BABEL: Thirteen Exquisite Corpses

Release date: Oct 31, 2019
Styles: Atmospheric post-rock, meditative, dark new age, ecstatic ambient, drone, neo-classical, free improvisation, gothic film music
Similar vibes: Black Tape For A Blue Girl; Dead Can Dance; Trial of the Bow; Stephen Micus; RAIC; The Last Temptation of Christ OST.

Thirteen Exquisite Corpses is the 200th and final release on Arachnidiscs Recordings, coming 20 years after the label’s first release. A collaborative work of 13 “improvised compositions” split into two suites. It was recorded under the ensemble name BABEL by bandleader and Arachnidiscs head, Jakob Rehlinger. Thirteen Exquisite Corpses was recorded using a modified version of the “exquisite corpse” collaborative technique usually employed in visual art or writing where each collaborator is only aware of the tail end of the previous collaborator’s contribution. In this case each of the 8 collaborators improvised to a series of minimal synthesizer drones provided by Rehlinger, unaware of each others’ addition, which Rehlinger then edited into cohesive works. The album is presented as a 2CD edition in a 24 page hardback book. 

THE BABEL ENSEMBLE:
Jakob Rehlinger
Matthew Fava
Kayla Milmine
Brodie West
Eiyn Sof
Andrew MacGregor
Roan Bateman
M. Mucci
Dominic Marion   

Releases Round-up: August 2019

We’be had a number of releases across numerous genres since our last update. Give them a listen, below.

Available on pre-order

Dynamic free-jazz from The Side Eye (Aug. 30, 2019)

OUT NOW

Experimental electro-acoustics from Mira Martin-Grey.
Limited quantities.

Lynchian bunker jazz from Women of the Pore. SOLD OUT

Floyd-worshiping instrumental space rock from Heavy Moon.

Experimental minimalist free jazz from A Half With Tinnitus.
Limited quantities.

Kosmische jamming post rock from Stargoon. SOLD OUT

Dark ambient esoteric ritual music from Serpent Season.
Limited quantities.

Crystalline ambient electro-acoustic drift from storyinsoil. SOLD OUT

Cosmic analogue synthesizer for black holes from Jakob Rehlinger. Limited quantities.

 

Releases Round-Up April 2019

We’ve had a number of releases and pre-orders out since our last update. From kosmische drones to punk-dub to ecstatic free-improvisation and guitar noise, take a listen below.

Available on pre-order:

 

Released:

 

 

2019 resolution: stop posting releases here

Long story short, I’m going to stop posting each release Arachnidiscs Recordings puts out. Why? This website/blog/wordpress was only ever meant to be a cheap (as in free) stand-in for a flashier, more professional webstore. This was back in the days before Bandcamp existed and provided you a free (almost) webstore architecture. Since if you click “purchase” on a post here, it just takes you to our Bandcamp anyways, these posts have become superfluous (especially since our analytics tell us not many of you are getting there from here anymore). Instead this website will be used for posting videos and interviews.

That said, since the last release update here, there’s been a few excellent CD and cassette releases which you will see stacked vertically in Bandcamp players below for your listening and, if you’re so moved, purchasing pleasure.

 

PYROCLASTICAL: Axis of Evil CD

Limited edition CD in white digipak, numbered, hand-stamped discs, exclusive art card

Styles: EBM, industrial, IDM, avant-garde electronica, harshe techno
Sort of similar:  Various Warp Records and Wax Trax! releases. If Richard D. James did instrumental remixes of Nitzer Ebb

<<ORDER HERE>> $6.00 CAD (+ regional shipping)

This group of strangers has its origin in the electronic underground punk scene of Surabaya. Nobody knows who they are, how many they are, or what their real names are. The name of the project is Pyroclastical, and its function in this world is to blow up your mind. Pyroclastical is a mixture of raw sounds that make you think… but without any pretension to be “excessively” intellectual.

This album is a sound collage inspired by the concept of “Axis of Evil”, popular on the media during the War of Afghanistan in 2003.

It is not a political criticism, but a critique of the nominal and mainstream concepts of propaganda and capitalism. But not only in the fields of politics.

Some people trust in leaders and that’s fine, but many times we are deceived by them, because we trust on their promises… in a blind way…  and some people steal our illusions without any remorse, pointing to others as the guilty powers that caused all the mess and despair.

Each one of the tracks refers to a city in the member countries of the “Axis of Evil”.

 

FLATBED: Drug Mom (12″ EP)

One-sided 12″ EP, screen printed covers, numbered edition.

Styles: Noise-rock, noisecore, punk, free-improv, instrumental speed punk
Sort of similar: The Bark Haze, KEN mode, Melt Banana without the cuteness, Skullflower but faster and with more intensity, early Swans on massive amounts of speed, Merzbow played by Big Black

<<ORDER HERE>> $10 cad (+ regional shipping)

FLATBED have been wiping Nanaimo, BC, off the face of the map for about 15 years now. They’re the bastard brainchild of a guy named Mike Thibodeau who plays a two-stringed bass, comes up with the song titles, and is the only permanent member. Past members have included guitarists Andrew MacGregor (The Bark Haze, Gown), Ken Holiday (The Crusties, Void Fill) and Jakob Rehlinger (Void Fill, Semen Priest, etc) but you don’t join FLATBED for the long haul, you join to spill bile all over the stage for 15 minutes and get the hell out, leaving behind blown eardrums and stunned faces. There’s new guys on guitar now, they’re called Shrum and Jub. On drums Lindsay (Bash Brothers, Hag Face) is the fourth lady to beat the hell out of the skins for FLATBED. Drug Mom is their sixth release.

MOTH BUCKET: Music For Homemade Instruments CD

Styles: Free-improv, noise, drone, new music, experimental, electro-acoustic, musique concrete
Sort of similar: Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Pelt, Faust, a cassette of ethnological music being eaten by a tape recorder that’s being crushed in a trash-compactor, Life In The Bush of Luc Ferrari

>>>Order here: $6.00 CAD (+ regional shipping rates)<<<

Moth Bucket is an electroacoustic duo from central Pennsylvania. Combining a professional background in new music/avant-garde classical performance and composition with a not-so-professional background in noise, the pair plays improvisational music with an assortment of unconventional instruments, both acoustic and electronic.

DARK BIRD: In A Milky Way CD

Styles: Post-rock, ambient, kosmische, chill-out, drone, psych-folk
Sort of similar: Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd, Tortoise

>>>ORDER HERE: $5.00 CAD plus regional shipping<<<

Dark Bird describes In A Milky Way as “lazy, hazy, cosmic, psych-folk electronica” and we describe it as “kosmische new age post-rock for stargazing.” Tomato/tomato.

See also, the trance-inducing intergalactic video for the title track by Melissa Boraski (aka Eiyn Sof).

BIO:

Dark Bird was founded by Roan Bateman in 2005 in Toronto (2013 he moved to Waterloo), and has been the home for almost all of his home-recorded music. His sound is often personal and low-key, but covers a lot of ground. The influences range from psychedelic, folk, alternative, electronic, ambient, experimental and more. Roan is a singer/songwriter, but often records instrumentals. Usually these two approaches will be kept separate from album to album, but there is definitely some overlap.

Dark Bird self-released Long Gone in 2007 and played numerous shows around Toronto for a few years. It became too much to continue with music while juggling family & work. Roan became focused on visual art as a creative outlet—designing album covers, T-shirts, and concert posters for Hawkeyes, Comet Control, Skydiggers, Michael Hurley, and Marissa Anderson among others as well as artwork for effect pedals by Greenhouse Effects—only performing and recording sporadically.

2018 will see the release of two new albums. In A Milky Way, which is an instrumental EP of lazy, hazy, cosmic, psych-folk electronica. To be released by Arachnidiscs Recordings in the summer as a limited edition CD, and digitally on Bandcamp. The full-length album, Lay Low, will be released by Ur Audio-Visual this Fall as a cassette, and also digitally on Bandcamp.

 

HEAVY MOON: 13 (digipak)

Styles: Space rock, acid rock, prog, kosmische, psychedelic, desert rock, retro proto-metal
Probably blatant influences: King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Sabbath, Nebula, Erkin Koray.

>>>Order here: $7 CAD + regional shipping<<<

Released on Friday the 13th, at 13:00pm, it’s the 13th instalment by the long-running psychedelic/space-rock project, and the “proggiest and foggiest” Heavy Moon to date. Thirteen trips through acid-fuzzed desert doom guitars, elfin flutes, acoustic daydreams, mellow mellotrons, cosmic synths and eastern visions.

 

Forager: Decay-Swarms CDr

Styles: Freak-folk, american primitive guitar, post-rock, instrumental, acoustic improv
Similarities: The spiritual lyricism of Ben Chazny mixed with the stark brutalism of M.Gira. James Blackwell camping in a lo-fi cave. A doomcore John Fahey.

>>>Order here: $6 CAD + regional shipping<<<

Decay/Swarms is comprised of two guitar compositions recorded in single long takes. Both pieces are in an alternate tuning, and both explore various finger-picking patterns and musical styles, documenting durational guitar playing that changes speed and mood as the player cycles through emotion, fatigue, silence, tactile intimacy, and sudden improvisation.

The second piece, “Swarms” is dedicated to the late Ana-Maria Avram. It is inspired by her music, and in its later moments reinterprets her composition “Swarms for string orchestra”.