News & Events
Von Suedenfed successfully leads Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith in new and unexpected directions where they've never gone as separate entities. Tromatic Reflexxions, has the energy of "a hybrid band -- a futuristic band playing grime or ska or soca like a pirate radio station" with electro, dubstep and disco thrown into the mix. It combines the genre-smashing attack of early-millenia club music with Mark E. Smith's free-associating visionary wordplay.
Tracklisting is as follows:
1. Fledermaus Can't Get Enough
2. The Rhinohead
3. Flooded
4. Family Feud
5. Serious Brainskin
6. Speech Contamination/German Fear Of Osterreich
7. The Young The Faceless And The Codes
8. Duckrog
9. Chicken Yiamas
10. That Sound Wiped
11. Jbak Lois Lane
12. Dearest Friends
THREE NEW RELEASES FROM COLD SPRING
Wholesale / Trades welcome. Please email
Imagine if Miles Davis, Sepultura and Karlheinz Stockhausen had the opportunity to work their magic on the phenomenon of Drum’n’Bass. It could well have sounded like “Compressor” by TERMINAL SOUND SYSTEM.
title: Future Rock
catalog #: krank108
formats available: CD
upc ode: 7 96441 81082 6
release date: May 21, 2007
content: Three years have passed since Drumsolo's Delight, and Strategy finally comes forward with a new full-length. His third album to date, Future Rock focuses Strategy's diverse interests into a single point, while still drawing directly from the dense, shimmering sonic language established on Delight.
Based on a refined studio process that incorporates multi-tracked live instrumentation, archaic synthesizer equipment, archived recordings of improvisations and band practices, digital sound design, and sound of non-musical origin, the album is a polyglot solution of genres. Musical quotations, discrete sonic jokes, and skewed musicological impressions are blended into a dream-like, impressionistic musical composite which confounds and compounds music's past, present, and future. A gauzy, vibrating curtain of sound, much like the one that made Drumsolo's so distinctive, ties together all the songs as do the signature Wurlitzer electric piano and old-school spring reverb.
Incorporating compositions that have taken years to develop, a handful of close collaborators (including his cohorts from the band Nudge), and using source material that dates as far back as 2000, Future Rock is easily Strategy's most complex, narrative, ambitious and overtly "pop" record to date; as well, it's practically a thesis statement for his vision of a genre-free musical world. To date you've heard Strategy dabble in everything from headphone-oriented ambient music to house and dub; this is the work that brings it all together.
context: This is Paul Dickow's second full length for kranky and third as Strategy. He is extremely busy running the Community Library label, which will be releasing a 12" version of this album's title track, while also collaborating in the trio Nudge, and recording and performing solo work.
track listing: 1. Can't Roll Back 2. Future Rock 3. Running On Empty 4. Windswept (Interlude) 5. Stops Spinning 6. Phantom Powered 7. Sunfall (Interlude) 8. Red Screen 9. I Have To Do This Thing (Fantastic Planet Mix)
quotes:
'...the unexpected musical aphrodesiac of the year.' mundane sound
"...as much a delight as it is a cipher.' all music guide
"humid deep-dub-house-punk-disco jams." boomkat
artist: Lichens
title: Omns
catalog #: krank106
formats available: CD+DVD
CD UPC Code: 7 96441 81062 8
Release Date: May 7, 2007
Content: The second long player from Lichens, like his first, the largely improvised The Psychic Nature of Being, is an ascent to a higher plane. Rob Lowe's sound recordings are of a distinctly personal nature, works turned inward as much as they are projected outward.
This new album was conceived with the idea of it being a continuation of the first, while using slightly different techniques in recording and editing; from multitracking individual passes, and pulling single tracks in and out of the mix ("vevor of agassou" "faeries"), to opening up into a completely different process by overdubbing multiple tracks ("m st r ng w tchcr ft l v ng n sp r t"). All this while remaining firmly within the realm of improvisation, augmented with the use of skeletal frameworks.
The accompanying dvd video contains a single live 28 minute performance from Chicago's Empty Bottle that was recorded in 2006. All Lichens live shows are individual events and are not mere duplications of previous performances. Thus, the performance here is a unique snapshot of the Lichens live experience. The film was directed and produced by Mary Scherer and edited by Todd Mattei.
Context: Rob Lowe is involved in collaborations with Cloudland Canyons and White Light, both of which are expected to produce albums in the coming year. He is also working on a collaboration with Alan Licht, and is currently a touring member of Rhys Chatham's guitar trio.
Track Listing:
1. Vevor of Agassou 2. Faeries 3. Bune 4. M St r ng W tchcr ft L v ng n Sp r t 5. Sighns
Quotes:
"Lichens launches skyward eerie, hymnal moans; atomized guitar chords; and meditative Fahey-esque fingerpicking… and the special knowledge to which only the most spiritual cats are privy." Dave Segal-The Stranger
"The impression is fostered that this is a colossal living organism, branching out into uncultivated lands, foreign concerns" Max Schaefer-Comes With a Smile
"Robert Lowe has crafted a solo universe of purely psychedelic beauty and mystery" Dream Magazine
"It's simply stunning, epic and totally timeless." Broken Face
"Natural, unexplainable, unpremeditated but deeply musical." Splendid
artist: Valet
title: Blood is Clean
catalog #: krank105
formats available: CD
CD UPC Code: 7 96441 81052 9
Release Date: April 16, 2007
Content: Blood is Clean is the debut release by Honey Owens under the name Valet. The songs were formed out of a natural and spontaneous process as separate incidents of recording over a 5 month period from January to May of 2006. They were recorded by and large in single, live takes with minor additional tracking added here and there. The results are at once spare and expansive; exploratory, yet deceptively simple.
Honey wanted to make music that was not neccessarily of her, but rather “to be a medium channeling sounds from an unknown place, opening up and spilling out onto the computer-tape.” The cryptic, mesmerizing sound pallete was inspired by “lucid dreams and physical artifacts that appeared to me daily that hinted at a sound-world of Haitian Voodoo drumming, various shamanic dreamtime musics, the Velvet Underground, and the ‘Fourth-World’ concepts of Jon Hassell”.
We will just say that these are some of the most inspiring alien-psychedelic-blues-jams that we have heard in ages. And check out the absolutely fried guitar work from the outer edge of the galaxy on the title cut.
Context: Honey Owens has been an important figure in the Portland experimental music scene for more than 10 years, collaborating with an array of both oscure and well-known music projects including: World, Nudge, Dark Yoga and JOMF. Honey Owens lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Track Listing: 01. April 6 02. Blood is Clean 03. Burmajuana 04. Tame All the Lions
05. Mystic Flood 06. My Volcano 07. Sade 4 Bri 08. North
Quote: "Does Honey Owens aka Valet really sing 'My blood is clean/But the devil's in me' right before that percussion kicks in? Holy moley; that's too perfect. That guitar solo is the best we might have heard in years. It's a time-stopping guitar solo. Everyone else should stop doing that, right now; put down your guitars! Thank you." MikeMcGonigal-Yeti Magazine #4
Following soon after the critically praised Black Tar Prophecies collection on Important Records, Portland, Oregon's Grails return with their first proper studio album since the 2004 release of Redlight. Burning Off Impurities - their debut for Temporary Residence Ltd. out on May 1, 2007 - makes good on the promise of those past releases in delivering an album that not only thrusts the group to new heights, but also pushes the instrumental rock genre forward for the first time in nearly a decade.
An increased interest in psychedelic, ambient and world music is most likely to blame for Grails' exploration of the lesser-traveled paths of modern music. In addition, their eclectic range of collaborative endeavors - guitarist Zak Riles is also in M. Ward's band, while drummer Emil Amos has moonlighted as Jandek's drummer - has introduced an element of improvisation and reinterpretation of ideas that is both brilliant and earnest.
Like Black Tar Prophecies, Burning Off Impurities was produced by Grails, with production assistance by Jeff Saltzman and Steven Wray Lobdell (of avant-garde legends, Faust). Influenced in equal parts by Ash Ra Tempel, Erkin Koray, Popol Vuh, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and dozens others, this is very likely the closest Grails will ever get to making a classic rock record; the kind of sprawling masterpiece that you savor for years before passing it on to your younger brother so he can repeat the process.
Track Listing:
1. Soft Temple
2. More Extinction
3. Silk Rd
4. Drawn Curtains
5. Outer Banks
6. Dead Vine Blues
7. Origin-ing
8. Burning Off Impurities
Discography:
GRAILS Black Tar Prophecies Vol's. 1, 2 & 3 CD (Important 2006)
GRAILS Interpretations... CDEP (Southern 2005)
GRAILS Redlight CD (Neurot 2004)
GRAILS The Burden of Hope CD (Neurot 2003)
Günter Müller, "Reframed"
http://cut.fm
Originally a drummer, Günter Müller continues his exploration of the instrument's
inherent resonant properties in five compositions based on processed recordings of
bowed cymbals.
«Reframed» achieves a sense of timelessness, placing the listener deep within
hovering layers of shimmering sound.
Recorded July 2006.
Processed and assembled August–December 2006.
Günter Müller was born in München in 1954, and has lived in Switzerland since 1966.
Müller has been playing a unique drum set with a mobile pick-ups and a microphone
system of his own invention since 1981. The system allows hand generated sounds on
drums and percussion to be modulated electronically. Since 1998 minidiscs, later an
ipod, are included in his electronic set.
He performs solo and has collaborated with a large number of musicians, including
Jim O'Rourke, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto,
Keith Rowe and Sachiko M.
In 1990, he founded the record label For 4 Ears Records.
http://home.datacomm.ch/g.mueller/mueller.htm
