MUSIC

Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang return with Azure, their third full-length with Ideologic Organ. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contemporary minimalism that slowly unfolds across the album’s length. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have retained a strong presence within the context of North American experimental music since the mid 1990s, each producing some of the most grippingly original music to have appeared over the subsequent years. Kenney is a vocalist and composer internationally regarded for her spellbinding timbres and her in-depth study of oral traditions. Her work takes the form of sound installations, talismanic scores, music for film, electronics, and choir. She released the groundbreaking experimental gamelan album Atria (Sige) in 2015, and has collaborated with Lori Goldston, Holland Andrews, Niloufar Shiri, Tashi Wada, Alvin Lucier, Sarah Davachi, Melati Suryodarmo, Ensemble Nist-Nah, Sunn O))), and numerous others. Kang, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. In addition to creating a striking body of solo works that has traced its way across the last two and half decades - most recently including Sonic Gnostic (Aspen Edities, 2021) and Ajaeng Ajaeng (Ideologic Organ, 2020) - he has played on albums by Bill Frisell, Joe McPhee, Sun City Girls, Ikue Mori, Laurie Anderson, Blonde Redhead, William Hooker, Animal Collective, and numerous others. Since beginning to work together as a duo in the early 2000s, Kang and Kenney have collaborated on sound installations, music for orchestra, choir, and mixed ensembles in addition to releasing numerous widely acclaimed full-lengths: Aestuarium (2005), The Face Of The Earth (2012), Live In Iceland (2013), At Temple Gate (2014), Reverse Tree (2016), Seva (2017), The Cypress Dance (2020). A hypnotic return to the duo’s unique expression of “unison music", Azure is among Kenney and Kang’s most pared-down efforts in more than a decade. Its five compositions are underscored by allusions to the natural world and drifting temporalities, producing a profound calm that rises in arcs of tonal color. The album’s opener, Eclipse, is a composition built around the phrase “eclipse…inside the eclipse”, drawn from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book, Dictee. Leaving aching silences between each utterance - Kenney’s sparse vocal interventions enmeshed with Kang’s delicate viola d’amore tones - the piece’s collective elements produce a remarkable tension bubbling within its spacious calm. The title track, Azure, takes its name from a pun on the Persian "az u" or "from her/him/them”, and is a meditation on the closing rhymes of ghazal 413 from the Divan of Hafez, such as mâh az u, râh az u, and âh az u, “the moon from them, the path from them, the sighs from them”. Imbued with sorrow and release, across the piece Kenney’s vocals and Kang’s viola d’amore weave and dance against a shruti drone, calling forth echoes of lost moments in far off worlds. This is followed by three pieces that incorporate traces of wide-ranging techniques into their forms. Ocean is an experiment with different intensities of pulsation, with inspiration from ring modulation’s use of two simultaneous frequencies, which assemble an enveloping expanse of intoxicating harmonics and vibrato. For Forest Floor, Kenney’s long-tone vocalizations play on the meanings of ‘tan’ or body, and ‘nur’ or light, and the town names of ‘Chegel’ and ‘Khotan’ from ghazal 327 from the Divan of Hafez. Dancing at the boundaries of sorrow and joy, her voice, paced in perfect harmony to Kang’s viola, seems to propose alternate realities of what ecstatic music might be. The album’s final piece draws upon Glenna Cole Allee’s book, Hanford Reach, incorporating photographs and words spoken within by interviewees living or working in the tribal territories of Wanapum, Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and many others on or near the Hanford Nuclear Site in the state of Washington. Among the album’s most dynamic and powerful efforts - drones and pizzicato tones playing counterpoint to Kenney’s soaring vocals - the duo, inexplicably, imbues strong impressions of that landscape. As Suzanne Kite states in the album’s liner notes, with each of Azure’s discrete expressions Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang “ask our ears to hold/stop/wait/listen closely to the edges of knowability, while the world continues around our sounding bodies… [they] draw our ears so closely that if we are not careful, the listener’s breath

Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang return with Azure, their third full-length with Ideologic Organ. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contemporary minimalism that slowly unfolds across the album’s length. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have retained a strong presence within the context of North American experimental music since the mid 1990s, each producing some of the most grippingly original music to have appeared over the subsequent years. Kenney is a vocalist and composer internationally regarded for her spellbinding timbres and her in-depth study of oral traditions. Her work takes the form of sound installations, talismanic scores, music for film, electronics, and choir. She released the groundbreaking experimental gamelan album Atria (Sige) in 2015, and has collaborated with Lori Goldston, Holland Andrews, Niloufar Shiri, Tashi Wada, Alvin Lucier, Sarah Davachi, Melati Suryodarmo, Ensemble Nist-Nah, Sunn O))), and numerous others. Kang, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. In addition to creating a striking body of solo works that has traced its way across the last two and half decades - most recently including Sonic Gnostic (Aspen Edities, 2021) and Ajaeng Ajaeng (Ideologic Organ, 2020) - he has played on albums by Bill Frisell, Joe McPhee, Sun City Girls, Ikue Mori, Laurie Anderson, Blonde Redhead, William Hooker, Animal Collective, and numerous others. Since beginning to work together as a duo in the early 2000s, Kang and Kenney have collaborated on sound installations, music for orchestra, choir, and mixed ensembles in addition to releasing numerous widely acclaimed full-lengths: Aestuarium (2005), The Face Of The Earth (2012), Live In Iceland (2013), At Temple Gate (2014), Reverse Tree (2016), Seva (2017), The Cypress Dance (2020). A hypnotic return to the duo’s unique expression of “unison music", Azure is among Kenney and Kang’s most pared-down efforts in more than a decade. Its five compositions are underscored by allusions to the natural world and drifting temporalities, producing a profound calm that rises in arcs of tonal color. The album’s opener, Eclipse, is a composition built around the phrase “eclipse…inside the eclipse”, drawn from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book, Dictee. Leaving aching silences between each utterance - Kenney’s sparse vocal interventions enmeshed with Kang’s delicate viola d’amore tones - the piece’s collective elements produce a remarkable tension bubbling within its spacious calm. The title track, Azure, takes its name from a pun on the Persian "az u" or "from her/him/them”, and is a meditation on the closing rhymes of ghazal 413 from the Divan of Hafez, such as mâh az u, râh az u, and âh az u, “the moon from them, the path from them, the sighs from them”. Imbued with sorrow and release, across the piece Kenney’s vocals and Kang’s viola d’amore weave and dance against a shruti drone, calling forth echoes of lost moments in far off worlds. This is followed by three pieces that incorporate traces of wide-ranging techniques into their forms. Ocean is an experiment with different intensities of pulsation, with inspiration from ring modulation’s use of two simultaneous frequencies, which assemble an enveloping expanse of intoxicating harmonics and vibrato. For Forest Floor, Kenney’s long-tone vocalizations play on the meanings of ‘tan’ or body, and ‘nur’ or light, and the town names of ‘Chegel’ and ‘Khotan’ from ghazal 327 from the Divan of Hafez. Dancing at the boundaries of sorrow and joy, her voice, paced in perfect harmony to Kang’s viola, seems to propose alternate realities of what ecstatic music might be. The album’s final piece draws upon Glenna Cole Allee’s book, Hanford Reach, incorporating photographs and words spoken within by interviewees living or working in the tribal territories of Wanapum, Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and many others on or near the Hanford Nuclear Site in the state of Washington. Among the album’s most dynamic and powerful efforts - drones and pizzicato tones playing counterpoint to Kenney’s soaring vocals - the duo, inexplicably, imbues strong impressions of that landscape. As Suzanne Kite states in the album’s liner notes, with each of Azure’s discrete expressions Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang “ask our ears to hold/stop/wait/listen closely to the edges of knowability, while the world continues around our sounding bodies… [they] draw our ears so closely that if we are not careful, the listener’s breath

The fourth release in Blank Forms Editions’s initiative to chart the ever-expanding musical practice of Catherine Christer Hennix, Solo for Tamburium captures the composer’s most recent major work. Hennix plays an instrument of her own creation, a keyboard interface controlling a suite of eighty-eight recordings of precision-tuned tambura, creating a sweeping and continuous flow of rich harmonic interplay. This piece, documented in Berlin at MaerzMusik 2017, carefully draws upon the fundamental perceptual effects of sound, forming an exacting and cathartic electronic drone. Densely-layered timbral textures and continuous overtone collisions create a maze-like sonic landscape, thrusting the listener into what Hennix calls divine equilibrium or a distinctionless state of being. Since the late 1960s, Hennix has created a massive and innovative body of work spanning minimal music, computer programming, poetry, sculpture, and light art—pushing the technical and conceptual boundaries of these media toward singular ends. She was part of the downtown music school in New York and has worked extensively with some of its key figures, including Henry Flynt and La Monte Young. In the ’70s, Hennix studied the nature and use of harmonic sound as a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, a master of the Kirana tradition of classical Hindustani music. The exceptionally designed tamburas of Pran Nath were central to her intensive investigations, as was the devotional practice of carefully tuning and sounding the instruments in a continuous and even flow—both have guided her work with sound ever since. In 1976, at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, Hennix presented a pair of groundbreaking works that came to define her ensuing practice. With the Deontic Miracle—a group composed of Hennix, her brother Peter, and the Swedish percussionist Hans Isgren—she performed a series of modal compositions for Renaissance oboes, sheng, and harmonic feedback distortion. On this same occasion she premiered an equally significant body of solo work for keyboard, including the only public presentation of The Electric Harpsichord (1976), a piece that marks the beginning of Hennix’s characteristic style of playing, where dense sonic textures gradually emerge from the multilayered interplay of harmonic construction and dissolution. Solo for Tamburium represents a pointed revisitation of her endeavor to map the non-gravitational harmonics of modal musics—among them raga, maqam, and the blues—onto a tuned keyboard. Since the debut of this piece in 2017 she has continued to develop the work, reshaping and presenting it in a variety of contexts, including at Blank Forms in New York and the Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection in Paris in 2022. For Hennix, to approach modality as a dynamic process is ultimately a contemplative practice. Through it, embodied attunement to harmonic vibration gives rise to epistemically transformative states, opening new ways of knowing and being.

Available from Blank Forms for the first time since its original 1980 release on ALM-Uranoia, New Sense of Hearing documents a collaboration between Takehisa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki, two luminaries of Japanese experimental music in the lineage of Fluxus. Blank Forms’s high-quality reissue of the sought-after, long out of print LP, is produced by musician-artist Aki Onda and mastered from the original tapes recorded on April 2, 1979, at Tokyo’s Aeolian Hall. Described by Suzuki as the “culmination” of their sound, New Sense of Hearing features the two musicians improvising together in that empty Tokyo theater, Kosugi on vocals, violin, and radio transmitter and Suzuki on the Analapos, his namesake glass harmonica, spring cong, and kikkokikiriki, all apparatuses of his own invention. Suzuki and Kosugi first met at the city’s Minami Gallery in 1976 on the occasion of “Sound Objects and Sound Tools,” an exhibition of Suzuki’s homemade instruments. Two years later, at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Suzuki invited Kosugi to join him for a suite of performances as part of the exhibition “MA: Espace – Temps au Japon,” organized by architect Arata Isozaki and composer-writer Tōru Takemitsu. Suzuki and Kosugi performed together at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, nearly fifty times, honing their approach to mutual improvisation, before traveling with the exhibition to Stockholm and New York—critic Tom Johnson wrote in the Village Voice that he had “seldom seen two performers so completely tuned in on the same types of sounds, the same performance attitude, the same philosophy, the same sense of what music ought to be.” For New Sense of Hearing, the duo reunited in Japan and produced an extraordinary dispatch from their collaboration of arioso violin, echoing vocals and bangs, and metallic twangs. As Johnson observed in 1979, Kosugi and Suzuki are “in a very subtle artistic world where there can be no direct relationships. . . . Only coincidence.”

This is first reissue ever Che-Shizu ライヴ集１（Steeple & Globe） www.discogs.com/release/1239264-シェシズ-ライブ集１1986-1988 With Download Code Chie Mukai Takuya Nishimura Yoshio Kuge Tori Kudo Masami Shinoda Yuriko Mukoujima Wataru Okuma Shinya Kimura Designed by Toyohiro Okazaki Remastered by Yasushi Utsunomiya Liner Notes by Shinji Shibayama Translate by Alan Cummings Limited Edition to 100.

In 2021 Nijs and Smolders started a series of free improvisations. Each came from a different background (see bio’s) and wanted to explore musical horizons that they were not used to. As a next step they decided to record an album of composed tracks. The experimental platform shifted from long improv sessions to composition and structure, with the work of Delaere as a source of inspiration. The material of his work, the unevenness, the detail of pigments clashing, superimposing on the canvas served as a metaphor and inspiration for sonic canvases that they constructed. The result has become a record full of surprises. Rhythm, drone, dynamics, timbre, notes, tones, all have been thrown in the tumble dryer and during the process many times led the two musicians towards an outcome they couldn’t have possibly foreseen. But here we are. Our own experience is that the music works best when it’s played loud. Crank up the level of your amp and dive into these 35 minutes of colorful sounds.

As Young Druid, John T. Gast distills his most endearing Midi-eval energies into a suite of LED candle-lit fugues and funky Myrdas, making a sterling follow-up to his UVA_roots_and_destruction mixtape for Richard Sides’ Bus and the INNA BABALON tape in 2016, which was also self-issued on his 5 Gate Temple label. Concocted from a bank of recordings alchemised on one box and a two-track recorder, Young Druid follows 12 ley-lines of investigation with findings equally applicable to occult soirees and the downtime of amateur archaeologists and tyrannical trap lords alike; conjuring a haul of exquisitely ornate, glyphic hooks, gilded dub grooves and smoked-out chamber themes of a supremely rarified yet earthly air. They bear a striking resemblance to the bright, poised baroque MIDI orchestrations of Coil as much as King Tubby’s classic digi dubs, splitting the fine difference between K. Leimer’s new age experiments and Roland Young’s mystiphonic experiments or even Wiley and Geneeus’ early grime etudes; essentially divining an obscure, arcane and meditative sense of spirituality that transcends time and place with a broad appeal to armchair and headphone-dwelling mystics of all stripes. If you need any prompts, check the creamy luft of Young Druid for a start, then the cross-eyed invocation of Fugue and the Jammer-meets-kenji Kawai stepper, Myrda, and Blue’s exquisite trip hop pallor and you should have a good measure of the variety and consistency of mood and vibe therein. Strongly recommended.

Palestre is a study of higher-dimensional spaces and altered states of consciousness. It explores parallel dimensions and temporal anomalies from a perspective that blends mythology, modern physics, ADHD, transcendental music and club culture. Sciogli Assurdi was recorded between art galleries, clubs, squats, and folkloric festivities in 2018.

LP version. Includes eight-page booklet; 425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve; 180 gram vinyl. "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At the beginning of the 1970s, she discovered the Breton song tradition (soniou and gwerziou) through Yann Poëns and became involved in Névénoé, a cooperative of traditional expression founded by Gérard Delahaye and Patrick Ewen. It was under this label that her first album Marc'h Gouez, was released in 1976. With a dozen friends playing guitar, piano, violins, flutes..., Noguès composed not Breton music, but music from Brittany: a type of shared folklore in which imagination is married to the reality of the moment, that of social demands and companionship. At the very beginning of the record, we can hear her drawing up a chair, before the plucked notes of the harp become a cascade: "Enez Rouz", is an invitation to listen up close. You are reminded here of the Meredith Monk of "Greensleeves", there of the early albums of Brigitte Fontaine/Areski, elsewhere of Emmanuelle Parrenin, Pascal Comelade... Noguès rhyming pattern is ever changing: airy ("Hunvre"), cosmopolitan ("Pinvidik Eo Va C'hemener"), enigmatic ("Ar Bugel Koar"), profound ("Ar Gemenerez"), or enchanting ("Hirness An Devezhiou"). And then there is the track from which the album takes its name: "Marc'h Gouez" which, between nursery rhyme and chamber music, weaves a fabulous web in which the auditor is obliged to be caught. "Brittany equals poetry": so, said André... Breton; and Kristen Noguès proves it to be true. Licensed from Katell Branellec. Carefully remastered from the master tapes by Gilles Laujol. Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur.

Two visionary maestros, Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila, unite in their first collaborative album, Baba Soirée. The veterans of electronic music bring their unique expertise to the table, resulting in a captivating fusion of experimental styles. Bastien’s mechanical loops and fantastic instrumental setups merge seamlessly with Banabila's sound design and impeccable skills of sampling collages. It's not a dance party, nor is it an avant-garde intervention. It's a soirée: a cultivated evening of sonic alchemy hosted by these two charismatic gentlemen. Pierre Bastien is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with a background in French literature. He has spent decades crafting an idiosyncratic world of experimental sound with his self-built mechanical orchestra Mecanium. It was most notably showcased in audiovisual releases on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Bastien's creations are a mesmerizing combination of traditional instruments (he has a vast collection) and mechanical automatons. The violin in the track Rotomotor, for example, is physically played by one of his machines. In Baba Soirée, Bastien also plays a prepared cornet (Slow Dance, Banbas Aura), infusing the recordings with a breathy, dreamy dimension. Michel Banabila, a sound artist, composer and producer, possesses an eclectic musical repertoire that defies genres. His blend of minimal electronica, tribal ambient, and neo-classical influences has earned him a prominent place in the world of experimental music, and an impressive discography (Knekelhuis, Bureau B, Séance Centre, a.o.). Banabila serves as the creative sampling editor for Baba Soirée, expertly weaving together the recordings to craft an evocative sonic tapestry. The two share a curiosity for traditional instruments from various cultures. The instruments used in the recordings are shown in the cover artwork. A mutual admiration for each other's work paved the way for this fruitful artistic partnership of the Rotterdam-based artists: Collaborating on a single as a fundraiser for Yemen in 2022 set the stage for the creation of Baba Soirée. For Pierre Bastien, Dada, Fluxus and International Situationism have played a significant role in shaping his artistic vision. The title Baba Soirée is an homage to Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg's "Kleine Dada Soirée" collaboration which took place exactly a century ago. There's an unmistakable stoicism and an anarchic not-giving-a-f*** attitude in these recordings by Bastien & Banabila, which resonates in the light of this Dada reference.

Carl Stone continues his late career prolific renaissance with a new album of sculpted, tuneful MAX/MSP fantasias. Stone “plays” his source material the way Terry Riley’s In C “plays” an ensemble – with a loose, freewheeling charm connected to the ancient human impulse to make sound, melody, and rhythm from anything. Stone’s unique technique simultaneously focuses and sprays sound like a symphony of uncapped fire hydrants. Is this techno, avant-garde, sound art? It’s simply (or rather fantastically messily) Carl Stone.

During the transitional period in which Coil’s primary leadership (Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and John Balance) reorganized their creative direction by taking on new membership in the group through their inclusion of Drew McDowall, Coil took a drastic turn towards the metaphysical unknown. Employing the subtle handiwork of Coil’s “real life” members, as well as cleverly guised aliases and spiritual collaborators, the band chose to filter their identity through a the nome de guerre, 'Black Light District', setting the precedent of Coil’s future exploration of otherworldly influence. Recorded during the Winter of 1995/96, 'Black Light District' leans more on their formal avant-garde pursuits and academic interests rather than their industrial pedigree resume. Starting off with an obvious nod to John Cage with their introductory “Unprepared Piano”, the tone is prepared in exactly the same way… unpredictable. Conceptually abstract, Black Light District shows Coil’s old guard disregarding the pop rhythms found on previous albums, such as Love's Secret Domain, and fully embracing their experimental electronic trajectory. Subtle patterns of looping melancholy and malaise are placed delicately underneath ghostly electronic timbre. Approaching their creative method as something from the beyond, another realm in which sounds blur and performers seemingly appear from the ether.

Over the last few years, the Italian imprint, Dialogo, has showed a remarkable dedication to the history of experimental music via reissues of seminal artefacts from the Cramps catalog, and important albums by Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Enrico Rava, and others. This initiative now takes on a towering scale with the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno's Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. A truly groundbreaking body of recordings - many of which have remained out of print and difficult to find for decades - it contains some of the most important, influential, and enduring music to emerge during the second half of the 20th Century, which collectively reconfigured the terms of minimalism and laid the groundwork for the emerging movement of ambient music over its short, three-year run. This historic collection marks the first time such a seminal series has received a complete repress and is certainly one of the year's most interesting, essential, and widely anticipated releases, stunningly produced with the complete involvement of all the artists or their estates. Includes texts / contributions by Gavin Bryars, Bradford Bailey, David Toop, Max Eastley, Richard Bernas, Tom Recchion, Carlo Boccadoro, Walter Rovere and Bruno Stucchi, and rare photos, including several by Roberto Masotti. When viewed collectively, the Obscure catalog reveals a remarkable, and previously unexplored counterpoint – bridging the United Kingdom and the American West Coast – to the dominant threads of minimal and experimental music, centered in New York that had long dominated the public consciousness. CD1 Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic CD2 Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, Gavin Bryars - Ensemble Pieces CD3 Brian Eno - Discreet Music CD4 David Toop, Max Eastley - New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments CD5 Jan Steele, John Cage - Voices and Instruments CD6 Michael Nyman - Decay Music CD7 The Penguin Café Orchestra - Music From the Penguin Café CD8 John White, Gavin Bryars - Machine Music CD9 Tom Phillips, Gavin Bryars, Fred Orton - Irma CD10 Harold Budd - The Pavilion of Dreams

Northern Irish musician and producer David Cunningham, known for releasing two electro-punk albums on Virgin in the New Wave era and having a worldwide hit single "Money" as The Flying Lizards. The first solo album "Grey Scale" released in 1976 is the first analog reissue from the prestigious . This work was sent out as the first release from his own label , which sent out This Heat and General Strike. From avant-garde musicians such as Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman with whom he has performed live, to improvisers such as Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and David Toop, Cunningham draws influences from a wide variety of fields. At the time, he was a student at the Kent Institute of Art & Design in Kent. , a work that created an infinitely changing palette of sounds. A suite of minimal etudes that does not belong to any genre, with an attractive sound collage and free tones.

Custom Cock Confused Death", the first album by Hair Stylistics, a solo unit of Masaya Nakahara (ex. Violent Onsen Geisha), is now available on 2LP with new artwork, gray vinyl, and a gatefold jacket! Originally released in 2004 on Haruomi Hosono's Daisyworld discs label, the album is now finally available in analog format after 15 years. The abstract psychedelic dub of "UNDERHAIR WORLD" sounds like "Juicy Fruit" boiled down in a dark pot, with disturbing sound effects and moaning voices intertwined with a crushed, boogie bass line. The scum/minimal acid "Kill the Animals Project" is like wandering through a rainforest and into a slum, with animal noises and noises interspersed over a thick, evil, blistering synth bass. The album contains 21 tracks, including "TIRED," a moody, avant-garde chill number with a cheap rhythm machine, a repetitive bass line, synths that tinkle like they are trying to penetrate the brain, and occasional jazzy guitar interjections that create a strangely laid-back sensation. The album is a masterpiece that should be reevaluated from a club music perspective, as it dissolves noise, avant-garde, hip-hop, dub, techno, and all other musical elements and reconstructs them in an obscene and precise manner. The artwork has been redesigned for this analog release, and was created by Kusuhei Akagi, a photographer active both in Japan and abroad.

For the first time on cassette (Limited to 150 copies), Masami Akita's 1998 masterpiece, Vibractance, originally released in France, this is one of the most unique and beautiful releases in the Merzbow library. It stands out as an analog dream of drone, noise, ambient music: a meditative journey on the psychedelic shores of experimental music. Riso Printed artwork, real time duplication. First Pressing.

Recording of Pavel Milyakov’s live performance for the closing night of Cyprien Gaillard’s Dumpty exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris on January 8th 2023. The automaton sculpture, Le Défenseur du Temps was being activated live during the performance. Its mechanical movements can be heard on the recording. guitar, strings resonator, effects, mixing and mastering by Pavel Milyakov cover photography by Max Paul inside photography by Timo Ohler, Oleksandra Trishyna recording by Camille Jamain design by Pavel Milyakov released on Firecamp, 2023 edition of 150

DJ Desecrator smelts 70 minutes of radical metals and synth gloom on what TTT are touting as “our best mixtape?” - a must-check for anyone who copped the DKR session or Tom Boogizm's 'Hardcore' shotta. Utterly reeking of Ork armpits and putrefied meat, ‘Ritual Giblets’ lays out a feast of extreme hard rock and metal entrails by artists who have us by the short and curlies for the duration. Bookended by cinematic scenes of doom and decay in the opening blast of horns and drizzle, and its sublime closer, the meat of the mixtape is pure BM, grind and death metal sequenced for optimal possession, replete with the sort of synth intros Conrad Schnitzler made for Mayhem, or the foul medieval atmospheres to When’s ‘Black Death’ which inspired the Norwegian BM scene and are also found on NTS’ dungeon synth survey. Not for the faint hearted but manna for headbangers. full gnarrr.

Gnarled outliers Scheich In China slam the hardcore panic button with five ruthless ramrods for acolytes of Nkisi, Gabber Modus Operandi, Service Animal, Hellfish & Producer, The Ephemeron Loop, Fifth Era… Dispatched beside a complementary album of death metal via their self-titled label, they unleash total hell via torrents of radical hardcore techno that absorbs aspects of doomcore, power noise, industrial and gabber musicks without any fucking about. Just as their Death Metal gear properly gnaws on its aesthetic bones, Scheich in China’s take on this sound is equally true to the ‘core, incendiary and primed to cause havoc at free parties or febrile clubs. ‘Fkk in Dänemark’ hews to a template of fast trot and down pitched doomcore dread next to a passage of inverted kick drum artillery, while ‘Bullenschweine (För Demos) + extra Track - Fick Die Oma - Mexican Mescal Mix’ churns up comparisons to vintage Hellish & Producer Deathchants. At its most radical, ‘Fickt Schafe (Russland is out Sodomie Mix)’ and the tracey death spiral of ‘Arschlöcher Überall’ recall the depth and intensity of The Ephemeron Loop or Fifth Era’s cold rushing doomcore arrangements. Be fucking daft not to.

LP version. Includes eight-page booklet; 425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve; 180 gram vinyl. "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At the beginning of the 1970s, she discovered the Breton song tradition (soniou and gwerziou) through Yann Poëns and became involved in Névénoé, a cooperative of traditional expression founded by Gérard Delahaye and Patrick Ewen. It was under this label that her first album Marc'h Gouez, was released in 1976. With a dozen friends playing guitar, piano, violins, flutes..., Noguès composed not Breton music, but music from Brittany: a type of shared folklore in which imagination is married to the reality of the moment, that of social demands and companionship. At the very beginning of the record, we can hear her drawing up a chair, before the plucked notes of the harp become a cascade: "Enez Rouz", is an invitation to listen up close. You are reminded here of the Meredith Monk of "Greensleeves", there of the early albums of Brigitte Fontaine/Areski, elsewhere of Emmanuelle Parrenin, Pascal Comelade... Noguès rhyming pattern is ever changing: airy ("Hunvre"), cosmopolitan ("Pinvidik Eo Va C'hemener"), enigmatic ("Ar Bugel Koar"), profound ("Ar Gemenerez"), or enchanting ("Hirness An Devezhiou"). And then there is the track from which the album takes its name: "Marc'h Gouez" which, between nursery rhyme and chamber music, weaves a fabulous web in which the auditor is obliged to be caught. "Brittany equals poetry": so, said André... Breton; and Kristen Noguès proves it to be true. Licensed from Katell Branellec. Carefully remastered from the master tapes by Gilles Laujol. Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur.

Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, including a multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over five hundred page book. Recorded in summer of 1994 at S.H.P studios (frontman Graham Lambkin’s parents’ home), the group’s sophomore record Put the Music In Its Coffin is a more sinister, saturnine affair than their debut City Lights. Coffin was many listeners’ introduction to the Shadow Ring, who had hitherto self-released their music, courting a steady stable of international fans through the magazine and mail-order catalog Forced Exposure. For their follow-up, the duo reached out to the ascending Philadelphia label Siltbreeze, whose eclectic roster of sneering, low-fidelity rock and noise connected disparate subterranean scenes from rust-belt America to the English Midlands, Dunedin, and beyond. As luck would have it, Siltbreeze proprietor Tom Lax was already a fan of the band’s first record and arranged to release both a 7” and their “difficult second album.” The connection proved to run deeper than vinyl—within six months, Lax would pick up the pair from the airport for their spring 1995 US tour. This episode marked not only their first trip to the States but their first live performances at all, formally introducing the Shadow Ring to the American underground and solidifying the allure of the Folkestone pair. From the get-go, the record has a menacing, vile ambience. Its opening track “Horse-Meat Cakes,” inspired by an anecdote by pulp author Philip K. Dick about how he and his wife subsisted off low-grade pet food when he first arrived in San Francisco, sets the tone lyrically and sonically. Subsequent tracks are filled with Rabelaisian body horror and sinewy, haptic diction. “I try to pass out vital organs, convinced that they are waste,” intones Lambkin in “Heart, Liver & Lungs,” before a chorus of detuned guitars kicks in, nearly drowning out the speaker’s account of consuming chevaline intestines. Later songs similarly detail vernacular cooking (“Caribbean Porridge,” about a cornmeal hangover cure), bodily processes (“Nocturnal Middle Rumbles,” about nighttime defecation), and creaturely conflict (“Crystal Tears” and “Spin The Animal Dial”). The album’s makeshift percussion and teenaged rawness resembles the verve of City Lights, while its screeching strings and gnarly distorted vocals give it a sparse, miasmic atmosphere that look towards the uncompromising, otherworldly experimentation of the band’s Hold Onto I.D. (1996) and Lighthouse (1997), making this one of the Shadow Ring’s most distilled musical statements.

A forward thinking collaboration between electronic music pioneer Jon Appleton and trumpet great Don Cherry, that explores the relationship between the humanity and the manufactured robotic future. Using the techniques associated with Musique Concrete the ensuing improvisations create a unique entry into the great trumpeter's discography. It was an in vogue attempt to render the music of tomorrow, and today sounds more like the soundtrack to a truly great sci-fi movie Reissued in a fascimile of the original gatefold sleeve, and remastered from new 24/96 transfers, this is part of Ace's HiQ LP series

This selection of obscure eighties and nineties experimental and industrial music was taken from even more obscure cassette releases on labels such as Nihilistic Recordings, Harsh Reality, Cauchy Productions, Cafardage, Illusion Production, Watergate Tapes, Afterbirth Records, IEP and Out Of Nowhere. Crazy selection of cult noise and experimental from the 80s and the '90s. Edition of 300 copies. Featuring Kinexus Stringenus, Bernard C., Winter, Lyke Wake, Varoshi Fame, Toshiyuki Hiraoka, Mortification To The Flesh, Louis Pasteur, Det Wiehl, Nox, and A Violated Body.