Samt ar-ra's
Samt ar-ra's by Benjamin Dobó and Dion Monti is an evocative ambient collaboration that serves as a sonic companion to Dobó's film. Crafted between 2020 and 2022, the album moves through delicate textures, atmospheric field recordings, and subtle melodic fragments, inviting listeners to explore intricate emotional landscapes in a work that bridges visual and auditory art.
Dragon's Return
LP with obi strip, incl. booklet. Australian composer Oren Ambarchi and Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten present Dragon's Return, a compelling new score for Eduard Grecner's 1967 Slovak cult film of the same name. Released via Viernulvier Records, this collaboration emerged from a live performance at the Videodroom Festival during Film Fest Ghent in October 2024, where the musicians premiered their improvisational soundtrack alongside the restored black-and-white parable. What began as a singu…
Zungsang
Zungsang by Joke Lanz takes listeners on a disorienting and surreal sonic journey marked by sharp observations and idiosyncratic soundscapes. Anchored in the spaces between performance art, improvisation, and experimental noise, the album weaves together unsettling textures and fleeting melodic fragments, revealing a world that is at once darkly humorous and intellectually provocative.
Bidet Dreaming
First LP by this rather berserk Portland Oregon duo, made up of vocalist/electronics-scrambler Noa Ver and drummer/electronics-scamperer Zach D'Agostino. Our experience with Portland music had led us to believe it often has a mellow and/or gentle edge, but Sea Moss offer none of that. Their raucous, face-to-face approach to duo dynamism is as weirdly aggressive as anything that's ever come out the dag end of Brooklyn or Providence, and that's saying something. Using homemade electronic devices t…
Plutonic Shine
Vinylization of last year's cassette by UK duo, The Slowest Lift. Comprised of Julian Bradley (Vibracathedral Orchestra, etc.) and Sophie Cooper (whose Divine Ekstasys LP, (FTR 342LP, 2018) is a dang classic), The Slowest Lift has been producing high-quality avant-pop form-waffling for several years. Their eponymous debut album was on VHF (2017), and Plutonic Shine continues their drive into the heart of some very weird beast. Sophie's vocals sometimes breath like the air itself, although they c…
Red Amber
Because he is a relentless seeker of strange truths (especially as they relate to music), Nigel Cross was the gent who uncovered the fact that the London-based artist, Jill Tipping, had been a member of a Sunforest-style folk-rock group back in the day . . . Here are some notes from Jill on what's what. It's early '70s London and in a small all-girls grammar school a band is born. There had been an extant group of sixth-formers -- The Folk Group -- who provided musical filling at morning assembl…
Ohio
What's round on the ends and high in the middle? Why, the new LP by those proud Buckeyes, Sex Tide, of course. Ohio is the first album they've recorded with a full quartet line-up. Bassist Phillip Park and saxophonist Ryan Mcauley join the core duo (drummer/vocalist Aurelie Celine and guitarist Chris Corbin) to create a new fat-ass sound that continually conjures up visions of the 1970 Stooges. As with the previous Sex Tide LPs we've done -- Possession Sessions (FTR 325LP, 2017) and Flash Fuck /…
Early Worm
Having explored a lot of Southern Vermont-based artists over the past decade and a half, it now seems time to cast our gaze northward. From the cold shores of Champlain comes the music of Wren Kitz, a singer and guitarist from Burlington VT. Unlike much of his earlier work, which falls into what might be called a 'progressive/experimental folk bag,' Early Worm documents a harder sound. As Mr. Kitz says, 'It's my rock n roll album.' And he ain't kidding. While some of the tunes were initially dev…
Briars On A Dewdrop
Turner Williams Jr is a string-player out of the same Alabama surrealist scene that gave us Rev. Fred Lane & the Say Day Bew gang, Davey Williams & LaDonna Smith’s Trans Museq universe, and the Sweet Wreath madmen (who have been working with Johnny Coley, Silica Gel and others). Some crazy shit has gone on down there, and Mr. Williams soaked it all in before heading up to NYC, where he fell in with some of the Sound @ One scene. Which added another layer to the freak potential of his playing. Af…
Live In Fishtown
"On a hot night in Philly -- Saturday August 9, 1998 -- Brooke Sietsons's backyard hosted the No More Bush tour. The line-up that evening was Zaïmph, Jack Rose, MV+EE, Tom Carter & Willie Lane, 50 Foot Women with Axolotl, and the sole known appearance of the Mike Watt/Charles Plymell duo. Plymell and Watt had met a year earlier at the Festival Ecstatique in Western Mass, and they hit it off like crazy. So, when this tour was coming together, and Charley agreed to reprise the work he did on the M…
Dark Ride
The debut album by Western Mass trio, Mozzaleum, is an unholy union of hot cheese pie, cool Italian prog, and wanton horror movie lust. One gets the feeling this's the sort of band that Roky Erickson dreams about after a few mugs of cocoa and a slasher flick watch-a-thon. The three tracks on the first side all take their names from actual films (none related to the films' music as far as I can tell), the five on the flip carry on in a more thematic manner. But the music on side two -- keys, samp…
Jaw Guzzi
Jaw Guzzi is the ninth LP Melted Men have released since 1995. This is reportedly the year they formed, but as with all Melted Things, there is little hard information to back this up. Like an earlier experimental 'rock' band from Northern California (by way of Louisiana), Melted Men have embraced something akin to Nigel Senada'sTheory of Obscurity. Facts regarding the band's details are smudgy at best, and that's the way they like it. About all I could get out my contact for the group is that t…
Sun Cycle / Elk Jam
Two mind-bending slabs of acoustic and electric guitars, wandering into corners of acid-logic only accessible to bravest explorers. Elkhorn is a duo -- Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner -- from NYC. Their earlier records (Elkhorn on Beyond Is Beyond, The Black River on Debacle) would have blown us away, even if we didn't know Jesse from his work as a film-maker (he directed the Glenn Jones/Jack Rose doc,The Things That We Used to Do) and organizer (he put together the 1,000 Incarnations of the Ros…
Time Machine
Time Machine is a reissue of a 2017 cassette, and represents the first vinyl issued by Wendy Eisenberg, a peripatetic improviser and composer currently based in Amherst. We first heard of Wendy when she was playing with a blasted quartet called Birthing Hips, whose NNA cassette was an instant classic. Since then she's begun a solo career that branches off in a lot of directions simultaneously. She has an album of post-form noise-metal (in trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches Smith) due soon on John Zo…
Pastry
2025 stock "Jonny Kosmo, the Los Angeles (via New England) registered therapist and home recordist is a card-carrying expert in the shape of your desire and the horizon of meanings your dreams catalyze. In his briefcase lives his weapons grade kaleidoscope, a 1972 Mayfair recorder, and a neatly folded pair of pants that fits seamlessly to the shape of your longing. His armchair prescriptions for the zeitgeist hover ever present on his most recent LP Pastry which hits you Like 69 cc of heady nost…
Achlys
Jon Porras’s Achlys unfolds a meditative narrative across eight drone-based pieces: fragmented guitar melodies and modular synths swirl through dense atmospheres, echoing elemental habitats and ambiguous emotional states. The album rewards careful listening for its textures, cyclical patterns, and subtle resonance, inviting reflection on impermanence and change.
Psychic Hearts
2025 stock Deluxe double LP reissue of Sonic Youth guitarist's 1995 solo album. Features a complete record-side of bonus material not included on the original release. In addition to Moore on guitar, bass, and vocals, the album features guitarist Tim Foljahn (Two Dollar Guitar) and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley on drums. For this release, the fourth album-side contains 5 bonus tracks previously unavailable.
Dinsterwenk
* Edition of 200 * Baljuw is the improvisation project of Matthias Dewilde (Nagløed, Matterhorn Well) and Nicolas Van Belle (Suura, Ever Present, Sarcastic Fringehead). Although the two musicians were longtime friends, it still took until 2023 for the two to begin “playing” together, stimulated by a shared interest in sound, texture and transformation. A series of improvisation sessions and some tasteful performances (including at the Ghent Citadelic festival) followed, which only stimulated the…
Che mi Guardi Attraverso Una Fiamma
Tip! A dream within a dream - Innocent and whimsical song-craft from a vibrant pocket of the contemporary Italian underground via Naples-born Lucia Sole aka La Festa Delle Rane. New split release between ANF and Tokyo friends Conatala.
It’s impossible not to be totally captivated by this. Lucia’s explorative, imperfect song-writing leans into a sense of cranky, domesticated nostalgia and soft melancholy - songs (you can just about call them that) are just about held together by a loose thread …
Thin Peaks
"Thin Peaks" is the sixth album by the microtonal tuba trio Microtub, featuring Robin Hayward (UK/DE), Peder Simonsen (NO), and Martin Taxt (NO). Initially developed during an artist residency in Andersabo, Sweden, the two pieces "Thin Peaks" and "Andersabo” underwent several adaptations before being recorded in 2022. The pieces draw on the acoustic phenomena of half-valve combinations, creating distinctive timbres and harmonic spectra based on the unique half-valve signature of each tuba. Whils…