Double-LP version. Silver vinyl. The musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light-speed and slow-motion all at once since 2017's breakthrough Patterns Of Consciousness. 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation pushed even further with the lead single "Fantas". Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label light-years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound work yet -- a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. Spirit Exit is Caterina Barbieri's time machine, primarily composed with a modular synth rig she thinks of more like a mechanical fortune teller. Whereas previous releases were constructed on lengthy tours, capturing only snapshots of continually evolving works, Spirit Exit represents the producer's first album fully written and recorded in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It was during this extended isolation she found inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time, but united in their strength at cultivating vast internal worlds. St. Teresa D'Avila's foundational 16th century mystical text The Interior Castle, philosopher Rosi Braidotti's posthuman theories and the metaphysical poetry of Emily Dickinson act as thematic anchors throughout Spirit Exit. Spirit Exit crystallizes Barbieri's densely layered, blindingly bright synth arrangements while introducing stunning new elements that feel as if they've always belonged. Strings and guitar flawlessly thread into the composer's web of modular patches, while her revelatory singing voice often cuts right through them. Melodies remain Barbieri's great passion and obsession and on Spirit Exit they grow as large as planets before cracking into atoms. The sweeping "At Your Gamut" perfects the producer's dramatic, slow-burning openers, but in her first ever use of sampling, it later gets crushed, accelerated and unrecognizably transformed into the ghostly hook surging through "Terminal Clock". As the album closes on "The Landscape Listens" -- a song that approaches death with all the gentle grace of Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)".

LP version. Reissue, originally released in 1973. There's something perversely fabulous about the thought of this warped masterwork wandering into 60,000 unsuspecting British homes in 1973. Faust's second-and-a-half album hit the shops to celebrate their signing to the nascent Virgin Records, who were looking to take advantage of the zeitgeist for German music at that time. Undeterred by the fact the band's unwillingness to engage with the commercial landscape had seen them dropped from Polydor, Branson and co. cooked up a suitably spectacular marketing strategy, selling the LP for 49p, the bargain price of a single. What was lurking within the grooves was a condensed collage of outtakes, oddities, sketches and samples previously known to the band's nearest and dearest as The Faust Party Tapes -- and how you wish you'd been to those parties. Cacophonous keys and roaring drones splinter into a deranged hybrid of tumbling toms and yelping vocals; committed experimentalism which in no way prepares you for the beautiful ballad which follows. Armed with acoustic guitar, playful piano and panning vocals, Faust fashion a pastoral idyll imbued with the most profound yearning. "Flashback Caruso" brims with Byrds-ian jangle and Syd's psychedelia, its non-sensical English lending the piece a Confucian lyricism perfect for expanded minds. Sliced and spliced between TV snippets, dissonant trumpet and the sound of someone pissing, the utterly freaky fuzz-rock of "J'ai Mal Aux Dents" sounds positively radio-friendly, far less far out than if it were encountered alone. Compared to the non-musical madness beside it, this thrash-jazz trance dance makes perfect sense, as does the corrosive breakbeat of "Two Drums, Bass, Organ", a mutant funk workout which rivals Can in an all-German dance off. The progressive and symphonic "Dr. Schwitters", dissected by fragments of dissonant process music, haunted vocal takes and the proto-industrial grind of "Elerimomuvid", charts a course for the dark side of the moon more suited to the serious cosmonauts of the world. Then the record freefalls into disorienting drum workouts, mixing desk experiments and a wicked premonition of no-wave jazz ("Hermann's Lament") before taking slight respite in the beauty of "Rudolf Der Pianist" and "I've Heard That One Before". The particles of prepared piano, power tools and tape echo continue to cascade through the soundspace, gradually building into the final trilogy of "Stretch Out Time", "Der Baum" and "Chère Chambre", which return to conventional song structure, albeit in the group's typically twisted style. Once again though, in comparison to the wonderfully weird pieces which precede them, these three tracks are entirely accessible, and in this lies the brilliance of the album.

Limited double-LP version of the 2008 CD originally issued on Load, compiling the best live and studio recordings by the final iteration of this group.

"60 second bursts of chaotic rock 'n' roll that barbarize whole histories of freakout style, from free jazz through classic hardcore, boogie, blues, Black Flag, Germs, most explicitly through Beefheart, but all hyper-condensed into ultra-kranky riffs that Orcutt plays at hallucinatory speed, compressing Zoot Horn Rollo style avant confusion into lighting runs and metallic two note knock-outs. Hoyos's style is so primitive that it's wildly avantgarde, with an instinctive feel for time that confounds the most advanced improvisatory strategies with the most hysterical. And her vocals are post-Yoko in the truest sense, not directly informed by her but sharing the same spontaneous energy and a-musical appeal, sometimes breaking from songs completely to expand on barely articulated vocal rants and fever pitched bouts of screaming. The whole group existed in a zone that was constantly beyond technique. The arc of their career was perfect, the mission truly accomplished, and all that's left is this amazing series of recordings, a body of work that has had a disproportionate effect on the minds, if rarely the actual sound of the underground." --David Keenan, The Wire, December 2008

LP version. The musician Kurt Dahlke is not only a member of the bands Der Plan and Fehlfarben, founding member of the group DAF and co-founder of the label Ata Tak, he has also released a stellar line of solo works under the name Pyrolator for which he enjoys great critical acclaim. What began in 1979 with the first release Inland continues its lineal thread with new work Niemandsland -- the sixth album within the Land series. It was 1979, some 43 years ago, when Pyrolator released Inland, an instrumental protest album, as he liked to think of it. Autumnal protests against nuclear weapon stations, against the entire structures of the war generation, but without the pathos of the rebellious songs which soundtracked the 1968 movement. Apart from a few samples, there were no words at all. Now, more than four decades later, Kurt Dahlke alias Pyrolator returns to his origins. But not, this time, in protest: "The clock already stands at ten past midnight and we have arrived in no man's land. Neither the student movement nor the rejectionist stance of punk changed anything. Avarice has emerged victorious and no future is nothing more than an empty cliché. This is what global reality looks like. The principle of cause and effect." This is also a back to the roots story for Pyrolator in the musical sense. Niemandsland was created exclusively with modular synthesizers, the computer merely a recording device. All of the tracks were played live and direct -- neither storable nor replicable. The sixth album in Pyrolator's Land series is more than just a bridge to the past and the music to be found there. It has a formal language all of its own, meandering between the beauty of crystal-clear melodies and restrained ambient moments on the one hand and rugged, dystopian brittleness on the other. A cycle revolving between the hope of a revolution for humanity and arrival in no man's land.

LP version. Dieter Moebius is one of the most important protagonists of avant-garde electronic music in Germany. Alongside his bands Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia, he participated in numerous collaborations (Brian Eno, Guru Guru). Seven years after Moebius passed away in July 2015, Asmus Tietchens, one of his musical companions, compiled this collection for Bureau B -- he concentrated on his solo works "as they offer the clearest insight into his personality and inventive potential."

"Together, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius were Cluster. Their influence on the development of electronic music in Germany since the early 1970s has been considerable. If we were to represent the two of them as woodcuts reflecting their musical characteristics, Roedelius would be the baroque version of Cluster and Moebius the motorik minimalist. Their solo releases make this all the more obvious, but the serendipitous combination of such divergent components is what makes the music of Cluster so wondrously magical. Aside from his many collaborations with a wide variety of musicians, there are just seven Moebius solo albums, one of which (Metropolis) was released posthumously in 2015. Moebius always wanted to create pop music and he actually thought of Cluster as pop. On the sleeve of the Cluster album Zuckerzeit he can be seen sporting a colorful Hawaiian shirt whilst sitting on Roedelius's knee. He found more than enough to astonish him in the here and now, so esoteric, transcendent, fantastical notions were alien to him. The names he gave to the tracks which populated his LPs and CDs categorically rejected any form of overindulgence. He may have thought he was making pop music, but his interest in the material, aural substance aligns him more closely with contemporary classical composers. The repetitive patterns he favored had less to do with baroque ornamentation and everything to do with minimal shifts in sound and rhythm, their rigor enhanced, time and again, by strange 'little' electronic noises and reverberating layers . . . Moebius rarely deviates from linear rhythms or tonal harmonies, yet is able to create a world of sound within this rhythmic/harmonic framework which is unmistakably his own. Never big on messages or statements, his focus has always been on feeling good about -- and in -- his music, a sensation he sought to share with his listeners. As far as I know, his listeners absolutely feel good in the presence of his music. For this collection, my fascination with his music as strong as ever, I have deliberately zeroed in on Moebius's solo works, as they offer the clearest insight into his personality and inventive potential..." --Asmus Tietchens, March 2022

2022 restock; LP version. "Harald Grosskopf was in his early twenties when LSD 'blew [his] reality away,' as he recalls. Born in Hildesheim in 1949, he had previously drummed in fairly conventional rock bands, most recently for Wallenstein. Their label-boss Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was fond of facilitating jam sessions for musicians on his Ohr und Pilz label, often supplying his 'cosmic couriers' with LSD (unbeknown to them, on occasion). In one such session, the drug inspired something of an epiphany in Grosskopf: 'There I was playing the drums when, in the midst of my euphoria, I realized that I had been imitating other drummers. Suddenly a voice spoke to me: stop trying to sound like Billy Cobham or Ginger Baker. From that moment on I felt liberated, free to drum without having to shine in a particular role.' Having discovered his own musical identity, Harald Grosskopf understood that a standard rock combo was not the ideal conduit through which to express it. Grosskopf: 'I was completely in thrall to electronic music and the total freedom that it offered. This was the music I wanted to create. I knew it would be a success, the energy levels were so high.' Grosskopf consequently left Wallenstein. 'I fell into a hole at first, wondering what I was going to do. So I sold my prized drum kit and used the money to buy a guitar, amp and echo device.' A few days later, the doorbell rang. It was Manuel Göttsching, on his way back to Berlin from a tour of France. They knew each other from Berlin's electronic scene and recording sessions for the likes of Ash Ra Tempel. Göttsching invited Grosskopf to sign up for his new project Ashra and the rest is history: Ashra (Grosskopf, Gottsching, Lutz Ulbrich alias Luul) released a series of successful albums in the years that followed. It was not until the summer of 1979, however, that he finally felt ready to release a solo album. Synthesist comprises eight instrumentals, recorded largely by Grosskopf on his own. His melodies, carried along by synthesizers and drums, were reminiscent of works by Berlin electronic friends such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, as well as those 'cosmic' sessions of the early 1970s -- yet each melody retains a unique timbre. Synthesist is thus regarded as a classic by electronic music enthusiasts all over the world, evoking a thrilling musical era of the past with equal capacity to excite today." --Christoph Dallach

LP version. Behold! I Make All Things New is all instrumental and consists of sparse works for lute and electronics. There are no vocals. It is more a return to the minimal neo-classical style of Jozef Van Wissem's early work. Written and recorded in lockdown in Warsaw and Rotterdam between 2019 and 2021. Van Wissem lived in Brooklyn since the early nineties. He left New York because of Trump's immigration policies. There was no need for singing. Personnel: Jozef Van Wissem- lute, electronics.

First time on vinyl. Originally released as a CD only album on Riot Season back in 2008 and out of print ever since. Fourteen years later it's finally getting the double vinyl release it fully deserves. Now expanded, and with new artwork Pink Lady Lemonade - You're From Outer Space really could be Acid Mothers Temple's first "summer album". Here, Acid Mothers Temple's most representative song "Pink Lady Lemonade" is dismantled and reconstructed as a blissful ecstatic psychedelic trip where chaos and silence intersect. These were the first Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno studio recordings since the addition of Pikachu, drummer and vocalist with Osaka grenade-girl duo Afrirampo. The popular AMT standard "Pink Lady Lemonade" showcases a 21st century acid rock update on the '60s San Francisco psychedelic sound. This one doesn't reach in the red status often -- it's a more out-there trippy ride. But when it does finally soar, Kawabata Makoto's guitar has never sounded more alive. Gatefold sleeve; clear vinyl; edition of 350.

Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno: Pikachu - drums, voice, cosmic shaman; Tabata Mitsuru - bass, voice, malatab; Higashi Hiroshi - synthesizer, dancin'king; Shimura Koji - drums, Latino cool; Kawabata Makoto - guitar, voice, electronics, speed guru; Audrey Ginestet - voice, cosmos.

The author Max Goldt is well known to the general public. Not so the musician Max Goldt, who came across the guitarist and songwriter Gerd Pasemann through a classified ad in 1978. Their joint collaboration in the 1980s resulted in the musically contrasting project Foyer des Arts: "Melancholic, sometimes resigned tracks alternated as a matter of course with comic and surreal ones," wrote Max Goldt in the booklet to his CD box set Draußen die herrliche Sonne. In 1986, after a two-year delay, Foyer des Arts released their sophomore album Die Unfähigkeit zu Frühstücken. BBC Radio DJ John Peel liked Foyer des Arts so much that he not only played all the songs from the album Die Unfähigkeit zu Frühstücken several times on his show. Gerd Pasemann and Max Goldt were ultimately invited to record a (John) Peel Session, a rare and distinguished honor for a German-speaking band. The Berlin duo made their way to London in October 1986, where they were joined by three members of The Higsons, an energetic combo with plenty of experience as session musicians. Indeed, they only needed one rehearsal to learn the four songs that Foyer des Arts brought with them, two from the aforementioned album and two brand new tunes: "Könnten Bienen Fliegen" and "Frauen In Frieden Und Freiheit". Recording took place the following afternoon in the legendary Maida Vale Studio 4, the regular home for the Peel Sessions. "The musicians were excellent and the atmosphere was really relaxed," Max Goldt recalls, "and afterwards we met John Peel in his favorite pub, The Vine Bar." In the year 2000 Goldt asked the BBC what had happened to the session tapes, only to learn that they had probably been wiped. This was not a huge surprise, as the BBC archives were notoriously unreliable. Entire Dusty Springfield shows disappeared, apparently deleted. Twenty years later, the Cologne-based sound engineer Tom Morgenstern, with the help of a colleague from the BBC, managed to unearth the lost tapes. And here they are, 35 years on, as fresh as the day they were made.

Beautiful, haunting, and somber, this double-LP presents the entire recording from Henning Christiansen's Heinrich von Kleist tribute at Rene Block's Rosenfest festival, Berlin, 1984. The Reality Is A Ghost In My Mind (first LP) is a work that unfolds patiently with a mix of field recordings; wind, bird song and the sound of snow being crushed underfoot all unite in a foreboding atmosphere. In Penthesileas Höhle (second LP) features electronic treatments to the original field recordings found on The Reality Is A Ghost In My Mind, a representation of psychological reorientation perhaps? A deep ground tone (or "root" as Henning calls it) leads the listener through a variety of realistic and unrealistic environments. As Henning says in his essay reprinted on the back sleeve: "Then comes a section where the field recordings of the sea, the storm, birds, cars and other things, are built together so that the realism of these sounds become unreal. For example, the cars drive into the sea and the birds are singing within the storm. When you hear footsteps in the show, it's Kleist sneaking past Deutsche Schauspielhaus. When you hear a deep, human sleeping noise, it's Achilles sleeping. When you hear hammering it's the weapon smith working. When you hear a stone being thrown it means the unanswered question: 'Who threw the first stone?' These recordings lead to the finale where Carla Tatò's haunted vocals into her singing mournfully along with Jan Tilman Schade's violoncello and tuba, then a chainsaw appears." A previously unreleased project of Henning Christiansen, monumental in scope, traversing years, countries and now, formats. Pentheseila is one of the most ambitious works in the entire Henning Christiansen oeuvre. A large-scale work from the mid-eighties based on the play of the same name by Heinrich von Kleist (1808). Both Henning and his widow, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, were enthusiastic about Kleist's text, both making works around the themes within this portent text. Henning Christiansen first developed a work around this text for the Rosenfest festival performed in Berlin in 1984. Rosenfest was curated by René Block and featured a variety of composers presenting works in response to Kleist's work including Robert Ashley, "Blue" Gene Tyranny etc. Henning formulated a composition utilizing tape, field recordings, voice, soprano, and violoncello alongside the homemade instruments of Werner Durand. The live presentation was then expanded upon and first performed two years later at Teatro Olímpico, Rome on the November 8th, 1986 as directed by Carlo Quartucci. Along with the five-CD set (HC 005CD) sharing the four and a half hour backing track prepared for the Teatro Olímpico performance in Rome in 1986, these releases make up a substantial overview of one of the most significant works in the entire Christiansen canon. Includes writings Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Henning Christiansen and artwork by Ursula Reuter Christiansen. Small excerpts of these works previously appeared on one of the 7"s in the Rosenfest Berlin 1984 catalog (Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD) and the compilation CD Ghosts And Monsters: Technology And Personality In Contemporary Music (1999).

Trading Places present a reissue of Second Hand's Reality, originally released in 1968. Obscure prog rockers Second Hand began as the Next Collection, formed at a south London secondary school; engineer/manager Vic Keary scored them a contract with Polydor as the Moving Finger, but their legendary debut LP was credited to Second Hand, due to a rival Moving Finger. Channeling psych and spacey acid hues, there is blues-rock underpinning Bob Gibbons's guitar and keyboardist Ken Elliott helps aim the sound towards deep space; this edition features rare tracks "James In The Basement" and "I Am Nearly There" from a 1965 Next Collection single (backing Denis Couldry), already showing their freak-psych capabilities. An essential listen for all true prog connoisseurs. Licensed from Cherry Red.

Trading Places present a reissue of Second Hand's Death May Be Your Santa Claus, originally released in 1971. After their excellent Polydor debut suffered from lack of promotion, Second Hand's sophomore LP surfaced on Mushroom, the noncommercial label formed by Vic Keary, Mike Craig, and Neil Richmond, allowing for unfettered experimentation. With George Hart on bass, new front man Rob Elliott, and drummer Kieran O'Connor on vibraphones, Ken Elliott takes melodic command on Mellotron, piano, and organ, the disc a freakily esoteric juggernaut. This lost masterwork here comes with rare bonus tracks "Dip It Out Of The Bog Fred", "Baby RU Anudder Monster?", and the orchestrated "Funeral", a scare 1972 single. Licensed from Cherry Red.

As the z-axis of our planet tilts away, and a gulf of dusty earth, air and searing fire is revealed before us, Minimal Violence holds an unflinching stare, unveiling Phase Three in an act of pure psychic release. Consecutive of the destruction of Phase One (TRESOR 317EP) and the restructuring of Phase Two (TRESOR 317EP) it only seems appropriate that the third phase of the series finds the project reaching a state of transcendence and transition as it also aligns with the shift from a duo to the solo venture of Ash Luk following the departure of co-founder Lida P. This third EP of the DESTROY ---> [physical] REALITY [psychic] <--- TRUST series launches straight into the 145 bpm stomper Flatline. It is a track founded by a family spirit, with lyrics co-written with Luk's mother and their stepfather Mad Johnny on vocals and guitar. It draws a hoarse chant of passion, "... nothing matters ... I still love you ... resuscitation ... resurrection ..." in answer to arching melodic euphoria. "Cold (sex)" follows down a scorched earth driveway into distorted whistles, detuned melodies and some of the best sequencer abuse out there. "We Suffocate on the Violence of Light" reveals perhaps the finest expedition so far in Minimal Violence's particular vein of acid-singed euphoric trance. Its synths smeared and merged unholy, where the drums meddle with the tensions between drum and bass and nail to the ground four to the floor rhythm. "Focus On That Form" pummels hard within a deep noise volley, scratching hard to rid its environments of any longer lasting luster. As ever, the transformative sound of Minimal Violence emerges deep from fire. Denying any uncertain embers an escape route, Luk casts anew from a seemingly unending source of unique energy. "Flatline" features Mad Johnny.

2017 release. Recorded live in Prague in February 2017. Includes pieces for film like "Only Lovers Left Alive", "Sola Gratia", and "Our Hearts Condemn Us", as well as songs like "Detachment", "The Day Is Coming", and "Love Destroys All Evil". Personnel: Jozef van Wissem - lute, voice. Artwork by Sergey Marinichev. Limited edition, silver on black silk screen printed cover.

LP version. Includes printed inner sleeve and download code. Minru is the project of Caroline Blomqvist, a Swedish musician based in Berlin. Woven from light and shadow, the interplay of her folk and indie-rock blend appears from a personal space of finding life after death. On her debut album Liminality she paints melody in soft tones, whispering secrets to navigate feelings of loss. Built around winding layers of acoustic guitar, piano, and strings, Minru is a surprisingly uplifting and stirring testament to Blomqvist's own suffering from the passing of someone close to her. Returning to Berlin from Sweden feelings of grief, confusion, and pain travelled with her, and these emotions prompted the journey both of and within the album, heard as a dreamlike actualization of wandering lost between them. Defined as "the threshold separating one space from another," Liminality moves between feeling the ground beneath your feet fall away, fighting through the darkness and the doubt, and the emerging shades of hope and light as you painstakingly make peace with mortality and find yourself as a person again. Flourishing from a preferred position of solitude, Liminality sees Blomqvist's vision radiate with intensity from her home-based studio in Neukölln -- a small, two-room apartment with squeaky old wooden floors. Capturing the intimacy of the space, she recorded vocals and synth on gear partly borrowed from friends, and the songs flow with a stream of consciousness as feelings become entwined with melody. Time-restraint drew the process to a natural close, preventing Blomqvist from losing herself to experimentation. Finished and self-produced at a Berlin-Lichtenberg recording studio alongside musical friends (Povel Widestrand, Tobias Blessing, Sunniva Lilian Shaw Of-Tordarroch, Marlene Becher, and Liv Solveig Wagner), the result is beautifully detailed and rich like the folk of her Swedish roots. First picking up a guitar as a kid and becoming obsessed with it, she would skip school to spend extra hours mastering the instrument, grappling to perfect the "Stairway to Heaven" intro. After attending music high school in Gothenburg and playing in bands during her teens, Blomqvist later moved to Germany. She performed with Tuvaband, Adna, and Tara Nome Doyle and played in Berlin venues Loophole and Schokoladen. With the passing of time, she felt a growing urge to find an outlet for her own songs; Minru was the answer along with her first Yearnings EP. Now writing whenever she returns to Sweden, within the calm and stillness of her family's mountainside cabin, her skillfully constructed arrangements summon the comforting atmosphere of home. Liminality is the kind of record that rewards attention. Give this album your time, it will give you its soul.

Double LP version. Includes printed inners and download code; edition of 500. Music for Shared Rooms is B. Fleischmann's eleventh solo album and his first since 2018. It is also not an album, or at least not in the conventional sense of the word. These 16 instrumental pieces provide a kaleidoscopic glimpse of a forward-thinking musician at home in many different musical worlds, including experimental and abstract music, pop, and more classically-minded compositional forms. These pieces were culled from an archive of roughly 600 compositions for theatre pieces and films written throughout the past twelve years. The Österreichischer Filmpreis-awarded composer, however, aimed for more than simply documenting his extensive work in and with different media. To do so, he edited and re-mixed the individual recordings for this release, taking them out of their contexts and reworking them for an audience who can experience them in a different setting. Music for Shared Rooms makes it possible for its listeners to engage with the sounds and to fill the spaces they open up with their own imagination. Roughly speaking, music for theater or film can serve two functions: it either takes the lead, or underscores what is happening on stage or screen. The marvelous thing about these pieces is that they manage to do both. Fleischmann's work as a prolific producer has always drawn on contrasts, at times combining pop sentiment with rigid experimentation, the seemingly naive with the intricate and complex. This approach also marks the tracks collected here: bringing together acoustic elements and electronic sounds, at times working with conventional structures but always de- and re-contextualizing them, Fleischmann constructs a vivid dramaturgy out of discrete singular compositions, letting them interact across the record. A dramaturgical interconnectedness of varied musical materials is the thread that runs through Music for Shared Rooms. The differences between the pieces may be striking, but the progression from one to the other is subtle. It goes on like this through different moods and tempos. All these pieces create distinct situations through the juxtaposition of diverse musical elements, but are also bound together by a single vision. Writing music for theatre pieces or film requires a composer and his pieces to engage with people and their movements in space, which is exactly what Fleischmann offers on this record.

Part of The Optic Sevens 4.0 reissue series. This version is a brand new band approved stereo mix of the only single by Liverpool cult legends The Wild Swans. Due to studio inexperience, the single originally ended up being perhaps the only 12" in history with the A-side recorded in mono and the B-side, "God Forbid", in stereo. Despite this, the 12" received rave reviews, becoming single of the week in numerous music papers. John Peel played it to death and it quickly gained cult status by ending up as the last record ever released on Bill Drummond's cult label Zoo Records (Drummond himself went on to proclaim it "the best single we put out on Zoo"). Blue vinyl; includes postcard and poster.

A welcome reissue of this long-deleted classic digital dub album from the deadly dub duo -- The Bush Chemists. Originally surfacing on the Dubhead label in 2001, Dub Fire Blazing was the follow-up to Light Up Your Chalice. Ten slabs of throbbing heavy-weight bass pressure from The Bush Chemists crew. Edition of 500.

Reissue, originally released in 1989. Tena Stelin's Wicked Invention is one of the most highly-sought UK digital roots reggae vocal albums. Produced by Sound Iration (Nick Manasseh and Scruff), essentially, this is the vocal version of the classic dub album Sound Iration In Dub (2010). This vocal set, like the vocal counterpart was released on Wau! Mr Modo in 1989 Features the sound system belters "Orthodox Music", "Jah Equity", and the title track. Edition of 500.

First ever vinyl edition of this one-off collaboration between Philippe Poirier (Kat Onoma) and Stefan Schneider (To Rococo Rot) which was initiated by La Batie -- Festival de Geneve, in 2002. The original recordings of the album took place the same year at Bleibeil Studios, Berlin. Engineered by Bernd Jestram. Restoration and mastering by Detlef Funder at Paraschall, Düsseldorf in 2022. Includes printed inner sleeve and download code; edition of 300.

"19 or 20 years, what difference does it make if the beautiful things in life are able to transport us back to Year Zero -- again and again. The moment when this album was created. It is the timeless horizon that motivates the artist. 'Dad, what's the line doing there?' -- a good start for a story. Philippe Poirier and Stefan Schneider recount tales of slow travel, far beyond the known continents. The adventures of a certain Corto Maltese, mysterious love stories in long forgotten harbors. A love that creates its own time, just like a chess game, an ocean liner or propeller airplanes. The enthusiasm for cartography which Philippe Poirier and Stefan Schneider share, time and again, similar to dream. The dream of an idea, of exploration, of finding. The first lines of a drawing that become the great painting. The sequences and the words which design a world in its own right. A tremendous reservoir and my old friend knows that there is an ideal companion for every journey. This time Philippe Poirier is a narrator who finds a sound like sand flowing through fingers and who knows how deep each object accompanies each love. Les Choses de la Vie." --Detlef Weinrich (Tolouse Low Tax), Paris 2021.

Musique Phénomenale was recorded by Asger Jorn and Jean Dubuffet between December 1960 and March 1961 in Paris, and published in 1961 as a box containing four 10" records in an edition of 50 copies by Galleria del Cavallino, Venice. 61 years after its original release, this is the first ever reissue. Produced by Daniel Löwenbrück/Edition Hans Pumpestok, København, in cooperation with Fondation Dubuffet, Paris. Double-CD in six-panel digipak in slipcase; includes 12-page booklet in French and English; edition of 600.

"... It's a curious feeling to implement and test a spontaneous form of orchestration with an artist who has such an extremely independent background. It really felt like we were experiencing an event of singular importance and significance. I can't say if this importance was greater than our own personal joy. But I do know that this music illuminated many ideas for me that had previously remained obscure. For me it remains a kind of phenomenal music, in the sense that in our productions the music became its own specific phenomenon, and yet one that was still connected to all the other sensorial phenomena... "--Asger Jorn (from the liner notes)

Asger Jorn (1914-1973), was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, author, and one of Scandinavia's most influential and internationally recognized artists. He was a founding member of the avantgarde movement COBRA and the Situationist International.

Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) was a French painter, sculptor, lithographer and writer. He was one of the main protagonists of Art Brut (a term he invented in 1945).

"Archival Memphis Mess, edition of 300. Richard Martin (4 Johns, Victimized Carcass, Corn For Texture, True Sons Of Thunder) with John Floyd, Roger Moneymaker, and Eddie Hankins (under loose pseudonyms) in free rock blurred reality mode, 1997-98. Stars in a scene of their own... outsider psych brilliance that only gets better the deeper you dig."

The Henning Christiansen Archive present a collection of previously unreleased "classical works" by Henning Christiansen, a large part of his oeuvre which has remained out of sight, until now. This 2CD compilation encompasses a variety of stylistic approaches written in the years from 1963 to 1988.

"This collection gathers music by Christiansen targeted on (in one sense or another) the concert hall. All the recordings presented here are previously unreleased. The majority of publicly available Christiansen recordings have focused on music related to dramatic works, soundtrack works, music made for and within artist performance and tape music. This time, Christiansen as composer is truly at the forefront. His voice is always recognizable even as his expressive range is surprisingly broad; his approach ranges from the conventional to the radical. Any niggling concert-hall questions about craft are settled, yet at the same time he continues to question the role of form and genre in music." --from the liner notes written by Ben Harper.

"Johnny Moped's 'lost album' from 1990, finally gets a reissue." "I like this album, Johnny hates it. But why? I think it's more 'Johnny Moped' than any other album out there. What other album has entirely penned JM songs/ditties like 'Soldiers' and 'Moped crash' plus ad-libs and all the other little interludes in between the tracks that are pure 'Moped'. Johnny thinks it sounds like a 'disco' album, which it does in places, but, hey-ho, it was 1989 and it was the age of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. At the time there had been no Moped band since 1985-ish and certainly Slimy hadn't been in the band since the early '80s. Also, there was only one album out there, Cycledelic so there was a lot of songs destined for a follow up album that never happened and it looked like we were going to be a one album band. So, with so much unreleased material and a chronic lack of 'mopedisum' I decided to embark on a little project... This album came out in 1990 on Deltic Records but the deal was that I had to produce a finished master tape that could go straight to the cutting room and be pressed, so I borrowed a 4-track Teac and a Roland sampler and Roland drum machine and got to work. Some of the tracks sound like they were recorded in someone's bedroom, that's because they were, but Captain recorded some great stuff on his 8-track where I had recorded Johnny 'live' and handed over a tape for him to work with ('I'm a Spasm', 'Soldiers', 'Cut Across Shorty'). Also, he provided some decent backing vocals on other tracks ('Corpse Boogie', 'Hiawatha')." --Dave Berk, May 2022

"To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the film, Rustblade is releasing the definitive edition of the soundtrack to Dario Argento's cult film Opera. Argento's long-time collaborator Claudio Simonetti combines classic operatic atmospheres with dark electronic grooves and violently smashing rock. Never was Argento more closely involved in the structuring of one of his film's soundtracks. Includes three never before released bonus tracks. Limited gatefold cover with colored marble red blood vinyl plus poster."

Sidi Abdallah is the son of legendary Abdallah Oumbadougou from Agadez, Niger. Sidi grew up surrounded by Tuareg music and culture. His late father was one of the originators of the guitar-driven musical genre now called Tuareg desert blues. Steeped in this style Sidi emerges today among the new Tuareg musicians from Niger giving their own interpretation of the traditions of their fathers. He brings fresh energy to the music from northern Niger. With classic Tuareg instrumentation -- electric guitars, percussion and vocal -- Sidi's music echoes his father's influence, as well as the influence of other musicians from Niger such as Rhissa ag Wanagli, Bombino, Mdou Moctar, and the many other young musicians active in Agadez today. Sidi is age 22 and lives in Arlit and Agadez in northern Niger. Personnel: Sidi Abdallah Oumbadougou - electric guitar and vocals; Dawoul Ahamouk - electric bass; Djamilou Rabey - drums.

2022 restock. "The second of two electric-blues albums released on Chess Records and Cadet Concept imprint in the late '60s, Muddy Waters' After the Rain has achieved cult-like status amongst blues fans in the years since his death in 1983. After taking a backlash from critics with first attempt at adopting psychedelic influences on Electric Mud, Muddy made adjustments for the follow-up, despite keeping a majority of the same session players. This time, he toned down the psychedelic elements and put them in balance with his classic Chicago blues sound, and the results yield some vintage tracks that glow with fuzzy guitars and bass: 'I Am the Blues,' 'Ramblin' Mind,' 'Bottom of the Sea,' and 'Blues Trouble.' After being out of print for years, Get On Down is proud to present this rare classic from Muddy Waters pulled from the original masters and presented on LP with Japanese-style OBI and double-sided poster."

"One of very few recordings of Kim Fowley to survive and amazingly, he survived this show as the audience boo-ed him off the stage. The band hadn't rehearsed properly and mid-show, the organizer asked the audience if they wanted the show to continue and even though they emphatically said 'NO!!!!', Fowley and the band continued on, oblivious to the jeering audience. Eventually, he was 'removed' from the stage."

2022 limited repress. Mad About Records present the first worldwide reissue of Hareton Salvanini's soundtrack for Xavana, Uma Ilha Do Amo, originally released in 1981. Rare Brazilian album of the obscure film Xavana, Uma Ilha do Amor mixes elements of jazz, bossa nova, and psych. Hareton Salvanini creates a record full of groovy guitars, refined strings, and delicate orchestral sounds. Polish film maker Zygmunt Sulistrowski pioneered the format of shooting low-budget soft porn on exotic locations. In this case, Brazilian arranger and writer Hareton Salvanini was commissioned to deliver this soundtrack. No wonder many consider him a lesser-known Arthur Verocai. Salvanini creates a record full of groovy guitars and percussions that could rival with the best of KPM or Chappell library LPs. Deluxe reissue in thick carton cover; obi.

The four pieces on this record all date from the late 1980s and predate any officially released material: "Cords" was entirely realized in Chicago, and the others realized, or at least finished, upon arriving in Seattle in 1990. The pieces were originally privately released on cassette in micro-editions of five to seven copies and given to friends. In 2009-2010, Petri Supplies, which had a complete set of those early privately released tapes, rereleased some of that material (including these four pieces) in small-run bootleg cassette editions.

Yamila reveals her most intimate catharsis in Visions, an album that brings together and provokes the hallucinatory powers of music. Like an ancient herald, she announces the profound feminine mystique while crossing epic melodies full of pleasure and pain. This album is a journey that prodigiously unites baroque accents, Spanish folklore -- such as flamenco -- and contemporary electronic music. Her voice and music -- sometimes torn and others buoyant -- could resemble the score for a biblical passage (ie visions of the Apocalypse), for they are overflowing with physical ecstasy and sounds that one can touch. Visions is composed of different forms and rhythms. Pieces like "Visions V" evolve intensely with sharp and systematized hits -- powerful layers that bring us closer to Alessando Cortini's Forse era. "Visions II", for its part, shares intensity and power with flamenco ritual patterns, as if it were an old Andalusian scene dripping with oscillations and electric shocks. Yet there are luminous vocal pieces such as "Visions I" (featuring Rafael Anton Irisarri), inspired by Manuel de Falla's Suite Española composed in 1922. Here, an aural chiaroscuro with beautiful voices and choirs is deeply fused with daring drones. And it is in the ensemble of moments of Visions where Yamila's conceptual axis is rendered solid. Pain and glory, lacerating religiosity, feminism cauterized by power, and hallucinations as a source (or pretext/tool) to be heard. Yamila exhibits a profuse aesthetic with her music that calls for a look at the far-past with romanticism and nostalgia. Visions is radiant, intense. A unique album. All songs written and performed by Yamila Ríos (Spain), except "Visions I", which features Rafael Anton Irisarri. Recorded between the Swedish winter and the Belgian countryside. Additional musicians: Simbad - guitar; Vera Cavallin - harp. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, New York. Photos by Virginia Rota in Madrid. Design by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City. Transparent blue vinyl; gatefold sleeve; edition of 500.

2022 repress; LP version. "The third full-length release for Portland, Oregon-based Liz Harris. Harris might have achieved a significant fan base thanks to the whispering, near-ambient vocal crusades of her debut album Way Their Crept and its follow-up Wide, but those with a careful ear would have heard slightly more trapped beneath her fuzzy chain of effects. Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill marks a departure of sorts for Liz, which sees her turn down the fuzz boxes which caged (and to some degree defined) her sound and allows her voice to ring out above everything else. It is an album steeped in the world of dream-pop and far from shying away from the reference, Liz has instead grabbed on with both hands, creating an album's worth of perfect, left-field pop songs. Using delicate song structures which are at once both familiar and somehow alien, her vocals cry out hauntingly over stripped-down guitar lines and looped environmental recordings. These are the future soundtracks to love, despair and ultimately, hope." "This remarkable album is actually what I personally always wanted 4AD records to sound like, only they never quite delivered the hazy pleasures their beautiful sleeve art promised." --Pitchfork (8.2)

2022 restock; orange and white LP version in deluxe heavy-duty sleeve. Limited numbered edition of 500. Previously unreleased album by German trio Sand, composed and recorded in 1973, '75, and '76. The once-croaking raven now flies silently over the ocean, higher and higher. Where are you rolling, sun-ball, and why don't you fall? The sandy Golem crumbled into dust. His brave struggle against the mighty forces of darkness soon dissolved in voiceless space. There is something magical and inexplicable in creation, and Sand absolutely manifest these mysterious phenomena. Storytellers, musicians, shamans, geniuses -- Sand were known, at the end of the '60s, as P.O.T. (Part of Time). Then Sand -- Ludwig Papenberg, his brother Ulrich Papenberg, and Johannes Vester -- developed a more avant-gardist, proto-industrial, visionary, experimental approach, becoming a truly unique entity in the history of music. Not dependent on a classic krautrock style, Sand is nevertheless part of this movement of German cosmic/psychedelic bands, in addition to being the originators of proto-industrial musics. Johannes Vester: vocals, guitar, VCS3. Ludwig Papenberg: congas, VCS3, drum box, guitar, organ. Ulrich Papenberg: bass. Guests on "High Tension": Klaus Pankau, electric guitar; Micky Westphal, bass; Dietmar Burmeister, drums. Cover painting by Babs Santini.

2022 restock. "String Quartet Describing the Motions of Large Real Bodies" was composed as the potential orchestra for an opera-based on the text of In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men And Women." When the work was composed in 1972, it was clear that a huge change in electronic instrumentation was just beginning, a change that would involve computers and sound-producing devices as yet undreamed-of. The piece consists of an electronic orchestra of 42 sound-producing modules. The technique of the string quartet is for each player to make a stream of intentional but unpremeditated (that is, random) very short sounds, pulses, somewhat like pitched clicks, but with the formats and overtones of a string instrument (this idea came from the rumor of a performance by Takehisa Kosugi). These sounds go directly to a set of four loudspeakers, but at the same time they are delayed electronically, and those delayed sounds are sent to a series of seven networks of sound-producing modules activated by the very brief coincidence of an original sound and a delayed sound. The operation of the networks as a result of the coincidence can, in the theoretical world of electronics, produce almost any sound imaginable. In the performance recorded here, few of the technical resources were available. Now, of course, there are computer "patching" programs that would make the job possible, but complicated. Such are dreams, when technology promises a "new world." Sort of like 1492. The hills and mountains separating San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean are filled with a labyrinth of endless concrete tunnels constructed by the military in the 1930s in anticipation of World War II, to defend San Francisco Bay from invasion. At the entrance of every tunnel is a huge steel door. When the door is slammed, the reverberation through the labyrinth seems to last forever. It is one of the wonders of the world. Naturally, Robert Ashley tried to record this phenomenon. On the occasion of the recording, just as the reverberation seemed to die away, a motorcyclist, miles away in the tunnels, started coming closer. The effect, which took minutes, was as if the reverberation had been reversed, as if the tape recording was running backwards. A perfect case of coincidence as illusion. In Version One of "How Can I Tell the Difference?" the composer tried to create the drama of the recording of the reverberation and the motorcyclist, using the "String Quartet" as an "orchestra," in the way it was intended to be used in the opera. In Version Two of "How Can I Tell the Difference?" a solo string player using the same playing technique as in the "String Quartet" opens and closes the sound "gates" to electronic reverberations and pre-recorded sounds running continuously with the performance. A digipack CD edition including an 8-page booklet with scores and liner notes written by Robert Ashley.

LP version. LP version includes download card; cardboard sleeve with OBI. Part-time farmer/musician Oliver Chaplin is the person behind one of the rarest private pressings from the UK. His cult masterpiece Standing Stone was recorded in early 1974 at a remote farm in Wales, using a portable 4-track TEAC reel-to-reel machine. Helped by his brother Chris at the controls (an experienced BBC engineer who had worked on Syd Barrett sessions), surrounded by animals and "smaller winged creatures", Oliver sang and played acoustic and electric guitars filtered through tape echo, distortion and multi-tracking, creating a very unique sound, a kind of DIY mutant-psychedelic-blues (think Captain Beefheart) which sounded years ahead of its time. Despite the lo-fi nature of the recording, the sound quality is amazing and timeless. Only 250 copies of the album were pressed and it even caught the attention of the Virgin label, who were interested in distribution but Oliver finally refused their offer. Musicians like JJ Cale expressed interest in Oliver's music, inviting him to a jam session but in the end, Oliver decided he was not interested in the music business and left Wales to travel around Europe. He remains a kind of a mysterious figure and we're proud to offer a new, long-awaited reissue of Standing Stone, sanctioned by him. RIYL: Captain Beefheart, Syd Barrett, Roy Harper, Brian Eno, Robert Johnson, Magical Power Mako, Fresh Maggots, Comus, Tony Caro & John. Incudes insert with liner notes by Richard Allen and rare photos. Sourced from the original master tapes. "Few other musicians have been able to mix and blend folk, blues, psychedelia together as Oliver has managed to do" --Ricardo Martillos (Distorsioni). "Like a rustic, ramshackle mix between Electric Ladyland and No Pussyfooting" --Giacomo Checcucci (Pincopanco). "A truly remarkable record" --Galactic Ramble.