Highs In The Low Twenties
New tour disc of solo material from Tom Carter (made for May's Charalambides UK/EU tour). The first track, 'Train Kept', was previously issued on the long out of print split LP with Barn Owl. This is the first time it has been released on CD. The second track, 'Hurricane Isis' is a new track recorded by Marcia Bassett in Tilburg, Netherlands in March 2008. 'Train Kept' was recorded the month before 'Hurricane Isis'. Both tracks are absolute raging guitar pieces, similar to Carter's 'Shots …
Nyida Days
Following on from previous collaborations between Robert Horton and Charalambides Tom Carter on fine labels such as Important, Preservation and Digitalis, Carter and Horton come back to Blackest Rainbow (both we have previously worked with but not as a duo) for their first duo recording in a while. The 3 tracks result in combinations between outsider improvised trips and swirling head drones created via a wide array of instruments and non-instruments. Carter takes hold of the guitar, ebow…
Point Of Arrival
Latest release on the excellent Forced Nostalgia imprint, a vinyl edition of a super-rare 1986 tape by sound designer at Oberheim Electronics, Loren Nerell. 500 copies only* Forced Nostalgia make their first physical impression of 2012 with a vinyl edition of a mystical 1986 tape by gamelan enthusiast and Berlin school composer Loren Nerell. A contemporary of Steve Roach and collaborator with Steve Reich, Kronos Quartet, Paul Haslinger and L. Subramaniam, Nerell has a richly varied musical backg…
Whisper Not / The Wrong Holiday
This latest release on the excellent Forced Nostalgia imprint is by some distance its most illuminating release to date - a split LP that features an astonishing rediscovery from the early 1980's synth-pop era. That album is 'Whisper Not' by Vazz - a duo consisting of Anna Howson & Hugh Small, and is redolent of so much classic, deeply cherished music from around the same period (think Crépuscules, Antena, early Cocteau Twins on the one hand, and The Cure's 'Seventeen Seconds' on the othe…
Voices Of Packaged Souls
Debut release on this new imprint brought to you by FInders Keepers, Pre-Cert Home Entertainment and Boomkat, "Voices Of Packaged Souls" was the first album recorded by Suzanne Ciani, originally pressed up as a private edition of just 50 copies and now available in this limited run of just 1000 housed in screenprinted silver foil sleeves faithful to the original pressing** Dead-Cert is a brand new reissue venture with a focus on genuinely rare archival curiosities of early computer music, …
Heliograms
Much needed reissue of this early computer music classic, recorded between 1977 and 1980 and one of the first albums to feature music produced almost entirely with digital synthesizers. Remastered from the original tapes and cut to vinyl at D&M Berlin - made in an edition of 700 copies only, initial copies come on strictly limited white vinyl* Digitalis dig deep to unearth and reissue one of the first albums to be produced almost exclusively on digital synthesizers. The work of Canadian composer…
September Cell
Absolutely KILLER new twelve from Vatican Shadow on Dominick Fernow's own, newly minted Bed of Nails imprint - his most direct dancefloor productions to date. Edition of 700* Bed Of Nails is a new label curated by Dominick Fernow of Vatican Shadow and Prurient fame. Operating from his recently consecrated L.A. compound - the label will focus on his reorientation towards industrial dancefloor rhythms and seductively isolated electronics. Fernow christens the label with 'September Cell', a…
Inland
Pyrolator is the co-founder of the legendary German label and publisher Ata Tak, was a member of various seminal post-punk bands such as D.A.F. and Der Plan and released solo albums under his artist name from 1979 onwards until today. His debut album "Inland" from 1979 features cold, urbane, disconcerting synthesizer sounds and aural collages, imbued with the post-punk/industrial zeitgeist as the seventies segued into the eighties. Yet sounding so fresh, it might have been recorded …
Ausland
Just two years separate Pyrolator's 1979 debut Inland and the 1981 album Ausland. Nevertheless, they could hardly be more different from one another. If Inland reflects the industrial decay and politically-explosive atmosphere of 1977 and the years thereafter in the Federal Republic of Germany, then Ausland is a buoyant, playful and yet groundbreaking pop album. There had been some significant developments since 1979. The Ata Tak label, which Pyrolator had co-founded, had hit a rich vein of…
Sólaris
Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason are two composers used to shrugging off the distinction between experimental sound-art and deeply felt melodies. frost's vast, blackened post-industrial works often crystallize in moments of quiet beauty before disintegrating in pure visceral noise; bjarnason's orchestral music marries brutal modernism to classical aesthetics one moment and soaring ethereal harmonies the next. and yet here, on the tail of two widely acclaimed releases; bjarnason's procession…
Octagonal polyphony
These recordings, sadly, mark some of the final trio recordings with David Gamper who passed away in 2011. This LP is being released simultaneously with DLB's Great Howl At Town Haul CD and Pauline Oliveros' comprehensive 12 CD collection of electronic work. Pressed in an edition of 500. 'Deep Listening Band January 2011 residency and concert at Town Hall Seattle produced enough material for both a CD and an LP on Important Records, and a double LP on Taiga Records. The subsequent summer consist…
Great howl at town haul
This CD is being released simultaneously with DLB's Octagonal Polyphony LP and Pauline Oliveros' comprehensive 12 CD collection of electronic work. Deep Listening Band January 2011 residency and concert at Town Hall Seattle produced enough material for both a CD and an LP on Important Records, and a double LP on Taiga Records. The subsequent summer consisted of well over 100 hours of listening on my part along side DXArts technical wizard Michael McCrea who himself has between 150 and 200 hours …
Gradient
Beautiful string experiments by Tashi Wada, son of original Fluxus member Yoshi Wada. Julia Holter is a fan of his, and from the strength of these pieces, so are we. Hand-stamped edition in wrap-around jacket** "Tashi Wada is a San Francisco-based composer and performer whose recent work focuses on sound perception as a basis for direct modes of listening. His work has been performed throughout the United States and Europe, and for several years now he has performed alongside his father, …
Blau
'Blau' is the colour-coded 1974 follow-up to Konrad Schnitzler's solo debut album after working on the first albums from Tangerine Dream and Kluster. With it, he effectively continues the motorik trajectory of his momentous debut, instinctively mainlining his beguiling logic further into an inverted abyss where harmony and melody are rejected in favour of synthetic expression and the joy of revelling in pure electronic timbre. Inspired by the contemporary avant-garde - most specifically the Flux…
Rot
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. There was a particular type of artist who could only have emerged in the legendary early 1970s. Few musicians fit the bill better than Conrad Schnitzler (Tangerine Dream, Kluster). Revolution, pop art and Fluxus created a climate which engendered unbridled artistic and social development. Radical utopias, excessive experimentation with drugs, ruthless (in a positive way) transgression of aesthetic frontiers were characteristic of the period. The magic words were "su…
'Split'
Split release including a new 20 minute piece from Eleh and the installation version of Duane Pitre's beautiful new composition, Feel Free. Screenprinted jackets. Feel Free is a new composition by Duane Pitre that currently has three possible manifestations: solo performance, group performance, and sound installation. At the core of all of them is the pillar of the work, an open yet orderly system whose intention is to produce potentially infinite variations of self-generating rhythm and …
Parthenon
Spectrum Spools is pleased to release the debut album by veteran musician Toko Yasuda's Plvs Vltra project. Toko has been working for years already in established pop acts such as Enon, Blonde Redhead and now touring with St. Vincent handling synthesizer duties for live events. In all her years of songcraft there have been sparse, if any solo output, until now. Parthenon is a sugar-sweet album of catchy pop songs, crafted with expert precision and outstanding composition logic. Everything is loc…
Cycles of confusion
Connecting his many worlds, ideas and influences into highly personal live performances and recordings, floris vanhoof keeps on amazing people here and abroad. after his vinyl debut on ultra eczema, this is his second outing on wax. cycles of confusion unites two different aspects of vanhoof's work. side a is a live piece recorded to four tracks and mixed in his home studio. it shows vanhoof's riley inspired side, focussing on consciousness outside the mind as evoked by modular synth soun…
Three days of silence. The mountain of the stigmata
restocked ""three days of silence" is conceived as complete phenomenological experience of listening. i have been three days within the sanctuary of la verna on the top of a mountain called "the mountain of the stigmata" in tuscany. i've lived together with the monks recording and attending the ceremonies and the sounds of the place trying to penetrate in a dimension of pure contemplation. la verna, in latin alvernia and geographically known as monte penna, is a locality on mount penna, an…
Lifetime Of Romance
LP version. "Heartland synthesist Dylan Ettinger follows up 2010's widely lauded New Age Outlaws imaginary cyber-soundtrack with a stark, dark, and intensely different collection of misshapen new wave weirdnesses, Lifetime Of Romance. Recorded at a proper studio, and written over the course of a year, the seven songs of Romance reflect a heavy influence from the fringier strains of bummed out quasi-industrial synth-pop in the vein of Fad Gadget, certain Cabaret Voltaire, early Human League,…