THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2015
Artificial Dance
The story of electronic music pioneer Kerry Leimer continues with a focus on his auteurist studio project Savant. Compiling the standalone album, 1983’s The Neo Realist (At Risk), with Savant’s debut 12″ and a grip of compilation and unreleased tracks, Artificial Dance documents Leimer’s complete collaborative venture into the unpredictable realities of music, exploring the gulf between what is expected by its creators and what is eventually – and eternally – committed to tape.Savant was designe…
Simple Songs
"Yes, Simple Songs is an album of songs sung by Jim O'Rourke all the way through! It has been ten years since Jim's voice rang out from a new album. Ah, when James Michael was just a wee lad, he sang all the time, with a lovely little lilt to his voice, like all the children do. But the songs he sang gave his parents no end of consternation: 'Great Decei-verrr! Cigarettes, ice cream, figurines... of the Vir-gin Mar-eeee!' Aye, if only we'd-a been there -- little Jimmy's career would have started…
Schwarze Riesenfalter
An evocation of “Nacht,” Graham Lambkin and Michael Pisaro’s chilling, malefic collaboration directly references Giraud’s collection of poems, Pierrot Lunaire, and Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama of the same name. Despite the continental subject matter, Schwarze Riesenfalter isn’t an academic act of re-rendering a historical text. Their use of verse comes across as the result of warped poetic fascination and fixation, where a text crawls underneath skin, finding ways to subtly influence the mundan…
Maki Asakawa
2019 Repress. A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. The “Queen of the Japanese Underground” stuck to her unique personal style – long black dress, dark glasses, cloud of cigarette smoke…Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone. A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongsi…
Backwards
Gatefold double LP version. Includes insert and download code. After the groundbreaking release of 1990's Love's Secret Domain album, Coil were not dormant; their main project was Backwards, which was started in 1992, updated considerably between 1993 and 1995, and transferred in 1996 to New Orleans, where it was finished in the magic of the Nothing Studios of Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails). The album saw the fruition of Jhonn Balance's recent vocal-coaching, which produced haunting, passionate …
Sonambient : Recordings of Harry Bertoia
Harry Bertoia's Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 of Bertoia's original records newly restored from their master tapes and housed in replica jackets. A heavy duty box, printed with metallic inks, holds the 11 discs as well as a 100-page book containing a lengthy historical essay, an interview with Harry Bertoia from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, exclusive Sonambient-era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn, and reflections on …
Don't Just Sing - An Anthology: 1963-1999
Outstanding reissue. CD version. House in deluxe gatefold Stoughton tip-on jacket. Newly remastered audio. Includes rare archive photos and liner notes Q&A with Krog. The work of Karin Krog may be unfamiliar to much of the world, but in her native Norway and Scandinavia at large, she's practically a household name. This says much about the local enthusiasm for post-bop jazz but also about the tyranny of distribution: until 1994, Karin Krog's albums weren't available in the USA or UK, meaning thr…
Hexadic
" The only constant in Ben Chasny's longstanding Six Organs of Admittance project is change. Since 1998 he has engaged in composing, playing, improvising, and recording based on whatever aesthetic or philosophic principles appeal to him regardless of genre. More often than not, his records have existed between rather than within them, though there has always been a thread that marked a unique, if mercurial, signifier woven throughout to connect them. Hexadic is a different animal. Chasny spent s…
We Are Not The First
For those who maintain the more mutable dance music is, the deeper its impact on human evolution, RVNG Intl. presents We Are Not The First, an Epic conducted and deconstructed by Chicago artist Hieroglyphic Being and the J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Bul. We Are Not The First combines the musical forces of Marshall Allen, Daniel Carter, Greg Fox, Shelley Hirsch, Shahzad Ismaily, Elliott Levin, Jamal Moss, Rafael Sanchez, and Ben Vida in deep dialogue with each other and humans’ hidden sonic history. Tracked…
Buddhas Of Golden Light
Reissue of legendary underground release Buddhas of Golden Light by Pekka Airaksinen, Nurse-With-Wound-listed founding member of legendary Finnish improv group The Sperm. Buddhas of Golden Light is a highly sought-after crate-digger's classic, originally self-released in 1984. Airaksinen originally recorded the album to tape, using an 808 and DX7, with improvised saxophone taken from an epic week-long solo session and Antero Helander featured on one track. Buddhas of Golden Light is a true under…
Chiltern
Outstanding!!!!!! Conceived while wandering through the iron bark forests and gold fields of country Victoria, Australia, the official debut by Melbourne's Hour House offers a musical blueprint marinated in mystery, beauty, sound, and song. Hour House is the duo of Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna, formerly of the Newcastle-based outfit Castings. Chiltern comprises individual tracks folded into two side-long suites in a unique excursion through foreign encounters, warm surrounds, and disorienting comfor…
Kailash: Pilgrimage to the Throne of the Gods
Kailash is a new collection of work from Florian Fricke, leader of Popol Vuh, seminal group in the German rock scene of the 1970s (Can, Faust, Amon Duul, Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream) and creators of classic soundtracks to the films of Werner Herzog (Aguirre the Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Fitzcaraldo and others). Popol Vuh took their name from an epic mythological text from the 16th century Quiché Maya people of Guatemala, the name translates as ‘meeting place, together or common house’ Kailash …
Vertigo
After more than 25 years of confusing the heck out of anyone who dares turn up to a concert expecting to hear a run-of-the-mill jazz trio, Sydney mavericks The Necks are set to continue to push the trajectory of jazz out of the stratosphere of convention with their new, incredible album. The Necks 18th album Vertigo is an eventful, kaleidoscopic tone poem set against a darkly shimmering background. Slowly but inexorably moving forward, it crosses many frontiers yet remains true to the mission…
Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments
CD version. Spectrum Spools presents the first reissue of American minimalist composer and electronic music pioneer David Borden's 1981 masterpiece, Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments, a work of the highest archival significance. A radiant achievement in sonic elegance, experimentation, and ambitious composition technique, Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments contains four pieces, each utilizing three players and six keyboard instruments. - Borden was a central figure in the developmen…
Electronic Works 1958-1995
2xCD box. Pressed on audiophile grade heavy duty vinyl in an edition of 500 copies. Else Marie Pade, born in 1924 in Denmark, is a precious golden gem in the world of contemporary electro-acoustic music. She is a true pioneer of electronic music and musique concrète. Pade is Denmark's first lady of electronic music and her piece "Syv Cirkler (Seven Circles)" became the first electronic piece performed on Danish radio. Pade's fascination with sound began in early childhood. Isolated in her…
Muscle Up
Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up again to release another volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the canon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, "The San Francisco Sound." Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco at the age of 21. He studied at the City College of San Francisco where he founded …
Cardinal
Philip Jeck writes: "To make this record I used Fidelity record players, Casio keyboards, Ibanez bass guitar, Sony MiniDisc players, Ibanez and Zoom effects pedals, assorted percussion, a Behringer mixer and it was edited it at home with MiniDisc players and on a laptop computer." "...and they sparkled like burnished brass" "Out of the depths of our complaints, it could be all so simple. To be never fooled by the finesse of a long-yearned for solidity, but in the momentary aplomb of a sle…
I Abused Animal
I Abused Animal is Heather Leigh's first solo album for Ideologic Organ, following solo albums on Kendra Steiner Editions, Golden Lab Records, Not Not Fun, Fag Tapes, Wish Image, Volcanic Tongue's label, and more. Renowned as a fearless free improviser, Leigh showcases her songwriting prowess on I Abused Animal, foregrounding her stunning voice and her innovations for the pedal steel guitar. Warmly recorded in a secret location in the English countryside, the album transports the power of her ca…
Raphael Roginski plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes African
You may know Raphael Roginski for his justly celebrated treatments of Jewish and Eastern European music, including his Shofar trio (with Mikolaj Trzaska and Macio Moretti) and his work with Wac‚aw Zimpel (Music of the Yemenite Jews, Hera’s Seven Lines). Though these and related projects are important to Roginki’s ambitions as a guitarist, composer, and activist, his interests and influences range widely—see for example his collaboration with DJ Lemar (also reviewed on the blog) or his recor…
Music for Church Cleaners Vol. I and II
** few copies back in stock ** 2015 repress, don't miss it "Over the course of several months, Áine O'Dwyer was given access to the pipe organ in St Mark's Church, Islington, while the cleaners were at work. Primarily a harpist, this was a rare opportunity to grapple with the 'king of instruments' and apply her sense of melodic, structured improvisation in a new context. Since it's impossible to exert complete control over such a recording environment, she entered into the sessions with a C…