A La Lu La
(Ultramarine - UM003) LP $25.00
Aaron Moore (Volcano the Bear), Dave Nuss (No-Neck Blues Band) and Sheila 16 (Laboratory Theater Group) create compositions from improvisations centered around strong elemental percussion, radical theatrical vocals, and classical acoustic instruments. Recurring themes are the pain of relationships, the affirmation of the feminine in myth, the hero’s journey, and continuous need to flame the passions of the heart. “A La Lu La” specifically addresses the gap of language in facilitating accurate communication, a gap that only music at its most primal can fill. The back of the album features text by Portuguese authors Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino, who in 1855 created the English phrasebook “English As She is Spoke,” even though they didn’t know any English. A La Lu La mirrors the linguistic train wreck that ensues with the play of language, sound, and unintentional humor. Clear vinyl, die-cut jacket.
Still Insane After All These Years
(Ultramarine - UM023) LP $22.50
Belgian duo Alain Neffe (synth, beats, loops, strings) and Nadine Bal (vocals) return to their 80s cassette culture roots and take advantage of newer technologies and sonic textures. Their mad variety of instruments and moods, punchy beats, hypnotic strings, groovy organ, crazy sax lines and an inventive use of sound shaping do not exclude a choir of frogs (lucky you). Bal sings like an angel, a child, a siren and an alien – a perfectly weird combo of pop, avant garde, surrealism and emotion that shares aesthetic choices with Anne Clark, Roberto Cacciapaglia, Laurie Anderson, Kraftwerk, and Die Form. Edition of 300.
MATTIAS BOSS / RAYMOND DIJKSTRA
Ins Kahle Zimmer Sinken Blaue Firne
(Ultramarine - UM024) 7-inch $13.50
Fantastic “chamber” recording from these two masters of the screeching acoustic metal-on-metal -- Amsterdam-based artist Dijkstra (whose extremely personal work, redolent of opium, crusty wallpaper and taxidermy, involves accordion, unknown electronics, and voice) and Swiss violinist extraordinaire Boss. Violin, organ, fork and spoon are the credited instruments here, blowing ice cold gusts into your listening parlor, like twisted classical music from a distant century. Silkscreen jacket. Edition of 100.
Chora / Quivers
(Ultramarine - UM0061) split LP $25.00
Chora on this recording is joined by Ben Nash and Karl Brummer who only enhance Rob Lye’s and Ben Morris’s already gorgeous mix of psychedelic free-form improvisation and ecstatic free jazz, with hypnotic percussion, cymbals, bowed instruments, eerie reeds, and an overall ritualistic, shamanic vibe. Guitarist Ninni Morgia and upright bassist Jordon Schranz have drummer extraordinaire and Milford Graves student Mike Pride on board for the Quivers improvisations; get ready for amazing timbral research and creative interplay, sometimes reminding of great historical groups like AMM, Musica Elettronica Viva and Smegma. Artwork by Pascal Nichols (Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides). Edition of 300.
CHRIS FORSYTH / SHAWN EDWARD HANSEN
Dirty Pool
(Ultramarine - UM002) LP $25.00
(Ultramarine - UM002) Used LP $12.50
Electric guitarist Chris Forsyth (Peeesseye) and organist Shawn Edward Hansen (Phantom Limb + Bison) run rock music through a filter of transcendental experimentalism and improvisatory nerve. The disorienting, psychedelic, and beautiful result realigns rock music’s form and function.
Damned Revolutions
(Ultramarine - UM022) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Dark and fuzzy guitar drones from Dead C guitarist Michael Morley, who accompanies dense walls of distorted resonance with sparse electronics sustained by spectral beats and bass pulses. Moaning vocals are reminiscent of pre-war blues chants. Side B’s suite of free rock improvisation, wild noise, echoed vocals, thick guitar fog, haunting nocturnal blues, and cymbal crashes captures the mood of a lonely, grey, apparently still, sunless port city landscape. Edition of 300.
SILVIA KASTEL / KOMMISSAR HJULER / MAMA BÄR / NINNI MORGIA
Two Couples
(Ultramarine - UM008) LP $25.00
A fusion of musique concrete, avant-garde, tropical psychedelia, moaning, screaming, free jazz and lots of raw synths recorded by German NO!artists / performers in collaboration with Italian musicians Ninni Morgia (guitar) and Silvia Kastel (synth and voice). Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer are known for their provocative and extreme neo-dada. Ninni Morgia moves in NYC’s improv and free jazz circles, has been heard in psychedelic rock outfit La Otracina, and started the noise rock band White Tornado. Silvia Kastel has studied sound engineering, electronic music, and singing (with Lee Torchia and Joan La Barbara). All four killed it on a UK tour, where they played and recorded at historical sound poetry venue The Morden Tower in Newcastle. Edition of 300. "Tropical... screaming... sounds good. I totally need an eleventh record from these nuts." --Darksmith. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2011
Take It
(Ultramarine - UM015) 7-inch $15.00
Triple Silvia on voice, mutant beats, synths, tape echo, working the early Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA and dub influences, delivering some much-needed anguish, agony, and paranoia against today's fun-at-all-costs shit. Silkscreened jacket. Edition of 100.
SILVIA KASTEL / NINNI MORGIA / GARY SMITH
Brand
(Ultramarine - UM012) LP $18.00
Heavyweight improviser, stereo guitar pioneer, and Aufgehoben guitarist Gary Smith has you covered in the multiple layering, complex grainy textures, dense counterpoint, influences of birdsong department. Fused with this is the guitar of free improv innovator Ninni Morgia, which floats between minimal movements of primordial electronics, pre-war slide blues and Hendrix-esque feedback. La Barbara and Torchia protégé Silvia Kastel’s moaning, screaming and howling alternates with her delayed, bubbling, glitchy or round bass synth. It’s a dense sound for three people -- not just visceral and intense, but articulate and defined, and in some instances very delicate. It’s got the deep taste of fearlessness of tempo, pulse, more conventional musical devices, or pushing to unpredictable extremes. Includes free download card. TEDIUM HOUSE BEST OF 2012
MARCELLO MAGLIOCCHI / NINNI MORGIA
Sound Gates
(Ultramarine - UM009) LP $23.00
Guitarist, sculptor and designer of strange marimba-like instruments (made of found beach stones), litophones, cymbals and huge bells Ninni Morgia accesses infinite guitar timbres (electronic, filtered analog sounds, soothing bowed drones, wild distortion or small, bird-like plucking techniques). Propelled by Marcello Magliocchi's warm acoustic sounds from strings, metal sheets, handmade rattles and tuned drums, the eleven pieces here slowly grow, build up and dynamically move across pure avant garde, early electronica, psychedelic hypnosis and wild free jazz. Includes download card.
Prism
(Ultramarine - UM017) 2xLP $24.00 (Out-of-stock)
Upright bassist Parker is one of the last men standing who, according to Derek Bailey, still plays "pure free jazz," while Morgia (Control Unit, The Right Moves, Quivers) here reaches the top-level of avant guitar, his sounds ranging from Stockhausen’s tape experiments to the saxophones of Braxton and Evan Parker. Morgia's alien sound finds an excellent match in Parker's slide whistle and a strange Spanish reed instrument called gralle. During the making of this recording, Parker asserted: “This is the music I have always had in my mind, the music I have been dreaming about. Music that inspires me with visions of colors, like the light reflecting through a prism."
Ever And Anon
(Ultramarine - UM021) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
LAFMS-style free jazz, industrial noise, improvisation, and straight-up weird music from the first family of freakdom. Amazing drumming courtesy of Dennis Duck. Oblivia’s trademark vinyl samples pay homage to the devilish surfabilly of Link Wray. Crazy reeds, Aylerian invocations, electro-acoustic meditations, (shrink) chamber music and moments of pure avant garde. A riot in a farm, strange strings riding the waves, Ju Suk Reet Meate’s guitar riffs and slides with the seagulls, a bat party in a cave, a hot bath of analog synth bubbles. Cover art by Ace Farren Ford. Includes insert. Edition of 300.
Eksra
(Ultramarine - EKSRA500) LP $25.00
The rumbling, delayed bass runs of Peter Blundell, against James Dunn's drum bursts that trigger an unruly ARP 2600, are entirely improvised and were recorded live with no overdubs in a makeshift studio in London in January 2009. Vocals, both muffled and shouted, get buried under a landslide of sounds, expressing suffocating alienation as well as today's over-communication that yields a helpless lack of communication. "Spasmodically captivating," in Arthurspeak.