NEW ARRIVALS

Mshukai is an improvisation group that revolves around Imao Takuma, known as a contemporary artist and percussionist Pedal.The group performs in unconventional spaces such as baseball fields or inside closets, responding playfully to the environment. This tape documents their performance in the headwaters of a river in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, where they brought equipment and played around a campfire. Additionally, recordings capture their studio session in Kanazawa, where they listened to the above recorded performance while playing with Imao's studio doors open. They also recorded a performance where Imao and Pedal interacted across a road, simulating a dialogue. This project serves as the debut album for Mshukai.

Masami Tada (Marginal Consort) started his career by joining the legendary improvisational group GAP in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, he has continuously embraced improvisation while expanding his creative expression into installations, photography, and more. In recent years, Masami Tada has been capturing Mount Koubou, visible from his home in Kanagawa Prefecture, in photographs every day and sharing them on Instagram, continuing his practice of daily acts of creation. This work features recordings of his actual climb up Mount Koubou, during which Tada brought electronic devices, amps, and percussion instruments. These instruments created sounds in rhythm with the climbing process, and the recordings also capture Tada's improvised performances atop Mount Koubou, including interactions with birds, airplanes, and other elements encountered during his performance.

Late night '60s R&B caught on tape at Jim Kirchstein's jack-of-all genres Cuca studio. Released on minuscule pressings into the Wisconsin wilderness, these 26 sasquatch-rare tracks uncover the soulful paths between the Chicago, Milwaukee, Rockford, and Rockford scenes. Featuring Harvey Scales, Step By Step, Betty Moorer, Seven Sounds, Twiliters, Birdlegs & Pauline, Esquires, Artie & The Pharaohs, and Fantastic Six, this 2xLP tells an alternate history of soul music that could only happen in the Hinterlands on Highway 12.

There are certain occasions when you can truly feel the stars align. One of these is when the interstellar voyager of cosmic soul Jimi Tenor finally lands his spaceship at full force on a Timmion recording. In 2023, he will be serving us two spaced out album sessions recorded together with Cold Diamond & Mink. Jimi is no stranger in these space ways as he has operated behind the Timmion scenes for years, furnishing several of the label's artists with his flute and reeds artistry. The first album out is titled "Is There Love In Outer Space?", which begs the question with the force of five extended tracks that are guaranteed to blow your mind to the stratosphere. The pieces are loaded with whooshing and glistening synth noises and span from lofi space funk to cinematic soundscapes. The sweetly floating title track is like some of those galactic ballads that rare soul collectors are spending their pensions on. At the other side of the spectrum, album closer 'What Are You Doing?' sounds like Sun Ra sat down at a JBs session, and is straight up meant to get that booty moving.Combined with the raw soul prowess of CD&M, Jimi is able to refine new shades from his already impressive repertoire of talent. Even if you are a friend of his previous work you might not have heard him get down quite like this.

Actress’ tenth studio album, the celestial and expansive Statik, is released June 7th via Smalltown Supersound. The collaboration between Darren Cunningham and the esteemed Oslo-based purveyors of elevated sonics evolved organically following Actress’ remix of a Carmen Villain cut for the 12” of her Only Love From Now On LP. In this vein, the entire Statik project, from conception through creation and release, has been blessed with an almost unnatural ease. For Actress, who wrote the majority of his subtly majestic new record in an extensive flow state, the project serves as a cohesive testament to artistic liberation. Resultantly, Cunningham’s new album is imbued with a sense of freedom. And of stillness. The kind of stillness within artistic motion that arises via the deepest states of flow. Once ‘inside’ the Statik experience, listeners may well find themselves newly calm and meditative. Of course, those well-versed in Actress’s works are well-travelled when it comes to fantastical flights of the mind. Transportive sonics that spark inner-voyages – whether through nocturnal cityscapes, or far above and beyond, through Saturn’s rings and past Pluto’s moons – are prime Cunningham terrain. Yet while Statik is unmistakably an Actress LP, it’s also distinctly aquatic and subtly primordial, and so offers his audience novel elemental atmospheres to flow through. Listening closely, influential visions of aqueous realms, such as the mythic Atlantis, and evocations of ancient ceremonies as well as flying birds (and, perhaps, humans) may reveal themselves. No matter if Statik inspires you to soar above or below the horizon, Actress and Smalltown Supersound promise you a safe and transcendent journey.

Ach, komm, ein Mensch kann nicht immer gut sein... This sentiment rings amusingly true for us. How did we find ourselves in this post-truth era, and why does such a term actually exist? In a world where distinctions between right and wrong blur, does the clarity of a black-and-white delineation persist? Are we progressing, or are we regressing to a state reminiscent of the past? Weaving together the complex tapestry of gore, politics, emotions, and, of course, the human experience in this work is done intricately and reflectively by the hands of Christoph de Babalon.

Lost in the soot and fallout from Youngstown, Ohio’s infamous Black Monday steel industry collapse was Tony March’s cross-generational Tammy label. From its early days as a doo wop powerhouse to their last gasps chasing disco hits, Tammy unintentionally documented Youngstown’s small but prolific Black music scene. This single LP surveys the label’s best R&B, soul, funk, and disco, with 13 tracks from Ice Cold Love, Lynn Minor, J.C. & the Soul Angels, The Snapshots, Iron Knowledge, Roy Jefferson, and Steel City Band. Housed in a deluxe tip-on jacket, with a booklet crammed full of notes and ephemera, The Tammy Label continues Numero’s 20 year tradition of preserving regional Ohio music.

Special Alert: A worldwide team-up worth its weight in black gold. Numero Group x Star Creature x Another Taste link up for a seriously HOT collabo. Despite the warning in the song title, blistered fingers and melted gig bags are being reported worldwide. Maxx Traxx’s “Don’t Touch It” has become a certified grail in recent years with its synth-heavy jazz-funk/boogie crossover sound. Rotterdam’s Another Taste has been pounding the scene with a slew of similarly-styled, contemporarily-grailed releases under various aliases across the Space Grapes label. Here the group adds some extra analog flavor plus its trademark “vintage-or-modern?” seasoning for a peak-hour floor-filling rendition of the Chicago classic. For the first time on 12” and cut at 45, Another Taste’s cover plus the Maxx Traxx original get to stretch out properly on the supreme giant disco format. Star Creature x Numero Group are rounding out a boogie bombardment of a year with heavy releases across LP, 45 and Compilations (Chicago Boogie Vol 3, Eccentric Boogie, Magic Touch 45s, Lucky Rosenbloom 45). With the recent deluxe double-dose grail 2xLP reissue of Maxx Traxx & Third Rail’s debut albums alongside extensive liner notes and unearthed photos, the Windy City natives tapped Netherlands' Space Grapes crew to inquire about a viral hit circulating IG from the label’s dominant disco act, Another Taste. After seeing the band perform the song live, we knew it would be a perfect addition to our resurfacing of the Maxx Traxx / Third Rail catalog and really help cement their legacy and influence. Another Taste is the top modern band doing this sound, both live and on record and the perfect current peer to highlight one of the best dance tunes of the era from Chicago’s best underground club band on the opposite end of the DJ-culture era. Another Taste: Known for famous YouTube comments such as; “Shbengg!”, “C’Maaaan!”, “Straight Fire”, and “This is Space Boogie”. Another Taste is the amalgamation, the realization of four brains, hearts and big souls coming together to vibe. They stay firmly grounded and in gratitude to the many music streams that influenced them. Is it boogie? Is it 70’s funk? Obscure disco? Or an ode to Burgess? It’s neither and it’s all. Indefinable yet universal. Being responsible for several releases on the Space Grapes imprint (Mad Honey, GALXTC, Jambonne), Another Taste reinvents itself with every release but remains true to the familiar. And the familiar being that which makes us hit the floor and bop heads for more. Maxx Traxx: There was one irrepressible Chicago club act that refused to be replaced by any DJ’s sound system. Maxx Traxx (and Third Rail before them) were a scene unto themselves in the early 80s, happening live on-stage five-plus nights a week somewhere in the 312. Their two LPs, both recorded in 1982, are like catching a bullet train, a sheer energy ride almost too explosive to be captured by studio tape. And yet these two stone classics would remain unanswered by a city as it moved determinedly toward the motorik sound of house. Hop the turnstile and move with this complete document of Chicago’s last great club band told in detailed text, newly revealed photos, and complete studio recordings painstakingly remastered.

On August 5th 1962, after 300 years of British rule, which had soaked the earth of the island in blood, Jamaica was finally independent. The country that the British left behind was certainly a place of widespread poverty and deep inequality, but there seems to have been a real burst of confidence that came with independence.
Newsreels of the day show well-dressed crowds reacting with enthusiasm and excitement, and the era found its perfect soundtrack in the boldness and exuberance of ska music, which was erupting all over the island.
This optimistic mood found probably its greatest artistic expression in the music of the Skatalites, who formed in June 1964 as a kind of Jamaican supergroup. Philip “Justin” Yap was a young, upcoming producer who had used members of the Skatalites for his first tunes, recorded either at RJR (Radio Jamaica and Redifussion) or at Federal studios. As Steve Barrow documented in the sleevenotes for Pressure Sounds’ reissue of the classic “Ska-Boo-Da-Ba” album, Justin had also befriended Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, and when Coxsone opened his own Studio One facility in December 1963, Justin immediately switched most of his production work to this new recording room. Studio One opened just in time to catch the formation of the Skatalites, and is where Justin recorded most of his classic Skatalites sides.
He also recorded lots of excellent instrumentals with a smaller brass section, still mainly using members of the Skatalites, but crediting instead the composer or arranger of the tune. Combined with Coxsone’s own recordings, these productions for Justin’s Top Deck and Tuneico labels really captured the members of the Skatalites at their magnificent best, in the unique atmosphere of Studio One.
From 2006, I had the huge pleasure of getting to know the great Jamaican
innovator Hedley Jones, who told me how he had designed and installed the original Studio One recording studio, responsible for most of the recordings on
this disc: ‘In 1963 (Coxsone) Dodd contacted me. I was doing a lot of recording work with him as a guitarist in 1961, ‘62 and ‘63, and in 1963 Dodd contacted me with the idea of building a studio of his own. The only equipment he could find himself was a record cutting head that he got from a pawn shop in Miami, but it was a 60 cycle machine. He brought that to Jamaica, and an Ampex reel to reel one track recorder – they was the only things he could find. The rest of the stuff is history because I had to design all the amplifiers, design the studio layout and everything, with the help of two of my sons, who did quite a bit of the laying of
the conduits, while I designed the amplifiers.’ Hedley Jones was an amazing polymath, and one of Jamaica’s greatest inventors.
He designed and built one of the world’s first solid body electric guitars, one of the world’s first double necked guitars, and a new traffic light system for the city of Kingston, all based on the knowledge he gained during World War 2, as a radar operator with the RAF. He called himself “an experimenter”: ‘So I built that studio for him between August and December of 1963. I built the mixing board myself – well I had to – everything in Coxsone’s studio was custom built by me, anything that had to do with amplification. As a matter of fact, I had to design circuits that would quiet his cooling equipment, his air conditioning, it was too noisy. I had a board in there that automatically switched off the air conditioning as soon as the recording started. As soon as you turn on the warning
light, saying that you’re starting recording, the cooling equipment switch off automatically. And all that was my design.
‘It was open in December, I think the week before Christmas. And after having a successful opening – I put together a band to test it – and after the first successful test, then of course the rest is history. I think the board I built for Coxsone had 4 or 5 inputs for microphones, but it was still only a single channel (tape) recorder.
One input (on the board) was for the band, one for the singer, and there was a central microphone hanging from the ceiling… so at least four or five input channels that were available on the console. Anything that you can think of in a modern studio was there. We had reverb – I built that and I used a circuit and I used a mechanical unit, a spring reverb, and then we amplify that and fed it into the circuits. Tape echo came later. That spring reverb for Coxsone was the only one I (ever) built.
‘The last thing I had to do with launching that studio was helping in the recording of Bob Marley’s recording “It Hurts To Be Alone”, that was done on a Sunday morning in April of 64, and Ernie Ranglin was the guitarist, and he used my double-necked guitar, which was also a first in the world.’
Other than building the first incarnation of Studio One, probably Hedley’s greatest historical impact came from the design and build of the Jones Sound 100 Watt tube amplifier of 1947, which powered the first recognisable Jamaican sound system for Tommy Wong, aka Tom the Great Sebastian, with the same amplifier driving the first systems for Duke Reid the Trojan, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd and Roy Johnston’s “House of Joy”.
‘I build the first sound, but I didn’t call it ‘sound system’… it’s Tommy Wong who call it sound system, he gave it the name. It was 100 watts amplifier, and I build one for Duke Reid and one for Coxsone, and it was a basic design but with those tubes you couldn’t exceed 100 watts or you’d be running into trouble. ‘I wasn’t interested in copyright or money at the time. All I was interested in was the technology. I had these ideas in my head and on paper that I wanted put out as a practical design. So that’s where I started the ball rolling, it was in design.
Anyway, I left Kingston in 1965 because I found that I was working for nothing. I was doing all this and getting no rewards. And everybody was like “oh Mr Jones, could you just do this” or “just do that”, so I left Kingston in January 65 feeling quite dejected, I picked up all my things and came to Montego Bay.’
So Hedley Jones had an epiphany, and left the competitive bustle of Kingston for the relative peace of Montego Bay. Of course, he carried on experimenting, building great telescopes whilst working as a journalist, schoolteacher and guitarist, and as president of the Jamaica Federation of Musicians. When I got to know him, he was turning 90 and finally getting some recognition from the Jamaican establishment, receiving the Order of Distinction from the government, and some favourable profiles in the newspapers.
Through Hedley, I also got to talk to Keith ‘Sticky’ Parke, who engineered many classic recordings, first at RJR, and later at Coxsone’s new Studio One facility. With Justin Yapp supplying food, drink and ganja, and also paying everyone double, a convivial and exuberant atmosphere certainly comes through in the recordings, many of which were captured by Sticky Parke: ‘I worked for RJR from 1958 to 1966. At RJR we had a big concert studio, and people would hire the hall, like producers like Chin Randy’s, and I did a nice job for Chin Randy’s with “Rico’s Special”, I recorded that at RJR. I’d say I got involved with Dodd in 1959 or 1960. I think I might have been the first engineer to do any recordings there. Hedley Jones, he built the studio. I worked at Studio One from when it was built, and I recorded the Skatalites and Bob Marley, all the great names I recorded there. I was still at RJR but I used to go down there after work
or when I have spare time to fit in Coxsone’s studio. I worked there until ‘66.’ Sticky remembered the technical side of recording the Skatalites at Studio One: ‘We had, let me see, we had piano, drums, bass, one for the horns and two tenors (saxes), we had about five or six mics. For the drums we used a big RCA44 BX (microphone) or something like that, and we used Neumann mics also. We’re going back 50 odd years and you’re picking my brain! When we started at Coxsone, he only had an Ampex 350 and another Ampex, but they were all single (mono) track. Coxsone started with the one track machine, so if somebody in the band made an error we had to record it all over again, it was not like today where
you could dub that back in. What we used to do was Coxsone also had a sound system, about 3 sound system in Jamaica at the time, so what we’d do is we’d record and we’d have several reels of many, many records, and on Saturday afternoon we’d transfer the tapes onto acetate disc, what we called soft wax (or dubplate), and then he would send them out to different sound systems, and sell some of them.’
Sticky remembered supplying the Skatalites with American jazz albums for
inspiration: ‘Most of the tunes the Skatalites played, it’s not their original. Most of it came from (for instance) Herbie Hancock music which, working at the radio station, I would borrow the record, tape it and take the tape down there (to Studio One). There’s a chap, but now he’s dead, God bless him, but one of the finest musicians we ever produced named Jackie Mittoo, and I would marvel, cos while I would play the tape from the control room down to him, he would be writing out the music and playing along. And then when the Skatalites get together they would make their
own arrangement of it. Jackie Mittoo was a dear friend of mine, but then all of those musicians was my friends, you know.’ Sticky described the relaxed arrangements for payment: ‘Well I never charged Coxsone a dime, but I was well taken care of. Like we had no set fee, like 5 pound a session or something, but he was quite generous to me.
And I never charge him but he was quite generous to me, he provided all the alcohol for my wedding and also the champagne, and I never had to ask him, like I liked to play the horses and he’d always stand me a couple of pounds so I never could complain.’

This earliest incarnation of the Studio One setup would have been used on mostof the tracks on this ‘Ska Shots’ compilation, but it was significantly rebuilt in 1965, probably just after the Skatalites split up. Hedley’s mixing board was replaced, along with the one track Ampex recorders, swapped for two track machines which allowed the overdubbing of extra tracks, so a vocal could be recorded after the backing track. Unlike Sticky, Hedley Jones was not entirely happy with his payments from Coxsone:
‘I don’t know what happened to that console, because he changed it for a
commercial console about two years after, when he had made enough money that he could buy commercial stuff – he didn’t even finish paying me for the original console. He still owes me some money and so I hope that when we meet in hell, he’ll pay me then!’

I lost contact with Keith “Sticky” Parke, who was living in New York in the early 2000s, but Hedley Jones stayed in touch. He died aged 99, but, until he was overtaken with blindness, he would still email me regularly with questions about the latest recording software, and advice for what he called “good daddying”, on how I should bring up my children as a new father. Reading the words of both of them today brings back a key moment in Jamaican cultural history, when the birth of the Studio One recording studio coincided with the formation of the mighty Skatalites.
Diggory Kenrick 

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best. We realise that there's been a lot of electronic music released recently saddled with these buzzwords. Choirs, unusual tunings, deconstructions of early music - elements almost mandatory for artists eyeing the lucrative Euro festival circuit. But to our mind that's what makes von Oswald's latest all the more astonishing. He's stepped in with an album that's so definitive, it reminds us just how foundational and game-changing his early material was, and how less can so often amount to more. Opening track 'Silencio' is a dazzling proof of concept that winds lilting, oddly-tuned synth tones around the barest percussion. There are no vocals on this one, instead the traces of early Detroit techno hang heavy around its frayed edges. Working like a scientist with the stereo field, von Oswald introduces familiar elements into the mix in unexpected places. Wormy,cascading synth tones are met by driving whirrs, and the kickdrum sounds so submerged that it's almost an illusion. When he does introduce noisier sounds, they color the track like drybrushed highlights, and he saves the best until the final moments, energising the mood with monumental Millsian stabs that reference the past without retreading churned mud. It sets us up for the album's biggest tonal shift, when Oswald presents the choir on 'Luminoso'. He's worked extensively with ensembles in the last few years, his own - the constantly-shifting Moritz von Oswald Trio - the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Kyrgyz ensemble Ordo Sakhna, and the experience has furnished him with the ability to treat the choir with just the right amount of reverence and distance. Here, the Berlin singers' voices swirl into ghosted tones, nestling beneath a layer of mixing desk noise that feels like von Oswald's little wink to the camera, an acknowledgement of past glories. Moritz also provides a more abstracted rework of the track (along with three other versions of the choral compositions) that deepens the narrative. Losing the vocals completely, this take references the original's framework while adding impalpable, off-grid beats and cottony, rumbling textures that pirouette between the speakers. The synths and voices meet somewhere in the middle on 'Infinito', and von Oswald's remix shuttles them further into outer space, fogging them into spectral impressions and building a lithe rhythm over the top that hiccups and stutters with poise and momentum. 'Colpo' is even more impressive, offsetting the suggestive chorals with mechanical oscillations and thunderous sub bass tones. Like the earliest Detroit experiments, it's material that positions electronic music as a way to speculate about the past's relationship with the future. Von Oswald has formulated a minimalist masterpiece that interrogates not just technology, but the conceptual technologies of cultural invention. It's a highly rewarding, engrossing listen, certain to become a classic for the most adventurous after-hours listeners.

Searchlight Moonbeam is the new narrative compilation from Time Is Away (Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney) whose eponymous monthly NTS Radio shows, tinctured fusions of fugitive sounds and reverie-inducing archival speech, have won them an ardent following. It follows from the London-based duo’s Ballads, a remarkable driftwerk released on A Colourful Storm in 2022. 
 Searchlight Moonbeam is an autumnal dreamscape, intimate and vespertine, pensive and irresolute. An imagined community where differences drop off and resonances emerge – between Maher Shalal Hash Baz affiliates Kasumi Trio, Taiwanese score composer Chen Ming Chang whose ‘Rainwater’ (written for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 film Dust In The Wind) is exquisitely heartbroken, and the plangent improvisations of self-taught French pianist Delphine Dora. 
 Revelations are frequent: the bedsit isolationism of Bo Harwood and John Cassavetes’ ‘No One Around to Hear It’ (from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie); the narked minimalism of Klang (an early 2000s band formed by ex-Elastica guitarist and featuring prize-winning experimental novelist Isabel Waidner on bass); the etude-grooves and echoic wobble of below-the-radar French avant-gardists Omertà ; the beautiful, plaintively dubby ‘Is It You?’ by Slapp Happy; a psych-tinged reimagining of PiL’s ‘Poptones’ by Simon Fisher Turner (one half of Deux Filles, and here, recording for él as The King of Luxembourg) that's as perverse as the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. 
 Searchlight Moonbeam is the musical analog of an Italo Calvino novel or a medieval fable. Associative, intuitive, borderless. Emotional and mysterious. Endowed with the tactility of Braille. A private language that is both unknowable and understood. It is a record of the seasons, for the seasons. 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Time Is Away’s first broadcast. Featuring an evocative essay by writer Jeremy Atherton Lin and disarming cover art by Penny Davenport, Searchlight Moonbeam showcases Rollo and Tierney’s still-unrivalled talent for gloaming melodies, disques du crépuscule and ensorcelled storytelling.

Legendary Jamaican MC Prince Far I's compilation reissued as a 2LP set for Record Store Day!
The compilation "Cry Tuff Chants On U", a collection of tracks by the late legendary Jamaican MC Prince Far I with his On-U Sound house bands Creation Rebel and Singers And Players in the early 1980s, is being reissued on Record Store Day! The limited RSD edition 2LP set includes the cassette released in 2021, as well as another version and two deep cuts that are a must have for true dub/reggae heads!
Prince Far I was a legend of roots reggae both as a producer and in his highly individualistic DJ style while holding the microphone. The album, "Psalms For I," featured his rugged voice singing bible verses over heavy rhythms. Tragically, Prince Far I was killed by gunfire in Jamaica in 1983, but his influence lives on to this day in the recordings of Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound label.

180g weight vinyl. Hidefumi Toki's debut album features a hot soprano solo in "Lullaby for the Girl" and a melancholy alto solo in "Darkness," and he shows his presence in both performance and composition.

180g Heavy weight vinyl.Enjoy the soulful melodies of Isao Suzuki, Art Blakey's esteemed bassist, as he, along with his fellow musicians Kunihiko Kanno and George Otsuka, brings his distinctive musical vision to life on this captivating album.

180g Heavy weight vinyl. The third TBM release from Mari Nakamoto, a melancholy vocalist who sings softly with a sweet husky voice backed by the supreme duo of Isao Suzuki (b) and Katsumi Watanabe (g). (From series supervisor Koki Hanawa)

LP (red vinyl) & 7" (one-sided blue vinyl). Limited vinyl edition of 300 copies.

Merzbow's impact transcends the confines of traditional music, embodying an ethos of constant innovation and fearless exploration into uncharted realms of sound. Navigating through the annals of Merzbow's extensive career reveals an artist who, for over 40 years, has remained dedicated to reshaping our understanding of music and pushing the boundaries of sonic expression. We are thrilled to unveil the highly anticipated vinyl reissue of Merzbow's groundbreaking album Oersted. This album, originally released on CD in 1996, marked a significant milestone in the experimental noise music scene, showcasing the unparalleled sonic explorations of the legendary Masami Akita, known as Merzbow. Oersted is a sonic journey through realms of noise, texture, and intensity that have solidified Merzbow's status as a pioneer in the realm of noise music. The album features a collection of meticulously crafted tracks that push the boundaries of sound manipulation and composition, creating an immersive experience for listeners daring enough to delve into its sonic landscapes. The vinyl reissue, masterfully remastered for the first time by the esteemed James Plotkin, renowned for his unparalleled expertise, breathes fresh life and depth into the album's already rich and intricate sonic landscape, unveiling new detail within its reverberant dense tapestry and complex noise palette. Each track on Oersted is a aural sculpture, with layers of distorted frequencies, pulsating rhythms, and unexpected sonic artifacts that challenge conventional notions of music and sound. Features four untitled tracks originally on CD, each occupying an entire side of the vinyl, except for the track on side D, which shares the side with two bonus tracks. These tracks epitomize a profound and multifaceted sonic odyssey, harnessing various tapes and the raw power of analog instruments and tools such as EMS Synthia, metallic electronics, various filters, and processed audio mixer. Side A plunges the listener into a kaleidoscopic amalgamation of unrefined sound elements, steadily weaving together strata of intensity and textural richness that evolve dynamically over its duration. Side B embarks on a sonic expedition delving deep into mesmerizing rhythms and intricately woven soundscapes, crafting an immersive experience that challenges traditional notions of musical structure and form. Side C boldly pushes the frontiers of sound manipulation, employing dynamic tonal shifts and varying intensities to construct a visceral and immersive sonic landscape. Side D, in its initial segment, extends the sonic narrative into uncharted realms of noise and texture, maintaining a cohesive yet unpredictable sonic progression. The supplementary tracks in the latter part of Side D provide additional depth to Merzbow's sonic experimentation, showcasing distinctive sonic palettes and layers that harmonize with the album's overarching themes and exploratory essence. The original artwork for the 1996 CD digipack, curated by Masami Akita, stands out for its minimalism and visual impact. The pink outer cover, with only the artist's name and album title in silver-gray at the center, grabs attention with its bold simplicity, foreshadowing the sonic experience of the album. Inside, the green provides a pleasing contrast, with credits in silver-gray maintaining stylistic coherence. The vinyl reissue faithfully replicates the graphics with a gatefold cover, enhancing the visual impact of the original artwork. The blending of pink and green colors creates a striking visual effect, highlighting the beauty of simplicity in Akita's graphic design. Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing world of Merzbow's Oersted and experience the raw power and beauty of noise in its purest form.

牧歌的ニューエイジ・フォーク大傑作『Pentimento and others』を残した人物であり、サンフランシスコ拠点のフォークロック・バンド、Citayのメンバーとしても知られるニューヨークを拠点とするギタリスト/作曲家のEzra Feinbergによる最新アルバム『Soft Power』が〈Tonal Union〉からアナログ・リリース。当店お馴染みの名ハーピストMary Lattimoreに、シューゲイズ・ドローン/アンビエント名手Jefre Cantu-Ledesma、マルチ奏者のRobbie Leeといった面々と共に精巧に作り上げた親密でゆとりのある珠玉のアンビエント・フォーク作品！限定300部。

'Imerro' is a collection of song odes to both heat and desire, closely felt. Its title literally presented itself to Diab from a random page contained in a poem by Ezra Pound found in the book ‘The Imagist Poem’. Searching for its meaning, Diab discovered that Imerro is “a Greek word for ‘desire for, I desire you’, yet nothing could substantiate its truth. “It made sense, almost like it had chosen me. An obscure word for Desire, one that might not even exist, or is so ancient that nobody really remembers it meaning anything. It's just a sound, like an album.” Imerro finds Caton at his most expressive and free-spirited. Inviting the music to find him, almost by osmosis, foregoing any preconceptions of playing any instrument he is unfamiliar with or regrets not learning during adolescence. This is music for wide screens: the result is an undeniably evocative, moving and mysterious voyage. Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer’s unprecedented second “heat dome”, which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of “simple ecstatic improvisation.” Diab explains: “I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music ‘shows its face’ as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play.” ‘Ourselves At Least’, the rhythmic album opener gracefully leaps and bounds with a human-like metronome at its core, capturing a rush of elatedness felt by Diab over the course of its late night creation. ‘Lunar Barge’ bursts into life with tone-bending bow strikes that glide across Diab’s guitar towards a climatic peak before the track drops into an electronic/acoustic trance. Inspired in part by the rhythmical works of Huun-Huur-Tu and the animated cello play remindful of Arthur Russell. “Lunar Barge is a track for a dry, hot night in the forest (which it quite literally was.). I roamed around the floors of the studio picking up any instrument standing out in the moment, and tried to see if it had anything to say.” ‘The Excuse of Fiction’ sees Diab return to free-flowing guitar play, the chosen instrument of his youth. He loops layers to form an ethereal backbone before plucking further melodies from the air on top. The result is a cinematic guitar-laden expanse brimming with optimism and nostalgia. The title references a quote by Zizek: “We need the excuse of a fiction to stage what we really are.” Themes of remembrance, yearning and desire pervade the album's 9-tracks with a palpable presence as we reach ‘Quatsino Sound’, named after an inlet on Northern Vancouver Island where Diab grew up. It features hoopoe birdcalls which were sampled from a found cassette tape of African sounds before being randomized until it became rhythmic, then embellished with synth lines, bass drops, and bowed layovers. The album centres around the nocturnal ‘Crypsis’ with Diab sleepily playing notes on a switched-off Wurlitzer before dampened piano chords, bow scrapes, and noisy glitches reverberate. ‘Erratum’ erupts with untamed force from a war cry of screaming saxophone layers reminiscent of Colin Stetson. Its visceral thirst and energy seem to be a response to the heat of the night and Diab’s urge to play the instrument he loved but had yet learnt. ‘Tiny Umbrellas’, an improvised pass of banjo, bowed guitar and ethereal modular synths breathes a contemplative pause before ‘Surge Savard’ chimes in. This whirlwind closer started life as a longform jam under the influence of psychedelics; its modular synth, air organ, guitar and sax lines were initially improvised with final touches made at Watch Yer Head studio.

43°C, the debut LP by French electronic producer Basile3, is the result of a decade of cultivating a musical identity that focuses on hybridization, sonic recycling, and playfulness. The enigmatic title "43°C" signifies a haze of bliss (4+3=7, the producer's lucky number) backdropped by the ecological state of a world that’s grown slightly but surely warmer. In this anticipation fiction, Basile3 offers a soundtrack that is an exploration of club music, electronica infused with r&b and ambient synths. The French producer warmly invites listeners to his state of mind, blooming with genre-bending floating soundscapes. Featuring Telma Cappelo, Daisy Ray, Loydfears, Lucy Sissi Miller and Minor Science.

Late 2016’s Highway Songs brought Papa M back to us, after many years of silence and several harrowing dances with death for his Id-ego/host body, David Pajo. Now, two years on down the road, we’re all here again to witness A Broke Moon Rises. The five songs of A Broke Moon Rises find David focusing his technique in unknown directions, to find out what he can do with them. When that happens, he finds himself on the very spot where Papa M music becomes alive! We call this, “the sweet spot.” As the quietly funereal march of the opening track resonates with a spare drum beat, we are completely transfixed into the open spaces around the guitars: damn, son — it’s the M-scape! David’s been engineering and mixing his records for years, so the sensation of his sound-thoughts doesn’t entirely surprise us, even in their latest, acoustic anointment. Layers of guitars curl and unfurl, falling away from the center with feathery softness. Slide figures cut through the progressions with a rusty glide. Arpeggiations flicker with light, leading into a change that’ll break on yer ear like a small revelation. Even the sound of Papa M playing in the room, leaning forward or untouching the strings, provides textural byplay in created space. A Broke Moon Rises is meditative in the most active sense, with the unquiet mind leaping from place to place in a static, spartan theater. All of which action makes hypnotic music, perfect for listening.

Cult Japanese Reggae/ Cosmic Dub LP. Featuring an all star line up including: Sly & Robbie, Augustus Pablo, Minako Yoshida + core members of Soul Syndicate and The Wailers. Direct reissue of this 1980 original.

Following its release in the winter of 2018, "Landmarks", a collaboration between veteran ambient artists Celer and Forest Management, initially drew quiet accolades and a steadfast listenership that has since swelled to unimagined proportions (~20 Mil. streams), resonating with listeners perhaps now more than ever and cementing its status as an experimental classic. Inspired by Paul Theroux's novel "The Mosquito Coast" and Peter Weir's 1986 film adaptation of that book, "Landmarks" sets out 14 tracks in a "stunning hour of music" (The Quietus) that creates a "general sense of foreboding, critique of romantic retreat into individualism and colonialism" (A Closer Listen). The album is now offered on vinyl for the first time (originally out on cassette tape), newly remastered by Stephan Mathieu to enhance the depth and richness of this oneiric soundscape. Both Americans, Celer (Will Long) resides in Tokyo, Japan and Forest Management (John Daniel) in Chicago, USA. "Landmarks" was born of their months-long collaboration, trading music back and forth and reshaping each other's work using a series of patches, tape looping, and electronic manipulation. As a throughline in each piece we hear their distinct voices and cultural contexts blend to unique, often otherworldly effect, conjuring a dreamlike tension that refuses easy resolution. We are hooked by a mood that captured listeners back in 2018 and continues to hold us today in the context of current events, related disquietudes, and a nostalgic longing for solutions that may be more imaginary than real.

Nearly twenty-five years after disbanding, Gastr del Sol have unpacked their archive, stringing together an alternative view to their genre-melting 1993-1998 run. This assembly of previously uncollected studio recordings and beautifully captured unreleased live performances forms a spacious ode to the flux that was their métier; a further set of reinventions that continue to alter the manner in which we hear music, and literally everything else!