Brand new recordings of some classic early MONO songs that have become fan favorites and live staples. MONO formed in Tokyo, Japan in the closing winter weeks of December, 1999. They played their first live shows at the top of the new millennium, and released their first album, Under The Pipal Tree, in 2001. Recorded live in one day on a razor-thin budget, Pipal Tree was an earnest introduction to the curious magic of a band that would eventually become synonymous with monstrously dynamic, contemporary classical rock music. To commemorate those austere beginnings - and celebrate their remarkable longevity - MONO revisit three of their earliest songs, and retrofit them with speaker-destroying upgrades.

Anchored by the towering 16-minute noise opus, "Com(?)", Before The Past - Live From Electrical Audio shows the evolution of MONO's execution, stripping away the strings and layers of guitar overdubs to show just how massive this band can be at their most instrumentally austere. Newly recorded in one day in 2019 with longtime collaborator, Steve Albini - and mixed by Albini with Temporary Residence founder, Jeremy deVine - Before The Past is as much a declaration of the present as it is a document of the past. These songs, which are now 20 years old, feel more powerful and profound than ever; a testament to MONO's enduring dedication to their craft, and their dogged exploration of maximum minimalism

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies Only edition Crystal Clear w/ Pink Smoke Coloured Vinyl

The expansive new album Rachel Grimes, the renowned modern composer and cofounder of iconic chamber-rock group, Rachel’s. A rich, sprawling folk opera that explores the controversial history of Kentucky’s overlooked figures. The Way Forth, a new folk opera from Rachel Grimes, encompasses lush layers of voices and orchestrations in an experiential, non-linear investigation highlighting perspectives of Kentucky women from 1775 to today. Inspired by a treasure-trove of family documents, photos, and letters spanning several generations, Grimes began in 2016 to research some of the more vexing questions that came to the surface about these people, places, and events.

The songs that make up The Way Forth weave back in time through a postcard, a personal account of a long life on a farm, traces of folk tunes, names, places, and rivers, all woven into an emotional fabric of yearning, nostalgia, grief, and the rich intimacies of everyday life. Initially solo voices are heard above vivid orchestrations, expanding with the choral voices of the community through fragments of traditional church music and popular tunes. The scope widens to include a modern male narrator's reflections on a place battered by greed, civil war, bigotry, and the exploitation of natural resources. Through music, voice, and film, The Way Forth honors the emotional legacy of the silenced, the holistic, the beauty in quotidian life, and explores the eternal grace and redemption of time, as symbolized by the great Dix and Kentucky Rivers

The debut album by renowned composers and ambient Americana pioneers, Chuck Johnson and Marielle V Jakobsons (Date Palms). There is an old Norse myth that says the great northern glaciers stored energy until they burst with fluorescent light, creating the Aurora Borealis. Saariselka is inspired by the meeting of earth and light, where slowly moving land masses merge with enveloping light fields. This sonic collaboration between composers Marielle Jakobsons (Fender Rhodes, organ, synthesizers) and Chuck Johnson (pedal steel guitar and treatments) is as expressive as it is enigmatic. On their debut album, The Ground Our Sky, a kind of new ambient Americana is unearthed and explored. The respectively singular artistry of Jakobsons and Johnson collectively craft a universe of remarkable resonance. It is a vibrant, seemingly infinite sway of sounds that exists unmoored in time and space. The Ground Our Sky gets its lift by pondering the universe not while staring up at the sky, but rather down at the ground – gazing into the earth, where we are all individually and collectively a meeting of the ground and the sky. This inverted perspective is at the heart of Saariselka’s music. That feeling of becoming ungrounded is universal and inevitable – and increasingly necessary to seize those rare opportunities for meaningful changes in perspective. “Something is happening. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies-only dark blue vinyl.

Floating Spectrum is the moniker for Taiwan-born, Berlin-based composer and audio technologist, Mei-Fang Liau. Her debut album as Floating Spectrum, A Point Between - crafted from a combination of synthesizers, everyday household objects, and unique software synthesizers made by Liau herself - is truly a sound and vision unlike any other. To complete the album, Liau relied heavily on a self-made, fractal-inspired software synthesizer called Polyphylla, which simulates the way in which nature creates very complex and organic forms just by repeating slight variations of a simple form.

It allowed Liau to create slowly evolving textures and sounds with complex dynamics, and thus the driving influence for the whole of A Point Between. The lone outlier is "Eruption," for which Liau built a generative sound system that turns visual data into sound. In this hybrid system, sensitively fluctuating analog signals, fine-tuned data analysis, and human intuition perform together as one coherent living being. The technological marvels of Floating Spectrum are, of course, uniquely impressive. But the more astonishing and intangible triumph of A Point Between is its singular ability to collect and shape such abstract sonic organisms into richly textured, immersive works of art. It's that profound resonance that makes A Point Between such an uncanny work of emotional and structural depth

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited Crystal Clear with Dark Red Streaks Vinyl.

The first new studio album in 13 years from Uzeda, the legendary long-running Italian post-punk quartet. Recorded by longtime touring companion, collaborator, and friend, Steve Albini. Last year Uzeda celebrated their 30th anniversary as a band in the most appropriate way they knew: They hosted a weekend music festival in their hometown of Catania, Sicily, and filled it with all of their closest friends' bands. That weekend as they played host to scores of similarly legendary bands (including Shellac, The Black Heart Procession, The Ex, Three Second Kiss, and a reunited June of 44), Uzeda cemented their reputation as Italy's national treasure of underground rock music. Now, one of the longest-running punk bands on the planet returns with their first new album in 13 years,Quocumque jeceris stabit.

The title Quocumque jeceris stabit comes from the famous inspiration phrase that loosely translates in English to "Wherever you throw it, it will stand" – a testament to the resilience and adaptability of Uzeda. Like a buoy in turbulent waters, virtually everything around the band and its members has changed significantly since their last album, Stella, was released in 2006 on their previous longtime label, Touch and Go Records. They've endured the passing of friends, family, collaborators and business partners. What they've never lost is their will to continue to inspire and draw inspiration from all of those around them, in life or otherwise. Recorded, as always, by longtime friend and collaborator, Steve Albini, Quocumque jeceris stabit sees Uzeda picking up where they left off, albeit with the sands and scars of time cutting new creative paths within the reputable map through which Uzeda have traveled for the past four decades. Vocalist Giovanna Cacciola's fragile, dynamic rasp still cuts through the jagged guitar of husband and fellow Bellini member, Agostino Tilotta, while the rhythm section of bassist Raffaele Gulisano and drummer Davide Oliveri provide the sturdy foundation on which all Uzeda songs are built. But there's something noticeably different now, a kind of melodic tension that was always hinted at but perhaps never fully displayed until now. It is a sound and a feel that Uzeda was made for, and one that unquestionably defines them

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited edition indies-only Pearlescent Platinum coloured vinyl

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of MONO – and the 10th anniversary of their most iconic album Temporary Residence Ltd. proudly presents Hymn to the Immortal Wind – Anniversary Edition. Beautifully remastered from the original analog master tapes by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, this super deluxe reissue sounds, looks, and feels more pure and powerful than ever before. The CD format has been repackaged in a gorgeous full-color gatefold jacket with metallic gold inks, matte varnish, and custom inner sleeve. The 2xLP vinyl format is packaged in a mind-blowing full-color, custom die-cut jacket with metallic gold foil stamping, matte varnish, and 7 interchangeable full-color cover inserts. The vinyl is pressed onto 100% virgin, audiophile-quality vinyl. No expense was spared in properly honoring what has become MONO’s most beloved album. 

Pianoworks is Eluvium’s first solo piano album since his sophomore album, An Accidental Memory In The Case Of Death (2004). Inspired by the quiet thoughts and solitary observations of children – and the evolution/dissolution of that ephemeral, uncorrupted wonder of simple joy – Pianoworks begins with a song about children’s piano lessons, and culminates with an etude driven by the struggle to hold onto innocence and imagination as adulthood settles in. The record’s dramatic simplicity in both execution and expression is with purpose: Cooper wants the music to be simple enough to inspire children and novices to play, and the concept simple enough to resonate regardless of age or experience.

As any minimalist painter, poet, or architect can attest, it is oftentimes the profoundly simple art that proves to be the most time-consuming and torturous to produce. Pianoworks exemplifies this dichotomy, having been recorded, re-recorded, and re-re-recorded in the span of nearly a decade. Cooper exhausted every attempt to achieve a very specific, peculiar sound that is out of time – a sound not entirely lost in an attic, but also one not easily found in a playlist. The process to achieve this elusive sound was painstaking, but it has yielded a rare kind of music that is as uncomplicated as it is uncompromised. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've been a fan of Eluvium for as long as I can remember, and can clearly recall the joy of hearing 'An Accidental Memory...', stripping back the elemts to just a piano and some field-recorded ambience. This brings me right back to that time, with Cooper's delicate tinkling keys filling the sonic spectrum with graceful reverb and beautifully minimalistic instrumentation.

Beloved Exile is the new studio full-length by Steve Moore, his first non-soundtrack album in over five years, and his first for Temporary Residence Ltd. A prevalent figure of the modern synth era, Moore cofounded the influential synth-prog duo, Zombi, and has scored more than a dozen feature films and TV shows, including The Guest, Crunch Time, and Mayhem. Composed and produced by Steve Moore in his home studio in upstate New York, Beloved Exile is a collaboration with internationally-renowned Tunisian singer-songwriter Emel Mathlouthi, visionary harpist Mary Lattimore, and veteran percussionist Jeff Gretz. Drawing influences from vintage ambient synth libraries, New Age/spiritual music, and menacing horror film canon, Beloved Exile proves to be simultaneously exquisite and deceptively unsettling. It is appropriate, then, that a literary treasure like John Darnielle (The Mountain Goats), would provide the song and album titles – his masterful mind most fitting to put moniker to this mercurial triumph. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited edition Crystal Clear w/ Pink Streaks colored vinyl

The new studio album from one of the world’s most celebrated sound artists. Vinyl format features exclusive mixes that differ from the CD and Digital formats. “At its best, William Basinski’s music inspires the sort of rapturous testimony usually reserved for peak experiences, cult leaders and the dead.” 

On Time Out of Time is a suite of works originally commissioned for the 2017 installations ‘ER=EPR’ and 'Orbihedron' by artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand (in collaboration with Jean-Marc Chomaz and LIGO) for the exhibition, ‘Limits of Knowing’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin by curator, Isabel de Sena. These works utilize, among other things, exclusive source recordings from the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) capturing the sounds of the merging of two distant massive black holes, 1.3 billion years ago. The CD and Digital formats feature two tracks: The 40-minute title track, “On Time Out of Time,” as well as “4(E+D)4(ER+EPR)”, a live track recorded during the aforementioned installation. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: vinyl LP format features two exclusive mixes of the title track: “On Time Out of Time” on the a-side; and “On Time Out of Time (The Lovers)” on the b-side, made especially for the vinyl format.

The limited edition super-deluxe vinyl format is pressed onto 100% virgin vinyl in a custom Yellow-White-Clear March-Up color mix. The records is packaged in a full-color gatefold jacket, and includes a full-sized 28-page full-color diary, and an original hand-numbered animation print cell from the We The Animals film production. The soundtrack to the massively acclaimed, aware-winning motion picture, We The Animals. We The Animals has received near-unanimous acclaim (91% on Rotten Tomatoes), and the soundrack has been praised as an integral part of the film’s profound resonance. We The Animals is the award-winning new film from Jeremiah Zagar (In A Dream). Based on the best-selling novel by Justin Torres, We The Animals is Zagar’s first narrative feature.

It reunites Zagar with Nick Zammuto, the renowned composer and co-founder of beloved collage-pop pioneers, the Books. Inspired by the film’s setting in rural upstate New York – and influenced by the early ambient electronic music that galvanized the Books two decades ago – Zammuto pairs that earthen, wooded isolation with dynamic pulses of customized electronics and sparse, crystalline layers of melodic soft synths. The juxtaposition is arresting, and gives the soundtrack a unique heft befitting of its subject matter – and betraying of its minimal instrumentation. Beautifully edited and sequenced to act as both a companion to the film and a standalone album, We The Animals: An Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is as subtle as it is startling, and succeeds in making even the heaviest emotions feel momentarily weightless

RIYL: Ludovico Einaudi, Max Richter, Eluvium, Nils Frahm, Goldmund.

Bruno Bavota is a young Italian composer and multi-instrumentalist with seemingly boundless potential, and an extraordinary gift for marrying the intellectual and emotional into earnest and profoundly effective songs. Though favorably compared in his early career to another Italian composer, the legendary Ludovico Einaudi, Bavota has found himself increasingly pursuing ways to distort and disturb traditional arrangements and melodies in pursuit of a more distinct resonance. Armed with a plethora of outboard effects pedals and processors, Bavota manually manipulates his songs in real time as he performs - often with his bare hands engaged in a seesaw battle of construction against obstruction. It infuses a genuine sense of tension and forward momentum that makes his work extraordinarily poignant. Recorded live in one afternoon at a friend's studio in Bavota's hometown of Naples, Italy, RE_CORDIS documents many of Bavota's most recognizable and accomplished works as they stand and at this moment in time - ever-evolving musical life-forms that change shape while maintaining their distinctive skeletons. It also introduces his newest work, "The night of," a tense, escalating race of loops punctuated by a series of dramatic chord strikes. The recording is charmingly informal, leaving the sounds of Bavota's physical movements - the shuffling of feet, the triggering of effects pedals, the creaking of stools - present in the mix to mingle with the music. As an exhibition of Bavota's skills as a composer and performer, it's impressive; as a glimpse of what's to come, it's an epiphany. 

The first new album in nearly a decade from Italian-American post-punk stalwarts. Recorded, mixed, and sequenced by longtime collaborator, Steve Albini. A decade is literally a lifetime for most bands. For Italian-American post-punk stalwarts, Bellini, a decade is simply the time it took to make their new album.

Separated by an ocean, the members of Bellini lived their lives, mourned several close friends who lost theirs, and occasionally converged in Italy or Chicago to write and record what would become Before The Day Has Gone. Recorded as always by longtime collaborator and companion, Steve Albini, Before The Day Has Gone’s roots are in tracks that were originally laid to tape at Albini’s Electrical Audio Studios way back in 2012, where they sat unfinished until fall of 2017, when vocalist/lyricist Giovanna Cacciola recorded her vocals with the help of Sacha Tilotta, her son with Bellini guitarist,
Agostino Tilotta.

Once received, Albini mixed and sequenced the album independently, as Bellini has preferred with all of their albums since 2005’s Small Stones. Bellini’s gift for marrying melody and dissonance is as sharp as ever on Before The Day Has Gone – the band’s veteran rhythm section of Matthew Taylor and Alexis Fleisig anchoring Tilotta’s sinewy anti-riffs and Cacciola’s primal punk poetry. Bellini deliver passion and pain with the kind of pride and prowess one would expect from a band of their pedigree, and Before The Day Has Gone is their most dramatic and dizzying display of their two-decade career. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Indies Exclusive LP Info: Transparent red vinyl.

After an eventful year of touring throughout their native Australia - including runs with labelmates MONO and likeminded pioneers Tortoise - and featuring alongside the work of artist David Hockney at the National Gallery of Victoria, post-everything quintet Tangents return with another album, and another stylistic detour. New Bodies continues Tangents' rummage through countless varieties of electronics, rock, dub, noise, and free improv jazz that defines the group's acclaimed aesthetic.

The spacious dub of a plucked cello gives way to a minimalist breakbeat tableau resting over rhythmic prepared piano; a staid electronic groove is gradually absorbed into washes of frenzied improv; staccato synths are woven into tumbling avant-rock; and shimmering free drums phase over static loops of piano, guitar and cello. To quote FACT Magazine, "The quintet are so comfortable working with jazz, folk music, postrock and electronic music that it comfortably hangs in a space between the m all." On New Bodies, that description rings more intuitive and authentic than ever. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Collects every single, b-side, and rarity from the first ten years of YOUNG WIDOWS’ career. Includes four previously unreleased tracks. Since their inception in 2006, Young Widows have released four studio albums – each pushing their restless drive towards the incomparable a little further. Those albums – Settle Down City (2006), Old Wounds (2008), In and Out of Youth and Lightness (2011), and Easy Pain (2014) – were as bruising as they were brilliant, as menacing as they were mysterious. DECAYED: Ten Years of Cities, Wounds, Lightness, and Pain perfectly charts Young Widows' evolution from inspired post-hardcore trio to peerless entity crafting profound combinations of post-punk, noise rock, heavy psych, and gothic folk.

The fifteen tracks in this collection originally appeared on stand-alone singles, b-side, splits with like-minded artists (including Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Pelican, Melt-Banana, and MY DISCO), and rare compilations. Four of them have never been released until now. Of the many impressive aspects of Young Widows' decade-plus run as a band, perhaps most remarkable is the quality and breadth of music they made that didn't appear on their albums. Every song here is a standout track from the evolving eras of the band, and as with all things Young Widows, DECAYED pays respect to the past while planting roots for the future. 

RIYL: The Microphones, Will Oldham, Bon Iver, Jim O’rourke. Features members of Pinback, Tarentel, Sleeping People, Rumah Sakit, Dilute, and more. After more than ten years apart, multi-instrumentalist songwriters Marty Anderson (Dilute, Okay) and Kenseth Thibideau (Tarentel, Sleeping People) have reconnected to resurrect Howard Hello. Originally founded to craft music inspired by the American Zeitgeist, Election Year finds Howard Hello returning to familiar themes: The dichotomies of reality and illusion; organic and synthetic; sincerity and irony; faith and fact.

These themes, however familiar, are perhaps no more confusing and confounding than right now in present-day United States (hence the album's title). Musically Anderson and Thibideau use music as an analogy, fusing abstract and traditional instrumental textures with angelic, distorted layers of vocal accompaniment. Their collaborative connection is extraordinary and rare, symbiotic craftsmen of profound meditations that are as fascinatingly weird as they are irrefutably wonderful. 

Lasso Yo is the third full-length from Canon Blue, the alter ego of Nashville producer-songwriter, Daniel James. It's been over a half-decade since Canon Blue's previous album, the Efterklang and Amiina-augmented orchestral pop opus, Rumspringa. Six years can feel like a lifetime, and James knows that all too well, and he tells the whole story on Lasso Yo. Conceived during increasingly long periods of isolation caused by increasingly intense bouts of anxiety and depression.

Lasso Yo weaves those difficult personal struggles into a lyrically earnest and musically rich collection of songs. Produced, performed, and recorded by James at Taylor York's (Paramore) house, and mixed by John McEntire (Broken Social Scene, Yo La Tengo, The Sea and Cake), this is not only Canon Blue's most personal record, but also his most profound. For what was undoubtedly a challenging, cathartic record to make, Lasso Yo achieves a kind of weightlessness that betrays the heavy load it carries. It' s this dichotomy that gives the album a curious magic, an unlikely transcendence spawned by an uncomfortable confrontation between James' past and present, and the new shape it gives his future.

Two legendary PINBACK Eps compiled, remastered, and released on vinyl for the first time ever. Remastered for vinyl from original recordings. In the early days of Pinback, they were known mostly as two lauded musicians who spent their spare time away from their primary projects (Three Mile Pilot, Thingy, Heavy Vegetable) to hone their home recording skills while experimenting with ideas, tones, and instrumentation that didn’t quite fit into those primary projects.

Pinback hadn’t yet become their day job; it hadn’t yet become a well-oiled 5-piece touring machine; and it had no idea where it was going to go. In retrospect, that earnest curiosity is what makes those early Pinback recordings so resonant and so unique, and what separated them from every indie rock band of this century. Every bit as powerful and expressive as their first two albums, the 1999 EP, Some Voices, and the 2003 EP, Offcell, famously bucked the perception of EPs as outtakes and toss-offs. What were ostensibly minor stopgaps between albums became massive fan favorites and staples of Pinback’s live show. Having never been released on vinyl, it’s only fitting that we revisit these poignant recordings – and take the opportunity to painstakingly remaster and repackage them into the full-length album that never was, the aptly named Some Offcell Voices. 

The first new album by GRAILS in six years. Features members of OM, HOLY SONS, LILACS & CHAMPAGNE, and WATTER. RIYL: Pink Floyd, Earth, OM, The Flaming Lips, Clams Casino. Rather than pick up where they left off, Grails take the sky-high riff-based heaviness of their earlier albums and distill it into a nuanced, widescreen opus. The perennial influences of mid-20th century Western film scores, obscure library music, and psychedelic krautrock are indelibly imprinted, but Chalice Hymnal exudes an eerie patience in unfurling the many layers of its subtle details.

Produced by the band over the past five years, Chalice Hymnal bears some of the European psych and experimental hip-hop production techniques of founding members Alex Hall and Emil Amos' other group, Lilacs & Champagne. Amos' meditative metal band, Om, and longtime singer-songwriter project, Holy Sons, also naturally find their way into the Chalice cauldron. Rounding out their leaner line-up, cofounder Zak Riles (also of experimental kraut-psych trio, Watter) layers finger-picked acoustic guitars into a prog-folk hybrid that pushes Grails further into the deep end, displaying a profound resonance, both musically and emotionally. No one else sounds like Grails, and on Chalice Hymnal they sound more like themselves than ever before. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: One of my favourites for a long time, these lot. Add to that Amos's other projects Holy Sons and Lilacs & Champagne, and you have a whole wealth of musical musings to consider. It's obvious that influence has seeped into Grails itself, with the eastern influence much more pronounced and the patchwork found-sound collage vibes segued into their sound like it was there all along. A great return for Grails, and a cementing of their importance in experimental music.

Under The Pipal Tree is the debut album by now-legendary Japanese experimental rock band, MONO. Released in 2001 on avant-garde icon John Zorn's Tzadik label, Under The Pipal Tree showcased a young Japanese quartet whose wide range of influences - most notably Sonic Youth, Mogwai, The Velvet Underground, and Neil Young's Crazy Horse - were on ferocious and ambitious display.

Though MONO would eventually become known for their expert marriage of metal and classical genres, Under The Pipal Tree highlights the band's psychedelic roots. Long stretches of hypnotic, melodic washes give way to scorching guitar freakouts that evaporate into haunting silence. It's remarkable not just for its earnest exploration, but for its startling execution. Fifteen years and eight albums later, Under The Pipal Tree stands as one of the great debut albums by a seminal underground band. Finally released on vinyl for the first time ever, Under The Pipal Tree has been remastered for vinyl by longt ime friend and tour mate, Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. The double album is packaged in all new artwork, and is pressed onto audiophile-quality 100% virgin vinyl. This stunning album has never looked, sounded, or felt better.

And so it began. When multi-instrumentalists and sound enthusiasts Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto first came together, they surely could not have foreseen their debut album, Thought For Food, becoming such a beloved genre-defying masterpiece, an album that rests firmly in countless Top 100 Albums of the Decade lists. Filled with endearing and enduring songs, the Books revisit their wide-eyed beginnings with this remastered Thought For Food, repackaged with all-new artwork and expanded to include lyrics for every song for the first time ever. Carefully and thoughtfully remastered from the original mixes by Zammuto at his new studio outside his home in Vermont, TFF now boasts a warmth and clarity that surprisingly reveals an increased harmonic depth. Having combined and refined their compositional and recording processes over the course of four albums, addressing the technical limitations of these earlier recordings offers the chance to marry the technical, musical and emotional aspects of these songs in a way like never before. To be sure, the differences are subtle, but for a band who have transformed minutiae into modern art, that subtlety is downright sublime. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: Classic debut album digitally remastered from original mixes. Features all new artwork, including never-before-seen lyrics and images

Emerging from a decade-long hiatus, East Coast electronic producer and multi-instrumentalist, Sybarite, returns with Waver The Absolute. The long break from Hawkins’ Sybarite project seems to have done him some good, as this is unquestionably his strongest and most cohesive work to date. The aesthetic shifts from Sybarite's early ‘00s work to Waver The Absolute are immediately apparent with the opening track – an in-your-face wall of harsh static and fuzz that evolves into a distant, almost blissful transmission. From there Hawkins slips effortlessly into dancefloor mode with a pair of tracks that stretch the limits and lengths of what we used to expect from Sybarite. Waver The Absolute defies genre and expectation, and the eclecticism serves it well. The marriage of the electronic and the organic has been one that Hawkins has expertly manipulated since his days in the legendary Silver Apples in the late 1990s. Both CD and LP formats are packaged in full-color jackets with metallic silver overprints.The vinyl format includes an MP3 download coupon featuring two digital bonus tracks. 

"Ceiling Sky" collects these previously rare, vinyl-only tracks onto CD for the first time. This includes the limited edition 12" singles "Streets" / "Nozomi" and (rmxs) - featuring remixes by Four Tet and Sybarite - as well as the two bonus tracks from the 2xLP vinyl edition of the "Noumena" album. In total this is an hour's worth of enchanting, haunting music that only a handful of people have had the pleasure to hear until now.

The stories that make up Tarentel's existence are almost as dramatic and hard to follow as their musical trajectory. The San Francisco group started in the mid-90s as an outlet for guitarists Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Danny Grody to make left-of-centre instrumental guitar suites. Their sound and vision proved very infectious, drawing in more collaborators and full-fledged members than anyone has time to count. Over the course of nearly a decade, the band has become a bit of a legend in independent music. The songs themselves, average over 10 minutes each – with some stretching past the half-hour. Perhaps then, it comes as a bit of a surprise that their first album in nearly four years bears more songs in less time than ever before. Though hardly a pop record, "We Move Through Weather" is Tarentel's most focused album. Now stripped to a trio (Sonna's Jim Redd completes the line-up on drums), the sound is almost entirely intuitive. Virtually every song is built from expansive improvisations of sweeping drones and walls of discordant feedback. Where taught, meticulous guitar melodies once drove their songs to conclusion, thunderous drumming now navigates the group through an uncertain abyss of layered noise, horn bursts (courtesy of musician Steve Dye's arsenal of homemade instruments) and the occasional lonely piano.

To truly understand the color and shape of Nice Nice, you must really see them live. Only then will you realize that every sound heard on this record, every intricate polyrhythmic layer is live. There are no overdubs, and there are only two people in the band. Born in Olympia, Wa and now calling Portland their home, guitarist Jason Buehler and percussionist Mark Shirazi meticulously warp hard funk, psyche, soul, dub, angular rock and no-wave noise into a mechanical beast that can take you from dream to dance in 30 seconds flat. The instrumentation is relatively simple: guitar and drums. But it's the endless tap-dancing of effects pedals and rock solid dub beats that make every moment more magical than the last. Recommended to fans of the Load label, Leaf label, the new weird Americana scene and old school New York punk funk ala ESG and James Chance.

Cex's initial rise to fame came from a series of warm, skittery instrumental albums showcasing a dark mix of hard dance production and atmospheric ebb and flow. Recorded for a couple of highly respected electronic labels (Tigerbeat6 and 555). Hence the natural decision to release an instrumental version of his "Being Ridden" album. As an added bonus, there are three exclusive instrumental tracks on this disc that are not included on the vocal version!

Jazz-infected structures, funky rhythms and beautifully frenzied guitar interplay, steeped in progressive rock influences and destructive improv.

Recorded by Steve Albini at his electrical audio studios, this dark and addictive music that will appeal to fans of Low, Tortoise, Papa M, Codeine and Yo La Tengo.

Complex polyrhythmic insrumentals for the acoustic guitar, accordian, upright bass and drum kit. The instrumentation lends itself to be a quieter album, but the subtle dynamic shifts and loud drumming makes for an incredible rock-out. Will appeal to fans of Papa M, Rex, Directions In Music etc.