New Arrivals
Birth Canal Blues
Birth Canal Blues is the first CD release on Coptic Cat, the new label started by David Tibet and Current 93. The album consists of one 20-minute song in four movements that sets the basic narrative structure of Anok Pe Current 93's new Hallucinatory Mountain trilogy, whose first part, Invocation of Hallucinatory Mountain, is due in January 2009. Birth Canal Blues was recorded by Tibet, Baby Dee, John Contreras, and Andrew Liles. The packaging includes an 8-page color booklet with photographs fr…
Planet Dream
In this present age of the history of humanity, there are few places left for a true utopia. The world has already experienced some of those ideal systems, but the results were tragic. Even in literature utopian thinking seems to have vanished. Only In music is there still a place to wonder, especially when it deals with spontaneous and non-hierarchical procedures. Musical improvisation is becoming the only possibility left to forge micro-societies of freedom and egalitarianism, without having t…
What A Beautiful Place
CD edition, lavishly packaged: In the last couple of years there's been no shortage of lost folk albums re-appearing for the world to enjoy once more, and the wonderful Numero Group label (which is fast becoming one of our most loved imprints...) has managed to find another. Hailing from the bleak northern city of Halifax, Catherine Howe was initially trained at drama school, gaining a brief stint in Doctor Who ('The Underwater Menace' for all you Whovians out there, wink wink) among othe…
Noise Art
An album of unreleased music made by Jeff Keen, one of the UK's great avant garde artists. This is music found on cassettes in his studio after his death. It was made by Jeff (throughout the 1980s) using field recordings from his local amusement arcade: radio, TV, films, an Atari, a ZX Spectrum, a delay unit and a WASP synth. This is the first Jeff Keen album ever issued. Jeff Keen is one of the great undiscovered artists of our times. A missing link between the Dadaists, Cocteau, Warhol, …
Vellus
Incorporating wildly coloured orchestrations and unusual performance actions, set against intense monochromes of noises and whispers, Vellus is a collection of chamber works that obsessively deals with the privacy of ritual, memory and the self. Diverse takes on instrumental concrète by this young Australian composer. 'Lucas Stumbles' (2007) for percussion (Eugene Ughettti, Greg Sully, Mathias Schack-Arnott, Anna Webb) and electronics (James Rushford). 'Respite in the Woodland' (2007) with Aviva…
M.O.S.
'A new series designed by Clare Cooper. M.O.S. is Ingar Zach's second solo release for Sofa, six years after the critically acclaimed 'Percussion music'. M.O.S. reveals a large and almost monolithic sound world. Zach's horizontal bassdrum (gran cassa) functions as a gigantic, resonating membrane, where metallic and ceramic percussions create articulations over the bass vibrations in a ritualistic dance of pulses and overtones. The music moves slowly, but with a continuing drive, and stretc…
Ommatidia
Nmperign are one of the most celebrated and influential bands in contemporary improvised music. Yet surprisingly, more than a decade after their debut, Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax) have never recorded a studio album as an unaccompanied duo... until now! Intransitive is proud to present the nmperig album that fans have been waiting for: the core duo, beautifully recorded in an actual studio with excellent microphones. The music is spare and peerlessly inventive as always, b…
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 …
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…
The Sky Is Full Of Kytes
Mindblowing!!! Simon Balestrazzi should need no introduction. He founded T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata) in 1982 and has bee pioneering the italian industrial scene since then. His passion for sound synthesis and exploration brought him in recent years to develop a research in electro-acoustics, both in duos, trios and also in solo.
My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
After a fourteen year absence, Michael Gira resurrects his legendary apocalyptic no-wave band for a fabulous new album on his own Young God imprint. Assembling a cast of musicians that includes familiar Swans and Angels Of Light conspirators, Gira also welcomes a few new members to the fold with guest stars including Devendra Banhart, Mercury Rev's Grasshopper, Bill Rieflin (of Ministry, REM and Robyn Hitchcock's band), Shearwater multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris and even Gira's three-and-a-hal…
Crookt, Crackt Or Fly
Crookt Crackt Or Fly is a 1994 album by Gastr del Sol released on Drag City. The album was written and performed by David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke, with John McEntire (percussion), Steve Butters (percussion) and Gene Coleman (Bass Clarinet) also contributing. All tracks were recorded by Brian Paulson in October 1993 at King Size studios.
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…
Beyond The Purple Star Zone / Oblique Parallax
Two related classic Saturn LP reissues on a single CD, both recorded at the Detroit Jazz Centre - in 1980 and 1981 respectively. They share an excellent sound quality and great playing - there's a classic version of Rocket No.9 and plenty of otherworldly Moog and electronic keyboards - up there with Ra's best on record. Rocket excepted, all the pieces are original to these LPs and don't appear elsewhere (though the first track of Purple is heard again at the end, with another name (exactl…
In light
Four years after the release of their debut album Outflow, Japan’s Small Color, a duo comprised of Rie Yoshihara (aka Trico!) (accordion, voice, vintage keyboard instruments) and Yusuke Onishi (guitar, banjo, bass, programming and production) are back with the beautifully polished In Light. This album marks what some may consider a departure for 12k: sublime and gentle, minimal, acoustic J-pop, which once may have been destined for the now-defunct Happy label, but can now sit comfortably beside …
See
Tim Hodgkinson's first major project after Henry Cow with Bill Gilonis, Mick Hobbs & Rick Wilson. See was the third and last record the band released before it broke up, and was continuing to evolve, becoming more subtle, complex and rounded than the earlier albums, though still packing a mighty punch. There's nothing polite about this record and no other group ever attempted to occupy this territory. See is extremely appropriately recorded and is constantly in your face with powerful rhythmic t…
Dispositions Furtives
Through the open sound portals created by his compatriot Castiglioni, the Italian pianist Alfonso Alberti first entered col legno's World of New Music; on his second album, he dedicates his sensitive and brilliant musicality to Gérard Pesson's fragile and puzzling fabrics of sound. A selection of piano pieces has been compiled in a joint effort by the pianist and the French composer; in his interpretations Alberti lets us catch glimpses of musical structures as though they were glittering just u…
Sleppet
Composed and produced by Marc Behrens in 2007-2008 in Bergen, Oslo and Frankfurt am Main. Basic material recorded in Gloppen, Bergen, on Utvær island, at Brenndalsbreen glacier and close to Rosskleivvatnet lake, Norway. Sleppet originated from a sound art project in 2007, when six renowned artists (Natasha Barrett, Bjarne Kvinnsland, Steve Roden, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen and Marc Behrens) recorded sounds on a 10-day trip through the Norwegian Westlandet region and used the nature exper…
Under foot
Rusalka is a female noise artist based in Vancouver with past works on What We Do is Secret, Ruido Horrible and Dead Audio Tapes.Under Foot is worship. The worship of women and sound. It is sacred filth. Based on the novel ‘Venus In Furs’ about sexual cruelty, servitude and female dominance, Under Foot strips away illusions. It is a complete submersion into disharmony. The disharmony of desire for degradation. The disharmony of a woman wielding the whip. The desire to be sonically and spirituall…
For Myria
On his cd debut, UK sound artist Jodi Cave creates seven short compositions united by themes of singularity and natural randomness. One of the most immediate features of For Myria is its restrained sound palette. Like an instrumentalist who has laid a small collection of choice instruments out in front of him, Cave creates beautifully intimate collages, each touching on maybe only 2 or 3 sounds, woven together by computer processing which has been pushed into the background, utilized more as a c…