New Arrivals
Balf Quarry
LP version; printed innersleeve with lyrics. Before Balf Quarry landed on my desk, I figured the dirtiest thing in Connecticut was Chris Dodd's browser history. Not so. Among other things — like guitar tones that buzz around like contact-high June bugs, Elisa Ambrogio's slack vocals wavering between coy calls and willfully distant snarls, and a production value so low and dense you feel you're listening to them from the dining room above their rehearsal space — Hartford natives the Magik Markers…
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…
Menses
*Numbered edition of 206 copies pressed on 180 gram Menstrual Blood Red vinyl* Reissue of the private LP edition of 300 copies from 1981; the pyramidal construction of these two 'suites,' with its intentionally brutal and grotesque deformations, elaborates on overflowing and apocalyptical collapse, dragging a completely dissolvent conception of the world and of the para-industrial sound. Bonus tracks: 'Milan Bruits' from the Fix Planet! comp (Ata Tak) and the two tracks first issued in the v…
Hemp Is Here
Leven Signs' Hemp Is Here came and went in 1985, as both a cassette release (Unlikely Records) and vinyl release (Cordelia) in the blink of an eye. The duo of Peter Karkut and Maggie Turner managed to craft one of the strangest, most affecting albums of new wave experimentalism of the era, but due to the album's impossible-to-find status, it's been largely forgotten and continuously overlooked ever since. A chance encounter with the cassette version of Hemp Is Here led Brad Rose of Digitali…
Minimal Milan
Lovely compilation selected by Xiu (Oksana Rodionova) consisting of contemporary minimal electronic and deviant-techno artists based in Milan, Italy. Here's the label's mission statement as you could say: "The musical aesthetism defended by the label admits connections with post-modern qualities and challenges conventions for an innovative musical conversation between analogue instrumentation and technologies." The label will host various types of electronic music always seen throught a dark and…
So sorry
A meeting between Japanese sound artist Takahiro Kawaguchi and two american improvisors, Nick Hoffman (head of the Pilgrim Talk label) and Aaron Zarzutzki. Recorded by Brian Sulpizio at The Chateau, Chicago, in September 2011 and then edited and mixed by Giuseppe Ielasi in Oreno.Numbered edition of 250 copies. Black vinyl (cut at SST), screenprinted cover on heavy grey stock.
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…
Lonely women's club
Beautiful new work from Lawrence English. Pressed in an edition of 500 copies. Somewhere after dark, before dawn, in a place where natural light is shunned and organ is singing. It's voice is that of an arcing clouds of tone, emerging and falling with an uneasy sense of pace and direction. The voice warbles, a vibrato of shifting pulse and subtle variation. The room around it is filled with a dusty ash; smoke in haze like proportions. Eyes are blood shot, sunken below the rim of a glass. …
Olympians
‘Experimental’ bands are never going to please everyone; a lot of them seem almost uninterested in being anything but show-offs and twats, and there’s occasionally no attempt to make a connection twixt music and listener. All we get is: ‘marvel at my amazing button-pushing skills.’ And then, suddenly and horrifically, you turn into your dad: ‘that’s not music, that’s noise!’ Despite the post-watershed name, Fuck Buttons have always been a more subtle and meditative addition to the experime…
5IVE XIMES OF DUST
A classic, highly sought-after and influencial experimental electronic and acoustic tape from 1981, finally released as a deluxe vinyl LP in extended form with an additional LP to round-up this perfect release - Solo-Works and three more 5ive Ximes of Dust instrumentals by the two genius synth-and-cassette-culture-protagonists and musicians of Dada Computer; Mark Philips, who also ran the Tape-Label MAP-Tapes and Robert Lawrence who ran one of the first Cassette-culture Tape-Labels called Quick …
Divisionals
Mouthus are professionals. Not that their music is a full-time job, or is made out of obligation. Rather, Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson approach every recording seriously and diligently, never bending their methods to fit expectations or pander to an audience. Often this devout methodology produces a glorious alchemy; other times it results in workmanlike exercises in sound excavation. But every Mouthus album comes with an implicit seal of quality craftsmanship. You may not find an epiphany in …
Broken Hearted Dragonflies
There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies, and other insects display their charm as masters of the high frequency airwaves, recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of L…
Hubble Drums
Planned since Hubble’s first live performance in September of 2010, Hubble Drums is an inspired record of new guitar music. Equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fried psychedelia, Hubble Drums marks Ben Greenberg (of Zs and The Men)’s first full-length recording and debut for Northern Spy. Recorded at Python Patrol and lovingly mastered at Bonati Mastering, the CD and 150g LP features original artwork by Michael Yaniro and Ben Greenberg. “Hubble’s Hubble” serves as the soundtrack for a v…
Virgins
Virgins was recorded during three periods in 2012, mostly in Reykjavik, Montreal and Seattle, using ensembles in live performance. The sound palette of this work is wider, almost 'percussive' and tighter sounding than previous works. While this album remains committed to a painterly form of musical abstraction, it is also a record of restrained composition recorded live primarily in intimate studio rooms. This record employs woodwinds, piano and synthesizers towards an effort at doing what digit…
Ernest Thrasher
Back when I was about six months older than I am now, I used to see these bumper stickers around town that said, "There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert." My first reaction was to say, "Thank fuck," since the last Dead show I saw (Jersey City 8/6/74) pretty much blew. Then I remembered that last goddamn Dead show anyone saw was almost 20 years ago (Chicago 7/9/95) and it makes me wonder what kinda stupid pills the cars' occupants have been snorting. 'Cause Jesus, there're all sorts of thi…
Dedicated to J.Goebbles
The tape more provocative and irritating of Pierpaolo Zoppo, the Italian sub-genius behind Mauthausen Orchestra, is certainly Dedicated to J. Goebbels . The tracks were recorded during '82-‘83 and offer an overwhelming noise ferric devolves into agonizing nightmare and atrocities sound that recall the dark side of humanity. This is the fourth official reprint on Urashima in Lp and the artwork was approved by the artist.Tracks remastered from the original tape and the record has been pressed on 1…
Concredrones
M.B., also known as Maurizio Bianchi doesn’t need much introduction. In the early 80s he was responsible for a string of compelling electronic music albums in the first wave of ‘industrial music’. After a hiatus of many years he returned in the late 90s and since then has been very active with many new solo releases, but also on the side with collaborations. Here he works with Mario Costa, also known as Sostrah Tinnitus, from Italy, who has had a number of releases on labels as Umbra, Beyond, My…
Palimpsest
It’s no secret how much we’ve loved Stephan Mathieu’s sublime drones and Sylvain Chauveau’s delicate compositions in the past, so to see these two pillars of experimental music collaborating has got us hot under the collar. But that’s not the half of it – not only did the two decide to work together, they had a very specific concept - ‘Palimpsest’ finds the duo reframing the timeless songs of Bill Callahan (aka Smog). Those familiar with Callahan’s writing might struggle to work out just how two…
Echokrank
Ear drum piercer brezel göring (of stereo total) and thrash lout "hotleg" have committed themselves to a reckless and impulsive mix of dub-psycho-speed-new wave, action film soundtracks and 50's musique concrète. For several years, these two desperados have hacked their way through the unpredictable weeping fistulas of post-industrial easy listening. In doing so they combine genre-spanning arranged marriages and acceleration of track playback speed. The music is played on children's toys and fle…
Surrender to the Fantasy
Stop right there, hands in the air! If you want to know what Magik Markers think is good for you, you'll Surrender to the Fantasy. For this long-desired alpus, they've been working in threes and stuff. Triangles. The hermetic trifecta of knowledge, Christ and the two thieves, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and the original tagline of the Markers' symbol: '3 down, no to go.' Meaning, these three get it and literally no one else needs to, 'cept the record-buying public, tra la la, ha ha ha ha. STTF (nev…