BELL ORCHESTRE - 'AS SEEN THROUGH THE WINDOWS'

Formats

• ERATP156LP - 2xLPs

  3700551784967

• ERATP156LE - 2xLP (COLOURED)

  3700551784974

Details

Erased Tapes are thrilled to announce the reissue of Bell Orchestre second album As Seen Through Windows out on April 28th. Bell Orchestre is a collaborative instrumental group based in Montreal. Whose six members come from wildly divergent musical backgrounds, and the unlikely chemistry that results from their collaboration is the very thing that sustains their connection. It’s as if the group as a whole has tapped into a very particular, very distinct energy: like that of an approaching storm. In many ways, Bell Orchestre is the sum of not only its parts but the sum of its influences and inspirations Expanding further on the foundation that Recording a Tape the Colour of the Light laid, the group refined and tightened their sound on this masterpiece. Bell Orchestre retreated to Banff Centre in the rocky mountains of Alberta to write the follow-up to their debut album. The title As Seen Through Windows is inspired by the rehearsal space where it was written. The room had two exterior walls entirely made of windows, and with the cinematic view of the mountains they saw occasional herds of elks and deer’s passing by. The specifics of time and place, the elemental forces at work outside, and those forces that exist inside, all come into play within Bell Orchestre’s musical process. This particular music could be made by no one else at no other time in history. The album was produced by John McEntire (Stereolab, Jeff Parker), drummer and producer of the legendary Chicago post-rock band Tortoise. McEntire had been the group’s dream producer to work with. “I think I was more starstruck around John McEntire than I’d been around anyone before,” says violinist Sarah Neufeld. McEntire was up for trying anything in the studio, and inspired the band endlessly. Now looking back at the recording sessions, lap steel guitarist Michael Feuerstack remembers “I don’t know how aware we were of the uniqueness of our bond and the resulting methods of music making, but they are very evident across this recording.” Following the original release, they went on to tour the world, from festivals and theatres to small venues.

Tracks

1. Stripes
2. Elephants
3. Icicles / Bicycles
4. Water / Light / Shifts
5. Bucephalus Bouncing Ball
6. As Seen Through Windows
7. The Gaze
8. Dark Lights
9. Air Lines / Land Lines

Press

Audio & Video

JOHN ANDREWS & THE YAWNS - 'LOVE FOR THE UNDERDOG'

Formats

• WOODSIST105 - LP

  795154138036

Details

John Andrews is something of an open secret in a certain corner of the music scene: a versatile musician and animator. A film school drop out whose work hat-tips tradition as much as outsider anti-aesthetics. He’s spent over a decade on the DIY circuit, playing early house shows alongside then up-and-coming peers Weyes Blood and Daniel Bachman. Today he is still out there projecting his sketchy hand-drawn animations during his performances in coffee shops, small galleries and non-traditional venues. Andrews’ painterly approach now introduces the listener to his version of New York City, the place he was bound to end up after years of dwelling in Pennsylvania farm towns and New Hampshire barns. There is handmade vibrancy to the world he’s imagined here: intimate moments seen from the interior, looking outward from hole-in-the-wall restaurants, theaters and the fragments of peace found within the restless and dirty street corners. Love For The Underdog, his aptly titled fourth release with the Woodsist label, was tracked live to tape in various studios and apartments across the Empire State with help from his bandmates in Cut Worms’ touring outfit, Max Clarke, Keven Lareau and Noah Bond. Buoyant melodies are supported by timeless string arrangements, translated from Andrews’ head to page with the help of friend Simon Hanes. The string quartet follows the tradition of Francoise Hardy, Harry Nilsson, Margo Guryan and Belle and Sebastian, giving the whole thing a cinematic ambience with stark shadows of an Edward Hopper painting. The lyrics tie together narratives of cynical heroes and troubled lovers. Put on the record and sink into well-worn red velvet theater seats, when the lights go down and the flickering of projectors run the title: Love For The Underdog, indeed.

Tracks

1. Checks In The Mail
2. Never Go Away
3. Fourth Wall
4. Starving Artist
5. Walking Under My Loves Ladders
6. Cloudy
7. Only Heart
8. I Want To Believe

Press

Audio & Video

LINDA SMITH & NANCY ANDREWS - 'A PASSING CLOUD'

Formats

• GY13-1 - LP

  600197613115

Details

In 1983, Nancy Andrews and Linda Smith shared a big house in Baltimore with a continuously revolving cast of artists and musicians. It was there the like-minded artists formed their first band, Ceramic Madonna Head (with Plastic Arms), a short-lived project which included housemates Elizabeth Downing and Peggy Bitzer. By the time the lease was up, Smith and Bitzer had decided to move to New York where they would form a new band called The Woods while Andrews and Downing remained in Baltimore and formed a performance art band called Lambs Eat Ivy. While playing guitar in The Woods in the mid-’80s Smith purchased her first 4-track cassette recorder and embarked on a pioneering decade of solo, DIY home recording with a series of cassettes and 7-inch records of smart and moody singer-songwriter bedroom pop music. This trailblazing period was recently documented on the Captured Tracks retrospective compilation Till Another Time: 1988-1996. Her band, The Woods, made a record which was shelved for decades but will finally see release in 2023. During this same period Andrews pursued art, animation and filmmaking with occasional forays into music including another short-lived collaboration with Smith called The Gertrudes as well as a 7-inch under the alias Pinky on Harriet Records in 1992. The friends stayed in touch but hadn’t worked on a project together in nearly thirty years. In 2020, Smith rediscovered in the back of a drawer some old tapes of Andrews’s songs she had recorded for her in the ’90s. In the process of digitizing the old recordings she was inspired to reach out and float the idea of a new collaborative recording project with her old friend. A Passing Cloud is the fruit of their rekindled long-distance musical conversation. They began the songwriting process by flipping through Andrews’s pulp fiction collection and pulling provocative phrases from the lurid titles and hard-boiled storylines. Then, they set out to create new stories from personal, feminist perspectives. All the songs were composed incrementally by passing tracks back and forth between Maine and Maryland during the late pandemic. A Passing Cloud’s lovely and beguiling pop music may be borne out of isolation but it draws one in with a carefully rendered intimacy made possible by decades of artistic collaboration.

Tracks

Press

Audio & Video

SUNBURNED HAND OF THE MAN - 'HYPNOTAPE'

Formats

• VHF158 - CD

  783881015829

Details

A genuinely sprawling collection of high-fidelity mutation music that suits the compact disc format perfectly, Hypnotape is the third consecutive Sunburned Hand Of Man album of studio assemblages following 2019’s Headless and 2021’s Pick A Day To Die. Recorded throughout 2021 and 2022, it’s an album possessed with a peculiar runaway locomotion which jump cuts feverishly between unusual atmospheres yet maintains a beguiling consistency—throbbing, twisting, undulating rhythmic blastoffs suddenly kick the door down into serene realms of nuanced acoustic privacy which are unexpectedly plunged back, face first into a miasma of shirtless, raging thuggery, ad infinitum. The album is notable in the group’s monstrous catalog for a few reasons: first, it showcases founding member Conrad Capistran stepping out from behind the keyboards and electronics to spread his smooth, buttery baritone atop the majority of the tracks. From his velvet cooing above the pulsing whirlwind of opener “People Person” to his vivid and febrile musings as a trip reporter on the frontlines of the meltdown zone on “Roger” his honeyed vocals guide the listener Virgil-like through the inferno all the way to the album’s finale where he duets with Ron Schneiderman on the old Dino Valenti / Quicksilver chestnut “What About Me”. Secondly, it features the recorded debut of Sunburned’s longtime friend and collaborator Mark Perretta after years of touring with the group. Some may remember Perretta from his days stomping across the primordial Boston underground of the late ’80s / early ’90s with the mighty Subskin Cables or his solo career as Deluxx but most, no doubt, will be familiar with his stint with Lou Barlow, John Davis and Bob Fay as Deluxx Folk Implosion, most notably when Perretta’s whimsical ode to fatherhood “Daddy Never Understood” was used in the opening sequence to Larry Clark’s beloved coming of age tale Kids in 1996. Finally, with Hypnotape, Sunburned steps into the hallowed VHF arena after decades of hovering along adjacent corridors!

Tracks

1. People Person 2. Roger
3. Barefoot On Brush
4. ?Music 5. Hypnotape
6. The Sun > The Moon > The Stars
> The Earth
7. Priest Of The Village
8. Violate The Silence
9. That Which Is
10. Salt Taffy 11. Sweat Ship
12. Dragon Drainer
13. With Zeus
14. Salad Bar 15. Height
16. Edward?s Buggy
17. What About Me

Press

New album by experimental rock band
from Boston that started in the mid-?90s

Audio & Video

DANIEL O'SULLIVAN - 'THE PHYSIC GARDEN'

Formats

• VHF152 - LP

  783881015218

Details

Third in a trilogy of albums of library music miniatures from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan (Æthenor, Ulver, This Is Not This Heat, etc) following 2020’s Electric Māyā and 2021’s Fourth Density. For heads, the term “library music” in 2021 might evoke dodgy Italian gray market LPs and crate-diggers hunting for “funky breaks”—but London’s venerable KPM Music is working with groundbreakers like O’Sullivan to open up new avenues for composers to experiment. The fifteen tracks on The Physic Garden are fully-formed and orchestrated compositions, which would be highlights on anyone’s release, never mind as incidental music. Of the music, O’Sullivan says: “The Physic Garden is an album of diverse instrumentals inspired by a swathe of verdant vistas from manicured gardens and follies to urban common land, overgrown and forgotten. Convalescent memories in the shape of psychedelic auditory botanics.” Key tracks include the droning acoustic folk of the title song; the Canterbury-esque rolling horn and woodwind melody of “Return The Heart” (with expert drum kit from Frank Byng); the prog-ish odd meter interlude “Buttercup Tea”; The quiet ambience and delicate melody of “Dusty Feather:”; and the Eno-like drift of “Vapourer Larvae.”

Tracks

1. The Physic Garden
2. Greenfingers
3. Return The Heart
4. Ivy In The Holly
5. Buttercup Tea
6. Wishes On The Wind
7. Crawl Under Here
8. Dusty Feather
9. The Vine Column
10. Paul
11. Perennials
12. On Lawn Drake
13. Vapourer Larvae
14. Axial Flame
15. The Scented Ape

Press

Third in a trilogy of library music
miniatures by member of ?thenor, Ulver,
This is Not This Heat, etc

Audio & Video

KLAUS WIESE - 'QUMRA I'

Formats

• FoB009CD - CD

  8016670151722

Details

Klaus Wiese (1942-2009) was a German musician and sound researcher. Wiese brought the teachings of Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan to Germany from his travels in the East. His album "El-Hadra, the Mystik Dance," which he created with Mathias Grassow and Ted de Jong, made him famous in the genre. Under his own name, From 1981 until his unexpected death in 2009 he released upwards of 60 recordings, not including collaborations(with Oophoi, Mathias Grassow, Ted De Jong, Jim Cole, Al Gromer Khan... to name a few). Wiese’s music exists at the nexus of several overlapping modes - ritual, dark ambient, environmental - yet new age exerted an influence as well, most audibly on these late 1980s outings. On his recordings, Wiese used Persian stringed instruments, Tibetan singing bowls, bells, voice, and other exotic instruments. "Qumra" duology was released in 1986 and 1987 by a German label Aquamarin Verlag and reissued on small run cd-r by Gianluigi Gasparetti (Oöphoi) on his own label Umbra. Since then both parts became extremely rare items and top-wanted albums for searchers of spiritual ambient music. "Qumra II" was included in the 20 best new age albums ever recorded, by FACT magazine. "Qumra" is one of the most beautiful ambient recordings I have ever heard. A sweet stream of otherworldly music dissolves time and space and brings you to a place of perfect and endless tranquility. This is a sound of a moment that is equal to eternity. Being in love with the albums for many years, the idea of reissue always bothered us, and finally, with the help of our friends The Fact Of Being, we're blessed to release it first time on a CD and hope these 2 small beautiful plastic circles, like a right puzzle, will take its place in your heart and collection.

Tracks

Press

"Qumra" sways like a censer in some ancient holy place, birdsong and pensive strings simmering across a smoke-streaked, slow-motion expanse, as if willing an extra-dimensional visitation to occur. The B-side (?The Hidden Treasure?) is more literal in its mysticism but no less levitational, a swirling, endless Om braided with majestic, resonant tanpura, epitomizing Wiese?s Sufi pursuit of 'the fugitive moment of ecstatic sensation.' - FACT

Audio & Video

WOLFMANHATTAN PROJECT - 'SUMMER FOREVER AND EVER'

Formats

• ITR374 - LP

  759718537413

• ITR374CD - CD

  759718537420

Details

Summer Forever And Ever succeeds Blue Gene Stew, 2019’s debut by the Wolfmanhattan Project, a collective unit co-starring three musicians familiar to In The Red listeners: singer-guitarist Mick Collins, front man of the seminal Detroit-bred garage units the Dirtbombs and the Gories, singer-guitarist Kid Congo Powers who played in such legendary bands as the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drummer-vocalist Bob Bert, whose skin work has distinguished albums by Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus, and Jon Spencer and the HITmakers. The group was founded as a studio project by three musicians who are kept busy by their primary bands. Blue Gene Stew was written and recorded quickly. Powers says, “I think that the new record was much more a group effort. I think there’s more of a group kind of sound, as eclectic as it is. I feel like we all played together, as opposed to playing on each other’s songs.” Bert notes that the band’s music is grounded in spontaneity: “Me and Mick went in and had a couple of rehearsals, and I would come up with a beat, he would come up with a riff. I still have a cassette Walkman, believe it or not, and we’d put it down on that. It wasn’t even a full song. We’d just put down a bunch of ideas. When it came to recording we’d lay down the basic tracks and work out different things, and a lot of it was made up on the spot. It really is a great collaboration.” Recorded and engineered by Mark C. of Live Skull at his studio, Summer Forever And Ever finds Powers playing piano and the Kaoss touch-pad effects unit and Collins playing synthesizer, in addition to their usual instruments. The album reflects the same eclectic mix of musical styles heard on the debut. References and sometimes even direct quotes from sources as diverse as the Andrea True Connection, Captain Beefheart, the Count Five, and Eurythmics leap out of the speakers.

Tracks

1. Like Andrea True
2. Countdown Love
3. Summer Forever
4. Respectable Pigs
5. Hypnotize Too
6. H Hour
7. Silky Narcotic
8. Very Next Song
9. New In The World
10. Raised/Razed

Press

Rock ?n? roll supergroup featuring Mick
Collins (Dirtbombs, Gories), Kid Congo
Powers (Gun Club, Cramps, Nick Cave
and the Bad Seeds) and Bob Bert (Pussy
Galore, Lydia Lunch)

Audio & Video

KID CONGO POWERS & THE NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE - 'LIVE IN ST. KILDA'

Formats

• ITR378LP - LP

  759718537819

• ITR378CD - CD

  759718537826

Details

Live In St. Kilda is a twelve song live album from a one-time-only show in which Kid Congo Powers was backed by The Near Death Experience. Kid Congo says, “How did I hook up with The Near Death Experience you may ask? One fine day Kim Salmon, my long time Scientists Surrealist Beast of a friend, wrote from Australia to ask me to play at his book launch for his biography Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand: Kim Salmon And The Formula For Grunge on November 9th, 2019. The launch was to take place at the Memo Music Hall in St. Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne. A royal command performance for the king of Kim? How could I say no to such an honor? What to do about a band? It did not take more than a minute for each of us to suggest Harry Howard and The Near Death Experience as the logical choice. I was a massive fan of the band already and we shared crossed paths as expats claiming out our musical in 1980s London. Harry with Crime And The City Solution and These Immortal Souls, Dave and Clare with The Moodists, Kim with the Scientists and me with Gun Club and Fur Bible. Needless to say it was fantastical to get together and make a playlist for Kim featuring covers by Suicide and ShangriLa, with mine and NDE’s songs as well. The night was magic—I still am floating on a surrealistic pillow remembering the night. Enjoy the racket, enjoy the love, enjoy this record of friendship and celebration.”

Tracks

1. LSDC
2. I Found A Peanut
3. Black Santa
4. La Llorona
5. The Only One
6. Sophisticated Boom Boom
7. New Kind Of Kick
8. Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne
9. She Doesn?t Like It
10. Sex Beat
11. When He Finds Out
12. Garbage Man

Press

Audio & Video

PAUL B. CUTLER - 'LES FLEURS'

Formats

• ITR364LP - 2xLPs

  759718536416

• ITR364CD - CD

  759718536423

Details

Fans of the innovations and originality that sprang from the L.A. underground of the late 1970s and ’80s often ask, “What’s Paul B. Cutler been up to?” A vital participant in the Los Angeles music scene of that period as bandleader, songwriter, musician and producer, Cutler’s work—in particular his guitar playing— with The Consumers, 45 Grave, Vox Pop and The Dream Syndicate is still admired by fans and an influence on anyone interested in that period and the styles that developed from it. In 2014, “Ryan Adams contacted me and wanted to form a band. He loved 45 Grave, he wanted to do some goth / punk, whatever you want to call it. That’s right up my alley. He’s amazingly talented and inspiring to work with. We did that for a while, and I wrote a bunch of songs.” Enthused about his new material, Cutler continued recording songs with just his signature electric guitar style and vocals. As this was developing, another vet of the early L.A. scene—Brad Laner of Medicine and Savage Republic—got in touch with Cutler. Soon Laner was mixing, co-producing, playing keyboards as well as adding the rhythm section. The overall process took some time, with songwriting beginning in 2014. When reflecting on the music that comprises Les Fleurs, “To me, and it does not sound like it, but because of the philosophy I had while producing it, it’s punk. I come from the original punk, before it was a genre. Before it was a ‘sound.’ When I got to LA in 1977 there were about twenty, maybe thirty bands and they all sounded very different. The Screamers, The Deadbeats, so many different takes on what music could be. There was no chance for commercial success so we all just did what we wanted. I never stopped. So philosophically I consider this punk rock, made in its original spirit although nobody would recognize it as such. I am a punk to this day.” So that, dear reader, is the basic story. Now it’s up to you to see what you recognize in Paul B. Cutler’s Les Fleurs.

Tracks

1. The Cold Light Of Day
2. Engineer
3. For The Children
4. Fly Away
5. Grinning Reaper
6. Medusa
7. Istanbul
8. The Game
9. Chains
10. Home Sweet Home
11. Eat Me
12. Last Kiss
13. Decay
14. Persistence
15. Body Shadow Spirit

Press

First solo album by innovative punk
guitarist from the Consumers, 45 Grave,
Vox Pop and the Dream Syndicate
? Features Brad Laner of Medicine and
Savage Republic

Audio & Video

RIVERHEAD - 'CANCER'

Formats

• SOS221 - LP

  4260016922215

Details

RIVERHEAD was formed in 2015 and consists of four experienced musicians, who know each other from the Danish metal and hardcore scene having played together in different contexts in the past. The band found its first frontman in Swedish singer Jonas Pedersen, and in the beginning of 2016, the first EP ‘Letting Go​/​Something To Die For’ was released, followed by the debut album ‘Nothing’ in 2018. Along the way, the band played a good amount of shows and deservedly earned its reputation for being an intense, tight live unit. When Jacob Bredahl entered RIVERHEAD as its new singer in 2021, and with the band underway with preparations for the upcoming record, he was diagnosed with cancer, which turned everything upside down. With a life threatening illness in the mix, an increased focus on the music and friendship, the subsequent process was both tough and beautiful, and the new album ‘Cancer’ ended up creating itself, right there in the middle of the band’s joint struggle for the project. ‘Cancer’ is a rough, melodic rock album emanating the member’s background in hardcore and metal while the band treads new paths towards a more vulnerable expression. An approach that is a natural consequence of the dissolvement, illness and struggle that have marked the band these last years - a struggle which has now resulted in a strong and honest record about survival. ‘Cancer’ is produced by Jacob Bredahl and Riverhead, recorded by Tommy Hansen, Tue Madsen and Jacob Bredahl, mastered by Brad Boatright with artwork by Liz Curso. ‘Cancer’ is released on LP/CS/Digital via Sounds of Subterrania April 28th 2023.

Tracks

01. Time
02. Broken Boy
03. Love Cuts
04. Numb To The World
05. Torches
06. The Rusty Sound of Love That Dies
07. Survive
08. 0806
09. Erupt
10. Karma

Press

Audio & Video

KLAUS WIESE - 'QUMRA II'

Formats

• FOB010CD - CD

  8016670151739

Details

Klaus Wiese (1942-2009) was a German musician and sound researcher. Wiese brought the teachings of Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan to Germany from his travels in the East. His album "El-Hadra, the Mystik Dance," which he created with Mathias Grassow and Ted de Jong, made him famous in the genre. Under his own name, From 1981 until his unexpected death in 2009 he released upwards of 60 recordings, not including collaborations(with Oophoi, Mathias Grassow, Ted De Jong, Jim Cole, Al Gromer Khan... to name a few). Wiese’s music exists at the nexus of several overlapping modes - ritual, dark ambient, environmental - yet new age exerted an influence as well, most audibly on these late 1980s outings. On his recordings, Wiese used Persian stringed instruments, Tibetan singing bowls, bells, voice, and other exotic instruments. "Qumra" duology was released in 1986 and 1987 by a German label Aquamarin Verlag and reissued on small run cd-r by Gianluigi Gasparetti (Oöphoi) on his own label Umbra. Since then both parts became extremely rare items and top-wanted albums for searchers of spiritual ambient music. "Qumra II" was included in the 20 best new age albums ever recorded, by FACT magazine. "Qumra" is one of the most beautiful ambient recordings I have ever heard. A sweet stream of otherworldly music dissolves time and space and brings you to a place of perfect and endless tranquility. This is a sound of a moment that is equal to eternity. Being in love with the albums for many years, the idea of reissue always bothered us, and finally, with the help of our friends The Fact Of Being, we're blessed to release it first time on a CD and hope these 2 small beautiful plastic circles, like a right puzzle, will take its place in your heart and collection.

Tracks

Press

In lists like '50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.' And 'The 20 best new age albums.' by Fact mag.

Audio & Video