★Kranky
Mirages
First time this classic Tim Hecker album has been available on vinyl. Incredibly rich, sumptuous album from Tim Hecker, layering his particular blend of organic ambience with slivers of piano, found sounds and the quiet hum of abandoned machinery. Playing counterpart to the processed acoustic transmissions of Fennesz, Hecker takes a much darker route, only offering relief from the mass of textures he concocts with deep buried remnants of melody and light. As a follow-up to Mille Plateaux's subli…
Virgins
Virgins was recorded during three periods in 2012, mostly in Reykjavik, Montreal and Seattle, using ensembles in live performance. The sound palette of this work is wider, almost 'percussive' and tighter sounding than previous works. While this album remains committed to a painterly form of musical abstraction, it is also a record of restrained composition recorded live primarily in intimate studio rooms. This record employs woodwinds, piano and synthesizers towards an effort at doing what digit…
Space Mirror
Space travel is the dream of many and the reality of few. Since Yuri Gagarin first shed the bonds of earth gravity in 1961, only about 500 humans have made the trip beyond the atmosphere. Ken Camden travels to space while still grounded on terra firma. His vessel of choice is a guitar and some effects with which he journeys on fantastical expeditions and surveys the biggest territory of all, the one between your ears. The glimmering sound fields he forms could be a soundtrack to an epic '60s sci…
Era
"Era is the fourth annual report from Chicago powerhouse quartet Disappears. It was formed during the gloom of the Chicago winter at Electrical Audio by now regular foil John Congleton. Insular and dark, the album sees the band further refining their love of dub, minimalism and repetition into their most original and stark set yet. It harks back to the early 80's post punk period, when almost anything seemed possible with the classic two guitar, bass and drums lineup, and exploration and…
Antithesis
2013 repress, originally released in 2004 "first of two lp-only releases on kranky; this one features some of my favorite archival material, over which i labored some time ago, then again for some time late last year... on one hand i love theses pieces dearly and listen to them often, but on the other i didn’t want to seem like i was eschewing computer music altogether for a more “organic” route (couldn’t be further from the truth). i came very close to doing a 300 copy lo-fi lp of this material…
Hymnal
"Hymnal is the fourth kranky album by Thomas Meluch under his musical alias Benoit Pioulard, following Précis (2006), Temper (2008) and Lasted (2010). It was written and recorded throughout a year spent in southeastern England and on the European mainland, during which the ubiquity of religious iconography and grandiose cathedrals became an unexpected muse. Raised as a Catholic but never especially pious, Meluch drew on this aspect of social history as the basis for Hymnal's 12 chapters. H…
Connected
Presenting a new collaboration featuring Oren Ambarchi on guitar, the electronics of Robin Fox, and both performing on various other instruments. The music on this album came about as the result of the two being asked to co-compose the soundtrack for a new production by renowned Australian contemporary dance company Chunky Move for their Connected production. 'Chunky Move's artistic director Gideon Obarzanek was drawn to the organic and deeply musical qualities of Ambarchi's work and the digital…
Sequitur
Emeralds co-pilot Steve Hauschildt follows up his 'Tragedy & Geometry' album for Kranky with the plush new age disco dreamscapes of 'Sequitur'. Arguably, Steve is the lazy one in Emeralds, conjuring only three solo album to date compared with the gazillion respective works from bandmates John Elliot and Mark McGuire. But, as evidenced here and previously, he's also the canniest and most pop-wise, honing a more concise, richly rhythmic and melodic style of composition still rooted in cereb…
The Ballasted Orchestra
The much-in-demand vinyl version of the second (or third, depending on how you calculate) Stars of the Lid album, their first for Kranky, now finally reissued on vinyl. The original 4 track cassette recordings were remastered and new lacquers were cut, and the original artwork has been updated* When it comes to genre-defining releases, even releases that define a band's career, few sum up ambient music, and the work of Stars of the Lid in general like 'The Ballasted Orchestra'. Released in 1…
AIA
This is the first CD issue of Grouper's 2011 self released two part album subtitled 'Dream Loss' and 'Alien Observer,' comprised of songs written and recorded over the last four years. A chronological order informs the thematic trajectory of the dual release. 'Dream Loss' is the first album and is a collection of older songs, while 'Alien Observer' is mostly made of newer songs. Each is meant to stand solidly on its own, and also as a satellite in the other's system, subjects on either side of t…
Opus 2
Developing on the trance-induction and brainwave entrainment techniques explored on the first Ethernet album 144 Pulsations of Light, Opus 2 moves into deeper, more introspective and emotive territory. A stronger focus on melody and harmonic structure results in pieces that almost approach, but never quite arrive at, traditional song forms, while still leaving much to the imagination of the listener, evading mental categorization and revealing new sonic experiences with each listen. The bu…
Sketches From New Brighton
*Deluxe 2LP Edition Now In Stock* Scott Morgan makes a welcome return with his seventh album of amorphous ambient drift as Loscil. Since 2001 the Vancouver resident has eked out a special niche with his much-loved Kranky releases, a sound that's equal parts dub techno momentum and tenderly organic sound design, one which consistently and carefully treads a fine line between crepuscular, chamber-like melancholy and widescreen optimism. 'Sketches From New Brighton' is an impressionistic col…
Black Earth
Black Earth is a haunted and magical place. There's an old barn there with many rooms and a silo that's filled with dead insects. Outside there's a big wood pile filled with spider webs that probably has black widows living in it. There are mysterious plants growing everywhere. At night, when the air is crisp and clean, you can lie on your back by the fire and look up at the stars and listen to the animals and insects making their music. A trip to Black Earth could change you forever and you may…
Pre Language
Right on cue, the third annual report from Chicago's Disappears is submitted for your consideration. Following up on the acclaimed Guider album released just over a year ago, and with new drummer Steve Shelley now fully integrated into the group, these songs were again forged into proper shape during live shows before heading to the studio and the tape machine. Never ones to dither or be indecisive, it's a full-bore assault from the opening track to the last as Disappears attack these new…
We Will Always Be
There's a disarming honesty to the way Michigan-based husband and wife duo Windy & Carl communicate with one another. A blog post from Windy, published in late 2011, describes the making of We Will Always Be, framing it in the context of their relationship. "Yeah, we have had bumps in the road, and on occasion it seems as if we may never recover from these bumps, but we do," she wrote. That type of candor doesn't stop at the written word; it also bleeds through into the duo's music. Often their …
Tragedy & Geometry
On Tragedy & Geometry, Steve Hauschildt, one-third of Cleveland’s neo-kosmische revivalists Emeralds, crafts an hour’s worth of instrumental synthesizer vignettes. His pieces tend to evoke thoughts of bygone eras of technological pop culture — many of these tracks could be placed seamlessly into Blade Runner, or into some lost Playstation-era (you know, when Final Fantasy VII was cutting edge) videogame. Hauschildt doesn’t craft wholly formed songs so much as he works with detached, technologica…
Exile
A Charalambides album is always an event in our book, and this new one on Kranky is superb stuff, arguably taking their fizzy, fuzzy psychedelic pop and drone-folk sound to a whole new level. It's mad to think that Tom and Christina Carter have been making music together for 20 years now, but it shows in the coherence of Exile, their first LP since 2007's Likeness. It begins cautiously, with the uber-minimal twanger 'Autumn Leaves', like Richard Chartier scoring a spaghetti western, but t…
Harmony In Ultraviolet
This is the first proper vinyl release for Tim Hecker's breakthrough 2006 album. At the time of original issue, there was a small run of a few hundred vinyl copies done by a small German label, but this was pressed on an inferior sounding single LP which was much too short for the length of the album, not to mention the wide dynamic range of the recording. This new version is mastered at 45rpm over four sides for maximum sound quality. Full color gatefold sleeve.
Dropped Pianos
This Tim Hecker release is composed of sketch pieces recorded in 2010 in preparation for what would become the Ravedeath, 1972 album. All of the compositions are piano driven and minimal in nature. This is not a new Tim Hecker album, but rather a peek behind the curtains into the working process. That these pieces stand on their own as compelling soundworks is a testament to the fact that Tim Hecker is at the absolute top of his game at the moment, and has been for years.
Common Era
It's been five years since the last Belong long player, as the duo works slowly to organize their sound works. Both the time invested, and the wait, have been well rewarded with this return.Common Era shows extraordinary progression from that first album of dense, scorched earth instrumentals, hints of a new direction having been revealed on the Colorloss Record EP from 2008 which contained covers of four should-have-been classics from the original psychedelic era. The new material has such comm…