Animal Psi

C/F016 Coppice/N.N.N. Cook split C60 $7(US)/$10(World)
Side A: Prune, by Coppice, is a 30-minute composition for tape studying foundation reduction, threshold permutation, mercurial residue, and compression techniques. Recorded in Chicago in late 2010 using pump organ, fire bellows, push-pump organ, samples, and electronic processing. Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer) is a Chicago-based duet of bellows and electronics. Formed 2009, they have produced original compositions for stage, fixed media, and performed installation settings, with a focus on adhering textural attenuation, processed gradation, the contours of instrumentation, and their multiple aspect highlights. Their variable instrumentation departs from bellows and reed instruments (accordion, pump organ, shruti box, harmonica), custom electronics (reproduction, transmission, spatialization, interference and gentle feedback), and multi-channel systems adapted in ways responsive to location, audience flow, and aural perspectives. They have recently appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art, New Music at the Green Mill (Chicago); Music with a View (New York); Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts (Minneapolis); Dragonfly Festival (Göthenburg, Sweden); and several live radio performances. Side B: Two new works from N.N.N. Cook chosen to accompany Prune. Wu Wei I: Repose features the texture of select materials arranged in order to accentuate the color of each while inducing horizontal and vertical spatial movement. Material (and non-material) sources include: baoding balls, brass censer, feedback, porcelain vase, tape, voice, wine glass, and wooden flute. Wu Wei II: Impulse is the first 18 minutes excerpted from a 40-minute improvisation on electric organ. The meditative state involved in the creation/listening process and the immersive quality of engaging in the perception of the beats, overtones, and shading are its focus. Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double sided j-cards. Featuring altered Polaroid photo cover art by Joseph Kramer. Edition of 100 on chrome tape.

C/F019 ‘Rhizomatic St. Louis Vol. 1′ compilation C72 $7(US)/$10(World)
A compilation of Sound Art, Free Improvisation, Electronic & Electroacoustic music from artists currently living and working in the St. Louis area. Featuring: Regicide Bureau: Tom Sutter; prolific 80’s tape trader with an electroacoustic infatuation, self-released over 300 cd-r’s and tapes Rich O’Donnell: Director of the Electronic Music Studio at Washington University, St. Louis, was principal percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for 40 years, percussion and electronic instrument builder, co-founded HEARding Cats, a 501(c)(3) arts collective in ’09 Raglani: Analog synth guru, electronic music history enthusiast, OG of the STL experimental music scene Tory Starbuck Project: Tory Z. Starbuck; avant-garde art rocker, music instructor, adept player of ethnic drums, saxophone, violin, sitar, koto, and electronics  N.N.N. Cook: Sound artist, improviser, graphic designer, and visual artist, runs the tape side of Close/Far Recordings Dr. Mabuse: Electronic instrument inventor and builder, I call him the, “Harry Partch of electronics”, president and co-founder of HEARding Cats arts collective Dave Stone: Reeds player par excellence, Free Jazz hero, seasoned improviser Public Shallows: Integral promoter, writer, and performer in the local music community, Josh Levi’s Flood Yr Face blog is the #1 source for underground concert listings in STL Brain Transplant: Chris Smentkowski’s long running solo and collaborative Noise project, laptop data warper, guitar mangler Kevin Harris: Runs the best experimental venue in the city, The Floating Laboratories, Performs with homemade “wind turbine” signal generators diffused through a multi-channel sound system and modular synthesizers Dinner Music: Rick Weaver; experimental Renaissance man, restless soul, runs Human Conduct Records.  Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double sided j-cards. Signed and numbered silkscreened posters (edition of 25), signed and numbered digital prints (edition of 75) and cover art by Jeremy “Ghost Ice” Kannapell. Edition of 200 on high bias tape.

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BJERGA/IVERSEN – ‘ATTEMPTING TO DISCOVER WHERE TO BEGIN’ CDr £4(World)
Beartown presents a 26 minute live track from Norwegian experimental drone duo Bjerga / Iversen (Sindre Bjerga, Jan-Morten Iversen). Recorded at the ACTE Project Space in Oslo in October 2011, Attempting to Discover Where To Begin bristles with nauseous energy; a performance stretched and distorted by depthless sonic tension. The distant rattling of hidden urban rituals echoes over an ominous, lurking symphony of undulating drone textures. A study in symbiosis, the superimposition of a superimposition upon a hologram of a copy, endless reflections of each other dance and weave sonic cloudscapes in a clear, moonless sky. Pulsing synthesisers ebb and flow, the tape-loop tide comes in, and retreats. Knocking and clattering, shuffling and rumbling announce themselves before disintegrating into silent ash, blown away by the advancing rumble-breeze.  Edition of 33 with photographic artwork, on-CD stickers and casually-selected insert.

TPIATNAW – ‘Untitled’ CDr £4(World)
A frothing, bubbling, over-flowing cauldron of distorted analogue sound waves from the damp wilds of South Cheshire, via North London. A composite recording of domestic field recordings, rotting tape collage and overlapping arpeggios. Gusts of flowing electronics ascend and descend while the doors of perception are slowly crowbarred from their hinges by melodies of gurgling low-end static. UNTITLED is a roaring, distorted hymn to the gods of radio dream-bulbs, the lost deities of microwave terminal chime-core. One for fans of relaxation, agitation and gestation – pop this on, brew the tea, and watch the kettle-steam ghosts dance and beguile to the sound of collapse. Edition of 28 with collage artwork, and on-CD ‘root vegetable’ stick.

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CHROME WINGS LADYSHAPESCHROME WINGS & LADYSHAPES split CS
john jurow & shane mcdonel of portland have been dropping em for a while now… know what i mean? these dudes are the real deal. weirdos dropping gems. cruising steady on sum acid-magic-carpet. half floaty pop, half sizzling brainwash. cruise on….. moniker for another portland tripper, john rau. translucent jeweled dreams. featuring some help from jed bindeman (heavy winged) and braden j mckenna (wyld wyzrds), blankets of plucked guitar resonance dancing among the sparkling backdrop of the ocean of yr senses…. edition of 70, full color o-cards designed by alex, custom labeled cassettes.

RASH – ‘PURPLEIMAGE’ CS
DEBUT CASSETTE FROM RASH. DESOLATE TECHNO FROM PLANET CYBERFUCK. SOAK IN THE RADIATION. 1st EDITION OF 50. FULL COLOR O-CARD SLEEVES & CUSTOM LABELS. FREE (OR DONATION) DIGITAL.

HEAT WAVE – ‘SWEETS’

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BEN VIDA – ‘esstends-esstends-esstends’
Five pieces for Computer Controlled Modular Synthesizer and Digital Signal Processing. Composed and recorded from February 2010 – April 2011 in Brooklyn, New York. ‘esstends-esstends-esstends’ is a collection of spatial compositions in which audio focal points shift between external and internal emanation sources. The intent with this work is to escape the stereo image and create an activated listening space of expanded spatialization. Using just intoned pitch combinations to produce difference tones and harmonic distortions, sound materials are created that emanate from both the playback speakers and inner ear of the listener. By engaging the listener’s sense of aural perception and sound localization in relationship to compositional structure, these pieces act to reframe the listening experience and encourage an engagement with, not only the form and aesthetic of the music, but the sonic space a recorded piece of music projects. Higher amplitude will help to reveal. Ben Vida is a composer, improviser and sound artist who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Ben led the group Town and Country and experimented with world musique concrète under the name Bird Show. In collaboration with Keith Fullerton Whitman and Greg Davis he explores cross control voltage integrated improvisation and real time automatic group composition. Ben has worked with artists Hisham Bharoocha (duo as Soft Circle), Siebren Versteeg, Doug Aitken, Nadia Hironaka and Mathew Suib. He has played in ensembles led by Tony Conrad, Rhys Chattam, and Werner Dafeldecker. As an improviser he has performed with Milo Fine, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Chad Taylor, Kevin Drumm, Yamatsuka Eye and C. Spencer Yeh among many others. He has released over twenty records on such labels as Thrill Jockey, Drag City, PAN, Amish, Bottrop-Boy, Hapna and Kranky. In 2011 Ben was Composer in Residency at Diapason Space, NYC and at EMS Studios, Stockholm and was awarded a Swedish Arts Committee Travel Grant, ISSUE Project Room Emerging Artists Commission and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona “Composing with Process” Exclusive Works Commission. As both a solo artist and in collaboration Ben has presented his work in the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea and Japan.  The LP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Kathryn Politis & Bill Kouligas.  Ben Vida video by Hisham Akira Bharoocha.

NHK – ‘Koyxeи ‘Dance Classics Vol.I’
Prolific producer Kouhei Matsunaga’s ‘Dance Classics Vol.I’ LP documents his more dance oriented material, as seen from his sets with Sensational and also his other minimal techno project NHK. Not feeling tied down to one genre, Matsunaga nestles in the PAN roster, and however that isn’t to say that he is dance per se as witnessed from his recent collaborations with Conrad Schnitzler. The album focuses more on bass/base electronics, music for the dancefloor and/or altered state reflection. Having composed pieces for WDR based on Henry Chopin, Kouhei is equally at ease jamming with Sensational, whilst simultaneously executing a obsessively numerical sequence of dance pieces that borders on Hanne Darboven-like compulsivity.   Born in Osaka, Kouhei Matsunaga is a musician and an illustrator. He started drawing during childhood under the influence of his grandfather. He grew up listening to hardcore-techno and hip hop, studied architecture and has been mainly making music since 1992. Under many different aliases (NHK, NHKyx, Internet Magic, Koyxen) he has released numerous albums on labels such as Skam Records, Wordsound, Raster Noton and his first ever album “Upside Down” on Mille Plateaux in 1998. He has also collaborated with artists like Merzbow, Jungle Brothers’ Sensational, Autechre’s Sean Booth, Mika Vainio, Conrad Schnitzler, Anti Pop Consorium’s High Priest, Rudolf Eb.er, Puppetmastaz crew, Asmus Tietchens, Ralf ‘RLW’ Wehowsky and so on. His own label Flying Swimming was founded in 2002 with the main purpose being to publish and curate events of experimental contemporary music and art. The LP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Kathryn Politis & Bill Kouligas.  NHK’Koyxen video by Takuya Dairiki.

SND/NHK split
Split 12″ between two of the artists at the forefront of the experimental dance scene, SND and NHK. Aside from sharing 3 letter names and having an upcoming Japanese tour together, the two acts also nicely compliment each other via skewed electronics which come out of mutual dance and minimal electronic sensibilities. SND offer a cut of jacking minimal loops, flows of repetition crafted at once as structured yet simultaneously unfolding before your eyes (and ears), whilst on the flipside NHK is suitably equal part bass squelch with rudimentary snare motorik via pirate radio broadcast.  SND formed in Sheffield, UK, in 1998 by Mark Fell and Mat Steel. Three critically acclaimed albums for Mille Plateaux alongside the continuing series on their own label put SND at the forefront of new digital minimalism, pioneering a sound that always influenced but also resisted the so called ‘clicks and cuts’ movement that built up around them. After their third album — Tender Love — for Mille Plateaux in 2002, SND became disillusioned with the recording treadmill and proliferation of the genre they seemed to inhabit, and turned to other projects; solo work, curating events and installations, the occasional contribution to compilations, an album for Raster Noton from side project ‘Blir’, remix work for the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, and sound design for fellow Sheffielders The Designers Republic. During this time they also honed their impressive live performance through extensive touring of Japan, America, and Europe (most notably with Autechre), and one off shows at major festivals and venues around the world. Experiencing an SND performance can be alienating, engaging, dynamic, and unforgiving; each event a unique exploration of the relationship between performer, audience, software and context. Snd continued an active year with another European tour supporting Autechre, a reworking of Billie Jean for the ‘Recovery’ box set on Fractured Records, a major feature in the Wire magazine, a tour of Japan and the recording of another album.   NHK formed in 2006 in Osaka, Japan by Kouhei Matsunaga and Toshio Munehiro. Mainly as a side project of prolific producer Kouhei Matsunaga (who is working under many different aliases such as NHK’Koyxen, NHKyx, Internet Magic, Koyxen), they started making experimental dub techno with a more raw and harsh edge to it. Kouhei has released numerous albums on labels such as Skam Records, Wordsound, Raster Noton and his first ever album “Upside Down” on Mille Plateaux in 1998. He has also collaborated with artists like Merzbow, Jungle Brothers’ Sensational, Autechre’s Sean Booth, Mika Vainio, Conrad Schnitzler, Anti Pop Consorium’s High Priest, Rudolf Eb.er, Puppetmastaz crew, Asmus Tietchens, Ralf ‘RLW’ Wehowsky and so on. His own label Flying Swimming was founded in 2002 with the main purpose being to publish and curate events of experimental contemporary music and art.   The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g white vinyl which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Kathryn Politis & Bill Kouligas.

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(pyr048): Sarah J Ritch – ‘String Theory’
sarah j ritch is a composer and improviser from chicago whose interest in classical composition arose from both her studies in piano and cello as well as explorations of the guitar and bass in punk and metal bands in las vegas between 1996 and 2003. she eventually landed in chicago and earned a bachelor of music from roosevelt university and a post-baccalaureate certificate in sound from the school of the art institute of chicago. she has been the composer-in-residence for chicago classical ensembles the millennium chamber players and anaphora, and regularly performs solo and with her free improv group sound collision alliance.  on her debut album, string theory, sarah displays her interest in both improvised noise and notated tonal music as she explores the acoustic structures of strings and sines. over the course of the album electronically treated cello gives way to droning and pizzicato violin; a pure drone at the center resolves itself with a rising and falling violin sonata; and a cello converses with itself in woodtones.

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CANNIBAL MOVIE –  ‘Avorio’ LP 17E
Originally released as a tape it comes out now as a limited edition of 300 copies LP. Cannibal Movie is a sub genre of exploitation films made mostly by Italian filmmakers through the 1970s and 1980s. This sub genre is a collection of graphically gory movies that usually depict cannibalism by primitive, Stone-age natives deep inside the Asian or South American rain forests. Cannibal Movie is also a duo from south of Italy, exponents of new rising Italian avant-garde music scene. They play drums and a old italian organ and their sound is a mix of obscure psychedelia, hypnotic tribalism and ecstatic magic tunes.

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ELFIN SADDLE – ‘Devastates’ CD/LP
Elfin Saddle deepens its compositional and conceptual agenda on Devastates, the band’s third full-length album and its most urgent, ornate and impassioned work to date. The Montreal group, led by multi-instrumentalists Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie (who also share vocal duties), has always shown a profound engagement with issues of environmental sustainability and the emotional impact of economic/political ideologies that continually foreclose on the possibility of genuine, progressive renewal and redirection. With Devastates, this is explicit in the lyrical narrative of the album as a whole and implicit in the band’s use of found and re-purposed objects to create its soundworld. The new album weds an operetta-style song cycle to an organic, junkshop aesthetic to great effect, forging a unique hybrid folk music that weaves Honda’s trilling vocals (often singing in Japanese) and McKenzie’s woodsy, unaffected baritone with threads of clattering steam-engine percussion, ukulele, accordion, glockenspiel and pump organ. The addition of Kristina Koropecki’s cello alongside long-standing third member Nathan Gage (Shapes & Sizes) on upright bass allows for a doubly melodic/rhythmic low-end.  This is profoundly un-escapist and engaged folk music that avoids the obvious trappings of folk traditions, grounding the listener in a sonic and narrative terrain that stakes out a highly original and distinctive definition of protest song. More info, including an audio stream of Devastates in its entirety, is available here.

ERIC CHENAUX  – Guitar & Voice’ CD/LP
With this fourth album for the Constellation, simply and aptly titled Guitar & Voice, Eric Chenaux – one of Canada’s most respected and long-standing experimental guitar players and songwriters – has made what in a literal sense can be called his first solo album.  The recording features only his playing and singing; no guest or supporting musicians, minimal overdubs, and a rigorous structure that alternates back and forth between longform, mostly vocal-based tunes and shorter, cacophonously harmonious bowed-guitar instrumentals.  Chenaux sees the entirety of Guitar & Voice as balladry. The album’s four tunes with singing are clearly ballads, but filtered through Chenaux’s uniquely distorted, refracted, genre-defying lens. With the exception of “Sliabh Aughty” – a beautifully fried 8-minute Hendrixian workout (were Jimi channeling Braveheart rather than “home of the brave”) – all the album’s instrumentals are miniatures of a sort. Each is a bowed guitar piece, recorded acoustically, re-amplified through Leslie speakers and re-recorded as installation pieces in the studio. Each shifts and slides along a stream of harmonic consonances and dissonances wherein melodic motifs are continually subject to slippage, and each is intended to frame and expand the sentiments (and sentimentalism) of balladry that inform the album as a whole.

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These Feathers Have Plumes – ‘Hegira’ 3”CDr
Edition of 65.  Beautiful, haunting drone works by masterful avant-garde composer Andie Brown under her alias These Feathers Have Plumes.  Former performer of underground goth-rock outfit Cindytalk, Brown has departed that world to focus on her minimalist compositions, employing numerous ideas and effects to reach her humbled zenith.  These Feathers Have Plumes utilizes her standard form of upright bass and tape, but more recently her “glass pieces” have reflected her talent and ear for new forms and meditative techniques.  Two reflective ambient works captured for reproduction, replicated for enlightenment.

Genetic Infantryman & Ryan Martin – ‘Live 12-23-2011’ 3”CDr
Edition of 35. During the winter of 2011, a collaboration set between Genetic Infantryman (Charles Hickey of Black SS) and Ryan Martin (DeTrop / York Factory Complaint) took place during the first snow on December 23, 2011 at the  Badlands Gallery in Syracuse, NY.  Both artists compiled a setting using modular electronics, voice and tape manipulated through a variety of methods and portrayed simply in a limited document of this special event.

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Sleep Fern/The Ether Staircase split C40
Never mind leaky microwaves and humming power lines, Sleep Fern gathers the waves and radiation of the everyday and blurs it all into agitated, yet beautiful, clouds of voices and static. The flip presents an unhinged summer with The Ether Staircase, collaged fidelities of glass shards and magnetic tape. ((CAVE-07)) Edition of 50 . C-40, pro-dubbed Type II Cobalt . Full color, handmade j-cards. Art by Sleep Fern

Rainbow Valley – ‘Tipoftheredgiantbranch’ C44
After great sides on Jozik and Sangoplasmo, Rainbow Valley’s latest is an expansive work of depth and power. Walls of textured sound build slowly, creating wide canyons of reverberating space. The patient and deliberate motion of these pieces has a way of stopping time and bringing the gaze inward, drowning thoughts in the blue haze of distance. ((CAVE-08)). Edition of 50 . C-44, pro-dubbed Type II Cobalt. Full-color, handmade j-cards, Art by Rob.

RAGS s/t C34
RAGS continues to ride the line between structured songwriting and sonic exploration on this second release. These pieces travel through a wide range of moods and modes, utilizing complex layering of playback, guitar and keyboards, recorded with no overdubs. The result is infectious. ((CAVE-09)) Edition of 65. Pro-dubbed C-34 Type II Cobalt. Full-color, handmade j-cards. Art by James Seevers (www.jamessevers.blogspot.com) This release includes a free download coupon.

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(Bridgetown #72) Kevin Greenspon – ‘Maroon Bells’ C20/CDr $6
In support of two comprehensive USA tours this year and on the heels of splits with Former Selves, Sky Stadium and Trudgers, Greenspon has finally offered his first official follow-up album to 2010’s Unveiling album on Monorail Trespassing and Common Objects 12″ LP. Greenspon effortlessly transforms gentle progressions of soothing guitar notes into a graceful choir of blurry tape collage. The six pieces on Maroon Bells are concise recollections of a very specific set of personal memories: those first times you had dreams of disappearing, seeing a city from the mountains, being dwarfed by the skeleton of a skyscraper, and the deafening railroad tracks that threaten the hope of sleeping to dream once again. Limited to 100 chrome cassettes dubbed in real-time with full-color, doublesided glossy cardstock inserts and 100 stamped CDrs in full-color printed jackets.

(Bridgetown #70) Chasms – ‘The Science of Consciousness’ C14 $5
Cody Kirkendall’s recent releases as Chasms showcase a very refined take on contemporary synth composition. His craftsmanship of briskly paced sci-fi miniatures are brief but highly personal doses of kosmische electronica. These documents place the inner self under a microscope, revealing a wide spectrum of fine details that flicker in and out of focus for mere seconds at a time. While much of the current crop of sci-fi synth obsesses over the infinite bounds of outer space, Kirkendall’s work serves as a reminder that there is more to us than meets the eye, and that perhaps our exploration of the cosmos should begin inside ourselves. Limited to 100 chrome cassettes dubbed in real-time with full-color, doublesided glossy cardstock inserts.

(Bridgetown #69) Aurland Gruvan – ‘mixtape #2: Emerald Ocean’ C30 $5
Based in Gothenburg and Oslo, Aurland Gruvan dismantles the core components of electronic songs in house, trance and other club-friendly genres without the use of key/beatmatching or automated DJ software. His ongoing mixtape series serves as a calculated exercise in using manual and hands on editing/mixing techniques to reassemble their beats, frequencies, vocal patterns and structures. Gruvan avoids the petty indulgence to include tracks found on pedestrian dancefloors or to experiment with free-form ideas, opting for a more refined mix with mainstream production values. Limited to 90 chrome cassettes dubbed in real-time with full-color, doublesided cardstock inserts.

(Bridgetown #68) N.M. C10 $5
Crashing onto the Los Angeles noise scene while still in his teens, Nial Morgan’s explosive live performances and sporadic output as Wrong Hole are a prime example of how to raise the bar and then proceed to destroy it multiple times… all before even graduating from high school. Morgan’s raw approach molds vintage styles into a youthful vessel, beckoning a much-needed renaissance of harsh textures and attitudes in classic form. These two side-long pieces are the real deal: menacing, energetic and unforgiving doses of contact mic punishment committed to tape. Limited to 50 chrome cassettes dubbed in real-time with full-color, doublesided cardstock inserts.

(Bridgetown #12) Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk – ‘Jam Packed Full of Awesome’ C30 $6
Hazy indie rock tunes bridged by a smooth veneer of ambient and experimental instrumentation. Recorded years ago in Kansas at the onset of Chomp Womp fever, BBDDM are now nomads roaming the country from rural California, the Midwest and East coast. This is a long overdue reissue of their first album, just in time for the Freak City All-Stars Bridgetown label showcase tour. Third edition of 60 chrome cassettes dubbed in real-time with full-color, double-sided cardstock inserts.

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