Blackest Rainbow

JAZZFINGER – ‘Titan Granolith’ 2xCS £9
Brand new limited double cassette of crumbling decaying drone zones from Newcastle’s finest, Jazzfinger. 15 tracks across almost three hours. Packaged in a double cassette case, pro-dubbed, hand numbered edition of 100, includes download of the music as a FLAC, WAV or many other file formats.

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Nothing Out There

Zero Centigrade – ‘Selce’ CDr
Artwork by Tonino Taiuti (paintings) and Constantin Dubois Choulik (drawings and layout). Released August, 2012, edition of 60, available. Zero Centigrade is one of the most exciting music projects I’ve heard recenlty. Hailing from Napoli, this is the duo of Vincenzo De Luce, architect, playing trumpet and acoustic guitar, and Tonino Taiuti, actor, playing acoustic and electric guitar. Sparse but solid, raw but luminous, their music is a unique blend of free jazz and free improv, musique concrete, and blues.

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Pleasence

Sexy Merlin – ‘Heater’ 12”
SEXY MERLIN (Sean Dunal) has played backed many of Toronto’s best on drums, and currently sits with goth-punks Mausoleum. His previous release with Pleasence (a self titled 7” EP) gained him the reputation of “a one man Liquid Liquid,” playing fast, aggressive blasts of percussive post-punk. The Heater 12” EP finds him discovering him inner Arthur Russell and exploring the sound of late disco and early house music. The result is a dark dance record that’s sure to get everyone on the floor at the club or in a haunted cave. The record was recorded and mixed at Polyphasic Studio by Brandon Hocura. Produced by Sexy Merlin and Brandon Hocura.
 
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Sloow Tapes

Allen Ginsberg/Peter Orlovsky/Steven Taylor/Harry Hoogstraten – ‘De Leeuwerik 1979’ C95
1979 performance of Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Steven Taylor and Harry Hoogstraten recorded live at De Leeuwerik, a small bar in Eindhoven (Holland). Everyone takes turn reading poems and singing songs accompanied by harmonium, percussion and guitar. The set starts with Ginsberg’s ‘Plutonian Ode’ and ends with a wasted ‘Copulation Blues’. Orlovsky reads extracts from ‘Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs’, Hoogstraten from his book ‘Boxing Days’. Awesome archival find that has been gathering dust on Hoogstraten’s shelf for more than 30 years. Hoogstraten is a Dutch poet and visual artist who was one of the people behind the One World Poetry festivals and editor of the literary underground magazine Mandala. 200 copies.

Innercity – ‘A Minor Prince’ C66
Mind-altering trip of utopian electronics: a joyous lofi wormhole of kraut and new age fractals reflecting in the multi-dimensional waters of No Mind Pond. Weird loops and minimal synth as the alpha and omega of hallucinating dreamtime bliss. 60 copies.

Bul-Bul Tarang Gang – ‘Kali’ C60
Spiritual charged improvisations on dholak, harmonium, bass, lots of percussion and Ravi Padmanabha on bul-bul tarang. Padmanabha might be best known as percussionist in his post-Interstellar Space duo with Steve Baczkowski, but he also played with the likes of Willam Parker, Peter Kowald, Pauline Oliveros and Daniel Carter. The recordings on ‘Kali’ are dreamlike raga infused meditations on the wild Indian goddess who roams the cremation grounds at night surrounded by jackals and goblins. 100 copies.

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Mark Przybylowski – ‘Lonely House’ [Review]

‘Lonely House’ marks a sharp, early turn for the Galtta label, their catalog having not yet reached double-digits.  Still based in instrumental virtuosity, the tape by Mark Przybylowski diverges from the familiar jazz sounds of previous releases by utilizing stringed instruments alone, and then in a distinctly folk idiom familiar to Kottke and Fahey.  Beyond the choice of strings (cello, bass, and guitar), it is the use of space and architecture – the title house, standing empty, utilized for its reverb – which makes the most radical break in concept compared to Galtta’s previous studio pieces, and which brings it back around to reunite with the instrumental novelties/innovations which distinguish each release.  The space is both vital and subverted: the reflections of the house make the rich, bold sounds of each strum and pluck, but the house becomes abstract as each layer is recorded and edited together into one piece.  That is, rather than present each stringed instrument in a solo piece, and thereby contextualizing the space in the real-time of a “single take” (real or faked), two and sometimes all three of the instruments appear together, overlapping sounds from different moments into one, achieving not just impossible harmonics, but bringing with all the artifacts of each moment and imposing them into one space of the song.  This neo-classicism likens the sound to prime Johann Johannsson and Peter Broderick in songs like “Sunday”, which by this process juxtaposes multiple tones across these multiple spaces, materializing the structure of the house through activity.  Perhaps the only thing close to uni-dimensional is the theme of the tape – relentlessly melancholy, with titles like “Slow Winter”, “Lamentation”, “The Pain” – but this is not to say flat or uninteresting: the vocals which appear on “Blank Walls” are subdued but youthful, the guitar perky and waltzing across the floors and natural light that cello chords bring.  Even the coda, “Rejoice,” reverses this formula only slightly, lacking what would otherwise pass as joy but isolating well those strains of optimism which pass quietly through these seven tracks.  Professional cassettes come in heavy cards with art by Przybylowski’s grandfather John Carl Bulthuis, hand-numbered to 200.

Galtta cassette
$7
HERE

Hashram Audio Concern

hashram031 Sun of the Seventh Sister – ‘untitled’ 2CDr $12
Two long skull fucking strolls into the void

hashram032 6majik9 – ‘Tracer Glow Neurosis’ CDr $10
The world is tenuous.

hashram034 Noco Domo – ‘The Goddess in Every Woman’s Machine’ CDr $10
Sparkle improvisations.

hashram035 Terracid – ‘Telepathic Satellite’ CDr $10
Drumorgansynth.

hashram036 Terracid – ‘Armed of the Head Forces’ CDr $10
Space rock flashback.

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Bridgetown

Bridgetown #84 – Kevin Greenspon – ‘Folding Focus’ DVD
Folding Focus is a 10-song exploration of movement, transitions and stasis in the audio/video field. The disc features visual work by Paul Skomsvold (Former Selves) and Matthieu Séry that will be projected during Kevin Greenspon’s performances on his 3-month USA tour this Fall. Tiny Mix Tapes’ review of the first track explains that Skomsvold’s visuals “give new meaning to a term like ‘watercolor,’ truly painting the frame with soft strokes of vivid shades while keeping the overall image in a decidedly aqua state. Greenspon’s guitar, meanwhile, is at its most fluttery and falsetto with this number, the melody softly gliding to the forefront before unabashedly chiming out its saccharine message, swimming through a gentle pond of tone before the entire thing crumbles as the beauty is rudely devoured in crinkling static.” Séry’s work serves as a complementary foil, immersing the viewer in subtle shifts of painted color, points and form that gradually coalesce into hundreds of miniature, inconceivable climaxes. Pro-duplicated and shrinkwrapped region-free DVDs (NTSC Region 0 for worldwide compatibility) with full-color artwork and liner notes.

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Large Father

LFL013 – Two Inch Astronaut – ‘Red Pancake and the Dark Energy’ CS/DL $6
First full-length release from Maryland rock trio. Solid songwriting. Impressive guitar work. Catchy melodies. Notable Dishcord influence, but still very much its own thing. 25 copies.

LFL012 – Steamy Wolves – ‘Moist Lord’ CS/DL $6
Pounding electronic beats. Distorted screeching vocals. Basically: everything is constantly exploding for the 10 minutes this cassette is playing. Extremely angry and dark. From Baltimore’s Calvert Trash / So-Gnar Collective. 25 copies.

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Bed of Nails

BRONZE AGE – ‘antiquated futurism’ 12″
enter bronze age. the solo hard techno project of kris lapke. lapke has been working furiously for years on many diverse projects, such as alberich and northern cross, among several others, but has achieved many high marks as a sound engineer for extreme music having run the basement studio in manhattan for hospital prouctions and put his ears to work on such projects as kevin drumm’s epic imperial distortion for hospital productions, prurient’s arrowhead for editions mego, and cold cave’s remix of belle and sebastian for rough trade, to name just a few. bronze age blends the single-minded acid minimalism of fuse with the forward perpelling synths of militia’s new european order, building a dystopian excavation of atmospheric industrial arrangements. first copies on clear ‘copper-tool orange’ vinyl. now available direct from boomkat and forced exposure

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M-minimal

m-014 – Conrad Schnitzler/Andreas Reihse – ‘Con-Struct’
Con-Struct the 2nd – When we asked Andreas Reihse to produce a Con-Struct album for us he didn’t hesitate to accept. Andreas Reihse, member of Kreidler and solo artist (album: Romantic Comedy m=minimal mm-008) is one of the most important  representants of the post-kraut generation, he also knows and loves the music of Conrad Schnitzler. The result is this second Con-Struct album. The composition Con-Struct 9 opens this work, epic spheres, deep electronic music that only can be produced being an admirer of Conrads sound aesthetics. Andreas Reihse starts his travel through the sound tracks of Conrad Schnitzler showing his producer and composer skills. The following tracks of this album contain some surprises. Some of the “Con-Structs” are groovy, in other Reihse and Schnitzler beam us to abstract worlds. Con-Struct is based on an idea of Conrad Schnitzler and m=minimal. This series will be continued.

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