New Arrivals
Awakening Messiah
Dominick "Vatican Shadow" Fernow presents veiled techno producer Violet Poison on his Bed Of Nails imprint with the spectral industrial gloom of 'Awakening Messiah'. To date Violet Poison is best known as the mysterious accomplice of Shaped Noise in their Violetshaped alias - but here he strikes solo, transmitting four cuts of steely, night-stalking cyberpunk driven by sputtering techno engines through intensely bleak synth interzones. Like Black Rain or Vatican Shadow, it's a chilling exercise …
Wood Flute Songs: Anthology/Live 2006-2012
Some of the most amazing work we've ever heard from this legendary bassist – a set that's not based around music from a wooden flute, but which instead refers to the instrument in its title – as an illustration of the very organic approach of the work within! A 8CD box set of all previously unissued recordings by world-renowned bassist-composer-bandleader William Parker, a 2013 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation's Artist Award. Parker is a wonderfully prolific composer, and over half of t…
Soul Translation - A Spiritual Suite
A beautiful little record – and one that definitely earns the "suite" distinction in the title – given the thoughtful longform approach of the set! The album's got a more composed feel than other spiritual jazz sessions of the time – not in a stiff way, but in a style that shows that leader Donald Alexander Strachan really has a strong vision in his music – not just in the compositions he spins forth on the record, but also in the way he directs the rich energy of the ensemble! The lineup featur…
The Magic Bridge
Gatefold double LP version. Includes a CD with three bonus tracks, plus lyric sheet inserts. Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson's genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out on CD (Pink Triangle…
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…
Testacoda
Jérôme Noetinger is an improviser and composer of electroacoustic music based in Rives (near Grenoble), France. He plays Revox, tapes and radio. SEC_ is the moniker of Mimmo Napolitano, an electronic musician and sound engineer from Naples, Italy. He plays Revox, no-input feedback, laptop, electronic devices. Together these two play the kind of improvised electronic mayhem that put Europe on the map. Testcoda features two separate recordings of shapeshifting electronics. One side recorded…
Unfinished. For William Turner, painter
"Which side of the picture should be hung uppermost? 2003, London: the first time I visited Tate Britain, Tate Gallery, and the first time I saw and really experienced the paintings of JMW Turner (1775-1851). Overwhelmed, especially by his late and unfinished works I was stunned by the power of the stillness of his work. 25 years before that something similar; me, as a young man in Madrid; Prado, Goya paintings and etchings - for me an initiation which opened up the door to earlier art an…
The Acrylic Widow
Awesome! Quoting Metamkine review "Dylan Nyoukis returns assemblying iconoclastic voices, collages of field recordings, reminding a Tibetan monk lost in a festival of sound poetry or the music concrete by Michel Chion". Four measured tracks, all washing up a new kind of psychedelic moss, fresh thin tendrils, easy to snap, but determined to grow among loose grey matter late on into the next day, and the next and the next. Dry coughs and outta-whack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs. …
Hertta Lussu Assa
Lau Nau, Islaja, and Kuupuu all together in one band - it's like the dreamiest aQ daydream come true! All three of these ladies have been responsible for some of the most mystical and beautiful recordings of the last few years, all of which have become permanent favorites with everyone here. Lau Nau, and Islaja's recent recordings have shown them moving toward a more direct approach in their songwriting, but this project really lets all of these ladies dig deep into their textured, exper…
An Ambassador for Laing
LP version. Debut album from the Edinburgh-based duo of Marc Dall and Alex Ander, who work with intricately-stacked percussion, dub-wise bass and a rich harmonic tapestry of processed voices, keys, harp, vibraphone, guitar, woodwind, strings and synthesizer -- every sound re-sampled to the nth degree then subjected to subtle automation and rigorously fine-tuned over a period of many months. From the mesmerizing, pastoral drift of "Anger Sees Red" and "Dwelling by the Meadow" to agitated arabesqu…
Structures and Solitude
Tor Lundvall’s elegant soundtracks have been captured onto nine full length albums and collected within various compilations, raising his stature as one of the most abundant craftsman within the field of ambient music. Lundvall’s second box set for Dais features a 5 disc collection of more recent works including the albums Empty City and Last Light, as well as CD versions of the vinyl-only albums Sleeping & Hiding and The Shipyard. Additionally, the fifth disc in the collection entitled Night …
Stranded
Since 2002, Idea Fire Company has performed and recorded as a quartet with core members Karla Borecky and Scott Foust (me!), joined by Meara O'Reilly and Jessi Swenson. (Meara and Jessi, along with Matt Krefting, start in my finally completed feature-length film Here's To Love!). I feel this LP is as strong as any I've been involved in, and I feel pretty strongly about my body of work. Stranded is the perfect companion to Anti-Natural. Excellent Karla Borecky cover. 180 gram luxury object.
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…
Ask the dust
Hailing from Northern California, John Davis is a sound artist, composer and filmmaker who has released music on labels such as Root Strata and Digitalis. With “Ask the Dust,” he offers up a moving suite of compositions made using a plethora of instrumentation including guitar, piano, tape loops, Max/MSP, field recordings and the newest addition to his arsenal, a complex assortment of Blacet synthesizer modules. Davis uses the synth not as the crux of his recordings but as a tool among many in h…
Kenzo Deluxe
Guitarist Chris Forsyth is a unique voice in the realm of American music, having emerged from the challenging free form expressionism of his old group Peeesseye with a lyrical command rare in any genre. His newest work brings his trademark lyricism to new heights in his most straightforward setting yet. Gone are the fleshed out rock band arrangements of last year’s Paranoid Cat LP, replaced on Kenzo Deluxe, by Forsyth shunning overdubs and playing his transcendent songs alone in a room on his el…
Journey from Anywhere
Compound Eye is Drew McDowall (formerly of Coil) and Tres Warren (Psychic Ills and Messages). Journey from Anywhere is their second album release following Origin of Silence, an art edition LP on The Spring Press label. This double LP features four sides of improvised electronics that lead the listener into the dark recesses of the duo's subterranean explorations. Each of these works move at a slow and considered pace, gradually unfolding into a transportative blur of dark psychedelic minim…
Rehearsal tapes and alt. Takes NYC 1976-1978
"Connie Burg and I met Sumner Crane and Nancy Arlen in late 1975 and quickly decided to start a band. Sumner had been playing piano since he was a kid and I trumpet, guitar and more recently bass, but we were for the most part self taught. Connie decided to pick up a guitar and we started jamming in Nancy’s loft on Broadway and Duane St. where Sumner lived downstairs. For the first few months it was just piano, bass and acoustic guitar, with some paper bag percussion from Nancy. Our biggest rock…
Avast!
Avast! was created from field recordings made between 2009 and 2012 in Lyttelton, a volcanic harbour on the South Island of New Zealand. Sounds were captured at sites around the natural ampthitheatre of this extinct caldera: from abandoned wartime bunkers on the top of the crater rim to the port and its cacophony of cargo ships, tugs and workshops. The work is also haunted by the resonance of buildings such as the Timeball Station, which were destroyed when the town was at the epicentre of a maj…
Proceed with Caution!
Whereas the earlier black jazz album Shawn-Neeq had its share of riff-based funk, Calvin Keys' second outing Proceed with Caution! (1974) sticks close to straight-ahead jazz verities with the 30-something guitarist in the studio with seven similarly young, on-the-rise musicians including Charles Owens (saxophones, flute), Oscar Brashear (trumpet), Al Hall Jr. (trombone), Kirk Lightsey (electric piano), Henry Franklin (bass), and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler (drums). Keys can really play the guitar, e…
Live from Festival au Desert, Timbuktu
Two days before the 2012 rebellion in northern Mali. Soldiers are everywhere. Guns mounted on pickups; low-flying surveillance planes. Several thousand people have gathered outside Timbuktu to celebrate the music and culture of the Sahara at the 12th edition of the Festival au Desert. Three months later, Sharia descends on northern Mali. A millennial history is suppressed. Shrines destroyed. Secular music banned. Before, the streets were alive with music. Weddings, baptisms, celebrations …