New Arrivals
Talisman
Debut release on reissue label Otic curated by mastering engineer and musician Joshua Stevenson (Otic Sound, Staked Plain, Von Bingen, Cast Exotic Archives, JOMF).
Orientations
A raid on the values of oriental jazz master and pioneering ethnomusicologist Lloyd Miller.
Merci Yaya Bongo - Female Animation Groups in Gabon 1982-1989 (2LP)
Gabon, 1980’s. President Omar Bongo has been in power since 1967. Together with his wife, the infamous singer Patience Dabany, he invents one of the ultimate political propaganda machine: ‘animation groups’, massive female choirs and dancers, up to 60 women deep, singing the praise of his regime over some of the best soukous rhythms ever, broadcasted live on TV. Between 1982 and 1989, mainly thanks to the flourishing oil economy, a record-label is created, a state-of-the-art recording studio is …
Over The Stations
The power trio that is charging up, charging up and charging up.
Rewind and release. - Guy Mercier
Togo Soul 2
Hot Casa Records present Togo Soul 2: Selected Rare Togolese Recordings from 1974 to 1989.
Ukouk. Round Singing Voices of the Ainu 2012-2024
Marewrew (pronounced: Ma-leoo-leoo / mɑleːul̯ eːu)̯ is a female vocal group that sings traditional Ainu songs. The music of the long-suppressed people from northern Japan has been a particular focus of Pingipung's output in recent years, together with Oki Kano who recorded and produced many Ainu artists. Following various re-releases by Umeko Ando, the late grande dame of traditional Ainu music, the spotlight is now on the a cappella music of Marewrew, which by the way means ‘butterfly’ in Ainu.…
Coraje Buenos Aire
Killer unreleased 1973 post-bop, avant jazz album from Argentina, with highly political texts. The missing link in Argentina's jazz history finally sees the light. Coraje Buenos Aires was recorded in 1973, conceived as a follow-up to the historic Bronca Buenos Aires (1971). More explicitly than its predecessor, the texts in Coraje denounced the atrocities of the military junta that ruled the country, and the album was inevitably censored before being released. The tapes, thought to have been bur…
House of Gold
Sofa is proud to announce the debut album of Montreal-based band House of Gold, a very special group playing American composer Isaiah Ceccarelli’s songs and compositions. House of Gold is a quartet that blends quiet melodies and songwriting, chamber music, minimalist folk song, improvisation, jazz harmony, and early music influences into an immersive and embracing sonic experience. Composer, drummer, and singer Isaiah Ceccarelli has built a repertoire of songs around his original texts and intim…
Funky Stuff
Fresh reissued magic of Funky Stuff, formerly a rare exquisite by jazzmaster Jiro Inagaki, originally released in 1975. An enduring, pioneering fusion of jazz, funk, soul and rock - the album features some of the best and most acclaimed Japanese musicians of the time, enlisting the talent-wares of Hiromasa Suzuki on keyboards, Akira Ishikawa on drums and Takeru Muraoka on sax.
Six Crossings
*300 copies limited edition* "Six Crossings" is c_c’s ultimate recording with the electronic setup he has honed for nearly 10 years of live performances: several drum machines and a sampler interconnected to a mixing system and feedback effects, analog and digital hybrid. Between basic writing and improvisation, all the songs were recorded in a single take during the same day, at ZZLand, while he was back from the ZAD of Notre Dame Des Landes, charged with the good vibes of a huge party in suppo…
Cryptophasia
Cryptophasia is the third album from Scottish twin brothers Andy and Mike Truscott under their Kinbrae moniker. Shifting focus from their previous landscape-based releases, Cryptophasia sees the band explore their relationship growing up as twins and how this has shaped and formed them as people both individually and collectively. Reflecting on experiences across their lives, the album deals with themes including family dynamics, lived experiences and memories, identity, sibling rivalry, isolati…
Diana
Progressive folk act Comus was a true one-off, their unique take on folk rock a spine-tinglingly shocking one, even as the music draws the listener into singalongs. Formed by singer-guitarist Roger Wootton with some art school mates, including guitarist Glen Goring, violinist Colin Pearson and oboist Rob Young, Comus began recording their debut LP for RCA, who dropped them halfway through, leading to further recordings for Dawn with Barry Murray. Every song on this single bears the hallmark of t…
The Soft Machine
The first two albums by England's legendary Soft Machine, originally released in 1968 and 1969, remain among the most innovative and influential releases of that musically fertile era. These seminal LPs offered a visionary psychedelic-progressive-jazz-rock mix that helped to make the Soft Machine one of Britain's first significant underground bands, as well as a key force in the birth of both progressive rock and jazz-rock. A product of the same fabled Canterbury scene that spawned such beloved …
Debased Shapes
Second full length LP ‘Debased Shapes’ by Australian band Sky Needle performing hypnotic, messed up, unmistakable / mistaken music using an array of invented and homemade instruments.
“defies genre and spits phlegm in the face of categorization” Boston Hassle.
“makes little sense.” Record Collector.
“as immediately filthy as it is undeniably artistic” Inpress.
“have your ear drums exfoliated by tones you forgot existed.” The Thousands.
“essential listening if you like staring at walls and imagin…
Flowers Of Romance
Listening to Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody”I get a sudden striking flash of Michel Henritzi at work. To me Michel is first and foremost a working man, be it in Dustbreeders the Metz originating so called “noise” outfit, or in his collabs with a wide and varied range of Japanese comrades such as Tetuzi Akiyama, Fukuoka Rinji and of course Junko, always retaining his name as the anchor point of a free man. Freed from the salaried workers yoke, the worker can claim his own name…
The Upcoming Flame
*2024 stock* Stefan Christensen swamps delicate threads of melody in a muted squall of distortion. Waves of agitated noise, tamped down but still fractious, roll over the structures of his songs, so that it’s hard to tell whether the song or the dissonant scree of sound is the main thing. A current member of Headroom and frequent collaborator with members of Mountain Movers, Alexander and Nagual, Christensen layers haunted sung imagery over slow looped constructions of guitar and percussion. Her…
Mouse Sluts
*2024 stock* Bruit Direct Disques proudly announce our fourth release of 2015 with a new four track 12″ record by Mouse Sluts (Dan Melchior, Graham Lambkin, Letha Rodman Melchior and Glen) playing at glorious 45rpm.
The music contained on this E.P. came about almost by accident. During a period of intense correspondence between Dan Melchior and Graham Lambkin, a story from a Folkestone area newspaper tickled the warped funny bones of the duo and gave birth to some lyrics that were dictated into …
Standing Abs
"Terrine/sound is a salutary balancing act-convincing to destabilise prevalent control systems ;- a proto -resistance assembly/and (meta ) language. Organic /electronique in the guise of “techno£”? Who for !?=the tech adventurous surely as much as for those declaring a tech-no-phobia /immunity/,the tech-sceptics ((for those who desire such antiquities ?as mood ,feelings ,words!!?,worlds !!,provocations !!!, As the agnostics will vouch techno often wont or cant supply these within the functions o…
The Last Temptation Of Thrill
This record needs ,or is pleading to have a FAC/tory catalogue number, but for an “actual”? factory state-of -mind ;-documentation for the disenfranchised and exiled snot !;-the love herein is turned fumescent and gluey Nusidm (the Australian Glen Schenau) has “de” and “re”-constructed a cell dwelling paradigm to his desire, or for it? Where whatever’s “ugly”? And squalid is honorable or not at all . The artist, hard to believe, means to communicate through his incarceration, self -imposed but …
Ciutats
Lès Modernos present a psycho-geographic trip to Andalusia, a journey recomposed in a green Corolla. Mechanized and pastoral collages. Miniature songs, luminous yet just a little heavy, from the great theater of life. Car radio samples, recorded from the passenger seat of the Father's vehicle. Al-Mutreb Abul-Loul, Big City Orchestra, Eric Copeland, Bertold Brecht, Sachiko Matsubara, Hopeton ‘Scientist’ Brown, Cabaret Voltaire (Red Mecca), a French singer, resolutely of the now (or Jonathan Richm…