New Wave / Post-Punk
204 products
Crass, conceited, vulgar and unpleasant. Also quite unique. DINTE drops a cassette reissue of Iggy and The Stooges chaotic Metallic KO LP, recorded live at Detroit's Michigan Palace between 1973 & 1974 - documenting the band's death throes during what would be their last performances for 30+ years. Remastered by Sterling Roswell of Spacemen 3 and officially licensed from Skydog Records/Jungle Records.
"Metallic K.O. is the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings"
— Lester Bangs
"Something we should get straight from the start: measured by any normal criteria 'Metallic KO' is one hell of a long way from being a good rock'n'roll record, let alone a great one"
— Giovanni Dadomo
This compilation charts the unlikely link between Cologne’s DIY scene and the Ukrainian underground at the turn of the 1990s. Visual artist and producer Guido Erfen and sound engineer Michael Springer were central figures in SHM1, a Cologne collective who ran concerts and a studio space inside the vast, disused Rhenania grain silo. From this base, they built an independent network for recording and distributing music beyond the mainstream. In 1990, Erfen received a cassette from Ukraine featuring bands from Kharkiv and Kyiv, alongside an essay by Sergey Myasoyedow, co-founder of Kharkiv’s Novaya Scena rock club. The music—shaped by punk, avant-garde experiment, folk motifs and abrasive grooves—opened a window onto a scene largely unheard in the West. Further tapes followed, and Erfen travelled to Ukraine, eventually persuading Alfred Hilsberg to release the Novaya Scena compilation on What’s So Funny About, documenting 14 bands recorded between 1986 and 1992. In the wake of that release, musicians including Svitlana Nianio and Yewgeny “Yenia” Taran travelled to Cologne. From 1994 onwards, informal sessions at Springer’s Phantom Studio and the SHM space at Rhenania forged a new chapter in this exchange. Those recordings form the basis of this collection, capturing four distinct incarnations of the Ukraine–Cologne connection.
Bad Brains is the self-titled debut studio album recorded by American hardcore punk/reggae band Bad Brains. Recorded in 1981 and released on (then) cassette-only label ROIR on February 5, 1982, many fans refer to it as "The Yellow Tape" because of it's yellow packaging. Though Bad Brains had recorded the 16 song Black Dots album in 1979 and the 5-song Omega Sessions EP in 1980, the ROIR cassette was the band's first release of anything longer than a single. The release includes the original liner notes by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. This reissue marks the second release in the remaster campaign on the band's own Bad Brains Records imprint with Org Music. In coordination with the band, Org Music has overseen the restoration and remastering of the iconic Bad Brains' recordings. The audio was mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic Mastering.
Hüsker Dü. Live. 1985. Need we say more? Witness the transcendent Minneapolis punk trio tearing into the most incendiary year of its existence, captured live on stage at First Avenue in perhaps the highest fidelity recordings of the band’s lauded SST era.
This 4xLP edition includes Beau Sorenson’s restoration of an entire January 30 1985 set, 20 extra live tracks from the year’s touring schedule, and a deluxe 36-page book detailing twelve months of history-making Hüsker Dü. What is the sound of a legend being written?
The fantastic disco/world music project from Bremen, Germany that was never meant to be. Formed by Bremen DJ Ralf Behrendt in 1982, Saâda Bonaire was a unique concept band centered around two sultry female vocalists (Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld) as well as dozens of local musicians culled from the local immigration center. Originally signed to EMI in 1982, their first and only single, “You Could Be More As You Are” was produced by legendary Matumbi, Slits and Pop Group producer Dennis Bovell in Kraftwerk’s studio in Cologne. Its fusion of husky female vocals, Eastern instruments, dub and African music aesthetics, drum computers and synthesizers remains unique to this day.
Saâda Bonaire compiles two songs from the original EMI single along with eleven previously unreleased songs recorded between 1982 and 1985. Also included are never before published photos, in depth interviews with band members, and a full gate fold cover for dedicated vinyl buyers. These lost recordings from the early eighties still sound fresh on today’s dance floor.
The first album by Koshimiharu, a musician with a diverse background including classical, chanson, jazz, and ballet, on the Alpha/YEN label (original: 1983). The analog reissue LP, which was released on “RECORD STORE DAY” in 2021 and sold out immediately, is now available to the general public by popular demand from fans in Japan and abroad. All but one of the songs were written by Haru Koshimi. The song “L'amour Toujours” was co-written with Belgian techno-pop group Telex, who also participated in the performance, and it caught the attention of IDIOT Record, which released it simultaneously in the Netherlands. The basic specifications for this release are the same as the 2021 reissue, with the original version pre-mastered by Haruomi Hosono and cut by master engineer Toru Kotetsu, but it will be pressed on colored vinyl (transparent pink). The album artwork differs from the original version, using the cover photo from the 1992 CD release. Interview with Koshimiharu 2021 published (with English translation).
Taco weaponise the very idea of “tako” - octopus, kite, bunion, drunk, bald head - into a mutating post‑punk organism, a rotating guerrilla cell whose songs behave like incidents rather than compositions. “Tako” is one of those Japanese words that refuses to sit still. It can mean octopus, kite, bunion; it’s also slang for bald men, shaved heads, red‑faced drunks staggering home. The term slips between bodies, objects and insults, picking up grime and humour as it goes. In the early 1980s it became something else again: the name of a loose music and performance collective whose shows felt less like concerts than controlled disturbances. Taco emerged at the start of the decade as part of Japan’s post‑punk alternative wave, a shifting network of players orbiting Harumi Yamazaki, ex‑member of Gaseneta and the group’s volatile core. Around her gathered friends, acquaintances and fellow travellers from the Tokyo underground, forming a band that refused fixed membership, fixed genre, fixed anything. From the outset, Taco behaved more like a guerrilla unit than a conventional group. Personnel connected, collected, interrupted, scattered; line‑ups changed from gig to gig, and sometimes from piece to piece. Sound and image were treated as transient weapons to be deployed and discarded. Performances could happen with or without Harumi - reinforcing the sense that Taco was as much an anonymous mercenary outfit as it was a band, a name that could mask any number of combinations and intentions. What remained constant was the drive to send out music and noise that felt like it existed only for that night, that room, that confrontation, and then evaporated. In 1983 Taco released its first album, an anomalous, collaborative document that detonated across Japan’s underground as something both of and against its moment. The record functioned as a kind of local all‑stars compilation: key figures from the scene dropping in to contribute, while Harumi supplied the lyrics that stitched the whole together. Each track sounded like the reverberation of a particular cluster of people and circumstances - a conglomeration of voices, instruments, mistakes and impulses. Yet running through all of them were Harumi’s words, delivered with a force that turned scattered pieces into a single, bristling wave. The album didn’t simply collect songs; it spawned an “incident,” a disturbance that spread by word of mouth, tape dub and rumour. Then, as suddenly, it was pulled back: a separate scandal over some of the lyrics led to the records being recalled, ensuring that only a small number of copies ever made it into private hands. A second release followed in 1984: a 12" EP built around a live recording from the end of 1982. If the debut was a collage of sessions and personalities, this document caught Taco as a unit on stage, and what it revealed was an unexpectedly coherent musical engine beneath the chaos. For a band of indeterminate membership that specialised in one‑off performances, the playing here feels locked in without being smoothed out - grooves, fractures and eruptions held in tense balance. The record captures the power of Taco’s legendary live shows, but it’s Harumi Yamazaki’s presence that sears itself into memory: inflammatory, sensational, masochistic. Her muttered phrases and sudden screams ride over, and often wilfully against, the beat, treating rhythm as something to be taunted rather than obeyed. The effect is of a voice confronting the audience like a groundswell, an undertow that doesn’t care whether or not you keep your footing. One of Taco’s members once described the project as “an alternative counter organization”: a setup in which indeterminate participants fan each other’s heightened desires for personal revenge and retribution. In their words, Taco is “an ecosystem of tangible and intangible mouldy slime which accumulates in order for emotions to be acted out, both indoors in the studio, or outdoors on stage. That’s why the avenger can often end up being the victim.” It’s a metaphor that fits the music: thick, unstable, mutating, made from residues and leftovers as much as from polished ideas. Emotions congeal, are performed, and then rebound on those who unleashed them. The “alternative counter organization” is not a party or a platform; it’s a fragile, dangerous zone where sound becomes a way to test how far you can go before your own force turns back on you. The Alternative Counter Organization brings this history into focus not by tidying it up, but by acknowledging Taco’s refusal to be pinned down. It honours a group whose performances really were “like nothing before or since,” born from a word that already meant too many things and happy to add a few more.
From the depths of the most independent and revolutionary underground, a handful of tracks from the repertoires (often limited even to a single flexi disc) of some of the heroes who rode the wave, extracting from it—more for themselves and expressive necessity than for us—its most mystical and expressionist essence. New and No Wave, minimal and minimalist electronics, Avant Wave from the land where the sun still rises for now.
From the depths of the most independent and revolutionary underground, a handful of tracks from the repertoires (often limited even to a single flexi disc) of some of the heroes who rode the wave, extracting from it—more for themselves and expressive necessity than for us—its most mystical and expressionist essence. New and No Wave, minimal and minimalist electronics, Avant Wave from the land where the sun still rises for now.
Through the dense blend of Japanese New-Wave, between moldy kimonos and punctured paper screens, along the rails of a sonic bullet train, this mini-LP reaches us, overflowing with purebred Punk-Funk, splinters of Soul and shredded Jazz. A gold nugget in a sea of sadness. Scattered energy trapped in a handful of vinyl grooves.
Back in print ! What exactly happened in the Italian underground / post punk scene 30 years ago, is not entirely clear. Therefore, this collection of 13 incredible tunes helps track down the feeling and focuses on the blurry images of a period that was mixing influences from the UK/USA scenes with a more national' approach to new music developments. The damage began in 1977 when a series of urban / suburban musical agitators, whether skilled or complete amateurs, decided to embrace instruments as weapons for a war against sonic stereotypes. Here's the result: a multiform sonic attack that marks the history of a movement that may have remained local in most cases but whose echo reflected the amazing creativity of a generation.
2025 repress forthcoming in Feb. One of the brightest and most famous projects of the entire punk/new wave scene, No New York was released in 1978 on Island's sub-label Antilles. Featuring some of the most incredible rule breaking bands of the underground N.Y.C. art and music scene, the project - produced by Brian Eno - is a genuine snapshot of the massively creative N.Y.C. scene. Artists: Contortions, Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, Mars, D.N.A..
If punk culture and aesthetics ever had a poet, it would undoubtedly be Kō Machida. Best known as the visionary frontman of the pioneering punk band INU and later acclaimed as a novelist, essayist, and professor, Machida has built a career at the intersection of raw musical energy and razor-sharp literary craftsmanship. Eleven years after the groundbreaking 1981 masterpiece INU – Meshi Kuuna!, Machida returned with a new creative chapter: the album *Harafuri*. This record marked a significant evolution, fusing his uncompromising lyrical power with the modernized sonic force of Kitazawagumi, a band whose sound became the perfect canvas for Machida’s sharp wit and emotional depth. Now, Harafuri sees its first-ever official reissue, presented with utmost care and attention to detail. Every element has been restored to honor both its cultural resonance and artistic precision. Most notably, this edition includes meticulously retranslated English lyrics—bringing Machida’s singular voice to an international audience without losing its vivid intensity and layered meaning. At once biting, poetic, and ferociously alive, Harafuri is more than an album: it is a literary and musical landmark that speaks across time and geography. With this reissue, listeners everywhere are invited to rediscover Kō Machida not only as a pioneering punk icon but as one of Japan’s most vital contemporary voices.
Originally released in 1981, this is MIZUTAMA SHŌBŌDAN’s legendary debut album. A wild theatrical mix of avant-post-punk material worked out by one of the most uncompromising women’s brigades ever. An outstanding document from “another” Japan! MIZUTAMA SHŌBŌDAN were a force of nature – powerful and original and unapologetic. I saw them live before I heard the first record and was very impressed. I liked the way the group interacted, it was a very good atmosphere between everybody. I really liked the contrasting sounds and styles of Kamura and Tenko, two very different kinds of voices that really worked well together.
‘Fred Frith’
CONTAINS PRINTED INNER SLEEVE AND 4-PAGE FOLD-OUT INSERT
Viva is the second album by the German band La Düsseldorf, realized in 1978 and it is considered its most successful release. Indeed, the album contains both the singles "Rheinita", which was their most successful single, and "Cha Cha 2000"; an expansive and utopian piece that mixes repetition, piano passages, chants, and electronic textures into a kind of dreamlike manifesto for a more ideal society. Probably the band’s most famous song. The album represents a combination of modern electronic textures, pop clarity, and krautrock experimentation which has secured Viva a lasting place in the history of German experimental rock. This vinyl reissue is the first after fifteen years.