Cave Vaults of the Moon
Joanne Forman's Cave Vaults of the Moon created in 1987 for an exhibit of sculptures in Taos, New Mexico is a mesmerizing score for voice, Ensoniq Mirage, Juno 106, flute, guitar and effects. The playful extra-terrestrial recording wafted through the exhibit every day for its duration and then lay dormant for nearly 30 years. Unearthed now, Cave Vaults of the Moon sounds prescient and timeless, as if Pep Llopis and Iasos scored a Wicker Man remake set on Mars. Restored, remastered and cut using…
Music Of The Five Elements
Brandon Hocura’s Séance Centre pull out Sam McLellan’s sublime 1982 new age opus Music Of The Five Elements for this invaluable first vinyl reissue. Music is the healing force of the universe. It’s an ancient idea bandied about by Pythagoras and Plato. In the last century, music as medication has been explored by musicians as diverse as Albert Ayler, Spacemen 3 and Pauline Oliveros. Nowhere did this concept gain more traction than in the so-called realm of New Age Music, an entire movement of sy…
Kantamoinen
Kantamoinen is perhaps the most intimately beautiful yet little known LP in MIka Vainio's Ø canon, bridging the gap between his classic ‘90s minimal techno productions - compiled in the vital Metri and Olento collections - and the project’s subsequent turn to more ambient, kosmic and dub wise dimensions in the coolly brilliant Oleva and Konstellaatio albums.
Upon original release it was an immediate favourite of ours - a go-to disc for hazy daydreaming and post-club head salvage alike, dr…
Cinema
5cd box edition. An overview of Holger Czukay's solo work and collaborations, also including Canaxis 5 (1969) - a legendary album which fuses ambient, ethnic music and early form of sampling, several years before anybody else started to get to grips with any of those ideas - Movies (1979), On The Way To The Peak Of Normal (1981), Full Circle (1982), Der Osten Ist Rot (1984), Rome Remains Rome (1987) and Radio Wave Surfer (1991). This five-LP set features a 36-page booklet, DVD of movie starrin…
Composiciones Nativas
Subtitled "Music for Native Peruvian Instruments and Magnetophonic Tape (1978)" this is a wonderful collection of pieces composed between 1976 & 1978 at the Royal College's EMS by Peruvian composer Arturo Ruiz del Pozo. Ranging from extended tape-loop meditations to application of mystical folk instrumentation & enharmonic percussion sonorities, this is an incredibly eye-opening survey of the work of a composer of whose work I was completely unfamiliar prior to this issue.Like many countries in …
Eisgang
Eisgang was originally released on Dutch Korm Plastics label in 1995 as a limited edition vinyl LP only. It was later reissued as a double CD with Dämmerattacke. For this latest edition, we have added another bonus track making the CD 20 minutes longer than the LP. Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in musique concrete by listening to a German radio programme when he was 10 years old. In 1965, at the age of 18, Asmus started experimentin…
Dammerattacke
Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in musique concrete by listening to a German radio programme when he was 10 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 fo…
The Biophonic Boombox Recordings
Double LP version. Vinyl housed in gatefold jacket Includes 28-page booklet of ephemera and liner notes Gatefold sleeve. "Deep, diverse, and unheralded, the Philadelphia ambient electronic music scene of the 1980s is explored with The Nightcrawlers' The Biophonic Boombox Recordings, an expansive archival collection documenting the hard-knuckled kosmische synthesizer trio's home recordings self-released and distributed over 35 cassettes between 1980 and 1991. Featuring the farthest reaching space…
The Mysticism of Sound & Cosmic Language
Double CD edition. A previously unreleased series of astounding recordings, made between 1972 and 1973, by the collective Hy Maya, pull the rug from beneath the standing narratives of history. Never before released in any form, The Mysticism Of Sound & Cosmic Language is a revelation in sound. Incredibly diverse - an absolutely intoxicating, immersive journey through collective creativity which shatters the standing narratives, and foreshadows nearly every important movement of counter-…
Terminal Drive
Terminal Drive is studio recording of a mythical piece of electro-acoustic music composed and performed in 1975 by Allen Ravenstine (b. May 9, 1950 in Canton, OH) with assistance from Albert Dennis on string bass. Terminal Drive’s significance in terms of Cleveland underground music cannot be understated and has been cited as partially responsible for Ravenstine’s invitation to co-form the musical unit Pere Ubu in September 1975. Ravenstine gained recognition for his unusual and inventive synthe…
Meditative Music
Pulse Emitter’s Meditative Music series captures an artist’s dedication to evolution through years of traversing a myriad of textural and contemplative terrains. Active in the ambient, drone, and noise scenes of Portland, OR since the early 2000s, Pulse Emitter (the project of Daryl Groetsch) has grown fathoms since the project’s inception, from Groetsch’s humble homemade synthesizer, to his embrace of the worlds of possibility digital instruments and processing could unfold. Originally s…
Música Para Planetarios
Mexican guitarist and ambient artist Eblen Macari's masterpiece Música Para Planetarios (Music for Planetariums) was originally composed for weekly performances in the Luis Enrique Erro Planetarium in Mexico City. The album, released in 1987 was based around Macari's solo performances using Ensonic ESQ-1, a Korg Poly 800, two guitars and pre-hispanic Ocarinas. The arrangements on the album are expanded to include a full stable of pre-hispanic percussion and beautiful baroque harpsichord played b…
Sequence Of Earlier Heaven: Electroacoustic And Computer Music
Original 1985 LP, few copies available and of course long out of print "Canadian electro-acoustic music composer Barry Truax (b1947) studied with R. Murray Schafer and was a member of the latter’s World Soundscape Project, helping record soundscapes around the Vancouver area as early as 1973 and subsequently using sounds from this collection in his own compositions. Truax launched his own label, Cambridge Street Records in Vancouver, 1985. Several features on ‘Sequence of Earlier Heaven’ sound f…
Indonesian Electronic Music 1979-1984
Double CD edition. Indonesian rainforest atmospheres which could almost be scoring some Werner Herzog absorbing documentaries. Otto Sidharta is born in Bandung, Indonesia November 6, 1955. In 1978 he studied music composition in Jakarta Institute of Arts under guidance of Slamet Abdul Sjukur, in 1984 he continue his post graduate study for composition and electronic music with Prof. Ton de Leeuw in Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam In 2015 acomplished his doctoral study at Institute Seni Indone…
The Nazgul
Lost-in-time kosmische/kraut/avant-garde artifact produced by Toby Robinson, aka The Mad Twiddler, circa 1975 for his private Pyramid label. From the moment they emerged during the mid 90’s, mystery has swirled around Psi-Fi’s six Krautrock gems. Each, the label claimed, had been recorded for the long lost Pyramid label, based in Cologne during the 1970’s. Embraced and loved by many, others cried hoax. Some ventured further, implicating the perpetrator - the voice behind this assembly of drifti…
Early Tape Works (1986 - 1993) Vol. 1
Since their first release in 2013, the Amsterdam based imprint, Music From Memory, has rapidly emerged as force in the musical landscape, dissolving long standing conceptions of genre and history, with a startlingly catalog of reissues, compilations, and archival works. Their latest LP, Early Tape Works (1986 - 1993) Vol. 1, by Kuniyuki Takahashi, is one of their most exciting to date - redefining what we know about its creator, while challenging the accessible presumptions about the landscape …
El Sol Desde Oriente (Selected & Unreleased Recordings 1980-90)
For a good number of Spanish musicians, attracting attention from somewhere outside of Madrid was a mission impossible for several decades. While the Movida Madrileña, commonly referred to as the “Madrid scene” in English, stirred things up and made front page news on the basis of new wave music, musicians that were on the fringe or directly beyond it had few platforms from which to be heard. Although Javier Segura has been recording music in his studio almost continuously since the 70's, his re…
Ragapadani
**Black vinyl edition of 400 copies**For fans of neglected Italian music, the last year has been among the best on record. We’ve seen reissues of seminal albums by Franco Battiato, Giusto Pio, Roberto Musci,Telaio Magnetico, Zeit, Lino Capra Vaccina, Claudio Rocchi, N.A.D.M.A., Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, and a stream of others, each charting the singular path which makes this sonic geography so remarkable and unique. Italian music from the second half of the 20th century is noto…
French Archives 1977-80
** Small repress available ** It’s an incredible moment in the history of recorded music. At SoundOhm we’re lucky enough to hear it all. Within such a stunning landscape, it’s impossible to pick favourites, but Milan based imprint Black Sweat always comes out at the top. And they return with what may be their most ambitious effort yet, a stunning four LP box set of previously unreleased archival recordings by Ariel Kalma. The life and work of Ariel Kalma is a remarkable journey in sound - an emb…
Luxicon II, Echospace
Gil Trythall’s two late-60s “Country” themed Moogsploitation LPs are of course the gilded arches that keep the genre airborne, but it’s this 1980 collection on the minuscule, West Virginia-based Pandora records imprint that’s always been the real show of Trythall’screative vision. While “Luxicon II's” gorgeous deep-bass filtering, runaway arpeggiations, & spot-on “Electro” -tinged drum-machine gork is the stuff of legend, I maintain that “Echospace” beats a good chunk of time-lag architect Terry…