Thousand Bells
Yui Onodera and Takashi Kokubo are two visionary artists hailing from Japan, known for theirexceptional ability to create captivating and immersive sonic experiences. The compositionsseamlessly blend Yui Onodera's minimalist sensibilities with Takashi Kokubo's mastery oftraditional Japanese instrumentation, creating a sonic tapestry that transports listeners to arealm of serenity and introspection.
Grammy-nominated Takashi Kokubo is a veteran musician, composer, and sound designerwho has played …
Slow And Distant Corrosion
*50 copies limited edition* Lichen functions like nothing else on earth. This combination of algae, fungus, and bacteria serves as a keystone species to keep the entire ecosystem healthy and on track. Thanks to their ability to take nutrients from air, sun, and rain, and their capacity to survive with very low water contents, these species can thrive on every continent, including Antarctica. They can spread their secondary metabolites that make the rocks slowly flake off, participating in soil f…
Akh
Big tip! *250 copies* Reissue of Amon's seminal 1996 debut album augmented with three tracks from the same sessions. Since the mid '90s Andrea Marutti has been crafting his own blend of mind-expanding soundscapes, creating a strong sense of ancient mysticism and time travel with his Amon project. His mesmerizing recordings of drones and tones, presented as a careful form of resonant minimalism pregnant with cavernous sounds and slow movements, reverberations and drifting elements, have always be…
28th Dec, Arakawa
Maeda Yasuyuki and Li Song are musicians and computer programmers based in Nagoya and London, respectively. They both improvise with their computers through code using SuperCollider, a real-time sound synthesis system. They first connected online in 2017 through OSC Hub, a computer music program for remote collaboration created by Tadashi Usami.
They self-released "Two Laptops" in February 2022, and later released it as a tape on Karma Detonation. It was recorded during Maeda’s trip to London in…
Sky Flesh
If there's one specific component that grounds Sky Flesh, it's focus. Italian musician and sound designer Marta De Pascalis flexed her technical muscle on 2020's Sonus Ruinae, layering various sounds and processes in an attempt to touch the sublime. In contrast, Sky Flesh is a single thought, composed using just one instrument: the Yamaha CS-60. A slimmed-down sibling to the gargantuan CS-80 -- the analog synthesizer used by Vangelis to create his iconic Blade Runner score -- the CS-60 was relea…
Layers
Every person we meet, every moment we live through, all the love we feel, and the losses we endure, add another layer to the intricate pattern of our lives. Like multicolored threads, these layers twist together to form a complex, vibrant tapestry - a reflection of our life journey until this point. On his new album Layers, Khalab acknowledges and celebrates the encounters that have shaped his ever-evolving musical vision. The record represents the culmination of a creative journey that began wi…
Serwed IV
Flaty & OL’s Serwed return to Huerco S’ West Mineral for their fourth album; straying from their usual bass abstractions into hi-gloss lab experiments with obvious appeal to disciples of Dopplereffekt, Vangelis or the 'Resident Evil'/'Silent Hill' OSTs.
Last Exit To Chickenley
90 minute 2LP, edition of 300 copies, mastered by Rashad Becker including a mirri board screenprint designed by Mark Fell and printed at Small Press. Comes with a download of the album dropped to your account.
Station To Station To Station
Sparse, drum centered, dubbed out Electronica excursions by CZN, an acronym which stands for for copper, zinc and nickel the raw path of materials used by percussionist and sculptor Joao Pais Filipe, composer and drummer Valentina Magaletti (from the great Tomaga) and producer Leon Marks. This is ritual music for the whole family. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
Mirrors
*150 copies limited edition* For their first collaboration as a duo, rather than succumb to the devastating fury that is the hallmark of so-called 'noise' music, Michael Morley (electric guitar) and Michel Henritzi (lapsteel) have opted for the open sea, and the interior landscapes with the ghostly strangeness that is usually associated with them. The emergence of embryonic melodies under their fingers never frightens them. On the contrary, it allows them to delve deeply into the contemplative a…
Offene Türen
*2023 stock* "...Offene Türen shows a more avant-garde side. The pieces in their brevity are often sketchy, acting as sound miniatures. The instrumentation is minimal with origins in the Selbstportrait series, with sound effects backing the Farfisa organ. There are also songs like 'Allemande,' which sounds a bit like a burlesque folk dance, or 'Abenteuerliche Begegnung' and 'Besucher im Traum' which resemble in their romantic mood more typical Roedelius music." - Jochen Rindfrey
2015-2020
Under the production moniker of Material Things, 12th Isle co-founder Stewart Brown unveils a part debut album part compendium of musical collaborations spanning from 2015-2020. Some recordings began as long, one-take improvisations (How's Life, Peckham) spliced together and revisited years later. Others were based upon chance opportunities to record with musicians operating a long way from the parameters of 12th Isle. Cult private-press loner folk guitarist Bob Theil, whose 1982 album So Far co…
The Summer Passed In Monotone
*200 copies limited edition* It dawns slowly here in Appalachia, summer's persistent pulse, that seething solidity of buzzing insects, flowers bursting into wilt, animals waking and returning in preparation to leave and sleep again. It's the peak and the decline, the sun's summit and sinking, the heat blast of day and the cool pall of night. There never seems to be quite enough time. Summer begs us to hold onto it, to be asked to stay, even in its heat and the incessant light, to allow it to con…
Return to Archive
In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized th…
No Middle Without The Beginning
Zach Rowden's new album, titled "No Middle Without The Beginning", radiates the current musical concrete. Two pieces, each spanning a single side of the LP. Distinct & comprehensive as a whole. Letting Such Evil Occur samples and resamples acoustic instrumentation with minimal effects, allowing the artifacts of the source to seep into the composition. Grainy and slowly groaning along. A singular loop respirating upon each hit, holding itself to its core, living all its own. It's The Light That M…
Kozmik Noize
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* Nyctalllz is a noise, experimental and dark ambient music project formed in 2007 by Morego Dimmer (aka Xerxes The Dark/ Morego) in Tehran, Iran. Agdistiz is a noise and experimental music project from Romania. Both artists exchanged audio files through the internet, Kozmik Noize was born.
Kee Thara
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* Since his first release in 2006, Aluviana made us explore electroacoustic landscapes but this album is a turning point. Aluviana explores electroacoutsic music a bit further but this time with a guitar and electronic processing. This new path blends electroacoustic and improvised music with a tiny touch of dark ambient, less the usual clichés inherent to the latter. Aluviana's music could be regarded as the continuation of dark ambient and post-industrial…
Turchesi Miracolosi
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* The Pond: voice based music. Collaboration between vocalist Elisabetta Lanfredini and electroacoustic composer/performer Nicolas Wiese. An unfolding narrative, continuous, elusive. A flaring up and fading, a door opening and closing, ears left to listen through the keyhole. Flashbacks of old traditions, the sound of a language that does not exist. Literary figures materialise in sound before disappearing just as quickly – none of them ever becoming the ce…
Whisperings
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited release* Kei Watanabe (Sri Lanka/Japan) performs ghostly mystifying and electrifying improvisations of found instruments, shuffling loops and odd occurrences. A minimal combination of voice, bells, stringed instruments and electric hums. This first album is a collection of tracks composed between 2017 and 2021 in Colombo and Berlin. While recording Kei's sessions in Berlin, we tried to keep her way of working and recording as close as possible from her original st…
Vers Le Fourré...
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* After improvising for several years together in Germany, Marie Takahashi and Cedrik Fermont decided to record their first studio album. Free improvised music for viola, gongs and cymbals, mainly. Marie Takahashi, a Modern and Baroque violist, composer and improviser was born in Sapporo, Japan, in 1985. Having a classical and early music background she builds vivid contrasts of minimal/abstract and expressive sounds. She has worked with many international …