New Arrivals
Future Slip
For her fifth solo album, Samara Lubelski finds a new home on Ecstatic Peace, with label boss Thurston Moore taking on a role as producer, even roping in his band's drummer (the estimable Steve Shelley). Moore recruited Lubelski for violin duties on his own solo LP, 2007's Trees Outside The Academy, and set about coaxing her into recording a different type of record from her established Social Registry output. Future Slip certainly diverges from the more baroque folk tendencies of her recent wor…
Here Is Always Somewhere Else
2008 release. You might not think that there would be much information available about a performance artist whose entire catalog of work lasts about 40 minutes, and who vanished at sea. This release will dispel that notion. Here is Always Somewhere Else is not only a moving tribute of artist Bas Jan Ader, but a celebration of the eye, that which notices the miraculous in the small, mundane details.Ader, in that sense, was one of the first micro-historians. He was obsessed with gravity, with…
Bronze Age Subway
"Fruitful meeting of two very consistent mainstays in the southern drone hemispheres... The recordings took place in Buenos Aires when Antony recently was on a trip to South America.. Dark and broodling, yet also soothing and narcoleptic drone works from these two masters of their fields.. Guitars, violins and organs create buzzing forcefields and nocturnal sonic transfixions.... Top shelf trans-continental drone extravaganza from these highly prolific gentlemen. Don't miss out!"
The Plain Where The Palace Stood
Drag City drops the sixth and latest David Grubbs pop album, The Plain Where the Palace Stood, which finds David once again twining together the diverse strands of his vast interests. Working with Andrea Belfi (drums, electronics) and Stefano Pilia (guitar) - plus Attila Faravelli on electronics - creates a sympathetic groupthink that David expects more and greater from in the years to come. The welcome return of his distinctive overdriven guitar tone is a highlight of the record. And C. S…
Shell-shocked
Meirino has been crossing fabricated, gathered, altered, provoked or wrong sounds for nearly two decades. The second Noisendo release follows the first one (Gorgomilos) closely - chronologically speaking - and dives deeper into a DIY electronica where machines dictate as much law as Man. Mutual respect? The obvious punk drive of Noisendo001 is more subtle in 002 but it is present in the nervous breathing of the acoustic and synthetic sounds that excite our senses while listening to this r…
Barca beach
Live recordings from Barcelona, summer 2009. Frankensteins Ballet features Mik Quantius (Embryo) speaking-in-tongues and Thomas Hopf on drums. Other members have played with Damo Suzuki, Michael Karoli, Michael Rother etc. Some serious damaged krautrock jams happening on this one, not to mention the weird dub space some of this is floating into. Edition of 70 copies.
Black Magic & Mustache
Seattle-based Simon Henneman's first solo vinyl release is here. Mr. Henneman has worn many hats in the musical vortex of the Seattle sub-underground, most "famously" as one of the Diminished Men, who released an LP on the Sun City Girls Abduction label in 2009. That LP gave the lucky few who procured a copy an idea of the talents of that great band. Here, Mr. Henneman strikes out on his own and creates a solo journey of a much more intimate palette. Playing every instrument on the reco…
Cafe Cicago
RESTOCKED things were different in thailand a few years back, since it's inhabited by the sleazy christophersons or lou de preycks of our time, you can not just enter cocktail bars anymore without showing your ID! the idea is simple and plain though: watching the sunset with purple sunglasses and a fresh strawberry diahreah with ice in your hands while listening to classic german kraut or early kraftmenship from the same country! sliding over the autobahn while dreaming away on the analog…
A Birthday Tribute - 75 Years
Five recordings, 2 from 1977 at Tempo Natural and 3 from 1993, where Tony Oxley leads various permutations of improvisers Derek Bailey, Paul Rutherford, Pat Thomas, Matt Wand, Phillip Wachsmann, Ian Brighton. The first track from 1993 brings all musicians together for a 29 minute work of great dynamic and dialog. The following track present a quartet with Oxley, Bailey, Thomas and Wand from the same session, and the final 1993 track is the duo of Oxley and Rutherford. The first '77 tra…
Mirrors & tides
Eyes closed, ears wide open, we are given freedom to dream the void. Sweeping, intricate, sometimes ominous yet always exuding a warmth and depth of emotion, The Stargazer's Assistant produces pure cinema of sound. For the new EP, David J. Smith (Guapo) is joined by Circle vocalist Mika Rttö', who sings on the heart-breaking 'Coral Butterfly'. David also had the honour of playing the late Finnish jazz drummer Edward Vesala's Sound & Fury collection of unique metal percussion. Ancient fore…
Mountains Of Tongues
Important collection of recordings documenting and preserving "fringe" or under-represented folk cultures and voices from a unique region at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. It spans a diverse cross-section of music by Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Chechens and many other ethnicities which fall outside their country's definition of national folk music - Azeris from Georgia, Kurds from Tbilisi, Avars and Lezgis from Azerbaijan, or Molokans in the South Caucasus - giving room for al…
Divisionals
Mouthus are professionals. Not that their music is a full-time job, or is made out of obligation. Rather, Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson approach every recording seriously and diligently, never bending their methods to fit expectations or pander to an audience. Often this devout methodology produces a glorious alchemy; other times it results in workmanlike exercises in sound excavation. But every Mouthus album comes with an implicit seal of quality craftsmanship. You may not find an epiphany in …
Preplexure
John Oswald (Plunderphonics) returns with two fourteen-minute-plus tracks of sliced and diced audio assemblage. Pre and post versions of Plexure out in 1993 on Avant, 'PrePlex' (1982 - 1992) and 'Plexure concentrate' (1992 - 2009). Here some feedbacks: 'Highly recommended. Imagine playing Ôname that tune' at 5 times the speed of your ears' ability to recognize familiar sounds. This composition, made up entirely of pop music samples, deserves five stars because of its meticulous organizatio…
Ill Fares The Land
**Digitalis debut from Koenraad Ecker, one half of Opal Tapes' Lumisokea, highly recommended if you're into Vainio, Joachim Nordwall, The Haxan Cloak. Initial copies on transparent red wax** Belgium's Koenraad Ecker swiftly follows his 'Apophenia' LP as part of the Lumisokea duo for Opal Tapes with a personalised invitation to his shadowy solo zones for Digitalis. Inhabiting space between slow techno and electro-acoustic dimensions, 'Ill Fares The Land' surveys similar soundscapes to Mika…
Mother of Thousands
As with their previous 'proper' full-length Gettin' Gone, new album Drone Trailer finds Matt Valentine and Erika Elder Still hooked up with The Golden Road, and ready to spurt forth blistering passages of galvanized psych-rock at a moment's notice: after a scorching pile-up of vintage guitar muck, opener 'Anyway' draws to an ill-behaved conclusion with some improv guitar and free-noise skronk, all completely undermined by a jazzy line in tremolo rhodes piano tinkering. Despite such flight…
The Dusted Sessions
"Date Palms revolve around the core duo of Gregg Kowalsky (keyboards, electronics) and Marielle Jakobsons (violin, flute, electronics). They employ traditional rock instrumentation to create music informed by Indian classical music, country, minimalism, and spiritual jazz, arriving at a style that is wholly their own. On their third album, The Dusted Sessions, the duo expanded the line-up to include Ben Bracken on electric bass, Michael Elrod on tanpura, and Noah Philips on electric guitar…
Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980
Blackest Ever Black presents the first vinyl edition of Dickon Hinchliffe's original score for 1980 -- the second part of Channel 4 and Revolution Films' Red Riding trilogy, adapted by Tony Grisoni from David Peace's quartet of novels and first screened in 2009. Each film in the Red Riding trilogy, a landmark achievement in British television history, was helmed by a different director and had its own distinctive look, sound and feel. While Julian Jarrold's 1974 and Anand Tucker's 1983 were bo…
Works for String Quartet and Percussion
"The evolution of the string quartet repertory has accelerated during the last half of the twentieth-century and beyond as composers from both the mainstream and the avant-garde have mined its seemingly inexhaustible creative resources. This CD features the virtually unprecedented combination of string quartet and percussion. It contains three works by prominent American experimentalist composers from several generations exploring the ensemble's unique sonic resources in diverse stylistic settin…
United States of America Triptych (I)
Voice by Pete Simonelli, guitar by Miron Grzegorkiewicz, bass Guitar by Michael‚ Biela, turntable by DJ Lenar. Text excerpted from 1939 Southern Recording Trip Fieldnotes by John Lomax and Ruby LomaxAudio quotes excerpted from their recordings.
Evening river
Vinyl edition of this stunningly beautiful album of fragile and haunting Korean folk from Kim Doo Soo that was issued earlier this year on CD by Japan's consistently incredible PSF label. Kim Doo Soo's first major appearance outside of Korea was through the Damon & Naomi curated 'International Sad Hits' compilation featuring 4 tracks from Kim. This was followed with PSF releasing his first new record in 5 year, 2007's superb '10 Days Butterfly'. On 'Evening River', Kim has re-recorded some of hi…