New Releases for February 2008

Index of New Releases for February 2008

APNEA (SPAIN)

Artist:	FROM KARAOKE TO STARDOM
Title:	ĄDatura!
Label:	APNEA (SPAIN)
Format:	12"
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	APNEA 019EP

"Jeremy Herpe comes back to Apnea after the magnificent Loopism Opposum, with ĄDatura!, where the wonder boy experiments with the darkest possible grooves. With the precision of a surgeon, From Karaoke To Stardom builds rhythms that breathe with complexity and passion, adding all kinds of effects, blips and samples. 'El Beso Magnético de la Muerte' is a visceral piece of low frequencies, a magnet for the dancefloor. Side B is for 'Diss-A-peer,' an aquatic journey of unknown pleasures."

AREAL RECORDS (GERMANY)

Artist:	HENNEBERG
Title:	Winter Dump/Milk Effect
Label:	AREAL RECORDS (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	AREAL 047EP

In case you are drifting away from your spaceship and without any gas for the control nozzles, please follow these instructions: 1. Get in a straight hovering position and smile as much as you can. 2. Try to throw any equipment towards the space ship. 3. Press the button "Winter" on your control board and then press "Dump." Within the next 7 nanoseconds, you will be completely frozen and of course, not alive anymore. Thank you for your co-operation.

ASTERISK

Artist:	BOSCOE
Title:	Boscoe
Label:	ASTERISK
Format:	LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ASTERISK 004LP

LP version, in deluxe gatefold sleeve. "Combining the spiritual soul and funk of Earth, Wind, & Fire with the proto-rap of the Last Poets and the cosmic jazz of Pharaoh Sanders, Boscoe's lone album has long eluded bootleggers and the collector elite. At last, and via Numero's * imprint, this Chicago spiritual soul jazz masterstroke will see the light of day. Impeccably remastered and housed in gatefold sleeve with copious liner notes, personal testaments from the group, and never-before-seen archival material, this thirty-five year old album is a must for anyone interested in soul's secret history."

ATAVISTIC

Artist:	VANDERMARK 5, THE
Title:	Beat Reader
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	ALP 184CD

"KV and Chicago's finest fivesome once again team up with Bob Weston to notch out Beat Reader, the quintet's 12th album for Atavistic over the course of the last decade-plus. Inasmuch as one may contemplate the recorded works of Sonic Youth as a genre unto itself, The V5 may now lay claim to such a distinction: existing simultaneously inside AND outside the realm of jazz. Vandermark's compositions have recently become even more guided by his respect for (and sonic interpretations of) the traditional arts."

Artist:	BROTZMANN/PEETER UUSKYLA DUO, PETER
Title:	Born Broke
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	ALP 185CD

"Peter & Peeter have once again joined spirits and forces, picking up where their trio with Peter Friis-Nielsen left off -- this time as a reeds-n'-drums duo delivering a blowout double-CD -- whose only remote competition in the field understandably comes from Messrs. Vandermark & Nilssen-Love's two-man implosion unit, Dual Pleasure. A fresh double-dose of soul-purge from free men, presented in a Brötz art-brute package. From Uuskyla's liner notes: 'The liferoad of the one life you have. Been fighting all the time for playing untouchable sounds of simple music. My definition of beauty. Untouchable, therefore powerful, simple, therefore universal, for everyone. But you are notable to keep it only yourself, that's the strength. No amplification, not even monitor speakers or headphones needed for this duo. The punch and the scream -- the foundation of natural music-making!'"

Artist:	SUN RA & HIS ARKESTRA
Title:	Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	ALP 265CD

"The third deluxe Ra reissue in the new O-Card format from the UMS, released in conjunction with El Saturn Records is here: a superb reissue of a delicious, seldom heard Saturn Records document from '70 -- replete with two alternate takes of a previously unissued classic AND an 'Untitled' piece from the original '77 sessions... all available for the first time on CD!" "Sun Ra's career-long commitment to his Arkestra allowed the pianist and bandleader little time for the elaboration of less populous projects. There were brief, tantalizing glimpses, however, into his small group concept -- including a rash of recordings made in the mid 1970s. There are, for instance, two great double-LPs of quartet music, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore gloriously forward, made for the Italian Horo label in 1978. A year prior, a stripped-down group made a set of studio recordings focused on standard jazz songbook material, as well as some original music by Ra, that was issued on Saturn as Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue. As a special treat, to augment this extremely rare Saturn LP and show how Ra developed the idea for one of his arrangements, two alternative versions of the poignant 'I'll Get By' are included -- taken from a session slated May 3, 1973 by Gilmore. In the distance, the muffled remnant of a previous track appears, taped over on this home recording, the almost in-sync backwards drums providing a low-key element of surreality." --John Corbett, Chicago, October, 2007

AUDIO FREAKS (UK)

AURORA BOREALIS (UK)

Artist:	WOLFMANGLER
Title:	Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves
Label:	AURORA BOREALIS (UK)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$23.00
Catalog #:	ABX 012LP

"Wolfmangler is the musical vision of Polish revelator D. Smolken, formerly of Dead Raven Choir. His music is slow, grim, noisy and shambling, a deconstructed hybrid of twisted folk and hinterland doom-metal. Bowed double bass, electric bass, flute, French horn and violin merge with sinister growls and whispered vocals rich with the symbolism of life and decay, creating a listening experience at once unsettling, twisted and darkly beautiful. Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves takes his trademark raw, buzzing intensity and pushes it even further down an uncharted overgrown path, creating a wall of noise that almost seems to suck the air out of the room, leaving a festering rotten discomfort -- a real sonic alchemy -- creating oil from sound. We doubt you will hear a record so deliriously unsettling this year. Maybe in any year."

Artist:	STARGAZER'S ASSISTANT, THE
Title:	The Other Side of the Island
Label:	AURORA BOREALIS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ABX 018CD

"'We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.' James Hutton, Theory of the Earth, 1795. Deep underground, life moves slowly. Once teeming with insect and amphibian life, the great swamps of the Carboniferous era were buried under the weight of 300 million years, eventually returning to the surface as coal. In this new form they would be consumed in fires and furnaces for three thousand years before blackening the lungs of Empire and driving the Industrial Revolution. It was then that James Hutton, the first geologist, began to consider the depths beneath our feet and the unimaginable abyss of time that they represent. This is the world of The Stargazer's Assistant. This is the forge of the Earth. This is deep time. The Other Side Of The Island is the soundtrack to the sculptural works collected under the same name, both being the work of David J. Smith. In addition to his percussion duties with Guapo, Smith has spent the last two years bringing his visions to life; life that emerged slowly, painstakingly, out of wax, coal, copper and lead. In much the same way, the soundtrack itself slowly writhes organically before the listener: the groan of the motherlode, the shifting of tectonic plates, the song of the Earth's crust. In collaboration with longstanding musical cohort Daniel O'Sullivan (with whom Smith plays in Miasma & The Carousel Of Dead Horses) and audio engineer Antti Uusumaki, Smith has created a strange work comprising of layered vocals, percussion, electronics and prepared strings. The Stargazer's Assistant offer up the soundtrack of eternal, elemental labor."

Artist:	DEAD RAVEN CHOIR
Title:	My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind
Label:	AURORA BOREALIS (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ABX 019CD

"Smolken returns to Aurora Borealis in the guise of his perhaps better known Dead Raven Choir project. Since the release of Wolfmangler's Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves Smolken has settled in Poland, and seriously begun to record as much as possible. Where Wolfmangler is slow and ponderous ('compost with a grudge' as Julian Cope stated in The Guardian last year) and could perhaps even be described as an obscure branch of Doom, how shall we classify Dead Raven Choir? An altogether noisier undertaking and unafraid of the heady heights of mid-tempo, Dead Raven Choir has baffled, irked and aroused listeners for a number of years now. An unholy cross of black metal and folk? Organically produced noise and scree? Doubtless many a consumer has been outraged by a lazily tagged Dead Raven Choir release, though with the countless CD-R and micro-label releases, there grows a veritable army of supporters, eager to have their preconceptions smashed and ears damaged once more with every hint of new material. My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind grips the listener immediately and threatens to overwhelm them with its brute force. Clearly there is something to be said for the Eastern Bloc technologies that were so deftly abused, as this is truly a unique sound. Smolken has transcended the avant-garde and moved beyond: ladies and gentlemen, Dead Raven Choir has left the field."

BAKED GOODS

Artist:	DINOSAUR JR.
Title:	You're Living All Over Me
Label:	BAKED GOODS
Format:	LP
Price:	$19.00
Catalog #:	BG 005LP

LP version of the 2nd Dinosaur Jr. album, originally released by SST in 1987. "Dino cut all the excess ruffage from their diet, and Murph and Lou locked into a tuff little unit. Even the solos feel like they're being corralled by their burgeoning pop instincts. If they lumber, it's a tuneful lumbering. They discovered the sweet spot between Black Sabbath and the Buzzcocks, which every carpetbagging grunge chancer (and one or two geniuses) took to the mall a few years later...." Pressed on red marbled vinyl.

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Artist:	HEKTAGON
Title:	Running Thru/Elemental RMX
Label:	AUDIO FREAKS (UK)
Format:	12"
Price:	$11.50
Catalog #:	AF 002EP