Browse by Label: TYPE (UK)

Artist:	KHONNOR
Title:	Burning Palace
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	T7PE 001EP

After the runaway success of Handwriting just over a year ago, the Vermont wonderkind makes his long awaited next move, kicking off a collectible 7" series from the Type label. The A side is "Burning Palace," a hip-hop tempo electronic pop anthem. The flip side is a far more melancholic effort and takes distorted vintage Khonnor pads and loops and layers over a twisted but tear-inducing vocal part destined to melt the hearts of Swedish ladies the world over. A great way to start the 7" series and a perfect next step from Khonnor before his eagerly-anticipated sophomore album.

Artist:	XELA
Title:	Bobble Hats In Summer/Danse Macabre
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	T7PE 006EP

John Xela is one of Type's label founders. It was always going to irritate vinyl completists that the track "Bobble Hats in Summer" was cruelly left off the vinyl version of For Frosty Mornings and Summer Nights -- so he generously plonked it on a 7" along with "Danse Macabre" (another vinyl exclusive) for your listening pleasure. Lovingly re-mastered and cut by those legends at Dubplates and Mastering until both moody, crystalline tracks absolutely sparkle. One of Xela's finest moments finally gets the treatment it deserves.

Artist:	MOKIRA
Title:	The Bum That Will Bring Us Together
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	T7PE 010EP

"It has been almost four years since the release of Album, so it's fitting that Andreas Tilliander returns to Type with a contribution to the ongoing 7" series. And what a contribution -- these two tracks show Tilliander's transition from digital to analogue as he casts off the digital demons of his past to craft two tape recorded shoegazing epics which revel in glacial Scandinavian beauty. Like Sigur Ros as realised by Basic Channel or My Bloody Valentine piped through decomposing, hotwired synthesizers this is an uncompromising blend of styles, but has a grounding in good old fashioned melancholic pop, even down to the Smiths-referencing track titles. While the bubbling ambient dub and glitchy minimalism of his previous work might now be all but an echo, the sentiment and skill is still present throughout and when Tilliander strikes the guitar triumphantly on 'I Was her My 15th 1995' all misgivings are thrown out of an open window. This is Mokira re-wired and re-imagined for 2007."

Artist:	SKALLANDER
Title:	Future Life Remixes
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	T7PE 013EP

The duo of guitarist/vocalist Matthew Mitchell and producer Bevan Smith (aka Signer) present their release in Type's 7" series. In response to the upcoming self-titled album, they both decided to remix the track "Future Life" under their own solo guise. Bevan takes the track back to an almost skeletal form then builds new melodies and new vocals to create a bizarre, crumbled-up psychedelic monster. Flip over and we are introduced to Matthew Mitchell's Muriel Tsains project who, through a woozy gauze of glockenspiel and reversed guitars, re-wires the track into five minutes of dream-pop bliss. This is the perfect introduction to Skallander.

Artist:	SANSO-XTRO
Title:	Sentimentalist
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 007CD

Debut release on the super quality conscious Type label, and one of the most impressive digital sound assemblages heard in 2005 so far.



       "Melissa Agate is no newcomer to the music scene, exposed very early in life as the drummer of Australian avant rock outfit Sindog Jellyroll. Since then she has refined her style and perfected what we believe and know to be a truly personal sound. Drawing influences from her antipodean background and also from a life-changing move to British shores, Sentimentalist is a deeply reflective and unashamedly visual album. Finding herself discontented with the trappings of the rock genre, it was not long before Agate discovered electronic music and began to experiment with as many different instruments as she could manage to acquire. From acoustic guitar and ukulele to traditional bells and kalimba, anything at hand was added to the rich soundscape of her creative vision. In doing this, Melissa has created something truly original. By purposefully taking sounds which inspired her and allowed her to visualize the rich memories she had stored in her mind, she has forged a work which is accessible but quite difficult to define in genre. Agate's influences are as far reaching as her musical ambition, and she takes well informed references from avant jazz, blues and experimental electronic works. Moments of Sentimentalist project hazy echoes of Robert Johnson, before colliding with the sublime analogue chic of Stereolab or Broadcast. Elsewhere, skeletal outlines of Opiate and perhaps Múm drift into angular rhythmical sounds explored recently by Supersilent and Radian. Yet rather than try and emulate another artist, instead Agate takes ideas to add to her ever changing musical ideal. It is her goal to produce an honest sound, something that is true to her soul, and she succeeds magnificently."

Artist:	SICKOAKES
Title:	Seawards
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 010CD

This is the long-awaited debut release from Sickoakes. Harking from the vodka-drenched tundra of Sweden, Sickoakes are a fluid six-piece (sometimes there's four...) who make sprawling cascades of orchestral post-rock which appears to be accruing glowing adjectives, like moths to a flame. Sickoakes have been leaking CD-Rs for years now, and there has been a bubbling interest in their next move. Massaging disparate elements into a delicious, cohesive whole, Seawards manages to evoke the ocean and its belligerent mood-swings to perfection; opening with the tender "Driftwood" and closing an hour later with the malignantly euphoric "Leonine." While ostentatiously labeled post-rock, Sickoakes do not adhere to the clipped wing schematic that has so come to blight the genre; eschewing the quiet-loud-quiet-loud-quiet approach for a richly textured and profoundly moving journey that earns its accolades rather than attempting to Xerox those of others. Sharing a twilight disposition with label-mates Deaf Center, crossed with the effervescent genius of Mogwai - "Driftwood" ushers you in through delicate piano and an achingly poignant melody which brings to mind the less sun-blushed output of Ennio Morricone, while "Taking The Stairs Instead Of The Elevator" roams brusquely into view with an odd (yet compelling) combination of British folk, chiming guitars, spaghetti horns and staccato rhythms. The result? Genre-defying. Elsewhere, "Oceans On Hold" reclaims a killer guitar part and lets it spiral skywards amongst breathlessly rendered instrumentation and AM samples. "Missiles And Mammals" transports you to a starry-eyed retreat through lashings of snow capped strings, while the truly epic "Wedding Rings & Bullets In The Same Golden Shrine (Part I & II)" cements Sickoakes' position alongside Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai as purveyors of un-cut, grade-A aural necromancy. In other words, this is just about as good as it gets.."

Artist:	NORTH SEA AND RAMESES III, THE
Title:	Night of the Ankou
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 012CD

Night of the Ankou is an immense collaboration between London-based psychedelic-ambient three piece Rameses III and Tulsa's finest free folk rebel, Brad Rose aka The North Sea. Rose might be better known as the brains behind Digitalis, a multi-media wyrd folk empire acting as a CD-R label, magazine, book publisher and full-blown label, but it is his own musical compositions that remain at the core of whatever he turns his hand to. As with many overseas collaborations these days, the two acts have never actually met in person -- instead they worked by re-moulding each others' tracks, working their own ideas into the skeletons of that of the other, and the result is mesmerizing. The opener "Death of the Ankou" is a hypnotic journey into the instrumental ambience explored by such acts as Popol Vuh or Stars of the Lid, yet adds a sense of cinematic adventure which could be compared to Type's very own Deaf Center. We are transported quite promptly into a spiritual world of water, bamboo, beauty and restraint which is simultaneously calming and beguiling. The second piece, entitled "Night Blossoms Written in Sanskrit" is different; the ambience is filled out by echoing guitar, and the mood goes from peaceful and spiritual to truly triumphant. It would even be possible to compare this track to the later work of Slowdive -- it has that same blissful, life-affirming quality which makes you remember why you loved music in the first place. The disc is polished off by a remix from the Type Records boss himself Xela, and pulls together the ideas explored in the first two tracks, adding elements of his own signature production. Drones and bowed guitar squeals are spread densely over light percussion, harp and otherworldly sounds to produce something unusual but hugely enjoyable. This may be Type's first foray into the weird world of psychedelic folk music, but given the deep ambience and mysterious cinematic beauty of Night of the Ankou, it is a match made in heaven. Last copies.

Artist:	MOUNTAINEER
Title:	When The Air Is Bright They Shine
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 014CD

This is Hamburg-based Henning Wandhoff's third release as Mountaineer. After the release of his first album Sunny Day, Wandhoff began to itch for collaborators, especially in taking his epic songs into the live environment. After a few years and a few lineup changes he was eventually left with the crack team of Katja Raine, Fiona Mckenzie, Anna Bertermann and Alexander Rischer. When the Air is Bright They Shine harkens to the classic LPs of the late '60s and '70s; 35-40 minutes, ten tracks, every track perfectly realized and the album holding together without filler. Back in those days, there were none of those modern devices used to trick people into thinking they have something a little more worthy than it really is... just pure pop music. He wanted to recreate this, but not make something knowingly retro -- instead, he assembled his album with ten songs that embodied the philosophies of those classic albums without actually mimicking them. The result are leftfield pop gems, ranging in influence from decades of essential music. The album opens with "A Town Called Ivanhoe" -- the track has the best elements of Jim O'Rourke, Kings of Convenience or Jose Gonzalez, while managing to inject its own special bossa charm which carries across the whole album. When we reach "Eliza (A Day for Every Hour)," it's clear Wandhoff has a deft skill in pop songwriting -- this is a track that wouldn't sound out of place on any self-respecting radio show, but what's more it's actually credible, too. As Wandhoff's soft vocals trip and tread over brushed drums and slide guitar it's simply impossible not to fall in love with the music. In cynical times like these it has never been more appropriate to deliver an honest album of great music, music that makes you feel good to be alive. When The Air Is Bright They Shine is exactly that, and its unforgettable sun-drenched moods will take you all the way to paradise and back again.

Artist:	NORTH SEA, THE
Title:	Exquisite Idols
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 021CD

This is the first official solo full-length release from Tulsa's The North Sea (Brad Rose). Rose is easily one of the free-folk movement's busiest exponents, splitting his time between running the Digitalis and Foxglove labels, the Foxy Digitalis webzine and writing his own music under a variety of different monikers with a host of collaborators. Somehow, he has found the time to craft Exquisite Idols, which elegantly follows a hugely acclaimed collaboration with UK's Rameses III, Night of the Ankou. However, whereas Night of the Ankou explored both acts' occasional leanings towards ambience and drone, Exquisite Idols shows Rose digging deep into the dusty vaults of his American heritage and drumming up an album dripping with blues, folk and free experimentation. This is folk music as played from a snow-drift in Tulsa, in a Midwest wasteland or a forgotten forest drenched in moonlight. It is personal, secluded and almost lonely, but Rose never allows the melancholy to take over. From the jubilant opening crackles of "Eternal Birds" right up until the rockin' stomp of "Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestess," there is the distinct feeling that although this might be labeled free folk, there's a barn somewhere full of like-minded drunkards waiting eagerly to get dancing on them there hay-bales. Just flip to the rip-roaring folk stomp of "Take It From Me Brother Moses," take a swig of moonshine and let your feet do the talking. Exquisite Idols is an album steeped in tradition, yet its greatness comes from Rose's ability to absorb other cultures so easily -- there are traces of Indian traditional music, Greek music and more, all hidden within the cacophony of banjo, guitar and clanging percussion. This is what sets him apart from his contemporaries and makes his music so absorbing.

Artist:	LETTERS LETTERS
Title:	Letters Letters
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 022CD

This is the debut album from Montreal/Chicago trio Letters Letters, a band made up of veteran electronic music producer Mitchell Akiyama, singer Jenna Robertson and producer/singer Tony Boggs. Mitchell Akiyama has been an active part of the music scene for some time now as a solo artist, label boss and collaborator with various other musicians, most notably with Boggs (as Désormais) and Robertson (as Avia Gardener), but this is the first time the three musicians have put their heads together and created something which absolutely defies their earlier work. Turning electronic music and post-rock on its head, Letters Letters instead decided to look to the early '80s. With broken synthesizers, fizzled-out drum machines and the usual arsenal of guitars and overdriven amplifiers, they managed to figure out a perfect pop formula. Taking the usual hooks and choruses and feeding them through a mire of grimy effects, they ended up with something flickering and desperately neon-colored. Music for day-glo wrist bands and basement parties, this is a fresh take on the DIY lo-fi scene, and even if the whole fanzine culture has broken down, making way for blogs and webzines, it doesn't mean we have to lose touch with the grittier side of life. Touching on themes as diverse as sex, drugs and the all-important unicorn scene in Blade Runner, there shouldn't be any reason not to usher Letters Letters into your life immediately.

Artist:	LETTERS LETTERS
Title:	Letters Letters
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 022LP

LP version. This is the debut album from Montreal/Chicago trio Letters Letters, a band made up of veteran electronic music producer Mitchell Akiyama, singer Jenna Robertson and producer/singer Tony Boggs. Turning electronic music and post-rock on its head, Letters Letters instead decided to look to the early '80s. With broken synthesizers, fizzled-out drum machines and the usual arsenal of guitars and overdriven amplifiers, they managed to figure out a perfect pop formula.

Artist:	SKALLANDER
Title:	Skallander
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 023CD

This is the first official international debut by Skallander, the duo of Bevan Smith (better known as Signer) and Matthew Mitchell. Skallander have had two albums out already, though scant few copies made it out of their home country of New Zealand (where they have received almost universal praise), but now the oddly monikered pair are ready to have their sound lavished upon the world at large. Mitchell and Smith have been playing together since their teens in various bands, and Mitchell's well-trained finger-picking could be heard on Signer's recent tours, so this third album feels like the two musicians have an almost spiritual link. Taking cues from the golden age of rock music, when songwriting was just as important as musicianship -- Skallander is an album which should appeal to those of us desperate to hear great, memorable songs. Utilizing Mitchell's virtuoso instrumental skills and haunting vocals and pitting them against Smith's veteran mixing desk trickery, the result is an album that sounds both incredibly new and yet retains the classic structure of your favorite '70s LPs. With nods to early Pink Floyd, Neil Young and more recently, Jose Gonzales and Kings Of Convenience, this is a deep and beautiful record which revels in the enjoyment of music itself. Like an invitingly mysterious book, this album will have you trapped in its hazy beauty for many months to come; we can't imagine a better forest to be lost in.

Artist:	SKALLANDER
Title:	Skallander
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 023LP

LP version. This is the first official international debut by Skallander, the duo of Bevan Smith (better known as Signer) and Matthew Mitchell. Taking cues from the golden age of rock music, when songwriting was just as important as musicianship -- Skallander is an album which should appeal to those of us desperate to hear great, memorable songs. Utilizing Mitchell's virtuoso instrumental skills and haunting vocals and pitting them against Smith's veteran mixing desk trickery, the result is an album that sounds both incredibly new and yet retains the classic structure of your favorite '70s LPs. With nods to early Pink Floyd, Neil Young and more recently, Jose Gonzales and Kings Of Convenience, this is a deep and beautiful record which revels in the enjoyment of music itself.

Artist:	ZELIENOPLE
Title:	His/Hers
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 024CD

Zelienople (named after a borough in Pennsylvania) is the moniker of Chicago-based musicians Matt Christensen (guitar/vocals), Mike Weis (percussion) and Brian Harding (guitar/clarinet) and between them, in a desolate suburban basement, they have come up with a record of pure psych-rock sludge. Now on their fifth album, the band has struck upon their finest moment yet, honing their skills to create something singular and utterly unique. There is certainly no shortage of acts willing to throw down waves of experimental guitar noise and clattering percussion, but with the benefit of focus and experience, Zelienople sound like something totally out of time and almost impossible to place. Residing in a hazy drunken world in-between slow-core pioneers Low, psych-folk outsiders Charalambides, Japanese overlords Boris and Dead Man-era Neil Young, His/Hers is a faded photograph of rock music past, yet still manages to keep a firm footing in the present. Guitars echo like disappearing ghosts and vocals moan and wail mercilessly while percussion bubbles up in glorious waterlogged waves. Fusing the warring factions of blues, noise, metal, folk and jazz, the trio has made as breathtaking a psychedelic album as you're likely to find. This is an album made for listening, for enjoying and sinking into, an album that is made as an illicit treat for the discerning music fans among us. Grab hold and step aboard, Zelienople are just about ready to take you on a universal journey into the subconscious, and it's gonna be quite some ride.

Artist:	CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN
Title:	The Black Book Of Capitalism
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 025CD

Originally released in 2000, Le Livre Noir Du Capitalisme was the first album from French composer Sylvain Chauveau. Now in 2008, it has been remastered and repackaged for Type Records, translated into the English The Black Book of Capitalism. This record was the first the world had heard from Sylvain, a musician who had been rooted in post-rock before realizing that he could do a lot more with the instruments around him. On The Black Book of Capitalism, we hear a rare playful side to the composer as he flirts with Gallic classical music, electronica, jazz, and even indie rock. The variety splintered into various side-projects as Sylvain moved on in the music scene, but here we get a sense of confident experimentation without a hint of cliché. Sylvain's sound would go on to influence a host of other artists and kick off an entire sub-genre of modern classical music, but strangely enough, this debut album has been out of press for some time. Now remastered by Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin and on vinyl for the first time ever, it sounds more relevant and timeless than it ever has. Beginning with a cloud of smoky ambience, piano, strings and the atmospheric field recordings that frame the record, we are dragged into Sylvain's noir-esque world. This sets the scene for the entire album which drifts through the kind of piano-led classical vignettes popularized by Max Richter and more recently Goldmund, yet punctuates these with doomy jazz and lighter pieces such as the guitar-led "Dialogues Avec Le Vent." The result is a beguiling collection of pieces which show an incredibly inventive mind at work, a mind refusing to be held to one specific style, or even time.

Artist:	MARTIN & MACHINEFABRIEK, AARON
Title:	Cello Recycling/Cello Drowning
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 029CD

The Netherlands' Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) and American multi-instrumentalist Aaron Martin present their first-ever collaboration. Zuydervelt is somewhat prolific; his steady flow of super-limited edition 3" CD-Rs seem to slip out relentlessly month after month, and Martin has one full-length album to his name so far. Between them, the duo has come up with a project that is far more than the sum of its parts. The Cello Recycling project was originally commissioned for use in an art gallery; Zuydervelt took cello improvisations from Aaron Martin and built them into the slow-burning post-ambient monster that is "Cello Recycling." The second track takes Martin's original piece, morphed by Rutger, and then once again distorted, where the original piece is drowned in a bath of murky water, submerging it in all different directions it has never before drifted. The two pieces together are perfectly complimentary, showing two sides of a tarnished coin -- one giving us pent-up emotion, fizzing and shuffling awkwardly until it explodes majestically, the other giving us a peaceful reflection as seen through the eyes of a serial killer who has just completed his final gift to the world. An inventive and incredibly beautiful look at the cello as an instrument and noise-making tool; this is an absolute must for fans of post-classical music, the droning beauty of Stars of the Lid or even the moody post-rock of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Moody, kinetic and hugely enjoyable stuff, this needs to be played loud and absorbed totally.

Artist:	CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN
Title:	S.
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	10"
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 030EP

10" vinyl version to accompany the long-awaited sixth release for French composer and electro-acoustic producer, Sylvain Chauveau. Since his 2000 debut Le Livre Noir Du Capitalisme, Chauveau has been a pioneering figure in the world of modern classical/electronic music. This status has seen him inhabit the same creative space as Max Richter, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Ryan Teague, and Type welcomes him to their label and community, beginning with the issue of this brand new mini-album. S. sees Chauveau taking a daring new direction since his last record, moving away from the haunting strings and piano work of his best known works and temporarily stepping into the world of minimal electroacoustics, using the guitar as a focal point.

Artist:	SVARTE GREINER
Title:	Kappe
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 033CD

This is Erik Skodvin's (one-half of Deaf Center) second full-length release for the Type label as Svarte Greiner. His debut Knive was a milestone in doom music. Taking a surprisingly acoustic route, he kick-started a sub-genre as he used cello, violin and rattling miscellanies to conjure up blood-curdling soundscapes. Kappe continues Skodvin's blackened underworld cruise, furthering his mysterious, cinematic sound. Through incessant touring, Skodvin has built up a distinctive live technique since the release of Knive and it is this which works as a spirit guide on Kappe. Travelling the dark corners of the world, Skodvin has explored every shadowed alleyway in his grasp, built up a collection of broken glove-puppets and potion-filled medicine bottles and trapped many a stifled scream in the process. Some of these disparate adventures were captured to cassette tape (Penpals Forever, Digitalis Limited) and wax disc (Til Seters, A Room Forever), but the most evil moments were set aside for this full-length record; four fated psalms in honor of the dark Northern lords. The album's opener "Tunnel Of Love" may be the noisiest piece Skodvin has produced to date with a death-rattle of chains accompanying his patented maritime bass drone. It sounds something like Death's gondola gliding through purgatory, gradually building into a dense, chattering cloud of torment before dropping into bleak stillness. Skodvin is joined by Ultralyd saxophonist Kjetil Møster who adds a disarmingly terrifying squeal to the horrifying detuned strings on "Candle Light Dinner Actress." The most startling change here is his incorporation of the electric guitar -- "Mystery Man" sees Skodvin harness the feedback into loops of distressing, pained melancholy, bringing to mind Skullflower or a slow-motion Sonic Youth at times. Kappe, however, is very much its own beast, and followers will already know that nothing sounds quite like Svarte Greiner. You won't find a more unsettling winter record.

Artist:	HOLTKAMP, KOEN
Title:	Field Rituals
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 035CD

Field Rituals is the first solo album to come from Koen Holtkamp, an artist probably better known as one-half of ambient duo Mountains. Based in Brooklyn, Koen created the album slowly and as a love letter of sorts, taking in delicate field recordings and using them like faded photos, representing his distinct memories of the people and places he chanced upon. Taking cues from the classic ambience of Brian Eno and fusing it with the instrumental subtlety of Sweden's Tape, Koen has come up with an aural book on his subject matter. Each track feels entwined in the next and feels like a part of something much bigger. Sure we've heard field recordings, synthesizers and guitars before, but rarely have these instruments been injected with such a lightness of touch and with such a delicate open ear. Each listen reveals more, like peeling back layers of onion skin -- take the album's epic centerpiece "Sky Flowers" for example, which blends slow-moving synthesizers with good-natured environmental recordings and shimmering strings. The result is explosive somehow, with the grandeur more usually exploited by Arvo Pärt being framed with a distant electronic ambience. The slow-burning pace is probably the single most important facet and reveals an artist at ease with his musical choices, something unusual in a genre brimming with young hopefuls. A good comparison might be Stars Of The Lid, but Koen's music is more organic and more humble somewhat than the ex-Texan duo. This is a look into Holtkamp's most personal of works.

Artist:	ALPS, THE
Title:	III
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 040CD

Although III might be the third album from San Francisco trio The Alps, it marks their first studio-based record and a fresh direction for the psychedelic supergroup. Made up of Tarentel mainman Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, ex-Tussle member Alexis Georgopoulos (better known as ARP), and ex-Troll member Scott Hewicker, there is a deft amount of skill on display as the three rip through eight tracks of sizzling spiritual bliss. Comparisons here are easy to bring up -- Popol Vuh, Ennio Morricone and Serge Gainsbourg spring to mind for starters, as the band toss and tangle through thick drum breaks and reverberating, sun-drenched guitar lines. III feels like a lost soundtrack to some crumbling Italian surrealist classic with its pounding bass lines and swirling synthesizers. This is visual music, inspired by the likes of Werner Herzog, Alejandro Jordorowsky and Michaelangelo Antonioni, but what results is far more than a pastiche. Rather, the trio have concocted a record which, while being aware of its sprawling influences, is far more than the sum of its parts. The finest excesses of progressive rock and the leanest intricacies of the psychedelic folk scene have been splashed together with a distinct, dusty funk overlook to produce something which is totally out of time. Free from some half-baked scene or other, this is the result of three musicians doing exactly what they want. III has taken a plethora of sounds and crumbled them into something altogether beguiling. From the distant supernaturalism of "Trem Fantasma" to the Terry Riley-influenced bliss of "Pink Light," The Alps show us that there's more to psychedelia than meets the eye.

Artist:	XELA
Title:	In Bocca Al Lupo
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 043CD

This is the fourth full-length release from Manchester-based Xela (John Twells), and his second release on his own Type label imprint. In 2006, he released the horror-flecked epic The Dead Sea. Taking influence from the movies of Dario Argento and Umberto Lenzi and fusing them with a Lovecraftian concept, he created the perfect tribute to his obsession. Every good horror movie has a sequel, and for this full-length follow-up, John has used the dark corners of the Christian religion as his guide. Composed initially for a fear-themed Chicago art installation, the 60-minute piece gradually took shape as a celebration of desolate cellars and distant church bells, the things that truly scare him. Researching further took him to Spain and Italy as he explored basilicas, cathedrals and crumbling churches in search of inspiration. Ancient stories, whispered histories and sounds drifting through generations became the basis of the recording, which is split into four distinct parts. Beginning with metallic scrapes and haunting industrial soundscapes, we drift among fluidly dense drones, electrical hums and crumbling noise. Like a doom-laden take on the crunching assault of Hair Police or a noisy version of David Lynch's Eraserhead soundtrack, the music is stripped down to the bare bones of what is necessary. Before long, we hit the record's central piece, "In Deo Salutari Meo" which takes an almost funereal tone, using religious bells as the primary sound source. Eventually the album climaxes on the longest piece, "Beatae Immortalitatis," which features Heavy Winged's Jed Bindeman on drums. Bindeman was last seen lending his percussive skills to "Calling For Vanished Faces" which appeared on the Xela/MGR split earlier in 2008, and here his pummeling beats accompany John's icy oscillator tones. Like a freeform Pan Sonic, this takes heavy electronic music into a frightening new place, ending in a thick cloud of screams and crackle. One might even call it a religious experience.

Artist:	BRODERICK, PETER
Title:	4 Track Songs
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 044CD

This is the third full-length release by Peter Broderick for the Type label. In just a few short years, the multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer and all-round Renaissance man has shot from being a darling of the underground to something far more substantial. Constantly touring, Peter has accrued fans far and wide with his alluring folk songs and gorgeous post-classical compositions -- but all this had to start somewhere. A few years ago, Peter sent Type a package containing all his material prior to writing 2008's Float -- two CD-Rs, lovingly hand-labelled 4 Track Songs. Recorded to tape using only a cheap microphone, Peter assembled these tracks as and when they came to his head. From delicate piano improvisations to fully-fledged songs more reminiscent of Home, this is a charming and heart-warming portal into Peter's early creative process. More than that though, these songs are so defiant in their hazy, lo-fi beauty, that they stand on their own as pieces that can never possibly be repeated. Moving from track to track with all the grace of that chunky stop button on a cassette recorder, we are treated to both volumes of Peter's early recordings, and although they might have been released before, they actually never sold a single copy. Through dedications to get-well-soon messages to simple musings on life, each song seems to come straight from the heart and is untroubled by the trappings of modern production. This is pure, simple and ineffably beautiful music which shows the beginnings of a truly special talent.

Artist:	CITY CENTER
Title:	City Center
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 045CD

This is the debut full-length release by Brooklyn-based Fred Thomas as City Center. Although this is his first solo project, Thomas is far from a newcomer to the scene. Rather, he has spent most of his life in search of the perfect pop music, first as the frontman/mastermind of Saturday Looks Good To Me, recording with His Name Is Alive's Warn Defever, as a member of Flashpapr, and now under the oddly-monikered City Center. Apparently the name comes from European tours where the "City Center" sign is such a regular (and reliable) sight, but it gives few clues to the unknown pleasures held within Fred's music. Taking cues from the skewed pop music of Arthur Russell on one side, and the most warped moments of Brian Wilson by way of Panda Bear on the other, Fred has channeled an outsider pop masterwork. Thick waves of decomposing electronics and processed instruments (is it gamelan? Is it something else altogether?) crash and fizz beneath Fred's multi-tracked echo/reverb-heavy vocals. Sandwiched in-between three-minute hazy a.m. pop marvels such as opener "Killer Whale" and the stand-out "Summer School" are extended ambient experimentations -- but unlike the occasionally academic workouts you might expect from Type, these feel organic and distinctly home-brewed. There is something raw and magical about Fred Thomas' musical creations -- exultant, far-away harmonies are buried under thick blankets of fuzz guitar, hand-bells, ambient hums and gentle acoustic guitar, and it all pulses with an animal warmth, like something that grabs you and won't let go. Pop music has rarely sounded quite so open-hearted.

Artist:	COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER
Title:	Perdition Hill Radio
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 046CD

From the desolate hills of Albuquerque, New Mexico comes self-styled black ambient guitar overlord William Fowler Collins, and his second full-length release, Perdition Hill Radio. Brought up in New England and educated in San Francisco, the constant traveling has given his music a rare patience and focus and a distinct connection with the sprawling American landscape. Like Earth's seminal Hex before it, Perdition Hill Radio invokes the ghosts of a lost America and drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise and drone. With a love of both experimental ambient music and ear-splitting black metal, Collins has arrived upon a grim hybrid of both. Black ambient might be the best description, as this is neither one nor the other, inhabiting a lonely space in-between. The chugging, blown-out treble and isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present and correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski and Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static. These rare cracks of beauty are what make Perdition Hill Radio such an arresting listening experience, and what sets it apart from so much that has come before. There is a shadowy link between the compositions of William Fowler Collins and fellow Type artists Svarte Greiner and Xela; all three share a similar fascination with the darker side of the ambient spectrum. Collins, however, manages to re-frame this darkness to suit the sun-baked mountain tops of New Mexico, and it's all the bleaker for it. As crows circle an anonymous skeleton and brightly-colored lizards retreat into their dark corners, there could be no better soundtrack than this. Dark, doomy and with no escape from the pounding sun up above, Perdition Hill Radio is a truly cinematic record.

Artist:	COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER
Title:	Perdition Hill Radio
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 046LP

2LP version, contains an extra 20+ minute bonus track not on the CD. From the desolate hills of Albuquerque, New Mexico comes self-styled black ambient guitar overlord William Fowler Collins, and his second full-length release, Perdition Hill Radio. Brought up in New England and educated in San Francisco, the constant traveling has given his music a rare patience and focus and a distinct connection with the sprawling American landscape. Like Earth's seminal Hex before it, Perdition Hill Radio invokes the ghosts of a lost America and drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise and drone. With a love of both experimental ambient music and ear-splitting black metal, Collins has arrived upon a grim hybrid of both. Black ambient might be the best description, as this is neither one nor the other, inhabiting a lonely space in-between. The chugging, blown-out treble and isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present and correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski and Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static. These rare cracks of beauty are what make Perdition Hill Radio such an arresting listening experience, and what sets it apart from so much that has come before. There is a shadowy link between the compositions of William Fowler Collins and fellow Type artists Svarte Greiner and Xela; all three share a similar fascination with the darker side of the ambient spectrum. Collins, however, manages to re-frame this darkness to suit the sun-baked mountain tops of New Mexico, and it's all the bleaker for it. As crows circle an anonymous skeleton and brightly-colored lizards retreat into their dark corners, there could be no better soundtrack than this. Dark, doomy and with no escape from the pounding sun up above, Perdition Hill Radio is a truly cinematic record.

Artist:	MOKIRA
Title:	Persona
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 047CD

The is the second full-length release by Sweden's Andreas Tilliander as Mokira for the Type label. It's hard to believe that five years have passed since the release of Album, Tilliander's first outing on the Type label. Album marked the final stage in Andreas' development as a "laptop" artist, and since then he has collected synthesizer upon synthesizer and enough tape to make the boys in Berlin jealous. Ditching the zeroes and ones, Andreas set about piecing together a follow-up to Album and constructing it entirely in the analog realm; the warming hiss of tape, the decomposing buzz of a monosynth, and the nostalgic twitch of the Roland TB303. There might be a love of all things "kosmiche" once more, but it would be facile to label Persona as such. Sure, Andreas has heard his fair share of Cluster and Harmonia records, but his sound is just as rooted in psychedelic rock and even Basic Channel-era dub techno as Germanic ambience. Just listen to the thick, pulsating ode to Spacemen 3, "Oscillations And Tremolo," and you quickly realize that you are not merely listening to another synthesizer Album. Half-heard rhythms and familiar TB303 bass pulses drag us in and out of a hinted-at Basic Channel-axis production on "Valla Torg Kraut" while a fairground jangle drives us through "Ode To The Ode To The Street Hassle." Something in there is blissful, almost beautiful, but it is hidden below thick layers of tape hiss and crumbling circuit boards. Persona is a mature, confident and engaging experience -- the product of a veteran electronic musician producing music that comes naturally to him. As the Ingmar Bergman film of the same name suggests, it might be Andreas Tilliander's most revealing record to date. A stunning collection of modern electronic music.

Artist:	ON
Title:	Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 050CD

Originally released in 2004 on the Les Disques Du Soliel Et De L'Acier label and now reissued by Type, this is the debut release by On -- the collaborative duo of Chicago-based percussionist Steven Hess (Haptic, Pan American) and French composer/producer Sylvain Chauveau. The concept behind Your Naked Ghost... is simple: the duo record an album in the studio, and then place it in the hands of a third party. The resulting work is then "remixed" (for want of a better word) and the album is complete. For this album, the three hours of delicate source material was handled by none other than Norwegian master of dark ambient Helge Sten aka Deathprod. Sten's characteristic smudged ambience is evident as he submerges Chauveau and Hess' compositions beneath a swamp of cavernous reverb and synthesized smoke. Hess' patented percussive drones are filtered into the distant buzz of an insect's wings, and Chauveau's prepared guitar becomes a tectonic rumble from another continent. At times it is difficult to discern where On stops and Deathprod begins, such is the mastery of Sten's production and the appropriateness of Chauveau and Hess' recordings. Like only the finest records in the dark ambient genre, Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night guides you to another world for its 60-minute duration. Haunted and trembling, these recordings (made in 2003) marked the conclusion of the Deathprod project as Helge Sten vowed never to record under the name again. It is easy to appreciate then, how special this album really is, and it is a work that should be savored accordingly.

Artist:	ON
Title:	Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 050LP

Double LP version. Originally released in 2004 on the Les Disques Du Soliel Et De L'Acier label and now reissued by Type, this is the debut release by On -- the collaborative duo of Chicago-based percussionist Steven Hess (Haptic, Pan American) and French composer/producer Sylvain Chauveau. The concept behind Your Naked Ghost... is simple: the duo record an album in the studio, and then place it in the hands of a third party. The resulting work is then "remixed" (for want of a better word) and the album is complete. For this album, the three hours of delicate source material was handled by none other than Norwegian master of dark ambient Helge Sten aka Deathprod. Sten's characteristic smudged ambience is evident as he submerges Chauveau and Hess' compositions beneath a swamp of cavernous reverb and synthesized smoke. Hess' patented percussive drones are filtered into the distant buzz of an insect's wings, and Chauveau's prepared guitar becomes a tectonic rumble from another continent. At times it is difficult to discern where On stops and Deathprod begins, such is the mastery of Sten's production and the appropriateness of Chauveau and Hess' recordings. Like only the finest records in the dark ambient genre, Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night guides you to another world for its 60-minute duration. Haunted and trembling, these recordings (made in 2003) marked the conclusion of the Deathprod project as Helge Sten vowed never to record under the name again. It is easy to appreciate then, how special this album really is, and it is a work that should be savored accordingly.

Artist:	RAMESES III
Title:	I Could Not Love You More
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 052CD

Croydon, UK three-piece Rameses III have been busy proving to the wider world that there's more to their hometown than dubstep with their deep and original take on ambient music. In that time, Daniel Freeman (keyboards, processing), Spencer Grady (guitars, noises) and Stephen Lewis (guitars, percussion) have notched up a number of releases for Important Records, Digitalis and of course Type Records, but it is with this latest opus that they truly leave their mark on the faded musical landscape. I Could Not Love You More is a record that reframes their sound, taking their drifting ambience and pastoral folk and sharpening it at every opportunity. You can hear echoes of Takoma in Lewis' delicate acoustic guitar playing, shadows of early 4AD in the shimmering drones, and all this is wrapped up in an Eno-esque sense of restraint. It sounds almost as if the pieces were written for the mid-20th century, with sounds coming from electric pianos, Mellotrons and guitars rather than heavy electronic processes. We end up with a warming blur of sound, something far removed from the chatter of zeroes and ones we have become accustomed to. As the album drifts from beginning to end, there is a delicate yet defined narrative, enhanced by the inclusion of subtle field recordings and just the right amount of silence. The tracks lull us forward and send us into a state of nostalgic reminiscence, which is, in essence, the theme which balances the album. I Could Not Love You More is simply a gorgeous reflection -- exactly what it reflects upon is left up to the listeners themselves. Who would have thought the mean streets of South London could produce such beautiful music?

Artist:	BLACK TO COMM
Title:	Alphabet 1968
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 053CD

This is the debut full-length for Marc Richter aka Black To Comm for the Type label. Richter is no newcomer to the experimental music scene. As the figurehead of the Hamburg-based Dekorder label, the musician and designer has brought countless oddities to the attention of rabid music fans in the last few years, but it is with his own compositions that he has made the biggest splash. Releasing for a plethora of labels including Digitalis, Trensmat, and of course, his own imprint, he has pioneered a new, organic drone sub-genre using tape loops, vintage organs and an inexhaustible swamp of found sounds. With this latest album however, it was Richter's intention to move away from the epic drones he had made his own and into something more "classic." The mission statement for Alphabet 1968 was to write an album of "songs" for want of a better word. Short tracks which represented genre points, the milestones which stuck in Richter's mind when he thought back to his favorite records. What we arrive at is a breathtaking 10-track album which, over the course of 45 minutes, explores world music, techno, noise, avant-garde, ambient music and even exotica. Each track is linked with a loose thread of radio static or environmental sound, dragging you through the album, as if tuning in to a stray broadcast or a particularly adventurous mix. Richter has pieced the album together from hours of recordings made at his studio with home made gamelan, small instruments and loops gathered from a collection of ancient vinyl and 78 records. The scope of the album is admirable, but ignoring this, it is simply a shockingly arresting collection of experimental oddities, with references ranging from Moondog to Basic Channel by way of Bernard Herrmann. It's not hard to fall in love with Alphabet 1968, far harder would be to place exactly where the record should fit into your collection.

Artist:	ZELIENOPLE
Title:	Give It Up
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 054CD

Chicago-based trio Zelienople present their second album for the Type label. Zelienople have been around for quite a while now, and in that time have become staples in the underground music architecture. Percussionist Mike Weis has appeared on recent recordings with alt-folk legend Scott Tuma, and Weis, Tuma and guitarist/vocalist Matt Christensen form the band Good Stuff House. Despite all this activity, their passion still lies in Zelienople. Multi-instrumentalist Brian Harding completes the trio, which has forged its most essential work to date with Give It Up, a record which succeeds as a perfect summation of their progress. With previous albums, the band have garnered no shortage of comparisons to Talk Talk, Slowdive and Bark Psychosis, and while these comparisons still stand, here Zelienople have pushed the influences into the background to reveal a daring and fresh sound. Poppier than its predecessor His/Hers (TYPE 024CD), Give It Up is a collection of rolling songs, from the Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore-esque opener "Aging" to the doomed Americana of "All I Want Is Calm," and the hazy ambience of "Water Saw." As we pass through the effortless percussive shuffle and dream-like riffing of "I Can Put All My Faith In Her," perhaps the closest the band have ever come to writing a pop song, it's hard not to fall under their spell. It is a record with scope and an enviable restraint, and a record which revels in the band's experience and pedigree. This is an album of crystalline, mysterious beauty; it is something which might take multiple listens to truly uncover, and is infinitely rewarding once you do. Cinematic, but startlingly unpretentious, this is music perfectly primed for the colder seasons. Light a log fire and enjoy.

Artist:	SKELTON, RICHARD
Title:	Landings
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 055CD

2010 release, repressed. This is UK artist Richard Skelton's second album under his own name. Since the release of the genre-defining Marking Time, the music of Richard Skelton has been widely celebrated for its raw, organic beauty -- its honesty and restraint. Whether the work has been under his own name or under one of his many shadowy guises (A Broken Consort, Riftmusic, Carousell, Clouwbeck, and others), there is a level of skill, a sureness of touch, and an emotional resonance that is virtually unparalleled by his peers. Landings is the culmination of four years of recording on the moors and hillsides of Northern England. The resulting album isn't simply a suite of songs in the mold of Marking Time, but a form of diary; a dialog with the landscape itself. It is imbued with a real sense of narrative -- and of place -- that is both epic in scale and yet intimate in feel. And so, we are taken on a literal journey across the threshold of "Noon Hill Wood," with its achingly-beautiful, interleaved bowed melodies, drifting through ranks of pine, larch and birch. From there, we cross the river and climb the slopes of the nearby hills in search of the source of "Greens Within Brook" -- a crushing Eno-esque ballad for concertina, recorded by the banks of the fledgling stream as the ice melted one wintry morning. We are then taken across miles of bleak moorland, and to the album's desolate centerpiece, "Voice Of The Book," a symphony of bowed metallic sounds recorded in the ruins of a centuries-old farmhouse. Finally, we make a long, slow descent into the valley, and follow the river as it leaves the moorland behind. Landings is a demanding, involving experience and is, without a doubt, Skelton's most complete work to date, containing within it the very essence of his musical output. Slowly, over the course of its 70+ minutes, he reveals the heart of his compositional skill, and with that we are drawn into the depth of his work. Rarely are albums so involving and so absolutely moving.

Artist:	ALPS, THE
Title:	Le Voyage
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 056CD

Still comprised of the core threesome of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma (Tarentel), Alexis Georgopoulos (ARP) and Scott Hewicker (Troll), The Alps return to Type in full force for their fourth sprawling long-player. Buoyed by the praise lavished upon its predecessor III, the band were adamant that Le Voyage would be bigger, brighter and better than anything in their catalog to date, and Type reports that they have been successful in their quest. The sun-bleached European movie soundtrack sentiment that underpinned their previous records is still here in full force, but it comes rolled up in something defiantly more psychedelic, and in turn more unpredictable. Sewn together by vignettes which bring to mind Delia Derbyshire's Radiophonic hiccups or Luc Ferrari's tape collage, the band have put together an album which genuinely takes you on a journey. Surely it can't be a mistake calling the album Le Voyage then, a title which simultaneously brings to mind the work of Serge Gainsbourg and Alejandro Jodorowsky -- something deeply visual but effortlessly beautiful. With propulsive, break-heavy rhythms sure to appeal to any diggers out there and a blissful, sunny outlook to wipe the frown from the faces of all you dour experimental types, Le Voyage is a crack of light in a dark room. A mysterious record, it is punctuated by the same energy that gave us space rock and psychedelia, and while the band are quick to demonstrate their wide-ranging musical knowledge, there is something incredibly unique about their sound. This is not a lazy soundtrack to a film which might never be made, rather, Le Voyage is a journey for the listener and one you will want to take over and over again.

Artist:	CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN
Title:	Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 057CD

It is hard to believe that five years have passed since French composer Sylvain Chauveau's last "proper" album. Of course, there have been re-issues peppering the years since Down To The Bone, as well as more than a few collaborations and soundtrack appearances, but Sylvain has purposefully waited to allow his ideas to come to fruition. The Depeche Mode songs he had explored on Down To The Bone had given him ideas he felt he needed to explore, and Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) is his attempt at an album of "songs." In many ways, this album is constructed the way albums used to be -- it is compact and filled with vocal hooks and melodies, yet Sylvain has deconstructed the musical forms he grew up listening to and reduced them to their base level. Vocal snippets fall through the stereo field and his signature piano motifs splutter and cough through processed digital hiccups. As Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto deconstructed classical music, Sylvain attempts here to study and dissolve the roots of popular music. Each piece feels like it could have started as a 3-minute pop sing-along before the accompaniments were stripped away and the component parts reduced to merely a backbone. Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) is a daring and challenging listening experience. The widescreen theatrics of Sylvain's previous work have all but disappeared, leaving an album that is stark and incredibly beautiful. It is an album rooted in a love of art and music, both minimal and mainstream and celebrates Sylvain's influences. One listen might only reveal surface details, but listen again and you will find much, much more.

Artist:	CHAUVEAU, SYLVAIN
Title:	Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 057LP

LP version. It is hard to believe that five years have passed since French composer Sylvain Chauveau's last "proper" album. Of course, there have been re-issues peppering the years since Down To The Bone, as well as more than a few collaborations and soundtrack appearances, but Sylvain has purposefully waited to allow his ideas to come to fruition. The Depeche Mode songs he had explored on Down To The Bone had given him ideas he felt he needed to explore, and Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) is his attempt at an album of "songs." In many ways, this album is constructed the way albums used to be -- it is compact and filled with vocal hooks and melodies, yet Sylvain has deconstructed the musical forms he grew up listening to and reduced them to their base level. Vocal snippets fall through the stereo field and his signature piano motifs splutter and cough through processed digital hiccups. As Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto deconstructed classical music, Sylvain attempts here to study and dissolve the roots of popular music. Each piece feels like it could have started as a 3-minute pop sing-along before the accompaniments were stripped away and the component parts reduced to merely a backbone. Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) is a daring and challenging listening experience. The widescreen theatrics of Sylvain's previous work have all but disappeared, leaving an album that is stark and incredibly beautiful. It is an album rooted in a love of art and music, both minimal and mainstream and celebrates Sylvain's influences. One listen might only reveal surface details, but listen again and you will find much, much more.

Artist:	INDIGNANT SENILITY
Title:	Plays Wagner - Part Two
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 059LP

This is the second in a series of two strictly-limited vinyl editions of Plays Wagner by Portland, Oregon's Pat Maherr. This recording under his Indignant Senility moniker first appeared as a very limited cassette on Maherr's own label in 2009, but as soon as it landed at the Type offices, they knew it needed to reach a wider audience. Using a handful of dusty Wagner pieces (no doubt scored from one of Portland, Oregon's many thrift stores), he has stretched and distorted the hallowed tones into something indescribably dark and beautiful. Like David Lynch's peerless Eraserhead soundtrack before it, this is music that sounds as if you are being dragged through rusted pipes and hearing the distant swell of broken gramophones playing in unison. Maherr has created music that is at all times exquisite but deeply disturbing. Like Leyland Kirby or even William Basinski, there is a sense of harmony, nostalgia and restraint in the layers of hiss, grit and noise. It is only very rarely you hear something as pure and enveloping as Plays Wagner. Having mastered this from cassette tape, Type has retained all the decomposing grime experienced on the original version (which was dubbed to aging, heavily-used C90 cassettes), but have beefed it up for public consumption. The best way to absorb an album like this is to place the needle and simply slip away into a deep, nightmarish slumber. Just keep your eye on the radiator -- who knows what might happen. Cut at Berlin's Dubplates and Mastering.

Artist:	INDIGNANT SENILITY
Title:	Plays Wagner
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 060CD

This recording under Pat Maherr's Indignant Senility moniker first appeared as a very limited cassette on Maherr's own label in 2009, but as soon as it landed at the Type offices, they knew it needed to reach a wider audience. Using a handful of dusty Wagner pieces (no doubt scored from one of Portland, Oregon's many thrift stores), he has stretched and distorted the hallowed tones of the original material into something indescribably dark and beautiful. Like David Lynch's peerless Eraserhead soundtrack before it, this is music that sounds as if you are being dragged through rusted pipes and hearing the distant swell of broken gramophones playing in unison. Maherr has created music that is at all times exquisite but deeply disturbing. Like Leyland Kirby or even William Basinski, there is a sense of harmony, nostalgia and restraint in the layers of hiss, grit and noise. It is only very rarely you hear something as pure and enveloping as Plays Wagner, and Type is proud to be able to bring this to the wider world. Having mastered this from cassette tape, all the decomposing grime experienced on the original version (which was dubbed to aging, heavily-used C90 cassettes), has been maintained, but also has been beefed-up for public consumption. The best way to absorb an album like this is to just listen and simply slip away into a deep, nightmarish slumber. Just keep your eye on the radiator, who knows what might happen.

Artist:	SEASONS (PRE-DIN)
Title:	Your Eyes The Stars And Your Hands The Sea
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 061LP

This is the debut full-length release for the UK's Seasons (Pre-din) for Type. You might not be familiar with the work of Seasons (Pre-din), but the shadowy Northerner has been honing his craft for some time now, covertly issuing a slew of stunning albums while the world ticked on. He cut his teeth performing and collaborating with Richard Skelton and Xela, but over the last couple of years has busied himself prepping a range of hand-made releases on his own label. Often gone in a matter of hours, these lovingly-crafted curios caught the attention of astute listeners worldwide and now Type is pleased to present the first widely-available album from Seasons (Pre-din). Your Eyes The Stars And Your Hands The Sea is a collection of tracks crafted from hours of field recordings and instrumental takes. Using a small hand-held recorder and a collection of stringed instruments, Seasons set about using "spaces" -- recording sounds in different areas to create a certain sound or mood. These rooms, fields and abandoned buildings form the backbone of the sound and give a curious cinematic quality to the record. You can almost place yourself in each space, and while it isn't always obvious beneath the chatter and manipulated radio static, there are always skeletons of real life just around the corner. It is eventually the artist's humanity that sets these compositions apart from those of his peers; rather than simply dry recordings, they are merely starting points for layering and sculpting. The result is thick, detailed pieces which, while subtle, pack a clout more readily associated with the contemporary noise scene. Restrained and totally enveloping, this is an album which resides somewhere in the undergrowth, emerging slowly before drifting gently out to sea. Turn down the lights, lower the needle and let it pull you away. You might not want to come back.

Artist:	ON (REWORKED BY FENNESZ)
Title:	Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 062CD

This is the third album from French composer/producer Sylvain Chauveau and Chicago-based percussionist Steven Hess (Haptic, Pan American) under their On moniker, continuing their excavation of abstracted experimental sounds. As with the previous records, improvisations were recorded in a studio in Chicago and then handed to a guest musician to rework in whichever way they saw fit. This time around, the guest musician is none other than experimental pioneer Christian Fennesz. Christian's association with the band goes way back -- he performed with them in 2004 as a trio, so it seemed almost inevitable that a collaboration would emerge at some point, but this treatment truly takes the notion of collaboration to another place entirely. Unlike Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night (TYPE 050CD/LP) (which was handled by dark-ambient master Deathprod), Fennesz has treated the source sounds with a distinct lightness, allowing them to creak and breathe. Occasionally, you can hear the room itself ticking in the foreground -- hands on drumsticks and feet on pedals. The sounds become the backbone of the intense, slow-building dronescapes that Fennesz pulls from the original recordings. We are treated to piercing noise as the album opens with a choir of feedback, but the cacophony gradually disperses to allow pulsing harmony and Steven Hess' propulsive, metronomic drumming. When we close on the blissful near 20-minute "The Sound Of White," echoes of Fennesz's best work drifts through the crackle and pulse of Chauveau's prepared guitar and Hess' distant percussion. These hypnotic patterns slowly rise and fall, giving the listener time to truly hear each subtle shift. This is not an exercise in easy listening; rather, here is an album that demands close attention, and one where the beauty truly is in the details.

Artist:	ON (REWORKED BY FENNESZ)
Title:	Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 062LP

LP version, limited to 500 copies. This is the third album from French composer/producer Sylvain Chauveau and Chicago-based percussionist Steven Hess (Haptic, Pan American) under their On moniker, continuing their excavation of abstracted experimental sounds. As with the previous records, improvisations were recorded in a studio in Chicago and then handed to a guest musician to rework in whichever way they saw fit. This time around, the guest musician is none other than experimental pioneer Christian Fennesz. Christian's association with the band goes way back -- he performed with them in 2004 as a trio, so it seemed almost inevitable that a collaboration would emerge at some point, but this treatment truly takes the notion of collaboration to another place entirely. Unlike Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night (TYPE 050CD/LP) (which was handled by dark-ambient master Deathprod), Fennesz has treated the source sounds with a distinct lightness, allowing them to creak and breathe. Occasionally, you can hear the room itself ticking in the foreground -- hands on drumsticks and feet on pedals. The sounds become the backbone of the intense, slow-building dronescapes that Fennesz pulls from the original recordings. We are treated to piercing noise as the album opens with a choir of feedback, but the cacophony gradually disperses to allow pulsing harmony and Steven Hess' propulsive, metronomic drumming. When we close on the blissful near 20-minute "The Sound Of White," echoes of Fennesz's best work drifts through the crackle and pulse of Chauveau's prepared guitar and Hess' distant percussion. These hypnotic patterns slowly rise and fall, giving the listener time to truly hear each subtle shift. This is not an exercise in easy listening; rather, here is an album that demands close attention, and one where the beauty truly is in the details.

Artist:	YELLOW SWANS
Title:	Going Places
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 063CD

In April 2008, American noise duo Yellow Swans (comprised of Peter Swanson and Gabriel Mindel) announced their decision to split. The news was a shock to the noise community, not least because the band had become a regular fixture in the live arena -- touring incessantly and garnering a huge, dedicated following in the process. What the duo neglected to announce, however, was that a final album was already in the works, and while they would not tour together again, steps were being taken to finish off their crowning achievement. Going Places is Yellow Swans' conclusion as an entity, and sees the duo looking inward to create their most introspective work to-date. It shouldn't be surprising given the climate in which the record was put together, but without the constant touring, Swanson and Mindel allowed themselves to take their time on the record and allow the tracks to breathe somewhat. The resulting collection is distilled and reflective, retaining the grit and damage of their earlier work but adding layers of harmony and, maybe more surprisingly, pulsing rhythms. The improvisational, psychedelic washes that have always enriched their sound are tempered and controlled, leaving an almost Kosmische narrative. The drifting, subtle beauty that characterized 2007's At All Ends has emerged even further in the mix, and Mindel's guitar is allowed to play foil to Swanson's piercing noise. Comparisons could be made to Tim Hecker or even Brian Eno in parts, but Yellow Swans' harsher edge sets them apart from many of their peers. No doubt some listeners might be put off by Yellow Swans' noise background, but make no mistake, Going Places is one of the most haunting and engrossing albums yet to appear on the Type label. Swanson and Mindel prove, if proof was ever needed, that there is beauty in dense cacophony, and Going Places is the perfect way to close a startling career.

Artist:	JOHANNSSON, JOHANN
Title:	And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 064CD

It probably wouldn't surprise most, but the Type label was originally formed with soundtracks in mind. The moody music that usually accompanied their favorite independent films was a starting point for the label, so it seems perfect that nearly seven years on, they are going back to their roots, if you like, with this album from acclaimed Icelandic musician/composer/producer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Jóhannsson emerged on the influential Touch label with the genre-defining Englabörn (TO 052LP) album in 2002, and since then, he has gone from strength to strength, becoming one of the most important figures in post-classical music. With two towering records for the 4AD label, it was only a matter of time before he was asked to record a film soundtrack, and And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound Of Bees is the result. An accompaniment to Marc Craste's animated film Varmints, this is a collection of achingly beautiful orchestral work balanced on a bed of Jóhannsson's patented electronics. Surprisingly, however, the film itself is not intrinsic to the enjoyment of the music; Jóhannsson's score stands alone perfectly as a haunting collection of tracks. As with most soundtracks, the album is made up of a selection of repeating themes which appear and disappear throughout the record; Jóhannsson manages to approach this with such subtlety you can't always even tell that a familiar theme is drifting in and out of each track. The clouds of ambience and growls of synthesizer that underpin the lilt of the orchestra are crucial to the record and lend a warmth similar to what made Englabörn so very special. These pieces are memorable and deeply moving, and within one listen you could almost visualize the film itself -- or at least a home made version. Soundtrack or not, Jóhannsson has created yet another peerless collection of electronic/post-classical vignettes you won't be forgetting any time soon.

Artist:	NORTH SEA, THE
Title:	Bloodlines
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 065CD

Brad Rose is an artist who is notoriously hard to pigeonhole. He might spend his days running the esteemed Digitalis imprint (sidelining the wonderful Foxy Digitalis webzine) but his nights are wiled away chiseling at the petrified corpse of experimental music. Donating sounds to Ajilvsga, Altar Eagle, Sea Zombies and Ossining (among many, many others), he has somehow found time to fashion a new solo work for Type, and it could hardly be further removed from his last outing. Bloodlines is an album rooted in synthesis -- the kind of busted power electronics that emerged in the early 80s with Ramleh, Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse. This is not, however, simply a noise album -- Brad has anchored his sound in this explorative mode, but uses his expertise to take it far beyond murk, grit and fractured teeth. With the help of Zelienople drummer Mike Weis (who accompanies the entire record on percussion) the record is a gloriously spacious excursion, with the fizzing Radiophonic blips, drones and tones set against gongs, scrapes and clanks. The sounds are dark and often punishing -- torturous and occasionally frightening, but Brad somehow manages to offset it with an occasional flourish of beauty or calm. The record is cut into two distinct acts and each "song" blends into the next, giving a true album experience. Bloodlines is not a simple collection of pieces, but a distinct narrative from beginning to end. As it tumbles from '50s sci-fi synth tones into haunting off-world terror, there is a sense of purpose and most of all, place. Brad has created a record that might not be an easy listening experience, but is one which grows on every successive play. It is truly deep and intensely troubling music.

Artist:	NORTH SEA, THE
Title:	Bloodlines
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 065LP

LP version. Brad Rose is an artist who is notoriously hard to pigeonhole. He might spend his days running the esteemed Digitalis imprint (sidelining the wonderful Foxy Digitalis webzine) but his nights are wiled away chiseling at the petrified corpse of experimental music. Donating sounds to Ajilvsga, Altar Eagle, Sea Zombies and Ossining (among many, many others), he has somehow found time to fashion a new solo work for Type, and it could hardly be further removed from his last outing. Bloodlines is an album rooted in synthesis -- the kind of busted power electronics that emerged in the early 80s with Ramleh, Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse. This is not, however, simply a noise album -- Brad has anchored his sound in this explorative mode, but uses his expertise to take it far beyond murk, grit and fractured teeth. With the help of Zelienople drummer Mike Weis (who accompanies the entire record on percussion) the record is a gloriously spacious excursion, with the fizzing Radiophonic blips, drones and tones set against gongs, scrapes and clanks. The sounds are dark and often punishing -- torturous and occasionally frightening, but Brad somehow manages to offset it with an occasional flourish of beauty or calm. The record is cut into two distinct acts (split lovingly for vinyl listening) and each "song" blends into the next, giving a true album experience. Bloodlines is not a simple collection of pieces, but a distinct narrative from beginning to end. As it tumbles from '50s sci-fi synth tones into haunting off-world terror, there is a sense of purpose and most of all, place. Brad has created a record that might not be an easy listening experience, but is one which grows on every successive play. It is truly deep and intensely troubling music.

Artist:	KONER, THOMAS
Title:	Nunatak, Teimo, Permafrost
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	3CD
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 072CD

Following on from three limited vinyl editions, Type now proudly presents a triple CD package including the first three, long-unavailable and newly-mastered albums from influential drone soundscapist, Thomas Köner. Since the release of these three albums in the early '90s, Köner has gone on to enjoy something akin to a cult status among musicians of all dispositions. His CV boasts not only a series of seminal albums under his own name but also membership of acclaimed Chain Reaction duo Porter Ricks and, more recently, a number of works that have seen him occupy a respected position in the installation and sound art worlds. Through the careful and measured use of gongs (recorded in different rooms and underwater) as well as homemade wind instruments, Köner's early work would become a cornerstone of the genre and part of a triptych of records which really have never been bettered. After far too many years in the out-of-print wilderness, it's a source of immense satisfaction to finally be able to share this incredibly dark, immersive music with the world once again. Housed in a triple panel digifile package.

Artist:	ALTAR EAGLE
Title:	Mechanical Gardens
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 073CD

Brad Rose (aka The North Sea) is probably the last person you'd expect to see at the helm of a pop album. A folk record -- maybe, a noise record? sure, but pop? Probably not. Yet that's exactly what he and his wife Eden Hemming have done with Mechanical Gardens. The Altar Eagle sound might not come as much of a shock for those cassette collectors who have managed to source copies of the duo's now-rare debut EPs, but for the rest of the world it should serve as a radical change in direction for one of experimental music's most valuable sons. The ear-splitting noise that enticed listeners on Bloodlines is all but forgotten as Brad and Eden pick through shimmering dream-pop and cold-wave electronics with the greatest of ease. The quality is assured within minutes of the gorgeous Slowdive-esque opener "Battlegrounds." Anchored by Eden's humming, ethereal vocal tones, the song is a glorious statement of intent and while the band go into clubbier directions on the second half, this song is a gateway to their sound. Possibly the biggest surprise on Mechanical Gardens is the sound shift which occurs mid-way through the record, as the bubbling bliss of "B'nai B'rith Girls" gives way to the abrasive electro growl of "Monsters." Influenced in part by Eden's long-time love affair with techno and Brad's recent obsession with synthesizers, the duo strike a perfect middle ground between crumbling experimentation and pop excess. This is rarely better explored than on "Spy Movie," a track that somehow combines the supposedly warring sounds of Juan Atkins and early My Bloody Valentine. On Mechanical Gardens, Brad and Eden have created an album that revels in its grab-bag of influences, but somehow they have managed to emerge with a sound that is totally singular. It's pop music for sure, but un-cynical, atypical and hugely enjoyable.

Artist:	MUELLER, JON
Title:	The Whole
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 074CD

The Whole might be avant-percussionist Jon Mueller's first album for the Type imprint, but it's far from his scene debut. Working in a plethora of bands for many years (including Collections Of Colonies Of Bees and Volcano Choir with Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver), Mueller has honed his sound to a distinct peak, and over the course of umpteen solo albums and collaborations has cemented his status as one of experimental music's most revered drummers. Following his epic works Metals (a collection of classic heavy metal rhythms) and the expansive and surprisingly beautiful Physical Changes, both for the esteemed Table Of The Elements label, Mueller embarked on the heady process of creating a "defining" work. Intrigued by ideas of simplicity and acoustic sound, Mueller's research drew him to Shaker crafts and quilt-making, both deceptively simple practices rooted in the transmission of ideas. Over time, these experiences were interpreted in many different ways, almost certainly inaccurately, and this miscommunicated simplicity is at the very center of The Whole. Through a rolling, unamplified snare drum (a piece of kit perfected over a year of intense practice), booming low toms, hammered dulcimer and his own voice, Mueller creates a sound that is wholly original and totally beguiling. There are traces of folk traditions and lines drawn to the avant garde idiom, but Mueller's sound is so singularly perfected, it is hard to connect him to specific peers. The Whole is an album that sounds like both a relic of the past and an echo of the future. The ideas are anchored in memory and tradition, yet the sound is alien and sometimes impenetrable. Over time, as the messages are stripped back, an unabashedly gorgeous piece of work is revealed. Like a good book, it requires patience and contemplation to show its beating heart.

Artist:	MUELLER, JON
Title:	The Whole
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP+CD
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 074LP

LP version. Includes an exclusive bonus CD of 30-minute album, The Whole -- mixed by Olivia Block. The Whole might be avant-percussionist Jon Mueller's first album for the Type imprint, but it's far from his scene debut. Working in a plethora of bands for many years (including Collections Of Colonies Of Bees and Volcano Choir with Justin Vernon aka Bon Iver), Mueller has honed his sound to a distinct peak, and over the course of umpteen solo albums and collaborations has cemented his status as one of experimental music's most revered drummers. Following his epic works Metals (a collection of classic heavy metal rhythms) and the expansive and surprisingly beautiful Physical Changes, both for the esteemed Table Of The Elements label, Mueller embarked on the heady process of creating a "defining" work. Intrigued by ideas of simplicity and acoustic sound, Mueller's research drew him to Shaker crafts and quilt-making, both deceptively simple practices rooted in the transmission of ideas. Over time, these experiences were interpreted in many different ways, almost certainly inaccurately, and this miscommunicated simplicity is at the very center of The Whole. Through a rolling, unamplified snare drum (a piece of kit perfected over a year of intense practice), booming low toms, hammered dulcimer and his own voice, Mueller creates a sound that is wholly original and totally beguiling. There are traces of folk traditions and lines drawn to the avant garde idiom, but Mueller's sound is so singularly perfected, it is hard to connect him to specific peers. The Whole is an album that sounds like both a relic of the past and an echo of the future. The ideas are anchored in memory and tradition, yet the sound is alien and sometimes impenetrable. Over time, as the messages are stripped back, an unabashedly gorgeous piece of work is revealed. Like a good book, it requires patience and contemplation to show its beating heart.

Artist:	CANTU-LEDESMA, JEFRE
Title:	Love Is A Stream
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 075CD

As a member of San Francisco legends Tarentel and Type's premier astral travelers The Alps, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma is hardly a new addition to the label, so it's hard to believe that Love Is A Stream is his first Type solo album. With previous releases on Arbor, Spekk and his own Root Strata imprint, this latest album marks his journey into the beautifully cacophonous world of dream pop. Shoegaze music has been much maligned in recent years, probably due to its rebirth and subsequent explosion of popularity (which gave rise to hundreds of young bands aping the over twenty-year-old sound); however it was only a fragment of the genre that these bands attempted to recreate. On Love Is A Stream, instead of focusing on tired, melancholy ballads, Cantu-Ledesma focuses solely on expansive, almost noise-ridden hopefulness. This is the kind of noise audiences fell in love with when My Bloody Valentine blew their ear drums performing Loveless, or the kind of harmonic excess heard on Catherine Wheel's Ferment, but taken into deeper, more abstract realms. Love Is A Stream is dedicated to love itself, and the dreamy, shimmering blown-out textures might at first sound like white noise before they ultimately give way to blissful harmony and hidden melody. Underneath the grit and growl are hidden guitar parts, synthesizer drones and even vocals (provided by Lisa McGee, John Twells and Maxwell August Croy) that succeed in swelling the dense, tape-saturated songs to heady new heights and belie any influences they might have. On each listen the mind strips away another layer of dust and bones to reveal haunting and deeply moving beauty. The world might be spiraling into despair, but Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has brought us a record that isn't afraid to share the love. All that's left to do is drown in it.

Artist:	HEAVY WINGED
Title:	Sunspotted
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 076CD

Heavy Winged are a sprawling North American trio made up of drummer Jed Bindeman, bassist Brady Sansone and guitarist Ryan Hebert. Over the last few years, the band have released a cacophonous splatter of cassettes, vinyl and CD-Rs for Not Not Fun, Digitalis, Aurora Borealis and a handful of other esteemed imprints. Most of these have been mercilessly grimy signifiers of their buzzing free-rock style, and were recorded poorly to almost accentuate the harsh guitar tones and double-time blast beats. This latest jagged offering, however, is a rare beast in the Heavy Winged canon, offering a higher-fidelity peek into their muddled world. This time around, the band escaped to a "real" studio to record two slices of extended sludge rock, which come across as wider than ever, thanks to some fresh recording techniques. Something like an unholy union between the sheet-noise of Yellow Swans and the blissful sub-harmonic transcendence of early Mogwai or Sonic Youth, Sunspotted is an album that takes tried-and-tested sounds and bends them beyond recognition. Sure, plenty of bands have made distorted, blurred, guitar noise before, but rarely with the conviction and wit of Heavy Winged. With their early explorations into doom and metal, we find the band on a high, framing their high-octane jitter into something that could almost be mistaken for beautiful. Just as the aforementioned Yellow Swans took their sound from the outer reaches of noise to something, dare I say it, pretty, Heavy Winged have focused their three individual powers to come up with an album that revels in its depth and shimmering beauty. It might take a few listens to reveal its layers, but Sunspotted is a challenging and rewarding listening experience. Standing at the top of the band's already estimable catalog of albums and EPs, this album finds them at a key moment, a moment where they have found a balance between fidelity and grit, harmony and discord. Step in, turn it up and let yourself descend. Cut at Berlin's D+M.

Artist:	HEAVY WINGED
Title:	Sunspotted
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 076LP

LP version. Heavy Winged are a sprawling North American trio made up of drummer Jed Bindeman, bassist Brady Sansone and guitarist Ryan Hebert. Over the last few years, the band have released a cacophonous splatter of cassettes, vinyl and CD-Rs for Not Not Fun, Digitalis, Aurora Borealis and a handful of other esteemed imprints. Most of these have been mercilessly grimy signifiers of their buzzing free-rock style, and were recorded poorly to almost accentuate the harsh guitar tones and double-time blast beats. This latest jagged offering, however, is a rare beast in the Heavy Winged canon, offering a higher-fidelity peek into their muddled world. This time around, the band escaped to a "real" studio to record two slices of extended sludge rock, which come across as wider than ever, thanks to some fresh recording techniques. Something like an unholy union between the sheet-noise of Yellow Swans and the blissful sub-harmonic transcendence of early Mogwai or Sonic Youth, Sunspotted is an album that takes tried-and-tested sounds and bends them beyond recognition. Sure, plenty of bands have made distorted, blurred, guitar noise before, but rarely with the conviction and wit of Heavy Winged. With their early explorations into doom and metal, we find the band on a high, framing their high-octane jitter into something that could almost be mistaken for beautiful. Just as the aforementioned Yellow Swans took their sound from the outer reaches of noise to something, dare I say it, pretty, Heavy Winged have focused their three individual powers to come up with an album that revels in its depth and shimmering beauty. It might take a few listens to reveal its layers, but Sunspotted is a challenging and rewarding listening experience. Standing at the top of the band's already estimable catalog of albums and EPs, this album finds them at a key moment, a moment where they have found a balance between fidelity and grit, harmony and discord. Step in, turn it up and let yourself descend. Cut at Berlin's D+M.

Artist:	RENE HELL
Title:	Porcelain Opera
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 077CD

Rene Hell is the latest and possibly greatest moniker of U.S. noisenik Jeff Witscher. Over the last handful of years, Witscher has made a name (and possibly a cult?) for himself under a plethora of different pseudonyms exploring various disparate styles. He has been known as Impregnable, Secret Abuse, Marble Sky and as part of Roman Torment and Deep Jew, among others, and now he's settled on Rene Hell. With this project, we find him focused on synthesized kosmische sounds -- but unlike many of his contemporaries (Emeralds, Oneohtrix Point Never etc), instead of delving into nostalgia, there is something decidedly modern about Witscher's compositions. The bubbling, effervescent synthesizer sequences and percussive patterns seem to twist and turn over each other with a near-techno precision, and at times you might be forgiven for thinking that Porcelain Opera had more in common with Basic Channel than Cluster. Porcelain Opera is an album made by a consummate music obsessive, and Witscher is just as obsessive about his composition as he is his influences. The album's tracks seep into each other like viscous lava, decomposing and reforming as the track markers fade and re-appear. This is pure electronic music -- songs created with analog circuits and half-baked patch cables, dusty cassette tapes and greased-up potentiometers. And despite his noise roots, there is something distinctly sparkling about this collection of tracks. "Prize Mischief Hold" fizzes and cascades from the speakers like a box of illicit Chinese fireworks, and the album's glorious centerpiece "L. Minx" thunders through an electrical storm to reveal glorious, warming harmony. Electronic music has been much maligned in recent years and its contemporary rediscovery seems almost too rooted in kitsch to be taken seriously, but Jeff Witscher's synthesizer gospels are more than just a flash in the pan. This is analog exploration at its best, and once it digs its rusty talons into you, it refuses to let go.

Artist:	MULLEN, GEOFF
Title:	Bongo Closet
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 079LP

Vinyl-only release, limited edition of 500 copies only. Providence, Rhode Island operative Geoff Mullen has been working beneath the popular music radar for some time now, putting his name to a number of limited cassettes, CD-Rs and vinyl albums. It is hardly surprising that in that time he has developed something of a cult following in the New England scene, with live performances (solo and together with Keith Fullerton Whitman) and his own Rare Youth label garnering him a loyal throng of rabid fans. Using the guitar, synthesizer and a selection of well-developed processes, Mullen has come up with a unique sound difficult to pigeonhole. Throughout the album, the sounds feel so effortlessly unified that one can completely forget the individual instruments themselves. It is hard to believe that the synthesizer used (the legendary Yamaha CS50) is the baby brother of the CS80, heard so distinctively piped into Deckard's electric dreams in Blade Runner. The distant, dusty tones and pulsating rhythms bring to mind instead memories of early Popol Vuh or something altogether more defiant. As a veteran guitarist, writing Bongo Closet was Mullen's search for different ways of playing music, and these weathered, deeply personal songs are the result. Rich with emotion and surprisingly detailed, there is the sense that the technology never informs the creative process. Mullen is using his chosen instruments without a care for what they can and can't do -- they are tools in the creation of his music, never the other way around. Bongo Closet is an intensely human listening experience. Teeming with life and breathing as it coughs and splutters, there is an unavoidable attachment felt almost instantly as a listener. This is music that drags you in and simply refuses to let go. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering.

Artist:	JAZKAMER
Title:	Chestnut Thornback Tar
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP+CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 081LP

This is a vinyl-only release that comes with a bonus CD -- a 75-minute mix tape of sorts made by Jazkamer from elements of their 2010 series of releases. As Norway's premier noise troupe, Lasse Marhaug and John Hegre's Jazkamer project has a certain status to uphold. Rather than resting on their well-earned laurels, Marhaug and Hegre keep a grueling schedule of shows and an even more grueling schedule of releases, which has culminated recently in an ambitious album-a-month series running throughout 2010. While the concept itself is now fairly well-worn, what has astonished this time around is the sheer quality the duo has managed to keep up while flitting from genre to genre with the utmost of ease. Chestnut Thornback Tar was originally the May 2010 installment of the Jazkamer subscription series, and the record that perhaps best sums up the band's wide reach. The album creeps to life with a molten guitar drone well worthy of comparison to Dylan Carlson's molasses-slow compositions. Through wailing sheets of white noise, thick, sustained tones push their way through the track's 20-minute duration, giving the post-millennial drone pretenders more than enough to think about. "Sentimental Journey" feels less like a statement of intent and more like the underlining of a genre that might be well-trodden, but is rarely done with this Zen-like attention to detail. Even this, however, gives little indication of the frothy, hyperactive noise the remaining tracks extol. With a Sissy Spacek-influenced jump cut style, Marhaug, Hegre and their collaborators Nils Are Drønen and Jean-Philippe Gross pummel their way through the back-rooms of metal clubs everywhere, rupturing veins with splattercore drums, burbling noise and screaming feedback. Chestnut Thornback Tar might not be for the faint of heart, but you'd struggle to find a more rewarding collection of intense, metal-drenched experimental noise.

Artist:	RENE HELL
Title:	The Terminal Symphony
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 085CD

Since Porcelain Opera (TYPE 077CD), his debut for Type, U.S. noisenik Jeff Witscher aka Rene Hell has put out a whole series of collaborations, 7"s, tapes and splits. Looking to his love of classical minimalism, Jeff took it as the starting point for this new record. The result is a deeply electronic rendition of a classical electronic formula; the digital and analog synthesizer and drum machine sounds that brought Porcelain Opera to life are reframed and transferred into a very different compositional structure. The Terminal Symphony is Jeff's attempt to write tighter, more composed pieces of music -- something of a reaction against the glut of long, often-flabby drone compositions that have become a mainstay in the scene. The pieces here are short, concise, and packed full of ideas that can take multiple listens to unravel, and the album as a whole is almost obsessively structured and complex. Each side of the record is composed very specifically with a beginning, middle and an end, and when we begin with the familiar grunt and grind of "Chamber Forte," it is only mere minutes before the track dissolves into the main theme of the album. An appropriate enough comparison might be arch-recluse Aphex Twin, but there is no pandering to dance music culture here. Rather, Jeff has used his enviable background in noise, punk and synthesizer music to come up with something totally removed from the current Kosmische revival. The album comes to a close with the hauntingly melancholy and purposefully referential "Adagio For String Portrait." The dancing synthetic blips that pirouette across Witscher's mournful electronic waves not only re-enforce the decades-long love affair between electronic and classical music, but help to define it in 2011.

Artist:	HONIG, EZEKIEL
Title:	Folding In On Itself
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 088CD

Describing the music of Ezekiel Honig is never easy. It's related to techno, but the pulsing 4/4 beats are pushed so far into the background that they simply become another texture in the sprawling ambience. And that doesn't mean to say the music is "ambient" either -- the structures are far deeper than the musical wallpaper that achieves that label right now. New York-based Honig's Type debut Folding In On Itself doesn't make his music any easier to describe but does a lot to clarify the mood. This is deeply melancholy music, and while it doesn't revel in sadness, it conveys a sense that the things we grew up with and see disappear can never be recaptured. Memory and the corruption or distortion thereof is at the core the record, and like the cover which is made up of hazy family snaps of a changing Manhattan, Honig has tried to capture a sense of entropy in his quickly disintegrating city. Using a palette of locally-recorded environmental samples, decayed acoustic instruments and the unusual, clattering percussion that has become his signature, Folding In On Itself is probably Honig's most measured and defining record. Elements of his previous work are still present, heard most obviously on the breakthrough Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band (ANTICIP 006CD), but every tiny part has been trimmed and honed with a selfless attention to detail. From the lilting, processed horns and clipped percussion on "Subverting The Memory Of Your Surroundings" to the noisy, slowly decomposing piano of "Drafting Foresight," there is a sense that Honig has a distinct story to tell, and that every track on the album is a unique part of the same object. Far from a random collection of tracks, "Folding In On Itself" is an introverted collection of musings on change and loss, and is as softly-spoken and moving as anything on Type to date. Handle with care.

Artist:	HONIG, EZEKIEL
Title:	Folding In On Itself
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 088LP

LP version. Describing the music of Ezekiel Honig is never easy. It's related to techno, but the pulsing 4/4 beats are pushed so far into the background that they simply become another texture in the sprawling ambience. And that doesn't mean to say the music is "ambient" either -- the structures are far deeper than the musical wallpaper that achieves that label right now. New York-based Honig's Type debut Folding In On Itself doesn't make his music any easier to describe but does a lot to clarify the mood. This is deeply melancholy music, and while it doesn't revel in sadness, it conveys a sense that the things we grew up with and see disappear can never be recaptured. Memory and the corruption or distortion thereof is at the core the record, and like the cover which is made up of hazy family snaps of a changing Manhattan, Honig has tried to capture a sense of entropy in his quickly disintegrating city. Using a palette of locally-recorded environmental samples, decayed acoustic instruments and the unusual, clattering percussion that has become his signature, Folding In On Itself is probably Honig's most measured and defining record. Elements of his previous work are still present, heard most obviously on the breakthrough Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band (ANTICIP 006CD), but every tiny part has been trimmed and honed with a selfless attention to detail. From the lilting, processed horns and clipped percussion on "Subverting The Memory Of Your Surroundings" to the noisy, slowly decomposing piano of "Drafting Foresight," there is a sense that Honig has a distinct story to tell, and that every track on the album is a unique part of the same object. Far from a random collection of tracks, Folding In On Itself is an introverted collection of musings on change and loss, and is as softly-spoken and moving as anything on Type to date. Handle with care.

Artist:	MUELLER, JON
Title:	Alphabet Of Movements
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 092LP

With the music of Milwaukee-native Jon Mueller, patience is the key. His radical snare workouts are meditative master-classes in drumming, but require a distinct offering of time and attention to truly enjoy the dense clouds of sound his music creates. After crafting 2010's critically-acclaimed The Whole, Mueller decided to put together a live set that, while not reflecting the over-dubbed nature of the album itself, reflected the philosophy held within. The result was "I Almost Expect To Be Remembered As A Chair," and Mueller proceeded to perform this piece at various venues across the USA. Utilizing a unique snare drum set-up, which finds the drums mounted on small amplifiers, Mueller's enviable focus is put center-stage and his resolve transferred absolutely into this dense, moving 20-minute piece. Here, the composition has been recorded to tape with a tireless attention to detail by Greg Norman at Steve Albini's legendary Electrical Audio studio. The haunting, resonant drones spring to life with a surprising clarity, and the silo's natural reverb gives the percussion a deeply human quality. On the first piece, Mueller sticks to his chosen snare, slowly ramping the buzzing rhythm into near-cacophony. By the time the piece is fully formed, you barely notice the change you have witnessed, but are surrounded by a cloud of thick, resonant, cavernous drones. The second rendition moves the composition to gongs and sees the dense resonance enhanced by the instruments' singular plethora of harmonics. It is hard these days to emerge with music that could honestly be described as original, but Alphabet Of Movements is a truly singular piece of work. The focus that Mueller injects into his composition is unmatched, and his interpretation of drone and noise is absolutely on its own. Listen, absorb, and let the sounds permeate; you'll be coming back for more in no time at all. Cut at Berlin's Dubplates and Mastering.

Artist:	AR
Title:	Wolf Notes
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 093LP

Originally published in a limited CD edition of merely 200 copies, Wolf Notes is the debut album from *AR, the collaborative project of Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton. While both are already accomplished solo musicians, Wolf Notes marks a stunning new chapter in their canon, and like all great collaborations, takes the finest elements of each, moulding it into a pitch-perfect whole. Those of you familiar with Skelton's previous works, most notably Landings, might be surprised to hear that the central instrument on Wolf Notes is the human voice. Autumn Richardson's glassy, lilting echoes haunt the record like distant spirits, with her melodies kneaded and obscured by Skelton's patented treatments and signature strings. The central theme is established with relative ease, but is allowed to shift like the tides, pushing and pulling throughout the record's duration. Wolf Notes might be split into five distinct parts, but they are all simply sections in a very defined whole, and are not intended to be heard in isolation from one another. At times you might get the feeling that this is music being piped through from another era -- music untouched by the tragedy and disappointment of our development as a race. It is music mercifully free of the tropes that trip us up and the trends that scratch on the grubby windows of the music scene. Wolf Notes is music dedicated to the natural world, to the remnants of civilization rather than modern mistakes, and listening to it feels like a rare, beautiful privilege. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin, pressed up in a limited edition of 500 copies for the world.

Artist:	RED HORSE
Title:	Red Horse
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 094LP

Red Horse is the blistering free-post-everything project of drummer/multi-percussionist Eli Keszler and guitarist/mad-scientist Steve Pyne. While both musicians are active in a number of different projects (you probably wouldn't believe Pyne's day job even if we told you), Red Horse catches them working with a distilled sense of focus and is for many their breakthrough project. Red Horse (not to be confused with the similarly-titled debut) is the duo's second album, and follows the rush of critical acclaim for the first which saw thick-skinned musos wowed by their blistering combination of rhythm and dissonance. As you'd expect in a sequel, the budget is higher and the production more widescreen, and a far cry from the near lo-fi grind of its predecessor, this new full-length is exposed to the miniscule detail. The production technique might scare some, but the crisp sound of Keszler's innovative drumming and Pyne's complex instrumental destruction has never sounded better or more fitting. Garnishing Keszler's well-worn patented hyperactive splatter-beats, Pyne experiments with a veritable arsenal of home-made equipment -- from gargantuan electrified, automated string sculptures to confusing sequences of reclaimed speakers (taken from a very well known Eastern-themed music box) wired together, creating a wall of screaming feedback. In the wrong hands their sound could easily be stuffy and academic, but Red Horse inject their experiments with a punk spirit rarely heard in the avant garde. Sure, the instruments are being handled by a couple of the best musicians in their field, but it hardly matters -- this is the sound of beautiful cacophony, and like Supersilent before them, there's something undeniably attractive about that concept. It's not your average noise, rock, improv, jazz or experimental record -- it's all of the above and a great deal more. Just make sure you listen loud, there's a lot to hear. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	INDIGNANT SENILITY
Title:	Consecration Of The Whipstain
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$23.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 096LP

Pat Maher's outsider sounds have emerged in many different forms; the syrup-laced rap remixes of DJ Yo-Yo Dieting, the ketamine house of Diamond Catalog and of course the wheezing industrial ambience of Indignant Senility. Consecration Of The Whipstain is Maher's second widely-available album under the Indignant Senility moniker, and its long-form abstractions place him a step apart from his peers. Where Plays Wagner took a selection of thrift store charity records as source material, Consecration... works with a wider palette and sees Maher roughly paste together clattering percussion, wretching environmental sounds, opium drones and much more to emerge with a sound that owes more to Iannis Xenakis and Lustmord than to the contemporary set. Maher's noise roots have always given him a rougher, more abstract edge than others in the genre, but this album finds his shadowy ambience chiseled into four pitch-perfect explorations of his very particular alternate timeline. Recorded through amplifiers and microphones to give the music a chance to "breathe," the fuzzy pictures slowly come to life and offer a shocking amount of depth and variety. At times it sounds like a decaying sound strip from a '30s suspense reel, with all the crackle and flicker you'd expect to come alongside that. Maher's sounds take us into places we might not want to go, but there's no denying that once you're there it's hard to wrench yourself free. Deluxe vinyl edition, cut at Dubplates And Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	SHIFLET, MIKE
Title:	Sufferers
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 097LP

Ohio-based noise upsetter Mike Shiflet has amassed an enviable amount of releases in the last decade. Tapes, vinyl, CD-Rs -- you name it, he's done it, but it's taken until now for Shiflet to weld together what he regards as his defining work. The first in a series of two "proper" albums, Sufferers takes the listener to the very heart of Shiflet's sound -- through the abrasive noise heard on his early releases all the way to the shimmering ambience that made up his breakthrough album Llanos. A deeply patient and rewarding record, Shiflet uses his long-practiced skills to lay waste to a gaseous collection of source recordings, bringing a chattering, disturbing resonance to what sounds like whirring hospital equipment. It is always difficult to reframe U.S. noise music without the punk, tape-destroyed aesthetic -- but like Kevin Drumm before him, Shiflet manages to push his sound into high fidelity effortlessly. Each frequency is picked meticulously for maximum effect, and if you listen on headphones, you are treated to an entirely different experience. Whether reducing the listener to an opium-fuelled coma on the shimmering "Axle Grease," or treating us to the kind of intensity Fennesz last exhibited on Endless Summer with "Blessed And Oppressed," there is a sense that Shiflet has an ineffable control over his plethora of techniques and ideas. A rare gem in a mire of half-hearted records, Sufferers grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until the final creak. And this is only the beginning. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Limited vinyl pressing of 500 copies only.

Artist:	SHIFLET, MIKE
Title:	Merciless
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 098LP

Type follow up Mike Shiflet's Sufferers with a further exposition of his individual and far-reaching sound palette. A member of C Spencer Yeh's revolving Burning Star Core unit, and a prolific collaborator with the likes of Daniel Menche, Chris Corsano, Pete Swanson and many others, Shiflet has honed an intensely visceral feel for tone and texture which makes his records so intriguing to lovers of experimental composition and music-making. With some production/audio mastering assists from fellow Columbus, Ohio-based musician Joe Panzner, on Merciless Shiflet engages with corrosive textures from the off, enticing us in with fractured small sounds on "Feeble Breaths" before weaving a lattice of quick-drying fiberglass strands over your cochlea, which become infested with scuttling, insipid rhythms and abstract noise abrasions designed by Panzner on the lloopp software for max/msp. This induction, by contrast, makes the second half piece of evolving horror drones in "Exodus And Exile" that much more affective, while the second side plays through as one longer, queasy composition veering from cacophonous noise to wheezing drone and chilly isolation with the contribution of cassette manipulation by Jason Zeh, cello by Marina Peterson and violin from C Spencer Yeh. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Limited vinyl pressing of 500 copies only.

Artist:	PORTER RICKS
Title:	Biokinetics
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	TYPE 100CD

Techno isn't a genre that has birthed many classic albums, and the dub techno subgenre even less so, but one indisputable classic is Porter Ricks' debut Biokinetics. Originally issued on the legendary Basic Channel sub-label Chain Reaction in 1996 following a trio of 12"s, Biokinetics was the first of the label's album releases, and still stands as its crowning achievement. The duo was made up of dark ambient pioneer Thomas Köner and sound engineer Andy Mellwig, and between them they re-framed the techno sound, imbuing the spacious ambience pioneered by label bosses Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald with a frosty, isolated experimental bent, and combining it with the sort of haunted minimalism of early Plastikman. What separated Biokinetics from other albums at the time was its unwavering narrative -- the exact sound has been interpreted countless times since, but the immersive qualities of this singular record have rarely been touched. Maybe it is down to the silvery underwater concept that ties each track together -- the bubbling pads, sub-aquatic basses and muffled kick drums. But as with any great album, it's hard to exactly put your finger on what makes it a classic. Simply put, Biokinetics is one of the most important records in the genre, and it is Type's pleasure to make it available to the world once again. Features new artwork.

Artist:	COLLINS, WILLIAM FOWLER
Title:	The Resurrections Unseen
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 103LP

There are dark forces at work deep in the deserts of New Mexico. William Fowler Collins has been hard at work since his last full-length effort, but collaborations with Gog and Aaron Turner (of Isis) haven't deterred him from crafting this pitch-black follow-up. The ingredients won't surprise fans of Perdition Hill Radio (TYPE 046CD/LP), but on The Resurrections Unseen, Collins further damages and buries his palette of sounds beyond all recognition. Howling field recordings are trapped between walls of tape hiss while white noise and twisted guitar suffers through overdub after overdub, leaving only the picked carcass of what was once a discernable sound. Much was made of its predecessor's deconstruction of black metal, but The Resurrections Unseen takes this to another level entirely. The album is, for all intents and purposes, a black metal record -- but any traces of blast beats, hoarse, blood-curdling vocals or shrill distorted guitar have been totally obliterated. What remains are bleak, windswept textures, spine-chilling rituals and the kind of doom-laden ambience that'll have you double-bolting your doors and checking your phone lines. This is not theater though; Collins never resorts to the typical horror tropes, instead opting to suggest fear with the most restrained hand. As rolling hiss emerges from a muddy puddle of dank sub bass, it might take a few listens to pick out exactly what you're hearing at all, but the terror is there from the very beginning. Many artists attempt dark music, but few really succeed -- Collins has managed it by merely suggesting what our brains already know. A frightening thought, indeed. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, limited to 500 copies only.

Artist:	MAIN ATTRAKIONZ
Title:	808s & Dark Grapes II
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$25.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 104LP

The internet can be blamed for many things, and while the current consensus seems to be that it is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the music scene, it's impossible to deny the influence it has had on contemporary rap music. Previously held hostage by industry moneymen, file sharing and social networking has democratized the genre and allowed people to hear what's really going on in the minds of young producers and rappers. Main Attrakionz are one such cottage industry made up of rapper/producer Squadda Bambino and rapper MondreM.A.N., and in only a couple of years, the Oakland-based duo have amassed an enviable cache of heavy-hitting records. Surprisingly, none of these highly-regarded mixtapes have yet made it to the physical realm, so it is Type's pleasure to issue the band's defining 808s & Dark Grapes II on wax for the first time. 808s... shows Mondre and Squadda in exemplary form, spitting home truths and fractured hood memories over untouchable productions from their unmatched arsenal of collaborators. Clams Casino hardly needs an introduction at this point, but he is joined by Japanophile SF duo Friendzone, Marlee B, Keyboard Kid and many more to create a veritable roadmap of the current scene. The sound might have been awkwardly labeled "cloud rap," and sure, it sounds pretty dreamy, but there's more to Main Attrakionz than just a subgenre. This is fathoms-deep, genre-bending rap music found outside of the traditional boundaries, and its protagonists are two of the most compelling voices in the scene. Listen hard, and listen good, this won't be the last time you hear from Main Attrakionz. Limited edition double-vinyl pressing, cut at Dubplates & Mastering in Berlin.

Artist:	SWANSON, PETE
Title:	Pro Style
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 110LP

Since upsetting the techno multiverse with Man With Potential, ex-Yellow Swan Pete Swanson has tirelessly continued his exploration of the form, quickly breaking it down and molding it in his image. Pro Style is the result of those experiments, and finds Swanson at his most explosive, with his archetypal searing synthesizer blasts directed over warehouse kicks worthy of the Downwards catalog. This is possibly Swanson's most technoid investigation to date, but any "mainstream" form is peppered with more than enough failure to put a smile on the faces of unconvinced Yellow Swans fans. Pro Style is far from Berlin's precise minimalism, instead taking a raw, hands-on direction that we haven't heard in the genre for many years. Whether you're in the club or in the basement, Swanson's pounding kicks and (surprisingly) booming basses should keep the apocalypse at bay, for now at least. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	HAIR POLICE
Title:	Mercurial Rites
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 113LP

Working tirelessly at their craft since 2001, Hair Police are survivors of the rapidly-dissolving U.S. noise scene. Made up of Mike Connelly (aka Failing Lights), Robert Beatty (aka Three Legged Race) and Trevor Tremaine -- the three Midwesterners have amassed quite a catalog between them, but somehow always hit hardest when they fuse their talents and work together. Mercurial Rites is the trio's first proper full-length since 2008's Certainty of Swarms, and in typically obstinate form doesn't pander to the noise scene's mass exodus towards the dancefloor. Instead, the record is as dirt-sodden and gruesome as the band has ever sounded, and marks an evolution in industrial noise without straying far from their original intentions. They've always been a consistent band, but Mercurial Rites does a pronounced job in distilling the raw energy of their defining early LP Obedience Cuts and fusing it with the disturbing soundscapes of later records Drawn Dread and Prescribed Burning. Tape-saturated bells and gongs push up awkwardly against pounding, funereal percussion and the kind of disembodied screams we last heard on '80s-era Whitehouse sides, and while the result might terrify some, it re-affirms what made the noise scene so alluring in the first place. It's an unsettling, punishing sound that revels in its own abstraction, yet every clank is meticulously placed, every screech of feedback so pointed that at times you forget the layers of distortion and fog altogether. We're simply left with sparse vignettes of darkness, and in the empty silence in-between the blasts of synthesizer or white noise, there's more horror than you could possibly imagine. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	MULLEN, GEOFF
Title:	Filtered Water
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 114LP

It's been three years since Rhode Island sound artist Geoff Mullen released his last album for the Type label, but he's hardly been taking it easy in the interim. After a few small-run cassette releases and a string of dates in Europe (both solo and in the Oxtirn trio with PAN's Eli Keszler and Ashley Paul) he found some time to get stranded in the woods and craft this beguiling long-form record. A mono recording of a multi-channel installation piece, Filtered Water is probably the most unusual addition to Mullen's catalog, and definitely the most hypnotic. Recorded in the Hudson Valley, the album blends field recordings, feedback, and tape collage to create a deeply immersive sound environment. This is a record that reveals itself slowly, and uses the most spare of materials. Everyday sounds like a passing train or a far-off party are subsumed by the music, and the raw sounds of nature are tempered by electronic processes. Luckily, Mullen's signature musical sensitivity prevents this extended experimental piece from ever becoming trying or indulgent. It is honest, textured sound and far more beautiful than a description can attest. Geoff Mullen is one of New England's most impressive sonic innovators, and Filtered Water offers a fascinating glimpse into his unique sound world. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Artist:	BULLEN, NICHOLAS
Title:	Component Fixations
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	LP
Price:	$20.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 115LP

To this day, Nicholas Bullen is best-known as a founding member of arguably grindcore's most important act: Napalm Death. Although he decided to call it a day before the band slipped into the mainstream circuit, his sonic fingerprints were all over their influential debut Scum, and he's been breaking boundaries ever since. A key figure in Birmingham's experimental scene, Bullen was also a founding member of Scorn and has been involved in a variety of projects since. Over 30 years later we arrive to Component Fixations, an album that Bullen has been contemplating, working, and reworking for some time. It is, after all, his solo debut proper, and as such is a work that absolutely represents him as an artist both visually and aurally. Taking influence from the early electronic artists of the 1960s, Bullen has fused this passion with his own musically explorative past, resulting in an album of beguiling tape-manipulations, drones and noise. Component Fixations is far more than a simple exercise in academic sound, and Bullen has injected his long-form pieces with a rare mortal sense of corruption and failure. Every single sound on the album was taken from field recordings captured in the confines of Bullen's house and garden, and this only serves to confirm the unshakable humanity of the record. Component Fixations might be a long way from Scum, but dig deep and you'll find the same curious mind, desperate to pull apart sounds and give them a brand-new meaning. Extreme doesn't have to mean loud, after all. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

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Artist:	MIDAIRCONDO
Title:	Shopping For Images
Label:	TYPE (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	TYPE 008LP