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CD
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TOM 134CD
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"Six years after the release of his previous album Landau, Toronto's Chris A. Cummings, a.k.a. Mantler, is set to releases his highly anticipated fourth album Monody." "Cummings' feather-light vocals and lush instrumentation recall Timber Timbre, though in a more distinctively upbeat way. The disco beats ('Fresh and Fair') and Isaac Hayes-style horn-and-string arrangements give the music a slight 1970s AM radio colouring." -- Eye Weekly
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12"
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TOM 136EP
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"Judy At The Grove is a pop record of a different order, transcending any expectations of what 'indie' music should sound like. Pristine production values, bonkers arrangements, and a star-studded list of talented guest musicians all prove that No Kids are onto some next level shit. Every track on Judy At The Grove points to a ingenuity, maturity, and clarity of vision that lifts No Kids heads and shoulders above their contemporaries."
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TOM 125CD
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"Blackbird's Echo is the title of the fifth full length album by Cologne, Germany based Niobe, recorded and produced at Studio G by Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Home & Garden) in Brooklyn, New York with Aki Onda, Brooklyn, New York acting as guest producer and collaborations with David Grubbs, DJ Olive."
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CD
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TOM 127CD
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"From Kraftwerk to Leonard Cohen, The Smiths to Suicide, and Pet Shop Boys to Smog, Chicago's one-man musical army Own Ashworth -- aka Casiotone For The Painfully Alone -- has been bracketed with all manner of illustrious names in the course of his eleven year career. But in collecting the 7-inch split-singles and compilation tracks he released from 2004-7 (all but two of them on CD for the first time), Advance Base Battery Life provides compelling evidence of the singular nature of this industrious film-school dropout's talent."
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CD
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TOM 128CD
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"Hot on the heels of the recently released singles and rarities compilation Advance Base Battery Life comes Vs. Children, the fifth album proper by Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. Vs. Children continues the trajectory of 2006's Etiquette, which showed singer/songwriter Owen Ashworth straying from the strictly electronic instrumentation of his earlier recordings."
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CD
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TOM 108CD
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"Come Into My House is the first release by Vancouver, Canada trio No Kids, which is comprised of three-quarters of the critically revered pop band P:ANO. Come Into My House achieves an unexpected cohesiveness despite the wide range of musical styles over its 12 tracks. Golden era Hollywood musicals, Jam & Lewis-inspired production techniques, the icy displacement of contemporary R'n'B, and the breadth of Arthur Russell, disco, pop, and avant garde compositional work are referenced and married together by novelistic narrative strains, a lush instrumental palette, and a cinematic atmosphere."
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7"
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TOM 109EP
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"The A-side, 'Wedding' defines Munch Munch's sound. With prominent synth similar to Of Montreal, and the distinct vocals of Klaxons, this track is a piece of raucous DIY charm. Complex drums and synth move in to a jingle pop ditty with 'Endolphins.' Like Architecture In Helsinki, Munch Munch are able to blend funk elements into the proceedings, making this track easy for every stripe of listener to enjoy. It is as hypnotic as Steve Reich-esque patterns play counterpoint to old school Neptunes style breakdowns. The end to this delectable slice of musical initiative is 'Wet Nightmare' -- the shortest track on the single, but by no means the least noteworthy. Like a Christmas song on speed, it grabs your attention and holds you tight, ending in a crescendo of frantic gusto. Recording frantic pop explosions in their bedrooms, they mix abstract lyrics, unpredictable structures, and ecstatic playfulness into a unique sound that appears to be the start of a fruitful career."
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CD
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TOM 102CD
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"Misha are Ashley Yao and John Chao. The two have crossed paths since their childhood days in Taipei, but each time, circumstances caused them to move, wandering the world (here in Hong Kong, there in Paris) until they met again after college in New York. Two years after their debut on the highly respected Alphabet-Singles-Series on Tomlab, the Asian/American duo now present their first longplayer Teardrop Sweetheart, a cycle of happy/sad love songs with a new take on an old pleasure: the classic pop album. Walking the line between traditional songwriting and modern music making, settings of grandeur and intimate doubts, Ash and John make little big things, imagining a dimestore Joseph Cornell, and Buster Keaton with holes in his shoes."
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LP
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TOM 098LP
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LP
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TOM 096LP
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CD
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TOM 072CD
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"With White Hats Niobe has recorded her most accessible album since Tse Tse and Voodooluba. White Hats projects memories from a vacation of skiing in the Swiss Alps sometime in the '50s, it bears the easiness, the miracles and mysteries of nature in the mountains and carries as much romanticism as today's modern world can allow. Niobe has shaped White Hats with a great variety of sound colorings and associations that illustrate her amazing ease of travelling through the last 8 decades of songwriting and chanson highlights. Niobe's songs are starting to breathe through the uniqueness of her voice that transmits all her emotional variety we already had discovered by surprise in her early cut-up work on her debut album Radioersatz (even through the thickest walls of sound). On White Hats, Niobe's passionate voice wanders between many worlds, marching through picturesque landscapes, and releasing its amazing powers over crystalline guitars. She uses the feelings from the sight of the red and blue skies of a day in the mountains as determining colors in her music. There is a red disturbing side and a blue soothing side to Niobe's voice and both intertwined they can guide the lost folks out of the sudden darkness in the mountains into the secure refuge. Very different from her previous albums, the new songs are always very optimistic. The experience she gained from the vocal contributions to the house tracks for Mouse on Mars' last record Radical Connector can be clearly discerned on this record."
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CD
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TOM 021CD
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"CFTPA is songs made up, sung and played by Owen Ashworth. His first release on Tomlab under the title Pocket Symphonies for Lonesome Subway Cars has gained a lot of attention in the alternative press with an endless list of references ranging from Moldy Peaches, Mountain Goats, Smog, Silver Jews, Young Marble Giants to Will Oldham. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone's self released debut album, Answering Machine Music that has been hard to find previously is now available in an expanded version. A series of musical answering machine messages disguised as pop songs. Recorded in 1999 on 4-tracks, answering machines, and boom boxes and played entirely on swap meet and thrift store bought miniature keyboards, it just may be the best battery-powered pop record you've ever heard."
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LP
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TOM 021LP
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LP
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TOM 018LP
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LP version. "The man behind Flim is Enrico Wuttke, a new artist from Dresden, Germany who has been working all quietly over the past years in his home recording studio to develop his unique sound. His debut CD Given you nothing surprised us very much because it is somehow pointing back to the very first Tomlab release Visor -- both with evident references to Talk Talk's Laughing Stock album. Given you nothing is a very playful, warm and acoustic sounding release, far away from the bespoken Visor CD and hard to compare to anything around. It maybe transports feelings that are close to the wonderful Wechsel Garland release on Morr Music but sound wise it is much more centered on organ and piano as well as guitar sounds that sometimes remind us of Fridge."
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CD
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TOM 019CD
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"Having completed Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance, I found myself drawing a continuous line going back in time some 15 years. These early pieces are at the other end of that line. At the time of recording them, I was far from dreaming I would ever release records at all. I found them of little value then, but under the light of all my following works, from 'Sound Mind Sound Body' through 'Wave Field' and 'Cyclorama Lift' to 'Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance', they stand out as having paved the way for all this music." --Rafael Toral, December 2001
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CD
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TOM 011CD
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"Aerons Bergman says: this is a sci-fi tale meant to be enjoyed by a fireside on a cold winter sunday afternoon. The sun sets and soon leaves the window pane dark blue. Wrap a knit quilt around yourself (and a loved one), sit back with a cup of your favorite hot drink, and let this story wrap its lazy electricity around you. Tom says: These are the most beautiful electronic sounds I have heard in a long long time thoughtfully arranged from the first to the last second. It leaves a long gap between improvised laptop sounds and advanced DSP based composition techniques. It even managed to slip into my dreams where I was looking from the safe spot down from the mountains where the fires are (terrible fight track) -- it all seemed so real -- perfect cinemascope format!" Limited stock.
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CD
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TOM 010CD
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"JÜrgen De Blonde is known as the man behind the project Köhn, an electronica-bedroom-project with two CD releases on the belgian (K-RAA-K)3 label, filled with a lot of weird skippings and bleeps. On Hidden Rabbit he is experimenting with beats and melodies like he is born to do nothing other than that. Wonderful guitars and vocals break down the barriers between hi-tech-electronica and songs. His sound library shows fidelity to the Köhn project but the vocals and guitars bring more familiar facets into the sound spectrum and if you listen closely, you'll discover real pop music."
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CD
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TOM 006CD
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Mass-market version of what was previously a limited CDR Christmas giveaway CD. "On For Friends, Harald is playing his horn for a very melancholic intro, Köhn pays his guitar to the first drum computer on earth that always was and always will be his best friend, Zammuto makes everything so quiet that you can hear the atmosphere's breathing with the last broken melodies that may exist, Kristian Peters is looking for resonance in the depth of his loops, and Blumm makes a break to his organ lessons for the first breakfast in the new century, Jon Sheffield goes to picnic, and Alejandra & Underwood are looking for presents on their hard disc with cryptic codes." Artists include: Harald Sack Ziegler, Köhn, Zammuto, Kristian Peters, Sack & Blumm, Jon Sheffield, Alejandra & Underwood. Limited stock.
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