★Smalltown Supersound
Provoke
Huge Tip! Lasse Marhaug has for 35 years been one of Norway’s most prolific and active sound and visual artists. As a producer, studio engineer, curator, photographer, designer, filmmaker, composer, improviser, self-publisher and writer Marhaug has worked across a wide range of formats. Collaborators include artists like Joe McPhee, Merzbow, Jenny Hval, Okkyung Lee, Jim O’Rourke, Paal Nilssen-Love, Kevin Drumm and many more. Despite being involved in hundreds of releases, Marhaug’s solo albums a…
Most, but Potentially All
Eivind Lønning has been sharing ideas with Jim O’Rourke for several years: the duo collaborated on music for the Whitney’s ‘Calder: Hypermobility’ exhibition, and Lønning played trumpet on O’Rourke’s brilliant 2020 album ‘Shutting Down Here’. For this new work, Lønning headed to O’Rourke and EIko Ishibashi’s home studio in the Japanese mountains, where he teased unfamiliar, alien textures from his trumpet to open the labyrinthine three-part composition. O’Rourke took the material and subsequentl…
Imprint
Best known for his work for legendary Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (he even designed the enigmatic “bang” in 2021’s labyrinthine ‘Memoria’), Japan’s Koichi Shimizu has been honing a unique musical language since the early ‘90s, where some of his earliest material can be found on a split LP with Yoshiteru Himuro via once-iconic imprint Worm Interface (itself home to music from Autechre side-line Gescom). ‘Imprint’, was initially released quietly back in 2021 and has been remastered for…
Pmxper
Pmxper is a new collaboration between the artists Pavel Milyakov (aka Buttechno) and Perila (real name Aleksandra Zakharenko). They will debut live at the influential Berlin Atonal festival in September. The music has elements of spoken word, electronics, guitars and drums, and has the same feel, flow and freedom as Young Marble Giants' classic album Colossal Youth.
Farewell to Faraway Friends (Wurlitzer Improvisations 2021-23)
Stunning recordings from Norwegian pianist Anja Lauvdal, who follows-up last year’s Laurel Halo-produced ‘From a Story Now Lost’ with an album of improvisations made on a Wurlitzer electric piano, featuring the great Lasse Marhaug on mastering duties.
Music From The Living Monument
Carmen Villain follows last years ‘Only Love From Now On’ with this new full length exploration of soporific, slow-moving ambience and disembowelled dub, a score she composed for a contemporary dance performance by acclaimed Choreographer Eszter Salamon. Simply put, it’s one of the most captivating things we’ve heard this year; all luxurious texture-cycles in possession of a delirious, dreamlike quality that hits a rarefied spot somewhere between Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works Vol.II’, cl…
Org
** 300 copies ** First ever reissue of an influential and much sought-after norsk drone masterpiece originally self-released in 1996 in an edition of just 108 copies, tipped by all the people you ought to be taking tips from, most notably Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi. Deeper than deep, it's a durational masterwork that connects ley lines between Ramleh, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Deathprod, When and Antena, taking unexpected turns and sounding better than ever on this new edition, …
Las Camelias, Tres Equinas
Las Camelias, Tres Esquinas is the debut album by Norwegian-Chilean flautist and composer Johanna Orellana for the Oslo-based electronic and experimental music imprint, Smalltown Supersound. It is a collection of intimate electroacoustic compositions, flute improvisations and field recordings, augmented by the production and recording techniques of fellow Smalltown alum Carmen Villain. However, Las Camelias is also a solemn and deeply personal eulogy to Orellana’s recently deceased father, a Chi…
Compositions
Oslo’s Deathprod (aka Helge Sten) announces Compositions, his new album out January 27th on Smalltown Supersound, and presents its lead single/video, “Composition 1.” The first new Deathprod studio project since 2019’s Occulting Disk—“a mesmerizing, terrifying, and emotionally nuanced ‘anti-fascist ritual’ of an album” (Pitchfork)—Compositions is the result of an intense period at his legendary Audio Virus Lab studio in central Oslo. All tracks are released in chronological order – in other word…
Sow Your Gold In The White Foliated Earth
Staggering, career-defining work from Norwegian vanguard Helge Sten (aka Deathprod), who drives relentlessly forward on this illuminating new tome, using Harry Partch's extremely rare metal and glass instruments to pen a major new work that’s been years in the making and somehow resets modern experimental mores. Truly one of the most exceptional, most unclassifiable albums we've heard in ages - one that does a rare thing of having immediate impact - only to further expand deeper into the psyche …
Signe Emmeluth
Its an honor for the AFJ-Series to introduce the self-titled debut album by Danish Oslo resident Signe Emmeluth. Recorded at Flerbruket, in the forest an hour outside of Oslo - Emmeluth alone in a room with her alto and tenor saxophones.
A fantastic session of sax solo ecstasies recorded by Magnus Hemnes Nergård. Much like Joe McPhee's Tenor and Peter Brötzmann's 14 Love Songs, this album share the same beautiful intimacy. It is close, sparse, poetic and raw at the same time. Minimalist and soul…
Sequential Stream
Big Tip! *Limited edition of 500 copies.* Properly transcendent deep-dream jazz fantasy from prolific trumpet virtuoso Arve Henriksen (Supersilent) and Norwegian pianist Kjetil Husebø, together shaping an album that’s much, much more than the not so inconsiderable sum of its parts. Like a fever-dream comedown, it takes us from insanely rich sounding 4th world topographies to fizzing, electric ambience and fluttering prepared piano, perfectly soundtracking the humid un-reality we’re living throug…
Context
Tip! *In process of stocking. 300 copies limited release* Over almost three decades of activity, Marhaug has carved out notoriety as a solo performer, a prolific collaborator (working with everyone from Sunn O))) to Jim O'Rourke) and as a busy producer, who's notched up credits on some of the most striking-sounding albums of the last few years. This new album was created as a swan song for the infamous Oslo studio that he's inhabited for 17 years, prior to his move back to the Arctic Circle wher…
Electro Nova
Like a rediscovered Viking burial ship, Electro Nova compiles near-mythical drone recordings produced in 1998 and described by Helge Sten aka Deathprod as some of the most important music to ever come out of Norway. It’s the work of Kåre Dehlie Thorstad and compiles two of the earliest releases on Smalltown Supersound, back when it was basically no more than a bedroom operation. It’s taken over two decades, but finally the label have given the material a first ever proper release on vinyl, compl…
Half A Dove In New York, Half A Dove In Buenos Aires
The NetCast improvisation with Reynols (Miguel Tomasin, drums; guitarist Robeto Conlazo, guitarist Anla Courtis) Monique Buzzarté - trombone and Kevin McCoy-computer processing is my first International collaboration in this form. So far I have been involved in several multi-site improvisation NetCasts in the USA only. Through Pauline Oliveros Foundation I am interested in helping in the evolution of the Internet as an international venue where diverse collaborators can engage with one another. …
Contra Songs
Tip! *In process of stocking* ‘Alone at night. Large church room. Lots of air. Stone. Wood. Glass. Quietness. Stillness. The dead and the alive. Surroundedness. ‘Existentialistic matters spinning. Peaceful state of mind. The dialectic equilibrium of complete stillness and deeper thoughts on contra-resistance on local and global levels. Fighting (y)our stupidities. Contra. I have never ever before gotten myself into such an unusual setting for a recording project. And yet, so simple. So naked. S…
All My Clothes
*In process of stocking* "This is the first release in a series of albums on Smalltown Supersound with Norwegian freeform pianist Anja Lauvdal. On All My Clothes, Lauvdal teams up with her friend, the reclusive and now retired(?) Norwegian drummer Joakim Heibø for a session in the great tradition of piano and drums at Flerbruket Studios, Hemnes outside of Oslo.
Anja (born 1987) is from the small town of Flekkefjord in the south of Norway (where Smalltown Supersound was founded) and from the age …
Frijazz Mot Rasisme
Tip! 'Frijazz mot rasisme' or ‘Free Jazz Against Racism’, as you may have guessed, is a compilation of Norwegian contemporary and outsider music. There’s plenty to get your teeth stuck into here. Highlights include Sanskriti Shrestha & Andreas Wildhagen cut a percussive groove, there’s the strange processed sounds of Propan and the subversive Agnes Hvizdalek.
Stitched and compiled by Anja Lauvdal and Tine Hvidsten, the set features 18 outsider Jazz burners centered around a varied and diverse ca…
Harmonia Macrocosmica
** Restocked. Edition of 500, no repress, no digital.** For nearly 30 years, the Norwegian imprint, Smalltown Supersound, has ridden the razors edge of adventurous sound, issuing startlingly ambitious release that span a diverse number of musical idioms, from Neneh Cherry, Arp, The Thing, Lindstrøm, Dungen, Merzbow, Kevin Drumm, Mats Gustafsson, Paal Nilssen-Love, Ken Vandermark, and near countless number of others. Last year the imprint launched a brand-new series, Actions For Free Jazz, with t…
Actions For Free Jazz
Edition of 500, no repress, no digital** Smalltown Superjazzz was a free-jazz subsidiary label to Smalltown Supersound from 2005-2012. The label has been dormant in the years 2012 to 2019, but is now reborn as the AFJ-Serie. The AFJ-Series represents a new start - built on the foundation and heritage of the Superjazzz label. AFJ-Series is short for Actions for free jazz. This was the slogan for Smalltown Superjazzz and was borrowed at the time from Don Cherry & Krystzof Penderecki’s The New Eter…