Reissues
Rome Remains Rome
The 5th solo album by Holger Czukay, ‘Rome Remains Rome’ bubbles up for its 30th anniversary reissue on Gronland - bastion of all things good and Krautrock. Arriving after a string of total classics such as ‘Movies’ and ‘Full Circle’’, and before his ambient outings with David Sylvian, 1987’s ‘Rome Remains Rome’ is a typically, lysegically playful and odd collection of songs tripping lines between pop, jazz and the avant-garde.Make sure to check it for Holger’s possessed vocals on the psychedeli…
Der Osten Ist Rot
‘Der Osten Ist Rot’ is a wigged-out 1984 treat helmed by Can’s Holger Czukay, with drums by his legendary bandmate Jaki Liebzeit and vital synth input from Conny Plank. Now making its first official digital release, the 1984 album was Czukay’s 3rd solo side, proper, following from ‘Movies’ [1979], and ‘On The Way To The Peak Of Normal’ [1981] in pursuit of an elusive, avant and pop-wise spirit that would also be explored on its follow-up ‘Rome Remains Rome’, before Czukay set off on two seminal…
Movies
Upon examining the eventful life of Can bassist Holger Czukay, one might conclude that this intrepid musician was a loner. His turbulent career exuded an enduring eccentricity governed by a boundless free spirit. Holger Czukay’s debut solo LP ‘Movies’ [1979] is, quite frankly as mad as a bag of squirrels, but super playful and cool as fuck with it. It’s his first record after striking out from Can, and he clearly had a lot of ideas brewing and ready to get out From the Afro-inflected lilt of t…
2 / 3
Edition of 300. When it comes to music, time and geography can have a strange effect. Divisions form and dissolve. Things which were heard are can be forgotten. Things which were not are often remembered. As many of us know, this is increasingly the effect of the reissue market, with its radical reappraisals for history, pulling the lost and obscure from the shadows - musical objects now given the ability to travel and gain the attention they deserve. One of the more fascinating and important te…
Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective
Throughout his six-decade career, Tony Conrad (1940–2016) forged a unique path through numerous artistic movements and a vast range of cultural forms—from Fluxus to rock music, from structural film to public access television. Published on the occasion of the first large-scale museum survey devoted to works Conrad presented in museum and gallery settings, this richly illustrated catalogue offers an in-depth introduction to Conrad's life and career.Often unified by the diverse tastes of fans, ava…
The 4th Demention
** Edition of 300. Includes an insert with archival photos and a letter from Virgin Records on the cover** Plexi Gladz’s sole available recording — 1981’s Mind Control 7" — spawned a cult hit (Verveling [Boredom]) and over 35 years of intrigue. Who are these people? Rumours circulated that Jo Bogaert (of Technotronic fame) was involved; and artist Harald Thys. But not Siobhan Fahey. In a classic case of Chinese Whispers, Jo Bogaert turned out to be Brussels-based Paul Bogaert who together with J…
The Cop Killers
A genuine holy grail of Italian post-industrial music, The Cop Killers’ sole, eponymous tape is remastered and issued on vinyl for the first time via Alessio Natalizia’s Ecstatic label. Fetching triple figures on the 2nd hand market (there’s a copy on scogs atm for £300) this is an indispensable slice of ‘80s Europe’s underground experimental rhizome. An important release for Ecstatic and one very close to their heart, ‘The Cop Killers’ was originally released in 1982 on the legendary Trax labe…
Soundings 2 - Nordic Sound Art
"Usually, only particular circumstances trigger our awareness of the sounds that surround us. To most of us sound functions as a backdrop for visual experience. Sound artists on the other hand shift our attention to the immense possibilities for acoustic variety. The Museum of Contemporary Art celebrates a special occasion, focusing on sound. In April we will present works by the graduating students from the Nordic Sound Art programme a cross-nordic collaboration between several art academies in…
Music from the Black Side
The Black Side by Søren Lyngsø Knudsen was a multidisiplinary performance about light and its absence in the Nordic countries.It was the result of 12 months extensive audio and video recordings in Norway, Denmark and Finland – put together into a performance that pulled it’s audience through pitch black darkness, fog, loneliness and blinding light.This record contains the soundtrack from the performance.
Joe's Garage Acts 1, 2 & 3
2015 Release. Triple LP. Needless to say, it is a grandly absurd undertaking, full of scatological comedy and hard-rock-jazz-fusion. "Frank Zappa’s satirical rock opera, Joe’s Garage, is ambitious and mad, brilliant, peculiar and incoherent — epithets that have also been applied to German expressionist Georg Buchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck. This may seem like a ludicrously lofty cross-cultural reference to attach to an album most notorious for a song about Catholic girls’ aptitude for fellati…
Sheik Yerbouti
2015 Release. In order to finance his artier excursions, which increasingly required more expensive technology, Frank Zappa recorded several collections of guitar-and song-oriented material in the late '70s and early '80s, which generally concentrated on the bawdy lyrical themes many fans had come to expect and enjoy in concert. Sheik Yerbouti was one of the first and most successful of these albums, garnering attention for such tracks as the Grammy-nominated disco satire "Dancin' Fool," the con…
Weasels Ripped My Flesh
2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original 1970 Analog Master. A fascinating collection of mostly instrumental live and studio material recorded by the original Mothers of Invention, complete with horn section, from 1967-1969, Weasels Ripped My Flesh segues unpredictably between arty experimentation and traditional song structures. Highlights of the former category include the classical avant-garde elements of "Didja Get Any Onya," which blends odd rhythmic accents and time signatures wi…
Zoot Allures
2018 Release. Zoot Allures, released in October 1976, is mostly a studio album (there are some basic live tracks, as in the title track and "Black Napkins") featuring a revolving cast of musicians who, oddly, do not correspond to the ones pictured on the album cover (for instance, Patrick O'Hearn and Eddie Jobson did not contribute). Compared to previous releases like One Size Fits All, Roxy & Elsewhere, or even Over-Nite Sensation, and to upcoming ones such as Zappa in New York, Studio Tan, or …
Chunga's Revenge
2018 release. 180 grams, Taken from the original 1970 Analog Master. It's 1970, and look what Frank Zappa's up to: The band now includes jazz
players like George Duke (keyboards) Anysley Dunbar (drums) and Ian
Underwood (guitar and keyboards) plus a mysterious pair of singers
called The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie -- who, it would turn out, were
singers Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, who'd recently jumped ship
from LA pop group the Turtles (they weren't contractually allowed to use
their real …
Cruising With Ruben & The Jets
2017 Release. 180 grams, sourced from the original analog master. "It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had all the master tapes and I could take a razor blade and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to. Then I could take that razor blade and cut it apart and reassemble it a different way, and it still would make sense. I could do this twenty ways. The material is definit…
Rak
This second AG recording for Treader sees Charles Hayward passing the drumsticks to Rupert Clervaux. Together with John Coxon’s simple and insistent guitar themes, the elegant drum-work underpins four extended group compositions, containing a surprising collision of sounds and influences, bringing together Pat Thomas from the Improv scene, Floating Points-collaborator Susumu Mukai, and Alexis Taylor’s mooger-foogered rhodes. Somehow it all crystallises perfectly. The clearest precedent for this …
Guitar Loops
Breaking form from the more overtly free jazz-oriented agenda the Treader label has based itself upon, this release finds Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Spacemen 3 tackling a lengthy piece of music assembled from electronically treated guitar loops (as you no doubt guessed from the title) and a bit of lo-fi percussion. The resultant thirty five minutes of music is an enormously dynamic, often rather difficult venture into the avant-garde, far-removed from the trance-inducing pop Pierce built …
In C Mali
2015 release. Terry Riley's In C Mali by Africa Express is the first ever recording of Riley’s minimalist work by an African ensemble. In C Mali was originally written by Terry Riley in 1964. Upon hearing this new version the composer said that he was “overwhelmed and delighted”. The piece is conducted by Anton De Ridder who has lent his expertise to Max Richter, Jonny Greenwood and These New Puritans to name but a few.
Autobahn
Although Kraftwerk's first three albums were groundbreaking in their own right, Autobahn is where the group's hypnotic electronic pulse genuinely came into its own. The main difference between Autobahn and its predecessors is how it develops an insistent, propulsive pulse that makes the repeated rhythms and riffs of the shimmering electronic keyboards and trance-like guitars all the more hypnotizing. The 22-minute title track, in a severely edited form, became an international hit single and rem…
Independent and Regional Jazz in Great Britain 1968-1988
Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve with liners notes and pictures; Includes download card. Jazzman Records deliver A New Life, Vol. II: Independent and Regional Jazz in Great Britain 1968-1988, continuing their series of under-heard jazz from the UK. It's been three years since Jazzman's A New Life (JMAN 075CD/LP, 2015) alerted jazz heads to the existence of an unknown world of British jazz private pressings and indie obscurities. Back for a second round, compilers Francis Gooding and Duncan Bro…