New Arrivals
Second Hand Emotions And Half Forgotten Feelings
Human Flesh is a long lived project of Alain Neffe. The tracks presented here are all unreleased songs recorded in the mid 80s. With a wide range of unconventional instruments Neffe & his compadres create their own dark & twisted world. WIth a lot of improvisation & cracked up minimal synth going on this makes up a great album. Besides synths & rythm boxes we hear zither, bells, strings, tarang, ocarina, Yugoslavian voice, reel to reel tape scratch & more. Limited edition of 400 copies. …
Dutch Tvashar Plumes
'Dutch Tvashar Plumes' seems to map the changes in Lee's approach to music making over the last 4/5 years. From his initial exposure and subsequent immersion into Jungle as a teenager, he soon began experimenting with structure and sound design which led him to a more 'academic' approach with 'Computer Music'. There were many self-imposed rules he adhered to during this time. These last few years he decided to break with that and make an intuitive venture forward. This record is the first real d…
Frequencies
Nicolas Bernier’s Frequencies (Synthetic Variations) is his first piece made entirely of synthetic sounds. Having evolved within the musique concrète and field recording traditions, Bernier wanted to break with habit — the result being 15 short movements of warped and crackling textures, vividly articulated sine waves and rhythmic bursts of pattern. The piece is designed to be listened to at random (the sound sample above is such a sequence), offering a new duration and dynamics with every heari…
Voyage a l'ombre
CD in 4-panel chipboard sleeve. The complete, unabridged masterpiece from 1997. Almost impossible to find since more than 10 years. After a vinyl reissue (but not complete) here\'s the CD version again ! Voyage à l\'ombre was originally released in 1997, as a limited CD on the France-based Demosaurus label run by David Fenech, a frequent Tazartes-collaborator. With tracks featuring Pambin Thullal, Syeta Choir, and Yumi Nara. Original lbel note \'Ghédalia Tazartes combines an orchestra and a pop …
Nigeria Special Volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigeria
Nigeria Special 2 is the second part to the best selling Nigeria Special album released to critical acclaim in 2007 and further extends the look at the most exciting period in Nigeria’s recording history. The range of styles vary from highlife to Juju and Nigerian blues in the languages of Yoruba, Igbo, Bini and Ijaw. With a peppering of ‘afro’ experimentation the same musical stew pervades volume 2 as it’s predecessor – some artists appear again alongside some new …
Rock Power
Reissue of an extremely rare and essential Sunroof! CD-R released during a European tour in 2003 on Matthew Bower's own imprint, Rural Electrification Program (REP). On this LP, Bower is joined on guitar by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Flower-Corsano Duo) and the result was once qualified as Sunroof's rock record and its tribute to Neil Young and AC/DC (hence the title). RockPower is a very singular record because it documents a very short time period in the M. Bower/Sunroof! evolut…
Armed Courage
With nary a praising documentary, coffee table photo book or tribute band to their name, The Dead C are nonetheless one of the most respected, longest surviving groups in the history of rock. Still sporting the original band members (Michael Morley on guitar, vocals, Bruce Russell on guitar, Robbie Yeats on drums) from their first assemblage in 1987, The Dead C's renown has a lot to do with their stubborn unwillingness to compromise in any form. With a varied and challenging discography, the ban…
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…
Hassaniya Music from the Western Sahara and Mauritania
In 2006, Hisham Mayet returned to West Africa to continue his search for an unknown musician he had heard six months earlier on the radio in a Morocco hotel room. Knowing only that it was Sahrawi music -- music of the south -- he headed down through the vast and remote desert landscape of the Western Sahara and Mauritania in hopes of finding someone who could identify these revelatory recordings. The story of how he finally found this elusive artist is the stuff of ethnomusicological legend. But…
Mountains Of Tongues
Important collection of recordings documenting and preserving "fringe" or under-represented folk cultures and voices from a unique region at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. It spans a diverse cross-section of music by Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Chechens and many other ethnicities which fall outside their country's definition of national folk music - Azeris from Georgia, Kurds from Tbilisi, Avars and Lezgis from Azerbaijan, or Molokans in the South Caucasus - giving room for al…
Elegy for Bangalore
The sound/video installation-project 'Eye Contact with the City' (recipient of an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011) was the outcome of an artists' residency in Bangalore in the autumn of 2010. The primary materials used in the installation were the field recordings made and video footage shot at various locations in Bangalore. Materials also included retrieved audio from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city's flea markets. The extensive repository of field recordings and other a…
Mika Vainio-Haswell & Hecker remixes
Popol Vuh's soundtrack work for the films of Werner Herzog in 1970's and 1980's are some of the most stunning in the field. Editions Mego is pleased to present two re-workings of classic Vuh tracks. Mika Vainio takes 'Nachts: Schnee' from the 1987 soundtrack 'Cobra Verde', and delivers a skillfully constructed ambient piece of beauty, which shifts and turns over 10 minutes. Haswell & Hecker turn the majestic 'Aguirre' from the 1972 soundtrack 'Aguirre - The Wrath Of God' into possibly the first …
The Spectacle of Light Abductions
The book is 12 full-color pages of art, text and photos in the full size LP format."After many years as half of the highly influential SKATERS with James Ferraro, 2 solo albums on Olde English Spelling Bee (BLACK JOKER and MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS) and countless tapes and CDs, SPENCER CLARK has taken it to the next level. Layers of cosmic and alien sounds inhabit their own world and act as metaphors you can access subconsciously or explicitly. Clearer and more lucid than previous rel…
Nine Months To The Disco
The most impressive, but also the most overlooked of all the bands that lurched around the mutant extremes that trail through Gang of Four, the Mekons, and, ultimately, the Pop Group, the Glaxo Babies' debut album was actually cut following the collapse of the original band -- both vocalist/songwriter Rob Chapman and drummer Geoff Alsopp had departed, with saxophonist Tony Wrafter explaining the reason for the rift. "Rob was into songs and we weren't." Too true! Under Chapman's aegis, Glaxo Babi…
Works 1987-1993
Both of these projects hardly need an introduction. Merzbow is since the late 70s the project of Masami Akita working in the field of noise music, having released a few hundred CDs/LPs/cassettes by now. In 1987 Kapotte Muziek was then the solo project of Frans de Waard, after Christian Nijs left the group early '87. De Waard concentrated on working with other musicians, and started trading tapes with a few musicians he was already in contact with, and one of them was Merzbow. The first release w…
Dawn In 2 Dimensions
After the dark conceptual ambience of Beyond the 4th Door, the members of Eternal Tapestry decided the time was right to do an album embracing their live show - blistering psych rock filled with lyrical guitar soloing and a caveman approach to rhythm, an oddly euphoric state where melancholia is blasted by ecstatic noise. Compiled from a variety of sessions at Tapestry Space throughout the spring of 2011 (some of this material first found a home on the two fall tour tapes), this set of so…
Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco
Features six extended tracks from the Golden Age of the Moroccan record industry. 'Kassidat', the Arabic word for poetry, is one of the essential ingredients in Moroccan song. Despite the bewildering array of musical styles in Morocco, the Moroccan sense of poetry is found throughout the music, regardless of the style or language. This isn't the language of high art, but an often impenetrable vernacular poetry of oblique references, symbols, metaphors, and double entendres that describes the liv…
See the World Given to a One Love Entity
Guardian Alien is a free wheeling ensemble coming into its own, having found just the right balance between structured arrangements and wild abandon. Helmed by Greg Fox, who has lent his percussive force to the likes of Teeth Mountain, Dan Deacon, and Liturgy, the ensemble was initially an extension of his solo music (GDFX). It rapidly took on its own identity and expanded to a core group of Greg (drums, vocals, electronics, arrangements), Alex Drewchin (vocals, synth), Turner Williams Jr…
A World Out Of Time
Both words in Eternal Tapestry's name say something about their music, but it's the first that's key. This Portland band's expansive psych rock sounds like it could go on forever, and most of their releases have in fact been culled from longer, open-ended improvisations. The way they slowly build these jams-- adding parts, increasing volume, and cresting in unison-- you get the feeling they're always playing, and their records are just glimpses of an endless stream.For A World Out of Time, Etern…
A Rebours
Depuis que Minizza existe (le groupe se forme en 2000), ses membres ont toujours eu dans l'idée, un jour, d'adapter un roman en musique. Lorsque France Culture leur commande un Atelier de Création Radiophonique, l'occasion est saisie, et le choix se porte rapidement sur A Rebours (1884) de Joris-Karl Huysmans, chef-d'œuvre séminal, manifeste du décadentisme, dévoré par les membres du groupe dès l'adolescence.Ce travail pour France Culture donne naissance au troisième album du groupe qui, bien qu…