Best of 2018
The executioner
First in a series of two releases unveiling the previously unissued soundtracks made for the films of Ursula Reuter Christiansen by her partner and collaborator Henning Christiansen. The Executioner ("Skarpretteren") is Ursula's first film from 1971 and is now considered one of the most important works of early Danish feminist art. A highly praised recent show at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen highlighted the pertinent themes and ongoing urgency which lies within this bold symbolic w…
Den Rode Skov
Second in a series of two previously unreleased soundtracks Henning Christiansen made for the films made by his partner and collaborator Ursula Reuter Christiansen. Den Røde Skov ("The Red Forest") was Ursula's second film made in 1986. In stark contrast to the exquisite romantic melancolia of their first collaboration, The Executioner (PP 034LP), Den Røde Skov resides as one of the wildest recordings in the entire Christiansen catalog. Aligned more with works like the legendary collaboration wi…
Canaxis 5
Exact LP repro edition. A few months after the foundation of Can, Holger Czukay recorded his first solo album ‘Canaxis’, in conjunction with producer/engineer Rolf Dammers, this album was assembled from thousands of snippets recorded from short wave radio, a long standing obsession of Czukay's which he also incorporated into some of Can's later albums. A refugee during the Second World War, Holger Czukay famously studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the early ‘60s. That direct exposure to the c…
Dahl-Tah-Ghi
Okkyung Lee is a cellist, composer, and improviser who moves freely between of artistic disciples and contingencies. Since moving to New York in 2000 she has worked in disparate contexts as a solo artist and collaborator with creators in a wide range of disciplines. A native of South Korea, Lee has taken a broad array of inspirations—including noise, improvisation, jazz, western classical, and the traditional and popular music of her homeland—and used them to forge a highly distinctive app…
Pur En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu
Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Pur En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu by Antonin Artaud. Antonin Artaud was a French poet, dramatist, and director and one of the most important figures in 20th century European theater, and especially the avant-garde. His piece "Pour En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu" was recorded in 1947 to be aired on French radio. But the project was shelved not only for its scatological, anti-American, anti-religious content, but also for its avant-garde sound, wi…
Tout Ce Que Je Sais
CD edition. The duo Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor has produced original works where poetry and guitar combine in explorations of thematic axes. With the project ‘Heretics’, of which Tout Ce Que Je Sais (All I know) is the second part, they revive the most obscure, violent, erotic passions, summoning the great figures of their personal mythologies. In the company of Caravaggio, Marquis de Sade, William Burroughs and figures such as Jose Mujica, the duo immerses the listener in another wor…
Grand Bruit/Stop ! l'horizon
Christian Zanési on Grand Bruit (1991): "The great mobile sound bodies have an ordinary yet amazing ability to place the listener-traveler within, as if he or she was inside a giant double bass, in this case a train stroked by a double bow: the rails and the air. In 1991, I explored this phenomenon during my daily commute from the studio to my home. I used only a 21 minutes recording and treated it as a single sound object. I then processed and enhanced it as a photographer would have don…
Nirvana
Astonishing collage / tape music by ’80s Dutch collective featuring members of de Fabriek and Mekanik Kommando, among others. Imagine floating like a whale in the waters of the nordic hemisphere looking through the layers of water and ice to the sun the moon and the stars, and you might get closer to this LSD-infused release... Narwal was (is?) a band from the Netherlands, most active during the 80's. It consists of four members that were also active in two industrial groups (de Fabriek & Meka…
Riot
Hand-numbered LP. Edition of 400 copies. Re-dition of this John Duncan 1984 le Riot album: re-recorded, re-mixed at EMS and expanded with material that didn’t make the initial pressings, all taken from original 8-track master tape - which required them to revive obsolete machinery - and all re-mastered by Rashad Becker for this release; which, according to the legendary avant-garde agitator himself, is finally packaged in artwork befitting of his vision. Or take it straight from the horse’s gob:…
My Dear Killer
Death Waltz Recording Company is proud to present the soundtrack to 1972's Giallo My Dear Killer with music by Maestro Ennio Morricone. My Dear Killer (Mio Caro Assassino) was a 1972 Giallo directed by Tonino Valerii (The Assistant director on A Fist full of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More), it is easily one of the greatest of all Giallo films to come out of Italy and you owe it to yourself to track it down and watch it. The score form Maestro Ennio Morricone is absolutely outstanding and no…
Xylomania
Xylo-Mania is a concise collection of beautiful computer experiments. Using PRAAT, a software to analyse and manipulate speech on a signal basis, Francesco Cavaliere brings to life yet another part of his grand world. A world reading like a Landolfi or Gogol story; where the fantastic, the imagination and the creative meet. Here’s an artist inhabiting the Italian heritage - magic realism, flamboyant thinking, and self confident harmonization - soaking up references and dissolving it into …
‘Mars II’ Music for Automated Piano, Pianist and Ash
Incredible edition consisting of 2LP set in hardboard gatefold with black linen and embossed print, with large format booklet with extensive notes (in English), scores, illustrations and graphics, in a edition of 300 copies.‘MARS II, the vinyl’ contains the music composed for MARS II, the performance. In MARS II Karl Van Welden explores the impact of volcanic ash on the performance of pianist Frederik Croene and the sound he produces, playing on an automated piano. MARS II examines a momen…
Tint
Tint is the first new solo recording from Joe Talia in over a decade. Australian-born but now based in Tokyo, Talia is known to many listeners as a drummer (frequently collaborating both live and in the studio with artists such as Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke) and as a recording and mixing engineer responsible for dozens of releases across the fields of contemporary experimental music, wayward pop, and jazz. Alongside James Rushford, he is also responsible for one of the most legendary r…
Crying Bamboos: Ceremonial Flute Music from New Guinea
Double LP version. Crying Bamboos is a translation of the pidgin description of the sound of sacred flutes: "Mambu i cry, i cry, i cry". Sacred flutes are blown to make the cries of spirits by adult men in the Madang region of Papua New Guinea. Pairs of long bamboo male and female flutes are played for ceremonies in the coastal villages near the Ramu River. There are seven male initiation flute cries from Bosmun, four flute cries from Bak: Borai with occasional single garamut percussion and two …
Synthesis: Electronic Music 1984-1988
LP version. Dennis Young is best known as the percussionist of the New York band Liquid Liquid, which is known for their piece "Cavern" from 1983, which in turn became very well-known because Grandmaster Flash sampled it and used it as the basis for their hit "White Lines". But Young was more than just a member of the band, he produced plenty of his own music, much of it reflecting his passion for analog electronics. He was fascinated by the pioneers of the genre. In 2016 Bureau B released Wa…
Invenzioni
**Very Last Copies - Original 1983 copies of this obscure classic, slightly warped** few copies available. Over the last decade we’ve begun to form an image of Italy’s long neglected musical avant-garde. This movement, with artifacts stretching from the mid-1960’s to today, remained landlocked for decades, almost entirely unheard beyond the country of its birth. With a small number of exceptions, despite the remarkable creative diversity reissue culture has managed to represent, the majorit…
Misztériumok
Misztériumok is the third full-length record - their first on three:four - of Italian duo Amuleto, composed of Francesco Dillon and his cousin and three:four’s artist Riccardo Wanke. Following the route of previous releases this new album emerges as the fusion of composed and improvised forms and moves between contemporary and electronic music mixing acoustic, electronic and real world sounds. The music takes shapes from a progressive disclosure of sonic material that gradually manifests i…
Braublff - Materie und Laut
**Edition of 250 copies with silkscreened booklet** Braublff (Materie und Laut) is an archival piece with work from Gerhard Rühm, Alessandro Bosetti, Tomomi Adachi, ArfArf. With specific contributions and live recordings. Braublff is a series of live events organised by DE PLAYER (Rotterdam) and KRAAK (Ghent) and brings together contemporary vocal poets, text-sound composers and language-based artists with the pioneering work of the avant-garde. It deals with the question: “Where and how…
In Praise of Shadows
Sublime immersive session for computer generated sound, guitar and electronics from Yuen Chee Wai and Lasse Marhaug. In collaboration, they find a deeply immersive equilibrium where their tempered, haptic gestures give rise to a play of shimmering tones in negative space recalling the soundtrack to some black light theatre piece or Far Eastern classical.Yuen Chee Wai is a musician, artist, designer and curator based in Singapore. Often inspired by ideas drawn from philosophical and literary te…
Ex Nihilo
Editions Mego’s 250th release continues its ongoing legacy of cross-pollinating and perverting various threads of radical 20th Century music whilst concocting and properling further ideas into the nebulous region where we currently reside. With Ex Nihilo, Editions Mego resumes it’s enduring relationship with long term collaborator and stalwart representative of the labels aesthetic with a new release from London’s most charming deviant occupant, Mr Bruce Gilbert (formerly of Wire, Dome etc…