Michael Zerang Assyrian Caesarean LP

Chicago-based percussionist Michael Zerang presents his first solo recording after a long career as an exploratory musician and composer. Recorded and mixed by Matt Bordin in the woods at (the new) Outside Inside Studio, the album features a range of approaches to percussion that Zerang has developed over the years, including the use of vibrating drumhead surfaces, expressive friction passages, multiple timbre percussion, and straight up trap-set drumming - all infused with a rich sense of melodic, rhythmic and textural innovation.

Zerang has performed and recorded with some of the most adventurous artists of his era, including a fourteen-year stint with The Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit III, and an extended collaboration with drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake. Frequent collaborators also include cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, pianist and synthesist Jim Baker, bassist Kent Kessler, trumpeter Axel Dorner, along with an ever-widening pool of international improvisors. He also recently began performing with the experimental Middle-Eastern super group Karkhana - with Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui, Maurice Louca, Tony Elieh, Sam Shalabi and Umut Çağlar.

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Deadsmoke - Mountain Legacy

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Mountain Legacy is an album exploring something fundamental to humanity: ISOLATION 
The illusion of silence, which is a natural non-existing concept, is perfectly described by synthetized sounds and noises of the newly acquired band member Claudio Rocchetti (In Zaire). These sounds are missing on the first self-titled release of Deadsmoke, so now the old tracks have been enriched and new ones have been composed providing a consistent psych-disturbed synthetized sound. Six brand new tracks featuring deep guitar fuzz and growling bass take the listener on a journey through the woods, alternating lightly groovy rhythms with sludge-doom cadences.

Geodetic - Broken Consonance

The low thrust of a grainy claustrophobic man-made environment, heavy lights, rising atmosphere and human indecision. This is the world we live in, this is the constriction we go through every day, carelessly wading our lives through a bullshit narrative that still needs to be told. Here at the Maple Death HQ we need an OST that can discern the living from the dead, furthering ourselves from oblivion for just one extra day: Geodetic’s debut ‘Broken Consonance’ is our soundtrack today.

Formed in late 2016, Geodetic is the electronic duo of Claudio Rocchetti and Jukka Reverberi. Industrial, techno, cassette culture, avant-garde fascination are all part of their sonic palette. They’ve been trading sounds via the complicated interwebz from their homes in Bolzano and Reggio Emilia, working relentlessly at night, headphones on, baby monitors dialed in at the 1, saturation monitors dialed in at the 10. You always have to cave in somewhere.

‘Broken Consonance’ opens with ‘I’, a pulsating steady cosmic serpentine hi-hat hissing away almost recalling early Boards Of Canada until saturated hand-claps lead us into 4 track Green Velvet era. ‘II’ moves effortlessly, a slow steady leftfield train of celestial paranoia; ‘III’ and ‘IV’ move from industrial frenzy to meditative landscapes, incorporating the Italian tradition and dark eleganza of 80’s synth cassette pioneers Daniele Ciullini, La Maison and power-electronics king Maurizio Bianchi; ‘VI’ is a pure EDM industrial banger, ripping apart on an Ike Yard-ish circular pattern spreading shards of white noise on broken euro beats. Communal dissonance, endearing infinite dreams.

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CINDY LEE – MALENKOST

Describing a world of beauty, escape, sorrow, loss and catharsis usually needs a strong leap of faith and when it comes to music such a feat is almost impossible, modern day consumption is pulling us by the throats and we don’t have time to surrender, we don’t have time to let the fog, the mystery, the universal shine seek into our eyes and creep into our minds. There are exceptions, Cindy Lee is one of them, a rare all-in lifer, flickering candle.

Maple Death is beyond honored to team up with Superior Viaduct in presenting Cindy Lee’s Malenkost, the first LP in a series of reissues (plus forthcoming new music) dedicated to one of our most cherished artists of the last decade. For the insiders, we can only use an analogy to describe the feeling CL’s music conveys: pull out your Swell Maps Lp’s, forget the genre, listen to the exact moment, the exact sequence when Blenheim Shots turns into Raining In My Room. Those 30 seconds, that is what we are talking about, that sensation, that abandoned bliss. Patrick Flegel aka Cindy Lee has been turning in those sequences for the best part of the last decade, from his years as singer/guitarist in Canadian cult band Women, to his brief stint as Androgynous Mind, everything has been building up to this moment. For the past 4 years Cindy Lee has been meticulously crafting her pure universe of no wave, doo-wop, noise, Matsumoto visions and psychedelic shimmer untouched and unaffected by external hands. Music so far has been released and carefully dispatched via CL’s own label and website CCQSK Enterprises, selling out as quickly as people could connect and fine-tune their souls.

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Sensations' Fix - Vision´s Fugitives

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In Zaire - Visions of the Age to Come

In Zaire are closing the chapter opened in 2013 with their critically acclaimed debut full-length „White Sun Black Sun“.
This time, the fever-dance takes on new environments, new worlds, new visions. „Visions Of The Age To Come“ is the aptly named follow-ups name that is to be released on Sound Of Cobra Records this spring.

Packing eight tracks of sprawling all-ends-open psych workouts with a definite rock edge to them, their visions have sharpened to a determined longing into the unknown that is most aware of the preceding waypoints the band has travelled through so far.

At the heart of it all is still the underlying hum of the universe and its infinite vibrations - this is boldly stated with „Hermes Dance“, the albums literal opening track. It functions as a foreboding vision showcasing the essentials of the band: rhythm as key to a broad palette of ever-shifting atmospheres and emotions. As soon as this new chapter is opened, we see In Zaire reaping what they’ve sown in the past with a plethora of high-energy riffs and freewheeling outbursts that communicate with each other in a way that brings the ever so apparent dichotomous dance of chaos and form, of focus and blur to the surface of things.

Where its predecessor was bred in much more blurred musical hotbeds, „Visions Of The Age To Come“ is an expressive kaleidoscope of projections (or perceptions?) coming into focus, and in doing so presenting a rich dialogue with the inner and the outer realities we all have to balance. Through the course of the record we get confronted with sonorous entities constantly trying to work with themselves in order to transform, to find new shapes and to eventually pinpoint the reason of their longing.
Culminating in what is arguably the records key track, „The Seven Sermons Of The Dead“ sees the band leading their newfound approach to the edge with an intense marriage of their rock roots with the outer planes they constantly flirt with - the entrancing main riff moves like a snake in a dizzying journey, which finds its destination in the closing title track.
The intensity lifts, the curtains fall, an ending giving birth to a new beginning - In Zaire’s age to come is a promising one.

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Lorenzo Senni - Persona - Warp records

Lorenzo Senni will release ‘Persona’ on 11 November, his debut EP on Warp. Listen to a new track ‘Win In The Flat World’ below.

‘Persona’ is a fresh insight into Lorenzo Senni’s lucid take on '90's hard trance and its links to EDM and contemporary dancehall. At the core of ‘Persona’ is a raver's disciplined restraint from alcohol or drugs at it's core – reflected in the artwork by Ed Atkins which a CGI depiction of Senni's own “Rave Voyeur”. 

Following this weekend’s show for Red Bull Music Academy Montreal, Lorenzo will play a debut NYC show this Thursday in support of the EP.

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Henning Christiansen - Musik Essayistik 2xLP

Henning Christiansen (Copenhagen, 1932 – Isle of Møn, 2008) was a Danish composer and an active member of the Fluxus movement. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen and at the more liberal Ex-School (Eks-Skolen) embracing soon its radical approach in study and creation of art and developing his own musical thinking. In 1962 he attended the George Maciunas’s International Festspiele Neuster Musik in Wiesbaden, where he probably experienced an epiphany that caused a significative shift in his artistic practice and musical composition.

Musik Essayistik is the combined reissue of twin releases Fluxyl (1983) and Fluxid(1984) – two of the most obscure and enigmatic records in Christiansen's discography – previously issued separately by Borgen Records in Denmark. Four minimal pieces exploring the clash between instrumental composition-improvisation and pre-recorded real sounds.

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Claudio Rocchetti - Memoria Istruttiva (Tannen Records)

Indagare il naufragio, più come elemento cultural-esistenziale che come mera evenienza, sembra essere stato alla base del lavoro che ha portato Claudio Rocchetti a pensare e produrre questo Memoria Istruttiva. Un disco che mette in chiaro questa specie di concept sin dal titolo, ispirato alle vicende di Vitaliano Donati (medico e viaggiatore italiano del XVIII secolo morto naufrago nel Mar delle Indie), e dall’immagine di copertina (rielaborazione di Alice Winkler di un ritratto opera di Friedrich, omaggiato dalla dedica del disco insieme a Alexander von Humboldt, altro “esploratore” di notevole fascino). Oltre a questi palesi indizi, Memoria Istruttiva (titolo tratto di peso da uno dei molti “manuali per far viaggi” d’Età Moderna) segue, poi, uno sviluppo interno, una sorta di schema che tende a ricreare alcuni dei percorsi mentali che porta(va)no all’abbandono del luogo natio per avventurarsi in territori più o meno sconosciuti ma pur sempre “altri” rispetto alle rispettive quotidianità, affrontando pericoli e alterità diffusa con occhio curioso e, parafrasando le parole di Goethe, con “quel germe latente di follia” che accompagna ogni partenza.

Ciò che Rocchetti mette in essere è dunque un album umorale, tra alti e bassi atmosferici e saliscendi emotivi che rendono appieno l’idea di spaesamento, difficoltà, pericolo ed emotività alterata che permeava l’esperienza viatoria in Età Moderna. Non è un caso, dunque, che a inaugurare l’album in Our Dying Silent Minds sia il suono di un contrabbasso che si fa quasi sirena portuale, a significare lo sgancio dalla terraferma e l’inizio di una avventura che si snoda lungo un percorso che è distacco da sé, dal quotidiano, e incontro/scontro con l’ignoto e l’alterità minacciosa e ostile. Il procedere a flutti dei droni di The Room, i field recordings di voci che appaiono “fantasmatiche” qua e là come presenze/assenze ectoplasmiche e persistenti in un non-tempo eterno, le reiterazioni sfrigolanti sub specie ambient di Arctic Shipwreck e il loro preludere alla catastrofe, non sono che momenti di un fluire unico che ci dà la misura dell’eccellente lavoro di ricerca, non solo strettamente musicale, messo in atto da Rocchetti. Giunto, se non si fosse capito, a uno dei picchi della propria produzione.

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Blow Up Magazine Radio

Da Giugno 2007 a Dicembre 2008 lo staff di Blow Up dette vita alla Radiozine, un progetto pensato per far ascoltare a chiunque ci seguiva la musica di cui parlavamo (e parliamo) sul giornale. In pratica pensammo di realizzare dei podcast, vere e proprie trasmissioni radio registrate in mp3 e poi caricate per il download su un’apposita pagina di questo sito. Nel corso dell’anno e mezzo di vita della Radiozine i podcast creati furono 236 per più di 200 ore complessive nelle quali facemmo ascoltare al pubblico una quantità enorme di musica con rubriche, monografie su scene e musicisti, novità del momento, memorabilia, speciali, rarità ed esclusive, in pratica una versione ‘reale’ di quanto promosso e trattato sul giornale. I podcast vennero scelti e trasmessi da:

Stefano I. Bianchi
Daniela Cascella
Diego Palazzo
Piergiorgio Pardo
Marina Pierri
Valerio Mattioli
Roberto Municchi
Federico Savini
Enrico Veronese
Christian Zingales

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Iron Maiden - The Book Of Souls 2015

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The Wire Magazine - Best of December 2015

The Wire is an independent, monthly music magazine covering a wide range of alternative, underground and non-mainstream musics. The Wire celebrates and interrogates the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical, marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, past and present, in the realms of avant rock, electronica, hiphop, new jazz, modern composition, traditional musics and beyond. Passionate, intelligent and provocative, The Wire wages war on the mundane and the mediocre. 

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Squadra Omega - " Altri Occhi Ci Guardano" Sound of Cobra

Other eyes look at us - the literal translation of „Altri Occhi Ci Guardano“, the new record by Squadra Omega - applies in many ways to its sound and aesthetic. The Italian collective takes on the form of a three-piece for the time being, resulting in a double album paving the road from inspiration to innovation.

Embarking on the trip that is this record means to enter a white room whose walls have a distinct grounding that evokes the ghosts of like-minded sonic adventurers. You can feel the influence of library music just as well as there are subtle nods to the greats of Italian film music - Morricone, Frizzi and so on. Nevertheless, the fresh white that rests on top of said grounding shines brighter - Squadra Omega prove yet again to have the lucky hand and right mindset to not let the music become a mere regurgitating of influences. The songs has the free spirit that needs to be deeply felt in order to move the listener, especially in these times where music is infinitely accessible. The trio defies any strict categorization by constantly shaking up their sound with a plethora of instruments and rhythms - nothing is purely tribute, everything is a necessity.

„Altri Occhi Ci Guardano“ is an exercise in shifting perspective. Motifs steadily blend in with close relatives, expanding the scope of the music to a sphere that is tangible for everyone open to genuine musical exploration in what you could call the afterglow of rock and roll.

Squadra Omega make a bold statement on what free thinking at the crossroads of rock’n’roll, jazz and psychedelia can sound and should feel like. Make sure to let the eyes take a look on you.

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released May 15, 2015

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Cosmic Dead - EasterFaust

Since 2010, The Cosmic Dead have been exploring the outer reaches of Krautrock, doom and psychedelia, tasting the extremes of sound and fusing them into a single, all-enveloping web of stratospheric riffing, otherworldly ambience and kosmische textures that has spread itself across countless shows throughout all Europe 
“For anyone who hasn’t yet stood before the Dead and their live homage to the cosmos, expect religious devotion to synthesised dreamworlds, subsonic grooves, guitaristic splendour and the vast, hypnotic sounds of Hawkwind and Popol Vuh eternally jamming in the Möbius strip of time and space” 

Remember that satanic drug thing you didn't understand? Forget about it! Here comes the new breed and it's a fierce and fiery force! A creeping barrage of sound that embodies the spirit of heavy psychedelic freak-outs from the Godz and Hawkind to early Monster Magnet („25... Tab“-era) and Acid Mother's Temple to set you afire. Want some? Tune in, turn on, get burned!

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Lee Gamble - Koch

Following up from the success of his emphatic PAN releases ‘Dutch Tvashar Plumes’ and ‘Diversions 1994-1996’ in 2012, we are excited to announce ‘KOCH’ (pronounced “cotch”), the new album from London’s Lee Gamble.

Sharing some stylistic affinity with his previous records, which excavated his deeply personal history with UK jungle and rave, and techno, this new work dives even deeper to reveal a singu- lar and intimate musical vantage point, shifting to approaching music as projection, state, hallucination, an other place. In ‘KOCH’, we experience an artist constructing a future after time spent deconstructing the past.

In the music we witness such dimensional abstraction, zooming between epic macro scenery and claustrophobically close detail, disorientation and absolute focus. Rhythms fuse together and phase apart, club tracks tunnel into an anxious wilderness, with themes and textures emerging as threads throughout the record, wormholing between each track.

There is a sense of the seen and the unseen, an honest tension between music as function (for this world) and as artistic exploration (for another world) as cracks in the surface appear to reveal the odd and alien minutiae within. ‘KOCH’ represents an intimate and revelatory new phase in Lee Gamble’s practice. Producing tracks that can live and grow on their own in a club or personal listening environment, the artist’s exploratory framework creates threads of consistency and tension between disparate spaces, locations, and mental states.

The LP is mastered and cut at D&M, with artwork by Bill Kouligas.

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Antoine Chessex - Multiple

"A cloud of quick gray motion, a presence in the forefront, then rapid withdrawal. A dazzling cloud, swirling, drawing together to the thinnest of waists, then wildly twisting in pulses of enlargement and diminution, a fluid choreography of funnels, ribbons, and hourglasses, spills and mixing, ever in motion and achieved through scale-free correlations". 

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Howard Stelzer & Giuseppe Ielasi - "Night Life"

Korm Plastics is proud to present the eigth release in the Brombron series. Originally a co-production between Staalplaat and Extrapool, it is now hosted by co-curator Frans de Waard. In the year 2000, Frans de Waard and Extrapool started the Brombron project. Two or more musicians become artists in residence in Extrapool, an arts initiative in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, with a fully equipped sound recording studio. These artists can work in a certain amount of time on a collaborative project; a project they always wished to do, but didn't have the time or the equipment to realize.

liner notes by Howard Stelzer:

"I was introduced to Giuseppe Ielasi over email in 1999 or 2000 (I don't remember presicely), by a guy who ran a music magazine in Italy called BlowUp. The guy was writing about CDs on my label, Intransitive, and suggested that I get in contact with his friend in Milan named Giuseppe, who was starting a label of his own called Fringes. Giuseppe and I exchanged some CDRs of our music, corresponded for awhile, and discovered that we had much in common.

"When Giuseppe came to the US to promote his "Right After" album with Domenico Sciajno, he and I got along immediately. We're about the same age, we have a similar temperament, we play a similar sort of music... we're both excited about records, we love to eat, we're kinda geeky... yeah, this is my kind of guy! Giuseppe and I had spoken about collaborating at a few points over the years, but somehow it just never happened, probably because we're so busy with our various projects and labels, and... well, you know how life is. Time has its way of passing faster than it ought to. So Frans de Waard offered me a Brombron residency for which I could select any person in the world that I wanted to make an album with, I thought of Giuseppe. We met up in Nijmegen with a week in which to work.

"The method we chose was to first proceed to the closest coffee shop for a breakfast of cheese and meat sandwiches (me) and cookies (Giuseppe). Afterwards, we'd record improvisations for a few hours until lunchtime. I primarily used cassette tapes and Giuseppe used a guitar, but we also both played synths and electronic doodads and microphones, and I made some tape recordings around the city that I fed back in to our improvisations. Our minds were open, and we experimented without deciding in advance what sort of album we might be making. We'd then take a long walk, go to the Nijmegen record shops (where Plurex records were still cheap!), have some lunch, maybe also a snack, and then start to edit out the good bits from the morning. We'd also add some effects and change some parts, use the recordings as source material in a small way. Then we'd return to the record shops to buy the records we hesitated on in the afternoon, have some dinner and relax. The next day, we'd wake up, have coffee, and do it again. Our pace of working and comfort matched quite well. For the final few days of the residency, we started to piece together our bits until they worked as compositions. Then we edited some more until the album emerged.

"About the title.... as part of the requirements of our residency, we had to give a public concert at Extrapool. There was an art opening happening at the same time, so the gallery was packed with people. After we played, Extrapool took on a party vibe. It was a lot of fun, but it also made us both feel a bit strange; we're somewhat awkward in social situations, and didn't know anyone at the Extrapool party except for Frans and Roel Meelkop, who drove out from Rotterdam for the occasion. After our set, we left the venue to go get more fried Dutch snacks. We chatted about how we used to go out to parties more often when we were younger, but now we aren't even so old and we generally enjoy staying at home where it's quiet, listening to records and reading. Giuseppe was reminded on the song by Arthur Russell, "Losing My Taste for the Nightlife". Maybe we are. Or, maybe that's just how we felt on that evening. It doesn't matter, really, I suppose." - HS, 12/2005

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released 01 December 2005
GI - guitar and electronics
HS - cassette tapes and electronics

composed and recorded January 2005 at Geluidwerkplaats, Extrapool, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Thank you: Frans de Waard, Joyce Guley, Roel Meelkop, and everyone at Extrapool.

Originally published as a limited edition CD by Korm Plastics, as part of the Brombron series. Brombron is a joint project by Extrapool and Korm Plastics and receives financial support from the FPPM and Modriaan Stichting. Packaging concept and print at Kunst, Nijmegen.

Arthur Doyle - Live In NYC

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Trapist - "The Golden Years"

'If Morton Feldman, John Cage and David Tudor had formed a rock band, they might have sounded a bit like this.' (Peter Marsh/BBC)

Restraint is a key word in the Trapist musical vocabulary which is no wonder as the group's name relates to the Trappist fraternity whose devotion is demonstrated by their silence. Whereas on previous albums the group often relied on drastical editing and melodic ornamentation in order to escape restraint, 'The Golden Years' displays a newly gained maturity which is breathtaking: Trapist bring the attack and release game to a climax never heard before. Sharp shocks of black and white with some golden silence in between.

Drawing from both a wide variety of influences ranging from space rock to improvised minimal music, and from folk-influenced psychedelia to noise as well as the members' numerous collaborations the band has managed to establish an unique ensemble sound defying categorization, blending both acoustic and electronic instruments as well as blurring the gaps between improvisational music and prestructured forms. Their blend of sparse improvisation and delicate electronics is a welcome and refreshing change for fans of electronic and free music of all types.

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AARON DILLOWAY / JASON LESCALLEET 'Grapes And Snakes'

Aaron Dilloway: synth and tapes recorded at Tarker Mills, Oberlin OH
Jason Lescalleet: synth, tapes, and Dell XPS recorded and mixed at Glistening Labs, Berwick ME 

‘Grapes and Snakes’ is the first collaborative work of two of the most respected American underground experimental/noise artists, Aaron Dilloway and Jason Lescalleet. Using purely analog synths and tape manipulation, they build a foggy psychoacoustic mass that lies between dynamic yet patiently treated tape-music and industrial howl. 

Jason Lescalleet's sound world occupies a space between noise, contemporary composition, and minimal electronics. Using decidedly primitive tactics and equipment (e.g. antiquated reel-to-reel recorders, damaged tape, etc.), his work focuses on extreme frequencies and microscopic audio detail. He's been a member of Due Process, performed and recorded with Keith Rowe, Joe Colley, Jason Kahn, John Hudak, Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley (both separately and as Nmperign), and most recently Graham Lambkin in their Breadwinner project which has yielded unprecedented and glorious results in the electroacoustic music of today. He lives and works in the state of Maine. 

Phenomenal live performer and recording artist, Aaron Dilloway utilizes magnetic tape, synths, contact mic growls, and various other electronics and evocative sounds to create experimental noise and electronic sets that tend to start with a slow burn and build to mindmelting climaxes of intense energy and catharsis. A very physical and versatile performer who has shared the stage and collaborated with a who's who in noise and experimental electronic sound, audiences tend to walk away from Aaron's sets completely dumbfounded. He is a former member of the band Wolf Eyes, and currently also works with his solo modular synth project Spine Scavenger and an ever-changing cast of sound artists under the name The Nevari Butchers. 

The LP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g vinyl and it is packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silkscreened pvc sleeve. 

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