New Arrivals
Townsville
The Necks in quiet mood recorded at a concert recording in Townsville, Thuringowa, Northern Queensland. Though many Necks' pieces open with - or eventually arrive at - some discernable groove, Townsville just floats in a state of suspension from beginning to end. It's like watching the ocean as wave follows wave follows wave: each the same; each different; assymetric. Bassist Lloyd Swanton who, on this occasion, provides the motif that set Townsville running says he had had no idea where it woul…
Sol Sketches
Film director Chris Teerink asked me to make the soundtrack for a documentary he would be making about American artist Sol LeWitt. This was in 2009. Chris and I agreed that the music and the images should both be equally important in his film. We didn't want the score to overpower the images, but neither did we want it to become solely background 'muzak'. I searched for a certain openness in the sound, while at the same time keeping a directness to it. Musical references for me were the piano pi…
Minimal studies
It all began with Study Ten. After releasing his 4th Static album, which included ten songs, about 15 musicians and which took almost 6 years till its release, Hanno Leichtmann had the wish to record an album in one go, without endless recording and mixing sessions. While experimenting with his modular system he discovered a method to compose that, what he later called Minimal Studies. A modular sample player which can be controlled manually, by a sequencer, LFO or any CV source would mak…
Sights
Back in stock. Take two collaborators, one a German sound artist noted for his painstaking micro-engineered computer compositions, the other a New Zealand noise terrorist with a reputation for making albums over his morning tea breaks. Put them in a basement studio in Karlsruhe for three days in February 2003, feed them on coffee and apple juice and let them out to walk in the woods once a day. What do you get? Sights, a dramatic collision of two very different but complementary approaches to th…
The unknown knowns
Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, alto saxophone & clarinet. Tor Haugerud, drums & percussion. Kim Myhr, guitars & objects. Martin Taxt, tuba. Muringa navigates playfully in a polarized world of opposites. Between speed and tranquility, industry and flora, violence and tenderness, noise and silence, chaos and order; Muringa gives the listener the hegelian third choice. The group consists of four of the most active improvising musicians from Norway. All occupied with other SOFA-projects such as Mural…
Live
Oxtirn 'live' documents a performance in new york city, by the new trio of geoff mullen, ashley paul and eli keszler. following a score by keszler, the group performs on an array of instruments, using three guitars, drums, voice, auto-motorized harps, tenor harp, bass harp, microphones, clarinet, alto saxophone, crotales, drums and cymbals. the music drifts in a unique way between a wide variety of sounds, from incredible density of clattering metal textures and string attacks, wall of so…
Remixed No. 1
Moondog's outsiderness ensures an approach to modern composition that doesn't ever establish any single, fixed identity, which is of course what makes this man such an alluring figure in 20th century music. Mr Scruff remix is a post-futuristic-jazz influenced by hip-hop cadences that makes appear how important Moondog has been in the past and how he will be for contemporaries and future generations.
Nazoranai
Keiji Haino (guitar, vocals & synth), Stephen O'Malley (bass guitar) & Oren Ambarchi (battery). Recorded by Chris Fullard at Gaîté Lyrique, Paris 8th November 2011. Edited by Oren Ambarchi in Sydney January 2012. Mixed by Joe Talia & Oren Ambarchi at Chinatown, Melbourne 8th February 2012. Mastered by Joe Talia at Chinatown, Melbourne 17th April 2012. Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin April 2012. Artwork: Lars Teichmann 'Bathing Girls' & 'Nymphos' (detail, 2010, …
Milwaukee Volume
Revered reeds and drumming duo Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love return to Smalltown Superjazzz with another magisterial set of live improvisations. Released alongside their Chicago Volume, this disc was recorded live in concert at Milwaukee's Alchemist Theater on 10th June 2007 (the Chicago Volume was laid down the following day) and finds these two free-jazz maestros on blistering form. It's a joy to hear how the improvisations evolve - on 'Clean Sweep' the pair …
47°13' N 7°E
Another uncommon sonic wringer from Portuguese label Creative Sources has been signed by a couple of Switzerland-based (as you could easily surmise from the geographical coordinate, which point to a place the district of Franches-Montagnes in the canton of Jura in Switzerland, they used to name this release) musicians, Lea Danzeisen and Christoph Schiller, who decided to squeeze the spinet, the little brother of harpsichord and piano, whose sound got totally transfigured by meticulous mod…
Coda (For WK)
The new CD-EP (clocking in at 20 minutes exactly) from Stephan Mathieu is a coda to A Static Place (2011, 12k), created with his highly focused setup of two mechanical-acoustic gramophones and computer. Coda (For WK) is dedicated to the legendary “quiet” pianist Wilhelm Kempff, whose 1927 recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 Les Adieux from a double 12” 78RPM set on Brunswick were used as input for an autogenerative process. Mathieu’s process emphasizes the archaic beauty and texture of…
Open Percussion
this CD is an amazing achievement. Kjos Sørensen is a brilliantly gifted performer, but clearly an imaginative and creative one too. A very special issue, continuing BIS’s tradition of opening our minds and our ears.
Ommatidia
Nmperign are one of the most celebrated and influential bands in contemporary improvised music. Yet surprisingly, more than a decade after their debut, Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) have never recorded a studio album as an unaccompanied duo... until now! Intransitive is proud to present the nmperig album that fans have been waiting for: the core duo, beautifully recorded in an actual studio with excellent microphones. The music is spare and peerlessly inventive as always, b…
Bellows And Breath
The Preservation label presents the fourth album from Sydney's Seaworthy. Seaworthy is the musical guise of Cameron Webb, who, for the best part of a decade, has developed singular soundscapes scored with guitar-driven ambience, field recording and digital processing. In recent years, Webb has recorded to acclaim for the esteemed 12K label, releasing the 1897 album in 2009 followed by a collaboration with Matt Rösner, Two Lakes. His compositions reflect his deep connection to environment an…
I Dreamed A World Of Darkness And You The White Light Shining
Gorgeous solo album from Isaac Edwards of ODAWAS. Think Popul Vuh's soundtracks for Werner Herzog. Limited to 300. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Serpentement
The very old catfish, covered in moss, that live in the depths of the lake, never go up towards daylight and disdain any bait that nature offers them.They are only attracted by the oddest shapes that fishermen can invent, shiny and silvery blades in the shape of a human hand that, attached to their line, dance a jig; or also a bat made of red glass with hooks treacherously sewn inside their wings'. G.Meyrink. Instruments: mechanical metronome with bell, harmonica reeds, six string banjo, amps, m…
at Oto
The first meeting of two masters of improvised music. Concentrated solo pieces from each before an uncompromising duo.When Matthew Shipp was invited to London's Cafe Oto for a residency in 2010 he immediately asked to play with John Butcher, perhaps not the most obvious choice of collaborator but one that proved inspired. Although they generally work in very different areas of improvised music, both players share an intensity of focus and pugnacious individualism that heightened rather than hind…
Umbra
"Umbra was recorded in 2010 in Barcelona. I used a modified AM radio and a home-made oscillator. I found the radio in the street the previous year, discarded outside a huge warehouse full of electronic ‘garbage’. I took it to my studio and modified it using circuit-bending techniques. Umbra is comprised of ten short pieces. In most of them I played only the modified AM radio, in others just the oscillator, and in some both.”Juan Matos Capote is an artist from the Canary Islands living in Barcel…
Okkupation
Thomas Rehnert lives and works in Berlin. He was deeply influenced by the European free jazz of the 1970s, and in West Berlin in the 1980s he played percussion in various punk bands. In the world of punk and experimental music of these years, he began to occupy himself with electro-acoustic music, machine music and automata. He builds sound machines from analogue modular synthesizer systems that are voltage- controlled and steer themselves.His formative principle of organization is variation by …
Simple Psychedelic Pleasures
I love the Tadpoles, a quintessential American psych band, so chances are I was going to be all over David Max’s solo platter when I heard about it. And I am. I don’t want to go on and on with endless comparisons with his work with the Tadpoles because much of that is obvious. Let me just say that maybe its sort of another tentacle from the body of the Tadpoles; sprung from it, indebted to it, but operating with a mind of its own. And name-checking all of David’s influences, though tempting and …