A Number Of Small Things/Labels/Forced NostalgiaArtikel

Vazz / La Bambola Del Dr Caligari - Whisper Not / The Wrong Holiday 18,99 €

The Forced Nostalgia label continues to expand and inform with the release of this split release featuring 1980's outfits Vazz and La Bambola Del Dr Caligari. Limited to 500 copies only!
The A-side features six tracks from Glasgow's Vazz, a duo consisting of Anna Howson & Hugh Small. "Whisper Not" was recorded at the legendary Hellfire Club in Glasgow in 1982 and was eventually released on limited edition cassette, before the band were signed up to appear on the 2xLP compilation "Antelopes & Alligators" on Operation Twilight - a sublabel of Belgium's infamous Les Disques Du Crépuscules. For one reason or another the compilation never materialised - but the reference to Crépuscules should give you some idea of where Vazz figure in the scheme of things. "Whisper Not" really is an astonishing collection of tracks - a small but perfectly formed companion piece of sorts to Antena's "Camino Del Sol" (which appeared in the same year), with Anna Howson's distinctive voice accompanying guitars, bass, drum machine, percussion and the Casio MT-30 keyboard - a classic configuration. But what sets Vazz apart from their contemporaries is Hugh Small's forward thinking production signatures - something that's most evident on "Cast Reflections" - the standout track on this mesmerising set. The way the drum machine and guitar have been treated and compressed sounds like something from The Cure's "Faith" album reworked in a current electronic studio - it's just a profoundly beautiful and affecting piece. It really is hard to believe that these tracks have languished in the archives until now.
The B-side features Italy's La Bambola Del Dr Caligari and 5 tracks recorded between 1983 and 1986. The band were a short-lived minimal synth trio from Bologna, Italy, consisting of the exotically named Judy Asquith (voice), Aurelium Spitty (sound engineer, synth, drum machines, effects) and J.R. Ewing (keyboards, effects). They recorded their first demo tape in early 1984 and sporadically played live in 1985/86, eventually arranging the soundtrack for an installation at the art gallery Number Zero (Bologna) in Feb 1986. Several self-produced tapes were recorded over the years but were never properly released. In 2005 Roberto Napoli mastered all the recordings from the analogue tapes and kindly assisted in editing the selections made by Forced Nostalgia. The result features some of the finest lost-andfound musical gems from the '80s gloom-pop era, finally available for public consumption 25 years after they were recorded..

Tracklisting:
Vazz - Whisper Not
A1. Want of Anger
A2. Cast Reflections
A3. Lost Time
A4. Thirst for White
A5. Endless Road
A6. Flute Dance
La Bambola Del Dr Caligari - The Wrong
Holiday
B1. Strawberry Creeps
B2. Blue Soldier
B3. Deep Skanner
B4. Satan's Pride
B5. Voices On Am (Edit)

Cicciolina Holocaust / Sermonizer - Albeit Albeit / Sibelius Spiders 15,99 €

"Enter Forced Nostalgia - a label mining the post-punk underground of dark electronics. Judging from this release and their upcoming programming for "a wayward selection of often unreleased, mostly unheard and overlooked material from tape music to industrial, from bossa-pop to proto-techno, and from drone to out and out analogue experimentation," Forced Nostalgia looks to be something wholly different from Vinyl-On-Demand, Minimal Wave, and Dark Entries. The bands here are two terminally obscure Italian industrial outfits who made these recordings in the early '80s with a clear aesthetic framework set forward by the Industrial Records model of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Clock DVA, and Cabaret Voltaire. Cicciolina Holocaust's woozy cornet buried in the mix of murky rhythms and electronic arpeggiations certainly draw their inspiration from the early productions of Chris & Cosey (think Heartbeat and the collaborative single with John Duncan) and of course there's plenty of TG to be heard in the mix. There are a couple of exceptional minimal wave numbers with clockwork nocturnal techno modulations and super creepy windswept dronings, all of which have been expertly remastered and sound really amazing on this piece of vinyl. Sermonizer harkens from the same realm of spooky electronics, with weirdly plucked guitars working through tape-delay splutter which is more Illitch than TG. Cold radio detunings, dark meanderings of synth warble, and highly sexualized moans and groans flush out Sermonizer's contribution to the split. All of these tracks seem to have come from private cassettes handed out back in the day. This is an amazing find and whets our appetite for what else Forced Nostalgia will be offering in the years to come." Aquarius Records

Pump - The Decoration Of The Duma Continues 18,99 €

"The excellent Forced Nostalgia label strikes pay dirt again with this reissue of little-known UK group Pump's jaw-dropping 1987 debut album, The Decoration of the Duma Continues. Pump, a duo of Andrew Cox and David Elliott, had previously recorded numerous cassettes as MFH and had collaborated with the likes of Nurse with Wound before conjuring up this amazing blend of electro post-punk black magick. Decoration at times draws similarities to works by peers like 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire, This Heat, and even a bit of early Coil, blending pummeling drum machine rhythms with dark synth drones, deep echo-chamber bellowing vocals, and the eerie whirs and squeals of manipulated tapes and guitars. Karl Blake from Shock Headed Peters and Lemon Kittens provides guest vocals on one track, and the whole thing shines as an unfairly overlooked document of the fertile mid/late-'80s transition/cross-pollination of the post-punk and industrial scenes. Even at its noisiest, this album has a deep streak of beauty lying underneath, and anyone with an interest in this sound and era would be foolish for passing this up. It's remastered and presented in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve, and like all the best stuff coming out these days, is limited. Buy now or cry later, trust me!" Other Music

Packed in a beautiful gatefold vinyl pressing - with a suitably rich master and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

Loren Nerell - Point Of Arrival 18,99 €

Latest release on the excellent Forced Nostalgia imprint, a vinyl edition of a super-rare 1986 tape by sound designer at Oberheim Electronics, Loren Nerell. 500 copies only!
Forced Nostalgia make their first physical impression of 2012 with a vinyl edition of a mystical 1986 tape by gamelan enthusiast and Berlin school composer Loren Nerell. A contemporary of Steve Roach and collaborator with Steve Reich, Kronos Quartet, Paul Haslinger and L. Subramaniam, Nerell has a richly varied musical background including research into analog synthesis, and the micro-tonal techniques of Harry Partch, complemented by his studies in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. The bat-eared Forced Nostalgia imprint have shrewdly selected his debut release - an enigmatic and hypnotic side sonically and spiritually located somewhere between Craig Leon's 'Nommos', 23 Skidoo's 'Urban Gamelan' and Tangerine Dream's 'Rubycon' - for reissue. Utilising studio skills as a sound designer at Oberheim Electronics, together with his masters studies in Balinese ceremonial music, Nerell created an enveloping rhythmelodic experience with the help of contributors Steve Roach, Richard Burmer and Ann DeJarnet. From the interweaving tribal rhythm sequences of opener 'Eidolon', the album dilates to cover the haunting chorales of 'Soundscape' and rippling machine minimalism of 'Matrix', before the lushly soporific synth drift of 'Growth', conceived with assistance from Steve Roach. Berlin school themes define the re-entry into expansive cyberdelic B-side 'Waves of Time'. Polyphonic keys and simulated celestial winds carry us across cyberreal topographies accompanied by chanting shamans to then-advanced (now charmingly evocative) holo-zones of lucidly organised dreamscapes. It's a vivid glimpse of a future past, re-implanted in the present and highly recommended to all sonic time-travellers.

John Avery - Jessica In The Room Of Lights 18,99 €

Vinyl cut by Lupo at D&M, Berlin and limited to 500 copies. RIYL anything from Max Richter to Kareem and Coil!
Forced Nostalgia’s sixth release imposes the uncannily affective melancholia of John Avery’s 1986 soundtrack to a theatre performance ‘Jessica In The Room Of Lights’ by the coincidentally named Forced Entertainment company.
Avery employs piano, synth, tape and FX in chillingly purposeful union to reflect the piece’s storyline, itself centred around a cinema usherette for whom the lines between fiction and reality become blurred, and its intertwined themes of failed romance and the infidelity of memory. It’s a largely unknown yet spellbinding touchstone in the canon of Sheffield’s industrial music heritage, coming from a latterday member of Hula, the steel city unit based at Hula Kula - a villa shared with various notables such as Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA’s Paul Widger.
Recording at Sheffield’s Vibrasound studios, Avery casts a lonely shadow from solemn solo piano figures, mottled electronics, and Spanish and fretless guitars, layering possessed chants and disembodied voices amongst the gauzy atmospheres in an unheimlich narrative miasma, crawling thru the ether-dream ambience of ‘Do This To Another Human Being’ across the desolate tract of ‘Selling Plastic’ to the melodic salvation of the title track, looping a chilling synth hook to the bewitching vocals of Catherine Naden. But it’s a brief window of light, preparing us for the sepulchral descent into ‘Zero, Zero One, Zero One, Zero One’ and the windswept moorland isolation of ‘The Day Serenity Returned To The Ground’, to leave us with the plaintive and emotional piano articulation of ‘Almost’.