News & Events
Ship Chop is a celebratory cut-up of far-flung musics. Edited, collaged and re-arranged by Daniel Padden from original vinyl sources to create impossible collaborations between musical ghosts.
It is both reverential and sacrilegious, giving the music its full praise whilst also subjecting it to playful subversion. Some of the editing is obvious and transparent, but some of it much less so, where sounds from different recordings and continents overlap into an unlikely whole.
Techno isn’t a genre that has birthed many consistent albums, and the dub techno subgenre even less so, but one indisputable classic is Porter Ricks’ debut Biokinetics. Originally issued on the legendary Basic Channel sub-label Chain Reaction in 1996 following a trio of 12”s, Biokinetics was the first of the label’s album releases, and still stands as its crowning achievement. The duo was made up of dark ambient pioneer Thomas Koner and sound engineer Andy Mellwig, and between them they re-framed the techno sound, imbuing the spacious ambience pioneered by label bosses Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald with a frosty, isolated experimental bent, and combining it with the sort of haunted minimalism of early Plastikman.
What separated Biokinetics from other albums at the time was its unwavering narrative – the exact sound has been interpreted countless times since, but the immersive qualities of this singular record have rarely been touched. Maybe it is down to the silvery underwater concept that ties each track together – the bubbling pads, sub-aquatic basses and muffled kick drums. But as with any great album, it’s hard to exactly put your finger on what makes it a classic. Simply put Biokinetics is one of the most important records in the genre, and it’s a pleasure for us to make it available to the world once more.
More information here.
AIDAN BAKER & THISQUIETARMY - DOCUMENT: EUROTOUR 2011 - LIVE IN PARIS & LJUBLJANA
The long awaited 3xCD document from Aidan Baker & thisquietarmy's
European tour in 2011 is finally available!
This document should have been available sooner, but the magnitude of
this project overcame several mutations. In the end, we wanted to
present this document as a very limited box set with tons of goodies
as to relate the tour experience as much as possible, and to be
distributed directly into their hands of our closet fans. No middlemen
& no promos for this one. Thus, we have chosen to release it through
TQA Records (thisquietarmy's label) & Pirate Ship Records (one of our
mutual fan), with the exclusive distribution from Basses Fréquences
(our mutual French label) & Broken Spine Productions (Aidan Baker's
label). This document presents 3 live sets on 3 separate black-
bottomed discs:
Disc 1 (silver) - Aidan Baker & thisquietarmy - Live in Paris (May 29th, 2011)
Disc 2 (white) - Aidan Baker - Live in Ljubljana (June 7th, 2011)
Disc 3 (black) - thisquietarmy - Live in Ljubljana (June 7th, 2011)
The Paris show was set up by Basses Fréquences, at the Village Label
of the Villette Sonique festival for a collaboration between Aidan
Baker & thisquietarmy, in which Aidan have decided to play the drums
merely five minutes before the show started. Needless to say that this
recording has captured an incredibly unique & spontaneous performance
that was not rehearsed in any way, and that could never be reproduced
again. The solo sets from the Ljubljana concert (set up by Rok
Pregelj) were recorded at Menza Pri Koritu with the collaboration of
the venue's soundman Marko Trsenjak. Aidan's set was completely
improvised, while thisquietarmy's set incorporates some open-ended
song structures from his latest releases mixed with several improvised
segments.
Additionally, we have included a tour report, a tour diary (written by
Eric Quach), 3 flyers from the Bochum (designed by Dimitrios Kaitsis),
Paris (designed by Jerome Moncada) & Ljubljana (designed by Zoran
Pungercar) show and an unique set of 6 photographs randomly picked
from 100 photos taken during the tour by Eric Quach. All of these
items fit inside an elegant white A7 envelope, on which was printed a
photograph of Aidan Baker & thisquietarmy, taken the morning after the
first show of the tour in Bochum, Germany by Cristobal Marquez.
The whole thing is enclosed inside a beautiful white DVD triple-case.
Lastly, every case is decorated with an old and unique European stamp,
and also includes a custom-made guitar pick embedded with Pirate Ship
Records' & TQA Records' logos. Everything was designed, printed, cut
and hand-assembled by Eric Quach, with the help of Jason Sykes.
Release date: Febuary 14th, 2012. Regular price: 25$ + shipping.
Pre-order between Febuary 7th and Febuary 13th to reserve your copy,
specially priced at only 20$ + shipping:
https://thisquietarmy.storenvy.com/products/256477-tqa021-aidan-baker-thisquietarmy-eurotour-2011-3xcd
Also available digitally for 10$:
http://tqarecords.bandcamp.com/album/tqa021-aidan-baker-thisquietarmy-document-eurotour-2011-live-in-paris-ljubljana
Young God Records has announced the release of a new live Swans album We Rose From Your Bed With The Sun In Our Head, a 2 CD set.
We Rose From Your Bed With The Sun In Our Head is Handmade and Assembled With 2 Color Woodblock Print Sleeve of Original Drawing by M.Gira. Each One Uniquely Signed and Numbered and Further Personalized by M.Gira.
This Version is a Limited Edition of 1000 and includes Exclusive Solo Recordings of Songs for New Swans. Album in Progress (as well as narrations/explanations re the new songs, exclusive to this version).
JOHN WIESE 'Seven of Wands' (PAN 22)
As a composer, John Wiese is an elusive one. Employing a very healthy range of conceptual framework throughout his oevure, he's unmistakably recognizable, but rarely easy to predict. No matter what the sound, we find it always sounds like Wiese. Seven Of Wands contains a romanticism only hinted at previously. Comprised of pieces from a range of eras and sequenced into a narrative arc, this very unique album has a quality of being beautiful, listenable, immersive, and transportive all at once. He probably wouldn't like this, but I dare say "musical."
Let's look for a second at the development of Wiese's solo albums to date: Magical Crystal Blah (2003), Soft Punk (2002–2005), Dramatic Accessories (2007), Circle Snare (2008), Zombie (2009), and now Seven Of Wands (2004–2010). With the exception of Zombie's rigid conceptualism, what we can see is a development of a completely individual approach to cutting and stereo spectrum, with a constantly fluctuating degree of severity in choice of sounds. On this latest, we see this transposed to a longer-form, with more emphasis on beauty and musical qualities (well, don't get me wrong), employing strategies and techniques of musique concrète and electroacoustic music throughout, all the while further emphasizing the mixing desk as a true instrument.
Two of the albums central pieces were developed while touring the US, UK and Europe with Liars, No Age, and (in quadraphonic) Matmos, and feature source material contributed by Angus Andrew (voice, field recording) and Julian Gross (percussion) of Liars. This is Wiese's second release on PAN, following the vinyl edition of C-Section, his duo album with Evan Parker.
The CD is a limited edition of 1000 copies, and is packaged in a pro-press digisleeve jacket which itself is housed in a one-tone silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by John Wiese and Bill Kouligas.
More information is available at the PAN website.
ELI KESZLER 'Cold Pin' (PAN 21)
Over two years in the making, Cold Pin is the new full length record by Eli Keszler. Both a composition and stand alone installation, 14 strings ranging in length from 25 to 3 feet are strung across a 15 x 40 curved wall, with motors attacking the strings, connected by micro-controllers, pick-ups and rca cables. Recorded in Boston's historic Cyclorama, a massive dome built to house the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg painting in 1884. The b side features in addition, a 'dry' version of the installation with motor attacks on metal squares rather then strings, creating dense percussive clusters. Cold Pin works within the frame work of left to right time and vertical structure. The installation acts as the architecture of the music, surrounding and immersing the live instruments into incredible density and sharp angular mass shapes, and functions alone as the performers stops. Rather then an individual sound the sustained horns, strings, drums and metallic attacks function as a singular unit, and continue too when they stop alongside the installation. Cold Pin features Eli Keszler (drums, crotales installation and guitar), Geoff Mullen (guitar), Ashley Paul (clarinet, guitar, greenbox) Greg Kelley (trumpet), Reuben Son (bassoon) and Benjamin Nelson (cello).
Eli Keszler is a composer, artist and multi-instrumentalist based in New York City. In performance, he often plays drums, bowed crotales and guitar in conjunction with his installations. In his ensemble compositions, he uses extended strings, motors, crotales, horns and mechanical devices to create his sound, balancing intense harmonic formations with acoustic sustain, fast jarring rhythm, mechanical propulsion, dense textures and detailed visual presentations. Eli has toured extensively throughout Europe and the US, performing solo and in collaboration with artists such as Phill Niblock, Aki Onda, Joe Mcphee, Loren Connors, Jandek, Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Coleman, Joe Morris, Steve Beresford, C Spencer Yeh, Greg Kelley (Nmperign), T Model Ford, Ran Blake, Ashley Paul and Steve Pyne. He has recorded solo releases for labels such as hiw own REL Records, ESP-DISK' and Type (Red Horse). His installations have appeared at the Boston Center for the Arts and Nuit Blanche NYC and the Shreveport MSPC New Music Festival. He has most recently won the Mata composers competition for the 2012 season. Eli Keszler is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston where he studied with Anthony Coleman and Ran Blake.
The Lp is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, in a limited edition of 500 copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by Kathryn Politis & Bill Kouligas.
More information available at the PAN website.
MATT CHRISTENSEN
A CRADLE IN THE BOWERY
Under The SpireRecordings
Vinyl and CD available now.
http://www.underthespire.co.uk/
Matt Christensen of Chicago’s premier pastoral bliss inducers Zelienople ventures out on his own with this triumphant set of dedications to his young daughter. Siphoning strains of melancholic Americana through the trancelike prisms of groups such as Spaceman 3 and Galaxie 500, he creates swirling vistas on tracks such as mesmeric opener Someday I Won’t Matter that’ll be familiar to his group’s many admirers. But elsewhere Christensen pares back the layers to reveal this beautiful album’s emotive, breathing core, baring pellucid folk patinas that recall everyone from Nick Drake to Damon & Naomi, all shrouded in Christensen’s distinctive, nebulous veil.
Featuring contributions from Type head honcho/Xela stud John Twells, as well as post-production wizardry from Pete Jørgensen, A Cradle In The Bowery marks a milestone in the catalogue of the burgeoning Under The Spire imprint and documents a pivotal stage in Christensen’s own personal journey and continuing evolution as an artist.
Natural Snow Buildings released a "surprise" album made specifically for Record Store Day. Details are below.
Brand new full length CD album from Natural Snow Buildings, made especially for Record Store Day. Following on from January 2011′s “Waves of the Random Sea”, this is the most recent recording from the duo of Mehdi and Solange, recorded over the first three months of 2011.
Epicly dark and brooding folk blurred with psychedelic and ritualistic overtones, this album sounds as good as any other Natural Snow Buildings / Twinsistermoon / Isengrind release, retaining the sound that only this duo can conjure up.
Opener “Chants of Niflheim Part 1″ is a dark reflection upon the concept of its title, followed by “Templars Ritual”, a psychedelic meandering 17 minutes of ritual head nodding zone outs. “Chants Of Niflheim Part 2″ builds ethereal levitation to new forms, from dark to light, blurring heavy riffs with almost vocal instrument sounds to create a mist of unknown. Album closer, “H. Scudder”, opens with Mehdi’s softly sung lyrics layered with percussion and string, heading straight into a deep ritualistic swirling drone section.
“Chants of Niflheim” again concretes Natural Snow Buildings as an essential contemporary duo, crossing the lines of folk drone experimentalism, traditional folk craftsmanship and post rock aesthetic. Again, another essential disc from this French duo.
Limited to 500 copies in full colour 4 panel card sleeves.
Tracks Are :
- Chants Of Niflheim Part I
- Templars Ritual
- Chants Of Niflheim Part II
- H. Scudder
Released on Blackest Rainbow Records, but not available through them.
THE NEW CURRENT 93 ALBUM and other C93/Coptic Cat news 4 February 2011
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HONEYSUCKLE ÆONS
AMEN STAUROS
The new Current 93 album The new album by C93 is titled HoneySuckle Æons. It will be released at the Athens show on 24 March 2011 and will be available at the other subsequent C93 concerts on the tour. It will also be available from the Coptic Cat shop and will be sent out on 24 March. Coming soon... Amen Stauros.
Current 93: ‘Thunder Perfect Mind’ to be played live simultaneously with David Tibet’s lyric book launch “Bloody smoke, foggy smoke, beginnings and endings…” We are delighted to announce that David Tibet, Michael Cashmore and Current 93 will be performing the entirety of their Hallucinatory Playtime Dream Cycle, THUNDER PERFECT MIND, in (almost definitely) London whilst simultaneously launching David Tibet’s long-awaited lyric book, SING OMEGA (previously titled Under the Rain and Teeth of Gods). Due to the nature of their rehearsals, and the availability of our chosen venue, this concert is likely to take place in July 2011—meaning a brief postponement from the previously-mentioned March publication date—but it is very important to Michael and David to bind together these two events and make each of them into as Hallucinatory a Playtime Dream as possible. It is likely C93 will be performing two nights. More details very soon.
Click here to buy Thunder Perfect Mind from Coptic Cat (2CD or download) or here to buy it from Jnana Records (2CD).
Current 93 cloth bags re-ordered
There have been a lot of emails asking about the Thunder Perfect Mind and Dogs Blood Rising/There’s No Hiding from the Blackbird cotton fairtrade bags which sold out very quickly. We have just re-ordered both of these—the Thunder Perfect Mind bag will be in the blue/green/jade we call ByrdColour, and the Dogs Blood Rising/There’s No Hiding from the Blackbird bag in the same red/black as before.
C93 German and (possibly) Danish dates added to March tour C93 hope to play play their first-ever Scandinavian show in Denmark as part of their forthcoming tour, but this is not yet confirmed. More details as and when we have them. An extra German date has been added, at Cologne/Köln Stadtgarten on 29 March. We hope to see you there, as real as rainbows.
David Tibet ‘Baalstorm, Sing Omega’ original artwork for sale
David has added four pieces of his original artwork for Baalstorm, Sing Omega to the original artwork section of the Coptic Cat website. The first is ‘She is Naked Like the Water’, the painting used for the front cover of the CD and vinyl LP album; this piece is approximately (30 × 30 cm/12" × 12"), crayon and white ink on black paper. The second and third are, respectively, ‘Anoükiem et Anok in Storm’ and ‘The Assault Against Christ and the Four Apostles by the False Moon and her Legions’ which were two more of the paintings David made whilst working on Baalstorm, Sing Omega for possible use in the album artwork. These pieces are both A4, crayon and white ink on black paper. ‘Anoükiem et Anok in Storm’ is presently in the hands of Devendra Banhart, who is including it along with two more pieces by David in a large group exhibition he is curating in Mexico City in February—more details of this exhibition follow below. The fourth and final piece, ‘ZOSer and Pavo Ascend as Egypt’, is now in the collection of Uwe Henneken and Katja Strunz and is being exhibited at the Berlin show mentioned elsewhere in this update. All pieces can be found in the original artwork section of the website.
David Tibet ‘I Have Seen the Gnostic Awe and All’ original artwork for sale
David has also added images of the nine paintings in his I Have Seen the Gnostic Awe and All series which he did for the Fabio Quaranta T-shirt collection that will be released in the Autumn of 2011. ‘I Have Seen the Gnostic Glory 2’ is presently in the hands of Devendra Banhart, who is including it along with two more pieces by David in a large group exhibition he is curating in Mexico City in February—more details of this exhibition follow below. All pieces can be found in the original artwork section of the website.
Test pressing of C93 7" available
There are eight copies available of the black vinyl 7" test pressing of the C93 single, ‘Time of the Last Persecution’/‘Black Flowers, Please’. It comes in the original sleeve, signed by David, and has white labels with the title and the group’s name written in black ink by David. They are £75 each plus postage and packing. Please email
Unique C93 test pressing box sets added to eBay Two box sets have been added to eBay at the links below. There is only one copy of each.
One is the Like Swallowing Eclipses box set of Andrew Liles and C93’s reworking of early album material. This has all six albums as white label test pressings, with the titles handwritten by David. Also included is a piece of original artwork by David which was done for the box set but never used. The box set includes: the proper printed LP covers (into which the test pressings are inserted), the double-sided colour photographic insert and the printed box. So: this item is the same as the standard box set release, but with handwritten white label test pressings and the extra original artwork.
The other is a test pressing of the German Vinyl on Demand Current 93 box set. This contains all eight white label 12" black vinyl test pressings, and the white label 7" black vinyl test pressing that was available to subscribers to VoD only. The records are housed in two black wooden silkscreened boxes which themselves come in a beautiful fine-linen silk-lined box with a Coptic text design by David on it. Each label has the titles handwritten by David. It contains all the original items from the original box set, which sold out on pre-order. So, this is identical to the subscribers’ edition of the box set except that the records are white label test pressings with handwritten labels; there was a small number of black card boxes, containing all the test pressings, with a drawing by David on the front of the box; these were sold privately. This box set is the only one in which the labels are handwritten. A list of what is in the two box-sets follows. Please notice this box set is very heavy, so be aware that the postage cost will reflect that.
Stapleton-Tibet album CD reissues We are now working on the reissue of the two albums that David Tibet and Steven Stapleton recorded together. Both will be 2CD digipaks. The Sadness of Things will contain the two tracks from the original album, as well as ‘The Fire of the Mind’ from the Simply Being book by James Low and an alternate mix of ‘The Grave and Beautiful Name of Sadness’, whilst Musical Pumpkin Cottage will feature the two tracks from the CD album of the same name, the alternate mixes of those tracks that were released first on the vinyl album Musicalische Kürbs-Hütte and then later on the Octopus CD and the track ‘I Left Her for a Cartoon Octopus’, also released on the Octopus CD. More details as soon as they ready.
Don Bradshaw-Leather CD reissue David is meeting Don Bradshaw-Leather’s sister once again when she returns to England in March/April to discuss the Coptic Cat reissue of her brother’s masterpiece Distance Between Us. This project is taking longer than we had both envisioned due to her recent relocation outside of the UK. She is very keen (as I am) to find extra material for the issue—photos, texts and perhaps even music. The release is still absolutely on and we are planning for it to be out later this year.
David Tibet painting in Berlin group exhibition David has his painting ‘ZOSeR and Pavo ascend as Egypt’, which was used on the insert of the vinyl edition of Baalstorm, Sing Omega, on display at a group show called ‘La Vallée Patibulaire’ between 25–27 February at Caro Bittermann, Gustav Müller Str. 18, 10829 Berlin. Opening times: Friday 25 February: 6–10pm; Sat 26–Sun 27 February: 12–6pm. www.vallee-patibulaire.eu.
David Tibet paintings chosen by Devendra Banhart for Mexico exhibition David is Over the Æon to have had three of his paintings chosen by the loveliest Devendra Banhart for a group exhibition entitled ‘La Migra!’ that Devendra is curating in Mexico City. The paintings are ‘Anoükiem et Anok in Storm’, ‘This Day You Will Be With Me in Paradise’ and ‘I Have Seen the Gnostic Glory 2’. The exhibition opens on 23 February. The exhibitors are as follows: Zach Hill • Marc Bell • Eric Wareheim • Jerry Hsu • Beck • Melissa Shimkovitz • Kevin Long • Adam Green • David Tibet • Marilyn Manson • Fabrizio Moretti • Alia Shawkat • Nat Russell • Thomas Campbell • Travis Keller • Angeline Rivas • Keegan McHargue and Adam Tullie with one more person tba… The show will be held at VICE GALLERY, Mérida 109, esq. Alvaro Obregón Col. Roma, Mexico City. www.viceland.com/mx
This update has been written by me, Anok Pe David Tibet, in |
