New Arrivals
1933 Your house is mine
The cacophonic discord of Missing Foundation and the prophetic vision of Peter Missing culminated into a sophomore album following their legendary self-titled debut which was collected under the banner as 1933 Your House Is Mine. This tumultuous effort was brought about in 1988 as a means to educate the forgotten and venerate their followers using brash performance tactics and industrial rhythm to rally their cause. An industrial soundtrack of urban protest, Missing Foundation found their voice…
GAU
In March of 2012, nearing the end of a tour together through the Netherlands and Belgium, Celer, Machinefabriek, and Jan and Romke Kleefstra gathered in a country studio, spending an afternoon improvising to record Gau. Recorded by the old hardcorerocker Jan Switters at the Landscape studios in Gauw, situated in the countryside in the midst of Friesland, the place was surrounded by green fields with idle tractors, few trees, buzzards and only massive farmhouses dotting the horizon. From the almo…
Burning Off Impurities
Following soon after the critically praised Black Tar Prophecies collection on Important Records, Portland, Oregon's Grails return with their first proper studio album since 2004 release of Redlight. Burning Off Impurities - their debut for Temporary Residence Ltd. - makes good on the promise of those past releases in delivering an album that not only thrusts the group to new heights, but also significantly pushes the instrumental rock genre forward for the first time in nearly a decade. An incr…
Low Life / Last Exit
Two key 80s moments from Peter Brotzmann – split together here on a heavy LP! First up is material from the album Low Life – hard-handed work from the duo of Peter Brotzmann on reeds and Bill Laswell on bass – a set that's kind of a side project of the Last Exit quartet, and one that comes across with a similar sense of power! Laswell's handling a fair bit of basses here, often with a bit of processing – thanks partly to producer Martin Bisi – and there's a dark, electric undercurrent to the who…
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…
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…
Live At Doornroosje (Nijmegen 1982)
Recordings of a stand-out gig at Doornroosje in Nijmegen (NL). By 1982 De Brassers had been playing in almost every small public space or squad in the area and logically they had gathered a cult following. Sporadicly they also performed in The Netherlands. Doornroosje was / is the club where underground music groups performed before they became well-known, especially the 80s were an interesting period with Joy Division, Nick Cave and many local punk / new wave bands hitting the stage. Here we fi…
The Four Seasons
"Noah Creshevsky composes some of the most meticulously constructed electronic music around. For his third Tzadik CD he has created a sonic history of his life work, inspired by the idea of a retrospective. The Four Seasons presents a new large-scale composition that reflects his work from 1992 on to his present work with Hyperrealism, creating virtual "super-performers" using the sounds of voices and traditional instruments pushed beyond human capacities. Another brilliant and varied program ch…
Great Dose Of Monotonous Techno
Calling someone "ahead of his/her time" is straight out of Music Marketing 101 and is a claim that rarely holds much merit. On occasion, though, it's a phrase that is entirely appropriate and accurate. Joel Brindefalk was as integral a part of Sweden's premiere off-kilter dance label, Börft, as anyone outside its founders, Jan Svensson (FRAK, etc), Birre Isgren (FRAK, etc), and, eventually, Joachim Nordwall (Skull Defekts, etc). While Brindefalk's work under monikers such as Contemporary …
Dance Classics Vol. I
2013 repress. Born in Osaka, Kouhei Matsunaga is a musician and an illustrator. He started drawing during childhood under the influence of his grandfather. He grew up listening to hardcore techno and hip-hop, studied architecture and has been mainly making music since 1992. Under many different aliases (NHK, NHKyx, Internet Magic, Koyxen) he has released numerous albums on labels such as Skam Records, Wordsound, Raster-Noton and his first-ever album Upside Down on Mille Plateaux in 1998. He …
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 …
Hen ogledd
180gm LP limited to 250 copies. Between them Rhodri Davies and Richard Dawson are busy people. Playing festivals across the UK, Europe and the US; with their last solo albums (Wound Response and The Glass Trunk) both receiving huge critical acclaim, and serially collaborating with prominent figures across music's counter culture. Hailing from Newcastle, Dawson:Davies: Hen ogledd is the new good buddy duo-project between pioneering harp-fiend-legend-dangerman Rhodri Davies and rebel singer-painte…
Piece Of Mind
"As K.J. Gustin wrote, Piece Of Mind is a work of 'exotic psychedelic free-jazz-meets-rock, East-meets-West, progressive and smoky moment in late Twentieth Century music history'. Add to that a spice of jazzy brassed R&B and a touch of minor-key popsike sensitivity and you get an accurate description of the sounds contained in Roger Bunn's astonishing 1969 LP, originally released in the UK on the Major Minor budget label, but issued in some European countries (Ohr label in Germany or Phil…
s/t
"Marissa Nadler's Kickstarter funded self-titled self-release. Brian McTear produced the album, which Nadler says is the 'most honest, natural record' of her career." "You'll want this music to never end...best severe and complex emotions that we've possibly never recognized in this or previous lives." -- LA Weekly
Berlin
Rhodri Davies: harp. Mark Wastell: violoncello. Simon H. Fell: double bass. 'One day, I hope, the story will be written. The story of the group IST and its relationship to the birth of the music that subsequently became variously known as New London Silence or Lower Case Improv (and yes, I use those upper case letters intentionally). Perhaps the learned critics (who seem very rarely to actually ask the musicians) will tell us just what our place is in this history. Certainly we were not the firs…
Message Bag
We come burdened with the glorious purpose of having readied the latest recordings by Messages, a double LP set called Message Bag. It's a set of pieces that imparts a vibe rife with history, and yet clearly focused on the future. You buy these 2 LPs, poster and insert in a bag, but in all of its formats and strategies Message Bag operates as a return to an unresolved system, as an alternative to the rest of yr choices, and bestows something that can't be bought. We call it Wisdom.
Deviation
If “Dream Tennis” was any indication, Heatsick has struck a nerve with his singles that stretch preset washes of polyphony through sunset-hued landscapes of disco and house. Equipped with only a Casio keyboard, he has played alongside everyone from Omar Souleyman to DJ Harvey, Daniel Wang and Legowelt, and has demonstrated his ability not only to extend his keyboard to its limits, but to transcend its musical territory, opening up a diverse range of styles, genres and gestures to his danc…
Giorgio Gaslini - Complete Black Saint & Soul Note collection
Cam Jazz, the company behind the great series of Black Saint/Soul Note reissues, presents the first release in a new line – the complete works by artists on the Italian label Dischi Della Quercia. The inaugural set presents the complete label output from famed Italian pianist Giorgio Gaslini and includes eleven albums that have been unavailable in the US until now. Each is presented in a slipcase with the original album artwork and housed in a sturdy box. Pianist, composer, conductor and …
The eyes, the mouth Night of the ocean
Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and XO4 and VAMPIRE BELT's Bill Nace team up for the third time (they also released a cassette and did a FEVER cover) showing no band needs a drummer to trash or mildly shake brains!basement jams after listening to basement jams, deep down in the deepest basement of the valley, 2 guitars fighting for a place on a chubby cassette recorder while the ultra no wave vocals of Kim Gordon ghostride thru a pretty packed parking lot.a throw back as well to early raw Sonic Youth d…
Correspondance Sonore
A mail collaboration between Denis McCarty (turntable, cassettes, vinyles) & Martial Bécheau (cut-ups, computer, sounds). Martial Bécheau practice montage, the assembly of this matter that is the sound. Orchestration reports, juxtaposition plans, rhythm & density. Implement disparate materials, and compare the sonorous (sounds, words, music, soundscape, etc.).. Organize of the time factor - Subversive resonances - Respiratory theatre - Walled up silence - Temporal confrontations. Between collag…