Henry Cow - Western Culture

Western Culture is the last album by Henry Cow, recorded at Sunrise Studios in Kirchberg, Switzerland in January, July and August 1978. It was released on Henry Cow's own private label, Broadcast, in 1979. Later editions appeared on Interzone in the US and Celluloid in France. Only the UK Broadcast pressing used the custom label artwork design.

Western Culture is an instrumental album which came about as a result of disagreements in the band as to what the composition of their next album should be. Recording had already begun at Sunrise Studios in January 1978 and some members were not happy about the predominance of song-oriented material. As a compromise it was agreed that two albums would be made: one of "songs" (released soon after as Hopes and Fears under the name of a new group Art Bears) and one of purely instrumental compositions.
The group returned to Sunrise Studios in July that year to record the instrumental pieces for Western Culture, except "½ the Sky", which had been recorded during the January sessions.
Henry Cow split up shortly after recording this album.

Listen the full album on Youtube (Tracks 1 to 7 are the original tracklist, 8 to 11 are the bonus tracks from the 2001 cd re-issue):

alexander de large - Into Your Grave

 

"alexander de large is probably the smelliest south italian artist. He is a coarse pop/punk singer, a would-be hippy, a sweet pet, but sure as hell he’s not a porn star. Born a piano player, he switched to many other instruments, becoming the greatest, as well as the sole, drinking straws in the armpits player ever. We hope he won’t waste his talent as he’s doing with his life. If you like gangsta rappers, r&b and blacks without soul, then let him go."

For our new tag "free listenings" we are proud to share with you the first album of alexander de large, Into Your Grave.
With the moniker of a famous movie character, alexander de large music features a great ability to saturate even his introspective voice & classical guitar ballads, if not the album itself, the result is a freak folk album with the flavour of an experimental work.

Listen the full album on Youtube:

Download it here or here

Talibam! - Ordination Of The Globetrotting Conscripts

The NYC group's first-ever studio record was the result of one non-stop, three-day session of furious improv recorded in the winter of 2006.

The duo of Matt Mottel (keys) and Kevin Shea (drums) recruited an ensemble that includes some of New York's most advanced improvisers: Peter Evans (trumpet), Cooper-Moore (self-made instruments), Michael Evans (percussion), Anders Nilsson (guitar), Moppa Elliott (acoustic bass), Jeremy Wilms (guitar), Jon Irabagon (sax), Sam Kulik (trombone), Ed Bear (feedbacksaphone) and Robbie Lee (renaissance instruments).

They emerged from the studio with this luminous, unexpected masterpiece of cracked, American noise. The sonic maelstrom they work up in the course of these eight songs and forty-five minutes highjacks the vocabularies of free-jazz, Appalachia, Afropop, psychedelia, electro-acoustic composition, and noise and spins them out in vivid constellations of sound. Its antecedents include Bat-Chain Puller, Astro-Black, Machine Gun, Rock In Opposition, Moon in June, Keith Moon, Ground Zero, Dancing in Your Head.

Listen to the full album on youtube:

Talibam! Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Talibamnyc 

Talibam! YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/talibambam/videos Talibam! on Bandcamp: http://talibam.bandcamp.com

This Heat - Health And Efficiency

Health and Efficiency is an EP by English experimental rock band This Heat. It was released in 1980, through record label Piano.

Jesse Harvell describes it on Pitchfork in this way:

Health and Efficiency is This Heat’s masterpiece. The title track is, in a complete turn of events for these doommongers, a hymn to the restorative powers of sunshine, and their most traditionally rocking song, at least until it veers off into an extended instrumental slalom with some of Hayward’s most intricate (and violent) drumming. “It seemed to be a quite radical idea to be healthy, happy, acknowledging the sun,” Hayward says in the liner notes. “We’ve all got the same bodies; it’s international.” The B-side, “Graphic/Varispeed”, is an extended experiment in tape loops and studio manipulation, as you might have guessed from the title. 

 

You can now listen the EP as a full album on Youtube:

David Holland Quartet - Conference Of The Birds

Conference of the Birds is an album by the Dave Holland Quartet, recorded in 1972 and released in 1973. It is jazz bassist Holland's second collaboration with composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton, as well as his second album on ECM Records. The liner notes describe how birds would congregate each morning outside Holland's London apartment and join with one another in song.

Anthony Braxton and Dave Holland

Holland's compositions for the album had been performed at a New York City concert by a group including Randy Brecker on trumpet, Michael Brecker on tenor sax, Ralph Towner on guitar, Holland on bass, and Barry Altschul on percussion; Braxton and Rivers, however, were chosen for the recording as better able to respond to the opportunist disjunctions offered within Holland's compositions.

Each piece on the album is "open form," with a theme stated at the beginning to set key, tempo, and mood. The players are then free to improvise in whatever direction they choose. Stuart Nicholson writes: Conference of the Birds emerged as a definitive statement of swinging free expression. It was, in essence, a return to the rugged discipline of early 1960s free improvising by working off melodic foundations using the 'time, no changes' principle to achieve greater control over that elusive quarry, freedom.


Here you have the full album on Youtube.

Lootpack - Soundpieces: Da Antidote!

Lootpack's definition of abstract is
To take the mic in ya one hand, motivation in the other
Flip a freestyle flow and stop biting wack rhymes from another

A.D. 1999. Otis "Madlib" Jackson Jr., Jack "Wildchild" Brown, DJ Romes minds of the strategic hip hop rebirth of the end of '90s by self election: We stay original while your subliminal lines and minimal perception - Poetical enemas for your section. The upper project Lootpack is underground independence, that throbs with fervor and trepidation: poetic investiture on the shoulders, rhymes in the hands, awareness in the brains. 

And Lootpack is a landmark core, experience of maturation and transaction: nobody knows yet, they do, We could do this lyrical or I could bust a beat miracle. Peanut Butter Wolf knows too, he hires them for Stones Throw. They write their flow in the history of vinyls of the West Coast scene, We represent the West, Lootpack […]; they record their first work, unattainable masterpiece of Baroque class: the will to surprise the desire to impress overhangs the contents, the wonder of the exasperated rhyme is  lymph and outperforms the contents of conscious rap and Afro-centric plots of sublime complexes of home. Native Tongues. “Soundpieces: Da Antidote!” is the booom!, it explodes in the liver, and marks the immeasurable growth just after three yeard from the release of their first EP, "Ill Psych Move", for Crate Digga's Palace, label founded by  Madlib, Otis Jackson Sr.' father, still immature: I was "uhh", three years ago. Extreme and brilliant production. L-Double-O-T-P-A-C-K, represent how I live every day "805".  

[by E.S.]

Here you have their full album on youtube.

Bron Y Aur - Between 13 & 16

Playing together since 1995, the four members of Bron y Aur , attracted soon attention thanks to the quality of the first two demotapes (1997 and 1998) and obviously for two previous albums. Always considered a band who take roots in the seventies, they don’t hide having spent their days in youth between Zeppelin and Sabbath, to be fascinated then by the german kraut rock and free jazz. This unusual mix generates an original and open-minded band able to exalt its own rock roots as to interact with musicians of different extractions.

This is the second album of the band, conceived when the band gathers in order to give shape to some intuitions born in their jam sessions, leaving the improvisation take the main meaning. In the following reorder and selection of the material all the parts considered even partially fruit of a composition have been eliminated, the improvisations emerge like the most inspirated moments. The subsequent mixing , where Edoardo Ricci and Jacopo Andreini took part, have been really important in the assembling and treatment of the materials: Bron y Aur becomes part in the large formation of musicians who used the recording studio like an added instrument.

Purchase a copy here and here or download other stuff here.

Die Form - La Dimensione Umana / Die Form + Orgasmo Negato - Live Art Nouveaux (Tasaday Box CD01)

In 1981 Electric Eye released the first tape album made by the band from Brianza Die Form named La Dimensione Umana. The band was formed by Abderezac Ahmed (sax, clarinet), Franz White (vocals), Alessandro Ronchi (guitar), Carlo Ronchi (bass, drum machine), Roberto Girardi (drums), Stefano Sangalli (synth and vocals)

At the time in Brianza there were other bands like Orgasmo Negato, that will change their name in Nulla Iperreale, with Alessandro Ripamonti (synths), Marco Camorali (bass, amputed bass, percussions, vocals), Paolo Cantù (guitar and drum machine).

The two bands started a collaboration melting in Die Form & Nulla Iperreale. They started together an intense activity made by concerts, fanzines, radio broadcastings and a lot of tapes made in coproduction between their label Tasaday and ADN.

Wallace Records released a box-set with 15 cds and a DVD that contains all the tapes, radio broadcastings, videos, live recordings etc. made by Tasaday between 1981 and 2007.

Here you have the full album of the first of these cd that contains the four tracks of the first tape La Dimensione Umana by Die Forme and the Live at Art Nouveaux by Die Form and Orgasmo Negato.

Contact Tasaday to purchase a box-set!

Hochenkeit - Omu4h 4aholab/400 Boys

Very few information about this album. I found it on Mutant Sounds some years ago.
These are almost all the words expressed on this album you can find on the internet:

"Formed out of the ashes of The Irving Klaw Trio, who had a few choice albums of their own, the trance inducing and elegantly commanding work here maneuvers within a template similar to some of the better Can influenced acts making the rounds circa 2000 (think: Cul De Sac, Kreidler and Fridge), but finds some specific threads of their own to tease from Can's flying carpet and run for the hills with. That said, the force of their vision and their command of this subcultural meme/touchstone render the results far from mere pastiche and revivalism"

"Offering much longer tracks than their debut, Omu4h 4aholab/400 Boys goes even deeper into the sonic realms of Krautrock, ethnic detritus, and sound collage. The CD is an exotic brew, whether venturing into cosmic funk grooves on tracks like "Give Them the Ants" and "To Be Born Drunk and Die Dreaming" or settling into the more relaxed trance-meditation-drift that the Keit are known for. The 14-minute title track, with Arabic flute and percussion washes, shimmers like a desert mirage; "Please Turn Out the Sun," also clocking in at 14 minutes, uses mantra-rock riffs that slowly evolve and devolve. The CD is full of sonic twists, like the jarring sample snippet at the end of "Seen" and the strange spoken word at the beginning of "Please Turn Out the Sun," which only enhance the otherworldliness of the music. It doesn't hurt that Omu4h 4aholab/400 Boys was engineered by Steven Wray Lobdell, guitarist for Faust (and occasionally for Hochenkeit at live gigs). Omu4h 4aholab/400 Boys delves deeper into the worlds that I Love You hinted at"

You can listen the full album on youtube here:

Max Roach, Archie Shepp - Force

"Force" is the collaborative album between Max Roach (drums) and Archie Shepp (clarinet) datated 1976.

From the LP:
"Max Roach and Archie Shepp have always been at the forefront of the cultural struggle of African-Americans, as their music reflects not only the crises of the recent past, but as it remains an expression of the historical revolt against slavery, racism, neo-slavery and injustice. They are immersed in the continuum of Black creative music, always bending and shaping it to the concrete reality of the American ethos. They are cultural workers, who provide a spiritual force and material energy that will allow as to go forward with strength and conviction".

You can listen this album on Youtube here:

 

A Short Apnea - Illu Ogod Ellat Rhagedia (Ustrainhustri)

The second album by A Short Apnea, Illu ogod ellat Rhagedia (Ustrainhustri) is a concept album divided into three long tracks, themselves evolving tunes composed of different movements. The innovative rock symphony – involving not only guitar, bass, and drums but also accordion, sax, clarinet, ’60s psychedelic experimentation, jazz as free expression, and ’90s american noise rock – breaches today’s rock line and finds its place as a hybrid music born of the mating of post-rock and experimental noise. With its instrumental pieces, A Short Apnea builds an evocative soundtrack-like album that works with variations of mood. The musicians take you from dark alleys where you witness a surrealistic apparition to disquieting dank sewers, then change the general atmosphere here and there with a melodic passage reflecting hope, while always bringing you back to spasmodic and bizarre tunes or dissonant and quiet experimentations. Dense and complex but at the same time evocative and easily accessible, A Short Apnea brilliantly proves with Illu ogod ellat Rhagedia (Ustrainhustri) a that avant-garde does not necessary means intellectual or inapproachable.

Other infos here and here!

You can listen this album on Youtube here:

If you like this album you can buy it here!

Xabier Iriondo / Paolo Cantù / Fabio Magistrali

Massacre - Killing Time

Original Cover, 1981

Cd reissue cover, 1993

Killing Time is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Massacre. It was released in September, 1981, through record label Celluloid. It consists of a compilation of recordings made at Martin Bisi's OAO studio in Brooklyn, New York in June, 1981, and live recordings taken from their April, 1981 Paris concerts. The group disbanded shortly after, eventually reforming in 1998 with Charles Hayward replacing Maher on drums and further recording three more albums. Killing Time was generally well-received by critics.

The album was reissued on RecRec music in 1993 with six extra tracks.

Other infos here, here and here! 

You can listen this reissue as a full album on youtube here:

If you are lucky you can download mp3s here (don't know what version is!)