New Arrivals
Luminous Night
CD edition: Luminous Night is the first set of new Six Organs Of Admittance material to leap forth from Ben Chasnys' cerebral cortex in 18 months, and what a joy it is. With the release of odds-and-sods collection RTZ earlier in the year there to bridge the gap between 2007s Shelter From The Ash it doesn't seem like he's been away for long per se but for serious Chasny-heads a new album is something to get pretty excited about and with his other musical outlet Comets On Fire either on extended h…
Improvisation Anarchy
With a title like ‘Improvisation Anarchy’, you pretty much have the blessed assurance that the record will be either a right-on, spontaneous surge of electricity, or at least an entertaining disaster. Recorded in 1978-79, this patchwork quilt of straight-arrow punk and meandering synth-assisted psychedelia manages to be both at the same time. It should be noted that this kind of music was not common for 1970s West Japan before the ‘bubble economy’ of the 80’s allowed for more impulsive consumpti…
Port Out Starboard Home
Some bands produce a CD every week; by now it seems 'normal' to have three year gaps in releasing records for Beequeen, which is a fresh antidote to the music business of more = more. For Beequeen, like good wine, things mature given more time. Whereas 'Sandancing' (2008) featured Olga Wallis a guest singer, on this new album she's a fully fledged bandmember, adding her beautiful voice to Beequeen's off beat songs. 'Port Out Starboard Home' features surreal dream-pop, but always with that unique…
A thousand mountains
To start with, we've always commended Japan's Doubtmusic label for the handsome packaging job that each one of their digipack cd releases invariably receives. This one, though, we'd probably be inclined to buy just 'cause of the especially cool cover art alone! Done by one Tomoo Gokita, the cover suggests an arched window in a brightly patterned wall, looking out on (a photo of) some majestic snow-capped alpine mountain (the Matterhorn, is it?). But in front of the "window", the corpse-painted v…
Orchestral works and chamber music
ESSENTIAL RELEASE: The impulsive and electrifying Ata (1987) was referred to as "a kind of shifting of the senses" by the composer. The task of sketching N’Shima (1975) was actually assigned to a computer, whereas Metastaseis (1953-54) is devoted to architecture; the composition was derived from the bases of calculation used for the pavilion for the Brussels World's Fair of 1958 and is famous in particular for its glissandos and thickening clusters. Ioolkos, written for Donaueschingen in 1996, a…
Live in concert
Denman Maroney (piano) & Mark Dresser (bass). Vision Festival NY - June 11, 2008. This is the third duo album by bassist Mark Dresser and pianist Denman Maroney, after Duologues and Time Changes. In contrast to some of the other material by the two players, this one is fully improvised in three long pieces. The first 30 minute track was recorded live at Vision Festival on June 10, 2008, the two other pieces date from a performance in Chicago in 2001. It's hard to call this jazz, since none of th…
The End Of The Empire
Second album for the Brooklyn trio led by guitarist Ninni Morgia (ex White Tornado, ex La Otracina), in this recording with Stuart Popejoy (Bassoon) on bass and Kevin Shea (ex Storm and Stress, Talibam!) on drums. Compared to their first album, that featured Peter Evans on trumpet, “The End of the Empire” is more various and eclectic. The eight tracks open up to psychedelic and ambient music besides free jazz, marked by Ninni Morgia’s visionary guitar, Stuart Popejoy’s pulsating industrial bass …
Monsters Of Felt
Robert Horton’s musical exploits are diverse, heady and spans over three decades. From his early punk days to joining various groups in pursuit of free jazz, drone and even psychedelic hillbilly, Horton is happily hard to pin down. He also makes his own instruments. One found regularly across the 30-plus releases he’s been involved with since 2005 is the ‘boot’, a four-stringed instrument that plays like an otherworldly dobro or slide guitar. Tom Carter has been a lightning rod-like figure…
If You Want To Fuck The Sky, Teach Your Cock To Fly
Andy Bolus (Evil Moisture) armé d'électroniques maison et autres oscillateurs, Korg 800DV ou Revox (!) est accompagné de la voix de BB soit Brigitte Bordelle, qui crie quand on la chatouille et qui crie aussi quand on la cogne. If you want to fuck the sky, teach your cock to fly Ñou si tu veux un frère, dis à ton père de baiser ta mère Ñ ou quand les cons voleront, tu seras chef d'escadrille Ñ est un excellent disque de bruits divers et variés avec moults rebondissements dynamiques, cut-u…
Archive #1
The IMO is a very large improvisors ensemble, founded in september 2010, that usually gather about 35 musicians per concert, from all switzerland and beyond. From the, expected, mess of the first concerts emerged a collective consciousness and involvement from the impressive number of musicians included in this ambitious projet. After a year - and 7 concerts - 40 of them met during 3 day during the 2011 summer, marking a sensitive step in the orchestra progression. Working deeply a certai…
City of Straw
On their seventh studio album, Sightings don’t make any radical breaks from their past. Instead, Richard Hoffman, Jonathan Lockie and Mark Morgan continue the slow evolution of their vision, a sort of "industrialization" of rock. On 2007’s Through the Panama, the trio achieved their best amalgamation yet. City of Straw doesn’t really up the ante, but it stays right there. These 39 minutes run the gamut from chittering electronics to punk chaos. When saying "industrial" in reference to …
Quattro illustrazioni / Suite N° 8 \"Bot-Ba\" / Cinque incantesi
Crazy about the sound: the composer as a medium fHis bizarre way of composing earned Giacinto Scelsi not only fame and respect; he was also mockingly accused of dilettantism. Scelsi regarded himself not as a composer in the traditional sense, i.e. one to combine form, rhythm, pitch and sound in an intelligent way and note the result down on paper, but as a tool. His music was created during periods of meditative contemplation recorded by him on tape, to be noted down only afterwards. Eastern rel…
Anyway Your Children Will Deny It
After excellent reviews and endless touring all over the world, supporting bands like Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu and Sic Alps, the Italian weirdos Father Murphy are back with a brand new album titled “Anyway your children will deny it”. It is the latest, boldest installation of an ongoing series of albums investigating the band’s favorite themes: life, death, love, religion and even more death. For this album, the Italian trio comprised of Reverend Freddie (vocals, guitar), Chiara Lee (vocals, keyboards,…
EARR plays a Snare is a Bell
a Snare is a Bell is a solo piece for snare drum, voice and the room in which it is played.Inspired by some close encounters I had with African shamanic/trance musicians and my personal experiences with meditation and music, it also relates to a known-to-many-of-us acoustical wonder of sitting on the toilet and picking up the tone of that little room (often by accident while coughing or talking out loud to oneself) and enjoying to sing that tone and let the toilet become filled with an eno…
Daydreaming
Debut album by Seattle's Rafael Anton Irisarri, released in 2007 on Deaf Center's Miasmah label. A splendid but pitch black album based on long piano melodies, distant drones and even more distant glitches, "Daydreaming" is a particularely sad and introvert CD, which takes the most emotional and melancholic side of the other Miasmah releases, but expresses them in a very direct and stripped down way. Splendid.
Erroneous: A Selection Of Errors
Lovely collaborative project, result of the meeting of Italian cult band Larsen and Steven Stapleton’s ubiquitous creature Nurse With Wound. Almost 2 years of file swapping and occasional conceptual meetings led to a multi-headed collection of deformed sounds based on one long NWW piece and two Larsen tracks (that both bands have written specifically for this project) then deconstructed and rebuilt by each other into totally brand new opuses.Erroneous also features Neu! and Kraftwerk original me…
Bridges intact
Dan Burke alone or with Thymme Jones and Ben Vida. All music completed during 2010 by Daniel Burke.
Tutti i colori del silenzio
This performance was very special concert under candle lights, summertime passion. We performed in garden with very relaxed audience in that atomosphere which will ever bring you there. This track alone is worth documentation for creative moment of time and space.
The Full Use Of Nothing
Awesome reissue! Here sensitively remastered by Denis Blackham from the original master tapes at Skye Mastering and with a beautiful facsimile mini LP style sleeve, made in Japan.The Full Use Of Nothing was the first serious publication of music by Andrew Chalk/Ferial Confine on cassette in 1985. Early experimentation in acoustic percussion and primitive multi-tracking techniques shaped the sound and spirit of these formative recordings, somehow very tentative but leading to an on-going …
Spiritual Jazz 3: Europe
Esoteric, modal and deep jazz from the European underground, 1963-1972. At the end of the '50s, Miles Davis' Kind of Blue heralded the revelatory arrival of modal jazz. As the vibrations of these giant steps resonated across the world, European jazz musicians reassessed their bearings and began to steer a new course. Across the continent, they sent roots down into the rich soil of the European folk and Christian liturgical traditions, extended their music along ancient routes of communicat…