SC Distributon

Synthesist is the debut album by Harald Grosskopf, the enigmatic percussionist behind Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, and Cosmic Jokers. Originally released by Sky Records in 1980, RVNG Intl. celebrates the 30th year anniversary with this newly mastered and packaged reissue. Re-Synthesist, the companion CD compilation to Synthesist, is an assemblage of reinterpretations of Grosskopf's work by a new vanguard of electronic and experimental artists including Oneohtrix Point Never, Blondes, Arp, Stellar Om Source, CFCF, James Ferraro, and many others. The Synthesist LP comes as a deluxe package on post-consumer recycled goods, including a unique reverse bound record jacket and full color liner notes by Harald Grosskopf in English and German. The Re-Synthesist compilation is only available with vinyl purchase, both available digitally through our usual storefront suspects.

Holly Herndon?s debut collection of material hybridizes experimental and dance music into hard-coded human sensuality. Incorporating themes of presence and physicality / flux and futurity within said musical expressions via Herndon?s unapologetic use of computer as her primary instrument, Movement translates the Avant-Garde into what Herndon fundamentally considers ?life practice.? The influences of Maryanne Amacher and Galina Ustvolskaya are as prevalent in Herndon?s music as Pan Sonic and Berlin and Birmingham 90s techno. Still, in line with pop deconstructionists Laurie Anderson and Art of Noise, Movement is purposefully positioned to reach new ears beyond a niche.

Julia Holter's second album, Ekstasis, is a collection of songs written and recorded across the span of three years in Los Angeles, California. Ekstasis marks a return to the playful searching of her 2007 Eating the Stars EP, but guided by newly-learned disciplines, slightly better technology, and nearly limitless home recording time. Holter's songwriting stems from a mythological reverence of that which is incomprehensibly beautiful. Stars was a first attempt at musically transcribing this beauty, while discovering the honest enjoyment of unadulterated creativity. Holter's critically acclaimed debut album Tragedy (Leaving Records, 2011) embraced Stars strains of shimmer, but used sparser textures in a narrative context. While Ekstasis reflects the conventions of her classical training, the album is also uncannily, if unknowingly, poppy. Holter's approach to crafting the songs of Ekstasis centered around what she describes as, "open ear decision: what seemed to sound best for that moment." This blindness to reverence unintentionally steers Ekstasis along the experimental pop spectrum most commonly associated to New York's Downtown music micro-universe of the 80s, specifically the works of Laurie Anderson and Arthur Russell.

House of Woo is the new album from Maxmillion Dunbar, rogue house producer and one half of DC dance captains Beautiful Swimmers. House of Woo is a pure blast of bliss that works on a Funktion One just as well as it does a blown set of speakers at a house party gone woozy with punch drunk love.