New Arrivals
Tender Exploration
“Tender Exploration” reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”, it’s an enormous metallic machine on spindly legs, walking like a toddler, but also steaming, mumbling, panting, a creature full of energy, and inhabited by a fire demon. “Drake”, the first track”, starts seeking for a structure almost clumsily, the band members seem to have to find each other. But soon they have a good chemistry and Bauer, who dominates this piece in spite of its name, adds his huge repertoire of tech…
In St Cuthbert's Time
The Sounds of Lindisfarne and the Gospels. To celebrate the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels at Durham Cathedral from July to September 2013, awardÐwinning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson has researched the sonic environment of the Holy Island as it might have been experienced by St Cuthbert in 700 A.D. 'A 7th Century Soundscape of Lindisfarne. Throughout human history artists have been influenced by their surroundings and the sounds of the landscape they inhabit. When Eadfrith, the B…
French Antarctica
probably the most anticipated record of the year for this household. the clip below has been on repeat for a couple months. Kye is proud to present 'French Antarctica', the debut LP by Good Area. Drawing from a palette of guitar, rhythm box, cornet, shortwave radio and room activity Good Area have crafted the ultimate stand-alone testament to instantaneous expression. Bypassing such obsolete concepts as dexterity and restraint 'French Antarctica' cuts loose with a raw unbridled rush of creative …
Nepenthe
Julianna Barwick returns with the successor to 2011's charming The Magic Place. Given how successful that self-recorded LP was, it’s surprising to see that the Louisiana-born singer has looked to an external producer to document and frame her work this time around, namely Sigur Ros associate Alex Somers. Barwick once again uses delay-pedals to build heaven-scraping towers of chorused plainsong out of her earnestly, achingly pretty soprano, placing them in what John Foxx - whose 90s’ ambient reco…
Hasselt
Three open improvisations recorded in concert at Kunstencentrum Belgie Hasselt, Belgium in 2010 by sub-groups from the Electrocacoustic Ensemble, plus an extended performance by the whole ensemble: Richard Barrett, Peter van Bergen, Lawrence Casserley, Peter Evans, Agusti Fernandez, Barry Guy, Ishikawa Ko, Paul Lytton, Paul Obermayer, Evan Parker, Walter Prati, Ned Rothenberg, Joel Ryan, Marco Vecchi.
In Sirenis
A deluxe edition LP, documenting and salvaging the sonic particularities of the Ravenna harbour."By “noise” we mean all the sounds that surround us every day, but the idea of an uncontaminated natural landscape, or of a singular sound event isolated from the context is impossible to realize and undeniably limiting. The artificial is now an integral part of contemporary sound and image landscape, sometimes almost a synonym thereof.In Ravenna harbour area, largely industrialized spaces intermingle…
Choubi Choubi Folk And Pop Songs From Iraq Vol. 2
In 2005, Sublime Frequencies released Choubi Choubi: Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq, and in the ensuing years it has become one of the most beloved and venerable titles in their catalog. Now almost 10 years later, this highly-anticipated second volume is finally here. Compiler and producer Mark Gergis has once again put forth a revelatory and poignant collection of Iraq's national folk music. What has happened to Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion and eventual occupation? Endless death, destructio…
Hassaniya Music from the Western Sahara and Mauritania
In 2006, Hisham Mayet returned to West Africa to continue his search for an unknown musician he had heard six months earlier on the radio in a Morocco hotel room. Knowing only that it was Sahrawi music -- music of the south -- he headed down through the vast and remote desert landscape of the Western Sahara and Mauritania in hopes of finding someone who could identify these revelatory recordings. The story of how he finally found this elusive artist is the stuff of ethnomusicological legend. But…
Tanz In Dem Himmel EP
"Superb cosmic and minimal synth/coldwave German underground masterpiece recorded in the early 1980s and released exclusively here on super-loud high quality 12" vinyl on Soul Jazz by popular demand! This is extremely limited (500 copies only) and contains three exclusive tracks of cosmic heaven by the cult German electronic group E.M.A.K. -- none of which appear on Soul Jazz Records' recent E.M.A.K. album. E.M.A.K. were a main feature on Deutsche Elektronische Muzik, Soul Jazz Records' j…
Financial Glam
Jar Moff returns with his second full-length, Financial Glam, a follow-up expanding on ideas first presented by the excellent Commercial Mouth debut LP PAN released earlier this year. Continuing with themes established on his previous LP, Financial Glam reflects the flux and tension of his home city, a gripping opus of grandiose crescendo and collapse, broken rhythm and disquieting calm. These intricately-composed collage works, constructed from hundreds of archived samples, provide a fitting…
Moved by magnets
Stunning release from Cristian Vogel and SØS Gunver Ryberg as SGR^CAV for The Tapeworm. The label informs us that "Their compositions encourage the listener to observe and explore the resonances of a powerful musical awareness" and 'Moved By Magnets' exhibits a keen sense of spatial perception, tone and presence which entirely justifies that claim. Over four pieces they explore diffuse, free-formed spaces charged with a slow-moving, chaotic sort of energy ranging from the shuddering metallic res…
Metz
Some will find it hard to believe that a glamrock band with a gritty urban veneer came from Texas and stuck together long enough to release this milestone record. Indeed, I was startled to learn that they're from Texas and not NYC or London. Clearly the underground music scene throughout Texas is fertile with talent and enough socio-cultural diversity to support any genre, including mid-70s glamrock. Metz take on glam includes some of the associated clichés like heavy chunks of chord strokes and…
BIPPP : French Synth-Wave 1979/85
Sounding as current as any of the recent output from France's Ed Banger, Kitsune or Institubes labels, and on influential blueprint for the evolution of the French electronic music genre at large, the majority of the performers featured on B.I.P.P.P. never made it beyond limited DIY pressings of 500 or 1000 copies of 7" vinyl singles.
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…
Curse of the Bodysnatchers - Tape-Recordings 1980-86
Gerald O'Connell and Mark Harvey began recording as Mystery Plane in 1980, although they had worked together since 1978 in two other more conventional five-piece bands ( The End and 3D5). The very early stuff ( for instance Death Sentence contained on the bonus 7" for members) was recorded in Gerald's living room on a two-track Akai reel-to-reel with a primitive internal overdub facility. For the most part Mark wrote and sang the songs, while Gerald created the backing tracks. In 1981 they were …
Exile in Paradise
Established in 1978 by Truus de Groot in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, she tinkered with toy and electronic instruments in her flat - amidst the explosion of Punk Rock. Even though Truus was very active in that genre and “New Wave” as well, the more experimental side gradually took over and the concept of Plus Instruments was born. Plus Instruments released their first e.p. single in 1979 on Dutch label Plurex:
Playing odd electronic instruments, Bass and vocals, most of their performances were im…
Introjection
The collaboration between Israeli electronic musician Shay Nassi and German media artist Nicolas Wiese began in 2008, with the exchange of some raw recordings of feedbacks and everyday objects, via internet. During the following years, several compositional sketches have been sent back and forth and so have been refined step by step, in multiple sonic layering and construction processes. The result is a 45-minute-long collection of dense, dynamic, ambiguos and twisted atmospheric pieces which ca…
94diskont
The extremely influential 1995 classic album from Oval is finally re-issued on vinyl. Freshly cut to vinyl by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering the two LPs are pressed on orange vinyl and packaged in a jacket replicating the original. LP1 is the album, LP2 is a 12" featuring remixes from Jim O'Rourke, Scanner, Mouse on Mars, and Christian Vogel. Included for the first time is a free download coupon. Limited to 1,500 units worldwide."
Summer through my mind
Richard Youngs presents his debut recording for BaDaBing Records, and the label is looking forward to a long relationship. For Summer Through My Mind, Youngs pushes himself into a challenging new sphere yet again. A renowned musician with over 40 albums to his name, he goes somewhere he never has before - to the heart of American music. Summer Through My Mind is a country music album, warped through Youngs's ambidextral mind. A warning: it's not like any country album one has heard before. There…
Scales
*Orange Vinyl* Like a would-be soundtrack to some forgotten Wagnerian saga, Mythical Beast's debut full-length unleashes sonic elements akin to trudging minions in an epic struggle for tonal supremacy. This bloodless battle is for hearts and minds though, and is shot through with majesty and pathos. It's no wonder that a trio commanding this type of simple yet nuanced compositional energy would risk life and limb crossing the New Orleans "security" perimeter one month post-Katrina to rescue thei…