New Arrivals
Animalia Corolla
Most of us are living in an urban world, dominated by constant noise and contagious stress. Our ears are conditioned by this aggressive environment and have often lost the ability to perceive another discreet world surrounding us. It might be hidden but also swarming, vivid and incredibly musical. We are all able to prick up our ears to some birds chattering together, the wind shaking leaves, toads singing serenades or old spirits telling us their immemorial adventures…Since its creation in 2006…
Eye of the microphone
A somewhat surreal audio rendition of the sounds of The City of London. BJ Nilsen (b,1975 Sweden) is a sound and recording artist. His work is based on the sound of nature and its effect on humans. Heprimarily uses fieldrecordings and electronic composition as a working method. He has worked for film, television, theatre, dance and as sound designer. Track notes: In 2012 I received a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust for a one-year Artist in Residency at the UCL Urban Laboratory in London, …
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…
Phantom Horse
Phantom Horse is the duo of Ulf Schütte and Niklas Dommaschk from Hamburg and Kiel (home of seminal Digitalis Recordings artist Jürgen Müller). Schütte is a (part-time) member of Datashock, Black To Comm, Aosuke et al and has recently released his modular synth explorations under the Alien Radio moniker on a (sold-out) Dekorder split-LP with Keith Fullerton Whitman and a 4-way split 7" with Köhn, Ducktails and Peaking Lights on Kraak. Dommaschk plays guitar, synth and electric piano.
With…
L'Origine / TEMA
Drawing inspiration from the "Action Direct" expanded guitar performances of Masayuki Takayanagi, Fusinato places the guitar at the centre of his work. A few crudely played strings provide the impetus for a long chain of electronics which obliterate the original signal and leaves us with a hyper-kinetic wall of full frequency spectrum noise. Like the piano in David Tudor early 1960's performances of Cage's Variations II, in Fusinato's work, the guitar is the object of a dialectic of simultaneous…
Crowded
Breathtaking slab of the black stuff from peerless drone/noise (de)composer Kevin Drumm - with "spectral editing and time domain consultation" by Russell Haswell. We shouldn't need to tell you that this is a big deal. But, in case you're a bit daft; it is. Haswell helps out on the wormholing A-side 'Repetitive Algae'; a single tract of cacophonous, morphing rhythmic noise reminding of Philip Corner's 'Coldwater Basin' - a home recording of cold water running from a faucet into a basin - b…
Hostile Environment
Bolder is Martin Maischein, who used to record as Heinrich At Hart on Position Chrome, and Peter Votava, also known as Pure, who has recorded previously for Mego and was half of Ilsa Gold. With their combined background in electronic music of all kinds, Bolder introduces a significant proposition to the current experimental electronic boom. Blurring the lines between industrial, techno, dub, ambient, and narrative forms, the work on Bolder's debut presents a dance amongst the abyss, a world wher…
Oiseaux-Tempete
Oiseaux-Tempête debut album retraces, in a sonic odyssey, the qualms and queries of a sickly and dysfunctional Western society. Experimental, Stoner, Post-Rock, Ambient, Free Music. The trio was created in Paris in 2012 by the musically versatile pair Frédéric D. Oberland (guitar) and Stéphane Pigneul (bass) (members of FareWell Poetry and Le Réveil des Tropiques) and percussionist Ben Mc Connell (drummer for bands such as Beach House, Rain Machine, Au Revoir Simone, Marissa Nadler and Winter Fa…
Along the way
Former Emeralds member Mark McGuire has planned a new album following his 2011 albumGet Lost. Along the Waythrough Dead Oceans. On Along The Way, McGuire writes in the liner notes: "€œThis story is an odyssey through the vast, unknown regions of the mind€¦the endless unfolding of psychological landscapes, leading to perpetual discoveries and expansions, in a genuinely emergent and infinite world of worlds. Further he writes “[the new album] is not a critique, it is not inst…
Compositions For Geomungo and Gayageum
Sub Rosa reissues Belgian composer/violinist Baudouin de Jaer's Gayageum Sanjo (SR 347CD), with a complete new design and an additional CD of new compositions for another ancient Korean instrument: the geomungo ("black zither"). "Baudouin de Jaer chose a highly delicate musical instrument, the geomungo, and has drawn from it a marvelous creation; I can only congratulate him with all my heart for such an accomplishment, and for the release of this beautiful CD. I hope he will continue to make gre…
In emptiness there is truth (Call no man happy until he is dead)
A soundwork commissioned for the 2010 edition of the Ravello Festival, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Stefania Miscetti and Gianluca Ranzi. Voice: Seijiro Murayama. Voice recording engineer and EQ: Stefano Pilia Original stereo mix: John Duncan. All other sounds, recording, editing and mixing by ALH.
“In relation to this soundwork, the extended overtones created by the clashing frequencies of the ‘ghost chorus’ could indeed be read as faint glimmerings of a sublime imperative. This imperative,…
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…
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…
Stroomtoon II
In December 2011, I recorded the album Stroomtoon, which was released by the French Nuun label the year after. The music was constructed using recordings from improvisations with a setup that I was trying out for upcoming live performances. It's actually the same setup that I still use nowadays, consisting of an old Phillips analogue tone generator and a selection of effects pedals. The Stroomtoon album still feels like an accomplishment. It's layered, subtle and considered, but I wanted to see …
Solitaire
Beautifully presented reissue of classic archival electroacoustic works, within "Warszawa-Oslo" project, a recollection, phonographic documentation and reactivation of bonds between Polish and Norwegian electro-acoustic music, presentation of their individual character and unquestionable significance on the international scale. This beautifully designed set (with extensive booklet of note) collects some of the most exciting, shimmering and crystalline electronic sounds to be unearthed in quite a…
Moved by magnets
Stunning release from Cristian Vogel and SØS Gunver Ryberg as SGR^CAV for The Tapeworm. The label informs us that "Their compositions encourage the listener to observe and explore the resonances of a powerful musical awareness" and 'Moved By Magnets' exhibits a keen sense of spatial perception, tone and presence which entirely justifies that claim. Over four pieces they explore diffuse, free-formed spaces charged with a slow-moving, chaotic sort of energy ranging from the shuddering metallic res…
Berberian Sound Studio
To coincide with Halloween we can announce that Warp Records will be releasing Broadcast's original soundtrack that accompanied the recent Warp Film 'Berberian Sound Studio' - Peter Strickland’s brilliant homage to 1970s Italian horror. The film's integral soundtrack was composed by Broadcast before Trish Keenan's untimely passing last year.
Mimikry
2010 edition, long out of print, few copies resurfaced. Box Set, Limited Edition, Special Limited Box Edition - Album comes in a cardboard sleeve with tracks 11 and 12 as bonus tracks and as part of a box set including inserts. Having nicely set up the release of this album with their Ret Marut Handshake EP a few months back, Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten fame) deliver a set that exceeds all expectations. One of the most strikingly obvious comparisons to arise from …
Eros
Amazing quadruple tape set comprising of 8 artists, 4 tapes for almoust 2 hours of unsustainable harsh noise. Tounge Knax, Mordant Karma from Japan, Blodvite and Arv & Miljo from Sweden, Elisha Morningstar, Endless Sea from Italy, Skingraft, Developer from USA. Each artist explains his idea of eros, the relationship between lovers, the power of physical and mental attraction.
Take a chance In the void: Harold Norse at the Beat Hotel
Historical recordings made by Harold Norse when he was living with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Gregory Corso at the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris during the early sixties. By the time Norse arrived in Paris he had traveled extensively in Morocco and Europe and his poetry was already championed by people like W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams.
Together with Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs and Gysin, Norse was one of the first to apply the cut-up method. He made the tec…