New Arrivals
Revelation
The Black Jazz recordings of Doug Carn are always a revelation – some of the most powerful, progressive work on the American underground of the early 70s – music that got Carn into way more record collections than you might expect! The sound here is a perfect summation of Doug's early genius – his own work on organ and keyboards, never overdone and mixed perfectly with a righteous array of acoustic sounds from Rene McLean on alto and tenor and Olu Dara on trumpet – both players who soar to the s…
V/A
Collection of 20 unreleased tracks by the likes of ALASTAIR GALBRAITH, BLACK TO COMM, ARP, PIGEONS, IGNATS, ALVARIUS B, WILLIAM TYLER, SUPREME DICKS, FILIPE FELIZARDO, HAMILTON YARNS, & CIRCUIT DES YEUX. It also hosts 3 new collective projects: Mendrugo (feat. JOSEPHINE FOSTER joining forces with husband Victor Herrero, Jose Luis Herrero, Jose Luis Rico & Takuhiko Nochimoto); Raajmahal, the reunion of Pat Murano (NO-NECK BLUES BAND), Carla Baker, & Santa Wolanczyk; & Syracuse Ear, a 1st …
The darkened mirror
Tetuzi Akiyama, guitars. Tom Carter, guitars. Christian Kiefer, guitars, banjo and Chip Conrad, percussion, Scott Leftridge, bass & bowed bass. 'The darkened mirror' is a unique vision of American music. Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Ca…
Live! At The Butchery
Three guys in South Africa obsessed with Can, Red Crayola, Pere Ubu & like sounds, a disdain toward apartheid, & the means to record themselves make one fantastic 200+ press LP in 1981 which disappears in obscurity. S.S. Records gives it a second life. Underground DIY classic which belongs on the NWW list (if they only knew about its existence!). 330 pressed.
Bridges
Duane Pitre\'s new album, Bridges, features two pieces taken from a suite of analogous compositions by the same name, and was composed by Pitre in 2012. The two pieces that comprise the album are meant to work together in sequence as a composite work; or they can be isolated and listened to on their own. The title derives its name from the original concept for this work, which was to bring together aspects of traditional Eastern music (such as compositional form and tuning) with Western musical …
Lifespans
Lifespans is a mesmerizing and hallucinating piece of electronic music. Listen to it at a fairly loud volume, or with headphones, and you will hear myriads of voices and melodies, never repeating themselves
Staring Into The Sun: Ethiopian Tribal Music
A contemporary survey of the tribal music of Ethiopia. Recorded in 2009 by Olivia Wyatt, this double LP showcases an array of mind-blowing sounds from the "land of eternal sunshine." Presented in this visually stunning gatefold are audio examples ranging from remote tribes -- of the Ethiopian highlands, the lower Omo and the Great Rift Valley -- to their electric analogues in the sweaty beerhalls of Addis Ababa. This collection features songs from the Azmari, poet-musicians who play the k…
Luz
From the very start the world around you is singing. There's a distant conversation spoken through the trees, but it stays unclear against the clarity of the songs of the forest. Within that life the forms of the heart open up, as if immediately transported to a city-wide window, with only the view of afternoon traffic below, the burning concrete, and the inside of a small apartment. Nothing more than a toy piano lifting its head over the plumes of steam from a cup of tea. Momentary narrat…
Weird universe
Valerie Martino's Unicorn Hard-On project has been a long running staple in the American underground since it's inception in 2003. Through her own Tangled Hares imprint, as well as many others, she's built a strong, constantly evolving catalog of singular works that serves to many as a prototype of the current beat-oriented phenomena currently sweeping the nation. Martino's vision, however,remains unphased and flourishes accordingly to her own unique vision; standing outside of any trends and re…
Improvisation Sep. 1975
Originally released on the Iskra label in 1975, Improvisation Sep. 1975 is a mind-bending slice of drone improv from two of Japan's post-war heavyweights; former John Cage student, Juilliard graduate, and Yoko Ono's former husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Takehisa Kosugi, considered by many to be the father of what some called "Japanese Krautrock," and Stockhausen percussionist Michael Ranta. Heavy layers of reverbed ring modulators, threaded vocals, melodicas, pianos, violins, gongs and Japanese biwa…
Another temple of the great beast 666
K11 is a project of Italian sound artist Pietro Riparbelli and lives within the world of radio signals, transcommunication and other invisible phenomena, to create a dimension where the main sound sources are signals from shortwave radio receivers. Another temple to the Great Beast 666 has been composed from said sound sources recorded during an Instrumental Transcommunication Action realized within the Temple of Diana in Cefalù, Sicily. The temple is famously known for its association wi…
Vilke
Julian Cope Review on Head Heritage Site: VILKÉ is the particularly fine and sprawling new 2LP by American composer, field recordist and hiker Daniel Menche. Inspired by the wolves of his travels in the N. West and named for the Lithuanian for ‘she-wolf’, VILKÉ presents us with four side-long pieces of haunted and eerie atmosphere music whose dilating post-industrial rhythms, and seemingly ever-decaying, ever-degrading, cicadas-driven post-industrial drone-o-drudge inhabits a parallel half-world…
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Collaboration between Argentinian experimental musician Courtis (of Reynols) and sound artist Prins of the Netherlands."Born 1961 in Ijmuiden, the Netherlands, Gert-Jan Prins has been known for twenty years as one of the most challenging sound artists in the Netherlands and established himself as one of the central electronic performers in improvised music. His unique self-developed live-electronics make use of radio and transmitter technology, and create sounds with great physical energy. Prins…
New Release (1)
*Regis and Haswell finally debut their Concrete Fence project - 12" mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g white vinyl which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Bill Kouligas & Russell Haswell* Regis & Russell Haswell's Concrete Fence is a tantalising proposition for noise and techno freaks. As a duo they first rallied under the aegis at the 2012 Blackest Ever Black party in London's Corsica Studios with an improvised live set that veered bet…
A history of every one
'A History of Every One' by Bill Orcutt is an album of songs: minstrel songs, holiday songs, hymns, marches, cowboy songs, Disney songs, work songs, delta blues. The original tunes themselves are nothing special, well known, but not particularly well-regarded. Most would be filler on a mid-60's Doris Day or Burl Ives LP. What Orcutt does with them however is remarkable: expanding upon techniques developed on 2011's 'How the Thing Sings' and incorporating ideasforged since his recording of 'The S…
Arsonicide
The two LPs are straight reissues of the first two Kleistwahr cassettes released by Broken Flag in 1983 - BF3 and BF15. They are the first two volumes in a series of four releases cataloging the early Kleistwahr recordings. Kleistwahr was the solo project of Gary Mundy which he ran alongside his main band Ramleh. "Edition of only 250 copies reissue of what was originally a limited 1983 cassette release (BF15) on the legendary Broken Flag label. Kleistwahr is the solo project of BF head Gary Mu…
In Four Parts (Tribute To John Cage)
Equipped with a modular synthesizer, a guitar and electronics Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz approach the master of the treatment of silence, John Cage. The piece on this album, which was recorded live at Wiener Konzerthaus, was inspired by the underlying attitude of Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts. Upon invitation by the WIEN MODERN festival the two legendary electronic music protagonists tackled the composer’s early string quartet, took it apart and adapted it for two players, alw…
The Call From Below
Something very different from Digitalis, a destroyed dub session somewhere between Rhythm & Sound, Disrupt, Actress, Pole and Vladislav Delay, vinyl edition of 500, initial copies on purple vinyl* This unexpected salvo from Digitalis comes from the hitherto unknown Seekers International crew and dives head-first into a bubbling mass of soundsystem culture and dubwise tropes in fine, destroyed style.The album was written and compiled during the darkest hours - and it shows - reviving a b…
Appalachian excitation
The meeting of composer Arnold Dreyblatt and psych-folk trio Megafaun shouldn’t be seen as unlikely just because it’s cross-generational, or even (arguably) cross-genre. Such categorizations have to be set aside before taking in their Appalachian Excitation. Born in New York in 1953, Dreyblatt came up under such lauded experimental groundbreakers as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young, obtaining a Master’s degree in composition from Wesleyan University. Now based in Berlin, where h…
Live At Sant'Anna Arresi Jazz Festival
Saturn calls, Istanbul responds! After releasing a handful of beautiful releases last year that brought them to the attention of the free jazz scene, Konstrukt come back with a fantastic album recorded in collaboration with Mr. Marshall Allen, the legendary saxophonist of the Sun Ra Arkestra (aka the best band ever landed on Earth). Cosmic, cathartic, spiritual free jazz in its purest form! When music can make you travel with your imagination like this, building bridges between different…