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Today, like always, we try to pour lots of balm into the ears of the true sound connoseur. The highlights are the new albums from ritualistic Finns Aural Hypnox, delicate sound art, improvisations and field recordings from Observatoire, OtO, Helen Scarsdale Agency and 23five, new releases by Infinite Fog Productions (Aghast Manor, Cisfinitum, Neutral, Maeror Tri, etc.) and a bit of militaristic aesthetics from the ever-marching Ufa Muzak label.
Have a good listening time,
M.M.
19.03.2014
I. Reviews
Some reviews of our releases:
Exit In Grey "Shadows of Stillness" CD:
Sal Solaris "Die Scherben 2004-2010" CD:
II. Forthcoming Events
19.03.2014
i! PROJECT
St. Petersburg, "Zoccolo 2.0". More info...
20.03.2014
NOISES OF RUSSIA
St. Petersburg, Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG-21). More info...
21.03.2014
MICHAEL GIRA
St. Petersburg, "da:da" club. More info...
22.03.2014
MICHAEL GIRA
Moscow, "Theater" club. More info...
22.03.2014
PAPA SRAPA, HIGHWAY NIGHTSTALKER, X3D5
Volgograd, "Steel Rat" bar. More info...
23.03.2014
PAPA SRAPA, ELEMENTY NAHERA, RED PILLOW
Saratov, "Art-Attack" rock bar. More info...
25.03.2014 - II Ambient Music Fest
FABIO ORSI, CLAUDIO ROCCHETTI, ORIGAMI GALAKTIKA, ALEXEI BORISOV, JAKE BELL, CREATION VI
Moscow, "DOM" cultural center. More info...
28.03.2014 - Nordic Noise Night
HVIDE NAETTER, BALTIC WIND
St. Petersburg, Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG-21). More info...
29.03.2014 - Nordic Noise Night
HVIDE NAETTER, BALTIC WIND, X3D5 + 1G0G
Moscow, Ypsylon Studio. More info...
30.03.2014
LUNAR ABYSS, AKINESIA
St. Petersburg, Experimental Sound Gallery (ESG-21). More info...
30.03.2014
NOISES OF RUSSIA
Moscow, "Tomorrow" club. More info...
05.04.2014
LUST FOR YOUTH, ZEX MODEL, BURAGO
Moscow, Dewar's Powerhouse. More info...
12.04.2014
BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE
Moscow, "Theater" club. More info...
13.04.2014
BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE
St. Petersburg, "Waiting Hall". More info...
25.04.2014
SPIRITUAL FRONT
Moscow, "Theater" club. More info...
26.04.2014
SPIRITUAL FRONT
St. Petersburg, "da:da" club. More info...
III. New items in mailorder catalogue
CDs & CD-Rs
Aghast Manor -- "Penetrate" -- CD -- €12
2013 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-33
Aghast Manor is the creation of Andrea Nebel (ex-Aghast). On this album she is joined by grand dark-art master Jouni Havukainen (In Slaughter Natives). "Penetrate" invites you to a dark and haunting flair of ambient sounds combined with styles of symphonic industrial, dark cabaret and jazz noir. Sinister and peculiar indeed, but undeniably beautiful and alluring! ”Penetrate” seduces with an overall concept of 1940’s Paris, fallen suicidal women, wicked asylum nurses and Russian spies. [label info]
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Arktau Aon -- "Ikuisuus Nakyy Luiden Lapi" -- CD -- €12
2013 Aural Hypnox, [AHUE01], (ltd. 289)
Thought lost and subsequently forgotten, a complete album by AIH & AIL of ARKTAU EOS and JKV of ZOÄT-AON was recently rediscovered. This unknown chapter in the evolution of the classic Finnish ritual sound originates from sessions held in May 2005, when Arktau Eos was still unnamed, beginning work on their seminal opus ‘Mirrorion’ and Zoät-Aon had just released the equally influential ‘Star Autopsy’ CD. The album retains the original title of the sessions: ‘Ikuisuus näkyy luiden läpi’, Finnish for ‘Eternity Shines Through the Bones’, and for purposes of this release the group is named simply ARKTAU AON. ‘Ikuisuus näkyy luiden läpi’ is enthusiastic, youthfully vigorous and decidedly ominous ritual music with a total running time of 31:53. Instead of songs, it is divided into different ‘movements’ or phases: it resembles a field recording of some obscure ceremony from a far-off corner of the world. Boasting a raw but good, clear sound, ‘INLL’ remains unaltered save for the mastering done in 2013 at Katajan Kaiku studio. CD edition is limited to 289 copies and includes two hand-finished photo prints (selected randomly from a set of 32 prints), an insert and silk-screen printed cardboard cover. [press-release]
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Ataraxia -- "Suenos" -- CD -- €12
2001/2012 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-14
"Sueсos" ('Dreams' in Spanish) was originally released in 2001 by Cold Meat Industry's imprint Cruel Moon International. This remastered edition contains the bonus track 'Melisanda', which appeared on the rare split 10” with Engelsstaub "In Amoris Mortisque" (1995). "Sueсos" is a collection of songs with different styles, themes, with different historical backgrounds and recorded with the use of many acoustic instruments. Divided into three parts, the first (‘Ego Promitto Domino’) features lyrics inspired by journeys and memories of middle Eastern lands. The sounds are between neoclassical, orchestral and dreamy Mediterranean ambience. The second part (‘L’ame d’eau’) is entirely based on Medieval ballads for acoustic instruments and 2 vocalists. The Third part (‘Sandy Dunes’) is more intimate and meditative, once again the theme is the one of water linked to the female soul: The voyage through the sea, regret, the need of the sea, just for Francesca’s heavenly vocals. [press-release]
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Beequeen -- "Sugarbush" -- CD -- €10
1995 Raum 312, RAUM 02, (ltd. 1000)
Beequeen is the duo of Frans de Waard and Freek Kinklaar and Sugarbush is their third CD release. Frans is also the erstwhile publisher of the excellent experimental/industrial music fanzine VITAL. Sugarbush contains seven tracks of musique concrиte, industrial, and avant garde electronic music. The opening track, "10 Minutes before the Worm," is the ultimate sound sculpture using such diverse elements as running water, an airplane flying overhead, pouring rain, footsteps, a door opening, and electronics. The remaining six tracks demonstrate Beequeen’s ability to compose dark moody atmospheres, alien tribal music, clangorous noise, and eerie cosmic excursions similar to Klaus Schulze’s Irrlicht, and insects from hell. This shifting of styles and moods from track to track is an excellent technique for maintaining your interest throughout the CD. Sugarbush is quite an enjoyable CD and a necessity for those of you who want that dash of adventure added to your mundane listening habits. [Henry Schneider, Expose]
Borghi, Andrea -- "Moltiplicazioni" -- CD -- €8
2010 Lisca Records, Lisca006
Distorted digital sound with interesting sides of matter. Made using custom max/msp applications and varied sound sources. All filtered through analog equipment. Great first work! Typographic print on special textured paper in jewelcase. [label info]
Borghi, Andrea -- "Musica Per Nastro (Tape Music)" -- CD-R -- €6
2012 Spectropol Records, SpecT 16
Originally intended to be released on cassette, the work is also a tribute to composition methods used in electronic tape music of the 1960s. Every track is processed in real-time by a patch built in the Max application and is based on cut-up, sovraposition, sound stretching, loop, echo and feedback. [label info]
[bandcamp]
Broitmann, Eric -- "Carnets Africains" -- CD -- €9
2013 Observatoire, obs * akusma | 048 cd, (ltd. 200)
Eric Broitmann is a composer and a performer of acousmatic music. He is mainly interested in the sound material and develops levels of perception that highlight it. He guides the listener at edge of reality, and plays with that ambiguity to open to listening. His works have been played in several international Festivals: Forum de la jeune creation musicale, Foliesphonies, Elektrophonie festival, Espace du Son de Musique et Recherche, Synthese festival, Palais de Tokyo, France Musique, Futura festival and at the GRM. In addition to his activities as a composer and a performer, he organizes events: concerts, discovery-concerts, creative residencies for non initiated persons. He mainly works with Motus. He also leads mutual creation residencies with the collectif Adelaide & Co (photographers, video makers, visual artists, directors, composers). During the past two years (2012,2013), he’s been working for the GRM (Group of Musical Research) on the European project "Compose With Sound", which aims at developing the access to electroacoustic creation for young audiences. He also works on performing arts and live music... This triptych, whose main material has been collected throughout sound journeys Eric Broitmann made on the African continent, interrogates both memory and perception. It’s a founding project of his composition practise, a project that echoes large parts of his past and illustrates a trip that is both personal and compositional. It represents the fine, fragile path one follows while travelling… It holds the memory of sounds the composer brought back from there, sounds that little by little have dissociated themselves from the present. And then, it also holds everything one brings with oneself, in the luggage of one’s life: Music; Literature; Painting; the living ones, the dead ones. All those things intertwine in a composition and builds a new and modified perception. The journey gets crowded, deviates, polyphonic, a multiple dialogue... [press-release]
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Bullock, Michael T. & Andrew Lafkas -- "Ceremonies To Breathe Upon" -- CD -- €9
2010 Winds Measure Recordings, wm18, (ltd. 300)
Recorded live amongst the very definition of urban decay, this duo of contrabass players demonstrate their exceptional ability at improvisation. Presented here as naked as possible (no overdubs, editing, or post-production), the result is a compelling minimalist document of both improvised music and a study of sparse, natural sound. [Brainwashed.com] CD and insert, packaged in a paper envelope, attached to three-panel letterpress card stock sleeve.
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Chasse, Loren & Michael Northam -- "The Otolith" -- CD -- €10
2008 Helen Scarsdale Agency, HMS 014, (ltd. 700)
The recordings of Loren Chasse and Michael Northam begin and end with the great outdoors. Yet, the well-documented wanderlust of these two kindred sound artists is only part of the equation. Field recordings of wind, water, and stone intertwine and hybridize within private rituals of droning psychedelic ragas that return as a folklore reiterating the mystery of the natural world around us. Through his numerous contributions to the multi-faceted Jewelled Antler as well his solo work, Chasse has long postulated the microphone as an extension of his ear, which magnifies and probes the surface of the earth for a tactile grit that permeates all of the sounds that he generates. Northam claims his inspiration from vast geographies, microscopic detail, and severe weather, which he compacts through various techniques to explore what is between improvisation and acousmatic composition. Both Chasse and Northam entertain such notions through an alchemy of arcane instruments: autoharps, ouds, flutes, bells, gongs, bowed wires, harmonium, and Northam's magnetic table harp. The Otolith is the result of several years of work, with sounds gathered collectively in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout Europe. The album speaks as a bramble of fence wire and chaparral scrub oak, acquiring an unkempt collection of rubbish, cobwebs, insects, and soil within its tangle. As the wind pushes in one direction, this mass emits a quite if scratchy melody as if the ghost from a forgotten song; but when the wind changes directions, it bellows a rasping din of metal and vine cracking against itself. This sodden calliope tumbles into a miasma of droning atmospheres, softly rasped distortion, and very subtly rendered lulabies lurking deep within the overgrowth. Hand letter-pressed in an edition of 700 copies. [press-release]
Cisfinitum -- "The Bog" -- CD -- €11
2013 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-39
This album is dedicated to the archetype of the toad in the world's mythology and based on re-processed sounds of frogs, toads and swamps. Field recordings were made during travels in China, India and Kavkaz and parts of the sound sources from friendly sound artists as Mars F. Weillink (ex-Vance Orchestra), Andrea Marutti (Amon) and Roman Voronovski (Rombix). Track 3 contains a looped voice by Dasha Baskakova and sounds recorded at Volkonski Dolmen using sine generator and dolmen original acoustic. Track 4 is based on pitched loops of a violin and sounds from Mars. No any preset sounds/ synths used on this record. [label info]
Corazzata Valdemone -- "Avanguardia Rumorista" -- CD -- €10
2013 Ufa Muzak, UFA63, (ltd. 500)
Martial industrial / Neo folk. The Italian division of totalitarian art ministrels presents an integral conceptual program embracing the most striking moments, testaments, dates and personal fates of the last century. Each track is a separate chapter, separate piece of art, immerging into uneasy retro atmospheres of the last century. The musical part of this album represents a whole variety of performers and musical styles. From traditional songs and bombastic battlefield canvases to sad and quiet departures that help to understand deeper those restless times. Special focus is made on funeral theme, both as a point of no return and as a symbol of lost hopes. Prayer of the Italian fascists, testament of Magda Goebbels before the tragic finale in the bunker, German funeral march "Ich Hatt Einen Kameraden", and traditional Sicilian march of death - all can be found here. Though this is not sombre and sepulchral music, but rather inspiring and frantic hour-long song. Mild baritone voice sinks in the monotonous drone of fields fuming after air bombardments. From the shattered ditches and infantry defences the praying voice will rise again, now in English, slowly crumpled by the patter of new legionnaires and mechanical noises. "Mother Of Death" runs the show, red colours of "The New Force" draw to stand up in close rows again and again, both alive and dead, for the final part, the great energies of the earth glorify the cult of machines and endless wars, turning into one dynamic line, just like on futuristic paintings. Corrazata Valdemone are neither politicians, nor militarists, they don't start wars and don't appeal to anything, this is just their aesthetic feeling which we can fully enjoy here. 9 tracks, 44 minutes, 4-panel digipak. [press-release]
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Dauby, Yannick / John Grzinich / Murmer -- "Lind, Raud, Aastaajad" -- 2 CD -- €10
2012 Invisible Birds, ib005, (ltd. 509)
Invisible Birds is very proud to announce the release of "Lind, Raud, Aastaajad", a 2 CD set of Estonian recordings from three masters: Yannick Dauby, John Grzinich, and Murmer. Disc 1 - Yannick Dauby: Lind, Raud - songs of birds and metal, recorded in Estonia in 2007. Disc 2 - Yannick Dauby, John Grzinich, and Murmer: Aastaajad - field recordings by John Grzinich and Murmer, electronic sounds by Yannick Dauby. Two tracks composed by John Grzinich, two tracks composed by Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer). Yannick Dauby mentions in his notes that, while in Estonia, John Grzinich guided him through some of his most favorite recording locations. It is in these locations where he feels the artist "becomes an instrument for the landscape". The "Lind, Raud, Aastaajad" recordings perfectly evoke the connection these three artists have to the landscape. In specified locations and seasons, they compose rich sounds from birds, metal, rain, snow, footsteps, melodious wind, water trickles, and more. The recordings subtly ensconce the listener in a sublime and poetic "view" of the landscape transforming itself. [press-release]
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Diagnose: Lebensgefahr -- "Transformalin" -- CD -- €12
2005/2012 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-25
Words are not enough to describe the visceral feelings that Transformalin delivers, but this sound-therapy will cure your soul or make you total sick! This project’s sole member is Nattramn, whose ‘Death—Pierce Me’ album under the project name Silencer stand as defining work in the suicidal black metal movement. Diagnose: Lebensgefahr is significantly different from either, though, and should not be considered a black metal album as such. For the first time this album blew up the world in 2007 and now it's still one of the most interesting works on current scene. Transformalin is a bleak voyage through related genres, particularly dark ambient, power electronics, martial and noise-influenced industrial, with black metal serving as the filter that taints and completes them. Consequently, ‘Transformalin’ is a jarring experience that can be harshly rhythmic at one moment and the next dive into unmetered, dragging ambience, while still others draw on martial cadences and horn reveries that echo in the background. Though mostly instrumental, he does provide ‘narration’ from time to time with primarily clean vocals that range from manically impassioned to psalm-tone catatonia. Last years it became extremely rare album and now, 5 years later, this black pearl is available again! This time with the expanded booklet on 16 pages which was specially developedover by the well-known artist Costin Chioreanu (drawing for Grave worked; Darkthrone; Demonical; Aura Noir; My Dying Bride; Arcturus, Trencadis; Arktau Eos and many other). Masterfully executed, under the sensitive management of Nattramn'a, drawings, are your silent conductors on desert corridors of Diagnose: Lebensgefahr. Regular jewelcase the edition with 16 page booklet. [press-release]
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Duncan, John & Carl Michael von Hausswolff -- "Our Telluric Conversation" -- CD -- €10
2006 23five, 23five 008
23five Incorporated proudly presents Our Telluric Conversation — the second collaborative album from John Duncan and Carl Michael von Hausswolff. This is an album which Duncan describes as having been galvanized by magnetism. In a semantic sleight of hand, Duncan and Hausswolff reveal magnetism through a duality of meanings. One on hand, they speak of the physical phenomenon of charged objects that exert an attraction or repulsion upon other objects; yet on the other, magnetism can be defined the psychological influence wielded by charismatic individuals. Our Telluric Conversation maps out the complexities that emerged through the collaborative pursuits of these venerated sound artists... [label info]
Function Fukushima -- "Tears of Shamans" -- CD-R -- €7
2013 OtO, OtO 007, (ltd. 100)
Improv music from Japan.
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Furudate, Tetsuo + Zbigniew Karkowski -- "World As Will II" -- CD -- €10
2002 23five, 23five 003, (ltd. 500)
The World As Will collaborations between composers Tetsuo Furudate and Zbigniew Karkowski reflect their mutual adherence to the principles of the 19th Century thinker Arthur Schopenhauer, who had demonstrated a necessarily pessimistic philosophy within the comprehensive four volume set entitled Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (World As Will). Almost 200 years later, Furudate and Karkowski have forged a collaborative sound that builds upon these principles, highlighting that their synchronized wills can unleash an infernal majesty through the cruel manifestation of electronic sound. Drawing also from the acknowledgement of Schopenhauser’s influence upon Richard Wagner’s vigorous operas, Furudate and Karkowski have centered World As Will 2 almost exclusively upon samples of Karkowski’s little heard orchestral work and Wagner’s masterful Gцtterdammerung. Augmented through the crucible of digital processing, these electronic samples of vivid polyphony found in the masculine crescendos of orchestral sound take a violent turn towards the realms of militant noise. World As Will 2 results in an unrelenting soundtrack of expressive power and will, shaped within arenas of sound. [label info]
Garai, Akos -- "Barges & Flows" -- CD-R -- €6
2011 3LEAVES, 3L005, (ltd. 100)
"It is dawn by the Danube. The river is flowing quietly. There are only a few moored ships, and many empty docks. No movement? No sounds? It is quite the opposite. From close-up, you can hear the docks and their vessels sing their own rusty songs incessantly. I find a place and set up my recording equipment. The purpose of these unprocessed field recordings is to introduce the harbor sounds along the riverbank of the Danube. Some areas are filled with people and ships on a daily basis, while others are only visited occasionally or never at all. I collected these field recordings in the autumn of 2010 in Budapest, Hungary." [Akos Garai]
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Garcia, Miguel A. & Oier Iruretagoiena -- "Sohorna" -- CD-R -- €5
2013 Observatoire, obs * RD#1, (ltd. 100)
A split release by Miguel A. Garcia (sometimes known as Xedh) and Oier Iruretagoiena. The first has four tracks of about twenty-five minutes and the latter just one track of the same length. In recent years I began to like his music more and more, especially when it seems to be having some thought into it. Based on field recordings, I should imagine, but then heavily processed into four pieces here of highly dark, delicate drone matter. It almost sounds like static hiss, like the taped events of an electrical current, on the brink of dying down. Maybe it dies, occasionally, when it rises out from the sheer inaudibility, such as in 'Ipurtargik'. Essentially Iruretagoiena does the same thing, but then considerable louder than Garcia. If I have to guess, I'd say he stuck a contact microphone on nearly defective piece of machinery, like an motor of some kind. His piece has two main parts and in both he keeps processing the sound, in the second half with what seems to be some stomp boxes, like distortion. Both Garcia and Iruretagoiena work in a minimalist fashion, changing bits in the color of the sound to keep up a full level of interest. Each in their own fashion, which works out twice nice. Excellent release. [FdW, Vital Weekly]
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Gerard, Pierre -- "Environment & Gesture" -- CD -- €8
2011 3LEAVES, 3L009, (ltd. 250)
"I would like to improvise with the most minimalist element, which shares our everyday life each minute when we are there. This improvisation does not come in a domination of the one on the other, but in an integration. Hoping that the sound which I produce would have been able to be without my participation. I would also love that this work infiltrates into a notion of time, temporality. No as a fear of to see it to fly away, but as a soft impression of to feel it to slide. In this exercise the presence of the movement allows a sound, this sound gives an acoustic presence to the author, to the actor, to the musician. The produced sound is only the result of the movement. The movement has its resonance own, its particular light touch." [Pierre Gerard]
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Giffoni, Carlos -- "Welcome Home" -- CD -- €8
2005 Important Records, imprec064
Welcome Home is less of a homecoming and more of a coming out for Carlos Giffoni, a highly respected and active NYC collaborator who typically shares the stage and records with the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline, Chris Corsano, John Duncan, Massimo, Thurson Moore and many others. Giffoni has long been the experimentalists experimentalist and now on Welcome Home, his first official full length, finds him center stage where he belongs... Like many of the great electronic artsts Giffoni builds his own custom electronics and programs his own software with which he's able to achieve sounds uniquely his own. Welcome Home, taking over three years to complete, is full of heavy electronic compositions using meticulously arranged microsound particles generated from Giffoni's unique equiptment... Giffoni is certainly a centerpiece in the American experimental electronic undereground functioning as an a-list collaborator and as the primary organizer of NYC's No Fun Fest. Fans of his collaborations, and his band Monotract, will relish in this opportunity to hear Giffoni under the lights and all alone. [press-release]
Gintas K / David Ellis / Simon Tyszko, Masayuki Imanishi, Dasein -- "Radical Demos #3: Electronics, Montage, Noise" -- 2 CD-R -- €7
2013 Observatoire, obs * RD#3, (ltd. 100)
Disc I contains 2 tracks made by collaboration of GINTAS K, DAVID ELLIS & SIMON TYSZKO and 5 tracks by MASAYUKI IMANISHI. Disc II contains 3 tracks by DASEIN... David Ellis describes himself as a 'Culturalist' or 'Rogue Enthusiast'. He is an occasional actor, writer, journalist, film curator, broadcaster & advocate of marginalised artists. The vocal elements of Gintas K's compostion or 'Unsong' were recorded ad-hoc at the Beaconsfield Arch Space, London by David Ellis & Simon Tyszko during Tyszko's exhibition 'Unfunfair' - an assemblage of Sonic sculptures including defunct machines, a rewired analog record-player & Neon. At the invite of Tyszko to "step-up to the mic" Ellis a regular collaborator, began singing in "the quasi crooning, sentimental style of his Fathers generation, though in the more slightly off-the-cuff, off-key manner of our Uncles after two or three beers". Tyszko then joined him in a duet. Plus "....at some point as I was singing I started to feel queasy, unsettled, whilst at the same time liberated from my taste for syncopation, dissonance & rupture etc. When we were fondling the mic, belting-out these bit's of half-remembered songs from a Post-War period there was nothing ironic in our delivery. None. It came from the heart. From our hearts & the technology. From the microphone, from somewhere else"... 5 tracks by MASAYUKI IMANISHI recorded using radio and paper plus field recording... The material by DASEIN was recorded under the influence of a trip to Vietnam. Presented tracks are an attempt to rethink the Vietnamese traditional music in line with sound art. In addition to the modern sound processing also used authentic musical instruments. [label info]
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Halo Manash -- "Caickuwi Cauwas Walkeus" -- CD -- €12
2009/2014 Aural Hypnox, [AHSM01], (ltd. 444)
Caickuwi Cauwas Walkeus, a work recorded in early September 2008 is finally re-released through Aural Hypnox’s Stellar Mansion series. Stellar Mansion is our new re-release series, presenting past Helixes transmissions, sent back from distant stars, in newly designed packaging. CCW was previously available during Halo Manash tour in France (Jan. 2009), in an edition of only 29 copies. The album presents contemplative forest music in its purest form - a return of lost, primeval forest hymns. Buried deep in sound and soil, primal Mana has been unearthed and unleashed from the remote frosty hummocks and calm fells all over boreal forests. The circling polar flares in the night sky and a variety of forgotten calls guide the indefatigable explorer inwards, towards the saffron moon and self-devouring windlestraw pyres. CCW consists of five tracks utilizing only acoustic instrumentation, which for the most part have been recorded live in the Katajan Kaiku studio with no overdubs. Total running time: 43:56. Regular edition of 444 copies is enclosed inside hand finished cardboard covers including a 8-panel booklet. [press-release]
Halo Manash -- "Taiwaskivi" -- CD -- €12
2009 Aural Hypnox, [AH12], (ltd. 500)
As winter hibernation and spring awakening gives way to summer, Halo Manash rises radiant into luminosity, with wings spread into all worlds, and brings forth Taiwaskivi, an opulent work of solar ambience and primordial Ur-music... Taiwaskivi, a work of sonic flame and aural ash, consists of seven interrelated tracks, utilizing such diverse instrumentation as organ, horns, vocals, drums, gongs, percussions and various string instruments as well as field-recordings captured during the pilgrimage that the creation of the work embodies... An air of finality abounds, as Taiwaskivi, although a complete work in itself, can also be viewed as the third and final facet of a tripartite series of works that are part of one holistic creation – a treelogy, with seed, root, trunk and finally, branches. Being the culmination of an ascending journey through the aforementioned realms within and without, Taiwaskivi is the celestial crown at the peak, reaching toward Sol, source and beyond; it is the leaves and fruit of the branches and their skybound nectar ever-flowing - the sacred fire, the consummation and conjunction of All... Comes in a hand finished cardboard booklet with inserts. [press-release]
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Halo Manash -- "Wesieni Wainajat" -- CD -- €12
2013 Aural Hypnox, [AHUE03], (ltd. 350)
Halo Manash has been working for the past three years in solid-shadows and un-lights to reach the posture of Mercurial Aqua-Aurorae. ‘Wesieni Wainajat’ presents a natural continuation for the group’s past Forest Music phase and their previous ‘Taiwaskivi’ album, in which the cresent-drop was just about to descent in the bottom of the sublunar-cup. 'Wesieni Wainajat' consists of three, long and brooding, repetitive trance-drone tracks interweaving various analog drone sources with elemental field-recordings. Each track serves as a vehicle in passing the threshold of consciousness and triggering the subliminal realms of hallucination and shape-shifting. As a whole the album is an evocative lunar-hymn reaching out toward one’s Mercurial Empire – and the One who is moist. CD edition is limited to 350 copies and includes three hand-finished photo prints, an textual insert and silk-screen printed cardboard covers. Total running time: 39:11. [press-release]
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I.Corax -- "Cella Phantasma" -- CD -- €12
2013 Aural Hypnox, [AHUE02], (ltd. 350)
Aural Hypnox welcomes I.corax to the label roster. We will eventually reprint the entire I.corax back catalogue, but to initiate the series we are thrilled to present Cella Phantasma, an album consisting of previously unreleased material dating back to a time before the birth of the Blue Sector label. The material on 'Cella Phantasma' originates from the very first I.corax sessions held in the surroundings of Oulu in 1999. The album offers an archeo-astronomical account of the spectral phenomena found at that particular time. The sessions or states of 'Cella Phantasma' were heavily influenced by numerous mystical experiences that took place during various night-time wanderings and ritual retreats, which more than often included exceedingly vigorous and intimidating encounters with the Visitors from beyond. The primitive electro-acoustic manifestations arising from such experiences are brought forth in a characteristically eerie lo-fi atmosphere, composed using a minimal selection of instruments. CD edition is limited to 350 copies and includes three hand-finished photo prints, a textual insert and silk-screen printed cardboard covers. Total running time: 36:16. [press-release]
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irr. app. (ext.) -- "Cosmic Superimposition" -- CD -- €10
2007 Errata In Excelsis, eie06
On the single 45 minute track that comprises Cosmis Superimposition, irr. app. (ext.) presents a revolving set of organic fluctuations that wax and wane in accordance to a well-tuned internal logic. Glassine ambient passages of processed environmental noise slide into the sustained harmonics of bowed metals which in turn couples with the off-kilter phase pattern of an exhaust fan whose motor is not quite properly aligned. All the while gurgles from streams, clatter from subterranean actions, singing bowl reverberations, and dark elliptical cycles of blackened electronics pock the stately progressions of Cosmic Superimposition’s dronemusik foundation. Yet, none of these elements shatter the spiraling atmosphere of the contemplative, occasionally melancholia album which parallels the spectral sounds of The Hafler Trio, Organum, and Christoph Heemann... [Helen Scarsdale Agency]
irr. app. (ext.) -- "Kreiselwelle" -- CD -- €10
2009 Helen Scarsdale Agency, HMS 016
irr. app. (ext.) is the sound-engineering project of Californian M.S. Waldron, whose liminal slippages and detourned croons have been spotted recently on stage in Nurse With Wound. Yet for all of the antics that are required for the NWW spectacle, Mr. Waldron still dedicates himself in the parallel pursuits of irr. app. (ext.) with a discography that reads more like a wunderkammer of uncanny investigations into futility declared as its reverse... Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment to a body of works that irr. app. (ext.) has composed under the influence of Wilhelm Reich, the unorthodox 20th Century psychologist who proposed amongst many hypotheses, an interconnectivity between energy, organisms, and the entire cosmos. The title to this album translates as ‘spiral wave,’ a structuralist form which Reich had observed throughout nature within numerous systems, whether that be the grand arcs of galaxies down to the radial symmetries of micro-organisms. For Kreiselwelle, Mr. Waldron returns to the same collection of field recordings which began this trilogy that includes Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition; however, he restricted himself to those sounds with spiralling origins: resonating springs, the sounds of the ocean cyclically churning over pebbles on the beach, the wafting of air around various objects, or simply a lamp-shade spinning in place. The resulting recording develops as an organic sublimation of one sound transforming from one state into another and then another. Motorized sounds of mechanical toys set askew settle into a tremolo phase pattern of electrical vibrations. These in turn morph into a cauldron of slow locomotive rumbling, which beget one of many glassine drones that float throughout Kreiselwelle. Many of the sounds seem to have origins in objects that are broken, obsolete, or just plain wrong; but through Waldron’s deft alchemy, these sounds are allowed to flourish in this richly dark and oddly serene amalgamation. [press-release]
irr. app. (ext.) -- "Ozeanische Gefügle" -- CD -- €10
2001/2004 Helen Scarsdale Agency, HMS 002
irr. app. (ext) is the work of California-based sound artist Matt Waldron, whose collected body of work is far too important to continue to be forgotten. During the past decade, only two full albums -- Dust Pincher Appliances (2003 on Crouton) and An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding in Conversation (1997 on Fire, Inc.) -- have seen the light of day despite the fact that perhaps a dozen albums have been completed. The public silence for irr. app. (ext) was never by Waldron's design, as numerous recording deals collapsed, one after the other. The story becomes all the more of conundrum as these misadventures of neglect and ignorance occurred despite Waldron's high-profile collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Stilluppsteypa. If a humble organization like the Helen Scarsdale Agency can have its say, then we speak to remove whatever curses that have haunted irr. app. (ext.) in the past and provide the world with the opportunity to revel in the spectacle and the beauty that is Matt Waldron's art. Had things gone differently, Ozeanische Gefьhle would have been one of the lost irr. app. (ext.) recordings. That would have been a shame for Ozeanische Gefьhle stands as an impeccable composition of post-surrealist dronescaping rivaling such masterpieces as The Hafler Trio's Kill The King, Jonathan Coleclough & Andrew Chalk's Sumac, and Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith. The title has origins with Freud and earlier thinkers; yet Waldron came across Ozeanische Gefьhle (which translates from the German as "oceanic feelings") in his studies of Wilhelm Reich who referenced the term to describe the natural state of every healthy organism as connected to and engaged with the world around it, with its energies flowing from the center outwards. For Waldron, Reich's ideas became the starting point for a metonymic exercise seeking to discover that which is near a signifier and spiral beyond each successive discovery along a complicated aesthetic thread by way of intuition and accident. The album tumbles through a series of sympathetic dronings, field recordings, and performative gestures, continuously traversing the emotional polarities of psychological tension and externalized jouissance. The album begins with a heavily processed flutter of sustained woodwinds accompanied by thunderous rumbles in the distance before dispersing amidst Bernhard Hermann-esque slashings of discordant strings. Later on, the grotesque pathos of a Wurlitzer organ dissolves into a blackened emptiness that envelopes the complex resonant frequencies from Waldron's slow, deliberate performance upon bowls and bells. Despite the incredible depth of his source materials, Waldron displays an uncanny intellect that reflects all of his wandering passages through the lens of a melancholic ambience. Simply put, Ozeanische Gefьhle is a wonder to behold. [press-release]
Kahn, Jason & Takefumi Naoshima -- "In A Room" -- CD -- €9
2009 Winds Measure Recordings, wm14, (ltd. 300)
In this recording Takefumi Naoshima and myself were trying to listen to the room as something like an equal partner in the development of the music. In other playing situations this is often not the case, as the musicians are rather listening to each other (or themselves) first and foremost, with the performance space as an afterthought. And for this reason we chose the title "In a Room". Due to the fact that we played very softly and sparsely the sounds of the room and even those from outside take on equal importance with the sounds we are making with our instruments. In a sense, listening to the CD could be approached in a similar way, with the volume of the playback somehow melding with the volume of the listening environment, so that the recording doesn't dominate the listening environment--just as our playing didn't dominate the recording environment, but worked with it. [Jason Kahn] CD and insert, packaged in a paper envelope, attached to three-panel letterpress card stock sleeve.
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Kriegsfall-U / Kraschau -- "Unitas" -- CD -- €10
2013 Ufa Muzak, UFA64 / MozgaloM, MM015, (ltd. 500)
Martial industrial. Ufa Muzak proudly presents the full-length original split release by the first class bands from the Eastern Europe. A monolythic fusion of two forms of the traditionalist force. In their stone crypts, ancient kings roll their long beards over one hand and raise petrified swords by another. Once ultra-limited release now presented in a new quality format in a glossy digipak. Time runs with different speed, and their minute equals a century, but the breath of bones doesn't break the connection with an ancient clan. Splendid restless tracks by Kriegsfall-U like cups are filled with premonitions of the forthcoming danger, they thunder with marching drums and implode with shouts of orders. Sound of horn and weapon clatter, marble face, slow ritual and young blood soaking the cuirass. The part of Kraschau pays respectful homage, sharing in half light and darkness, melody and noise, their ascetic approach to music is moderate and austere. In a cave amidst stalactites and bones the golden crown is wrapped in a decayed coat, eternal damnation is the price of entering here. Taste the liquor cooked by a sonic union of the Hungarian magicians, touch the peculiar consciousness, the value not posessed by time but by what is called an artifact in "troublesome" times. 7 tracks, 36 minutes, 6-panel digipak. [press-release]
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Lopez, Francisco -- "Machines" -- 2 CD -- €10
2010 Elevator Bath, eeaoa030, (ltd. 500)
Elevator Bath is extremely pleased to present this new double CD set of thematically-linked works from Francisco Lopez, still unquestionably one of the major figures of contemporary experimental music. Machines collects four pieces recorded from 2004-2007, each of which is based upon sounds of machinery (clocks, elevators, and various laboratory and factory equipment) gathered, respectively, in Amsterdam, Leipzig, Barcelona, and Riga. Yes, these compositions are permeated by an “industrial” sound, but these are very subtle arrangements, even with a wide dynamic scope and with silence playing a lesser role than in much of Lopez’ output. There is a strong rhythmic presence in these recordings, heavy with the weight of machinery. Thick sounds held in crisp clarity. Blindfold or no, Machines offers an involving listening experience, drawing the listener deep into the various locales of its sources. And with a running time of more than two and a half hours, this is a substantial and important addition to the world of absolute concrete music by one of the most distinguished and distinctive artists in the field. Packaged inside an elegant printed sleeve with a fold-out insert featuring color photography by the composer. Printed with soy-based ink on 100% recycled paper. This double compact disc set has been issued in an edition of 500 copies. [press-release]
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Lost In The Woods -- "The Meadowland Suite" -- CD -- €13
2013 Hulterstad Sound, HLTS10, (ltd. 200)
Lars Tangmark (ex Dawn, King of Asgard) and Johan Levin (Desiderii Marginis) began working together musically as far back as 1989 when Johan joined synth pop band "The Wounded Meadow". Since that band became less active the pair created more Leftfield, ambient electronic music (Johan through Desiderii Marginis and Lars under his own name). They did not work together until 2008 when they begun working on compositions (and later improvisations) which in 2012 was compiled into the pastoral industrial, 48 minute Meadowland Suite and the yet-to-be-released piece Gornamudur. For the project they revived the name Lost In The Woods. The Meadowland Suite is a full colour digipak CD in a limited edition of 200 copies, released through the label of Lars Tangmark, Hulterstad Sound. This is not an intellectual exercise - this is the real deal. [Old Europa Cafe]
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Maeror Tri -- "Peak Experience" -- CD -- €15
1989/2013 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-32, (ltd. 250)
1th official album of cult drone band in special 25-anniversary edition! Remastered re-issue of the very first official MT cassette release from 1989, lim. 250 heavy 'digibook' design with great new cover-artwork. [Drone Records]
Mecha/Ogra -- "40:43" -- CD-R -- €7
2013 OtO, OtO 004, (ltd. 100)
Improv music from Japan. Environmental sounds recorded in Athens and London, August 2012-January 2013. Composed and mixed at the Composition Studio, London College of Communication, January and February 2013. Includes 4 cards with photos by Takanobu Hoshino.
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Meelkop, Roel -- "Secret Garden" -- CD -- €9
2013 OtO, OtO 002, (ltd. 200)
Back in Vital Weekly 809 I reviewed a CD by Roel Meelkop in collaboration with Japanese sound artist Takanobu Hoshino, who now started his own label. The release by Francisco Meirino we hope to review in the near future, but here's Roel Meelkop's 'Secret Garden' release. It started out as the soundtrack to a film of the same name by Marco Douma, with whom Meelkop worked before. An hour long movie, we are told by the liner notes (a rare thing for Meelkop) of 'letting go, in forgetting the goal and enjoying the ride'. The film existed before Meelkop did the music, but in honor to the film he decided to create his soundtrack, as an interpretation of the film. Both can be enjoyed together and independently. Like his CD with Hoshino we encounter a new Meelkop direction here, one that is perhaps getting more and more 'ambient'? Unlike his previous works which were heavily 'composed' with abrupt change-overs, heavy computer processing and such like, we have here a Meelkop that is also letting go. There is no doubt some form of computer processing in play here, but it all sounds more like unprocessed field recordings. One bit we recognize from his contribution to the 'Villa Fiasco' (see Vital Weekly 820) project, but for the rest of this more than an hour long CD we move from part to part. Each part seems to be sliced from one bit of field recording (just plain church bells in one part) or sound sources, like singing bowls (a recent interest from Meelkop) and it seems that it is presented almost 'as is', but surely isn't. It moves minimally around until fading into the next part, the next movement. This is Meelkop, I guess, at his most ambient. Not unlike that recent collaboration this is definitely the next step in a new direction. I haven't seen the film, but this soundtrack, if such it is, is great! [FdW, Vital Weekly]
Meirino, Francisco -- "Undetected (Untreated Recordings From On-Site Testimonies Archives)" -- CD -- €9
2012 OtO, OtO 001, (ltd. 200)
Active since 1994 (as Phroq until 2009) in sound and live performance, Francisco Meirino explores the tension between programmable material and the potential for its failure. He works mainly with the computer, magnetic fields detectors, tape recorders, contact microphones and various electroacoustic devices. More than 150 live performances in various venues and festivals in Europe, Japan and North America. Over the years, Francisco Meirino had the honor to collaborate on studio and live with great artists such as Dave Phillips / Scott Arford / Michael Gendreau / Michael Esposito / Jason Kahn / ILIOS / Zbigniew Karkowski / Astro / Randy H.Y. Yau / Lasse Marhaug / etc... He lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. [label info]
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Menche, Daniel -- "Eye On The Steel" -- CD -- €10
2004 Substractif, SUBSF07
Substractif (side-label of Alien8 Recordings) comes out of hibernation with “Eye on the Steel” from Portland Oregon’s Daniel Menche. The sound on “Eye on the Steel” is heavily based around drones, pulses and ambient noise and is Menche’s most diverse offering yet and included many different sound sources. [label info]
Monosov, Ilya -- "Architectures On Air And Other Works" -- CD -- €8
2005 Elevator Bath, eeaoa022, (ltd. 330)
Elevator Bath proudly presents the first full-length CD from Ilya Monosov. Architectures on Air and Other Works is a challenging collection of recordings, perfectly summarizing the various interests of this inventive sound artist. The range of these works is tremendous: From harsh intensity to gorgeous drone to virtual silence, concluding with the deeply affecting title track.
Monosov recorded three of the six pieces presented here as solo works, while the other half are collaborations. Two of these collaborative tracks feature conceptual sound artist Civyiu Kkliu (Banned Productions) and the third includes the work of veteran electronic composer Larry Polansky (Frog Peak). Architectures on Air and Other Works displays the fruits of several years' worth of activity, and though each piece is distinct in concept and execution, the album offers a solid block of organic sound, compelling from beginning to end. In addition to the stunning audio work, this enhanced CD also features two QuickTime movie files of Monosov's sound performances (about 18 minutes of material). Ilya Monosov's sound works have been released by Bremsstrahlung, Eclipse, & Elevator Bath. Packaged inside two elegant printed sleeves of 100% recycled paper, this compact disc has been issued in an edition of 330 copies. [press-release]
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Murmer -- "What Are The Roots That Clutch" -- CD -- €10
2012 Helen Scarsdale Agency, HMS 022, (ltd. 400)
It was a cavernous tone that broadcast from a ventilator duct that inspired Patrick McGinley to begin collecting field recordings and working them into his slow-arc compositions. At the time when he heard that particular tone in that particular city at that particular time, he had no gear to recording device on hand. Over the next fifteen years (and counting) McGinley has eased into a peripatetic lifestyle, wandering the European countryside and forests (but never straying too far from the thrum and spark of civilization) in search of the same epiphany with his head rattled to the sound of a cavernous air duct... Around 1996, McGinley adopted the moniker Murmer for his compositional work; and though his work often steps into the quieter realm of sound construction, much of his field recordings and resultant compositions privilege interference and disturbances that occur within any given sound ecology. Those sounds could be the elusive tone from that ventilator, the polyrhythmic chorus of chirping frogs, the abstracted roar from an Arctic wind tearing across the Black Sea, or the metallic skree from a bowed antenna perched atop a Soviet-era observatory. What Are The Roots That Clutch marks McGinley's first full album in nearly 5 years, but it marks an elegant continuation of his previous album We Share A Shadow. The five chapters of this album can't easily be associated with any specific location; instead McGinley overlaps and crosshatches his field recordings and abstractions into acousmatic passages with ghostly, half-melodic qualities. Even the two unprocessed recordings of the album are impossibly complex in their accretions of sound. McGinley's composed pieces embrace lithe, mysterious drones whose mossy, damp atmosphere perfectly situate with tactile crunches, tactile events, and signal noise generation. Eels and leaches would not be out of place in such an environment; but the subaquatic murk snaps into a hallowed manifestation of ritualized minimalism at the album's finale -- one that LaMonte Young and Angus Maclise might have conjured in 1968 with clattering percussive elements and a hypnotic blur of harmonic drone... What Are The Roots That Clutch is limited to 400 copies and comes housed with letterpress artwork. [press-release]
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Nehil, Seth & Matt Marble -- "Ecllipses" -- CD -- €9
2008 and/OAR, and/30
a/O is very pleased to present this highly anticipated first collaboration release between two American "sound composters", Seth Nehil and
Matt Marble. A dynamic whirlwind tour through states of ellipsis and eclipses, abrupt ruptures, reuniting and igniting. Where nothing is
static for too long. Through an invigorating admixture of instruments, field recordings and various found matter, a compelling and mysterious world comes alive to spark the imagination. [label info]
Neutral -- "Luisenkirche, Konigsberg" -- CD + DVD -- €40
2006/2013 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-22, (ltd. 99)
A very anticipated release from one of the best Dark Folk bands! Neutral was founded in 1993 by a singer and composer known as ASH, later Evgeny Voronovsky (Cisfinitum) joined the band. Literally every song of this project features delicate guitar and violin tunes, touching lyrical images and deep vocals. Neutral have never released too many albums, actually their recordings are big rarity... Aside for some demos and mini-albums, during the 20 years of existence only 2 studio albums were recorded: "...Of Shadow And Its Dream" (2004) and "Serpents In The Dawn" (2008), and also 2 live albums: "Walpurgis Night At Luisen Kirche Koenigsberg Live" (2000) and "Luisenkirche, Konigsberg" (2006). And if "Walpurgis Night" was released twice, in 2000 and 2008, "Luisenkirche, Konigsberg" was kind of lost in the history. It was published in 2006 by a cult and now deceased German Dark Folk label Eis Und Licht, but only on CDr/DVDr limited to 35 copies, which were actually sold out immediately. There was also a CDr version without bonus video, but those 100 copiesalso quickly found their places in cozy collections. After that the original masters were lost and we spent almost 2 years trying to find them and luckily we made it! Now this recording is reissued on factory pressed CD and DVD packed in heavy digibook, and light remastering work was done by Peter Andersson (raison d'etre)... Despite the work we've done, the new release is also limited to just 99 hand-numbered copies! [press-release]
Pinto, Joao Castro -- "Ars Abscondita" -- CD -- €9
2013 OtO, OtO 005, (ltd. 200)
Portuguese sound artist Joao Castro Pinto is said to “compose silence with sounds”, and this description is perfect for Ars Abscondita. The combination of field recording and sound sculpture allows artists to fill spaces with the most interesting sounds they can find, or to leave them empty for contrast. While this seems as if it might be easy, it’s not. On the one hand, such artists are freed from the constraints of common song composition (verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus - chorus). On the other, they are expected to present a comprehensive framework for their art. Listeners need to hear intention and drive; otherwise, their attention will be lost. Pinto’s strength is that he seems to know exactly where each piece is headed and how to get there. While there’s no predicting what sounds will appear and where they will turn, nothing on Ars Abscondita seems random. The music reflects the title, which roughly translated means “hidden art”, or as Pinto puts it, “meta-soundscapes with secluded meaning”. In daily life, our minds attempt to make sense of auditory inputs, but in sound art, the guideposts are absent. The narratives we discern may not be the narratives that are intended or even available. And yet, interpretation becomes a public province once any artistic work is shared... [Richard Allen, A Closer Listen]
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raison d'etre -- "Apres Nous Le Deluge (Redux Version)" -- CD -- €13
1992/2012 Eternal Pride Productions, EPP 018, (ltd. 500)
The dark, atmospheric and energetic mix of choirs, strings, various Fx sounds, heavy drums and tribal sections makes this the seed for the raison d’etre sound trademark that begun with the album 'Prospectus I' from 1993. Released in 1992 'Apres nous le Deluge' became the first official output from raison d'etre when it went available on the Cold Meat Industry subsidiary label Sound source. For the first time 'Apres nous le Deluge' is now available as a complete album on CD, restored and remixed for superior quality and added with five bonus tracks. [label info]
raison d'etre -- "Collected Works" -- CD -- €12
2013 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-30
As the title suggests 'Collected Works' is not an album with new material of raison d'etre (Peter Andersson). It is a collection of tracks from between 1999 and 2010 that has appeared on various compilations or other external projects. Suprisingly, despite the collection fact, these tracks form together a unity like if they were material for a conceptual album and presents a memorandum of a past.Death, decay, melancholia and sadness is the common attributes and this is also beautifully rendered in the images by Martin Bladh (Irm, Skin Area) used for the artwork. His premature death masks sequence is based on different aging faces of Peter Andersson and works as the perfect facade for this kind of soundwise journey and exposure. [press-release]
Roden, Steve -- "Berlin Fields" -- CD-R -- €6
2012 3LEAVES, 3L013, (ltd. 222)
The album is comprised of multiple unprocessed field recordings made in Berlin, Paris and Helsinki, interwoven in a single 41-min. track with unpredictable turns and overall great creativity & imagination.
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Ruhl, Joris & Antez -- "s/t" -- CD -- €9
2013 Observatoire, obs * instrument | 047 cd, (ltd. 350)
This material was recorded live in 2012 in Zürich and Grenoble, Joris Rühl playing clarinet and Antez playing percussion. Minimal intuitive improvisations with deep droning electoacoustic feeling (although no electronics were used!).
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Ruhlmann, Mathieu + Banks Bailey -- "Anaadiih" -- CD-R -- €6
2011 3LEAVES, 3L006, (ltd. 100)
Within each location, there is profound history. From their first collaborative album, artists Mathieu Ruhlmann and Banks Bailey have created an album that is not only a record of detailed documentation and imagination, but a depiction of a time and place, which also represents an idea, and maybe more importantly, a future. Details have been so meticulously collected and arranged accordingly, that momentarily, everything is illusory, yet retaining completion, and full realism... [Will Long]
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Sasajima, Hiroki & Takahisa Hirao -- "Hidden Bird's Nest" -- CD -- €8
2011 3LEAVES, 3L011, (ltd. 300)
With the aptly named "Hidden Bird's Nest" Hiroki Sasajima & Takahisa Hirao, all senses in alert, commit an uncommon dive into Nature's breathing Heart, the clamor of the world... Purity is often usually a simple idealistic abstract notion - not here; all sounds seem to have been captured in such a pristine way and in such full details that it seems to exceed the limitations of faithful reproduction... and one gets the feeling that suddenly the whole Cosmos is almost enclosed in a single resonance just in front of your ears... Distance becomes abolished, and it's like if the listener is invited to become a vibrating & active part of the selected location... Each sound has its own weight, color, placement and is the exact reflection of what it stands for... the restitution of an essence into all its components... "Hidden Bird's Nest" should cross time easily, offering a veneer of permanence, while being an ultimate testimony of the magnificent Togakushi region... [Daniel Crokaert]
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Sheffield, Colin Andrew -- "First Thus" -- CD -- €9
2005 Elevator Bath, eeaoa020, (ltd. 330)
"First thus" is a phrase used by book sellers, publishers, collectors, etc. to describe a book which may be considered a first edition and/or first printing, but which has been available previously in a slightly different form. A true first edition is the original, first printing of a given book, while a first thus is the first printing of a new version of that book. This classification can come about for any number of reasons, though often times it has to do with a new translation of a particular work, the involvement of a new (different) publisher, or with a new forward or introduction.... First Thus is Sheffield's debut solo album. The recordings on this disc were entirely composed using other commercially available recordings. The goal was to distill the essential qualities of these works and then utilize that essence for new recordings. Only very brief sections of the original works were selected. These raw components were then contracted, expanded, layered, and/or otherwise processed until something new was forged. The result is gorgeous ambient music that gradually shifts and unfolds, offering subtle nuance and quiet restraint. In a sense, it is a collection of other people's work, but this music appears here for the first time in a new setting or, if you will, a new translation. Packaged inside two elegant printed sleeves of 100% recycled paper, this compact disc has been issued in an edition of 330 copies. [press-release]
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Smallwood, Scott / Sawako / Seth Cluett / Ben Owen / Civyiu Kkliu -- "Phonography Meeting 070823" -- CD -- €9
2011 Winds Measure Recordings, wm22, (ltd. 300)
The recording is comprised of unprocessed field and or location recordings in 10 minute parts mixed consecutively person to person. Recorded live at Issue Project room - OA Can Factory, Brooklyn, NY. [label info] CD and insert, packaged in a paper envelope, attached to three-panel letterpress card stock sleeve.
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Tanzi, Dante -- "Double Miroir" -- CD -- €9
2013 Observatoire, obs * akusma | 047 cd, (ltd. 200)
After majoring in Philosophy, Dante Tanzi went on to study composition, electroacoustic music and musical informatics. From 1985 to 2009 he worked at L.I.M., the Musical Informatics Laboratory of the University of Milan. Since 1988, his compositions have been performed in Italy and abroad: Zurich (Euromicro - 1988); Moscow (Italia 2000 - 1988); Lugano (Computer Music Concert - 1991); Montreal (EuCuE - 2001); Paris (Palais de Tokyo - 2006, Festival LICENCES - editions 2007, 2008 and 2009); Huddersfield (ICMC - 2011); Flix (Nit Electro Sonora - 2013); Crest (Festival Futura - editions 2008 - 2013). He also published essays on CTheory, Leonardo Music Journal, Leonardo, Cogito, Crossings, De Musica, Organised Sound and Contemporary Music Review. In 2009 he took the Futura Festival annual acousmatic interpretation course (Crest, Drфme). Since 2012 he has been performing works of the acousmatic repertory on the acusmonium SATOR (Centro Culturale San Fedele, Milano) and on the acusmonium mobile AUDIOR. [label info]
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Tarab -- "Take All The Ships From The Harbour, And Sail Them Straight Into Hell" -- CD -- €10
2009 23five, 23five 014, (ltd. 500)
The title to this album from Tarab (nee Eamon Sprod) is striking enough in its allusions of damnation, with a watery grave a potential outcome from human activity impacting the earth. So, it may be stating the obvious that the corroded locations where mankind has scarred the surface of the earth feature prominently in the work of this Melbourne based sound artist. The residual elements of these sites become the agents for metaphor and allegory in Tarab's work, documented through field recording and sympathetic actions with found objects from those sites. One such location that features prominently in Take All of the Ships... is Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. Once the home of an immigration station at the turn of the 20th Century and later a Nike Missile site for the US military, Angel Island now rests in the hands of the US National Park Service, which has left some of the buildings to succumb to the forces of decay. From the sounds culled from this site and others closer to his antepodean home, Tarab diligently overlays and stiches together a highly tactile composition with very little digital treatments to speak of. Take All of the Ships... opens with an ominous rumble whose frequencies appear to emerge from the center of the Earth and liquefying the surface upon impact. As these tones ebb and flow, Tarab unveils as revolving series of exaggerated details from a hyperbolic gash of two heavy pieces of metal grinding against themselves to a toxic chorale of nighttime insects to sand, wind, and surf detourned into sedimentary white noise. Tarab's compositional sensibility shifts throughout the album, at first sparsely situating these sounds into shadowy vignettes. Gradually, Tarab coalesces this sublime opus into an arcing crescendo which exhibits sustained harmonics rarely heard in the best of the contemporary dronemusik technicians much less from the realm of sound ecology. [press-release]
Tarab -- "Wind Keeps Even Dust Away" -- CD -- €10
2007 23five, 23five 010, (ltd. 500)
Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) professes a romantic attachment to the notion that the world is falling apart, a terminal process only enhanced by the intrinsic obsolescence from the output of consumer culture. Yet, this Australian sound artist is not one to wallow in the nihilism of such poetics, rather he counterpoints these thoughts with the allegorical implications of his nom de plume. Tarab is an Arabic word that doesn’t readily translate into English, but it might be best defined as the ecstatic surrender one can experience when listening to music. Through installation, performance, and composition, Sprod reinterprets the physical detritus of the landscape within a hypothetical topography where dirt, soot, and smog emerge as privileged materials, in to which he has grafted the potential for a transcendent response... Field recordings are fundamental to this creative process, bolstered by sympathetic sounds activated by Sprod’s own hands rummaging through crumbling leaves, rusted bits of metal, broken concrete, and shattered glass, just to name some of the more obvious sources. Wind Keeps Even Dust Away is only the second documentation of Sprod’s compositions; yet, it is an accomplished work on par with the best of contemporary sound ecologists (e.g. Chris Watson, Eric La Casa, Toshiya Tsunoda, etc.). On this album, Sprod presents an intertwining series of compacted collages that tease aquatic references from abandoned and overlooked sites of the arid Australian landscape. Every sound of a pipe gurgling with water is but a mirage of sand, rust, and dirt cleverly tricking the audience’s collective ear... With its subtle transitions and evolving sound structures, Wind Keeps Even Dust Away figures into the models of psycho-geographical wandering, as Sprod explores sets of roughly cut textures, resonant frequencies, and atmospheric vibrations that are intrinsic to an imagined space and then shifts into another with its particular idiosyncrasies. While the ecstasy that the word tarab implies may not be an immediate reaction to this album, wonder and discovery certainly are as experienced through this exemplary album of re-engineered sonic dislocation. [press-release]
Zero Centigrade -- "Birch" -- CD-R -- €6
2013 Observatoire, obs * instrument 045, (ltd. 65)
There is a Swedish guitarist David Stackenas, he had an album with Mats Gustafsson in mid-00s entitled "Blues". Of course, there was no blues at all, it was 100% Scandinavian improv originating from English improv, as you know. What am I about? I'm about first several munutes of melancholic fingerpicking of two acoustic guitars of the Italian duo Zero Centigrade which reminded me of that CD and particularly manner of Stackenas. A kind of sloed down improv, which is not blues at all but you want to call it blues. However the Italians are not done yet, as they also use feedback appearing in guitars. And again, that Swedish guitarist have actively used an e-bow and its sounds are quite close to natural feedbacks, so here I remembered his solo works. Well, enough of similarities, let's better talk about differences and peculiarities. What immediately strikes an eye (ears) is the absolutely anti-Italian mood with absence of sun in the music and low sound. It's weird, because they live in Naples, and it is an extremely bright, southern, bustling and noisy city. Perhaps for this reason the duo is so gloomy, if not misanthropic. Maybe they're not glad with the Mediterranean weather when going out to the streets and prefer the twilight of their own studio. The album features only one track lasting for 26 minutes. In the beginning and in the end they play without electronics and this reminded me of "blues". The rest of the track is dedicated to feedbacks and gentle work with them adding and fading out breaking overtones and some sonic defects. The overall mood is extremely relaxed and concentrated at the same time, and if the first quality is pretty obvious, the second appears only with understanding of what and how Zero Centigrade play. Melancholic mood of the music helps thoughts running leisurely in the evening after daytime worries. One can relax and just follow, or attentively listen to every sound appearing - choose what's best for you. [Ilia Belorukov, SM]
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V/A -- "A Cleansing Ascension" -- CD -- €9
2008 Elevator Bath, eeaoa040, (ltd. 650)
On the occasion of Elevator Bath's 10-year anniversary, the label has issued its first compilation release. This 73-minute compact disc is not a retrospective but is instead a collection of (almost) entirely exclusive material from 10 artists currently involved with Elevator Bath. A Cleansing Ascension includes previously unreleased recordings from: Matt Shoemaker, Adam Pacione, Jim Haynes, Keith Berry, Rick Reed, Dale Lloyd, Colin Andrew Sheffield, James Eck Rippie, and Tom Recchion. This is the ideal introduction to the label, offering a particularly cohesive yet varied selection of works from some of the brightest names in the experimental music community. Uneasy narrative, warm ambience, rusted drones, sine waves, field recordings, meditative composition, plus a glorious photograph on the inner sleeve (taken by Colin's father in 1971) can all be found in this single, beautiful package. Elevator Bath = A Cleansing Ascension. As always, packaged inside two elegant, printed sleeves (this time in full color) with soy-based ink on 100% recycled paper, this compact disc has been issued in an edition of 650 copies. [press-release]
V/A -- "Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue" -- 2 CD -- €10
2010 and/OAR, and/36
The third and perhaps final project in the film director series which began with Andrei Tarkovsky - Another Kind Of Language and Yasujiro Ozu - Hitokomakura. Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue focuses upon the Italian auteur's landmark "tetralogy" of films L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962) and Il Deserto Rosso (1963). Antonioni was known for not being very keen to use music in his films, partially because he wanted the films to tell their stories free from "additional gloss". Therefore music was sparsely used - if at all. Antonioni considered the natural sounds or "background noises" of a film to be of enormous importance, and considered them to be the "true music" of a film. Obviously Antonioni's view resonates with and/OAR since environmental sound has always been it's main focus, and is one of the reasons why he was chosen for this project over other film directors. Composer Giovanni Fusco, whose music is (more or less) featured in most of Antonioni's films from the late 1950s to the early '60s said, "the first rule for any musician who intends to collaborate with Antonioni, is to forget that he is a musician!" Yet, there is another composer who Antonioni worked with, that this project seeks to acknowledge and pay subtle homage to in addition to the director himself; because if it were not for his inspirational and pioneering minimal electronic music featured in "Deserto Rosso", this project might not have come together at all: Vittorio Gelmetti. Gelmetti's electronic work consistently came to mind during the planning stages of this project, and his influence can indeed be heard throughout this release. Participants: Tyler Wilcox & Corey Fuller, Olivia Block & Adam Sonderberg, Marc Behrens, Roel Meelkop, Adam Sonderberg, J. Winston Phillips, Antti Rannisto, Ben Owen, Lawrence English, Asher, Pali Meursault (with Ici-Meme), EKG (Kyle Bruckmann & Ernst Karel), Dale Lloyd, Juan Jose Calarco, Richard Garet, Alan Courtis, Luigi Turra, I8U, Steinbruchel, Gabriel Paiuk, Jason Kahn, Fhievel, Tomas Phillips, Marihiko Hara. [press-release]
Vinyl
V/A -- "Drone-Mind // Mind-Drone Vol. 3" -- LP -- €15
2013 Drone Records, MIND-03, (ltd. 500)
The NEW LP-series from Drone Records, dedicated to the Drones of the World, and the Drones of our Minds. A kind of continuation of the Drone 7"-series on a more user-friendly format. Each LP features four artists from the international drone-scene and is limited to 500 copies, pressed on four different vinyl-colours. Volume 3: JIM HAYNES (USA), MANINKARI (France), KSHATRIY (Russia), EXIT IN GREY (Russia). Stunning artwork paintings by British artist PETE GREENING, design by TILMANN BENNINGHAUS. [label info]
Cassettes
Cyanide Bastard -- "Statika" -- C-90 -- €2
2014 YouRock, YRK 02, (ltd. 10)
Digital static harsh noise wall from a young project from St. Petersburg, Russia.
Frea market
Baker, Aidan - The Sea Swells A Bit… - CD - NM - €5.90Echran - s/t - CD - NM - €4.30
Klier, Cordell - Measure Here And Be Now - CDR - VG/VG+ - €3.90
Riek, Lasse-Marc - Habitats - CDR + bizcard CDR - NM - €4.30
Toy Bizarre & Pierre Redon - Saisons - CD - NM - €6.90
Don't forget to check the full list of rare & used items with all details, it's here.
Other
Halo Manash -- "Caickuwi Cauwas Walkeus" -- t-shirt -- €20
2014 Aural Hypnox
A t-shirt made after the album of Halo Manash "Caickuwi Cauwas Walkeus". Black print on chest and back, high quality brown t-shirts. Image. Sizes S, M, L, XL.
IV. Back in stock
Aeoga -- "Zenith Beyond The Helix-Locus" -- CD -- €11
2005 Aural Hypnox, [AH05], (ltd. 1000)
From beyond the mundane symbolscape, the 2nd album of Aeoga - entitled 'Zenith Beyond the Helix-Locus' - emits aural phenomena from devouring multi-layered elemental ambience to amorphous and hallucinatory sequences entrancing one's awareness thoroughly. The fifteen formations manifest themselves in various forms; bright and luminous helixes intertwine with shadowed and shapeless non-beings. All in all truly overwhelming material where acoustic instruments and electronic equipment mingle themselves to channel forth the aural elemental current. [press-release]
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Aghast Manor -- "Gaslights" -- CD -- €11
2012 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-18 / Eternal Pride Productions, EPP-19
Aghast Manor is a creation of Andrea Nebel (Aghast, Hagalaz Runedance, Nebelhexe) who - after working for quite some time on dark movie soundtracks - recently also re-introduced her old Aghast songs to actors and filmdirectors such as Scott Derrickso and David Lynch. As a result, Andrea got received new inspiration and she decided to work again on a full album with dark tracks! Aghast Manor is inviting you to haunting darkness and decadent visions, providing perfect soundtracks for dark disturbing atmospheres. With a blend of sinister ambient and classical tunes the first album 'Gaslights' is giving you images of industrial lunacies, victorian visions of opium smokes and dark poetry, femme fatales, Jack the Ripper and Lovecraftian occult experiences... Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation has submitted a song called 'Suck My Drain', vividly describing the atmospheres within slaughterhouses and other death camps. Aghast Manor's 'Gaslights' must be enjoyed at night, either in darkness or with candle light. [press-release]
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Andersson, Peter -- "Music For Film And Exhibition I & Natura Fluxus" -- 2 CD + DVD -- €28
2011 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-19, (ltd. 400)
Peter Andersson from the Cold Meat Industry act raison d’etre now presents his sound work for film and exhibition, spanning through the years 1999 to 2006. Peter has been working on several film and exhibition projects, some of these projects never went to final completion but the music was composed in almost all the cases. Music for Film and Exhibition presents a broad spectrum of the sounds and music capabilities of Peter Andersson and those familiar with any of his different music projects including raison d'etre, Necrophorus, Atomine Elektrine, Bocksholm etc… will most probably enjoy this double album (Music duration 151 min.) very much... For now Infinite Fog Productions presents complite edition of 'Music for Film and Exhibition I" which contains real DVD with Natura Fluxus - film by Peter Andersson and Lars Bosma + some rare bonuses, like another Peter's films - Autumn Leaves; Mandala; Dritfing Wall; Nature Morte e.t. Total play time approx. 83 minutes! Natura Fluxus brings us on a poetic, existential and suggestive journey dealing with matters like abandonment, desolation, emptiness, inanimation, remembrance and residual energy through places where we can spot traces of presence of mankind. Discover the aesthetic beauty in old factories and ruins: in the perishable and the metamorphoses that follow. Natura Fluxus is a experimental film where concrete, environmental sounds and original scored music blend with visual stunning sceneries of rarely seen places. The film is in B/W and Color. Highly recommended! Masterpiece of ambient music! [press-release]
Archon Satani -- "Mind Of Flesh & Bones" -- CD -- €10
1993/2006 Cold Spring Records, CSR63CD
The classic Archon Satani album, out of print for over a decade, remastered and repackaged! Archon Satani are one of the founding voices of Death Industrial - with their unique style being emulated to this day. The Swedish duo of Mikael Stravostrand (Inanna, Mitek) and Tomas Petersson (Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio) create claustrophobic, ritualistic, menacing anthems - now unleashed onto a new generation. The Archon Satani project finished with the Cold Spring releases "The Rightous Way To Completion" (CD) and "The Final Completion" (10" picture disc) in 1997. [press release]
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Arktau Eos -- "Ai Ma Ra" -- 2 CD -- €14
2009 Aural Hypnox, [AH11], (ltd. 1000)
Ai Ma Ra is a monumental album containing over 105 minutes of experimental elemental and ambient music, original in the literal sense of the word. More than music, it is 'ethnography of the unknown' in action, providing vistas into rarely glimpsed corners of reality. Created primarily on acoustic instruments, organs and harmonium, carefully mastered on vintage tape, the sound is equally earthy as it is otherworldly – a contradiction in terms maybe, but then Ai Ma Ra is not classified easily in any other respect either. It is a record in which to immerse one’s self over time, containing more than two years' worth of strange experiences and sensations distilled into a curious, potent elixir, the use of which may in its truest sense be determined only by the individual listener... Ai Ma Ra, pressed in 1.000 copies, comes in a sturdy, deep green cardboard box stamped with the mark of Arktau Eos. Contained within is an 8-page booklet bound in tкte-bкche format on high quality paper, a small talismanic print, and two CDs. [press-release]
[myspace]
Atrium Carceri & Eldar -- "Sacrosanct" -- CD -- €13
2012 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-26
Atrium Carceri & Eldar, two of the genres most prolific artists, team up for this fantastic dark ambient release. The deep rumblings and future visions of Atrium Carceri combined with the whispers of historical enlightenment that is Eldar creates a vacuum in time where the future and past coexist. Where nothing and everything is sacred, where the webs of powerful bloodlines are woven and where humanity crumbles. [Cryo Chamber]
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Attrition -- "Invocation" -- CD -- €12
2012 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-28
A soundtrack for your dreams and nightmares... 30 years since their groundbreaking dark ambient album "This Death House" ATTRITION's Martin Bowes has combined forces with his wife Kerri on their full length movie score, written for the film G.H.O.S.T from cult U.S. horror film company Mutantville. From uneasy, shifting atmospheres to main themes on piano, vocals and strings, the album was remodelled and mixed at the Cage for this audio only version... An invocation in nine parts. Jewel case edition with 12 page booklet. With artwork by Holger Karas. [press-release]
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Der Golem -- "Zmet / Discipline of Exploded Bridges" -- 2 CD -- €18
2012 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-29, (ltd. 199)
Der Golem was a band from Moscow suburb Fryazino formed in 1999 by the musicians Dmitry Zubov (Hypnoz) and Roman Sidorov (Staruha Mha, Fatal, Sedativ). The music is a weird mixture of Industrial, Post Rock, Shoegazer, Ambient, Post-punk. Roman Sidorov ceased his existence in September 2003, Dmitry Zubov in November 2011... Zmet: "The genius of man is felt immediately and is reflected in everything what this man touches. In music, aside for all-pervading depression and complete minor mood, one can feel the note of some universality / cosmicality. Rock on the verge of industrial music is perceived as a kind of dark ambient in the widest sense of this term. Slow drumming is hypnotising, vocals are mesmerising and guitar sound brings some transcendent anxiety in the acoustic space..." Discipline of Exploded Bridges: "... Dirty industrial sound produced mainly by electric guitar and old analogue synthesizers. Excellent material with exceptional spirit of its creators felt in sound. Every time I listen to the "Discipline...", every time I find not only my own nostalgia for old party times, but also something timeless and not bound to my subjective feelings. This is the classics of Russian industrial underground..." [press-release]
Halo Manash -- "Am Kha Astrie" -- CD -- €11
2008 Aural Hypnox, [AH10], (ltd. 1000)
As the apex of Spring heralds awakenings, Halo Manash emerges from Winter and hibernation ~ Treefaced. Horns spiral skyward and antlers ascend. A tripartite trunk arises – a pillar that splits all worlds... Am Kha Astrie, a work of heliotropic, elemental ambient, is an opening, an awakening, a summoning, a crossing of thresholds. After their previous oneiric and minimal album, Am Kha Astrie sees Halo Manash re-integrate a more diverse instrumentation and a multiplicity of soundsources to create their work, which consists of seven interrelated tracks. Am Kha Astrie is a complete work in itself, but can also be viewed as the second facet of a tripartite series of works that are part of one holistic creation... Archaic elemental drums, bones and spiraling animal horns merge with various metal percussions, chimes, wind-instruments, voices and a multitude of other instruments to create a deep, earthly and yet celestially-bound opus. Am Kha Astrie is a massive and sometimes ominous work, a primal experience of coming-into-being, with all the terror, ecstasy and divine awe that it implies... Comes in a hand finished cardboard booklet, in an edition of 1000 copies. [press-release]
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Halo Manash -- "Language of Red Goats" -- CD -- €10
2008 Aural Hypnox, [AH09], (ltd. 920)
Guided by nether nectars and dream herbs, oneiric visions and the light of lunar tides, Halo Manash Language of Red Goats aims to be a cartography of cavernous elemental realms and regions, sources and springs that run deep and thick with the fluids of life, death and dream. What was seeded at the Thin Veils has been gathered at Harvest time, and is offered to the seeker as a libation and guide into the ever-liminal, shrouded spaces, for dream-vigils and awakenings. Language of Red Goats is a complete work in itself, but can also be viewed as the first facet of a tripartite series of works that are part of one holistic creation – three faces of the same being. More akin to a primitive fieldrecording in the realm of oneirotropic exploration, than an actual album, the work consists of one lengthy tripartite soundscape. Utilizing only gongs, bells, metal bowls and wind instruments, as well as flocks of birds, the work is in contrast to earlier more refined works that feature a wide multiplicity of instruments and soundsources. Language of Red Goats is a bare, primitive and sometimes raw aural landscape, and yet nonetheless achieves a rare subliminal intensity and an edge of otherwordly luminosity. Comes in a hand finished cardboard booklet, in an edition of 920 copies. [press-release]
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In Slaughter Natives -- "Insanity & Treatment" -- 3 CD -- €27
2011 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-15, (ltd. 999)
The bloody awaited new release from Swedish cult band! Seven years of silence and now is the time to be back… Indeed, Jouni Havukainen never released his records too often, for over 20 years of existence, ISN did not release neither singles, (except for split 7” with Voice Of Hate) nor miniCDs, but have produced five full-length albums, each of which is an approachless peak in the history of dark music. Insanity & Treatment, is a collection of group’s live performances in a luxurious packaging, the best of them have been carefully selected and remastered personally by the author. You'll find the legendary radio recording of Mort Aux Vaches, Concerts in Madrid, France, Prague and in Moscow. The record is featured by Tomas Pettersson (Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio), Kathleen Binder, Peter Andersson (raison d'etre) and Peter Andersson (Deutsch Nepal)! The famous musician and one of the best designers of the modern Industrial scene - Jerome Nougaillon (Propergol, Cosmos Entropy, Old Iron Fence, Sea-Green Series, Vargtimmen, Wrong Number) engaged in artistic design, his work makes an already unique publication, a true piece of art! [press-release]
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Lopez, Francisco -- "Wind [Patagonia]" -- CD -- €10
2007 and/OAR, and/27
and/OAR couldn't be more pleased to present the third part of Spanish sound artist Francisco Lopez's already classic "trilogy of the Americas" which started with La Selva, followed by Buildings [New York] (both released by V2 Archief, Netherlands). An immersion into the sonic matter from micro- and macro- environments dominated by wind in Patagonia. A vast barren space shaped and inhabited by the ever-changing forces of unmuted plants, rocks, sand, snow, and ice. An irregular broad-band environment of relentless strength and richness. And above all, a tour de force of profound listening... Packaged in a super gloss digipak with 16 page 4 color booklet. [label info]
Lunde, Eric -- "A World Of Hurt In The Kingdom Of God" -- CD -- €9
2011 Heart & Crossbone, HCB 035
Clock says done. Time has come for the new admonishment from Eric Lunde: An inductive sound revolutionist, a founding member of the Milwaukee avant-industrial noise squad Boy Dirt Car, and an acrimonious underground writer & musician with over 40 solo releases dating back to the mid 80's. "A World Of Hurt In The Kingdom Of God" derives its name from a series of 2-ply plastic engravings Lunde did in 2004, The original title being "A World of Hurt in the Kingdom of Gosh". It is primarily a product of the concerns Lunde still have (and expressed in his book "Prison Sex", from which the majority of the text on this album is taken from) with the latent cruelty of humans in regards to their alleged relationship with a fabricated supernatural being and how is it that religious people have to prove nothing, but the atheist ones have to prove everything. So what's there to be found in Lundes' dragnet this time regarding these issues? A dish of sober mischief noise served cold, bubonic industrial and irate sound poetry created in the detrimental corners of the mind where the proof reproduces the intimate bonds of brutality that men create between themselves. Clock says done. [press-release]
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Maeror Tri -- "Multiple Personality Disorder" -- CD -- €10
1993/2009 Purple Soil, pulse zero: six
Repress of the first CD release by Maeror Tri (1993, Korm Plastics). "Multiple Personality Disorder" is a concept CD divided in four long parts recorded back in 1991 that fully showcase their mastery in distorting drones and layering guitar sounds. Stefan Knappe and Martin Martin Gitschel now record under the guise of Troum. Presented in a very nice 6-panel digifile with booklet and postcard, featuring the original (yet unused) cover for the album's initial 1993 release. Expanded liner notes and the story behind the album by Frans De Waard. [Cold Spring]
Mieville, Emmanuel -- "Buddha - Anima - Asia" -- CD -- €9
2012 Observatoire, obs * e|tradition 037, (ltd. 300)
Introducing the new solo work of Emmanuel Mieville. The album Buddha - Anima - Asia plunges us into the impact of Asian Buddhist Traditions. Four field recordings made in Malaysia, Taiwan and Nepal. The first track is Buddhist chanting by nuns recorded in Copan, Nepal. The second track is sounds from Hindu Ceremony recorded in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. The third and fourth tracks are composed with sounds from Taiwan, track 3 is from Taoist ceremony dedicated to the japanese godess Matsu. Track 4 is funeral song for a young man deceased. Four long songs perfectly combine this mastery of style and electro field recordings with varying degrees of processing. Very bright and surprising effect of full presence in the development of sacred actions, sometimes electro-wave helping to complete detachment from the thought process and analysis of the soundtrack ... Absolutely excellent 'immersing' work! [label info]
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Noises Of Russia / A Challenge Of Honour -- "2010 Secret Assembly Apocalyptic Tour" -- CD-R -- €6
2010 ElectroIndustria
Split-release dedicated to the joint tour of Noises Of Russia and A Challenge Of Honour happened in April 2010. Contains 4 new compositions from Noises Of Russia + 3 previously unreleased tracks from A Challenge Of Honour.
Silk Saw -- "Preparing Wars" -- CD -- €9
1998 Ant-Zen, act 82
Silk Saw (Marc Moedea and Gabriel Severin), a remittent duo who's working desperately hard to cut the edges of music, like this: peregrinations through the abstract, shuffle and superposition of cards, movements of objects, scissors that we grind, tamping, clean sweep of the idiots, pretences, confrontation between the weak and the strong, smooth and rough, pillage and recuparation, laugh at first, then destruction of the mountain according to rule. This enterprise requires the refusal of compromise. Thus, Silk Saw is not a turkish delight for everybody. Seriously, let's say that the duo is trying more and more to translate in sounds an intern climate, the humming of the body singing of his own way, the basic vibration, deaf and omnipresent, but that words can't almost never formulate. Then, music (in the ordinary meaning) doesn't have so much importance; remain only the impulse, the beating/recognition signal of the body, the ultimate billow wich 'll make us overturn: it gets tipsy and is about to provoke nausea. [label info]
Velehentor -- "Boeing: There And Back Again" -- CD -- €12
2004 Gravestench, STENCH 01, (ltd. 500)
The CD contains two mini-albums: first of the is called "The Rest of Hiroshima" and dedicated to nuclear bombing of japanese cities by american military aviation. Nice cold darkwave. The second part - "Wargasm 911. The Best of USA" - is dedicated to aircraft bombing of New York City by american civil aviation. Dense power electronics. The last track entitled "168:1" is recorded in memory of Timothy McVeigh who exploded the federal building in Oklahoma-city in 1995. Festival of soul for misanthropic comrades. The CD is packed in DVD-box with booklet and a set of postcards.
Von Thronstahl / The Days Of The Trumpet Call -- "Pessoa / Cioran" -- CD -- €12
2004/2010 Infinite Fog Productions, IF-06
Since 1998 year Von Thronstahl, led by the founder and leader Josef M. Klumb, remains to one of most appreciable and interesting groups on martial industrial/neofolk scene. The Days Of The Trumpet Call, it's neoclassic project by Raymond P., the musician of the Von Thronstahl.This split, is devoted the Portuguese poet Fernando Antonio Pessoa (1888-1935) and Romanian philosopher Emil Michel Cioran (1911-1995), their writings are used as lyric for this album.The melancholic neoclassics from The Days Of The Trumpet Call and probably strangest of all records Von Thronstahl where they balance on border between neoclassics and ambient, with a light touch martial and all the same, beautiful and charismatic, Josef's voice. CD is released in 6-pannel Digipak, with design by Federico Salvador (All my faith lost...) [press-release]
Zoat-Aon -- "The Triplex Bestial" -- CD -- €11
2006 Aural Hypnox, [AH07], (ltd. 1000)
By the careful adjustment and manipulation of both modern and archaic mediums is created a highly dynamic work of aural alchemy depicting the trance and dream of a carnal totem standing between Heaven and Earth, where the unearthly sound of starlight's serpentine arteries winding together with the blackened branches above mingles with the oneiric hisses and crackles of necromantic phantoms and slithering roots below. A barbarous, sonic paradox suggesting the subtle arousal of the ancestry in flesh, a work both soothing and threatening to the intuitive mind. [press-release]
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