New Arrivals
Tidings / Amesthyst Waves
Trying to put the last 15 years of music into context, you’d be hard pressed to get anyone to agree on a single thing. If anything, this period has been a collective convergence of all things cool-sounding: naïve experimentalism, academic composition, art-rock synthesis, electronic nihilism/flagellation, and, well, everything else. Mark McGuire could muddy anyones interpretation of the contemporary canon with his buddies in the triadic mega-unit, Emeralds, his collaborative outings in Sun Wa…
Outmospheric Arts of the Outmosphere
"Ben Reynolds has emerged as one of the most prolific contributors to the UK ecstatic-drone scene over the past year. He has released numerous solo CD-Rs and last year saw his first CD on the Finnish Ikuisuus imprint. Outmosphere was originally intended to add to the list of CD-R releases, but once we heard it, we knew it deserved something bigger. Many moons later, this is Ben Reynolds' first stateside widely-available CD release. As his music has developed, Reynolds has given nods t…
The source
“A 4000 year old rock band" W. S. Burroughs. Recognised internationally, Jajouka goes back up to the late Rolling Stone Brian Jones, across his collaboration of 1968, but also to Paul Bowles, Brion Gysin, and William S.Burroughs which had already established their residences for some years together with these musicians of the mountains of Rif. "The Source" is the new record of The "true" Master Musicians of Jajouka and it goes back to the origins of their sacred music. Bachir Attar, last …
Fancies, forbearance
Fancy: a 17th century term generally describing a composition in which form is of secondary importance. Fancies were usually contra-puntal and in several sections. (The Oxford Dictionary of Music)Fancies (2009) served to reconcile previously unsettled material, based upon a scheme that condones disparity between its constituent parts. In the period since its completion, and subsequent issue on cassette, Fancies has come to represent an antithesis to what I originally termed ‘a work in parenthesi…
Fenetre ovale
Karl Naegelen and the Risser/Rühl duo share a common interest in the quest for new sounds and sound illusions. Creating a confusion of sources, suggesting various acoustic spaces, evoking the sound of a sewing machine or a hard shoulder, making a rubbing sound sound like breath and making breath sound like creaking, this is the type of urge that stimulated collective research. The grand piano had to become a wind instrument and the clarinet a water instrument ; the pianist had to play per…
Kontinent
Number 4 of the Salzburg Festival “Kontinent” series was dedicated to Wolfgang Rihm. We have compiled a selection of the works for your conven- ience – including a first recording! Wolfgang Rihm once claimed that the most appropriate statements about his oeuvre are his own compositions. In 2010 the Salzburg Festival adopted this approach. The result was a “Kontinent Rihm” which placed the manifold tone colors and modes of expression created by the former Stockhausen student into a broader contex…
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…
Minimal studies
It all began with Study Ten. After releasing his 4th Static album, which included ten songs, about 15 musicians and which took almost 6 years till its release, Hanno Leichtmann had the wish to record an album in one go, without endless recording and mixing sessions. While experimenting with his modular system he discovered a method to compose that, what he later called Minimal Studies. A modular sample player which can be controlled manually, by a sequencer, LFO or any CV source would mak…
Apokatastasis
Consisting of one side of solo lute material by Van Wissem and one side of new pieces by the duo. Film maker Jim Jarmusch plays electric and acoustic guitar and does tape on one piece. Van Wissem plays lute and 12 string electric guitar. CD edition.Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Van Wissem met on the streets of New York in 2006. Finding that they shared many interests, both a friendship and a musical collaboration was soon born. The duo has released two albums of lute and guitar compositions: Conce…
Delta
Extended sonic fluxes of synthetic nature mixed with delicate acoustic and electric guitars chords and riffs, crowd noises, indefinite and fading melodic "spots" of unknown origin, feedbacks, echoes, pulsations, vibrations, cracklings, rustling waves in continuous movement... But also sudden pauses, unpredictable and improbable inserts of folk blues radio transmissions, crystal clear water sounds, static, wrapping and dramatic electronic weaves, metallic tickings... An extraordinary range of sou…
Sound Is
"Sound Is, is delightfully not what I had expected when this fine disc arrived, a beautiful soundscape, awash with more layerings and hypnotic cinematic virtues than I would ever hope to find. Though while saying that, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the ultra fine hazy jazz that both effortlessly, and rambunctiously flows through this release, and stands not starkly in juxtaposition to the soundscape, but gives it the vibrant life necessary to keep you quietly swinging at 4 in the mornin…
Circle Snare
His given electronic anatomy of drum machine, microphones, tapes, & MSP folded out of their hard accustomed formations, breaking out into a more cogent & vital arsenal. A finely detailed & dimensional evolution of an already unique voice.
Suite N° 10 \"Ka\" / Suite N° 9 \"Ttai\"
Scelsi's works usually originated as transcribed improvisations; therefore they are never based on superficialities of form or compositional technique but always directly reveal the core of their message. Pianist Marianne Schroeder reports that Scelsi recommended daily improvisational practice as a method for discovering one's own creativity; and on his Suite No. 9 "Ttai" the composer is said to have commented: "Play it whenever you're sad. And when you're in high spirits." In Ttai, which links …
Never Bought Never Sold: Singles + Demos 1979-83
"Animals + Men -- named after a song by Adam and the Ants -- started life around the winter of 1978-1979 when Susan Wells took over vocal duties in what was a three piece called Psychotic Reaction. Based in Frome Somerset, their first release Don't Misbehave in the New Age (1980) was an indie hit. When the band split in '81, Susan and Ralph formed the Terraplanes. A & M/Terraplanes released three vinyl 45s. A few years ago, demos by the band surfaced on the Messthetics/Hyped 2 Death label. Recen…
Transient Places
Music in the here and now. An event in an everyday situation. A connecting link between actual occurrences and the deepest depths of one's inner world. A balancing act between total control and the inexplicable. An acoustic journey through the present. It is with his ears that Luigi Archetti journeys into the guitar's pick-up, to the limits of the audible. He hears, listens and gathers until he has a whole depot of sounds at his disposal, which he then processes by structured planning or b…
Moondog and suncat suites
By 1956, the early New York street recordings of the great Moondog had reached British shores. His primitive percussive sounds struck a new nerve with many artists and musicians, none more so that fine London jazzman Kenny Graham. So inspired was he by these extraordinary recordings that he decided to bring together a band of top notch session men and pay his very own musical homage. The result is this exceptionally rare and unique 1957 album of Moondog covers (Moondog Suite) and Graham’s…
Recyclopaedia Britannica (Selected Works 1992-2002)
“The work of People Like Us rests gingerly between two dangerous positions: on the one hand, the risk of fashioning merely stylish pastiche out of borrowed finery for the sake of self-conscious kitschiness; on the other hand, the risk of making simplistic, heavy handedly "topical" audio-jokes at the expense of one's raw material to a smug effect. If the lounge creeps uncritically snack on their sonic ingredients and coast on being "groovy", the cads of pseudo-critique take cheap shots at straw m…
You'll Be Safe Forever
CD version. You'll Be Safe Forever marks the first release from Locust in 12 years. Mark Van Hoen, who made a string of influential releases as Locust on R&S records in the 1990s, all but retired the alias at the end of that decade. In May 2012, Van Hoen was invited to perform a live set on WFMU radio. In order to make the set more spontaneous and add a further dimension, he asked friend and fellow musician Louis Sherman to collaborate. While improvising new material in Sherman's Brooklyn …
intersezioni di vortici, studi ritmici e false chimere
“intersezioni di vortici, studi ritmici e false chimere” is a suite of ten short compositions for modular analog synthesizer (except for one track that incorporates a few sounds recorded with a microphone). Initially conceived as series of studies on panning and phasing, the work ended to incorporate parts of two other series, all realised in Bologna between November 2011 and March 2012. The cover includes some of Maggiore’s drawings from the same period. Luciano Maggiore lives and w…
Sorow
new work by David Jackman aka Organum after completing the recent "Holy" trilogy ('Sanctus', 'Amen' and 'Omega'). SOROW is not an album that expands the trilogy still farther, but opens a new chapter in Organum's career. On the basis of the European organ drones and the Indian Tanpura foundation, the gentle Japanese temple bell compliments the piece. ....