This Alabama-raised Atlanta-based trio impressed Killer Pimp late last year and we put out plenty of people and feelers in the area.  We got them on the same bill as APTBS in Atlanta and Athens and reports were all positive.  They've definitely got the loud thing going on but they know both how to arrange songs and how to arrange an album. Fire On Corridor X was produced with Ben H. Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, P-Diddy, Christina Aguilera) and sounds fantastic.  But don't take our word for it: two MP3s are being given away from the album at killerpimp.com and the group is about to embark on a small East Coast US tour to coincide with the release (read on for dates and locations).

Jan St. Werner should be no stranger, he's 1/2 of the core of Mouse On Mars and a full time member of Von Südenfed and Microstoria.  Mound Magnet pt. 2: Elevations Above Sea Level will be released by Killer Pimp on May 27th. The limited vinyl edition (300 copies) is available through Sonig.com and the MP3s are available from fina-music.com. The CD version by KILLER PIMP contains one bonus track however.

Ever since the release of his first cassette on the renowned and legendary Cologne-based label Entenpfuhl in 1993, Jo Zimmermann aka Schlammpeitziger grants an international audience insights into his private cosmos. The musician, graphic artist and tireless inventor of increasingly strange song titles with a ribald as well as subtle humour has been coining a highly distinctive style for these last 15 years. On his new album he demonstrates how to combine artistic development and remaining true to oneselves' style.

 
Elevations Above Sea Level is the second Mound Magnet part from Lithops aka Jan St Werner, 1/2 of the prolific duo Mouse on Mars, 1/3 of last year's surprise collaboration Von Südenfed with the Fall's Mark E Smith and 1/2 of the dsp group Microstoria. Though he is a prolific producer he seems to have a fascination with rollover dates (he cancelled mostly every Lithops gig in the last 5 years) does that spill into a fascination with cycles of nature? No! Actually he's more interested in the cycling by man-made machines, as expressed in the Mound Magent sequel. Elevations Above Sea Level gives us aural diagrams of a large, hypermodern cities with futuristic vehicles moving around. The electrical ticking of fluorescent advertising panels, a thwappy airiness of the ventilation system, the rattles of trains and chopped up hums of distant roads, the mechanical groans that maintenance machinery starts up with, rain drumming on the stretched glass roofs of urban malls, the howling groans of motorcycles on city highways. It's not an ambient record by any means, nor is it purely musique concrete. It's rather an acid fulled hallucination of how to detect an idea of the future in the noises that surround us. Though he uses some of the sound editing methods like his contemporaries (and his own other groups), this doesn't mass into huge pools to make a statement; the basslines, hums, jolts and whooshes divide and multiply into sections like buildings and streets are divided, from sub-basements to rooftops, alleys and boulevards, by stories. Lithops' narcoleptic programming has a precision which holds the listener completely captive -- difficult, haunting and highly enjoyable. Vinyl limited to 300 copies.

Tracklist is as follows:

01 Roctrum
02 Rosa In A Light Speed Vessel
03 Caribbean Circuitry
04 Bleasure Pastique
05 Every Detail's Matter
06 Noo Non M Oon
07 A Generation Without Conent
08 Mound Magnet Pt.1 Remixed By The Allophons
09 Fahrtenheit
10 Concretemess And Absaction
11 Serendippo
12 Baliation

Ellen Allien's DJ skills are made available once again in her fabulous Boogy Bytes 4 mix. Following her contributions to the Fabric mixes (Fabric 34), and "My Parade" (BPC094), the long awaited new release on BPitch Control is finally finished and ready for all to hear! And we have to first say a big "YES!" because Ellen Allien possesses a striking intuition for being directly on the sound of the present and never subduing herself to a certain "Zeitgeist". Instead, she is known for shaping her own typology of sound, which at times might seem a bit too far out, crooked, more abstract or technoid than others, but is always her personal reflection of the NOW. As a DJ, Ellen Allien continues the long tradition of having an emotional and direct contact with the audience and she aims to wage all feasible facets possible in the interaction between dancefloor, airports, studio, office, and living rooms. It is important for Ellen Allien to "memorize" her favourite tracks for the club, but besides that, she never stands idle during the week, and thus the motif of motion carries through from her daily life to the mix. The newest mix is impulsive, yet equally subtle and described by Ellen Allien as "emotional, noisy, trippy, weird, and sexual".

Release date: April 22 2008

John Fahey and Ayal Senior layed down the tracks for Three Day Band in a Woodburn Hotel room at some point in 1999. These tracks show an undocumented improvisational side of Fahey. It's certainly not early period Fahey but not TOTE era either. At night after the recording sessions commenced Ayal would record Fahey reading and discussing selected excerpts from his writing. Fifteen tracks of spoken word Fahey are included.

Release date: April 22, 2008

Vulcano is sourced from original master recordings discovered by Kluster member and Tangerine Dream engineer, Klaus Freudigmann. Along with Admira, also being released at the same time on Important, Vulcano is presented here for the first time in this deluxe package. These intense sessions were made with Schnitzler at the helm, as always, after the departure of Mobius and Roedelius from the group.

Conrad Schnitzler founded Kluster in 1969 along with Roedelius, Mobius and often Klaus Freudigmann who had multiple roles within the group as a player, engineer and instrument inventor. Eventually Roedelius and Mobius left Kluster and continued on as Cluster while Schnitzler and Freudigmann continued as Kluster often exploring the communal aspects of music by bringing new people into the group. Vulcano is limited to 1000 copies and is packaged in a deluxe gatefold jacket made to emulate the original die stamped puffy packaging for Kluster's album Klopfzeichen. Very deluxe. 

Release date: April 22, 2008

Admira is sourced from original master recordings discovered by Kluster member, and Tangerine Dream engineer, Klaus Freudigmann. Along with Vulcano, also being released at the same time on Important, Admira is presented here for the first time in this deluxe package. These intense sessions were made with Schnitzler at the helm, as always, after the departure of Mobius and Roedelius from the group.

Conrad Schnitzler founded Kluster in 1969 along with Roedelius, Mobius and often Klaus Freudigmann who had multiple roles within the group as a player, engineer and instrument inventor. Eventually Roedelius and Mobius left Kluster and continued on as Cluster while Schnitzler and Freudigmann continued as Kluster often exploring the communal aspects of music by bringing new people into the group. Admira is limited to 1000 copies and is packaged in a deluxe gatefold jacket made to emulate the original die stamped puffy packaging for Kluster's album Klopfzeichen. Very deluxe.

June 17th 2008 is the auspicious date when Drag City will release a never-before-shown-to-the-world recording - Children of the Sixth Root Race: Songs from the Source. Twelve amazing songs recorded live in the Father House garage as a rehearsal for a live date that Spirit of '76 (aka YaHoWa 13, also now known as Children of the Sixth Root Race, Father Yod's "house band") had at the Whisky in the summer of 1973.

Greetings and salutations from me here at V/Vm Test Records (est. 1996) to you out there in world wide webbed land. O.K. some of you know the news, some of you may have seen the news at the website, others will be oblivious to the news but here we expand on the news in the best way possible, hopefully giving you a smile along the way.

To coincide with the tenth album release and subsequent tour as Meat Beat Manifesto, Autoimmune, Brainwashed introduces the sixth in the Handmade Series. Music For Planetarium is a solo Jack Dangers disc of music recorded for the T.I.T. Planetarium in Budapest. The disc will be released on April 8th and is once again done in a hand made letterpressed sleeve. Brainwashed will have 500 to sell and hopefully get some to Jack in time for the tour. Pre-orders are being taken now in the brainwashed commerce shop.

SOOL, Ellen Allien's fourth solo album, will be released by BPitch Control on May 27th, 2008.

Produced by AGF, SOOL is subtle, mysterious and minimal. Ellen Allien will be playing select dates in the U.S. and Canada in support of this new full-length album and the release of Boogy Bytes Vol. 4 mixed by Ellen Allien, out March 31st on BPitch Control.
 

 

Pansonic DVD
By Edward Quist
"KUVAPUTKI" (Cathode Ray Tube)
blastfirstpetite
PTYT 009
Release Date : March 31st, 2008

The first ever Pansonic DVD release by Edward Quist, American digital
visual artist.
A live performance, close filmed.
A redux digital film based around a Pansonic performance from their
New York stop of their adventerous 1999 Round The World Tour.

The film is a hyper-real abstract reflection of the duo, in the final
year of the last century. Whilst the documentary core remains, the
footage is twisted and shaped by Quist into a new form in conjunction
with Pansonic's improvised set.

Vaino & Vaisanen are immersed in the imagery of the cathode which
seems to live and infect their physicality over the course of the
three parallel films until they merge with their own sound and Quist's
mesmerising visuals.

Sonar Electronic Festival described the film as "A beautiful and
unique film capturing the very essence of a Pansonic live
performance…. which really is quite an achievement"
SxSW Music Festival calls it "An embodiment. Probably the most perfect
electronic music film yet"
ICA Film London "Suprisingly watchable. Forty minutes of unswervingly
moderne, super intense sound & visuals"
Duration  38.05 miins

Trailer Clip @
www.embryoroom.com/kuvaputki/kuvatrailer.html
 ALL REGION NTSC / AVAILABLE NOW FROM BFP MAIL ORDER
 www.blastfirstpetite.com

Four Tet returns with four tracks of techno (not techno). The Ringer mini album is a 32 minute, four-track excursion into the kind of wide-open spaces you might find if you set out to make techno with an afrobeat/krautrock sensibility.

Ringer locks together gloriously rich synthesizer arpeggios; 'Wing Body Wing' slips from crisp clusters of disco percussion to Steve Reich polyrhythms; and in between are another two euphoric ripples of sound, 'Ribbons' and 'Swimmer'. These are tracks that make you think of Berlin - Dakar - Detroit - but they could only have been made in London. All four are headphone epics, but are mixed in such a way you know you have to hear them at Plastic People or The End.

The techno heartbeat comes from Kieran Hebden's regular DJ residences over the last couple of years - but also from his ongoing collaborations with legendary jazz drummer Steve Reid. Whether in the studio or live, Kieran and Steve often click into the kind of deep 4/4 grooves that can depart in any direction with a little adjustment.

Ringer carries that minimal pulse over into Four Tet, and while Kieran's trademark recuttings of jazz breaks may be less in evidence, his feel for harmony and melody is, as always, unmistakable.


Tracklisting

1 Ringer
2 Ribbons
3 Swimmer
4 Wing Body Wing

Somewhere between Dan the Automater, Ennio Morricone, and Leonard Cohen, lies Barry Adamson. Over a wide-ranging career as a film composer, a founding member of both Magazine and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, and a solo artist, his music has continuously looked to the future. However, 'Back to the Cat', Adamson's seventh record, finds him looking to the past, gaining inspiration from some of his favorite artists from the past 18 years.

Not that Adamson is aping anyone on this record; you can hear strains of Elvis or Jacques Brel, but it remains unmistakably Barry Adamson. Just one track, "Shadow Of Death Hotel," manages to seamlessly stitch together the sounds of a guitar and flute from a '70s funk song, Jackie Mittoo's keyboards, the horn section from the Mike Hammer
theme, and some Butch-Vig-ish fuzzed out guitars. By the next track, he's on to channeling Al Green. Other touchstones include Curtis Mayfield, Leonard Cohen, Serge Gainsbourg, and more.

Barry premiered this album in full at the recent London Jazz Festival (the least "jazz" thing there, by far), headlining two sold-out nights at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The album went over amazingly. Barry Adamson will be in New York City and available for press from February 28th to March 2nd.

Release dates:

Digital (worldwide): March 17th, 2008
CD/LP (UK/EU): March 31st, 2008
CD/LP (US/Australia): April 22nd, 2008  

Tracklisting:

1. The Beaten Side Of Town
2. Straight 'Til Sunrise
3. Spend A Little Time
4. Shadow Of Death Hotel
5. I Could Love You
6. Walk On Fire
7. Flight
8.Civilization
9. People
10. Psycho_Sexual

 Tour dates:

03/31 Oxford, Academy, UK
04/01 Edinburgh, Voodoo Rooms, UK
04/02 Glasgow, Oran Mor, UK
04/04 Manchester, Lowry Theatre, UK
04/05 Nottingham, Rescue Rooms, UK
04/06 Bristol, Thekla, UK
04/07 Berlin, Privatclub, Germany
04/09 London, Pigalle Clu, UK
04/10 Brighton, Komedia, UK
04/12 Paris, Noveau Casino, France
06/18 Brisbane, The Zoo, Australia
06/19 Melbourne, The Corner Hotel, Australia
06/20 Sydney, The Factory, Australia
06/21 Perth, The Bakery Artrage Complex, Australia

Catalog number BAD VCCD51 / BAD VC51 / BAD VCP51
CD / 2x10 inch LP / 2x10 inch LP picture disc
From Autumnal to Vernal Equinox, this is the Death In June Winter
tree. Stripped bare, but for thirteen of its branches. But they are
as strong as ever, and with thirteen glasses and one last toast, this
new album captures the true essence of Death In June, again setting
new standards in its self-created genre. Let the Blackbirds kiss you
and may The Rule Of Thirds dictate your life.

NER/NERUS, in association with Soleilmoon, is proud to announce the
first new Death In June studio album in more than three years. The CD
is presented in an embossed softpak with 16 page lyric book. The
double 10 inch vinyl edition comes in two versions: An edition of
1500 copies in black vinyl, and a very limited edition of 500 picture
discs. Both are packaged in an embossed gatefold sleeve with a large
fold-out poster with lyrics and photo.

Track Listing:

THE GLASS COFFIN / FOREVER LOVES DECAY / JESUS, JUNK AND THE
JURISDICTION / IDOLATRY / GOOD MOURNING SUN / THE PERFUME OF
TRAITORS / LAST EUROPA KISS / THE RULE OF THIRDS / TRULY BE / THEIR
DECEPTION / MY RHINE ATROCITY / TAKEYYA / LET GO.

Windy Weber, known for being half of the ambient drone duo Windy & Carl, has recorded a solo album. It is quite different from what you may be thinking – it has none of the soothing characteristics you may be expecting, and instead is full of heavy and brooding music.

 

"At one time or another, in everyone's life, each one of us wants an island…..a place to be away from the rest of the world, a place where no one can hurt or betray us. This record is about that island."

It is comprised of two tracks – "Sirens," coming in at 24 minutes, is instrumental, and is filled with the sound of guitars crying, rising and falling like waves crashing on the rocks. Sirens is ominous, and haunting. It is not music to sleep to, but instead could make you tense and anxious.

The second track is "Destroyed." It is 32 minutes long, and comprised of 3 suites. The first being layers of vocals, woven together to make a chorus of breathing and breathlessness, layers to make you feel as if you may be drowning in the sea…..whether that sea be the ocean, or the sea of life, the day to day world in which you must deal. The second suite becomes noisy, agitated, rumbling and distorted guitars, bass and feedback, and makes you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what is about to happen. The third suite takes you to the end of the album with it's subsonic frequencies and strange unrecognizible sounds.

This is not music for the faint of heart. Windy's dear friend Jody found herself having to pull over while trying to listen to this in the car because it made her too tense. And kranky turned it down for release, feeling it was more suited for listeners of Nurse With Wound or Current 93. Born out of frustration and anger, I Hate People is the story of how in one's life, your car, your dog, a dead bird on the ground, are not going to be as upsetting or devastating to you as another human will be – only people can make you feel so bad. Only people can hurt you, betray you, and make you feel like you want to die. I Hate People is the expression born of real life, and real pain, and is an expression of emotion that is universally shared. At one point or another, we all want an island. But most of us will never get there.

I Hate People will be issued on CD by Blueflea and on LP by Kenedik. The LP will be on limited (1000 copies) beautifully colored splatter vinyl (500 on clear with blue and green and purple splatter, and 500 on clear with blood red splatter), featuring a completely different mix and with a shorter length on each song so as to provide the best sound quality. Cover art features a wonderful selection of photos by Christy Romanick, Windy's dear friend and one of her favorite artists, and Windy's passport photo from 1987 – showing a very angry, young, punk rock beginning to this musician's career.

It is scheduled to be released on one of the most hated days of the year (tax day) April 15, 2008.

Amish is proud to offer for the first time on vinyl, HALL OF FAME'S second album, 1999's, First Came Love, Then Came the Tree . . . This limited edition of 250 LPs appears almost a decade after the original CD, currently out-of-print, was issued.  To commemorate, we’ve launched the Delux Redux series, which in this case will include the LP reissue and a bonus CDr of a 40-minute Hall of Fame performance from 1998 recorded at the now-defunct Louisville, KY nightclub The Mercury Paw.
 
This is what folks had to say about First Came Love, Then Came the Tree . . . when it was first issued:
 
"Starting off with beautiful guitars and violin . . . it proceeds to float in, out and around styles of drone, musique concrete, pop and raga moderne... the way Hall of Fame is evolving, you might as well make space in your Lower East Side box, alongside The Godz, Moondog and those early Velvets boots."  - BANANAFISH
 
"First Came Love, Then Came the Tree. . . finds Hall of Fame further refining their lo-fi, avant-drone aesthetic, adding more warmth, melody, and accessibility to their vocal and instrumental pieces.”  - ALL MUSIC GUIDE
 
For those unaware of their history, Hall of Fame existed from 1996 through the early 2000s.  They released their first two full-lengths and a seven-inch on Amish Records, a subsequent full-length for Siltbreeze, a posthumous album on the Social Registry and a number of 7"s and live albums in-between.  The group was comprised of three musicians who have gone on to create a significant body of solo material and collaborations:  Samara Lubelski has had three solo albums on The Social Registry (plus releases on Eclipse, Destijl, Child of Microtones, among others).  She has also played in late incarnations of Tower Recordings and Metabolismus and, most recently, recorded and toured with Thurston Moore.  After Hall of Fame broke up, Theo Angell toured with Jackie O'Motherfucker and has gone on to release three solo albums (Polyamory, Amish and Digitalis).  Theo also works in film and video art and has done music videos for JOM, Samara Lubelski, Exceptor and others.  Dan Brown recorded one incredible album of solo percussion for Amish, Inner Boroughs. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and plays in a free jazz ensemble.
 
In addition to offering the Delux Redux version of First Came Love, Then Came the Tree . . . we are also, for a limited time, bundling this release with other Amish-related Hall of Fame titles in our webstore.  Get the new LP (+ CDr), their Self-Titled LP and the "Coliseum Rising" 7" for the low price of $28 postpaid in the US (foreign orders must add additional postage).
 
Go to http://www.amishrecords.com/main_purchase.html
 
Forthcoming from Amish:  new CDs and LPs from Son of Earth, Black Taj, Metabolismus, Metal Mountains (Helen Rush, Samara Lubelski & PG SIX) and more.
 
AMISHRECORDS
P.O. Box 1841 NYC, NY 10013
http://www.amishrecords.com