New Arrivals
Rufen
Rufen is the second installment in a trilogy of Qluster music, following on from the Fragen (BB 076CD/LP) studio album. In four impressive live recordings, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Onnen Bock unfold aural panoramas which can only be described, in the truest sense of the word, as fantastic. Had Claude Debussy not already composed 'Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun,' then Qluster would have been ideally placed to do so, their transparency and polymorphism so reminiscent of his high Impression…
Dabke 2020: folk & pop sounds of Syria
Sublime Frequencies is pleased to present the second volume of Northeast Syrian dabke music from legendary vocalist Omar Souleyman and his group. This record was compiled by Mark Gergis to coincide with the Sublime Frequencies UK/European tour in May and June of 2009, featuring live performances by Omar Souleyman himself. Culled from dozens of cassettes recorded in Syria from 1999-2008, the music here is an extension of Omar's Highway to Hassake: Folk & Pop Sounds of Syria (SF 031CD) release, to…
Qat, Coffee & Quambus: raw 45s from Yemen
Compiled by Chris Menist, Qat, Coffee & Qambus: raw 45s from Yemen features vintage oud and vocal music inspired by the qat-chewing, coffee-sipping, qambus-playing culture of Yemen. Although part of the classical Arabic musical tradition, the music of Yemen takes its rhythmic lead as much from the East African coast (a mere 20 miles across the Red Sea) as the surrounding Arab Peninsula.Little has been written about the music and culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations, and each 45rpm …
Scott (The Collection 1967-1970)
This box set collects remastered versions of Scott Walker's first five solo albums. The Scott albums are the fulcrum of Walker's career: You can hear where he'd been, and in retrospect, where he was going. His third act was emerging after 20 years of almost total silence with Tilt, The Drift, and Bish Bosch, released between 1997 and 2012. Walker's latter-day albums are fearless and violent, featuring wailing donkeys, moans, scrapes, and famously, the sound of someone punching meat. They seem to…
Butcher Meat
Moreno Daldosso breaks into 1993 with his project Murder Corporation and released his first tape on his new label Murder Release. Tape after tape Murder Corporation has gained a prominent position as electronic serial slaughterer, claiming frontal attacks and sonic walls relentlessly, sampling overload and brutal distortion. Butcher Meat is reflected in an overdose of frequency, blood, screams and distorted voice beyond the human. Death, massacres and violence are tightened up until the total sa…
Works 1987-1993
Both of these projects hardly need an introduction. Merzbow is since the late 70s the project of Masami Akita working in the field of noise music, having released a few hundred CDs/LPs/cassettes by now. In 1987 Kapotte Muziek was then the solo project of Frans de Waard, after Christian Nijs left the group early '87. De Waard concentrated on working with other musicians, and started trading tapes with a few musicians he was already in contact with, and one of them was Merzbow. The first release w…
The Falling Rocket
This is true cosmic music!!! Stephan Mathieu is at the top of his game with The Falling Rocket, this is some seriously pensive & brooding minimalism that runs the gamut of the emotion rainbow without tossing you around rollercoaster style, with mostly just a Farfisa organ, Hohner Electronium, and radio at his disposal, Mathieu concentrates on a dense & lightweight essence, the sound of civilized silence carved out in the blankness of your mind, surrounded by inaudible hiss & hum, a delicate stat…
The Magic Bridge
Gatefold double LP version. Includes a CD with three bonus tracks, plus lyric sheet inserts. Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson's genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out on CD (Pink Triangle…
Mad Dog\'s Hustle
A too long unheard blacksploitation soundtrack from the Fantasy Productions house -- grooves from the pool of players who laid down the sounds on Secret Stash's fantastic Porno Groove compilation -- the score for the very little seen and long lost Mad Dog's Hustle from 1974! The music is credited to The Upstroke -- the same unidentified musicians from Fantasy's adult film scores -- and in a similar fashion to the porno soundtrack material, they're working very much in the appropriate idiom, but …
Resorts & Ruins
In “Resorts & Ruinsâ€Â, a set of three recent sound works, Kyriakides deals with several themes in both a physical and narrative sense. All the pieces use source material that highlight specific vocal traditions, namely Turkish pop music, Cypriot epic song, and Baroque opera, but they also all make extensive use of other forms of speech and vocal acts. In “Varosha (Disco Debris)â€Â, a narrating voice is our tour-guide in the ruins of the Cypriot ghost town Varosha; the many fragm…
Hei / Sou
Celer & Machinefabriek are having a great year. In addition to their separate releases, they’ve toured, released a download set of the tour, and completed a trilogy of fine vinyl singles, of which Hei/Sou is the final piece. Perhaps the most exciting thing about their collaboration is the extent to which each seems to have been inspired and invigorated by the presence of the other. By pushing each other into new territories, they’ve each upped the ante, as best demonstrated on Celer’s late…
Cuckoo live life like Cuckoo
Now in their tenth year the band have been gathering plaudits and accumulating new fans with every release, and after playing to thousands at Supersonic Festival last year, things are accelerating at an even faster pace. As with each album release, Hey Colossus continue to mutate and for their eighth album they have enlisted the support of a new drummer, Part Chimp guitar/vox man, Tim Cedar, who has undoubtedly brought a whole new kind of energy that has reinvigorated the band. When the rhythm s…
Barn Nova
After five years and 20-plus albums-- most released on their own Child of Microtones label-- MV & EE's 2006 move to Ecstatic Peace began on a high note. "East Mountain Joint", the opening track on Green Blues, is a hypnotic hymn to unscheduled freedom, and it's catchy without losing the duo's loose, do-what-we-feel-like vibe. In fact, it's so entrancing that it's made subsequent work by Matt Valentine, Erika Elder, and their various colleagues seem like insufficient attempts to recapture…
Lifespans
Lifespans is a mesmerizing and hallucinating piece of electronic music. Listen to it at a fairly loud volume, or with headphones, and you will hear myriads of voices and melodies, never repeating themselves
Petite Geante
Recorded in 1208 Saalfelden, 01-0209 Brest. Stephen O'Malley: Electrical guitar, Supro, Fulltone tape echo, sine wave, field recording. Originally commissioned for the Enter sound installation series at Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway curated by Anne Hilde Neset. Appears as a 4 channel work which loops for a full day, on a cycle with 9 other artists, every tenth day, for at least two years. More information about Tou Scene and Enter can be found at www.touscene.com. Published by Ideologic Organ (BM…
Nihtes niht
'The music supposed to be a soundtrack for lonely ice-soundscapes... when you stand there on lonely wide inhuman places and feel lost, but you still stand on ice...' - Baraka[H] The newest collaboration between masters of evocative noise/drone ambient is divided into four long tracks, four directions of nothing. The tracks are entitled in middle ageindo-german language, for north, east, south, west. And the album title means nothing from nothing - very weird notion, as it doesn't exist anymore i…
Plekzationz
Double LP version. This recording contains seven remixes by UK-based artist and electronic musician Mark Fell of the first three 12" singles released on the record label Sensate Focus in 2012. These were called 10, 5 and 3.3.... The first of these, 10, was itself a reworking of materials from an earlier project by Fell and Terre Thaemlitz, released on Comatonse Recordings in 2012. The seven remixes were written and recorded in June 2012 at the Upper Lounge, Chatham Street (UK) using a MacBook…
Oh
Roger's reigning post-Burma moment; basement 4-track recordings of unknown-tongue space psych, ecstatically rendered.
Trente belles annes
Triumphal new CD, the first new recordings in an age, from one of the greatest bands on the goddamn planet, the trio of saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and guitarist Donald Miller aka Borbetomagus: this is a roof-raising performance, recorded live at Instants Chavires, France, 19th December 2009. Borbetomagus combine the elevated amplifier violence of Jimi Hendrix at his most combustible with the spontaneous free music polyphony of Ascension-era Coltrane and the ‘guitar smashing’ h…
Bellstomp / Pond Dance
Me, Myself & Ekoplekz present two versions of Tod Dockstader library production tunes from his 1979/1981 LPs for Aldwych stalwarts Boosey & Hawkes...one veers towards saline techno, the other remains a resolute radiophonic bubbler...both of us are well chuffed to have had the chance to tamper with the wiley tape sage's great work ...BM