BBC Radio 1
* 2021 Stock. Limited Edition, Green/Black * Drag City presents BBC Radio 1 by OM. Recorded live at BBC Radio 1, Maida Vale, May 3rd, 2019. The songs continue to evolve; two each from the classic OM releases Advaitic Songs and God Is Good, encompassingly recorded and mixed with the pristine quality that BBC engineers (and OM) bring to recorded sound.
Car and Freezer
* 2021 Stock * Drag City presents Car and Freezer by Eiko Ishibashi. J-Pop, if the J stands for Jazz. Eiko loosens the instrumental reins and cracks her songwriter's code, writing in two languages to achieve the proper remove from her subjects. You can only regain life when you accept death, and throw yourself into the sea!
Cut A Crooked Track
* Edition of 200 copies. Stamped white labels, postcard attached to the cover, insert * Six new tracks from Mark Anderson and Mark Sadgrove, New Zealanders now based in Japan. Obtuse duo skronk starting out on a fairly reasonable note with 'Scantling' but then slowly deconstructing the song format track by track. The Quemada description of their very underrated 2015 12" makes perfect sense on at least the A-side, "image a Back from the Grave band that was weened on Operation of Sonne and fronted…
Music From Cassettes, Etc. 2008-2017
* Edition of 300 * 'A collection of material from old cassettes, CD-r releases etc from the English guitarist Jon Collin. Now based in Stockholm, Sweden, Collin has besides issuing several limited releases on his own Winebox Press/Early Music imprints also released several volumes of the ongoing 'Water And Rock Music' series on Feeding Tube Records. Swirling and absolutely mesmerizing instrumentals often incorporating field recordings, alternating between acoustic and electric modes. 'Music From…
Dark Ballads
* Edition of 300 * Dark Ballads is the obvious title of this LP, as if this music pre-existed the duo that, without any other choice, was formed around it. Since then, Giotis Damianidis and Audrey Lauro have continued to advance along this straight line that runs through their inner landscapes.
Their music creates a "stretched" emotional space, which evolves in slow motion and captures the fragility of the tone, the tension of the path. Each stage of the record is a mineral evocation of the inti…
As Vgei Kapou Ayto
* Vinyl edition, limited to 200 hand-stamped copies * Twelve years since 2008, year zero in the documentation of Angelos Kyriou’s works, 2020 saw the long-awaited release of an expansive compilation of his music from the Agios Anthropos label (KLIMA). Rekem in its turn presents the edition at hand, a more current offering of where Angelos’ music sits today. A warm evening live in front of friends, a healthy 11min dose from the last few days of 2019, offers us the occasion for this rough gem.
Pan…
Soundscapes from Philoti, Naxos
Rekem Records presents an album of field recordings from the village of Philoti, Naxos, in the Cyclades. These recordings by anthropologists Panos Panopoulos and Yorgos Samantas offer us a tangible and pleasurable sonic image of highland Naxos, focusing on a range of acoustic stimuli that touches on the multiple aspects of everyday life, as well as those of ritual space and time, and the dynamic interplay between voices, natural sounds and music.
The material compiled sketches an acoustic profil…
Mex 2020
Mex is a non-profit-organization for intermedia and experimental music projects, located in Dortmund, Germany. Since 1992 more than 650 musicians and media artists from around the world presented their subtle, noisy, improvised or conceptual works. mex’s traditional venue for those projects of concerts in combination with performance, video and intermedia, is the mexKeller at the Künstlerhaus with it’s special acoustic and atmosphere. Jens Brand began inviting artists and later Maija Julius went…
Ludwig Wittbrodt
* Cassette in a plastic case with a cardboard insert, printed on the devices of the Museum of Photocopy in Mulheim, Germany. Dubbed in high quality at Ana Ott * The Duo Ludwig Wittbrodt, that‘s Emily Wittbrodt on cello and Edis Ludwig on laptop and drums. The two develop a thicket of sounds and melodies that absorbs us in a completely unpretentious way and fills us with associations and warmth. Sometimes in the jungle, sometimes under water in the desert, we are reminded of the achievements of b…
Anna-Lisa & Rosanne
* Each cassette is handmade and unique. The cases have been made in gravure printing. More precisely: They are line etchings with oil paint on handmade paper. The process also uses a titanium-zinc plate and a paint made of diluted tar. And finally, to match the music, the whole thing wanders through an acid bath * In the heat of summer, Nasssau staggered in a stuffy bus through parts of Europe. They pant in Dusseldorf, they splashed in Hamburg, they rejoiced in Brussels and they mumbled in Antwe…
SSSS
Alicja presents SSSS by Szymon Wildstein.Imagine a theatre run by pigs, the play that comes out of it, will it ruin your life?orYou piggy could start everything, and bring it all to an end.orHyperbole's draft never quite finished, as if there were more extensions to be experienced.Future has already arrived, why don't you change your life?
Throat Mask
The self-titled debut from Throat Mask collects four improvisations from the duo that are built around random processes and hover constantly between collapse and coalescence. The recording sees Nathan Gray attempt to guide his unruly stack of sputtering and chiming digital automations while T. Kowalski responds with fm, digital and analog synthesis and sparsely gestural midi drums.Side A keeps returning to Gray’s voice, occasionally it’s recognisable but more often it’s faltering or shredded by …
Eliksir
* Pro-dubbed clear tape in smokey brown case, cover image printed on transparency film, insert card with a stamp * Alicja founder, painter DJ and problem child Tomasz Kowalski presents his first collection of confounding audio objects: Eliksir. The title track, centrepiece and key to the work as a whole, Eliksir is an augmented radio play that is loosely based around Alvin Lucier’s I’m Sitting in a Room. But instead of an intense focus on auditory phenomena, distraction and interruption divert t…
Wwdruja nuk Nieuzywaja / They wander, don't use the feet
* Edition of 80 * Wędrowiec is a relatively recent project from Poland, channeling forward thinking sonic experimentation through the lens of minimalism and traditional ritual folk music from central Poland. Featuring members of Ksiezyc, Bractwo Ubogich, Kapela Domu Tanca, Kolowrót and Pies Szczeka (Agata Harz, Emili Herda, Piotr Herda, and Remek Hanaj), Wędrują nuk Nieuzywają / They Wander, Don't Use the Feet delves deep into a mysterious world, is built from a sonic pallet of haunting vocals, …
Shakuhachi for Latin Lovers
* Edition of 70 * Clive Bell’s roots in British experimental music run deep. Many will know him for his frequent contributions as a writer for The Wire magazine, while others will know him for his sonic explorations that date back into the 1970s, both solo as well as in collaboration with New Jazz Syndicate, Peter Cusack, Jac Berrocal, Steve Beresford, Jah Wobble, David Ross, David Toop, Mike Cooper, and countless others.Bell is an accomplished player of the shakuhachi (Japanese flute), khene (T…
Quattro
Tanz Mein Herz’s latest, Quattro, out via Standard In-Fi, encounters the French collective pushing at the boundaries of folk tinged experimentalism, psych, and drone. Sprawling across two LPs, it’s an absolute burner of throbbing, hypnotic sound and stunning creative interplay, and easily one of the best records we’ve heard in the early months of 2021.
Taiwan Years
A stunning journey into the archives of one of the most fascinating composers / percussionists working today, Michael Ranta’s Taiwan Years, issued by Metaphon, is nothing short of a revelation, seamlessly binding acoustic interventions with a subtle pallet of electronic and electroacoustic ambiance in a landscape threaded by East-Asian esotericism, psychedelia, minimalism, and outright experimental avant-gardism.
Best that You Do This for Me
A 50-minute composition for string trio by the Japan-based musical pioneer and experimentalist. Commissioned by Anton Lukoszevieze of Apartment House, who perform it beautifully.
Brief interview with Anton Lukoszevieze
Why did you choose to commission a piece from Jim O'Rourke for Apartment House, and how did you know his work?
I have known of Jim for a long time, mainly through his work with Merce Cunningham’s dance company, who I also performed with at the very end of their time. But I had n…
Muto Infinitas
An extended duo for double bass and quartertone bass flute by Catherine Lamb, another US-born composer now resident in Berlin, whose previous discs include ‘Point-Wave’ and the Viola Torros double CD with Johnny Chang.Exquisitely played by Rebecca Lane and Jon Heilbron.
Sculthorpe Studies
Wonderful engaged and engaging music by the young Western Australian composer Josten Myburgh. ‘Sculthorpe Studies’ combines harmonies taken from the work of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe with field recordings made in Whadjuk Noongar in Western Australia.
Jet Kye Chong, percussion Jameson Feakes, electric guitar Djuna Lee, double bassStuart James, piano & electronics Kirsten Smith, flutes Josten Myburgh, alto saxophone & electronics