Out of stock
LP
MERZBOW & VANITY PRODUCTIONS
“Coastal erosion”
On their riveting debut collaboration, Merzbow (Masami Akita) and Vanity Productions (Christian Stadsgaard) transmute worries about ecological disaster into a torrent of spirit-gnawing, experimental noise that surpasses the sum of its parts
Both hailing from places with a lot of coastline vulnerable to sea level rises, Masami Akita from Japan, and Stadsgaard in Denmark, ‘Coastal Erosion’ sees them grasp the nettle of impending doom with typically gauntleted grip and an unswerving intensity that speaks to clear and present concerns. While perhaps not the most obvious bedfellows for collaboration, the artists patently share an emphatic empathy for the situation that resonates through their music, where human forces of emotion intersect elemental chaos in a pair of poetically tempestuous, even harrowing works.
Merzbow’s visceral, primal roar sustains a perpetual force of attrition that constantly threatens to overwhelm VP’s widescreen, panoramic pads on both of the LP’s monolithic tracts. But it’s due to their democracy of vision that they speak as one, rather than over each other. In the A-side’s 18 minutes of ‘Erosion Japan’ they connote the frothing might of the Pacific tide encroaching and destroying towering walls of steel and glass with an arrestingly Ballardian quality to their instrumental description of violence and anguish. The B-side’s 17 minute ‘Erosion of Denmark’ follows with a more pensive arrangement of low-lying, unyielding drone frequencies smeared to stereo extremes and overlapped with spirit-penetrating shards of distortion, limning the prospective submergence of the Danish peninsula and its archipelagoes with a Thunbergian seriousness and intractable logic.
Taken as a profound warning or as an elegy for anthropocene extinction, ‘Coastal Erosion’ is a frighteningly powerful statement that leaves its message like the murky stain of flood waters inside the mind.
300 copies, clear vinyl.
20,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
Felicia ATKINSON
“The Flower And The Vessel”
Félicia Atkinson has frequently fixated on the elusive interwoven relationship between microcosms and macrocosms – how even the quietest creative act ripples outward in unforeseen ways, a whisper with no fixed meaning. Her latest work pursues this notion in a more literal and lasting fashion, as it was crafted while pregnant on tour, in impersonal hotel rooms in foreign cities. She describes it as “a record not about being pregnant but a record made with pregnancy.” Each day and night, finding herself far from home, she asked herself “What am I doing here? How can I connect myself to the world?” The answer gradually revealed itself: “With small gestures: recording my voice, recording birds, a simple melody.”
The album’s 11 songs span a vast pantheon of whispering textures, opaque moods, and surreal spoken word, leading the listener through a mirrored hall of beguiling mirages. Atkinson cites a trio of French classical compositions from her childhood as formative influences on this particular collection: Maurice Ravel’s “L’enfant et les sortilèges”, Debussy’s “La Mer” and Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédies”. There’s certainly a shade of classicism woven within these tracks, however veiled, abstracted, or unorthodox. Melancholic piano motifs repeat then retreat into a radiant frost of shivering frequencies; processed voices recite cut-up poems and interviews over delay-refracted Rhodes and Wurlitzer;
Although much of Atkinson’s past discography is shaped by speech and the lyricism of language, The Flower & The Vessel ventures farther into silence, absence, and voiceless wilderness. Here Atkinson’s synergy feels close to apotheosis, emotive but ambivalent, a ceremony of expectation and invisible forces. The 19-minute closing collaboration with SUNN O))) guitarist Stephen O’Malley, “Des Pierres,” is one of the album’s few pieces tracked in a proper studio (Music Unit in Montreuil, France) but it broods and burns with the same subliminal majesty as the rest of the album: an ember in amber, seeds planted in shifting sands. Atkinson’s voice flickers like a flame, framed by slabs of shadowy feedback. Her process may be personal is but its impact ripples to the edges of existence.
29,00€
In stock
LP
SINS FOR BEGINNERS
“Fireburn the Bloodlot”
‘Fireburn the Bloodlot’ commits crenellated walls of guitar noise by CM Von Hausswolff and Joachim Nordwall under their Sins For Beginners alias for avant-garde powerhouse, iDEAL
Mantled after a phrase Richard Kern graffitied on the bathroom wall of Hausswolff’s Lower East Side apartment in the late ‘80s, ‘Fireburn the Bloodlot’ dispatches a pair of unrelenting and incendiary exercises in amp worship and FX-mutilated electric guitars - which is perhaps not what one might expect from these masters of the oscillator.
Unflinchingly recorded by Linus Andersson (Goat, The Skull Defekts, The Leather Nun), the music surely warrants comparisons with Glenn Branca’s massed armies of strings, or Sunn 0))) at their crankiest, but it’s simply a swaggering swell of pure, white hot evil destined to get under the skin of fans of all kinds of extreme metal, drone and noise.
Original price was: 18,00€.10,00€Current price is: 10,00€.
In stock
LP
ZEITKRATZER
“performs songs from Kraftwerk 2 and Kraftwerk”
2nd volume of "modern composition supergroup" (The Wire) Zeitkratzer's re-interpretations of early compositions by electronic pioneers Kraftwerk.
In more than two decades Zeitkratzer has created an astonishing broad catalogue from the obligatory (20th century avant-garde composers like Cage or Stockhausen) to the unexpected (electronic artists such as Carsten Nicolai, Terre Thaemlitz or underground experimentalists like Throbbing Gristle and Keiji Haino) – but hardly anyone was prepared for the ensemble’s choice of early Kraftwerk pieces! When volume 1 was released in 2017, Zeitkratzer founder and director Reinhold Friedl announced that there'll be a volume 2 of course – and here it is : from the opening drony horns of "Harmonika" to the subtle guitar of the album closer "Wellenlänge", the 4 tracks own all the interpretatory and aesthetic acerbity the ensemble is known and praised for.
19,00€
In stock
LP
TO LIVE AND SHAVE IN L.A.
“Spatters of a Royal Sperm”
« Twenty-Four years ago back in 1994 the first To Live and Shave in L.A. CD 30-Minuten Männercreme was released. Jim Magas, the indie buyer at the local Ann Arbor Borders Books and Music convinced myself and pal Andrew W.K. to buy it...telling us that it's some of the most fucked up music we would ever hear. He wasn't wrong, it blew our teenage minds....we had NEVER heard ANYTHING that sounded like this...and it remains one of the most influential music releases of my life. It was and is one of the most psychedelic things I've ever heard. It was a maximalist blast of pause-button tape "loops", doubled up rock crooner vocals, noise guitar blasts (supplied by Harry Pussy's Bill Orcutt), recorded and mixed with mind scrambling hi-fi clarity, by Tom and long time Miami underground music beacon Frank Falestra aka Rat Bastard.
Before that monumental album was recorded, TLASILA's main man Tom Smith had recorded 4 songs to be released as a 7 inch back in 1992. The label, afraid of the new name wanted to release the record under Tom's previous moniker 'Peach Of Immortality'. This wouldn't do as it was a new beast all of it's own. Alas, the release was shelved... until now.
The Side A of this LP contains the complete unleaded 4 song 7 inch, recorded by Tom in his very first of many projects with longtime collaborator Rat Bastard. Tape loops of dollar bin garbage reworked into disorienting alien rock music with freak-pop hooks. I challenge you to find me another recording project as freaked out and unlike anything as this. Go for it! No hyperbole...This is the unheard blueprint recordings of one of the most creative projects in the history of underground music.
The B-side of this LP is unreleased dub experiments Tom was doing through the years 1977 - 1980 and available only on this vinyl, and not available with the digital download. » Aaron Dilloway, May 2019
250 copies
For Fans Of: Harry Pussy, Sonic Youth, early Severed Heads, TheHanatarashi, Aaron Dilloway, Evil Moisture, Tod Dockstader, J Dilla, Giorgio Moroder, Public Image Ltd, Pussy Galore, Death Mix-era Bambaataa, Doris Wishman, and Captain Beefheart.
18,00€
Out of stock
LP
CITY OF WOMEN
II
Jimi Tenor and a group of friends visited twice at Edward Vesala's unique home (Sound and Fury Studio) in Korkeakoski in southwest Finland. It was winter 1998.
Matti Knaapi and Jimi Tenor have been designing and building instruments since early 80s. They brought vanful of apparatus to Sound and Fury which already had a large collection of Vesala's exotic and self built instruments.
During the two rather extreme sessions 13 songs got finished. The first part was released in year 2000. Sadly Edward Vesala passed away before the first part City of Women I was released.
Now after 20 years of calming down we are ready to evoke the second part of the sessions.
City of Woman is Edward Vesala, drums, vocals, instruments - Jimi Tenor, flute, instruments - Iro Haarla, harp - Jimi Sumen, programming - Matti Knaapi, instrument design and construction
Original price was: 14,00€.9,00€Current price is: 9,00€.
Out of stock
LP
COMPILATION
“Albania, There Where the Avalanche Stops”
"For one week in every five years, two thousand singers, dancers and musicians along with fifty thousand spectators make their way to the small town of Gjirokastra in southern Albania for the Festivali Folkloric Kombelar. In the great castle overlooking the town, they participate in the incredible National Folk Festival of Albania, hoping to attain the highest level of interpretation and win one of the many awards available the festival… the banner, even.
Considering the comparatively small size of the country (just over three million inhabitants) the range of instruments, styles and costumes seen at the festival is exceptional, sustaining a folk tradition that dates back to ancient Illyria.
The works presented here in volume one are all live recordings made at the Gjirokastra Festival, taken from six of the 26 participating districts: Vlora, Gjirokastra and Lorca from the south, and Shkodra, Debra and Tropoja from the north (see map).
The original compact disc, released in 1990, was a collaboration between The Institute of Popular Culture, Tirana, The Albanian Shop Ltd. and Touch.
Edited from the original 1/4” tapes, mastered and produced by Touch"
15,00€
In stock
LP
EXTENDED ORGAN
“Vibe”
Important Records announces Vibe, the new LP from Extended Organ, the Los Angeles-based quintet associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Vibe, Extended Organ’s first full-length studio LP since 2000’s XOXO was recorded in April 2016 by members Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, and Alex Stevens. The album consists of two side-long tracks, Hate and Vibe, recorded live at LACM Studio in Pasadena, California by acclaimed engineer André Knecht. On Vibe, the band employs prepared piano, junk percussion, Joe Potts’ Chopped Optigan, electric guitar, voice, Rheem organ, various electronics, and homemade instruments. Each track is improvised, then assembled and edited without overdubbing in studio. The music moves with velocity and direction revealing surprises at every turn. The resulting sound is ominous, humorous, harmonious, chaotic and at times quietly erotic. This is abstractly powerful music. The highly provocative cover image, created collaboratively by Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, and Tom Recchion, is shrouded inside a unique laser-cut outer sleeve. Like the music contained within, the cover reveal is a beguiling experience in and of itself. This intriguing package was art directed and designed by Tom Recchion. Formed in 1994, Extended Organ produces a dynamic otherworldly ambience which can be simultaneously hilarious and frightening. Joe Potts lays down a carpet of sound using and his self-engineered drone instrument, the “Chopped Optigan,” over which Paul Mc-Carthy performs vocal and guitar improvisations channeled and processed by Alex Stevens. Alex also adds his own keyboard triggered synthesized sounds. Tom Recchion, renowned as an inventor of homemade instruments, a free improviser, and an accomplished composer of acoustic, electronic and tape music, performs an array of sounds folding lush beauty and horror sensibility into the matrix. Fredrik Nilsen plays an antique Rheem Mark 7 organ along with electronic sound and recordings created by Mike Kelley. Kelley was a member of the group from 2000 until his death in 2012 and continues to be a contributing member by virtue of sound recordings he provided before his death; “In case I can’t make a gig, I can still play.” The LAFMS formed in the early 1970s around a loosely knit group of like-minded musical improvising sound experimenters in eastern Los Angeles who discovered their mutual interest and banded together to design modes of self production and distribution of recordings and publications, helping to develop and propel the DIY movement. In the ensuing 45 years the LAFMS has gone on to create dozens of records and groups (including Doo-Dooettes, AIRWAY, Le Forte Four, Smegma, John Duncan and Extended Organ), hundreds of concerts, festivals in both US and Europe, a full-scale gallery retrospective and volumes of artwork, sculptures, homemade instruments, videos, recordings, and other ephemera.
Original price was: 24,00€.14,00€Current price is: 14,00€.
In stock
LP
Harry BERTOIA
“Experimental I / Mechanical I”
This LP is cut straight from the original master tapes maintaining a straight analog signal path. The CD version contains a bonus track called Long Sounds.
When Harry Bertoia's Sonambient label was resurrected, our intention was to tell the story of Bertoia's groundbreaking Sonambient work as revealed through his extensive collection of notes and recordings. When the first new LP was released in 2016 we were only in possession of 1/20th of the archive. Now, in 2019, we're excited to release the first LP of new material from the full archive and we present it to increase understanding of what Bertoia was doing in his sound-barn deep in the Pennsylvania woods.
The recordings contained on this LP were selected because of their relationship to Bertoia's body of recorded work. The titles are from from Bertoia's notes which Bertoia placed in each tape box, indicating date and describing briefly. Like his sculptures, Bertoia never titled his recordings but frequently referred to specific concepts he was pursuing. These are among the earliest known examples of Bertoia using terms which would become more common in the years to come: "experimental," "mechanical" and "long sounds."
25,00€
In stock
LP
RG ROUGH
“60”
A musical jigsaw made out of sounds from the 60s, ripped to shreds,reshaped, reassembled and coerced into fitting.
This long piece in 10 parts ( 60 to 69 ) takes you on a journey through a decade which may have existed long ago, in some strange parallel universe...
17,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
RAMLEH
“The Great Unlearning”
Ramleh return with The Great Unlearning: 4 rocking sides with downbeat electronic leanings making a complex and bold follow-up to 2015’s Circular Time.
« All the years combine; they melt into a dream...” I don't know where we may be up to now but I'm fifteen, it's September 1984 and I've taken an absurdly oversized packaged Ramleh tape into school and the kids are laughing because there is a track called Fistfuck and they are laughing harder and calling me mental when they have a 30 second blast of it on the walkman. Or maybe it's summer 2011 and I'm having an interesting conversation with a Broken Flag recording artist in a field in Oxfordshire but have to leave him as I've promised to be part of a performance of Cornelius Cardew's 'The Great Learning' in ten minutes.
On LP one, in the parallel dimension and the universe next door Hawkwind were even trippier and Throbbing Gristle were even darker than you remembered but sandwiched between them is insect terror music entitled “The Twitch” with a pointed lyric directed at the modern horrors of social media.
And then side three starts with a track that could have been taped off the John Peel show in, perhaps, 1979 and whose title I never knew but it turns out the title is “No Music For These Times”. LP two delves further into the chaos of the 21st century planet and a song like “Your Village Has Been Erased” is just as cheery as it sounds, and there is an even more shocking and distressing example of that insect terror music in “Religious Attack” and it was funny to see the full and very unfriendly titles of the tracks from the mysterious advance Italian remix 12".
Ramleh never ever give you what you think you want and as such they are one of the very few bands on the planet left in this state of true and always gorgeously sinister and malevolent independence. Quietly watching so many fucking chancers come and go, and it must feel good. The nearest thing to the classic downer psych Ramleh sound is the beautiful elegiac closing track “Natural Causes”, yet the personal lyrics somehow contradict the state of the globe address that precedes them.
Gary Mundy, Anthony Di Franco, Stuart Dennison, Philip Best, Martyn Watts and Sarah Fröelich. The Ramleh Family in full effect. If you're going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy. All the years combine; they melt into a dream. »
Simon Morris, Blackpool, UK, February 2019.
500 copies.
30,00€
In stock
LP
AAMM
“A” Trio & AMM
"Back in August of 2015, the legendary London Grand Seigneurs of improve pioneers, AMM (John Tilbury & Eddie Prevost) joined forces with Lebanese electro-acoustic-free-jazz outfit A-Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin). Two generations of improvisers with a very differing approach to work, captured dancing slowly along a very thin line of fine tuned, both, clear and crackling improvised sounds. Harsh at times with magic mellow moments of intense, fragile, broken noises. No overdubs, no use of electronics. UnJazz at times. One time pressing. Packaged in fine art pantone-printed jacket, designed by Mazen Kerbaj.
LP Side A
Unholy Elisabeth (Part 1)
LP Side B
Unholy Elisabeth (Part 2)
All music improvised by Mazen Kerbaj/Eddie Prevost/Sharif Sehnaoui/John Tilbury/Raed Yassin.
Recorded by Andreas Pysiewicz at St. Elisabeth Kirche, Berlin on August 27th, 2015 in the context of Daad’s Mikromusik Festival.
Mixed by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork Studios, Beirut , mastered by Peter Körfer @ Ivory Tower.
Artwork & Design by Mazen Kerbaj.
Produced in Lebanon by Al Maslakh & Unrock with kind support by DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program."
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Sir Richard BISHOP & David OLIPHANT w/ KARKHANA & Nadah EL SHAZLY
“Carte Blanche”
"It took more than just some time and imagination to believe that Carte Blanche, this piece of astonishing contemporary music by some of the most talented and able musicians of the international avant-circuit, could be realized. Karkhana, a highly explosive mostly Middle Eastern/Mediterranean ensemble (Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush, Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs Of East Agouza), Sharif Sehnaoui (“A”Trio), Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Jaap Blonk, Vandermark, etc.) Mazen Kerbaj (“A”Trio), Maurice Louca (Dwarfs Of East Agouza), Tony Elieh, Umut Caglar (Konstrukt)) is weaving a tapestry of sound for Egyptian songstress Nadah El Shazly’s voice to slide deep into. On the other side, two Grand Seigneurs of underground, Ex-Sun City Girls & Rangda guitar whirlwind Richard Bishop and W. David Oliphant (Maybe Mental) play it loud. Far Eastern Post Industrial. Very heavy, sharp and crystal clear. Ripe.
“Carte Blanche” will be released as a one-time pressing on 140g. black vinyl. Wrapped into an extra heavy deluxe cover and a printed cardboard insert."
21,00€
In stock
LP
Ariel KALMA
“Nuits Blanches au Studio 116”
Unreleased Rarities from Ariel Kalma’s personal archives recorded in the legendary GRM’s Studio 116 during the 70’s.
Born and raised in Paris, Ariel Kalma started playing the recorder and saxophone as a youth. After successive studies of Computer Science, Music and Art in Paris he performed in various concerts from middle-age music to free jazz duo. Ariel toured the world, then performed and recorded with several bands.
After learning circular breathing on soprano sax, Ariel could include those endless notes into his own long-delay-effect system, dual Revox set-up (two tape machines “chained” together to form a long delay system).
In France during the mid-1970s, Kalma was staffed as à recording assistant at legendary Groupe de Recherches Musicales (INA GRM) studios, where Ariel recorded some of his compositions in the Studio 116 ; the same music concrète laboratory that spawned masterpieces by members Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani…
22,50€
Out of stock
LP
Pierre BASTIEN
“Tinkle Twang ’n Tootle”
Pierre Bastien orchestrates his meccano marionettes on Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle to form the charming imaginative ensemble that’s he’s been known for since the late 80s.
Equal parts composer, inventor, mechanic, and performer - Bastien translates his imagination into instruments and compositions that defy any musical categories. Whether it’s preparing instruments like playing a trumpet underwater or through a kazoo, using belt-driven motors and mechanical components to perform cumbersome yet surprisingly musical operations on traditional instruments and household items, or using a fan to hit the strings of a kundi harp with flowing paper - Bastien’s love for tone, rhythm, noise and harmony is poetically reflected across his quite extensive oeuvre.
Playful and melancholic, the sound sculptures that Bastien invents and plays with are partly inspired by the work of Raymond Roussel, a visionary French author who in the first few decades of the twentieth century wrote a unique form of literature which inspired and guided artists from the surrealist and pataphysical movement and was declared by Michel Foucault as one of structuralism’s founding fathers. On that note, the influence of literature and syntax on Bastien’s work cuts all the way through to the palindromes he uses for his track titles - which, much like his machines, infinitely loop.
True to its adorable title, Tinkle Twang ‘n Tootle is a music box of unfolding whimsical structures, half broken rhythms, detuned harmonies, and fantastical sound collages that evoke a childlike sense of wonder and an urge to explore the spaces in between the sounds.
16,50€
In stock
LP
Eddie PRÉVOST
“Matching Mix”
Solo percussion pieces recorded in a single day around Matching Tye, Essex, October 2018.
“In October 2018 we took several recordings in and around Eddie Prévost’s home village of Matching Tye in Essex, where he has been living for the past fifty years. The majority of the pieces that made it to this LP took place in All Saints Church, High Laver, the burial site of John Locke. This fact was notable in the choice of title for this set of recordings, and it seemed necessary to put forward Eddie’s own take on Locke that he offered in our correspondences:
“Scholars of Locke’s philosophy will be familiar with the idea of mixing labour with materials as a fore-running notion of possessive individualism and basis for private property. Such ‘mixing’ is a persuasive description of a creative act. But the theory is more worthy of a social dimension.” As for the individual titles for each of the studies on the LP, each takes ideas and elements from music past. For example, MaxPlus makes a nod towards bebop pioneering drummer Max Roach who offered an earlier hit-hat study. Eddie utilises such examples, offering further creative insights which can then be woven back into the common wealth of sound. The final track, returning to the bowed cymbal method of the first, was recorded outdoors on a breezy green, and is pictured on the back cover of the sleeve. It was an attempt to capture the playing in its ‘metamusical’ relationship with the untempered sounds of the external environment.
Eddie has written about Metamusic in his book The First Concert (Copula, 2011): invoking childlike ‘protomusical’ behaviour, or the sense of music that a person might possess before the inevitable influences come to play any role in their productive, and appreciative, musical development.
Ross Lambert provided a few words along side his cover drawing entitled ‘The Metamusician’: “The eyes would symbolise for me things like searching, examining, closeness or friendship I think; engagement with the world. Decisions in making the image were completely intuitive, this is just me looking for the meaning, post-analysing, post rationalising.”” - Daniel Kordik & Edward Lucas, March 2019
Original price was: 17,50€.12,00€Current price is: 12,00€.
In stock
LP
ACHWGHÂ NEY WODEI
s/t
"Achwghâ Ney Wodei was a quartet of François Boitière (drums, keyboards, vocals), Didier ‘Higgins’ Copp (bass, percussion, vocals), Eric ‘Riton’ Sterenfield (guitar, keyboards, percussion, vocals) and Phillippe ‘Wodi’ Royer (percussion, trumpet, bass, vocals). They released a cassette for the French label V.I.S.A. and later, in 1987, a triple 12" for New International Records, a short-lived by Simon Crab, of Bourbonese Qualk (maybe that should serve as an explanation?). That was the last sign life of his band. This LP is a re-issue of those first cassettes, then housed in a cult plaster Citroën DS model, and now the LP in a handmade cover. I didn't hear this cassette back then, nor did I hear the triple 12"; it probably was over my budget back then. The band called their music 'Razz!', by which we are to understand it is influenced by "Jacques Tati, Blurt, Neu!, Les Frères Jacques, Captain Beefheart, Tex Avery soundtracks, French working class Chanson and music hall, Razz! is an unpredictable sound mass, a comedic blend of oddworldly jazz-funk, repetitive motives, binary syncopated rhythms and narrative voices"; it somehow sounds very French to me. The invention of a music genre reminded me of the invention of a language with Magma, the music not unlike that of Un Department or D.D.A.A., but also with the roots in rock in opposition, Univers Zero. It has humour (which may be lost in translation), strange sounds, weird melodies, odd interjections and surreal notions. Yet the music has sounded like something from the mid-'80s, owing to the world of post-punk and faux-funk, with its rough production techniques and almost danceable rhythms. It is altogether, all nineteen tracks quite a wild ride, but a lovely one. The energy level is kept up with all these short pieces, mood changes, alterations in tempo and lots of funny, captivating and strange voices. A great record and a most welcome re-issue, simply because it seems so out of the ordinary, compared to many other re-issues." (Vital Weekly)
20,00€
Out of stock
LP singled side
Michèle BOKANOWSKI
“La plage”
Remained unpublished until today, this composition is made as soundtrack for the short film "La Plage" (1992) created by the experimental filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski (husband of Michèle Bokanowski).
"La Plage" is probably the less "concrete" composition made by Michèle Bokanowski. It is pure liquid abstraction in sounds. It is one of those rare compositions really out of time and space.
As expressed by Pip Chodorov, editor of 4 DVDs that contain all the films directed by Patrick Bokanowski, we can feel the works created by Michèle Bokanowski and Patrick Bokanowski are a sort of "spiritual search for the overrunning of perception, and thereby oneself. Searches into abstraction in the real, mysterious blanks that recover the daily".
Limited edition of 300 copies. Unconventional 4 different cover artwork (75 copies each) on embossed cardboard (2 colours version : Lavanda and Tabacco), one credit sheet inside. All on high quality recycled paper.
16,00€
Out of stock
LP
Oren AMBARCHI
“Simian Angel”
Oren Ambarchi - guitars & whatnot
Cyro Baptista - percussion & voice
After a trilogy of spectacular explorations of relentlessly driving rhythms – Sagittarian Domain (2012), Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016) – Simian Angel finds Oren Ambarchi renewing his focus on his singular approach to the electric guitar, returning in part to the spacious canvases of classic releases like Grapes from the Estate while also following his muse down previously unexplored byways.
Reflecting Ambarchi’s profound love of Brazilian music – an aspect of his omnivorous musical appetite not immediately apparent in his own work until now – Simian Angel features the remarkable percussive talents of the legendary Cyro Baptista, a key part of the Downtown scene who has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn and Derek Bailey to Robert Palmer and Herbie Hancock. Like the music of Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira, Simian Angel places Baptista’s dexterous and rhythmically nuanced handling of traditional Brazilian percussion instruments into an unexpected musical context. On the first side, ‘Palm Sugar Candy’, Baptista’s spare and halting rhythms wind their way through a landscape of gliding electronic tones, gently rising up and momentarily subsiding until the piece’s final minutes leave Ambarchi’s guitar unaccompanied. While the rich, swirling harmonics of Ambarchi’s guitar performance are familiar to listeners from his previous recordings, the subtly wavering, synthetic guitar tone we hear is quite new, coming across at times like an abstracted, splayed-out take on the 80s guitar-synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell. Equally new is the harmonic complexity of Ambarchi’s playing, which leaves behind the minimalist simplicity of much of his previous work for a constantly-shifting play between lush consonance and uneasy dissonance.
Beginning with a beautiful passage of unaccompanied percussion dominated by the berimbau, the side-long title piece carries on the first side’s exploration of subtle, non-linear dynamic arcs, taking the form of a gently episodic suite, in which distinctive moments, like a lyrical passage of guitar-triggered piano, unexpectedly arise from intervals of drifting tones like dream images suddenly cohering. In the piece’s second half, the piano tones becomes increasingly more clipped and synthetic, scattering themselves into aleatoric melodies that call to mind an imaginary collaboration between Albert Marcoeur and David Behrman, grounded all the while by the pulse of Baptista’s percussion. Subtle yet complex, fleeting yet emotionally affecting, Simian Angel is an essential chapter in Ambarchi’s restlessly exploratory oeuvre.
Recorded by Randall Dunn, Joerg Hiller, Iuri Oriente and Oren Ambarchi.
Edited by Joerg Hiller and Oren Ambarchi at Choose Studios, Berlin.
Mixed by Joe Talia and Oren Ambarchi at Good Mixture, Tokyo.
Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin.
Executive Producers: Konrad Sprenger & Dick Wolf.
Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis.
Design by Lasse Marhaug.
17,00€
Out of stock
LP
Lee RANALDO / Jim JARMUSH / Marc URSELLI / Balázs PÁNDI
New York based producer Marc Urselli had the idea to bring people together who had never met before and let that meeting of minds create beautiful soundscapes. Film director and musician Jim Jarmusch, Sonic Youth co-founder and guitarist Lee Ranaldo shared space with versatile drummer Balázs Pándi for a night session at Urselli's EastSide Sound studio in downtown NY.
These are the unfiltered results. Absorbing instrumental patterns of cinematic sounds and improvised rhythms. No overdubs, no editing. All was recorded live and analog, produced and mixed by Marc Urselli. The front/back coverfotos were taken by photographer William Semeraro in Norway. That is why Marc Urselli gave all the songs titles inspired by Norwegian mythology.
20,00€
Out of stock
LP
Leif ELGGREN
“Motor For An Unknown Vehicle (Opening Of The Grave)”
"Motor" is the second part in a trilogy, preceded by "Das Baank" (Fragment Factory/Rekem Records) in 2016. The Motor started a long time ago with small basic fragments used for different steps (phases) like installations and performances. Those fragments were put together over the years into a longer piece presented on this LP. Motor is now a 32 minutes long continuous piece of sounding matter. Autonomous and free in itself. Like an homunculus it can now leave its birthplace and head for the future, for something else. The initiative (the basic source) was taken already in April 1949, as an inevitable starting point.
Leif Elggren is a Swedish artist who lives and works in Stockholm. Active since the late 1970s, he is a writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer. He has many sound-works to his credit, both solo and with the Sons of God (with Kent Tankred), on labels such as Ash International, Touch, Radium and Firework Edition Records (which he co-runs with Kent Tankred). His music usually presents carefully selected sound sources over a long stretch of time and can range from quiet electronics to harsh noise. His wide-ranging and prolific body of art often involves dreams and subtle absurdities, social hierarchies turned upside-down, hidden actions and events taking on the quality of icons.
Together with artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff, he is a founder of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV) where he enjoys the title of king.
Edition of 300 copies on black vinyl, incl. signed and numbered insert.
19,50€
Out of stock
LP
Alessandra ERAMO
“Tracing South”
Alessandra Eramo, voice, electronics, field recordings, theremin, harmonica.
Alessandra Eramo’s new solo album Tracing South is a sonic enchantment through the use of extended vocal techniques, analog electronics and her hypnotic field recording of bagpipe (zampogna) during the Carnival rites in Southern Italy.
She shapes mouth noises, breath, whispers, her invented languages, fragmented words, the sound of old tape recorders, handmade theremin and synth, and she creates a sound poetry composition that seems to evolve into a shamanic trance music. Polyphonic singing, repetition, dissonance and overtones are tearing the listener out of the comfort zone.
Tracing South is centered on the last three years of her artistic research and concerts in Europe, the Mediterranean region and Chile. Reflecting on the Mediterranean Sea as a human and spiritual dimension, as a crossroad for cultural exchanges and passages of all sorts, but now also as a vast and silent migrant cemetery, Eramo’s work oscillates between the caress of tender melodies and the brutal energy of noise eruptions.
She says ”Like the sound of the sea, repetitive, always different and in constant moving, I’m interested to explore the concepts of Global South and Instability, by tracing a South as a non-geographical condition, an imaginary sonic cosmos, which is open, crude and undefined, giving space to conscious freedom of the listener.”
Alessandra Eramo is best known for her extraordinary and unconventional vocal performance art, with a prolific concert activity in the context of contemporary music, and also having a career as artist with the production of audiovisual works, drawings and installations.
Original price was: 20,00€.10,00€Current price is: 10,00€.
Out of stock
LP
SPILL
“Stereo”
Stereo is the latest studio recording by Berlin based duo of Tony Buck, percussion and Magda Mayas, piano.
Conceived as rendering of a live concept the two have been developing over the last year or so, featuring multi-speaker and multi-layered audio, the essence of Stereo sees Spill performing in the studio, improvising and reacting to previously recorded improvisations and pre-structured, pre-recorded elements.
The result creates a music with a sense of space and depth and an internal logic not often heard in the realm of improvised music.
Featuring sonorous harmonies and spacial percussive interactions, it opens up new territories for the duo, expanding on their well established, almost telepathic improvisations.
Sounds move from the fore to the background, sweeping across the stereo image in a teeming world of action and reaction, interwoven timbres and fluid resonance. Phrases pass between the musicians seamlessly, moving forward and back in a seemingly three-dimensional conversation, creating a sense of a new and colourful, ambient sound world.
Recorded and conceived especially for an LP release, the two 20 minute pieces, Sway and Magnetic Island, offer contrasting takes on this sense of spacial and gestural give and take Spill have been developing over the last 15 years.
20,50€
Out of stock
LP
Jacques THOLLOT
“Quand le son devient aigu, jeter la girafe à la mer”
Label notes:
"While he was still just a young adolescent who had perfected his drum technique under the benevolent wing of Kenny Clarke, the Club Saint-Germain liked to present Jacques Thollot as a prodigy capable of holding his own with the famous jazz musicians who came through Paris. It was there that Eric Dolphy immediately noticed him, and from René Thomas to Walt Dickerson, everyone wanted to work with him. However, it was during the 1960s, first with Jef Gilson then François Tusques, Barney Wilen, Joachim Kühn and Steve Lacy, that the decisive encounters occurred. Without forgetting that he joined, in 1968, one of Don Cherry’s groups, went on tour with them and came back transformed. That being said, to present Jacques Thollot as an in-demand virtuoso who could adapt to any circumstances would be to ignore both his demanding compositions and his complete freedom from stylistic boundaries. To prove the point, and although he had already featured on some cult albums (Our Meanings And Our Feelings by Michel Portal, Monkey-Pockie-Boo by Sonny Sharrock), the first album under his own name, recorded in 1971 for producer Gérard Terronès, who gave him free rein, would turn out to be an unexpected, unclassifiable and astounding work. Entitled Quand le son devient aigu, jeter la girafe à la mer, (when the sound gets high-pitched, throw the giraffe into the sea) it is an extraordinary sonic collage, created from discrete re-recordings and using just a handful of instruments including drums and piano. The result is a miracle, though the economy of means the production technique succeeds in putting the spotlight on the oddly elaborate compositions under an enigmatic but well-chosen title, borrowed from poet Henri Michaux. It puts into words the mysteries of a fragile melancholic universe which can be compared to another album by an iconoclastic drummer: The End Of An Ear by Robert Wyatt. The difference being the highly personal elements which shine through the French musician’s album, clearly drawn from listening intently to classics from Debussy, Ravel and Barraqué (whom he knew), a seam which he would continue to mine on his equally excellent following albums Watch Devil Go and Cinq Hops. Yes, it is true that Jacques Thollot recorded rarely under his own name (five albums during his lifetime), but what marvellous albums they are!"
First ever vinyl reissue with a 16 page booklet with unpublished photos an an essay by Jean Rochard. Licensed from Futura / Marge
22,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
Joachim MONTESSUIS
“Le vray remède d’amour”
Seven tracks recorded between 2012 and 2019 with a "Boîte à Bourdons", a mechanical electroacoustic hurdy-gurdy with four strings and sliders to play an adjustable chord in sustained twisted tones, drones and complex over- tones. Ltd ed. 300 copies.
23,00€
Out of stock
LP
Julien OTTAVI – Joachim MONTESSUIS
“Snow Crash”
Voodoo noise and poetry : what is sound, what is poetry? What is this reality and how are we perceiving it? This LP brings together two extreme and loud vocal performers digging and channeling invisible realities through electronically expanded proto languages. No occult bullshit, this is an experimental non-dual approach to reality: clashes and crashes into extatic trances.
12,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
Hermann NITSCH
“Traubenfleisch”
Double LP. Edition of 300 copies in fullcolour gatefold sleeve. First recording of the grand scale "Traubenfleisch 2007-2017" symphony by Hermann Nitsch. Performed at the Nitsch Museum, Mistelbach, September 2, 2017, by Orchestra "Klangvereinigung Wien" and a new choir formed for the occasion. Directed by Andrea Cusumano.
30,00€
In stock
2 LP
RENALDO AND THE LOAF
“Songs for Swinging Larvae / Songs from the Surgery”
A biomedical scientist and an architect form a band in the early 70’s with nothing by the way of traditional musical talent or skill but with endless enthusiasm and their own unique musical sensibility. The ensuing career and creative output of this ongoing home studio / bedroom band remains one of the most significant song based ‘outre’ catalogues ever produced in the United Kingdom. This comprehensive 2 LP (+7” for first 300 copies) set contains their first official LP (originally released on The Residents legendary Ralph records label) along with an extra album of different versions and extra tracks which reside here for the first time on vinyl.
The duo Renaldo & The Loaf, originally Portsmouth based, now in Portsmouth and Mid-Wales, remain an enigma whilst amassing an enormous cult following worldwide. Their singular take on music encompasses wit, strange melodic construction and an off kilter sensibility which successfully rendered them engaging for each emerging generation. The ability of Renaldo & The Loaf to unnerve and entertain in equal measure is what binds these songs to a musical universe outside of all other forms that existed around the time of release. The Residents are obvious spiritual heirs.
Songs For Swinging Larvae is a classic collection of confounding songs which lead the listener into a surreal world of twisted tunes and perverted pop. Songs from the Surgery is made up of improvisations, early/alternative versions of various Larvae tracks and unreleased pieces from the same period.
The results leave one laughing through a thick veil of unease. As the original Ralph records press release said of Songs For Swinging Larvae: “This is an album of primitive modernism, energetic obnoxious noises, manic high pitched vocals and sweet brilliance.
Original price was: 23,50€.15,00€Current price is: 15,00€.
Out of stock
LP
Jim O’ROURKE & CM von HAUSSWOLF
“In, Demons, In!”
The time-stopping tract of ’In Demons In!’ is a naturally elemental drone collaboration between eminent experimentalists Jim O’Rourke and CM Von Hausswolf for their eternal admirers at iDEAL Recordings
Offering a transfixing peek behind the curtain of pure black hole drone dynamics, ‘In Demons In!’ finds the American in Japanese exile and the proclaimed monarch of the imaginary kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland meeting on common ground after 26 years of international correspondence. Initiated in Tokyo 2016 and completed over the proceeding two years in Japan and Sweden, the uncompromisingly adventurous results are galactic in scope and viscerally metaphysical in presence, conjuring scales of abyssal bass and diffused, atomised, abstract dark matter that make the listener feel like a speck of stardust floating in infinity.
Using sound as a magickal tool for psychic transport and to finely model notions of the metaphysical that typically elude human comprehension, the near 40’ work feels to collapse billions of years into a glacial moment. Location recordings made in Kathmandu lend an barely there iridescence, like microbial filaments flickering in the endless darkness, to their plunging, subharmonic basses and vaporised mid-upper registers, where spectral forces comb thru the piece, only very gradually altering the weightless keen of its planetary mass and mental traction.
Ultimately, and fans are likely to agree, ‘In Demons In!’ amounts to a vitally definitive entry in both artists’ catalogues, marking right up there with the most abstract wonders of O’Rourke’s electro-acoustic Steamroom volumes, while manifesting some of the most fascinating results from Von Hausswolff’s ongoing investigations into drone music’s paranormal properties. In other words: it’s Grade A+ zoner music.
20,00€
In stock
2 LP
COMPILATION
“Ethnoelectronics”
Originally released on tape by Sound Reporters in 1986. Ethnoelectronics is a further episode of pioneering fusion between ethnic and electronic music, involving dauntless explorers such as Walter Maioli, Nirodh Fortini, Fred Gales, Raffaele Serra, John Zandijk and the visionary sculptor Edward Luyken. As the soundtrack of an obscure science-fiction saga, the six parts of these recordings retain something profoundly osmotic and sidereal. In these hybridizations, it's the heart of personal spiritual cosmos and stratospheric portals to pulse, but always remains the devotion to wild nature and ethnographic differences. In this way, the sinusoidal movements of electronic synthesizers and radiophonic frequencies interact with the pounding sounds of the jungle, with frogs, sea waves, buzz insects, leaves and rain. From flutes, rattles, steel sound sculptures or rustling idiophones, mysterious samples appeared like weird interferences, with rhythms and ritual voices from Tibet, West Papua, Burundi, Tahiti or the shamanic Japan of the Ainu.
30,00€
Out of stock
LP
Joanna JOHN
“No End”
From Felt Hat Reviews site : "I guess it's pretty difficult to look beyond the profile of a certain label if you think of new releases coming from it. With Bocian records who releases improvisational stuff or modern composition, sometimes more or less obscure drone noise aspects of the former two, I was pretty surprised to hear about Joanna's album. It was also intersting since I know her from her visual art side which doesn't change the fact that it was a bit surprising to see her upcoming release on Bocian. (...) Joanna's debut album is a nice promise to something, I am sure, she will develop in her own time. It has lots of subtle hues and undertones. An element of mystery and even whimsicality. An aspect of arcane eroticism and even synergy of the elements. It has a rubber stamp of her associations with the creative background which by all means is not a blemish. And foremostly there is something else. A courage to step into a larger world with something that creates a new profile, a new aspect of expression. Re-modelling, re-defining, self-actualising and at the end of the day self-discovery is growing pains in artist's life but hats off to those who do it. Well done!"
16,50€
Out of stock
LP
Wojciech PUŚ
“Endless: Music for Performers”
Since 2016, Wojciech Puś has been developing Endless, a sensual architecture of images, light, and sound that serves as a base structure for a poetic essay, a dream about identities in process.
The music result is a fascinating electronic masterpiece showcasing his talent as a performer and producer creating his own unique universe
This works sound very ancient and probably very alien as well. This is music of hope, love, despair and sadness and probably all at the same time.
16,00€