New Arrivals
You Are The One I Pick
"Nottingham duo Felix make their Kranky debut with this fine and idiosyncratic collection of songs. The main focus here is the vocal/piano/cello talents of Lucinda Chua, whose sparse yet quirk-loaded minimalism receives guitar and bass backing from Chris Summerlin, who's probably best known for his work in the rock band Lords. Chua's writing is quite unlike anything else currently out there; her lyrics convey strange or often very simple, domesticated ideas delivered in a pared-down, plaintive f…
Swing Low Sweet Spiritual
Following a few years spent living and playing in Scandinavia, an unknown saxophone player by the name of Albert Ayler returned home to the USA to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world. Having recorded his debut album, My Name Is Albert Ayler for the Danish label, Debut Records, this session (which took place in New York City on 24 February 1964) was his first American effort, resulting in the eventual release of two albums: Spirits (released in 1964 on Debut) and Swi…
Live at the Storyville, NYC - 24 October 1977
Quite simply one of Sun Ra's best live albums. This rare recording (originally on Horo records) finds Ra, along with a 19-piece Arkestra, playing a mix of his own compositions ('Images' and 'Lights') along with several jazz standards (including Jelly Roll Morton's 'King Porter Stomp' and Duke Ellington's 'Lightnin''). While Ra's own compositions were usually more avant-garde affairs, he always revelled in playing the classics as well in an effort to give his audience a lesson in jazz histo…
The Parasites Of The Western World
The Parasites of the Western World are a band from Portland, OR who released their recorded debut in 1978. It's a fascinating spin, a galactic ramble across the otherworldly themes of alienation and paranoia, seemingly inspired by LSD and Philip Dick. Primarily the creation of Patrick Burke and Terry Censky, the Parasites were limitless with invention and completely DIY. This is a record that was recorded in an apartment, by a crew thoughtful enough to curtail it's loud excursions for the…
Hyperborean Trenchtown
The album resonates a future sound vision that can only come from an old soul destined to further pave the paths laid by electronic & minimalist pioneers. Undeniably pure processes of creating & sustaining sound visually, sonically & otherwise brings a mathematical & scientific accuracy that hasn't been seen since the days of lovely music ltd. or GRM. Brilliant textures & audio hallucinogenic time/space wormholes create infinite listening possibilities
Safiyya
Like a true psychedelic experience, one that if you've ever had, you'll know what we mean, it presents you with a fixed length window that opens into another possible perspective of our lumbering existence. Imagine 500 milligrams administered via an eye dropper filled with mercury and you're on your way. Born of a correspondence between two fellows entrenched in parallel explorations of the unknowable and imagined, there's a mystery to the source of the sounds contained in these grooves; …
Rain in skull
Australian Charles Curse's music is one of the weirdest things I've come across all year. On Rain In Skull, fragments of disjointed folk melodies move across a plain of wheezing chords, tape hiss, children's voices, ambient washes, amp hum, electronic glitch and bits of buzz in general. The contrast between downcast guitar playing and the physical claustrophobia-inducing weight of sound is equally perplexing and intriguing. It's all presented in a decidedly lo-fi environment but the sound constr…
Russian mind
Amazing! Transcribed by the Material Eye Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 1, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia. 6 baseless marble pillars not yet completed, covered in white strata against the backdrop of a simple three-dimensional plane with soft edges. 1. Synesthesia outside venue. 2. If you lived here, you'd be home right now. 3. Lopatin designs preset Prismata ascribed to Trujillo, 2003 and goes downstairs for air. 4. He comes from a long line of shovelers. 5. Life …
Inventions
Sandy Bull's 1965 LP Inventions remains one of those legendary albums that almost no one has heard. Its impact, however, can be scene in the title of this new compilation spotlighting a great unsung hero of "psychedelic folk." "Blend," the 22-minute opus from 1963 that opens this disc, surely fits that designation, perfectly blending folk, jazz, and Indian influences into what Bull called "new guitar raga." An eclectic virtuoso who switched from acoustic guitar to banjo to Stratocaster to oud (m…
Concatenating Fields
After last years twice sold out and now long out of print record with Mark McGuire, the guitarist from Emeralds, Trouble Books are about to release 'Concatenating Fields'. Their most accomplished and fully realised work yet, it has everything from the perfect minimal pop song, to Eno like guitar symphonies, to a noise freakout with legendary cult Ohioan noiseniks, Tusco Terror. It's an unbelievable treat for MIE to be working once again with the band and their label, Bark and Hiss, in get…
Asshole Snail dilemma
10 years after the first Edition on CD the most horrifying piece of music available again on Vinyl. Featuring the infamous recording 'For Stringquintet and Asstrumpet' on one side, and a collage of studio-recordings and various live-actions in Rudolf Eb.er's unique style on side b. Mastered & cut by Lupo at D&M, Berlin.
Live On
Follow-up to last year's well-received full-length of collaged live performances released on SHDWPLY. This is another half hour-plus of the Baltimore drum/drone collective at their most zoned and loose-limbed.
Emeralds
RESTOCKED!! Brand new full length from Cleveland's Emeralds recorded Aug-Sept 2008. Proper follow up to their debut LP 'Solar Bridge', 'EMERALDS' takes the thick drone sound of that LP and transforms it into an even more abstract and strange place. Visual music that lifts the listener up and transports them through tubes of sound occasionally to be swept into the opposite direction by an unexpected entrance into another world entirely. An intense journey that drops you off in a place just be…
Group: Xex
Xex were an all-synthesizer band from South River, New Jersey who recorded their debut album group:xex in 1980. Formed when a trio of high school misfits with funny names (Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo and Alex Zander) teamed up with some friends from Rutgers CollegePerformed entirely on then-state-of-the-art Arps, synths and electronic drums – no guitars anywhere – group: xex aims for the future, but comes across now like a time capsule from the deepest, darkest Reagan years. Each song burro…
Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy
This disc brings together the Sun Ra recordings "Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy" and "Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorrow" (recorded in 1963 and '61-'62 respectively). Cosmic Tones functions as a kind of blueprint for the sort of large-scale jazz weirdness that would inform much of Sun-Ra's subsequent works, featuring the woozy reeds of 'And Otherness' and the afro-jazz experiments of 'Thither And Yon'. On 'Adventure Equation' a space echo treatment on the recording which is reprised for the sax f…
Sun Circle
The most recent release on the lichen label; all releases are hand-assembled by zach wallace in his native ann arbor environs and offer of a lovely wave of art-sound, field recordings, improvisation with natural non-instruments, and, in the case of this particular title, a pair of pieces by greg davis and zach himself on farfisa, distorted vocals, and bells. the first appears to be a zonked “cover” of lamonte young’s “31 vii 69 10:26 - 10:49 pm munich from map of 49's dream the two systems of el…
The Age Of Swing
After the monumental Hammond Pops, new work for finest norwegian noise duo Golden Serenades. Two long track clocked at 35 minutes for their most violent and complex work to date. 140 gr vinyls, black inner sleeves, printed labels, deluxe 330g ivory paper.Ltd 150
Piano Piano
Bureau B reissues Piano Piano by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1991 on the Italian label Materiali Sonori. In classical music, "pp" (piano piano = pianissimo) is a dynamic indication of particularly soft music. And Piano Piano is a very soft, quiet album. Roedelius assumes the role of a fairytale character with his piano music, transported to a strange, fantastical landscape where, filled with awe and amazement, he tries to get his bearings. What he see…
Spielwiese 3
"for the latest of their sound expeditions, the two warriors of experimental music from two generations (hans joachim irmler from faust and fm einheit as a founding member of einstÜrzende neubauten), have rejuvenated themselves and added a feminine touch. here, the german multimedia performer ute-maria paul, as well as the american composer and bassoonist katie young, broaden the sound cosmos which could already be explored on "no apologies", irmler's first co-operation with fm einheit. b…
Live At Sohgetsu Hall In Tokyo, 15th July 1972
After returning from a year-long tour of Europe and Asia, the group returned home to Tokyo for this concert. Originally released on CBS Japan in 1972, the concert remained out of print for decades and has never before been reissued on vinyl. The line up features Takehisa Kosugi on electronic violin, vocals and radio oscillators, Ryo Koike on electronic contrabass, suntool, sheet iron, and harmonica, Yukio Tsuchiya on vibraphone, Michihiro Kimura on electronic guitar & percussion, Seiji N…