Novità sulle uscite e sui rientri.
Hello,
here are some new releases and restocks for the week.
The webzine www.sands-zine.com has dedicated a profile to the Bowindo label.
Check the website for really nice articles and reviews (italian only, sorry).
Best Wishes
G
A-Musik (Germany) :
Felix Kubin “Matki Wandalki” [cd]
“Old School? New School? In reality, both are just a question of orchestral and sound preference. The freespirit, in this case, decides for No School: for only from the fragments of No (ie. No Wave in reference to No New York) new forms can originate. And, at best, No would also imply idiosyncratic wanking and autodidactic self-empowerment. As 11-year-old pre-teen, this Gyro Gearloose of pataphysical sound Felix Kubin not only sought for self-satisfaction with his legendary child-band Die Egozentrischen 2 but also instigated the first folk synthesizer against its own instruction manual (of course in accordance with the ‘zeitgeist’ at that time). The result was an elevated monstrosity from a merciless rage-experiment with frightening precociousness. All at the peak of the Neue Deutsche Welle…Thank god that today, more than two decades later, there is no stopping this former ‘wunderkind’. Admittedly, the mischievous demolition of pop structures, which was once attributed to a juvenile Berserkerdom, has since then evolved into a more conscious Dada-Hooliganism. Or — to put it simple with the metaphor of the album title — it turned into the Mothers of Destruction(in Polish: ‘Matki Wandalki’ = Vandalizing Mothers). The fact that the anaemic ghost of deconstruction doesn’t spoil the 13 tracks on this CD must have to do with Felix’s abstruse humor. Like his love of sounds, the hum of Kubin’s cosmos is powerfully distinct. It reminds (not only) me of tschechoslovakian animation films and — even further back — of the electro-acoustic sound experiments of the fifties avant-garde long before their development into pop. Matki Wandalki unites several pairs of aesthetic contradictions. Abstract Darmstadt goes Pop. The result is ‘witty’ musique concrete and something that I can only interpret as ‘program-music’ without a narrative program.”
Euro 16,00
Crucial Blast (US) :
Various Artists “Record of Shadows Infinite” [cd]
A diverse collection of contemporary post-rock neo-minimalism and cinematic audio experimentation, “Record Of Shadows Infinite” brings together eerie twilight drones, harrowing field recordings, intoxicating soundscapes, and hazy psychedelic ambience from across the globe. From pastoral to apocalyptic, a wealth of evocative aural vistas are contained within…featuring new recordings from TROUM, FRANCISCO LOPEZ, HOUSE OF LOW CULTURE, THUJA, UNEARTHLY TRANCE, CHAOS AS SHELTER, AMON, BENEATH THE LAKE, SCOT JENERIK, and RUHR HUNTER.
Euro 14,00
Die Stadt (Germany) :
John Duncan “Da sich die Machtgier Da sich die Machtgier Da sich die Machtgier ” [cd]
“A new CD by John Duncan which is completely based on recordings of Asmus Tietchens voice. Edition of 1000 copies in digipack cover with insert.”
Euro 17,50
Kontakt Der Jünglinge “n” [cd]
“Fourth part in the ongoing series of live collaborations by Thomas Köner & Asmus Tietchens. This marks the end of the first phase in their mutual work feat. the familiar ‘classic’ cover style. The music was recorded on the 28. May 2002 at the ‘Stedelijk Museum’ in Amsterdam and shows the two treading on quiter grounds this time. Edition of 1000 copies.”
Euro 17,00
Asmus Tietchens “Biotop” [cd]
“Second in the rerelease series presenting the first of four albums that were issued by Sky Music in the early 80’s. Incl. 2 unreleased bonus tracks. 1000 copies with poster booklet in jewel case. With the release of this album, a 3 year interlude began which was dominated by the use of Roland ‘CompuRhythm’ drum-machine. In addition, I discovered new sounds and playing possibilities on the Moog which considerably expanded my creative armoury. I also added a conceptual self-limitation: no track should be more than four minutes long. In the end, the majority of the pieces on the first two Sky albums actually clocked in at under three minutes each. In the opinion of my musical mentor Okko Bekker, their sparseness and short lenght evoked the impression of radio time-signals (Radio-Zeitzeichen), a form of acoustic station identification which was already obsolete by then. This reference provided me with the name for my accompanying orchestra, which consisted solely of musicians from the experimental music scene in Hamburg. Because of the total absence of bass lines the commercial potential of the pieces was virtually non-existant. The album was recorded on an 8-track Otari tape-machine. The Eventide digital harmonizer and the Ursa Major ‘Space Station’ reverb-machine also played a part. All of the pieces were recorded in 1980.” — Asmus Tietchens, 2003.
Euro 17,50
Asmus Tietchens “Spat-Europa” [cd]
“Part Three in the ongoing rerelease series of all early vinyl albums from 1980 – 1991, this is Tietchens second album for SKY Records recorded in 1981 documenting his search for his own style of ‘pop music’. Edition of 1000 copies in jewel case with poster booklet feat. the original cover artwork.” “Even more consistently than on Biotop I kept all of the tracks on this album deliberately short. Originally, all of them were supposed to be exactly two minutes in length but, back then, without a computer, this was not really possible and the idea could not be carried ot precisely. Nonetheless, this strict concept gave the listener a total of twenty miniatures, four more than on Biotop.” — Asmus Tietchens 2003.
Euro 17,50
Family Vineyard (US) :
The Blithe Sons “Arm of the Starfish” [cd]
“Arm of the Starfish” is the fifth full-length release from the outdoor, San Franciscan wandering The Blithe Sons, the Jewelled Antler-related duo of Loren Chasse (Coelacanth, the Child Readers, Thuja) and Glenn Donaldson (the Birdtree, Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Mirza, etc.), and their second CD for Family Vineyard. Performed mostly in coastal environs on acoustic and battery-powered instruments, the sound of waves, wind, tide pools, seabirds and shifting sand plays an active role in these minimalist folk atmospheres. Incorporating 12-string cuatro, acoustic guitar, dulcimer, banjo, harmonium, percussion, toy amplifiers, wood flutes, Thai mouth-organ, violin-uke, Casio and Donaldson’s mysterious vocal utterances, “Arm of the Starfish” evokes haunted shorelines, windswept cliffs and vast undersea caverns. The Blithe Son’s previous Family Vineyard release “We Walk the Young Earth” was critically acclaimed the world over by Mojo, The Wire, Pitchforkmedia, Vice, Dusted, Signal to Noise, and many other publications, outside of the growing legion of Jewelled Antler followers.
Euro 15,50
Grooves Magazine (US) :
Various Artists “Grooves #13” [Magazine]
With Electronic Music’s Online Future, Funkstorung, Vladislav Delay, Asmus Tietchens, cLOUDDEAD, 100+ reviews.
Euro 7,00
Jewelled Antler (US) :
Dead Raven Choir “Death to Dead Wolves” [cd]
Jewelled Antler, operating since 1999 as a thriving CDR label, inaugurates its new phase w/a proper CD release by the infamous DEAD RAVEN CHOIR. Primarily the work of Polish expatriate D. Smolken, absorbing sounds from Eastern Europe & American traditional forms, the anti-communist songs of his native Poland, folkloric black metal, tortured Japanese psych, postwar cabaret & minimalist composers, Smolken creates a strange & desolate, beautiful & sometimes absurd form of avant-folk rock using cittern, archtop guitar, string bass, banjo, fuzz mandolin & hi own unsettling vocal incantations on five tangled psych-folk settings. A must have for the Broken Face/New Weird America/scary elves are chasing me through the meadows music fans.
Euro 15,50
Last Visible Dog (US) :
Dead Raven Choir “Wine, Women and Wolves” [cd]
If you haven’t checked out the jagged Eastern Euro folk stylings of Smolken AKA Dead Raven Choir, now just might be the time. Wine, Women and Wolves is as good as anything I’ve heard from this rabid troubadour. Reference points are still the bleak winter, black metal, improv/noise, acid folk, Poland and maybe Jandek. Words like fractured, damaged and fucked up could also still be employed; Smolken isn’t really doing something that anyone else dares to, or would want to for that matter. It’s music that can be hard to take in large doses, an amalgam of sparse detuned folk clang and pure negative space, just like the harsh winds of the Siberian tundra, but there’s something to sSmolken’s jagged austerity and whispered, multi-tracked vocals (reading words from the likes of Rilke, Baudelaire and Belloc here) that proves entrancing in the same way as a classic German Expressionist film or a Kafka short story. It’s all rather disturbing, but genuinely avant-garde and even kind of beautiful too. Fans of Thuja and Jewelled Antler might want to note that Glenn Donaldson contributes throughout. –Lee Jackson, The Broken Face #18
Euro 15,00
Miminokoto “Live” [cd]
Miminokoto comes out of the PSF tradition of overdriven guitar damage, but what this trio does is more primitive than High Rise or White Heaven. Guitarist/vocalist Masami Kawaguchi (of the legendary Broomdusters) probably has an appreciation for Michio Kurihara though, not to mention Haino of Fushitsusha. What he does throughout the course of the seven songs of Live is rapturous in terms of no-wave informed garage punk psych string torture. The shitty-fidelity of the recording (live albums don’t suck!) may detract for some, but for me it only further reinforces the purity of the vision. His band is no slouch either, with Koji Shimura (High Rise, White Heaven, Mainliner) on drums and Takuya Nishimura of Che-SHIZU on bass. It’s all good, but what keeps drawing me in over and over is Kawaguchi’s primal string work which repeatedly amazes in a way that will appeal to fans of virtuall every group mentioned in this review.-Lee Jackson, Broken Face #18
Euro 15,00
PSF (Japan) :
Haino Keiji “Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Konohibiki ” [cd]
First album of solo guitar by Keiji Haino in quite some time, but very much a departure from the mountain-levelling, continent-sundering, weather-system huge electric guitar releases of years past. Hikari yami… is played just on acoustic, gut-strung guitar, entirely forsaking the effects and extreme amplification characteristic of his electric work. Over three lengthy improvised pieces, recorded in clothes-rustling close-up, Haino explores the full dynamic range of the instrument, working abyss deep into his eternal preoccupations of duration, decay, sustain and resonance. Vast spectrums of reference, from Bailey and Fahey to flamenco, oud music and bluegrass are invoked in single notes and brief phrases, only to be dismissed with confident authority. Another masterful piece of work from Haino, as replete with mystery and the sadness of existence as ever. The title roughly translates as “Light darkness melting into one this vibration”. Haino advises the listener to play as loud as possible – surely a first on an album of acoustic guitar.
Euro 18,50
Soft Abuse (US) :
The Franciscan Hobbies Masks & Meanings” [cd]
“The second album from this satellite of San Francisco’s Jewelled Antler Collective is packed full of earth mystery, permeated by the smell bone fires and vegetative rites. The sound of rust-caked acoustic guitar and banjo dominates, while the ripple of earthworked gongs, tremulous sitar and percussion makes this the perfect soundtrack to a version of The Wicker Man performed by a group of California heads.” – The Wire
Euro 15,50
The Skygreen Leopards “One Thosand Bird Ceremony” [cd]
The Skygreen Leopards are easily the most structured of any band in the Jewelled Antler stable of projects, which is not to say that improvisation figures heavily to their sound (oh, it does). What you get are loosely-structured psychedelic folk songs arranged with banjos, bouzoukis, 12 string guitars, tape loops, Hammond organ, and a host of other instruments. One Thousand Bird Ceremony is easily their most accomplished and fully realized album yet, and it’s the perfect soundtrack for the summertime. The Skygreen Leopards are Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, The Birdtree, The Blithe Sons, The Franciscan Hobbies) and Donovan Quinn (Verdure).
Euro 15,50
Sonig (Germany) :
AE “Bootleg” [cd]
“Electronics man Andrew Sharpley (Stock, Hausen & Walkman, Dummy Run, Mami Chan Band etc.) and female percussionist Emiko Ota (Urban Sax, Mami Chan Band etc.) got under way in 1998 as a sort of trash-electro-punk duo with shouting. (They were joined for a period by the notorious avant-guitarist Noel Akchoté (Rectangle), and became more structured and song-oriented.) Returning to their original line-up as a duo, they create a wild mixture of rhythmic cut-ups, crazy, cracked-up punk collages and lounge melodies, but despite the genrehopping, Bootleg sounds like a well rounded piece of work, Coming across like a musical freakshow, a telling collection of rejected pop music of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, it is critical of the pop-media-machine, the duo’s own quotation-machine runs at open throttle. Like label-mates Wevie De Crepon, Æ produces ‘meta-music’ that is a lot of fun to hear, a welcome disruption of musical stereotypes, and in the end a proud presentation of an animal by the name of ‘Affrodil’.”
Euro 16,50
Jason Forrest “The Unrelenting Songs of the 1979 Post Disco Crash” [cd]
“Jason Forrest, an artist formerly known as Donna Summer, is a celebrity among electronic artists; featured by magazines all around the world, he is one one of the most brilliant Plunderphonic artists who has ever walked the Earth. He samples, deconstructs and reconstructs himself into a rage while driving audiences to the verge of madness. Forrest obviously knows his disco and his prog rock; he’s a maniac who controls his machines with dreamlike competence. His knowledge of repertoires and styles seems boundless. He mixes the most trashy with the most beautiful and the most rocking elements of the disco-decade into lavish sets, which, believe it or not, are perfectly danceable. Samples sound as if they had been broken three times and patched up four. Big band-like brass sections! Wild guitar solos! And, of course, always disco, Disco, DISCO! All this is combined in such a euphoric mix.”
Euro 16,50
Vert “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” [cd]
“The masterful sound design of Vert’s third Sonig album creaks and splutters, rumbles and rocks, breaks and blows from all sides and every angle. Despite complexity, British exile and resident of Cologne Adam Butler grooves with the best of them. Small Pieces Loosely Joinedcomprises both flirty come-ons in pop’s direction and short sketches, apropos of its title. Using accordion, Rhodes, lots of piano, and a dense tissue of electronica, the tracks approach musical themes, toy with them, view them from different angles, and then move on to new pastures. The listener is by no means swept away in a maelstrom of sonic events, but rather engaged by the pace of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. You simply can’t not listen. Vert conjures up tension and dissolves it by turns in a wonderfully charming, articulate and unpredictable manner. This string of loosely, even randomly connected musical clippings contains a clear thread of musical rigor, embedded deep down in the complex arrangements, traceable throughout the entire album.”
Euro 16,50
Three Poplars (Uk) :
Andrew Chalk “Fall In The Wake of a Flawless Landscape” [Lp]
“The first new solo release by Andrew Chalk since his Over The Edges LP from 1999 on Streamline. The material was recorded in 2003. For anyone interested in Mirror this off course is a must. Limited edition of 600 copies. “When the moon did not free him nor the sun release him, he thought his time strange, became impatient with his life; he moved the gate of the fort with his ring finger, suddenly turned the bony lock with his left toe; with his nails he got outside the threshold, with his knees out from the door of the entrance. Then he plunged straight into the sea, the person among the waves. There he lay outstretched for five years, both five years and six, seven years, eight. At last he came to a stop on the surface, by a nameless headland, a treeless land. With his knees he struggled up from the ground, with his arms he turned himself over. He got up to look at the moon, to admire the sun, to observe the Great Bear, to scan the stars.”
Euro 20,00
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Giuseppe Ielasi – Fringes Recordings
www.fringesrecordings.com
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