New Arrivals
Leh Jani
First release on Sham Palace, a new label from key Sublime Frequencies conspirator Mark Gergis. "Leh Jani" -- the legendary Omar Souleyman track -- was originally released in Syria as a sprawling 30-minute epic groove, alongside two additional tracks. The entire 60-minute cassette album was recorded live to tape in 1998 at the home studio of producer Zuhir Maksi in the village of Ras Al Ain in northeastern Syria. Many of Omar's early tapes were recorded in this fashion to replicate the feeling o…
Joke in the hole
Black Dice bod returns to DFA with a playful solo LP of sample-splitting psychotomimetic grooves. Like an unhinged, PCP-huffing cousin of Smith 'N Hack, Copeland deranges plunderphonic globs into stomping, jerry-rigged and unstable structures, equal parts garage rock, wayward blues, disco, techno and avant-garde noise collage. Yet far from being a total mess, 'Joke In The Hole' is possibly his most "musical" effort to date, enriched with fragments of melodic hooks that give something to hold ont…
Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco
Features six extended tracks from the Golden Age of the Moroccan record industry. 'Kassidat', the Arabic word for poetry, is one of the essential ingredients in Moroccan song. Despite the bewildering array of musical styles in Morocco, the Moroccan sense of poetry is found throughout the music, regardless of the style or language. This isn't the language of high art, but an often impenetrable vernacular poetry of oblique references, symbols, metaphors, and double entendres that describes the liv…
Message Bag
We come burdened with the glorious purpose of having readied the latest recordings by Messages, a double LP set called Message Bag. It's a set of pieces that imparts a vibe rife with history, and yet clearly focused on the future. You buy these 2 LPs, poster and insert in a bag, but in all of its formats and strategies Message Bag operates as a return to an unresolved system, as an alternative to the rest of yr choices, and bestows something that can't be bought. We call it Wisdom.
Deviation Heat-treated
Surprise release from the mighty PAN label, Heatsick re-worked by Mark Fell's Sensate Focus across two long tracks totalling 35 minutes* From behind your ear, PAN pluck a blink-and-miss exclusive: a 35 minute audio response by Mark Fell (Sensate Focus) to source material by Heatsick, somewhere between cover version, remix and deconstruction. Along the A-side 'X' plane, tones are exploded, harmonies refracted with HD dissonance; time is extruded, made ductile yet intangible. On the B-side 'Y' axi…
Temple
'Temple' is the final installment in Jan Jelinek's series of four vinyl compilations that bring together the wide variety of his music: commissioned works, live recordings, collaborations with other musicians as well as unreleased material from the last five years. Temple stems from a collaboration with French-Canadian choreographer Sylvain Émard. Temple is a re-worked excerpt of the music for the dance piece Fragments – Volume I and is a 10 minute drone work that builds from nothing more than a…
Sleeper line
Sleeper line is a five-track EP constructed from the original components of a live set performed in December 2012. These components — manipulated found sounds — were recorded at various times and in various environments: Dungeness Power Station (2012), street recordings post-Notting Hill Carnival (2007), a prior live performance at the White Building in London (2012), and a cassette recording made in the cloakroom of the Metalheadz Sunday Sessions club night (1997). The cyclical process of merg…
Grain
CD edition "The new Zs lineup (Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins) sounds very much like a new band, at least as evidenced by the Grain EP. The two side-length tracks (coming in at a total of 42-minutes) bear the marks of Zs' sound - repeated phrases, looped or played in situ; buried drones and harsh electronic tones - but it does sound very much like a new band.
There's an extended ambience to the album that trick perceptions of time. Glitches and waves that last only a minute or th…
E Pluribus Unum
Long-awaited reissue of the first full-length album from 1980 by late '70s/early '80s UK DIY super-group The 49 Americans. The main instigator behind The 49 Americans was Andrew "Giblet" Brenner, who assembled a loose, disparate group of musical/non-musical practitioners as an experiment in equality and democracy. This democracy included David Toop, Steve Beresford, Max Eastley, Lol Coxhill and Peter Cusack, Nag and Bendle of The Door And The Window, Viv Albertine of the Slits, Vivien Goldman…
Teenage Tapes
Following on from releases from the likes of Powell, Mark Leckey and Merzbow, The Death Of Rave is buzzed to present the exceptional debut album from L.A.-based upstart Delroy Edwards. Combining combustible little noise sessions made with guitar pedals and reel-to-reel tape at Art school, together with shocking recent productions, 'Teenage Tapes' showcases a lesser-heard aspect of Delroy's highly aware and divergent tastes owing more to Minimal Wave, Noise, EBM and Black Metal than the Ch…
Body waves
On 22 February 2011, an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale hit Christchurch, which combined with a series of massive aftershocks destroyed huge swathes of the New Zealand city. At its epicentre in the port of Lyttelton, sound artist Jo Burzynska (Stanier Black-Five) grabbed a recording device as she ran from her home, leaving it running on her doorstep capturing the aftershocks that ricocheted though her house and the disaster unfolding on the street outside. This unique recording of …
Five Poems for the Swamp Ghost
Recorded at Soopa studio and featuring Arthur Doyle (sax, flutes and voice), Jonathan Saldanha, Gustavo Costa and Filipe Silva (assorted percussions and electronics), this is a beautiful, wild, cut, with Doyle's touch being so deep, rough and gentle at the same time, while his band gives him plenty of room to spread out through minimal rythm patterns and a hypnotic work on bells and cymbals. Closing with an anthem that will give you shivers down your spine, this recording will bring you to an an…
Active recovering music
Active Recovering Music (ARM) is a slide whistle ensemble led by sax player Masahiko Okura. All of the members play the slide whistle. Okura debuted ARM in concert with a five-member formation in 2008. He's since continued the group's activity (though their live performances are infrequent) with changing numbers of players. This is the recording of a performance by ARM--this time with eight members--which took place at Ftarri, Tokyo, in February 2013. Each of the three pieces was composed by Oku…
1933 Your house is mine
The cacophonic discord of Missing Foundation and the prophetic vision of Peter Missing culminated into a sophomore album following their legendary self-titled debut which was collected under the banner as 1933 Your House Is Mine. This tumultuous effort was brought about in 1988 as a means to educate the forgotten and venerate their followers using brash performance tactics and industrial rhythm to rally their cause. An industrial soundtrack of urban protest, Missing Foundation found their voice…
When The Rest Are Up At Four
Mind Over Mirrors is the solitary reeling of American harmoniumist/electronicist Jaime Fennelly. Utilizing an Indian pedal harmonium, oscillators, tape delays, and an assortment of synthesizing processors, Fennelly bends slowly-building, repetitive melodies into massive sonic mountains. When the Rest Are Up at Four is the fourth Mind Over Mirrors album following releases on Digitalis, Hands In the Dark, & Aguirre/Gift Tapes."Jaime Fennelly’s Mind Over Mirrors is the true dark star. The Chicag…
Matter
Ingar Zach, percussion. Martin Küchen, saxophone & pocket radio. Nikos Veliotis, cello & video. Looper's unique combination of floating sounds provides the spectator with a suspended environment to sink in, dislocating him from the casual perception of time and space.
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music Vol 6
The sixth and penultimate edition in Sub Rosa's ongoing assembly of crucial noise and electronic music looks at the period 1957-2010. So far the series has been duly noted for its excavation and reappraisal of lesser known works by important artists and vol. 6 is no different, presenting 26 exclusive and original compositions including the work of Tzvi Avni, Joseph Nechvatal, and Kohei Gomi/Pain Jerk among better known titans of the avant garde such as Stephen O'Malley, Dick Raaymakers, J…
Alcor
restocked!! Alcor is the debut LP by a new voice from the Australian wilderness. Hailing from Ferntree Gully, Victoria, the music of Astor has thus far been appreciated only via a string of barely-distributed CDRs. Alcor gathers together the prime of these micro-editions and presents the material as a seductive and puzzling new whole. Field recordings of humble organic activity bend against a foundation of discreetly processed electronics/piano, creating sonorities that are as undefinable a…
Resorts & Ruins
In “Resorts & Ruinsâ€Â, a set of three recent sound works, Kyriakides deals with several themes in both a physical and narrative sense. All the pieces use source material that highlight specific vocal traditions, namely Turkish pop music, Cypriot epic song, and Baroque opera, but they also all make extensive use of other forms of speech and vocal acts. In “Varosha (Disco Debris)â€Â, a narrating voice is our tour-guide in the ruins of the Cypriot ghost town Varosha; the many fragm…
Stranded
Since 2002, Idea Fire Company has performed and recorded as a quartet with core members Karla Borecky and Scott Foust (me!), joined by Meara O'Reilly and Jessi Swenson. (Meara and Jessi, along with Matt Krefting, start in my finally completed feature-length film Here's To Love!). I feel this LP is as strong as any I've been involved in, and I feel pretty strongly about my body of work. Stranded is the perfect companion to Anti-Natural. Excellent Karla Borecky cover. 180 gram luxury object.