New Arrivals
Hemp Is Here
Leven Signs' Hemp Is Here came and went in 1985, as both a cassette release (Unlikely Records) and vinyl release (Cordelia) in the blink of an eye. The duo of Peter Karkut and Maggie Turner managed to craft one of the strangest, most affecting albums of new wave experimentalism of the era, but due to the album's impossible-to-find status, it's been largely forgotten and continuously overlooked ever since. A chance encounter with the cassette version of Hemp Is Here led Brad Rose of Digitali…
Under A Single Banner
It's been a busy couple of years for the producer behind the Shifted project. On top of an extremely well-received album for the Mote Evolver label, the producer has edged further out into the fringes of electronic music under a number of aliases, taking in noise/ambient variants as Covered In Sand, as well as more distorted, technofied productions under the Alexander Lewis moniker, a sound described by the Blackest Ever Black label as "S-M techno." His new album as Shifted, Under a Single Ba…
Ernest Thrasher
Back when I was about six months older than I am now, I used to see these bumper stickers around town that said, "There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert." My first reaction was to say, "Thank fuck," since the last Dead show I saw (Jersey City 8/6/74) pretty much blew. Then I remembered that last goddamn Dead show anyone saw was almost 20 years ago (Chicago 7/9/95) and it makes me wonder what kinda stupid pills the cars' occupants have been snorting. 'Cause Jesus, there're all sorts of thi…
A history of every one
'A History of Every One' by Bill Orcutt is an album of songs: minstrel songs, holiday songs, hymns, marches, cowboy songs, Disney songs, work songs, delta blues. The original tunes themselves are nothing special, well known, but not particularly well-regarded. Most would be filler on a mid-60's Doris Day or Burl Ives LP. What Orcutt does with them however is remarkable: expanding upon techniques developed on 2011's 'How the Thing Sings' and incorporating ideasforged since his recording of 'The S…
Neuro Habitat
Reissue of the private LP, issued in an edition of 300 copies in 1982 and titled in original Mörder Unter Uns/Neuro Habitat , considered with Regel one of the Maurizio Bianchi's most representative works , Neuro Habitat is finally reissued for the first time in vinyl and remastered under the supervision of the Milanese artist. Side A "Morder Unter Uns" made of puzzled motifs and effects is a dark, sinister mantra to oppressive musical experiences. The piece finishes in an industry of molecular, …
Light that comes, light that goes
One of two new releases from Brian Pyle (the other being 'Interval Signals'), Light that comes is a rich exploration of Ensemble Economique's range and power. With a palpable sense of the sublime throughout, the listener is guided through drones like the pillars and buttresses of a cathedral for a sombre new religion, into the sounds of the ocean (somehow elegiac), flute tones springing up in the fog like gravestones, and fallen kosmische. These are followed by the wonderfully odd 'As the Train …
The Cremator
Limited LP pressing for The Cremator, as ongoing commitment to the lost music of the Czech New Wave cinema movement from the late 1960s and 1970s, Finders Keepers Records follow up our series of previously unreleased music to Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Daisies, Saxana and The Little Mermaid with a short series of soundtracks for films by the country’s master of the macabre and the nation’s first point of call for freakish fairytales and hallucinogenic horror, Mr. Juraj Herz. As another lat…
L'Origine / TEMA
Drawing inspiration from the "Action Direct" expanded guitar performances of Masayuki Takayanagi, Fusinato places the guitar at the centre of his work. A few crudely played strings provide the impetus for a long chain of electronics which obliterate the original signal and leaves us with a hyper-kinetic wall of full frequency spectrum noise. Like the piano in David Tudor early 1960's performances of Cage's Variations II, in Fusinato's work, the guitar is the object of a dialectic of simultaneous…
Cover Versions
Andrew Pekler selected 300 different covers from second-hand records and, using colorful geometric elements to cover over all titles, performer’s names, and label logos, removed traces of the covers’ original contexts. The sunsets, couples in silhouette, alpine panoramas, roses on pianos, female faces in close-up, and seascapes no longer serve as the packaging for easy listening and exotica. Instead, the romantic, bizarre and intriguingly bland images of the original covers are free to lend thei…
Trente belles annes
Triumphal new CD, the first new recordings in an age, from one of the greatest bands on the goddamn planet, the trio of saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and guitarist Donald Miller aka Borbetomagus: this is a roof-raising performance, recorded live at Instants Chavires, France, 19th December 2009. Borbetomagus combine the elevated amplifier violence of Jimi Hendrix at his most combustible with the spontaneous free music polyphony of Ascension-era Coltrane and the ‘guitar smashing’ h…
Line the clouds
Multi-faceted composer and performer Ashley Paul releases her new lp 'line the clouds', on brooklyn's rel records. a hyper-intuitive record, where off-kilter instrumentation meets beautifully crafted melodies to convey the very essence of 'musicality', 'Line the clouds' contains 44.18 minutes of sonic paradoxes and dichotomies. Stirring up a zephyr of twelve blissfully cacophonous sounds - singular moments of an indivisible whole the focus is on guitar, voice and saxophone, but Ashley also em…
Mitosis
"12k kicks off its 11th year with a new release that takes the label down new sonic pathways. Caught between the organic and electronic minimalism that 12k is known for and the unconventional Japanese pop musings and songwriting style of Happy, Moskitoo's Drape is an infectiously strange, bleepy, and dreamy debut release. Sanae Yamasaki (Moskitoo) hails from Sapporo, Japan in Hokkaido, the country's northern-most prefecture. Perhaps a reaction to the cool climate of her home, her multi-instrumen…
Combines
The GGRIL is an ensemble of musicians who have decided to give a space to experiment with various forms of interactions possible in an orchestra without a conductor. The group brings together a dozen musicians from different backgrounds, but all eager to explore new territories offered by bands where the music is alive, freed from the linearity of writing. Powered by Tour de Bras, Rimouski, this set is a way to involve a large number of musicians and composers in the region around a unifying pro…
Scott (The Collection 1967-1970)
This box set collects remastered versions of Scott Walker's first five solo albums. The Scott albums are the fulcrum of Walker's career: You can hear where he'd been, and in retrospect, where he was going. His third act was emerging after 20 years of almost total silence with Tilt, The Drift, and Bish Bosch, released between 1997 and 2012. Walker's latter-day albums are fearless and violent, featuring wailing donkeys, moans, scrapes, and famously, the sound of someone punching meat. They seem to…
Assimilating The Shadow
In the time since Ricardo Donoso delivered his debut album Progress Chance, he's been pursuing his take on morning music even further. Informed by deep house, slowed-down trance and club influences, this new album unfolds to reveal elaborate sonic labyrinths that emerge out of the burning embers of dance music. Assimilating the Shadow has been designed to be consumed at sunrise, at the party's end. It assembles dark, carefully-considered sequences layered in a way that seems on first list…
Mad Dog\'s Hustle
A too long unheard blacksploitation soundtrack from the Fantasy Productions house -- grooves from the pool of players who laid down the sounds on Secret Stash's fantastic Porno Groove compilation -- the score for the very little seen and long lost Mad Dog's Hustle from 1974! The music is credited to The Upstroke -- the same unidentified musicians from Fantasy's adult film scores -- and in a similar fashion to the porno soundtrack material, they're working very much in the appropriate idiom, but …
Dutch Tvashar Plumes
'Dutch Tvashar Plumes' seems to map the changes in Lee's approach to music making over the last 4/5 years. From his initial exposure and subsequent immersion into Jungle as a teenager, he soon began experimenting with structure and sound design which led him to a more 'academic' approach with 'Computer Music'. There were many self-imposed rules he adhered to during this time. These last few years he decided to break with that and make an intuitive venture forward. This record is the first real d…
Four Years Older
A new set by the coolest chap in New York City, documenting the development process of a solo electric guitar piece that Alan Licht has been playing out for the last four years. Revered for his work in the Blue Humans and Text Of Light, and a key figure in the pantheon of experimental solo guitar players born in the late '60s such Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi, Four Years Older is his debut Editions Mego release, representing another peak in a career of mining the rich seams of minimalism, noi…
Jack Allett / Kalbakken
"Relay I" is the first in Smeraldina-Rima's Relay Series. An artist for the A-side is chosen by the Smeraldina-Rima clan, after which the A-side artist decides upon who will get to fill the B-side. For every Relay 7" a different artist will be chosen to create the outside artwork. The A-side of "Relay I" fell to Jack Allett, the fingerpicking whirlwind formerly known as Spoono. Allett chose Kalbakken for the B-side. A great choice, Kalbakken, with its shamanistic folk, offers a great supplement …
In a Fung Day T!
Since 2001, Duchess Says have been spreading the gospel of the influential and mysterious Church of Budgerigars. Their learned mix of hypnotic rock and saturated keys, concocted by Phil C., Ismael and Simon Says, is delivered by A-C, a sermon laden with the teachings of the novice Mere-Perruche. The congregation has prayed the three Ts; now it's time to reiterate. In a Fung Day T! is their second offering. Adrian Popovich and Joseph Donovan of the Mountain City studio have succeeded in r…