Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield Sale 95 Items

Packaged in an old school, tip-on sleeve. Includes hi-res digital download.

Legendary debut album by Junko Tange (mystery woman who showed up on the NWW list), originally issued by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1979. Dadaesque recitations and sparse guitar, piano and electronic meanderings combine for a beguiling, hypnotic dreamworld. Officially licensed from the custodians of Yuzuru Agi's Vanity Records archives, this edition has been fully remastered from new transfers of the original analog tapes by Stephan Mathieu.

Los Angeles-based marine eyes (aka Cynthia Bernard) and Melbourne-based Iksre (aka Phoebe Dubar) come together for this new album on Past Inside The Present and it is one that draws on their respective backgrounds as musicians, multi-instrumentalists and sound healers, as well as their shared love of field recordings. The album came about when each heard the other's music and decided to share sounds through an email pen-pal format. The mail chain included notes and pictures and became a geographical lesson and exploration of emotional landscapes. It blends ambient drone with neo-classical, sound healing, dream-pop and gentle lullabies onto something warm, comforting and introspective.

Channeling a love affair with classic '90s hip-hop, an affinity for otherworldly themes and an ear for raw funk, Barclay Crenshaw uses his given birth name to bare his soul and deliver a slowed-down, emotive collection of collaborations and instrumentals. This self-titled debut album is a left-field departure from his better-known alias, Claude VonStroke, but the quality is undeniably the same. The themes of ancient alien abductions and exploration of time and space are discovered and brought to life over ten tracks that sound like a mixture of gold rope chains and new age enlightenment. Modern organic beats mixed with gorgeous melodic moments and underlying grittiness create an experience that is eclectic, expressive and expansive. Coded art furthers the sense of mystery and the unknown, harking back to the past while gazing into the future.

Guests include a wide array of artists, from bass maestro Mr. Carmack to the U.K.’s inspired Lady Chann, Flatbush emcees The Underachievers, and even a Cool Kids reunion from Chuck Inglish & Sir Michael Rocks.

Back in print for the first time since release, and pressed on White In Tan Color In Color Vinyl with White Splatter

Twenty-eight years into her kaleidoscopic discography, Songs for Peacock is the first album singer guitarist / composer Tara Jane O’neil has credited to just her initials: TJO. Recorded at home using primitive electronic instruments in addition to heavily effected electric guitar, bass & voice, Songs for Peacock is a collection of pop covers recalled from TJO’s youth, intended as a “mixtape” for her late brother Brian. Over twelve tracks & thirty-nine minutes, Songs for Peacock abstracts radio hits by the likes of Boy George, Bananarama, Leonard Cohen, Siouxsie and the Banshees & Inxs, distilling earworms into thin wisps of dreamlike atmosphere, or stretching them into languorous psychedelic soundscapes. Songs for Peacock warps our collective musical memory to form a singular & cohesive body of work that defines TJO’s highly personal sonic landscape.

Dream team trio Better Corners – Valentina Magaletti, Sarah Register and Matthew Simms – have completed a staggering new album Continuous Miracles: Vol. 2 for state51 Conspiracy, and where their debut LP joyfully opened the door to a brand new room, this one strides purposefully inside.

Renowned drummer/percussionist Magaletti (Holy Tongue, Vanishing Twin, Moin), avant rock musician and in demand mastering engineer Register (Kim Gordon, Talk Normal) and multi-instrumentalist and modular obsessed Simms (Wire, Memorials) inject an all-too-rare sense of childlike wonder and joy into their own inimitable collage of experimental rock, wonky dream pop, analog ambient, tape experimentation, avant percussion, modular electronics and noise music.

Multi-disciplinary artist Jasper Marsalis, known by his stage name Slauson Malone 1, announces his new album, Excelsior, out October 6th as his debut for iconic label Warp Records. Among the gems within this album, the spotlight shines on his newly-released second single out today "New Joy," a mesmerizing exploration of finding pleasure from submission, complemented by visuals crafted by the talented hand of Parker Corey of By Storm/Injury Reserve fame, and Marsalis himself. The forthcoming album also includes previously-released single "Voyager," which was accompanied by a music video directed by Ryosuke Tanzawa that spoke to the period of aimlessness following the release of his critically acclaimed 2019 full-length A Quiet Farwell, 2016-2018 (Crater Speak), before he moved to Los Angeles.

The word "excelsior" embodies perpetual ascent. Slauson Malone 1 envisions it as a metaphorical sword, one that in someone's possession incessantly grows until it cleaves the Earth in a grand finale. That metaphor becomes his lens to explore all facets of masculinity with a newfound clarity, as he interrogates his own lived experiences through songs and movements across the album inspired by everything from Grammy award-winning composer Wendy Carlos, to the similarities between falling out of love and a nuclear half-life. Excelsior takes the form of a collection of personal essays, with vignettes that intertwine and stand-alone, but ultimately serve the purpose of forming Slauson Malone 1's most personal and enthralling musical work to date.

Both a marketing firm and metaphysical mission, Valley of the Sun synthesized style and spirituality to produce an extensive catalog that at once defines and defies new age music. Founder Dick Sutphen worked with tireless devotion to spread a message he believed could change the world for the better. This 18-track overview of Vots' fertile 1977-1990 period includes music from Upper Astral, Robert Slap & Steve Powell, David Naegele, David Storrs, Steven Cooper, and Gloria Thomas, a 24-page booklet with extensive liner notes, J-card scans, and a hint of Sedona sand. Subliminal hypnosis likely.

Los Angeles Free Music Society (lafms) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, Lafms incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, Lafms self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground musicians. Lafms primarily reached outside Los Angeles via word-of-mouth and the United States Postal Service, foreshadowing the self-publishing and cassette trading networks of post-punk and industrial subcultures. In 1976, Joe Potts solicited recordings from Lafms affiliates and admirers to edit and compile I.D. Art #2, utilizing correspondence art's technique of "assemblings." (The first installment in this series was a magazine, and the third was a coloring book.) Potts received dozens of pieces by members of Le Forte Four, Doo-Dooettes, Smegma and Ace & Duce as well as painters, filmmakers and non-artists with few recording credits to their name, creating a delirious, winking sound-art collage of field recordings, voicemails and improvisations. Participants purchased time on the record and received one copy each of the finished LP, realizing the philosophy contained in Lafms' motto: "The music is free, but you have to pay for the plastic, paper, ink, glue and stamps." This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with insert.

An edit-reissue of this gargantuan double cassette released back in 2014 under the Typhonian Highlife moniker, 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' finds netherworld voyagerSpencer Clark at a particularlybeguiling conjunction of his labyrinthine-esque soundworld. With complete disregard for linear timelines and trajectories, 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' finds both inspiration in the swiss master's vision and the Cenobite iconographypreviously exploredby Clark on Fourth World Magazine's 'Pinhead in Fantasia'. The CD Head Cenobite picture adorning the cover makes the connection more than apparent.

A sprawling, two and half hour excursion on the tape version, here properly edited down to the wax container, the first two volumes of 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' are some of Clark's most mystifying recordings. A baroque odyssey through an hermetic maze of alien voices, warping sound effects, oneiric keyboards and a quasi-orchestral sense of space and dynamics, 'H.R. Giger's Studiolo' feels like an hallucinatory fever dream still unlike everything else, either from before or after. Time doesn't apply here, anyway.

NOTON IS PLEASED TO RELEASE RAY COLLECTOR - A LIMITED EDITION VINYL FEATURING RECORDINGS SOURCED FROM TAPES PRODUCED BY CARSTEN NICOLAI' FOR HIS 2023 SOLO EXHIBITION STRAHLEN/RAGGI AT FONDAZIONE MODENA ARTI VISIVE.
IN FEBRUARY 2022, CARSTEN NICOLAI DISPATCHED TEN PARCELS FROM BERLIN TO VARIOUS DESTINATIONS. EACH PACKAGE CONTAINED A BLANK MAGNETIC TAPE CASSETTE, AN ILFORD DELTA 3200 ISO 1000 BLACK-AND-WHITE FILM, AND A KODAK ISO 800 COLOR NEGATIVE FILM. ALL PARCELS WERE ADDRESSED TO THE SAME RECIPIENT, MR. NEMO, THE UNFORGETTABLE CAPTAIN OF THE SUBMARINE NAUTILUS IN TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. THE IDEA WAS FOR THE RECIPIENTS TO RETURN THE PARCELS TO THE SENDER. EACH PACKAGE HELD MAGNETIC TAPES AND PHOTOSENSITIVE FILMS THAT WOULD BE EXPOSED TO ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES AND RADIATION DURING THEIR JOURNEY. UPON THEIR RETURN TO THE SENDER, THE LATENT IMPRESSIONS WERE DEVELOPED, DIGITIZED, AND THUS MADE BOTH VISIBLE AND AUDIBLE.

Some Songs Of A Dumb World

'The light at sunset is mysteriously pinkish.'

After Trip Trap, TRIP's sub-label Galaxiid releases the debut album by the Species Of Fishes duo. The record, originally released by the Dutch experimental label Korm Plastics in 1994, has influenced two generations of post-Soviet musicians. 'Some Songs of a Dumb World' is like a quest that you can either take up or appreciate as a mosaic of different music styles.

Igor Kolyadny and Vitaly Stern initially worked separately but later shared ideas during home sessions to build their own psychedelic world. They used a large number of cassette samples, including the voices of physicists, paranormal researchers, astronomers, and wildlife TV show hosts, combining them with pulsating rhythms inspired by various electronic music genres. The result, as the duo described it in an Inverted Audio interview (https://inverted-audio.com/feature/species-of-fishes-envelop-the-expanse-for-newtype-rhythms/), is 'a sort of alienated, extraterrestrial, studying view on the sound component of human activity.'

For the very first time, the tracks from the debut album by Species Of Fishes are now available on vinyl. The double LP reissue with the refreshed version of the original artwork includes the original tracks, mixed between 1993 and 1994, but re-edited and remastered by Igor Kolyadny in 2021. Two tracks were released on the lesser-known follow-up 'Songs of a Dumb World Part 2', while "Salmon Hunting/Kaluga-Mars" is being released for the first time.

Keplar releases a vinyl reissue of 2001’s »Curve,« the second album released by Frank Bretschneider on Mille Plateaux under his real name. »Curve« saw him pick up on the underlying concept of 1999’s »Rand,« but gave his explorations of the sonic and stylistic range of electronic music notably more space and time to unfold. Merging compositional minimalism with sonic complexity, the eight tracks display an affinity for the production techniques of dub music, which had already been a major reference point for Bretschneider’s work before. Its subtle grooves, especially in the rhythmically charged pieces towards the end of the album, also nod at the dance music-inspired work of contemporaries such as SND or Vladislav Delay. Produced during a prolific time for Bretschneider, who had previously co-run the Rastermusic label and was at that time still active under his Komet moniker, he considers »Curve« to be a crucial album in his discography. Bretschneider was an important figure in the 1980s Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) scene and released his first solo experiments with electronic music through his own klangFarBe tape label as early as 1985. Throughout the 1990s, he was part of projects such as Produkt and Tol and also released solo albums as Komet on Rastermusic, which he had co-founded in 1995 together with Olaf Bender a.k.a. Byetone. At the turn of the millennium, he gradually started releasing more solo records under his real name. After 1999’s »Rand,« followed »Rausch« on 12k—with whose owner Taylor Deupree he would collaborate for 2002’s »Balance,« reissued in 2020 by Keplar—in the following year and, finally, »Curve.« Produced after he had moved to Berlin, Bretschneider used a Clavia Nord Modular as his primary sound source and the Logic DAW to modulate and synchronise the sounds, adding only drum loops to some tracks in the second half of the album. »Curve« is a record that is hard to pigeonhole and thus an archetypical Bretschneider album: marked by a meticulous attention to detail, infinitely playful, and fully dedicated to pushing the envelope of electronic music. It is no wonder that it left a lasting mark on the international scene for adventurous electronic music.

On this second volume, focus is laid on the boogier side of Japanese sonics, nimbly moving the cursor from jazz to Afro-house, via deep technoid wares and spaced-out funky business. Setting the tone without further ado, Seiji Ono’s sun-streaked chugger ‘Celebrate Your Life’ is the very epitome of a time-proof party anthem; a buoyant and catchy ode to Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage that keeps on giving even after the thousandth listen. A dynamic ride down memory lane, Uyama Hiroto’s Afro-Bossa number ‘Compass’ delivers a suspended moment in time, halfway the soothing ethereality of Brazilian folk and syncopated patterns of African music. Up with the very much sub-Saharan-influenced ‘Pray’, J.A.K.A.M. takes us on a luminous ride across endless dunes of sand and lush oases of melodic abundance and polyrhythmic flair.

Yuu Udagawa turns in the jacking ‘We Float’, a proper NYC-style piece of abstract hip-hop and Chicagoan house laced into one lithe dance-floor churner, whereas Jazztronik summons ancient woodlands spirits on the kalimba-heavy ’Neon Forest’, ushering us into a world of pure soulfulness where ghostly silhouettes float in a haze of shakuhachi flutes and vaporous pads. We all know a classic slab of piano house done the right way is hard to resist, but when Brisa opts for this tried-and-tested route on ’State of Mind’, he nevertheless injects it with the kind of refinement and oomph you simply have to bow down before. The Backwoods remix of Ryoma Takemasa ‘Deepn’’ opens a spacious window that looks out onto a dreamy skyscape where the stripped-back rhythmic grammar of atmospheric techno rubs shoulders with that of electronica’s deep focus.

Not just contributing the aforementioned remix, The Backwoods - alias DJ Kent, steps up with the big-room momentum of ‘Cloud Nine’ - an alt-rock-influenced piece of racing electronics bound for ecstatic after-partying and beachside boogie with your loved one at sunrise. In the hands of Hiroshi Watanabe, 909state ‘RaTaTaTam’ morphs into an entrancingly beautiful mix of slo-burning prog techno and neo-classical orchestration, just as sleek and elegant as it proves deadly in a club context. Graced with similar melodic accoutrements, Satoshi Fumi’s rework of Tomi Chair ‘Remorse’ offers a grandiose and mood-enhancing display of piano-riddled techno bravura, clearly geared up for climactic DJ use. A magmatic finale that lacks neither that stadium-sized oomph, nor Fumi’s hallmark of all-around compositional excellence.

Super rare album now reissued on BBE!

The third and concluding edition of the Transmissions compilation series curated by IOJ Jura Soundsystem. The compilation focuses once again on rarities no longer available on Vinyl and touches upon Reggae & Dub, Ambient House, Downtempo and Leftfield Disco. Mixmaster Morris in his Irresistible Force guise opens the album with the Ambient Electronica of ‘Lotus Position’, a long time favourite that’s been unavailable on Vinyl for nearly 30 years. Full Moon Scientist pick up the Ambient Dub baton with ‘Lunar Base Dub’ segueing into Australia’s Rude Band, featuring Oz radio royalty Doug Mulray on the aptly titled ‘Doug’s Dub’ originally released on Oz Sounds in Australia in 1982, a true Balearic gem recorded long before the genre had been widely discovered. Other highlights include Mary House’s ‘Ambient’, a chuggy slo-mo piano houser originally the last track on a 7 track EP released in 1991 on Italian label Technology, and ‘Do It’, an obscure South African track by Inspiration which covers the music from Sylvester’s ‘I Need Somebody To Love Tonight’ paired with new vocals using the refrain ‘Do It’. Jean-Michel Bertrand gave his blessing to a special Jura Soundsystem version of ‘Dream Reggae’ which features long time collaborator Mike Burn adding lead and rhythm guitar to an extended edit of the song. The album closes with some Ambient Tools which should serve to raise a smile at the end of the series.

Morikawa Seiichirou, vocals, bass Yamagiwa Hideki, electric & classical guitar Takahashi Ikuro, drums & percussion

je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas (I pray that the drop does not fall) is the first international release by Japanese trio Chi To Shizuku. While they have released five albums and a 7” in Japan, their spectral, haunted rock songs haven’t yet reached a much wider audience overseas. With this album, then, a live recording taken at Koenji High, Suginami, Tokyo on 23rd November 2021, the unique, quartz-like character of Chi To Shizuku’s music is writ large, the bleak bliss of their songs carved onto twelve-inch vinyl. Perhaps the best-known member of Chi To Shizuku, at least for audiences with an ear turned to Japanese psychedelia, is drummer Takahashi Ikuro, known for his membership of almost every group worth a damn from that scene – Fushitsusha, Nagisa Ni Te, Ché-SHIZU, Kousokuya, High Rise, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, LSD March, the list goes on. But the core of Chi To Shizuku’s music is the collaboration between vocalist, bassist and lyricist Morikawa Seiichirou, and guitarist and arranger Yamagiwa Hideki. Morikawa is a member of long-running punk/goth group Z.O.A., and has also played with YBO , Zzzoo, and as collaborator with Takeshi and Atsuo of Boris in A/N; he’s also recently been performing with Mitsuru Tabata. Yamagiwa’s history takes in stints with Katsurei and Cock C’ Nell, and he also recently guested with la scene 裸身.

All this contextual information does relatively little, though, to prepare you for the unique vibration of Chi To Shizuku’s lustrous songs. They shimmer in the same half-light, perhaps, as Shizuka and the quieter moments of LSD March, sharing a similar poise and classicism, and there’s a tenderness and wracked poetry to Morikawa’s voice that reminds of the emotional intensities both of traditional Japanese folk, and of British folk music: on “Musuu No Nemuri No Naka De Kumo Wo Tukamu”, the combination of his singing, backed with gorgeously plangent guitar, reminds of no-one so much as it does The Pentangle or Spriguns Of Tolgus. Chi To Shizuku’s love for the ballad as form gifts their music an archaic, sometimes arcane resonance, and from what you can hear on this album, it’s clear they’re in love with graceful melancholy.

But this is not a folk album, by any means; it just shivers with the same eternal spirit. There are also hints of prog rock, and you can catch some passages of scratchy, distended free rock, on the extended spirit invocation of “Nanhito Hanhito”. je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas is an extraordinary album, a melancholy surprise, that reminds dedicated listeners of the seemingly bottomless well of great music to be found via the Japanese underground in its many forms. Perhaps Michel Henritzi says it best, though, in his liner notes, when he writes, “Chi To Shizuku’s music reminds us that our life is a dream that lasts only a season, and that oblivion will follow.”

Recorded at Koenji High Suginami, Tokyo, 23 November 2021 Mix & Mastering: Taku Unami, photography : Noriko Akiyama Liner notes by Jon Dale Printed by Alan Sherry

First time on Vinyl, presented in Gatefold Sleeve on Double LP. Originally released in 2015 and carefully forged between 2011 and 2014, "De Aeris In Sublunaria Influxu" showcases a magically crafted alchemical wedding between these two titans of drone ambient. The 2LP features an exclusive bonus track. Troum navigates through cavernous, subterranean spaces where cyclical sounds reverberate towards impressive crescendos of icy noise, luminous drones and dramatic, guitar-driven ghostly melodies. Their truly unique soundscapes shine in a perfect symbiotic movement with the Swedish dark ambient maestro Peter Andersson. Engulfed in a hauntingly beautiful kaleidoscope of grey-ish melancholia, raison d’être comfortably walks deeply into Troum’s vast territory, delivering his very own trademark of eerie tones, ominous sacral ambience and crystal clear constructions. Airy lush enigmatic atmospheres live together with dark breathing, reverberant transformative drones. Rich and gorgeously layered. All sounds assembled and recorded by raison d'être (Peter Andersson) and Troum (Stefan Knappe, Martin Gitschel) between 2011-2014. All sounds processed, manipulated and structured by Peter Andersson 2011-2014. K-14 level mastering by Peter Andersson 2014. Artwork by Ritxi Ostáriz.

Sleepyard from Stavanger (Norway) is back with their sixth full length album. Brothers Oliver and Svein Kersbergen conjure up a new mix of drones and soundscapes with beautiful melodies.

The tracks were composed during the winter months in Helsinki, Finland in 2019-2021. Railo (finnish for a crack in the ice or crevasse) can be seen as on ode to winter, the richness of the seasons and different weather conditions which have been an inspiration to Karjalainens work. The arc of the album follows seasons from autumn to spring, starting from cold autumn winds (Viima) and ending to the melting of the ice (Sula). Different winter phenomena are explored on the way, including Routa (finnish for ground frost), Kuura (rime) and Kelirikko (a term known especially in the archipelago meaning a time at the end of winter when the frozen sea does not support transportation anymore but boat traffic is neither possible). Yet, the album is being suffused with a sadness stemming from the threatening permanent changes in the diversity and balance of nature trough the climate change caused by us. Hannu Karjalainen is an internationally acclaimed electronic musician, video artist and photographer based in Helsinki, Finland. His albums have been released on international record labels since 2007, lately on the renowned German label Karaoke Kalk. Domestically Karjalainen is known as the recipient of Young Artist of the Year (in 2009), one of Finlands biggest art awards. His video art works and photographs have been exhibited in New York, Berlin, Zürich, Paris and Helsinki, among other places.

“4 Tones to facilitate travel through time.” So begins the listeners’ journey into what has become one of the most treasured and revered pieces of Coil history ever released.

Each of the four pieces on Time Machines is named after the chemical compound of the hallucinogenic drug that they were composed for, and the album was meticulously crafted to enable what John Balance referred to as "temporal slips" in time and space, allowing both the artist and audience to figuratively "dissolve time".

Inspired by long form ceremonial music of Tibet and other religions, where the intent is to lose oneself in the music – to meditate or achieve a trance state – Time Machines became Drew McDowall, John Balance, and Peter Christopherson’s “electronic punk-primitive” answer to this tribal concept.

Starting as a rough demo tape recorded solely by Coil member Drew McDowall, Time Machines started to take full form when McDowall enthusiastically delivered these demo recordings to Balance and Christopherson as sketches for a new Coil project with the primary goal of shifting Coil’s sound further into a more conceptually abstract direction. Largely recorded in 1997 using single takes with minimal post production, these four drones contain every intended fluctuation and tone, along with every glitch of the original – “Artifacts generated by your listening environment are an intrinsic part of the experience.”

The world is already fallen and the temples are all new again.

Originally released on limited 10" double-pack in 2017, 'Luxor Necropolitics' was once again produced by Joshua Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv, and includes a super rare remix from Female of Sandwell District fame.

House of Mythology proudly presents the official release of Ulver’s monumental Grieghallen concert from the 2018 Bergen International Festival.

Grieghallen 20180528 documents the pinnacle of Ulver’s 2017–2018 touring cycle, following the release of their landmark album The Assassination of Julius Caesar. A massive explosion of sound and light went off in Bergen that night, leaving the baffled audience floating somewhere between pleasure and fear.

Professionally multitracked by the Bright AS stage tech team, Kristoffer Rygg and Anders Møller were asked to mix the tracks for the 2020 “streaming edition” of the same festival. After having circulated as a YouTube bootleg, it is now being made official partly due to popular demand, and partly because we think of it as a magnificent companion piece to the studio version of Caesar – showing Ulver at the height of their live game.

»Born Again In The Voltage« (released in 2018), is an astonishing collection of electro-acoustic pieces for Buchla 200 system, cello, and voice composed and produced by Caterina Barbieri at Elektronmusikstudion (se) between 2014 and 2015. Cello by Antonello Manzo. Images by Giovanni Brunetto; Photography by Angelo Jaroszuk Bogasz; Layout by Important Records. Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.

»Renoir Of The Toys« is a deep dive into the world of Youri Kun, the nom de plume of Japanese guitarist, singer and songwriter Hiroshi Nar. It follows a similar compilation, »Unheld Ball«, released in 2022 on Japanese label Inundow; like that album, »Renoir Of The Toys« draws from the rich catalogue of outsider psych-garage and rock recorded by Youri Kun over the past two decades. Deeply wired into the history of Japanese underground music, Nar was a founding member of legendary ‘70s outfit Datetenryu, and a member of both Brain Police (Zuno Keisatsu) and Les Ralllizes Dénudés (Hadaka No Rallizes).

Unprecedented submolecular laser class 4 electro session, recorded in Physics Dept, Freie Univeristät Berlin, in 2005. The modern photon concept was originated by the work of Albert Einstein at the beginning of XX century, when he elaborated the relativity theory, in 1905. To celebrate the centenary (2005) of that singular event, the AEM - "Casa dell'energia" of Milan - organized the presentation of a dedicated installation and a live performance by the artistic collective Alterazioni Video. To develop this photonic work, they went to the physics laboratory of the Freie Universität in Berlin. Together with Giovanni De Donà, then researcher Markus Gühr (now director at Potsdam University after his experience at Stanford) carried out his research using a class 4 laser. There are various types of lasers and class 4 is one of the most powerful. Certainly not a free sale item. The class 4 is able not only to pierce the retina, but also to break the bond that holds the oxygen molecules together, thus generating flashes of light and powerful micro-couplings with interesting rhythmic flaps. The session involved a certain risk, the atmosphere was naturally electrified, and under the supervision of Markus it was possible to trigger the laser through a drum machine in order to control these bursts and use them as rhythmic units. Improvising a unique session of electro to all effects properly sub molecular, minimal electronic sounds interacted with the rhythms of the matter stimulated by the laser while producing light phenomena. The Waterlaser track in particular was created by concentrating the laser focus on a water surface, and documents the background sound given by the splitting of the molecules of the liquid. This experimentation on the border of art and science goes beyond the reductionism given by the programmed structures of the explosions, and highlights the obscure aspect of indeterminacy revealed by uncontrollable explosions, out of the rhythmic grid and out of every possible control. This took place because of a physical principle that we could touch with our hands, which brought science closer to the aesthetics of magical realism, as we could experience with our eyes and ears: Gdd- Markus, what's going on? There are explosions that I didn't program, that create these syncopated rhythms, as if someone was improvising on the sequence... And it's not me...- MG- It's ... (sneering) a matter of “sympathy”, “vibratory sympathy”. Sometimes, some molecules follows the ones that blows, with no particular apparent reason...- This true Berliner experimental session was recorded with room microphones, and the balance was all in all positive: no one injured, a professional digital camera burned for daring to linger too long in framing the focus of the explosion of molecules. and a recording that is now presented in this record 15 years later. The B side features Chris Mitchell with Bass influenced kinematic interpretation using parts from the session. The recording of the next Milanese public session was lost in the black hole of the RAI archives.

Superb album revisiting the traditional and early psychedelic Arabic music, all through distorted paths and instruments, remashed and deconstructed sounds, recreating patterns with diverse instruments to give a different perspective of the sound itself.

Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) takes us beneath all the bedazzled glam stardom as Yves journeys through the limbo of life and love, escaping toxicity to get higher and holier. From the raw, unapologetic drawl of 'God Is a Circle' comes a mercurially shifting tracklist where Yves picks apart their psyche, discerning lovers and enemies both spiritually devoted to. 'Lovely Sewer' captures the incendiary spark of love, heart racing to the red flags under sunset coloured new wave guitars; a total flipside to the later sultry sighs and strong shuffles of 'Echolalia', where heat rises from the spiralling synths and funky dance grooves.

As Yves explores the pulchritude of purgatory, they move through electrifying rock strains. The technicolour acoustic guitars of 'Meteora Blues' evolve into a high voltage headbanger as they plead, "I'll always pray to an empty sky," sauntering into a falsetto-powered, scathing examination of the popstar on 'Parody' and the cold wave-meets-emo thrashes of 'In Spite of War'. 'Purified By the Fire' is a plunderphonic gauntlet of alchemical transmutation, with shredded loops and cataclysmic beats leading up to the anthemic and heavenly last hurrah of 'Ebony Eye', where Yves Tumor finds glory and salvation, sitting on the throne as the righteous leader of rock music’s contemporary revolution.

The world needed a new rockstar, and Yves Tumor has the answer. From the chameleonic kaleidoscope Safe In The Hands Of Love, to the visceral fusions of Heaven To A Tortured Mind, and the theatrical power jams of The Asymptotical World, Yves Tumor has proved their prowess in any sound their punk spirit inhabits. Hot Between Worlds distills all of this into a masterclass of pop songwriting and rock captivation, with songs that carry a stadium shaking energy having been teased and refined with their band live across the globe.

Opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes and broken FX pedals by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris, created during and after two contrasting residencies in the Azores, Portugal and Murmansk, Russia and combined with pieces made at home in Astoria, Oregon. The collection’s unique dual design functions as a forked path, existing independently of one another but with roots intertwined. She cites her score for HYPNOSIS DISPLAY as a compositional reference point, inspired by “interior mnemonic device landscapes” and “curiosity around a sadness.”

In pacing, palette and poignancy, these sides rank among Harris’ most stark, primordial work: fragile, feverish, ominous and otherworldly. She describes this music as “a requiem, a ritual, to unlock and release feelings,” a sense of shadowy masses, moving backwards, in spirals, massive doorways opening chaotic forces, “a toxic concentrated reduction of something much darker bubbling beneath.” Her artistry for mapping richly detailed inner worlds is nowhere more expressive and enigmatic, vibrations and voices gliding dimly out of the void, “wraithlike and ethereal, their existence in the mist questionable.”

Initially released in a private edition that vanished almost as quickly as it was announced, After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house is presented here in a beautiful second edition on Superior Viaduct’s imprint W.25th.

The Psychedelic Side of Kosmische Musik Fellow humans, Bureau B invite you on an expedition to Silberland, a singular span of spacetime created by Germany's sonic futurists of the seventies and eighties. Embracing the early electronics and tape experiments of the sixties' avant-garde, these artists aimed to boldly go, eschewing small steps for giant leaps into a nebulous and novel sound.

Simultaneous double release of the percussionist / composer Steve Shehan's legendary albums!! The world's first LP reissue of his 1990 CD album "Arrows" from First on Vinyl, and his 1995 CD album "Indigo Dreams" from Silent River Runs Deep.

Limited edition LP run of 200 on neon pink Colored Vinyl in full colour jackets with OBI strip and shrink wrapped.

A cult was built around this truly ominous original tape by Vatican Shadow. With slowed down mega-apocalyptic drone drum contemplations. Despite being created over a decade ago for limited double cassette and then compiled on ‘it stands to conceal’ this is long form esoteric cold industrial perfectly suitable for our accelerating global amnesia.

Artists Kyoko Takenaka + Tomoki Sanders team with In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi & Pure Person Press to release their breathtaking debut record as Planet Q.

Gatefold Single LP w/ OBI & Insert

To explore and absorb Planet Q, the new record by artists Kyoko Takenaka + Tomoki Sanders, is to become untethered from structural expectations, to reside in a realm where genre vanishes and a profound musical space remains, where the absence of gravity causes curious things to occur.

It’s a spot where handclaps may not move in time, where sonic gurgles of unknown origin offer texture, where a deep, hooky rhythm can propel a groove into the stratosphere.

At various times the tracks move like Dilla pieces, at others like Terry Riley explorations, like Flying Lotus or Milford Graves or Alice Coltrane meditations. But every time you think you’ve got the sound figured out, it hits from another angle. Though a brief missive at 33 minutes, you exit Planet Q as if leaving an utterly alien spot.

Setting: In 2021, during the covid lockdown in America, Takenaka and Sanders were both living in Tokyo without any gigs or work to be found back home. They met at a mutual friend’s cafe in the Higashi-Koenji neighborhood, and the connection was immediate. “The chances of us meeting not only someone else of the diaspora when the borders are closed, but also queer and non-binary, and also a musician? Pretty slim, and pretty fateful,” Takenaka says.

In early 2022, the Omicron variant prompted a new round of isolation. Returning to New York, they united with kindred musicians by going to private jam sessions, but at the time those evenings didn't tap the magic they were seeking. They decided to quarantine and create together. Takenaka was living alone at the time so they invited Sanders to crash there. Says Takenaka, “We made rice, ate natto, meditated and made music for seven days straight.”

That they would create something masterful does seem somehow predestined. Sanders’ late father is the brilliant composer and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, their mother a life-long music fanatic who nurtured the same. The younger Sanders, who grew up in New York and Tokyo, has been playing music – drums, saxophone, clarinet, piano – and absorbing profound sound since they had baby teeth. Takenaka is a first-generation Nikkei Japanese American actor, butoh dancer and filmmaker who also grew up with music; their father was a jazz pianist, and by age 7 they were already singing at jam sessions in Boston. Planet Q is Takenaka and Sanders’ debut musical collaboration.

That week together in isolation was pretty ritualized. Their aim, Takenaka says, was to create “a really beautiful, secluded safe space for ourselves as qtpoc folx – a planet where we both belong – and to make music as we created the space. Basking in it. Being inside it.”

They quickly fell into a daily routine that commenced with an improvised spoken meditation, tidbits of which made it onto the record. The layout of Takenaka’s apartment – an open kitchen looking out on the living room – afforded them the chance to mix rituals. They prepped meals and sampled parts of the process. Cooking rice, making curry, eating natto – the sounds simmer throughout Planet Q. Dancing and calligraphy also informed the compositions. Takenaka calls it “embodying the process, the textures.”

Tomoki says, “Before Hip hop, in my dad’s age, the saxophone was where the rapper, or the electric guitar spotlighted. It was only $500 to buy a saxophone in the 50’s...now its anywhere from $3000-$10,000. However, we fortunately are in a current time to have a whole studio literally in our laptops – and you can get a $50 midi device from a music store or online. Time of technology has advanced the music, the sound, the production – I’m challenged to reimagine things in ways never been thought before.”

Though each piece has distinct traits, Planet Q feels more like a suite of tracks, a gathering of waveforms that, despite their differences, when woven together create an utterly striking piece. The intention-setting opening piece was born through their improvised morning meditations. Tomoki uses bells their father gifted them.

“‘My Sweet, My Tender, My Loving, Home’ is dedicated to my dad and his metaphysical and galactic sounds, that is grounding,” Tomoki says. “Every intention I put into the style of music or energy comes from him and the ancestors, or god, ‘subconsciously’ – being a continuation of his DNA but in a completely different generation and time; me matching his point of view in spirituality and raising a level of self-consciousness.”

Borders blur. Rhythms lope and gallop. “竹” is a beat-driven rush featuring Takenaka on guitar. When Sanders grabs their tenor saxophone for “Grow,” the result vibes like a funky film-noir soundtrack, with Takenaka reciting the title.

Their tools: bells, electric guitar, piano, shakers, saxophone, African thumb piano, flute, keyboard, drum programming and voice. Most importantly, Planet Q is the sound of two devoted artists committing in full to exploring the mystic, hellbent on mastering the ways that two mortals can, with focus, desire and ancestral guidance, unite in music to create something that transcends the here-and-now.

Nakid presents the first album in years from Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric) and Tobias Freund’s cult Non Standard Institute. Delving deep into the aether with a double LP - almost an hour and a half in length - featuring ruined, vaporous and engrossing ambient variations on a theme.

Planing axes between iridescent new age ambient, sublime folk and avant-classical, to miasmic drone and plangent shoegaze; ‘A Day or Two’ charts the Non Standard Institute’s first actions in 6 years and serves as a compelling reminder of their intuitive work in abundance. Expanding and contracting their sound across 18 parts, they arc from heaving, oddly-tuned drones to smoggy, surreal soundscapes, bringing a wealth of fine-tuned instincts to the table. With Max Loderbauer’s 35+ years as Berlin ambient pioneer with Sun Electric, jams with Villalobos, and roles in Vladislav Delay Quintet and the Moritz von Oswald Trio, he’s matched by Freund’s 40 years of deep engineering expertise embedded in the experimental industrial and techno trenches.

The melancholy, Satie-laced piano meditations that grounded 2018's '5863' are gone, and the human touch that's been present since their very first collaborations is placed under the microscope, enhanced by their use of the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, a gestural synth that was developed to open up new modes of playing. Loderbauer's experience with the piano helps him make the most of the instrument's touch-sensitive 3D surface, while Freund uses two multi-channel loopers, piping the sounds through his arsenal of pedals.

The 18 tracks are billed as "unplanned atmospheres" that arc from sombre, drone-heavy material to humid, tape-saturated imaginary-island jams such as 'Listening To Cells' and 'Are You One Of Them'. On the latter, the duo work patiently, letting dusted string plucks tumble across each other while warbling pads hum below, bending like flutes. On 'Unlikely Events', anxious didgeridoo-like wails are ruptured by environmental rattles, before ominous voices lead us into a pocket of industrialised resonance. In time, the skies open up and the sounds morph into pastoral song, the drone blurring into hopeful pads almost as lucid and eloquent as AFX's 'saw Vol. II', with sonorous synths that float over formless strings. Reflective, cinematic arrangements for flute and silvery ambient give way to diffusions of denser, resonant polychromatics and pucker up in outernational, alien ambient impulses recalling Connor Camburn jamming with dirashe folk pipes.

"jataka" is an ambient to experimental synthesizer masterpiece album released in 1978 by Osamu Shoji, known as a composer, arranger, and synthesizer player. Contains a total of 8 songs, including "pyramid Ion" where cosmic synth shines. I think many people have been looking for this title, as the used market price has soared and there are many WANTs from overseas!

(2xLP, printed innersleeves, sticker sheet) nit is the genius underdog of the current French chanson scene. After playing along with Sébastien Tellier or Juliette Armanet (a huge success in France), after remixing Phoenix, Myd, Dita Von Teese, Cola Boyy, Tony Allen or Jane Birkin, here he comes with his debut album. The balearic sound is always a big nit influence, feel good electronics & lush acoustic chords.

Spotted by French label Record Makers (Sébastien Tellier, Kavinsky, AIR, Cola Boyy) with his 2017 “Dessous de plage” first EP, nit has since grown from funky DIY library music to a lush and complex groovy sound. The magic of this debut album “Big Bang Puzzle” is a keen sense of composition and an innate affinity for 90’s European electronica.

It’s a playful album, the work of an artist at the peak of his craft, determined to twist styles and references (Daft Punk, Ennio Morricone, Robert Miles, Vangelis...) in order to give them a new form.

“Big Bang Puzzle” is a tangle of psychedelic and cartoon-esque pieces, an abstract modernist painting of sounds inspired by vintage pop music. The cover, created by Swiss artist Flora Mottini, offers a first glimpse of his brand new universe.

But it’s also by collaborating with French iconic design studio H5 that nit suddenly enters the French Touch genealogy. nit takes the shape of an n that grows legs and arms to become a cheeky cartoon character traveling through a real space-time continuum. Parisian H5 studio has been involved since the end of the ‘90s in the design of strong visual concepts for French Touch’s elite (Etienne de Crécy, AIR, Mirwais). French music at its best from which nit is a direct descendant. And one who expands and opens even further: pop, italo-disco, trip-hop impulses, Morriconian cavalcades, lo-fi aesthetics, Caribbean music. Producer and mixer Lucien Krampf (Oklou, Ascendant Vierge, Casual Gabberz, Crystallmess) was the person in charge of mixing this ambitious record.

nit is both a question and an answer, and a musical enigma that pushes us to explore the far reaches of our imagination…

With about a million subscribers and millions upon millions of views, TheRealSullyG is the undisputed King of Otamatones. His lovingly-produced otamatone covers of pop-culture standards, paired with quirky and imaginative videos starring the adorable Japanese synthesizers, have proven to be a recipe for viral success. Covering roughly his first year of otamatone content, Otama-Tunes, Vol. 1 dazzles the ears and delights the senses with wahsome covers of Queen, Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, Dragonforce and more! Remastered by Angel Marcloid, TheRealSullyG’s debut on physical media is presented on two different deluxe gatefold vinyl variants as well as CD and cassette.

Electronic music pioneer Lustmord released an album titled [other] in 2008, to date the only Lustmord album with guitars on it, performed by Adam Jones (tool), King Buzzo (melvins) and Aaron Turner (isis). The albums The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond, both released in 2009, areextensions of the ideas explored in [other] and are taken from the same recording sessions, but with the guitars removed and the essence of [other] distilled and reduced.[other] was a journey with friends, whileThe Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond take the concept and listener further, deeper, in-between and beyond. While is some ways [other] is as close to a "rock" album as Lustmord will ever make, The Dark Places of the Earth and Beyond are pure Lustmord, a sound that many others imitate but can never equal. Lustmord is the artistic moniker of Brian Williams. Born in North Wales, he started his musical career in 1980 and soon became a pioneer in the early industrial music scene in the UK. He was a former member of SPK during arguably their most crucial era, and went on to work with Throbbing Gristle members Chris & Cosey as well as appearing on early albums by Current 93, Nurse With Wound and others. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1993, Williams worked on dozens of motion picture soundtracks including The Crow, Underworld and Paul Schrader's First Reformed. Additionally he created several video game soundtracks, television scores and solo albums, as well as collaborating with artists as varied as THE Melvins, Clock DVA, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Paul Haslinger (tangerine Dream), Puscifer, Wes Borland and more, including Grammy Award-winners Tool on their much acclaimed effort Fear Inoculum. To this day, Lustmord is actively recording and releasing music, his latest release being the collaborative album Alter with Karin Park of A°rabrot, and he is considered to be the founding father of the dark ambient music genre.

Simultaneous double release of the percussionist / composer Steve Shehan's legendary albums!! The world's first LP reissue of his 1990 CD album "Arrows" from First on Vinyl, and his 1995 CD album "Indigo Dreams" from Silent River Runs Deep.

2017 debut album from Manila, PH future funk producer システム Fairy previously released on cassette and long sold out until now! Enjoy this long sought after future funk fave with refreshed artwork and on wax for the first time!

Acclaimed NYC experimental musician Lea Bertucci explores dissonance, drone and dynamics with two new longform compositions for strings, electronics, harp and percussion on Of Shadow and Substance. “More so than any of my other music, I don’t feel that these works belong to me,” Bertucci writes. “There is something about them that is beyond myself as an individual and provides, if anything, a brief glimpse into what it is to be human in what feels like these waning days of the Anthropocene.” Working with instrumentation in the ancient “just intonation” tuning structure (in which notes are spaced exclusively at whole-number ratios of frequencies) and a textural approach to composition, even commonly-heard timbres such as cello, harp and double bass in Of Shadow and Substance are afforded a sense of deep, ancestral knowing. The record opens with “Vapours”, whose contemplative, semi-improvisational, interflowing lines of acoustic instrumentation swell and expand like the passage of time, as if revealing an ancient, eternal memory, old as humanity itself. Its spacious, mutable open strings and droning harmonies do not favour a soloist or even any single melody, but instead blur and coalesce into one entity, drifting from consonance to discordance in harmonic clusters. A dizzying middle section gives rise to a sense of panic, pulling the strands of languid, drifting vapours into a volatile tumult before resettling into a misty, atmospheric trance-state. Bertucci writes: “A “vapor” is a molecule that exists on the verge between a liquid, gaseous or solid state, and the archaic term “vapours” was a pseudo-scientific term to diagnose types of hysteria in women.” The piece was commissioned and performed by Italy’s Quartetto Maurice, who were prompted to visualize vapours in air and to meditate on hysteric fits as they play, while Bertucci controls the sonic space with subtle processing and spatial mixing. The latter half of the album—just as moving and evocative—comprises the composition “Of Shadow and Substance” for double bass, cello, harp, percussion and electronics commissioned by the Philadelphia creative foundation ARS Nova Workshop and performed by Henry Fraser, Lester St. Louis, Lucia Stravros and Matt Evans. “This piece measures the accumulation of events over glacial periods of time as a metaphor for social and environmental shifts,” Bertucci tells us. “It is a meditation on time travel, asking the listener to consider the way events from the past propel themselves into the future.” Its construction reflects the strange concertina of time we find in recorded history, suspended densely in the moveable center of an empty space. Using experimental mixing techniques, Bertucci loops and layers fragments of the performance in real-time, resulting in a diffuse, swirling, self-referential mass of experience, both familiar and metamorphic.

An’archives presents the latest album by Japanese free saxophonist and vocalist Harutaka Mochizuki, Doppelgänger ga boku wo. Since the early 2000s, Harutaka has quietly, yet steadily, released a string of solo and collaborative releases that have allowed multiple perspectives on one of the most singular voices in modern music. In collaboration, he seems to prefer the duo format, and digging through his discography, you’ll find releases where he pairs with Tomoyuki Aoki (of Up-Tight), Michel Henritzi, and Hideaki Kondo. But Harutaka’s solo performances, with their lyricism and physicality, are where the magic truly happens.

If earlier albums, like Solo Document 2004 (Bishop, 2005) and Pas (no label, 2014), were raw documentations of solo alto saxophone performances, in recent years, Harutaka’s solo albums have become more complex, more mystifying. Most significantly, they’ve become more personal; there are few musicians extant whose albums feel quite so much like diaristic interventions, and Harutaka’s music now is deeply moving in its intimacy. Developing that thread of revelation, Doppelgänger ga boku wo offers a still richer exploration of many facets of Harutaka’s artistry.

The two double-tracked alto saxophone performances here feel consummate, with Harutaka shadowing himself, exploring the possibilities of the multiple self: Doppelgänger is me, indeed. The playing here is rich with affect, but still exploratory, voiced with rigour and intent. Two short pieces for keyboard and voice (about Giacometti and Genêt, respectively) are fragile miniatures, with clusters of chords, and passing phrases, wrapping around Harutaka’s untutored but lovely singing.

The ‘karaoke’ performance that closes the album, of “Woman ‘W no higeki’ yori”, speaks to the iterative aspects of Harutaka’s music. A cover of the Hiroki Yakushimaru song, the theme to Shinichirō Sawai’s 1984 film W’s Tragedy, he’s returned to this song several times, and here, his delivery perfectly captures the spirit of what Michel Henritzi, in his typically beautiful liner notes, evocatively details as “one of those sad love songs that accompany lonely sake drinkers in smoky night bars, sharing their spleen.”

Gorgeous, human, heartrending - Doppelgänger ga boku wo is Harutaka Mochizuki in element and in spirit.

Kata No Wadachi is the latest album by Banetoriko, the solo noise project of Tamaki Ueda. Her first release both on An’archives and on vinyl, it follows several albums for the Neurec imprint – 2017’s Beside the Sluice and 2022’s Yorioto Hogiokuri – and several other cassettes and CD-Rs. With Kata No Wadachi, the Banetoriko world, inspired by the Yokai (“strange apparitions” – supernatural figures, ghosts, spirits) of Japanese folklore, is at its most resonant yet.

Recorded across 2022 and 2023, the three tracks on Kata No Wadachi have Ueda performing in a particularly elevated manner. Her sound is highly tactile and grittily sensuous, the better to capture the ritualistic repetitions, and hypnotic methodologies, core to Banetoriko. The scrape and scratch of Ueda’s self-made metal instrument, the Banetek, gives these improvisations a unique throb, even as their mood, of introverted focus and elaboration of minutiae, gestures towards broader histories of noise and abstract art. Kata No Wadachi evokes, to some degree, the urban ritual noise of the likes of The New Blockaders, Organum, or Ferial Confine; elsewhere, the abraded, rough-housing textures bring to mind the eighties tape works of Hands To and John Hudak.

Ueda embraces the dream evocation that’s possible when loops of blurred texture collide with the gnaw and groan of energised metal, while mantric, dissociated vocals, and the oppressive weight of deep breath, gather around these compositions like a ghost’s shroud. While she’s been making noise for some time, since the nineties, Banetoriko was formalised as a project in 2011, while Ueda lived in Los Angeles. Relocating to Osaka in 2021, she’s carved out an utterly unique space for herself in Japanese noise, and her music contains an absolutely elemental vibration. Framed beautifully with poetic liner notes by Aurélien Rossanino, Kata No Wadachi is an oppressive, yet quixotically blissful trip.

Tiny piece broken off the edge, not affecting playing. Vinyl is Close to VG.

VentureX is an American electronic music producer based out of Chicago, Illinois who creates music that can be described as french house & nudisco. Experimenting with Hip-hop and other genres as times.

For their fifth collaboration Marc Barreca and Kerry Leimer set aside their more abstract creative approaches to composition in favor of basing the music of Arrhythmian on beats. Using rhythm as texture, the tracks gravitate to concussive and bass voices, high bpm rates, and constantly evolving timbres shaped by granular synthesis, sampling, heavy processing, audio manipulation, rich distortion, with the maximum dynamic range vinyl can offer.

“We’re always thinking about sound quality, about what’s possible in a recording for vinyl demands a very specific approach. Pitch, dynamics, layering, density all play a more significant role in analog recording and reproduction,” says Leimer, as Barreca continues, “Let’s just say it’s not music you can dance to...”

Arrhythmian is released as a double disc vinyl set, produced to safely allow the grooves their maximum possible excursion while giving one’s stylus a rewarding and demanding workout.

Marc Barreca and Kerry Leimer have worked on a nearly parallel musical course for more than forty years. Nearly parallel because their musical paths do occasionally cross. First in 1980 with “Four Pages From An Unfinished Novel” on K. Leimer’s first solo album Closed System Potentials. Again during the live performance of Music For Land And Water and for the massive loop piece “Heart Of Stillness” from The Neo-Realist (At Risk) by the virtual group Savant.

K. Leimer founded Palace Of Lights in 1979 and has been actively producing music since the mid 1970s. Marc Barreca has created and performed electronic music since the mid-1970s. His 1980 vinyl album, Twilight, was among the first releases for Palace of Lights Records. Their work is part of the Collection of the British Library. With Steve Peters, Leimer and Barreca form the collaborative trio Three Point Circle.

The Lower Lights is well known as one of the most emotionally potent ambient records of recent years. It is a collection of 10 tunes from a busy period in which 36 undertook a year-long 'Audio Diary' project. The sounds are immediate and direct, demanding of your full focus and a mix of dark and urgent, cyberpunk-inspired and emotionally charged ambient sounds that bring all new thinking to the genre. Nice work.

What the artist may consider the most formative years for the project and what clubbers may have heard in numerous live sets with the ‘encryption nets’ classic dub track. Despite being created over a decade ago for limited double cassette and then compiled on ‘it stands to conceal’ this is widescreen esoteric cold industrial perfectly suitable for our collapsing world.

each album always starts with a feeling
that i try to shape into sound
the feeling was landing
( after my last album utopia which was all island in the clouds element air and no bass )
on the earth and digging my feet into the ground
it was also woven into how i experienced the "now"
this time around 7 billion of us did it together
nesting in our homes quarantining
being long enough in one place that we shot down roots
my new album "fossora" is about that
it is a word i made up
it is the feminine of fossore ( digger, delver, ditcher )
so in short it means "she who digs" ( into the ground )
so sonically it is about bass , heavy bottom-end ,
we have 6 bass clarinets and punchy sub
i would like to especially thank bergur þórisson and heba kadry
and side project , el guincho , hamrahlíð choir , soraya nayyar , clarinet sextet murmuri , siggi string quartet ensemble , emilie nicolas , serpentwithfeet
viibra and last but not least : sindri and dóa .
visuals were made by viðar logi , james merry , m/m , nick knight , andy huang , edda , isshehungry , tomi , sayaka , sunna , sara and heimir
and my ever so loyal and magnificent team : derek , rosamary , catherine , chiara , hilma and móa

Vinyl close to NM

THE RECORD INCLUDES A 12-PAGE BOOKLET WITH NOTES ABOUT THE ALBUM

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first vinyl reissue of David Rosenboom’s unique Future Travel, originally released on the short-lived Detroit label Street Records in 1981 and here presented in an expanded edition with an additional LP of wild, previously unheard live and studio material from the same period.

Future Travel emerged from the confluence of two important streams in Rosenboom’s work at this time. First, his exploration of ‘propositional music’, defined as ‘complete cognitive models of music’ that start from the radical question, ‘What is music?’ In this case, the music belongs to the universe of Rosenboom’s In the Beginning (1978-1981), in which proportional relationships determine the material available to the composer in all musical parameters (harmonic relationships, melodic shapes, rhythmic subdivisions, dynamics, and so on). Second, the work documents a key moment in Rosenboom’s long collaboration with synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. Having played a role in developing concepts for some of the modules of the Buchla 300 Series Electric Music Box (an innovative analogue modular system controlled by micro-processors), Rosenboom went on to write the software for Buchla’s hybrid analogue-digital keyboard synthesiser, the Touché, the instrument heard most prominently here.

In a way that no purely analogue synthesizer could, the 300 Series and Touché allowed Rosenboom to work with the In the Beginning algorithms in real time, the synthesizers becoming ‘intelligent instruments’ that actively collaborate with the performer. Developing the open structures of the electronic pieces from In the Beginning, Future Travel explored the possibilities of simply ‘playing the system’, recording live at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope studio in San Francisco. Working from loose sketches, Rosenboom added acoustic instruments to the electronic sounds and, on some pieces, the processed voice of Jacqueline Humbert. Like Rosenboom’s collaboration with Humbert on the abstracted synth-chanson of Daytime Viewing, this music set out deliberately to challenge the ‘stratified and illusorily coagulated identities in the musical culture of the time,’ refusing distinctions between ‘serious’ and popular music. But where Daytime Viewing achieves this in part through genre references, Future Travel is bracingly sui generis, existing in a unique universe where radical formalisation à la Xenakis spontaneously gives rise to expressive jazz harmonies and old-timey folk melodies.

The crystalline quality of many of the Touché sounds gives Future Travel a sparkling, immediately enticing surface, its layers of shifting ostinato patterns pulsating outside conventional meter, rippling like waves on the surface of water. On opener ‘Station Oaxaca’, ping-ponging synth arpeggios and hand percussion accompany a sentimental violin melody, abruptly overtaken by layered keyboard runs, before the entry of tinkling marimba-like sounds reframe the scene as sci-fi Martin Denny exotica. ‘Time Arroyo’ begins as an austere study in staccato synth sounds in multiple overlapping tempi, reminiscent of Ligeti’s famous ‘clock’ rhythmic effects. Before long, it opens up into a melodic passage with the gentle heroism of classic Roedelius, which proves to be only a brief interlude before the layers of rhythmically distinct synthesiser patterns begin to build and accelerate into an increasingly dense cacophony. The wildest twists and turns are saved for the epic closer ‘Nova Wind’, where the arrangement focuses on Rosenboom’s virtuoso piano playing, perfectly embodying the project’s radical disregard of stylistic orthodoxies as he moves from hyperactive pointillistic flurries to a kind of space-age gospel.

At several points throughout the record, the distinctive voice of Jacqueline Humbert is heard reading passages from the text component of In the Beginning, a dialogue between The Double (an embodiment of humanity’s timeless desire to replicate itself in spiritual and technological copies) and two Spirit Characters. Fittingly, as all are conceived as embodiments of a future form of techno-human collective consciousness, distinctions between the three characters are not immediately evident in Humbert’s delivery, just as the music blurs the boundaries between intelligent computing and human spontaneity. Adorned with a striking retro-futurist cover (and here accompanied by extensive new liner notes and archival images), Future Travel is a time capsule of radical imaginings at the birth of our digital age, reminding us of utopian possibilities of which our own present seems so often to fall short.

Limited edition double vinyl LP on magenta Colored Vinyl in full colour jackets in protective sleeves. Remastered by Angel Marcloid 2021. Contains new exclusive bonus track.

RSE surprise album just in time before the migration to cooler waters.

Grown in the shade of the glacier. 'Killer Whale Atmospheres' is a future-memory affair of sub bass propulsive drones, rhythms, chords and dorsal scars building to a forbidding sense of cold echolocations yet to come through the violent procession of darkening rains.

No. 42/300

Silk-Screen cover. In 1978 I arrived for my first time to Sweden, to the town of Lund .. and there I met a remarkable man named Jean Sellem who ran a tiny gallery in the middle of the town, "The Galleri St.Petri: Dedicated To Modern Art and Thought "... and he was one of the few and first people who saw the greatness and beauty of Continuous Music .. and since I was a complete "unknown" at that time, I really needed his moral support ! --- and he created with me, the idea of a huge work for multiple pianos ... three pianos .. in stages ... and it became as he had envisioned ! and was first performed on a small upright piano in 1978 in his gallery, and the piece was called THE LUND.St.PETRI SYPMPHONY .. because it was so symphonic in grandeur (once the three pianos came together ...) The Lund - St. Petri Symphony, from 1979, is the second album from Lubomyr Melnyk and the first composition for double piano which he released. In this work, the early minimalist tendencies which played such a major part in the emergence of Continuous music, are very significant and clearly evident. This Double LP set sold out within 1 year of production, Only 1000 copies were made. Original Release: 1980 Limited All Analog Remastering Recording