motion sickness of time travel - s/t - spectrum spools - 2xlp
2xlp - blue vinyl - 27$
2xlp - black vinyl - 25$
In 2010 Rachel Evans released "Seeping Through the Veil of the Unconscious", an expansive, magic trick of a cassette which captivated an unsuspecting American cassette underground and made dedicated fans instantly. Digitalis released fine editions of the "Seeping..." as well as the acclaimed follow-up "Luminaries and Synastries" on LP which packed an equally potent punch. Since then much anticipation has been created from her work with husband Grant Evans, including a split LP on Aguirre Records in late 2011 and various releases as duo Quiet Evenings
Evans has since been hard at work on an expansive, definitive 2xLP project, carefully arranging sounds to create immense, alchemical side-long tracks which push the boundries of the project into new territory. These incredible new highs are documented in a clear, spacious fidelity where cerebral sounds gently flow and wash through the stereo field creating a beautiful deep listening situation. Big changes in sound and scope are evident; a shift from the murky, mysterious haze of the older recordings into a highly addictive concentrate of airy tones and gem-like glow, each track forming a universal sky-map . There is, however, no loss of mystique. One of Evans most charming elements is her ability to create a divine magnetism, and to capture this very magic unfiltered, raw and uncomprimised. Very few have the capability to create this powerful energy and make is as accessible as Evans does.
This full-length definitive album is a high water mark in Motion Sickness of Time Travel discography. An album masterfully crafted with ambition, crystal clear vision and dedicated focus. Mastered for vinyl by Lawrence English and cut for vinyl at Dubplates and Mastering.
Artwork by Juli Elin Toro
human teenager - animal husbandry - spectrum spools - lp - 19$
"Animal Husbandry" is the result of absolute, genuine obsession: a devotional masterwork with song craft, exquisite production and aesthetics regarding the ultra-damaged times we live in all in perfect harmony. Burrowed away in private studio sessions over the course of a year, Human Teenager have emerged with a profound and colorful masterpiece.
Like Chrome before them, the effects of a carbon copy community of lemming rock groups were avoided and ignored, and the vision of creating a pure, singular work was achieved. Rarely does an album with complex structure and abstract tendencies sound so organically catchy as this. The duo spawn a brand new sound that ranges somewhere between Ilitch's "10 Suicides" to the work of the Cleaners from Venus. To be clear, however, it would be impossible to plaster genre descriptors onto an album with such enormous scope. Terms like "synth-pop", "rock and roll", "punk", et cetera, can all be applied on a surface level, but at the end of the day it's none of and all of these things at the same time, more or less. Few projects are able to create and exist in a personal universe that hits the nail right on the head the way "Animal Husbandry" does. From "Fourth Reich," the albums opening cut, it's very apparent that Human Teenager have created an album that will not be able to stop listening to with its wildly morphing vocals, strafing synthesizer arrangements, and prismatic guitar detail.
Police, The New World Order, YouTube, New York; it's all a drag, and Human Teenager captures the horrors of everyday life in "the future" and holds them hostage. Spectrum Spools is very pleased to present you with an instant classic.
Mastered and Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering Winter, 2011.
franco falsini - cold nose - spectrum spools - lp - 19$
Franco Falsini is an Italian musician and producer perhaps best known for his work with his space/prog rock group Sensations' Fix, who released seminal albums in the 1970's. His music was primarily crafted with impressive guitar technique (proven to be way ahead of his time), various synthesizers, and unorthodox recording methods to churn out beautiful experimental psychedelic sound.
'Cold Nose' was his debut solo outing, originally released on Polydor in 1975 as a soundtrack to a film that has never been widely released and only seen by very few people. Falsini applied many experimental methods to his recording process, including a mechanism borrowed from the Bio-Electronic Meditation Society, which would monitor his brain activity in the studio. Only when his brain would produce Alpha/Theta waves would he begin to write and commit his music to tape. Composed in three suites of spiraling and kaleidoscopic proto-ambient, psychedelic rock, Falsini had created a masterpiece that today stands as one of the all-time treasures of the Italian Progressive music scene of the 1970's. Throughout the recording we are treated to gentle washes of EMS and Minimoog synthesizers laced with floating guitar line melodies that break out into sky-high guitar leads. 'Cold Nose' is a rare and gorgeous organic creation, glowing with colorful pulses and morphing algorithms. Spectrum Spools is pleased to present the first pressing of the album in over 30 years, remastered by Falsini to his specifications from the original tapes and cut to vinyl at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin.
Original record jacket scans by Devon Dagworthy
head boggle - headboggle - spectrum spools - lp - 19$
Spectrum Spools are beyond excited to present you with the highly-anticipated vinyl debut of the Head Boggle project. The world has been waiting for this day to come, and finally a full-length long player has arrived. Recorded at his apartment studio, Headboggle is the manifestation of Derek Gedalecia's acoustic/electronic research utilizing the "kitchen sink" in every sense of the idiom: Moogs, harmonica, banjo, harpsichord, Irish harp, EMS Synthi, violin, drums, clavinet, Serge Modular, field recordings and more! What makes Headboggle so special is the careful arrangement of sound, with painstaking attention to composition and sound direction. Disorienting magic is a key trait of the Head Boggle sound, one which captivates and commands repeated inspection. Like any great, focused album effort, there is a narrative arc -- from the introductory "Flourescent Star" with its dizzying, fractured crackle and bizarre piano float to the tension-packed, information-overloaded squabble and squawks of the "Dream Diary" and "Europa Astrobiology Lander" tracks. Head Boggle is a dedicated and devotional effort -- one with precision and prodigious vision. Equal parts François Bayle and Tod Dockstader in the best possible way, it's still hard to pin such a multifaceted talent to any kind of descriptor. Derek has been honing his sound for years with loads of releases on almost every essential tape and CD-R label out there. Here we have his finest set of compositions yet in hi-fidelity, tight and tediously packed, forming his most concise release to date. The Head Boggle debut has raised the bar for classical electronic composition with the greats, a feat of rare occurrence.
robert turman - flux spectrum spools - 2xlp - 25$
"Flux" is the 1981 debut solo outing of Robert Turman, an American multi-instrumentalist and avant-garde composer. Until recently, Turman was perhaps best known for his contributions to the ballistic NON project with Boyd Rice, as well as other obscured U.S. industrial acts such as Z.O. Voider. In the summer of 1981 Turman decided he would take a drastic turn from the noisy/electronic/industrial work of his compatriots, and began work on what is now the classic "Flux" cassette. "Flux" was originally self-released in extremely limited numbers. Weary of the noisescapes of old, he set out to create long-form minimalism utilizing kalimba, piano, "Mini-Pops Jr." drum machine, and tape loops to create a complex bed of interweaving micro-stasis'. The results of these new experiments were as beautiful as they were perplexing.
A curious dusty fidelity carries these classic tracks across four sides of vinyl, including all of the original "Flux" content. These compositions glow with a sprawling, slow motion haze that's light years ahead of its time. "Flux" reveals wide spectrums of sound from melancholic kalimba and percussion patterns to slowed down, syrupy Exotica. Turman had complex ideas in his mind yet only the simple technologies of the day were at hand. Hear the click of the stopping and starting Tascam 3340 open-reel tape machine as one hand presses the "record" and "play" buttons and the other plays piano phrases. While there are similarities in style to Classical Minimalism, Turman's sound and vision is his own and is exclusive to his limited discography.
Spectrum Spools
temporal marauder - temporal marauder makes you feel - spectrum spools - lp - 18$
If Jean Logarin did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Never mind your outsider composers; never mind your library music. Never mind your merely unreleased records. Jean Logarin's music, like some recent unearthings by Belgium's Ultra Eczema label, exists at a remove from publicity so complete that it was nearly not among us, and has never been before. Like any obscurity, its immediate appeal might be that this music could count as a more genuine artifact of its time than any more commercial product, by virtue in part of its being outside of history. Jean Logarin's music is definitely outside of history, but it is no artifact. It is so deeply consonant with the best contemporary electronic music that it is hard to believe it isn't brand new. But the biographical details, however elusive of our usual channels of verification, speak for themselves: Logarin studied under Andrew Rudin during the early 70's; his interest in electronic music further developed while working as a studio assistant for engineer Max Tanguy, an associate of famed krautrock producer, Conny Plank. Through Tanguy, Logarin met percussionist Hans Schule, an eccentric whose shady wealth bankrolled a series of recording sessions at Tanguy's studio. Together with Logarin's then-girlfriend, Llissa Zuckovich, Tanguy, Schule and Logarin proceeded to compose in the studio several hoursworth of finished pieces whose original purpose and intention have only become cloudier with time. There was no serious attempt made to release it, and only vague talk of attempting to sell it for commercial usage. The music on MAKES YOU FEEL is, then, from a historical perspective, purely a vanity project. A vanity project within a vanity project, even: None of the pieces were given titles by Logarin, and the name TEMPORAL MARAUDERS does not predate this release. The album was compiled, its presentation determined, by its own first fan. And here is where the story strains credulity, because it requires believing that Jean Logarin one day met, by chance, accordionist and composer Guerino Raglani, who even then was uncle to a young Joseph Raglani, today trafficking in romantic, kraut-tinged electronics under his own name. Two years ago, the elder Raglani passed onto his nephew a set of DAT transfers of his old tape reels, among which were (what have proven to be the only known) copies of Logarin's studio recordings. The younger Raglani, so the story goes, flipped out--became "nearly scared," in his own words--and demanded to know more. His uncle shed what light he could on how he came into possession of the tapes (a funny story in itself), but it took an extensive search to find any accessible trail to Logarin. While Jean and the rest of the erstwhile group were pleasant enough when located, and happy to lend their support to the belated discovery of their work, each was mostly surprised anyone would want to go to the trouble; particularly Logarin, who declined the invitation to be involved in the project beyond its approval, and encouraged Joseph to come up with the album's names and titles himself. So, the project became Raglani's, and it bears the impression of his own aesthetic stamp, drawing from a range of references he and Logarin discovered they had in common. And yet: a "vanity project within a vanity project"? What else is music to begin with? How can it be said to begin with any purpose, and whose is it to name? In any case, this is close to the limit of what can be said about MAKES YOU FEEL. One may search for further information about Jean Logarin beyond these and a few other bare facts, but only in vain; he does not wish to be known. But to anyone who supposes that music this enjoyable and exciting, however buried, would've already been found by now if it actually existed, I would suggest that it has arrived at just the right time to be heard. And to those who will inevitably question if Logarin himself is real, the only straight answer is that we have his music. How could he not be real? - Michael Ferrer.