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 …
L'experience acoustique
Francois Bayle's 'L'Experience Acoustique', Realised between 1966-1972 using the best technology available at the time, this 2 hour opus, powerful and immense in its scope, which explores a universe of electronic sounds and sound relationships. It's an investigation of acoustic sound at its purest levels and borders on psychedelic in effect. Chopping material from the world around him, manipulating it and juxtaposing against other, unlikely sources with illusive sleight-of-hand and haptic te…
Awakening Messiah
Dominick "Vatican Shadow" Fernow presents veiled techno producer Violet Poison on his Bed Of Nails imprint with the spectral industrial gloom of 'Awakening Messiah'. To date Violet Poison is best known as the mysterious accomplice of Shaped Noise in their Violetshaped alias - but here he strikes solo, transmitting four cuts of steely, night-stalking cyberpunk driven by sputtering techno engines through intensely bleak synth interzones. Like Black Rain or Vatican Shadow, it's a chilling exercise …
Psychedelic Sax
Grey-area exact LP repro edition, originally released on Fahey's Takoma label in 1967. Charlie Nothing was the fractured-psyche pseudonym of author, organic farmer, beekeeper and philosopher/clown Charles Martin Simon, inventor of the dingulator (guitar sculptures made out the metal from American cars). The Psychedelic Saxophone Of Charlie Nothing made a minor splash in the European free jazz melting pot upon its initial release, but the album's non-dingulating psych sax improvisation, acc…
Expressions East
Exact repro edition of this LP, originally issued in 1964. This is the limited edition colored vinyl version. "John Berberian is considered to be one of the finest oud virtuosos in the world. He has been featured in numerous concerts and dances throughout the United States, Canada, and South America. John is known for a series of successful Armenian and Middle Eastern recordings and has recorded with such major companies as: MGM, RCA, Roulette, Verve and Mainstream Records. Expressions Eas…
NYC, Hell 3:00 AM
James Ferraro takes inspiration from "the things I see" in his 'NYC, Hell 3:AM' dystopia. The follow-up to 'Sushi' is a wry reflection of his locale, "a surreal psychological sculpture of American decay and confusion" evoking imagery of "rats, metal landscape, toxic water, junkie friends, HIV billboards, evil news, luxury and unbound wealth, exclusivity, facelifts, romance, insane police presence and lonely people... all against the sinister vastness of Manhattan's alienating skyline." Of course…
Benji
Mark Kozelek is back with a new Sun Kil Moon album featuring Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, Jen Wood (who has worked with the Postal Service), Will Oldham, and Owen Ashworth (formerly known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, now of Advance Base).
Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby
Incredible work from the amazing Dorothy Ashby – a brilliant set of funky and spiritual tunes, set to full backings from Chicago soul arranger Richard Evans! This album is easily one of Ashby's greatest, and it's dedicated to the writings of Omar Khayyam – one of the forces guiding Dorothy's more spiritual sound at the end of the 60s, clearly opened up in a way that's not unlike the direction of Alice Coltrane's work, but a lot more focused and a lot more funky! Ashby not only plays her…
Ivy (Vatican Shadow / Lakker Mixes)
**Transparent Vinyl - Individually numbered edition of 300 copies** Vatican Shadow and Lakker provide remix reinforcement for the killer debut from Berlin's Tommy Four Seven and Alain from One Million Mangos Mastering as These Hidden Hands. Their original 'Ivy' is heavily informed by the romantic dystopia of mid-late '90s IDM and D&B's grander gestures, gazing out on drizzly grey north European synth skies whilst the reduced tech-step torque ticks and prods like a not-so-dystant cousin o…
Veterans of disorder
Back in play just to celebrate 14 years, 2 months and 12 days since its original release is Royal Trux's penultimate album, Veterans of Disorder. Coming off the fan-favorite Accelerator LP, it was clearly time to build on expectations, right? Uh... listen, maybe this isn't the band for you. Neil and Jennifer were fans of rock n roll to the finish, sure -- but in that, Royal Trux was a dyed-in-the-wool contrarian enterprise, rebels to the core, and everything they endeavored to was viewed from th…
Ill Fares The Land
**Digitalis debut from Koenraad Ecker, one half of Opal Tapes' Lumisokea, highly recommended if you're into Vainio, Joachim Nordwall, The Haxan Cloak. Initial copies on transparent red wax** Belgium's Koenraad Ecker swiftly follows his 'Apophenia' LP as part of the Lumisokea duo for Opal Tapes with a personalised invitation to his shadowy solo zones for Digitalis. Inhabiting space between slow techno and electro-acoustic dimensions, 'Ill Fares The Land' surveys similar soundscapes to Mika…
The Falling Rocket
This is true cosmic music!!! Stephan Mathieu is at the top of his game with The Falling Rocket, this is some seriously pensive & brooding minimalism that runs the gamut of the emotion rainbow without tossing you around rollercoaster style, with mostly just a Farfisa organ, Hohner Electronium, and radio at his disposal, Mathieu concentrates on a dense & lightweight essence, the sound of civilized silence carved out in the blankness of your mind, surrounded by inaudible hiss & hum, a delicate stat…
Audio technic catalog
After Sound Effects and Le disque contre l'insomnie (hypnose), Audio Technic Catalog is the third release of a series that reinvents sound library. With this one (LP + DVD with videos and audio, in a gatefold sleeve) the visual artist musician Vincent Epplay tackles the category of didactic records and movies (education, method, technique, instruction of use), with a lot of humour, weirdness and poetry. Like the first two releases, the graphic design, the texts and the music are combined…
weltraumruckfuhrungsubereinkommen
Third vinyl release by the mysterious Von Himmel commune. Some of these guys go back a long way into Sloow’s history and their classic ‘Space Communion’ tape from way back received the vinyl treatment by Humito. ‘weltraumrückführungsübereinkommen’ has more of those awesome serious zoned and mind melting fractals spider webbed into shining diamond stars mirroring inner and outer space. There’s the obvious nods to the kraut gods but Von Himmel seem to exist in their private spacetime continuum of …
Pictures of sound. One thousand years of educed audio : 980 - 19
Using modern technology, Patrick Feaster is on a mission to resurrect long-vanished voices and sounds--many of which were never intended to be revived. Over the past thousand years, countless images have been created to depict sound in forms that theoretically could be "played" just as though they were modern sound recordings. Now, for the first time in history, this compilation uses innovative digital techniques to convert historic "pictures of sound" dating back as far as the Middle Ag…
The System of Objects
Silentes presents a new collaborative effort between two prominent artists of Italy's electronic and experimental scene, Corrado Altieri (Candor Chasma, Monosonik, Uncodified) and Gianluca Favaron (ab'she, Under The Snow, Z'been). Inspired by Jean Baudrillard's essay of the same name, "The System of Objects" offers seven compositions combining field recordings, analogue textures, computer music and concrète sounds. Altieri e Favaron dig deep in the unconscious of the french philosopher, devising…
Elegy for Bangalore
The sound/video installation-project 'Eye Contact with the City' (recipient of an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011) was the outcome of an artists' residency in Bangalore in the autumn of 2010. The primary materials used in the installation were the field recordings made and video footage shot at various locations in Bangalore. Materials also included retrieved audio from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city's flea markets. The extensive repository of field recordings and other a…
Galaxies
Laurence Vanay is the pseudonym for Jacqueline Thibault, wife of producer and musician Laurent Thibault (Magma). Her debut album "Galaxies" (1974) is pure genius: almost all instrumental, with gorgeous keyboards of many types, acoustic/electric guitar, even a little Zeuhl bass. There are wordless vocals on many of the tracks, although she occasionally sings in a soft, seductive manner. Incredible, spacey “avant-garde progressive chanson,” a Holy Grail for most collectors of 70's underground Fren…
Rehearsal tapes and alt. Takes NYC 1976-1978
"Connie Burg and I met Sumner Crane and Nancy Arlen in late 1975 and quickly decided to start a band. Sumner had been playing piano since he was a kid and I trumpet, guitar and more recently bass, but we were for the most part self taught. Connie decided to pick up a guitar and we started jamming in Nancy’s loft on Broadway and Duane St. where Sumner lived downstairs. For the first few months it was just piano, bass and acoustic guitar, with some paper bag percussion from Nancy. Our biggest rock…
in Tokyo
Four pieces of computer music. Iancu Dumitrescu \'Hazard and tectonics\' (2009 - 2013), \'Crepuscule I\' (2011-12), \'Early, before all times\' (2010-11). Ana-Maria Avram \'Metalstorm I\' (2012).