New Arrivals
Preplexure
John Oswald (Plunderphonics) returns with two fourteen-minute-plus tracks of sliced and diced audio assemblage. Pre and post versions of Plexure out in 1993 on Avant, 'PrePlex' (1982 - 1992) and 'Plexure concentrate' (1992 - 2009). Here some feedbacks: 'Highly recommended. Imagine playing Ôname that tune' at 5 times the speed of your ears' ability to recognize familiar sounds. This composition, made up entirely of pop music samples, deserves five stars because of its meticulous organizatio…
Unfinished Studies
This LP is the first release from young Melbourne-based composer Robert McDougall, presenting four electroacoustic studies, the fruits of many hours of private sonic research and improvisation. Simple electronics, acoustic instruments, field recordings and textural manipulations are subtly processed, fragmented and iterated into patiently evolving forms. Eschewing the jump-cut dynamics of academic electroacoustics while making use of a large variety of source material, McDougall allows the eleme…
Calmont breakdown
New solo album by the highly prolific yet always captivating Richard Youngs, whose music can waver healthily between new forms of singer-songwriter material, lo-fi drones and all manner of avant-garde forms. Here, his music sways towards the difficult and embraces organ drones and swells, frazzled electronics, a voice that is at once unnerving and unnerved, and more besides. Anybody expecting a comfortable listen should be prepared.
Stupor Hiatus
Definitive collection of Ohio lo-fi pioneer's 1974-1992 material. A mash of home-recorded punk, pop & psychedelia. "Man, i hate it when someone's entire career seems to have passed me by, especially when it's someone as crazy as lo-fi pioneer and mad ranty man Mike Rep. I know fuck all about this guy but he sounds like a genius. I guess he may have come to prominence for his production work with Guided By Voices, Strapping Fieldhands and Times New Viking but this guys been kicking it since …
Made in China
special artist multiple signed edition, limited to 150 copies, this is a collaborative record by swiss artists Marc Zeier (G*Park), Luigi Archetti, and Ian Anull. Released for their Exhibition 'Made in China' at Hans-Trudel-Haus, Baden, Switzerland, April-May 2009. The music consists of (manupulations of) recordings the three artist made during their travel to China in 2008. Traditional instruments and field-recordings with electro-acoustic treatment.
Live in Istambul
"Collective improvisation based on a Turkish folk tune. One of the most ecstatic piece of music i ever heard (simple as it is) ! suddenly i found myself dancing madly, like a Whirling Dervish... unfortunatly i didn't get Enlightment BUT, it was fun !" ep
Mellow Out
Mainliner, were a Japanese trio consisting of Asahito Nanjo (High Rise), Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and Hajime Koizumi and their debut album 'Mellow Out' is considered by many to be thee CLASSIC Japanese underground album. Since it was first released in 1996 it's legend has grown and grown, and it's still talked about by lovers of all things loud, noisy and Japanese as THEE definitive Japanese noise rock statement. Upon release it was instantly dubbed 'the pinnacle of achieveme…
Interval Signals
Brian Pyle is becoming a big name in disquieting ambient and haunted audio, and two new releases (this and Light that Comes, Light that Goes) from him this week aptly explain why. Interval Signals is an enticingly evocative story, a single-take journey through a series of interiors and exteriors spaces layered with memories and geographies. Melancholy like an old crime scene, its mixture of ancient broadcasts, echoes trapped in the dusty twentieth-century telephone network, spiritualistic tuned …
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…
Space Mirror
Space travel is the dream of many and the reality of few. Since Yuri Gagarin first shed the bonds of earth gravity in 1961, only about 500 humans have made the trip beyond the atmosphere. Ken Camden travels to space while still grounded on terra firma. His vessel of choice is a guitar and some effects with which he journeys on fantastical expeditions and surveys the biggest territory of all, the one between your ears. The glimmering sound fields he forms could be a soundtrack to an epic '60s sci…
Red Sugar
Restocked, reduced price 'winter family are the brooklyn based duo of ruth rosenthal and xavier klaine. alt.vinyl is proud to release this double vinyl ltd edition edition (300 copies only) of their latest intensely atmospheric work. artwork by franz vesolt, layout by fabien lehalle. audio mastering by patrick klem. review: a rare and unique audio worldview expressed by the singular approach of brooklyn based duo ruth rosenthal (spoken words) and xavier klaine (harmonium, organ etc..). fro…
The Stargate Tapes
"Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post-prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music. At the turn of the 1980s Bob Stohl and Kat Epple embarked on a ten-year spiritual journey playing at planetariums and laser sho…
Homeless cats
The Swedish psychedelic trance-rock pioneers new album - Homeless Cats. Eleven new boundless tracks with organic music for open minds. A 40-year anniversary is actually rather on the small. Back in 1967 the guitarist Bo Anders Persson had already started his Terry Riley-inspired underground band Parson Sound with the bass player Torbjorn Abelli and drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, amongst others. They evolved into International Harvester, then Harvester, and finally striking root as Trad Gras och Sten…
Complete Spiral
Two of the world's most distinguished electronic musicians have drawn upon their shared passion for the sensuality and groove of late '80s / early '90s NYC House to hatch a genuine anthem for unsuspecting and open minds. DJ Sprinkles, aka Terre Thaemlitz, is a now Tokyo-based producer who, among so much other stuff, released the hugely loved, genre-defining "Midtown 120 Blues" album back in 2009. Mark Fell is the South Yorkshire-based sonic genius known for groundbreaking work as half of…
Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh
Restocked, few available..."If the pentagrams and moccasins and ponchos of the now nearly bygone “freak folk” era made listening to Fairport Convention cool again, Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh’s self-titled collaboration serves as a reminder that British longhairs of the ’60s were nerds, nerds, nerds. Cellist Espvall, best known for her work with Espers, and Batoh, the guitarist of Japanese psych band Ghost, deploy an arsenal of exotic stringed instruments. They play earnest cover…
the 15,000 day boat trip
november 2009 release ; pristine electro-acoustic work from cenotaph’s john w. fail (responsible for both a criminally under-appreciated quadruple tape-box on c. spencer yeh’s dronedisco &, partially, the “lied music vs. boy-band tax returns” lp on ultra eczema ... as well as full-length collaborations with spiral joy band & ben reynolds) ...inhabiting similar head-space as graham lambkin’s recent “softly softly copy copy,” the piece in question here takes it source material from live-played ins…
Hen ogledd
180gm LP limited to 250 copies. Between them Rhodri Davies and Richard Dawson are busy people. Playing festivals across the UK, Europe and the US; with their last solo albums (Wound Response and The Glass Trunk) both receiving huge critical acclaim, and serially collaborating with prominent figures across music's counter culture. Hailing from Newcastle, Dawson:Davies: Hen ogledd is the new good buddy duo-project between pioneering harp-fiend-legend-dangerman Rhodri Davies and rebel singer-painte…
Home Is The Sun
Invisible Things is the duo of guitarist Mark Shippy (U.S. Maple) and drummer Jim Sykes (Parts & Labor). Well beyond the stereotypical thoughts of a guitar, drum improv/jam session, the drumming is based the study of Sri Lankan percussion and applied to the modern drum kit. This foundation of the drums allows for explorations by the guitar that is tight and sparse one moment and then seamlessly shifted into majestic swirls of reverberation. The album, comprised of 17 tracks, is presented as on…
Hirrnkopter hellikranck
Its a reissue of the 1989 Schimpfluch cassette that features early destructive outbursts - both in the radio station and out on the street - by Joke Lanz (Sudden Infant) and Rudolf Eb.er (Runzelstirn Und Gurglestock).
A Romance Of 2 Planets
2010 release. Beautifully presented three-track 12" from Jamal Moss in his enigmatic Hieroglyphic Being guise, presented in a run of 500 copies on London's excellent Alter label - who're responsible for that OPN/Tomuttontu split 7" some months back. Jamal's unique and impregnable style is in full flow on the 12-minute A-side 'Sphere Of Madness', divining wandering, astral synthlines and frothing machine rhythms, all equally informed by vintage Chi-House, Industrial and New Age memes but entirely…