New Arrivals
Ernest Thrasher
Back when I was about six months older than I am now, I used to see these bumper stickers around town that said, "There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert." My first reaction was to say, "Thank fuck," since the last Dead show I saw (Jersey City 8/6/74) pretty much blew. Then I remembered that last goddamn Dead show anyone saw was almost 20 years ago (Chicago 7/9/95) and it makes me wonder what kinda stupid pills the cars' occupants have been snorting. 'Cause Jesus, there're all sorts of thi…
Butcher Meat
Moreno Daldosso breaks into 1993 with his project Murder Corporation and released his first tape on his new label Murder Release. Tape after tape Murder Corporation has gained a prominent position as electronic serial slaughterer, claiming frontal attacks and sonic walls relentlessly, sampling overload and brutal distortion. Butcher Meat is reflected in an overdose of frequency, blood, screams and distorted voice beyond the human. Death, massacres and violence are tightened up until the total sa…
The Just Reproach
The Just Reproach documents the second concert given by John Tilbury and Oren Ambarchi as a duo. When they first performed together in Reykjavik, Iceland in March 2012, the aptness of the pairing was evident. When they reprised the duo at London's Cafe OTO in September the same year in the concert presented here, the city was in the midst of a heatwave. With the air-conditioning turned off to accommodate the low volume of the performance, the uncomfortable squirming of the audience members…
Inconsistent Images
Inconsistent Images includes three works of musique concrète composed in 2012. The title is derived from an observation of inconsistencies in stereo image, but also describes the destabilisation of certain media, utilised for their musical properties, and at the same time suggesting a pseudo-visual response.”
Adam Asnan is a London based composer-performer of musique concrète, acquiring an MA under the supervision of Denis Smalley in 2009. Adam’s work promotes the aesthetic potential of f…
Surveillance
Painted Caves is Evan Caminiti. Surveillance is his debut LP under this alias. Primarily sourced from modular synthesizer, Surveillance compiles 7 tracks recorded over the last year, warped with cassette tapes and other digital tools. Beamed in like a scene from Videodrome, this sensual brand of dystopian psychedelia creates a grainy and tension filled narrative to get lost in. Much of Caminiti’s past work has inhabited a world of it’s own, but Surveillance is a direct response to life in an …
The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World
Peter Jefferies's extraordinary debut solo album, The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World, first saw life as a cassette via the Xpressway label of Port Chalmers, New Zealand, in 1990. As a result of some international underground acclaim in fanzines and mailorder catalogs -- for both the album and a striking 7-inch, 'The Fate of the Human Carbine,' released around the same time -- it soon appeared on LP and CD as well, through the Ajax label of Chicago. Within a couple of years it slipped…
Qat, Coffee & Quambus: raw 45s from Yemen
Compiled by Chris Menist, Qat, Coffee & Qambus: raw 45s from Yemen features vintage oud and vocal music inspired by the qat-chewing, coffee-sipping, qambus-playing culture of Yemen. Although part of the classical Arabic musical tradition, the music of Yemen takes its rhythmic lead as much from the East African coast (a mere 20 miles across the Red Sea) as the surrounding Arab Peninsula.Little has been written about the music and culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations, and each 45rpm …
Audience of one
On Audience of One, Oren Ambarchi, presents a four-part suite which moves from throbbing minimalism to expansive song-craft to ecstatic free-rock. While his previous solo albums for Touch have exhibited a clear progression towards augmenting and embellishing his signature bass-heavy guitar tones with fragile acoustic instrumentation, Audience of One, while also existing in clear continuity with his previous recordings, opens the next chapter in his catalogue of solo works. Remarkable in i…
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…
Pyrolator's Wunderland
LP version, on 180 gram vinyl. Bureau B reissues Pyrolator's Wunderland, originally released on Ata Tak in 1984. Quote 1: "I have always strived for the opposite of whatever is hip at the time." (Pyrolator in June 2013) Quote 2: "Wunderland is so beautiful -- the first time I heard this record, I cried." (Andreas Dorau). New York City, 1983. Andreas Dorau has a gig at Danceteria and Pyrolator accompanies him as sound engineer. Back then, it really looked as if Ata Tak could make a go of it in th…
Eight (+3) Tristano Compositions 1989 - For Warne Marsh
"I would like to make a few notes and hopefully clear up a potential misunderstanding or two. Most importantly, no matter what you think about the original Tristano performances, this music is not "cool" – with feverish intensity, volcanic dynamics, explosive technique, aggressive attitudes ... there is an enormous amount of drama here, and none of it is sedate, reticent, or bloodless. Note the treacherously difficult heads on tunes like "Two Not One," "Dreams," "Lennie's Pennies," and "A…
Music Of Group Ongaku
"Group ONGAKU, founded mainly by students at Tokyo National University of Fine Art & Music, was the 1st collective musical improvisation group. The group began their activities in 1958, & from the naming of the group in 1960 onward continued until somewhere around 1962. They attempted to create acoustics corresponding to actual time & space by means of collective improvisation. Although methodically different, the music that they pursued incidentally shared common directions with contemporaries …
Issue 3
third issue of Lasse Marhaug’s titanic self-published journal of “noise, music and random chaos. Exclusive interviews with : Moe. Norway's Guro Moe on her various projects, ice swimming, playing loud and what's wrong with Norwegian music. Carl Michael Eide. Norwegian guitarist and vocalist from Aura Noir, Virus, Ved Buens Ende and more metal bands that you can think of. Being inside that groove, not wanting out. The Menstruation Sisters. Multi-disciplinary Australian artist Nik K…
Hypnosis, distortion & other innovations 1969-1978
In 2010, against all odds, Angola Soundtrack Vol. 1 (AACD 069CD/AALP 069LP) was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize in the category "Black Music." This victory was all the sweeter for its triumph over the predicted winner, Aloe Blacc's multi-platinum record, Good Things. Many were surprised that the award was handed to a compilation that covered obscure music, but it didn't surprise the team behind Analog Africa, who believed such an award should have come much earlier. Since discovering th…
Das Testament
Backwards proudly presents the reissue of a private Maurizio Bianchi vinyl LP, issued in a small edition of 300 copies in 1983 and titled "Das Testament". M.B. is an Italian pioneer of noise music, born near Milan. Bianchi began to produce music in 1979, and since 1980 has used electronic equipment with the avowed goal "to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on complete realising of the modern decadence". Now remastered, for this release MB plays electronics, rhythms, neutroni…
Crossarc chute
Crossarc Chute was inspired by my interest in the compositional strategies adopted for the early analogue electronics of the 1950s and ’60s, yet using digital processes and my own adaptations. Starting with pulse sounds, predefined filtering techniques and rules became the springboard from which I was able to generate many new sounds. These parameters formed a kind of system from which I could at times deviate.For one piece, Detail II, I separated the frequencybands of a group of sounds and then…
Open Space
I've been composing graphical scores since 2004. Each score has been done for a particular group, and not just for a certain set of instruments but also for specific persons, each with their own personal sound and their own distinct approach to improvisation. The scores hover in the gray region between composition and improvisation. They create a situation where the players are free up to a point to improvise but in which they could also find themselves in juxtapositions with other player…
Ncat
Nate Wooley, trumpet, amplifier. C. Spencer Yeh, violin, voice. Audrey Chen, cello, voice, electronics. Todd Carter, piano, electronics, edit. Blurring the lines between electronic and acoustic music, as well as composition versus improvisation, NCAT is an unique quartet consisting of an improvising trio whose music has been mutated and structured in post-production by its fourth member. The bulk of the musical material on this LP was recording at Steim in Amsterdam, during a residency of …
Souvenir Of Italy
A lost gem from the mid 80s in the best italian tradition, BlowUp reissue of the month: to describe GustoForte’s Picture disc “Souvenir of Italy - La merda che fuma”, to give some dialect shape to the electro-magnetic throbbings that come out from the record , to try drawing, with grammatic help also that more basic, a logic or a descriptive way, it’s complex.And not because exists a multi-shape objective difficulty but rather the concreteness it’s impossible to approach to GustoForte: sandpaper…
GAU
In March of 2012, nearing the end of a tour together through the Netherlands and Belgium, Celer, Machinefabriek, and Jan and Romke Kleefstra gathered in a country studio, spending an afternoon improvising to record Gau. Recorded by the old hardcorerocker Jan Switters at the Landscape studios in Gauw, situated in the countryside in the midst of Friesland, the place was surrounded by green fields with idle tractors, few trees, buzzards and only massive farmhouses dotting the horizon. From the almo…