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PP 063LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Penultimate Press presents a global collaboration that harnesses earth with combined members and atmospheres of Santiago, Chile, Salsipuedes, Argentina, Melbourne, Australia and Berlin, Germany. El Jardín de las Matemáticas (The Garden of Mathematics) was written and recorded by Alvaro Daguer (Glorias Navales/A Full Cosmic Sound/ETCS Records), Pablo Picco (Bardo Todol/Bolinga Everest Records), Tomás Salvatierra (Glorias Navales) and Mark Harwood (Penultimate Press). Utilizing Chinese drum, ocarina, shakers, flutes, whistles, violin, bells, acoustic guitar, gongs, clarinet, n'vike, harmonium, Korg ms-20, moceño, tapes. owl flute and more, The Garden of Mathematics is an alluring, alien, bizarre, colorful, curious, fascinating, peculiar, romantic and astonishing recording where beauty coexists with unusual atmospheres in an exotic exploration of sound and song. Navigating waters possibly traversed by Angus Maclise, Pygmy Unit or Charlie Nothing the nine tracks the Garden brings forth take the listener on a journey through sound and song via nature and the expansive mind. The results are a wild mix of folk, ethnomusicology, musique concrete and psychedelia.
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PP 058LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Maths Balance Volumes follow up their acclaimed 2020 release A Year Closer with a further and sturdier bucket of songs scraped from the dust of being. Haunted, fragile and beautiful, this is music that explores the ghostly zones of its own creation. The loneliness and vulnerability that unfolds with the opening cut "Stay" lays the way for exploration of sound and song as simple melodic guitar and organ whilst the subsequent and subsequent "Janet's Song" weaves these elements alongside the sound pebbles entering a water. This is evocative music made thoroughly by humans with the most basic of tools. Unafraid to step away from their screens Maths Balance Volumes stroll with breezy resistance to the current thread of platform regurgitation. "Tonight" flips the song on its side as a barnstorming melange of concrete hustle made from shakers, animals, humans and beelzebub knows what. Egyptian "Wedding" sounds like Still House Plants if they operated off the depths of a rotating well. Forming a round is a dusty scratchy heartbreaker that encapsulates the hybrid Smithsonian Folkways label approach that only MBV do. There is something enormously human about Maths Balance Volumes take on underground experimental music, one far more so than the human pitched music made in the mainstream today. In the 20th Century it was the other way around.
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2LP
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PP 060X-LP
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$39.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Pancrace is an ensemble comprising French, British and Austrian performers. The members being Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel, and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace has "a unique, fully formed vision that combines improvisation, composition, eclectic instrumentation and a church's massive pipe organ." Pancrace's latest double LP Papotier is the third panel of a tryptic after Pancrace (2017) and Fluid Hammer (2019). The ensemble knew at some point from their previous LP they would have to go back to church and repent confronting a Silbermann 18th century baroque organ with their custom-made modular midi pipe organ: the "Organous". After nearly 18 months of lockdown the quintet finally met in Bouxwiller Alsace a few miles away from Dangolsheim where Pancrace first formed in 2015. During a residency Pancrace had full access to the Protestant church with its humongous Silbermann pipe organ famous for its "human voice" stop. Ironically the album title Papotier came up before the covid era. Ironic because a "papotier" is a mask or to be very specific a grotesque face carved in wood, initially rigged to the lower part of the organ casing. There are only very few of these fancy oddities left in France and around the world. After months of feeling gagged during lockdown having a "papotier" as an amulet was somewhat liberating and greatly contributed to opening up the Pancrace sessions to the exploration of human voice. Relearning how to breathe, listening to the human membrane, questioning the nature of air all within the confined space of a 14th century church were the essential acts that compose the pieces. One can consider this album as a phenomenological investigation into voice articulation trying to emulate the birth of a vocable like von Kempelen's speaking machine who also used rudimentary organ modules to mimic human babbling. Essentially understanding what a mouth is to us to the point where, when all the pipes are blowing, they make a hell of a noise.
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2CD
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PP 062CD
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$20.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Colonia Dignidad was the settlement of a German evangelical sect. After being prosecuted for child abuse in Germany, the group fled to Chile in 1961. Like similar religious sects, it was characterized by the outward appearance of a unified, godly community with well-tempered cultural activities and social welfare, but inwardly and in its environment by oppression, sexual abuse, and exploitation. In the 1970s, it unquestioningly inserted itself into Pinochet's regime of terror, aiding in the imprisonment and torture of political prisoners, weapons production, etc. Since the end of the 1980s, there has been a legal reappraisal of the C.D.'s crimes in Chile. Its successor organization makes a living from tourism. The C.D. project uses, on the one hand, a series of documentary recordings of contemporary witnesses, and on the other, a set of melodic improvisations (MIDI files), improvised in the spirit of the impressions of terror, tension, claustrophobia and fear associated with the Colonia. CD 2 directly reflects this atmosphere. CD 1 on the other hand, is characterized by the contradictory breadth of the statements found after the dissolution of the sect: Denial of atrocities to glorification of the C.D. by leaders who returned to Germany against the professed traumas of formerly abused inmates and exploited community workers. For this purpose, the eyewitness recordings were sound-modified to a considerable extent. The MIDI files were played back with a variety of virtual instruments (piano, guitar, sax, turntable, lung machine, barrel organ, synths, etc.) in a multitude of modifications (speed, pitches, loops, harmonic and tonal variations), so that the 11 pieces from CD 1 and the 16 pieces from CD 2 each represent a closely interwoven overall composition.
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PP 065LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Dan Melchior has a wild history, brain and catalogue. Penultimate Press adds to it. This is Melchior's first piano recording. The reverb is natural, as the piano sits in a large, mostly empty room. Hill Country Piano is the result of a human music box mind brimming with many a corner somehow aligning with chambers still being told. Melchior does not play the piano in any formal way, as you can probably tell. He played and recorded the piano, with simple repetitive parts, whilst listening to previous recordings on headphones. Then the magic happens. The gentle introduction of a banjo on "
"Sparrow Song" paints the reality of an America now lost. The percussion on the self-titled track unravels a psychedelic gamelan piano duo residing in the now. It didn't start out that way, it never does, but this slow burning trip around a mind/world happened to come into formulation just as an interest in Pascal Comelade was coming into play. All original piano was recorded in Austin. Dan Melchior is from London, England. He has lived in various cities in the USA for the last 24 years. Melchior's resume is as unique as it is exciting and diverse. Having cut his teeth in the land of garage rock as a collaborator with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly his vision takes sharp twists landing on Graham Lambkin's strange and beautiful experimental label Kye with two records which broke not only the mold of himself but that of the song itself. Melchoir is a musician with a voluminous discography which embraces many different forms of expression, from song-based rock to pure textural explorations. His music has evolved significantly, to become a distant entity from some of his earlier blues-based work, showing a definite influence of more experimental bands such as The Homosexuals and The Fall, and some absurdist elements which have led to comparisons to compatriot exponents of that genre, Vivian Stanshall and Syd Barrett. Always experimenting with form in an original manner avoiding any inherent genre anchor. Blues is referenced and extended, musique concrete is found embedded in the song.
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CD
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PP 055CD
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$14.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Far from the extended still lifes and mises en abîmes of their acclaimed Penultimate Press debut A Sunset for Walter, Noetinger & Pateras' 15 Coruscations weaves frequencies and stirs data into an agitated series of deft psychoacoustic miniatures. Employing electronics as a deformed mirror reflecting joyous lacerations and interweavings, 15 Coruscations borrows from both brut and skilled musical practices, emerging from the current despair to blister light across the moribund horizontalities of post-surveillance musical product. Jérôme Noetinger (Marseille, 1966) is one of the most respected composers/performers of electronic music working today. Discovering the ReVox B77 as a powerful tool for live electro-acoustic creation in the mid-1980s, he has developed a singular performance language unmatched in agility and invention. Anthony Pateras (Melbourne/Naarm, 1979) works at an evolving nexus of notation, improvisation, electro-acoustics + keyboard instruments. Active since the late '90s as both a composer of concert music and independent bandleader, he has created a unique body of work across multiple genres and contexts. Noetinger & Pateras' working relationship began in 2009 in the Thymolphthalein quintet, extending through to the development of the six-channel tape part for Pateras' percussion sextet Beauty Will Be Amnesiac Or Will Not Be At All (Immediata, 2017). Establishing their duo in 2018 with A Sunset For Walter, they have performed across Europe in both piano/tape and pureelectronic configurations. 15 Coruscations is their latest testament to their quest for the unheard, deploying tape, computer, samplers, garbage, environmental recordings, lo-fi electronics, hi-fi circuitry and a deep love of all things concrète.
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Cassette
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PPCS 009CS
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$12.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
"DOG FM is the debut release by the London-based duo of field recordist Oliver Chapman and poet Phoebe Eccles. Combining Chapman's seemingly banal snapshots of a family car journey with Eccles' fantastic, reflective spoken verse, DOG FM deftly transports the listener through a series of uncanny and oft-times bizarre audio travelogs where tension and expanse alternate to disorientating effect. By exploring the dynamics of a typical close-quarters family exchange, and with repeated use of 'canine' annotation, Chapman reimagines the car as both a confine and a means of escape, with Eccles' verse acting as thematic glue, bonding memory, dream and textural reference to the road map. DOG FM brings a multifaceted lens over a commonplace event, exploding our expectations, and allowing us to surrender the wheel -- and our fate -- to kismet outcomes." --Graham Lambkin 2025
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CD
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PP 056CD
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$14.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 6/6/2025
Polish composer and sound artist Robert Piotrowicz presents his first work for Penultimate Press, one which outlines an uncanny sound world with a series of fictional organ pieces. Whilst resembling a pipe organ alongside other acoustic sources all material is strictly synthetic. The impression of air being swept through the bellows -- false. The spatial organization suggesting it was recorded in large physical space -- false! The long middle solo passage in "Noumen" must have been performed by some kind of wind instrument, no? False. All of these are elaborate tricks of the ear. The music of Afterlife is an artificial construct, one that is not able to be played on a traditional 12-tone organ, especially as one encounters a tuning based on 1/3-tone intervals. The result are three compositions which comprise a rather unique harmonic composition. One that comes across both familiar and foreign. Afterlife is an ambitious exploration of sound modelling and sound manipulation. Manipulation of both the tools deployed and to the listener with regards to the synthesis of acoustic deception. The result is a bold and dramatic shimmering mass of music. A fluid and visceral audio rendering with sheets of colorful sound pouring around the listener. Like much of Piotrowicz's output this is more extraordinary exploration of the constituent relationship between harmonic and frequency components whilst investing a deep engagement with the synthetic as acoustic ruse.
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PP 054CD
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Compendium coffin closer from Pat Klassen's Barn Sour project. A project where the batshit crazy defies the beautiful whilst relishing in unease. Animals appear as phantasms, humans expel intense emotional states. Borderline music and borderline funny this is not for the faint of heart. Soap & Glue collages material from all six Barn Sour releases on a variety of labels, Staighre, Careful Catalog, 72 Fold Mane, etc. alongside a small sprinkling of exclusive material. The final Barn Sour release is the ultimate Barn Sour release and all you need to engage with one of the most twisted outfits to emerge from the underground in recent years.
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2CD
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PP 053CD
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Penultimate Press releases one of the most audacious and unrelenting entries in the entire minimal cannon. A collection of recordings from a true American eccentric maverick pioneer, Sam Esh. Originally available as double-cassette in tiny editions on Mike Rep Hummel's OldAge/NoAge label these are now bound together on a double-CD set which does not interrupt the unrelenting creativity of Mr. Esh. Picture Moondog taking a turn for the far worse morphing into a way further crazed Legendary Stardust Cowboy who eschews any song tradition for an unrelenting hypnotic acoustic hurricane complete with glossolalia vocals. This is raw primitive repetitive street blues, an acoustic freight train barreling through your brain.
"It was Ron House that first steered me to the music of Sam Esh circa 1990. Sammy would bring his self-made cassettes to Usedkids Records and Ron thought it would be something that would interest me, which indeed it did. I had a cassette-only label I started in 1985 called OldAge/NoAge which had just started to garner interest in the outside world thanks to a RARE cassette review in Byron Coley's Underground column for Spin Magazine . . . Sam often sang and played in drug induced states hence this unique lingual hodgepodge streams direct from his altered temporal reality. A large part of it has to do with a tragic event in Sam's life 50+ years ago. He and his wife were in San Francisco during the late '60s and imbibed in most of the indulgences that time and place was known for. They 'took a trip' to a remote area of Baja Mexico, and during an extended acid trip Sam caught dysentery, a bacterial disease that results from contaminated food or water. Being he was in a rural undeveloped area at the time, and under the influence of said drugs Sam very nearly died from lack of proper medical attention, and was severely affected cognitively by this near-death experience. The result of this trauma was a cognitive state that has ever since required medications psychotropic medications that do not mesh well with alcohol which Sam has been on and off for decades. Regardless Sam liked to drink, and when he did he developed something of a 'Jeckyl-Hyde' personality as a result. Sam was never violent or antisocial, but often quite difficult to relate to for most people . . . Through six months of amazing shows (I drummed for the band he recruited to back him up called Hard Black Thing) Sam was quite charismatic on stage. We recorded the Incendiary release 'Sam Esh & Hard Black Thing / Montezuma Baby Duck' released on Siltbreeze Records from '92..." --Mike "Rep" Hummel
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2LP
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PP 015LP
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Following the first ever vinyl reissues of Aurore and Royaume/Aimant + Aimant, Penultimate Press make available the final part of this extraordinary trilogy. Bleu is the final gesture and culmination of this period of creation where poésie and la nature form a magical alliance that resonates as an alchemical wedding. Having the conviction that Bleu was the ultimate arc based on the purity of natural sound and poetry, leaning towards a mystical spiritual search towards their own souls the band moved into comradery and collaboration with friends and ideals such as Lydia Lunch and Alan Vega.
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LP
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PP 051LP
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The four pieces on this record all date from the late 1980s and predate any officially released material: "Cords" was entirely realized in Chicago, and the others realized, or at least finished, upon arriving in Seattle in 1990. The pieces were originally privately released on cassette in micro-editions of five to seven copies and given to friends. In 2009-2010, Petri Supplies, which had a complete set of those early privately released tapes, rereleased some of that material (including these four pieces) in small-run bootleg cassette editions.
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LP
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PP 050LP
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Offering is Mark Harwood's second LP and is an album of songs about geography and placement and the way people choose to move across the surface of our planet. His simple tools of acoustic guitar, voice, tapes and bric-a-brac give Mark the freedom and clarity of vision to offer hope in song to those who choose to hear him. Offering is more than we deserve in these lousy times -- it is calm and it is forgiving, but it is also sharp and can cut. It is wise and all-inclusive but Offering is never blind and sees the world as truth, as if on a TV screen. Recorded in Berlin 2021 and mixed/edited in London by Graham Lambkin, Offering is only that, but it asks to be accepted. Recorded in Berlin, Winter/Spring 2021. All music/words Mark Harwood. Mixed/edited by Graham Lambkin. Mastered by Bhob Rainey. Artwork by Graham Lambkin and Mark Harwood "Guillaume-en-Égypte".
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PP 049LP
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Tim Goss (The Shadow Ring, Call Back The Giants) returns with his first outing under his birth name. Afterfly is a mature and compelling work that observes life as a set of repeating patterns, no matter the apparent differences everything has already happened. After one fly comes another and another and another ad infinitum. You have the face of an old man, catch me if you can. Afterfly serves as an initiation into a more thorough overview of Tim's current practice followed with a book of recent illustrations to be released on Penultimate Press in 2022. Comes with a booklet with a story to be read alongside Fly 4 (merely a rehash of the conquistadors, life forever repeating with no obvious improvement). Edition of 300.
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PP 048LP
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"... The city of Mankato, Minnesota has been the steady gathering point for the band since its beginnings. Mankato had always provided an ominous backdrop: built on stolen Dakota land, the city was the site of the largest mass execution in US history, when 38 Dakota prisoners were hanged on in 1862 in a straightforward act of genocide. But in their music of the past twelve years, Maths Balance Volumes has made music in and of a hometown overshadowed and unsettled by its history, music for a world in which things have never been okay. Traditional American folk genres seep in at times, but never as the incarnation of a living popular culture -- only as ghosts or unliving effigies. A Year Closer tells you in its title what its theme is: approaching death, time ticking away and getting closer with each track of the record. We are told in the first song that our protective mask isn't working, warned by the storm clouds and a ticking bedroom clock in 'Dark Skies'. We hear fears of death approaching in the sad words exchanged by lovers who see they will run out of time, or already have, as in 'We Had Time' or the romantic lament of 'When I Drink.' In 'Work Last Monday,' all of life passes with cold automatism in an 'office apartment,' as a narrator broods over early onset dementia, remembers the details of rituals for respecting the dead, and thinks of how a hole is opening up in reality itself. The singer of 'Over the Hill' isn't apparently afraid of growing older and becoming a 'man,' but only leaks a few disjointed details of his plans for disappearing, collapsing, turning into a tree, and finding a home. 'Angel of Mercy' tries to resurrect the Christian promise of a life after death, anxiously asking if anyone is up there waiting for us after the oblivion of this world. But these are just the moments when A Year Closer speaks in words clear and audible enough to be understood. The giddy, agitated voice of 'The Price' speaks only to itself in a private language, hidden away in a tin can somewhere. Musically, A Year Closer is a series of pieces that make symphonies out of separate processes of decay and disappearance: unidentified cracking and creaking objects, broken equipment, and lost melodies that seem to have escaped other songs and wandered into the room looking for a place to hide..." --Paul Buchholz Includes A4 insert; edition of 283.
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PP 047LP
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"A Perfect Punctual Paradise Under My Own Name is a two-part audio drama that charts the life of a middle-aged Australian man in the throes of an existential crisis, brought about through a series of unforeseen circumstances that collectively threaten to undermine the fundamentals of his existence. It's a work that explores the sound of a mind collapsing under pressure, where lucidity is traded for mania, and eloquence reduced to a scattershot of primal rambling and abstract self-reflection. It's man-as-animal, cowering in a cage, teeth exposed, as vulnerable as it is unpredictable. It's the sad musings of a failed musician turned stand-up comic, left alone in his squalid flat to reflect on life's undelivered promise with only the constant playback of his odd routines for distraction. It's a palimpsest of derelict ideas and unloved skits, etched onto the tattered skin of Salmon Run and worn before an audience of no one. It's a series of wrong turns and dead ends, a puzzle, a game, a confession, but above all else, A Perfect Punctual Paradise Under My Own Name is the greatest record Astor never made." --Graham Lambkin Edition of 300.
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PP 046LP
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Penultimate Press present the debut full-length from Komare, a UK outfit based somewhere between south-eastern edges of London borough and the Swale. Komare is Dominic Goodman and Peter Blundell who also make up two thirds of Mosquitoes. Somewhat of an estranged cousin to Mosquitoes take on re-ruffled rock, Komare resides more as a dub influenced exploration of the outer fringes, creating a thick vibrational delusion. Somehow like Zweistein mixing a Robert Ashley record, Komare is an exceptional space and time stretching disorientation. In the process of rendering reality redundant Komare gleefully lead the listener into a netherworld of holographic, hallucinatory audio. Shades of Monoton and Pyrolator may also be detected as can the impression of intoxicants wafting around the mixing console. This is a state where humans and machines, though present, are smeared of all traceable attributes. The depths of the journey move further into a netherworld as the album progresses/disintegrates. Not necessarily one for the beauty seekers, Komare is an extremely deep trip concocted by two unbridled creative crusaders. Clear vinyl in a screen-printed wrap around sleeve; edition of 400.
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PP 005CS
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soft tissue is a collaboration between Glasgow-based artists Feronia Wennborg and Simon Weins. Penultimate Press present their debut release which has grown out of a collaborative process where recordings from everyday life rub alongside experiments with analog feedback. Exploring the sonic relationships between physical objects, pre-recorded material, and digital processing the duo plays within networks of micro amplification, blurring the boundaries between conscious interventions and environmental sounds. soft tissue welcomes you to a subtle serving of subliminal sound, both baffling and bewitching.
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PP 045LP
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Literally taking off where the acclaimed Precious Waste in our Wake LP (PP 041LP, 2019) finished off, London based outfit Triple Negative return with another exemplary amplified jigsaw puzzle. The playback of this reality is garnished with humor, bedlam, beauty, and a robust fear of the predictable. As payback for your acknowledgment our international line-up delivers a disparate mix of genres and histographies rendered into a devious dish of rhythm, song, balladry, and nerve. This is Not This Heat. A.Kostis/Kostas Bezos's "Stin Ypoga" (1930) is the template for "Bad Emotional Investments" whilst the haunting "Fine Cargo Lacquer" takes flight from the morbidly on point novel The Death Ship by B. Traven (1926). God Bless the Death Drive could be construed as a compass to navigate the wayward wonder we inhabit or it can just be enjoyed. This second full-length steers into scathed realms of everyday junk and poignant punk, all pressed down on the lowest quality ethylene and chlorine. Triple Negative return with another stamped digest of hope as joke, noise and song, rollicking rhythm and seasick soul. High gloss sleeve with printed comic book inner sleeve; Edition of 500.
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PP 040LP
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Penultimate Press (UK) and Aimless Wander (Australia) present the debut album from Brisbane's Pious Faults. With Old Thread this young Australian group have crafted a remarkably lucid and original vinyl debut. A sonic whirlwind of wonderfully deconstructed hardcore punk -- songs stripped of inheritable form, leaping from stone to leaf to puddle in a unique, abstract manner. Pious Faults careen through nine tracks on this 45rpm 12″, balancing short, disaffected hardcore punk blasts with an experimental urgency, as referenced across tracks like the massive "Worship the Surface." The tense physical interplay between instruments feeds powerfully beneath uninhibited, wonder-full snarls that depict a landscape of the destructive external and a keyhole view into the bruised internal. Experience is exposed here by Pious Faults. Watch on and see no mind tied to its own leap. This record is born solely out of love, amusement, and all the motions that follow in their wake. Tracked and mixed by Luke Walsh, mastered by Mikey Young. UK/Australian pressing limited to 300 copies, includes booklet.
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PP 044LP
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Pancrace is a quintet from France comprising Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel, and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace began with a residence in 2015 at the Saint Pancrace church in Dangolsheim where the instrument inventor Léo Maurel resides. Pancrace's debut self-titled double-LP was released by Penultimate Press in 2017 and ended up on The Wire's best releases of that year. After the first record and subsequent tour the band were despondent that the main character of their story, the church organ, was not there. A series of meetings and chance encounters resulted in the band developing their own organ which they named "Organous". The approach of Pancrace is based on the physicality of sound, a choice of specific tone qualities within a given spatial contextual awareness. Therefore, the manufacturing and usage of the musical instrument are constantly reassessed. Consequently, playing with the mechanical aspect of the instruments is central to their musical approach and narrative. Designing an unbound pipe organ -- though emulating some of the mechanical idiomatics of the initial Pancrace church organ -- seemed the obvious way to gain more spatial control over a vast choice of places. This allowed them to approach their music from a totally new angle and work from within the organ. The results of these experiments are captured here, on their second opus, The Fluid Hammer. This new beast of an instrument, somewhere between a spider or an octopus, led Pancrace to compose from the frontality of the instrument as well as with the interactive tone possibilities brought by other instruments. With its six panels display (two bass registers, two treble, and a pair of crumhorns) the organ projects sound like the musique concrèt Acousmonium giving the listener a spatialized perception of a wide range of tones and harmonics. Fluid Hammer is the result of the research and experiments undertaken with the Organous and other instruments. Fluid Hammer is a more rhythmic and percussive affair than its predecessor, bringing to mind the experiments of Conlon Nancarrow as well as fairground barrel organs. The wide range of polyrhythmic patterns generates a constant tension between the machine and the human play. Music for Organous (spatialized and MIDI-controlled pipe organ), Uilleann pipes, Pi-synth, piano, motorised bow, boîte à bourdons, gaida, Baroque violin, hurgy toys, toy piano, componium, bodhran, low whistle, bird calls, AM radio, and shaker.
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7"
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PP 703EP
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Who Will Listen to Aches That Everyone Has is a telaesthetic document of disquiet, distance, and disintegrating memory. Careful mantels, rumors of summer, a nocturne, the black inside; Septembers wither, sentiments wane, the chamber-band plays. MB - violin, piano, spokes, hotel bell, lighthouse bell; LR - cello; ML - pianette; LF - cutlery; SM - silhouette. Edition of 150.
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7"
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PP 704EP
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Nether neither either ether [C.B.]. Bad bad grace back for a death-affirming day. Hard-to-reach claimants born in the wrong place (Bayern Tāmaki Makaurau, Arkhangel district), put out too tender and possessed by spite. 3 x negation = 15 years Philosophie Queen, 18 Meanstricken, meaning totgeschlagen! No end to the keratodermic bouzouki, knock-off glock, plastic reed, Tascam Spiel. There's nothing not superficial about it. Edition of 150.
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PP 041LP
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Debut full-length from London-based three-piece originally hailing from New Zealand (Matthew Hyland), Germany (Anja Büchele), and Romania (Dennis Debitsev). Precious Waste In Our Wake (full title written nowhere: "The Fucking Terrible Receding Shapes, We Shed Precious Waste In Our Wake") is an endlessly beautiful, dense, and chaotic crawl through so many forms it can be difficult to ascertain what is actually at play here. Ostensibly a "rock" band carved from the same plank as previous outfits Philosophie Queen, The Mean Streaks, etc., Triple Negative have appeared in a somewhat complacent London with their wildly original blend of chaos shifting alongside the suggestion of a maelstrom of politics, spite, and humor. Bloodclaat Orange, Fatna Bent Lhoucine, The Associates, Aby Ngana Diop, Royal Trux, Brigitte Fontaine/Areski, and Babyfather are all somehow wished into the scenario, either suggestively, explicitly quoted or manifesting as some malformed degree of inspiration. Precious Waste features bloody-minded Schlagzeugspiel by Stephen Robinson (Aufgehoben) and Rohan P. Thomas (The Mean Streaks, Sigma Editions) with guest verses by Maria Callas/P.P. Pasolini, Marlene Dietrich, and actually existing urban foxes of Northeast and South London. Also contains "Destroyer", the first song written by Cameron Bain for The Mean Streaks (2000. complete lyric sheet: "Destroyer!"), followed immediately by Dr Moreau-style fusion of Herman Melville and Peter Perrett in glass-all-void "Immigrant Song". Also, bass sound of the miraculous Stylophone Beatbox, plus Casio MT 45 psychick dancehall, and three pairs of strings, not four, on the bouzouki. Following on from the quietly released Towers, Open, Fire/Looking For Business 7" towards the dying end of 2018 (PP 704EP), Precious Waste In Our Wake is a malediction forbidding mourning, a portfolio of old pathologies folded into a sleek new nervous wreck. Precious Waste In Our Wake exists as a hulking ride of audacious rhythmic passages swaying alongside the meanest of melodies suddenly swept over by flights most fragile. High gloss sleeve with insert.
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PP 042CD
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Sholto Dobie is an artist and performer born in Edinburgh and living in London. His solo output is marked by live performances that are characteristically delicate, evocative, and absurd. He uses his own instruments, crudely assembled from materials such as reeds, whistles, bin bags, fans, and air compressors, alongside loose performative structures, to respond to places and situations. He plays in Al Fresco (with Lia Mazzari and Tom White) and regularly collaborates with Ben Pritchard, he has also worked with Ashley Paul. He continues to run the event series Muckle Mouth which he founded in 2014. Mark Harwood is a musician and performer born in Ferntree Gully and living in London. His output veers towards uncanny audio both delicate and unsettling whilst his performances rely on teasing out and playing with the mood embedded within any given environment and audience situation. He has collaborated with Graham Lambkin, Aine O'Dwyer, Timo Van Luijk, and MP Hopkins and runs the Penultimate Press label which brings forth this very release. The Blue Horse is a beautiful strange journey through a landscape where little is familiar but all are welcome. Made from predominantly acoustic sources, The Blue Horse gracefully hisses, puffs, wheezes, whirls, and clunks its way through a series of distinct musical and non-musical environments. Sounding both at times like a dark and stormy night, and "an elephant trying to get laid", the ambiguous style of The Blue Horse conceals the artists' unsettling, fantastical, and quietly humorous sensibility. Whilst The Blue Horse lacks any obvious precursors, its elemental and environmental leanings potentially tread a path initially mapped out by Moniek Darge and Godfried-Willem Raes in the works coming out of the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium in the mid '80s. The Blue Horse is the debut recording from Sholto Dobie and Mark Harwood and features a guest appearance from cellist Judith Hamann.
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