New Arrivals
Menses
Originally released in a private edition of 300 copies in 1982. This vinyl re-issue comes in a beautiful picture disc and includes a replica of the original and hard to find insert. The copies I have here include a page of a medical book handsigned by Maurizio Bianchi himself.
Polar satellites
Polar Satellites is a mesmerising collection of percussion improvisations performed in duo by Nathan and Scott deep in the winter of 2009 and 2010 with absolutely no overdubs. Building on the starkness of last years Effigy by Pelt, the duo have recorded an even bleaker, more minimal and hermetically vibed record together. Unnerving and hypnotic, Polar Satellites is an intense journey into the unknown, awash with uncategorisable percussive instruments, kalimbas and banjo.
Nathan and Scott first m…
A Short Life of Trouble
"Compilation of truly great sorrowful American ballads recorded between 1927 and 1943. Songs mostly about murder, death, and broken hearted-ness. Lots of intense minor chords and stark gritty vocals. Artists include Emry Arthur, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Red Hot Old Mose, the DeZurik Sisters, Shortbuckle O'Rourke and Family, Jimmie Tarlton, Mississippi John Hurt and more. Mountain bluesmen and songsters presenting their darkest & most intense work. Old school 'tip on' sleeves."
Six & Six
Originally released in 1981, JANDEK'S second album stands as an incredible document of the formative stages of his cracked genius. The musical elements are almost catatonic: 9 songs drift by as a series of slight variations on several desolate, untuned acoustic guitar phrases. First time on vinyl in over 25 years. Old-style tip on jacket. LIMITED!
These Are The Good Times
The Vittelli label announces itself with this fine release of London’s highlife, lowlife, wildlife and everday life plucked from Ian Rawes’ vast London Sound Survey. At his day job at the British Library sound archive Rawes cut his teeth in archiving and explored its depths. Field recordings and studies by acoustic ecologists came to his attention around the same time that he was looking to create his own capital-based project. At this time the internet promised to be the great equaliser a…
Sung In Broken Symmetry
Describing the music of Aquarelle's Ryan Potts is a difficult task indeed. It's related to the hazy, heavily treated output of musicians such as Fennesz and Tim Hecker, but one would be remiss to locate it solely within the realm of electronic ambient or drone, as there are often strong organic, rhythmic and composerly elements to Potts' work. In fact, the title of his last record, Slow Circles, might offer the best point of access into the Aquarelle aesthetic, in which compositional trop…
Yesterday & Today
Double vinyl LP pressing includes bonus CD pressing of this 2009 release. The Field is Axel Willner, and 2007's Here We Go Sublime was one of the year's most acclaimed releases, receiving a 9.0 from Pitchfork as well as universal praise. It was a soundtrack to the spit-shined airport of your dreams - faceless, futuristic, and fuzzy. Now, Willner expands his palette, continuing the oblique sampling strategy while building up the rhythmic architecture.
Hei / Sou
Celer & Machinefabriek are having a great year. In addition to their separate releases, they’ve toured, released a download set of the tour, and completed a trilogy of fine vinyl singles, of which Hei/Sou is the final piece. Perhaps the most exciting thing about their collaboration is the extent to which each seems to have been inspired and invigorated by the presence of the other. By pushing each other into new territories, they’ve each upped the ante, as best demonstrated on Celer’s late…
Music Of The Modern White
2009 issue "The album begins with a percussion intro that sounds more like a gunfight than any sort of recognisable drumming routine, and continues to get weirder and weirder from there on. New York avant-garde-ists Zs might be seen as a kind of post-modern free-jazz ensemble, combining sax, guitars and live kit sounds with all the tumult of contemporary electronic drone music. This LP absorbs the impact of no-wave, industrial music, Merzbow and (on the ornate rhythmic figures of 'MMW I…
Urban Gothic
Not Not Fun label-mate Xander Harris has released “Urban Gothic,” the most overtly Carpenter-influenced modern electronic album to date. While Harris cites a laundry list of influences, new and old, it is Carpenter’s distinctly chilly synth-based sound that is most evident here. Although just as Umberto and Ensemble Economique mixed an array of genres ranging from African tribal music to disco into their reimagining of the horror soundtrack, Harris also draws inspiration from 80s synth pop and d…
Apophenia
Belgian/Italian duo Andrea Taeggi and Koenraad Ecker isolate a diffuse mixture of techno and concrète noise with 'Apophenia' for Opal Tapes. Building on the decayed structures of last year's 'Contrapasso' album, their latest blends the chaotic virtues of their improvisational approach with a more premeditated logic, manifesting five arcane constructions balancing abstract expression and rugged, grooving purpose. In that sense it works well alongside Opal Tapes' boss Basic House, but Lumisokea's …
Totaled And Stranded
Awesome release: recorded in a hotel room after we totaled out tour vehicle and became stranded in the worst snowstorm in Ohio history†Beatty, Connelly, Tremaine. Artwork: hand cutted black cardboard, Xeroxed recycled paper, raw paper inner sleeve. The B side is screenprinted by Serimal. Limited edition in 500 copies. A 1-sided album of piercing vocals, walls of guitars, precise heavy electronics and thundering drums. A fusion of metal, noise rock, free jazz, industrial, and harsh electron…
Sunrise
The music of My Education, a five-piece group from Austin, Texas, tends towards the classical side of the spectrum. If you’ve read any recent think-piece about how the lines between rock bands and classical ensembles are blurring, you could pretty easily swap their name into the list of case studies provided without sacrificing accuracy. Besides recording their own compositions, they’ve also released their take on Arvo Pärt’s taut “Spiegel im Spiegel” and collaborated with the hip-hop group däle…
Occlusions
… Occlusion is a loose framework for a multi-channel, freely improvised piece of LIVE ELECTRONIC MUSIC, performed without the aid or consent of pre-recorded or even pre-arranged materials of any kind. A given realization will last between 10 and 30 minutes ; time is elastic. Every effort has been made to avoid divisible rhythms (although mistakes are occasionally made) ... Still, I consider it a "kind" of Dance Music. These two realizations, recorded a week apart at festivals in France and…
Component Fixations
To this day, Nicholas Bullen is best-known as a founding member of arguably grindcore's most important act: Napalm Death. Although he decided to call it a day before the band slipped into the mainstream circuit, his sonic fingerprints were all over their influential debut Scum, and he's been breaking boundaries ever since. A key figure in Birmingham's experimental scene, Bullen was also a founding member of Scorn and has been involved in a variety of projects since. Over 30 years later we …
Entomology
A threesome of coloured vinyl by WORM Records. These records are extraordinary not just because of their appearance (bright yellow, blue and pink vinyl), but also because of their unique origins. The a-sides of the records were recorded for Soundpiece, a soundinstallation under the floor of the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam. WORM invited the composers Machinefabriek, Pierre Bastien and Dyane Donck/Daisy Bell to compose a piece for this. The results are three soundartworks/tape compositions that a…
Patagonian Field Recordings
Carlos Casas is a filmmaker and visual artist from Barcelona. His work is a cross between documentary film, cinema, and contemporary visual and sound arts. In 2001 he started a trilogy of works dedicated to the most extreme environments on the planet, Patagonia, Aral sea, and Siberia, with a particular interest on how humans relate with the territory they occupy. These tracks comes fro…
Cold Pin
Over two years in the making, Cold Pin is the new full length record by Eli Keszler. Both a composition and stand alone installation, 14 strings ranging in length from 25 to 3 feet are strung across a 15 x 40 curved wall, with motors attacking the strings, connected by micro-controllers, pick-ups and rca cables. Recorded in Boston's historic Cyclorama, a massive dome built to house the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg painting in 1884. The b side features in addition, a 'dry' version …
Homage To The Sine Wave
Already out of print, Eleh resurfaces from the depths with a new full-length release on TAIGA records. Homage to the Sine Wave is the second release in the sound wave series following 2008's sold-out LP, Homage to the Square Wave. In a fashion similar to Square Wave, the elemental approach to construction of the pieces on Sine Wave is influenced by Josef Albers, the visual artist best known for his color studies embodied in paintings of geometric abstraction. Both faces feature sidelong composi…
Re-Engineering
Steven Warwick aka Heatsick cocks a unique and compelling perspective on contemporary dance music with his bold follow-up to 'Intersex', a gorgeous, layered work that those of you into DJ Sprinkles should check out without delay. Now woven with leaner dancefloor muscle, the deeply funked views of 'Re-Engineering' are characterised by the artist as a "cybernetic poem". We can take this quite literally in his use of spoken word in pieces such as 'Re-Engineering' with its Chris Morris-esque wordpla…