Cerca:merzbow

On their first official collaboration, Japanese noise pioneer Masami Akita aka Merzbow and Australian sound sculptor Lawrence English present a harrowing, surrealist portrait of nocturnal industrial activity, spawned by field recordings made in a sprawling factory complex seven hours north of English's home in Brisbane. He characterizes the area as "uneasy and unsettling," awash in the sickly glow of smelters and refinement machinery, somehow not of this world - a liminal quality vividly captured in Andrei Tarkovsky's sprawling purgatorial opus, Stalker, to which the title alludes. Akita, too, described early drafts of Eternal Stalker as feeling "like the soundtrack to a dystopian science fiction opera." A mood of mechanical dread and ruined futures permeates each of the album's seven potent compositions. Opener "The Long Dream" sets the stage with steady rain on sheet metal, punctured by thunder and metallic echoes, reverberating to the rafters in a collapsing warehouse. Quickly the tempest rises. "A Gate Of Light" and "Magnetic Traps" both convulse in churning furies of electric demolition and rattling chains, roaring and relentless. "The Visit" and "Black Thicket" operate more at a distance, surveying the topography of steam, rust, and liquid metal from above, their flickers of violence swallowed by blankets of darkness. This is noise at its most elemental and unknowable: brooding, bristling, and opaque, stalking forbidden peripheries of chaos and creation. Discussing Akita's music, English refers to its "intense substrata that is purely psychedelic; it consumes and confounds." The seasick swells of friction and fracture subsume the listener, forcing an auditory surrender: "this saturation of the senses can be a euphoria." Proof comes halfway through "The Golden Sphere," when the howling mayhem subtly recedes, revealing an eerie siren drone hovering in the void, like the resonance of a dead star galaxies away. Slowly a seething, venomous wall of volume returns, shredding the signal until its frequencies fray, whipping away into the eye of the storm. The combined effect merges obliteration and liberation, rapture and ravagement; it's the sound of dissolution as resolution, uprooted and unmoored, finally freed from form.

First collaboration ever between Japanese noise legend Merzbow and visionary/provocateur Kaoru Sato of R.N.A. Organism (Vanity Records) and EP-4 (WRWTFWW).

Side A: live recording of Merzbow and Kaoru Sato's first live collaboration ever. Recorded October 21st 2018 at Metro Club in Kyoto for a three-label showcase with avant-garde imprints Slowdown, Phonon and Kyoh Records.

Side B: Solo sessions by each artist that took place after the joint performance on the same night. Edited and mixed in their respective studios.

Der unbestrittene König der japanischen Noise-Electronica Masami Akita aka MERZBOW kehrt zurück, denn sein bahnbrechendes Album "Venereology" feiert 25 Jahre Tinnitus-induzierende Jahre mit seiner ersten Vinylpressung! Das Meisterwerk wurde von James Plotkin (ISIS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, FULL OF HELL u.a.) remastered und es bietet auch ein überarbeitetes Artwork an. "Venereology" bleibt eines der härtesten und extremsten Aufnahmen in der elektronischen Industrial-Noise-Szene und die 2LP beinahaltet auch mehr als 20 Minuten von bisher unveröffentlichtem Bonusmaterial!

Among the true Keiji Haino devotees, Nijiumu’s Era of Sad Wings (released on P.S.F. in 1993) has always held a special place in the pantheon. Operating for only a few years in the early 90s and apparently only performing a handful of shows, Nijiumu operated at the opposite end of the dynamic spectrum to Haino’s famed power trio Fushitsusha, dwelling in a hushed, meditative realm of mysterious droning sonorities and free-floating melodies that occasionally erupts into violence. Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new double-LP edition of a lesser-known 1994 Nijiumu recording, When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade “prayers”, then, turning to face the outside, together we explode. Here, Nijiumu is the trio of Haino, Tetuzi Akiyama and the obscure Takashi Matsuoka, the three performing on a wide variety of string, wind and percussion instruments, as well as electric guitar and bass, and Haino’s unmistakeable voice.

Like on the early solo Haino album that shares the group’s name (released on P.S.F. in 1993), the instrumentation swims in reverb (the use of which Akiyama recalls as ‘a kind of point of the band’), often obscuring the instrumental sources. On the short opening piece, a distant reed instrument arcs long buzzing melodies over a bed of cymbals and gongs, like a psychedelic take on Tibetan music. The epic second part, occupying almost 50 minutes, begins as a splayed, near-formless cloud of electric guitar and bass, shadowed by bowed and plucked strings, the three elements working through twisting atonal shapes. At various points in the recording, we hear what seems to be the sounds of musicians moving between instruments, their shuffling and bumps fitting seamlessly into this radically open music. Eventually, what sounds like electric guitar moves closer to the foreground, fixing on a repeated melodic cell around which hover mysterious clouds of long tones and a sporadic shaker. At the half-hour mark, the music begins to build to a violently emotive climax, Haino’s impassioned vocal cries punctuating a lumbering, bass-heavy murk, contrasted at points by what sounds like a tin whistle. Suddenly, the volume drops to a near-whisper, opening the way for the stunning final moments, which touch on the slow-motion balladry of Haino’s classic Affection, here given an eccentric twist by an occasional woodblock hit. The third piece opens with a hazy trio of rumbling bass, bowed strings and abstracted slide guitar, the latter calling to mind some of Akiyama’s later solo work. Eventually joined by Haino’s voice, its fragile, haunted tone might remind the listener of the man in black’s documented love of the madrigals of the murderous Count Gesualdo, before the recording abruptly breaks off mid-note. In this new edition, the Nijiumu trio recording is supplemented by a piece recorded solo by Haino in 1973, a bracing electronic blowout stretching almost half an hour. Using a homemade electronics setup to unleash a barrage of crunching distortion and shuddering harmonic fuzz, it takes its place in the canon of extreme live electronics next to Robert Ashley’s Wolfman and Walter Marchetti’s Osmanthus fragrans, looking forward to extreme noise years before Merzbow. Taken as a whole, these four sides of music are a stunning document of some of the lesser-known waystations of Haino’s singular creative path.

Limited 2025 Repress
Black Truffle is pleased to announce the release of Ichida, the first release from the duo of two important yet often underappreciated musicians, Eiko Ishibashi and Darin Gray. Ishibashi is a singer-songwriter, keyboardist, drummer, and multi-instrumentalist, known in Japan both for her own elaborately conceptual solo albums and for her frequent collaborations with figures such as Jim O'Rourke, Merzbow, and Phew. Darin Gray is a bassist and multi-instrumentalist known for a multitude of collaborations (with O'Rourke and Loren Connors, among many others), for On Fillmore, his cinematic post-exotica project with Glenn Kotche, and as one half of Chikamorachi with Chris Corsano, one of the finest free-jazz rhythm sections around. Presenting the entirely of a live set performed at Tokyo's Super Deluxe in March 2013, the set begins as a duet for Ishibashi's flute and Gray's upright bass. Calmly melodic yet harmonically inventive, with shades of 'spiritual jazz', the pair's acoustic ruminations are gradually joined by Ishibashi's lush electronics, which randomly flicker between chords in a manner recalling the classic work of David Behrman. As the electronics build into a gloomy fog of slowly cycling loops, Gray lays his bass aside and turns to making strangely mournful interjections on a mouthpiece. Eventually Ishibashi moves to the piano, enveloping the audience in rippling pools of sustained, octave-doubled melody, provided by Gray's bass with a fluid and dynamic foundation. For much of the second side, both Ishibashi and Gray turn to electronics, ultimately arriving in a bizarre space of melancholic arpeggios and random sputter and sizzle, oddly reminiscent of 70s outsider prog acts like Wapassou. An uneasy coda of rich piano chords ends the set. Captured in warm room ambience and beautifully mixed by Jim O'Rourke, Ichida is a rare combination of improvisational acumen and emotional directness, both adventurous and immediately accessible.

Kohei Matsunaga, a musician and illustrator born in Osaka in 1978, started drawing at an early age and went on to study architecture at university. He has been actively making music since 1992, with notable releases on labels such as Raster Noton, Wordsound, Mille Plateaux, PAN and Skam Records. Kohei has collaborated with many artists, including Mika Vainio, Sensational from the Jungle Brothers, Sean Booth from Autechre, Conrad Schnitzler, Merzbow, Asmus Tietchens and many more.

Written & Produced: Kohei Matsunaga

Carlos Giffoni reconnects with Thurston Moore for two sides of loose-limbed axe noise, oscillator worship and hard-phased, Spacemen 3-style feedback.

Giffoni’s been on a roll recently. Since the No Fun founder returned to the scene with »Vain¡, a genius set of synth mutations that appeared in iDEAL back in 2018, he’s been slowly ramping up the activity, dropping the celestial »Dream Walker« on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ in 2024 and following it with »Pendulum«, a bumper compendium of collaborations, just a few weeks back. For those who remember Giffoni’s first trip round the block, he was always able to hold his own chopping it up in person, not just by mail.

Just scrub through his early catalog and you’ll see collabs with Nels Cline and Chris Corsano, Merzbow, Jim O’Rourke and Lasse Marhaug, and of course, Thurston Moore. The two rekindle their thing on »IGUANA’« picking up where 2001’s fabled »4 Guitars Live« performance left off. Here, Giffoni straddles a tabletop synth and FX while Moore attacks his signature Jazzmaster with a drumstick and a screwdriver – vibes fully intact.

Moore is on blistering form, sounding as if he’s taken a step back to refresh his approach since the early ‘00s when he could be spotted moonlighting on any number of basement-adjacent noise sides. Sawing at his strings and turning the guitar into a shrieking resonator, he leaves only faint vapours of the classic Sonic Youth sound as opiating accents on his animalistic wails and rumbles. On the opening half, his whammy – assisted shreds are balanced out by Giffoni’s off-world whirrs and airlocked vibrations, building a dense wall of noise towards an unexpectedly elegiac conclusion. At some point, Giffoni’s rasping churr transforms into a simmering shudder and Moore’s into hymnal drones – squint a bit and you could almost call it pretty.

Of course, they ramp things up on the flip, dissolving the melancholia with smokey white noise and twangy, post-Derek Bailey chimes that Giffoni accompanies with aggy oscillations. Like every great taped noise set, the recording quality is crucial - »IGUANA« was captured from the pit by Guillermo Hernandez Avendano, the dad of Lia Miranda who provides the cover photo. It’s that kinda show.

Some years ago, Kjell Bjørgeengen and Keith Rowe attempted to convert video signals into sound by setting up Rowe’s pickups next to an old CRT monitor, turning its magnetic field into a sound generator. Rowe further developed the system with David Jones at Alfred University, slimming down the setup using a copper coil, a circuit board, a video input, and a telephone pickup. Jones named it the »Flood Coil«, and it’s that instrument you can see on the album’s front cover and that lies at the core of these recordings, made without any physical live input from the artists themselves. In essence, it’s generative music in its purest form.

Bjørgeengen’s video feed is generated by oscillators, then routed into Marhaug’s pedals and then back into the Flood Coil, so any visual shifts alter the sound, and any modification to the sound changes the video. The duo have played this setup live many times, but for this studio version they left the system to do its thing without any intervention for two minutes at a time before moving onto the next idea. They recorded hours and hours using this process and then selected 18 highlights for this album, extracting harsh noise, power electronics, lulling feedback drone, and peculiar rhythmic snippets to show the scope of their technique.

A wall of growling, hi-octane Pulse Demon-style noise opens the set, gradually exposing us to more asymmetric textures, shifting through unstable repetitions that transform Merzbow’s metal-inspired screams into »Aaltopiiri«-era rhythmic noise. It’s remarkable, actually, how much Marhaug and Bjørgeengen can squeeze from the system, chancing on shivering, lower-case chugs and pops, galloping drums, soundsystem subs, and grinding blast beats that sound like Napalm Death’s »Scum« piped through a broken amp stack. It ain’t pretty, but noise/industrial freaks will revel in the fierce delights inside.

The London based singer and keyboard player Dominic Appleton, known since the early eighties for his musical activity in the post punk/dream pop band Breathless, and perhaps even more for his vocal contributions to the legendary This Mortal Coil project on 4AD, joins forces with the Milanese producer and sound artist Matteo Uggeri, active from 1993 behind several projects spanning from industrial to post-rock and ambient soundscapes, known for collaborating with artists such as Maurizio Bianchi, Nocturnal Emissions, Controlled Bleeding, De Fabriek, OvO, Giuseppe Ielasi, Lau Nau, Giulio Aldinucci and many more.

Starlight Assembly’s first album, “Starlight and Still Air”, was released in 2021 by the American label Beacon Sound. In Italy the album received amazing reviews in all four of the main music monthlies. It was album of the month in Blow Up and Rockerilla ran a four page interview. Several articles and reviews were made, including a special issue on Foxy Digitalis by Brad Rose.

A remix project was launched afterwards, including old and new friends and fans of the two S.A. members: among the others, Robin Rimbaud/Scanner, Auscultation, Gabriel Saloman (Yellow Swans), Patricia Wolf, Insides, Julia Sabra with Fadi Tabbal, Sawako and Pan American.

The new album, “There Will Be Fireworks”, continues the duo’s complex cross-genres approach to music by melding Uggeri’s intricate musical textures with Appleton’s sweet and melancholic melodies, in this case even supported by the haunting guitars of Gary Mundy (in Breathless as well but also in Ramleh and Broken Flag’s label manager). The tracks on this album are more songlike, the journey more cohesive, with the artists playing more to one another’s strengths. The mastering will be done by Martin Bowes/Attrition, making it even more powerful and clean for its publication on Silentes (ex-Amplexus), historic italian label well known for releases by Rod Modell, Gigi Masin, Dirk Serries, Eraldo Bernocchi, Merzbow, Fabio Orsi and the latest releases by AUBE and much more.

1) WAIT FOR THE WORLD
2) TIME
3) THIS DESERT
4) ALL THE LOVE THE STANDS BESIDE US
5) MOTH TO THE FLAME
6) FRICTION
7) SYMPHONY IN MELANCHOLY
8) THE NOT DEAD
9) RELIEF
+
10) THERE WILL BE FIREWORKS (ghost track)

Un-easy listening from »anti-singer« and improviser Sofia Jernberg, a celebration of the voice in its rawest, most malleable form. Jernberg was born in Ethiopia and grew up in Vietnam and Sweden, so one can only imagine these diverse languages opened up a wealth of phonetic possibilities before she entered academia to study jazz and composition. If you dive into her catalogue you’ll clock her startling range – working as a jazz soprano and as an improviser, collaborating with everyone from Stefan Schneider to Mats Gustafsson, as well as appearances on the stage and screen, most notably in Matthew Barney, Erna Ómarsdóttir, and Valdimar Jóhannsson’s »Union of the North«.

On »Voice«, Jernberg provides a ground-level entry point to her work, meticulously running through a litany of unconventional techniques (non-verbal vocalisation, split tones, toneless singing, and distortion) without any effects, just pure batshit sonics designed to show off the voice’s scope as an experimental instrument. On »Mouth Synthesizer« she purses her lips to make ratcheting pops like some analog oscillator, hoarsely mimicking the sort of blustery, Merzbow-coded distortions you might get if you patched a RAT pedal into a broken guitar amp. It isn’t an act of caricature, it’s Jernberg’s way of demonstrating that expensive modular rigs aren’t an essential tool for experimental music, before throwing a side-eye to the field recording industrial complex on »Birds«, transforming her vocal chords into a nightmare aviary. But it’s Jernberg’s startling »multiphonic« experiments that hit hardest. The album opens on »Multiphonic I«, and it’s difficult to tell that you’re listening to a human voice at first – you could just as well be on Colin Stetson’s overblown sax airstreams. Jernberg creates a captivating spiral of crooked, phased tones and hoarse, guttural croaks that she develops over three movements. On »Multiphonic II«, her voice is turned into a storm of pained shrieks, and on the third and final segment, it almost resembles Arve Henriksen or Jon Hassell’s muted brass curlicues. Each track pulls a different musical muscle, whether it’s »One Pitch« with its unsettling yodel-like quivering drones or »Gurgle«, sounding like a close mic-ed recording of a small pot gently simmering.

Die erste Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem japanischen Noise-Titan Masami Akita, alias Merzbow, dem legendären brasilianischen Schlagzeuger und Produzenten Iggor Cavalera und dem zukunftsorientierten italienischen Gitarristen und Sounddesigner Eraldo Bernocchi, ,Nocturnal Rainforest", schafft eine Klanglandschaft, die fast überwältigend dicht und verwirrend ist, aber niemals aggressiv oder chaotisch. Es ist ein vollständig immersives Erlebnis, das die jahrelange Arbeit des Trios im Bereich der extremen experimentellen Musik neu kontextualisiert, indem es sich auf Textur, Atmosphäre und sensorische Überlastung konzentriert. Der Noise selbst wird verwendet, um ein raffiniertes Maß an Konzentration zu provozieren; ,Nocturnal Rainforest" ist auf seine eigene Weise meditativ und umhüllt die Zuhörer mit Wellen von Verzerrungen, phantasmatischen, ungemessenen Rhythmen und verwirrenden, bearbeiteten Feldaufnahmen, aber es ist nicht für passives Hören gedacht. Entstanden durch eine Fusion von maßgeschneiderten Techniken, die das Trio seit Jahrzehnten entwickelt, existiert es in einer rohen und mystifizierenden Grenzzone zwischen dem organischen Bereich und der digitalen Welt - einem Ort, der zu vertraut ist, um ignoriert zu werden. Als einer der bekanntesten und produktivsten Noise-Künstler der Welt hat Akita vielbeachtete, genreprägende Alben auf so unterschiedlichen Labels wie Relapse, Important Records, Tzadik, Cold Spring und Soleilmoon veröffentlicht und mit einer Vielzahl von Künstlern zusammengearbeitet, von Keiji Haino und Mika Patton bis hin zu Melt-Banana und Boris. Seit 1979 hat er über 500 Merzbow-Alben veröffentlicht, darunter das Tape-Experiment ,Pornoise/1kg Vol.1" von 1984, das bahnbrechende Noise-Wall-Album ,Pulse Demon" von 1996 und das dubartige ,Merzbuddha" von 2005. Cavalera ist vor allem als Mitbegründer der brasilianischen Metal-Band Sepultura bekannt. Seit er die Band 2006 verlassen hat, beschäftigt er sich intensiv mit experimenteller Underground-Musik und arbeitet mit Künstlern wie Laima Leyton, Ninos Du Brasil, Raven Chacon, Linekraft, Petbrick, Pig Destroyer, Soulwax, Dwid Hellion, Shane Embury und anderen zusammen. Bernocchi begann seine Karriere in den 70er Jahren in verschiedenen Punkbands und wurde in den 80er Jahren bekannt, als er das postindustrielle Kollektiv Sigillum S mitbegründete und Kontakte knüpfte, die sich über die gesamte globale Underground-Szene erstreckten. Als aktives Mitglied der einflussreichen Illbient-Bewegung arbeitete er mit einigen der wichtigsten Persönlichkeiten des Genres wie Spectre, Bill Laswell und DJ Olive zusammen und nahm für WordSound sowie das Kult-Hip-Hop-Label Rawkus auf. Bernocchi hat seine innovativen Aktivitäten fortgesetzt, indem er als SIMM mit dem Grammy-Gewinner Grime MC Flowdan zusammengearbeitet und mit Harold Budd, Robin Guthrie von den Cocteau Twins, Gaudi Nils Petter Molvaer, Hoshiko Yamane und vielen anderen aufgenommen hat. ,Nocturnal Rainforest" ist das Ergebnis der kontinuierlichen musikalischen Entwicklung jedes einzelnen Künstlers, angetrieben von extremer Musik, aber gemildert durch Deep-Listening-Techniken, die Präsenz statt Distanzierung erwarten. Auf ,Swietnenia Macrophylla" vermitteln suggestive, feuchte Klanglandschaften zunächst ein prekäres Gefühl der Sicherheit, das an den Rändern durch schnurrende Schwingungen, die die Fauna des Dschungels imitieren, verschwimmt. Und diese Ruhe wird schnell durch perkussive, nebelhornartige Verzerrungen unterbrochen, die das Ausmaß der Vision des Trios verdeutlichen. Es handelt sich nicht nur um rohen Lärm, die raueren Elemente werden durch subtile Wellen wogender Atmosphäre und schwüle Low-End-Drones unterbrochen, bevor der Track in eine Symphonie computergenerierter Stottergeräusche übergeht. Es gibt ein ständiges Hin und Her zwischen organischen und künstlichen Klängen - bevor man sich an den DAW-verfälschten Lärm gewöhnt hat, trüben collagierte Bandübersteuerungen und zerschnittene Verstärkerbrummen die Atmosphäre, verwirren gezielt die Sinne und verschleiern die Quellen. Dieser Gedanke wird in ,Ceiba Pentandra" fortgesetzt, wenn das Trio den wimmelnden Klängen des Dschungels mit knurrenden, surrenden Elektronikklängen und dichten Interferenzen folgt. Was als Vogelgesang und Insektenchor beginnt, verwandelt sich in eine Wand aus ohrenbetäubender, transzendenter Vollspektrum-Textur, die sich wie ein langsam voranschreitender Sturm über einer schattigen Wildnis auftut.

At ATP, the band previewed instrumental and early versions of songs from the then soon-to-be recorded NYC Ghosts & Flowers album, and this exclusive performance was the premiere of “J’Accuse Ted Hughes.” The B-side is a soundtrack-style piece recorded at the band’s Murray Street Studio in 2003 for a never-realized collaboration with French clothing designer Agnes B. The 18-minute-long song was recorded by a five-piece version of the band—the four members of Sonic Youth plus Jim O’Rourke, who also mixed “Agnes B Musique.” This LP will be soon followed by a CD-only release of the band’s Another Side of Sonic Youth Roskilde Festival performance, where the five-piece Sonic Youth line-up was joined by saxophonist/reed player Mats Gustaffson and electronic noise legend Merzbow for an hour of improvised music.

A double LP package from Bardo Pond, combining two of their super rare jam volumes on vinyl for the first time. A further edition in this celebrated series, ‘Volume 4’ and ‘Volume 5’ feature more freeform improvisational pieces from the hypnotic Philadelphia outfit.

Capturing the raw essence of the band, whose fearless exploration blurs the lines between structure, chaos, melody and noise. Bardo Pond's music traverses space rock, acid rock, post-rock, shoegaze, noise, Krautrock and psychedelia.

‘Volume 4’ hails from self-released sessions recorded in January 2002, its five tracks include the supremely tripped out heaviness of ‘K2’ and the balance-shifting ‘New Drunks (Revisited)’ with Isobel Sollenberger’s exquisite and, frankly, quite disturbing vocal. They’re shorter interrogations of sound by Bardo terms, almost succinct in their mesmerising riffage and off-kilter arrangements.

By contrast, ‘Volume 5’ consists of two lengthy mantras recorded between 2000 and 2004 and released as the tape spool spiralled out. ‘FUFO’ sounds like Cluster unravelling with Merzbow mixing, a post-industrial slew of hypnotic proportions, while ‘Monarch’ begins as a Current 93-like neo-folk mood piece before evolving into a wailing slice of drone-drenched Americana by way of a Velvets’ jam.

“We were pushing improvisations as far as we could. It was glorious having the studio. The more that our heads were spinning after a session, the better we knew that session would sound when we listened back. We were getting together two nights a week, usually three or four hours working on material and songs and the other half the time letting loose. Volumes 4 and 5 gather together some of these improvisations, and one early song that we felt like doing.” Adds Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond.

Phantasmagoria is a landmark release from Japan’s legendary noise collective C.C.C.C. Originally unleashed in the early '90s, this album represents the group’s masterful balance between overwhelming sonic force and hypnotic, psychedelic intensity.
Led by Hiroshi Hasegawa and fortified by the presence of Mayuko Hino, C.C.C.C. blended the raw power of Japanese harsh noise with elements of cosmic electronic music, creating a sound that resonates with the crushing density of Merzbow, the ecstatic distortion of Hijokaidan, and the hypnotic feedback worship of The New Blockaders. Phantasmagoria stands as a crucial document of noise music’s golden era, where extreme frequencies met transcendent states of mind.
This long-awaited reissue finally brings this essential work back to life—available now for the first time as an official release on limited edition vinyl and digital formats.

Brilliant Experimental album by the Merzbow co-founder, recorded in 1989 - with sticker and insert

The clear vinyl version is only available in the limited 99 copies boxset "artefAKTs from the Early Japanese Experimental Noise Music Scene

Producer, designer, publisher, filmmaker, all-round scene phenom - Lasse Marhaug returns with his first album since relocating from Oslo to the Arctic Circle, surveying his 35-year career for a set of grizzled, doom-pocked rhythms and foghorn drones pulled from the aether. Expansive and hard to categorise, it's a precision-tooled set of ice-cold tonal productions that heavily lean into Mika Vainio’s rhythm experiments, with extra levels of growling bass and curious noises to send us deep into the uncanny.

Lasse Marhaug has put his mark on literally hundreds of albums - working with artists like Jenny Hval, Merzbow, Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Hilary Woods - so many others - yet he still regards himself as a primarily visual artist who got diverted into an occasionally different path. If his last album 'Context' was a kiss goodbye to decades of life in Oslo, 'Provoke' turns a new page, but one that draws heavily from memories of the distant past, reflecting on the way the topographies of Norway's frozen north helped shape his creative worldview. Weaving electronics into environmental recordings captured in the bleak Arctic winter, the album was mixed during the Polar night season, when, for two straight months, the sun never rose past the horizon. Somehow, even at its bleakest, Marhaug avoids the usual aesthetic signifiers for this kinda thing, finding elements of queered beauty in all the severity, juxtaposing elements that shine a bright light on all the odd spaces in-between.

A consideration of noise music's place in 2024, and whether it can still be a tool for subversion when its aesthetics have been so commodified, ‘Provoke’ also refernces an experimental '70s Japanese art magazine that attempted to define a new language for photography. Operating somewhere between these two guiding poles, Lasse feels his way through a subtly altered mode of expression, a new approach to familiar concepts. Album opener ‘Plates’, for example, gives it the full Ø treatment, like some exceptional ‘Oleva’-outtake, but , eventually, shards of interference start to exhale like horses blowing, creating uncanny sensations that hit through ambiguous feeling rather than sheer noise terror. Ritualistic, corporeal - hard to know what you’re listening to and why it makes you feel that certain way - so much more than just machine cycles optimised for their ultimately hollow brutalist aesthetic.

Marhaug paints vivid pictures from a carefully chosen palette, drawing us into a soundworld that's rich with contradictions and contrasts. Even the relatively deafening 'New Topographics' offsets its wall of distortion with a muffled, perforating kick drum, cutting into the noise like a knife through butter. And all of this preparation makes the album's lengthy centrepiece 'Monochrome Head' even more impactful; hinging on a Pan Sonic-like alloy of bass and drums, the track snowballs through tempered feedback and improv scrapes and whistles that pick up into an orchestral din. Marhaug accents the bluster with rhythmic hums that gather in momentum until they're almost oppressively heavy, as if everything's about to collapse.

A masterclass in quietly subversive world-building, 'Provoke' invites us to peer at an expansive sonic landscape and marvel at its intricacies, but this time around there's a Lovecraftian behemoth lurking somewhere beneath its icy surface.

Continuing our quest to get all of the classic early AMT albums released on vinyl, we turn to 2004’s 'Mantra Of Love’, and with the help of Makoto Kawabata’s studio wizardry, we’ve made it possible.

This latest instalment in the ‘Acid Mothers Temple Vinyl Archives - First Time On Vinyl’ series (as with the three previous SOLD OUT releases in the series) have all been meticulously put together with the help of Makoto Kawabata with the original CD artwork recreated for these vinyl editions from archive photos stored in the vaults at the Acid Mothers Temple in Osaka, Japan and the original audio remastered by James Plotkin.

Here’s what others had to say upon it’s original CD only release back in 2004 …

“Acid Mothers are strong folk. You'd think they'd tire quickly, all tucked away on their island, strewn about on tree roots while baking their lungs and throats to a knotty green tinge. But instead of waltzing through life like hippies, they manage to not only tour and put out records every year, but also to fill those albums with 30-minute jams and assorted freakouts. And while evil jam bands would fill that space with guitar work taken from the Classic Rock Manual of Clichés, Makoto Kawabata and company assault listeners with frighteningly dense walls of white noise, psychedelic swirl effects and, yes, even guitar solos-- albeit ones that are more Merzbow or Keiji Haino than Gary Rossington. Truly, AMT's endurance and threshold for cosmic lashings are both worthy of admiration.

But how much AMT can you take in one sitting? If there's anything this band has taught us-- via records such as 2002's Electric Heavyland and the ferocious Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O-- it's that they're not afraid to reach for the upper regions of consciousness. On Mantra of Love, they offer two titles over the course of one hour, never faltering along the way, and it's as if we listeners are just brief visitors passing through a never-ending, spontaneous group trip. For all I know, Kawabata has hundreds of hours of this stuff on his hard drive-- at any single moment, this record's sheer volume of sound is a clamor to behold. However, if you aren't dialed into that the particular space AMT inhabits (for me, it's the mystical fire-baptism standby), you might not hear their glorious noise for all the, well, glorious noise.

"La Le Lo" begins as a lengthy psychedelic ballad sung by Cotton Casino (who doubles on "beer & cigarettes"), who is accompanied by her own ghostly backing vocals. The band is playing a mantra as Casino waxes earth-mother stylings to the moon. The serenity is broken by a patented AMT rave led by Kawabata's electric sitar (!) solo. Ace rhythm section Tsuyama Atsushi ("monster bass") and Koizumi Hajime hold things together, as does the generally decent recording quality (not a given for these guys), but the real money is in effects-- lots and lots effects. Much like France's Richard Pinhas or AMT's countrymen in Les Rallizes Denudes and High Rise, the band understands the collaborative power of solo + overdriven Moog sirens and screams. And, also like those artists, Acid Mothers can go on all night if need be. About 25 minutes into this piece, any hell that hadn't already broken loose gets its due, and the band speeds to a fiery climax before winding down into glimmering astro-ambience.

The second track, "L'Ambition dans le Miroir", also begins as a minor ballad featuring Casino's haunting solo vocal. The Mothers set her up with a faux-blues drag and a thick buffer of synth-rays; when Casino actually enters, she fights for airtime with an array of falling stars and cosmic dust. However, this time there is no overwhelming solo to power the comedown. Casino intermittently coos in the background while droning horns keep the auxiliary pixie haze from evaporating. As they showed on In C and La Novia, AMT are more than adept at creating calmer storms-- listeners just have to catch them in the right light. Mantra of Love doesn't necessarily capture the most inspired moments in their canon but as usual with this band's records, it's rarely at a loss for moments of horror or grandeur.”

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. : Cotton Casino - Vocal, Beer & Cigarettes - Tsuyama Atsushi - Monster Bass, Vocal, Cosmic Joker - Higashi Hiroshi - Synthesizer, Dancin' King - Koizumi Hajime - Drums, Percussion, Sleeping Monk - Kawabata Makoto - Guitar, Bouzouki, Electric Sitar, Violin, Hammond Organ, Speed Guru

Der italienische Musiker, Produzent, Komponist und Instrumentenbauer Alessandro Cortini veröffentlicht am 4. Oktober sein neues Album 'NATI INFINITI' via Mute.

Nach 'Scuro Chiaro' (2021) ist 'NATI INFINITI' ein 40-minütiges Stück in fünf Sätzen, das auf einer immersiven Audioinstallation basiert, die Cortini ursprünglich für das Sónar Lisboa Festival 2022 schuf, wo sie auf vier Etagen des Museu de Lisboa's Moagem präsentiert wurde. Später, im Jahr 2023, präsentierte Cortini die Live-Performance auf dem Atonal-Festival in Berlin, wo er das Werk als einen einzigartigen, sich entwickelnden Dialog neu interpretierte. Das Album wurde von der für einen Grammy nominierten Tontechnikerin, Produzentin und Mischerin Marta Salogni (Björk, Depeche Mode, Sampha) abgemischt und enthält Cortinis Strega-Synthesizer, den er zusammen mit dem Musiktechnologieunternehmen Make Noise entwickelt hat.

Cortini ist einer der wichtigsten Vertreter der zeitgenössischen elektronischen Musik und vor allem für seine eindringlichen, atmosphärischen Werke bekannt. Als langjähriges Mitglied von Nine Inch Nails ist er ein äußerst produktiver Solokünstler, der in den letzten zehn Jahren einen stetigen Strom seiner eigenen berauschenden Musik auf renommierten Labels wie Mute, Hospital und Important Records veröffentlicht hat. Während seines schattenhaften Aufstiegs zum Ruhm hat er mit Künstlern wie Lawrence English, Daniel Avery und Merzbow zusammengearbeitet und wurde in die Rock and Roll Hall of Fame aufgenommen (als einziger italienischer Musiker, der jemals geehrt wurde).

- Ltd. LP: (Limited edition first pressing - Silver Mirror Board - Embossed on front / Debossed on back / Includes information sheet insert)

Ltd Edition - 200 copies**

Canadian-currently-residing-in-Berlin and multi intstrumentalist Aidan Baker teamed up with Dutch demolition duo Dead Neanderthals late 2023 to work on the collaborative album entitled Cast Down and Hunted.

Cast Down and Hunted is an abstract affair. Angular and dark, droney and lush. Two lengthy tracks, Subterfuge and Paranoia, each fill one side of the LP, which will be released by the Dutch label Moving Furniture Records.
The artwork was made by Steven Kenny and the album layout was done by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek).

The album was mixed and mastered by Marlon Wolterink at White Noise Studio.

ABOUT AIDEN BAKER
Aidan Baker is a classically-trained multi-instrumentalist focusing on the electric guitar as his primary instrument. Using prepared and alternate methods of playing the guitar, along with various electronic effects, Baker creates music which generally falls within the ambient/experimental genre but draws on influences from post-rock, shoegaze, electronica, neo-classical, and jazz.
A highly prolific artist, Baker has released numerous recorded works, both solo and with various group projects—most notably his dreamsludge duo, Nadja—and including collaborations with Tim Hecker, Carla Bozulich, Jussi Lehtisalo, and Andrea Belfi, among others—on such independent labels as Karlrecords, Gizeh Records, Important Records, and his own imprint, Broken Spine Productions. A frequent live performer, Baker has toured extensively around the world, including appearances at such international festivals as FIMAV, SXSW, Incubate, Unsound, Roadburn, and Mutek.
Originally from Toronto, Canada, Baker currently resides in Berlin, Germany.

ABOUT DEAD NEANDERTHALS
Dead Neanderthals have spent more than a decade putting together an eclectic and envious back catalogue that spans multiple genres – from free-jazz to grindcore to doom drone by way of psychedelia – and continuously throwing curve balls that defy expectations. You never know what you’ll get, but you know it’ll be heavy.


ABOUT MOVING FURNITURE RECORDS
Moving Furniture Records is a label based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands specialized in releasing experimental electronic music, run by Sietse van Erve, started in October 2008. We are mostly interested in drones, minimalist, microtonal and field-recordings music.
Moving Furniture Records has released music by both renowned, musicians such as Richard Chartier, BJNilsen, Jos Smolders, Gareth Davis & Merzbow and Machinefabriek, as (young) new talent such as Gagi Petrovic, Fani Konstantinidou, and Ryan van Haesendonck.
Aside from the regular releases Moving Furniture Records has two special series: Eliane Tapes: music inspired by and dedicated to the work of Éliane Radigue. Contemporary Series: contemporary music written for acoustic and electro-acoustic ensembles and solo artists.
Moving Furniture Records also organizes concerts in various venues in Amsterdam. For all our releases and more information