Archive for the Experimental Category
Robert Haigh “Black Sarabande” (Unseen Worlds)
Black Sarabande expands upon pianist-composer Robert Haigh’s beguiling debut for Unseen Worlds with a collection of intimate and evocative piano-led compositions. Haigh was born and raised in the ‘pit village’ of Worsbrough in South Yorkshire, England. His father, as most of his friends’ fathers, was a miner, who worked at […]
Rap “Export” (Jolly Discs)
Free, fresh, rowdy-cum-wistful rave/blooz mutations from Thomas Bush and Guy Gormley (Special Occasion, Enchante), improbably applying hardstyle tempos to breezy, dub-scuffed pop songs with soca/funky-derived rhythms and eerie, ambient/folk textures (what?). Hashed out over a few sessions at GG’s studio over the road from us back in December, it’s a […]
Pessimist & Karim Maas “Pessimist & Karim Maas” (Pessimist Productions)
Now in stock! Pessimist links with longtime associate Karim Maas for twelve untitled, interconnected tracks of paranoid, dub-fissured hip-hop and voidal techno pressure. Forget dnb…this is a downer than downtempo excursion, deep and dread, heavy as a jeep parked on your chest, with low-slung, blunted breakbeats and weapons-grade sub-bass caught up in […]
Boreal Massif “We All Have An Impact” (Pessimist Productions)
Proper stunning 12-track LP of ruffneck, downtempo breakbeats, ultra-sparse electro and gorgeously melancholic, after-the-flood ambience from Pessimist and Loop Faction. Much like the Pess & Karim Maas album from earlier this year, We All Have An Impact is an Isolationist’s dream synthesis of low-slung trip-hop rhythms and suspenseful, blood-vessel-bursting dub-techno […]
Ragnar Grippe “Sand” (Dais)
Since its original release in 1977, Ragnar Grippe’s seminal debut album entitled “Sand” has been adorned with immense praise and influenced a myriad of ambient musicians and minimalist composers. Grippe’s unique approach of bonding post-modern classical composition into the tape techniques of musique concrète allowed him to be one of […]
Russell Haswell “37 Minute Workout Vol. 2” (Diagonal)
N0!zy blighter Russell Haswell returns to Diagonal five years after his label debut with a spontaneously combusting follow-up to 37 Minute Workout (2014) generated again from a mix of analog/digital synths and modular systems edited on a computer. It was inspired by a visit to CERN, The European Organisation for […]
Akitsa “Goetie” (Hospital Productions)
Hospital Productions present a reissue of Akitsa’s Goetie, originally released in 2001. Repressed 20th anniversary edition with updated layout. Classic debut album that has influenced a generation since with its stunning and inimitable mix of black metal, punk, funeral doom, and industrial ascension. Juvenile black metal madness. Double-LP in wide […]
Vilod “The Clouds Know” (Mana)
Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer as Vilod, with their second full-length album following 2015’s cult classic Safe in Harbour on Perlon. Housed in a stunning gatefold sleeve. “Cryptic, twilight emissions from Villalobos and Loderbauer; their synthetic compound of electronics and ouroboros jazz has walked from ECM and Perlon over to […]
Shasta Cults “Shasta Cults” (Important)
Shasta Cults is the musical project of Canadian electronics technician Richard Smith. For almost two decades, Smith was the official Buchla & Associates go-to repair person for studios, collectors, and musicians around the world, having worked with artists such as Aphex Twin, Suzanne Ciani, Mort Subotnick, and institutions such as […]
HSXCHCXCXHS “AAA” (Rosten)
AAA (pronounced something like AOE) is the first release from SHXCXCHCXSH under the new moniker HSXCHCXCXHS. It’s a single LP, delivered in 80 bpm and presented with visuals from Pedro Maia.
Ena “Baroque” (Different Circles)
Two years in the works, Baroque follows from the D&B-styled flux of Ena’s early 2019 collaboration with Felix K (F&E #1) to sound out more unorthodox areas of inquiry of abstruse, Chain Reaction-like sound design and algorithmic decomposition. In terms of the music’s boneless construction and roiling spectral nature, it […]
Dome “Dome 4: Will You Speak This Word” (Editions Mego)
With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of “using the studio as a compositional tool” and recorded and released three Dome […]
Fred Lane “Icepick To The Moon” (Feeding Tube)
“Amazingly, here is the glorious (long-delayed) follow-up to Fred Lane’s 1988 Shimmy Disc LP, Car Radio Jerome. In the wake of that surreal masterpiece, Shimmy announced an LP called Icepick to the Moon, but it took 31 years to wrestle this slab of bacon to the mat. And you’ll be […]
Company “Trios” (Honest Jon’s)
For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London’s I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio…), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the […]
Incapacitants “Stupid Is Stupid” (Hospital Productions)
Hospital Productions present a reissue of Incapacitants’ Stupid Is Stupid, originally released in 1993. In 1993, founding fathers of Japan noise T. Mikawa and F. Kosokai revealed Stupid Is Stupid, one of the most classic titles to emerge from the criminally underrated and revered Incapacitants. A seminal document already over […]
Smell & Quim “Cosmic Bondage” (Hospital Productions)
Hospital Productions present a reissue of Smell & Quim’s Cosmic Bandage, originally released in 1995 on their notorious Stinky Horse F*** imprint. Cosmic Bondage stands as a monument to the universal perversion inside us all. Birthed into the world with an auto-asphyxiated doll complete with toy packaging and overgrown pubic […]
Vatican Shadow “Kneel Before Religious Icons” (Hospital Productions)
Before another Vatican Shadow release appears on vinyl for the first time early next year, Hospital Productions reissue a killer 2011 tape release on a 2019 vinyl pressing after appearing on a long sold-out LP edition for Type in 2012 Remastered and slightly edited from the original 4 x tape […]
Robert Ashley “Automatic Writing” (Lovely Music)
Lovely Music present a reissue of Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing, originally released as an LP by Lovely Music in 1979. Over the course of Robert Ashley’s career his preoccupation with language and the voice took many forms. He became known in his librettos as a wonderful, funny, moving writer. But […]
Bernard Parmegiani “De Natura Sonorum” (Recollection GRM)
The first series comprises six related movements, usually organised in pairs, electronic sounds with instrumental and more rarely, concrete sounds: Incidences/resonances brings into play controlled resonances akin to sounds of concrete origin in a process that helps to expand the variable electronic sound sources. Here, ‘incidents’ are opposed to one-off […]
Ahmed “Super Majnoon (East Meets West)” (Otoroku)
أحمد [Ahmed] — the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, and Seymour Wright — make music of heavy rhythm, repetition, and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the two LPs which make up Super Majnoon [East Meets West] […]
Peter Brotzmann “Solo – I Surrender Dear” (Trost)
A long desire of extraordinaire saxophone player Peter Brötzmann was a studio recording of some of his favorite jazz tunes and his own music — a grand bridge over the music important for his life and his musical career in the past and present. Trost invited him to Martin Siewert’s […]
Peter Brotzmann “Fifty Years After…Live At The Lila Eule 2018” (Trost)
For the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the legendary Machine Gun recordings at the Lila Eule in Bremen, Peter Brötzmann put together a trio with the Berlin pianist, composer Alexander von Schlippenbach and the percussionist Han Bennink, who already sat on the drums 50 years ago. They were so […]
Merzbow “Pulse Demon” (Relapse)
Relapse with a remastered reissue from the undisputed king of Japanese noise. “Pulse Demon” is one of the most celebrated releases of Masami Akita’s storied 4 decade long career. Composed entirely by live noise concrete and the use of a fuzz box, “Pulse Demon” eschews all overdubs and studio trickery, […]
Michael Gordon & Jonny Greenwood “Industry Water” (Octatonic)
“Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) announces the formation of Octatonic Records, a new imprint via Council Records. Greenwood’s Octatonic Records will champion classical music. Discussing the label, Greenwood said: ‘This year, I’m launching a new record label, called Octatonic Records. I’ve been documenting the musicians I’ve worked with and encountered in the […]