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Coldwell & Nozaki – Angry Ambient Artists Vol.4
TapeThe fourth instalment of Angry Ambient Artists sees the series widen its scope with some raw rhythmic jams and horror score worthy instrumentals. Conflux Coldwell and Tomonari Nozaki step up to cast the series wide net into a pool of tense ambience, dark drones and belting percussive numbers.£7.00 -
Jasper TX – Singing Stones
Tape74 minutes. Compact Cassette in white Norelco case with card slipcase... Limited, expanded and remastered tape-only rerelease, issued to mark the 10th anniversary of Singing Stones. Singing Stones was originally released on CD in February 2009. The tape includes the complete track list from the 2009 release, as well as additional, original versions of ‘Stillness’ and ‘Not Leaving, Not Really’.£7.00 -
David Bremer – Paradise Refuted
TapeThis year, David Bremer has made his second comeback to planet Earth. This release marks the 23rd anniversary of his first (solo works) cassette. It tells the story about another journey, one that never was made. The sommarplåga of this year's unconscious episodes. Cassette tape in clear case with deluxe card slipcase.£5.00 -
Tropic of Coldness – Deplaces
TapePro dubbed cassettes by Bandjesfabriek, C47, smokey clear, Norelco smokey clear box, Photo insert with track list, different hand made covers with skeleton leave included. Limited to 12 copies. Tropic of Coldness is a Brussels-based ambient/experimental duo, formed by David and Giovanni, who met by chance, or maybe not, during the autumn of 2011. “Deplaces” is their fourth album, and it has been conceived as a reflection on both their five years working together and their relationship with the city of Brussels. The album is the synthesis of impro-driven recording sessions held between May and July 2016, edited with additional overdubs and field recordings in the following months and mixed in autumn 2016.£8.00 -
Andrew Tasselmyer – Vantage Points
TapePro dubbed cassettes by Bandjesfabriek, C51, solid black, Norelco smokey clear box, Photo insert with track list, different hand made cover with skeleton leave included. Limited to 25 copies. "Vantage Points" is an album about place, meaning, and translation. It is literally a tape reel playing back my memories. When recording this album, I heavily manipulated field recordings from several places relevant to me. Some sounds were trivial, some were remarkable, but each one came from a place that has had a very specific and powerful impact on my life; impacts that I can't necessarily describe in words. I recommend it be played quietly, as a low-volume companion for your dreams and reflections...£8.00 -
Gipsi – Sleepy Follow (Tape)
TapePro dubbed cassettes by Bandjesfabriek, C43, solid white, Norelco smokey clear box, Photo insert with track list, different hand made covers with skeleton leave included. Limited to 12 copies. “After the death of someone very close to me, I was, at times, so emotionally disorientated that some days I could barely take it. As music is my only creative output, I decided to make an album honoring this person: inescapably mournful but, ultimately, sanguine. Sleepy Follow is me channeling both memories and nightmares. There’s an oppressive repetitiveness to grief that lulls you into a sort of trance-like submission; that’s pretty much how these pieces were born. Every vibration of a guitar string and every reverb-drenched pad is entwined with the prosaic tedium of loss”.£8.00 -
øjeRum – Skælver Fuglenes Vinger
TapeType I C46 cassette tape, includes download code. Edition of 100 copies...£7.00 -
James Osland – Departures
TapeLimited Edition Cassette, 15 Apricot/Dark Yellow copies, pro dubbed by Tapeline, download code included. 15 handmade, hand numbered, each cover unique, photo included. Departures was recorded in areas of Europe, South-East Asia and Australasia over a period of two years. The album seeks to explore our relationship with sound, memory and place. Thank you to everyone that helped make this album possible. All tracks composed and mixed by James Osland.£8.00 -
Bålsam – Dream Landscapes
TapeLimited Edition Cassette, 15 British Racing Green copies, pro dubbed by Tapeline, download code included. 15 handmade, hand numbered, each cover unique, photo included... Dream landscapes is a vision, a journey of thoughts, meditations and sound vibrations. Moving through mountains and páramos...the colors and the beauty in nature and all the things we can learn from her. The places I've lived and the places I've seen...cloud forests, vibrant jungles, beautiful rivers, superior lakes, tranquil oceans. The Rain, the sun, the moon, the sound of birds, the sound of the wind, my love for the northern winters and the snow...my home in Minnesota and my home in Colombia. I let the organics of nature guide the songs. It's like a detailed soundscape of what I really see, and of what these places made me feel. It's sound healing. My medicine. My animal heart.£8.00 -
Aleks – Body/Astral
Tape82 minutes of deep meditation, astral traveling and out of the body experiences... Limited Edition Cassette, 50 black copies, pro dubbed by Tapeline. The cassette goes in a handmade package, hand numbered covers with original drawings by Aleks, Photo & download code included.£8.00 -
Post Global Trio – Minus Seven (Tape)
TapeLimited Edition Cassette, 27 pea green copies, pro dubbed by Tapeline, download code included... 27 handmade, hand numbered different colored covers, photo included.£8.00 -
Thet Liturgiske Owäsendet – Wisconsin Mining State
TapeThe Rust Belt refers to a largely-deindustrialized portion of the United States surrounding the Great Lakes. Once a powerhouse of manufacturing, the region is now known for being a poster child of economic decline, and perhaps swinging a presidential election. Thet Liturgiske Owäsende are Swedish experimentalists Linus Schrab and Johan Fotmeijer, and their Wisconsin Mining State release sonically explores the sparseness and melancholy of small towns in this region. In fact, four of the six tracks are titled after mining towns with populations of less than 2000 each. Using synths, guitars, and field recordings, Schrab and Fotmeijer provide drones with mechanical rhythms and pulsing bass, evoking post-industrial soundscapes – a place where the machines have largely shut down, but occasionally fire up for a few minutes at a time. Platteville begins with a slowly repeating drone melody that grows and ebbs with lightly-distorted walls. Hazel Green offers dark ambient atmospherics interspersed with ominous crescendos. Iron Ridge consists of oscillating drones and a sparse, repeating bass line. Klar Piquett features throbbing, distorted walls. Mineral Point, perhaps my favorite track, is dominated by a start/stop mechanical cadence overlaid with varied percussive patterns. Rajah is a more traditional spacious, ambient drone, and somewhat out of place compared to its companion tracks.£8.50 -
Svetlana Maraš & Bodies Under The Waterfall – Angry Ambient Artists Vol.2
TapeAfter kicking off the Angry Ambient Artists series with two of the most established and respected names in contemporary composition; Machinefabriek and Philippe Petit, Volume 2 sees the series look to two new talents - Svetlana Maraš and Bodies Under The Waterfall in their efforts to make some creative sense of these dark times. AAA Vol.2 sees both artists making their solo release debuts in an exacting and intense fashion.£7.00 -
Steve Pacheco – Constellate
TapeNumbered edition of 90 copies with handmade artwork and a dried flower... Across its 7 pieces, all of Constellate, from its song titles to its feeling, the whole thing, can be heard as a series of broad strokes that drift over the listener and have a mysteriously hypnotic quality, or a series of smaller brush strokes that add up to a much grander whole than the sum of its parts. Even the song titles bring together references to the grand scale of the entire night sky hovering over a planet matched against references to something that seems deeply personal. But perhaps the biggest credit to Constellate is that no matter the interpretation, whether it be grand global narrative or personal story, it’s an album that just plain works on both levels. And much like the mystery created by Pacheco’s deliberate disinterest in personal biography, the album has a mystery of its own going for it: why’s it so damn good? “Constellate” is a remarkable offering by any definition; that it serves as a debut release for an artist only compounds how impressive it is. - Brendan Moore (Fluid Radio)£10.00 -
Kate Carr – The Story Surrounds Us
TapeEmblematic of her work is a gentle dislocation between the environmental sounds and her drone-dub ellipses of somnambulant melody. The clatter of a frozen dock or a vibrational shimmer from rustled objects or the unintelligible whispers displaces the sense of self amidst a sea of disparate symbols and coded thought. More a travelogue in and out of one's own body than to any particular place. Carr suggests "In a way, it is about restlessness, an uncomfortable tossing and turning in all these many different places, a struggle somehow to forge a connection between my own internal world and all these places and persons I have encountered. I think this holds a sense of unease and strain, with both beautiful and failed moments of intimacy and connection which are made either possible or impossible in the difficult and distorted context of being away. It is quite sad, really." Look to Carla dal Forno, Alan Lamb and those moments of clarity in the shapeshifting ethos from Jewelled Antler for neighboring sounds to Kate Carr's chimerical compositions. - HS£7.00 -
Phil Maguire – Solo Computer Music
TapeCrackles and shapeless tones waft across each other in slow-mo digital drift, motherboard reveries transmitted deep from a hard disk on standby. There’s a satisfying sense of algorithmic self-determination at times here, yet the fact that these two pieces are actually edits of live, human performances in no way detracts from their terse machine anomie. Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2016 – a triumph of public service broadcasting! – the first cut, there will be no miracles here, sees Maguire alternating the scuffle and buzz of his software with abrupt snatches of found sound. The disjunction between the two is deliberate, the disembodied voices of Maguire’s samples, possibly clips of old adverts and public information films, bursting out from the dusty blur as if trying to escape from an archive prison.£6.00 -
Masayuki Imanishi – Clips
TapeLimited Edition of 50... Home dubbed c45 cassette. Hand numbered Xerox cover. Masayuki Imanishi is a Japanese Sound Artist: Paper, speaker, field recording, synth. Mastered by Jos Smolders Photography by Emma Dove£6.00 -
The Laborer – Se Vende
TapeThis is first release on the new cassette label, Analogue Chat, which is an independent label based in Spain and The Netherlands releasing limited edition cassettes. Artists are invited to record sounds from their own ‘medio ambiente’ (environment) to tell their personal narrative in the form electronic soundscapes or traditional song structures. The idea behind the album was inspired by a walk with a good friend, Dan Miles, across the de Galvany nature reserve located about 10km south of Alicante in November 2015. Dan is an archaeologist for Historic England and has also lived in the Alicante region and worked for the city’s MARQ museum. What is not so well known is that the reserve was also the site of Republican defensive line during the Spanish Civil War and the area is home to bunkers and trenches from this period. The land was put in danger at the end of the 1970s due to proposed urban development, but public pressure combined with the support of the local council saved it from destruction. However, the area has not been immune to subsequent housing development, particularly in the boom period from 1996 to 2007. The reserve is flanked by the urbanizations of Gran Alacant to the south and Arenales to the north and is popular with expats and Spanish holidaymakers. As a result of the financial crisis in 2008, many properties remain empty or unsold and there are a number of developments that are half-built and abandoned. It was the idea of destruction through war and destruction through overdevelopment that we discussed as we walked across this landscape. A tale of dreams unfulfilled...£10.00 -
Mykja – Climate Change
STAFF PICKS, TapeC-40 / Real-Time / Ferric Black Cassette tapes. Limited to 30 Copies Only! ‘Climate Change’ is formed to describe the relationship between man and nature, our impact on the environment that causes global change effect. Recorded live: Christian Pevere & Emanuele Pertoldi aka. Mykja£7.00 -
Machinefabriek / Petit – AAA Vol. I
Sale, TapeC12 cream cassettes with black print, supplied in clear cassette cases with full colour printed artwork. Limited edition of 100... Following on from the hugely well received EP series by Tomonari Nozaki, Forwind begins a new audio adventure with the first instalment of our new cassette and digital series, ‘Angry Ambient Artists’. Vol.1 kicks off the series in uncompromising fashion featuring two intense outsider cuts to add some scares to those simmering summer nights.£5.00 -
Lanzo – Gratitape
Sale, TapeThe third of three tapes now in stock from San Diego’s Scenic Rythms. Limited edition of 30 cassettes.£6.00 -
Aitanna77 – Patterns For Smartness
Sale, TapeThe second of three tapes now in stock from San Diego’s Scenic Rythms. Limited edition of 25 cassettes.£6.00 -
Astral – Mondhaze
Sale, TapeThis is the first of three tapes now in stock from San Diego’s Scenic Rythms. Limited edition of 30 cassettes.£6.00 -
Robert Heel – Naihehe
Sale, Tape“Naihehe” is inspired by huge caves around the world. Enormous echo spaces, cavernous spaces, versatile reverberation, natural surroundings and heavily modified sound and field recordings: from slowed down bat sounds to water and wind in caves to clicks, noises and slipping rocks.£6.00 -
Himukalt – Conditions Of Acrimony
Sale, TapeSomewhere in the American Southwest may lie a pile of fetid cassettes, the scope and breadth of which might very well match that of the experiments with tape and electronics from Rozz Williams and Chuck Collison. In her terse exchanges with us, she once alluded to a past set of recordings without divulging them; and so for now we have this prolonged electrical cramp that marks the first published recording of Himukalt. The given name we know is Ester Kärkkäinen, and that’s pretty much about her beyond the Nevada return address. This enigma is fitting for her work. exhaustive, claustrophobic, and cryptic, these lacerated (de)compositions address collapsed psychological states that dislocate the body, the self, and the spirit into horror, fear, doubt, hostility. Such have marked the acme for the most virulent strains of power electronics and industrial decay (e.g. Puce Mary, Anenzephalia, Maurizio Bianchi, Maria Zerfall, etc.), and this — hopefully the first of many transmissions from Himukalt — stands shoulder to shoulder next to those giants.£5.00 -
Wolf Maps – Purity
Sale, TapeLimited hand-numbered edition of 100... Following his EP ’Sun Ghosts’ from a few months ago and debut album ‘Landforms’ (2011) is Wolf Maps’ second album ‘Purity’. His most personal work to date crafts layers of guitar tape loops into eight tracks of ambient drones, which with an apparent emotional fragility, envelopes the listener in washes of translucent memory and life-weary noise. As an experienced drone-creator with a large following in the experimental music community, Wolf Maps has reached a new plateau in his work, placing him along side his established peers.£6.00 -
Black Eagle Child – Playing
Sale, TapeBlack Eagle Child is the project of Michael Jantz from Milwaukee Wisconsin. Jantz and Black Eagle Child are in no way unfamiliar names if you’ve been following experimental music over the last 5 years. He has released a number of albums on a slew of great labels over the years (Stunned, Digitalis, Under The Spire, Blackest Rainbow, Space Slave… to name a few). Black Eagle Child’s album titled “Lobelia” and came out on Preservation in 2011 and was met with critical acclaim from Pitchfork among other press outlets. The aptly named ‘Playing’ by Black Eagle Child takes a more playful approach to composition with less focus on the melancholy, while still maintaining some of the nostalgia that comes very naturally and sincerely from Jantz. ‘Playing’ is the perfect soundtrack for spring and summer with it’s circling guitar lines interplaying perfectly over various serene field recordings. A most blissful listening experience.£7.00 -
Odawas – Black Harmony
Sale, Tape'Coming from a period in both our lives where failed marriages, affairs, drug and alcohol abuse and a fatalistic dose of existential dread were leading us into something of a madman’s revelry. The lyrics weave these personal moments in through various fantastic narratives about star-crossed soldiers finding perfection in the desert, Prohibition-era murder and espionage, crime scene investigations in pastoral meadows, and finding soft comfort in the hallucinatory madness of Nebraska. Themes of being lost, betrayal, murder and madness are given candy-coated arrangements of Americana and atmospheric electronics. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, as they say.' - Isaac Edwards (Odawas)£4.00 -
Grant Evans – Brittle
Sale, TapeWith a detached curiosity, Grant Evans drops us into his petri dish of mud, bacteria, and fetid slop. At first, we have no roadmap to the drowning noise that slowly trickles down the throat and presses against the ear drums; but Evans is no sadist. Yes, volatile coagulations and conflagrations abound with malaise at the beginning to each of the side-long works to Brittle — itself a vibrant landmark in the Evans’ rhizomatic back catalogue that slips through harsh wall noise, kosmische explorations, dronologist collage, and the like. But upon the discharge of that initial shard of tooth and blood, Evans tempers the atmospheric pressures and illumines a path by which to proceed. Beacons of monochord guitar. Radiant dispersions of glare and trill. Compacted bowed metal resonance. Interstitial ecological sounds from water, bird, and tree. Exhumed cassette minimalism. And a gasping, pulsing, morphing drone that bends around each of these sound objects. Such is the vivid unfurling of Brittle — a meticulous and wondrous bricolage of the exploded organic. Parallels to be found in Chalk, Organum,Toniutti, and Grzinich.£5.00 -
Jim Haynes – Scarlet
Sale, TapeJagged bursts of strobe lights. Cackling radio signals bristling with interference. Sawtooth patterns of tactile noise. Torn flesh. Scabbed wounds. These are some of the building blocks to Jim Haynes’ Scarlet. This crucible of unkempt rhythm and noise-pulse turbulence was decomposed and sutured together from the various sources of electromagnetic and psychic detritus into an unstable mutation of sequential error. The eight tracks of Scarlet stand as vastly radical and obsessive variations on the theme of repetition through trauma. Each of the tracks may have begun with the same system of building blocks, but quickly spiral into disparate orbits, time-lag accumulation, tunnel-vision mania, schizoid detours, amplified seances, and teleological endgames. This strategy of rupture and release was first noted on Haynes’ 2012 album The Wires Cracked, but has become all the more unhinged here on Scarlet. The analog tone generation and shambolic futurism harken to an earlier era of industrial immolation, with Haynes’ echolalia of Le Syndicat, Mika Vainio, and Martin Rev stridently tracing and electrically bleaching the forms of those antecedents without the benefit of drum machine, sequencer, and whatnot. Bruitisme, indeed.£5.00 -
My Home, Sinking – Sleet
Sale, TapeLovingly reel-to-reel mastered by Ian Hawgood, the album unspools its vintage heart from an audiocassette presented in craft paper and letter-pressed cover designed by Giacomo Vianello and realized by Marco Brunello at Cartiera Clandestina. Coming with dried brambles in a small pergamino paper bag. Hand numbered envelopes. “Sleet” is a pastoral fable with a resolutely vulnerable core – a ’60s folk narrative echoing through modern classical and ambient music. Enrico Coniglio evokes the cadenced ghosts of My Home, Sinking with the aid of Natalia Drepina, Katie English, Peter Gallo, Piero Bittolo Bon and Giovanni Natoli. The fading Morriconian memories of “Sleet” evolve through a languid structured homage to Italian songwriters, embellished by weaving flute, cello, vibraphone, duduk and drums, like a prayer for human tragedy to a deaf and distant cosmos. The story of a young virgin woman and a miraculous gift is reinterpreted amongst the cobwebs of fragmentary mellotron, orchestral samples, pads of noises and manipulated field recordings.£5.00 -
Jeremy Young – Chants Beneath The Bed…
Sale, TapeInspired by the stream that flows through my parents’ town in upstate New York, this piece was written as a descriptive reflection of movement and stillness. I have walked along the banks of this frozen brook in Winter, witnessed its healthy rushing energy in Autumn and savored its pacifying calm in green Spring. Its name suggests imagery of both heat and coolness, and I wanted this to be represented in the mixing. The solemn stillness of the single icey tone and jagged high frequency shards of feedback balance out through Greg’s impressive mastering which seems to have run through the buzzing warmth of analog tubes. The genesis of sound is a square wave frequency, which is then bent and shaped by echoing delay and feedback rhythms and an octave shift, manipulated subtly and slowly to reflect the contours of its wired trajectory. Electronic current mimicks the flow of rushing water through a riverbasin while also conjuring the image of temporal stillness, timelessness.£4.00 -
Fischerle / Micromelancolie – Moulding
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c34 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card and download code. Decaying Winter drones loops and found sounds from the collaboration of Fischerle & Micromelancolié.£4.00 -
MonoLogue – The Sea From The Trees
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c43 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card and download code. Ambient synth drone movements courtesy of Marie e le Rose’s MonoLogue project.£4.00 -
Nick Castell – The Water Margin
Sale, TapeLimited Edition of 50 Pro-Dubbed Cassettes. Hand Painted / Letterpressed Packaging. No two alike! “I know people will always assume that I listen to a lot of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Nick Drake etc. I do listen to all of this and I do love it but there is so much more to the world of music I inhabit. Some of my favourite composers take folk motifs to make ‘art music’, composers like Béla Bartók and Osvaldo Golijov. It is perhaps their approach rather than their music that influences me most. I listen to hours of field recordings from all over the world every week as well as ‘classical’ music from Dowland to Poulenc and 20th Century popular music styles.” This is a beautiful loner folk album that will stand the test of time, no doubt about it.£5.00 -
Grizzly Imploded – You Are The Way…
Sale, TapeNeapolitan free jazz tornado-hatching is totally my bag and Grizzly Imploded bring the joy in spades; I could listen to this kind of steez all day! This trio is a branch off the Strongly Imploded tree – two of the three members hail from that noisy outfit – and they employ all the latest techniques to melt the faces of their audience. Minimal/maximal guitar skree deftly unloaded like depth charges off the side of a warship. Freely-pummelled drums that bounce off of the floor, on the verge of exploding under the weight of deft arms. Controlled chaos that threatens to seep out of the rusty container holding it all together. Yeah, my heart’s totally into this beautifully-crafted tape – which excels both in audible and visible content – delivered directly inside my tattered cranium courtesy of Scissor Tail Editions.£4.00 -
Nathan McLaughlin – Karen Studies
Sale, TapeOn the surface, Karen Dalton may seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for the reel-to-reel experimentalist and recent Upstate New York transplant Nathan McLaughlin. Dalton was an undeniably great interpreter of folk songs whose gritty, whiskey-singed voice could add new layers of emotional depth to virtually any song she took on. McLaughlin, as a solo artist, has predominantly explored expansive, slow-building sound pieces using his beloved Teac 3440 tape machine with subtle manipulations and guitar and synth accompaniment. In places, it’s as though McLaughlin appears to be recreating the worn contours of Dalton’s voice itself. In the end, when the banjo notes ring out, McLaughlin has created one of his most original and deeply moving works to date.£4.00 -
Raising Holy Sparks – For Fran…
Sale, TapeLimited edition run of 50 copies… ‘For Fran, Etched In Glass & Water’ is a new album from Irish musician Dave Colohan, under the name Raising Holy Sparks. Colohan is a founding member of the respected avant-folk collective United Bible Studies and the Deserted Village label. Raising Holy Sparks began in 2011, after Colohan retired the Agitated Radio Pilot name under which he’d been recording since 1993. The project sees Colohan and a rotating crew of friends exploring music informed by Hasidic mysticism and the landscapes of rural Ireland, achieving an ecstatic outpouring of drone, folk song, and free jazz in the process. ‘For Fran, Etched In Glass & Water’ is the third album from Raising Holy Sparks to see a physical release. Recorded in Ballymahon, Co. Longford during April and May of 2013, it features Colohan on accordion, Appalachian dulcimer, autoharp, harmonium, Hohner Organetta, melodica, shruti box, trombone and sampled Mellotron. The results are more serene than much of Colohan’s recent material, coalescing into a long-form ambience where echo and memory are key.£5.00 -
Bastian Void – Phonics
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c36 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card. Warm daylight, myself at age 8, sitting in computer class. Circuits and pine trees. Views out various bedroom windows. The research laboratory down the street. Atari in the basement. Wood paneling. Office buildings. Power generators sitting in the forest. Light shapes cast on walls. Science class. Old computer games. Leaves and educational video tapes.£3.50 -
Sima Kim – Whatever
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c26 pro-dubbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card… Delicate post-classical piano ambience from South Korean musicologist Sima Kim. Includes re-workings from Wil Bolton and Hakobune.£3.50 -
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 -
Coppice – Epoxy
Sale, TapeThe prolific Chicago based duo of Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer have produced a steady stream of increasingly impressive music for a few years now. This cassette sees Coppice focus less on the electronics and bellows their releases have normally involved, and instead turns the ear back on the recording process itself. The duo played a number of improvisations with various guest musicians, and captured the performances using a tape deck modified to play back and record at the same time. Exactly how this process works isn’t quite clear, but the end result is two pieces of strange, hauntingly oblique music that completely disguise the voice, cello, guitars, etc that are apparently embedded in there somewhere and replace them with a smudged blur of intriguing, strange activity. It’s more a kind of immediate, acoustic musique concrète than improvisation in its natural sense, full of murky but vastly contrasting colours and a wide range of dynamics.£4.00 -
Coppice – Pied
Sale, TapeSince late 2009 we have developed compositions using a modified boombox – a tape loop machine that records and plays back simultaneously. Sounds that enter it are released within seconds, sounding gentle feedback. Our first compositions using this boombox and a shruti box marked the beginnings of our collaboration as Coppice, and a phase of up-close entwinement of both instruments in decidedly quiet gestures. Since then, we have expanded our dynamic palette and range of instrumentation to include more bellowed instruments, custom instruments and other electronic processes. Last Fall, we began imagining what has become Pied, a composition for tape, pump organ and the boombox. Its form contrasts the tapes’ fibrous processing with the more tabular appearances of microtonal pump organ transpositions – performed quietly but loudly amplified to bring out interferences and resonances by means of the original microphone techniques. On one hand, Pied is a stark display of our sounds as solo artists, but in a borderline duet: five pump organ sections (recorded in Summer 2011 at Fljótstunga, Iceland) alternating with their boombox mediation and trails.£5.00 -
Raglani / N.N.N. Cook – Split
Sale, TapePro-duplication and imprinting in black ink on clear shells with gold foil liners. Edition of 200 on high bias tape… On the A side is a new track commissioned specifically for close/far recordings. Sig. to Ether Error seems to channel a distant astral oratorio. Slowly your mind’s eye is activated and begins to build its own temple. Reconciling the synthetic with the organic, Raglani coaxes a state of concord between himself and his circuitry. On the B side the primary sound source is an electronic unit, the Meridian Box, custom designed and built by Joseph Kramer. It consists of six oscillators with independent pitch controls and electrodes controlled by body resistance. Otherness Figments immediately sweeps you into its current, enveloping your body with hum and crackle. Punctuated by blasts and tears in time, jarring moments begin to smear and stretch. As you pan across your barren destination, mirages dance across the landscape. Abruptly, your Dionysian journey ends in repose.£4.00 -
Gideon Wolf – I Am Wolf
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c40 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card… I am Wolf is a departure from my debut album Paper released on Fluid Audio last summer. The modern classical elements of my previous album (piano and cello) have been replaced with vocals and a more dynamic use of electronic beats and ambient textures. The contrasts of hard and soft are starker on these tracks and the ambient elements are holding together what might spill over into chaos at any moment. At the outset of this album it was clear for me that I wanted to go further with the treatment and use of my voice which I had begun to explore on my first album and to see where writing lyrics and singing would take me. On I am Wolf the voice or song is used primarily as an instrument, and although it often threatens to come forward I’ve rarely allowed it to break free from the other repetitive elements of the music. Neon Marks is probably the only really recognizable song on the album but even so all the tracks here have been informed or created around structures and ideas that began at one stage with the voice. If Paper had been about movement and traveling through urban spaces, then I would say that this album represents traveling at night and the darker imaginary spaces these nocturnal worlds create.£4.00 -
Lost Harbours – Wooden Wires
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c30 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card… The Southend-On-Sea duo Lost Harbours join the Chemical Tapes family with ‘Wooden Wires’ 6 tracks of heartbreakingly haunting experimental folk for the soul.£3.50 -
Stenorette – Cyan
Sale, TapeLimited cassette edition packaged in hand-stamped, 100% recycled chipboard packaging – includes tape, and vellum printed insert (with extra download code)… 02 [Cyan] is the second of a planned six-part series of cassettes documenting the Stenorette recording sessions in 2013. The tracks included are edited versions of two 45 minute pieces originally recorded in February 2013. Edits were to shorten the pieces only, no additional sounds were added.£3.50 -
Stenorette – After The Parade
Sale, TapeLimited cassette edition packaged in hand-stamped, 100% recycled chipboard packaging – includes tape, and vellum printed insert (with extra download code)…£3.50 -
Moon Zero – Tombs
Sale, TapeBlack cassette in clear cases with cover art inlay, limited to 50 copies… Recorded onto an 8-track at St George In The East Church in Shadwell, London last October, ‘Tombs’ is the debut release for Tim Garratt under his Moon Zero moniker. This four track EP introduces Tim’s approach to noise-drone, incorporating melody and structure, delivered through processed instrumentation and filtered electronics. ‘Tombs’ is, especially for a debut, a bold and confident musical statement, which reimagines the possibilities of processed organ and laptop sounds in a live context. EP-opener ‘Dalyan’ builds from slowly wavering layers of sound into a crumbling, decaying wall of fuzzed-out, peaking noise, which in turn builds again into ever-moving blocks of chopped loops and feedback, absorbing the listener completely into Moon Zero’s musical space. Yet the real power of the EP is in the fact that Moon Zero’s compositions include all of the elements included above, without ever attempting to sound ‘like’ other noise / ambient / drone artists – the entire EP flows seamlessly from form to form, constituting of some of the most unashamed and fresh takes on musical ideas that are so often presented as tired, genre-defining clichés. A remarkable listen.£4.00 -
The Fractal Skulls / Adam Willetts
Sale, Tape70 c40 electric blue cassettes in yellow library cases. 3 colour, double-sided risograph sleeves designed and printed by James Hines… Fractal Skulls is a High Wycombe, UK based master of the kosmische. His side of the tape follows on from a full length on Subexotic and cassettes on Blue Tapes and Reverb Worship. Unashamedly mellow, ‘Telepylos’ melds the highest regard for the likes of Terry Riley & Cluster with a hint that we should be questioning everything. Adam Willetts is from Christchurch, New Zealand. Over the last few years he has been quietly releasing a slew of clever electronics for imprints such as Fictitious Sighs and Dungeon Taxis. ‘Sandyford Lines’ marks a step into the minimal. Super focused synth action comes to the fore whilst brushing aside any sense of melody, recalling the tinkering of early electronic experimenters Raymond Scott and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Both chaps have skilfully acquired the knack of using repetition to move you forward into new spaces.£3.50 -
Yousei Suzuki – The Scene From A Frame
Sale, TapeHoused in screen printed hand numbered Bradpaks in Edition of 100. No two copies alike… Yousei Suzuki is a young steel string guitarist from Osaka Japan. ‘The Scene From A Frame’ is the follow up album to his release on Senri Records last year entitled ‘Broken Woods & Some Prayers’. A continuation of his experimentations with broken guitars, zither, and piano. The songs on this album were all recorded either live or in one take. Suzuki’s compositions are sometimes full, fluttering bustling tales told with ringing steel strings- but they’re also sometimes sparse, songs scraping together shy offerings that tiptoe in, and with their presence loop slow & solemn incantations ’round us, calling for blessings by makers unnamed. In some tracks like “Full Moon Strings” and “Broken Woods,” these petitions are deconstructed and, growing hopeful in their clarity they burst into a sedated, stumbling kind of laughter. There is a purity here that perhaps can only be found in the oblations of someone hailing from the opposite end of the earth. We hear Suzuki’s words for a bit on “What Visible,” the only track with vocals, but as most of us will never speak Japanese we can only listen to his melody, his strain, his pitch and be left with an understanding of whatever wordless reflections emerge from our own mediations on these delicate tones. – Melody O’Hearn£4.00 -
Rainbow Valley / Wind In Willows – Split
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c40 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card. Includes download code… The UK (Rainbow Valley) and Russia (Wind In Willows) unite. Each side dedicated to the artists vision and an overall aim to complement the others work has resulted in 2 tracks from each artist, conjuring emotive synthesiser landscapes. Rainbow Valley invokes slow burning euphoria, the sound of healing. Wind In Willows soothes the senses, warm ethereal drones emerge from the fog. Two contemporary psychedelic ambient artists at the peak of their therapeutic powers.£4.00 -
Sublamp / Giovanni Lami – Split
Sale, TapeEdition of 50 hand-numbered ferrik cassettes.. A spontaneous first meeting between two young artists resulting in forty minutes of experimental music covering a wide spectrum of drone sounds. From granular synthesis and walls of guitar distortion to Jerusalem’s filed recordings and dark soundscapes, this release continues Felt’s catalog in an unpredictably cool way. The idea for this project came during a conversation with the Italian musician/photographer Giovanni Lami (b.1978) about a possible release and I quickly brought to the table the idea of inviting Ryan along for a split release. Los Angeles based Ryan Connor (b.1979) under the alias ‘Sublamp’, who has been delivering top drone sounds since 2008, was then asked to join and this album came to life. It was really interesting for me to see those two artists interact as their music careers are surprisingly parallel but in the same time so distant. The tracks they created for this split provide a great opportunity for us to get some insight into their techniques and style, and to document those two promising artists at their artistic take-off. I would like to leave the invitation open for Ryan and Giovanni to come together again in a few years for the second part of this split; it will be really exciting to see how their sound has evolved. – Felt£3.00 -
Software Wolf – Spit & Image
Sale, TapeEdition of 50 hand-numbered ferrik cassettes… I would like to stress how great collaborating with an artist like Quinn has been. It took us months to complete this project and I haven’t met a better, more open or positive person to collaborate with. We would critique each others work, pushing the project in a totally new and unexpected direction within a 5 minute conversation, but in such a smooth, cooperative and positive way that it was hard to remember that there had ever been an argument in the first place. I believe these experiences are reflected throughout the project musically & visually. I discovered Software Wolf uploaded on a lonely Soundcloud profile with a couple of followers and two or three odd beat-driven songs. At first I was really confused. Who made these awesomely weird tunes? It took some effort, but after several messages and emails their creator was found. The album took some time to get compiled. Quinn and I tried our best to pay close attention to detail throughout the project. The idea of focusing the visual aspect of the release on Korea came a bit after we started the project. Quinn is located in Korea, for now, and both of us are really interested on the modern history of this troubled place. It made total sense to touch the subject somehow.£3.00 -
Analepsis / The Last Tram
Sale, TapeThis is a split release featuring the work of two young, Berlin based sound artists: Preslav Literary School (aka Adam Thomas) and Will Gresson. The former, originally from the UK, has toured his multi-layered tape collages throughout Europe, sharing stages with the likes of Aki Onda, Machinefabriek, Gudrun Gut & AGF, Anton Bruhin, Leif Elggren and Sudden Infant. The latter, a New Zealander, forms half of NZ/Italian drone duo Fausto Maijstral and works extensively on exploring the relationship between urban infrastructure systems and the residents affected by them. Gresson’s side captures the feel of a cold winter in a bustling city, recorded on a bedroom floor late one evening it ebbs and flows but never quite strays from the cover of night. If you listen close enough you can hear the sound of an ambulance rushing by, there for a moment and then forgotten to the city. Thomas’s side is no less evocative – a live collage of old tapes and spoken word recordings mixed in realtime alongside an unintrusive synth part.£3.00 -
Darryl Burke Mahoney – Untitled
Sale, TapeCassette format with risograph printed artwork in a limited edition of 100 copies… The sounds found on Darryl Burke Mahoney’s first release are reminiscent of his hometown in Lachine, Quebec where the spectre of industry looms upon the lower avenues and the dormant factories present a rich palimpsest. There is expansive decay, a resistance to gentrification, as though suburban teenagers crawl inside these crumbling spaces to waste away the years. A happenstance of sounds seep from these abandoned, commercial properties: water trickling through a concrete ceiling, the fumbled rhythms of a broken air conditioner, a stripped bolt scuttling through a tin pipe. Even the lights of Mahoney’s samplers gleam through a veneer of impenetrable dust settling among the nocturnal emissions of traffic lights and the asthma of train-whistles in the distance. There is a curiosity to revisit this document, to witness the exquisite dissolution of its interiors. Items previously observed will suddenly seem moved or misplaced. Still, other machinery will be immovable but ever-changing. A story written in a corrosive language, an impermanent literature.£4.00 -
Mike Bruno & The Black Magic Family Band: The Willing of the Wisps
Sale, TapeLimited edition yellow c39 cassette shells with black imprinted ink // full colour J-cards // high-bias bin loop mastered tapes // plastic norelco cases with shrinkwrapping // runtime [0:38:56]… A tight-knit family, indeed… the Black Magic Family Band is the warped, doom-ridden ‘backing band’ to singer / sound-crafter Mike Bruno, situated somewhere comfortably between the listening congregation and the sickened scyophants of this heathenly preacher. Though also based in Pennsylvania, the Family Band contains a rotating cast of characters spread out over the greater New England area.£3.00 -
Bathaus – Arcane|||Cut
Sale, Tape25 translucent green & 25 translucent blue limited edition c40 cassette shells with white imprinted ink // full colour J-cards // high-bias bin loop mastered tapes // plastic norelco cases with shrinkwrapping // runtime [0:49:17]… Sometimes, no matter the content, the sweetest sounds must first be filtered through the darkest corners of the human mind. Culling samples from a society’s lost bits of cultural ephemera, Bathaus manages to break through those secluded borders, delivering, on pinpoints, a dreamy urban delight.£4.00 -
Atlantis – The Institute Of Technology
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c30 produbbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card… oing back to where it all started for Chemical Tapes, Tim Diagram who’s opening salvo for us was his excellent kosmische workout ‘Maps And Diagrams – Red Moon Rising’ returns under his Atlantis moniker with The Institute Of Technology c30. Subaquatic synth soundscapes document the expedition into the deep. From the hazy tranquil moments at the surface to the curious glitched rhythms of the depths.£4.00 -
Tidal – Olympus
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 75 c40 pro-dubbed and imprinted cassettes. Pro printed double sided J card. Tidal, the UK based Jimmy Billingham’s otherworldly musical project has found a home on a variety of important underground labels from around the globe, we are finally lucky enough for him to join the Chemical Tapes family with his latest work entitled Olympus. Is this a reference to soaring mountain peaks? If so this is the perfect soundtrack. 4 journeys spanning the c40 cassette take us on a trip of psychoactive shimmering ambience, there is a re-assuring warmth to the synth soundscapes across Olympus, keeping the listener engaged and locked into the eternal bliss.£4.00 -
Leedian – Stunting Noise
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 50 numbered copies that come with download insert cards… Coming from Toon, a small Japanese town which belongs to the Ehime province, Hitoshi Asaumi delivers very unexpected sounds when compared to contemporary beat culture. Leedian disguise has been around for two years now and listening through his work one can find it difficult to categorize his music. From extreme noise, he switches fast to melodic pop backed by organic beat, then quickly back to the extreme noise . There is an inevitable innocence deriving from his tracks, mainly with regards to their length. His music feels like an “arranged marriage” of the punk approach to composition with experimental electronic sounds. The result is rewarding and raw sounding. Jazz and electronic influences melting together in a chaotic doom-sounding noise. This album is a collection of his best moments making music as Leedian. While his sound texture remains constant throughout the album, differences in composition alter the mood deliberately from start to finish offering a deep insight into Leedian’s work£3.00 -
C.T.A.N – Broken
Sale, TapeLimited edition cassette run of 100 copies (funky green tape) featuring dark drones, glitchy beats and otherworldly sounds… Passive Aggressive is a new label in the noise scene, combining influences of noise, ambient and experimental with breakbeat, techno and more to create a cutting edge sound, breaking barriers in experimental music as we know it. Side 1: 1. Pass Out 2. Love Constitutes Conformity 3. Living Like This Side 2: 1. Chronic 2. In Your Head£3.00 -
R. Adams – W(REST)LE
Sale, TapeLimited to 50 copies. Type ii high-bias cassettes with red tinted shells + silver imprint Color insert… Adams’ musique concrète offering ‘W(REST)LE’ merges various traditional religious recordings and tones to create a sonic tapestry celebrating devotion and meditative states. Adams’ first solo release is contemplative one. ‘W(REST)LE’ is an excursion into orthodox religious music and it’s stigmas. Church bells, choirs, and traditional instrumentation are woven together and collide to create new relationships between opposing styles and techniques. While this is his first outing as a solo artist, he is no stranger to meditative practices or the music that parallels it.£4.00 -
Bing & Ruth – City Lake
Sale, TapeLimited Edition of 32 hand numbered copies, comes with a download code inside the sleeve. The second release in the new tape series comes from Bing & Ruth, led by New York residing composer David Moore. Limited Edition of 32 numbered copies. – Printed card inner sleeve – Hand typed insert on hand-made paper – White cassette tape – Download code included – Housed in a brown card outer case£6.00 -
For Machines
Sale, TapeSuper Limited edition of 50 cassettes with accompanying hyperactive/disorientating essay (screen-printed). All assembled by hand. C90 cassette with bonus Side B: minimal Background sounds and unassuming drones.£5.00 -
Magic Towers – N4
Sale, TapeC32 – black cassette / clear flexy polycase / cover printed on Risograph – blue/orange fluo / limited to 100 copies… Magic Towers is a duo born in Vittorio Veneto and active from summer 2010: two nomad and egocentric knights. They use synths, delays, tape echoes and space sounds in order to compose or improvise ambient and delayed atmospheres and trips. The project is based on the inner observation and the visual contemplation of the sound. The image of the Tower – connected on one hand with the journey, the passage and the transit, on the other with the static position – reflects the attitude of MT: an observer looking for the right observation point. Space ambients, rhythms from the deep, melodic inserts and an evil beat out: in contemplation of the immense Void. N4: recorded in Milano during the All Soul’s Day 2011. It’s the fourth part of the “Magic Trips” series.£3.50 -
Coppice – Prune
Sale, TapePro-duplication and imprinting with full color double sided j-cards. Limited edition of 100 on chrome tape… Prune by Coppice is a 30-minute composition for tape studying foundation reduction, threshold permutation, mercurial residue, and compression techniques. Recorded in Chicago in late 2010 using pump organ, fire bellows, push-pump organ, samples, and electronic processing. Side B includes two new works from N.N.N. Cook. Wu Wei I: Repose features the texture of select materials arranged in order to accentuate the color of each while inducing horizontal and vertical spatial movement. Material (and non-material) sources include: baoding balls, brass censer, feedback, porcelain vase, tape, voice, wine glass, and wooden flute. Wu Wei II: Impulse is the first 18 minutes excerpted from a 40-minute improvisation on electric organ. The meditative state involved in the creation/listening process and the immersive quality of engaging in the perception of the beats, overtones, and shading are its focus.£4.00 -
Ducerey Ada Nexino – Kill Centre
Sale, TapeLimited to 100 copies: C24.chrome grade cassette. BLACK… Regularly releasing albums as a member of STEVEN PORTER for various international record labels, Sludge-Tapes presents Ducerey Ada Nexino, a solo album from the founder of the recent upstart Kyoto-based, 10 Label. Starting out with unexpected heavy, distorted guitar, this release moves from arhythmic tracks, like buildings crumbling in slow motion, to abstract interpretations of obsolete industrial techno. Unlike anything heard on other labels, this is a presentation of heterochromatic black-stepping techno.£4.00 -
Appalache – Fue
Sale, TapeIf you’ve ever had the chance to travel, you know that it changes your life. After a year on the road, from the jordanian dunes to the asphalt of Nashville, Julien Magot locked himself in his appartement to record ‘Fue’, the first album of his lonely adventure Appalache. If you’ve ever had the chance to travel for a long-time, you know how hard it is to fight against monotony of a daily life. This is maybe the start of this story, a way to escape from the outside world’s oppression, a dream about a dream inside a dream, where flashbacks can be possible futures. More than a story, ‘Fue’ can be the painting of a luxuriant desert under the moonlight, maybe like the one on the Barn Owl’s Lost In The Glare cover. 8 songs for 8 colors, leaded by an electric guitar and indians spirits, both hunting for serenity…£4.00 -
Cleared – Breaking Day
Sale, TapeBreaking Day is the second full-length album from Cleared, the Chicago-based duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera. While their self-titled debut album (Immune 014, Jan 2011) found the duo exploring themes of stasis and texture, Breaking Day represents a huge development in the scope and overall style of the project. Where previous material had been slowly assembled from dozens of individual recordings and experiments, this new collection of songs was born from the raw documentation of Cleared’s live performance in the studio. Elements of noise, drone, and psychedelia are filtered through a dark, unifying lens that ranges from relentless rhythmic assault to monolithic tonal sculpture. Dueling rhythms of drums and sampled percussion, walls of undulating soundscapes, and hypnotic guitar are deployed with heightened intensity and force. If Cleared’s first record presented a frozen, gray-washed realm of ambient sound, Breaking Day represents its inverse: A blackened subterranean space of alien movement and activity; a premonition of an assault from the unknown.£5.00 -
Jen Paul / No Lakes – †
Sale, TapeLimited to 125 copies: red c50 cassette shells with black imprinted ink // full colour J-cards with photography by Kate Kell // plastic norelco cases with shrinkwrapping // artwork & layout by Amanda Boutourline and D.S. Ciarán£3.00 -
David Carter / The Witch Family
Sale, TapeLimited edition of 125 copies: white c67 cassette with black imprinting // full colour single panel J-cards // plastic norelco cases with shrinkwrapping // artwork & layout by Amanda Boutourline and D.S. Ciarán…£3.00 -
Bird From the Abyss (2 x Tape)
Sale, TapeBloodred c60 + c40 tapes, handstamped / inked in black Handcut, dyed + scored custom chipboard O-cards / insert Handstamped red 8.5″ by 8.5″ insert with black lettering Handnumbered & stamped in roman numerals Screenprinted artwork by D.S. Ciarán There is a stench here so old that it rids the body of any uncertainty. It is a comfortable rapture. The stench comes not from distant swamps, putrescent and green in their small wakes, or the mounds of bone matter and meat made dust underfoot. This waft of hidden and yet all-too demanding treasures lifts itself steadily from the bated, beating wings of the Bird, on its eternal voyage somewhere far past home.£5.00 -
Birds of Passage – Winter Lady
Sale, TapePerfect for the wintertime, Alicia Merz’ Birds of Passage project comes from another world, separate from our own. This is an world similar to ours, but everything is just slightly off. A constant overcast sky, filled with birds drifting through these skies leaving long trails of gold and blue ribbons. It’s a fantastic and ethereal plane.£4.00 -
Kelly Churko – Atrophy of the Instan
Sale, TapeC24.chrome grade cassette. KELLY GREEN. Limited to 100 copies. Mp3 downloadcard included! Experimental musician and guitarist, Kelly Churko – Canadian-born, Tokyo-based – is recognized as an integral part of the Tokyo underground scene, from jazz to improv to grindcore to noise. A computer creation, stoicism exudes over this continually developing, detailed and finely constructed, pulse-drone-centered work. A completely realized composition of a new type of drone core noise.£3.50 -
Yousuke Fuyama – 0.06479891 / MOTIV
Sale, TapeC30.chrome grade cassette. RED. Limited to 100 copies. Mp3 download card included… Sound designer and programmer, Yousuke Fuyama, is a front runner in the academic world but fully embedded in the avant garde audio/visual scene. An updated version of his Sonar performance generated by the mutual exchange of music and sound data. An unexpectedly accessible work of noisy, extra-dimensional, abstract sound. A stunning blend of rogue, 4D glitch.£3.50 -
Miclodiet – Caesiumen / Strontiumen
Sale, TapeC24.chrome grade cassette. BLUE. Limited 100 copies. Mp3 download card included… The first EP from the next generation of technoise. An intersection of extreme high- frequency feedback and heavy, incisive beats. This long track is buried in the extremes of the dancefloor and experimental music. An exhibition of new music.£3.50 -
Heat Wave – Stasis 1
Sale, TapeEdition of 100 custom labeled, pro-dubbed tapes w/ full color, double sided j-cards… Recontextualizing the past into fragments of an alternate plane… trash, 20th century garbage dump. of shimmering gold, sacred.£3.50 -
Beth Kleist – Drei
Sale, TapeThe third album of the NQ / Teamforest collaboration: limited tape edition of 100… Recorded in a makeshift lakeside studio, Beth Kleist’s Drei is the sometimes psychedelic, sometimes pastoral third album from Nils Quak and Philipp Bückle. The album haunts and teases its way through mostly guitar, percussion, and electronics without settling long into an idiom before leaping headlong into a new idea. Lovers of kraut rock, post-spectral drone, twee electronica, and especially postrock in all of its shifting facets will find pockets of bliss in Drei.£3.00 -
Bible & Henry – Marker/Magnet (2 x Tape)
Sale, TapeOriginally released individually, Bible & Henry’s Marker and Magnet are two complimentary volumes in a set that covers quite a bit of ground, and covers it quite masterfully. The duo’s work here is mostly in the area of electroacoustic improvisation and musique concrète. Jeremy and Jason manage to utilize the tiny musical space they’ve allotted themselves and stretch it out to a length of over two hours. Typically I’d say this is an accident waiting to happen, but these fellows have pulled it off with class to spare. Never does anything sound recycled or looped, never is there a moment where the music returns to a point. It is always winnowing, sifting, threshing through waves of electronic abstractions and obscured acousmatic sounds. The result is a confounding experience in which I find myself searching for some familiarity and finding little. There are moments of potential clarity, but those are seldom and surprising when they arrive. The rest of these compositions are steeped in mystery and endless engagement. This is not background music; please listen with care.£4.00 -
Archers By The Sea – Eagle Kiss (Tape)
Sale, TapeCassette from Vincent of “V” and The Pistol Cosmos. Blackest Rainbow previously released “V”s The Chanting Path a few years ago to some great reviews… Five untitled pieces opening with a mediative guitar meandering, leading into more powerful heavy distorted pieces and right back through to a superb final track of layered instrumentation with beautiful distant vocal flowing in and out of the hypnotic sounds laid across the almost 16 minute finale. Full colour covers, pro-dubbed and limited to 100.£4.00 -
Indian Weapons – Labyrinth (Tape)
Sale, TapeBrad Rose, Nathan Young and Eden Hemming Rose take us on a journey of radical synth spirits from dark and heavy through to a blissed euphoric finish.£4.00 -
Driphouse – Root 91 (Tape)
Sale, TapeDarren Ho’s latest trip down the rabbit hole is a baroque maze lit with neon lights. Machine music for The Blue Danube. Piano, harpsichord and synthesis all set adrift, levitating into minimal jewels of sound.£3.50 -
Damian Valles – Fixtures (Tape)
Sale, TapeFixtures’ contains 9 tracks that expand on the darker, more noisier elements found in the droning/ambient soundscapes Valles has been experimenting with as of late. A blend of distorted sounds, dusty acoustic guitars, old pianos, and field recordings mixed with slowly evolving tones and brooding passages. Released in an edition of 50 copies in cassette format & beautifully packaged in a 2 colour screen printed slipcase. Released through the Australian imprint Left (field) Recordings.£3.50 -
Drekka – Live In Europe 2010 (Tape)
Sale, TapeTo chronicle part of his European tour, Drekka (Michael Anderson) releases Live in Europe 2010 exclusively on Chemical Tapes. Forty six minutes of intense arcane cinematic ambience that was recorded live in various Italian and Slovenian cities during November 2010.£4.00 -
Mohave Weapons – Smoked Mystics (Tape)
Sale, TapeAnthropological audiophiles feared that all forms of smouldered geometric sound magic had died away when Europeans reached far in to the desert wilderness of western America. Although this sand based kahuna was never officially outlawed, the decline of native culture saw many forms of sonic sorcery die out as the acoustic conjurers were unable to pass on their wisdom to new aural apprentices.£4.00