New Arrivals
Goose vibrations
GOL (Jean-Marcel Busson, Frédéric Rebotier, Ravi Shardja, and Samon Takahashi). GOL was formed in 1988 in Paris by Jean-Marcel Busson, Frédéric Rebotier, Ravi Sharda and Samon Takahashi. The quartet embodies, within a post-dada spirit, a lost rural tradition. GOL plays flute, horns, guitar, violin, toys, selfmanufactured instruments, tapes, turntables, voices, various percussion instruments and electronics, an appropriateness of both traditional string instrument and handmade low fi equipment. G…
The Voice of the Turtle
The Voice of the Turtle is one of the most beguiling albums from one of America's most legendarily beguiling musicians. Originally released in 1968 on his own Takoma label, Fahey credits some of the compositions and performances to the fictional guitarist Blind Joe Death, and some of the songs are actually rumored to not be Fahey at all but in fact obscure blues 78s. Whatever the case may be, it's one of Fahey's most adventurous and beautiful LPs, with the three lengthy improvisational pie…
Arf Arf
The Australian sound poetry / film-maker / artist group ARF ARF consists of Marisa Stirpe, Frank Lovece, Michael Buckley and Marcus Bergner. Between 1985 and 2000 they produced and mounted hundreds of live performances in Australia and Europe. Their film 'Thread of Voice' (featuring Bob Cobbing / Konkrete Canticle) has been shown widely including at The Serpentine Gallery (London), The Pompidou Centre (Paris), Arsenal Kino (Berlin), Millennium (New York) and at the Museum of Modern Art in…
Cafe Cicago
RESTOCKED things were different in thailand a few years back, since it's inhabited by the sleazy christophersons or lou de preycks of our time, you can not just enter cocktail bars anymore without showing your ID! the idea is simple and plain though: watching the sunset with purple sunglasses and a fresh strawberry diahreah with ice in your hands while listening to classic german kraut or early kraftmenship from the same country! sliding over the autobahn while dreaming away on the analog…
The Background Noise
Under The Snow is a project by Stefano Gentile (guitar, objects, field-recordings) and Gianluca Favaron (microphones, field-recordings, processing). Stefano Gentile is well known for his work as owner of the Silentes and Amplexus labels; he is part of Maribor (along with Maurizio Bianchi, Nimh, Andrea Marutti and Gianluca Favaron) and in the past he has collaborated with Aube and Amir Baghiri. Beyond releasing under his own name, Gianluca Favaron collaborates with Ennio Mazzon on the Zbeen proje…
Quanta Of Light
Limited, hand-stamped white label edition** Highly disciplined master of visceral intensity, Daniel Menche, presents a one-off album for Touch's great white label series. Daniel's work is gladly accepted by both noise and more "musical" spheres, releasing on a wealth of labels including Important Records, Editions Mego and Sub Rosa among many others. Taken as a whole, they capture and play with a timeless sense of drama and direct emotional rawness that's hard to ignore. For Touch, 'Quant…
Indonesia Pop Nostalgia - Pan-Indonesian Pop, Folk, Instrumental
It is an eclectic collection of inspired Indonesian folk and pop music culled from cassettes and vinyl recorded and released during the 1970s and 1980s. The music on this collection spans several contemporary popular genres - each inherently unique and born from very different cultural and geographical origins within the archipelago. All, however, are also vitally informed by Islamic, Arabic and South Asian popular and traditional music, alongside various Western musical fads -- a distinctly Ind…
Message Bag
We come burdened with the glorious purpose of having readied the latest recordings by Messages, a double LP set called Message Bag. It's a set of pieces that imparts a vibe rife with history, and yet clearly focused on the future. You buy these 2 LPs, poster and insert in a bag, but in all of its formats and strategies Message Bag operates as a return to an unresolved system, as an alternative to the rest of yr choices, and bestows something that can't be bought. We call it Wisdom.
Overloaded Ark
A sequel to last year's eponymous debut as a duo, this new Drag City LP from Espers cellist Helena Espvall and Ghost's Masaki Batoh delves even deeper into traditional and ancient musics, making use of an armoury of instruments that extends beyond 'mildly obscure' (renaissance harp, sho, hurdy gurdy, etc) and enters into the realm of 'are you sure you haven't just made that up?' (auschpfeife, crumhorn, cornamuse, rig and darbuka). On hand to assist in this piece of instrumental archeology is anc…
A Red Score In Tile
Composed in 1979 and inspired by James Elaine's painting of the same name. First released on Three Poplars on LP in 2003. Cover picture: A Red Score In Tile (L'Apocalyse des Animaux), detail, James Elaine, 1979. Canvas, acrylic paint, taxidermied animals. 112" x 120". Title on disc and inner face of back insert: "a red score in tile (1979)".
Remember your black day
“Remember Your Black Day” features the first material conceived and produced as a full length by Dominick Fernow for the Vatican Shadow project following almost a dozen tapes (mostly released on Hospital Productions) and vinyl editions (released by the likes of Blackest Ever Black, Modern Love and Type) over the last three years. None of the 8 tracks included have been released before on any other format. At a time when the scene is saturated with “Noise Techno” the album is almost celebratory b…
Rv8
With RV8, the Osaka-based producer and musician Aoki Takamasa continues his long-term project that focuses on the modulation of rhythms and grooves. It began with his first EP Rhythm Variations in 2009, released as part three of the Unun-series. Besides his collaboration with Raster-Noton, he released records on several labels like Commmons, Progressive Form and Op.Disc, produced remixes for well-known musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yoshihiro Hanno and played performances at Elektra/Mont…
F/C
Michael Mantra creates Ambient music. But more than that, he creates audio tools for "brain hemisphere synchronization": going beyond the synchronization of mind and body, Mantra's techniques are a mean to release endorphins, which are part of the human body's natural pharmacy and work at the same level of opiates. Michael creates his soundscapes mixing modulating high and low harmonic synthesizers tones (low deep drones and high resonating harmonics) with didgeridoo, ocean waves, rain, water, …
Kitchen
Kevin Drumm is a musician not only known as a one-man-orchestra exploring the boundaries of music, but also a star under the banner of inestimable Bocian Records label. This time we were granted with access to his kitchen. The LP is limited to 34 minutes, consisting of 2 pieces, originally recorded in 1996 yet fully remastered in 2012. Side one piece slowly opens a kitchen door. Smooth, equilibrious and loopy sound fractions that surpass those requirements ambient music is bound to meet. F…
Orilla Oscura
Heavyweight, tip-on style gatefold jacket printed on uncoated Stoughton stock includes download code redeemable from the label. Vinyl mastered by Lupo at D&M** In swift succession to his excellent Vallens 12", Barn Owl Jon Porras presents his third solo side under his birth name. Inspired by a book on the San Francisco Tape Music Centre, Jon creates expansive atmospheres from slowed down tape manipulated with analogue FX to complement the hazy grain and shapes of his signature, plangent g…
Elegy for Bangalore
The sound/video installation-project 'Eye Contact with the City' (recipient of an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011) was the outcome of an artists' residency in Bangalore in the autumn of 2010. The primary materials used in the installation were the field recordings made and video footage shot at various locations in Bangalore. Materials also included retrieved audio from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city's flea markets. The extensive repository of field recordings and other a…
Swisher
The Blondes duo refract their house abstractions through a smudged psychedelic prism on 2nd album 'Swisher' for RVNG Intl. Picking up where their eponymous debut left off, Sam Haar and Zach Steinman start with the kosmic organ swell and atom-split rhythms of 'Aeon' before locking down to a driving, technoid momentum with 'Bora Bora' which carries through the album in the glyding dub-house gait of 'Andrew' to the ornate, future-baroque arpeggios of 'Poland' to the laser-grabbing, Belgian-styled t…
Voyeur
Husband-and-wife duo, Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long, who self-released handmade items and created sound for installations and exhibits along with producing conventional releases. "A few years ago I was commissioned by a film company in California to create a musical score for a film inspired by the Hitchcock 1954 film Rear Window, but with a more surrealist, two-sided viewer plot. As filming hadn't begun, I was given the screenplay and timeline, and asked to make specific music that might f…
Nothing Is Forever
Recorded at Forest City Gallery, London, ON with help from John Clement. 'The NSB was formed in 1965 by a group of people who enjoyed music and wanted to play in a band. There was no desire to learn to play traditional instruments so kazoos were bought and assorted noise makers modified or built from scratch. The band started playing regularly every Monday night in 1966 and has just carried on. The personnel has stayed the same. John Boyle (artist) kazoo and drums, John Clement (MD) guitar…
Air Museum
Air Museum blurs the lines between acoustic and electronic music even more without sacrificing melody or the delicacy of their sound. It is an album of firsts. It was the first album that the acoustic instruments were not processed via a computer. Instead, the processing of the instrumentation (acoustic and electric guitar, cello, accordion, piano, bass etc.) was done using a variety of pedals, modular synths, and other analog techniques. While acoustic instruments were used extensively, …