New Arrivals
El Acero del Partido/Heroe del Trabajo
Limited vinyl reissue of the first LP from Spanish industrial band Esplendor Geométrico. An industrial classic originally released in 1982 on the Tic Tac label, Esplendor Geométrico's sound was already devoid of aggressive lyrics and even titles for their tracks (the A-side, El Acero del Partidio, is spread across five tracks while the B-side, Héroe Del Trabajo, has three tracks). Their sound had already begun to acquire a personality of its own, not fully mature but with an astounding aus…
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…
Nocturnes
'Nocturnes' is William Basinski's first new solo recording release in four years. It comprises two typically sanguine, extended compositions; 'Nocturnes' written between 1979-80 during his post-grad period in San Francisco, and 'The Trail Of Tears' recorded in 2009 for the Robert Wilson opera, 'The Life and Death of Marina Abramovich'. If there's any one way to measure the efficacy of his music, it's by how drowsy one feels after consumption. We could either do with a snooze or a strong c…
Fleshpile sister
Fleshpile Thematic, released on The Tapeworm earlier this year, reconsidered as an album of dub versions. Smooth edges roughed out. Re-engineered space. All human vocals erased.
Relief
Our man Millis is a Climax Golden Twin and a noted curator of globe trotting / time traveling esoterica, amongst other accolades.ÊIn the former category, Millis and Jeffery Taylor steadily release some of the most headscratching amalgamations of avant-rock, decontextualized temple music, heightened-state minimalism, and collaged field recordings this side of the Sun City Girls (including the soundtrack to the cult film Session Nine); and in the latter, Millis has published a number of acclaimed …
Echohaus
If you’ve heard of Felix Kubin before, you’ll likely think you have some idea of how ‘Echohaus’ is going to sound. Well forget what you know, you’re wrong – Kubin’s well-worn Sci-Fi pop stylings are entirely erased on ‘Echohaus’ as he rebuilds people’s preconceptions from the ground up. He may have just scored a long-deserved Wire cover, but Kubin is not content to simply rest on his laurels, and although ‘Echohaus’, a collaboration with contemporary chamber group Ensemble Integrales, migh…
Wooden Veil
This Berlin-based group combining the talents of artists Marcel Türkowsky, Hanayo, Christopher Kline, Domink Noé and Jan Pfeiffer, who each seem to spread themselves between a number of different projects. Interestingly, Noé is credited as a member of "krautrock legends Lustfaust", which is the fictional band created by conceptual artist Jamie Sholvin for the 2006 Beck's Futures exhibition, which might prompt you to think that Wooden Veil re made up too. There's definitely some sort o…
A Rebours
Depuis que Minizza existe (le groupe se forme en 2000), ses membres ont toujours eu dans l'idée, un jour, d'adapter un roman en musique. Lorsque France Culture leur commande un Atelier de Création Radiophonique, l'occasion est saisie, et le choix se porte rapidement sur A Rebours (1884) de Joris-Karl Huysmans, chef-d'œuvre séminal, manifeste du décadentisme, dévoré par les membres du groupe dès l'adolescence.Ce travail pour France Culture donne naissance au troisième album du groupe qui, bien qu…
Requiem for a baby grand
Final piano music for 8 hands and tools. A film by Pavel Borodin documenting the performance by Hans W. Koch, Thomas Lehn, Ben Patterson and Jozef Cseres.
Alien, All Too Alien
Their cat may well be all too alien but there's quite an earthly feel to this epic voyage of a record from the brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. It feels like you are slowly drifting through different continents perched on a floating glass-domed steel barge, observing the strangely contrasting cultures go about their business, seemingly unaware they are being watched. Though there are certain sounds contained herein that are quite familiar to many 21st century homosapie…
A history of every one
'A History of Every One' by Bill Orcutt is an album of songs: minstrel songs, holiday songs, hymns, marches, cowboy songs, Disney songs, work songs, delta blues. The original tunes themselves are nothing special, well known, but not particularly well-regarded. Most would be filler on a mid-60's Doris Day or Burl Ives LP. What Orcutt does with them however is remarkable: expanding upon techniques developed on 2011's 'How the Thing Sings' and incorporating ideasforged since his recording of 'The S…
Time of the Last Persecution
Time of the Last Persecution is Bill Fay's second and final album for the Deram label, originally released in 1971. An absolute classic of melancholy (borderline morbid) folk-rock that falls somewhere between Pearls Before Swine, Leonard Cohen, and a suicide prevention hotline. Time of the Last Persecution is almost single-mindedly obsessed with end times so it's fitting that this brilliant album would be his last release for over 30 years. Now that Fay is back with a new and highly laude…
Regions of the old school
After the mind-erasing and shamanic Amaranthine released in January 2012, MIE is ecstatic to be working with Richard again on a true magnum opus of the Youngsian experimental catalogue. Regions of the Old School is an epic and proudly sprawling collection of instrumentals and songs. In a conceptual nod to the long out of print Festival, released in 1994 by Table of the Elements, it features five extended tracks scored for a diverse array of instruments with guest vocals by Madeleine Hynes and ad…
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…
Ritual
gorgeous LP of this obscure live recording, an ethereal vortex of electric moon-sounding mandolin and slow bass (luca massolin), spacy keyboards (david vanzan), primitive astral soprano sax and voice (virginia genta). atmospheres for the end of the earthly. handmade collage cover art. limited edition of 280 numbered copies.
Shell-shocked
Meirino has been crossing fabricated, gathered, altered, provoked or wrong sounds for nearly two decades. The second Noisendo release follows the first one (Gorgomilos) closely - chronologically speaking - and dives deeper into a DIY electronica where machines dictate as much law as Man. Mutual respect? The obvious punk drive of Noisendo001 is more subtle in 002 but it is present in the nervous breathing of the acoustic and synthetic sounds that excite our senses while listening to this r…
Live at I-and-E
This is a long-awaited re-issue, unavailable since 2006. The duo had formed the previous year for ErstQuake in NYC and this was to be their second and, as yet, only other performance together. The breadth and depth of [the] music is totally inspiring, I absolutely love this piece of music. Total unity in sound to make a perfect piece in the moment. It doesn't get better than this! (Gordon W. Smith)
Keith Rowe and Mark Wastell. This last performance balanced the evening well. Louder, more gestura…
Demiurge
Multiverse - the constellation of forward-thinking Bristol labels that also includes Tectonic, Kapsize and Caravan - reactivates its seminal Subtext imprint for a daring new LP from Emptyset. A collaboration between Mutiverse boss James 'Ginz' Ginzburg and Paul Purgas, Demiurge is the second album by Emptyset, and finds them reducing their production process down to a singular signal chain channelled into a modulated analogue hardware line (or so we're told). The results are somewhere between dr…
Beija Flors Velho E Sujo
São Paulo Underground is an electronica-laced tropicalia funhouse, a secret passage between Chicago’s volatile avant garde jazz scene and Brazil’s teeming creative capital. Featuring Chicago maestro Rob Mazurek on cornet, harmonium and various effects, and São Paulo’s Guilherme Granado on keyboards, synths, sampler and vocals, and Mauricio Takara on percussion, cavaquinho and electronics, SPU delivers its fourth revelatory album Beija Flors Velho E Sujo.In its latest incarnation, SPU is a power …
Prince Of Truth
Beginning with her first Constellation release in 2006, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista project has steadily been gaining recognition for its complex beauty and fierce, raging appeals. Bozulich has been knocking these and many other ideas into form for two decades (Neon Veins, Ethyl Meatplow, The Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella). Evangelista is the best and the brightest, filled with adventurous risk taking that sometimes whispers and licks, sometimes pulls the listener so close that it is hard to bre…