***Debut 12" from Berlin performance artist and saxophonist BENDIK GISKE. On "Adjust," Giske transmutes his clubbing experience through the saxophone and returns full-circle with reworks from TOTAL FREEDOM, LOTIC, DEATHPROD and REZZETT.
12" $14.50
11/09/2018
***Smalltown Supersound is proud to be releasing YOSHINORI HAYASHI's debut album, Ambivalence. Previous work by the Tokyo-based producer has been called “a complex patchwork of studio gear, live instruments, dusty jazz records and smartly cut library sounds, whose textures are soft and inviting. But its arrangements are constantly ruffled, squeezed, brushed and pinched—which is to say, nothing stays still for long” (Resident Advisor). Hayashi presents his self-described “collage expression” throughout Ambivalence, which he produced and played in its entirety. Album opener, “Overflow,” is a club track inspired by Cecil Taylor. It’s freeform nature sets the tone for the album’s cosmic, hypnotic, and almost ritualistic approach. Hayashi has studied under Japanese avant-classical composer Mica Nozawa. When not DJing, he works in a record store in Tokyo. Thus far, Hayashi has released a string of 12”s on labels including Going Good Records, Jinn Records, Lovers Rock, Gravity Grafitti and Moscoman’s Disco Halal. Check out his recent mix for Resident Advisor
LP $14.50
11/09/2018
***The avant-garde ambient/noise/jazz/improv group returns with their 14th installment in the Supersilent series. Produced by DEATHPROD at Audio Virus LAB All selections by SUPERSILENT—Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice and electronics), Helge Sten (electronics), Ståle Storløkken (keyboards and electronics)
LP $19.50
11/09/2018
***After a transcendent 2017, KELLY LEE OWENS returns with the first and only remix of a track from her landmark self-titled debut LP. “Bird” is reworked into a 17-minute cosmic disco epic by Norwegian innovator and Smalltown Supersound mainstay PRINS THOMAS.
12" $17.75
08/03/2018
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Smalltown Supersound is proud to announce BUGGE WESSELTOFT and PRINS THOMAS, the self-titled collaborative album between, respectively, the Norwegian jazz legend and the space disco auteur. The Rainbow Studio in Oslo is a familiar name to anyone who follows the ECM label—many of its classic 1970s jazz albums were recorded there under the eye of resident producer Jan Erik Kongshaug. Bugge and Thomas booked a couple of sessions at the legendary space with Kongshaug at the controls, and improvised some tunes in the style and spirit of some of their favourite ECM moments, like the fresh, open sounds of Codona, Egberto Gismonti, Oregon and Kenny Wheeler. Bugge had previously done a remix of Thomas’s "Bobletekno" in 2015 but this is the first time they have worked together as active musicians. The results—also partly taped at Thomas’s home studio—fuse programmed rhythms, live synths and percussion, all captured in sumptuously spacious acoustics. For an even more authentic touch they called up one of their all time local heroes and one of Norway’s most famous jazz drummers, JON CHRISTENSEN, who’s been the go-to guy for Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Keith Jarrett and many more. At 75 years he’s still pretty spry behind the kit, as you’ll hear on several tracks here. Make no mistake, though, this is not retro pastiche but contemporary music, coasting on gently insistent programmed grooves and bubbling basslines. The whole thing feels not so much like a consciously hip fusion of DJ and jazz musician, more...
LP $17.75
08/03/2018
***MATT KARMIL's fourth album, Will, is released on the Norwegian Smalltown Supersound label—the home of Lindstrøm among others. Even more than before Matt has managed to combine his love of the graceful forward motion of minimal techno beats with the deeply granular textures and meditative chambers of reverb and delay. Mastered by the careful hand of RASHAD BECKER at the legendary Dubplates & Mastering plant, this driverless vehicle takes bumps and curves with ease, but passes through enough scuzzy neighborhoods to make the journey more memorable. Before you get to the long ambient closing track, "Maffé," Will contains its share of muted bangers like "Morals" and "Can’t Find It (The House Sound)." While these would vibrate well on the dancefloor, the experience for Matt is primarily a private domestic one. Recent years have seen a raft of new releases from Matt, remixing X-Press 2 for Skint, the albums idle 033 and ++++, as well as 12”s for Yumé Records, Idle Hands, Endless Flight and Studio Barnhus, received with great reviews in publications from The Wire to Resident Advisor and beyond.
LP $19.25
04/13/2018
***With the Norwegian disco movement having given birth to many international dance stars, its most fundamental pioneer BJORN TORSKE is an essential name to know. Bjørn laid the foundation for the disco scene in Norway that gave birth to Prins Thomas, Lindstrom, Andre Bratten and Todd Terje. Inspired by DJ Harvey, Ron Hardy and Idjut Boys, Bjorn Torske brought underground disco and house/techno (Chicago/Detroit style) to the country, developing a new style of dubby disco with its characteristic humorous and psychedelic twists along the way. The reclusive cult innovator is back with a new 12” for Smalltown Supersound in advance of a full-length release out later this year.
12" $14.50
04/13/2018
***Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. JENNY HVAL and HAVARD VOLDEN are LOST GIRLS. They have been recording Feeling since 2014, when Håvard was getting really tired of the idea that improv recordings need to be documentation, "true" to a live performance. Meanwhile, Jenny was tired of "representation" in her part of the musical spectrum––of pop music being something that needs to represent you. Together, Lost Girls wanted to go deeper into the chaos of composition, creating longer pieces inspired by analogue synths, radio plays, the lightness and intimacy of Robert Ashley's music, and the complexity of technology permeating their daily lives. They wanted to let the music be transparent and open, able to consider and reconsider its own paths. The sound of someone changing their mind.
LP $19.25
04/06/2018
***On HANS-PETER LINDSTROM's latest album, those northern disco lights are twinkling once more. Over the continuous stream of nine interlocked tracks on It’s Alright Between Us As It Is, he’s refined his love of arpeggiated synths, warm and steamy analogue bubble baths and earworm melodies into his most rounded and complete statement to date. A Norwegian based in Oslo, Lindstrøm has always made a virtue of his obsessive work ethic, turning his city centre studio (where his neighbours include friends and collaborators Prins Thomas, Todd Terje and Andre Bratten) into a factory floor for churning out monster tracks, then punching out regularly and going home to his family. This is about music being woven seamlessly into the fabric of life.
LP $22.50
10/27/2017
***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork. Norway's cosmic house forefather BJORN TORSKE collaborates with PRINS THOMAS, a disciple from Torske's long lineage of inspired Nordic producers, on their first full-length together, Square One.
LP $17.75
07/14/2017
***CARMEN VILLAIN returns with the Planetarium EP, the follow-up to her 2013 debut, Sleeper. In the span of the last few solitudinous years, the US-born, half-Norwegian and half-Mexican has honed and nurtured her songwriting and production craft, while still drawing from the gossamer atmospheres of Sleeper. She weaved the hyper-personal songs in peaceful seclusion, creating starry tapestries of field recordings, piano, guitars, programmed drums and synths. The EP’s title-track, “Planetarium,” serves as the first glimpse into Villain’s upcoming album, due out later this year. Melancholic piano and long wisps of reverb create a cocoon of warmth in the otherwise cold and desolate outer space in which “Planetarium” voyages. Lyrically, “Planetarium” captures her typical contrast between rapture and irony, closing with a murmured coda recorded as she fell asleep one night. The EP contains the instrumental track, "Safe,” as well as two remixes by the Italian ambient veteran GIGI MASIN that seamlessly fuse Villain’s sound with his trademark avant-balearics.
12" $14.50
06/02/2017
***Based in Oslo, Norway, composer HELGE STEN has been crafting this music since the early '90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The DEATHPROD concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects—cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus”—could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical. Almost obsolete samplers and playback devices distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable mutations of their former selves. The virus breeds layers of complex and overlapping sonic debris, creating a kind of cellular composition. Sten is a founder member of Norwegian improvising group SUPERSILENT and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. In 1998, alongside Biosphere, he electronically transformed the music of Norway’s leading contemporary composer, Arne Nordheim. More recently he composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary invented instruments for the Cologne based Ensemble Musikfabrik. Now the core trilogy of Deathprod albums are released for the first time on vinyl. Cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, they form Deathprod’s complete official canon.
LP $17.75
05/05/2017
***Based in Oslo, Norway, composer HELGE STEN has been crafting this music since the early '90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The DEATHPROD concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects—cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus”—could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical. Almost obsolete samplers and playback devices distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable mutations of their former selves. The virus breeds layers of complex and overlapping sonic debris, creating a kind of cellular composition. Sten is a founder member of Norwegian improvising group SUPERSILENT and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. In 1998, alongside Biosphere, he electronically transformed the music of Norway’s leading contemporary composer, Arne Nordheim. More recently he composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary invented instruments for the Cologne based Ensemble Musikfabrik. Now the core trilogy of Deathprod albums are released for the first time on vinyl. Cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, they form Deathprod’s complete official canon.
LP $23.25
05/05/2017
***Based in Oslo, Norway, composer HELGE STEN has been crafting this music since the early '90s, a deeply atmospheric, grainy minimalism that slows time down and explores the very particles of sound itself. The DEATHPROD concept arose in 1991 when Sten realized his complex array of homemade electronics, samplers, sound processing and analogue effects—cumulatively known as the “Audio Virus”—could add a musical dimension above and beyond the merely technical. Almost obsolete samplers and playback devices distort and transform sounds into unrecognizable mutations of their former selves. The virus breeds layers of complex and overlapping sonic debris, creating a kind of cellular composition. Sten is a founder member of Norwegian improvising group SUPERSILENT and has produced records by Motorpsycho, Susanna, Jenny Hval, Arve Henriksen and others. In 1998, alongside Biosphere, he electronically transformed the music of Norway’s leading contemporary composer, Arne Nordheim. More recently he composed music for Harry Partch’s legendary invented instruments for the Cologne based Ensemble Musikfabrik. Now the core trilogy of Deathprod albums are released for the first time on vinyl. Cut to vinyl by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, they form Deathprod’s complete official canon.
LP $23.25
05/05/2017
***Norway's ANDRE BRATTEN grew up in Oslo on the border between a bustling city and a dense forest. That juxtaposition has informed his sound as he skillfully imbues cosmic disco with intense cerebral techno. He released his debut album Be A Man You Ant (2013) on Prins Thomas' Full Pupp label, and shares a studio with Thomas, Todd Terje, and Lindstrøm. However, rather than simply emulate these figureheads, Bratten blazed his own trail, blending disco with a grim psychedelia rarely heard on the dance floor. His debut EP for Smalltown Supersound, “Math Ilium Ion,” was released June 2nd 2015, and features “Trommer & Bass,” which, after being played by legends, including DJ Harvey and Erol Alkan, has become a dance sensation around the world. It's solidified Bratten as the dense, ominous heir to the bright disco throne.
12" $14.50
04/28/2017
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. KELLY LEE OWENS has dabbled in many various form of electronic music, but seems most comfortable and comforting in this atmospheric world with a beat, combining the spectral pop of Grimes with techno and the gentle krautrock of Broadcast. "The identity she advances on her upcoming album—dreamy yet involving, with a melancholy undercurrent—reflects her interest in emotionally nuanced techno, as well as her newfound immersion in the world of healing music."—Jazz Monroe, Pitchfork
LP $19.25
03/24/2017
CD $14.50
03/24/2017
***"The fullness of it all is paradoxical, given that it’s mostly made of empty space. At the center, she repeats one phrase like a mantra, as though conjuring the elements out of nothingness: The colors, the beauty, and the motion."—Pitchfork (Best New Track)
12" $11.00
10/28/2016
***Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. It’s easy to forget that Norway shares a short stretch of frontier with Russia, right at the northernmost tip of the country. That region is where GEIR JENSSEN, the Norwegian electronic producer behind BIOSPHERE, comes from, and where he has been composing his austere, disturbing and deeply textured ambience since the early 1980s. Biosphere has released many albums to date including Substrata, voted the greatest ambient album of all time on the Hyperreal website, and has collaborated with Arne Nordheim, Higher Intelligence Agency, Deathprod, Pete Namlook and Bel Canto. His 12th album Departed Glories is his first in almost five years and marks a new deal with the Oslo independent label Smalltown Supersound. On the cover is a photo of the Russian landscape taken more than a hundred years ago. It’s part of an incredible cache of recently discovered images by the photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, who pioneered a form of color photography using three sheets of glass, and left us with a collection of hauntingly beautiful pictures of a vanished world that could have been taken on an iPhone.
LP $22.50
10/14/2016
CD $14.25
10/21/2016
***You can’t accuse SUPERSILENT of keeping the noise down. Ever since the ‘Big Crunch’ of 1997, when Norway’s finest free music outfit came together for the first time, their unpredictable noises and rapturous textures have been heard all around the world—and maybe somewhere outside the stratosphere too. Currently a trio featuring HELGE STEN, ARVE HENRIKSEN and STALE STORLOKKEN, Supersilent’s album number 13 marks a turning point in the group’s two-decade career. After a dozen recordings under the umbrella of the diverse Rune Grammofon label, Supersilent have now signed to Oslo based Smalltown Supersound, where they join the likes of Lindstrøm, DJ Harvey, Prins Thomas and Andre Bratten as labelmates. Supersilent is a platform for a highly physical improvised electronic music, made by a trio that’s a kind of supergroup of Norwegian players in their own right.
LP $22.50
10/21/2016
CD $14.25
10/14/2016
***Let's get this out of the way first—CARMEN VILLAGE used to be a very successful model. Her face has appeared on the covers of Vogue & Nylon, and high profile cosmetic ad campaigns. It turns out CARMEN HILLESTAD (Carmen Village) has been a spy in the house of fashion. Behind the scenes, she was channeling her frustrations into a set of songs with a defiantly DIY underground free-rock sound. Now at last, she's stepping off the glossy page and emerging as a major new songwriting voice and multi-instrumentalist. Behind the angelic face lurks a villain. With acid in her airbrush, she reminds us of This Heat, Bikini Kill, Sonic Youth, and Royal Trux. No Export outside of North America.
LP $20.15
03/26/2013
CD $17.00
03/12/2013
***Tempest, the band's fourth album from Smalltown Supersound was recorded last year in Glasgow with JD TWITCH, one half of the iconoclastic Scottish DJ duo OPTIMO. TUSSLE worked with LIQUID LIQUID members on the album—hey sent DENNIS YOUNG rough mixes of a few tracks and he overdubbed his parts from his New Jersey studio, and the first track, "Yume No Mori" contacts a vocal sample from SAL PRINCIPATO. The experimental interludes and drum solos of past releases are absent. Instead, Tempest charges forward with a deeper, more structured sprawl. No Export outside of North America.
CD $17.00
10/23/2012
***NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! London's IDJUT BOYS (DAN TYLER & CONRAD McCONNELL) and RUNE LINDBAEK are MEANDERTHALS. Contrary to the definition, Lindbaek, Tyler & McConnell's do not see meanderthal people as a threat, but as a person that is completely in his own world—a slacker, musically on his own. This could also be a good description of Lindbaek and the two Idjut Boys. Meanderthals' Desire Lines is their chosen path of beautiful and mellow balearic disco. A warm and dreamy blend of dub, folk, prog, kraut, psychedelia and ‘70s West Coast combined to invent an organic, slanted and proggy feel. Recorded live, the album features contributions from good friends, including PETE Z (DJ HARVEY) on keyboards, DES MORGAN (YAMWHO) on drums and percussion, MALCOLM JOSEPH (GRACE JONES) on bass, PER MARTINSEN (aka MENTAL OVERDRIVE) on percussion and RAJ GUPTA (LAJ & QUAKERMAN) as sound engineer. Limited one-time pressing of 500 copies. No Exports.
LP $17.00
11/24/2009
CD $17.00
11/24/2009