Category Archives: UPDATE

Rainbow Island – ‘Crystal Smerluvio Riddims’ LP
Rainbow Island are an interdimensional-psych band based in Rome, Italy. Crystal Smerluvio Riddims is their second LP following their acclaimed debut RNBW, released in2012, two cassette releases and their participation in theInterdimensional Folklore Vol. I compilation release by the Milan Communion collective in late 2016. They are a prominent voice in the Italian psych underground and in the Rome psych community that gravitates around the DalVerme club, the Thalassa festival and bands such as Mai Mai Mai and Heroin in Tahiti. Rainbow Island explore interdimensional territories and frequencies coming from distant universes and unchanneled frequencies. Their sound brings together elements of electronics, psych-space rhythms and temporal explorations. RNBW was meant to be the inauguration of the project and the launch of the journey to the unexplored Bongolandia, while Crystal Smerluvio Riddims is the continuation of the exploration, brought to a more mature and conscious level. In this new album Rainbow Island’sfuturistic psychedelia meets dub and primitive rhythms. Crystal Smerluvio Riddims is released jointly by Flying Kids Records (FKR) – FKR also released Rainbow Island’s first album RNBW in 2012 – and the Rome-based NO=FI Recordings, that already worked with Rainbow Island in 2013 for the tape Road to Mirapuri. The graphics project for the new album has been curated by multi-artist Canedicoda, who is also responsible for the experimental project Ottaven

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Donato Epiro – ‘Rubisco’ LP
Rubisco is the second full length album from Donato Epiro. Following his debut album Fiume Nero (2014), the young Italian composer has moved from the raw primordial chaos that characterised his first work to develop a reflection on how a hypothetical absence of humans and biological life could modify industrialized and civilized spaces. Using field recordings, obscure samples and FM synthesis, Epiro draws his abstract landscapes as a series of overexposed and imprecise pictures made by concrete and organic architectures, amorphous rhythmic patterns, repetitive sequences broken by oblique elements that seems looking for a new active role into the ecosystem. Exploring communication and transitions between the inanimate side of the existing and the living one, the sound of Rubisco seems to be pulled out from the walls of an abandoned building or captured while it is lying on the ground of empty spaces or fluctuating like fine dust through the light. It leads the listener into a form of “after rave” limbo, or a personal hiding place, where the head projects only the image of the sounds you’ve listened to during your human experience. The result is a record that plays with taut minimal touches, inspired by the work of Egisto Macchi and Angus MacLise, alongside the sonic delirium recently dreamed up by the likes of Demdike Stare and Fis. Mastered by Neel. Ltd LP to 300, cut by Beau Thomas. Artwork photography by Kazuma Obara.

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DK065 Sindre Bjerga – ‘The roots of synchronicity’ C30 €5
…cassette player drones and kitchen sink psychedelia, sound ghosts hidden deep in the molten magnetic tapes.. always aiming for that mind-altering head trip… These are a few words that can be considered as Sindre Bjerga’s music manifesto. His electro-acoustic tape glissandos, static hums and pops can be linked to that famous 70s parapsychology book, to which both the title and the artwork ironically pay homage to. The track are extrapolated from livesets made in Holland, UK, Finland and Norway from 2014 to 2016.

DK064 Deison – ‘Mutazioni’ C30 €5
“Ogni istante ha la sua musica irripetibile che si fonde con la luce e con l’aria dell’ambiente”//“Every moment has its own unique music that blends with the light and with the ambient air” (Enore Zaffiri, 1968) Deison is involved in the experimental electronic area from more then 20 years, (he played loops and voice in Meathead during 90’s) and he approached the world of sounds doing his own tape collages with tape recorders, turntables and objects mainly in the field of experimental noise; he established a small label (Loud!) and began to collaborate with artist like Lasse Marhaug, KK Null, Teho Teardo, Thurston Moore, Scanner, Shee Retina Stimulants, etc… Influenced by the experimental music, ambient minimal electronic as well as a great interest into digital music and sound design, he operates with loops, field recordings and drones to develop swirling electronic sounds of enormous range and complex musicality. Waves of looping deep ambient scapes, penetrated with sample fragments and light additional noise-ambient textures form Deison’s silent, minimal frame-set. His works have been released on Silentes Records (Italy), Aagoo (U.S.A.) and various labels in Japan, Germany, Switzerland; new collaboration works emerged with Candor Chasma, Sara Galan and Mingle. He also contibutes sounds for his more dark-ambient duo Cinise (with G.Santoro)

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Anthony Vine – ‘Remnants’ $7.5
Composed and performed in New York during the balmy months of 2016, “Remnants” is a 65 minute collection from the mysterious inner world of composer, Anthony Vine. In this world, music is a place, a dream, a living landscape; it’s a swirling conversation between close friends playing guitar, saxophone, piano, harmonica, melodica, bass, and percussion; wandering through found sounds, vast microtonal systems, and fragile moments of improvisation and chance. Not so easily characterized, Vine is rooted in contemporary classical music, while “Remnants” finds itself sliding into the outer realms of jazz, minimalism, and ambient music.

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Effenaar 7″
Effenaar is a music venue located in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It was founded in 1971 and has hosted many national and international concerts throughout its existence. Bands like Joy Division, Sex Pistols or Cabaret Voltaire have played there. During late 70s and early 80s, young people from Eindhoven used to spend most part of their time in Effenaar . It was a meeting point for people with cirtical views of society, politics and establishment. But also this place was a counterculture input in whatever art discipline. From this environment came up an underground and avant-garde scene that Carlos Van Hijfte (founder of Kremlin Records) captured by producing in this single. Limited editon of 500. Sound from original tapes.

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Charlemagne Palestine – ‘Strumming Music’ LP
This classic minimal music album is now available again on vinyl for the first time since the 70s. Primed with a glass of cognac Charlemagne Palestine sits at the keyboard of a Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano. One foot firmly holds down the sustain pedal while both hands perform an insistent strum-like alternation on the keys. Soon Palestine and his Bösendorfer are enveloped in sound and bathed in a shimmering haze of multi-coloured overtones. For 45 minutes this rich pulsating music swells and intensifies, filling the air. When Strumming Music first appeared on the adventurous French label Shandar during the mid-1970s, it seemed a straightforward matter to place Charlemagne Palestine in the so-called Minimalist company of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, whose work also featured in the Shandar catalogue. Palestine too used a deliberately restricted range of materials and a repetitive technique, but as he has often pointed out in more recent times the opulent fullness of his music would more accurately be described as Maximalist. Strumming Music, recorded in Palestine’s own loft in Manhattan, has no written score. In an age of recorded sound he still feels no need for traditional notation. The surging energy of this particular recording stands comparison with the improvising of jazz visionaries who impressed and inspired him while living in New York, as a young man. But, as Palestine himself has made clear, primarily he brings to music-making the sensibility of an artist rather than a musician. Although the technique of the piece has roots in Palestine’s daily practice, when a teenager, of playing the carillon at a church, hammering sonorous chimes from a rack of tuned bells, it also draws on his later work as a body artist, staging vigorously muscular, physically demanding and often reckless performances. In addition, Strumming Music can be heard as a sculptural tour de force, while its textures connect with the colour moods, plastic rhythms and tactile space of Mark Rothko’s Abstract Expressionist canvases. Strumming Music remains the essential index of Palestine’s singular creative vision. Fundamentally this fascinating piece is a collaboration between an artist and an instrument. Palestine had first encountered the Bösendorfer Imperial back in 1969. He had already been playing church organs for several years, relishing their power and presence. Now he had found a piano that satisfied his need for sonic depth and weight. “The Bösendorfer at its best is a very noisy, thick molasses piano,” he has remarked. Charlemagne Palestine embraced its clinging sonorousness, its clangorous resonance and out of that embrace came the voluptuous sonic fabric of Strumming Music. “My rhythms are sexual, not machine-like.” Charlemagne Palestine, in 2013.

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Diurnal Burdens – ‘Inaction / Extinction’
A regular on the Manchester live experimental electronic scene, Ross Scott Buccleuch’s Diurnal Burdens makes it’s first appearance on a physical format after a handful of digital only releases. A 60 minute dose of dark analogue worship. Drawn out industrial drones sit side by side with barely perceptible melodies. Inspired by the writings of Thomas Bernhard. Hand dubbed black C60. Double sided, full colour artwork on 200gsm silk stock. Limited to 50 copies.

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Matthew Milia – ‘Even Fuckboys Get The Blues’ C50 $5
“Even Fuckboys Get The Blues” collects bedroom recordings, sound collages and orphaned tunes recorded by Matthew Milia from 2010 to 2015. Milia, most known as leader of folkrock group Frontier Ruckus, is a deep well of clever poetics. The New York Daily News remarks that “Milia’s words obsess on the most suburban images possible,” and on the album’s opener, “Somerset Solo,” suburban memories are painted through a kaleidoscope of rapid rhyme e.g “corsage pinned on my collarbone flesh / teenage gowns of gauze and mesh” and reflections on aging: “we used to sneak into the Christmas gifts / now it’s all spotty sex and Netflix riffs.” Milia delivers his inventive lyrics over bonfire strums, and moon glow plucks, creating intimate atmosphere. The album’s close, an extended sound collage where elderly, salt-of-the-earth, waxings jumble over each other, moving in and out of the mix, is an intriguing end to the cathartic opus.

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Anthony Vine – ‘Remnants’ CS $7.5
Composed and performed in New York during the balmy months of 2016, “Remnants” is a 65 minute collection from the mysterious inner wold of composer, Anthony Vine. In this world, music is a place, a dream, a living landscape; it’s a swirling conversation between close friends playing guitar, saxophone, piano, harmonica, melodica, bass, and percussion; wandering through found sounds, vast microtonal systems, and fragile moments of improvisation and chance. Not so easily characterized, Vine is rooted in contemporary classical music, while “Remnants” finds itself sliding into the outer realms of jazz, minimalism, and ambient music.

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