New Arrivals
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…
A big circle drawn with little hands
A big circle drawn with little hands was created from a box of things sent to Steve Roden by label owner Sylvian, who runs the ini itu label. the box contained everything from newspapers, coins, wooden toys, pamphlets, plastic objects, plastic bags, broken airline headphones, notes, a bottle opener, a noise maker of wood, a small electronic toy shaped like a butterfly that offered tones and animal noises, cardboard, a fan, and other things. i also used a banjo in the first track, and my voice in…
The Invisible Hands
Limited edition 2LP. The Invisible Hands is the English translation of the band's original Egyptian Arabic name: El Ayadi El Khafeyya. Taking almost two years to create amidst an unusual and challenging backdrop, this is the new project of Alvarius B. (Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls). Eleven highly-crafted songs projected through his typically dark lens of songwriting and a band of brilliant musicians from Egypt; this special edition limited 2LP includes the English and Arabic language vocal …
Diluvial
Local preoccupations with rising sea levels fuel Diluvial - a work that dwells on the dynamics of flood geology and global warming; creation stories and climate change. Diluvial is an evolving soundscape and environment by Bruce Gilbert and Beaconsfield ArtWorks (David Crawforth & Naomi Siderfin). This work was initiated on the Suffolk coast for Faster Than Sound, Aldeburgh 2011 and then developed for a show at Beaconsfield, London later that year. Taking rising sea levels as its theme, Diluvial…
Live At Skymall
Jan Jelinek, Hanno Leichtmann and Andrew Pekler have formed a trio that can truly be called a supergroup. As solo artists, all three members are among the most renowned of Berlin's electronic musicians. When playing together as Groupshow, the three instrumentalists -- themselves largely informed by minimalist sensibilities -- engage with the idiom of free-form collective improvisation, which has a long tradition in Germany dating back to the days of Fluxus and Krautrock. Consequentially, t…
Cat mask at huggie temple
“The outcome of a collective trudge across the European/American desert for 40 days and 40 nights.†Cat Mask at Huggie Temple is the superb debut 12†by Desert Heat, a dust bowl rock trio of Steve Gunn, John Truscinski and Cian Nugent. The trio originally came together when they played a bowling alley followed by an appearance at Tusk Festival in Newcastle, UK where the trio jammed together like they had been a band for years. Part of the group\'s success hinges on John and Ste…
Machine Gun Nest: Cassette Works, Vol. 0
We've been waiting for a vinyl issue of Alberich material for an age, and here it is - an 8 track selection of often brutal, always heavy-hitting Industrial/Techno/Ambient productions from one of the most interesting characters to have emerged from the Hospital axis. Scoping rare and out-of-print highlights from his extensive cache over the last 6 years, it embodies a shell-shocked and embattled spirit in eight parts ranging from water-boarded ambience to remorseless industrial rhythms and night…
Alien, All Too Alien
Their cat may well be all too alien but there's quite an earthly feel to this epic voyage of a record from the brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio. It feels like you are slowly drifting through different continents perched on a floating glass-domed steel barge, observing the strangely contrasting cultures go about their business, seemingly unaware they are being watched. Though there are certain sounds contained herein that are quite familiar to many 21st century homosapie…
Tender Exploration
“Tender Exploration” reminds me of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”, it’s an enormous metallic machine on spindly legs, walking like a toddler, but also steaming, mumbling, panting, a creature full of energy, and inhabited by a fire demon. “Drake”, the first track”, starts seeking for a structure almost clumsily, the band members seem to have to find each other. But soon they have a good chemistry and Bauer, who dominates this piece in spite of its name, adds his huge repertoire of tech…
Beaches Canyons
Debut album from NYC sound manipulation specialists, back in print on vinyl w/ download. Black Dice is an explosive, radical, and viciously unique rock & roll band. Based out of Brooklyn, NY, the trio is fiercely independent, doggedly disciplined, and uncompromisingly DIY in approach. Brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren have spent over a decade recording, touring, and unleashing their bizarre musical doctrine on audiences the world over.By the time Beaches and Canyons made its reti…
Character
Opportunities for introspection have come few and far between for Canadian-born, New York City-based cellist Julia Kent. After coming to prominence as a member of the cello-driven group Rasputina in the ‘90s, she went on to arrange and play on numerous recordings and tour extensively as a member of Antony and the Johnsons, among other projects.The opportunity to explore her own emotional and creative world came with her solo LPs, Delay (2007) and Green and Grey (2011), and it is something she ap…
The darkened mirror
Tetuzi Akiyama, guitars. Tom Carter, guitars. Christian Kiefer, guitars, banjo and Chip Conrad, percussion, Scott Leftridge, bass & bowed bass. 'The darkened mirror' is a unique vision of American music. Tetuzi Akiyama is a highly unique and experimental guitarist heavily applying free improvisation and noise. Besides guitar, he also plays electronics, viola, and self-made instruments. Best known for his work with acclaimed iconoclasts Charalambides, which he co-founded with Christina Ca…
Outside/Inside
Charlie Nothing was the fractured-psyche pseudonym of author, father, horsekeeper, organic farmer, beekeeper, philosopher and clown Charles Martin Simon, inventor of the dingulator (guitar sculptures made out of the metal from American cars). Charlie's only visible offering to the record buying public was really anything but. Due to its rarity, The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing, issued by Takoma Records in 1967, has been a source of consternation for in-the-know types for years. …
Spoken Music Concert At Paula Cooper Gallery
Originally issued on Dog W/A Bone in 2002. The S.E.M. Ensemble's Spoken Music Concert took place on Tuesday, February 6, 1990, at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, then on Wooster Street in Soho. It was performed by members of the S.E.M. Ensemble: Petr Kotik (Director), Chris Nappi, Joseph Kubera, and Den Neill (sound mix); and four guests: John Cage, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, and Anne Tardos. "Empty Words," written in 1973-1974, is arguably the most musical of John Cage's texts. M…
Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby
Incredible work from the amazing Dorothy Ashby – a brilliant set of funky and spiritual tunes, set to full backings from Chicago soul arranger Richard Evans! This album is easily one of Ashby's greatest, and it's dedicated to the writings of Omar Khayyam – one of the forces guiding Dorothy's more spiritual sound at the end of the 60s, clearly opened up in a way that's not unlike the direction of Alice Coltrane's work, but a lot more focused and a lot more funky! Ashby not only plays her…
Open Space
I've been composing graphical scores since 2004. Each score has been done for a particular group, and not just for a certain set of instruments but also for specific persons, each with their own personal sound and their own distinct approach to improvisation. The scores hover in the gray region between composition and improvisation. They create a situation where the players are free up to a point to improvise but in which they could also find themselves in juxtapositions with other player…
Poisoned Soil
House of Low Culture is the long-running solo project of Aaron Turner (Isis, Mamiffer, Lotus Eaters, etc.) and Poisoned Soil is the first proper album to be released in nearly a decade. HOLC's first release, Submarine Immersion Techniques Vol. 1, would set the tone for all that would follow. Recorded from 1997-1999, released in 2000, the album explored lonely, lysergic drone territories and the construction of textural weavings. Over the course of the next several years, Turner broadened …
Pangaea Ultima
Double LP version. Pangaea Ultima, Steve Moore's debut record on Spectrum Spools, is an epic musical achievement, not simply for its sonic sophistication and compositional mastery, but also because Moore has crafted here an album that has come as close to any in transcending the boxed human logic of time and place. The album title refers to the name which geologists have given to the future super-continent that is suggested may form on earth in the next quarter-of-a-billion years. Over th…
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…
The Magic Bridge
Gatefold double LP version. Includes a CD with three bonus tracks, plus lyric sheet inserts. Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson's genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out on CD (Pink Triangle…