Best of 2021
Pioneering Knob Twiddler
Super Tip! **Edition of 500.** Before we go on, Janet Beat does exist. This is not some invented composer, cunningly dreamt up so I can sell some modern sonic noodlings as old ones to unsuspecting record buyers. I say this as it has happened in this market before and her name could easily arouse some suspicion. But yes, Janet Beat actually exists and she’s certainly one of the best examples of nominative determinism I have ever personally come across. However, even though Janet Beat does make mu…
South Pacific Migration Party
* Edition of 200 copies. 140g clear vinyl with printed inner sleeve + extensive booklet * Peter Zinovieff (b. 1933, d. 2021) founded the revolutionary Electronic Music Studios in 1969, and devoted much of his earlier life to the art of sound. The studio developed many synthesisers including the famed VCS3, AKS and the Synthi100, and financed the world's first computer controlled electronic music studio in Putney, London. It is difficult to overstate the effect that Zinovieff's work has had on co…
Vertical Music Batch 04-06
**70 copies** This bundle includes the following tapes:Nicola Di Croce - Hearing Voices (Vertical Music 04)"Craco is a small town in southern Italy, completely abandoned after a landslide in 1963. Since then, plants and animals slowly started to take over the ruins, creating a suspended atmosphere magnified by distant echoes coming from rural production and imaginary voices." Nicola Di Croce is a Venice based, musician, composer, architect and scholar. His main research deals with the relation…
Sync or Swim
Yet another stunning artifact from Freedom to Spend, the first ever vinyl reissue of The Same’s legendary 1981 LP, 'Sync or Swim', stands high among the great holy-grails of '80s British Underground music’s and is one of Robert Cox’s (Rimarimba) most important statements. Its minimal and rigorously experimental sounds set the stage for what is easily among the most exciting releases of the year. We've managed to get a few of the 200 copies limited edition - already sold-out at source - that incl…
Il Suono delle Api / La Vibrazione del Cosmo
An absolutely stunning effort from one of the great journeymen of Italian experimentalism, Walter Maioli's 'Il Suono delle Api / La Vibrazione del Cosmo', issued by Villa Lontana Records, is electroacoustic music at its absolute, vibrant best. Pressed in two extremely limited editions on black and transparent vinyl and laden with rich tonalities, deep drones, and hypnotic arpeggiations, it's a truly mind-melting, free-standing sonic world that encounters Maioli at the top of his game.
Blue Beginnings
The Don Rendell Ian Carr Quintet live in session in 1964 playing much of their debut album ‘Shades Of Blue’ including the title track composed by Neil Ardley. Beautifully packaged 180g vinyl. Flip-back sleeve. Strictly limited pressing run of 500 copies worldwide. Liner notes by Simon Spillett. Not nearly celebrated enough, Rendell & Carr were Britain's answer to Miles & Coltrane. With beautiful, introspective modal numbers & a fine backing group consisting of Colin Purbrook (piano), Dave Green …
Processione sul Mare
A stunning artefact from 1970s Italian scene, this first ever vinyl reissue of Toni Esposito’s incredible and sinfully overlooked 1976 LP, "Processione sul Mare", ripples with mind-blowing polyrhythms and genre-defiant tonal interventions, as it intertwines the ecstatic with free-flowing jazz, prog-rock, and experimental gestures. A true revelation rescued from depths of obscurity by a visionary artist who worked with everyone from Luciano Cilio to Don Cherry, it can’t be missed.
Live at Century City Playhouse 9/9/79
Finally available after long pressing delays, comes a never before issued recording of Horace Tapscott leading his legendary Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, "Live at Century City Playhouse 9/9/79", documenting the entirety of a 2 hours performance that sprawls across glorious 3 LPs. Easily one of the most beautiful, striking, and historically important records of the year, it’s a joyous explosion of sound, seeded by social, political, and community-based action, at the juncture of spiritual and fr…
The Amygdala Expedition
A truly stunning masterstroke with almost no equivalent, "The Amygdala Expedition", by the Hungarian musician and musicologist, László Hortobágyi, weaves a singular world of myth and imagination at the boundaries of New Age, Ambient, experimental, and ethnographic music. Drawn from a body of work that first began to emerge during the late '80s and early '90s, it's issued in a very limited edition of 250 copies on 180g Vinyl that's not to be missed.
Soothing Sounds for Baby, vols. 1-3
The legendary proto-minimalistic Soothing Sounds For Baby series by Raymond Scott were pressed in limited quantities and have been out of print for almost over a decade. Designed for babies one to six months old, the first volume of Raymond Scott's dreamy, engaging Soothing Sounds for Baby series emphasizes soft synth tones, repetitive melodies, and relatively simple arrangements. Keeping in mind a young baby's attention span, Vol. 1 also contains shorter, more numerous pieces than the following…
Think Pink
**2021 Sock. Remastered edition** of this psychedelic masterpiece by Twink (Tomorrow/Pretty Things/Pink Fairies etc.), which was prepared before the more widely known stereo mix, and originally intended for release as part of Decca Records' Nova series. Recorded in London in July 1969, and featuring members of Tomorrow, The Pretty Things, The Deviants, and Tyrannosaurus Rex, the legendary Think Pink is one of the hallowed relics of British underground rock. "Twink was the drummer in the Pretty …
Rhapsodia / Battements Solaires (LP) + La grande vallee / Micro-climat
This bundle collects the two most recent Recollection GRM releases:Michèle Bokanowski "Rhapsodia / Battements Solaires" (LP)Lionel Marchetti "La grande vallee / Micro-climat" (LP)Since the mid-2010s, Recollection GRM - the celebrated vinyl only imprint attached to the archives of the legendary Paris based studio and collective Groupe De Recherches Musicales - has issued some of the most exciting artefacts of experimental electronic music to have graced out ears. Initially focused on the output o…
Siberian Field Recordings
Channeling a visionary approach to the specter of humanity through a singular sense of sonic artistry, Carlos Casas’ "Siberian Field Recordings" - issued as a beautiful cassette by Second Sleep - draws on the material of field recordings and captured short-wave / radio frequencies to blur the lines between ethnography and experimental sound, rending surprisingly imagistic, abstract narratives of elastic meaning over its hour-long length.
Defeat
**CD edition** Fire! Orchestra tracking new paths and reaching new levels of excellence, still honoring their 12-year-old vow of presenting a fresh approach to improvised music. Their debut album, You Liked Me Five Minutes Ago, was released in 2009 to wide international acclaim. "The basic strategy of pairing the expressive energy of free jazz with a sturdy sense of groove has yielded something potent and self-contained" --New York Times. Between this and Defeat there´s been five albums, includi…
Abstractions of the Industrial North
* Edition of 500 * This is music from one of Basil Kirchin's most creative periods. Basil had finished his world tour of weird discovery, and came back to the UK to make, in his words, music for imaginary films. This is basically library music, but lead to quite a few original film compositions.
The music we are releasing here is Basil's work for the De Wolfe library, all from the 1966 period. Although you will imagine the music to be a little later, it's just that Basil is always a little ahead…
Situazioni del Terzo Mondo
** Edition of 100 Colored LP ** The world of Italian Library music surprises us again with an extremely evocative record. Released in 1972 with the name of Maria Teresa Luciani but really produced and composed by her brother Maestro Antonino Riccardo Luciani, Situazioni del Terzo Mondo ranks among the most important abstract soundscape records. Spontaneous tribalisms tainted with concrete sounds support the looming psychedelic vein, with different solutions from track to track.
Waves: Real and Imagined
* Edition of 300 LPs • Includes folded 11″ x 17″ insert with liner notes * Captain Rip Hayman (b.1951, New Mexico) has come ashore again, bearing fresh cargo. A student of John Cage, Ravi Shankar, and Philip Corner, Rip was a founding editor of the revered Ear Magazine (1975-1991), and since 1977 he has run New York's oldest bar, the Ear Inn. The focused minimalism of his new LP Waves: Real and Imagined varies from the collaged spectacle of his first Recital LP, Dreams of India & China (2019). …
The Age of Electronicus / Maracatú / Word Jazz
This bundle collects three of the latest Pleasure For Music essential re-releases:Dick Hyman "The Age of Electronicus" (1969)Elisabeth Waldo "Maracatú" (1959)Ken Nordine "Word Jazz" (1957)Dick Hyman "The Age of Electronicus" (1969)
In his long career Dick Hyman has covered a great variety of music fields, from Broadway through music for film and television to jazz, classical, pop, and electronic music. The Age of Electronicus, originally released in 1969 is one of his Electronic Pop jewels. A br…
Maracatú
Elisabeth Waldo’s Maracatú, originally released in 1959, is a rare and early gesture of hybridic musical multiculturalism that has remained sinfully overlooked through the decades. Occupying a similar territory to now widely celebrated, roughly concurrent albums like Eden Ahbez's Eden's Island and Chaino’s Jungle Echoes, Pleasure For Music’s reissue turns history on its head, offering a rare opportunity for a visionary and forward-thinking body of work to receive its rightful due.Elisabeth Wald…
Word Jazz
Ken Nordine’s debut LP from 1957, Word Jazz, belongs to two histories. While interconnected, one is momentary - capturing the close and incredibly important alignment between jazz and poetry that emerged during the 1950s and 60s - while the other is transient and progressive, belonging to a continuum that still exists today. It stands alongside similar albums like those capturing Jack Kerouac’s work with Steve Allen, Kenneth Rexroth and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s collaborations with The Cellar Jazz…