Electronic / Modular Synthesizers

** Edition of 750 Dark Transparent Green Vinyl ** Veteran NYC based Scottish electronic musician Drew McDowall's latest work is his loftiest, most liturgical, and a least industrial outing to date — and potentially the apex of his recent discography. Named after an ancient Greek word for votive offering, Agalma exudes a hooded, devotional aura, creaking and keeling under vast rafters of stone, stained glass, and shredded wires. It's a music of majesty and mystery but also modernity, McDowall's r…

On this seven track album we hear MinaeMinae (alias Bastian Epple) playfully scurry through his dense soundscapes on a tightrope. The sounds lying somewhere on the crossroads of psychedelic trance, exotica, ambient and melodic dance music – veering further off orbit with nontypical rhythms and dystopian percussive patterns. MinaeMinae understands musical material similar to documentary footage which he would cut up, repitch, and rearrange freely. Most of his tracks are a mix of analog, synthetic…

* 180 grams LP  + Limited Poster * Suzanne Ciani is a true electronic music pioneer. The five Grammy nominated Italian-American neoclassical composer is unquestionably one of the greatest minds that contemporary music has ever witnessed. After an incredible career spanning forty years, Ciani’s accomplishments have become a benchmark when discussing the origins of musical synthesis. For more than four decades she developed a body of work that transcends the music industry, composing for film, vid…

Hailing from Suuns, Canadian Ben Shemie offers up his first solo work, ‘A Skeleton’ - an experimental pop album of cold synthetic sounds with touches of psychedelia. Based on his live, itinerant experiments, the whole album was recorded in a single take with no overdub. Shemie has left traces of the atmosphere of each recording space, adding an element of chaos and unpredictability alongside his masterful/dexterous manipulation of the equipment.The voices and instruments sound as if they were dr…

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-…

* Aquamarine coloured vinyl * Beaubourg is an expressionistic work, consisting almost exclusively of strange, unearthly sounds. Ring modulators, noise, and weird effects are unleashed in wide stereo spaces. The album is often referred to as anti-commercial, because of its non-melodic - even consonant - nature. Vangelis however spoke with great affection about this piece in several interviews and his engineer says Vangelis took it very seriously while recording it. "Beaubourg" takes its title fro…

Suction present a new vinyl release of “The Plaintive”, the first new album since 2014 by the somewhat underrated electronic project of Mark Van Hoen, Locust. "When Suction was formed in 1997, we were deeply enthralled with the UK “listening” electronic scene, otherwise known as electronica or IDM, but besides the obvious icons - Aphex Twin, Autechre, and other luminaries of labels like Rephlex, Warp, and Skam Records -  one of our heroes was the lesser known Locust, whose productions were murki…

NYZ on the recording: "The Buchla 100 experimental session begins with a documentary recording of the noise generators. Something I find endlessly fascinating is listening to different noise sources, so I always feel compelled to record them. The remaining tracks are sequenced by my MANIAC Cellular Automata sequencer. First up are three little sequenced ditties that also incorporate the ARP 2600 modular interconnected to the Buchla 100. After this is an ultra-minimal setup using MANIAC and the m…

Last copies **Edition of 300, comes with 8-page glossy photo booklet and double D/L code. Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M Berlin** Music by Piotr Kurek for theatre performances directed by Tian Gebing and Grzegorz Jarzyna:Composed as a means to map the cultural translation between Chinese culture and European traditions, Piotr Kurek’s A Sacrifice Shall Be Made / All The Wicked Scenes is comprised of pieces composed between 2016 and 2018 specifically to accompany theatre performances directed by…

**180gr LP + 48-page book in a clear PVC bag, to be released in early June 2020** "David & Stephen Dewaele (aka Soulwax/2manydjs) have always been fascinated by collecting instruments and recording gear. Their passion hasn’t been born by completism: simply every new item inspires a world of possibilities. The one item that always eluded them was the EMS Synthi 100 —a huge and rare analogue synthesizer, of which there were only 31 ever produced, that can create a near infinite array of sounds.Sho…

Edition of 200. Two creative and sound arty musicians are paired together here on this split LP from Poland’s Bocian label. Robert Piotrowicz gives us some intense analog synth-work, with overlapping pulse and tone action that’ll blast you. Carl Michael Von Hausswolff goes with subtle, quieter noise works that are all about explorations of texture. Great stuff on both sides of this highly limited LP.

Driftmachine Plays Marien van Oers is a parallel physical output to the concert Massive Trance: Interpreted by Driftmachine, which was performed during the 2019 Minimal Music Festival in Amsterdam. The concert performed at Muziek Gebouw aan‘t IJ as well as the album, takes its cue from a cassette produced in 1983 by the Dutch experimental composer Marien van Oers (1955–2013). The original cassette states Van Oers’ following intentions: “The basic idea of the performance is experiencing a constan…

2019 Small Repress. Ecstatic offer a deeply arresting and definitive collection of Works by erstwhile Serbian factory worker-turned-synthesist Abul Mogard; containing selections from two cassettes released in 2012 and 2013 on Steve Moore and Anthony Paterra’s VCO Recordings, as well as a cassette only release last year on Ecstatic, never before available on vinyl. RIYL Alessandro Cortini, The Caretaker, Fennesz, Tangerine Dream, Brain Eno, Tim Hecker...Abul Mogard’s relatively unusual path to re…

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…

Berlin’s hardcore minimalist Frank Bretschneider tweaks the freqs for Shitkatapult, rolling out pronged stabs and inhuman vocals on the physical electro flow of Plastik, and with head-slapping tones swept up in a sort of drily swanging house vortex with Mechanik. Bretschneider was raised in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in the German Democratic Republic. He is the founder of the East German underground band AG Geige and co-founder of the Raster-Noton label. He lives as a musician, video artist,…

Peter Frohmader, also active with his alias Nekropolis, is a German artist known for his distinct and very dark athmospheric electronic compositions as well as his extreme visual art-projects leading to many exhibitions, films, multi-media events and collaborations in the field of art and music, including H.R. Giger and Chris Karrer. In 1981, at age of 23 Frohmader released the album Musik aus dem Schattenreich, the first in a long series of productions. Italian label Orbeatize presents his late…

We are pleased to welcome Parisian Matthias Puech into the HITD fold with his album ‘Alpestres’. A researcher by day, he transforms into a nocturnal narrator of sound travel by night, with his new album taking us on a mythical, magical hike up to the inaccessible heights of the Alps. Puech creates a vast collection of untouched electronica landscapes with modular synthesisers built by his own fair hands. With his various devices, he emulates the sounds of nature and gives sonic form to feelings,…

Distant Animals is the artistic output of Daniel Alexander Hignell, a researcher and sound, video and performance artist from South East England. Hignell has developed a practice indebted to political and participatory resonance of creative acts, interrogating notions of autonomy, collaboration, and the tension between sense (what is perceived by the senses) and sense (what is made sensible by the community). He has recorded, written, performed and researched numerous socially-oriented sound wor…

The iconic album Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos (originally released under the name of Walter Carlos) and Benjamin Folkman introduced the world to the Moog Synthesizer in the 1960s. It played a key role in popularizing Classical music performed on electronic synthesizers, which had until then been relegated to experimental and Pop music. Switched-On Bach was one of the first Classical albums to sell 500,000 copies. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Moog modular synthesizer, here's a br…

**50 copies** "Let us make one thing clear, here, at the beginning of things: Otomatk Muziek is a small tape label. We have no need for advertising, for selling anything you don’t need, for releasing anything we’re not convinced of. And as much as we love drone music, we are super tired of the bazillion of self-sufficient, male drone artists of the internet world. In fact, we couldn’t care less. Boys, this thing is through! Nobody wants to hear you gaffertaping some low key on your synth for ano…

American-born, Japan-based composer John Di Stefano self-released a number of cassettes as part of the 80s DIY underground on his own imprint Oktron Produktions, including Klang's Drift, a collaboration with Joel Graham. Living in San Francisco, Di Stefano had access to multiple University electronic music studios, where he had an impressive array of synthesizers at his fingertips, including both Buchla and Serge modular systems. Combining his knowledge of modular synthesis with a background in …

Emotional Rescue is honoured to reissue the benchmark in new age ambient music, Michael Stearns' epic Planetary Unfolding album. Unavailable on vinyl for over thirty years, here is Stearns masterful electronic symphony in six movements, recorded using his Serge modular synthesizer at the Continuum Studio in 1981. The culmination of years of exploration in "space" music, Stearns' journey, to the album release, was one of learning and application. Involved in music since his teens, he graduated fr…

**135 copies** The Frankfurt-based Jogging House is a relatively new name in the scene of minimal electronic music. However, within a short period of only two years he was able to attrack substantial attention from the (modular) synth community with numerous video’s in which he portrayed his music with a central focus on the instruments being used. The culmination of these endeavours were presented in the form of several well-received releases on his own Seil Records imprint. His new album When …

A lifelong expatriate, Bana Haffar was born in Saudi Arabia in 1987 and spent much of her childhood in the GCC. Having trained as a professional bass player and a classical violin player, she has now embraced electronic music fully, exploring live modular synthesizer performance. She is an enthusiastic proponent of the latest Moog and eurorack technology and has a growing discography of releases (VENT, Make Noise Records) in the last couple of years that highlight a unique melodic direction. Thr…

René Huthwelker’s solo performances emphasize minimalistic repetitions that are created foremost by analogue-synthetic spheres. "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII" is Huthwelker‘s solo debut in which he presents an insightful exploration of polyrhythmic networks, based primarly on the analogue synthesis of the Buchla system.

In process of restock, last copies around. Edition of 300. Bridging the worlds of Modern Classical composition, musique concrète, electronic and electroacoustic music, organic jazz and minimalism while fitting comfortably in none, for more than a decade Piotr Kurek has remained a slow and elusive fixture in our sonic landscape, creating an entirely singular, almost lawless world of his own. After a series of records made in collaboration with others, and solo efforts under different monikers, th…

Back in 2017, Black Sweat produced a lovely reissue of DSR Lines Spoel. It was easily one of our favorite records of that year. Continuing their dedication to its creator, the label now brings us yet another stunner - a reissue of a little heard tape only release from 2013, Venndiagram. Like its predecessor, we can already tell that this one is going to top our year end lists.  DSR Lines is the moniker of David Edren, an artist based in Antwerp, who, since coming into view during the late 90’s, …

**Edition of 300, sold-out at source** Hailing from Paris, Jonathan Fitoussi has been exploring contemporary minimalist musical forms for almost a decade. His recent solo works have been described as a “fusion of electronic and acoustic sounds with melodic textures, colours and emotions in a cinematographic aesthetic style”, all of which is fuelled by his passion for recording, for analogue studio technology and for rare instruments. He’s also audio restoration engineer at Institut National de l…

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…

Single-sided "aquatic clear" 7". Includes a copy of the original press release as well as a press cutting from the time. Limited edition of 500 for Uk. As the first and only label dedicated to liberating the private, non-commercial artifacts from Suzanne Ciani's groundbreaking Ciani Musica studio vault, Finders Keepers Records presents the first release of an incredible cryogenically suspended slice of precious, precocious, immersive fledgling synthesis. Ironically well removed from the intentio…

Rod Modell returns as Deepchord for his first solo release on Astral Industries since inaugurating the label with his sought-after ‘Lanterns’ EP. Consisting of two stunning long-form pieces split on one side each, 'Immersions' captures the emotive, halcyon sound that Rod has long become synonymous with. Opening with glistening ambient textures, ‘Immersion I’ grows into an 18-minute piece of deep rolling dub techno. On the other side ‘Immersion II’ paints pristine soundscapes of soft, lapping wav…

2017 "upgrade" of this early Creel Pone title; this replica edition includes all of the material from Reinhold Weber's two Corona-label LPs, "Elektronische Musik" & "Elektronische + Phonetische Kompositionen" - Creel Pones #009 & #099, respectively - along with everything from his two later Sound Star Ton LPs (again) "Elektronische Musik" & "Computermusik", all on four separate discs. Those who have already acquired the first two titles in earlier sweeps can simply purchase the CP 009-099.2 pack…

Handy, double-pack reproduction offering a pair of Compilations on the Greek Music Box label, the first comprised of key Magnetic Tape & Spectral Computer Music pieces by Iannis Xenakis, Dimitris Kamarotos, Xaris Xanthoudakis, & Vasilis Riziotis, the latter of, essentially, Dark Ambient & assorted "Wave" & "Age" fare by Vangelis Katsoulis, Lena Platonos, "Antitheseis" alum Michael Grigoriou, & Minas Alexiades, each on its own disc inside a "Gatefold" booklet. Released pretty much back-to-back - …

Lovely set of tape-music by composer Jack Tamul, issued in 1980 by Spectrum - not the Wergo sub-label, but the same Bear Mountain-area powerhouse that released William Hoskins’ “Galactic Fantasy” & William Strickland’s “An Electronic Visit to the Zoo” the year prior - “recorded at the Jacksonville Museum of Arts & Sciences."Starting with a series of pieces incorporating acoustic materials: “Genesis” is a choir piece peppered with synthesizer & tape-manipulation; “Lament for Gettysburg” is …

The second title in Creel Pone's 23x survey of Romanian Early Electronic Music, offering both pieces from the lone Electrecord LP by Composer Dinu Petrescu, along with a composition from one of the many Corul Madrigal offerings, here conducted by Marin Constantin.  "Space Doina", or possibly "Doina Space (1978)", "music for symphony orchestra, mixed choir, children's choir, synthesizer, magnetic tape and electronic modulation" starts off with a gaseous drone of distant reverberance, seguei…

One thing I've learned as I've grown and progressed through music is that there is an incredible wealth of largely unheralded & seldom-heard music buried deep in the expansive Saravah catalogue, largely due to the street-level largesse of in-house engineer Daniel Vallencien, who aside from engineering a large portion of the canonic BYG catalogue - Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Musica Elettronica Viva, Sonny Sharrock, Sunny Murray, etc. - was crucial in the development of the label's sound …

Reproduction of this obscure 1977 Private Press stunner by Extradition, Company Caine, & Phyl Vinnecombe sideman & early 18th Century Quartet member Stephen Dunstan, a key part of Australia's Electronic Music history alongside Val Stephen, Bruce Clarke, Keith Humble, Felix Werder, & Ian Bonighton. Steve was a tragic figure; operating across multiple disciplines before disappearing under suspicious circumstances in the mid-80s while out retrieving a Moog Modular system, Dunstan was both a c…

All analog - no computers or instrument overdubs - The prodigal return of Venezuelan artist Carlos Giffoni to the avant-electronic music scene he was instrumental in shaping with the seminal, hybridising No Fun Fest and No Fun Productions label, which was home to debut releases by Oneohtrix Point Never, and classics from Haswell and Prurient during the late ‘00s to early part of this decade. If yr into 0PN or Keith Fullerton Whitman, this album f u c k i n g  r u l e sCarlos’ first new release i…

Dennis Young is best known as the percussionist of the New York band Liquid Liquid, which is known for their piece "Cavern" from 1983, which in turn became very well-known because Grandmaster Flash sampled it and used it as the basis for their hit "White Lines". But Young was more than just a member of the band, he produced plenty of his own music, much of it reflecting his passion for analog electronics. He was fascinated by the pioneers of the genre. In 2016 Bureau B released Wave (BB 219CD…

Nice to see this 1982 “Private Press” LP by Chicagoland’s Tom Cameron in the program; I’ve long felt this was one of the better “One Man Against the World ... with Synthesizer” LPs self-financed during the late-70s / early-80s. Each side features an extended, gorgeous take on analogue “Automation” book-ended by two, shorter, more “Accessible” numbers. The A-side’s “Another Question” is an impeccably gaseous, floating void of minimal diminished-minor filigree that rates up there with thebest of…