Smudging
(Backwards - BW06) LP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded variously in Toronto and Berlin, Smudging is a beautiful and dreamy listening experience spread across six songs in two epic tracks with guitar textures and hypnotic rhythms. Guitar drones and enveloping electronic sound-carpets alternate with more rhythmic and structured brackets, thanks to the involvement of Baker’s drummer brother Richard, who divides his time between more consistent raids, near-improv evolutions, and softer special interventions. In both execution and structure, the stylistic code of Smudging elegantly delivers listeners to multiple parallel worlds.
Das Testament
(Backwards - BW05) LP $26.00 (Out-of-stock)
The two Das Testament suites were recorded in 1982, released by Mectpyo in 1983, and can be included among the most extreme and uncompromising MB recordings; Bianchi’s synthesizer parts and tape loops create an incredibly oppressive soundscape. Remastered for the Backwards edition, his bleak, dark electronics, rhythms, and neutronic effects reach the avowed goal: “to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on [the] complete realizing of the modern decadence.” With insert. Edition of 300
Das Testament
(Backwards - BW05, BW05-7) LP + 7-inch $45.00 (Out-of-stock)
The two Das Testament suites were recorded in 1982, released by Mectpyo in 1983, and can be included among the most extreme and uncompromising MB recordings; Bianchi’s synthesizer parts and tape loops create an incredibly oppressive soundscape. Remastered for the Backwards edition, his bleak, dark electronics, rhythms, and neutronic effects reach the avowed goal: “to produce technological sounds and in such a way to work on [the] complete realizing of the modern decadence.” The bonus seven-inch on white vinyl includes two previously unreleased tracks: “Defected Piano (Part One)” and Defected Piano (Part Two).” Includes insert. Edition of 100.
Elegy For Rusted Souls
(Backwards - BW08) Used LP + 7-inch $18.00
The first new, previously unreleased music since 1982 by San Francisco industrial pioneers Factrix, together with Italian duo Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia. The quartet uses guitars, bass and electronics in their fusion of acoustic and electric elements, primitive rhythm patterns and ghostly, No Wave-ish vocals. Edition of 500. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2013
Bloody Language
(Backwards - BW13) 7-inch $13.00 (Out-of-stock)
Three tracks by Silvia Kastel and Ninni Morgia that reconnect the duo to the tradition of rock’n’roll in all facets (psychedelia, industrial, punk, no wave). Silkscreened jacket. Have a look at their video for the title track here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC4f7YXHOFw
The Fugitives
(Backwards - BW02) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Four intense episodes of pure madness sound, obscure and sensual at the same time, courtesy of Ninni Morgia’s devastating technique and delirious strings, and Silvia Kastel’s hypnotic groans, biting screams and caustic, powerful synthetic raids. A perfect car-crash between two industrial music currents of yore: the American (e.g. Factrix) and the European (e.g. Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire). Silkscreened jacket. Edition of 300
Light On A Wall
(Backwards - BW14) LP $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
“Spirit songs” — vocal works constructed by chopping up (à la Burroughs, Gysin, Phillips) Pynchon’s novels V and Gravity’s Rainbow recorded live on Radio Lebanon in Beirut — accompanied by electric Vietnamese lap steel (heavily processed through a vintage Kaoss pad and Zoom SampleTrack looper). Chords, melodies and harmonic patterns are unplanned improvisations unique to each performance. The final track is a thundering cover of “Masters At War.”
Tender
(Backwards - BW03) LP $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
This Canadian musician with the warm, dreamy voice, intimate, melancholy compositions, and deliberately meager arrangements, conceives of music as intense and fraught with emotions of the broadest range; Engel’s melting lyrics recall the “poetry in music” of Jacques Brel or contemporary balladeer Antony Hegarty. Moving from visionary atmospheres à la David Lynch, through raging blues of the Mississippi Delta, to gloomy scenes worthy of Nick Cave’s pen, Tender combines Chrissie Hynde, Howlin’ Wolf and Diamanda Galas into a single creature. Edition of 300
RINJI FUKUOKA / MICHEL HENRITZI / LUCA MASSOLIN
Weather Report
(Backwards - BW11) LP $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
An oneiric yet political soundpiece in two long movements of cosmic improvisation that serves as the soundtrack of an ecological disaster, specifcally the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant destruction in Fukushima 2011. Ghostly shapes and tones haunt the first side, where Massolin’s dreamy organ and heavenly electronics are blessed by Fukuoka’s elegiac violin lines, evolving into an improvised blues for flamenco-like guitar, percussion and abstract electronics, building up tension until Henritzi’s lapsteel joins with waves of ectoplasmic electricity, and finally exploding into a blast of cathartic free noise. The piece starts vibrating on the flip, where Massolin’s electric bass pushes the whole thing into full-on shoegaze mode, with Henritzi combining long, doomy drones and Fukuoka playing the most emotional violin ragas you’ll hear on an improvised studio album. Edition of 250
Heading South
(Backwards) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
(Backwards) Used LP $15.00
The eighth album by these Polish conceptualists, who, with help from Ter on recordings made between 2011 and 2012, derive exotic visions from B-movies, old adventure films and cheap comic stories (though their inspirations are typically almost invisible and immersed in hazy and dark moods). Yellow vinyl edition of 100.
The Dance Of Oneirism
(Backwards - BW19) 2xLP $37.00 (Out-of-stock)
From the liner notes: “Self-made double-bodied string instrument, handmade pocket harp, pedal effects, wordless vocalizations, modified analog drum machine, mini-keyboard, alientronics…. [N]othing is straightforward; everything is invented, shrunken, self-built, inchoate: alien-ated. The session was recorded – instantly composed – in MCIAA’s “Alien Zone” situated in the Western Alps, and it sounds it…. The rhythms have a contrary cold, organic quality to them, the feel of the pulse as the breath is held…. The transmissions are fuzzy … and at points it makes for a music of almost terrifying quiet. It is minimal, sure, but MCIAA are not so much interested in repetition as in eternal expansion. The Dance Of Oneirism is MCIAA’s greatest long-form work.” Includes a photographic art book by Roberto Opalio. Silkscreened image by the artist on Side D.
Endless Autumn
(Backwards - BWCD01) CD $15.40 (Out-of-stock)
The atmospheric field recordings created by this Berlin-based Italian artist penetrate the smallest gaps of the cerebral cortex. The environmental sounds that come from Puglia and the German capital capture the essence of the landscapes that Orsi loves to observe, allowing the listener to mentally fly over sunny Apulian coastlines and countrysides, up to German lush forests. Endless Autumn comes together naturally with melancholic electronic textures and guitar melodies.
Von Zeit Zu Zeit
(Backwards - BW01) LP $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live in Berlin, 2010, edited in 2011, the two side-long compositions here hover in space, seduce, and hypnotize. Orsi plays synth, guitar and filters, and embraces Central European kosmische musik, turning cold, early darkness into an oneiric remembrance, a daydream. With six photo inserts. Edition of 200.
Nostra Signora Delle Tenebre
(Backwards - BW20) 2xLP $34.00 (Out-of-stock)
Alongside the world-famous auteurs, lesser known and critically unappreciated Italian directors (mockingly called cinematografari) excelled at wild, sick takes on horror and crime dramas, in the success of which music played a big role. Classically trained composers like Ennio Morricone and Stelvio Cipriani rubbed shoulders with pop-stars-turned-soundtrackers like Nico Fidenco and Pino Donaggio and together happily immersed themselves in the muddy waters of this cinematic swamp, creating their own distorted versions of the funk, psychedelia and beat rock canons. The aberrant results were then applied like thick make-up to equally mind-boggling, malevolent, highly stylized movies from directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci or schlock-meister Joe D’Amato. Here Italy's current occult psychedelia scene pays tribute to the gloriously adventurous soundtracks of the less glorious horror and giallo flicks — movies that retained a decidedly Italian flavor in a bizarre mix of nasty violence, lurid sexuality and feverish Catholic mysticism, all filtered through a manic obsession with death, blood and the sins of the flesh. Track listing: Heroin In Tahiti “Nuda per Satana” (A. Baldan Bembo); Lay Llamas “Palude” (L. Michelini); Second H. Sam “Gli ultimi cannibali” (N. Fidenco); Lamusa “Tourist trap” (P. Donaggio); Edible Woman “Magic & Ecstasy” (E. Morricone); Mai Mai Mai “Sette note in nero” (Bixio – Frizzi – Tempera); Jennifer Gentle “Chanson de la Nuit” (E. Macchi); Slumberwood “Toby Dammit” (N. Rota); Mamuthones “The Thing” (E. Morricone); Gianni Giublena Rosacroce “Incubo sulla città contaminata” (S. Cipriani); Beautiful Bunker “L’aldilà” (F. Frizzi); Cannibal Movie “Sans espoir” (B. Nicolai); Father Murphy “L’alba dei morti viventi” (Goblin); OVO “Nuda per Satana” (A. Baldan Bembo); and Maria Celeste “Cento campane” (Fiorentini – Grano). Colored vinyl. Edition of 500
Copal Flow
(Backwards - BW04) LP $21.00 (Out-of-stock)
Whispers and screams; heartbeats and metal clashes; hypnotic, pulsing rhythms and voodoo drumming; ancient chants of the earth; primal cadences and powerful crescendos; subtle drones made of processed voices, atmospheric harmonics and noises -- these are the elements of the obscure night that is the first step of the new explorations of this Italian band, rooted in industrial music and musique brut, known for the past twenty years as Terroritmo. With the name change come ancient memories and visions of forests crowded with spirits and animals. Wakinyan incorporates into their modern ritual metal pipes and springs, glasses, Tibetan bowls, gongs, metal sheets, oil bins, knives, custom drums, and rattles. Edition of 300. Includes free MP3 download card.