New Arrivals
Ghost In The Shell (Original Soundtrack)
Composed by Kenji Kawai for the original 1995 film. In 2029, with the advancement of cybernetic technology, the human body can be augmented or even completely replaced with cybernetic parts. Another significant achievement is the cyberbrain, a mechanical casing for the human brain that allows access to the Internet and other networks. An often-mentioned term is “ghost”, referring to the consciousness inhabiting the body (the “shell”).
Megatech Body, a shell manufacturer with suspected close ties…
Façadisms
*400 copies limited edition* The seeds of composer Rafael Anton Irisarri’s latest LP were first planted during his 2016 tour in Italy, months before that Autumn’s unexpected presidential election. The linguistic glitch of an innocuous diner in Milan named “il Mito Americano” – meant as “The American Dream” but translated literally to English as “The American Myth” – sparked a series of ideas, both conceptual and musical. Amid the chaos of 2020, while exploring the stark world of brutalist archit…
Totemo Aimasho
*2024 stock* In essence Tokyo’s Tenniscoats celebrate all that makes song vital in our collective conscious. Matching emotive live performance against delicately psychedelic folk songs, the duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno (assisted by a plethora of floating members), create some of the most compelling music currently emanating from Japan.
On Totemo Aimasho – loosely translated as 'Lets Meet Very Much' – Tenniscoats find themselves traveling across countries, scribing audio journal entries from Aust…
Alluvial
*2024 stock* Crafted throughout 2004 and early 2005, Rösner’s original source material stems largely from instruments (guitar, percussion, analog electronics), and through his detailed processing and production methods he’s been able to counterpoint a desire for raw digital overtones against earthy acoustic qualities.
The results are simply a pleasure for the ears – course passages of hiss and electronic splutter give way to lilting moments of sheer melodic beauty. With strong humming bass heavy…
Constants
*2024 stock* UK-based artist Chris Herbert is a man of intermittent communications. Over the past decade he has published a select oeuvre of crushingly lush and elegant records. Fittingly then, Constants, his new edition for Room40 is a transmission from an overtly private realm. Working in a relative vacuum, beyond the reach of contemporary electronic music trends, Herbert has focussed his interest in intuitive composition. Drawing on a mixed musical palette and interweaving sounds sourced from…
Ballad(s) for Quiet Horizons
*2024 stock* Incredible collection of Scott Morrison's audio visual works. Presented in a gatefold monochrome printed and matte laminated jacket with insert cards.
Trystero
This debut full-length album of Stockholm-based composer and electroacoustic experimentalist Theodor Kentros, could easily be interpreted as 'just' an assemblage of pieces written between 2021-2024. Named after the paranoid hallucination (or, if said hallucination is real, the underground secret mail system) figuring in the 1966 Thomas Pynchon novel ‘The Crying of Lot 49’, it should rather be perceived as a very distinct, coherent stream running through his output during these years.
The six tra…
Dry Routine
*200 copies limited edition with hand-stamped coffee stained sleeves and insert* 5 decided and minimal arrangements of raw organic waste, tired motors, and idling electronic signals. Sound sources that are unmistakably worldly, spun into Ochu’s signature malaise, making them impossible to place. A continuation of the trajectory established on his preceding albums Unproduktiw and Lähmung des Wartens, this time while a slightly noisier edge.
Two im Teer
*300 copies limited edition* “Two In Teer (two in the tar) contains five cycles of poems spread over fourteen tracks, always implemented differently in terms of sound. Poetry and sound poetry turn into fragile and lonely noises. An excessive collage of voices, piano, and increasingly distorted and destroyed tape recorders. Solo and in duet with the voices of Alice Kemp, Mara Genschel, Anna Schimkat, and the violins of Hans Essel and Inge Salcher.Perhaps the most naked, embarassing and most indet…
”A&E, Adolf & Eva, Adam & Eve, in the Garden of Eden, Picnic”
This recording is roughly 80 minutes of the A&E three day performance superimposed.
Performed by Paul McCarthy (Adolf / Eva) and Lilith Stangenberg (Eva / Eve).
Das Berliner Konzert
*300 copies limited edition* "Stimulated by our first public performance of "rarely heard music" (Das Münchner Konzert), we at once planned another concert in which the tight circle of performers was to be enlarged by a couple of dear friends, and once again the location had to have the lure of the special. oswald wiener suggested the church of the holy cross in berlin as our place of action, for we had learnt that it could be hired for public performances. everyone was most enthusiastic about p…
Oman Protest Music
Compilation of revolutionary Omani songs from the time of the Marxist-Leninist Dhofar Liberation Front seeking to overthrow the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman and Establish an independent state in Dhofar, free from the rule of the Omani Sultan Said bin Taimur. The rebels also held the broader goals of Arab nationalism which included ending British influence in the Persian Gulf region. The Dofar War lasted from 1965 – 1976 ultimately ending with the defeat of the PFLO. These songs celebrate the bra…
Balinese Gamelan Music
”Nowhere is the richness of Balinese art more evident than in the glitteringly brilliant music and dance of gamelan gong kebjar, which uses a 25-piece orchestra of xylophone-like bronze-keyed instruments, tuned gongs, cymbals, drums, and flutes. This style is relatively new. The earlier musical style known as gamelan gong was stately in pace. Gamelan means orchestra; gong refers to the large gong used in the orchestra. But when the kebjar style came into existence, this traditional form changedr…
Kiss Me Again
Arthur Russell first visited The Gallery in 1976 with his then boyfriend Louis, who introduced him to Nicky Siano. Arthur became a regular at the space and one night as Siano was playing “Turn the Beat Around”, which had just been released, Arthur waved at him from outside the booth and asked to come in. Nicky opened the door and Arthur suggested they make a record like this together. This ended up being a huge step for Siano as it marked the first ever production by a DJ making a record from sc…
Clouddead
cLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10" EPs that appeared between 2000-2001, is aurally dense and obscured. A sprawling mass of miniature beat-suites and Dadaist lyrics, this strange and beautiful 3xLP would influence a myriad of sub-genres (cloud rap, hauntology, lo-fi hip-hop, etc.) in the two decades since its initial release. Only the three members of cLOUDDEAD – Why?, Doseone and Odd Nosdam – can speak to the group's origins, but in the context of underground hip-hop towards the end of t…
Propulsion
Propulsion is the debut album by a stellar quartet of journeymen Chicago improvisers assembled by saxophonist and Aerophonic Records founder Dave Rempis. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz is known for his extensive work with the late Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Mike Reed, and his own trio Sun Rooms. Bassist Joshua Abrams is the leader of Natural Information Society, perhaps the best-known group internationally to emerge from Chicago over the last decade. He also maintains longstanding relationship…
39 / Part IV - VI
"The creative process, a means by which creative work finds its way into realization, has consistently reconfigured its basic principles as the content of art has evolved. The choices we make, the decisions that make sense to us, reveal our nature and our passion to assemble the things we wish to share with others as an experience. We are offered a number, as a title for this recording, which we have seen before and we'll see once more, as Christian Wolfarth releases this second of three chapter…
One for One
*200 copies limited edition* Renowned French alto sax and organ player Jean-Luc Guionnet is also an outstanding composer. "One for One" is a work that Guionnet composed in 2015. Santiago-based guitarist Cristián Alvear (born in 1979) is active on the contemporary classical and experimental music scenes inside and outside Chile. Juan Sebastián Lach (born in 1970) is a composer and keyboard player from Mexico. In 2013 Lach released the album "ISLAS," a collection of his chamber music compositions,…
Roughly Random
*200 copies limited edition* Akira Sakata is a treasure of Japan’s free jazz/improvised music world. Rie Nakajima is a London-based sound artist with an international career in Europe and beyond. Sakata and Nakajima have performed together in Japan and other countries since the mid-2010s. When Nakajima came to Japan for a time in 2023, the two appeared at Ftarri, Tokyo, on December 4, performing two duo sets. Sakata, on alto sax and clarinet, forgoes ferocious sound-making and plays with calm el…