New Arrivals
Re-Engineering
Steven Warwick aka Heatsick cocks a unique and compelling perspective on contemporary dance music with his bold follow-up to 'Intersex', a gorgeous, layered work that those of you into DJ Sprinkles should check out without delay. Now woven with leaner dancefloor muscle, the deeply funked views of 'Re-Engineering' are characterised by the artist as a "cybernetic poem". We can take this quite literally in his use of spoken word in pieces such as 'Re-Engineering' with its Chris Morris-esque wordpla…
These Are The Good Times
The Vittelli label announces itself with this fine release of London’s highlife, lowlife, wildlife and everday life plucked from Ian Rawes’ vast London Sound Survey. At his day job at the British Library sound archive Rawes cut his teeth in archiving and explored its depths. Field recordings and studies by acoustic ecologists came to his attention around the same time that he was looking to create his own capital-based project. At this time the internet promised to be the great equaliser a…
Wake Up Awesome
The second chapter of SStudios (Software Studio Series). SStudios is a new venture in the Software Recording Co.'s expanding catalog that invites artists in the field of electronic music to create collaborative works of quality and vision. Inspired by the historical intersections of live performance and studio post-production, Wake Up Awesome is a modern kind of fusion in technique as well as genre. At its core are three artists highly experienced with both instant and labored composition.…
Late
New York's "...premiere improvisatory, vocal-and-electronics cosmic beat-box band..." return to Woodsist with a brilliant side of loopy hypnotics, including an insert code for free digital download of the 2007 cassette-only release for Tank Tapes redeemable directly from the label. All four tracks are previously unreleased, arms-out eyes-shut wanders through darkly tinted terrain. 'Oboh' opens up with what sounds like reversed field recordings made inside a washing machine at a Native Am…
Pan Am Stories
Tape-warped phantom band Rangers finally unleash the lush, soaring, expansive prog-pop opus we always knew was floating inside the fretboard (and imagination) of multi-instrumentalist mystery maestro Joe Knight. The north Dallas-raised, San Fran-residing head Ranger grew up taking classical guitar lessons from a dude who claimed to have 'toured with the Dead,' and some of that brain-wonked jam agenda obviously seeped into the young Knight, who began recording his own loose, lo-fi jangle s…
Lonely women's club
Beautiful new work from Lawrence English. Pressed in an edition of 500 copies. Somewhere after dark, before dawn, in a place where natural light is shunned and organ is singing. It's voice is that of an arcing clouds of tone, emerging and falling with an uneasy sense of pace and direction. The voice warbles, a vibrato of shifting pulse and subtle variation. The room around it is filled with a dusty ash; smoke in haze like proportions. Eyes are blood shot, sunken below the rim of a glass. …
Combines
The GGRIL is an ensemble of musicians who have decided to give a space to experiment with various forms of interactions possible in an orchestra without a conductor. The group brings together a dozen musicians from different backgrounds, but all eager to explore new territories offered by bands where the music is alive, freed from the linearity of writing. Powered by Tour de Bras, Rimouski, this set is a way to involve a large number of musicians and composers in the region around a unifying pro…
Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan Vol. 2
Molam is a multi-faceted folk country music native to Laos and the collection of rural Northeastern Thai provinces called Isan. Molam is an umbrella term used for numerous Lam styles. It literally translates into "expert singer" or "expert song." Featured here on volume two of this series are Lam Phun, Lam Thuy, Lam Plern, Lam Dern, and Lam Sing styles of Molam recordings from the 1970s and 1980s. All of these forms are built from a tradition that is centuries-old. A few examples of Molam…
Arf Arf
The Australian sound poetry / film-maker / artist group ARF ARF consists of Marisa Stirpe, Frank Lovece, Michael Buckley and Marcus Bergner. Between 1985 and 2000 they produced and mounted hundreds of live performances in Australia and Europe. Their film 'Thread of Voice' (featuring Bob Cobbing / Konkrete Canticle) has been shown widely including at The Serpentine Gallery (London), The Pompidou Centre (Paris), Arsenal Kino (Berlin), Millennium (New York) and at the Museum of Modern Art in…
Weird universe
Valerie Martino's Unicorn Hard-On project has been a long running staple in the American underground since it's inception in 2003. Through her own Tangled Hares imprint, as well as many others, she's built a strong, constantly evolving catalog of singular works that serves to many as a prototype of the current beat-oriented phenomena currently sweeping the nation. Martino's vision, however,remains unphased and flourishes accordingly to her own unique vision; standing outside of any trends and re…
Spider John
This vinyl-only album fills a crucial gap in the evolution of legendary folk artist Spider John Koerner. Recorded in between 1965's Spider Blues and 1969's Running, Jumping, Standing Still (with Willie Murphy, both released on Elektra), Koerner is captured here live and unaccompanied at The Ash Grove in Los Angeles, bringing to light an exciting and previously-undocumented period in the career of Spider John. The excellent recording captures Koerner at the absolute peak of his guitar-playin…
New Slave Part II: Essence Implosion!
Further to their acclaimed 'New Slaves' LP of spring 2010, Zs offer 'Essence Explosion' backed with new remixes on vinyl from Thee Majesty (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Bryin Dall), JG Thirlwell (Foetus) and Cex, plus a download code for mixes by Gabe Andruzzi (The Rapture), Zebrablood (Excepter), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and Ecstatic Sunshine redeemable directly from the label. It's hard not to be wowed by the velocity of their explicit noise skronk on the original version, …
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…
Jessica In The Room Of Lights
Reissue of this largely unknown yet spellbinding touchstone in the canon of Sheffield's industrial music heritage, the album was recorded in 1986 as a soundtrack to a theatre performance recorded by John Avery, a contemporary of Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA. Forced Nostalgia's sixth release imposes the uncannily affective melancholia of John Avery's 1986 soundtrack to a theater performance Jessica in the Room of Lights by the coincidentally-named Forced Entertainment company. Avery employs pi…
A Red Score In Tile
Composed in 1979 and inspired by James Elaine's painting of the same name. First released on Three Poplars on LP in 2003. Cover picture: A Red Score In Tile (L'Apocalyse des Animaux), detail, James Elaine, 1979. Canvas, acrylic paint, taxidermied animals. 112" x 120". Title on disc and inner face of back insert: "a red score in tile (1979)".
Use your illusions
After a 12” for the Souterrain Transmissions label and a split LP with Ducktails on No Fun Productions, Dracula Lewis delivers his long-awaited debut full length "U$e Your Illu$ion$"; a title which evokes an imaginary deviant glamour which is synonymous with the teasing nature and sense of mystery which is a part of Dracula Lewis’ world. Working with an abundance of pop based ideas with an abstract mentality, the record brings to mind, in manner and tone, hallucinatory avant strategies that were…
Sane Men Surround
Following up their warmly-received 2011 Alter debut, The Letter (ALT 005LP), Sane Men Surround is the second album to emerge from Southend-on-Sea's Liberez. Like their debut, the nine tracks here continue to savagely EQ percussion, guitar, violin and electronics into abstraction with tracks like "A Warning and My Madness Offends," bearing the industrial and almost ritualistic atmospherics of its predecessor, while "Nema Te" and "What's Mine Is Mine" introduce a new style of composition and songw…
Split LP
When does modern composition become drone?  When the original elements are sunk into a sea of strings, brass and electronics, as they are on this evocative split release.  Each of the artists composes, but in a modern fashion, either by manipulating source elements or by rearranging them to make a different sort of sense.  Both pieces are based on recordings of the Antonio Lomatto choir, conducted by Davide Mainetti.  The phantoms of these recordings remain, spectral yet in…
I Love It When You Snore
Mats Gustafsson is perhaps the pre-eminent saxophonist of this post-free jazz/improv era. A perfect combination of Peter Brotzmann's fiery passion, Evan Parker's extended technique and Ken Vandermark's willingness to explode genre boundaries, Gustafsson's discography spans over two decades and sports numerous must-hear recordings with a long laundry list of collaborators, including such luminaries as Brotzmann, Vandermark, Joe McPhee, Jim O'Rourke, Derek Bailey, Sonic Youth and The Ex. Illustrio…
Remember your black day
“Remember Your Black Day” features the first material conceived and produced as a full length by Dominick Fernow for the Vatican Shadow project following almost a dozen tapes (mostly released on Hospital Productions) and vinyl editions (released by the likes of Blackest Ever Black, Modern Love and Type) over the last three years. None of the 8 tracks included have been released before on any other format. At a time when the scene is saturated with “Noise Techno” the album is almost celebratory b…