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Recent Best Sellers
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ABDT 061LP
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Abduction Records reissue Dawn of the Devi, Sun City Girls' follow up album to Torch of the Mystics (ABDT 055LP). Originally released in 1991 on Majora Records, many who had discovered SCG via the preceding Torch LP were immediately alienated and blindsided by Devi and all the harshness that comes with it. Below, John Olson takes us back to 1991 when Dawn of the Devi premiered in all its glory and obscurity.
"Sun City Girls scan your dome for what they THINK you want but code it for the opposite. If you don't have me at my 'Napoleon & Josephine' then you don't get me at my 'Valentines for Matahari.' Easy to pick and choose your course thru their ridiculous and amazing path, but to fully get verbally abused by Uncle Jim you have to ingest it ALL. In order makes even less sense. Torch is like the APPLEBEES of the SCG catalog. My sister eats there, the appetizers are *good* / they have deals. Devi is after hours dish washing shift at the 'Bees: hurry with a joint out back with the one 'Kool' manager by the grease pit/catch the 11:15pm bus to go home to your loser roommates watching midget porn as they forget to clean up yet again. Everyone wants a wild free ethno-screech RNR unit as their own to mentally catalogue but when it comes to plugging in and actually DOING experiments, all of a sudden everyone wants to be locked into the 'Rock n Roll High School.' The underground should be difficult and on shaky ground -- like your first kiss. What worth is following rules when you make them yourself? That said, Devi and the previously mentioned Matahari are MY SCG. That fucking BASS sound battling with Jim Hall on Walmart 3am desert speed thru ten watts of pure terror peppered with the ????? tin can ethno rhythm confusion of the great late Charlie G with all cylinders blaring in 'four dateless months in winter mode' is my THC in spades. Devi's sprawling anti-social etho-mess aside, the back photo says it all, in loud mid-range volumes: backs turned, duct taped third eyes, audience of three of which two are talking about how to the get the f outta the gig, the WORKS. A band photo can make a record and this is probably the biggest example of it. Like The Fall's Room to Live, everyone stares at their Chuck Taylor's when Dawn of the Devi is mentioned. Fuck, I'd get a tat of that fem-beast featured on the stark cover, thug-life stomach style in a show of prime period SCG pride but I'm puss when it comes to needles & ink son. Me and soldier Jeff Dunn circa '91 would play this sandpapered masterpiece all day and stare at that photo, placing ourselves either onstage or in the audience, fantasizing how wild the experience must have been. Can't tell you how many times I've had my grill blasted by this unholy racket. The playing is incredible and antisocial AF -- timeless but yet perf for a certain era as well beyond inspiring, musically and culturally. Of course people hated it: tuneless, raw, desperate, sprawling, LONG. It's like if SOLGER went to the ghettos of Baghdad to score black tar feedback instead of sketcher punker huts in Seattle at the dawn of HXC. Everything you need for yet another lonely night glaring into an empty closet is inside this grim long player. How it will sink into the ten second modern digital era of attention is anyone's guess but it's bound to boil and microwave one kid's brain. And I'll def be hunting said kid down to shred with. Also, the fact that I can call the two remaining GIRLS friends and jaw about Sag-nasty with em makes the cake even sweeter homeboy. LONG MAY THEY ISOLATE." --John Olson, May 2018
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PAL 056LP
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LP version. "After two LPs and over half a decade spent toiling in the margins of the American Songbook, Bill Orcutt returns to original composition and the blues with his latest LP, Odds Against Tomorrow. Taking its title from Robert Wise's 1959 film noir, Odds Against Tomorrow retrofits familiar folk/blues forms to the unique sound of Orcutt's guitar and the result crackles with a freshness and authority that nostalgic retreads cannot deliver. Odds Against Tomorrow is more than an expansion of the territory charted by Bill Orcutt, his eponymous 2017 studio electric debut, although it's certainly that. With its nods to existing musics, half-step fluctuations, and near-songwriter-ly manipulations of tension/release, Odds Against Tomorrow is a rock record -- almost. Clearly and simply recorded through a clattering Fender Twin in Orcutt's living room and lovingly mixed by Bay Area neighbor and pedal-steel savant Chuck Johnson, no one would mistake it for any era's radio fodder, yet the precision of its technique and the swaying Child-ballad logic of its gentler improvisations comfortably seats it between John Mayall and Richard Thompson in your Ikea Kallax. Three songs ('Odds Against Tomorrow,' 'The Writhing Jar,' 'Already Old') are multi-tracked, an innovation that, for guitar buffs familiar with Orcutt's stripped-down vernacular, jumps out of the grooves like a Les Paul sound-on-sound excursion in 1948, or a Jandek blues rave-up in 1987. Specifically evoking John Lee Hooker's double-track experiments on 1952's 'Walking the Boogie,' the steady chord vamps of 'Odds Against Tomorrow' and 'Already Old' form a harmonic turf on which Orcutt solos with lyrical abandon . . . For the more 'contemporary-minded,' 'The Writhing Jar''s crashing overdubs recall the brassy six-string voicings of This Heat or Illitch. With the exception of the unreconstructed Elmore James-isms of 'Stray Dog' and the 'Layla'-finale-like haze of 'All Your Buried Corpses Begin To Speak,' the remaining non-overdubbed tracks dovetail snugly with Orcutt's previous solo output, reeling gently in a Mazzacane-oid mode or vibing up the standards ('Moon River'). On their own, these tracks would still be an important contribution to Orcutt's canon. As part of Odds Against Tomorrow's greater whole, they provide a through line, connecting the idiosyncrasies of Orcutt's past explorations with the scrambled tropes of his present work. Odds Against Tomorrow challenges contemporary solo guitar practice in a way that simultaneously nullifies hazy dreams of folk purity and establishes a new high-water mark for blues-rock reconstruction." --Tom Carter
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KALLISTA 001LP
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LP version. Carla dal Forno announces her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp, on her own Kallista records. Dal Forno beckons a bold new era in her peerless output pushing her dub-damaged DIY dispatches to the limits of flawless dream-pop. In a transformative move towards crystal clear vocals and sharpened production, Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It's Like (BLACKEST 015CD/LP, 2016) and The Garden EP (BLACKEST 068EP, 2017). Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London's sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno's first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley, and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work, as on "Took A Long Time" and "No Trace". These are contrasted with songs like "I'm Conscious" and "So Much Better" that channel the lilting power of YMG and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like "Fast Moving Cars". The second half begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of "Don't Follow Me", which takes The Cure's "A Forest" as its conceptual springboard. It's the clearest lyrical example since "The Garden" of dal Forno's unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with "Push On" -- dal Forno's most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. Adding further depth to Look Up Sharp are the instrumentals, which flow seamlessly between the vocal-led pieces. "Hype Sleep" and "Heart of Hearts" drink from the same stream as The Flying Lizard's dubbed-out madness and the vivid purple sunsets of Eno's Another Green World (1975). While "Creep Out of Bed" and "Leaving For Japan" funnel the fourth-world psychedelia of Cyclobe's industrial-folk into the vortex of Nico's The Marble Index (1968). A deeply personal but infinitely relatable album its many surfaces are complex but authentic, enduring but imperfect, hard-edged but delicate.
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2LP
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MOABIT 022LP
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January 1981 found Gudrun Gut and Bettina Koster in Christopher Franke's Berlin-Spandau Studio recording their first Malaria! EP (Zensor Records). Christine Hahn of The Static with Glenn Branca and Barbara Ess, joined in from New York, and Manon P. Duursma fresh from Nina Hagen's O.U.T. project, and Susanne Kuhnke completed the line-up. Malaria! started touring intensively soon after the release of their 12", commencing with a concert with New Order at Brussel's Ancienne Belgique, and going on from there to concerts with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Birthday Party, The Slits, The AuPairs, Raincoats, Nina Hagen, John Cale, and Einstürzende Neubauten. They played venues as diverse as the Mudd Club, Peppermint Lounge and Studio 54 in New York, the Documenta in Kassel, the Bat Cave in London, Les Bains Douche in Paris, Milky Way and Paradiso in Amsterdam, ICA in London, the Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and Markthalle in Hamburg and naturally, again and again, at the SO36 in Berlin. While touring, Malaria! used their time off to record in Studios in New York, London, Brussels, New Orleans, and in Berlin -- How Do You Like My New Dog? 7" (1981), Weisses Wasser 12" (1982), New York Passage 12" (1982), Revisited cassette (1983), and the Emotion album (1982). At the BBC studios in London, Maida Vale, Malaria! recorded a John Peel Session. Malaria! took a break in 1984 -- Bettina and Christine re-located to New York, and Gudrun and Manon stayed in Berlin to form Matador with Beate Bartel, but not before they recorded their mini-album, Beat The Distance (1985). In 1992 Gudrun, Bettina, Christine, and Manon met up in New Orleans with Jim Thirlwell (Foetus) to record Elation 12". Elation was followed by Cheerio (1993), which again was recorded in Berlin. Chicks on Speed did their own version of Malaria!'s song, "Kaltes Klares Wasser" in 2001, and the remix went into the German Top 10. Malaria! has been an instrumental part of Berlin music history, as recently presented at the "Zurück zum Beton" at Düsseldorf's Kunstakademie, Kunsthalle Wien "Punk!", "Geniale Dilletanten" Goethe Institut, and in B-Movie.
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2LP
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ZEHRA 001LP
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Zehra present The Trance Of Seven Colors by master Gnawa musician Maleem Mahmoud Ghania and free jazz legend Pharoah Sanders, available on vinyl for the very first time. Originally released in 1994 on Bill Laswell's Axiom imprint, and produced by Bill Laswell, The Trance Of Seven Colors is the meeting of two true musical masters. Maleem Mahmoud Ghania (1951-2015), son of the master of Gnawa music Maleem Boubker Ghania and the famous clairvoyant and "moqaddema", A'isha Qabral, and a master of the traditional Gnawa style in his own right. Mahmoud learned this craft as a youth along with his brothers, walking from village to village, performing ceremonies with his father Boubker and was one of the few masters (Maleem) who continued to practice the Gnawa tradition strictly for healing (the central ritual of the Gnawa is the trance music ceremony -- with the purpose of healing or purification of the participants). With 30 cassette releases of music from the Gnawa repertoire with his own ensemble and performances at every major festival in Morocco, including performing for the King in various contexts, Mahmoud Ghania was also one of Morocco's most prominent professional musicians. In 1994, Bill Laswell and Pharoah Sanders went to Morocco equipped with just some mobile recording devices to record Ghania and a large ensemble of musicians (a good portion being family members) in a very intimate set-up at a private house. Sanders, the legendary free jazz musician, contributed the distinctive tenor saxophone sounds that gained him highest praise as a truly spiritual soul right from the days of playing with John Coltrane and his wife Alice and on seminal solo albums, like Karma (1969). The aptly titled The Trance Of Seven Colors ranks among the best Gnawa recordings ever released, making it onto The Vinyl Factory's list of "10 incredible percussive albums from around the world". 25 years after its original CD release, it is finally available on vinyl. Remastered for vinyl and vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. 180 gram vinyl; comes in gatefold sleeve; includes download code. "One of the most important albums of Gnawa trance music released in the '90s." --The Attic "first-hand access to Gnawa healing ceremonial music" --All Music
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FOX 018LP
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Japanese experimental group Les Rallizes Denudes are the ultimate rock 'n' roll enigma. Sometimes referred to as Hadaka no Rallizes or even as Hadaka no Rarizu, each appellation a variant of the name "Fucked Up and Naked", which equates to being high on hard drugs, they are seen as noise-rock pioneers, yet sifting fact from fiction isn't easy with their oddball tale. Emerging from the radical hippie communes of Kyoto during the late 1960s, the band was formed in November 1967 by university student Takashi Mizutani, taking the overamplified, distorted guitar of the Velvet Underground as a starting point. Early demo recordings apparently suffered from poor sound quality, leading the perfectionist Mizutani to retreat from the studio environment, meaning that most of the group's output has appeared as live bootlegs, with the occasional studio demo surfacing as well. Performances were initially staged as part of avant-garde theatre, though the band's propensity for super-loud noise soon put paid to such collaboration; the ever-changing membership saw Mizutani the only permanent force, despite his embroilment in the 1970 Red Army hijacking of a civilian Japan Airlines flight, enacted partly through bass player, Moriaki Wakabayashi, who defected to North Korea in its aftermath. Though perhaps not quite as notorious, fellow improvisational group, Taj Mahal Travellers, has a backstory of random international travels that is almost as intriguing as that of Les Rallizes; formed in 1969 by six experimental musicians and an electronic engineer, they embarked on a series of improvisational gigs across Japan, notably including an all-day marathon held at a Kanagawa beach, and made their way to Europe in 1971, where they crossed paths with Don Cherry and other like-minded practitioners. They later drove from Holland to the Pakistan border, acquiring santoors in Iran on the way to help broaden their already unpredictable repertoire. The OZ Days Live release is culled from the OZ Last Days festival held in the autumn of 1973, to benefit Tokyo's OZ Rock Café, which had been closed following repeated drug busts. Here the Taj Mahal Travellers are suitably cosmic, their echoing jams featuring looped vocal chants, disjointed string instruments and sparse, off-kilter percussion; in contrast, the contributions from Les Rallizes are more standard examples of instrumental psychedelic rock, which veers more towards the acid rock end of the spectrum as the performance progresses.
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2LP
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VIC 014LP
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Deep, deep, earth music from Tsutomu Ōhashi and the Geinoh Yamashirogumi crew. A macrosymphony composed for the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka, Japan, 1990, Ecophony Gaia, was supposed to be the stunning, aural centerpiece for a light and water performance system echoing the sentiment of the venue: "Harmonious Coexistence of Nature and Mankind". Ecophony Gaia was in its truest essence the final part of a trilogy that began with 1986's Ecophony Rinne, continued, in 1988, with their most-known work the soundtrack to Katsuhiro Otomo's dystopian, cyber-punk film Akira (released as Symphonic Suite Akira), and this release mere months later. Looking back one can break up these releases into a holy musical trinity: Ecophony Rinne = spirit, Symphonic Suite Akira = body, and Ecophony Gaia = Gaia/earth. Ecophony Gaia is Geinoh Yamashirogumi's most hopeful release. Rebirth, the hardest thing to capture in music, is something Ecophony Gaia expounds upon through sonics and feeling. You hear this in light echoes from Symphonic Suite Akira coursing through Ecophony Gaia, acting as symbols saying: "not everything from the past needs to be discarded, that certain things, when rethought of, hold a heavier power". The Japanese Noh music you heard trapezing through Akira's "Illusion" walks positively untethered in Ecophony Gaia's "Euphony", Indonesian gong chimes that hit darkly in Akira's "Tetsuo" transform Ecophony Gaia's "Catastrophe" into the light sublime, serene music that it is. What's left over are the songs that point to new directions. Those that derive their influence from things that aren't easily quantifiable. The introduction of field recordings to a warmer palette of sound makes Ecophony Gaia Geinoh Yamashirogumi's first roots album. Of course, these roots belong to worldlier kind of music. Rhythms that sound like water coursing downstream from brook to ocean, electronic layers that hum and cycle through, string instruments that hover like atmosphere, wind instruments that sound like air and breath, and the powerful sound of human voices presenting divinity through communal chant -- those all constitute the ecosystem of Ecophony Gaia. Things that you've heard/felt before, renewed in a different luster. When you hear the album, notice how there are two sides to its whole: "Chaos" ending in "Euphony", "Catastrophe" ending in "Gaia". It would be a disservice to describe the way it sounds, it's an album based on belief not premonition. All you'll find in Ecophony Gaia are movements. Hopeful movements. Needed movement.
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3CD BOX
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DLS 004CD
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A collection of three extended compositions by Thurston Moore recorded between 2018-19. This collection represents a period of reflection on spiritual matters, collective musical friendships, and a time and space universally, without words or languages to distract from meditation. "Alice Moki Jayne" is a new composition from noise guitar explorations honoring Alice Coltrane, Moki Cherry, and Jayne Cortez. These female partners of jazz musicians brought spirituality into the lives and music that has most inspired Thurston Moore. Recorded in Brussels in 2019; Personnel: Thurston Moore, James Sedwards, Jen Chochinov - 12-string electric guitar army; Deb Googe - Baritone bass, truth, and soul; Jem Doulton - Magick drums; Jon Leidecker - Electronic Wobbly love; Christophe Albertijn - Engineer. "8 Spring Street" is a personal homage to Glenn Branca, the title an address is in New York City, the apartment where Thurston first visited his mentor to rehearse. Recorded in London, UK in 2019; Personnel: Thurston Moore - Electric guitar; Syd Kemp - Engineer. "Galaxies" is an orchestral piece of music, with Moore as conductor and composer. Twelve guitarists are arranged as if one instrument, exploring the vast emotional depths present in twelve strings. Taking inspiration from a poem by Sun Ra, "Galaxies" ponders our place in the universe as we stare into imagery offered by satellites via space agencies. Recorded in London, UK in 2018; Personnel: Thurston Moore, David Toop, Susan Stenger, James Sedwards, Deb Googe, Alex Ward, Jen Chochinov, Jonah Falco, Rachel Aggs, Joseph Coward, Eugene Coyne, James McCartney - Guitar Army; Beetmol Troy and Matt Tag - Guitar technicians. Includes an artist book edited by Thurston Moore with photographs compiled during the process of creating the accompanying musical works and is available exclusively within this boxset; 20 pages.
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2LP
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IMPREC 467LP
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Eliane Radigue's Chry-Ptus is her very first piece for the modular synthesizer. It was composed in 1971 using a Buchla 100 which had recently been installed at NYU by Morton Subotnick. This double-LP was mastered by Golden and pressed at RTI for maximum fidelity.
From the original press release: "Chry-Ptus (1971). Originally two tapes which were to be played simultaneously, with or without synchronisation, which does not affect the structure of the work, but creates changes in the game of sub-harmonics and overtones. Three variations on this piece were performed at the New York Cultural Center in 1971, with variations of amplitude and location modulation as well as synchronisation. Realized on the Buchla Synthesizer at the New York University. The booklet contains a text by painter Paul Jenkins, who also realised the watercolor on the front cover, written on occasion of Radigue's first concert in New York, April 6th, 1971. "It's with the Buchla that I constructed Chry-ptus, a piece made up of two tapes with an analogue duration, 22 or 23 minutes, which could be played either simultaneously or with a slight time difference, so as to establish slight variations every time the piece was played. I spent the first months eliminating everything I did not want; I even used a notebook in which I tried to determine a writing system resembling chemical formulae." --Eliane Radigue
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LP
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WRWTFWW 030LP
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LP version. 350gsm sleeve with selected UV high gloss varnish. Liner notes by Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, and Gareth Quinn Redmond. WRWTFWW Records announce the reissue of Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way (Wave Notation 2). Initially released in 1982 as part of the Wave Notation series (which includes Hiroshi Yoshimura's Music For Nine Postcards), Still Way is, without a doubt, a seminal Japanese environmental/ambient/minimalism album, often mentioned alongside Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass (1983) (WRWTFWW 018LP, WRWTFWW 019CD/LP) and Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green (1986) as one of the genre's most important pieces. "Like the moment of stillness, after the wind passes through the garden, when the rain stops for a brief second..." Notably inspired by Erik Satie's Furniture Music and Brian Eno's ambient work, Satoshi Ashikawa aimed to compose music "intended to be listened to in a casual manner, as a musical landscape or a sound object -- not something that would stimulate listeners but music that should drift like smoke and become part of the environment." The result is simply phenomenal, subtle minimalism and emotional elegance exquisitely orchestrated by Satoshi Ishikawa and his team consisting of his wife Masami Ashikawa (on flute), Midori Takada (on vibraphone), Yuko Utsumi (on harp), Tomoko Sono (on piano), and Junko Arase (on vibraphone). In conjunction with Still Way, WRWTFWW Records is releasing Laistigh den Ghleo (WRWTFWW 039CD/LP), a companion album by Irish ambient/minimalist composer Gareth Quinn Redmond, inspired by Ashikawa's approach. Liner notes by Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa, and Gareth Quinn Redmond.
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LP
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MFM 042LP
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Broken Belief brings together a selection of recordings by Japanese multi-instrumentalist Toshfumi Hinata drawn from a body of work originally recorded between 1985-1987. Attending Berklee College of Music after spending time living in both the United States and the United Kingdom, Hinata would study under the tutelage of pianist Patricia Laliberte, graduating from the esteemed American school in 1982. Returning to Japan after becoming disillusioned with his classical training, Hinata experimented with many different forms of music. Moving away from depending simply on acoustic instruments, he would instead become entrenched in the possibilities of the latest analog synthesizers being developed at the time. Toshifumi Hinata's initial idea was to make his first album with just a Prophet 5 and Linn Drum Machine. Tweaking filters and creating intricate sequences, Hinata would record various sounds on analog tapes and overdub many different layers; recording violin, piano, and other accompaniments separately later on. It would become a method of working for the musician which he would apply almost entirely throughout this period. A deeply submerged process; one in which he would seek, as he himself puts it, to "weave musical images". Toshifumi Hinata would go on to record several more albums released only on CD throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, after which he focused mainly on music for TV dramas, commercials, and documentaries. Now living in Tokyo, he is almost exclusively focused on creating music for documentaries. The period of work released between 1985-1987 is one though that was not only a rich moment in the history of Hinata himself but of Japanese music and electronic music in general.
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CTI 002LP
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2019 repress on gold vinyl. This seminal album and a long time favorites with DJs and fans alike. Trance is often cited by electronic musicians as being highly influential in contemporary electronic music. Primarily an instrumental album, Trance covers everything from minimal electro and polyrhythmic sequences to rhythm heavy industrial dance tracks. Includes a 12" B/W double-sided insert of archive photos, clippings and texts.
"High-tech sequencer dazzles mix with heavy stews of sound, teasing atmospheric pieces with abrasive disco forgeries." --John Gill (Time Out, 1982)
"No one else currently turning out commercial music has anywhere near Chris and Cosey's intuitive grasp of the stimulating possibilities of electronic rhythm. Trance is just what it claims to be: a mesmerising chance to reassess the suggestive potential of sound, which in turn, attempts to intoxicate the listener into a reinvestigation of surrounding environments." --Steve Sutherland (Melody Maker, 1982)
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CTI 001LP
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2019 repress on purple vinyl. Originally released to much acclaim in 1981 by Rough Trade, Heartbeat was the first in a long line of groundbreaking albums by Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti. This early example of Chris & Cosey features cut-up sampled voices, Cosey's disto-guitar, industrial sequences, melodious synths, and cinematic sweeps. Includes a 12" B/W double-sided insert of archive photos, clippings, and texts.
"There are moments of great beauty like 'Moorby' and, equally, many moments of sheer depravity all performed with Kraftwerk's cultured class and the hypnotic charm and deadly grace of a synthesised cobra." --Steve Sutherland (Melody Maker, 1982)
"All the world loves a love story... but Heartbeat still has an edge of evil among the extensions of the pair's established scenarios." --Sandy Robertson (Sounds, 1981)
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LP
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LVY 516LP
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Restocked. In January of 1980, Joy Division kicked off a tour of The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany with a show at the legendary Paradiso Club in Amsterdam. Little did anyone know that in less than six months, Ian Curtis would be dead, and the brief, brilliant run of the group would be over. This is a particularly heavy and deep set, with the band performing at their angular best, and Curtis in top form vocally. Essential live broadcast for any fan of Joy Division.
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2LP
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HJR 209LP
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"The original concepts of vocal and instrumental music are utterly different. The instrumental impulse is not melody in a 'melodious' sense but an agile movement of the hands which seem to be under the control of a brain center totally different from that which inspires vocal melody. Altogether, instrumental music, with the exception of rudimentary rhythmic percussion, is as a rule a florid, fast and brilliant display of virtuosity... Quick motion is not merely a means to a musical end but almost an end in itself which always connects with the fingers, the wrists and the whole of the body."
The inclusion of the above passage from Curt Sachs's The Wellsprings of Music with this album, the recording of which predates the Music Improvisation Company's only other release, the eponymous ECM outing, indicates a clear intention to stake out territory for European free improvisation markedly different from that of the (American) free jazz it sprang from. The African-American heritage that led to jazz was melodious, vocal, field holler/church-inflected, and the Germans and the Dutch never made any secret of their affection for it, but British free improvisers in the late 1960s were looking elsewhere. Even so, and though the music press made a big deal a while back about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey's earlier Joseph Holbrooke trio (with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley), their early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane, and there's still a faint but distinct aftertaste of jazz in Bailey and Parker's work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968's Karyōbin (1993). But with the addition of Jamie Muir -- the first great free improvising percussionist who didn't start out as a jazz drummer -- and Hugh Davies and his electronics from way out leftfield in the avant-garde/experimental world, the MIC leapt right off that cliff. As Nina Hagen screamed later, "1968 is over! Future is Now!" These six tracks -- tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating -- sound like nothing else that came before. In a word, seminal. Housed in a gatefold sleeve.
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LP
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WWSLP 026LP
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LP version. Wewantsounds present a reissue of Yukihiro Takahashi's debut solo album Saravah!, originally released in 1978. One of the key Japanese albums of the '70s, it was released at a key time when, following his tenure with Sadistic Mika Band, Takahashi had just joined the nascent line up of Yellow Magic Orchestra. A sophisticated mix of disco funk, synth pop, ambient, French exotica, and bossa nova, the album has the stylish feel of a night out clubbing in Paris circa 1978. It's the missing link between the city pop scene of the late '70s and the synth sound of YMO which was about to revolutionize the world. The month before recording the YMO debut album that would help alter the course of music, Yukihiro Takahashi entered the studio with his fellow band-members Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono to record Saravah! together with the cream of the Japanese scene. He drew his inspiration from globe-trotting French musician Pierre Barouh who had introduced Bossa Nova in France in 1966 with "Samba Saravah" (featured in soundtrack the Oscar winner A Man And A Woman which he co-wrote) and subsequently launched Saravah Records. Saravah! starts off with a couple of French and Italian exotica classics ("Volare" and "C'est Si Bon") with delicious touches of synth while "Saravah!" is a nod to Pierre Barouh, a languid bossa nova with beautiful soulful strings arranged by Ryuichi Sakamoto. The album gets hotter with "La Rosa", a superb mid-tempo ambient funk featuring Shigeru Suzuki's fluid guitar. Next is an amazing exotica-synth version of the standard "Mood Indigo", announcing the midi revolution that was to come before things get funkier shortly after with Ryuichi Sakamoto's superb up-tempo disco instrumental "Elastic Dummy" featuring soulful strings and horns with solos by Sakamoto and guitarist Tsunehide Matsuki. The album then moves on to the ambient synth pop of "Sunset" before switching back to disco funk with "Back Street Midnight Queen" which, like "Elastic Dummy", has become a dancefloor cult classic. Saravah! ends on a perfect note with the beautiful "Present" a perfectly crafted pop song which Takahashi wanted to do in a city pop mode, featuring a superb melody and high-class arrangements.. Newly remastered by renowned engineer Mitsuo Koike. Features original artwork with photos by Masayoshi Sukita (David Bowie's Heroes (1977)); includes four-page insert and a new Introduction by Benjamin Barouh (of Saravah Records).
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PAL 056CD
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"After two LPs and over half a decade spent toiling in the margins of the American Songbook, Bill Orcutt returns to original composition and the blues with his latest LP, Odds Against Tomorrow. Taking its title from Robert Wise's 1959 film noir, Odds Against Tomorrow retrofits familiar folk/blues forms to the unique sound of Orcutt's guitar and the result crackles with a freshness and authority that nostalgic retreads cannot deliver. Odds Against Tomorrow is more than an expansion of the territory charted by Bill Orcutt, his eponymous 2017 studio electric debut, although it's certainly that. With its nods to existing musics, half-step fluctuations, and near-songwriter-ly manipulations of tension/release, Odds Against Tomorrow is a rock record -- almost. Clearly and simply recorded through a clattering Fender Twin in Orcutt's living room and lovingly mixed by Bay Area neighbor and pedal-steel savant Chuck Johnson, no one would mistake it for any era's radio fodder, yet the precision of its technique and the swaying Child-ballad logic of its gentler improvisations comfortably seats it between John Mayall and Richard Thompson in your Ikea Kallax. Three songs ('Odds Against Tomorrow,' 'The Writhing Jar,' 'Already Old') are multi-tracked, an innovation that, for guitar buffs familiar with Orcutt's stripped-down vernacular, jumps out of the grooves like a Les Paul sound-on-sound excursion in 1948, or a Jandek blues rave-up in 1987. Specifically evoking John Lee Hooker's double-track experiments on 1952's 'Walking the Boogie,' the steady chord vamps of 'Odds Against Tomorrow' and 'Already Old' form a harmonic turf on which Orcutt solos with lyrical abandon . . . For the more 'contemporary-minded,' 'The Writhing Jar''s crashing overdubs recall the brassy six-string voicings of This Heat or Illitch. With the exception of the unreconstructed Elmore James-isms of 'Stray Dog' and the 'Layla'-finale-like haze of 'All Your Buried Corpses Begin To Speak,' the remaining non-overdubbed tracks dovetail snugly with Orcutt's previous solo output, reeling gently in a Mazzacane-oid mode or vibing up the standards ('Moon River'). On their own, these tracks would still be an important contribution to Orcutt's canon. As part of Odds Against Tomorrow's greater whole, they provide a through line, connecting the idiosyncrasies of Orcutt's past explorations with the scrambled tropes of his present work. Odds Against Tomorrow challenges contemporary solo guitar practice in a way that simultaneously nullifies hazy dreams of folk purity and establishes a new high-water mark for blues-rock reconstruction." --Tom Carter
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2LP
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TROST 183LP
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Post-metal power force Sumac based around Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom) follow up their collaboration with Keiji Haino on Thrill Jockey, American Dollar Bill -- Keep Facing Sideways, You are too Hideous to Look at Face on (2018), with another monolith -- heavy and experimental at the same time. Personnel: Keiji Haino - guitar, voice, flute, taepyeongso; Aaron Turner - guitar; Nick Yacyshyn - drums; Brian Cook - bass. Recorded at Soh Ki Moon at Fever, Tokyo on July 3rd, 2017. Mixed by Randall Dunn at Avast, Seattle, December 2018. Mastered by James Plotkin, Bethlehem, December 2018.
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LP
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CTI 009LP
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2019 repress on transparent turquoise vinyl. Songs Of Love & Lust was originally released by Rough Trade Records in 1984 and at the time was considered to be quite a departure for both Chris & Cosey and Rough Trade. The album contains Chris & Cosey's trademark infectious rhythms, melodic tunes, edgy guitar, wailing cornet and of course Cosey's unique vocals -- which give a dark and sensual edge to the production. Includes a glossy insert with historic photographs and press clippings.
"A vice-like turn of the screw that is at once dreamy, hard and compelling. A gathering of all those forces which give electronic music a heart of its own. This is seduction!" --Adrian Jones (City Limits, 1984)
"Chris & Cosey's alluring invitation is to try another world: their promise is that the possibilities should be endless." --Don Watson (NME, 1984)
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2LP
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VCR 013LP
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Arguably one of the most important experimental records to emerge from 20th century Ireland, Thalia, as featured on the Nurse With Wound list, is coveted for its inventive, unpredictable, near-psychedelic brilliance, yet has remained scarce due to major label politics, meaning listeners had to fork out a ton for a second hand copy. Now readily available on its intended format, the keening, breezy logic and abstract theatric dramaturgy of Roger Doyle's work on Thalia has been reshuffled to highlight its apparent surreality and frolicking apparitions. Combining his studious research and prep work at Utrecht Institute of Sonology (then home to Roland Kayn, Leo Küpper, Jaap Vink) and the studios of Finnish Radio (Yleisradio) Helsinki with a finely honed improvisational intuition at his home studio in Malahide, Dublin, the record yields a poetic diffusion of electro-acoustic phantasms meshed with politicized and unsettling field recordings, alongside a mad, experimental solo piano piece. The three-part title track is the biggest attraction on Thalia. Acting as a sort of shamanic extension of Gaelic bardic traditions, Doyle guides the listener through labyrinthine dimensions, vacillating tape FX with stark synth pulses, fragments of "Danny Boy", and the unsettling sound of a woman wailing or even keening (a lament for the dead) in only the first minutes, the piece spirals over two sides between obtuse electronics and jump-cuts to melancholy strums, airborne melody, and rabid dissonance with the natural quality of Ireland's ever-shifting interplay of sun, rain, and clouds. The relatively brief "Baby Grand" follows as a sort of playful solo piano palate cleanser for the LP's purest electronic piece "Solar Eyes", which surely recalls the iridescent expanses of Roland Kayn or Jaap Vink's cybernetic music as much as Coil's pHILM #1 as ELpH (1994). Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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TRANSVERS 014LP
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To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Luc Ferrari's birth, Transversales Disques announce the release of Photophonie - Bandes magnétiques inédites, unpublished archives, spanning 1973-1992, revelatory collection of commercial, commission, and secret music by electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari. "Photophonie" (1989) features music for the photographic exhibition of Alain Willaume; "Il était une fois" (1973) was Commissioned by the G.M.E.B.; "Trans-Voices" (1992) was curated by the American Center, Paris; and "Leica" (1977) was used in advertisement for the Leica camera. Affiliated with French Radio's Groupe de Musique Concrète, co-founder of the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer in 1958, Luc Ferrari (1929-2005) was a major figure of musique concrète and electroacoustic music, broke away to pave his own path of individualistic expressions of minimalist music, musical theater, field recordings, orchestral music and soundtracks.
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LP
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SVVRCH 005LP
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Futuristic synthesizer specialist and sound designer Matsuo Ohno was responsible for the sound design of a broad range of film, television, and radio soundtracks, most famously the animation series Astro Boy which he began working on in 1963 together with his assistant, Takehisa Kosugi. Ohno was born in the heavily-populated Kanda district of central Tokyo in 1930 and was heavily affected by the repeated bombing raids on the city enacted in World War II, which took place during his formative years. After the war, deeply motivated by philosophy and Surrealism, he was largely unaffected by popular music, other than the electronic abstractions of Karlheinz Stockhausen; the left-wing filmmaker Fumio Kamei was another early influence. Ohno began immersing himself in the realm of sound effects while working with the Bungaku-za modernist theatre troupe and he performed a similar function at NHK, Japan's national broadcasting corporation, but became so frustrated by the rigidity of the restrictions imposed on him there that he quit his prestigious post at the broadcaster, although his skills were such that he remained in high demand as a freelancer, which allowed him to refine his sound effects techniques with evolving analogue synthesizers. The five suites of tracks that make up the Roots Of Electronic Sound album were recorded between 1963 and 1966; initially released on the ALM label in 1975, it is comprised of brief tape experiments, the cover artwork fittingly representing Astro Boy, from which many of the audio interludes are taken. Includes full color insert; edition of 500.
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LP
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ZORN 062LP
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New album by New Zealand composer and guitarist Roy Montgomery in close collaboration with Emma Johnston. After Nietzsche is a response to Nietzsche's assertion in Twilight of the Idols (1889) that "Without music, life would be a mistake." Roy Montgomery and Emma Johnston recast this as "Life is a mistake set to music" and they take issue with one of Nietzsche's principal tenets concerning fate. After Nietzsche is in a way the sister-album to 2018's Suffuse, where Montgomery composes songs for guest vocalists. Only this time it's in close partnership with Emma Johnston. Montgomery's distinctive, interweaving guitar play is set as background for Emma Johnston's angelic vocals and experimentations. Swimming through the four tracks of the album, it's surprising to notice how different they are. The opening track could have been plucked from one of Montgomery's '80s projects, while the rest of the A side takes you into more shadowy territory. "Realm Of The Senses" with its slow strumming and echoing vocals evokes Grouper, and the title track, with dramatic vocals and strings, cleverly builds up to a climax that never happens. The last song clocking in at just over twenty minutes is a post-postmodern duet between the two musicians in a dark philosophical mood. Included insert with lyrics; Calligraphy by Liz Harris (Grouper); Cover by Trudi Cameron. Mastering by Kris Delacourt. Edition of 500.
Roy Montgomery is a composer, guitarist, and lecturer from Christchurch, New Zealand. Montgomery's mostly instrumental solo works have elements of post-rock, lo-fi, folk, and avant-garde experimentation. His signature sound might be described as atmospheric or cinematic, often featuring complex layers of chiming, echoing and/or droning guitar phrases. He is currently head of the Environmental Management department at Lincoln University in New Zealand. Montgomery has played in several New Zealand bands since 1980, most notably The Pin Group, Dadamah, Dissolve, and Hash Jar Tempo. He has also released solo albums on labels including Kranky and Drunken Fish.
Emma Johnston, a classically trained singer, she has developed a practice that explores experimental voice in theater. This led to her MA and then PhD theses, which explore her work in the context of experimental voice in avant-garde performance. Emma has also worked as a singer and actor with Silencio Ensemble, the Christchurch Symphony, and Corrupt Productions, and has premiered vocal works by composers Chris Reddington and Gao Ping. Alongside her ongoing Free Theatre work, she enjoys collaborating with artists such as Reuben Derrick and Roy Montgomery on a diversity of projects.
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LP
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NK 201903LP
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Spanning tracks from the classic 1964 self-titled debut to their 1967 masterpiece Something Else by The Kinks, this collection features nearly two dozen Kinks classics, recorded live on the BBC. With stunning sound quality and a near perfect group of songs, hear the Davies brothers and company at their live, raw best. From the psych-pop brilliance of "David Watts" to the foot-pounding R&B of "All Day and All Of The Night", this collection runs the full spectrum of The Kinks' sound. Essential live cuts from one of the top British Invasion and psychedelic era groups. Limited edition, multi-color vinyl LP.
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2LP
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VOD 156LP
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Limited 2019 repress (with no certificate). Anthony & Paul was Anthony Burke and a mysterious Paul. Two Daughters were recording in Brixton around 1980-1982 and were closely connected to the Industrial Records and Throbbing Gristle gang. They recorded a debut tape called, Ladder of Souls released on their own Methane Music in 1980. Their one-and-only LP Kiss The Cloth / Gloria was released in 1981 on Anthony & Paul Records, a sub-division of United Dairies Records the label run by Stephen Stapleton of Nurse with Wound. The LP then also got reissued on United Dairies in 1987. A substantially edited version of "Return Calls - We Are" can be found on the Cherry Red compilation, Perspectives and Distortion (1982). The music and unique percussion-driven style of ambient and experimental sounds are in the vein of bands like O Yuki Conjugate -- they still hold the test of time. Anthony passed away in 2004.
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LP
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MPD 018GREEN-LP
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Green vinyl; comes in green sleeve. Musique Pour La Danse present Coil's unreleased soundtrack for the VHS only, pre-internet, sexual education documentary entitled The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex released in 1992. Members for this project were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, and Danny Hyde. The OST, to quote John Balance's interview for Compulsion Online, "is [a] slightly new age-y, progressive house type thing". Another way to approach it is as a delightful collection of Balearic beats, smoking jazz not far removed from Badalamenti's work with David Lynch, somewhat of an ambient house album for your home listening and early morning sunrise dances, Coil style. Taken from the original masters provided by Danny Hyde, The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex features a new sexy edit of the main theme. Bonus tracks "Nasa-Arab" and "Omlagus Garfungiloops" are taken from the 1992 CD-only release Stolen And Contaminated Songs, both being original versions of the radically reworked (for the OST) "Nasa-Arab 2" and "Exploding Frogs" in order to balance the whole album and extend the listening pleasure.
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LP
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CTI 016LP
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2019 repress on transparent violet vinyl. This hugely popular mid-eighties Exotika album was originally released in 1987 by Play It Again Sam. It includes such Chris & Cosey classics as the crowd-pleasing "BeatBeatBeat", the haunting ballad "Dr. John (Sleeping Stephen)", and the original version of their seminal title track "Exotika", which was adopted as an electronica anthem, most notably on the GOA scene and in the US West and East Coast gay clubs of the later 1980s. Includes a glossy insert with historic photographs and press clippings.
"Chris & Cosey beat most of 87's mainstream dance-floor contenders on their own territory of sheer pleasure, urged joy. 'BeatBeatBeat' is extreme, a revelation." --Ian Gittins (Melody Maker, 1987)
"Chris & Cosey have made a great dance record, but it's their kind of dancing. No junk here. They're crazy enough to be sincere about their musical Pleasureland and they want to share their discovery. Come and feel the sound as though your life depends on it: if it were up to them, it would depend on it." --Rockpool, 1987
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LP
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TRANSVERS 012LP
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Transversales Disques announce the release of Nuits Blanches au Studio 116, unreleased rarities from Ariel Kalma's personal archives recorded in the legendary GRM's Studio 116 during the '70s. Born and raised in Paris, Ariel Kalma started playing the recorder and saxophone as a youth. After successive studies of computer science, music, and art in Paris he performed in various concerts from middle-age music to free jazz duo. Ariel performed and recorded with several bands (J. Higelin, R. Pinhas, NYL, G. Scornic, Baden Powell...) After learning circular breathing on soprano sax, Ariel could include those endless notes into his own long-delay-effect system, dual Revox set-up and two tape machines "chained" together to form a long delay system. In France during the mid-1970s, Kalma was staffed as a recording assistant at legendary Groupe de Recherches Musicales (INA GRM) studios, where Ariel recorded some of his compositions in the Studio 116; the same music "concrete" laboratory that spawned masterpieces by members Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, and others.
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LP
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OME 1023LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Daphne Oram and Vera Gray's Listen Move & Dance, originally released in 1962. The British composer, musician, and audio engineer Daphne Oram was a pioneering figure in the use of electronic music. Coming to prominence through her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which she co-founded, Oram was one of the first British composers to feature electronic instruments in her work and has been rightly hailed as helping musique concrete to become accepted in Britain. Oram's composition "Still Point", involving two orchestras, two turntables and five microphones, was deemed too radical by the BBC, though she was promoted to studio manager in 1950, leading to the gradual introduction of electronic music and musique concrete techniques on BBC soundtracks. In 1957, she composed the music for the play Amphitryon 38, using a sine wave oscillator and homemade filters, and this and other subsequent works led to the establishment of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop the following year, but Oram soon tired of the conservative constraints of the BBC, leading to her resignation in 1959 to pursue her own vision at the Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition, located in Tower Folly, a former hop kiln located at Fairseat, near the village of Wrotham in rural Kent. "Oramics" was a radical sound composition technique that sought to transform images to music, enacted by drawing onto 35mm film, which would then be read by photo-electric cells; in addition to its use in Radiophonic Workshop material, "Oramics" was also employed for sound installations, theater productions, and feature films, such as The Innocents, though financial pressures forced Oram to seek a range of commercial engagements in addition to creating her own artistic works. The Listen Move & Dance series of BBC programs were devised as a radical new technique to help British schoolchildren learn how to dance; on the LP releases, Vera Gray arranged short adaptations of classical pieces by Bartok, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and others, designed for "stamping, punching, kicking and jumping" movements, as well as "running lightly", "dancing on toes" and "shaking all about", which contrasted sharply with Oram's electronic abstractions, which seemed to have been beamed in from outer space. 180 gram vinyl.
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LP
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BEWITH 061LP
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LP version. 140 gram vinyl; gatefold sleeve; includes 16-page insert with photos and liner notes. For the first time since its inception in 1983, Steve Hiett's elusive Down On The Road By The Beach is finally made available outside of Japan. Most recognized in the fashion sphere as an English photographer and graphic designer, Hiett's transportive audio portraits amplify his serpentine guitar to the infinite blue, recorded across Paris, Tokyo and New York. A career devotee of Brian Wilson's groundbreaking harmonies, Hiett shot The Beach Boys for Rolling Stone -- as well as The Doors, Miles Davis, and Jimi Hendrix -- while establishing himself as a fashion photographer. Decamping to Paris in 1972, he began what would become 20-year collaborations with Vogue Paris and Marie Claire. In 1982, representatives from Tokyo's Galerie Watari visited him to propose a solo exhibition. Asking if he could insert a 7" of original music into the back of the exhibition catalogue, Hiett laid down "Blue Beach - Welcome To Your Beach" in a Parisian radio station, playing all of the instruments himself, and two more cuts in New York with Yoko Ono, The Doobie Brothers, and Steely Dan hired-gun, Elliot Randall. Once dispatched, there were requests for him to fly to Tokyo to record; it wasn't until he arrived that he discovered CBS/Sony had facilitated an entire album. Heitt hastily gripped some petty cash, bought a guitar, and retreated to his hotel room to start writing. Entering the studio the following day, he was further surprised by a waiting room of session players known as Moonriders -- one of Japan's most acclaimed rock bands of the 1980s. Intimidated by their indecipherable sheet music, Hiett suggested Randall join them and with money being no object for major labels at the time, his wingman was on the next plane out of New York. Near-ambient arrangements that float in a space between The Durutti Column, Steve Cropper, and Ashra, Down On The Road By The Beach also crowns Hiett the master of recontextualization with his zero-gravity blues visions of "Roll Over Beethoven", Santo & Johnny's "Sleep Walk" and the 1967 Eddie Floyd soul hit, "Never Found A Girl". Produced in coordination between Be With Records, Efficient Space and the artist, this definitive reissue is restored from original masters; extensive liner notes penned by Mikey IQ Jones.
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12"
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KALITA 12011EP
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Kalita Records present the first ever official reissue of the holy grail of disco 12" singles, Vance and Suzzanne's I Can't Get Along Without You, originally privately released in 1980 on Vanton Records. The product of two members of Crown Heights Affair (Richard Vance Turner and Eleton Johns), Vanton Records was established as a way to protect their musical freedom. Vance and Suzzanne consisted of Richard and his childhood friend and fellow band member Suzzanne Slaughter, who was a background singer for many bands in New York including Sister Sledge. Includes a never-before-seen press photo and interview-based liner notes.
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LP
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SVVRCH 008LP
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Survival Research present a reissue of Apryl Fool's self-titled album, originally released in 1969. The story of Japanese psychedelic band Apryl Fool and their eponymous debut album is simply extraordinary. It was the vehicle by which bassist Haroumi Hosono first came to prominence, years before he became known as the "Godfather of Japanese electronica" as the founding member and leader of Yellow Magic Orchestra, though this musical titan had work released prior to the group's 1968 founding, such as the song "The Sea Of Summer Day", recorded with Yuko Okuyama and released by King Records the year before. Drummer Takashi "Rei" Matsumoto was a Beatles maniac that had covered songs in his earlier group, Burns, while pioneering prog-rock keyboardist Hiroyoshi Yanagida and guitarists Chu Kosaka and Eiji Kikuchi had all been part of a group called The Floral, formed in 1967 through the Japanese wing of the official fan club of The Monkees (whom they supported during a Japanese tour enacted in October 1968). In September 1969, Apryl Fool played behind musical theater group, Tokyo Kid Brothers, the recording issued in minute quantity as the Love & Banana EP, issued on Columbia Japan's Musicolor subsidiary; Apryl Fool's own LP, also issued on Musicolor that year, had extended spacey psychedelic freak jams in the form of "Tanger" and "Pledging My Time", marathon blues-rock tracks such as "April Blues" and "Honky Tonk Jam", with the employed English-sounding, fairly credible though, parts of the epic opus "The Last Mother Land", featuring Japanese lyrics. Of course, the day that the LP was actually released is reportedly the day that Apryl Fool announced their termination, giving this scarce release another level of legend for connoisseurs.
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2LP
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HOS 642LP
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An exclusive and outstanding Regis collaboration appears on the third volume of vinyl premieres for Vatican Shadow's early and highly sought-after tapes, as originally dispensed in 2011 during the peak years of the War On Terror. Holding all six sides from 3x hard-to-find tape "deck" issues of Washington Buries Al Qaeda Leader At Sea, plus the previously digital-only track "He Ambled Down The Dirt Road For Visits To A Market" and the aforementioned Regis exclusive; the third instalment of the series definitively compiles Vatican Shadow's impressionistic take on a turning point in 21st century U.S. geopolitics. Coupled with track titles lifted from the media and official government communiques on the subject, plus a full-length portrait of the Twin Towers prior to 9/11, the stark music suggests a perceptive void of detachment between reporting of the events' objective reality and Vatican Shadow's subjective response, beckoning listeners to read between the lines in a way that was previously deployed by two of Dominick Fernow's (aka Vatican Shadow/Prurient/Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement) key historic influences; Muslimgauze and Whitehouse. From the offset clatter of drums evoking marching boots on "People In The Compound Kept Themselves To Themselves", to the furtive pads that bleed thru "Supplying The Compound With Food and Medicine", and the elegiac gloom cast by "Peace Be Unto You", there's a nerve-edged tension to the music which surely evinces its subject in an allusively classic style. And the two new parts succinctly fall in line, with the dusky stroll of "He Ambled Down The Dirt Road For Visits To A Market" marking out one of the project's finest trip hop downbeats, while his collaboration with Regis on "See You Again Always" provides the project a new highpoint of guttural, militant, technoid pressure. With original tapes selling for triple figures on the second-hand market, this expanded definitive double-LP edition is unmissable for anyone with their head in the belly of modern electronic gloom. Mastered and cut to vinyl at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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CD
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TROST 194CD
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For the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the legendary Machine Gun recordings at the Lila Eule in Bremen, Peter Brötzmann put together a trio with the Berlin pianist, composer Alexander von Schlippenbach and the percussionist Han Bennink, who already sat on the drums 50 years ago. They were so pleased with the music that they decided to release it and continue to play gigs as the trio. Machine Gun was originally recorded in May 1968 by an octet consisting of influential musicians of new jazz and improvised music. The LP was repressed on Cien Fuegos in 2018 (CF 020LP). Personnel: Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone, b-flat clarinet, tarogato; Alexander von Schlippenbach - piano; Han Bennink - drums.
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CD
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KALLISTA 001CD
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Carla dal Forno announces her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp, on her own Kallista records. Dal Forno beckons a bold new era in her peerless output pushing her dub-damaged DIY dispatches to the limits of flawless dream-pop. In a transformative move towards crystal clear vocals and sharpened production, Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It's Like (BLACKEST 015CD/LP, 2016) and The Garden EP (BLACKEST 068EP, 2017). Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London's sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno's first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley, and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work, as on "Took A Long Time" and "No Trace". These are contrasted with songs like "I'm Conscious" and "So Much Better" that channel the lilting power of YMG and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like "Fast Moving Cars". The second half begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of "Don't Follow Me", which takes The Cure's "A Forest" as its conceptual springboard. It's the clearest lyrical example since "The Garden" of dal Forno's unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with "Push On" -- dal Forno's most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. Adding further depth to Look Up Sharp are the instrumentals, which flow seamlessly between the vocal-led pieces. "Hype Sleep" and "Heart of Hearts" drink from the same stream as The Flying Lizard's dubbed-out madness and the vivid purple sunsets of Eno's Another Green World (1975). While "Creep Out of Bed" and "Leaving For Japan" funnel the fourth-world psychedelia of Cyclobe's industrial-folk into the vortex of Nico's The Marble Index (1968). A deeply personal but infinitely relatable album its many surfaces are complex but authentic, enduring but imperfect, hard-edged but delicate.
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LP
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NG 001LP
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2019 repress. Almost two years after the success of the album The Tony Allen Experiments (COMET 072LP, 2016) and a few months after the release of the 7" Amore (2017), the duo Nu Guinea return to the scene with a new LP published by their newborn label NG Records. After touring the world looking for sounds suitable for their vibrations, Nu Guinea decided to go back to square one, Napoli, where Massimo Di Lena and Lucio Aquilina were born and raised. They watched their city from a distance reconstructing its energy from their studio in Berlin, calibrating the synths on the meridian of Vesuvius, the volcano that has always protected and threatened Napoli. Nuova Napoli is the result of a long musical research that has become a historical investigation on the sound that shaped Napoli during the '70s and '80s, starting from the contamination of genres (disco, jazz-funk, African rhythms) which ended up in Nu Guinea's DNA. In this album the synthesizers fill the spaces between the past and the future, tightening in a single body acoustic instruments, electronics and voices in Neapolitan dialect. It is the first time that the duo has worked with such a large group of musicians, some of whom are exponents of the contemporary Neapolitan scene. It is recommended that you listen to Nuova Napoli while walking in the alleys of Napoli's historic center, around wet clothes hanging and street vendors on tiny three-wheelers.
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2LP
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HJR 211LP
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Honest Jon's Records present a reissue of Company's Epiphany, originally released in 1982.
Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure.
All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London's ICA in July 1982. It's a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between moments of mounting intensity and tension. The passage about halfway through -- when Derek Bailey's harmonics ring out above a sheen of inside piano tremolos and shimmering electronics, topped off by Julie Tippetts's soaring vocalese -- is simply sublime. After which it's fun to try and tell the two pianists apart. Are those runs Ursula Oppens, with her formidable technique honed from years performing some of the twentieth century's most difficult notated new music, or are those Keith Tippett's crunchy jazz zigzags? Are those intriguing twangs from one of Akio Suzuki's invented instruments or could they be Fred Frith's or Phil Wachsmann's electronics? Bah, who cares? There's plenty of room for the more delicate instruments too, like Anne LeBaron's harp picking its way gingerly through a pin-cushion of pings and scratches from Bailey and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa. Of course, some performers are instantly recognizable: Tippetts, as lyrical and flighty on flute as when she sings, Phil Wachsmann, sinuous and sensitive on violin, and trombonist George Lewis, who, as John Zorn once put it, "swings his motherfucking ass off." So many magical moments abound, from the opening dawn chorus of Tippetts' voice and Frith's guitar swooping through a rainforest of exquisite piano cascades, to the Zen calm of the closing moments. Epiphany, indeed. Housed in a gatefold sleeve.
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LP
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FARO 212LP
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LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Far Out Recordings present an official reissue of Ana Mazzotti's Ninguem Vai Me Segurar. originally released in 1974. An artist as imaginative and unique as Ana Mazzotti doesn't come around often. Dubbed a "super-musician" by fellow Brazilian virtuoso Hermeto Pascoal, Mazzotti's short but rich musical career culminated in just two studio albums: Ninguem Vai Me Segurar (1974), and Ana Mazzotti (1977). Outside circles of Brazilian funk aficionados, these two gems of spellbinding samba-jazz, lysergic funk and trippy bossa have remained relatively obscure. This was partly as a result of Mazzotti's premature death (she lost her battle with cancer in her mid-thirties), but also due to financial restraints and the prejudice she faced as a female songwriter in a fundamentally sexist society. Born in Caixas, in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul municipality, Mazzotti began to play the accordion aged five, before moving with prodigious ease onto the piano. By the age of twelve she was already conducting her convent school's choir, and at twenty-one she led her city's premier chorus, the Coral Bento Goncalves. When rock n' roll hit South America in the '60s, a young Mazzotti was one of the early adopters, fronting various guitar groups including an all-female Beatles cover band, and an eclectic, eight-piece psychedelic group Desenvolvemento. Before moving to Sao Paulo to start her career proper, Mazzotti met drummer, producer, and fellow music educator Romido Santos, who she would later marry. Romildo introduced Mazzotti to jazz, and music by the likes of Chick Corea and Hermeto Pascoal who she would later befriend and perform with. In 1974, Mazzotti recorded her first album Ninguem Vai Me Segurar, enlisting the in-demand arrangement talents of Azymuth's original keyboard maestro Jose Roberto Bertrami. It also features Azymuth's bassist Alex Malheiros and percussionist Ariovaldo Contestini, with Romildo Santos who produced the album on drums. Recorded in Estudio Haway around the same time Azymuth recorded their debut album there, it's no wonder the samba jazz-funk pioneer's distinctive aesthetic is present throughout, and Mazzotti's sensational compositions are made even more beautiful for it. Kicking off with the swirling samba-jazz-dance masterpiece "Agora Ou Nunca Mais", the album hosts several groove-heavy Brazilian cult-classics. Deeper moments come in the form of the alluring future soul synth sounds on "Bairro Negro" and "Sou", and Mazzotti's tender, hallucinatory version of "Feel Like Making Love" (made famous by Roberta Flack). Remastered.
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LP
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SMR 003LP
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"Enta Omri" -- A milestone in Arabic music history. "Enta Omri" is Om Kalsoum's most famous song, composed by Mohamed Abdel Wahab, who is still rightly regarded as a prominent musician and composer in Egypt. The creation of this song was the first long expected collaboration of two musical giants, which came at the repeated urging of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser. There was talk in Egypt on the streets and in the media about what was believed to be a cold relationship between the two legends. Finally, after years of estrangement, Mohamed Abdel Wahab took the initiative and offered Om Kalsoum a song by poet Ahmed Shafiq Kamel, for which he had just composed a musical score. To his surprise, she responded positively and started to like the theme upon hearing it a few times. After a month of rehearsals, "Enta Omri" was released in February 1964 to critical acclaim and packed performances. The event was so grand it was labeled "The Cloud Meeting". With "Enta Omri", Abdel Wahab opened up the traditional repertoire of the diva to a more innovative style, for which the composer was known for. The use of the electric guitar and a long instrumental intro, fusing oriental themes with Western musical elements, made the song particularly special, securing its place in Egyptian musical history. Despite some criticism from other Egyptian composers from that era, the song was soon recognized as a milestone and opened a path to modernize Arabic music for many other musicians and singers. "Enta Omri" is loved by Arab and non-Arab audiences alike. Paying respect to the great diva, dozens of artists around the world have reinterpreted the song, adopting the intro's catchy guitar melody in their compositions. Souma Records thought it was time to re-release this monumental piece of music on a high-quality vinyl format, together with a repress of "Laylet Hob" (SMR 004LP), another classic song by Souma. Vintage inside out-sleeve; printed inner sleeve with liner notes.
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LP
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TO 115LP
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Repressed! Agora is Christian Fennesz's first solo album since Mahler Remix (TONE 052LP, 2014) and Bécs (EMEGO 165CD/LP, 2014). Fennesz writes: "It's a simple story. I had temporarily lost a proper studio workspace and had to move all my gear back to a small bedroom in my flat where I recorded this album. It was all done on headphones, which was rather a frustrating situation at first but later on it felt like back in the day when I produced my first records in the 1990s. In the end it was inspiring. I used very minimal equipment; I didn't even have the courage to plug in all the gear and instruments which were at my disposal. I just used what was at hand." Fennesz uses guitar and computer to create shimmering, swirling electronic sound of enormous range and complex musicality. His lush and luminous compositions are anything but sterile computer experiments. They resemble sensitive, telescopic recordings of rainforest insect life or natural atmospheric occurrences, an inherent naturalism permeating each piece. He lives and works in Vienna. Recorded at Kaiserstudios, Vienna, August, September 2018. "Rainfall": vocals by Katharina Caecilia Fennesz; "Agora": field recordings Manfred Neuwirth, vocals Mira Waldmann. Photography and design by Jon Wozencroft. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye. Full color inner and outer sleeve. "Imagine the electric guitar severed from cliché and all of its physical limitations, shaping a bold new musical language." --City Newspaper
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LP
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STUDIOMUL 024LP
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Studio Mule present a reissue of BGM's Back Ground Music, originally released in 1980. The debut album from Japanese living legend, electronic music producer Takayuki Shiraishi. Released on legendary experimental music label in Osaka, Vanity Records, run by Yuzuru Agi when Shiraishi was high school student. Shiraishi was influenced by the music of post punk, new wave, kraut rock -- this album is his unique mixture of that kind music style. One of the most in-demand alternative music albums from japan finally reissued. Remastered from original tape and mastering by Kuniyuki Takahashi.
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LP
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DOME 003LP
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With the demise of the group Wire in 1980, founder members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis joined forces to create Dome. With the assistance of engineer Eric Radcliffe and his Blackwing Studio Dome took the ethic of "using the studio as a compositional tool" and recorded and released three Dome albums on their own label in the space of 12 months: Dome (July, 1980), Dome 2 (October, 1980), and Dome 3 (October 1981). A final fourth album, Will You Speak This Word: Dome IV was released on the Norwegian Uniton label in May 1983. These albums represent some of the most beautifully stark and above all timeless exercises in studio experimentation from early 1980s alternative music scene. Previously issued in the out-of-print Dome 1-4+5 box set in 2011. Floating-point re-master by Russell Haswell, August 2011. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering by Rashad Becker, August 2011. New artwork by Dave Coppenhall. Includes download card.
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LP
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FARO 213LP
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LP version. 180 gram vinyl; includes download code. Far Out Recordings present an official reissue of Ana Mazzotti's self-titled album, originally released in 1977. An artist as imaginative and unique as Ana Mazzotti doesn't come around often. Dubbed a "super-musician" by fellow Brazilian virtuoso Hermeto Pascoal, Mazzotti's short but rich musical career culminated in just two studio albums: Ninguem Vai Me Segurar (1974), and Ana Mazzotti (1977). Outside circles of Brazilian funk aficionados, these two gems of spellbinding samba-jazz, lysergic funk and trippy bossa have remained relatively obscure. This was partly as a result of Mazzotti's premature death (she lost her battle with cancer in her mid-thirties), but also due to financial restraints and the prejudice she faced as a female songwriter in a fundamentally sexist society. Born in Caixas, in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul municipality, Mazzotti began to play the accordion aged five, before moving with prodigious ease onto the piano. By the age of twelve she was already conducting her convent school's choir, and at twenty-one she led her city's premier chorus, the Coral Bento Goncalves. When rock n' roll hit South America in the '60s, a young Mazzotti was one of the early adopters, fronting various guitar groups including an all-female Beatles cover band, and an eclectic, eight-piece psychedelic group Desenvolvemento. Before moving to Sao Paulo to start her career proper, Mazzotti met drummer, producer and fellow music educator Romido Santos, who she would later marry. Romildo introduced Mazzotti to jazz, and music by the likes of Chick Corea and Hermeto Pascoal who she would later befriend and perform with. In 1977, Mazzotti took her debut album back to the studio, releasing the album with a new running order and new ethereal cover art, ostensibly another crack at commercial success following the small scale of the independently funded first release. With intimately re-recorded vocals, and the bonus of gorgeous horn arrangements and a new track: the carnivalesque "Eta, Samba Bom", replacing Roberta Flack's hit "Feel Like Making Love", Ana Mazzotti (1977) delivers Mazzotti's refreshingly cool musical style even more effortlessly, while retaining the all magical energy of her debut. A cult Brazilian treasure. Remastered.
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LP
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FOX 019LP
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As noted on Alternative Fox's Berkeley November 7, 1970 (FOX 002LP) and Information, Transmission, Modulation and Noise (FOX 006LP) releases, the New York-born composer and abstract keyboard artist Steve Reich was one of the most important pioneers of minimalist music. After studying with jazz pianist Hall Overton, Reich studied composition at the Julliard School of Music and later at Mills College, a hotbed of experimental music in Oakland, near San Francisco. He subsequently began experimenting with audio tape as a medium for recorded and performed music at the San Francisco Tape Music Center with important figures of early electronic music, including Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, and Phil Lesh (the latter eventually a bassist in the Grateful Dead), and more importantly with Terry Riley, who joined Reich for the staging of In C in 1964, based on constantly shifting, fragmented music patterns. Reich went on to compose a number of noteworthy film soundtracks and in 1967 collaborated with Oliveros and Richard Maxfield for the LP New Sounds In Electronic Music. Phased musical and rhythmic patterns, sonic loops and electronic percussion were focal points from the mid- 1960s. Music For 18 Musicians was first released by jazz label ECM in 1978, based around pulsing patterns of tuned percussion created by several pianists, a vibraphonist and three marimba players, along with a clarinetist, a cellist, and a violinist, as well as three vocalists, with players switching to different instruments and percussion as necessary; the masterful version presented at Tokyo's Opera City on May 21st, 2008 features the choral group Synergy Vocals, close-microphone specialists founded by BBC Singers and London Choir alumnus Micaela Haslam, who first collaborated with Reich on his 2002 Drumming release.
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LP
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SMR 004LP
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"Laylat Hob" -- Another meeting in the clouds. Mohamed Abdel Wahab wrote another big score for Om Kalsoum in 1972. In "Laylat Hob" (A Night of Love), you hear Arabic music and poetry in perfect symbiosis. The rich and lengthy instrumental intro is just a precursor of the emotion present in this song. The talent of the composer is underlined by how he utilizes the traditional style of singing poetry in a more open and creative way. Abdel Wahab's infusing of long and groovy interludes with varied tonality, rhythmical patterns, and an overall unique approach, carries Om Kalsoum's powerful voice and brings the song to an incredible climax. In this way, he gives more color and depth to the music and the skilled soloists in the orchestra are finally able to breathe. Sensual rhythms, breaks, and breathtaking solos of accordion, guitar (Omar Khorshid), violin, and organ (Hany Mehanna), have ensured this song is an all-time classic for belly dance routines. Souma Records thought it was time to re-release this monument on a high-quality vinyl format, together with a repress of "Enta Omri" (SMR 003LP), another classic song by Souma. Vintage inside out-sleeve; printed inner sleeve with liner notes.
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LP
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BEWITH 062LP
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LP version. 140 gram vinyl; includes four-page insert with photos and liner notes. Three emotional years in the making, Be With and Efficient Space present Steve Hiett's Girls In The Grass. Pressed alongside the long-awaited reissue of his one-shot masterpiece, Down On The Road By The Beach (BEWITH 001CD/061LP), these ten Balearic soul instrumentals are of equal necessity; unrivalled beauty rescued from the fashion photographer-guitarist Paris Tapes (1986-1997). While recordings unintended for release should often be approached with caution, this is a rare case of unheard material being assembled as an indispensable and coherent piece. Girls In The Grass is something super special. The light and shadow that defines Hiett's music is arguably more compelling here. It speaks to us in a language that feels profound, yet entirely comforting and familiar. Girls In The Grass reintroduces Hiett's languid electric blues boogie, crafted on Saturday afternoons with fellow art director Simon Kentish. Kentish would cook, pour some wine, and then utilize his arsenal of technology. He'd dial up a chugging rhythm, together with some ambient pads or keyboard textures, and anchor the weightless gauze of Hiett's six-stringed touch. Hiett's guitar sings with the same clean, crisp tone as Down On The Road, animated by a carefree weekend groove. Unlike his defining album which was boiled under pressure, these subsequent sessions have all the time in the world. The naïve melodies chart a missing link between Vini Reilly's ventures into electronica and Booker T, sounding like sun-warped takes on wordless, fractured non-hits from his heroes The Beach Boys. Remastered from the previously unreleased, original masters by Simon Francis. These private moments are adorned with Hiett's singular photography and feature typically idiosyncratic liner notes from Mikey IQ Jones.
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2LP
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FOX 003LP
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Repressed. One of the strangest and most enigmatic groups in the history of rock n' roll, Les Rallizes Denudes, also known as Hadaka no Rallizes or Hadaka no Rarizu, were a Japanese experimental rock band that is often cited as a pioneering force of the noise rock movement. The story of the band is as strange and difficult as the music they made and although much of the tale is shrouded in mystery, everything apparently begins around Kyoto's radical anti-establishment communes of the late 1960s, where androgynous frontman Takashi Mizutani formed the group in November 1967 while attending Kyoto University. Hard facts are in thin supply and the band's name employs complex punning that essentially equates to "Fucked Up and Naked" in Japanese, a slang reference to being high on drugs. Inspired by the Velvet Underground and other groups employing prominent, overamplified guitar, the band's music was typically based on repetitive rhythmic patterns bolstered by Mizutani's heavily distorted lead guitar, though the poor sound quality of early demos apparently turned Mizutani away from studio recordings, rendering much of their output in the form of live bootlegs, supplanted by the occasional leaked studio demo. Early performances were given as accompaniment to avant-garde theater groups, though the group was soon deemed too loud to be a mere accompaniment, and membership fluctuated frequently, with Mizutani being the only constant, though he retreated from public view following the 1970 Red Army hijacking of Japan Airlines flight 351, with the assistance of original Rallizes bass player, Moriaki Wakabayashi, who subsequently fled to North Korea; the band continued to sporadically record and perform under various guises until 1997. The two versions of There's No Heaven Like Hell, presented here, was recorded on April 1, 1975 at Rallizes House in Fussa, a small town to the west of Tokyo, joining Mizutani with keyboardist/guitarist Taisuke Morishita's experimental group Be, originally known as Yellow. The first version takes the form of an epic slow drone, featuring Mizutani on acid guitar, backed only by Morishita's pulsating synthesizer lines; the second version is in full marathon mode, an hour-long dirge that sees the spacey duo joined by drummer Shunichiro Shoda and a plodding bassist in the latter portion.
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LP
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KH 9090LP
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Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, live from the Theatre De L'Olympia, Paris, France October 26th, 1968. This was the final night of the Mothers' 1968 European tour and finds the band pulling out all the stops to deliver an outstanding show. Broadcast on Radio France, its highlights include one of the best renditions of "King Kong" they ever gave and a superb "Hungry Freaks, Daddy", as well as some typically acidic repartee from Zappa. The entire Radio France broadcast is presented here, digitally remastered, with background notes and images.
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2LP
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AUK 004LP
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2019 repress ...black vinyl. Gatefold 180 gram double vinyl version. Truth in advertising: the Brian Jonestown Massacre's sophomore album does, as promised, spring forth from the Rolling Stones' long-underrated 1967 masterpiece Their Satanic Majesties Request, copping not only Mick and Keith's leering bad-boy attitude but also their rock-and-roll-circus spirit. Opening with the brilliant "All Around You (Intro)," a tongue-in-cheek guide to the mind-altering journey ahead, the record is a kaleidoscopic, drug-fueled freakout -- like the Stones' namesake album, Second Request is painted by Eastern drones and psychedelic tangents, each track bubbling with dozens of sound effects including sitars, mellotrons, farfisas, didgeridoos, tablas, congas, and glockenspiels. Travelling through the past, darkly, the Massacre arrives on the other side unscathed; their music is too rich to be merely retro, and too knowing to be merely slavish -- the Stones themselves haven't made a record this strong or entertaining in years.
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LP
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WWSLP 024LP
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LP version. Wewantsounds present a reissue of Ryuichi Sakamoto's first solo album Thousand Knives Of, originally released in 1978 on the sought-after Better Days label. Save for a small-scale release in 1982, this is the first time the album is being released on vinyl outside of Japan. 1978 was a key year for Japanese music. Haruomi Hosono, one of the country's most innovative musicians had just formed Yellow Magic Orchestra pursuing the sonic experimentation he had started with his solo album Paraiso. The album, recorded between December '77 and January '78, featured both Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi. Hosono quickly invited both musicians to form YMO but before the group could release their first album, Sakamoto entered the Nippon Columbia studios in April 1978 with a plan. Sakamoto had become an in-demand session musician after studying composition at the Tokyo University of Art and had played on many key albums of the time, such as Taeko Ohnuki's Sunshower (1977) and Tatsuro Yamashita Spacy (1977). This led to an invitation by Hosono to feature on Paraiso. A penchant for avant-garde and improvisation had gotten Sakamoto interested in electronic music early on, and with Thousand Knives he decided to get Hideki Matsutake on board as he had mastered the art of synth programming following a stint with Electronic Music pioneer Isao Tomita. Thousand Knives took several months to record as Sakamoto would be busy during the day with his session work and would only record at night. Named after Belgian-born poet Henri Michaux's description of a mescaline experience, the album is a reflection on how synthesizer technology might come to change the face of music. The first side conceived as a long suite opens with the title track and a recitation of the Mao Zedong poem "Jinggang Mountain" filtered through a vocoder, before morphing into a mid-tempo synthpop instrumental. It is followed by "Island Of Woods", a ten-minute track buzzing with insect-like synth sounds. Side one ends with "Grasshoppers", a beautiful acoustic piano melody underlined by a subtle synthesizer soundscape. Side two opens with "Das Neue Japanische Elektronische Volkslied", acknowledging the influence of the German sound spearheaded by Kraftwerk. The track features a mid-tempo metronomic beat skillfully intertwined with a Japanese folk sounding melody. The album ends with two catchy up-tempo synthpop tunes in the form of "Plastic Bamboo" and "The End Of Asia", which both became staples of YMO's and Sakamoto's live shows. YMO's sound included various influences from its three members but there is no denying Thousand Knives paved the way for the group's Computer Music sound. Remastered from the original tapes by renowned producer and engineer Seigen Ono.
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