Nihtes niht
'The music supposed to be a soundtrack for lonely ice-soundscapes... when you stand there on lonely wide inhuman places and feel lost, but you still stand on ice...' - Baraka[H] The newest collaboration between masters of evocative noise/drone ambient is divided into four long tracks, four directions of nothing. The tracks are entitled in middle ageindo-german language, for north, east, south, west. And the album title means nothing from nothing - very weird notion, as it doesn't exist anymore i…
Memory of a safe place
Orsi is an ambient composer and uses synthetic and natural sounds to create his music, that fits the black and white photography quite well. Lots of pictures of nature, and with a sound that seems to stem straight from nature this is music that is probably best enjoyed outside - be it that taking a record player into nature is a bit difficult. That's the only downside of such a release I guess, which is otherwise filled with some great music. In 'Part 1', I believe to hear a mass of voice materi…
The New Dark Age of Love
The past two years have found Austin’s Lone State dark lord Xander Harris (aka Justin Sweatt) on a heavy transfigurative trip, overhauling his live rig, detouring through an expansive soundtrack project celebrating the 20th anniversary of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, touring outside Texas (from New Orleans to the Netherlands), plus a host of other inner life turmoils and metamorphoses. All of which seems to have seeped into the synthesizer soil of his stunning second full-length, The New Dark A…
Undefined
Undefined is the first collaboration between artists Richard Chartier and Yann Novak. For this piece the artists chose to collaborate in a way that was less about concept and more about the act of listening. The piece began with Chartier creating an unfinished work and sending it to Novak with no explanation, just the instructions to add to it, subtract from it, or a combination in order to finish the piece. Novak was then to send the recording back to Chartier for a simple approval or rejection…
The Mineral Victim
After a lengthy silence, Chora’s Ben Nash came back recently with an album made entirely on his computer, and now here’s another one which seems to have been made with a combination of computer and guitar, carving out slow melodic soundscapes with glassy, patient drones, disembodied voices and a whole variety of tones which swell and recede for quite an ominous, organic-sounding psychedelic thrum.There are two lengthy pieces on here, on the first side there’s ‘From 80 Fathoms’, which is quite sp…
Sólaris
The power of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris is not in its futuristic sets, or in the hypnotic shots of the alien planet’s weird, fluid surface, but it’s in the way he juxtaposes his alien, futuristic elements against the intimately familiar. This is a future not just of flashing lights and video screens, but of wood and wool and leather, of dogs and horses, books and photographs. In Frost & Bjarnason’s SÓLARIS we do find the futuristic, gaseous atmospheres and pulses one might expect from a sci-fi s…
Ben Nash / Magic Lantern
2010 release. This one's been brewing at BR HQ for quite sometime, due to come out long ago, this beaut of a split is finally seeing light of day. A mutual respect from these two camps brought about what is surely one of this years most exciting releases in the field of the split vinyl LP. Ben Nash returns after over a year's absence from releasing any solo work, now busy as a full time member of the excellent Chora, we may all be in for a long wait for anymore solo action after this release... …
Here Is Where We Used To Sing
2011 Release. Die Stadt and Janet records are extermely happy to announce on the release of the new Fovea Hex album. "There have been few albums that I remember waiting so impatiently for. Several years have gone by since Clodagh Simonds' first transmission under the Fovea Hex umbrella and finally a full length has appeared. Continuing on from an exceptional string of EPs and singles, Here is Where We Used to Sing finds Simonds and her ever shifting group exploring different aspects of their son…
Proverbs of hell
Daisy Bell is Donck's new group. The live show involves a collection of electronic and acoustic instruments, harmony vocal arrangements, lots of live sampling and sound processing plus a video projection, illustrating each song with minimal, yet evocative imagery. All songs are based on poetry by William Blake with his texts providing a vocal spine to the compositions. These range from experimental musique concrete to pop "with a twist" and all with strong intensity, dark atmospheres and raw bea…
Primeval Nebula
It seems to be a great creative period for Gino Fioravanti, alias
Aglaia, that with each new release continues to expand their vocabulary
and to enriches its palette of sounds and colors. The immersive power of
this work has reached the pure fusion with listening, a liquid
quality.. osmotic, it is an act that rejoins the source of consciousness
from which all true art springs.
The electronic sound have lost any artificial appearance and seem to be
generated directly by the flow of blood, b…
Proscenium
** 500 copies ** Tom Recchion’s Proscenium, released by Elevator Bath, is a beautiful piece of ambient/drone that was originally created for Janie Geiser’s play, Invisible Glass. Proscenium is a subtle and remarkably controlled collection of atmospheres. The air of mystery, deliberate pacing, the deep tones and unidentified sounds of Recchion's 2006 album Sweetly Doing Nothing have been explored even further here. It's a logical development but the results are unexpected and strikingly original,…
Point Of Arrival
Latest release on the excellent Forced Nostalgia imprint, a vinyl edition of a super-rare 1986 tape by sound designer at Oberheim Electronics, Loren Nerell. 500 copies only* Forced Nostalgia make their first physical impression of 2012 with a vinyl edition of a mystical 1986 tape by gamelan enthusiast and Berlin school composer Loren Nerell. A contemporary of Steve Roach and collaborator with Steve Reich, Kronos Quartet, Paul Haslinger and L. Subramaniam, Nerell has a richly varied musical backg…
Parthenon
Spectrum Spools is pleased to release the debut album by veteran musician Toko Yasuda's Plvs Vltra project. Toko has been working for years already in established pop acts such as Enon, Blonde Redhead and now touring with St. Vincent handling synthesizer duties for live events. In all her years of songcraft there have been sparse, if any solo output, until now. Parthenon is a sugar-sweet album of catchy pop songs, crafted with expert precision and outstanding composition logic. Everything is loc…
Oh Lordy Me! (My Heart Is Wandering Again)
250 copies. It's been quite some time since a full length solo Ben Nash release, and it's finally here, and somewhat different from his more psychedelic folk drones he showcased way back on 'The Seventh Goodbye'. Probably best left for Ben to explain this one for you... "I recorded this new full-length record during downtime from playing with Chora and after a long break from recording any solo music. Having become somewhat disillusioned with the process of overdubbing conventional “physical” in…
Midnight In Space
The third of the experimental electronic releases on the PDU label (along with recent Wah Wah's offerings Elektriktus' Electronic Mind Waves and Roberto Cacciapaglia's Sonanze) was released in 1978 and offered amazing cosmic passages in the purest Gillet Lethman & Cosmic Jokers style, built with piano, synth and even a spice of disco rhythms, plus sensual voices in a Cantori Moderni d'Alessandroni or Edda Dell'Orso feel adding for an exotic touch. Reissued for the first time in a limited edition…
Inward Eye
The edition is limited to 287 and vinyl comes in three different colors: marble orange, marble white, and black. The record is housed in a 12" cloth bag, with front, back and inner fully screen-printed with artwork reproducing a painting by Roberto Opalio. Secret messages are written between the grooves and both sides' center labels, that feature mysterious, full-color portraits of Ramona and Roberto respectively on each side. Each copy hand-…
Elusive Metaphor
Listening to Elusive Metaphor feels a bit like being told a secret, or like getting a clandestine glimpse at some sort of shadowy ritual. Alio Die (aka Stefano Musso) and Parallel Worlds (aka Bakis Sirros) combine their respective approaches, melding long, deep drones with crackling, technical analog electronics in this hour-long voyage. Balance plays a vital role here. Each composer distinctly steps forward in spots, but never completely owns the moment. Sirros’ work powers “The Dispersed Expec…
We're In Heaven
Vinyl debut by this Viennese rave abstractionist boils down pulsing LED beats and deep synth strobe FX into a cavernous laser-streaked fog. In blinding Alex Grey-style acid-body artwork by Mr. Cruise Family himself
Threnody for Marcus Junius Brutus
Atmospheric radical electronics at their highest peak. Key of Shame is the creature born from the collaboration of Mark Morgan (Sightings) and Pat Murano (No Neck Blues Band, Decimus, Malkuth, K. Salvatore) revealing the black side of psychedelics.
This session has been recorded live in the WFMU Studio (engineered by Glenn Luttman) edited by Pat Murano and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. A journey through industrial minimalism evolving from bubbling metal drones into indecipherable structures of su…
Selbstportrait
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. This is the third solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. Alongside his ongoing work with Cluster and Harmonia, Roedelius amassed an almost incalculable number of musical notations during his time in the idyllic Weser Uplands. Fleeting sketches, spontaneous improvisations, implied miniatures, rough compositions -- Roedelius recorded virtually every idea he came up with outside the studio sessions on h…