Best of 2017
Worlds Within Worlds
Unwinding history - catching a glimpse of its truths, can be a near impossible task. There’s an understandable tendency to look in the obvious places, seeking generality and concise definition to guide the way. While this presents obvious paradoxes within the fields of avant-garde sound practice and experimental music - territories which, by their very nature, are resistant to genre, categorization, and definition, the impulse persists, allowing strange and singular free-standing efforts to slip…
Expansion Galactica
Mental Experience present the first ever collected works of Guatemalan electronic experimental musician Emilio Aparicio, collecting five 45s he released from 1969-1971. Aparicio was an, a pioneer in using the Moog synth in Latin America. He released a series of private 45s, recorded at his home studio in collaboration with his patron and producer, the painter Roberto Abularach. It is from 1969-1971, when the recordings included here, were registered. Most of the tracks were written at the countr…
Die Nacht Der Seele
‘Die nacht der seele’ is the twelfth album by Popol Vuh, originally released in 1979 by Florian Fricke and friends–Daniel Fichelscher on guitar, Djong Yun and Renate Knaup on vocals, plus guests Alois Gromer on sitar and Susan Goetting on oboe. Popol Vuh had moved again one step farther, ellaborating a complex world music opus based mainly on acoustic instruments plus Fichelscher's electric guitar and the use of multitracked vocals to reproduce the sounds of Tibetan monk chants.‘Florian was and …
Trip Flip Out Meditation
Zweistein's trippy Kraut psych experimental masterpiece from Philips Records 1970, arguably one of the most sought after Kraut titles, period! Remastered from the original tapes, absolutely essential! With roughly a half century between us, the revolutionary spirit of the 1960’s is easily lost - watered downed, its energy and truths rubbed clean by the ubiquity of the pop machine. Our contemporary vision of the past rarely resemblances the true zeitgeist of the day. The 1960’s was an era defined…
W.h.e.a.d.
W.H.E.A.D. is the first solo vinyl effort for the Naples based sound artist Mimmo Napolitano. Over the course of the last 10 years he had developed an elaborate body of works where electroacoustic rumors interact with electric clangours and magnetic object presences, all reassembled and digested through his main instrument, a reel to reel machine. The result is a visceral language where the city of Naples plays a central role in the process, vivid and dramatic feeling of this composition breathe…
Pays Noir
Previously unreleased, the three tracks on Pays Noir come from recording sessions held at the same time as those for the cult album No Man's Land (FFL 026LP), produced by Jef Gilson in 1976, and published on vinyl by Souffle Continu Records in 2017. Singled out at the time of its release by Actuel, Rock & Folk, and Melody Maker, the tabula rasa of No Man's Land is the result of free-flowing experiments born of chance, if the two musicians are to be believed. Indeed, their approach to free im…
Nord 1st Album
First ever official reissue after 36 years! Remastered and expanded edition, it remains one of the holy grails of DIY electronics from Japan. Hazy and drugged, this entrancing 1981 recording by the infamous Nord is a must-have for anyone who is into claustrophobic and destroyed ambient of the most disturbing, affecting kind. "Nord, consisting of Satoshi Katayama and Hiroshi Oikawa, were one of the leading groups in the Japanese underground music scene of the 1980s. The group's two members now pe…
Improvisie
Bamboo present the first ever reissue of Paul Bley's Improvisie, originally released in 1971. Recorded Live March 26th, 1971 at Club B14 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Improvisie is a part of the 1971 trilogy of Paul Bley and Annette Peacock's combined experimental recorded work. Together with recent reissues of 1971's The Bley Synthesizer Show (BAM 7020CD/LP) and 1972's Dual Unity (BAM 7018CD/LP), Improvisie is taken from a compelling period for two iconic figures of the free jazz movement, and the…
Goodbye Future
One of those amazing groups from the early 70s German scene – the kind of outfit who were doomed to failure right from the start, but didn't ever let that stop them from making some incredible music! The sounds here came about as a result of the dwindling Tomorrow's Gift lineup woodshedding in a schoolhouse in rural Germany – experimenting freely with all sorts of timings, styles, and instrumental combinations – then refining the whole thing down to their core lineup of keyboards, bass, and drum…
Cozmic Corridors
CD version. Mental Experience present a reissue of Cozmic Corridors self-titled album. A 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…
The Mecanoncentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien
Discrepant present a magical live recording from the legend that is Pierre Bastien, showcasing his mecanoid orchestra at its intricate best during a performance at Studio M, the historical studio-concert hall of Radio-Television of Vojvodina, Serbia. Around 1986, French composer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre Bastien started creating and building his own orchestra called Mecanium: an ensemble of musical automatons constructed from meccano parts and activated by electro-motors, that "play" on a…
Insalata Statica
**A real find. In the best way this is a record that is immediate and enduring. Limited to just 300 copies for the world, we urge you to grab one while you can** The new solo LP by Giovanni Di Domenico, Insalata Statica comprises a single album-length composition, initially a suite of six distinct parts that have been weaved together to form a kaleidoscopic whole. Composed and performed almost in its entirety by Di Domenico himself, the music takes listeners from passages of melancholic introsp…
Nachtflug / Atem des Windes
Peter Behrendsen (b. 1943) is a Cologne-based radio producer, performer and composer of experimental music. He started concerning himself with electro-acoustic music in 1972, was a member of Josef Anton Riedl's ensemble and assistant to Klaus Schöning at the WDR radio play studio (Studio for Acoustic Art). In Cologne, he organized numerous concerts and festivals for experimental music, most notably BrückenMusik, a series of concerts in the box girder of the Deutz bridge. He regards John Cage, Al…
Kanon / Torsi
Ernstalbrecht Stiebler (b. 1934) is a German composer of minimalist and reductionist contemporary music. His name is still most closely associated with his long-time position as radio editor and producer for New Music at the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation (Hessischer Rundfunk), but his own compositional oeuvre – beginning in 1955 and continuing until now – has in the recent years attracted more attention with various concerts and several releases.Having attended the Darmstadt International Sum…
New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle (New Jazz 1976 & 1977)
A stunning new 8 CD box set, comprised of recording from New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle between 1976 & 1977, and issued by the German imprint B.Free, offers a mind altering vision of just that. Toward the middle of 2016, B.Free released a sprawling 11 CD box of recordings from the 1974 and 75 incarnations of the New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle. As remarkable as it was, the following years seriously upped the game. Found within this new box are complete performance recordings of ensembles led by s…
All My Circles Run
All My Circles Run is the fourth full length release by Montreal-based electro-acoustic composer Sarah Davachi and her second outing for Students of Decay. In a move which may surprise followers of her previous output, the five compositions on this record eschew synthesizer entirely, each focusing on a different instrument, including strings, voice, organ and piano. What remains consistent however is the striking attention to detail and commitment to investigating tonal possibility that c…
Key
One of the great overlooked artifacts of the New York avant-garde, Meredith Monk’s debut album - Key, is a revelation - leaping over the decades with a vision as radical as the day it was made. Originally privately issued in 1971 - now emerging in the hands of Tompkins Square, across its sides, the human voice unfurls as its rarely been heard - the origins of Monk’s seminal body of work, and a near perfect lens into the awe inspiring nature of the era from which it sprang.Within avant-garde prac…
Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain
In the years following his reemergence into the world of music in the 1990’s, until his untimely death last year, Tony Conrad was a towering presence in American experimental music. He was it’s grand patriarch. A monolith. A beam of light shining on the future and past. Beginning with his efforts during the early 1960’s, Conrad set the terms for how experimental practice is currently understood and pursued, yet with a vision and being so completely focused on the present, it was often hard to re…
Sir Robert Williams
Originally Oba Loba is a project of Norberto Lobo and João Lobo in order to satisfy their desire to compose music for a band. Their debut album, Oba Loba, released in 2015 and critically acclaimed, has been described as a canalising music (Clive Bell in The Wire). Comparisons with Tom Zé or Jim O'Rourke were made to try to qualify a music hard to categorize. Recorded in May 2015, Sir Robert Williams is the second album of the sextet. While most of the songs are composed by Norberto and João L…
Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York
**We're over the moon to present this truly legendary 1973 mind-expanding Eastern-influenced/ecstatic/free jazz LP, reissued for the first time ever** Die Schachtel present the first vinyl reissue N.A.D.M.A.'s (Natural Arkestra Da Maya Alta) Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York, originally released in 1973. Comprised of Davide Mosconi, Franco Pardi, Gustavo Bonora, Inez Klok, Marco Cristofolini, Marino Vismara, Mino Ceretti, Otto Davis Corrado, and Talia Toni Marcus, within the histor…