[engl] How bad is it out there? Is this the preapocalyptic era? Or are we the proverbial frog in boiling water and the end of days is already here? Maybe this is just late-capitalism Suck City. Whatever the reality, take heart, Rider/Horse has provided an exhilarating score for this seemingly hopeless era of anxiety and decay. On their sophomore release, Feed ’Em Salt, the duo of Cory Plump and Chris Turco deliver the same booming industrial thud and twisted shards of Chrome-plated noise that made their debut, Select Trials, one of the finest releases of 2021. But Feed ’Em Salt subtly pushes the outfit into new aesthetic realms and further distinguishes Rider/Horse as an entity to be reckoned with on its own terms, distinct from the other bands in which the pair have played (Spray Paint, Trans Am, Les Say Fav, to name a few). Where the icy grind of Select Trials conjured a Man with No Name traversing the desolation of a nuclear winter, Feed ’Em Salt adds pedal steel (courtesy of experimental multi-instrumentalist Zoots Houston), features the occasional mutant disco rhythm, and delivers some of the sleaziest basslines since Tracy Pew got his head stuck in Phill Calvert’s drum kit. That's not to say there isn't plenty of ominous cacophony here. But imagine if the Man with No Name stumbled into some sort of fever-dream ritual dance fueled by expired Four Lokos and held inside an abandoned Cash for Gold. He just might hear "Rotting Profits" coming out of whatever jerry-rigged speaker system the place had. Even the bad times are good if the music is right. All hail Kingston's finest.

[engl] One hundred miles north of New York City is a post-industrial hardscrabble up-and-down town called Kingston that currently lies somewhere in-between. Kingston is where Rider/Horse came to exist, and where they now call home. Before the Rider/Horse team-up, Cory played guitar and sang in Spray Paint, while Chris was a hired gun for the likes of Trans Am, Les Savy Fav and Scene Creamers. When normal life forced them to press pause, the construction of Select Trials became an almost daily obsession/meditation for the duo. Recorded, assembled and mixed by Chris, with sounds from a makeshift dub zone set up in the (shuttered-at-the-time) venue Cory owns, Select Trials is a pitch-perfect distillation of C & C’s mithering. “Tremolo Harm” is a high-tension wire that leads into the horizon-vanishing tones of “Chime Inn.” Other tracks, like “Guns In The Snow” and “Prawn Ranch,” radiate with drum-driven menace, echoing Big Black’s foreboding clang. “Sleeping In The Box” drills deep into the salt of the earth, searching vainly for sustenance, while “Today’s Gains” hurts like a weary back after a long shift. Finally, “Nitetime White” pulls down the shades and blots out the sun. With Select Trials—the debut album from Rider/Horse—Ever/Never Records brings you a doozy for the ages.

[engl] Born in San Francisco in 1927 Samuel Lloyd Spence is a peculiar piece in the komplicated krautrock puzzle. As an American expat working in a community of German rock musicians in the early 70s Spence shared his alien status with the likes of David Johnson and Malcolm Mooney (Can), Carole Muriel (Brainticket), Maria Archer (Embryo), Bill Barone (Wallenstein) and the band Sweet Smoke, but in Spence’s case it wasn’t the free-love and communal living that attracted him to Germanic pastures – Spence’s European travel plan was academic. Over a decade earlier Spence had travelled from California to Paris to study “serious music” composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique with the great composers Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc where he conducted alongside Jean Fournier. After settling in Europe he would later make his way to Austria and later Germany in search of a supportive community of symphony orchestras to help him develop music for film and television. Due to Communism it became difficult for Spence to enter the classical epicentre of Eastern Berlin so he settled for Munich. Throughout the mid 60s Spence kept his hand in popular music via his US connections. His original roots playing clarinet and sax in Californian swing bands had lead to paid work sending compositions to commercial Hollywood groups which lead to a part time interest in electronic instruments and the development of the synthesiser. To balance his classical composition Spence was able to use his Hollywood credentials to score German TV commissions making dozens of groovy symphonic scores with electronic flourishes and towards the end of the decade, with the help of a long term contract composing motivational music for the National Football League, Spence had raised enough capital to bring one of the very first Moog sythesisers to Germany. While in Munich Spence met an American disc jockey called Mal Sondock who had recently struck a production deal with a new German pop music label called Kuckuck. Sondock introduced Spence to a 24 year old Eckart Rahn who owned the record company and after an initial agreement to release a single of Spence’s soundtrack to the Francis Durbridge thriller series entitled ‘WIE EIN BLITZ’ (‘Like Lightning’) the pair discussed the idea of recording an LP of electronic music which would appeal to ambient and experimental enthusiasts who were searching for cosmic sounds after the rise of krautrock bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. After the release of two moog-fuelled singles including a cover version of Focus’ 1972 hit single ‘Sylvia’ Rahn agreed to release Spence’s debut LP of synthesiser based pop music which would sit amongst his eclectic Kuckuck roster including the minimal electronic pulses of Deuter, the experimental field recordings of Ernst Schultz and the avant-garde releases of Peter Michael Hamel and Terry Riley. Signed exclusively to Kuckuck in Germany Rahn recognised the potential in Spence’s synthesiser music amongst production music circles and television advertising companies so he struck up deals throughout Europe with library labels such as Brull and Dewolfe who would distribute Spence’s LPs and sublicense new Sam Spence recordings from Kuckuck for potential commercial usage. This included a whole LP of entirely electronic tracks entitled ‘The Art Of The Sythesiser’ on which he used a Moog 55 to stunning effect creating melodic pastoral pop music, freakish suspense themes and a selection of short bursts of bubbling ‘Moog Shots’ which would soon find their way into crime thrillers and action films (such as Taylor Wong’s Kung Fu fantasy film “Ru Lai Shen Zhang”) Having continued to expand his successful career in symphonic music Sam would, by the end of the 1970s, return to orchestral film music seizing further opportunities to work as a composer recording over 500 cues for films made by the NFL back in his native USA. For vinyl junkies Spence’s American Football music existed on a series Library records manufactured by NFL until it was finally commercially released in the mid-90s. Still residing in Germany, the country where he can find the best orchestras, Spence continues to make theme music. In recent years he has been heard on shows like The Simpsons, Everybody Loves Raymond, King Of Queens, Saturday Night Live, FBI’s Most Wanted, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Sponge Bob and several TV and radio commercials.

[engl] Quality cutting at 45PM at the Dubplates & Mastering studio. Standard 140g black vinyl in special blue inner sleeve. Glossy lamination finish for the outside of the outer sleeve. The inside of the outer sleeve is printed in sky blue.

[engl] The Begotten is the brainchild of Jürgen De Blonde (Köhn/de portables) and Brecht Ameel (Razen), who initially performed a number of shows and released a CS under the moniker 'Kohier' - gleefully referencing the absurdity of Belgian tax systems and institutions. On their debut LP "Temidden Laaghangende Wolken" they are joined by percussionist and improv-veteran Dirk Wachtelaer (Pablo's Eye/Vanishing Pictures), who locked with De Blonde and Ameel's post-reality continuum during a recording session at Les Ateliers Claus in Brussels. In this new trio format, The Begotten weaves a stripped-down set of after-hours, trancey observations on keys, baritone guitar and drums. Neon-lit bars are named Le Kheops or 60 Moons, streets are soaked in sheets of rain, people are staring at tax sheets and comets pass by unnoticed. Dub with tears; "Temidden Laaghangende Wolken" is the perfect backdrop of a strongly medicated game of Manillen during a 'Derrick' rerun. Edition of 250

[engl] 14 early avant-garde and electronic compositions for ballet and modern dance. The roots of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) by definition. An unlike- ly combination of early recordings by international electronic and avant-garde composers as well as infrequent collaborators retrospec- tively unified by their commitment to the musical enhancement of 20th Century ballet and the evolution of modern dance. Presenting key exponents of the musique concrete and tape music movements along- side masters of the early electric sound synthesisers, as well as pre/ anti-electronic instrument designers with non-conformist and microtonal composers, Danse Sacrale reveals a broad range of truly revolutionary musical and academic advancements which found an improbable, spo- radic and vibrant creative outlet via one of Europe’s proudest and sacred cultural institutions. Featuring composers names such as Pierre Henry, Lasry-Baschet, Igor Wakhevitch, Henk Badings, Jean-Claude Vannier and Remi Gassman alongside choreographers like Béjart, Ballancine and Yvonne Georgi, Danse Sacrale unites the unanimously lauded and the relatively unknown with some of their earliest and underexposed inhibited achievements. These rare and remastered compositions provide a concise retrospective of a previously undocumented global phenomena and an unconferred global synergy that formed the true foundations of electronic dance mu- sic and changed the perceptions of modern music and dance culture in the stern face of adversity and tradition.

[engl] This record represents an important milestone in the development and progression of musique concrète – marking a crossroad for not only the genre itself but also in the paths of its originator Pierre Schaeffer and another of the genre’s most important and respected protagonists Pierre Henry. Undoubtedly one of the most influential experimental and electroacoustic musicians, Pierre Schaeffer is also credited as being the father of the theory of musique concrete as well as later name coining the term itself. Having found a job in 1936 at Radiodiffusion Française (later Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française or RTF) as an engineer, Scaeffer developed a newly found interest in music and with the blessing of his superiors made the most of his access to the Radiodiffusion Française studios, utilising his abilities as an engineer to experiment with sound whilst collaborating with musicians and composers that passed through the station’s hallowed doors. In 1942 Schaeffer and influential theatre director, producer and actor Jacques Copeau founded the Studio d’Essai (renamed Club d’Essai in 1946) as part of RTF in order to experiment with radiophonic techniques. Drawing on the works of French filmmaker, critic and novelist Jean Epstein, Schaeffer would occupy his time and his mind with the manner in which sound recordings “revealed what was hidden in the act of basic acoustic listening” and in 1948 formally set about his research in ernest – the results of which were presented as a series of studies known as Cinq études de bruits (Five Studies of Noises) during a concert in Paris. With word of his theories and experiments spreading, Schaeffer was able to press the RTF management to further finance and in doing so expand his research. However, for an undertaking of this size he would need help. Having previously collaborated as part of his early research with a young classically trained composer by the name of Pierre Henry, Schaeffer had no problem convincing the RTF executives he was the right man of the job. By adding a third prong to this sonic fork in the shape of sound engineer Jacques Poullin, Schaeffer was able to complete a powerhouse, which he renamed the Groupe de Musique Concrete, that would push his experiments further than he could have imagined. In1951, RTF handed the trio the keys to one of the earliest purpose-build electroacoustic studios (the other being the WDR Studio in Germany), furnishing it with state of the art bespoke equipment such as a Morphophone (designed by Poullin himself and capable of tape loop-delay) and a Phonogène (a multi-headed tape instrument also designed by Poullin). The studio went from strength to strength, attracting composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Edgard Varèse to collaborate, and in that same year Schaeffer and Henry produced and premiered what is considered to be the first opera concrète, Orphèe 51. As Schaeffer’s notoriety grew as did demand for his time and he found himself increasingly called away from the studio during which time he would hand the keys to over to his colleagues. Pierre Henry wasted no time in pursuing projects closer to his own heart, working with experimental filmmakers and choreographers like Maurice Béjart (the two would later collaborate with Michel Colombier on the cult classic Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent Et Musiques Concrètes Pour Maurice Béjart). In 1957, following a particularly prolonged absence on RTF duties, Schaeffer returned unhappy with the direction the group had taken and tabled an idea to revitalise both their approach as well as personnel. As a result, Henry and several other key members left the group the following year leaving Schaeffer to lay the foundations in 1958 for a new collective called Groupe de Recherches Musicales – one of a number of theoretical and experimental groups overseen by Saeffer’s Service de la Reserche at RTF – and set about recruiting new members including Iannis Xenakis, Henri Sauguet, Luc Ferrari and Michel Philippot as well as usher in a new steady stream of eager musicians eager to study within what had rapidly become (and still is) a national institution – including a young Jean Michel Jarre! Featuring the full versions of these seminal early works (abridged versions of which had previously appeared across two 7” singles on Disques BAM) the recordings presented here are the first fruits of this new alliance and served to lay the bedrock for the future of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales research which would later count the likes of Ivo Malec, Philippe Carson, Romuald Vandelle, Edgardo Canton and François Bayle (who went on to coin the term Acousmatic Music) amongst its members and cement its place in the annals of experimental, electroacoustic and early electronic music history.

[engl] After years of mythology, misinterpretation and procrastination Nurse With Wound’s Steven Stapleton finally chooses Finders Keepers Records as the ideal collaborators to release “the right tracks” from his uber-legendary psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The Nurse With Wound List, commencing with a French specific Volume One of this authentically titled Strain Crack Break series. Featuring some Finders Keepers’ regulars amongst galactic Gallic rarities (previously presumed to be imaginary red herrings) this deluxe double vinyl dossier demystifies some of the essential French free jazz and Parisian prog inclusions from the alphabetical “dedication” inventory as printed the anti-bands 1979 industrial milestone debut. When Steven Stapleton, Heman Pathak and John Fothergill’s anti-band Nurse With Wound decided to include an alphabetical dedication to all their favourite bands on the back of their inaugural LP the notion of creating a future record dealers’ trophy list couldn’t have been further from their minds. By adding a list of untravelled European mythical musicians and noise makers to their own debut release of unchartered industrial art rock they were merely providing a suggestive support system of existing potential likeminded bands, establishing safety in numbers should anyone require sonic subtitles for Nurse With Wound’s own mutant musical language. Luckily for them, the record landed in record shops in the midst of 1979’s memorable summer of abject apathy and its sound became a hit amongst disillusioned agit-pop pickers and artsy post-punks, thus playing a key role in the bourgeoning “Industrial” genre that ensued. On the most part, however, the list , like most instruction manuals, remained unreadable, syntactic and suspiciously sarcastic… As potential “real musicians” Nurse WIth Wound became an Industrial music fan’s household name, but in contrast many of the names on The Nurse With Wound List were considered to be imaginary musicians, made-up bands or booby traps for hacks and smart-arses. It took a while for the rest of the record collecting community to catch on or finally catch up. Since then, many of the rare, obscure and unpronounceable genre-free records on The Nurse With Wound List have slowly found their own feet and stumbled in to the homes of open-minded outernational vinyl junkies, D’s and sample hungry producers, self-propelled and judged on their own merit, mostly without consultation of the enigmatic NWW map. But, to the inspective competitive collector’s chagrin, one resounding fact recurs, NWW got there first! via vinyl vacations, on cheap flights and Interrail tickets, buying bargain bin LPs on a shoestring while oblivious to the pending pension worthy price tags after their 40 year vintage, Stapleton and Fothergill, even if you’ve never heard of them, were at the bottom of the pit before “digging” became paydirt. And NOW at huge international record fairs that occur in massive exhibition halls (or within the confines of your one-touch palm pilot) amongst jive talk acronyms such as SS, PP, BIN, DNAP and BCWHES the coded letters NWW have begun to appear on stickers in the corner of original copies of the same premium progressive records accompanied by a customary 50% price hike to titillate/coerce the initiated as dealers extort the taught. Like “psych” “PINA” or “Krautrock” did before, “NWW” has become a buzzword and in the passed decades since its first publication The List has been mythologised, misunderstood and misconstrued. It’s also been overlooked, overestimated and under-appreciated in equal measures, but with a growing interest it has also come to represent a maligned genre in itself, something that all members of the original line-up would have deemed sacrilegious. Bolstered by the subtitle “Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden,” all bands on the inventory (many chosen on the strength of just one track alone) were chosen for their genre-defying qualities… A check-list for the uncharted. Forty years after Nurse With Wound’s first record, Finders Keepers Records, in close collaboration with Steve Stapleton remind fans of THIS kind of “lost” music, that there once existed a feint path which was worn away decades before major label pop property developers built over this psychedelic underground. As long-running fans and liberators of some of the same records, arriving at the same axis from different-but-the-same planets, Finders Keepers and Nurse WIth Wound finally sing from the same hymn sheet resulting in a collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from the list, succeeding where many overzealous nerds have deferred (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick). Naturally our lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium would only scratch the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities hence out decision to release volume one in a series which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focuses exclusively on individual tracks of French origin, the country that unsurprisingly hosted the highest content of bands on the list. Comprising of musique concrète, free jazz, Rock In Opposition, Zeuhl School space rock, macabre ballet music, lo-fi sci-fi, and classic horror literature inspired prog, this first volume of the series entitled Strain Crack And Break throws us in at the deep end, where the Seine meets the in-sane, introducing the space cadets that found Mars in Marseilles. Like the Swedish flat-pack record shelves that attempt to house the vast amounts of vintage vinyl that goes into a multi-volume compilation like this, it is time to prepare your own musical penchants and preconceived ideas about DIY music and hear them slowly strain, crack and break.

[engl] With his ongoing commitment to like-minded archivist label Finders Keepers Records, industrial music pioneer Steven Stapleton further entrusts us to lift the veil and expose “the right tracks” from his uber-legendary and oft misinterpreted psych/prog/punk peculiarity shopping list known as The Nurse With Wound List. Following the critically lauded first instalment and it’s exclusively French tracklisting both parties now combine their vinyl-vulturous penchants to bring you the next Strain Crack & Break edition which consists of twelve lesser-known German records that played a hugely important part in the initial foundations of the list which began to unfold when Stapleton was just thirteen-years-old. From the perspective of a schoolboy Amon Düül (ONE) victim, at the start of a journey that commenced before phrases like kosmische and the xeno-ignant Krautrock tag had become mag hack currency, this compendium is devoid of the tropes that united what many would accurately argue to be the greatest progressive pop bands in Europe (namely CAN, Neu! and Kraftwerk) and rather shatters the ingredients across a ground zero landscape for both inquisitive fans and socially rehabbing musos to begin to assemble a unique self-styled identity. If Krautrock was the music that journalist told us lurked behind schlager (German pop) in the 1970s, then this record includes the music that skulked behind Krautrock and perhaps refused to polish its backhanded name belt. Including lesser-known artists like the late Wolfgang Dauner whose career proceeded and outlived the kosmische movement while consistently informing and outsmarting ‘em whenever they got stuck in their metronomic ruts, or how about Fritz Müller, the man who was to Kraftwerk what Stuart Sutcliffe was to The Beatles but had more in common with Yoko and quite rightly couldn’t give a shit about the Fab Four’s Hamburg roots. Elsewhere we have a plethora of German bands made for German audiences as they try and shed second hand flower power Americanisms and feel the benefits of much harder drugs and the realisations of difficult second album budgets while Kommune 1 newsflashes wipe smiles from everybody’s faces and replace them with opioid chic or acid-sarcastic grins. Bonzo Cockettes show us their Big Muffs and drummers ask for extra mics while Conny Plank goes for parliamentary office and gives babies good firm hand shakes for the camera. Strain Crack & Break Volume Two is the sound of Steve Stapleton’s sponge-like mind and the dividends of anyone who was brave enough to even peek inside those brick-thick gatefold covers never mind drop the needle, with tracks by Mr. and Mrs. Fuchs (aka Anima-Sound) who played their instruments completely naked throughout their anti-career alongside previously unpressed tracks by the scene’s leading Detroit-born African American drummer Fred Braceful who’s band Exmagma officially had the coolest record sleeves and track titles of ALL TIME (Torpedo Tits? Yes Please!). From an era where it was embarrassing to go into your local record shop and hum the tune over the counter, well that young lad Steve Stapleton was braver than that, and besides, these tracks are unhummable and at times unutterable. Did somebody in the crowd shout out for Joel Vandroogenbroeck! Good luck with that one. Stapleton is sharing. Even Stevens. Over forty years since Nurse With Wound’s first album was released, Finders Keepers Records and Steve Stapleton take connoisseurs of OUR kind of music, back to the disused elevator shaft towards ground zero. Arrriving at the same checkout from different departments, Finders Keepers and Nurse With Wound continue to sing from the same hymnal with this ongoing collaborative attempt to officially, authentically and legally compile the best tracks from Steve’s list, where many overzealous nerds have faltered (or simply, got the wrong end of the stick). After Strain Crack & Break Volume One merely scratched the surface of this DIY dossier of elongated punk-prog peculiarities, our second lavish metallic gatefold double vinyl compendium drives a much deeper groove, which, in accordance with Steve’s wishes, focusses exclusively on individual tracks of German origin – the country whose music forged the prototype of the NWW inventory in the form of his secondary school vinyl want-list in the early 1970s. Comprising of disassembled free jazz, unshowered stoner psych, hypnotic prog, deranged monk funk and fuzzed out Deutschmark bin bonzo beats this second volume of the series throws us straight back in the deep end, putting the Bad in Baden and the odour in The Oder with little need for cheap Cologne. Willkommen to another forgotten plateau found beneath the psychedelic underground, as Steve Stapleton and Finders Keepers dig new tunnels through the fabric of your vinyl wish-list, these German records are heavy, so find Solid Ground or watch you floorboards Strain Crack & Break before your bloody ears.

[engl] All the way from Sydney, ever/never records presents you with a masterpiece for our current times. It has the aura of a great classic record, avant-garde meets melodic intensities and contemporary poetry while inviting the listener to the urgent need for collective reflection. A fantastic array of players with complex instrumentation offer us intricate narratives and multilayered soundscapes: Maeve Parker (flute, poetry, xylophone, and keys), Lyn Heazlewood (guitar, fan, vocals, and accordion) Sabina Rysnik (guitar, vocals, and keys), and Andrew McLellan (bass, vocals, electronics, and piano). Marcus Whale lends saxophone on 'Fantasy in Facsimile'. I was already incredibly excited about this record since Andrew McLellan's Cured Pink album Current Climate (also published on CD by ever/never) is for me, one of the best records of the last decade. Experimental no-wave dub as its best. The expectations have not only been met but astoundingly exceeded. Witness K is a different affair altogether from Current Climate. Sparse but thoughtful. Recitations punctuated by sparks of shoegaze interventions make the mood serene but with a constantly menacing undercurrent. The compositions, the playing, and the production are masterfully accomplished; clear, precise, and beautifully executed. Think if the Shadow Ring finally play with their idols ZNR and together they invite Florence Shaw and Roland S. Howard to do a non- commercial city pop record to be produced by Mica Levi. This album cuts through the confusing digital entropic reality, in order to give you the necessary space to reflect while wandering subtly through field recordings, poetry, and voices that take you to different situations at the edge of memory and consciousness. There is a certain atemporality to this record. Or rather it puts you exactly at that moment where history is breaking in two. As if you suddenly were in San Francisco in 1981, when Throbbing Gristle were disintegrating but a new beginning was also being constructed. Between the end of an era and the beginning of a new adventure. Captivating nostalgia for a past that you know you just have to let pass and move forward. No need to panic. ASMR melodies whisper to you that there is a future beyond our melting ground and that it is possible to crawl into the surface of a ragged society so you can keep going and able to build something different, something better and more honest. This is already marked in the name of the band which connects the dark undercurrent that goes through the record and refers to one of the most turbulent geopolitical Australian incidents in the last two decades. Witness K was a highly decorated ASIS officer (Australia's overseas secret intelligence agency) who revealed that in 2004 during the negotiations with East Timor for the extraction of oil and gas, the Australian secret service bugged East Timor's government and president's office so they could have the upper hand during the negations. This obviously resulted in an extremely bad deal with East Timor. Australia has done everything possible to hide this case. Witness K is not about seeking discounted redemption, but showing that the ground is unstable, that this disintegrating society also offers the possibility of constructing a better future. It gives you the necessary warmth to acknowledge that the world is fucked but there is something that we can do about it. The more you listen to it the more layers you discover and the more you get. Opaque in the most positive way, this record is necessary. — Mattin (author of Social Dissonance)