New Arrivals
Harvey Milk
Following critical acclaim of Harvey Milk’s latest album Life… the Best Game in Town (2008), the band’s current home Hydra Head, has gone into the archives for this new/old album. Originally recorded in 1993 by one Bob Weston, these recordings never officially saw the long-playing light of day. Until now. The band is known for being somewhat curmudgeonly, and this proto-debut is fittingly nasty and strangely disconnected. Not for the ‘Milk the youthful exuberance of early spotty Metallica or gri…
Deficit des années antèrieures
Déficit Des Années Antérieures was originally released in 1979 as a C60 tape. This CD reissue is a limited edition of 450 copies, numbered and signed, silkscreen cover with 2 colors + one bonus live in Cherbourg in 1979.
Piano & Percussion Works
2011 release. Satoko Inoue is an experienced performer of Ferrari’s works and had a lively exchange of ideas with the composer, who was also present at the recording sessions. No wonder then that precisely those ideas of open work and its “anecdotal” interpretation were the ones that were most important to him – as such sounds were to him always abstract at the core, even if he first illustrated them in a very visual and associative way. Satoko Inoue writes: “We discussed, he explained ab…
Musica Metaphysica
Mauricio Reyes was born in Mexico City in 1969 and composes music under the name Robol. Musica Metaphysica is his debut album. When he was 14 years old he started to create music with dual tape recorders, two turntables and experimented with different records playing simultaneously at times in reverse. Later he collected rare samples of early electronic music and started to study a wide range of electronic music. One year ago he started to create this album and used sound samples that were recor…
Yaho-Niwa
Masami Akita alias Merzbow, the king of noise music, the defender of the vegan cause, the animals lover is coming back with a cosmic and devastating magma, a spinning metal tapestry-work with loops of echoes in a whale rutting way. As usual, to be listened to very loudly. Mix realized at Munemihouse in Tokyo during the month of April in 2011.
Glass Armonica
In its two hundred year history, the glass armonica has played many roles. It was a serious attempt by Benjamin Franklin to create a new instrument for the classical repertoire; believed to cause insanity in its players, it gained traction as an object of superstition; a century or more in historical obscurity ensued, followed by its revival as a compositional curiosity for a handful of composers and as an exotic timbre in soundtracks and on pop records. More recently, Christina Kubisc…
Guts
Deluxe 2LP version. More voraciously bestial soundwork coming from Daniel Menche -- this time, his chosen theme is the piano, in which he attacks, investigates and dissects with the precision of an autopsy surgeon, adding a whole new meaning to the concept of prepared piano, or should we say, unprepared piano, for an all-out assault. Guts lays out quite possibly some of the finest slabs of Menchian sonic mayhem to date. Slightly different track sequence over CD and vinyl formats due to ti…
47°13' N 7°E
Another uncommon sonic wringer from Portuguese label Creative Sources has been signed by a couple of Switzerland-based (as you could easily surmise from the geographical coordinate, which point to a place the district of Franches-Montagnes in the canton of Jura in Switzerland, they used to name this release) musicians, Lea Danzeisen and Christoph Schiller, who decided to squeeze the spinet, the little brother of harpsichord and piano, whose sound got totally transfigured by meticulous mod…
Deleted scenes
Deleted scenes, the debut album by Marion Wörle aka Frau W (Laptop) and Maciej Sledziecki (Guitar) uses the vocabulary of sound-art just as instinctively as it does elements from psychedelia, noise and Krautrock. The electronic music of the 90s and 2000s is also bursting through every crack on this record. Refreshingly non-academic and equipped with a fine sense of humor they bring great diversity to the day. No one track compares to any other - each has its own very individual character. PIRX i…
News from the \'70s
This rare collection of recordings from the 1970s features Anthony Braxton at the height of his power and makes an indispensable contribution to his discography. Personally selected by esteemed Italian musicologist Francesco Martinelli from long forgotten cassettes stored in the saxophonist's home, these six tracks were not released commercially until 1999. While the sound quality is mixed, the music is some of Braxton's best. There are two solo performances ("Composition 8G" and "Composition 8C…
The Gowanus Session
“The Gowanus Session”, a new trio recording by Thollem McDonas (piano), William Parker (acoustic bass), Nels Cline (electric guitar), that explores the density and subtlety of tones with reverberating layers of sounds. Thollem McDonas approaches the piano brilliantly, leading the listener to image abstract and beautiful worlds within themselves. William Parker, with his mastery of the acoustic bass, brings warmth to the recording that is complex, soaring and joyful. Nels Cline’s innovative and s…
Guillotine
'A visualisation in slow motion of an uncomfortable moment. Recorded live one night, a long time ago. First edition of 50 copies.' label info
Mon Possible
The new record by Dominique Petitgand, Mon possible, gathers sound and musical pieces created between 2001 et 2010. Still composed of voices, words, noises, musical atmospheres and silences, the stories here get more enigmatic than on the previous records (Le sens de la mesure, Le point de côté, Le bout de la langue, also released by Ici, d’ailleurs…). The music, interpreted and composed by Dominique Petitgand (recorded with the sometimes subliminal of some accomplices : Marc Sens, Dominique A, …
Spacer
Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz's (of Exploding Star Orchestra fame) Chicago Trio with drummer Mike Reed and bassist Nate McBride in a great modern jazz release of original compositions, informed, warm and compelling music. "The Jason Adasiewicz Trio features Jason on vibraphone, Mike Reed on drums, and Nate McBride on bass. The Chicago jazz group formed in 2008, first experimenting as a free improvising trio, and later focused attention on arranging tunes that Adasiewicz wrote during his wife's …
Hairdryer Peace
Finally available on CD. Ranked 3rd best album of 2008 in The Wire magazine. Intensely psychedelic and mixed for maximum hallucinations, this marks a pretty heavy departure from the Hospitals of old. Heavy tranced-out riffs, weird pop, cracked folk, disorienting noise, paranoid vibes. Main Hospital Adam Stonehouse with Rob Enbom & Rod Meyer from Eat Skull and Chris Gunn from The Hunches. The most forward-thinking album of 2008 but also an album of songs with actual emotional intensity. Not a par…
Moon Over Torrelorca
Cold and glacial drone recorded at the prestigious EMS in Stockholm. 58 minutes of northern iciness. Moon Over Torrelorca, the second album from Keränen, serves as a great follow up to his amazing debut album Bats In Attic that Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk released last year. In contrast to the high energy multi-layered noise- bomb the debut offered, Moon Over Torrelorca instead showcases a carefully composed drone piece from this highly skilled sound artist. It’s cold up north.
AIA
This is the first CD issue of Grouper's 2011 self released two part album subtitled 'Dream Loss' and 'Alien Observer,' comprised of songs written and recorded over the last four years. A chronological order informs the thematic trajectory of the dual release. 'Dream Loss' is the first album and is a collection of older songs, while 'Alien Observer' is mostly made of newer songs. Each is meant to stand solidly on its own, and also as a satellite in the other's system, subjects on either side of t…
Massacre
In "massacre" Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. An opera for five singers, nine musical instruments and electronics.Based on Christopher Marlowe’s drama »The massacre at Paris«, Wolfgang Mitterer paints an acoustic picture of destruction, conspiracy and the thrill of power. His protagonists virtually rid themselves of their identities, turning into typological representations of different points of view. The concrete e…
Atonal drone
Rarely you remember the moment you listen to a record for the first time as something clear and tangible - what is retained in the memory is the atmosphere and the emotions that the music evokes, but not much else. Atol Drone (Polycephal 2002) was an altogether different case. It broke through into my mind surreptitiously like a high Pacific wave and for years it held sway over the area of my musical memory responsible for the rough sea, atomic fears, sea fever, incomplete Morse signals no…
Invisible ear
Two decades ago, saxophonist John Butcher abandoned his doctoral pursuits in theoretical physics to pursue a life in improvised music and has since become one of the genre’s leading instrumental and structural innovators. Butcher’s pursuit of extended techniques has yielded and continues to yield, as indicated by this most recent solo outing, a treasure trove of unfathomable timbral and dynamic possibilities for an instrument whose role in experimental music seems to consistently teeter o…