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CD
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AUK 050B-CD
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CD version. Alternate cover. Anton Newcombe -- frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father, force of nature -- returns with the Brian Jonestown Massacre's 20th full-length studio album Your Future Is Your Past on his own label A Recordings. The lead track Fudge was released on 30th September. It is 30 years since the release of their first single "She Made Me / Evergreen", released in 1992. As leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Newcombe had already established himself as a visionary songwriter, a man to whom making music wasn't a lifestyle choice or a hipster haircut but the very fabric of existence itself. Instead of saying yes to everything like many of his peers Anton Newcombe was different. He was going to say no to everything. Much of this was documented on the controversial documentary Dig!, one of the best rock documentaries ever made. Brian Jonestown Massacre's shoegazing-tinged debut album Methodrone (AUK 008CD/LP) was released in 1995 and since then numerous bandmembers have joined Newcombe on his sonic escapades, but he has remained the sole constant and creative mastermind. There have been a further 19 albums under the Brian Jonestown Massacre moniker since then, 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. Along the way, Newcombe has established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime talent who saw the direction in which mainstream indie-rock was heading and opted to take the long way round. He's hopped around the globe, from the West Coast to New York, from Manhattan to Iceland, and then to Berlin, where he's lived for 14 years and has two flats, one to live in and one that's been converted into his studio. He goes there six days a week to work and write and record and produce. After a hugely prolific 2010s that saw the release of eight long-players and one mini-album, Newcombe had been going through a period of writer's block when one day he picked up his 12-string guitar and "The Real" (the opening track on previous album Fire Doesn't Grow on Trees) came out of him. After that, they tracked a song every day for 70 days and had two albums ready to go by the end. Joining Newcombe in the studio for The Future Is Your Past were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar) and Uri Rennert (drums).
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AUK 050CD
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Anton Newcombe -- frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father, force of nature -- returns with the Brian Jonestown Massacre's 20th full-length studio album Your Future Is Your Past on his own label A Recordings. The lead track Fudge was released on 30th September. It is 30 years since the release of their first single "She Made Me / Evergreen", released in 1992. As leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Newcombe had already established himself as a visionary songwriter, a man to whom making music wasn't a lifestyle choice or a hipster haircut but the very fabric of existence itself. Instead of saying yes to everything like many of his peers Anton Newcombe was different. He was going to say no to everything. Much of this was documented on the controversial documentary Dig!, one of the best rock documentaries ever made. Brian Jonestown Massacre's shoegazing-tinged debut album Methodrone (AUK 008CD/LP) was released in 1995 and since then numerous bandmembers have joined Newcombe on his sonic escapades, but he has remained the sole constant and creative mastermind. There have been a further 19 albums under the Brian Jonestown Massacre moniker since then, 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. Along the way, Newcombe has established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime talent who saw the direction in which mainstream indie-rock was heading and opted to take the long way round. He's hopped around the globe, from the West Coast to New York, from Manhattan to Iceland, and then to Berlin, where he's lived for 14 years and has two flats, one to live in and one that's been converted into his studio. He goes there six days a week to work and write and record and produce. After a hugely prolific 2010s that saw the release of eight long-players and one mini-album, Newcombe had been going through a period of writer's block when one day he picked up his 12-string guitar and "The Real" (the opening track on previous album Fire Doesn't Grow on Trees) came out of him. After that, they tracked a song every day for 70 days and had two albums ready to go by the end. Joining Newcombe in the studio for The Future Is Your Past were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar) and Uri Rennert (drums).
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AUK 050LP
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LP version. Clear 180 gram vinyl; includes six color pencils to color album cover.. Anton Newcombe -- frontman, songwriter, composer, studio owner, multi-instrumentalist, producer, engineer, father, force of nature -- returns with the Brian Jonestown Massacre's 20th full-length studio album Your Future Is Your Past on his own label A Recordings. The lead track Fudge was released on 30th September. It is 30 years since the release of their first single "She Made Me / Evergreen", released in 1992. As leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Newcombe had already established himself as a visionary songwriter, a man to whom making music wasn't a lifestyle choice or a hipster haircut but the very fabric of existence itself. Instead of saying yes to everything like many of his peers Anton Newcombe was different. He was going to say no to everything. Much of this was documented on the controversial documentary Dig!, one of the best rock documentaries ever made. Brian Jonestown Massacre's shoegazing-tinged debut album Methodrone (AUK 008CD/LP) was released in 1995 and since then numerous bandmembers have joined Newcombe on his sonic escapades, but he has remained the sole constant and creative mastermind. There have been a further 19 albums under the Brian Jonestown Massacre moniker since then, 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. Along the way, Newcombe has established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime talent who saw the direction in which mainstream indie-rock was heading and opted to take the long way round. He's hopped around the globe, from the West Coast to New York, from Manhattan to Iceland, and then to Berlin, where he's lived for 14 years and has two flats, one to live in and one that's been converted into his studio. He goes there six days a week to work and write and record and produce. After a hugely prolific 2010s that saw the release of eight long-players and one mini-album, Newcombe had been going through a period of writer's block when one day he picked up his 12-string guitar and "The Real" (the opening track on previous album Fire Doesn't Grow on Trees) came out of him. After that, they tracked a song every day for 70 days and had two albums ready to go by the end. Joining Newcombe in the studio for The Future Is Your Past were Hakon Adalsteinsson (guitar) and Uri Rennert (drums).
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AKU 1039LP
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The cabalistic duo Ak'chamel strikes again with a second record called A Mournful Kingdom of Sand. Following the publicly and critically acclaimed The Totemist (AKU 1023LP) released in 2020, this album sucks the listener into another esoteric journey which -- according to the band -- is a perfect soundtrack for the desertification of our world. Ak'chamel, The Giver of Illness is an enigmatic duo from a border state. Fourth World Post-Colonial Cultural Cannibalists Circumcising The Foreskin of Enlightenment. Performing in homemade costumes and masks, they have played festivals in various cities around the US gaining international attention from Vice, the Wire, Tiny Mix Tapes, Consequence of Sound, and many more. They have amassed over ten cassette albums and one VHS full-length film. Reverse cardboard sleeve; includes printed inner; edition of 500.
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AKU 1040LP
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Akuphone present the Jerusalem-based improvisational trio Leviot and its hypnotizing debut album Sharav. Leviot (Hebrew for "Lionesses") is the brainchild of the multifaceted musician and composer Yael Lavie. She is accompanied by classically trained percussionist and music teacher Cnaan Canetti, and synth enthusiast Yishay Seroussi. The project is a result of Lavie's explorations beyond the restraints of classical kanun and her fascination for electronic sounds and modern composition. The project initially started after Yael performed and recorded with the Spiritczualic Enhancement Center. With Leviot, she favors improvised sets over rehearsed pieces, revolving around virtuous interpretations by Cnaan and Yishay. The three musicians have been active since 2019, playing their immersive shows in a wide variety of settings, venues and festivals. The trio's debut release is a live session recorded in late 2020 at the Mazkeka Studios (Jerusalem), for the lockdown edition of the annual Zikuk Festival. It's a meditative improvised piece in five parts that melts boundaries between traditional and experimental music, combining primal and futuristic sounds. Lavie's graphic melodies are a road map for the piece, as Leviot takes off on a cosmic journey with deep drones, whispering chimes, mesmerizing Arab melodies, pulsating rhythms and iridescent ambient patterns. Reverse cardboard sleeve; includes printed inner; edition of 500.
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CD
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AKU 1041CD
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Eka Faune offers a surprising mix of Asian cultures, shamanism and post-punk in the form of a record called Healing of the Nation. The band merges dark mantras, hypnotic rhythms, ethnic samples and the acid sounds of Seika Faune. Delphine Poupard's voice and Robin Plastre's sax are added to produce a haunting music, dark and luminous at the same time, alternating dance and trance, taking the listener far inside... Similarly, to the other albums by Eka Faune, Seika first recorded his drums and sounds machines as well as his sampler-sequencer in one take. Then he added the instruments and voices. Sax, bass, sarod, tambourine, and vocals accompany loops captured on the streets of Delhi, the mountains of Asia or old acid house vinyl. Eka Faune is a musical project based in Nantes, France, initiated in 2014 by the artist Guyseika. The project evolves under the influence of guitarists, cellists, singers, or dancers who join the band for a concert, a recording, a tour -- or more. Over the years, Amélie from Breedz Insane, Steph from Modules Étranges, Budwarrior, or Vincent Roy, have taken part in the project. Recorded in 2021, the album Healing of the Nation is a deeply thought-out answer to the crisis we are all going through. It offers a way to heal from it: sounds coming straight out of a feverish cave located between the Himalayas and Detroit bewitch us into quite a trip.
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LP
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FOX 018LP
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2023 restock; Japanese experimental group Les Rallizes Denudes are the ultimate rock 'n' roll enigma. Sometimes referred to as Hadaka no Rallizes or even as Hadaka no Rarizu, each appellation a variant of the name "Fucked Up and Naked", which equates to being high on hard drugs, they are seen as noise-rock pioneers, yet sifting fact from fiction isn't easy with their oddball tale. Emerging from the radical hippie communes of Kyoto during the late 1960s, the band was formed in November 1967 by university student Takashi Mizutani, taking the overamplified, distorted guitar of the Velvet Underground as a starting point. Early demo recordings apparently suffered from poor sound quality, leading the perfectionist Mizutani to retreat from the studio environment, meaning that most of the group's output has appeared as live bootlegs, with the occasional studio demo surfacing as well. Performances were initially staged as part of avant-garde theatre, though the band's propensity for super-loud noise soon put paid to such collaboration; the ever-changing membership saw Mizutani the only permanent force, despite his embroilment in the 1970 Red Army hijacking of a civilian Japan Airlines flight, enacted partly through bass player, Moriaki Wakabayashi, who defected to North Korea in its aftermath. Though perhaps not quite as notorious, fellow improvisational group, Taj Mahal Travellers, has a backstory of random international travels that is almost as intriguing as that of Les Rallizes; formed in 1969 by six experimental musicians and an electronic engineer, they embarked on a series of improvisational gigs across Japan, notably including an all-day marathon held at a Kanagawa beach, and made their way to Europe in 1971, where they crossed paths with Don Cherry and other like-minded practitioners. They later drove from Holland to the Pakistan border, acquiring santoors in Iran on the way to help broaden their already unpredictable repertoire. The OZ Days Live release is culled from the OZ Last Days festival held in the autumn of 1973, to benefit Tokyo's OZ Rock Café, which had been closed following repeated drug busts. Here the Taj Mahal Travellers are suitably cosmic, their echoing jams featuring looped vocal chants, disjointed string instruments and sparse, off-kilter percussion; in contrast, the contributions from Les Rallizes are more standard examples of instrumental psychedelic rock, which veers more towards the acid rock end of the spectrum as the performance progresses.
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Cassette
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SAUNA 073CS
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Shared System is Tony Rolando's 2021 entry into the Make Noise Shared System series of releases that included Richard Devine, Alessandro Cortini, Robert AA Lowe, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Surachai. Despite the limited instrumentation, this Shared System cassette is another collection of Tony Rolando's work that is familiar yet unique, catchy and is hard to stop listening to. Back in 2008, Tony Rolando was demonstrating modular synthesizers to anybody who would listen. A few folks were wildly curious -- most people asked, "How do you make music with that thing?" Tony's lonesome journey into the vacant landscape of analog electronic music was like being reborn. He wanted people to understand and experience riding these electrical currents of music for themselves. In order to do so, he needed to convince them that the seemingly primitive analog modular synthesizer was a musical instrument capable of amplifying an artist's unique voice. Around 2010, outside the Empty Bottle with the artist Surachai, he surmised that sending a singular, modular synthesizer to five artists to record two tracks live would highlight unique results-illustrating the capabilities of the modular synthesizer as an instrument and the artists' distinct voices. Here is the original text that accompanied the release of these five records from Richard Devine, Alessandro Cortini, Robert AA Lowe, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Surachai: "The Shared System series compiles the separate recordings of several artists utilizing the same electronic musical instrument, the Shared System. At times it feels as though electronic music has become an overly automated form driven by simplified genre specific apps and software. What happens when the signal path is not pre-defined or optimized for a popular result? The Shared System is a modular synthesizer developed by Make Noise. It has no pre-determined signal path, and is not designed for any particular musical destination. In limiting the artists to this one instrument, we hope the Shared System series of records will purely illustrate the intentions of the artists."
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4LP
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COMP 515LP
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2023 restock; 4LP version. Future Sounds Of Jazz Vol. 14, compiled by Permanent Vacation's Benjamin Fröhlich and Tom Bioly. 28 tracks by Move D, Roman Flügel, Slowdive, Isolée, Cobblestone Jazz, Luke Abbott, remixes by Avalon Emerson, Russ Gabriel, Kassem Mosse, I:Cube, among others, including three exclusive and previously unreleased tracks. Wow, a new chapter of this legendary series. This and the very first time it's not compiled by Michael Reinboth, rather by Benjamin Fröhlich and Tom Bioly, the founders and masterminds behind Permanent Vacation. Why- Simply because they both are very close friends of the Compost family, with an amazing musical and DJ-like tastefulness, with the knowledge-based trust of music in the vein of vibrant, jazzy electronica hybrids. And they are from Compost Records' hometown Munich, too. Maybe Volume 14 differs slightly to what the previous 13 brought up music-wise, but that's the score, idea, and open-mindedness of this series, as it was by the compilers, and last but not least a great time for a change, too. The first half of the release, compiled by Benjamin Fröhlich, is clubbier. The second half, compiled by Tom Bioly, is a bit more sublime downbeat/electronica or relaxed feel. Both are true listening pleasure anyway. Future Sounds Of Jazz has been voted as one of the best compilation series of all time by several publications. With this series, starting in 1995, the term "future jazz" became a genre landmark. Also features: Basil Hardhaus, JTC, The Abstract Eye, Tee Mango, Marvin Horsch, Matt O'Brien, Aubrey, Marcellus Pittman, Herzel, David Goldberg, Benjamin Fröhlich, Claude Rodap, Jose Padilla, Jex Opolis, Pierre Bastien, Vanishing Twin, Yussef Kamaal, Machine Woman, The Stowaway, New Jackson, Albinos, Sirconical, and TB.
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CD
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CPT 605CD
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Felix Laband's The Soft White Hand is the masterwork of an artist who expresses himself through musical and artistic collage acting together to reinterpret his sources and to express significant elements of his own personal story. Released by Munich-based Compost Records, the 14-track album is Laband's first full-length offering since the critically acclaimed Deaf Safari in 2015 (COMP 470CD/LP). In The Soft White Hand, Laband works with source materials that will be familiar to those who know his previous four records. However, the disengagement he felt from his homeland during his latest album's creation -- an abiding sense of untethered-ness to place and space, exquisitely rendered in tracks like "Death of a Migrant" -- is perceptible in Laband's desire to illuminate instead aspects of his own life. Few artists have managed to air these intimate aspects of their life so luminously as Laband does in tracks like "5 Seconds Ago", "They Call Me Shorty", and in the strange and meditative "Dreams Of Loneliness". Yet, as in all of Laband's recorded output, the delineations between emotions are never starkly drawn and The Soft White Hand is also shot through with beauty. Nature appears in recordings made in his garden in the intimate early morning hours, whether as in the calls of the Hadada Ibis and other birdsong in "Prelude" or of the vertical-tail-cocking bird in "Derek And Me". The last is a wonderful track with Derek Gripper, the South African experimental classical guitarist of international renown, whose 2020 song "Fanta And Felix" imagines a meeting between Fanta Sacko and Laband. Laband's eloquence in reinterpreting classical composers such as Beethoven in "We Know Major Tom's A Junkie" is another thrilling aspect of the new record. A fresh quality comes to his work through this sonic adventuring: the tender manipulation of the mundaneness of the computer's AI voice to reimagine and reinvent iconic lyrics and melodies in strange and unexpected configurations. The Soft White Hand is Laband's most cohesive body of work to date. Yet it remains, in its sheer artistic scope, impossible to describe fully. Darkness abuts the gossamer light. His music reflects a primal artistic impulse that is also visible in Laband's considerable visual art output as seen in several solo exhibitions. With The Soft White Hand, Laband is confirming his singular ability to achieve this in both art and music, melting the divisions between the two creative disciplines until they become one.
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2LP
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CODIS 025LP
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2023 repress. For 12 years, Compost Disco provide a massive package of 15 exclusive, previously unreleased tracks. A brilliant cocktail of disco-ish tunes by Dimitri From Paris and DJ Rocca, AN-2, Mark E, Ed Lee, Manuel Tur, Chocolate Garage Production, Velmondo, Ron Deacon, and some other suspect alter egos. Destined for the sunset crew, for the hip shaking, for the gym, for those, who are open minded with disco anyways, for more parties, last but not least for salvation. The variety range across the floor from boogie, Italo, new wave, classic soulful, Balearic, neo-disco, house-y, downbeat, fusion, garage, to tech disco. Tasty, hypnotizing, and emotional. A big shout-out, respect and thanks goes to Benjamin Röder, who does all the fantastic artwork for the 25 Compost Disco releases. Also features Alison David, Moodorama, Sharp 9, Priorat, Jonny Spencer, Kovi, Imperial Porcelain, and Grosso Modo.
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LP
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DC 050LP
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2023 repress. Originally released in 1994. "Letter from a young city. Population: one." "When I first heard Days In the Wake, my tenure as a member of the Revolting Cocks & Ministry had recently ended, a good six or seven years of round-the-clock recording, cutting edge technology and larger-than-life touring productions. Days In the Wake was -- amongst many things -- the record that told me my heart truly was not in it, and that I was severely marginalizing my creativity. The album showed me a very raw, naked creative soul at work undisturbed, it was like being allowed to walk through many doors into an inner sanctum where the creative process happens in absolute solitude. I found it both unnerving and beautiful at the same time. I had no idea who Palace Brothers were or are, and who the boy shrouded in shadows on the cover was, this served only to leave the songs even more stark, uninhibited by the listeners own idea of the singer's personality. I still hold this album in the highest esteem (although, all of Will Oldham's subsequent albums have been treasures in their own exclusive right) and consider it one of my 'tools', something I can go back to for inspiration, which to me is one of the rarest of gifts. I could go on in detail about the merits of each song, likening them to a roomful of Picasso's sketches, but that may require a small book! Suffice to say, if you do not have this record, or have not spent a good deal of time becoming intimate with it, you are doing yourself a disservice!" --Chris Connelly, January 2010
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DC 055LP
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2023 repress. Originally released in 1994. "Employees must pray for the franchise before returning to work. Dedicated to waitresses around the world." "Starlite Walker was an Oxford, Mississippi record. David resided on the outskirts of town at the time. He was renting a tiny building that was part of a professor's chemistry lab in the woods. He paid $100 a month. It was mildly suspicious. Stephen and I went there to rehearse for about five days. Oxford is a beautiful town. There are lots of beautiful people. We were well. Peaking physically. We built songs around David's words. David had just about all of his lyrics written down in a notebook. When we were 70% ready, we headed up to Easley Studios in Memphis (which burned to the ground a few years ago). Doug and Davis were ready for us. They were cool and it was welcoming. Steve West joined us on the songs that we needed a 'real' drummer. I just wasn't good enough. It didn't bother me. I was proud of my drums on 'Trains Across The Sea' and my Moog on 'New Orleans.' We didn't have any significant problems recording and it turned out well. Our host Sherman Willmott (we stayed above his record shop in a small apartment) did a marvelous job of keeping barbecue sauce on our faces the whole time. I gained six pounds. Upon completing Starlite Walker, Silver Jews felt like a band instead of a project. We became formidable." --Bob Nastanovich (2/7/11, Des Moines, Iowa)
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DC 060LP
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2023 repress. Originally released in 1995. "What you remember: the upside-down crosses on your girlfriend's jean jacket. Always drawn with magic marker. Always smeared in the wash."
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DC 663LP
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2023 repress. "Drag City, Inc. is pleased to announce the solo debut full length from Wand's Cory Hanson. The Unborn Capitalist from Limbo was recorded during May of 2016 in various locations across Los Angeles County, and features string arrangements by Heather Lockie. It came on as a panic, a car wreck, shivering and sudden liquefaction . . . It's a small and simple thing, just longer than a half hour of recorded music. Dressed in garlands of inherited words. Modest pools of rainwater punctuating the young volcanic expanse, marbled with fuel slicks. The Unborn Capitalist is a secret that didn't need to be kept -- conceived of and executed while a droughted Southern California autumn became a droughted winter, became a droughted spring, rolled on toward a broiling summer. It marks the disintegration of a long and dear coupling. It marks a domestic rhythm traded for a touring circuit, for these shrinking obsessions and all their shadowy company. You turn the topsoil of an ordinary childhood pocked by its needling wounds, you compost it with the dead leavings of your meals, you try to make new space for the promise of seedlings. You move back in with your mom. You wake up each day and let the pets out to sniff around and stalk insects back and forth across the fenced-in yard. Accordingly, records like this accumulate. Life calls for music, for lyric, and if you can somehow handle them without needing to possess them, they echo back again as life, vital in its total excess. Hanson's lyrics here are his best to date. By turns naked, leering, playful, evasive, they present a mute, parading statuary -- doughy figures waltzing in doomed configurations through bleeding watercolor backdrops across terrains of tangled information. The music is gorgeous and livable. Every surface threatens with the promise of an untold depth; every depth threatens to collapse into a surface. Every place you ply a solution turns out to be an intractable edge. You go looking for the soul, but there is no soul -- just the things you had to lift to look behind. Children of Limbo, we are gathered here around a floor lamp, a darkening purple desert stretching out in every direction."
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DC 673LP
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2023 repress. "Plum is Wand's fourth LP since the band formed in late 2013 but their first new album in two years. After a whirlwind initial phase of writing, recording, and touring at a frenetic clip, their newest document marks a period of relative patience; a refocusing and a push toward a new democratization of both process and musical surface. In late winter of 2016, the band expanded their core membership of Evan Burrows, Cory Hanson, and Lee Landey to include two new members -- Robbie Cody on guitar and Sofia Arreguin on keys and vocals. From the outset, the new ensemble moved naturally toward a changed working method, as they learned how to listen to each other and trust in this new format. The songwriting process was consciously relocated to the practice space, where for several months, the band spent hours a day freely improvising, while recording as much of the activity as they could manage. Previously, Wand songs had generally been brought to the group setting substantially formed by singer and guitarist Cory Hanson; now seedling songs were harvested from a growing cloudbank of archived material, then fleshed out and negotiated collectively as the band shifted rhythmically between the permissive space of jamming and the obsessive space of critique. This new process demanded more honest communication, more vulnerability, better boundaries, more mercy and persistence during a year that meanwhile delivered a heaping serving of romantic, familial and political heartbreak for everyone involved. They learned more about their instruments and their perceived limitations. Much else fell apart in their personal lives, in their bodies, and the bodies of those near to them. In this way, Plum lengthened like a shadow underneath a dusking Orange; or rather 'Weird Orange,' an affectionate name given to the color of a roulette-chosen, tour-rushed batch of Golem vinyl... an idiom, an inside joke, a talisman, a bookmark, a mood ring. And meanwhile all the shifting weather, the wireless signals, the helicopters overhead. Weird orange softened, darkened delicately, and rouged itself to a Plum. The music of Plum focuses teeming, dense, at times wildly multichromatic sounds into Wand's most deliberate statement to date, with a long evening's shadow of loss and longing hovering above the proceedings. Plum delicately locates the band's tangent of escape from the warm and comfortable shallows of genre anachronism, an eyes-closed, mouth-open leap toward a more free-associative and contemporary logic of pastiche that more honestly reflects the ravenous musical omnivorousness of the five people who wrote and played it."
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EPR 012LP
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2023 repress. Papir is an instrumental trio from Copenhagen, Denmark. They've created their own unique type of semi-improvised psychedelic rock by mixing together new and old, heaviness and atmosphere, freedom and power. By now, they have become masters of their craft, and this, their third album, earns them a spot in the absolute elite of the current European psychedelic rock scene. Everyone who has been lucky enough to catch the band live know what a reverence-inducing experience their energetic, adventurous explorations can be. Papir don't just reach back to the bygone golden era of psychedelic rock and electric jazz like so many others do -- they transcend it. Their music sounds vital and fresh. These guys are certainly on their own path and Papir III is their most fully-realized album to date, it encompasses everything the band represents in a single piece of heavy vinyl -- from explosive, guitar-solo-driven peaks through motorik Krautrock grooves to peaceful and atmospheric soundscapes. Like its predecessor, the album was recorded during a single intense week and produced by Jonas Munk (Causa Sui), capturing the band in the midst of their creative prime.
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LP
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ETAT 016LP
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"Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground musicians. LAFMS primarily reached outside Los Angeles via word-of-mouth and the United States Postal Service, foreshadowing the self-publishing and cassette trading networks of post-punk and industrial subcultures. In 1976, Joe Potts solicited recordings from LAFMS affiliates and admirers to edit and compile I.D. Art #2, utilizing correspondence art's technique of 'assemblings.' (The first installment in this series was a magazine, and the third was a coloring book.) Potts received dozens of pieces by members of Le Forte Four, Doo-Dooettes, Smegma and Ace & Duce as well as painters, filmmakers and non-artists with few recording credits to their name, creating a delirious, winking sound-art collage of field recordings, voicemails and improvisations. Participants purchased time on the record and received one copy each of the finished LP, realizing the philosophy contained in LAFMS' motto: 'The music is free, but you have to pay for the plastic, paper, ink, glue and stamps.' This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with insert."
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2LP
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ETAT 017LP
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"Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground musicians. Live At The Brand documents the second performance of newly formed LAFMS core groups Le Forte Four and Doo-Dooettes on July 8, 1976 at the recital hall of the Brand Library in Glendale. Le Forte Four (now joined by Tom Potts) did not actually perform live, but rather created 44 pyramid-shaped headphone helmets with internal quadraphonic speakers and countless wires in order to share their latest tape assemblages with showgoers deprived of sight. The recordings delivered in this Fluxus-inspired manner feature the Buchla synthesizer at nearby CalArts, radio interpolations, group improvisations, addled outbursts and splices from source material lost to time. Doo-Dooettes -- Tom Recchion, Harold Schroeder, Juan Gomez, Dennis Duck and Fredrik Nilsen -- performed a series of alternately droning and chaotic duets with guitar, percussion, piano, tape loops and synthesizer, all improvised around loosely structured compositions and culminating in a spontaneous group composition at the end of the program. Originally released in 1976, the double LP would be LAFMS' third release. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with inserts."
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LP
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ETAT 018LP
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"Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground musicians. In 1977, LAFMS released Blorp Esette, one of several compilations tracking the collective's growth and wild-eyed experimentation. Ace Farren Ford, an early LAFMS recruit from the Poo-Bah circle, produced the album and solicited cover artwork by Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart). Ford appears in various configurations alongside members of Smegma, Le Forte Four and 'unknown artist' (as the credit for more than one piece reads). The Residents, showing their affinity with LAFMS, contributed 'Whoopy Snorp' for their first non-Ralph Records release. Blorp Esette shows the artists grasping for new, non-idiomatic voicings and collaborative modes, anticipating LAFMS affiliates and offshoots such as Airway, Human Hands and Monitor. A second volume would come out in 1980, featuring Ford's punk band The Child Molesters. If you're looking for the missing link between mid-70s art practice and outsider music, then look no further. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with inserts."
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LP
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ETAT 019LP
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"Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground musicians. Poo-Bah Records, with its import bins and backroom jam space, attracted the pseudonymous artists forming the initial incarnation of long-running collective Smegma. Early members Ju Suk Reet Meate, Dennis Duck, Cheez-it Ritz, Big Dirty, Amazon Bambi and Dr. Id contributed to various LAFMS compilations and combinations before several core members relocated to Portland, Oregon in 1975, where they recorded their debut album Glamour Girl 1941. Originally released on the LAFMS label in 1979, the LP combines rock instrumentation with tape, synthesizer, horns and voice in a tempestuous cauldron of anti-academy improv and alien noise. Beyond its roots in LAFMS, Smegma would help shape the early Portland punk scene in the late '70s alongside Wipers and Neo Boys. In more recent years, they have collaborated with Merzbow and Wolf Eyes. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with insert."
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ETAT 020LP
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"Sound: An Exhibition of Sound Sculpture, Instrument Building and Acoustically Tuned Spaces opened at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art in the summer of 1979 (and was also on view later that year at PS1 in New York). Curated by Bob Wilhite and Robert Smith, the exhibition surveyed the field of sound art. The forty-four participants were painters pivoted toward performance, conceptual artists attracted to time-based mediums, self-styled creators of environments, and musicians (formally trained and otherwise) fashioning new instruments from household items and consumer electronics. They were more or less object-oriented and, at the same time, more or less music-oriented. What brought them all together, as the exhibition catalog gamely asserted, was sculpting in three-dimensional space. The Sound exhibit included installations, recordings played in the exhibition space and a series of live performances, demonstrating instruments that otherwise rested inert in the gallery. For a broader sense of the show than a single visit provided, the curators also produced a compilation album featuring short pieces, or excerpts from longer works, by many of the participants. (Artists in the exhibition, but not on the LP include Alvin Lucier and Mike Kelley.) Selections from bright lights of the 20th century avant-garde -- such as composers Bill Fontana, Yoshi Wada and Paul DeMarinis; conceptual artists and performance artists Terry Fox, Tom Marioni and Jim Pomeroy; experimental vocalist Joan La Barbara; and Los Angeles Free Music Society members Tom Recchion and John Duncan -- feature alongside the sounds of Jim Hobart's tuned jars, Ivor Darreg's fretless banjo, Doug Hollis' aeolian harp and Richard Dunlap's rubber bands. This first-time reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with poster."
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LP
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FTR 631LP
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"Herewith is an extraordinary 45 RPM album of solo electronic music by NZ's great contrarian, Bruce Russell. The pieces were all created using machines built by Clinton Williams, whose musical work under the OMIT moniker has long been championed by Bruce. Unlike many of Williams's own recordings, which contain kosmiche extensions recalling the '70s work of Klaus Schulze, the 15 improvised Sonatas presented here mix a few of those sorts of sonorities with a variety of more harshly-edged tones. There are also post-techno references recalling the work of folks like Scott Foust and Stefan Jaworzyn, in addition to the artists to whom some of the pieces are dedicated -- musicians Ralf Wehowsky and Martin Rev -- as well as philosopher Paul Feyerabend. As with much of Russell's music, the music's surface feel is restless, ornery, and questing. The pieces often feel as though they were devised while attempting to answer specific questions or notions that Bruce was wrestling with. But as always, one suspects some pieces are just pure fuckery, for which a conceptual framework was built ex post facto. Or not. Regardless of intent (and/or imagined intent), Russell has come up with another album that ends up being both about itself, and also about something big and conceptual that keeps fidgeting just outside my brain's grasp. The best approach may just be to dive in a float around in this excellent music. Context be damned. Because, really, sometimes a Sonata is just a Sonata. Y'know?" --Byron Coley, 2022
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2LP
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GET 54091LP
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2023 repress. "On the West Coast, gangsta rap held sway in hip-hop as the 21st century began. The alternative and conscious rap music of the early-to-mid-90s had all but faded into the underground. The scene was set for a comeback, perhaps as a backlash to the perceived violence and misogyny of gangsta rap's content. Leading the resurgence of alternative hip-hop were groups like Jurassic 5, and recent signees to Capitol Records; a West coast trio that had been building steam underground since the early 90s called Dilated Peoples. Anticipation was high for the release of the debut album from Evidence, Rakaa, and DJ Babu. (Of the influential turntablist collective Beat Junkies.) When The Platform arrived in May of 2000 it was met with critical and underground acclaim, as well as affording Dilated Peoples their first Billboard chartings. It featured a back-to-basics sound with a heavy debt to the old-school hip-hop ethos, the kind of sound that harkened back to the early days of legends like De La Soul & A Tribe Called Quest. Hits like 'No Retreat' and 'The Platform' were bolstered by Evidence & Rakaa's subtle, abstract wit, and swift, adroit wordplay, while DJ Babu provided production chops and dexterous scratches. On The Platform the trio were joined by the likes of B-Real, Tha Alkoholiks, Everlast, Planet Asia, and many more providing guest vocals, while boasting guest production from The Alchemist & Kut Masta Kurt, among others. Since its 2000 release this influential record, which heralded the return of alternative hip-hop, has never seen a vinyl reissue. With that, Get On Down-always on top of giving the greatest hip-hop albums their due-is proud to present this re-release of The Platform. The rhymes are still fresh, the production is still pristine, and the album is now back on vinyl for the first time in 17 years."
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LP
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GONE 183LP
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"Imagine a world apart from our own -- an agrarian utopia where the corroded cables of the 20th century lie in moss-covered heaps and the Mississippi River runs clear. New structures rise from the detritus, gnarled patchworks of the natural world and everything else humanity left behind. This is a world where Nirvana and NAFTA never happened, punk didn't break but bloomed, and guitars jangle in the breeze. This is the world of Ibex Clone and their new album, All Channels Clear. Formed by members of essential bands from the modern era of Memphis rock and roll, Ibex Clone reconfigures the paranoiac punk of Ex-Cult, NOTS and Hash Redactor into something altogether different, a vision of music from a timeline that split with ours a long time ago. Guitarist George Williford's dizzy six- and twelve-string explorations form a lush thicket for Alec McIntyre's fluid basslines to slip in and around, anchored by Meredith Lones' steady, driving rhythms. Williford's powerful vocal melodies ward off impending death and decay with visionary lyrics about humanity's place in the ecosystem, the balm of love and friendship, and the complex feeling of being alive in this version of the world of tomorrow. With All Channels Clear, Ibex Clone develops the woozy, folk-tinged post-punk of their excellent debut From Nowhere into a catchy, complex approach to the pastoral power pop of XTC, the Meat Puppets, and Guided By Voices. These ten beautiful tracks tunnel back through the shredded remains of folk, pop, blues and psychedelia to rediscover the real, the human, and the good in this world. Listen close and you'll hear the ramshackle chime of Big Star, the fingerstyle melodicism of John Fahey and Gimmer Nicholson, and the wild experimentalism of Amon Düül II. Ibex Clone doesn't offer an antidote or a soundtrack to a world in rapid decline, but instead a window into something much stranger and, maybe -- if one can find the path -- better."
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