Three brand new releases have been shipped to our distributors in the last few weeks and should be available from them by now: The debut album by Our Love Will Destroy The World (aka BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL), a brand new Xela LP and a very limited Stephan Mathieu 10". And the 3rd pressings of the Machinefabriek CD and Kuupuu "Yökehrä" LP have just arrived here so these are back in stock as well. We're already down to the last 100 copies on all these releases so you should better act fast!

-----

[028] STEPHAN MATHIEU "The Key To The Kingdom" 10"

"The Key to the Kingdom" is Stephan Mathieu's tribute to the great gospel preacher Washington Phillips and the world of raw, early gospel on 78rpm platters. The 2-part suite, presented in the classic 10" vinyl format that comes in an authentic, individually stamped and numbered 78rpm archive sleeve, has been performed on a historic Phonoharp No.2 zither from the 1890s utilizing five E-Bows and entropic and convolution processes. "The Key to the Kingdom" is a spin-off of Mathieu's "Virginals" project, a solo recital of contemporary classics performed on historic instruments.

Stephan Mathieu is a musician and sound artist based in Saarbrücken, Germany. During the last decade his music has been released on 16 critical acclaimed CDs, both solo and in collaboration with Douglas Benford, Ekkehard Ehlers, John Hudak, Janek Schaefer and Akira Rabelais on some of the finest electronic music labels worldwide (Die Schachtel, Häpna, Ritornell, Lucky Kitchen, Headz…).
His sound is largely based on early instruments, environmental sound and obsolete media which are recorded and transformed by means of experimental microphony, re-editing techniques and software processes involving spectral analysis and convolution and has been compared to the landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and the work of Colorfield artists Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Ellsworth Kelly.
Stephan is a collector of 78rpm records from the 1910s and 20s, the era of acoustic and early electronic audio recording.
His most recent album "Radioland" made it into "Best of 2008" lists in The Wire, Dusted, Boomkat, Milkfactory and many others.

Limited numbered edition of 400 copies!


[030] OUR LOVE WILL DESTROY THE WORLD "Stillborn Plague Angels" LP

The gates of Birchville Cat Motel crack, creak wide, and crash, unleashing a gush of soul-fried bleakness and love-damage stained with a defiantly metallic pose. Thats 'METALLIC... as in, has the surface qualities of metal' not 'METAL... as in, has the surface qualities of Metallica'... step back you fucking freaks. Although the broken bricks of BCM are still plain to see amid the burning wreck and ruin, 'Stillborn Plague Angels' represents the first fully formed sentence in a new chapter of Campbell Kneale's ongoing tome of star-spangled, psychedelic, noise-OM. Cholesterol-shaving guitar peeks over the trench to survey an adrenalised landscape of endless roaring catastrophy... Everything louder than everything else!

Our Love Will Destroy The World is the new one-man project by New Zealander Campbell Kneale after disbanding BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL. In the past Kneale has released albums on Ecstatic Peace, Corpus Hermeticum, Last Visible Dog, Conspiracy and his own Celebrate Psi Phenomena label. He has colllaborated with Lee Ranaldo, Neil Campbell, Bruce Russel, John Olson (Wolf Eyes), Yellow Swans, has toured throughout Japan, Europe, America and Australia and also records und the names Black Boned Angel and Ming.

“Stillborn Plague Angels“ is the debut LP by this new project.


[031] XELA "The Illuminated" LP

The music of Xela is not easily described. The alias of Type Records main-man John Twells, he has over the last decade moved through a dense fog of musical styles from abstract electronics to rusty soundscapes. In recent years his output has allied itself with darker realms, taking a liberal dose of influence from Norway's darker exponents, but retaining a deep and measured experimental focus.

'The Illuminated' was originally released on cassette, a format very fitting to the gloomy, waterlogged sounds; but having sold out in a matter of days it now recieves the much needed deluxe re-issue treatment. Taking cues from the cracked black metal of Burzum and Striborg and fusing this with heavy, synthesized noise 'The Illuminated' is possibly Xela's darkest, most spine-chilling work to date. We are taken through chiming Nurse With Wound-inspired soundscapes into Middle Eastern marketplaces and through caverns of thick, buzzing synthesized noise on the album's first piece. Entitled 'Black Scripture' this takes the dank religious themes of 'In Bocca Al Lupo' and goes even deeper into the Church dungeons, digging up lost artifacts and the angry spirits that accompany them. The flipside extends this heresy with a throaty vocal and distorted electric guitar, leaving blackened corpses and the traces of a sleepy village in its wake. Devastating and dark material, listen if you dare...