New Arrivals
Song Islands Vol. 2
Song Islands Vol. 2, released under the Mount Eerie moniker as opposed to Microphones like the original Song Islands compilation, is a sizable compendium of songs covering from the 2002 release of Song Islands to the present day. Coming in at a total of 31 tracks, Song Islands Vol. 2 continues Phil Elverum’s powerful and decidedly exploratory musical style. The compilation maintains an incredible sense of intimacy, even when the vocals get choral, which is on the precipice of being the rule as o…
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…
Antropofagia
An outstanding recording, and an unjustly neglected contribution to prepared piano performance by Area member Patrizio Fariselli issued on Cramps in 1977 (in the legendary "DIVerso" series), a record with energy that's somewhere between John Cage and Cecil Taylor! At times, Patrizio Fariselli plays with a great sensitivity to silence – letting it emerge with as much force as his well-placed work on the keys of the piano. But at other times, he comes off with a full, frenzied sound that's really …
Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5
"Since 2005, Tompkins Square label's Imaginational Anthem compilations have featured some of the greatest acoustic guitarists in the world, with recordings spanning five decades. More than mere samplers, these albums have served as state-of-the-art dispatches from the front lines of the art form. Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5 is a specially priced 6CD box set, limited to 999 copies, featuring the first five volumes in their originals packaging, plus an exclusive live bonus disc from Willia…
Antiquated Futurism
Latest release on Vatican Shadow's Bed of Nails label - initial copies on Translucent Orange Vinyl** Dominik Fernow's Bed Of Nails venture welcomes his longtime co-conspirator Kris Lapke with three tracks of haunting Gothic Techno produced as Bronze Age. Kris used to run the Hospital Productions studio when it was operating in Manhattan. It was there that he galvanized seminal records including Kevin Drumm's 'Imperial Distortion' and Prurient's 'Arrowhead' with his signature post-product…
5 05 - 3 Renotations of 1 act of cleaning a piano
A project by the german artist Franziska Koch, edited by Fink Edition, Zurich. "The cleaning of the piano in the house Franziska Koch - Once a year - recurring as of spring cleaning . On this is both spontaneously and passionately played in their living environment for young and old . In the resulting recording is heard, like the piano cleaned, is rubbed and wiped. Knocking noises and random poking against the instruments body give the piece its own rhythm, so as to connect by wiping over the …
Leh Jani
First release on Sham Palace, a new label from key Sublime Frequencies conspirator Mark Gergis. "Leh Jani" -- the legendary Omar Souleyman track -- was originally released in Syria as a sprawling 30-minute epic groove, alongside two additional tracks. The entire 60-minute cassette album was recorded live to tape in 1998 at the home studio of producer Zuhir Maksi in the village of Ras Al Ain in northeastern Syria. Many of Omar's early tapes were recorded in this fashion to replicate the feeling o…
Silvertone e il sentimento oceanico
Outstanding tape from Angelica Castello (Mexico, 1972) one of the best electroacoustic composers of her generation "I see my music basically as a complex construction of associations, quotations, dreams, nightmares, real and unreal people, stories and reflections. 'erche">Silvertone e il sentimento oceanico' is about a big ship leaving' Angélica Castelló About Castelló's music: 'Music that is both visual and abstract, that calls forth memories and chases them away, that ofte…
Hubble Drums
Planned since Hubble’s first live performance in September of 2010, Hubble Drums is an inspired record of new guitar music. Equal parts shred-fi, cyber-dread and fried psychedelia, Hubble Drums marks Ben Greenberg (of Zs and The Men)’s first full-length recording and debut for Northern Spy. Recorded at Python Patrol and lovingly mastered at Bonati Mastering, the CD and 150g LP features original artwork by Michael Yaniro and Ben Greenberg. “Hubble’s Hubble” serves as the soundtrack for a v…
In Four Parts (Tribute To John Cage)
Equipped with a modular synthesizer, a guitar and electronics Patrick Pulsinger and Christian Fennesz approach the master of the treatment of silence, John Cage. The piece on this album, which was recorded live at Wiener Konzerthaus, was inspired by the underlying attitude of Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts. Upon invitation by the WIEN MODERN festival the two legendary electronic music protagonists tackled the composer’s early string quartet, took it apart and adapted it for two players, alw…
Problems
As per usual, Hundebiss delivers a sick record for us to choke down before we even know what’s in it (like your mom used to do at the dinner table). Problems, by Primitive Art, to these ears, represent a warped union of dub, industrial and even chillwave/hypnagogic pop. Reminds of that solo Avey Tare record, albeit dub-ified with the corners melted down and the beats rendered with more vintage care.
Jedwabnik
More music involving the seemingly always-at-work Wojciech Kucharczyk (does the man ever sleep?), this time in a quartet alongside B a ej Król, Jerzy Mazzoll and Radek Dziubek. The project's title Dwutysi czny translates as 'two thousand' - referring, according to a brief recent interview with Easterndaze, to the year when Król first came across the music of the other three players, a discovery that eventually led him to write to them to ask if they'd donate him some of their recorded sounds to …
Music Of Changes
The title is a double pun. The score is the first that John Cage devised allowing the hexagrams of the I Ching to fully determin e how the music would procee d, event by event, gesture by gesture—the musical details (pitch, duration, dynamic s, density, tempi) being painstakingly, albeit fortuitously, derived through point-by-point con sultation from charts of possi bilities designed by the composer. (Christian Wolff, Cage’s young friend and musical associate, had presented Cage with a co…
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…
Ancient faith
In limited edition of 250 hand branded wooden box. Atom Earth Mother: A solo project from one half of Zoviet France Dedicated to the White Goddess and inspired by the prehistoric antiquities in Northumberland, primarily the enigmatic and beautiful 'rock art' that are known as 'cup and ring' marks, a form of symbolic language 4500+ years old, whose meaning has been lost in the mists of time. Utilizing digital and analogue equipment and production technique, location recordings, found sound…
Balf Quarry
LP version; printed innersleeve with lyrics. Before Balf Quarry landed on my desk, I figured the dirtiest thing in Connecticut was Chris Dodd's browser history. Not so. Among other things — like guitar tones that buzz around like contact-high June bugs, Elisa Ambrogio's slack vocals wavering between coy calls and willfully distant snarls, and a production value so low and dense you feel you're listening to them from the dining room above their rehearsal space — Hartford natives the Magik Markers…
Has anybody seen our freedoms?
Recorded in December 1970. "Peter Walker is an American original, as eclectic and enigmatic as the songs he writes. The legendary seventy-five year old raga/psychedelic/folk acoustic guitarist, who was schooled by masters such as Ravi Shankar, and Ali Akbar Khan, has been described by Larry Coryell as, “One of the most original practitioners of contemporary music” and proclaimed by the Beatles’ press agent Derek Taylor as “Perhaps the greatest guitarist in the world.” His music, celebrated by t…
Danse Sacrale
A cherry-picked compendium of EDM prototypes circa 1956-1971 by Pierre Henry, Jean-Claude Vannier, Igor Wakhevitch, Henk Badings and more "The roots of Electronic Dance Music" (EDM) by definition. An unlikely combination of early recordings by international electronic and avant-garde composers as well as infrequent collaborators retrospectively unified by their commitment to the musical enhancement of 20th Century ballet and the evolution of modern dance. Presenting key exponents of the musique …
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 …
Alien, All Too Alien
Their cat may well be all too alien but there's quite an earthly feel to this epic voyage of a record from the brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. It feels like you are slowly drifting through different continents perched on a floating glass-domed steel barge, observing the strangely contrasting cultures go about their business, seemingly unaware they are being watched. Though there are certain sounds contained herein that are quite familiar to many 21st century homosapie…