Biarrezgaur
*300 copies limited release* Biarrezgaur (not tomorrow, today) is a blissful and misty set of guitar tones entangled with effects and reverberation. Dreamy and reflective proto-blues-folk sketches that suggest a sense of matured serenity that only comes with years of practice. Spontaneous, gentle and free-flowing in equal parts, Biarrezgaur is a perfect autumnal recipe for those looking in the direction of Six Organs of Admittance, Loren Connors with Alan Licht, or even Robbie Basho or Albert Gi…
Isocèle
*100 copies limited edition* Headlights Recordings presents Manuel Mota's new work Isocèle. Manuel Mota is known for the personal vocabulary he has developed for the guitar. His music draws inspiration from a multitude of references loosely rooted in the blues tradition to craft a sound which was highly regarded by Derek Bailey. Actual but transmitting an enigmatic sense of timelessness. The moment of creation- composition, and the instrumental execution- playing, are to him indistinct, and that…
Sprecato
First album in seven years from Maple Death Records founder James Jonathan Clancy (Italy/Canada), and the first under his birth name following previous ensembles His Clancyness (Fat Cat, Maple Death) and Brutal Birthday (Total Punk, Improved Sequence). In the interim between those projects and this latest, ‘Sprecato’, Clancy has refined and honed his vision —steadily and carefully drawing from a host of disparate influences to create a new kind of singer-songwriter album that bridges the divide …
Vibrações de Prata
This is a presentation of Xexa's different sensibilities as a composer, musician and sound designer, mapping what are in effect her initial explorations with voice, rhythms, synths, ambience, ever searching for an organic final result. As a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) between 2019 and a still fresh 2023, she presented in her third year a portfolio that included what we can now listen as "Clarinet Mood", the final track on "Vibrações De Prata". Her intention was to…
Windshift
Michael Atherton is a writer, composer and educator from Sydney, Australia. Originally born in Liverpool, England, to Welsh-Irish and German parents, his family later migrated to Australia in 1965. Moving to the suburbs in La Perouse, he grew up in a mixed, multicultural community, where he fostered friendships with existing indigenous members and Iberian migrants. His formative migrant experience and his curiosity about vernacular, as well as notated music, led him to study music formally where…
Overcloseness
Started around a decade ago, "Overcloseness" has been a long time coming. It is Colorist's debut album on paper, but already has a magnum opus feel to it. The beginnings of Colorist lay in the Cologne music community. Being small, it was always influenced by the art and the film scene. (In fact, the label Magazine originates from the same crossing point.) The large cast of guest appearances underlines how much Antonio de Luca and Caroline Kox are in the center of that Cologne community. On "Over…
LP 12" Autumn '20
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited release* Composed and played during summer 2020. Recorded at NGHE (Brussels) between september '20 and march '21. Mix by Valentin Noiret with acurate advices from SSM. Mastering by Manuel Duval. Artwork by Fanny D. Touchemoulin. Layout by Todesangst
Avaler Des Couleuvres
Tip! LP release by Fougère honcho Kévin Orliange. Repetitive music made with tape loops, which tell the bad weather and deep industrial forest of the place where he lives called Le Plateau de Millevaches (who inspired Deuleuze and Guattari's Mille Plateaux).
Meadow Argus II
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited release* "“Warmth and woozies,” that’s what Meadow Argus is made of! Tynan Krakoff of Columbus, OH recently revived that ol’ solo moniker for a followup to his tape from over five years ago. And yeah, there’s already a Meadow Argus III on the way! But today, we’re looking at the Meadow Argus II self-release from back in April. It’s a simple C35 kind of affair; one that is legitimately keeping me on edge as I type this up.
You see, I recently swapped boomboxes and …
Meadow Argus III
*2023 stock. 50 copies limited release* Fresh off their April cassette, Meadow Argus returns with "III," 34 minutes of tape manipulation soundscapes in an arrid region that was once a lush forest. Tape loops made from field recordings collected in Summer 2009 while on a freight trainhopping journey up & down the west coast. Backwards metallic drum circles unspool into industrial muck of monsters struggling. There is no water in the fountain but that doesn't stop the mirage. Side A contains eight…
Peristera
*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* "I’ve been a big fan of Tynan Krakoff’s Meadow Argus project for a while now, but Peristera is my favorite album so far. Dust-covered loops tug at memories buried deep in our subconscious, coaxed out by operatic samples and the increasing glassine electronics. Urgency fights against a current of clanging, broken down chimes and toy piano skeletons. Krakoff has an uncanny ability to push old, broken-down sounds up an ever-rising, the palette continuing to …
The Palace
*2023 stock. 37 copies limited release* "The first side of the new Meadow Argus tape has unsettling creaking and crunching noises and looped layers of decayed piano melodies, turning potential distractions and irritants into something oddly comforting. The best part is the last few minutes, when it turns into a gentler ambient part that could almost be an outsider house track stripped of its beats and left outside to dry in the breeze. The other side incorporates clips from what I assume must be…
This Old Rotten Barge
*32 copies limited release* "[This] Meadow Argus tape is the project’s most evocative recording yet, making the listener feel like a stowaway on a haunted ship on the path to total disappearance from civilization. The album extensively incorporates field recordings run through a delay pedal, with the first stretch of the first side taken from the banks of the Ohio river under a bridge, while a spooky backwards voice bleeds through from the other side of the master tape. Then there’s “It’ll heal …
For The Birds
*27 copies limited edition* "The newest Meadow Argus tape melds his usual field recordings and tape loops with a particularly soothing set of organ drones, possibly made by a harmonium. The fuzzy organ rolls throughout, and cheerful conversations, birds chirping, and thickets full of insects enter the sound-picture. It’s all a pleasant stroll that gradually gets trippier, as you realize when a crowing bird echoes deep into the ether, and other sounds feel out of balance. The second side gets par…
The Chameleon's Dish
Tapes, field recordings, synth and other tape manipulation magic. Recorded 2022 at Lilleypad Studios, Ohio. Art by Pearl Morgan/Purple Akronym
Rice Field Silently Riping In the Night
*2023 much needed repress!* Reiko Kudo first appeared on the Tokyo underground music scene in 1980 with Noise, a duo which consisted of Tori Kudo on organ and herself (then under her maiden name Reiko Omura) on voice, guitar and trumpet. Their only album "Tenno" (1980 on Engel) is probably one of the most outstanding and uncompromising records of all time. Besides other pioneering female producers from Japan such as Non (of Non Band), Phew and Haco, who all had started their startling careers in…
Tomo Plays
He claims to originate from a parallel universe and be in possession of alien technology that he uses to create self-discovery music for your listening pleasure. Introducing Tomo with his Mini CD single Plays - a love letter to the sound of the 80s Yamaha synths & drum machines and Fostex tape-recorders in a cosmos-peppered stylistic blender. The album was recorded directly to the 4-track cassette recorder. We gave up with describing this music, but perhaps the way Tomo classifies it could help:…
Tales From The Skinny Apartment
*2023 stock* Tales from the Skinny Apartment is somewhere around the 20th or so Painted Faces release...Drucker has long lost count. He runs/curates gigs (and records at) the Skinny Apartment, his dwelling place in Ridgewood Queens, which some folks have called the "realest DIY zone in NYC." He also rips in Dead River Company, Big Hiatus, Shecky, Canyon River Blues and countless other unknown subterranean improv zoner outfits. "Ripping" involves keeping it freaky and weird and ripping sets where…
Don't Eat Food!
A high-octane tour-de-force widely considered in Japan to be one of the all-time greatest punk records, 1981's Don’t Eat Food! remains shockingly unknown to the rest of the world. Led by literate but unhinged Machida Machizo, a magnetic stage presence who sang in a thick Osaka dialect that sounded like nothing else at the time, INU came from the same scene as Aunt Sally and took Japan by storm in the late '70s with their powerful live show. Their membership changed frequently but INU's final lin…
La preuve
La preuve is a rearguard action. Most of the people who inspired it are dead or retired. Old teenagers flay their former loves. They bear witness to a bygone era, but happily embraced, digested and spat out. Everything was still possible. Or possible at last. Psychedelia opened the doors of perception. Romanticism wasn't relegated to a dull formatting, a cheese without a rind. The group Poudingue, which started out ten years ago, has some fine leftovers. These are the crumbs from purgatory. The …