Animal Psi

Marielle V Jakobsons – ‘Glass Canyon’ CD/LP
It’s been a little while since we’ve last heard from Oakland-based sound artist Marielle Jakobsons in a solo capacity, but that’s certainly not to say she hasn’t been busy. Last year saw full-length outings by her two duo projects, Date Palms and Myrmyr, and already in 2012 works with Bay Area drone ensemble Portraits and trio recordings with Helena Espvall and Agnes Szelag have been released. Her last major solo outing (under the nom-de-plume Darwinsbitch) came in form of the dark, complex Ore, released by Digitalis in 2009. With Glass Canyon, Jakobsons presents her first major work under her own name, a decision which perhaps offers a bit of insight into her compositional intentions on the album itself. Jakobsons sought to strip down her creative process to primarily just synthesizer and violin as a way of focusing, as she puts it, “on where two timbres meet.” Meticulously composed from 2009-2011, Glass Canyon is a work of deep richness and beauty. Throughout the record, whirring, pulsing synths flutter around elegiac arcs of bowed strings. The effect of these juxtapositions is staggering, as evidenced to profound effect by the glacial opener “Purple Sands”. Jakobsons’ preternatural abilities as a sound designer allow the otherworldly tones culled from her synthesizers to be wed perfectly to the radiant sonorities of her violin. The results are compositions that are at once classical yet somehow alien, intimate yet estranged, as though we’ve stumbled upon a conservatory located entirely elsewhere, untethered to the terrestrial.

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FAB017 – WOLF FLUORESCENCE – ‘We’re So Glad You’re Home’ C36
Wolf Fluorescence is the solo project of experimental musician and NY-native Ross Devlin. On We’re So Glad You’re Home he conjures long summers, nostalgia for youth, and time spent with family and loved ones. Dream-like ambient music with a warmth that seems to be a missing from a lot of the very precise and clinical-sounding experimental music out there. Edition of 50 on pro-dubbed high-bias chrome and full color j-card.

FAB014 – DEREK ROGERS – ‘Hex Illumination’ C30
Six new dark synth/electronic tracks from this distinguished and extremely prolific gentleman currently residing in the city of angels. Hex Illumination is the perfect soundtrack for a late night drive through post-recession America’s once thriving cities. Edition of 50 on pro-dubbed high-bias chrome and full color j-card.

FAB012 – INSECT FACTORY/LUCIERNAGA split C80
New sounds from Silver Spring, MD’s own guitar-drone project INSECT FACTORY and Gowanus Brooklyn’s LUCIERNAGA. INSECT FACTORY provides two extended guitar-based drones of sounds and textures that meld into haunting yet-tuneful melodies. These two tracks are an excellent companion to the recently released full-length INSECT FACTORY LP on FABRICA/INSECT FIELDS. LUCIERNAGA, normally a guitar-only project, this time around includes acoustic and electric guitar, mbira, buddha machine, and looped field recordings. LUCIERNAGA is accompanied by Sean Keane (STRNGLV) with additional sounds generated by circuit-bent synth and effect pedals. First edition of 50 packaged in printed 5” x 5” reel-to-reel box.

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ELEH/DUANE PITRE split LP
Split release including a new 20 minute piece from Eleh and the installation version of Duane Pitre’s beautiful new composition, Feel Free. 6 color screenprinted jackets, pressed in an edition of 550.

v/a ‘FESTIVAL ELECTRONICA EN ABRIL 2003-2012‘ 2LP
Released by La Casca Encendida in Spain, this 2LP (clear vinyl) contains exclusive tracks from Eleh, Radian, Maja Ratkje, nsi, Farben, Dopplereffekt, Elektro Guzzi, Thomas Koner, Matmos & SND. Packaged in a heavy duty cardboard & woven fabric box sleeve that changes color from green to purple as you move it.

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DDP 1971.019 v/a  ‘Tired and Emotional‘ C60
Ed. of 100. Perhaps an audio document of what scorching tropical heat and prolonged periods of rainfall can do to the (perhaps, tweaked) artistic mind, Tired and Emotional provides a glimpse into the strange world of the New Zealand underground. From gauzy indie-rock and female-fronted noise-punk to damaged folk, primitive psych-noise and bizarre field recordings amidst meandering acoustic folk, this tape covers a lot of strange, strange ground. In fact, chances are you have never heard anything quite like this. Take the last 30 years of underground music and leave it on the dashboard of your step Dad’s Ford Colt during a heatwave, then try to play that gooey mess in your little sister’s toy boom box while you’re freaking out on shitty drugs and you might be getting close to what’s going on here. But probably not. Do you pride yourself on how “weird” and “eclectic” your musical tastes are? This tape is guaranteed to make the last thing you downloaded off a blog on your lunch break sound like whoever is performing on Letterman tonight.

DDP 1971.020 Shearing Pinx – ‘Storm Majorities & Magnetic Tremors’ C90
Ed. of 100. Compiled from 7″s, splits and compilations released since the band’s inception in 2007, this anthology serves as an introduction to the breadth, depth and sheer velocity of Vancouver’s Shearing Pinx. White-hot cymbals sizzle and shimmer atop a smoldering garbage heap of buzzsaw guitars, molten bass lines, neanderthal kick-drum abuse and frantic vocals. Yet amidst the chaos lurk actual songs: guitar skree sculpted into impossible hooks, deranged, intersecting melodies and low-end thrum all aimed at total dance floor annihilation. At once unrestrained and tightly wound, Storm Majorities…  illustrates a band with uncomprimising vision, a band positively possessed by their instruments who destroy the lines between no-wave, punk and noise in once fell swoop.

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JEFF GRACE – ‘Meek’s Cutoff (Music From The Motion Picture)’ 10″ £10
Kelly Riechardt has directed several films, An Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and last year saw the release of Meek’s Cutoff. A slow burning, bleak film following a small group of settlers traveling across the Oregon High Desert with their guide Stephen Meek. What follows is increased paranoia and tension as they start to believe Meek does not the territory he has lead the group in to. The film was released to some fantastic reviews and Michelle Williams recently won the Hollywood Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Meek’s Cutoff, My Week With Marilyn and Take This Waltz. This fantastic film’s score was written by Jeff Grace. Grace has scored several films including Ti West’s excellent retro horror ‘House of the Devil’ and Jim Mickles great vampire movie ‘Stake Land’, as well as working as an assistant to Howard Shore’s score for Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ trilogy. Grace’s soundtrack work is always interesting and defies genre. For Meek’s Cutoff, Grace enhanced the films portrayal of the fear of the unknown stark land the group faces. The sounds composed by Jeff Grace are hypnotic, ambient and minimal, much like the deserted dust lands the characters in the film travel through. The soundtrack blends classical composition with drone and experimental avant garde music. Meek’s Cutoff was one of my favourite soundtracks and films of 2011, and I’m honoured to present it here on 10″ virgin vinyl, in a gorgeous sleeve, including a small insert of liner notes and photographs of the file. Produced in a one-time edition of 250 hand numbered copies.

CENTRAL LIVING – ‘Dune Church’ LP £12
Debut collaborative release from Manuel Padding and Steve Gunn (GHQ). Steve plays guitar with effects and Manuel is on electronics, vocals and percussion. Dune Church comprises of two tracks, The Original Mind Roti being the first with some beautiful playing from Steve which is reminiscent of his solo work and his GHQ collaborations with Marcia Bassett, but layered with Manuel’s electronics, which fluctuate between psychedelic hazes to almost concrete walls of heavy drones at noises at times, it creates something otherworldly. The B side, ‘Stone Canoe’ has rapid cascading plucking merged with whirring electronics, Steve’s playing moves in and out of the blissed out mystic drones already laid down by the duo, haunting vocals creeping in and out. These two 20 minute tracks should be played as loud as possible. Pressed in an edition of 300 on virgin vinyl with donwload code for your choice of high quality digital download format.

GOLDEN CUP – ‘Vagabond’ LP £12
Brand new full length from Golden Cup featuring a new expanded 4 piece. Vagabond features 3 tracks, the opening 15 minute tracks takes up the full A side with wild psychedelic percussion and floating riffs, it’s one hell of a jam. The B side features two shorter pieces, the first which are totally tranced out tribal percussive pieces, it sound nuts. The closing tracks is the perfect blend of the previous two tracks, crazy percussions, hazy guitars, far out flutes. The new expanded line up has pushed Golden Cup to a new level of other-worldly psychedelia. Edition of 250 copies. Cut at 45 rpm for maximum fidelity! Comes with download coupon for your choice of high quality digital download format.

TOM CARTER & ROBERT HORTON – ‘Nyida’ Days CDr £6.5
Following on from previous collaborations between Robert Horton and Charalambides Tom Carter on fine labels such as Important, Preservation and Digitalis, Carter and Horton come back to Blackest Rainbow (both we have previously worked with but not as a duo) for their first duo recording in a while. The 3 tracks result in combinations between outsider improvised trips and swirling head drones created via a wide array of instruments and non-instruments. Carter takes hold of the guitar, ebow and lap steel with Horton’s every growing army of sound making objects described here as boot loops, boot, vortex, cassette player, minidisks, vibrator, computer, sine waves, voice, sex machine, organ, construction and beats to name some… Carter and Horton create a wild sound that is almost deconstructed and rebuilt through the 3 tracks, it sounds great and like no one else… Edition of 200.

UNDERCARRIAGE – ‘Homunculus’ CDr £6.5
Debut disc from the new collaborative project between Nathan Bowles (Black Twig Pickers/Spiral Joy Band) and Lisa Cameron (Venison Whirled). A real odd one this, lots of rattling and scraping of percussive objects creating 3 tracks of abstract improvised surreal sonic explorations. The sound is matched by what I can only describe as the weirdest sleeves I have every had the joy of releasing (and we’ve had some weird ones), but this one is far out, the guy at my local print shop looked baffled when he was printing these for me… Edition of 100 copies in full colour covers with insert.

TRANS/HUMAN – ‘The Wider’ CDr £6.5
CDR made for Trans/Human’s euro tour in May. Trans/Human are the duo of Adam Denton (frequent collaborator with Cam Deas) and Luke Twyman who runs the Audacious Art Experiment label and space in Sheffield. The Wider is a 33 minute blast of weirdo outsider noise rock, pummelling drums, slabs of effects and feedback, horror movie screams and hypnotic rhythmic freak outs. Limited to 70 hand numbered copies featuring cover photograph by Joe Blanchard.

TOM CARTER – ‘Highs In The Low Twenties’ CDr £6.5
New tour disc of solo material from Tom Carter (made for May’s Charalambides UK/EU tour). The first track, ‘Train Kept’, was previously issued on the long out of print split LP with Barn Owl. This is the first time it has been released on CD. The second track, ‘Hurricane Isis’ is a new track recorded by Marcia Bassett in Tilburg, Netherlands in March 2008. ‘Train Kept’ was recorded the month before ‘Hurricane Isis’. Both tracks are absolute raging guitar pieces, similar to Carter’s ‘Shots At Infinity’ CD and LP on Important Records, total blow out electric guitar heaven! Edition of 80 hand numbered copies, packaged in parchment paper covers featuring photography by Sarah Blanchard.

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ANCESTORS – ‘In Dreams and Time’
On In Dreams And Time, ANCESTORS fuse the primal aggression of their earlier work with the advanced dynamic sensibilities of the new, gazing into the infinite horizon to provide innovative, atmospheric thinking-man’s music. From the moment the album’s lead track “Whispers” comes on like a collapsing star, SoCal’s reigning kings of heavy psych unleash spacious yet pulverizing music that unveils layer upon layer of vintage tones, spectral atmospheres, skin-crawling ambience and swirling keyboard swell over a body of crushing, full-contact rock.  ANCESTORS music-fan-friendly sound easily finds appeal with both indie rock and metal fans alike and has been called “the hard rock equivalent of returning to the womb”.

NAAM – ‘The Ballad of the Starchild’
There are very few bands in the known universe that can draw upon such varied influences as The Stooges, Hawkwind and Can, but Brooklyn’s NAAM certainly fits the bill. With their new EP The Ballad Of The Starchild, NAAM creates spacey, spacious, garage-bluesy kraut-psych with an epic scope and altered state intergalactic musings about time, space and the future. The Ballad Of The Starchild is a far-out journey where riffs fall from the sky and float off to planets yet undiscovered by science!

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GLD026: Silvia Kastel – ‘Something There’ C32
Last year’s ‘Love Tape’ brought a sexuality and singular strangeness to the current world of sound art and drone tape explorers.  Loosely standing in her own realm of sensual psychedelic synth abstractions, Silvia Kastel’s ‘Love Tape’ and now ‘Something There’ are slower creeping shadows of her howling collaborative work with like-minded avant garde artists like Ninni Morgia and Gary Smith.  For ‘Something There’ she is operating a Tenori-On to create darker maps of rhythmic paranoia meditations and whispering seance smoke.  Evolving aural shapes of foil cave drones, metallic ringing echoes and aged misty docks.  Bells made up of all elements and many shapes give up voices new and old rippling towards the surface and back down. A dream creeper, for sure. Silvia Kastel ‘Something There’ (GLD 026) c32, pro duplicated and on shell printing cassette tapes.  Double sided and scored J-Card. Ltd 75 copies.

GLD029: Henry Dawson – ‘The Thunder of Wonder’ C18
Henry Dawson stands out from the crowd of synthesizer wizards for the sheer emotive power of the harsh abstract soundscapes he creates.  ‘The Thunder of Wonder’ is a total mindfuck of dual joys and spiraling anxieties.  A sonic stash of synapse bong bubbles, bug flutters, psi-fi shakedowns, ‘Runaway’ spiders, and mental reboots. Henry Dawson enters your skull, smokes yr brain, and calls it a day!! Recorded by Seth Graham and Mastered by Robert Beatty.  Henry Dawson ‘The Thunder of Wonder’ (GLD 029) c18, pro duplicated and on shell printing cassette tapes.  Double sided and scored J-Card. Ltd 75 copies.

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DAIS031 Tor Lundvall – ‘The Shipyard’ LP $16
Edition of 500. Tor Lundvall has graced us with yet another remarkable album this year.  Previously, Lundvall had introduced himself to Dais with his masterpiece album Sleeping & Hiding and struck lightning twice with the resilient The Seasons Unfold box set and now we are humbled to be crafting the strings with the curation of his most recent effort.  The Shipyard was recorded during the dramatic season change-over of ’09/’10, during which time Lundvall was immersing himself in portrait studies of local maritime themes and nautical life at the docks.  This instrumental collection of songs composed the soundtrack to the final renderings of these conceptional ideas put side by side, for which semblance he is most know for. Limited to 500 hand numbered vinyl copies (comes with a free MP3 download coupon) with artwork by Tor Lundvall.

DAIS034 King Dude – ‘You Can Break My Heart b/w Devil’s Tail’ 7″ $7
Edition of 500. King Dude returns hot of the heels of his prolific debut album Love, giving listeners a preview of two new tracks poetically titled You Can Break My Heart (which will be featured on his upcoming full-length Burning Daylight on Dais Records this summer).  An exclusive unreleased b-side of Devil’s Tail wraps up the old world backyard gospel that King Dude has cemented himself in over the past year. Serves tribute to both sides of the coin, both sides work equally, paying service to the ones we’ll never understand. Complemented with reverent artwork by TJ Cowgill. Limited to 500 copies.

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Tomoko Sauvage – ‘Ombrophilia’ LP
Tomoko Sauvage, Japanese musician and sound artist based in Paris, has developed a natural synthesizer, an electro-acoustic system using hydrophones (under-water microphones of Aquarian Audio) immersed in porcelain bowls of different sizes filled with water. She plays with water waves and drops resonating in the bowls, also with her new sonic exploration, audio feedback creating waving drones and natural overtones. Since her solo album, “Ombrophilia” was released from either/OAR (US) in 2009, she made performances in Europe, US and Japan, often in solo but also in collaboration with Momus, MC Schmidt (Matmos), Gilles Aubry, André Gonçalves… In 2011, a new set of porcelain bowls was created during her residency at La Pommerie (FR) in collaboration with Ceramic Research Center of Limoges (CRAFT).

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sky thing – ‘garbage strike’
about the artist: sky thing is john collins mccormick, an improviser and sound artist currently living in garrett, indiana whose performances and installations are built on improvisation utilizing the natural comings and goings of the people and the space as well as transducers and contact mics. his interest lies in percussive aspects of traditional instruments and extended performance techniques; the space in between improvisation and composition; and acoustic to electronic sound conversion. about the album: john used prepared turntables, transducers, contact mics, modulators and various objects to create garbage strike, his first album for pan y rosas. the sound is something like a furnace roar and artificial cicadas with life happening in the background. metal singing. found objects vibrated with motors. phased sizzle.

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