New Arrivals
Das Testament
Backwards proudly presents the reissue of a private Maurizio Bianchi vinyl LP, issued in a small edition of 300 copies in 1983 and titled "Das Testament". M.B. is an Italian pioneer of noise music, born near Milan. Bianchi began to produce music in 1979, and since 1980 has used electronic equipment with the avowed goal "to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on complete realising of the modern decadence". Now remastered, for this release MB plays electronics, rhythms, neutroni…
Monstrance
Now also on vinyl.Mika Vainio, Electric Guitar, Processing, Metallic Percussion. Joachim Nordwall, Electronics, Electric Bass Guitar, Metal Objects, Hammond Organ, Vibraphone.Recorded in Berlin at Studio Schwedenstrasse one day in June 2010. Recording Engineer: Marco Paschke. Mixed and Mastered by Daniel Karlsson in Stockholm at Elektronmusikstudion. Mika Vainio was a member of the legendary minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic. Emerging from the Finnish industrial and rave music scene in the early …
Ensemble Pearl
Cosmic, heavy amplified rock drops and ripples, auras radiate and expand into cloud forms, through which lightning bolts. Tides rise, the moons wax upon a place somewhere between Link Wray, Hex-era Earth and early Tangerine Dream. The echoes return, leaving a trail that blows and drifts, creating a separate piece. Ensemble Pearl are Atsuo, William Herzog, Michio Kurihara and Stephen O'Malley. Their debut album also features the elemental forces of Eyvind Kang and Timba Harris. These playe…
Structures and Solitude
Tor Lundvall’s elegant soundtracks have been captured onto nine full length albums and collected within various compilations, raising his stature as one of the most abundant craftsman within the field of ambient music. Lundvall’s second box set for Dais features a 5 disc collection of more recent works including the albums Empty City and Last Light, as well as CD versions of the vinyl-only albums Sleeping & Hiding and The Shipyard. Additionally, the fifth disc in the collection entitled Night …
Bridges
Duane Pitre\'s new album, Bridges, features two pieces taken from a suite of analogous compositions by the same name, and was composed by Pitre in 2012. The two pieces that comprise the album are meant to work together in sequence as a composite work; or they can be isolated and listened to on their own. The title derives its name from the original concept for this work, which was to bring together aspects of traditional Eastern music (such as compositional form and tuning) with Western musical …
Princess Nicotine: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Myanmar (Burma)
...Vol. 1. Limited edition full-color gatefold LP version of the Sublime Frequencies CD release from 2004. Original description from 2004: How do they do it? Are they smarter? Are they better? How can it be ignored or denied? How is it possible that one of the most unique, perfectly composed and performed, intense and awe-inspiring musical legacies the world has ever known is looming north of the equator physically tucked between world cultural giants India, China, and Thailand, without more tha…
These Hidden Hands
Double LP pressed on 180 gm vinyl, Includes download code redeemable from the label** Tommy Four Seven and his buddy Alain present striking gothic techno architecture as These Hidden Hands on their excellent debut album. Converging a brutalist aesthetic with studio dynamism, their eponymous debut cycles eleven crushing blends of wrecking ball bass hits and pulverised noise rent with super wide and spacious production. It's a sound that's steadily attracted a lot of listeners and producers alike …
Stranded
Since 2002, Idea Fire Company has performed and recorded as a quartet with core members Karla Borecky and Scott Foust (me!), joined by Meara O'Reilly and Jessi Swenson. (Meara and Jessi, along with Matt Krefting, start in my finally completed feature-length film Here's To Love!). I feel this LP is as strong as any I've been involved in, and I feel pretty strongly about my body of work. Stranded is the perfect companion to Anti-Natural. Excellent Karla Borecky cover. 180 gram luxury object.
Test Leads
Includes digital download voucher redeemable from the label** Judging from his prolific output, L.A. dude M. Geddes Gengras must have a heavy carbon footprint. But we'll let him off 'cause he makes exceedingly good music. After techno odysseys as Personable, psych-dub trips with Sun Araw and The Congos, and duties in Robedoor, Pocahaunted and LA Vampires, he flies under his birth name for 'Test Leads', perhaps his purest and most honest revelation to date; two sprawling sides of throbbin…
An Anthology Of Noise and Electronic Music: Volume 2
Finally available on vinyl for the very first time - featuring exclusive and never before available material from the likes of Autechre, Tod Dockstader, Luc Ferrari and so much more - in a super heavyweight and deluxe gatefold package* This second volume of this excellent compilation series from Sub Rosa features an exclusive/previously unreleased Autechre track 'Bronchus 1' from 1991 - an alternate version of the track on 'Incunabula'. A second chronology of pioneering sound artists cove…
This Crying Era
First time vinyl release for Nimh, this guy has a solid experience and has collaborated with some genius of dark ambient / done, like Maurizio Bianchi, Mathausen Orchestra, Andrea Freschi...A1 This Crying Era is a featuring with french pianist Philippe Blache, for an outstanding melody.This Lp compiles some New material, and some material released on Silentes on K7 or cd-r released in the past 10 years. (label press)
Correspondance Sonore
A mail collaboration between Denis McCarty (turntable, cassettes, vinyles) & Martial Bécheau (cut-ups, computer, sounds). Martial Bécheau practice montage, the assembly of this matter that is the sound. Orchestration reports, juxtaposition plans, rhythm & density. Implement disparate materials, and compare the sonorous (sounds, words, music, soundscape, etc.).. Organize of the time factor - Subversive resonances - Respiratory theatre - Walled up silence - Temporal confrontations. Between collag…
The Ocean Above Your Heads
Limited edition vinyl LP in super deluxe, full-colour printed jacket, featuring cover artwork by Roberto Opalio. The idea of a recording collaboration by Nels Cline and My Cat Is An Alien was born one day in Torino, Italy, while Cline was touring with Wilco in 2007. After two other intersections of their respective orbits (first at Victoriaville, then at a UK All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2006), Cline eventually mailed them a CDR of prepared and heavily effected electric guita…
Police Water
Under the wickedly cryptic title of 'Police Water', Gary War delivers his latest psych-pop dazzler on Sacred Bones - also including the two tracks from his 'Reality Protest' 7". Just as everyone begins to catch up with his brilliant body of work from the last two years, he goes and switches up his sound with reinvigorated song structures, a broader tonal palette and far, far tighter rhythm programming. Don't worry, though, he's not lost the inexplicable post-apocalyptic weirdness, it's ju…
Opiate Sun
The EP might be the ideal format for Justin Broadrick's music, regardless of his alias. Whether he's trying to erase your head via concrete-slab guitars in Napalm Death, reduce techno to a series of clockwork hammerblows with Final, or massage your pleasure centers with neo-shoegaze in Godflesh, Broadrick's music has a laudable singularity. The three-or-four-song dose mainlines his all-consuming mood of the moment without the potential dilution of trying to fill up a CD. Broadrick claims to be …
Sleeper line
Sleeper line is a five-track EP constructed from the original components of a live set performed in December 2012. These components — manipulated found sounds — were recorded at various times and in various environments: Dungeness Power Station (2012), street recordings post-Notting Hill Carnival (2007), a prior live performance at the White Building in London (2012), and a cassette recording made in the cloakroom of the Metalheadz Sunday Sessions club night (1997). The cyclical process of merg…
Music for Sick Queers
The German Shepherds, formed by Sandy Stark and Stephen Scheatzle in Nov. 1981, released a three song ep in early "82 with "Booty Jones" -- to child molester and kidnapper Kenneth Parnell; "I Adore You" -- an offering of prayer and submission and "Message from JJ" -- a rousing sermon by Peoples Temple chief Rev. Jim Jones. Later that year a dub version of "I Adore You" and "The Earthquake Has Come" appeared on the "You'll Hate This Record, Record" compilation lp. In 1983 the Shepherds began work…
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…
Sequitur
Emeralds co-pilot Steve Hauschildt follows up his 'Tragedy & Geometry' album for Kranky with the plush new age disco dreamscapes of 'Sequitur'. Arguably, Steve is the lazy one in Emeralds, conjuring only three solo album to date compared with the gazillion respective works from bandmates John Elliot and Mark McGuire. But, as evidenced here and previously, he's also the canniest and most pop-wise, honing a more concise, richly rhythmic and melodic style of composition still rooted in cereb…
The Blackout
Thrill Jockey seem to be snapping up lots of underground faves, Barn Owl, Eternal Tapestry, Wooden Shjips, Sun Araw, and now Tunnels. For several years, Tunnels has been the moniker for the solo output of Nicholas Bindeman. Over time Bindeman's sound has evolved from the slow, breathing landscapes of his earlier ambient/drone releases (Colour Seance, Vexations) to completely fried-out bedroom psych explorations (Astral Collage, In Between Dreams). The Blackout delves into a world of sound un…