New Arrivals
New Slave Part II: Essence Implosion!
Further to their acclaimed 'New Slaves' LP of spring 2010, Zs offer 'Essence Explosion' backed with new remixes on vinyl from Thee Majesty (Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Bryin Dall), JG Thirlwell (Foetus) and Cex, plus a download code for mixes by Gabe Andruzzi (The Rapture), Zebrablood (Excepter), Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), and Ecstatic Sunshine redeemable directly from the label. It's hard not to be wowed by the velocity of their explicit noise skronk on the original version, …
Relief
Our man Millis is a Climax Golden Twin and a noted curator of globe trotting / time traveling esoterica, amongst other accolades.ÊIn the former category, Millis and Jeffery Taylor steadily release some of the most headscratching amalgamations of avant-rock, decontextualized temple music, heightened-state minimalism, and collaged field recordings this side of the Sun City Girls (including the soundtrack to the cult film Session Nine); and in the latter, Millis has published a number of acclaimed …
Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5
"Since 2005, Tompkins Square label's Imaginational Anthem compilations have featured some of the greatest acoustic guitarists in the world, with recordings spanning five decades. More than mere samplers, these albums have served as state-of-the-art dispatches from the front lines of the art form. Imaginational Anthem Vols. 1-5 is a specially priced 6CD box set, limited to 999 copies, featuring the first five volumes in their originals packaging, plus an exclusive live bonus disc from Willia…
Vilke
Julian Cope Review on Head Heritage Site: VILKÉ is the particularly fine and sprawling new 2LP by American composer, field recordist and hiker Daniel Menche. Inspired by the wolves of his travels in the N. West and named for the Lithuanian for ‘she-wolf’, VILKÉ presents us with four side-long pieces of haunted and eerie atmosphere music whose dilating post-industrial rhythms, and seemingly ever-decaying, ever-degrading, cicadas-driven post-industrial drone-o-drudge inhabits a parallel half-world…
Hassaniya Music from the Western Sahara and Mauritania
In 2006, Hisham Mayet returned to West Africa to continue his search for an unknown musician he had heard six months earlier on the radio in a Morocco hotel room. Knowing only that it was Sahrawi music -- music of the south -- he headed down through the vast and remote desert landscape of the Western Sahara and Mauritania in hopes of finding someone who could identify these revelatory recordings. The story of how he finally found this elusive artist is the stuff of ethnomusicological legend. But…
A Red Score In Tile
Composed way back in 1979, 'A Red Score In Tile' eventually surfaced as a vinyl-only edition in 2003. Made up of piano, this shows Basinski's patented tape-loop technique perfectly and still stands as one of his most affecting pieces of music. If you've heard 'Melancholia' you'll likely know what I'm talking about, piano notes are transformed into tones by the slowly disintegrating tape, and the loops become motifs all of their own. The beauty of Basinski's work is in its patience, and this earl…
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…
Drawn and Quartered
"A selection of rarities from 2008-2009. Track one originally released on an OPN/Outer Space split CS (Arbor, 2009). Track two originally released on Ruined Lives CS (Young Tapes, 2008). Track three and four originally released on Transmat Memories CS (Taped Sounds 2008). Track five and six originally released on A Pact Between Strangers CDR (Gneiss Things, 2008). Track seven originally released on Young Beidnahga CDR (Ruralfuane, 2009)." Includes a digital download code.
Recur
After successful EP Collapsed, the Bristol-based project Emptyset strikes back with a full-length album on Raster-Noton. Once more James Ginzburg and Paul Purgas challenge the perceptual boundaries between noise and music and the potential for both technology and architecture to embed and codify themselves within sound. Recur is presented as Emptyset's third studio album -- continuing on from their work with Demiurge, the material examines the central themes of time, structure and recursion, thr…
Jessica In The Room Of Lights
Reissue of this largely unknown yet spellbinding touchstone in the canon of Sheffield's industrial music heritage, the album was recorded in 1986 as a soundtrack to a theatre performance recorded by John Avery, a contemporary of Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA. Forced Nostalgia's sixth release imposes the uncannily affective melancholia of John Avery's 1986 soundtrack to a theater performance Jessica in the Room of Lights by the coincidentally-named Forced Entertainment company. Avery employs pi…
333 Loops (Volume 1)
333 Loops (Volume 1) is the first chapter of a CD/DL live series, which documents the sound events generated by the homonymous modular system, designed in 2011 by the Italian musician Emiliano Romanelli.
The system is composed by an archive of 333 pre-recorded sound loops, produced between 2008 and 2011 by a sound synthesis software played in different acoustic environments, and documented mainly with internal microphones of several digital and analog portable recorders. Subsequently, by a custo…
Here Come The Cars
A year after the Clean's reunion LP Vehicle (also their first proper album ever) put them back on the international-pop radar in 1990, guitarist David Kilgour retreated with his new Revox tape machine (which he'd been singing about rapturously in his side-project Stephen and elsewhere: "Have you seen my new tape machine?!") and cut his first solo album, Here Come the Cars, issued by Flying Nun in 1991. From the jarring cover image of David through to the last note, Here Come the Cars is a specia…
70 Years of Sunshine
In 1943 a Swiss chemist accidentally absorbed through his finger-tips a tiny amount of a compound he was researching. Later, he recorded the effects in a journal - a document of the world's very first LSD trip: 'Last Friday, April 16,1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condi…
Hemp Is Here
Leven Signs' Hemp Is Here came and went in 1985, as both a cassette release (Unlikely Records) and vinyl release (Cordelia) in the blink of an eye. The duo of Peter Karkut and Maggie Turner managed to craft one of the strangest, most affecting albums of new wave experimentalism of the era, but due to the album's impossible-to-find status, it's been largely forgotten and continuously overlooked ever since. A chance encounter with the cassette version of Hemp Is Here led Brad Rose of Digitali…
Split LP
Alo Girl is an obscure Italian noise project that keep with-in deeper roaring and at times almost subterranean obsessive & paranoid tones through-out the piece, as well as managing to keep the sound tinged with a nice sleazy and airless atmosphere.Last Rape is a Richard Ramirez project that saw its debut in 1995. This harsh noise/HNW project remained untouched until 2005 relaunched with Naoki Chisato (ex-Forced Orgasm). In 2008, Sean Matzus (In The Land of Archers) replaced Chisato and is…
Piece Of Mind
"As K.J. Gustin wrote, Piece Of Mind is a work of 'exotic psychedelic free-jazz-meets-rock, East-meets-West, progressive and smoky moment in late Twentieth Century music history'. Add to that a spice of jazzy brassed R&B and a touch of minor-key popsike sensitivity and you get an accurate description of the sounds contained in Roger Bunn's astonishing 1969 LP, originally released in the UK on the Major Minor budget label, but issued in some European countries (Ohr label in Germany or Phil…
Weird universe
Valerie Martino's Unicorn Hard-On project has been a long running staple in the American underground since it's inception in 2003. Through her own Tangled Hares imprint, as well as many others, she's built a strong, constantly evolving catalog of singular works that serves to many as a prototype of the current beat-oriented phenomena currently sweeping the nation. Martino's vision, however,remains unphased and flourishes accordingly to her own unique vision; standing outside of any trends and re…
Nigeria Special Volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigeria
Nigeria Special 2 is the second part to the best selling Nigeria Special album released to critical acclaim in 2007 and further extends the look at the most exciting period in Nigeria’s recording history. The range of styles vary from highlife to Juju and Nigerian blues in the languages of Yoruba, Igbo, Bini and Ijaw. With a peppering of ‘afro’ experimentation the same musical stew pervades volume 2 as it’s predecessor – some artists appear again alongside some new …
Wild temple
New studio album recorded by Rafal Iwanski and Rafal Kolacki with special guest Slawomir Ciesielski - great percussionist and drummer of legendary Polish rock band Republika (in 80. Republika was one of the most original European bands - thanks to their specific antimainstream rock & roll songs, with new wave-inspired music and lyrics). HATI forms a link between a personal interest in modern improvised and acoustic music with ritual and meditation. They worked together in 2010 on several tracks …
Spider John
This vinyl-only album fills a crucial gap in the evolution of legendary folk artist Spider John Koerner. Recorded in between 1965's Spider Blues and 1969's Running, Jumping, Standing Still (with Willie Murphy, both released on Elektra), Koerner is captured here live and unaccompanied at The Ash Grove in Los Angeles, bringing to light an exciting and previously-undocumented period in the career of Spider John. The excellent recording captures Koerner at the absolute peak of his guitar-playin…