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The late 1990s was a fertile time in the American electronic underground. A growing body of artists, spread around the nation, were engaging in the latest round of a decades-long transatlantic musical conversation. At the convergence of hip-hop, electronic, and soul music, these artists sought to carve out their own lane. In September 2001, New Orleans’ Telefon Tel Aviv, high school friends Joshua Eustis and the late Charles Cooper, joined the conversation with their debut album, Fahrenheit Fair Enough, released by Hefty Records. A labour of love, Fahrenheit was an attempt by the pair "to contribute something meaningful" Eustis says today, "something definitely American, and kinda southern too." On the fifteenth anniversary of its release, Ghostly International is reissuing Fahrenheit Fair Enough with a vinyl edition and bonus digital material.
Living in New Orleans in the late 1990s, Eustis and Cooper were in the thrall of two musical orbits: black America——New Orleans' bounce, Detroit's techno, Chicago's house——and British electronica——Autechre, Aphex Twin, Jega. Recorded over the course of a year in Eustis' childhood bedroom in the Riverbend neighborhood of New Orleans, Fahrenheit mapped out a potential for American electronic music in a time of hope. The music features delicate Rhodes and guitar instrumentation wrapped in a southern bounce shell, smothered in r&b, and cut up by digital rhythm programming. The tracks were meant to be "constantly, evolving sculptures." Fascinated by IDM, the pair sought to inject "some swagger into it, loosen it up a little but also make it hyper romantic."
Eustis and Cooper had imagined making a "hard club record," but instead Fahrenheit came to be seen as a delicate slice of electronica by fans and critics who misconstrued its stylistics roots. This was, perhaps, hardly surprising. Telefon Tel Aviv arrived at a time when there was no roadmap for an American electronic music scene comparable to what the UK had produced in the 1990s. They were the latest artists to find themselves in a strange middle ground between hip-hop and electronic music that had yet to be understood.
“We just wanted to see if we could make it work,” recalls Eustis. “We didn’t know. Our aim was to make something we could be proud of.”
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We are kicking off 2017 with the 1st of several planned releases for the new year. This (Blue Flea 022) is a limited edition cassette tape featuring 2 long songs of music perfectly suited for the cold & snowy winter months.
"GODZILLA OF SNOW" is a previously unreleased, unedited full length mix (an edited version was released in January 2014 by Life Like Tapes in an edition of 30 copies). "WITCH & A CAULDRON" is also a previously unreleased, unedited full length mix (an edited version was released in October 2016 for the GEOGRAPHIC NORTH Cassette Death on the Hour: Aural Apparitions from the Geographic North which was limited to 100 copies)
Tapes will be 60 minutes long, with full program running on each side.
The planned release date for this of January 14th 2017 may be bumped up depending on how quickly we receive these from manufacturing.
THIS CASSETTE RELEASE IS A LIMITED EDITION OF 150 COPIES (HAND NUMBERED & INDIVIDUALLY HAND PAINTED ARTWORK BY WINDY)
releases January 14, 2017.
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Cruel Optimism is a record that considers power (present and absent). It meditates on how power consumes, augments and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility. This pyramid is an affective ecology of the (ever)present moment.
When I made Wilderness Of Mirrors, clouds of unease were overhead. As I have worked through Cruel Optimism, what seemed an unimaginable future just a few years prior, began to present as actual. Over the course of creating the record, we collectively bore witness to a new wave of humanitarian and refugee crisis (captured so succinctly in the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s tiny body motionless on the shore), the black lives matter movement, the widespread use of sonic weapons on civilians, increased drone strikes in Waziristan, Syria and elsewhere, and record low numbers of voting around Brexit and the US election cycle, suggesting a wider sense of disillusionment and powerlessness. Acutely for me and other Australians, we've faced dire intolerance concerning race and continued inequalities related to gender and sexuality. The storm has broken and feels utterly visceral.
Cruel Optimism is a meditation on these challenges and an encouragement to press forward towards more profound futures.
Beyond the motivations forging the record, the process by which this edition was created was unlike many of my other records. Having worked largely alone in recent years, I wanted to shift away from that approach. I wanted the opportunity for exchange, to trial new ideas in various spaces and to find myself surprised by the perspectives of others. It was this desire that led me to reach out to friends, old and new, and invite them to contribute to Cruel Optimism. It also led to me using a range of studio spaces to explore new techniques, informed by what I had learned taking Wilderness Of Mirrors on the road for the better part of two years.
I leave it to you then, to listen as you can. This record is one of protest against the immediate threat of abhorrent possible futures. It’s an object of projection, from me to you and onward from there. I couldn’t be more pleased to share Cruel Optimism with you.
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Originally issued as the fourth LP in the limited edition box set Tandoori Dog, Jerusalaam follows Jaagheed Zarb, the title disc, and Libya Tour Guide with a CD reissue; finally, the long out-of-print box has been completely reissued. Again the increased space of its new medium has allowed unreleased material from the original tape to be included. This time, however, the extra material is neither alternate versions of Tandoori Dog material nor new songs intended for those releases; the two extra tracks here, clocking in at near 15 minutes and just under 8, make up unused material from the Return of Black September sessions.
The contrast, even for someone with as wide a range as Muslimgauze had, is stunning. The original Jerusalaam fits in with much of Bryn Jones' classic work, with a heavy emphasis on hand percussion, bass-heavy distortion, sharply clipped loops, and the seething his of static. The two otherwise unnamed Return of Black September tracks, however, follow that album in taking a much more cleanly digital feel, with many of the elements Jones usually uses present but in more stripped down or even mechanized forms. The relatively clean pulse of these two longer compositions serve as a refreshing contrast next to the hand- and tape-made feel of tracks like "All the Stolen Land of Palestine" and "Hessian Bag of Camel Parts," an invigorating reminder of the breadth and vitality of Jones’ work even now.
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Unsurprisingly for an artist as prolific and strident as Bryn Jones was, the flood of material he sent to labels and compatriots was not always carefully categorized. Also, sometimes he would be so eager to release material that if things didn’t happen fast enough he’d just send in another tape. And that circumstance is how you wind up with a fascinating oddity like Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Staalplaat has previously released, in 2002, the Muslimgauze album Sarin Israel Nes Ziona. While continuing to sort through and release the material Jones left behind with his death in 1999, the Mohammad Ali Jinnah tape was found to have significant overlap with that now out-of-print album, but only to a certain extent. 6 of the 15 tracks on Mohammad Ali Jinnah match up with material from the earlier tape (which included 20 tracks), but when Jones resubmitted this tape he also included extended mixes of 4 of the tracks from the original album ("Imam Fainted," "Yousif Water Pipe Habit," "Opulent Maghrebi Meze," and "Indo Muslem Atlas") as well as five entirely new compositions. The result is a fascinating re-setting of some of the music from that underheard release.
Whether Jones preferred one arrangement to the other is sadly lost to us, but listeners now can appreciate a wholly new experience with the material herein, even if some of the material itself is previously released. And the new tracks are fascinating, even by Jones' usual standards, whether they’re the grinding, obsessively focused percussion workouts "For Larger Iran" and "Burnt Pages of Ali Jinnah Koran" or the cryptically distant likes of "Cold Turkey." Paired with classic tracks like the bass-distorted, Middle Eastern boom bap of "Kurds Eye View" and the furtively head-nodding "Zahir Din, Cabdriver of Zind" the result is a release unlike anything else in Jones' discography.
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Last Signs is Eli's first solo release since 2012's Catching Net (PAN Records) and explores a very different side of his
unique acoustic universe. One in which the macrocosmic percussive collisions of his earlier work give way to a gradual
unfolding of dub-influenced rhythmic constellations. Eli has described Last Signs as his response to playing in club
environments over the last few years; an attempt to negotiate a delicate balance between the materiality of his acoustic
instrument and the hyper-mediated sonic ecosystem of the club sound system. Coming off like an inspired synthesis
between Scientist and Xenakis, Last Signs of Speed is a truly unique work by an artist at the height of his
powers.
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Ideologic Organ is proud to present the brand-new recordings from The Necks, the legendary Australian trio who excel in bypassing musical cliche whilst exploring and extending the practices embedded within improvisation, jazz, post rock, ambient, minimal, and textural, ‘sound based’ music.
The latest document from this long-running ensemble, Unfold, presents itself as a double LP, with four side-length tracks. A deliberate absence of numbered sides hands a substantial swatch of participation over to the listener, allowing her to navigate his own path through the soundscape at hand. The shorter length of the vinyl format, far from being a constraint upon the members of the ensemble, instead offers them a more compact horizon to contemplate, wherein the distance travelled is recalibrated to more immediate and dynamic textural concerns. The immediacy of "Rise" confirms this new path, as the mournful tones of Lloyd Swanton's bass swirl around Chris Abrahams' crystalline piano motif, with Tony Buck's percussion steering proceedings into enlightening free-jazz territories. "Blue Mountain" cuts a swathe through the sonic undergrowth, with soul organ, rattling percussion, whistles, and loping sound-waves all vying for the foreground. "Overheard" retains a sublime melancholic aura as the percussion and keyboards simultaneously embrace and fall apart, whilst "Timepiece" skips along as a gentle gesture of further possibilities. Exactly how The Necks conjure their particular magic - as deceptively simple as it seems - whilst always moving forward, is anyone’s guess, but Unfold proves yet again that rules and schools are to be broken and re-formed into patterns and frameworks unlike those we know.
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Editions Mego is proud to publish the third release by Sendai. Comprised of Peter Van Hoesen and Yves De Mey, Ground and Figure presents the duo reside in a more economic framework which allows the sound and rhythm they produce more room to shift, swirl and swim the circumference of the audio spectrum. Moving away from the twitchiness and anxiety of the earlier output Ground and Figure is a vast spacious journey from a duo in full control of their chosen path.
Throughout Ground and Figure abstraction and rhythm weave amongst each other in such a sly manner that the resulting tension in the conflicting elements presents the listener with a hypothetical high-tech elastic percussive grid. A thudding, pulsating, shapeshifting ambient beast is summoned by these two creators working as one.
This is machine music. This is hypnotic disorientation. This is an immense ambitious and refined world of sound and rhythm. This is the work of two producers who continuously try to top up their skills.
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Mute announce the release of two boxed sets from
Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard H. Kirk:
Richard H. Kirk – #7489 (Collected Works 1974 – 1989)
Sandoz – #9294 (Collected Works 1992 – 1994)
Richard H. Kirk – #7489 (Collected Works 1974 – 1989) is an 8-CD boxed set, collating Kirk’s solo work from 1974-1989.
Walking a tightrope of experimental and dance floor themed electronic music, Richard H. Kirk’s solo work precedes his output with Cabaret Voltaire and his releases continued alongside the band’s output. Cementing his reputation as a pioneer of electronic music, this box set amply proves Kirk’s inventiveness and sounds as fresh now as it did otherworldly then.
#7489 includes the 2CD Earlier/Later album as well as the newly re-mastered albums Disposable Half Truths, Time High Fiction (2CD), Black Jesus Voice, Ugly Spirit and an album of rarities Super Duper Soul. 
Sandoz – #9294 (Collected Works 1992 – 1994) is a 5-CD boxed set collating the melding of African sounds with European electronic music, the mission statement of Richard H. Kirk’s alter ego, Sandoz.
These works date from 1992-1994, the box includes the 2CD Digital Lifeforms (Redux), the longtime unavailable and newly re-mastered Intensely Radioactive and Dark Continent albums and an album of rarities Runs The Voodoo Down.
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No Way In celebrates Joe Colley's return after a self-imposed hiatus from creating music. Colley was last spotted in 2012 with his Lonely Microphone LP on Italy's Senufo Editions.
No Way In is a further exploration of Colley's terrain of internal dilemma, mental stress, paranoia, and the pessimistic contemplation of one's fate. This could be a soundtrack to distract one from these thoughts, or it could be the trigger that stirs such things.
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6-CD boxed set containing a series of digital-only releases selected by Sonoris records.
All selections remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
Boxset contains:
- May 1
- February
- The Whole House
- Tannenbaum bonus tracks
- Bolero Muter
- Crooked Abode
- The Sea Wins
- Equinox
- Shut In(Bonus track)
- Earrach ( Part 1)
- Middle of Nothing(Part 1)
- Mithering The Skiving Gorm
The box will be released in January 2017.
More information can be found here and here.
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