LP
Alex Monk “The Safety Machine” 2xLP
Drenched in a frozen, hypnotic melancholy, The Safety Machine is a double-LP tour de force by London-based musician and producer Alex Monk. Incorporating seventies kraut-synth psychedelic, cosmic ambient drones and haunting melodies into an ambitious framework of multi-layered sonic bleakness with hints of early Eno, Klaus Schultze, Robert Wyatt and Moondog, Monk creates a haunting world that’s filled with loss, loneliness and ethereal beauty — staring into the abyss while the icecaps are hugging your skull…
The Safety Machine double-LP comes in a hand-numbered edition of 310, with a screenprinted open sleeve. Also includes MP3 download voucher.
BLOOD STEREO ‘Your Snakelike King’ LP
A release from Brighton mongs Blood Stereo, duo of Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance. ‘Your Snake Like King’ picks up where ‘The Magnetic Headache’ left off, a shape shifting and strange mix of tape collage, free vocals and electro-acoustic mischief. Midnight to 3am recordings fueled by grape and smoke conjour up a blurred narrative, the meaning of which is never quite clear, like weird off camera sounds in some tripped out movie.
“Anal fins tucked in tight behind them, Blood Stereo look like a pair of ill-kempt roosters, fighting over a doughnut. The guy rooster is jibbering in some unknown tongue, turning his face inside out, while shoving the microphone slowly through a hole in his cheek. The girl rooster appears to be pecking at him, either that or she’s picking at various trash they have strewn around the stage. Every time she ducks her head there is the sound of a jet passing overhead. But when you look up at the sky there is no sign of a comtrail. After a while you think you are starting to get a handle on what they are doing, but the guy falls down and starts doing a spazz dance so utterly convincing you begin to worry about him. Then the girls starts screaming and it seems as though something is really profoundly wrong. And it is. But it’s not like they’re in any kind of trouble. They’re just wrong, y’know? So savagely wrong from every angle that it’s really tough to imagine there ‘s anything you could do to really help them. As if they’d even want in. In their masks or out, they sow confusion like wheat.” – Byron Coley The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, in a limited edition of 330 hand-numbered copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a two-tone silk screened pvc sleeve with interweaving geometric designs. All artwork by Kathryn Politis and Bill Kouligas.
DAS SYNTHETISCHE MISCHGEWEBE ‘Frequency Conquistadors’ LP
Words are more often then not the point of departure for many works of Das Synthetische Mischegewebe. The track – titles here stem from ‘El Mundo Alucinante’ de Reinaldo Arenas, which itself is inspired by François-René de Chateaubriand’s ‘Mémoires d’outre-tombe’. It is about time rather than history and about being in history. Having lost the war of time, the only thing that remains to do is being, and here we go, ‘being infiniment exigent’ in it’s means of expression.
DSM began in Berlin armed with a visual education from the early 80′s. They quickly became part of the international industrial cassette scene. Composing for light installations with open-reel machines, cassette recorders, microphone and guitar fuzz boxes with both loud, quiet, occasionally full blast and frequently sneaking in little sounds, all alternating within a few seconds, create an electroacoustic anti-music. With unusual concerts in the underground network as well as in high art institutions and museums (such as Centre Pompidou) and later on with performances for mixed media installation, exhibitions and conferences on cognitive science and neurologic research related topics, the group toured with changing casts since the early 80′s, and participated in international festivals throughout Europe and the US. Since 1982 they continue to produce vinyls, CD’s and tapes on many international labels: Discos Esplendor Geometrico, RRRecords, Hypnagogia, Vinyl-on-Demand, Auf Abwegen, Harsh Reality Music, Equation Records, Das Cassetten Combinat and many others. Live and recording collaborations with musicians such as: The New Blockaders, Ralf Wehowsky, Frans de Waard, Ios Smolders, Zeitkratzer Ensemble, Artificial Memory Trace, ERG, MSBR, Toy Bizarre, Roel Meelkop and others. The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, in a limited edition of 330 hand-numbered copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a two-tone silk screened pvc sleeve with interweaving geometric designs. All artwork by Kathryn Politis and Bill Kouligas.
EXTRA SEXES “Spiral Mirror” LP
Smeraldina-Rima 16
edition of 300 LPs, cyan & magenta screenprinted sleeve, artwork by Tessa Deceuninck
Hyena “Outside, The Great Drought” LP
Smeraldina-Rima 18
NY-based multi-instrumentalist Colby Nathan delivers a debut that contains a jumpy and highly neurotic form of outsiderpop combining bebopdrenched rants and surrealistic torchsongs with lush arrangements that constantly test the limits of self-control and good reason. “Outside, The Great Drought” offers baroque exuberance and teenage angst through sixties inspired craftsmanship that keeps spiraling out of this worldly realm. Think Jonathan Richman, Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.
ILIOS ‘Kenrimono’ LP
‘Kenrimono’ is a type of pachinko machine for advanced players which gives certain privileges during the course of a high-risk game. This LP is entirely based on field recordings and manipulations made from sounds in pachinko parlors in Kansai area, Japan in 2007. A very intense and meditative atmosphere to be played at maximum volume.
Active since the early 90′s in sound art and image, ILIOS has been exploring the extremes of sound and image derived phenomena. Through constant change in his sound palette touching and surpassing the limits of the sound spectrum he definitely advocates for an anti-career. By 2009 ILIOS has performed more than 170 times in various venues and festivals in Asia, Europe, South and North America, pushing the space and body resistances to a hard test pursuing a state of alert for the human senses. He has done studio and live collaborations with the likes of: Francisco Lopez, Jason Kahn, Keiichiro Shibuya, Mattin, Michael Gendreau, Norbert Möslang, Coti K, Xabier Erkizia, Julien Ottavi, Bernd Schurer, Ralph Steinbruechel, Takehiro Nishide, Tzesne, Thurston Moore amongst many others. Since 1997 he runs Antifrost, a publishing label for sound media with more than 40 works published to date. The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, in a limited edition of 330 hand-numbered copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a two-tone silk screened pvc sleeve with interweaving geometric designs. All artwork by Kathryn Politis and Bill Kouligas.
LADYSCRAPER / DESPOILAH ‘Split EP’ 12″
Break-core split EP with inside & outside screenprinting by Jelle Crama
Nate Wooley “Trumpet/Amplifier” LP
Smeraldina-Rima 11
Edition of 496, heavy-weight vinyl with screenprinted open sleeve. Liner notes by Ben Hall.
“Trumpet/Amplifier: three pieces of unrelenting pressure, from choking bursts of muteness to firestorms of sound. Trumpeter becoming trumpet. Brass ventriloquism.” —ttt
Panicsville “A Dragonfly For Each Corpse” LP+7″
Smeraldina-Rima 10
Edition of 400, heavy-weight vinyl with screenprinted open sleeve.
“A Dragonfly For Each Corpse is a record that stands no daylight. A feverish nightmare of an album, dragging us into a brown paper bag —ferocious cannibal jungle ambience seeping through— till we’re cast down some stairs into a cellar made out of spit. A twirling folkballad sung by a ghost made out of chewing gum turns into a symphony of typing fingers, ticking clocks and slamming car doors, like a noirish soundtrack to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, accompanied by squeaking stuffed animals as eyewitnesses. A record that feels like a horror franchise turning into understated drama, where mourners and killers change places in unexpected and drastic fashion. With the collaboration of John Wiese, Josephine Foster, MV Carbon, Thymme Jones.” —w
Peeesseye + Talibam! 2xLP
Smeraldina-Rima 13
Only 600 copies available, artwork by Rachel Lowther.
“Talibam! (Kevin Shea on drums, Matt Mottel on keyboards) and Peeesseye (Jaime Fennelly on electronics, Chris Forsyth on guitars and Fritz Welch on drums) have been pals and Evolving Ear labelmates for a while now, so it was only a matter of time before they all got together and let it rip. And rip this certainly does, driven on by the double-barrelled percussion attack, underpinned by Fennelly’s drones and scribbled all over by Mottel and Forsyth, whose wild gonzo soloing is a happy and healthy reminder that one-chord jamming was part and parcel of American alt.rock before the word alt.rock even existed, back when Fugs roamed the Earth and Angus MacLise still turned up for rehearsals, back when these laddies were still twinkles in their daddies’ eyes. Of course, it’s not all one-chord rock —sometimes they dispense with chords altogether and dive headlong into the primeval murky soundpool, with scant regard for whatever sharp rocks and nasty beasties might be lurking under the surface. Loud, messy, dangerous and glorious.” —Dan Warburton


