Electronic & Dance Vinyl 428 Items

Sought-after Belgian minimal synth finally reissued.

They were interesting times, the early eighties. Against a backdrop of cold war and economic crises, the DIY attitude of the earlier punk movement had spawned near countless new genres where artists and bands broke the three-chord guitar mould and experimented with new content matter, singular song structures and – in many cases – new instruments. Synthesizers became affordable and were no longer the sole privilege of rock millionaires. All around the globe, musical creativity boomed as never before, and Belgium was no exception: Digital Dance, Snowy Red, The Names, Pseudocode, Marine, 1000 Ohm, De Kommeniste, M.Bryo & D.M.T., De Brassers, Struggler, Siglo XX are but a few legendary names of bands and artists who started making a name for themselves.

In Leuven, things were happening as well. Until then, the music scene in this rather provincial town had been dominated by straightforward rock and blues acts. Not for much longer, though: in places like Arno'z and (later) The Gladhouse, where young budding artists met with kindred spirits, bands were often formed on the spot and, more importantly, started to make ripples.

Ludo Camberlin and Karel 'Bam' Saelemaekers already had a certain track record in Leuven's burgeoning music microcosm. But what they shared would become the cornerstone of A Blaze Colour (Against The Dark Trees Beyond): a fascination for new forms and instruments, a penchant for sonic adventure and a profound love for gripping songs. The full band name, by the way, was inspired by a phrase from the Irish-American novelist J.P. Donleavy, a writer who belongs in the definitely-worth-checking-out section.

In the early eighties Exart label owner Hessel Veldman regularly went to the city of Rotterdam to visit the creative minds behind local act Rotterdans. Their base was a house that both served as a home studio to record sessions of improvised music and a dealing spot for marihuana, which means customers were ringing the doorbell all day and all night long. During a late-night session one of the Rotterdans members told Veldman about a certain coworker, a ship welder working in the harbor, who was in his mid-twenties, lived with his parents in a typical workers' home and was totally obsessed by analog synthesizers. Collecting all the different types and playing them every night.

A meeting was arranged and Veldman met Aart Zwaans for the first time. They went to his room upstairs where he spent his evenings experimenting and writing his own tracks, that turned out to be a mixture of melancholic ambient pieces in the vein of synth wizards like Enno Velthuys and the early electronic music of Klaus Schulze and the Berlin School. Zwaans was a real outsider, not interested in the underground tape trading scene and preferred to be left alone. He did however promise Veldman to record some tracks and draw a cover for a cassette on Exart which was releases in 1982. Although plans were made to release more of his music, the Sémi Hóra cassette turned out to be the only remaining proof of his mysterious existence.

Sémi Hóra stayed an obscure must-have for collectors of underground music only, until some of the tracks were uploaded to the internet, where it reached a modest new audience. Overlooked by the various reissue labels, some of these hidden gems from the golden age of home taping are now finally presented on vinyl for the first time. In association with Veldman and archivist Bence Meijer, we selected 4 tracks from the original tape to be remastered for a convincing sample of one man’s imperturbable vision. Hopefully it prevents this idiosyncratic and talented musician from fading into total oblivion.

The most obscure and sought after italian electronic release, but also another extraordinary 70s output from the legendary Regson Studio of Milan remembering in 1976 "Funky Bump" and a year later "Disco Shitan", both produced by Pino Presti. The eclectic brother of Vangelis chit> he was playing keyboards like him, helped by Yorgos Pentzikis for the "vocoder" vocals, reached the right sound for one of the craziest electronic disco song now available for for the first time on 12, containing also the unreleased instrumental version. Nikos Papathanassiou in 1976 achieving success with the disco-hit "U" by Chrisma, but Maurizio Arcieri cousin of Pino Presti and Chrisma's leader, moved towards new-wave and punk. So for the orchestral conducting of a new cosmic-disco project titled MoreI Like It he involved Rodolfo Grieco who later produced in the emerging genre of Italo-Disco great classics like "Going Crazy" by Lily Ann."

Emotional Rescue can be relied on to dig up obscure, left of centre dance gems and serve them up to newer, wider audiences. Adu's reggae-pop cut 'Burkina Faso' is a great example, re-purposed for the dancefloor without any of its original flavour lost in the overhaul. A South Saharan/West African emigre to Brixton, Rauf Adu would go on to fairly sizeable European fame with the Eddy Grant-esque 'Human To Human'. This, however, is his 1982 debut for Copasetic Records, another reggae-pop inspired, ludicrously catchy effort with scorched electric guitar and a Compass Point-style drum/bassline providing rhythmic rocksteadiness. As well as the buffed up original, there's a dub mix, which gives his beautiful guitar plenty of room to breathe, and an appearance from the Isle of Jura Sound System boss Kevin Griffiths , whose remix completes the trio of mixes.

Moody Oxford post-punk quintet Exit 13 became Aerial FX at the dawning of the 1980s, the promise of their minimal sound, with its prominent synthesizers, yielding a publishing deal with Island Records and an early single released by the label. Debut album Watching The Dance has shades of dark synth pop and Goth, with future Radiohead manager/producer Chris Hufford firmly in the spotlight throughout. The influence of acts like Van Der Graaf Generator, Modern Eon and others lurk beneath this hidden Cold Wave gem.

Moody Oxford post-punk quintet Exit 13 became Aerial FX at the dawning of the 1980s, the promise of their minimal sound, with its prominent synthesizers, yielding a publishing deal with Island Records and an early single released by the label. Debut album Watching The Dance has shades of dark synth pop and Goth, with future Radiohead manager/producer Chris Hufford firmly in the spotlight throughout. The influence of acts like Van Der Graaf Generator, Modern Eon and others lurk beneath this hidden Cold Wave gem.

(Japanese pressing, Official reissue) Brilliant synth prog weirdness from the late 1970s Tokyo. Recorded by the guitarist Akio Niitsu who was compared, not without reason, to Manuel Göttsching. Niitsu has a fairly small discography of only three full-length albums, but his second one - “Pet Step” - was on Tomita’s label and supposedly with the involvement of Haruomi Hosono (this is according to Chee Shimizu who lists it in his “Obscure Music”).

Akio Niitsu's first album, "i/o(i･o)" released in 1978, was produced in a homemade studio that had been converted from a storeroom in his home, and he spent three years doing everything from composition to engineering by himself, using overdubbed guitar recordings. 's first analog re-release has been decided.As a guitar multi-recording album, the idea was realized six years earlier than the album "e2-e4" released in 1984 by Manuel Göttsching, the central figure of "Ash La Tempel", but it was too early. A hidden experimental/ambient gem!The paradoxical sound that makes you feel as if you are lost deep in a labyrinthine forest, combined with Tadanori Yokoo's artwork, is a piece that allows you to enjoy Akio Niitsu's worldview with your ears and eyes.

Issued on le Kiosque d'Orphée in 1979, Voyage aux fonds de la Mer is the only LP by Alain Meunier (not to be confused with French classical music cellist of the same name), and is one of the most elusive collector pieces of the 1970s electronic experimental French scene.

This rare sought after album starts with an instrumental guitar introduction but from the second track onwards it becomes a totally electronic experimental psychedelic trip that can be aligned with the most kosmische side of kraut rock, and of course also with other works by French experimentalists of the era like Pascal Comelade's Fluence or Richard Pinhas' production (including Heldon). Guitar comes in now and then showing also a certain Robert Fripp influence.

Instruments used according to the insert sheet that came with the LP are a Korg 800 DV synthesizer, a K.O. Welson Clavinet, effects like a Fender Echo or a Electroharmonix Small Stone phaser and a fuzz pedal, plus Meunier also used a Gibson Les Paul Custom Guitar, a 12 string acoustic Eko guitar and a 6 string Morris guitar.

First ever vinyl reissue. Limited edition to 500 copies only. Remastered sound.

Expanded reissue of mega rare 1979 unknown vanity pressing LP that blends ethnological field recordings, musique concrète principles, and introspective synthesizer music from this cult European studio maverick and historic collaborator of COS, Philippe Druilet, Marc Moulin, and John Surman. Alain Pierre's Mondo movie soundtrack to the controversial Des Morts shares very few stylistic rivals, but fans of Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain soundtrack and some of the more eldritch early sampling experiments of Jean-Pierre Massiera will certainly draw fragmented comparisons herein. Other listeners might file this album at the weirder end of your Smithsonian Folkways shelf, just before the Video Nasty soundtracks. Presented in remastered form comprising extra vintage studio outtakes (in accordance with the films morbid narrative), Des Morts serves as a would-be sequel to Finders Keepers' previous Ô Sidarta release witnessing Pierre balance his allegiance to the Belgian bandes dessinée scene and Thierry Zéno's shock cinema oeuvre from the heart of his uber-legendary Brussels based experimental recording studio through the 1970s. Presented in remastered form comprising extra previously unreleased vintage studio outtakes. Edition of 750.

Lovely crafted tip-on sleeve. Remastered from the master tapes. 600 copies.

Recorded in 1982, Following The Light is the third album british composer Albert Alan Owen recorded for the Apollo Sound Label.
Originally a Library oriented Music label, Apollo Sound by the mid 70s commissioned contemporary musical pieces from new composers, aiming presumably to provide atmospheric backgrounds for film, television and advertising, and to feed the burgeoning demand for ‘New Age’ music. Therefore comes Following The Light.
While certainly melodic, Owen’s music makes no concessions to mid-afternoon mindfulness or commercial use and reuse. Instead, Following The Light - whose title is taken from the Tao. Number 27 - is a deep and immersive listening experience, clearly the work of a singular musical imagination following its own rules in its own way.
With the help of Katherine Sweeney on violin and Milada Polasek on electric piano and organ, Albert Alan Owen recorded Following The Light in “live” conditions, taking profit of a strong use of the digital effects which were in its infancy at this time; the music was written to make the most of what technology was available, resulting a singular piece of music of sheer beauty
The record demands to be considered as a stand-alone unit, its three sections unfolding elegant and propulsive by turns, as reoccurring themes answer each other through the layers. There are echoes of Reich and Riley in the use of delay, that warm rolling repetition and those bass pulses. But this is not in the service of a system. There is something more lyrical, more humane at work in the music.
With Following the Light, Albert Alan Owen has given us a record that stands outside of time and place, it’s familiar elements made strange and new, all bathed in magic hour light.

Albert Alan Owen was born in Wales in 1948 to parents of Welsh and Latvian heritage. His family later moved to Zimbabwe, where his father took up a teaching position. There, Owen was deeply influenced by local music and culture, while also exploring American RnB and jazz. It was during this period that he became acutely aware of the harsh inequalities under British colonial rule, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to discrimination and racism.

In 1967, Owen returned to Europe to pursue his studies and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He went on to spend time in Paris, studying composition with the eminent Nadia Boulanger and piano under Jacques Février, a favorite pianist of Ravel’s and Poulenc’s. Owen's focus shifted almost entirely to composition, and the acquisition of a Fender Rhodes electric piano marked the beginning of a divorce from his classical Western training. This transition allowed him to merge his passion for African and African-American music with the impressionistic styles of Ravel and Debussy while exploring the innovative realm of electroacoustic composition. These formative experiences framed Owen’s career as a composer and educator at the Royal Academy of Music and London’s Working Men’s College. He eventually returned to Wales, where he continues to reside. In 1979, 29-year-old Albert Alan Owen released “Keyboards & Strings”, a light magical chamber music masterpiece. Transcending the formal conventions of its era, “Keyboard & Strings” is an acoustic and electric piano piece, where the violin is met by synths and electronics.

As is often the case in Albert Alan Owen’s most intimate works, there is a sense of ethereal beauty that emerges from the music, akin to the emotional state one might experience while contemplating a Félix Vallotton landscape or the unfathomable mystery of dawn’s first light. Quiet, profound, and immersive, “Keyboard & Strings” stands out as an electronic-age tone poem, a rare gem that transcends time and place.

Alésia Cosmos was a collective of musicians led by Bruno de Chénerilles formed in the early 1980s in Strasbourg, France. The group consisted of Pascal Holtzer (guitar, synthesizer, tapes, drum machine, vocals), Pierre Clavreux (vocals, gong), Marie-Berthe Servier (vocals), Bruno (guitar, tapes, synthesizer, drum machine, vocals) and Tunisian percussionist Lotfi Ben Ayed (darbukas, bendir). In 1981 Bruno composed and wrote some sci-fi radio plays for French state radio channel France Culture. Under the influences of William Burroughs, John Cage, Pierre Henry and others, he developed tape music studio work. By 1982 he appeared for the first time under the name Alésia Cosmos Furi Show. It was a solo performance on guitar, voice, analog synth and tapes. This experimental show lead to a music project based on Bruno and Pascal's compositions to be performed and recorded with other musicians in the beginning of 1983.


Exclusivo! was the group’s debut album recorded and self-released in 1983 on Planetarium. Pascal and Bruno would compose tunes in their personal home studios. Then they would bring the tapes, electronics, guitar lines and lyrics to experiment and rehearse with the other members of the group. Improvisations and adaptations brought more ideas and the album was recorded in a few days. The result was a musical mixing of electronic music, field recordings, North African and Asian percussion, electric guitars and voices, compositions and free improvisations. All four musicians take turns singing onomatopoeic phrases and backing vocals, even sometimes in an unknown language, a sort of mixed bag between Breton and Japanese. All songs have been remastered cut by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Each LP is housed in a replica of the 1983 cover and includes a 6-page insert with photos, lyrics, reviews and liner notes by Bruno de Chénerilles.

Raised from the ashes of eighties new wave (when Materiali Sonori debuted the Fuzz Dance series), Problemes D’Amour soon began a disco and electro classic all over the place. Florence born producer and musician Maurizio Dami - with co-conspirators Giampiero Bigazzi, Arlo Bigazzi and Marzio Benelli – created a mysterious character, a so called “modular structure born out a soviet calculator and promptly runaway". He was singing in french and was supported by primordial digital machine, using at the same time the more classical electric guitars, sax and sensual female voices. A handful of evergreen are still played all over the world by many international deejays, while “Problemes d’Amour” was even featured on influential Strut compilation Disco Not Disco 2. American label Sire (home of Talking Heads and a young Madonna) published a Fuzz Dance Ep in 1985 with the Robotnick masterpiece and several contribution from Mya & The Mirror, Gina & The Flexix and Naïf Orchestra. Maurizio Dami is still performing worldwide as a dj and is still composing new music. After 40 years Spittle Records in joint venture with Materiali Sonori re-issues the mini album and the 12” with its original artwork. "Once I was in Chicago, it was around 2010, I was just finishing my set and went outside the club to light a cigarette. Suddenly a police car stops nearby. I thought the policeman was here to fine me (I was more than 20 meters outside the venue), but he just lifted a poster of mine and asked to sign it. Then I realized that "Problèmes d’Amour" has been for a longtime the opening theme for a popular radio broadcast well-known between the black community (hence the policeman was black)”. Maurizio Dami

Fully remastered and licensed, ltd to 500 copies on clear vinyl Yet another chapter in the ongoing Alexander Robotnick saga. Electronic wizard Maurizio Dami licensed his second single in 1983 on Materiali Sonori ‘club series’ Fuzz Dance. After the surprising and astonishing success of the debut - Problèmes D'Amour – Robotnick became a sort of cult figure even in the United States and soon was labeled as a forerunner of the electro movement.

American composer and multi-instrumentalist Alvin Curran has remained one of the great emblems of experimental music for the last half-century. In 1966, along with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, Curran co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva, a seminal gesture in collective free improvisation. In the early ’70s, his solo work would become a crucial bridge between minimalist traditions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico, Curran’s solo debut, was recorded by the artist himself and issued on Ananda, the small Italian imprint started by Curran and fellow composers Giacinto Scelsi and Roberto Laneri. The piece itself was put together in the winter of 1973 and presented for the first time at Teatro Beat 72 (Rome’s The Kitchen).

Encouraged by the work of Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti, Curran binds the listener to aberrant notions of place and time: blending field recordings (wind, high-tension wires, beach waves, etc.) with simple and often primitive instruments. Across two sidelong tracks, Giardino Magnetico forms a lyrical collage of synthesizer, glass and metal chimes, plastic tubes, brass and the composer’s alluring voice—converging in an immersive realm of Curran’s inner / outer experiences.

This first-time vinyl reissue is recommended for fans of Harry Bertoia, Michel Redolfi and Lino Capra Vaccina.

The Works - one of the most famous pieces by brilliant American composer Alvin Curran - was not created by will and direct purpose but, as the composer himself states, as a “providential accident” which is to say quite organically. Combining piano and voice with found sound and a custom-built Serge modular synthesizer, “The Works” is a slowly developing piece where space and ambient tape are eventually overtaken by raga-esque chanting and frenetic piano playing, where synthesizer washes become full-on workouts all leading to a coda where the listener is “finally carried off on the wheels of the Berlin U-Bahn.” Curran - whose initial training and musical education was as a pianist - had been living in Roma, Italy, in the mid-‘70s returning to his roots and performing regularly in cocktail lounges on Via Veneto. It was this return to piano and vocals that became the genesis for The Works. In relearning the piano, a five-note “motive” took hold. Added to this was “a recording I had made of our 14 year old dachshund Caspar just before he died. It was, in fact, a love song which he persisted in singing all day after meeting a lovely bitch in heat in Piazza Navona. This I knew would be the beginning of the piece.” As the piece expands further the listener will hear “cows munching grass, the Rome-Florence express train, a horse-fly caught against a window pane, my footsteps approaching a Roman fountain and later going up the steps of my old studio, cicadas, an Amsterdam calliope, a tin can being kicked, and a series of sounds from La Serra di Lerici.” Though “The Works” has been performed in many incarnations over the years, it’s this performance - captured on February 24, 1980, and originally released that same year by the short-lived Italian avant-garde label Fore - that is the definitive version, and one of the finest recordings ever made by the celebrated composer.

Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media. Bird and Person Dyning is his first solo recorded work; originally released on the Italian Cramps Records label as the 11th volume of the Nova Musicha series dedicated to contemporary avant-garde composers, Bird and Person Dyning is now made available again on Dialogo in a faithful reproduction of the original gatefold cover artwork, including also an inner sleeve with the English translation of the liner notes. From the original liner notes of “Bird and Person Dyning”: The Duke of York (1972) “A long time ago I wanted to build a grotesque jukebox. I thought of merging three or four old jukeboxes and then recording sounds on 45s, so that you could mix the sounds together. [...] The original idea of this work was about the power of singers and vedettes in our society and the hypothesis that their vocal personalities are present in our memory at different levels and, in addition, that all of us, living or dead, might somehow be part of a huge composite identity that is constantly changing with the birth and arrival of new people. The Duke of York is an attempt to elaborate these ideas. A single performer chooses and determines the order of an indefinite number of whole songs, speeches, arias, selected excerpts from books, letters, poems, films, plays, TV series or any other vocal sounds, including non-human ones. The actual duration of these sounds is altered by one or more people using synthesisers or other electronic tools, basing their choices on memories or similar experiences. Once altered, for example through a filter, the example can no longer be undone, and other changes must be made to the previous examples. The effect is that of a vocal identity made of layers of separate and partial iden tities. [...] The Duke of York was composed in 1971 and was performed in its current version on 19 February 1972 at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bird and Person Dyning (1975) for performers with microphones, amplifiers, speakers and a sound object. One day I got an electronic bird in the mail. It was a silver ball with an electrical cord that, when connected, made a sound similar to that of a chirping bird [...]. A few months later I read an article in «Scientific American» about how certain birds that fly at night, particularly the bunting, cross long distances by partly orienting themselves looking at the position of the stars in relation to the rotation of Earth [...]. I owned a Sennheiser binaural microphone consisting of two mini microphones which, when introduced into the ears of a dummy or a person, faithfully reproduced the sounds as heard when they were bouncing inside the head and in the ear canals. I began experimenting by moving the sounds of the bird between two speakers, listening to them through the two mini microphones inserted in my ears, as I walked slowly through the space between the two speakers. The amplified chirps moved left and right according to my movements, creating small time delays and phase-shifts in relation to the position of the motionless bird. Sometimes the microphones would resonate with the loudspeakers, thus generating a Larsen feedback, and I could control the timbre and volume with small head movements [...]. A performance of Bird and Person Dyning is a live exploration of these phenomena. The title is meant as an exact description of the activity.