New Arrivals
Freaked With Jet
No guitars and fuck two-second gaps. A collection of six 7"s (Gutter Splint, Fortune b/w The Eyes Of Men, Epistasis, Vacuum, Vanishing Point, and the split with Agathocles). Performed by CHARLIE MUMMA, CORYDON RONNAU, JOHN WIESE. The only band to make a Milton and a Mentors reference on the same album. Typically I think noisecore is best in small blasts, but for those who can't find or play the records, this collection is still pretty terse, don't worry.
Natsu No Sebone
Alto saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe and percussionist Toshi Ishizuka recorded this extended improvisation at Tokyo's Apia Club, quietly ferocious music with a unique physicality. "Thrilling, blood-shaking, soul-scraping and defiantly non-sexless improv set from two Japanese titans. Recorded live at the Apia club in Tokyo in December last year, this set showcases Urabe's uniquely physical approach to improvisation -- ferociously concentrated, contorted, sweating and eruptive with physical power. Hi…
Opus 2
Developing on the trance-induction and brainwave entrainment techniques explored on the first Ethernet album 144 Pulsations of Light, Opus 2 moves into deeper, more introspective and emotive territory. A stronger focus on melody and harmonic structure results in pieces that almost approach, but never quite arrive at, traditional song forms, while still leaving much to the imagination of the listener, evading mental categorization and revealing new sonic experiences with each listen. The bu…
Reception
The Sons of God: 32 amplified iron plates. Mats Gustafsson: live electronics. Recorded by Olof Madsen on the 5th of March 2006 at Frgfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden. Reception was a sound installation at Frgfabriken (February 18 - March 5, 2006). by the Sons of God and Emanuel Swedenborg and a part of the festival Place and Space, Stockholm New Music. The festival was curated by Magnus Haglund and Magnus Andersson. During the installation period, the following guest-artists were invited for performa…
Live installation at Loop-Line recorded by Toshiya Tsunoda
USW56, USW57, USW59, USW61, USW113, these five hand-made electronics hanged from a ceiling have an ultrasonic wave transmitter, a reciever and an amplifier. Each frequency of the ultrasonic wave is about 40khz but slightly different. And when each instrument swings, each frequency changes a little caused by the Doppler effect. On thier instruments we can hear beat signals between transmitted and received ultrasonic waves changed in frequency. (Manabu Suzuki) Where does art work appear? How do pe…
Electric Fruit
"Electric Fruit" alludes to the vexing encounter between nature and technology, one of the most complex issues that we face as a global society. The album brings together a powerhouse of innovators—Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson and Peter Evans—to emphatically capture, question and explore the throes of this crucial contradiction. "Electric Fruit" is a stirring and potent recording of the dangerous confrontation between the innate and the artificial, the organic and the robotic. Each member of th…
Große Gartenbauausstellung
Sven-Ake Johansson, Andrea Neumann and Axel Dörner formed the trio Barcelona Series in the end of the 90's. Their music was utterly important for the development of the new improscene, the new ways of improvising by using your instruments more as acoustic bodies than traditional instruments. Johansson had since the 70's been experimenting with a music with less gestures but anyhow keeping the emotional pressure. Both Dörner and Neumann were pioneers in their ways of playing their instrume…
It's You
Sydney, Australia's Holy Balm trio jack out a heat-warped LP of avant-dance songs for Not Not Fun. 'It's You' feels like dance music that's been made in a hot country. It's got a faded, sun-bleached quality and drunk-in-the-afternoon sloppiness that's entirely endearing to our tastes. Their synth melodies are always prone to slipping saltily off-key and the beats are basically functional - lumpy kicks and squirmy, acidic synth pop bass - ridden with alluring nonchalance by Anna John in a hybrid …
9 symphonies
Sultan Hagavik is first Polish band (and probably the second one in the world) which performs music using tape decks. It was founded in July 2011 in Wroclaw, in circumstances hard to specify. The band utilizes recordings found on old cassettes, as well as their own material recorded with analogue dictaphone. Using tape decks as musical instruments allows duo members to create completely new sonic quality. In their sur-conventional compositions they refer to many musical genres; from pop to punct…
Selections From The Symphonies (For Electric Guitars)
Intro sampler collection of Glenn's various guitar orchestra classics for the uninitiated. Glenn has personally selected a track listing representative of his absolute unique-on-this-planet vision, with material ranging from the delicate celestial beauty of Symphony No. 3 to the demonical, otherworldly terror unfurled in No. 10. Selections is the ultimate 'in' to Branca's work if you're yet unacquainted with the most influential composer of the era.
Sjunga Slutet Nu
Sjunga slutet nu (Sing the End Now), the new long-awaited project by Hans Appelqvist, consists of both an album and a film. The work is about the angst and silencing of death and the meeting with the final end. The film and album have the atmosphere of a fairy-tale that feels both natural and original, a world where talking levitating spheres seem as ordinary as man. In it, we meet Theodora, an elderly woman that lives in a lonely house by a lake somewhere in Sweden. We also meet her friends: th…
The Yelm Sessions
Another important piece of the elusive and hermetic Eyvind Kang puzzle. This newest studio project from one of the most consistently interesting young composer/performers working today is instantly Kang’s most adventurous, varied and ambitious recordings to date. Featuring many of his most illustrious musical associates as well as several orchestral ensembles from around the world, this new CD brings Kang’s exuberant gift for orchestration and lyricism together with a keen sense of the miraculou…
Garage Music
Bruce Russell has an MA in Political Studies, and works as an information designer. He has previously worked in the field of archives management, during which time he ran the National Radio sound archive. As a sound artist Russell is known mainly for his involvement in New Zealand's longest-running improvisational 'post-rock' group, the Dead C., although he also works in the field of radiophonic composition, and records as a solo artist and with the trio A Handful of Dust. He performs wit…
In light
Four years after the release of their debut album Outflow, Japan’s Small Color, a duo comprised of Rie Yoshihara (aka Trico!) (accordion, voice, vintage keyboard instruments) and Yusuke Onishi (guitar, banjo, bass, programming and production) are back with the beautifully polished In Light. This album marks what some may consider a departure for 12k: sublime and gentle, minimal, acoustic J-pop, which once may have been destined for the now-defunct Happy label, but can now sit comfortably beside …
Troubled, Shaken Etc
Another album of unclassifiable experimental songs from British band the Sian Alice Group, who blend elements of avant-rock, folk and dark, cinematic tones for a uniquely atmospheric, inter-disciplinary sound. A Stereolab-like mix of pop modernism and Terry Riley minimalism gets the album started ('Love That Moves The Sun'), before all momentum is dismantled in favour of fluid ambience on 'Airlock'. From here on the band continue to genre-hop before stumbling upon a rich vein of balladry on trac…
Beyond The Purple Star Zone / Oblique Parallax
Two related classic Saturn LP reissues on a single CD, both recorded at the Detroit Jazz Centre - in 1980 and 1981 respectively. They share an excellent sound quality and great playing - there's a classic version of Rocket No.9 and plenty of otherworldly Moog and electronic keyboards - up there with Ra's best on record. Rocket excepted, all the pieces are original to these LPs and don't appear elsewhere (though the first track of Purple is heard again at the end, with another name (exactl…
Overheard and rendered 2
At long last, and/OAR presents the second of a series of limited edition collections illustrating the various approaches to environmental sound art. These collections allow for longer format works to be presented within a multi-artist presentation. Also returning for the first time in five years is the custom card stock insert packaging housed inside clear vinyl sleeves. Yperiau, by French sound artist Eric Cordier, is a sonic exploration of the lower regions of the Maison de Radio France in Par…
Folk XII
FOLK XII" was born as a CD re-edition of Militia's - a band from Perugia, Central Italy - debut release (a four tracks EP entitled "Folk II" released by Contempo in 1985), but also, as the title aptly suggests, as a new reading of that work with the help of modern technology (which produced a partial remixing and remastering by the musicians themselves) and its integration with unreleased tracks that were left aside until today. That 12", althought still immature, was favorably received by the p…
featuring Ginsberg, Hentz, Irmler
Bob Rutman has invented what may well be the largest stringed instrument ever made. with a bow made of fishing line, he bows the suspension of a gigantic steel sail and in this way creates drones whose volume is not unlike the noise of a plane taking off. we might be reminded of russolo and 'the art of noise' by the futurists, or of machine music or industrial. and we're right and wrong there. of course, simply the look of rutman's steel cello gives a martial impression. so, it's not surp…
Seamstress In A Suitcase
Tan or Boil – a pun on the name of bratty short stop from those 1970s Bad News Bears films that stuck – is the alias of the Pittsburgh-born Jason Bacasa. After growing up in Pittsburgh and studying graphic design, Jason took flight from his home town to work freelance in a variety of cities, though his latest and current stint in New York seems more permanent than those in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. On the songwriting side, Jason’s continual travels kept him to just an acoustic guit…