Best of 2017
Il Cavaliere Azzurro
Limited clear vinyl, edition of 100. One of the many characteristics of Italian avant-garde theatre, from the seventies through the eighties, was the overlap of acting with the physicality of movement - reality with fiction and the stage with real life; it was a new poetic language for a multimedia representation. In this new language, the music composed for the stage was an active part of the performances, and the soundtrack from 1985’s “Il Cavaliere Azzurro” is one of its most significan…
Antibarbarus
A reissue of Antibarbarus, issued as a compact disc in 1998, was the first edition Walter Marchetti released on Alga Marghen. The Antibarbarus cycle of five pieces makes use of original tapes coming from the same recording sessions that originated some of Marchetti's major musical works realized in the '80s. This former series of works presented some homogeneous and untouched sound sources in the "concrete" status of their inner - and necessarily chaotic - level of entropy. Nevertheless this ope…
Crawling To Lhasa
**Picture Disc edition with an insert of 8 pages and is also limited to 1000 hand-numbered copies.** Against its remarkable, sprawling, and lasting influence, it is hard to image the 1960’s and 70’s German sonic counterculture as it was - a truly underground music, almost entirely unknown beyond the borders of the country from which it sprang. Across the ensuing decades, this scene - among the most ambitious, rebellious, and experimental of its day, has offered an unparalleled wealth of inspirat…
Look'n for Ya (1973-75)
In 1973, when Smegma (the band) was born they had only one rule: No Musicians! That way they could re-invent the musical wheel with a new primitive, suburban, anti-hippie approach. 44 years later perhaps the world is ready for the first full LP of this original, uncompromising sound. At the time, it seemed they thought they were on a solitary journey, but shortly after these recordings, it was discovered that there was another local group, The Los Angeles Free Music Society, that they shortly be…
Epitaph For Venus
Mental Experience present a reissue of Galactic Explorers' Epitaph For Venus. Another album from the Pyramid label shrouded in mystery and produced by Toby Robinson in Cologne, circa 1974. Kosmische and head sounds with plenty of Minimoog, analog synths/keyboards, effects, loops, tape manipulation, treated percussions, etc., courtesy of Galactic Explorers, an electronic, minimal, ambient krautrock trio featuring Reinhard Karwatky (Dzyan). Take a trip to the inner regions of your mind, see ancien…
La nuit est au courant
Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl edition of Jac Berrocal's La Nuit Est Au Courant, originally released on In Situ in 1991. Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" on the radio, Renaissance motets, his grandfather in a Zouave military band, Syrian deserts... Columns of tanks in the streets, the soundtrack to Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1956), Juan Manuel Fangio's car, the fall of the Berlin wall: from the first and fantastic Musiq Musik (1973), this is where Jac Berrocal's trumpet com…
Cozmic Corridors
Mental Experience present a reissue of Cozmic Corridors self-titled album. A vinyl reissue of an ultra rare LP (no surviving copies are known to exist!) underground kraut-kosmische monster, Cozmic Corridors was recorded and produced circa 1972-73 in Cologne by Toby "The Mad Twiddler" Robinson for his Pyramid label. The album was apparently released as an ultra-limited handmade edition back in the early '70s, but no original copies have surfaced. Featuring Mythos drummer Hans-Jürgen Pütz on pe…
Conditions of the Gas Giant
Bureau B present a reissue of Conrad Schnitzler's Conditions of the Gas Giant, originally released on cassette in 1988. The Berlin artist first released these recordings on a small American cassette label. Admirers of the seminal artist Conrad Schnitzler can be found all over the planet, including the USA, of course. Matt Howarth, illustrator and independent comic artist, is one of them. He has been following Schnitzler's music since the early 1970s whilst drawing offbeat science fiction stories…
Solo 1975-1980
Sidestepping all normal expectations on this album, Ju Suk Reet Meate (founding member of Smegma) directly goes about casting musical spells, utilizing primitive "inner mind" techniques on hammered dulcimer, tape loops, thrift store records, a homemade synthesizer, electric guitar, saxophone, mouth sounds, and manipulated christian radio broadcasts. Recorded in Portland, Oregon, these previously unreleased recordings reflect a similar "inner-mind over limited technique matter" aesthetic as the a…
Un Giorno in una Piazza + Il Cerchio degli Antichi
Special bundle. In the late 70’s the Italian music scene recorded a renewed interest in a sound research involved to a stimulating fusion of popular elements, jazz improvisation and suggestions of the middle-oriental classical heritage. Starting from the experience of Aktuala the idea of a common "Mediterranean air", that could compare and harmonize rhythms and timbres of various regions, enlivened a large number of musicians. In this context, it also placed the short history of Zeit and of his …
Les Choses de la Vie
First ever LP reissue of this timeless masterpiece by Philippe Sarde, the most versatile and talented french film composer. Les choses de la vie, an outstanding score which offers both the wonderful « Chanson d'Hélène » and most of the musical features which appeared later in Philippe Sarde's musical career : Nostalgia, melancholy, experiment and sound discord. Les choses de la vie is the film which confirms Sautet as a genuine author and Philippe Sarde as a rising composer. This is also the st…
Elapsed Time
A landmark! "Elapsed Time" is undoubtedly destined to be a classic, and one of the finest experimental tomes to emerge over the last years. Kevin Drumm array of releases have traversed the auditory spectrum, roaming from tension-ridden ambient and electro-acoustic suites through to massively distorted, dense and decimating guitar and synth compositions. But despite his noisy reputation, KD music can be overwhelmingly sensual even at its loudest, providing a form of minimalism replete with a de…
A Thousand Breathing Forms
Over the last thirty years, Steve Roden has risen as a singular voice, attacking and advancing the highest challenges of the avant-garde - blurring the lines between nearly every creative field, moving outwardly toward the boundary with every day life. A visual and sound artist, his work spans the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance. Following their brilliant box set of rare recordings by the artist from the period between 1988 and 2003, Sonori…
La Porte Ouverte
La Porte Ouverte is the Elodie's highly anticipated new vinyl-only album, released on Andrew Chalk own Faraway Press imprint. Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luijk have been collaborating extensively as Elodie over the past year, often helped by Tom James Scott here tickling the keys of the piano to augment with his own strings and treatments. The album is constructed from slowly revolving patterns of delicate harmonics floating around an omnipresent timbral drone, plenty of bells and gongs, and while…
Dé-Coll/Age Musik
A seminal figure in the history of 20th century avant-garde, yet sinfully overlooked, Wolf Vostell unleashed ideas - those running wild through his debut LP Dé-coll/age Musik, which remain a slap to the face, more than half a century after they were set into play. A founding member of Fluxus, an early instigator of Happenings, an innovator of video art, Vostell was equally one of the most radical and irreverent practitioners in sound that the world has ever known. First released in 1982, …
Samtvogel
By far one of the most important Krautrock experimental albums made during the ’70s. There are records that come from the soul. No matter how primitive may be the recording techniques the musician has access to, the soul gets its way to the heart and mind of the listener. “Samtvogel” is one of those records. Günter Schickert recorded that amazing piece of human greatness in 1974, using the media he had at the time, putting his brain at work to find the best way of taping everything he had to say…
L'occhio Nel Labirinto (The Eye in the Labyrinth) 1972
First ever official release for this unbelievable giallo score by Roberto Nicolosi, composed for the experimental thriller by Mario Caiano in 1972. Previously issued on the Fontana label in 1973 with the title "Atmosfera", this is certainly one of most sought-after Italian jazz LPs for any serious collector, featuring a five-star collective of marvelous musicians such as Giovanni Tommaso (bass), Franco Tonani (drums), Angelo Baroncini (guitar), Antonello Vannucchi (organ), Franco D'Andrea (piano…
Naši Hostia: Experimental Studio Bratislava Series, vol. 3
This Series of electro acoustic music and Musique Concrète has started in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Experimental Studio Bratislava, Exs. Series 1 introduced us to Ina Hudba/Other Music from the first generation of Slovak avant-garde composers recorded in the Exs, mostly with self-built electronic equipment behind the Iron Curtain. Series 2 provided a platform for Nova Generacia/New Generation of Slovak composers using Western equipment – now integrat…
Opus 67 Strategygetarts A Symphony, Hommage a Richard Demarco
This record is a lie and a failure - a triumph and truth. Such is the condition that Henning Christiansen build across his entire career. One the 20th Century’s most striking and visionary composers - perhaps the most notable of Fluxus’ Danish arm, Christiansen was a radical collectivist as much as an assertive individualist - contradictory and reactionary - possessed by a singular vision which drove him down uncharted paths. Christiansen’s life, with the sprawling body of work it left in its w…
The Zürich Concert
Just when you think you are grasping the breadth and quality of the music of Julius Eastman (1940 - 1990), a recording such as Julius Eastman: The Zürich Concert shows up, and you have to go back and reassess his work and wonder what will show up next. This recording is from a 1980 solo seventy-minute improvisatory concert in Zürich, a cherished cassette made by a friend of Eastman's, who recently realized its uniqueness and decided that he should share it.The Zürich Concert was performed on Oct…