Reissues
Ballaké Sissoko & Derek Gripper
In November 2022 world-renowned kora player Ballaké Sissoko and acclaimed guitarist Derek Gripper spend just three hours recording a wordless album together. The kora and guitar in the hands of masters - a session where New Ancient Strings meets One Night On Earth. “Musically we tested each other,” says Sissoko, explaining that the most magical aspect of their initial encounter was the spontaneity of the whole thing. “We have the mastery of our instruments, the technique and a good ear. Derek is…
Atom Flower's
First-ever reissue of this cult and extremely rare record by one of the leading musicians and composers of Italian jazz and cinematic music. This album was recorded in 1972 in Piero Umiliani’s Sound Work Shop studio with a similar line up to the one of legendary ‘To-Day’s Sound’ album.
Javakade 8485
Over the years, we’ve written a lot about the visionary artist, Walter Maioli, many times, highlighting an increasing number of reissue and archival releases that explore the many dimensions of his multifaceted body of work. A central architect of Italy’s singular movement of musical Minimalism, for more than half a century Maioli’s output has remained a constant source of inspiration and awe, entirely carving its own path, while establishing unexpected ties between the ancient world and others …
Stridulum (The Visitor)
This is the masterful score that Italian composer Franco Micalizzi created for the 1979 Sci-fi horror film Stridulum (aka. The Visitor). The Giulio Paradisi film featured a star-studded cast including Mel Ferrer, John Huston, and Shelley Winters. Although it wasn’t as commercially successful as expected at the time, its unique subject matter and expressive style eventually attracted a cult following. While Micalizzi is better known for his ‘Poliziotteschi’ flic scores and collaborations with dir…
Get Carter: Expanded
"This is the soundtrack to Get Carter (1971), the all-time classic British gangster flick starring Michael Caine and directed by Mike Hodges. It became the bridge by which jazz musician Roy Budd successfully expanded his horizons to film music, with a score brimming with moments of his genius. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the film's opening, we drew on the original Japanese (1971) and British (1998) OST releases to put together an expanded edition of the OST - including a bonus disc fe…
Excelsior Mill Sun Ra Excelsior Mill
"The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do - It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you'll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl! When you're Sun Ra, you don't need synthesizers to evoke a…
To Dream
Hold on to your mind! Led by Belfast-born phenom David Lewis, Andwella made three LPs circa 1970 for London’s Reflection label, redolent with Cream-y rock workouts, soaring post-Sgt. Pepper psych experimentation, and earthbound laments The Band might’ve dreamt up at Big Pink. Barely heard back then, they now conjure a popular rock fantasia to challenge the most expertly composed and orchestrated songs of the era. This deluxe set includes meticulous reproductions of the band’s 3-LP discography, p…
Boku・Neko・Platanus (Expanded Edition)
A Japanese synth curio? A lost techno-pop classic? So might run the standard view of the electronic album 'Boku・Neko・Platanus', recorded in 1984 by Shinichi Omata. The facts point that way. The futuristic 'Platonische Liebe' and Omata’s technodelic take on the traditional Greek folk track 'Omorfoula' (here titled 'Egyptische Knabe') are timeless electro tracks with a radically simple pop concept and robotic flavour that closely echo Japan’s most recognisable exports from the era - sounds and sty…
The Faintest Hint
2024 Repress. Ai Aso's immaculately crafted form of minimalist pop music skirts the edges of tensity with the manner and with the skill of a tight rope walker, calmly balancing repeatedly at every step, with a combination of surety and the risk of a slip, a fall, and an unknown uncoiling of events. Aso's capacity to capture, or inspire, the tension and attention from within the listener and observer are quite pronounced. At Aso's concert the performance constantly teeters near the brink, a sharp…
Lone
2024 Repress. Tokyo's Ai Aso is a Japanese psychedelic pop singer-songwriter whose work has a whisper-thin acid-folk quality to it. She started performing as a solo singer around 2000. Her solo work, infrequent collaborations with White Heaven members You Ishihara and Michio Kurihara, Yurayura Teikoku, and Boris bring a level of fragility and hypnotism to the stage, recalling lost memories, small flavors of Coil, and serial playing on the verge of evaporation. As for her recent activities, she h…
Ptomaine 2
Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in Musique Concrete by listening to a German radio program when he was ten years old. In 1965, at the age of 18, Asmus started experimenting with tape loops and turned them into musical collages. Soon, the use of synthesizers was added. In 1980 his debut album Nachtstücke was released, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream. This was soon followed by a series of albums of electronic pop music for the Sk…
μP RPF78
Tip tip tip! 4LP Box, Hardboard linen LP box with silkscreened titles, 12 page booklet with notes by Robert Fesler and Baudouin Oosterlynck + A5 card with reproduction of oil on wood self-portrait by Robert Fesler. Edition of 300 copies with download code. An anthology of the intensely arresting work of Robert Fesler (1936-2023), revealing many of his compositions (1975 -1987) created with his self-built synthesizers, with as pinnacle the μP RPF78. All music composed and recorded by Robert Fesle…
Curieuse Quiétude
Thierry Müller is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who is best known for his projects Ilitch and Ruth. He uses unconventional guitars as well as keyboards and other electronic devices to create unusual textures and sounds. A Parisian graphic designer, he began making recordings in the early 1970s using prepared guitars, harmonium and tape recorders as instruments. Since 1978, his albums with multiple and unclassifiable universes (Periodik Mindtrouble, 10 Suicides) have been erected as cult c…
Traumstadt 2
Double CD, 6 panel ecopack. The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band formed in London in August 1980. In 1984 the band moved to Amsterdam, playing with rotating musicians and having, as core members, singer/songwriter/keyboardist Edward Ka-Spel and keyboardist Phil Knight aka The Silverman. The band was originally called One Day... but subsequently changed the name to The Legendary Pink Dots, apparently inspired by pink dots on certain keys of the band's main recording s…
Chewing Hides the Sound
Double CD, expanded edition. Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. A…
Proofs & Refutations
2024 small repress! Recorded in 1995 and 1996, mostly in John Fahey's room at a Salem, Oregon boardinghouse, the performances on Proofs and Refutations prefigure the ornery turn of the page that marked Fahey's final years, drawing another enigmatic rabbit from his seemingly bottomless musical hat. Cloaked in the language of dogma, this is Fahey dancing a jig in the Duchampian gap, jester cap bells a-jingling. Right out of the gate, Fahey re-materializes before us, somewhere between Oracle of Del…
Journey To Air
*Limited Edition* Trumpeter Terumasa Hino at a level that's quite different than most of his early work in Japan recording in New York, and using a very spiritual approach one that's clearly influenced by some of the other players in the session! The album features one long track a bit improvised, and almost free at times but also given a strong sense of direction, too that balance between completely unbridled expression and structure that can make some of the best spiritual jazz sessions so gre…
Aya's Samba
First vinyl reissue of Eiji Nakayama’s incredible 1978 album, a crate diggers dream find for many years, this is deep spiritual jazz, post-modal impressionism and grooves at the top
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is the self-titled debut album by the Düsseldorf band Kraftwerk . It was produced by Conny Plank and released in 1970. "Musicians sometimes have very poor insight into what constitutes their best work. Bob Seger and Alex Chilton come to mind. One of the most extreme cases of this unfortunate phenomenon is Kraftwerk. The legendary German group’s founders— Ralf Hütter and the late Florian Schneider-Esleben—are/were undoubtedly intelligent people, but for baffling reasons, they refuse(d) …
Beyond Paradiso 1969
Clifford Jordan was actually supposed to perform at Paradiso on September 10, 1969, but at that time the stage was facing problems and closed for a month. He diverts to VARA studio 7 in Hilversum with pianist Cees Slinger, bassist Ruud Jacobs, drummer Han Bennink and percussionist Steve Boston. Three of the four pieces Jordan puts on the lectern he recorded in early 1969 for the Strata-East label under the album title In the world.