From Industry Home
An elegant decay amassed from the sounds of detritus. That may be an apt introduction to the work of Jo Montgomerie. Of course, The Helen Scarsdale Agency has a long standing infatuation with disintegrated sound in various forms. So, it makes perfect sense we should publish her work! That said, Montgomerie has a fascinating strategy to her long-form smears of blackened mascara ambient and smoldered noise. As a teenager she was a classically trained musician with an eye towards a career as a conc…
Drone Studies
*300 copies limited edition* In the past few years, Clarice Jensen has forged her own path. Recently, her focus has shifted to film scoring, successfully recording work for three feature films between 2020 and 2021. At the same time, Clarice continues to serve as artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, while continually collaborating with an impressive array of musicians, such as Max Richter, Björk and Stars of the Lid, to name a few.That being said, it was her 2019 tape r…
Forse
Alessandro Cortini's acclaimed 'Forse' series is available for the first time on CD including an exclusive disc of 'Forse' performed live. Packaged in matte coated digipacks housed in a heavy duty tip-on style outer box. 2021 digital master by Stephan Mathieu.
Composed using only an original Buchla Music Easel, an incredibly rare electronic music instrument designed by Don Buchla, the Forse series features long, romantic compositions full of voluminous, bombastic tones and dripping with thick t…
Organized Pitches Occurring In Time
2007 release ** Consists of two 25 minute pieces of music, both spawned from the same conceptual composition/score by Duane Pitre, titled 'Ensemble Drones.' With their form reminiscent of works by La Monte Young's 'Theater of Eternal Music' and their tonality touching on the floating works of Terry Riley, 'The Ensemble Chord in Eb with a Minor 7th' and a 'Pump Organ Base & The Ensemble Chord in C with a Major 7th and a Guitar Base' are aural tapestries based on a minimal tonal palette with their…
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Second half of a two-part album by Mens and Kouw, recorded live in studio in December 2014 and following directly from the first volume. The two long-form pieces extend the duo's pursuit of precisely tuned analogue synthesis: deep, warm drone fields that gradually disclose, to patient listening, a rich substructure of resonances, artefacts and slowly shifting collages of texture. Material that resists time as event-based articulation and proposes it instead as immersive sonic sculpture.
Sileen II
2018 release **
"An adaptation from "Sileen", a composition commissioned by Musica For The Festival Oortreders at Neerpelt, Belgium, 2016 performed with 50 members of a local music school; "Sileen II" was realized with only Gareth Davis on bass clarinet plus sounds from Machinefabriek, recorded in the same pitch and tempo as "Sileen', then slowed to half its speed and one octave lower. Stunning!"
132 Ranks
132 Ranks for Pipe Organ was composed by Olivia Block in 2016-2017, as a commission for LAMPO and The Renaissance Society. Block composed the piece specifically for the enormous Skinner Organ at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago. The world premiere was performed by Block on April 21, 2017. The concert, free and open to all ages attracted a large crowd. 132 Ranks was conceived as a hybrid of concert and sound installation. Six speakers were placed throughout the chapel. These speakers played…
Focus Intensity Power
BJ Nilsen's first LP for the label, departing from his field-recording practice. Recorded during a Fall 2017 residency at Willem Twee Electronic Music Studio in Den Bosch, the five pieces document improvised sessions on modular synthesizers, tone generators and laboratory test instruments. The flâneur's ear, normally trained on wind or city traffic, is here turned on machine-generated material: analogue pulse, droning waves and subtle noise arranged with the same patient sense of texture.
Crystalline Tragedies / The Procession - Distant Motionless Shore
An unusual collective release: Comes and Aldinucci composed their two pieces in complete isolation, exchanging neither studio time nor materials, but both worked from the same Nietzschean opposition - the moral codex of the Christian church against the radical surrender to emotion. Aldinucci builds his side from a single field recording of a procession in rural Tuscany; Comes's Crystalline Tragedies traces three distinct sections through the affective dimension of major life passages.
Semper Liber
2025 stock ** "Semper Liber consists of a series of duets featuring Marcus Davidson, Hildur Gudnadottir, Mike Harding, Charles Matthews, Clare M Singer, Maia Urstad, and Anna von Hausswolff and are drawn from recordings made at Spire events since 2009. Mixed by its curator, Mike Harding, at the Völlhaus, and mastered by Mark Van Hoen, this powerful four track collection -- to be played as one piece -- explores the sonics of the mighty organ in all its thundering glory. Warning!: Extremely low fr…
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Mens and Kouw have worked together since 2001, when their first album emerged from the clicks 'n cuts vocabulary via raw mixer feedback recorded to minidisc and broadcast live on Amsterdam's Radio 100. The duo has since migrated into tonal and timbral long-form, combining software, recorded acoustic instruments and modular synthesizer into electro-acoustic drone with audible debts to the American minimalist canon. First half of a two-part album, recorded live in December 2014.
Wurmwulv
Lotus Eaters is Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O))), KTL, etc.), James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher, etc.) and Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, etc.). Previously issued on CD, Plotkin has remixed, remastered and rearranged Wurmwulv for this vinyl edition using alternate takes from the original recording sessions. The 2LP also includes reworked material from Lotus Eaters' self-titled 7" released by Drone Records. 52 minutes and 29 seconds on 3 sides of direct metal mastered 200 gram virgin vinyl, t…
Divergence
A four-movement work probing the reciprocal interference of sound and space. The source material is reduced to elementary sonic primitives - sine waves, white noise - then physically degraded through tape manipulation to generate pulses, beats and emergent waveforms. From this collision between idealised digital signal and the analogue artefacts of magnetic media, van den Broek builds a heightened spatial perception where pure tone and altered source act on the listening field simultaneously.
Tria Atoma
Recorded in Athens in July 2014, the second album by 300 Basses extends the trio's move from free improvisation toward fixed composition. The investigation here turns on minimal but precisely framed actions: the beating patterns generated by long tones at slightly detuned pitches, the unstable timbre that emerges when reed sustains are layered with bowed cymbal, the slow permutation of a reduced interval set. A sound world built from infinitesimal elements, dense in vibration and microvariation.
Four Squared Wheel
Frans de Waard's first full CD under the Modelbau alias, a project built around a deliberate constraint: cassettes, small synthesizers, guitar effects, microphone and amplifier, with little or no computer involvement. Four Squared Wheel was captured in an extended studio session around a Philicordia organ routed through guitar effects and amplifier, signals mixed on the fly into a near hour-long single piece. Live electronic drone with the unmistakable grain of analogue circuitry.
N°3
Gatefold double LP version. "Album No. 3 from Christina Vantzou is the result of a two-year process of composing, arranging, rearranging, experimenting, and melding classical instruments with synths and electronics. Recorded in Belgium with a 15-piece ensemble of strings, horns, woodwinds and micro-choir, the tracks vacillate between orchestral, ambient soundscapes and more structured works that the composer refers to as 'pillars.' The internal core of the record, however, is unwavering. All tra…
Corridors
The first full length cd from Byron Westbrook’s Corridors project. Meticulously and seamlessly mixed live guitar drones specifically assembled for this release. Limited to 500 copies and housed in a custom oversized sleeve.
This album consists of recordings of the audio component of three works for multi-channel audio and video. Each piece was performed with the same distribution system, using either treated recordings of instrumental performances or live guitar feedback as the sound source. The…
Radiator
Beautiful new work from Kevin Doria (Growing). If Eliane Radigue and Kevin Drumm made a record together it might sound something like Total Life. Kevin Doria creates a sound world with deep inner dynamics shrouded by distortion. Whether you stay on the surface or listen deeply, the energy in this work is vivid. Recorded and mixed at home in the winter of 2012, RADIATOR represents the first proper full length release by Total Life for Important Records. RADIATOR is inspired by standing on the ga…
Reverie
An amazing mix of spaced out electronics and improvisation, combined with analog/traditional instruments as usual but also taking it even further and into deeper realms! 400 only coloured vinyl, mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. "This Italian group, with the great CD 'Like little garrisons besieged' (2009) and two intriguing 7's made in collaboration with Oren Ambarchi and Steve Roden under their belt, are back with a new release on Bocian Records with even greater momentum. Their music could be l…
Svapiti
Born of Six, featuring Amelia Cuni, Catherine Christer Hennix, and Werner Durand, create exemplary drone compositions rooted in the traditions of Dhrupad, early minimalism and just intonation. Composed by Durand, Cuni, Hennix, Svapiti is one long composition measuring 55 minutes in length. 'A solid foundation is the best basis for the fundamental.' Narada´s exposition of the seven notes begins as follows: because Sadja (the tonic) arises from the combination of nose, throat, chest, palate, tongu…