MUSIC

Originally released on tape in 2019, 'Big Room' helped establish Philly's Ulla Straus as one of the key figures in the post-"bblisss" wave of nu-ambient practitioners. Interchangeably glacial, gaseous and liquid, it's a rare downtempo tome that never shies away from sensuality and raw, messy emotionality. Gorgeous material: essential listening for anyone into Jake Muir, Perila, Shuttle358, Oval, Pendant or Space Afrika. 'Big Room' is a technically advanced record that never dangles its prowess in your face. Ulla's sound sculpting is remarkable, but the key to 'Big Room' is not her processing skill, it's her open-hearted emotional honesty. And if contemporary ambient and experimental music has been pocked by the Instagrammable nostalgia drip and hacky tacked-on PR narratives, 'Big Room' succeeds because it offers us a clear, demarcated alternative. Ulla doesn't need to shoehorn in a grandstanding press release or video footage of an elaborate modular setup to get our attention, the music does all the heavy lifting, drawing us in with clouded bathhouse textures and soft-focus dub rhythms, chiseled digital hiccups and levitational synthesizer loops. From the opening tones of 'Nana', with its sloshing pads and subtle glitches, to the dislocated wind chimes and blurry electronics of 'House', there's a resounding faded texture to Ulla's music that helps set a picture perfect mood. 'Big Room' is an album to lose yerself in - Ulla's able to dial in an aesthetic that goes beyond the surface level, piercing not just the production elements but the writing itself. Using relatively few elements, she's able to bridge the gaps between dub techno ('Net'), Mille Plateaux-esque processed glitch ('Past'), glowing Eno-influenced ambient ('Billow') and breathtaking arpeggio-led kosmische sounds ('Sister'), linking each track with her diaristic subtlety and careful choice of processes. In a forest of withered ambient mediocrity, 'Big Room' is a lonely, pristine evergreen - we just can't recommend it enough.

For fans of Sean McCann's Recital works to Yusaku Arai ”a two”. Collabolation album of ambient master Ulla & Japanese Experimental musician Ultrafog.

Abstract, Downtempo,Trip-Hop …Gi Gi returns to Quiet Time with a new album, Dreamliner. The Texas producer’s latest, Dreamliner, is comparably immediate and propulsive exploring spacey, kosmische-laced trip-hop, beneath slow motion arpeggiations and lullaby melodies, dubby percussion and sound effects gnash and quiver.

'Apodelia' is Hotspring's second solo release on Mood Hut, and is partly a further exploration of song forms, studio techniques and instrumentation explored on 2020’s 'Obit for Sunshade'. 'Apodelia' explores lifting into revealing; scouring fidelities, playing with emotion, and improvising by night.

SUNFOOT - The minimalist expressionistic improvisational experimental emotional intellectual cathartic project of three best friends/musicians created an epic sonic smattering during the heart of the Covid 19 Pandemic. Wearing protective masks just to play music with eachother, and staying in separate quarters at the infamous Sou'Wester trailer hotel, they would gather like silent monks in the morning, make highly original music with very little verbal communication and then part ways at end of the day. Under the production of Sonny Smith, they created with little break until they were exhausted and emotionally unhinged. During the mixing of the record, percussionist Ron Burns died tragically and unexpectedly, creating a whole new meaning for the record and a whole new meaning for his remaining two best friends. The songs range from a post punk devolved pop song form punctuated by searing guitar to an extremely personal and original musical communication style between three thoughtful musicians. With the passing of Burns, songs like Space, Mean World, You Roll the Dice Everyday and No Master Plan take on a more tragic and sensitive hue. However, Sunfoot has always been a positive vibration ensemble, spiritually speaking they are a very American counterpart to Japan’s Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Sunfoot’s love for eachother and life quest to battle negativity has carried through their music all along. Beneath the cloud of tragedy during the making of this sensitive and emotionally intelligent art piece the album stands as a testament of friendship, originality and deep musical exploration. This special issue is now available on ROCKS IN YOUR HEAD RECORDS & MISSISSIPPI RECORDS

On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the CMYK series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. - A Polaroid. Still life with tangled leads and consumer electronics, late twentieth century. Black and various shades of dirty white are the dominant non-colours. The image’s spatial depth remains diffuse, the links between its elements speculative. A note stuck to the wall (a legend, perhaps, or an all-explaining blueprint in text form?) is impossible to decipher. You can’t see what connects the picture’s signs. You have to hear it. farben says: Every sound is a text. A bearer of meaning in search of a reader. Hoping the ideas inscribed in its autonomous existence will be understood as intended. While its beauty lies precisely in misunderstanding, in reading the coded message a new way every time. A thousand colours of sound, a thousand different ways to hear, to see, to understand. On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the CMYK series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. Another new element is the Polaroid, showing the origins of a world: Jelinek’s home studio in Berlin at the time. farben says: Move your body! The project has its roots in Jelinek’s love of house as a reductionist vision of soul. Of four to the floor as a proposition that can be accessed anywhere. Of electronic dance music as a realm of possibility that can be continually expanded. farben was written as contemporary house music. As a text about excitement and euphoria. The arrangements were made directly while recording to DAT, on a twelve-channel mixing desk. Several track titles suggest a link to live concerts, coupled with the context of machine music and bedroom recording. Others affirm pop music’s most extravagant stock phrases about various states of love. Jelinek produced the tracks with the aim of making music for dancefloors. An idea that failed very productively. In the locations to which it was originally addressed, the project barely figured. But people did listen, and they listened all the more closely to this music that opened up new acoustic and associative scope for house. farben is the opposite of genre: a music spawning new terms (clicks & cuts, micro-house) that never manage to fully capture it. farben says: Signifiers. The four CMYK EPs are designed as a network of references that cannot be missed but that can also never be precisely deciphered. The vectors of sound, word and image point to Isaac Hayes and Ornette Coleman, to Detroit and the first generation of the Red Army Faction, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. So multifarious that they are distorted to the point of recognition. Overall we hear sonic docufictions whose appealing vagueness derives precisely from this oscillation between clarity and ambiguity, which is also the source of their poetry: the lyricism of the pure circulation of signs. The artwork is based on photographs of former Red Army Faction members, broken down into the four colours of the CMYK model. The motifs dissolve into individual dots of a single colour, so close to the faces that their expressions are only hinted at. Taken together, the individual colours compose a new whole out of fragmentary material, defying definition and thus maintaining their vibrancy. The same occurs on the level of sound. The sampler Jelinek used for these tracks had to be fed with floppy disks, imposing a memory limit of 1.44 megabytes per audio quotation from soul or jazz records. As a necessary consequence of this, the individual references, like the dots of colour, are dissolved into details and abstractions. They appear as splinters that recombine in new ways to create new meanings. The joy of collapsing metaphors. farben says: New departures. Even two decades after its original release, textstar+ does not come across as an epitaph to the modern era. Instead, it appears as a euphoric affirmation of the utopias of the twentieth century, translated into new sound texts via the aesthetic strategies of abstraction, collage, networking and speculation. 1.44 megabytes of history, one thousand signifiers, one album. From “Live ...” to “... Love”.

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

Superior Viaduct and our new artist label, W.25TH, are proud to continue to be the home for Cindy Lee with the physical release of the celebrated album Diamond Jubilee. Universally praised, shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and already hailed by Pitchfork as the 3rd best album of the 2020s, anticipation and conversation around the record has been high. Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting vehicle of Patrick Flegel (who previously fronted influential indie group Women). Over several albums, Flegel has combined delicate melodies and sheer beauty with moments of experimentation. With Diamond Jubilee, Flegel's undeniable songcraft comes to the foreground, embracing a more instant connection and accessibility. Timeless tales of love and longing, surrounded by sticky hooks, take the listener on an unforgettable journey.

Superior Viaduct and our new artist label, W.25TH, are proud to continue to be the home for Cindy Lee with the physical release of the celebrated album Diamond Jubilee. Universally praised, shortlisted for the 2024 Polaris Music Prize, and already hailed by Pitchfork as the 3rd best album of the 2020s, anticipation and conversation around the record has been high. Cindy Lee is the performance and songwriting vehicle of Patrick Flegel (who previously fronted influential indie group Women). Over several albums, Flegel has combined delicate melodies and sheer beauty with moments of experimentation. With Diamond Jubilee, Flegel's undeniable songcraft comes to the foreground, embracing a more instant connection and accessibility. Timeless tales of love and longing, surrounded by sticky hooks, take the listener on an unforgettable journey.

In October 1987, four months after the release of their critically acclaimed Sister LP, Sonic Youth showcased their latest work in a blistering set at Cabaret Metro, Chicago. The concert was introduced by Big Black's Steve Albini (who at the time was banned from the venue) and subsequently released as a semi-official bootleg under the title Hold That Tiger on writer/provocateur Byron Coley's impishly Geffen-baiting label Goofin' (years later the band would use this nom de guerre for their own imprint). Hold That Tiger's sterling reputation among the Sonic Youth faithful is well deserved. In fact, it isn't a stretch to suggest that the album is to the first handful of SY releases what It's Alive is to the first three Ramones LPs – a feral and liberatory public snapshot of a band's blossoming imperial phase. Indeed, HTT is the sound of a group at the peak of their powers, presenting new songs alongside a handful of older ones with the kind of wild, cathartic enthusiasm common to rock 'n' roll's most revered live albums. Taking nothing away from Sister – inarguably one of indie rock's first true masterpieces – it is reasonable that many fans prefer the live versions heard on Hold That Tiger to their studio counterparts. On HTT, Sonic Youth is a spiky, pummeling and confident force, alternately mammoth and meditative. Sister and its predecessor EVOL notably added an airy, dreamlike reverie to the band's turbulent doom-lurch, a stylistic evolution that seems to crystallize on HTT. Throughout, Kim Gordon's sinewy, sumptuous bass and Steve Shelley's propulsive, tom-heavy percussion provide the bedrock groove for Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's ferocious barrages of noise-guitar crunch. By 1987, the band was confidently articulating their dual lexicon of punk-noir dissonance and supernal, psychedelic sonic calligraphy – bending their jagged, streetwise gnarl into balloon animals of dazzling and beautiful songs. This collision of splendor and chaos would become a hallmark of the group's singular alchemy as well as provide a blueprint for the post-SST American underground they would help invent and ultimately nurture. Hold That Tiger's encore – four songs by the band's beloved Ramones, which Thurston would later astutely compare to "the perfect pudding after a hearty meal" – serves as a reminder that, like any true punks, Sonic Youth never could resist a good, rousing anthem to send the kids home with their ears ringing, their hearts hot-wired. This first-time reissue comes with gatefold jacket. Mastered by Bob Weston from the orginal tapes. Recorded by Aadam Jacobs. Audio repair/editing by Aaron Mullan.

In October 1987, four months after the release of their critically acclaimed Sister LP, Sonic Youth showcased their latest work in a blistering set at Cabaret Metro, Chicago. The concert was introduced by Big Black's Steve Albini (who at the time was banned from the venue) and subsequently released as a semi-official bootleg under the title Hold That Tiger on writer/provocateur Byron Coley's impishly Geffen-baiting label Goofin' (years later the band would use this nom de guerre for their own imprint). Hold That Tiger's sterling reputation among the Sonic Youth faithful is well deserved. In fact, it isn't a stretch to suggest that the album is to the first handful of SY releases what It's Alive is to the first three Ramones LPs – a feral and liberatory public snapshot of a band's blossoming imperial phase. Indeed, HTT is the sound of a group at the peak of their powers, presenting new songs alongside a handful of older ones with the kind of wild, cathartic enthusiasm common to rock 'n' roll's most revered live albums. Taking nothing away from Sister – inarguably one of indie rock's first true masterpieces – it is reasonable that many fans prefer the live versions heard on Hold That Tiger to their studio counterparts. On HTT, Sonic Youth is a spiky, pummeling and confident force, alternately mammoth and meditative. Sister and its predecessor EVOL notably added an airy, dreamlike reverie to the band's turbulent doom-lurch, a stylistic evolution that seems to crystallize on HTT. Throughout, Kim Gordon's sinewy, sumptuous bass and Steve Shelley's propulsive, tom-heavy percussion provide the bedrock groove for Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's ferocious barrages of noise-guitar crunch. By 1987, the band was confidently articulating their dual lexicon of punk-noir dissonance and supernal, psychedelic sonic calligraphy – bending their jagged, streetwise gnarl into balloon animals of dazzling and beautiful songs. This collision of splendor and chaos would become a hallmark of the group's singular alchemy as well as provide a blueprint for the post-SST American underground they would help invent and ultimately nurture. Hold That Tiger's encore – four songs by the band's beloved Ramones, which Thurston would later astutely compare to "the perfect pudding after a hearty meal" – serves as a reminder that, like any true punks, Sonic Youth never could resist a good, rousing anthem to send the kids home with their ears ringing, their hearts hot-wired. This first-time reissue comes with gatefold jacket. Mastered by Bob Weston from the orginal tapes. Recorded by Aadam Jacobs. Audio repair/editing by Aaron Mullan.

Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux. Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone with Jon Hassell on trumpet and Garrett List on trombone. This work is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). The piece evolves with the oscillator changing pitch and dictating an ornate pattern over the course of the performance. Side two is an example of one of the sets of frequencies sustained in the Dream House, the composite sound environments conceived by Young and Zazeela. The composer suggests listening while seated – to experience how the sound interacts with the room and other perceptions of its arrangement – as well as while walking. As Young states, "The frequency ratios are monitored continuously as lissajous patterns on the oscilloscopes and, in spite of the great stability of the oscillators, the phase relationships of the sine waves gradually drift which causes their amplitudes to add and subtract algebraically. Not only does the sound become a bit louder and softer, but at very loud levels, one actually begins to have a sensation that parts of the body are somehow locked in sync with the sine waves and slowly drifting with them in space and time."

Sounds While Waiting documents the latest organ works by composer and musician Ellen Arkbro – following her phenomenal debut, 2017's For Organ And Brass, and the more recent CHORDS. Recorded at a centuries-old church in Unnaryd, Sweden in June 2020, these pieces reveal the enchanting qualities of sustained harmonic sound, how patterns of listening dissolve and emerge as textured space. On opening track "Changes," long radiant tones ebb and flow like divine breaths, while "Leaving Dreaming" builds with dynamic tension to unlock a subtle, otherworldly ambience.

As the composer states in the sleeve notes, "These recordings are traces of something I have come to love to do in large resonant spaces, which is to set up sustained chords on multiple organs and then move slowly through the sound. The instruments are usually far apart, which makes for the emergence of large fields of continuous change, spaces of harmonicity that can be passed through layer by layer and which contain within them points of both clarity and overwhelming complexity. The organ pipes are tuned and retuned, though sometimes I leave them just as they are. What I'm searching for is the moment when a particular kind of sounding texturality is revealed – it is rough, focused and yet strangely transparent."

Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, for synthetic sound and for combinations of both, including music for orchestra and smaller chamber ensembles and large scale installation works. She currently performs in Catherine Christer Hennix's Kamigaku ensemble, and she previously studied with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. Recommended for fans of Sarah Davachi, Eliane Radigue and Charlemagne Palestine. <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 307px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1223054530/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com/album/sounds-while-waiting">Sounds While Waiting by Ellen Arkbro</a></iframe>

La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day.

Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script.

Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.

Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity.

Track Listing:

31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM
23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta

La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day.

Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script.

Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.

Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity.

Track Listing:

31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM
23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta

La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day.

Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script.

Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.

Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity.

Track Listing:

31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM
23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta

Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux. Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone with Jon Hassell on trumpet and Garrett List on trombone. This work is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). The piece evolves with the oscillator changing pitch and dictating an ornate pattern over the course of the performance. Side two is an example of one of the sets of frequencies sustained in the Dream House, the composite sound environments conceived by Young and Zazeela. The composer suggests listening while seated – to experience how the sound interacts with the room and other perceptions of its arrangement – as well as while walking. As Young states, "The frequency ratios are monitored continuously as lissajous patterns on the oscilloscopes and, in spite of the great stability of the oscillators, the phase relationships of the sine waves gradually drift which causes their amplitudes to add and subtract algebraically. Not only does the sound become a bit louder and softer, but at very loud levels, one actually begins to have a sensation that parts of the body are somehow locked in sync with the sine waves and slowly drifting with them in space and time."

Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux. Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone with Jon Hassell on trumpet and Garrett List on trombone. This work is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). The piece evolves with the oscillator changing pitch and dictating an ornate pattern over the course of the performance. Side two is an example of one of the sets of frequencies sustained in the Dream House, the composite sound environments conceived by Young and Zazeela. The composer suggests listening while seated – to experience how the sound interacts with the room and other perceptions of its arrangement – as well as while walking. As Young states, "The frequency ratios are monitored continuously as lissajous patterns on the oscilloscopes and, in spite of the great stability of the oscillators, the phase relationships of the sine waves gradually drift which causes their amplitudes to add and subtract algebraically. Not only does the sound become a bit louder and softer, but at very loud levels, one actually begins to have a sensation that parts of the body are somehow locked in sync with the sine waves and slowly drifting with them in space and time."

cLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10" EPs that appeared between 2000-2001, is aurally dense and obscured. A sprawling mass of miniature beat-suites and Dadaist lyrics, this strange and beautiful 3xLP would influence a myriad of sub-genres (cloud rap, hauntology, lo-fi hip-hop, etc.) in the two decades since its initial release. Only the three members of cLOUDDEAD – Why?, Odd Nosdam and Doseone – can speak to the group's origins, but in the context of underground hip-hop towards the end of the 20th century, their arrival makes perfect sense. Cincinnati had a vital scene; home to Scribble Jam, an annual confluence of MCs, DJs, B-boys and graffiti artists. While the trio soon relocated to the Bay Area where they co-founded the Anticon collective, their Midwestern roots – in ramshackle basements of off-campus hovels, as the "cerberus of Southern Ohio" – would remain the atomic heart of their early recordings. As Chris Martins writes in the liner notes, "The only reason we know their names today is because of how loudly and curiously they aired their insularity. They rewrote the entire world as they knew it through their own fucked perspective, and when those mysterious 10-inches started popping up in record shops, it wasn't just a puzzle to investigate: there seemed to be a whole cosmology hidden in those grooves." Each side of the album represents one of those elusive 10-inches, each embodying a universe unto itself. Opening salvo "Apt. A" and "And All You Can Do Is Laugh" are perhaps most emblematic of the cLOUDDEAD experience. Why? and Dose create a new language through boundless non-sequiturs, sing-song non-choruses and call-and-response hooks, while Nosdam's dexterous production shifts from crackling ambience of Flying Saucer Attack to tight Ohio Players drum breaks and oblique film samples. Taken all together, cLOUDDEAD is an original interpretation of hip-hop in the surreal Y2K glow – a bizarre meeting point between William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and MF DOOM's Operation: Doomsday. All it took was a Dr. Sample SP-202, Tascam cassette eight-track and cheap RadioShack mic. There's truly nothing like it.

By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual for him, after which he would be totally spent, emotionally and physically. Graves rarely left anything on the table. Any musical performance was an opportunity to present an amalgamated version of all the things he had learned. He was an innovator and a teacher at his core, and the concert venue was one of his first classroom settings. In March 1976, Verna Gillis invited Graves to perform on WBAI's Free Music Store radio show. For the date, he chose to present a trio lineup which he had been occasionally playing – featuring two saxophonists who were dedicated to the drummer's vision. Hugh Glover is almost exclusively known for his work with Graves, while Arthur Doyle would gain exposure later for an obscure record that he made two years later, Alabama Feeling, which would become a highly collectable item among free jazz enthusiasts. Originally released in 1977, Bäbi remains one of Graves' most seminal recordings. The music played by the trio was ecstatic. Extreme energy music, buoyant and joyful. It relied on Graves' new way of approaching the drum kit, in which he had opened up the bottoms of his skin-slackened toms and eliminated the snare. Graves' art was always unblemished by commercial interests, and this album is its finest mission statement. First-time vinyl reissue. Sourced from the original master tapes.

Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex – a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall – have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration. Blueprints For A Blackout, The Ex's fifth album and first double LP, combines caustic studio experimentations and loose songs from their gripping live-set at the time. The band consisted of singer G.W. Sok, guitarist Terrie Ex, two new recruits on bass, Luc and Yoke, and drummer Sabien Witteman, along with a plethora of guests including Mekons' Jon Langford and long-serving sound engineer Dolf Planteijdt, among others. Originally released in 1984 on the band's own Pig Brother Productions, Blueprints veers from jagged punk explosions to sharply focused improvisations featuring field recordings that would become a hallmark of their subsequent forays into free jazz and experimental music. The overall effect is not unlike the menace of a slowly building winter storm. Tracks like "Rabble With A Cause," "U.S. Hole" and "Scrub That Scum" stand out as exemplars of this phase of The Ex. Comparisons can be made to contemporaries Einstürzende Neubauten, NoMeansNo and Svätsox as well as later Crass label bands. This first-time vinyl reissue comes with 24-page booklet.

1990's Recurring, the fourth and final studio album by Spacemen 3, is often considered the introduction of two brilliant solo projects (Spectrum and Spiritualized) rather than the work of a functioning band. While Spacemen 3's departing statement surely reveals a deep divide within the S3 camp – each side of the LP was written by Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce separately and, unlike previous releases, the two do not play on each other's songs – Recurring maintains a cohesive, dreamy feel with its chief sonic officers backed by fellow travelers Will Carruthers, Mark Refoy and Jon Mattock. Opening saga "Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)" marries ambient haze with narcotized indie rock, while "I Love You" manages to arrange a beautiful flute alongside a defiantly throbbing bass track. "Hypnotized," a reimagined fuzz-pop hymn, would become the group's first entry in the UK Singles Charts. Recurring lays bare the essence of Spacemen 3's persistent sound, rooted in both aural expansion and phenomenal songwriting. Includes download card and new insert with liner notes by Marc Masters.

Known for his viral video series “Sexta dos Crias”, Ramon Sucesso is a virtuosic DJ who crushes, reimagines and rearranges songs to such a degree that the original tracks become virtually unrecognizable. He has turned his controller into a particle accelerator, creating firework-like bursts of classic funk carioca samples, his own productions, mainstream tracks, nonsense TikTok sound bites, and tons of his trademark beat bolha. All contained within an unparalleled, mischievously non-linear rhythmic flow. Ramon’s social network profiles are as outrageously unpredictable as his mixes. He posts interactive emoji games, bountiful fast-food feasts with his family, comments about the Flamengo football team and videos of him playing FIFA. He has a prolifically restless mind, constantly riffing and improvising; he does whatever it takes to get by, to navigate the reality of life in Brazil and overcome the daunting challenges of the music industry. His new album “Sexta dos Crias” is the culmination of Ramon's DJ work. A LP that embodies the newest in funk carioca, a faithful transposition of the bailes to vinyl. And forget copyrights; forget the notion of ownership – you’ll find none of that here. Ramon has unpretentiously ushered in a new age of experimentation for the genre – making a daring and unprecedented foray into a territory where extreme and radical sounds abound.

Drummer-composer and multi-instrumentalist Valentina Magaletti’s explorative percussions join Afro-Portuguese artist Nídia’s singular beat-making for an exciting new collaboration in dance music. From the first beat, listeners are drawn into a world where rhythm reigns supreme and movement is inevitable. The album explores a diverse yet universal musical language through syncopated drum patterns, pulsating marimba lines, and melodic interludes.