New Arrivals
The Skipper at Home
Jazz-man Henry Franklin, widely respected for his service to the finest jazz players, brought that ineffable quality called soulfulness into play when he made his first record for producer George Porter at Black Jazz, The Skipper. Not unexpectedly, his follow-up affair titled The Skipper at Home teems with the same jaunty uplift. In sync with Franklin's musical spirit on the second recording are returnees Charles Owens on saxophone, Oscar Brashear on trumpet and Kenny Climax on guitar along wi…
Component Fixations
To this day, Nicholas Bullen is best-known as a founding member of arguably grindcore's most important act: Napalm Death. Although he decided to call it a day before the band slipped into the mainstream circuit, his sonic fingerprints were all over their influential debut Scum, and he's been breaking boundaries ever since. A key figure in Birmingham's experimental scene, Bullen was also a founding member of Scorn and has been involved in a variety of projects since. Over 30 years later we …
Along the way
Former Emeralds member Mark McGuire has planned a new album following his 2011 albumGet Lost. Along the Waythrough Dead Oceans. On Along The Way, McGuire writes in the liner notes: "€œThis story is an odyssey through the vast, unknown regions of the mind€¦the endless unfolding of psychological landscapes, leading to perpetual discoveries and expansions, in a genuinely emergent and infinite world of worlds. Further he writes “[the new album] is not a critique, it is not inst…
Poisoned Soil
House of Low Culture is the long-running solo project of Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer, Lotus Eaters, etc.) and Poisoned Soil is the first proper album to be released in nearly a decade. HOLC's first release, Submarine Immersion Techniques Vol. 1, would set the tone for all that would follow. Recorded from 1997-1999, released in 2000, the album explored lonely, lysergic drone territories and the construction of textural weavings. Over the course of the next several years, Turner broadened …
I drink your skin
CD reissue of 2001 recording, originally released on cassette by American Tapes. Kevin and I traded raw material at some point in 2001. After discussing a collaboration I found a cassette of unreleased material of myself messing with Renaissance (the band) and junk noise 8-track loops on the floor of my car as I was getting ready to leave for home from a Chicago trip. A couple days later Kevin sent me a mini-disc of his own unreleased material.. His disc was caked in spilled coffee or something …
Unfinished. For William Turner, painter
"Which side of the picture should be hung uppermost? 2003, London: the first time I visited Tate Britain, Tate Gallery, and the first time I saw and really experienced the paintings of JMW Turner (1775-1851). Overwhelmed, especially by his late and unfinished works I was stunned by the power of the stillness of his work. 25 years before that something similar; me, as a young man in Madrid; Prado, Goya paintings and etchings - for me an initiation which opened up the door to earlier art an…
In Solo
Restocked, very last copies around: Doyle is another matter. This man is dangerous - he never plays anything you could recognize, just furious blasts of rage. His solo on "Domiabra" couldn't be written down, or even sorted out. It sounds more like raw energy than anything I've ever heard. He's nasty, man." These liner notes to the original issue of Noah Howard's 'The Black Ark' may define perfectly also this new, incredible album by Arthur Doyle, this time 'in solo' for sax, flutes and voi…
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…
Open
"Following on from their two track LP release, Mindset (2011), Open sees legendary artists-in-resonance The Necks return to the territory they are best known for, a single piece running for over an hour. The piece emanates a calm, immersive stillness throughout. Already The Wire has said that Open "(displays The Necks') astute handling of pacing and momentum, finely honed collective sense of timing, (and) their shared ability to balance at length a group equilibrium". Here the band returns…
Jared's Lot
It's been nearly two years since we've heard new music from Gary War and we are excited to announce the release of his inevitable breakthrough 'Jared's Lot'. Through the years we have heard the developments from the D.I.Y. psychedelia of New Raytheonport to the more current electronic acid-prog tracks we heard from Horribles Parade and the most recent Police Water EP. Jared's Lot brings the years of laboring and hard work full circle, with every facet of the project dialed into perfection.…
Compilation
This 7-CD set contains 19 selected performances from the Ftarri Festival, held in April 2008 (Kyoto / Tokyo), and the Ftarri doubtmusic Festival, held in September 2010. The 7 CDs, together with a sequentially numbered Ftarri Collection card, come in a special handmade felt bag about 18 cm high and 17 cm wide. Each bag has a different design. Ftarri Collection 1 with Opera Southern Cross (Taku Sugimoto: composition, images. Katsuaki Iida: words, reading. Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board…
The Godward Way
Daniel Higgs has always been held in the highest esteem by us here at Southern, becoming an almost totemic figure in the process. Certainly an appreciation for his work, and the canon of the band Lungfish, has been a job requirement for all the staff who've worked with us over the years. He has graced us with visits from time to time, and his London shows have always been must attend events for Southern alumni. Naturally, a Latitudes recording would be the jewel in the crown for our catal…
The Magic Bridge
Gatefold double LP version. Includes a CD with three bonus tracks, plus lyric sheet inserts. Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson's genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out on CD (Pink Triangle…
New Ear
With this new album, Melmac reveals a new maturity gained in the course of three French and european tours that have enabled the group to initiate a major part of the ideas presented here through extensive improvisation sessions on stage in the spirit of the instant composing sessions ran by Kraut Rock bands during the psychedelics years. These new experiments have opened the artistic spectrum of the band to new horizons clearly rock, heavy, trippy or noise reminiscent of bands like Sleep or Sku…
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 …
Qat, Coffee & Quambus: raw 45s from Yemen
Compiled by Chris Menist, Qat, Coffee & Qambus: raw 45s from Yemen features vintage oud and vocal music inspired by the qat-chewing, coffee-sipping, qambus-playing culture of Yemen. Although part of the classical Arabic musical tradition, the music of Yemen takes its rhythmic lead as much from the East African coast (a mere 20 miles across the Red Sea) as the surrounding Arab Peninsula.Little has been written about the music and culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations, and each 45rpm …
Wood Flute Songs: Anthology/Live 2006-2012
Some of the most amazing work we've ever heard from this legendary bassist – a set that's not based around music from a wooden flute, but which instead refers to the instrument in its title – as an illustration of the very organic approach of the work within! A 8CD box set of all previously unissued recordings by world-renowned bassist-composer-bandleader William Parker, a 2013 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation's Artist Award. Parker is a wonderfully prolific composer, and over half of t…
The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World
Peter Jefferies's extraordinary debut solo album, The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World, first saw life as a cassette via the Xpressway label of Port Chalmers, New Zealand, in 1990. As a result of some international underground acclaim in fanzines and mailorder catalogs -- for both the album and a striking 7-inch, 'The Fate of the Human Carbine,' released around the same time -- it soon appeared on LP and CD as well, through the Ajax label of Chicago. Within a couple of years it slipped…
Music Of The Modern White
2009 issue "The album begins with a percussion intro that sounds more like a gunfight than any sort of recognisable drumming routine, and continues to get weirder and weirder from there on. New York avant-garde-ists Zs might be seen as a kind of post-modern free-jazz ensemble, combining sax, guitars and live kit sounds with all the tumult of contemporary electronic drone music. This LP absorbs the impact of no-wave, industrial music, Merzbow and (on the ornate rhythmic figures of 'MMW I…
Cover Versions
Andrew Pekler selected 300 different covers from second-hand records and, using colorful geometric elements to cover over all titles, performer’s names, and label logos, removed traces of the covers’ original contexts. The sunsets, couples in silhouette, alpine panoramas, roses on pianos, female faces in close-up, and seascapes no longer serve as the packaging for easy listening and exotica. Instead, the romantic, bizarre and intriguingly bland images of the original covers are free to lend thei…