New Arrivals
The Live One
XI Records is very pleased to announce the release of Tom Chiu’s new double-CD The Live One, a diverse and thoroughly engrossing album that showcases the multiple facets of Chiu’s visions. Chiu is a polymath who is as comfortable with lyricism and the beauty of tonality as he is with process-based works and challenging conventions of composition. Chiu specializes in creating spatial experiences and altered states of mind with his music, with a singular, questing path. He is a gifted improviser a…
Sonance for the Precession
The electroacoustic composition Sonance for the Precession was commissioned by Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). The piece furthers Neil Leonard's practice in large scale sound installation, with recent commissions by documenta, Venice Biennale, and Fujiko Nakaya of Experiments in Art at Technology. The original composition, created for the quad adjacent to WCMA, played from the dome of the historic Hopkins Observatory, the oldest working astronomical observatory in the United States. The …
Fog Friend Font: Ways of Doing Multilingual Sense
**Edition of 150 copies. Four softcovers, a hardcover, a vinyl record, and a dustjacket, arranged in a layered set** Box set comprising five books, a vinyl and a supplementary dust jacket, each highlighting different practices and transformative developments occurring in the realm of writing and speaking today as triggered by digital communication. Fog Friend Font: Ways of Doing Multilingual Sense is the editorial framework for a unique set of discursively related publications. It comprises seve…
Mahalla – The Survey
**Edition of 200 copies. Box containing three folders, one vinyl, 300 pages,** Mahalla – The Survey offers a scientific investigation and an artistic statement which aims at a critical reading and a tentative exploration of a fascinating Uzbek cultural heritage: the mahalla (luxury box set including numerous documents, a 7" vinyl record by Carlos Casas and exclusive art prints by Bas Princen). Historically forged by family, ethnic and professional ties, the traditional mahalla is a neighbourhood…
The Great Complotto - Pordenone
** 2021 Stock ** Finally reissued on vinyl by Spittle, the seminal compilation of the post-punk undercurrents of northern Italy. Great Complotto is been an amazing story, one you would like to live yourself, even more than 30 years later. A typical story of suburban Italy, based in Pordenone, when creativity was on top and the shortage of technical resources didn’t keep the dream from coming true. That was the driving force of the often underestimated Italian punk scene.
Rituals
A cult band from the Florentine darkwave scene of the 80s is back on the scene, thanks to the re-release of one of the key records of the Italian alternative scene of some decades ago: "Rituals". Neon were the creators of a melodic synth-rock, which borrowed a lot from the new romantic thought put on the staff by the pioneers Ultravox and Human League. Born as a duo at the end of the 70s, Neon gradually became a quartet, accentuating the dance-pop component at first, and then the more rock compo…
Post-Human Folk Music
** 2021 Stock ** Maurizio Marsico is one of the most extrovert, versatile and prolific musicians on the Italian scene. Always fascinated by artificial sounds and the interaction between man and machine, Marsico is an emblematic example of those musicians who - despite being born in an academic environment - deal with modernity and technology. During his career he has been able to range from austere experimentation to typically 80s Italodisco, from collaborations with RAI programme to cosmic elec…
Beat - Action
Sdban Records is thrilled to announce the official reissue of the hard to find ‘Beat - Action’ library compilation originally released in 1980. If you loved the ‘Funky Chicken’ and ‘Funky Chimes’ compilation on the label, you will definitely dig this! Library music was music recorded in a multitude of contexts and styles by work-for-hire musicians, owned by music-library labels, and lent out to commercial enterprises in TV, radio, and film. In the heydays during the 60s and 70s, composers could …
Komori
**Moss Green vinyl, edition of 500 copies** "FUJI||||||||||TA, real name Fujita Yosuke, is a Japanese sound artist and pipe-organ builder, he provided us with one of the prettiest, weirdest records that passed over our desk last year, essentially a custom-built organ duet with a bat colony, recorded in a cave beneath Mt. Fuji. It’s now been remastsred by Rashad Becker (with whom Fujita will be collaborating on a performance for Issue Project Room next month) and captures a sound somewhere betwee…
Deaf
Originally released in 1981. First vinyl reissue ever, Remastered and pressed on red vinyl with poster and download card. Foetus is the brainchild of acclaimed Brooklyn-based composer JG Thirlwell, also known in the past as Clint Ruin, recording under the name Wiseblood, etc. JG is also mastermind behind the Manorexia, Xordox and Steroid Maximus projects and composes for the TV shows Archer and Venture Bros. Thirlwell is known for his solo sets with electronics, sound installations, composing st…
Où
** 2021 Stock ** For some, applying the structures of electronic music to folkloristic samples may seem de-contextualizing. Yet when considering the similarity between dancefloor compositions and the minimalism of Steve Reich and Terry Riley, the gap to traditional music begins to fade away. They remain distinct mostly by aesthetic characteristics of sound. Nicolas Sheikholeslami’s premiere solo record as Çaykh is named after the French conjunction "Où" - meaning “where” - as this was the linkin…
The Shameless Years
* 2021 clear vinyl repress with new cover art; originally released in 2017 * Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's Umor Rex debut. Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri's most eerily pertinent music to date. One of Rafael Anton Irisarri's most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burs…
All Parts Dark
** 2021 Stock. Includes a 12 page color booklet with rare photographs, full lyrics, and extensive notes ** Marika "Politissa" Frantzeskopoulou was a Greek singer from Constantinople, reknowned for her precise, fluid and graceful performances and depth of feeling. Backed by some of the best musicians of the era on lyra, violin, oud, kanonaki and guitar, Marika’s repertoire and techniques drew from Byzantine and Ottoman musical traditions. She possessed an ability to devastate her audience through…
Heavenly Ethiopiques - Best Of Ethiopiques Series
** 2021 Stock ** 'Heavenly Ethiopiques' presents the best of the legendary Ethiopiques series of Ethiopian jazz and funk, compiled by Francis Falcetto, the founder of the series and an expect in Ethiopian music. Featuring tracks by Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete, Tilahun Gessesse and others. Falcetto opened his large collection of pictures, vinyl records and memorabilia to make the artwork of this double LP gatefold. 'Heavenly Ethiopiques' is the perfect introduction to the world of Ethiopian m…
Tape Works, Vol. 1
** 2021 Stock ** New from Langham Research Centre, Tape Works Vol. 1 stands alone as a collection of modern musique concrète. Created with rare and obsolete machinery and inspired by early electronic composers including John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram, Tape Works Vol. 1 is the modern incarnation of the work of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Tape Works Vol. 1 documents the origins of Langham Research Centre as a late night experimental gathering in BBC Studios, t…
1+3+1
A long-lost vinyl album is back in stock: for the last 18 years, 1+3+1 by Triosk meets Jan Jelinek, originally released in 2003 on ~scape, existed only as a digital download. Now the remastered album is available again on vinyl. What the press said about 1+3+1 back in 2003: “Hence the album's titled 1+3+1 – it’s a reference to how it was made. Jan Jelinek sent us stuff, then we did stuff, then he added the final touches. He did a little bit more editing and production and mixed and mastered it i…
Les Tontons Flingueurs
** 2021 Stock. Edition of 500 ** The music of the film Les Tontons Flingueurs, as well as that of James Bond, is recognizable from the first notes. A little ritornello that even manages to run through the heads of 21st century kids. Musicologists call monotheism the stylistic variations around a single musical theme that can be found in Les Tontons: on the banjo, during the "bourre pif" sessions, in gloria, in jazz, in blues or in Hully Gully. The soundtrack of Les Tontons Flingueurs seems, at f…
Total Control Anthems
** 2021 Stock ** Proper doomed "Brexit gush" sonic detritus from Discrepant boss Gonçalo F Cardoso and Alex Jones (not that one). Sound collage, drones and industrial waste - what more do you want? Gonçalo F Cardoso might be prolific, but the Discrepant and Sucata Tapes figurehead is so reliable it's actually hard to keep up. This latest jammer finds him again teaming up with Alex Jones to splice together bizarre news recordings, piano loops, field recordings and radio static, overlaying the sor…
Work Ethics
White Centipede Noise presents Work Ethics by Altar of Flies. A new album recorded in summer of 2020, marking a fresh phase of creativity and passion from this virtuosic artist. An eclectic assortment of bumping, scratching, fluttering sounds blend seamlessly together with his signature heavy tape manipulations. The melancholic and emotionally charged elements found on many Altar of Flies releases are less present here, creating a more ambiguous dry atmosphere, as if sitting wide awake in the ey…
Signaler
Clamor from inside the earth as it's being excavated, punctured, deconsecrated. Sputtering and whirring of failing machinery. Menacing layers of magnetic decay, iron turned to dust through the erosion of repetition. The amplified obscenity of the mundane, the indelicate hunger of a gravitational hollow. Separated from the comforts of familiarity by a thick, lusterless film. Signaler can be all of these things and more. A new album from Mattias Gustafsson's long-running Altar of Flies project, ho…