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Way Out
The Books have a terrific sense of humor-- and it makes The Way Out, an album built on eccentric vocal samples, a good-natured discovery instead of a cheap piece of mockery. Imagine if a blog had posted these clips of goofball hypnotherapist and meditation consultants, or found a tape of a boy and a girl swapping violent threats with each other: You'd chuckle and move on. But when the Books use these samples, they give them integrity. You find yourself engrossed with people …
The Sapphire Nature
"One of the world's premier noise percussionists and a learned scholar of Kabbalah, Torah and Talmud, Z'ev has been a vital force in the downtown scene since the late 1970s. In addition to his collaborations with Glenn Branca, Rudolph Grey and his fascinating solo work, Z'ev is also a prolific writer and musical thinker. He has written on subjects ranging from music composition, ritual performance and has also translated several esoteric Tibetan and Hebrew texts into English. His latest study is…
Turning Dreams & Shifting Harbours
The Kidnapping Europe project was initialized by the artists Christina Clar (Paris, France) and Peter Jap Lim (Berlin, Germany) in 2001. Based on the "Europa Myth" (Zeus kidnapped the phoenician princess Europa and brought her to a continent which now has her name), the project aims to approach the topic of migration and the dreams, hopes and visions of migrants, in particular, from a contemporary perspective. In addition to their own work, which resulted in an installation that made its debut a…
No Magic Man
Finally, we have managed to track down copies of one of the most revered Sunburned Hand of the Man records in existence. Originally pressed up by the prestigious Arthur magazine's own imprint, this handmade reissue (straight from the Sunburned Men themselves) takes the factory made cd and plonks it in a very plush gatefold hard-cover with handprinted artwork. 'No-Magic Man' was the first time that the band submitted a truly coherent album, prior to this their cds although insanely good were more…
Las Orillas
“It seems most important to me not to stop being a connoisseur; I freely confess that I would rather be considered a hedonist than an analyst.” This statement by Luis de Pablo is reflected in his music; not in violent yet superficial currents of sound but in finely differentiated sound as de Pablo’s Las Orillas (1990) demonstrates: “The composition is very linear, particularly in the slower parts. The orchestration has therefore been planned especially thoroughly such that each voice has a meani…
Sexual Infinity
'Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards, Hototogisu, GHQ, fame on her first proper solo full length has given us one of our favorites in the history of hospital productions. Sexual infinty stands refreshingly organized into six escalating pieces of her signature guitar, voice, and electronic moodscapes entrancing the listener with sinister seduction. Comparisons to early 80's power electronics and industrial acts as uncommunity, mauthausen orchestra and ramleh reside in the underbelly of Zaïmp…
Chamber Music
It is with great shrewdness that Uroš Rojko has almost maxed out the unusual juxtapositions of an accordion with a viola and a piano, respectively. His fondness for the accordion may have its roots in his folk music past. On the present recording, however, these roots are not in evidence. Even the Tangos speak a language of their own, which Rojko creates by juggling characteristic fragments of tango, thereby reducing them to their essence. Even the first bars of his pieces exhibit the correspond…
Hibernum
Exclusive work by Italian noise legend Maurizio Bianchi.A marginal division of the whole existence in four palpable seasons, marked by pestilential changes in emotional hemisphere. At the end, the hibernating organisms organize a reproducing molecule of environmental for a silent "hybernum".‘Hibernum’ contains 3 lengthy, slowly shifting atmospheres for private meditation.
Einem Luftigen Akustischen Kosmos Entgegen
Collaboration performance by this two infamous german visual artists, writers & sound-poets, recorded at Lyrik-Kabinett München, June 1991. This is Carlfriedrich Claus' only sound-collaboration ever. Both artists prepared a 60-minute backing-tape and wrote a detailled score for live-performed poetry and voice-operations. In addition to these fixed compositions they left room for spontaneous improvisation and the use of small cymbals ('tschinkas'). This is like nothing else. Very serious, …
Milano New Wave 1980-83
a representative and intense snapshot of the Milanese sinthy wave scene of the early eighties, 20 tracks that recount the salient steps of the brief but intense career of four Milanese bands — from the post-punk of Other Side, to the oblique funk of State Of Art, to the evident Kraftwerk infl uences of La Maison, to the electro of Jeunesse d’Ivoire — four bands that illustrate the mood of an underground scene tha…
Chamber Music
“Art can give us a sense of the infinity of existence, the singular unity of all beings and phenomena as the apparent dualism between the inner and the outer is dissolved. Art can allow us to experience what it means to be alive. It can lead us back to our own sensuality, spirituality, and emotionality - to the very core of our selves,” said Caspar René Hirschfeld. This distinctive conception of art also informs Hirschfeld’s compositions, which are probably best described as objects of immediate…
The Crackle Of My Soul
'Written and recorded by Gordon Sharp at Belmont Shore (ca), mid-levels (hk) & kobe (japan) 2001-2009. Mastered at Piethopraxis, july 2009. Dedicated to Matt Kinnison (1965-2008). Cindytalk have been active since 1982, which we won't go into here (a quick Google search will satisfy that need). During The 80s and 90s Their sound was defined by broken down rock structures and abstract piano ambience. A third side to Their coin emerged at The dawn Of The 21st Century with a turn towards obscure com…
THIS PLACE IS DREAMING
An attempt to convert Brussels' sonic reality into music. Mutated environmental sound materials gathered in Brussels, remixes of interviews with inhabitants and extracts of installations are flanked with atmospheric compositions made with sounds from other cities and countries.
Tau
Main is back in grand form... After finalising his Firmanent CD's it's been a bit quiet around Robert Hampson. Although very busy with other projects as Comae (with Janek Schaefer), Chasm (Fatcat), his main output has been a bit low. Tau shows the first full album in years from a talent whom showed us the way to turn guitars into ambient. His unique way of concrete sounds and manipulating these into something of his own has always been his identity. Tau is no more or less a classic mover for qui…
Kokotsu/ Ecstasy
Long deleted, originally released by Columbia Records on March 1970, “ Kokotsu / Ecstasy” is here re-released for the first time. Sonic-wise, the disc unleashes a whirlpool of Latin styled mondo -sexploitation sounds that get spiced up with feminine breathing and respiration sounds, moaning and hissing, igniting a maelstrom of assorted eroticism and sexual depravity. In all, it resembles a caged vixen engaged in sexual intercourse, hatching out cries, moans, sighs, words and other sounds such as…
Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
Hardly any other composer has ever been as far removed from conservatism as Helmut Lachenmann. In all his oeuvre his listeners are never permitted to lean back comfortably even for a moment in expectation of the well-known and familiar. Again and again Lachenmann succeeded, and still succeeds, in shaking the "aesthetic apparatus," the system of conventional formulas and phrases established throughout decades and centuries, to its very foundations. Intérieur I (1966), a piece for percussion solo,…
AR5 - Autovision
From 1974. A.R.'s fifth excursion with echo-guitar, a collection of group and solo recordings, would be his last studio album in the mind-blowing style. Available again with improved packaging.
In memory ov John Balance and homage to Coil
CD Compact disc album, cardboard cover, limited edition. '17 french bands from the genesis of industrial, experimental, free jazz musics, for the most part unclassable underground musics, and more recent and emergent artists from the same vein, form COILECTIF. These artists explore and express, openly and without limits, what Coil's heritage suggests to them, an opportunity to make an homage to Geff Rushton aka John Balance or Jhon[n] who left us on November 13th 2004. Coilectif is also an homag…
Childhood, Christian Lies & Slaughter
"I find this disc to be consistently superb and often sublime.
Cian writes contemplative, melodic and somewhat bluesy songs that
always ring true. The one cover, Baka Dance, has more of an older,
folky theme, but all of the songs have an organic, human quality that
feels just right. If this was released in the mid-70's, it would fit
perfectly in the Takoma catalogue with John Fahey and Leo Kottke.
Pretty great company for a young whippersnapper like Cian Nugent." Downtown musi…
Speak no more about the leaves
This cd contains 3 pieces inspired by Arnold Schönberg's 'The Book of the Hanging Gardens' and in particular the poems by Stefan George that Schönberg used as lyrics. Track one uses Steve Roden's voice reading/singing part of the text as the only sound material. Track two uses the vowel structure from the text as a score for striking five tones on a small chime. Track three uses samples from the Schönberg work as well as Roden's voice singing the same text as track one.