New Arrivals
And Never Ending Nights
Please allow us the pleasure of introducing Axel Willner's Loops Of Your Heart. Hailing from Sweden, the man behind this record alone needs no introduction, as he is already well-known in the electronic music scene for his project The Field. Loops Of Your Heart reflects Axel's experience in Germany, where during his lengthy stays, his mantra-like arpeggiators contributed to the first manifestation of the sound of Cologne Tape, a group that formed while he was staying there. You can also he…
City of Straw
On their seventh studio album, Sightings don’t make any radical breaks from their past. Instead, Richard Hoffman, Jonathan Lockie and Mark Morgan continue the slow evolution of their vision, a sort of "industrialization" of rock. On 2007’s Through the Panama, the trio achieved their best amalgamation yet. City of Straw doesn’t really up the ante, but it stays right there. These 39 minutes run the gamut from chittering electronics to punk chaos. When saying "industrial" in reference to …
Gallipoli 1915 e le altre storie
Another double OLBM CD that testifies the remarkable work carried out within the New Wave phenomenon by Viridanse (from Alessandria, Piedmont) between 1983 and 1987. Despite its short existence, the group has left an important trace in a time when the world of music was already full of proposals. Influenced by the English Wave and the Florentine scene, Viridanse debut with a split-tape shared with The Art of Waiting. In 1984, Contempo Records produces their 12” EP "Benvenuto Cellini" and - the f…
Free Action
2008 release. "A deep excursion into the laboratory of Germany's most important avant-garde jazz musician. A milestone of breaking down barriers between genres. Feat. Jean-Luc Ponty (Zappa, Mahavishnu). Originally released on MPS in 1967. Unique gatefold cardboard packaging."
Consequenz
Commercial Schnitzler? How quickly, how prematurely are opinions and judgements bandied about when an artist suddenly changes the form of his work. Conrad Schnitzler fell under such a cloud when, after 1978, his songs, for a time at least, did not exceed the catchy compactness of pop songs, while their harmonies and rhythms seemed to be drifting towards pop. Produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Dream) the Con (1978) album and the Auf dem schwarzen Kanal 12" EP (1980) ushered in this phase, …
Luz Azul
Ah now, this is a lovely little CD. The group i treni inerti began life a decade or so ago now as the trio of Ruth Barberan, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Matt Davis, and when their first album came out as one of the very first Creative Sources releases however long ago Brian Olewnick wrote what to this day remains one of my favourite opening lines to a review- something like “Yeah I can hear you sigh, yet another trumpet/trumpet/accordion trio…” In 2012, as David has long left Barcelona the group …
Kippschwingungen
In 2007, Frank Bretschneider was invited to compose music for the Subharchord, a unique electronic instrument developed during the 1960’s at the RFZ, the technical center for radio and television of the East German postal service. Built in a limited edition of eight machines total, only three Subharcords (in Vienna, Trondheim and Berlin) are believed to survive to this day. The Subharchord is, broadly defined, a subharmonic sound generator, comparable soundwise to the Mixturtrautonium. It’s sugg…
Sounds Like Silence
In 2012 the world celebrates not only the centenary of John Cage’s birth, but also the sixtieth anniversary of the premiere of his ”silent piece” 4’33”(four minutes, thirty-three seconds) on August 29, 1952. This composition in three movements without intentional sounds is the composer’s best-known work today. As an ”art without work” (John Cage), it takes up and renews the impulses of the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, notably Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, which the artist h…
Succubus
Seductive but perilous, he Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble's new session under the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation name is a new combination of drones and jazz. Creating sensual, murky and dark atmospheres, “Succubus” the evolution of this band, with stronger horns and a focus on hypnotic, soundtrack-like material. A deep, dark and yet seductive trip again for the corporation.
Under Stellar Stream
For his latest album, UK avant-folk maverick Richard Youngs seems to be converging on some of the most assured and firm-footed vocal work of his career to date, fashioning rock-solid songs from typically leftfield instrumental tactics. On 'Broke Up By Night', Youngs sounds like a gnarled old folkie of almost Ewan MacColl proportions, albeit accompanied by organ drone and wispy electronics. It's a rather magical, mantra-like cadence he elicits, and the album springboards nicely from this point. S…
Ready\'n
Seijiro Murayama: snare drum, cymbal, sticks, brushes. Masafumi Ezaki: trumpet. Kazushige Kinoshita: violin. Recorded live by Taku Unami at Kobe Art Village Center, Kobe, April 12, 2008. Mastered by Taku Unami. Photo by Nobuhiro Sasaki. Includes liner notes by Seijiro Murayama in Japanese and English.
Peace Conference
"Mountain Ocean Sun is a project fronted by His Name Is Alive main man Warren Defever, who collaborates with three like-minded drone artists for an hour-long recording of shruti box, harmonium, bells, gongs and violin. The group's first performance was at a 500 year old Buddhist temple in Osaka, and that pretty much sets the tone for the quartet's quasi-mystical approach to soundscaping. Defever himself continues to mythologise, describing the recording as having been made "on a mountain, in the…
Neue Volksmusik
he zeitkratzer project Neue Volksmusik (new folk music) is more of a reflex to, rather than a reflection on folk music. This is because the ensemble does not play specific music with any sense of distance. On the contrary, zeitkratzer is taking possession of folk music in its essence. This means that they continue a tradition which folk musics all have in common: constant transformation. No form of authentic folk music can ever be about conservation as a fixed medium, destined for a museu…
Burnt Offerings
The Preservation label presents Burnt Offerings, the fourth album from Brooklyn's Padna. As Padna, Nat Hawks initially made his name in the cassette underground on the revered Stunned label with two works of pop experimentalism displaying a bustling -- often boggling -- and vivid imagination. Veritable joyrides in sound and style, these releases were in line with the DIY aesthetic, primitive songcraft and eclectic sonic stew pioneered by the likes of Tall Dwarfs and forwarded by Olivia Tremo…
Oltre
The best 12k/LINE release in ages - dark, Lynchian eroded tape-loops and analogue menace. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! (boomkat) "The Transparence dubplate, developed at O ' in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O', the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audi…
Love Comes Close
Love Comes Close is the debut full-length from Cold Cave. Synth-pop, post punk, new wave, atmospheric industrial... Edition of 1000 copies.
Unisono
Eight musicians play the same virtual synthesizer programmed by myself with Max/MSP following a precise score. They start with the same sound but while slowly modifying each parameter they transform it from within, grinding up its entrails. The listener is positioned at the center of a sound at once unique and multiple. The version on this CD is a live recording made at Les Voûtes in Paris in June 2008 by the CLSI (Circle for the Liberation of Sounds and Images) directed by Paul Méfano. Th…
Making The Walls Quake As If They Were Dilating
Recording of the sound sculpture in the Polish Pavilion at 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Sound sculpture by Katarzyna Krakowiak. Sound design by Ralf Meinz. Voices by Ulrike Helmholz and Sabina Meyer. Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by by Ralf Meinz. 32-page booklet. 'Architectural Biennale sound sculpture amplifying the entire building of the Polish Pavilion turned into a flat CD ? Will you say it completely misses the point? Brings the real space into a stereo syst…
Walden Pond's Monk
The first ‘proper’ widely-available album from Portugese composer and pianist Tiago Sousa, ‘Walden Pond’s Monk’ balances itself on the idealism and revolutionary spirit of Henry David Thoreau. While this might be initially hard to hear in an album of mostly solo piano, as the songs seep into the soul it becomes easier and easier to decode Sousa’s messages. There is a mourning, but hopefulness to these compositions, and in contrast to solo piano records from Gonzales or Goldmund it feels like an …
Leyfou Ljosinu
Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir presents a new album, Leyfdu Ljósinu (trans. "Allow The Light"), recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012, by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones (NB -- it was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience). To be faithful to time and space -- elements vital to the movement of sound -- this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering …