New Arrivals
Krewton the Knewtron
'Previously unreleased material by the legendary Rick Potts of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), to commemorate his solo tour of Japan. Raw, lo-fi avant-garde experiments with field recording, improvisation and tape music, recorded in the late seventies when Rick was in his early twenties. Featuring contributions by Le Forte Four and Doodooettes on one track, and two recently recorded unreleased tracks. " In 1977 I wanted to make an animated film filled with the strange creatures…
Uncle Joe's Spirit House
A special project fully produced by William Parker for his own Centering Records imprint and dedicated to his Aunt Carrie Lee & Uncle Joe (who is pictured on the album cover) – they celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary on August 6th, 2010. William really wanted to get this done in time for this auspicious date and he did. Seven of the songs on this CD were written in December 2009 especially for this recording session which took place on January 22, 2010; Ennio's Tag and Oasis were p…
Birds in a box
Stephen Vitiello is a sound and media artist. CD releases include “Bright and Dusty Things” (New Albion Records), “Listening to Donald Judd” (Sub Rosa) and “The Gorilla Variations”, with Molly Berg (12k). Vitiello’s sound installations have been presented internationally, including exhibitions at the Cartier Foundation, Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art in NY and the High Line, also in NYC. Originally from NY, Stephen is now based in Richmond, VA.Rutger Zuydervelt records as Machinefabri…
Strait Gait
The Southern Records Latitudes juggernaut thunders into town once more, this time driven by Kranky's very own Boduf Songs, aka Mat Sweet, who for the purposes of this release teams up with a couple of collaborators and strays slightly from his established sonic parameters, venturing into the realms of dark, cinematic drone for first piece ' Please Extract My Teeth With Your Rustiest Pliers (For Redemptive)', whose title is not only massively 'eww' inducing, but commits a grammatical felony at th…
Time & Motion
Radio Massacre International is a British trio of Steve Dinsdale (keyboards, electronics, drums), Duncan Goddard (keyboards, electronics, bass) and Gary Houghton (guitar, synthesizers). These three musicians have worked together in various configurations since they were 16 year old students in the 70s and formed R.M.I. in 1993. After nearly 20 years together as R.M.I. and over 30 albums and hundreds of concerts, you might think that there might be no surprises left, but like their undulating, fl…
Ready\'n
Seijiro Murayama: snare drum, cymbal, sticks, brushes. Masafumi Ezaki: trumpet. Kazushige Kinoshita: violin. Recorded live by Taku Unami at Kobe Art Village Center, Kobe, April 12, 2008. Mastered by Taku Unami. Photo by Nobuhiro Sasaki. Includes liner notes by Seijiro Murayama in Japanese and English.
(hail satan)
Carlos GALVEZ Taroncher (bassclarinet)-Magda MAYAS (piano)-Koen NUTTERS (acoustic bass)-Morten J. OLSEN (percussion). Recorded on 28 August 2006, Berlin.
Sjunga Slutet Nu
Sjunga slutet nu (Sing the End Now), the new long-awaited project by Hans Appelqvist, consists of both an album and a film. The work is about the angst and silencing of death and the meeting with the final end. The film and album have the atmosphere of a fairy-tale that feels both natural and original, a world where talking levitating spheres seem as ordinary as man. In it, we meet Theodora, an elderly woman that lives in a lonely house by a lake somewhere in Sweden. We also meet her friends: th…
Temporary Perspectives
Limited to 300 copies. Field recordings, sine waves, computer data, lloopp, electric guitar, tremolo pedal, condenser microphone, contact microphone, mixing board. Recorded and mixed: 2006-2009. Mastered by Valerio Tricoli. Photography by Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga. Package design by Pafsanias Ioannidis.' label info
The Full Use Of Nothing
Awesome reissue! Here sensitively remastered by Denis Blackham from the original master tapes at Skye Mastering and with a beautiful facsimile mini LP style sleeve, made in Japan.The Full Use Of Nothing was the first serious publication of music by Andrew Chalk/Ferial Confine on cassette in 1985. Early experimentation in acoustic percussion and primitive multi-tracking techniques shaped the sound and spirit of these formative recordings, somehow very tentative but leading to an on-going …
Invisible ear
Two decades ago, saxophonist John Butcher abandoned his doctoral pursuits in theoretical physics to pursue a life in improvised music and has since become one of the genre’s leading instrumental and structural innovators. Butcher’s pursuit of extended techniques has yielded and continues to yield, as indicated by this most recent solo outing, a treasure trove of unfathomable timbral and dynamic possibilities for an instrument whose role in experimental music seems to consistently teeter o…
Split the Difference
"Splinters is remembered, indeed lionized by knowing UK jazz fans, as the monumental musical meeting of tenor giant Tubby Hayes, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, saxophonist Trevor Watts, pianist Stan Tracey, bassist Jeff Clyne, and legendary drummers John Stevens and Phil Seamen. Split The Difference is the rare recording Trevor Watts made of the group's first public appearance, at London's 100 Club on May 22nd, 1972. Two extended sets of continuous collective improvisation comprise this full-length CD…
In light
Four years after the release of their debut album Outflow, Japan’s Small Color, a duo comprised of Rie Yoshihara (aka Trico!) (accordion, voice, vintage keyboard instruments) and Yusuke Onishi (guitar, banjo, bass, programming and production) are back with the beautifully polished In Light. This album marks what some may consider a departure for 12k: sublime and gentle, minimal, acoustic J-pop, which once may have been destined for the now-defunct Happy label, but can now sit comfortably beside …
Bag It
After 4 intensive days of recording with Steve Albini (WTF!?! Thought he didn't like jazz) The Thing created Bag It!, a new mastodon of ecstasy music. The Thing is well known for their free jazz versions of rock classics from artists such as PJ Harvey, White Stripes, The Sonics, Yeah Yeah Yeahs & Lightning Bolt. This time the band is only doing two rock interpretations, one by Japan's 54 Nude Honeys & one by the The Ex/ Muzsikás. The rest of the tracks on the album are written by Mats Gustafsson…
Thought for Food
Every once in a while a record like this one appears out of the ether without clear reference points. Web details on The Books are sketchy, but I have ascertained that they're a duo consisting of guitarist Nick Zammuto, who lives in North Carolina and has released some solo material under his surname, and cellist Paul de Jong, who lives in New York and has composed for dance, theater and film. After that, the pool of Books information dries up fast. The music is similarl…
Aleph At Hallucinatory Mountain
The long-awaited Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain is Current 93's first album in three years, following their double-platinum-selling Black Ships Ate the Sky. Spinning around epic series of verses written by Current 93 founder David Tibet, the new album sees Tibet back with a new 1972-style supergroup comprised of himself on vocals and July and Gorgon guitars; guitar hero James Blackshaw on 12-string guitar and piano; counter-culture guru William Breeze on electric viola and viola-controlled samp…
Chronoradial
In the world of sound library and production music French Avant-garde composer Patrice Sciortino is both unique and universal. His astounding late 1960s and early 1970s recordings for the prestigious Musique Pour L’Image and PSI labels receive their first serious reissue and reappraisal here. Cellos growl and twist with an air evocative of Bernard Hermann, choirs hiss and howl like Alessandro Alessandroni’s ‘I Cantori Moderni’ and the whole thing is as dexterous and playful as Ennio Morric…
Gratuitous Abuse
The London based improvising string trio Barrel of Alison Blunt on violin, Ivor Kallin on violin & viola, and Hannah Marshall on cello, all members of London Improvisers Orchestra and performers at the 2007 Freedom of the City. "These three musicians have been performing in various combinations with others on the London improvising scene for several years. As well as the numerous small groups they have participated in, all three are members of the London Improvisers Orchestra. About six years a…
Perpetuum Mobile
“Perpetuum Mobile” is the result of a uniquely schizophrenic “open source” compositional process: the UK's finest collage composers (collage-posers?) Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) uploaded files to a shared server, downloaded and processed each other's work, and flung the resulting fragments back at each other. The result is an interpenetrating audio-collage so intricate that neither party can recall who did what to whom. So far, so avant-garde; but what makes this record d…
Live at Café Oto
The live music experience is what it’s all about! Let’s face it, the recording, the thing (CD, vinyl, ipod), that you’re listening to now is a luxury – a convenient form of storing and a flawed attempt at revisiting the ecstasy of the live experience. Live music is at the heart of civilization and culture. Live music is real music – the recording is simply the run out groove of time, a means to try and capture the experience. This trio is defined by live performance. The relationship between the…