New Arrivals
Soulnessless EP 2 (DJ Sprinkles Remix)
The 2nd of two keenly awaited vinyl EPs supporting the ambitious 32 hour, 16GB microSD card release of Terre Thaemlitz's 'Soulnessless' - this time featuring a killer reworking from Terre's DJ Sprinkles Alias, plus a sublime 18 minute Piano excerpt of the original. With 'Meditation on Wage Labor and the Death of the Album (Sprinkles' Unpaid Overtime)' on the A-side Terre returns to the deeply arresting New York/New Jersey minimalist House approach which made his 2009 LP - 'Midtown 120 Blue…
HYDratioN
Super limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. Hand screened jackets printed by Neil Burke at Monoroid. For years, both Z'EV and Jon Mueller have explored these possibilities, both within traditional forms, and singling out specific elements within those forms. For Z'EV, an entire book, called Rhythmmajik, was written about the properties of rhythm, while his history pairs him with a wealth of collaborators, from Carl Stone, Glenn Branca, and many others, as he pursued the quest for rhythmic…
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…
Up To Earth
Vinyl edition of this joyous improvised music drawing on South African roots and European free jazz from Chris McGregor and a group including Evan Parker, Louis Moholo, Barre Philllips, &c. This album only had a few test pressings at the time of recording and this is therefore the first vinyl release of this classic work. In 1969 the Chris McGregor Group were riding high on the London jazz scene, playing and hanging out with all the rising stars of British free jazz. Sessions for the pre…
Badlands
If you think something’s wrong with your speakers, you are mistaken. No, you can’t turn up the bass. You’re just listening to the raw, stripped down wail of Alex Zhang Hungtai, better known as Dirty Beaches. His MySpace describes the music as “minimalist rockabilly,” and those are probably the two best words I could think of to describe his newest LP, Badlands.At times, Hungtai’s vocals sound quite Elvis-esque; at other times, you can barely make out the mumbling echoes over the subdued drum bea…
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…
Englabörn
Upon setting out to score the music for the play Englaborn by Havar Sigurjonsson, Johann Johannsson, co-founder of the Icelandic arts organisation Kitchen Motors, came upon a text by the Latin poet Catullus which roughly translates as, I hate and I love. Why do I do it, you might ask? I dont know, but I feel it happening to me, and it's tearing me apart. This poem concisely bridges the emotional opposites which clashed within the play itself. As the play's content was extremely violent and distu…
Origin
The entirety of Origin's musical material is comprised of the vibrating strings of Pitre's ensemble of bowed "harmonic-guitars," which are unconventionally strung electric guitars (utilizing multi-unisons) tuned to intervals corresponding with the Harmonic Series, a.k.a. Just Intonation. No effects processing (pre or post) was used in this recording. All effect-like qualities result from the multi-unison strings (phasing), sympathetic vibrations, combination/difference tones (of the chosen just …
The Very Heart Of The World
LP version. Edition of 500 copies. On The Very Heart of the World, Burning Star Core (BXC) has created an incredibly heavy record, built on dense, layered drones, pulses, splintered vocals, and deep rhythms that euphorically build to total overload. With a line-up including the Hair Police front line and other luminaries from across the exploding Midwestern psych-noise-folk underground, BXC's C. Spencer Yeh has assembled a group that seamlessly shifts through epic movements and pushes pure elect…
Instrumentals For The Broken Hearted
As sold on recent tour - Limited to 500 copies on clear green vinyl with all handpainted covers. This record features 5 instrumental mixes of songs from the latest kranky lp (songs for the broken hearted). These mixes are completely different & in some cases hardly sound like the kranky version. There is also a sixth song which is unreleased. The covers were made using recycled lp jackets, all white washed & then painted on. Some have concrete designs & some are very free form. Photocopied tour …
Frequency Conquistadors
Words are more often then not the point of departure for many works of Das Synthetische Mischegewebe. The track - titles here stem from ‘El Mundo Alucinante’ de Reinaldo Arenas, which itself is inspired by François-René de Chateaubriand’s ‘Mémoires d'outre-tombe’. It is about time rather than history and about being in history. Having lost the war of time, the only thing that remains to do is being, and here we go, ‘being infiniment exigent’ in it’s means of expression. DSM began in Berlin arm…
Circo Divino
This is the first collaboration by ambient master Alio Die with soundscape creator Parallel Worlds. The unique sound achieved could be described as a hybrid sonic world, made out of bouncing electrons and air vibrations. The modular machines of Parallel Worlds are merged with the acoustic instrumentation and drones of Alio Die, joined by the ethereal voice of the Polish vocalist/composer India Czajkowska, resulting in a surreal, yet down to earth, listening experience. The compositions, b…
Anarchist Republic Of Bzzz
Anarchist Republic Of Bzzz is the exceptional and ephemeral reunion of two cult guitarists, Marc Ribot & Arto Lindsay and two inspired and engaged rappers, Sensational & Mike Ladd, with Seb el Zin at the helm. The group displays a level of urgency too rare nowadays. These five musicians break free from all the music rules and transcend all styles. This isn't free jazz per se, nor free improvisation or dub or hip-hop -- actually, the Anarchist Republic Of Bzzz's sonic manifesto is simultan…
This is no fun acid 02
'In the beginning there was Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi and an arsenal of computer controlled analog jock boxes designed specifically to outmode the trad rock (read: human) rhythm section... the circuitry was so tightly wound however, so rooted in synthesis that it failed to meet its promise. It wasn't until the mid-80s that the TB-TR system took novel form as acid house; a simple but novel attitude shift that saw an embrace of extra-terrestrial machine funk aesthetics converging with the…
Inland
Pyrolator is the co-founder of the legendary German label and publisher Ata Tak, was a member of various seminal post-punk bands such as D.A.F. and Der Plan and released solo albums under his artist name from 1979 onwards until today. His debut album "Inland" from 1979 features cold, urbane, disconcerting synthesizer sounds and aural collages, imbued with the post-punk/industrial zeitgeist as the seventies segued into the eighties. Yet sounding so fresh, it might have been recorded …
Nicht
"Well, here it is! The moment you have all been waiting for.... the arrival of the debut album release by Peterlicker. Despite following on in that terrible tradition of Butthole Surfers and Throbbing Gristle of stupid band names, Peterlicker (newly reformed after 20 years of inactivity) have, against all odds, come up with a serious slab of modern electronic rock.NICHT comprises of five well crafted selections recorded over the summer of 2010. Having got their previous noise free fall style out…
untitled
Five tracks, totalling approximately fifty minutes. Packed into the small horrible room (rip) inside the cedar house (rip) down in Lexington ky (still alive), individuals huddled in every corner, painting the room in colored cables, glossy wood and metal boxes. Deafness and disorientation was administered through the afternoon on into the night. Summoning over two hours of recorded tape, it was decided to cut the baby in half for adoption between two imprints. Heavy blossom ferried away the long…
A hidden place
Sohrab was born in Tehran in 1984. He was seven when the Iran-Iraq war ended. His name, from an old poem called “Shahname”, means “rouge water”, which can also mean 'blood'. He started a punk band with his brother and a friend, which lasted about two years before splitting. Sohrab is totally isolated in Iran, with little or no connection to what is happening there. Sohrab is, like so many, displaced within his own country and occupies a similar internal cultural isolation. This is suggeste…
Roll the dice
Massively anticipated release of this mysterious Fever Ray related project for fans of John Carpenter, Emeralds, Cluster, Afx - on a strictly limited vinyl pressing* Roll The Dice is a very special collaboration between two Swedish studio boffins, Peder Mannerfelt and Malcolm Pardon. The keener eyed among you will recognise Mannerfelt from his involvement with the stunning Fever Ray project, while Pardon is known for his work as a behind-the-scenes producer of music for film and TV. They'…
BloodLinks + SacredPlaces
Poet Laureate of East St. Louis+founder/editor of internationally acclaimed journal "Drum Voices Revue". Principal architect of black cultural arts movement of the 60s, teacher & acclaimed writer of countless volumes of poetry, Redmond has been called "the preacher of poetic rhythm" by Maya Angelou, "a carver of high song magic" by Quincy Troupe & "a worker & healer" by Ishmael Reed. On this spirited, funky, streetwise collection of 12 vintage cuts recorded live in the studio in Sacramento in 19…