Blu-ray + CD Housed in hard box slipcase 32 page perfect bound booklet 4" x 6" postcard 11" x 17" poster Released by Terror Vision and Severin
No one has dared enter this house for nearly ten years since a young couple from the valley were brutally murdered by a madman with a sledgehammer. No one…until now. They would not be alone. There was something evil in the house. The kind of thing no one believes in, yet everyone fears. Something that moves only through the still of the darkest nights, creeps within the shadows of man’s deepest fears and strikes without warning. Something which does not want them in this house yet cannot allow them to leave. The night will be shrouded in their fear, stained with their blood.
The nightmare has begun! God help them!
Terror Vision in partnership with Severin Films, are thrilled to bring the pinnacle of SOV to Blu-ray for the first time in the world! Sledgehammer is sourced w/ a new transfer from a master tape to bring this bloodshed to you in the best way possible. Loaded with new and old extras - this marks the definitive release of this classic horror film. Thank you to our pals at Severin for making this nightmare come true.
This hard box, booklet, and CD is limited to 1500 and will not be repressed.
7xCD Hardcover Accordion Case Hard box slipcase 26 page perfect bound booklet 8.25" x 11.75" 10 page folded and stapled zine 12" Slipmat One sided white on black silkscreened T-shirt Restored and Mastered by Anders Peterson Designed by Steven Levers Published by Vinyl-On-Demand in Cooperation with the Bryn Jones Estate
Limited CD Box with t-shirt and slipmat. Vinyl-on-demand presents the definitive excavation of Bryn Jones' formative years with Complete Oblique 1980-1983, a comprehensive 7CD box set that collects every recording from the pre-Muslimgauze era. This extraordinary archaeological document captures one of experimental music's most prolific figures in the crucial period before his transformation into the underground legend we know today. Between 1980 and 1983, working under the moniker E.g Oblique Graph, Jones was assembling what would become one of experimental music's most singular vocabularies through minimal electronic pieces built from synths and tape manipulations. This collection gathers all three impossible-to-find cassettes originally released on "Kinematograph Tapes" (Extended Play, Piano Room, Inhalt) plus the rare 7" Triptych for Bourbonese Qualk's "Recloose Organization."
Complete Oblique reveals material that bears little resemblance to trademark Muslimgauze. Instead of the dub-heavy rhythms and Middle Eastern influences that would define his later work, these recordings present an artist enthusiastically experimenting with sounds and technology, creating music that is crude yet surprisingly varied and very much of its early '80s moment. The opening Fall Into Glass presents a bleepy reverbed melody with classical suggestions, while Merge develops into darker experimental territory with voices underscored by developing swirling tones. What's most startling is the appearance of icy melodies and loads of ghostly space in these recordings, placing them closer to the experimental strategies of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire than future Muslimgauze releases. Much of the material explores the same post-industrial landscape that Zoviet France, Nurse With Wound, Einstürzende Neubauten, and SPK were simultaneously mapping, while drawing from the systematic alienation techniques pioneered by Neu! and La Düsseldorf.
The collection encompasses everything from the eerie Choir-Screenwith its spooky haunted music from almost voice-sounds which sweep and swirl ethereally, to the monumental 21-minute Piano Room - a complex collage that anticipates the systematic tape manipulation techniques of Jones' future work. You can feel the influence of Chris Watson-period Cabaret Voltaire, the glacial repetitions of Cluster, and the ritual minimalism of Conrad Schnitzler. Most crucially, Complete Oblique documents the emergence of Jones' signature approach to political titling. Tracks like Islamic Koran In Camera Dome and Rapid White Flag In Snapshot Blur appear precisely as Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon occurs, marking the paradigm shift that would define his future work. This is where those vaguely poetic, evocative titles referencing political turmoil paired with hypnotic minimalist electronics first emerge - an aesthetic vocabulary that echoes Laibach's concrete interventions while anticipating the systematic approach that would later inspire artists like Vatican Shadow.
Despite being his earliest releases, these four recordings are also Jones' most challenging and uncompromising - quite an accomplishment in a discography nearly 400 albums deep. Complete Oblique functions as more than historical curiosity; it serves as a masterclass in how artistic identity crystallizes through apparent failure and successful accident in equal measure. - Soundohm
The Shadow Ring 1992-2002 Edited by Lawrence Kumpf, G. Lambkin, and L. Quigley
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8 1/2” x11 3/4” 472 pages Perfect Bound Softcover Full Color Offset Published by Blank Forms Editions ISBN: 978195691200
The Shadow Ring (1992–2002) presents a comprehensive overview of the work produced by British musicians Graham Lambkin, Darren Harris, and later Tim Goss over the course of a decade. Throughout their legendary ten-year run, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of teenagers in the port town Folkestone, were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. The group have left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7-inches, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic.
Collected for the first time; Blank Forms presents a nearly five-hundred-page book that includes a monographic biographical survey, more than one hundred color photos, a comprehensive discography with transcribed lyrics, and a selection of zine appearances, fliers, postcards, and other miscellanea. In aggregate, this significant collection not only plums the depths of the band and its attendant lore, but reveals a vivid minor history of mail-order networks, bedroom recording sessions, cross-USA couch-surfing, and encounters with fellow travelers such The Dead C, Harry Pussy, Charalambides, Richard Youngs and the No-Neck Blues Band. Where is the connecting thread between Ralf Wehowsky and Squirrel Nut Zippers?
The ebbs and flows of the band—their schoolboy beginnings, initial successes, first shows and tours, life milestones, and Lambkin's gradual development as a solo artist—are painstakingly detailed in a sizable band history-cum-Künstlerroman by Blank Forms artistic director Lawrence Kumpf, illustrated with candid photos, sketches, letters, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera. - Blank Forms
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12" Design by Grant Corum Mastered by Nicolás Carcavilla at Galapex Orpheus Studio Pressed at Outta Wax Includes download code Edition of 500
Description via Psychic Sounds:
Long awaited release of Aaron Dilloway’s foreboding ’ambient’ works with Psychic Sounds' initial selection entitled “Medicine Stunts’: Two sprawling sides of atmospheric practices & mysterious meditations fully mastered & pressed on wax for the first time, all which include the glacial ‘Stunt 1’ of sparse industrial factory mesmerization invoking shadowed moments reminicent of the beloved David Lynch & Alan Splet's Eraserhead soundtrack. Dilloway's tape chops glide into glass harmonic chamber echos calling on such spirited reverberations by way of crystallophone, Aeolian harp, or even frequencies recalling Coil's experimental investigations on the legendary Soviet-era ANS photoelectric synthesizer. In this instance, a distant alien cooing along the liminal glassy seam is introduced alongside slow pumping mechanical wield, and further minimal creature calls reminiscent of the stranger field recordings documented on Folkways 'Sounds of the Sea' or Amphibian related releases.
Flipside 'Stunts 2 & 3' brings the gurgling & juggling metallic slabber warbled in a box bleeding into slight fuzz unknown, all which gently wades into a pulsating pump of squells.... it all certainly stirs a flavor of your regional moldy spook house attraction soundtrack crackling through the busted sound system. If this isn't enough for the adventurous listener , a suspenseful end event on the horizon offers us an unsettling whistle in the Old West Morricone ghost town. A beautifully haunted hallway of reflected recourse through the reality of the unsettling American jokes & labyrinths of now.
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Aaron Dilloway - Bhoot Ghar: Sounds of the Kathmandu Horror House 12" (PSR37)
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12" Design by Grant Corum Double sided insert with liner notes Mastered by Nicolás Carcavilla at Galapex Orpheus Studio Pressed at Outta Wax Includes download code Edition of 500
Description via Soundohm:
"Bhoot Ghar: Sounds of the Kathmandu Horror House by Aaron Dilloway is a raw suite of field recordings captured inside a decaying Nepali fun‑park attraction. Blown speakers, mechanical screams, and ambient chaos fuse into a hallucinatory documentary of sound—half ethnography, half haunted collage.
In Bhoot Ghar: Sounds of the Kathmandu Horror House, Aaron Dilloway transforms a chance encounter with an amusement‑park ghost ride into an extraordinary document of sonic decay. Recorded on a mobile phone during multiple visits to the “Bhoot Ghar” (literally “Haunted House”) inside the Kathmandu Fun Park, the piece reconstructs a real environment almost too surreal to believe—blown PA speakers sputtering with horror samples, mechanical apparitions creaking into motion, and the brilliant dissonance of human laughter cutting through the din. The resulting album is less a composed work than a found situation rendered musical by the intensity of listening. The recordings unfold between entrance and exit: the path soundtrack, recorded from a distorted outdoor loudspeaker, crackles with the overdriven echoes of South Asian horror television themes; inside, motion sensors trigger brief bursts of noise, broken motors, and shrill screams. Each moment is both documentary and hallucination. Dilloway’s perspective—half participant, half observer—turns the frailty of consumer electronics and decaying mechanics into an accidental symphony. What might have been dismissed as amusement‑park kitsch becomes, through his ear, a portrait of entropy and improvisation.
Interspersed throughout are vignettes that expand the experience beyond the haunted house itself: the chaos of bumper cars that “go way too fast,” the rhythmic thrum of a ferris‑wheel belt moments before it breaks, and the cacophony of geese feeding outside while a soccer match blares in the distance. These sonic collisions situate Bhoot Ghar within a lived environment—no studio manipulation, no layering beyond the realities of the place. The blur between fieldwork and performance echoes Dilloway’s lifelong fascination with tape manipulation and acoustic grotesque: the moment everyday noise slips into abstraction. More than a novelty artifact, the album functions as a meditation on perspective itself—what happens when artists relinquish control and simply record the world as it is, trusting that chaos might compose itself. Dilloway has long pursued this boundary, from his early noise work with Wolf Eyes to his later solo cassettes and installations. In Bhoot Ghar, he distills that approach into pure location: sound not as creation but as capture, bearing the heat, static, and overstimulation of life itself."
Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue edited by L. Kumpf and C. Curtis
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6” x 8” 412 pages Perfect Bound Softcover Full Color Offset Published by Blank Forms ISBN: 9781953691224
The tenth and final anthology from Blank Forms explores the early electronic work of French composer Éliane Radigue, whose radical approach to feedback, analog synthesis, and composition on tape has long evaded historical and technical interpretation. Combining key texts, newly translated primary documents, interviews, and commissioned essays, this compendium interrogates the composer’s idiosyncratic compositional practice, which both embraces and confounds the iterative nature of magnetic tape, the subtleties of amplification, and the very experience of listening.
Among these entries is an in-depth overview by cellist Charles Curtis, a close collaborator of Radigue’s, examining the composer’s earliest experiments with feedback techniques and analog synthesis, her eventual shift to composing for unamplified instruments and live performers, and her unique aesthetic configurations of time and presence. A number of detailed conversations between the composer and researchers Georges Haessig, Patrick de Haas, Ian Nagoski, and Bernard Girard provide crucial insights into her working methods at different points throughout her career. Religious studies scholar Dagmar Schwerk reflects upon Radigue’s profound synthesizer work Trilogie de la Mort(1988–93) in the context of Tibetan Buddhist thought and its history, while texts by musicians Daniel Silliman and Madison Greenstone examine, in notably different ways, the technical characteristics of Radigue’s sound practice. Sketches for unrealized work, contemporary reviews, concert programs, and other ephemera mapping the performance history of Radigue’s early work are presented together for the first time. The anthology concludes with a roundtable discussion between Curtis, Greenstone, and Anthony Vine, untangling the knot of paradoxes at the center of Radigue’s artistic practice to trace the thread of her continued “ethos of resistance.” - Blank Forms
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Various Artists (Kimihide Kusafuka) - Early Kinky Works 1983 - 1988 2xCD (NF153)
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2xCD 3 Panel Fold-Out Remastered by Grant Richardson Design by John Wiese Reissued by New Forces
The ultimate statement from Japanese noise legend Kimihide Kusafuka. A "fake compilation" of tracks recorded under various aliases, originally issued by his Kinky Musik Institute label in 1993. Noise, power-electronics, techno, post-punk, psychedelia... Kusafuka does it all on this compilation. A work of unbounded creativity and a key document of the Japanese cassette underground.
"This is a fake compilation. All pieces in this product were composed and recorded during 1983 to 1988, under the name of 'Kinky Tape Collection,' the preexisting, underground mail art & music project. This is a fake compilation. If you think almost all of this product is of only one personality, you're RIGHT!!! So this is the greatest deception! Thanks. By K. Kusafuka."
Laetitia Sonami was born in France, where she studied with Eliane Radigue. She moved to the United States to study electronic music, first with Joel Chadabe at SUNY Albany, then at Mills College where she was mentored by Robert Ashley and David Behrman. Laetitia Sonami is not only a gifted composer/designer of electronic music, but a compelling presence on stage. This collection of early works covers a period when Sonami transitioned from live mixing with cassettes, homemade analog synths and objects in the early eighties, to working with MIDI, MAX software and "off the shelf" synths and samplers. At the same time, she begins a long collaboration with Melody Sumner Carnahan, using her dramatic texts to evoke characters and behaviors to inhabit musically and visually. All but two of the works on this release utilize Sumner Carnahan's stories, and all but one use Sonami's famous invention, the lady's glove, an arm-length tailored glove fitted with movement sensors allowing the perform to fluidly control digital sound parameters and processing, as well as motors, lights and video playback. Sonami has since moved on to works for another of her inventions, the Spring Spyre, which applies Machine Learning to real time audio synthesis.
14CD set housed in foldout rigid box Includes 78 page booklet w/ Full English Translation INA 6060/74 (2024 Repress)
'One COULD put 'everything' aside and grind through all that is offered in this more than generous box. BUT the duration of your listening session would be 16 hours and that's not the point. Radigue is one of the most important electronic musicians to emerge in the past 50 years. Her music will serve you well throughout your life and generations to come. Incredible; eloquent; transcendent; top tier. Comparisons can be made but Radigue has created her own criteria. (Recommended pieces 'Adnos I-II-III' and 'Trilogie de la Mort'.) - Ross
CD1 1. Chry-ptus (version 2001) 24’01 2. Geelriandre 29’57 CD2 1. Chry-ptus (version 2006) 23’10 2. Biogenesis 21’06 3. Arthesis 25’40 CD3 1. Ψ 847 (version concert) 71’08 CD4 1. Adnos I 71’28 CD5 1. Adnos II 72’44 CD6 1. Adnos III 72’40 CD7:Les Chants de Milarepa 1. Mila’s Song in the Rain 19’10 2. Song of the Path Guides 21’01 3. Elimination of Desires 17’22 4. Symbols for Yogic Experience 19’29 CD8: Les Chants de Milarepa 1. Mila’s Journey Inspired by a Dream 62’22 CD9: Jetsun Mila 1. Jetsun Mila (première partie) 44’25 CD10:Jetsun Mila 1. Jetsun Mila (seconde partie) 39’57 CD11: Trilogie de la Mort 1. Kyema 61’07 CD12: Trilogie de la Mort 1. Kailasha 56’09 CD13: Trilogie de la Mort 1. Koumé 51’18 CD14 1. L’Île re-sonante 55’04
'This is ‘it’. ‘Infra’. Turn the dial up and give the keys to Kayn. This one might be the best entry point for anyone looking to ‘dive in’. Enveloping and (some times) arresting. ‘Dynamic’ would be selling it short. Originally released in 1979 but could be released 15 years in the future and no one would question. Beautifully remastered by Jim O’Rourke and if you are familiar with his work on ‘Steamroom’; YEAH he’s ‘on the tip’ as well. Highest recommendation possible. Theres so much info; dive as deep as you’d like.' - Ross
3xCD Boxset Includes 17 page booklet Reiger-records-reeks - KY-CD2201-03
Building upon the ground of their previous “Infra”, “Scanning”, and “Tektra” collections, Reiger Records Reeks continues its dedication to Roland Kayn’s monumental back catalog, delivering “Elektroakustische Projekte & Makro”, a towering 5CD box set reissuing two of the composer’s most important bodies of work for the very first time since their respective original releases in 1977 and 1981. Fully remastered from the original analog tapes by none other than Jim O’Rourke - allowing a number of the pieces to be heard without breaks for the very first time - this collection amounts to some of the most significant efforts in Kayn’s pioneering work in the field of cybernetic music, further illuminating him as one of the most radical and groundbreaking creative voices of the 20th Century and beyond.
This box set includes the tracks from legendary opuses MAKRO I, II, III, created at the Institute for Sonology, and Elektroakustische Projekte, featuring works like Cybernetic I, II, and III, which were recorded at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, alongside Entropy PE31, Monades, and Eon. These pieces – previously available only on rare out-of-print vinyl editions – highlight both Kayn’s innovative approach to musical structures and his significant impact on the development of electronic and cybernetic compositions.
This is ‘it’. ‘Infra’. Turn the dial up and give the keys to Kayn. This one might be the best entry point for anyone looking to ‘dive in’. Enveloping and (some times) arresting. ‘Dynamic’ would be selling it short. Originally released in 1979 but could be released 15 years in the future and no one would question. Beautifully remastered by Jim O’Rourke and if you are familiar with his work on ‘Steamroom’; YEAH he’s ‘on the tip’ as well. Highest recommendation possible. Theres so much info; dive as deep as you’d like. - Ross
A pioneer of electronic, computer, and instrumental avant-garde music, for the majority of his life, the German composer Roland Kayn remained one of the great unheralded figures in the landscape of 20th century sound - a founding member of Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, who delved into singular territories entirely his own.Kayn spent most of his career working beyond the normative definitions and parameters of electronic, electro-acoustic, and computer music, endeavouring to contract an entirely new territory of sound which he referred to as Cybernetic Music, a generative process of composition through programming, carefully aligned with a constant relationship between three parameters - the cybernetical, the technical-physical, and the apperceptional.
'Tektra’ is a standout in the catalogue of Roland Kayn (1933* - 2011 †) - a legendary figure whose work bridges the early electronic innovation of his tutor Oskar Sala; the free improv experiments of his work in Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza with Ennio Morricone; and the furthest limits of c.20th computer music. Despite cult acclaim from the heaviest synth heads, Kayn’s work has remained largely off-the-radar until relatively recently, with each reissue and archival deep dive now received with due reverence by new ears, ultimately leading to this, his 1984 payload of computer generated abstraction that absorbs the mind like nothing else. It’s been a proper touchstone to us for many years, and although available as compressed YouTube files, it has been out of reach in full fidelity for far too long, making this release utterly indispensable for listeners of insatiable persuasions who really want to get into it.
‘Tektra’ is the one we’d recommend any newcomer with a glint in their eye and a hunger for the true electronic spice. It stands as an ideal example of Kayn’s “cybernetic music”, in which he tasked hugely unwieldy, early computers to express unfathomably complex functions, and modelled the results in sound. In ceding as much control as possible to the machines, Kayn comes uncannily close to voicing their inner thoughts and, with it, the mysteries of the universe. This may sound a bit far-fetched, but once experienced, it’s hard not to talk about his compositions in sacred terms, touching as they do on the ineffable, the sublime, and truly transcendent in their ultra fine gradated, star system-leaping, pitchbending harmonic transitions between milky way spumed angelic chorales and phantasmically chasmic darksides.
Frankly ‘Tektra’ contains some of the greatest electronic music ever made. It utterly uproots the fundamentals of musical structure and renders it anew, deeply probing its conventions and questioning the role of the composer in the age of computer-aided sound creation. But it should be considered that it was made long before the ready availability of DAWs and their colouring book templates, effectively starting from a sort of tabula rasa to create immeasurably billowing tapestries of sound with seemingly no beginning or end, that communicate in a language of sheer sensory reception that triggers the most atavistic, as well as futuristic, sensations.
Make some time and space, and dive in head first for untold rewards. - Boomkat
8.5" x 11.25" 224 Pages Hardcover Full Color Offset ISBN: 9791096037353 Published by Timeless Editions First Edition
Description via Timeless Editions:
Timeless Edition is thrilled to announce the publication of HARDCORE, a striking new photobook by Eric Kroll, featuring rare and intimate photographs taken during the shooting of Paul Schrader’s cult 1979 film — and much more beyond.
This book takes you deep into the world behind the camera: the set, the atmosphere, and the many individuals — technicians, casting director, actors and non-actors alike — who accompanied or inspired Kroll throughout the shoot.
More than a simple behind-the-scenes document, HARDCORE also includes the photographer’s own reflections, commentary and a recent interview he conducted with adult film actress Serena.
The book is also accompanied by a foreword from Paul Schrader and a rare text he penned in 1978 for a publishing project about the film that was never completed.
Together, these elements reveal a deeply personal and unexpectedly intimate perspective on the film and on the porn film industry at the end of the 1970s.
House Of Psychotic Women by Kier-La Janisse (Signed by Author)
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TWO LEFT
Hardcover: 10" x 8.5" Paperback: 9" x 7.5" 448 pages Published by FAB Press ISBN: 9781913051211 (Hardcover) ISBN: 9781913051341 (Paperback)
House of Psychotic Women is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and examination of female madness, both onscreen and off.
Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.
Named after the U.S.-retitling of Carlos Aured's Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, House Of Psychotic Women is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens.
This sharply-designed book, including a 48-page full-colour section, is packed with 680 rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork throughout, that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!
11.5" x 15" 160 pages Hardcover Full Color Offset Edition of 100
'By far one of the most visually striking and thought provoking books I've encountered in quite some time. Incredibly beautiful and orginal. 'The Future' has arrived and its everything we hoped for... right?' - Ross
Artist's Statement:
The Neuron Mirror is a human/AI collaborative partnership; an intensive process of inspiration, iteration, curation, finesse and judgement; a collection of images conserved while thousands of others were discarded. Yet the question continues to be asked: who or what is the artist?
Salvatore Chiarella has written that it is not technology alone that makes an artwork, but rather the totality of artistic theory, approach, and realisation. Al image generation is a Copernican revolution in the artistic field, but the technology does not replace human creativity. The spread of photography at the end of the 19th century with the advent of technology able to reproduce reality (at least as it was defined at the time), led to similar debates about its status as an art form and the possibility that it might supplant painting. The outcome, however, was photography's gradual acceptance and simultaneously the flowering of historical avant-gardes such as Impressionism, Futurism, Surrealism and Expressionism. There is every reason to anticipate similar developments in the context of art in this century.
There are other relevant implications for philosophical aesthetics, especially the discussions about the nature of creativity and authorship. The generation of art by Als calls into question the uniqueness of individual creativity and artistic imagination in an unprecedented way, questions we will elaborate on in later chapters. Al technology can be considered as an extension of human potentialities through the externalization of mental processes in the form of a distributed non-corporeal mind. Mark Coeckelbergh, however, argues that existing notions such as tool, extension, and (quasi) Other are insufficient to conceptualize the use of this technology, and proposes instead to investigate what happens as processes and performances out of which artistic subjects, objects, and roles emerge. The old categories leave in place the human/machine separation and opposition. The discussion has been about how humans and Al relate in this context, yet the focus was on the ontological and artistic status of the Al which implicitly or explicitly was compared to that of the human. He suggests turning this around, no longer taking the relationship as fixed and given, but rather bringing the relation and the process itself to the forefront of the analysis?
The process can perhaps be better viewed as 'poietic performances' involving humans and non-humans potentially leading to the emergence of new artistic (quasi)subjects and roles in the process. For example: Al image generators often introduce exquisite detail in a quite unexpected way. They also currently confuse ground and subject if the human prompter does not take extraordinary measures to avoid the ambiguity. Yet the results, which are evident in many images herein, are often stunning. This is only an 'error when conceived in terms of mirroring animal visual perception - a survival mechanism, not an artistic one. It is likely that developers will attempt to 'correct' such artefacts in subsequent versions, thereby betraying an anthropic bias towards representation within the larger project of artificial general intelligence.
The Neuron Mirror is a 3-way performance of human/Al/audience all embedded in a dynamic process which includes the role of the artist, the technology, and the viewers, philosophers and critics who ascribe meaning and value to the work, entangling the human prompter/curator and the Al into the 'Artist'. In Karen Barad's terms, what happens can be understood as dialogue, intra-action and dance between the performances of humans and the performances of Al. These are in turn embedded in extensive material and narrative contexts in which they are immanent, by which they are shaped, and to what meaning they contribute.
The final creative output may go beyond the boundaries of expectation and fulfil the requirement of and originality. These are new starting points for an artistic re-evaluation of what we mean by intelligence and creativity.
2023 repress. Double LP. Re-cut from original Peter Christopherson approved masters. The Ape Of Naples is Coil's highly celebrated final album completed by Peter Christopherson following the tragic death of Jhonn Balance in 2004. Often noted for being a fan favorite, The Ape Of Naples uses Balance's final recordings and material recorded at Trent Reznor's studio in New Orleans to create a deep, heavy masterpiece. Packaged in a heavy tip-on gatefold sleeve with Ian Johnstone's original artwork coated in a custom spot gloss. Each LP is house in a printed inner sleeve and side D is printed with all three original etchings. Lyrics are printed across the gatefold.
Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.
Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”
What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.
The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”
After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group’s heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one.
Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed “moon music” – post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group’s limitless insular synergy.
Opener “Something” is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. “Tiny Golden Books” unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. “Ether” is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay (“It's either ether or the other”), while “Where Are You?” and “Batwings – A Liminal Hymn” lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one’s death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight.
As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination “Paranoid Inlay” captures the group’s oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. “It seems concussion suits you,” he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: “On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster.”
Initially a rough demo tape recorded solely by Coil member Drew McDowall, Time Machines started to take full form when McDowall enthusiastically delivered these demo recordings to bandmates John Balance and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson as sketches for a new Coil project with the primary goal of shifting Coil’s sound further into a more conceptually abstract direction. Largely recorded in 1997 using single takes with minimal post production, these four drones contain every intended fluctuation and tone, along with every glitch of the original – “Artifacts generated by your listening environment are an intrinsic part of the experience.
Each of the four pieces on Time Machines is named after the chemical compound of the hallucinogenic drug that they were composed for. Time Machines was meticulously crafted to enable what John Balance referred to as "temporal slips" in time and space, allowing both the artist and audience to figuratively "dissolve time".
The compact disc edition includes reproductions of the six original vinyl stickers and comes housed in a gatefold chipboard digipack featuring spot gloss overlay.
2-Discs Blu-ray 16 page booklet UPC: 745295491781 Region 0 (Worldwide) LBR 4917
’These are songs about the corn belt and some of the people in it… or on it.’
Comissioned by NYCs ‘The Kitchen’ in 1978, written for television in 1980, and presented in 1984. Robert Ashleys ‘Perfect Lives’ has received a tasteful face lift courtesy of Lovely Music Ltd. and the original post production editor Dean Winkler.
‘An opera for television’ told in seven parts / 3 hours total. For someone unfamiliar with Robert Ashley; this may be the most informative entry point to begin your journey.
This new NTSC to HD re-master beautifully preserves the original presentation; a 4:3 aspect ratio in addition to a complete surrender to ‘shot on video’.
Booklet contains on set photos as well as an essay by Ashley’s biographer Kyle Gann, and a review by Charles Hagen.
Ambitious and life affirming. Highest possible recommendation.
Lovely Music Ltd. Description:
Robert Ashley, solo voice; Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem, chorus; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, keyboards; David Van Tieghem, non-keyboard percussion; Peter Gordon, music producer; Paul Shorr, soundtrack producer; Dean Winkler, image processing and videotape editor.
Perfect Lives has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s." At its center is the hypnotic voice of Robert Ashley. His continuous song narrates the events of the story and describes a 1980's update of the mythology of small town America. Perfect Lives is populated with myriad characters revolving around two musicians — "R", the singer of myth and legend, and his friend, Buddy, "The World's Greatest Piano Player". They have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at the Perfect Lives Lounge. As Robert Ashley describes in the opera synopsis, "they fall in with two locals to commit the perfect crime, a metaphor for something philosophical: in this case, to remove a sizable about of money from The Bank for one day (and one day only) and let the whole world know that it was missing."
The eloping couple, Ed and Gwyn, the old people at the home, the sheriff and his wife (Will and Ida) who finally unravel the mystery, and Isolde who watches the celebration of the changing of the light at sundown from the doorway of her mother's house are some of the characters who journey through the seven episodes of the opera.
Derived from a colloquial idiom, Perfect Lives transforms familiar material into an elaborate metaphor for the rebirth of the human soul. It has been called a comic opera about reincarnation.
The 1983 video was upgraded to 1080 HD and remasterd in 2022-23. A 16 page booklet inside includes Robert Ashey's synopsis plus articles on the music by Kyle Gann, and on the video by Charles Hagen
