Reissues
Ask The Axes
Besom Presse announces Ask the Axes, the first collaborative release by the duo of experimental bagpiper David Watson and famed percussionist of The Necks, Tony Buck. Watson and Buck’s premiere recording documents two twenty-plus minute tracks featuring the hallucinatory sound palette of the Highland bagpipes, drums and percussion
Listen Move & Dance
**Edition of 500. 180 gram vinyl** Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Daphne Oram and Vera Gray's Listen Move & Dance,
originally released in 1962. The British composer, musician, and audio
engineer Daphne Oram was a pioneering figure in the use of electronic
music. Coming to prominence through her work with the BBC Radiophonic
Workshop, which she co-founded, Oram was one of the first British
composers to feature electronic instruments in her work and has been
rightly hailed as he…
Speech After The Removal Of The Larynx
**Edition of 500. 180 gram vinyl, includes insert; hand-numbered** Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Speech After The Removal Of The Larynx, originally released by Smithsonian Folkways in 1964. The larynx or voice box is a small organ located towards the top of the neck in humans and some other animals. Constructed largely of cartilage, it houses the vocal folds that allow for the manipulation of pitch and volume, which are essential for the phonation of spoken speech. It is also invol…
Serenata I/Sonatine/Canteyodjaya/Zeitmasze
**Edition of 500. 180 gram vinyl** Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Serenata I/Sonatine/Canteyodjaya/Zeitmasze, originally released in 1958. The avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a titan of post-war experimental classical music. Born in the small cheesemaking town of Montrbrison in central France in 1925, Boulez studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the composer and organist Charles Messiaen and received private tuition from pianist Andrée Vaurabourg; after moving…
Byzantine Private Cia
Vatican Shadow's impossible to find early tapes finally arrive on vinyl, kicking off a completist series of new Dubplate & Mastering remasters with a first volume featuring: Byzantine Private CIA (2010), Mural of Saddam (2011), and Yemeni Commandos (2011). Arriving under a shroud of anonymity in 2010 with the four tracks of Byzantine Private CIA, Vatican Shadow has since become one of the most vital projects manned by Dominick Fernow (Prurient, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement). Daring to grasp …
Uguisudani Apocalypse
"This record is a soundtrack for Uganisudani. Uganisudani is JR Yamanote line running in Tokyo and has the fewest number of users per day but, the deepest." This announcement on The Gerogerigegege Facebook page seems to describe the concept behind Uguisudani Apocalypse as some kind of "soundtrack" relating thematically to the "dangerous" Uguisudani Station in Tokyo which serves "the smallest number of commuters per day on the Yamanote Line operated by the East Japan Railway Company". "Siq city-…
Laughing Afternoon
Mannequin Records and Platform 23 come together to start a series of stand-alone reissues of the music of post-punk / industrialists Bourbonese Qualk, starting with their 1983 album Laughing Afternoon. Formed in Southport during the late-70s, the band came to prominence out of South London's squat scene via their own Recloose Organisation. Early releases including the band's first experiments put to tape and the now highly sought after Sudden Departure compilation featuring luminaries Colin Pott…
Music For Deathbeds
As with the first SchleiBen series, Emotional Response follows the
success of the second set of split releases with a stand-alone album by
one of the highlights, in Neil Tolliday. Recorded over a 17-year period,
the ambient, drone and noise pieces collected here offer a glimpse in
to the depth of a supremely talented, thoughtful and at times, troubled
musical mind. As his love for house music and the success of his Nail
moniker grew and waned during the ascent 90s boom, there followed his …
The Sun, Moon & Herbs (180 Gram Vinyl) LP
180 gram vinyl version. Dr. John's fourth album, originally released in 1971, following Remedies. Featuring the songs "Black John The Conqueror," "Where Ya At Mule," "Craney Crow," and "Zu Zu Mamou." Gatefold exact repro reissue, manufactured by Rhino
Alice Clark
Following the success of Wewantsounds' Alice Clark RSD edition featuring an extra 20-page booklet, the label reissues the standard version of Alice Clark's highly sought-after soul jazz classic produced by Mainstream Records' Bob Shad in 1972. Featuring original artwork, remastered sound making this reissue is the first official reissue of Alice Clark's original album for decades, a long overdue release of one of the best Soul albums ever recorded. When it comes to legendary albums, very few can…
Adams Apple
Originally released in 1974, Doug Carn's final album for the Black Jazz label, and a set that pushes even farther than his previous efforts! Jean Carn isn't in the group this time around, but the set does feature a totally great twin-vocal approach – with singing by Joyce Green and John Conner, blending their voices together in a style that's right up there with the most righteous 70s jazz experiments by Horace Silver or Billy Gault! This vocal balance really brings a new sort of power to Carn's…
Infant Eyes
Doug Carn created a personalized strain of jazz music that expressed a loving hopefulness. He found a home at the Black Jazz label, where African-Americans called the shots and, of course, racial tension was nonexistent. Who was this 22-year-old whose first album, Infant Eyes, sold very well away from the machinations of the music industry? Once a child prodigy on piano and alto saxophone, Carn had attended Jacksonville University on a full music scholarship and afterwards performed on the Flori…
Luna Surface
12th volume in the BYG Actuel series; 180 gram vinyl. "Super-session recorded in Paris on August 17, 1969. Alan Silva collected here many of the top free jazz players of the time, an incredible 11-piece ensemble featuring, among others, Grachan Moncur III, Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Dave Burrell, Leroy Jenkins, and Malachi Favors. As a result, this is a very free record and a historical document of Pan-African high art music. Two tracks."" I haven't given up my quest of finding music that tr…
Ketchaoua
2019 small repress. 23rd volume in the BYG Actuel series; gatefold sleeve, 180 gram vinyl. "This album was recorded in Paris on August 18, 1969 by Clifford Thornton (cornet and conga drums) with Grachan Moncur III (trombone), Archie Shepp (soprano saxophone), Arthur Jones (alto saxophone), Dave Burrell (piano), Sunny Murray (drums), Beb Guerin (bass), Earl Freeman (bass) and Claude Delcloo (drums)." "'Clifford Thornton was a player and a composer whose obscurity was offset by the high esteem in …
Topographie Parisienne
**Back in Stock** A sequel to the legendary Topography of the Lungs that first brought together the three improvisers almost half a century ago for the seminal 1st album on Incus label. Recorded in 1981 by audio engineer and label owner Jean-Marc Foussat, the trio of guitarist Derek Bailey, saxophonist Evan Parker, and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Han Bennink are heard in an amazing evening of performance at 28 rue Dunois, in Paris, France, in duo and trio configurations, exploring material sim…
Bamboo Music
Stemming from Jacobus Derwort’s 1987 solo debut tape ‘Bamboo’, this expanded and reshuffled compilation of ‘Bamboo Music’ celebrates more than 30 years of J. Derwort’s deeply focussed yet dilated and richly spirited recordings which have come to define an etheric strand of late ‘80s ambient pursuits. Pairing his gentle, breezy gestures with spongiform layers of subbass, colourful canopies of bird calls and trickling, fluid electronics, the recordings speak to a bucolic and blessed conception of …
Dots
First time vinyl (2LP) pressing of Atom Heart’s 1994 ambient album as Dots, originally released by his mighty Rather Interesting label and now newly prepped by Uwe Schmidt himself and cut by Noel Summerville for Astral Industries. Modestly self-described by Schmidt aka Dots as “elevator music”, the project’s only release is defined by its spacious parameters and paucity of palette, using icy arps and plangent bleeps to connote a wide, free-floating sense of vastness and airy detachment. If it is…
Nachtmuziek
Belgian artist Bernard Zwijzen, aka Sonmi451, has for over a decade now been quietly making some of the most luscious ambient we’ve heard here at AI-HQ. We are delighted to announce him as part of the Astral family with this six-track EP - Nachtmuziek - sit back, tune in and drift away.
The Mantra Recordings
Dedicated to the life and work of Robert Lax (1915-2000), the American poet who lived on Patmos, Greece, as a self-exiled hermit since the 60s. Jack Kerouac called Lax “one of the great original voices of our times, a Pilgrim in search of beautiful innocence”. The Chi Factory would like to give special thanks to his good Patmian friends Ulf Knaus and Nikos Eliou, who showed us his house on Patmos (everything is still the same since he left) and also his favourite old wooden door (see leaflet). H…
Dreamtime Return
2018 re-release, 30th Anniversary Remastered Edition. California ambient pioneer Steve Roach released Dreamtime Return, arguably his finest album, in 1988 following extensive travels to the Australian outback. The word "dreamtime" refers to the Australian Aboriginal belief system, specifically to their notion of the distant past and its inhabitants. Though now considered a dated and anthropologically inaccurate term based on the faulty interpretation of an Aboriginal concept, in the '80s it was …