Ghosted

Finders Keepers presents this uber-rare soundtrack to a film that never existed, performed by an imaginery pop group. Incredible Polanski inspired German hip hop psychsploitation beats from 1968.

You couldn’t script it… You are nineteen minutes and twenty-two seconds in to your peak- season cruise around the Kraut-schlock peripheries. To say the trip has been an eventful one would be an understatement – you don’t know what to expect next and your 12” x 12” Germanic tour guide has proved quite unreliable thus far. As your diamond tipped vessel maneuvers through the grooves of your ninth horrific attraction (entitled The Soaked Body) the soundtrack awkwardly becomes background music and you are overcome with the sound of gushing water… ‘Help!’ you think sarcastically, the music, or is that muzak, is drowning!

This is the movie soundtrack to a film that never existed. This is the movie soundtrack by the band that was never requested. These were the sound library musicians who had to invent their own clients and imaginary cast, crew and plot to get their music heard, by a niche audience, before floating deep into the depths of the rare record reservoir gasping for breath.

To take a cinematic cue the record in question is the eurotrash pop equivalent of Jean Renoir’s tragic/triumphant Boudu character who as a homeless, confused and desolate down-and- out plunged to the depths to be unwillingly rescued, resuscitated then after gradually winning the hearts of an entire family becomes respected and revered as royalty. Over twenty years after the mad scientists, Dr. Horst and Ackermann, first breathed life into this short-lived beast, brave and intrepid vinyl explorers have sporadically returned to the doors of Dracula’s Music Cabinet to resurrect the sonic spooks and mutated melodies to share with nerds, mods, rockers, hip hoppers, psych nuts and Krautsiders alike. The lifeless corpses of The Vampires Of Dartmoore that lay six feet beneath the belly of the Eins Deutschmark bins has since crept through the record collections of the aforementioned social circles devouring continental currencies and demanding random ransoms of €250 plus, not to mention sweat, tears (of laughter) and a lot of blood.

www.finderskeepersrecords.com

Dracula's Music Cabinet

The Vampires Of Dartmoore - Tanz Der Vampire (Dance Of The Vampires)

The Hardy Tree – Common Ground
Frances Castle is the illustrator/owner behind the Clay Pipe record label and The Hardy Tree is her on- going musical project. Common Grounds was started at the beginning of the 2019 pandemic - when time moved very slowly and travel away from home became impossible. 
“Like many others with extra time on my hands I walked the streets of my neighbourhood for exercise and well-being. I rambled like I might in the country side; stopping every now and then to take in the view, or notice something I’d missed before. I took to looking up local streets in historical newspapers, and read reports of murders and deaths and robberies that had happened in the past.  I researched the names of the people who had lived in my house before me, viewed old census returns from the surrounding area, and noted the birth places and livelihoods of past residents. I began to see the ghosts of these people on my walks, and notice the things that they had left behind; shapes of ancient tram tracks creeping under the tarmac, an old gas street light in an alley way, a tiny metal sign indicating a culverted  river.   I spent my evenings writing and recording the music on this LP and then the following day would listen to the rough mixes as I walked, the music began to soundtrack the walks, and the walks began influencing the type of music I was creating.”
Frances Castle 2022

01 A Garden Square In The Snow

Circassian-Turkish Producer Sine Buyuka debuts new solo project Sinemis with lush, graceful album ‘Dua’, gently combining the ancestral Sufi music of her homeland with sophisticated techno-inflected ambient.

Gazel is the first single taken off the album. "Most of the Dua album is created with organic sources of audio and acoustic instruments, lots of creative audio editing and soft synths. However, Gazel is the only track that has a vintage analogue modular analogue synth at its core, a Roland System 100m. I started improvising without a plan and recorded bits and pieces for fun. A couple of months later, after my surgery when I was homebound, I felt like visiting those recordings and decided to use one as a basis of a new track. It was a recording done in a single take, later adorned with ney recordings, vocal chops, and ambient soundscapes. I wanted to see how I could integrate two instruments belonging to two different musical cultures to create something new and perhaps a bit mystical, marrying different musical traditions. The name Gazel, which refers to an age-old improvised singing form that is sometimes accompanied by the ney (or ud or tanbur) in Turkish music is also a nod to the production process – my voice being my synth."

‘Dua’ was also mixed and mastered in Dolby Atmos (available on Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon) to capture the immersive experience of Sufi music.

Please note this is the binaural version of the track. Listen on headphones for the experience.

Binaural and Dolby Atmos mixes by Tom Bailey (Air), mastering by Matt Colton (Metropolis).
Stereo mixes by Mark Dobson (Coda), mastering by Joshua Eustis.
Cover artwork by Özge Cöne.

Gazel

Sinemis - Gazel

Race With The Devil - Sound bite
James Asher- Heavy Train
Steve King- Satan Is Her Name
The Executioners- The Guillotine 
Bob Kamas - Misirlou 
Mia Farrow - Secret Ceremony 
La Nouvelle Frontière - Sans Ligende 
Nico-Sixty Forty 
Alexey Rybnikov- Flowers and Thunderstorm
Walter Schumann - Dream Little One Dream
Giovanni Fusco & Carlo Pes - La Guerre Est Finie
Peggy Lee- I Go To Sleep 
Kaplan- I Like
The Hard Times- Blew Mind
Shadows of Knight-Darkside 
Philippe D'Aram- Bizarre Cult 
Benjamin Lew et  Steven Brown -Bamako Ou Ailleurs
Ruth Hohmann & Erbe-Chor - Im Staub Der Sterne - Das Licht 
Dalhous - Acceptance Is Reality
Laurie Anderson - New York Social Life
Pascal Comelade- Goodbye Wyatt Hat 
Danielle Dax- Fortune Cheats
Ennio Morricone - Mio Caro Assassino 
The Mephisto Waltz - Is It Possible?
Unloved- 3am on Russell Avenue 

Elegy For Mrs. Clarkson

Another track from Köhn's new album 'Kreis Plön', out on KRAAK, on the 9th of June. Pre-order at kraak.bandcamp.com.

Almost 20 years ago Jürgen De Blonde debuted on KRAAK with the nowadays unfindable and almost visionary album köhn 1. It was the starting point for a vital and wondrous exploration that lead him over paths of glitch, idm, shoe gaze, hypnagogic pop, improvised music, straight forward synth music, field recordings and kraut. 

In the middle of this ungraspable adventure through contemporary electronic music, Köhn stands as a genuine artist that stayed true to the curious spirit of the DIY knob twiddling and boggling boy he once was. 

KRAAK is proud to present his 7th album on KRAAK — Kreis Plön, which documents and envisions 20 years of exploring. It’s an album that is about a fusion of the past and the future, of separation and reconfiguration, of mourning and rejoicing, of noise and peace. Kreis Plön is about geolocation. It’s about probable fiction and looking for bits of different puzzles that fit together. An exercise in linear and perpendicular coherence devoid of any objective logic. 

In the middle of the album an artist is envisioning his place in the Now, questioning how or when he got there, as he links memories to imaginary places, and real places to imaginary histories. Kreis Plön stands as such a masterpiece that bluntly envisions the future of electronic music.

Klinker

From the Neptunalia LP compilation (LAL-92 / IKU-054). Edition of 300. Release day hopefully July 23rd.

NEPTUNALIA, a festival of Neptune, celebrated at Rome, of which
very little is known. The day on which it was held, was probably the 23rd
of July. The festival was celebrated with games. Respecting the ceremonies
of this festival nothing is known, except that the people used to build
huts of branches and foliage, in which they probably feasted, drank, and
amused themselves.
From a "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities" by John Murray, London,
1875.

Side A:
David Edren - Whale Bubbler
H. Takahashi - Deep
Nuslux - Hippocampi
Olli Aarni - Eliksiiri A & B
Ilpo Numminen - Speleothem

Side B:
H. Takahashi - Coral
Non Local Society - Latiaxis Mawae
Kuupuu - Jään alle
Marja Ahti - Silent Floor
Miaux - Rip Current at Avalon Beach

Compiled by Roope Eronen
Cover Art by Leon Sadler
Mastered by Tommi Keränen
Laquer cut at Duplates and Mastering

Lal Lal Lal & Ikuisuus, 2018

Miaux - Rip Current at Avalon Beach

Released 23rd June

https://neotantra.bandcamp.com

https://neotantra.co.uk

Autumn Of Communion - Ayurveda

Two totally infectious sets from Decoy - the trio of John Edwards, Steve Noble and Alexander Hawkins - reunited with pocket trumpet and saxophone player Joe McPhee on the closing night of his four day residency at Cafe OTO.

In the eight years between the recordings which make up ‘AC/DC’ and their last release ‘Spontaneous Combustion’, Decoy and each of its members have been practicing individually at the very top of their form. Coming together again in such celebratory circumstances and in the good company of a fantastic crowd set the scene for a very special night. 

As they begin, Alexander Hawkins casts a needling surface between his Hammond organ and John Edwards’ loose splatters and slaps of low end bass. McPhee skitters over them with his pocket trumpet by way of introduction; Steve Noble strikes his rims in anticipation. The mood in the room is that of a rock band reformed, of a certain number of “boys” being “back in town”.

The first set sees moments of frenetic free jazz peel off into weirdo soul territory and when switched to saxophone halfway through, McPhee’s romantic lyricism is utterly beautiful. When a groove sets in, Hawkins’ B3 ascension in harmony with an ever powerful Edwards-Noble rhythm section sees the room thicken and swirl to the point of giddiness. There is one unreal part at 22:22 where we’re sure you can hear Edwards’ bass vocalising. 

Regrouped for a second set, Steve Noble’s metallic textures meld with detuned arco bass to create an unholy atmosphere, ripe for Hawkins to play out the eerier end of the Hammond. When McPhee sounds a sax motif the band catches it quickly and it’s soon wickedly morphed and stretched by each player, recurring to absurdity in a stoned out funk free for all. 

The whole recording bleeds enthusiasm and joyful imagination and is a brilliant document of an unforgettable evening. Decoy are a limitless band who play nowhere near enough. We cannot attest to them any more, Book them, buy this, go and see them if you can.  

---

John Edwards / bass

Alexander Hawkins / hammond b3

Joe McPhee / pocket trumpet, alto sax, voice

Steve Noble / drums

---

Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Friday 10th May, 2019. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Artwork and layout by Oliver Pitt. Printed in an edition of 1000. OTOROKU023CD.

ROKU023 - Decoy with Joe McPhee "AC/DC" [sample]

Pole (aka Stefan Betke) announces details of his new album on Mute and shares the first track, ‘Röschen‘.
The album "Fading" is set for release on Mute on 6 November 2020 and is available for your pre-order here: https://mute.ffm.to/Fading

Fading

Röschen

pole - Röschen (edit)

Pre-order now available from Imprec.com

Harry Bertoia's Glowing Sounds LP contains three versions of the same composition, each transferred at different tape speeds in accordance with the artist's instructions. This is the third LP to be released from Bertoia's extensive tape archive and it's the first, of many, to be released using instructions left behind by the artist himself.

Bertoia wrote the concept for this Glowing Sounds LP on a note in 1975 and slipped it into the master tape case where it sat unread for 45 years. The idea was simple, transfer the original recording at its original speed and two slower speeds. Bertoia noticed that the results, however, were profound. 

Recorded on January 20, 1975 using two large gongs, Glowing Sounds is one of the most powerfully minimal recordings yet discovered in Bertoia's collection. The artist's note left with the tape indicated that it was recorded at a speed of 15 IPS (inches per second) but slowing it down to speeds of 7.5 IPS and 3.25 IPS were quite effective for enhanced playback. Side A features the original 15 IPS recording and the 50% slower 7.5 IPS recording. Side B features a 20 minute, ultra-slow version at 3.25 IPS. 

Long, deep drones and powerful overtones define the sound of this recording. Comparison of the three speeds provides a revealing magnification of Bertoia's gongs, overtones and the artist's inventive approach to performance, composition and recording. 



Bio: 

Harry Bertoia first gained some artistic visibility in the early 1940s, then came into prominence with his sculptural, ergonomic chairs, produced by Knoll Furniture beginning in 1952, which quickly became classics of modernist furniture. Inspired by the resonant sounds emanating from metals as he worked them and encouraged by his brother Oreste, whose passion was music, Harry restored a fieldstone "Pennsylvania Dutch" barn as the home for this experiment in sounding sculptures which he had begun in the late 1950s. Bertoia was an obsessive composer and relentless experimenter, often working late into the night and accumulating hundreds of tapes of his best performances; Oreste, too, would explore and record the sculptures' sounds during his annual visits to his brother's home in rural Pennsylvania.

Harry Bertoia's recently dismantled Sonambient barn collection was an attentive listener's paradise full of warm, expressive instruments that were gorgeous visually and audibly. Nothing could prepare you, even on return visits, for the overwhelming experience of entering the spacious wood and plaster interior where gongs, some of them giant, hung among the ranks of standing sculptures of various metals. Over nearly twenty years of adding, culling and rearranging, Bertoia carefully selected nearly 100 harmonious pieces ranging in height from under a foot to more than fifteen feet. He considered this barn a full experience, sights and sounds comprising not a collection of works, but one piece unto itself. It was here, deep in the woods, that his Sonambient recording work took place.

Learning by experimentation was common for Bertoia and he mastered the art of tape recording, turning the Sonambient barn into a sound studio with four overhead microphones hanging from the rafters in a square formation. He would experiment with overdubbing by performing along to previous recordings, sometimes backwards, constantly improving his methods while also honing his performance skills. Bertoia was a careful editor of his own work and only chosen recordings remained, each with a date and carefully considered observations written on a note included with each tape. Through these pieces of paper a the artist's logic can be uncovered, a careful approach to composition, ideas, feelings and forms. The story of Sonambient barn collection will slowly be told through the release of recordings from the archive as well as installations and performances built from Bertoia's own recordings, lectures and a book.

Klinker

KRAAK_records

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