Hip-Hop Vinyl New Releases - News

Legitimately available again on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 1983, Outernational Sounds proudly presents a major statement from a crucial figure on the Los Angeles jazz underground – pianist Nate Morgan’s spiritualised deep jazz classic, Journey Into Nigritia.

How many 16 year olds would have the confidence to walk up to a revered bandleader at a gig, and inform him that one day they’d be playing together? As improbable as it sounds, this is how pianist Nate Morgan introduced himself to the great Horace Tapscott, founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. The teenage Morgan had heard Tapscott’s Flying Dutchman LP The Giant Is Awakened being played by Greg Kufahamu on local Los Angeles radio station KUSC, and Arthur Blythe’s wailing sax had gone ‘straight to the heart. It was a spiritual experience.’ Morgan showed up to all the Arkestra shows he could find. He was already studying with Joe Sample and Hampton Hawes and playing in local bands, but the draw of the Tapscott’s band was too much for the gifted young pianist:

‘I could only take about two or three more concerts before I had to run up on stage. When I first introduced myself to Horace, he tells everybody that I said, “Yeah, I’m Nate Morgan. I’m going to play with you all.” Not that I want to, but that I’m going to.’

Over the next decade and beyond, Morgan would become a central figure in Tapscott’s UGMAA (Union Of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension’), bringing new figures into the fold (it was Morgan who first hipped Jesse Sharps to Tapscott’s circle; they were lifelong friends), running jam sessions, and eventually being given the task of organising the Arkestra songbook. During the early 1970s he also worked commercially, doing a stint with Rufus and Chaka Khan and appearing on Willie Hutch’s Foxy Brown soundtrack. Into the 1980s and 1990s he remained active, keeping the UGMAA flame alive in late night jams and private sessions, and working tirelessly around LA, including collaborations with Bone Thugs N’ Harmony; he was also part of the early 2000s LA jazz collective Build An Ark. A true musician’s musician, Morgan died in 2013.

Journey Into Nigritia, featuring firebreathing reedsman Dadisi Komolafe, was the first of two LPs Morgan recorded for Tom Albach’s storied Nimbus West imprint. A committed, spiritualised work that showcases Morgan’s heavy composing as well as his McCoy Tyner- influenced and technically flawless playing, Journey features dedications to Coltrane (‘He Left Us A Song’) and Cecil Taylor (‘Study In C.T.’). Surging, modal jazz from the LA undergound, Journey Into Nigritia is a crucial recording by an unsung jazz legend.

Absorbing new album from this very special artist. Hand printed sleeves. Very limited edition.

Marta De Pascalis is an italian composer living and working in Berlin. Her solo works employ analog synthesis and tape loops, incorporating free playing into steady, repetitive patterns. She has produced two albums of Berlin School minimal synth excursions: the self-released Quitratue (2014) and Anzar (The Tapeworm, 2016). Her new piece ‘Her Core’ has been published on spring 2018 by The Wormhole. Marta creates densely layered collages of glowing melodic shards and growling bass lines, her hypnotic minimal synth figures warping and whirling around each other before dissolving into entropic oblivion. For her compositions she uses improvisation on a tape-loop system, in which patterns of repetition create a sense of a dense, dynamic and cathartic distance.

All music by Marta De Pascalis Recorded at WORM Sound Studios in Rotterdam, artist's studio and Big Snuff Studio in Berlin, between 2019 and 2020. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Lorenzo Mazon Studio. All rights reserved to the respective owners. doser039LP - Morphine Records 2020

New Fries has never been interested in being a band. What we mean is a spirit of abandoning ideas of what songs should be, how they should be performed, and by whom. We’ve never been interested in the tradition of songwriting—though we’re interested in musical elements like repetition, space, and dynamics. We have wanted our music to make people dance but have also wanted to produce the feeling of that being taken away from a room. We often work around these sorts of energy transfers (whether or not we name them this way). This space to make music in has felt wild and free. We have also contradicted ourselves. We are also always changing. In 2018 Ryan Carley (synthesizer) left the band and we found ourselves at our first juncture to restructure and re-evaluate New Fries. This is such a classic boring story, we know. But immediately we knew that as a three piece (the band’s original formation) we had to turn to something new and open—the way some describe “beginners mind”. Anni grabbed bass (which was new to her), Tim grabbed guitar and a sampler as a new juggling routine, and Jenny reduced her drum kit to three pieces. We wanted to create a structure that allowed us to be curious about being in transition.

Much of this record sounds and reflects on this in-between. It’s anxious in its repetitions and unsure of genre. It rejects a singular character or emotion and attempts to instead act as a container for many. Anni’s lyrics state this directly: “it lacks a mood, it lacks definition” / “curiosity beyond expectation”. Her lyrics describe the spaces, objects, people, and situations that embody an in-between—her grandfather who worked as medium, the ecology of the foreshore, Mount Tambora’s eruption in 1816 that produced the Year Without a Summer, and mesh (the fabric). The result is a collage of 6 songs and many otherwise quick ideas.

Much of this collage was testament to the work of engineer/musician Carl Didur. Carl (Zacht Automaat, formerly US Girls) is a long-standing pillar of Toronto’s experimental music community. He is also a tape expert, which we knew these songs needed entering the recording process as mostly bare grooves. The result was less that of hiring an engineer than it was working with a collaborator. His musical ideas are all over this record. ‘Is the Idea of Us’ is the situation of musicians/non-musicians making music together perhaps completely illegible in the music on this record and to the random listener who doesn’t know our story in South Bend, Indiana (how did you find us?!) But with this title we name this absurd gesture, through our changing relationship to making music both as a unit and as individuals. There are enough bands out there; we insist on do it differently.

‘’Ruff drum computer- and bubbling ambient excursions from Bonn, Germany, making their first appearance on vinyl for the new decennium’’.

Newly established label Raakvlak plucks a lush synth gem from the depths of 80’s D.I.Y.- cassette culture for their inaugural release. Heil Eris / Enjoy sees the first-time reissue of the work of German synth-wizards Overflow. The group, conceived as the session band of cult tape label Brainstorm-Studio, merely released two cassettes within the timespan of one year, of which Raakvlak now has culled some of the finest moments.

Out of a matrix of drum computers, synths, voices, tape FX and a flute come these five live-takes (no overdubbing used!), dedicated to the trio’s mascot Apumé, which was present at all sessions.

Ranging from the aquatic ambient excursion on ‘’Pressure Wave’’ and the existential cold-wave pop of ‘’Take A Chance’’ to the blissed-out downer ‘’Voiceless’’, Overflow shies away from musical expectations and thereby sounds as up to date as ever.
Restored, remastered and available on wax for the first time! Comes with download card plus three digital bonus tracks.

On vinyl in the U.S. for the first time since 1977, this 1975 release includes African, Indian, Arabic and 70's era Miles Davis style electric rock fusions. Featuring contributions from former Ornette Coleman bandmates Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, and liner notes from Stanley Crouch.

Presenting a condensed survey of KRAAK’s recent past and immediate future through a selection of tracks that chart the breadth of the label’s output.

The 18 songs contained within this unassuming piece of plastic speak for a generation of artists whose contribution to the legacy of KRAAK is in no way insignificant: the faded melancholia of Ignatz, the cosmic outlook championed by Köhn, the bejeweled exotica of Bear Bones, Lay Low, the brainwave tingling of Floris Van Hoof... all of the elements and personas that make up not just a community, but a constellation bright and beaming. A new crop of newcomers to the roster (Vica Pacheco, KRAMP, Kuupuu and Orphan Fairytale) herald new frontiers within the continuation of narratives that are as auspicious as they are unmapped.

The tracks made especially for this cassette are testaments to the musical kinship as well as camaraderie that KRAAK has always held at its core, and of which KRAAK Festival is the chief manifestation. Reminisce while gazing at what unfolds before you and stay tuned: there is more to come.

“In 1976, the Asociaux Associés (antisocial associates, TN) led by Philippe Doray (Rotomagus, Ruth, Crash), recorded the first of the two albums under their own name: Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires. On synthesiser, Doray fires off his disturbing poetry over psychedelic pop, voodoo rock, off-kilter krautrock, approximate swing … But if the music is iconoclastic (bringing to mind as much Hendrix as Areski, Ash Ra Tempel as Berrocal…), one thing is certain: Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires is one of the best albums of obscure experimental song ever recorded.

It is no surprise that, on the Nurse With Wound List that Steven Stapleton inserted in the first album of his legendary musical project, the name of Philippe Doray can be found between that of the Doo-Dooettes and Jean Dubuffet: his music is genuinely original and, what is more, ahead of its’ time.

It was in 1977 that the first album by Philippe Doray, Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires, was published on Gratte-Ciel, a label created by the journalist from Rock & Folk Jean-Marc Bailleux and run by Jean-Marc Patrat and José Serré. Encouraged by his wild experience in Rotomagus, a formidable rock band which swept through Rouen, for sure, but also further afield – as Julian Cope was himself inspired, years later, by their explosivity – Doray brought a team to this album which was both untamed and ready to fight to defend it’s terrible (and trembling) poetry.

Backed by his ‘Asociaux Associés’ (antisocial associates, TN), our man from Rouen let his fantasy run wild and cried out again: “sing with me, and don’t be afraid to clap your hands!” And so, much of French popular music was shaken: the ball in Doray’s pinball machine had struck Jimi Hendrix then Alain Goraguer, then Ash Ra Tempel and onto Areski, then T-Rex followed by Jac Berrocal…

As far as the texts are concerned, just take a listen. Doray’s poetry is schizophrenic: nurtured in the Normandy countryside, it relates paranoid tales of booby-trapped towns, Levis jeans, Prisunic supermarkets and plastic dolls… Crumbs of reality which he sucked up to create the album that Souffle Continu and Thierry Müller, mastering (with Ruth, Crash, and Illitch too) spit out again fifty years later, with many good memories.

First ever vinyl reissue
Remastered from the master tapes
Obi Strip + Textsheet Insert”

“Between 1978 and 1980, the Asociaux Associés (antisocial associates, TN) recorded the second of the two albums which appeared under their name: Nouveaux Modes Industriels. Philippe Doray, with the help of his 'Associés', evermore iconoclastic and numerous, backs up his anguished poetry with customised krautrock, hallucinatory pop and rock Suicide. Much more than a memory of the then surprising (and disturbing) Swinging Rouen, this album is an intergalactic ambush.

Following the publication, in 1977, of the first of two albums under his own name, Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires, on the label Gratte-Ciel, Philippe Doray didn’t waste any time before writing new obscure and experimental songs. As proof, between May 1978 and January 1980, with his Asociaux Associés (antisocial associates, TN), he recorded ten of them in the farm in which he lived (and shared) close to Rouen.

In 1980, Nouveaux Modes Industriels was published thanks to the support of Invisible, the label of the Société Coopérative d'Ouvriers-Producteurs Artistiques (S.C.O.P.A., the Cooperative Society of Artistic Worker/Producers,TN) run by, amongst others, the ex-manager of Crium Delirium Jacques Pasquier. This meant that Doray had free rein for his electric poetry, his personal delirium, to be heard. He had already shaken up French music with his mix of pop, krautrock and free jazz; a few months later he would undergo a change which would be the precursor of his future projects.

Before collaborating with Thierry Müller under the names Ruth and Crash, Doray let loose one last time, with his Asociaux Associés, his anguished poetry into the face of the urban labyrinth, his nuclear dynamite… It is no coincidence if the album cover is similar to those by Urban Sax, the spirit of the times was anguish as a creator of beauty. Doray’s version had the advantage of still knowing how to sing.

Never forgetting his interest for dance, the musician gets Cluster moving to a boogaloo, foments a Suicide on synthetic jaw harp or invents elevator music for tower blocks… All of which hotchpotch feeds into his Nouveaux Modes Industriels. If the last track of the album states “no after-sales service”, it is simply because there is no need.

First ever vinyl reissue
Remastered from the master tapes
Obi Strip + Textsheet Insert”

The Flying Luttenbachers’ “Shattered Dimension” is the first offering by the seminal cult band since 2007. It is released on CD and download on March 1st, 2019 via ugEXPLODE Records and on gatefold double LP in April 2019 via the Austrian God Records label. The current New York City based version of the group on this recording features stalwart leader and primary composer Weasel Walter on drums, saxophonist Matt Nelson (GRID, Elder Ones), bass guitarist Tim Dahl (Child Abuse, Lydia Lunch) and guitarist Brandon Seabrook.

The project of Trimolo was setup more or less in 1984. The group won a price at a band contest 1987 where they stepped up from a basement band to a highly asked live band in the upcoming years between 1987 and 1992.

After winning the price they earned their first studio experience and the first two songs published on an LP – the Rock Feierwerk 1987 Sampler. The year after they released their debut LP that is a master piece.

The sound of Trimolo is a melting pot of all 4 musicians that is not divisible from each other. All of them giving a unique sound that blends different styles together to one. Trimolo sometimes sounds like a jazz record but with influences that can sound like a Caribbean or an oriental or a classical record.

The original press of the debut album is nowadays high in demand and a collectors item that has been sold recently for more than 200€. Back in the days it was pressed in a tiny number and was only sold on concerts around the Bavarian capital Munich.

Europe’s leading reggaeton experimenters DJ Clara! And Maoupa Mazzocchetti. exert a tripped-out spin on modern Latin dance and vintage Galician folk styles for Low Jack’s boundary-stepping club division of Editions Gravats. Following the duo’s 2018 debut EP
and Clara!’s ‘Meiga de Acero’ single in 2019 for Les Disques De La Bretagne, ‘Luna Nueva’ binds the duo’s astrological, spiritual and romantic dancefloor cues in a significant new take on Caribbean futurism.

Designed to make you sweat - and maybe check your head -
the album pairs Clara!’s effortlessly nimble vocals with lean and spacious co-production by Maoupa Mazzocchetti in a way that faithfully and daringly plays with reggaeton convention, and, by extension, offers a critique of global electronic dance music currents.

Based in Brussels, Belgium, but originally from northern Spain, Clara! brings a strong knowledge of reggaeton, perreo and trap absorbed from beach parties and clubs back home to a wickedly offset batch of productions by Maoupa, who’s arguably earned a mean reputation in recent years for his killer mixtapes with the PRR! PRR! gang, as well as a slew of 12”s for everyone from Unknown Precept and Mannequin to Arma since 2014.

Together they throw down eight distinctive vocal cuts on disc 1, while disc 2 is loaded with their singular instrumentals. Clara! dispatches ice cool but barbed bars in diverse flows, bewitching Maoupa’s rhythms with on point style in the dramatic ‘Badman’ - a bullet for the male gaze - while layering herself in choral cadence on a spellbinding cover of Faltiquera’s Galician folk song ’Sum Sum’ over unusual tablas and drones...

But while the finer details of Clara!’s pointed but humorous lyrics may be lost on non-Spanish speakers, her co-productions with Mauopa are bound to resonate regardless of tongue, with strong, dare-to-be-different highlights in the hard and psychedelic drive of ‘Gaviléan’ and the bolshy bashment grind of ‘Virgo’, along with straight up freaky gear such as ‘Baja Y Suda’, plus their cold fusion of reggaeton and Mahraganat influences in ‘Secreto Ritual’, and warped hypermodernism in ‘Clarividencia.’ No matter what angle or
language it’s approached from, ‘Luna Nueva’ cycles fresh and luminous with a steadfast yet experimental call to the ‘floor while the world collapses around them.

Contagious is a solid blending of avant-garde experimentation and electronic music. Formed by two innovative voices from the Improvisation scene of Berlin (Andrea Neumann and Sabine Ercklentz) and Mieko Suzuki, a well-crafted and creative DJ and musician who’s operating in Berlin venues and festivals since a long time.

Contagious is one of the most forward thinking, mind-melting projects to hit the electronic music scene. Intense and powerful, yet rooted in a tradition of crafting and sculpturing of in the most creative ways, all this building up within a solid structure of instant composition and improvisation. The trio plunder each other’s musical spheres, appropriate them and switch roles. Andrea Neumann on her infamous Inside Piano, an instrument she pioneered and crafted, is applying the most creative feedback processing to simple piano strings and sending them occasionally to Mieko Suzuki’s processing rig, who also uses her own pre-recorded sounds and her skills on turntables, while Sabine Ercklentz’s trumpet sounds blast through her processing system and altogether the three musicians communicate into logics of composition and futuristic structures, where fragile sound textures and pulses become monumental.

Contagious is also the debut album recorded and produced by Rabih Beaini. The Trio wanders in new aesthetic areas, sound is a texture where the processing rigs are constantly developing new forms and evolutions. Structures and grooves implode in noisy fragments, growing into a deep trance state.

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 has 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

Neues Album des britisch-nigerianischen Avant-Pop-Sänger/Produzenten Tony Njoku, der abstrakte Elektronik, Afro-Jazz und Art-Pop zu einem subversivem Kunstgebilde fusioniert und sich in eine Reihe mit seelenverwandten Künstlern wie Yves Tumor, Thom Yorke und Young Fathers einreiht. Njoku tourte bereits mit Anna von Hausswolf, Rival Consoles, Goat Girl, GAIKA, Jacques, Ider und Kokoko!. Zu seinen Fans gehören u.a. die BBC-Radio-DJs Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft und Huw Stephens.

"Exciting blends of African percussion, falsetto croons and dark synths." - Fact
"Fusing abstract beats with his angelic tones." - Mojo
"Turning high art into sonic form." - Mixmag

The avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a titan of post-War experimental classical music. Born in the small cheesemaking town of Montrbrison in central France in 1925, Boulez studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the composer and organist Charles Messiaen and received private tuition from pianist Andrée Vaurabourg; after moving to the Marais district in 1945, he briefly studied with Schoenberg disciple, René Leibowitz, and further influence came from immersion in Balinese gamelan, Japanese classical music and African drumming, among other sources. Earning money by playing an early electronic keyboard called the ondes Martenot on theatre productions, Boulez soon became music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company (led by actor/direction Jean-Louis Barrault and his actor wife, Madeleine Renaud), leading to tours of Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and both North and South America. American composer John Cage became an ally, though they subsequently clashed over Cage’s commitment to the role of chance in his compositions, paving the way for an intense and lasting friendship with the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, who arrived in Paris in 1952 to study with Messiaen. In July of that year, the pair attended the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, leading to contact with Italian composer Luciano Berio and other noteworthy figures. Then, in 1954, with backing from Barrault and Renaud, Boulez began staging a series of concerts of experimental music at the Petit Marigny theatre, titled Le Domaine musical. The pieces collected on this album are all taken from performances staged for the 1957 Domaine musical season, beginning with Berio’s “Serenata I,” conducted by Boulez, which debuted in Paris in March of that year; arranged for flute and fourteen instruments, Berio said that the idea behind the piece was for the solo flute to be confronted by continuously interchanging elements, rather than mere accompaniments or oppositions. Boulez’s own “Sonatine,” composed in 1946 for flute and piano, is a 12-tone piece that evidences Messiaen’s influence, with shades of Asian classical music in places; then, Stockhausen’s monumental “Zeitmasze” or “Time Measures,” a serial composition for five woodwinds, played in different combinations of tempos and speed, was partly inspired by Webern’s principles of homogenous and harmonic textures. Finally, Messiaen’s 1949 work “Cantéyodjayâ,” delivered by pianist Yvonne Loriod, takes it shape from the classical Hindu rhythms of ancient India, as with much of the composer’s oeuvre.

Zru Vogue is a two man post punk avant-pop group from Palo Alto, California, combining the talents of Andrew Finkle and Rick Cuevas.

The band began in 1980 as a four member group: Rick, Andy, Tom Sanders and Nancy Miller. Tom and Nancy left the group shortly after the first single, "Nakweda Dream", was released by independent San Francisco label Adolescent Records in February 1981. Inspired by rave reviews and heavy airplay on alternative radio stations, Andy and Rick went back into the studio, now as a duo, to record some new ZRU tracks.

The self-tilted LP was released on the band’s Zero Risk Records in 1982. It contains eight compositions blending African tribal and Middle Eastern rhythms, avant-garde rock, minimal electronics, and funk-rock guitars.

The duo’s sound is inspired by the art and anti-art movements of Dada and Surrealism. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. Each copy is housed in a replica of the original jacket, which features artwork by the group members, and includes the original 2-sided lyric sheet.

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. The first album made it immediately into "The Wire office ambience" playlist and to the "Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical Releases": "ZEITKRATZER's interpretations are bouncy, horn-driven motorik grooves, static explorations of pointillistic overtones, breathy Zen-like meditations, and rollicking rhythms." The Spanish Rockdelux concluded: "Keep close and be happy to get more!" Sonic Seducer attested ZEITKRATZER to "uncover unexpected potential. It's a blessing that the next KRAFTWERK is already announced!"

And here it is! Now you can listen to all the music of the first two KRAFTWERK albums "as gloriously played as one could ever desire" (Vital Weekly).

Recorded live atHELLERAU - European Centre for the Arts, Dresdenin january 2019, "zeitkratzer performs songs from the albums "Kraftwerk 2" and "Kraftwerk" " delivers the compositions that were still missing to complete zeitkratzer's stunning take on the early, hybrid kraut-esque electronic avantgarde albums "Kraftwerk" and "Kraftwerk 2". Mission accomplished! A must-have. As German radio SWR agreed: "ZEITKRATZER is serious music turned from stiff to joy!"



Mixed by Klaus Dobbrich (Volksbühne Berlin).

Mastered & cut by Mike Grinser at D&M, Berlin

Recorded in Oslo’s small and intimate St. Edmund’s Church the 13th of December 2017, this LP features compositions by James Weldon Johnson, Thelonious Monk and Joe McPhee plus two by McPhee and Nilssen-Love.

The album was mixed, edited and mastered by Lasse Marhaug and is vinyl only, no digital. 500 copies made and no re-press. Artwork by Kim Hiorthøy.

“Following on from Homenagem, Lugar Alto’s first critically acclaimed project, the São Paulo label's new endeavour is the reissue of another neglected masterpiece. This time, it’s “Poema da Gota Serena” turn by Zé Eduardo Nazário from 1982. This unique work gathers elements of free jazz, Brazilian Northeastern rhythms, Asian percussive instruments and electronics.

Zé Eduardo is a virtuoso drummer and percussionist with a prolific career as a musician and teacher. He was introduced to music in his youth and started playing professionally at the age of thirteen. In the late 60’s he was a regular at the famous Totem night club in São Paulo, where he performed alongside the pianist Tenório Jr. and other exceptional instrumentalists. It was there that he met Guilherme Franco, and together they formed the Grupo Experimental de Percussão. This period defined Nazário’s interest in different sonorities involving percussion, and he broke away from the more traditional genres, such as bossa nova and jazz. Over time, this distinctiveness in sound and playing allowed him to create his own path which culminated in an extensive number of remarkable works, including the colorful and psychedelic “M andala”, which examines Indian and hippie themes. He also played with Hermeto Pascoal’s group and joined him and Jaques Morelenbaum for the recording of the cult classic “Imyra, Tayra, Ypy” by Taiguara. For Egberto Gismonti’s “Nó Caipira”, Nazário performed with the khene, a mouth organ from Laos, a present from Gismonti himself.

But it is Nazário’s work with the 1976 collective Grupo Um which is his most well-known, who, during their 6-year legacy recorded, amongst movie and ballet soundtracks, 3 albums: “Marcha Sobre a Cidade”, “Reflexões Sobre a Crise do Desejo” and “Flor de Plástico Incinerada”. The combo is considered one of the most innovative formations of its time, unusually combining electro-acoustic elements, jazz and Brazilian traditional music.

Poema da Gota Serena was Zé Eduardo's first solo project and it was financed by the legendary Lira Instrumental, a collaboration between the ground-breaking venue, label and publisher for the São Paulo avant-garde, Lira Paulistana, along with the always interesting Continental Records, home to such luminaries as Tom Zé. The album was offered as a package deal simultaneously with the production of “Flor de Plástico Incinerada”, ensuring 2 studio sessions at JV studios in October 1982.

Each side of the album explores different duets which, with its suite formated tracks, give the album the feel of a cohesive whole. The first half of the A side, “Energia dos Três Mundos”, is shared with the improvised saxophone of Cacau. Nazário delves into free jazz rhythms and plays his drums with a rolling and tumbling swing, using the kit in full, demonstrating the power of Brazilian jazz fusion. The second half of the suite takes us into a more tranquil mode. “Só Prá Ouvir”, demonstrates Zé’s mastery on the glockenspiel, and Indian percussion instruments, such as the tabla and mridangam. Cacau, on his side, switches his saxophone for more delicate dancing flute driven passages, equal parts northeastern rhythms and deep Amazonian indigenous influences. The B side, with “Prá Pensar / Prá Sentir e Prá Contar”, contrasts heavily with the A side’s more organic and natural feel. In Prá Pensar Lelo Nazários’s synth clusters and electronic blasts strangely interact with the exploring, wandering percussion. This track leads into the sublime “Prá Sentir e Prá Contar” where South Indian inspired vocals, performed by Zé Eduardo, accompany the graceful synth chords and fluttering percussion. The result is a hypnotic, otherworldly feel to the music that is infectious and takes the listener on an extraordinary journey.
With Poema da Gota Serena, it is possible to hear music that extrapolates the lines of the avant-garde and popular music. It is an album the demonstrates that Brazilian jazz fusion can be both spiritual and challenging at the same time.

All the tracks were expertly remastered by Lelo Nazário, directly from the original tapes, maintaining the high quality of production that Lugar Alto are becoming renowned for. All the artwork was reinterpreted by the São Paulo design studio Sometimes Always, including an exclusive insert and unpublished images.

It seems that Lugar Alto have managed to excavate yet another gem from the seemingly bottomless Brazilian mines. Long may they continue to do what they do so well.”

Stefan Fraunberger's Quellgeister#3 Bussd is Recorded entirely on an abandoned church's organ in the village of Bussd, Romania, the album is the third installment of the series by Austrian artist and composer Stefan Fraunberger. His research on the influence of nature on culture touches on time, periphery, memory, and transience as evidenced in his Quellgeister research. The album is an archeological sonic research on the deteriorating Organ discovered in the saxon church in Transylvania.

A project founded by label owner Manolis ten Haaf in collaboration with musicians Ruben Kodheli, Arjuna Schiks and guest artists. Combining his Italian and Dutch roots of classical symphonies and urban electronics into an avant-garde painting of improvisation with no boundaries. The classical rustic Italian countryside versus the non-stop Dutch metropole and the New York city life.

In support of their forthcoming Bob Moog documentary Electronic Voyager, Waveshaper Media have produced a compilation LP of Moog recordings from the 1960s. The first compilation of its kind, Electronic Voyages: Early Moog recordings 1964-1969 contains tracks by Robert Arthur Moog, Herbert Deutsch, Joel Chadabe, Lothar and the Hand People, Intersystems, Ruth White, Max Brand, and Paul Earls. All of these tracks, released here on vinyl in an edition of 1000 copies, have been scarcely heard and difficult to track down, with all but three of them previously unreleased on vinyl.

Bypassing the Moog synthesizer’s backseat appearance on key pop recordings by the likes of the Beatles, the Doors, and the Beach Boys, Electronic Voyages aims to highlight the diverse approach of 1960s musicians and composers who adopted the Moog as their primary instrument; these recordings all feature the Moog synthesizer front and centre. Beginning with an “audio letter” (The Abominatron) from Bob Moog to his musician-muse Herbert Deutsch, demonstrating some of the first Moog synthesizer prototype’s capabilities, Electronic Voyages veers from avant-garde and electronic soundscapes, to psychedelic madness and summer-of-love pop. In the 1960s, the Moog synthesizer was a new, groundbreaking instrument, and its use was completely uncharted territory. The pioneering use of the Moog on all of these recordings sounds fresh today - you can sense the wide-eyed exploratory delight unfolding, and the disparate results range from endearingly naive (Lothar and the Hand People, Paul Earls) to downright eerie (Ruth White, Intersystems).

The musicians and composers behind these Electronic Voyages may have been among the first to adopt Moog synthesizers, but the fact that they so readily found within them expressivity, heart, and a means to translate their wondrous sense of discovery, speaks far more to Bob Moog’s visionary invention and enduring legacy.

Glorious new Floris Vanhoof LP co-released with Kraak. Comes with 24 page colour photo book.
. Modern experimental Belgian brilliance by this ever exciting artist. Do Not Sleep! 220 copies only. BIG TIP !

"This music and these pictures are made out of curiosity about how multiple images overlap on film
and how waves that arise in tiny electronic circuits translate to the outside world.
2 side long pieces and a selection of 24 slides printed on a lush 30 by 30 cm format give an
alternative for popular myths “our memory is a tape recorder” and “the exact photographic
memory”. When we take time to listen inside own heads, what appears might be closer to the
double exposed images and swirling tape manipulations then we imagine.

Whooshing echoes out of homemade musical circuits and acoustic recordings processed through
configuration of tape recorders and filters mix the same way as the colors in the layered images.

The title is comes from the book 'The Pattern on the Stone' by inventor W. Daniel Hillis. The word
'computer' usually refers to an electronic digital device. The book tells about the existence of
computers where water flows instead of electrons. This 'fluid computer' serves as a source of
inspiration for deconstructing the ubiquitous algorithmic machine, and for new technologies to be
revived through untracked sidetracks."

Koma Saxo is a highly potent new five-piece produced by the visionary Berlin-based Swedish bassist-producer Petter Eldh. The lineup brings together five heavy jazz names on the Berlin–Nordics axis, including Eldh on bass, Christian Lillinger on drums and the frontline of three saxes: Otis Sandsjö, Jonas Kullhammar and Mikko Innanen. Despite the top-billing names, make no mistake: this is not just another "supergroup", but a real working band with their own sound and musical trejectory.

Eldh's vision for the Koma Saxo sound is one step ahead of what groovy avantgarde jazz could sound like in 2019, involving postproduction work with the raw material recorded in Helsinki in connection to Koma Saxo's successful debut at the We Jazz Festival. Both studio and live tapes exist side by side, and Eldh goes deep in molding the final music to be heard on the upcoming Koma Saxo releases.

The first introduction into the world of Koma Saxo comes in the form of a 7"/digital single "Port Koma / Fanfarum For Komarum". Side A presents a restlessly dubby beat track, which would be ripe for hiphop sample use. The flip launches into a joyful full-on groovy free jazz fest which is hard to resist. Think Art Ensemble of Chicago at their swingingest but add a little "Nordic Noir" dropped right into the busy streets of Berlin's Kreuzberg.

Brooklyn-based saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson presents an inspired set of ambient jazz for baritone sax and electronics, captured at Helsinki's We Jazz Festival in December 2018. The mood of the set is intense, with Parzen-Johnson's powerful music blending perfectly with the spacious feel of the room. His commentary in between songs gives the set a communal feel, which can now thankfully be revisited in the warm spirit of this wonderful evening of music.

This We Jazz Records release is tape only in terms of its physical distribution, while also a digital version is offered for streaming and download. "Helsinki 8.12.18" by Jonah Parzen-Johnson is a part of the ongoing "We Jazz Live Plates" series documenting the label's live activities.

Some Became Hollow Tubes floating in the ocean.

6 self recorded improvised drone rock waves from Eric Quach (thisquietarmy - relentless DIY powerhouse) and Aidan Girt (Godspeed You! Black Emperor).

Chords loop, pedals get pushed, pounding drum parts get added and subtracted, it starts quiet and gets loud. Eric no longer needs to worry about the rhythm, Aidan no longer has to worry about the song structure. All four ears stay cocked and listening even if neither of them are very good at keeping eye contact.

One life to live, pound drone and loop this moment into the present, hahaha let’s keep joking, it's ok.... the music has our sadness. This world is dying, the machines are getting better and better at eating material things to create nothing and all we can do is make wordless music in response.

The album was mastered by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Tindersticks etc).

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt Electric Smog, the next installment in Unrock's ongoing Saraswati series, will be the most rebellious and wildest to date. Again an intercontinental output, this is a dangerous, electric brew filled with exotic aroma from Cairo's sound guerilla, Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Maurice Louca (Karkhana), and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Karkhana). The always-changing face of Dwarfs Of East Agouza shows them in a feverish mode with an adrenalin rush; massive eruptions fight a genuine flow. Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt manage to sound like a tonal cyclone consisting of 156 musicians, blowing heads and minds away. Out of the blue they suddenly manage to change mode and develop mild, calm, and elegant/fragile melodies. Interplay between early Baker and Clapton in Cream's looser frequencies seems sometimes just a stone's throw away. Electric Smog is meant to be a twin release to Sir Richard Bishop and David Oliphant / Karkhana with Nadah El Shazly's Carte Blanche. One-time pressing.

Active in Los Angeles’ 1980-1986 underground music scene, John Lafia is best known for the hypnotic album Prayers, released through Barry Craig’s influential, cassette-only label Trance Port Tapes. "Life Is Short", "A Promise", “Dream", “Hidden Things", "Spaghetti Western", and "Escape" come from that release.

This compilation also features tracks from subsequent Trance Port releases: LA Mantra 2 ’s "Queen Of The Nile" and Phantom Takes’ "The Moth". John’s “Odyssey Girls” appeared on the seminal 1983 spoken word LP, English As A Second Language. “The Confession,” a collaboration with legendary producer Ethan James, was released on 1986’s LP, Voices From North America. While recording this music, Hollywood-based John also dreamt of making his own films.

To support himself, he intermittently crewed on low-budget movies, including fellow UCLA Film School alumni, Alex Cox’s infamous Repo Man. Cinematic influence comes to the fore in titles such as, “Spaghetti Western”, “Queen Of The Nile”, “Escape”, and “Hidden Things”. Working alone endlessly in his home studio, John used the recording environment as a launching pad for exploring his uncensored psyche’s furthest dimensions. Hours of repetitive rhythms often transported him into trance-like states.

Tracks “Propaganda” and “Art Of The Jungle” exemplify this technique. Others, “4AM”, “Doubt”, and “Montgomery Park”, are miniature psychodramas (replete with three-act structures). Songs "Life Is Short", and "Dream" grapple with life’s fragile and unknowable essence. "The Moth", "Fourth Of July", and "SOS", are sonic journeys into trance-like repetition.

This intensely personal music never intended to "find" an audience; it was a means in and of itself. Its decades-later rebirth in this compilation is a joyous surprise.

Charlemagne Palestine's majestic 1976 work The Golden Mean, originally performed by Palestine on two pianos, is revisited here as The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn, a new collaboration between Palestine and enigmatic musician Rrose.

March 2018: the Festival Variations in Nantes commissions Charlemagne Palestine to reinvent The Golden Mean for two pianists. Palestine chose Rrose to join him in this new rendition of the work. Together, they performed The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn onstage at the main opera house in Nantes -- the sumptuous Théâtre Graslin – with extraordinary results.

The concept of the 'golden mean' goes back to the roots of mathematics, and ancient Greek philosophy. It is an important work in the Palestine mythos, embodying his total immersion in the power of the interval. "It's probably his most systematic work . . . a step-by-step journey through the intervals of the octave," says Rrose. "When we rehearsed it, we were noticing how each interval is like a universe of its own -- with its own history, emotions, and sonic qualities all mixed up together. Every time you move from one interval to the next, it feels like moving into another world."

"I love the interval," Palestine told me in a recent interview. "I love when it plays with itself. That's what I learned from organ musics too. You can just do an interval, and if they're just slightly out of tune with each other, then they shimmer . . . they play themselves. And it sounds like somebody's playing lots of notes. In your ear, it's like an aural phenomenon . . . that's my whole concept. I make something that then does itself somehow. It continues by itself. So I don't have to always be there. And that makes my music a little less egocentric. So there's more space. Also for the listener — the ear plays with these things, and you're not always being given orders. Your ear isn't given orders all the time of what to listen for."

Beautifully recorded, with mastering by Rashad Becker of Dubplates and Mastering, The Golden Mean + Sheeenn feels expansive, radiant and hypnotic, opening new ears to its enduring mystery.

Rrose adds this note to listeners: "Do not focus your attention on the notes being played, but on the ocean of overtones swimming, suspended, overhead, brushing against one another, kissing one another, melting into one another."

This is the definitive reissue of the long out of print first album from Italian experimental-rock band La 1919. Originally released in 1987 by ADN, the Italian Recommended Records branch, Ars srA was an early example of a long distance collaboration album as result of a virtuosic exchange of tapes between the Milan based duo and the legendary American guitarist Henry Kaiser and Canadian maverick sound artist John Oswald. The resulting music sounds like a perfect blend of '70s Art-Rock elements and '80s electronics. An eclectic mix of "Frith" oriented guitars, cold synthetic sounds and programmed drum machine beats. Some sort of sonic no-man's land where elements from the Post-Rock in Opposition aesthetic meet the experimental side of New Wave. The album includes a declared tribute to the Frith-Laswell-Maher seminal coalition, via a metronomic version of "Killing Time", the title track from Massacre's first album. The LP comes with updated graphics and contents including unpublished pictures and various memorabilia + CD with extra tracks.

The second volume of Water and Rock Music by British guitarist Jon Collin is another solid gambol in the outdoors. For much of this it sounds almost as though Mr. Collin is wearing a pair of hip waders and is up to his ass in a stream, casting for notes the way Hemingway casted for trout. His string bending recalls Loren Connors at points, but he has a manual approach to filigree Loren has never displayed. Notes bend and hovers, but they also flutter, and the combination of sounds is not quite like anything that’s preceded it.

Some listeners have noted that the environmental sounds put them in mind of New Age string pluckers, but Collin’s compositions do not fall into the trap of needing to resolve melodic quandaries, or making gestures that chase after standard forms of beauty. Jon’s music works as a series of comments on sound and questions about the physical space in which it’s created, but like any good philosopher he knows when to leave a sense of mystery hanging in the air.

There is plenty of sweetness to the playing here, whether he’s strolling through a playground, standing in the middle of a busy street, or sitting the the flight path of an airport. The music never seems dictated by the background sounds, so much as it encourages us to consider every part of the sonic construction to be heard as music (in the Cage-ian sense). The elements become a part of the greater whole in a seamless way. And the closer you listen the more that becomes clear.

I am still most struck by (at least what sounds like) the “stream” sequences. But that’s just because I really like the visuals it conjures up. You may find different personal sweet spots. But find them you will.

Water and Rock Music Volume II is a truly ear-opening spin.

-Byron Coley, 2019

Reissue of a true avantgarde-rock classic: Skeleton Crew were the maverick duo of Ex-Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith and the great late cellist Tom Cora. Formed during one of Frith's early American residencies, Skeleton Crew was a legendary two man crew who somehow - in real time, managed to play all their instruments, cello, bass, electric guitar, violin, vocals - as well as, drum parts dislocated between the two of them. No one sounded like Skeleton Crew, ever. An unprecedented and tight duo coalition that produced some of the best music of the decade. Originally released in 1984, Learn to Talk consists of a highly integrated mixture of art-rock, punk energy, tape manipulation and re imagined folk elements. A catalogue of invention that remains breathtaking today. Fully re-mastered and including a printed inner sleeve with previously unpublished text by Fred Frith in memory of Tom Cora on the 20th anniversary of his premature passing.

We announce the joyous return of the spacecraft known as IQ+1 to Planet Earth.

After more than six years, which its members spent on experiments, improvisational side-missions, solo excursions, and hunting for material, we can finally welcome a third mission, following on from the highly acclaimed Tvárí v tvár (Face to Face, 2011) and IQ+1 (Polí 5, 2013).

The current line up – George Bagdasarov, Veronika Hladká (PIO), Jaroslav Tarnovski (Gurun Gurun, Wabi Experience, Jipangu), Petr Vrba (Rouilleux, Poisonous Frequencies, PIO), Michal Zboril (PIO, B4), and Katerina Bilejová – adheres to the philosophy of free improvisation. There is no captain to determine its momentary course, nor genre restrictions, nor sonic or musicianly hierarchy. The strategies remain unchanged, as does the instrumental variety, and the authentic excitement of live performance.

Mappa editions presents IQ+1’s third album, titled Conversaphone Plus, as the result of several séances recorded at the end of 2017. Every submersion in its depths is an unrepeatable experience. The organic sonic material is constantly contracting and expanding, adapting itself to the listener’s context, escaping beyond the horizon, creating mimicries, and enticing us to bubbling, popping, and jingling polyrhythms to then release its protective toxins. All six pieces boil on the narrow edge of chaotic decomposition and celestial order in which every sonic detail has its precisely determined position. Field recordings permeate the instruments on an equal footing, making it difficult to identify the sound, instrument, or player, so that each time the record is turned over, a new adventure begins. Federsel (B4, Handa Gote, Gurun Gurun) took care of the connective tissue between the pieces and the balanced post-production architecture.

Avoiding irritating instrumental exhibitionism, and egocentric deafness, Conversaphone Plus is nothing less than an uncompromising electro-acoustic testimony to the vitality of the Czech improvising scene. And it is nothing more than an attempt to connect sonic geology with astral listening.

Open the window a little – a messenger from the spacecraft known as IQ+1 is descending through the opening.

Nach Releases Auf Going Good, Jinn, Lovers Rock, Gravity Grafitti Und Moscomans Disco Halal-label Veröffentlicht Der Japanische Produzent Yoshinori Hayashi Nun Sein Debütalbum Auf Smalltown Supersound. Als Schüler Des Avantgarde-komponisten Mica Nozawa Besitzt Sein Werk "ambivalence" Einen Kosmischen, Hypnotischen, Fast Rituellen Ansatz Und Wird Von Resident Advisor Als "komplexes Patchwork Aus Studiogeräten, Live-instrumenten, Verstaubten Jazz-platten Und Clever Geschnittenen Library-sounds Mit Weichen Und Einladenden Strukturen" Bezeichnet.

90's Electro-Punk project based in Chicago after Janis Sils emigrated from Riga, Latvia. Self built instruments to create an trash and solid industrial sound. Influenced by label Wax Trax! & bands like Laidbach, Nine Inch Nails, Front 242 ... The world of U.S.O.C.A. reflects a strong talk to military minds. Something straight with no breathe. A uniting calling for masses.

collecting orders for repress ... !

Originally released in 1972, Lord Of Lords was Alice Coltrane's final album for Impulse! and the last installment in her awe-inspiring trilogy that also included Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy. While all three records featured strings alongside a jazz ensemble, Lords Of Lords stood apart from its predecessors due to the sheer size of the orchestra (12 violins, 6 violas and 7 cellos, arranged and conducted by Coltrane herself) and its refined, blissful performances - shining a vital light on the devotional path that she would follow for the rest of her career.

On the first two pieces, "Andromeda's Suffering" and "Sri Rama Ohnedaruth" (titled after the spiritual name for her late husband), Alice's dazzling piano and harp blend perfectly with the blanket of strings, while the haunting rhythm section of Charlie Haden and Ben Riley and a magnificent, droning electric organ emerge immaculately on the title track and closer "Going Home." Coltrane's musical vision is bold in its imagination and cosmic in scope, yet remains intensely personal and immediate. Lord Of Lords points inward as much as to the beyond, recalling her classical roots and recasting Eastern modes to radically invert the American avant-garde and spiritual jazz traditions.

This first-time vinyl reissue has been carefully remastered from the original master tapes.