New Arrivals
Tobel II
Reinhold Friedl, inside piano. Franck Vigroux, electronics. 'An encounter between two worlds. Reinhold Friedl and Franck Vigroux are two musicians, both addicted to a real contemporary approach, getting to the core of sound but by very different means. Reinhold Friedl with his purely acoustic instrument and his highly developed and refined inside-piano techniques meets Franck Vigroux with his electronics including all kind of devices from tape recorders to analog synthesizers. Their sole purpos…
Message Bag
We come burdened with the glorious purpose of having readied the latest recordings by Messages, a double LP set called Message Bag. It's a set of pieces that imparts a vibe rife with history, and yet clearly focused on the future. You buy these 2 LPs, poster and insert in a bag, but in all of its formats and strategies Message Bag operates as a return to an unresolved system, as an alternative to the rest of yr choices, and bestows something that can't be bought. We call it Wisdom.
Surfaces
Gianluca Favaron returns on Silentes with the second release in the prestigious “Private Sounds” series. Besides having published some solo works, Favaron is part of Under The Snow along with Stefano Gentile and collaborates with Ennio Mazzon on the Zbeen project. In the past he has released music as Ab'she and was part of Lasik Surgery along with Pierpaolo Zoppo. Among his most recent releases we remember his collaboration with Corrado Altieri entitled "The System of Objects". "Surfaces" is a m…
Proceed with Caution!
Whereas the earlier black jazz album Shawn-Neeq had its share of riff-based funk, Calvin Keys' second outing Proceed with Caution! (1974) sticks close to straight-ahead jazz verities with the 30-something guitarist in the studio with seven similarly young, on-the-rise musicians including Charles Owens (saxophones, flute), Oscar Brashear (trumpet), Al Hall Jr. (trombone), Kirk Lightsey (electric piano), Henry Franklin (bass), and Leon "Ndugu" Chancler (drums). Keys can really play the guitar, e…
Ivy (Vatican Shadow / Lakker Mixes)
**Transparent Vinyl - Individually numbered edition of 300 copies** Vatican Shadow and Lakker provide remix reinforcement for the killer debut from Berlin's Tommy Four Seven and Alain from One Million Mangos Mastering as These Hidden Hands. Their original 'Ivy' is heavily informed by the romantic dystopia of mid-late '90s IDM and D&B's grander gestures, gazing out on drizzly grey north European synth skies whilst the reduced tech-step torque ticks and prods like a not-so-dystant cousin o…
Flora
Born in Japan and a resident of New York since 2001, Aya Nishina is a very special and beautiful spirit whose work touches upon nature, spirituality and the deepest human emotions. Five years in the making "Flora" is a brilliant suite of pieces for the human voice. At times layering hundreds of voices at the same time, the music is lush, orchestral and healing. Meticulously written, rehearsed, guided and recorded, this is a fabulous debut CD by a unique composer who has worked with Ryuic…
Barn Nova
After five years and 20-plus albums-- most released on their own Child of Microtones label-- MV & EE's 2006 move to Ecstatic Peace began on a high note. "East Mountain Joint", the opening track on Green Blues, is a hypnotic hymn to unscheduled freedom, and it's catchy without losing the duo's loose, do-what-we-feel-like vibe. In fact, it's so entrancing that it's made subsequent work by Matt Valentine, Erika Elder, and their various colleagues seem like insufficient attempts to recapture…
Pass hidingly seek
Long-running solo project by Jeffry Astin. Label head honcho of everyone's favorite underground cassette label Housecraft. His highly abstract style, represented on over 40 releases, predominantly cassettes, defies all attempts at elementary categorisation, but indicates broad influences from modern and ethnic drone, tape music, musique concrète, kosmische and lo-fi, amongst others. Two selected recordings “Pass Hidingly Seek” (2009) and “Quaking Myth” (2010) finally get the proper issue on wax!
Broken iteration
The Japanese percussion player who lives in Europe has three fields of interest: 1, non-idiomatic improvisation (that includes idiomatic researches about it, or workshops on it). 2, electro acoustic composition. 3, plural disciplinary collaboration (with words, images, body movements etc) and it would seem to me that these four pieces here are a combination of 1 and 2. [] Murayama's playing is very minimal and we do recognize indeed the element of percussion instruments, and Murayama explores hi…
Live from the Sahara
The Kel Tamasheq people of the Sahara respect an ancient social order of noble families supported by lesser nobles, craftsmen and former slaves. Noble princes never would pick up a musical instrument -- that was for the craftsman, the griot, the professional bard, or the lesser nobles. But all that has changed during the droughts and rebellions of the past 50 years. The whole social order has been challenged. In the 1970s, electric guitars appeared in the desert. Everything began to c…
Films super-8, la nature comme atelier
A book all in French about the Swiss artist Roman Signer and his work. Texts from François Bovier and Hamid Taieb, Geneviève Loup, Rachel Withers, + an interview with Roman Signer.
Broken Hearted Dragonflies
There is a legend in Burma stating that swarms of male dragonflies gather to join in choruses of high-pitched tones to court their mates. The ones that don't succeed in mating eventually scream so loud that their chests explode and they drop dead to the ground. These recordings are a tribute to this legend. Droning cicadas, dragonflies, and other insects display their charm as masters of the high frequency airwaves, recorded live and unprocessed by Tucker Martine in the lush settings of L…
Avast!
Avast! was created from field recordings made between 2009 and 2012 in Lyttelton, a volcanic harbour on the South Island of New Zealand. Sounds were captured at sites around the natural ampthitheatre of this extinct caldera: from abandoned wartime bunkers on the top of the crater rim to the port and its cacophony of cargo ships, tugs and workshops. The work is also haunted by the resonance of buildings such as the Timeball Station, which were destroyed when the town was at the epicentre of a maj…
7.10.12
a minimalist repress of this classic release from 2012 which sold out globally in ONE day! Review: Six months after the release of the limited edition '7.10.12' vinyl boxed set, alt.vinyl and :zoviet*france: are making the music from the album more widely available in a more conventional form. Retaining the original 7-inch, 10-inch and 12-inch vinyl formats, the three discs are pressed in standard black vinyl and packaged together in plain black sleeves.
Dawn In 2 Dimensions
After the dark conceptual ambience of Beyond the 4th Door, the members of Eternal Tapestry decided the time was right to do an album embracing their live show - blistering psych rock filled with lyrical guitar soloing and a caveman approach to rhythm, an oddly euphoric state where melancholia is blasted by ecstatic noise. Compiled from a variety of sessions at Tapestry Space throughout the spring of 2011 (some of this material first found a home on the two fall tour tapes), this set of so…
Death Set
"JAMES JACKSON TOTH, aka WOODEN WAND, is your fearless friend, the stumbling guy who gets himself into incredibly fucked up situations but comes out shining and lives to tell about it, entertaining you safely and immensely. You should be grateful. In my view, he's a great American songwriter in full bloom. Most likely you'll think that's a preposterous claim, and I won't blame you, but you'll be totally, completely, and unforgivably wrong not to agree. To me, it's obvious Toth is animated with t…
UKMerge/Strict
Hand-stamped 180g white label Inga Copeland furnishes new imprint All Bone with two grubby sound system tools produced by John T. Gast ov Henny Moan fame. It follows her \'Don\'t Look Back, That\'s Not Where You\'re Going\' 12\" with a more rugged, minimal UK dancehall sound iced by those knowing vocals. Top side stars the barely-hinged, pitching snares and dread digi dub of \'UKMERGE\' gilded with drowsy utterances, whilst flipside they tilt the tempo to a bouncing blend of mutant Dubstep and b…
Song Islands Vol. 2
Song Islands Vol. 2, released under the Mount Eerie moniker as opposed to Microphones like the original Song Islands compilation, is a sizable compendium of songs covering from the 2002 release of Song Islands to the present day. Coming in at a total of 31 tracks, Song Islands Vol. 2 continues Phil Elverum’s powerful and decidedly exploratory musical style. The compilation maintains an incredible sense of intimacy, even when the vocals get choral, which is on the precipice of being the rule as o…
Elogia De La Sombra
Two tracks, 31 minutes. Southern are very excited to present the latest release in our Latitudes series from Master Musicians of Bukkake. Recorded at Southern Studios by Harvey Birrell on 17 April 2010. Additional tracking and mixing at Aleph Studios in Seattle. Produced by Randall Dunn. Mastered by Mell Dettmer. Artwork by Randall Dunn and A.Turner. Elogia de la sombra is the 24th recording in the Latitudes series.Master Musicians Of Bukkake are an enchanting collective, comprising a fine pedig…
Blooming The Ena
Continuing on from last years reissue of the first Aritomo LP, here we have Aritomo's second LP, 'Blooming The Ena' which was previously issued on his own private Hakanairo label in 2007. It was housed in a brown card sleeve with paste on artwork on the front and back with an insert in an edition of only 200 copies. This original pressing is impossible to find now. This reissue has a pro printed cover reproducing the original cover art as the private press edition and a 4 page insert printed ont…