New Arrivals
Mobilisation Generale
Born Bad Records, the on-point French label that has brought you some of our favorites of the year, will release this week a compilation of French protest jazz from the 70s called Mobilisation Generale. The compilation, which you can stream below, is a fantastic look at a small slice of history that could use a little more attention. On BBR's Bandcamp, an entire oral history is written out to accompany the release, which features some truly innovative freeform jazz and poetry, and we've reprinte…
An Anthology Of Noise and Electronic Music: Volume 2
Finally available on vinyl for the very first time - featuring exclusive and never before available material from the likes of Autechre, Tod Dockstader, Luc Ferrari and so much more - in a super heavyweight and deluxe gatefold package* This second volume of this excellent compilation series from Sub Rosa features an exclusive/previously unreleased Autechre track 'Bronchus 1' from 1991 - an alternate version of the track on 'Incunabula'. A second chronology of pioneering sound artists cove…
A living room at the bottom of a lake
gorgeous LP by this Leeds duo whose first half lives in London (and loves Whitehouse and Rush) and the other in Berlin (and loves Farley Jackmaster Funk). With several releases on labels such as Chocolate Monk, American Tapes, Troniks, Hospital Productions, or their own: Alcoholic Narcolepsy, Luke and Steven have been crafting and sculpting their psychedelic-electronic-noise-drone sound for over half a decade. But who cares and what does that sound description mean anyway? If you ask them,…
Appalachian excitation
The meeting of composer Arnold Dreyblatt and psych-folk trio Megafaun shouldn’t be seen as unlikely just because it’s cross-generational, or even (arguably) cross-genre. Such categorizations have to be set aside before taking in their Appalachian Excitation. Born in New York in 1953, Dreyblatt came up under such lauded experimental groundbreakers as Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young, obtaining a Master’s degree in composition from Wesleyan University. Now based in Berlin, where h…
The Magic Bridge
Gatefold double LP version. Includes a CD with three bonus tracks, plus lyric sheet inserts. Richard Dawson has been a much-loved musical spectacle in his native Newcastle for many years now, a skewed troubadour who sings and plays guitar with a rare intensity and a very singular style. Beguiled northern audiences have long awaited the arrival of recordings that capture Dawson's genius, and it has finally arrived with his album The Magic Bridge, a 10-song collection out on CD (Pink Triangle…
Excerpts (& Half-Speeds)
Dan Melchior is known by many as a long-standing footsoldier of garage rock. Throughout his 15 years of service Dan has gained a reputation as being one of the few in his field willing to test the flexibility of an otherwise stagnant genre. Last year's brilliant Assemblage Blues LP (Siltbreeze) showed Dan scratching at the bars of his cage, restricted by the very domain he dominates. Excerpts (& Half-Speeds) is Dan Melchior's hammer in the mirror. A courageous act of self-vandalism, reduc…
Mirror | Me
This Zine was developed from a collaborative exhibition and performance organized by the writer, Brandon Stosuy, and the artist, Kai Althoff in the Summer of 2009 at Dispatch Bureau in NYC. It was displayed during the White Columns Annual 2009, during which pages were added by the original exhibition's various participants. The Zine features new materials by artists, writers and musicians such as Adam Helms, Brandon Stosuy, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Kai Althoff, Karlynn Holland, Lionel Maunz, Matt Za…
Periodic Orbits Of A Dynamic System Related To A Knot
The album features two 23-minute halves that Fell describes as “almost live”. These tracks combine out-takes from his recent album ‘Multistability’, with bits he originally produced as part of a “quadraphonic piece” he performed live in Barcelona this year, which is called Supersimetria: New Languages In Computer Music.
‘Periodic Orbits Of A Dynamic System Related To A Knot’ was produced when Fell moved to a new home and studio, where he was limited to only internal speakers on his MacBook…
The Acrylic Widow
Awesome! Quoting Metamkine review "Dylan Nyoukis returns assemblying iconoclastic voices, collages of field recordings, reminding a Tibetan monk lost in a festival of sound poetry or the music concrete by Michel Chion". Four measured tracks, all washing up a new kind of psychedelic moss, fresh thin tendrils, easy to snap, but determined to grow among loose grey matter late on into the next day, and the next and the next. Dry coughs and outta-whack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs. …
F/C
Michael Mantra creates Ambient music. But more than that, he creates audio tools for "brain hemisphere synchronization": going beyond the synchronization of mind and body, Mantra's techniques are a mean to release endorphins, which are part of the human body's natural pharmacy and work at the same level of opiates. Michael creates his soundscapes mixing modulating high and low harmonic synthesizers tones (low deep drones and high resonating harmonics) with didgeridoo, ocean waves, rain, water, …
Live! At The Butchery
Three guys in South Africa obsessed with Can, Red Crayola, Pere Ubu & like sounds, a disdain toward apartheid, & the means to record themselves make one fantastic 200+ press LP in 1981 which disappears in obscurity. S.S. Records gives it a second life. Underground DIY classic which belongs on the NWW list (if they only knew about its existence!). 330 pressed.
Prediction and Warning
“Steve Noble [‘s] armoury of textures and tones is an acoustic mirror of [Ikue] Mori’s electronica, and just as spellbinding. He attacks his orthodox, loose-skinned drum kit from all angles, lays upturned gongs on the drumheads and is a master of orthodoxy as well as the avant-garde. His duet with Mori was the evening’s highlight, a pulsating welter of scrapes, thumps and press rolls interrupted by silences made sinister by the tick of an off-kilter metronome.” – Mike Hobart, Financial TimesIkue…
GAU
In March of 2012, nearing the end of a tour together through the Netherlands and Belgium, Celer, Machinefabriek, and Jan and Romke Kleefstra gathered in a country studio, spending an afternoon improvising to record Gau. Recorded by the old hardcorerocker Jan Switters at the Landscape studios in Gauw, situated in the countryside in the midst of Friesland, the place was surrounded by green fields with idle tractors, few trees, buzzards and only massive farmhouses dotting the horizon. From the almo…
Jazz Sahara
Decades before the advent of 'world music', bassist-composer Ahmed Abdul-Malik introduced Arabic music into jazz, creating a distinct, unique sound that was far beyond its time. Best known in jazz circles for his solid work with Randy Weston and Thelonious Monk, Abdul-Malik, who is of Sudanese descent, was also the first to use the oud, a pear-shaped, traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument similar to a lute, as a jazz instrument. Recorded in 1958, with tenor saxophonist Johnny Gri…
Testacoda
Jérôme Noetinger is an improviser and composer of electroacoustic music based in Rives (near Grenoble), France. He plays Revox, tapes and radio. SEC_ is the moniker of Mimmo Napolitano, an electronic musician and sound engineer from Naples, Italy. He plays Revox, no-input feedback, laptop, electronic devices. Together these two play the kind of improvised electronic mayhem that put Europe on the map. Testcoda features two separate recordings of shapeshifting electronics. One side recorded…
Benji
Mark Kozelek is back with a new Sun Kil Moon album featuring Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley, Jen Wood (who has worked with the Postal Service), Will Oldham, and Owen Ashworth (formerly known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, now of Advance Base).
Forma II
Composed and recorded in Berlin from 2008 to 2010 the music consists of four electroacoustic pieces based largely on analogue synthesizer material and one long-form swarm-like composition for multiple overdubbed saxophones. Additional sounds range from metal foil floating on ultrasonic sound-beams to mechanical clickers recorded in the abandoned radar domes at Teufelsberg. The raw materials have been extensively processed and re-constructed using analogue tape and digital methods. The fiv…
Eye of the microphone
A somewhat surreal audio rendition of the sounds of The City of London. BJ Nilsen (b,1975 Sweden) is a sound and recording artist. His work is based on the sound of nature and its effect on humans. Heprimarily uses fieldrecordings and electronic composition as a working method. He has worked for film, television, theatre, dance and as sound designer. Track notes: In 2012 I received a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust for a one-year Artist in Residency at the UCL Urban Laboratory in London, …
Six & Six
Originally released in 1981, JANDEK'S second album stands as an incredible document of the formative stages of his cracked genius. The musical elements are almost catatonic: 9 songs drift by as a series of slight variations on several desolate, untuned acoustic guitar phrases. First time on vinyl in over 25 years. Old-style tip on jacket. LIMITED!
Aoyama Crows
Aoyama Crows is the fifth album by Peter Brötzmann's Die Like a Dog Quartet. Saying the music can still surprise would be a lie. But that doesn't mean it lacks excitement, on the contrary. The performance, recorded at the Berlin Total Music Meeting in November 1999, contains all the elements necessary for an enticing free improv session. The rhythm section formed by Hamid Drake and William Parker is tried, tested, and true. The drummer can oscillate in and out of a pulse with incredible ease. He…