New Arrivals
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…
Skate-Snorkel
The second LP in the RRR Foley Artist Series. Another great noise-wall record from The Rita. Two sound sources, one for each side. Because each side is a completely separate sound source, lets consider it a split LP.
Stone/Water
With any sizeable Brötzmann group, the temptation is always there to compare it to his classic Machine Gun unit. This new tentet doesn’t match up to the unbridled ferocity of that earlier grouping, but then what has? Perhaps the greatest sea change since the heavy-drinking glory days of 1968 is that ecstatic playing is now as much an idiom as an instinctive response. For all its supposed iconoclastic freedom, this idiom now has its own traditions, its own heroes, and its own stock cliches. Youth…
Night of Purple Moon
Sun Ra was a innovative jazz composer, pianist, synthesizer player, poet and philosophiser who was fascinated by cosmic philosophy. Ra’s fascination with all things ‘cosmic’ combined with his instrumental ability lead to the creation of off-kilter, avant-garde and highly experimental music. ‘The Night of the Purple Moon’ originally cut in 1970 showcases Sun Ra playing the Roksichord (a then state-of-the-art solid-state electronic keyboard manufac…
Things That Happened
Joke Lanz aka Sudden Infant creates an unique blend of physical sound-poetry and dadaistic vocals, using contact microphones, prerecorded soundloops and noises. The result is abrupt Musique Concrète juxtapositions of spasmodic gibbering and a battery of disorienting electronics. It's a fragmented field of sound that comes to its own autonomy!' Two great live recordings which shows more the competence of Joke Lanz then the most studio recordings ! Termite Club, Leeds, England (Live 2004-08-21). R…
Joka Baya
First in a trio of limited edition new LP’s from the ever mysterious Vibracathedral crew, returning from another relatively quiet period with an uncompromising set of outre’ jams. Slightly reorganized around a lineup of stalwarts Mick Flower and Adam Davenport with frequent collaborators John Godbert (Total) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand of the Man), the band here stretches way, way out over these six sides, taking in several different styles while maintaining “that” sound all the way through…
July 19, 2006
may 2009 release: label-less lp release (“private,” if you will) covering the first ever duo set between myself & geoff mullen, recorded in concert at the brendan murray-curated “uppercase sound #2” event @ pa’s lounge, somerville, ma, 02143, usa, on july 19th, 2006 ...the music is entirely improvised, with geoff sticking largely to a suitcase-electronics-based setup (although he does provide some fine guitar & pedal alterations throughout) & myself to the doepfer (ditto guitar & korg guitar-syn…
Oh Me Oh My... The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs A
To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic flights of chaos -- and the wildly surr…
Direct Current
Again, ultralimet release on qbico, the original music was rec. @ the qbico u-nite XIII which took place @ Issue Project Room in NYC back in Feb. 2009. for sure the opening set by Atiba & Dave Nuss was one of the most original live set i had the pleasure to... see i remember talking with Dave, trying to set up this gig... he came out with this duo, saying that Atiba is the best well kept secret in the NYC... he spotted him playing in Harlem Clubs... nobody knows him, Andrew Barker or Steve... no…
III
I don't care how many goddamn cute hobo bands there are out there right now. Not two runny shits. There's something Hank IV knows that few other current "of interest" bands realize, and it's a painfully simple thing: guitars were meant to sound like this, not that (pick something). That's as plainly as it can be put. This is twin-guitar punk rock in a class of its own, driving more than dueling and hot-sauce-free. I'd say "power with taste" but then I'd have to kill myself. I will say that…
Let’s just see what happens
REL is proud to present the debut LP of the scottish duo USURPER (Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff). Creating a sound nearly impossible to describe, USURPER combines obsessive metallic clunk, destroyed voices, broken horns and dropped marbles (?), into dense fields of activity. Working towards an intuitive sound logic all it's own, USURPER creates a surreal, comic structure that is unmatched and an energy that will make you laugh as soon as you shake your head in bafflement. The B side features a tr…
Red Horse
Red Horse is the blistering free-post-everything project of drummer/multi-percussionist Eli Keszler and guitarist/mad-scientist Steve Pyne. While both musicians are active in a number of different projects (you probably wouldn't believe Pyne's day job even if we told you), Red Horse catches them working with a distilled sense of focus and is for many their breakthrough project. Red Horse (not to be confused with the similarly-titled debut) is the duo's second album, and follows the rush of…
Rainwater Cassette Exchange
12" version. Certainly not a group to rest on their laurels (especially difficult when they have new songs burning a hole in their collective back pockets), Deerhunter delivers five new tracks on this extended play. This is not some stop-gap release between albums, or mere leftovers from their most recent Microcastle album, but an all new session. The band loves the EP format and thinks it does not get the respect it deserves. Hell, some bands arguably work best in the EP format, think Cocteau T…
A Year In The Kingdom
Since Joshua Tillman had his profile raised by association with Seattle folk favourites Fleet Foxes, whose drumsticks he wields, he hasn't exactly been making an attention-seeking racket in his solo career. In contrast to Fleet Foxes' dawn-chorus harmonising, Tillman favours a spare style, and his sixth solo album may be the year's most subdued record. "I possess a taste for blood. I have numbered mankind's days," the 28-year-old murmurs on "There Is no Good in Me", throwing in a reference to fi…
Maru Sankaku Shikaku
New psychic territorial landscapes the cosmic cartographer mapped yesterday before tomorrow. Acid Mothers Temple main man Kawabata Makoto links up with LSD March guitarist Michishita Shinsuke to create another amazing platter of fantastic sounds and vibes. Maru Sankaku Shikaku (Circle Triangle Square) finds the duo moving on from the electric guitars of their previous duo releases to an all acoustic album featuring ethnic instruments from around the globe. Two side long pieces mesh drone music w…
Spirit Of The Positive Wind
featuring Brian Sullivan & Nate Nelson (Mouthus), Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Spectre Folk) and Karl Bauer (Axolotl). The LP features two side-long tracks of bubbling, meandering noise-drone collages. "What the hell is this madness? After the Georgia Sea Island Singers took me somewhere nice it’s up to this super-group to drag me back to the fierce, nightmarish industrial landscape from whence I came. Then again this isn’t the sound of Bradford. I don’t know what it’s the sound of actua…
Beguiled Entropy
Expo '70 has garnered a great deal of notoriety over the last few years in certain circles in which the moniker is usually mentioned to describe types of cross-genres. After completing a couple US tours and a handful of limited releases and re-releases in 2010, a short hiatus was in order. During this time last year Justin Wright, sole operator of the project, recorded tracks for an upcoming release. Wright entered a basement studio and improvised over two nights layered recordings for the first…
Here's Sunshine
This is another lost private-press gem, from a Texas singer/songwriter who is remembered for “looping, melodically through often surrealist lyrics with a strong Tim Buckley influence.” Another description drops the always-intriguing “downer” folk tag on this record, calling it “stark, edgy real-people loner vibe, reverb, acoustic instrumentation, occasional hand percussion, piano, harmonica, as that off-the-chain Texas feel that approaches solo Roky Erickson territory.” The record label, Backbea…
Dums Will Survive
RFTO Bandwagon have just released their first full-length LP entitled Dums Will Survive on Dull Knife Records this month. Coming latently on the heels of their excellent New Jack 7" on the same imprint from last spring, RFTO Bandwagon continue with their mark of gritty folk-pop, and often sway into the weirdo territory of the genre with songs the grip the edges of so many sounds, and yet stay held together with beautifully frayed strands of brilliant songwriting. The title track on the a-side (t…
Cymbals In The Night
Heavy solo release from deep as Marianas Trench Swedish drummer Sven-Ake Johansson. Johansson is primarily known in the US as the drummer on the two hugely influential Brotzmann recordings: For Adolphe Sax and Machine Gun. However, the Berlin-based percussionist/composer/filmmaker/performance artist/painter -- all of which he is remarkably adept at -- also has numerous FMP releases and a well documented relationship with Alexander Schlippenbach. Notable contributions to the canon of exper…