Reissues
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…
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 …
Territorial Landscape No. 1
Edition of 250 copies. Sculptor Relly Tarlo (° 1949) is mostly known for his large scale installations which he specifically designs for certain locations, i.e. an outside staircase, a park or the space under a bridge. His work is interdisciplinary: a mix of visual arts, architecture and resonance / noise & it explores the functional relationship between architecture, form and sound. Relly Tarlo has been active since the 1970s. The art-works always involve mechanically produced sound, that may o…
Missing Link
Studio Mule presents Missing Link, a collection by Japanese living legend electronic producer Takayuki Shiraishi. Missing Link is a collection of unreleased material recorded in the late '80s. Shiraishi started his career in working with BGM, who released material on the Japanese experimental label Vanity Records. Their one and only album Back Ground Music (1980) has been one of the most in-demand Japanese new wave albums. The present album is unique mixture of dark new wave, post punk, kraut ro…
Institute of Sonology 1959-1969
This is a collection of electronic works composed between 1959 and 1969 at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland. Once again, Sub Rosa offers a chance to reflect upon a rare lineage of electronic music's origins, a revolution of the fifties and sixties when an art form was emerging without a base -- ex nihilo -- a new music produced by machines designed to construct the new. Utrecht University's large complex of studios that comprised the Philips laboratories housed an extensive collect…
The Pulp Sessions II
Edition of 180 copies in digipack. 'When I heard the The New Blockaders / Organum ‘Pulp’ 7” in the mid-‘80s it was one of the noisiest things I had ever heard and I had heard plenty of Industrial Music and Power Electronica as well as a lot of earlier noisy music. On ‘The Pulp Sessions II’ Part I the noise levels and sounds change throughout the course of both sides, but the level of pandemonium remains constant. There are loads of feedback, radio, scraping, clanking, and other sounds, chopping …
Atomique Mörder
Limited edition of 100 copies in digipack. Second re-issue of this rare M.B. tape from 1980. The tape was only distributed in a handful of copies in 1980 and was later bootlegged on LP format in a truncated form in the 90s. Remastered from original tape. Cover images are 1980 artworks by M.B
A Light In The Window Will Guide Us Safely Home
** Special cover with hand-made 'paper-cut forests' pop out diorama. Handmade edition of 200.** A light in the window will guide us safely home”, the new and unique LP by Little Skull, is an album defined by places, journeys between them, and the traces we leave. Insignificant instrumentation congregates on insignificant locations, leaving behind ghosts in a place of their own. Warbly guitars and a town hall in rural Waikato.Wheezing melodicas and a train through Tongariro. Tinny autoharps and …
Some Songs
Edition limited to 200 copies, red vinyl, includes extra tracks taken from "Decap" (1995) and "The Trees" (1996) 7” lathe editions. "The first time I heard anything about Donald McPherson was when my friend David Muir told me excitedly about this guitarist from Ravensbourne who could play really beautifully properly but also just as wonderfully wrongly. I first heard him playing a rare live performance in Dunedin in about 1997. It remains one of the most heavily self-deprecating sets Iive ever 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…
Live / Electric Music
A Landmark in Minimalism and Process Music. 180 gram audiophile vinyl, remastered. The influence Steve Reich had on contemporary music can hardly be put into words. As one of the great innovators, he started playing around with tape loops and created rhythmic and tonal effects while recording the sounds of rain, it formed the basis of his ambitious project called " It's Gonna Rain". The great depth and complexity make this an outstanding song in his repertoire - an incredible tape loop piece tha…
A Gain
**500 copies, sold-out at label!** Colin Potter’s vaulted classic A Gain bubbles up for reissue with Joyful Noise Recordings, presenting its first ever reissue proper of a UK synth classic (if we discount the augmented compilation of Entering Again released by Sacred Summits in 2014) Recommended to Joyful Noise for reissue by Benjamin John Power (F*ck Buttons, Blanck Mass), who states “…the lines are simple but perfect… It’s incredibly well constructed”, Potter’s best known release prior to join…