Batu Malablab: Suite for Prepared Piano, Flute and Electronics
Based in Baltimore, M.C. Schmidt is one half of the acclaimed electronic duo Matmos. As half of Matmos, Schmidt has worked with Terry Riley, Björk, Kronos Quartet, Peter Rehberg, INA-GRM, Rrose, Marshall Allen, Horse Lords, People Like Us, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Antony Hegarty, William Basinski, and many more. Batu Malablab, his first solo album, works a dislocating magic, indulging in a tradition of western fantasy of non-western music. Recalling gamelan-inspired experimental classics such…
415 Steppsss to DingggDonggg Paradise
Huuuuge Tip! CD Edition. Where the bells begin, everything else follows. Long before Charlemagne Palestine discovered the thick molasses sonority of the Bösendorfer piano, before the strumming technique that would define his maximalist-minimalist vision, there were bells. Colossal carillon bells in the tower of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York, where a teenage Palestine hammered hymns into the Manhattan sky before spending hours lost in spectral improvisations that drew Moondog, Ton…
Mako Sica Plays "Invocation"
"Pretty sure this amazing Chicago trio was first introduced to us when Jim McCardle insisted we buy one of their albums at a record fair in the Windy City. Not sure which one it was, but it blew us away. Surprisingly, over the damn-near-a-decade since they started recording, Mako Sica has managed to keep itself well out of the limelight. Even though their first LP, Mayday At Strobe (2009), was released by one of Chicago's pre-eminent vanguard labels -- Permanent -- it was not easy to locate peop…
All Is Ablaze
Recently we touched base with the New Zealand ex-pat guitarist Dean Roberts. He's living in Berlin these days, teaching, playing and staying out late. When asked if there were any interesting, unheralded players we should know about he immediately mentioned Julia Reidy. Julia is also a guitarist currently based in Berlin, but the city from which she's apart is Sydney, NSW. While there she was embroiled in the Australian improv scene, and played with the likes of Jon Rose et al. She was focused e…
Melle-Aan-Zee
Melle-Aan-Zee is the latest lo-fi recorded collection of improvised pieces by Ghent-based occasional psych folk, kraut infused jam collective De Regering Van Treffelijke Zaken, which seems to continue to give birth to compositions that defy convention and exceed expectations. Just as their sporadic meet-ups seemingly cannot be planned, their enigmatic worlds of sound unfold through pure improvisation, sense of experimentation, a confluence of coincidences and reasoned skits. There's a special ki…
Give Me Shelter
Although it was the lead track on the Stones's eighth studio LP, Let it Bleed, the song 'Gimmie Shelter' was not released as a single. Indeed, the single 'from' that album was the countrified non-LP track, 'HonkyTonk Women' backed with the corny chorale sluice of 'You Can't Always Get What You Want.' It was as though the Stones, knowing they would soon be pilloried on the cross of Altamont, wanted to have a way to try and dodge those nails by being able to claim they weren't even a rock band. We…
Pantheon Of Fuckery
A long time in the making but good things always come to astral travelers as transatlantic soul mates Dead Sea Apes and The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol are joined together on black vinyl for the first time. Two artists that for over the last ten years (and longer) have spent their lives creating music that defies easy categorizations -- psych rock/kraut rock/minimal/maximal/avant/free are phrases that only give you fleeting glimpses of what each artist represents. What we do know is that via a s…
Afternoon-Dusk
Ned Collette's last album, the 2LP set Old Chestnut (FTR 362-2LP), was hailed as a masterpiece by 'most everyone who heard it. Part of this was due to the darkly delicate lyrics and vocals of Ned himself (akin to the work of Graeme Jefferies, ca. This Kind of Punishment), but much was also due to the elegant lyricism of the music, which had a fantastic prog/folk heft as impossible to peg as it was to ignore. With this new LP, Collette (an Australian ex-pat, now based in Berlin) goes all-instrume…
Orphic Resonance
Near the end of his days, John Fahey told me he was sick and tired of solo guitar records. This statement was partly designed to take me aback (as was often his tact), but it was also true. He seemed genuinely bored by most guitar players, especially those who were traveling in the shoes he'd first worn on his own early records. That said, I'm pretty sure he would have loved Eric Arn's Orphic Resonance. The first time I ever saw Eric play was as part of the classic second line-up of Crystalized …
Cancer
*250 copies limited edition* Originally released in 1992 via Tesco, »Cancer« was recorded one year earlier by Thymme Jones, Dan Burke, Mark Klein, Mitch Enderle, Chris Block, and Jim O'Rourke.
This one was mostly a group effort focused on a dark ambient atmospheric environment and experimental minimalism that crawls under your skin. Mark & Thymme’s heavy synth is omnipresent, Mitch & Chris scraping every piece of scrap metal they could find, Jim’s extended piano & tabletop guitar is apparent, t…
Rumanikos, Kokin, Mixolydian, Kourd Atar, Pigmy, Slendro
In a sonic dialogue that balances delicacy and depth, Clinton Green and Barnaby Oliver explore the shifting textures of acoustics and resonance. Employing bowed aluminum bowls, strings, and a grand piano, their work unfolds in patient layers that probe the very essence of sound and its environment, evoking an atmosphere of quiet tension and subtle transformation.
Dead Mind Records Bundle
A comprehensive survey of experimental sound practices across generations, geographies, and aesthetic approaches. This four-release bundle from Dead Mind Records presents vital documents of uncompromising artistic vision: from contemporary electronic collaboration to archival excavations of ambient and industrial histories.
At the center stands Carlos Giffoni & Joachim Nordwall's New Music - a visceral convergence of two sound artists operating at the outer edges of techno, noise, and electro-ac…
More Songs of Civilization
Excavating new sonic layers from archives and homemade instruments, Darrell DeVore extends his panoramic collage with More Songs of Civilization - the third volume of his highly personal, genre-scrambling series. This edition continues the kaleidoscopic fusion of outsider jazz, synthetic textures, chants, and fragmented ensemble dialogues, casting a wide net through decades of radical experimentation and archival recovery.
A Song of Civilization Up to Now
With a panoramic sweep spanning ancient chant, synth experiment and fractured jazz, Darrell DeVore crafts a heady multi-part journey in A Song of Civilization Up to Now. Homemade instruments, electronics and stuttering ensemble work animate an unpredictable collection that tunnels between traditions, collage and improvisation, reflecting on humanity’s creative arc through uncompromising sonic invention.
You Must Be Certain Of The Devil
CD Edition. In 1988, with America's AIDS death toll at 46,000 and antivirals still years away, Diamanda Galás released You Must Be Certain of the Devil, the final installment of her Masque of the Red Death trilogy. Her brother Philip had died of AIDS-related illness in 1986. She had been attending Act Up protests. Critics dismissed her as "the AIDS lady," unwilling to reckon with what she was actually doing: creating a work she described as "begun in 1984 and not completed until the end of the e…
Thylacine
Drawing from Tasmania’s rugged landscapes and the spectral absence of its lost fauna, Clinton Green composes a series of site-specific sound works that fuse kinetic turntable setups with ambient field recordings. The album is an evocative journey through environmental improvisation, blending mechanical invention, wildlife acoustics, and subtle instrumental textures into a narrative of listening and ecological reverence.
Blindfold test
Movement, unpredictability and found sound take center stage as Clinton Green and Ernie Althoff bring together turntable constructions and hand-built kinetic instruments. Their joint work finds a magnetic middle ground between gentle percussive chaos and immersive, floating textures—highlighting the overlapping of machine logic and human touch.
Steady State
In a sonic dialogue that balances delicacy and depth, Clinton Green and Barnaby Oliver explore the shifting textures of acoustics and resonance. Employing bowed aluminum bowls, strings, and a grand piano, their work unfolds in patient layers that probe the very essence of sound and its environment, evoking an atmosphere of quiet tension and subtle transformation.
Melophobia
Melophobia spins tension out of spontaneous contact - Dave Tucker (guitar) and Pierpaolo Martino (double bass and electronics) improvise with sharp attention to rhythm, fracture, and digital manipulation, conjuring environments that threaten – and then dissolve – melodic order.
Semiotic Drift
Semiotic Drift is a living conversation - Maggie Nicols uses voice as a map to possibility, Matilda Rolfsson provides creaking, insistent percussion, and Mark Wastell frames everything in the deep resonance of amplified tam-tam. The work rides the edge between storytelling and pure abstraction.