New Arrivals
An Oblique Reference To Zeros
A budget-priced collection of tracks by artists who've had releases out on Fourth Dimension Records or whose music has entered the label's orbit and made a good impression. In an ideal world there'd be at least several albums by all concerned on Fourth Dimension Records, but the label operates from more or less the same dingy old basement it always has and subsequently has to limp along in usual fashion. It is precisely because of this that 'An Oblique Reference to Zeros' has been assembled. The…
Monster Movie
* Limited Edition Mother Sky Blue Vinyl* With the sounds of Jimi Hendrix, Captain Beefheart and The Velvet Underground ringing in their ears, Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt left behind their careers in academia to form the influential group in the late 60s. Together with Michael Karoli, Jaki Liebezeit and American singer Malcolm Mooney, they recorded their debut album Monster Movie in a castle near Cologne in 1968.
"Are we there yet? After 25 years of critical reappraisal and at least 15 years…
Hoof Stand
Tip! * 300 copies. In process of stocking * Hoof Stand is the third vinyl output by Primorje, the collaborative project between Giovanni Donadini (Ottaven, Canedicoda) and Matteo Castro (Mercury Hall, Lettera 22, also founder of Second Sleep label). Keeping their focus on a minimal yet disruptive 4-track recorders-based set-up, in the nine tracks making up this 12" the duo sew up rough textures of oblique tape loops intertwined with dub echoes and slowed down tempos, giving shape to what appears…
V.C.U.
* 2022 Repress * Another obscure album from the Nurse With Wound list, the official release of eponymous album of Frankfurt region group Lily. Lily's music revealed influences from Traffic to Van der Graaf Generator and Gnidrolog because of the flute and sax work. The album is also comparable to the 1st Nine Days Wonder or Os Mundis "43 Minuten" albums. LP comes with insert containing band story by group member and bass player Wilfried Kirchmeier and a lot of photos. Remastered from the origina…
Ra to the Rescue
'Ra to the Rescue was initially pressed in limited quantities in 1983, but several of its tracks subsequently were reissued with incongruous tracks on the albums (commonly referred to as) When Spaceships Appear, Cosmo-Party Blues, Somewhere There, and Children of the Sun. Those album "titles" are in many cases simply the names of the first track on a particular side (these were scribbled in pen on otherwise blank labels). To complicate matters, some tracks were retitled for reasons that shall fo…
Nativity Colostomy (Anus Horriblis)
Reissue of a cassette from the UK’s most eccentric and vile noise act. Originally released in 1993 via Old Europa Café, “Nativity Colostomy” is an hour’s trek through filthy industrial and colorful shifts of sound. Excellently remastered by Milovan Srdenovic, this crucial part of the Smell & Quim catalog is available for the first time in over two decades as a professionally-manufactured CD digipak.
Les Plus Belles Valses
Reissue of a 1994 French cassette. Bittersweet toy pop, minimal synth, and avant-folk interpretations of classical waltzes. Professionally-replicated CD in 4-panel digipak featuring the original art, extensive liner notes from Christophe Petchanatz on the production of each track, and newly-found photos from the recording era.Audio / Art by Christophe Petchanatz / Françoise LefebrveRemastered by Phillip B. Klingler, @pbksoundReplicated by Monotype Pressing
Endogeny
"I am not entirely sure, but I don't think I reviewed 'Endogeny' when it first came out on Direction Music in 1990. Hearing the music I am not even sure I heard it, even when being in contact with the label at that time. I surely heard Gen Ken Montgomery's music by then and was always fascinated by that, his connection to Conrad Schnitzler and his Generator space in New York, which was a venue doubling as a shop (or vice versa) for weird music. The pieces here are for various instruments that we…
Anywhere
Reissue of Flower Travellin' Band's debut album Anywhere, originally released in 1970. Anywhere is the first album from the legendary Japanese rockers fronted by Yuya Uchida. Although an album consisting mainly of cover versions, Anywhere still exhibited many of the musical traits that were to come to the fore on the band's next release, the classic 1971 album Satori, an album of original material delivered with panache by the increasingly confident Uchida. An album made memorable by its risky c…
Beat of the Earth
* in process of stocking * Second album from the cultish experimental jam band formed in 1967 in Orange County, California. Their second effort from 1970 - The Electronic Hole - takes a step away from their earlier work, being composed with definite song structures versus the earlier drawn-out freeform jams. Sounding much like a west-coast version of The Velvet Underground & Nico, the album has melodic motifs but is much more primitive and mysterious than its cousin, with loads of fuzz, hauntin…
Diptych
*150 copies limited edition* It’s not easy to summarize any band whose career has stretched over two decades. In the case of The Growing Concern, though, it’s all in the name: since 2001, the core duo of Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo have been making vibrating, explorative experimental music that is in a forever state of evolution. In that time, Growing have amassed a hard-to-define and influential body of work, and “Diptych,” out April 30th on Ethan Miller’s Silver Current Records, sees the band …
Commotus
Tip! 'Today, we seem to have two branches in the school of experimental pop. One branch privileges object-hood, richness of surface, and mass-hallucinatory quotation. The other (much less celebrated) branch seeks to recapture authenticity in the form of a highly personal hallucination of music history.
With her sophomore full-length, Lucrecia Dalt follows the latter branch as far as it seems to go. She leaps into a surrealist landscape with stunning abandon, eschewing the comparatively safe trop…
Tarika Blue
Tip! They say that if you’re a friend to everyone you’re a friend to no one. Well, in the case of Tarika Blue, here is an album that roundly disproves that maxim. A record that delivers to fusion, soul, jazz and disco aficionados alike, Tarika Blue’s ability to cover all these bases with equal skill is quite an achievement. The balance locked in its grooves are testament to the astonishing musical range found in the artists who perform with such aplomb. Tarika Blue was formed in 1973 by Phil Cle…
Citycraze//Dweebcity
*50 copies limited edition* Following releases on Warm Gospel Tapes and Ingrown Records, J Hamilton Isaacs continues on his synthesizing quest to encapsulate the universe around him in his modular rig. This release is comprised of two side-long compositions of precise, drifting modular electronics. As the pieces build, sweep, fluctuate, dissolve and begin again, the sound itself seems wholly alive, breathing and wandering with the listener.
Lillian Drip
*75 copies limited edition* Lillian Drip was collectively recorded and mixed in different home studios in State College, PA, Pittsburgh, PA and Baltimore, MD over the course of a few years.
Split
*50 copies limited edition* Hailing from the American midwest, Matthew Crowe is active in a number of musical projects and collaborations. Crowe is one half of the left-field improv duo Sex Funeral and also makes video game-centric vaporwave music as Heaven Drugs. On this split, he brings us a dreamlike, oddball sampling frenzy. Various styles and themes drift in and out, dissolving and replacing one another in a stew of world music juxtapositions and pop culture sampling nostalgia. Marsha Fish…
I Guess This Is Fine
*50 copies limited edition* Lean, experimental soundscapes cobbled together from field recordings, prepared guitar snippets and synthesizer learning meant to walk the line between mania and having a good time. All music composed, improvised and recorded by Sean Devlin.
Unauthorized Sunset
*100 copies limited edition* Get your seasonal dose of environmental futurism from expert synth-operators Asako Fujimoto and Niki Neecke via Knackless. Two tracks from the duo in the spirit of the season of rebirth: »Chlorophylic Memories« makes room between canopy and soil to immerse yourself in a glistening and hyperreal forest. Flip the record over and enter a kaleidoscopic concert hidden away in the thickets of the underbrush with »GalaxianIdyl«. Precious and rare!
Abstract Musette
"This seemingly improbable duo finds both artists defending a common cause, with Lanz as stunning turntablist to serve as a perfect companion to Kocher's iconoclastic approach to his instrument. Detailed moves, fast gestures and throbbing pulses are recurrently cut by silences and sustained tones. Short rhythmic patterns and precise syllables emerge only to give way to more intimate sequences where players drift into some neutral space before re-colliding again into actualizations of micro-event…