"This issue features a major cover story on British Mod R&B heroes the Artwoods by Mike Stax, while Pop Art paintermen the Creation are the subject of a brilliant new fact-finding mission by Peter Stanfield. Doug Sheppard reveals the true story of '70s hard rock mystery group Stonewall and their mega-rare private press tax scam LP, Moby Grape's Don Stevenson shares photos and secrets from his early history, and there are interviews with pre-teen pop prodigy Mark Radice, and UK label head and A&R genius Andrew Lauder. Also: '60s Miami garage girls the Belles (of Melvin fame), Minnesota psych monsters C.A. Quintet, sublime singer-songwriter Fred Neil, a Doors/Sons of Adam love triangle, Laurie Anderson on Lou Reed, Cyril Jordan on the Yardbirds, and much more including our remarkable review sections, covering all the latest vinyl and CD reissues, and rock and roll-related books."

"Let`s go back to the pre-orthodox world, the ancient one, which gave us mythology, extreme experiences, congealed in stories. Echo was a storyteller herself, distracting from what was going on around her, up to the point when she got punished, and from then she was only able to repeat the last words spoken to her, to her, to her... A loop is a loop is a loop and it`s all about roses. A rose is arrows, is errors... Echo -- is a potential, endless space. We need this construction towards an actual eternity we cannot grasp. This layer was up above the countless expressions. I could hear it from the very first moment to the last. Searching in transitions, lost in transitions. The idea of a space behind the next space helps us get through, in order not to get lost in such constructions. If We Could Hear has seven pieces, a beginning, and an end. It`s a poem and not a Matryoshka even though it sounds like one. 'A strange footprint on the shores of the unknown, out there extending from nowhere, turning in on itself to a place which is both an ending and a beginning." --Robert Smithson

2023 repress! Saltern's latest offering marks the first-ever release of "lost minimalist" Terry Jennings' visionary 1960 composition, Piece for Cello and Saxophone, as arranged in just intonation by legendary composer La Monte Young for renowned cellist Charles Curtis. Born in Los Angeles in 1940, Jennings was a close associate of Young, Terry Riley, and Dennis Johnson, and an early adopter of minimalist tendencies, creating slow, sustained music, influenced by jazz, modalism, and late romantic classical music. Jennings died tragically in his early forties, most of his work lost to a chaotic life; however, his forward-looking music quietly exerted a lasting influence on composers including Young and Harold Budd. Composed over sixty years ago, Piece for Cello and Saxophone, foreshadows a number of movements in postwar avant-garde music. Despite the title, there is no saxophone on this album. At over eighty minutes, La Monte Young's justly tuned realization of Piece for Cello and Saxophone for cello alone unifies and extrapolates Terry Jennings' dense harmonies, creating an extended field of complex sonorities in motion, all brought to life by the immaculate playing of Charles Curtis. The recording captures Curtis in a performance from 2016 reflecting more than twenty-five years of dedication to the piece. Piece for Cello and Saxophone is released physically on double-LP. Mixed by Anthony Burr, mastered by Stephan Mathieu, and cut to vinyl via direct metal mastering by Hans Jörg Maucksch at Pauler Acoustics. Pressed at RTI and printed at Stoughton. Includes a four-page insert with liner notes by Young, Curtis, Burr, and Tashi Wada, and a download of the full recording.

Orange color vinyl version. Berlin party series and label AWAY Music continues its limited vinyl series called Reissued, dedicated to re-releasing iconic cuts from the vast collaborative catalog of Move D & Pete Namlook. The third installment Reissued 3, which follows the series' first two EPs from previous years, features again some exceptional pieces that were previously only available on CD. Move D and Pete Namlook are electronic visionaries whose 26-album relationship explored and intertwined psychedelic synthscapes, deep house and techno, future jazz, and downtempo on Namlook's cult imprint Fax Records. Their innovative and influential works keep inspiring electronic music producers today, showcasing their willingness to collaborate and push the boundaries of electronic music. First up on the A side, "Der Strahlender Verlierer", from the 2006 Album Let the Circle Not Be Broken, begins atmospherically before pushing subtly into open filter and undulating synth territory. Introspective and accepting, the piece gradually lets the sum of its parts coalesce into a peaceful whole with sustained chords and the flicker of played steel strings. "Hardwired Tangent" from the 2001 Album Wired rounds out the first side with edgier and more ominous tones. Brooding and bubbling its way through artificial textures absorbed by carefully weighted rhythmic tension. Shuffling jazz electronics. The moody low-mid hum providing buoyancy throughout. Also from the 2001 album, the B side's "Hardwired Hypotenuse + Asymptote" is a synthetic journey. Textural, pseudo-organic, pulsating with urgency. The motoric percussion imparting structure to the sonic alchemy. Tactile yet integrated components offer the listener (or dancer) multiple entry points into the music. This is both artful and kaleidoscopic -- a treatise on contemplative and psychoactive house music. Reissued 3 is a true testament to the innovative spirit and pioneering work of Move D and Pete Namlook. With these tracks now available on vinyl for the first time, AWAY's limited series is a must-have for old and new fans alike.

Synth pioneer and musical polymath, Wally Badarou is a genius. A vinyl version of his majestic Colors Of Silence has been craved by the Balearic cognoscenti ever since its low-key 2001 release. Colors Of Silence is ostensibly a new age album. As ever though, Wally's sophisticated synth textures and expressive keyboard runs are so full of character, so full of life, that this work of art transcends any easy genre categorization. It sounds like A.r.t. Wilson or Suzanne Kraft, with traces of CFCF and Jonny Nash. But it was made a good decade earlier than the work of these modern giants. It's understandable why Colors Of Silence remains somewhat of a lost gem. Over the years, it has become a true cult record for the ambient/Balearic heads. There can be few artists more under-appreciated given their vast influence than Wally Badarou. His solo work practically defined the sound of the Balearic DJs of the 1980s, and thus the more sophisticated sound of dance culture thereafter. A synth specialist, Badarou was the long-time associate of Level 42. He was one of the Compass Point All Stars (with Sly and Robbie, Barry Reynolds, Mikey Chung, and Uziah "Sticky" Thompson), the in-house recording team of Compass Point Studios responsible for a series of albums in the 1980s recorded by Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club, Mick Jagger, Black Uhuru, Gwen Guthrie, Jimmy Cliff and Gregory Isaacs. Badarou's keyboard playing could also be heard on albums by Robert Palmer, Marianne Faithfull, Herbie Hancock, M (Pop Muzik), Talking Heads, Manu Dibango, and Miriam Makeba. He also produced Fela Kuti. Meticulously remastered and cut by both Simon Francis and Cicely Balston respectively, it has been pressed to the highest possible quality at Record Industry in Holland.

2023 repress as double heavy weight black vinyl, with original artwork and gatefold sleeve. Originally released in 2006. Even though 5:55 isn't technically Charlotte Gainsbourg's first solo album (that would be Charlotte for Ever, which was released [in 1986] when she was 15), it is her first solo album as an adult and, with the help of a dream team of collaborators, it's a fittingly sophisticated set that touches on her father Serge's brilliantly louche, literate pop without being overshadowed by it. Air's Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin (who paid tribute to Serge Gainsbourg particularly well on 10,000 Hz Legend's Wonder Milky Bitch) wrote 5:55's delicate music, while Jarvis Cocker and the Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon penned its lyrics. This mingling of French and English influences is mirrored in Charlotte Gainsbourg's subtly expressive voice and accent, which provides the perfect complement to the album's lush sounds and vivid imagery.

10th anniversary reissue of this 12-track album, which was written and produced in 2013 and mixed with Erol Alkan at "The Phantasy Sound," the label's own studio in London. A difficult trick to master but like Carl Craig's More Songs About Food And Revolutionary Art, Plastikman's Consumed or more recently the work of Four Tet, the album works as a cohesive whole rather than a disparate collection of tracks. Innovative and forward thinking, Drone Logic manages to draw influences from beyond the dancefloor via My Bloody Valentine, NEU! and Chris Carter while still having the techno pulse to scale the walls of any club. The wide array of plaudits and early adopters of Daniel Avery's music is proof of this, ranging from acid house legends like The Chemical Brothers, Andrew Weatherall, and Richie Hawtin to the best of the new breed in Maya Jane Coles, James Holden, and Factory Floor. Firmly established as one of the UK's most exciting new DJ/producers having cut his teeth in Weatherall's Shoreditch studio bunker, Drone Logic follows up Avery's universally acclaimed mix CD for London clubbing institution Fabric where he remains a resident, recent remixes for Primal Scream, The Horrors, and Django Django. On Drone Logic there are no set piece vocals; when voices emerge on tracks, they are invariably disembodied, odd. And as distortion whips across techno-based backing tracks, it splices modern club music with the kind of sounds that forward thinking guitar bands might conjure up. The result is wholly compelling, gloriously transcendent and, yes, trippy.

2023 restock; LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's 6 - Interface, originally released in 1977. A brilliant moment occurs right at the end of Heldon's sixth album, Interface. The album's final song, its side-long title track, builds up slowly into a roaring tornado of fiercely mutating drum patterns, effervescent synth work, and guitar licks that wail into the atmosphere like an abandoned astronaut. Then, after nearly 19 minutes of highly futuristic avant-garde space rock, this ultramodern music fades out and is replaced by a concluding few seconds of traditional blues-rock guitar. "We were finishing the track, the tape was rolling, and I started to play a normal boogie or whatever," remembers Heldon leader Richard Pinhas. "I think it was a good idea to keep it. It just came naturally, at the end." This event acts as a reminder of just how far rock n' roll had been transformed since its earliest incarnations. This blueprint had been jolted and nudged down all kinds of unexpected avenues after players like Chuck Berry and Bill Haley first found fame. The genre had branched out into every manner of mutated form. It had given rise to misshapen clones and had shifted into unrecognizable shapes, like a beautiful alien creature from one of the science fiction tales that were fondly admired by so many experimental rock musicians, Pinhas included. Heldon, surely, represented one of rock n' roll's most distant relatives; an innovative fusion of avant-garde rock sounds and synthesizer pulsations. At the same time, Interface's unexpected ending also tells us that such music, however improvisatory or fused with electronic elements, will forever have its roots in those early rock n' roll records that are responsible for so many varieties of aural exploration. Thanks to the increased presence of drummer François Auger and synth/Moog man Patrick Gauthier, Pinhas's project had solidified into a harder and heavier unit. Around the time of the album's release, the musician and composer Jean-Philippe Goude told Pinhas that because of its merging of synthesizer sounds with "real" instrumentation. Despite its often warm and near-funky feel, Interface has been cited as an influence on key industrial and noise musicians including Wolf Eyes and Merzbow.

Recorded Live in Italy in October 1985 and mastered directly from the old dusty cassette, here's a previously unheard Steve Lacy recording from a rare duo appearance with pianist Martin Joseph, a little known yet fascinating British musician who had worked with Harry Beckett, John Surman, Ian Carr, and Tubby Hayes, among others, and who later became a regular presence on the Rome mid '70s creative Jazz scene. This recording presents an opportunity to listen to the soprano sax giant in a repertoire not frequently found on his other duo recordings with pianists. The set list includes some of Lacy's finest compositions like "Prospectus," "Flakes," and "Coastline," plus Thelonious Monk's classic "Bemsha Swing," a tribute to Monk's visionary mastery where Joseph's contrapuntal response to Lacy's angular lines leads the music towards a multidimensional space, a quality to be found throughout the whole album. This is a wonderful discovery, and a significant addition to Lacy's discography and legacy. Contains printed inner sleeve with archival photos and extensive liner notes by two Italian soprano saxophone specialists Roberto Ottaviano and Eugenio Colombo, and pianist Martin Joseph himself.

LP version. HYbr:ID Vol. 2 is the second installment of Alva Noto's HYbr:ID series initiated in 2021. The new album captures the music commissioned to score Richard Siegal's Ectopia performed in 2021 by Tanztheater Pina Bausch with Shooting into the Corner (2008-09) by Anish Kapoor. Building upon the captivating blend of immersive dub and electronica from the first installment, HYbr:ID Vol. 2 takes the listener on a journey into the realm of intricately manipulated digital production. These ten compositions delve into infinity, drawing inspiration from resonance and elasticity, concepts rooted in Minkowski's four-dimensional spacetime model. Throughout the album, Carsten Nicolai summons precise rhythmic patterns that gracefully hover, reminiscent of celestial bodies orbiting in perfect cosmic unison. The sonic landscape gradually unfolds with somber and brooding tones, incorporating spacious sound design, ethereal atmospheres, and cascading metallic percussions. These elements are delicately crafted with artistic finesse, set against a backdrop of expansive dub textures. At times, the music takes unforeseen turns, as melancholic chords skitter and meander through a digital haze, evoking an atmosphere of introspection and emotion. The ten compositions are accompanied by graphic notations informed by the album's sonic and acoustic codes. Album art designed by Carsten Nicolai / Nibo Mastering by Bo @ Calyx.

Noton presents Ray Collector, a limited-edition vinyl featuring recordings sourced from tapes produced by Carsten Nicolai for his 2023 solo exhibition Strahlen/Raggi at Fondazione Modena Arti Visive. In February 2022, Carsten Nicolai dispatched ten parcels from Berlin to various destinations. Each package contained a blank magnetic tape cassette, an Ilford delta 3200 ISO 1000 black-and-white film, and a Kodak ISO 800 color negative film. All parcels were addressed to the same recipient, Mr. Nemo, the unforgettable captain of the submarine nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. The idea was for the recipients to return the parcels to the sender. Each package held magnetic tapes and photosensitive films that would be exposed to electromagnetic waves and radiation during their journey. Upon their return to the sender, the latent impressions were developed, digitized, and thus made both visible and audible.

Singer, songwriter and author Ali Sethi had been entranced by Jaar's music long before they began collaborating. He'd absorbed the sounds over a number of years, listening casually and taking in their subtleties in bars and rooftop parties across Lahore and London. So when the two were finally introduced by Indian visual artist Somnath Bhatt, a regular Jaar collaborator who also handled the album's artwork, Sethi was well prepared. He began to sketch out voice notes using loops snipped from Jaar's acclaimed 2020 album Telas, improvising vocalizations and seductive Urdu poems over Jaar's weightless, time-bending productions. Improvisation has been important to the Chilean artist for many years. Before he had even started making electronic music, Jaar jammed on accordion with friends on the street in New York City. It's at the core of his practice, "a moment in time," in his own words. Sethi is best known globally for his attempts to revive the ghazal, an ancient poetic form that was taken by Sufi mystics from the Arab world to Persia and throughout the Indian subcontinent, where it captivated the royal court. It's been unfashionable in the last few decades, a mannered style associated with decadence, and Sethi offers it a new lease of life through his playfully revisionist covers and renditions. Sethi updates the ghazal form by using his years of training in raga music, lifting metaphors that reflect his journey as an out-of- place queer kid in Pakistan who became a US citizen and now lives in New York City.

Restocked. Dead Moon were a lo-fi garage/rock n' roll band from Portland, Oregon, active for almost 20 years between 1987 and 2006, during which time the band gained a mythic and legendary iconic status. Off the Grid is a "dizzying oral history" about this most stubborn, idealistic and arguably wildest band in the world -- a saga about love itself and the love of rock and roll, about DIY and about an improbable career. The biography of singer and guitarist Fred Cole (formerly of The Weeds, Lollipop Shoppe, and The Rats before Dead Moon) is like a rollercoaster ride through countless bands and musical styles beginning in the Teenbeat era of the '60s driven by an invisible force and one big love. Dead Moon cultivated their DIY code built around Fred's superstitions and avoidance of conventional music industry pitfalls. They toured around the world, played in live clubs between Oregon, Europe, and New Zealand. They cut their own records and ran their own music store and label -- Tombstone Music. Their story is completely unique in the pantheon of rock music: a group who never sold out, never gave in and built a legacy of art and community in a sustainable way almost unheard of. The book is a tribute to their unique aesthetic, unbelievable twisted path of a story and role as pioneers of the Portland music scene. Off the Grid is a declaration of love to Dead Moon, to music in general and to rock n' roll in particular. The documentation tells the entire Dead Moon saga in the words of the band itself. Close friend, author and editor szim spent three summers (2013-2016) in Fred and Toody Coles's attic sifting through photos, flyers and tour diaries, collecting posters and T-shirts and conducting extensive interviews. This fourth revised and updated edition contains 16 more pages than the third and 36 more pages than the first one. The already extensive photo section now holds even more historical material, posters, flyers as well as an extended and completed discography and gig list. Exclusive to this edition is an interview with Edwin He. Softcover; 336 pages. 9.49x1.06x12.6 inches; 3.59 pounds.

2023 repress; LP version. 180 gram vinyl, half speed mastered; heavy sleeve with obi and gold ink. We Release Jazz announce the official reissue of Hiroshi Suzuki's Cat, a glorious jazz-fusion-funk holy grail originally released in 1976. Cat was recorded in October 1975 at Nippon Columbia Studio, while Hiroshi Suzuki was visiting his home country of Japan after moving to Las Vegas in 1971 to play with Buddy Rich and perfect his craft. Back on his old stomping grounds, the man known as Neko (Cat) immediately reunited with his dear friends for an epic two-day session of groove magic. The chemistry was still intact. The skills and style had grown. The result, Cat, is a smooth masterpiece, a deep and soulful affair where stunning trombone solos by Hiroshi Suzuki flirt with Takeru Muraoka's heavenly saxophone and the sensual rhythm section of Hiromasa Suzuki (keyboards), Kunimitsu Inaba (bass), and Akira Ishikawa (drums). Celebrated in jazz collectors circles, in the lo-fi beat scene, and among music diggers around the world, Cat has become one of the most sought-after Japanese jazz albums of all time and, much like Ryo Fukui's Scenery, has fascinated old and young generations alike. Sourced from the original masters. Liner notes by Teruo Isono.

Tropic of Capricorn is the second album by Lawrence English and Werner Dafeldecker. Based on field recordings made by the prolific Room40 owner that were subtly but decisively altered with electroacoustic techniques through the German improv legend, these two long-form pieces blur the lines between acoustic ecology and aesthetic interventions, concrete local sound worlds and boundary-defying art. They put a focus on our relationship with nature as listeners as much as they call into question where nature ends and human perception begins. They are deeply confusing, disorienting perhaps, in the most beautiful ways. English recorded the material that form the basis of the duo's Hallow Ground debut on two different field trips. One led him from the Western coast to the Pilbara region in the North of the country called Australia, the other to the central desert into the lands of the Arrernte people. When recording the soundscapes, the artist put a focus on the residues of failed colonial aspirations. "The buildings and objects that remain from the failed cattle pastures and other endeavors create uneasy sound worlds of their own," English says of the regions that are also places of extraction, especially the heavily mined Pilbara. "There is a distant drone of industry in even the most remote of places; an unsettled sense of heavy breath on the land." He brought home a document of natural reclamation in time. The rich source material was then given to Dafeldecker. Spatializing the recordings with transducers applied to different surfaces such as wood, stretched animal skin, glass, or metal surfaces and also re-recording parts of the recordings, he created discrete events that were inserted into, or rather enmeshed with English's recordings. What Tropic of Capricorn invites its listeners to listen beyond the preconceived notions of how nature is supposed to be represented in sound and to instead embrace the immediacy of the sensation.

LP version. As Brian Eno famously said, "The studio is a musical instrument," Bruce Brubaker now says, "A musical instrument can be a studio." Eno Piano, is a stunning reinterpretation by American pianist Bruce Brubaker of selected tracks from Brian Eno's ambient masterpieces, including iconic Music for Airports as well as three original compositions venturing into his collaborations with Harold Budd, Hans Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius, or Jon Hopkins. In his explorations of minimalism, Bruce Brubaker makes connections to music old and new. In his album Codex, there was a dialogue between open-form music by Terry Riley and very early keyboard pieces written down by anonymous scribes in the 15th century, while Brubaker's performances of music by Philip Glass enabled the releases of the critically acclaim Glass Piano and his collaboration on Glassform with Max Cooper (IF 1059CD/LP, 2020). Brian Eno's music is equally a significant part of the repetition-based musical minimalism in the 20th century. Eno Piano acknowledges a deep artistic bond. In Eno Piano, the piano, one of the first "synthesizers," becomes a new kind of fantastic resonating box -- a supernatural synthesizer. The album is a compelling discovery, a rereading, reinterpretation, "re-production" of Brian Eno's music, from the hands of a visionary virtuoso. Sonically, the record is a combination of Bruce's piano playing, and piano sounds made using new electromagnetic "bows" that vibrate strings inside the piano creating drone notes. The album represents a leap, into a new genre of post-ambient, post-piano piano music. Here, sound technology heightens artistic sensitivity, and the listener's presence in the moment. An instrument is reimagined, refashioned. The usual boundaries of time and sound loosen allowing the formation of a new 21st-century beauty.

Nairobi-born Berlin-based sound artist Joseph Kamaru, aka KMRU, shares his new work Stupor on the new Helsinki-based label Other Power. Commissioned by the Helsinki curatorial and commissioning agency PUBLICS, Stupor is comprised of three original long form tracks; "CRP-12," "Even a Tear," and the title track "Stupor." The tracks on the album are speculative notes to social architectures and environments the artist has traversed. His signature emerges through electro-acoustic forms as he configures spatial and temporal imaginaries still tethered to the experiences of the places his ear encountered. The tracks on this album are speculative notes to social architectures and environments the artist has traversed. His orchestrated compositions and arrangements levitate us and turn our ears towards places and times beyond our reach, propelling us into a future anticipated but ungraspable. It is exactly the physical and psychological space that KMRU forges from his recordings and digital processes that stretch and transform them into prolific sound "events." For Joseph Kamaru, sound is a sensorial medium through which social, material and conceptual interpretations are manifested in his works. KMRU carries with him a repository of listening experiences from Nairobi and beyond expanding his sonic practices, bringing an awareness of surroundings through creative compositions, installations and performances. KMRU has carved out a serious and definitive space on the list of essential authors in ambient experimental music -- one of the most prolific and innovative artists in his field.

In 1983, Dieter Moebius (Cluster) and legendary producer Conny Plank teamed up for the third time, resulting in the Zero Set project. On this occasion, they were backed up by one of the best drummers on the German rock scene: Mani Neumeier of Guru Guru. Moebius had got to know and admire him as the live drummer for Harmonia (Moebius, Roedelius, Rother) and during the recording sessions for their second album (De Luxe). Conny Plank, usually more of a background figure as producer, takes an equal share of the limelight alongside the musicians. His supermodern studio is brought into play like an instrument in its own right; Plank explores the full range of audio editing, pushing recording techniques to the limit to achieve maximum brilliance and plasticity. Neumeier uses all of his many years of experience as a drummer, demonstrating the precision and stamina of a drum machine, just infinitely livelier and more inventive. And finally, to Moebius. Always one of the patriarchs of German electronic music, a creator of the most bizarre sound happenings, yet never sounding forced or arbitrary. On the contrary, he consistently worked within the context of the tracks themselves and their relationship to each other. The music on Zero Set flows both smoothly and energetically. No single idea is overplayed, none of the tracks hits the ten-minute mark. Aural and musical structures are concentrated to the point of askesis, yet there is no mistaking just how much the musicians are relishing playing together -- these are the two very different, yet defining characteristics of the album. Moebius, Neumeier and Plank are unsentimental in their use of technology, exploiting it as an effective tool in pursuit of their musical vision. Three musicians at the top of their game and far too smart to allow their efforts to drift into psychedelic meanderings. Limited Anniversary Edition: hand numbered, limited edition white vinyl, 500 copies available.

By 1969 at the latest, Dieter Moebius was synonymous with the avant-garde electronic music scene in Germany. He and Hans-Joachim Roedelius formed Cluster, a seminal electronic/ambient duo, whilst Moebius was also a member of the so-called Krautrock supergroup Harmonia (with Michael Rother and Roedelius), as well as collaborating on various other projects with the likes of Brian Eno and Mani Neumeier from Guru Guru. Somehow, it took Moebius until 1983 to release his own solo debut album, Tonspuren. Tonspuren is an album of minimalisms, miniatures and stringent form, ten consistently concise and precise pieces. Moebius develops tonal variations out of minimalistic, rhythmic, harmonic basic tracks, sometimes coming close to tangible melodies. Yet this is exactly the point at which he purposely steers clear of electronic pop criteria. Nevertheless, Tonspuren is a pop album, its radically stripped-down contents replenished with harmonious elements of prevalent popular music. Echoes of Cluster notwithstanding, the music of Tonspuren is a separate entity altogether. Moebius seems to be avoiding improvisation as the devil keeps his distance from holy water. Each piece is thoughtfully composed, as Moebius crafts his miniatures layer by layer. Spontaneous inaccuracies have no place here, noise escapades are nipped in the bud. Baroque, folklore and frivolity are not admitted into the studio when the red light is on. Thanks to Tonspuren, the keen listener now has the opportunity of direct comparison in his appraisal of the solo albums of Dieter Moebius, Hans Joachim Roedelius and Michael Rother. What role did each of the Harmonia triumvirate play in creating the style of the supergroup? Tonspuren thus represents a vital piece of the Harmonia puzzle. Limited Anniversary Edition: hand numbered, limited edition white vinyl, 500 copies available.

LP version. Red color vinyl. "[Martin] Rev initially explored free jazz and similarly free forms of musical expression before discovering the magnetic attraction of electronic production and instrumentation, enabling him to create music in a wholly independent and autonomous environment. Using the most rudimentary equipment, he grafted the roots of rock n' roll into the process of combining effects and devices to generate electrified sounds, the likes of which had never been heard before. This music would map out the way forward not only for Suicide, but also for a fascinating solo career. Martin Rev's predilection for experimentation knew no bounds. At home, he played around with rough ideas, trying out all manner of variations and colorations. These tape recordings provide a captivating insight into his modus operandi, often representing the early stages of what would later become Suicide tracks or cuts on Rev's solo albums. Spanning the period 1973 to 1985, the recordings on The Sum of Our Wounds are much more than a collection of demos and outtakes. One has the sense of listening to a rounded album of familiar compositions, now portrayed in a completely new light. The brittle fragility of these cassette pieces reveals a deep-lying sensitivity, like a collection of wounds..." --Daniel Jahn, June 2023

LP version. With Ein Bündel Fäulnis in der Grube, Holger Hiller presented his solo debut having left Palais Schaumburg. Originally released in 1983 on the Düsseldorf scene label Ata Tak, an international release followed in 1984 via Cherry Red Records. Combining electronic sequencer sounds and sampling fragments with unconventional lyrics its multidisciplinary approach locates it somewhere between the pop and avant-garde. Bureau B is now making the work accessible again on its 40th anniversary.

"In 1983, during the completion of this album, some ideas and views of the future changed for me. While everyone's mind was still haunted by the admonishingly gloomy vision of George Orwell's 1984, the release of the motion picture Blade Runner had a lasting effect. It depicted a world that can no longer be saved: Acid rain is pouring down derelict buildings and humanity has to confront fugitive cyborgs as a result of artificial intelligence gone wrong. The future however was not quite so clear-cut as those pictures: dystopian imaginings were also being layered with mosaic pieces of a pop history that saw itself as a source of hope, a supposed counterculture. Could this promise be fulfilled or was it simply a 'productive misunderstanding?' With the onset of digitalization, the new musical tools -- first and foremost the techniques of 'sampling' and computerized sequencing -- were enthusiastically met by me and many others, a generation of William Burroughs readers whose sensibility had been nurtured by 'cut-up' and 'automatic writing.' And so everything flowed together on this album: the esoteric heritage of various hippie and alternative movements and their expressions in 'pop,' the underlying currents of 'Modernism' and the influences of European 'neue musik.' The resulting musical pieces on the album celebrate this moment in its simultaneity, its confusion and its new confidence." --Holger Hiller

A more than welcomed re-issue for the iconic post-punk band Sad Lovers And Giants, coming all the way from Watford. The album showcases a collection of unreleased recordings -- mostly conceived between 1981 and 1983 -- and it is a right companion to their two-studio masterpiece: "Epic Garden Music" and "Feeding The Flames."

Lucy Railton trusts in the nuance of her own creative instincts on an intensely modern, quietly radical new album, her second for Modern Love. Following her 2018 solo debut Paradise 94 (LOVE 108LP), and countless collaborations in the time since, Railton's diverse musical circles here bleed into each other, creating an insoluble testament to a lifelong pursuit of sound. The multi-instrumentalist further articulates her own tonal register, embracing her solo strengths and trusting the process to reveal vulnerable and compelling emotional facets through a fluid mix of composition, and pure expression. On the simplest level, Corner Dancer is a record that revels in the momentum of creation. Through a range of approaches, Railton gradually loosens her grip and allows her identities to expose themselves; cut to the bone, sinew and spirit of music making. Reaching outside tried and tested zones, she lands at a charged space characterized by unmetered pacing and an embrace of imperfection, using cello, viella (a medieval cello), Buchla, 808, a fan, synths, horse hair whips, a handheld harp and her own voice, across eight tracks that arc from an opening sequence of ruptured asymmetries, to something bordering the sublime on "Blush Study," the album's masterful closing flourish. In between, Railton invokes psychoacoustic, heady spins and repetitions, while also allowing space for live performance, a mode to which she feels most attuned, and here captured best on "Held in Paradise" (her violin debut) and "Rib Cage." Collapsing boundaries, Railton harnesses a lifetime of formal training in order to patiently trace more ambiguous, intimate and sometimes deviant shapes, operating to a fuzzed logic that loops back to themes with an ingenious underlying dramaturgy of energies, dismantling the form from the inside out, in a way that bends through feeling, rather than design.

"In the swirl of underground music emerging from Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1980s, Peter Gutteridge stands as one of the era's most intense and shadowy figures. Despite being a founding member of The Clean and The Chills, Gutteridge would eschew indie-rock fame for the hypnotic and driving sounds of his later bands such as Snapper. Fittingly, it is Pure -- Gutteridge's lone solo album of intimate home recordings -- that serves as the most revealing and celebrated release of his career. As Peter Jefferies writes in the liner notes, 'That's what's so good about Pure. Not only the songs, but the name, the name for the recording. It is as pure as you can get. That's the real deal, when it goes from nothing to something and he catches it on his machine.' Originally released on cassette in 1989 on Xpressway, Pure documents Gutteridge's stunning use of four-track as instrument. Featuring lo-fi pop gems and interstitial sketches, the LP combines densely layered keyboards and guitars, distorted drum machines and possessed-sounding vocals to create a truly singular work of undistilled artistic vision. While Gutteridge denied that he was the architect of the 'Dunedin Sound,' Pure sits comfortably next to the most revered Flying Nun releases of its time. Shifting exquisitely from churning rattle to an airy ease without losing momentum, these twenty-one songs hold a lasting place in the canon of DIY music. Recommended for fans of Syd Barrett, Jim Shepard, and early Fad Gadget. Includes drawing chosen by Peter's family."

Sun Electric, the Berlin-based electronic music duo of Tom Thiel and Max Loderbauer, were among the pioneers of "live" electronica presentation in the early 1990s, when options for realtime reproduction of one's sound were a fraction of what we enjoy today. Perhaps a spiritual successor to earlier forms of "kosmische" music, which saw the exploration of outer and inner space as being equally worthwhile undertakings, Sun Electric's music was expansive, epic, and involving in a way that prioritized the communion between sounds and listeners over the public exposition of the musicians' personalities. Space was, of course, utilized as an instrument unto itself: a fact that is evident in this new release of a notable 1996 set in which Sun Electric performed at the neo-Gothic Votivkirche in Vienna. Over 75 minutes of performance time, the duo took full advantage of the 20-second reverb decay time offered by the space. The real star here remains the way in which the interdependent musical objects move through open space and mutually evolve with it, and the percussive impacts are part of a "sonic democracy," standing on an equal footing with the glistening effects and the lapping waves of sequenced melody. It's the consistent application of these strengths which allows the music of Sun Electric not to be a "nostalgic trip" to a simpler time, but very much a part of the musical dialogue of the present.

2023 restock. Reissue, originally released in 1986. A dreamlike dispatch from mid-80s Japan, the first and only Hallelujahs album is an entrancing and gentle work of psychedelic pop brilliance. In a series of informal studio sessions between 1985 and 1986, Shinji Shibayama (Nagisa Ni Te) gathered a group of friends, emerging luminaries from the burgeoning Kansai underground rock scene including Naoki Zushi (Hijokaidan, Spiral Stairs / 螺旋階段), Ken Ichi "Idiot" Takayama (Idiot O'Clock), and Chie Mukai (Ché-SHIZU) to form what would become known as Hallelujahs. The result was a music of deep feeling and wonderment created through simple song craft and imbued with a sort of guileless magic. Their sole album presented a set of unvarnished songs, filled with vulnerable, intimate moments, caught on reel to reel, most often in single takes never to be repeated. The album was self-released in 1986 in a micro-edition of 300 copies. It was the first record by Shibayama's now revered ORG Records which would go on to introduce the world to the likes of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Reiko Kudo as well as his own group, Nagisa Ni Te. With affinities to the sounds of the Rough Trade and Flying Nun labels, the Paisley Underground and Galaxie 500, the Hallelujahs' Eat Meat, Swear an Oath is an utterly unique masterpiece that remains a touchstone for generations of like spirited artists in Japan and around the world. Black Editions is proud to present this all-time classic in a deluxe vinyl edition, remastered from the original tapes and presented in a heavy tip-on jacket with textured paper, mounted high quality print, foil stamped finishes and spot colors. Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI.

LP version. The avant-garde Kraut ensemble Supersempfft laid the foundation for their techno-tropical pop music in 1979 with their debut album Roboterwerke. In 1981, they followed up with the album Metaluna, which is now being honored through a re-release on Bureau B. The group, consisting of Dieter Kolb, Franz Knüttel, and Franz Aumüller, fused global influences, experimental sonic landscapes, and surreal lyrics into a unique sonic cosmos. Metaluna stands out with its meandering sequences, unconventional rhythms, and psychedelic songwriting that remains groundbreaking even decades later. After their first album, Kolb and Aumüller's love of reggae and dub took them on a transatlantic trip to Trinidad and Tobago under the false assumption that all the islands stepped to the Jamaican style. Any momentary disappointment was soon dispelled by the liveliness and optimism of calypso and soca, and a life affirming experience at carnival left them awestruck and inspired. Back home, they began work on Metaluna, a wild combination of roving sequences, tropical rhythms, squashed brass and yearning vocals which sprints, skanks and soars through ten triumphant tracks. Amid the metallic beats and interplanetary idents lurk sublime melodies and soulful motifs, psychedelic songwriting reminiscent of Barrett, Beefheart, or Brian Wilson at their best. In their dubbier moments, Supersempfft sound like Lee Perry jamming on an alien console, with wild panning and delirious FX suggesting a sound clash on a distant planet. Meanwhile the arcade exuberance, vocoder gospel and space age ballads predate the sweltering synth-pop of The Knife, Hot Chip, and Ariel Pink by a full two decades, setting a bar that their successors still fail to meet. Innovative, experimental yet still heavy on the hooks, Metaluna is both a jubilant expression of its creators' tastes and a masterclass in mercurial pop -- a success of self-expression which proves once again that the best bands play for themselves.

"In January 1983, Minor Threat went into Inner Ear Studio for the first time as a five-piece (Brian Baker had moved from bass to second guitar and Steve Hansgen was now playing bass). They had six new songs that would end up being the center piece of what became the Out of Step 12" EP. The band had also decided to re-record the song 'Out of Step' with some extra language to try to clarify the lyrics, as well as 'Cashing In,' a tongue-in-cheek song about the DC punk scene which they had only played live once. After much debate, 'Cashing In' was added as a hidden track on the original vinyl release though not listed on the cover or label. There was still blank tape on the reel, so they decided to record an instrumental with the working title 'Addams Family' and then recorded new versions of 'In My Eyes' and 'Filler' to hear what they sounded like with two guitars. 'Addams Family' ended up being used as a coda to 'Cashing In,' but the other two songs were never mixed and largely forgotten for over 35 years until the multitrack tapes were taken into the studio to be digitized in 2021. Surprised by the discovery, Ian and Don Zientara mixed the two songs along with the complete take of 'Addams Family.' These outtakes are now being released on a 7" to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Out of Step."

The composer behind one of the most sensational breakthroughs in Danish music invites you on a crackling, ever-changing and deeply personal journey. His third album Atmospherics drops after a decade in which Mike Sheridan has searched deeply to find and capture his inner sound. Films, theatres and art museums have benefited from Mike Sheridan's sense of sound and melody for the past ten years. An album has been a long time coming because, in the wake of his breakthrough at the age of 16, he needed to listen extra closely to his inner sounds. With Atmospherics, he unfolds the music in a meeting between who he once was and who he is today. Three years ago, he began to create what is now the album Atmospherics. The term refers to electrical disturbances in the atmosphere, such as during a thunderstorm, which can interact with and distort wireless signals. Here, the title refers to both the sound of the album itself, where computer collages, classical instruments crystal clear melodies and heavy rhythms collide, and to the electronic processing and reworking. But really, he thought it would be a quiet release, almost devoid of melodies. Themes and music slide in and out of each other on the album. There are moments of dub, techno, pop and modern compositional music. There are sounds and beats that crackle, dissolve, replace each other, or connect with each other in new ways. In this way, Atmospherics can be listened to as a long exhalation from an artist who has dared to hold his breath longer than most. Atmospherics features both Danish and international guests such as Agnes Aldén (a singer, songwriter and producer from Falun, Sweden), Indra Rios-Moore (a singer, songwriter and arranger, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan), BYLJA and Janus Rasmussen - as well as a host of Sheridan's regular musicians. The artwork for Atmospherics is created by visual artist Nicolai Howalt.

Double LP version. RSE surprise album just in time before the migration to cooler waters. Grown in the shade of the glacier. Killer Whale Atmospheres is a future-memory affair of sub bass propulsive drones, rhythms, chords and dorsal scars building to a forbidding sense of cold echolocations yet to come through the violent procession of darkening rains. Black vinyl double LP in wide spine sleeve. Digital download code included.

"Before hitting the road together in 2022, Bill Nace and Emily Robb recorded a tour split -- a cassette, limited run of 50 -- only to be found at their merch table. Now on vinyl, the split captures a moment bursting with verdant, crisp anticipation. Both artists were then on the heels of significant artistic leaps. Robb was wrapping up the promotional cycle of her first full-length solo record, 2021's How To Moonwalk, and Nace had recently shifted his focus from prepared guitar to the taishogoto, a Japanese instrument rarely heard in the west. When Nace plays his taisho live, listeners generally respond in a couple of different ways. Some become slightly hypnotized by the constant motion required to maintain the instrument's frantic, electric flicker. Others, on the edge of their seats, whoop loudly, almost involuntarily, to release the mounting tension. As a performer, Nace says the experience is a bit like being watched while jogging in place. Where the guitar easily allows space, this particular model of taishogoto has no sustain. 'I have to keep playing it to keep making sound,' Nace says. 'I have to get whipped up into this state.' This presents new limitations, and Nace expands to the edges. Here it shudders and sparks, spiking and scribbling like an EKG. It emanates white light, white heat. Robb luminates in a balmier way, like sunshine through leaves. Her guitar arcs and billows. Fripp-y tones and textures establish a structure inside which it feels good to get lost. Robb describes her improvisational playing here as somewhat meditative. 'There's a constant running through it,' she says. It's like 'hearing a story of a person's mind and emotions as they let music flow through.' Nace notes that coincidentally, the two sides -- both recorded by Robb at her Suddenly Studio in Philadelphia -- mirror one another in structure: 'There's a stripped-down element that both things have. It's almost more about cutting things away than adding.' Having frequently worked together in the studio over the last few years, Robb says they've each developed an understanding of the other's processes. 'We often discuss quite a lot but conversely, sometimes we don't have to say anything.'" --Margaret Welsh, Queens, NY 2023

"I was hanging out with Bill Orcutt at the 930 Club nearly 30 years ago, watching a famous post-rock band (who shall remain nameless, but whose moniker contained two-and-a-half times more articles and conjunctions than nouns) when he said: 'This band is like my band in college -- all major 7th and 9th chords.' I relate this to emphasize that in the case of Bill Orcutt and Harry Pussy, the seemingly untutored ooze of 'Please Don't Come Back From the Moon' and 'Girl With Frog' had its genesis in something far more Apollonian than is usually understood. It's debatable whether or not Watt, the duo of Orcutt and drummer Tim Koffley featured on Recorded in Miami, is the above referenced grad-school band. Watt is not resplendent with jazz chords, but it's certainly more tutored, offering a mannered link between the contemporaneous Thunders-esque punk of Orcutt's Trash Monkeys and Harry Pussy's mayhem. The continuity with Harry Pussy is more than temporal -- Recorded in Miami is Orcutt's first use of the four-string guitar, and Harry Pussy claimed the same amp and drum kit. The resemblance more or less ends there. To further put Recorded in Miami -- made on Orcutt's Walkman, Rat Bastard's North Miami studio, and South Miami's Natural Sound (total bill $289) -- into context, consider the fecundity of the underground music world as the '80s rolled into the '90s. It's hard to relate to those who missed it, but it was a time when post-hardcore hadn't quite given way to the bloat of grunge, when the Minutemen held sway (for the moment) over Led Zeppelin. The indie world was ruled by an ever-propagating compost heap of jagged guitar bands like TFUL282, Truman's Water, and (to crank it back a couple years) Phantom Tollbooth. And in some ways (although Orcutt swears Watt's prime influences were James Blood Ulmer and Fred Frith's Massacre), this record seems very much cut from that decade-ending cloth, seemingly only one vocal overdub away from a Homestead catalog number. Track after track (mostly titled after episodes of Art Clokey's slyly Buddhist TV masterwork, Gumby), Recorded in Miami's tracks spill over with right angles, rockist tropes, and verse/ chorus structures, from the Minutemen-oid funk of 'Band Contest' to the stroked Moore-Ranaldo-isms of 'The Young and the Decoding.' Yet Orcutt's fretboard-spanning angular melodic runs are right up front in the latter, and the final two tracks introduce a bit of the explosive chaos that would follow when Adris finally claimed the drum kit. Consider 'Wattstock,' where Koffley forms the bedrock for an extended Orcutt hotbox of instantly-composed harmolodics. Or 'God Are You There, It's Me, Watt,' where we can hear the spontaneous vocal bursts (the only vocals on the album) that would re-emerge on Orcutt's early solo records. Watt began to crumble when Koffley, as drummers will do, yearned for rhythmic grids of increasing complexity, while Orcutt instead wanted to 'smoke more pot and improvise.' For a few records with Harry Pussy, Orcutt would get his wish (though some of the structuralism of Watt would creep into later records). But we shouldn't regard Recorded in Miami as mere transitional scraps of juvenalia, or stunt-rock delivered for the mere thrill of pulling it off. Rather, it's an early, major piece of the unfolding and complex puzzle of Orcutt's music. A foundation. And without the earth beneath our feet, how can we ever reach the sky?" --Tom Carter

2023 repress! 75 Dollar Bill, a project by Che Chen and Rick Brown present Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. "Che's interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm 'boom' sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we're likely to do in the percussion realm. Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rok, this new record, differs quite a bit from the previous one, notably in the rhythmic 'tone.' Wooden Bag (2015) was all forward momentum, stomping and shaking, but the new record explores a long-standing interest of mine: odd and 'compound' meters. In most of my previous musical activities, I've convinced my partners to delve into this, but in 75 Dollar Bill it has just felt natural and I believe Che's modal investigations and melodic/harmonic tendencies enhance (and are enhanced by) this combination. The current record differs from the last in another big way: reinforcements! Over our few years together, Che and I have frequently had friends play with us at some of our gigs. There have been all sorts of permutations of instruments and some great friends/players who don't all appear on this record but here we are lucky to have a bunch of them: Cheryl Kingan (of The Scene Is Now) on baritone and alto saxes, Andrew Lafkas (of Todd Capp's Mystery Train) on contrabass, Karen Waltuch