New Arrivals
Kablys. Live at 11:20
This is a great live performance of the best Lithuanian contemporary jazz musicians played live at the small punk club in Vilnius. That was a hot night. Liudas Mockunas - tenor, baritone and soprano saxophonesEugenijus Kanevicius - bass and electronicsDalius Naujokaitis – drums
Marking Time
Originally released on CD in 2008 on the Preservation label, & now available on vinyl for the 1st time. Using a selection of bowed string instruments & lavishing these sustained howls w/ the most delicate of fingerpicked guitar & gentle piano, he takes us through a most harrowing journey. These short songs are deft & deeply touching musings on loss & on the importance of time. Comparisons could be made to plenty of Richard's modern-classical or avant-folk contemporaries, but few imbue their musi…
Ja / Nein - Sonate
LP in white vinyl, comes in aluminium-cork coversleeve, designed from children with mental handicaps with 4 inserts. It's limited to 150 copies.
Fugue
I began writing about this Tape & Bill Wells 'Fugue' record yesterday but I gave up as the words just were not coming to me. I guess that's probably a good sign though as I was just kind of getting into the melancholy zone of the record, which certainly is a thing of beauty. Wells' guitar playing is delicate and magical. The Tape guys really give him space to do his thing adding wonderful little details and twinkles into the mix. This quite simply is the prettiest, most charming record I …
beet5 / Nervures
Limited edition of 200 copies. beet5 takes Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto as its starting point. The slow movement was recorded using a special turntable for the blind that plays back records at quarter speed. I had an old recording of the piece lying around; I forget who the pianist was. The slowed down version was very striking, recognisable as Beethoven’s music but much sadder, more fragile. I developed a piece around this, using my usual array of synthesized sounds, field recordings, ‘borr…
Introducing
The Drag City / Galactic Zoo team delve deeply into the recesses of private press obscurity once again, further revealing the underbelly of American music's recorded history - this time the little known songwriter Ryan Trevor is in the spotlight, who released just one incredibly rare, homespun LP (this one, if you're wondering) which surfaced originally in 1977. Not much is known about Trevor, though the guys at Drag City bill him as a "loner genius", whose work is to be filed somewhere between …
White Summer of Love Dreamer
Brand new LP from Kawabata Makoto, his second for Blackest Rainbow following on nicely from where 2008's 'Rainbow Of Love' left off. White Summer of Love Dreamer continues to develop Kawabata's experimentation into psychedelic drone music using a variety of instruments. Across the two tracks on this LP, Kawabata seamlessly uses acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, sarangi, tambura, organ, hurdy-gurdy, electronics, field recording, and his voice to create a stunning soundscape of hazy summ…
Vadelma/Hawaii
Surprisingly good free jazz from this Finnish combo. Very organic sound, there's something unique about them. "One of the hottest shows of recent memory was seeing this burning-free ecstatic force in TAMPERE back in 2008. One of those nights where you just feel that you are beyond this planet's laws of nature and in a world you did not know existed. Now the other foot has dropped, and what seemed impossible now can be held on this beautiful LP. Side Vadelma recorded January 26 in Helsinki. Side…
The World Is A House On Fire
Veterans of the sprawling Chicago music scene, Zelienople have carved out a unique sound over their album releases. The World is a House on Fire is the latest chapter in the band's story, and frames their music more succinctly than ever before. Mike Weis (percussion), Matt Christensen (vocals, guitar) and Brian Harding (bass, saxophone) managed to perfect brooding, melancholy doom-pop on their last full-length Give it Up (TYPE 054CD), and this latest LP finds the band in a more evocative mood.…
Third Mouth
British avant pop artist Alexander Tucker releases his much anticipated new album, Third Mouth, on Thrill Jockey in 2012. This album builds on the strengths revealed by his landmark debut for the label, Dorwytch released in April 2011, culminating in his finest work to date. Using songs written over a 12 month period he achieves his own inimitable blend of psych rock and ambient pop using a variety of studio crafted effects, rudimentary beats, guitar and bass, as well as synth and cello drone…
Henzai
Tokyo-based guitarist/singer Hisato Higuchi presents his fourth full-length and first LP release. Henzai is Higuchi at his most bare. Each song appears like a spectral poem -- sewn together with hushed electricity and whispers. This recording is wholly intimate, recorded in seclusion, and washes over the listener like a hazy, day-break dream. Higuchi splits these 12 torch-songs between slow-motion improvisations and the composed, yet each is sung with a mix of beautiful wordless/Japanese languag…
Coil Sea
The idea for the Coil Sea record came about after Arbouretum had finished our Summer 2009 European tour. The band had some time off, and I thought it would be interesting to put a session together consisting of musicians that I knew and had played with, but hadn't all played with each other. The goal was to create improvised music without much in the way of set ideas or editorial input from my end, and to hope that we could, over the course of the session, become comfortable enough playing…
Go Grey
The second full-length release by U.S. Girls is an even more fully realized excursion into a hazy alternate universe where pop vocals and muzzy scree fuse in harmony. Go Grey conjures up ambient aerosols while luminous kaleidoscopes of sound sizzle, peak, and explode. Megan Remy is a chanteuse from (perhaps) the future, guiding all who choose to sail an evocative trip through her unique aural hallucinogenic landscapes. It's a journey of lush vistas, warm currents, and complex beauties. 23nd-Cent…
Ausland
Just two years separate Pyrolator's 1979 debut Inland and the 1981 album Ausland. Nevertheless, they could hardly be more different from one another. If Inland reflects the industrial decay and politically-explosive atmosphere of 1977 and the years thereafter in the Federal Republic of Germany, then Ausland is a buoyant, playful and yet groundbreaking pop album. There had been some significant developments since 1979. The Ata Tak label, which Pyrolator had co-founded, had hit a rich vein of…
Origin
The entirety of Origin's musical material is comprised of the vibrating strings of Pitre's ensemble of bowed "harmonic-guitars," which are unconventionally strung electric guitars (utilizing multi-unisons) tuned to intervals corresponding with the Harmonic Series, a.k.a. Just Intonation. No effects processing (pre or post) was used in this recording. All effect-like qualities result from the multi-unison strings (phasing), sympathetic vibrations, combination/difference tones (of the chosen just …
Anthem
Presented here for the first time on vinyl, Joe Colley's 'Anthem' LP gathers material from limited edition releases issued between 2001-2006. Side A presents Anthem a long form tonal study with contrasting climax. Side B edits together 4 shorter explorations culled from the Triptych triple business card cdr release and inserts a track from the 2001 compilation CD Coalescence. Mastered for vinyl by Giuseppe Ielasi. Pressed in a limited edition of 200 copies housed in a deluxe tip-on jacket…
Thing
For fifteen years, Trans Am has forged a musical legacy that has consistently confounded those who would confine them to generic indie-rock labels and rather spoken for itself. Trans Am a-la 2010 is a band of veterans unafraid to contradict themselves, one that has grown stronger in its music and more confident in its identity over the course of now nine full length albums.
Neue Rungholter Tänze
'Published September 2010 by Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, Hamburg in an edition of 500 numbered copies with an insert. New treatments and adaptations of the musical heritage of Mechthild von Leuszch as final part of the Rungholt dance trilogy, executed & presented by Werkbund.' label info
Endless Falls
Endless Falls is the fifth full length release by Scott Morgan under the loscil moniker. The album begins and ends with the sound of rain recorded by Scott in his back yard, precipitation being a constant presence in his home city of Vancouver. Many of the other sounds on the album are derived from these same recordings, processed and combined with other harmonic sounds to create the textures and drones. Something completely new to this release would be vocals, of a sort, a first for any loscil …
BloodLinks + SacredPlaces
Poet Laureate of East St. Louis+founder/editor of internationally acclaimed journal "Drum Voices Revue". Principal architect of black cultural arts movement of the 60s, teacher & acclaimed writer of countless volumes of poetry, Redmond has been called "the preacher of poetic rhythm" by Maya Angelou, "a carver of high song magic" by Quincy Troupe & "a worker & healer" by Ishmael Reed. On this spirited, funky, streetwise collection of 12 vintage cuts recorded live in the studio in Sacramento in 19…