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viewing 1 To 15 of 15 items
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CD
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BAY 103CD
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"They come from the trees. When the city encroaches on the forest, nature finds a way to reclaim what is rightfully hers. Snapped Ankles arrive as messengers. On their debut album Come Play The Trees, they hold up a mirror to us. They're here to plant the seed. They're here to have a good time, but never at the expense of the natural habitat. This band emerges from the woods clutching an album that feels simultaneously modern and ancient. This is dance music once the computers finally fail us. Log synths, bass guitar and sticks on taut animal-skin form fearsome primal rhythms. Fuzz guitars rub up against dirty, rolling, arpeggiated synthesizers to ignite wild white-noise fires. Forest folklore passed down through generations has made its way onto these tracks. Subjects veer from dystopian futures to Swedish flat-pack furniture, from the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei Tarkovsky to throwaway YouTube comments. High art and cultural detritus are all fair game -- a brave new world indeed."
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LP+CD
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BAY 099LP
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LP version. Includes CD. "Cistern is the second album by prodigiously talented multi-instrumentalist and composer Jherek Bischoff. Gloriously cinematic, these modern orchestral recordings pull at the heartstrings. It comes hot on the heels of Strung Out In Heaven, a moving string quartet tribute to David Bowie, conceived with Amanda Palmer and featuring the significant talents of Anna Calvi, John Cameron Mitchell and Neil Gaiman. A prolific and divergent collaborator, working with the likes of David Byrne, The Kronos Quartet, Caetano Veloso, Xiu Xiu and Australian star Missy Higgins, the real Bischoff can be difficult to pin down, but Cistern is an intensely personal work. It is intrinsically linked to the space in which it was conceived, born from time spent improvising in an empty, two-million-gallon underground water tank. The environs forced Bischoff to slow down, to reflect, to draw on his childhood growing up on a sailing boat?an unexpected journey of rediscovery, from the city back to the Pacific Ocean via the cistern."
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CD
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BAY 101CD
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"Question: it's the end of the world, how are you going to spend it? Last Evenings on Earth is the apocalyptic second album by Melt Yourself Down, evangelical hawkers of DNA-rearranging post-punk exotica. Snatch your passport and let this hydra-headed serpent take you for a dizzying, continent-hopping voyage around a globe spinning ever more rapidly off its axis. If the band's self-titled debut was a series of feverish nocturnal visions beamed from a sub-Saharan desert where voodoo spirits were raised from dusty catacombs, then this is an even headier trip. Here the rhythm has migrated to the city to merge with the pulses and dark currents that run through it."
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LP+CD
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BAY 093LP
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LP+CD
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BAY 051LP
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"The Way the Wind Blows, the incandescent third album from A Hawk And A Hacksaw, was partly recorded in a remote Romanian village with members of the justly admired Balkan folk group, Fanfare Ciocarlia. Songwriter Jeremy Barnes (drums, accordion, vocals) and Heather Trost (violin) joyously and romantically romp through traditional sounds, interspersing passionate musical duets with exuberant brass band stomp."
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CD/BK
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BAY 102CD
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"'For me, there is a great nostalgia and melancholy about this album,' says Franck Vigroux, the composer and sound artist who, along with Perrier Jazz award-winning pianist and composer Matthew Bourne and installation artist Antoine Schmitt, is responsible for the Radioland project. Earlier in 2015, they re-imagined Kraftwerk's 1975 masterpiece Radio-Activity live on the 40th anniversary of its release, using a formidable barrage of analog equipment and live visual imagery. Vigroux and Bourne briefly considered faithfully replicating the original Radio-Activity, whose structural perfection feels hard to improve upon, before almost instantly dismissing the idea. 'I thought, no, we don't want to do it like this,' says Vigroux. 'Why do this? So in the end, we kept the melodies, we kept the main element but then treated it in more of a jazz way.' Jazz is apt. In the end, there are parallels between the way Radioland uses Kraftwerk's original as a jumping off point musically and the journey John Coltrane undertakes on his version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic showtune 'My Favorite Things.' While the melodies and rhythms of the original album are briefly referenced, this is not so much a cover version as a discovery version, a launchpad for analog and digital exploits that is far truer to the spirit of Kraftwerk than mere duplication. After all, it was Kraftwerk who constructed the grid from which myriad adventures in electronic music -- from techno to IDM, house to EDM -- have proceeded. This album is an homage to their vast influence. And so, Radioland weaves its own highly individual mesh of electronics, including blizzards of analog, antique futurist percussive patterns, rewired melodies, processed versions of sounds recently discovered in space by NASA, short- and longwave radio samples, hurricanes of modulated electronics, vocoders ebbing and throbbing; it's like the detritus of 40 years of electropop all colliding at once."
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LP+CD
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BAY 102LP
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Deluxe gatefold LP version. Includes CD. Limited to 1000 copies.
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CD
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BAY 066CD
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"The Leaf Label is proud to present a special reissue of Essie Jain's stunning 2008 album, The Inbetween -- a high point for the songwriter that explores the nuances of intimacy as she never has before. The Inbetween's songs are direct and captivating in their honesty, and serve to reflect the artful beauty that can result from periods of clarity. After the release of 2007's We Made This Ourselves, Jain led her band around the country on tours before returning to New York and jumping back into writing and recording. Having solidified a fellow group of musicians, the British-born Jain drew from current challenges in her life. 'I was in this space where things weren't ready to take their next shape yet -- in some ways it was a really beautiful experience, because you can't force things and it nails you down, and in another, you can see the opening into the next chapter and you can't reach it,' she says. Music serves as a means towards making sense of a situation, and Jain chose to name her record The Inbetween in order to highlight the ephemeral nature of the issues she addresses. Recording with a larger group of musicians, Jain experimented with new ways of orchestrate songs. 'The record had a personality that came about and evolved of its own accord, whereas the first record had a tighter lid on it, because I needed it to be a more internal piece.' The Inbetween features an array of instruments -- French horn, clarinet, Rhodes, cello, trumpet -- but none are more central to the songs than Jain's vocals, which remain the strident and captivating centerpiece of each composition." Includes two bonus tracks.
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CD
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BAY 040CD
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"Copenhagen's Efterklang reach far beyond the expectations of a debut with their ambitious first album for The Leaf Label. The ten-member group's music whispers like thunder, combining glacial strings, febrile electronic rhythms, hushed male-female vocals (reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine) and a Greenlandic choir -- all joining together to a transcendent whole. Tripper was a year in the making, and it captures the intricate majesty of the best film soundtracks and most evocative classical works. Efterklang means 'reverberation' (literally, 'after noise'), but is loosely translated as 'remembrance.' Both definitions capture the band's effect; a strong sense of yearning lies at the heart of their work, while ghosts of aggression linger menacingly along the edges. Tripper breathes with sensations and subtleties and emotional depth, bringing to mind the music of Rachel's, Mum or Mogwai."
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CD
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BAY 038CD
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"Since the release of Martes, Murcof's debut album, Corona has progressed into film soundtracks, recently finishing work for the producers of one of the biggest Mexican films of all time, Amores Perros. He has been commissioned to remix both Kronos Quartet and Miles Davis; will continue to tour extensively in Europe, Japan and North America; and has been nominated for the prestigious Ars Electronica award."
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CD
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BAY 018CD
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"Eardrum's second album, Side Effects, is a testament to the methods of improvisation, Afro beat free jazz, musique concrete and carnival street music as well as the insularity of studio manipulatio. lnspiration comes from Miles Davis, Lee Perry, Fela Kuti, the limitless influence of African music and the aural chaos of London life. Side Effects evokes cinematic imagery, sparked from dark urban and untamed rural counterpoints using talking drums, tone drums, varied effects, and computer programming. Musical textures are in continual flow, a sense of motor drive and movement creating a sensation akin to road hypnosis. Harnessing the talents of diverse musicians from distinct disciplines, Side Effects is the link between the ambient rhythm-scape of Last Light and the dynamic, unpredictable energy of Eardrum's live performances"
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CD
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BAY 015CD
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"Ellis is best known for his collaborations with PJ Harvey (since her first album Dry and co-produced her new album), has recorded two albums as Spleen (Swarfinger) and is also part time member of Laika. The album started life as a piano solo album, gradually evolving into something more orchestrated, taking in music boxes and other wind instruments, as well as cello and classical guitar. Scott Walker has already sampled a track from the album and used it as a backing track on his contribution to the recent Ute Lemper album, and Brian Eno has given the album a personal endorsement."
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12"
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DOCK 018EP
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"Alien funk of the highest order. House music stripped to the bare essentials, recontextualized and rebuilt by one of Cologne's best new mood engineers. Vocal snippets on the lead track courtesy of Dr. Kosmsos. Two B-side tracks exclusive to this release."
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12"
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LEAF PRAGUE2
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"Mega limited sampler EP (300 copies only) featuring versions of tracks taken from their forthcoming debut album on Leaf, The Dirty Rope, plus a bonus track from their last album, Snorkelhouse. Isolated versions of tracks for DJ use (the album is sequenced), Frosty Bardum is an extended version of the track on the album. All tracks previously unavailable."
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CD
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LEAF 12 CD
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Leaf is an interesting UK label, associated somewhat with Lo Recordings (they co-released the stunning Twisted Science album) and these are their first full length releases after a few 12" EPs. Invisible Soundtracks is a compilation of two early 12" releases, plus additional tracks. Featured artists are: Richard Thomas, Zurich, Sons of Silence, Nonplace Urban Field (Incoming! label), Being, Bedouin Ascent, Disjecta (Warp), Twisted Science, Air Miami, Gescom, Seymour/Van Hoen and Vendor Refill. Instrumental tracks of excellent, moody & disruptive ambience, with brief interludes supplied by Richard Thomas. Some of the best tracks (by Twisted Science, Thomas, etc.) drift through loops of purely surrealistic garbage of a lingering quality and well worth soaking in.
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