Hardcover, 200pp, 88 ill. (44 colour) Reaktion, 2026 Imagined instruments reveal how we shape music – and how music shapes us. The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments is a guided tour through centuries of instruments that never existed. From ancient myths to futuristic media, these imagined devices appear in literature, theory, video games and art, at times echoing real instruments, other times pushing far beyond the bounds of technology. This book presents a wide-ranging collection of such creations, showing how they reflect changing ideas about sound, invention and the limits of the possible. At once a cultural history and a study of creative thought, it uncovers unexpected links between music, design and the human urge to make meaning through sound. These are not just fictional artefacts – they are windows into what music might mean, even when it cannot be played.

Hardcover, 524 pp, 21 x 27 cm Korm Plastics, 2026In the mid-1990s, four thick, annual issues of Ongaku Otaku magazine were published. Operating from San Francisco, California, the goal was to spread the word about the compelling independent music being produced in Japan. With dozens of interviews and articles, and many hundreds of reviews, the magazine was an influential voice, sharing words about Aube, Cornelius, Yamamoto Seiichi (Boredoms, Rovo, Omoide Hatoba), Shizuka, Jojo Hiroshige (Hijokaidan, Alchemy Records), Melt-Banana, Ruins, KK Null, and many more. This facsimile edition brings the original pages to readers several decades later. Publisher and editor Mason Jones has run the Charnel Music label since 1988, and has recorded many albums solo, as Trance, and as a member of SubArachnoid Space, Numinous Eye, and Collision Stories. He began visiting Japan regularly in the early ’90s and arranged U.S. shows for many artists from Japan. Ongaku Otaku was a labor of love aided by many contributors to whom he remains grateful.

Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC    Tracklisting: 1. 'A' - 22:24 2. 'B' - 24:47 Long out of press mighty gamelan collab from members of US drone collective Pelt, the UK's Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides and New Zealand guitarist Michael Morley aka Gate. Recorded at 2012's TUSK festival in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the huge ensemble folded up into a mid-size room in a little corner of England and tapped into the music that has long transfixed the world - but with as much raga and hillbilly influence as Indonesian. Be warned, this is not 100% holy. Soon, avain hymns give way to drones akin to those of Vibracathedral Orchestra, and low, slow tones eat at your redeeming thoughts. A one time super-group and damn were they super. Official MIE press release: "In October 2012, at the Tusk Festival at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, noise emissaries from three continents came together on a Sunday to make music for an hour or so. From the United States came Mike Gangloff, Nathan Bowles, and Patrick Best of the mighty Virginia drone collective Pelt. Representing the United Kingdom were sonic pilgrims Pascal Nichols and Kelly Jayne Jones of Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides. And from Oceania came the transcendent New Zealand guitarist Michael Morley of Gate and, of course, the legendary Dead C. This summit proceeded without words. Their chosen means of deliberation was the gamelan: an array of gangsa and saron metallaphones and singing bowls sprawled out on the patchwork oriental rugs; a rig of gongs; the flurry of hammers and mallets; a few dozen onlookers seated cross-legged or just laying prostrate on the floor. And everyone and everything was transported. - Brent S. Sirota ---  Recorded at TUSK Festival 2012 at Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Live sound by Steve Nicholson and Stosh. Recording by Sam Grant. With thanks to Henry MIE.  www.tuskfestival.com

First ever vinyl pressing of Ishmael Reed's beloved The Hands of Grace, jointly released by All Night Flight and Reading Group  Touching homebuilt compositions from celebrated American novelist, playwright and poet Ishmael Reed, channelling a long life immersed in jazz culture.  A joint in-house production from ANF and NYC-based label Reading Group. You’re never too old to learn something new.  Reed credits bebop with keeping him and his friends out of reform school because they were too busy listening to records at each other’s houses to get into trouble.  Finding fame as a distinguished writer, he found his way back to music circuitously, eventually taking the plunge at aged 60 to study jazz piano.  Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 he hastily assembled a quintet to fulfil a lifelong ambition of recording an album. He made the record but thankfully he didn’t succumb to his illness   Cash-strapped during COVID, he became a composer to save on money for his own plays, enlisting his daughter Tennessee as the narrator.   These humble origins and a genuine love (and natural talent) for music are what underpins The Hands Of Grace.  Consisting of works written for Reed’s play ‘The Slave Who Loved Caviar’ alongside new original compositions, it brings in close friends and family to accompany his casual, unvarnished playing style that’s so genuinely heartfelt it feels as if you could be sat alongside them in their living room.  The music carries a lived-in simplicity yet it also holds something ambiguous that draws it away from the predictable. Music papers rustle, a living room chair is dragged up to the keys whilst Reed’s wife Carla contributes violin and daughter Tennessee recites her poetry on standout ‘How High The Moon’.  This is a poignant family affair with no-one left out, ending on a touching tribute and voicemail from their late daughter Timothy.   Ever since it first appeared on CD The Hands Of Grace has become a staple. A record to return to, a uniquely personal tribute, a document of working method, a lifelong passion finally coming to fruition… (Mint / New - with free DL & double sided insert Edition of 250 CDs, with liner note essays by Ishmael Reed and Fred Moten.Mastered by Matt Bachmann. "A great pleasure to play with my favorite writer; he has transformed his literary genius to the piano in one lifetime, Bravo!" -David MurrayNew album of original music by the legendary novelist, essayist, poet, critic, and playwright Ishmael Reed (b. Tennessee, 1938). The Hands of Grace presents for the first time the original music that Reed composed for his 2021 play, “The Slave Who Loved Caviar,” which was read at the Nuyorican Poets Café and premiered at the Theater for the New City in 2021. Also featured on the album are several other solo piano and ensemble compositions by Reed, with accompaniment from Roger Glenn (flute), Ray Obiedo (guitar), Carla Blank (violin), and Tennessee Reed (voice).Reed’s compositions on The Hands of Grace range from humor and pastiche to arresting beauty. The intimate and idiosyncratic sound calls to mind the off-kilter beauty of Charles Mingus’s piano record and Carman Moore’s score (also on Reading Group) for Personal Problems (1980), the brilliant “black soap opera” that Reed co-developed with Steve Cannon and Bill Gunn. Opening with a minimalist meditation on Jean-Michel Basquiat (also the subject of the play), and moving through blues tunes, descriptive pieces, and tributes to poet Lucille Clifton and Reed’s partner Carla Blank, the record closes with a moving ode to Reed’s late daughter Timothy. The Hands of Grace offers a deep dive into the musicality of this inimitable artist. --- Ishmael Reed / piano, compositionsRoger Glenn / fluteRay Obiedo / guitar, bassCarla Blank / violinTennessee Reed / voice

录制于上海，2012年冬至2024年夏Recorded in Shanghai, Winter 2012 to Summer 2024徐程：原声吉他、十二弦吉他、古典吉他与吉他里里Xu Cheng: Acoustic Guitar, Twelve-string Guitar, Classical Guitar and Guitalele, Prepared and Unprepared录音、制作：徐程Recorded and Produced by Xu Cheng木刻：玛布Woodcut by Mabu感谢：徐喆、铁梅Thanks to Xu Zhe & TiemeiPoems without Words brings together fourteen improvised guitar solos by Xu Cheng, recorded over twelve years. Xu Cheng first emerged in the Shanghai underground in the early 2000s, as an early member of the harsh noise project Torturing Nurse. He went on to become a versatile sound artist working across a wide-ranging array of influences, from Fluxus event scores to Buddhist sutras.The project originated in Xu Cheng’s attempt to restore a broken instrument he had picked up in a vintage store some fifteen years ago, and to play it as though a guitar reborn. In this process, he came to realise that the art of improvisation consists of endless exercises in forgetting: to forget what the body has learned before, and to learn how to play in a state of “having forgotten”. Xu Cheng told the story in a note:"Bit by bit, I applied thin veneers of pine, replaced the tuning pegs, and polished the frets until they gleamed. Eventually, the guitar shed its uncanniness, revealing the basic shape of a musical instrument. From time to time, I would glance at it and attempt to play it in the ways that guitars are supposed to be played. Was such playing a habit preserved through time, was it a fixture of my life? Or perhaps the goal is to forget—to forget the act of playing, and the very present moment of life being lived. Isn’t that one of the true purposes of music in this world?As muscle memory fades, some echoes remain. ‘Mistakes’ occur, and new memories are forged, and once more, one strives to learn how to forget. This happens over and over again, on different guitars, in different settings, and across different lives. In this sense, these moments of playing are the moments when hearing and living coalesce: through the instrument, life is transmuted into sound, and sound, in turn, becomes life."This album documents such moments of learning to forget, through which the materiality of the instrument and the disposition of the player dissolve into one another. Half of these recordings were made in a small park located in the Shihua subdistrict of southwestern Shanghai. Occasionally, the sound of insects in the atmosphere interfered with guitar harmonics, a gentle hum piercing through the eye of the storm that is life.

"A long desire of extraordinaire saxophone player Peter Brötzmann was a studio recording of some of his favorite jazz tunes and his own music -- a grand bridge over the music important for his life and his musical career in the past and present. Trost invited him to Martin Siewert's studio in Vienna to do so in summer 2018. The result is intense, beautiful and touching. Features compositions by Harry Barris/Gordon Clifford, Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II, Herbie Nichols, Dizzy Gillespie, George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin, and Sonny Rollins. Personnel: Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Martin Siewert. Liner notes and artwork by Peter Brötzmann."