MUSIC

Relapse presents a remastered reissue from the undisputed king of Japanese noise-MERZBOW. Pulse Demon is one of the most celebrated releases of Masami Akita's storied 4 decade long career. Composed entirely by live noise concrete and the use of a fuzz box, Pulse Demon eschews all overdubs and studio trickery, laying MERZBOW bare. What follows in these recordings is the pure essence of unfettered noise. The rawness in Pulse Demon is palpable; praised as "genuinely extreme, downright torturous sounds that are strangely compelling in their shredding intensity." (A.V. Club) upon its original release in 1996.

Remastered by James Plotkin (ISIS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, FULL OF HELL, and more,) the Pulse Demon reissue features "Extract 1", a never-before released track that was recorded as part of the original Pulse Demon sessions.

The undisputed king of Japanese noise MERZBOW returns, as the landmark album Venereology celebrates 25 tinnitus-inducing years with its inaugural vinyl pressing! Remastered by James Plotkin (ISIS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, FULL OF HELL, and more) and featuring reworked art, this is the most extreme recording of harsh electronic sickness you will ever own! Venereology features a second LP with more than 20 minutes of unreleased bonus material.

Unfettered harsh noise from the legendary Japanese noise artist Masami Akita aka Merzbow. Tirelessly churning layers of distortion are punctuated across two tracks with glistening, jagged feedback and thrashing pulsations that lash at the ears and utterly invigorate the senses.

Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisational group comprised of sound artists Kazuo Imai (a student of Japanese free jazz linchpin Masayuki Takayanagi and occasional performer in both Taj Mahal Travellers and Takayanagi’s New Direction Unit), Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii, and Masami Tada (also in group GAP). Formed in 1997, the four members of Marginal Consort attended Takehisa Kosugi’s music classes at the Bigakkō art school in Tokyo in the mid-1970s, where they teamed up with other students to record East Bionic Symphonia’s debut album “Recorded Live” in 1976. Since its inception, each year Marginal Consort holds one (or more when invited) annual concert at spacious venues in which they perform continuously, without interruption, for over three hours. Their extended set explores forms of sound and ways of playing that never coalesce into music but create a group dynamic of ebb and flow, exploration and fluidity. Their performance, which is completely free from abstract, political or sometimes mystical ideas about improvisation, neither contraposes the immediacy of action or anonymousness of sound against music nor dramatises the dialectics between the individual and the whole. Even the general idea of the words “collective”, “improvisation” and “project” do not really tell the way they work. Marginal Consort performed at South London Gallery; St. Elisabeth Kirche, Berlin; Asahi Square, Tokyo; Kotoku Morishita Bunka Center, Tokyo; Mikawadai Junior High School, Tokyo; Super Deluxe, Tokyo; Tokyo Arts and Space, Tokyo; Macao, Milan; Instal 08, The Arches, Glasgow; St. John at Hackney Church (33-33), London; The Substation, Melbourne; Carriageworks, Sydney; Third Edition Festival, Stockholm; nyMusikk, Bergen; Borderline Festival, Athens; On the Boards, Seattle; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; PuSh Festival, Vancouver; Zebulon, Los Angeles; Pioneer Works, New York. ​​​​​​​“A form of sound that does not turn into music and a group that does not produce harmony; individual concepts and group fluidity; individuals who are at once independent entities and components of the whole; coexisting time frames and intersecting rhythms – these are among the images of group improvisation that have occupied my mind since the ’70s. These images neither presuppose specific elements nor regulate the entire process. There always remain, however, the fundamental premises that sounds are separately produced phenomena and that their accumulation forms the whole”. – Kazuo Imai

The collaboration between Klara Lewis and Nik Colk Void somehow seemed inevitable. Both artists having seen their releases published by Editions Mego, individually carving out idiosyncratic voices in the worlds of extreme, abstract electronic music. With Full-On, Lewis and Void explore and assimilate the very edge of their individual practice where a unique collaborative interface allows two voices to combine and morph into a third voice. Lewis and Void play ping pong with the conversation of sounds, generating ideas and bouncing them off each other, simultaneously encouraging the other to go further with their ideas opening up an opportunity to engage with previously unexplored terrain. Guitars, synths, euro rack modular systems, voice, sampling and outboard processing are folded in a playful unification with a propensity to tease, explore and extract new ideas and shapes, sometimes brutal, sometimes playful. Trust was also a compositional tool allowing instinct to freely move on any aspect of the sound and space. This sound/feeling/instinct/association let this wild and wonderful material grow organically into something new. The result of this exploratory interplay are 17 intense miniatures reveling in the process of unadulterated experimentation and whimsical interplay, not just between the humans, but the machines themselves. United in an endless series of sonic U-turns, this daring duo intertwine pop and noise whilst also bringing together visions of tender techno and forthright ambient. The various zones manifest from all this reveals vocals shifting in mysterious ways, dust drenched beats churning limpidly and devilish string loops navigating a disorientating domain. The experience of listening to Full-On is to be confronted with a range of ideas resulting in a platter of emotions. A place where beauty and the beast collide with the impulsive and outright weird. What a wonderful world.

Dreams In Splattered Lines fuses together Wolf Eyes' 25 years of DIY electronics with the avant-garde sensibilities of Fluxus and the granite of dreary Midwestern life. Continuing some of the ideas explored on the Difficult Messages record of collaborations, the result is a surreal dreamscape of disorienting sound collages, where hit songs are transformed into terrariums of sonic flora and decimated fauna. As if pulled from a fever dream, the surrealists of the 1960s converge with alien electronic blues musicians in an underworld of mystery. The air is thick with car wash radio white noise, crackling and fizzing like a toxic elixir, spoken word poetry transmissions as absurd and cryptic phrases. Each corroded aural environment is a microcosm of chaos, honed to razor-sharp precision. Swept away in a whirlwind of thirteen perplexing narratives, each one an unpredictable journey through subterranean worlds, a sonic trip of reality folded into itself.

SONG 08

A selection of private press 45s featuring Nate Young, John Olson, Alex Moskos, Gretchen Gonzales, Aaron Dilloway & Raven Chacon. These collaborations between the core Wolf Eyes crew and friends was originally self-released as a series of super-limited 7” hand painted box sets, but now the core ‘hits’ have been compiled by Disciples for wider consumption. 

Wolf Eyes' history with collaboration goes back almost 26 years. From the first Wolf Eyes w/Spykes concert that led to Olson joining the band to Smegma, Braxton, Richard Pinhas, Merzbow, Marshall Allen, and many more. Wolf Eyes has continued expanding musical ideas through collaboration and Difficult Messages is the first compilation of this practice. 

Many of the bands on 'Difficult Messages' exist inside an assemblage of a mail art tradition. Most of the music was made remotely and this allowed for deeper exploration into styles that might have been too uncomfortable to attempt face to face. Short Hands finds Nate Young, and Alex Moskos exchanging bass and guitar fragments with Olson’s reeds and tones overtop sculpted into odd rock songs. Wolf Raven touches on harsh electronics and pushes forward into postmodern ideas of composition. Time Designers is a duo of Alex Moskos and Nate Young using hacked drum machines and a 'design' approach to organizing sound. U Eye finds Olson and Young alongside longtime collaborators Gretchen Gonzales and Aaron Dilloway for a scrape and tape session recorded by Warren Defever. Stare Case is Olson and Young in a non-Wolf duo. Perhaps the only 'rules following' project these two have EVER had. The collection of audio tracks could be looked at as an exquisite corpse: a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. With this method over thirty tracks and four hundred paintings were created. 

Síntomas de techno : Ondas electrónicas subterráneas desde Perú (1985​-​1991) Symptoms of techno: Underground electronic waves from Peru (1985-1991) This compilation presents for the first time various underground techno groups and projects that emerged in Lima in the mid-1980s. Projects such as Disidentes, Paisaje Electrónico, T de Cobre, Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí, Cuerpos del Deseo, Círculo Interior, Ensamble and Reacción were responsible for introducing styles such as techno-pop, EBM, industrial and minimal synth in Peru. Coinciding with the explosion of punk in Lima and the appearance of the so-called Rock Subterráneo [underground rock], these techno groups shared the same DIY spirit, performing in many punk concerts and even creating their own fanzines, and, above all, opening a space for other types of sonic experiences. Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí and Paisaje Electrónico were also the parallel projects of the members of Narcosis, the iconic punk band, one of the founders of Rock Subterráneo. Disidentes and T de Cobre brought extreme sounds to local electronics: viscerality, mechanical rhythms and the use of Casiotones or synthesizers, which resulted in an atypical sound that, in turn, portrayed a critical time in Peru, and which has made them an unavoidable reference for any historical account of techno and industrial music in Latin America. The title of this compilation is inspired by the name of a concert held in Lima in 1991, considered to be the first techno concert to have taken place in Peru. Even though not all intervening groups were doing techno at that time, they did share the fact that they all used keyboards. Four of them, however (Cuerpos del Deseo, Ensamble, Círculo Interior and Reacción), were in fact affiliated to an electronic sound (techno-pop, EBM). The concert was a sign of the diversification of musical styles in Lima's alternative scene, and in particular of the emergence of a micro scene, for which the concert Síntomas de techno [Symptoms of Techno] represented an important step towards the development of a local culture of electronic music during the 90s. Many of the recordings included here are extracted from demos with limited circulation, practically impossible to find. Other tracks are unpublished pieces which come from the private archives of the artists themselves. The compilation has been made by Luis Alvarado and is part of the Essential Sounds Collection, with which Buh Records is making available a vast archive of avant-garde Peruvian music. This compilation is published in vinyl format in a limited edition of 300 copies, with extensive information and visual documentation. Mastered by Alberto Cendra. Art by René Sánchez. Cover photography by Rogelio Martell. This project was awarded with funding from the Economic Stimuli program of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.

Musician and sound/video installation artist Steve Bates presents a striking solo ambient/noise album of melodic smear, radiostatic blur, panoramic noise clouds and dissolving tones. Made primarily with the self-imposed limitation of a Casio SK-1, All The Things That Happen showcases the more deliberate, intensive, maximalist side of Bates' wide-ranging sonic aesthetic and practice. An isolation record (like so many), it combines an ineffable melancholy with claustrophobic tension and simmering political rage. Constructed from layers of glistening distortion-drenched melody, pulsing and droning oscillation, bursts of blown-out chords, sweeps of static and sheets of crackling hiss, Bates has made a dynamic, ardent, iridescent noise album of impressive depth and underlying devastation. "This was supposed to be an ambient record; quiet, minimal and sad. These tracks all started off that way but I kept reaching for more texture and noise. Somehow the noisier the record got, the less sad it was also. I was listening to, and loving, a lot of music by Andrew Chalk and I had finished a year-long run of listening to Eno’s Ambient 1 and 4. I prefer On Land to Music for Airports although I love both. On Land just has a darkness and uncertainty that appeals to me. Adding more noise also got me excited about ways this material could be played live even though it also felt like that could never happen again. In 2022, I opened for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Saskatoon to give it a try and was pleasantly pleased to hear it all live and loud." A fixture of Winnipeg's burgeoning anarcho-punk and social justice community in the 80s-90s, Bates played in hardcore and indie rock bands (XOXO, Bulletproof Nothing) while contemporaneously continuing to fiddle obsessively with the shortwave radio his father bought him as a child — sensibilities that continue to meld and inform his sound work to this day. Bates founded the Send + Receive Festival in 1998, a crucial development in putting Winnipeg on the map for avant music and experimental sound art, which he helmed for seven years. Moving to Tiohti:áke/Montréal in 2005 he took on the Sound Coordinator position at Hexagram (Concordia University), released solo and duo work on ORAL_records and two albums with his Black Seas Ensemble on The Dim Coast, while pursuing myriad other ongoing audio research, installation and collaborative projects. His exhibition and site-specific works have been presented throughout North America and Europe, Chile and Senegal. Bates relocated to Treaty 6/Saskatoon in the fall of 2019, a return to the Canadian Prairies just before pandemic that also profoundly shaped the solitary, immersive, assiduous practice that yielded All The Things That Happen: his most purposive, powerful, purely ‘recorded’ work. Thanks for listening.

First ever reissue of an influential and much sought-after norsk drone masterpiece originally self-released in 1996 in an edition of just 108 copies, tipped by all the people you ought to be taking tips from, most notably Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi. Deeper than deep, it's a durational masterwork that connects ley lines between Ramleh, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Deathprod, When and Antena, taking unexpected turns and sounding better than ever on this new edition, mastered by Lasse Marhaug and finally available for wider public consumption. Selected by Jim O’Rourke for his Tone Glow list of 25 albums that “never got their due”, Org was founded in the early 90’s by Espen Jensen and Kjetil D Brandsdal who would later go on to variously record as Elektrodiesel, Noxagt and Ultralyd in the swirl of the highly active Norwegian underground. “Org" was the only album the pair recorded as a duo, pressed in a meagre edition of just over 100 copies which disappeared almost as soon as they were made, lodged in the memory of the select few who have managed to hear it in the years since. Made up of three long tracks, the near 20-minute ‘001’ opens the album with an extended organ zone-out matched with scraping factory machinery saturated into a dense cloud of harmonic fuzz. There's something transcendental about the sound that intersects with microtonal Alice Coltrane (particularly the unfairly maligned organ-only edition of "Turiya Sings"), as well as Pauline Oliveros and Ramleh. It’s music that pulls you in subconsciously; before you know it, you're fixating on the uncomfortable grind of metal on metal, buried mechanical rhythms and liturgical organ vamps that wind between industrial cacophony and sacred ritual music. For its last few seconds, we go into a full death metal tearout that fades out before it takes full flight, a glorious wtf. ‘002’ connects between minimalist drone styles and shoegaze, distorting fuzzed organ into pliable, dreamlike warbles that end up sounding like Kevin Shields' ‘Loveless’-era glides, or even Sunn O))) at their most devotional. Never losing the numbing overdriven mettle, its a piece that sounds spiritually entwined with Matthew Bower's Skullflower - a minimalist re-reading of high-contrast guitar music that takes all the psychoacoustic power and none of the annoying posturing. For ‘003’, subaqueous organ is joined by synth and drum machine, sounding like the inspirational spark for Religious Knives' screwed 'n chopped cosmic psychedelia. The choice of sounds links it to Antena's foundational electro samba recordings too, but the overwhelming drone - a constant on all three compositions - connects the music to minimalist spirituals that have simmered beneath the DIY/avant garde for decades. ‘Org’ sits heavy on the nerves with overproof levels of mulched amp worship and ungodly, palms-down organ chords and wheezing, bezonked lines of melodic thought. 25 years out of sight and marinading in the archives, with the benefit of hindsight we can better understand the role these sounds played in the development of music in the contemporary sphere. It’s an important piece of the puzzle, one that makes valuable connections that, over time, have looked progressively more faint.

オランダ・アムステルダムにて、1979年に結成された伝説的アナーコ・パンク・バンド、The Exが1982年に録音した7インチ4枚組のサード・アルバム『Dignity Of Labour』が、〈Superior Viaduct〉より、史上初のLP仕様で待望のヴァイナル・リイシュー。フロントマンであるG.W.Sokは、「我々の考える即興のインダストリアル・パンク・ノイズ」とも述べた、The Exの40年以上の歴史の中で最も衝撃的かつ不朽の名作です！24" x 18"サイズのポスターと24ページに及ぶブックレットが付属。

After two 12 inches, the legendary Mick Harris (Scorn, Napalm Death,Lull) steps up with his first full length double lp for L.I.E.S. under his FRET moniker. Over 10 tracks, "Because of the Weak" displays Harris in his most intense sonic form to date, blasting through the red with reckless abandon and destroying all weakeners and sound systems in his path. This is the definition of black hole industrial techno and while it's completely pulverizing, Harris' heavy trademark dubstyle elements are strongly present, coupled with deeply psychedelic textures swirling within the deadly onslaught of this album. While others have softened up through the years, Mick has upped the ante, staying true to the unrelenting intensity he pioneered behind the drum kit back in the 80s. Turn on the TV, witness the demise of humanity, put this album on and watch it all fall to pieces minute by minute. Never more could music of this magnitude be more relevant. Not recommended for those with medical conditions!

Recorded in Lary 7’s legendary apartment studio Plastikville over nearly a decade, Larynx is the first full-length retrospective of the East Village icon’s hybrid music and engineering practice. The record mobilizes 7’s array of homemade instruments, which he ‘frankensteins’ together from offcast and outmoded bits of technology. An ode to the long-lost Canal Street junk shops he frequented in the 1970s and ’80s, Larynx brings together numerous thrift finds and sonic inventions used in his theatrical performances and installations. To play “le concretotron,” a board covered with twenty years worth of unspooled magnetic tape, 7 runs a tape head topographically over the flattened strips, picking up snippets of their recorded contents. The spring tree, another of his contraptions, is simply turned on and left to its own devices; feedback loops cause the amplified coils to resound in space and slowly increase in volume. The track “Mechano-Bleep” features a pattern generator constructed from a telephone sequence switch, 150 oscillators from an electric accordion, a sewing machine motor, and an early computing system called a “select-a-board.” Meanwhile, antiquated electronic instruments abound—7 employs the Ondioline, a precursor to the synthesizer; a Philicorda organ; and a homemade Trautonium, among other gadgets. Following Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Raymond Scott of Manhattan Research, 7 adopts a painstaking editing process that is entirely analogue. With lacquer cut directly from reel-to-reel and mastered by Paul Gold, Larynx is, in 7’s words, “the sound of the twentieth century going haywire.”

Vladislav Delay presents the second EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series with five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton". Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops breathing. It’s filled with tiny particles, dancing. Everything can be explained on a molecular level, but since we’re not scientists – and even if you happen to be – it’s the natural world of perception that moves me. Still air is very similar. A hot summer’s day with zero wind feels completely still. It’s the closest I have felt to complete stillness. Or for a more urban adaptation, imagine the same vibe inside a normal apartment. In those moments, revelations and mind- blowing experiences can be had with experiments in stillness. Try this: Just sit down for a minute on a sunny day, making sure there’s enough natural light. Do absolutely nothing. Try not to breathe for a bit. (If you need a mental anchor, you can play Cage’s 4’33” in your head but nothing else.) Watch the tiny dots of dust dancing :..’ ̈.:; ́ ́*°.,’:,. ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈:,.’ The movement is crazy, but the feeling of stillness comes from witnessing how subtle it is. In (perceived) complete stillness, every act of microscopic mobility seems to speak volumes. Yet, it feels both reassuring and oddly threatening that the stillness is never complete. What if we would need absolute stillness? Or is it just enough that we can perceive something as such? Extremes attract, so for both water and air, extraordinary movement is equally fascinating. That is also a luxury item of sorts. For us to enjoy a very ”loud” body of water or air, we need to be safe, in enough control of the situation. So when you are, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and take it all in. A rapid flowing free with extreme strength and just barely in control. Look at that water go! No still water on this one, only ”sparkling”. A windy day when birds seem surprised how hard it is to fly, but in the end they make it. Trees bend but don’t break. The wind shows you its movement but doesn’t hurt you. It feels friendly, like a big clumsy dog that doesn’t quite understand its size. It’s beautiful to be a guest of the elements, but not at the mercy of them. A new kind of dialogue forms. **Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:** *1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Hide Behind the Silence”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?* Exploration of inaction. Of many kinds. In arts and in personal life, or at bigger and more serious levels. Questioning myself as a human being as well as an artist. Acknowledging the growing activism all around, and the very clear need for it, and how it reflects my own inaction. Musically speaking, after Rakka, Isoviha and Speed Demon, I finally found some relief, but more importantly lost the need to go musically ever more outward and intensive. I felt quite strongly certain periods/moods from the past and they made me revisit some musical ideas or states of mind I was exploring early on. It’s about live moments being captured, not much premeditation or editing. More intuitive and raw, even though the end result (to me) feels and sounds quite introspective and calm. It’s not very ambitious. Momentary and reflective. *2) Your music doesn’t sound very silent. Does it come from somewhere behind the silence?* Oh, this time to me it sounds quite quiet and playing with space if not silence. I don’t know what’s actually behind silence, but I think silence is the source of everything. We just don’t understand it yet. *3) What kind of thoughts or experiences gave inspiration to this series?* Writing this in Nov ’22, it’s not a stretch to say the world has been really unwell. Sometimes, like Mika Vainio put it, the world eats you up. I feel a bit like that. And I try to hide in my studio and stay away from it all, but it’s getting harder by the day. I’ve been questioning myself and thinking if what us artists are doing is worth anything, and whether it’s just a selfish thing I’ve been doing for the past 25 years, running away from everything. I haven’t come to a conclusion yet. *4) Is it easy for you to be in silence, or around silence?* Absolutely. I not only hide behind silence but I also love silence. It’s only since I started going back to nature as a grown-up person that I sensed and was enveloped by silence, true silence. I have begun to appreciate it a lot. I think all the people should spend more time in silence.

noise matrix unleashes material from the same sessions as noisembryo and counterpart 'hole' and selected recordings from the time period. 
 originally released as a bonus disc on the definitive ’noisembryo' 2xcd edition noise matrix absolutely can’t be missed for fans of this period of noise deity merzbow. When people ask where to start with merzbow or the entire 90’s noise movement in japan - this is an answer! 
 masami akita’s surrealism of the past stands prominently relevant to this day combining the expansive textures of electronics, effects, aluminum soaked winds of the tokyo metropolis and metals. presented in deluxe wide spine metallic reflective ‘mother of pearl’ jacket. digital download code included.

日夜音楽を通してアラビック/ダブに襲撃を繰り返し続け、あまりにも膨大な音源の数々を残してきただけでなく、未だにその未発表音源までもが掘り起こされる今は亡き英国の名手ことMuslimgauze。97年に米国のノイズ/アヴァン系大名門〈Soleilmoon Recordings〉に残したアラビック・ダブ/ノイズ名作『Farouk Enjineer』の2021年度再発盤！エクスペリメンタルとアラビア世界のトラディショナルなリズムがあちら側で溶け合う、Muslimgauzeのベスト作品のひとつ！新規アートワークを起用＆リマスタリング仕様。限定プレス。

日夜音楽を通してアラビック/ダブに襲撃を繰り返し続け、あまりにも膨大な音源の数々を残してきただけでなく、未だにその未発表音源までもが掘り起こされる今は亡き英国の名手ことMuslimgauze。97年に米国のノイズ/アヴァン系大名門〈Soleilmoon Recordings〉に残したアラビック・ダブ/ノイズ名作『Farouk Enjineer』の2021年度再発盤！エクスペリメンタルとアラビア世界のトラディショナルなリズムがあちら側で溶け合う、Muslimgauzeのベスト作品のひとつ！新規アートワークを起用＆リマスタリング仕様。限定プレス。

With their debut album, "Isn't Anything," released in 1988, the band revolutionized alternative music and introduced a new approach to guitar music in the years that followed. Their sound became the template for numerous sub-genres and presented a groundbreaking approach to guitar music and studio production. The genderless vocals of Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher, who sing in the same vocal range and blend perfectly together, serve as another melodic layer that complements the dizzying intensity of Shields' guitar. The album is characterized by the eerie sense of space present in many of the recorded tracks, which range from intensely propulsive to quiet and unsettling.

Japanese obi included.
Mastered from original 1/4" analog tape using Studer A80 VU-PRE and Neumann VMS 80
180g vinyl weight
Standard gatefold outer sleeve
Four 300 x 300 mm art prints enclosed
Includes DL code (24-bit | 16-bit | mp3)

Limited edition of 200 copies.* Ferns proudly presents a new release on the label, K.Mizutani's "Inferior's Betrayal". Reissue of the self-produced K7 in 1994 on Kiyoshi Mizutani's Ulcer House label. Mizutani was a member of Merzbow in the '80s and has done solo work since 1989. He has recordings on Ulcer House, ZSF Produkt, Shirocoal Recordings, NEdS, Sounds For Consciousness Rape, Pure, Artware, Kaon, e(r)ostrate, Povertech Industries, and Flenix Records.

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 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.

Tape comes in only 199 copies with O-card 300g wrapping clear box with j-card and laser print orange shell.

Merzbow stands as the most important artist in noise music. The moniker of Japanese artist Masami Akita was born in Tokyo in 1979. Inspired by dadaism and surrealism, Akita took the name for his project from German artist Kurt Schwitters's pre-war architectural assemblage The Cathedral of Erotic Misery or Merzbau. Working in his home, he quickly gained notoriety as a purveyor of a musical genre composed solely of pure, unadulterated noise.
Originally released on CD in 1990 by Alchemy Records as part of the Good Alchemy Series, Rainbow Electronics marks the pinnacle of Merzbow's late 80’s noise phase. Selected and transformed from about 21 hours tape of primitive raw material recorded during three years (1987-1990) in 14 fragments lasting about 74 minutes, this monumental work is an aural trip through a cold plotted universe of intergalactic space ships and golden celestial bodies. Remastered in December 2019 and split into four parts directly by the artist for the double vinyl version it opens up with a slow, kind of creepy tempo, reaching from dirty harsh noise flows coupled with eerie reverbed screeches and scrapes of iron objects. Noise and blasts come from every angle, and all you can do is sit and take it. Then continues with solid drumbeats briefly emerging from the static and disappearing just as quickly, again long stretches of subdued electronic drones buzzing along sleepily and the occasional sudden shift of noise into something more violent, though it all happens kind of slowly and gradually. A truly mesmerizing and immersive body of sound and its intense finish is something of pure artform.
“I don't need a lot of words about Merzbow. All you have to do is immerse yourself in the sound.” translated from Japanese liner notes of Alchemy Records CD by Toshiji Mikawa.
Double vinyl comes in only 299 copies with gatefold cover that faithfully reproduces the original art work plus a 12" size insert. If you looking for a great starter title by Merzbow, an amazing piece of art, or something to get high to, this double LP is perfect!