Category Archives: UPDATE

Rella the Woodcutter/IOIOI – ‘Veiculo Longo/A II Moon’
A present for the first Christmas after the end of the world. Two complementary sides on a single continuum: Italian savants Rella the Woodcutter and IOIOI trace their own post-apocalyptic dreams through an absorbed exploration of the heart of sound devices. Rella the Woodcutter weaves drones of memory and intimacy through the breath of a Bontempi organ. IOIOI echoes from the catastrophic outside, conjuring sputtering destruction and unsettling panoramas from a faulty Korg EM-1. Harshmallow Records is proud to offer this little gem of concrete melancholia as a free download, enlivened by the artworks of Li Huihui.

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ROBERT TURMAN – ‘Beyond Painting’ 2LP
Robert Turman began making sound experiments in the early 70’s employing reel-ro-reel tape, cassette decks, an Arp synthesizer, drum sequencers, multiple string and percussion instruments, and whatever
else he could scavenge. In the late 70’s he co-founded NON (along with Boyd Rice), but left shortly after the release of Mode of Infection/Knife Ladder 7″ to focus on composing and releasing his own music on limited-edition, and now extremely rare, cassette tapes. Robert has collaborated with art rockers FZ13, post-apocalyptic industrialists Z.O. Voider, and more recently Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes, Nevari Butchers), Neon Depth and Jandek. Beyond Painting, with its 72 minutes of haunting lo-fi ambience, is probably one of Robert’s most accomplished recordings. Layers of meditative synth loops, guitar, and eastern tinged melodies, all beautifully delayed, bring to mind blistering desert landscapes, high-tension cold war era spy action sequences, and dark cavernous sounds. Originally recorded in 1990, these tracks did not see the light of day until 2010 when they were self released on a limited run of 100 professionally printed and duplicated CD-Rs. Beyond Painting follows in the footsteps of the recently reissued “Flux” cassette on LP (Spectrum Spools). Mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk (Mississippi Records, Sublime Frequencies, Grouper, Wooden Shjips, Yellow Swans) at Stereophonic Mastering. Edition of 500 on 140grm black vinyl in full-color gate-fold jacket.

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GOD 12 No Business For Dogs – ‘Lovely Objects’ LP
If there is a record, that could be simply described with the word STRANGE, then this would be definitely the one. The trio consisting of Juun (Judith Unterpentiger, ex – Der Boese Zustand), Steven Hess (Pan American, Locrian) and Bernhard Breuer (from seminal techno trio, Elektro Guzzi), provided to be one of the most original formations in experimental music of today. Lovely Objects offers punctual but also groovy drum parts, filtered through intimate electronics, “harmonized” with bowed and striking piano strings (piano guts), provided chamber textures and increasingly unique atmosphere. Magnificent balance between improvisation and fixed music material, create one of a kind compositional style and musical language, whose structure and sense request numerous listening in order to be discovered properly. Very distinctive and very powerful masterpiece, created by three very strong personalities. This (pink) vinyl is housed in handmade silk-screened cover!

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.mf – ‘Throwing Shapes’ CDr $7(US)/$8(MEX/CAN)/$9(World)
Throwing Shapes is the first CD release of computer music by California born and Minneapolis based Michael Flora. Deeply inspired by a love of techno’s repetition and sequencer based compositions, modern minimalism, as well as the extreme computer music of the 90’s Mego label. The disc features recordings of different patches created through Miller Puckette’s Pure Data. Only sine waves are used, sometimes showcasing the pure harmonics of the wave itself or often subjected to further abstractions.

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PF050 Celer – ‘Truth Abandons’ C60
Ed 150 w/ DL. In June of 2012, I spent several weeks packing to move to a new apartment. Everything was in boxes, and I realized that the majority of my possessions were CDs and vinyl, mostly copies of my own releases. That month, I took many of my own copies of CDs and records to Disk Union, selling them for less than half of wholesale prices, just because I couldn’t get rid of them otherwise, and to lighten the load of moving. I got rid of a few keyboards, including a Korg that I found on the street in Ochiai, I ended up leaving for the electronics garbage man. When something in your life is changing, for a while everything seems like a blur, and like you’re always moving to a new hotel room. You’re going to the same place, but it isn’t home yet. There was a pile of boxes in the corner of the room, an open balcony window, and a laptop on the floor. I watched the movie Overboard several times, just because the DVD was still in my computer, and hadn’t been packed up with everything else. Unpacking slowly, things began to come out, and piece themselves together into functionality again. In boxes of randomness I found some tapes of unused recordings, made sometime in my older apartment, for a show at Forestlimit in Hatagaya a few weeks before, when I used an open cassette player for live modulation. All those recordings came together, and once cut to length, fit as individual pieces of a wider whole. It took several weeks, but the pieces with no place eventually find somewhere, and fit, whether it was the intention or not. Then, most importantly, they have a home. Full album DL w/ artwork.

PF051 Harrow – ‘Wanderer’ C69
Ed. 100 w/ DL. In the spring of 2012, we had the idea to begin documenting the Canadian Black Metal scene west of the Great Lakes. We immediately took to scouring our contacts and the internet looking for folks who producing raw BM that worked for our ears. The first band to sign on for this project was Harrow, from Victoria B.C. Wanderer is essentially, two albums in one. The a-side (Wanderer) features studio tracks that mesh neo-folk and black metal where the b-side (Wandering) is live tracks recorded on a 2011 Wanderer tour. Pro-Duplicated and printed. Full album DL w/ artwork.

PF052 Walden – ‘Metchosin’ C30
Ed. 100 w/ DL. Walden is the second edition in our ongoing documentation of the Western Canadian BM scene. Like Harrow, Walden revolves around one person (Jacob Moyer) and is also from Vancouver Island. Metchosin however, is some next level shit. Described as atmospheric black metal, post-black metal, folk black metal – you name it – it’s not enough to properly convey what’s happening on this tape. Tribal folk flows seamless into blackened hardcore and then turns on a dime into pummeling raw BM, capped off with a forest inspired outro. Full album DL w/ artwork.

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PURR 0020: Looks Realistic – ‘Where Does It Come From?’
Description: Joseph Bastardo and Ryan Mulhall erase the earth from all directions, drawing in a home where mountains grow, rainbows bow, and melodies play throughout the land.

PURR 0021: Fluorescent Heights – ‘Tidal Motions’
Description: A hue technicolor and dominant. The sun is here, but we are not here, permanently folded by the sun’s vacation-pebbles that radiate like floating metal. What do they do?

PURR 0022: GREYGHOST – ‘Memoirs of Dementia’
Description: Controlling your heartbeat, peace pervades your space, bringing with it clarity and new life to the stillness of the indoors. Tones coalesce, lazily see-saw, and gallop away — rumbling out through the walls.

PURR 0023: Hobo Cubes & Jonathan Carr split
Description: Trudging through the choking darkness of an uncertain cavern, Hobo Cubes brings warm lights to forgotten sensations. Then along comes Jonathan James Carr with a continuum of transient beauties in this organically flowing work.

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OPPONENTS – ‘Thought Control’ C52
OPPONENTS didn’t come here to make friends. They’re not looking to talk gear. They came to kick the piss out of some synthesizers, and are doing it whether or not you’re ready for it. Synthesis in its rawest form. This is about survival, not crystal pendants. The next brood in line culled from the long standing hatefuck between punk rock and control voltage that has its seeds strewn deep throughout the gutters of New York past. Limited to 75.

LONG DISTANCE POISON – ‘Rare Human’ C42
Greenpoint Brooklyn trio Long Distance Poison bring two monumental slabs of primordial synthesis to a fresh brew here with “Rare Human”. Pulling itself from the bubbling murk of ancient ponds onto the banks of the dawn of civilization, a soundtrack to life’s first glimpses up to the limitless heavens. Limited to 75.

ANDREW SCOTT YOUNG – ‘Warm White Light’ C32
Self-described as his “God-Bless-America-Mr. Holland’s-Opus-Style tribute” to his high school orchestra teacher, the collision of strings, piano, voice, reeds, percussion and fireworks erupting over the A-Side feels like the chance meeting of Crumb, Partch, Penderecki and Ives; sipping highballs and puffing pipes, hillside, on a breezy July 4th evening. Side B sees Young go electric of sorts with sideways boogies and left-footed shuffles in a new vision of absolutely fucked “dance hits”. Limited to 75.

HEAD BOGGLE – ‘Backed Tape’ C29
To say Derek Gedalecia marches to the beat of his own LFO would be an understatement. In an era where the sudden renewed infatuation with the synthesizer has led to an endless supply of formulaic sound-alike projects, Head Boggle stands alone, miles from where anyone else dare venture. The beautifully disorienting sounds Gedalecia conjures recalls the ever elusive x-factor guiding the forefathers of electronic music and concrete before him, and seemingly lost in that of any of his contemporaries – a sense of wonder, the wanderlust for experimentation and the sheer brilliance of the spark of possibility. Limited to 75.

DADS AGAINST VIETNAM – ‘Courage’ C27
Far from the dreamy “world of tomorrow” utopian optimism the futurists hoped for, or bleak uniformity of the robotic age and conveyor-belt societies it feared, Josh Millrod (Grasshopper, Hexbreaker Quartet) sends us a completely different report back from the future, and shit’s damaged! The sky and oceans run prismatic with the pollutants and discharge of centuries of neglect and shareholder-driven compromise. The nuclear winds have left this rock nearly uninhabitable, aside from those prosperous enough to vacate, leaving the rest to otherwise adapt or perish. These are their folk-songs. Limited to 50.

SHINGLES – ‘Swarm of Pigs’ wax cylinder
Recorded just hours before the Ridgewood, New York institution The Silent Barn was raided and closed by the police, the 2-minute long “Swarm of Pigs” documents an oddly foreboding lament of the post 9/11 justice system. Less than a handful of copies were handcut on turn of the century technology on a warm July day in the UK.

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Hartmut Geerken – ‘burned beyond recognition/orgie mit mir selber’ C60
Archival recordings by Hartmut Geerken. German author, poet, composer, musician, film-maker, performer, actor, mycologist, archivist, stager of exhibitions, lumberjack and bumble-bee-keeper who published countless books of poetry and prose, edited the collected works of the exiled German philosopher Salomo Friedlaender/Mynona and worked with Amercan poet Tom Lax. As a musician he collaborated with John Tchicai, Sun Ra (he was the first to bring Sun Ra over to Egypt in 1971), Embryo, Michael Ranta, Art Ensemble Of Chicago etc etc. In the seventies Hartmut lived in Afghanistan organizing the annual Indo-Afghan-European music weeks and broadcasting the first jazz program on Radio Afghanistan together with Wahab Madadi. The two soundpoetry pieces on this tape were recorded in 1979 while living in Kabul. 100 copies.

Roberto Valenza – ‘Impermanence is Beautiful’ C60
Roberto Valenza (1943 – 2010) was a poet of the crazy wisdom school, influenced by the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of spontaneous realization poetry of Doha songs. He spent most of the seventies living on Swayambhu Hill in Katmandu, where he attended ceremonies and initiations and was part of the international poetry scene which also included Angus MacLise and Ira Cohen, who published two classic books by Valenza under his Bardo Matrix imprint. Upon returning to the States, Roberto went to Seattle where he co-founded Red Sky Poetry Theatre and collaborated with poet margareta waterman on several chapbooks and a full-length volume of poetry, drawings and photographs from his time in Katmandu. ‘Impermanence is Beautiful’ collects home recordings from 2002, plus contains a further five tracks recorded live in San Francisco in 1980 and excerpted (compliments of Eddie Woods) from a forthcoming live-performance album entitled “Ins & Outs at the Grand Piano.” In the liner notes Ralph La Charity writes about the recordings: “Our triple-threat magic man to the max, a Cosmic Giggle sort of wise guy artist/poet ever in motion who most feared standing pat, a whirlybird with glittery eyes all itchy with Else; he painted visions hilarious sacred and profane, his songs likewise rapt bawdy and Grand, & once he sat down on his flute, bent it, & that was that.” 100 copies.

Metal Rouge – ‘Thunder Woods’ C42
Thunderous riffs of devastating free-rock squall soaked up in extended intuitive solos of endless distortion. These jams drown in hazy echo’s of art rock, noise psychedelia and the darkest corners of acidic free jazz. 80 copies.

Metabolismus – ‘Brimborium’ C40
Acid-folk- jazz jams by the legendary Metabolismus, this tape has a deep sixties communal hippie vibe to it. Mostly acoustic instruments, with some electronics thrown in for a nice fried kraut feel. Features an extended version of The Fug’s ‘Nothing’. 100 copies.

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Labanna Bly – ‘Come With Me’
A huge shard of existential magic that has been floating around the multiverse for a couple of years, this recording was made in the spring of 2009 around the Skaters Solo + P.A.R.A. + Dolphins into the Future Euro tour. Coming off the end of what was her Post-Atlantean Ritual Artifacts lifecycle, Labanna switched over to her pre-internet free meditation entity and uttered this raw, mainly vocal articulation of sexual serenity. Where instrumentation sets in, the music shifts into pastoral haunted romanticism and shadowy manifestations of residual dreamtime memory. This tape also marks the end of her tape energy healing period, which since then has shifted into current era internet energy healing of Labanna Babalon. Edition 100.

No Space Island Viking Invasion
No Space Island Viking Invasion is a duo consisting of belgian synthesist Hans Dens, who normally records under the name Innercity, and the swedish, now danish boy of cold skin and hot blood, Hannes Norrvide of Lust For Youth / Posh Isolation fame. Together they’ve melded their separate musical aesthetics, which results in an equally haunting and calmingly enveloping space island symbiosis of cavernous murk and the cold hard surfaces of abandoned space ships. Perhaps a Space Island Viking Invasion never took place, but there is definitely remnants of some kind of nautical space exploration going on. Edition 50.

Sand Circles – ‘Echo Passage’
Sand Circles has for the past three years released solid and well-written recordings that dwell in the dusk til midnight sonic area. Suggestive and visually prompting, the music connotes dark blue sports cars, alleyways, under water camera sweeps and sleuthing in dark office buildings. To some extent the music has a tweaked nostalgic tang, but it could just as well be and attempt to summon the future through skewed reflections and reverberations of ficticious pasts. Songs over sides! Edition 50.

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VALES – ‘Surface’ C28
Crisp and coarse sandpaper sonics conjured from exceedingly harsh and precise synthesizer dominance. No nonsense electronics and concentrated seethe styles. Honed to fine edge, slicing with pure display of focused power. Vales is the solo outlet of David Doyen, now providing some of his harshest work to date, opting for maliciously deliberate full on drill-churn maneuvers. Light the pyre and fry the friar. Real time duplicated clear shell Type II Chrome cassette comes with hand numbered double sided cardstock J-card featuring original vortex collage artwork by M.H. w/ matching plum labels in a clear Norelco case. Shifting currents and walls of pristine ferocity. No arpeggios, guaranteed.

SASHASH ULZ – ‘Hibernation’ C32
Two sides of twisted sonic canopy for sweet, sweet solitude. Lucid tape loop hypothesis from Sashash Ulz of Russia, zone deep and lose self in the ultimate circular dissolve. After a furious swarm of releases on such stalwart labels as Digitalis, Goaty, and Hooker Vision, we at Lighten Up are proud to present this newest expanse of mind-numbing audio dreg. Using a series of multiple tape loops played simultaneously through multiple tape machines, providing fresh nitro glycerine boom-box wobble for complete brain melt. Swollen neanderthal perpetual! Real time duplicated black shell Type II chrome cassette with kush green labels comes packaged with matching full color double sided card stock J-card featuring blazed original collage artwork by M.H. in a clear Norelco case. Blissful garble-trance supreme for proud social rejects, true abandonment. Hypnotic warp mode ala crude analog voyeurism, as it should be.

MOLE HOLE – ‘The Horrors of Dentistry’ C24
Everything crumbles and slowly dissolves. A potent dose of harsh cure all murk medicine, using anti-records and prepared phonograph machine with damaged 16mm film loops and projector. All thumbs oral surgeon provides crude feedback manhandling for satisfying root canal. Recorded live directly to cassette, low-fi and loud! Real time duplicated clear shell tape with double sided dental x-ray labels comes packaged in a sealed 4” x 6” brown paper envelope with wrap around paste-on artwork featuring grim black and white tooth portrait. Hand-numbered edition of only 6 copies. Fully thrashed dental terror. Sorry, we’re all out of anaesthetic.

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