Headdress
'I’ll set the scene – we’re all passed out face-down in the lawn of the first Bush term, scratching our heads after 9/11 and wondering how much more dystopian it’s about to get. Ash hangs in the air as we march toward endless war, and the activities of the post-hippie, post-beat, post-punk, post-jazz, post-industrial, post-experimental bohemian underground flail against the avalanche with a mystic fire you can’t get your arms around, let alone bottle up for consumption. Jars of tears, rockets fr…
Distance Between Us
Double LP reissue of this legendary dark psych minimal masterpiece! "The music on this bizarre double album from 1972 is somewhere between gothic horror and psychedelic. Don Bradshaw Leather was apparently some kind of British occult group who self-released this album with no credits. (Also, on the record cover the name is spelled “Bradsham-Leather,” not Bradshaw Leather, as it is referred to in everything from the Nurse With Wound list to the book and web guide on early U.K. psychedelic rock -T…
L'incendie
Vocalist-multi-instrumentalist Areski and singer Brigitte Fontaine are a legendary French musical couple that rose to prominence in the ‘60s, making a series of albums that showcased a boldly unorthodox approach to the art of song.
Taken as a whole the 13 pieces on L’Incendie stand as high-impact scenes or episodes in a theatre or TV production as much as they represent another take on the concept album. Translated from French L’Incendie means fire, but Areski & Fontaine give it admirably broad …
Purf
Super Tip! The musical world of Sonorhc is oriented to collective improvisation and the research of tones; they create a sound full of invention, rich technically, made by many differents instruments which incorporated judiciously elements from the rock music, free-jazz, acid-psych, concrete, ethnic and experimental making them as one of the most atypical French Underground group, and seems somewhere more closer to the German “krautrock” bands like Between, Agitation Free, Deuter, Limbus 3, Dzya…
Dreamweapon
"August 1988, Spacemen 3 embark on one of the strangest events in the band's already strange history. Billed as 'An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music' (although consciously omitting the sitar), the group would play in the foyer of Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford, Middlesex to a largely unsuspecting and unsympathetic audience waiting to take their seats for Wim Wenders' film Wings Of Desire. Spacemen 3's proceeding set, forty-five minutes of repetitive drone-like guitar riffs, could be seen …
Encore 72 Hours
"Encore 72 Hours is a special project including some remarkable Chinese domestic musicians. This release is a live recording compilation of the project. All mixing and mastering are done by famous mixing engineer Liu Ying’s studio thus possess extraordinary quality. The album is not only a recording and a reproduction but also a necessary supplement to a live performance, even an artistic reinvention of acoustic. We hope to strike resonance among some listeners." - Tu Fei
Undone Shal
Brooding psychedelic revelations from the Stavangerian outsidercore. The uncanny is never out of bounds in the debut release by shadowy Norwegian duo Firmaet Forvoksen. Gaute Granli and Thore Warland, two archetypes of the Stavanger experimental scene long active through solo work (Gaute Granli’s recent Ultra Eczema notoriety, for one) and other collaborative projects (Thore Warland’s ongoing drum devolutions with Golden Oriole, for another), have joined forces under multiple configurations over…
Excavation
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 300 copies.* This release from Astral Editions, the rock offshoot of Astral Spirits, promises a lot of gems and this collaboration from Chris Cochrane (No Safety, Weird Little Boy) and John Thayer (Drunken Sufis, YAI) sits high atop the pile. Cochrane’s guitars crumple and crush, they squelch against Thayer’s rhythms with a gleeful sickness. “Zinc” chews through layers of tin and turbulence until Stan Zenkov’s sax enters the scene, throwing notes like …
Paradise Of Delusion
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Paradise Of Delusion, the first vinyl release of the music of Japan’s legendary psych-pop group Shizuka, originally appeared in June 2021. Long-awaited, the LP sold out almost immediately, and already changes hands for three-figure amounts. An’archives is pleased to announce a CD edition of Paradise Of Delusion, making this music accessible again to a wider audience. Drawn from a 2001 performance at Binspark, Nishi Ogikubo, Paradise Of Delusion is gorgeous and ot…
Lunatic Pearl
*Limited edition of 550 copies.* Following the long-awaited Paradise Of Delusion LP from 2021, An’archives announces Lunatic Pearl, a 10” EP by Japanese psych-pop legends Shizuka. As with the material on Paradise, 狂気の真珠 [Lunatic Pearl] draws from the deep well of music the quartet recorded in 2001, this time from two studio sessions. Here, though, the group’s classic line-up of Shizuka, Maki Miura, Jun Kosugi and Seven is augmented –on the a-side, they’re joined by Yasushi Nagata on guitar; flip…
Nemo Point Soundmap for Terrestrial Melanoheliophobics
Representing Ahad's Flux Worlds 1, the lengthily titled 'Nemo Point Soundmap...' album is the very latest solo offering from this Hungarian sonic traveller now based in Berlin, Zsolt Sőrés. Spread over the two discs are seven pieces that take a combination of viola, bass, piano strings, voice, mellotron, dictaphone, percussion and all manner of other instrumentation and objects into a realm where inner space folds in on itself and unwittingly assumes the guise of multitudinous journeys to those …
You're Either Standing Facing Me Or Next To Me
“Only this is Rock” Keiji Haino has said of new studio album You're Either Standing Facing Me Or Next To Me. “Treat what I call rock like breaking the seal of old manuscripts.” Since his beginnings in 1970 as the vocalist of the band Lost Alaaf, Haino has spread his work across multiple genres, pushing the limits as a tireless explorer of free-form experimentation. It was with the intense psychedelic soundscapes of Fushitsusha, formed in 1978, that his live set earned a formidable reputation. Th…
Arbor
Stoned to Death is happy to join forces with Stefan Christensen. Stefan is a huge inspiration for our label and our musical trips. He is based in New Haven, Connecticut and if you don't know his work yet, you are up for a nice discovery. His solo outfit is guitar based and very prolific, very idiosyncratic and very surprising. Stefan's discography is a journey through various forms and styles ranging from minimal drones through outsider folk to loud guitar improv and broken free rock anthems. S…
Covered in Mud
*140 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Japanese electronica and ambient composer Morimoto Naoki presents his 3rd album for Seil Records. »Kotoba« is a mesmerizing collage of sounds and the most beautiful, gentle phrases. Each sound tells a story, each word has a sound.
The Portrait You Painted Of Me
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 400 copies.* "Here we have the third solo LP by London's Alison Cotton, following on previous successes, All Quiet at the Ancient Theatre (FTR 424LP, 2019) and Only Darkness Now (FTR 564LP, 2020). And as with each of Cotton's projects it is a stylistic advance as well as another example of her dark signature sound. Alison's work with bands is well documented by recordings with Saloon, 18th Day of May, Trimdon Grange Explosion, and her current, ecstatic…
Who Remembers Light
*In process of stocking. Limited edition 340 copies.* "Four years after their magnificent, eponymous debut, this Connecticut trio returns to vinyl with another brain-blurring set of tunes. Picking up where that last LP left off, drummer Michael Kiefer, guitarist/vocalist Jon Schlesinger and guitarist/bassist/mandolinist/electronics/mark tree-rep, Steubs, dig ever deeper into the pulse of the Earth. The first track here, 'Hot Peace,' sounds like stuttering, shimmering emanations from the core of …
Heavy Invertebrates
Tip! *99 copies limited edition* “This particular brand of home brew lysergia falls in and out of underground fashion, but it's to Todd's credit that he doesn't seem to give a shit, carrying on as he would regardless. That's what legends are made of, kid… if the hall of fame doesn't give my dude a lifetime achievement award soon, the whole of Greatest Imaginary Hits might be reason enough to start storming the gates and demanding action.” – The Quietus
“AN remain a puzzlingly underrated but in…
Strata
*Limited edition of 100 copies.* Dream Weapon Ritual was born in November 2006 as a duo made up of Simon Balestrazzi and Monica Serra. In September 2020 the line-up expands into a trio with the entry of Laura Farneti. Often accumulated in the Italian Occult Psychedelia, the sound of DWR is articulated in a free-from sound that draws in equal measure from drone music, from electro-acoustic improvisation and from an imaginary folk visionary.
Waiters On The Dance
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 500 copies* Another unsung hero of the long lost british prog history, Julian Jay Savarin is a keyboard player and composer, poet and science fiction author, hence the association with the most epic and romantic tendencies of the genre. He was born in Dominica (an island between Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean) and moved to the UK in 1962. He debuted in 1970 with Julian's Treatment, a short-lived progressive rock band which his sole album – …
Come Out From The Shadows Volume 5 (Parzkricht)
*Limited edition of 199 copies.* Legendary Pink Dots open-air live-section at "Parzkricht / Rotterdam" in 1983. These recordings from the park have been floating around the World Wide Web for some time, but never as a complete show. This offering fills in the gaps and completes the puzzle. Tracks 1-3 are taken from the Vpro Radio recording of the show, while the rest was never broadcasted in full. "They Don't Horses.." did appear on a compilation cassette many years ago (Recloose Live Series Num…