MUSIC

While Chrisman's "Ku Mwezi" ep mostly explored gqom and trap influenced Afrohouse mutations, his debut album heads in a different direction. On "Makila", Chrisman provides an experimental vision of the taraxina sound: a molasses-slow fusion of the Angolan kuduro and kizobma dance templates that dips in-and-out of fuzzy drones and syrupy gqom. On 'Angels of Kivu', he pushes the clicking skeletal rhythm into the background, allowing electrified likembé melodies to take pride of place. It sounds like Congolese legends Konono No.1 shocked into a psychedelic electronic future by way of Durban. 'Fatiliya' pushes more solidly into taraxina territory, with familiar saw synths accenting low 'n slow kicks and air blast leads. The backbone is Angolan, but Chrisman approaches his music with a full awareness of Atlanta trap and gqom, never ignoring the gut-rattling pressure of sub bass. That's never more evident than on the title track, where he constructs a haunted atmosphere of bells and drones to sit beneath staccato percussive hits and and winding drill slaps. "Makila" is challenging music that takes divergent African forms and melts them together with next level skill and sleight of hand. It's another bold step for East African electronic music that underscores the wild creativity and talent emerging from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bladder Flask’s debut (in fact only) LP, originally issued by Orgel Fesper Music in 1981, is one of the most eclectic albums of the post-Industrial era. It is both challenging and perplexing… So, put down your puny instruments of normality and breathe in the frenzied fungal spores of Bladder Flask! The fact that Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound is a big fan of this album is testament to its greatness: ‘I love Bladder Flask’s One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling and what a great title, perhaps my favourite ever. I must have listened to the album so much in the ’80s. I listened to it again recently and it was like welcoming an old friend.’ Personnel: Richard Rupenus, Philip Rupenus + Sean Breadin, John Mylotte, Nigel Jacklin Recorded at Wrongrong Studio and Spectro Arts Workshop 1980 – 1981 Audio Restoration & Mastering: Colin Potter @ IC Studio

Nurse With WoundのSteven Stapletonもその大ファンであることを公言しているアヴァンギャルド音楽史上に刻む大傑作にして、TNBことThe New BlockadersのPhilip Rupenus & Richard Rupenus、John Mylotte (Metgumbnerbone)、Nigel Jacklin、Sean Breadinらにより結成されたカルト・グループが残した幻の名作。1981年に〈Orgel Fesper Music〉から限定500部でリリースされたBladder Flaskのデビュー作が〈Sonoris〉からCD&LPリイシュー。ポスト・インダストリアル時代における最も多彩なアルバムの一つであり、挑戦的であると同時に当惑させられるインダストリアル/サウンド・コラージュの傑作。Colin Potterの手により〈IC Studio〉でリマスタリング。

The Wire's critically acclaimed 1999 album is now available on LP and CD for the 21st year. His 1999 work, praised by The Wire, has been reissued on LP and CD for the 21st year. It is an ink painting-like sound work created with his own voice and found sound loops, weaving dry sounds. New mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.

The Wire's critically acclaimed 1999 album is now available on LP and CD for the 21st year. His 1999 work, praised by The Wire, has been reissued on LP and CD for the 21st year. It is an ink painting-like sound work created with his own voice and found sound loops, weaving dry sounds. New mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.

Xochimoki - celebrated American ethnomusicologist Jim Berenholtz and Aztec descendant / wisdom keeper Mazatl Galindo - traverse millenia with career compendium Temple Of The New Sun, an album recorded in New Mexico in the mid 1980’s but tracing a lineage back thousands of years. Xochimoki summon feathered gods and animal spirits. They incant mythological folktales of celestial glory and supernatural dread. Their songs are sung in Pre-Columbian Central and South American languages, including Nahuatl, Maya, Purepecha and Quechua. And much of their music was written at ancient ceremonial sites, in rituals and meditations, in communion with the spirits that rest there. There is an inherent sense of storytelling, of the peoples of the jungle and the earth living through this music. Xochimoki self-released two cassettes, soundtracked the Albuquerque Museum’s touring exhibition MAYA: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization, and created several discs’ worth of further soundtrack music elsewhere before moving on to new and individual projects. Phantom Limb’s hand-curated reissue album The Temple Of The New Sun collects key works from their broad history, newly remastered and now available for the first time on vinyl.

Invisible City Editions continues our 10 year anniversary in adventurous sounds. We are thrilled to announce the re-release of Rico Toto’s 1993 CD recording Fwa Épi Sajès. Mind melting synthesizers and drum machines fuse with ancient Guadeloupe Gwo-ka rhythms in this musical endeavour Rico Toto describes as “Electro-ka.” The improvised live instruments of the Moundjahka ensemble meld with electronic abstraction to create a psychedelic, immersive digital diaspora dream state. With nods to Jon Hassell's atmospheric soundscapes, YMO and Baldelli / TBC Cosmic mixtapes, this selection of songs encompasses an entire spectrum of moods and sounds. The A side begins with fourth-world tropical percussions, opening with sounds of nature in “Jungle Meditation” and leading into the downtempo summer synthpop jam “Yadadé.” The B side takes a darker turn, starting off with the deep chugging rhythms of “Rawal Pindi” and continuing even deeper with synth sounds and haunting vocals that culminates into the dreamy meditative final track, “Golgotha.” Limited vinyl repress in collaboration with Rico Toto. Artwork by Floating Bstrd.

Devo's Hardcore documents the group's beginning as pre-punk outcasts in the fertile Akron, Ohio underground rock scene. Spawned at the nearby college of Kent State, site of the infamous May 4 Massacre, Devo formed as a conceptual art project armed with a radical philosophy of de-evolution. Brothers Mothersbaugh (Mark, Bob, and Jim) and Brothers Casale (Jerry and Bob) along with drummer Alan Myers soon whipped-up an otherworldly brand of "devolved blues" that could hold its own alongside the beatnik groove of 15-60-75 (aka The Numbers Band) or the primal rock poetry of the Bizarros. Recorded on various 4-track machines and in tiny studios, basements, and garages between 1974-1977, Hardcore reveals their strikingly clear vision: rock n' roll stripped bare of its collective cool and jerked back into propaganda fit for post-modern man. It's no surprise that these transmissions would soon catch the eye and ear of Brian Eno who later produced their landmark 1978 debut album. Noisy synth, strangled guitar chops, and a primitive rhythmic thud power the early Devo sound. Threaded beneath it all are lyrical themes of post-McCarthy paranoia, middle-class ephemera, and Devo's long-running topic of choice: sex, or lack thereof. Volume 2 digs further into the band's cranial bunker with the caveman hit "Be Stiff," the space age surf-blues of "Clockout" and even a demented take on bubblegum pop, "Goo Goo Itch." This 2xLP set includes four previously unreleased tracks: "Man From The Past," "Doghouse Doghouse," "Hubert House," and "Shimmy Shake." Superior Viaduct and Booji Boy Records are proud to present Devo's Hardcore to a new generation of spuds, lovingly packaged with Moshe Brakha's stunning cover photography. As David Bowie said in 1977, Devo is indeed "the band of the future."

One of our all-time favourite artists and extended Circus Company member The Mole returns to the label for a proper presentation of his album The River Widens. Originally a limited, cassette-only release via fellow Canadian Eddie C’s Red Motorbike, we are proud to offer this album in its full glory for the first time on all formats. Never one to shy away from synth deep dives, or raw sample flip collaging, this collection of 21 works checks all the boxes. Ambient trippers to straight up neck-snapping instrumental beats. Not forgetting tastes of the more uptempo, highly-assured and hypnotic dance floor feels the world has come to love The Mole for. Moments of casual chillin are interspersed with effortless, emotive angles, some evoking the charm of his Little Sunshine release for us in 2017. X-pert Profat opens the set with sly statements that give way to relaxed and subtle keys over gentle, midtempo rhythms. Things switch up nicely into easy, Northwest Coast boogie-meets-beatdown feels in Break for Ma, followed by a solid array of almost Jaylib-schooled boom bap twists, like the aptly-titled Drums 2002 and Jo Barker. Ambient cuts like AR day and New Family offer a refreshing tap of the brakes, setting the scene for the gorgeous, Jarre-esque Weak Stranger. We also get treated to Repepepater’s nod to Detroit house, urban-mode Balearic feels on They Work for Mr. O, and sneak attack lo-fi future funk in the form of Ufos Over Egypt, with Montreal co-pilot Cristobal on a wild shisha-lit vox narrative, earlier versions of which have blessed many of our label comrades’ DJ sets, from Dave Aju to Vincent Lemieux. The River Widens expands beautifully on the breadth of unique musical directions The Mole is capable of taking us in, now spread across fresh 2x12” vinyl and available digitally for the first time, along with another limited editio

The French electronic composer Bernard Parmegiani, one of the most important figures of the French music research group [INA-GRM] founded by Pierre Scheffer, has influenced Aphex Twin, Autechre and Keith Fullerton Whitman. In 2008, to celebrate GRM's 50th anniversary, compiled with 12-CD collection of electronic music works that became very popular and is now hard to find. Winner of the President of the Republic Award at the French ACC Disc Awards(!) A 92-page booklet (in both English and French) is included. This is a must-have for all fans of electronic and experimental music.

This dense 11-disc retrospective of Pauline Oliveros' early and unreleased electronic work includes her very first piece made for tape in 1961. Organized chronologically, this set not only documents Pauline's earliest electronic music but it also functions as an early history of electronic music itself. Follow as she participates in the establishment of the legendary San Francisco Tape Music Center and then moves to University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio, Mills Tape Music Center and University of California San Diego Electronic Music Center. This tenth anniversary edition is packaged in a clamshell-style box containing all the tracks from the 2012 edition spread out over 11 CDs each housed in single pocket sleeves. A 36-page booklet includes extensive liner notes and essays from Pauline Oliveros, Alex Chechile, Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, Corey Arcangel.

Pauline Oliveros was a composer, performer, humanitarian and an important pioneer in American music. Acclaimed internationally, she forged new ground for herself and others. Through improvisation, electronic music, sonic philosophy, teaching and meditation she created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly affects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it. Pauline Oliveros built a loyal following through her concerts, recordings, publications and musical compositions written for soloists and ensembles in music, dance, theater and inter-arts companies. She provided leadership within the music community from her early years as the first Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (formerly the Tape Music Center at Mills), director of the Center for Music Experiment during her 14-year tenure as professor of music at the University of California at San Diego to acting in an advisory capacity for organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council for the Arts, and many private foundations. She served as Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College. Oliveros was vocal about representing the needs of individual artists, about the need for diversity and experimentation in the arts, and promoting cooperation and good will among people. She was honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros' commitment to interaction with the moment went unchanged. Oliveros passed away peacefully on November 24, 2016 but her sonic legacy and philosophy continues to grow and inspire.

"On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level." --John Rockwell

"I don't hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning." ~ Harry Bertoia, 1976

Harry Bertoia's Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 of Bertoia's original records newly restored from their master tapes and housed in replica jackets. A heavy duty box, printed with metallic inks, holds the 11 discs as well as a 100 page book containing a lengthy historic essay, Smithsonian interview with Harry Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn as well as reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia's children. The Complete Sonambient Collection celebrates 100 years of Harry Bertoia in 2015, the centennial of his birth.

In the late 1950s Harry Bertoia (1915-1978), already a renowned American sculptor, began creating long-form, improvised pieces of music utilizing pure acoustic tones evoked from his sound sculptures. Around this time Bertoia came up with the term "Sonambient" to describe the music and environment created by his tonal sculptures and their lush harmonic overtones. In a renovated barn on his property deep in the Pennsylvania woods Harry curated a harmonious selection of his sculptures and gongs, often recording his frequent, intuitive sound experiments using fout overhead microphones and a 1/4" tape recorder. Bertoia dedicated the last twenty years of his life to his Sonambient work and in 1970 he released the first Sonambient LP. In 1978, in the final months of his life, he selected recordings from his archive and produced ten more Sonambient records. He would not live long enough to see or hear these records himself. Bertoia died in 1978, at age 63, and was buried beneath a giant gong behind his Sonabmient barn.

Bertoia's recordings are as much a celebration of sustained tones, slow decay, healing vibrations and shimmering harmonics as Indian Classical music, singing bowls, The Well Tuned Piano or Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica. Through these rich harmonics, pulsing tones and pure gongs Bertoia was able to more clearly articulate his inner spirit than he could with sculpture alone – a point he made himself many times in interview. Harry's single greatest piece of art is the totality of his life which is nearly impossible to measure but easy to feel. It's our hope that somehow this box set evokes some of the same sacred, personal feeling that one has in Bertoia's barn.

Your purchase directly supports the preservation of Harry Bertoia's Sonambient archive. 

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. In 1977, LAFMS released Blorp Esette, one of several compilations tracking the collective's growth and wild-eyed experimentation. Ace Farren Ford, an early LAFMS recruit from the Poo-Bah circle, produced the album and solicited cover artwork by Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart). Ford appears in various configurations alongside members of Smegma, Le Forte Four and "unknown artist" (as the credit for more than one piece reads). The Residents, showing their affinity with LAFMS, contributed "Whoopy Snorp" for their first non-Ralph Records release. Blorp Esette shows the artists grasping for new, non-idiomatic voicings and collaborative modes, anticipating LAFMS affiliates and offshoots such as Airway, Human Hands and Monitor. A second volume would come out in 1980, featuring Ford's punk band The Child Molesters. If you're looking for the missing link between mid-'70s art practice and outsider music, then look no further. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with inserts.

Hugging the bend and blowing kisses since 2012, Antinote has been a vessel of choice for lovers of left-of-centre dance music and retro-laced boogie. Covering a supremely wide range of styles, the Parisian outlet has carved out a musical lane truly its own by putting on a nonstop celebration of electronics’ inexhaustible power of enthralment. A pledge of quality-driven curation and never-ending search for the next thrill that’s proven untiringly relevant throughout the years and opens onto its second decade of existence with equal panache. Toasting to its ten years splashing the game with continuously reasserted outsider bravura, label captain Zaltan has bottled some of the finest expressions out Antinote’s versatile vaults of sound to form the present “X” compilation, “ten years of loving notes and foolin around 2012-2022". From totem animal IUEKE’s oddball musique concrète (“fiano-church") to the candid synth-pop of Latvian outfit Domenique Dumont (“La Dolce Vita"), via Feminielli’s outré mix of ghetto-house and ominous croon (“Nobody’s Boy”) and Tel-Aviv vibist Alek Lee’s signature synth-splattered 80s wave (“Different Plans”), it’s a smorgasbord of colours and vibrations that prepares to avalanche across your sound system. Take the esoteric shoegaze of Epsilove, Shelter and Thomas Riguelle (“From The Spaceship in My Room”) and prepare to move upstream a river of saturated guitars and all-engulfing reverbs; let Low Jack’s jagged floor aggressor drill a hole in your head (“Feel 2020”) or opt for further ankle-breaking UK-bass-influenced riddim traction from DK & Geena (“BelleTech One”). A further cosmic-friendly epic, Chimère FM (I:Cube!) embarks us on a ride near Saturn’s belt (“La Genèse du Monstre à Suze") whereas former Antinote apprentice River Yarra snipes a hail of Italo-informed arpeggios and giallo-esque bass murk to compelling effect (“Blooms”) and L.I.E.S. head honcho Ron Morelli goes all in with a formidable, old-school dusty house chugger (“Tribute”). There’s obviously more to "Antinote X" than the sum of its parts, and Jean Luc’s post-Plantasia jazz hybrid (“La Truite”), Arabica’s decadent, anti-colonial spoken number (“Multo Storia") or fellow Antinote in-house visual designer Nico Motte’s vintage disco churner (“All The Money In The World”) are there to attest. Not to forget Panoptique, up with a lashing, dissonant treat for the senses (“Un Licenciement”), Leo Martelli under guise as Sammy Patanegra with a tribal jacking weapon (“Maria”), Pont Levis floating into emotional hyperspace (“L’Espace et le Coeur de L'Âme”), Trigger Moral in with a marvel of a hip-hop gem emerged from some retro-futuristic wormhole (“soul assssn”) and Laporte rounding it off downtempo, modular ambient style for good measure (“Sleepers”). Ten years on, Antinote still leading the pack.

Back in 1980, The Pump sessions prefigured Nocturnal Emissions. The same personnel (Nigel and Daniel Ayers + Caroline K) was later credited in the first NE performance in March 1981. Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire opened a path and a kind of DIY sound collage practice became popular in the underground. More punk than punk, right? With synth, bass, guitar and vocals, The Pump could almost be mistaken for a new wave band, but it was the start of a long, prolific and eclectic journey for Nigel Ayers, sole member of Nocturnal Emissions for quite a while now. Although it is not at all obvious, by 1980 Nigel had been exposed to a few dub tricks and mainly the otherwordly spatial sounds and breaks: «In the late 70s I became aware that dub producers such as Lee Scratch Perry, Prince Far I - and sound systems - were doing something with sound that was a very new and different approach. It was in the separation of recorded sound into very spatial elements, working very sculpturally with sound. I had absorbed the space concerns of Hendrix years before I got into dub, and the spatial elements within Gong, Hawkwind, early Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, etc. When we did The Pump, we lived in Brixton and spent a lot of time absorbing dub in the streets and shebeens.» Growing up in the Peak District (northern England) during the 1960s didn't put one directly in touch with black culture or music. There was one black kid at school and «to see a black person you'd have to go to Manchester or Sheffield.» And mainstream culture tends to ridicule outsider forms and expressions, so a popular idea of reggae came through in things such as the novelty single "Johnny Reggae" by The Piglets, released in 1971. By that time, Nigel was already listening to a few reggae singles his dad brought home from Sheffield, where he worked. He remembers the labels being scratched and thinking it must be because the records were so rude, meaning lyrical content. His artistic inclinations led him to spend more time at home trying out his skills with Super8 films and pasting soundtracks onto them. One of the first he remembers was a loop worked out from side B of one of those singles (the traditional instrumental Version on reggae singles). First heard about tape loops from "Dr Who" on TV, a weekly show that imprinted strange sounds and sights on kids' minds since the first episode in 1963. More experiments followed, loops and cut-ups recorded to cassette with full conscience that non-musicianly, non-conventional approaches were sanctioned by such names as Captain Beefheart and Brian Eno. Punk made it easier for everyone aspiring to make a point with music, it created a context for rawness and spontaneity. «Punk was a necessary break from virtuosity, and a good thing. I dug punk, a lot of ideas about accessibility, tackling racism, sexism and species-ism, were brought to the foreground. And it created an infrastructure for the zine culture, and cassette culture, autonomous collectives & networked DIY.» Only the way most early punk bands recreated dub and reggae didn't strike a chord with Nigel Ayers: «That's more to do with questions of my own personal taste and preference, which is by no means fixed.» Things became more serious when "Tissue Of Lies" came out in 1980 and Nocturnal Emissions steadily became hot within the so-called industrial culture (or counterculture). Although never explicitly adopting a dub format, its techniques and inspiration certainly informed many of the more rhythmic tracks NE recorded over the years. «Personally I was trying to create something that integrated my own personal experience and had a focussed ethic in content, personnel, production and distribution. Women collaborators have been vital , for example, as active creators - not as set dressing. Caroline K (for example) had technical proficiencies that aren't often expected in a male-dominated music world, she ran her own studio and later became a telecommunications engineer.» Come 2010 and the love of dub finally surfaced explicitly on a very limited "In Dub" CDR. All the space is there, some might say also the industrial weight and - dare we say it - the weight of crumbling capitalism (notoriously visible after 2008). There's a sort of robotic pace in these dry statements of political commentary, not really the same as in 80s digital dancehall or 90s digidub. It sounds like the kind of autonomous zone dreamed about since the punk and cut-up years and informed by all the accumulated background in electronic music and knowledge and respect for dub pioneers. "In Dub Volume 2" appeared in 2020, also strictly limited, framed by the early stages of the COVID experience, expanding on the same sonics, gently dragging the listener along for a thoughtful ride. The music on both volumes was recorded at leisure over a period of roughly 12 years and it hovers timelessly above. Heavily synthetic, learned and respectful music, alienated and in sync with the desire to escape (even if temporarily) to an artificial and abstract safe zone. We now present carefully selected tracks from both volumes, given a proper boost for vinyl by Douglas Wardrop (Bush Chemists, Conscious Sounds).

Kinzua debut a ritualistic, zonked outernational ambience, downbeat and cyberpunk bliss on Vladimir Ivkovic’s Offen Music - RIYL Morphosis, To Rococo Rot, CS + Kreme, Black Zone Myth Chant. Formed by Lucas Brell in Berlin and Leipzig’s Marvin Unde (Qnete), Kinzua emerge from the German club undergrowth with hypnotic slants of brownfield-pastoral electronica and meter-messing motorik pulses on their first release ‘None of the Above’. Smeared over a double LP, the hour-long album pitchbends with a properly lysergic quality as it executes its functions between the folksy crackle of ‘First Chapter’ and the grungy, viscous, post-D&B rolige of ‘Breath’. Rhythmic prompts ranging from klassic kosmiche to ‘90s UK armchair music and contemporary dembow dancehall underline Kinzua’s lines of melodic thought and dream-textured electronics in swirling permutations that feel in-the-moment but ever rolling towards an uncertain horizon. Kinzua act as spirit guides for the mind expanding new generation of trippers, with effortlessly oily grooves and keen attention to detail that suspend a sense of disbelief and mesmerise to their method. Seductive oddities such as ‘Domestic Affair’ follow to Detlef Weinrich-esque electro on ‘Elevator Moving Flor’ and ‘Heidi Peter’ echoes original Harmonia from a bleaker perspective, while supremely groggy drone in ‘Surface’ gives way to arid dancehall abstraction on ‘Sahara’, and ‘Gobi’ slopes off on a crooked outernational tip to a highlight of Laila Sakini-like scenes in ‘The Dancing Smoke’ starring vox by GiGi FM reciting from Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs de Mal’.

The liminal space between storytelling and dreaming is full of noise. Like whispers, flickering lines of static travel to the rhythm of tension, moving through moments of stillness and chaos. The sharp details of the hyper-personal become shared memories. Dreams can be stories, their fabric transient and their logic malleable - like folk songs carrying ancient knowledge or clairvoyant wisdom. White Dove Dream tells a story that only sound can. One that defies language and closed narrative; a story that is both a personal rumination and collective conversation. There are layers of healing synthesis and dream logic improvisation; captured recordings coalesce somewhere beneath the scramble like deja vu. Like a diary entry or a manifesto - noise is folk music and Icebear is noisy. ​​Icebear is Eilis Mahon, a musician from Kildare, Ireland, currently based in Limerick City. ~ Icebear began as a lofi recording project while Mahon was in school. Her previous releases 'Bug', 'in watermelon sugar', 'in summer i am an empty field' & 'lost voice memos' were recorded in her childhood bedroom using tape experiments and synth improvisations. As Mahon entered adulthood, the project morphed into an experiment in noise and performance, using harsh noise and improvised electronics to explore pain, power and trauma. White Dove Dream circles back to Icebear's roots - created alone in a bedroom during a period of personal (and collective) alienation, it serves as a reminder that the past versions of ourselves are never too far away, never quite gone; they flicker, fade out and repeat. White Dove Dream is her debut release on Weeding - an independent label and collective of friends based primarily in Dublin, Ireland, who love to make and share noise.

Latvian producer mu tate joins Utter with the ‘Faded’ EP, a collection of five mesmerising ambient electronica pieces. mu tate - real name Artur Strekalov - has been diligently and unceremoniously weaving his musical magic for the past half-decade. ‘Faded’ walks the same spectral path as his feted album ‘Let Me Put Myself Together’ (Experiences Ltd, 2020), which introduced many to Strekalov’s highly atmospheric, blissed-out sonic explorations. The EP glides along, each track enveloping the listener in a cocoon of undulating frequencies and ghostly rhythm, softly contained yet stretching out beyond into wide open space. Delicate, crackling sparks fizz in and out of perception above. It’s a trip alright! ‘Faded’ is available on limited vinyl and digital formats, mastered and cut by Anne Taegert at D&M. Artwork by AS, laid out by Alex Egan. A special insert designed by Art Crime is also included with physical copies.

A self-released record with three previously unreleased versions & reworks of tracks from the last 7 years, originally released via Blackest Ever Black, Berceuse Heroique and Noods Radio. TEXT FROM RWDFWD.COM: "Red X, Information & Drum Tangle. Originally relesead via Blackest Ever Black, Berceuse Heroique and Noods Radio, respectively (go seek them out if you haven't yet!) - this self-released 12" features three previously unheard cuts & versions of recent time - dubbed, live & direct - straight from Ossia's mixing desk. Red X, which was the title track to Ossia's debut solo record on Blackest in 2015, is served up on the A side of this record (now cut at 45rpm, so you can test it at slow motion dread speed too). This new cut is titled 'Red X (Vertigo Version)' and keen ears and eyes might recognise the additional inclusion of the String & electone organ part which appeared on the final track 'Vertigo' at the end of Ossia's recent album 'Devil's Dance'. The strings - played by the great Rakhi Singh - come searing in over the spring reverberated breakdown section, and burn over the final crescendo of the track - something Ossia had been testing out in live shows from time to time, but only recently commited to a proper recording - now also including extra splashes of echo & reverb over Peter Tosh's Red X vocal excerpts, for extra menace. On the B Side, we get two dubwise versions, raw dub style - First up, 'Information' which came out on a 2 x 12" va Berceuse Heroique in 2016, gets the rework / dub mix treatment. Some of you might remember that the original 'Information' already had a version to it on the B side of it's original release, which explored an even more minimalist angle. Upping the energy levels for this counterpart, some years later, the 'Raw 2020 Version' on this new record features a reworked bassline which revolves into more stepping kind of techno territory - with the remnants of pads, and percussion getting squeezed through broken mixing desk faders, their echo'd signals left to feedback into the void as the bass tumbles down on you. Play it loud, or don't. The final cut on this disc is also the most 'recent' - The original cut of Drum Tangle came out in 2021 on a various artists 12" via our friends at Noods Radio. We have the last copies of this 12" available here by the way - And if you don't already own it, then we'd recommend grabbing a copy of that one, so you can play this new version right after the original cut. Because, as in best Jamaican style dub tradition, the idea is that the dub should follow the original cut - allowing you to explore the foundations of the rhythm in a newly focused way. Plus, this part two, the 'Raw Dub' of Drum Tangle lets loose on those snares which were only teased in during the final part of the original Drum Tangle cut - listen closely and they might just whisper at you, whilst the bassline shudders below."

Ever since he made his first trip to Japan to DJ, Optimo Music founder JD Twitch has been bewitched by Japanese music, and particularly the vibrant, imaginative, and often far-sighted sounds which emerged from the island nation during the 1980s. Now he’s put years of digging in Japanese record shops to good use on Polyphonic Cosmos, the latest release on his compilation-focused Cease & Desist imprint. Subtitled ‘A Beginners Guide to Japan In The ‘80s’, the collection offers a personal selection of Japanese gems recorded and released between 1981 and ’86 – a period when advances in recording and musical technology offered the nation’s artists and producers a whole new tool kit to employ. When combined with the unique musical culture of Japan, where local traditions are frequently fused with Western styles to create timeless, off-kilter aural fusions, this embrace of locally pioneered music technology had spectacular, often unusual results. Eight years in the making, Polyphonic Cosmos provides an endlessly entertaining musical snapshot of Japanese music of the early-to-mid ‘80s with all of the open-minded eclecticism and sonic twists that you would expect from the Glasgow-based DJ. Compare and contrast, for example, the gently breezy, morning-fresh folk-plus-electronics bliss of ‘ばら二曲 Baranikyoku (Fellini&Rota)’ by World Standard – the most familiar alias of long-serving musician/producer Sohichiro Suzuki – and the hallucinatory, slow-motion tribal rhythms, post-punk rhythms and tape delay-laden electronics of Imitation’s ‘Exotic Dance’. Or, for that matter, the tipsy mid-‘80s electronic reggae of Pecker’s ‘Sha La La’, the grungy but melodic post-punk strut of ‘You Go On Natural’ by Earthling (a track Twitch accurately describes as “sheer unrelenting groove”), and the unearthly, swirling sonics, new age instrumentation and flotation tank vocals of prolific (and seemingly mysterious) act Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s ‘Rimme Kohkyogaku Meiki’. It’s a credit to JD Twitch’s curatorial skills that the quality never dips, and sonic surprises lurk around every corner. Consider for a moment the hard to describe, far-sighted audio immersion of D-Day’s ‘Ki-Ra’ – all languid post-pop guitar, enveloping chords, spoken word vocals, shuffling 808 beats and marimba melodies – and the two contributions from video games soundtrack specialist (and driving instrumental synth-pop specialist) Hiroyuki Namba. The collection naturally includes some selections that have long been favourites in Twitch’s DJ sets – see Masumi Hara’s ‘Your Dream’ – as well as a handful of tracks from artists who may be more recognisable to those with only rudimentary knowledge of Japanese musical culture. The great Yasuaki Shimizu, whose work as Mariah has become far better known in recent years thanks to reissues of some of his most magical albums, is represented via ‘The Crow’, a picturesque chunk of horizontal, hard-to-define jazz-not-jazz smokiness, while the collection fittingly concludes with a sublimely funky, oddball electronic workout from Yellow Magic Orchestra legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (the frankly incredible ‘Wongga Dance Song’). Optimo’s JD Twitch extends a guided tour of his Japanese record collection, acquired on DJ jaunts to the Far East and spanning obscurities by Yasuaki Shimizu, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Normal Brain, a.o. The second release on Twitch’s Cease & Desist label, which delivered the ace Sheffield bleep & bass retrospective in 2020, ‘Sonic Innovations in Japan (1980-1986)’ dives deep into a pivotal era of Japanese music around its ‘80s economic boom time, when leaps in musical technology and recording brought the future into much sharper focus. The selection effectively takes Twitch’s ‘Polyphonic Cosmos’ mixtape (one of many exquisite selections along with Belgian new beat, Jamaican dub, and mooching goth) as jump off point into the rarified realms of ‘80s Japanese music, spelled out in full fat, legit licensed cuts that work equally well as a mixtape in their own right, or component joints to fetishise and send heads scurrying down discogs wormholes. Fans of YouTube algorithms will no doubt be enticed by yasuaki Shimizu’s opening gambit, the sultry lounge stroller ‘Crow’, while the DJs, dancers and Kraftwerk fiends will plug right into the speak ’n spell electro-pop of ‘M.U.S.I.C.’ by Normal Brain, the glittering uptempo disco energy of Hiroyuki Namba’s ‘Who Done It? (Part 2)’ and likewise their Pet Shop Boys-on-holiday viber ‘Tropical Exposition’. There’s also a super juicy cut of bendy-limbed post-punk from Pecker and EP-4, and, for the wee small hours, sexier turns of dry-iced electro boogie glyde on ‘Your Dream’ from Masumi Hara and the breezy beauty ‘Ki-Ra-I’ by D-Day.

Percussions Pour La Danse was a collaboration between North American born jazz & contemporary-dance instructor Tony Kennybrew and French musician Jean-Pierre Boistel. Tony, a Washington native who had studied, taught and danced professionally since the age of 12, found himself in France in the late 80’s. It’s here that he linked up with like-minded musician Jean-Pierre; who had recently returned from a 6-month trip to West Africa. A trip that helped refine his craft that begun in the early 70’s. 

The music was created for Tony to use when teaching contemporary jazz-dance classes and to accompany live performance, allowing students to “dance slowly, rapidly and change speeds without changing the tempo!”. This work of rhythmic research was based on the “Balance of The Walk”; in 4 times, in 6 times, in 7 times & in 3 times. In order to reach the spatial possibilities he was striving for, Jean-Pierre would also use computer assisted programming to sample and re-play his own instrumentation. This allowed him to lay down the tempo of the track and then play live over the top, which in turn gave him the freedom to add the desired instruments and effects to each song. 

Jean-Pierre’s use of instruments such as the Kalimba, Talking Drum & Sanza gives the album a distinctly African feel, while contemporary Jazz-dance time signatures adds a unique perspective to these traditional instrumentations creating an ethereal balance between the old and new. 

Six Black Hole jazz dubs by Cosmic Threat come together in one truly epic album straight from the astral echo chamber. Jammed over various sessions in an empty Leipzig club during lockdown, Kiki Hitomi, disrupt and bass clarinet black belt Volker Hemken (from Gewandhausorchester Leipzig) are keeping the track structures in constant warp mode, psychically locking in with the machines and freely exploring all the sonic territory inbetween Sun Ra and Prince Jammy. This highly hypnotic spiritual sequel to Kiki Hitomi’s 'Karma No Kusari' (2016) comes on red vinyl and with hand-painted artwork by Ellen G.

Debut album that serves as both an optimistic statement of intent and a final glance back at the painful places it explores

Feedback Moves returns with a vinyl reissue of Pat Thomas’ New Jazz Jungle: Remembering. The album was originally released on CD in 1997, at a time when Pat had already spent years playing on the free improvisation circuit with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey. Thomas is largely known as a jazz and improvising pianist, but can be heard using electronics as far back as 1989 on an electro acoustic work called Monads and on the Bailey-led Company ’91 recordings. Thomas identified jungle’s weirdness and intensity and saw a space open for his own interpretation, on New Jazz Jungle: Remembering he utilises his classical training and knowledge of the tonal systems used by 20th century composer’s Schoenberg and Webern, and fuses that with his earlier experiences using electronics, keyboards & sampling techniques. What we end up with is 10 tracks of bass heavy jungle breaks, which are intersected with vocal and orchestral samples, and layers of percussion rotating at varying time signatures. It’s in this fashion that the album seems to present itself: in layers. Layers of samples, keyboards and FX, deployed at varying speeds, never losing their intensity. The re-issue of this lost classic comes at a time when Thomas continues to go from strength to strength, having recently released various solo and collaborative works with a wide range of musicians and projects such as Matana Roberts, Elaine Mitchener, حمد [Ahmed], Black Top, XT and many more. 2 x 12" vinyl w/ liner notes and interview by Edward George (The Strangeness of Dub, Black Audio Film Collective). Edition of 500. Mastered by Beau Thomas @ Ten Eight Seven.