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2LP
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AUK 006LP
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2026 repress; 180 gram black vinyl for the first time. This 1997 album is seen as a classic Brian Jonestown Massacre release. The Brian Jonestown Massacre is a psychedelic rock band originally from San Francisco, California, led by guitarist/singer Anton Newcombe. Since 1995 The Brian Jonestown Massacre has released numerous albums, first for Bomp! Records, the label which gave them their start, and later for TVT, Tee Pee, and now on Anton Newcombe's own A Recordings label. BJM has been essential in the development of the modern U.S. garage scene, and many L.A. and SF musicians got their start playing with Newcombe, including Peter Hayes of The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Originally Newcombe was heavily influenced by The Rolling Stones' psychedelic phase -- the name comes from Stones guitarist Brian Jones combined with a reference to cult leader Jim Jones, but his work in the 2000s has expanded into aesthetic dimensions approximating the UK shoegazing genre of the 1990s, and incorporates influences from world music, especially Middle Eastern and Brazilian music.
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2LP
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AUK 027LP
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2026 repress. Tepid Peppermint Wonderland Volume 2 includes the second half of the double CD Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective (AUK 013CD, 2004), remastered for vinyl. Following Tepid Peppermint Wonderland Volume 1 (AUK 026LP, 2004), Volume 2 continues to mine the period of 1995 through 2004 and includes key tracks from all of The Brian Jonestown Massacre's albums as well as live recordings and many otherwise unreleased tracks. The Brian Jonestown Massacre is a psychedelic rock band originally from San Francisco, California, led by guitarist and singer Anton Newcombe. Beginning in 1995, The Brian Jonestown Massacre released numerous albums, first on BOMP!, the label that gave them their start, and later on TVT Records and Tee Pee Records. The band was essential in the development of the modern U.S. garage scene, and many LA and SF musicians got their start playing with Newcombe, including Peter Hayes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Originally Newcombe was heavily influenced by The Rolling Stones' psychedelic phase (the band name is a reference to Stones guitarist Brian Jones and Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones), but his work in the 2000s expanded into aesthetic dimensions approximating the UK shoegazing genre of the 1990s and incorporating influences from world music, especially Middle Eastern and Brazilian music. Gatefold double LP version.
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ACRSLP 1695LP
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"Time to immerse yourself in the deep, soulful world of Texas blues legend Lightnin' Hopkins. This powerful LP captures the raw, unfiltered essence of a true blues master, presenting a definitive collection of his work from a golden era. The album showcases his iconic guitar work and deeply personal lyrics, seamlessly moving from the mournful lament of 'Cemetery Blues' and 'The Blues Is A Mighty Bad Feeling' to the hard-driving rhythms of his instrumental boogies. It is a masterclass in the artistry of a one-man band, with Hopkins commanding the listener's attention through every track. Experience the blistering energy of tracks like 'Lightnin's Boogie,' 'Movin' On Out Boogie,' and the playful 'Grandma's Boogie,' which demonstrate his complete command of the instrument. Alongside these are the heartfelt ballads and storytelling that were his hallmark, including the classic 'Evil Hearted Woman' and 'I'm Wild About You Baby.' The LP also features hidden gems like the sentimental 'Remember Me' and the swinging 'Hopkins Sky Hop.' From the classic 'Nothin' But The Blues' and the heartfelt 'I Had A Gal Named Sal,' to the hopeful 'Finally Met My Baby' and the poignant 'Lightnin' Don't Feel Well,' this collection is an essential document of one of the most important figures in the history of American music. It is a journey through the heart of the blues, a raw and honest portrait that every fan of the genre should own."
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AVM 084LP
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Cloud Management return to Altin Village & Mine for a unique collaboration with New York writer and creative polymath Vivien Goldman. A pairing spanning generations and geography, but with a musical overlap that is quite fitting in both process and result. Cloud Management's jammy, improvisational approach to their dubby electronics blends well with Goldman's idiosyncratic vocal style, which has its origins in the early days of post-punk and UK dub experimentalism. Cloud Management blend many historical aspects of German electronic music into something distinctly their own, while retaining a view well beyond those borders or any particular era. This approach fits well with Goldman's deep multidisciplinary career, not easily defined because of its eclectic abundance across disciplines, yet always orbiting around music as its foundation. When it comes down to it, these are great tracks created in the same way they sound: loose but refined, circling and turning inwards and outwards, back onto themselves. A dub of a dub of a dub, but never falling too far from the source -- the minimalism necessary to deliver a direct, steady resolve and a gripping listen. The B Side of the record features three remixes by artists from across the globe, all with strong connections to the front line of dancehall, dub, and electronic music experimentalism. Longtime Equiknoxx member Time Cow from Kingston (Jamaica), delivers a version of "Quick Cover Up" that represents a major overhaul of the original. This remix strips away much of the looseness of the source material and leans into a lush yet slightly darker atmosphere, created by layered synths and a masterful use of underlying percussion and melodic stabs. Up next are Twin Cities, Minnesota-based Feel Free Hi Fi, who take on "Judge Judge." The duo tighten things up, overlaying weighty vintage string synths and digi-flute melodies. This version feels designed for smoky, late-night dub sound system sessions, harkening back to dub's foundations. Last but not least is London's Pat Orburn. Stripped way down, the remix rides an interplay between alternating minimalism and a more lo-fi but lush exuberance, somewhat reminiscent of a bossa nova-esque minimal synth sound. This version's lo-fi pop sensibility provides a fitting contrast and completes an eclectic yet copacetic trio of remixes for the record.
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ARBITRARY 025CD
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Arbitrary presents Terrain Vague II -- the second album by Danish electro-acoustic trio Mesmer. With this work, the trio creates a sensuous and reflective space to inhabit in a time marked by speed, noise, and digital fragmentation. Terrain Vague II emerges from field recordings made in Læsø, Frederikshavn, and Aalborg in Denmark. Using environmental sounds from harbors, coastlines, and the outskirts of the city, Mesmer explores the places where nature and culture intersect. These field recordings are not atmospheric background, but rather the architectural foundation of the work -- carriers of social, historical, and sensory traces. Through improvisation, compositional structures, and an electro- acoustic setup featuring synthesizers, trumpet, percussion, and modular systems, these traces are transformed into personal and collective sonic journeys. The title refers to the concept of terrain vague: indeterminate transitional zones with open potential. For Mesmer, it becomes an image of a society in motion. Rather than offering definitive answers, the trio creates an open listening space in which the boundaries between the composed and the improvised, the controlled and the free, dissolve. Listening is activated here as a conscious act -- an opportunity to reconnect with place, presence, and community. In relation to their debut work Terrain Vague (ARBITRARY 019CD, 2024), Mesmer has developed their practice in a more consistently site-specific and spatial direction. While the first work established the trio's shared language between field recording and electro-acoustic composition, Terrain Vague II allows the specific geographies to structure the music. Improvisation comes clearly to the fore, contrasts are sharpened, and the tension between the individual and the collective is pronounced. With this work, the format is also expanded -- realized as an album, a concert-series, and an installation. Mesmer -- Emil Jensen, Victor Dybbroe, and Anders Filipsen -- have worked closely together for more than 15 years across music, film, radio, and installation. With Terrain Vague II, Mesmer refines and deepens their artistic position. They offer a space for slowness and attentiveness within a complex present -- and insist on sound's capacity to open new ways of being in the world.
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BING 224LP
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"Toronto's Mad Iris has been playing live in the local underground scene since 2023, blending noise rock, punk, and shoegaze into a sound that honors influences like Sonic Youth, Pixies, and the Breeders. Their self-titled debut album covers desire, obsession, longing, and grief, taking place in basements, night buses, and gas stations, with gum stuck to desks and drinks spilled on sticky floors. Throughout the record, distorted vocals crash and ascend in unison with thrashing drums, plump basslines, and staticky guitar overdrive, lurching between restraint and eruption. A Mad Iris song teeters on disaster, shifting from gritty feedback to intentional sloppy haze, like the sound of a tape machine overheating. Strong, sparkling production is complemented by a wall of noisy visuals: videos that emulate a worn VHS tape, scrapbook show flyers, and alleyway photoshoots. 'Our visuals are an integral part of the band's style,' says bassist Ela Hinatsu, who shares lead vocals with guitarist Kaiya Rosie, often on the same song. With a deliberate sound, style, and presence, Mad Iris goes beyond being a band, becoming more of an art project. Opening track, 'Silver Nails,' sets hushed, breathy vocals floating over a screechy guitar line, played by Patrick Muldoon, before collapsing into distorted, whiny grit and greedy screams, ending the track with a guitar solo from producer/mixer Ximuna Diego, who, with his own musical expertise, is the secret to Mad Iris' signature distorted sound. The album oscillates between sweet and bitter, pretty and dirty, lust and shame. 'Poor Baby' is soaked in self-pity and pointed blame, building from scratchy dual vocals and warm analogue tones into a fever pitch, led by drummer Josh Pryce. 'Goldfish' opens with buzzing guitar riffs and addictive drums, as bittersweet vocals cut through muddy noise. The song strips the intensity and cattiness of other tracks, framing loss in a bright, chaotic context, with vocals weaving between jangly hooks. On record, Mad Iris is raw, unpolished, and intimidatingly cool. Off-stage, they're grounded and self-aware. As Pryce puts it, 'We're just four friends hanging out and making music together. There's lots of playful love in it.' That chemistry drives their energetic debut."
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BALMAT 021LP
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LP version. Laurence Pike's Possible Utopias for Jazz Quintet represents a search for freedom, potentiality -- liberatory strategies that transcend the ego and the solitary, atomized figure. But in this case, the album title is also a red herring, because there is no jazz quintet here -- just Pike, his drums, and his machines, not so much an ersatz ensemble as a purely notional one, a thought experiment equipped with drumsticks, circuitry, and the desire to go beyond hardwired limits. And the results incorporate the vocabulary of jazz, along with that of ambient, electronica, and post-rock. The Sydney-based musician has a long history of coloring outside the lines, not just in his solo recordings -- including four albums for the Leaf label between 2018 and 2024 -- but also in the trio Pivot (later PVT); Szun Waves (alongside saxophonist Jack Wyllie and Border Community's Luke Abbott); Triosk, which recorded an album with Jan Jelinek in 2003 (FAITBACK 005LP); and even post-punk titans Liars, whom he joined in late 2018. Of his first album for Balmat, Pike says, "My loose concept was: What does music sound like when the expectations of late capitalism are removed from it? How might a jazz musician from an idealized culture of the future, or even another world, utilize musical language when the conventions of style and marketing are no longer a factor in music making?" That inquiry, he says, connects to his "guiding principle: that the purpose of music is to access something bigger than the individual, and reveal a sense of possibility and freedom in the world to the listener. To create an understanding that the future can be something other than what we imagined or expect, even unconsciously." Heady ideas, but plug into his stream-of-metaconsciousness flow and you may start to intuit what motivates him. There is a deeply lyrical expression in these pieces, but also a sense of exploded perspective, of ideas approached from more angles than any one mind could dream up. Of a collectivized consciousness, of mycelial networks branching across tone and rhythm and timbre, of ideas articulated in distributed fashion, nodal points dancing across drum heads. Pike's imaginary quintet is hardly without precedent; it's a continuation of concepts floated across Jan Jelinek's Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records (FAITBACK 001LP), Burnt Friedman's many guises, and much of the recombinant improv of the International Anthem roster, not to mention the far corners of ECM's catalog in the late 1970s and 1980s.
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2LP
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BE 1008LP
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Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven's brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo's Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought-after artifacts of the '90s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead guitar on the group's first two albums. The pairing is revelatory as they weave luminous melodic lines, sometimes in parallel, sometimes opening into sustained intricate counterpoint. Bassist Koji Shimura and drummer Ken Ishihara shuffle and swing in parallel with a fluid, sinuous rhythm, while flourishes of synthesizer, mellotron and the introduction of Go Hirano on keyboards and piano deepens the group's sound with orchestral colors and a soft cinematic haze. Across the album, clear, shimmering guitar tones and gentle chord progressions are layered with bright arpeggiated figures and darker minor-key passages. The songs develop through gradual changes in tone and dynamics as Ishihara's voice reveals a gentle yearning and wistfulness. An extended version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "The Look of Love" serves as the album's entrancing focal point; stretching the song's familiar lounge-pop swagger, the group renders it as a slow-burning, psychedelic meditation crackling with electricity as it drifts into the night. Available for the first time on vinyl in over 30 years. Remastered and expanded with three previously unreleased song versions on a second LP cut at 45RPM. Presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold with metallic and ink pigment foil stamping, spot colors as well as a gatefold insert. House in a custom vellum wrap with a mirror metallic sticker seal. Pressed at RTI Recorded at Inter Music Studio, Tokyo 1994. Remastered at Peace Music 2021, Produced by You Ishihara.
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BMC 364CD
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"The pensive, enigmatic compositions of Ensemble Ensemble outline an imaginary folklore: freely drawing on Norwegian and Alsatian traditional music, they equally absorb elements of oral and written, experimental and folk, electronic and analogue, vocal and instrumental cultures, ultimately forming a flow of sounds closely related to ambient music."
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BSR 820CD
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"A classic late-'70s deejay set from one of Jamaica's most commanding mic talents, Clint Eastwood emerged from the shadow of his brother Trinity to establish himself as a heavyweight voice of the era. Named in tribute to the cinematic Man With No Name, Eastwood forged a distinctive, confident style that helped define reggae's golden age. Originally released in 1979 as one of the first titles on the Burning Sounds' Burning Vibrations imprint, Love And Happiness captures a pivotal moment when roots reggae was evolving into the early dancehall sound. Featuring four prime Clint Eastwood cuts alongside key tracks from a young Jah Thomas -- who cites Eastwood as a major influence -- the album stands as a vital document of late-70s Jamaican deejay culture. Essential listening for collectors of classic reggae and foundational dancehall."
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LP
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DAMGOOD 309LP
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LP version. "Billy & Holly's only album together, originally released in the US in 1999."
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DAMGOOD 644CD
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"It's been three long years since CTMF's last studio album, 2023's Failure Not Success, and now they're back with a brand-new record! House On Fire finds them firing on all cylinders and they've never sounded finer! The album features remixed versions of their covers of The Saints' 'Untitled' and The Yardbirds' 'Shapes of Things' (both previously only available on limited edition 7" singles), along with twelve original new recordings."
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DAMGOOD 648CD
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"Thirty-three tracks! Rounding up all the band's 7" single releases to date! That's all their A- and B-sides! Cyanide Pills released their first 7" single 'Break It Up' in 2009, following it up with a further 14 fab 45s, the most recent being a split single with Switzerland's Nasty Rumours. Most of these releases featured exclusive non-album B-sides which we've rounded up for Singled Out. Good to have them in one place innit! All tracks were recorded at the Billiard Room in Leeds with producer Carl 'Razorblade' Rosamond. 'Influences? Hmm well, we don't just listen to punk rock, neither did the early bands because there wasn't any' said lead singer Phil speaking with Vive le Rock magazine in 2023. 'We like the usual suspects obviously, our favorites are the Belgian band The Kids, X-Ray Spex, and Buzzcocks. We like Satan's Rats, The Tours, Knots, The Fingers, Panic, Kleenex, Crime, The Terrorways, Victims, Wipers, The Briefs, The Spits, The Plugz, Bad Nerves, Nasty Rumours, stuff like that, loads of stuff, Syd Barrett, The Kinks, MC5, Stooges, Bowie, Ruben and the Jets, Kim Fowley, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf. The list goes on and on and on."
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2LP
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DAMGOOD 648LP
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"Thirty-three tracks! Rounding up all the band's 7" single releases to date! That's all their A- and B-sides! Cyanide Pills released their first 7" single 'Break It Up' in 2009, following it up with a further 14 fab 45s, the most recent being a split single with Switzerland's Nasty Rumours. Most of these releases featured exclusive non-album B-sides which we've rounded up for Singled Out. Good to have them in one place innit! All tracks were recorded at the Billiard Room in Leeds with producer Carl 'Razorblade' Rosamond. 'Influences? Hmm well, we don't just listen to punk rock, neither did the early bands because there wasn't any' said lead singer Phil speaking with Vive le Rock magazine in 2023. 'We like the usual suspects obviously, our favorites are the Belgian band The Kids, X-Ray Spex, and Buzzcocks. We like Satan's Rats, The Tours, Knots, The Fingers, Panic, Kleenex, Crime, The Terrorways, Victims, Wipers, The Briefs, The Spits, The Plugz, Bad Nerves, Nasty Rumours, stuff like that, loads of stuff, Syd Barrett, The Kinks, MC5, Stooges, Bowie, Ruben and the Jets, Kim Fowley, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf. The list goes on and on and on."
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DC 971CD
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"Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius. It was produced by OM, and was originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain."
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DC 971CS
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Cassette version. "Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius. It was produced by OM, and was originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain."
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DC 971LP
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LP version. "Variations on a Theme, features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius. It was produced by OM, and was originally released in 2005 on Holy Mountain."
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DC 972CD
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"OM's Conference of the Birds also features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, with production by OM, originally released in 2006 on Holy Mountain."
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DC 972CS
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Cassette version. "OM's Conference of the Birds also features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, with production by OM, originally released in 2006 on Holy Mountain."
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DC 972LP
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LP version. "OM's Conference of the Birds also features Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, with production by OM, originally released in 2006 on Holy Mountain."
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DC 984LP
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"What lies beyond The Black Door? An essence of otherness in the form of Cole Berliner, breezing out a vibrant acoustic sequence of bucolic instrumentals, chasing an old-world sense of beauty, projecting equally into the ear of listener and non-listener! Listen, having lived life as an atheist-spiritualist and progressive pop composer/performer, Cole desired to find his own kind of devotional music, devoting himself to the cause that became this album. But it took more than that in the end. The Black Door required playing in aspects of traditional genre formats like 'country,' 'blues,' 'finger-style,' 'gospel,' 'soundtrack,' 'ambient,' and Cole is adept at them all, mixing and matching modes and vibes. Adding to that a cosmic spray of full circle/circus leap consciousness, The Black Door flew open! Initially conceived as solo acoustic guitar tunes, in the studio the songs demanded the dynamics of an acoustic ensemble (a departure from his work with Kamikaze Palm Tree and Sharpie Smile). This was key. The arrangements form intricate passages for acoustic, electric and lap steel guitars, acoustic/ electric bass, piano, drums, percussion, violin, viola, horns, woodwinds and synthesizers. Playing with Cole are violinist Laena Myers, along with Garret Lang, Dylan Hadley, Sofia Arreguin, Robert Earl Thomas, Michael Sachs, Sarah Safaie, Kilan Thorns, and Cesar Hernandez PLUS Cesar Maria, who mixed and co-produced with Cole. The music of The Black Door is honest modern folk -- west coast folk! -- with a rad amount of odd psyche laced within. A presence in the production ecosystem of ominous (but friendly) ghost theater, elegant framing for a perfectly civilized, surreal mystery and exquisite, acoustic folk-chamber puzzle. And lo! Cole Berliner's solo debut is rich-grained instrumental parlor music, organically growing on in the speakers and ears beyond, an album after Drag City's own hearts in the challenger tradition of Bert Jansch's Avocet, Marc Ribot's Saints and Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing. As Cole brings a succession of new moods and qualities to the true spirit of the thing, The Black Door opens up an album-length sequence of musical transformation."
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EMEGO 326CD
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It has been twenty-five years since the seismic events of 2001 -- when twin towers collapsed under terrorist attack and Coventry's sonic insurgent Russell Haswell launched his inaugural salvo on the original Mego label with Live Salvage 1997-2000. The intervening era has delivered unrelenting turbulence: protracted wars, institutional corruption, a global pandemic, the resurgence of fascist currents, rampant media distortion, and omnipresent surveillance. For Haswell, a lifelong admirer of 1970s and 1980s dystopian cinema, the verdict is unequivocal: "Science Fiction is now!" In the face of this darkening reality, Let It Go arrives as both acknowledgment and antidote. This new full length on Editions Mego extends an olive branch through defiant sonic diversity -- an unpredictable mosaic that embraces everything from propulsive rhythms to radical abstraction and enveloping ambience. True to Haswell's core practice, the material draws from the same tactile, free-improvised electroacoustic framework that powers his live sets: immediate, powerful and unscripted. The album weaves reverent echoes of 1990s Detroit techno's hypnotic pulse and the abrasive, metallic edge of the Birmingham sound into fractured generative territories. Haswell returns to his computer-generated origins while integrating his recent modular-synthesis experiments. During a residency at the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK) in Norway, he harnessed the latest GRM Tools suite to conjure the volatile, "rapidly fluctuating pitched sounds" that characterized Iannis Xenakis' late electronic works -- resulting in pieces such as "Fall 3" and "Fall 2," where instability becomes a form of vitality. The tracks "Exit Downwards" and "The Anxieties Of Our Time," whilst reflecting the currents of the release, also offer surprisingly melodic patterns over jagged rhythms. The wryly titled "Thu 25 Dec 2025," (recorded in Glasgow after a solitary post-Christmas-lunch walk home) is a vast drone which evolves according to the random walk model -- known more evocatively as the drunken walk -- each sonic step veering unpredictably, mirroring the disoriented lens of contemporary existence. Let It Go is liberation. Amid the cacophony of crumbling certainties, Haswell deploys a full arsenal of resistance: kinetic drive, disorienting rupture, quiet refuge, raw aggression, and tentative hope. In an age where dystopia has shifted from fiction to lived fact, this music asserts that possibility endures.
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FAITICHE 041LP
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Faitiche welcomes a new artist to the label. Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Her practice ranges from performances, concerts, to works with video and visual art, but she is best known for her sound installations and electro-acoustic compositions. TUNING brings together three pieces by Christina Kubisch from different periods of her oeuvre. What they have in common is the way they transform sound phenomena originally considered "non-music" into compositions.
From Christina Kubisch: "I alter my source material as little as possible, layering and overlapping until a distinctive sound space emerges. In recent pieces, I sometimes combine magnetic waves with field recordings or live instruments. In 'Gaming' it's my recording of a Chinese song about silence... With ['Two persons walking through a street in Madrid'], I wanted to understand what is heard by people participating in an Electrical Walk in the same place but moving in different ways. The Spanish composer Miguel Alvarez-Fernàndez and I set off from opposite ends of a major shopping street in Madrid, met briefly in the middle, and then continued to the end. We both recorded our walks and I then layered them over one another. You might call it a work of electromagnetic conceptualism... 'Diapason' is part of a series of three pieces that deal with 'non-instruments' or instruments that no longer exist: electrical mine bells used to send signals to the workers underground; a historical glass harmonica originally used for medicinal purposes; and tuning forks that were used by doctors to test people's hearing. All of these methods are no longer in use. The sound of the tuning forks, audible only if held close to the ear, was recorded at the electronic studio at Berlin's Technical University in such a way that even their decay remained audible. The frequencies range between 64 and 2048 Hertz and they can be adjusted at micro-intervals using small movable weights. The sequence and the duration of the pauses are dictated by chance and were not defined in advance. The 2009 version was created for an installation in the historic Holy Cross Church (Korskirken) in Bergen. Visitors could enter and leave the space at any time, deciding for themselves where and for how long they wished to listen to the sounds played back over an array of small loudspeakers placed on the floor of the apse."
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FAITICHE 042LP
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Take Me, I'm Yours is the first collaboration album between Alan Abrahams and Jan Jelinek. Released through the latter's faitiche, it builds upon multi-layered vocal sketches by the former. The Paris-based artist, primarily known for his work as Portable and Bodycode, supplied Jelinek with multi-layered song sketches that the German artist subjected to a rigorous process of manipulation, excavating the ambiguities of the original material and transforming its rhythms into subtle pulses. Take Me, I'm Yours is neither a typical Abrahams record nor a classic Jelinek album -- it is something third, mediating between the physicality of the voice and the abstraction of electronic sound design. The two had crossed paths before really getting to know each other after Abrahams invited Jelinek to play at one of his Süd Electronic parties. The idea of a collaboration emerged slowly. "It started as an experiment, and over the past few years grew from a few tracks into this album," says Abrahams. He describes recording the basic material as a "tantalizing" process, not knowing how Jelinek would transform his material, some of which was based on wordless chanting, while other tracks were working with lyrical content. However, their mutual trust allowed Jelinek to remove the harmonies, radically reduce the rhythms, and concentrate on Abrahams' voice. Jelinek heard something "fragile" in this voice, "moments of doubt and dark premonitions." He points to "Forever" as an example. "Alan's original song reminded me of classic vocal house, but his voice seemed to almost break," he says. "This contradiction made the piece even bigger, because we hear a singer in the moment of an awakening." He further accentuated such tensions through arrhythmic synth modulations and time-stretching algorithms, while also adding concrete sounds from a variety of sources. With its dedication to both transforming and amplifying the emotional qualities hidden within Abrahams' pieces, Take Me, I'm Yours functions as a dialogue between those two singular artists. Includes download code.
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FTR 825LP
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On Meditations, Bhajan Bhoy presents four expansive, deeply immersive compositions that slowly open and unfurl across the album's duration. Length here is incidental; what matters is the total listening experience. These pieces move with patience and grace, drawing the listener into a blessed, inward journey. The result is a remarkable record -- equally cinematic, intimate, and richly evocative. Drawing from folk traditions, ambient synthesis, ethereal guitar work, and deep listening practices, Meditations creates a world of textural depth and microscopic wonder. The album's wide-ranging instrumentation -- accordion, piano, yangqin, synthesizers, guitar and bass, banjo, and harp -- highlights Bhajan Bhoy's imaginative and searching compositional approach. Each sound feels carefully placed, allowing space, resonance, and atmosphere to guide the music's emotional weight. There is a quiet power running throughout Meditations: a sense of stillness that never drifts into stasis, and beauty that reveals itself gradually. These are pieces that reward patience and presence, offering something profound to the deep listener. "These tracks served as a series of spiritual prayers when I recorded them," says Ajay Saggar (Bhajan Bhoy). "They became even more important to me later, as personal changes occurred in my life from mid-2025 onwards, and the real power and beauty of the tracks came to the fore -- helping me heal in my body and in my mind." Meditations is a meditative, enchanting work -- music as refuge, reflection, and renewal.
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