New Arrivals
I’m The Sky: Studio And Demo Recordings, 1964–1971
*2023 stock* Norma Tanega’s I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964–1971 is a comprehensive survey of the pioneering folk artist’s two commercially released studio albums, an unreleased album, and a trove of unheard demos. Before playing a pivotal part in folk music’s cultural crossover in the ‘60s, Tanega was a curious little girl born at the very end of the ‘30s to a multicultural Navy family in Long Beach, California. Her parents often brought her to Los Angeles for piano lessons, and e…
Inner Roads And Outer Paths
*300 copies limited edition* Inner Roads and Outer Paths is Herefordshire born Vic Mars’ third release on Clay Pipe Music. It follows last years ‘The Soundtrack To The Hospice’ commissioned by Gideon Coe for BBC 6 Music, and 2015s critically acclaimed ‘The Land and the Garden’.
Inspired by in part by Alfred Watkins words and photographs of Herefordshire, the record also harks back to a period in Vic’s youth spent exploring the abandoned houses and factories on the fringes of his home town; the i…
Standards of Living
Standards of Living is a multimedia work that investigates the relationships between the desire for comfort and the forms of living in neoliberal society. The work highlights how our “standards of living” are reduced to surrogates for the utopia of contemporary comfort, with the aim of satisfying the global commodification of living. Standards of Living compares the authentic appeal of parquet flooring with replicas made of synthetic composite materials and adhesive laminates, which proliferate …
Future Chorus
*200 copies limited edition* “Future Chorus is a conceptual release curated by Eleni Ikoniadou, researcher in Digital Culture and Sonic Arts at the Royal College of Art. A collection of readings, spoken word, nonlinguistic sound, poetry, MCing, cello and animal sounds were combined with machine learning processes to artificially generate a new voice speaking a nonhuman language. The vocal database and AI voice then became the raw material for five remixes by AGF, Chino Amobi, Harrga, Savvas Meta…
Music Of Guatemala
Tip! First reissue of these cult 1974 recordings of a Mayan brass band playing funeral dirges and popular songs in its distinctive extended harmonic and rhythmic style. The members of the San Lucas Band lived in the mountain village of San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, playing local events of both religious and social nature. The pride of their town since 1922, the band represented a fast disappearing musical tradition when these recordings were originally released in 1975. Their unique sound deriv…
If You Want to Make a Lover: Palm Wine, Akan Blues & Early Guitar Highlife, Pt. II
The second part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s.
Branes
*150 copies limited edition* In 2010 Giovanni Di Domenico formed a band called “Mo(ve)ments Ensemble” and released a CD on Belgian independent label Spocus. The concept and repertoire of that band reflected Di Domenico’s love for subtle orchestration and chamber music sensibilities, the basic idea behind it being the dissertation of the organic elements that form the instruments involved (in that case the wood of the strings and clarinet) and the re-construction of them by means of musical ideas…
Infinita Domenica
Tip! For José Manuel López López it is essential to approach the works on this album with an open mind and to explore other forms of instrumental expressivity and sonic emotionality. He draws significant conclusions from these seemingly fragile figures, gestures and minimal elements, which evolve and multiply to achieve a great expressive and formal perspective. All this affirms a hallmark that reveals a great continuity and coherence among the works included on this album.
Flightless Bird Needs Water Wings - Vol. 1
This record is a nice summary of some of the band's earlier work -- when infamous bassist Moriaki Wakabayashi was still playing before he went and hijacked a plane (he was a member of the "Yodogō Group" of the radical New Left Japan Communist League's "Red Army Faction" that carried out the hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351 in 1970, ultimately forcing the plane to fly to North Korea, where Wakabayashi currently resides). A seemingly endless sonic flame-throwers of phased white noise streak …
The Insect Trust
Temporary super offer! Insect Trust were an American jazz-based rock band that formed in New York in 1967. The members of the band were Nancy Jeffries on vocals, Bill Barth on guitar, Luke Faust -- formerly of the Holy Modal Rounders -- on guitar, banjo, fiddle, and harmonica, Trevor Koehler on saxophone, and Robert Palmer (1945 -- 1997) on clarinet and alto saxophone. Elvin Jones and Bernard Purdie both drummed with the group at times. Bill Folwell, who had played with Albert Ayler (and later a…
Muted Language
“Brilliant drumming by two fearless artisans; hearing, resounding the real world around us. Truth is in our ears.” - Chris Searle, The Morningstar
The Undanced Dance
"Fractured grooves blend into dark, cinematic ambient drones and morph into spontaneous improvisations, colored by epic electronica and ornamented with raw noises." - Eyal Hareuveni, Salt Peanuts
The Way We Speak
"It is one of the finest documents of how improvisation is made that this listener has heard, on par with the two astounding The Life of a Trio albums (by Paul Bley, Jimmy Giuffre and Steve Swallow)" - George Grella, New York City Jazz Records
In Air
“Excellent testimony to the quirky and detailed improvisation of the British where the emphasis is on dynamics, the sporadic use of silence and restricted playing with a multiplicity of playful options (…)” – Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg
Sensory Symphonies
Big tip! *199 copies limited edition* Akifumi Nakajima, renowned for his prolific and captivating work under the alias Aube, stands as one of Japan's most intriguing noise artists. His artistic prowess extends beyond the sonic realm, encompassing an impeccable sense of design and a deep appreciation for materials. Nakajima's creative journey began in 1980, but it wasn't until the early '90s, prompted by a request to compose music for an art installation involving water, that he stepped into the …
Organ
Tip! *99 copies limited edition* Taking immense pleasure in unveiling the exquisite vinyl reissue of Jun Konagaya's seminal solo album, titled Organ. Originally presented in 2012 on the CD digital medium, this opus marks Konagaya's inaugural solo venture, distinctly departing from his earlier collaborative endeavors under the monikers Grim and White Hospital. A prodigious figure in the Japanese noise and industrial landscape, Grim left an indelible mark in the 1980s with its dark, luminous allur…
Amaterasu / Tsukuyomi
Tip! *300 copies limited edition in a deluxe wooden box* Prepare to embark on a sonic odyssey as we unveil the official reissue of Grim's groundbreaking Amaterasu 7". A visionary one-man project, crafted by Jun Konagaya, Grim transcends the conventional boundaries of industrial music, power electronics, and noise. Emerging from the ashes of the legendary White Hospital, Konagaya's artistic trajectory spans nearly three decades, with a unique ability to draw inspiration from a diverse array of in…
Message
Tip! *Limited edition of 199 copies. White vinyl 2023 repress* Grim is the one-man project of Jun Konagaya - formed from the ashes of White Hospital, his legendary early 1980s noise duo with Tomosada Kuwahara - which, accepting a long hiatus in the middle, has bridged the worlds of industrial music, power electronics, and noise for nearly three decades. Belonging roughly to the first wave of Japanese noise, Konagaya is particularly noteworthy among his peers for casting an eye further afield, dr…
Circular Music (Ext. N° 1 / N° 2 / Ext. N° 2)
Circular Music and Extended Circular Music are two collections of compositions written by Jürg Frey between 2011/2016 and 2014/2015 respectively. The first cycle is composed of seven distinct compositions while the second is divided into nine parts but, in reality, the n. 4 and no. 9 of the second series share the same harmonic progression. What distinguishes them, in addition to the ensemble (no. 4 is for string quartet and piano while no. 9 is for piano.
A Falling Sound
"A recording of a piano tuning session was the starting point for a series of different pieces, all of which question the experience of measurement. These two pieces, "about a thousand years" and "a falling sound", for piano and cello, are a new stage in this process. If the music results from a work of measurement - that of the piano as a territory and of its different acoustic regions, both the voice of Pandit Prân Nath, which gave rise to the playing and scordatura of the cello, and the bass …