II
The four Scottish-Irish musicians Conor Dalton, David Donaldson, Greame Reedie and Ian Maclennan are Island People. After their highly acclaimed debut from 2017, they have now finished their second album with the simple and consistent title »II«. Compared to their debut, »II« sounds more mature and complex. The arrangements unfold like the long tracking shots of an early Antonioni film - time seems to stand still, circling the moment. Impressionistically, one feels transported into the Scottish …
Lifeblood of Light and Rapture
** Monochromatic print, matte laminate jacket with emboss, insert card ** Room40 presents Lifeblood of Light and Rapture by Yann Novak. "When I began working on Lifeblood of Light and Rapture I was thinking a lot about both my personal and society’s tendencies towards nihilism. When I was in grade school, I was taught that 2020 would be the turning point in our collective fight against climate change—that if we did not change by then, there would be no turning back. After learning this at a youn…
A Trail of Laughters
Room40 presents A Trail of Laughters by Siavash Amini. A series of distressing dreams started this whole thing. A few years ago someone pointed out that my repeating dreams of being lost in what seemed to be a maze of pits, reminded them of stories about wonders of wells and pits in the Book of Marvels. More than a year ago I started having those dreams again, so I read the book. There were similarities with a few of the stories but nothing more. One of the stories made an impression on me more …
Is Dead - Volume One
Paul Chain was a pseudonym first used by the self-taught Italian multi-instrumentalist Paolo Catena in 1977. In 2003 he announced Paul Chain's 'artistic death' and destroyed all the tapes and photos in his possession. No explanation was given. Paul Chain has become a cult figure in the doom metal scene, but his 'purely phoentic' vocals, lo-fi recording techniques, and disregard for genre, will appeal to a far wider audience. With this officially licensed 93-minute double LP the Horn of Plenty si…
Andromache
** Edition of 150 ** Andromache is an unforeseen homage to an unfamiliar friend. Recorded over a five year period on abandoned and ruined pianos all over Europe, the project culminated inside a death-struck apartment in the south of Athens. Andromache includes new re-worked versions of previously released pieces from the MMMD discography. Recorded 2012-2017 in Copenhagen, Lausanne, Budapest, Kallithea.
L’Âge de l’Absolutisme
** Heavy (180gr.) vinyl. Pressed in golden color. 60 x 30cm Poster inserted ** Antifrost proudly presents a new release by ΜΜΜΔ featuring baroque keyboardist Alem. Entitled ‘’L’âge de l’absolutisme” this new album, ΜΜΜΔ’s 12th release to date, contains an idiosyncratic take on three landmark late baroque masterpieces: Alessandro Marcello’s Adagio from Oboe Concerto D minor, Georg Friedrich Händel’s Sarabande from Keyboard Suite in D minor (Suite de pièce Vol. 2 No. 4) and Johann Sebastian Bach’s…
Dust of Human Race
Raffaele Pezzella's Sonologyst made it to these pages a couple of times (Vital Weekly 1225, 1194, 1134 for instance) and here is a new one, with a quote from Ovi on the cover "Wherever you look, there is nothing but the image of death" (well, in Latin), which, perhaps, says something about the darker nature of the music. Maybe it is a sign of grim times, but in his previous work, Sonologyst wasn't a bundle of laughs either. As I noted previously, you could think that Pezzella's is gothic, but it…
(Eco)Systems
** Packed on a killer looking CD edition designed by Entr’acte boss Allon Kaye ** Fresh in the post from Russia, via Stellage – this hallucinatory amalgamation of otherwordly soundscapes and sonic scenarios from Seth Neil & Bruno Deplant – one of two new CD’s in the steadily growing discography of solid experimental music and sound art the label and the artists that find themselves there - (eco)systems is a mix of acoustic instruments, field recordings, digital and analogue synths, structured in…
July
** Edition of 200 copies, risograph sleeve, white and marbled blue cassette. ** Dauw presents July by R Beny. Novation Summit and Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus improvisations. Recorded live in one-take on July 6, 2019. Originally aired on Ghunghru FM. The limited edition tape was given away to our artists and a random selection of Dauw followers while the digital version is offered on a pay-what-you-want basis. With this album we would like to thank you for the continuous support - it means the wor…
Early Works / Things Popping Up From The Past
Michel Banabila, born 1961, is a sound artist, composer, and producer. Banabila releases music since 1983 and has produced musical scores for numerous films, documentaries, theatre plays and choreographies. This album collects 11 songs from his early years, released on tape, vinyl EPs or limited CD editions: beautiful minimal loop-based electronica, neo-classical pieces and ambient drone music. A true discovery!
Numerous threads run through the music of Michel Banabila, whose contemporary work …
Musick From Madness
**200 copies** Musik From Madness is a collection of previously unreleased material, recorded between 1986 and 1990. Schloss Tegal is an American ambient psychogenic sound project duo consisting of Richard Schneider and Mark Burch, that has existed since the 80s, recording conceptual albums that explore extreme and sometimes morbid subjects. The name comes from a castle outside of Berlin that was one of the first psychiatric hospitals. The castle was destroyed and the patients exterminated durin…
Mask of Cheerful
** Edition of 100 ** Test Recordings presents Mask of Cheerful by Ross Scott-Buccleuch on tapes, synths, and field recordings; Sigrtryggur Berg Sigmarsson on sounds and voice; Andrew Sharpley on sounds and edit. Mastered by Richard Scott. Front cover collage by Ross Scott-Buccleuch.
Ghost of dAdA
** Edition of 100 ** Test Recordings presents Ghost of dAdA by Ross Scott-Buccleuch, Sigrtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Andrew Sharpley. Previously issued july 2020 as Chocolate Monk CD 481. Ross Scott-Buccleuch asked Andrew Sharpley to edit his solo record for him. He sent over a lot of files, some DIY circuit bent improvising, some tape stuff, recordings of rugby club toilets, overt dregs of blank weather, streams, train stations, drones, all kinds of audio gunk & goof that he was supposed to edi…
Red Sugar
** CD / 4 Pages Digipack + Poster Booklet ** Second long awaited album by Winter Family, the duo composed of Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine, actually based in Brooklyn. A rare and unique audio worldview expressed by the singular approach of Ruth Rosenthal (voice) and Xavier Klaine (harmonium, organ etc..). From the first bares of Searching Donkeys this new album creates a glowering and intense atmospheric...part nightmare, part uplifting dreamscape. It permeates and builds into a compelling wh…
Something Is Missing
Luxe, spaced-out drone music from Phillip Sollman (Efdemin), including a charming drone-pop take on Jane’s ‘Fine Day’. In his post-techno phase Phillip Sollman continues to spread his wings and double down on his interest in minimalism following collaborations with Oren Ambarchi and John Gürtler in the past few years, and more recently on his percussive study ‘Monophonie.’ The title for his new suite with Dial kinda gives the game away; it’s very minimal, in the school of thought developed by li…
South from Here
Winter Family is a duo made up of Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine. They met in Jaffa, Israel in 2004. Their self-titled debut (Sub Rosa, 2007) offered minimal music played by Xavier on pipe organ, harmoniums and piano backing strict spoken-word texts chanted by Ruth. Their second album, Red Sugar (Sub Rosa, 2011) was highly praised by critics (The Village Voice, Liberation, Haaretz, Pitchfork). Winter Family then composed soundtracks for dance shows, films and advertising (Chanel, EU). They col…
Dirge
** Edition of 200 ** Daniel Menche has yet again utilized a piano to create a vast and immense storm of noise and drones. In 2011 he created a piano noise album titled “Guts” that was the sound of a piano being violently attacked and then electronically treated. Ten years later Daniel Menche worked with a grand piano that was in tune and located in a very acoustically sound studio. With carful elegance and care Daniel Menche wove long horse hairs in between the longest strings of this grand pian…
Bakunawa
Easily among our favorite records of the year - issued in a very limited vinyl edition of 300 copies by Cortizona and Stuk - Pak Yan Lau's latest, "Bakunawa", is a truly stunning thing to behold. A continuation of her long-standing "Book of Toy" project, expanded for the first time to incorporate the contributions of a five-piece ensemble, it's a sprawling expanse of deep harmonics and percussive rhythms that channel the magical and poetic into the realms of experimental music, deftly nodding to…
Hanazono
Satomimagae entrusts listeners with Hanazono, a compendium of miniature beauty, a sonic globe enclosed with subtly resonant energies. Satomi’s fourth full-length arrives as an invitation to revel in your immediate and imagined surroundings; to make time and space for guileless curiosity and garden variety enchantment. Hanazano, translated as “flower garden,” is a tribute to everyday mysticism, that sense of pure and private wonder excited by a stone, a river, or winds. Its often unplugged and af…
Neues Boot
** Edition of 200 ** TAL presents the first musical collaboration between Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens and Japanese artist Miki Yui, operating out of Düsseldorf for almost 20 years now. Highly respected and hugely influential artist Asmus Tietchens first made his mark on the electronic music scene in the late 1970s, whereas Miki Yui debuted her sonic settings in 1999. Their first joint album Neues Boot envelops the listener with a poetic sound sensibility and a conceptual clarity which was proc…