As an artist and a thinker, Massimo Magee has been consistently drawn towards patterns: traditions, lines of influence, schools and the unexpected intersections of each. This album, Toneflower, presents a solo programme, meditating on many of those concepts. As an entirely improvised set of pieces, it is also inspired by Anthony Braxton’s solo alto tradition and the larger solo saxophone canon. Similarly, it draws from Magee’s prior percussive experimentations with Tim Green and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s use of contact microphones. In Magee’s words, it offers rich parallels with many other saxophone schools, “the ceaseless streams of broken air column wizardry of Evan Parker, the angular atonalism of Tim Berne, the earnest beauty of a Pharoah Sanders melody, the breakneck urgency of Kaoru Abe, the sinuous and unpredictable ebullient elegance of Eric Dolphy, the eerie whistling of Tamio Shiraishi, the satisfyingly round-toned repetition of Steve Lacy, the heavy low-end honking of John Coltrane in a certain mood. The listener might even hear a dash of the motivic minimalism of Terry Riley.”  Throughout the album's 5 tracks, Magee pays close attention to the siloed divisions of each school, as part of a larger interrogation of a music industry that privileges singular musicians, cultivating musical traditions and loyal fanbases. Following diverse and distinct musical lineages, Magee curates an informed, thoughtful constellation of influences and traditions, captured through his particular lens of reinvention.

Following two singles, two albums, and a bunch of compilation tracks, Ultra Eczema is proud to present Miaux’s third LP. Mia Prce, originally from Sarajevo and a Belgian resident since 1989, was reared on a psychedelic diet of Krautrock and similarly serpentine music by her artist parents who were part of the Antwerp-based (and over fifty years old) Ercola collective. Beautiful songs that break hearts without using a sharp object! More tears for the creatures of the night.

TEETH001 comes from Malvern Brume, who has already notched up releases on cult labels like Low Company, Alter, Infant Tree and Kashual Plastik. Brume’s practice is something akin to audio collage, a layering of sounds each with a strong sense of time and place but nevertheless otherworldly and disorientating. The title, Pacing The Hollow Path, was initially the name of a collaborative piece between Brume and Wes Knowler which ended up on the cutting room floor. However the discarded text from the collaboration, which focussed on the act of walking - Brume’s principle obsession, came to inspire this record. Pacing The Hollow Path is inspired by a daily walking practice that saw the artist return to similar places again and again, such as Sydenham Woods, Catford and Nunhead Cemetary. During those walks he visualised the scores and text which would become the six tracks on the album. The result is, in the artist’s words “both an emotional response and I guess an explanatory process to recounting these walks.” Sonically, rough textural notes combine with insectoid drones and distant crackle against the occasional entry of more familiar, albeit ruptured, instruments like the piano.

Remastered from original tapes by Paradigm Discs' Clive Graham, 'Rock and other four letter words' is a genuinely psychedelic obscurity originally pieced together and released in 1968. The work of one J Marks (1930-2001) and his buddy Shipen Lebzelter (1942-1986), it revolves around a stockpile of cut-up quotes taken from Marks' interviews with rock stars of the time for his eponymous book (essentially a book of photos by Linda Eastman, soon to be McCartney). The likes of Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Brian Wilson, Grace Slick etc. all feature, spliced with progressive rock, wigged-out electronics, tape loops and even gospel songs about baked beans in a unique conflagration of sound poetry, Stockhausen-esque compositional strategy and free-ranging, experimental '60s psychedelia. It's understandably achieved cult status since then, not only for its sampled sources, but also an illustrious cast of contributors including jazz players Alan Silva, Andrew Cyrille, Roswell Rudd and Burton Greene, alongside the studio assistance of John McClure, who produced this, along with 100s of other recordings at CBS, including the Harry Partch records. Placed in context with other seminal records of that pivotal year - Zappa's 'Lumpy Gravy', Terry Riley's 'In C', Walter Carlos' 'Switched On Bach' - it stands out as a real anomaly, offering similarly positive, mind-boggling sorts of sonic possibilities on one hand, whilst providing an incisive, perceptibly sardonic attitude towards the times, on the other.

New release from London's Mosquitoes out on Knotwilig Records, due to land in April. *UPDATE - NOW DUE MAY 12th* "Music fans, journalists and so on have been puzzling words and phrases to describe the impact of the music of Mosquitoes. I am indeed talking about "impact".Lumping them in the nowave/postpunkdub/rockdeconstructivism bin is way too easy. Of course there are references, but then again: not really. I honestly believe every single second they released not only set a bookmark, but also stands out as a landmark in music history such as PIL's Metal Box, Oval's Diskont and Stockhausen’s Kontakte for instance.Every note is an evolution in an oeuvre which specialises in having an immediate impact on the listener. Reverse Drift / Reverse Charge is a natural progression, and a step forward from their previous output. Like ocean waves gently invading dune territory.Muffled vocals, haunting bass fragments, deconstructed loops/guitars and a crumbling rhythm in a world which barely holds itself together. This music deserves to be played through grant speakers, even in silenced mode.Everyone who ever had the chance to catch them on a stage know what impact they have on an audience. Mostly baffled, speechless and holding breath because your guts just tell you so. The new tracks are of a similar calibre. They immobilize you instantly in whatever you are doing. You simply need to surrender and listen to it, again and again and again... What would the world be without these 22 minutes of sheer beauty?"

Thomas Bonvalet is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist. Having commenced his vocation as a bassist he cemented it as a guitarist at the heart of the band Cheval de Frise (1998-2004). Progressively straying from the guitar, he began to integrate foot tapping and various wind and percussive instruments into his performance, incorporating mechanical elements and stray amped-up objects into the soundscape. This formed the guiding principle of his solo project, L'ocelle mare, initiated in 2005, and continues to form the core of his instrumentation. The release of Serpentement in 2012 marked the end of a cycle of four progressive stages, homogeneous but distinct from one another, released with successive regularity, proceeding with the elaboration of his singular set up, implicating the human body into a simultaneity of associated gestures and sonic tools and forming a commonality of timbres and tremors. This structure remained fluid and adaptable, finding a balance which lent itself quite naturally to collaborations, entering into the fields of improvisation, folk, rock and contemporary music. In recent years Bonvalet has collaborated, most notably, with Powerdove, Arlt, Radikal Satan, Jean Luc Guionnet, Arnaud Rivière, Will Guthrie, Gaspar Claus, Daunik Lazro, Fred Jouanlong and Sylvain Lemètre. Without renouncing his solo work, his interruption from it has allowed a slower and more elastic evolution, permitting ancient shapes to gradually metamorphose. In this way new compositions successively articulated themselves in an almost self-determining manner. Temps En Terre is the fifth album release from L'ocelle Mare, and the first to have been recorded in a studio. The preceding releases were characterised by a marked acoustic: the echoey reverberations inherent to Serpentement were thanks to the protestant temple it was recorded in; Engourdissement was entirely recorded in forest expanses, upon ponds and enclosed within remote wood cabins; Porte d'Octobre was recorded entirely in urban spaces; and his first, unnamed album was entirely recorded in caves and churches. The pieces forming Temps en Terre however, are recorded under a harsher gaze, presented in far cruder light, comparable to that of a live recording. The instrumentation is composite, rustic, yet paradoxically sophisticated: piano, 6 string bass banjo, mechanical metronome, tuning forks, claves, hand and foot clapping and tapping, mini amps, amps, subwoofer, microphones, small mix desk, bells, mouth organ fragments, concertina, componiums, "stringin it", audio ducker, drum skins, clockwork motors...  --- Kythibong, 2018 Kythibong - 2018

Konstrukt made contact with both Alexander Hawkins and Alan Wilkinson during their presence at Konfrontationen Festival in Nickelsdorf in 2013 where the band performed for the second time in Austria after Saalfelden Jazz Festival with Marshall Allen in 2011. All three parts were excited and have agreed to get together sometime in the future. The result was a night of music with high energy and a wide musical perspective. From drum & bass to ethnic funk vibes, from straight free jazz bursts to spiritual chantings, the whole performance here shows a wide range of outer wordly aspects of all musicians present. --- Korhan Futaci / alto & tenor saxophones, flutes, sipsi, kaba zurna, voiceUmut Çaglar / electric guitar, gralla, bamboo flutes, pocket drum machine, xylophones, percussion, tape echoBarlas Tan Özemek / electric bassEdiz Hafizoglu / drums, cymbals, bells, turkish hang drum+Alexander Hawkins / acoustic pianoAlan Wilkinson / baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, voiceDaniel Spicer / pocket trumpet, bugle, bamboo saxophone, shenai, recorder, pan pipe, whistle, cow bell, kalimba, voice --- Omlott Records, 2018

Seditionary art music and hypnobeat from (The) Mudguards, the (very) English duo of Nelson Bloodrocket and Reg Out, a properly f****d bricolage of end-of-the-pier agit-pop, nauseated industrial cut-ups and the kind of demolished-man techno that transports you to an alternative universe where E was never invented.Active in East London and Essex between ’81 and ’93, and inspired by quintessential English working class entertainment – music hall, skiffle, drinking songs and broadsides – (The) Mudguards’ theme, or rather career-long obsession, was the “commodification of dissent”. In fact what makes their work special, and more resonant today than that of your typical sloganeering anarcho bleater, is their awareness of their own complicity in the things they despise, and all the self-loathing that comes with it. VERY relatable. But though in some ways it transcends history, this stuff was born of a very specific time and place. As Johnny Cash-Converter writes in his brilliant sleevenotes, the backdrop was one of genuine civil unrest, with Mrs T gleefully overseeing “the dismantling of welfare and the deliberate creation of poverty as a social control mechanism.”Intense corporatisation, and the attendant feeding frenzy of land-grabs, sell-offs and privatisations left large swathes of industrial Britain looking like Tarkovsky’s Zona, empty spaces that would, for a time, be repurposed by the resistance: squats, warehouse parties, experiments in communal living and/or communal oblivion. It’s in this milieu that (The) Mudguards established their hunt-under-the-wreckage praxis, “maximum content with minimum hardware”, creating improvised installations/performances with noise-makers and visual props built from re-appropriated scrap, vintage sound equipment and circuit-bent electronics.This was the era when post-punk, industrial and noise scenes and sensibilities were overlapping with the arrival of electronic dance music: and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a band or project who capture that brief confluence of disparate things quite so brilliantly as (The) Mudguards. One minute they’re plainly and openly addressing Harold Wilson and the state of the National ‘Elf, the next they’re unspooling narcotic/neurotic minimal synth raga like a dole-queue Monoton. And somehow, despite their preoccupation with class war and the treacheries of the state, they retain a sense of humour – well, if you find Ceramic Hobs funny…Sterling maiden release from London-based label Horn of Plenty

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