BOW
Brussels-based string quintet BOW celebrates musical freedom. Juggling between their own written music and pure improvisation, the ensemble has worked since its creation on a personal and modern approach, digging into their instruments' capabilities and blending a large scope of influences.
Its debut eponym LP, due to be released on Sub Rosa, gathers five instantly-composed pieces that were recorded live by Christine Verschorren in the Echo Collective studio in Brussels. During the day, BOW repe…
La Flourenn En Mars
Wonderful lo-fi synthpop/collage LP by Marseillaise duo Jean-Marie Mercimek. Something has been brewing in France in recent years. Underground record shops, small venues, micro labels, and young musicians are creating a new vibe in various parts of the country. A broad range of styles and genres get randomly mixed into a melting pot with refreshing results. Jean Marie-Mercimek is one of those projects coming out of this new scene. The duo of Marion Molle and Ronan Riou revisits French lo-fi synt…
Ozeanische Gefühle
irr. app. (ext) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, whose collected body of work is far too important to continue to be forgotten. During the past decade, only two full albums -- Dust Pincher Appliances (2003 on Crouton) and An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding in Conversation (1997 on Fire, Inc.) -- have seen the light of day despite the fact that perhaps a dozen albums have been completed. The public silence for irr. app. (ext) was never by Waldron's design, a…
We Share a Shadow
Murmer is the pseudonym for Patrick McGinley, a man with several passports which have taken him to many a foreign land in search of found sounds of the unsettled, the forgotten, the mysterious, and the beautiful. His field recordings of activated environments (e.g. resonant industrial spaces, windswept telephone lines, bowed branches, gasping ventilator systems, etc.) originate from all of the locations where he has traveled; yet, the documentation of these sounds is not the terminus of McGinley…
Samoa Highway
**Edition of 500** RV Paintings were born in California. Humboldt County, to be exact. It is nearly impossible to imagine their origins being elsewhere since the brothers Brian and Jon Pyle, who currently pilot RV Paintings, constantly mine the metaphysical properties of their homeland through a heavy-lidded psychedelia. The redwood trees that majestically rise from the rugged terrain may have been one of the endemic objects that inspired RV Paintings to “jam nature”; but Humboldt County’s other…
Works For Cassette
Here be the final drone / hypnogogic statement from Taiga Remains. The man behind Taiga Remains has now shelved this moniker; but he's far from hanging up his hat, as he now works under his given name Alex Cobb -- also known as the philosopher king who benevolently reigns over his Students Of Decay. There are those at the Agency who can claim to speak with the poetics of corrosion, and we have long admired the sympathetic aesthetic in Cobb's gorgeously elegant compositions for guitar, bells, tap…
So Long
A journey through time, perhaps, for a daydreamer floating in a small boat amidst the radiant hues of a midnight sun. that daydreamer in this instance is the icelandic artist Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson, best known for his electro-surrealism in stilluppsteypa. he has long been an artist of extremes and absurdities -- mania fueled performances, wildly scribbled drawings, and haflerian audio shock-therapy, on one side; and on the other, a profound meditation on austere shape, form, and mood cast th…
The Unlistening Place
The core tracks of The Unlistening Place were recorded in 2015. At the time, these were intended to be part of what was to be the final Fossil Aerosol album, scheduled for a distant release. But history circled back on itself and the result was a reworking of future tracks, alongside more new material. Historiography eating its own tail. Tradition, referents, and resolute nothing from the place that does not hear.
Scaath Catfish
Songs about the river are a common trope in the history of music. Psalms of being cleansed, being baptized, being redeemed. There are ballads of murder, lost love, jealousy, and all sorts of rank human emotion reflected in the surface of the water. Respect, praise, and worship of the river are other themes often channeled through music as well. Even in the realm of ambient music, digital mimesis of the aquatic is commonplace. Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, in their ongoing archaeological approac…
Slow Music
Records are almost always more than they seem. For all the sound and joy that they bring, they are works of art in multiple that indicate vast networks of happening, history, and ideas; beacons to be chased, leading to understanding beyond themselves. Particularly in the case of historical works, whether they emerge from dusty crates or as reissues and archival releases, these objects can reveal unexpected creative intersections that defy our notions of what was. Aguirre’s first-time reissue of …
South from the Future
**Limited edition cassette. Risograph artwork** The debut album by C. Blumberg (living in Berlin DE) is a series of composite images. Anecdotes with distorted perspectives. Documents or maps - impressions...? However if you look a bit closer you see something very different, quite like a technologic fantasy.
The second track, 神奇森林上海 (tr. Shanghai Magical Forest), holds a certain key to enter the psyche of the album. Here Blumberg is inspired by a photo found on Flickr. The author of the photo ga…
Eistla
**Edition of 200. 12" Vinyl LP. Risograph print cover** The ability to create moving music with no words, no beats and no conventional instruments is rare, but San Francisco Bay Area-based modular synth artist Austin Cairns - who records under the name r beny - is such an example. Belgian label Dauw are reissuing his first four albums separately and as a box set. Eistla was the final one of these, first released at the end of 2018.
Saudade
**Edition of 200. 12" Vinyl LP. Risograph print cover** The ability to create moving music with no words, no beats and no conventional instruments is rare, but San Francisco Bay Area-based modular synth artist Austin Cairns - who records under the name r beny - is such an example. Belgian label Dauw are reissuing his first four albums separately and as a box set. Saudade was his third overall and the first of two full-lengths released in 2018 alone.
Cascade Symmetry
**Edition of 200. 12" Vinyl LP. Risograph print cover** The ability to create moving music with no words, no beats and no conventional instruments is rare, but San Francisco Bay Area-based modular synth artist Austin Cairns - who records under the name r beny - is such an example. Belgian label Dauw are reissuing his first four albums separately and as a box set.Cascade Symmetry was his 2017 sophomore effort.
Full Blossom Of The Evening
**Edition of 200. 12" Vinyl LP. Risograph print cover** The ability to create moving music with no words, no beats and no conventional instruments is rare, but San Francisco Bay Area-based modular synth artist Austin Cairns - who records under the name r beny - is such an example. Belgian label Dauw are reissuing his first four albums separately and as a box set. Full Blossom of the Evening was his 2016 debut.
The Consummation of Right and Wrong
David First likes to use the phrase "the virtuosity of slowness" to describe his musical philosophy. In The Consummation of Right and Wrong, he and his eight-piece ensemble, The Western Enisphere, practice this virtuosity to great effect in closely examining the universes that fall between the cracks of convention, reflecting a wide continuum of complex relationships, all the while creating music that is simply ravishing to listen to. This is "drone music" as dynamic organism, moving from compac…
Lost In Spice
**Edition of 400** La Scie Dorée presents a new album by In Camera. In Camera is composed of Christoph Heemann and Timo van Luijk , both experienced and quite active in the contemporary experimental music world. In Camera was formed in 2003 out of a twenty year dialogue between the duo who have recorded two albums together. On these dates, Heemann plays the Moog and manipulates prerecorded sounds live to generate lush electronic drone-scapes while van Luijk symbiotically adds to the visual sound…
Some Days It Rains All Night
**Edition of 350 copies on transparent vinyl** La Scie Dorée presents a new album by Mirror (Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk) recorded at the Loft, Cologne. Christoph Heemann, with co-founder Achim P. Li Khan, was active in the celebrated group Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa in the 80's. In the mid-90's, Christoph concentrated on his solo career while collaborating with artists such as Jim O'Rourke and Edward Ka-Spel (Legendary Pink Dots) in the Mimir project. He also worked with Masami Akita (Merzb…
Nervous Rattles
**Limited edition of 300** KRAMP is the solo project of Stijn Wybouw, a young artist involved in many visual and musical projects that often overlap and which share an unflinchingly honest approach as well as penchant for crimson hues. As KRAMP, Wybouw assumes a red-faced identity to unleash raw machinations that take on ceremonial underpinnings through coarse compositions, murky drones, and warped vocalizations, all churned through the marshy fuzz of various tape recorders.After a slew of self-…
Nigths and Profecy
**Edition of 200** Zombies lurk throughout the post-industrial abstractions and radiantly murky collages of Nigths and Profecy - an 80 minute split release from Fossil Aerosol Mining Project and 400 Lonely Things.
Fossil Aerosol has a long history with zombies. Or perhaps more specifically, with the contexts that fostered zombies during the 1970s and 1980s. Of particular interest was the imagined, and then realized, ruins of contemporary society - often populated with artificial corpses. One of …