LP version. Clear vinyl. What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? is the eighth studio album by British post-punk legends Echo & The Bunnymen, released on April 16, 1999. The album saw the band continue a trajectory set with 1997's Evergreen, embracing more introspective themes and melodic approach to its arrangements. Featuring an inspired selection of collaborators including strings from the London Metropolitan Orchestra and two songs featuring the American rap rock band Fun Loving Criminals, What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? featured two singles, the title track, and the atmospheric fan favorite "Rust," which would mark the band's final Top 40 UK single. Celebrating 25 years of What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?, the album is issued on vinyl for the very first time, alongside expansive 34-track 2CD which feature B-sides, alternative versions and previously unreleased live versions of both tracks from the album and classic Bunnymen tracks.

Anton Newcombe and Dot Allison present an album together under the moniker All Seeing Dolls. Anton Newcombe is the founder, the sole constant and the creative mastermind at the center of one of music's most fascinating bands; Brian Jonestown Massacre. He's a frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father and force of nature. There have been 21 BJM albums over the last 30 years, each embarking on their own mind-expanding adventure and exploring the outer realms of rock'n'roll; psychedelic rock, country-blues, snarling rock'n'roll, blissed-out noise-pop and more. Newcombe has established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime talent, a revolutionary force in modern music and an underground hero. Dot Allison released her debut solo album Afterglow in 1999. Over the years she has strived to keep the listener on a journey -- and herself too. She revolts against what she has done before, to evolve and not just occupy the same space. That journey has taken her from Afterglow's broad church to the sultry synth-pop of We Are Science (2002), the lush, baroque Exaltation Of Larks (2007) and the eclectic, rootsy drama of Room 7½ (2009). After a hiatus to raise her family she returned with the graceful acoustic folk record Heart-Shaped Scars (2021) and the haunting, barely there beauty of Consciousology (2023). The range of guest stars on Allison's records is equally broad: where else would you find a cast list that includes Kevin Shields, Hal David, Paul Weller, Pete Doherty, and Darren Emerson.

Formed in Bristol, four-piece Lice have become one of UK experimental rock's most inventive and ambitious outliers. Their second album Third Time At The Beach is a three-part epic exploring the struggle to better understand the world. Darting between minimalism, rock, techno and more, it sends listeners hurtling through time and space: featuring a cast of astronauts, cavemen and dinosaurs. This follows Lice's internationally acclaimed debut album WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear (2021). Third Time At The Beach's concept is expressed through three movements. The first ("Unscrewed," "White Tubes," "Red Fibres") presents the child being introduced to the world, hammered into shape through prevailing culture, and realizing they have reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world. The second ("To The Basket," "Wrapped In A Sheet," "Scenes From The Desert," "Mown In Circles") is a disorientating, alien sequence: reevaluating fundamental concepts including money, time, nationhood and language. In the third ("Fatigued, Confused," "Third Time At The Beach," "The Dance"), the individual embraces these new ideas -- granting them a changed understanding of the world, and more agency in the path they take through it. Everything is always changing in Third Time At The Beach. The album shifts from lush piano balladry to crushing industrial, and from swampy avant-garde compositions to triumphant rock freakouts. Employing vocal manipulation and field recordings, as well as cutting together studio recordings and home demos, the band produces a spatially elastic, collage-like effect. The album, like the ideas being reached within it, presents a work-in-progress. Lyrically, the record employs a scattershot style to present the experience of learning (or "unlearning"). The listener visits ancient civilizations, the Industrial Revolution, outer space and the land of the dinosaurs: encountering mediaeval farmers, silver miners, cavemen, Napoleon and Satan. Speaking on the record, the band say: "This album's about trying to understand the world and everything in it: history, science and the way we explain it all to each other. It's a celebration of feeling confused or intimidated by the processes that shape our lives."

Jump Ship, Sit Lean, Be Still, Stand Tall is a collaborative LP from BZDB, comprised of Duncan Bellamy and Belinda Zhawi (MA.MOYO). The record is a collection of sonic-poetry setting Zhawi's illuminating, elliptical words in dialogue with diffuse, explorative music and sound by Bellamy. Together they render these disparate forms into something distinct, melancholic and luminous, fluctuating between expansive contemporary classical arrangements and intimate layered vocal experiments. Belinda Zhawi (b. Zimbabwe) is a literary and sound artist based in London and Marseille, author of Small Inheritances, and experiments with sound/text performance as MA.MOYO. Her work explores African diaspora research and narratives, and how art and education can be used as intersectional tools. Her literary and sound works have been featured on various platforms including The White Review, Vogue, NTS, Boiler Room and BBC Radio. She's held residencies with TriangleAsterides, France; Cove Park, Scotland; Serpentine Galleries; ICA London and was a Brixton House Associate Artist 2022-24. Belinda is the co-founder of literary arts platform, BORN::FREE. Zhawi is working on her first full poetry collection. Duncan Bellamy (b. Cambridge, UK) lives and works in London. Encompassing painting, photography, sound and music, his diverse practice explores the correlation and discrepancy of our present with the distant past. He is a founding member of Mercury Prize nominated Portico Quartet and has contributed sound work to the artist Hannah Collins audio-visual installation I Will Make Up A Song as well as to Hania Rani's latest album Ghosts. Bellamy is working towards a solo exhibition and an album of new music.

LP version. Clear color vinyl Mirror Phase concludes a trilogy of minimal ambient albums in Jonas Munk's own name. These eight compositions, based on guitar and synthesizer loops, marks a return to the warmer sounds Munk is often associated with. Sonic structures that slowly and gradually evolves and changes, like cloud formations in the sky. The title track "Mirror Phase" is Munk's most expansive drone opus so far. It's a carefully arranged piece where sounds that oscillates with the same interval, but at different phases, are continuously added, hence creating shifting patterns throughout the track's nearly 18-minute duration. Elsewhere, in "Transition," multi-layered guitars create the sonic equivalent of waves gently splashing on the shore. "At a Distance" creates a haunting, and hypnotic, soundscape by using slightly out-of-tune analog synthesizers, summoning the transcendent krautrock of Popol Vuh. "Rise," as well as the closing track "Return to Nowhere," recall the glistening sounds of his Manual releases. Mirror Phase might just be Munk's ambient oeuvre reaching its zenith. RIYL: Fripp & Eno, William Basinski, Christopher Willits, Stars of the Lid.

Limited edition pressing of 500 copies worldwide. All pressed on cream colored vinyl, housed in a full color sleeve with leather effect laminate, with hype sticker and black polylined inner bag. Continuing Riot Season's quest to get all of the classic early AMT albums released on vinyl, the label now turns to 2004's Mantra Of Love with the help of Makoto Kawabata's studio wizardry. This latest instalment in the Acid Mothers Temple Vinyl Archives - First Time On Vinyl series has been meticulously put together with the help of Makoto Kawabata with the original CD artwork recreated for these vinyl editions from archive photos stored in the vaults at the Acid Mothers Temple in Osaka, Japan and the original audio remastered by James Plotkin. Here's what Pitchfork had to say upon its original CD only release back in 2004: "Acid Mothers are strong folk. You'd think they'd tire quickly, all tucked away on their island, strewn about on tree roots while baking their lungs and throats to a knotty green tinge. But instead of waltzing through life like hippies, they manage to not only tour and put out records every year, but also to fill those albums with 30-minute jams and assorted freakouts. And while evil jam bands would fill that space with guitar work taken from the Classic Rock Manual of Clichés, Makoto Kawabata and company assault listeners with frighteningly dense walls of white noise, psychedelic swirl effects and, yes, even guitar solos -- albeit ones that are more Merzbow or Keiji Haino than Gary Rossington. Truly, AMT's endurance and threshold for cosmic lashings are both worthy of admiration." Originally released on CD by Alien8 Recordings in 2004.

Souffle Continu presents Byard Lancaster -- The Complete Palm Recordings 1973-1974, the definitive seven LP deluxe package of Philadelphia born jazz wizard Byard Lancaster, including his four legendary albums released on Jef Gilson's Palm Records in the 1970s: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement, and Funny Funky Rib Crib, along with the first ever standalone edition of "Love Always," a fifteen minute modal jazz beauty plus a 20-page booklet with rare photos and in-depth article about Byard Lancaster's Parisian years by Pierre Crépon. At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell, and Ted Daniel. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It's Not Up To Us. He would come back to France in 1971 and in 1973. This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson's label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement, and Funny Funky Rib Crib. Us, the first of the four records was recorded on November 24th, 1973 with Sylvin Marc on electric bass and the evergreen Steve McCall on drums. A few months after recording Us, Lancaster recorded Mother Africa along with Clint Jackson III, a trumpeter, partner of Khan Jamal or Noah Howard on other recordings. The recording of Exactement required two sessions in the studio: February 1st and May 18th 1974. Two names appear on the cover of Exactement: Lancaster (Byard) and Speller (Keno). Funny Funky Rib Crib is an unforgettable recording (made up of several sessions dating from the middle of 1974) of creative jazz overwhelmed by funk and soul. If Lancaster had already made successful albums in the same genre, this one is an homage to James Brown and Sammy Davis. The magnificent "Love Always" was originally released on the fourth (and last) volume of the Jef Gilson Anthology series released in 1975. Recorded on 8th March 1974, it is a beautiful 15-minute-long modal jazz piece. Four notes from the bass (the relentless Jean-François Catoire, who makes up the rhythm section alongside drummer Jonathan Dickinson and percussionist Keno Speller), and the group is up and running! On piano, Gilson shows the subtle tact of a sideman, leaving the lions' share of the place to the horns. And if further proof was required of the confidence that Byard Lancaster and Jef Gilson inspire, "Love Always" provides it on this one-sided release exclusive to the box set. Carefully restored and remastered by Gilles Laujol. Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur.

Exquisitely compiled by Discrepant head honcho Gonçalo F. Cardoso from three tapes by the tireless mind-body of Spencer Clark through his own Pacific City Sound Visions, This Year In Coconuts Vol. 2 is another revelation into the deeply personal soundworld of this true voyager of both ancient, present and forthcoming times. Coming from a truly singular artist, capable of conveying multiple visions into a labyrinthine-esque mythology all of his own, these seven tracks feel as much part of their original setting as connected pieces from this never ending and puzzling netherworld. Dedicated to the Temple of Isis in Pompei and opening sides A and B, the two tracks from Tempio d'Iside set up a scenario not far from a dream version of the Temple itself, made from crystal clear synth-lines and levitating ambiences, like drifting into ancient memories from days to come. Making up about half of the compilation, the four tracks from Kowloon Spider Temple drip into a feverish mosaic of Clark's by now trademarked cascading rhythms, un-hinged alien-vocal samples, phantasmic textures and sparkling synth harmonies projecting a catchy hypnotic oblivion filled with intrigue. The sole title track from From the Caves and Jungles of Apulia tangentially reports back to some lower-fi recordings of the past, with its murkier sound inducing the feeling of willing confinement within such caves and jungles.

Over the summer of 2024, Adam F released a series of reboots on 181 Recordings -- the label founded with vocalist and partner Kirsty Hawkshaw. He now presents painstakingly re-recorded and rebooted versions of his seminal track "Circles," with a reboot by Adam F, as well as the first official release of the Pola & Bryson & Adam F reboot -- which has been causing a storm on DnB dancefloors worldwide. "'Circles' is one of the first tracks where I could express my influences with no boundaries. The music became known as Drum n' Bass but started off as hardcore Rave and Jungle. One of the greatest things about it for me was that I could express myself through that medium using all my influences; funk, soul, reggae and jazz -- freely and unrestricted." says Adam F on the release. "'Circles' has evolved over time with very solid and rich roots. Behind the hooks, basslines and such there are great textures. Saxophone, trumpet, Keyboards and synthesizers contributing to a free flowing arrangement drawing on my love of jazz musicians indulging my own personal imaginative dreamscape of sound. Ultimately I want it to be crafted into something of a listener's story and journey that people can hang their hats on as well as their hearts."

2024 repress. "Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet, is at last here. Recorded live at ETA (referencing David Foster Wallace), a bar in LA's Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, & alto saxophonist Josh Johnson to convene in extraordinarily depthful & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 by Bryce Gonzales, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy is a darkly glowing séance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker's first double album & first live album, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy belongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast as Lee Morgan's Live at the Lighthouse, Miles Davis' In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco & Black Beauty, & John Coltrane's Live in Seattle. While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group -- just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It's tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras -- dub & Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone -- suffuse the proceedings. Listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, 'we sound like the Byrds' (to certain ears, the Clarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it). A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they've established in Parker's -- The New Breed -- project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker's beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose's animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers -- as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming -- bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet's language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet's grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom. For all its varied sonic personality, Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy scans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker's unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker's music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power. On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together." --Michael Ehlers & Zac Brenner

2024 repress; 180-gram LP version. Originally released in 1975. Remastered by Manuel Göttsching. Recorded July-August 1974, Inventions for Electric Guitar is Manuel Göttsching's first solo album. Written and performed entirely by Göttsching on electric guitar, with a four-track TEAC A3340, Revox A77 for echoes, wah-wah pedal, volume pedal, Schaller Rotosound, and Hawaiian steel bar.

Double LP version. NOTON presents the release of Xerrox Vol. 5, the final installment of Alva Noto's Xerrox series. For anyone who has been following the series since its inception in 2007, the concept of Xerrox no longer requires introduction. Originally, it aimed to create copies of images -- both visual and acoustic -- that are more memorable than the originals. The exploration of the relationship between the original and the copy, along with the invention of the copier, not only inspired the series name but also informed its underlying concept. In 2024, this series comes to an end, marking the culmination of a journey that began with the first recording in 2005/2006. Over nearly two decades, the five albums in this series have accompanied the artist's evolving perspective and conceptual approach. Nicolai describes this evolution as a journey encompassing buildup, exploration, and resolution, drawing parallels to the Odyssey and the stories of Jules Verne, particularly those featuring Captain Nemo. The conclusion of this album holds a sense of finality for the artist. In crafting Volume 5, Nicolai has evolved his compositional process, eschewing samples in favor of original melodies. Drawing from his recent experiences working with film and larger ensembles, Nicolai's approach to composition reflects a growing influence of classical instrumentation. The sonic atmosphere of Xerrox Vol. 5 is one of profound dissolution. "I wasn't initially interested in strong, emotional melodic aspects," Nicolai shares, "but I realized that the fragment plays a central role." This shift leads to an emotionally charged experience, imbued with melancholy and the bittersweet essence of farewell. The passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto, an admirer of the series, has further deepened the album's emotional resonance. "Xerrox Vol. 5 has a lot to do with farewell," the artist explains. "Not only the farewell to the series itself, which I've nurtured for almost two decades, but also there have been many farewells to people who were close to me. I believe these people are recognizable in the music. It's a very emotional, personal album." Listeners can expect a visual dimension to the music, though Nicolai intentionally leaves this open to interpretation. The result is a layered listening experience that invites tenderness and introspection. Album art designed by Carsten Nicolai & Nibo. Mastering by Bo at Calyx.

From Lawrence English: "There's two things I can tell you about Ueno Takashi, without reservation. The first is he knows the best coffee spots in Tokyo. I am the happy recipient of this knowledge. The second thing I can tell you is that he is someone for whom the guitar is a platform of exquisite promise. Ueno Takashi, who many of you would recognize as one half of the legendary unit Tenniscoats, is also responsible for an impressive series of solo guitar recordings which stake out a claim that tests the fringes of extended technique, harmonic relation and post-blues modes. His approach is simple; the guitar must lead and through allowing this he has unlocked a potential in the instrument that is entirely personal and profound. Arms, which collects together a series of recordings made during the past few years, is by far one of his most melodic and structured recordings. Here, using only the simplest of tools and techniques he crafts a suite of pieces that orbit one another with a gentle gravity. His playing is, at times, intensely delicate and at other moments more free and playful, but never careless. Ueno's way with the guitar is one attuned to 'what is needed,' and he seemingly shuns excess. While some might call this approach minimalist, his unique sense of time opens another reading which extends beyond those traditions. Arms is a complete universe within which we are invited to be. Ueno is your host, and guide here. Enjoy."

Patience is a virtue well-rewarded in techno; finding the right groove to build on then holding your nerve long enough to pay off the wait at the optimum moment is a much more skillful endeavor than it would seem for such a minimalistic style. And few display this talent better than Detroit originals Scan 7. Part of the hallowed Underground Resistance family, Scan 7 first broke out in the mid-'90s with a series of jacking machine funk 12"s that showcased their savvy for self-control -- a faculty they have demonstrated in releases year-on-year since. Highlighting this continuous font of vitality, Tresor Records has returned to the source and is proud to announce the reissue of Scan 7's debut LP, Dark Territory. First unleashed on the label in 1996, the album has been remastered from the original DATs by Mike Grinser, augmenting already powerful tracks such as the snake-like, teasing "Unusual Channel" (mixed by the master Blake Baxter), and the harder-edged "VII" resulting in music that will, without doubt, provoke an enhanced response when the pressure is finally released. Repressed on vinyl with updated artwork, these tracks still sound like a blueprint for the future, testament to the prescience and assurance Scan 7's leader, Trackmaster Lou, clearly had when writing "I hope you enjoy my records in the phuture to come" in the sleeve notes nearly 30 years ago.

2024 repress. 180 gram picture disc in clear plastic sleeve. The Velvets legendary debut album with the Warhol's Banana cover art printed on vinyl. Although Warhol, who was listed as producer on the album, allegedly gave the Velvets free reign over their sound, it was on his insistence that Nico performed on this album. However, this does not detract from the fact that when this album was made the Red Sea parted, and the Velvet Underground crossed into the Promised Land.

KahruMusiqa is a musical retrospective by Tunisian singer and composer Badiâa Bouhrizi AKA Neysatu. She is known as the author behind the protest songs that became the anthems of the Tunisian revolution. Songlines Magazine elected Badiâa as the best artist for 2024. "KahruMusiqa" means "electronic music," but is never used as such in Arabic to name the genre. The record is a collection of sonic experimentations that started when Badiâa first got her hands on music production software in the 2000s. The tracks are based around poems in classical Arabic language or Tunisian dialect written by Badiâa herself or female poets she admires, such as Palestinian authors Fadwa Tuqan or Salma Al Jayusi, or the Tunisian poet Noureddine Werghi. Most of the vocal work features improvisations recorded with a computer microphone. A take on the classic Turkish folk song "Muhabbat" is almost a modern harmonic rewriting, using only classical guitar, vocals and delays. KahruMusiqa's themes are in line with Badiâa Bouhrizi's ideological trajectory. She is a woman in the moving sands of Tunesia in the song "Transrimel." She also questions the political contract that led to Balfour and the displacement of millions of Palestinians in 1948, describing a journey between London and Nablus, in "Fil Madinatil harima" ("In The Old City"). This lo-fi bedroom album (the first ever record Badiâa Bouhrizi was willing to release) also displays several songs that have become classics of the Arab underground milieu like "Ila Selma."

Parsley Sounds was the glorious debut album for Mo Wax by Parsley Sound. The album was one of the iconic label's final releases before it closed in 2003 and locating a clean copy has been extremely tricky of late, unless you're flush enough to drop 150 notes on it. Mercifully, the Be With reissue, put together with invaluable assistance from the group, should remedy this situation. It's a lo-fi, bass-heavy, blunted beat treat, warped with heat haze and dreamy soft-psych and has been criminally under-heard for far too long. As with most cult-like records, Parsley Sounds has many influential fans, far and wide. From Four Tet and Caribou to NTS's modern day breakfast hero Flo Dill, its reputation has only grown in stature. At the time, the notoriously hard-to-please Pitchfork garlanded it with a scarcely achievable 8.8 whilst the Numero Group's Rob Sevier described it as a "visionary bit of proto-Salvia Plath (or Steve Lacy)" via a Ghostly International missive. Parsley Sound comprised super-talented duo Preston Mead and Dan Sargassa. They released an early single on Warp Records as Slum, before signing to Mo Wax. Hidden behind a wall of sound -- fuzzy layers of beats, bleeps and symphonic synths -- they were convinced they made mainstream pop music. And, in many respects, Parsley Sounds really is a beautiful pop album. It overflows with memorable, gorgeous melodies and inspired songcraft. A melodic masterpiece, part Crosby, Stills & Nash, part proto-Koushik, it presents a melancholy falsetto, surging bass and blunted lead guitar. As it climaxes, gorgeous strings are ushered in to see listeners out. Under the watchful eye of Parsley Sound themselves, the audio for Parsley Sounds has been carefully mastered by Be With regular Simon Francis, with a few much-needed tweaks here and there, according to the artist's wishes. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the records have been pressed to the highest possible standard at the always stellar Record Industry in Holland. With the audio and artwork now approaching completeness after 20 years, this long overdue re-issue could be considered its definitive vinyl release.

"The inspiration for Album l and Album II began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance, the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film Drive My Car was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spar who featured Ishibashi on their then new album Under Pressure. It was these previous collaborations that triggered the seven friends to take part in an extended session which resulted in these two new recordings, the first of which contains a variety of short pieces while the second boasts one continuous epic, album-length track. These recordings are a development of Von Spar's collaborative ambitions, where Sebastian Blume, Jan Philipp Janzen, Christopher Marquez, and Phillip Tielsch have previously invited special guests to their home studio to help realize a vision -- a methodology exemplified on their last two releases, Street Life and the aforementioned Under Pressure, which featured contributions from Marker Starling, Laetitia Sadier, Vivien Goldman, and R. Stevie Moore. On Album I, the percussion and drums phase in and out in a bold and skillful manner and form the framework for delicate guitars and complex progressions on the keys, all resulting in somnambulistic city-pop pieces like the opener, grooving electro-jazz reminiscent of the early 2000s, and fusion. You can also hear elements of contemporary jazz explorations from New York, LA and London, or reach back further to the Chicago post-rock of the early '90s. Album II with its expansive, experimental nature goes one step further featuring Yamamoto and Janzen's jagged percussion serving as the bedrock for a menacing and otherworldly arrangement of wind instruments to float in until essential sampler work by Joe Talia brings everything to a lively conclusion. These two albums may have the same origin but they are wildly different pieces of work, both exciting in their own way and proof that daring to experiment with freedom and trust in your collaborators can lead to musical highs such as these." --Lars Fleischmann, 2024

LP version. Color vinyl. "You don't really need to say much about this man: co-founder of Wallenstein, drummer on at least two of the most wonderful Krautrock albums (namely Mother Universe and Cosmic Century), member of the legendary Kosmische Kuriere, records with Ash Ra Temple and Klaus Schulze. Finally, Harald Grosskopf switched from drums to sequencers and created something breathtaking. I listened to his solo debut Synthesist (BB 158CD, 1980) to death, and few days began without 'So weit, so gut.' It was a record that did everything right, that salvaged whatever could be salvaged from Kraut, adding the melancholy with which one suddenly looked back on everything that could still be naively believed and played in the '70s. Then in 1985 came the follow-up Oceanheart (BB 157CD), no less great, albeit already noticeably more minimalist. Manuel Göttsching could be sensed in the distance if you surrendered to the track 'Eve on the Hill' and followed it into the depths. Time passed, the music stayed with me. I lost sight of Harald Grosskopf, even though he did produce an album from time to time. And now: Strom. The evocation of electricity, the virtuosity of the circuit that skillfully intertwines man and machine, an antidote to the triumphal march of desolate musical digitality. If you listen carefully, you will immediately recognize the engineer behind the soundscapes. Right from the opener 'Bureau 39,' everything you would expect from Grosskopf is immediately there: the push toward hypnosis, a subdued pulse, catchy, circling bass lines, layering Moog kaleidoscopes. Sometimes the sounds coarsen, the depths distort into grinding noises (as in 'Blow'), into mechanical gurgling, i.e. into what remains when the path comes to an end, when the music reaches beyond the human. The mid-tempo track with the programmatic title 'After the Future,' grotesquely twisting the word 'Ònever,' points the way there. Time and again, however, the beat pauses, leaving space for the soundscapes -- and then, at the latest, the electronica of the early '80s springs back to life. The two complementary pieces 'Gleich Strom' and 'Spaeter Strom' would also fit in wonderfully on Synthesist. On the other hand, the closing track 'Stromklang' remains resolutely committed to the sinister, even gloomy groove that was previously unknown from this artist and with which he has finally returned to me after far too long. Stylo Kraut indeed." --Philipp Theisohn

LP version. Area Silenzio is eat-girls' debut record and it is both haunted and haunting. Since 2020, the French trio have been crafting their songs into little self-contained worlds with the patience of entomologists, taking them out all over the country and Europe to confront them with the wilderness of a live audience. The ten resulting tracks are a collection of electronic madrigals, groove-driven songs played on a mischievous multi-speed Victrola, ranging from languid dub drips to full-on drum machine cavalcades. Their live performances have that same ghostly, ephemeral quality.

"There is something other-worldy about the three of them, a suggestion of telepathy, their three voices blending together or going their separate ways like a flock of starlings. They secured opening slots with artists as different as Thalia Zedek, Exek, and The Young Gods, just to name a few. It is the elusive essence of their music that allows them to feel at ease pretty much anywhere they find themselves: part no-wave disco rhythms, part post-punk throbbing basses, folk tunes and synthesizers in equal measures, with a perpetual attention to hooks and melodies. The album was self-recorded, a necessary measure to protect the delicate nature of the inner landscapes painted by the band. In this case 'delicate' does not mean 'soft' by any means: the industrial disco inferno of 'A Kin,' the ritualistic kraut stampede of 'Para Los Pies Cansados' and the bubbly post-funk rhythms of 'Trauschaft' will leave you gasping for air once you come out on the other side. 'On a Crooked Swing', the opener, is all arpeggiated bass and stumbling kicks. 'Unison' will dip you into a hallucinatory river where nothing is what it seems to be and rescue you at the very last second. 'Canine', the first single off the record, will gently but firmly reach for your jugular with its vulpine Farfisa and deceptively nonchalant drum beat. The vocal polyphonies on '3 Omens' sound like a field recording of traditional music from a tiny country that has yet to be discovered. eat-girls exist on a slightly different plane from ours, where everything is teeming with secrets and hidden life. Area Silenzio is a precious polaroid shot from that world, or, as Tom Verlaine would have it, 'a souvenir from a dream'." --Sebastien Perrin

LP version. Color vinyl. It's hardly a secret that there was a lot of movement in German pop music during the late '60s and early '70s of the last century, and that many new things emerged then. Countless books have already been published on the subject of "Krautrock," and many LPs from this period have been re-released. Günter Schickert only released two LPs in the '70s: Überfällig (Sky Records, 1979/Bureau B, 2012) and Samtvogel (Brain, 1976). Now, exactly 50 years after its original release, Samtvogel has returned.

"Günter Schickert used only guitars, echo devices and a modest recording technique for Samtvogel. The album is a genuine DIY production -- radical in every respect and not at all in keeping with the zeitgeist of the time. It was perhaps this radicalism that made it difficult to find a suitable record label to release the album. In any case, Schickert initially self-released Samtvogel in 1974 in an edition of 500 copies. It wasn't until two years later that the album was released in a much larger edition on the Brain label. I am sure that Schickert was familiar with the minimal music of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass. I don't know whether he had also heard Die grüne Reise (1971) by Achim Reichel. Inventions for Electric Guitar by Manuel Göttsching would not appear until 1976. With his version of minimal music, Schickert completely dispenses with electronic sound generators; neither synthesizers, sequencers nor rhythm machines can be heard on Samtvogel. Instead, he enters into a dialogue with the echo device and uses it and his electric guitar to create seemingly simple, almost rudimentary repetitive patterns that only reveal their minimalist nuances on closer listening. What sounds so simple requires a high level of concentration from the player, as he has to react to the relentless echo once it has been set up. If attention wavers for even a second, the piece immediately goes off the rails and chaos ensues. In the studio, you simply start all over again; in a live situation, it's a worst-case scenario. However, Schickert remains absolutely precise on Samtvogel, and yet his music does not have the coolness and/or artificiality found in the electronically produced music of other German musicians." --Asmus Tietchens, 2024

Limited restock, last-ever copies. "Yodeling Astrologer (aka: Color By The Number) could be considered an anomaly, a one-off or a miracle of circumstance in the history of psychedelic pop music. Mij, a.k.a. Jim Holmberg was discovered by ESP-Disk owners while playing in Washington Square Park in the summer of 1968. His style and persona mesmerized the label heads, and he explained to them a recent auto accident had fractured his skull but left him changed. He perceived sound, color and vision differently and he had funneled this new world of perception directly into his music. All this was enough to warrant getting Mij into the studio to lay down a record of his rambly, cosmic folk songs. The entire album was recorded in three hours, first-takes and impromptu production intact, then pressed up and introduced to the world shortly thereafter. To focus on the yodeling aspect of the Yodeling Astrologer would miss some of the depth of this album. Not just a hippie novelty act of the time, this is a truly thoughtful and somewhat frenzied document. Like Buffy St. Marie's Meditations, Linda Perhacs' Parallelograms or Cold Fact by Rodriguez, this is an album of sincere folk songs colored with subtle psychedelic touches. Uneasy reverberations and soft echoes glide over Holmberg's breezy songs, creating a consistent sonic environment as spontaneous as it is intriguing. Available on vinyl for the first time since an incredibly limited original pressing in 1969 on ESP-Disk."

Previously unreleased live recording from the Ranta archives. The creative duo of Michael Ranta and Takehisa Kosugi performed many times in the 1970s and 1980s. In this outstanding performance, recorded at the Japanese Culture Institute in Cologne in 1987, the application of an advanced multi delay system, independently utilized by both players, plays a central role. The smartly treated cyclic tapestry of the delay system (modulated, transformed, harmonized) injects additional dimensions to the highly coordinated improvisation with voice, percussion, violin and electronics, creating interactive "composition-like" textures being Multiple Musics.

Aguaturbia (1970) is an essential album to understand the construction of Chilean rock. This very influential album is raw and dynamic, featuring heavy rhythms, distortion, and exceptional phased female vocals reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane. It comprises original compositions and electrifying renditions of songs brought to fame by the likes of Tommy James & The Shondells, The Beatles, and, of course, Jefferson Airplane elevating these classics to new heights of intensity and rhythmic allure. Aguaturbia's debut album was originally released in 1970 and showcases one of South America's most significant psychedelic bands from the late '60s and early '70s. Their influence in their native Chile -- and beyond -- was groundbreaking. It was played live in 1969 on three tracks, and it became an icon of transgression due to its unbridled musical aesthetics and cover art that -- for the time of its irruption -- meant a clear defiance of the conservative logics lived in Chile, which saw in the nudity of the cover a challenge to morality and good manners. The album is raw and dynamic, featuring heavy rhythms, distortion, and exceptional phased female vocals reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane. Guitarist Carlos Corales shines and when he played solos at the gigs, the effect on the audience was silence and euphoria at the same time, they couldn't believe what they heard. Everything was done with a professional attitude. In fact, Carlos Corales (guitar) and Willy Cavada (drums) were both professional musicians who had made a previous career in rock and roll bands. The LP showcases breathtaking moments, like Willy Cavada's masterful drum solo in "Ah Ah Ah Ay" captured flawlessly in a single take. Dive into the sensual psychedelic journey of "Erotica," where Denise's alluring vocals dance harmoniously with Carlos' electrifying guitar. Plus, don't miss their thrilling renditions of "Somebody to Love" and "Crimson and Clover" -- each track elevating classics to new heights of intensity and rhythmic allure. This album is more than music; it's an invitation to experience sheer auditory bliss!

"In attempting to write this dispatch on the second Voice Imitator album my instinct is to pitch them as somewhat of an antidote to the current ills of what could be described as the post-noise rock landscape. I'm trying not to tread too far down the path of negativity and slander, so let's just say that while on paper they share basic characteristics with popular groups in the pigfuck to frat rock pipeline, Voice Imitator possess a tact and vision scantly seen in repetition-orientated rock. On Of How Hits, the members decades long individual and collaborative experiences in punk/rock, the avant-garde and electronic music, are further honed to form an internal logic that doesn't merely cut and paste from these experiences, but creates a distinctive and singular group sensibility. Self-conscious subcultural baggage is removed from past youth music experiences, only the molten core remains. With each listen the distinction between traditional band and synthesized modes becomes harder to distinguish, like a zoomed in Killing Joke welding itself to Robert Hood's technominimalism. Lyrics reflect the surreal banality and horrors of modern existence, like a co- worker recapping their interstate trip away to the Banksy exhibition. The album ender, 'On Cloud Nine As One Of Three Percent' can only be compared to Lou Reed and Metallica's 'Junior Dad'. In short, affecting contemporary music." --Nic Warnock

You Never End is the third album from Valentina Magaletti, Tom Halstead, and Joe Andrews (Moin) out via AD 93. Its title alone expresses the teetering and shifting nature of both the album and band. This record marks the Moin's shift into a new phase with vocal collaborations across the album from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey and Sophia Al-Maria. The album's collaborators all have voices that are alluring in their own right whilst hard to pin down: from james K's ethereal, reverb drenched vocals, Coby Sey's words that bounce and echo across London's concrete streets and Olan Monk's emotive songwriting, while artist Sophie Al-Maria's voice and thoughts are known to stretch across her multidisciplinary practice as an artist, filmmaker and writer. The unique mystique of each collaborator is maintained throughout the record while simultaneously opening Moin up to new possibilities, in a gentle shifting alchemy. Continuing their enigmatic re-configuring of the traditional band, Moin use a mix of conventional and unique production and compositional techniques. Subtly re-framing the current conversation about what the band in 2024 needs to be, Moin walk the line between what's reassuringly familiar and what's unsettling and inquisitive. You Never End is a more sensitive record in sentiment, it re-contextualizes grunge, shoegaze and indie rock with a weirdly comforting melancholy while still sounding direct and alive. Showing Moin at their most accessible, the vocal collaborations bring the most articulate moments and lucid emotion while still remaining uniquely within Moin's established world. Alongside this, the record fine tunes the elements of electronic production that have always been a feature of the band's unique sound in a deeply subtle way. Elements are simpler and more direct, offering robust functional support as well as textural and emotional resonance. Together they show the potential for both practices to intertwine. You Never End is both produced and mixed by Tom and Joe, demonstrating the extended range of control the pair have over the band's sound, and their ability to truly hold together Moin's intricate world.

The Buffalo sacrifice is a significant ritual among the Bahnar people, an ethnic group residing in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It symbolizes a connection to ancestral spirits and the natural world. Prior to the sacrifice, the community gathers to prepare offerings and adorn the buffalo with symbolic decorations. The ceremony typically involves prayers, chants, and dances led by village elders. The sacrifice is performed with reverence and gratitude, honoring the buffalo's sacrifice for the well-being of the community. It's believed to ensure fertility, protection, and prosperity for the village. The ritual underscores the Bahnar people's deep-rooted spiritual beliefs and their harmonious relationship with nature. After the sacrifice, the buffalo's meat is shared among the villagers in a communal feast, fostering unity and solidarity within the community. This tradition serves as a cultural cornerstone, preserving the Bahnar's heritage and spiritual practices for generations. Recorded in the village of Plei Hven (Vietnam) in 2019 by Vincenzo Della Ratta, this unique album offers a deep immersion in this ancestral ceremony. Includes liner notes.

In between two European concerts and some recording session, Cyril and Cyril took a break and used a tiny gap in their hectic schedule (both member of Yalla Miku, co-managing Bongo Joe Records for C. Yeterian and touring with La Tune and other projects for C. Bondi) to go the studio to record two atomic tracks with their children. They played a myriad of instruments, including typewriters and ping pong balls. Jeannot, Zoé, Marilou, Marlowe, and Lénaïs sang sharp and joyful manifesto-like texts to express how absurd and boring the adult world seems to them. The result is a brilliant 7'' released on Les Disques Bongo Joe (obviously).

"The inspiration for Album l and Album II began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance, the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film Drive My Car was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spar who featured Ishibashi on their then new album Under Pressure. It was these previous collaborations that triggered the seven friends to take part in an extended session which resulted in these two new recordings, the first of which contains a variety of short pieces while the second boasts one continuous epic, album-length track. These recordings are a development of Von Spar's collaborative ambitions, where Sebastian Blume, Jan Philipp Janzen, Christopher Marquez, and Phillip Tielsch have previously invited special guests to their home studio to help realize a vision -- a methodology exemplified on their last two releases, Street Life and the aforementioned Under Pressure, which featured contributions from Marker Starling, Laetitia Sadier, Vivien Goldman, and R. Stevie Moore. On Album I, the percussion and drums phase in and out in a bold and skillful manner and form the framework for delicate guitars and complex progressions on the keys, all resulting in somnambulistic city-pop pieces like the opener, grooving electro-jazz reminiscent of the early 2000s, and fusion. You can also hear elements of contemporary jazz explorations from New York, LA and London, or reach back further to the Chicago post-rock of the early '90s. Album II with its expansive, experimental nature goes one step further featuring Yamamoto and Janzen's jagged percussion serving as the bedrock for a menacing and otherworldly arrangement of wind instruments to float in until essential sampler work by Joe Talia brings everything to a lively conclusion. These two albums may have the same origin but they are wildly different pieces of work, both exciting in their own way and proof that daring to experiment with freedom and trust in your collaborators can lead to musical highs such as these." --Lars Fleischmann, 2024

"Papa M is back, and he's talking 'bout Harry Houdini. This time, with a fresh, fine and fat-assed set of songs. Sometimes you never know when it comes to Papa M and his ol' left-shoulder angel, David Christian Pajo. After Slint's disbandment, he whiled away the '90s playing with literally everybody who asked, pausing long enough here and there to start his own band, called M. Two epic/classic albums and a forbiddingly large outstretched palm of singles (eventually collected into another epic full-length) later, David was looking a bit green around the gills. It'd been five years of Papa-ing off; time to do something/anything else for a while. Twelve long years go by before he sends in Highway Songs. Now comes Ballads of Harry Houdini. Following the path of M records from Aerial to Papa, (the just-released The Peel Sessions excepted!) David recorded Ballads of Harry Houdini on his own, receding deep inside himself and taking the time for ideas new and old, from soup to nuts, et al. Having his fun before spitting it all out onto the world -- setting down some tracks, getting lit, grabbing a guitar, getting a sound going, and soloing over 'em! With a bit of singing here and there too. Everything that's meant to be in the picture is in there. The shit that isn't, isn't. Frankly, the amount of hip-shaking sleaze oozing out of these pieces blows the idea that these are simple ad-hoc assemblies right the FUNK out of the water. Sure, when David does blues scaling, he sounds a little like Billy Gibbons. But then there's the insistent torn-n-fucked delirium that's accompanied every Papa M expression into the marketplace (with pride) since 1999. As ever, it's mixed extra-crispy, with earworms and easter eggs and lots of other surprising shit that's bound to change your whole personality. And so it is and so it does. Ballads of Harry Houdini: it can make you dance, sing or anything."

"This one to me is a time capsule more than most any of my recordings. All music is a time trapped in time that preaches timelessness -- preaching either convincingly or not. But with a radio session such as this, there is a different aspect. It's all live, all first take, no overdubs. Also I think having the BBC engineers at the controls, with their own aesthetic, not one I am bringing to the studio, that makes it more encapsulated ? 'remember that day we did that?' The circumstances and the memory of the smell of the studio makes it stand out. So it's more of a performance maybe than a usual recording, because the audience (engineer and producer) were foreign to us. British, milk in tea. So we gave them something to show them who WE were -- Dale Coopers with our black coffees. Somebody said this EP is very Twin Peaksy. Not in a Badalamenti, torch-song way -- a deeper connection. I can see that. 'Beautiful Child' has been turned into a minor key song because, well, it really should have been one in the first place! 'Cold Discovery' was a live staple then and some nights it could really catch fire. We got a pretty good one for BBC. 'Dirty Pants' here is probably better than the LP version. And then there's 'Jesus.' Sweet, sweet 'Jesus.' Here sounding like a deathbed plea shot through with visitations from the angel of mercy." -- Bill, 2024

"Four years separate the release of Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit. In the interim, Tashi Dorji has seldom stood still, playing and touring almost constantly, continuing to record both as a solo and in collaboration with artists including Susie Ibarra, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Bill Orcutt, Michael Zerang, Elliott Sharp, Audrey Chen, Sally Gates, Marshall Trammell, Efrim Manuel Menuck, Aaron Turner, Dave Rempis, and Joe McPhee. For Tashi, the playing of this music is always political even in its most abstract iterations. In and of itself, music can't solve political problems -- but since no moment of life is without its political context, 'strumming in opposition to the towers' is therefore a universal state, a freedom of expression made while doing all the other things involved with playing, maintaining a sense of lineage and documenting forward movement. we will be wherever the fires are lit was recorded over a period of a month on a Zoom recorder in a cabin behind Tashi's home. His music, as ever, is all improvised, using different guitar preparations -- tape for muting, and metal for buzz. Different tunings and techniques; inspirations from all over. Tashi's sound is his own, but listeners can't help but feel the sound of many nations, in all hemispheres, storming through these acoustic expressions. Who else would it be for, if not for everyone?"

Composed from 2023 to 2024, these three pieces present a deep dive into the murky and turbulent world where analogue electronic sound sources are driven hard and without mercy into an entirely contemporary setting that's at once commanding and convoluted. Vast torrents of apparently untamed noise are reshaped alongside iridescent whirrs, metallic scrapes, shimmering tones, space flotsam, deep well chimes, front line pulses and heaving hums over the course of three magnificent pieces that pull confrontational music inside-out to expose a kind of ravaged beauty. Tokokawa is the result of two very unique artists pulling together to share a vision mercilessly singular yet possessed of an ability to communicate far beyond as it stakes its claim to its own place on the map of sonic abstraction. Malaysia's Reverse Image also released the excellent debut The Silence That Does Not Exist CD in mid-2023, plus founder Siew Y'ng-Yin used to operate the renowned Mirror Tapes imprint. Early 2024 also saw the release of the debut Beyond the Flat Earth CD by her fiery and intense electronics project Fallen Sun. Thomas Bey William Bailey, meanwhile, has released numerous cassettes and CDs since his debut Strangelet album in 2009 and has collaborated with many artists since, including Susana Lopez, Rick Reed, Leif Elggren, and others. His most recent album, Metaphysics of Autonomous Shadows, appeared in 2023. He is also known for having had books published, including the recent Sonic Phantoms co-authored with Barbara Ellison on Bloomsbury. Tokokawa is limited to 300.

FREQ002 introduces a vinyl repress of the Future in Light album by Ken Ishii, a legendary producer from Japan known for his releases on labels like R&S Records. Ishii, a techno pioneer, has an inherent connection to anime, with iconic video clips directed by Koji Morimoto, famous for his work on Akira and Memories. The FREQ team has reinterpreted the original cover and remastered those tracks while staying true to its original aesthetics. This album showcases Ishii's blend of techno and house, and even as a repress, it continues to point to the future with the intriguing sound designs featured on this LP. FREQ Records is the record label accompanying the manga FREQ, created by Nicola Kazimir, illustrated by goodnewsforbadguys, and written by the legendary Dai Sato, who has written scripts for Ergo Proxy, Eureka Seven, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, among many others. The setting of Freq's lore unfolds in a futuristic realm where the influence of sound frequencies governs all aspects of life. In this world, everything from traffic and AR visuals to electricity, warfare, and of course, music, is orchestrated through the manipulation and extraction of sound frequencies. The narrative unfolds within the sprawling expanse of Rephlex, a vast city featuring diverse districts, factions, and social classes.

HOS 666: the complete cassette works of 666 Volt Battery Noise. After having released a series of handmade cassettes quietly around Buffalo, New York, the tapes of David Brownstead (1965-2020) started appearing internationally in 1993 on the most prominent labels of the '90s: Self-Abuse Records, Spite, Vanilla Records, Slaughter Productions, Mother Savage Noise Productions, Deadline Records, and Pure. Working closely in conjunction with the Brownsteads, who generously provided access to the family archives, after nearly half a decade, hospital productions presents: Unblind Discipline Power Annihilate Survive: nine CDs with fully restored audio by Kris Lapke housed in custom 3x6x9" deluxe box with 100-page hardcover book including private photos, unseen art, writing, and remembrances, along with massive poster, temporary tattoo, and digital download code, telling the story of 666 Volt Battery Noise, the most elusive legend in New York underground noise history. Includes the following releases: Family Annihilator; Bliss: Flesh Vol. One; Blunt Objects Vs Sharp Things; Exercises In Negative Energy Blood American Style; Psychic Self Defense Sound Improvisations; New Wall Of Bruise; Kadef Split; 666vbn; 6v6b6n; A Brief History Of The Unstoppable Power Of Negative Energy; Another Weapon In The War Against Music; Live VHS (Unreleased: Audio From The Only Known Live Performance From 1993).