Reissues
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (1964-1967)
The accidental matriarch at the head of the recent folk revival, Vashti Bunyan had been championed by everyone from Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Adem as one of folk music's great lost voices. After the reissue of her 1970 LP Just Another Diamond Day, Vashti was coaxed out of retirement to record the Max Richter-produced Lookaftering, an album which featured guest appearances from many of the nu-folk crowd's movers and shakers and formally reintroduced her to the contemporary music scene. …
Just Another Diamond Day
Recently voted one of the Top 100 British Albums of all time by the OMM, this CD re-release of Vashti Bunyan's 'Just Another Diamond Day' features the likes of Robert Kirby (of Nick Drake fame), Robin Williamson (Incredible String Band) and the Fairport Convention's Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick, it is also regularly cited as inspiration by Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Scout Nibblet... Possibly sounding a bit naïve in retrospect, much of 'Just Another Diamond Day' seems to exist somewher…
Beautiful blood
One of the most exciting experimental music artists currently active in North America, he has earned a growing following around the world. This recording is what you might expect—insanely powerful drone based music composed of the richly layered sounds of different instruments & field recordings, allowing the listener to pick up on new sounds & subtleties with every listen. Incredibly unusual music that takes influence from both ambient & noise circles & blends them to fantastic results. A very …
Same Places (Slow Version)
Wafting, vaporously, from the suffocating heat of New Orleans, Belong shimmers like a mirage: vaguely discernable, yet always at the edge of an unobtainable horizon. Collaborators Mike Jones and Turk Dietrich employ a singular and remarkably inscrutable studio technique (Dietrich's remix skills extend to Nine Inch Nails' "The Frail") to wholly liquefy source material - here electric guitars - into wave upon breaking wave of sound. Comparisons are frequently made to William Basinski's notorious "…
Studies for Player Piano
The definitive recording of Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano, originally released on LP by 1750 Arch Records, newly remastered in spectacular sound, representing the most faithful reproduction of what Nancarrow heard in his own studio. This is the only available recording utilizing Nancarrow’s original instruments: two 1927 Ampico player pianos, one with metal-covered felt hammers and the other with leather strips on the hammers. The 4-CD set includes a 52-page booklet with the origin…
Mectpyo Bakterium
2014 repress, originally released in 1998. First issued by the Mnemonists' label (Dys in the U.S.) in 1982. M.B.: proto-electronics, compositions, arrangements. Mektpyo Bakterium is a work furnished of implacable plastic exasperation. The icy oppression, the hallucinative electronic wounds, are a precious and singular fact in a technological society brought to the limit. The emotion is pushed into dangerous zones, and unusual zones, and unusual tensions -- free biological groans of extreme e…
Neuro Habitat / Moerder Unter Uns
2014 repress, originally released in 1998. Reissue of a private LP, issued in an edition of 300 copies in 1982 by Maurizio Bianchi ; a skeletal extremist project that will then transform into the "soundtrack" of a movie with the same title, edited and directed by Paul Hurst. It's the setting of the griable pre-apocalyptic fossilization, the supreme lapidation of the meanness which creates the myth. There are actual melodies present -- dense and dark that mutate into harsh electronic outbur…
Menses
2014 repress, originally released in 2000. First issued on the Broken Flag label in the UK in an edition of 500 in 1983. A different style, providing some distance from all his previous works; a more expansive experimentation with multiple layers of synthesizer sounds. Still very intense. M.B.'s recordings come closest to classical electronics, but always with a very personal style. This CD edition also features an interview on Radio Popolare in Milan from 1/1/83. An English translation i…
Symphony For A Genocide
2014 repress of these classic M.B. albums (M.B. = Maurizio Bianchi, for those of you who haven't been saved yet). These were first reissued in 1998 by EEs'T (a division of Alga Marghen) and are now back again. Symphony... was the first M.B. album, issued in 1981, at the gates of the industrial noise revolution (it was also reissued on CD in the U.S. on Hospital Productions). "ArcheoMB" is the title given to the complete reprint of old M.B. records and here is part 1. EEs'T Records and M.B. …
Off the wall
More Yoshi Wada from EM Records! The long-awaited reissue of Wada's 1985 LP Off The Wall, recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP-subsidiary SAJ label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ("massive," as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), Off The Wall features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri. The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by …
Imitation of Life / Double Indemnity
Two classic Y records reissued on the Unheard Music Series; hardcore improvised music by Beresford (Slits, Premiere U.K. Jounalisto), Honsinger (cellist extraordinaire), Toop (experimental Genius/author) & Kondo (Japanese improv legend). Originally released in 1980/81, never reissued before. With bonus tracks, new liner notes by Beresford.
1968
You know how sometimes people try so hard that they do not wish their early moments to be seen nor heard? Such is the case with Gérard Manset and his first recordings which, as it were, represent some of the best psychedelic chansons in existence and in league with such luminaries as Gainsbourg, Polnareff and Ferrer. Ill-conceived timing with the May 1968 student riots in Paris doomed the fate of his Animal on est Mal EP and self-titled LP, and both are now as rare as truffles. However, his popu…
Doppio Coro / Artemisia / Triola / Cantate Pour Elle / Week-end
VERY LAST COPIES, long deleted masterpiece 'Doppio coro' (1993) for organ orgue, 'Artemisia' (1991), 'Triola ou Symphonie pour moi-même' (1977-78), 'Cantate pour elle' (1966) for soprano, harp and tapes, 'Week End' (1982), 'Luminétudes' (1968), 'Reflets' (1961), 'Dahovi' (1961), 'Lumina' (1968) for 12 strings and tapes.
How to Make a Happening
Historic release. Originally released as an LP in 1966 by Mass Art, this is Allen Kaprow, father of The Happening explaining how to do it, and what is - and is not - a Happening. Simple in construction, yet profound in context, How to Make a Happening is Allan Kaprow delivering 11 rules on how, and how not, to make a Happening, an movement begun by Kaprow in the late fifties that is known for its unpredictability, open scores, and constantly-evolving form. On the first track, Kaprow speaks plain…
Forerunners - Swedish Electronic & Concrete Music 1955-65
With Karl-Birger Blomdahl: Mimamusik (1959). Bengt Hambraeus: Doppelrohr 2 (1955). Rune Lindblad: Formation (1958-59), Optica 2 (1960). Arne Mellns: Nite Music (1964). Sten Hanson: Fruits de mer (1962). Åke Karlung: Antihappening (1962). Leo Nilsson: Skorpionen (1964). Ralph Lundsten: Atomskymning (1964). Bengt Emil Johnson: Enmans Gubbdrunkning (1964). Lars-Gunnar Bodin: Den heter ingenting, den heter nog 'Seans 2' (1965). The cd includes a 16 page booklet with texts by Sten Hanson.
Keio Line
An incredible collaboration that sweeps across the generations of electronic music. Richard Pinhas is internationally recognized as one of France's major experimental musicians: the 'father' of French electronic music. He was the founder of Heldon, a band whose violent fusion of electronics and guitar in the 70s rivalled the German electronic school. As a guitar player he has been compared to Robert Fripp. Cited as an influence by many electronic musicians, Richard Pinhas has helped to define th…
Give Me Love: Songs of the Brokenhearted: Baghdad, 1925-1929
In the mid-1920s, The Gramophone Company sent representatives into Iraq to investigate the indigenous music found in its record stores and performance halls. Their research laid the foundation for sessions that produced almost 1,000 recordings. The selections on this disc, restored from their original 78s, present a compelling multicultural portrait of Iraq that is all but forgotten today.Rural Arab folk singers, Kurdish violinists, professional Jewish musicians, and prostitutes share equal bill…
Live At The I.C.A. / Retrospective
The English free jazz improvisation scene of the late 60s and early 70s was an incestuous breeding ground. Robert Fripp was producing albums by Keith Tippet, Brian Eno was using Derek Bailey and Evan Parker on albums of odd Russian electronic music on Island, and labels like EMI and RCA were actually taking a stab at selling this music to a large market. Amidst all this was Ray Russell, a popular session guitarist, also playing in John Barry's group, also reputed to be the first guitarist in Eng…
Soldier Talk
The Red Crayola's Soldier-Talk returns at last. Drag City Records are proud to announce that, after having been missing in action for twenty-eight years, this vital, much acclaimed work is now available again. Soldier-Talk appeared first on Radar Records. A custom label built around Elvis Costello, financed and distributed by WEA, Radar had licensed the International Artists catalog in 1978 and had already re-released the band's first album, The Parable of Arable Land, and first single, 'Wives i…
Live 1967
Rescued from a long slumber of loathe, these live tapes of the Houston Red Crayola rejoin us to the truth about flower power: all free, all form, all freaked out.