Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

"Our Love Is The Gold" is the third proper studio album from Paco Sala following "Ro-Me-Ro" & "Put Your Hands On Me". Written over 4 years it marks a return to song-writing for the duo, employing fever-dream melodies and synth drunk hooks, balanced against off-kilter production that sets them apart from their peers.

Intense, impassioned, guttural yet enigmatic - the album documents the process of leaving London and the empowerment a new life inspires. The opening & title track is a statement of intent “are you aware of my power?” repeats Garza, leaving us in no doubt that we really shouldn’t doubt her.

Tone set, what follows is gloriously idiosyncratic and deeply personal pop, presented without compromise or concession. Direct, confident, articulate - gone are the the opiated improvisations of 2017’s "The Silent Season", though the wilful sense of adventure remains throughout. "Our Love is The Gold" is a record of awakenings and self-discovery. Praise about Paco Sala:

"fragmented, distorted pop music, and its melted concoction of influences – from 80s no-wave to contemporary R&B – is transformed into an inebriated haze of synthesizer and vocals" - FACT

Echolocation is the debut album by Pamela Z, the pioneering Bay Area intermedia composer and performance artist. Written and recorded over three years, and self-released and distributed on cassette in 1988, Echolocation is genre-defying document of Z’s earliest experiments with live voice and delay, and the impetus of an artist’s three decade search for sounds yet unfelt.

Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, Z traded one snowy backdrop for another to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder at the tail end of the 70s, where she pursued a degree in music while taking local gigs covering Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds b-sides on an acoustic guitar. While a host at KGNU, Z discovered a vast world of avant-garde music in the community radio station’s library, and was inspired to create towards, and alongside, the fringe sounds she pulled from the stacks and broadcast. This revelation intersected with a new era of accessible and affordable instruments and home recording technology, and a diversifying community of artists self-releasing music on cassette and finding an audience through underground publications.

Z moved again to San Francisco in 1984, legally changed her last name, and furthered her practice of vocal processing in live environments. A city simultaneously nurturing and stratifying the free spirit of the two decades prior, Z assumed an immediate role in the Bay Area’s interdisciplinary performance art scene, and began curating Z Programs, her own concert and event series.

Vinyl re-issue of the work initially released on CD by Staalplaat in 2000. First time on vinyl, remastered, with new cover design (a 1974 drawing by Charlemagne Palestine).

This is the first release in the 'GodBear' series, a project consisting in the re-issue of existing works and production of unreleased material by Charlemagne. In partnership with the Charlemagne Palestine Foundation.

Paper Birch is a collaborative experimental noise rock duo formed by Fergus Lawrie (Urusei Yatsura) and Dee Sada (NEUMES / An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump) in May 2020. United by mutual feelings of despair, fragility and hope, they passed ideas and sounds between London and Glasgow whilst the UK was in lockdown. The resulting 9-track debut LP morninghairwater is set to be released on vinyl, CD and digital. A melting pot of genres, morninghairwater twists and turns through moments of 60’s inspired
indie-pop, fuzzed out angular shoegaze and glitchy electronic soundscapes with astonishing ease. This album draws not only on the influence of both Lawrie and Sada’s individual back catalogues but which at times echoes with everything from Heavenly to Joy Division. The album also marks the beginnings of a collaborative relationship with renowned visual artist, Thomas James who has created thrilling films for Ghostpoet, Paloma Faith and most recently, The English National Ballet. Whilst morninghairwater may be a product of the universally challenging time in which it was recorded, the duo has already started work on their second album and Paper Birch looks set to be an enduring fixture of the UK experimental scene. Press and radio coverage for Paper Birch “an intoxicating squall of noise pop” - God Is In The TV “Sada’s signature softly cooed atmospheric translucent vocals prove a congruous fit with Lawrie’s
deeper, more grunge-y despondency; sounding at times like Psycho Candy-era Jesus And Mary Chain in harmonious matrimony with Mazzy Star, or, the Pop Group hooks up with MBV” - Monolith Cocktail “mixing in disparate elements from classic 60s pop to glitchy electronica to transportative effect” – Joyzine “with a strong baseline and a sea of roaring guitar, a bit like The Pastels vs My Bloody Valentine (nothing wrong with that!)” - Is This Music “The texture is suggestive, the atmosphere hypnotic and the climate oppressive” - Sun Burns Out “A true jewel of modern and underground psychedelic pop” - Acute Pop

"The beauty of Jiha's work lies in the spaces she leaves" - The Guardian
The highly acclaimed Korean multi-instrumentalist and composer Park
Jiha, returns with a luminous third album
A deep meditation on the intersection of music and light, The Gleam further
extends Jiha's reputation for uncompromising sonic explorations. Pop Matters
called her musical art "a near flawless fusion of folk tradition and new
composition."
How often do we consider light? We revel in the soft wonder of a sunrise or the
majesty of a glorious sunset, but all through the day its quality and texture is
continually changing, second by second, in ways we rarely register. That beauty is
the inspiration for The Gleam.
"The Gleam continues Park Jiha's solo expedition into experimental Korean
neoclassical braindance. Once again, she plays all the instruments herself – piri
(an oboe), saenghwang (a multi-pipe mouth organ), yanggeum (a dulcimer) and
glockenspiel – overdubbing multiple parts to build songs that shimmer with
levels and degrees of light." - The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music Upcoming
live shows

Patricia Brito is the future of Porto Djing"

Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other.

Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’:

“I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option to notation. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”

In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space.

After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity. They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances.

It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In Slip, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

Die Cut Sleeve with download. It’s a strange betweenworld, bookended by sleep and the jolt of being wide awake in a place where you wonder how you got there. You know the feeling… It seems familiar but the colours are, well, unreal. In a high-ceilinged room, a grand piano plays lush melodies as, meanwhile, somewhere, an Alice In Wonderland clock ticks, cellos are bowed, a swarm of something vibrates and the hallucinatory crowd around Rosemary’s Baby babble. An echoey electronic hum builds and falls like a 50s refrigerator passed through and effects board, things run backwards, staccato strings are plucked… and that’s not the half of it. “I’ve never been happy staying in one particular school of musical thought. The fun has been turning things on their heads, to try something you were not supposed to do.” We’re on an immersive and adventurous travelogue with the former member of the legendary Tangerine Dream, Paul Haslinger - this is a man who knows how to build tension, hold moods, illustrate contempt, lies, passion and pleasure; He can create fear, loathing and love - he’s been unlocking the nuances of such emotions in a hugely successful career as a TV and film soundtrack composer (Halt And Catch Fire, Underworld and the Golden Globe-nominated Sleeper Cell). ‘Exit Ghost’ is his long thought out opus, a moment caught in time, flicking through reference points, taking an ethereal excursion that permeates musical genres as it becomes awash with intricate sounds and cross-pollinating rhythms. Built originally from the warmth of his grand piano ‘Exit Ghost’ resonates with purity and power, from an eerie and evocative betweenworld, that’s at once expansive and rolling, then intoxicating and suffocating in equal measures; modern composition at its most uplifting; cerebral, celebratory, intense and beautiful. “The soul searching in connection with this record was extensive. Finding places of resonance, giving a colour to your memories. It was more challenging because it’s not somebody else’s narrative. Finding the core of your own story can be the most difficult task of all.” Created over the span of eight years and filled with literal and personal references, the album itself is a testament to the search - a quest filled with hints, particles and suggestions.

Recorded at Absolute Studio & Soundfirm Melbourne, jan - june 1990.
Engineered by Steve Burgess.

Special thanks to : Steve Burgess, all at Soundfirm, Philip Brophy, Robert Goodge,all the Tunisian extras who sang & played for us between scenes during the shooting of Isabelle Eberhard & finally to Sylvie Partiot for her marvelous sound recordings & atmospheres.

"Originally released in 1990 on the legendary Australian label Extreme, The Annihilating Angel stands as one of Paul Schütze’s most visionary and cinematic works — a dark ambient masterpiece rooted in mystery, decay, and metaphysical beauty. Blending slow-burning soundscapes, processed field recordings, and abstract industrial textures, this album explores the sonic equivalent of sacred ruins and distant, imagined geographies.


Now officially reissued by Everland Music, this long out-of-print classic returns on vinyl with restored audio and updated packaging. The new brilliant remaster was handled by Miroslav Piškulić, a radio sound maestro renowned for his subtle approach to psychedelic electronic music. The result received praise from Paul Schütze himself — who called it the most faithful reproduction of his original vision to date."

The first release on Koo Editions features a documentation of Pavel Pepperstein's exhibition in the Russian pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2009. Since 2009 was the year of the centenary of the Futurist Manifesto, the thematic reference looks to the historical Avant-Garde: it is in fact a work of Russian Retrofuturism and bold beauty. The vinyl features an extended track of Ilya Dmitriev, a mixable retro electronic flow deliberately influenced by 80s disco archetype. Pepperstein's speech blows over the beat from the ultraworld and goes in an unexpected direction, far from any hedonistic exaltation, embracing a severe criticism of a future towards which he absolutely does not want to tend. The artist, of unquestionable fame and international value, takes strong positions against the western cultural narrative and art market policies which deserve to be slammed in the face of today's public, like MiG that lands in your living room.
Koo Editions comes on vinyl purposing a selected documentation from art exhibitions, interviews, intermedia collaborations. KOO EDITIONS was born with the idea of using the vinyl medium as a moving exhibition space, referring to the relationship between certain experiences of visual art with the listening one. Why the record? Because the catalogs don't speak. The record is a place: "Where" in fact, deputy to the sound testimony of something that has already happened, can be preserved to be able to enjoy it from a distance (of time and/or space). The intent of KOO EDITIONS is not to launch a precise style or a defined aesthetic, but to put the accent on the voice of peculiar and seminal attitudes linked to the world of visual art. The record introduces an inversion of focus, compared to what usually happens in artistic events where the eye and not the ear is the master. This is not a matter of sound art, vinyl art, net art or anything else: the medium is NOT the message, but conveys it. The target audience is both that of the lovers and regulars of artistic events. One of researchers of particular records, which can also be DJs looking for adventures. The former will be able to purchase an artist's reference at the affordable price of a vinyl edition without having to come across the typical costs that an art collector usually faces, while the latter similarly to what has always happened for film soundtracks, will be able to approach a cultural sector usually distant from them by listening. The editions will be published in limited and numbered series, as are the art multiples, to underline their cultural significance and their collectible aspect. They are treated with the care that non-homologated historical content deserves. They will also be accompanied by unpublished material such as interviews and critical texts that will be published train on train on the site kooeditions.art, under construction. KOO EDITIONS is an independent documentary project by Giovanni De Donà, and is the result of experiences, risks, interests and personal research.

20th Anniversary edition pressed on Californian Sunburst vinyl with
newly designed artwork and bonus 7” featuring ‘Brown Eyes’ and the
previously unreleased ‘The Earth From Above’.
 ‘California’ was released in 2002 to massive critical acclaim and reached
a much wider audience across Europe. Features the hit singles ‘This
Life’ and ‘Ordinary Day’.
 The album features Glenn Garrett on bass, Neil Conti (David Bowie /
Prefab Sprout) on drums and Dickon Hinchcliffe (Tindersticks ) and Rick
Carter (The Sisters of Mercy) on keyboards.
 ‘California’ was mostly co-written with Italian composer Marco Sabiu,
who collaborated with and was mentored by the late, great Ennio
Morricone.
 Perry Blake, Sligo-born singer / songwriter, is one of music’s great
untapped resources. After his first three singles - taken from his debut
album - received Single Of The Week on Jo Wiley BBC Radio 1, Blake
moved to France, where he was met with critical acclaim with his next
four albums, touring Europe with Carla Bruni and writing two songs for
Francoise Hardy’s Platinum-selling album ‘Tant de belles choses’,
appearing on various TV shows in France as her special guest.
 You may very well wonder what to expect of an album with American
West Coast orientations from an Irishman who happens to be critically
acclaimed on the Continent but is largely ignored in Britain. Thankfully,
Blake lives up to his billing with apparent ease. His song writing is
evidently mature and melodic; he incorporates lush orchestral
arrangements with tender vocals; and combines pop-like hooks with a
deep sonic texture.
 ‘California’ is a thriving and absorbing collection of songs in which
orchestral arrangements strain with emotion, melodies thrive and bloom,
like The Verve at their peak, though far more fragile and balmy.
 ‘California’ is ether for the soul - a truly magnificent and touching
collection of frankly beautiful songs, which is up there with class of Bryan
Ferry, The Blue Nile and anyone else who can turn a night around.
 Blake’s glimpses of people living a state of mind is one of those great
escapes it’s very hard to get away from. His gift here is to take a
subdued, grown-up collection of songs but make them sound like they
deserve daytime radio.
 Radio - Radio 2 Jo Whiley session.

The new album from Cambridge's pop-surrealist Pete Um, a world unto
himself, but also a standard-bearer for the kind of heroic DIY
befuddlement and unfinching self-analysis that Deep Freeze Mice, Mick
Hobbs, Robert Storey and the Homosexuals minted
Pete Um is a lyrical troubadour and lo-f electronic maverick. Um has supported
Thom Yorke, received critical acclaim from The Wire and released more music
than most artists have written.Um's sprawling catalogue is a beast that can't be
tamed or reasoned with, but it's endlessly rewarding: time and time again he nails
that going-mad-in-the-potting-shed-ness that is the historic, and perhaps eternal,
English condition. Even at its most demented and disorderly your man sounds
like he's wrenching everything he possibly can out of his primitive keyboard-andmic set-up.
While the infuence of 80s UK squat-whimsy looms large, we're reminded too of
the synth-fuelled early-noughts of the The Soft Pink Truth and Safety Scissors,
and, more than anything or one, R. Stevie Moore – unexpectedly powerful and
unforgettable songs emerging unexpectedly out of awkward, enervating loops
and the more obviously pranky vignettes.
"It takes a while to enter Pete Um's world: his songs are brief, dense and
ramshackle; he revels in a reviewer's dismissal of his live act as "grindingly
awkward shithop", and wears his self-doubt on his sleeve - Can't Get Started is an
ironic title, for Um is prolifc across videos, blogs and music. A Remarkable,
coherent document, an excellent introduction to Um's misft creativity." The Wire

“One of the most compelling and complex releases of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s post-Black Ark canon, Mercy is the fruit of a long and complex working process that has yielded exceptional results. Spearheaded by the maverick artist and musical outlier Peter Harris with Fritz Catlin, the drumming co-founder of industrial funk dub act, 23 Skidoo, Mercy’s experimental sonic occupies its own space.” David Katz (People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee “Scratch” Perry).

Dash the Henge are excited to announce the vinyl release of Mercy an innovative record featuring the legendary Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and the work of Peter Harris and Fritz Catlin. It will be preceded by vibrant visual representations of key tracks ‘Reggae Poison’, ’Row Fisherman/Whale Song’ and ‘This is Hell’ created by Peter Harris and Llyr Williams. “I always saw Lee as a performance artist rather than a musician in the traditional sense, so this conceptual backing feels like a more accurate setting for his stream of conscious performance art,” Peter Harris explained. “There is an attention to Lee’s history here too, something that elevates the musical collage with the echoes informed by albums like Super Ape where earlier tracks were recorded over again. In ‘Big Fish,’ the lyrics pay homage to Bob Marley’s ‘Small Axe’ and the tune references Perry’s version of ‘Sugar Sugar,’ which he recorded with the Silvertones. Although the structure might seem chaotic, the songs were crafted over a long period of time and the approach was the same as making a painting, where foundations are worked on then painted over and over until it is full wrested.” Nathan Saoudi (founder Dash The Henge/Fat White Family) boils it down. “It’s kind of quintessential outsider music - I can’t explain what they are doing, but they have a why, and that’s enough. That’s why I needed to get involved.”

Oliver Barrett returns with his first Petrels album in three years - The Dusk Loom. Having put out a steady album-a-year since 2011, culminating in 2016’s Jörð, Barrett decided to take a step back from the project for a while, not wanting to releasing albums out of habit and wanting to be sure that there was something new to say.

The result is at once the most expansive but also personal Petrels release to date. Three years in the making, The Dusk Loom builds on the eclectic sonic palette of Barrett’s back catalogue but brings these sounds into sharper focus than ever before. Those hoping for the all-enveloping dynamics and textures of past Petrels releases will not be disappointed, but over the ten parts of The Dusk Loom, Barrett puts this trademark euphoric aural scree to work in new and unexpected ways.

Drawing on myriad influences as fans of Barrett’s have come to expect, the resulting themes of the album are perhaps woven more intricately than before. In The Dusk Loom, Barrett takes an evocative approach to storytelling that asks the listener to draw their own meanings from the clues and references running through the sounds and words. Finding inspiration in mythology - both ancient and new, the work and writing of Remedios Varo and William Blake, memory, death and cosmology to name just a few, Barrett pulls these seemingly disparate strands together into something that is unmistakably Petrels but which also points the way to something new.

“Petrels sidesteps the chilliness found in much of the music of his peers, replacing it instead with an almost spiritual ecstasy, his ravishing synths and almost choral vocal treatments calling out in cosmic, wide eyed wonder at the universe.” (Paul Margree, Louder Than War)

Margaret Chardiet was born and raised in New York City. As a founding mem- ber of the Red Light District collective in Far Rockaway, NY she has been a fig- urehead in the underground experimental scene since the age of seventeen. She describes her drive to make noise music as something akin to an exorcism where she is able to express, her “deep-seated need/drive/urge/possession to reach other people and make them FEEL something specifically in uncomfortable/confron- tational ways.” Engineered by Sean Ragon of Cult of Youth, Abandon is Pharmakon’s first proper studio album and also her first widely distributed release.

The songs on this album were all written and recorded during a turbulent three month time period during which several fundamental life changes forced her to begin living in a completely new way and in a new space. She describes the lyrical themes of this album as being about “Loss. Losing everything. Relinquishing control. Complete psychic abandon. Blind leaps of faith into the fire, walking out unscathed. Crawling out of the pit.”

Sacred Bones is now repressing this legendary debut on colour vinyl for the very first time in celebration of the label’s 15th year anniversary.

The renowned avant-garde artist Phew has
returned to Mute for her forthcoming album, ‘New
Decade’.
Working with voice and electronics, ‘New
Decade’’s six new tracks define her as a master of
her craft.
Described by pitchfork as “a Japanese
underground legend,” Phew was a founding
member of Osaka punk band Aunt Sally, who
broke up in 1980.
Since then, she has worked solo and collaborated
with musical luminaries including as Ryuichi
Sakamoto, Jim O’Rourke, Ana da Silva (The
Raincoats), Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms) and
Holger Czukay (Can).
Phew’s 1992 album for Mute, ‘Our Likeness’,
featured Alexander Hacke (Hackedepicciotto,
Einstruzende Neubauten), Jaki Liebezeit (Can)
and Chrislo Haas (Crime & the City Solution, DAF,
Liaisons Dangereuses).
CD in card pack with 12-page booklet.
'Total Clear’ vinyl format includes digital download
code. (Once this format has sold out, a black vinyl
format - STUMM496 - will be made available)

"Undoubtedly this album is one of the important discs of Japanese new wave and German krautrock history. ""Phew"" is Japanese female vocalist who is well known as a member of legendary punk band ""Aunt Sally"". She has been active in a wide range of projects and collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Seiichi Yamamoto, DAF, and Neubauten etc.
This was originally released in 1981 as her solo debut album, made in legendary Conny's Studio with Conny Plank, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from CAN. Not only highly demanded by vinyl collectors worldwide, but also this album is outstanding in the dimension of the music. By Plank's engineering, their never fading sound-making is still innovative and no one can stand next. Now we present it as reissued LP with OBI, you can listen to the monumental work of her career in vinyl after more than 30 years since the last time it was reissued for the first time."

Some of the earliest works by American composer Phill Niblock, including three never before released pieces: "Index" (1969), "Tenor," and "Boston III" (both from 1972). Until now, it's been impossible to encounter Niblock's compositions from earlier than the 1960s, a reality thankfully rectified by the long overdue publication of this Boston/Tenor/Index LP on Alga Marghen.

"Tenor" (1972) represents the first evolution of Niblock's musical thought towards the aesthetics of microtones, overtones, and drones which the composer would develop in following decades. The piece was recorded by the photographer Martin Bough on tenor saxophone and gradually dubbed back and forth by the composer in his New York studio. "Boston III" (1972) was recorded at the Intermedia Sound studio in Boston with Rhys Chatham (flute, voice), Martin Bough (tenor saxophone), and Gregory Reeve (viola, voice); the composer himself also contributed with his voice. The LP also includes "Index" (1969), an improvised sound performance by the composer himself. Guitar (both its body and strings), fingers and fingering fuse in a vehement action around which barely listenable sounds and resonances vibrate. Considering the extended pulsation as an organic blend of impulse, rhythm, drive, strength, vitality and passion, the end of this sole solo in Niblock's complete oeuvre is not defined by the fixed duration of the piece but as the consequence of the tiredness of the performer. The music changes according to the loudness of playback. The interaction of the upper harmonics changes especially, with much richer overtone patterns being produced at louder levels.

By now counting more than four decades of constant activity, Pierre Bastien erected such a towering and influential body of work that any blurb attempt regarding his music could easily fall into redundancy. Not that his revolving soundworld, deeply personal and unique, has ever stalled into gimmick or self mimicry, being Bastien the tireless explorer whose vision can never be complete, only continuously redefined in a process of discovery equally playful and challenging. So, completely in touch with Discrepant's ethos. 

Returning to the label after 2017 The Mecanocentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien, the french musician, composer and instrument builder, brings an array of instruments from different cartographies and legacies with the appropriately titled Sonic Folkways. Resorting to different types of horns, prepared trumpet, an army of percussion, from gongs and tambourine to castanets and maracas, violin and too many others to mention here, Bastien weaves together a highly textured and hypnotic mosaic that projects an exotica beamed from scraps of the future. 'Aha!' in the same interstellar wavelength as Sun Ra's cosmic tones, 'Moor's Room’ almost orchestral tapestry of small percussion and insects or the non-western strings and tunings salvaged from ancient alien ceremonies on 'Pan's Nap'. 

In an era where so much ink has been shed about world building in experimental music, Bastien can actually claim that to himself. The otherworld is right here, indeed.

An expedition in sound in 10 sequences: Enfoncement Deep Sink, Gouffre circulaire [Circular Abyss], Noyau secret [Secret Core], Apesanteur [Weightlessness], Entrailles [Entrails], Four solaire [Solar Furnace], Fissures [Cracks], Mer intérieure [Inner Sea], Éruption [Eruption], Remontée [Ascension]. "Labyrinthe !" is not only a very unique piece in Pierre Henry's masterful repertoire, but also a remarkable demonstration of his compositional skills and musical singularity. Indeed, for this piece, Pierre Henry was deprived of his own, otherwise essential, sonic material. Here, the sounds, provided by GRM collaborators at the time, carry their own distinct stories, sensitivities and qualities. Yet, despite this discrepancy, Pierre Henry's voice, the breath and dynamics of his own music, quickly appear. Through this sonic maze, a music arises, utterly focused on sounds, their development and their use, which Pierre Henry applies with extraordinary clarity and determination.

Now who would have thought? Pile are back with an experimental improv record that is pure bliss. Painting immense landscapes and mixing viola, cello an tape loops to create a beautiful ambient voyage through noise, emotional electronics, pulsating drones and kosmische atmospheres. Dive in.

The prolific On The Corner Records are proud to present "Trans-Neptunia", the mind bending debut LP from Planet Battagon, exploring new dimensions in left-field experimentation, cosmic sampling and ancient drum machines.

**REPRESS ALERT - EARTHTONES EDITION* Polypores (AKA Stephen James Buckley) new work, “Flora" was written and recorded in the long, hot summer of 2018. Says Stephen “I didn't intend to write a record with a specific theme or sound, but, as is often the case, something eventually presented itself once I started playing around with my machines. I spent a lot of time walking in the woods and exploring some of the beautiful countryside around the North West of the UK. Whilst doing this I got a collection of field recordings, which ended up forming the compost from which the album grew. I'd have the recording playing in the background whilst writing, or running through loop pedals. I found that if I blended the field recordings in with my initial synth pieces, it added a whole new texture and depth to what was already there.

"It created a place in which the music lived. And that place was most definitely a forest. As I got deeper into the writing process a vague narrative formed. Entering a strange forest, where everything was unnaturally huge. Towering flowers and fungus. Both frightening and overwhelmingly beautiful. Then, emerging at the end through the canopy of trees into bright daylight. The last track, Sky Man, represents this I think. Like I say, it's a very loose narrative. I don't even feel like I wrote it myself - more that I channelled it from that strange ether out of which music comes.”

“Flora" is an astounding record. Electronic Sound Magazine reviewed the LP in issue 54, declaring that “Flora” '…is just as good as you would expect from this superb analogue synthesist. From the eerie grittiness of the title track to the bleepy, sombre wobbles of “Golden Mould”, “Flora” has a touch of science fiction enveloping it for a record "about flowers”. “Giants" could soundtrack the exploration of a distant, long abandoned alien planet, all ambient whines and echoing, stargazing synthesis…There’s a lot to enjoy here.'

• British synthesist, Stephen James Buckley returns to Castle in Space for the release of a brand new Polypores record.
• Azure is a beautiful new age symphony of blissed out water music.
• It’s his first full length LP since the release of last year’s “Flora”, which is also reissued in a stunning new two coloured ”earthtones” edition.
• Flora was included in several end of year best of charts last year including Electronic Sound and Norman Records best of 2019.

Stephen explains the genesis of Azure:

“As with a lot of my music at the moment, the original inspiration from Azure started out with the music itself, rather than an initial concept. That is, it came through playing. I noticed that a lot of what I was writing seemed to lend itself to water imagery. It was flowing, fluid, bubbling. The album was written late 2019, when it seemed to be perpetually raining, so that might have been a factor.
I was also listening to a lot of new-age music at the time. Whilst I didn’t purposely set out to do a "new-age" album as such, I think a lot of that crept in there - but with it's own Polypores-esque twist. Rather than working in a specific genre, I much prefer to take elements and signifiers from a genre, and warp them into my own vision.
Once I'd decided to go down this route the writing became more focussed, and I was also able to immerse myself in various books, films, and documentaries related to the ocean, particularly the mythology and lore surrounding it. I imagined this to be the music that the sunken stone heads from Easter Island would have on their record players. A relaxation tape for dolphins.
The album was created with a modular synthesizer, which was still fairly new to me at the time. As with most of my music, it was a fairly quick process, as I tend to record live rather than overdubbing/multi-tracking. I find this way of writing more immediate, it gives me a more direct link to my creativity, without too much thought or analysis getting in the way. I used a lot of New-Age type sounds, and one of the tracks uses a Gamelan scale. I made heavy use of granular synthesis on the human voice, to create the choir sounds.
I think I did subconsciously want to create something similar to Flora. Not sonically (as it's a very different sound palette) but more the idea of it being an exaggerated, almost fantastical response to an environment. So whilst Flora takes place in the forest, Azure takes place in the ocean, but both focus on the fantasy elements, as opposed to the mundane or harsh reality. I wasn't going to do an album about overfishing or something. It's a form of escapism I suppose.
Some interesting facts about the album are:
- One of the tracks has a short sample from the soundtrack to a well known 1990s point-and-click adventure game, set deep in the Caribbean,
- I was listening to Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Iron Maiden a lot around the time of writing.”
Castles in Space presents ”Azure” in a deluxe azure blue vinyl pressing in a full gloss varnished sleeve and foldback tabs. The LP includes a beautiful art print designed by the sleeve designer, Nick Taylor. French comic book legend Moebius was an inspiration for Nick along with taking direction from the luxurious flow of the music.

BMG is releasing Popol Vuh’s vinyl deluxe box set “Vol. 2 – Acoustic & Ambient Spheres” on November 26th. This edition includes the albums "Seligpreisung", "Coeur de Verre", "Agape-Agape" and "Cobra Verde", four important acoustic and ambient works by the band from the 1970s and 1980s. "Cobra Verde" and "Coeur de Verre" are the original soundtracks to the Werner Herzog cult films.
All albums have been remastered and will be released as audiophile 180g pressings with adapted original artwork, including a bonus track for each album.
The box set comes with an insert with extensive liner notes and photos, complete with three picture prints, a collector's film still poster from "Coeur de Verre" and the original movie poster from "Cobra Verde" (both in A3 format).
Each album will also be available as a CD with an extensive booklet. Following the highly acclaimed release of Popol Vuh's The Essential Album Collection - Vol. 1 in 2019, Vol. 2 - Acoustic & Ambient Spheres marks a magnificent continuation of this series of works.

✰ flash across the intervals ✰ is the first new Powell LP since 2016’s Sport on XL Recordings, and the first music available physically since his 2018 collaboration with Turner-Prize winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans. Oscar Powell wanted it known that this is not intended as a definitive album, the realisation/release of some bold new statement, a singular mark of identity or triumphant elucidation of years of valiant work. Rather, it is simply 35 minutes of music segmented from an overall flow of stuff, a variable torrent of hyper-synthetic composition brought about by entirely other things — circumstances that relate in no way to a previous life led within an occasionally toxic bubble of taste, music, entertainment and ‘community’. As René Char once wrote, ‘No bird has the heart to sing in a thicket of questions’, and so it is that we can become bereft of courage, stripped of any enduring connection to our work, dissociated from many of the fragile and reactionary structures that previously held us up. When the illusion of reality dissolves around you, how can you not think as Leibniz once did: ‘We thought we had arrived at port, but found ourselves thrown back out on the open sea.’ It is easy to be moulded by a contemporary space that leaves you with no possibility of creating anything at all; in a kind of zero state of expression that inevitably forces you to look elsewhere ➜ to pursue a Deleuzian line of escape out towards a horizon line that never draws closer. Here, at least, out on the waves, new cartographies can be traced and new connections formed. This ‘album’ thus functions as a message in a bottle: cast from unknown coordinates, it maps some of these connections, not least in its close relationship with the visual work of Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs [see afolder.studio]. Their imagery inflates this sleeve; the music inflates their films [see links]. What emerges from the fog is a luminous three-headed constellation of melodic lines in non-sensical interplay with one another. Here on record, spinning at a speed of your choosing and with eyes closed and no imagery to hand, the feeling persists of a deep decentring, music discontinuously carbonated by a different geography of relations, the depths of which this music begins to explore.

'Endlessly strange and formlessly mesmerising' - The Quietus. 'on the feet of a wind' is a wild assemblage of carbonated synthetic music from Powell and a sister record to 'flash across the intervals' and 'multiply the sides' - two albums already released in 2020. Recalling Xenakis, Parmegiani and Hecker but with the smile/smirk of vintage Powell, the record is released via a folder, a new music and film platform created by Powell, Michael Amstad and Marte Eknæs that bundles up music, film, image, text and other forms of madness into folders that are shared/expanded online.The release is accompanied by a 'Hi-sensitive' film directed by Amstad and Eknæs entitled 'flares, currents'. The film contains a recombined live version of 'rise, world unfold', the musical series that concludes this album. a folder is a collection of disorienting works of experimental film, ambiguous texts, and other assorted media set to the most brazenly strange and formlessly mesmerising musical structures of Powell's career. It's also a work of artistic assemblage, without fixed notions of time. Tarkovsky once described his filmmaking as "sculpting in time," and a folder exists in a similar kind of "zone;" it is a project continuously added to, subtracted from, abstracted, and injected into the glut of cyberspace like a slow moving pathogen that refuses to be defined or categorised. Shunning titles in favour of oblique category markers, films like a34 present a mosaic of images of biological forms and sublime landscapes set to super-synthetic, carbonated compositions. All of this signals an artist liberated from the confines of the narrow branding signifiers an electronic musician can find themselves in. While it is aware of its place in cyberspace, this project also connects to something primordial and awesome. "Xenakis talked about creating universes with sound," says Powell, "and we are all free to create our own worlds in life, art - whatever. This is what happened to me in a way: I have been in this world for three years or something, and I don't really want to leave. The folder is a refuge.'

Prana Crafter is William Sol, a musical mystic who blends the raw energies of nature with guitars, synthesizers, singing bowls, and a dose of flow-consciousness. The resulting sonic nectar flows out from the amplifier, cascading in the mind of the listener, splashing mantras against the listener’s third ear. Some music is meant to entertain, to be consumed like flashing patterns on a TV screen. Not so with the music of Prana Crafter. This music is a sonic-tapestry of energies that are meant to envelop the listener and deliver a message that, as Sol puts it, cannot be known through symbol or through sign.
Likened to artists across the psychedelic and folk spectrums—Popul Vuh, Agitation Free, Six Organs/Ben Chasny, —Sol’s self-professed mentors-in-spirit Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix, and Manuel Göttsching are present as well in familiar and surprising ways. In review it has been said that Prana Crafter’s music is “an example of psych-folk at its finest” (Raven Sings the Blues), “like a long lost pressing from the early 70s, it’s a mist shrouded mysterious meditation” (Shindig Magazine), and even that, “few other musicians are making music as ambitious and genuine as Prana Crafter” (The Active Listener).
Will has said he thinks of himself as a conduit when recording and with ‘MorphoMystic’ Prana Crafter are creating truly Cosmic Music, a synthesized mediation – think if you will of Terry Reilly and Sandy Bull blending their hypnotic energy flow together. ‘MorphoMystic’ is a 35 minute kosmische inspired acid opus that lets your mind venture in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream before gently flaoting you back down to earth.
Presented in a lush Gloss Laminated Outer Sleeve with exquisite artwork design by John Nicol.

Prangers’ sound is unprisable, perhaps impossible to uproot from the landscape that spawns it.

On Gomp, the Rochdale trio forge and graft a kind of sonic semblance of wire, flesh and bracken - a misshapen organism that scuttles across the damp amber of the pennines. Collected from their environment, collages of local field recordings and tape-jammed voices hang over the trio's mill-gamelan of scrap percussion, with the whole thing force-fed back on itself through a neat duality of blunt electronics and sharp sample processing.

Although the form of its language feels human, the rhythm and definition is stretched to a point of almost attractive grotesque: de-elasticated and drubbed into a curiously unrecognisable state by the busted motor speeds and over-voltaged electrics that power it.

Through the electric static of Prangers' transmit, the outline of an awesomely unsettling shape comes into focus.

First proper album for the duo of Giovanni Donadini and Matteo Castro. After a couple of tapes and a split with Exoteric Continent the italian duo have finally find their shape, removing all the instrumentation and focusing only on the possibility of the 4 tracks recorder. Body Text offer 2 long tracks made only by tape loops, playing with speeds and pauses the duo play a mix of mechanism and Field recordings, tails of beats and degraded tempos creates minimal and sinister compositions.

ATO Records and Prawn Songs are excited to
bring you a 10th Anniversary pressing of Primusʼ
2011 album ‘Green Naugahyde’.
 This new 2021 pressing comes in a deluxe
gatefold jacket (spot gloss and emboss) with newly
expanded artwork and includes two LPs on ghostly
green coloured vinyl plus digital download code.
 ‘Green Naugahyde’ was produced and engineered
by Les Claypool in his personal studio, Rancho
Relaxo in Northern California, and features
Claypool, long-time guitarist Larry LaLonde and
drummer Jay Lane.

Tape

Having recently retired from his most prolific moniker Gonzo, Gonçalo F Cardoso keeps busy and plowing ahead into an ominous 2020 with the second tape from his new concept: Prophetas.

Inspired by visionary/paranoid cult figures, modern/new idiosyncratic figures as symbols of hope/despair for the uncertain times of the new decade.

Where the first tape compilation (Reveal, Accept, Remember, Forget) revived mid 50’s ideas (UFO sightings, suburbia,
space race) this new work reshuffles the now established paranoia to new heights by positioning itself in early 90’s disillusionment: mall culture, X-Files, rampant consumerism and late night cable TV.

The new past/present memories finally laying the groundwork for the ubiquitous fake prophets of the 21st century: silicon valley types, Apple, Google, Facebook - the new cults - all filtered through an overused 90's fragmented lens.

‘History is the price we pay for progress. If the future should ever come to stay again, it will only be to haunt us’ Ken Hollings in Welcome to Mars

Having recently retired from his most prolific monicker Gonzo aka Gonçalo F Cardoso keeps busy and plowing ahead into an ominous 2020 with a new monicker/concept: Prophetas.

Inspired by visionary/paranoid cult figures, gurus with delusions of grandeur, lonely and indiosyncratic figures as symbols of hope/despair for the uncertain times of the new decade. Starting with ideas develloped in the mid 50’s: UFO paranoia, suburbia, lemuria, space race and going all the way to 80’s excess, mall culture, collective consumerism, future memories finalizing laying the ground work for the new fake prophets of the 21st century, in the guise of silicon valley type bosses, Apple, Facebook - the new cults - all filtered through an overused 80's broken lens. Living and repeating the exact same age of dystopia paranoia as ever, Reveal, Accept, Remember - and Forget.

GREY & BLACK SWIRL VINYL
Public Memory is a blend of damaged and dubbed out percussion, unfurling synths and sparse sampling all strung together by producer Robert Toher's spectral tenor. The project's sophomore LP, Demolition follows 2017's Veil of Counsel EP and 2016's Wuthering Drum LP with cinematic fortitude.While Public Memory's prominent krautrock and triphop rhythms are represented here, Demolition explores a greater range of tempos and an expanse of alien emotions with layers of electronic drums, live drums, Korg synths and samples from nature. Themes of rebirth and reflection imbue the album's atmosphere, rich in tape delay, spring reverb, and textures that conjure a sci fi and supernatural narrative.Toher's adept use of space and tension articulates the world of Demolition as eerie, emotive, and above all, narcotic.Each track is an existential procession. "Turning out the lights on your illusion," Toher sings to close the album, accepting that change is an inescapable condition of being.

ORANGE SWIRL VINYL

Public Memory is the solo project of Brooklyn's Robert Toher, recorded over the course of a year as he lived in Los Angeles temporarily. Previously of the group ERAAS, Robert places a greater emphasis on electronics in this new project. Rhythm is at the forefront, with the tone informed by stripped down, narcotic impressions of krautrock, hypnotic percussion, and subtly layered atmospherics. Spectral vocals meld with delicate piano against hip hop beats and a dub sensibility, conjuring clouded lights, foggy glass in empty buildings, urban wraiths.To call it minimal would, on the surface, seem appropriate. Wuthering Drum does not need an abundance of flashes and frills to illustrate its point, nor does it need smoke and mirrors to mask a lack of vision. However, repeated listens yield layers of tonal variations, textural nuance, and tastefully placed overdubs. There is a slightly religious or spiritual element at Wuthering Drum's core; a sense of being in an existential crisis, while simultaneously being uplifted, in the face of change. This is the search for redemption in a far away place, away from comfort; it is adjustment to an inner dissonance, rather than the washing over of past fears and regrets with sterile holy waters.