Best of 2022
Slowdown Records Box Sets bundle
"Merzbow's unpublished/excavated archive series by Slowdown Records began to be released in 2018, and so far 15 chapters have been published. This "35 CD Box" contains chapters 11-15 of this archival series, with the addition of "2017-2020" (5CD), a collection of five original Merzbow albums released on Slowdown Records from 2017 to 2020. These chapters are presented in chronological order of when the recordings were made, and each chapter was compiled with some concept or musical feature in min…
The Quietly Clouds And A Wild Crane
* Edition of 300 copies * This latest instalment from NoBusiness Records collaboration with the Japanese Chap Chap label under the name of Yuji Takahashi with Sabu Toyozumi constitutes a real find. A wonderfully mystic vernal episode of free improv music recorded in Tokyo, 1998. Piano and percussion album of the highest beauty, interactive on a telepathic level and execution. Yuji Takahashi is a Japanese avant-garde composer and pianist. In Japan he was by then already well established as leadin…
Space Tuning Box (3LP Box)
Hyper Tip! This incredible box, released in a deluxe wooden edition with digital printing on the lid limited to 300 copies, contains the first album “Cosmos from Diode Ladder Filter” released on CD on Alchemy Records , “2” released on Midi Creative , “3” released on double LP on Tiliqua Records and the four CD EPs released on P-Tapes, California based label run by Damion Romero, reissued for the first in a complete box, accompanied by a square pin and a series of photos of the impressive equipme…
Pulse Music
*2LP Gatefold with tipped in booklet * Presented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire’s Pulse Music series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe’s angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock seriali…
De Revolutionibus
Tip! * 300 copies * Other Minds Records is pleased to announce de revolutionibus: sound homage to Copernicus, a new limited edition LP release from legendary text-sound poet Enzo Minarelli. Minarelli compares the revolution of sound poetry to the revolution that Copernicus brought about with his discovery of the heliocentric nature of the solar system. Just like Copernicus put the sun at the center of the solar system, sound poets centered the human voice—and thus the sensuous nature of a text—…
Sound
Sound: An Exhibition of Sound Sculpture, Instrument Building and Acoustically Tuned Spaces opened at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art in the summer of 1979 (and was also on view later that year at PS1 in New York). Curated by Bob Wilhite and Robert Smith, the exhibition surveyed the field of sound art. The forty-four participants were painters pivoted toward performance, conceptual artists attracted to time-based mediums, self-styled creators of environments, and musicians (formally…
The Pavilion of Dreams
**Repress** For five decades, Harold Budd stood on the forefront of the West Coast avant-garde. Born in Los Angeles, he studied with Schoenberg-pupil Gerald Strang and began teaching at CalArts in 1970. While searching for his own voice, he was influenced as much by abstract expressionist painters as by John Cage and Morton Feldman. In his work, Budd brought delicate, slowing-moving melodies to the foreground – creating a new musical language based on “eternally pretty music” and smooth surfaces…
Entropic trash apotheosis
Tip! "Back in 2009 I had a small exhibition and a collaboration show with Yasutoshi Yoshida (one of my favorite noise artists ever, by the way) at Flying Teapot in Tokyo. I was also supposed to go to his place and record something but I got drunk and lost like an asshole. 13 years later our collaboration mayhem is out." Mastered by Ivan Fu for extra damage. Manuel's (Narcolepsia) words: "Yasutoshi Yoshida and Nicola Vinciguerra have both carved their own corner in underground, being consistent t…
Modern Dance Gold, Vol. 1
From the UK based imprint, The state51 Conspiracy, comes, “Modern Dance Gold, Vol. 1”, the debut LP by Better Corners, a brand-new project from Valentina Magaletti, Sarah Register, and Matthew Simms. Harnessing a vast range of sound sources, it's a visionary expanse of abstract textures and tonalities that steadily defies any association with genre - incorporating elements of industrial music, post-punk, dance music, noise, and new age into its incredibly ambitious two sides.
Having Been Built On Sand
In 1978 Having Been Built on Sand was conceived as a vinyl edition and released by the Rüdiger Schöttle gallery in Munich with sleeve design by Weiner. The piece consists of eight untitled tracks. Lawrence Weiner, Tina Girouard, and Britta Le Va recite text with Dickie Landry’s woodwinds, all recorded in the natural reverb of Robert Rauschenberg’s studio, a former mission and chapel in Lower Manhattan. Layering Girouard in English, Le Va in German, and Weiner in English and German blocks of rela…
Osmose
** Edition of 300 ** Born and raised in Paris, Ariel Kalma studied electronics, computer science, music and art in Paris, he performed with several bands, then toured the world and visited Europe, Japan, India, Eastern Canada, and parts of the USA. Apart from rhythm & blues, pop and jazz, he acquired assorted experiences in Middle Age French, electro-acoustic, and modal music. All the travels broadened Ariel's musical horizons tremendously; listening to and playing with different styles, people,…
Time & Condition
** Available on CD for the first time and housed in a lovely reverse printed card gatefold sleeve ** Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's. He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, The Human A…
Up Your Sleeve (LP)
** In process of stocking, edition of 500 copies with a numbered 4-page insert ** Previously released in 1980 on David Toop’s Quartz label at a time when improvised music in London was settling into a long spell of excellence. The players here are Steve Beresford, Peter Cusack, Terry Day and David Toop. Terry had been a member of The People Band in the 60s, one of the groups forming part of the first wave of British improvisation. The rest of the group could be regarded as pioneers of a second g…
Lalibela
Tip! The debut album by The Pyramids was inspired by the group's visit to the Lalibela monastery in Egypt, and was recorded in Yellow Springs Ohio in early 1973. Drawing on the teachings of Cecil Taylor and the influence of John Coltrane, combined with a barrage of intense percussion, the album evolves over several long-form pieces.
Birth / Speed / Merging
Tip! Birth/Speed/Merging was recorded in 1976 after the band's move to San Francisco. The album closes The Pyramids' 70s trilogy and makes more use of studio technology: adding overdubs and other effects, a marked departure from the previous two releases, though at no cost to the urgent message and energy of their earlier works.
Song Of Soil
Masahiko Togashi was a pivotal figure in the development of the Japanese free jazz scene in late 60s. Percussionist and composer, he lost the use of the legs in an accident which nevertheless didn’t not prevent him from continuing an astonishing career that includes long and established collaborations with figures of the likes of Steve Lacy, Charlie Haden, Mal Waldron and Paul Bley. This session, recorded in Paris at the Ramèse Studio Du Village in 1979, sees an explosive collaboration by the t…
Sunrise From West Sea
Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the first-ever release of 'Sunrise From West Sea', a mesmerising performance by Stomu Yamash'ta accompanied by Jazz pianist Masahiko Satoh (well known for his involvement in the New Herd Orchestra and his 'Belladonna of Sadness' soundtrack) and Taj Mahal Travellers founder Takehisa Kosugi on Electric Violin. The line up, also comprising Hideakira Sakurai on Electric Shamisen, is a spaced-out improvisational soundscape over the two LP sides. Remastered from t…
Supergolden
** Ltd. 100 copies ** "Supergolden" is the name of Petter Asbjørnsen’s debut album featuring Kjetil Møster on saxophone and bass clarinet, and Øyvind Skarbø on drums. Møster and Skarbø are prominent figures in the Norwegian jazz community, known from ensembles such as Zanussi 5, 1982, Skarbø Skulekorps, Møster! and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Stints living in Bergen, Copenhagen, Berlin and New York informed Asbjørnsen’s work as a composer and performer in projects with Molecules and Erlend Sko…
De natura sonorum
2022 much-needed repress! One of the true masterpieces of acousmatic electroacoustic composition. Master of subtlety and timing, Parmegiani takes us into a world of delicate and refined clusters of sound, swirling around, popping and crackling like waves breaking onto beaches of lava. Natural and electronic sounds are collected and assembled in the best way possible. The definition and resonant qualities of his tones are unparalleled. Bernard Parmegiani'sDe Natura Sonorum (1975): Premiered at th…
Natural Sonic
*Tip! First vinyl reissue of Yoshiaki Ochi's "Natural Sonic" from 1990 from one of the Japanese leading environmental music label "Newsic". Magical sound & ensemble of the mother nature, perfectly melting in with the electronics. Remastered for vinyl by Kuniyuki Takahashi * Released on Wacoal Art Center’s Newsic label, Yoshiaki Ochi’s Natural Sonic shares some of the same magic heard in the music of fellow roster mates Yoshio Ojima, Motohiko Hamase, and Mich Live. This time the aural trick would…