Spittle Records present a reissue of The Work's Slow Crimes, originally released in 1982. From the heart of the late '70s/early '80s British underground scene, an extraordinary album at the very edge between art-rock and punk. The Work were a full electric band featuring Tim Hodgkinson, his very first project after the seminal experience of Henry Cow, and three younger maverick figures from the London underground scene. Guitarist Bill Gilonis (The Lowest Note, News from Babel, The Hat Shoes), bassist Mick Hobbs (Officer!, Half Japanese), and drummer Rick Wilson (Family Fodder). The Work embodies the crucial step between two unrepeatable decades in music. An unprecedented mixture of rock complexity and punk attitude. Unapologetically raw and direct, Slow Crimes, The Work's first album originally released in 1982, stands as one of the most essential and uncompromising pieces of vinyl in the field of experimental rock. This edition comes in printed inner sleeve with unpublished pictures and various memorabilia; Includes CD containing the album along with four extra tracks, three of which are from The Work's first and only 7", including the anthemic "I Hate America".

A bootlegged record of a space and its echoes. Recorded on Grain Tower Battery, a Victorian fort on the Isle of Hoo only accessible at low tide which has led a life of repurposing and eventually decay. By the time it was completed in 1855, the original purpose and technology was outdated, and it has never really been in proper use since. A mysterious fate. The base material for the music was made from reverberations of spaces in the tower in a feedback loop, which was then re amplified back into the building, in a sense amplifying what was already there.

Walser, the new album by Robert Piotrowicz is a reiteration of the artist’s soundtrack for the eponymous film by Zbigniew Libera, in which the fictitious Concheli tribe enacts its ritual gestures through music and performance. Rather than following a traditional soundtrack format, where music is written after the film and cut to illustrate the cinematic form, Piotrowicz approaches the film as a point of departure to create an altogether autonomous sound work. While its aesthetic narrative echoes the one that we are submerged into throughout the film, the record’s underlying structure and dramaturgy have been reconfigured and reworked into a new spatial and affective arrangement. Unlike Piotrowicz’s previous works, Walser is predominantly an acoustic album, with a nod to his previous projects that imagined fictional music ensembles (such as Rurokura and Eastern European Folk Music Research Volume 2). The instruments’ idiosyncratic sound is a result of a multifaceted composition process, which took custom-made instrument design (wind, percussion and strings) as its starting point, prototyping the music’s structure and meaning, and the composer-led choreography of actors’ gestures that took place during the film shoot and in its originating performance workshop. In the film, Piotrowicz’s original music score is thus enacted by a body of sound, rather than the by actors on the film set, as it fills up the metastructure devised by the composer. Of course music always influences the way one views a film, but in Walser it becomes a cinematic language of its own kind, an extension of the camera, an omnipresent observer and narrator that sculpts our experience of watching and listening. In the album, sound returns to its first and foremost dimension, time, and while the storyline is no longer in the foreground, its immaterial traces persist in the LP’s structure and narrative, incorporating a myriad of mood changes and dramatic turns. The album is an analogue recuperation of the primal, original sound where music finds a new form of embodiment and occupies a new territory, beyond the screen and beyond the image. It is a sensuous body of sound that carries meaning beyond traditional ways of verbal and pictorial communication.

12" Vinyl LP of Z'EV's The Invisible Man / The Old Sweat released by Coercion.  --- Element/L 1-6 Recorded May 1987, Processing June 1981 O.D Studios NL "Q" 3 Recorded July 1981 at O.D Studios NL Additional Percussion by Gerrd Beuken and Rekk Iersen Phase Relations July 1981 by Z'EV  --- The Old Sweat Selections from KPFK Radio in Feb 1987 recorded by Carl Stone Selections from Rijksmuseum Kröller Müller Otterloo, NL in Feb 1984. Recorded by Dorohea Franck

Yximalloo’s (Naofumi Ishimaru) long and varied career in music covers a period as manager of Yellow Magic Orchestra back in the day, when he also started producing his own music on cassette. Later branching out into CDrs, his discography is voluminous. Sometimes collaborating with Momus, Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Sympathy Nervous (Vanity Records) and others, he has quietly put out over 70 releases, all with his undefinable catalogue of styles. Part one of an incredible, three part series exploring Yximalloo’s output, featuring Jad Fair, Gilles Rieder, and Jason Willett

Yximalloo’s (Naofumi Ishimaru) long and varied career in music covers a period as manager of Yellow Magic Orchestra back in the day, when he also started producing his own music on cassette. Later branching out into CDrs, his discography is voluminous. Sometimes collaborating with Momus, Jad Fair (Half Japanese), Sympathy Nervous (Vanity Records) and others, he has quietly put out over 70 releases, all with his undefinable catalogue of styles. Final part of a three part compilation series that attempts to make sense of the vast catalogue of music Naofumi Ishimaru has released as Yximalloo. Dating back to, I believe, the late seventies, the history of Yximalloo is spread across a near-endless spillage of micro-release cassettes which detail an alternative vision of Japanese post-punk electronic music and proto-indiepop, one that runs parallel to YMO, Vanity, Kankyo Ongaku... One such release is a recording made of a performance in the toilet of Honda's factory in Japan... This, you've a sense of what's on offer here: playful & provocative electronic experimentations that in their nascent state cover similar ground to TG, Severed Heads, Portion Control et al but developed to embody a distinctly twee spirit that presages the Hamster and Cordelia aesthetic. Indeed, it's remarkable that Yximalloo didn't appear on the Japanese edition of the latter's Obscure Independent Classics compilation from 1987. Art-damaged DIY fuckery with a perfectly wanton singularness. These three records together do a remarkable job in distilling what previously appeared too obscure and distended to understand. Brilliant oddities, one and all. "First off, the record should be set straight: previous reports of Yximalloo having managed YMO have proven to be false. That said, with one of his earlier tape releases being entitled "Live At The Lavatory In Honda's Factory", we should consult our lawyers before alleging anything further.The world as we knew it may have unraveled before our eyes, but one thing remains constant, Yximalloo's singular, twisted musical visions keep coming. Here we all are, counting off The End Of Days with the one consolation, that his third volume is here. No, not The Book Of Revelations, but Yximalloo's self compiled bumper-car / helter skelter ride through his voluminous tape and CDr archive, realised over the last 40 years.Yximalloo, pronounced Ishimaru, has produced over 70 CDrs & tapes since the early 80s, occasionally working with Sympathy Nervous (Vanity) and Jad Fair (Half Japanese), but mostly within his own universe.An unknown track of his was released in 2013 by Kompakt, as "Wanted". An unknown artist - they had lost the details of the CD he'd sent them but were compelled to release it anyway. It was the only vinyl release of Yximalloo until "Best Of".

Underground Mod Obscurity from South Africa • South African take on the London Beat scene, mixing British beat, R&B, reggae and funk Zorro Five were a South African studio band comprising Johnny Boshoff (bass), Archie van der Ploeg (guitar), Tony Moore (drums), Johnny Fourie (guitar) and Zane Cronje (keyboard and organ). They won the “Best Beat Group” at the 1971 South African Recording Industry Award for the album Jump Uptight. The single Reggae Shhh! b/w Reggae Meadowlands was an underground hit in the UK and Italy.

White Boy Scream is the experimental classical project from opera singer and composer Micaela Tobin. On her latest release, 'BAKUNAWA', she dissects her voice through the use of electronics as a means of exploring identity and ancestral trauma. “BAKUNAWA” is an homage to the pre-colonial mythology of her motherland, the Philippines. Part sonic ritual, part diasporic storytelling. Micaela Tobin is currently on Faculty as a Voice Instructor at the California Institute for the Arts. She most recently performed a principal role in the critically acclaimed experimental opera, Sweet Land (comp. Raven Chacon & Du Yun), which made it’s U.S. premiere in March 2020. Her previous album, 'Remains' was listed as one of the top 10 Noise/Industrial Albums of 2018 by The Wire Magazine.

The Roman on the cover soldiers on in silence. This album is the product of excavations in materials recorded at home, EMS in Stockholm, Worm in Rotterdoom, and Willem Twee Studios in ’s-Hertogenbosch, much of which has been collaged, recollaged, broken apart, bleeped backwards and put back together with the kind of casual elegance that takes years of practice to perfect. Hiele is a very busy man: aside from his music (solo, commissions, and in collaboration with far too many people to mention here) he co-runs Table Dance — a bar-restaurant-venue in Antwerp’s red light district — and Universal Exports, a shady organisation that occasionally releases records. --- All music by Hiele Mixed at Studio De Ziltige Olijf in Antwerp Mastered by Yves De Mey Released on vinyl by Ultra Eczema. Master cut by Frederic Alstadt --- Ultra Eczema, 2021

First LP by Nina Garcia, aka Mariachi.Guitar, pedal, that's it.  "Mariachi is Parisian guitarist Nina Garcia’ solo project, started in March 2015. Mariachi experiments between improvised and noise music. The setup is ultra minimal: 1 guitar, 1 pedal, 1 amp. Everything is focused on the gesture and the sound research of the instrument: its resonances, limits, expansions, impurities, all the audible parts of the guitar: to go with or against it, to contain it or to let it go, to support it or to hurt it. You’ll probably find: feedback, crackling, short circuits, impacts, harmonics, grindings noises, overflowings, notes and an almost perfect chord. Her first LP was released in October 2018 on No Lagos Musique and Doubtful Sounds. Nina Garcia was born in 1990, she lives and works in Paris." (Shape) "I find that there's never any point in sharing your impressions and feelings about a piece of music, but precisely when I say to myself that this music feels like a mountain weather report passed directly into my brain, it's not about feeling. Or maybe it is, and I can't help it. A short fifteen minutes of the concert, and a long, sharp, mountainous song that sinks into the skull like the echo of bad weather reverberating in the mountains. I don't know what it's about, maybe the simplicity of the sound arrangement, the brutal and purposeful simplicity of the onstage manipulations, but there's something very physical about this sound, something all muscle and tension." (No Lagos Zine)

"impressive soundscape, I like it as if I would have composed IT, bravo". Hans-Joachim Roedelius Phase one is to me a deep dark-blue indigo soundscape, almost instantly trance-inducing. A mountain pass quite far, seen opening heavy wooden shutters, no stars and a fixed moon towering a compressed sky between green-thick slopes are conjured by the restrained chant of Pat Moonchy, richly nuanced and awesomely halo-crafted in the deep projection of the horizon. The cohesion given to the mix by discreet drones is like the transparent fog my eyes are sacrally trapped in once I decided to open the window. There Liguori's punctuations, scrapes and washes of gongs let feel the pulses of life among the trees, fungi slow accretion, nocturnal mammals roaming in the undergrowth, and his round drops of opaline cithara essential plucks are the reflex of this life perception, their presence as transcoded in the consciousness of the human viewer. In the very proximity are centipedes intricately crawling on the wall at my right, summoned by the reeds of Paul Jolly; they transmute at times, at the softest timbre and more even phrase someone is tapping at my shoulder: judging from the brownish collage hang behind it should be Kurt S. offering a cup of tea from a copper samovar. In the middle of that, temporally speaking if here time dimension is allowed to exist, a orange lamp appears climbing to the pass from the invisible valley beyond: couldn't be a shepherd (it's night you know) maybe is Bruno G. walking his long path to the castle, maybe I'm just hallucinating. In the second phase, after a descent I'm guided to explore slowmo the cellar of the house, gray-charcoal rock blocks inebriating of saltpetre, tall candles diffuse reddish and yellow light in square rooms I can just partially see through two-palms-large slits. Voice and instruments hold each other in a subtly different way, in this more enclosed reverberated soundspace it's the ritual dance surely acted in the areas hidden to my view. Throbs at times pace the mesmerized curiosity, I sense that fingers should have touched these walls well before. Likely by pastel colors veiled maidens, maybe imprisoned by a Jean R., how much time ago? A lingering breath of melancholic air could rise from a corridor, when you stop you can feel the pitch-black on both directions, but the fantasy goes to a proper faded end, or better a impression-lasting suspension... Fabio Limido Pat Moonchy - voice and synth Paul Jolly - sax and bass clarinet Lucky Liguori - prepared cithara and gongs

This album is a 4 hours free electronic sonic exploration by Unglee Izi, one of the wildest french electronic freak – a long journey into the wilderness from extreme digital noises to sophisticated landscapes and suspended silences.The vinyl contains 2 extracts, 20 minutes for each side and is accompanied by a CD (74 minutes) and a download card of the original 4 hours track -- Erratum Musicals, 2019

Double album in gatefold sleeve with artwork by Elodie Ortega. In co-production with La Nòvia & released in an edition of 400. The Jericho project is fully in line with the approach of the La Nòvia collective from which it originates, a hub for like-minded musicians reinventing regional folk repertoires, marrying traditional French song with minimalism via the use of drone. Jericho is just one of many available permutations of La Nòvia members, with the line-up including Yann Gourdon, Clément Gauthier, Jacques Puech and Antoine Cognet – you could say it’s La Nòvia’s flagship, or super-group. There are no dramatic stylistic shifts here, this is a story of gradual evolution within parameters that Jericho, and La Nòvia, have set for themselves. That also applies to their interpretation of individual songs, which are largely traditional.They can build from almost nothing to reach a furious, near-hallucinatory pitch, underpinned by Gourdon and driven higher by Cognet’s banjo and Gauthier and Puech’s cabrettes (Auvergnat bagpipes). Gauthier and Puech also sing in unison but drift marginally in and out of time with each other, creating a natural delay effect. Many of the songs slide into each other in long sequences, adding to the sense of disorientation; the one which runs from ‘Revenant Des Noces’ to ‘Trois Mariniers’ takes in both eerie, keening balladry and wild dances. When Jericho hit their stride at these moments – see also, especially, the glorious ‘Planh De la Madalena’ – they leave you feeling like you’re spinning forever, encircled by whirling bodies caught up in dancing mania. L’Oreille Dauphine: An ambitious reinvention of Auvergne songs, where popular tradition mixes with a truly modern aesthetic, a mixture of contemporary folk and drone. The opportunity to discover the unfortunately declining Occitan language as well as unusual instruments such as the limousine bagpipes or the hurdy-gurdy, which by continuous and powerful "drones" ensure this continuity between ancestral heritage and avant-garde.This album marks an astonishing symbiosis, where the joyful frenzy of a wedding song can mingle seamlessly with a hypnotic and transcendent yet profane mysticism, against a backdrop of deep roots in the earth, thereby consecrating a nobility of heart. which frankly conquered mine. —Martin

Following on from the sun-bleached, decayed atmospheres of Scott's previous 2016 release 'The Carousel' (SKR05), 'Hilldrop' brings together four pieces for piano, FM synth, finger cymbals, autoharp, and clock chime. Recorded in different domestic settings between 2011 and 2016, the four tracks vary in structure and intensity, yet remain united by a common sense of stillness and a lightness of touch familiar to much of Scott's solo and collaborative work. Composed and recorded by Tom Scott Autoharp on Dewpoint played by Kristina Liulia Mastered by Sean McCann

Saxophonist Mars Williams is most famous as a member of The Psychedelic Furs, but has proven his jazz bona fides with Peter Brötzmann and Ken Vandermark, and while guiding Liquid Soul and Hal Russell's NRG Ensemble, to name just a few. Williams also leads the Albert Ayler tribute band Witches & Devils, and out of their holiday concerts grew a unique tradition. One listen and you'll hear that, as odd as that concept may seem, it's brilliantly effective, with the disparate melodies working together in their common projection of joy and celebration -- which is painfully needed at this point in time amidst the current climate. For the last four years, along with the annual Chicago performances, Williams brough "An Ayler Xmas", to select cities in the US & Europe, featuring local improvisers from each host city. This particular album showcases two specific group performances from the 2019 touring in Chicago and NYC. These recordings highlight the unique personalities of the individual players Williams convenes, using some of the same material as jumping off points, each group creates an entirely unique sound that pays tribute to Ayler, the spirit of xmas and joyous improvisatio --- Side A: Chicago MARS WILLIAMS – SAX, TOY INSTRUMENTS JOSH BERMAN – CORNET JIM BAKER – PIANO, VIOLA, ARP SYNTH KENT KESSLER – BASS BRIAN SANDSTROM – BASS, GUITAR, TRUMPET STEVE HUNT – DRUMS Side B: New York MARS WILLIAMS - SAX, TOY INSTRUMENTS STEVE SWELL - TROMBONE HILLIARD GREENE - BASS CHRIS CORSANO - DRUMS NELS CLINE - GUITAR FRED LONBERG-HOLM - CELLO --- Released Nov 2020, Astral Spirits

A Colourful Storm presents Tangerine, a collection of songs by Reiko and Tori Kudo. Recorded at Village Hototoguiss, Japan, during autumn, winter and spring 2011 and 2012, the makeup of Tangerine is the culmination of over thirty years of experimentation, improvisation and intimacy between Reiko Kudo and Tori Kudo. Beginning their collaborative musical activities in the late 1970s and documenting their movements as Noise, it would be an earlier Les Rallizes Dénudés gig that would prove influential in shaping the duo’s lifelong impulse for collaboration and free play - it was, after all, where they first met. Over the course of a decade, they became associated with Hideo Ikeezumi’s seminal PSF (Psychedelic Speed Freaks) scene, Tori playing with the likes of Ché-SHIZU and Fushitsusha and self-releasing cassettes before forming the first incarnation of Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Tori’s storied musical ensemble of an ever-rotating cast of contributors, would perhaps find difficulty with Tori if called his own. First surfacing in 1985 on a Shinichi Satoh-released cassette compilation, the group would spend the next thirty years playing live and recording, their sound finding solace with labels as far-reaching as Geographic and K. Tori would welcome local amateur and professional musicians, neighbourhood children, friends and passersby on stage, while in the studio, the likes of Ikuro Takahashi (LSD March) and Takashi Ueno (Tenniscoats) have joined him and Reiko on seminal sides such as Return Visit To Rock Mass and Blues Du Jour.  A deeply human, deeply romantic recording, Tangerine shines as a touchstone of contemporary Japanese folk minimalism and is significantly the last recorded appearance of Reiko and Tori Kudo as a duo. Reiko's voice, plaintive yet playful, quietly commands centre stage and resonates perfectly with Tori's crystalline instrumentation: bass guitar, euphonium, violin and piano evoking echoes of Enka blues. Glacial soliloquies ’The Deep Valley of Shadow’ and ‘When Seeing the Setting Sun Alone’ bare isolation and restlessness before evolving into profoundly welcoming works. A dedication to playwright and former collaborator Jacob Wren, ‘The Swallow II’ struts confidently while ‘Homeless’, delicately adorned and desirous, addresses themes of universal vulnerability: “Will you give me bread when I’m hungry? / Please stay by me like my mother”. A beautiful accompaniment to the intoxicating swirl of ’We May Be’, recorded live by John Chantler at a Cafe Oto concert in 2009. Originally released on CD by Hyotan in 2013, Tangerine is presented for the first time on vinyl by A Colourful Storm with an exclusive alternate digital version of ‘Homeless’. It stands as the final documented interplay of this enchanting, invigorating duo.

The connection with and love for Radio Centraal runs through Ultra Eczema’s veins. The Antwerp-based station has functioned as a voice for myriad local underground movements for nearly forty years. From its inception, architect and ex-Situationist Rudi Renson and restaurateur Roland Rom were a critical, hilarious, and provocative voice in its repertoire of weirdos, chiefly via the weekly RTVS (Radio & Television Salon) programme.Lots of 'music' was made within this show, largely enabled by its presenters’ revolving door policy of regularly inviting others to contribute or host: musician and artist George Smits, actionist and performer Jacques ‘Jack The Rapper’ Ambach, artist Jörgen Voordeckers, jazz saxophonist Mike Zinzen, aspiring philosopher and bass player Filip Baert, political activist Peter Terryn, troublemaker Jan ‘JAC’ Van Den Eynde, renaissance man Mark Meulemans, graphic designer Dominic Gregoire, fashion photographer Ronald Stoops, communist activist Leo Dierckx, feminist Ellen Verryt, translator and teacher Linda Greeve, biologist and Cassis Cornuta’s sole member Daniel Renders… You get the picture.This compilation is far from complete. It is merely a selection from over 200 cassettes from the archives of Rudi Renson and Roland Rom’s families. The 24-page book features interviews (in Dutch) with some of the show’s main protagonists, and a long essay by Peter Terryn (in English).

At last! The long-promised duo LP by two undisputed masters of post-tongue instrumental gesticulation and invention. Augured by their eponymous 7” from 2019, Off Motion is a full-length exploration of the previously unknown aural destinations these two guys continually discover as they move beyond the borders of music-as-it-is-played. Often, when writing about music, it's possible to draw comparisons to players' stylistic relationships to what has gone before. But the music on Off Motion (to quote a William Burroughs chestnut), “buggers comparison.” Nace's style on electric guitar may have its roots somewhere in the playing of Keith Rowe, but the sonic scapes he conjures are so nimbly freaked, I can rarely figure out what the hell he is doing (if anything) to generate what I'm hearing. And White's avant garde approach to the jaw harp (as well, I think, nose flute and maybe even bird call) has so few precedents apart from random Fluxus events, it's impossible to make any inferences as to possible influences. This duo lives up to the promise of ESP-Disk's motto as much as anyone I can think of. You have never heard such sounds in your life. The seven pieces on Off Motion are hard to unravel. Chik sent recordings to Bill. Nace added his own bits. Then he and Emily Robb screwed around with everything until it pulsed with sheer mystery. I took a lot of notes on the tracks, but the best ones are hard for even me to decode. For “Pathways” -- starts with pixie twinkle guitar, then evolves into a duet for Taishōgoto and nose flute that sounds as though it was designed to drive dogs nuts while they search for phantom, mocking squirrels. For “Erasing” -- like a troubled pigeon visiting a guy who uses an electric razor while bouncing around on Slinky-shoes, before switching into carillon-based boots and breaking into a human pinball routine he's been practicing since he was a boy. I repeat these descriptions only to show how entirely Bill & Chik's music resists easy categorization. There is a sense at times the studio/mixing board itself is being used as an instrument, which is very cool. But I am still jonesing to see these guys do some live shows. Both Bill and Chik have the ability to mix jocularity and seriousness into a strangely compelling whole. Their music is bizarre as hell without being off-putting or sterile, and anyone who has a taste for weird thrills is gonna love Off Motion to death. Tell Alice Cooper the news.--Byron Coley