We have signed copies of this amazing new 2LP from Ty, which we are selling at a smidge under Bandcamp, to keep us brick-and-mortar and non-streaming folks in the mix.
An amazing album, though it challenges traditional notions of the album throughout. So many aesthetics and sounds engaged. Our favorite portion of the label one-sheet reads:
“It may be a perfect album for 2026, a time when the sonic landscape continues to fervently embrace increasingly radical hybrids, at once club soundsystem-ready, art-installation-leaning, and music-school-mediated. But also, importantly, intuitive and hand-crafted.”
During our in-store, much of the dialogue focused on the artist’s relationship to studio and gear, but also to how these technologies encourage a push back to more human, and even interpersonal interactions. One can hear that dialogue as a thread throughout these tracks, gathered across years (2018-2025) and projects.
Why hasn’t this album gotten more praise and/or shoutouts yet in 2026? We did see someone compare it to Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, which doesn’t quite sit right, though we understand the reference. One of our favorite releases of the year, Kammerkonzert is essentially chamber music with Tom Jenkinson playing all of the parts, framed by Squarepusher’s electronic vocabulary.
Like so many of the releases that came out after Jenkinson’s breakbeat period and the iconic Feed Me Weird Things (1996), Kammerkonzert positions electronic and acoustic instruments in dialogue. Jenkinson prefers to frame the electronic versus the acoustic as an “argument,” though this 2LP flows quite smoothly between these voices.
There are Venetian Snares-like moments where breakcore and classical music come together with with Rossz Csillag Alatt Született-future-leaning beauty, but most of these tracks evoke Univers Zero and/or orchestral Prog, ECM, fusion, funk and, to our ears and the best side of all, mid-century classical music. Again, Art Bears and Henry Cow provide grab bag references.
Please see the final side of this double record, which as a self-contained unit offers a perfect arc across many classical periods and instrumentation. Ending with organ music in 2026 feels almost like parody coming from Squarepusher. That said, the album closes with somber and still beauty, reverb, then quiet.
Where many of Squarepusher’s contemporaries benefit from the CD format, the purest of uninterrupted long players, this double LP uses its four discrete sides wisely. As is often the case with Squarepusher, his music and ideas demand much of the listener. Having a short break to flip the record offers space/time to digest and appreciate an artist working at a frenetic pace, even if this chamber concert is mostly quite mellow. Even in those places where the bass and percussion point back to last century’s Drum&Bass, everything sounds smooth in presentation and tone, smartly integrated and well considered.
“Goat(JP) return with a brittle contemporary dance soundtrack that locks into the pointillist rhythmic micro-precision of the now classic Joy In Fear. Directing an IRL physical performance, the band totter between rhythmelodic, ritualistic minimalism and intricate, pneumatic beat music […]
The six parts to "Without References" perfectly highlight the synchronicity between Goat's remarkably precise acoustic practice and the physical movements coordinated by Cindy Van Acker, a choreographer renowned for her meticulous stage direction and work with Mika Vainio. In their shifts from tendon-tweak tension to lissom melodic fluidity, Goat prove the ideal foil and spurs for Van Acker's rigorously demanding performances, laying down super crisp commands and rhythmic geometries that manifest a ludi ideal of "dancing to architecture."
Koshiro Hino(guitar, percussion), coupled with Atsumi Tagami (bass, percussion), Takafumi Okada(drums, percussion) and rendered by the deft spatialization of Bunsho Nishikawa's mixdown -- all faithfully suspended in Rashad Becker's mastering -- come to mirror the way computerized grids and lines on paper manifest in physical space with a rare clarity and concision that makes for an utterly enveloping listen.
Really interesting (narrow & ) deep dive addition to #blackmetal and #darkambient subcultures in this curiously designed new volume, printed in an edition of 100.
Astral Glade: An Exploration in Esoteric Cassette Music, Vol. 1
Collaborative project from @astral_glade and @snail.farm, Volume 1 pairs an overview and feature-length survey of the enigmatic German label, Voldsom Musik, with tape reviews covering select releases from the last fifteen years. Identifying the themes, threads and connecting tissue is half the fun.
Perfect bound with heavy paper stock and an aesthetic/design pointing to Bergman and assorted esoterica.
So excited for this book and the show up at Moma here in 2026. The one-sheet reads:
“Over six sessions between September 1951 and November 1952, Marcel Duchamp sat down with collectors and gallerists Harriet and Sidney Janis for a wide-ranging conversation about his inspirations and working processes, and his many opinions on the workings of the modern art world and its histories.
The Janises, owners of the influential Sidney Janis Gallery, were ardent supporters of modern art and close friends with Duchamp. Harriet, an accomplished author, led the interviews with an eye toward writing a monograph on Duchamp, though this was never realized. Now, this previously unknown chronicle is available for the first time through the efforts of Carroll Janis, Sidney and Harriet's son.
Under Harriet's expert guidance, Duchamp holds forth on his artistic philosophies, his career, his friends, his rivals and his lifelong obsession with chess. He provides an inside look at some of his most famous works, from his controversial 'Readymades' to 'The Large Glass.' Contextualized with illustrations, annotations and an introduction by Carroll Janis, this publication is a rich treasure trove of information on one of the 20th century's most controversial, groundbreaking and larger-than-life artists.”
From the one-sheet and props to Hozac on this publication. We’ve been waiting decades for this:
“Hozac Books is proud to present another foundational brick in the pantheon of New Zealand underground music with Peter Jefferies – The Other Side of Reason, a career-spanning biography by music historian Andrew Schmidt of Audioculture.nz.
Covering Jefferies’ earliest musical projects during the first wave punk heyday such as Dull Emma, and Pink Noise on into Nocturnal Projections, This Kind of Punishment, Plagal Grind, Cyclops, and much more in striking detail, the author leaves no stone unturned and weaves Jefferies life story into a gripping saga of innovation, isolation, and redemption.
Alongside is the story of the evolving Flying Nun imprint as well as the creation of Xpressway which served to fill a sorely needed gap in handling & distributing more of the marginal New Zealand lo-fi recordings to the masses.
The Other Side of Reason truly shows the endless power of creative perseverance and the intensities that come therein when dealing with that immovable thrust in the core of your being and how to channel that into something that lasts for the ages.
For ten long years between 2002 and 2012, Peter Jefferies, the New Zealand indie composer and musician didn’t answer the phone or his email, when old and new fans and friends called. He didn’t want to know about the brilliant run of solo albums and live shows that sparked a major cult following in the United States. Then step by step, note by note, year by year, Jefferies emerged from his Taranaki abode on the edge of home city, New Plymouth, to see nearly every major work he’d meticulously assembled in the post-punk and alternative rock era between 1980 and 2002 in New Zealand and the US reissued and universally praised. The cultural footprint from his busy and fiercely creative years with Nocturnal Projections, This Kind of Punishment, Xpressway Records, Plagal Grind, Cyclops, Two Foot Flame and solo was that deep.
Returning sporadically to the live stage in New Zealand, new music soon flowed, adding to one of the small South Pacific nation’s most potent collections of words and sound.
Written with Peter’s cooperation, Peter Jefferies / The Other Side of Reason, reveals the stark beauty, brutal honesty and endearing humanity of his best work, as music historian, Andrew Schmidt, traces the Stratford-born musician’s life through New Zealand’s punk and post-punk hot spots in Auckland, New Plymouth, and Dunedin in the 1980s and early 1990s, and then, when the world came calling, Chicago, Vancouver, and Austin, Texas, with tours through Europe and Australia from the mid to late 1990s into the new millennium.”
We believe this was an edition of just 35 copies, possibly only available in an 8 tape box collection?
O’Gallagher (October 2, 1917 – December 4, 2007) was an avant-garde sound artist, painter and teacher whose San Francisco studio became an early gathering place for Beat writers and poets in the 1950s.
He was integral to the creation of foundations and centers for human growth, including Feathered Pipe Ranch, The Ojai Foundation and the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts.
So pleased to stock the last Sightings show ever, Stavanger 30.4.2013, issued on tape by the Norwegian Drid Machine imprint back in 2015!
We’ve said it before, Sightings remain the greatest band of the era that brought about the Brooklyn brand, though Msgrs Hoffman, Lockie and Morgan had no part in the beards, the button-downs or Vice magazine. That said, they did circle with Andrew W.K.
Here is the setlist, total heat, drawing heavily from Terribly Well (Dais, 2013) and Amusers and Puzzlers (Dais, 2015):
CC
Take It In Trade
Mute's Retreat
Rivers Of Blood
13
Bucket Brigades
Bundled
The Loafer
Highest recommendation (and we don’t even like the tape format that much)!!
From the “Blue” Gene Tryanny Collection
Amazing 1968 periodical with contributions from “Blue”s primary collaborators Robert Ashley, Dick Higgins, Alan Kaprow, Ann Halprin and many more.
“Blue” had broken the spine and kept this propped open on an article about the ONCE group. Ashley and Tyranny’s starting off point.
November 17, 2023: After more than a decade, our Dystopian t-shirt has been put to rest. The cheeky irony sits less well when living through our own spotty patch of history. Yesterday we spotted two burned out cars on the street in just one commute home. The spirit of Rollerball lives on even if the t-shirt design is no more.
To right/re-write the tone of our last t-shirt a bit, we borrow from an iconic avant-garde luminary who is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. Everyone is crazy for Robert Ashley these days, so many voices doing the voices.
We’ve decided to appropriate what’s appropriate too, so here’s our Automatic Ashley design!
Acquired these direct from Bill Orcutt during his March 20, 21 and 22nd residency at Roulette. The Four Louies night on 3.21.26 was extraordinary, especially the performance of that Fake Estates Lp. And the other nights featured an amazing cast of fellow artists, some on PALILALIA, and among others:
Wendy Eisenberg
Chris Corsano
Shane Parish
Cyrus Pireh
Ava Mendoza
Kris Gruda
…. and even an appearance from shop favorite William Winant!
We only have a few of each size, so please act fast.
Selling it a smidge cheaper than the Orcutt’s merch table, as not appear like we are in on the grift.
Grateful to have these in the shop.
Nashville's Terry Reed-he being neither Jerry Reed nor Terry Reed-self released his 'On Way To Alpha' mini album into this universe sometime in 1975 as a 7". While novel in formant, Reed's fantastical, solitudinarian take on inchoate, Psychedelic expression is uncannily impressive. Gentle psych, loner psych, however you choose to approach it, this aural nug is a giver of tremendous reward. Little seems to be known about Reed, or this release, via the interwebs & original copies rarely turn up. So I will roll the spiffiest of spliffs in homage to the keen, curatorial scholarship of Johann Klepp & Zaius Tapes. He says this is the second volume in an American Loner series (the 1st being the Hams 12") & I eagerly await volume 3.
One time edition of 200.
FFO; Bobb Trimble, Terry Brooks, Simones, S.T Mikael.
Features:
A MULTI-PART PRINCE FEATURE with reprints of rare writings by the great writers Ann Powers, Michael A. Gonzales, and Greil Marcus.
- Mary Lattimore – the great LA-based harpist interviewed by RJ Smith.
- Audrey Golden’s Thought I Heard You Speak book on the role of women in Factory Records is celebrated with an interview by Jessica Beard.
- Negativland – amazing huge very very in-depth feature on the whole ‘Helter Stupid’ debacle – strap on in for this one, by Cory Frye.
- Roussel + Duchamp, illustrated – Philippe Lapierre delivers dozens of real and super-real vignettes of a posthumous relationship, with beautiful pointillistic drawings.
- Stewart Lee by Richard Gehr – an awesome and dare-we-say-deep chat with the world’s greatest living standup comedian.
- Katharina Kuhlenkampf drew this terrific comic strip about the delightful Go-Betweens song “Lee Remick.”
- Emeralds – Fred Thomas on the much-missed Ann Arbor-based drone explorers.
- High Risk Group by Tim Alborn – the full, fascinating story of the excellent, obscure Boston based 1980s alt-rock group.
- Joshua Gamma – Murat Cem Mengüç on the big show the artist curated which explores the relationship between Christian psychedelic aesthetics and American subcultures.
FEATURES:
Raymond Pettibon: In a wide-ranging and sweet interview by Adam Woodhead Pettibon walks us through his entire career, and even makes economics sound interesting.
John Waters: We have a beautiful discussion on the merits of transgression in today’s climate by Feral House publisher and old friend Christina Ward.
Cheri Knight: The great Seattle-based scribe Dave Segal goes deep on this neglected experimental pop musician from Olympia in the '80s.
David Nance: Editor Mike McGonigal is fascinated by the way Nance manages to mix up tributes to other artists, and collaborations, with such deeply strong solo material.
Amy Ruhl: The cinematic visual artist is explored in depth by Michelle Dove.
John Brannon: Check it out: we have the most epic and excellent career spanning photo packed feature by Brannon’s longtime photographer Doug Coombe.
Melvins photo tour diary: Entirely by Buzz Osbourne, photos and words -- this is like a dozen pages and so and taken just months ago. It’s really rad, all shot on their first tour in forever!
Lidia Yuknavitch: Alex Behr turned in a brilliant interview with the cult writer.
Kan Mikami: The Japanese outsider blues-folk musician and actor is interviewed by the LA-based saxophone player and composer Patrick Shiroishi
The Willies: And here we have thanks to Tyler Wilcox the most Maggot Brain type article, a big in-depth, lyrical feature on the Feelies ambient offshoot who have never been written on in-depth. The band’s connection to Downtown minimalism has never been written on this way, and basically you will for the first time understand how the band morphed from the first record into the second, and at least part of why there was so much time in between. We’re not worthy!
and more!!!