Electronic / Tape Music

Tip! Truly intrigued as a kid by the weird sounds his DIY electronica building kit could make, Mich L. (aka Mich Leemans of Paper Hats and curator of AB Salon) never stopped his quest for more beauty in hidden frequencies and harmonics of modular synths and old tape recorders. His search into the deep mysterious sound spectrum unexpectedly made a surprising u-turn after a seizure of increasing tinnitus and enduring nausea. The concept of listening, as stated by Pauline Oliveiros as 'the involunt…

*Sold out at source, last copies * A 12-CD set definitely constitutes an "immersive experience" with any artist's music. And Pauline Oliveros is well served by Important Records' retrospective of her unreleased earlier work, coinciding with her 80th birthday celebrations being held throughout 2012! Dense 12 disc collection of Pauline Oliveros' early and unreleased electronic work including her very first piece for tape made in 1961. The majority of these pieces have never before been released. O…

**Edition of 500 copies. No represses** An astounding, epic journey into the more obscure areas of early electronic music, Phillip Werren’s Electronic Music is a wellspring of contemporary composition across four LPs. Originally released in 1971 in an edition of 100 copies, this impossibly rare piece of early Canadian electronic music has finally been reissued on vinyl in an exact replica box with a silk-screened cover.Electronic Music was recorded at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), McGill …

*140 copies limited edition* Fragile nostalgia, immersive drone, and magnetic tape. Recorded March/June 2024 between Montreal and Paris. Music by Pier-Luc Tremblay & Théo Martin.

In the early 1960's Tod Dockstader was a young maverick composer of electronic 'organised sound', and James Reichert a film composer and music supervisor. They met in New York in 1963, and launched one of the most extraordinary collaborations in modern music, a unique attempt to integrate electronic sounds and the classical orchestra. Unlike Varese's Deserts, and Stockhausen's Kontakte, it does not merely have the orchestra play along with a tape, or even process orchestral sounds live. What mak…

This is a collection of electronic works composed between 1959 and 1969 at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland. Once again, Sub Rosa offers a chance to reflect upon a rare lineage of electronic music's origins, a revolution of the fifties and sixties when an art form was emerging without a base -- ex nihilo -- a new music produced by machines designed to construct the new. Utrecht University's large complex of studios that comprised the Philips laboratories housed an extensive collect…

Incredible and unreleased before music by Otto Sidharta, pionneer of Indonesian electronic music. Head-vibrating electronic drones conjuring a rare and arcane kind of acousmatic magick, with electronic compositions that integrated natural sounds and urban sounds to this extent were extremely rare at the time, which gives them a unique form of intensity. An hallucinatory ascent into narcotic-hazed Indonesian rainforest atmospheres which could almost be scoring some Werner Herzog absorbing documen…

*50 copies limited edition* Active since the late 1970s, Rosa Arruti was a member of bands like Mohochemie, Tendre Tembles and Psicópatas del Norte. Since 2000, Arruti has been working on her solo project, Nad Spiro, delving into experimental electronic soundscapes and crafting intricate guitar textures. Known for collaborations with international artists like My Cat is an Alien and Atsuko Kamura, her work has been released on labels such as Geometrik Records. Arruti's music is recognised for it…

"Oxide Manifesto is intended as an audio sketchbook, which explores a particular method of creating music. It aims to link obsolete machines and experimental composition. In recording it, I embraced as many techniques of working with magnetic tape as possible. I gave myself the freedom to lean into the perceived flaws of tape as a recording format. Often we hear ‘it’s not about the equipment’. But on this album the equipment is in equal focus to the music. Wow, flutter, wonky pitch, abrupt edits…

*60 copies limited edition* Ohio-based tape manipulator Meadow Argus (Tynan Krakoff) returns with over 60 minutes of memory mulching sound stew. The main aural sources stem from a momentous summer 2009 trainhopping/hitchhiking trip around America's West Coast with Tynan's brother Max, a seminal coming of age experience. During the trip, Tynan carried a microcassette pocket recorder and captured hours of raw audio. These memories are collaged & juxtaposed with found tapes & other family recording…

* Edition of 250. In process of stocking * Bald Eagle Over Food City is a blurry zoomed-in photograph of a national bird soaring over a grocery store parking lot. It is an album of thirteen failed portraits attempting to distill the impossible essence of a place that is repeatedly deformed by displacement and extraction, quietly made invisible by milltown charm. Bromp Treb is the solo project of noisemaker and filmmaker Neil ‘Cloaca’ Young, who has been performing and producing small-run release…

*100 copies limited edition* "The idea came to us during a drunken conversation in a South London pub with Philippe from the Tapeworm label," says François Kirmann Gamaury aka Franz Kirmann aka Dj Salinger - a French producer who has been based in London for over twenty years. "Voyage voyage voyage" is a mixtape. But not in the traditional sense of the word. Kirmann calls it a subjective mixtape, where the tracks are not played as they are, but presented as they are felt by the artist. A little …

*300 copies limited edition* In 2022, Enyo worked with the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop on an epic two-hour composition made from tape loops inspired by selkies, mythical creatures in Celtic folklore. Contemplating memory, grief and time itself, Enyo devised a “sonorous myth” installation and performance that drowned her voice in the deep sea, using echo to help parallel the communication of humpback whales. It was powerful enough for her to net the award for Sonic Arts at the Scottish Awards fo…

*2024 stock. 50 copies limited edition* "The second tape started to develop when I was looking for a way to play Tape Cuts live. A track was composed and its shapes were repeatedly explored. The final form was ultimately recorded in a single take on 1/4 inch tape, mirroring a live performance and celebrating one moment in time. After completing this recording I was faced with a mass of tape loops left hanging on the wall, the wreckage of the composing process. Layers and layers of sound buried a…

*50 copies limited edition* "It was a slow growing body of work with material continuously transforming, being re-recorded and discarded, lost sounds emerging from forgotten loops and a few staple tracks dragging at me to dig deeper. I also found myself working on other music during this time and gradually the Blue Cut tapes went lingering into hibernation. However, early spring brought me focus when I was unable to play music due to surgery I had undergone. Seemingly, the only way of creating m…

Mark Templeton is a Canadian media artist and the founder of Graphical, an audiovisual label dedicated to publishing his own musical and image based experiments. Mark’s audio compositions are constructed from reel-to-reel tape loops and sampled cassettes that are contrasted with contemporary sound techniques. In his published photobooks, he incorporates his own 35mm pictures and found images, focusing on intangible fantasies and realities. During his audiovisual performances, he utilizes digital…

From participation in the early Fluxus to giving an introduction of Futurism, Kuniharu Akiyama (1929-1996), a renowned music critic, was involved in a vast range of activities. Particularly in the 1960s, he recorded a lot of music on tape for himself. To our surprise, the music compiled on this CD was actually discovered from a series of ambient music pieces played in the Athletes’ Village at the Tokyo Olympics! During this period, Akiyama was fascinated by the sound of Sanukite stone from Sanuk…

The second Taming Power release on Input Error. A collage of recordings from 2006 and mixed down in 2022, presenting a single long form, ambient piece incorporating tape manipulations, feedback and drone.

**Epic 15 CD box set, coming as a deluxe book-like folder, compiles all the Clock DVA material previously issued by Vinyl-On-Demand on the three vinyl-only box sets Horology, Horology II and Horology III. Includes t-shirt.** With bands like Cabaret Voltaire leading the way, Sheffield, in the north of England, has long been known for pioneering the hybrid zone between punk and electronic music during the late 1970s. Among the first of them all was Clock DVA, founded in 1978 by Adi Newton from the…

* Housed in a silkscreened wooden box in a limited edition of 25 copies and sold as an exclusive mail-order item only * The idea for this release started years ago while listening to a tape from the Slowscan archive containing a radio broadcast about the Otto Mühl commune on La Gomera, Portugal. Later, while working with William Levy, a close friend of Mühl, on his 2016 LP on Slowscan Records the idea arose to combine forces for an Otto Mühl LP, documenting some of the stuff from the personal ar…

NM is very, very satisfied to announce 'Where The Sidewalks Are Safe For The Little Guy', a new release from tape recordist, conversationalist and punk music vocalist Mark Groves (Index Clean, Red Wine and Sugar, Voice Imitator) as Absurd Cosmos Late Nite.

Sisarusten Toistuva Uni is the sophomore album from Juho Toivonen, a young sound artist based in Pori, Finland. It follows up the piano-heavy debut album Kasveille Ja Eläimille released in 2023 - a record that was one of the major highlights at the Discreet Music HQ last year. The new album revolves around a recurring dream that Juho and his sister Ida-Sofia shared unknowingly. The 8 songs on the album resemble childhood memories, lacking clear borders or narrative, yet painted with strong, rich…

* Edition of 200 12" Gold Vinyl. Hand numbered. * Joni Void & N NAO are the respective monikers of surrealists Jean Néant and Naomie de Lorimier from Montréal, Québec - who found each other in 2016 through a poetry-reading/performance by Naomie in Jean’s home at the time, a DIY loft-venue known as The Plant. This would lead to numerous events involving both, there and in many other Montréal underground spaces, until both finally worked on a collaborative piece for Joni Void’s album “Mise en Abym…

Comes with 8-page 12" booklet.. Replica edition covering this wonderful 2LP boxed set, issued on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Experimental Music Studios of the University of Illinois School of Music. Features work by a largely otherwise undocumented array of midwest composers, including Antonio G. Barata, Paul Christian Koonce, Carla Scaletti, Michael Kosch, Brian E. Belét, Sever Tipei, & Nelson Mandrell alongside those by more well-known ones such as studio head Herbert Brün, Mar…

A pair of mid-70s Finnish Experimental Electro-Acoustic gems featuring "Suomalaista Elektroakustista Musiikkia" 's Antero Honkanen, masquerading as 1). a picturesque "Music To Accompany Paintings" affair and 2). a straight-ahead jazz-fusion session. The first disc here covers "Reidarin Sähköiset Kuvat," a wonderful set dovetailing pieces by Honaken & Åke Andersson, composed after paintings by Reidar Särestöniemi at the Experimental Studio of Yleisradio. With a production style owing to the forma…

After something of a break, Creel Pone returns, borne anew, with this reproduction of an obscure 1975 Standard Library offering (#ESL-133), dovetailing tracks by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop / White Noise member Brian Hodgson & previous Creel Pone "graduate" John Lewis (whose lengthy collaboration with composer John Keliehor, "Schizophrenia" closes out the otherwise all-Dubravko Detoni "Avantgarde" volume from Studio G, issued the previous year) - both founders of Electrophon studios & the lone …

Even to a die-hard Early Electronic Music acolyte, Frank W. Becker's name isn't a readily familiar one, despite issuing a half-dozen LPs of vaguely Berlin-school music via Toshiba EMI while based in Japan in the mid-late 70s. "Celebration," a "Private" issue on his own Gorilla imprint, starts out sure enough with the titular, 1976 side-length bit of protracted sequencing and minimalism-inspired forms - all with a vague new-age lilt to it b/w of calming ocean noises & an almost Terry Riley-ish …

While there’s no explicit date listed anywhere within, I’m guessing the pair of 45rpm 7”s in question - released only in Turkey - date to the mid-60s, with each featuring Solmaz Sporel reading a different fairly tale over a completely amazing Musique Concrète tape-backing by Ilhan Mimaroglu, produced at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. Personally, these particular outings are some of the most gratifyingly zonked things I’ve ever heard, having much to do with the langua…

Now that the Creel-Pone series has reached its teens, its time for an irreverent late-60s blast of heavy Synth-Freakout / Tape-Psych weirdness from this Cicero, Illinois based composer Edward M. Zajda, about whom i can’t find a single bit of information - other than that he has a piece included in a 1964 radio program called “Electronic Music in America” that’s archived in the Brandeis library. Originally issued in the late 60s on the regional Ars Nova / Ars Antiqua” label, “Independent” star…

Once again the “boxes from Reykjavik” have started arriving on Thursday mornings like clockwork; let’s start up again not with an outright explosion of lost Tape-Psych damage - to give us all time to recover - but with a rather remarkable set of subtle, Lo-Fi Electronic compositions composed throughout the 60s & originally released in the early 70s on the private-press “Golden Crest Records, Inc.” label. Of the past Creel Pones, this one has the most in common with the George Engler “Inside of…

Trucking right along, here’s the 1974 second entrant from British library Studio G’s “Avant Garde” series, featuring a trilogy of pieces composed by none other than “Acezantez” head Dubravko Detoni - only his second LP release following the storied “Graphie I.II.III / Phonomorphia 1.2.3” LP for Philips’ Prospective 21e Siècle series from a few short years prior.Laid out with familiar Library-lexicon panache - the three pieces are described as “Acoustics for Piano Effects and Cello,” “Piano Effec…

Creel-pro of this mid-70s Aulos lp, with Klaus Ager’s three-part “Sondern die Sterne sind's” - recorded in the “Computer Music” studio at EMS Stockholm from 1974-1976 as well as the Electronic Studio at Salzburg’s “Hochschule Mozarteum” - slowly unfolding over the A-side & two shorter chamber pieces, “I Remember a Bird” for clarinet, trombone, guitar, piano, percussion, and tape & “Metaboles i” for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano on the other. Rising from a whisper, the first movement of “S…

I hope you're been enjoying the Creel Pone 19x "Doubles" series; some great multi-disc titles that simply couldn't wait for their usual "every ten catalogue number" positions, especially as the series is running out of spots approaching its intended 200-title terminus. Here we've got an absolute corker, offering a mid-50s, private-press 10" release by Swiss sound engineer Francis Jeannin, who, verbally, takes us through the techniques of making Tape Music before letting loose with a side of home…

** 300 copies only**  For Organ And Brass is comprised of two works by the Stockholm-based composer Ellen Arkbro. Both works focus on tuning, intonation, and harmonic modulation. In previous projects, Arkbro composed for early music ensembles, wrote a series of durational pieces utilizing synthetic tones and processed guitars, and, most recently, presented a work lasting 26 days at the Stockholm Concert Hall. For Organ And Brass looks back to Arkbro's studies in just intonation with La Monte You…

* Limited LP edition * Highly electrified guitar, anamorphosed, perforated, and tainted by all sorts of effects, implodes its rage and its urgency in the magnetic nets of a tape recorder as cannibal as it is destructive. From various recordings Lionel Fernandez & Jérôme Noetinger have created and produced these ten pieces: big, biting, dangerous and acerbic – like the intoxicated meeting of a chainsaw and a microphone. Real garage music: grease, gutted car bodies and outdated alternators, like a…

2021 Stock * Edition of 300 * Reissue of the project by Ralf Dörper (Die Krupps, Propaganda) in 1992. Including official cover versions of "Ruckzuck" from the first Kraftwerk album. Featuring: Richard Kirk (Cabaret Voltaire), Mark Gamble, Robert Gordon, Uwe Schmidt ( AtomTM). Colored vinyl (yellow) + CD set, limited to 300 copies, Japan release only!!

2021 Stock * Edition of 300 * Special compilation album of Ralf Dörper's (Die Krupps, Propaganda) early rare recordings from 1979 - 1981. Experimental sound collage works!! All tracks are digitally remastered. Liner notes: Ralf Dorper (English & Japanese).

** 2024 lucky restock, sold out at the source ** Recorded in 1975. Selected by Dennis Tyfus. This is the second in a series of Edmond de Deyster (who sadly died in '99) archival lp's. Edmond de Deyster left an incredible amount of reel tapes behind, full of beautiful analog synthesizer music. His family was kind enough to share this archive with us. It took me way longer than expected to get this second installment together, partly because I wanted to interview his relatives and other people who…

** 2022 Repress ** "I wonder if my fascination for clouds (without being an obsession) may have risen at the end of the '80s as, whilst composing 'Micro-climat', I would regularly wander between the Vercors mountains and the high plateaus of the Monts du Forez discovering, through my eyes, body, breath, active observation and walk, that natural forms when constantly changing and yet swollen with a unity of matter (in this instance, water) open one up to a deep, fundamental breath and a clear fie…

*50 copies limited edition* Dunkelfelder is another entry in DRNTTCKS‘ (pronounced [droʊn əˈtæks]) ongoing series of directly recorded live jams – after tapes on Hungary’s Beach Buddies, Austrian Feathered Coyote, German noise institution Grisaille and British Industrial Coast, they return to their home turf Otomatik Muziek for the label’s last release. As all other entries in this series, Dunkelfelder was improvised on the spot and recorded in one take. It's a very much loop-based duo improvisa…