New Arrivals
Englabörn
Upon setting out to score the music for the play Englaborn by Havar Sigurjonsson, Johann Johannsson, co-founder of the Icelandic arts organisation Kitchen Motors, came upon a text by the Latin poet Catullus which roughly translates as, I hate and I love. Why do I do it, you might ask? I dont know, but I feel it happening to me, and it's tearing me apart. This poem concisely bridges the emotional opposites which clashed within the play itself. As the play's content was extremely violent and distu…
World Complete
Harmonizer, or as lovingly referred to as HARMO around these parts is the Vermont duo of Toby Aronson and Greg Davis, whose previous effort, their self-titled debut on Aronson's own stellar NNA Tapes label was the definitive 5th world statement, and solidified them as sensais in the koan of new drone worship shared by the likes of fellow melodic noisers Caboladies and OPN. In fact Greg Davis (Kranky, Carpark) is zone veteran shredder whose explorations into pastoral electronics have been w…
Emeralds
RESTOCKED!! Brand new full length from Cleveland's Emeralds recorded Aug-Sept 2008. Proper follow up to their debut LP 'Solar Bridge', 'EMERALDS' takes the thick drone sound of that LP and transforms it into an even more abstract and strange place. Visual music that lifts the listener up and transports them through tubes of sound occasionally to be swept into the opposite direction by an unexpected entrance into another world entirely. An intense journey that drops you off in a place just be…
Traba
"Following the blurry shoegaze ambience of his revelatory 'Navigare' LP for Miasmah, former Slowdive drummer Simon Scott applies his melancholy treatments to four tracks of widescreen, textured ambience for Chicago's Immune label. 'Traba' is distinguished from his debut by a swirling aquatic theme embedded in the titles and the nautical nature of the recordings. The mass of 'She Came From The Sea' is flooded with slow moving currents of darkness while at the surface we can hear lighter, m…
Rocket Ship Rock
...a set of totally twisted sides called Rocket Ship Rock featuring Yochanan 'The Outer Space Vocalist' (with his demented Saturn 45 Muck Muck/Hot Skillet Momma) and his way out friends backed by Sun Ra and his Arkestra! Atomic outer space genius from yet another Norton turban headed star!"
Let’s just see what happens
REL is proud to present the debut LP of the scottish duo USURPER (Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff). Creating a sound nearly impossible to describe, USURPER combines obsessive metallic clunk, destroyed voices, broken horns and dropped marbles (?), into dense fields of activity. Working towards an intuitive sound logic all it's own, USURPER creates a surreal, comic structure that is unmatched and an energy that will make you laugh as soon as you shake your head in bafflement. The B side features a tr…
Historische Aufnahmen
Musician, composer and radio producer Felix Kubin has spent the last 5 years investigating, tracking down and collecting a stunning selection of hitherto neglected recordings from archives and private collections. With an eye for the antique curiosity, and an ear for the curious dusty beauty of abandoned transmissions from the past, he is now proud to present this first collection of historical recordings. The recordings presented here offer many and diverse pleasures from the analogue rea…
Bright Failing Star
Bright Failing Star is probably one of the most straightforward albums I've made, and under some of the most trying circumstances I've encountered in recent years. The south London flat we were in at the time had suffered flood damage during the summer before we moved in, and our room had it's sodden carpet ripped out and the bare concrete floor exposed. This was never fixed in the duration we lived there so by December it was bloody freezing. To compound this we had no hot water for 5 months, c…
Alpi
oreledigneur is the duo of giuseppe ielasi and renato rinaldi and “alpi” is the new film by photographer and filmmaker Armin Linke. rinaldi followed linke’s shooting sessions between 2004 and 2009, recording on-location sound for the film, which was then edited and sound-designed by oreledigneur. the whole sound archive was used by ielasi to edit and compose (without any additional processing) those two sides, which bear very little resemblance to the final soundtrack of the film. the lp consist…
United World In Outer Space
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…
Nigeria Afrobeat Special
Nigeria Afrobeat Special is the fourth addition to the Nigeria Special series, a project initiated by Miles Cleret, owner of the Soundway Record label back in 2004. Cleret’s ambition to distinguish the blossoming music scenes of 1970s Nigeria has lent to an indispensable series of CD and LP compilations documenting the influence of western blues, rock and disco amongst artists and musicians versed in the local musical styles of highlife and juju. It was Fela Kuti and his musical and politi…
Didascalies 2
Vinyl-only release. Performers: Jean-Philippe Collard-Neven (piano); Claude Berset (piano); Vincent Royer (viola). Sub Rosa presents the first release after their Luc Ferrari trilogy. Didascalies 2 is not to be confused with 2007's Didascalies (SR 261CD) -- this is another composition entirely, never published before. "The other day I found a file from 1993, a score for two pianos entitled 'Revenir à la Note de Départ' (trans. 'Getting Back To The Initial Note'). So I decided to turn it i…
Summer Wanderer
“Summer Wanderer” is a sideslip in the discography of the Scottish avant folk musician Richard Youngs because it’s the only acappella release in his eminent and extensive list of recordings.“Summer Wanderer” was released for the first time in 2004 in an edition of twenty copies. For close friends only. A year later, Youngs re-released these recordings on his own No Fans imprint. So this vinyl release on the Ghent based Gipsy Sphinx label can actually be called a re-re-release. But that doesn’t m…
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…
White Bird Release
Vinyl! The sixth album from Mark Nelson's longtime solo project following Quiet City. A mix of warmth & foreboding expansiveness, neither of which is minimal nor overdone.
Primitive North
A mighty split release from two of today's most progressive underground metal bands, bringing together the formidable post-doom of Brooklyn's A Storm Of Light and the luminous sludge of Canadian duo Nadja. The real question here is whether or not the music can come anywhere close to the awesome sleeve art, and while that may not even be possible, the twenty-two minute epic from Nadja has a decent go at it. While A Storm Of Light throw everything at their plodding, Wagnerian outings 'Bro…
Broken Bones
This latest in the Latitudes series of limited LPs comes from American noise-pop band Gowns, whose Red State album you may recall as being one of 2007's more unclassifiable recordings. A folkish spectre hangs over these pieces, particularly when it comes to the wiry, haunting violin sequences strewn liberally across the session - they bring to life the sinister spoken word of 'Dog', crowning a soundscape that's always on the precipice of turning nasty. Much of Gowns' music tends towards uncertai…
Asleep On The Floodplain
Ben Chasny has spent many years at this point perfecting his very personal vision of the American landscape. With his early LPs he managed to grab a groundswell of support for his distinctly lo-fi recordings, and since hitting the Drag City label with the breathtaking 'School of Flower' he has managed to extend his vision to countless others. 'Asleep on the Floodplain' continues his exploration, and while it doesn't change up the formula too much (apart from the odd analogue synth blurt here and…
Confrontations
Vinyl Edition of 750. Another crucial keystone in the occult arc de triomphe of Kansas City composer’s deepening discography! X-filed highway cover artwork designed by Dionysian visualist Tim Goodwillie.Kansas City’s Goblin king of neo-Giallo, brood-blooded dark fantasy soundtracking returns with his third official full-length, two years after the badass psychodrama of Prophecy of the Black Widow. The time betwixt was well spent, on tours (Europe twice, including the Mogwai-curated All To…
Regine Flory
Limited to 200. Zak Boerger's combination of fuzz, acoustic guitar & extended downer ballads most immediately aligns him with the New Zealand scene centered around Peter Jefferies & Alastair Galbraith as well as associated international satellites like Flying Saucer Attack & the Twisted Village roster, but there's a lonesome edge to the music that would situate it ouside of any particular historical tradition & closer to the mystery school of regional private press obscurities. The acoustic trac…