New Arrivals
Burning Off Impurities
Following soon after the critically praised Black Tar Prophecies collection on Important Records, Portland, Oregon's Grails return with their first proper studio album since 2004 release of Redlight. Burning Off Impurities - their debut for Temporary Residence Ltd. - makes good on the promise of those past releases in delivering an album that not only thrusts the group to new heights, but also significantly pushes the instrumental rock genre forward for the first time in nearly a decade. An incr…
Split LP
When does modern composition become drone?  When the original elements are sunk into a sea of strings, brass and electronics, as they are on this evocative split release.  Each of the artists composes, but in a modern fashion, either by manipulating source elements or by rearranging them to make a different sort of sense.  Both pieces are based on recordings of the Antonio Lomatto choir, conducted by Davide Mainetti.  The phantoms of these recordings remain, spectral yet in…
Make It Real
Wait, this is the new Pocahaunted album cover? Gone may be the days of cassette cases featuring creepy collages and hand-dyed bags with feathers attached, but this is something else entirely. I mean, there’s a parrot with blue Ray-Bans, a giant dollar sign, a “He’s on fire!” NBA Jam-style basketball…What is going on? After the shock of the cover art, I waded into the unfamiliar soup that waited within. From the opening thrums of “Touch You”, the lo-fi recording aesthetic seemed to be held …
Kugeln / Wallerfangen
Here's the 2nd part in Dekorder's brand new series of highly limited Hybrid-Vinyl 12“ releases to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the label. It comes out simultaneously with parts 3 (Ensemble Economique) and 4 (Kemialliset Ystävät). The 1st part by Pye Corner Audio has been a massive success and sold out within two weeks (remaining copies are only available to subscribers).
Future contributions will feature new & exclusive recordings by Leyland Kirby, Excepter, Sonic Boom (EAR), Bill…
Live at I-and-E
This is a long-awaited re-issue, unavailable since 2006. The duo had formed the previous year for ErstQuake in NYC and this was to be their second and, as yet, only other performance together. The breadth and depth of [the] music is totally inspiring, I absolutely love this piece of music. Total unity in sound to make a perfect piece in the moment. It doesn't get better than this! (Gordon W. Smith)
Keith Rowe and Mark Wastell. This last performance balanced the evening well. Louder, more gestura…
I am the Center: private issue new age music in America, 1950-90
One of the best things about Seattle label Light in the Attic’s new new age compilation I Am the Center is that it doesn’t try and pretend that new age music was something that it’s not. Look at the album’s cover illustration and you’ll see an angel-like creature carrying an orb of yellow light through the clouds; open the gatefold and you’ll see what appears to be a bird made of stars launching itself out of the ocean. Press play and be delivered into over two hours of mind-numbingly mellow mus…
El Pianista del Antifaz
LP version with CD. French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade's world is atypical and his inspirations come from many different sources -- from contemporary music to The Cramps -- making him one of the most creative and original artists of our times. At the crossroads of many different arts, never where he's expected, he never ceases to surprise his audience, taking the listener on poetic paths of primitive perception. El Pianista del Antifaz is the latest album in Comelade's galaxy. The artwor…
Stanza Nera
Newest Nico Vascellari trio (WW stands for Women in the Woods), an amazing hypnotic industrial soundscapes housed in a beautifully packaged LP released in a handful of copies, comes with an insert
The Four Seasons
"Noah Creshevsky composes some of the most meticulously constructed electronic music around. For his third Tzadik CD he has created a sonic history of his life work, inspired by the idea of a retrospective. The Four Seasons presents a new large-scale composition that reflects his work from 1992 on to his present work with Hyperrealism, creating virtual "super-performers" using the sounds of voices and traditional instruments pushed beyond human capacities. Another brilliant and varied program ch…
Shell-shocked
Meirino has been crossing fabricated, gathered, altered, provoked or wrong sounds for nearly two decades. The second Noisendo release follows the first one (Gorgomilos) closely - chronologically speaking - and dives deeper into a DIY electronica where machines dictate as much law as Man. Mutual respect? The obvious punk drive of Noisendo001 is more subtle in 002 but it is present in the nervous breathing of the acoustic and synthetic sounds that excite our senses while listening to this r…
These Are The Good Times
The Vittelli label announces itself with this fine release of London’s highlife, lowlife, wildlife and everday life plucked from Ian Rawes’ vast London Sound Survey. At his day job at the British Library sound archive Rawes cut his teeth in archiving and explored its depths. Field recordings and studies by acoustic ecologists came to his attention around the same time that he was looking to create his own capital-based project. At this time the internet promised to be the great equaliser a…
Petite Geante
Recorded in 1208 Saalfelden, 01-0209 Brest. Stephen O'Malley: Electrical guitar, Supro, Fulltone tape echo, sine wave, field recording. Originally commissioned for the Enter sound installation series at Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway curated by Anne Hilde Neset. Appears as a 4 channel work which loops for a full day, on a cycle with 9 other artists, every tenth day, for at least two years. More information about Tou Scene and Enter can be found at www.touscene.com. Published by Ideologic Organ (BM…
The eyes, the mouth Night of the ocean
Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and XO4 and VAMPIRE BELT's Bill Nace team up for the third time (they also released a cassette and did a FEVER cover) showing no band needs a drummer to trash or mildly shake brains!basement jams after listening to basement jams, deep down in the deepest basement of the valley, 2 guitars fighting for a place on a chubby cassette recorder while the ultra no wave vocals of Kim Gordon ghostride thru a pretty packed parking lot.a throw back as well to early raw Sonic Youth d…
Menses
Originally released in a private edition of 300 copies in 1982. This vinyl re-issue comes in a beautiful picture disc and includes a replica of the original and hard to find insert. The copies I have here include a page of a medical book handsigned by Maurizio Bianchi himself.
Polar satellites
Polar Satellites is a mesmerising collection of percussion improvisations performed in duo by Nathan and Scott deep in the winter of 2009 and 2010 with absolutely no overdubs. Building on the starkness of last years Effigy by Pelt, the duo have recorded an even bleaker, more minimal and hermetically vibed record together. Unnerving and hypnotic, Polar Satellites is an intense journey into the unknown, awash with uncategorisable percussive instruments, kalimbas and banjo.
Nathan and Scott first m…
The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World
Peter Jefferies's extraordinary debut solo album, The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World, first saw life as a cassette via the Xpressway label of Port Chalmers, New Zealand, in 1990. As a result of some international underground acclaim in fanzines and mailorder catalogs -- for both the album and a striking 7-inch, 'The Fate of the Human Carbine,' released around the same time -- it soon appeared on LP and CD as well, through the Ajax label of Chicago. Within a couple of years it slipped…
The Men Parted The Sea To Devour The Water
Numbered edition of 700 housed in die-cut, origami fold and foil-blocked jacket** 'The Men Parted The Sea To Devour The Water' is The Haxan Cloak's long awaited Latitudes edition. It's his first release since that jaw-dropping eponymous album (an end of year favourite across the board) and means that we're possibly one step closer to two things: a vinyl edition of said LP, and his hugely anticipated album debut for Tri Angle. But let's not get ahead of ourselves....here we find Bobby Kr…
Outside/Inside
Charlie Nothing was the fractured-psyche pseudonym of author, father, horsekeeper, organic farmer, beekeeper, philosopher and clown Charles Martin Simon, inventor of the dingulator (guitar sculptures made out of the metal from American cars). Charlie's only visible offering to the record buying public was really anything but. Due to its rarity, The Psychedelic Saxophone of Charlie Nothing, issued by Takoma Records in 1967, has been a source of consternation for in-the-know types for years. …
Footnote(s)
Originally published as a cdr in 2005, limited to hardly any copies on Feater one's Nest, in the period Joshua Burkett visited Europe for the first time, it was about time these beautiful recordings saw some day light again on wax! I've met various people on other planets that i could compare to friends closer to home, Bill Nace calls himself a "fat Vaast Colson", Vladimier looks like Phillip Quehenberger, Tarp's Conrad Capistran's laughter sounds simular to W Ravenveers grinning and so on…
Live At Doornroosje (Nijmegen 1982)
Recordings of a stand-out gig at Doornroosje in Nijmegen (NL). By 1982 De Brassers had been playing in almost every small public space or squad in the area and logically they had gathered a cult following. Sporadicly they also performed in The Netherlands. Doornroosje was / is the club where underground music groups performed before they became well-known, especially the 80s were an interesting period with Joy Division, Nick Cave and many local punk / new wave bands hitting the stage. Here we fi…