New Arrivals
Neue Rungholter Tänze
'Published September 2010 by Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, Hamburg in an edition of 500 numbered copies with an insert. New treatments and adaptations of the musical heritage of Mechthild von Leuszch as final part of the Rungholt dance trilogy, executed & presented by Werkbund.' label info
ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ
Starring’s ABCDEFG-HIJKLMNOP-QRSTUV-WXYZ combines minimalist musical patterns with dreamy poetry to create a new style front-woman Clara Hunter likes to call “sparkle prog.” It captures the frenetic energy of the band’s live show, but here it is overlain with a new palate of synthesizers, delay effects, drum processing, aux percussion, and vocals that create delicate, but sometimes radical juxtapositions between the lyrical and the experimental. Though songs like “the best” and “aphonia” …
Sun Circle
The most recent release on the lichen label; all releases are hand-assembled by zach wallace in his native ann arbor environs and offer of a lovely wave of art-sound, field recordings, improvisation with natural non-instruments, and, in the case of this particular title, a pair of pieces by greg davis and zach himself on farfisa, distorted vocals, and bells. the first appears to be a zonked “cover” of lamonte young’s “31 vii 69 10:26 - 10:49 pm munich from map of 49's dream the two systems of el…
Abandoned In Sleep
For his second album Jonathan Lee draws on two years of recording and performance - and it's not just his own material that's used for the record either. 'Abandoned In Sleep' features studio recordings, sample edits and collaborative work with artists including Xela, Jasper TX, Svarte Greiner, Stephen Vitiello and Gareth Davis among others. This album is all about dark, nocturnal ambience and combines a variety of half-dreamed soundscapes together for every track: Xela's falsetto murmur…
Glass Fountain
The duo mainly sticks to their guns, mining the same post-Suicide art-trance vein they perfected on Dream, but here there's an added emphasis on the disembodied, oscillator pop mode that they often toy with. Mesmerizing organ melodies over plink-plonky vintage drum machines with weirdo soulful singing & outer space electronics, like an outsider-punk Silver Apples or something. Edition of 600
Lux Aeterna
greay-area LP reissue, Lux Aeterna, was originally composed to celebrate a friend of William Sheller's wedding, thematically driven by concepts of union and togetherness, and ostensibly based on the Catholic mass, this is far from any sort of religious music you've ever heard. Following in the footsteps of other iconoclastic composers, like Serge Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Vannier, Lee Hazlewood, David Axelrod, Scott Walker and of course Magma (more on that in a second), Sheller conjured up w…
B/P/M Series 1
Absolutely mind melting release from this consistently amazing American duo. This release has a very different sound to the superb drone recordings of their recent releases, yet it is still totally immense but really quite unexpected. This was previously issued as a tour-only CDR in a press of somewhere between 20 and 30 copies. Brian Pyle and Merrick McKinlay spent sometime recording legendary Humboldt based pianist Darius Brottman, who also happens to have a radio show before Brian's own show …
Moondog
Debut album, originally released in 1956. The blind Kansas native showcases his talent for the minimal & avant-garde here, w/ compositions driven by percussion & Japanese-inspired melodies, complimented by street sounds, recitations, & animal noises. Bizarre even for today's standards, it's a wonder this was released over a half-century ago.
Electronics Without Tears
LP eition: the excellent Public Information label really comes into its own with this revelatory collection of early concréte tape music by F.C. Judd - a much overlooked British electronic music pioneer and contemporary of Daphne Oram. Born in Woodford, East London in 1914, Frederick Charles Judd served in the RAF coastal command during WWII working with highly secret radar equipment. After being demobbed he applied this knowledge and skilled engineering background to his musical interests…
The Violent Blow
After a long time out of print Sacred Trails 7", a new release from Altar Of Flies for Wendy.Minimalistic textures, tape loops, field recordings and junk abuse, all mixed in an unique cruel sound. AOF explores line between man and nature, with analog machines he transforms in sound the cold of his lands, the feeling of no light, the man perfection in loneliness. The result is the must organic, deep and dark AOF release ever.A new start for this criminally underrated artist, a new powerfully soun…
Origin
The entirety of Origin's musical material is comprised of the vibrating strings of Pitre's ensemble of bowed "harmonic-guitars," which are unconventionally strung electric guitars (utilizing multi-unisons) tuned to intervals corresponding with the Harmonic Series, a.k.a. Just Intonation. No effects processing (pre or post) was used in this recording. All effect-like qualities result from the multi-unison strings (phasing), sympathetic vibrations, combination/difference tones (of the chosen just …
Live On
Follow-up to last year's well-received full-length of collaged live performances released on SHDWPLY. This is another half hour-plus of the Baltimore drum/drone collective at their most zoned and loose-limbed.
Cymbals In The Night
Heavy solo release from deep as Marianas Trench Swedish drummer Sven-Ake Johansson. Johansson is primarily known in the US as the drummer on the two hugely influential Brotzmann recordings: For Adolphe Sax and Machine Gun. However, the Berlin-based percussionist/composer/filmmaker/performance artist/painter -- all of which he is remarkably adept at -- also has numerous FMP releases and a well documented relationship with Alexander Schlippenbach. Notable contributions to the canon of exper…
Shot
ultralimited lavishly packaged LP (100 handnumbered copies only!), this ground-breaking electro-acoustic trio made my day. The album is largely improvised, with extracts of Charles Bukowski’s poetic works overlapping on the interweavings and multiple stratiï¬Âed references in the trio’s music. It features a faceted palette of acoustic, analogue and digital colours: drums, metallic objects, ethnical instruments, samples, sequences, filtered voice, pedal effects, vinyls, digital electronic…
Teils teils
The first track of this is the side-long "Teilmenge 20," which begins as a set of indecipherable static electricity clicks that are quite warm and engaging, which quickly builds to a rhythmic cycle, continuing to mutate and diverge throughout the entire track. Most interestingly, as the rhythm sets in it truly begins to resemble a traditional 4/4 techno beat. The tempo and percussive elements are there, but the sounds in no way resemble the stale drum machines and overwrought synths. As the pi…
This is no fun acid 02
'In the beginning there was Roland's founder Ikutaro Kakehashi and an arsenal of computer controlled analog jock boxes designed specifically to outmode the trad rock (read: human) rhythm section... the circuitry was so tightly wound however, so rooted in synthesis that it failed to meet its promise. It wasn't until the mid-80s that the TB-TR system took novel form as acid house; a simple but novel attitude shift that saw an embrace of extra-terrestrial machine funk aesthetics converging with the…
Bunny
Simon Scott produced one of the best records of 2009 with Navigare, an album whose shoegaze dronemusic was dotted with radioluminescent dream-pop numbers. It was hardly a surprise to us when we learned that he was the drummer of Slowdive way back when. Since then, Scott has produced a single for Immune and a collaboration with Jasper TX, both equally fantastic. For his second proper record, Scott makes a slight detour; but one that is well suited to everything else that's been released by…
The World Is A House On Fire
Veterans of the sprawling Chicago music scene, Zelienople have carved out a unique sound over their album releases. The World is a House on Fire is the latest chapter in the band's story, and frames their music more succinctly than ever before. Mike Weis (percussion), Matt Christensen (vocals, guitar) and Brian Harding (bass, saxophone) managed to perfect brooding, melancholy doom-pop on their last full-length Give it Up (TYPE 054CD), and this latest LP finds the band in a more evocative mood.…
Valley Tangents
Don't lose control — dig Blues Control! Following a circular path in order to access the unknown, Russ and Lea nab chaos in a plastic cup and crush rock into diamonds, or something that looks like them anyway. Valley ho! This new record is like drugs for your ears.
Black Summit
Strictly limited to 400 copies only, already sold out at source* Garden Söund is the rewarding collaboration of two hugely respected outfits: Barn Owl and Eternal Tapestry. Word of the album has spread like wildfire on a vast midwest plain, hence all 400 copies are sold out at source. 'Black Summit' finds the commonalities in Barn Owl's epic desert scapes and the crushingly potent psychedelia of Jed Bindeman's Eternal Tapestry with immeasurable success. The two characters stalk moonlit ca…