New Arrivals
What Are The Roots That Clutch
It was a cavernous tone that broadcast from a ventilator duct that inspired Patrick McGinley to begin collecting field recordings and working them into his slow-arc compositions. At the time when he heard that particular tone in that particular city at that particular time, he had no gear to recording device on hand. Over the next fifteen years (and counting) McGinley has eased into a peripatetic lifestyle, wandering the European countryside and forests (but never straying too far from th…
Few and far between
Susann Wehrli (flutes, melodica) with Karin Ernst (laptop, live electronics).DUE is playing. A beginning, a tone, a noise, a sound. Listen. Act, react. No ready-made concept, no intended form. Awareness. Liability. Instant composing, where what has been connects with the here and now and the yet to come. DUE is a formation that joins an acoustic instrument with electronics in a unique way: two women, each musician doing her own thing on her own instrument; but at the same time, the flute music i…
Black Box: Torture Garden/Leng Tch\'e
"The controversial and influential Naked City Black Box couples two of Zorn's most extreme and violent creations. Torture Garden (1991) presents Naked City's intense and groundbreaking music combining free jazz, bebop, r&b, country, funk, rockabilly, surf, metal and grindcore—usually in the same song! The rare, seldom heard Leng Tch'e (1992), released only in Japan and long out-of-print features Naked City in an agonizingly slow, brutal 32-minute assault. This special 20th anniversary ed…
Out Of This World's Distortions
Farmers By Nature – drummer Gerald Cleaver, bassist William Parker, and pianist Craig Taborn – a fully-improvising unit, a complete musical collective. Each of these men are highly regarded & admired composers and bandleaders in their own right; their coming together to create new music is always an auspicious and deeply fruitful occasion. Superbly attuned listeners and masterful players of their respective instruments, they are without question one of the finest improvising units / musical grou…
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,…
Green & Cold
A kind of different album from A. Baker (Nadja) as it leans more into shoegazery and drone-pop songs. “Green & Cold” is the strength of strings proved by A. Baker. His soft lyrics suffuse weightlessly into a humming cloud of perfumed guitar scour. Yes, when gazed upon, these patent leather shoes really do reflect up. However, “G&C” is accomplishes much more than throwing Loveless lights back up to Heaven. An ass-load or so of previous avant-garde releases has developed in Baker a skill-se…
Succubus
Seductive but perilous, he Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble's new session under the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation name is a new combination of drones and jazz. Creating sensual, murky and dark atmospheres, “Succubus” the evolution of this band, with stronger horns and a focus on hypnotic, soundtrack-like material. A deep, dark and yet seductive trip again for the corporation.
How Day Earnt Its Night
"Ben Reynolds is an English solo steel string guitarist and songwriter. In his solo instrumental works he draws upon the vast well of musical inspiration native to the British Isles as well as that found across the Atlantic and beyond. Ben's 2008 recording Two Wings was released on Portland, Oregon label Strange Attractors Audio House and focuses upon sprawling, meditative improvisations and concludes with the track 'Here Toucheth Blues' which appeared on Tompkins Square's Imaginational An…
Radiant intervals
Radiant Intervals' is the first Eleh LP on Important since '08s 'Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis Vol.3', and follows one of the Wire magazine's (and our) top records of 2010, the incredible 'Location Momentum' for Touch. Continuing with investigations into physically tactile tones and drones, this LP offers four further modular synth expeditions eternally moving towards the distant point depicted on the gorgeous, letterpress printed sleeve. After a stoically inert start 'Night Of Pure E…
Tidings / Amesthyst Waves
Trying to put the last 15 years of music into context, you’d be hard pressed to get anyone to agree on a single thing. If anything, this period has been a collective convergence of all things cool-sounding: naïve experimentalism, academic composition, art-rock synthesis, electronic nihilism/flagellation, and, well, everything else. Mark McGuire could muddy anyones interpretation of the contemporary canon with his buddies in the triadic mega-unit, Emeralds, his collaborative outings in Sun Wa…
I Know When it's Time To Get The Fuck Away
From the initial sonic assault of “Apocryphal” to the final “Wrong Affection”, the five tracks guide the listener through shades of early nineties electric blues (think Palace, Songs:Ohia and fellows), sixties psichedelia flavoured from the spirit of Skip Spence. Rella's singing is rich, intense and perfumed, sometimes plunged into deep trance, like in “Are You Expired?” or “Wrong Affection” where instruments and voice rise together in a psichedelic unison building from a country-like ope…
Homemade Gloomy Pop
Finally available as a double CD, this collection is dedicated to Endless Nostalgia, one of the cult-band par excellence of the Italian electronic New Wave of the Eighties. Better known for the single "Me & My Alter Ego" released in 1984, this electro-pop duo from Verona, Northern Italy, produced a large number of cassette releases that have become very sought-after items nowadays. This generous and well-structured collection is a testament to the quality of the formation that was centered on Lu…
Gaycre (2)
Xavier Charles : clarinet, Michel Doneda : saxophone, Jean Pallandre : microphones. Following the first meeting in 1997, they went back to the same places to record again an incredible meeting of soundscape !
Outdoor Spell
Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…
Seven
Third album from Oslo's PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE & Chicago's KEN VANDERMARK who have previously worked together in SCHOOL DAYS & FME follows their 2 "Dual Pleasure" releases. While it seems barely possible, the duo have become even more groovy on this third album. Free Jazz w/roots in both the American & European traditions: warm, groovy, melodic & funky at the same time as it is raw, wild & energetic. The pure art of spontaneous music. Independent underground jazz at its very best & a free jazz master…
Organica (Solo Saxophones, Volume 2)
The second volume in a planned series of David S. Ware solo recordings, presenting two entire concert performances on sopranino and tenor sax at Park Slope and at Unmbrella Music Festival in Chicago. Each David S. Ware solo concert performance is a rare and magisterial happening. There were two such events in 2010, and both concerts are presented here in their entirety. The first took place in March at an intimate, invite-only event in Brooklyn; the second took place at the Umbrella Music …
The Cloud of Unknowing
For fans of acoustic guitar music, James Blackshaw's The Cloud of Unknowing is a gift that's long overdue. Blackshaw's fourth album gracefully glides over the same sonic ground that his contemporaries generally tread with reverential obedience or dilettante tactics. Growing into his prodigious own at the relatively young age of 25, Blackshaw has finessed his 12-string acoustic guitar into a veritable solo symphony that's as schooled in uncommon beauty as it is in complex 20th century composition…
Sonatas
Markus Hinterhäuser shows us a terrific interpretation of the piano sonatas from the russian composer. Massive music!They say that Galina Ustvolskaya led a very secluded life, that she was a loner. It is amazing, though, how distinct an image of her emerges from the almost meditative way in which she immersed herself in structures, dynamics and combinations of pitches. And not only that. You can hear the concentration on her work and the contrasts within the scope of an existence, some even say…