New Arrivals
Dream Seeds
Extra Life’s first record for Northern Spy, Dream Seeds marks a dramatically new creative direction in the band’s still-young but prolific career. It is perhaps Extra Life’s most clearly-defined concept album : seven songs dealing entirely with the twin themes of dreams and children. In a lyrical left turn away from the morbid sexuality and black humor of Made Flesh, these songs look to the subconscious in search of innocence, morality and meaning. According to principal songwriter and e…
Financial Glam
Jar Moff returns with his second full-length, Financial Glam, a follow-up expanding on ideas first presented by the excellent Commercial Mouth debut LP PAN released earlier this year. Continuing with themes established on his previous LP, Financial Glam reflects the flux and tension of his home city, a gripping opus of grandiose crescendo and collapse, broken rhythm and disquieting calm. These intricately-composed collage works, constructed from hundreds of archived samples, provide a fitting…
Deep Politics
Deep Politics was conceived during the lengthiest gestation period between Grails albums, and reflects a deeper, more educated level of concentration. In their ongoing exploration of occult/fringe culture and the rich history of film music, they have cultivated a unique environment that inspires both an eternal sense of longing and an indelible sense of dread. Produced by the band, as always, the most immediately noticeable advances are the lush string arrangements (courtesy of acclaimed compose…
2nd Wave
In a fair and reasonable world, Roland Haynes would have compelled more attention than he did when his jazz-funk record 2nd Wave appeared on Black Jazz in the mid-1970s. Not to say the keyboardist was totally neglected back then, but he and other plugged-in pianists of his stylistic inclination (such as label-mate Doug Carn, Hampton Hawes, Don Grolnick, Larry Willis, and Gordon Beck) existed in the deep shadow cast by jazzman-turned-jazz-funk powerhouse Herbie Hancock, whose records with the H…
Exile in Paradise
Established in 1978 by Truus de Groot in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, she tinkered with toy and electronic instruments in her flat - amidst the explosion of Punk Rock. Even though Truus was very active in that genre and “New Wave” as well, the more experimental side gradually took over and the concept of Plus Instruments was born. Plus Instruments released their first e.p. single in 1979 on Dutch label Plurex:
Playing odd electronic instruments, Bass and vocals, most of their performances were im…
Graft
Graft is an album by Japanese noise master Masami Akita aka Merzbow. This LP album is pressed on lime-green vinyl in a "bootleg"-style sleeve and sealed with a sticker. Limited to 300 regular copies. According to the Merzbow blog, the design was inspired by a '70s Jethro Tull bootleg called My God, and the recording was inspired by the plant illustrations in the Voynich manuscript. Recorded in November 2009 at Munemi House, Tokyo.
Summer through my mind
Richard Youngs presents his debut recording for BaDaBing Records, and the label is looking forward to a long relationship. For Summer Through My Mind, Youngs pushes himself into a challenging new sphere yet again. A renowned musician with over 40 albums to his name, he goes somewhere he never has before - to the heart of American music. Summer Through My Mind is a country music album, warped through Youngs's ambidextral mind. A warning: it's not like any country album one has heard before. There…
Virgins
Virgins was recorded during three periods in 2012, mostly in Reykjavik, Montreal and Seattle, using ensembles in live performance. The sound palette of this work is wider, almost 'percussive' and tighter sounding than previous works. While this album remains committed to a painterly form of musical abstraction, it is also a record of restrained composition recorded live primarily in intimate studio rooms. This record employs woodwinds, piano and synthesizers towards an effort at doing what digit…
Rock Power
Reissue of an extremely rare and essential Sunroof! CD-R released during a European tour in 2003 on Matthew Bower's own imprint, Rural Electrification Program (REP). On this LP, Bower is joined on guitar by Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra and Flower-Corsano Duo) and the result was once qualified as Sunroof's rock record and its tribute to Neil Young and AC/DC (hence the title). RockPower is a very singular record because it documents a very short time period in the M. Bower/Sunroof! evolut…
Space Mirror
Space travel is the dream of many and the reality of few. Since Yuri Gagarin first shed the bonds of earth gravity in 1961, only about 500 humans have made the trip beyond the atmosphere. Ken Camden travels to space while still grounded on terra firma. His vessel of choice is a guitar and some effects with which he journeys on fantastical expeditions and surveys the biggest territory of all, the one between your ears. The glimmering sound fields he forms could be a soundtrack to an epic '60s sci…
Untitled
Penultimate Press is proud to release a unique vinyl of the only known recordings by Danish artist Poul Gernes.Poul Gernes only ever recorded just under 20 minutes of music. His entire musical production is therefore on this LP. The recording was done on a Tandberg Recorder at Poul Gernes’ house in the south of Sweden in 1969. He is playing an old harmonium salvaged from a local primary school. The result is an informal quasi-drone work, which, along with the ambient sounds and domestic interfe…
Corpse On Horseback
"Ergot Records inaugural release: Aaron Dilloway's Corpse on Horseback. Originally released as a cassette on Hanson Records in 2003, this marks the first time that this classic 10 year old recording of ultra crude 8-track tape junk metal loops is available on vinyl. Limited edition of 500 copies on gold wax."
Gills cut into woman
"Terrifying monster of the ages raging with pent-up passions! ...with every man his mortal enemy ...and a woman's beauty his prey! Could only her beauty tame its savage fury?""...forbidden depths!" Creature libertinage; voyeur of the women's legs enveloped in dark waters. The hosiery has been cast aside in exchange for a one-piece to enter the watery depths, setting the stage for obsessive creature tendencies targeted toward the shapes of Kay Lawrence, Helen Dobson, and Marcia Barton. Sam McKi…
The love robots
Jim O'Rourke, guitar. Paal Nilssen-Love : drums. Lasse Marhaug, electronics. Recorded at Gok Sound Tokyo by Yoshiaki Kondo February 2011. Mixed by James Plotkin. Coproduced by Pica et PNL. Gatefold cover. 500 copies. Housing, parasites and hammering textures.
Transkript 17-Transkript 18
The source material for these recordings, produced between 2007 and 2009, originates from found objects and treated acoustic instruments such as cello, viola, double bass (Nikolaus Gerszewski), bass clarinet (Nicolas Wiese), as well as conga, cymbal, wood, paper, marbles, wallpapering table and chains. Further sounds have been produced using my voice and limbs. A basic rule for my work with digital tools is to maintain the liveliness of the source material within the structure of my compositions…
Solitaire
Beautifully presented reissue of classic archival electroacoustic works, within "Warszawa-Oslo" project, a recollection, phonographic documentation and reactivation of bonds between Polish and Norwegian electro-acoustic music, presentation of their individual character and unquestionable significance on the international scale. This beautifully designed set (with extensive booklet of note) collects some of the most exciting, shimmering and crystalline electronic sounds to be unearthed in quite a…
The Rocker
THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2010!
Jailbreak s the duo of pedal steel-vocalist Heather Leigh and drummer Chris Corsano. The name foregrounds the kind of outlaw violence with which the two reformulate rock-roll instants by bringing free jazz fire power to amp-humping sex beats. Their musical alliance goes all the way back to the legendary Brattleboro Free Folk Fest, the birthplace of the 'New Weird America', where Corsano and his long-term saxophone partner Paul Flaherty joined Leigh and Christina C…
5IVE XIMES OF DUST
A classic, highly sought-after and influencial experimental electronic and acoustic tape from 1981, finally released as a deluxe vinyl LP in extended form with an additional LP to round-up this perfect release - Solo-Works and three more 5ive Ximes of Dust instrumentals by the two genius synth-and-cassette-culture-protagonists and musicians of Dada Computer; Mark Philips, who also ran the Tape-Label MAP-Tapes and Robert Lawrence who ran one of the first Cassette-culture Tape-Labels called Quick …
Record Store Record
If you cant come to our shop, then maybe our shop can come to you. no, this is not a collection of in-store performances, there are no bands or artists trying to impress you with their skillz and technique - this is a collection of location/environmental recordings made inside our record stores, just the sound of regular everyday customers looking at records, talking about records, buying records - oh yeah, and record store owners boxing up records for mail-order customers - audio verite, sound …
Ritual Totemic Stone
By now, the significance of Sam McKinlay's extensive body of work is undeniable. After having begun his mapping of the depths of monomania, fetish, addiction, and vice, in the mid-1990s with his flagship project, The Rita, McKinlay briefly halted his work in the early 2000s. Though it was unforeseeable at the time, McKinlay's return to substantial recording output and live performances around 2004 would quickly and permanently alter the landscape of Harsh Noise. The Rita became one of the most …