New Arrivals
Deep Politics
Deep Politics was conceived during the lengthiest gestation period between Grails albums, and reflects a deeper, more educated level of concentration. In their ongoing exploration of occult/fringe culture and the rich history of film music, they have cultivated a unique environment that inspires both an eternal sense of longing and an indelible sense of dread. Produced by the band, as always, the most immediately noticeable advances are the lush string arrangements (courtesy of acclaimed compose…
Mono
Initially published on CD by Smalltown Superjazzz in 2011. Mats Gustafsson, tenor and baritone saxophones. Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, bass. Paal Nilssen-Love, drums. The Thing music + two Sonny Rollins tracks and one Norwegian trad. Recorded and mixed 2011 in mono in Melbourne, Australia. Limited release of 500. Heavyweigt double-vinyl, first time on vinyl. Manufactured by Trost Records." (label info)
Body issues
Patricia's warm, fuzzy post-techno-house slots neatly with the Opal Tapes aesthetic on his debut album, 'Body Issues'. Six tracks come off like a boosted 1991 or Huerco S, pushing malleable bass hits below swirling streaks of melody bursting with ferric quality. There's firm parallels to be made here with Anthony Naples, albeit with a noisier bent in 'Hissy Fit', whilst on 'Melting' juicy acid forms over a brittle jack track and the sweet-but-slamming 'Jospehine' and 'Plural' appear like some GH…
Peepers
Elsewhere, ‘The Love Didn't Go Anywhere’ sees Leafcutter John play guitar on a beautifully loping piece that has the subtle afterglow of classic Roxy Music, with Bryan Ferry’s vocal replaced by the rapier glide of the two reeds, while Tom Herbert’s hefty double bass pounds out concise but penetrating lines. Interestingly, prior to the sessions, Rochford listened to a lot of ‘60s soul (“Aretha and Marvin Gaye”), an influence that he has channelled with more guile than is immediately discernible. …
Piano Music
Two compositions exploring the decay of the piano from Wandelweiser composer Eva-Maria Houben. Fading sound is the link between life and art; between perception in daily life and perception while performing, while composing.“Fading sound is the link between life and art; between perception in daily life and perception while performing, while composing. And the awareness of fading sound may become the awareness of presence.” Halfway through Eva-Maria Houben’s abgemalt, the pianist unfurls a …
Deviation
If “Dream Tennis” was any indication, Heatsick has struck a nerve with his singles that stretch preset washes of polyphony through sunset-hued landscapes of disco and house. Equipped with only a Casio keyboard, he has played alongside everyone from Omar Souleyman to DJ Harvey, Daniel Wang and Legowelt, and has demonstrated his ability not only to extend his keyboard to its limits, but to transcend its musical territory, opening up a diverse range of styles, genres and gestures to his danc…
Mirror Mirror
A collector's dream come true, Sam Sander's Mirror Mirror is so rare that the recordings on this album have never before seen a proper release and even the cover art had to be created from scratch. An almost unbelievable fact given that it ranks as one of the strongest releases in the already air-tight era of Strata Inc's Detroit. Although he's been compared to John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Joe Henderson, Sam Sanders stands out as one of the most unique phenomena to come from the Motor Cit…
Purge
Kevin Drumm's 2007 cassette 'Purge' on iDEAL went out of stock in less than a week. This is the CD version of that killer thing. Intense listening taking you deep into the known unknown, or perhaps the unknown known. Drumm's noise is extremely powerful and dynamic.; travelling frequencies, rich with details, with very little hope, with guaranteed exhaustion after frequent listening. I always think about Black Metal when I am listening to Drumm's works,Ê they share the same cold and darkness. 'Pu…
Music Of The Modern White
2009 issue "The album begins with a percussion intro that sounds more like a gunfight than any sort of recognisable drumming routine, and continues to get weirder and weirder from there on. New York avant-garde-ists Zs might be seen as a kind of post-modern free-jazz ensemble, combining sax, guitars and live kit sounds with all the tumult of contemporary electronic drone music. This LP absorbs the impact of no-wave, industrial music, Merzbow and (on the ornate rhythmic figures of 'MMW I…
Wounded Laurel
Hospital Productions present a heavy 30-minute session of layered drone and tormented, bass-heavy bombast from Max Gudmunson's Virile Games project, now available on vinyl for the first time after a sold-out micro edition of cassettes in 2013. Operating somewhere between his label-mate Lussuria's gothic ambience, the ear-bleaching concrète of Helm, and the more blown-out cinematic visions of Leyland Kirby, Wounded Laurel oscillates between sublime and wretched with a gripping night-time narrat…
United States of America Triptych (III)
Voices by David Grubbs, Magorzata Penkalla and Pete Simonelli, guitars by David Grubbs and Miron Grzegorkiewicz, organ and violin by David Maranha, Text excerpted from Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America without a Trace Music by David Grubbs, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, David Maranha, Gosia Penkalla, Pete Simonelli
Three takes on America - three journeys and three documents. Written and recorded.Year 1939, John A. Lomax and Ruby T. Lomax in their Plymouth - going South. 6502 miles, tons of …
ACE 26,250'/11 DEGREES 22.4'N 142 DEGREES 35.5'E
The audio on this LP was inspired by early efforts to explore extreme locations on earth, and the clash between the will of humans, the limits of their bodies, and the immutable laws of the natural world - the latter which can easily destroy both of the first two. The 11° 22.4'N 142° 35.5'E side is based on the 1960 dive by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the bathyscaphe Trieste to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on earth. This side aims to mirror the …
23 formes en Elastique /The only authentic work
New work of Lionel Marchetti. 23 tracks. Length more than 77 minutes. Materials went through last 23 years of his field recording, composition, experiments and musiques concrètes composition studies. A backward looking by a forward creating. By this CD Lionel Marchetti built a labyrinth of elasticity, empty space, reality and its metamorphose. A material world of sound. The Only Authentic Work Yan Jun’s writing with inspiration of Marchetti’s music. 23 essays on music, literature, art and …
Pan Am Stories
Tape-warped phantom band Rangers finally unleash the lush, soaring, expansive prog-pop opus we always knew was floating inside the fretboard (and imagination) of multi-instrumentalist mystery maestro Joe Knight. The north Dallas-raised, San Fran-residing head Ranger grew up taking classical guitar lessons from a dude who claimed to have 'toured with the Dead,' and some of that brain-wonked jam agenda obviously seeped into the young Knight, who began recording his own loose, lo-fi jangle s…
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…
When We Were Eating Unripe Pears
The seven pieces on this LP were developed over a period of about five years; 'Rain in Coffee' is built on a Hyperborean Trenchtown-era demo, while 'Pinq Drinq' -- sorrel, for the record, and neither guava nor antacid as certain wags have already ventured -- was reanimated directly from the cutting-room floor, 11th hour, 2012. As a whole, they should probably be considered the proper 'sequel' to Canzoni dal Laboratorio del Silenzio Cosmico, extending that record's preoccupation with the drea…
Perhaps
Limited double LP version. Recorded live on December 8, 2006 at a memorial event for James Tenney at California Institute of the Arts, Perhaps is Harold Budd sublimely distilled. Striking in its restraint and simplicity yet profoundly resonant in its depth and message, it is both eulogy to a departed friend and defining statement from an artist at the apotheosis of his career. Originally available only digitally (and only from Samadhisound's web site), Perhaps sees its first-ever and much-de…
Testacoda
Jérôme Noetinger is an improviser and composer of electroacoustic music based in Rives (near Grenoble), France. He plays Revox, tapes and radio. SEC_ is the moniker of Mimmo Napolitano, an electronic musician and sound engineer from Naples, Italy. He plays Revox, no-input feedback, laptop, electronic devices. Together these two play the kind of improvised electronic mayhem that put Europe on the map. Testcoda features two separate recordings of shapeshifting electronics. One side recorded…
Escape From New York
Spectrum Spools give flight to a right zinger from Palm Highway Chase. 'Escape From New York' has already achieved cult status in the synth interzones, notching up over 5000 downloads from the artist's myspace and bandcamp pages since 2009, before John Elliott and Peter Rehberg colluded to present the tangible artefact on wax. Flashback to 2009, maybe late winter or something like that. The Road Chief comes back from his extended stay in Belgium all laced up with new jams from the undergro…
Comunicato n. 2
Odd tracks duelling with vintage sounds and acid riffs, krautrock and 70s sound, then add some weird sample and you get the abstract image shot by this trio