New Arrivals
The Middle Distance
First chapter in the trilogy of Charles Cohen retrospective works, featuring some of his early works stepping into the archives of one of Philadelphia's best-kept underground secrets: synth composer Charles Cohen. This excellent release beholds seven key tracks (recorded between 1979-1988) that go into uncharted polyrhythmic/ambient/cosmic territory. The label says "First chapter in the trilogy of Charles Cohen retrospective works, featuring some of his early works from the Philadelphia's '…
Infratracts
Limited repress. Infratracts revealed. Eight outstanding tracks from the twisted minds of Philadelphia's finest. After the Topographic Interference four-tracker and the abstract head-banger Decant/Churn releases, the duo formed by Kenneth_Lay and V.Hold has established the fundamentals of a real new generation of psychedelia and wild technological freedom. This is the clear and definitive Metasplice manifesto: fist-rising -- scream if you can read it."The two EPs outlined the Metasplice sound:…
Feedback: Order From Noise
Memory is a funny thing. 10 years after touring the UK with the Feedback: Order from Noise tour I am trying to recall the concerts that I experienced in some sort of trance. There I was, the youngest member of a group of musicians that consisted of a mixture of good friends and musical heroes, apparently the curator of this musical adventure, ravaged by self-doubt. Would it all work out? Now, ten years later my memories have been altered every time I have thought back to those days, every t…
Work 2006-2011
Wall and Rodgers have worked together informally and irregularly for the best part of two decades, but it has been since Wall took the leap into improvisation, roughly five years ago, that the potential for their collaborations to become something more solid has evolved. So the pair have worked together, either just informally in Wall's studio or out playing live gigs since 2006, and they have produced a body of material that Wall has then sculpted into the composition that appears on the CD. Th…
Work 2011 - 2014
John Wall, computer-generated sounds, severe editing, arrangement and composition. Alex Rodgers, voice, computer-generated sounds. This work was compiled from improvisations, independently-recorded fragments and pre-written texts over the specified period. A second edition of Work 2006 -2011 (E114) is also available. Mastered by Jacques Beloeil and John Wall.
This latest collaboration by electronic composer John Wall and his old sparring partner, poet Alex Rodgers, gets off to a terrific st…
This Is It
Psychedelic music all began with the tiniest possible bang: a minuscule pressing of a self-produced LP by Zen Buddhist scholar Alan Watts. In one cosmic flash of inspiration and group improvisation, the next two decades of musical innovation was pre-supposed: psychedelic rock, spiritual jazz, and even new age. As this micro pressing barely made it out of the ashram, it was his writings that actually spread his ideas, usually through osmosis: he was profoundly influential on the beat poets and th…
Ecotone
Both musicians have been active in the scene of improvised and experimental music for twenty years, both have been astounding their audiences with their intricately developed playing manners. Now they joined their forces on this album.
eRikm, based in Marseille, started his musicial activities as a virtuoso turntablist in early 90s, gradually shifting his focus to more abstract music, sometimes abandoning turntables or substituting them with minidiscs or CD-turntables. His recent record ou…
Five Lines
The meeting of heavyweights of electroacoustic improvisation from Europe and the Pacific United States happened during MKM trio tour in Northern America. This recording, at CalArts in 2010, yielded interesting results: a nervous displacement of noises and rich sonorous timbres. Casey Anderson, from Los Angeles, works with sound in a number of media from composition and improvisation to installations. On Five Lines he played a combination of digital and analog instruments of his own design…
infrantumi
Much needed vinyl reissue of a legendary Italian album from the 90s, finally remastered and housed in truly deluxe edition. Starfuckers' "Infrantumi" was recorded in the summer of 1997 in Massa, in the cramped attic of the Bocci house, all the equipment we had was: a sampler, a small mixer, an analog synth, a digital multi-effect, an electric guitar, a cheap transistor amp, a low wattage monitor, a vintage drum kit and a turntable. For recording we decided to use a mini-disc four-track reco…
Moving Along
Matsuli Music continues its reissue program of rare indigenous afro-jazz sounds from South Africa with the release of Sowetan group Batsumi's self-titled debut from 1974. The reissue has been lovingly re-mastered from the original tapes and features material compiled on the recent Next Stop Soweto series from Strut. The album arrived amidst a period of intense political, intellectual and artistic ferment stimulated in large part by the teachings of Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement…
Classroom projects - Incredible music made by Children in school
LP version. Incredible music made by children in schools" says is it all really. Jonny Trunk has collected the best moments of that most niche of niche collectors' genres, the school album, spanning music by small primary school choirs singing folk songs to full-blown avant-garde experiments written and performed by children still at secondary or grammar school. As with practically all Trunk releases, it's a nostalgic gas for anyone over a certain age - we reckon anyone younger than 25 may be ba…
Happiness is Overrated
"Originally from the land of throwing sausages, eggs, beans AND tomatoes on one plate for BREAKFAST, though residing in the land of the freaks, Dan Melchior travelled many roads, between wreckless R&R bands or duo's with Wild Billy Childish, to solo collages on Chocolate Monk or Kye records, to the beautiful collaborative works he created with Letha Diane Rodman Melchior, Dan's partner who sadly passed away in November 2014, and who this record is dedicated to. Knowing this makes it uneasy to wr…
Avantgardegasse
"It has often been said, and we gladly repeat it again, here at the UE office tower, "Folks drive faster without a drivers license", and that's not a lie, it might be because the popo's are right behind you! Boy or Girl, can those assholes make a real human nervous! Once one enters Avantgardegasse, somewhere In Germany (a country known for its brutality on the road) rules and laws concerning your ride all flush down the toilet like a recycled napkin! No popo's on Avantgardegasse! Forget about th…
Minor Differences
André Vida is a Berlin-based saxophonist, composer and lyricist. He has developed a series of practical approaches to improvisation using restrictive outfits, animated graphics-based score installations and self-made instruments. His solo saxophone pieces are a synthesis of these areas of improvisational research, combining body, instrument, song-forms, and voice. In this case the pieces are made in the moment and memory, with shifting time matrices. Over the course of a two-minute walk, some fo…
There
Engrossing debut album from Iranian sound artist, Pouya Ehsaei, sublimating samples of traditional Iranian music to "reveal the rage hidden beneath its melancholia." 'There' was produced in 2010, using fractured and brutally processed instrumentation indigenous to Iran to isolate a palpable feeling of tension articulated with a timbre unique to the artist's background. In the course of its six pieces we perceive a stark and grinding sadness from his aerated arrangements, gleaning elusive emotion…
Untitled
Sam Kidel a.k.a. El Kid presents an extended drone work for the excellent Entr’acte label inspired by Henri Michaux's 'Untitled (Movements)' drawing. Located much farther out than his work with Killing Sound or the Young Echo collective, or even his numerous soundtracks for film, TV and theatre, the piece is based on two layers of synthesiser - one outputting the wavering, natural heat fluctuations of analogue circuitry, and another undergoing a slow and subtle metamorphosis. Pocked with collage…
Delirious Elaborations
An outstanding and truly lavishly packaged 4CD-Box collecting 1987-1997 material by the legendary ULTRA (Christoph Heeman, Achim P. Li Khan, Jon Carlson) containg four CD’s each in individual picture sleeves, 16 page booklet, housed in foil-debossed slipcase. Very recommended humourous electroacoustic power electronics.The entire recorded output of the 'classic' Ultra lineup of St Degeneratus (Jon Carlson), Herr Mucke (Christoph Heemann) and Dr Tengelmann (Achim Flaam) along with lyrics, artwork…
Vanity Fair
Greetings, here we have Recital’s inaugural release, “Vanity Fair,” Sean McCann & Matthew Sullivan’s debut collaboration album. A fitting introduction to the ethos of Recital; the desire to turn a new page, to more accurately project what is significant and engaging in contemporary music.Matt and I had often talked about collaborating, as our musical understandings and interests align. Both drawn to minimalism and graceful ambience, we would trade tidbits and slivers of ideas casually over coff…
Music For Private Ensemble
“Music For Private Ensemble” is Sean McCann’s first new solo album since 2011′s “The Capital”. Demonstrating a more serious study of orchestration and timbre than his previous work; it is a big step forward. The four arrangements presented here shy away from the use of synthesizers and effects processing – instead relying on voicing and movement to actuate the album’s sentiments. Inspired by the grandiosity of John Adams, the concerned somberness of Gavin Bryars, and the guttural tape work of Fl…
Space Probe
Recorded mostly in the early'60s with Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, James Jacson, Nimrod Hunt and Thea Barbara, Space Probe explores stripped back forms and colour combinations that are far from jazz Ð or that attempt, very successfully, to take jazz into wholly new territories. Especially notable is the extraordinary Conversation Of J.P. for piano and percussion which, along with the opening track - an 18-minute Moog solo, probably recorded in 1970, just after Ra had newly acquired the…