Best of 2016
Astro Black
Astro-Black mythology, astro-timeless immortality! Astro Black has long been known as a cornerstone of the Sun Ra catalog. It is well recorded, features a superb Arkestral lineup, and successfully combines several of the styles in which Sun Ra orbited, from Saturnic jazz to astro-funk. And now it’s finally back in the earthly bins! Pressed on colored vinyl, and packaged with new cover art, with liner notes by Robert Campbell (author of The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra), and includes a poster ins…
The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986
The follow up to Light In The Attic’s game-changing I Am The Center box set is finally here. The Microcosm: Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970-1986 is the first major overview of key works from cosmically-taped in artists needing little introduction — Vangelis, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh — and unknown masterpieces by criminally overlooked heroes like Bernard Xolotl, Robert Julian Horky and Enno Velthuys. Whereas I Am The Center called for a reconsideration of an entire maligned genre…
Life Extreme – An Illustrated Guide to New Life
At the junction of art and science, Life Extreme intends to present new living beings created by man, beings no longer produced solely by “nature”. This poetic proposition takes the form of a guide to new lives among the most astonishing that have appeared at the beginning of the Twenty-first century.Artist Eduardo Kac, a pioneer of bio-art, and Avital Ronell exchanges on very controversial questions inspired by scientific actuality in the biotechnological field, challenging the limits of what's…
Expériences Musicales 1961
Milestone reissue! Recorded in Venice in 1961 by the French sculptor, painter, and iconoclast Jean Dubuffet, these recordings were originally released in a hyper-limited 10" box set that is all but impossible to acquire. An early progenitor of the avant-garde and musique concrete, Dubuffet's recordings nearly defy category and still sound innovative some 50+ years later. Dubuffet’s music is contained as raw and uncompromising: noisy, pure, crazy, exuberant, yet also focused and inventive. Dubuff…
The Little Glass
The ever-enigmatic Akira Rabelais returns! The Little Glass breaks down clearly over two discs; the first containing four plaintive solo piano parts by Harold Budd and Rabelais, followed by a 2nd disc presenting Rabelais’ hour long, inharmonic, electronic transformation of the preceding material. Rabelais has collaborated with Budd before, he provided his own incredible side-long second CD to Budd’s majestic Avalon Sutra album, and while the piano pieces that make up the first CD here are bloody…
Royaume/Aimant + Aimant -
This is the second of three reissues focusing on the works of Étant Donnés based on field recording and voice. Royaume (originally released on CD by Touch in 1991) is made up of four tracks and is a kind of purifying journey through the four elements that symbolically refers to the light evoked by the color green, an allegory of the grail and of the light-bringing angel. As to the poems, they tend to amount to their essentials, as is the case on the track "Matin," which is both Taoist and surrea…
Porn Art Movement
These previously unissued recordings from the Porn Art Movement (1980-1982) include five performances recorded live on Ipanema Beach in 1982, as well as a selection of previously unheard studio recordings of Eduardo Kac yell-poems. Kac fused existing coarse and curse words with parts of words, neologisms, salacious buffoonery, the antinormative scribblings of toilet-wall graffiti, commonplaces, blasphemy, expletives, agrammatisms, incorrect orthography, slangy expressions, lexical exorbitance, g…
Fall of Saigon
Fall of Saigon was born in 1981 when Florence Berthon (Vocals), Pascal Comelade (Organ, Synthesizer) and Thierry Den (Guitar, Vocals) met at a concert in Montpellier, France. They chose to the name the project Fall of Saigon after a song by UK post-punk act This Heat. They self-released their debut EP in 1983 citing Nico & The Velvet Underground, Suicide and James Joyce as influences. At the time the band formed, Pascal Comelade was an accomplished musician with instrumental sketches composed fo…
Call Me Burroughs
Originally released in 1965 by The English Bookshop in Paris and later by ESP-Disk' in New York, Call Me Burroughs marks not only the recorded debut of William Burroughs, but also for many the first encounter with his inimitable voice. While Burroughs has had pervasive influence on counterculture in the past 50 years – from the Beats to punk rock and even hip hop – no other figure today is so widely considered the epitome of cool. Call Me Burroughs features the author reading from Naked Lunch an…
Waves
Petra Dubach and Mario van Horrik have been working together as an artistic duo in Eindhoven since 1983. Originally, they combined dance and music in concerts, performances and theater pieces, Dubach being a dancer and van Horrik making music. He is also a long-time member of the Maciunas Ensemble alongside Paul Panhuysen et al. Dubach's and van Horrik's starting point was the notion that movement and sound are essentially the same: If there is no movement (vibration), nothing can be heard; if t…
Spiral Insana
Color LP, edition of 500. Probably one of Nurse With Wounds most deep and mysterious recordings, with 4 indexed tracks containing 20 listed sequences. Such is Steven Stapleton's Nurse With Wound. The music contained here in, still having it's surreal edge, is more ambient and user friendly than on many other Nurse With Wound outings. Stapleton and guests, Robert Haigh and David Jackman mix prepared piano, percussion, loops and various bric a brac together into an hour long collage of mashed u…
Eclipsed
Bremen return with Eclipsed, a double LP of glacial electronics, strung-out drone-punk, and smoldering space-rock minimalism. Following the release of their self-titled debut on Skrammel in 2013, the Swedish duo of Jonas Tiljander (Brainbombs) and Lanchy Orre (Brainbombs, Totalitär) joined the Blackest Ever Black fold in 2014 with Second Launch (BLACKEST 033LP). If the mood of that record was brooding and stygian, its monochord intensity unfaltering, then Eclipsed, this equally sprawling set, co…
Giornata Nera Per L'Ariete
180 gram audiophile vinyl LP; Gatefold sleeve + movie poster. Fourth and last reissue of this Spettro invasion and, obviously, a tribute to the greatest Italian maestro of original soundtracks, none other than Ennio Morricone himself. Giornata Nera per l’Ariete (The Fifth Cord in english) is a 1971 Italian giallo film directed by Luigi Bazzoni. The Italian title, which in its literal meaning reads “Black Day for the Ram”, in its typical figurative meaning could translate as “A Bad Day for Aries”…
La Morte accarezza a Mezzanotte
180 gram audiophile vinyl LP; Gatefold sleeve + movie poster. The first release of Spettro, a new Italian label devoted to soundtracks and libraries. A giallo film from 1972 directed by Luciano Ercoli, the movie deals with a taboo film like drugs and the LSD hallucinations of the female actress are perfectly underlined by Ferrio sublime cinematic score. Lots of spare spacey arrangements, with doomy keyboards, muffled horn riffs, and even some cool electronic harpsichord, the soundtrack offers a …
Complete Song Books
... to consider the Song Books as a work of art is nearly impossible. Who would dare? It resembles a brothel, doesn't it?" --John Cage. Complete Song Books, volume three in the Perihel series on Karlrecords, along with La Legende d'Eer and Douze Inventions en Six Modes De Jeu is dedicated to one of the most iconic composers of 20th century, John Cage. All 92 pieces of Song Books are presented here, with stunning interpretations by Reinhold Friedl, recorded at Rashad Becker's Clunk Studio who a…
This Dazzling, Genuine "Difference" Now Where Shall It Go?
Black Truffle presents the eighth full-length release from the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi. Over the course of four LP sides, the October 2014 concert documented here ranges from rock power trio dynamics to maelstroms of analog electronics. Once again, the three demonstrate their commitment to pushing into new areas of instrumental exploration and group interaction. Where their previous releases featured extended vocal workouts from Haino, his vocalizations here ar…
Aura Legato
Blackest Ever Black presents Af Ursin's 2005 masterpiece Aura Legato. Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer/improviser Timo van Luijk. His work is rooted in the use of acoustic instruments (wind, percussion, strings), but his special sensitivity to the timbral qualities of each instrument, and his deft blurring of them, results in a sound-world that is mysterious, amorphous and hallucinatory, full of suggestive shadows, creaks and whispers. Van Luijk's process begins alw…
Le Stanze
It's been 6 years since Ingar Zachs critically acclaimed solo album; M.O.S. (SOFA 532). On his 5th album, Le Stanze, Ingar Zach continues to develop his unique, personal music, also this time with percussion and electronics. The four compositions show an highly original artist who constantly finds new surprising possibilities in the world of percussion. The music is recorded in a small church in Urueña in Spain and in his studio in Madrid. The result is a brilliant refined album which again c…
The Long Exhale
Anthony Burr, clarinets, ARP 2600. Anthony Pateras, piano, prepared piano. Seven meditations for clarinets, pianos and electronics. The Long Exhale catalogues psychoacoustic experiments and Feldman-influenced acoustic excursions undertaken between 2014 and 2015 by Australian composer - performers Anthony Burr and Anthony Pateras. Anthony Burr has enjoyed a distinguished career as an exponent of contemporary classical music, probably known to many people from his meticulously executed perfo…
I'm The One
Masterpiece!!! I'm The One, you don't have to look any further. I'm The One. I'm here, right here for you,' oozes jazz, rock, and electronic music pioneer Annette Peacock on the leadoff title track of her solo debut LP. The album's wide range of vocal emotions and diverse sonic palette (featuring Robert Moog's early modular synthesizers, which the singer actually transmitted her voice through to wild effect) places it firmly at the forefront of the pop avant-garde. Originally released by R…