MUSIC

Masami Tada (Marginal Consort) started his career by joining the legendary improvisational group GAP in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, he has continuously embraced improvisation while expanding his creative expression into installations, photography, and more. In recent years, Masami Tada has been capturing Mount Koubou, visible from his home in Kanagawa Prefecture, in photographs every day and sharing them on Instagram, continuing his practice of daily acts of creation. This work features recordings of his actual climb up Mount Koubou, during which Tada brought electronic devices, amps, and percussion instruments. These instruments created sounds in rhythm with the climbing process, and the recordings also capture Tada's improvised performances atop Mount Koubou, including interactions with birds, airplanes, and other elements encountered during his performance.

LP (red vinyl) & 7" (one-sided blue vinyl). Limited vinyl edition of 300 copies.

Merzbow's impact transcends the confines of traditional music, embodying an ethos of constant innovation and fearless exploration into uncharted realms of sound. Navigating through the annals of Merzbow's extensive career reveals an artist who, for over 40 years, has remained dedicated to reshaping our understanding of music and pushing the boundaries of sonic expression. We are thrilled to unveil the highly anticipated vinyl reissue of Merzbow's groundbreaking album Oersted. This album, originally released on CD in 1996, marked a significant milestone in the experimental noise music scene, showcasing the unparalleled sonic explorations of the legendary Masami Akita, known as Merzbow. Oersted is a sonic journey through realms of noise, texture, and intensity that have solidified Merzbow's status as a pioneer in the realm of noise music. The album features a collection of meticulously crafted tracks that push the boundaries of sound manipulation and composition, creating an immersive experience for listeners daring enough to delve into its sonic landscapes. The vinyl reissue, masterfully remastered for the first time by the esteemed James Plotkin, renowned for his unparalleled expertise, breathes fresh life and depth into the album's already rich and intricate sonic landscape, unveiling new detail within its reverberant dense tapestry and complex noise palette. Each track on Oersted is a aural sculpture, with layers of distorted frequencies, pulsating rhythms, and unexpected sonic artifacts that challenge conventional notions of music and sound. Features four untitled tracks originally on CD, each occupying an entire side of the vinyl, except for the track on side D, which shares the side with two bonus tracks. These tracks epitomize a profound and multifaceted sonic odyssey, harnessing various tapes and the raw power of analog instruments and tools such as EMS Synthia, metallic electronics, various filters, and processed audio mixer. Side A plunges the listener into a kaleidoscopic amalgamation of unrefined sound elements, steadily weaving together strata of intensity and textural richness that evolve dynamically over its duration. Side B embarks on a sonic expedition delving deep into mesmerizing rhythms and intricately woven soundscapes, crafting an immersive experience that challenges traditional notions of musical structure and form. Side C boldly pushes the frontiers of sound manipulation, employing dynamic tonal shifts and varying intensities to construct a visceral and immersive sonic landscape. Side D, in its initial segment, extends the sonic narrative into uncharted realms of noise and texture, maintaining a cohesive yet unpredictable sonic progression. The supplementary tracks in the latter part of Side D provide additional depth to Merzbow's sonic experimentation, showcasing distinctive sonic palettes and layers that harmonize with the album's overarching themes and exploratory essence. The original artwork for the 1996 CD digipack, curated by Masami Akita, stands out for its minimalism and visual impact. The pink outer cover, with only the artist's name and album title in silver-gray at the center, grabs attention with its bold simplicity, foreshadowing the sonic experience of the album. Inside, the green provides a pleasing contrast, with credits in silver-gray maintaining stylistic coherence. The vinyl reissue faithfully replicates the graphics with a gatefold cover, enhancing the visual impact of the original artwork. The blending of pink and green colors creates a striking visual effect, highlighting the beauty of simplicity in Akita's graphic design. Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing world of Merzbow's Oersted and experience the raw power and beauty of noise in its purest form.

Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982’s Nodal Excitation – in effect, looking beneath the hood of several decades of progression to review and renew the revolutionary intent of their microntonal foundation credo. This new Orchestra – Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger and Joachim Schütz – combine effortlessly to explore new scalar dimensions. PLAY LOUD.

Tip-on gloss/matt sleeve. Printer inner sleeve.Recorded at Steamroom Tokyo and Hoshi To Neji. Mixed at Steamroom Tokyo. This one is for K.W.

Digging deep into the legendary Igloo Records catalog, Holidays Records returns with the first ever vinyl reissue of the imprint's sixth outing, the Belgian composer Henry Krutzen’s astounding 1981 LP, “Silances”. An entirely singular gesture at the borders of sound poetry, musique concrète, and radical electroacoustic practice that draws upon disparate elements of drone, jazz, minimalism, ecstatic tribalism, and various traditions of music from across the globe, decades on from its original release it remains as striking, unique, challenging, and compelling as it did upon its release. * Deluxe edition in screen printed cover + insert * Since their founding during the early years of the new millennium, the Italian imprint, Holidays Records, has stood at the vanguard of forward-thinking sound, building a carefully curated catalog of releases that collectively build context and conversation across numerous avenues of exploration - contemporary and historical sitting side by side - within the wider field of experimental and improvised music. Every step of the way, they’ve seemed to step up the game. Their latest, the first reissue of the Belgian composer Henry Krutzen’s astounding 1981 LP, “Silances”, takes a deep dive into the legendary Igloo Records catalog. Once described by Keith Fullerton Whitman as being “nestled somewhere between Ghédalia Tazartès' mutant Sound Poetry, Anton Bruhin's acoustic / Alphorn drones”, drawing on a palette of vocals, hand percussion, piano, harmonica, saxophone, synthesizer, it’s a truly engrossing immersion into spaciously bristling sonority that remains as radical more than forty years down the road, as it did the day it was released. Issued in a very limited vinyl edition, beautifully reproducing the original sleeve, accompanied by Krutzen’s original liner notes, this is one for the heads that can’t be passed by. Henry Krutzen is a relatively shadowy figure in the history of experimental sound. Between the early '80s and the 2010s, there are only a handful of albums that bear his name, and little to no information about how they come to be. A multi-instrumentalist and composer who studied percussion, saxophone, and harmony in various schools and jazz clinics across Belgium, over the years he played in a diverse range of musical projects across the idioms of jazz, new wave, heavy metal, experimental, chanson française, world music and progressive rock, before relocating to Brazil during the early 2000s. Had he disappeared completely and done nothing else, “Silances”, his lone 1981 LP for Igloo Records - the Belgian imprint founded in 1978 by Daniel Sotiaux to “promote diversity, allowing expressions of more marginal music to be heard and supported in a musical context that lives under the threat of standardization” - would have ensured his legend. Sitting alongside astounding and remarkably unique albums by Leo Küpper, Jacques Bekaert, Henri Chopin, Arthur Pétronio, André Stordeur, and numerous others, in the label’s early catalog, it’s a truly stunning piece of work. Reflecting back in a note that Krutzen penned in 2022 when he was contacted for the reissue of “Silances”, Krutzen recalls: “Since I was 16, I had been experimenting with concrete music with a technician friend and we used all a teenager’s room could offer to make sounds into music: faucets, glasses of water, metal springs on ladders, objects of any kind… I had hours of recordings I pitched to Daniel [Sotiaux, of Igloo Records], to see if he was interested in making an album. I also had other ideas I wanted to be able to develop. What a joy when he accepted to work on the project! So I got to work. First, I set up a vocal improvisation quartet, and we spent long afternoons rehearsing using input I provided… We went into the studio and recorded almost two hours of improvisation, from which I then chose the best moments for the final product”. The resulting nine compositions, when viewed as a cohesive whole, unfold as an endlessly surprising journey into a diverse means of expression, incorporating elements of concrete poetry, phonetical vocal utterance, musique concrète, drone, nods to jazz, minimalism, ecstatic tribalism, and various traditional musics from across the globe, creating a fascinating counterpoint to the roughly concurrent DIY experiments of projects like Nurse With Wound, Current 93, and Organum. While radically open and experimental, one of the most striking aspects of “Silances” is how undeniably tight and considered it is, appearing as though each structure and chosen elements is exactly as it should be, and for which there would have been no other option. From the vocal squawks and ambient detritus of “Des Voix” or the incredibly constrained minimal beats and clangs of “La Machine” - a piece through the consideration of Deleuze and Guattari’s desiring-machines - and the droning harmonics of “Froid”, which incorporate excerpts of Krutzen’s teenage experiments in concrete music with records

Hemann Damen is a Dutch artist and language designer who, among other things, has created visual poems, performance works and "verbosonies" -- a genre that Damen developed where vocalized morphomic elements are assembled in different ways. In his works, he has been exploring "kinetic language" and the spatial aspects of language. Damen's manifesto Semiotic Theatre states that his work "places itself outside official literature and wants to fascinate, shock or activate people by combining and replacing writing and articulation with extra-linguistic signs and techniques like pictures, drawings, graphics, photos, montages, collages, de-collages, projects, objects, light, darkness, signals, symbols, gestures, happenings, noise, silence, smells, tastes, situations, states, properties, streets, landscapes, etc." The first side of this LP presents five verbosonies recorded between 1966 and 1970. The second side presents three phonographies recorded between 1967 and 1973. Hermann Damen was also the founder and editor of the AH! Magazine, a magazine for "verbal plasticism." Somehow parallel in contents with the legendary Revue OU, Damen's AH! occasionally also included vinyl records and represented an ante-litteram multi-media. This edition includes eleven inserts. Because of its specific contents, this edition was issued in a limited run of just 220 copies.

Boston/Tenor/Index presents for the first time some of the earliest works by the American composer Phil Niblock, including the three never before released "Index" (1969), "Tenor" and "Boston III" (both from 1972), thus making it possible to discover Niblock's starting point as a composer. Until now, it's been impossible to encounter Niblock's compositions from earlier than the '80s, a reality thankfully rectified by the long overdue publication of this Boston/Tenor/Index, now on CD from Alga Marghen. "Tenor" (1972) represents the first evolution of Niblock's musical thought towards the aesthetics of microtones, overtones, and drones which the composer would develop in following decades. The piece was recorded by the photographer Martin Bough on tenor saxophone and gradually dubbed back and forth by the composer in his New York studio. The audio materials activated in "Tenor" through technologically de- and re-composed sounding textures, became a vehicle for those sound anomalies that would determine Niblock's audio poetics. Performing gestures are deconstructed though disseminating and editing processes by the imperceptible gestures of the composer. With its smooth flowing structure, "Boston III" (1972) stands at the very beginning of this illusion. It was recorded at the Intermedia Sound studio in Boston with Rhys Chatham (flute, voice), Martin Bough (tenor saxophone), and Gregory Reeve (viola, voice); the composer himself also contributed with his voice. "Index" (1969) is an improvised sound performance by the composer himself. The listener is lucky to listen to the movements of the artist's fingers hitting a guitar string and the soundboard in breathtaking tempo. The piece itself represents early minimalism in its virgin state, untouched by distancing technology. Guitar (both its body and strings), fingers and fingering fuse in a vehement action around which barely listenable sounds and resonances vibrate. This CD also includes "Boston I" (1972), or the first chapter of the "Boston" series. This 25-minute bonus track is less massive than "Boston III," but this version is much richer in dynamics and presents a more recognizable voice of each instrument. The music changes according to the loudness of playback. The interaction of the upper harmonics changes especially, with much richer overtone patterns being produced at louder levels. Edition of 300 copies in digipak sleeve, including an eight-page booklet with photos and liner notes.

Damião Experiença's surreal, self-released run of LPs are among Brazil's most bizarre subcultural treasures, a blown-out mix of psychedelia, freak folk, prog and reggae that defies convention at every loose beat. 'Planeta Lamma' attempts to condense the output for curious beginners, cherrypicking crucial moments from the Brazilian legend's vast catalog. Mindboggling gear. Self-taught outsider Damião Ferreira da Cruz, aka Damião Experiença, is considered to be the Brazilian answer to Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Jandek or Moondog, a wildly inventive fringe hybridist whose dadaist, semi-improvised songs - often sung in his own invented dialect - have found him a dedicated cult following. Famously press-shy and irritable, Damião was born in Bahia, escaping as a pre-teen to Rio de Janeiro, where he joined the Brazilian navy. Legend has it that Damião hit his head when he fell from a ship's crow's nest, which could explain his unpredictable moods, but he left the navy in the mid-1960s, working as a pimp to fund his private press releases. Damião's moniker was an homage to his favorite band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, but the music doesn't exactly come across as a tribute. Singing in his own 'Planet Lamma dialect', Damião improvised on instruments he never learned how to play, assembling his voice into ritualistic, overlayed chatters and one-string guitar riffs into a lumbering, reggae-esque chug. Drums might match up, or might not, pattering in the background to add psychedelic thrust, rather than a rhythmic backbone. At its best, the music sounds like multiple records playing at the same time, held together by Damião's charismatic, garbled tones. 'Planeta Lamma' might share a name with Damião's 1974 debut, but it's not the same album. Confusingly, both records begin with the same track (the brief '1308 Registrou Gravou Rose Oliria Experiença'), but this edition quickly goes off piste. The focal point of the first side is the chaotic 'Ritmo Linguagem Planeta Lamma', a densely layered 20-minute romp that Damião released in 1999 (as far as we can tell). The side ends with 'Planeta Lamma' from the debut album, and the second side is mostly taken up by 'Sol', another lengthy, freeform experiment that's taken from the Brazilian multi-instrumentalist's late period. Jazzy and unpredictable, it's a frothy blast of angular funk that's got us confused and completely absorbed. One for the cranks!

From Pacific City Discs, to you the listener, this summer, a DJ mix of fantasy and splash-energy is coming to you in a small edition of vinyl. Fantasy writer/recording artist, Francesco Cavaliere, while visiting his seaside childhood vacation location, was extended an impromptu invitation, to DJ an 80s swimming club. He had this to say about his experience: “I was at Shangri-La and a boy and girl from the bathhouse in silver swimsuits and sand-colored streaks waved me over with a drink and asked me if I would like to DJ the next day during my lesson on the beach at Tana del Pirata! I then and there I laughed but then I accepted (I had nothing at home just my mp3 player and a Nokia with music inside) The next day there was a little wind on the beach and the umbrellas swayed to the left. From the heat they could catch fire, white flames, instead the sea was rough and that wind with very long wrists cheered us up, blowing gaseous clouds in our faces. Perfect for the day ahead. After the first few pieces, I began to see that a group of kids jumped into the adjacent pool trying flips bombs and candle dives. Someone at the bar was playing Altered Beast .. so sipping a drink with ice I imagined DJ werewolf repeating catchy pieces while a kite half cobra half skyscraper inflated above us.” This Impromptu Disc is fresh now, for you to frolic with this summer, while entertaining a daydream in the midst of entering a body of water while witnessing an apparition in the sky.

宮沢正一率いた伝説の実験的パンク・バンド「ザ・ラビッツ」による貴重音源の数々を集めた公式LPが、ゆらゆら帝国やAunt Sally、向井千惠作品などを手がけたニューヨークの要注意レーベル〈Mesh-Key〉から登場。アンダーグラウンドなリスナーを中心にカルト的な人気を博すも、これまで公式LPがリリースされることの無かったザ・ラビッツ初のLP盤！「わ、わ、わ、」や「名犬バター犬君号伝」「Winter Song」といった貴重音源を全10曲収録。

Taylor Deupree at 12k, Nathan Moody at Obsidian Sound, and Scott Petito at Scott Petito Productions, for mastering, astute ears on the highest level. Scott and Sarah and all at AtoZ Media. Darryl Norsen for visually nailing it with his stunning album design. The musicians for selflessly offering these gems & whose dedication to their craft is a perennial inspiration. Peter Wright for pushing for this project to happen and encouraging us every step along the way, and his crew at Virtual Label: Miguel Gallego & John Allen, Dennis McNally for guidance and encouragement, Weston Pagano, Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky/That Subliminal Kid for enthusiastic support and guidance, Rose Solomon, Megan Mann, Antonio Pagano, Rick Blything, Maria Garcia–Teutsch, Peter Shapiro, Andy Bernstein & Sophie Webb at HeadCount, Ken Weinstein of Big Hassle Media, Ian Brennan for producing The Good Ones (Rwanda) and delivering our first track. Barry Miles for compiling original audio of Ginsberg’s poetry. Stanford University Libraries, Maki Hakui & Yasutaka Minegishi at Presspop inc., Norio Fukuda at Sweet Dreams Press. Stacey Lewis and the whole City Lights Crew. Peter London at HarperCollins. The Estate of Fred McDarrah & Timothy McDarrah for use of iconic Ginsberg Uncle Sam Hat image, and The Estate of Elsa Dorfman for photo of Ginsberg in Cherry Valley. A Peter Hale & Jesse Goodman Production in Association with the Allen Ginsberg Estate presents: Allen Ginsberg’s The Fall of America: A 50th Anniversary Musical Tribute Dedicated to Hal Willner This exciting tribute celebrates the 50th Anniversary of beloved poet Allen Ginsberg’s “The Fall of America: Poems of these States”, 1965-1971. In the fall of 2020 with the 50th anniversary of those poems fast approaching we reached out to many of Allen’s musician and artist friends. Many responded enthusiastically about interpreting these poems to music; even those poems that presented more of a musical challenge. Our model for this exciting project was Allen’s 1989 “The Lion for Real” produced by the masterful Hal Willner. We had hoped that he would offer us his guidance and with some musicians on board he might have been persuaded to join us as he had done with other projects over the years. Sadly, fate intervened and Hal became one of the first casualties of this deadly pandemic. Although we cannot come close to the genius he would have brought to this project, he will forever be our guiding light, our guardian angel and inspiration for this project . He has left us a model to work with and we will shoot for the stars as his spirit guides us. His blueprint for unexpected combinations and looking in unexpected places inspired us and to our surprise we found international interest from around the world including Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Korea and Japan. Music has an incredible power not only to move but also to unite people. With that in mind, all proceeds from the sales of these tracks will be donated to HeadCount.org, an organization which promotes voter registration and participation in democracy through the power of music. The Fall of America is the warning and the world is listening.

Masami Akita (秋田 昌美), (メルツバウ, Merutsubau) aka Merzbow, Animal Rights Activist, Writer, and Musician, Emerges as Iconic Figure in International Noise Scene Renowned for his pioneering contributions to the noise music genre, Merzbow (aka Masami Akita) has solidified his position as one of its most significant and recognizable figures. From his groundbreaking utilization of tape loops to craft expansive industrial landscapes in the late 1970s, to his transition to laptop-generated static noise at the turn of the century, Merzbow has consistently pushed the boundaries of sonic experimentation. Modern Obscure Music is delighted to unveil Merzbow's debut release on the label, "Tsubute Mosaic."

"In the core of the album’s creation, lies my fascination with unveiling the piano overtones by harnessing the properties of complex systems, which emerge when competing oscillations of strings interact with room acoustics, microphone placements, the piano's pedals, and its soundboard. Through long forms, incremental gestures, and nuanced timbral artifacts, the album aims to distort the perception of time and invite an introspective experience of multiple and expanded temporalities." - Zoe Efstathiou. "Following collaborations with Egil Kalman and Oda Dyrnes, Greek pianist Zoe Efstathiou investigates chaotic overtone systems on this pecuilar solo piano excursion, teasing inscrutable, hypnotic drones that sound utterly alien. RIYL Akira Rabelais, John Also Bennett, Kassel Jaeger." - Boomkat. Bio: Zoe Efstathiou, pianist and electro-acoustic composer, originally from Greece, has lived in Sweden since 2015. Her interest shifts between the intricate relationships of the overtones of acoustic instruments, electro-acoustic textures, and the sonic potential of light installations. Her music interpolates the momentary with the ever-evolving, exploring ideas related to time, expectation and memory. Physical copies of the ltd LP is available from Boomkat, A Musik, Discreet Music, etc!

Composed by Jim O’Rourke and pieced together by Jim together with longtime collaborator and trumpeter Eivind Lønning at Jim and Eiko Ishibashi’s home in the Japanese mountains, this engrossing new album blows brass wails and tense fanfares across O'Rourke's manipulated Kyma tapestries for a deep, captivating trip into the aether. As expected, its outlandishly next level. Eivind Lønning has been sharing ideas with O'Rourke for several years: the duo collaborated on music for the Whitney's 'Calder: Hypermobility' exhibition, and Lønning played trumpet on O'Rourke's brilliant 2020 album 'Shutting Down Here'. For this new work, Lønning headed to O'Rourke and EIko Ishibashi's home studio in the Japanese mountains, where he teased unfamiliar, alien textures from his trumpet to open the labyrinthine three-part composition. O'Rourke took the material and subsequently funnelled it through his Kyma system, transforming it into a swirl of sound that hums alongside Lønning's original takes. The album was composed, mixed and mastered by O'Rourke, with everything's based on Lønning's virtuosic performance. The album begins by cautiously introducing us to its sonic palette: wavering, bird-like horn wails that O'Rourke contorts around quiet synth oscillations and computerised swarms. Lønning's spittle-drenched blasts are given the spotlight, but O'Rourke's manipulations - often gentle and illusory, and sometimes utterly lacerating - lift the sounds into completely new territory. When Lønning begins to turn rhythmic cycles using the trumpet keys, popping with his mouth to compliment its leathery timbre, O'Rourke replies with dense, hallucinatory drones, juxtaposing unstable electronics with Lønning's breathy, sustained notes. All these sounds coalesce into a dizzy vortex, but O'Rourke is careful not to overwhelm the senses, dropping to near silence as the first act transitions into the second. O'Rourke pelts Lønning's vertiginous wails, steadily mutating them into Xenakis-like stabs until they sound like cybernetic strings and icy tones that extract the tension from Lønning's brassy harmonics. The third act is more screwed, with O'Rourke allowing Lønning's improvisations wail into cathedral-strength reverb, accompanying the sound with glassy penetrations and throbbing subs. Here, Lønning sounds as if he's heralding the arrival of a celestial being, piercing the atmosphere with bright, sustained tones and muted, jazzy flourishes. O'Rourke hangs back, carefully spinning the notes into naturalistic fibres and orchestral drapery, before he allows the electronics to subside completely and the trumpet to echo into the imposing negative space. 'Most, but Potentially All' is a dumbfounding piece that shifts the dial on contemporary experimental music; dizzyingly complex but never showy, it's the kind of record you can spin repeatedly and hear something different each time. As an exploration of the trumpet, it's a unique expression, and as a progression of electro-acoustic compositional techniques, it draws a deep trench in the sand, setting a new standard. We're floored.

200 copies limited edition* In 2022, Gillies Adamson Semple made a pilgrimage to the Valère Basilica in the Swiss Alps to play the oldest functioning pipe organ in the world. Built in 1435, this unique instrument is the centrepiece of this sensitive and stirring 6-track release, tracing the elemental themes of spirituality, anatomy, ecological collapse, and the nature of listening in its glacial minimalist drones. Drawing inspiration from the long-form compositions of Sarah Davachi and Kali Malone, Volumes was built from in-situ recordings Semple made in Switzerland, with the aim of capturing the physical qualities of the sound, from the stops and pedals to the air rushing through the organ’s ancient pipes. Treated like sculptural material and re-assembled at Semple’s London studio in the tradition of musique concrète, the tracks evoke a sense of exquisite timelessness, at once part of and floating free of their environment. As Semple explains: “What I like about the organ is that you can make it feel very physical. It has all these mechanical parts that sound really beautiful. And the piece is never performed. It is something that is rooted in the site. The whole pilgrimage to see this organ in Switzerland ended up acting like that, where you’re going to this very sacred place to see this specific instrument, but all you’re taking back is recording.” Released on vinyl via Fourth Sounds, Volumes was initially conceived as the soundtrack to Semple’s 2023 exhibition of the same name at Cedric Bardawil in London.

Music taken from the Carte Blanche performance "Monument 0.10 : The Living Monument" by Eszter Salamon. This album contains selections from Carmen Villain's score for the two-and-a-half hour performance, most of them edited down from the long-form versions that accompanied the ultra-slow scenes of the performance. These are Carmen Villain's first compositions for dance. Acclaimed Choreographer Eszter Salamon’s dance performance The Living Monument is built on still life, slowness and the presence of the body. In the performance, the theatrical elements are equal and interdependent, and it develops into an installation of sound, movement and figures. Each tableau is bound together by Carmen Villain’s hypnotic score in which the audience is taken on a meditative journey through vibrant tableaus in a dreamlike universe. Carmen Villain's score is a suspension of time where her music is seeking a new form of slow-moving minimalism.

In 1987, Nakahara Masaya founded the project Violent Onsen Geisha, which quickly became one of the most well-known and influential names in the Japanese noise music scene, distinctive among others for frequently displaying a bizarre, sarcastic, and mischievous sense of humor. The band's name, which translates to "violent hot springs geisha," is a reference to the traditional Japanese practice of hot spring bathing, as well as a nod to Nakahara's confrontational and irreverent approach to music. As Violent Onsen Geisha, he creates experimental music that blends elements of noise, industrial, and avant-garde styles. He is known for his use of unconventional instruments and sounds, including feedback loops, field recordings, appropriated or "found" music, in addition to (or even instead of) straight-ahead noise. As well as his work as a musician, Nakahara is also a prolific visual artist and writer. His artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and he has published several books on the subjects of art and music. He is known for his irreverent and humorous approach to art, which often subverts traditional Japanese imagery and cultural norms. Despite his underground status, Nakahara has been a highly influential figure in the Japanese art and music scenes for over three decades. His work has inspired countless musicians and artists both in Japan and around the world. "Wagamama Na Ofukuro" is a super rare 1993 cassette release by Nakahara’s label “My Fiance's Lifework” . The title translates to "Selfish Mother" in English, and the tape is known for its confrontational and irreverent approach to music. It consists of handful of tracks that features a barrage of harsh noise, feedback, and distorted vocals. Despite its abrasive nature, there is a sense of humor and playfulness to the music, with artist incorporating samples of children's songs and nursery rhymes into the mix. Nakahara's use of unconventional instruments and sounds, as well as his willingness to push boundaries and challenge established norms, make this cassette a standout in the noise genre. Now available fully remastered 30 years after its first release.

First vinyl pressing of the long out of print 1993 classic many consider not only Skullflower's apex, but one of the finest noise rock records of the 90's. Edition of 600 clear smoke 2xLP in deluxe embossed sleeve.

The Pacific Northwest musician John Greek originally released "I'm Hot For Your Body" as a limited private press 12" single in 1979 - rumors abound that only 100 copies were ever made, though much about this record feels apocryphal.Across six minutes of sordid, primal disco- blues, Mr. Greek slowly yields to the power of desire, chasing swirling string synths around the shadows like they're ghosts, dousing everything in flange it's lighter fluid. It is both terrifying and undeniable.With permission from Mr. Greek's estate, we've remastered the original and presented it alongside a even-more-unhinged version from Velvet Season & The Hearts Of Gold, the duo of Gerry Rooney (co-founder of the legendary Black Cock edits label) and Joel Martin (of Quiet Village).Not for the faint of heart, this.

In 1980, Genesis P-Orridge and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson of (then-) Throbbing Gristle travelled to New York City to meet up at the fortified apartment, known as The Bunker, of famed beat writer and cultural pioneer William S. Burroughs and his executor James Grauerholz. Genesis and Sleazy started the daunting task of compiling the experimental sound works of Burroughs, which, up until that point, had never been widely heard. During those visits, Burroughs would play back his tape recorder experiments featuring his spoken word “cut-ups”, collaged field recordings from his travels and his flirtations with EVP recording techniques, pioneered by Latvian intellectual Konstantins Raudive. Over the following year, P-Orridge, Christopherson and Grauerholz spent countless hours compiling various edits, each collection showcasing Burroughs sensitive ear and experimental prowess for audio anomaly within technical limitations. In early 1981, Burroughs had relocated to Lawrence, KS to escape the violence and manias of New York City life. There, P-Orridge and Christopherson put the finishing touches on the record that would be known as Nothing Here Now but the Recordings. Released in Spring 1981, the album would end up as the final release on Industrial Records, brought about by the dissolution of Throbbing Gristle. It was quietly out of print until 1998, when John Giorno and the Giorno Poetry Systems included the album on a retrospective CD box set, which compiled the majority of Burroughs's seminal recordings. In 2015, Dais Records worked closely with the Estate of William S. Burroughs to finally re-release, for the first time in 36 years, a proper vinyl reissue of William S. Burroughs Nothing Here Now but the Recordings to celebrate the centennial anniversary of William S. Burroughs. For the 2023 edition, Dais has remastered the audio with renowned engineer Josh Bonati, and restored the original artwork with a new dedication to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson. Releasing in tandem with Break Through In Grey Room

聽覺侵蝕 噪音宣言 2 years after their debut album on Utech Records, P/O MASSACRE goes deeper in their immersive noise experimentation in this collaboration album with Alex Buess, and Merzbow (Masami Akita 秋田昌美). An architecture of distortion, Moog processors, spring reverb, drone effects and more, then developed in different directions by two electronic/noise veterans. It’s a journey of pure sensation, destruction, and rebirth. A skull-vibrating sound decomposition to your face. For this very reason of searching the limit of frequency and sound structure, we’ve decided to make this album as double 45 rpm vinyl, for a maximum aural experience, cut for vinyl by Frédéric Alstadt at Mont Analogue Masters. As he says: “it’s the cut of the uncuttable”. The visual design and layout are taken care of by the Taiwanese noise builder Chia-Chun Xu (Karma Detonation Tapes), with the artwork from the film destroying artist Tseng Peng-Chieh. Heavy gatefold sleeve, with obi and a bonus CD which includes an exclusive track “Nonslaught” from the same recording session by P/O MASSACRE only.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first vinyl reissue of David Rosenboom’s unique Future Travel, originally released on the short-lived Detroit label Street Records in 1981 and here presented in an expanded edition with an additional LP of wild, previously unheard live and studio material from the same period. Future Travel emerged from the confluence of two important streams in Rosenboom’s work at this time. First, his exploration of ‘propositional music’, defined as ‘complete cognitive models of music’ that start from the radical question, ‘What is music?’ In this case, the music belongs to the universe of Rosenboom’s In the Beginning (1978-1981), in which proportional relationships determine the material available to the composer in all musical parameters (harmonic relationships, melodic shapes, rhythmic subdivisions, dynamics, and so on). Second, the work documents a key moment in Rosenboom’s long collaboration with synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. Having played a role in developing concepts for some of the modules of the Buchla 300 Series Electric Music Box (an innovative analogue modular system controlled by micro-processors), Rosenboom went on to write the software for Buchla’s hybrid analogue-digital keyboard synthesiser, the Touché, the instrument heard most prominently here. In a way that no purely analogue synthesizer could, the 300 Series and Touché allowed Rosenboom to work with the In the Beginning algorithms in real time, the synthesizers becoming ‘intelligent instruments’ that actively collaborate with the performer. Developing the open structures of the electronic pieces from In the Beginning, Future Travel explored the possibilities of simply ‘playing the system’, recording live at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope studio in San Francisco. Working from loose sketches, Rosenboom added acoustic instruments to the electronic sounds and, on some pieces, the processed voice of Jacqueline Humbert. Like Rosenboom’s collaboration with Humbert on the abstracted synth-chanson of Daytime Viewing, this music set out deliberately to challenge the ‘stratified and illusorily coagulated identities in the musical culture of the time,’ refusing distinctions between ‘serious’ and popular music. But where Daytime Viewing achieves this in part through genre references, Future Travel is bracingly sui generis, existing in a unique universe where radical formalisation à la Xenakis spontaneously gives rise to expressive jazz harmonies and old-timey folk melodies. The crystalline quality of many of the Touché sounds gives Future Travel a sparkling, immediately enticing surface, its layers of shifting ostinato patterns pulsating outside conventional meter, rippling like waves on the surface of water. On opener ‘Station Oaxaca’, ping-ponging synth arpeggios and hand percussion accompany a sentimental violin melody, abruptly overtaken by layered keyboard runs, before the entry of tinkling marimba-like sounds reframe the scene as sci-fi Martin Denny exotica. ‘Time Arroyo’ begins as an austere study in staccato synth sounds in multiple overlapping tempi, reminiscent of Ligeti’s famous ‘clock’ rhythmic effects. Before long, it opens up into a melodic passage with the gentle heroism of classic Roedelius, which proves to be only a brief interlude before the layers of rhythmically distinct synthesiser patterns begin to build and accelerate into an increasingly dense cacophony. The wildest twists and turns are saved for the epic closer ‘Nova Wind’, where the arrangement focuses on Rosenboom’s virtuoso piano playing, perfectly embodying the project’s radical disregard of stylistic orthodoxies as he moves from hyperactive pointillistic flurries to a kind of space-age gospel. At several points throughout the record, the distinctive voice of Jacqueline Humbert is heard reading passages from the text component of In the Beginning, a dialogue between The Double (an embodiment of humanity’s timeless desire to replicate itself in spiritual and technological copies) and two Spirit Characters. Fittingly, as all are conceived as embodiments of a future form of techno-human collective consciousness, distinctions between the three characters are not immediately evident in Humbert’s delivery, just as the music blurs the boundaries between intelligent computing and human spontaneity. Adorned with a striking retro-futurist cover (and here accompanied by extensive new liner notes and archival images), Future Travel is a time capsule of radical imaginings at the birth of our digital age, reminding us of utopian possibilities of which our own present seems so often to fall short.

Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground artists. Poo-Bah Records, with its import bins and backroom jam space, attracted the pseudonymous artists forming the initial incarnation of long-running collective Smegma. Early members Ju Suk Reet Meate, Dennis Duck, Cheez-it Ritz, Big Dirty, Amazon Bambi and Dr. Id contributed to various LAFMS compilations and combinations before several core members relocated to Portland, Oregon in 1975, where they recorded their debut album Glamour Girl 1941. Originally released on the LAFMS label in 1979, the LP combines rock instrumentation with tape, synthesizer, horns and voice in a tempestuous cauldron of anti-academy improv and alien noise. Beyond its roots in LAFMS, Smegma would help shape the early Portland punk scene in the late '70s alongside Wipers and Neo Boys. In more recent years, they have collaborated with Merzbow and Wolf Eyes. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with insert.