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.

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Mastered and Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering Winter, 2011.

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.

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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

We 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 it's 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 Francois 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.

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Here at Spectrum Spools, one of the many missions is to make sure great, under-documented, and limited offerings get a chance to see a wider release. No UFO's debut cassette,"Soft Coast" (2010, Nice Up Int'l), is surely no exception. It was said about the Swell Maps "A Trip to Marineville" that the album had been obviously crafted by true music lovers who were record collectors. It seems that Konrad Jandavs' debut as No UFO's was calculated and carefully pieced together to spawn a whole new universe from the omniverse of collective musics, a feat which many attempt but few succeed. Lazy comparisons to Neu! and other such kraut-oriented material have bubbled up here and there, but Jandavs' vision, as with any great recording artist, is all his own; a new perspective from looking at musics past and present.

"Soft Coast" began Jandavs' short, yet potent string of collaged "cosmic trash" which gripped the underground tape scene. Since he's just seen the drop of his new "Mind Controls the Flood" EP on Public Information and has future releases planned, it seems wrong to let this one slip thru the cracks any longer. A killer debut out of the blue, more than deserving of wider recognition, now available on vinyl.

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"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.

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"Elemental Disgrace" is an album that needs to happen now. Finally, the next phase has arrived - a stunning double side-long record of some of the U.S. best underground synthesizer music we have heard here at the Spectrum Spools headquarters.

Whatever rise to the synthesizer came later on in the 00's is hardly of any concern to Greh Holger and his Hive Mind project. Having released private press cassettes of solo synth works as far back as 2002, Hive Mind exists as enigmatic in world of new-jack synthheads and the tidal wave of "neo kosmische" that goes with it by flying far under it's radar.

The silence is now broken and here we are treated to some of the most unique sounds Spectrum Spools has yet presented. No blisscapes to be found here. No soaring latched arpeggios, no cosmic vistas. Not a single melody. This is two sides of ancestral ruin in its clearest and most focused presentation. The brutality of the Earth and the harsh reality of all that it holds. Unknowable sounds - that of the dawn of the Earth, or perhaps the sound of its demise. A toxic swamp of chemicals and mutated organisms left behind long after man has wiped himself away for good. Field recordings from the end of the world.

While others are racing for the stars, Hive Mind's tetonic plate shifting and brutal rumble will give you a brand new way to look at modern synthesizer composition. With a focus on textural sounds and shifting frequency registers, this album gives the listener the a full range of listening possibilities with infinite replay value.

It's worth noting that Spectrum Spools as a label would not exist without Hive Mind. An inspiration and a pioneer in the modern U.S. synthesizer circuit, it's with pleasure and honor to release "Elemental Disgrace" into the world.

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All tracks by Daren Ho

Originally released on cassette in an edition of 100 by Root Strata as Root 91

POPULAR TAGS: Ambient, Analog, Baroque, Beautiful, Bizarre, Boring, Cold, "Daren Ho", Digital, Driphouse, Drone, Electronic, Electronica, Experimental, Floating, Harpsichord, "Library Electronics", Modular, Mysterious, Piano, Psychedelic, Puzzling, Satie, "Spectrum 008", "Spectrum Spools", Sterilized, Synthesizers, Ugly, Wendy Carlos, Wobbly, WTF, Zig-Zag

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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.

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For the last few years, Chris Madak has been on a tangled and cryptic path toward the full realization of his Bee Mask alterego. Now, for the first time there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel - a chance for old plans to come to fruition and for new ideas to blossom into the unknown. "Elegy for Beach Friday" is a personal selection of highlights from a slew of limited cassette and CDr editions recorded between 2003 and 2010, reimagined, reedited, and remastered, offering both a cross-section for the uninitiated and a fresh enigma for the already-enchanted. The original documents will age on the shelves of those fortunate enough to have been the know, and for the rest of the world, we now have this double LP retrospective of Chris' favorite time-stopping microcosmic suites, woven together over four instantly classic sides of wax. Here, the full range of Bee Mask's sonic palette has been carefully compressed into a dazzling and infinitely dense time capsule of mind-altering Martian sound fields and psychedelic dimension bending, bridging the worlds of Nikola Tesla and Lamonte Young and giving us the ideal soundtrack for our collective walk down a dirt road into the gaseous cloud of our final days.

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"House" is the 2nd official full-length offering by Cleveland, Ohio duo MIST featuring Sam Goldberg (of Radio People) and John Elliott (Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods etc) after 2009's self-titled debut effort on Amethyst Sunset.
A suite consisting of 7 complex, layered compositions shows new progression in composition and melody from the duo. From the lightning fast, bittersweet crescendo of "Twin Lanes" to the dramatic chord progressions of "I Can Still Hear Your Voice", "House" is a certain expansion in execution and construction. Tracks like "P.M." put a new take on the long-form Mist style with cryptic alien vocoder and humid pad sounds, while "Mist House" and "Dead Occasion" reveal new, complex territories that will most certainly please fans of the previous Mist recordings.

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"House" is the 2nd official full-length offering by Cleveland, Ohio duo MIST featuring Sam Goldberg (of Radio People) and John Elliott (Emeralds, Outer Space, Imaginary Softwoods etc) after 2009's self-titled debut effort on Amethyst Sunset.
A suite consisting of 7 complex, layered compositions shows new progression in composition and melody from the duo. From the lightning fast, bittersweet crescendo of "Twin Lanes" to the dramatic chord progressions of "I Can Still Hear Your Voice", "House" is a certain expansion in execution and construction. Tracks like "P.M." put a new take on the long-form Mist style with cryptic alien vocoder and humid pad sounds, while "Mist House" and "Dead Occasion" reveal new, complex territories that will most certainly please fans of the previous Mist recordings.

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FORMA (Mark Dwinell, Sophie Lam, & George Bennett) emerged on the NYC minimal synth scene in 2010 with a singular vision of cosmic Krautrock for a new age.
On their eponymous debut LP, the Brooklyn-based electronics trio merges the melodic flow and primitive rhythms of their motorik predecessors with the hypnotic drones of Minimalism, creating an intricate work both addicting and rewarding with repeat listens. Like many of the LP's eleven tracks, the churning and relentless FORMA237B draws its energy from a precarious equilibrium between structural rigidity and free improvisation, a dynamic at the heart of FORMA's universe.
With lush, distant soundscapes as interludes between these peaks, FORMA's inaugural full-length is a harmonious and expansive expression of the enduring power of Kosmische musik.

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Canzoni dal Laboratorio del Silenzio Cosmico" is an outstanding document in the long and complex Bee Mask discography, part of an astounding body of work that's been brewing since the mid-00's, and a carefully and meticulously composed album on par with the classics of the Lovely Music and INA-GRM catalogs.
Straying from the status quo of improvised "one take" synthesizer music flooding the underground electronic community today, Chris Madak has created an elaborate and captivating work, a soundtrack to an event shrouded in mystery and beauty, at once larger than life in it's grandeur and cryptic in its reserve.
Released as a limited edition cassette on Gift Tapes last year and now where it should be, on the longest-surviving phonographic format.

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Matthew Mullane is a Chicago multi-instrumentalist performing under the guise of Fabric.
Here we have a fine suite of compositions which embark on a voyage through darkness of night and the brightness of day. Washed out dark colors and static pulses sweep across your stereo painting a portrait of intense yearning and determination. Recorded over the course of a year, Matthew has constructed a multi dimensional organism of sound that has perplexing depth and astounding detail.
The album reveals new shapes and sizes with repeat listens and is truly a work which you can submerge yourself in to get lost. "Leaving the House" is an energetic workout with it's dense, ultraviolet fog and stream-like melodies.
Then there's the vignettes such as "Orange and Red" or "Containers", that branch out into unfamiliar territory in their own special ways synthesizing a journey far from home.
So far, Fabric releases have appeared in very small editions including a split with Sparkling Wide Pressure and a practically non-existent cassette on Fairchild Tapes. Spectrum Spools is proud to kick off the label by presenting the debut Fabric album.

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