Special remarks : LP with download code

Tracklist
1 Relatos de Praga
2 Por Una No Clara Razón
3 Días de Infancia
4 Decay
5 La Vida Esta En Otra Parte
6 Faints
7 Atardecer
8 Otonno
9 Petalos y Cenizas

Short info:

Bélver Yin's soul mining odysseys have been unjustly overlooked for three decades. An anomaly in the Spanish alt-pop scene, their forlorn instrumentals and ethereal romanticism would have struck a chord in the British league of Felt, The Chameleons, Cocteau Twins and Dif Juz, leaving their 1991 debut Luz Bel deserving of reappraisal.

While coining their band name from a Jesús Ferrero novel and quoting Laozi philosophy on album sleeves, Bélver Yin create illuminating textures that unlock a wordless language of memory and adolescent emotion. Formed in Salamanca by self-taught musicians Pedro Ortega Sánchez and José María Martín, the guitar-bass duo spent two years crafting their divine interplay with interim drummers before submitting a demo to Noisex Music, their only attempt at label courting. The phone rang mere days later with owner and producer Bernar Marks (The Dust Sessions) offering to cut an album and the band ventured to Valencia with cloud-touching optimism soon after.

Championed by local press, the release fell short of expectation, fueling the mythology of a vanished band known only to the initiated. Varying lineups would, however, continue to work in the shadows under Pedro's direction, recording two spatially arranged follow-ups at their own pace in 1996 and 2005.

A glorious debut that undeniably set a high watermark, Luz Bel is finally available again, faithfully remastered by Mikey Young and featuring bilingual liner notes from John Gómez, the authoritative ear behind Outro Tempo.
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2LP

Tracklist
1. Bo Harwood & John Cassavetes - No One Around To Hear It
2. Chen Ming Chang - Rainwater
3. Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Bittersweet Reflections
4. The King Of Luxembourg - Poptones
5. Slapp Happy - Is It You
6. O.G. Jigg - Jesus Is My Jam
7. Klang - As It Is
8. Scala - Fuser
9. Soft Location - Let The Moon Get Into It
10. Gyeongsu - YZOBEL (feat. CROCHE)
11. Omertà - Moments In Love
12. Kasumi Trio - Cabbage Butterfly
13. Un - Fast Money Blues
14. Delphine Dora - V
15. Harry Plunket-Greene - The Hurdy-Gurdy Man

Short info:

Searchlight Moonbeam is the new narrative compilation from Time Is Away (Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney) whose eponymous monthly NTS Radio shows, tinctured fusions of fugitive sounds and reverie-inducing archival speech, have won them an ardent following. It follows from the London-based duo’s Ballads, a remarkable driftwerk released on A Colourful Storm in 2022.


Searchlight Moonbeam is an autumnal dreamscape, intimate and vespertine, pensive and irresolute. An imagined community where differences drop off and resonances emerge – between Maher Shalal Hash Baz affiliates Kasumi Trio, Taiwanese score composer Chen Ming Chang whose ‘Rainwater’ (written for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 film Dust In The Wind) is exquisitely heartbroken, and the plangent improvisations of self-taught French pianist Delphine Dora.


Revelations are frequent: the bedsit isolationism of Bo Harwood and John Cassavetes’ ‘No One Around to Hear It’ (from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie); the narked minimalism of Klang (an early 2000s band formed by ex-Elastica guitarist and featuring prize-winning experimental novelist Isabel Waidner on bass); the etude-grooves and echoic wobble of below-the-radar French avant-gardists Omertà ; the beautiful, plaintively dubby ‘Is It You?’ by Slapp Happy; a psych-tinged reimagining of PiL’s ‘Poptones’ by Simon Fisher Turner (one half of Deux Filles, and here, recording for él as The King of Luxembourg) that's as perverse as the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats.


Searchlight Moonbeam is the musical analog of an Italo Calvino novel or a medieval fable. Associative, intuitive, borderless. Emotional and mysterious. Endowed with the tactility of Braille. A private language that is both unknowable and understood. It is a record of the seasons, for the seasons.

2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Time Is Away’s first broadcast. Featuring an evocative essay by writer Jeremy Atherton Lin and disarming cover art by Penny Davenport, Searchlight Moonbeam showcases Rollo and Tierney’s still-unrivalled talent for gloaming melodies, disques du crépuscule, ensorcelled storytelling.





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CD

Tracklist
1. Bo Harwood & John Cassavetes - No One Around To Hear It
2. Chen Ming Chang - Rainwater
3. Bhairavi Raman & Nanthesh Sivarajah - Bittersweet Reflections
4. The King Of Luxembourg - Poptones
5. Slapp Happy - Is It You
6. O.G. Jigg - Jesus Is My Jam
7. Klang - As It Is
8. Scala - Fuser
9. Soft Location - Let The Moon Get Into It
10. Gyeongsu - YZOBEL (feat. CROCHE)
11. Omertà - Moments In Love
12. Kasumi Trio - Cabbage Butterfly
13. Un - Fast Money Blues
14. Delphine Dora - V
15. Harry Plunket-Greene - The Hurdy-Gurdy Man

Short info:

Searchlight Moonbeam is the new narrative compilation from Time Is Away (Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney) whose eponymous monthly NTS Radio shows, tinctured fusions of fugitive sounds and reverie-inducing archival speech, have won them an ardent following. It follows from the London-based duo’s Ballads, a remarkable driftwerk released on A Colourful Storm in 2022.


Searchlight Moonbeam is an autumnal dreamscape, intimate and vespertine, pensive and irresolute. An imagined community where differences drop off and resonances emerge – between Maher Shalal Hash Baz affiliates Kasumi Trio, Taiwanese score composer Chen Ming Chang whose ‘Rainwater’ (written for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 film Dust In The Wind) is exquisitely heartbroken, and the plangent improvisations of self-taught French pianist Delphine Dora.


Revelations are frequent: the bedsit isolationism of Bo Harwood and John Cassavetes’ ‘No One Around to Hear It’ (from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie); the narked minimalism of Klang (an early 2000s band formed by ex-Elastica guitarist and featuring prize-winning experimental novelist Isabel Waidner on bass); the etude-grooves and echoic wobble of below-the-radar French avant-gardists Omertà ; the beautiful, plaintively dubby ‘Is It You?’ by Slapp Happy; a psych-tinged reimagining of PiL’s ‘Poptones’ by Simon Fisher Turner (one half of Deux Filles, and here, recording for él as The King of Luxembourg) that's as perverse as the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats.


Searchlight Moonbeam is the musical analog of an Italo Calvino novel or a medieval fable. Associative, intuitive, borderless. Emotional and mysterious. Endowed with the tactility of Braille. A private language that is both unknowable and understood. It is a record of the seasons, for the seasons.

2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Time Is Away’s first broadcast. Featuring an evocative essay by writer Jeremy Atherton Lin and disarming cover art by Penny Davenport, Searchlight Moonbeam showcases Rollo and Tierney’s still-unrivalled talent for gloaming melodies, disques du crépuscule, ensorcelled storytelling.
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12” with picture sleeve

Tracklist

1. Love On A Funeral Pyre
2. Shipwrecked
3. Fool's House
4. Mr President
5. Late, Late Show
6. Calamity Jane

Short info:

After a ten year pursuit, Efficient Space finally presents Late, Late Show, the last recordings of influential Sydney-via-Newcastle band pel mel. Taped in the mid-’80s, these charmingly unvarnished sessions pare the combo back to their core, producing blue-collar sophisti-pop to a danceable LinnDrum beat. From the funky disco-not-disco of ‘Mr President’ to the effortless pop perfection of ‘Fool’s House’, the six tracks reveal a creatively open and well-oiled pel mel before they inevitably disbanded.

Formed in early 1979 as a misfit sextet from steel and surf town Newcastle, pel mel were inspired by New York and UK’s post-punk imports. Cutting their teeth speeding through originals and Joy Division, Wire and The Buzzcocks covers every Friday night to a regular turnout of dole bludgers, students and the under-age, the band would also cross-pollinate with electronic-leaning support act The Limp. In 1980, they decamped to Sydney to join the city’s flourishing alternative music scene alongside the likes of Laughing Clowns, Tactics, The Reels, Wild West and the M Squared crew, making an indelible mark with two albums and several singles as the only domestic signee of Factory’s Australasian licensee GAP Records. Catchy and intelligently experimental without being noisy, their musicianship and enduring legacy continues to be lauded by peers.

Undoubtedly some of their strongest output, this previously unreleased demo suite documents pel mel free from the pressures of a commercial outcome, naturally elevating them to a class alongside Orange Juice, Antena and Young Marble Giants.






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2023 repress

2LP with printed inner sleeves

Tracklist

1. The Mod 4 - A Puppet
2. The Yardleys - Just Remember
3. Decompressed Impossibility - You Can't Ride Away
4. The Living End - Brigitta
5. The Newports - Feelin' Low
6. The Landlords - I'm Through With You
7. The Prisners Dream - Autumn Days
8. The Fortels - She
9. The Bohemians - Say It
10. Tresa Leigh - Until Then
11. WM. Penn & The Quakers - Ghost Of The Monks
12. The Tempters - I Will Go
13. Jerry McGee - Twilight Zone
14. Carroll - The Boy Called Billy Joe
15. The Common People - Here, There & Everywhere
16. Dennis Harte - Summer's Over
17. Toe Head - Goodnight Jackie


Short info:

A North American road trip of coming of age garage soul mapped by Ivan Liechti, Ghost Riders is Efficient Space’s latest narrative compilation, hovering in a liminal emotional ravine between moonlight melancholy, teenage heartache and unchecked, unrealised ambition. Across 17 open hearted ballads recorded 1965-1974, the 2LP collects and connects dots between British Invasion fanatics, child prodigies, the loners and the luckless, in a kind of trans-continental survey of those swept up in rock’n’roll mania and buoyed by local newspaper ads promising fame and gold records.

From the tangerine dreams of 8th grade all-girl combo The Mod 4 to the tri-state jukebox aspiring echoes of The Tempters, The Yardleys' poetic Farfisa vamp and lilting folk pop, and The Landlords’ weepy break up b-side blues, these are mostly one shots by dreamers whose experience was brief before being checked back to the reality of suburban normality and realistic career options. Hailing from the regional backwaters of Illinois, Arkansas, Nevada, Massachusetts, Ohio, Idaho, Texas and beyond, the licensed artists were scouted by way of local fire departments, spiritualist fellowships and animal welfare centres, often barely a stones throw from where their contributions were originally laid.

A barely teenage Dennis Harte's ‘Summer’s Over’ perhaps best taps the collection’s essence. A gut-wrenching lament of the passing of the season as if it was the last on earth. Flanked by players from The Left Banke, Harte, a now-piano tuner to the stars, is from the minor segment that found longevity in showbiz. Likewise with Michigan icon Lyn Nowicki who cast her ghostly voice over Beatles cover song chameleons The Common People and Jerry McGee, The Ventures member and conduit of Dr. John’s ‘Twilight Zone’.

Ghost Riders simmers with the scent of youthful summers, the pang of schoolyard romance, and the excitement (and disenchantment) of teenage naïveté, delivered via a deceptively simple and frequently wonky garage band set up. The vision of record collector and graphic designer Ivan Liechti, these eternal psych-folk howlers are further crystallised by Colin Young’s fastidious audio restoration, the original artwork of Elise Gagnebin-de Bons and an aptly penned forward from Sonic Boom.






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7” with picture sleeve

Tracklist


A1 I Remember
A2 Until Then (1970 Version)
B1 I Miss You
B2 Until Then (1971 Version)

Short info:

Tresa Leigh is the reflection of St. Simons Island, Georgia teenager Teresa Laxamanna (né Leggett).

Wooed by a classifieds listing to audition for Philly funk and soul imprint Lyndell Records, the aspiring 15 year old dragged her father, guitar, fender amplifier and microphone to perform her convincingly mature folk tales of first time heartbreak. Winning the support of label owner Walter L Rayfield, the fresh recruit cut two originals in a makeshift motel studio on the neighbouring Jekyll Island, backed by a band of unhurried session players. The 1970 recording yielded her debut 45, pairing I Remember’s endearing juvenile jangle with the heartsick Ghost Riders cornerstone Until Then.

After a car accident prevented Mr. Rayfield from fulfilling his release plans, an unswayed Tresa responded to Great World Of Sound’s newspaper advert, baiting the prospect of gold records, major label connections and sales of a million copies. With family and friends crowdfunding the $1,200 that the company required to produce a follow-up 7”, she jetted to Nashville, recording a slicker, emotionally elevated update on Until Then, and the symphonic slow dancer I Miss You. In another unfortunate career misfire, the dubious label failed to deliver on any of their promises, with the artist volunteering the only surviving copy for restoration.

Collating all four recordings, this brief anthology immortalises the innocent small town dreams of a genuine original, inadvertently echoing the likes of Nora Guthrie, Bonnie Dobson and Patti Whipp.



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7” with picture sleeve

Tracklist

A Dub The Farmer's Daughter
B Out On A Limb


Short info:

A double shot of Y2K digi thrillers from Sydney via Bromley electro-dub producer Jeff Dread. Part of the city’s burgeoning network of blunted bass and sound system culture, Dread worked in parallel with the likes of Sheriff Lindo, Andy Rantzen and Ali Omar, issuing two dynamite albums on Creative Vibes in 1999 and 2001.

Utilising the Atari 1020 Ste, Dread would frantically live mix up to 9 tracks direct to CD-R, echoing the same rough and ready low tech intuition as Jamaican trailblazers King Tubby, Scientist and Jack Ruby and their UK-based disciples Jah Shaka, Adrian Sherwood and Mad Professor. While unmarked discs of his indulgently durational sessions litter the archives, this plate showcases versions immortalised by two crucial compilation CDs. Wicked stepper ‘Dub The Farmer’s Daughter’ burrows the ear canal with its addictive melodica and tightly coiled acid synth lines, edited for high impact by Sheriff Lindo for his volume of Dub For the Masses (Dread would curate its successor), while ‘Out On A Limb’ hails from Just Is, a double album sequenced by legendary Sydney queer party crew Club Kooky. A bass bin creeper that was extended with horns for his second longplayer Return From Alpha One, it’s this unembellished work in progress that really stings.

With Dread’s allegiance to local sound system heavyweights Firehouse, these totally brained studio jams are tried and tested weapons, finally blasting on the sacred 7” format.


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CD digipak with booklet

Tracklist

1. The Mod 4 - A Puppet
2. The Yardleys - Just Remember
3. Decompressed Impossibility - You Can't Ride Away
4. The Living End - Brigitta
5. The Newports - Feelin' Low
6. The Landlords - I'm Through With You
7. The Prisners Dream - Autumn Days
8. The Fortels - She
9. The Bohemians - Say It
10. Tresa Leigh - Until Then
11. WM. Penn & The Quakers - Ghost Of The Monks
12. The Tempters - I Will Go
13. Jerry McGee - Twilight Zone
14. Carroll - The Boy Called Billy Joe
15. The Common People - Here, There & Everywhere
16. Dennis Harte - Summer's Over
17. Toe Head - Goodnight Jackie


Short info:

A North American road trip of coming of age garage soul mapped by Ivan Liechti, Ghost Riders is Efficient Space’s latest narrative compilation, hovering in a liminal emotional ravine between moonlight melancholy, teenage heartache and unchecked, unrealised ambition. Across 17 open hearted ballads recorded 1965-1974, the 2LP collects and connects dots between British Invasion fanatics, child prodigies, the loners and the luckless, in a kind of trans-continental survey of those swept up in rock’n’roll mania and buoyed by local newspaper ads promising fame and gold records.

From the tangerine dreams of 8th grade all-girl combo The Mod 4 to the tri-state jukebox aspiring echoes of The Tempters, The Yardleys' poetic Farfisa vamp and lilting folk pop, and The Landlords’ weepy break up b-side blues, these are mostly one shots by dreamers whose experience was brief before being checked back to the reality of suburban normality and realistic career options. Hailing from the regional backwaters of Illinois, Arkansas, Nevada, Massachusetts, Ohio, Idaho, Texas and beyond, the licensed artists were scouted by way of local fire departments, spiritualist fellowships and animal welfare centres, often barely a stones throw from where their contributions were originally laid.

A barely teenage Dennis Harte's ‘Summer’s Over’ perhaps best taps the collection’s essence. A gut-wrenching lament of the passing of the season as if it was the last on earth. Flanked by players from The Left Banke, Harte, a now-piano tuner to the stars, is from the minor segment that found longevity in showbiz. Likewise with Michigan icon Lyn Nowicki who cast her ghostly voice over Beatles cover song chameleons The Common People and Jerry McGee, The Ventures member and conduit of Dr. John’s ‘Twilight Zone’.

Ghost Riders simmers with the scent of youthful summers, the pang of schoolyard romance, and the excitement (and disenchantment) of teenage naïveté, delivered via a deceptively simple and frequently wonky garage band set up. The vision of record collector and graphic designer Ivan Liechti, these eternal psych-folk howlers are further crystallised by Colin Young’s fastidious audio restoration, the original artwork of Elise Gagnebin-de Bons and an aptly penned forward from Sonic Boom.
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2022 REPRESS Edition, 1LP+MP3
Carefully ReEdited, 100% Original

Lady of Mine is the 1989 debut LP by self-made Italian-American Joe Tossini. An astoundingly honest, passionate record of cosmopolitan lounge music, he willed this charming suburban oddity into existence without any formal musical training.
Special remarks : LP with digital download card

Tracklist
LP A1 If I Should Fall In Love, A2 I'm In Love With An Angel, A3 Sincerita, A4 Sulla Luna
B1 Tomorrow May Never Come, B2 Lady Of Mine, B3 Wild Dream


Short info:

Lady of Mine is the 1989 debut LP by self-made Italian-American Joe Tossini. An astoundingly honest, passionate record of cosmopolitan lounge music, he willed this charming suburban oddity into existence without any formal musical training.

Sicilian by birth, Tossini drifted around the world between Italy, Germany and Canada, before finally settling in New Jersey. After the passing of his mother and the breakdown of a second marriage, an anxious and depressed Tossini took to songwriting as a form of therapy, crafting disarmingly candid lyrics from his extraordinary life and loves. Whatever industry savvy or musical virtuosity he lacked was made up for by unflinching resourcefulness and infectious charisma. Befriending bandleader Peppino Lattanzi at local club The Rickshaw Inn, he was encouraged to animate his singular songs with an ambitious cast of 9 players and 5 backing vocalists, sincerely credited as his Friends.

The Atlantic City basement sessions are a low budget, high romance testament to Tossini's character and the power of positive thinking. From the defiant, Casiotone samba of If I Should Fall In Love, to Wild Dream's dizzying escapism and the native tongue croons of Sulla Luna and Sincerita, Lady Of Mine hums with the inimitable magic of a true original. Piercing the heart with an effectively sparse combination of humming keys, CompuRhythm drums, horn flourishes and backing divas, ample room was left for Tossini to frankly deliver his much-needed life lessons.

Underperforming commercially at the hands of short lived label IEA Records, Lady Of Mine has since earned a place in the outsider music canon. Recently peaking interest as a cornerstone of the Sky Girl compilation, the private press trades for inordinate sums, typically with no financial benefit to its creator. Lady Of Mine is now finally reissued on the artist's own terms via Joe Tossini Music, in partnership with Efficient Space, restored from original master tapes with unseen photos, extensive liner notes and Tossini's trademark wisdom.

Devoutly independent, Tossini has previously self-released the 2015 instrumental album When You Love Someone as well as two books - a new fiction novel The Devil In White and his autobiography The Account of My Life.
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Special remarks : 2LP, 2022 Repress Edition

Vital Sales Points:
- Released by popular NTS show Noise In My Head
- Liner notes from Ivan Smagghe and artwork from Misha Hollenbach (Perks and Mini)
- Features many rarities reissued for the first time ever (Karen Marks' most wanted Australian cold wave single last sold for 290€ while Once traded for 170€)
- All tracks officially licensed, sourcing original masters when available
- Includes digital download

Tracklist
A1. Linda Smith - I So Liked Spring , A2. Karen Marks - Cold Café , A3. Bruce Langhorne - Leaving Del Norte , A4. The Seraphims - Conciousness of Happening
B1. Garry Davenport - Sarra , B2. Some of My Best Friends Are Canadians - Feeling Sheepish , B3. The Rising Storm - Frozen Laughter
C1. Warfield Spillers - Daddy's Little Girl , C2. Joyce Heath - I Wouldn't Dream Of It , C3. Joe Tossini and Friends - Wild Dream , C4. Scott Seskind - I Remember
D1. Angel - Driving (Down) , D2. Nini Raviolette and Hugo Weris - Slow , D3. Nora Guthrie - Home Before Dark , D4. Once - Joanna

Short info:
Sky Girl is a mysteriously unshakeable companion, a deeply melancholic and sentimental journey through folk-pop, new wave and art music micro presses that span 1961-1991. A seemingly disparate suite of selections of forgotten fables by more or less neverknowns, Sky Girl forms a beautifully coherent and utterly sublime whole deftly compiled by French collectors DJ Sundae and Julien Dechery.

From Scott Seskind's adolescent musical road movie to Karen Marks' icy Oz-wave, the charming DIY storytelling of Italian-American go-getter Joe Tossini and the ethereal slow dance themes of Parisian artists Nini Raviolette and Hugo Weris, Sky Girl resonates on a wide spectrum historically, geographically and stylistically. It unites in a singular, longing, almost intangible ambience.

If the names sound wholly unfamiliar that doesn't matter, the nature of the compositions swiftly nurtures an intimacy with these lonely, poignant, openhearted wanderers. Most were available in a very limited capacity at the time of their release, some were never really released at all - Gary Davenport declined to release Sarra after he split with the girl for whom the track is named - years later a friend convinced Davenport to allow him to put 100 copies online to sell and DJ Sundae was quick enough to snare one. Beyond their scarcity, these tracks are bound together by a certain raw beauty that's achievable when music is made and no one is listening.

Sky Girl comprises of fifteen officially licensed songs, a two year international scavenger hunt through long-folded home label operations, the depths of internet forums and traceless acetates. Both compilers are well trained record sleuths - DJ Sundae's labels Hollie and Idle Press have reissued Arthur Russell affiliate Nirosta Steel and DIY relic Pitch, while Julien Dechery previously compiled 'Fire Star', a retrospective on Tamil film composer Ilaiyaraaja, for Bombay Connection.

Released by Noise In My Head offshoot Efficient Space, Sky Girl is enriched with artwork from Perks and Mini mutant Misha Hollenbach and appropriately elegant sleeve notes courtesy of Ivan Smagghe.




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2022 Repress

Special remarks : 2LP with digital download card

Tracklist
A1. FSOM - Resist The Beat
A2. Hypnoblob - Deep Down
A3. Ian Eccles-Smith - The Slaughtering Eye
B1. General Electrik Meets Andy Rantzen - Leather Lover
B2. Jandy Rainbow and Adrenalentil - I Will Go
B3. Sobriquet - Is This Your First Time? (Artificial Remix)
C1. Blimp - Yellowgold
C2. Inner Harmony - Da Lub Club
C3. Maroochy Barambah - Mongungi (Dance Mix)
D1: Third Eye - Behold The Angel Of Frequency
D2. Tetrphnm - Track11
D3 Screensaver - Eliminated



Short info:
3AM Spares is a new collection of Australian Electronic Dance Music compiled Andras and Instant Peterson that encompasses the darker sounds and later nights of the 1990s and beyond. Following on from forerunner compilation Midnite Spares, this double LP draws from local 12" releases, CDRs and the archives of community radio station 3RRR FM to make a diverse and pumping scene audible once more. No longer confined to beer barns and back rooms, this generation of producers, DJs, clubbers and ravers spilled out into pavilions, warehouses and paddocks, embracing a new culture of machine-metaphor and chemical love.

Future Sound of Melbourne's warehouse triptych Resist The Beat embodies a time when the country's youth united with juggernaut stamina, partying beyond the long arm of the law. Restored from the ARIA award-winning trio's original DATs, this debut 12" incited label offers from Jeff Mills, Frank De Wulf and Carl Cox.


Released by the likes of Clan Analogue, Creative Vibes, Volition, DanceNet, Juice and Psy-Harmonics, this era's material has evaded sufficient digital documentation until now, some lost in the decommission of Angelfire, Tripod and Geocities websites. Often these bedroom experiments and one-off collaborations existed solely for compilation inclusions, a plausible scenario for the mysterious Inner Harmony. In the case of Tetrphnm, graphic artist Jeremy Dower's glacial sub-bass was digitised from the only known CD-R copy, preserved by the 3RRR FM library.

Many key figures of this narrative have deep roots in the DIY/post-punk family tree. Third Eye, the impressive evolution of Whirlywirld founder and industrial legend Ollie Olsen, finds common ground with I Will Go, a hypnotic concoction by Adrenalentil and Poets of the Machine associate Jandy Rainbow, a transgender artist whose liberated electronics trace back to 1978.

The most unique take on this new wave of dance music comes from Turrbal-Gubbi Gubbi woman and Stolen Generations survivor Maroochy Barambah. Recorded in New York, Mongungi incorporates two lines of a traditional Gubbi Gubbi song Gurri Nina Nami with the sound palette of tribal house, highlighting the broadening ways that identity and culture were being negotiated and manifested within club music.

A lesson in intelligent appropriation, Artificial's Sobriquet remix bends one of the most looped samples of all time to fit a wired new generation's interrogation of that thing called disco. Artificial's ingenuity was vital impact to the scene, releasing three influential albums as one half of B(if)tek and establishing the WINK Awards - a music prize that recognised and encouraged subversive electronics. Her playfulness is mirrored in Blimp's frisky garage house, recalling Paul Johnson, while Ian Eccles-Smith's borrowing is comparatively more discrete on the chillout sampledelic collage The Slaughtering Eye.

Andy Rantzen returns to Efficient Space in two incarnations - as one half of Itch-E + Scratch-E ambient alias Screensaver, and in collaboration with General Electrik on Leather Lover, a cocked and loaded glimpse at the bottom end of Oxford street, originally recorded for the Club Kooky compilation Gay In The Life: Adventures in the Queer Underground. Reinventing himself as Hypnoblob, fellow Sydney Oz Wave artist Ian Andrews also gives us his pneumatic-drill-step Deep Down.




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Special remarks : 8 track LP with digital download

Tracklist
A1 My Gull
A2 Loch and Key
A3 Perishable
A4 Killcord Pts I-III
B1 Idle
B2 All Hands Bury the Dead
B3 Safe. Bird
B4 Crossing The Bar


Short info:

Wilson Tanner come to shore with a new album of floating melodies, lightly salted. Throwing electroacoustic conventions overboard, Andrew Wilson (Andras) and John Tanner (Eleventeen Eston) recorded this new work aboard a 1950s riverboat with a resourceful array of weatherproof electronic instruments and a long extension lead. These eight compositions pull in a by-catch of maritime folklore; of Siren and Selkie, Seagull and engine oil slick. A change of course from their debut album 69 (Growing Bin Records, 2016), the ambient temperature drops as II casts out to sea in uncertain weather and returns to the safe harbours of Port Phillip Bay.

The seafarers head out to My Gull's poised optimism. The birds watch but do they listen? By the arrival of Loch and Key, the shoreline has dissolved completely, the boat floating in serene infinity as the rest of the world spins. Conditions soon take a treacherous turn on Killcord Pts I-III - a 12 minute odyssey that battens down the hatches as these sailors eye merciless waves and blinding ocean spray, jointly channelling Berlin-school electronics and sea legs. In the aftermath, the waterlogged bleeps of Idle survey the damage as our parched crew sound the distress signal and ultimately descend into delirium.

Known for navigating individual courses as solo musicians, Wilson and Tanner's collective storytelling is saturated in detail, buoying between tension and harmony. II modestly stands as some of both artists' most accomplished material.
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2022 Re Edition

Special remarks : LP with digital download card
Follow up to the labels previous releases - Sky Girl and Midnite Spares

Tracklist:
A1. Irena Xero - Lady On The Train
A2. Andy Rantzen - Will I Dream?
A3. Prod - Knife On Top
A4. Software Seduction - New Collision
A5. Ironing Music - Don't Wish It Away
B1. He Dark Age - Holding Out For Eden
B2. The Horse He's Sick - Larynx
B3. MK Ultra & The Assassins of Light - Jesus Krist Klap Rap (Orthodox Mix)
B4. Moral Fibro - Take A Walk in the Sun
B5. Zerox Dreamflesh - Squids Can Fly


Short info:
Efficient Space continues to expose Australia's esoteric musical history with Oz Waves - a collection of 80s DIY recordings, compiled by odd wave anthropologist Steele Bonus. Definitive proof that inhabitants of the Down Underground were links in a global network of creative kooks, Oz Waves connects those who utilised mobile recording rigs and small press releases to create and disseminate misfit synth-punk, tape loop experiments and inner city pop. Through overseas mail order exchanges, anonymous groups like Zerox Dreamflesh could find place on Belgian compilations, while Chris and Cosey lullabied their son to sleep with Irena Xero and her interdisciplinary art collective Zip.

Bonus selects 10 survivors from the fertile period (1982-1989), most of which were only issued on cassette in tiny editions of 5 to 100 copies. M Squared affiliates Prod join the extraterrestrial Software Seduction, He Dark Age's minimal wave neglect and the irreverent cut ups of The Horse He's Sick and MK Ultra & the Assassins of Light. The remaining tracks have been sourced from musicians' private archives and are being officially released on Oz Waves for the first time - Andy Rantzen's industrial dub Itch-E & Scratch-E precursor, the buoyant vocal-drone of Ironing Music and Moral Fibro, Sydney's short lived answer to Weekend and Marine Girls. With detailed track by track notes, lines are drawn to Severed Heads, Scattered Order and other antipodean post-punk royalty.

As a DJ, Steele Bonus has gained notoriety via the exquisite selections that form his ongoing mix series Odd Waves. Sydney-born, Amsterdam-based, his graphic design has not only been responsible for sleeves on Efficient Space, but also trusted Amsterdam connoisseurs Music From Memory and Young Marco's Safe Trip.


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2022 Re Edition

5 track 12"/EP with full colour sleeve

Tracklist

A1 Cold Café
A2 Won't Wear It For Long
A3 You Bring These Things
B1 Cold Café (Demo)
B2 Problem Page (Demo)

Short info:

Almost four decades since it's domestic release, Karen Marks' 1981 single Cold Café has finally reaped it's deserved international credit to become one of Australia's most recognised minimal wave recordings. Efficient Space now showcases the Melbourne artist's brief but entire discography, including two previously unheard demos, all produced with experimental synthesist Ash Wednesday (The Metronomes, Modern Jazz, Thealonian Music).

A rarity in the then male dominated industry, Marks found her footing in music, first through rock journalism and then in band management. Formally of Adelaide, newly arrived synth-punks JAB (Johnny Crash, Ash Wednesday and Bodhan X) approached her for representation, subsequently contributing tracks to seminal 1978 snapshot Lethal Weapons and playing the Crystal Ballroom's opening night. Wednesday and Crash would soon dissolve JAB, enlisting Mark Ferry and Sean Kelly to create Models. Still under Mark's management, Models became one of the fastest rising new bands of the punk movement, playing to full houses of dedicated and frenzied fans everywhere. Sadly, internal frictions forced Wednesday and Marks to leave after two years, with Crash following three months later.

Her creative relationship with Wednesday fortified with the co-production of his 1980 machine-pop prank Love By Numbers, her swooning chorus uplifting his deadpan count to 100, before the two collaborated on Marks' own recording persona. Immortalised by the icy Oz wave of Cold Café, her Astor issued 7" also boasted the caffeinated flip Won't Wear It For Long - a should be hit with guitar from future Icehouse member Robert Kretschmer.

Fans know of one more recording - You Bring These Things, a forlorn arrangement of an otherwise unreleased Paul Kelly song, gifted to her by the revered wordsmith. The track only ever appeared on the Astor promotional LP Terra Australis, sinfully alongside Up There Cazaly and Joe Dolce - hard proof that the label grossly misunderstood her talent (Marks recalls their persistent requests to show midriff and cleavage). Locked in a dissatisfying label arrangement and at this stage unwilling to follow her peers to greener pastures overseas, she felt her only way out was to cease all further activities.

At the 11th hour of preparing this retrospective, two tracks unexpectedly surfaced via two cassettes - a paranoid demo version of her signature tune Cold Café, and a long-lost fourth song Problem Page. Both living room recordings follow Marks and Wednesday's ingenious framework of minimal lyrics, minimal chord progressions.
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LP

Tracklist

A1 Wurlitzer Jukebox
A2 Piano Movement With Percussion
A3 Song For The Meek
A4 I Hear A New World
A5 New Monotonic FM
A6 House Warming
A7 14th July
B1 Reprise
B2 Beloved Invader
B3 Interlude
B4 New Monotonic FM (Acoustic)
B5 LDR
B6 Send In The Clowns
B7 Completed Extract From The Previous 7"

Short info:

Hydroplane reinstate their formidable 1997 debut of sublime guitar atmospherics, fragile lyricism and droning incidentals with an overdue vinyl and digital reissue.

An offshoot of the now-féted The Cat’s Miaow, the trio formed after drummer Cameron Smith decamped to London, charting new territory with tape loops, manipulated samples and a borrowed Jupiter 4 in the wake of Endtroducing. Adopting a handle that Dean Wareham once considered calling Luna, Hydroplane intended to only ever release Excerpts From Forthcoming LP, a single-sided 7” sonic collage, before imploding in mystery. Their label however insisted they deliver their taunted album. From the comfort of a Brunswick flat, they continued to record soaring melodies and restrained song structures to 4-track, sculpting dramatic Radiophonic Workshop cues weighted in reverb and near-perfect dream pop lead by Kerrie Bolton’s empyrean vocals.

Bored of industry expectation and largely ignored by local audiences, the reluctant performers followed the way of The Cannanes and formed meaningful overseas alliances by mail and phone, securing releases on Michigan outpost Drive-In and Broadcast launching pad Wurlitzer Jukebox. Championed by John Peel with twenty spins on his converted Radio One slot and even polling in Festive Fifty of 1997, the humble three-piece still walked to their neighbourhood shops undetected.

Previously only available as a US-issued CD, this reminiscent late-night suite establishes Hydroplane as an everlasting ember in Australia’s beloved indie nexus.




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7”. Edition of 327 copies. Hand stamped, cover white ink printed on coloured card.

Tracklist:

1. (Can I) Bridge The Gap
2. Entropy

Short info:

Crossing over to Adelaide, odd wave minor players The Frenzied Bricks completely bypassed the history books with indifference. This madcap union of school friends Chris Merchant and David McCarthy cut void-entering motorik and weirdo monologues in bedrooms and suburban rehearsal studios. Rumoured to be an individual, they never bothered to disprove the gossip with live perfor-mance. They did however submit aspiring demos to community radio station 5MMM, where they were fortuitously stored for four decades.

The 7” marks the non-band’s debut release, combining two should-be classics from the vault. ‘(Can I) Bridge The Gap’ apathetically tunnels with Neu! Order energy, dual bass and McCarthy’s laconic vocal delivery, while their only instrumental ‘Entropy’ calls in guitarist and unofficial Brick Dave Warren to send the TR-808 into the stratosphere. Unknown until now, this is down under synth-wave at it’s fin-est.

The Frenzied Bricks is pressed in an edition of 327 hand stamped white labels, wrapped in white ink printed coloured card.


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7”. Edition of 281 copies. Hand stamped, cover white ink printed on coloured card.

Tracklist:

1. Blood Pressure In The Sand
2. Dusk
3. The Tinning Test

Short info:

Height/Dismay were the M Squared studio-as-instrument duo of Patrick Gibson and Dru Jones. A member of Systematics and Scattered Order, Gibson was an integral part of the M Squared label and studio, where he met Jones. With an unapologetic misuse of instruments and ample time, the two sonic explorers scraped guitar strings, manipulated clarinets, and contact mic’d woks to layer their echo chamber apparitions.

Collating three 1981 recordings, the then-shelved ‘Blood Pressure In The Sand’ joins ‘Dusk’, their con-tribution to archetypal cassette-zine Fast Forward. Also unreleased, ‘The Tinning Test’ rejects formal lyrics in favour of a deadpan reading from the Australian Standard for tinned copper wire. The outsid-ers of the outside, these mutual minds’ productions have long been overlooked as crucial pieces of the Australian DIY music puzzle.

Height/Dismay is pressed in an edition of 281 hand stamped white labels, wrapped in white ink print-ed coloured card.

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LP

Tracklist:

1. Ros Bandt – Ocean Bells
2. LIME – Shifts
3. LIME – Annapurna

Short info:

Efficient Space presents Soft and Fragile by Ros Bandt and LIME (Live Improvised Music Events), originally released by Move Records in 1983. A pioneering figure in Australian music, Bandt is known for her work with sound sculpture, electronics, acoustic ecology, and invented instruments, as well as her writings and teaching.

Soft and Fragile comprises a series of structured improvisations performed on custom-built bells and gongs. On the side-long ‘Ocean Bells’, Bandt performs on her ‘flagong’, a three-tiered vertical glass marimba that she made in 1978, inspired by the ‘cloud chamber bowls’ of maverick instrument builder and microtonal composer Harry Partch. Over a long tape loop made up of slowed down sounds from the same instrument, she delicately strikes the glass bells with mallets, allowing individual pitch-es to ring out and decay with the aquatic wavering quality that suggested the piece’s title, eventually building into flowing melodic sequences. Structured as a series of events determined by the length of the performer’s breath, this gently undulating music invites listeners to lose themselves in delicate microtonal fluctuations and subtle yet expressive phrasing.

For ‘Shifts’, Bandt is joined by Julie Doyle, Gavan McCarthy, and Carolyn Robb on a collectively composed work for clay bells. Atop a steady pulse, melodic and rhythmic cells expand and contract, shifting between LIME’s four members. LIME also perform the closing ‘Annapurna’, where timbres sourced from glass, clay and metal are freely threaded through a pulsating tape backdrop generated from loops of the ensemble chanting.

Presented in a redesigned sleeve showcasing the performers and their instruments, the reissue repro-duces the extensive original liner notes. While Bandt’s ideas and techniques draw on aspects of the invented instrument tradition of Partch and Bertoia, Stockhausen’s intuitive music, and the cyclical structures of American minimalism and Javanese gamelan, the floating world of Soft and Fragile also resonates with the work of New Age outlier Stephan Micus and contemporary practitioners such as Tomoko Sauvage. In Bandt’s own words, this is ‘elegant and sensual music where the body and mind have the time to reflect and catch up with the moment as it passes…It is a music intended for res-pite’.




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Special remarks : 2LP, 2022 Repress Edition

Vital Sales Points:
- Released by popular NTS show Noise In My Head
- Liner notes from Ivan Smagghe and artwork from Misha Hollenbach (Perks and Mini)
- Features many rarities reissued for the first time ever (Karen Marks' most wanted Australian cold wave single last sold for 290€ while Once traded for 170€)
- All tracks officially licensed, sourcing original masters when available
- Includes digital download

Tracklist
A1. Linda Smith - I So Liked Spring , A2. Karen Marks - Cold Café , A3. Bruce Langhorne - Leaving Del Norte , A4. The Seraphims - Conciousness of Happening
B1. Garry Davenport - Sarra , B2. Some of My Best Friends Are Canadians - Feeling Sheepish , B3. The Rising Storm - Frozen Laughter
C1. Warfield Spillers - Daddy's Little Girl , C2. Joyce Heath - I Wouldn't Dream Of It , C3. Joe Tossini and Friends - Wild Dream , C4. Scott Seskind - I Remember
D1. Angel - Driving (Down) , D2. Nini Raviolette and Hugo Weris - Slow , D3. Nora Guthrie - Home Before Dark , D4. Once - Joanna

Short info:
Sky Girl is a mysteriously unshakeable companion, a deeply melancholic and sentimental journey through folk-pop, new wave and art music micro presses that span 1961-1991. A seemingly disparate suite of selections of forgotten fables by more or less neverknowns, Sky Girl forms a beautifully coherent and utterly sublime whole deftly compiled by French collectors DJ Sundae and Julien Dechery.

From Scott Seskind's adolescent musical road movie to Karen Marks' icy Oz-wave, the charming DIY storytelling of Italian-American go-getter Joe Tossini and the ethereal slow dance themes of Parisian artists Nini Raviolette and Hugo Weris, Sky Girl resonates on a wide spectrum historically, geographically and stylistically. It unites in a singular, longing, almost intangible ambience.

If the names sound wholly unfamiliar that doesn't matter, the nature of the compositions swiftly nurtures an intimacy with these lonely, poignant, openhearted wanderers. Most were available in a very limited capacity at the time of their release, some were never really released at all - Gary Davenport declined to release Sarra after he split with the girl for whom the track is named - years later a friend convinced Davenport to allow him to put 100 copies online to sell and DJ Sundae was quick enough to snare one. Beyond their scarcity, these tracks are bound together by a certain raw beauty that's achievable when music is made and no one is listening.

Sky Girl comprises of fifteen officially licensed songs, a two year international scavenger hunt through long-folded home label operations, the depths of internet forums and traceless acetates. Both compilers are well trained record sleuths - DJ Sundae's labels Hollie and Idle Press have reissued Arthur Russell affiliate Nirosta Steel and DIY relic Pitch, while Julien Dechery previously compiled 'Fire Star', a retrospective on Tamil film composer Ilaiyaraaja, for Bombay Connection.

Released by Noise In My Head offshoot Efficient Space, Sky Girl is enriched with artwork from Perks and Mini mutant Misha Hollenbach and appropriately elegant sleeve notes courtesy of Ivan Smagghe.




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2022 Re Edition

Special remarks : LP with digital download card
Follow up to the labels previous releases - Sky Girl and Midnite Spares

Tracklist:
A1. Irena Xero - Lady On The Train
A2. Andy Rantzen - Will I Dream?
A3. Prod - Knife On Top
A4. Software Seduction - New Collision
A5. Ironing Music - Don't Wish It Away
B1. He Dark Age - Holding Out For Eden
B2. The Horse He's Sick - Larynx
B3. MK Ultra & The Assassins of Light - Jesus Krist Klap Rap (Orthodox Mix)
B4. Moral Fibro - Take A Walk in the Sun
B5. Zerox Dreamflesh - Squids Can Fly


Short info:
Efficient Space continues to expose Australia's esoteric musical history with Oz Waves - a collection of 80s DIY recordings, compiled by odd wave anthropologist Steele Bonus. Definitive proof that inhabitants of the Down Underground were links in a global network of creative kooks, Oz Waves connects those who utilised mobile recording rigs and small press releases to create and disseminate misfit synth-punk, tape loop experiments and inner city pop. Through overseas mail order exchanges, anonymous groups like Zerox Dreamflesh could find place on Belgian compilations, while Chris and Cosey lullabied their son to sleep with Irena Xero and her interdisciplinary art collective Zip.

Bonus selects 10 survivors from the fertile period (1982-1989), most of which were only issued on cassette in tiny editions of 5 to 100 copies. M Squared affiliates Prod join the extraterrestrial Software Seduction, He Dark Age's minimal wave neglect and the irreverent cut ups of The Horse He's Sick and MK Ultra & the Assassins of Light. The remaining tracks have been sourced from musicians' private archives and are being officially released on Oz Waves for the first time - Andy Rantzen's industrial dub Itch-E & Scratch-E precursor, the buoyant vocal-drone of Ironing Music and Moral Fibro, Sydney's short lived answer to Weekend and Marine Girls. With detailed track by track notes, lines are drawn to Severed Heads, Scattered Order and other antipodean post-punk royalty.

As a DJ, Steele Bonus has gained notoriety via the exquisite selections that form his ongoing mix series Odd Waves. Sydney-born, Amsterdam-based, his graphic design has not only been responsible for sleeves on Efficient Space, but also trusted Amsterdam connoisseurs Music From Memory and Young Marco's Safe Trip.


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2022 Re Edition

5 track 12"/EP with full colour sleeve

Tracklist

A1 Cold Café
A2 Won't Wear It For Long
A3 You Bring These Things
B1 Cold Café (Demo)
B2 Problem Page (Demo)

Short info:

Almost four decades since it's domestic release, Karen Marks' 1981 single Cold Café has finally reaped it's deserved international credit to become one of Australia's most recognised minimal wave recordings. Efficient Space now showcases the Melbourne artist's brief but entire discography, including two previously unheard demos, all produced with experimental synthesist Ash Wednesday (The Metronomes, Modern Jazz, Thealonian Music).

A rarity in the then male dominated industry, Marks found her footing in music, first through rock journalism and then in band management. Formally of Adelaide, newly arrived synth-punks JAB (Johnny Crash, Ash Wednesday and Bodhan X) approached her for representation, subsequently contributing tracks to seminal 1978 snapshot Lethal Weapons and playing the Crystal Ballroom's opening night. Wednesday and Crash would soon dissolve JAB, enlisting Mark Ferry and Sean Kelly to create Models. Still under Mark's management, Models became one of the fastest rising new bands of the punk movement, playing to full houses of dedicated and frenzied fans everywhere. Sadly, internal frictions forced Wednesday and Marks to leave after two years, with Crash following three months later.

Her creative relationship with Wednesday fortified with the co-production of his 1980 machine-pop prank Love By Numbers, her swooning chorus uplifting his deadpan count to 100, before the two collaborated on Marks' own recording persona. Immortalised by the icy Oz wave of Cold Café, her Astor issued 7" also boasted the caffeinated flip Won't Wear It For Long - a should be hit with guitar from future Icehouse member Robert Kretschmer.

Fans know of one more recording - You Bring These Things, a forlorn arrangement of an otherwise unreleased Paul Kelly song, gifted to her by the revered wordsmith. The track only ever appeared on the Astor promotional LP Terra Australis, sinfully alongside Up There Cazaly and Joe Dolce - hard proof that the label grossly misunderstood her talent (Marks recalls their persistent requests to show midriff and cleavage). Locked in a dissatisfying label arrangement and at this stage unwilling to follow her peers to greener pastures overseas, she felt her only way out was to cease all further activities.

At the 11th hour of preparing this retrospective, two tracks unexpectedly surfaced via two cassettes - a paranoid demo version of her signature tune Cold Café, and a long-lost fourth song Problem Page. Both living room recordings follow Marks and Wednesday's ingenious framework of minimal lyrics, minimal chord progressions.
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7” with picture sleeve

Tracklist


A1 I Remember
A2 Until Then (1970 Version)
B1 I Miss You
B2 Until Then (1971 Version)

Short info:

Tresa Leigh is the reflection of St. Simons Island, Georgia teenager Teresa Laxamanna (né Leggett).

Wooed by a classifieds listing to audition for Philly funk and soul imprint Lyndell Records, the aspiring 15 year old dragged her father, guitar, fender amplifier and microphone to perform her convincingly mature folk tales of first time heartbreak. Winning the support of label owner Walter L Rayfield, the fresh recruit cut two originals in a makeshift motel studio on the neighbouring Jekyll Island, backed by a band of unhurried session players. The 1970 recording yielded her debut 45, pairing I Remember’s endearing juvenile jangle with the heartsick Ghost Riders cornerstone Until Then.

After a car accident prevented Mr. Rayfield from fulfilling his release plans, an unswayed Tresa responded to Great World Of Sound’s newspaper advert, baiting the prospect of gold records, major label connections and sales of a million copies. With family and friends crowdfunding the $1,200 that the company required to produce a follow-up 7”, she jetted to Nashville, recording a slicker, emotionally elevated update on Until Then, and the symphonic slow dancer I Miss You. In another unfortunate career misfire, the dubious label failed to deliver on any of their promises, with the artist volunteering the only surviving copy for restoration.

Collating all four recordings, this brief anthology immortalises the innocent small town dreams of a genuine original, inadvertently echoing the likes of Nora Guthrie, Bonnie Dobson and Patti Whipp.



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