New Arrivals
Fete galante et pastorale
There were several ‘firsts’ involved in my initial encounter with Zygmunt Krauze’s music: my first visit to Poland (1970), my first ‘Warsaw Autumn’ festival and its first concert (19 September), and the Warsaw premiere of Krauze’s first Piece for Orchestra (1969). The memory has stayed with me ever since, not least because here was a work that was distinctly different from the other new Polish music that had so far filtered westwards. I was familiar with some Lutosławski, Penderecki …
Self Title
There are no words to say how amazing the Heinz Hopf's debut album is. They are a harsh noise duo consisting of Matthias Andersson and Dan Johansson. The first is the mind behind the label Release the bats, and the second is the man behind the moniker Sewer Election. The result is 32 minutes of pure, brutal and uncompromising harsh noise. Comparisons with Incapacitants is too easy, their love of the Japanese noise is too evident. Comparisons that do not lead to the cloning of a sound. Thei…
Under A Single Banner
It's been a busy couple of years for the producer behind the Shifted project. On top of an extremely well-received album for the Mote Evolver label, the producer has edged further out into the fringes of electronic music under a number of aliases, taking in noise/ambient variants as Covered In Sand, as well as more distorted, technofied productions under the Alexander Lewis moniker, a sound described by the Blackest Ever Black label as "S-M techno." His new album as Shifted, Under a Single Ba…
Traces Two
2014 repress, Recollections GRM presents four "forgotten" and compelling electro-acoustic pieces from the institute's world famous archive. Recollection GRM, a label within the Editions Mego family of labels, offers a second selection from the vast archives of Groupe De Recherches Musicales (GRM). "The idea of the Traces series is to unearth from the GRM Archives short, forgotten, or ignored pieces of music. This second volume, which gathers works prior to 1976, features the 'early' works of f…
Twenty Systems
Twenty tracks made on 20 synthesizers spanning 20 years, accompanied by a 60-page color book with a foreword by Robin "Scanner" Rimbaud, Twenty Systems is Benge's acclaimed concept album, first released in 2008. His 10th solo album, this ambitious project combines an audio CD of new music with a hardbound full-color book containing photos and diagrams of the electronic instruments used, along with a detailed history documenting the development of synthesizers between 1968 and 1988. The purpo…
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…
Armed Courage
With nary a praising documentary, coffee table photo book or tribute band to their name, The Dead C are nonetheless one of the most respected, longest surviving groups in the history of rock. Still sporting the original band members (Michael Morley on guitar, vocals, Bruce Russell on guitar, Robbie Yeats on drums) from their first assemblage in 1987, The Dead C's renown has a lot to do with their stubborn unwillingness to compromise in any form. With a varied and challenging discography, the ban…
@
Screeches, Scratches, Knocks, Bangs, Explosions and Howls in the Night! “@” is a fabulous studio recording of two Downtown masters. Both long-time supporters of extreme music and proponents of free improvisation, John and Thurston share a deep musical connection and come together here to create their first work together. A varied and powerful program of duo improvisations, “@” presents the community of NY’s Downtown scene at its collaborative best.
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…
Rock Power
Reissue of an extremely rare and essential Sunroof! CD-R released during a European tour in 2003 on Matthew Bower's own imprint, Rural Electrification Program (REP). On this LP, Bower is joined on guitar by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Flower-Corsano Duo) and the result was once qualified as Sunroof's rock record and its tribute to Neil Young and AC/DC (hence the title). RockPower is a very singular record because it documents a very short time period in the M. Bower/Sunroof! evolut…
The Operetta
"The psychedelic find of the decade-their long-lost final magnum opus. Rumored to exist for years-often put down as just rumor though. Here it is, unearthed from tapes thought lost forever but now found after nearly 30 years. The first thing to be released from Ya Ho Wha 13 since 1975. In the spring of 1975 the Family was homeless and was travelling on the West Coast after having been driven out of Hawaii by local laws (they would return later that year for what would be the final time wi…
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 …
I am here where are you
After the great 2012 record by Brötzmann / Noble / Edwards, the worse the better, Peter Brötzmann and Steve Noble started to play some gigs as a duo. It worked out really well, wonderful pieces of music that had to be put on cd; an expert, you might even say telepathic, interplay between those two outstanding musicians, sometimes delicate and swinging, sometimes full-force free jazz.
Versions
Grandly orchestrated versions of highlights from the Zola Jesus back catalogue, arranged by none other than classically trained industrial survivor JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus, aka Manorexia). Conceived for a performance at New York’s Guggenheim Museum at the climax of her Conatus world tour, these tremulous string settings are really what Nika Roza Danilova’s tender but polished vocals have always been begging for, and the sensitivity and focus of Thirlwell’s charts, beautifully realised by the Mi…
Sins of omission
A mutating web of feedback, choral echoes and lo-fi loops of various squeaking, rattling found sounds, settling gently into certain texture combinations before teasing the stasis through jolts of pitch bend or slow fades into somewhere else. It's a real nightmare collage: one minute it's a blast of screaming electronics, like someone tampering with the cockpit controls, and the next it's tornado of factory noise and alien sex. Musique concrete for the mind's darker, more paranoid recesses, with …
Unroof the house of the fishes
Long-awaited vinyl LP reissue of Unroof The House Of The Fishes by Key Ransone's Small Cruel Party. Originally released in 1993 as a limited to 50 copies tape on the Japan-based G.R.O.S.S label run by Akifumi Nakajima. Aube but now upgraded to vinyl by UK label Harbinger Sound. Mastered for vinyl by Scott Konzelmann of Chop Shop 'fame'. The LP is housed in a printed inner sleeve, along with a full-colour jacket, both featuring new artwork by the artist. Side A is a creeped contortion of ambient …
Between Strangers
'Between Strangers' is Sohrab's first physical follow-up to his widely received debut LP, 'A Hidden Place' (2010), and burrows further into that same lonely, displaced headspace. There is a dramatic melancholy and underlying rage to both pieces which can't be ignored, making for deeply compelling listening. The A-side in particular uses lo-fi recording of "Voice of a burnt generation" attributed enigmatically to "Hani", recorded in the Eissenhutenstadt refugee camp, Germany to great effect, plac…
Cut
Awesome new recordings from percussionist Chris Corsano using a single drum set augmented by various re-purposed metal objects, modified reed instruments and bowed strings stretched across drums."This all-acoustic solo outing--no electronics or overdubs--more or less further develops what Chris Corsano started on his 2006 recording, The Young Cricketer: one drum set augmented by various re-purposed metal objects, modified reed instruments and bowed strings stretched across drums. 43 minutes/19 t…
Music(S)
Music(s) is the intimist portrait of Japanese composer Otomo Yoshihide.Music(s) is the intimist portrait of Japanese composer Otomo Yoshihide.In 1990, he founded the mythic group 'Ground Zero' produced by John Zorn, and is one of the major players on the current Japanese scene. An adept of free jazz and noisy music, he travels around the globe with his various jazz ensembles as well as solo on guitar or with his astonishing turntables. This double DVD presents a talented artist through th…
DNA on DNA
Limited edition 2LP version featuring newly-discovered songs exclusive to this LP: "Pompeii," "Shrinking Thing," "Drinking Water," plus two encores from DNA's final performance at CBGB's. Housed in a gatefold sleeve. New York's seminal no wave band, DNA, makes it's highly anticipated American CD debut with this definitive collection of studio and live recordings. Surviving two line-ups over a brief period of four years; this highly influential, strikingly original and extremely under-re…