New Arrivals
Vista
Saxophonist Marion Brown ended his '70s stint at Impulse! Records with this serene and colorful album. It features musicians such as drummer Ed Blackwell and bassist Reggie Workman, plus Stanley Cowell on acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes. While Brown wrote the blissful coaster Vista, the five other compositions are well-chosen, starting with an inviting version of Cowell's "Maimoun" and an impressionistic and deeply meditative take on Stevie Wonder's "Visions".
Pneuma
Violinist and composer Michael White was among the first to play the violin in avant-garde jazz, and became one of the first jazz violinists to play jazz rock fusion. During his career, he played with Sun Ra, McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Pharoah Sanders and others.
Black Sun Ensemble Vol. 2
"Lion's second volume of the Black Sun Ensemble's recordings for their classic first album contains an alternate version of that album, including the tracks from the Camera Obscura label CD (2000) version of that album -- well, sort of. When sifting through the masters while preparing the Lion reissue of the real, actual first Black Sun Ensemble album -- as issued in 1985 on Pyknotic -- it became clear that many of the original LP tracks were also on the Camera Obscura CD release, but under the …
a two
The Kyoto-based musician Yusaku Arai is known for his production work in the avant-garde scenes of Japanese hip-hop and R&B. On this solo album, though, he offers more lengthy, piano-centric meditations that use the techniques of musique concrète. Arai’s compositions on the A-side emerged out of a reflection on the corporeal and interwoven relationship between his own body and things he encountered in the world—the ocean, a flower petal, a plastic sheet, a hand. His intent is to represent a proc…
Forever Voiceless
An instrumental edition of the critically acclaimed 2022 album, Foreverandevernomore written and produced by Brian Eno.
Tightrope Walker
Tip! *315 copies limited edition* Barstool Mountain returns to Absurd Exposition after the well-regarded "III" CD from 2022. On "Tightrope Walker", the project's debut LP, Mattias Gustafsson continues his "harried, frazzled, grizzled" experiments in tape mangling with his Altar of Flies alter-ego. The album furthers the buildings-crumbling barrage of "III", leaving just enough room to realize that the walls are coming down hard.
Leadlined
*2023 stock* Leadlined is a 35-minute lamentation of the perverse ideology of the English, shaped by sound collage and heavy electronics. Heaving drones of memory churn the decayed hum of modernism and the spiritual bus routes of the past. £40 million of military hardware flying low over the colonial jugular; the knifing wind off the Kentish coast, shearing through the tendons of Roman roads and Saxon shores. Through the record’s mediation of these imagined pasts and displaced futures — the sine…
Free Time / Dead Time
Free Time/dead Time is the first full-length 12" LP from Robbie Judkins’ long-running experimental sound project Left Hand Cuts Off The Right. The album combines elements of focused minimalism, experimental electronics and twitching musique concrete to create a series of meditative compositions that reflect on the precarious boundaries between labour, leisure, and the quality of lived experience under late-capitalism. Judkins exploratory practice of sonic experimentation invokes the work of Blac…
Pray For Your Prey
Recording live on a rainy night at Brussels in October 2017 “Pray For Your Prey” will capture your attention with it’s s striking power. An eclectic mixture of noise, experimental, free jazz and improvised music blended exemplary together creating a volcanic atmosphere.
Habitat II
Habitat (what we might now properly refer to as Habitat I) arrived, fully-formed, in 2021—the product of a conscientious, exploratory, and decidedly Covid-era collaboration between two Berlin-based experimental musicians: the composer N. (Niklas) Kramer, and percussionist, J. (Joda) Foerster. Inspired by the Italian architect, Ettore Sottsass, Habitat’s simple, albeit beguiling conceit (following in the footsteps of canonical ambient releases like Music for Airports and Plantasia) was that each …
Glass Band
"We have here three musicians with such a rich shared history that they might as well share the same blood. Each an accomplished solo artist in their own right, there’s a vibrant track record of collaborative work as well, with others and among themselves. The Gunn-Truscinski Duo has been a formal going concern for nearly a decade and a half, producing a fabulous string of albums for this label. Truscinski and Nace, along with Jake Meginksy, make up xo4, a group dating back to the early days of …
Continuing A Worn Out Tradition III
*300 copies limited edition* Archaic Vaults – a label operating between London and Berlin, run by Severin Black – present its first vinyl release: a compilation of ›durational ambience, field recordings, oversaturated improvisations and spatialised synthetic loops‹, featuring Suburban Crooked Collective, Burning Pyre, Ciaran Jacob & Flora Yin-Wong, Chantal Michelle, YL Hooi and more: A diverse cohort of familiar and new collaborators alike.
Put The Music In It's Coffin
Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, The Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the firs…
Vessels
"I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tide-flats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off." - William Faulkner.
This is the third and final instalment of Jeremiah M. Carter’s album triptych, »Vessels«. Following »Rejoice« and »Speak You Also«, all three album’s where conceived within a 6 month period during ferociously exalting …
Portrait Of An Atmosphere
"Portrait of an Atmosphere was recorded with the intention of crafting a long duration work of constituent parts; a suite of related compositions to be listened to as a singular narrative. It focuses on acoustic elements to achieve the kind of sound immersion that is central to our practice, without using the typical palette of reverb and delay. It is rewarding for us, that in the absence of these tools, it still enters the dream-float realm, attaining that sense of something 'other'. It is at o…
Untitled White Album
In 1974, Hiroshi Tanaka and Yoichi Fuwa, the self-proclaimed heirs of the Beatles, crammed into a 75 square foot room and recorded over 50 songs, all without names. 19 of those songs would be self released on a record titled “Untitled White Album”, of which only 100 copies were pressed.
Their music is like a fairy tale. It’s leisurely and relaxed yet bursting at the seams with melodies and youthful ambition. Its whole attitude is gentle but splendid in evoking tears, anger, sentimentality, infat…
Continuity
*300 copies limited edition* Eponymous first album by Continuity, the new project of Swedish artist Martin Herterich, whose sonic explorations of memory and imagination have come to full bloom in this atmospheric and elusive narrative of seven intense cityscapes. Martin Herterich previously released music (as Sand Circles, etc) on labels like Posh Isolation, Not Not Fun Records, iDEAL and Irrlicht.
“Have you ever felt like all you want is to go back? Continuity is a sonic narrative, a story arc …
From Signal to Decay: Volume 5
Tip! *Numbered + handmade in an edition of 250 copies only; 180gr vinyl in custom-made screen-printed outer (sealed), containing two risograph inserts with a specially commissioned essay* Generated in part by his 2022 exhibition in London and produced to coincide with his 2023 exhibition at Argos, Brussels. Includes contributions / interventions from Gary Stewart, Aniruddha Das (AKA Dr. Das / Asian Dub Foundation) and Kate Shortt.
In Pieces - Volume One
*2023 stock . 300 copies limited edition* It's a gathering place of Taumel's collaborative productions and musical encounters with other musicians. In pieces - volume one (Taumel -Eensemble Adapter) in several sessions with the 'Ensemble Adapter'. Recordings were made and combined with additionally produced material. The line-up: voice, piano, drums, keyboards, synthesizer sampler, percussion, guitars, bass, harp, flutes, clarinets, typewriter, loop machine, fx's, banjo, lyre, tape players.
Entain.
The Keplar label presents the next instalment in a series of reissues from the catalogue of Sasu Ripatti’s seminal Vladislav Delay project. Originally released on Mille Plateaux, the vinyl edition of »Entain« from 2000 omitted two shorter tracks and included all others in an abridged form. With this reissue, the full album as it was pressed on CD is finally made available on vinyl. Besides a new remaster by Kassian Troyer, it was also given new cover artwork by Marc Hohmann that picks up on that…