Category Archives: UPDATE

Natural Transgressions

Mantle – ‘There is Nothing New Under the Sun’ C30
Mantle creates addictive synthwave melodies on this release. Edition of 50.

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Os Três Amigos

OTA018 buta nite – ‘os charnecos’ C28
There are many Iberian magpies in America living in vans. There are many Iberian magpies living here. They spread havoc, they are killed without mercy, without mercy they destroy. Everything is wicked, and yet their blue… l’azur, l’azur, l’azur!

OTA019 cactólogo – ‘vol. 1’ C23
The boats will break wonders. I told my friend once: the boats will break wonders. But we were too obsessed, somehow rightfully, with our own misery. So three times three we accelerated through wonders, and speed and hunger rushed over parrots, life, wonders. Three times three I said: the boats will break wonders.

OTA020 platzangst – ‘call before you dig’ C61
The tools being broken excited us so much we felt we had to give each of them a certain living fluxus through discharges of lovesoundmatter that would enable many beings being able to follow the design of pure freedom, where you met my sister, remember? And here, every broken tool is a new species completely licked by gummy feelings, like lust, leisure and large portions of tar instead of flesh. We are large and we pass through space. Let us in.

OTA021 space echo – ‘viagens’ C22
when the grill guy drops his own heart near the other meat.

OTA022 TAKAHIRO MUKAI – ‘slow and steady’ C35
A straight line between two bending lines. The bloated landscape where the older people were born. This forgotten river is doing a boat race with toothpicks. Naughty heads, play round dices with me, please.

OTA023 the moon rises in maevis – ‘the moon rises in maevis’ C40
Fuck off the pair of you.

OTA024 germ class – ‘dimensions of value’ C30
You see, a lot of people talk about waves as being some sort of intensely magical experience for those who can ride them. Many others enjoy observing them from afar and get caught by the looping qualities of their existence. As a shipwreck they are your death and they are your life. Cleaners of the sand pit that is the bottom of the sea.

OTA025 bohm – ‘transients’ C29
I caught an eye. It developed. I adapted. It listened. I believed. It looked to me. I boasted. It closed. I danced. It postured. I walked. It stayed. Behind was its brain. In front of it me. Ever smaller. Ever there.

OTA026 HgM – ‘iridium192’ C27
Call out the soul of the universe that portrays immensity. Tell of these here. Sources and incantations alike formed the matter, the darkness and the forces. One could explain them, for any proof is preferable. Let expansion continue so. Let it be heard. Component after component of intramingle.

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Brainwrap City Media

Portopak – ‘Bull Inside the Echo Chamber (b/w The Unfriendly Dreamer)’ CS
Type II Cassette, Professionally duplicated. Limited edition of 50 tapes split between green and blue shells and includes a vinyl sticker inside of a paint-splattered poly box. The songs were created using a modded Nintendo Game Boy with guitars, vocals, and an old Casio SK-1 keyboard recorded on top to create a sort-of chiptune/new-wave sound. It’s kind of like if you mixed New Order, The Cure, and The Postal Service together in an old video game. Both tracks were written, recorded, re-recorded, and mixed in a bedroom in Pennsylvania over the course of about 6 months. The tapes are professionally duplicated using a digibin duplicator by A to Z Audio in Parma, Ohio.

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Fuzzy Warbles

Benzoil CS
C30 of minimal bedroom synth action. All analog synthesizers used including some hand-built by the artist.

Famous Logs in History CS
4 song EP cassette by DIY art-punks from Brooklyn. Catch them live on the WFMU show “Burn It Down with Nate K” at the beginning of March.

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Bonding Tapes

BOND023 Kibble – ‘Lapses’ C39 $6
Beautiful & abstract layers of texture and harmony faded away in VHS decay.

BOND024 QBLA – ‘So Far’ C53 $6
Split Tape release of QBLA’s previous 2 digital albums.

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Lighten Up Sounds

CLEAR FLUIDS – ‘Music of the Spheres’ C22
For Cassini. This shadowy project has been quietly releasing vignettes of home-spun synthesis since 2012, and returns here with seven new haunting tracks of extraterrestrial electronics focused on the celestial bodies. Dark melodics and orbital oscillation offered in homage to the noble explorer. Mission accomplished, rest in power. Hi-bias Chrome Type II tape, professionally duplicated / imprinted clear shell cassette comes packaged with gloss b/w cardstock J-card in clear Norelco case. Edition of 70 copies.

ADDERALL CANYONLY – ‘The Limits of All Known Ice’ C32
Adderall Canyonly has been steadily cranking out keen tripper groove, kosmische tres outré and electro-synth splat since 2010, amassing over 20 releases under the belt and forging his own twisted approach to contemporary psych-electronics. “The Limits of All Known Ice” is a gem of church organ grizz, rough electric bass thump and wobbly stereo synth-fuzz, a rainbow faceted spectrum of crystalline dirt. Originally seeing digital-only release in 2014, this work has now been given physical presence for select grubby mitts, with an all new five minute “outro” on the B side. Hi-bias Chrome Type II tape, professionally duplicated translucent yellow shell with white ink imprint comes packaged with full color double sided J-card featuring artwork by Tiny Little Hammers, Edition of 70 copies.

CONCRETE COLORED PAINT/TAP WATER split C40
Concrete Colored Paint is a new nom de plume from the prolific Peter Kris of German Army, delivering a trance inducing soup of heavily processed field recordings and post-industrial murk, captured while traveling through Portugal and meticulously mixed to form a gloriously disorienting new whole. Choirs half buried in waist-deep quicksand, mechanical churn of burnt out motors in unlit tunnels, a pervasive ghostly blur. Confusing / spectacular. Tap Water is the maniacal duo of Ian Franklin (Shredderghost) & Mike Haley (Wether, Tabs Out), cranking a particularly mangled and crude form of uncomfortable tape wonk and electronic flutter. Deep creepers ala modular sput and magnetic garble, RAW New England psych-noise boys in live formation for the true gurus and casual goblins alike. Bizarre and ugly, just right! Real time duplicated clear shell Type II chrome cassette with printed silver foil labels comes packaged in extra thick, reflective silver mirror board J-card with two color process print featuring crumbling two-headed serpent photo by Peter Kris. Hand-numbered edition of 44 copies.

NIEDOWIERZANIE – ‘Lumière’ C45
Niedowierzanie is the long running solo project of French experimental musician Léo Maury, active since 2008 with a back catalog of excellent releases on labels such as Reue Um Reue, Obscène Et Anémique, Vrystaete, and Zoharum. This newest work “Lumiere” congeals into a truly remarkable lump, combining radiant new age bliss with lurching Giallo swagger, mutant alien groove, and ambient trance electronics. A careful recipe of both organic and synthetic elements to form a profoundly luminous stew. Six tracks of evolutionary voltage, bringing 1000 lumens of light to the dimmest corners of the contemporary stratosphere. Professionally duplicated to Type II Chrome, translucent blue shell cassette with white imprint comes packaged with double sided blue and white “Mandala” process print J-card on 80 lb gloss cardstock in clear Norelco case. Edition of 70 copies.

GRAHAM BALDWIN – ‘Black Book Run-On’ C32
Graham Baldwin, mighty guitar wielder of the long running project BLOODWALL, returns to the imprint with a powerful new album of raw micro-cassette recordings offered under his own name. A singular work from GB unlike anything else in his discography, offering cosmic-brut organ psychedelia, granular grit and epic cello trance, snips of radio interference cut into circular piano melodies, and his own distinct approach to stripped down six-string wizardry. Electronic gurgle and room sound shimmer are blended through deft in-machine editing, all recorded live, with no over dubs or post processing. “Black Book Run-On incorporates a range of traditional instruments and musical forms, combining elements of musique concrète, psych folk, experimental blues, and electro-space mantra, deep listening for these dark days. Professionally duplicated to Type II Chrome, bright green shell cassette with white imprint comes packaged with double sided green & white process print on 80 lb gloss cardstock in clear Norelco case. Edition of 70 copies.

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Dokuro

DK071 Claus Poulsen – ‘Starry womb’ C40 €5
Claus Poulsen is a danish musician and producer who works with laptop, turntables, synths, electronics, field recordings, amplified objects and other sound sources. His output can sit anywhere within the blurred boundaries between ambient, avantgarde, noise and (rarely) pop. As a solo artist, CP is currently working with a number of concepts: bowing vinyl records, traveller’s recordplayer, bonzai tree and “Children of the Stars” experiments with sampled voices of children. His journey as an artist is very much an on-going process and he prefers to experiment with sound and texture in an improvised fashion, with a goal of gradually honing his craft and covering new and uncharted territory. He runs the label Skrat Records and makes cover art. CP performs and makes releases solo and in a number of collaborations: improv-trio CAM (Since 2009), dark ambient duo Small Things on Sundays (since 2007), lo-fi space explorations with Star Turbine (Since 2011) and experimental ambient with Carbon Copy (since 2015).

DK072 Gert-Jan Prins – ‘Drums and electronics #17’ C40 €5
Gert-Jan Prins, born 1961, Ijmuiden, the Netherlands: electronics, percussion. Gert-Jan Prins focuses on the sonic and musical qualities of electronic noise and percussion and investigates its relationship with the visual. While he started his career as a drummer, his works include performances, sound-installations, compositions, electronic circuits and collaborations with other musicians, visual artists, composers, and dancers. Besides his long-term collaboration with video artist Bas Van Koolwijk, with whom he designed the synchronator and the mole-rat, current projects include: Black Smoking Mirror with Martijn Van Boven, a new group with drummer Balász Pándi and Peter Van Bergen, several collaborations with de player rotterdam, the synchronator orchestra. He has collaborated with Pita, Thomas Lehn, Lee Ranaldo, Cor Fuhler, Keith Rowe, Tomas Korber, Fennesz, Jérôme Noetinger, Peter Van Bergen, Domenico Sciajno, Marcus Schmickler, Mats Gustafsson, Alan Courtis, Thomas Ankersmit, Koen Nutters, Raed Yassin, Sharif Sehnaoui, Dirar Kalash, Giuseppe Ielasi, Carlos Giffoni, Luc Houtkamp, Misha Mengelberg, Anne La Berge, David Dramm, Fred Van Hove and many others. With audio / visual artists: Martijn Van Boven, Peter Fengler, Dennis De Bel, Bas Van Koolwijk, Gijs Gieskes, Greg Pope, Tina Frank, Billy Roisz, Rob Flint, Xavier Guérel, Manel Esparbé i Gasca, Petra Dolleman, Martha Colburn, Cyrus Frisch. He is a longtime member of M.i.m.e.o. (the 12-piece movement in music electronic orchestra). Performances, on international festivals & clubs throughout Europe, North America, South-Africa, Russia, central Asia, Australia.

DK073 Filtro – ‘Materia’ C30 €5
“Filtro” is the duo consisting of Angelo Bignamini (The Great Saunites) on tapes and Luca de Biasi (Satantango, Playground, Vhd Vhd) on modular synths and even more tapes. Despite being born and raised on psychedelic and noise rock, the core of Filtro is improvisation through magnetic tapes and modular synthesisers, manipulated until they form a thick and intertwined sound layering. Auditory fragments coming in shapes of cutting edges and curves are recalibrated and polished, so that they are reborn as patterns – some entirely or half repeated, some lost. The sound is flowing between movement and disappearance and is ultimately capable of expanding the listeners’ sound perception in innovative ways. “Materia” (Dokuro, 2018) is a study in two acts on progression and regression of the same reiterated sound matter.

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Hangover Central Station

Robert Scott & Alastair Galbraith – ‘On Golden Pond’ CS
In order to avoid horrendous Discogs prices, we have made a second edition. So there was a time some 33 years ago when some Robert Scott, Alastair Galbraith, Michael Morley and Bruce Russell happened to share a flat in Dunedin. What sounds like a legend from that never written book of the very unlikely history of New Zealand music is indeed a fact. More or less accidentally, some recordings by two of the mentioned gentlemen found their way to Germany on a self-burned CDr. Their names: Scott and Galbraith. Those songs have never been released before. Limited 2nd edition of 50 pro dubbed black cassettes.

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Choam Charity

Ptheven Universe CS $4
”Ptheven” was recognized as a dog meme a year or two ago. Slowly forgotten in a sea of useless information… then resurrected as a post-mallsoft band. Ptheven Universe sounds like a misspelling of a cartoon show everybody watches. It’s not. It’s the actual pronunciation (Com Truise anyone?). Internet artist Pilleater has been misunderstood for almost a decade. His humble beginnings start with YTMND.com in 2009, where he was responsible for creating and forcing the later know internet meme “Mr.Krabs” (his YTMND sites have been featured on the Youtube channel Know Your Meme). Pilleater has since dedicated his spare time becoming a master troll. Last year, he started the controversial alt-right inspired website “Asian-Aryanism.com,” which confronts the alt-right with a serious and philosophical question about ethnonationalism and the fall of liberalism. “Where should all the weebs go with their anime/asian waifus?” To this day, Pilleater gets daily hate mail by both the far-right AND the far-left. Both ends of the horseshoe have never been so burthurt. But Pilleater is also an amazing musician and producer who started playing chiptune when he was 16 (he produced a forgotten 7inch during his teen years). He has created a new post-vaporwave genre which he calls “poserwave.” Vaporwave has taken over the past decade as the main influential genre of the teen years. The genre has became the equivalent of middle school kids wearing Led Zeppelin and AC/DC t-shirts to impress their close peers. So why not embrace that factor? Why not recreated Floral Shoppe and Eccojams again? The debut album of Ptheven Universe is those two things together. These 12 tracks had original names, but you have to ask Pilleater what they actually were. Rather, what is presented is the tracks “written in marker” on the demo tape. The tracks were produced in Reason 9.5. ReCycle was used to create synchronization among the mess. Samples come from cliche video games millennials grew up with to obscure Japanese commercials found on YouTube. Pilleater made one track sleeping over a girlfriends house (can you guess which one?). Music creation is just him and his computer. Think the same way any anonymous 4chan user would approach dank meme creation. Both “III” and “fuck off melissa” feature vocals akin to Nivek Ogre. “I wanted to create an album that mixes the twee universe of Steven along with the dark and violent world of Skinny Puppy,” Pilleater wrote on his Twitter. Other tracks like “VII” and “h o l d me b a b y” keep up with the vaportrap trend and “IV” pays tribute to the classic trip-hop sound of the 2000s. “It really is three albums mixed into one. This album has already been posted somewhere on bandcamp unconsciously. That’s what makes this album both unoriginal and truly original.” The self-titled debut of “Ptheven Universe” is housed in a double-sided J-card with art produced by the amazing Aaron Silao and mastered by zactiessen (look them up on Fiverr). Each copy is sealed, brand new, with a red/gold glitter cassette matching the artwork. The most promising 44 minutes that will change the vaporwave genre yet again.

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Canti Magnetici

Sammartano – ‘Rompighiaccio Destiny’ C10 single-sided
“Rompighiaccio Destiny” is an auto generated composition resulted by the random interactions of two different tape recorders left to play and mixed without any external intervention except for some subtile variations of equalization, pitch and modulation through a delay used in effect send. “We have an increasing desire in any case to get firm ground under our feet. The floe has been a good friend to us, but it is reaching the end of its journey, and it is liable at any time now to break up and fling us into the unplumbed sea.” text from SOUTH, the story of Shackleton’s last expedition 1914-17: chapter III, Escape from the ice. Gaspare Sammartano is an Italian underground musician, producer and sound maker. His solo work is focused on gathering and manipulation of tapes and reflecting on the evolution of modern sampling techniques. He is also part of the Canti Magnetici label team. Limited edition of 80.

Videobasic – ‘To our good friends in the Western Alps’ C34
In 2016 Videobasic spent some days making music in a cabin in the North branch of Canti Magnetici (Western Alps). After these days they recorded this new work during a performance at the historical subversive Radio Black Out, based in Turin. A new stoned psychoacoustic journey based on tape loops manipolations and croaking homemade minimal electronics. Michele Mazzani is one of the most “pure” representative of the Italian underground music scene. In the strangest places you can image as show locations (bivouacs lost in the mountains, crumbling houses, garbage dumps) he organizes live sets that are an unmissable cult for the few people who follow him. His legendary DJ sets played only with tapes recovered in charitable organizations run by the Church is also a must. He lives in an old Romagna-style farmhouse where he frequently organizes shows, festivals and happenings. The farmhouse is also Lonktaar headquarter, his label, which now counts more than thirty releases, ranging from battered psychedelic and rotten noise to Indian travel sound reports. Gabriele Gotini is a master in the art of circuit bending and tape loops. Besides playing in Videobasic and other more or less extemporaneous projects, he runs the music project: Trashsound. Limited edition of 50.

Luigi Monteanni – ‘Om Telolet Om’ C12 single-sided
“Om telolet om” is a composition made out of small and medium audio cut-ups and samples taken from various youtube videos compilations regarding a specific theme named after these words. “Om telolet om” refers to a meme, and to a popular internet subculture, originally developed in Indonesia and that successively spread through other countries. The meme consists in showing a sign (usually a simple handwritten piece of paper) on which the aforementioned phrase, that literally means “Uncle honk uncle”, is written. In doing that, the kids try to get the attention of the bus drivers of several famous Indonesian bus companies, trying to make them honk. The joke is based on the fact that those busses all have customized honks which allow them to produce weird sequences of sounds that range from silly and very recognizable westerns melodies to pure 8-bit raving madness. The sequences and the honks, although not unique and similar to the ones that can be found for example in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, remind at a time of traditional reed and string instruments (tarompet, rebab) and percussions of the Indonesian tradition while being only simple successions of synthesized sounds. While the deep reasons of this whole subculture remain partially unknown up til now, it is true that this is a movement that has its own consistence, resulting in unprofessional street parades and both bus and bus drivers meetings (which sounds are also present in the track). “Om telolet om” is therefore a fake series of field recordings in the double sense of the non-autenticity of the recording phases (which anyway takes in account the online birth and life of the phenomenon) and of the choice of the subject, trying at the same time to give a playful sight on sound culture, subculture, field
recordings and their contemporary developments. Compiled and assembled by Luigi Monteanni. Luigi Monteanni is one of the founders of Artetetra collective and already component of musical projects devoted to the ambiguous mix between exoticism and the exotic and between fake cultural appropriation and authentic cultural invention. Limited edition of 80

Michael Bonaventure – ‘Darenth’ C50
“I have been endlessly busy playing and creating in the sonic universe that is the organ since childhood. I love this instrument because of its kaleidoscopic tonal potential and limitless capacity to sustain sound – qualities that are exploited very fully in the music you are going to hear in this album. DARENTH is a massive meditation, a cycle of three tone poems composed almost entirely of drones, toneclusters and repetitive figurations (‘loops’). I have used these elements to establish broad and sometimes very dense harmonic fields of sound that are given inner animation by means of subtle shifts in timbre, density and dynamics. From time to time, some kind of tonal or timbral ‘anomaly’ will occur, often becoming regular and insistent, increasing in intensity and importance until the entire sound picture has been transformed into something new. There is a tonal centre in this music, which you will recognise as a sort of murky and mysterious deep F-minor drone. The music starts here and ends here, and this tonal base is variously recalled, suggested and returned to many times throughout the cycle. My way of composing tends to be very intuitive and, more often than not, springs from improvisation. And I find landscapes (of all kinds) particularly inspiring. Darenth is an area in north west Kent, England, not far from where I used to live in south east London. I visited this area many times, drawn there for some reason by the name itself as well as by the natural beauty, occasional stillness, horizontality and colour of the landscapes, not to mention by the many anomalous and unexplained things that one finds incidentally while exploring…All of these things somehow got me inspired to start an improvisation that led eventually to the formal creation of this work”. Michael Bonaventure, October 2017. Recorded in All Saints Church, Blackheath, London, November/December 2013. Recordings edited, mixed and mastered by Michael Bonaventure Michael Bonaventure (1962, Scotland) is a composer, concertizing organist, promoter of new and experimental music based in Edinburgh and Amsterdam. His sonic universe is heavily inspired by church liturgy and ritual, imaginary worlds, astronomical and supernatural phenomena; these influences are particularly evident in his many electronic, electro-acoustic, organ and choral works. Together with Huw Morgan and Lauren Redhead he is a member of the collective Automatronic, formed in 2013 to promote new music for organ and electronics. He is also organist of the Barclay Viewforth Church in Edinburgh. As an interpreter of new music, he has worked with a huge number of composers internationally, concertized throughout the UK, Europe & USA, on BBC Radio 3, premiered over 100 new works and made numerous CDs; these include four volumes of Contemporary British Organ Music on the sfz label, and the later organ cycles of Olivier Messiaen for Delphian Records. Limited edition of 80.

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