Animal Psi

(HSR-021) Afternoon Nap s/t CS
Take a nap. A 10 minute sound art piece made up of looping lo-fi samples and a summer afternoon field recording. Available as digital download and cassette.

WEBSITE

MARIA MINERVA – ‘HISTRIONIC’ CD/LP
tallinn royalty lays down her latest galaxy of mirrored electron pop, and it’s also her best ever.

SKEPPET – ‘PHASE 3’ LP
secret swedish psych legends finally issue a debut after a trail of overlooked EPs. lush cosmic music from the heart of the sky.

I IM EYE MY – ‘7 TRANSMISSIONS’ CS
cool new philly duo explore various psychedelic dimensions in unpredictable ways.

LX SWEAT – ‘SWEAT SWEAT SWEAT’ CS
german steamroom champion’s debut comes around for a partial-repress, with new artwork.

WEBSITE

VAllEY – ‘VAllEY’ C26 $6
VAllEY was recorded in the English countryside by James P Honey and FRKSE. The album is an honest and simple portrayal of minimal instrumentation and vocalization. James P Honey’s signature voice and emoting poetry is unworldly. Something ethereal about the fragments and loops that are whispered across the valley as the instrumentation is constructed with gentle strokes by FRKSE. The delicate and dark layers to this album are very refined. VAllEY is beautiful. Featured on woven fabric j-cards hand cut and lavender hand-stamped cassettes limited to 150.

John E Cab – ‘Do What They Say’ C51
Somewhere between the beats and the raps is this thread of jazzy rhythms. “Do What They Say” is the latest release from I Had An Accident Records and Us Natives featuring John E Cab – a 51 minute epic journey 7 years in the making. John E Cab, a prominent producer in the Philadelphia underground with recent tracks most notably with Planetary of AOTP and Burke the Jurke, is currently residing in Austin, Texas. Classically trained in violin at a young age, growing up surrounded by jazz and progressing into classic hip hop, “Do What They Say” outlines the talents, thoughts, and cohesiveness of Cab’s work. The process of writing the album circled around the death of Cab’s brother. Overcoming a troubled past and dealing with the loss, “Do What They Say” became an artistic reflection of life through a series of tragedies and setbacks. The jazz influence touches on lounge style for moments, the drums kiss the hiss of the cymbals on a laid back escape from the troubles of our mind. Limited to 80 smokey tinted cassettes.

WEBSITE

DAIS055 Harassor – ‘Into Unknown Depths’ LP $16
Unrelenting raw black metal fused with punishing death-laced thrash punk, L.A.’s hate fueled trio Harassor drop their newest statement of destruction and apocalypse on Dais Records with Into Unknown Depths. For the past 10 years, the band’s output has seen releases on Husk, Nostilevo and their own Rising Beast and Universal Consciousness imprints, which lead to the bands arrival on the Southern Lord’s lauded 2011 compilation The Power of the Riff. Singer Pete Majors blood splattered live performances use black metal tradition but appropriate the bleak landscapes of their own creation to recognize their hellish, bleak dismissal of the human race. Drummer Sandor GF (a.k.a Lord Time) alongside guitarist James “Roach” Brown III (a.k.a. the infamous Lord Foul / Moonknight) pull together a demonic metal assault of unholy blasphemy and sinister hostility. Subversive as it is demonic, Into Unknown Depths reeks of true underground blackened hate. Limited to 300 copies. (50 on Dirty Snow Vinyl, 250 on Black vinyl).

WEBSITE

Ian Watson/Stuart Chalmers – ‘Good Is A Lobster’
Entitled ‘Good is a Lobster’ following an e-mail correspondence typo we begin with Ian Watson’s half of the split. 4 tracks of electronics that hover between the organic and the machinic. For example, there are moments that conjure both insect swarms and TV static. Not some electronics that sound like an insect swarm or some white noise shaped to resemble static from a TV after falling asleep watching VHS horror movies. Rather it’s as if there is some subterranean heart that beats in both insect swarms and TV static and Ian gets right into evoking this. That’s possibly a fancy way of explaining something. Rather Ian has been building his own electronics and whittling down his selection of equipment to achieve intense focus in the sonic qualities he’s improvising with. Here we have a great example of an intensely focused yet generously warm practice committed to tape. Next up we have Stuart Chalmers who shares a similar commitment and focus to Watson but this time in improvising with cassettes and electronic manipulations. My first encounter with Stuart’s work was with ‘Myths and Beasts’ (which we released 2 years ago and there’s still a couple of copies left if anyone wants). His subsequent releases have been increasing in focus with more room for quiet and contemplation. 9 of his tracks presented here are named ‘haiku’ and it fits. Maybe it’s a case of a title imposing something upon one’s response but I imagine Japanese Art-House background noises and Shinto rituals. The final track is an epic, blissfully ecstatic, crescendo of drones and voices – worth the admission price by itself. It’s available either digitally for £3 or as a cassette with download for £5 or get in touch for trades etc.

WEBSITE

RUDOLF EB.ER/JOKE LANZ/GX JUPITTER-LARSEN/MIKE DANDO – ‘Wellenfeld’ CD
300 copies. The grande finale of ‘Extreme Rituals – A Schimpfluch Carnival’ held at Arnolfini, Bristol UK on December 2nd 2012. In memory of Urs Schwaller. Four leading figures of the international Noise circus team up for a unique performance, solely based on their brainwave activity. Each performer is wearing a wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) headset. The EEG signals sent from the stage are received by sound­engineers, transformed from data into sound and processed to emerge through eight speakers surrounding the audience. The performance took place without prior tests or rehearsals. The performer develops and gains control over his own brainwave patterns during the performance, by listening to the sonic results of his mental activity. By changing electric impulses of the brain during meditative and ecstatic trance, the performer begins to sculpt the sound through the mind alone. 4-panel digipak, edition of 300

WEBSITE 

Valerio Orlandini – ‘Luci Accese alle Soglie del Mattino’ C35 £5
An immense two part dark ambient work from the Italian composer. Hypnotic and brooding, it takes you on an evolving journey from minimalist psychedelia via plunging bass heavy chasms. Recorded on a high quality bright yellow cassette with multi-panelled full colour gatefold inner sleeve. Limited to 20 copies.

WEBSITE

CLAUS POULSEN – ‘FLAT WORLD’ C30
One half of STAR TURBINE and the whole entirety of himself, Claus Poulsen presents 3 live pieces recorded in the UK and Denmark. Side A features 15 minutes culled from a derranged late night, ‘straight from the airport set’, while side B is a hack ‘n’ slash job featuring racket generated at both Electric Knife Records, London and Skrat Studio, Copenhagen. Field recordings, processed dribbling, violin bow abuse and whistling filters. Intense textural investigations from the man who controls vermin with HNWs for fun – but not today. Edition of 43 tapes with full-colour ‘trans-human’ cover by CWB with Cheshire Plains on-tape stickers.

STUART CHALMERS – ‘IMAGINARY MUSICKS VOL.1’ C35
CHALMERS CHALMERS CHALMERS. This noodling sonic tourist has coalesced and conjured 35 minutes of expansive/expanding atmo-collage, for the soothing of the tired mind. Flattened drumming, distant wailing and shining synthesis intertwindle together in ecstatic glory – meditation creation. Wandering flutes and meandering loops swirl and swell during 35 minutes of enchanting audio cartography – we be map-making with sound, ain’t no doubt. One for fans of sunken huts in the northern Wirrel or just a bloody good hypno-rave by the abandoned Kwik Save – 3lbs on the door. Edition of 45 tapes in clear(ish) grey with brain melting on-tape stickers and austere brown papier (paper) inserts.

WEBSITE 

Valerio Tricoli – ‘Miseri Lares’ 2LP
Composed in Berlin and Munich, 2011/2013. A former version of Miseri Lares was originally presented in 2011 at the festival “l’Audible” (Paris), curated by Jerome Noetinger. It has been 7 years since ”Metaprogramming from within the eye of the storm’, thelast solo full length release by Valerio Tricoli. In the years between he hasestablished himself as a formidable presence on the international experimental livecircuit and released acclaimed collaborations with Antoine Chessex, ‘Coi Tormenti’ (Dilemma Records, 2010) and Thomas Ankersmit, ‘Forma II’ (PAN, 2011) along with the fifth full length release by his band with fellow Italiancohorts 3/4HadBeenEliminated, ‘Oblivion’ (Die Schachtel, 2010). Throughout theseshows, collaborations and ongoing explorations Valerio has developed upon hissignature style of beautifully unsettling Musique Concrète. The result of his tirelessexplorations, ‘Miseri Lares’ is his magnum opus, a multilayered and heavilynuanced work which epitomises the uncanny in the realm of sound. ‘Miseri Lares’ explores a variety of interlocking themes and sonic tapestries thatcombine in a quietly disturbing and deeply existential work. As a contemporarytake on Musique Concrète Tricoli utilises his full explorations of the Revox taperecorder alongside digital processing whilst retaining all of the mystery andsurprise elements found in the classic approach of pioneers such as Bernard Parmegiani, Eugeniusz Rudnik and Michel Chion. Themes of the internal, represented by both the psychological and the physical, play throughout the record. A mind lays waste to it’s own self abasement the immediate surrounds (casa or ‘home’) feeds on the collapse of the individual. As a symbol of spirits preying on the grief within, haunting wisps of sound swirl around a throbbing bass in ‘Hic Labor Ille Domus et Inextricabilis Error’, whereas ‘La Casa Deviata’ emphasises the paranoid structure as looming creaks make way for abandoned pipes and a cloud of escaping water. Here, the tension at play is injected with a treated dictaphone recording: “Tell me what happened”,”I can’t remember… THE SMELL!!! There was a tape recorder, where is the tape”? Spoken text (Italian and English) appears throughout the record, mostly as texture or as a dehumanised floorboard A play on the albums themes of the psychological, emotional and irrational horror within. Texts by Italian poets Dante and Guido Ceronetti appear alongside excerpts from The Ecclesiastes (in hebrew, Qohelet), H.P. Lovecraft, E. M. Cioran, and writings by Tricoli himself. These add an extra weight to the recording, making it reminiscent of Robert Ashley or even the comedic tragedy of later day Scott Walker (baritone aside). Valerio Tricoli’s release for PAN adds another piece to the puzzle of narrative based concrete music, yet deviating from all conventional forms and playing out like a literary form of unsettling sound sculpture. The 2xLP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g vinyl. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a silkscreened pvc sleeve with with photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Bill Kouligas.

WEBSITE

BODY MORPH – ‘pussy for breakfast b/w medical fame’ 2CS $10
Brand-new double cassette of slipstream saxophone insanity from BODY MORPH. First legit solo tape in a while. Alternately lush and grating slabs of nebular reed rubbing for sleep and love-making. The sound of space folding and waking up full. 40 copies.

‘LIVE PUZZLE VOL.2‘ C90 compilation $5
Wild and confusing live sets recorded across the great nation of michigan. Musician offenders include: UNEVEN UNIVERSE, FLOATING HEADS, BODY MORPH, CRIMINALS, JOSH BURKE, E.A.S, and SLOWSLAG. Its like you were there, except better. 40 copies/

WINTER RUBY – ‘open grave’ CS $5
A couple of years ago, WR wrote several new songs, recorded them, and ceased operations for the time being due to life circumstances (good ones). OPEN GRAVE is a collection of those songs. Recorded in scenic warren, mi and it sounds like it. 80 copies.

MAJOR BLAST C30 $5
Napalm layers of absolutely horrible saxophone crust. Like dancing in acid rain mixed with sharpened reed hail. Severely unchill/a true blast. MAJOR BLAST: knox mitchel/dlugosielski duo. 30 copies.

TARPIT – ‘gradual paralysis’ C40 $5
Shivering primordial ear pollution from the TARPIT sound dungeon. Listen to your brain fall out your ear. A negative experience. SIDE A: solo; SIDE B: hooker/dlugosielski duo. 40 copies.

WEBSITE