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cd -- selection MARCH 2006
 
Artist: THIS HEAT
Title: Out of Cold Storage
Label: THIS IS (UK)
Format: 6CD BOX
Price: 80€
Catalog #: THIS ISBOX

 
"The complete official lifetime releases of This Heat: This Heat, Deceit, Health and Efficiency, Made Available and Repeat, re-mastered and re-packaged, with a substantial (48pp) book of interviews, recollections, information, documents and photographs in a sturdy box, PLUS a new CD of concert recordings."

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Artist: SHOGU TOKUMARU
Title: LST
Label: ACTIVE SUSPENSION
Format: CD
Price: 15,5€
Catalog #:  

L.S.T.", Shugo's follow up, renews the miracle, with the further will to accomplish a real album as additional baggage. Guitar sorcerer, discreet virtuoso, mutant songwriter who seems to experiment like he breathes, nothing was missing but Shugo’s will to convince all and blow your mind. This second album thus shares with its predecessor the love for intimate atmospheres, elegant melodies, chamber music-like harmonies. But, more self-confident, it is also less discreet, rougher, less blithe and happy-go-lucky. A dazzling explosion of inventiveness, swarming with details as subdued as they are conclusive, "L.S.T." is dense like a masterpiece, mixing a few decades of pop music and crazy folk music, but never compels, never obliges the listener, a bit in the way his Tokumaru’s voice itself goes its way, soft and discreet too, almost feminine, always buried yet never hidden in the bodies of guitars, or in the way of his songs, weirdly blurry, yet the melodies of which print in your mind and never go away.

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Artist: ASHTRAY NAVIGATION
Title: FOUR MORE RAGGA MOODS
Label: IKUISUUS
Format: 1CD
Price: 15,5€
Catalog #:  

 
Follow-up to Phil Todd’s long-revered Four Raga Moods side presents four more slow-glowing trance bombs that combine lucid, transparent guitar gliss with spectral folk, subliminal drones and guest appearances from Alex Neilson, Ben Reynolds, Mel Delaney, Chris Hladowski, Matt Cairns, Andy Jarvis and Pete Nolan of Magik Markers et al. Fold-out full-colour four-panel digipak. Includes “The Pete Nolan Effect”, one that we’re all familiar with, right? Highly recommended, one of the best Ashtrays this month. - Volcanic Tongue

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Artist: SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN, THE
Title: Complexion
Label: VERY FRIENDLY (UK)
Format: CD
Price: 18,5 euro
Catalog #: VF 030CD

"Very Friendly (in collaboration/co-operation from Spirit Of Orr) are honored to offer you 2005's Complexion for the first time on CD -- originally released on a limited run of 1000 vinyl. Another psychic gangbang from New England's finest fever dream peddlers. This record contains futuristic meditations on some proto-gypsy ritual from the distant past & hyper-realistic abstractions tailor made for the absurdity of human interaction as it has come to be recognized in the present day. Complexion, unlike other Sunburned records, promises invisible skin for the faces between your ears and transcendental pulse options for the curiously minded purveyors of a young millennium."

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Artist: VA
Title: Gold Leaf Branches
Label: DIGITALIS
Format: 3CD
Price:
Catalog #: DIGI 001CD

"Gold Leaf Branches is a massive collection. It is an undertaking that is years in the making, one that often looked as though it would never be completed. But after endless hours of emailing, calling, and generally harassing the 59 artists presented here, Gold Leaf Branches is complete. This is a compilation with two simple motives: to collect as much of the music I love from all over the globe in one place and to expose as many people as possible to numerous outstanding artists they might not have heard. Gold Leaf Branches succeeds with flying colors. Of the 59 tracks here, all but one are exclusive to this release." Artists include: Six Organs of Admittance, Charlambides, James Blackshaw, Hala Strana, Lau Nau, Wood & Wand featuring the Rose, Nick Castro, Marissa Nadler and more.

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Artist: ARP/SCHWITTERS/HAUSMANN
Title: Dada Antidada Merz
Label: SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)
Format: CD
Price: 17E
Catalog #: SR 195CD

Three major artists of the European Dadaist avant-garde read from their own texts. German-French sculptor, painter and poet Hans Arp, who was very close to Tristan Tzara when he created Dada in Zürich (from a very rare recording), photomontagist and co-founder of the Berlin Dada movement, Raoul Hausmann (some rare pieces from 1918 to 1957 -- recorded by Henri Chopin) and the great Kurt Schwitters, twentieth century's greatest master of collage who reads his only two recorded merzpoems, "Anna Blume" and "Ursonate" (both recorded in 1932). Including photos, texts and historical introduction (translated in German, French and English). Alongside the seminal Sub Rosa Luna Park CD (a collection of avant-garde voices 1913-1974) Dada Antidada Merz represents more definitive documentation of early Dada/avant-garde output (edited by Marc Dachy once again) -- significant aural documents, previously impossible to access.

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Artist: KEMIALLISET YSTÄVÄT
Title: Lumottu Karkkipurkki (Vapaa Systeemi)
Label: FONAL (FINLAND)
Format: CD
Price: 17,5 euro
Catalog #: FR 038CD

FONAL BACKCATALOGUE ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SHOP (17,5 euros)

"Originally Lumottu Karkkipurkki was released on cassette on Huutomerkki label, re-released on double 8 inch lathe cut on the Celebrate Psi Phenomenom label. Now finally available on CD remastered and remixed." Notes from Ralf Normaali: "Lumottu Karkkipurkki ('the enchanted candy jar') is a musical work of two concepts: a song cycle based on an obscure Finnish children's book of the same name. The plot is simple; a boy buys a candy jar from an old 'witchy' shopkeepress. Every time the boy takes a colourful drop his surroundings change unexpectedly and completely. He meets strange beings in the nearby forest. The atmosphere is exciting and slightly scary. Ville eats all the drops and craves for more, but the woman with the shiny green ring is gone and so are the candies... The other concept, Vapaa systeemi ('free system') has something to do with plucking stringed instruments growing moss and the speed control, but we don't want to get too specific here. Lumottu Karkkipurkki was the first release after Mr. Anderzén abandoned his harem (& the couple obligatory eunuchs) in order to work his way out in a more solitude manner, with his bare hands and the four tracks. So, besides from being darn good late night drooling accompaniment, this music has some sort of historical significance." FONAL
 
 
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