New Arrivals
The car boot sales
A recent collaboration between these sound experimentalists consisting of both musicians’ passionate relation to found objects and recycled material treated as instruments. Devoted solo performers of free improvised music, also members of the London Improvisers Orchestra, Tasos Stamou (modified electronics, prepared zither, found violin) & Adam Bohman (amplified objects, prepared balalaika and prepared violin) create layers of “instant” musique concrète which balances between narrative structure…
Hemp Is Here
Leven Signs' Hemp Is Here came and went in 1985, as both a cassette release (Unlikely Records) and vinyl release (Cordelia) in the blink of an eye. The duo of Peter Karkut and Maggie Turner managed to craft one of the strangest, most affecting albums of new wave experimentalism of the era, but due to the album's impossible-to-find status, it's been largely forgotten and continuously overlooked ever since. A chance encounter with the cassette version of Hemp Is Here led Brad Rose of Digitali…
Church organ works
The three piece group from Portugal explore in ten tracks the possibilities of the church organ. The members play in various combinations on different organs. The outcome is very varied. The opening piece is barely audible, but the second piece is a loud, repitive, all register open one. Of course it's hard to see this music without any religious overtones, but Osso Exotico don't give a clue in that direction: all their pieces are untitled. Meditative pieces in most cases, but less minimal then …
Music for Earbuds
Music for Earbuds is composed entirely from headphone feedback which makes some surprisingly organic (as well as electronic) sounds, Stephen Cornford writes to introduce his new CD. A collection of sounds stark and stubborn, as a listener you hit against their form, slide on their surfaces. These sounds so alien yet alluring call you to spend time with them, attend to them. They mark the edges of hearing and understanding. The edge here is the ear that hears as listening encounters nothing but i…
Drowning / Untitled #185
Back in stock in very limited quantity. 'Francisco Lopez is perhaps best known for his dynamic studio and live performances that sway between crushing silence and dynamic, shifting volume swells. Over the course of 25 years, Lopez has developed and honed a refined audio lexicon. Michael Gendreau entered the experimental sound community in the early 1980s with his project Crawling With Tarts. As a solo artist, Gendreau caught everyone s attention with the 2002 release of his CD 55 pas de la ligne…
1986-1991
"The Venom P. Stinger retrospective is on. One of the roughest groups of the '80s is back in print on vinyl and for the first time ever on CD, and still nice and hard and rough and wild on either format. File under: punk rock/noise rock/free-of-constraints rock. If you think of Venom P. Stinger simply as the proving ground for 2/3rds of the Dirty Three first, then you're seriously missing it, and fuck you. It was the mid-'80s and everything was going fine. The music underground was its ow…
Bitter Suites
Deluxe repress edition of this incredible masterpiece made out of two live performances of the U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble recorded in 1979 at The Showing Room in NYC and at Helen Shlien Gallery in Boston. The Ensemble performs playing large sheets of metal and producing amazingly droning sounds. These live recordings are the result of an evolutionary refinement of instrumental design and playing techniques which Robert Rutman explored and develped after a ten year period of practice. He inv…
weltraumruckfuhrungsubereinkommen
Third vinyl release by the mysterious Von Himmel commune. Some of these guys go back a long way into Sloow’s history and their classic ‘Space Communion’ tape from way back received the vinyl treatment by Humito. ‘weltraumrückführungsübereinkommen’ has more of those awesome serious zoned and mind melting fractals spider webbed into shining diamond stars mirroring inner and outer space. There’s the obvious nods to the kraut gods but Von Himmel seem to exist in their private spacetime continuum of …
Test Leads
Includes digital download voucher redeemable from the label** Judging from his prolific output, L.A. dude M. Geddes Gengras must have a heavy carbon footprint. But we'll let him off 'cause he makes exceedingly good music. After techno odysseys as Personable, psych-dub trips with Sun Araw and The Congos, and duties in Robedoor, Pocahaunted and LA Vampires, he flies under his birth name for 'Test Leads', perhaps his purest and most honest revelation to date; two sprawling sides of throbbin…
Instruments non-electronique
A collection of the earliest recordings of the French sound sculpture musicians and Cristalists known as Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet. Featuring the first fruits of one of the greatest unisons in experimental French music combining the beguiling haunting sounds of Jacques and Yvonne Lasry and the development of the musical inventions of Bernard and Francois Baschet. Exploring a similar route to that of early Michel Magne recordings (and often likened to “a French Harry Partch”) the emotive m…
A Short Life of Trouble
"Compilation of truly great sorrowful American ballads recorded between 1927 and 1943. Songs mostly about murder, death, and broken hearted-ness. Lots of intense minor chords and stark gritty vocals. Artists include Emry Arthur, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Red Hot Old Mose, the DeZurik Sisters, Shortbuckle O'Rourke and Family, Jimmie Tarlton, Mississippi John Hurt and more. Mountain bluesmen and songsters presenting their darkest & most intense work. Old school 'tip on' sleeves."
Live at Cbgb 1986
“Not since the early days of MC5 at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, circa 1968, had there been such an organic melding of sheer metalesque maelstrom and free jazz. These archival recordings from the legendary punk club CBGB capture a moment in time when open-minded musicians from the 'downtown scene' were exploring the possibility of bringing Lou Reed's feedback-infested Metal Machine Music together with Albert Ayler's Love Cry. Dissipated Face guitarist Kurt "Hologram" Ralske and special guest …
Music for Sick Queers
The German Shepherds, formed by Sandy Stark and Stephen Scheatzle in Nov. 1981, released a three song ep in early "82 with "Booty Jones" -- to child molester and kidnapper Kenneth Parnell; "I Adore You" -- an offering of prayer and submission and "Message from JJ" -- a rousing sermon by Peoples Temple chief Rev. Jim Jones. Later that year a dub version of "I Adore You" and "The Earthquake Has Come" appeared on the "You'll Hate This Record, Record" compilation lp. In 1983 the Shepherds began work…
(B)Haunted
Following his collaborations with Fabio Orsi and Luigi Turra published in 2012-2013, it’s time for another Gianluca Becuzzi solo album on Silentes. This electronic / electro-acoustic composer and sound-artist boast an enviable curriculum: active since the first half of the ‘80s as founder of the historic Darkwave / Industrial project Limbo, since 1999 his artistic production is characterized by a strong experimental imprint and by a clear tendency toward abstract aesthetic forms and micro/macro …
The Skipper at Home
Jazz-man Henry Franklin, widely respected for his service to the finest jazz players, brought that ineffable quality called soulfulness into play when he made his first record for producer George Porter at Black Jazz, The Skipper. Not unexpectedly, his follow-up affair titled The Skipper at Home teems with the same jaunty uplift. In sync with Franklin's musical spirit on the second recording are returnees Charles Owens on saxophone, Oscar Brashear on trumpet and Kenny Climax on guitar along wi…
Time Traveler
Kudo’s to Lieven Martens of Dolphins Into The Future for bringing J.D. Emmanuel back into the spotlights. In 2007 Lieven dug up the masterpiece album Wizards and re-issued it on his own label. A few years later, in 2011, J.D. was asked to tour through Europe where he was accompanied by Dolphins Into The Future and Paul Labreque. Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and Holland welcomed J.D and the people attending the concerts knew they were in for an electronic blast from the past!This 2xLP set co…
Blue Clouds
Some cream for your acid-folk tea - hitherto unreleased sides from the two and a half bards (well, two bards and a maiden - forsooth!) who self-released All On the First Day back in '72. These include studio recordings from later in the 70s, a couple live songs and an outtake from the legendary album itself! Well, the first legendary album anyway - for Blue Clouds is clearly another.
Pansophical Cataract
John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions) is a Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and writer who is perhaps best known as the drummer for Oneida. Man Forever, his vehicle for exploring the outer limits of drum performance, was created to overwhelm, to investigate the nuances that bloom in the midst of repetitive music, and to act as a pure sound experience.
Originally based on the idea of creating a sort of punk-infused Metal Machine Music for drums, Man Forever has evolved from a f…
Grain
"The new Zs lineup (Sam Hillmer, Greg Fox and Patrick Higgins) sounds very much like a new band, at least as evidenced by the Grain EP. The two side-length tracks (coming in at a total of 42-minutes) bear the marks of Zs' sound - repeated phrases, looped or played in situ; buried drones and harsh electronic tones - but it does sound very much like a new band.
There's an extended ambience to the album that trick perceptions of time. Glitches and waves that last only a minute or three somehow…
Scott (The Collection 1967-1970)
This box set collects remastered versions of Scott Walker's first five solo albums. The Scott albums are the fulcrum of Walker's career: You can hear where he'd been, and in retrospect, where he was going. His third act was emerging after 20 years of almost total silence with Tilt, The Drift, and Bish Bosch, released between 1997 and 2012. Walker's latter-day albums are fearless and violent, featuring wailing donkeys, moans, scrapes, and famously, the sound of someone punching meat. They seem to…