New Arrivals
Score: The Complete Sextet Works 2002-2007
In celebration of their 10 year anniversary New York City-DIY modern composition combo Zs offer this 4CD retrospective. Throughout 10 years of activity, the band has changed in countless ways without ever changing a fierce commitment to inscrutable easthetics & execution crafted to provoke reflection & challenge assumption in the consumption of music. Housed in a 2 piece 55pt box featuring artwork by Fredricks & Mae
E Pluribus Unum
Long-awaited reissue of the first full-length album from 1980 by late '70s/early '80s UK DIY super-group The 49 Americans. The main instigator behind The 49 Americans was Andrew "Giblet" Brenner, who assembled a loose, disparate group of musical/non-musical practitioners as an experiment in equality and democracy. This democracy included David Toop, Steve Beresford, Max Eastley, Lol Coxhill and Peter Cusack, Nag and Bendle of The Door And The Window, Viv Albertine of the Slits, Vivien Goldman…
Two characters
Through more than 25 years of existence, the french composer Christian Renou, aka Brume, has developed a unique 'handwriting' style within the experimental underground, something one may call 'atmospheric musique concrète'. It is the marriage of many concrete sounds, hand-played acoustic instruments and electronic drones noises that are arranged in a manner somewhat akin to a 'narrative' - highly emotive and often evolving in a dramatic way. We are delighted to have received two tracks for the S…
Ganymede
Inspired in equal measure by the throbbing urbanity of coastal cities, continental European art-rock experimentation, left-ï¬Ã‚Âeld techno, and the freewheeling punk aesthetic of contemporary home studio recording, Jonas Reinhardt’s music transcends its inï¬Ã‚‚uences to bring into being a work that’s wholly new while referencing a celebrated aesthetic of the past. Jonas Reinhardt's 'Ganymede' is an experimental science ï¬Ã‚Âction ï¬Ã‚Âlm set on the solar system's largest moon. On Ganymede, i…
Psychomagia
"Psychomagia" is the new album by the fabulous quartet of Abraxas, the acclaimed tribal rock arrangements for the Book of Angels series. Here they perform a complex new suite of music written expressly for them by Downtown alchemist John Zorn. Drawing inspiration from the magical writings of Giordano Bruno and Alejandro Jodorowski and others, Zorn has written a bold collection of compositions that challenge the musicians to the breaking point. With a program ranging from some of the most …
Pictures of sound. One thousand years of educed audio : 980 - 19
Using modern technology, Patrick Feaster is on a mission to resurrect long-vanished voices and sounds--many of which were never intended to be revived. Over the past thousand years, countless images have been created to depict sound in forms that theoretically could be "played" just as though they were modern sound recordings. Now, for the first time in history, this compilation uses innovative digital techniques to convert historic "pictures of sound" dating back as far as the Middle Ag…
the flowmotion years 1980-1982
PREORDER: Dark-Ambient / Ritual-Project Konstruktivists was formed by mastermind Glenn Michael Wallis in 1981/82 out of the ashes of Heute. Around this time - in the late 70's/early 80's Glenn Michael Wallis was heavily involved with Throbbing Gristle, the U.K. pioneers of "Industrial". Between 1980 and 1982 Glenn/Konstruktivists has recorded several tracks of which one solo-tape and several Konstruktivists-Tapes found release in extremely rare and limited edition on the legendary Tape-Label Flo…
Rehearsal tapes and alt. Takes NYC 1976-1978
"Connie Burg and I met Sumner Crane and Nancy Arlen in late 1975 and quickly decided to start a band. Sumner had been playing piano since he was a kid and I trumpet, guitar and more recently bass, but we were for the most part self taught. Connie decided to pick up a guitar and we started jamming in Nancy’s loft on Broadway and Duane St. where Sumner lived downstairs. For the first few months it was just piano, bass and acoustic guitar, with some paper bag percussion from Nancy. Our biggest rock…
A history of every one
'A History of Every One' by Bill Orcutt is an album of songs: minstrel songs, holiday songs, hymns, marches, cowboy songs, Disney songs, work songs, delta blues. The original tunes themselves are nothing special, well known, but not particularly well-regarded. Most would be filler on a mid-60's Doris Day or Burl Ives LP. What Orcutt does with them however is remarkable: expanding upon techniques developed on 2011's 'How the Thing Sings' and incorporating ideasforged since his recording of 'The S…
Full Blast
Ass-whooping live set from the Full Blast trio, recorded in Cologne in 2006: Brotzmann’s work with electric bassist Marino Pliakas and drummer Michael Wertmuller extends his work with Last Exit in that it combines an almost metal/No Wave attack with a fluid non-stop dynamic and a feel of electric blues. Brotzmann has always favoured electric bassists – Bill Laswell, Massimo Pupillo – and there’s something about the unyielding aspect of the instrument that acts as a propulsive metal backbone for …
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…
Old Punch Card
Taking inspiration from early music concrete and electronic music, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Nuno Canavarro, Raymond Scott, David Behrman, and free improvisation, Old Punch Card is a beautifully noisy, jagged, yet stately album of synthesizer music. The ideas and implementation of Old Punch Card (the album title alluding to the electronic, faintly mechanic origins of the music) were the result of an entirely new challenge: to do something completely different from anything else he's…
Space Mirror
Space travel is the dream of many and the reality of few. Since Yuri Gagarin first shed the bonds of earth gravity in 1961, only about 500 humans have made the trip beyond the atmosphere. Ken Camden travels to space while still grounded on terra firma. His vessel of choice is a guitar and some effects with which he journeys on fantastical expeditions and surveys the biggest territory of all, the one between your ears. The glimmering sound fields he forms could be a soundtrack to an epic '60s sci…
Transkript 17-Transkript 18
The source material for these recordings, produced between 2007 and 2009, originates from found objects and treated acoustic instruments such as cello, viola, double bass (Nikolaus Gerszewski), bass clarinet (Nicolas Wiese), as well as conga, cymbal, wood, paper, marbles, wallpapering table and chains. Further sounds have been produced using my voice and limbs. A basic rule for my work with digital tools is to maintain the liveliness of the source material within the structure of my compositions…
Old News 9
Jim O'Rourke's Old News series continues with this, the ninth installment. This new release is unique in the series in that it is the first to feature an all-new composition. The work here showcases the kind of experimental concrete drift which O'Rourke has been exploring for a number of years, resulting in a magical blend of musical abstraction. With the measured hand and alchemical technique of a François Bayle classic, Jim has us spellbound with A-side, transmuting spectral whistles in…
Technological music
An oblique response to various antecedents of pulse-based electronic music without recourse to drum machines or sequencing (or — in the case of the Four Investigations — synthesizers). Tools include oboe, English horn, analogue synthesis and malfunctioning electric organs and piano. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Gratitude also to Niko Wenner and Monica Scott. Dedicated to Michael Randers-Pehrson, Jeff Bollaro, and HK Kahng — stalwart comrades in my very earliest electronic music misadventures.
Graft
Graft is an album by Japanese noise master Masami Akita aka Merzbow. This LP album is pressed on lime-green vinyl in a "bootleg"-style sleeve and sealed with a sticker. Limited to 300 regular copies. According to the Merzbow blog, the design was inspired by a '70s Jethro Tull bootleg called My God, and the recording was inspired by the plant illustrations in the Voynich manuscript. Recorded in November 2009 at Munemi House, Tokyo.
The jungle he told me
Joachim Badenhorst (1981) is a Belgian reed player who divides his time between NYC and Belgium. Over the last 5 years Joachim has released a number of albums with different projects, such as Baloni, Han Bennink Trio, Rawfishboys, Taro, Tony Malaby’s Novela, Thomas Heberer’s Clarino, Mogil, Polylemma, Os Meus Shorts, International Trio, Red Rocket and Equillibrium.The Jungle He Told Me is Joachim's first solo album. It consists out of nine pieces on clarinet, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone. B…
Do You Love Me?
Do You Love Me? is an extension of Lutz Bacher's videos of the same name, in which Bacher interviews curators, artists, friends, and family about Bacher the person and Bacher the artist. Though Lutz Bacher is the starting point, the interviews often reveal more about the people being interviewed than Bacher herself. The publication takes the form of transcripts interwoven with images of Bacher's artwork from the 70s to the present as well as photos, letters, and ephemera.
Intrepid trips
**Limited edition coloured vinyl pressing from This Motion Sickness Of Time Travel related project** Husband/wife duo, Grant and Rachel Evans have found enough time out from running their ace Hooker Vision label, washing the dishes and doing the groceries, to sit back for a beautiful Quiet Evenings album. In case you missed all the fuss earlier in the year (and right now - her new LP is also out this week), Rachel Evans has been seducing listeners across the world with her Motion Sickness …