Available Tapes

Tapes

Tom Carter and Eric Arn - Pohyb-zvuk-prostor Žive v Opave
Sachiko - Cassini
Bridge Of Flowers - S/T
Miminokoto: KOENJI 07/02/2016
Kris Vanderstraeten & Frederik Leroux: Live at The Audioplant
My Cat Is An Alien & Nad Spiro - La Casa Encendida
Kabouter Chismus - S/T

Broadside

Mia Kirsi Stageberg - A Few Things You Might Not Know About Trolls

Lp

Fursaxa - Immured LP
Ilta Hämärä - Saivo

Books

Bart De Paepe - mellow my mind: a sloow tapes discography
Bob Forrest - John Michell: A Memoir
Malcolm Ritchie - Encounter with the Great Mother. Ayahuasca in the Andes



orders & contact: sloowtapes at g mail dot com

Mia Kirsi Stageberg

Mia Kirsi Stageberg
A Few Things You Might Not Know About Trolls
Sloow Tapes Broadside #16

Mia Kirsi Stageberg’s family legend says that in Norway’s Trøndelag dialect her name (STAH-ga-berg) meant “stepmountain.” It’s for steps that had to be cut into rocks at Stågeberget, since even goats found it hard to climb. This broadside explores the Norse folklore of the troll.

Tom Carter and Eric Arn

Tom Carter and Eric Arn
Pohyb-zvuk-prostor
Žive v Opave
CS 40

Duo of Tom Carter (Charalambides) and Eric Arn (Primordial Undermind). A meeting of two American minds somewhere in the esoteric wilds of Czech Republic. Deep breathing guitars enliven a whole universe and rendering it everlasting. 70 copies.


Recorded live in Czechia, this meetup between two Yankee guitar wranglers seems blessed. Old comrades Carter and Arn play electrics here, gently plucking and wiggling their axes into lush near-feedback drones, and soft plucks dripping like melting icicles. The first side cycles restfully through some tentative interactions between the two, like sleeping giants waking up together (hungover and perhaps a little surprised). A wave of tremolo flutters rises and crashes from their amps, and the rest of the first side stirs and rises and falls like an uneasy ocean. Neither partner whips out any shredding or strong leading melodic lines, both opting rather to paint in broad textural strokes with the odd dab of rhythm, periodically allowing certain notes to poke their head above the surface.

The second half of the show on side two heads into raga rock territory, then out into rock rock territory. The duo strum and scurry over each other like conversing pandits, breaking into a couple of solos wailing enough to get those heads bobbing. They get more liberal with the pedals towards the end, and morph their guitars into a miniature Rhys Chatham orchestra for a final blast of blissful heavy strumming. Fans of either Arn’s precise and strange solo guitar records, or Tom Carter’s legendary Charalambides outfit should find plenty of joy in here. This is freeform folk music, electrified and shattered by old sparring partners. (The Quietus)

Sachiko

Sachiko
Cassini
CS 40

Wordless vocals drifting on a royal tapestry balancing between noise and silence, unveiling its pale face in the star-woman’s eyes in night’s harem. Sachiko was once a member of Overhang Pary and Kousokuya. 70 copies.

Birdge Of Flowers

Bridge Of Flowers
S/T
CS 40

Blossoming transcendent Massachusetts-flowers sparking Velvet Underground-rays of light, reflecting in the scrying mirror of one’s inner being. Like drinking wine under the grace of god. 70 copies.

Miminokoto

Miminokoto
KOENJI 07/02/2016
Sloow Tapes – CS 40

Latest from Miminokoto, the trio of Suzuki Junzo (20 Guilders), Koji Shimura (Acid Mothers Temple) and Nishimura Takuya (Che-SHIZU/Maher Shalal Hash Baz), catching the space-blues live in Tokyo. Re-imagining classic psychedelia and garage rock. Edition of 100 copies.

Miminokoto are guitarist and vocalist Suzuki Junzo, drummer and Acid Mother Koji Shimura and bassist Nishimura Takuya. Their gig at the Penguin House, Koenji, Tokyo in 2016 was released simultaneously in 2017 on Suzuki Junzo’s own label Plunk’s Plan (as a CD and a digital album) and on Sloow Tapes (as a limited edition cassette). Suzuki Junzo’s frail and unsteady voice wavers over his intense and psychedelic guitar work. Koji Shimura and Nishimura Takya, both gifted musicians themselves, are solid partners on his bluesy trips and at times follow a wild path of their own, only to join Suzuki Junzo again in one of his long psychedelic pieces or more conventional rock songs on this album. Miminokoto. From Tokyo. With love. (Sea urchin)

Kris Vanderstraeten & Frederik Leroux

Kris Vanderstraeten & Frederik Leroux
Live at The Audioplant
Sloow Tapes – CS 70

Abstract duo of two grand masters: Kris Vanderstaeten (percussion, objects) and Frederik Leroux (guitar). Both explore the endless possibilities of their instruments in terms of dynamics, texture and space. A surreal mix of instant composing, free improvisation and minimalism. Edition of 70 copies.

Percussionist Kris Vanderstraeten, bringing his long experience in free improvisation, and relatively young guitarist Frederik Leroux teamed up in November 2016 for a concert at De Audioplant, Antwerpen, where they were recorded by Simon Beeckaert. During the recorded session each musician skillfully explores his instrument and together they get involved in a shuffle of gentlemen-pugilists. Sloow Tapes did well to publish this disruptive continuum of small amplified movements and sounds. (Sea Urchin)

Malcolm Ritchie

Malcolm Ritchie
Encounter with the Great Mother. Ayahuasca in the Andes
Sloow Tapes – Book

Malcolm Ritchie was born in London, in 1940. He spent his childhood in Scotland and later on moved to Cornwall where he attended art school. Since then he has traveled widely and has lived in Wales, London, California, New York, and for nearly 10 years in Japan. He now lives in Scotland again, on the Isle of Arran. His books include The Shamanic Healer and Village Japan. Limited to 50 copies.

Bob Forrest

Bob Forrest
John Michell: A Memoir
Sloow Tapes – Book

Short memoir about John Michell (1933-2003), the Merlin of the Age of Aquarius, by friend and occasional collaborator Bob Forrest. Michell wrote about diverse subjects such as flying saucers, ley-lines, British eccentrics and sacred geometry. His books include The View Over Atlantis, Dimension of Paradise and Megalithomania among others. Limited to 50 copies.

Ilta Hämärä

Ilta Hämärä
Saivo
Sloowax 006 – LP

Out of the twilight emerges this debut offering by Ilta Hämärä, the duo of Bart De Paepe (Sylvester Anfang II, Bokrijk, Charles Vögele) and Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie, La Poupee Vivante). An imaginary source that combines Bart’s hazy psychedelic antics and Timo’s subtle and abstract sound manipulations in otherworldly spheres of cosmic dimensions, like a spectral veil covering an odoriferous botanical garden. The gates are open to golden clouds… Limited to 300 copies.

Addendum to the sweet batch of Timo Van Lujik-centred LPs (Af Ursine, Elodie, Lumine) newly in stock this week, Saivo documents The Belgium-based Finn farther exploring the heavily psychedelic duo, Ilta Hämärä alongside Bart De Paepe (Sylvester Anfang II, Bokrijk, Charles Vögele) for De Paepe’s Sloowax - an offshoot of the prolific Sloow Tapes label.

The scope for Saivo is perhaps more dilated than Van Lujik’s trio of new releases, and somewhat closer to the electro-acoustic wanderlust of his Af Ursin project thanks to the a mutual sense of trippiness that we’d also associate with De Paepe’s work in Sylvester Anfang II. Essentially the pair divine a sort of pineal alchemy inside, gingerly approaching from stereo extremes to frame a widescreen, lysergic sound between the eyes and around the head with beautifully illusive and elusive mixing treatments.

They first draw us in with a magickal shimmer of percussion and keys in Spektrin Huntu before seamlessly segueing into the ascendent kosmiche trajectories of Sielun Ankalo, then following the spirals of Tuoksuva to the lense-smearing astral creme of Kynttilänvalon Jumalat and the bifurcating raga drone helixes of Kuvitteellinen Alkuperä at the run-out.

That all appears to be a sort of mental preparation for the steepest leg of the journey, the summit of Tähdenlentoja on the B-side. Freed of time restraints, here they really billow outward and upwards, buoyed by updrafting strings and angel’s breath harps to a pinched highpoint where oxygen is in short supply and depth perceptions become warped, intangible. (Boomkat)

My Cat Is An Alien

My Cat Is An Alien & Nad Spiro
La Casa Encendida
Sloow Tapes – CS 60

Live collaboration by My Cat Is An Alien and Nad Spiro with an introductory note by Mk Ibañez. Unfolding galaxies of shooting stars slowed down to my speed. Another blast from the alien void. 100 copies.

Gregg Sharits

Gregg Sharits
Bone Wings
Sloow Tapes Book

Never before published poems, drawings and collages by Gregg Sharits, brother of Paul the celebrated filmmaker. Gregg was an original member of the Bardo Matrix crew when it was still a psychedelic lightshow operating from Boulder, Colorado together with John Chick, Dana Young and Craig Love. Introduction and additional photo’s by Craig Love. Edition of 50 copies.

Kabouter Chismus

Kabouter Chismus
S/T
Sloow Tapes – CS 40

Kabouter Chismus was a short-lived project of Dutch singer-songwriter Nico Denhoorn and singer Minneke Walstra. This record represents a certain Dutch hippie movement that started out in the early sixties called Provo. Provo in Holland was one of the first worldwide movements of youth culture created in 1964 and in a way precedes many of the later proper hippie movements of America. It was very much influenced by Beat Generation writers, Marquis de Sade, Dada and anarchism. The Provo generation were one of the first generations to question environmental problems, challenge conservatism and advocate for women emancipation and progressive acadamic innovations in post-war Europe. When the provo movement somewhat vanished in the same way Dada had decades earlier it gradually transformed into a movement in which people called themselves Kabouters, meaning Gnomes. basically the Kabouters took the provo mentality further into the years to come. They called The Netherlands Oranje Vrijstaat, which means Orange Free State, opposing the monarchy and wars western countries were engaging in during cold war. During that time Amsterdam was globally regarded as a liberal hippie capital. Its reputation of freedom to smoke weed and absolute freedom for gays is also rooted in this era.
Musically this album is sometimes reminiscent of Boudewijn de Groot, but more versatile. The basis is acoustic guitars with added electric guitars, flutes and other instruments. Some songs are in English and some are in Dutch. Official reissue, 100 copies.