New Lost Knowns
**Edition of 200 housed in silk screened jackets, white vinyl** One of our favourite labels, Planam, pulls out a real time-and-space bender from James Twig Harper, who's perhaps best known for his collaborations with Nate Young in Nautical Almanac and alongside Daniel Higgs for Thrill Jockey. Theres some genuine weirdness within, some of the strangest we've heard since Planam first gave birth to Pat Murano's Decimus series, but with a distinctly unique fidelity and gyroscopic dynamic that makes …
Defense de
First ever vinyl reissue of this cult album from 1975. Défense de was the first album of Jean-Jacques Birgé and Francis Gorgé, before founding Un Drame Musical Instantane with Bernard Vitet in 1976. They had started to play together while at high school, and on their debut LP they were joined by percussionist Shiroc (who also played in Speed Limit). The album's four tracks were recorded in the family apartment of free jazz producer Sebastien Bernard, who had several nice instruments belonging to…
Scrumptious sabotage
A recording of live performances which brought together two essential figures of the contemporary scene: an oustanding Norwegian composer and vocal artist Maja S.K. Ratkje and a celebrated improviser and composer, former DNA drummer, Ikue Mori. The common sound territory, created together by Mori and Ratkje, balances between quietly growing tension and powerful outbursts of unrestrained, relentless noise. Within this harmony, Ratkje takes adventurous excursions towards the borders and unknown fa…
Huffin Rag Blues
Nurse With Wound is the main recording vehicle for British musician Steven Stapleton. Since 1978, with collaborators such as David Tibet (Current 93), John Balance (Coil), Colin Potter and Matt Waldron (Irr. App [Ext]), Nurse With Wound has released dozens of albums that draw on nearly every genre of music. The only constant is that one never knows what the next album will sound like.Stapleton and Andrew Liles form the core of the band on Huffin' Rag Blues, and the direction to which they are he…
Temperament as Waveform
Long-awaited duo, assembled over a period of two years as a result of file exchanges between Manchester UK and Austin Texas between 2010 an 2012. Four tracks of powerful electro-acoustic composition from two like-minded musicians who have never met in person. 'This fascinating album manifests both the frustration and invention that can emerge from inter-continental collaboration. It is an album of sacrifice one that subsumes existent tendencies into the creation of a whole beyond individual ide…
Msg rcvd
On msg rcvd, Neptune employ an array of new techniques and methodologies to explore indeterminacy and difficult phenomena such as feedback. Moving away from guitar feedback, this record features amplified drum feedback as well as the introduction of two new ‘feedback-organ’ machines. Developing their career-long interest in arranging and deploying found sounds, Neptune continues to use their sonically peculiar guitars built from pieces of found metal, but add to this new devices to pick and ar…
Globe et dynastie
Bo' Weavil is totally psyched to have the opportunity to release the second album by Reines d'Angleterre. This time a thoroughly studio affair. Reines d'Angleterre is a fascinating collaboration between avant outsider musician Ghédalia Tazartès and two electronic botanists, èlg and Jo aka Opéra Mort. This LP covers more of the wild ground the band started with on 'Les Comores' released back in 2010, but going further into a musical terrain that defies definite descriptiona slow trip into wizards…
Off-Road
"Cheerful Mats was dragged into the studio last year by David Grubbs for the ostensible purpose of contributing to a Thicket-in-the-works. The pair instead became terminally sidetracked with recording the two lengthy duets for harmonium and tenor saxophone and harmonium and fluteophone (Mat's invention -- a flute with a reed mouthpiece) that make up Apertura. Listening to Apertura, the first question is 'who is doing what?' It's not certain that even the artists themselves know." Two long …
Field
"The Koeln concert shows us these positive vibrations marching through "the complete continuance of creative music," and on towards the next millennium. The "success of the future" is not a lost cause as long as there is music like this in the air."-Graham Lock"Although Anthony Braxton does not play on this double CD (whose contents were released for the first time in 1995), his presence is certainly felt. He conducts the band through a fairly free improvisation and five of his compositio…
Herzschlag Erde / Verdunkelt die Sinne
** Edition limited to 350 copies including a large booklet with sinister photos, surreal drawings and lyrics in German and English. ** Right on time for its 30th anniversary, “Herzschlag Erde”, cassette debut album of Die Welttraumforscher, is being re-released in a collaborative effort between the labels Planam and A Tree In A Field. The new, limited vinyl edition includes a large-format, 20-page booklet as well as the previously unreleased follow-up album, “Verdunkelt die Sinne”. Die Welttraum…
Echos Pastoraux
Beautiful new album by Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luyk (with Daisuke Suzuki on percussions and Ian Middleton on "accidental sounds"). Andrew Chalk is one of the most appreciate musician in this category floating between drone and ambient music, and his meeting with Timo Van Luijk has created an amazing disc, able to emphasize the slow, limited gestures, movements elegiac elegance, but still so heavily controlled. Each faint seems to have a gesture meaning. Here you can hear a flute (connected to …
Granny Awards
Alga marghen was the first label to issue on CD the 4 record LPs that Ghedalia Tazartes privately produced between the late 1970s and early 1980s, therefore contributing to the diffusion of this music among the new generations. At the same time Ghedalia Tazartes' music defined the high standard level of the alga marghen label in its early days.
These great recordings are still available in their original CD editions and no surprise that alga marghen has now the privilege to bring you the pleasur…
10
Since the very beginning 13 years ago Supersilent have always moved forward with the greatest integrity. No albums, or indeed concerts, sound the same, yet there´s always a strong signature present. So also with this album. Mostly recorded by Jan Erik Kongshaug at the famous Rainbow Studio in Oslo, this was their first session after drummer Jarle Vespestad lef the band. This time they have moved slightly towards a more acoustic landscape with Ståle Storløkken, for the first time with Supersilent…
Fin Eaves
We don’t write record reviews often these days thanks to the current paradigm of online music journalism. Considering our hyperactivie information age zeitgeist, why do you need some blowhard like myself describing a record to you when you can just pipe in the preview on Last.fm or whatever? With that said, it takes a certain type of album to convince me that I have some serious science to impart on others, and spirit warriors Cloudland Canyon’s latest, Fin Eaves, is just that type of work. Thi…
Mouthless
Pick-up is a new duo of Frans de Waard (Beequeen) on laptop and Martin Luiten (Girlfriends, Uw Hypotheek Advies) on guitar. Limited edition of 300. Hand made cover artwork. This is the 9th release in our Arts & Crafts series which pairs music with handmade artwork by the artists responsible for the recordings.
Papercuts Theater
"Operating from his base in Cincinnati, violinist and noisy dronester C. Spencer Yeh has released music under the name Burning Star Core for over 15 years. He’s worked with a long list of collaborators and toured extensively, the fruits of which resulted in Papercuts Theater. Broken into four equal parts (constituting four sides of the double-LP edition), the material collaged from shows recorded over the past seven years. If the release info is to be believed, Yeh used recordings from 66 differ…
Mirrors
There is not a lot to say when a young talented percussionist meet one of the master of improvised music, also percussionist ; we can just sit and listen what happens. this is what exactly did the guys at cosabeat studio during "mirrors" recording session. the result is incredible. you can really feel the musicians concentration and then understand the importance of every sound they created. this is a focused, brilliant, top class "sound dialogue" between two of the most dedicated artist i …
4
This fourth Supersilent installment once again features the tantalising quartet lineup of Helge Sten (aka Deathprod), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizer), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), and Jarle Vespestad (drums). If you haven't encountered their work before, Supersilent 4 is a good place to start - a sumptuous arrangements of tracks often described as "Death Jazz", though the title is somewhat misleading. Deathprod's arrangements and production techniques loom large over these amazing pieces, coating th…
1-3
Debut triple CD by a Norwegian deathjazz improvising unit! The group features Helge Sten (audio virus), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizer), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), and Jarle Vespestad (drums)." Many hours of studio recordings, which have been trimmed down into this debut. "Difficult music, perhaps, but also playful and stunningly beautiful, always trying to stretch the limits." New packaging, now comes in an elaborate fold-out digipak.
5
Back in stock. Helge Sten, aka Deathprod, sat through over 30 hours of live material to compile this 70 minute collection - widely regarded as Supersilent's most subdued work. Often compared to the fusion aesthetic favoured by Miles Davis in the early 70's and the post-modern compositional structure of Stockhausen, the result here is once again surprising and breahtaking, new sounds unearthed around every corner, you get the feeling that the ground beneath you is about to collapse with the sheer…