New Arrivals
s/t
White Poppy, the “experimental therapeutic pop” project from British Columbian inner-peacenik Crystal Dorval, has been evolving fresh forms for a couple years now. Last winter, packing a satchel full of four-track tapes, she ventured out from her bedroom haven and boarded a boat across the Strait of Georgia to the town of Ladysmith, on Vancouver Island, to The Noise Floor Recording Studio, to mastermind and mix the ten deluxe, delirious dream-gaze gems comprising her self-titled full-length debu…
Draught
Earle and Sussmann are best known for their minimal electronic work as Stasis Duo but this disc sees them in far more bracing mode for this all electronics trio. Recorded while Kahn was touring Australia in 2009. Matt Earle works with blank media including samplers, mixers, turntables and tapedecks. He has a solo project under the name Muura, and plays in the groups Stasis Duo and Xwave (with Adam Sussmann), xNoBBQx and Sun of the Seventh Sister. He also runs the Breakdance the Dawn record label…
What's That For, Mate?
* Hand-numbered edition of 100 in recycled cardstock sleeve with envelope. * Recorded in March 2010, What's that for, mate? Is one of the first recordings the duo (Jack Harris & Samuel Rodgers) made together. At this time the two worked with a combination of no-input and acoustic feedback, digital processing and phonography. This recording sees a discourse resulting from the amalgamation of and conflict between the analogue and the digital, the gestural and the static, and multiple recorded spac…
It Just Ain't Flapping
Hand-numbered edition of 100 in recycled cardstock sleeve with envelope. VA AA LR is the London-based trio of Vasco Alves, Adam Asnan and Louie Rice. Their fearless experimentalism has previously seen them tackle instrumentation as variable as compressed CO2, distress flares and a Citroën. Here, while the tools are in more traditional electronics territory, the music is anything but. From a heap of pulsating speaker cones, whirring dictaphones and a virtuosic cameo by Stevie Wonder the trio forg…
Impermeability
Improviser and composer Laurent Peter - one half of Diatribes, co-ordinator of the Insub Meta Orchestra and co-curator of the Insubordinations label - has been a important figure in the Swiss Experimental scene for some years now. This new solo composition, although assembled from studio recordings, conjures gurgling volcanic pools, teeming with myriad amphibians and insects.
Oera
Recorded in the small Norwegian town of Øra, from which the album takes its name, this meeting of two acoustic string instruments belies the simplicity of its instrumentation through the complexity and diversity of the music produced. Ranging from careful melodic a/tonal interplay to dense full spectrum harmonics, capturing the versatility and inventiveness of these musicians.
Quasi static crack Ppropagation
Brussels-based sound artist Yann Leguay is a true media saboteur. He appropriates industrial machinery for the playback of musical media (using an angle grinder to perform the live destruction of a microphone or to playback a CD at dizzying speed) with flagrant disregard for the accepted norms of audio behaviour. His back catalogue is equally deviant, releasing a 7” single without a central hole and a record composed from recordings of vinyl being scratched by scalpel. His Phonotopy label propos…
Your vice is a locked room & only I have the key
Finding the perfect axis between the likes of Goblin, Roubaix, Barry and Sorgini this bloodthirsty entrée to our Bruno Nicolai and Edwige Fenech series delivers a vinyl debut for the music of this lesser-known beat driven Sergio Martino Giallo horror. A real treat for the patient Euro VHS fans and the library collector alike this varied vinyl compact OST finally spreads its wings. As the third instalment of a devoted series of vinyl releases focussing on Italian composer Bruno Nicolai’s soundtra…
De Overkant
Gosh this is lovely - a suite of spellbinding ambient folk meditations from Timo Van Luijk, the boss of Belgium's exquisite Metaphon label. A regular collaborator with the likes of Andrew Chalk, Raymond Dijkstra, and Christoph Heeman, among others, Timo operates at the core of Belgium's current avant-garde and experimental circles. Produced and released under his Af Ursin alias on the La Scrie Dorée label set up for such purposes, 'De Overkant' is a disarmingly quiet and mysterious suite of frag…
Gene Pick
On side A, two of the best American artists in a collaboration to remember 'Boogie Woogie Man' Jimmy Valiant. On side B, a track by Gene Pick, new astro in american noise scene, recorded live to tape with modular system, ms20, mixer and pedals.
Seven Inches Vol. 3
Fratto9 under the sky and Kinky Gabber present the third volume of the “seven inch series”, a series of coloured 7inches in limited and numbered edition that Luminance Ratio shares with different international artists and musicians. While the first volume of this series, released a year ago, involved the American musician/artist Steve Roden (almost sold out now), and the second volume features the Australian artist Oren Ambarchi, this volume includes an innovative track with voice and charming m…
Vobes
Beneath pulls up to PAN with a super forward platter of UK bass/techno dreadnaughts. Combining archival rolige with up-to-the-minute missiles, PAN's 51st release operates at the crucial nexus of dubwise dancehall science and minimalist techno, pairing uniquely sculpted rhythm dynamics with a filigree feel for aerated electronic timbre. Most importantly it's aimed squarely at the 'floor with 20" rimmed riddims bound to bounce any stack, but it's his taste for spectral, holographic electronic mode…
Intrigue & Stuff Vol.3
Almost 40 minutes of incredible, original, completely unsocialised brilliance sounding somewhere between Vangelis, Armando and John Carpenter** The third volume of four in this incredible series, beamed direct from the depths of Berlin onto vinyl. Our maverick protagonist again looks to the future mindful of the past, following a twisted trajectory from imagination to realisation which would leave lesser artists and musicians exhausted (or in need of drying out). But as we all know, his …
Intrigue & Stuff Vol.2
Out of the blue and onto your platter, HAFTW presents Vol. 2 of Leyland Kirby's four-part 'Intrigue & Stuff' sessions. There's absolutely no predicting what direction this series will take, and in this instance we're privy to an internal ocean of quieter thoughts and moods, smudged with a majestic yet somehow solipsistic glow. As ever, there's a wealth of cultural mulch swirling below the surface, siphoning the slyest hints of Harold Budd and dormant spirits of the new age with a dissolute…
Intrigue & Stuff Vol.1
**Limited, hand-stamped white label** The indomitable Leyland Kirby returns two years (or is it twenty?) since his memory mangling and essential 'Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was' LPs, offering the first in a series of four 12"s entitled 'Intrigue & Stuff' - channeling some of the weirdest, most discomforting and downright essential music we've heard this year. The title may refer to a Martin Hannett quote regarding Factory Records - "There's an awful lot of incest that goes on…
Fingerpainting
Fingerpainting is the first solo release of Greek percussionist and electronic music composer Christos Chrondropoulos. The main source of inspiration for this one sided, 45 rpm, solo percussion album are the documental recordings of musicological record labels such as Smithsonian Folkways, Tangent and Ocora.
Following the short recording time format that is encountered commonly in these releases, Fingerpainting gives the impression that it's a recording of an unknown music culture that operates …
Fools
Solo release by Antoine Chessex, Fools presents studio material recorded in 2008 in Berlin. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Chessex is his ability to take a single instrument Ña tenor saxophoneÑ and seamlessly move between the hallmarks of musical genres that many others simply get stuck in. As an immersive journey into the physicality of sounds, FOOLS features phasing microtonal explorations of time and space, dense layers of harsh electrified explosions, deep droning textures and moments …
Sulla musica
Italian only - Se consideriamo le grandi personalità del Novecento, Stockhausen si distingue come una delle forze più creative nella musica contemporanea. Figura controversa e a tratti contraddittoria Stockhausen in queste pagine mostra di essere semplicemente inafferrabile nella vastità delle sue riflessioni e allo stesso tempo di una lampante chiarezza nella sua visione della musica e del mondo. Stockhausen ha investigato a fondo tutti gli aspetti del suono nelle sue composizioni e nella sua r…
Quartet / Octet
Taku Sugimoto, guitar and composition, with Klaus Filip (sine tones), Ko Ishikawa (sho), Moe Kamura (voice), Kazushige Kinoshita (violin), Radu Malfatti (trombone), Masahiko Okura (clarinet), Taku Unami (sine tones), Nikos Veliotis (cello). 2013.
Chasing The Shadow of Bryn Jones
*The 208 page book by Ibrahim Khider and accompanying 15-Track CD - edition of 400 copies* Those of you who don't want to fork out on the mammoth vinyl box set, the 208 page book plus CD are now available to purchase separately, packaged in a gorgeous spot-gloss and foil-blocked hardcover and limited to 400 copies. The book is divided into three sections; biography, posthumous narrative, and discography analysis. The biography of the late Bryn Jones is comprised of a quilt of narratives …