MUSIC

Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements — a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and "radio edit" coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview.

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

Minimalist avant-rock from experimentalist Dreyblatt: ultra-rhythmic overtones created from striking piano strings strung to a bass.

LP originally released in 1982 by India Navigation Records

Comprising a selection of songs masterfully recorded and produced by Greg Freeman right after the sessions that yielded 1993’s Admonishing The Bishops EP, The Funeral Pudding could be thought of as a sister release to that EP; indeed, the band originally considered combining tracks from both sessions into a single album. Had it been released, that record would’ve followed the pattern of the previous album in which the band’s pop and avant-garde leanings are yoked together cheek by jowl. Instead, Admonishing showcases the band at its most accessible while The Funeral Pudding flaunts their more expansive, abrasive and absurdist side without forfeiting the earlier EP’s miraculously high standards for songwriting and sonic clarity.

What makes The Funeral Pudding a unique feather in the Fellers’ cap is that most of the tracks are sung by bassist Anne Eickelberg and guitarist Hugh Swarts — a notable departure from the Davies/Hageman vocal dominance on most of the other albums. With Eickelberg’s soaring vocals leading the proceedings, tracks like “Waited Too Long” and “Heavy Head” are some of the most beloved in the band’s discography. And “23 Kings Crossing” is a whiplash-inducing psych/prog stunner that adds another metric ton to the burden of proof demonstrating that TFUL282 was creating some of the most thrilling, enduring and sonically autonomous music of its era

Recorded in the early 1970s, this collection of instrumentals is a crystal clear glimpse into a forgotten period of Portland’s music history. Fostered by the Albina Art Center, a hangout spot for creatively-inclined Black youth, The Gangsters were led by trumpeter Thara Memory who produced the sessions heard on this release. After gigging around the city for a few years, the group—who were almost all in their late teens—laid down some tracks at Ripcord Studios, but they disbanded soon thereafter and the tapes sat in a closet, unheard for over 40 years.

Rescued from obscurity, the tracks on this album have all the punch and hip-swinging joy of fellow jazz/funk artists like The Crusaders, Weather Report, and Pleasure. But with Thara Memory leading the charge, the music has a rich complexity, best exemplified by the nine-minute “Suite for Funk Band,” which runs through a series of movements that touch on Latin grooves and post-bop before culminating in an almost-psychedelic breakdown capped off by a devastating guitar solo.

For many members of The Gangsters, their careers would continue to flourish. The late Thara Memory became a renowned educator and won a Grammy for his work with Esperanza Spalding on her 2013 album Radio Music Society. Jimmy and Johnny Sanders toured in B.B. King’s band throughout his final decade of performance. Bassist Lester McFarland would go on to play with jazz icons The Crusaders, The Jeff Lorber Fusion, and Tom Grant. But what this record captures is lightning in a bottle, a period when these young men crossed paths and created a burst of energy and light.

Vinyl pressing company derived from runouts. Fifth LP by the legendary Ali Farka Toure and one of 5 LPs being reissued for the first time ever.

Drag City and Yoga Records are delighted to return to the music of Matthew Young. Following Recurring Dreams (1981, reissued 2014) and Traveler's Advisory (1986, reissued 2010), Undercurrents (2025) collects eight oddly dissimilar pieces that somehow fit together perfectly. Although unique enough to be called outsider, Young’s new album occupies a musical world accessible to fans of many genres. Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, Undercurrents displays the wide range of Young’s various sonic pallets: similar to Recurring Dreams, the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like Traveler's Advisory, the album skews from the nearly algorithmic computer music of side one to the moving pastoral folk of the second.

On the opener “Reflexion,” a quartet of marimbas twist and turn over each other, while in “One and All,” a harp melody is overtaken by various electronic effects. The 12-minute title track is an abstract weaving of piano and synthesis, with the six sections named after oceanic currents. “A Game of Chess, a Game of Chance” consists of sparse electronic tones created on the Princeton University IBM mainframe during his studies in 1976. This all makes way for the second half of Undercurrents, where settings of Marion Lineaweaver's poems, “The Summer Girls” and "Her Key is Minor," showcase Young's honest, fragile vocal approach, conveying a deep sense of soulful longing, and the latter even sweetly approaching something akin to synthpop. The piano on "Inflexion" calls back to the end of “Reflexion," and in the album closer, “Into the Woods,” Young plays the hammered dulcimer with the disciplined reverence of an alchemist.

Simply put, Undercurrents is a triumph across many musical realms... this is Matthew Young’s world.

“My favorite singer in the place was Karen Dalton. She had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed.” – Bob Dylan Karen Dalton's 1969 Capitol debut is finally back in print! Light in the Attic is thrilled to present a brand new edition of this heart-wrenching & bluesy introduction to the intoxicating world of Dalton and her deep well of musical secrets. World-weary and filled with the blues, Dalton’s unsurpassed interpretive depth and emotional range were like no other. Recorded for Capitol in 1969, It’s So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You The Best spans generations of classic American songwriting–covering classics by Lead Belly, Fred Neil, and Tim Hardin. While no longer with us in the physical, Karen’s growing musical presence is stronger than ever and worthy of re-examination by both the converted and the uninitiated alike. This new re-release serves as the definitive, all-analog version of Dalton’s stunning debut, featuring remastered audio from the original Capitol masters, the original 1969 artwork in an expanded gatefold jacket, unseen photos by album photographer Joel Brodsky, and an essay interviewing Karen’s friends and music collaborators, from album producer and bassist Harvey Brooks to musician Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders.

Portland's finest practitioners of Great Black Music offering to the planet! All Is Sound could not be a more apt title for this. Through saxophone, cello, piano, and flutes The Cosmic Tones Research Trio created a truly beautiful record. All Is Sound breaks new ground. At its heart, it's healing/meditation music, but the Gospel and Blues roots are in there too...as well as hints of forward-looking Spiritual jazz. As sincere a record as you could ever hope for. Music is indeed the healing force of the universe.

A towering figure in jazz history, John Coltrane reshaped the sound of the tenor sax much like Charlie Parker did for bebop—his influence still echoes today. Olé Coltrane, his ninth and final album for Atlantic, was recorded just two days after his first Impulse! session at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary studio. With his working quintet and guest players from Africa/Brass, including Art Davis and Freddie Hubbard, Coltrane delivered a hypnotic, Spanish-tinged masterpiece that bridged eras and labels, marking the dawn of his most exploratory phase.

This exclusive compilation showcases the very best of Tappa Zukie's productions from 1988 to 1994, featuring an all-star lineup of legendary Jamaican vocalists and backed by top musicians such as Sly & Robbie and Clive Hunt. Each track has been remastered and is available together on vinyl for the first time ever. "When your mother and your father forsake you, the Lord God Jah will pick you up."

These were the words spoken by the people of Trench Town (Kingston, Jamaica) to a young Tappa Zukie, who began running away from home at the age of twelve. Drawn to the allure of the Rude Boy gangs, Tappa was captivated by Kingston’s thriving Sound System culture, where every neighborhood pulsed with music. It was in this vibrant environment that the young Tappa Zukie first began deejaying, quickly gaining recognition as a rising star in the dancehall scene.

This early success solidified his deep connection to music, as he developed a sharp intuition for what the dancehall crowds craved. Over the next two decades, Tappa would find both fame and fortune as a deejay, but his influence reached far beyond the mic. He became known as a visionary producer, founding the Stars label, which became a platform for legendary artists like Prince Alla, Junior Ross, Horace Andy, Knowledge to name a few during reggae's golden age of the 1970s Roots era.

By the mid-1980s, as Jamaican reggae evolved both in style and production techniques, Tappa responded by launching Tappa Records. This album is a carefully curated selection of ten tracks from Tappa Records, spanning the years 1986 to 1994. These ten tracks—produced by Tappa Zukie—highlight some of Jamaica’s finest singers and deejays, and while the music reflects the shifting styles of Jamaican music at the time, the deep influence of Roots is unmistakable. The themes of Roots music are still front and center, not just in the lyrics but in the very fabric of the production itself, a sound that has since become known among reggae music addicts as "Digital Roots."

Tappa Zukie and his talented array of musicians developed a sound that remains fresh even today, a testament to their creative vision. It has since become a reference for modern reggae producers, especially within the sound system scene, where Tappa's innovative work continues to inspire and set the standard for the next generation of reggae music.

Milton Nascimento’s 1969 ‘Courage’ blends Brazilian music with jazz, marking his international debut. Featuring Herbie Hancock and arranged by Eumir Deodato, the album highlights Nascimento’s emotive vocals and lush arrangements. A timeless introduction to one of Brazil’s most unique voices.

The 20th Anniversary Edition of "The Creep" by Slomo, this ambient doom masterwork, is now available on vinyl for the first time via Ideologic Organ. This is a storied album of verbal history, and emerged from a figurative long barrow deep within a virtual space of great depth and contemplation, an inverted framing of acoustic space with heavy floors ranging from the wake of COIL to the heaviest Japanese fire of psychedelia to the monuments of drone coagulating in the early 'aughts. A first tiny CDR edition (100 copies) of "The Creep" in 2005 garnered the focus of heavyweights like SUNN O))), Julian Cope, GNOD, the esoteric legendary record store Aquarius, and the Wire. Ideologic Organ is honoured to have been tasked with bringing this to a limited LP for the very first time, and has collaborated with mastering genius Rashad Becker to create a 61-minute single LP in perfect cut. The album will also be distributed widely on all digital channels.

–Stephen O'Malley, Stockholm May 2025

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Doom Metal is often appraised in terms of its sludginess. You might suspect Julian Cope associates Holy McGrail (guitar) and Howard Marsden (synth) of having taken these criteria to heart when they recorded their debut album as Slomo. Initially released on Cope’s Fuck Off & Di label and later reissued by Important, The Creep strains at the very boundaries of Doom. An eerie and evanescent hour-long exercise in bottom-heavy drone, it shares as much with Eno’s On Land as anything by Sunn O))) or Earth, including a comparable attitude towards the wild spots of the British landscape.

Sinking deep into their environment, McGrail and Marsden initiate contact with the pagan spirits lying dormant in the soil, such as the indolent entity of the album’s title and the “Old Rhyme” printed on the sleeve (“In Old England they called me Slaewth the slothful…”), while mimicking the slow, imperceptible processes of growth and decay. The duo’s low-frequency ooze certainly succeeds in evoking the subterranean, but its unhurried rumble also conjures the hidden spaces that flourish against the odds all over the British Isles, from untouched railway verges and motorway laybys to overgrown footpaths where used contraceptives, pornography, Coke cans and crisp packets collect like offerings to the Great God Pan. In more than one sense, The Creep is a fitting tribute to what lies beneath.

-Joseph Stannard, 2012

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The Creep, contextualised.

Just one week after the passing of COIL's Jhonn Balance in late 2004, the 61-minutes of "The Creep" manifested in a Sheffield suburb. Not yet a band and only captured due to happenstance, this first music of Slomo flowed forth without any consideration of it even being "a piece", let alone a release, though it didn't take long for the participants (Chris "Holy" McGrail and Howard Marsden) to realise they'd captured something of distinct colour on account of how often they were listening to it.

Initially dubbed "The Ballad of Jhonn & Sleazy", the pair soon instead ascribed the music to Boleigh Fogou; a prehistoric underground chamber on the Land's End peninsula that both had recently visited and been affected by. "The Creep" took its name from the peculiar side chamber assumed to be of ritual function, having no apparent practical use. This ponderous music chimed perfectly with the fogou; an apparently stolid place that teems with life once you become attuned to its frequency.

Fitting in perfectly alongside other massive single-track albums such as Sleep's "Dopesmoker", COIL's 'Queens of the Circulating Library', Cope's "Odin", and Boris' "Flood", "The Creep" secured a limited release on Cope's Fuck Off & Di CD-R label in 2005 that quickly sold out via supportive outlets such as Southern Lord, Aquarius Records and Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ - then operating merely as a blog and micro-store.

After a wider CD release in 2006, Slomo followed up "The Creep" with "The Bog" in 2008 – a much denser plunder into the fundament. 2012 brought with it the pair's first live outings and "The Grain", another nod to Land's End with an airier, more agricultural sound and the first signs of creeping automation. 2017's "Transits" captured three spontaneous compositions for time and space and remains a firm favourite among the band's listeners; one of the tracks going on to be remixed by twelve of the band's favourite artists on 2018's 2xCD compilation "Super-Individual: Collective Ritual". The band returned in 2024 with "Zen and Zennor" and live shows with GNOD and a sold-out show at Stone Club, London.

In other's words :

“If the doom metal of Khanate is the ideal soundtrack to the 21st Century Odinists’ hanging upon the tree of Yggdrasil, then the vegetal music of Slomo is the unfolding, nurturing, ever-becoming ur-ooze that titanically irrigates the roots of that sacred tree. Slomo restores our timeless beginnings and fulfils the Ginnungagap… motherfuckers.”

JULIAN COPE

“…seeps into your subconscious, where it flutters like a trapped and burning moth at the back of your brain. Ghostly sounding and ominously rumbling with atmospheric threat, The Creep is an undeniably effective chunk of subterranean echo, whose quaking aftershock could cause sleepless nights.”

THE WIRE

“Uneasy, brooding, and honestly unsettling, this disc slowly works its way out of the speakers and into the psyche. Ingrained, it’s impossible to put it down, lock it away, carry it to the street with the beer and Scotch bottles to be recycled. Inactivated, it defiantly surfaces in the cat’s purr, the Volk’s engine knocks, a fritzing hard drive.”

DUSTED MAGAZINE

“Labège, released on Good Morning Tapes, emerged from a residency in the town of the same name in Occitanie, where NEXCYIA, mu tate, and Exzald S lived and worked under one roof. Immersed in the slow rhythms of southern French life, the trio embraced live improvisation, intuitive sampling, and a freeform process shaped by their domestic surroundings. The result is a collection of gentle, drifting compositions—sonic postcards capturing a fleeting moment in time.

The trio brings a distinct yet complementary voice. Working with abstraction, sound mangling tools, field recordings, and fragmented rhythms to sculpt tactile, evolving environments. All leaning into softness and restraint, weaving filtered harmonics and spacious reverb into floating atmospheres anchored by deep sub-bass and hushed vocals.

Their methods intertwine seamlessly, allowing improvisation and chance to guide the music’s form. The result is both expansive and intimate—suspended somewhere between memory and the present.”

For our 100th Eccentric Soul 45, Numero returns to our Ohio roots with three replica 45s from the Capsoul universe. Marion Black's timeless two-sider "Who Knows" b/w "Go On Fool" made a few blips upon its 1970 release, but has taken on a life of its own soundtracking prestige TV and car commercials around the globe and finally going gold after 65 years. We discovered Ron Harrington's "Because You're Mine" demo amongst the Capsoul tapes, a demo cut for founder Bill Moss that never escaped greater Columbus. The mid-tempo harmony joint "It Happened To Me Again" adorns the flip, with a lo-fi funk backbeat tossed in for good measure. Capsoul's crown jewel group harmony quartet Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr cut just two records in their short time together, but the quartet's "You Can't Blame Me" has endured as a classic example of the raw and unhinged soul sound that Numero is known for. Eccentric Soul from the heart of it all.

Re-issue of New York singer-songwriter Nina Nastasia's Steve Albini produced debut LP from 2000 - back in print after nearly two decades.

"In October of 1999, Nina Nastasia recorded the album that would finally document her well-seeded career as a local singer-songwriter in New York City. It was exemplary of Nastasia’s style, delicate string arrangements, the restrained beauty of her live band, the deceptive simplicity of her voice, and poignant, life-wise lyrics. The following year, “Dogs” was released on CD by micro-indie label Socialist Records. By the end of 2000, the “Dogs” CD was out of print. But “Dogs” had a special grassroots effect on Nina Nastasia’s music career, as fans of the record would correspond across internet message boards and zines, discussing songs and soliciting copies of the rare edition. The album would also mark the beginning of a lasting peer relationship with noted recording engineer Steve Albini. In 2004, Touch and Go Records reissued “Dogs” on CD and, for the first time, on vinyl. The vinyl quickly sold out and remained out of print for nearly two decade… until now."

Beirut-via-Berlin polymath Raed Yassin summons the supernatural thru a modular synth and spectra of strategies derived from Terry Riley’s minimalism, Suicide’s no wave rock freedom, and synth-pop structures. A strong follow-up to his ambitious ‘Phantom Orchestra’ side with Rabih Beaini - one side panoramic melodrama, to one side turbulent helical spiral.

Issued to coincide with Yassin’s debut London exhibition of the same name, ‘Eternal Ghost’ is the latest iteration of his decades-long artistic thrust toward consolidating improvised and composed musics. Concrète yet ephemeral, minimal yet majestic, the results diverge and contrast in their outlooks and formations with a guile that has served Yassin well thus far, from a memorable 2009 solo debut of illbient collage for Annihaya Records, to jams with Alan Bishop & AMM as part of “A” Trio, and in Praed/Praed Orchestra!, and most the centre of a complex maelstrom for Morphine Records.

Perhaps unusually ‘Eternal Ghost’ frames Yassin mostly solo and left to his own devices for one of their most intimate, if widescreen, expressions of self. ‘A Spectre of a Stranger’ creeps crepuscular with modular synth evoking onset of night before his synth leads tear at the sky in Riley-esque ribbons layered with wholehearted wail in a compelling forward tilt. The B-side ‘Eternal Ghost’ also charges the metaphysical thru synthetic means with its initial lift of saccading arps knotting into panel-beaten industrial pulse and epic pop vox vamps that switch from fourth world optimism to more ragged no wave dystopia, or the other side of the same wave?

〈Honest Jon's〉が60年代に南米エクアドル・キトで活動していた知られざるスイートスポット的レーベル〈Caife〉に残された魅力的なカタログを紐解いたシリーズから新たな発掘音源が登場！アフリカ先住民の伝統と豊かな音楽の伝統が融合した、エクアドル北端エスメラルダス州のユニークなアフリカ系エクアドル文化の素晴らしい記録を収めたアルバム『Juyungo』がアナログ・リリース。マリンバを中心に、コール&レスポンスのチャント、アンデスのギターのフィンガースタイル、パンパイプなどによる深い没入感に溢れる音楽作品を余すところなく収録。ゲートフォールド・スリーヴ仕様。洞察に満ちたメモと貴重写真が満載のブックレット(16ページ)が付属。

On the eve of Drop Nineteens' first live performances in 30 years, we are excited to announce the reissue of the band's 1992 shoegaze masterpiece, Delaware. "Reissue" is slightly misleading as Delaware has never actually been issued on vinyl in the United States. Delaware is the debut studio album by American band Drop Nineteens released on June 19, 1992. Despite the albums release over 30 years ago, and the band remaining inactive from 1993 onwards this album has remained a favorite of shoegaze fans for decades, and was listed as one of the 50 best shoegaze albums of all time by Pitchfork in 2016. This lasting love of the record has cemented the band as one of the most influential bands of the genre from their time. Over the last several years the album has found a new audience that has championed Delaware along side of the band's mostly UK 90's contemporaries. A new legion of Drop Nineteens fans have likely discovered their music through streaming services, rather than on 120 Minutes. Tracks like the towering "Kick The Tragedy" and pop songs "Winona" & "Delaware" sit next to more experimental moments like "Reberrymemberer." And while the album is certainly a wild ride, it all flows together as easily as singers' Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley's vocals.Now for the first time, this record will be available via a USA pressing on yellow colored vinyl. Remastered for vinyl by Carl Saff the album will be available on June 21st.

Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties presents the soothing, hallucinatory side of Stone’s slow-evolving, time-bending composition. While we can’t always identify the source, we can hear that his sounds come from somewhere, and that there is a “correct” or “complete” version of them in theory; and so we can hear when they are being changed. What drives Stone’s music is the flow that he draws out of those differences: the way an Indonesian gamelan morphs into a chorus built from one female vocalist over the course of “Mae Yao”’s twenty-three minutes, the surprise emergence of a Mozart chorus out of the synths and skip-glitches of “Sonali,” or the slow, ambient evolution of “Banteay Srey”. “Woo Lae Oak,” issued in a single side edit for the first time, is an exception. Its samples – a tremolo string and a bottle being blown across the top like a flute - are simple in the extreme. Yet the Stone hallmark is clearly present, he locates the inherent emotional properties of the sounds – the tingling anticipation of the string and the calm nobility of the wind – and takes them into unexpected expressive territory.

    
Entering its 26th year of activity, the morphing, Los Angeles based experimental outfit, Sissy Spacek, joins Shelter Press with Entrance, among the project’s most captivating outings to date. Encountering the duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma joined in various configurations by an incredible cast of collaborators - Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, Ralf Wehowsky, and C Spencer Yeh - collectively transformed into a series a deeply intimate and delicate gestures of musique concrète, Entrance radically repositions the possibilities presented by group improvisation outside of time and place.

Founded at the end of the last millennium, the Los Angeles based project, Sissy Spacek, initially emerged from the knotted, fiery context 1990s American noise and grindcore, producing sheets of visceral sonority that quickly set the scene on its head. Going through numerous evolutions, before eventually settling as a duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma - joined by a rotating and often recurring cast collaborators - over the last 25 years the band has continuously entered states of evolution that have defied the expectations of its own context, seeding the sonic extremes noise with subtle and sophisticated approaches to free improvisation and musique concrète.

Fiercely positioning its efforts within the outer reaches of contemporary experimental music, while resisting the constraints of a singular sound or proximity, Wiese regards Sissy Spacek as being primarily centred around the practice of musique concrète and the pursuit of extremes. From its earliest releases - collage treatments of material gathered from the band’s full throttle practice sessions - the project’s conceptual framework has continuously evolved within a deeply engaged process of experimentation, not only reworking tactical approaches, but also definitions and perception regarding the location and action of their work. In recent years, this has led to an increasingly varied and diverse output. Percolating within, is a thread marked by a striking sense of delicacy and intimacy, driving forward while doubling as an unexpected challenge, in real time, to perceptions connected to the band’s past. Entrance is the most recent of these.

Embarking upon the four compositions that comprise the finalized four sides of Entrance, Wiese and Mumma enlisted longstanding collaborators, Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, and C Spencer Yeh, as well as new initiate, Ralf Wehowsky (of the seminal German electronic noise collective P16.D4), requesting a contribution of sounds from each, determined by a general set guidelines that dictated certain qualities the given sonorities, while allowing for the expression of each player’s distinct creative voice. The sets of resulting recordings were then chopped, harvested, manipulated, and reassembled as the four tape compositions that make up the album - Web Of Unfolding Appearance, Figure Of Reflected Light, Trancher And The Inheritors, True Dimension (From The Opaque - Spike) - each blurring the lines of authorship and clear creative proximity in remarkable ways.

Where historical gestures of musique concrète tend to draw upon non-instrumental sound sources - regarding its sonorous material as raw elements, unburdened by inherent meaning or association, to be transformed and imbued with musicality - Sissy Spacek turns this position on its head. Entrance comprises works of musique concrète that not only draw upon instrumental sound sources, with all their possible meanings or associations, but also individual characters and personalities of their players, crediting each resulting piece to its respective configuration of contributors.

As such, Entrance is an effort of sound collage defined by a rare sense of intimacy and humanity: four pieces that often take on the resemblance of group improvisation, but have, in fact, been assembled outside of time and place. Bent under the ever-present hand of Wiese’s tape treatments and manipulation, each of the album’s four compositions unfurl startling states of sonic abstraction and percolating texture, marked by a striking sense of hard-shifting structure, that culminate as tense, driven manifestations of ambient music: scrapes, squeals, rattles feedback, rolling drums, bouncing tones, whispers, bent electronics, electric artefacts, and seemingly everything else under the sun, configured into immersive, sublime mediations in sound from the most improbable events. 

Six years have passed since Swiss-based duo Klaus Johann Grobe’s last long player “Du bist so symmetrisch” (2018) and you’ll hear they’ve come a long way. “Io tu il loro”, their fourth album for Chicago-based Trouble In Mind Records was written over two weeks in a cabin at the very end of a remote Swiss valley, where - pretty much at the same place - Klaus Johann Grobe came up with their whole debut full-length “Im Sinne der Zeit” album in 2014. What started out as simply making music again quickly turned into seriously making a new album. Once decided, the whole thing was finished rather quickly and recorded once again at David Langhard’s Dala Studio at the end of 2022. “Io tu il loro” is a record that cannot be done by endlessly fiddling around with hundreds of ideas and sounds. All it needed was a real break (Dani and Sevi didn’t work on any Grobe-related stuff until they met up in the mountains in 2022). It’s an album with a blurry vision and soft limitations. You can somehow feel them looking back on all their work forgivingly and then moving on to what felt right. So here we are with nine tracks full of embracing warmth, so melancholicly welcoming you don’t know if you want to smile or cry. Some might call it timeless, some might call it dad-rock... well, it certainly isn’t disco for the masses, it’s more like, “If I can’t make myself dance after four beers, I can as well go home.” So, no disco? No syncopated synths? No German? No reverb? Where’s The Grobe? Take your time, you’ll notice Klaus Johann Grobe aren’t gone, they just took a turn before driving yet into another unknown.

Big Black was started by Steve Albini in 1982 while he was attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Lungs, the first Big Black release was recorded by Steve on a borrowed 4-track. He played everything on the EP himself - except the sax bleating courtesy of pal John Bohnen and the drums courtesy of Roland. Soon after, Steve recruited Jeff Pezzati (Naked Raygun) on bass, and Santiago Durango (also Naked Raygun) joined them on guitar. In 1983, together with live drummer Pat Byrne, they recorded the Bulldozer EP. By 1984, the band had done some touring and recorded the Racer X EP and the start of the Il Duce 7". After that, Jeff returned to Naked Raygun and was replaced by Dave Riley. In 1985, Big Black recorded their first full-length, Atomizer, as well as finishing the Il Duce 7". Atomizer was released in 1986 along with the release of the Hammer Party compilation CD. In 1987, the Headache EP and Heartbeat 7" were released. That same year, the band recorded and released the 7" of The Model/He's A Whore as well as their second full-length album, Songs About Fucking. They toured extensively (for Big Black). And they broke up.

Shelter Press and INA GRM's excellent Portraits GRM series continues with Michelle Helene Mackenzie and Stefan Maier's collaborative piece 'Orchid Mantis' which takes inspiration from Taiwan's abandoned Sanzhi Pod City. The building project came to a halt following multiple accidents in the workplace. The site is now a wasteland, said to be haunted, and is inhabited by five species of orchid mantis. Their soundworld conjures this mysterious place. Meanwhile, Olivia Block's electroacoustic piece uses field recordings from the San Ignacio lagoon and synthesised sounds to provoke thought on humanity's threat to the survival of Pacific grey whales and other species.