MUSIC

“This sound / synapse transposition is as haunting as it is beautiful—surely Grouper’s best.”—Tiny Mix Tapes “If past Grouper releases have inhabited abyssal trenches and damp backwoods, here Harris takes us journeying across constellations and stars. Two of the most beguiling albums of the year, exquisitely realized and singularly evocative.” —The Quietus “This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them.”—Pitchfork “Harris finds a way to dive deeper in simple and unassuming ways.”—NPR

It comes as no surprise that Andrei Tarkovsky, master of Soviet cinema, turned to composer Eduard Artemiev to score his two lyrical and haunting films, The Mirror (1975) and Stalker (1979), as he had done for Solaris (also available on Superior Viaduct).
 
Artemiev’s magnificent soundtrack to The Mirror is the natural follow-up to Solaris. Dense, slow-moving, and often disorienting mood pieces with Baroque sensibilities resonate beyond the film’s dream-like images. For Stalker―Tarkovsky’s other science fiction masterpiece―Artemiev was inspired by Indian classical music and employed layers of synth tones, flute and tar (a traditional Iranian stringed instrument) to create a central theme as spellbinding as The Zone, a setting in the film where laws of physics no longer apply.
 
Superior Viaduct presents the first-time official release of these two astonishingly unique soundtracks. Recommended for fans of Lech Jankowski’s music for Brothers Quay films, BC Gilbert & G Lewis and Oneohtrix Point Never.

• First-time official release of original soundtracks for two classic films by Andrei Tarkovsky
• Follows the recent release of Artemiev’s acclaimed soundtrack for Solaris
• Recommended for fans of Philip Glass, Aphex Twin, Tim Hecker

This is a 1972 album by Rufus Harley, a unique bagpipe player for a jazz musician. This is a spiritual jazz funk album with a psychedelic world of bagpipes and organ.

Liquid Liquid continued toward dance-floor perfection with their third EP. 1983's Optimo features the band's best-known songs and remains a high water mark for post-punk aficionados. The title track positively erupts when the bass enters, forcing even the stiffest person in the room to move. While it would be an understatement to say that "Cavern" may sound familiar (due to its gross sampling in Grandmaster Melle Mel's "White Lines"), Liquid Liquid were indeed the originators of this iconic New York riff.

Synth legend Suzanne Ciani, Demdike Stare's Sean Canty & Finders Keepers' Andy Votel come together on this killer hour-long 2014 synapse popper of a collaboration pooling the occasional group’s esoteric collage-based approach into a remarkably foreboding session pregnant with a dread that’s never quite resolved. Think Vladimir Ussachevsky, Todd Dockstader, Spectre and Company Flow melted thru the Deutsch-Italo industrial DIY tape era and funneled thru an almost impenetrable fog of Ann Arbor basement noizze. 

Hustling some of Neotantrik’s most amorphous gestures, ’241014’ is a four-segment movement of reduced Buchla treatments, destroyed vinyl loops and scraping foley suspense; like a cosmic dream diary layered into a collage of drones and clatters. Little in Ciani's extensive catalogue has hinted at what's on display here; the joyful lullaby-pop of "Seven Waves" or metallic alien soundscraping of "Flowers of Evil" are only hinted at. She instead paints new sonic vistas, allowing space for her collaborators to make themselves known; Votel's chiming toy autoharp and Bubul Tarang (a Punjab string instrument) add a distinctive flavor, while Canty's grimy drones and noise-soaked textures drizzle pitch-black molasses into the cracks and crevices. Together, the effect is a bit like hearing Philip Jeck improvising over Popol Vuh's peerless Moog-led debut "Affenstunde" or Demdike Stare knocking out impromptu reworks of Tangerine Dream's abstrakt early run.

Perhaps unusually, the trio have still never set foot in a studio together, exclusively maintaining their practice in-the-moment and on stage when schedules intersect. So it’s all the more remarkable that their improvisations naturally find a democracy of role and such a heightened level of intuition, beautifully converging their thoughts to mutual, open-ended conclusions that leaves billowing room for interpretation. In a most classic sense, it's like the sensation of sleep paralysis or dream/nightmare ambiguity, with a level of suggestiveness that’s disorienting from end to end.

For the first time the recordings are now available in high fidelity (there was a tape version a couple of years back) - now remastered by Rashad Becker to better represent the otherworldly scope of their actions on stage, from the NWW-like queues and drone of ‘Scanned Accents’ and keening silhouette of ‘Second Action,’ to new sections of subaquatic Porter Ricks-like murk in ‘Anti-Contraction’ and the levitating webs of synth and tactile, sampled textures in ‘Last Canción.’  

Tape music and synth music have long shared a passionate embrace, and here turntablism coolly slides in on the action. Canty and Votel's background in beat tape assembly and crate digging pays off: they're keenly experimental creators but bring an unfussy sense of rhythm and performance that's miles beyond any facile repetition of a nostalgia for vintage glory. Combined with Ciani's delicate Buchla work - it’s a unique proposition.

Blind Joe Death is the first album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. There are three different versions of the album, and the original self-released edition of fewer than 100 copies is extremely rare.

Original compositions inspired by the words of Omar Khayyam, arranged and conducted by Richard Evans. It is an oriental and exotic masterpiece that reflects Eastern thought while incorporating elements of African music, such as kalimba, with Japanese koto and harp. Recorded at Ter-Mar Studios, Chicago, November, 1969 - January, 1970. Published by Wiljean Music

Whether it’s Hip Hop, it’s face pointed reverentially to the Old School, or House stealing Disco riffs by the truck load, people are increasingly intrigued by back-in-the-day. And common to both the aforementioned scenes and much more is one person, Arthur Russell, a man some regard as the best songwriter of the 20th century. In 1981 Arthur set up Sleeping Bag Records with Will Socolov. The first release was the album “24-24 Music” as Dinosaur L. If you’re wondering about the name it would appear Arthur would often use the names of extinct or near-extinct animals. On one production credit he’s “Killer Whale, whilst the logo for Sleeping Bag is a Koala bear! Will remembers how they came up with the name for their label. “We were joking about names, and James Brown was on with “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” and I was sleeping in a sleeping bag in my apartment and I kind of made a joke about that, and Arthur said that was a great idea for the name of the company!” The line up was pretty much the same as the Loose Joints sessions, (which boasted the Ingram Brothers rhythm section) and a similar stream-of-conscience approach was taken with the recording itself. Russell arranged the beats so there’d be a change every 24 bars (hence the title) and the band would have to improvise the songs over the top. He also made sure he went into the studio when there was a full moon! The album is again very experimental, and makes occasional uneasy listening but the same magic is very much in evidence. Arthur would continue to be involved in production and mixing duties for the label, but parted company with Socolov in 1985. Arthur sadly died of AIDS in 1992 leaving behind many songs; as one obituary put it, it was though he simply vanished into his music.

Limited color vinyl (Marble Orange & Red)/ Gatefold sleeve specifications. The masterpiece "Kaleidoscope" released in 2000 released from the DJ Food project devised by the founder Coldcut. Produced by then-members Kevin Forks, aka Strictly Kev, and Patrick Carpenter, aka PC, this work sets it apart from DJ Food's original concept of providing DJ material, and the future of beat music. It was a perfect work as if I had foreseen. Twenty years after its release, Kev and PC celebrated the 20th anniversary of Kaleidoscope by discovering different versions, different mixes, and unpublished ideas from past archives and original recording session material. It was decided to put together a mixed sound source, make improvements and make it into a work as "Kaleidoscope Companion", and release it as a 4-disc LP together with the original album.

The opening "The Ents Go To War" has a gloomy arrangement and heavy drums, "Skylark" has a hypnotic dance between the bassline and the snare, and "Zoom Zoom" has a whimsical percussion. The airy synthesizer is impressive. In addition, "Kaleidoscope Companion" is full of moments that fans will be surprised at. The big band meets easy listening "Hip Operation" was reused in the first version of Sukia's "Feelin'Free" remix, and "A Strange Walk" was included in the compilation "Xen Cuts". An unreleased version of the remix. "Stealth" is another version of the Gentle Cruelty Remix of "The Aging Young Rebel", also included in "Xen Cuts".

Another version of DJ Food's signature song, "The Crow (Slow)," extends the melodic theme to a calm soundscape that eventually blends into another dub version. The 13-minute-long "Quadraplex (A Trip To The Galactic Center)" is made by stitching together various takes from different synthetic tracks. Closing Kaleidoscope Companion, Boo Hoo is an early short version of The Sky At Night that conveys the cinematic mood of the album.

It's not a new DJ Food album, it's an album that wasn't born at the time. In another reality, these songs may have been on Kaleidoscope, but now, 20 years later, they will be released as an adjunct to the original album. --Strictly Kev

William Hooker is a free jazz drummer/composer who has been active in the New York loft scene for over 40 years, and has collaborated with Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke and other members of Sonic Youth. William Hooker's first album, released on his own Reality Unit Concepts label in 1977, has been reissued for the first time on the prestigious Superior Viaduct label. This is a great album. This is amazing. This is not a sharp free improvisation, but rather an obscure piece of music that is quite dusty and deep, reflecting the black power of the social and political background of the time, and the growing spirituality that can be seen in the artwork. It's a spaced-out version of Rashied Ali or Milford Graves, and despite the large number of notes, it's very meditative and easy to get lost in.

This is a compilation of 36 tracks from Moondog's earliest recordings from 1949 to 1995, including various recordings from the New York and European eras, as well as some now-lost singles! The 78s series at the time of their debut and the 1953 EP On The Streets Of New York (all tracks included) are included, as well as material from their self-produced records and various labels (Mars, Epic, Folkways, etc.) with the money they saved from playing and sleeping on the streets of New York. I've been playing and sleeping in the house for a long time. This record is characterized by the rumbling percussion and self-made instruments. In addition to the symphonies and songs of the German period, which are characterized by strings and horn arrangements that give a solemn impression, the bleak and uncanny performances are unlike any of his previous works. The more I listen to this album, the more I realize how unique and rare Moondog was as a performer and composer, and what a wonderful human being he was (at the time, Moondog got tired of being told that he looked like Christ and started dressing like a Viking). So he started to dress like a Viking). ). This is a spectacularly high quality album that shows off Moondog's true nature and essence to the fullest. This is a masterpiece that can be said to be the culmination of the entire period! This is a must have for both new listeners and Moondog enthusiasts!

French house master Gilbert Cohen, who runs Versatile Records and is also known for his work with I:Cube in the famous duo Château Flight, presents his latest LP as Gilb'R. This is the latest LP that transcends 25 years of time. Last year, Cohen collaborated with French new age/electronic music genius Ariel Kalma on "Plantlife" and "Super Spreader" (with guest appearance by I:Cube!). He also collaborated with the great Ariel Kalma (!) on "Plantlife" and "Super Spreader" (with I:Cube as a guest!), a cosmic ambient dance number, the heavenly Balearic ambience "Café Del Pijp" with Jonny Nash of "Melody As Truth" fame, and the hot and quietly vibrant lefty A total of 10 tracks are included in this album.

The End is the Three 6 Mafia album that took them to the next level and eventual Grammy and Academy Awards. Available for the first time on vinyl. This newly remastered limited edition double LP on translucent Orange vinyl.

Limited edition green and yellow colored vinyl. A supergroup that arguably revolutionized the future of rap in Memphis, and rap itself, Three 6 Mafia was formed in the early '90s by mixtape DJs who had made a name for themselves as one of the top acts in the area. The End, a 1996 masterpiece by Three 6 Mafia, formed by mixtape DJs who had made a name for themselves as top acts in Memphis in the early '90s, proved that Memphis rap was commercially viable, and former member Koopsta Knicca's 1999 gangsta rap masterpiece was miraculously released on vinyl for the first time. It was remixed, edited, and remastered from the solo material that had been available only to underground audiences long before he became famous as a member of Three 6 Mafia, and became an instant hit. This is the long-awaited official vinyl release of one of the most sought-after albums in Memphis rap!

"When asked what were my early influences in music, I get reminded of my teenage years in Parisian suburbs, simultaneously discovering from public libraries two important French record labels: OCORA and GRM. Then the roots of my interest in traditional music and electro-acoustic experiments grew into doing it myself, recording ethnic minorities of the zomian plateau of south-east Asia and composing a soundscape around it. This is what is happening here."

— Laurent Jeanneau aka KINK GONG

Kink Gong works with what is unknown to him, as an artist who’s attracted by beauty and strangeness.
Like a stranger, he has been deeply curious about recording ethnic minority music isolated from dominating cultures within South-east Asia, thus working with musicians taking part in specific cultural communities to make almost 200 albums.
Like an artist, he has been leaning towards strange marriages, building on these raw materials. They are lived moments that combine space, people and music, as if they were blocks made out of the same material.

Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances Haino has staked out a ground all his own creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. For all this, his 1981 debut album Watashi Dake? has remained enigmatic. Originally released in a small edition by the legendary Pinakotheca label, the album was heard by only a select few in Japan and far fewer overseas. Original vinyl copies became impossibly rare and highly sought after the world over.

Watashi Dake? presents a haunting vision – stark vocals, whispered and screamed, punctuate dark si-
lences. Intricate and sharp guitar figures interweave, repeat and stretch, trance-like, emerging from dark recesses. Written and composed on the spot – Haino’s vision is one of deep spiritual depths that distantly evokes 1920’s blues and medieval music- yet is unlike anything ever committed to record before or since. Coupled with starkly minimal packaging featuring the now iconic cover photographs by legendary photographer Gin Satoh, the album is a startling and fully realized artistic statement.

Totally absorbing new album flush with ambient-jazz-electronic touches from Vegyn, following their production chops for Frank Ocean, Travis Scott and JPEGMAFIA with an ear-snagging new showcase on London’s PLZ Make It Ruins.

Affiliated with James Blake and Frank Ocean and known for work on some of the most prominent, boundary-probing rap releases of recent years, Vegyn brings a refreshingly optimistic, laid-back, dreamy aesthetic to the table in ‘Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds’. If this album had reached ears this summer it would have bene among the season’s most played, but as it stands it’s going to keep us warm all winter with its collaged mosaic of fleeting field recordings, Satie-esque melodic wist and sparingly used but super crispy R&B/hip hop snap.

A big, big look for fans of Klein, Gila, BoC, Oli XL.

Fortunately for us, Dmytro Nikolaienko agreed to open up the jewellery boxes of his tape-loop archive for his debut album on Faitiche. What came to light was a collection of dreamy glittering gems, masterfully presented using the compositional possibilities of analogue tape machines. Some may consider a tape machine to be limited as a musical instrument, but Rings makes a convincing case with its sure-handed use of the available parameters – moving tape over the tape head mechanically and manually, cutting loops, manipulating timbre and creating noise by means of saturation. The results are eleven blurred, repetitive, rhythmic patterns that can be understood as an intervention against digital precision, as mechanical irregularities and background noise become musical events.

For those familiar with Nikolaienko’s work, his nostalgic approach here will come as no surprise: born in Ukraine and now based in Estonia, he has chosen a historical medium (that has been enjoying a renaissance for some years now) to record historical-sounding sequences. The way he manages his own back catalogue is similarly archival, documenting the chronology of his tape loops in such a way as to leave no doubt as to their advanced age. And then there are his two wonderful labels Muscut and Shukai, the latter being an archival project releasing electroacoustic obscurities from the Soviet past.

Pavement’s sole long-player is the stuff of legend, a record so rare that in-the-know vinyl connoisseurs have questioned its very existence. As one of the many vinyl anomalies of the day, Pavement’s obscure story is very much about a particular place and time, in this case, the fringes of the multi-cultural London music scene that existed at the tail end of the swinging sixties. According to the liner notes of the original LP, Pavement was formed in 1968 after ‘Dexter Pat and John had left their original group,’ and ‘Tony and George left theirs to unite with them.’ Then, ‘an express letter to Beirut brought Mick, who was playing there at the time.’ We are told that these musicians were ‘digging the solid soul sounds’ and ‘the exciting rhythms of the Caribbean, ska and reggae,’ and after two months of steady rehearsals, the band ‘launched themselves into the rat race of popular music’ in November 1968. They supposedly had so much success as a warm-up act after playing up and down the country in support of various unnamed groups that they were ‘soon being booked as top of the bill,’ hence the need for this. Pavement’s self-titled debut album was the first LP released by Crystal, the subsidiary of President Records that was established in 1968 by Jack Price, a songwriter and harmonica player that had just replaced Siggy Jackson as label manager at Melodisc Records. Price had his finger in a number of different pies: in addition to promoting Melodisc’s ska and reggae catalogue, he was soon to produce the ground-breaking various artists album Rock Steady Hits Of 69 for Fontana with London-based reggae performers, which helped bring Caribbean rhythms into non-specialist music shops for the very first time, and enjoyed the publishing on The Cats’ massive ‘Swan Lake’ 45, a hugely successful pop-reggae adaptation. Jack also ran a recording studio of his own, reputedly the first London facility with eight-track recording equipment. The original liner notes suggested that we should ‘rest assured that there will be more singles and albums to come from this refreshing group’ and that ‘this news will please a lot of people.’ Of course, things didn’t quite work out that way, yet this reissue of the Pavement LP reminds that reggae, soul and other foreign forms were spicing up the London music scene as the 1960s drew to a close. Delve into its contents and ponder further on its particulars.

If you are in search of the origins of Jamaican music this is a great album to start with. Mento was the original Jamaican folk music that predates Ska and Reggae. Played Exclusively on acoustic instruments Mento was based on both African and European elements. The 1950s was Mento’s golden age, as many artists recorded songs using a variety of rhythms and styles. It was the peak of Mento’s creativity and popularity and the birth of Jamaica’s recording industry.

Guitarist RUSSELL POTTER's A Stone's Throw (1979) and Neither Here Nor There (1981) reissued via Tompkins Square - LP & Digital June 25th

The latest in a series of reissues spawned from Imaginational Anthem Volume 8 : The Private Press, following Tom Armstrong - The Sky Is An Empty Eye and Rick Deitrick - Gentle Wilderness/River Sun River Moon

Reflections on Russell Potter by IA8 co-producer and poet, Michael Klausman :

The two latest reissues to spin off from our acclaimed Imaginational Anthem Volume 8: The Private Press feature the solo guitar compositions of Russell Potter, recorded in the last waning days of the initial American Primitive explosion.

A then obsessed teenaged devotee of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke at a time when Punk and New Wave were ascendant, Potter harnessed a similar DIY ethos to his own ends by starting his own label & self-publishing his first record, 'A Stone’s Throw’, while a freshman enrolled at Goddard College in Vermont in 1979. Assembled at the legendary Boddie Records in Potter’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, and sprinkled liberally with references to his heroes, from the initial record label name of Fonytone (which more than a little recalls Fahey’s earliest record label, Fonotone), to the arcane song titles and references to obscure rags.

Even as he looks to his elders, Potter’s debut release nimbly evinces a complete mastery of his form and is all the more remarkable for one of such tender years, as only the chutzpah of youth can account for such moves as successfully grafting one of your own composition to one of John Fahey’s, as he does here. There’s a very immediate, lovely, and real homespun quality to Potter’s chiming twelve-string compositions that puts it in the realm of those classic records that seem to simply exist outside of time.

Shortly after ‘A Stones Throw’, Potter produced & released a 45rpm single by an Ohio bluegrass band featuring the cult singer songwriter Bob Frank performing a cover of Devo’s ‘Mongoloid’, before moving on to his second (and sadly final) album the following year, ‘Neither Here Nor There’. Following an independent study with a Goddard College ethnomusicologist, Potter’s compositions and performance only deepened on his second release — the recording quality steps up a little but loses none of the immediacy, the playing gets more exuberantly virtuosic —but then more reflective too, particularly on the tunes that are influenced by the gorgeous traditional Irish slow airs. He’s still tipping his hat to Fahey occasionally as well, this time with an audacious electric guitar setting of the classic “Dance of the Inhabitant of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain.”

Though these albums landed at a time when American Primitive guitar music’s 1960s & 1970s heyday was in the rear view mirror, they absolutely look ahead to the genre’s eventual 21st Century resurrection, anticipating both in form & content many of the same concerns you find in the great contemporary work of the last two decades by Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Daniel Bachman, et al., and as such provide about as fine a stepping stone between these two eras as you’re likely to find.

Media Condition: EX  Sleeve Condition: VG+

A Khayal Gunkali
B1 Khayal Mehkani
B2 Thumri Jhinjhoti

Recorded live and released in 1987 in Montevideo, Uruguay. this album is the most professional record of the duo that Eduardo Mateo and Fernando Cabrera formed for a period of a few months. These two great composers, performers and arrangers from different generations, premiered with the duo several beautiful new songs, in addition to concocting together renewed versions of some of the classic tunes from each one's repertoire. It is an intimate and acoustic work. Cabrera's guitar appears many times backed by the tasty and peculiar percussion of Mateo, and there are also grooves with precious arrangements of two guitars. The duo of Mateo and Cabrera was a milestone for the careers of both. 500 copies

Media Condition: NM  Sleeve Condition: VG+

A1 Raga Puriya Kalyan
B1 Raga Averi-Bhairabi with Ragamala