Donaueschinger Musiktage 2000
The annual collegno offering from the Donaueschingen Music Festival, for the millennium year2000, runs to 4 CDs and just under 5 hours of new music, for combinationsranging from a straightforward string trio, to 4 soloists, 4 ensembles, andlive electronics! All the works areperformed 'live', and all are world première performances, so that this set,with its illuminating notes by each of the 11 composers, constitutes aninvaluable historical document.
Der Engel der Geschichte
Vinko Globokar advises listeners to "make up their own movies to the music." The Slovenian-French European does not believe in explaining music. And the deeply moving expressiveness of his orchestral trilogy Der Engel der Geschichte, "The angel of history," inspired by Paul Klee's painting "Angelus Novus" and now documented by this recording of the exemplary SWR production, certainly speaks for itself. The listener encounters three disturbing sound images: the first, "Zerfall," refers to the dis…
Eisenberg
Archaic sounds, songs as psychodramas, plowing through the depths and shallows of the orchestra: experience Globokar's cosmos of original, intense music.
Interluder
On their album Interluder, AkkoSax are busy fathoming the depths of musical history: MedievalRenaissance meets FolkJazz.
Ecstasy of the Angels
The formidable trio recorded live. Michel Henritzi creates bleak, fractured landscapes with snare drum, wood and metal junk, turntable and feedback. Cult favorite Masayoshi Urabe adds uneasy atmosphere with alto sax and guitar. The banshee vocals of Junko bring almost undescribeable dread to the mix.
Musica Electroacustica
New release in this great series, dedicated to charting "unheralded classics of electronic music: 1947 to 1983". Every release comes beautifully packaged in perfect shrunken replica sleeves with an embossed sticker with each title pressed in a limited edition of 100 copies. The series puts back in print a number of record collector fantasies alongside a ton of unlikely idiosyncratic one-offs, and taken together it makes for one of the most ambitious and consistently dazzling series-runs of the e…
Estórias para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos
One composition from 1967 (the first), the rest from the late 70s. Here we have patiently forming compositions of a variety of means, although to be fair, the order in the title is clearly in order of importance. The voice is the most important element in three of the four compositions (the second is mostly ambient and dominated by piano and atmospherics), while the last is most likely where Jocy draws the electronics (although their appearance is fleeting and only used as window dressing). Thro…
Cortical Art III
Boston's best cdr-label is run by a fine gentleman named K., and it's dedicated to reissuing obscure 20th century avant garde electronic music in shrunk down replica sleeves, complete with inserts, etc. Follow up to the brainwave recordings made our fave man in the ivory tower, Pierre. It's also on Creel Pone. This one's a performance of the piece given for French brain doctors, who presumably used similar equipment to track the neurological problems of their patients. In addition, the brain whi…
Slaapkamers Met Slagroom
The Dutch title that literally translates to "Bedrooms with Whipped Cream" and harkens back to the band's experimental days. On three tracks spread over 28 minutes, Sonic Youth work out extended, hypnotic themes for non-existent psychological case studies. The title track, the longest of the three "songs" included here, opens with a swirl of sound before eventually settling into a 17 minute cavalcade of guitar effects overlaying a particularly "in-your-face" drum sound. The results are simultane…
Les Maledictus Sound
(Originally released in 1968) this is one of the most bizarre records ever released and one of the most sought after titles on the collectors' market. The Maledictus Sound are to instrumental rock what Frankenstein was to science... a laboratory monster... a strange creature assembled from a mish-mash of diverse musical sounds. Psychedelic pop, romantic ballads, musical tongue-in-cheek, drugged out chipmunks, near-delirium sound effects, horror movie screamadelia and a mega-twisted '60s vibe. Ec…
Quo
180 gram vinyl version of Stefan Neville' latest opus. Covers are two-color silkscreens by VG Kids on heavy-gauge recycled stock. Edition of 300. Here's what Soft Abuse had to say about Quo: as the title self-effacingly implies, Quo proffers a triumphant, primo slice of past Pumiceisms: uncertain progressions, anomalous structure, inimitable guitar buzz, sublime melancholy, and distorted vocals (crooned, spoken & moaned). Quo once more finds Pumice cruising the convergence of pop, folk and noise…
In The Sack
Among collectors of ultra-rare, private-press editions, the recordings of Mark Tucker represent the pinnacle of a highly-personalized, untouchably damaged musical vision. In 1968 he founded the Tetrapod Spools label to release direct-cut acetates ... Full Descriptionand reel-to-reels containing his unlikely music masterpieces; Tetrapod's first vinyl release, the highly experimental BATSTEW (1975), became highly coveted by enthusiasts of basement-level, loner-psych productions. After suffering a …
I\'m One Of Those Monsters Numb With Grace
James Brown had the nick-name ‘the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business’. Dirk Serries from Belgium must be one of the hardest working men of the ambient music scene. From the mid 80’s on he filled dozens of albums with atmospheric music under the name of Vidna Obmana. In 2005 he started a new project, Fear Falls Burning, and the number of releases already cannot be counted one one hand. The concept of Fear Falls Burning is a clear: a single man performs real-time on the electric guitar, which s…
Gathering Blue
On blue-colored vinyl. A work of blissful delight. Aidan Baker provides four sides of enchantment in this long-in-the-making 2LP set. Gathering Blue provides new original material plus a stunning cover of the Joy Division track '24 Hours' as well as an extended work-out of the amazing remix of 'The Cicada Sings Our Love Song' by Building Castles Out Of Matchsticks, which was originally released in 2005 on the ultra-limited and long-deleted Arcolepsy Records CD Remixes. This really is Aidan Baker…
Solo Voice & Electronics: Memories Of Murder / Always Been A Sto
Massive double album from C. Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core that mops up two years’ (2007-2008) worth of vocal experiments, running from acoustic throat-splurges and hysterical ticker-tape tirades through the sound of breath caressing microphones and physically impossible computer edited body extensions. The whole deal comes with liner notes from Yeh documenting the various strategies and set-ups, connecting sound poetry and 20th century avant garde techniques with current psych/noise practice…
In The Stars
Sabbath-esque riffs, putrid thrashing, animal howls, primitive blast beats, cheap keyboards, broken throat vocals, necro production, guitar solos, abyssic noise & a theatrical sensibility for the epic. LIMITED to 333 copies on multicolored vinyl. Exclusive artwork by acclaimed outsider artist G LANSARD. Features members of BURIAL HEX.
You+Me+The Continuum
Primordial Undermind's second full-length blast of psychedelic freakout guitar bliss evolves the sonics found on their critically-acclaimed September Gurls debut into freer, more expansive territory, while retaining plenty of the finely-honed song craft familiar to those lucky enough to have grabbed any of their unfailingly excellent singles. Long modal excursions into the heart of free guitar darkness like "Device", "Turning of the Worm" and "Persistence of Trinity", are counterbalanced by defi…
Four Spells
The debut LP from eccentric ambient-psych pair Sherri West and Taylor Clark was recorded at a self-described "mountain fortress" in California, despite the couple generally residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And like their disparate locations, the duo dabbles in varying forms of weirdness, from the amateurish, Deerhoof-esque racket of opener "I Am A Pony" to the dreamier blips and bleeps of songs like "Particles," which evoke a Hawaiian vacation as narrated by Rod Serling. LAVA CHILDREN strikes a uniq…
Tape Chants
A series made up of performances & compositions using tapes as the main source material, as well as mono speakers of various cassette players for the piece's amplification. Inspired by experiments with tape loops, cassette players & recorders, analog synths, sine oscillators, mixer feedback, contact mics & various acoustic sound sources. The studio version adds rhythmic textures to the once static drone compositions.
Shaking, Waking
Clear Vinyl. Anyone who grabbed hold of the recent 'Alive in my Mouth' LP from ex-Baltimore trio Heavy Winged will know just how essential their tunes are. Made up of the classic bass, drums and guitar combo, the noise they generate is anything but predictable - the guitars rasp and drone, the bass bubbles and resonates and the drums rise and fall like tidal waves hitting a doomed continent. This is not your average white band, and 'Waking, Shaking' is possibly their finest release to date as th…