New Arrivals
Live In Germany
Available for the first time, this LP offers two beautiful side-long compositions, recorded live at th Jazztage in Leverkusen, Germany 1986. The musicians are Billy Bang (violin), Roy Campbell Jr. (trumpet), Oscar Sanders (guitar), William Parker (bass) and Zen Matsuura (drums). Limited editions of only 70 copies with paste-on cover (front and back with notes).
A breed apart
John Balistreri and his project Slogun are perfectly known to those interested in industrial subculture. ‘’A Breed Apart’’ was originally released on cassette by Slaughter Productions (SPT 86) in 1996, and it was packaged in a beautifully designed, oversized sleeve with a vellum overlay with a cult serial killer photo from one of the victims of Harvey Glattman. Mass murders and crimes have been used to finely illustrate uncompromising tracks full of hatred against society, the sound of wh…
Industrial tape
Maurizio Bianchi began to produce music in 1979, since 1980 using electronic equipment with the avowed goal "to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on complete realising of the modern decadence". In the beginning, he published tapes under the alias Sacher-Pelz. Industrial Tape was one of the first release under the name MB, recorded in May 1980. Maurizio Bianchi elaborates his abstract and exhausting art with care and great detail. Industrial Tape is a concrete example of …
The Passion Of Rubbers
The question of what’s one’s favorite item from their collection (or accumulation) consistently pops up in conversations amongst fans and collectors, and this unquestionably is always my answer. From head-to-toe, insert-to-tape, all elements are in glorious harmony and conversation with what another. Having the G.R.O.S.S. label’s ’industrial design’ fetish/obsession (some would say a relatively antiseptic departure from much of the other noise tapes of the time) articulating the sexualize…
Suijin
Komodo Haunts is the psychedelic drone solo project of Ollie Tutty (aka Mt. Tjhris), from Lincolnshire, UK. With his music he explores drone structure, sonic textures, meditative zones and personal fictions. Making use of analogue and digital technologies; tape jams playing on human familiarity, natural ambiances, faux-exotica, mythologies, "reality therapy".
Taking inspiration from drone masters and new age wanderers the Suijin album is all about getting into "the zone” and could be the so…
Trace
Phil Julian is a UK based sound artist, composer and improviser active since the late 1990's, with a prolific output under the Cheapmachines alias and his own name. His work has been released on a catalogue of imprints and encompasses sonic textures ranging from harsh squalls of noise to compositions structured around hyper-minimalistic timbres and drones. Studio recordings and live performances within Europe and North America have focused on the use of electronics, particularly unstable and-or …
Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments
Spectrum Spools presents the first reissue of American minimalist composer and electronic music pioneer David Borden's 1981 masterpiece, Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments, a work of the highest archival significance. A radiant achievement in sonic elegance, experimentation, and ambitious composition technique, Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments contains four pieces, each utilizing three players and six keyboard instruments. - Borden was a central figure in the development of America…
Charles Cohen / Robert Turman rersions
Charles Cohen uses his Buchla Music Easel to replay Indonesian hardcore band Senyawa's "Di Kala Sudah." While enjoying a few months in Germany, Cohen conducted a ritualistic tonal re-adaptation, flushing the song through layers of spaced-out, orchestrated grooves. Meanwhile, in the U.S., explorer of the deepest depths Robert Turman smashed Cohen's "Conundrums" into small bits and recrafted it in his own masterful manner. His beaten and edited version displays ability similar to Cohen's, m…
Music for Dance and Theater
2014 release. Final part in the Charles Cohen trilogy on Morphine Records. Featuring various works made for dance and theater productions between 1976 and 1988. Eleven tracks in total -- lovingly spread over a double LP and featuring some of the most beautiful material of the series. While in the process of recording and optimizing the old reel tapes for the initial track list, Cohen discovered a master tape that was originally prepared for an extremely limited cassette release on the Gen…
The Middle Distance
First chapter in the trilogy of Charles Cohen retrospective works, featuring some of his early works stepping into the archives of one of Philadelphia's best-kept underground secrets: synth composer Charles Cohen. This excellent release beholds seven key tracks (recorded between 1979-1988) that go into uncharted polyrhythmic/ambient/cosmic territory. The label says "First chapter in the trilogy of Charles Cohen retrospective works, featuring some of his early works from the Philadelphia's '…
Infratracts
Limited repress. Infratracts revealed. Eight outstanding tracks from the twisted minds of Philadelphia's finest. After the Topographic Interference four-tracker and the abstract head-banger Decant/Churn releases, the duo formed by Kenneth_Lay and V.Hold has established the fundamentals of a real new generation of psychedelia and wild technological freedom. This is the clear and definitive Metasplice manifesto: fist-rising -- scream if you can read it."The two EPs outlined the Metasplice sound:…
This Is It
Psychedelic music all began with the tiniest possible bang: a minuscule pressing of a self-produced LP by Zen Buddhist scholar Alan Watts. In one cosmic flash of inspiration and group improvisation, the next two decades of musical innovation was pre-supposed: psychedelic rock, spiritual jazz, and even new age. As this micro pressing barely made it out of the ashram, it was his writings that actually spread his ideas, usually through osmosis: he was profoundly influential on the beat poets and th…
infrantumi
Much needed vinyl reissue of a legendary Italian album from the 90s, finally remastered and housed in truly deluxe edition. Starfuckers' "Infrantumi" was recorded in the summer of 1997 in Massa, in the cramped attic of the Bocci house, all the equipment we had was: a sampler, a small mixer, an analog synth, a digital multi-effect, an electric guitar, a cheap transistor amp, a low wattage monitor, a vintage drum kit and a turntable. For recording we decided to use a mini-disc four-track reco…
Moving Along
Matsuli Music continues its reissue program of rare indigenous afro-jazz sounds from South Africa with the release of Sowetan group Batsumi's self-titled debut from 1974. The reissue has been lovingly re-mastered from the original tapes and features material compiled on the recent Next Stop Soweto series from Strut. The album arrived amidst a period of intense political, intellectual and artistic ferment stimulated in large part by the teachings of Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement…
Classroom projects - Incredible music made by Children in school
LP version. Incredible music made by children in schools" says is it all really. Jonny Trunk has collected the best moments of that most niche of niche collectors' genres, the school album, spanning music by small primary school choirs singing folk songs to full-blown avant-garde experiments written and performed by children still at secondary or grammar school. As with practically all Trunk releases, it's a nostalgic gas for anyone over a certain age - we reckon anyone younger than 25 may be ba…
Happiness is Overrated
"Originally from the land of throwing sausages, eggs, beans AND tomatoes on one plate for BREAKFAST, though residing in the land of the freaks, Dan Melchior travelled many roads, between wreckless R&R bands or duo's with Wild Billy Childish, to solo collages on Chocolate Monk or Kye records, to the beautiful collaborative works he created with Letha Diane Rodman Melchior, Dan's partner who sadly passed away in November 2014, and who this record is dedicated to. Knowing this makes it uneasy to wr…
Avantgardegasse
"It has often been said, and we gladly repeat it again, here at the UE office tower, "Folks drive faster without a drivers license", and that's not a lie, it might be because the popo's are right behind you! Boy or Girl, can those assholes make a real human nervous! Once one enters Avantgardegasse, somewhere In Germany (a country known for its brutality on the road) rules and laws concerning your ride all flush down the toilet like a recycled napkin! No popo's on Avantgardegasse! Forget about th…
There
Engrossing debut album from Iranian sound artist, Pouya Ehsaei, sublimating samples of traditional Iranian music to "reveal the rage hidden beneath its melancholia." 'There' was produced in 2010, using fractured and brutally processed instrumentation indigenous to Iran to isolate a palpable feeling of tension articulated with a timbre unique to the artist's background. In the course of its six pieces we perceive a stark and grinding sadness from his aerated arrangements, gleaning elusive emotion…
Untitled
Sam Kidel a.k.a. El Kid presents an extended drone work for the excellent Entr’acte label inspired by Henri Michaux's 'Untitled (Movements)' drawing. Located much farther out than his work with Killing Sound or the Young Echo collective, or even his numerous soundtracks for film, TV and theatre, the piece is based on two layers of synthesiser - one outputting the wavering, natural heat fluctuations of analogue circuitry, and another undergoing a slow and subtle metamorphosis. Pocked with collage…
Vanity Fair
Greetings, here we have Recital’s inaugural release, “Vanity Fair,” Sean McCann & Matthew Sullivan’s debut collaboration album. A fitting introduction to the ethos of Recital; the desire to turn a new page, to more accurately project what is significant and engaging in contemporary music.Matt and I had often talked about collaborating, as our musical understandings and interests align. Both drawn to minimalism and graceful ambience, we would trade tidbits and slivers of ideas casually over coff…