New Arrivals
Aural Spaces
I've been in touch with Ian MIDDLETON for over 13 years now, lured into contact by a remora lathe-cut lp, I believe, which sounded similar in intent to ifco material that karla and I were working on at the time. IanIan's music has always had both organic and artificial elements combined with the vague melancholy of distant beauty. With Aural spaces, Ian has refined and distilled his processes into a gorgeous electronic diamond. To quote my good friend oskar spee, 'Aural spaces is an exotic, scie…
Imaginary Softwoods
Three years ago, a triple cassette oddity appeared out of nowhere adorned in washed-out nature collages and zero information. Turns out that John Elliot of Emeralds was behind the madness, and after further dissection of the sounds enclosed and it all began to make sense.Those three tapes (one yellow, one blue, one red) were the first taste of something that felt like a lost private-press object from the early European electronic experimentations of the '60s & '70s. Each vignette is its own stor…
Soul Translation - A Spiritual Suite
A beautiful little record – and one that definitely earns the "suite" distinction in the title – given the thoughtful longform approach of the set! The album's got a more composed feel than other spiritual jazz sessions of the time – not in a stiff way, but in a style that shows that leader Donald Alexander Strachan really has a strong vision in his music – not just in the compositions he spins forth on the record, but also in the way he directs the rich energy of the ensemble! The lineup featur…
Piano solo
Recorded live at Cafe OTO in March 2009 during Otomo Yoshihide's first residency here. This was one of only a handful of solo piano performances Otomo has given where he uses the instrument as a control matrix for harmonically rich feedback tones and devastating clusters of complex noise. Beautifully rendered with maximum dynamic range by Lupo's 45rpm cut!
Les Femmes Savantes
The Berlin based group Les Femmes Savantes, named after the famous play by Molière, Learned Ladies. This music is just as proud and individual, being a success and almost a myth in the improvised world, combining many styles of music. Les Femmes Savantes are Hanna Hartman, electronics, little objects, Andrea Neumann, inner piano, Sabine Ercklentz, trumpet, Ute Wasserman, voice, Ana Maria Rodriguez, electronics, each one of them an individual master. Together they let focus stay on either the gro…
Journey from Anywhere
Compound Eye is Drew McDowall (formerly of Coil) and Tres Warren (Psychic Ills and Messages). Journey from Anywhere is their second album release following Origin of Silence, an art edition LP on The Spring Press label. This double LP features four sides of improvised electronics that lead the listener into the dark recesses of the duo's subterranean explorations. Each of these works move at a slow and considered pace, gradually unfolding into a transportative blur of dark psychedelic minim…
Cold Pin
Over two years in the making, Cold Pin is the new full length record by Eli Keszler. Both a composition and stand alone installation, 14 strings ranging in length from 25 to 3 feet are strung across a 15 x 40 curved wall, with motors attacking the strings, connected by micro-controllers, pick-ups and rca cables. Recorded in Boston's historic Cyclorama, a massive dome built to house the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg painting in 1884. The b side features in addition, a 'dry' version …
Homicidal Texture
Homicidal Texture was released by Slaughter Productions in early 1995 in a bizarre packaging consists of a metal mesh that completely envelops the cover. The four tracks on the tape are based on obsessive synth drones. The smell of death is soaked in every sound produced by the brilliant and twisted mind of Marco Corbelli. Anxiety, alienation and hypochondria turn into a deep paranoia in pain. Without hesitation, the bodies are emptied, leaving the field to an electronics purulence of rare power…
Love Is A Stream
Limited vinyl edition. Includes a 50-minute bonus CD featuring some of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's original material reworked by Type label head John Twells (Xela). As a member of San Francisco legends Tarentel and Type's premier astral travelers The Alps, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is hardly a new addition to the label, so it's hard to believe that Love Is A Stream is his first Type solo album. With previous releases on Arbor, Spekk and his own Root Strata imprint, this latest album marks his journey int…
Swisher
The Blondes duo refract their house abstractions through a smudged psychedelic prism on 2nd album 'Swisher' for RVNG Intl. Picking up where their eponymous debut left off, Sam Haar and Zach Steinman start with the kosmic organ swell and atom-split rhythms of 'Aeon' before locking down to a driving, technoid momentum with 'Bora Bora' which carries through the album in the glyding dub-house gait of 'Andrew' to the ornate, future-baroque arpeggios of 'Poland' to the laser-grabbing, Belgian-styled t…
Lifespans
Lifespans is a mesmerizing and hallucinating piece of electronic music. Listen to it at a fairly loud volume, or with headphones, and you will hear myriads of voices and melodies, never repeating themselves
Sleep (An attempt at trying)
Sleep (an attempt at trying)“ is a radio suite for vocalist, narrator, improvising ensemble and electronics. In this project Bumšteinas explored the subject of insomnia which makes it a very autobiographic project. The main sound material for “Sleep” came from the sleeping-aid and relaxation tapes, that Bumšteinas bought for himself in various fleamarkets around Europe. The course of personal therapy wasn't too successful and due to nocturnal boredom Bumšteinas started dabbling with the function…
Low Life / Last Exit
Two key 80s moments from Peter Brotzmann – split together here on a heavy LP! First up is material from the album Low Life – hard-handed work from the duo of Peter Brotzmann on reeds and Bill Laswell on bass – a set that's kind of a side project of the Last Exit quartet, and one that comes across with a similar sense of power! Laswell's handling a fair bit of basses here, often with a bit of processing – thanks partly to producer Martin Bisi – and there's a dark, electric undercurrent to the who…
Nocturnes
Vittelli continues to set out its’ stall with this brilliant LP by Australian sound maker Matthew Philip Hopkins (Vincent Over the Sink / The Bowles / Naked on the Vague / Half High). This is Hopkins’ first solo vinyl outing after a decade of micro-edition cassettes and CDR’s. Nocturnes was assembled during late night headphone sessions at Hopkins’ Sydney home in late 2013. He employs synth, cassettes, fx pedals, contact mic and random objects to create a hypnotic suite of dramatic and highly ev…
Entomology
A threesome of coloured vinyl by WORM Records. These records are extraordinary not just because of their appearance (bright yellow, blue and pink vinyl), but also because of their unique origins. The a-sides of the records were recorded for Soundpiece, a soundinstallation under the floor of the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam. WORM invited the composers Machinefabriek, Pierre Bastien and Dyane Donck/Daisy Bell to compose a piece for this. The results are three soundartworks/tape compositions that a…
Take a chance In the void: Harold Norse at the Beat Hotel
Historical recordings made by Harold Norse when he was living with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Gregory Corso at the notorious Beat Hotel in Paris during the early sixties. By the time Norse arrived in Paris he had traveled extensively in Morocco and Europe and his poetry was already championed by people like W. H. Auden, William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams.
Together with Sinclair Beiles, Burroughs and Gysin, Norse was one of the first to apply the cut-up method. He made the tec…
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…
Deviation Heat-treated
Surprise release from the mighty PAN label, Heatsick re-worked by Mark Fell's Sensate Focus across two long tracks totalling 35 minutes* From behind your ear, PAN pluck a blink-and-miss exclusive: a 35 minute audio response by Mark Fell (Sensate Focus) to source material by Heatsick, somewhere between cover version, remix and deconstruction. Along the A-side 'X' plane, tones are exploded, harmonies refracted with HD dissonance; time is extruded, made ductile yet intangible. On the B-side 'Y' axi…