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.

Xu Shaoyang makes music about the fragmented beauty of everyday life. Over the years, he has sustained a fresh spirit of amateurism by travelling and performing in many different parts of the world, occasionally as a member of the avant-pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz. His songs are made of simple tunes, sometimes silly sometimes smart, sometimes delivered with a “backing band” of improvising musicians who he met and collected along the way. Sometimes the karaoke worked out musically, sometimes not.In spring 2019, Xu Shaoyang took a trip to East Asia. He performed two gigs in Beijing and Taipei with two small ensembles of local musicians, both taking place in a pedestrian underpass. For this journey, Xu Shaoyang prepared a songbook of 30 tunes he conjured while putting his newborn child to sleep. “When you are putting a baby to sleep, you find yourself having no time to sleep, and that’s when the familiar tunes deep in your heart flow out naturally”, as he explained to the crowd in Taipei.In both gigs, Xu Shaoyang sang these 30 songs with his microphone attached to a FM transmitter. Very different dynamics played out in the North and the South. In Beijing, Zhu Wenbo and Liu Lu smuggled their own composition game into the group jam: the two prepared 30 slips of paper with simple musical themes and instructions, randomly picking one each before a song was played, while a third musician, Ake, joined them with freeform improvisation. The Taipei backing band, consisting of Jyun-Ao Caesar and La-La Reich, improvised along simple principles provided by Xu, to explore the themes of expectations and failures.This cassette provides a documentation of a rare musical journey connecting the two Chinese capitals. Performed live, Xu Shaoyang’s lullabies turned into childish plays of bouncy melodic chaos, unrefined, unsettled, and cheerfully unconcerned. These recordings smell of the sincere joy of collective music making, the joy of connection and communication as well as miscommunication.

In mid-December 2021, Mamer flew from Ürümqi to Shenzhen to play a few booked gigs. Afterwards, he decided to stay on for a marathon music residency at the Old Heaven bookstore. From Dec 13 to 27, Mamer performed 14 concerts in 15 days, unreservedly presenting his vast creative world to a small but dedicated audience, who followed him throughout this journey. These performances were announced on each day with a theme decided often last minute, free admission offered. They were intended to be intimate and spontaneous, or in Mamer’s own word, “rehearsals”. Most of these “rehearsals” were sonically challenging, to say the very least. Years had passed since Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records released the album Eagle, which Mamer is still best known for in the Western world. Yet, among the listeners who followed him through the most recent decade, even the most nostalgic ones had come to the realisation that Mamer had left his “world music” identity long behind. The performances at Old Heaven showcased Mamer’s dialogues with a wild range of eccentric musical traditions, including industrial rock, heavy psychedelia, sample-based electronics, drone, and harsh noise. The Kazakh folk tradition, which predominantly defined the early works of Mamer and his band Iz, was most of the time barely discernible. On the fifth night, however, the audience found Mamer sitting alone with a nylon string guitar, delivering what would become one of his quietest public performances of the past decade. The night started gently with a reinterpretation of “Love”, a 90s ballad by Kazakhstani rock group Roksonaki, and it went on placidly, releasing into the air melodies from both folk songs and pieces originally composed for traditional Kazakh instruments. The setlist spans across centuries. Among others, it includes a dombra kui written by Ashim Dungshiuly, early 20th century master from Ili, and an ancient piece for sıbızğı (a sideblown flute) believed to be composed by Korkut Ata, the great hero in Turkic mythology. For Mamer, this is a songbook of memories. These tunes were once heard repeatedly on the radio during his youthful days in Xinjiang, and they all came back to him on this quiet winter night. The nylon guitar calmly inhaled in his hands, breathing out cold, whirling melodic currents, trailing around and round through personal and collective histories. In Kazakh language, “awlaⱪ” is a root word that denotes the state of being “off”, signifying an existence from afar and away. The word “awlaⱪta”, which Mamer uses to title one of his original compositions performed that night, literally means “outside” or “elsewhere”. In a more subtle sense, “awlaⱪta” implies a condition of sustained liminality, a voluntary exile of being a stranger in a strange land. This condition is one that has to do with the will to departure, the longing for a different place, and an utter resistance to the ease of belonging. For Mamer, it serves duly as an artist statement, but that night, the solitary drifter re-encountered home. Still Mamer refused to go gentle into the good night. After the last song, he grabbed an unused guitar pickup from the ground, and pressed it to his throat. With intense pitch shifting on the effect pedals, he summoned a long, ghostly howl, piercing through the tranquillity in the atmosphere. Amid resounding echoes, Mamer walked off the stage, on towards the next night.

Hugjiltu plays the guitar with five strings. Not used to the standard chord-forms of Western guitar, he invented his own system of tuning, combining the three-string Mongolian lute and the two-string horsehead fiddle, both of which he started playing as a child. These five strings epitomise his relationship with the music from within the Mongolian ethnic tradition and with the music beyond, a state of artistic composure few in his generation have achieved. Hailing from a musical family in Jarud Banner, Inner Mongolia, Hugjiltu came to be known as one of China’s most prolific world music veterans in the first fifteen years of his career. He toured extensively around the globe, first as a member of Hanggai and then as a leader of his own group, Ajinai. This success came with a growing bitterness towards the specific type of “Mongolian sound” his bands are habituated to playing, a sound constrained by the imagination of otherness from within the centre. Tired of performing an idealised, distant “world”, Hugjiltu opted to use his musical mother-tone to speak to the real world he lives in. After Ajinai disbanded, he shifted to a predominantly solo improvisational approach, questioning what it means to be of Mongolian descendant here and now. Cycle was recorded in early 2020, all tracks are fully improvised except for “Reservoir”, which is based on a traditional Kazakh melody. Besides his specially tuned guitars, Hugjiltu employs a selection of traditional instruments: the Tsuur (Mongolian end-blown flute), the Morin Khuur (horsehead fiddle), and Khoomei (throat singing), backgrounding them with airy synth effects and field recordings. The album’s scene is set in a day in life, navigating through a series of urban and suburban spaces, which also guide the listener along Hugjiltu’s regular commute. The journey starts from Mount Elephant, a name playfully given by inhabitants of the “painters village” in the suburb of north Beiing, where Hugjiltu also lives, and heads towards the heart of the city, crossing the Deshengmen tower gate on the vibrant 2nd Ring Road; and yet the album does not give only a one-way ticket. The two sides of the tape are designed to play recurrently as the traveller shifts between the metropolis and the mountainside, and between a meditative subject who gazes internally and an unreserved spirit who reaches out to the wide social world. This is the everyday story of an expatriate and wanderer, but also a person who finds peace in the rotating cycle that is life. For but one moment in time, the old tradition lays its burden down and breathes calmly. Listen.

Noising Sheng documents Zhang Meng’s attempt to reinvent the Chinese sheng into a noise instrument. Since ancient time, the sheng has been associated with the virtue of “he” central to Confucian ethics, denoting peace, harmony, and conciliation. In the family of Chinese wind instruments, the sheng is a rare member who is able to fix to a certain tune unaffected by playing, and to play multiple notes at the same time. In an ensemble setting, it often functions on the one hand as a standard-pitch instrument for tuning, and on the other hand as a basic accompaniment instrument holding the collective sound together. The sheng was never a solo instrument in its traditional role. It is supposed to sound steady, modest, and eminently decorous. Zhang Meng inherits a devotion to the instrument from his father, a professional sheng artist. For over two decades, Zhang Meng has performed his sheng in Chinese folk orchestras, contemporary classical ensembles, and rock bands, his regular collaborators ranging from avant-garde composer/conductor Tan Dun to beloved folk rock group Wu Tiao Ren. Yet, as his relationship with the sheng deepens, he feels increasingly uneasy with the stereotypical roles assigned to the instrument. On February 3, 2024, Zhang Meng performed a solo concert at Trigger, a new underground space co-managed by Shanghai noise artist Torturing Nurse. For the concert, Zhang Meng wrote the following: “Nowadays, this implication of ‘harmony’ of the sheng inevitably strikes me as ironic… as a sound-producing medium, the sheng can sound dirty and raw, it should be able to 'curse'. Although there are quite a few modernist pieces for the sheng that explore its unconventional aspects, they are mostly written by composers who aren’t skilled at playing it. Sentiment aside, I think they lack a genuine understanding of the sheng as an instrument. This is why I try to approach the sheng with an experimentalist spirit, to ‘noise’ the sheng as much as possible. I choose not to use any effects pedals so that all moods are expressed only through the sheng’s original tone, and they are not all supposed to be ‘noisy’... At the concert, I played a track of the typically lyrical sound of the sheng on a pre-recorded cassette, and I played my sheng alongside. If you insist on asking why, take it as a struggle between the real and the hypocritical.” Noising Sheng documents the whole concert throughout. The performance was half-improvised upon a written script, showcasing Zhang Meng’s virtuoso performing techniques and sharp theatrical sensibilities as a composer. Yet it is carefully staged in a way that the protagonist is not the performer, but the instrument itself. In a crescively charged space of revolving tensions, the sheng mutters, splutters, and bawls, setting free its eerie expressive potential from under a long historical shadow. Noising Sheng is a self-conducted piece of post-irony delivered with gentle earnestness. In a time when “noise” is becoming more and more performative, still it gives it a try to take noise seriously.

By the time of winter 2022, musicians around the globe had stopped making lockdown albums. Telling stories of the pandemic had been out of fashion in some parts of the world, and no longer emotionally bearable in others. This was the time when Sheng Jie recorded Review in Beijing, as accumulated feelings of anxiety, frustration, and loss rose to the peak across China. A deeply personal project from start to finish, Review bears the heavy weight of these collective sentiments in its genesis, and voices them out in a sincere, unsettling way. A classically trained multi-instrumentalist and veteran in Beijing’s underground, Sheng Jie is known for making beautiful noises. Over the years, she has developed a distinctive aesthetic which combines elegantly balanced compositions with relentless walls of string drones, marking her recorded works with a signature sound blending etherealness, intensity and warmth. Review makes a radical departure, taking instead a close-up on the raw texture of the everyday in the time of crisis and social control. Using her mobile phone, Sheng Jie recorded bits and pieces of life in her estranged hometown: the mechanical whirring of an elevator at the supermarket, the sound of the night crowding into her room from an open window, voice loops from a loudspeaker instructing citizens to scan the QR code for nucleic acid test. In between, she played guitar, cello, and an analogue synthesiser. The instrumentations are casual and sparse, they convey a sense of stone-cold apathy, a state of emotional exhaustion in which one loses the ability to be either hopeful or hopeless. For Sheng Jie, this was “the ultimate emotional response” to Beijing’s new normal. Shortly after the album was made, three years of zero-COVID campaign in China came to an abrupt end. History hastily moves on. Review, in this sense, speaks of memories and feelings that are too soon left behind, it makes a stand to look back. Against a bitterly divided world, it also gestures towards resonance and reconnection. The album was first released with no paratext on March 3, 2023, we thank all our blind listeners for their precious curiosity.

CD 1, Unitarian Chapel, Warwick, 1994 and 2023:“Andy Isham organised a concert in the Unitarian Chapel, Warwick on 29 June 1994. As part of a longer concert I played a solo piece on soprano which is the first track on CD 1.  It was not long enough to issue on its own and things moved on. Since then I have kept coming back to it because I think it is some of the best solo playing I have ever done. The idea came to me that I should go back to the chapel and see what it was about the space which drew that playing out. As the idea took shape, the saying of Heraclitus about not being able to step in the same river twice started swirling around too. And there it was – I had the title. The “concept”, even – or at least, the conceit … ”CDs 2-4, a sequence of solo recordings made at Arco Barco, Ramsgate, 2018-24:“I was introduced by Matt Wright, the other half of Trance Map, to Filipe Gomes and his Arco Barco studio in Ramsgate on the Kent coast. The studio is located in the upper floors of one of the former chandlers’ work spaces overlooking the harbour. A loft space with control room, a live main room and a smaller, less reverberant room. The acoustic response of the live room and Fil’s passion for sound recording has made Arco Barco my favourite studio and I have recorded there as often as possible.
 Over the many visits Fil has tested various microphones and their positioning. The variation means that some recordings are noticeably “dryer” and/or “closer” than others. Much of the thinking was inspired by the work of the late Michael Gerzon and his pioneering ambisonics. What I brought to the occasions was variability in reed behaviour and embouchure and perhaps most importantly my state of mind.”
THE HERACLITEAN TWO-STEP, etc.
BOOK CONTENTS:-- Writing by John Corbett (writer, curator, producer; Corbett vs Dempsey Gallery, Chicago), Filipe Gomes (Arco Barco, Ramsgate), Richard Leigh (writer), Stephen C. Middleton (writer/poet) and Robert Stillman (musician).-- An extended interview with Evan Parker by Martin Davidson (Emanem label).-- An email exchange between Evan Parker and Hans Falb (Konfrontationen Festival, Nickelsdorf).-- Writing and visual artwork by Evan Parker. 

Helping to mark Evan Parker’s 80th birthday in 2024, the book compiles both historical and contemporary perspectives on Evan’s work, by a range of contributors as well as Evan himself. The book also includes a selection of Evan’s visual collages, which are shared publicly for the first time.

‘May Spring Last a Lifetime’ is the first duo release from improvising tenor saxophonists Tom Challenger and Evan Parker. The album emerged after years of informal practice sessions; then, following two live performances, the duo recorded this session at Arco Barco in Ramsgate. The album is Evan Parker’s fifth appearance on the False Walls label.Extracts from the CD booklet conversation between Tom and Evan:Evan: “Duo is the simplest form of group playing. And so it’s the simplest, the purest in a certain sense, and the most challenging. There’s nowhere to hide, really. It’s about the exchange. With two tenor saxophones, they have a shared language as instruments and I think we both have a relationship with the saxophone which is about: what does this thing do, what can it do? And then I’ve learned things from Tom that he has discovered: you can do this and can I approximate that? Can I incorporate that into my language or my relationship with the output of the instrument?”Tom: “I mean, as much as there is just two of us and you can tell there’s two of us, there are moments where there’s no one [laughs], and then there’s moments where there are four or five. This duo has challenged the way that I listen, or the way I don’t listen sometimes. But there are these weird moments where there might be three perceivable, four perceivable things going on, you know, in terms of what you might call a voice.”

Matthew Wright’s album Cracked Glaze is performed by virtuoso vocalist Sofia Jernberg, Ensemble Klang (Michiel van Dijk, Erik-Jan de With, Anton van Houten, Pete Harden, Saskia Lankhoorn and Joey Marijs) and Wright’s improv/electronic group Spheric Totemic (Mandhira de Saram, Neil Charles, Alexander Hawkins, Stephen Davis and Matthew Wright).The 46-minute piece was performed live, and is built around a ‘spine’ of one long, descending scale which takes nineteen minutes to unfurl, and which then repeats with variations. Other layers of notation provide supporting roles. Superimposed against this notated ‘glaze’ are time-brackets (essentially start and stop times) for the improvisors to play solo or in groups. Wright also sampled, processed and sculpted the live sound design from the stage, and made significant post-production enhancements for the album release.From Matthew Wright’s sleeve notes: “In ceramics, a cracked glaze can occur during the firing process, when intense heat creates fractures, resulting in a tension between a smooth form and a tarnished surface. With Cracked Glaze I’m interested in how the elements of musical notation, improvisation and technology collide and ‘crack’ each other to produce catalytic results.”From Nate Wooley’s sleeve notes: “… this whole recording is rare and wonderful … Wright’s deft handling of the piece’s form and balance, the joy of hearing great improvisors at the top of their game, a murderers’ row new music ensemble, and a near flawless recorded document—but ultimately, the question that should be asked of this and all recordings is whether it leaves us wanting to return to it, demanding to know more … This is up to you, but repeated trips down this path will be rewarded.” --- Commissioned by Ensemble Klang for Musical Utopias 2024Premiered 12 January 2024 at Korzo Theatre, The Hague, NetherlandsLive sound engineering and recording by Micha de KanterPost-production, sound design and mastering by Matthew Wright

" ... as vital and immediate as anything already in the extended canon of Canadian-born, UK-based jazz master Kenny Wheeler."— Paris-MoveThe first release of a 1995 studio session, produced by Evan Parker. The Kenny Wheeler Sextet includes Ray Warleigh, Stan Sulzmann, John Parricelli, Chris Laurence and Tony Levin.Evan Parker instigated four recording sessions with Kenny Wheeler and members of this sextet between 1995 and 2003, with a compilation of Wheeler’s compositions from these sessions issued on 'Dream Sequence' (2003); the only sextet track on 'Dream Sequence', “Kind Folk”, was taken from the 1995 session which is presented in full here for the first time. 'What Was' includes compositions by Wheeler, Ray Warleigh, Stan Sulzmann, Mike Pyne and Lee Konitz.From Nick Smart’s sleevenotes:“Any previously unreleased studio session from a great artist is an exciting prospect, especially an artist sadly no longer with us but one whose legacy is still being cared for and curated by many of the musicians with whom they were closest. Such is the case with this outstanding recording from Kenny Wheeler’s sextet at Gateway Studio in late 1995, capturing a special period in his life with a special group of colleagues.On 'What Was' we hear Kenny at 65 years old and still at the height of his musical powers, but with the mature finesse and refinement consistent with all his playing during the nineties and particularly on his most successful recording of all time, made just a few months after this session in February 1996, 'Angel Song' (ECM).This period is perhaps a kind of ‘second chapter’ in the evolution of his playing; after the fiery Wheeler of the 1970s we hear him now still full of passion and every bit as assured, but with the more reflective, glass-like quality that refined itself into his sound and self-expression around this time. In addition to that, this new release also brings together many of the people deeply connected with Kenny and his musical world throughout his entire career.It’s another treasure in the important legacy of a much missed, and irreplaceable musician.” --- Kenny Wheeler, flugelhornRay Warleigh, alto saxophone and fluteStan Sulzmann, tenor saxophoneJohn Parricelli, guitarChris Laurence, bassTony Levin, drumsRecorded September 29, 1995Gateway Studio, KingstonEngineer: Steve LoweProducer: Evan ParkerMastering, 2025: Filipe Gomes at Arco Barco, RamsgatePhotographs: Caroline ForbesSleevenotes by Nick Smart, Stan Sulzmann, Chris Laurence, John Parricelli & Evan Parker

Henry Dagg is a composer, improvisor, sound sculptor and builder of experimental musical instruments who formerly worked as a sound engineer for the BBC. His works include the Sharpsichord, a pin barrel harp commissioned for the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and a pair of steel sculptural musical gates for Rochester Independent College.“What he’s doing is a very serious body of work. Henry’s not an ordinary commercial artist/musician; he seeks perfection, and he’ll get it at any cost.”— Brian Pain, Rochester Independent CollegeEvan Parker improvises on the tenor and soprano saxophone, and has performed live and recorded extensively across the UK and internationally. He has pioneered or substantially expanded an array of extended techniques for the saxophone.“The UK’s greatest exponent of free jazz.”— Mike Hobart, Financial TimesHenry and Evan improvised together for the first time as part of the Free Range series in Canterbury, Kent, on December 2, 2021. For the performance, Evan played soprano saxophone, and Henry developed a new electronic instrument called the Stage Cage, to both process Evan’s live sound as well as generate its own sounds.The Stage Cage includes four valve test-oscillators, a pair of ring modulators, frequency shifter, chromatic zither, and a variable tape delay system (consisting of two quarter-inch tape machines, eight feet apart – the first machine records, and the tape runs past moveable playback heads to the second machine, allowing several replays). Henry's main performance interface is a ‘dynamic router’: a five-key controller, which is the bridge between most of the components of the Stage Cage.Towards the end of the performance, the tape machines were stopped, their reels reversed and set to play: the improvisation from then on was overlaid by a reverse reproduction of what Henry and Evan had already been performing, with the reverse recording itself also being subjected to various treatments.The live recording was subsequently developed by Henry for this 56 minute album. Evan notes in the accompanying booklet interview: “I would say it will sound better now, because of the post-production work that Henry’s done, using the live recording as – basically – tracks to be part of a new mix, a new project, which obviously overlaps hugely with what we did in the room, but it should be more detailed and better balanced in certain parts. Some post-production decisions that technology makes possible, where they led to improvements, Henry used those possibilities. It should be better than being at the event …”For the CD and digital release, the recording has been mastered by Adam Skeaping, and a conversation between Henry, Evan and performance artist Karen Christopher is included in a 20 page booklet.______________________________________________________“This 56-minute improvisation demonstrates the fearless sonic imagination of both Parker and Dagg, always searching for unchartered territories and with great attention to detail and a totally free and unpredictable spirit, but their own way of suggesting a cohesive and coherent improvisation. Its arresting atmosphere visits abstract musique concrète, otherworldly, deep-space ambient journeys, and a careful but sometimes subversive and kaleidoscopic investigation of the soprano sax tones and overtones, live and processed ones.”— Salt Peanuts, on THEN THROUGH NOW______________________________________________________Music by Henry Dagg and Evan ParkerOriginal recording by RouteStockProduction by Henry DaggMastered by Adam Skeaping Photographs by RouteStockDesign by David Caines Gatefold sleeve, with 20 page bookletOriginal live recording: Fruitworks/Fond Coffee, Jewry Lane, Canterbury, as part of the Free Range series, December 2, 2021. freerangecanterbury.orgAlbum launch event & benefit for the venue:The Hot Tin, Faversham: November 20, 2022

This is Astrïd’s second album on the False Walls label, following Always Digging The Same Hole in 2023. Astrïd and Sylvain Chauveau previously released the collaborative album Butterfly in the Snowfall in 2014, and have played shows together and with Rachel Grimes. Sylvain often covers songs, changing the original music using electronic or a minimalistic harmonium. For their new collaboration, Astrïd and Sylvain decided to work together for the first time on an album of cover songs, starting with Nina Simone’s version of Dambala, then Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang (a song Sylvain regularly performs live). These two songs pointed towards the concept of the album: all iconic songs originally written and/or performed by woman singers. As the musicians all live in different places, the album took some time to be recorded, across different sessions in Nantes, France. The album is also the last recording on which Guillaume Wickel appears, after he sadly passed in 2022. His disease and death put the album on hiatus for some time, before Cyril Secq started to work on it again and did the final mixes. The record is dedicated to Guillaume. Songs and original credits:Video Games: written by Elizabeth Grant and Justin Parker, performed by Lana Del ReyMachine Gun: written by Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons, performed by PortisheadDambala: written by Exuma, performed by Nina SimoneEverything Is Free: written and performed by Gillian Welch and Dave RawlingsBang Bang: written by Sonny Bono, performed by Nancy SinatraRunning Up That Hill: written and performed by Kate BushWords by the artists above; music arranged and performed by Astrïd & Sylvain ChauveauVanina Andréani: violinSylvain Chauveau: vocals, harmonium, pianoYvan Ros: drums, metallophoneCyril Secq: guitars, piano, juno, harmonium, metallophoneGuillaume Wickel: clarinets, rhodesRecorded and mixed by Cyril SecqMastered by Ian HawgoodArtwork: Salle des fêtes by Alix Petit & Julien Nédélec Graphic design by David Caines This record is dedicated to the memory of Guillaume Wickel

OTOROKU is proud to present the first vinyl reissue of Blue Notes for Mongezi, one of the most passionate celebrations of a life in music ever laid to tape. Recorded in late 1975 by Blue Notes, then reduced to a quartet - Dudu Pukwana on  alto sax, whistle, percussion, and vocals; Johnny Dyani on bass, bells, and vocals; Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums, percussion, and vocals; and Chris McGregor on piano, and percussion - and issued the following year by Ogun, the album is a kairos; the first commercial release by one of free jazz’s seminal ensembles, captured them 13 years after their founding - at the height of their powers - delivering an explosive dirge dedicated to Mongezi Feza, their former bandmate and friend.  Blue Notes were founded in Cape Town in 1962 and stand among the most important ensembles in the history of jazz. Artistically brilliant and groundbreaking - gathering, within a few short years, a devoted following that included Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew,Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, John Stevens, and numerous others - they were also the first widely visible multiracial band in South Africa. As a mixed race band under South African apartheid; this group of friends and like-minded artists - Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo -  existed within a context that viewed their mere existence as a dangerous and subversive act. In 1964, as the pressure mounted, they joined an exodus of musicians leaving for Europe, eventually settling in London during the following year. Sadly, not long after arriving and facing continued economic peril, the group buckled. Johnny Dyani left to join Don Cherry’s band. Moholo-Moholo and Dyani followed suit and joined Steve Lacy on tour, and the remaining members morphed into a number of ensembles that eventually grew to become Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath. In late 1975 however, Mongezi Feza - in the midst of a fruitful period collaborating with Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Dyani, and Okay Temiz - suddenly passed away at the age of thirty from pneumonia. Nine days later, on the 23rd December, following the memorial service to their friend, Pukwana, Dyani, McGregor, and Moholo-Moholo gathered in a rehearsal room in London and set out to play. Fittingly, no discussion took place before or during the session. The music was left to say it all.   The resulting double LP coalesced into four long-form movements that occupy a side each, collectively unleashing an onslaught of free jazz fire, fluidly covering a remarkable range of moods and tactical approaches across it’s length. For anyone encountering the Blue Notes for the first time, the album must have felt like being blindsided by a brick, adding a profound sense of credence to Moholo-Moholo’s belief that free improvisation was intrinsically linked to the Pan-African temperament. In the band’s hands, the idiom sounds like nothing else and exactly as it should.  A frenzied funeral dirge, a cry, and catharsis, the record rises and falls between playful and joyous movements of deconstructed song, rhythmic and vocal tribalism, and churning, instrumental free expression. It indicates not only a possible future for musical expression - as all truly avant-garde music does - but also the very roots of music itself, illuminating, through abstraction, the far-flung, ancient roots currently carried by the New Orleans “first line” march to the grave. It is a decidedly African vision of free jazz, coalescing as a collective expression of celebration and loss on a cold London day. It is a masterpiece unfolding in real time - out on a limb and laden with risk - created by four of the most talented voices the idiom has known.   --- DUDU PUKWANA / alto sax, whistle, percussion, vocals CHRIS McGREGOR / piano, percussion LOUIS MOHOLO / drums, percussion, vocals JOHNNY DYANI / bass, bell, vocals and most of the words --- This 2022 re-issue has been made with permission and in association with Ogun records. Transferred from the original masters and featuring an exact reproduction of the original artwork. Remastered by Giuseppe Ilelasi and packaged in a high gloss sleeve. All music by the Blue Notes. All music published by Ogun Publishing Co. Cover design by Ogun.  Front cover photograph and photograph of Mongezi Feza by Geroge Hallet. Blue Notes photograph by Jurg. Back cover photograph by George Hallet and Peter Sinclair. Xhosa translation by Z. Pallo Jordan. Produced by Keith Beal and Chris McGregor. Ogun Recording would like to thank John Martyn for his assistance in making this album possible. Reissue for OTOROKU produced by Abby Thomas. Transferred from the original masters by Shaun Crook at Lockdown Studios. Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Layout for reissue by Maja Larrson.

OTOROKU is proud to present the first vinyl reissue of Blue Notes for Johnny - a defining statement by one of the greatest ensembles in the history of jazz. Recorded in mid-1987 by Blue Notes - then reduced to the trio of Dudu Pukwana on alto sax, Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums and Chris McGregor on piano - it encounters the band 25 years after their founding embarking on an inward meditation through collective music making dedicated to Johnny Dyani, their former bandmate and friend.  Blue Notes were founded in Cape Town in 1962, and stand among the most important ensembles in the history of jazz. Artistically brilliant and groundbreaking - gathering, within a few short years, a devoted following that included Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, John Stevens and numerous others - they were also the first widely visible multiracial band in South Africa. As a mixed race band under apartheid, this group of friends and like-minded artists - Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo -  existed within a context that viewed their mere existence as a dangerous and subversive act. In 1964 they joined an exodus of musicians leaving for Europe and eventually settled in London the following year. Sadly, not long after arriving and facing continued economic peril, the group buckled. Johnny Dyani left to join Don Cherry’s band. Moholo-Moholo and Dyani followed suit and joined Steve Lacy on tour, and the remaining members morphed into a number of ensembles that eventually grew to become Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath.    Following the death of Mongezi Feza in 1975 the remaining members of the group had come back together to record Blue Notes For Mongezi, reigniting a sporadic period of activity over the coming years. Following the untimely passing of Johnny Dyani in late 1986, the last three members of the original line-up - McGregor, Pukwana and Moholo-Moholo - reformed to pay tribute to yet another of their fallen brothers.  Blue Notes for Johnny, the group’s second musical memorial to a band member, incorporates a considerably broader range of touchstone and practices than its predecessor, nodding toward the band’s foundations in be-bop and post-bop without abandoning where they had journeyed along the way. Internalising equal elements of hard-bop, modalism, and free improvisation, it is a startling creative statement, imbued with a tension that renders an equally radical and sophisticated challenge; a furious tide - slow in pace and it slow to reveal itself - masquerading in gentler forms.  A celebration and a memorial. Joyous and tragic. A real time resurrection of personal experience, Blue Notes for Johnny dodges, dances, and transforms across its two sides, refusing to be nailed down. As the trio pushes against each other, bristling tonal and rhythmic collisions leave the impression that something is bound to explode, without ever fully letting go.  Blue Notes for Johnny’s memorialisation is unwittingly doubled by capturing the final time that the Blue Notes would come together in the studio. Both Dudu Pukwana and Chris McGregor would pass away three years later in 1990, leaving Moholo-Moholo - who continues to carve a groundbreaking trajectory across the world of jazz - as the last surviving member. The album remains as a journey between an imaged future and the beginning of it all. Six friends meeting and communing through sound. Six friends who had triumphed against the odds, becoming some of the greatest creative voices of their generation. Six friends who were five, then four, and then three, before they were done. Friends who never failed, in whatever form, to come together and play. It is a story begun 60 years ago that remains just as prescient today. --- DUDU PUKWANA / alto sax CHRIS McGREGOR / piano LOUIS MOHOLO / drums  --- This 2022 re-issue has been made with permission and in association with Ogun records. Transferred from the original masters and featuring an exact reproduction of the original artwork. Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. All music by the Blue Notes. All music published by Ogun Publishing Co. Cover design by Ogun.

6 panel Digisleeve CD with sleevenotes by Lol, photos and illustrations Tracks 1-5 originally released in 1978 on LP as OG 525 - The Joy Of ParanoiaTracks 6-7 originally released in 1977 on LP as OG 510 - Diverse Lol Coxhill - soprano saxophone, loose floorboardMichael Garrick - electric pianoDave Green - bassJohn Mitchell - percussionPaul Mitchell-Davidson - bass guitarKen Shaw - electric guitarVeryan Weston - pianoColin Wood - celloRichard Wright - Spanish guitar "The idea behind the original two LPs which form this re-issue was to present collective example of certain areas where I function mostly as an improvising musician. My intention with The Joy of Paranoia was to create an album which presented my saxophone improvisations within several different situations. The tracks with Michael Garrick, though based upon familiar compositions, were played very openly. The duets with Veryan Weston were spontaneous. Joy of Paranoia Waltz is based upon a simple riff with four saxophone overdubs. The Wakefield Capers, with the exception of some established rhythmic settings by the members of Paws for Thought, is improvised."  --- Lol Coxhill / soprano sax Michael Garrick / electric piano Dave Green / bass John Mitchell / percussion Paul Mitchell-Davidson / bass guitar Ken Shaw / electric guitar Veryan Weston / piano Colin Wood / cello Richard Wright / span guitar (track 1) --- Recorded at Bretton Hall, Wakefield; Hatfield Music Centre; Mekon Studios, London; Fairway Tavern, Panshanger; Seven Dials, London. Tracks 1-5 originally released in 1978 on LP as OG 525, The Joy of Paranoia. Tracks 6-7 originally released in 1977 as OG510, Diverse.

Beautiful x2 CD reissue of Moholo's essential Bra Luis - Bra Tebs and Spirits Rejoice! Bra Louis - Bra TebsLouis Moholo-Moholo - drumsFrancine Luce - voiceJason Yarde - alto & soprano saxesToby Delius - tenor saxClaude Deppa - trumpetPule Pheto - pianoRoberto Bellatella - bassSpirits Rejoice!Louis Moholo-Moholo - drumsEvan Parker - tenor saxKenny Wheeler - trumpetNick Evans - tromboneRadu Malfatti - tromboneKeith Tippett - pianoJohnny Dyani - bassHarry Miller - bass "With the Octet having whetted his appetite for band leading, Louis Moholo-Moholo went on to develop an array of ensemble projects, the longest serving of which he dubbed Viva La Black. It was with Viva that Louis toured South Africa in 1993, and for Louis and some of his compatriots in Viva the tour was nothing less than a personal triumph, a return home after three years spent in exile. Why these studio sessions rested in the vaults for so long remains a mystery. It was a slightly changed band that Louis assembled in 1995: the fresh ingredient that would move Viva into the darker, earthier grooves of Bra Louis - Bra Tebs was singer Francine Luce, originally from Martinique and now one of the vocal treasures of the London improv scene. But here they are, at last." - David Ilic   "Full of striking themes and strong improvisation, and continues a tradition that goes back a long way in South African jazz: stripped-down, hymnal themes repeated like mantras, gradually intensifying into free-jam furores, or giving way to racing swing. Some of the songs are as quirkily gentle as a Norma Winstone record, some like Annie Ross in a free-improv band - and though Francine Luce's frantic variations might not work for everybody, she's sonorous and soulful on the brooding traditional song Utshaka, and on a defiant Motherless Child."

Recorded live at OTO in April 2017 includes long time collaborators Jason Yarde on saxophones, John Edwards on bass, and Alexander Hawkins on piano, with the addition of saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings. "Another crowded night, atmosphere charged, some new faces, lots familiar...From the first note the music spirals into the spirit world, summoned, a dance of beauty and life and death., and some of our friends are crying. They are strong and crying. We've been here before and it's always a shocking truth. This music is very real." "Experience the sensation of being blown away by the waves of emotion, whether overwhelmingly ecstatic or exquisitely refined. And most of all, perhaps, listen to the Louis Moholo Moholo Quartet to understand how, in this music, the individual and the collective can simultaneously attain equal importance: a most elevated state of being." – Richard Williams, The Blue Moment, review of Louis Moholo Moholo Quartet at Cafe OTO."

"One of the most notable things Parker and Stevens have in common is their way of absorbing and transforming influences from jazz. Stevens has often paid tribute to the music of people such as Eddie Blackwell and Ornette Coleman. Parker has his roots in the records of Coltrane, Dolphy and others. They have drawn on other musics to create a new language which is very personal and not in any way parasitic upon its resources. Other contexts will find Parker playing tenor saxophone and Stevens a conventional kit. In the duo, Parker plays only soprano and Stevens' kit is diminutive - no bass drum, two hi-hats, a childs snare. Evendently they have mapped out a very special area - extremely concentrated and intimate."  --- John Stevens / percussion, cornet Evan Parker / soprano saxophone --- Front cover illustration by Geoffrey Rigden, 1986. Corner to Corner recorded direct to U-Matic master using Schoeps and Neumann microphones on June 8 1993 at Angel Studio, London, by Kirsten Cowie. Longest Night recorded on the longest night of 1976 at Riverside Studios, London, by Adam Skeaping.