-
Sale
Ennio Mazzon – Xuan
CD, SaleEnnio Mazzon is a sound artist who works in the field of experimental electronica. His background in engineering and his interest for maths, physics and programming languages are conveyed into the development of infrastructures of digital tools that he uses for audio processing and live improvisation. He is the founder of the label Ripples and he is part of the project Zbeen£7.00 -
Sale
Rosati / Saguto – Gridshape
CD, SaleGridshape is an intersection of heavily distorted violent sounds with points of kinetic aural quietness through the interaction between digital electronics and guitars.£7.00 -
Sale
Mysterybear – Oscillation
CD, SaleAnalog Path bring us this CD from composer/musician Dave Seidel aka Mysterybear. He attended Simon’s Rock College from 1974 to 1978 where he was the first person to receive a BA from that school with a Major in Music Theory and Composition, and after playing in a number of experimental and avant garde projects he is now making music purely from non modular analog electronic instruments. ‘Oscillation’ is two pieces of monotone synth noise. Track one is a single synth buzz for a solid 35 minutes long, pretty hard stuff to take in really but very interesting all the same. Track two, entitled ‘Transpiration’, has a little more variation though as the buzz fades in and out with a slightly different tone. This is purely for the hardcore aficionado of electronic music and not just for the casual ambient listener!£5.00 -
Sale
Sparkling Wide Pressure – Stream Returner
CD, SaleLayers of shifting, shimmering synths are joined by echoed, unintelligible vocal loops; industrial drones give way to gentle tropical guitar…it’s all rather gentle and patient and sleepily detailed stuff. I have had a hard time reviewing it because Phil kept resetting the internet router, so this write-up has ended up rather brief but I listened to the whole thing and it was most pleasant.£5.00 -
Sale
Ikebana – When You Arrive There
CD, SaleIkebana, in Japanese, is an art of flower arrangement. Unlike conventional flower arrangement, it often focuses on other areas of the plant, such as its stems and leaves, rather than its blooms, and lays emphasis toward the shape, line, form of the arrangement. Ikebana is about minimalism, about beauty in space, and about calmness. And so does the music of flau label’s latest signing, the Japanese female duo Ikebana. Ikebana is made up of 2 wonderfully talented female artists, maki and en. Their unique music is infused with a strong sense of Shoegaze and Ambient, but in a very much stripped-down form. Phases of minimal guitar noise floating through the space of sounds, like a wavering light in darkness, with deeply reverbed female voices drifting in to create a calm universe between a dream and the reality. Unlike the current style of psychedelic/drone music for overseas, Ikebana’s music is about minimalism, about beauty in space, and about calmness, just like the art of flower arrangement of Ikebana itself.£7.00 -
Sale
0 – Sonando
CD, Sale0 is a french band directed by Stéphane Garin (percussion), Joël Merah (acoustic guitar) and Sylvain Chauveau (acoustic guitar, glockenspiel), whose line-up can change for each project with the addition of regular guests. The trio of Merah, Garin and Chauveau have spend two years composing, recording and mixing the seven pieces of the Soñando album (dreaming in Spanish).This chamber folk suite is entirely played with acoustic instruments (guitar, glockenspiel) and small pieces of metal collected by Stéphane Garin for their special sound and tuning. In quiet spaces, this repertoire can even be performed without any microphone or amplification. The result looks like an original mix of rhythmic patterns assembled togetehr like the pieces of a puzzle.£8.00 -
Sale
Loci – Into Blindness
Sale, TapeFirst edition of 99 cassette, spraypainted black hand-scored & cut black & white J-cards / hand-cut black & white inserts / black & white Gilded Peradam logo card… Out of the darkness, straight Into Blindness. These two side-long tracks represent the very first meeting of minds and clashing of sounds that birthed LOCI. Recorded entirely live with no overdubs or edits, Into Blindness slips effortlessly in between droning, breathy stretches of pure black and seething climaxes steeped in the throes of chaos.£4.00 -
Sale
Machinefabriek – Vergezichten
Sale, VinylMusicians like Rutger Zuydervelt have a special relationship with presets – sounds, rhythms and samples that are inbuilt to keyboards or synthesizers. Presets are the opposite of individualism in music, they are commodities, sounds off the peg. Self-respecting musicians never use them, or perhaps use them precisely because they shouldn’t. Zuydervelt aka Machinefabriek is a master of self-made sound and time-stretching, sensitively handling organic recordings and samples on countless releases, and regards preset sounds in an organ or a cheap keyboard as a tonal find, as a part of the cacophony of every day life. He uses the chugging of a Bontempi rhythm box or preset strings like field recordings, with the same calm and matter-of-factness as the murmur of ventilation or the hum of a refrigerator. These Bontempi-rhythms plus the computer-stretched sounds of saxophone (Espen Reinertsen) and voice (Mariska Baars) are the base elements of Vergezicht 1 & 2. It is stunning how Zuydervelt manages to produce depth and meditative calm with this supposedly soulless material. Never-ending expanses and the mechanic rhythms overlap and start shifting, slowly and imperceptibly before the beat gets nervous, starts to stumble to finally come to a standstill with the slowly swelling bass. The track is held in suspense, rattling and rustling. Ghostly squeaking breezes in, then another stop with a soft beat of the drum. Slowly, the track builds itself up again with filtered grooves and prolonged notes. On Vergezicht 2, the Bontempi-rhythm sets in again, after seven minutes of rising and subsiding expanses and the breezy, ethereal soprano, this time slowed down alongside warm basses and single notes from the piano. Then a momentary halt, almost too beautiful and too clean for this track. Soon an ominous siren call floats above the euphony and restores order by friction. This subtle irritation is part of a complete acoustic pattern. It is not possible to imagine Machinefabriek’s music without the irritiating moment, the doubt turned into sound. The Dutch word ‘Vergezicht’ means view or panorama. And it is a wide acoustic panorama opened by Zuydervelt here that reveal presets in new light.£7.00 -
Sale
Machinefabriek – Colour Tones
Sale, VinylOne sided white vinyl record (as used in the Colour Tales exhibition) in a simple sleeve. The package includes a download code for the music in digital format, including the 12 minute ‘Mosaic’ (which is not on the lp itself). Tracks 1-5 were recorded for ‘Colour Tales – an artistic research into the quality of colour’, a project and exhibition by Lesley Moore, curated by Anthropologists in Art, inspired by Imants Ziedonis’ book Krasainas Pasakas (Coloured Tales). Mosaic was initially a study for a live performance at the opening of the exhibition.£6.00 -
Sale
Machinefabriek – Stroomtoon II
CD, SaleIn December 2011 I recorded the album Stroomtoon, which was released by the French Nuun label the year after. The music was constructed using recordings from improvisations with a setup that I was trying out for upcoming live performances. It’s the same setup that I still use nowadays, mainly consisting of an old Phillips analogue tone generator and a selection of effects units. When making Stroomtoon, it felt like moving into new territory that was worth explore more. While that album is very layered, subtle and considered, I wanted to try to capture the roughness and spontaneity of my live performances. I recorded more material, picked out the best moments, and edited them without adding too much post-production. When the labels Fake Jazz and Superior Standards asked me to release material on a few lathe cut singles, I knew this would be perfect for the music I was working on. simple, to the point vignettes with the ideal playing time for the 7-inch format. After making six Stroomtoon tracks and having them released on three extremely limited lathe cuts, I realized what a shame it was that they were so limited and that they weren’t gathered on one medium, like the first Stroomtoon album. With the extra value of having them in better sound quality then the lathes, I decided to compile them on this DISC, adding two other tracks that were previously released on lathe as well, my personal favorites Kreupelhout and Toendra. Stroop appeared on the compilation Antibothis 4. These extra tracks fit nicely with the other material on this CD. Then there’s the art of Rebecca Norton that’s gracing this cd sleeve. Rebecca got in contact when I was working on the music. Browsing her website, I was immediatly grabbed by her ‘The Affine(s): Small Paintings’ series. Their spikey, concentrated shapes struck me as perfect visualizations of the Stroomtoon II II material. That’s when all fell into place. – Rutger Zuydervelt, Rotterdam, January 2013£8.00 -
Sale
Banabila / Machinefabriek – Travelog
CD, SaleMatte laminated four panel digipak… When Michel Banabila and Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) finished their first collaborative album, it felt like they were just getting started. Suprised by how fluent and natural their collaboration went, it was obvious that this wasn’t over yet… While ‘Banabila & Machinefabriek’ was quite an abstract affair, its successor ‘Travelog’ is lighter, playful and rhythmic. Some moments might recall the mighty Tape, while others showcase motoric krautrock influences and subtle hints of African rhythms. All in all, this album clearly radiates the joy of its creative process and sees Banabila and Machinefabriek on the top of their game. ‘Travelog’ comes housed in a full colour digipack, graced with photography by Michel Banabila, designed by Rutger Zuydervelt. It’s released by Tapu Records, in collaboration with Lumberton Trading Company.£7.00 -
Sale
Strongheart
CD, SaleA heartwarming record by multi-instrumentalist, songwriter Matthew Anderson’s new project Strongheart. Heavily recommended to fans of Sigur Ros, Steven Wilson, Shearwater and anybody who is interested in the underground gems around U.S or any kind of artful music. Here at Wounded Wolf Press we’ve been long friends and in contact with Matthew Anderson even before this press were in existence, collaborating and making guest appearances on each others albums. For instance the drums on Svefn Plural’s ‘Skyhook’ (Except ‘Polaroid Girl’) were by Matthew and Atay did play guitars and mellotrons on his previous project Noble Dust. Package comes in six variations, differentiating in photograph on the cover -each is a crop from the original by George Anderson-, in ivory sleeve alongside with two informative cards within.£8.00 -
Sale
Treefingers – Op.I
CD, SaleTreefingers is a solo project of Atay İlgün focusing on ambient, drone-based and industrial music. It wanders through sounds of minds under the confusion of micro-cosmos and universe, supernovas with vivid details of elemental clouds, dreamy lands where giant machines were meant to be natural belongings creating beautiful forests. It does these with a zen like beautiful and very beautifully crafted soundscapes which simply deserves to be experienced in an enverioment where it’s sounds can live in. When it lives it gains the capability to slow one’s metabolism to turn the listener inside for an hour of healing , both physically and mentally. Package design is a reworked one of the first edition which was mostly designed by Alper Yıldırım. Photographs by Alper Yıldırım. Contains the bonus track ‘The Summit’ which was solely available from the mrsvee’s website.£8.00 -
Sold out
Miaou – Bring The Lights EP
CD, SaleThis is a limited edition of 300 handmade and hand-numbered collectible copies, packaged in a lovely hand-stamped green recycled cardboard envelope with the front cover image printed on a polaroid style photo paper and two inserts with the tracklist and credits… Miaou are a band based in Tokyo, formed in 1999 by Tatsuki Hamasaki and sisters Mayumi & Hiromi Hasegawa out of a university project and a shared love for music. To date they have released four albums, one remix album, two EPs and one split EP (with Below The Sea) on labels such as Thomason Sounds, Teto Records, Preco Records and Noon Records and have collaborated with artists like Ben Cooper (Electric President/Radical Face) and Ben Holton (Epic45). They have played live across Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ireland and UK and have toured with Epic45, Below The Sea, Tracer AMC, Art Of Fighting, Radical Face and Not Squares. Miaou have also contributed to various compilations and have done remixes for the likes of EF, Not Squares, Masha Qrella and many others. On Bring The Lights EP they present five new captivating tracks, blurring once more the lines between post-rock and electronica. The perfect combination of wistful guitars, swelling synths, fender rhodes, glockenspiel, samples and glitchy beats, alongside with instruments like piano, cello and flute, results in about half an hour full of warm and blissful melodies. The finishing touch on the dreamy sound of Bring The Lights EP was applied by the mastering of George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), bringing to mind the best moments of The Album Leaf, Epic45 and Mum.£8.00 -
Sale
Threethings – Antecedent Conditions
CD, SaleLimited edition CD of 150… Threethings is the solo project of Ben Worth (b.1979), who spent the first three decades of his life in England before moving to Toronto, Canada in 2010. He first picked up a guitar as a teenager and has been playing around with home recordings in one form or another ever since. From 2007 to 2010 he was a member of the band Kontakte, who during that time put out two full albums and an EP on the Drifting Falling label, and shared the stage with bands such as M83, Epic45, Six by Seven, Vessels and Fuck Buttons. Threethings started as a project after Ben’s move to Canada, where he found that he had more time to explore sounds that interested him – playing with pedals, processing and manipulating guitar loops, and combining the results with field recordings, contact mic textures, and other found sounds. Antecedent Conditions features six tracks built up in this way from a base of processed guitar loops and the incidental sounds that were captured along with them. Additional sounds, textures, and instrumentation were added as the tracks were slowly sculpted into their final form – all the while trying to find something beautiful/hopeful in the imperfect and accidental nature of the original recordings. The cover features an extract from a painting called Locust Limb by the Toronto based artist Jessica Rode.£7.00 -
Sale
Karina ESP – A Single Moment, Repeated
3", SaleKarina ESP is the solo recording project of Chris Gowers. Centered around exploring guitar-based textures, recordings vary between slowly formed melancholic ambient, experimental drones and blurred melodies. Karina ESP has been released on a number of labels including Morc Records, Hibernate, Airborne Virus and Evelyn, and has played live in venues across Europe and the UK, sharing the stage with Jessica Bailiff, Tara Jane O’Neil, Wouter van Veldhoven, Drekka and Plinth. Ongoing collaborations have also come to fruition, resulting in releases with Caught In The Wake Forever, Isnaj Dui and Circle Bros. Chris Gowers is also active performing, writing and recording with the bands Signals and Rome Pays Off, and runs The Remains Of My Estate record label. With A Single Moment, Repeated Chris wanted to capture those brief moments of beautiful clarity that communicate something wordless.£4.00 -
Sale
Offthesky – Exit To Anywhere
3", SaleOffthesky’s postcard ep “Exit To Anywhere” is a ‘diary’ collage of his recent travels in Europe with bits recorded in London, Halifax, Berlin and Bern.£4.00 -
Sold out
Isnaj Dui / Offthesky / Orla Wren – 85%
3", Sale85% is a collaboration between Isnaj Dui, Offthesky and Orla Wren. All three artists appeared at the Homenormalism show in London at the beginning of August 2013 where it was discovered that they shared a love for 85% dark chocolate. We hinted that an ep should be recorded on that basis and next thing Orla Wren pulls out his iPad and starts recording Isnaj Dui’s flute, Offthesky’s guitar and a load of other random instruments. A little while later the ep was finished…£4.00 -
Sale
Graveyard Tapes – Our Sound is Our Wound
CD, SaleGorgeous 6 panel re-issue… Many of you are already familiar with this year’s well-received album from Graveyard Tapes. The Deluxe Book Editions sold out in record time. With artwork this excellent from illustrator Jamie Mills, we couldn’t help ourselves in producing a Second Edition of this debut album. Taking much of the art from the original and translating it into a 6 Panel Matte-Print CD Wallet, the Second Edition is more compact than the Deluxe. Yet, it still captures the beauty of the illustrations in a more affordable design. For those that didn’t get a chance to grab a copy of this album the first time around, it is a beautiful piece of work. The Graveyard Tapes music is one of the most evolving, surprising, and emotional releases we have had the pleasure to release!£8.00 -
Sale
Grzegorz Bojanek – Constraints
CD, SaleLimited edition of 23 hand numbered copies. Also includes digital download code… While exploring SoundCloud I found a very interesting group called Disquiet Junto, created by Marc Weidenbaum. As Mark says: “The purpose of the group is to use constraints to stoke creativity”. When I joined the group the artists were working of the 14th project and I decided to take part in it. It went quite well cause I love to use “less” in order to create “more”. What is more, the artists who create their tracks following Marc’s guidelines are very creative and the comments they leave under the “soundclouds” are deep and honest. In my opinion it is because everybody really listens to the tracks of the other people very carefully and analyses the creative process which is always described under the track. This is really amazing. So far I’ve created several tracks for the Disquiet Junto group and they are free to download from my SoundCloud profile. Still, I wanted to publish them as an album, because I feel that they should exist also in a physical form. So I asked my friend Krzysztof Orluk to make the analogue mastering with his toys to add some warmth to the tracks. I must say I really like the new line of ETALABEL packages but in this case I also wanted to work with constraints while creating the package. That is why I made limited handmade digipacks. They are mostly in black and yellow (I don’t know why but when I think about the group those colors are in my mind). The graphics on the cover was designed by Mateusz Bąkała. I carved a woodcut out of the graphics and “stamped” it into the covers.£5.00 -
Sale
Jared Smith – Fjall
Sale, VinylLimited edition 12” white vinyl. Jared Smith is a musician, photographer, and programmer living in San Francisco. In his third release, Fjall, meaning “mountain” in Icelandic, he provides a stripped down departure from his previous albums. Whether it’s the melodic rapping of a flagpole in front of Hallgrímskirkja church, the hollow clatter of a loose street-tile along Bergstaðastræti, or even the warm, comforting sound of coffee brewing from within flat in Reykjavík, He is able to find the music in the micro and the mundane. Fjall explores the fear that disables enjoyment of beautiful moments, the fear of repeating mistakes, the fear of what a new path will bring.£10.00 -
Sale
Melodia – Saudades
Sale, VinylSaudades is the debut by Melodía, the duo of Federico Durand and Tomoyoshi Date. Fede is a musician who lives in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Born in San Paulo, Brazil, where he lived until the age of three, Tomo currently resides in Tokyo, Japan. They both share a profound passion for music. They both released a solo album on Own Records in 2011 and a few months later (Spring 2012) went to Europe for a common tour where they first met and where they decided to record an album together which was mastered by their friend Stephan Mathieu.£10.00 -
Sold out
Rudi Arapahoe – Double Bind
3", SaleA numbered limited edition 3″ CDr of 100… Double Bind is the second release from Rudi Arapahoe; the EP continues from where the album Echoes From One To Another (2008) left off, shifting the artist’s language into an increasingly bleak and abstract superstratum. The term “double bind” was originally coined by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues in the 1950s, in an attempt to elucidate the interpersonal interactions that were perceived to precede and maintain schizophrenia. The theory is now used to discuss a variety of complex relationships. Rudi has applied the theory to the relationships that define his world and voiced the findings as music. A face in the mirror, an intimate partner, a public face, a professional face, opponents in business, friendships, the relationships that make up a life; come together to speak, confound and contradict one another. The resulting music, Double Bind, rings out as complex, knotted chords that represent our lives in society.£4.00 -
Sold out
Porya Hatami – Land & Land Remixes
CD, Sale2 x digipak... Originally released on Somehow Recordings in January of 2012, this second edition of “Land” has been remastered and is co-released with “Land Remixes”. Buy both albums in a combo pack. Porya Hatami’s ‘Land’ explores a vibrant soundscape of hypnotic loops, delicately percussive chimes and manipulated field recordings to evoke the sensual, blissful minutiae of the natural world and of the life that both inhabits and interprets it. Fundamentally delicate and yet insistently, breathtakingly complete, Hatami’s keen ear for microscopic levels of sonic detail allows the album as a whole to sketch a wide-screen vision of nature at work. Buried deep within the gauzy, feather-light haze that permeates the album is a deep-seated sense of purpose – the insistent, bubbling loops underpinning ‘Autumn’; the porcelain synth washes of ‘Sea’; the disquieting crackles and squeaks of ‘Bug’. It’s an album obsessed with both stillness and movement, and the contradictions inherent in occupying those two modes of being lie at the heart of the record. Thematically profound and tonally complex, the album charts a course through a fragile natural world, constructing an exquisitely intricate tone poem from the manifold sounds of the earth and its transitory inhabitants.£10.00 -
Sale
Rezo Glonti – Late Night Diving
3", SaleThe old and the new, and the personal and political collide in Rezo Glonti’s EP Late Night Diving, which explores the history and contemporary reality of his post-Soviet home Georgia. Inspired by old wedding footage found during a trip to rural Georgia, Glonti decided to write a piece celebrating joy and renewal in the face of oppression and despair. ”It was really inspiring and beautiful,” he said of the footage, which was shot in 1985. ”I realised that despite the regime and the banning of certain things, people were happy and happiness and joy is universal and timeless, no matter when you live and where you live.”£5.00 -
Sale
Hovering – Nektarios Manaras
CD, SaleFrom the Greek island of Chalkis comes a very special debut by Nektarios Manaras celebrating magical sea life, the ancient Metéora rock pillar complex of monastries and dancing flowers. Glistening with gorgeous instrumentation, Hovering is a languid album full of fantastical imagery and whispered half truths. As the music plays, whales slowly submerge and monks scale the rock face to pray while the earth floats its way around the sun. It is an album to soak in on sun-dappled days, as the sun sinks beneath the sea and everything for that one moment seems perfect. As Manaras puts it: “The main idea is that everything in the universe and earth is floating in such a beautiful way. That is the feeling I’m trying to capture with my music.” And he certainly has.£6.00 -
Sale
Drape – An Idea And Its Map
Sale, VinylEdition of 400 copies. Black vinyl, 180 Gram pressing. Gatefold sleeve + OBI strip. Purchase of LP will include a download code of the album… Drape is an ambient duo comprised of Ryan Gracey and Spencer Williams. They have been crafting soundscapes since 2004. Their debut, ‘dream words’ (Gears of Sand) saw a limited CDR release in 2009. It was well received and garnered comparisons to Stars of the Lid, early 70’s Tangerine Dream as well as late 80’s space ambient. Their follow-up was an interesting pairing on cassette – a split w/ experimental artist Odd Nosdam. ‘An Idea And Its Map’ marks a refined leap forward in Drape’s sound. While less space music, there is certainly more expansion. It is a smudged and blended orchestra of drones on the opener ‘Solo in High Dreary’ and those drones are split apart in slow-motion – eventually revealing a single guitar tone. Moments of sublime resonance as on ‘The Visible The Untrue’ anchored by piano, and notes that float, seemingly carried in on a breeze. All is not as it seems with an undercurrent of ground swelling, oscillating air – somewhere in the distance there is a storm assembling. Ebb and flow between light and dark – silver lined black clouds converge on the B side opener ‘fanfare for lake flies’. The strings, guitar, siren calls are assembled and plastered to one another. A thick blanket of overwhelming beautiful cacophony results. The album’s close is as much filtered white noise as it is heavenly chords. The dual slow-motion treated guitar present thoroughout ‘An Idea…’ diverges between pools of dissonant feedback, howls of wind, and melodic drones.£10.00 -
Sold out
Be My Friend In Exile – The Silence, The Darkness
CD, SaleSecond full release from the UK’s BMFIE following from his last release, an EP on Twice Removed Editions. This is a 4 panel digipak with factory replicated disc in an edition of 100 copies…£5.00 -
Sale
Birch And Meadow – Butterflies And Graves (Deluxe CD)
CD, Deluxe, SaleDeluxe version comes in an edition of 100 copies. Each of these is comprised of a hinged, modified/collaged/printed 5″ reel to reel tape box. The cut out lid is collaged with pages from a 100 year old book on Lepidoptera, with the cut out forming a sort of an ancient and tattered specimen box, and revealing a two sided, quadra folded 5″ x 19″ print. Printed on Moab rag natural 300# paper, one side is printed from a detailed 3 dimensional scan, and the other is stamped with butterflies, each hand colored with leaves and flowers. In the box and beneath the print, comes the factory pressed disc in picture sleeve, and a hand numbered textual insert, all on a bed of mounting material…£20.00 -
Sale
Fibreforms – Treedrums
CD, SaleOne-time numbered edition of 300. Includes two previously unreleased tracks from that early era… Long before KILN turned to the sunset-soaked textures of Dusker (2007), they made music as fibreforms. Treedrums (1996) documents their transition from live performance trio to sound-art synergists, balancing symbiotic instrumental spaces of kit-drums and treated guitars with lost & found sound to evoke moments that are at once invigorating and tranquil. Seventeen years later, Treedrums is presented here as an economized, re-amped, remixed, and properly restored archival edition of this once buried treasure of sonic curio.£10.00 -
Sale
Eluder – Through Horizon
CD, SaleJapanese style mini-lp gatefold sleeve – printed by Stoughton. Features printed inner sleeve. Design by Timothy O’Donnell. Images by NASA. Edition of 400 copies…£8.00 -
Sale
Minadeo / Brown – Wood Land
CD, Sale‘Wood Land’ features deluxe packaging with a perfect bound booklet of 28 pages, matte digipak, housed in a slipcase… Wood Land is a story of a nameless worker caught in the mundanity of placid bureaucracy. Wood Land is a story of buried towers and subtle rebellion. Wood Land is a story of unsubtle rebellion and totalitarian overthrow. Wood Land is a story of deep space awakening and astronaut spiders. Wood Land is a story of return and reconciliation. Wood Land is a story. Scored by Joseph Minadeo and written by Curt Brown with imagery by both. Sonically, ‘Wood Land’ was an extension of Joseph Minadeo’s first foray into ambient – ‘sounds from a photograph’, a ‘Pearl’-esque LP of Lanois affected piano and placid drones. ‘Wood Land’ extends that premise and gives a hazy nod towards Noto and Sakamoto’s collaborative soft digital clicks and sustained piano. Airy atmospheres are constructed with multiple piano layering plus guitars dissolving into despondant organ, synth sequencing and minimal drum padding. Slow cadences of hope and light are countered with ominous sonatas. Indescernible Vocals, courtesy of Gabriela Kropf, are mixed into the mellotron choirs. Joseph Minadeo is a composer behind the former Akron, Ohio (now Los Angeles) based Patternbased label. He is also a member of the post-rock outfit Low in the Sky. He recently moved to California to dig deeper into art and music. Curt Brown is an Akron, Ohio based artist and is a co-founder of Rubber City Noise, a collective that runs a record label and arts space in Akron. Current projects include Black Unicorn and Cane Swords among others. Several tracks from ‘Wood Land’ were used in the global collaborative documentary film ‘One Day on Earth’ (along w/ Sigur Ros, Beirut, Cut Chemist and Mum).£8.00 -
Sale
Monos – Age & Transformation / Aged & Transformed
CD, Sale2 x CD: Each CD is packaged in a card stock envelope and then housed in a mini-lp gatefold Stoughton sleeve with matte finishing and spot gloss lettering. Designed by Timothy O’Donnell. Darren’s work has always been that of a drone eccentric — and proof positive of that is the micro-editions released since 2003 on his own Fungal Records. True modern-day psychedelia, drawn out drone excursions, electric guitar scraping & expansion, synth noodling harbored into small private recordings for the chosen few. The limited number of those exposed to Darren’s view –which was NOT intended to be exclusive — just small updates as to where/what was happening with Darren in terms of gear, mood and circumstance. There is an inherent feel that little editing takes place – just captured recordings with the reel-to-reel on. Tate has worked extensively with other collaborators – Andrew Chalk (together known as Ora), Colin Potter (as Monos), Paul Bradley, Andrew Liles, Ian Holloway to name a few. Collectively a solid block foundation of great U.K. drone artists. In a collaborative setting, there may be a bit more judicious editing employed for better (or for worse) depending on where one sits in appreciation of refinement over improvisation. Which brings us to “Age & Transformation”. Two tracks, both around the half-hour mark and presumably recorded in one take each. The first track (Untitled) contains all elements of what makes a Tate recording effective- gentle guitar scraping, echoed city recordings, air vibrations oscillating an overall nocturnal hush that shrouds the whole piece. The second track (again, simply “Untitled”) is undoubtedly one of Tate’s finest solo moments. A defining impressionistic recording from the middle of the night. It opens with the sound of a freeway – a very distant light traffic flow filtered through the forest. A lonesome organ sonata, languid chords with silence in between weave in and out at various points throughout. Tate sitting by the window capturing the sounds of the freeway, voices – haunting arias both human and industrial. The 2nd disc is a reworking by Colin Potter. Extracted from the quiet of “A&T”, the first track “Aged” is an encapsulation of the entire recording with the small dervishes, organ melodies and drone wrapped up in an almost tidy nine minutes. The second “Transformed” – is over 40 minutes of water tower acoustic sustained tones, layered subtle guitar hum – a perfect complimentary refinement on a classic ambient improvisation.£8.00 -
Sold out
Celer – Discourses of the Withered
CD, SaleThis is where it all began in a sorts for Celer. This was their first properly issued release (after a handful of achingly rare CDR releases). One of our favorite all-time acts. Originally released in 2008, remastered 2012 by Chihei Hatakeyama. All music by Will Long & Danielle Baquet-Long, featuring each of the tracks on the first issue, with an expanded version of “The Separation of the Two-phased Apple Blossoms” and includes a previously unreleased track “Retranslating the Upside-down Mountain” which was from the ‘Discourses…’ sessions. Cover image is a photo by Danielle, and a re-design by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek). Reissue is in an edition of 500 copies.£8.00 -
Sold out
Celer – The Everything And The Nothing
CD, SaleSublime, album-length track of ambient drones from the wonderful Celer. In its 71-minute duration ‘The Everything and the Nothing’ slowly transitions between glowing tones to symphonic bliss-outs and darker zones of bass subduction to ghostly drifts£8.00 -
Sale
James Murray – The Land Bridge
CD, SaleThe Land Bridge comprises seven heartfelt reflections on patience, devotion and loss. Delicately balanced electronics, keyboards, piano and guitar carefully combine to chart a territory personal to us all. This is a place of sparse, graceful motifs: an intimate, essential experience for sensitive souls who feel and listen deeply.£7.00 -
Sale
L’air Mort – Television Dream Suite
CD, SaleL’air Mort is the musical identity of three mysterious members all hailing from Terra Australis. Drawing from a diverse range of influences such as film soundtracks, found sounds, instrumentation and field recordings, their music weaves together a spectral haze of sound. Television Dream Suite is L’air Mort’s first outing; combining found sounds, degraded vinyl and cello into an album that recalls moments of modern classical composition, haunted soundtracks and electro acoustic experimentation£6.00 -
Sold out
Bailleau / Demoulin – Outshining Memories
CD, SaleHand printed paper sleeve version… A collaborative release from musicians Julien Demoulin and Christophe Bailleau entitled “Outshining Memories”. This is an unfolding and languid mix of spatial and organic synth work and overlaid electronic treatments often bubbly and shimmering, slightly rumbling at times and shifting into moodier but still overall warm vibes spacey stuff with an endless and beautiful echoey ambiance. Best to listen to out on the prairie under the stars at night particularly when the synth gives way to twang and the moon rises full…£6.00 -
Sale
Sarah Hughes – Accidents of Matter or of Space
CD, Deluxe, SaleSarah Hughes’ ‘Accidents of Matter or of Space’ is a limited edition of 100 archival CD-R’s mounted on an 11×14 letterpress score produced by Milkfed Press in Alameda, California. A complementary informational sheet includes credits, track list, and an essay by Dominic Lash. This release brings together a solo zither improvisation recorded in a disused transmission station in mid-Wales with three realizations of the 2011 composition (can never exceed unity), performed by Rhodri Davies, Patrick Farmer, Jane Dickson, Neil Davidson, and Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga… In what has become an oft-quoted passage, the British composer and improviser Cornelius Cardew wrote that “it is impossible to record with any fidelity a kind of music that is actually derived in some sense from the room in which it is taking place – its shape, acoustical properties, even the view from the windows. What a recording produces is a separate phenomenon, something really much stranger than the playing itself, since what you hear on tape or disc is indeed the same playing, but divorced from its natural context”. This text is usually cited as evidence of the artificiality of recorded improvisation and the superiority of “the real thing”, the live concert happening in real time. I love “the real thing”, but it seems to me that recorded improvised music at its best deliberately exploits the strangeness to which Cardew refers. We are not forced to choose between either experiencing the “natural context” (if one is there in the room when the improvisation is taking place) or having no inkling of it (if one only hears a recording of the improvisation later). Rather the recorded sounds can give greater or lesser hints as to the nature of that context, depending on the way the music is recorded, and the particular sensitivities and sensibilities of each listener. These hints can be accurate or misleading in any degree and any combination, and the activity of the listener’s fantasy in relation to these hints comprises one of the great pleasures of listening to recorded improvised music.£10.00 -
Sale
Chen Brothers – Ally
CD, SaleThe Chen Brothers’ «Ally» is a limited edition of 50 archival CD-R’s in recycled, hand-made packaging designed and printed by Jeremy Chen with sound by Jonathan Chen… Several years ago, my brother Jeremy and I began discussing the possibility of a collaborative project. Our initial idea was just that the collaboration would have something to do with the creation of an album: I would be responsible for the sound, and Jeremy would be responsible for the visual. As our discussion continued, we decided that Jeremy would design the sleeve before I would make the music, reversing the way recordings normally proceed. Thus, Jeremy would determine all the visual content of the sleeve, including the track names and times, and I would create the music to fit these parameters. This turned out to be a difficult task for me. I wasn’t used to accommodating a time frame in such a specific way as a composer. I made several versions of a couple of the tracks, but I didn’t feel like they were right. Meanwhile, the sleeve, which had the year 2006 printed on it, was missing its well past due CD. I had put the project aside for a couple of years when I decided on a different approach. I decided that maybe my brother was the composer here and that I was the performer/improviser. He had determined the track times and the instruction to me was to “do something within that time.” I treated each of the times as a stopwatch score with the instruction being to start and stop within the given time frame. Within that given time frame I improvised on electronics, in this case feedback. The recording was made at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, NY.£6.00
