Category Archives: UPDATE

TERRINE – ‘Les Problèmes Urbains’ 14€
Synthetic melancholy, homage to French party songs and improvisations without parachute. All packed in a colorful sleeve.

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Ski Crime – ‘Watermelon Snow’
Cape Town’s As Is experimental music veterans Andrea Dicò and Garth Erasmus had a chat with two HNW dinmongers Justin Allart and Jacques van Zyl at a ROAR experimental music gig one evening and decided to team up as a noise collective. The name Ski Crime arose randomly during a wonky conversation about watermelons, an imagined murder on the slopes, and one that got away. A photo of the four sealed the deal. Ski Crime’s concept has hereto been tacit – freedom is encouraged to an extreme, and implicit trust becomes the driving musical force. Chaos embeds structure, and language is individually coded and understood – but emerges as a whole. The instrumentation is anarchic. Much of it is self built and designed. Garth plays a number of his own stringed instruments based around Khoisan indigenous knowledge systems (notably the Zaan,) and Jacques carts around a growing bevy of food containers, housing primitive and often autonomous electronic objects. Aside from his drum kit, Andrea pounds on a kid’s drum set, along with toys, thrash metal objects, and various cheap and crappy accessories. Justin rattles a contact miked can, filled with bolts and nuts, twisting his sound stream through an impressive collection of boutique pedals and electronic sound machines. As all four members are seldom in the same country (even if Andrea currently lives in Milan), live performances often include only three members. Lockdown created an opportunity to work together at a distance, and Watermelon Snow exemplifies this new remote collaboration methodology. Independent label from Fargo, North Dakota, Black Ring Rituals (https://blackringrituals.com/) contacted Ski Crime to produce an audiocassette with new materials. The common interest for power electronics, experimental and harsh hoise made everything doable very quickly.

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Expo Seventy – ‘Evolution’ CS
Aptly titled “Evolution”, the album showcases the trio-mode line-up led by Justin Wright at the peak of their glowing, spontaneously unique brand of slow-burning lysergic sounds and anthemic riffages. Sacred drone tones and spectral analog synth meditations evoking deep ritualized aural metaphysic experiments — elements widely known from Expo ’70, Wright’s solo moniker (Seventy is not equal to 70 in his universe) — gravitate around long-form, trance-like magnetic waves of heady guitar jams that stretch to the other side of the cosmos to effortlessly coexist with amazing doom-inspired heavier incursions packed with mystical blown-out riffs and megatons of amp toned torque. The outcome is an one-of-a-kind document of dark and cosmic psychedelia. Recorded over two distinct periods of time — partially analog to 24-track reel-to-reel and partially digital due to complications in demagnetizing the tape. – ESSENCE MUSIC. Sonic Meditations – Limited edition of 100 copies ETCHED SOLID BLACK CASES.

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Lip Critic/Omnibael split CS/LP
The pairing of New York City’s Lip Critic and Stoke-on-Trent’s Omnibael is truly inspired. The two acts are certainly more contrasting than overtly complimentary, but that’s the key to the success of this release. Lip Critic fully embrace the electronic, using it to construct a car spray-painted with all shades of hip-hop which they then proceed to drive headlong into a wall. Repeatedly. It may be a rather clumsy analogy, but on hearing this, it will make sense. From industrial jungle to electroskapunk drum ‘n’ bass, Lip Critic pack a lot of insanity into five short songs. Omnibael’s darker industrial leanings are a whole lot more serious, and a whole lot bleaker, evoking vintage Pitch Shifter and Godflesh: hard, heavy, and propelled by clanging metallic beats, theirs is the sound of rage, of fury, of powerlessness and nihilism.

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P Wits – ‘Candle’ CS 6E
P Wits shows another blend of glooming dark cloud guitar noise. The two side-long compositions of „Candle“ will take you on an eerie walk around some bleak neighborhoods you would actually prefer to avoid until you end up in a melting arm chair. Edition of 64 numbered copies.

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The Savage Young Taterbug – ‘Ragman Transmissions Volume 1’ CS $8
For many years now the Savage Young Taterbug has wandered America’s hinterlands, bewitching drugstore clerks and gas station attendants with his balladry. “Ragman Transmissions” cobbles together songs he raw-dogged on the road, left in the tape decks of friends and fellow freaks, and abandoned or simply forgot about. A few songs carry on his signature swirl of transistor static and scarecrow spirituals. Others catch him in private, tinkling on the piano and crooning deliciously. Still others are bona fide studio slammers buoyed by thick licks and harmonies. Who knows how many Taterbug tracks still lurk out there, like old jellybeans wedged between cushions. Volume one is our humble effort to round some up and savor their strange flavors.

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Radio Eclipse – ‘Nicole L’Huillier / Thelmo Cristovam’ CS $8CAD
The two works that are presented in this release were part of Festival Tsonami 2020 in Valparaiso, Chile. During the period of the festival two important astronomical events ocurred, one of them being the solar eclipse that darkened part of Chilean territory on Monday, December 14th. On that day, the radio channel of the festival filled the 24 hours of transmission with works and content about the eclipse commisioned to various Latin American artists, as well as moments of discussion and reflexion around a non-occidental understanding of that astronomical event.

Land of Rituals – ‘Bardo Todol y sus Aves sin Nido & Anne-F Jacques’ CS $8CAD
After more than a year of exchanging messages, albums and ideas, Bardo Todol and Anne-F Jacques started this collaboration, each working with sounds from the other and adding to it. Bardo Todol side recorded in Salsipuedes, Córdoba, Argentina in 2020 and 2021, all the time between 00 and 02 AM. He have to take the power supply of the fridge for recordings, but he always forgot to put it again, so the next morning the whole thing was defrozen. Anne-F side recorded in Montréal, Québec, Canada in 2020 and 2021, playing sounds to a single track from Bardo Todol that she listened to so often that it accompanied her in her dreams.

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Score – ‘Post-Everything’
Score is the solo project of Chris Tate, known for his work with d_rradio; producers of a number of notable atmospheric electronica cuts from the early 2000s. ‘Post Everything’ is his latest album for Cruel Nature, following ‘Modern Wreck’ (2020), ‘Vent’ (2018) and his debut, ‘Slump’ (2016). 50 copies.

Dolores Mondo Stash – ‘Folklore Of Despair’
Dolores Mondo Stash has been around since 2017 and it is the solo project of Romanian artist Dan Tecucianu. Since the beginning, Dolores Mondo Stash was a vessel for sound experimentation, from different recording techniques to different styles and influences; from industrial, noise to no-wave, psychedelic and ambient. ‘Folklore of Despair’ is a six-track album, built from decaying, surreal tape loop sounds and atmospheric synth-scapes. 40 copies.

Gnäw – ‘I’
The Finnish-Iranian duo Gnäw create improvised, experimental music utilizing traditional local instruments and modular synthesizers. ‘I’ is their debut album, consisting of effortless, free channeling tracks that have appeared as a result of musical dialogue and contemplation. 40 copies.

Coaxial – ‘Neo/ism’
Coaxial is one of a number of musical vehicles for musician and academic Benjamin J. Heal. Coaxial represents the outlet for his explorations in instrumental electronica, and on Neo/ism there’s humour and wordplay not just in the song titles, but in the compositions themselves. This is apt, given that the Neoist art movement was largely satirical in its purpose. A vintage organ synth sound and even more vintage drum machine track that kick starts the album, landing between chillwave and krautrock. 40 copies.

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Inachis – ‘Beach Erosion’
Inachis is a Brooklyn born-n-raised experimental guitarist with an album of short instrumental sketches based on the secret lives of sand crabs (kind of)–and releasing on 6/11. It’s actually about connecting with the small bits of shore that are an intergenerational place–mostly unchanged in setting and use–in a city where gentrification has made “home” feel smaller and scattered.

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LAMIEE. – ‘Fisica’
Conceptually inspired by the ancient folklore of Piedmontese witches known as “masche.” Occupying a liminal space, Fisica is presented in 7 forms which reveal a spiritual transformation, appearing and disappearing, ancient and at the same time contemporary.

Merzbow – ‘Kazakiribane’
A pulsating onslaught of layered harsh noise.

Alfredo Costa Monteiro & Ben Owen – ‘Point Rest, Falls’
Minimal ambience that exudes a warmth and personality, enhanced by environmental sounds. An intimate documentation of the duo’s first meeting.

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