New Arrivals
in Tokyo
Four pieces of computer music. Iancu Dumitrescu \'Hazard and tectonics\' (2009 - 2013), \'Crepuscule I\' (2011-12), \'Early, before all times\' (2010-11). Ana-Maria Avram \'Metalstorm I\' (2012).
Nocturnes
'Nocturnes' is William Basinski's first new solo recording release in four years. It comprises two typically sanguine, extended compositions; 'Nocturnes' written between 1979-80 during his post-grad period in San Francisco, and 'The Trail Of Tears' recorded in 2009 for the Robert Wilson opera, 'The Life and Death of Marina Abramovich'. If there's any one way to measure the efficacy of his music, it's by how drowsy one feels after consumption. We could either do with a snooze or a strong c…
Backpages
Ron Morelli returns to stare down the 'floor with four pieces written during the stress-busting sessions for Spit (HOS 407CD/LP). The muggy, droning welt of "Public Consumption" kicks off with the sound of New York techno shot from the hip, while "Another Hit" vents a vintage era-Regis style built on skull-chipping snares and effluent acid modulation. The album's writhing batacuda banger, "Crack Microbes," reappears here as an extra-ferric extended "Version," sustaining the hypnotic intensi…
Mauricio Kagel Ludwig van
Mauricio Kagel’s 1970s film Ludwig Van, a rather critical piece of avant-garde cinema, asked pointed questions about the ways in which later audiences appropriate and interprete Beethoven’s music. Pianist F. Blondy and turntablist DJ LENAR reclaim and reinterpret the soundtrack in this post-modern mashup that includes source material such as Herzog soundtracks, a lecture by Alfred Cortot, samples of string playing and percussion from contemporary improvisation records, and numerous other …
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…
Prince Of Truth
Beginning with her first Constellation release in 2006, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista project has steadily been gaining recognition for its complex beauty and fierce, raging appeals. Bozulich has been knocking these and many other ideas into form for two decades (Neon Veins, Ethyl Meatplow, The Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella). Evangelista is the best and the brightest, filled with adventurous risk taking that sometimes whispers and licks, sometimes pulls the listener so close that it is hard to bre…
Shell-shocked
Meirino has been crossing fabricated, gathered, altered, provoked or wrong sounds for nearly two decades. The second Noisendo release follows the first one (Gorgomilos) closely - chronologically speaking - and dives deeper into a DIY electronica where machines dictate as much law as Man. Mutual respect? The obvious punk drive of Noisendo001 is more subtle in 002 but it is present in the nervous breathing of the acoustic and synthetic sounds that excite our senses while listening to this r…
Dream Seeds
Extra Life’s first record for Northern Spy, Dream Seeds marks a dramatically new creative direction in the band’s still-young but prolific career. It is perhaps Extra Life’s most clearly-defined concept album : seven songs dealing entirely with the twin themes of dreams and children. In a lyrical left turn away from the morbid sexuality and black humor of Made Flesh, these songs look to the subconscious in search of innocence, morality and meaning. According to principal songwriter and e…
Opiate Sun
The EP might be the ideal format for Justin Broadrick's music, regardless of his alias. Whether he's trying to erase your head via concrete-slab guitars in Napalm Death, reduce techno to a series of clockwork hammerblows with Final, or massage your pleasure centers with neo-shoegaze in Godflesh, Broadrick's music has a laudable singularity. The three-or-four-song dose mainlines his all-consuming mood of the moment without the potential dilution of trying to fill up a CD. Broadrick claims to be …
Kitchen
Kevin Drumm is a musician not only known as a one-man-orchestra exploring the boundaries of music, but also a star under the banner of inestimable Bocian Records label. This time we were granted with access to his kitchen. The LP is limited to 34 minutes, consisting of 2 pieces, originally recorded in 1996 yet fully remastered in 2012. Side one piece slowly opens a kitchen door. Smooth, equilibrious and loopy sound fractions that surpass those requirements ambient music is bound to meet. F…
Yesterday & Today
Double vinyl LP pressing includes bonus CD pressing of this 2009 release. The Field is Axel Willner, and 2007's Here We Go Sublime was one of the year's most acclaimed releases, receiving a 9.0 from Pitchfork as well as universal praise. It was a soundtrack to the spit-shined airport of your dreams - faceless, futuristic, and fuzzy. Now, Willner expands his palette, continuing the oblique sampling strategy while building up the rhythmic architecture.
Flocks
Two new long tracks on a 33rpm 7". Maginot features gorgeous vocals & acoustic guitar. Alaskan Lashes is a smear of found sounds & ambient tones. Housed in a heavy card sleeve, a mini lp style sleeve, complete with title on the spine. Pressed on very pretty, pale YELLOW vinyl. Limited to 500 copies!
Revelation
An undisputed 70s spiritual jazz classic – and arguably the best album that Doug Carn ever cut for the Black Jazz label! The set is a masterpiece of spiritual jazz – with Carn on keyboards setting up the groove, and wife Jean singing some incredible vocals. Doug Carn's third album for Black Jazz, Revelation (1973), is as compulsively listenable as his previous outings. The keyboardist-composer-arranger-bandleader is on top of his game -- Jean Carn returns to handle the vocal parts, the hir…
Black Magic & Mustache
Seattle-based Simon Henneman's first solo vinyl release is here. Mr. Henneman has worn many hats in the musical vortex of the Seattle sub-underground, most "famously" as one of the Diminished Men, who released an LP on the Sun City Girls Abduction label in 2009. That LP gave the lucky few who procured a copy an idea of the talents of that great band. Here, Mr. Henneman strikes out on his own and creates a solo journey of a much more intimate palette. Playing every instrument on the reco…
A World Out Of Time
Both words in Eternal Tapestry's name say something about their music, but it's the first that's key. This Portland band's expansive psych rock sounds like it could go on forever, and most of their releases have in fact been culled from longer, open-ended improvisations. The way they slowly build these jams-- adding parts, increasing volume, and cresting in unison-- you get the feeling they're always playing, and their records are just glimpses of an endless stream.For A World Out of Time, Etern…
Home Aged & The 18 Month Hope
The most recent installment of the rare & unheard archival recordings from the transgressive 70′s performance art group COUM Transmissions. Founded in late 1969 by Genesis P-Orridge, COUM Transmissions’s provocative performances mixed with visual art solidified the group as one of the most forward thinking breakthroughs within the 70′s conceptual art scene. Between 1969 and 1976, with a rotating membership including John Shapiro, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Spydeee Gasmantell, COUM Transmissions …
Untitled
This album is a return to brutality for Drumm and a continuation of the intense lo-end evil of Wiese. Needless to say it is amazing and an essential purchase for noise fans, Mania-inducing heavy waves of suffocating bass frequencies with ripping and tearing, hissing and speaker-destroying hell-storm; at times these guys indulge in noise in the service of the metal that has influenced them via hi-end frequencies, but for the most part this is an expansive record that will immensely satisfy fans o…
Continuation
Recorded in the 1960s with Marshall Allen featured on Jupiterian flute and Danny Thompson on Neptunian libflecto. The original LP was pressed in very small numbers at the end of the 60′s, with purposely mislabeled details in the liner notes in typical fashion to Ra’s output during that phase. The contents are believed to be from 1963-64, a period that produced some of the composers most revered works and an era when Ra relocated to New York from Chicago. What we do know about Continuation i…
Live in Istambul
"Collective improvisation based on a Turkish folk tune. One of the most ecstatic piece of music i ever heard (simple as it is) ! suddenly i found myself dancing madly, like a Whirling Dervish... unfortunatly i didn't get Enlightment BUT, it was fun !" ep
Live in Israel
Iancu Dumitrescu 'Liminal involvement' for ensemble. 'Le silence d'or' (Israel version) for ensemble and computer sounds. Ana-Maria Avram 'Lux animae XII' for ensemble and computer sounds. 'Telesma' (Israel version) for bass clarinet, ensemble and computer sounds. Contemporary Music Ensemble from Tel Aviv under direction Ilan Volkov with special guest Stephen O'Malley.