Make It Real
Wait, this is the new Pocahaunted album cover? Gone may be the days of cassette cases featuring creepy collages and hand-dyed bags with feathers attached, but this is something else entirely. I mean, there’s a parrot with blue Ray-Bans, a giant dol…
Split
Finely dressed in a full-colour Maya Miller sleeve, this split release from Ex Cocaine and Yellow Swans captures two wildly differing bands on great form. Ex-Cocaine is the collaboration between guitarist and vocalist Brian Ramirez and percussioni…
Oltracuidansa
Oltracuidansa is the radical questioning of the relation between the performer’s body and instrument: What is the language of the contrabass? How to give voice to the thought? In the variety of the contrabass voices, how to find “The Voice”? And f…
Mineral orange
Vanessa Rossetto is a composer and painter living in Austin, Texas. She uses primarily chamber instrumentation, field recordings, electronics and a wide array of different objects, exploring them through extended and traditional techniques. In 2008, …
2 seconds / b minor / wave
Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto are not generally closely associated, but have quite a bit in common. Both are composers whose primary instrument is the guitar, both have close ties to the Wandelweiser collective (Pisaro is a longtime member), and b…
Fields Have Ears
Fields have ears 1' (2008) - for piano & tape. 'Fade' - for piano (2000). 'Fields have ears 4' - realisation for 14 players (2009). Philip Thomas: piano + members of the edges ensemble. 3 varied works by the US-based composer Michael Pisaro. Field…
Expanded Slam
Expanded Slam and Extended Slam, two new compositions by one of America's most consistently explorative and radical artists. Presented in a blazing gatefold package designed by Jupitter-Larsen, including an essay on the permawave, the polywave and th…
The Immeasurable Gift
The Immeasurable Gift is a testament to cathartic possibilities and the role of creation/release as a means of understanding. Recorded throughout the past three years in a variety of locations and personal moments; encapsulated by a common, unrele…
False Flag
"When witch-gods collide, it might sound something like this. Six Organs of Admittance...Richard Bishop...Chris Corsano. Riders of the apocalypse, it's them vs. us. After absorbing their über-holy dynamo, you'll be prepared to join up with thes…
Completed Rotations of the....
When one thinks of the musical centers of New Zealand, the city of Tauranga doesn’t have as celebrated a history as Dunedin, Auckland or Christchurch. Which is apt, in a way, as the artist known to us only as Rotate The Completor makes music that so…
Split
As the cassette market becomes more and more over-saturated, it’s nice to see some of these artists break out onto the vinyl format. This is, I believe, the first vinyl outing for John Elliott’s Outer Space project. Apparently John plays in some o…
Hexadecagon
The Octopus Project as a performance piece meant to bring the audience into a world of total sound and image submersion, Hexadecagon is now an album. The special vinyl version of the album is a bit complicated, so I’ll let the band explain: “The viny…
Mind Ctrl: Psychic
A new label (The Fader) brings a deluxification of 2009's Psychic Chasms, which now also contains the bonus album Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed, featuring nine exclusive remixes and cover versions by Toro y Moi, Body Language, Javelin, Bibio,…
Olives and Orchids
Terrific stuff from Chicago's Herculaneum – a fresh, modern take on postbop and 60s avant garde jazz that's as addictive as anything the group has done to date – possibly their best yet! The group is a sextet with four horns, providing a really …
III
I don't care how many goddamn cute hobo bands there are out there right now. Not two runny shits. There's something Hank IV knows that few other current "of interest" bands realize, and it's a painfully simple thing: guitars were meant to sound li…
Black Summit
Strictly limited to 400 copies only, already sold out at source* Garden Söund is the rewarding collaboration of two hugely respected outfits: Barn Owl and Eternal Tapestry. Word of the album has spread like wildfire on a vast midwest plain, hence …
Castings
Castings is the third VHF release of lovely psych/folk by East Coast quartet Fern Knight, written, arranged and performed with their trademark quality and verve. Somewhat less fastidious than 2008's exquisitely arranged Fern Knight CD, Castings has a…
Small Craft On A Milk
If you were to dig through a random neighbor's record collection, chances are you'd come across something with Brian Eno's fingerprints on it. Maybe massive-selling offerings by Coldplay or U2, the still commercially viable art-rock of The Talking …