New Arrivals
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees
A flop-eared rodent frolics in a lush field. In from the horizon sweeps a black cloud, kicked up by an army of similar-looking rodents. That's the basic set-up of Varmints, a 24-minute film by Studio AKA animator Marc Craste, based on a book written by Helen Ward and illustrated by Craste. Jóhann Jóhannsson draws the title of his latest album from the book, and this is the music he composed for the film's soundtrack. There's quite a bit of extra material-- the album is a full 1…
Paper of pins
"the coming together of this quartet on "paper of pins" has resulted in mature, yet unforced sounding compositions. the touching number "brown reduse" wins you over with its catchy piano sounds and subtle trumpet which is rounded off by the electronica. it's a small orchestral gem in the jazz style which is still edgy despite its perfection. this is highlighted, for example, by the fact that you can hear the brass player drawing breath on some tracks. certainly, the scottish composer is no perfe…
Movements in Marble and Stone
While these performances occurred on opposite coasts, the source material is closely aligned in both concept and process. These works highlight Gregg's ongoing preoccupations with sound and setting, incorporating the focused blend of acoustic and electronic sources that Kowalsky is already well known for. 'Electronic Music for Square and Sine Waves' documents Gregg Kowalsky's contribution to the 2011 Activating the Medium festival in San Francisco. This commissioned piece continues Kowals…
Split
Inspired split LP that pairs feral European art soundists Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer with the avant garage surrealism of LAFMS stalwarts Smegma. Numbered edition of 177 copies with colour paste-on sleeves. The Smegma side bundles an eerie track from 1975 with two pieces from 2008/2009 that use loops, electronics and waves of extended muzzy tone to confuse time lines completely. The Kommissar side is less about outlaw sound poetry and more plugged into their destructo rock style as documented…
Provocative Electronics
Provocative Electronics is an exploration in analog synthesizers and recording techniques. As in the days of musique concrete and the beginning years of synthesizer development, Ortmann experiments with tones and his own brand of electronic tweakage. Provocative Electronics is not a homage, but yet another document in the ongoing history of Electronic Music. For fans of the 20th century Greek composer Xenakis, minimalist John Cage, or pioneer of musique concrete Pierre Schaeffer, Mort Garson, Mi…
Englabörn
Upon setting out to score the music for the play Englaborn by Havar Sigurjonsson, Johann Johannsson, co-founder of the Icelandic arts organisation Kitchen Motors, came upon a text by the Latin poet Catullus which roughly translates as, I hate and I love. Why do I do it, you might ask? I dont know, but I feel it happening to me, and it's tearing me apart. This poem concisely bridges the emotional opposites which clashed within the play itself. As the play's content was extremely violent and distu…
Vadelma/Hawaii
Surprisingly good free jazz from this Finnish combo. Very organic sound, there's something unique about them. "One of the hottest shows of recent memory was seeing this burning-free ecstatic force in TAMPERE back in 2008. One of those nights where you just feel that you are beyond this planet's laws of nature and in a world you did not know existed. Now the other foot has dropped, and what seemed impossible now can be held on this beautiful LP. Side Vadelma recorded January 26 in Helsinki. Side…
The Decoration Of The Duma Continues
The 1987 debut of one of the great forgotten bands of the post punk, dark-industrial era remastered at Dubplates & Mastering and reissued in a beautiful gatefold edition by Forced Nostalgia - 500 copies only* Pump were Andrew Cox and David Elliott, a pair of likeminded electronic music fiends who met at Brighton uni in '79. After staring a fanzine and a tape label the pair eventually began to record their own material (initially under the moniker MFH) and released several cassette albums …
Millions Now Living Will Never Die
LP version. 2012 repress. "1996 : Tortoise's landmark second album Millions Now Living Will Never Die is released. Featuring the famous 20 minute opener 'Djed' and out of print on vinyl for far too long we are happy to finally offer it again. Pressed on high quality virgin vinyl and including all original artwork - a fully artworked inner sleeve and for the first time a download coupon!"
Off Duty
As if the music of lysergic, lo-fi drugdub one man band Sun Araw wasn't flipped out and damaged enough, on this latest joint, those already tweaked and twisted sounds get even more far out, the vibe WAY druggier and spacier, a 26 minute blast of crumbling wah-guitar laced psychdub comedown in the form of three skull caving soul freeing innerspace excursions."Last Chants" begins with a dense swirling cloud of white noise and damaged effects, shot through with barely there melodies, and loose detu…
Kiri No Oto
Lawrence English's epic masterpiece - finally available on vinyl for the first time. Strictly limited edition - Initial copies come on white vinyl* One of the most memorable and absorbing albums released by the wonderful Touch label in recent years, "Kiri No Oto" was first released by them on CD in 2008 and has spent much of the intervening time lodged in our minds as one of the finer drone/field recording albums to have been made this century. Kiri No Oto (a Japanese phrase meaning 'sound…
Plague Of Fantasies
Brand new solo material from Aidan Baker, one of the most prolific musicians recording at the moment, Aidan creates such a wide array of musical sound its hard to keep track, not only does he perform as part of the fantastic Nadja, as well as in projects such as ARC, and collaborating with other luminaries such as Tim Hecker, he releases a whole host of solo material. This new solo record is really something, pulling together all the genres he works in, fusing heavy drones, with broken drums bea…
Rewolf
Remix albums might be the new live albums, but over the past few years, "sessions" have also come to prominence as a way for artists to reimagine or repurpose their music in a variety of different scenarios. Things like Daytrotter, La Blogotheque, Black Cab Sessions, "Don't Look Down" and other Pitchfork.tv shows, and AOL Sessions, have become the "MTV Unplugged" for the era of inexpensive digital technology, constantly shifting economic imperatives, and small-but-fervent online publ…
Ambianxe
an edition of 250 copies on 180 gram virgin black vinyl. A live LP of incendiary concréte guitar shards. Two live sets from SuperDeluxe Tokyo. Imagine Derek Bailey slamming his guitar into the circuitry of David Tudor and the subsequent brawl. Polite applause please. This is the sound of Caravaggio. Marco works outwards from his home in Melbourne, Australia. Primarily a visual artist he produces artwork through the employment of an open methodology, avoiding practice riddiled with formal …
Low Fiction
Great 2nd full-length collaboration between Lee Counts, Matt Franco (of Air Conditioning, Holy Family Parish), and Jason Crumer. Acoustic and processed power tools on scrap metal. This record is more spare and moody than their first, lush and industrial, elegiac sanders and spareness building up and blasting away from somber to near rapture.
Russian mind
Amazing! Transcribed by the Material Eye Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab. 1, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia. 6 baseless marble pillars not yet completed, covered in white strata against the backdrop of a simple three-dimensional plane with soft edges. 1. Synesthesia outside venue. 2. If you lived here, you'd be home right now. 3. Lopatin designs preset Prismata ascribed to Trujillo, 2003 and goes downstairs for air. 4. He comes from a long line of shovelers. 5. Life …
(Fake) The Facts
After the runaway success of the Akita/Gustafsson/O'Rourke LP One Bird Two Bird (DEMEGO 016LP), Swedish sax legend Mats Gustafsson returns to Editions Mego with another storming collaboration. Now a resident of Vienna, he teamed up with experimental artists dieb13 and Martin Siewert for a live and studio session. (Fake) The Facts is the result. A dense fog of sound comes from all directions, but whereas the general impetus is a full-on attack, the trio finds enough restraint to create a deepe…
Whisper Not / The Wrong Holiday
This latest release on the excellent Forced Nostalgia imprint is by some distance its most illuminating release to date - a split LP that features an astonishing rediscovery from the early 1980's synth-pop era. That album is 'Whisper Not' by Vazz - a duo consisting of Anna Howson & Hugh Small, and is redolent of so much classic, deeply cherished music from around the same period (think Crépuscules, Antena, early Cocteau Twins on the one hand, and The Cure's 'Seventeen Seconds' on the othe…
When California Falls Into the Sea
The product of more than a year's work, finds Caminiti shifting away from the evocation of the land elements and towards the urban- the coarseness of blood on the streets and people living in squalor juxtaposed with beautiful, fleeting moments like sun reflecting off of glass buildings into dingy puddles- to produce a dialogue where guitars float through the air weightlessly, weaving around each other like butterflies and other moments that are more solitary, monolithic excursions into the night…