Experimental / Avant-Garde

** Limited Edition Color Wax ** Camberwell, in South London, pops up infrequently in pop culture. Perhaps you know it from the Camberwell Carrot, the heroically sized joint smoked in cult movie Withnail & I, or perhaps – if you’re attuned to experimental music – you know of Camberwell Now. The group formed from the ashes of This Heat, the art-noise group whose catalog was reissued on Modern Classics Recordings in early 2016. Not so much a supersession as a continuation of that group, Camb…

Last copies! ** Edition of 250 copies in incredible diorama-style hand-made sleeve. **One more top mysterious trace from the Little Skull legacy: Dean Brown's album Ubique (i.e. "everywhere" in Latin) marks the passing of time and people. This sense of loss is very present though the whole record; not getting around to saying the things we meant to say and making sense of the leftovers. Screaming calmly, Dean Brown's Little Skull has shrunk, even more, until his head is almost just sore meat - t…

Trost continues its Trost Jukebox Series of 7"s. Okkyung Lee - cello; Lasse Marhaug - electronics. Recorded at Lasse's studio in Oslo. No overdubs, minimal editing. Mastered by Martin Siewert. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.

Fabrica Records announces the first volume in the Same Animal, Different Cages series by American composer and improviser David First. On Études for Acoustic Guitar, First twists and bends notes from his steel-string acoustic guitar, an instrument traditionally associated with American folk, country and blues music. And in fact, those genres are central to First's explorations here, constituting portions of a palette that also encompasses jazz and Indian classical music. In this series of s…

In a rare performance at Donau Festival in Krems, Austria in May of 2012, Tony Conrad (member of the Dream Syndicate project by La Monte Young), Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Psychic TV / Throbbing Gristle...) and Edley ODowd (Psychic TV /  Toilet Boys...) collaborate to create a unique, completely improvisational soundtrack that is at once transcendental & visceral. Consisting mainly of 2 violins, orchestral percussion and sparse electronics, quiet droning gives way to volcanic crescendos a…

Continuing the twisted pop explorations of Here Come the Warm Jets, Brian Eno's follow up album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), is more subdued and cerebral, and a bit darker when he does cut loose, but it's no less thrilling once the music reveals itself. It's a loose concept album about espionage, the Chinese Communist revolution, and dream associations, with the more stream-of-consciousness lyrics beginning to resemble the sorts of random connections made in dream states. Eno's richly l…

Completing the essential quartet of Brian Eno's early vocal albums is 1977's Before and After Science. The first half is vibrant, rhythmically complex songs (No One Receiving, Kings Lead Hat etc) before slipping into gentle relective moods for the second half. Cluster's Moebius and Roedelius, Can's Jaki Liebezeit, Phil Collins, Robert Fripp, Fred Frith, Fairport's Dave Mattacks, Phil Manzanera etc are amongst the players.

"The compilation that started the renaissance. In 2002 Audika Records entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with the estate of Arthur Russell to compile and issue previously unreleased and out of print material from Arthur's vast archive. This first album Calling Out of Context, features 12 previously unreleased tracks of Buddhist Bubblegum Alt Disco Pop recorded during Arthur's prime years 1985-90." "Four years ago, Audika Records began releasing the exceptionally varied, long sought-af…

The dreamer dreams again with her 4th album of otherworldly microcosms, 'Divers', recorded by Steve Albini and featuring contributions by Nico Muhly and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, arriving five years since her last opus for Drag City.  Still possessed by a voice that teeters between sublime and ridiculous (I honestly laughed out loud at the first song), Joanna Newsom remains a precious spirit within the indie folk paradigm, blessed with an air of stately patience and poised, imma…

Survey of saxophonist Ulrich Krieger's chamber music, probing the ties between the rock and classical avant-gardes: six works from 1997-2005 played by California E.A.R. Unit, Sonic Boom, Ensemble Experimente and others, with Krieger himself.

Trost starts a new 7" series called Jukebox Series, specially for one-time collaborations & projects. The paper-sleeve stays the same, labels are changing, and there's artwork by Lasse Marhaug. This time Christof Kurzmann teams up with Sofia Jernberg (Fire Orchestra) on one side, and with Ken Vandermark and Martin Brandlmayr (Radian) on the other for two versions of the beautiful song "Beggars." The lyrics are written by Joe McPhee.

 "A dark, brooding masterpiece of Zeuhl influenced music, Les Morts Vont Vite is actually much closer to the chamber rock of Univers Zero, Art Zoyd or Present than it is to Magma. Ann Stewarts quasi-operatic vocals have something in common with Stella Vander's contributions to Magma, but there are no choral arrangements or massed chanting here. Instead, the vocals are frequently played off the innovative trombone (an unusual instrument in a rock context) or the squalling, distorted guitar lines.…

FAT and the Masters of Haha is a 73-minute release of FAT's recording with the southern Moroccan Berber group Aouad Mia, master rebab player Rais Lahcen Benlamouden, and other Berber singers and percussionists. It was recorded in Agadir, Morocco, in 1991 after development during FAT's numerous visits to Morocco over the previous three years. Aouad Mia's music is improvised but extremely tight and crisp, and combined with FAT, the music ranges from ferocious looped attacks through complex melodic…

SUMAC is a new band who’s main core consists of Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer) and drummer Nick Yacyshyn from Baptists. Bass player Brian Cook (Russian Circles, Botch, These Arms Are Snakes) also joins the duo (as an auxiliary member) and did all the bass tracking on the band’s debut album entitled “The Deal”. An album consisting of steamroller crushing heaviness and methodical free-range technicality. SUMAC came to form when Aaron Turner had the urge to create music that’s heavy a…

2025 Stock. The Work emerged from the dissolution of Henry Cow in 1979, formed by saxophonist Tim Hodgkinson, guitarist Bill Gilonis, bassist Mick Hobbs, and drummer Rick Wilson. Their inaugural LP, Slow Crimes, is a little-known treasure of transformative magnitude, so rabidly articulate that it presides over and resides in a world very much unto itself. While falling within the loosest guidelines of post-punk, the term proves inadequate: the textural intricacies and distinct deliberacy through…

"Alchemic Heart is a special project presented by Vampillia who have colored these two colossal compositions with beautiful contributions by members of the Boredoms, Jarboe (ex-Swans), Inswarm and Japanese Noise-God Merzbow. Layered strings, piano, bass, noise and voices are weaved mysteriously and expand as two magnificently parallel aesthetic worlds. Comprised of two pieces, 'Sea'/'Land,' a primitive landscape is created via listening and destroyed when the pieces are complete. Vampilli…

It is an astonishing gift of fate when a creative artist, known to the world for a particular achievement, is suddenly shown in a quite different light thanks to the existence of a single document that has somehow escaped the ruthless culling mechanisms of time. Harry Partch's Bitter Music is such a document, a “diary of eight months spent in transient shelters and camps, hobo jungles, basement rooms, and on the open road”. This long-lost journal of Harry Partch's wanderings during the Great Dep…

Obscure 1970's French underground band cantered around Robert Diaz and Florence Leroy. Other members have included Armand Miralles and Kristof Temple. Feeling like a mix of Etron Fou Leloublan and Faust (in acoustic mode that is), with hints of Albert Marcoeur, Red Noise, it is full of invention and typically French eccentric touches. It was also much touted by Chris Cutler (of Henry Cow fame) at the time as the French Faust.Double CD retrospective of this amazing « mysterious » underground Fren…

The meeting of composer Arnold Dreyblatt and psych-folk trio Megafaun shouldn’t be seen as unlikely just because it’s cross-generational, or even (arguably) cross-genre. Such categorizations have to be set aside before taking in their Appalachian Excitation. Born in New York in 1953, Dreyblatt came up under such lauded experimental groundbreakers as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young, obtaining a Master’s degree in composition from Wesleyan University. Now based in Berlin, where h…

Reissue of an extremely rare and essential Sunroof! CD-R released during a European tour in 2003 on Matthew Bower's own imprint, Rural Electrification Program (REP). On this LP, Bower is joined on guitar by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Flower-Corsano Duo) and the result was once qualified as Sunroof's rock record and its tribute to Neil Young and AC/DC (hence the title). RockPower is a very singular record because it documents a very short time period in the M. Bower/Sunroof! evolut…