New Arrivals
Provocative Electronics
Provocative Electronics is an exploration in analog synthesizers and recording techniques. As in the days of musique concrete and the beginning years of synthesizer development, Ortmann experiments with tones and his own brand of electronic tweakage. Provocative Electronics is not a homage, but yet another document in the ongoing history of Electronic Music. For fans of the 20th century Greek composer Xenakis, minimalist John Cage, or pioneer of musique concrete Pierre Schaeffer, Mort Garson, Mi…
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…
Sacred & Profane Love
We haven’t made any secret of our love for Estonian Producer Maria Minerva, and this latest offering for 100% Silk might just be her finest yet. She’s had to bat off plenty of comparisons with Nite Jewel, Glass Candy and others from the nu-disco set, and this collection of six tracks should be where those comparisons end. Here Minerva explores a wider range of dancefloor styles, beginning with woozy late night Chicago gloom on ‘A Love So Strong’ with its detuned vocal hook and punchy bas…
Egypt Strut
Decades before his time, political and musical revolutionary, Sun Ra, developed a new plane of cultural existence where black people were all-powerful beings from outer space, sending their intergalactic message through jazz music. Recorded live in 1975 at Cleveland's legendary jazz club, the Smiling Dog Saloon, when Sun Ra and his Arkestra descended on the city for a week-long residency. You can imagine how the uninitiated's jaw must have dropped when Ra and his 15 musicians marched out onto th…
Introducing
The Drag City / Galactic Zoo team delve deeply into the recesses of private press obscurity once again, further revealing the underbelly of American music's recorded history - this time the little known songwriter Ryan Trevor is in the spotlight, who released just one incredibly rare, homespun LP (this one, if you're wondering) which surfaced originally in 1977. Not much is known about Trevor, though the guys at Drag City bill him as a "loner genius", whose work is to be filed somewhere between …
The Decoration Of The Duma Continues
The 1987 debut of one of the great forgotten bands of the post punk, dark-industrial era remastered at Dubplates & Mastering and reissued in a beautiful gatefold edition by Forced Nostalgia - 500 copies only* Pump were Andrew Cox and David Elliott, a pair of likeminded electronic music fiends who met at Brighton uni in '79. After staring a fanzine and a tape label the pair eventually began to record their own material (initially under the moniker MFH) and released several cassette albums …
New Sky Dragon
Top flight three man cosmic research team further investigations on galactic flux and refraction with two transmissions of synesthetic mind-fold. Lift off with skyward string stasis cutting through buffeted drum-clouds and synthesiser atmosphere, cosmic forever vision peaks at warp-speed rocket drone, anti-gravity percussion accents and star scraping rainbow universes. Saturating feedback zones spread webs of dimension amidst asteroid belt orbits, where two-way trips initiate zero g shimm…
Six imaginary scenes from the life of Muhammad Ali
This newest candle burning outing from the long going UK Psych project headed by Mr. Phil Todd continues the quest for the farthest possible cosmic frequencies through FX, guitar, synth, and saz on a bed of field recordings. Some tracks in here almost enter the pantheon of new age music ! Edition of 240 copies.
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…
Blue eyes are my reward
Jawdropping new collection of crop circles etched in sonic candy-floss by New Zealand’s beardsmith / noise-farmer Campbell Kneale. Rated by the horses mouth as the best thing he ever made, EVER, ‘Blue Eyes Are My Reward’ shimmers like an icicle-clad forest resplendent in its own crystalline magnificence. Snakecharming groove, dublike boomph, and bleary eyed strum blast the path out of a decidedly greying world of so-so metalized myspace drone, into a miniaturized drone-prairie of superpow…
The Divine
""the divine" marks the second phase in the trilogy proposed by john twells aka xela. crawling out of a castle dungeon in pursuit of its predecessor, "the illuminated", this lp finds itself trapped in an abandoned church somewhere in a damp southern wilderness. church bells chime and rattle through the record's first piece, echoing and distorting through a fog of chattering voices and prayers. tape loops stumble over tape loops and the solemn, ecclesiastical drone slowly decomposes into thick, c…
Bengt
Bengt is the new solo recording by Mats Gustafsson and is dedicated to Bengt Nordström. Mats Gustafsson plays a plastic alto sax. A classic Grafton sax. The type of sax that was used by Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman and Bengt Nordström. Nordström is best known having produced Albert Ayler´s first recording Something Different!!!!!! on his Bird Note imprint. It is in his own role as a sax player Bengt was truly inventive. Bengt was playing solo sax improvisation already in 1962 (!!!) Nor…
Outdoor Spell
Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…
And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees
It probably wouldn't surprise most, but the Type label was originally formed with soundtracks in mind. The moody music that usually accompanied their favorite independent films was a starting point for the label, so it seems perfect that nearly seven years on, they are going back to their roots, if you like, with this album from acclaimed Icelandic musician/composer/producer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Jóhannsson emerged on the influential Touch label with the genre-defining Englabörn (TO 052LP) album in…
Live In San Francisco
Astromero is the psychedelic synth-noise project of Japanese pioneer Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro,CCCC), and LA's Damion Romero (Speculum Fight). Side A is a Live show in San Francisco, a total scorcher with an immense level of energy where shifting walls of synthetic sound produced by Hasegawa are complemented by the signature rumbling low end frequencies coming from Damion's custom electronics. Side B is a new studio track, full of brain melting tones and showing the more compositional side of this…
Sensacao Do Principio
Sensacao Do Principio is the third release proper from Tropa Macaca and their first with an American label. Their previous efforts on Ruby Red and Qbico were magnificent (though hard to find) efforts of blotted, aural sci-fi codifications somewhere between Anar Band and Blues Control. The two-track full-length continues their foray into post-psychedelic instrumental morphine, where Moolah's LP and Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with …
Paper of pins
"the coming together of this quartet on "paper of pins" has resulted in mature, yet unforced sounding compositions. the touching number "brown reduse" wins you over with its catchy piano sounds and subtle trumpet which is rounded off by the electronica. it's a small orchestral gem in the jazz style which is still edgy despite its perfection. this is highlighted, for example, by the fact that you can hear the brass player drawing breath on some tracks. certainly, the scottish composer is no perfe…
Revelationes
"Revelationes is the 5th studio album from Tape, their first since 2008's Luminarium and the follow-up to their collaboration LP with Bill Wells (Fugue, Immune 008, 2010). The LP is co-released with Häpna in an edition of 1,000 copies worldwide and pressed on high-quality virgin vinyl at RTI with free MP3 download coupon. Tape have been playing their unique blend of pop, experimentalism, and minimalism since 2000; having released four full-length albums and collaborative recordings with Te…
September Cell
Absolutely KILLER new twelve from Vatican Shadow on Dominick Fernow's own, newly minted Bed of Nails imprint - his most direct dancefloor productions to date. Edition of 700* Bed Of Nails is a new label curated by Dominick Fernow of Vatican Shadow and Prurient fame. Operating from his recently consecrated L.A. compound - the label will focus on his reorientation towards industrial dancefloor rhythms and seductively isolated electronics. Fernow christens the label with 'September Cell', a…
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…