Category Archives: UPDATE

Already Dead

AD042 – Teenage Tasteless – ‘Bartam Shumak’
Artist Location: Berlin, Germany. Edition of 40 on white c90s. Design by Samuel Weikopf / Joshua Tabbia. “Some music is just a journey and then after awhile of listening – you end up gone with the wind. Hailing from Berlin, Teenage Tasteless brings you the sounds from their new album, “Bartan Shumak.” A dark electronic mix of six extensive tracks, bringing you all kinds of goodies, (not too sour, not too sweet, just about everything for the normal taste buds.) Let me just say, if you’ve ever liked anything that we have released this is a definite ‘must-have-album’. Teenage Tasteless brings us a fresh aftertaste, with electronic sounds of dark-chocolate echos, layered on top of bitter drones that twist, shout and purr. A few piano chords, drum machines and the fundamentals of haunted solo singing voice will at times accompany the blends in the album. A couple of the tracks push beyond 12 minutes, and will have several movements to the song, still bringing together the whir and the buzz of something new and beautiful to the diversity of a completed noise mix. Its a dark, tried and true sound, pushing the instruments until they finally distort within the coalescence and end with a somber harmony and a lasting impression.” -Ray Jackson, Already Dead Tapes 2012

AD041 – Br’er – ‘Deviation’
Artist Location: Philadelphia, PA. Edition of 50 on white c32s. Design by Darian Scatton / Joshua Tabbia. “Br’er is one of the all too rare bands seeking to make honest music outside of fashion, hype or influence. This is creative expression that still sounds fresh and exciting. A captivating experience that surrounds the listener and gives a lasting impression. Deviation marks a turning point in the evolution of Br’er. The music expands upon their previous ‘City Of Ice’ and features several alternate versions of songs from the album. This is the band’s last full length release before shifting into a more electric and heavy sound. Acoustic guitar, violin, cello, harmonium and auto harp give this album a very human and vulnerable quality. Dark subject matter over beautiful and hypnotic arrangements. Music worth hearing multiple times.”  Sean Hartman, Already Dead Tapes 2012

AD040 – Dominic Pierce – ‘West’
Artist Location: Calgary, AB. Edition of 40 on clear c30s. Design by Robert Huston. “I got depressed for two years after starting a garden behind a strangers house in Detroit. After the two years I walked back there and found a great blooming plant growing more than I could ever imagine. I came across the music to explain what I felt. Dominic, a hard-working and progressively industrious musician traveling throughout Canada and the US, making simple instrumentals with the minimalist sound of electroacoustic songs. His new album “West” to be released on Already Dead Tapes will keep your foot tapping, fingers snapping and images reeling in your head of good retrospective thoughts. Upbeat beats buried below layering guitar riffs and harmonic electronically tuned chords – an easy-dance album to play throughout the day with bright chord structures and groovy breakdowns.” -Ray Jackson, Already Dead Tapes 2012

AD039 – Alpha Couple – ‘Covers’
Artist Location: Toronto, ON. Edition of 50 on white c62s. Design by Kristel Jax / Joshua Tabbia. “An expression of a nightmarish landscape, but somehow, it sounds too human for something like a nightmare. Alpa Couple is a group that turns inwards; blending the voices into experiments and public conversations as music. The ambition is consistent as it seeks imagination, but even more profound and unique is the vulnerability the two musicians deliver. Wherever the voice lacks words, the singing drives with an emotional lament and a sorrowful cry. You can view the compositions as perhaps haunting, or you can listen to it and think of something surreal. Either way, the duet demonstrates a human quality, an expressive glow, and, of course, one great album.”  -Ray Jackson, Already Dead Tapes 2012

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((Cave)) Recordings

Bre’r – ‘OLSB Music No. 1’
A chance meeting with D.A. Fisher on the streets of Oakland, California led to an exchange of tapes and our first exposure to the brilliance of his Bre’r project.  The tape was the sprawling masterpiece, “Dhome Herder” (Baro Records), which immediately prompted discussions about the possibility of a future ((Cave)) release.  Needless to say when we received this tape we were beyond excited. OLSB Music #1 represents a refinement of the Bre’r vision.  While a bit more concise, these tracks still take their time, slowly enveloping a wealth of sonic activity just beneath the surface, evoking a solitary walker of urban streets, out of step with the surrounding pace on the concrete, yet abiding with it, witnessing the frenetic activity in soft focus. -C-30, edition of 100 -Home dubbed on Type II Cobalt  -Art by D.A. Fisher.

Evan Lindorff-Ellery/Chapels split
Evan Lindorff-Ellery (Dense Reduction, Notice Recordings) and Adam Richards (Chapels, House of Alchemy) are two major figures in experimental music.  Their eclectic, yet impeccable labels display their open ears and subtle understanding of sound.  Likewise, their respective music projects have incredible depth and range. Evan’s piece, while a departure from the field recordings presented on past recordings, is no less intriguing as it takes on the domestic landscape of an apartment and the activity within.  Evan is a master at collecting and assembling novel textures and timbres: objects can be heard quivering to life as a hive of activity builds and thickens to an almost overwhelming climax. Chapel’s side blends together home and live recordings into a dark, reverberating collage.   Wolves howl as mysterious movements echo in a space that is at once a  forest teeming with nocturnal rustling, and an abandoned building occupied by participants of some strange rite. -C-64, edition of 100  -Pro-dubbed on Type II Cobalt-Art by Rob.

The Ether Staircase – ‘III’
The saga continues on our third full-length tape which pulls together recordings made last winter and presents some odd gems.  Side A is a dust devil, swirling together thrift store tapes while several keyboards of unknown origin struggle to navigate the murk.  Side B is a slow burning epic that Ben thinks sounds like a primeval forest, while I would put the whole thing at the bottom of the ocean. -C-32, edition of 50 -Home dubbed on ferrite cassettes  -Art by Ben and Rob.

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Skitter+p6

Skitter+p6 7″
it’s a self-released 7″ of electronically-processed vocal improv… six mangled noise states aurally identified and condensed. 100 copies in screenprinted sleeves with obi strip.

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Hare Akedod

ARK TABLET C25
Limited Edition of 25 Olive Green Audio Tapes in vintage cassette case (mustard yellow, textured black, white or dark grey) with fullcolour double sided artwork and insert. Recorded june 7th, 8th and 9th 2012 by David Edren at ll150, Antwerpen.

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Orila

Mecha/Orga – ’18:36′
Field recordings that took place in various countries (Belgium, Greece, Lithuania, England) between 2010 and 2012, were used for the composition of this piece. Segments of the recorded material were selected according to the needs of this composition which took place in Klaipeda, Lithuania between March and April of 2012. 18:36 is divided in four chapters, through which the combination of industrial sound and sound produced without any human activity is dominant. Mecha/Orga is the project and recording name of Greek sound artist Yiorgis Sakellariou, a self-taught musician working in the arenas of computer music and field recordings. Having a background in classical and folk (Mediterranean) music, he came to develop his personal language during the ’00s. Since then, he has been active internationally being responsible for solo albums, having composed music for short films and theatrical performances, leading workshops and ceaselessly performing his music around the globe. His practice is founded on the digital manipulation of environmental recordings. His palette of sounds is all-encompassing; from vibrating rail-tracks to refrigerators’ static, and from noisy waterfalls to the humming of insects, all may find their place in his arsenal. He only performs in absolute darkness, fostering an all-inclusive and profoundly submerging sonic experience. Also a member of the Athenian Contemporary Music Research Centre (founded by I. Xenakis) and of the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers’ Association. Since 2004 he runs the label Echomusic. 350gram velvet paper. Silver Cd-r. Design by bend dot gr and orila. Edition of 60.

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Jansen Plateproduksjon

Wind – ‘Sleep’ EP 19€
Wind is a norwegian psych rock trio consisting of Filip Ramberg, Martin van Houtum and Fredrik Severin. A trinity of close friends that share a vision of sound – with more than enough of neverending drumrolls, spaced out guitarlicks and organic bass. Wind are inspired by the psychedelic rock of the 60s, folk music from the East and spiritual jazz. Their new EP “Sleep” is a two-cut outing that blends traditional psych rock and touches of folk, stretched out with improvisation captured in the studio. It’s a dreamily hazy turbulence that rolls and churns across the ground, keeping their feet free and the collective head in the clouds with a focus that keeps the lengthy cuts from dispersing into formlessness. Wind freely mine a recognizable psych that has solid roots in the 60s, while sounding throughly modern and fuzzy in all the right places. Throwing Stones eases in with an almost Hendrix-y circular vibe that gathers more detail and slow-burn heat as it flows out. Guitarist Martin van Houtum and drummer Filip Ramberg share the vocals, dovetailing in perfectly with Wind’s languid groove…loose, but never lazy or loopy. Throwing Stones moves from misty psych pop into a longer muscular work out that organically unfolds. Cathedral seeps out into a sleepy percolating boil, getting a touch Floydish in parts and working into a frothy bubbling that dissipates gently out, chiming guitars working with rolling drums and bass to blur the finish line. Wind have a firm, but gentle, grip on the waking edge, shifting from one side to the other without feeling unstable or worse yet, uncommitted. Both tracks feel comfortable stretching their legs out and hint at a full length that would take their brief Sleep to full dreamtime. 500 copies – all on white vinyl.

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Constellation Tatsu

Alexandre Navarro – ‘Sketches
Description: Sample manipulations amass as geometric patterns multiply and surround the user.  Approaching minimal electronics ever so gently, one gathers that this man understands his connection to this world and consequently takes flight.

Hakobune – ‘The Cowboy Across the River
The openness cannot be contained as stars brighten ten fold.  We are on the verge of shattering.  Hakobune aka Takahiro Yorifuji from a small town in Hyogo, Japan tears up the Netherworld.  This is form.  This is beauty.

Billy Gomberg – ‘Into the Fade
What if the doors of perception led you not to any sort of understanding, but a sort of cold objectivity to your surroundings.  the beauty found within a chair is shadowed through Billy’s combination of synthesizers and computers.  Intensify your interests.

Cankun – ‘Idle
Bouncy guitar riffs with splintering synth hits, Vincent Caylet of Archers by the Sea infinitely delays your thoughts.  Don’t let pollution get your mouth dry.

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Not Art

Nicholas James Alcock – ‘Finite/Infinite’ C49
Finite (29:02) is a reflection on the nature of the finite, that is, the individual self stripped of any spiritual or eternal clothes. This is what we have the ability to understand with the senses. It is an attempt at recognizing the weight of the eternal, however constrained, and its a subjective view of what that could possibly embody. There is tension, but it is seemingly subconscious.  The second, Infinite (19:47), is concerned with the progression into the eternal, into the undetermined which is not yet realized. It is a reflection on the realm that exists outside of us; a cognition which attunes itself to our being, recognizably or not. It is an acceptance of the restrictions the finite has placed upon us, and in turn it is a call for an immersion within this unrecognizable, omnipresent, infinite state.  This second piece is considerably shorter, but the lengths are not necessarily fundamental to what is being expressed.   Recorded to cassette in May using voice, electric guitar, and tape loops at my home in Indianapolis. Hand cut, dubbed and painted cassettes with printed insert. Gray cassettes, black and white insert.  This is a debut full-length. I self-released a split cassette in February, which was reviewed on NFOP here.

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Beartown

JOHN MACEDO – ‘Silt’ C20 £4
JOHN MACEDO is a polymath sound alchemist from London. Having previously collaborated / performed with / remixed the likes of Phil Julian, Trencher and Chris Tosic, Mr MACEDO briefly descends to the Beartown gutter to bestow two deranged compositions upon our bewildered furry ears. SILT is loud, abrasive, textured and depthless. Composed with and performed on a custom-built modular analogue system, MACEDO’s label debut guides the listener into the inhospitable wilds of a glitching drone hinterland. Flowing and churning over the course of 10 enlightening minutes, side A shows an experienced disaster-naut at the peak of his powers, casting spells and taking metaphorical lawnmowers apart in equal measures. Flip the biscuit to reveal harsher, more opaque tonal structures. Entrancing, meditative and densely layered, side B is a cathartic realisation of the inherent blissful reality that comes from “making a right proper racket and that” Perfectly formed. Edition of 30 with textured paper insert, powder blue on-tape stickers and deceptively peaceful pea-green tapes.

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Sprachlos Verlag

Sprach 06: Jaakko Vanhala – ‘Here be Lions’ C27 €4.5
The best noise tape from Finland since Keränen’s ‘Green Car Crash’.

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