New Arrivals
Format
In Format, Sarah Crowner's first widely distributed artist book, the artist creates a roving collage of source material culled from a diverse range of previously distributed print material: magazines, books, posters, newspapers, postcards, etc. This publication provides a rare insight into the artist's working practice, demonstrating Crowner's concerns with visual formulations hinged on historical investigations, particularly in the overlap of art, writing, fashion, and design. Crowner's gracefu…
Retro-2038
COH is the moniker used by Ivan Pavlov from Russia for more than a decade. COH is also the Russian word for 'sleep'. Yet, do not be deceived - RETRO-2038 is much more of a deep space than a deep sleep. The second COH release on Editions Mego is a true delight to behold, inviting as it does its exploration of electronic sound in minimalism, futuristic pop and the uncharted territories inbetween. Ranging from digital updates of Giorgio Moroder's pulse experiments to menacing lingering LF to…
Seitz versus Gendreau
Seitz Versus Gendreau is a collaborative experiment in using concrete music compositional strategies. These pieces were composed with created and found sound captured in San Francisco. 'Chorus After Rains': A strategy where we each use the same raw sound clips with different results. The two pieces are then melded to create one piece of music, the different modules becoming inseparable from each other. 'Things Lost That Will Never Be Found': A composition with live instruments, moving fro…
Centralia
Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundl…
Black Tie
LP version. Includes mp3 download and full-color poster. After two bone-chilling full-lengths for the Type Recordings imprint, Erik K. Skodvin has embarked on his first journey for his own Miasmah label with Black Tie. While originally conceived as a soundtrack to an installation by Norwegian artist Marit Følstad, Skodvin uses this as a starting point to craft his most unnerving long-form pieces to date. Split into two distinct movements, "Black Tie" and "White Noise," we are exposed to the y…
Future Slip
For her fifth solo album, Samara Lubelski finds a new home on Ecstatic Peace, with label boss Thurston Moore taking on a role as producer, even roping in his band's drummer (the estimable Steve Shelley). Moore recruited Lubelski for violin duties on his own solo LP, 2007's Trees Outside The Academy, and set about coaxing her into recording a different type of record from her established Social Registry output. Future Slip certainly diverges from the more baroque folk tendencies of her recent wor…
Imaginary Softwoods
Three years ago, a triple cassette oddity appeared out of nowhere adorned in washed-out nature collages and zero information. Turns out that John Elliot of Emeralds was behind the madness, and after further dissection of the sounds enclosed and it all began to make sense.Those three tapes (one yellow, one blue, one red) were the first taste of something that felt like a lost private-press object from the early European electronic experimentations of the '60s & '70s. Each vignette is its own stor…
Olympians
‘Experimental’ bands are never going to please everyone; a lot of them seem almost uninterested in being anything but show-offs and twats, and there’s occasionally no attempt to make a connection twixt music and listener. All we get is: ‘marvel at my amazing button-pushing skills.’ And then, suddenly and horrifically, you turn into your dad: ‘that’s not music, that’s noise!’ Despite the post-watershed name, Fuck Buttons have always been a more subtle and meditative addition to the experime…
Compositions For Geomungo and Gayageum
Sub Rosa reissues Belgian composer/violinist Baudouin de Jaer's Gayageum Sanjo (SR 347CD), with a complete new design and an additional CD of new compositions for another ancient Korean instrument: the geomungo ("black zither"). "Baudouin de Jaer chose a highly delicate musical instrument, the geomungo, and has drawn from it a marvelous creation; I can only congratulate him with all my heart for such an accomplishment, and for the release of this beautiful CD. I hope he will continue to make gre…
Split
New split 12′ between two modular experimentalists stretching the world map for this split release. While Keith Fullerton Whitman comes with one of his more accessible / danceable piece to date, Floris Vanhoof had full reign to record a dark and hazy drone piece for the flipside. Using purely analog synths, both build very unique although complementary compositions. Keith Fullerton Whitman – you already know him – is an American electronic musician who has recorded albums influenced by many genr…
Stroomtoon II
In December 2011, I recorded the album Stroomtoon, which was released by the French Nuun label the year after. The music was constructed using recordings from improvisations with a setup that I was trying out for upcoming live performances. It's actually the same setup that I still use nowadays, consisting of an old Phillips analogue tone generator and a selection of effects pedals. The Stroomtoon album still feels like an accomplishment. It's layered, subtle and considered, but I wanted to see …
The Ocean Above Your Heads
Limited edition vinyl LP in super deluxe, full-colour printed jacket, featuring cover artwork by Roberto Opalio. The idea of a recording collaboration by Nels Cline and My Cat Is An Alien was born one day in Torino, Italy, while Cline was touring with Wilco in 2007. After two other intersections of their respective orbits (first at Victoriaville, then at a UK All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2006), Cline eventually mailed them a CDR of prepared and heavily effected electric guita…
White Metal
“White Metal” is a new piece by Michael Pisaro, realised by the composer and Miguel Prado. “When I first heard that Michael was thinking of working on a project with the name “White Metal”, I contacted him, excited to know more about it. At first we talked about general aspects of the piece, without knowing the route it would take, beyond a couple of conceptual premises. At some point, Michael suggested that this project be included in his “Grey Series” a series of noise-oriented scores he was …
Berberian Sound Studio
To coincide with Halloween we can announce that Warp Records will be releasing Broadcast's original soundtrack that accompanied the recent Warp Film 'Berberian Sound Studio' - Peter Strickland’s brilliant homage to 1970s Italian horror. The film's integral soundtrack was composed by Broadcast before Trish Keenan's untimely passing last year.
Fever Logic
Ensemble Economique has emerged as an unusually globe-trotting creative valve for Arcata, CA, beachcomber Brian Pyle. The last year alone has seen him backpacking through Scandinavia, Europe and Russia—twice. Maybe his spirit’s too absorbent, ’cause he’s brought back some deeply heavier moods and ancient world weariness since his last outing on Not Not Fun, 2010’s demonic tribal monsoon Psychical. Recent splits with similarly instinctual psychedelic unclassifiables like Lee Noble and Her…
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…
The Men Parted The Sea To Devour The Water
Numbered edition of 700 housed in die-cut, origami fold and foil-blocked jacket** 'The Men Parted The Sea To Devour The Water' is The Haxan Cloak's long awaited Latitudes edition. It's his first release since that jaw-dropping eponymous album (an end of year favourite across the board) and means that we're possibly one step closer to two things: a vinyl edition of said LP, and his hugely anticipated album debut for Tri Angle. But let's not get ahead of ourselves....here we find Bobby Kr…
Ep1
Ripatti is a new label from Sasu Ripatti, better known to the world as Vladislav Delay. Envisaged as a studio diary of sorts, the label will be cataloguing ongoing experiments made by Sasu in his studio on his own and alongside various collaborators. This first twelve features two extended productions from Sasu under his own name, feeding into the emergant Techno/Footwork nexus and delivering something far removed from the submerged dub variants he made his name with on his classic 12"s and albu…
Mimikry
2010 edition, long out of print, few copies resurfaced. Box Set, Limited Edition, Special Limited Box Edition - Album comes in a cardboard sleeve with tracks 11 and 12 as bonus tracks and as part of a box set including inserts. Having nicely set up the release of this album with their Ret Marut Handshake EP a few months back, Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld (of Einsturzende Neubauten fame) deliver a set that exceeds all expectations. One of the most strikingly obvious comparisons to arise from …
Live at Caffe Lena: Music from America's Legendary Coffeehouse
"Unreleased performances by Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Kate McGarrigle, Rick Danko, Anais Mitchell, Sleepy John Estes, Arlo Guthrie, Sarah Lee Guthrie, and more. Caffè Lena, the oldest continuously operating folk music coffeehouse in the US. Opened by Lena Spencer in 1960, this tiny room has played host to influential artists across diverse genres of music; traditional folk, blues, singer-songwriters, jazz, and bluegrass. Luckily, many performances were caught on tape through …