New Arrivals
The Rocker
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010!
Jailbreak s the duo of pedal steel-vocalist Heather Leigh and drummer Chris Corsano. The name foregrounds the kind of outlaw violence with which the two reformulate rock-roll instants by bringing free jazz fire power to amp-humping sex beats. Their musical alliance goes all the way back to the legendary Brattleboro Free Folk Fest, the birthplace of the 'New Weird America', where Corsano and his long-term saxophone partner Paul Flaherty joined Leigh and Christina C…
Der Regt Mich Auf / A Controversy
Based around the married couple Paul and Limpe Fuchs, the group Anima, also known as Anima-Sound, was one of the most radically avant-garde and creative groups to emerge from the thriving Krautrock scene of Munich at the end of the 1960s. In fact, their improvised atonal sounds and unconventional instrumentation is much closer to the spirit of experimental free jazz than anything remotely close to rock music. The Fuchs began in the late '60s as part of the counterculture at the time. Adding to t…
Olympians
‘Experimental’ bands are never going to please everyone; a lot of them seem almost uninterested in being anything but show-offs and twats, and there’s occasionally no attempt to make a connection twixt music and listener. All we get is: ‘marvel at my amazing button-pushing skills.’ And then, suddenly and horrifically, you turn into your dad: ‘that’s not music, that’s noise!’ Despite the post-watershed name, Fuck Buttons have always been a more subtle and meditative addition to the experime…
Character
Opportunities for introspection have come few and far between for Canadian-born, New York City-based cellist Julia Kent. After coming to prominence as a member of the cello-driven group Rasputina in the ‘90s, she went on to arrange and play on numerous recordings and tour extensively as a member of Antony and the Johnsons, among other projects.The opportunity to explore her own emotional and creative world came with her solo LPs, Delay (2007) and Green and Grey (2011), and it is something she ap…
Scott 2
2013 repress. "Originally released in 1968, Scott 2 made it all the way to number one on the UK pop charts, perhaps the strangest number one hit in pop history. Continuing with his orchestral obsession, Scott 2 features over-the-top string and horn arrangements, occasionally veering into dangerously schmaltzy territory. This production style is in drastic contrast to the lyrical content, songs of despair, prostitution, homosexuality, and brutal honesty, indicting the same glamorous and gli…
Kogetsudai
Kogetsudai is Sylvain Chauveau's 10th album, the second in a trilogy initiated by Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) (2010), where the song structure is dismantled and reconstructed on the fringe of silence. Whereas Singular Forms found inspiration from Abstract Painting, Kogetsudai is influenced by Zen rock gardens found in Japan Ñ also the location where the album was conceived (for the most part) Ñ and from which the album borrows its title. Layers of minimal electronic sounds and filtered f…
Spoken Music Concert At Paula Cooper Gallery
Originally issued on Dog W/A Bone in 2002. The S.E.M. Ensemble's Spoken Music Concert took place on Tuesday, February 6, 1990, at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, then on Wooster Street in Soho. It was performed by members of the S.E.M. Ensemble: Petr Kotik (Director), Chris Nappi, Joseph Kubera, and Den Neill (sound mix); and four guests: John Cage, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, and Anne Tardos. "Empty Words," written in 1973-1974, is arguably the most musical of John Cage's texts. M…
Purge
Kevin Drumm's 2007 cassette 'Purge' on iDEAL went out of stock in less than a week. This is the CD version of that killer thing. Intense listening taking you deep into the known unknown, or perhaps the unknown known. Drumm's noise is extremely powerful and dynamic.; travelling frequencies, rich with details, with very little hope, with guaranteed exhaustion after frequent listening. I always think about Black Metal when I am listening to Drumm's works,Ê they share the same cold and darkness. 'Pu…
Almanac
Dragon Turtle Almanac is a heavy trip; a document of transformation, entropy, and causality. Dragon Turtle evokes Morricone landscapes as if painted by Glenn Branca, where dream atmospheres meet brutal realities of nature and relationships. These forces are both beautiful ("Causality", "Belt of Venus") and destructive ("Moon Fallout", "Burn the Leaves"). The textures and layers move with a sense of urgency and purpose ("Hometime", "Hourglass"). The duality of Tom Asselin and Brian Lightbody's mu…
Chiapaneca
A great, vivid recording of some wild playing, using the entire kit, rolling about on the various skins and cymbals. Recorded at Festival El Nicho Aural by Daniel Goldaracena at Centro Cultural España Mexico D.F 12 mayo 2012Mastering and cover design by Lasse Marhaug
Les Femmes Savantes
The Berlin based group Les Femmes Savantes, named after the famous play by Molière, Learned Ladies. This music is just as proud and individual, being a success and almost a myth in the improvised world, combining many styles of music. Les Femmes Savantes are Hanna Hartman, electronics, little objects, Andrea Neumann, inner piano, Sabine Ercklentz, trumpet, Ute Wasserman, voice, Ana Maria Rodriguez, electronics, each one of them an individual master. Together they let focus stay on either the gro…
Summer through my mind
Richard Youngs presents his debut recording for BaDaBing Records, and the label is looking forward to a long relationship. For Summer Through My Mind, Youngs pushes himself into a challenging new sphere yet again. A renowned musician with over 40 albums to his name, he goes somewhere he never has before - to the heart of American music. Summer Through My Mind is a country music album, warped through Youngs's ambidextral mind. A warning: it's not like any country album one has heard before. There…
El Nacimiento Del Huevo
Bernd Lohaus (1940 in Düsseldorf; + 5. November 2010 in Antwerpen) was a German artist (living in Antwerp/Belgium) mainly known for his sculptures, usually made of heavy found wood which he minimally changed (by carving in one word poems for example). He was a student of Joseph Beuys and together with Hugo Heyrman, Panamarenko and Wout Vercammen one of the first "Happeners" during the 1960's in Belgium, organising street performances in the centre of Antwerp. They published "Happening new…
Lava
"Lava is a wonderfully apt title for this duet between Liudas Mockunas on soprano, tenor and bass saxophones and Barry Guy on bass. The music was recorded live at Kaunas Artists House Concert Hall in Lithuania on the 2nd of April, 2011, and released in a limited edition run of 300 vinyl LP's. Lava is the appropriate name for this music as it flows slowly and inexorably forward. Guy is a rock solid bassist who is a stalwart on the avant jazz and classical scene in Europe, and his skills ar…
Transkript 17-Transkript 18
The source material for these recordings, produced between 2007 and 2009, originates from found objects and treated acoustic instruments such as cello, viola, double bass (Nikolaus Gerszewski), bass clarinet (Nicolas Wiese), as well as conga, cymbal, wood, paper, marbles, wallpapering table and chains. Further sounds have been produced using my voice and limbs. A basic rule for my work with digital tools is to maintain the liveliness of the source material within the structure of my compositions…
This is folk music
Raphael Lyon is the enigma known as Mudboy. From the incredibly detailed art/packaging to bizarre mp3 releases attached to scrap metal or plant matter to Freddy Krueger-inspired art installations, Lyon has always been one of the strangest cats on the scene.This unique perspective also infects his music. Whereas many of today's kosmiche-influenced artists bubble up from the noise scene (with knob-twiddling pedal pusher seemingly a prequisite to sequencing synth jammer these days), Mudboy's work h…
Real Sugar
"Ryan Garbes is the drummer of Iowa City bands such as Wet Hair, Dunebuggy, Trash Dog, and formerly Raccoo-oo-oon. His recordings under his own name represent a unique brand of solo multi-track recording with a seamless integrity; through a skillful use of instrumentation and recording technique, Garbes eschews notions of low fidelity for songs reminiscent of traditional American garage rock produced in the haze of an early '90s UK aesthetic. Genuine pop songs, cloaked in a comforting was…
Rv8
With RV8, the Osaka-based producer and musician Aoki Takamasa continues his long-term project that focuses on the modulation of rhythms and grooves. It began with his first EP Rhythm Variations in 2009, released as part three of the Unun-series. Besides his collaboration with Raster-Noton, he released records on several labels like Commmons, Progressive Form and Op.Disc, produced remixes for well-known musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yoshihiro Hanno and played performances at Elektra/Mont…
Leh Jani
First release on Sham Palace, a new label from key Sublime Frequencies conspirator Mark Gergis. "Leh Jani" -- the legendary Omar Souleyman track -- was originally released in Syria as a sprawling 30-minute epic groove, alongside two additional tracks. The entire 60-minute cassette album was recorded live to tape in 1998 at the home studio of producer Zuhir Maksi in the village of Ras Al Ain in northeastern Syria. Many of Omar's early tapes were recorded in this fashion to replicate the feeling o…
Live at the Red Garter 1970
his latest Transparency release brings an early July 1970 concert to our attention. "Live At The Red Garter" (later 'The Bottom Line' / New York City) doesn't offer the best sound quality, but it does give a glimpse of an exceptional version of the Arkestra: Sun Ra, Kwame Hadi, Akh Tal Ebah, Marshall Allen, Danny Davis, John Gilmore, Pat Patrick, Danny Ray Thompson, Eloe Emoe, Alan Silva, Alex Blake and a handful of unidentified percussionists...