The great YPY on the mighty Black Smoker records! Remixes from Compuma (Em Records) and Lena Willikens. BIG! More

Osaka’s Koshiro Hino steps up to the plate for the next journeys by Nous Disques with an oblique experiment in syncopated, gritty-textured, deep-hued techno with a heroic dash of industrial malevolence. The EP opens with ‘Borei’ an out and out mind melter of a track reminiscent of the golden days of DJAX-UP, before travelling to sparse second wave spaces with ‘Doobidoo’ and ‘Shadow’ a perfect partnering of nonchalant efficiency. Side two comprises the doomy and dense ‘Holy Goof’ which at over 8 minutes makes for a soporific listen, while the EP’s closer ‘Smog’ featuring AKN, is an adventurous sensorial amalgamation of muted hiss and hum with a deliberate metallic heartbeat winding the track ever tighter on its perfectly realised axis. More

** Includes Download

Clan Caimán, led by composer Emilio Haro, is a group from Argentina, but their timeless, organic music transcends nationality. “Pica-Pau” (woodpecker), their third album, is their most abstract and minimal to date, but this is not a cold abstraction nor an austere minimalism; the music here, with its focus on rhythm and texture, is warm and hypnotic, seeming to have existed forever despite the fact that it was recorded in 2023-24. As on their previous albums, all with EM Records, the music is driven by the kalimabafon, Haro’s self-made tuned percussion instrument. The kalimbafon’s patterns weave through waves of reverb-drenched lap steel and guitar, as bass undertow and sans-cymbal percussion allow the music to flow music inexorably forward, like a broad, timeless river. The compositions here have a feeling of being immersed in deep night, surrounded by life, away from the enclosed isolation of the urban environment. As with previous albums, the compositions are instrumental, the exception being the final song, a vocal version of the opening track, sung in a language invented by Haro. More

2023 Repress. Serious math rock/industrial rhythm fire on this ace album from 2018 - repressed! TIP!

The five tracks being compiled from their debut CD “New Games” (2013) and their second album “Rhythm & Sound” (2015). The titles of those releases provide a hint: a sense of joyful play within defined structures, and an emphasis on propulsive pulse and a prioritizing of pure percussive sound over melodic content. With guitar, bass, drums and saxophone, goat create music which is unlike any band, utilizing harmonics outside standard tonality, as well as clever muting, to craft the intricate, driven, forceful compositions of Koshiro Hino, aka YPY. More

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNrZLJdVbB0

Two 80s gems from this sweet duo. Blue vinyl pressed in 2017.

Text lifted from the great Monorail Glasgow here "Classic archive work from Em's micro label Em Custom, offering a glimpse into the world of post-punk folk pop. Fantastic Something's most iconic moment fits very much into Mike Alway's Cherry Red aesthetic of the time. Two good looking Greek guys (brothers) coming on like Simon & Garfunkel fronting Aztec Camera or Maurice Deebank era Felt with sweeter singing. Pre-empting Johnny Marr at his most melodic and also weirdly, Gerard Love's Lightships project (from memory, Norman was a fan). As punk, and the DIY ethic, had changed the landscape, enabling bands to self-release their material, eventually a slew of genres crept out of the woodwork. By the early 80s, there was a reaction against wilder guitar bands, one being a trend of indie, bedsit-folk-pop. 1983 saw the release of this jangly summer single, by Fantastic Something (Alex and Constantin Veis), with an instrumental version on the flip. It was followed by an album two years later for Cherry Red's offshoot, Blanco Y Negro." More

One-sided 7” single on am EM custom.. these won't be around for very long.

A great and rare song, never before reissued, an early 80s electric molam classic produced by Surin Phaksiri. This release celebrates “Classic Productions by Surin Phaksiri 2: Molam Gems from the 1960s-80s”, an upcoming EM Records compilation spotlighting this legendary producer; however, this song will not be available on the compilation, so get the vinyl or DL, and don’t miss this groovily swaying paean to the pick-up truck share taxi, performed by Chabaphrai Namwai and molam queen Banyen Rakkaen. Remastered and lacquer cut by D&M Berlin, with English and Japanese lyrics translations. Hop in and let’s go!

Footnotes:
‘Songthaew’ is a passenger vehicle in Thailand and Laos adapted from a pick-up or a larger truck and used as a share taxi or bus. This molam tune “Lam Phloen Songthaew Fan Club” is about the period in which Songthaew began to appear as a new means of transportation for people in Thailand. More

"Yutai-ridatsu ±", an album from Osaka-based electronic music producer Futoshi Moriyama. Initially released in 2015 as a cassette on the Birdfriend label run by Koshiro Hino (aka YPY), augmented by four unreleased/new tracks which replace other tracks. Beautifully weird home-recorded orchestral music! More

Here is a portal to a vast and relatively unknown world, the Japanese cyber-occult underground media scene of the early 1990s; our guide is the late Henry Kawahara, a media artist and electronic music producer whose expansive and visionary conception of digital technology merged with a desire to break free of the constraints of mere rationality. This collection, the first-ever archival release of his work, is drawn from recordings released during the period 1991-1996, an exceptionally fertile time for Kawahara. Originally released on CD by a few Japanese independent labels including Hachiman Publishing, a cyber-occult / new-age / shinto book specialist, the releases were available mainly in book stores, so this sumptuous and prescient music has remained relatively unknown. The original titles and tag lines of the CDs give clues about Kawahara’s interests and the music itself: Digital Mushroom, Subtropical Illusion, Never-ending Asia, and so on. This 15-track gateway compilation is available on double 12” vinyl and DL; the CD version has two extra discs featuring sound from two art installations entitled "Dysteleology - a" and "Dysteleolog - ß" from the 1990s. All formats feature extensive English liner notes. More

Alicia Bay Laurel is well known as the writer and illustrator of one of the classic books of the back-to-the-earth movement, the 1970 Living On The Earth, a hand-written guide to living the good life, but she is also a very accomplished singer, songwriter and guitarist, the latter skill honed by studying with John Fahey. The songs on Music From Living On The Earth were composed concurrently with the writing of the book, permeated by the sun and soil of the commune life, bright and earthy paeans to the natural world, featuring ABL's pure, strong and uplifting voice atop her fluid, confident and deft steel-string acoustic guitar fingerpicking, her style showing that she learned well from Fahey. She also collaborated with San Francisco Tape Music Center co-founder Ramon Sender Barayon, who contributes the 40-voice choral arrangement for the closing track. Although these songs were written as the sixties became the seventies, Music From Living On The Earth was actually recorded in 2000 and first issued as a self-produced CD, then later issued in Japan on EM Records and is now out of print. This 15th anniversary first-time vinyl version, with new liner notes by the artist as well as English and Japanese lyrics, allows listeners to again hear ABL's blues, jazz and Indian music influences meld with folk roots to glorious effect. More