Clap. An Anatomy of Applause
Clap. An Anatomy of Applause is a compilation of original works by a group of musicians and composers brought together by Andrea Stillacci and Unsounds. The project goal is to highlight the radically different forms and meanings that the sound of applause can take according to its context. The principle was to work from original recordings of each artist’s choice, with sources ranging from the thunderous applause celebrating Maria Callas’ last public appearance to the crowds cheering at the fall…
Women as Lovers
We are proud to present a new edition of Xiu Xiu's cult classic Women as Lovers. Originally released on budget vinyl in 2008, this is its first high quality edition on vinyl ever pressed. Named after Elfriede Jelinek’s seminal novel, this album contains 14 slabs of tortured, avant pop at its best. It includes a lauded cover of the Queen/ David Bowie's single “Under Pressure” featuring Swans leader Michael Gira. The album was recorded by a legendary line up consisting of Caralee McElroy, Ches Smi…
Unclouded Sky
During the summer of 2013, Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart and producer Shahzad Ismaily traveled to Sigur Rós’s personal studio in Iceland. Having access to the space for only one day, Stewart worked on setting down his interpretations of American and Caribbean spirituals using a 1953 Silvertone guitar given to him by his father (producer Michael Stewart), the man who introduced him to religious thought and folk music. The resulting album, Unclouded Sky, explores themes of death and faith over t…
Oh No
Stoned to Death is super happy to be part of this again. We are releasing a cassette edition of Xiu Xiu's new album called Oh No. This album is a collection of 15 killer duets and collaboration with the likes of Haley Fohr, Fabrizio Modenese Palumbo, Chelsea Wolfe or Liz Harris. Xiu Xiu is one of the hardest working bands of this century. Oh No is their 15th studio album (and we don't count all the collaborations such as XXL, boxes of seven inches, eps, experimental outputs etc.). They are alway…
Radio Two
Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva joins Swedish composer Alexandra Nilsson for their new album debut Radio Two on Superpang. Composed and recorded in residency at the legendary EMS in Stockholm, "Radio Two" presents the duo in full-tilt, engaging joyfully with sinuous figures, contrasting textures, and dynamic extremes throughout the album's six compositions. Disinterring at the perimeters of sounds both possible and impossible within the sonorities of their respective instruments, Santos…
Promise & Illusion
Promise & Illusion is the first LP from Ecka Mordecai, following the release of her solo Critique + Prosper on Takuroku in 2020. Cello, voice, horsehair harp, violin and field recordings combine to spin narrative melody, rich intimacy and melancholic landscapes.
Composed around an exploration of la charnière (from the French ‘hinge’), Promise & Illusion begins with the sound of footsteps and a door opening and closing repeatedly, unsure whether to let us into the mysterious interior beyond. We a…
The Arabic Room
* 300 copies * A critical meditation on variations of Orientalism practiced by Arabs themselves, as well as those who were born and raised within the diaspora. It originally began as a documentation of extended drum techniques, but eventually morphed into a project of more ambitious scope. Having an open timeframe, Julius Masri gave himself reasons to include all the instruments he obsessively picked up and learned over the years. The work accumulated intentions and guiding principles, and it be…
Caught In The Dilemma Of Being Made To Choose
Full title: "Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose" This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: "Ready or not?" The renowned trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi return to Black Truffle with their 11th release. Demonstrating once again their commitment to continual experimentation in instrumentation and approach, the record begins with a long-distance collaboration made in response to a commission from New York's Issue Project …
Comradely Objects
Horse Lords return with Comradely Objects, an alloy of erudite influences and approaches given frenetic gravity in pursuit of a united musical and political vision. The band’s fifth album doesn’t document a new utopia, so much as limn a thrilling portrait of revolution underway.
Comradely Objects adheres to the essential instrumental sound documented on the previous four albums and four mixtapes by the quartet of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, percussion, electronics), Max Eilbacher (bass, electro…
Gift (7")
* 200 copies. 7" vinyl record with poly, two-sided jacket and dust sleeve * Tetuzi Akiyama plays and explores the guitar with both a primitive-instinctual and technically advanced playing style. Ranging from acoustic minimalist reductionism to maximal full throttled amplication, he seeks to energize, electrify, and connect his own body into his playing and performance. His solo albums cover the realms of Americana-fingerpicking, acoustic slide guitar atonalism, noise, drone, and hi-amp’d infi…
Entry / Exit
"Entry" is the last remaining track from the late 1979 recordings at Pathway Studios that produced the 4AD 12" Wheel In The Roses the following year. At six minutes, too long for the studio side of that release, the track has been transferred from the original master tapes, cleaned up and is accompanied here with an instrumental version. Tightly-wound, with the typical Rema-Rema elements of Moe Tucker-style pounding (cymbal-free) drums, relentless basslines and Marco Pirroni's feedback-laden gui…
Fuoriforma
*2022 stock. Limited edition of 300 copies.* The first release of 2021 by i dischi di angelica is an archive recording documenting a trio of musicians that emerged from the Bologna music scene between the end of the '80s and the beginning of the '90s: Luigi Lullo Mosso (double-bass player and performer, both solo and with Vakki Plakkula, Specchio Ensemble, Roy Paci, Vincenzo Vasi, Guglielmo Pagnozzi, Alessandro Bosetti, etc.), Massimo Simonini (sound manipulator with N.O.R.M.A., Tiziano Popoli, …
¡Ay!
Tip! Lucrecia Dalt channels innate sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where traditional instrumentation encounters adventurous impulse and sci-fi meditations on atemporality in an exclamation of liminal delight. Dalt’s introspective approach to composition, last surfaced on her entrancing 2020 album No era sólida, refracts across ¡Ay! in a subconscious spectrum of the music genres she absorbed as a child. Treasured sounds and syncopations of bolero, mambo, salsa, and…
sisbiosis
*In process of stocking* Erstwhile presents sisbiosis, collaboration album by Clara de Asís and Ryoko Akama, mastered by Taku Unami. Photography by Clara de Asis (black and white) and Ryoko Akama (color). Six-panel digipak.
Clara de Asís - electronics, percussion, field recordingsRyoko Akama - amplified objects, field recordings
Track 1, 2: recorded and mixed by Clara de Asís in Leymen, France in May 2022
Track 3, 4, 5: materials recorded by Ryoko Akama and Clara de Asís in Leymen, France and Ho…
The Actress
Erstwhile presents The Actress, Vanessa Rossetto's solo album. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, designed by Matthew Revert. Double CD, six-panel digipak.
Through A Room
Using the looped-and-screwed methodology of Both, Nace takes a seismic step, building the process into a larger compositional process, employing guitar plus tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, quelle est belle and the nu Nace ax of choice, taishōgoto. Phrases talk to and obliterate each other, expanding and emerging into brave new unheard vistas.
Broken Gargoyles
Employing a vast array of advanced vocal and instrumental techniques, Broken Gargoyles is arguably Diamanda Galás' most intellectually, sonically and viscerally formidable work to date. The album finds the visionary artist deftly probing the weaving, warping transformation on the nervous systems of her post-traumatic soldiers and dying diseased. The album's first part, "Mutilatus," contains the Georg Heym poems "Das Fieberspital" and "Die Dämonen der Stadt," and concerns the suffering of the sol…
Elements
*In process of stocking.* Since my piece Terrible Fake (Piano, Drums, 2013) and especially Darkroom (Clarinet, Vibraphone, Sampler, 2017), I've been trying to to integrate some grooves into classical contemporary idiom. Since those experiments were mostly for smaller setups, this time I wanted to transfer it into the larger one in order to get more possibilities to work with different textures and coloring within harmonic structures of clusters and chromatic movements of melodies. Constant trans…
The Art of No-Art
*Includes a 364 pages, 12" x 8" bound book & PDF. Digital audio download. Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered.* A new book of scores by artist and composer Philip Corner (b. 1933). The Art of No-Art is a collection of 385 new graphic scores written between 2019 and 2022. Each score is a single-page meditation based around octaves. Though written mostly for piano, the scores could be arranged for other instrumentation (for those with fewer than an 8 octave range).
The Art of No-Art explores the …
Airs
*2022 repress. Limited edition of 600 copies.* Over the 23 years since Loren Connors’ Airs was first published, it has drawn a thick circle of fans. Gently recorded to cassette tape in 1999, (with wonderfully subtle multi-tracking), Airs is comprised of a series of brief electronic guitar poems. Intimately composed with the patience and purposeful hesitation we have reverently come to expect from Connors. Lyrical melodies recur in different forms throughout the LP, as shifting figures in a dream…