In stock
LP
Carl Michael von HAUSSWOLFF
“Conductor / Life and Death of Pboc”
Two rare historical recordings (1983 and 1986) originally released as single sides and gathered here for the first time. Carl Michael von Hausswolff on the pieces: "'Conductor' might be my favorite composition and 'Life and Death of Pboc' might be my most sincere. 'Conductor' was my first composed piece with no obvious reference points . . . 'Life and Death of Pboc' was the second. These two compositions gave me the title Godfather of Dark Ambient." Edition of 300.
Carl Michael von Hausswolff (b. 1956 in Linköping, Sweden, lives and works in Stockholm): Since the end of the '70s, von Hausswolff has worked as a composer using recording technology as his main instrument and as a visual artist using light projections, film/video and still photography as well as other media. He has exhibited at dOCUMENTA (Kassel), the biennials in Venice, Moscow, Liverpool, Istanbul, Sarajevo etc. and in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Nicosia, Kaliningrad, Tokyo, London, New York, Philadelphia etc. His music has been played in festivals such as Sonar (Barcelona), CTM (Berlin), L'audible (Paris), el niche Aural (Mexico City), MUTEK, (Montreal) etc. and release works on LP, CD, and download by labels like Erototox (Ashevile), Sub Rosa (Brussels), Touch (London), Pomperipossa (Göteborg), and iDeal (Göteborg). He recently curated the second part the sound-installation FREQ_OUT named freq_wave in co-operation with TBA21-Academy and collaborates with artist Leif Elggren, EVP re-searcher Michael Esposito, composers Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Mark Fell, Jim O'Rourke, author Leslie Winer and as Dark Morph (with Jónsi of Sigur Rós). He has also collaborated with Pan Sonic, The Hafler Trio, Freddie Wadling, and Erik Pauser (as PHAUSS).
15,00€
In stock
LP
Okkyung LEE / Jérôme NOETINGER / Nadia RATSIMANDRESY
“Two Duos”
“Two Duos” is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee’s most recent OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it’s magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities.
On the A side Noetinger’s opening tape hiss establishes a current; an electrical partner who gives Lee room to slide across and stretch out. Progressively the cello is returned, duplicated and manipulated with increased velocity and distortion. Noetinger draws out the full extent of Lee’s extended technique; rewinding strands of Lee's horse hair and transmuting her percussive attacks into shuddering echos, before letting his own concrete interjections spin the duo's sonic tussle into an almost romantic daydream.
On side B the ondes (invented by French cellist and wartime radio operator Maurice Eugene Louis Martenot and so loved by Bernard Parmegiani, Varese and Messiaen) seems shaken from classical tradition and those long, drawn out horrorscapes it has come to be associated with. In a duel with Lee, Ratsimandresy grasps the ondes’ extraordinary capacity for dexterity, nuance and speed, hounding Lee’s cello in a bid to drive her instrument out of the past and into the future.
Two fantastic pairings and a testament to the freshness with which Lee and her collaborators continue to work with their instruments.
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Okkyung Lee / cello
Jérôme Noetinger / revox b77
Nadia Ratsimandresy / ondes martenot
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Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 28th March & Friday 29th March by Paul Skinner and Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug. Designed by Maja Larrson.
18,00€
In stock
LP
Maja JANTAR
“In / Canti”
New meta-poem from multilingual and polysonic voice artist Maja Jantar, this LP delivers two magnificent subtle and sensorial haunting pieces of free tonal modulations, exploring the voice as a tool to create musical textures shifting from free layered tones and vivid harmonics to free sound poetry channeling inner and outer streams of imaginary landscapes - where poetry walks into the field of contemporary music.
Maja Jantar is a multilingual and polysonic voice artist living in Finland after long period in Belgium, whose work spans the fields of performance, music theatre and opera, poetry and visual arts. A co-founder of the group Krikri, she has been giving individual and collaborative performances throughout Europe and experimenting with poetic sound works since 1995. Born as daughter of opera singers, she spends her childhood travelling through Europe with her mother, enters and exits various languages, cultures; nomadic migrant, balances between the opera world and playing in her grandma’s garden, between ducks, sheep and sunset. Distant Tartar decendance echo’s in her soundings – weaving the operatic, poetic, abstract influences together to vocal sound works that landscape into performance.
From 2001 to present, Jantar has directed ten operas, i ncluding Monteverdi’s classic Incoronatione di Poppea and Sciarrino’s contemporary Infinito Nero. Her work invites to enter the field of the imaginary, the inner world, the inner
stream, the shamanistic, enchanting, prophetic. Circumventing the stage of the rational, in an attempt to enter through the back door of the intuitive.
A manifestation of poetry and voice, sound poetry or vocal art, VOXXX is a new sound poetry magazine. a joined adventure by sonhoras (barcelona) and erratum musical (paris). Behind the project we are Gerard Altaió, Martin Bakero, Eduard Escoffet and Joachim Montessuis. VOXXX will publish 4 LP by year, with care and dedication to bring the newest voices and sounds to your ears. we will take care of doing a precious cut and sound edition, along with a beautiful artisan work by printing all covers by hand with letterpress at L’Automàtica (barcelona).
mastered by Frederic Alstadt at Mont Analogue
track A mixed by Joachim Montessuis
recorded by Martin Bakero
design and letterpress print by Gerard Altaió
printed at l’Automàtica, Barcelona
pressed by Optimal, Germany
published by Erratum Musical and Sonhoras
23,00€
Out of stock
LP
Alvin LUCIER & Jordan DYKSTRA
“Out of our hands”
“Out of Our Hands” brings together Alvin Lucier and Jordan Dykstra who, through the hands of Ordinary Affects, have created debut recordings of two new compositions. Pressed at RTI for maximum fidelity with a full color printed inner sleeve....
These companion pieces have similar orbits as they were not only both composed in Middletown, CT (where Alvin and Jordan lived for a number of years), but are about Middletown, at least from a starting point. Alvin’s piece — a homage to the location of the house in which he recorded “I am sitting in a room” back in 1969 — continues his study into slow-moving glissandi and carefully crafted beating patters by interweaving three string players within a minor third (voiced by two vibraphonists). The result is entrancing, almost psychedelic, and opens space where one didn’t expect. Like much of his previous work, it is conceptual and process-based; once the wheels get turning they go on and on, giving the listener time to approach the piece, sit with it, and then move back inward.
On the other hand, Dykstra’s piece “32 Middle Tones” (a pun on his Middletown street address and the harmonic microtonality utilized in the composition) is a very textural work. His piece asks the cellist to sustain pitches for extended durations — at times quietly singing in close proximity to the stopped pitch coming from the cello — while the rest of the ensemble (violin, viola, and 2 percussion) voice a sequence of chords separated by notated silences. The cello voice is sometimes alone, but never for too long as it finds itself supported from both the top and bottom in a harmonic embrace. This supportive structure involves a percussion section which colors the seemingly simple chords (major 6th, inverted minor 7th, inverted minor 2nd, etc.) with a non-traditional toolkit of bowed singing bowls, stone sheets, harmonicas, and even leaves.
This is music that gently gives the listener a sense of predictability but always in an unexpected (and subtly indeterminate) shade. Speaking of shade, the album’s cover photo was taken in 2019 in Alvin’s backyard in Middletown. Alvin and Jordan sit with similar demeanors in front of his favorite tree — a crooked aspen which early on looked to be doomed — but which he would often saunter over to spend time with, giving it whispers of blessings and encouraging words.The world was blessed with Alvin’s presence and hopefully this album will whisper to you and yours.
26,50€
In stock
LP
Anton BRUHIN
“Rotomotor / InOut”
In the mid-1970s Anton Bruhin was surely at the peak of his tape manipulation works. Always using poor techniques and equipment he sculpted everyday-life sonic objects turning them into very accomplished and yet totally experimental music artifacts. The works presented here surely are among the most accomplished results of his expanded creativity.
"InOut", a masterpiece for tuning whistle, mouthharps, flutes, toy and party gag instruments, percussion, bells, electric razor, model ship engine with propeller, birdcall whistles, CH-Phon, feedback speaker-microphone, siren, double shawm, falling down spoon, jew's harp (only two short notes), tearing scotch tape from the spool, ocarina, hair dryer and other noise makers plus occasionally radio tuner was recorded in Zurich between May 17th and May 22nd, 1981, on a Sanyo M7300L stereo radio cassette recorder with both integrated and external microphone. The recorder is in the recording standby position, both RECORD and PAUSE buttons are pushed. Then Bruhin sings or plays a tone into the microphone. During this tone he releases the PAUSE button by pushing it. Subsequently he presses the PAUSE button again within a fraction of a second. Now the first short note is recorded. In "InOut" thousands of very short notes were added this way, like a patchwork, like an acoustic quilt with geometric irregularities and varied patterns.
"Rotomotor", subtitled "ein motorische Idiotikon", is a 28 minutes long reading representing one of Bruhin's major works. Written in Zurich between 1976 and 1977, then recorded in August 1978 at Etienne Conod's Sunrise Studio. "Rotomotor" is a poetic Idiotikon of the swiss-german dialect where, instead of the straight alphabetical order, the words are organized according to the similarities of their letters (each word differ from the previous one by just one letter). For this reading a delay equipment which repeated the signal after 0.6 seconds was used and each word is superimposed to the echo of the preceding one. On one hand this echo generates the rhythm of the performance, on the other it supports the acoustic metamorphosis of the words. As always in Anton Buhin poetics, a very simple concept perfectly accomplished.
Anton Bruhin in the 1960s began organizing happenings and performances, creating sound works, designing and typesetting his own books (which he self-published with Hannes R. Bossert through April-Verlag), drawing and writing poetry. Anton Bruhin was a member of the first class to study at the F+F School with Serge Stauffer, famous art teacher and specialist in Marcel Duchamp, where he came into contact with concrete poetry, Fluxus and experimental music.
22,50€
Out of stock
LP
Katalin LADIK
“Water Angels”
alga marghen proudly presents "Water Angels" an LP with previously unreleased tracks by Katalin Ladik, following the monumental "Phonopoetics" from 2019.
"Water Angel", the title track, is a side-long work from 1989. It began its life containing a plice of "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and was first staged in an artificial fog on a lake at the 1989 Spoleto Festival in Italy.The texts include fragments of her own lyrics mixed with parts from James Joyce and Lewis Carroll in a kind of sonic-textual collage of processed sounds superimposed to environmental field recordings. One can also hear the composer Erno Király, her first husband, playing his self-built instrument called "zitherphone", a 58-stringed huge engine of sounds assembling five zithers in a single body, with pick-ups placed on some of the strings.
The first part of "Water Angel" was used as a starting point for "Three Orphans", another composition juxtaposing electronically modified voice with recordings of folk songs, this time Hungarian. It's a kind of "adaptation of a Hungarian folk ballad", utilizing recordings done in Transylvania in 1940, registered with a wax cylinder phonograph and gathered by Radio Novi Sad. Thanks to the collaboration with Boris Kovač, the sound engineer for this project, the quality of Katalin Ladik's screams, whispers, chants, laughter, giggles is now significantly improved, and in some ways the subtle nuances of her virtuoso interpretation find here their most powerful rendition.
Also presented on this record are three and never before issued works created by Katalin Ladik in collaboration with the composer Svetlana Marasch at the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade in 2019, "Electric Bird", "White Bird" and "Ice Bird". Combining extended vocal techniques, processing and modular synthesis, these tracks confirm the artist's radical temperaments that helped to define her work during the 60s and 70s, while pushing it further into new territories thus revealing an artist with almost no peer in the experimental landscape today.
Ladik, born into the Hungarian minority of Yugoslavia in 1942, is an artist who resists categorization. She is an experimental writer, a sonic artist, a writer as interested in the sound of the words as its meaning. She is an actor as well as a performance artist, a visual artist whose graphic scores generates from her early contacts with the work of Stockhausen and Acezantez, also addressing the relations between sound and woman's body. Katalin Ladik can be considered a phenomenon of music excesses and voice miracles, combining music, theatre and poetry. It was the music of a female body and its motions, transformation, action and expression: when she produced sounds with her body as a music instrument, playing folk or self-made instruments nude; when she voiced poetry or transformed voice into linguistically inarticulate sounds of phonic poetry; when her voice turned into a scream transforming poetry into acoustic event; or when she borrowed her transgressive voice to experimental musicians.
22,50€
Out of stock
LP
Jean-Yves BOSSEUR
“Musiques Vertes”
First ever vinyl reissue of Jean-Yves Bosseur's visionary LP "Musiques Vertes", recorded by the legendary French ornithologist and wildlife field recordist Jean-Claude Roché, originally issued by Atelier 82. Utilising handmade instruments constructed from plants and other natural materials, played by a collective of children and untrained musicians, its radically experimental sounds build a revelatory bridge between the avant-garde and ancient forms of folk.
Jean-Yves Bosseur is a relatively obscure figure in the history of the French avant-garde. A student of Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as a close associate of Knud Viktor, he belonged to the legendary collective Groupe d'Etude et Réalisation Musicale GERM, widely celebrated for their realization of Terry Riley's Keyboard Study 2, issued by BYG / Actuel in 1970.
The "Musiques Vertes" project began in South East France during the late 1970s, spearheaded by Christine Armengaud, who was investigating, via elderly people in the region, a long tradition of musical instruments made with organic materials and plants. With their help, she was able to construct 240 instruments, collected in her book "Musiques Vertes", published in 1978 by Christine Bonneton éditeur, that had long been used for bird calls, dancing, toys of young shepherds and children, and much more, but had been lost to common usage following the First World War.
In 1980 the Direction de la Musique awarded the composer Jean-Yves Bosseur a grant to start a collective practice of music using the instrument constructed / reconstructed by Armengaud. Rather than working with professional musicians, he chose to use locals and children he encountered in Aix-en-Provence between 1981 and 1982. The Musiques Vertes album is the result of hours of practice and recording by these players, in each case, within the album 11 musical excursions, utilising a series of instructions or games set up by the composer in an attempt to create collective musical exchange, as well as a dialogic exchange between this practice and active listening within a natural environment.
While the acoustic practises that underscore Musiques Vertes display a deep resonance with those embarked upon by artists like Akio Suzuki, Toshiya Tsunoda, and Jeph Jerman, the structural resemblance, held deeply within utopian avant-garde principles, falls far closer to experimental electronic works that might have emerged from experimental electronic studios like Groupe de Recherches Musicales or EMS, or subtle object oriented efforts in free improvisation. Bubbling textures and atonalities, blended with sounds from the natural environment, intermingle with staggering birdsong-alike tonalities and rattling percussive passages, producing striking moments of abstraction that retain a remarkable sense of humanity and ease. A document of pure sonic magic and stunningly organic creativity.
300 copies, black vinyl, 20 page booklet
23,00€
In stock
2 LP
Alessandro BOSETTI
“Plane/Talea 31-34”
Since a few years Alessandro Bosetti has been collecting voices that become part of the Plane/Talea archive. The creation of the archive stems from dozens of individual meetings and recording sessions, in which each voice is detached from its owner or originator and anonymized. With each new iteration and performance, Bosetti plays the archive as if it were an instrument. He searches for hidden details and correspondences through exploration, immersion and contemplation. Each re-activation of the archive results in a dense and
swarming polyphony made up of thousands of short utterances - shorter than any word bearing a meaning - recombined and interwoven into complex textures. The particularity of the grain of Plane/Talea lies in the autonomous and darting life that each of these fragments lives in a teeming community of voices. Such polyphonies are rich in microtonal detail emerging from the incessant juxtaposition of vocal objets trouvés. Harmonic relationships are sometimes rough and chaotic, other times surprisingly just. The voices are never treated electronically but only recombined and musical tension is provided by the particular grain, inflection, energy of each one of them in counterpoint to the others and to a frugally used instrumentarium (Harpsichord, Ondes Martenot, Cristal Baschet, grand piano, analog synth, Hammond organ). Implicit reference goes to ancient, modern and postmodern forms of vocal polyphony. "Plane/Talea 31-34" - the continuation of the homonymous 2016 LP - is a work of sampling that projects an imaginary community and a disembodied choir. The four arching and extensive tracks were created between 2017 and 2018 and bear the trace of two specific moments: August nights in a country house in Vicobarone, in the hills of Piacenza (31-32) and a week-long residency at the "Studio Venezia", an environment created by French artist Xavier Veilhan in the French pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale (33-34).
« Encounters of this sort did happen, with the voice still clinging onto its own origin, and then seen, as it were, coming out of the original mouth and caught saying other things, with a slightly different intonation, a slightly different timbre, maybe due to a little aging, an extra cigarette, a cold. At that point we would come out unsettled, or maybe convinced that it was not the same voice anymore, but another. »
28,00€
In stock
LP
Martin DAVORIN JAGODIC
“Tempo Furioso”
Digging deep into the catalog of Cramps records, Dialogo returns with another stunning entry in their reissue series dedicated to the seminal imprint, the Croatian composer Martin Davorin Jagodić’s 1975 masterstroke, "Tempo Furioso (Tolles Wetter)". A bristling work of monumental scale at the vanguard of electroacoustic composition and musique concrète, its stunning two sides, created by his sinfully under-recognized associate of Groupe de Recherches Musicales, reshapes history at every turn. Issued by Dialogo in a limited edition of 300 copies on black vinyl, with fully remastered audio, housed in a gatefold sleeve that beautifully reproduces the original design, and complete with brand new English translations of the original liner notes.
26,00€
In stock
LP
Alvin LUCIER
“Bird And Person Dyning”
At long last, after decades out of print, joining their growing Cramps Records Reissue Series, Dialogo brings us the long-awaited vinyl reissue of Alvin Lucier's "Bird and Person Dyning", the composer's first solo LP. As legendary as they come, and easily among the most important and groundbreaking efforts in experimental music ever recorded, this is Lucier at his most visionary. Issued in a limited edition of 300 copies of black vinyl, with fully remastered audio, housed in a sleeve that beautifully reproduces the original design, complete with brand new English translations of the original liner notes, it doesn't get better than this.
26,00€
Out of stock
LP
Steve LACY & Andrea CENTAZZO
“Clangs”
Ictus Records' reissue initiative fittingly begins with Clangs, the first LP issued by the label in 1976. Featuring Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone, bird calls, and pocket synthesizer (or "crack box"), with Andrea Centazzo on drums, percussion, whistle, and vocals, the album is the culmination of a couple of weeks that the two artists spent together while Lacy was touring Italy during that year.
Clangs encounters Lacy - one of the giants of American free jazz - already two decades into a career defined by brilliant collaborations with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, and Thelonious Monk, as well as a sprawling body of visionary work as a leader. Like so much of his work leading into this period, it draws upon the saxophonist's belief that an artist should 'play what you feel', a position that Centazzo - roughly 15 years Lacy's junior - recalls as having torn down the curtain that separated his technique from his creativity.
Comprising a series of duets that investigate timbral relationships, the fragmentation of melody, and abrasive, provocative noise - shifting from the sparse, airy, and restrained, to dance clusters of interplay and back again - Clangs, for all its radicalism and forward-thinking gestures, rests firmly within the historic structures of jazz, deploying the idiom of theme / solo / theme. Lacy's playing is at the top of his form - fluttering and dancing with a primal touch - met by Centazzo's rattle and pattern of percussive interventions, the notes and polyrhythms of each respective player being the product of careful listening, response, and raising the bar.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Derek BAILEY & Andrea CENTAZZO
“Drops”
In the history of free improvised music, there has been arguably no greater advocate for the idiom's power and potential than the English guitarist Derek Bailey. Fiercely principled, between his emergence during the 1960s and his death in 2005, he cut a wide path, positioning this music at the height of creativity, transpiring in real time, and a means through which people from diverse backgrounds could come together, express, and commune. For Bailey, "playing is about playing with other people... Improvisation is a process that gets relationships sorted out."
Among many great examples of this within Bailey's sprawling discography, a stand out is his 1977 duo LP Drops - originally issued as the third album on Ictus - recorded with the Italian percussionist / drummer Andrea Centazzo. Capturing the guitarist during one of his most prolific and creatively visionary periods - overflowing with explosive clarity, dialogic energy, and imagination - he clearly found a perfect foil in Centazzo, who recalls of the sessions "The kaleidoscopic quality of Drops was created by this restraint of performing limits, i.e. the choice of instrumental timbres, dynamics and metronome speeds to suit each piece. We explored some aspects of our improvisational art, gleaned the best elements from our baggage of music memories and exposed them clearly and confidently."
Comprising nine individual improvisations, Drops encounters each of its players at their best, finding a strange middle ground between the intuitive logics of their instruments; Bailey's tones taking on decidedly percussive approaches, while Centazzo's fractured polyrhythms and beats often veer toward the presence of a notable tonality. Remarkably expressive and diverse in the approach of each piece, Drops presents creative interplay at its most striking and challenging, rethinking the terms of musicality and collaboration every step of the way. Flurries of rattle back and forth, sculpting barbed and pointillistic landscapes of texture, stripped of reference and precedent, and abstract as real time organised sound comes.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Steve LACY – Andrea CENTAZZO – Kent CARTER
“Trio Live”
Originally issued in 1977, Trio Live was recorded in 1976, only a handful of days after Steve Lacy and Andrea Centazzo's Clangs was laid to tape, presumably capturing another moment on the same two-week tour that had rendered the recordings for its brilliant predecessor. This time, the pair - Lacy and Centazzo - is joined by the American bassist, Kent Carter, a sinfully under-appreciated artist who had worked extensively in Steve Lacy's group, played on the two Jazz Composer's Orchestra LPs, and toured in the bands of Don Cherry, Alan Silva, Mal Waldron, Bobby Bradford, Max Roach, Roswell Rudd, Derek Bailey, John Stevens, Trevor Watts, Steve McCall and many others. The previous year, he had also delivered the stellar LP, Kent Carter Solo With Claude Bernard, as Ictus' second LP, allowing Trio Live to be understood as a narrowing of an already tight circle, despite its slightly expanded ensemble.
Arguably best defining the first two entries in the Ictus reissue series - Clangs and Drops - is a sense of rigorous and artistry. While no less present across the length Trio Live, what takes the forward charge throughout its five tracks is a sense of joy and pure pleasure in playing together. The sounds and structural interventions are locked in and tight, feeling at ease and intuitively responsive in the ways that players with a history of collaboration are only able to produce.
From swinging and chugging to stepped back and sparse combinations of rhythm and tone - moving from the lingering sensibilities of straight-ahead jazz to radically out hard blow fire - Trio Live is a cornucopia of brilliant artistry and improvised music.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
ZORN – CENTAZZO – CHADBOURNE – CORRA – KONDO – BRADFIELD
“Environment for Sextet”
John Zorn / Andrea Centazzo / Eugene Chadbourne / Tom Corra / Toshinori Kondo / Polly Bradfield
Recorded live at WKCR Radio in New York City in 1978 and issued by Ictus the following year, Environment for Sextet encounters John Zorn at the earliest stages of his career, resting within a sextet of a new generation of stunning improvisers emerging at the tail end of the '70s who would go on to define a vast swath of the '80s sound - Polly Bradfield on violin, Andrea Centazzo on percussion, Eugene Chadbourne on guitar, Tom Corra on cello, and Toshinori Kondo on trumpet - it roughly builds on the series of collaborations that had featured on Centazzo's 1978 Ictus LP U.S.A. Concerts.
Launching from a total wall of sound - full throttle fire on the boundaries of outright noise - Environment for Sextet takes the listening on an endlessly surprising journey through its players' inner world, shifting between airy open passages that feature endless combinations of one or more players, to furious moments of sonorous lashings where the group falls in together in brilliant dialogical periods of converstant texture and tonal intervention.
An engrossing and relentless listen from the first moment to the last - featuring two works built from two of Andrea Centazzo's earliest graphic scores - Environment for Sextet is an absolutely stunning body of improvised work by what were then among the most important rising stars on the free music scene.
22,00€
In stock
LP
Mark VERNON
“Time Deferred”
Mark Vernon’s solo noir album on Gagarin Records comes in an edition of 300 copies.
Cover art by Dennis “Ultra” Tyfus. Design by Meeuw. Caution: this record can cause dreamless nights.
Followers of the artist Mark Vernon will note a subdued and pensive mood on this new record. Muted and sepulchral, these tracks are in a minor key, a key which opens the door to a damp cellar of the imagination. Too-many legged spiders crawl over dusty violins. Time lurches, loops and echoes like excursions on slow motion railways in reverse. Concrète noir sombre séances for non-believers. Tauntological voices from the past provoke us. Half guessed ghosts, magnetic phantoms from funereal-to-reel tape recordings. The sibilant persistence of the deceased evokes the exhausted dread of waiting for a medical test result. Enigmatic messages thrown to the werewolves with nothing but cheap medication and some breathing exercises for support.
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Mark Vernon is a Glasgow based sound artist who works with found tapes and acousmatic presence. His oeuvre explores themes of magnetic memory, audio archaeology, voyeurism and nostalgia.
A rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, answer-phone messages and other lost voices often find their way into his unorthodox soundworlds. These diverse elements are distilled into radiophonic compositions for broadcast, multi-channel diffusion, fixed media and live performances.
Together with his colleague Barry Burns he runs the renowned radio art festival Radiophrenia. Under the moniker Vernon & Burns the plunderfrolic duo's beguiling mix of Music Hall Revue and Musique Unconcrète has materialized in two critically acclaimed Gagarin albums, "The tune the old cow died of" and "The light at the end of the dial".
His and Hers and the Sun from Mark Vernon on Vimeo.
22,00€
In stock
2 LP
Reinhold WEBER
“Complete Electronic And Phonetic Works 1968-74”
Reinhold Weber, born in 1927, was known as a pioneer of electronic music. In his compositions, Weber placed a focus on twelve-tone music, he became increasingly fascinated in the field of computer music since the 1970s. He produced numerous works at the Studio for Electronic Music at the University of Karlsruhe. Released in Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series.
Reinhold Weber was born in Gießen on July 18, 1927. He studied at Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf (including composition with Jürg Baur, piano with Max Martin Stein) and passed his exam in composition, theory, piano, and ear training with distinction. He completed further masterclasses with Wolfgang Fortner, Hermann Heiss, Oliver Messiaen (composition), Kurt Thomas (choral conducting), Andor Foldes (piano), and Gerhard Nestler (electronic music). Reinhold Weber was a professor at the Baden Conservatory of Music in Karlsruhe and also worked in the Studio for Electronic Music of the University of Karlsruhe. His works have been performed in numerous concerts and were broadcasted by SDR, WDR, NDR, HR, SWF, and Radio Bremen. Reinhold Weber died March 25, 2013.
Actor Kurt Müller-Graf was born in 1913. After visiting the Theater Academy of Baden in Karlsruhe, he appeared on stage at National Theaters of Karlsruhe, Kassel and Munich since 1935. During World War II, he performed in about ten feature films by Bavaria Film Munich. After 1945, he played at National Theaters in Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and at Theaters in Nuremberg, Cologne, Munich, Mannheim, Baden-Baden and Burgtheater Vienna. Furthermore, he had guest performances in Zurich, Basel, Salzburg and Heidelberg. Kurt Müller-Graf was touring and had broadcasts on radio and television shows at home and abroad. Kurt Müller-Graf died August 10, 2013.
19,00€
Out of stock
LP
Maurice LOUCA
“Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour)”
Maurice Louca is one of the most gifted musicians and composers on Egypt's thriving underground music scene. This forthcoming full-length album draws voraciously on Arabic music, psychedelic folk. The title Saet El-Hazz is a coded saying in Egypt to refer to a good time and usually implies a great deal of debauchery. "When you mention to someone that you've had a saet hazz, there are no questions asked. It is what it is." The initial spark for Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) was Louca's desire to collaborate with "A" Trio, the Lebanese improvisational group featuring Mazen Kerbaj on prepared trumpet, Sharif Sehnaoui on prepared guitar, and Raed Yassin on prepared double bass. "When the three of them come together they create a sonic cosmos entirely their own. I started by composing music that I wanted to have exist within this sonic world- at times in harmony, or clashing with it, and all the emotional ranges in between." Just as "A" Trio served as the spark, a commission from Mophradat, an arts organization based out of Brussels, was the tinder. The commission was for a new composition to be performed using instruments that Louca would modify to play microtonally. This led him to Turkey and Indonesia. In Istanbul, he worked with a luthier to custom-make a guitar. In Surakarta, he ended up with an instrument maker tuning a Serang-referred to as the Indonesian xylophone, part of the family of Gamelan tuned percussion instruments. These new modified instruments opened up the composition to new tonal possibilities which drove Louca to expand his line up to include Khaled Yassine, a longtime collaborator and versatile percussionist and drummer, Christine Kazaryan, a dynamic harpist whom he met via Praed Orchestra, and Anthea Caddy, a cellist who came highly recommended from the Berlin free improv scene. Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) is a long form composition of six movements, recorded over the course of a week in August 2019 at A/B studios in Brussels. RIYL: Sun City Girls, Tortoise, Nadah El Shazly, Amirtha Kidambi, Don Cherry, Jaubi, Pharoah Sanders, Sunil Ganguly. Marbled vinyl with insert.
15,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
Joris DE LAET
“Experimental & Parametric Music 1976-2017”
Double LP version. Includes insert. Through Experimental & Parametric Music 1976-2017, more than 40 years of composer Joris De Laet's work is unveiled. The collection discovers for the first time the great coherence of this work: from "Signalisations" (1976) to "Mnemosyne Pour Une Acousmaman" (2017). The compositions are annotated and explained in detail by the composer, as well as a kind of wild autobiography. Released in Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series.
Joris De Laet was born in 1947. Belgian by birth, self-taught by definition, parametric music and art video composer by choice. Founder of the S.E.M. (Studio voor Experimentele Muziek) in Antwerp, 1973. Internships at the IPEM (Instituut voor Psychoakoestiek en Elektronische Muziek) in Ghent, 1972-1975, under Karel Goeyvaerts, Lucien Goethals, and Dr. Herman Sabbe. De Laet is the founder of the SEMensemble, a group of musicians-composers specialized in performing experimental music and live electronics. From 1975 until 1990, he gave concerts with this ensemble throughout Europe (Germany, France, The Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Croatia, etc.) and in Canada (Montreal, Kingston, Toronto). Inspired by the deep control on electronic sonics, De Laet has been defining his work since 1979 as "Parametric Music", music where composition is based on transformation flows of one or several parameters, selected by the composer, that form, through their converging (or diverging) processes the main characteristics of the regulated sonics of the composition.
19,00€
Out of stock
7" single
Steve RODEN
“O.T.R. and U.T.R.”
Limited edition of 150 copies (of which only 100 are for sale) with unique hand made collages on every cover
In Steve Roden's onw words: "a few years ago, my mother gave me a small stack of 45s of some of her favorite songs as a kid; chuck berry, the platters, and others. when i began to listen to the records, i was not only excited about the music, but the surface-scuffs from my mother¹s repeated listening over the years of wear and tear.
the source for u.t.r. and o.t.r. is a recording of 'somewhere over the rainbow' by the dimensions.
What you are hearing are the processed sounds of the surface noise at the beginning and end of the record - the first and last notes of the song.
the experience of listening to a vinyl record is not only a durational experience, but a physical experience. when the needle is dropped upon the record at the beginning and picking it up at the end, it is a kind of performance.
in this piece, i wanted to explore the unintentional sounds - to emphasize the 'before-song' and the 'after-song'.
In the final seconds of listening to a 45, when the needle becomes trapped in the repetitive rhythm that is born of a locked groove, these clicks become a process of disintegration. the constant clicks offer a kind of lullaby like the aging process of a human being¹s body and skin as it changes. every time a piece of vinyl is played, new wrinkles, scars, scratches, scrapes, chips, and detritus are created and so here, i wanted to highlight the unintentional soundings caused by handling, to move away from the perfect veneer. The more a record is handled, the more the music is transformed to an entirely different atmosphere - where disturbances and interruptions can overwhelm a song. Listening to the sound of a needle trapped within the final groove of one of my mother's records, i think i must be hearing the exact thing she heard while listening to the same object possibly 10 years before i was born. as the record continues to offer the clicks and nothing else, i imagine my mother falling asleep to one of her favorite songs. there, in her darkened bedroom, she sleeps to the after-sound of the needle stuck in a groove.
As she sleeps, her ears absorb the minimalist rhythmic click, like a lullaby - and as the needle endlessly circles the outer realm of the record label clicking until morning..."
25,00€
In stock
LP
Philip SAMARTZIS + Eugene UGHETTI
“Array”
Array expresses the experience of a remote Antarctic research station through the convergence of sound, site and performance. The result is an immersive and affective experience of the spaces, protocols and conditions comprising the bracing polar environment. Array is a companion piece to Polar Force, a performance-installation work by Philip Samartzis and Eugene Ughetti, presented by Speak Percussion.
Array features recordings of radar and scientific instrumentation used for upper atmospheric research and terrestrial communication. These sounds reveal the sophisticated technology and architecture used and heard within the Australian Antarctic Territory. Many of the recordings focus on the way the built environment is transformed through stress and fatigue caused by extreme climate and weather events including freezing temperatures and high velocity winds.
Together with the field recordings are layers of live performance using custom built instrumentation to produce a unique series of textures, rhythmic cycles, resonances and timbral phenomena. The application of tension and pressure upon the assorted instruments recalls the distressed state of highly specialised infrastructure found within the perimeters of a research station.
A polar research station comprises many types and volumes of prefabricated space. In dialogue with this are the unique spaces used to record the instrumental performance. By merging different spaces Array brings into focus various industrial resonances, spatial characteristics, timbres of metal and concrete, and sonic artefacts produced by hard and permeable materials and surfaces.
In three parts, Array presents Antarctica as a liminal space oscillating between representation and abstraction to challenge often repeated tropes. The intent is to blur the relationship between the recorded and performed to produce a hyper-realistic encounter of the powerful forces that operate at the margins of our planet. One hears the precariousness of a remote research station contorted by unrelenting stress, compressed air forced through waterborne fipples and the volatility of weather events.
Life on remote research stations is progressively resembling the broader contemporary experience, in which strict protocols are used to govern and preserve life. The resilient communities who live and work in these places have learnt how to co-exist with an increasingly hostile environment, along with its unknowns and necessity for hyper-vigilance. Rather than consider it as a place on the edge of elsewhere, Antarctica and its assemblage of durable, super modern colonies provides an archetype for an uncertain future in anticipation of the volatility that awaits.
24,00€
In stock
LP
HEXA
“Material Interstices”
‘Material Interstices’ is another collaboration between Room40 label head Lawrence English and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart, known collectively as HEXA. The ominous, nightmarish soundscapes of dark ambient drones and industrial music the pair create apparently came from English detailing a recurring dream he had of a maze underneath his house. (Norman Records)
***
A note from Lawrence English
When I was child I had two recurring dreams. Both these dreams were tethered to the house I lived in. It was a rambling home which was high set but underneath it was largely unfinished. The underside of the house was a labyrinth of small rooms, concrete pits and a collection of building materials, piping and leftover furniture sat alongside beds of dirt that had a consistency of lunar dust.
The first recurring dream was of a burning bird, falling from the sky past the kitchen window in the early hours of the morning. The bird I’m pretty sure was some devolved version of a tabernacle candle, that shape of the twisted eternal flame often symbolised with twitching wings. This dream has never returned to me as an adult, though I can vividly recount it.
The second dream has recently emerged, albeit a distant hazy reference to the tangible intensity that I experienced when I was younger. This dream was one buried deep within the labyrinthian, unfinished features that existed under my house. The dream usually started with me playing on the lunar dirt and gradually a sound would emerge from a large concrete pit that was in the centre of the space. The sound would get louder and eventually I would have to go and inspect it. It called me in, there’s no other way to describe it. As I looked into the pit, there was always some kind of hatch, often resembling a pressure door, the type you might see in a Submarine film, and the sound would emanate from underneath that hatch. It was also a throbbing, hammering type of sound, deeply diminished and buried, like hearing bass music from a car parked up the block.
Inevitably, I would twist open the hatch and inside it was a mechanical world that today brings to mind the interior psyche of Tetsuo The Iron Man. It was dark, almost entirely duotone, shaded in heavy grey and black, and wet with a thick, humid, oil like moisture. As I climbed into the hatch and down the ladder (there was always a ladder too) the pressure of the sound increased and it was as if my whole body was being consumed by this monolithic subterranean machine. I never got to understand what the machine did, or if in fact it was a machine at all, the system was never revealed, but what I was made to feel was that there was something beyond my usual understanding that forged away night and day and was infinitely more powerful and commanding than I ever could comprehend.
I was surprised that, over the past year, this dream has returned to me. Perhaps it’s a result of the general quietening of the world and that innate way our ears can open up to even the most subtle acoustic shifts when we are sleeping. Remote sounds, usually hidden in the din of the urban nightscape, were filtering into my dreams and triggering some kind of speculative consciousness. This post-hypnogogic state ushered in a return to that imagined place from my childhood dreams, but simultaneously I was never allowed full access to that place, rather it felt more reserved. I could not enter it in the same way, even if the hatch was there, I was not the same mind and could not unlock it in the same way.
Last year, I mentioned this dream to Jamie, and he too reported unsteady sleep patterns. This got us to thinking about how the dynamics of the world have recently shifted towards the emergence of the natural world. Equally though it has shifted in favour of its shadow; those ongoing industrial, mechanical and other acoustic by-products of human (and unhuman) labour reach out from the hushed ambient noise floor. What is usually soaked up in the everyday (sub)urbanscape has been exhumed and in these particular moments it haunts us from a distance, an exterior force that unlocks interior uncertainties. This music is transposed of this experience and is written for those moments were consciousness is arguably speculative.
Written and produced by Lawrence English and Jamie Stewart
Mixed at Negative Space 2020-2021
22,00€
In stock
LP
Marina ROSENFELD
“Teenage Lontano”
Teenage Lontano and roygbiv&b, from 2008 and 2011 respectively, comprise two key works by composer and artist Marina Rosenfeld. Both works are choral compositions imagined for and enacted by teenagers.
Premiered in New York’s immense Park Avenue Armory, Teenage Lontano is Rosenfeld’s groundbreaking "cover version" of Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s 1960s classic for orchestra. Teenage Lontano is reimagined as an immersive sound environment bisected by a column of teenagers in headphones. Beneath a loudspeaker rotating at the phonographic speed of 33 1/3 rpm, the teens' collective voices produce a hauntingly vulnerable account of Ligeti’s dissonant polychords. Teenage Lontano has been performed on three continents, including a French premiere in 2020 as part of Musica Strasbourg.
In roygbiv&b, asynchronous, sometimes raucous incantations of song fragments swell and dissipate, loosely organized around a purposeful mis-hearing of the acronym ROYGBIV: in Rosenfeld’s version, “r” evokes ‘are' (as in, "Are you that somebody...”);, o is 'oh' (“Oh, oh, oh…”); y becomes 'why' (“Why should my heart...); g is 'je (sus)', and so on. The extra 'b' in the work’s title pays homage to the ‘blue(s)’ of r&b.
Rosenfeld’s punning, spectral composition had its debut performance at the Museum of Modern Art in 2011. The recording featured on this edition took place at the South London Gallery in 2014 realised by local south Londoners, the recording highlighting their style and genre affiliations. Both works have remained unpublished until now.
Side A
Teenage Lontano, 2008
Recorded on March 8, 2008 at the Park Avenue Armory by Arup Acoustics for the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Special thanks to Art Production Fund, Bob Bielecki, Raj Patel and all of the NYC performers
Side B
roygbiv&b (Version for South London), 2014
Recorded on June 11, 2014 at South London Gallery, London by Mick Ritchie. Special thanks to Simon Parris, Avid Williams and the talented vocal stylists of Peckham and Brooklyn
Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space
22,00€
In stock
LP
MERZBOW
“Flare Blues”
Flare Blues reimagines two of Merzbow’s long out of print EPs from 1994, Flare Gun and White Blues. Revisiting the original pieces and adding previously unreleased materials recorded during these sessions, Flare Blues tethers together a set of Merzbow’s most exploratory work, creating a visceral linkage between a pair of vital works.
Originally recorded in June 1994, Merzbow's Flare Gun is a pulsating and hammering collection of pieces that grinds ever forward with a sense of bludgeoning determination. By contrast, White Blues recorded the following month (which draws its title from several of the samples used as raw material that originate from blues inspired British rock bands), maintains a more unsteady sense of movement and musicality, matching degraded samples against a flurry of theremin and electronics which are overdriven and saturated in ways that would later go on to become some of the trademark sonic actions of Merzbow's live performances.
On Flare Blues not only are the pieces remastered by Merzbow, but they are recontextualised and when heard together with the previously unreleased bonus materials open up a new sense of his studio experimentation at the time.
What marks these recordings as critical is they trace a line through a period of significant discovery and refinement for Merzbow. Having been recorded just months after Venereology, this set of works bares the marks of Merzbow’s deepening awareness of extreme forms of distortion, compression and also his dynamic mixing approaches that simultaneously allow multiple or singular elements to occupy the entirety of the available sound spectrum.
Ultimately, these works are morphic, often churning and erupting with a magma like quality. When they do fall into waves of pulse, those patterns are never held long and the intense sense of cutting into the sound creates a feeling of endless anticipation as Merzbow guides you through an ever-evolving sound world that is uncompromisingly restless and relentless.
All Music by Masami Akita
Recorded & Mixed at ZSF Produkt, Tokyo June-July 1994
Remastered at Munemihouse Feb-March 2021
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Beatriz FERREYRA
“Canto+”
From Lawrence English
I’m not really sure when I first heard Beatriz Ferreyra’s music. My best guess would be in the early to mid 2000s when I was working alongside the curatorial team at Liquid Architecture. Given the focus of the festival at that time, GRM and musique concrète more generally was very much a point of focus.
That said, it wasn’t until this decade that her work was sharply in focus for me (and I am guessing a great many others). In 2017, I had the great pleasure to meet Beatriz in Braga, where we both were performing as part of the excellent Semibreve Festival. Subsequent to that I invited her to perform in Australia and we also had the pleasure to send time together this year in Rio during the Novas Frequencies Festival. Across these meetings, I have come to realise the incredible focus, generosity and vision that Beatriz has maintained across her life in sound.
Beatriz Ferreyra is one of only a few female concrète composers who were active across the second half of the 20th century through to today. Her work, which is still very much an active investigation, is simultaneously complex and elegantly simple. Often drawing upon singular object of focus, Ferreyra’s use of tape and other forms of manipulation radically reconfigure her chosen sound materials, opening them outward.
Canto+, collects works from almost 40 years of her life in music and pays homage to her unerring interests in dynamism, rhythm, voice and the morphic potentials of concrète materials. Two of the works are also dedication to close friends; Jingle Bayle’s (to François Bayle) and Au revoir l’Ami (to Bernard Bashet). This edition picks up where Echos+ leaves off and opens her sound worlds even further.
22,00€
In stock
LP
Mike COOPER
“Playing With Water”
From Mike Cooper
Playing With Water is a novel written by James Hamilton-Paterson. I was introduced to his writing by the Australian poet Peter Bakowski who gave me a copy of his book ‘Seven Tenths - The Sea And Its Thresholds’; a book that influenced my record Globe Notes and subsequent works immensely. Another of his books ‘Playing With Water: Passion And Solitude On A Philippine Island’ is about exactly what the title describes it as and provided me with the title.
The first edition on my Hipshot c.d.r label in 1999 was titled Kiribati and was dedicated to the people of that Pacific Island nation as I shared their concern, then as now, with the fact of rising sea levels due to global warming which threatens to destroy or make uninhabitable their low lying island homes. That album was the start of a long musical and artistic journey for me.
In the years that followed I have visited many places around the North and South Pacific, South East Asia and The Caribbean that are also in danger of being inundated as water levels rise, both coastal and inland, due to melting ice or weather patterns that change drastically bringing untypical amounts of rainfall.
Cities such as Venice, Bangkok, Jakarta, London, Manhattan or any coastal, or near a major river, city will be subject to serious flooding and subsidence and may well become uninhabitable in the same way in the very near future.
Bangkok was previously known as ‘The Venice Of South East Asia’ and its now roads were once canals. I have been in that city during the monsoon season and seen water coming up through the floor of shops and houses exiting to the street through the door. Jakarta is currently sinking at such an alarming rate that the Indonesian Government is building a new capital city in Kalimantan (Borneo)
Several of my albums subsequent to Kiribati - Globe Notes, Rayon Hula, Reluctant Swimmer/Virtual Surfer, Fratello Mare, Raft, Oceanic Feeling-Like (with Chris Abrahams) and now Playing With Water are all conceptually concerned with this same subject.
Another conceptual thread connecting them is my concern for the co-habitation of the human and non-human world expressed through my use of unprocessed avian or insect field recordings of song, signs and signals. Climate change, as well as the destruction by humans of the natural habitat of many species, is disturbing the balanced relationship we need to have with nature. Indigenous and small, often nomadic, coastal communities are very aware of this balance and the incursion of the industrial world into their way of life is having disastrous effects which will ( if not already ) have similar effects and repercussions on ours.
There are field recordings on this edition from Pulau Ubin, Ko Phayan, Ko Lanta, Sri Lanka, Bangkok, St.Lucia and Martinique; all places that can look forward to or are already witnessing the Postdiluvian Future.
We could quite possibly all be looking forward to an island existence in that future where all of our cities, or Wetropolis, will be floating worlds of Aquatecture and Aquaculture will provide all our food, powered by wind, solar or mechanical energy from the tides and the waves. Oceans cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface making it the worlds largest solar collector - Seven Tenths
In 1957 the Rio Turia that ran through the city flooded to such an extent, killing 60 people, that it was diverted to the south and what was the riverbed turned into a park which runs through the centre and surrounds the old part of the city. Within a few weeks after finishing recording this collection in my studio in Valencia the city experienced the biggest storm recorded in over a hundred years. Within a day the normally 135 metre wide, several kilometres long, Malvarrosa beach and the 10 metre paseo and road beyond it was completely flooded, as were the restaurants lining it. After cleaning and repairs some weeks later they re-opened only to be closed again two weeks after by the pandemic and subsequent lockdown in which I am now writing this.
My guitar playing here, as always, draws on a number of styles and genres influenced by Hawaiian Slack Key and Lap Steel guitar.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Akio SUZUKI
“Zeitstudie”
Referring to "Study Time", Zeitstudie presents two works each for two instruments developed by sound artist Akio Suzuki and recorded in Germany in 1984: the ANALAPOS, an echo instrument used to project the performer's voice across a coil spring; and the "De Koolmees" glass harmonica, 5 glass tubes in a metal frame that are struck or rubbed to create unique sounds.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Joe COLLEY
“Deformation Of Tone”
Joe Colley’s skeleton key is an intra-dimensional sense of humor. It exists in a place between and beyond dry, deadpan, and defeatist, and is not actually funny. He has a knack for unlocking the essence of the absurdly uncomplicated, elevating it to a place of near-iconic significance and leaving it there. Hovering in a void. Or mashed in the jowl of an insect getting doused with regurgitated chyme and rumen bacteria. Consistent with his past efforts, Deformation Of Tone contains no sturm und drang or exhausting drama. This spectacle-free album delivers abrasive-adjacent electronic judders cloaked in a feeling of intimacy distilled from primordial ooze. Opening voices dissolve into Lucierian mosaic yammer, and plummet into a negative space populated by an unadorned clicking, that most elemental physical manifestation of audio phenomena, the antithesis of awareness and enlightenment and transcendence. Of sentience, even. A quintessential example of his streamlined, efficient hilarity. The episodes continue without pause, as if one is moving through an exhibition. Compared to Colley’s work, which he once described as “little noises arranged on a piece of plastic,” a lot of other noise seems hell-bent on shameless over-compensation. Embarrassingly so. His material has always been low-key, and Deformation Of Tone finds him shuffling in a colder, harsher, more desolate direction. The single-malt rasp of an unnamed conspiracy theorist / motivational speaker, present more for his intonation than anything else, punctuates this rather sculptural 33 minutes of machines whirring, devices beeping, blank-face rotary drones swelling and merging with unnaturally regimented hive rustlings and perfectly unpleasant high-gain squelch — all constructed with a master’s timing and sense of scale.
- Seymour Glass / Bananafish
21,00€
In stock
LP
Mark HARWOOD
“Offering”
Offering is Mark Harwood’s second LP and is an album of songs about geography and placement and the way people choose to move across the surface of our planet. His simple tools of acoustic guitar, voice, tapes and bric-a-brac give Mark the freedom and clarity of vision to offer hope in song to those who choose to hear him. Offering is more than we deserve in these lousy times – it is calm and it is forgiving, but it is also sharp and can cut. It is wise and all-inclusive but Offering is never blind and sees the world as truth, as if on a TV screen. Recorded in Berlin 2021 and mixed/edited in London by Graham Lambkin, Offering is only that, but it asks to be accepted.
Recorded in Berlin, Winter/Spring 2021
All music/words Mark Harwood
Mixed/edited by Graham Lambkin
Mastered by Bhob Rainey
Artwork by Graham Lambkin and Mark Harwood
25,00€
In stock
LP
Tim GOSS
“Afterfly”
Tim Goss (The Shadow Ring / Call Back The Giants) returns with his first outing under his birth name. Afterfly is a mature and compelling work that observes life as a set of repeating patterns, no matter the apparent differences everything has already happened. After one fly comes another and another and another ad infinitum.
You have the face of an old man, catch me if you can.
Afterfly serves as an initiation into a more thorough overview of Tim’s current practise followed with a book of recent illustrations to be released on Penultimate Press in 2022.
Edition of 300 copies. Comes with a booklet with a story to be read alongside Fly 4 (merely a rehash of the conquistadors, life forever repeating with no obvious improvement).
25,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
ETANT DONNES
“Bleu”
Following the first ever vinyl reissues of Aurore and Royaume, Aimant + Aimant – Penultimate Press is finally proud to make available the final part of this extraordinary trilogy.
Bleu is the final gesture and culmination of this period of creation where poésie and la nature form a magical alliance that resonates as an alchemical wedding. Having the conviction that Bleu was the ultimate arc based on the purity of natural sound and poetry, leaning towards a mystical spiritual search towards their own souls the band moved into commadere and collaboration with friends and ideals such as Lydia Lunch and Alan Vega.
33,00€
In stock
LP
Drew DANIEL – John WIESE
“Continuous Hole”
2018 release
Gilgongo Records is pleased to announce “Continuous Hole”, a collaborative album by Drew Daniel and John Wiese. The fruit of over ten years of home recordings in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Baltimore, “Continuous Hole” melds improvisation and musique concrète composition into a uniquely sweaty document of labor-intensive rhythm. A finger puzzle of reconciled opposites: lockstep structure and constant flux. Many of the tracks reflect the unique blending of the disparate backgrounds of its creators: on “Abhorred Shears”, “Sleek Disorder” and “Cosmic Joke” the relentlessly variable source material is relegated to precisely timed gated forms and patterns. Without using any sampling or MIDI sequencing, the rhythmic cuts evoke the tempo/BPM of footwork, juke or gabber, but they are constructed entirely from volcanic, gnarled abstraction, and eschew typical genre elements.
“Progress Bar” goes from frantic cuts to weightless slo-mo freefall and back to frenzy. Moving from mayhem to menace, “Surprise” concludes the album with ominous flutters of a pedal steel guitar and the sound of a dog’s toenails scraping a stone floor. In the final milliseconds of the song, the dog leaps for the listener’s throat. Raw yet precise, it’s a dynamic conclusion to an album of strong contrasts from two American artists discovering common ground in the joy of frenzied cutting. A prolific recording artist and visual artist with an extensive discography under his own name, and with grindcore stalwarts Sissy Spacek, John Wiese is currently based in Cleveland. One half of the electronic band Matmos and all of The Soft Pink Truth, Drew Daniel is based in Baltimore.
The album was mastered by Thomas Dimuzio. The cover photograph was shot by John Wiese in Drew Daniel’s office on the campus of Johns Hopkins University where Daniel is a Shakespeare professor. Videos for album tracks are slated from John Wiese, Max Eilbacher, M.C. Schmidt, and Ola Vasiljeva. Summer concerts in support of the album are currently being planned.
16,00€
In stock
LP
SISSY SPACEK
“Blear”
Widening their scope from recent grindcore on Nuclear War Now! Productions, Sissy Spacek’s Blear LP explores a much more dynamic and spacious approach to sound—an entropic vortex of full-room tear-up texture. Duo lineup of Charlie Mumma and John Wiese, released in an edition of 300. The group’s 8th release on Gilgongo Records. —Label Description
16,00€