The Little Glass
The ever-enigmatic Akira Rabelais returns! The Little Glass breaks down clearly over two discs; the first containing four plaintive solo piano parts by Harold Budd and Rabelais, followed by a 2nd disc presenting Rabelais’ hour long, inharmonic, electronic transformation of the preceding material. Rabelais has collaborated with Budd before, he provided his own incredible side-long second CD to Budd’s majestic Avalon Sutra album, and while the piano pieces that make up the first CD here are bloody…
First
Tarotplane is the solo project of Baltimore-based musician PJ Dorsey. First, his full-length debut, is a tremendous album etched on the great krautrock and experimental psychedelic records from the '70s. Vintage electronic sounds are mixed with effected guitar parts. It might sound quite familiar at first, but once one enters the heart of the album it all gets spectacularly exhilarating and effortlessly captivating, swirling around the listener. Records such as Franco Battiato's Pollution, Bill …
13
Room40 inaugurates its series of works by American guitarist and composer Norman Westberg with 13. Best known for his work with the seminal outfit Swans, Westberg's output beyond that group is sprawling and restless. His name recurs and ripples through many interconnected micro-histories surrounding New York City's music and art scenes. From appearances in film works associated with the Cinema of Transgression to his participation in bands such as The Heroine Sheiks and Five Dollar Priest, Westb…
RE : EM
The brilliant Anna Zaradny's follows up her engrossing debut with this new EP featuring a sumptuous Fennesz rework of her New feat Old, following hot on the heels of Robert Piotrwicz's crushing side, Stara Szkola Ze Zlota, to remind us the ascetic, uncompromising brilliance of Polish experimental music at its best. On the front Zaradny utterly dominates the senses with a pulsating deconstruction of Stop the Chaos; originally a sub-3 minute rager, now distilled and expanded to three times the len…
Rank Sonata
"Colin Potter has been a central figure in the UK's DIY and post-industrial underground since the late '70s. His ICR label, founded in 1981, blurred the lines between post-punk experimentation, crude pop, Krautrock-inspired drone work and contemporary electronica, with releases by everyone from DIY legends The Instant Automatons through Chris & Cosey of Throbbing Gristle, experimental composer Trevor Wishart, drone soundists Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate and Bryn Jones's Muslimgauze. He has also …
Endless Autumn
Each new album by Fabio Orsi is an experience apart. The atmospheres created by the Apulian artist, who lives in Berlin since few years, penetrate the smallest gaps of the cerebral cortex, just where the memory lives. Backwards is proud to present, in collaboration with Puglia Sounds, "Endless Autumn", a work that draws inspiration in its title from "Endless Summer", by the acclaimed Christian Fennesz, but shines with its own light anyway. Entirely recorded between Taranto and Berlin, it embodie…
Moon Light Reflecting Over Mountains
On Moon Light Reflecting Over Mountains, Tokyo's Chihei Hatakeyama evokes an instrumental poetic grace that marks him out as one of the icons of his generation. Drawing upon a broad swath of aesthetic references, he seamlessly melts glacial ambient drifts with richly harmonic guitar strata that echo the gliding motions of My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Cocteau Twins. Never resolving to clear melody, his interest in unrestrained harmonics creates a depth to his compositions and moreover a pr…
Chantepleure
"The trajectory of Alex Cobb's music over the course of the last decade could be viewed as a distillation of tone and atmosphere to arrive at Chantepleure, his most optimistic and sanguine musical statement to date. The album, however, was created at a time of heartache, isolation, and emotional upheaval and acts as a balm of tender tones where abstract guitar lines circle and suspend in a kind of refined elegance. Noise, once a hallmark of Cobb's music, has not been entirely removed, but manife…
Glass Walking
Over the years the Menstruation Sisters have through a selective, but incredibly varied output of albums steadily built a reputation among music fans as a unique band. It was never a secret who the members of Menstruation Sisters were, yet the band's aura was shrouded in mystery and confusion, possibly because they would completely reinvent themselves with every new recorded statement. As a fan of the Menstruation Sisters you had to abandon everything you knew with each new piece of the puzzle.…
Feel the hiss
Some of the tracks on Feel the Hiss, a release Bryn Jonesrecorded LIVE to cassette in early 1995 but never had the chance to remix and polish before he DIED, use the same kinds of devotional voices found on much of Minaret Speaker(ARCHIVE 029CD), but here other voices are present too. Conversational or angry, male or female, English or French or Arabic, almost inaudible or forcing their way to the front of the MUSIC, these "Zilver Tracks" (the name based on a note Jones wrote on the tape) engage…
The Equatorial Stars
Totally essential LP re-release for the first collaboration between Robert Fripp and Brian Eno in over 30 years, that nearly equals the effuse beauty of their celebrated 70s works. "Ambient is a spacious, electronic music that is concerned with sonic texture, not songwriting or composing," says the All-Music Guide. That seems reasonable, although I suspect Brian Eno might take issue with the notion that his music is somehow unconcerned with composition. As with most musical definitions (and …
An Evolutionary Music (Original Recordings: 1972 - 1979)
Double CD version...A masterpiece! RVNG seem to be doing an enviable job of unearthing some of the most pre-eminent performers of progressive synthesizer and horizontalist ambient world music and this guy, whose stunning 'Osmose' is rarely off my record deck, is surely one of the most treasured. His work during the 70s is, quite simply, incredibly important to lovers of esoteric spiritual synth music and will leave you with a massive helpless grin and a notable dearth of tension in your m…
Whispered Visions
Sharing social circles and spiritual ideologies with artists such as Iasos, Connie Demby and Deuter, whilst splitting label release schedules with Laraaji, Laurie Spiegel and Wendy Carlos, the unique Florida raised soul mate duo known as Emerald Web released their privately pressed debut LP at an axis where post-prog rock met proto-new age and ambient electronic music. Notes by Kat Epple When originally released, one music reviewer described Whispered Visions as: “A cosmic tapestry of sound, wov…
The New Today
*2LP Edition of 700 copies, includes a free download of the album dropped into your account* Dave Huismans (A Made Up Sound) returns under his 2562 codename with the oneiric ambient/concrète dancefloor states of 'The New Today', his 4th solo album in this guise. Where its predecessor, 'Air Jordan', also for his When In Doubt label, took inspiration from the arid landscapes of the Middle East, 'The New Today' draws upon ideas sketched out whilst 2562 was in New York, late summer 2013, and was lat…
Live in Paris 28.05.1975
The subject of many poor quality bootlegs, this concert - one of only a handful undertaken by Fripp & Eno - is routinely described as legendary. Hearing the tapes in fully restored audio quality, it's easy to understand why it attracts such reverence now and perhaps, why the shows attracted such hostility then. No Roxy Music hits, No King Crimson riffs, just a duo sitting in near darkness with a reel to reel tape recorder, improvising over the pre-recorded loops with a filmed background projecti…
Atom bomb becomes folk art
Pogus is very pleased to release this 2 CD set of Australian composer Ron Nagorcka's work, covering almost 40 years of his compositions. Atom Bomb (1977) (Golden Fur: Samuel Dunscombe, Judith Hamann & James Rushford, with cassette tape recorders, toy instruments and various other devices) In a music critique for The Australian newspaper in 1977 entitled Atom Bomb becomes Folk Art, Paul Utiger described one of Atom Bomb's performances from the late 1970s: 'The most important instruments were the …
Evening Star
**200g super-heavyweight vinyl and presented in a re-print of the original sleeve** In 1975 with King Crimson on hiatus (as it would remain until 1980), Robert Fripp's appearances on album or on stage were rare. When he did appear, it was with Brian Eno. Circumstances following an accident in January 1975 led to Eno formulating the idea of ambient music as detailed in the notes to Discreet Music - released in December 1975. The title track of Discreet Music was initially conceived as a backing l…
No Pussyfooting
2023 Reissue. Fripp & Eno's timeless electronic music classic No Pussyfooting on vinyl for the first time in nearly 30 years. The album's return to the 12" format is cut from masters approved by the artists, manufactured on 200g super-heavyweight vinyl and presented in a re-worked version of the original gatefold sleeve, using variant photos from the original photo shoot by Willie Christie.On September 8th 1972, Robert Fripp brought his guitar and pedal board to Brian Eno's home studio. Using En…
Premonitions 1980-85
Shipping in a few days. Robert Rich's solo and collaborative recordings have proven extremely influential on a range of new school ambient and experimental artists. Although almost a decade younger than his cohorts, Rich's association with the West Coast scene of space-music pioneers such as Steve Roach, Kevin Braheny, and Michael Stearns also makes him one of the few of that generation to have interfaced creatively with the new wave of experimental electronic composers. A northern California na…
Celestial Soul Portrait
Numero present a sincerely wide-eyed and wondrous collection of new age synth music prototypes imagined and created between 1975-1985 by Iasos. As the story goes, Iasos was inspired by "...the infinitely numbered harmonies transmitted by Vista, a benevolent being from a distant dimension..." Iasos broke ground for a new age of electronic sound manipulation. His was pioneering work—done from a bohemian boat-slip home office—on some of the first commercially available synthesizers and, on stage, i…