Cirque
Triple LP version. Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen - a Norwegian musician who has released a notable catalog of ambient electronic music. He is well known for his works on ambient techno and arctic-themed pieces, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources. His 1997 album Substrata (TO 050CD/BIO 005LP) was voted by the users of the Hyperreal website in 2001 as the best all-time classic ambient album. Cirque - originally released in 2000 - was Biosphere's…
Musik Fur Metropolis
LP version. Includes CD. Dieter Moebius (1944-2015) was one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. He was a founding member of Kluster/Cluster (with Conrad Schnitzer and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and Harmonia (with Michael Rother and Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and worked with several artists such as Brian Eno, Conny Plank, Mayo Thompson, Hellmut Hattler, Asmus Tietchens, Mani Neumeier, Arno Steffen, Jürgen Engler, Jean Hervé Peron, Zappi Diermaier, and Chris Ka…
Cruel Optimism
Cruel Optimism is a record that considers power (present and absent). It meditates on how power consumes, augments and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility. This pyramid is an affective ecology of the (ever)present moment. This edition owes its title and its origins to the wonderful text of the same name by American theorist Lauren Berlant. I had the fortune to come across her writing almost a half-decade ago. In Cruel Optimism, I found a number of cri…
Transpandorem
UnicaZürn, David Knight and Stephen Thrower, build their long, ceaselessly evolving musical compositions through a process of improvisation, followed by careful editing and processing. Their music, drawn from subconscious associations while recording, is frequently aquatic or oceanic in overall mood and texture. Knight has spent most of his life living on the banks of the Thames while Thrower resides on the East Sussex coast, and their musical flights of imagination tend toward rolling ri…
Messages and Portraits
Classic work. Overlays and constructs rhythmic and harmonic vignettes of transparent sound (at once complex and simple) from electronic, acoustic and documentary sources, taking ethnic field recordings as it's thematic centre. In the realm of 'My life in the Bush of Ghosts' but far more accomplished and developed.
Atmosphere
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Adelbert Von Deyen's third album Atmosphere, originally released in 1980. Album number three from electronic musician Adelbert Von Deyen marks the end of his ambient phase. Whilst Atmosphere largely swathes listeners in familiarly vast expanses of sound, the driving analog drums of the opening track (Von Deyen's most successful, as it turned out) signal a shift towards electro-kraut terrain. Atmosphere showcases Adelbert Von Deyen at the peak of his powe…
Music for Fragments from the Inside
2016 repress; originally released in 2005. The long-awaited collaborative release from legendary American minimalist composer and pianist Harold Budd and Milanese producer and experimental electronic composer Eraldo Bernocchi. Recorded during a magic night in the courtyard of a Renaissance palazzo in Siena, Italy, Music For 'Fragments From The Inside' melds Budd's light tonal wash and sparse keyboard treatments with the deep electronic rumbles of Bernocchi. An astonished piano player drifts …
FRKWYS Vol. 13: Sunergy
Sunergy brings together synthesists Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Suzanne Ciani for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaboration series. For this edition, a panorama of the Pacific Coast provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of a life-giving form vast and volatile with change.Fortuitously (as is the freaky way), Smith and Ciani were discovered to be neighbors in the small coastal community of Bolinas, California. The two …
The Stargate Tapes
Temporary Super Offer! Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida-raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post-prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music. At the turn of the 1980s, Bob Stohl and Kat Epple embarked on a ten-year spiritual journey playing at pla…
Moments in Shapeshifting
New England's Lee Tindall has been a mainstay of the noise/electronic scene for some time. Working as Zerfallt and Belarisk, and in a variety of groups (including Astronaut with Daniel Lopatin), Tindall has been perfecting what he calls "Hy-Fy mutant music" for a decade, working on the fringes of a sound that has slipped in-and-out of focus. Moments In Shapeshifting is Tindall's most fully-realized release to date, bringing together his interest in abrasive noise, abstract electronics and h…
All Moments
NNA is proud to present our 50th release, Matt Carlson's All Moments long-playing record. Where 2011's Particle Language LP acted as a study in texture and density within experimental synthesizer music, All Moments finds Carlson engaging with the more traditional musical materials of melody, harmony, and rhythm, calling to mind his work as one half of Portland, OR duo Golden Retriever. The pieces on this record range from shorter pop études to longer, more open improvisatory synth studies, r…
Crystal
**Edition of 350 copies pressed on clear vinyl** Crystal is the third release and first vinyl LP outing by composer Tom James Scott. Sonically, the pieces presented on Crystal contrast as structures of space and density, dividing and inhabiting the space of the format. While Scott's previous releases used acoustic instrumentation to explore aspects of melodic form and song structure, 'Crystal' sees a shift towards a more electronic means of sound production. 'Skire' - the opening track - employs…
The All Most Quiet
Anyone who has experienced Swans live on one of their recent tours will know who Norman Westberg is: the almost stoic, tall man, who coaxes rhythmic sounds from his guitar with an incomparably minimalist power and elegance. The play on words in the title can be applied to Westberg's own musical work, because whereas Swans are hard to surpass in terms of brute force, the artist's solo work is much more subtle, and therefore also quieter. The resulting juxtaposition between the dense metropolis of…
Plays Hazkarà
Italy’s prince of chill Gigi Masin teams up with multitalented muse Mirco Salvadori for a tender excursion into the world of the piano in an attempt to build a unified poetry of art and sound in Hazkara. I mean, that’s pretty much a guarantee if you include a 48-page book with a CD, words and pictures and all. The first thing I noticed was the prominence of the piano on this one, more so than recent Music From Memory compilation Talk to the Sea, anyway. Yeah, I’m a pedestrian Masin fan. Being …
Grisailles
** Deluxe Ed. Attached onto handmade sleeves using thick card stock with textured debossing/rounded tabs outside sleeve construction. Limited to 300 copies **The glowing momentum captured in a suite of five movements for speechless voice rooted in a flair of earthly instrumental strokes. A sensual twilight where ashes become seeds. An original hand printed edition etching by Timo van Luijk is featured with each copy.
"Elodie is Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk. Grisailles is certainly a sea chan…
The Little Glass
The ever-enigmatic Akira Rabelais returns! The Little Glass breaks down clearly over two discs; the first containing four plaintive solo piano parts by Harold Budd and Rabelais, followed by a 2nd disc presenting Rabelais’ hour long, inharmonic, electronic transformation of the preceding material. Rabelais has collaborated with Budd before, he provided his own incredible side-long second CD to Budd’s majestic Avalon Sutra album, and while the piano pieces that make up the first CD here are bloody…
First
Tarotplane is the solo project of Baltimore-based musician PJ Dorsey. First, his full-length debut, is a tremendous album etched on the great krautrock and experimental psychedelic records from the '70s. Vintage electronic sounds are mixed with effected guitar parts. It might sound quite familiar at first, but once one enters the heart of the album it all gets spectacularly exhilarating and effortlessly captivating, swirling around the listener. Records such as Franco Battiato's Pollution, Bill …
13
Room40 inaugurates its series of works by American guitarist and composer Norman Westberg with 13. Best known for his work with the seminal outfit Swans, Westberg's output beyond that group is sprawling and restless. His name recurs and ripples through many interconnected micro-histories surrounding New York City's music and art scenes. From appearances in film works associated with the Cinema of Transgression to his participation in bands such as The Heroine Sheiks and Five Dollar Priest, Westb…
RE : EM
The brilliant Anna Zaradny's follows up her engrossing debut with this new EP featuring a sumptuous Fennesz rework of her New feat Old, following hot on the heels of Robert Piotrwicz's crushing side, Stara Szkola Ze Zlota, to remind us the ascetic, uncompromising brilliance of Polish experimental music at its best. On the front Zaradny utterly dominates the senses with a pulsating deconstruction of Stop the Chaos; originally a sub-3 minute rager, now distilled and expanded to three times the len…
Rank Sonata
"Colin Potter has been a central figure in the UK's DIY and post-industrial underground since the late '70s. His ICR label, founded in 1981, blurred the lines between post-punk experimentation, crude pop, Krautrock-inspired drone work and contemporary electronica, with releases by everyone from DIY legends The Instant Automatons through Chris & Cosey of Throbbing Gristle, experimental composer Trevor Wishart, drone soundists Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate and Bryn Jones's Muslimgauze. He has also …