New on Otoroku - Preorders taken now. Stock Due late November. Japanese bluesman Kan Mikami is nothing less than an unalloyed force of nature. A skin-shredding blast of frozen wind from the poor, rural north of Japan that he calls home. In the late 1960s, like thousands of other Japanese young people Mikami made his way to Tokyo in search of a life different from that of his parents. Since then he has forcefully carved out a space for himself in the culture as a modernist poet, a raging folk singer, an author, a actor, an engaging TV personality, and one of Japan’s most uniquely powerful performers. For most of Mikami’s career as a singer, he has performed solo. Just him and his electric guitar against the world, creating jagged A-minor vamps to drive along the surreal wisdom of his lyrics. But he’s equally at home in more demanding improvisational contexts such as those provided here by John Edwards on bass and Alex Neilson on drums. Their dense propulsive textures seem to spur on Mikami, his voice arcing powerfully into fragmented spaces, his guitar darting, colliding, shedding jagged and angular splinters of sound. A pulsing, raging maelstrom of serrated-edged energy. Gruff, rough, honest and very, very real. - Alan Cummings Oct 2017

"John, Kent and I played only once as a trio, a convert in November 1992, and this is the recording of it. We Planned more work as a trio and John was in the process of setting up some others at the time of his death. So, as it turned out, it was just the one time." - Derek Bailey --- Derek Bailey / electric guitar John Stevens / drums & mini trumpet Kent Carter / bass --- Recorded November 1992, Leicester, England.

Low volume, textural interplay between London improvisors Butcher, Derek Bailey & tuba player Oren Marshall. Comparatively short improvisations that are characterised by their laid-back restraint and taste.  --- Derek Bailey / acoustic guitar, electric guitar John Butcher / tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone Oren Marshall / tuba --- Recorded at UPS STUDIO, London. Design by & 3media, Karen Brookman. Photography By Karen Brookman, Yuhij Itsumi, Caroline Forbes, Thomi Wroblevski. Post Production by Martin Davidson

"Continuous change is the hallmark of Bert's musical practice. His sonic version of perpetual motion turns up in many dimensions at once - timbral, rhythmic, gestural, melodic, rhetorical, dramatic, and much more - so that playing with Bert often becomes a matter of finding, somewhere, a sound that he isn't playing at the moment, a sound that you can grab onto as a life preserver to save you from getting smoked right out the room." - George Lewis --- George E. Lewis / trombone Bertram Turetzky / contrabass --- Recorded by Sonic Solutions November 26th 1997. Design & layout by Karen Brookman. Photograph of George Lewis by Betty Freeman. 

"I met Derek at Clinton Studio and we started recording. I remember that my playing felt stiff at first, but I told myself to watch, listen and try to a have dialog with him and most importantly to follow my feelings. I still remember, during the middle of one track, Derek broke a string. I thought he might stop, but he continued playing, using the broken string to scratch on the frets. The results sounded incredible, they came out on Avant, and this followed. Derek and I went on tour playing concerts in Berlin, Graz and other European cities. I learned so much from him." --- Derek Bailey / guitar Min Xiao-Fen / pipa --- Recorded by Ben Bailes. Post Production by Toby Hrycek-Robinson and Ben Bailes. Design & layout by Karen Brookman. Recorded N.Y.C. November 1999

Brilliant duo from underrated cellist Tristan Honsinger and Bailey. The latter tracks (7-13) came out on the wonderful Duo LP (INCUSLP20), and the proceeding documents some the pair's first duets - equally as captivating. There are parralels between this record and fellow sometime Parisian string pkayer Joelle Leandre's Taxi, but really, Honsinger's voice is like no other - there's less revulsion than Minton, and more slapstick. Bailey on Waiswich Crackle Box on track 12 is a real treat. --- "The first time I heard Tristan was when I joined a group of startled listeners surrounding a cello player playing on the street in Massey, a small town a few miles south of Paris. It was about then that I realised had there been no such thing as free improvisation, Tristan Honsinger would have invented it.  I was in Massey to play on a concert made up entirely of solo guitar players; a situation obviously leaving a lot of room for improvement. It was to that end that I invited Tristan to play with me on the concert and it was my great fortune that he agreed and we've played together in all kinds of situations since.  The Massy tracks are from that concert. The other tracks are from Duo, the record we made he following year (Incus LP 20) and date from a time when judicious editing, post production and allied techinical sophistications had not yet entered recorded improvised music, and are issues precisely as we put them out in 1976." - Derek Bailey, August, 2002.  --- Derek Bailey / electric guitar, 19 string (approx) guitar, Waiswich Crackle Box on track 12) Tristan Honsinger / cello, voice --- Tracks 1 - 6 recorded October 26 1975. Tracks 7-13 recorded by Bob Woolford 6th & 7th February 1976. Artwork by tony Monstrom. Design and layout by Tony Monstrom & Karen Brookman.