New Arrivals
Music Of Changes
The title is a double pun. The score is the first that John Cage devised allowing the hexagrams of the I Ching to fully determin e how the music would procee d, event by event, gesture by gesture—the musical details (pitch, duration, dynamic s, density, tempi) being painstakingly, albeit fortuitously, derived through point-by-point con sultation from charts of possi bilities designed by the composer. (Christian Wolff, Cage’s young friend and musical associate, had presented Cage with a co…
Mirrors & tides
Eyes closed, ears wide open, we are given freedom to dream the void. Sweeping, intricate, sometimes ominous yet always exuding a warmth and depth of emotion, The Stargazer's Assistant produces pure cinema of sound. For the new EP, David J. Smith (Guapo) is joined by Circle vocalist Mika Rttö', who sings on the heart-breaking 'Coral Butterfly'. David also had the honour of playing the late Finnish jazz drummer Edward Vesala's Sound & Fury collection of unique metal percussion. Ancient fore…
Arghiledes
Arghiledes' is a brilliant homage to Greek Rebetiko music of the early 20th century by No Neck Blues Band's David Shuford aka D. Charles Speer. It's his 2nd solo LP under this moniker and a deeply researched, beautifully executed effort replete with in depth sleeve notes and paste-on cover. Coming from a Blues playing American of Greek descent, the project reflects the syncretic nature of Rebetiko music, itself made up of the many disparate elements which formed Greek urban folk music (European …
Cinema
Diverse musical elements - coruscating cymbal scrapes, shimmering amplifier hum, melancholy saxophone circlings, sharp hits of snare, string and reed, slow motion guitar riffs, deep tam-tam surges and floor tom rasps, hypnotic prepared piano figures, and hovering fragments of song-like melodies - fracture and coalesce in this single intense improvisation.
Featuring two of the foundational figures of free improvisation alongside a younger arrival, this recording captures the first meeting …
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 …
Blue Clouds
Some cream for your acid-folk tea - hitherto unreleased sides from the two and a half bards (well, two bards and a maiden - forsooth!) who self-released All On the First Day back in '72. These include studio recordings from later in the 70s, a couple live songs and an outtake from the legendary album itself! Well, the first legendary album anyway - for Blue Clouds is clearly another.
Marvellous Boy: Calypso From West Africa
Marvellous Boy Calypso From West Africa HONEST JON'S RECORDS **** endlessly satisfying' (Boston Phoenix); 'Blending cheeky calypso with rocking highlife — and by turns breezy, wistful and downright uproarious' (Daily Telegraph); 'gems at every turn... weaving highlife, swing, military brass bands, Afro-Cuban jazz, into a hell of a compilation... Honest Jon's have added to the highest order of this simple music of heartbreaking celebration' (Brainwashed). The inter-war dance bands of British West…
NYC, Hell 3:00 AM
James Ferraro takes inspiration from "the things I see" in his 'NYC, Hell 3:AM' dystopia. The follow-up to 'Sushi' is a wry reflection of his locale, "a surreal psychological sculpture of American decay and confusion" evoking imagery of "rats, metal landscape, toxic water, junkie friends, HIV billboards, evil news, luxury and unbound wealth, exclusivity, facelifts, romance, insane police presence and lonely people... all against the sinister vastness of Manhattan's alienating skyline." Of course…
Infinitesimal
Berangere Maximin was born in December 1976 on the remote French colonial Island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean where she resided until the age of fifteen. Performing first as a singer, she later studied electroacoustic music with the composer Denis Dufour (a member of the Ina-GRM from 1976 to 2000) at the Perpignan Conservatoire. Her first professional experiences occurred in Paris, and in 2002, she moved there permanently. From 2002 to 2007, whilst running the organisations Motus (concerts pro…
ACE 26,250'/11 DEGREES 22.4'N 142 DEGREES 35.5'E
The audio on this LP was inspired by early efforts to explore extreme locations on earth, and the clash between the will of humans, the limits of their bodies, and the immutable laws of the natural world - the latter which can easily destroy both of the first two. The 11° 22.4'N 142° 35.5'E side is based on the 1960 dive by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the bathyscaphe Trieste to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on earth. This side aims to mirror the …
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…
Evening river
Vinyl edition of this stunningly beautiful album of fragile and haunting Korean folk from Kim Doo Soo that was issued earlier this year on CD by Japan's consistently incredible PSF label. Kim Doo Soo's first major appearance outside of Korea was through the Damon & Naomi curated 'International Sad Hits' compilation featuring 4 tracks from Kim. This was followed with PSF releasing his first new record in 5 year, 2007's superb '10 Days Butterfly'. On 'Evening River', Kim has re-recorded some of hi…
Spectral life
Debut LP of one third of avant drone metal outfit Locrian. Contemporary artist / musician Terence Hannum is back on wax with two side of meditative and sonic cathartic noise torrents. Following on a dozen of highly regarded solo tapes and cdr, Spectral Life follows the artist through 2 tracks of electronic and acoustic drones blending in the most efficient way all the previous works of the artist. While the A side is made of short different synth-driven pieces blended together in an immense open…
Fur mich
Tired of quarreling endlessly with his imperious brother Klaus, Thomas Dinger quit the production of Viva, the second La Düsseldorf album, and promptly set off for the south of France. Frustrated and far away from home, his mind turned to the possibility of a solo album. An album devoted to his own musical ideas, free from domineering voices telling him what to do. Presenting his own vision in the context of a La Düsseldorf LP would have been difficult at the best of times. "I wanted to cre…
Armed Courage
With nary a praising documentary, coffee table photo book or tribute band to their name, The Dead C are nonetheless one of the most respected, longest surviving groups in the history of rock. Still sporting the original band members (Michael Morley on guitar, vocals, Bruce Russell on guitar, Robbie Yeats on drums) from their first assemblage in 1987, The Dead C's renown has a lot to do with their stubborn unwillingness to compromise in any form. With a varied and challenging discography, the ban…
Die letzte Rache
Der Plan (Moritz R, Frank Fenstermacher, Pyrolator) were instrumental in ushering in the German New Wave (NDW) and are considered free spirits of synthesizer pop: electronic music created with minimal means, sometimes experimental, playful or even bordering on dilettantism, but always with a sense of humour.
Retrospectively, it makes perfect sense that Der Plan created a soundtrack. For one thing, visuals were almost as important to Der Plan as their music. And if every self-respecting pop b…
Escape From New York
Spectrum Spools give flight to a right zinger from Palm Highway Chase. 'Escape From New York' has already achieved cult status in the synth interzones, notching up over 5000 downloads from the artist's myspace and bandcamp pages since 2009, before John Elliott and Peter Rehberg colluded to present the tangible artefact on wax. Flashback to 2009, maybe late winter or something like that. The Road Chief comes back from his extended stay in Belgium all laced up with new jams from the undergro…
Versions
Grandly orchestrated versions of highlights from the Zola Jesus back catalogue, arranged by none other than classically trained industrial survivor JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus, aka Manorexia). Conceived for a performance at New York’s Guggenheim Museum at the climax of her Conatus world tour, these tremulous string settings are really what Nika Roza Danilova’s tender but polished vocals have always been begging for, and the sensitivity and focus of Thirlwell’s charts, beautifully realised by the Mi…
Sins of omission
A mutating web of feedback, choral echoes and lo-fi loops of various squeaking, rattling found sounds, settling gently into certain texture combinations before teasing the stasis through jolts of pitch bend or slow fades into somewhere else. It's a real nightmare collage: one minute it's a blast of screaming electronics, like someone tampering with the cockpit controls, and the next it's tornado of factory noise and alien sex. Musique concrete for the mind's darker, more paranoid recesses, with …
Unroof the house of the fishes
Long-awaited vinyl LP reissue of Unroof The House Of The Fishes by Key Ransone's Small Cruel Party. Originally released in 1993 as a limited to 50 copies tape on the Japan-based G.R.O.S.S label run by Akifumi Nakajima. Aube but now upgraded to vinyl by UK label Harbinger Sound. Mastered for vinyl by Scott Konzelmann of Chop Shop 'fame'. The LP is housed in a printed inner sleeve, along with a full-colour jacket, both featuring new artwork by the artist. Side A is a creeped contortion of ambient …