Marcelle Van Hoof is a DJ first and foremost. As DJ Marcelle, she brings as much verve and self-expression to the art of playing records as one could realistically expect (for proof, check out one of the many mixes on her website, her radio show, Another Nice Mess, or last week's RA podcast). And yet, dance music has never really been her thing—"more underground left-field music of the past 40-50 years," she told us, in particular dub, post-punk and avant-garde. In her DJ sets this may be balanced out by the basic needs of the party. In her productions, though, it comes through in a wild, unadulterated form. Though she's been active since the '80s, Van Hoof's own music only started coming out in the last few years, all of it on the Munich label Jahmoni Music. One Place For The First Time is her first album. More than the EPs that came before it, it shows Van Hoof really letting it rip, whipping together 30-odd minutes of demented samples that could have come from the archives of Throbbing Gristle or William Burroughs, layered over sideways rhythms of wildly varying tempos. The vibe is best embodied by the second track, "Respect My Snack Foods." Near the beginning, a woman says: "We can walk you through that difficult, awkward, sweaty moment when you come to take a deep breath and say... I'm sorry." The track goes on to do precisely that, breaking down the process of apology into numbered steps while an 88-BPM groove slithers underneath. "Respect Caged Animals" could be club fodder for the adventurous DJ, with an almost Villalobos-style minimal beat (albeit at 140 BPM) framing a feverish collage of samples, from ambiguous gurgles to women chanting and ululating. Thanks mostly to their length—they're the only ones over four-and-a-half minutes—those two tracks feel like the album's centrepieces. In a way, though, you sense Marcelle is more at home in the album's shorter tracks, which tend to be more unhinged. Take "There!," a two-and-a-half-minute sketch in which a man snores while children sing "Frère Jacques" over a 260-BPM beat, with the occasional chime of a front-desk bell thrown in for good measure. That's the second in a run of four short ones that finish the album, arriving just after "Dub (Dub)," a track that lives up to its name, basically giving us a dub remix of dub itself, or dub to the power of dub. It's all a bit bonkers, and not for the faint of heart, but there's an ecstasy and humor in this chaos that's hard not to like. "Well… it's another nice mess you've gotten me into," a man intones in the album's final moment. Another nice mess indeed.  

Domestic Exile returns with the debut LP by Portuguese artist Luar Domatrix. LD has previously operated as 1/2 of Lisbon duo Yong Yong on Akashic Records and Night School, reworked traditional Portuguese workers songs for Discrepant Records, and released other solo material on Sucata Tapes, 12th Isle and Offshore Drilling Limited. Recorded between Lisbon and Glasgow, track 08 from the record 'I'll Fly With You' has featured on The Wire magazine’s Below The Radar 33 compilation as well as being supported by the likes of Jon K, Debonair, SIREN, Latete Atoto, SUE ZUKI and Body Motion on their respected NTS Radio shows. Bokeh Versions on Noods Radio and Vaj Power on Subcity Radio. ‘Nova Vida Passada’, which translated from Portugese means ‘New Past Life’, surveys the progressive expressions, technological innovations and futuristic aesthetics of late 90's & early 00's R&B, Hip Hop and Pop culture. NVP explores the way in which visionary songs of that nature can demonstrate being intimate and lavish but at the same time anonymous, intangible, enigmatic & metaphysical. Luminescent, glacial synthesisers merge with syncopated, multi-layered accelerated metallic percussion. Ebullient rhythms conjure up flourishing, intricate fractal patterns whilst euphoric, fragmented vocal edits gaze into a dazzling, psychedelic, precious crystal opal gemstone. How the moral sensibility of music is ever changing with the passage of time and propositions the listener to reflect upon the dynamics, ethics and desires of a generation. What does the ‘90s’ spirit epitomise? Music videos with abstract ice particle brick walls, gravitational fields, silver pagers, holographic iridescent spaceships, moral dilemmas and aluminium cyborg feelings. Pop music reverberating loud in a sci-fi celestial club in the distant future. Channels the same energies as Equiknoxx, NAAFI, Hakuna Kulala, BFDM and fellow Lisboners Principe.

Debut solo album by Ruth Mascelli of New Orleans no wave/glam/industrial group Special Interest. A Night At The Baths is a progression from their previous work under the Psychic Hotline moniker, as well as the electronic rhythms they supply as part of Special Interest, drawing on techno, acid house and ambient music. An album as journey in the best sense, starting with the late night pulse-racing dancefloor menace of “Sauna” and ending with the melancholy dawn chorus of “Missing Men”, with a strong narrative arc in between, told through a deft use of instrumental textures. Ruth Mascelli comments: “This album is an audio diary of adventures had at various bathhouses, dark rooms, and gay clubs while on tour with Special Interest and traveling on my own. It was a way of wrapping my head around my own experiences in those very specific surroundings but also an attempt to connect to the current of queer history flowing through those spaces. Cruising dystopia, libidinal contact, anonymity & risk - rites of passage with a potent lineage. I was in a particularly dark and cavernous sex club when I heard an unstable melody crackling from down the hall. Instead of a proper sound system this place had the kind of network of tinny intercom speakers you would find in a school. The sound of a degraded pop song several rooms away getting lost amidst the chorus of heavy breathing was the starting point for this project. I think of each individual track as it’s own room or physical space. Some may be lonely, some crowded, but I tried to leave them open enough to walk around and explore.” 

Mesmerizing D-I-Y electronic music from Cumbria, UK. Influenced by the Berlin School but, even more, by Tim Blake. "Call For World Saviours" features music which is both timeless and very much of its time, a disappearing act on the part of its creator whose character nevertheless resonates in every note. Released 1984 on cassette only.

  Eliza McCarthy plays 6 piano pieces by Mica Levi on ‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’. The pair’s collaboration has patiently cemented in the past three years, with McCarthy (winner of the 2013 British Contemporary Piano Competition) featuring on Levi’s Oscar-nominated score for Pablo Larrain’s ‘Jackie’. Eliza has performed Mica's work at the Barbican, St John’s Smith Square, and on a 7” both shared with cellist Oliver Coates on Foom in 2017. ‘Remain Calm’, Levi's 2016 collaboration with Coates, is the composer's previous outing on Slip. The EP is bound by a sense of unreal poise: the elegant, blunt, low-lit, and gloopy seep into one another. The titles describe what the music is trying to emulate. Levi's idiosyncratic mix, and the care in McCarthy's playing, give ‘Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall’ a sense of lived-in warmth.  --- Eliza McCarthy / piano --- Music by Mica Levi. Additional Mixing by Sam Slater. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Mica Levi and Eliza McCarthy. 

ALTER is proud to present ‘Tendrils’, the first LP release from London based artist & musician Malvern Brume. After gathering some hushed praise from the UK underground for a couple of excellent cassette releases and strong local live performances, ‘Tendrils’ is the first definitive document of the Malvern Brume sound world. His instrumentation and sound sources would be considered familiar staples in the world of “experimental” music, but Salter does an admirable job of making them his own. Comprised of 8 pieces, this is electronic music at its core but a kind that sounds as if it’s being played through fog. Like spores growing on a damp surface. Densely composed and thick with an almost asphyxiating atmosphere – even during the record’s more minimal moments – track titles like ‘Caught In The Exhaust Trails’ and ‘Sunk Into Plastics’ only heighten the tone further. Salter was originally born in the countryside and since relocated to London, a place he finds “over stimulating in every sense”. Much of ‘Tendrils’ could be taken as a response to the city and a means of equating the two. Camberwell is listed as the location for composition, but field recordings are attributed to rural landmarks. The Rollright Stones on the Oxfordshire / Warwickshire border and Seven Sisters Cliffs by the English Channel are two in case, but despite their picturesque origins Salter renders them into abstract clatter. As if dubbed from the private tape archive of an old eccentric. In addition, synthesised electronic tones hum and buzz, occasionally giving away to strange, slurring sequences that sound like lost transmissions from the radiophonic workshop. Despite the nod to this electronic music institution, it’s lacking the sincere level of esteem that can turn one into a heritage act. There is a strangeness and distant other worldliness to the music that feels unselfconscious and keeps Malvern Brume from being easy to define by contemporary terms. Salter says the album is defined by movement and the environments that have inspired him over the years. In his own words, “each of these tracks is inspired by a journey or moving through a space, an audible A to B”. With that in mind, ‘Tendrils’ is perfect music for solitary inner-city marshland walks and urban bike rides to forgotten local suburbs.

The music of Naarm/Melbourne composer Lisa Lerkenfeldt channels a unique wavelength of foreboding, interstitial electronics, incorporating strategies of musique concréte threaded with veiled currents of melody and hypnosis. Recent recordings for Vienna Press, Longform Editions and Aught Void have demonstrated different depths of process and finesse but her latest, Collagen, captures perhaps the most complete and complex manifestation of her craft to date.Drawing on a disciplined palette of peach wood combs, contact microphones, piano, strings, and feedback, the album moves in low, looming arcs, ascending to strange purgatories of opaque atmosphere. Lerkenfeldt cites a core aspiration to “elevate the everyday,” transforming common objects into otherworldly sound sources, which colors Collagen with a beguiling tactility, like vibrations traced in sand. The tracks shift in frequency and feeling, alternately heady and bodily, acoustic and synthetic, isolated states of static, light, and undertow skirting the outer rings of ambient, noise, and modern composition.Although each piece exists in its own rare air the composite panorama they present is striking in its sweep and subtlety. Lerkenfeldt's muse seems one of evasion as much as evocation, navigating negative spaces for their subliminal whispers of dread or beauty. It's an aesthetic both ascetic and exploratory, minimalist mirages of resonance, texture, and gravity skewed through the pensive glow of room tone.But Lerkenfeldt is too versatile an artist for purist restraint, which Collagen demonstrates dramatically in its closing cut, “Champagne Smoke.” A quivering bowed eulogy ebbs under a flickering film of distortion, slowly swelling in sorrow until suddenly the screech goes silent, revealing a murmuring phantom haze hidden beneath the strings, like a specter lost in an abandoned house.

Pacific City Sound Visions greets wonder again, this fall, to bring you a third vinyl release from the late 80's early 90's experimental/industrial european scene. Another special release on Spencer Clarks incredible label. Big Tip on this! Limited to 280 copiesMAAT is a solo project by Dorte Marth, who created two secretly powerful and underappreciated records in 1993. They were released on two labels (Dragnet, Dom Elchklang) run by Achim P. Li Khan, the co-founder of the GREATEST BAND ON EARTH, H.N.A.S. MAAT'S musical pallette is at once, strikingly, a more dark and brooding occult version of Anima and Limpe Fuchs. One can hear classical music references much like Coil's Unnatural History, but played further, blurring the shadowy lines between sampling and virtuoso playing. MAAT'S dark and glisteningly illustrated use of electronic drums, Pan-Asian arrangements, and classical styles, invent a private world where she uncovers and projects forth, a new and ancient female energy. Its almost as if she is orchestrating her pallette and shooting it through star-clusters beneath the world. Probably Typhonian Highlife's and 4th World Magazines greatest influence. --- Pacific City Sound Vision, 2018

Exemplary of Inga Copeland (Hype Williams) aka Lolina’s increasingly freeform, ephemeral style of composition of the last few years, her Geneva live show sees her coolly drifting between clouds of frothed percussive loops, bleeps, and church bells to screwed grime abstraction, janky blatz and dadaist synth-pop for nearly 50 wonky minutes. Keener observers will recognise mutant versions of songs from ‘The Smoke,’ released the same year of this performance, stitched in with her naturally unpredictable forms, which most brilliantly and boldly sound unresolved and frayed in a DIY, off-the-cuff way that many artists wouldn’t have the gall to perform live in front of an audience. It practically sounds as though she’s in her own space and doing what comes naturally, offering a candid snapshot of her stream-of-consciousness in unfettered flow. Never hectic, more stoned and endearingly carefree, the set washes out with a lolling sort of lo-fi psychedelia that feels freer, less contrived than more conventional sorts of psychedelic music (don’t get us started on soundalike “psych” bands that couldn’t be further from it), primed with a sort of aleatoric unpredictability and canny wit, and snagged with her patented, from-behind-the-ear hooks that light up the set at opportune junctures.

You are tuning into something that has been playing on an endless loop. These recordings come from a time when the dystopia called but life stood still, imagining other horizons. Love and new life in a place once used to house the dead. This was all we had: a shared dream. Dragging the harmonium from the top bedroom and down to the court, playing it until the fabric tore and it would no longer breathe or sound. Gold echoes reflecting on the roof. A memory, entombed. The familiar sound of the ferry engine roaring and the cold salt water blasting out beneath us as we went out to Inis Oírr, the smallest of the islands, like we did most summers. Love as a refusal to die, yet. This album survives as a vanitas—a reflection on the transience of life and certainty of death. A love letter to a dead city. Dripping paint over lost texts. Enticing the shadow self and embracing the anima, attempting divination. Live from an archive of past performances. All recordings are both dead and undead in that every time they are played back, they are re-lived. A mortuary of crystallised feelings, doubtful (self-imposed) exile and the long-gone sentiment of any romance in isolation. ‘But there it is, either you love or you don’t.’* *Samuel Beckett, First Love

Murk and mystery are the keys to Mosquitoes’ unique ability to suck the listener into a wormhole that pulses with menace. Little is known about this new-ish UK unit, but all signs point to an intriguing future. The proof resides within the grooves of Drip Water Hollow Out Stone, Mosquitoes’ 5-song 12” EP on New York City’s fearless Ever/Never Records. Yes, the record’s title functions as a concise explanation of a timeless natural process -- but it also reveals the name of each track, small gestures that gradually erode the listener’s sense of physical bearing. The murk radiates and pervades. “Drip” tosses you into the deep end and taunts you to try to swim. Strangled vocal cries and seemingly random guitar/drum patterns suggest the disorienting tactics of avant-rock legends US Maple. There is a disturbing logic afoot, even as the sounds seem to disappear into a maelstrom of their own making. “Water” quite literally buzzes with a malevolent grace as rhythms click and sounds reverberate like deep-sea sonar. “Hollow” channels the throbbing and whirring anxiety of latter-day Sightings, an all-too-rarely seen influence on contemporary noisemakers. It’s a testament to Mosquitoes’ peculiar aesthetics that they can hold their own in such rarefied company. On the flip, Mosquitoes’ put their heads down and burrow deep into into the listener’s skin. “Out” is an amorphous mass of distended sonics featuring short-circuiting guitars, unpredictable sound-swells and stuttering vocals attempting to communicate in an unspoken language. A perfect place-setting then, for the molten eruption of the final track, a fitting cap”Stone” on a mesmerizing outing from Mosquitoes, courtesy of Ever/Never Records. 

Mosquitoes are essential seneschals. What court, you ask? New Jupiter. Yep, they guard the threshold of the whole planet. Representatives of the Hexerei and Braucherei Guild beamed up for a brief exchange to learn something of their Suicide-inflected sound. But, that sure isn’t Scion retroactively influencing Rev. - Tom LaxCaustic dubs and wailing voices that search for space in the static; nervous skittering that fidgets under a layer of dust in a hollow acoustic space. - Jennifer Lucy Allen , Quietus

Bruce Russell and Noel Meek return with their second harsh noise collaboration. Their first, 'Classical Music' (2018) was an all-electronics wrestling bout that simulated engine testing on a long-haul passenger jet. Their new album combines guitar, violin and electronics and was recorded in a wood workshop. You can hear the power tools, even though none were actually used. Extreme noise can sometimes be associated with offensive, racist or extreme-right views. The New Zealand duo have chosen to spotlight that problematic tendency by recording their new record in Christchurch, scene of that country's worst right-wing terror atrocity, and calling it 'Say No to Hate'. It is an affirmation of life and collaborative solidarity, one of the signature characteristics of the fully international scene from which it springs. --- Released on LP, February 2020 Edition of 200 copies Ikuisuus Records

"Corulu Flatdas Gasigo" was originally planned for release in 2003 but the project got stuck in limbo. 20 years later, an envelope was found in Finland, containing the only existing master on a cd-r plus all the cut & paste style graphics on xerox paper. Luckily the cd-r still functioned and the project will now finally be completed by Artsy Records. Miguel Tomasin: Voice, percussion & organ on A1Moncho Conlazo: Electric guitar & marmonioAnla Courtis: Electric guitar & pacalirtePacu Conlazo: Mapuche percusiónRecorded & mixed at Valuba Mafiforo Studios,Buenos Aires, Argentina 2002-2003

Fernand Schirren was an exceptional musician and composer, rhythm teacher to Bejart and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, silent film accompanist of the Brussels Musee du cinema (now CINEMATEK) from its founding in 1962 until the 1980s, and eccentric collector of pipes and romantic postcards. He chose anything but a traditional historical-oriented approach, and left his avant-garde stamp on the film, dance and music worlds at home and abroad. This compilation gathers never before published works that Schirren specially composed for the short films 'Dimanche' by Edmond Bernhard in 1963, 'Masques' by Jean-Marie Buchet and Marc Lobet in 1959, and Cartoon Circus by Benoit Lamy and Picha in 1972. Some of the most intense and curious soundtracks cinema ever gave us. A1 Composed by Fernand Schirren for the short film Dimanche by Edmond Bernhard in Brussels, Belgium, 1963 B1 Composed by Fernhand Schirren for the short film Masques by Jean-Marie Buchet and Marc Lobet in Brussels, Belgium, 1959 B2 and B3 Composed by Fernand Schirren for the short film Cartoon Circus by Benoît Lamy and Picha in Brussels, Belgium, 1972

Edition Telemark proudly presents the first vinyl LP since 1989 by Munich's long-running ensemble for experimental music, PHREN, formed in 1968 by Michael Kopfermann. Informed by the musical avant-garde at the time and especially the problems discussed by other improvisational groups, Kopfermann developed his own approach to improvisation and tone production and sought to find instruments and playing techniques that allowed him to realize what he had in mind. His thinking centered around the treatment of noise and the eschewal of a separation between noise and tone, as well as methods for overcoming the limitations of the pre-conceived tones of the tempered system. This ruled out quite a few instruments, and also electronic techniques available at the time were deemed to primitive for the tones he sought to produce. After initially experimenting with Turkish cymbals stimulated by cello bows, Kopfermann settled on a range of instruments that included traditional string instruments, e.g. viola and violoncello, and certain wind instruments like the flugelhorn and the helicon. All instruments were prepared, the string instruments with thicker gut strings and unusual tunings, the wind instruments with longer elbow pieces. The preparations, along with the development of new and uncommon playing techniques, allowed the players to create and improvise on previously unheard noisy tones that are not static and pre-conceived but substantially individual. Over time, the number of musicians in the ensemble expanded up to six and the activities under the PHREN moniker became morefold, most notably with the formation of the PHREN theatre group led by Carmen Nagel-Berninger. Still, even during the sextet years, trios and duos of varying instruments were played, often called "analytical" because they were meant to focus individual voices against the background of the larger ensemble. From early on, PHREN published about their actitives in written form and on LPs and later CDs, mostly in their own PHREN-Verlag. This new LP thus compiles recent recordings from 2010 and 2018 of the duo of Carmen Nagel-Berninger (prepared viola) and Inge Salcher (prepared flugelhorn). The duos heard here are not so much meant as analytical studies, but rather as fully valid, improvisationally generated pieces, applying the musicians' long-term experience with their music in a way that doesn't sound reduced despite the small line-up. Edition of 300 with printed inner sleeve and extensive liner notes on the history of the PHREN ensemble and its duo line-ups in German and English by Reinhard Kapp, Carmen Nagel-Berninger and Inge Salcher, as well as a detailed discography.

Heavy Machinery Records is proud to present 'Expressions of Interest' the brilliant debut album from Melbourne post-punk specialists screensaver. screensaver balance frenetic energy with unsettling tonalities to create rhythmic gloom that rides the new wave to the synth-punk. Spending three years in an incubatory state, the band began as a trans-Pacific collaboration between Christopher Stephenson (Spray Paint / Exek) and Krystal Maynard (Bad Vision / Polo) in 2016. By 2019 the pair had recruited Giles Fielke (Low Tide) and James Beck (Personal Touch / Rat Columns) on bass and drums respectively to form the band as it exists now. ‘Expressions of Interest’ is the debut album from screensaver, released on Heavy Machinery (AU) and Upset the Rhythm (UK) Records. Sonically, the 10-track album is rich and detailed, and pays homage to its era of inspiration: late 70s-mid 80s post-punk and new wave. From electronic-driven krautrock, to post-punk full of tribal toms and dirge-y synths, to death-disco with touches of EDM, 'Expressions of Interest' is an album that is both fierce in attack and destined for the dance floor. Maynard’s vocal style is equal parts haunted and commanding, her lyrics exploring themes of social degradation, frustration and repetition, whilst exposing the fragility of our bodies/minds on the whole. Praise for ‘Expressions of Interest': “Though screensaver's lineup comes close to a supergroup of Australian post-punk talent, with members who have played in EXEK, Rat Columns, and other acts putting their stamp on these time-tested sounds, it's Maynard's voice that immediately distinguishes them from their peers. A vibrato-heavy alto snarl in the vein of Siouxsie Sioux or Adult's Nicola Kuperus, it's a refreshing -- and imposing -- change from the deadpan vocal style of many post-punkers in the 2020s.” – Heather Phares, All Music “E.O.I is a potent set of dark post-punk inflected with industrial, motorik prog-rock and other styles, combining angular guitars, buzzing keyboards, driving rhythms and hypnotic song hooks.” Don Yates, KEXP “Sonically, screensaver are an amalgamation of goth, synth, and post punk. On a macro level The Cure, Joy Division and Siouxsie and the Banshees, are some of vocalist Krystal Maynard’s musical influences as a teenager. However, on a micro level you'll find Constant Mongrel and Nun, UK label mates Es, and almost anything and everything released on Nihlistic Orbs. At the same time, this band is like no other.” - Tristan Birrell, 4ZZZ “Most bands trying to do this particular sound don’t have this level of attention to detail that screensaver have, in particular I enjoy the subtle and not so subtle use of percussive synth sounds. Great lyrics, maybe not the most uplifting but indeed an accurate representation of the new dark age we live in. ‘When the well runs dry, you act surprised’. Expressions of Interest is a studied, devotional love letter to the bands that have inspired them, not merely a genre exercise.” - James Vinciguerra (Total Control/Trevor) 

Electronic musician Xopher Davidson releases Lux Perpetua via Daydream Library Series. A noted protége of Maryanne Amacher, Xopher recorded these two tracks in 2020 utilizing vintage synths within the beloved music studios of Mills College in Oakland, California. Xopher builds his experiments in electronic sound from a basis in painting, photography, and film, and through an interest in electronic circuits going back to building radios and homemade circuits as a kid. He has built and explored the sound world of a homebrew modular synthesizer comprised of surplus laboratory equipment: various oscillators, pulse generators, filters and an 'analog computer. He has released 4 albums as ANTIMATTER : Transfixion, Antimatter Vs. Antimatter, Our Lady of the Skies, and Reset. As an audio engineer, Davidson has worked on projects composed / performed by: the League of Automatic Composers, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Subtropic, Diamanda Galas, Kid 606, DJ Rupture, Darwin's Bitch, Once 11, Mix MasterMike, Hans Grusel, Phoenecia, Jonah Sharp, We, Zbigniew Karkowski, and Iannis Xenakis.