Spume & Recollection
Punctual like a Swiss watch, Driftmachine presents a new album that once again astounds and delights. We know their trademark: solid mechanical percussions, forceful bass and melodies systematically built around circular patterns. "Spume & Recollection" is the sixth Umor Rex album by the Berlin duo, and what better way to celebrate the label's 15th anniversary than with a new record from the masters of labyrinthine cables and patches. Regarding "Nocturnes" (UR 2014), their debut album, we descri…
Ecophony Gaia
**2021 small repress** Deep, deep, earth music from Tsutomu Ōhashi and the Geinoh Yamashirogumi crew. A macrosymphony composed for the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka, Japan, 1990, Ecophony Gaia, was supposed to be the stunning, aural centerpiece for a light and water performance system echoing the sentiment of the venue: "Harmonious Coexistence of Nature and Mankind".Ecophony Gaia was in its truest essence the final part of a trilogy that began with 1986's Ecophony Rinne, …
Apart
Slowdive’s Simon Scott is back with a new release on 12k following his collaboration with Marcus Fischer (Shape Memory) and his full-length Below Sea Level. Apart chronicles the emotions of Simon losing his father and how his environment helped process and heal.“On 3rd April 2020 my father was pronounced dead from Covid-19. 48 hours after this devastating news I walked through New Decoy, a nature reserve in the Fens, and heard the vocalisation of skylarks. Their songs rang out across the resonan…
Music of Liberation
**2021 Stock** Bob Bellerue's new double-LP, "Music of Liberation," is a careful and intricate album of textured drone and shapely noise. Like the greatest works by post-industrial masters David Jackman (Organum) and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), its power lies not in harshness, but in dynamic spectral intensity. These are minutely composed pieces with very great attention paid to timbral details and variances.
Through the last few years, Bellerue has released a series of highly acclaimed…
French Archives Vol. II / French Archives
This special bundle collects the two Ariel Kalma box-sets issued by Black Sweat:French Archives Vol. II 1974-1985 (4LP Box, 2021)French Archives 1977-80 (4LP Box, 2017)French Archives Vol. II 1974-1985 (4LP Box, 2021)The life and work of Ariel Kalma is a remarkable journey in sound - an emblem of the singular thinking that makes great art. Kalma was born in Paris, beginning to play the saxophone during his early years. His musical career was kickstarted with tours and collaborations with Salvato…
Melanesia
A journey back in time, maybe thousands of years ago, somewhere in the isolated islands of Melanesia. Here, just like a sound alchemist, Roberto Musci transforms organic nature elements into a unique sound performance of self-estrangement. In the artists’ laboratory, we will discover a melting pot of ancestral ceremonial sounds collided with contemporary chamber music and experimental-electronic methods based on music research. Among these, ethnical music of the populations of Kanaki, Itamul, K…
Galoba
* High Bias Cassette. 3 Panel Linen J Card. White Shell with Black Ink Imprint Extra Download Code * Galoba ('ɡaːlobaː means ‘chant’ in Georgian). As a sound artist far from his homeland in search of tranquility, I have constantly been looking for some healing sounds for the wounded souls like mine; Some sounds you get lost in to forget your agonies, a remedy for your exhausted soul, Sometime around Christmas 2019, I was in charge of the recording of Georgian Christmas songs and chants concert a…
The Garden of Earthly Delights
* 4 Panel Wallet Style Case. Glass Master CD. Folded Insert with Expanded Artwork * On this new work Philippe Petit intended to create a contemporary soundtrack for Hieronymus Bosch’s "The Garden of Earthly Delights" triptych : Bosch’s most complex and enigmatic creation whose overall theme is the fate of humanity.
Following his interest in library music and soundtracks our « Musical Travel-Agent » has been conjuring up a thought-provoking and intriguing universe relying on the use of real instr…
De/Still
* 8 panel book insert. Jewel Case. * De/Still is a musical score for photography. Composer/musician Nathan Moody was asked by photographer TJ Norris to aurally interpret his “Urban Juxtapositions” series. The result is an eleven-movement audio work that boldly bridges the worlds of bricolage, musique concréte, electronic music, and acoustic drone into a unified sound-world. Rather than literally interpret each photograph as a visual score, Moody categorized the textures at play and created timbr…
Quelques Usines Fantômes N°3
* Glass Master CD. Panel Wallet Case. Full Color Artwork by Flesh & Bone Design * Modern life is full of sudden unexpected turns. Quelques Usines Fantômes n°3 both observes and ignores the norms of traditional time signatures by letting in an uncertain between-ness, a quasi-balancing of our immediate surroundings with the inner self. An internal battle or an eternal limbo? On this recording Bruno Duplant seems to further be exploring a slowing of time, almost as if to boundlessly analyze the uns…
Poe
Recorded over the course of March 2020 in Bandung and Amsterdam, ‘Poe’ is a collaboration between Jonny Nash and Teguh Permana. Permana is a renowned player of the Tarawangsa, a two-stringed instrument used in the sacred Tarawangsa music of Sunda, Indonesia. Poe’, meaning ‘Days’ in Sundanese, is a meditation on death and rebirth as reflected in the passing of time and the changing of the seasons. Permana is also active in the group Tarawangsawelas who released their debut album on Morphine recor…
French Archives Vol. II 1974-1985
An absolutely astounding accomplishment, Black Sweat's second 4 LP Box set of previously unreleased material by Ariel Kalma - French Archives Vol. II - is a mind-melting immersion into the composer and saxophonist's radical experiments and stunning ambient harmonics made between 1974 and 1985. Venturing far beyond the territories for which he is most well-known, the collection takes great strides to accurately framing ambient and New Age musics as rightful extensions of the avant-garde, and is e…
Hole in my Head
The only true non-places are those of the mind: but being able to give them a tangible form doesn't always equate to the delineation of a balanced, pictorially satisfying landscape, nor does it solve the inner mystery from which it originated. In the creation of an audio document, even the simplest sonic occurrence derives from an idea and a gesture, even if only pressing the record button: and it's precisely the gesture - be it overt, dissimulated, concealed, or mediated - the absolute protagon…
Some Deaths Take Forever
2LP + insert. First time vinyl reissue since the original 1980 version. Original remastered album plus second LP with unreleased extra tracks from 'Some Deaths Take Forever' recording sessions. Originally released on Pathé in 1980, the influence and the impact of Some Deaths Take Forever is still vibrating: Carl Craig mentioned it as his all time favorite album in Future Mag, the signature sound of Oneohtrix Point Never feels almost like a not so hidden tribute and the killer sci fi electronics …
Postcards From Nowhere
In 2017, musicians and regular collaborators Gigi Masin and Jonny Nash were invited to a residency at artist Xavier Veilhan's "Studio Venezia" project at the Venice Biennale. For this immersive installation, Veilhan transformed the French Pavilion into a fully functioning recording studio, inviting artists to record original works during a series of residencies. Masin and Nash recorded a series of improvised compositions primarily for Piano and Guitar which were eventually edited down to 6 piece…
Hotel Nota
**Much needed, limited repress** If you plot a line between Jon Hassell’s 'Dream Theory In Malaya' and Jan Jelinek’s 'Loop Finding Jazz Records', you’ll find this pearl lodged somewhere in between. Add in cover art that reminds us of the sun-bleached breeze of Antena’s eternally nostalgic 'Camino Del Sol' and you have three of our favourite albums referenced in one paragraph. In other words; essential listening if yr into the aforementioned, or if you're in desperate need of some time alone, was…
Penetrating, For Filtration
Akhira Sano's "Penetrating, For Filtration" was manufactured on C60 Super Ferro tape for a low noise floor, high output, and an incredible warm sound. Packaged in a purple tinted case with silver shimmer printing. Japan's Akhira Sano is a young master of slow, ambient, electro new age music. His compositions are highly organic, growing and flowing with great patience and care. But, like in nature, imperfections and incidentals are allowed to evolve producing sublimely primal and imperfect music…
Rock N’ Roll Station
**small repress available, in process of stocking** Reissue of this mesmerizing record including an unreleased alternate mix of "Subterranean Zappa Blues". Hypnotic rhythms made of slow minimal beats, industrial textures, intoxicating drones and repetitive voices that seem to merge from dreams. Everything built by two of the most brilliant industrial music minds: Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter. "This album arrived somewhere after a dream meeting of several individuals, Graham Bond, Joe Meek,…
Aperio!
* 180 gram Vinyl * The title of Miki Yui’s seventh solo album “Aperio!” is derived from the latin origin of April, "aperire" meaning “to open” or “to reveal”. Hinting at the way her music unveils another reality which is hidden beneath the surface. The title also reflects the aperiodic character of the music, its irregularity. Like a magic word to reveal the mysterious cosmos, each song opens up another intimate world of wonders."All my work emerges from my physical experience, the inspiration o…
The Oblivion's Wordless Knot
* Edition of 100. CD + Booklet * CD self-released by Haarvöl with music created for the commissioned audio/visual work "The Oblivion's Wordless Knot" for The Family Film Project in Porto, November 2017. Comes with photo booklet in lovely 6 panel artwork. The media times of our self-absorved present seek instantaneity. A time that cancels time. Times that affirm forgetfulness as the necessary matrix for the perpetuation of the present. A present time that makes a continuous act of presence.
The w…