Street date: 2008-12-12

Street date: 2008-05-05

5 trks, 46 mins. Originally released on Sub Rosa 9 years ago but now hideously out of print, kranky have reissued perhaps SOTL's most cohesive & accessible work of wonderment to date

Street date: 2008-04-21

7 tracks 39 minutes. The follow up full-length to their 2007 EP. This creation is an eclectic and extremely rewarding listen that owes a debt to the 70's German underground.

Street date: 2008-04-07

6 tracks 50 minutes. A collection of works that continue Bissonnette's explorations into orchestral and spacial acoustics.

Street date: 2008-02-11

14 tracks 50 minutes. Debut solo album from Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox. Mixing garage rock and ambient electronics resulting in 14 tracks of melancholy and mania.

Street date: 2007-10-22

9 tracks 69 minutes. A return to the spontaneous composition of previous releases, favouring lush and layered vocals and abrasive guitar sounds from these true originators.

Street date: 2007-10-08

10 tracks 56 minutes. A debut full-length centred around a love story, minimal post-rock electronics that focus on a repetitious melody floating over warm ambient currents.

Street date: 2007-09-24

9 tracks 71 minutes. Leave behind the bounds of gravity for a free floating meditational headtrip of inner space exploration.

Street date: 2007-09-24

9 tracks 71 minutes. Leave behind the bounds of gravity for a free floating meditational headtrip of inner space exploration.

Street date: 2007-09-10

Silver Tongued Sisyphus is a secular call to prayer with humming, looping and loping ambient passages interspersed with bursting rhythmic energy and agitated guitar lines. Recent live shows have sounded like an unauthorized soundtrack to netherworld versions of The Swimmer or The Scorceror. Pulling influences from the foggy ether of generations past, Cloudland Canyon has staked their claim to the shadows of cult musical culture of the late 1960's and early 1970's German underground scene. “In Greek mythology, “Sisyphus” was a king punished in the underworld by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill throughout eternity”. - Wikipedia

Street date: 2007-05-07

Cue is not an attempt to re-create, re-imagine or re-contextualize library music of past eras. It is not a post-modern exercise in citation, juxtaposition or collage. Cue sounds very little like its predecessors, and Pekler's method of production; starting from short expository phrases setting forth a track's instrumentation, mood and development (reproduced on the back cover) and attempting to construct the pieces to fit this very specific criteria. It's a fertile middle ground between the micro-managed jazz miniatures of his 2004 breakthrough record Nocturnes, False Dawns & Breakdowns and the expansive improvisations of 2005's Strings & Feedback. Piano and analog synthesizer sounds abound while percussion (when used) is typically reduced to a minimum of tom toms, bells and unidentified noises. Feedback can be heard in almost every track but taking on more subtle textural roles, guitars get the occasional spotlight and men are wearing pastels again this spring.

Street date: 2007-05-07

9 tracks 57 minutes. Incorporating compositions that have taken years to develop this is Strategy's most complex, ambitious and overtly "pop" record to date.

Street date: 2007-04-23

The second long player from Lichens, like his first, the largely improvised The Psychic Nature of Being, is an ascent to a higher plane. Rob Lowe's sound recordings are of a distinctly personal nature, works turned inward as much as they are projected outward. This new album was conceived with the idea of it being a continuation of the first, while using slightly different techniques in recording and editing; from multitracking individual passes, and pulling single tracks in and out of the mix ("Vevor Of Agassou" and "Faeries"), to opening up into a completely different process by overdubbing multiple tracks ("M st r ng W tchcr ft L v ng n Sp r t"). All this while remaining firmly within the realm of improvisation, augmented with the use of skeletal frameworks. The accompanying DVD contains a single live 28 minute performance from Chicago's Empty Bottle that was recorded in 2006.

Street date: 2007-04-09

18 tracks 122 minutes. The Band have created a musical EFX universe in which they are the sole inhabitants. Full of half awake dreams and moving soundscapes beyond mere drone.

Street date: 2007-04-09

Blood is Clean is the debut release by Honey Owens under the name Valet. Honey wanted to make music that was not neccessarily of her, but rather - “to be a medium channeling sounds from an unknown place, opening up and spilling out onto the computer tape.” The cryptic, mesmerizing sound pallete was inspired by “lucid dreams and physical artifacts that appeared to me daily that hinted at a sound-world of Haitian Voodoo drumming, various shamanic dreamtime musics, the Velvet Underground, and the ‘Fourth-World’ concepts of Jon Hassell”. We will just say that these are some of the most inspiring alienpsychedelic- blues-jams from the outer edge of the galaxy that we have heard in ages. And check out the absolutely fried guitar work on the title cut. Honey Owens has been an important figure in the Portland experimental music scene for more than 10 years, collaborating with an array of both oscure and well-known music projects including: World, Nudge, Dark Yoga and Jackie-O Motherfucker. Honey Owens lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Street date: 2007-04-09

Fluorescent Grey is an EP of four new songs by Deerhunter recorded while mixing Cryptograms. Could this be a snapshot of what direction the band might explore next? Probably not. This recording arrives on the heels of a well received sophomore LP, Cryptograms. While exploring themes not especially dissimilar, the EP functions in many ways as an epilogue to both the LP and the accompanying well-reported anxiety surrounding its creation. The band now has a clean slate to explore something entirely new in the future. The CD also includes a bonus video for “Strange Lights” from Cryptograms, directed by James Sumner.

Street date: 2007-04-09

This double album from Deerhunter pairs the critically acclaimed Cryptograms album with the all new Fluorescent Grey EP. Cryptograms is the second full-length offering from Deerhunter, and their first for Kranky. Deerhunter began in 2001 with the ambition of fusing the lulling hypnotic states induced by ambient and minimalist music with the klang and propulsion of garage rock. The band had weathered chaotic lineup changes, the death of a member, and much discouragement. Their live performances almost always leave audiences polarized, and have been referred to by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's in NME as bordering on “a religious experience”. Fluorescent Grey was recorded while mixing the material for Cryptograms, four new songs that explore themes not especially dissimilar to the full-length but it functions in many ways as an epilogue to both the full-length, and the accompanying well-reported anxiety surrounding its creation.

Street date: 2007-03-26

Painstakingly recorded, processed and assembled over the last five years, SOTL once again deliver a massive work filling two compact discs and three vinyl albums, clocking in at over two hours. While most albums of this length would be considered tedious at best, SOTL are arguably the only contemporary composers who can seemingly alter the time-space continuum simply through the playback of their organized sound. In this album, SOTL picks up where The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid left off with an emphasis on melodic development, moving their epic soundscapes beyond mere drone and subsequently frustrating all the typical ambient cliches associated with their music. Perhaps the best references for this current work would be found in the score to the film Le Mepris by Georges Delerue, the orchestral works of Zbigniew Preisner, or the 1958 CSO/Fritz Reiner recording of Hovhaness’ Mysterious Mountain, specifically the third movement. But in the final analysis, such comparisons are superfluous at best, as Stars of the Lid have created a musical universe in which they are the sole inhabitant. Simply put, this album is a masterpiece. "I simply feel that they are making the most important music of the 21st century." Ivo Watts-Russell - 4AD label founder

Street date: 2007-03-23

18 tracks 122 minutes. The Band have created a musical universe in which they are the sole inhabitants. Full of half awake dreams and moving soundscapes beyond mere drone.

Street date: 2007-01-15

Cryptograms is the second full-length offering from Deerhunter, and their first for Kranky. Deerhunter began in 2001 with the ambition of fusing the lulling hypnotic states induced by ambient and minimalist music with the klang and propulsion of garage rock. Cryptograms' first side begins with an introduction leading to the title track, and ends with the tape literally spinning off the end of the reel in the middle of a drone layered with bells and accordion ("Red Ink"). The second half of the record, also recorded in one day, represents the band in an entirely different state, focusing on a more psyche-pop angle. "...a massive, psych-heavy, art-damaged five-piece, and one of the most inspired new bands we've heard in quite a while.

Street date: 2006-10-23

Mathew Sweet (Boduf Songs) is an alchemist, having developed the powers to mysteriously transform a minimal palette of common musical elements into something extraordinary. His understated vocals are delivered not as declamation, but rather a muted invitation to listen to his tales of the failing human condition; a terrain of fallow fields, poisoned wells and doomed existence. Lion Devours The Sun is Sweet's first full length solo release and was recorded at home with a 4 track and a single microphone, using acoustic guitar and voice along with well placed touches of a cymbal-playing monkey, some bricks, an e-bowed autoharp, a homemade gramophone, and daggers. The title derives from alchemical imagery, the sun representing consciousness and the lion symbolizing emotion.

Street date: 2006-10-23

Precis is the first album from Thomas Meluch under his Benoit Pioulard psuedonym. Following a series of limited, handmade cassette and CDR releases for friends and family over the last several years, and the well-received Enge EP (Moodgadget, 2005), Precis arose as a documentation of a coming to terms with impermanence, marked by analog residue and the imperfections of human influence. A multi-instrumentalist with an insatiable palette, Pioulard bases most of his songs on treated acoustic guitars and honeyed vocals, backed by carefully layered bells, bass, dulcimer, old tape samples, field recordings and myriad other sources. These sounds, though sculpted roughly into pop songs, have their own delicate patterns of ebb and flow, distortion and disappearance. From the sunny refrain of "Triggering Back" to the descent of nighttime chills on "Needle & Thread"

Street date: 2006-10-09

Harmony in Ultraviolet is Tim Hecker's sixth album. It is a continuation of his interest in spectral communications, noise, impressionist musics, thresholds of listening pleasure-pain, and the limits of digital composition. This album is a significant development of his song-craft, challenging the usefulness of descriptors such as ambient, drone, metal, noise and even electronic music. Harmony in Ultraviolet follows no overarching process, no underlying narrative. It is both a homage for the Italian partigiani and also not at all. It is songs about ghost writing and midnight whispers but then again it isn't. In many ways this album can be viewed as a work of total destruction, embracing indeterminacy as an aesthetic ideal.

Street date: 2006-09-25

The album was recorded, mixed and edited entirely by Christina Carter, one of the two core members of Charalambides, and uses one key and guitar tuning throughout. A record split into four sections of hushed guitars and stirred vocalisations, two personal songs, two universal truths. About Electrice Carter says: "continuing with subterranean song writing eliminating excess elements, at the same time expansive because the 'mixing' of the record doesn't mimic the sound of a 'live' band more cinematic or sculptural, feeling of being a human body... piano-like guitar... two personal songs, two universal songs idealization and memory... songs created instantly, not knowing what I was going to sing about until I sang, but I have a few ideas that I carry around with me for extended periods until they find a place, natural and artificial are two sides of the same coin... often, it is best to do the opposite of what you think you should do... inspired by 60's album art and band photos of floating heads, slight physical 'defects' and skeletal uncoordination, anachronistic futurisms, the idea of 'drone' (4 different songs from the same basic musical elements), dance choreography, and living with chronic pain..."

Street date: 2006-09-11

Mezzotint is a collection of digital, textured pieces assembled through the extensive manipulation, subtraction and compositing of found sounds, improvisations and environmental sources. A dedicated non-musician, Chris Herbert has a long-standing interest in intuitive composition and the elastic nature of sound as a resource, influenced by the collage ethic and the instantaneous capture of performance. Working with decidedly low-tech methods (Chris uses minidiscs, a battle-worn desktop PC and a badly-behaved delay pedal), many of the tracks came into being through guerrilla sessions during his day job. The result is a spontaneous embracing the mystery of faraway broadcasts and the internal experience: a clouded, busy music of vertical activity and blended, indistinct color.

Street date: 2006-07-10

Feels Like Home balances the more acoustic approach to Jessica Bailiff’s songwriting on her most recent (untitled) album with the blissed electricity found on her earlier material. Gossamer vocals hover over delicate melodies, accented by tasteful bits of percussion, piano filigrees, and sundry guitar sounds. Feels Like Home is the most refined example of Jessica Bailiff’s musical vision to date.

Street date: 2006-05-29

“Compositionally, many tracks on Plume are similar in approach to First Narrows; they started with a harmonic root from which sounds were processed into a loose structure over which the live players could improvise... ...I opted to choose the better improvised passes and merely mix them in and out rather than cut them up. I think this leaves a lot more natural space and balances the heavily structured and repetitive electronic elements with more organic performed layers. Jason Zumpano returned from the First Narrows ensemble and I also recruited long time friend Steve Wood and my partner Krista to play some ebow guitar as well as Josh Lindstrom to play some Xylophone and Vibraphone which I believe added a nice new element into the mix”. SCOTT MORGAN

Street date: 2006-05-15

The long awaited new album from the legendary Charalambides, now pared down to the original core duo of Christina Carter and Tom Carter. After having exorcized some demons through the release of their last album Joy Shapes, here they have recorded a more melodic song cycle, reminiscent of their earlier albums Union and Market Square. Of particular note is the inspiring guitar work Tom displays on the 18 minute instrumental Black Bed Blues. With A Vintage Burden, Charalambides have delivered their most cosmic and beautiful album to date.

Street date: 2006-05-01

Mark Nelson's third release as Pan American, The River Made No Sound is, aside from its artistic worth, a subtle and charismatic amalgamation of many current trends in electronic music production. In the span of the album's 54 minutes Nelson courses through the influences of microhouse, dub, ambient music and a bevy of glitchy techniques, while keeping them all in balance, to render a record that is best taken in one sitting to better experience the elegance of its arc.

Street date: 2006-04-17

For Through the Cardial Window Kowalsky used micing and recording techniques to pull out hidden textures and frequencies from sound sources as diverse as recordings of the Mills Ensemble (he filtered a piece he wrote for the group through the pickup of an acoustic guitar), bowed acoustic guitar and a broken floor heater. “Into the Marshes They Drove Me” contains source material from the band Isis. Kowalsky made a track, using tones, harmonics and feedback loops. The music he creates is situated betwixt and between textural ambience, psychedelia and pure noise.

Street date: 2006-04-03

Lightning Ghost is the second Bird Show album, following the debut release Green Inferno. It centers around Ben Vida’s home-fi sound experiments. Tracks are carved out of opiate chanting, disjunctive drum circles, synth meditation and prepared piano trance song. Vida’s sonic explorations are embedded into tighter song structures, with a greater role given to vocals in the mix. The ceremonial air has been retained and expanded with a strong percussive presence and repeated, mesmerizing musical figures. Vida recorded the album at home, but much of the material resulted from the hours spent on stage this past year.

Street date: 2006-03-20

A message from Mr. Whitman: ...the piece I often play in concert has gradually been getting much darker, more dynamic, and in general; monolithic. I’ve started to embrace traditional “loud guitar” concepts (via a collection of bizarre, home-made/boutique guitar pedals) along with the sine-tone throb and “slow aerosol dispersion” of the classic “Playthroughs” material. More recently, I’ve augmented the pure-guitar sound(s) with a collection of small, battery-powered sound-devices and several tapes of “automatic synthesizer compositions” (recorded this past summer on the same Serge Modular Protoype and Buchla Music Box 100 systems used on Multiples) and field recordings from all over god’s green earth. Finally, on top of all that I’ve re-kindled my love of Alvin Lucier-lineage process music by placing microphones and small speakers / fm receivers / speakers around the space, capturing the sounds as they occur at various points in the room, feeding them back through the central artery that is the max-msp-based playthroughs patch, then out again to any number of locations... The recordings are released in a cardboard pack adorned with high-contrast photos taken by yours truly during the Lisbon trip, priced as a CD EP...

Street date: 2006-02-20

Minima Moralia is a product of the careful placement of sound afforded by computer programming combined with the timbres of live performance. Chihei Hatakeyama concentrated on the textures of sound in creating Minima Moralia, consciously avoiding the use of electronic sounds; instead using processed and reprocessed sound fragments made by guitars and vibraphone he played live. Minima Moralia presents the listener with tones that are familiar and tones that are foreign. Specific points of sound appear and velvet clouds elevate and disperse over the course of the album. Jumbles of melodies reveal and then resolve themselves.

Street date: 2005-11-14

The Dream House is the first album of new material from Windy & Carl in five years. Recorded at their home studio in Dearborn, MI it consists of two tracks. The Dream House is in many ways the duo's simplest and most straight-forward release, concentrated as it is on two evolving pieces. It is also Windy & Carl's most ambitious recording, with the duo deliberating on longer forms. Windy & Carl are capable of sustaining melodic ideas and patiently apply attention to singular musical gestures. Windy Weber describes the album as being about "death and dreams and beliefs and leaving and moving on." The second disc, Dedications to Flea, are gentle tributes to a departed canine friend.

Street date: 2005-10-31

As one half of Stars of the Lid, Brian McBride has contributed to the essential drift music of our time. When the Detail Lost its Freedom was recorded mainly on a keyboard sampler. The instruments recorded were guitar, piano, vocals, harmonica, trumpet and strings. As McBride describes the recording process: "In retrospect, it probably has to do with some of my weaker moments. Which is all fancy code for: it was therapy during a divorce and a move to a city which thrives on sucking the life of out people’s souls."

Street date: 2005-10-17

Former Jessamine bassist and vocalist and recent SUNN O))) contributor, Dawn Smithson has returned after a six year hiatus with her new full length album, Safer Here. Incorporating experimental aspects of Jessamine’s sound with acoustic elements and introspective songwriting, Safer Here balances melody with experimentation to create rhythmic, non−ornate songs, constructing an album where every musical gesture carries weight. As a solo recording artist Smithson’s voice comes to the foreground, carefully matched by considered instrumentation. The album was recorded alone with acoustic and electric guitar, bass, accordion and her voice, then later accompanied by collaborators Jussi Brightmore (100 Pets, I’m Being Good, Baron Samedi), David Farrell (Southerning, Dormant), Rex Ritter (Fontanelle, Jessamine, SUNN O)))) and Brian Foote (Nudge, Fontanelle).

Street date: 2005-10-03

Periphery is a collection of piano and orchestral based material, using seconds of samples to produce extended textural edits, often removing any traces of the original source, yet retaining the fundamental nature of each modeled phase. Audio patches are constructed with sets of randomized variables. Most tracks are mixed and recorded live, resulting in organic, sinuous compositions. Interstitial moments, trails of reverb and tonal passages are all manipulated to become the groundwork for compositions. These extended phases create a fragile balance of tension and atmospheric placidity. The results are introspective compositions; layered with delicate minutae, extended and immersive.

Street date: 2005-10-03

Lichens is the name Robert Lowe has chosen for solo performance and recording. Using his voice, guitars and an array of devices and effects The Psychic Nature of Being was recorded at home, at Soma Studios and Camp Gay with Shelly Steffens and mastered by Griffin Rodriguez in Chicago. Each track was recorded as a one time improvisation without any overdubbing or editing. The extended tracks on The Psychic Nature of Being move from grainy shrouds of overlapping voices to shivery finger picked guitar and on into clanging percussion. It can be lyrical and mind bending, an apt reflection of Lowe's mesmerising performances.

Street date: 2005-09-19

When was the last time you heard someone singing softly with an acoustic guitar about blotting out the sun with a stream of opaque bile? Deceptively low key, Boduf Songs skirts between singer-songwriter, psychedelic, home recorder and folk modes. With a touch of computer intervention for good measure.

Street date: 2005-05-16

Multiples was recorded at the Harvard University studios, where a stash of vintage synthesisers and electronics was made available to Whitman during his time as a lecturer there. The eight tracks on Multiples flow through hi-hat shimmer to skull-scraping electronic tones to interlocking clusters of repetition. This is Whitman's most inclusive and developed album yet. Whilst the limited edition Antithesis and Schoner FluBengel LPs released in 2004 showed the range of Whitman's interests, Multiples integrates them into a complete work.

Street date: 2005-05-02

Nudge features Honey Owens, Brian Foote and Paul Dickow and is based in Portland, OR. Cached is Nudge's third major work, and is markedly their richest and most explorative effort yet. Rhythms flirt with dub reggae or high life patterns while the accretion of electronic textures goes on above and below the melodies and beats. Cached is an album that harnesses the nervous twitches of IDM to song structure and melody while it diversifies the rhythmic base of rock songs.

Street date: 2005-04-04

Our Bed is Green was the debut elease from Charalambides. Formed in 1991 by Tom Carter (who was playing in the heavy psych combo The Mike Gunn at the time) and Christina Carter to take part in improvisational sessions at a local Houston club, the band was asked to play live on KRTU. Instead, they recorded this. Our Bed is Green is more than a historical document, the continuing relevance of the music is self-explanatory.

Street date: 2005-02-07

Though best known for his work in Town & Country, who have been experimenting in acoustic resonance, minimalist composition and world musics for the past seven years, Ben Vida has been a prominent player in the Chicago music scene, placing himself at the nexus between improvised and acoustic minimalist musics. He has played and recorded with Central Falls, Terminal 4, Pillow and Everyoned. Green Inferno is Vida's second solo recording, a long-in-coming successor to Mpls., which was released on Brent Gutzeit's Boxmedia label in 1999. Boxmedia described Mpls. as "a record of delicate acoustic guitar compositions, soft melodic songs with hidden teeth." Green Inferno is a different beast, showing its teeth with dense percussive tracks and droning narcotic folk reveries. Ben Vida describes it as an attempt to fuse all of his favourite aspects of the groups he has been playing in.

Street date: 2004-11-01

Originally released by Sub Rosa in 1999 and then reissued by Kranky in the fall of 2002. A pivotal album in their career, Avec Laudenum marked the first time the duo completely stepped away from the more abstract sound pieces of earlier albums and engaged with the more symphonic and compositional approach that has become the forte of their more recent recordings.

Street date: 2004-11-01

Somnia collects drone−oriented material Greg Davis has been working on over the last two to three years, with the final track "Mirages (version 2)" being a recording from spring 2004, using a schaaf punchcard music box and computer. Each track features a single instrument (bowed psaltery, acoustic guitar, harmonica, fender rhodes, magnus chord organ) played by Davis and then filtered through a computer. The tones that come out of the process bear little immediate resemblance to the instrument of origin, taking on protracted and reverberant forms of their own.

Street date: 2004-11-01

Performed by one woman in a room by herself, this music sounds both as old as the hills and utterly contemporary. The material on Living Contact is made up solely of Christina Carter on acoustic guitar and occasional vocals. It was recorded on boombox and four track tape from 1994−98, the period between Charalambides' Union and Houston albums, with most of the material recorded in 1995 and 1996. Wholly Other originally released Living Contact as a CDR in 2001 and the label's catalogue describes the music as: "The primitive and spectral underpinnings of Charalambides rendered with mysterious simplicity."

Street date: 2004-11-01

Created during live performance and processed and enhanced in the studio, the band's first release Jealousy and Diamond builds to higher volume levels than Be Mine Tonight, and turns on a more assertive rhythm section. All of the members of the group possess extensive credentials in improvisational, electronic and rock music. Dean Roberts has moved from the abstract electronics of All Cracked Medias, back towards song structure, and an able balance between these two poles characterized his last album, Be Mine Tonight. Jealousy and Diamond represents a more confident statement of purpose by Roberts, as well as the combustion that takes place in a working band.

Street date: 2004-11-01

2 cds, 21 tracks. Its been years since there's been a kranky sampler. Way back when compilations like Pillows and Prayers and Wanna Buy a Bridge? inspired us to check out tons of bands, hopefully kompilation can perform the same function for today's fans.

Street date: 2004-10-18

The eleven tracks on The Dead Texan are sonatas to Stars of the Lid's noctambulant fugues, or as Adam Wiltzie describes them, "mini symphonies". The distinctive piano and strings are reminiscent of Zbigniew Preisner's soundtrack work and the feel is suggestive of George Delerue's early sixties soundtracks, but the surreal smear of guitars is Wiltzie's unmistakeable contribution. Combined with the creation of the seven video segments on DVD that accompany Dead Texan Delight, the tracks appear and depart as brief chamber pieces.

Street date: 2004-10-04

The Soul Of The Rainbow and The Harmony Of Light was recorded by the band in Olympia, Washington, between 2003 and 2004. It was mixed with Rex Ritter (SunnO))), Jessamine, Fontanelle) at Magnetic Park in Portland, Oregon during March and April of 2004. The Soul Of The Rainbow and The Harmony Of Light takes Growing's expansive palette, blurring and disguising instrumental points of origin to a point where sheer sound defines itself with authority.

Street date: 2004-10-04

The ethereal coalescing with the foreboding. Glutinous dark droning ambience with sharp edges and gooey innards. A stupendous record, limited to 1000 vinyl only. The six tracks veer from processed, textured drone to computer-guitar-piano trio. The vcs3 synthesizer that runs through the two "Lixus" tracks was recorded at Soma in Chicago in 2001 with the aid of Casey Rice and John McEntire (Tortoise). Packaged in a gothic styled album jacket that is perhaps more akin to a Southern Lord release, complete with a suitably intricate script, Schoner Flussengel is a dip into a cold, Stygian stream that splashes and flows around the listener.

Street date: 2004-06-21

First Narrows is the third loscil album and the first one on which Scott Morgan has used real instruments and input from other musicians. Using sound sources ranging from sampled instruments to miscellaneous lo-fi mini−cassette recordings, Morgan generated music on computer by custom programming, sequencing and processing designed so that no two performances of the patches would be exactly the same. In turn, Jason Zumpani on Fender Rhodes piano, Tim Loewen on guitar and Nyla Rany on cello improvised over those elecronic sequences. Finally, Morgan edited and mixed the live and premixed sections together creating a unique sound.

Street date: 2004-06-07

Combining the computer-centric approach of 'The River Made No Sound' with the organic instrumentation that characterised Mark Nelson's work in Labradford, the material on Nelson's fourth Pan American album, Quiet City, sees a logical progression. Three of the eight tracks on Quiet City were recorded with upright bass player Charles Kim (Sinister Luck Ensemble, Boxhead Ensemble) and feature drums, trumpet and flugelhorn from other musicians drawn from Chicago's improv-alt-rock scene. Nelson also contributes his voice to the mix. Accompanying the CD version of Quiet City is an exclusive DVD produced and directed by Mark Nelson in collaboration with US visual-audio artist Annie Feldmeier.

Street date: 2004-06-07

Monument is a recording of guitar music from Tom Carter of Charalambides. The first track, Monument 1 (Memorial), is slightly longer than two minutes, barely revealing itself before retreating again. The second Monument 2 is 47 minutes in length, expansive and considerably louder, it wades stridently through the silence. In a weird way this is much more like sculpture than music; Monument 1 (Memorial) a small transparent globe filled with nearly microscopic details. Memorial 2, made of spun copper foil, is just about two and a half miles long and just over a mile wide; it's filled with enough helium to keep it hovering, as the wind catches it and it's slowly propelled across a wide expanse of plains, catching the light of the setting sun pulsing and rippling across its thin skin, while inside a huge bell sings and refracts sound and light within itself.

Street date: 2004-05-10

50mins, 3 trks. A skillful blend of field recordings, improvised electronics and noise manipulation, from the Jim Plotkin, TV Pow + Everyoned contributor. If you have a short attention span and lack the patience to listen to music that progresses deliberately and in minute increments, don't listen to this recording. Drugmoney is three tracks of entrancing, slow forming drones. These are not cotton candy clouds of bliss-out fodder. No, these are battleship chains, slowly dragged along rusty steel plates and then dropped onto the ocean floor, passing by plumes of chemical dust.

Street date: 2004-05-10

Charalambides new album is certainly not for the faint of heart. Five songs stretch and crawl over 75 minutes, with Christine Carter finding a new fearlessness in her voice that is sure to draw comparisons to Patty Watersor the early work of Meredith Monk. Joy Shapes is the first studio album recorded by Charalambides in a long time. The main tracks were recorded in June 2003, with subsequent overdubs, mixing and mastering done throughout the Summer and early Autumn of 2003, including one night of vocal recording done in what Tom Carter calls a "lost evening". The Wire writes "here is a truly 21st century experimental ethnic music that explores quietness and stasis... in the same way as musicians in the second half of the 20th century discovered amplification, noise and speed."

Street date: 2004-04-26

Drumsolo's Delight weds the subtle rhythmic promise of the early work anthologized on Strut with a discreet ambience. The album flirts with the tensions of hyper-modern digital vastness on one hand and the gritty immediacy of live dub mixing on the other. Drumsolo's Delight moves towards the points of overlap between rhythm and cloudiness - reaching towards the grey area where sounds share active and passive characteristics. Drumsolo's Delight is Strategy's most thematic work to date and aside from the technical syntheses achieved in the studio, the album is an accurate snapshot of several years of work creating music concerned with geography, place, people, memory and weather.

Street date: 2004-04-26

The first vinyl-only release on kranky, Antithesis is the second album Whitman has released under his own name. The first, Playthroughs, gathered good press for its computerized processing of improvised guitar. Antithesis broadens the instrumental and compositional base with Fender Rhodes piano, viola, guitar and percussion. The four tracks on the album verge from straight-up drone to what sound like lost krautrock classics.

Street date: 2003-11-17

Unknown Spin is the first in a series of reissues of Charalambides material on Chicago's kranky label. Originally issued by the band's Wholly Other imprint in a CD-R pressing of 300 [with a track by Scorces], Unknown Spin is now available to a wider audience at a reasonable price and will remain in print. Unknown Spin was recorded live to tape by Christina Carter, Tom Carter and Heather Leigh Murray in May 2002 and released prior to the newly expanded trio's first East Coast/Midwest tour. As such, this album is a great introduction to Charalambides' new modus operandi; these four ambient drone tracks are as haunting, barren and engaging as a Texan full moon, featuring layers of improvised minimalism that come from guitar, pedal steel guitar and the lingering wordless vocals of Christina Carter and Heather Leigh Murray.

Street date: 2003-11-17

Clear Horizon is the culmination of two years of tape trading across the Atlantic between Jesica Bailiff and David Pearce. Suffused with folky textures and bleached white noise (often simultaneously), the album compiles the band's formative recordings. Both Bailiff and Pearce contribute vocals and guitar, with piano, various effects and occasional percussive elements entering the mix as well. Although the resulting nine songs do embody some of each member's trademark sounds, something strange, compelling and fresh seems to have developed in their fusion as Clear Horizon

Street date: 2003-11-17

4 trks, 35 mins. Hailing from New Zealand, but now residing in Vienna, Roberts has produced a record of unmatched craft and beauty. Acoustic electronics and post-rock improvisation

Street date: 2003-08-25

Growing work with sound in ways that touch on drone and metal, but maintain a control of dynamics, melody and volume that is all their own. Using guitars, bass guitars, electronics and vocals Growing have forged a wide sound that the Portland Mercury describes as "extraordinarily loud power ambiance, like being slowly driven over by a street cleaner." The Sky's Run Into The Sea is their debut album and is aptly named; like the horizon line it delineates a place where elemental forces collide and overlap. With guitar sounds, bass and electronics Growing create rows of ascending and descending intervals of noise and silence which move rhythmically and reveal latent harmonies and dynamics. Growing recorded and mixed the album in their hometown of Olympia.

Street date: 2002-11-04

Nine tracks, fifty minutes.Second album from Vancouver based loscil. All tracks are named after submarines. Melody, texture and rhythm combine to make a mesmerising CD.

Street date: 2002-11-04

Seven tracks, forty-five minutes. Second full length. Instrumental improvisation and computer-aided arrangment.

Street date: 2002-11-04

Six tracks, thirty-five minutes. Debut release on Kranky. Brittle art-funk.. an airtight, energetic live band. Previous releases on GSL and many others.

Street date: 2002-10-21

Simultaneously clearer and murkier than her first two albums, 'Untitled' features a more acoustic focus and experimental sound placement. Made at her home in Toledo, Ohio with some help from Jesse Edwards (half of Northern Song Dynasty with Jessica Bailiff) and a former bandmate Noel Keesee, two songs feature the violin-uke (most notably the stark "Hour of the Traces"), there is a tin whistle on a few tracks, piano, a few computer effects, drums, smeary guitars and even sitar. Jessica Bailiff describes her new album as being about "...stagefright, dreams, loss of creative energy and desire, love and time, living in the same place all your life, ghosts, near−death experiences, etc."

Street date: 2002-10-21

Imagine the Mute catalogue circa 1985 chopped up, crunched and reassembled.

Street date: 2002-10-12

The source material for every piece on Playthroughs is guitar: acoustic, electric or otherwise. From September 2001 to April 2002, Keith Fullerton Whitman transformed those guitar pieces via laptop computer into the tracks on Playthroughs. Whitman has used ring modulators, granular shuffling algorithms, delays and spectral effects in a process that owes a lot to Terry Riley's Time Lag Accumulator and Steve Reich's Piano Phases. Technology and Whitman's careful selection of notes combine to create shimmering drones and deep waves of sound. Playthroughs is his first album under Keith Whitman's given name and differs considerably from the breakbeat concrete that is the Hrvatski stock in trade. Playthroughs reflects Whitman's interest in drone, academic and process music (IRCAM algorithms were used) and improvisation.

Street date: 2001-11-05

Nineteen tracks over two CDs and three LPs. 124 minutes in total. Most ambitious record to date, more overtly melodic. Six suites. Stars of the Lid are about Inner Space.

Street date: 2001-10-22

Ten tracks, sixty minutes. Loscil is Vancouver's Scott Morgan, who moonlights as the drummer in Destroyer. Fluctuating tones, texture, melodic sensibilities, rhythms. Rewarding!

Street date: 2001-05-21

Seven tracks. Fontanelle follow up last years self-titled album with this EP. Complex, Bubbling, funky rhythms. Melody and beats bob, weave and play off each other subtly.

Street date: 2000-12-31

Street date: 2000-10-23

Six tracks, 41.32 minutes. Features Adam Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid) and Bobby Donne (Labradford). Stretched out songscapes

Street date: 2000-10-09

Double CD on Kranky, Double Vinyl on Constellation. 87.02 minutes. After two years of tireless touring, this is their first full length since 1998. Four seamless pieces of music

Street date: 2000-06-05

6 trks, 43:50 After the demise of JESSAMINE in 1998, guitarist Rex Ritter & keyboardist Andy Brown formed Fontanelle. Bubbling guitar & synth loops, subtle melodic rhythms.

Street date: 1999-11-01

Lots of folks may talk about mixing instrumental improvisation and the transformative capacity of digital technology - Doldrums actually do it. They've dragged the swollen corpse of prog rock straight into the future, and brought along some mountain boogie too; courtesy of Matt Kellum's doubled up drum tracks. No clinical demonstrations of instrumental technique or digital editing will be found on Desk trickery, just a commitment to kick out.

Street date: 1999-10-04

7 tracks 50 minutes. Jessica's second album for Kranky aided] EFX by members of Low. An intriguing mix of conventional song writing and more abstract guitar-based soundscapes.

Street date: 1999-05-24

The result of a guitar track being passed back and forth between two musicians - being remixed each time. Gutzeit is a member of TV Pow, Plotkin did Old and lots of solo stuff.

Street date: 1999-05-24

The debut album from Labradford, as well as the premier Kranky release. At the very least, Labradford created a timeless work, one that still challenges the listener today. More to the point, they created a masterwork. Prazision LP not only announced the arrival of Labradford, a new force in organized sound, but also set the standard for kranky as the prime example of what would soon be the label's forte; releasing challenging work that will stand the test of time. The album has been given a proper mastering job for the first time, and the B side of their debut 7inch single has been added to the A side that appeared as an addendum on the original release.

Street date: 1999-05-24

Re-release of Labradford's critically acclaimed and long unavailable 2nd album from 1995. Their first as a trio with bassist Bobby Donne.

Street date: 1999-04-12

2 new pieces from the 9 member Montreal collective...a travelogue of sorts.. guitars, drummers and a string section coordinate with field recordings. 28 mins

Street date: 1999-04-12

True comprises soundscapes written by Montgomery for a play of the same name, as well as studio improvisations done with former Dissolve partner Chris Heaphy.

Street date: 1998-11-02

6 tracks. apprx 45 min. A unique collaboration b/tw SOTL John McCafferty (painter, best known for doing the REM lp cover for "Green"). Visual and sonic art working together.

Street date: 1998-11-02

5 tracks, approx. 45 minutes. Plotkin (OLD) can make a guitar sound unrecognizable while Spyvey (Zoviet France) use various instruments. Improvised then arranged.

Street date: 1998-11-02

approx 45 min. Ethereal as space rock can get. This might be the first Kranky release to cross over to the 4AD sector. Darkish, nocturnal, lush and mysterious.

Street date: 1998-10-05

10 songs, approx 45 min. Hailing from Ann Arbor michigan, this duo use guitars augmented with organs, synthesizers, percussion and audiometer to construct swirling sound shapes

Street date: 1998-09-07

7 Tracks, approx 40 min. Jessamine have distilled their experimental sounds into song craft creating a low flying groove oriented record.

Street date: 1998-09-07

14 tracks, 76 minutes for the price of a cd single! Godspeed You Black Emperor, Pan American, Low, Stars of the Lid, Jessamine, Bowery Electric, Amp and more.

Street date: 1998-06-08

Debut recordings produced in collaborations with Low members Bailiff easily holds her own with the Kranky posse- fragile vocals, echoed piano and guitar, percussion loops, songs!

Street date: 1998-06-08

See listing under CST records

Street date: 1998-04-13

7 tracks, 60+ min. Originally a four peice (Randall Nieman later formed Fuxa), this Detroit-area duo create some lovely blurred melodies and extended drones + dark layered guitar.

Street date: 1998-03-30

9 Tracks, 45 min. Mark Nelson, singer and guitarist for Labradford's (!) solo project. Traces of dub and bossa nova + warmth and fluidity. Minimalist techno + luscious ambience]

Street date: 1998-02-05

Street date: 1998-01-15

Street date: 1998-01-15

9trcks., 43min., dissolve, a New Zealand guitarduo consiting of Chris Heapy and Roy Montgomery, create unique bits of music that will absorb the listeners attention !

Street date: 1997-12-14

Street date: 1997-11-24

18 tracks 143 minutes. Double Cd!! Their first record got press anywhere from Guitar Player to NY Times as well as an invite to the Vienna Jazz festival. Recorded 9/94-10/96.

Street date: 1997-11-03

5 Tracks, 52 min. Cd reissue of ultra ltd vinyl version (Summer 96). One previously unreleased track. An aural sensory deprivation tank, soundwaves caress your body.

Street date: 1997-09-08

9 tracks of Gareth Mitchell's (Amp) solo recordings.

Street date: 1997-09-08

7 track 2nd full-length from Roy Montgomery and friends.

Street date: 1997-05-08

8 track CD, 10 track double vinyl; Second album from Bristol's Amp, reverberating rhythms carefully placed behind the curtains of sound.

Street date: 1997-03-16

8 tracks, 78 min., drawing close associations to labelmates Labradford Mc Bride & Co. due especially to the swirling guitarsound of "The Ballasted Orchestra" prove their worth

Street date: 1997-03-16

6 tracks, 73 min., Acupuncture, Doldrums first full length record proves all the more the trio's competence in playing unpredictable math-rock, out on Kranky

Street date: 1997-02-16

Labelmates with Labradford. Superb Lp packaging. Fans of Flying Saucer Attack and Third Eye foundation will love it!

Street date: 1997-02-16

9 tracks, 49 minutes. First album. More dark and vocalized than the rest of their labelmates. "Possibly the most frightening, strung out record ever made." Melody Maker

Street date: 1997-02-16

10 tracks, 74 minutes!!!! Second release by ambient guitar based mellow feedback kings. Fans of Labradford, Flying Saucer Attack must have this.

Street date: 1997-02-16

6 tracks, 40 minutes. EX-Dadamah. New Zealand quartet also includes ex-Terminals member Brian Crook. Eerie deap throated female vocals.

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6 songs, 36 min. Pulses and washes of sound extend and echo via 8 track tape across a delicate skeleton of song structure. High-impact emotion without the histrionics or noise.

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Recorded w/ Steve Albini. Vinyl is 3-sided w/ extra tracks from UK EP on the 4th side which DO NOT appear on the domestic CD.

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The sonic materials used on this recording were originally created from Gareth Mitchells's own sound samples - mainly derived from his electric guitar, which were then processed and reprocessed, edited and redited in his studio over the next nine months. Appparatus' finer, more detailed sounds are reminiscent of Bernhard Gunter while the use of incrementally sequenced beats brings to mind operators like PanSonic or Pole. Mitchell has crafted an album that will leave you puzzled but delighted, curious enough to lean in for a closer listen.

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