"2019 Rewind: Our massive annual survey of the last 12 months in underground music, including our definitive records of the year charts; opinion, analysis, musings and reflections from 2019's most active and influential critics, artists and musicians; plus Claire Sawers on science fiction in contemporary sounds from Moor Mother to Clipping; Rob Turner on new journeys in longform listening; Emily Bick on why music criticism matters, and more!"

Pop -- the album that has become widely recognized as the defining moment in which Wolfgang Voigt brought his listeners into a clearing of his deep, psychedelic forest. A landmark release in the GAS odyssey that drew international attention, Pop was originally released in 2000 on the iconic Frankfurt imprint, Mille Plateux. Pop was heralded by Pitchfork at the time of release as being "an exercise in sonic texture... pure sonic velvet, the layered drone radiating a palpable warmth." Pop was reissued by Kompakt in 2016 as a part of GAS Box (now out of print) and by itself here. First time on 180 gram, triple-LP vinyl; includes original artwork.

Mechanical Keyboard Sounds: Recordings of Bespoke and Customized Mechanical Keyboards is made and recorded by the master of this modern art, Nathan from Taeha Types. Yes, this is actual typing sounds on amazing future/retro/cutting edge keyboards, every track and keyboard different. Listen and weep, or sleep, or something to this incredible and unique listening experience -- the first mechanical keyboard album ever. For the last few years a small scene has been growing: the mechanical keyboard scene. It makes total sense as most people use keyboards every day, so why not have an amazing keyboard to use instead of total crap? Just look down: it's shit, isn't it? Some people worked out that things could be improved -- a lot. They started to make incredible, kinky keyboards, using both old and new tech: the possibilities and options in construction are endless. There are key cap options, spring options, and even backplate options (steel, aluminum, copper), and of course, case options too. All these options make a big or little difference. Once made these keyboards are carefully lubricated spring by spring to give them that little extra smoothness and "ping". The results are beautiful, fetishistic, and futuristic in an odd retro style, and they sound amazing when they are typed on. This is classic ASMR/whisper porn; the gentle click and rattle of carefully lubed springy keyboards make the hairs on the back of the neck rise. Either that or wooed into a peaceful, sublime state. This is a classic and groundbreaking new Trunk album for modern stressful times, from a selection of (enhanced) keyboards from the '80s, '90s, and now. They were recorded by the master maker of the modern mechanical keyboard, Nathan from Taeha Types. He has a large following on Instagram, YouTube (videos of his hands typing on his keyboards hit 10K in just a couple of days after upload), and he now has over half a million views on his Twitch channel where he constructs keyboards live. Notes by Jonny Trunk and Stu London (AKA Futurecrime) from the London mechanical keyboard scene. He knows what the fuck he is talking about. One might not understand it, but one can catch up really quickly. Mastered by Jon Brooks. Presented in full-color sleeve, with special foil pantone.

Dropped Out Sunshine is NYC mutant Madteo's incredible new album of trigger-happy club graffiti on Demdike Stare's DDS, weighing in a keenly anticipated follow-up to 2012's cult-classic Noi No LP for Sähkö. Splitting at the seams with deviant funk and irrepressible attitude, Madteo's first LP in sevem years forms a fractal, mixtape-like mosaic of asymmetric techno informed by skewed traces of rap, house, R&B, and dancehall. Its 12 tracks are delivered in an enviably nonchalant, freehand style that's become the Italian-American artist's ear-snagging signature since 2012's Noi No and Mad Dip Revue albums, and also a dozen 12"s and mixtapes over the interim; all of which exerted heavy inspiration for everyone from Andy Stott and Joy O to Demdike Stare over the past decade, making this new LP a perfectly unusual fit for the anything-goes DDS aesthetic shared by label alumni including Mica Levi, Equiknoxx, Iueke, and Shinichi Atobe. Without beating around the bush, Dropped Out Sunshine is a straight-up masterpiece of cut-up sampledelia bound to make the club dance differently. Crammed with sawn-off edits that never lose the thread, its wild and effortlessly inventive turns of phrase are anathema to linear club music convention, generating fizzing alchemy from mutually exclusive bedfellows such as dancehall and techno, or R&B and noise that could really only be executed by a producer of Madteo's caliber. Yet for all its singular nature, the album is also patently symptomatic of the times, sub-consciously parsing a gripping intimacy, personality and urgent yet elusive psychedelia from ubiquitous media overload. Kicking off with another *****-sampling zinger "1 4 U" (following his infamous use of "Marvin's Room" on Noi No), and ending up mired in the melancholy gauze of "The Lies That Bind", at each step the album effortlessly resists a struggle to square the nature of artistic expression. Fragments of gospel blues noise intersect gauntlets of filtered house fuckery, while restless Autechrian electro rubs up against uncoiled trap and needle-worrying levels of textured bass turbulence, leading to an outrageous turn of stuttering ragga-tekno in "Resident Alien (Broke-'n-Steppers Reluctant Club Mix)" and a final side of collapsed, post-club styles that will leave listeners wondering wtf just happened, and ready to do it all again. RIYL: Andy Stott, Joy O, Mica Levi, Demdike Stare, Moodymann. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve with comprehensive liner notes and pics. Subtitled: Esoteric, Modal and Deep Jazz from Prestige Records, 1961-73. The tenth edition of Jazzman Records Spiritual Jazz series takes a closer look at the music Prestige was recording at the start of the 1960s. This was the period when the modal jazz sound pioneered by Miles and Coltrane was starting to percolate through the jazz underground. In its heyday, Prestige was the only jazz label that could hold a candle to Blue Note. Prestige was always quick off the mark to record new artists, and in the years after Kind of Blue (1959) the label was quick to release some of the most innovative early explorers of the new style. Founded as New Jazz in 1949 by 20-year old jazz fan and entrepreneur Bob Weinstock, Prestige was the only other imprint besides Blue Note to capture the iconic jazz sounds of the 1950s, and like its rival it grew to be an icon itself. If Blue Note documented the sound of hard bop in its most carefully crafted and beautifully presented form, the low-key, jam-session approach that Weinstock preferred meant that the music captured by Prestige has a tough, unfiltered energy that was a lot closer to way it was being played live, night after night, by New York's most prominent jazz musicians. Featuring Afro-Eastern visions from Yusef Lateef and Ahmed Abdul-Malik, deep modal excursions from Mal Waldron and Walt Dickerson, and essential spiritual jazz grooves from Gary Bartz and Idris Muhammed, Spiritual Jazz 10 documents the sound of modal jazz in full flight, unabashed and authentic from the pioneers! Also features Roy Haynes, Latin Jazz Quintet, and Moondog.

A four-hour work, recorded at Jim O'Rourke's studio, Steamroom, between 2017 and 2018. Detailed and delicate electronic layers, processed instruments, and ambiguous field recordings come together in a slow-moving, fascinating kaleidoscope with multiple reflections and wrong turns, always in a constant state of flux. The finely crafted art of subterfuge. The four-CD set To Magnetize Money and Catch a Roving Eye is a hypnotic, multi-faceted, labyrinthine piece which flows as slowly as a river while speeding back through memory. Composer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist Jim O'Rourke was born in Chicago in 1969. He is a veritable chameleon working at the frontiers of very diverse musical genres.

Akuphone presents Saz Û Dilan, the second solo album of Rizan Said. After King Of Keyboards, (CREP 034LP, 2016) this release brings the most exciting Kurdish-Syrian dance music to one's ears. Surrounded by young local singers, Rizan offers his own interpretation of the modern dabke through eight original uptempo compositions full of energy. Rizan Said is a composer, musician and producer, responsible for hundreds of Syrian recording industry productions as well as compositions and themes for television and cinema. Hailing from Ras Al Ain, in northeastern Syria, Rizan was a musical prodigy from a young age -- a gifted player of percussion and reed instruments before a wealth of synthesizers began flooding Syria in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Steadfast on the Syrian cassette album circuit at the time, Rizan was already sending his signals out from the Jazeera frontier, thanks to a partnership with local Syrian producer Zuhir Maksi. Later, he was the man behind Omar Souleyman's music and has recorded and toured across the world with him. Nowadays, he performs as a solo artist and brings the original dabke dance sounds of Syria to European festivals and concerts. Includes download.

The prolific Kink Gong (aka Laurent Jeanneau) returns in a unique duet with one of the most prominent artists of the Chinese avant-gardist scene, Li Daiguo. Kink Gong and Li Daiguo first met in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan Province, China) while playing the same night at the Jahbar music venue. A few months later, as they become neighbors in Cai Cun, a village near the old town of Dali (Yunnan), Kink Gong begins recording Daiguo playing pipa, cello, and zheng. He then proceeded to deconstruct these recordings while adding voices that he mainly recorded in Yunnan Province. This fantastic combination of field recordings, experimental folk melodies, and electronic treatment leads its listeners to a fourth underground universe reminiscent of Jon Hassell's finest hours. Includes download.

Transdisciplinary NYC artist Gavilán Rayna Russom beautifully comes into her own with a distinguished solo debut album statement including the voice of Cosey Fanni Tutti and brass arrangements by downtown legend Peter Zummo. After decades exploring her sonic personality through here deep immersion in NYC's club and avant-garde scenes, Rayna uses The Envoy as a vessel to firm up and convey her personal conclusions on intersections of gender and electronic music. Enriched with complex human experience and key influence from sci-fi writer Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) -- a book with descriptions of an alien race with multiple sexual characteristics -- the album is intended to realign misconceptions of Russom's prescient early work such as 2005's The Days of Mars LP for DFA, which arguably foreshadowed a rise of beat-less and more ambiguous urges commonplace in contemporary dance music. With The Envoy, Russom returns to a 2019 music scene that's better prepared with the politics of an emerging new world. Entwining Russom's perspectives on gender, the occult, and spirituality, and how they relate to the body and music's healing properties, The Envoy expresses the artist's concerns in nine interrelated parts. Practically devoid of percussion, but full of body-moving polyrhythmic pattern, the pieces spill out of the lines of any typically imposed "grid". Within this loose context, porous to the chaos of noise, Russom smudges a blend of analog and digital synths to connote an elusive sense of self. Employing the fluid potential of electronic music at its most fundamental in a way that loops right back to the gliding suspense of her prized early work, literally incorporating elements of solo recordings made in the late '90s in the wake of Russom's psych/noise band, Soma. Unanchored by kicks, yet pulsing in its own ways, the album flows with an underlying elegance from Cosey Fanni Tutti's spellbinding recital of Russom's text in "Kemmer", set to an organic, orgiastic writhe of arps and stressed noise, and on thru the free-floating organ scape of "Envoy", to acknowledge more industrial impulses with "Strength Out of the Dark" and a towering highlight of the album in "Discipline of Presence", where Russom's throbbing mass is hauntingly illuminated by plangent brass arrangement from Peter Zummo (key Arthur Russell collaborator). The ten-minute "Winter" then wraps it all up under a titular reference to Ursula K Le Guin's novel, placing Russom as a filament of solo piano-playing light within the cold expanse of NYC. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Edition of 300.

Am Grabe (At the Grave) is an ongoing audio ritual executed by Stefan Fricke and Alper Maral. Since 2015, they have been visiting the graves and burial grounds of composers from various eras in order to record the sounds and noises present. Each sequence is a pure field recording, serving as a memento of a bit more than four minutes in length. After having been compiled for a series of radio programs, selections from Am Grabe here appear on audio media for the first time. This edition commemorates 36 composers -- from Bach to Beethoven, from Mahler to Eisler, from Stockhausen to Ben Patterson -- the recordings connected serially, sometimes overlapping, and compiled across four LP sides.

"Am Grabe is a work in progress, a collection of homages which shall and can never end, as long as emphatic music will exist and will constantly be invented in the world." (from the liner notes)

Stefan Fricke (b. 1966 in Unna) is a German musicologist. He founded the Pfau Verlag, specializing in books about contemporary music, in 1989, and since 2008 is editor for contemporary music and sound art at Hessischer Rundfunk (Hessian Broadcasting Corporation). He teaches as honorary professor at the University of Mainz.

Alper Maral (b. 1969 in Istanbul) is a Turkish composer whose oeuvre encompasses theatre and film music, symphonic and chamber works, electro-acoustic music, a.o. He plays in a number of ensembles such as -- for early music -- İstanbul Barok, A-415, and Bornova Trio, as well as -- for contemporary music -- Karınca Kabilesi, Control Voltage Project, and Alper Maral Multiphonics Ensemble. He is professor at the Ankara Music and Fine Arts University.

Mesmerizing minority language acid folk and wayfaring world music forges a river of revolution between langue doc and Côte d'Azur with this stunning seldom spoken 1978 intimate community pressing. Weaving a fragile thread through collectible outsider genres such as acid folk, French jazz, Braziliana, and world music it is virtually incomprehensible that this incredible one-off solo album by mononymous Occitan language singer, songwriter, and activist Miquela has managed to evade notoriety and wider affection over five decades. Captured via a humble makeshift studio set-up in a classroom in 1977, this startlingly crystalline recording is one of the best examples you are likely to hear, not shying from ambitious small string arrangements and intimate Gallic jazz infusions this LP represents the quiet storm erupting from the pride and protection of the ancient "Romance" language known as Occitan, as spoken by less than 1.5 million people in Southern France (as well as parts of Italy and Spain). Naturally combining a wide range of influences, and fueled by the same impassioned fervor found in privately pressed minority language records from Britanny, Catalonia, and Wales, Miquela's first and only solo record was recorded by request of poet Ives Roqueta for his exclusively Occitan language label Ventadorn. Including players from Miquela's surrounding area of Toulon the album also enlisted arrangements from important musicians such as co-author Jean-Michel Mariou, jazz contrabass player Didier Capeille (later affiliate of Marseilles' Etron Fou Leloublan), and guitarist Gilles Cardon, who would regularly play for Britanny-based label Nevenoe (knotting the ties between both French language rehabilitation movements). Released and well-received by a supportive and emotional Occitan fan base, this would be Miquela's only ever solo LP (preceded by a 7" picture sleeve EP, drawing similarities to Welsh label Sain) and laid the foundations for future releases with her folk rock girl group Lei Chapacans (The Vagabonds) which led to tours as far as Sardinia, Yemen, and Moscow. As a vital forerunner of a maligned genre of Occitan femme-folk singers such as Estela, Nicòla, Jacmelina, Rosina De Peira E Martina, and Claudia Galibert, this LP marks the start of a journey that would eventually find its beloved protagonist at the heart of the galvanized Occitan language media.

Graeme Miller and Steve Shill's Woodland Band (Parade) consists of homemade electronic and mechanical music heard exclusively via British TV speakers as an eerie backdrop for the Polish-made stop-motion adaptation of the Finnish comic strip. Custom-composed for radically reedited daily five-minute episodes (alongside reconstituted storylines and the narrations/impersonations of comedy actor Richard Murdoch), the short cues written and played by the two Leeds-based post-punk avant-theater composers helped exacerbate the program's bizarre spectral storylines and characters, earning a firm fixture of fear, intrigue and infatuation in the hearts and memories of a slightly confused electro-fed generation. Ticking all the boxes that attract freak-folk enthusiasts and "synthusiasts" alike, the combined efforts of Shill and Miller deployed thumb pianos, backwards tape effects, wooden pipes, and a Wasp synthesizer (the almost-affordable post-punk synth of choice) to replace the original '70s German jazz soundtrack, thus dramatically mutating the tonality of the hundred episode-long saga. Miller and Shill's unique DIY approach follows characters like Moomintroll, Sniff, Snuffkin and the Snork Maiden as they encounter hobgoblins, sand lions, and the mysterious Groke, complete with their individual detuned electronic voices and theremin-esque whimpers. Based on the original sprites invented by Tove Jansson, the modified fuzzy felt figurines were designed by animator Lucjan Debinski at the legendary Se Ma For studios in Poland for German syndication resulting in what many regard as the definitive and most enigmatic version of the story, succeeding further animated adaptations form Japan and Russia. Sharing the same nostalgia and oblique exoticism as The Singing Ringing Tree, The Little Mole, The Magic Roundabout, and other reconstituted imports seen on programs like Granada TV's Picturebox, The Moomins and its synonymous theme tune and sound effects render this limited 7" vinyl release an essential addition to the record shelves of soundtrack collectors, domestic electronic fans and absent bygone tele-addicts as well as animation and design enthusiasts on account of its unique imagery and packaging. Includes an extended take of "Woodland Band" and a never-before-heard cue from the forthcoming Lost Tapes. Like the running lengths of the original episodes, these rare specimens won't stick around for long -- act fast, relax, regress, and rejoice for the return of the Moomin trolls. Custom-made felt backed 7" sleeve depicting original production stills.

LP version. "Issam Hajali is most known as the singer and composer of the Lebanese band Ferkat Al Ard. While they recorded 3 albums only their classic 'Oghneya' saw a vinyl release and is highly sought after in the Lebanese record collector scene (A copy changed hands in Beirut this year for 5000 USD). Before the band came together, he recorded this debut album in Paris in 1977. This rare album fuses jazz and folk with Arabic and Iranian influences into unique beauty. It was only released in a limited run of 75 cassette tapes and is now officially licensed and reissued by Berlin based Habibi Funk Records."

The latest volumes in this highly acclaimed series presenting the music of the Windrush generation: the post-war, London recordings of West Indians and West Africans, in the first wave of modern migration to Britain. Volume 7: Calypso, Palm Wine, Mento, Joropo, Steel & Stringband overflows with diverse musical styles, including steel band, string band, calypso, joropo, and mento. Features Lord Beginner, The Lion, The Mighty Terror, Dai Dai Simba, Willie Payne & The Starlite Tempos, The Mighty Terror, Louise Bennett, Marie Bryant, Nigerian Union Rhythm Group, Calypso Rhythm Kings, Bill Rogers, Lili Verona, Billy Sholanke, Lord & Lady Beginner, West African Rhythm Brothers, and Trinidad Steel Band. Sound restoration at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas. Gatefold sleeve; full-size leaflets.

"One of the delights of the age" --Songlines.

"a witty and joyous testament" --Guardian.

"impeccably curated and packaged" --Wire.

Before another Vatican Shadow release appears on vinyl for the first time early in 2020, Hospital Productions reissue a killer 2011 tape release on a 2019 vinyl pressing after appearing on a long sold-out LP edition for Type in 2012. Remastered and slightly edited from the original 4x tape boxset, Kneel Before Religious Icons reasserts its place in the pantheon of Vatican Shadow's prized early releases which, with the benefit of hindsight, arguably amount to one of this past decade's definitive projects. Originally recorded in 2010, the album's eight tracks revolve some of the first material recorded by Dominick Fernow in this mode, aside from his then better-known work as Prurient. At the time, Fernow was still working under cover of anonymity and this release in particular only aided in heightening the intrigue and fascination surrounding this project and the way it eerily resonated with the both the redrawing of geopolitical borders and those between industrial, ambient, noise, and techno styles. The album contains one of the most valued VS outings in "Worshippers At The Same Mosque", with its pall of synth pads, harpsichord, and stepping drums patently influenced by Muslimgauze, while the parade ground trample of "Church Of All Images" -- which would form the basis for a now classic Regis remix issued by Blackest Ever Black -- adds up to one of the project's most militant numbers along with the scudding, bombed-out terrain of "Gods Representative on Earth" and "Shooter In The Same Uniform as The Soldiers". As a historic document of the time and a gripping album in its own right, Kneel Before Religious Icons holds tight among Vatican Shadow's most crucial and convincing communiques.

"Maggot Brain is brought to you by Third Man Records, under the eye of the 'zine wizard Mike McGonigal. Maggot Brain, a full-color quarterly with heavy cover stock."

Features pieces on Alice Coltrane, Swell Maps, Malls Across America, Mia Zapata, Dilla's Donuts, vibrant Detroit sign painting, Index, Big Joanie, how to resist ICE, Daniel Johnston, Les Filles Des Illeghidad, Swampfest, The KLF's greatest pranks, and more! Also features pieces by Luc Sante and Mayakovsky.

2019 repress. De Natura Sonorum (1975): Premiered at the Salle Wagram in Paris on June 3rd 1975. A suite of 12 movements, divided into two series of six. "The first series comprises six related movements, usually organized in pairs, electronic sounds with instrumental and more rarely, concrete sounds: Incidences/resonances bring into play controlled resonances akin to sounds of concrete origin in a process that helps to expand the variable electronic sound sources. Here, 'incidents' are opposed to one-off 'accidents' in the second movement: 'Accidents/Harmoniques' ('Accidents/Harmonics'). In the second movement, very short events of instrumental origin change the harmonic tone of the continuum they interrupt or overlap. Moreover, the high notes are underplayed, which stimulates the attention given to other phenomena generally hidden by the melodic form applied to the instrumental play. 'Géologie sonore' ('Sound Geology') is similar to a flight over an area where different 'sound' layers come to the surface one after the other. When seen from high above, instrumental and electronic sounds seem to fuse. 'Dynamique de la resonance' ('Dynamics of Resonance') is a microphonic exploration of a single sound resonating through different forms of percussion. 'L'Etude élastique' ('Elastic Study') places together various sounds produced by 'touching' elastic or instrumental skins (balloons, doumbeks) or vibrating strings and a number of instrumental gestures close to this 'touch,' using electronic processes to generate white noise. 'Conjugaison du timbre' ('Conjugated Tone'), the last movement in the series, uses the same substance to apply rhythmic forms onto a perpetually varying tone continuum. The second series of movements draws its inspiration from concrete and electronic sources rather than instrumental ones. 'Incidences/battements' ('Incidences/ Beatings') is a reminder of the first movement in the first series, which then quickly moves into 'Natures éphémères' ('Ephemeral Natures'): an ephemeral play on instrumental and electronic sounds, singled out by their internal trajectory rather than by the material itself. 'Matières induites' ('Induced Matters'): just as molecular effervescence triggers changes of state, it seems that the different states of these sound materials can be generated by each other or through induction processes. In 'Ondes croisées' ('Crossed Waves'), the pizz vibrations interfere with somehow 'visible' water drops on the surface of a similar material. 'Pleins et déliés' ('Downstrokes and Upstrokes') can be listened to as the energies absorbed in the motion of bouncing bodies, while hollow 'bubbles' and points bring together some people's gravity and others' downwards movements. The work finishes with 'Points contre champs' ('Reverse Angle Points'). Here, the notion of perspective of the different sound threads weaving a kind of network, or field, traps the occasional iterative elements in the foreground and progressively absorbs them, giving more space for the angle -- and the chanted sound -- to grow." --Bernard Parmigiani; De Natura Sonorum whose title echoes Lucretius' De rerum natura, similarly explores the multiplicity of sound possibilities. This profuse work, with countless discoveries and dazzling intuitions, has influenced several generations of composers and remains a truly seminal piece in the experimental music soundscape. De Natura Sonorum, one of Parmegiani's masterpieces, has left an indelible mark on the classical period of electroacoustic music. At last, it is being reissued on vinyl and for the first time this includes the whole of its 12 movements." --Christian Zanési & François Bonnet. Housed in a gatefold sleeve.

Four LP version. Gatefold sleeve; includes six-page insert, an engraved side, and download code. Function's long career has seen him uncover a vast range of sonic identities, a mainstay through house, techno and industrial with collaborations with the likes of Regis, Damon Wild, alongside his highly influential Infrastructure imprint. With influences deeply tied to pop art, rave, and gay scenes, and early memories of block-parties emitting Kraftwerk and Strafe, he found himself seeking out the undercover illegal nights of the '90s on a quest of sexual unearthing, mixing the ever-yearning escapology mission of disco with the influential DJ sets of Jeff Mills. For his new album Existenz, he marks a clear step away from the corporeal techno of his recent releases. Pivoting around themes of religion, sexuality, trauma, and healing, it is a work expansive and celebratory, a clear liberation from a deeply internalized past. Formed from a collection of recordings made in a period from late 2016 to mid-2019, Existenz takes the form of a creative outburst in reaction to a number of traumas. Life partner Stefanie Parnow assisted the production process in its entirety, providing inspiration, spiritual healing, and featuring vocal contributions. Cosmic synths soar and swoop in "Pleasure Discipline" through towering stacks of rhythm that stutter and creak to a halt before rebooting, a firm robotic response to human intervention. "Zahlensender" reflects a spatial Tetris of urban life, as digitalization set within an XYZ matrix confronts the sprawling city. "The Approach" recalls the unification of the self, a state of delirium non-subjective and smooth, as all connections and functions give way to simple intensities of feeling, crossing the threshold into spirituality. "Golden Dawn", featuring Stefanie Parnow, marks a further elevation of dubbed-out euphoria. His ode to the effortless short-trip urban navigation "Kurzstrecke" finds Function in motion, upfront, and bold, snapshots of conversation and flickers of light. "Ertrinken" finds metallic bass jabs swamping snipped synthetic voices, with hidden stores of emotion set as a nod to the history of vocoders as a tool for encrypted military communication. House icon Robert Owens features on "Growth Cycle" and "Be", entrenching a celebratory atmosphere over Function's clubwise leanings. "Downtown 161" reflects the unmistakable filtered and squashed interjections of television, and sampled dance vocals -- a sound for the curious, dreamers and dancers. With Existenz, Function reveals an essential body of work -- thought experiments on the role of identity and spirituality after a lifetime of upheaval and trauma.

LP version. A long desire of extraordinaire saxophone player Peter Brötzmann was a studio recording of some of his favorite jazz tunes and his own music -- a grand bridge over the music important for his life and his musical career in the past and present. Trost invited him to Martin Siewert's studio in Vienna to do so in summer 2018. The result is intense, beautiful and touching. Features compositions by Harry Barris/Gordon Clifford, Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II, Herbie Nichols, Dizzy Gillespie, George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin, and Sonny Rollins. Personnel: Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Martin Siewert. Liner notes and artwork by Peter Brötzmann.

Cold Spring Records announce the long-awaited reissue of Stolen & Contaminated Songs, Coil's 1992 album. Stolen & Contaminated Songs was recorded and produced by Coil in 1992. It is comprised of over 60 minutes of outtakes and unreleased songs, evolved during the recording sessions for their prior album, Love's Secret Domain (1991). A wealth of superb material showcasing the diversity of Coil: dark, violent, vivid, and fractured, yet cohesive and beautiful. Combined with the latest studio technology and Coil's ever-evolving production skills, S&C Songs walks a fine line between tradition and innovation, continually creating semi-abstract soundscapes with a cinematic quality. CD version comesin in six-panel digipak.

"Terry Fox was a first generation Bay Area conceptual artist. Beginning in the 1970s, he worked extensively with sound, especially the use of piano wires detached from their native instrument and anchored between opposing walls of the performance space. Linkage, Fox's first album, was originally released in 1982 to accompany an installation at Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland. The record would mark Fox's first attempt to realize his groundbreaking and visceral piece 'Berlin Wall Scored for Sound.' Side one links five ways of playing the piano wires: drumming, pulling, bowing, beating and scraping. The room itself acts as a type of natural resonator as Fox moves the wires with padded mallet, his bare fingers, violin bow, wooden shish kebab stick and rusted metal rod. The effect of such plain arrangements can be utterly hypnotizing. The second half of Linkage was recorded in the attic of Künstlerhaus Bethanien, West Berlin, in May 1981. A thirty-three meter long wire was held in contact with a sardine tin. Over the course of 20 minutes, pulsating drones dissolve into rhythmic patterns that sound almost synthetic in origin. As noted in the original LP pamphlet, all these sounds were strictly acoustic; the only electronics involved was the recording equipment. In an introduction for this edition, Marita Loosen-Fox and Ron Meyers write, 'The desire to eliminate any barriers between the art and the viewer/audience connects all of Fox's situations/actions/performances. The ultimate goal is to communicate as directly as possible, which finds its most concentrated expression in the artist's works with sound.' This first-time reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with booklet."

"Amazingly, here is the glorious (long-delayed) follow-up to Fred Lane's 1988 Shimmy Disc LP, Car Radio Jerome. In the wake of that surreal masterpiece, Shimmy announced an LP called Icepick to the Moon, but it took 31 years to wrestle this slab of bacon to the mat. And you'll be glad we did. Icepick takes up where Jerome left off. As inhabited by visual artist, Tim Reed, 'Fred Lane' (I'll drop the quote marks after this) is a lounge crooner with smoothly classic vocal chops and a taste for lyrics shaped by Alfred Jarry's proto-Dada writings. Fred Lane is a creature of the 'Pataphysical South, inhabiting the same pocket universe as Bruce Hampton and Eugene Chadbourne. And we guarantee his music is as deeply fried as anything you've ever heard. Or eaten. The roots of Lane have been explored in Skizz Cyzyk's great documentary, Icepick to the Moon (to which this is not a soundtrack LP), and are traceable back as far as high school in the late '60s, where Lane and the late guitarist Davey Williams had a weird-o cover band. A couple years later, they both ended up in the Tuscaloosa Alabama student/hippie ghetto (near the University), where some older artists -- Craig Nutt (aka "Ron 'Pate") and a few odd others -- had formed an art collective, Raudelunas, to do all the whacked out stuff interesting people like to do . . . This was the beginning of a long Alabama Surrealist tradition that includes LaDonna Smith, Anne LeBaron, Wally Shoup, and many others. Anyway, at some point, Reed brought his Fred Lane persona to the party -- an accretion of totally insane lyrics and performance tropes, set to what almost sounds like swinging cocktail music until you start noticing the bizarre detailing and avant-garde highlighting. Coming at the same early '70s moment that lounge retro was functionally hip (Manhattan Transfer, Asleep at the Wheel, Capt. Matchbox, etc.) the results were a complete mindfuck . . . The music, penned by Reed with Roger Hagerty (aka Dick Foote), played by a band with Williams (aka Cyd Cherise) on guitar, is unbelievably fine. Sadly, this was Williams' last recording session, but the instrumental inventions are a wonderful extension of Jerome (which was notably more sophisticated, sonically, than earlier recordings)..." --Bryon Coley, 2019

"Enhet För Fri Musik is a free-folk and experimental music collective formed in 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden. The band features assorted members of the current Swedish underground from bands like Neutral, Makthaverskan, Arv & Miljö, and Blod. A local scene supergroup, the band also runs the labels Förlag För Fri Musik and the Omlott imprint to document their own releases as well as the fertile underground scene surrounding them (much like the Xpressway label founded by artists Bruce Russell, Peter Jefferies, and Alastair Galbraith showcased the early experimental music scene in Dunedin, New Zealand in the late '80s and early '90s). Enhet För Fri Musik is the natural extension of a rich lineage going back to legendary Swedish bands from the '70s, such as Pärson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, International Harvester, and Arbete Och Fritid, whose music pushed boundaries and chose artistic innovation over any commercial concerns. Det Finns Ett Hjärta Som För Dig is the band's fifth release and it's a unique masterpiece. The mysteriously hypnotic album, released in July of 2017 in an extremely limited pressing of 300, sold out quickly without receiving distribution to greater Europe or the United States. The atmospheric record features atonal guitar, organ, tape effects, saxophone, and field recordings, in experimental song constructions that defy genre, moving like a river might through different environments, taking and leaving things as it moves, and coalescing around Sofie Herner's haunting vocals. Grapefruit is extremely proud to be reissuing this rare thing of beauty in a deluxe gatefold jacket and original artwork provided by the band."

The unique and magical sound of Los Siquicos Litoraleños (The Psychics of El Litoral), fermented in the rural north of Argentina, land of gauchos (Argentine cowboys), mate tea, chamamé folk music, and Psilocybe Cubensis. In this remote region, cut off from the fashions of the city, Los Siquicos were able to nurture their obsessions, hone their craft, and develop a singular style that takes the traditional chamamé folk music of rural Argentina, then throws it in a blender with Latin-American cumbia and chicha, the tropicalia of Os Mutantes and Tom Zé, the free music of Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, The Residents, UFO conspiracies, radical philosophy, and a strong dose of the absurd. Out in the hinterlands, they fully embraced the spirit and ethic of DIY punk, gaining a reputation for wild, open air shows on the backs of flatbed trucks, or from makeshift set-ups in village squares and at local fêtes and fairs, where confused locals half recognize the twisted sound of a chamamé beamed in from another planet. Hive Mind Records are delighted to help bring Medianos Éxitos Subtropicales Vol. 2: El Relincho Del Tiempo (Medium Subtropical Hits Vol. 2: The Neigh of Time) out into the world. The album features a number of brand-new songs alongside tracks chosen from Los Siquicos' extensive archive of home recordings. El Relincho Del Tiempo contains the soupy dub-cumbia of "Para Ser Un Gran Hombre", the fantasy radio-hit "La Danza Del Brontosaurio", and the shamanic ecstasy of "Los Ninos Del Brasil" or "Dostoyevski En El Minimercado". Los Siquicos Litoraleños invite you to take a leap into their world in which the sounds of the future and the past blur into one, where the music of the whole planet is digested and spat out in new shapes, where the noise is joyful.

"... a unique triumph of homegrown rural psychedelia, standing alone on the edge of an unchartered vanguard... Los Siquicos Litoraleños are the contemporary group you keep hoping exist, but can never find. If you were to reach for spiritual comparisons, you wouldn't be forgetting the most spirited moments from Sun City Girls, Butthole Surfers, Faust, Os Mutantes, Captain Beefheart or The Residents." --Mark Gergis

"Hebi" is tough, stomping, mesmerizing romany funk, riding Far East from the Baltic Sea on clopping hooves of uranium, with synths from spaceways further out still. Weakheart deejays will scatter, but Sotofett has road-tested this on dubplate for six months, tearing up parties and dancefloors. Deeply meditative, desolately beautiful, "Haru" will stop you in your tracks. Osaruxo's violin could be a rebab or a shamisen, a reed instrument or a voice. Ravishing music.

For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French bassist/vocalist Joëlle Léandre is equally at home playing free or performing works by Cage and Scelsi, while Vinko Globokar is an acclaimed composer as well as a trombonist of monstrous virtuosity. He and British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before a brief stint with Robert Fripp's King Crimson, percussionist Jamie Muir was, with Davies, on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970. Bailey once described playing solo as a "second-rate activity"; while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can, if they're not careful, descend into the musical equivalent of a rugby scrum: dangerous, but thrilling -- listen to what happens when Brötzmann comes barreling into the final track here. Sometimes one instrument takes center stage, as Parker's circular-breathing soprano does at the beginning of "Trio Five", but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere "Trio Three", is just as crucial to the success of the whole. Muir makes sure he doesn't get in the way of Globokar and Parran's leisurely exchanges on "Trio Four", but the trombonist is all over the place on "Trio One" -- transcribe what Globokar does here and it might be the most difficult trombone music ever written -- with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles, after which "Trio Two" is a lighter affair, Parran's flute and Léandre's vocals twittering together while Derek's acoustic twangs merrily along. With a touch of dry Bailey humor, two of the seven tracks aren't trios at all: "Trio Minus One" is his duo with Reijseger, running the gamut from crazed polyrhythmic strumming (imagine Reinhardt and Grappelli playing Schoenberg and Nancarrow simultaneously) to what must be the fastest cello pizzicati ever recorded. And on the closing ecstatic nonet, Brötzmann and trumpeter John Corbett prove that too many cooks don't necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell spice it up.

1978 tune by living reggae legend Lee Perry. "Captive" revealed the continual enslavement of black people in the West, calling for mental and spiritual liberation. The Upsetters dub it on the B-side. Full color vinyl sleeve; Licensed from Lee Scratch Perry; Remastered by Equus; Edition of 500.

Soundway presents two rare, Parang dancefloor cuts from early 1980s Trinidad & Tobago. Parang is a style of folk music that originated from Venezuelan and Colombian immigrants that came to the Caribbean, and evolved to include elements of Latin music, disco and soca -- as is evident in this release. Although traditionally played during the festive season in Trinidad and Tobago, parang music continues to heat up dancefloors all year round. These two in-demand tracks were originally released on the local RH Productions label in Trinidad & Tobago. Fully restored, remastered, and officially licensed -- both are now repressed for the first time on vinyl. A track each from Colleen Grant and Sandra Hamilton. For fans of: Body Beat compilation (SNDW 132CD/LP), Rebles' Sweetest Taboo single (SNDW 12036EP), The Millers' Easing single (SNDW 12037EP), Steve Monite/Tabu Ley Rochereau edits (SNDW 12025EP), Voilaaa, Nu Guinea.

"It's another exciting issue. Legendary rock photographer Chuck Krall (Creem, Rock Scene, Rolling Stone) opened his archive to us including rare and unseen photos from the 1970s (the Ramones, Bo Diddley, Arthur Lee, the Dead Boys, Flamin' Groovies, Link Wray and more), and also shares his remarkable story. We also have feature stories on Florida '60s garage gods We the People, Aussie proto-punk hard rockers Coloured Balls, mercurial blues guitar master Michael Bloomfield, New England '60s teen crazies Rasputin & the Mad Monks, obscure UK new wavers the Kameras, cult private press psych/hard rock band Seiche, and the early Pretty Things remembered by their first manager, Bryan Morrison. And look for our expansive, mind-bending interviews with Cleveland proto-punk legend Craig Bell (Mirrors, Rocket From The Tombs), eccentric pop genius Brute Force, and the late Don Grady (My Three Sons, Yellow Balloon). All this and more, including our eagerly pored over review sections covering the latest reissues and rock-related books."

Mark McGuire takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey through a winter wonderland with his soulful take on holiday favorites. From timeless classics like "Joy to the World" to a gorgeous rendition of Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here", McGuire thrillingly updates these arrangements with his signature psychedelic guitar work. Here, he employs a wide spectrum of sounds and instruments to bring new ideas to these beloved chestnuts. Brimming with joy and festive cheer, Do You Hear What I Hear? is a modern holiday record for all 21st century listeners.

Beyond Space And Time is the new record label from Japanese music festival, Rainbow Disco Club (RDC). This time around, festival regular DJ Nobu kindly opens up his collection and shares the music he loves with everyone. On visual duty is Senekt -- his representational yet contemporary drawing illustrates the emotion that comes from DJ Nobu. DJ Nobu describes ten tracks this way: Laurent Garnier's "Water Planet": Highly respected French DJ/Producer Laurent Garnier has been releasing tracks for decades capturing the very essence of Detroit Techno and Breakbeat. He always manages to create something truly emotional. Mono Junk's "Beyond The Darkness": This track represents the very early days of Techno with it's ravey atmosphere. It has a primitive feel, and the obscure mixdown sounds almost unbalanced. Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia's "The Valley": It was always my intention to include this track in a compilation if I were ever to do one. It has a fat underlying groove, with some indigenous spices thrown in. Melody Boy 2000's "Plenty Of Love": I wanted to include a track that had jacking feel to it -- that is my definition of dance music. This track mixes well in both techno and house DJ sets. Drax Ltd. II's "Amphetamine": This is my all-time favorite track by Thomas P Heckman. It asks questions and strikes down all the boring 'wanna be cool' techno tracks. Dan Curtin's "3rd From The Sun": Curtin's refined synth grooves and bass lines make this a true timeless classic. Front 242's "U-Men": The originator of Electric Body Music. Their husky vocals, hard rhythms and strong synth basslines made the group very popular at the time, and they are still to this present day. The Prince Of Dance Music's "E3 E6 Roll On": This is the track I played the most up until around 2006. It is a genuine house track that cuts through trends in music. Pan Sonic's "Lähetys / Transmission": Electronic music has existed for decades, and if you are to choose some of the best from all scattered and hidden places, Pan Sonic's 'Lähetys / Transmission' must be considered. The track emerges beautifully -- breaking structures and transcending the past. Burial's "Archangel": This track merges melancholic emotions with technological prowess at the highest level, and deeply impacted the dance music scene on its release..."

LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Notorische Reflexe's self-titled release, originally released in 1985 on Rebel Records. Mark Reeder on Notorische Reflexe: "I honestly can't remember the first time I saw Notorische Reflexe perform, but I imagine it was probably at some mad avant-garde experimental event in SO36 or Tempodrom, or somewhere, because those days have become a hazy, crazy mixture of drunken, drug-fueled fragments of memories that have become barricaded in the back of my mind. One thing I do remember, is that their performances were always packed with wild and experimental artistic creativity. They were always extremely entertaining to watch, mixing self-made movies and music at a time when it was not the norm . . . Yet, the Notorische Reflexe were not just a band in the traditional sense, they were a collective of artists, each with a unique talent of their own, which they pooled together to create an experimental experience with every performance. You didn't go to a Notorische Reflexe gig to listen to a collection of their greatest hits, you went to a Notorische Reflexe gig to be enlightened and always, challenged. The '80s were a time of creative liberation . . . It was as if they almost expected you to be weird and the weirder you were, the better and without doubt, Notorische Reflexe certainly fitted that bill. I loved watching them live. They were fun and funny. I sometimes got the impression they were trying to force a square peg into a round hole, like mixing disco with dirge, but that was the whole point of their unconventional presentation. They caused you to consider and query. Each performance was a one-off event never to be repeated. The movies mashed with the music, always in a bizarre setting, with piles of electronic junk as their stage scenery, which became their signature. Ok, the Notorische Reflexe might not be as well-known as Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Tödliche Doris, or Malaria!, but they were as equally important in creating what has meanwhile become known as the Berliner Geniale Dillitanten scene, because it was all the other bands like Notorische Reflexe (or my own band Die Unbekannten), who participated in this experiment, and who were an essential part of the pyramid of bands that supported the main feature and helped to create the Berliner Krankheit."

From the same studio that brought us 48 Chairs (Gerry & The Holograms), The Fall, and The Blue Orchids, while following the bona-fide bloodline between Danny And The Dressmakers, Toolshed, and 808 State, the "difficult second album" by Biting Tongues (released on a minuscule cassette run by The Buzzcocks' vanity label) has since become a near mythical artifact of Mancunian DIY. Cementing the path between the Absurd label's kitchen sink synth assaults and Factory's 99 informed downtown aspirations, Biting Tongues' bass-driven, pounding-sounding, schizo-skronking, squat-pop put the emergence of punk-funk under a blinding interrogation bulb then hid 'round the corner evading secret police. Pouring three letter words like "ESG", "DAF", "PIL", and "ACR" into Ken Hollings Scrabble bag would result in a unique form of wordy dictaphone agit-rap and closed-circuit commentary to Graham Massey's overqualified punk ensemble, laying foundations of future Manc activity using uncertified sand and gravel tactics, only to be safety checked every 38 years, or thereabout. Live It, the lost Biting Tongues album, still breathes. Including what the original members of this pioneering post-punk platoon unanimously consider their greatest work, Biting Tongues seldom-heard, second roll of the dice was presented to The Buzzcock's own label New Hormones to coincide with full-length DIY debuts by Ludus, Dislocation Dance, and a distinct tightening of purse strings. Recorded on half-price studio time (in the midst of a multi-track repair session) and duped on to compact cassettes to keep pressing costs down, the album Live It even entirely bypassed the non-existent art-department before landing in the hands of a small readership of peculiar-punk die-hards, instantly slipping into obscurity, evading official band future discographies, and reaching an imaginary status in the history of unchartered Manc-manufactured messthetics. Now available, on vinyl, with two sleeve variations and extensive notes from Graham Massey and Ken Hollings, Live It is a welcome misplaced release and an essential addition to Finders Keepers' Cache Cache catalog. Biting Tongues make wise heads!

"Proud we are to reissue the final piece of Willie Lane's original Cord-Art LP trilogy. It was recorded in various spots throughout Western Mass, in the years following the release of Guitar Army of One. Initially issued in 2016, in an edition of 350, this lovely session disappeared into the fog of the forest before most folks were able to catch its scent. Now it has re-emerged with re-interpreted cover art by Max Milgram, and sonics we think will please even the most finicky listener. A Pine Tree Shilling's Worth is my personal fave of Willie's first three Cord-Art LPs. It has a hazily unstoppable flow, incorporating elements of American Primitive and Bay Area Ballroom-era string greats in equal measure. Mostly played on electric (although there are some acoustic overdubs), the music manages to be abstract and melodic at the same time, with individual lines splanging off in oddball directions, then reasserting their formal qualities inside a single musical breath. The specific quotes that exist inside the playing are crafty, episodic and display a strange syncretic streak. A nice example of this is the sprawling track, 'New Arrivals,' on the first side. Lane manages to obliquely reference both John Fahey's improvisations for the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni's film, Zabriskie Point (1970), as well as Jerry Garcia's work that was used in place of the bulk of Fahey's music after he and the director had a savage falling out. Willie reconciles their differing approaches to blues architecture with mighty slide playing and sheer dint of will. Rumors are currently swirling that Willie's next Cord-Art release will have vocals, so this three pack of instrumental genius may well be the primary documentation of one phase of this maestro's aesthetic trajectory. Hope you've got them all." --Byron Coley, 2019

RSD Black Friday 2019 release. "Miles Davis was on the verge of forming one of his most acclaimed ensembles in 1964. It was this year that he travelled to perform in Japan for the first time, bringing with him 3/4ths of the musicians that would form his famed 'second great quartet'; Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on double bass, and Tony Williams on drums. In addition the jazz legend brought along saxophonist Sam Rivers to replace the recently exited George Coleman, who was primarily a free jazz musician, but had a long and extensive background in bebop. Davis and Rivers never developed any major chemistry between each other during the trip, and frequently found their distinct styles (Davis' cool and subdued traditional bop style contrasting with Rivers' wild but controlled avant-garde wandering) frequently clashing (or perhaps duelling) in their performances. But for all Davis and Rivers might not have meshed together, the crowd at Tokyo's Kohseinenkin Hall enjoyed it immensely. Davis himself reserved a special kind of respect and admiration for his Japanese audience as well, temporarily dropping his habit of exiting the stage during his fellow musicians' solos. Rivers would ultimately be dismissed from the group at the end of their trip, leading to the arrival of Wayne Shorter, and the inception of the 'second great quartet.' The partnership of Miles Davis and Sam Rivers may have been short-lived, but it did produce the live album Miles In Tokyo nearly five years later. The record is a rare jewel in Miles Davis' discography, featuring high-energy live versions of songs by Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, and Richard Carpenter, as well as a restlessly fast-paced take on the Davis staple 'So What'. This collection has previously only been available in Japan, but is now presented on vinyl for the first time in America by Get On Down, just in time for Black Friday Record Store Day. Miles In Tokyo is a must-have for completionists of free jazz, bop, and avant-garde alike."