Bats / Songs
(Spring Press - SP03) split 7-inch $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two tracks of signature understated NZ guitar-pop on one side (an excerpt from the Bats’ The Guilty Office album and an unreleased outtake from the same sessions); two tracks by the photographer Max Doyle’s Sydney-based group on the flip (an acoustic version of “Keeping it Clean” and an unreleased recording of “My Number”). Edition of 500
Jeff Burch
(Spring Press) LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Composed and recorded over a year between his home in New York City, and on residency in Stockholm, Tangier and Venice, Burch’s follow-up to his 2015 album summons a once familiar spirit caught inside the single note and the endless reverberations of the Fluxus streets. He sounds out endless violin and cello wail and draws long interstellar synthesizer vowels, pushing them up against a clangor of bells, dizzying organ-fed Leslie, glassy bows of cymbal and gong.
Compound Eye
(Spring Press - SP16) 10-inch (lathe cut) $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Two extended tracks where drifting pulses of modular synth, echoes of home-made electronics, and a ukelin played with the utmost restraint summon the ever-elusive energy of ’60s downtown experimentalism. “The first side,” says Volcanic Tongue, feels like “an occult working, with ectoplasmic forms channelled via acoustic and electronic receivers, jump-cutting between realities with soft synthesized thuds. The flip … is just as spectral, with deep Morse Code melodies bisected by butterflies of bright white light.” Edition of 70
Origin Of Silence
(Spring Press - SP12) LP $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
This long-standing collaboration between Drew McDowall (ex-Coil and Psychic TV) and Tres Warren (Psychic Ills and Messages) employs automatic composition, drone and concrète music in the creation of subterranean explorations on the nature of signals and time. The duo’s “exacting minimalist logic … locate[s] distant Morse Code tones and blurry EVP sightings on the very fringes of liminality,” observe our comrades at Volcanic Tongue. “[V]ague, nagging melodies … come out of the Goblin / Suspiria song book alongside long passages of single tone narcosis.” Clear vinyl, printed polyvinyl bag. Edition of 200.
Ambianxe
(Spring Press - SP09) LP $7.50 (Out-of-stock)
Incendiary concrète guitar shards recorded live in Tokyo that imagines the brawl after Derek Bailey slams his guitar into the circuitry of David Tudor. “Whatever music is or isn’t,” brags Anna Schwartz Gallery, “It certainly does not have to be as relentlessly deafening as Fusinato’s barrage, which [is] about as pleasant as being attacked by a squadron of F/A-18s...” All the bonus decibels of his “devastating torrents of piercing guitar sput” are included no extra charge. Edition of 250.
No Sense Of Reality
(Spring Press - SP18) 10-inch (lathe cut) $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Random, static electronics dedicated to New York City. Edition of 70.
Lift
(Spring Press - SP10) Used LP $7.50
Primordial dance music comprised of pulsating analog rhythms and austere waves of mechanical tones. With beginnings in laptop electronics, this synth maverick focuses on analog synthesizers and modular manipulation. “By stripping back his music to its barest essentials … over four concise tracks,” explains cookbook periodical The Wire, Giffoni uses the “synthesizer as a grimy, mud-encrusted machine whose function is [a dystopic] soundtrack.” Clear vinyl. Edition of 250.
Virginia Plane
(Spring Press - SP15) LP $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
This collaboration by two heavyweights draws on the languages of musique concrète, dub, blues, power electronics, free noise and early Italian avant-garde. “Some of the harmonica work is particularly mangled,” notes Volcanic Tongue, “Squeezed through the kind of thunderous tumult of contemporary Whitehouse with protesting tones that sound like Dylan ’66 given a streamroller for a makeover… The bottom end is particularly thick and sticky, more trunk slamming than junk glamming, while a track like ‘Pyjamarama’ recalls the primitive electro-acoustic aktions of Akita-and-Null-era Merzbow.” Edition of 500.
Oceans / Quarters
(Spring Press - SP30) 10-inch (lathe cut) $27.00 (Out-of-stock)
Cold sweats, claustrophobia, and the inevitable swirling comedown the morning after Saturday Night Fever. Numbered edition of 70.
Gert-Jan Prins
(Spring Press - SP14) 10-inch (lathe cut) $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
This Dutch electronic master (and member of Mimeo) explores the spatial, textural and compositional possibilities of electronic systems with custom circutry; both through sound and his arts practice. Edition of 70
The Movement Of The Free Spirit
(Spring Press - SP17) 10-inch (lathe cut) $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Feedback generated with a tape Dictaphone and effects chain, recorded after the devastating earthquakes of 2011. Appropriately enough, Russell’s “scudding, desolate drone,” notes Volcanic Tongue, “Isolates and amplifies the brokedown roar at the heart of [this] radical re-conceptualisation of rock dynamics.” Edition of 70
Arcana Coelestia
(Spring Press - SP13) 10-inch (lathe cut) $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
New recordings from this New York-based, Dutch experimental lutenist, who employs repetitive psychoactive minimalist, classical, conceptual and improvisational methods. He has collaborated with Keiji Haino, Tetuzi Akiyama, Loren Connors, Smegma, and Jim Jarmusch, among others. Edition of 70
I Dream Of Mezzanine / Cloudplanes
(Spring Press - SP11) LP $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
A commanding new exploration of voice and electronics, “with vocals, acoustic guitar, sleigh bells, tape, graphic equalizer, computer and epinette des vosges scored for two sidelong pieces,” marvels our friends at Volcanic Tongue. “The beats are genuinely cracked, stumbling over each other, breaking in and out of rhythm ... while … layers of vocals…, distant, electronically treated moans, and expressionist breath [frame] mantric / hypnotic phrases, almost giving the album the feel of a more pastoral Throbbing Gristle. The second side has a more lunar, psychedelic appeal.” Edition of 300
Richard Youngs
(Spring Press - SP20) 10-inch (lathe cut) $20.00 (Out-of-stock)
Pruned and interwoven vocals, live percussion, drum machines, organ and electronics that form a disorienting triptych. Monosyllabic motifs become cathartic codes, wildy modulated synths fall in and out of phase until everything is liquid. Another beautiful surprise from this maverick of the underground. Listen to some of it here: https://soundcloud.com/the-spring-press/richard-youngs-luther-side-b. Edition of 70.