Best of 2018
The Cymbals 1973
**Completely sold-out at source, few copies avaialble** Cymbals has finally landed… and brought a 2nd saucer with it! Originally recorded for the Impulse! jazz label in ’73, Cymbals makes its first legitimate release on vinyl, paired with a second LP of unheard material from the same sessions. Hear Sun Ra’s Baroque soundscapes, electrolytic clusters and dithering Moogs catalyze images of monoliths, space stations, computers malfunctioning and galaxies imploding on pristine red and green vinyl wi…
Eclipse
Limited to 300 copies on splatter vinyl. Reissue of extremely rare kosmische/electronic/experimental/ambient album by Didier Bocquet, originally released in 1977 on his own Kiosque D'Orphe label, in 100 copies, each with a hand-drawn/written cover effort by the artist. Inspired by the first wave of german kosmische sound-travellers (Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and the whole Berlin School spring inmediately to mind) but retaining that typical french urgency that places it close to Heldon / …
Ann Arbor
Reissue of an obscure 1978 LP in Ash-Ra Tempel/Stooges vein. The tracks forming Tötenköpfs first album were composed between 1970 and 1976 by the Frenchman Bruno Rooke. Eventually, they have been put to tape (in gogolphonic sound) during his stay in Karlstad (Sweden) in February-March 1978. Rooke (vocals, drums, keyboards, percussions) recorded with the help of his cousin Erland Malberg (bass, guitar, effects) and a friend of the latter, Mats Meyer-Lie (guitar, tapes, violin), a chaotic album ti…
Evoluzione Interiore
Juri Camisasca is one of the towering artists of Italy’s remarkable musical avant-garde. Evolving across the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, as it continues today, this movement suffered under a long-lasting, one sided isolation - unheard by the world beyond. Recently, under the care of labels like Black Sweat, it has begin to emerge from the shadows, gathering a momentum of marvel and praise. Over the years, beginning with 1974’s legendary La Finestra Dentro, Camisasca has released a slow trickle of carefu…
Standing Waters
The Italian guitarist Maurizio Abate is a rare breed - an experimental musician from Europe working within, and expanding the American tradition of Guitar Soli, an idiom first pioneered by John Fahey. Abate initially emerged within a diverse series of collaborative released over a decade ago, but, as the years passed, a love for his instrument, with inspiration provided by Fahey’s indication of its potential for application as a one man orchestra, prompted to him to embark on a pursuit of solo …
Ke I Te Ki
Room40 release Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda's Ke I Te Ki. "Akio Suzuki and I have been performing together frequently for the last five years; we have a tendency to perceive sound as space, or to always consider sound in relation to space. We don't usually hear sound sources as they actually are, since they are always modified by a space's acoustics and its reflections, absorptions, and attenuation. Sound is affected by the conditions and characteristics of a particular setting. We respond to the ex…
États-Unis Bundle II
**5LP Bundle with Tote Bag**Since its quiet beginnings back in 2011, the San Fransisco based imprint, Superior Viaduct, has come to hold a dominant place in the cultural landscape, stitching an intertwined narrative, crossing multiple genres, between countless forms and periods of counter-cultural music. In 2017 the label launched one of its most interesting and ambitious projects to date, their new sub-label Etats Units, a sonic intervention - an open challenge to how connections in sound are f…
Terminal Drive
Terminal Drive is studio recording of a mythical piece of electro-acoustic music composed and performed in 1975 by Allen Ravenstine (b. May 9, 1950 in Canton, OH) with assistance from Albert Dennis on string bass. Terminal Drive’s significance in terms of Cleveland underground music cannot be understated and has been cited as partially responsible for Ravenstine’s invitation to co-form the musical unit Pere Ubu in September 1975. Ravenstine gained recognition for his unusual and inventive synthe…
Exploring Self-corrosive Noise With Coquette
**Edition of 250, wooden box edition** Along with Merzbow and Hijokaidan, Masonna is one of the best (known) Japanese noise projects. A psychedelic touch, cascades of electronic noise and vocal belching mixed together constitute the ingredients of Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé, the double-barrelled named for Masonna. Yamazaki “Maso” Takushi created Masonna in 1987. He started recordings on cassette tapes for his own label: Coquette. His plentiful productions were prese…
Electronic music
Jeanne Dielman presents a reissue of a collection of Iannis Xenakis's work titled Electronic Music, originally released in 1997. Some of the earliest works from a truly groundbreaking composer in the realms of electronic music, musique concrete, electro-acoustic, 20th century classical, and more. The Romanian-born, Greek-French composer Iannis Xenakis was instrumental in the introduction of mathematical models into composition and helped revolutionize electronic music in the middle 20th century.…
Open your cunt
Along with Merzbow and Hijokaidan, Masonna is one of the best (known) Japanese noise projects. A psychedelic touch, cascades of electronic noise and vocal belching mixed together constitute the ingredients of Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé, the double-barrelled named for Masonna .Yamazaki “Maso” Takushi created Masonna in 1987 and he started recordings for his own legendary label Coquette . His plentiful productions were presented in a ultra limited edition, sometime to…
The B-Music of Jean Rollin: Various Artists 1968-1973
Rising out of the smoky Parisian Mai 68 shrapnel and claiming his stake as the first French vampire movie director, the inimitable father of European horrortica, Jean Rollin (1938-2010) has smudged the painted face of surrealist cinema for over five decades. Dragging his roots from beneath the Letterist/Situationist movements, avant-garde theater, and Belgian fine art groups and entwining them around the minds of sexual revolutionaries, the European comic book cognoscenti and the Parisian free j…
(F)lute Songs
Four pieces for flute and voice composed between 1985-2018 by Mary Jane Leach, a pivotal part of NYC’s pioneering avant-garde community since the 1970s and an active member of the legendary DownTown Ensemble, working alongside peers including Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Peter Zummo, Philip Corner and Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as devoting years to the preservation of Julius Eastman’s legacy since his death in 1990. Mary Jane's vinyl debut 'Pipe Dreams' arrived last year via the Blume imprint a…
Terry Riley and Don Cherry Duo
**Last copies. Newly remastered from the original tapes for optimal sound. Limited edition of 500 copies** Another incredible treasure from the vaults of Cologne radio, recorded in February 22/23rd, 1975. Unreleased sessions, carefully remastered, in this duo improvisation Riley's organ intersections just define the geometry of the hyper-dimensional space where Don Cherry's outwordly trumpet lives. Mantric and evocative, we could go on and on listening to the very same track all day long, it cou…
Electronic Music from York
On the Creel Pone short-list for easily as long as #200's William S. Fischer title, this 1973 compilation of music, all composed at York University's Electronic Music Studio during the late 60s & early 70s has been a real white whale for ages & ages, until composer Martin Wesley-Smith's personal copy landed (literally) in the lap of the core C.P. cognoscenti earlier this year. Consisting of three sides (1, 3, 5, appearing here as disc one) of music by resident composers, staff, and hangers-on at…
Sparkling Matter
Starting from the study on the state of active consciousness during various behavioral stages of sleep, Matteo Nasini focuses on the possibility of transforming the brainwaves of a sleeping into sound. Sparkling Matter is a cyclical horizon and potentially infinite, fertile ground on which sculptural objects, patterns of visual elements and sound data to be processed in a live stream.."Deriving from the recording of brain waves during the sleep phase translated into synthetic sounds by a specifi…
In Course of Time
**original warehouse find** In Course Of Time, his third LP was originally issued in Canada in 1982 and in France in 1983, although it contains works that he had began working in 1979. The material was originally shelved due to legal matters, although he continued to add some changes even after that. The Canadian edition came out in Les Disques Solaris, a recently created label that wanted to specialise in "cosmic" music. Zanov used the same equipment he had used on Moebius 256 301, albeit this …
Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Improvisations Vol. 10 (Art Editio
**Art edition of 100 copies, hand-painted and -drawn by Loren Connors** Before the spectral, romantic electric guitar miniatures for which he is celebrated today, Loren Connors recorded a string of nine solo acoustic guitar improvisations under the name of Loren Mazzacane between 1979 and 1980. The records feature Loren's contorted impressions of Delta and country blues, persistently kneaded into sidelong guitar excursions entangled with wordless, mournful vocal utterances, hummed and moaned in …
Selected Early Keyboard Works
A co-edition with Empty Editions. Selected Early Keyboard Works is the first in a series of planned archival records of the unheard music of Swedish composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist Catherine Christer Hennix, co-released by Blank Forms Editions and Empty Editions. It comes hot-on-the-heels of Traversée Du Fantasme at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, Hennix's first solo museum exhibition in over 40 years, and coincides with both Blank Forms' publication of Poësy Matters a…
Danish Tape Amateurs 1959 - 1976
Outstanding! Long understood as the realm of advanced composition, plumbed only by a small handful of adventurous listeners, the spirit which began the history of tape music and musique concrète, is too often overshadowed and lost. This incredible movement, kick-started by Halim El-Dabh, Pierre Schaeffer, and Pierre Henry, shortly after magnetic tape became widely available following the Second World War, was quickly adopted by many of the most noted composers of the day, from Messiaen and Boul…