Dylan Houser and Hal McGee – Stipulations Without Frontiers (HalTapes)

Label Description: Dylan Houser and Hal McGee recorded the sounds of Stipulations Without Frontiers from January 1-23, 2025 with Sony ICD PX-470 stereo digital dictaphones in Lakeland and Gainesville, Florida. On January 27th we created a dictaphone assemblage by playing our 274 recordings on four PX-470s in random/shuffle mode, and we recorded the mix directly into Audacity with no post production.

Dylan Houser: voice (demonic or otherwise), percussion, HiChord pocket synthesizer, door harp, wind chimes, oversized Christmas bell, blowing bubbles in a beverage with a straw, celebrity impersonations, automobiles passing by, foot steps, sprinklers, the air, fm radio, shortwave radio, not needing AI, button pressing, NOINPUTMIXER app, Koala app, TikTok samples, running water, unidentified clanging, pocket shuffling, and various assorted outdoor field recordings (and some indoor, too)

Hal McGee: sounds of my daily life, spoken words, my dog Stanley, neighbors and family, sending postal mail, conversations with Charles Rice Goff III and a former co-worker and Trevor Luke, crows and whippoorwills, Yamaha ReFace CS synth, airplanes and helicopters, Steinway baby grand piano, Yamaha Reface YC mini-organ, two string pink dumpster guitar, medical staff and hospital sounds, flowing water, circuit bent Casio SK-1, leaf blowers and garbage trucks, transparent plastic ukulele, Casio VA-10, Casio VL-Tone.

This album is dedicated to the immortal memories of Harold McGee (June 13, 1936-January 9, 2025) and Chef Jakether Black-Houser (ca. 2014-January 28, 2025).
  

Xorgett – Pareidol Detarutas (Opal)

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Label Description: Xorgett’s latest offering occupies a singular territory where processed cello becomes a vehicle for deep listening and destabilized perception. Moving beyond the academic severity often found in electroacoustic work, these compositions achieve a rare balance between instrumental virtuosity and electronic intervention, creating environments that feel both archaic and hypermodern.

The integration of voice and strings produces moments of startling intimacy, yet the electronic treatments ensure we remain at a critical distance – never quite able to grasp the human elements before they dissolve into granular cascades and spectral residue. There’s a profound tension between the cello’s inherent warmth and the clinical precision of digital processing, suggesting both the comfort of familiar forms and their inevitable dissolution.

What distinguishes this work is its refusal to settle into either pure abstraction or conventional musicality. Instead, it charts a course through territories where recognition constantly slips away – like watching faces emerge and recede in clouds. The result is less a collection of compositions than a series of perceptual exercises, each track carefully dismantling our expectations of how acoustic instruments should behave in electronic spaces. This is music that demands full immersion while remaining eternally elusive.

In moments of “representational catastrophe,” Xorgett transports us into a hypnotic state, a radical sensory overload that dissolves meaning and thrusts us into “hypostasis”—a liminal zone where abstraction and the concrete collide. These tracks are a sonic journey from order to abyss, from symbolic meaning to pure, resonant sensation—a soundtrack to the world’s own oscillating dance between chaos and creation.

Various Artists – Noise Forest (Cold Spring)

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Label Description:

A classic compilation that emanated out of Osaka, “Noise Forest” brings together a powerhouse of early 90’s Japanese noise stalwarts: MERZBOW, C.C.C.C., SOLMANIA, DISLOCATION, MONDE BRUITS, MASONNA, VIOLENT ONSEN GEISHA, and INCAPACITANTS.

The ultimate Japanoise collection, originally released in 1992 on the cult Les Disques Du Soleil label / record store on CD-only, and now impossible to find. Remastered and presented here on deluxe 2LP in matt-laminate gatefold sleeve (first time on vinyl) and new CD edition, all with new artwork.

A forest isn’t something normally associated with noise; it brings to mind silence and solitude. However, the ominous cover art here – and the artists within – bring to mind the notorious suicide forest Aokigahara. Despite all tracks falling into the Japanoise genre, the tracks are very diverse, yet every track is so distinct it could only be by that artist.

Notes on each track taken from Noisextra’s ‘Noise Forest’ special: www.noisextra.com/2024/01/10/various-artists-noise-forest

• CD in matt-laminate digipak.

• 2LP Black in matt-laminate gatefold sleeve.

• 2LP Forest Green in matt-laminate gatefold sleeve. Ltd 250 copies.

releases December 6, 2024

1. recorded at ZSF Produkt Studio, 11/07/91
2. recorded at Telecom Studio 06/07/91
3. recorded & mixed at works Fatagaga 07/91
4. edited by Dislocation 1991. Includes live recordings at Freebird (03/02/91) and Bubble (21/02/91). F.Kimura (guitars), K.Kiyokawa (performance), Y.Yanagawa (sax), T.Osaki (electronics)
7. recorded in 1989
8. T.Mikawa + F.Kosakai

Mastered by Martin Bowes
Layout by Abby Helasdottir

{AN} EeL – Glitter & Brimstone & Gold (Pan Pan Pan Avian Distress Call)

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Label Description:

It’s A Hell of a thing ,
A Lingering sting
A Diamond Ring
Dropped right down a sink
A Bubble
And Bubble
And Toile & Trubble
Witches Brooms & Warlocks Wobble
A Kiss in the Graveyard and
The dust of bones in churches
Lurches forwards, Shudders
and Halts
Bring it up to the earth,
Earth straight from the vaults ~

It’s all your fault

Hal McGee – Microcassette Mischief (HalTapes)

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Label Description: four microcassette collages
recorded mostly in August 2024
with a Sony M-570V Microcassette-corder
pillow diaries and text cut-ups
voices of family members, my dog Stanley
Trevor Luke, and other friends
including sounds of appliances
and other sounds of my daily life
sounds of Squared Wave on August 14, 2024
including my entire performance at that show

Violeer – Fairgrounds (Self-Released)

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Label Description:

i began recording fairgrounds in january of 2024 in an attempt to capture the intensity of our recent string of live shows throughout central ohio…as violeer had always been a project that i had shared with my husband since its inception…

however…throughout the spring and early summer of 2024 our creative and romantic partnership slowly eroded and the release evolved into something else…a dark meditation on loss, addiction, mental illness and the quiet rage that follows when everything that was once familiar is no longer…when forever becomes finite…

recorded in columbus ohio

january through may 2024

no coast

no sea

no eloquence of hope

credits

released June 2, 2024

matthew soko: lyrics, vocals, tape loops, noise, objects, arrangement

joseph morgan: original artwork and video

license

all rights reserved