Best of 2019
I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics. The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he …
Live Without Fear
**Almost sold out in pre-order, don't sleep** Number 27 in the Jazzman Holy Grail Series. With a price of well over $1000 on the few occasions the original LP has hit the market, Infinite Spirit Music's 'Live Without Fear' is a beautiful album of humble purity and peaceful spiritual jazz vibes that lives up to the hype. With the blessing of creator Soji Ade and colleague Kahil El Zabar, we're delighted to be able to finally share their music with you, 40 years since it was recorded. As so often …
Psychogeography, An Improvisational Derive
Recorded live at RedBull Studios as part of Improfest 4/2017 - Festival Internacional de Improvisação e Arte Sonora, São Paulo, Brazil. The legendary Otomo Yoshihide playing guitar and bass as well as turntables in company of: Antonio Panda Gianfratti (Contemporary Percussion, Drums) Marco Scarassatti (Viola de Cocho, Self-made instruments: Kraiser, PássaroCocho, Tromp Kirk Roland) Paulo Hartmann (Prepared 3rd Bridge Guitar, Freteless preparerd Chiquita, Gambelão and Effects). Great!
Cyclide
Edition of 200. Maulex, the moniker of René Middelhede, has been floating around for the better part of the last decade, issuing a catalog of minimal, electronic wonders. Cyclide, his latest, co-released with the Phloq label, and limited to 200 copies with lovely silk screened covers, plunges further, and takes us deeper, into the composer's evolving practice in sound. Created entirely on a modular synth, the LP unfolds as a shimmering realm of ambience, texture, and complex structures - evolvin…
Polygome
In process of restock, last copies around. Edition of 300. Bridging the worlds of Modern Classical composition, musique concrète, electronic and electroacoustic music, organic jazz and minimalism while fitting comfortably in none, for more than a decade Piotr Kurek has remained a slow and elusive fixture in our sonic landscape, creating an entirely singular, almost lawless world of his own. After a series of records made in collaboration with others, and solo efforts under different monikers, th…
Explosion
Fully remastered and licensed reissue, limited to just 350 copies on black wax. This killer Italian library album by Luciano 'Arawak' Simoncini was only ever released on the elusive Orrery Records label, and is now very hard to find. Still very much under the radar, Explosive reveals itself as a swift tangled web of beats for the discerning DJ. Tracks includes the driving cosmic funk Hardware with sharp hip-hop breaks and spaced-out abstract synth keys. Kangoroo Court is an even better alternati…
Venndiagram
Back in 2017, Black Sweat produced a lovely reissue of DSR Lines Spoel. It was easily one of our favorite records of that year. Continuing their dedication to its creator, the label now brings us yet another stunner - a reissue of a little heard tape only release from 2013, Venndiagram. Like its predecessor, we can already tell that this one is going to top our year end lists. DSR Lines is the moniker of David Edren, an artist based in Antwerp, who, since coming into view during the late 90’s, …
Pathways To Unknown Worlds
**First ever CD reissue, containing three Pathways session recordings left off the original, one never before issued** Intrinsic energies of mythic worlds! Pathways was originally issued on LP in 1975 as part of Sun Ra’s ill-fated and short-lived ABC/Impulse! partnership. This Modern Harmonic edition has been exquisitely mastered from the four-track session reel. The Impulse! LP was formatted as “Quad Compatible”—short for “quadraphonic”—which you could enjoy if you had four speakers, a custom q…
Cauldron
An electronic rock band wasn’t even an idea when Fifty Foot Hose released their landmark debut album at the end of 1967. Their fusion of psychedelia and electronics resulted in a truly trailblazing sound. Cauldron stands as a signal achievement that laid the groundwork for genres that didn’t even exist when it was released. Pressed at Third Man Pressing on custom colored vinyl and featuring a zine-style insert with liners by FFH electronics mastermind Cork Marcheschi and the original sleeve rei…
Bad Trips
Nobody went full-on electro-rock before Fifty Foot Hose. Before their brief-but-groundbreaking run in the late ‘60s, Bad Trips collects the demos, outtakes, and other rarities that complete the story of a band too far ahead of its time to last. Includes both versions of their multi-speed composition “Bad Trip.” From the pre-Hose tracks of boldly atonal, proto-psychedelic freakout music to early versions of songs that would land on their opus, Bad Trips brazenly displays how Fifty Foot Hose chang…
Sileen II
An adaptation from "Sileen", a composition commissioned by Musica For The Festival Oortreders at Neerpelt, Belgium, 2016 performed with 50 members of a local music school; "Sileen II" was realized with only Gareth Davis on bass clarinet plus sounds from Machinefabriek, recorded in the same pitch and tempo as "Sileen', then slowed to half its speed and one octave lower. Stunning!
Controlled Death Blax Box
Wooden black box comes with LP, CD digipack and two cassettes plus postcard, insert, business card and sheet with notes in Japanese by Tamotsu Mochida, in 199 copies. Controlled Death is a new project by the Japanese noise legend Maso Yamazaki a.k.a. Masonna. In April 2018 he decided to make a shudder debut with 1st album "Symphony For The Black Murder" . In this LP, Maso Yamazaki tried to commit to the dark side of psychedelia deepest in his own projects history and surprised the fans, but as s…
1973 -1976 -1979 (Musiq Musik + Parallèles + Catalogue) 3LP Box, coloured vinyls
Outstanding. **Jac Berrocal’s first remarkable albums in fully remastered form on 200g vinyl, contained within a beautiful box and individual metallic covers and 24 page, deluxe book** Every serious fan of avant-garde jazz knows that, for a great many years, France was a central axis for the global scene - a safe haven and source of support for countless visionary voices from the United States and other points abroad. Until recently, what has remained relatively under observed, is the country’s …
Radioland
**Deluxe reissue of Stephan Mathieu’s beautiful classic album of realtime processed shortwave radio signal, now reissued with an extra CD of previously unheard material. Double CD, 6-panel 350g cardboard sleeve Pantone Black with spot gloss detail. Available in a super limited edition of 200 copies** Recently, the electroacoustic composer, performer, and installation artist, Stephan Mathieu, has been keeping us mesmerized with a sprawling array of archival material, issued and reissued by his ow…
Decay Music n. 2: In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni
Milan based Die Schachtel presents In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni (We turn round in the night and, behold, we are consumed by Fire) - a work for solo guitar by the Italian composer Stefano Pilia, the second release to appear on a new series from the imprint - Decay Music, highlighting inspired contemporary experimental efforts in the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract.Born in Genoa and based in Bologna, Pilia is a guitar player and electro-acoustic composer concerned with the scul…
Dead Beats
Dead Beats: A new composition by American avant-garde composer Alvin Curran for Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt, brought together with the first ever recording of Inner Cities No 9 '9-11-01' The piano has always been at the core of Alvin Curran's oeuvre. Granted, you'd expect a statement like that from the liner notes to a collection of his piano pieces. In this case, however, he's said so himself, in a candid interview with sound artist Andrew Liles: "It’s the focal point and kind of a totem fo…
Situations
My relationship with Steve Lacy’s music is not occasional. It was for me the “door”. Since 2009, titled So Long!, I have presented several times a program with his compositions on bass clarinet. In the summer of 2013, on the mountains, I recorded the solo using the Bb clarinet, finding a bare, naked and raw dimension that marks an important point in my personal process with the music of Steve. “I try to be empty and to see what sounds” (Tom Raworth) Giancarlo nino LocatelliLacy’s tunes are devis…
Prayer
I think it's important and proper to play Steve Lacy's music today and that we have to take the risk. Keeping his example alive means to me every time to question the results achieved. My relationship with his music is not occasional. Steve is present in three tracks of my first album "trochus". Later I played his music alone and in various groups. I would like to remember at least the Fish Horn Quartet, with Fabio Martini, Jean Jaques Avenel and John Betsch, the sextet 5or6 Bones with Sebi Tram…