New Arrivals
Parallel / Grayscale
Parallel/Grayscale is the first collaborative work between Italian guitarist and composer Giuseppe Ielasi and French-Swiss composer and electroacoustic musician Kassel Jaeger. It is comprised of two different improvisation sessions. The first one took place in Paris, in October of 2011. The second happened in Oreno, in June of 2012, after the first concert Ielasi and Jaeger performed together. The first session was a pure analog device improvisation, whereas the second one was more laptop-o…
Nigeria Special Volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigeria
Nigeria Special 2 is the second part to the best selling Nigeria Special album released to critical acclaim in 2007 and further extends the look at the most exciting period in Nigeria’s recording history. The range of styles vary from highlife to Juju and Nigerian blues in the languages of Yoruba, Igbo, Bini and Ijaw. With a peppering of ‘afro’ experimentation the same musical stew pervades volume 2 as it’s predecessor – some artists appear again alongside some new …
Light that comes, light that goes
One of two new releases from Brian Pyle (the other being 'Interval Signals'), Light that comes is a rich exploration of Ensemble Economique's range and power. With a palpable sense of the sublime throughout, the listener is guided through drones like the pillars and buttresses of a cathedral for a sombre new religion, into the sounds of the ocean (somehow elegiac), flute tones springing up in the fog like gravestones, and fallen kosmische. These are followed by the wonderfully odd 'As the Train …
Piece Of Mind
"As K.J. Gustin wrote, Piece Of Mind is a work of 'exotic psychedelic free-jazz-meets-rock, East-meets-West, progressive and smoky moment in late Twentieth Century music history'. Add to that a spice of jazzy brassed R&B and a touch of minor-key popsike sensitivity and you get an accurate description of the sounds contained in Roger Bunn's astonishing 1969 LP, originally released in the UK on the Major Minor budget label, but issued in some European countries (Ohr label in Germany or Phil…
Dance of the vampires
"Roman Polanski’s 1967 film ‘Dance Of The Vampires’ (as it was originally called, but more widely known by its re-named title ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’, or ‘Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are In My Neck’) is a camp horror cult classic. At the time the film was marketed as a ‘farce’, which overlooked the fact that this film is fantastically eerie. The major part played by the soundtrack in giving the film this effect cannot be understated, and the cold-as-snow production did much to enhance the b…
Linge
Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone and radio. Joris Rühl, clarinet. 'Le Linge was my grandparents' old farm in the East of France. It is there, in the barn full of old hay, abandoned wasp nests, murmurs and memories, in its sweltering, dusty heat, that we played for three days and recorded several sequences. We had no precise direction in mind for the record. We focused on the present moment, and then on the next. The barn's structure elegantly cracked with the wind, and the church bells brought t…
Giovanni Lami / Kenny The Chimp
Giovanni Lami (Ravenna, Italy, 1978) is a field recordist and musician who works within soundscape and sound-ecology boundaries. Since 2009, he has founded several projects, attended many workshops and tought others about soundscaping and field recording techniques. With his various projects, Giovanni has performed in several venues including: Conservatorio B.Maderna (Cesena), DalVerme (Roma), Mu.Vi.Ment.S. Festival 2010 (Itri), Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venezia), Festival C/off (Faenza), Schiume…
The Electronic Belt
Jamal Moss aka Heiroglyphic Being presents The Electronic Belt, his second release for Alter, and perhaps his most dancefloor-oriented release. The EP is made up of three choice cuts from 2012's Man with the Red Drum transmission with each track bearing the signifiers of Jamal's rough and distinctive production; melodies twisting themselves into psychedelic wormholes, raw kicks and toms that hit hard and tight. Yellow vinyl edition in five different colored disco bags, mastered for vinyl by Step…
Under A Single Banner
It's been a busy couple of years for the producer behind the Shifted project. On top of an extremely well-received album for the Mote Evolver label, the producer has edged further out into the fringes of electronic music under a number of aliases, taking in noise/ambient variants as Covered In Sand, as well as more distorted, technofied productions under the Alexander Lewis moniker, a sound described by the Blackest Ever Black label as "S-M techno." His new album as Shifted, Under a Single Ba…
Ocean Parkway
It is with the greatest excitement that three lobed recordings announces the release of ocean parkway, the second album from the gunn-truscinski duo. ocean parkway is a unique and masterful album, one that sees the duo building and expanding upon the already telepathic chemistry that they demonstrated on their debut, sand city. whereas their first album operated to help introduce listeners to what steve gunn and john truscinski had been working on in private for several years, ocean parkway demo…
Ambivalent Scale; Tape Recordings 1979-82
Peter Becker is one half of famous Eyeless in Gaza. In 1979/80 Peter Becker and Martyn Bates formed their own label called „Ambivalent Scale Recordings“ in order to release their own music as well as projects of friends like Kevin Harrison or Bron Area. Peter released two Solo-Tapes called "They brought the Statosphere" (ASR04) and By Train to the Coast (ASR10, which also found release on Ian Dobson's Flowmotion Label)
Peters recordings from those two Solo-Tapes contain a wide variety from athmo…
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music Volume 7
These seven volumes represent a strong listening base, as incomplete as it may be, the basis for a near-infinite exploration through one's self, in the present tense.All in all, if I add up all these tracks, there are 176 of them, created between 1921 and 2012, for a total of almost 18 hours of music. The sphere of geographical propagation was kind of programmed at the start (between 1952 and 1970 there have been over one hundred national studios, mostly tied to radio, on all five continents), b…
The Spanish Suite
2012 Re-release "The Spanish Suite was written to magnify the contribution that Moorish Spain made on the European Renaissance. The relationship of music to cosmic rhythms and harmony was altered from the original state of Spanish music and eventually distorted down to the 12 tone equi-temperment system of tuning. The Artistic Heritage Ensemble was taught to play outside of the 12-tone system and to recognize natural tone relationships. The musicians had to be dedicated to music for life …
Problems
As per usual, Hundebiss delivers a sick record for us to choke down before we even know what’s in it (like your mom used to do at the dinner table). Problems, by Primitive Art, to these ears, represent a warped union of dub, industrial and even chillwave/hypnagogic pop. Reminds of that solo Avey Tare record, albeit dub-ified with the corners melted down and the beats rendered with more vintage care.
Fait a la machine
40+ min of heavy machinery pounding, hissing, and vibrating, plus a bonus 63 minute CDR of the dronier side of machines at work. If you enjoy artists like Vivenza, Matt Heckert, early Esplendor Geometrico, or Chop Shop, this might be right up your alley. "Unlike a lot of recordings of natural and dissonant phenomena, Fait a la Machine works just as well as a piece of music as it does an audio documentation of the world surrounding us. It makes that leap from interesting to enjoyable in a way…
Brombron 26: Two lost souls
Korm Plastics is proud to present the twenty-sixth release in the Brombron series (missing numbers will follow later this year). Originally a co-production between Staalplaat and Extrapool, it is now hosted by co-curator Frans de Waard. In the year 2000 Frans de Waard and Extrapool started the Brombron project. Two or more musicians become artists in residence in Extrapool, an arts initiative in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with a fully equipped sound recording studio. These artists can work in a …
Menses
*Numbered edition of 206 copies pressed on 180 gram Menstrual Blood Red vinyl* Reissue of the private LP edition of 300 copies from 1981; the pyramidal construction of these two 'suites,' with its intentionally brutal and grotesque deformations, elaborates on overflowing and apocalyptical collapse, dragging a completely dissolvent conception of the world and of the para-industrial sound. Bonus tracks: 'Milan Bruits' from the Fix Planet! comp (Ata Tak) and the two tracks first issued in the v…
Disappearance
Pioneering electronic minimalist Taylor Deupree and revered Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto collaborate properly for the first time with the willowy ambient beauty of 'Disappearance'. They previously crossed paths when Deupree remixed a song from Sakamoto's 'Chasm' album in 2006, and since then they've reached a mutual appreciation for the themes of 'Isolation, solitude, contemplation' which perfuse the delicate structures of 'Disappearance'. Its initial ideas were sketched out during rehears…
Wound Response
Already sold out at source ! Ltd edition of 350 LP. 'Wound response' is the third solo harp release by improviser and harpist Rhodri Davies following his albums 'Trem' (2003) and 'Over Shadows' (2007) on the Confront Label. Moved by the diverse and vital music scene in the North East of England this is a weighty departure for Davies. wound response is loud, distorted and forms an attempt to work with rhythm and pitches in an open and fluid way. The album comes pressed on heavyweight transl…
Mobilisation Generale
Born Bad Records, the on-point French label that has brought you some of our favorites of the year, will release this week a compilation of French protest jazz from the 70s called Mobilisation Generale. The compilation, which you can stream below, is a fantastic look at a small slice of history that could use a little more attention. On BBR's Bandcamp, an entire oral history is written out to accompany the release, which features some truly innovative freeform jazz and poetry, and we've reprinte…