Browse by Label: MOIKAI

Artist:	CANAVARRO, NUNO
Title:	Plux Quba
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M01 CD

2007 repress of the first release on Jim O'Rourke's now limbo-ized label. Rediscovered with the help of Rafael Toral, who remastered it. Nuno is credited with performing on electronics, melodica & pre-recorded tapes -- this is a subtle and supremely pleasing home electronics album -- thankfully resurrected. "Köln, Germany around 1991. After a 40-minute train ride from Aächen, Christoph Heemann and Jim O'Rourke are sitting around with Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert and George Odjik. Heemann has brought with him a strange obscure disc (what else?) from Portugal by some group called Plux Quba. Or is it the record? The label? Who knows, because no one here reads Portuguese, dummy! But what they do know when the needle hits the groove is that they've never heard anything like it. Attempts to cite reference points are soon given up, there are some similarities to Robert Ashley's later work, but even that is deceiving. It is simple, gentle, melodic, and yet completely alien. Yes, a few copies were bought in Köln that year, where the genesis of the new happening A-Musik scene is finally hitting fertile ground running. The only way these people could describe this music comes out slowly, as an influence on their own work, from Heemann's solo works to Jan's involvement in Microstoria and Mouse on Mars, yet the Plux Quba remains a little known enigma."

Artist:	LITHOPS
Title:	Uni Umit
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	M02 CD

First full length solo release by Jan St. Werner (Mouse On Mars, Microstoria). "Uni Umit was released in Europe as a vinyl-only item on Mouse on Mars' Sonig label. This is it's first CD issue, featuring new mixes as well as bonus tracks. Laying somewhere between his work in MoM and Microstoria, Uni Umit is both musical and abstract, melodic and scattered...stands out amongst the current crop because it harkens back to the early 90s, (can we indulge and say) 'classic', Köln sound. It features those strange bubbling rhythms that seem to be more lava burps than drum blurts, but also moves back through the experimental kind of textures that were found on the classic albums on Quiet Artworks and Dom Bartwuchs (Christoph Heemann's old label)."

Artist:	RUSSELL, RAY
Title:	Live at the I.C.A./Retrospective
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	2CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	M04 CD

"The English free jazz improvisation scene of the late 60s and early 70s was an incestuous breeding ground. Robert Fripp was producing albums by Keith Tippet, Brian Eno was using Derek Bailey and Evan Parker on albums of odd Russian electronic music on Island, and labels like EMI and RCA were actually taking a stab at selling this music to a large market. Amidst all this was Ray Russell, a popular session guitarist, also playing in John Barry's group, also reputed to be the first guitarist in England to have a pedal setup, and also the man responsible for the guitar freak-out on the Dr. No soundtrack album. CBS and RCA started releasing records of his free jazz groups. They started innocently enough, but eventually Russell started to break free. At a time when hollow body guitars and a clean sound were the norm, he had his Fender guitar in one hand and a fuzz box in the other. For a period in the early 70s he made records of unknown hybridibastardization of the rock sound and free jazz energy. He was Caspar Brotzmann when Caspar's dad was still writing blueprints for the continental Europe free jazz sound. Then he moved on, as people do, and the records became impossible to get. His efforts dropped off the face of the free map. The sound is recognizably jazz -- rhythm section, horn, playing heads; group improvisation. But even after all these years it's still a shock when Russell comes up to bat. His lines are not so much melodic variation, or even Coltrane-like walls of sound. Instead it is what, 20 years later, was termed 'skree'; sharp, angular bursts, like a Pollock painting mounted with guitar pickups, the sound of explosions. Like contemporaries Sonny Sharrock and Terje Rypdal, Russell makes it sound as if the guitar is not enough, as if he's reaching for something wilder, something that can't be contained within the 6 string cage."

Artist:	TORAL, RAFAEL
Title:	Sound Mind Sound Body
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M07 CD

"Rafael Toral's music is guitar based, but doesn't seem to involve any of the usual guitar histrionics. Instead he focuses in on the little details, the expansion of the sustained note. Sound Mind Sound Body is indeed a sustained note; the music is not dissimilar to Fripp and Eno's classic extrapolations, to Toral's mentor (and former NYC landlord) Phil Niblock, or to other like-minded drone masters. What is special is its (for lack of a better word) tenderness and hands-off gentleness. For this reissue, Toral has restored some pieces that were edited from the original and remastered the whole bloody thing for maximum drone effect."

Artist:	DRUMM, KEVIN
Title:	Comedy
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M08 CD

"Comedy is his third album, recorded over two years ago. It floated around in a provisional version, entitled Organ, for quite a while and caused a genuine bidding war between labels, at least five of them, which caused our Kevin to retreat in his special endearing way, and ultimately decide not to do anything at all with it. During this hibernation, Organ underwent some changes, being dissected and bisected and now including three electronically generated magnifications, bookended by the original monolithic organ recording. The album opens and closes with this would be title track, and it's awesome. 'Organ' is firmly in line with monster-minimalists Tony Conrad and Phil Niblock. The recording of this could honestly be heard over a block away from his apartment. The middle pieces are, like his album Second, extrapolations of microscopic detail and will be familiar terrain to fans of Bernhard Gunter and the Mego scene. But Drumm is so all-American, his sense of intuition over form is totally there, that classic intuition that got us all the patents."

Artist:	SPACE PONCH
Title:	The World Shopping With Space Ponch
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M09 CD

"Space Ponch is strange even by Japanese standards. The World Shopping With Space Ponch is the sound of an odd electronic orchestra, a digital dance band, somehow not out of place if you imagine a 1970s ballroom and a stage full of keyboard players, all pecking away at their silicon instruments. Vocoded vocals are overused all over the world, but here, they go far beyond what you may have previously heard. Giorgio Moroder's got nothing on Space Ponch. This world have been perfect for Ken Russell. And cinematic comparison isn't that far off. There's a medley of music from Jacques Tati, as well as other good-times standards, a cartoon-cutup style of Perry and Kingsley, the pre-video game sound of Yello Magic Orchestra, the electronic equivalent to Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band. Yet somehow Space Ponch goes somewhere very strange that they haven't been before. It's a case of mistaken identity, because you can't quite identify them."

Artist:	TSUYUKO, AKI
Title:	Ongakushitsu
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	2LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M10 LP

Double LP version. "Aki Tsuyuko may be best known on this side of the planet as the voice for Nobukazu Takemura, but she has been making her own music quietly and unassumingly for the last few years. Tsuyuko's own music is subdued, and more introspective that what is expected from the current generation of Japanese electronic music. Instead of the sample-crazed, cartoon-pitched high speed cacophony of say, someone like Space Ponch, the sound of Ongakushitsu is rooted in more organic sounds. Fender Rhodes, disconnected flutes, slow melodies, and an Ash Ra sense of space. If anything, Ongakushitsu sounds like the afterhour extrapolations of a chanteuse who thinks everyone's gone home for the evening." Previously issued on Childisc in Japan.

Artist:	ORTON SOCKET
Title:	99 Explosions
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M11 CD

"Orton Socket is mainly comprised of main-man and mouthpiece Rob Mazurek, known for blowing horns (as well as eardrums and minds etcetera) on a variety of efforts by Stereolab, Isotope 217, his own Chicago Underground Duo, and some other folks you probably have heard of. Plus Rob's done a series of records under his own name. See, he's been a spotlight kid for years now. But for 99 Explosions, Rob has reemerged incognito, armed with synthesizer and powerbook, wearing the shimmering cloak of Orton Socket. The results, shall we interject, are outstanding. More in line with Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba and Aki Tsuyuko's Ongakushitsu than Bill Dixon and Albert Ayler, 99 Explosions reveals a poet in the making a tone poet, that is. Truly, the man is not limited by an embouchure. Fans of Mazurek and the soon to be named 'melancholy electronics' genre will equally be fulfilled by Rob's latest excursion into outer now-ness."

Artist:	NIBLOCK, PHILL
Title:	G2,44+/x2
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M12 CD

"Yep, in this day and age, there's money in this minimalism thing. Which is nice for a fellow like Phill Niblock, a man who's been out in the field for over thirty years. While some may be happy to dabble in approximate music, or that only hinted at in whispered tones by those who still subscribe to the idea of the 'tonal auteur,' Phill Niblock makes the very stuff around which this particular world of music revolves. Thusly (and finally and thankfully), a finished record, to add to the handful of other Phill Niblock releases available today. Guitar too for four, you say? Indeed. Phill Niblock has assembled here a full roster of 6 stringers, and that means simply, a lot of guitar players. The project started some time ago, when the original recordings were made by Phill and Robert Poss. These were then made into a 'version' (like a dub record -- dig the crossover appeal!) by Portuguese man about town Rafael Toral. A new 'street-level' version was made in New York, with more chaos provided by Alan Licht, Kevin Drumm, Lee Ranaldo, and Thurston Moore. All of these folks have performed the piece live, and brought the 'vibe' into the studio. The whole thing was overseen by Phil and Moikai head honcho O'Rourke. The disc features both versions of the 32-minute missive."

Artist:	TRIANGLES
Title:	Triangles
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M13 CD

"Triangles offers you more of the powerbook electronics sounds we're all digging on so much, and from speaking comparatively from the field as it stands today, Triangles sounds quite good, really amazing, in fact. Despite falling into the, dammit, start saying it -- 'melancholy electronics,' hole that you clearly need filled, Triangles stands on it's own. Need more? Try this -- Triangles occupies the space between powerbook extrapolations (quite reminiscent of the sole person in America who can do anything well at all on them silicon bastards, wink wink!), and middle 70's Italian melancholy electronics (yes, they did it first again, damn them!), like Alvin Curran or Franco Battiato. It hints at Robert Ashley's automatic writing and David Behrman?s On the Other Ocean. A little bit anyways. But no matter what you think Triangles sounds like, it's definitely a 'trip,' as the kids on acid say. Yeah, Triangles will definitely keep those types busy for awhile. Meanwhile, critics will find it shocking easy to find angles and write reviews for Triangles, so expect much punning geometry in our near pulp future. But what of you, the listener? You can throw this disc on (after examining the cover graphics by Triangles and Swedish artist/soundmonger extraordinaire Leif Elgrenn) and find some points of your own. Who knows? Maybe you'll say, Triangles -- A hodgepodge of bleeps, scrapes, white noise, motor-like sounds, schmaltzy organ drones, sluggish acoustic guitar strumming, a morose piano note or two, an apoplectic fit of crunching and crackling and a clipped voice occasionally muttering something. Triangles use guitars (both electric and acoustic), piano, organ, PZM scrape and scratch as well as analog synthesizer and other modern electronic music producing equipment. Cold at times, serene at others, spacey, maybe gloomy for a few moments -- you can throw harsh in there too. All that in just 38 minutes."

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Artist:	PITA
Title:	Get Out
Label:	MOIKAI
Format:	LP
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	M06 LP