New Arrivals
III
Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble III is an album full of shimmering harmonic atmospheres. It’s emblematic of the Chicago-based ensemble, whose music explores the textures and resonances of their string instruments, namely six and 12-string guitar (Elijah McLaughlin), upright bass (Jason Toth), and hammered dulcimer (Joel Styzens). Throughout Elijah McLaughlin III, they expand their usual palette by including analog synths, field recordings, and melodies from guest musicians cellist Katinka Kleijn and …
Shintokumaru
Fourth J.A. Seazer album, originally issued on Victor in 1978. Shuji Terayama and J.A.Seazer’s phantasmagoric folk-psych-symph-prog-rock opera. Historical Tenjo Sajiki performance from 1978. J.A. Caesar (also spelled J.A. Seazer and J.A. Ceaser) is the pseudonym for a Tokyo music composer who has been involved with creating music for various theater and film projects since the very early '70s. His music is a radical mixture of progressive rock, traditional Japanese theater music, and Magma-inspi…
Birdy Island
Tip! Bandcamp – Electronic album of the year 2021. Swirling layers of OST-style sound design, dreamy choir vocals and traditional Chinese folk combine across eight dynamic and transportive tracks on Birdy Island, the latest album by Beijing-based producer/artist, Howie Lee. On Birdy Island Lee's intricate brand of traditional pan-asian exploration meets experimental bass weight sound via stripped-back UK Grime sonics and ceremonial taoist music. "Morphing Chinese traditional music with bass, C…
You No Fit Touch Am
Wah Wah 45s are very proud to present the first full-length album in almost a decade from vocalist, keyboard player, Fela Kuti collaborator and afrobeat legend, Dele Sosimi!
Pity By One All Good Treasure
*300 copies limited edition* LA Timpa snagged our attention with his exceptional debut ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ for O___o?,and an acclaimed follow-up for Rabit’s Halcyon Veil, which eventually led to a guest spot on SpaceAfrika’s cult lightning rod ‘Honest Labour’ and a remix for Tricky. After letting the dust settle, hereturns with a new collection of songs mired in rawly sublime melancholy, turning existentialreflections into a richly evocative sort of chamber pop akin to Arthur Russell jamming …
Brot und Ro-sen
*300 copies limited edition* Anna Schimkat's "Brot und Ro-sen" (Bread and Ro-ses) explores the connection between music, collective memory, and women's struggle for recognition through interviews with women from East and West Germany. The piece includes a score of sound and text fragments based on the interviewees' memories, which was first performed as a sound installation at the ODP Gallery in Leipzig, Germany. It was later performed live by young women at the Gallery for Contemporary Art Leip…
Lanterns
Finally repressed, this is the first release on the Astral Industries label is Deepchord's 'Lanterns', illuminating the skies with red and blue light like floating Chinese lanterns ascending into the aether.Rod Modell presents "Lanterns" - an epic journey through an evolving sonic landscape propelled by the churning momentum of reverb-soaked percussion. Red Lantern is an ode to the eerie red glow that once beckoned sailors to the port of Amsterdam - on one side, the gentle thud of a bass drum ro…
Tether
Murmer is the long-standing project of American/Estonian field recordist and composer Patrick McGinley, and with Tether, The Helen Scarsdale Agency welcomes Murmer back to our roster, over a decade since he graced us with his last production for the Agency. His field recordings often center upon the amplification and activation of resonance from a particular space, landscape, or object. Such sounds emerge from a condition as being fleeting, inconsequential, or ephemeral and explode into that whi…
Fiction of the Physical
Crystalline examples of Zweig’s aesthetic and brilliance...A labyrinth of sound worth getting lost in
Someone Somewhere
Someone Somewhere was assembled from original tapes during the band's active period (73-77). Acanthe was a French Classic Rock/Prog band in activity in the mid 70’s (from 73 to 77), but that has never seen its music reflected on a official release. For obscure reasons, this band was never given the effective opportunity to see its work properly published. Well, more than 30 years after their disbanding, the merits of the band have been finally recognized (and assembled) by homeland label Replica…
Mona The Carnivorous Circus
The adventurous singer, guitarist and music journalist Mick Farren launched his solo career after being sacked by his fellow Deviants, the protopunk band he fronted from 1967-69. Suffering from depression and other mental health issues, Farren teamed up with an all-star cast, including members of Quartermass and ex-Tyrannosauros Rex honcho Steve Peregrin Took for debut opus Mona The Carnivorous Circus, mixing hard rock, spoken word, spaced-out interludes, radio cut-ups and garage rock, rendering…
Off-Piste
Greg Foat has always had a great reverence for the musicians that featured on the records he has collected over the years. Whether they were players from the great European library catalogs, Italian soundtracks, American Jazz but most of all British Jazz. One of his all-time favourites being the beautiful tone of Art Themens Saxophone… After Art had played on a few sessions for Greg both were keen to record an LP together. Plans were hatched during lockdown and everyone headed to Edinburgh as so…
Luxury Problems
** 2023 Pressing, deluxe gatefold violet vinyl 2LP ** Following on from a pair of Extended Players released in 2011 ("Passed Me By" / "We Stay Together") Andy Stott returns to Modern Love with 'Luxury Problems', an 8 track album of new material recorded over the last 12 months.
Five of the tracks on the album feature Alison Skidmore, Andy's onetime Piano teacher whom he hadnt seen since he was a teenager back in 1996. There was no grand gesture in mind, it just sort of happened - but after almos…
80s Underground Cassette Culture: Volume 2
Glasgow’s Contort Yourself trawl the scuzzier echelons of ‘80s tape culture for the tangiest traces of coldwave, post-punk, post-industrial with an uncanny appreciation of the way the 1980s and 2022 share so much in common.
Delivered to a backdrop of a UK in terminal decline, dominated by ghoulish Tory gas lighters and sex pests, but just about keeping its head above water, ‘’80s Underground Cassette Culture’ offers an ideal soundtrack to disenchantment coloured in morose monochrome and a loomin…
Reshape
The cover of Joachim Spieth’s latest album, Reshape, depicts a stony landscape against a moody sky at dusk, silver clouds backlit with soft orange light. His 2021 album Ousia featured a similar sun, only foregrounded by waves. It’s as if some lost, drowned continent rose from the murky depths, dotted with strange fossils and petroglyphs. That contrast is an apt analogy for Reshape — an album of remixes and reworkings from some of the biggest names in ambient, techno and drone in honor of the Aff…
Terrain
With ‘Terrain,’ Joachim Spieth presents the fourth long player on his Affin imprint. The follow-up album to ‘Ousia’ (2021), ‘Terrain,’ reflects on the human relationship with nature. The album title is a reference to a musical language that layers Spieth’s music production practices and intimacy with nature.‘Terrain’ was forged in deep solitude.“ It’s an interplay of euphoric flashes and introspection” – says Spieth. The eight compositions take the listener into a captivating cascade of sonic te…
The Wave Ahead
Gorgeous, pearlescent cosmic ambient flights by London’s Jo Johnson - erstwhile member of ‘90s riot grrrl group Huggy Bear - now in pursuit of astral trajectories since returning to orbit over the past few years. “What is the sound of feeling? In physics, we conceive of sound as waves. Vibrations, undulations, physical manifestations: heard but not seen. Borne by the body, but interpreted in the brain.
Within ourselves, we perceive emotion as waves, too. Rolling in, rolling out: tidal, even. In …
Gyttjans Topografi
Edition of 500 copies w/ printed inner. Swedish drone alchemist Mats Erlandsson is sitting in a fictional room on ‘Gyttjans Topografi’, imagining a virtual chamber orchestra using zithers, tapes, double bass, harmonium, organ, and various synthesisers to draft a treatise on alternative tuning and non-normative harmonic structures. Transcendent material. The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that altern…
Devon Folklore Tapes Volume V: Ornithology (2x10")
Twin Ten-Inch Gatefold Edition Contains 2x 10" Records & 12page Research Booklet & Download Code Housed in manilla hand stamped & numbered paper sleeve // First released in 2013 as a limited-run cassette of just 30 copies, Ornithology has been expanded and refurbished for glorious double vinyl as part of the Folklore Tapes Archival Reissue series. Fluttering out into the world at the end of last year, this upcycled package offers a welcome revisitation of dark avian power, with Mary Arches’ cree…
Industrial Folklore Tapes Volume Three - Film As Fabric
Numbered limited edition of 250. The third Industrial Folklore Tapes release is constructed from live recordings of a performance tilted ‘Film as Fabric’ by Mary Stark, which examines relationships between textile practice and filmmaking. From 2012-2016, Mary’s studio practice and numerous performances took place in Rogue Artist Studios at Crusader Mill in Manchester, formerly a production site of machinery for the cotton industry and a garment works. The performance has been enriched by explora…