Two Views of Amami Ōshima
**Edition of 300** In 1958 the painter Isson Tanaka (°22 July 1908 –*11 September 1977) moved to Amami Ōshima, an island in the Ryukyus. There, in self-chosen isolation, he committed himself exclusively to his art until his sudden passing in 1977. In 2018 Seiha Kurosawa, Kanako Azuma and Hideki Umezawa visited Amami Ōshima to create a video installation about Tanaka’s insular life. The work, entitled “Dokkyaku” (tr. The Lone Visitor), shifts between the texture and materiality of Tanaka’s painti…
Short Stays
“Short Stays” marks the debut release on Raash Records By Max Schreiber, a founding father of Jerusalem’s electronic sound - better known for his Acidic club work as Mule Driver and as the bass player for legendary Industrial/Post-Punk outfit Mujahideen. Clocking at almost a full hour, Ironically enough “Short Stays” is also his first full-length release under the Max Schriber alias. Both sides of this tape are live improvisations, Schreiber dives deep into the abstract. Drowning in texture and …
FRKWYS Vol. 16: In a Word
**CD edition** In a Word, the sixteenth installment of the intergenerational collaboration series FRKWYS, brings together postminimalist composer Daniel Lentz with vocalist and sound artist Ian William Craig for an album that embraces erosion and the fertility of the loam left behind. A document of shared transformation, Lentz’s elegant piano figures and Craig’s trembling tenor are wilted, warbled, and looped through manipulated tape machines in a real time composition that evokes a strange warm…
The Habu
**Edition of 300 copies** Poole Music is thrilled to announce its inaugural commission, the Habu, the latest full-length from Belgium’s Lieven Martens. For the better part of two decades, Martens has been expanding his Aloha-bedecked musical vision, transitioning from the basement tape environments of his Dolphins into the Future project to the rich compositional tapestries of more recent post-exotica modernist works.
The Habu represents a true culmination of these identities in one of his most…
4 Track Guitar Music
4-Track Guitar Music is the unassuming title of a cassette by Swedish composer Mats Erlandsson, which was originally released on Kali Maloneʼs and Maria W. Hornʼs XKatedral label in 2018. Composed using only, as the album title implies, a 4-track tape deck and an electric guitar, the music was later modified on the computer and re-amplified in the machine hall of Ställbergs Gruva, a disbanded Swedish iron mine.
The music is primarily composed using melodic motifs and canonical structures in whi…
Upstream
German pianist and composer Hauschka returns to Sonic Pieces with music for the experimental film Upstream. Together with filmmaker Rob Petit and acclaimed writer Robert Macfarlane he has created a slow-moving dream-flight into wildness and winter through an eerie, hypnotic soundtrack of the Scottish highlands.
The film, which is shot entirely from the air, follows the course of the River Dee in Scotland all the way to its source in the Cairngorm mountains, the highest of any river in Britain. T…
Love Is A Stream
**Edition of 300. 10 year anniversary edition. Remastered by Stephan Mathieu. Design by Farbod Kokabi.** From the original press release: As a member of San Francisco legends Tarentel and Type’s premier astral travellers The Alps, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is hardly a new addition to the label, so it’s hard to believe that ‘Love Is A Stream’ is his first Type solo album. Previously releasing on Arbor, Spekk and his own Root Strata imprint, this latest album marks his journey into the beautifully cacop…
Ludwig Wittbrodt
* Cassette in a plastic case with a cardboard insert, printed on the devices of the Museum of Photocopy in Mulheim, Germany. Dubbed in high quality at Ana Ott * The Duo Ludwig Wittbrodt, that‘s Emily Wittbrodt on cello and Edis Ludwig on laptop and drums. The two develop a thicket of sounds and melodies that absorbs us in a completely unpretentious way and fills us with associations and warmth. Sometimes in the jungle, sometimes under water in the desert, we are reminded of the achievements of b…
Colliding Wind
* Edition of 250 copies. 180g vinyl, includes insert * The ambient/cross-genres record label Concentric Records (Simone Merli / Soundwalk Collective & Luca Calo / Born In 1986) - launches Colliding Wind, the second compilation of its introductory release trilogy. Featuring music by Christina Vantzou, Echium, Etapp Kyle, Jana Winderen, Kareem Lotfy, Soundwalk Collective, Tragic Selector (Daisuke Tadokoro & Terre Thaemlitz), the album is composed of a wide spectrum of ambient, field recording-base…
A Morphology of Wonders
** Edition of 300 ** Timelash is the freshly erupted synthesizer & SFX duet of Embassador Dulgoon (Nonlocal Research) and Corum (Psychic Sounds / Million Brazilians). Together they reveal new sound forms by playing with primeval motifs contrasted sharply against unfolding futuristic developments. The result is a simultaneous listening experience of ancient and alien settings told through their unique rhythm of language by mood-driven atmospheres, exotic tones, and electrifying sci-fi Cumbia jolt…
Temidden Laaghangende Wolken
** Edition of 250 ** The Begotten is the brainchild of Jürgen De Blonde (Köhn/de portables) and Brecht Ameel (Razen), who initially performed a number of shows and released a CS under the moniker 'Kohier' - gleefully referencing the absurdity of Belgian tax systems and institutions. On their debut LP "Temidden Laaghangende Wolken" they are joined by percussionist and improv-veteran Dirk Wachtelaer (Pablo's Eye/Vanishing Pictures), who locked with De Blonde and Ameel's post-reality continuum duri…
Livets Ord
** Limited edition of 300 copies with insert ** From the early days of the found-sounds recordings (like the downright scary Unga Röster album and the hilarious Mandys Bil 7"), the homespun kitchen recordings/tape collages of the still-going Idiotmusik series to the more carefully elaborated and precise Leendet Från Helvetet and Knutna Nävar albums, the massive Livets Ord dropped like a bomb when it originally surfaced as a self-released cassette in 2018.
Heavily based on synths and keyboards an…
Pop Ambient 2021
It’s 2020, the year Pop Ambient turns twenty-one years old, a spritely young adult waltzing out of its teenage joys and tears. Pop Ambient has always stood for a certain classicism and elegance, a kind of beatless music that’s diaphanous and hazy, gossamer and glittering. It’s a music that’s no less inviting for its slow pace and becalmed nature, with a different kind of tension bubbling under the surface. For twenty-one years, Kompakt co-founder Wolfgang Voigt has curated a series of peerless c…
Nerve Net
Reissue of Brian Eno’s 1992 album which found him returning to a more rock-oriented sound, albeit skewed through an aesthetic that is simultaneously playful, funky and claustrophobic, and featuring a mixture of vocal and instrumental excursions. Includes contributions from Robert Fripp, Robert Quine and John Paul Jones.
Spoki
**2020 repress** Spoki (Ghosts) is the sound of an artist putting their private world to tape. Of exploring and pushing the limits of themselves and technology to realise the music in their head. As Ingus Baušķenieks himself explains: “My own world differs a little from my friends tastes. And - as my father said - the collective art is not art at all.” Arranged and produced by Ingus Baušķenieks. Female vocals on A2, A3 & B3: Edīte Baušķeniece. All instruments and male vocals: Ingus Baušķenieks.
Gritty, Odd & Good
A new weird, pseudo-music compilation curated by avant-garde experimental composer and audio artist Francisco López. As far as creation itself is concerned, big cities do not manifest anymore as the catalytic cultural centers they used to be. Their iconic status as hip locations seems more symbolic than real. The combined mighty forces of neocapitalist gentrification and telecommunication / information decentralization might have generated a substantially different landscape of geographical cult…
Τhe Depths Above
Underflow Records presents Τhe Depths Above. Ko Ishikawa, Nikos Sidirokastritis, Giorgos Varoutas, Harris Lambrakis and Anna Linardou interpret the ecstasy of nature, wandering between ancient memory and imagination. The album was recorded in Athens on January 17, 2019, at the Underflow Record Store and Art Gallery, which was arranged accordingly for the project's audio and video recording needs. Ancient instruments, such as the Japanese shō and the Middle Eastern ney, a piece of acacia wood and…
Heterotopia
Heterotopia, released by Underflow Records in 2019, is a variety of vocalities from different places and eras, transformed through a contemporary perspective. Vocal idioms of different traditions are blended with electroacoustics, sampling and free improvisation to create sonic landscapes of undefinable geography. Appalachian bluegrass and throat singing, Lebanese lullabies and prepared piano treatments, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Medieval tunes, extended vocals, electronics, sampling and…
Bow Down Thine Ear, I Bring You Glad Tidings
* Limited Edition * Among the musicians whose work closely reflects the reduced forms in experimental music, perhaps the most interesting is Cristián Alvear, a Chilean guitarist performing formally radical post-Cagean music, as well as Laurent Peter aka D'incise, a composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, one of the key figures of the eclectic scene in Geneva. The numerous projects in which they participate prove their strictly defined artistic vision and active involvement in networking th…
Imaginary Island Music Vol.1: Canary Islands
Introducing a new project by Discrepant label boss Gonccalo F. Cardoso (Gonzo, Visions Congo, Papillon) and Tenerife electronic stalwarts Tupperwear (Mladen Kurajica and Dani Tupper). Diving deep into various phantom island mythologies (the elusive St. Brendan's island being a recurring motif) Lagoss borrow from the exotica playbook of ideas and twist it inside out into a bubbling melting pot of sounds, shapes and patterns that eventually confuse, wonder and (occasionally) scare the inattentive …