Category Archives: UPDATE

MKM – ‘White Album’ LP
All Tracks written and performed by MKM. Pics by Joni Kosmos (BFE Records) and Amalia Yusta Pressed by Krakatoa Records and printed by WAMED (Willy A Muerte Ediciones). Verlag System introduce: en “The white album of MKM (Verlag System, 2016), it new album, makes its way eliminating biological remnants still attached to the bones of Popol Vuh, with the discipline of Heldon as a guide. They continue in this, his second lp, deforesting vast grasslands. Accumulating bleeps, zrrghhh and kriegggg soon after starting the take-off, stacking fuel enough to overfly Antares, Aldebaran and Betelguese, with its new flight system encrypted by the AMM selfsame in the last century, and carrying the red end of the spectrum Harmonia , Cluster, Manuel Göttsching of Inventions for Electric Guitar but also Seefeel or Ufo of the Orb. These horizons are those that expand icy cryptograms of the immediate past, the ones of their previous album Ad Astra Per Aspera (Verlag System 2014), devoured by the internautical fast forward and that here resurface cyclopean throughout the 40 minutes trip without name. This white album manufactures a physical map of the star Sirius and it returns a fair copy back to us, instituting as a necessary tool for future explorers.”

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C/S004 XNOBBQX – ‘ALPHA-GAL’ C46
xNOBBQx is a nearly impossible band to pin down. For over a decade they have been making a racket down in the Southern Hemisphere. Their earliest output, like their Siltbreeze released long-player, Sunshine Of Your Love, has a frantic element, everything in the red, and nothing but wild, recklessness. Though Nick Dan still bashes the drums, and Matthew Earle still hums, thuds, and buzzes the guitar, more recent releases have seen the band refine the sound into more hypnotic, albeit divisive, tunes. And perhaps divisive is the word for their style of music; for every possible melody the listener thinks they have discovered the clang-and-smack of the next moment erases it as quickly as it appeared. And for every possible point of reference the listener elicits, an abrupt conclusion wipes away the very notion of influence. xNOBBQx are a stunning band, who have captured audiences around the globe with their unique take on rock music. C/Site is very proud to bring a rare stateside release, not to mention the bands first since 2014. Ready yourself for the 46-minute journey of Alpha-Gal, in all its tape warbled goodness.

C/S005 MOUNTAIN MOVERS – ‘SUNDAY DRIVE/NO PLANS’ C20
Watching the Mountain Movers progression over the course of the past decade has truly been a treat. Their earliest beginnings saw the band documenting Dan Greene’s vast catalog of songs, while displaying a rotating cast of New Haven musicians’ unique skills. The band produced three albums and several singles of polished indie rock in this incarnation. However, their fourth album, 2010’s Apple Mountain, saw the band transition to stranger territory; home-recorded and employing an arsenal of miscellaneous instruments, the record bore a folk-psychedelic element not displayed on their previous work. Shortly after Apple Mountain, constant members Greene and Rick Omonte were joined by lead guitarist Kryssi Battalene and drummer Ross Menze to form, what is now, the bands longest running lineup. The band has since produced a series of singles, lathe-cuts, cassettes, and 2015’s Death Magic, an album that melded Greene’s song writing with the bands ability to stretch out and improvise. Now in 2016, Sunday Drive / No Plans gives the first glimpse into the Movers’ session at former drummer John Miller’s home studio. Two instrumental improvisations clocking in at just under 20 minutes that bring to mind names like Neu! and Ash Ra Tempel, as much as they do any number of American psychedelic acts of the 1960’s. A wonderful preview of what promises to be one of the most stunning albums of 2016.

C/S006 ALEXANDER – ‘NORTON ST.’ C31
David Alexander Shapiro, AKA alexander, is still young but he’s been an active force for some years now. His early life was spent just outside of New Haven, Connecticut, but his musical life truly blossomed while attending Oberlin College (perhaps not such an uncommon story). While in Ohio projects like Lituya Bay (Shapiro’s solo electric guitar wanderings) and Nagual (Shapiro’s collaboration with Ian McColm) took shape. After years spent touring, releasing cassettes and records, and a year spent studying to be a luthier, Shapiro has found himself back in New Haven. Since arriving back Shapiro has been somewhat restless, moving from house to house, and endlessly collaborating with musicians on anything from bar rock to sludge metal, noise to folk, and anything caught between. And somehow through it all he’s found the time to make solo recordings. As alexander, Shapiro improvises and writes acoustic guitar numbers for fans of Fahey, Connors, and Rose. Balancing equal parts Americana, blues, jazz, and avant-garde, and always maintaining the intimate qualities of home recording, Norton St. features 15 concise pieces from Shapiro’s time spent at that address. Like his previous Mellen St. cassette this recording documents a brief time, at a particular place in this transient artists ever-winding journey.

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Stuart Chalmers – ‘Imaginary Musicks Vol. 5’ CS
The latest instalment of Stuart Chalmers excellent Imaginary Musicks series hits Invisible City Records. Expect cuts ups galore on this release…it’s tape loop manipulation done to the highest of standards. A truly beautiful collage of mysterious and wondrous snippets, delicately arranged into 8 slices of weirdo avant pop. A few words from Stuart himself: “Constructed from improvisations recorded between 2014-2016. Vol 5 continues with the re-imagining of old, forgotten cassette samples. An amalgam of phantasmagoric collages, menacing noise and psychotropic loops.” Available as a hand dubbed black C50 cassette. Double sided full colour artwork on 200gsm silk stock. Limited to 50 copies.

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zoho – ‘charleroi’
one year ago they fucked up our hangover breakfast at the tapette festival (france). they’re back with their building & engineering architecture noise approach. feedback battle, amps on air cushion, circular sawtooth frequencies. just press play and turn the volume button on its super right position.

somaticae – ‘djinn larsen/oiseaux larsen’
here somaticae just says no to the dance floor. and yes to his kneeled down closed fists. circular rituals, sacrificial birds, alchemical djinns. ecstatic industrialization and falsified forest.

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DAIS087 Body of Light – ‘Let Me Go’ LP
Formed roughly 5 years ago in the wasted sands of Tempe, Arizona, electronic dance faction Body of Light have proven to be a teeming creative force within the present-day electronic landscape. From the archaic drones and abstract measurements of their earliest collections, to their prodigious cinematic pop ballads and darkwave compositions, the two brothers, Alex and Andrew Jarson, are no strangers when it comes to blurring the compositional lines that confine underground music. Having worked together and separately over the years within the folds of the co-founded Ascetic House collective, both Alex and Andrew have given life to a variety of projects such as Otro Mundo, Blue Krishna, Somali Extract, and Memorymann, whilst unveiling over a dozen visual, audio, and written works under a variety of monikers in a shortened period of time. Body of Light is simply another extension of that exercised method of immediate and natural experimentation. Let Me Go frames the band as a project that has run the circle of practiced ideas to a fully-realized vision of synth pop sensibility and erotic aesthetics. Previous releases on Chondritic Sound and Ascetic House show both members grappling with sound and art as both a tool of mechanical reproduction and lawless spiritual hedonism. But after half a decade has marched on under the Body of Light banner, the project has solidified itself in its current mature state as one of the most transcendent dance music mediums today. Hesitant to define themselves strictly as a “synth-pop” collaboration, the brothers incorporate a wide variety of commodities as they attempt to formulate a direction, unique with decaying, warped tape loops, aging VHS home-movie sound samples from their childhood, primitive waveforms, and processed vocals tinged with harmonic means. Their notion is to utilize past and present technologies in a way that feels unique, honest and sensible. With multiple cassette releases to date, including Follow The Current, Lustre, Universal Sin, Volantà Di Amore and Limits of Reason, the project has established a sound and iconography that seem unusual in conjunction, though aesthetically and sonically opulent. Recorded during the afterglow of 2015, the song list that would form the groundwork of Let Me Go finally came full circle under the production guidance of engineer Ben Greenberg (Uniform / Hubble). The synth-pop anthems of songs such as “How Do I Know?” and “Tremble” relay a sense of dance floor incitement in the way that the zeitgeist of 1980’s Manchester forced the dull masses to get up and move, by any means necessary. “Moving Slowly” reminds the listener of their personal fantasy of life in the afterhours haze of Eastern Europe’s discothèques that sadly never took place. Each song follows the next into a lucid moment of cathodic synergy and romantic relevance that pulls from their self-reflected mysticism and projects itself forward during their masterful live performance. Dais Records proudly releases Body of Light’s “Let Me Go” on July 22, 2016 featuring artwork by artist Collin Fletcher (Halcyon Veil).

DAIS091 The Cakekitchen – ‘Time Flowing Backwards’ LP
Multi-instrumentalist Graeme Jefferies is the given name of the fabled underground counterculture icon hailing from New Zealand, and his mainstay project, The Cakekitchen, has its roots firmly grounded in the pages of 1980’s New Zealand garage storybook which featured countless innovative artists, all of which huddled under the umbrella of labels such as Flying Nun Records, Propeller, and Pagan Records. After performing in the revered gothic punk act, Nocturnal Projections, and after the collapse of his previous Flying Nun group, This Kind of Punishment, The Cakekitchen emerged as an amalgamation of gloomy and introspective post-punk and indie, with a stronger focus on structured studio songwriting and thoughtful compositional approach – producing some of the most expressive and unique music to come out of New Zealand during the early 90’s. Originally released in 1991 on Homestead Records, Time Flowing Backwards, the debut album by New Zealand art rock outfit The Cakekitchen, coupling the entire self-titled EP material released by Flying Nun Records in 1989 along with 6 new songs recorded for the album. Mastered at Abbey Road by Steve Rooke (who would later remaster The Beatles catalog), this debut full length would go on to solidify and promote the growing underground New Zealand rock scene and spawn a generation of devoted followers of Jefferies’ exceedingly graceful, atmospheric, and poetic songs, led by Jefferies’ unmistakable commanding baritone voice. A diverse and inspiring album, “Time Flowing Backwards” has been out of print and difficult to obtain since its original vinyl pressing in 1991. Dais Records is proud to reissue on vinyl in limited edition “Time Flowing Backwords” along with the The CakeKitchen’s sophomore LP (released the same year) “World of Sand”, in remastered editions of 500 copies making these albums available once again to old fans while introducing these classics to new listeners. Underground indie/post-punk for fans of The Chills, Flying Saucer Attack, Velvet Underground, Joy Division, The Clean, The Verlaines, Nick Drake, Felt, Sonic Youth, JPS Experience, Tall Dwarves, etc…

DAIS086 The Cakekitchen – ‘World of Sand’ LP
Originally released in 1991 on Homestead Records, “World of Sand” is the second full length album by The Cakekitchen, highlighting the first live line-up of the band featuring the drumming of Robert Key (Expendables / Lanky), and Rachael King (3Ds) on bass. This formation existed for roughly two and a half years and these compositions were considered by many to be the height of the groups’ creative potential, with musical comparisons to the early material by This Kind of Punishment…pounding piano, maddening viola, numerous tape splices and oddball musical passages – along with several pieces recorded at home on a four track, lending a lo-fi, dark, and intimate feel to the album. Led by Jeffereies’ distinct baritone voice, the album is layered, complex, and darkly beautiful. Long sought after by collectors and fans alike, “World of Sand” has been out of print and difficult to obtain since its original pressing in 1991. Dais Records is honored to reissue on vinyl in limited edition “World of Sand” along with the The CakeKitchen’s first LP (released the same year) “Time Flowing Backwards”, in remastered editions of 500 copies making these albums available once again to old fans while introducing these classics to new listeners.

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Carla Bozulich – ‘Red Headed Stranger’ 2LP
When Carla Bozulich set out to record a cover of this classic Willie Nelson concept album, she never dreamed that Willie Nelson himself would be interested in playing on it. Sure enough, a few weeks after he’d heard a tape on his tour bus, Carla was in his Austin studio recording duets with him. When frequent collaborator Nels Cline formed the all-instrumental Nels Cline Singers with Scott Amendola on drums and Devin Hoff on upright bass, it turned out that they were all closet country fanatics and there was a convergence of sorts around The Red Headed Stranger. Her idea of combining seemingly odd elements (jazz, improvisation, raga, caberet) with a traditionally country feel was brought to life by these highly inventive players. During a 24-date tour in April, 2002, Tzadik recording artist Jenny Scheinman joined the quartet on violin for a few shows and added soul and character to the recordings. Carla has been recording and performing music since the early 1990s and has played in the groups: The Geraldine Fibbers, Scarnella, Ethyl Meatplow, and Evangelista, just to name a few. She is perhaps best known for the range of her powerful voice and the intensity of her on stage performances. This is the first time this album has been released on vinyl. It was originally released as a compact disc on Dicristina Stair Builders in 2003. This version includes the bonus track “Lonesome Roads” which was written by Carla and originally appeared on the compact disc compilation For A Decade of Sin on Bloodshot Records. Released in a pressing of 500 records on 140 gram black vinyl. Records come in a hand die-cut chipboard jacket with a photograph inserted in it and a screen-printed backside. Includes a Risograph print insert on heavy chipboard and a digital download card.

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James Ferraro – ‘Rerex’ 3LP
James Ferraro is an experimental musician, composer and virtual atmospherist born in Bronx, NY. Ferraro has released material under a wide array of aliases, and was a member of the Californian two-piece avant-garde project The Skaters. His album Far Side Virtual was chosen as Album of the Year by the UK’s Wire Magazine in 2011. Ferraro has been producing small runs of releases on cassette, CD-R, and VHS with a wide variety of styles all representing different dreams of a demonic mind tower spanning from freak flesh bodybuilder atmospheres to ambient modern world/psych. First on New Age Tapes and later on MuscleWork Inc., self run cassette / CD-R labels primarily used for releasing small runs of his solo work. In the summer of 2009 Ferraro composed and recorded the Summer Headrush Series in Antwerp, Belgium for Musclework Inc. The series is loosely based on visualisations that came to mind while receiving self-induced hypocapnia (aka choking oneself) or as it’s commonly called ‘free fall’. The albums being representatives of the free fall head space. Other albums from the Headrush Series are: Body Fusion 1 and 2, iAsia, Wild World, Son of Dracula and Hacker Track. The Rerex album is vintage hypnagogic Ferraro and with it’s length (almost 3 hours) it may be considered as one of his Magnum Opuses. Using cheap casio keyboards, loops, effects and difficult to trace samples Ferraro creates a slightly haunting but oh so beautiful musical world. Please use headphones for a dynamic HD headphone experience.

Ian William Craig – ‘Meaning Turns To Whispers’ LP
“I realized at the end of the album that I didn’t want to express, I just wanted to explore.” Ian Wiliam Craig is a trained opera singer and painter out of Vancouver, Canada. Over the last few years he has proved to be one of the most original artists active in the ambient / experimental genre. His debut “A Turn Of Breath” (2014) and the follow-up album “Cradle For The Wanting” (2015) received high acclaim across the globe. Meaning Turns to Whispers is a combination of piano improvisations and FM feedback loops, recorded over various winters in the period 2009-2011 and edited down / manipulated / degraded to reveal some of their hidden spaces. The discreet piano layers mixed with waves of white noise keep on intriguing and make us longing for more. Craig has been making music since 2009, when he sat at a piano and started recording improvisations. The result was Meaning Turns to Whispers, a record rooted in a gorgeous neo-classical tradition, but totally fucked up by tape manipulations that made it anything but pretty. For Craig, the use of reel-to-reels is a way of decaying sentimentality: any time his music has come too close to meeting his expectations, he’s uprooted it, creating impervious walls or bursts of modest but stupefying noise, anything that might help rewrite the truth. In choice moments on Meaning, you could hear Craig trying to imagine the lived lives of his inanimate instruments: beyond the notes he played on his piano, there was the sound it made, if only for a few seconds; when you heard him beaming down on the piano, its wooden infrastructure was revealed, and it sounded like it had its own set of motivations. “I was living with my sister in Edmonton, and during the ridiculously cold winter, I gutted her piano and mic’d it up in a whole bunch of weird ways. I recorded probably 20 hours of material, and after listening to it I was amazed at how much it sounded like sentimental crap. At that point I was really trying to express something, and afterwards I thought the only way through would be to destroy the recordings, and that’s what Meaning Turns To Whispers is. It’s completely mangled to remove that struggle for expression. I realized at the end of that album that I didn’t want to express, I just wanted to explore.”

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Blood Rhythms – ‘Heuristics’
“Heuristics” is a collection of previously unreleased / scarce material over the last 15 years or so. Ranging from halloween themed instrumental homages, soundtracks, blistering rhythmic industrial, and raw, looped based noise, Arvo Zylo has released a cohesive set of works under his collaborative moniker, Blood Rhythms. These tracks didn’t have a home by themselves, and didn’t fit into the scheme of what a “single” should be, but now they make sense together. Zylo went to group piano class to learn to play one Fats Waller song, featured here. Another track was part of a ritual performance on June 6, 2006. Yet another was a collaboration with an ex-partner/vocalist from 2001. Each track has its own story. The album comes with photos from a photo shoot inspired by a dream, wherein a child is made to grow up immediately, and finds himself with poetry all over him that is not intended to be read in any chronological fashion.

Thirteen Hurts – ‘UVB-76’
Thirteen Hurts is a recording artist who has spent much of his time in a solar-powered dome in rural Colorado, 6 hours from any real civilisation. UVB-76 is a shortwave numbers station which has been mostly dead air since at least the 70s. Occasionally, there are various voices or anamolies that come on, and lots of speculation behind the sources and reasoning. Thirteen Hurts has crafted an album based around this idea, with mainly a wide array of pedals, resulting in carefully crafted soundscapes along the spectrum of industrial music’s forebearers, but in a realm all its’ own.

Arvo Zylo – ‘Hello Walls’
This strange album was originally released on cassette by the very discriminate and taste-making Enemata Productions. Then again, it was reissued on cassette two years later, in a black vinyl bag with three full color post cards, a page from a book in German that I’d found in an abandoned church, probably from the 19th century, and dirt from various places, namely, the notoriously haunted Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery. Naturally, the moisture caused the tape to rot, but even before that, I was getting eerie reports of tapes being “completely blank”. Even so, while the decay did lend a certain something to the experience, if not the physical detritus, it also limited the range of that experience. It could be haunting, it could be my soundtrack for the times I spent the night at the aforementioned Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, or it could be just an unusually precocious lo-fi dark-ambient album made by a somewhat high-strung person with not much of an ability to sit still long enough to be truly ambient. It comes off as minimal, but there are sometimes an excessive amount of layers. In the case of the title track, there were over 150 tracks used in various mixdown sessions. I’d say this is best listened to in a solitary environment, preferably outside, and in the dark. Is it still possible to do that? If not, a boiler room from a building built in the 20s or before would do. Approximate running time is around 70 minutes.

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The Bed Band – ‘The Dreamiest’ C47 $5
Ivan Antonio is The Bed Band. He lives down the street, but cosmically he’s more amongst the crystals, black magic, spells and skulls that inform his four-track, melted, twang. This is worbled psychedelic splatter for the fringe mind. This is “The Dreamiest”. Sun-baked, and back from Santa Fe, Ivan Antonio returns to Detroit deconstructing pop like a cacti drifter wafting off heatstroke. At times, “The Dreamiest” mixes country leanings with a warped four-track aesthetic to nice effect. “Low Places”, for example, has excellent, visceral, swampy guitar bursts mixed with the usual otherworldly production treatment. “Black Rose” has undeniable pop charm delivered through a mound of dirge. Ivan previously recorded as “Whatever” and played in “The Ruggs.” He describes the album as, “Dreamy, lo-fi, 60’s and 70’s inspired future rock n’ roll made with peace and love for all to enjoy.” CBS Detroit says The Bed Band is “pure experimental creativity at its finest.”

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LW093 BLACK LEATHER JESUS – ‘Every Male Alphabetically By Sin’ 2CD 18E
American harsh noise unit founded in 1989 by Richard Ramirez. 11 members make up this group with Sean E. Matzus and Richard Ramirez the brains behind the chaos. The material presented features various sessions with different lineups at the time of the recordings, including a live performance as a full lineup.

LW094 AUDIORCIST – ‘VOLYM 1’ 3” CDr 7E
1st release from AUDIORCIST, a project created by Krister Bergman (pre-Positive Adjustments, pre- Demons That Drove). Of punishment: inflicting and receiving it. On your knees please, consume.

LW096 OTOMO HAVA – ‘Densités Compacts’ 10 E
After almost 5 years of making noises, walls, disturbances and chaollages for various respectable labels on abroad, Greece based noisician Thomas Havales, under his HNW/Noise/Experimental moniker Otomo Hava, provides nearly 70 minutes of a set of variably monstrous HNW pieces glued into a single track and obtains a seat of L. White Records’ catalogue of venerable Noise/Industrial/PE acts. Beware! His Chaoticum Vitae’s expanding…

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