Miniatures One & Two
Featuring artists as diverse as The Residents, Robert Fripp, XTC’s Andy Partridge, Pete Seeger, Robert Wyatt and The Pretenders’ Martin Chambers, as well as cover artwork contributed by Ralph Steadman, Morgan Fisher’s 1980 release “Miniatures” truly was a first.
Overwhelmed with concepts for potential releases, Fisher decided to see how many of these ideas he might be able to squeeze onto just one album. Rather than performing everything himself, he invited 50 musicians he admired to send in tra…
Offerings
**200 copies** Gods of Rain explores textural improvisation for electric guitar and percussion/vocals. Brooding, arcane and foreboding, it navigates the turbulent waters of dark ambient and more abstract electronic music, swamped in swashes of caustic improv.
Recorded in Berlin in 2005 without overdubs and live in the studio, this is electrifying listening that knows no boundaries. At times meditative and filigree-like, at others abrasive and drenched in explosions of molten lava. The ultimate m…
Primal Fictions
**200 copies** “Primal Fictions” may sound like the early work of a literary novelist, but words are not Daniel Menche's chosen form of expression - instead, sound and noise form the foundation of his 30 year dedication to abstract sonic exploration. “Primal Fictions” (LP) released by Ferns Recordings is a prime display of Menche’s unique approach to field recordings and electronic manipulation. An earthly marriage of the acoustic and electronic worlds, “Primal Fictions” is a stunning example of…
Tropical Amnesia Two & Three
All sound recorded November 2007 in/at/around Mamori Lake, Amazonas, Brazil. Material culled and assembled December 2007/January 2008 in Seattle.
"His music consists of an ever-changing, intricate web of sounds defining spaces in constant transformation. It is very detailed, very present. Transitions between soundscapes, sometimes very slow and very gradual, sometimes very surprising, keep his music going; often different strata of time are present simultaneously. Matt is a master in building an…
Squenun
“We somehow tried to use sounds as idioms. Turning them upside down and back again, make them collide with each other’s distorted mirror image, let them mean everything one would usually not think them to mean. “Careta” meaning someone who acts like someone they are not. A sound, in music, usually one would say doesn’t mean anything, but the sound of the word “word” does (if you have learned English). But, a collaboration allows to pretend it would mean something else and language is but a colla…
Milk Thistle
"During the period I worked the most on these, summer 2018, I was reading the Daoist Zhuangzi and some Stoics. That material is likely why this CD has to do with detachment and inaction, as well as unspecifiable emotions. The synthetic/concrete sound relationship seems post facto to engage with the above. Inside and outside interpenetrate and relate in tension – openness, suffering, trouvailles and surprises of sound and feeling. The composition involved many layers of mixes, seemingly to do wit…
Exchange
Vinyl reissue of the much sought-after 2009 debut cassette by cult industrial act Corporate Park. A mix of heavy minimal beats, distant vocals and dark alien electro soundscapes that Corporate Park has become known for in later releases on Nostilevo and two collaborative LPs with Beau Wanzer. The new imprint, Virtues, is proud to present its first release, distributed by Fantastique, powerfully remastered by Dan Randall and pressed on 180g vinyl with heavy matte jackets.
Tactility
The first release from Arkeen – a 7 track, 30 minute full length from Los Angeles based Ted Byrnes. Percussive abuse and aural assault. Fragmented time creating spaces between what you are about to hear, and have heard. The present does not exist.
Previous output has been released by Claimed Responsibility, Foul Prey & Absurd Exposition. Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he comes from a jazz background and has s…
Optical Cadillac - The Granitoid Panics
A split 10inch with Jean-Philippe Gross on one side and Golden Oriole on the other. The first one delivers 7’30” of an impulsive electronic quicksand where everything seems unstable and elusive, with that strange feeling of not knowing if you are moving forward or not, or that experience of a “non-Newtonian fluid” – a fluid you can walk on. In short, we are between immobility and speed, between raw materials and etheric frequencies!
The second Golden Oriole, Thore Warland, drums, and Kristoffer …
From Somewhere Invisible
**Third pressing on black vinyl.** Edited and mixed between Montreal and Paris, From Somewhere Invisible summons the fever of experimentation and the powerful sound of the game coming together in the service of a luxuriant and psychedelic drift. Synthetic brass meets hammered rhythms, string electrics with cracked electronics, saxophone cries and laughter at a pulsing and seminal bass. Created in 2012 by multi-instrumentalists Frédéric D. Oberland and Stéphane Pigneul, Oiseaux-Tempëte (Storm Pet…
Plafond de verre
Lunar Error is a group of musicians based in Lille. They work in the field of drone, continuum but mainly acoustic. After Sêlêne published in 2017 on the same label, they decided to work with Jean-Luc Guionnet who, here, considers contemporary composition for ensemble as a work both plastic and reflexive, using drawing, writing, typography, diagram, plan, non-idiomatic notation, questions of musical writing, interpretation, as well as individual and collective playing techniques, up to the sound…
Tracce Magnetiche
Searching for new languages beyond the bitter and nihilist dialect of punk, bands like Gaz Nevada, Litfiba, CCCP, Diaframma, Neon, and many others, began spreading their message all along the Italian peninsula during the early eighties and many of the members of these bands are now some of the best musicians/producers in the Italian independent music panorama (Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Piero Pelù/Litfiba, Bisca, etc.). 16 tracks by 16 Italian underground bands from 1982-1984: bands who faded into…
Behind The Wall – The Record
Life behind the Berlin Wall, before the fall. Once there was DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), otherwise known as East Germany. Verging on the ruins of the 2nd world war, in the fog of the socialist utopia, there was a widespread scene fighting against corporations and restrictions. Die neuen Bands, that was the manifesto, a number of small alternative bands facing the efforts of the post-punk (and even post-industrial) revolution. This was happening right after the English new wave or the …
Demonology In Dante's Inferno
**200 copies** Dante's Inferno, widely hailed as one of the great classics of Western literature, details Dante's journey through the nine circles of Hell. The voyage begins during Easter week in the year 1300, the descent through Hell starting on Good Friday. After meeting his guide, the eminent Roman poet Virgil, in a mythical dark wood, the two poets begin their descent through a baleful world of doleful shades, horrifying tortures, and unending lamentation. During their journey, Dante and Vi…
Tastaturstuecke - Vol 1
Tastaturstuecke Vol 1 introduces 9 outstanding new compositions for church organ, harpsichord and self programmed software. The album comprises the first collaborational recordings of Brian Parks (Atlanta) and Phillip Schulze (Düsseldorf). The two musicians first met in the early 2000s at the famous Wesleyan University, Connecticut, where they regularly attended seminars of their teachers Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton.
Mine Is the Heron
“Mine is the Heron” is the new Tom James Scott record, the first document of his solo work since 2017. Over the past decade, the UK-based composer has released a diverse body of recordings via labels such as Bo’Weavil, Carnivals, Where To Now?, and his own impeccably curated Skire imprint.
Tapetopia 002: GDR Underground Tapes (1984-1989)
To release a tape in East Germany in 1986 called Ihre großen Erfolge (Their Great Successes) illustrates how every situation produces people that are unwilling to accept that situation. Claus Löser and Florian Merkel were two such people. Their band Die Gehirne and their many side-projects ensured that their hometown of Karl-Marx-Stadt, today's Chemnitz, could assert its role in the independent art world of the GDR. Inspirations included Frank Bretschneider from the experimental electronic band …
Tapetopia 001: GDR Underground Tapes (1984-1989)
Tapetopia 001 -- A Collection of East German Underground Tapes. In 1988, the legendary freak wave outfit Ornament & Verbrechen handed out some 20 to 30 copies of their Rotmaul-Tape to friends. The band, formed by the Lippok brothers, emerged from the first East Berlin punk group Rosa Extra and the avant-wave project Fünf Wochen im Ballon. From the moment of O&V's inception, the band was the wellspring for many acts that would subsequently branch off as tributaries and streams in the East Berlin …
Im Lungau
About this record and how Limpe and Paul Fuchs got together with Friedrich Gulda: In 1968, the Austrian classical and jazz pianist Friedrich Gulda organized the First International Music Forum of Ossiachersee with the theme "Improvisation in Music -- Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow". During the third edition of the festival, Gulda got to know the band Anima Sound and was fascinated by their "absolute free music", which they played on home-made instruments. Anima Sound was Limpe and Paul Fuchs, who…
Intuitive Mathematics
“Intuitive Mathematics” is illustrative improvisation registered with the use of percussion instruments amplified by piezoelectric sensors and an instrument I constructed myself called the Soundboard. I mounted metal springs, screws and tongues onto a pine board. Highly enhanced piezo amplification brings all sounds closer to the audience’s ears and allows them to hear rich harmonies of the percussion set as well as “non-musical” elements such as friction, shrieking or vibrations that occur insi…