New Arrivals
Sólaris
The power of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris is not in its futuristic sets, or in the hypnotic shots of the alien planet’s weird, fluid surface, but it’s in the way he juxtaposes his alien, futuristic elements against the intimately familiar. This is a future not just of flashing lights and video screens, but of wood and wool and leather, of dogs and horses, books and photographs. In Frost & Bjarnason’s SÓLARIS we do find the futuristic, gaseous atmospheres and pulses one might expect from a sci-fi s…
Split
Inspired split LP that pairs feral European art soundists Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer with the avant garage surrealism of LAFMS stalwarts Smegma. Numbered edition of 177 copies with colour paste-on sleeves. The Smegma side bundles an eerie track from 1975 with two pieces from 2008/2009 that use loops, electronics and waves of extended muzzy tone to confuse time lines completely. The Kommissar side is less about outlaw sound poetry and more plugged into their destructo rock style as documented…
Bounced Check
Wally Shoup, Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty make up this screamin' free punk jazz liquid solid noize trio captured LIVE 'in your face' style in Seattle, WA. Totally improvised double sax and drum explosions that break down into duos and solos and re-ignite as trio howlin' paint splattered madness gone butt-naked wilder. Recorded at an art gallery with artwork melting off the walls and frightened fans nervously mopping their furrowed blood-stained brows (they were especially afraid one or both o…
Low Fiction
Great 2nd full-length collaboration between Lee Counts, Matt Franco (of Air Conditioning, Holy Family Parish), and Jason Crumer. Acoustic and processed power tools on scrap metal. This record is more spare and moody than their first, lush and industrial, elegiac sanders and spareness building up and blasting away from somber to near rapture.
Super Roots 10
Previously only available as a Japanese CD, now a limited 2 X 12" cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity & feat. art & production by EYE himself. Limited to 2000.
Le viandier de taillevent
for almost 10 years, the québécois collective napalm jazz gets its hands dirty with its unorthodox approaches to improv.' 'mostly activ as a duo with erick d'orion and philémon they like to get different guests like for example a_dontigny, arnaud rivière, erikm or erik minkkinen. limited to 181 copies and coproduced with notype from montréal." (label info)
Primal waters
Fresh/new live studio rec. by one of the greatest jazz Ensemble around these days. (Label Press)
White Summer of Love Dreamer
Brand new LP from Kawabata Makoto, his second for Blackest Rainbow following on nicely from where 2008's 'Rainbow Of Love' left off. White Summer of Love Dreamer continues to develop Kawabata's experimentation into psychedelic drone music using a variety of instruments. Across the two tracks on this LP, Kawabata seamlessly uses acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki, sarangi, tambura, organ, hurdy-gurdy, electronics, field recording, and his voice to create a stunning soundscape of hazy summ…
The Rising
Call Back The Giants first surprised and delighted the listening world in 2010, with their warmly-recieved eponymous debut album. Since that time, the duo of Tim Goss and Chloe Mutter have been locked in perfect isolation, teasing every nuance of their sound into sharp focus. The Rising presents the results of their toil, exposing Call Back The Giants as true masters of cryptic intent. Homespun keyboard minimalism, wavering teenage laments, and foreboding pronouncements of doom, synthesize into …
A
A is Sunburned's second album with producer Kieran Hebden, a.k.a. Four Tet. Directed by Kieran like actors in a film, Sunburned is taken off the bandana smokestage of their previous collaboration -- Fire Escape -- and put onto a sweat-soaked 4am lysergic dance floor. Kieran uses the band like his live instrument laptop and sampler. The results are truly stunning which makes this record into one of the best moments of each artist's respective musical careers. With artwork by California vis…
Spirits
After a few years spent living in Sweden and touring with Cecil Taylor's Jazz Unit, Ayler moved to NYC to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world through a number of groundbreaking records. Spirits, recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York City on 24 February 1964, was his first effort. Recorded a few months prior to his landmark album for ESP-Disk, Spiritual Unity (but only released in Europe on Denmark's Debut Records), for the occasion Ayler recruited Norman Howard …
Ancestral Songs
Daniel Higgs has an unparalleled presence in both body and voice. This, combined with hypnotic repetition, gives the material on Ancestral Songs both a loose discipline and an immense yet serpentine power. Ancestral Songs is comprised of apocalyptic tunes, a banjo raag, mellifluous birdsong, and the sci-fi-sounding duet of a searing Jew's harp and toy piano. "Are You of the Body?" brings out the electric tamboura tone and an accompanying acoustic guitar to melt the spine. A distorted motorik gui…
Human Taste
Portland, OR-by-way-of-Michigan garage gang Little Claw first tripped our radar with their self-released Why Not 7 inch, which was/is raw and physical and swingin’ in all the ways you want a 7” to be. Their LA live shows proved even more ripping and charged; we were sold. So we sprung at the offer to enshrine their latest (and best) album, Human Taste, on vinyl for the world’s turntables to adore. Packed with classic, cracked anthems (“Frozen In The Future,” “Colors You Drown”), basement weirdo …
Spectrum 008
A new collection of killer, tempered synthesizer workouts from Darren Ho on Spectrum Spools. The seven tracks featured have are have the kind of fragile beauty - and playfulness - that we associate with the early electronic music of Wendy Carlos, Daphne Oram, Raymond Scott and their ilk. There's a strong narrative arc to the album, but each track explores distinct territory: 'Slow Sum' parts one and two' are playful agglomerations of phased analogue patterns, 'In Peru' a Budd/Roedelius-style amb…
Capricorn Born Again
Amanda from Pocahaunted joins Robedoor for this first full-length as Topaz Rags, and the album's a real winner, kicking off with 'Darker Sooner' sounding like a Portishead album recorded over the phone. Elsewhere, twisted blues and moaning, haunted house vocals convene for 'Sightings', and 'Wear You Thin' is like a chill-wave night terror. An uneasy listen, but Capricorn Born Again is a druggy, beautiful raincloud of a record that's got appeal beyond the more conventional parameters of the Not N…
Triangles
There's something almost religious about this Charlatan (Brad Rose) LP, its narrative arc swinging from light to dark and back again. From the opening chords of "Lime Beauty," we're awash in polarized-lens glinting twilight, fluorescent skies over the water. "Trace Blue Outlines" is trance-like and reflective, with long, arpeggiated figures chasing each other skyward in a fugue. Darkness creeps in around the edges of "Vodka Rocks," with almost post-rock moodiness bringing the side to a cl…
Oh Me Oh My... The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs A
To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic flights of chaos -- and the wildly surr…
Astra & Knyst
Now Voks is finally presenting his first full-length album (though only 30 minutes long this is epic in Voks' universe - both 3"CD's included 10 tracks each within 20 minutes). While keeping his trademark style of hyperactive and nervous high-pitched twisted pop songs a newborn interest in (italo-western) movie soundtracks seems to be evident. The sound of super fast surf guitars is colliding with what seems chinese opera samples, world music is combined with children's whisteling tunes. Think R…
Sensacao Do Principio
Sensacao Do Principio is the third release proper from Tropa Macaca and their first with an American label. Their previous efforts on Ruby Red and Qbico were magnificent (though hard to find) efforts of blotted, aural sci-fi codifications somewhere between Anar Band and Blues Control. The two-track full-length continues their foray into post-psychedelic instrumental morphine, where Moolah's LP and Pink Floyd's "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with …
Swing Low Sweet Spiritual
Following a few years spent living and playing in Scandinavia, an unknown saxophone player by the name of Albert Ayler returned home to the USA to begin imposing his revolutionary style of jazz on the world. Having recorded his debut album, My Name Is Albert Ayler for the Danish label, Debut Records, this session (which took place in New York City on 24 February 1964) was his first American effort, resulting in the eventual release of two albums: Spirits (released in 1964 on Debut) and Swi…