New Arrivals
Four Spells
The debut LP from eccentric ambient-psych pair Sherri West and Taylor Clark was recorded at a self-described "mountain fortress" in California, despite the couple generally residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And like their disparate locations, the duo dabbles in varying forms of weirdness, from the amateurish, Deerhoof-esque racket of opener "I Am A Pony" to the dreamier blips and bleeps of songs like "Particles," which evoke a Hawaiian vacation as narrated by Rod Serling. LAVA CHILDREN strikes a uniq…
Persona
LP version. The is the second full-length release by Sweden's Andreas Tilliander as Mokira for the Type label. It's hard to believe that five years have passed since the release of Album, Tilliander's first outing on the Type label. Album marked the final stage in Andreas' development as a "laptop" artist, and since then he has collected synthesizer upon synthesizer and enough tape to make the boys in Berlin jealous. Ditching the zeroes and ones, Andreas set about piecing together a follow-up to…
Lip Syncing to Verme
As a slow motion Stan Brakhage on K, this last and definitive new album from Aaron Dilloway is fluid and cinematic. After the monumental Chain Shot Lp and a furious live activity, the Mid West's mad tape-scientist is back to take your hand and dive you in a buzzy ocean of muddy water loops. Welcome to this creepy journey to the south of heaven, here you can just crawl like a worm.
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…
The Secret Base
Second 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 throug…
Amateur Doubles
amateur doubles is the brand new solo lp by graham lambkin - a two-part improvisation recorded in a honda civic. dangerous, tedious, pointless and timeless, amateur doubles is a perfect snapshot of life on the open road. expertly mastered by jason lescalleet, amateur doubles arrives in a high gloss full color gatefold, on clear vinyl, in an edition of 500
Country Stash
By necessity, any conversation about the music of Matt Valentine (MV) and Erika Elder (EE) is eventually going to touch on their prolific output. The Vermont duo's constant production has simply become one of its defining facts. In addition to a steady stream of studio albums for Ecstatic Peace!, MV & EE have continued to release small-batch recordings on their own Child of Microtones label, including a Dick's Picks-style series of live recordings on the offshoot Heroine Celestial Agriculture su…
Entertaining Physics
Poland's mik.musik agent wojt3k kucharczyk bugged his robotron family. "entertaining physics" is a poetic and secretful electroacoustic work that sounds like a gathering of digital clocks in the waiting room of an abandoned building. mechanical ants are crawling over piles of paper next to protesting copy machines and sadly shaking faxes. quiet industrial diseases spread in the attic and the doors clap in a-synchronicity. in between, interplanetary melodies are humming in retired telephones. all…
You Are The One I Pick
"Nottingham duo Felix make their Kranky debut with this fine and idiosyncratic collection of songs. The main focus here is the vocal/piano/cello talents of Lucinda Chua, whose sparse yet quirk-loaded minimalism receives guitar and bass backing from Chris Summerlin, who's probably best known for his work in the rock band Lords. Chua's writing is quite unlike anything else currently out there; her lyrics convey strange or often very simple, domesticated ideas delivered in a pared-down, plaintive f…
Human hips and saddle bags
'Human Skab was a 10-year old boy from Elma, Washington who played African music with buckets and spoons. Thunder Hips and Saddle Bags is a 1986 cassette recorded by young Travis Roberts with his neighborhood pals and siblings. It was injected into the underground network of tape traders, zine scribes, college DJs, and freak seekers who were universally bowled over by its bewildering and utterly poignant snapshot of the mid-1980s. Skab's music -- an orchestration of pots n' pans, three string gu…
Eulogy for evolution
The vinyl version of Olafur Arnalds' debut album is back.
Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh
This is an identical 180-gram vinyl reissue of the 1973 Vertigo release, wich is possibly Magma's great opus. Whether one prefers one of their other studio or live releases to it, there is no doubt that Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh is the most original, definitive Magma album around (although this reviewer personally prefers the Mekanik Kommandoh version!).Featuring a cast of thousands including a choir, brass section, flute and tuned percussion, Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh marries the stripped…
The Labyrinth Scored For Eleven Different Cats
The legendary American artist Terry Fox is known for his pioneering work in performance, sculpture, drawing and installation. Throughout his career, Fox (who died in Cologne in 2008), focused on sound as a fundamental artistic material. Many of his most important sound works were realized long before terms such as "sound art" or "audio art" became widely known.This recording, The Labyrinth Scored for 11 Cats (1977), is now recognized as an early classic of the audio art genre. It is one of Fox's…
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…
Harddisko
'About the record. Live-recordings of Harddisko: 16 computer harddrives on power. Superreal computer music. Upon powering, each harddrive moves with its own speed and pattern, as directed by the firmware and mechanical constitution. Electromagnetic emissions picked up as acoustic signal reveal the specific tone of a drive. In various formations, the harddrives perform according to their past usage and current state. About the artist : Valentina Vuksic (CH - 1974) is a computer artist and progra…
After Before
Fantastic document of higher-minded drone ritual from a trio that features Taketo Shimada. Shimada is a shadowy figure in fringe minimalism. He worked as Henry Flynt’s assistant, put together the Yoshi Wada week at the Emily Harvey Foundation, was involved with Herbert Huncke, Alison Knowles and a bunch of other Fluxus artists. Messages is an extended investigation into the eternal music concepts of Wada, LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, Pandit Pran Nath et al, with Shimada on bass a…
Eskra
Temperatures are a London-based duo formed by Peter Blundell (bass, voice) and James Dunn (drums, synth). Blundell's rumbling delayed bass runs against Dunn's bursting drums that simultaneously trigger an unruly ARP 2600. Vocals are both muffled and shouting at times and eventually end up getting buried under a (controlled) landslide of sounds. Thanks to their instinctive but thoughtful approach to noise, Temperatures can express a suffocating sense of alienation and mal de vivre, as well as tod…
Open Casket
romantic low-fi death rock creepers from prolific Providence showman/illustrator/film-maker Carlos Gonzalez. Some of his catchiest tunes yet. To be listened at night on headphones. Reminds me of morbid childhood, the thing in the mirror, the AM rock n roll station and it’s chintzy announcers, hair collectors and men in heels - - #1 pop hit of the year - - -
Third Mouth
British avant pop artist Alexander Tucker releases his much anticipated new album, Third Mouth, on Thrill Jockey in 2012. This album builds on the strengths revealed by his landmark debut for the label, Dorwytch released in April 2011, culminating in his finest work to date. Using songs written over a 12 month period he achieves his own inimitable blend of psych rock and ambient pop using a variety of studio crafted effects, rudimentary beats, guitar and bass, as well as synth and cello drone…
Harmonia & Eno \'76
AWESOME!! Fans of ambient music and Brian Eno will want to watch for a new album on the new Amazing Sounds label, Harmonia & Eno ‘76 Remixes. The album features remixes of tracks from the classic album Tracks & Traces by Shackleton, Appleblim & Komonazmuk. 2 tracks 12"