New Arrivals
History Of The Units - The Early Years: 1977-1983
first ever legit reissue of THE UNITS. This genre-defying band, from San Francisco's barely-documented synth/punk/art underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, combined sarcastic humor with deadly serious cultural critique, and synthetic experimentation with the bombast of punk. Includes the most sought-after early singles and selections from their first LP, Digital Stimulation, along with unreleased demos, and more. Remastered audio. Packaged in gatefold LP style sleeves with 32-page booklet…
Experimentum Mundi
CD reissue of the ultra rare Multhipla related (on its sublabel Fonia) LP from 1981 - the works of Giorgio Battistelli (b. 1953) are often linked to the theater, and even his instrumental works are highly dramatic, with various instruments and elements considered as 'characters' in a drama. For the past 20 years, 'Experimentum Mundi' has been one of the most-performed works of 'musique concrete,' i.e. music made with everyday objects instead of conventional instruments. In this work, 16 everyday…
Zone Sensible 2 - Dundee 2
For the best part of a decade, Éric La Casa's attention to sonic phenomena has resulted in some of the finest contemporary Musique Concréte to come out of France. A listener of the highest order, La Casa's methodology for sound recording allows for a versatile examination of both urban and natural environments and it is these interests which are captured on this new edition for Room40. With an ability to find unique perspectives on his sound subjects La Casa's site specific works 'Zone Sensible'…
Grand Electronic Suite
Recorded at the Roundhouse 1972, during the ICES Festival."For this show we rehearsed a week in a small village in the south of Holland. The repertoire of the first part was a kind of "frozen improvisation". We made some written plans about the form and structures and then rehearsed it for the whole week. So during these rehearsals things moved from improvisation into fixed form, just by remembering what we have played, and polishing it. This is a working concept that …
What A Beautiful Place
CD edition, lavishly packaged: In the last couple of years there's been no shortage of lost folk albums re-appearing for the world to enjoy once more, and the wonderful Numero Group label (which is fast becoming one of our most loved imprints...) has managed to find another. Hailing from the bleak northern city of Halifax, Catherine Howe was initially trained at drama school, gaining a brief stint in Doctor Who ('The Underwater Menace' for all you Whovians out there, wink wink) among othe…
Seconds
A beautiful acoustic-based record featuring careful, melancholy arrangements in the tradition set by his famous previous record - but with a few unpredictable musical touches. Seconds weaves black threads of lyrical reflection into its sleeve in the short-lived Higgins tradition. His was never a hippie-dippy perspective - back in the day, his songs featured a thoughtful, but worldweary, occasionally even paranoid perspective. Accompanied by his fellow travelers (including a couple Red Hash playe…
MP3 Deviations #6+7
Yasunao Tone creates music by means of disrupting MP3-files. Sound files that were corrupted in the MP3 generate error messages, which are then utilized to assign various lengths of samples automatically. Feeding also different play back speeds creates a sound which is always different – unpredictable and unknowable. The MP3 Deviation album contains pieces that are results of the collaborative research by a team of the New Aesthetics in Computer Music (NACM) and myself, led by Tony Myatt…
Intervals
'Z'EV: percussion. Jason Kahn: percussion, analog synthetizer. Recorded by Jason Kahn April 13-14, 2009 in Zürich and Lausanne, Switzerland. Mixed and mastered by Z'EV. Artwork by Mirt.' label info Jason Kahn, born 1960, New York, USA. Composition, installations, percussion, electronics. Based in Zürich, Switzerland. Z'EV. After studying at CalArts with Concrete Poet Emmett Williams he concentrated on producing visual and sound poetries, and was included in the ÔSecond Generation' show at the Mu…
Tutti i colori del silenzio
This performance was very special concert under candle lights, summertime passion. We performed in garden with very relaxed audience in that atomosphere which will ever bring you there. This track alone is worth documentation for creative moment of time and space.
Hyste
A sequence of six duo improvisations on tenor saxophone & church organ recorded at St Peter’s, Whitstable in 2009.
Stasis
Zbeen is an electro-acoustic project by Gianluca Favaron and Ennio Mazzon. Zbeen’s improvisational approach is developed from the human-machine paradigm which is represented by the interaction with digital instruments specifically designed and developed for this project. K-Frame, Zbeen's debut EP, was released by Ripples in January 2012. Unlike K-Frame, which was developed as a sonic counter-part to the linear algebra concept of an ordered set of ‘k’ linearly-independent vectors, Stasis elabo…
Brame (et autres mouvements d'automne)
Marc and Olivier Namblard did some recordings of deer during the rutting season. Deer bellow and listen. Marc and Olivier work also with the idea of sound trap. They find a place where animals go through, they set up the recording equipment and come back the day after. Beautifull and amazing recordings. Comes with photos from David Hackel et Marc Namblard. Texts in French and English.
Transient Places
Music in the here and now. An event in an everyday situation. A connecting link between actual occurrences and the deepest depths of one's inner world. A balancing act between total control and the inexplicable. An acoustic journey through the present. It is with his ears that Luigi Archetti journeys into the guitar's pick-up, to the limits of the audible. He hears, listens and gathers until he has a whole depot of sounds at his disposal, which he then processes by structured planning or b…
Book of Beyond
"Ben Reynolds is one of the newer voices from the same UK scene that includes Ashtray Navigations and many of the VHF celebrities (Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Richard Youngs, etc.) It should be of little surprise then that Book of Beyond fits very nicely among the recordings of those other artists -- noise/junk drone. As in his previous recordings, this at times dissolves into more acoustic offerings, but the Fahey influence appears to be mostly gone, and what remains in the quie…
It won't be called Broken Chair
"Two improvisations on piano & tenor saxophone, one in concert and the other before the audience arrived, recorded at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam in 2006. The sleeve design is derived from work by the late Tomas Schmit whose work is much loved by both MM and EP."-psi
Northern
The inspiration behind Northern (including its music, title and photography) comes from Deupree’s recent relocation from the heart of urban activity in Brooklyn to the tranquility of the forest in upstate New York. Inspired by nature and the winter during which it was created, Northern, like much of his recent work, explores Deupree’s interest in stillness and a slowed sense of time. Through quiet textures, subtle movements, faint loops and echoes, it was his goal to create the type of music tha…
Under Stellar Stream
For his latest album, UK avant-folk maverick Richard Youngs seems to be converging on some of the most assured and firm-footed vocal work of his career to date, fashioning rock-solid songs from typically leftfield instrumental tactics. On 'Broke Up By Night', Youngs sounds like a gnarled old folkie of almost Ewan MacColl proportions, albeit accompanied by organ drone and wispy electronics. It's a rather magical, mantra-like cadence he elicits, and the album springboards nicely from this point. S…
Bellows And Breath
The Preservation label presents the fourth album from Sydney's Seaworthy. Seaworthy is the musical guise of Cameron Webb, who, for the best part of a decade, has developed singular soundscapes scored with guitar-driven ambience, field recording and digital processing. In recent years, Webb has recorded to acclaim for the esteemed 12K label, releasing the 1897 album in 2009 followed by a collaboration with Matt Rösner, Two Lakes. His compositions reflect his deep connection to environment an…
Concentration of the Stare
Spend any amount of time in the company of Keith Rowe and the names of certain painters will arise in conversation with some frequency. Caravaggio, Twombly and, among others, most definitely, Mark Rothko. Just as, long ago, he'd imagined what the guitars in Braque's cubist painting might actually sound like, so, I think, he did with Rothko, often referring to the way the "tinged" the space in which they were hung. For some time, in the early oughts, Rowe tried to place his music in a similar are…
Of The Body Prone
Mixing improvisation & tightly controlled jump cut compositional complexity, AHLEUCHATISTAS are one of a handful of rock groups that can give the Ruins, Meshuggah, & Naked City a run for their money. Fascinating & powerful, passionately performed & beautifully recorded, this is New Rock Complexity at its very best.