Keiji Haino, one of the foremost exponents of the Japanese avant-garde, always provides a masterclass in constantly shifting improvisation. John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. Haino and Butcher met when Butcher opened for Fushitsusha at the show Cafe OTO arranged at St. John, Hackney - 5 years ago. In 2016 they were invited to play two duo concerts – at The Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and at Cafe OTO in London. Otoroku is proud to present the audio documentation of their first UK meeting. Recorded live at Cafe OTO in July 2016 the results are an uncompromising milieu of swirling sound played out as a total union of these two legendary performers.  Haino’s blues drenched guitar entices skittering notes from Butcher’s sax playing as numerous sonic clues unravel over the course of of this unique and compelling journey. Light Never Bright Enough comes in a limited edition of 500 LPs and 500 CDs with matt sleeves and japanese removable obi-strip. --- Keiji Haino / vocal, guitar, flutes   John Butcher / saxophones and feedback --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 9th July 2016 by Luca Consonni. Mixed by John Butcher. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photography and design by ORGAN. 

One of the final Incus releases and one that was written up in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as ‘an essential document of modern music’. Otoroku is proud to release the first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording The Snake Decides. Featuring 4  solos recorded in 1986 in St. Paul's Church, Oxford by the late Michael Gerzon. The Snake Decides is a groundbreaking example how far the language of a particular instrument can be taken. From Brian Morton’s liner new notes: “The Snake Decides attracts a certain array of adjectives - intense, radical, fearsome, hypnotic, virtuosic – and occasionally allows a more ambitious reviewer to avoid platitude by talking more specifically about 32nd harmonics, circular breathing, multiphonics and Gerson's exact choice and placement of microphones. But this misses a point, too. Listening to this record, either for the first or the fortieth time, is an arousing experience.” Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and housed in a reverse board sleeve with new liner notes by Brian Morton this is the ultimate document of one of the most important recordings in all of Parker’s extensive and exploratory catalogue. Edition of 500 copies.

Dedicated to the memory of Tony Marsh The recordings on this double LP are taken from the first night of Roscoe Mitchell's inaugural two day residency at Cafe OTO in 2012 and his first time playing with drummer Tony Marsh and double bassist John Edwards. It was one of those nights where the music electrifies the room. Everyone on edge. Everything alive with the possibilities. Although there was much talk after the concert of the group playing together again this would sadly be the first and last time the trio would play. Tony passed away unexpectedly just a few weeks later making this his last documented performance and a fitting tribute to a truly great drummer and percussionist. Roscoe Mitchell is one of the most important saxophonists and composers of the 20th Century. Active since the 1960s as a bandleader, mentor, collaborator and teacher. Mitchell was a founding member of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. He has been a pivotal figure in the collective re-imagining of what is possible in jazz, improvisation and beyond combining an instantly recognisable sound on the saxophone with staggering technique (check the lengthy stretch of sustained circular breathing on SIDE C) and an arresting, fractured melodic sensibility. On this date he quickly realised he was in the company of two musicians who could match his vision and create music that is more than the sum of its parts. John Edwards is a vital presence in London's creative music community. A true virtuoso, his staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role. No one else played or plays drums like Tony Marsh. Richard Williams had previously described Tony's "marvelous ability to erase the boundary between time and no-time" and here, on the jerry-rigged suspended percussion set-up he'd developed (no kick or hi-hats) he opens up a beautifully resonant space, quietly directing the pulse whilst allowing you to fully hear the upper-register harmonic detail and flickering pizzicato of John Edward's bass. You'd be hard pressed to hear anything in the playing that would hint at his shock passing only a month later.
 "Listen closely, take a chance, keep going even if money's tight, and you'll find the real reward – that's why Tony was hip in the most meaningful sense … And he didn't need to play loud, or be loud, to get that intensity. It's like splitting diamonds or something. If you know exactly the right place to make the impact, you don't need to hit anything hard." - Evan Parker 

 (Quoted in John Fordham's Obituary for Marsh)

We're very pleased to announce Pat Thomas's ‘The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari’ on our in-house OTOROKU label. Recorded live at OTO in May 2015 and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, the LP comprises four typically genre-defying and sonically dexterous pieces from one of the UK's most extraordinary pianists. In Pat's own words: The title for this Album, was inspired by the incredible automatic water clock invented by Badi' al-Zaman ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari. Al Jazari refers to the fact he was born in Al Jazira which lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates in what is now Northern Iraq. Badi al Zaman means prodigy of the age. He is known by historians of technology as the father of modern robotics. The Elephant Clock at seven metres high is a testament to his engineering genius, it utilizes Greek water raising technology, combined with an Indian elephant, Egyptian phoenix, Arabian figures, Persian carpet and Chinese Dragons celebrating the diversity of cultures in the world. This and other marvels of engineering can be found in his Book of the Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices translated by Donald Hill (Pakistan Hijra Council). Over 50 devices are mentioned. Amongst them the first analog computer, his remarkable Castle Clock, however, the debt the world owes this muslim genius is found in his remarkable water raising devices, particularly water raising device number 4 where for the first time a crank connecting rod system is used. The crank is considered to be the most important single mechanical device after the wheel, by 1206 this is found fully developed in Jazari`s machines predating Francesco di Giorgio Martini by 3 centuries. 'For Al Haytham' is dedicated to the great polymath genius who wrote the great book on vision, the first person to give us a true understanding of how we see. 'Lubb' is an Arabic word meaning innermost consciousness whilst to conclude proceedings 'Done' is loosely based on a well known standard. - Pat Thomas 26TH May 2017 Pat Thomas began playing  piano at the age of eight. He studied classical music and reggae was an early interest. Thomas was inspired to take up Jazz after seeing legendary pianist Oscar Peterson on television. By 1979, Thomas was performing seriously as an improviser. In 1980 he became a member of oxford based group Ghosts with Pete Mcphail and Matt Lewis. Has worked with Mike Cooper, Steve Beresford, Geoff Hawkins, Chuck Berry, Tim Hill, Alex Ward, Eugene Chadbourne, Steve Noble, Jimmy Carl Black, Thurston  Moore, Mats Gustafsson, Evan Parker, Oliver Lake, Alan Silva, Bill Dixon, Joe Gallivan, Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards, John Zorn, John Butcher, John Russell and a duo with Mark Sanders since 1986 a duo with Steve Noble (who first met in 1979).  Current activities include Black Top with Orphy Robinson, Valid Tractor with Lawrence Casserley and Dom Lash, About Group with Alexis Taylor and John Coxon, Albert Newton with Charles Haywood and the Founder Effect with John Coxon, a duo with Han Bennink and a trio with William Parker and Hamid Drake. Pat Thomas received Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers in 2014. --- Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 4th May 2015 b Mark Jasper. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photo by fabio Lugaro. Design by Maja Larsson. 

"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 --- Kan Mikami / vocals, guitar John Edwards / bass Alex Neilson / percussion --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on 3rd April 2013 by James Dunn. Mixed by John Chantler. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi

Recorded live at Cafe OTO in March 2009 during Otomo Yoshihide's first residency here. This was one of only a handful of solo piano performances Otomo has given where he uses the instrument as a control matrix for harmonically rich feedback tones and devastating clusters of complex noise. Vinyl sold out long ago, so pleased to share this as a download finally! "For Otomo, the piano is a big box of potential sound. But since he’s an obsessive sort, he really digs into certain of its corners, and dig he does; when this record doesn’t sound like a gonzo feedback extravaganza, it sounds like he’s cutting through the side of the instrument with a hand-held saw. Whatever the means he used to make the piano sound like that, he’s laid utter waste to the instrument’s conventional sonic associations. There are plenty of people out there making pianos sound like something other than pianos, but I can’t think of anyone else doing it with so much punk spirit and so little reference to any familiar piano vocabulary." - Bill Meyer, Still Single --- Otomo Yoshihide / piano  --- Recorded at Cafe OTO by Shane Brown. Mixed by John Chantler. Mastered by LUPO at Calyx Mastering. 

Keiji Haino, one of the foremost exponents of the Japanese avant-garde, always provides a masterclass in constantly shifting improvisation. John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. Haino and Butcher met when Butcher opened for Fushitsusha at the show Cafe OTO arranged at St. John, Hackney - 5 years ago. In 2016 they were invited to play two duo concerts – at The Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and at Cafe OTO in London. Otoroku is proud to present the audio documentation of their first UK meeting. Recorded live at Cafe OTO in July 2016 the results are an uncompromising milieu of swirling sound played out as a total union of these two legendary performers.  Haino’s blues drenched guitar entices skittering notes from Butcher’s sax playing as numerous sonic clues unravel over the course of of this unique and compelling journey. Light Never Bright Enough comes in a limited edition of 500 LPs and 500 CDs with matt sleeves and japanese removable obi-strip. --- Keiji Haino / vocal, guitar, flutes   John Butcher / saxophones and feedback --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 9th July 2016 by Luca Consonni. Mixed by John Butcher. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photography and design by ORGAN. 

Before heading up to Counterflows festival, we were lucky to have new two piece Zywizna play an extraordinary set at OTO. Zywizna is a collaborative project between two distinct voices in underground Polish music – Genowefa Lenarcik and Raphael Rogiński. With guitar and voice they re-realize traditional Kurpian folk songs within a new experimental context; making music that is as much about the past as it is about the possible future. Raphael returns solo on the 7th March for a night of solo guitar.  Raphael Roginski is one of the most exploratory guitarists to emerge in Europe in past few decades. Laying the foundations for new Jewish music in Poland with the bands Shofar, Cukunft and Alte Zachen, he has gone on to immerse himself in primitive American folk and blues, early Israeli music, European improvisation, Mediterean music, Jewish African music, American experimental music, as well the work of of Bach and Coltrane. Genowefa Lenarcik is a singer and performer of traditional Kurpian folk music. Daughter of the Kurpian vocal legend Stanisław Brzozowski and the acclaimed torch-bearer of her father’s oeuvre. ---  Raphael Roginski / guitar Genowefa Lenarcik / vocals

Irreversible Entanglements' remarkable UK debut, with Pat Thomas joining on piano for the second half of their firey 83 minute set. Comparisons of Irreversible Entanglements to Amiri Baraka and the New York Art Quartet ring true - free improvisation burns hot under Ayewa’s searing poetic narrations of Black trauma, survival and power - words drawn from her own 'Fetish Bones', '3D Bones' and 'Out of Order Punk'.  Dedicated to Cecil Taylor. --- Camae Ayewa / vocals Keir Neuringer / saxophone Aquiles Navarro / trumpet Luke Stewart / bass Tcheser Holmes / drums Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 5th April, 2018. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Original artwork by Geoffrey Winston. 

Having been on our wish list for a long, long time we were delighted to have Patty Waters take up a two night residency at OTO last December. Accompanying her on double bass is Tjitze Vogel, and on piano is Burton Greene with whom she recorded 'Sings' for ESP Disk back in the 60s. Greene's scratching and tugging of the piano strings during their first ever rehearsal had encouraged Waters to turn ballads inside out, and the same is true today. Before 'Nature Boy' Waters asks Greene to play inside the piano once more; the song's refrain is shredded by Waters with total control. Her voice has shifted but her unique command remains. The trio hold the room on a breath as they deliver renditions of classics unheard anywhere else. Huge thanks to all three musicians. --- Patty Waters / vocals Burton Greene / piano Tjitze Vogel / bass --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Thursday 6th December 2017 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photo by Maiken Kildegaard and artwork by Oli Barratt.  Track 1 'Free Form Composition 1' written by Burton Greene and Tjitze Vogel / 20 September 2009 written by Tilo Baumheier and Burton Greene. Track 4  'Mirjam Revisited' written  by Herbert de Jonge and Burton Greene. Track 7  'Free Form Composition 2  by Burton Greene and Tjitze Vogel / Space Is Still the Place written by Burton Greene. Track 10  'Say Yes' by Silke Röllig and Burton Greene / Free Form Composition 3 written by Burton Greene and Tjitze Vogel.

Having released her 'Melancoholic' 7" on American Tapes back in 2012, it was super special to have Sharon Gal play a solo set as part of Wolf Eyes' residency last year. 23.9.18 slinks around the demonic end of Gal's doings; kin to her work as Mami Wata (duo with Andie Brown) and Meltaot (with Edwin Pouncey). Bells and electronics summon malevolent birdsong and creatures lit by the light of a will-o'-the-wisp.  --- Sharon Gal / electronics, vocals --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Sunday 23rd September 2018 by Shaun Crook. Mixed & mastered by Jimmy Dunn. All music by Sharon Gal.

One of the final Incus releases and one that was written up in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as ‘an essential document of modern music’. Otoroku is proud to release the first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording The Snake Decides. Featuring 4  solos recorded in 1986 in St. Paul's Church, Oxford by the late Michael Gerzon. The Snake Decides is a groundbreaking example how far the language of a particular instrument can be taken. From Brian Morton’s liner new notes: “The Snake Decides attracts a certain array of adjectives - intense, radical, fearsome, hypnotic, virtuosic – and occasionally allows a more ambitious reviewer to avoid platitude by talking more specifically about 32nd harmonics, circular breathing, multiphonics and Gerson's exact choice and placement of microphones. But this misses a point, too. Listening to this record, either for the first or the fortieth time, is an arousing experience.” Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and housed in a reverse board sleeve with new liner notes by Brian Morton this is the ultimate document of one of the most important recordings in all of Parker’s extensive and exploratory catalogue. Edition of 500 copies.

'Who will listen to aches that Everyone has’ is a telaesthetic document of disquiet, distance, and disintegrating memory. Careful mantels, rumours of summer, a nocturne, the black inside; Septembers wither, sentiments wane, the chamber-band plays.  ---MB / violin, piano, spokes, hotel bell, lighthouse bell LR / cello ML – pianette LF / cutlery SM / silhouette  ---

Exceptional first release from much talked about trio, Triple Negative: Madame Tlank & Clinical Wasteman & others. Bayern Tāmaki Makaurau/northsouth London, since 1989/2003/2016. "Nether neither either ether [C.B.]. Bad bad grace back for a death-affirming day. Hard-to-Reach claimants born in the wrong place (Bayern Tāmaki Makaurau, Arkhangel district), put out too tender & possessed by spite.3 x negation = 15 years Philosophie Queen, 18 Meanstricken, meaning totgeschlagen! No end to the keratodermic bouzouki, knock-off Glock, plastic reed, Tascam Spiel. There’s nothing not superficial about it. An animus nursed with bad bad grace."

First in a series of two releases unveiling the previously unissued soundtracks made for the films of Ursula Reuter Christiansen by her partner and collaborator Henning Christiansen. The Executioner (Skarpretteren) is Ursula’s first film from 1971 and is now considered one of the most important works of early Danish feminist art. A highly praised recent show at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen highlighted the pertinent themes and ongoing urgency which lies within this bold symbolic work. The exquisite score is one of the key neo-romantic works in Henning’s far reaching output. A deeply melancholic set of vocal based works which place the listener deep within the tension and despair of Ursula’s themes. This unique vinyl presentation also features nature sounds recorded for the film on the island of Moen along with surprising works that defy anything else in Henning’s output.

Kreuzmusik was commissioned by the Bonner Kunstverein Gallery, Kunstfond, Germany in August 1989, for inclusion in their 'Taking Fluxus Around for a Drive' happening, (also featuring performances by Dieter Daniels, George Maciunas, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen, Joe Jones and others) and originally issued on cassette in 1990 by Neue Bildende Kunst in an edition of 100 copies. "in 1967 Joseph Beuys and i travelled to darmstadt for a performance of hauptstrom fluxus from 1:00 -11:00pm (10 hours) on the 20th march. hauptstrom was basically a new ritual, which is how a lot of people saw it at the time, and later on too. beuys used his own body as a deeply primal human language, and i made 10 hours of ritual music using a number of tape recorders. and obviously we wanted to make a completely new space for hauptstrom. the space at franz dahlem's at 7 aha street was small and there was even less space for the rather large audience because beuys made a roughly 7cm high rampart of margarine around his own performance space; and my main motif was a knocking sound, like the sound of a heart beating, which i used to create peace in the space, separate from the other more energetic sound-music passages. when i got the invitation for 'taking fluxus around for a drive' i immediately remembered that darmstadt exhibition in 1967. it's not all that far from denmark, 150 km to bonn-darmstadt, but a timespan of 22 years. i thought of jörg immendorf's lidl-bundestag, which you could say landed in the roses outside the real bundestag. this poetic, political act impressed me at the time, because it showed that our world could basically be quite different. i decided straight away that i wanted to make kreuzmusik, and i was also sure that no other fluxus people would come up with the same idea. most of my fluxus friends go for homo ludens and that's fine, but i wanted to feel the intimacy again in a small space, i wanted to make a scandinavian ritual in fluxid behandlung. i took my stone age gramophone (which really does play stones) called my friend ernst ludwig kretzer from hamburg and arranged with him that he would operate a time delay on my tapes and voice so that i could ritualise freely.

in kunstfond i didn't make a mound of margarine - of course not - instead i made one from flour (bread), in the middle of this was the stone age gramophone and hanging on the wall there were strange crosses, made out of socks and clothes hangers; as well as this there was a headless figure of christ and a toy cessna plane in a little canary cage.

i began with my piece io am en vogel as a 'starter' (about 20 minutes), then i performed zum preis des fluxus, which had been my contribution to the wiesbaden fluxus 82 catalogue, then i threw green stones into a bucket of water, then to the accompaniment of the eurasienstab -fluxorum organum music i played a green cutting sheet that was hanging on my chest, then to european zen i played 3 glass bowls with red sticks, the bells and knocking für das alte russland (for old russia). then everything went dark and i lit candles while my deep groundnote played. after 5 minutes played the lights came on again and my groundnote led into the sheep composition (sheep instead of fiddles); i used my green fat-fiddle to make little twittering sounds; for me, sheep mean peace and insight. this soundworld then lead into the composition with 180 hammer blows against war monkeys. i hammered very sharply and powerfully. beuys once wrote a piece with the title: der dumme hammer tritt auf (the stupid hammer performs), that's how it should be - against the war monkeys, logical. this sequence then finally lead into peaceful bird twitterings in a piece that i call die freiheit ist um die ecke (freedom is around the corner). during this i slowly immersed the cesna plane inside the canary cage in a tub of water , after i had flown around in my own space for a while. and that was the end of the whole seance. it lasted over an hour. - Henning Christiansen, 1990.” Thanks to The Henning Christiansen Estate and Ursula Block.

Two previously unreleased works from the late Danish composer, musician, publisher, artist and performer. Rødhætte (1985) is a rendition of Little Red Riding Hood featuring Ursula Reuter Christiansen as narrator. All the hallmarks of Henning’s unique approach to music/sound appear as the tale goes deeper into the depths of animalistic frenzy.  Ruinmusic (1984) inhabits the last breath off the piano housed within the former Marienborg Manor, an estate once on the Danish island of Møn. Prior to the destruction of the estate Henning Christiansen played a final haunting melody before the instrument was dumped down in the dirt.  Artwork by Ursula Reuter Christiansen.

Op.192 UMWÄLZUNG – fluxorum organum 1990 EURASIENSTAB ist immernoch ANGELPUNKT is a previously unissued work by Henning Christiansen from 1990. Around the formation of the European Union Henning approached his original Eurasienstab organ recordings from 1968 as a platform to remold a vast amount of audio he made over the subsequent years. This release comprises two different mixes of UMWÄLZUNG that were made for Werner Durand in 1990 to be used as backing tapes for a performance at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in February 1990. UMWÄLZUNG is unique in Henning’s output as it resides in a more contemporary landscape positioning itself more as a ‘mix’ than a stand alone recording. One which retains the skewered sensibility that only Henning could conjure. The two hour long versions of UMWÄLZUNG are haunted with tape hiss, weird interference and a deeply melancholic aura that moves from the original Eurasienstab organ recordings through to the somewhat hysterical 180 Hammer Blows Against War Monkeys resulting in an epic and hypnotic excursion.

"First commissioned by the French Government in 1981, the LP Rose Des Vents Action Musicale evolved out of a six year project by Swiss composer Pierre Mariétan to document and musicalise the sound environment of urban landscapes within France, creating an inter-geographical auditory map of cities and townships located in the suburban reaches of Paris, including Bezons, Herblay, Montmagny and l’Isle Adam. Through a mix of field recording, interviews, vegetable market catcalls, braying animals and urban hubbub, Mariétan paints a broad, psycho-acoustically vivid and decentralised profile of metropolitan life from the period; carried to the ear through a coupling with musical studio performance and serialist compositional technique. Over an hour and forty minutes, the recording provides an intersectional and ambient passage through environmental and urban narratives, the radiophonic voice of Ana de Carvalho offering fleeting, poetic orientation with announcements of each titled scene, divining and evoking the sonorous qualities of each landscape as it comes into focus. Each scene tangible yet non-specific, the artist arranging and signalling the possibility of civic and pastoral space as a musical container for spontaneous, sonorous interactions. Mariétan’s profile is of a rigorous yet open and exploratory composer, utilising principles of chance and curiosity in organising found sound and often negotiating or encouraging encounters with improvisatory gesture or incidental and occurring sound. In 1966 he established the outfit GERM, grouping composers and musicians dedicated to developing new meeting points between composition and improvisation. Members assist in contributing recordings and performances throughout Rose Des Vents, including musical passages on piano, synthesizer, horn and saxophone. These studio pieces, played on saxophone by Daniel Kientzy or piano by Gerard Fremy, recall and redeploy techniques developed over the lifespan of the project, where site- specific actions and concerts were performed within each of the towns. In many ways, the album is a folding of each facet of the author’s life and work into a single representative culmination. A sympathy towards radiophonic or documentary production values is recognisable—Mariétan produced two iterations of Rose Des Vents. Action Musicale for Alain Trutat and Jean Tardieu’s ground-breaking Atelier De Création Radiophonique on Radio France Culture ahead of this LP release—alongside the influence of his work in urban acoustics and research into forms of sound ecology. So too is the obvious pleasure taken in introducing the sweetness of music to children, with notable samples from his educational workshops and sound installations helping to internalise and evoke a sense of inquisitive delight. It’s these components, combined with themes and concerns about the acoustic environment that resonate 30 years later and establish Rose Des Vents as such an approachable, listenable and lovely piece of experimental sound art. The conjuration of an emotional or psychological plane through musical and metaphorical synthesis allows the listener to situate themselves within the montage in a near cinematic manner, discovering an underlying sonority embedded in the psychic atmospheres of communal life."

"Gamelan and capoeira in dub. The collective behind this doesn’t like to talk much but their music is beautifully conversational. De Leon is the most organic and percussive of their shifting identities, developed on their Aught project in small-run, clear-shell cassette tape releases over the last few years. They've appreciated a cult interest for their takes on outernational rhythm, field recording, and the tension and relief on the knife-edge of dance music; all delivered with an impressive commitment to anonymity and clarity of vision through cut-and-dried aesthetic minimalism. These six pieces of music seem formed from wood, metal, air. Dramatic, balletic flourishes and tightly woven interlocking patterns are embedded in slowly changing and "live" atmospheres. The shadow of a hand over the mixing desk makes gradual adjustments to alter the pressure and dimension of the space. A number of tracks first appeared on De Leon's set for Blowing Up The Workshop in February 2016."

Rie Nakajima and Keiko Yamamoto are joined by violinist Billy Steiger and percussionist Marie Roux in a dozen deconstructions of Japanese folk music, for this pacy, engaging debut album. Rie’s baby orchestra of rice bowls, toys, clock workings, balloons and motors is by turns haunted, teased, adorned and laid waste by Keiko’s chanting, rumbling, whispering and stamping on the floor. The production by David ‘Flying Lizards’ Cunningham deepens and spooks the mix, which brims over with energy and wit, intimacy and presence, grace and mystery. "Suddenly we are closer to music being made than we have been for many years or longer even, so alarmingly close as to feel warmth and discomfort, as if studying the sole of a foot from a few centimetres away or holding a private whisper within an enclosed hand and feeling its trembling desire to be free; but also so far away distant as to feel each vibrant, pungent ingredient within its box or jar or bowl or packet or bottle or air-tight translucent container or brown paper bag painstakingly stirred, shaken, scattered, poured into the heated cauldron of what we call recording, its imaginary rooms and its production, though my better self prefers not to speak about or analyse the notion of ‘the studio’, this being a working up of spaces that are social, a vision of something beyond us but not quite beyond us because its existence as a listening object is real enough to make us pause and question how it was lost or never found." - David Toop --- Keiko Yamamoto / voice, melodica, flute, recorder, floor percussion, toy dog (1-7, 9-12) Rie Nakajima / objects, whistles, flute, cards, taisho koto, xylophone, piano, abacus, drain horn (1-12) Billy Steiger / violin (2,4,7-9,11,12) Marie Roux / percussion, thumb piano (2,4,7,9,11,12) --- All composition by Nakajima/Roux/Steiger/Yamamoto apart from Yobu, Hebi, Iroha, Kitsune and Are Kore (Nakajima/Yamamoto) and Futari (Nakajima/Steiger). Words by Yamamoto except 5 and 11. Iroha is a Japanese classical alphabet. Sojarobai is a working song from Miyazaki, Japan. Produced by David Cunningham.  Cover image by Marie Roux. Sleeve design by Ayako Fukuuchi.

"Alternatively banging and evasive, exhausted and unglued. Stepping along the rim of the silver screen. Diptera takes a near electro-acoustic approach to the DNA, texture and pressure of UK Garage with a debut release on Mana. Its four tracks teeming with material detail, the duo's musical collaboration operates like a relay. Initial tracks made by Activist DJ — short sharp affairs focused on swung drums and darkside — are passed on to Wesley to be broken apart, tinkered with, and slowly refigured into more anxious and impressionistic musical forms, etched with intricacies and mixed fidelity. The result is a distinctive and resourceful excavation of hardcore at its most agile. A fly on the wall may face some adversity, so if you imagine a human hand in basic swatting motion, maybe you will also couple the image with an evasive manoeuvre of some sort; usually there is a moment of hesitation where the human is unsure whether their aim was true. "Did I catch it?""

"Wild soundscapes from Benedict Drew, an artist splitting his time between installation art and music that hums and spills over with vivid material encounters; sounds are slurpy, runny, fizzy, spongy, hard as rock. Following digital releases, a tape for patten’s Kaleidoscope label, a musical score to accompany his De Re Touch video art project commissioned by Transport for London’s Art on the Underground, and many active years in London’s experimental music scene through work with the London Musicians’ Collective, as a solo performer, and via live collaborations with artists including Rhodri Davies, Chris Watson and Sachiko M; ‘Crawling Through Tory Slime’ is Drew’s debut long-playing record. Music on each of the record’s faces bleeds together continuously, recalling long improvisational sets, floor-sucking dub-wise, psychedelia, plunderphonics, and tight GRM-era electronic sound design pieced together with drum machines, cloudy synthesiser, bits n’ bobs. There’s a certain English charm, humour and taste for cheap science fiction and cobbled-together escape routes out of reality that follows a lineage set out by artists like Jeff Keen or Bruce Lacey, reset for the exciting horrors and delights of contemporary life. Benedict Drew’s solo exhibition The Trickle Down Syndrome runs from June to September at the Whitechapel Gallery, designed over the same period as the LP and "drawing on wide-ranging references, from the stage sets of classic Hollywood cinematographer Busby Berkeley to the Surrealist worlds of artist Max Ernst"."

Edition Wandelweiser co-founder Jürg Frey presents the starkly beautiful minimalism of ’24 Wörter’, a song cycle based around the album’s evocative song titles, and performed by the trio of Regula Konrad (soprano), Andrew Nathaniel McIntosh (violin), and Dante Boon (piano). They’re mostly very succinct works with no detectable fat to trim, forming a gorgeous, dreamlike archipelago of experimental contemporary classical compositions... “Jürg Frey in conversation with Thomas Adank: JF: The 24 words are the titles of the individual pieces, and they are at the same time the entire text. They are also a list that shows how the piece gets from a beginning to an end. It is, in a sense, a cycle not simply a collection of pieces - a cycle which begins, makes a journey and ends at a different place. TA: If I had to categorize this list of words, it seems to me they are addressed to quite different areas. Herzeleid (Heartbreak) for example, sounds old-fashioned, Einsamkeitsmangel (Lack of Loneliness) almost sounds like a neologism, as do Halbschlafphantasie, (Half-Sleep Fantasy) Sehnsuchtslandschaft (Landscape of Longing), Vergessenheitsvogel (Bird of Oblivion). Others, such as Tod (Death), Schlaf (Sleep), Glück (Happiness), Wind (Wind), are very often used in everyday life. Did you, as you compiled this list, consider these categories? Or did you tell yourself a story that made these words necessary? JF: I was thinking in categories. At first I really wanted to make an even more rigid sequence. As it now stands, with the long words at the end and the short words in the middle, you can still feel a little of this structure; also at the beginning, which has many words with "e" and "ei". However, now it is not so strict. The words developed lives of their own, and this displaced some of the original structure. Some are everyday words, others are made by combining words, and some words found individual paths into the piece, including some very personal things. L'oiseau d'oubli ("Vergessenheitsvogel",Bird of Oblivion) comes from Edmond Jabès and is a tribute to this author I adore. But I also think that here Jabès has given me the perfect word. --- Dante Boon / pianoRegula Konrad / vocalsAndrew Nathaniel Mcintosh / violin --- Recorded 16.17 September 2013, Aarau, Schweiz.

Composer Eva-Maria Houben in a collaborative work with bass flutist Rebecca Lane and bass clarinetist Samuel Dunscomb, the composer performing on piano and orgran, for two renderings of "Observing Objects", a patient work of long notes and tones interspersed with silence, lower registers in the winds balanced by the piano or organ's upper register. --- Samuel Dunscombe / bass clarinetRebecca Lane / bass fluteEva-Maria Houben / organ, piano --- Tracklisting: 1. Observing Objects - 28:18 2. Observing Objects - 28:18

The piece originated from a field recording at Mentryville Park in Southern California; alone, in the same location, and as the sun was rising, which was transcribed by Martin and Amy Golden, Ben Levinson, Davy Sumner, and Ryan Gaston using Martin's system of notating silence. All slightly different, these five transcriptions were then combined into a score in which performers could wander while reading at their own pace(s) left to right.  Tracklisting: 1. so softly that it came, a wild dim chatter, meaningless - 72:00

"'Air" is yet another utterly impressive offering from, in my opinion, one of the most consistently extraordinary composers at work today, one who continues to unveil new facets of her persona. Hear it." - Brian Olewnick "And if you would ask me for a statement to composing, to my composing – I would answer: listening becomes the awareness of fading sound. Fading sound is the link between life and art; between perception in daily life and perception while performing, while composing. And the awareness of fading sound may become the awareness of presence.I am pianist and – in addition – organist. As organist I never forget that the organ is a wind-instrument. My pieces for organ and my “installations” for organ (the installations last many hours) ask: Am I realizing a piece? There is hardly anything you may hear in the church. The organ releases as a jewel each single sound; each stream of air; each noise: disappearing into the space of the hall. The listener will find the way to listening: in this particular room with this particular organ and its streams of sound/ air/ wind. All sound, all streams of air and noises are quiet; sometimes hardly recognizable. The sound of music; the noise of music; the sound and noise of everyday life: they cut into each other. Both sound and noise of music do not depend on silence as with a piece of music. Both sound and noise do not need any silent location: they are quiet themselves; their quietness creates silent rooms, which welcome all sounds. It is organ the machine and human beings working together. Man cannot breathe sounds of almost eternal duration; but the organ must not be considered a machine. My pieces for organ require the player: moving the keys; make the winds stream. Sounds, wind, noises of the organ as a wind-instrument and the silence at sacred spaces: not a coincidence. Churches’ sacred spaces turn into locations for people to nothing more than just be there and breathe; where people can listen – unhindered by any possible meaning of sounds and streams of air. In spite of the fact that the organ may have an endless breath – I composed one of my first organ pieces dazwischen (between) (2000) with two drones – you can hear “nearly nothing” by listening to the streams of air." - Eva-Maria Houben --- Recorded 2014, ref. church Elgg, Switzerland (ein schlummer), Hardstudios Winterthur, Switzerland (aufhören; atmen V: flutes), St Margareta, Dortmund-Eichlinghofen (atmen 5, organ)

"Madrid born composer, painter and sculptor Maria De Alvear wrote Besando El Tiempo in 1995. Public awareness of her music had grown a few years earlier with pianist Hildegard Kleeb’s excellent, intense and flinty interpretation of her spartan score En Amor Duro (hatART CD). Revisiting that encounter with tough love might be good preparation for the testing experience of listening to flautist Antoine Beuger on this stark and protracted new release. De Alvear’s refusal to dress instrumental sound in anything more than rudimentary musical trappings is disarming. The flute player often seems to have become absorbed by some private ritual, meandering in quiet introspection, picking over simple phrases at considerable length, all the while grappling with the task of kissing time set out in the title." - The Wire --- Tracklisting: 1. Besando El Tiempo (7./8.2.1995) 46:032. Besando El Tiempo (9./10.2.1995) 47:19 ---   Recorded: Haan (2015/2016)

"Issued under Bondi's name, he's joined by his Diatribes partner D'Incise on this composition, the former playing Indian harmonium, melodica, harmonica and pitch pipes, the latter Indian harmonium, electric organ and melodica. From the instrumentation alone, you get the idea that you're going to be experiencing, among other things, some rich drone-oriented music and yes, that's one aspect of 'euhesma, 2017'. Euhesma, incidentally, is a genus of bee and one wonders whether at least part of the piece is a meditation on that species' apparent decline in the world." - Brian Olewnick --- Tracklisting: 1. Euhesma, 2017 - 40:18 --- Cyril Bondi / harmonium, melodica, harmonica, pitch pipesd'incise / harmonium, organ, melodica ---

"'111 angelic MIDI cascade' is Ralph Cumbers' exquisite Slip debut: a finely forged collection of joyous electronic music built to surge and heal. This is Cumbers' first deliberate Bass Clef album since 2012's 'Reeling Skullways' on Bristol institution Punch Drunk, and a forceful departure from the bubbling, rogue club 12"s since issued on The Trilogy Tapes, PAN, and Idle Hands. Drums are almost entirely absent, making way for a braiding of soaring machine melodies, and taut harmonic threads. To be clear: this is no ambient record. No drifty clouds, no cocoons, no sonic platitudes.Recorded in Rotterdam in August 2018, amidst an immersion in the history of clairaudience, scrying, and natural philosophy, '111' is a leap into pinpoint mysticism, with Bass Clef as happy alchemist." --- Written and Recorded by Bass Clef. Mastered by Stephen Bishop. 

"'brace, brace' is Julia Reidy’s soaring Slip return: a dread-tinged incantation unfurling from breath-down-the-neck field recordings, auto-murmured voice, synthetic hum, and irrepressible guitar kinetics. Reidy’s signature 12-string playing - precise, burrowing, rhapsodic - dominates the LP's outer cuts, framing a plaintive electric centre. Blooms of arpeggiations and desolate strums re-inflect slow-moving pitch sequences; the music feels at once on fire and graceful, inevitable.Perhaps most surprising is how organic 'brace, brace'’s expanded palette feels. Reidy’s electronics are subtly eerie extensions, alien resonances of her playing, both embedding her instrument and making it somehow unreal. This strange smear of body and apparition is neatly nailed in Reidy’s sung-to-herself vocals, coaxed out and encroached upon by autotune Succeeding recent issues of her work by Feeding Tube and Room 40’s A Guide To Saints, 'brace, brace' is a definitive statement from a blazing, restless talent.The LP tours with visuals from Suze Whaites. Whaites’projection environment is built from the coruscant light sources and surface reflections with which her video footage is made, creating mutable vistas at once microscopic and panoramic, domestic and sublime." --- Mixed and recorded by Sam Slater. Mastered by Joe Talia. Artwork by Suze Whaites.

Dawning On is Australian, Berlin-based guitarist Julia Reidy’s Slip debut: a razor-sharp précis of pent-up, blazing melancholy on a lone 12-string guitar. Reidy’s playing is lucid and poised, teasing out elegant inflections from half-melodies, rugged strums, and curious tunings. Her compositions are lingering streams: barely-shackled attacks give way to introspective arpeggiations before resurging again, all spurred on by a yearning, nervous energy. With the album’s single-track A-side clocking in at just under half-an-hour, this is by some measure Julia’s most comprehensive solo statement to date, and a luxurious listen which revels in the 12-string’s generous resonance. For our money, it’s up there with the finest work of her fellow Aussies The Necks, Anthony Pateras, and Jon Rose.

'Solo' [SLP016] is the Slip debut of Berlin-based composer Andreas Dzialocha: a collection of lilting electric bass melodies refracted through a tangled network of live computer processing. 'Solo'‘s ruptured nocturnes are intimate duets between instrument and machine, with Dzialocha eloquently responding to randomised pulsing reverbs, filters, and compressors, which snatch his delicate motifs into virtual space in real time. Andreas studied art history, musicology, and computer science, and is founder and director of Berlin-based Serenus Zeitblom Oktett, and upstart publishing platform BLATT 3000. 'Solo' interactive website: solo.andreasdzialocha.com ---Mastered by Hannes Fritsch. Artwork by Rian Treanor

“’Got Gills?' [SLP015] is the exigent Slip debut of Manchester-based Otto Willberg, and a commanding introduction to the double bassist’s assertive, heady style. This unhinged collection of live acoustic takes (no amps, no overdubs) marries rasping grit and mesmeric repetition, and announces the arrival of a precocious instrumental talent.  Otto is a double bass player living in Manchester, interested in improvisation, experimental and contemporary music. He is a core component of caustic psych outfit Desmadrados Soldados De Ventura, and of Manchester's ever-blooming underground.”

"'Lost In Shadows' is American composer/performer Ashley Paul's bewitching Slip debut: an expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation.At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's ‘Line The Clouds’ (2013) and ‘Heat Source’ (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime. Recorded over 3 weeks at a FUGA residency in Zaragoza, Spain in December 2016, 'Lost In Shadows' documents a cathartic outpouring; the first time Paul had been able to write since the birth of her daughter 11 months earlier. The record is completely influenced by "many hours spent awake at night in a dream like state of half consciousness, darkness and solitude; an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and exhaustion made light by a profound new love", with Paul's solo playing bolstered by additional baritone saxophone, cello, tuba, and percussion. This ensemble set-up, which premiered much of this work at 2017's Counterflows festival, gives the LP a fresh sense of luxuriousness, bounce, and rich possibility.'" — Artwork by Gayle Paul. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

"Recorded live in Venice in 1977, these rare solo performances find Ra revisiting all facets of his career. With Ra there was never the divide between entertainment and art that marks the performances of younger, more self-conscious tone scientists, a term he preferred to musicians. Thus when he plays a simple blues he brings more dissonance to his left handed feints then you usually associate with the traditional sounds. When he performs his own "Angel Race," he begins by singing variations on the outer space theme." - All About Jazz --- Sun Ra / piano --- Recorded live at the Teatro La Fenice, Venezia, November 24, 1977. 

"Saved from oblivion by Anthony Braxton himself this recording can't be more welcome, for at the time of the release other Braxton's solo CDs are mostly unavailable. But make no mistake: the thing that will strike your ears is how absolutely contemporary this music sounds. Recorded twenty four years ago it sounds as if it has been recorded today. It was a long concert, but we managed to save every sound by editiong out bursts of applause after each piece. Yet it happened to be the longest recording in the entire Leo Records catalogue: 78'02." "Not released until 24 years after it was recorded, this classic solo album by one of the giants of the saxophone is a welcome addition to Anthony Braxton's discography. Performing solely on alto sax, there is a searing lyricism and a surprisingly jazz-oriented underpinning to even the most abstract of Braxton's improvisations. While most of the compositions are originals, the two that are not -- "You Go to My Head" and "Impressions" -- reveal Braxton's remarkable ability to delve deeply inside a song's structure and make it his own. In later years, Braxton often revealed a mellow tinge to his playing, even in solo performances. The instant release, though, reveals him in an energetic mood, and should satisfy those who appreciate his more radical side within the "mainstream" of the jazz avant-garde. He barks, screeches (though only occasionally and in characteristically good taste), and shows some outstanding technical skills, including incredible speed. While he has recorded some of these compositions elsewhere (for example, as Steve Day writes in the liner notes, four of the compositions appear on the impressive Alto Saxophone Improvisations 1979), Braxton is in peak form on this one and the results are uniformly excellent. Braxton enthusiasts (and others, too) will want this in their collections." - Surfing the Odyssey

"Originally released as a bootleg LP entitled Among the People. The Art Ensemble is at its best, in top form, in front of the ecstatic Italian crowd." "Half the recording is “Tutankhamun,” with a lyrical, slow Lester Bowie trumpet solo with characteristic emotive interjections, then a fast, melodic bass sax solo, presumably by Joseph Jarman, that bubbles like lava; when Bowie reenters, the group bounces along like a far-fetched version of a Gerry Mulligan quartet. “Illinstrun” is a quiet percussion piece, initially with tinkling metal sounds; over halfway through, the atmosphere suddenly, almost imperceptibly, changes to mysterious, indescribable sounds, with Malachi Favors bowing his bass alone at the end. Aggressive, vivid percussion led by Famoudou Don Moye opens “A Jackson in Your House”; the alto solo, consisting of edgy motivic variations, is presumably by Roscoe Mitchell, and the comic theme statement is by toy-store instruments." - Jazz Times --- Malachi Favors Magoustous / bass, melodica, percussionFamoudou Don Moye / drums, percussionJoseph Jarman / saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, vibraphone, percussionRoscoe Mitchell / saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, clarinet, percussionLester Bowie / trumpet, percussion---Recorded live in Milano, August 1980 

The Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago on September 25, 1978 - Volume 2 from the Waitawhile Sun Ra Archive. 18 compositions mixing untitled improvisations with Sun Ra's pieces and jazz standards. --- Danny Davis / alto saxophone, flute Marshall Allen / alto saxophone, piccolo fluteDanny Ray Thompson / baritone saxophone, flute Eloe Omoe / bass clarinet, fluteJames Jacson / bassoon, flute, percussion Atakatune / congas Luqman Ali / drumsDale Williams / electric guitarSun Ra / organ, synth, beamJohn Gilmore / sax, clarinet, vocals Damon Choice / vibraphoneJune Tyson / vocals --- Recorded live in Chicago on September 25, 1978 - engineer unknown.

"Complete performance by the legendary trio of their seminal composition Semplice (57 minutes) plus three encores." "The Ganelin Trio created some of the best improvised music ever played in the old Soviet Union, which you may think is like saying they're the best country music singers in the Metropolitan Opera company until you hear this disc. Recorded live in Moscow in 1983, this performance consists of Ganelin's fifty-seven minute "Semplice," plus three relatively brief encores." - All About Jazz "Maybe not since the first Ornette Coleman records appeared has Western European jazz experienced quite such a shock of the totally unexpected as the Ganelin Trio produced." - The Wire --- Vladimir Tarasov / drums, percussion, hornVyacheslav Ganelin / piano, keyboards, flute, horn, percussionVladimir Chekasin / saxophone, clarinet, flute, percussion --- Recorded live in Moscow 20th November 1983. Remastered by Alan Mosley. Photos by Hans Kumpf. Special thanks to Olivia Lichenstein for smuggling this recording out from behind the iron curtain. 

Seven original compositions plus two bonus tracks previously unissued. "36 minutes of the Man from Saturn and his Arkestra - the length of a good LP in the old days. Plus, how can any Saturnian resist the lure of a Ra disc recorded in the shadow of the Sphinx herself, right in Cairo? Top it off with 33 more minutes of Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band, and you've got a real treat. This is Ra in 1983 and 1984, sounding surprisingly close to the tight Ra band of the Fifties, rather than to the later, looser ensembles. To be sure, there isn't a lot of intricate ensemble work on these three Ra tracks, but the heads do have a bit of a throwback bop feel. Plus, "Egypt Strut" and "Dawn" both feature John Gilmore solos of terrific architectonic coherence and passion, and Marshall Allen chimes in on flute just as mellifluously. The Sun himself contributes a keyboard solo of ringing power on "Egypt Strut." "Watusa," meanwhile, is a feast of percussion in the grand Ra fashion. The Cairo jazz ensembles, which range from 21 members ("Ramadan") to five ("Oriental Mood,") hold up their end of the disc wonderfully. This is energetic and deeply sincere jazz with a marvelous Middle Eastern feel, complete with chanting on "Ramadan." All the instrumentalists are first-rate, especially pianist Khamis El Khouly, especially on "A Farewell Theme." A great one. A feast. Don't miss it." All About Jazz

"Reissue of Derek Bailey and Tristan Honsinger Duo, originally released by Incus in 1976. Born in Burlington, Vermont, and conservatory-trained in the US, the cellist Tristan Honsinger moved from Montreal to Amsterdam in 1974, quickly linking with Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg and opening a long and fruitful musical relationship with Derek Bailey. Recorded in 1976, Duo displays a performative musical approach already characterized by the lack of inhibition which would later endear him to The Pop Group: he is knockabout, exclamatory, explosively rhythmic; burping Bach and folk melodies with spasmodic lyricism, in amongst the garrulous textures and accents of his scraping, bowing, and plucking, and gibbering like a monkey; throwing out his arms and stamping the floor, grappling with his instrument like an expert clown, always tripping himself up. You can hear Bailey reveling in the company, as he ranges between scrabbling solidarity and an askance skewering of his partner's antics, on prepared (nineteen-string) and standard electric guitars -- and a Waisvisz Crackle-box, for the garbled, quizzical, cross-species natter which closes "The Shadow". Throughout, the spirited interplay between laconic, analytic wit, and guttural, sometimes slapstick physicality is consistently droll, often laugh-out-loud funny; vigorously alert, alive, and gripping.” --- Tristan Honsigner / cello, voice Derek Bailey / electric guitar, crackle box --- Recorded at Verity's Place 7th February 1976, except for A1 and B2 which were recorded at Tangent Studio 6th February 1976.

Originally released by Incus in 1974. Recorded at a private house in Catford, south-east London, the side-long title track is a masterwork: a twenty-two-minute, starkly personal, freely expressive, itchily searching re-casting of orders of rhythm and sound into a new, quicksilver kind of affective and musical polyphony. Never mind the guitarist’s championing of ‘non-idiomatic improvisation’, the poet Peter Riley gets the ball rolling in his identification of the various hauntings of Bailey’s playing at this time: ‘mandolins & balalaikas strumming in the distance, George Formby’s banjo, Leadbelly’s steel 12-string, koto, lute, classical guitar… and others quite outside the field of the plucked string.’  The five pieces on side two were recorded back home in Hackney around the same time — with the exception of Improvisation 104(b), from the year before (and issued by Incus in its TAPS series of mini reel-to-reel tapes) — opening with ventriloquised guitar feedback, and taking in some cod banter about colleagues like Mervyn Parker, Siegfried Brotzmann and Harry Bentink. Crucial. "In 1974, when Derek Bailey was planning his second solo LP on Incus, he decided to include a side-long solo using his stereo electro-acoustic set-up. Unfortunately, he never seemed to have a 20-minute stretch of time free of interruptions in his home, so he asked if he could record it at my place. After a fairly lengthy drive across London on the arranged date, he discovered that he had brought all his gear except the actual guitar. So he had a cup of tea and a chat, then drove home again. He came again about a week later, on May 13th, this time with everything. I set the level too high for the first two takes, not quite allowing for his enormous dynamic range (which really was not suitable for analogue recording and reproduction equipment). The result was too much distortion for his liking. The level was corrected for the third take which was the one used as the title track on the LP, even though he preferred the music on the earlier takes. All but one of the short pieces on the second side of the LP were recorded by Bob Woolford around the same time, probably at Derek's home. (The exception, 'Improvisation 104(b),' was recorded the previous year and originally released on one of the Incus TAPs -- mini reel-to-reel tapes that were an attempt to bypass the technical problems of going from tape to vinyl. They were reissued by Organ of Corti.) 'Pain In The Chest' and 'In Joke (Take 2)' feature the unamplified 19-string (approx) guitar, which was probably the only instrument that Derek modified -- he otherwise used standard guitars. There was a shortage of good vinyl at the time, making it difficult to get decent pressings. (The original pressing of the solo Steve Lacy Emanem LP sounded as though it had been recorded in a hail-storm.) We were recommended to go to a pressing plant that specialized in 'classical' music. (At the same time that Derek was trying to get Lot 74 pressed, I was also working on his duo album with Anthony Braxton.) The first test pressing of Lot 74 was very muffled, and we discovered that the cutting engineer had played the tape up-side-down, so that the music had been filtered through the tape backing (used on professional tapes to reduce print-through). The cutting was subsequently redone correctly, resulting in an acceptable test pressing. However, the plant manager was completely incredulous and perplexed, as he was used to checking pressings using his library of scores of Beethoven sonatas and the like. How could he tell if the vocal and feedback howls at the start of side two ('Together') were correct? Over thirty years later, advances in technology have eliminated most of the technical problems we had then, so that this magnificent music can be heard sounding better than ever. Every so often, I get someone asking me to issue things on vinyl -- my response is usually not very polite." Martin Davidson

Oxley's experimental electronics album. Anyone who has heard Pat Thomas do Black Top will hear Pat in this - high end keys, spoken word samples, worked with Matt Wand on drum machine and percussion, rather than Orphy Robinson.  In fact, Derek and Tony sit out and let them record "Duo MP" - a sparse, alien affair with fantastic tape loops. The following "TD Duo" is Bailey and Bevan all skittering and brittle, just as you'd imagine. Overall it's the quartet that really works, and you can tell how much fun they're having. A natural foreground to Derek's exeriments on Limescale, and again, Pat Thomas's work on Re-rectangle's And (with Steve Noble and Derek Bailey) and later his duo Black Top.  --- Matt Wand / drum machine, electronics, tapesDerek Bailey / electric guitarPat Thomas / electronics, keyboardTony Oxley / percussion --- Recorded on 8th April 1992 at WDR, Cologne, by Werner Srasser & Peter Eichenseher. Edited by Ulrich Kurth. Design by Karen Brookman. Painting ‘The Singer’ by Tony Oxley. Photography by Max Lautenschlager. Post Production by John Haddon. 

"Oxley and Bailey first played together in 1963. Although they come from the same city and share the same kind of background their meeting was, in a way, coincidental. Bailey - 10 years older than Oxley - after some years working away from their hometown, returned for what was initially intended to be a brief family visit. The musical situation he found there persuaded him to stay. Oxley and Bailey then worked together, continuously and intensively, for the next three years and developed, with Gavin Bryars who was then a bass player, their own particular approach to free improvisation. Since 1966, their working relationship, although intermittent, has continued in a multitude of different playing situations. Initially, during the late 60's and early 70's, much of it was in the context of Tony Oxley's small groups - quartet, quintet and sextet. From the late 70's on, it would sometimes be within Derek Bailey's improvisor's ensemble, Company. Throughout, and increasingly in the 1990's, they have played in duo. These recordings, a London studio recording made in 1977, and a concert recorded in New York 1995, are testament to the remarkable richness and sustained variety of their musical relationship." - Simon Kelly --- Derek Bailey / electric & acoustic guitars Tony Oxley / acoustic & electric percussion, violin --- Tracks 1-4: Recorded in Soho, London in February 1977 by Kevin Spencer. Tracks 5-10: Recorded at the Knitting Factory, NYC in September 1995 by James Mclean. PPhotographs of Derek Bailey &  Tony Oxley in concert (France, May, 1997) by Franz-Heinrich Busch. Post Production & design by Karen Brookman.

"Quite simply, Company produced some of the most stimulating improvised music you will ever hear." - John Eyles 1982 line-up of Company. Keith Tippett, Fred Frith and George Lewis are joined by concert pianist Ursula Oppens and composer & harpist Anne LeBaron. After playing more frrequently in Japan in the late seventies, Bailey had also invited Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and Akio Suzuki on assorted instruments like glass harmonica.  --- Derek Bailey / guitarJulie Tippetts / guitar, voice, fluteMoto Yoshizawa / bassFred Frith / electric guitar, electronics, percussionAkio Suzuki / glass harmonica, spring gong, kikkokiririkiAnne LeBaron / harpKeith Tippett / pianoUrsula Opens / pianoGeorge Lewis / trombonePhil Wachsmann / violin, electronics --- Recorded by Jean-Marc Foussat. Produced by Derek Bailey & Evan Parker. Design by Karen Brookman. Financial assistance by The Arts Council.  

Kicking off a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: Solo Guitar Volume 1, a reissue of Derek Bailey's Solo Guitar release on Incus in 1971, with additional tracks included on previous reissues and a performance at York University in 1972. Recorded in 1971, this was Bailey's first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years -- Incus 2 and 2R -- with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey's performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars, and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972, a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It's a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence, and wit. As throughout the series, the recordings are newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, remastered by Rashad Becker, and available for download exclusively here. --- Derek Bailey / guitar, synthesizer — Tracks 1-13 recorded by Bob Woolford and Hugh Davies. Photographs by Roberto Masotti. Mastered by Rashad Becker.

"This trio of Chris Corsano on drums, Bill Nace on electric guitar and Steve Baczkowski on saxophones was one of the most powerful albums of the drums-guitar-sax statement in 2018. Unfortunately the vinyl is already sold out."  My first listen to these four extraordinary pieces by Chris Corsano, Bill Nace, and Steve Baczkowski was over a very rough ferry crossing from Cairnryan to Belfast. It's hard not to think of the ghosts of impossible crossings, victories, loses, harbors in such rough waters. Why would anyone venture out here? Finding something new or an overdue visit? Ending all of the wars? For me, for my first listen to Mystic Beings instantly cured all motion sickness. It was probably just the very welcome adrenalin shots from their performance, but all the crashing and pitching over the waves became a joy. I was braver from listening in. Sometimes they hovered like a three-headed beacon -- a soaring vision to follow out on the horizon. Sometimes they seemed pulled into action and attack. Detonations and radio calls. Sometimes the spines of their own instruments cried out on the power of their own cores, their bodies having been left elsewhere. They drifted apart like a search party, skies clouded over, a spreading landscape streaked with transparent layers over layers. Or they joined together in quiet and unsparing ceremony, the kind usually reserved passing back through the place by which you've entered. All the while there was no scratching or banging at hard enclosed corners. These three players created a world of open space and flexible membrane, where any violence would only come from an outside imposition. Each of the songs read like movements in a larger work. As an eavesdropper, I added my own abstract, personal story over the whole album. I could repopulate new stories over and over again over this framework. The arc is that strong, and the conversation is that good. And even if just overheard, Mystic Beings generously called me out to where I needed to be. The shallows and the shores are where the worst dangers can find us, and our best chance of survival is sometimes out in the rolling depths. Deafen out the sirens and stay onward in the deep waters. Thank you, Bill and Chris and Steve, for sharing this kind of wild captain's safety with us.' --Meg Baird, Cairnryan and San Francisco, Nov 2018"

Fourth in Open Mouth's 'Live at...' series.  "This past March (2016), Bill Nace and I toured the West Coast of these United States of America performing in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Corvallis OR, Portland, Olympia, Seattle and Vancouver BC. We recorded most of the sets and Daniel Menche was kind enough to record the Portland show. That recording stood out from the rest and Bill has released it as part of the "Live at..." series on his Open Mouth imprint." - Greg Kelley --- Tracklisting: 1. Untitled - 11:08 2. Untitled - 15:10

Long sold out vinyl! "Nace and Dilloway make the perfect duo. For years, they've each kept their music fresh, always avoiding preconceived notions of what they're supposed to do. Dilloway's tape loops and electronics are routinely musical, which Nace's guitar always stretches to the edges of alien electricity. Both exude a refreshing and vehement disregard for cliché without leaving behind the necessity of tradition. One hears the earliest hints of electronic music, the conceptual and visceral assault of noise, the structural and spiritual liberation offered by free jazz, the delicate patience of extended techniques, and so much more." Matt Krefting. --- Bill Nace / electric guitarAaron Dilloway / tape --- Originally released on cassette as Silver Lining #2. Mastered by Carl Saff. "At long last, this recording sees a proper release. There's a story: Initially, I released this as a cassette on my own label, Silver Lining. To be fair, you can hardly call it a label. I have no right releasing my own music, let alone anyone else's. I'm bad at manufacturing things, I'm bad at promoting them, and I'm especially dismal when it comes to packing things up and mailing them out. And so this cassette had a brief brush with public life and then vanished, due primarily to my negligence and laziness. This is where Open Mouth, once again, comes to the rescue. The record comes in a gorgeous full-color sleeve, and the sound is so much finer than the cassette that even the more sweaty-palmed collectors out there will gladly welcome this object in favor of its previous incarnation, and join me in eagerly awaiting the day when these two release a proper full length. I like that they call this EP BAND. It's a subtle melding of the personal and the conceptual. The 'B' from 'Bill,' the 'A' from 'Aaron,' the 'N' from 'Nace,' and the 'D' from 'Dilloway.' It's simple. But they're not really a band. A band is a thing that exists over time and practices and builds its own identity. Or something. This is a duo. A meeting of the minds. A conversation. A lost weekend. At their best, duos illuminate the core tenets of individuals while pushing them into territory they might not otherwise occupy. It sounds easy but it's anything but. Just look at divorce rates. Nace and Dilloway make the perfect duo. For years, they've each kept their music fresh, always avoiding preconceived notions of what they're supposed to do. Dilloway's tape loops and electronics are routinely musical, which Nace's guitar always stretches to the edges of alien electricity. Both exude a refreshing and vehement disregard for cliché without leaving behind the necessity of tradition. One hears the earliest hints of electronic music, the conceptual and visceral assault of noise, the structural and spiritual liberation offered by free jazz, the delicate patience of extended techniques, and so much more. This collaboration though, like their back catalogs, works because it is beholden to none of these. Their individual voices are recognizable, yet the record's allure is found when those voices funnel into one another. In these moments, who's who becomes irrelevant, and the music is elevated to its rightful place, far above the concerns of personality or individualism. The gurgles, scrapes, moans, and loops build their own intoxicating fog, a metallic expanse with its own logic. After all these listens, I remain disoriented by it. It's the kind of thing you want to play again because you can't quite remember exactly what it sounds like. I'm reminded of J.G. Ballard: 'The slower the clock, the nearer it approximated the infinitely gradual and majestic progression of cosmic time.' And maybe that's the thing. Nace and Dilloway each embrace the immediacy of moments and the endless march of time equally, so for this record to finally see the real light of day is no minor event." (Matt Krefting, Holyoke, MA, 2016)

X04 is Nace, Jake Meginsky, and John Truscinski. Their third LP, after previous releases on Ultra Eczema, Ecstatic Peace, Joshua Burketts Spirit of Orr, etc.  --- Bill Nace / guitar Jake Meginsky / electronics John Truscinski / drums --- Recorded in July, 2008 VT.

The trio of Chris Corsano (drums), Okkyung Lee (cello) and Bill Nace (guitar) performing live at John Zorn's NYC improv club The Stone in 2014, three free improvising titans of the modern age in a very limited LP "An improvisation whose meshes, inextricable, allow larsens or repetitions to consider no solo. In any case, their network would always be more impressive in its solidity and coherence." - grisli --- Tracklisting: 1. 17:43 2. 15:02

A once super limited LP (50 test pressings only!) now available to cherish as MP3 or FLAC! First of two duo LPs from saxophonist Steve Baczkowski and guitarist and label head Billl Nace. Both know their instrument inside out and have an extraordinary ability to abstract their two already unique sounds into one super intense and sprawling new one.  "Barely off our sterero. A bedazzling demonstration of whacked, yet stunningly controlled guitar feedback smashing up against a wall of droning, wailing, crying and screaming sax, which each worked as the other’s tonal parallel, it was without doubt one of the records of the year." Golden Lab Records --- Bill Nace / guitar, loops, voice Steve Baczkowski / baritone and tenor saxophone --- Recorded January 2014 by Bill Sack Buffalo NY. Mastered by Mark Alan Miller. Cover Photo by Peter Gannushkin. Layout Bill Nace and Juan Amaya

Two concerts of experimental improvisation from Eddie Prevost and Christian Wolff, two giants of conceptual improvisation and composition, recorded at Ikletick in London in 2015 and at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2016; with superb pacing and brilliant execution, these dialogs between keyboard and percussive instruments explore unique sound worlds with depth, inquisitiveness, and a sense of wonder. "The set documents two concerts - 1, recorded at Iklectik in London in September 2015, is in two parts, 37 and 18 minutes in length; 2, recorded at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, in July 2016 is a singular 50-minute piece. Each musician restricts himself to a relative narrow palate. Prévost uses a bass drum as both drum and resonator and explores bowing and scraping cymbals for sustained metallic sounds, with very rare eruptions of multiple sounds. Wolff plays piano with even greater delicacy, from isolated sustained tones, alternated intervals, subtle use of plucked strings and minimal preparation and an occasional brief melodic figure. A keyboard wind instrument, perhaps a melodica, arises brieflyin both concerts." - Free Jazz Collective --- Eddie Prévost / percussion Christian Wollf /piano --- Artwork by Myah Chun Grierson. Edited and mastered by Giovani La Rovere and Rupert Clervaux. Recorded by Giovani La Rovere and Sangwook Nam. 

Recorded at a concert given at The Band on the Wall Manchester, England on 26th May 1994.  --- Marilyn Crispell / piano Eddie Prévost / drums --- Tracklisting: 1. Opening Time - 6:49 2. Slow Chaser - 3:59 3. Fragments - 2:48 4. Dogbolter - 2:05 5. Apart (I) - 2:33 6. As Our Tongues Lap Up The Burning Air - 6:29 7. Old Thumper - 1:08 8. Night Moves - 12:11 9. Bishop's Finger - 1:11 10. Irons - 3:47 11. Quiet Now - 3:37 12. Spitfire - 3:42 13. Last Orders - 8:20

Complete audio recordings of Evan Parker, John Edwards and Eddie Prévost's May 2013 residency at Cafe OTO.  --- Evan Parker / tenor saxophone John Edwards / double bass Edwin (Eddie) Prévost / drums Alexander von Schlippenbach / piano Christof Thewes / trombone --- "Given the different line-ups and the inclusion of both sets from each of three nights, the listener is presented with the chance to hear the music exposed and developing in many dimensions. Not only can each player be heard by himself and in shifting combinations - duet, trio or quartet - with the others, but the progression in mood and approach across an entire evening can be clearly appreciated. This is particularly marked on the second disc, where the careful exploration of the first set is succeded by the all-in surge of the second, which begins as if the four are resuming an interruped conversation. From the first night to the last, the music played over these three nights is of the highest quality. What can't be captured in the discs, but should never be underestimated, is the presence of listeners whose attentiveness cleared and charged the space in which the performers could do their work of creating a music as delicate in its inner workings as it is robust in its insistance on building for itself, night after night, a world without walls." - Richard Williams. --- Audio recorded by Giovanni LaRovere. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux. 

"Crux" is an Organum track, featuring Andrew Chalk on bowed gong, David Jackman on drone flute & bowed piano, Dinah Jane Rowe on drone flute and Stephen Stapleton on chair. "Flayed" features mainly AMM's Prévost on drums, general percussion and acme thunderer whistle, while Jackman added some bowed gongs and electronic sounds. "If you like the dronescapes of traditional Far Eastern musics, you'll love 'Crux'; if you wigged out to La Monte Young at his most conceptual, you'll do much the same with this. Better still, you may love 'Crux' having previously heard none of these supposed influences; you're simply wired for sound." - David Ilic.  --- Andrew Chalk / bowed gong David Jackman / drone flute, bowed piano, bowed cymbal and electronics Dinah Jane Rowe / drone flute Eddie Prévost / percussion, acme thunderer  Steven Stapleton / chair --- Flayed and Crux were produced by David Jackman and first featured on an LP released on Silent Records (SR8704A/B). Artwork by David Jackman. 

"Alan Wilkinson’s best known for his work with the high-energy Hession-Wilkinson-Fell trio. His discography includes just two duets, both with guitar players, but anyone who can stand up to both Derek Bailey and Stefan Jaworzyn comes out of a large and resource-rich bag. He is by far the most energy-oriented player to join Prévost in this particular ring, but the latter’s overriding determination to play exactly what the music of the moment requires serves him well here. Despite what I said a moment, ago, don’t get the idea that there’s any sparring going on here; while Wilkinson hits hard on both alto and baritone sax, this is a record where the two men work together, not against each other. Each is respectful of the other’s individuality and ability. Wilkinson does contribute some feral blowing; his unbridled snorts and whinnies on the title track are positively Ayleresque in their dimensions. But Prévost’s contributions take the music to a different place, unstable yet completely assured. His work in AMM has labeled him a percussionist, and rightly so, but listen to “Supa, Supa;” with its shuffling high-hat and dancing brushes – this is idiomatically aware jazz drumming of a very high order. Some of the best music occurs when they bring things down. On the lengthy and languorous “For Marlene,” baritone first sings quietly and then bubbles while toms rumble; a melody winds and twists whilst discovering itself in empty space. Exquisite." - Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine --- Eddie Prévost / drums Alan Wilkinson / alto & baritone saxophones --- Recorded at Barefoot Studios, London, on 10th January 2006, by Mark Richie. Front cover by Gina Southgate.

"These pieces create a coherent and cohesive statement of Cardew's approach to interdeterminacy. They set in motion his dual attention to extreme pragmatism and philosophical, even utopian ideals. They are subtle essays in how one might initiate a skeletal framework to be fleshed out, to be made corporeal, by future generations. Cardew referred to this as 'growth mechanisms' : ie, how changing performance practice and musical outlooks can be accommodated by compositional activity. It is a balance between 'cogent explicitness' and 'sufficient flexibility' rather than a fully notated, self contained piece." - David Ryan, 2001.  --- Anton Lukoszevieze / celloSimon Allen / vibraphone & marimbaBridget Carey / viola Rhodri Davies / harpAndrew Sparling / clarinetDavid Ryan / bass clarinet & pianoSarah Walker / piano & prepared pianoDave Smith / prepared piano & melodicaTania Chen /pianoRobert Coleridge / organMichael Parsons / electronic keyboard --- Recorded by Apartment House, directed by Anton Lukoszevieze. First commercially released recordings of many of Cardew's early compositions.Recorded at Gateway Studio, Kingston-upon-Thames on the 6th and 7th of April, 2001. Front cover artwork: detail from 'Solo with Accompaniment'

Grip, Denzler and Johansson, respectively in their early thirties, early fifties and early seventies, found each other through the intertwining scenes between Paris and Berlin. When taking a look at their previous musical activities you will get an exquisite account of the contemporary history of experimental improvised musics (yes, plural!) in Europe. It is a dense heritage in service of forming a new model for a creative process. Emerged through the questioning of methods, Neuköllner Modelle combine bipolar procedures in creating something which could be likened with a retarding ballad of the insistent up-tempo murmur accelerating in the backdrop-world of today. "Neuköllner Modelle is a gathering of musical ideas which function really good together. Our instruments and unique way of handling them formed the model serving the creation of Neuköllner Modelle. First there was an idea of the music, then there was the band. Our language is individually different and slowly changing, therefore we have something to say when we play. We are common in being different. A common thought is sometimes more reducing than a dissident. Anyway, without tension or friction, no music. In my music these opposing elements are of great importance. "Sektion 1-2" is an ambitious production in the sense that we have made (and make) our best to make it reflect the first idea we had. The questions of our age-differencies are not so interesting for me. It is more of an obvious and natural fact. What is more sad, maybe, is that not so many musicians today work across the invisible generational borders.'' Joel Grip, interviewed on the Free Jazz Blog "Pairing Denzler, a musician with an astute approach to minimalist saxophone (check out Tenor (Potlatch, 2012)), with Grip, a collocating musician who ties many disparate European improvisational forms together, and Johansson, the Swiss army knife (although he is Swedish) of drummers, is a genius amalgam of musicians." - All About Jazz --- Bertrand Denzler / saxophone Joel Grip / double bassSven-Åke Johansson / drums --- Recorded by Andrew Levine at Sowieso, Berlin, November 2015. Mastered by Werner Dafeldecker. Cover design by Teresa Iten. Notes by Bastian Zimmermann. Produced with the support from The Swedish Art Council.

Following up from Sektion 1-2, Neuköllner Modelle are joined by pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. Their music evokes questions on swing: how it is heard today and fed back to us historically. “Neuköllner Modelle is perhaps the first serious attempt to swing once again without playing standards. The musicians develop jazz as a form of instant composition, with the energy of not only the blues but also bebop, and in the classical hierarchy of a rhythm section consisting of double bass and drums. However, all four musicians come from the areas of Free Jazz, of improvised music, or even, in Johansson’s case, of performance and conceptual music.” The excitement, and here lays perhaps the keys of swing, is connected to the way Neuköllner Modelle voices out the positioning of strong independent and co-existing ideas. Their music is striving towards a common somewhere asserting their differing assumptions and expectations. --- Bertrand Denzler / saxophoneJoel Grip / double bassSven-Åke Johansson / drums Alexander von Schlippenbach / piano --- Recorded by Andrew Levine at Sowieso, Berlin, November 2015. Mastered by Werner Dafeldecker. Cover design by Teresa Iten. Liner notes (in german and english) by Bastian Zimmermann. Produced with the support from The Swedish Art Council.

اسم is a name written in ink. A dash through European creative music. A round trip, Berlin – Oxford, via Paris. اسم is Pat, Joel and Antonin in a dotted silence without name. Acoustically, the trio creates abstract forms close of written contemporary music with sounds reminding us of traditional jazz trios. The groove which appears in this music is dense, extreme but always quiet. Music in a continuous flow of high voltage charges. In Arabic, اسم is a way to connect between different cultural and imaginary worlds. --- Joel Grip / bass Antonin Gerbal / drums Pat Thomas / piano --- Recorded at Eglise Saint-Merry, Paris on June 2, 2014.

One of the best records of 2017 for sure. Four of the most idiosyncratic and creative voices at the margins of jazz, imagine their way into and around the music and philosophy of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. This is music to listen, dance and think to. A new jazz record, from a new jazz band. [Ahmed] make music about the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. They excavate, re-inhabit and use a-new the now overlooked documents, and fragmentary plans, of his mid-20th century synthetic vision to produce a new jazz imagination for the 21st century. Ahmed-Malik (1927-1993) was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher. A potent(ial) influence on Coltrane and Monk (we imagine), he was also a significant composer in his own right. (Ignored into creative obscurity, he spent his final decades teaching, and performing seldom). His albums Jazz Sahara (1958) and East Meets West (1960) fuse aspects of Arabic and East African musics and thought, his committed long-term relationship with Sufi Islam, and then-modern jazz and thinking – in revolutionary and vital ways. The product is exciting, radical, raw, and beautiful. But, as well as honouring these traditions, Abdul-Malik invented and imagined a lot*. Abdul- Malik’s straddling, synthetic and inclusive vision is one of the great projects of the imagination in jazz. He mixed sounds and ethics, meanings and beliefs in open, experimental ways without dogma. And so do [Ahmed]. They visit and (re)think his compositions and the process potential in them. They play the notes, but use them, and the ideas in and about them, as vehicles for their unique imaginations, instrumental approaches and ideas. Through his compositions they re-imagine and re-synthesize, moving from what they know into newly creative space. They imagine themselves into the future, free of the dogma, clichés and cloy neo-classicisms of current ‘improvised music’ and ‘free jazz’. ** Kelley, R.D.G. (2012) ‘Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s Islamic Experimentalism’ in Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 91-119 talks about this in his brief but fascinating study. --- Joel Grip / bass Antonin Gerbal / drums Pat Thomas / piano Seymour Wright / saxophone --- Recorded live at Hagenfesten in Dala-Floda, Sweden, August 6, 2016 by Arve Birkeland. Mixed at Studio206.de by Patrick Petzold Photography and design by Sven-Åke Johansson. Produced by Joel Grip and Seymour Wright. Sleeve notes by Robert Levin. 

After meticulous historical research and recording transcriptions, Pierre-Antoine Badaroux and his orchestra built a new repertoire based on the work of European musicians who discovered and took over jazz - specifically between (1925-1940). These tracks give us a take on the story of the birth of jazz in this new territory at a very special time, and brings to life a music that made history. "Compositions from USSR, Spain or Tchekoslovakia are to be discovered! And maybe, among many others, you will re- discover the swing touch from the British pianist Jack Hylton, the Belgian saxophonist Fud Candrix or Léo Vauchant the French and then Californian trombonist." "The talented and festive 14 musicians of UMLAUT BIG BAND, coming from the new jazz scene (ONJ) and/or from the European improvisation avant-garde (Peeping Tom, Zoor), gathered in 2011 to celebrate with its ecstatic audience the energy of the good ol’ swing bands." --- The Umlaut Big Band are: Pierre-Antoine Badaroux / direction and saxophone alto  Antonin-Tri Hoang / saxophone alto, clarinet Geoffroy Gesser / saxophone tenor and clarinet Jean Dousteyssier / saxophone tenor and clarinet Benjamin Dousteyssier / saxophone alto and baryton  Brice Pichard, Louis Laurain, Emil Strandberg / trumpet Fidel Fourneyron, Michaël Ballue, Nicolas Grymonprez / trombone Romain Vuillemin / guitarBruno Ruder / piano Sébastien Beliah / bass Antonin Gerbal / drums --- Recorded on the 23-27 February, 2015 at Le Luisant, Germigny-L’Exempt. Mixed and mastered by Ken Yoshida. Design by Sven-Åke Johansson et Dominique Hamot.

David Maranha’s recordings stretch back over 20 years with the Portuguese avant trio Osso Exótico, as well as collaborations with Z’ev and Minit. A followup to Marches Of The New World (2007), Antarctica is made up of two side-long excursions into monolithic drone-rock. In the vein of Tony Conrad & Faust, “Venus In Furs,” La Monte Young and Terry Riley, Maranha’s ensemble is driven by keyboards, strings, and hypnotized-heartbeat percussion. Like the great white expanse of the titular continent, it can be taken in simply as a glorious wash of sound; listen to it closely, however, and you’ll hear the smallest details jump out in high relief: a feather can move a mountain." "They started playing this album and there was this really heavy, slow, dragging rhythm to it, a bit like John Cale's viola drones, times a hundred. It sounded so warm that it was like embers from a bonfire." - Elias Rønnenfelt  “The keening violin nicely shorts out most higher thought, the buzzing organ evaporates the rest, and the music’s stolid trudge will lure your pulse into locked step. The textures are raw, the sound hypnotic, the effect nicely time-stopping.” – Bill Meyer, Dusted “Favoring intensity over sheer volume, Maranha and co achieve a focused minimalism that riff based drone rockers aspire to but cannot reach.” – Nick Southgate, The Wire “Sottilli le variazioni tra la prima e la seconda facciata (niente titoli): batteria che dipana un 4/4 lento e mortuario, organo che naviga e gorgoglia, violino dissonante che disgena, stira e allunga refrain insistiti, un suono che avvolge e stranisce i sensi colpendo al cuore con movimenti di nostalgia irrimediabile (splendido il lavoro di basso di Pilia e di chitarra di Wanke nel secondo late, un letterale capolavoro) che delineano scenari di ghiaccio immoto, solitudine – bianchissimi.” – Stefano I. Bianchi, Blow Up

In the spring of 1998, guitarist Jeff Fuccillo (Irving Klaw Trio, Wham-O, Hochenkeit) met avant-folk guru John Fahey while opening for his trio at a gig in Portland, Oregon. Fahey was sufficiently impressed, and booked studio time to record Fuccillo for his label. On the day of the session, Fuccillo arrived prepared to make a solo acoustic guitar album. To his surprise, Fahey had brought along a pile of samples — random snatches of music, all manner of sound effects — and without warning, began shooting them out into the studio room through the monitors, effecting a guerrilla collaboration of sorts. Disturbed Strings captures the highlights of that day: veering from hardscrabble stringrattling to modal melodicism, the album is ample testament to Fuccillo’s wide-ranging inventiveness as an improvising guitarist, as well as a window into an aspect of Fahey’s artistry not previously represented on record. Released in an edition of 542 copies, with artwork by Fahey and Judith Lindbloom. “Damn, what a great record!… The hepness of the way this guy bends and hammers strings makes it impossible to peg stylistically, seeming as it does, to owe equal debts to Derek Bailey, Robbie Basho and Jandek.” – Byron Coley & Thurston Moore, Arthur “…an enticing introduction to Fuccillo’s ‘solo’ art, and something that Fahey completists will need to own.” – Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen “…fascinating and stylistically dizzying…” – Ethan Covey, Dusted

On a hot Minneapolis night in the summer of 2001, the legendary avant/jazz group Curlew played a scorching gig at the now-defunct Gus Lucky’s Gallery. Gussie documents that evening: the veteran improvising group dispensed with their compositions altogether and took an eminently successful walk along the free-improv tightrope. The ever-evolving lineup featured George Cartwright (saxophones), Davey Williams (guitar), Chris Parker (piano), Fred Chalenor (bass), and Bruce Golden (percussion). A limited edition of 436 copies, with hand-drawn covers by Anne Elias. “A monster of soul-churned improv snacks… pressed in fidelity that can only be described as dandy. What a treat.” — Byron Coley, Arthur “This limited edition LP contains none of that tight avant-jazz riffing any fan of the band is used to. That being said, anyone who has witnessed George Cartwright’s group in the flesh knows that free improv is part of their modus operandi… Once the shock subsides, the intricacy of the playing and the inspiration of the musicians can percolate.” – Francois Couture, All Music Guide  “…shows the group taking chances… Each member plays with surprising restraint, focusing on the creation of gauzy electronic textures that stretch in improbable and satisfying ways.” – James Beaudreau, One Final Note “It’s a woolly pile of noise, but listened to in the right frame of mind, very exciting.” – Jerome Wilson, Cadence “Curlew sound in top form as they scrape, scratch, tinkle and blow their way through a set bulging with surprises and thrilling moments.” – Edwin Pouncey, The Wire

"Live album by virtuosic musical carpenter Paul Metzger, culled from many hours of concert recordings. Side one comprises Metzger's public debut on his modified banjo, recorded in 2002 at a former church-turned-underground art space in Minneapolis. One of his most memorable compositions, 'After Milo' later turned up as an untitled improvisation on his CD for the Chairkickers label. Jumping ahead six years (and several more banjo alterations later) to side two, the glittering 'Orans' gets a workout at a memorial show for the artist Matt Zaun. As an acknowledgment of the occasion, Metzger also gave a one-time-only performance -- 'Dark Green Water' -- on another of his mutant instruments: an acoustic guitar with the body drilled out to accommodate a cymbal set into its face, and ten assorted strings of varying lengths laid over the top, giving it a particularly metallic and dissonant sound." --- Tracklisting: 1. After Milo - 20:292. Dark Green Water - 7:253. Orans - 13:48 --- Side one recorded 5 July 2002 at the church, Minneapolis, MN Side two recorded 18 January 2008 at the Ritz, Minneapolis, MN

A major figure in 20th century arts and music (and beyond), Philip Corner studied with Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen, and was one of the original Fluxus conspirators, among other highlights of his long and storied career. As part of the body of his 'Metal Meditations' work, Gong/Ear is a decades-long series of improvisations with dancers. Utilizing his favorite Paiste tam-tam, these two recordings from Corner's NYC Leonard Street loft in 1989 are a feedback loop of perceptions between gong and dance: 'the initiating sound (or is it the dancer's posture?) is made physically audible. Responsive movement is turned back into sound. Musical attentiveness sends it back and it continues.'  It’s 1989 in NYC. Public Enemy is winding them up for “Fight the Power” and Philip Corner is elsewhere, with dancers. He bangs a gong and they get it on. Two long, meditative tracks of nothing but gong and the stray om chant, but what a sound this makes – these are ostensibly cassette recordings but they explore the resonant frequencies of Corner’s favored Paiste tam-tam within the kind of loft space that artists in the city can’t get anymore. These documents allow you to access, against the tension of tape hiss, the entire surface of the instrument, the physicality of playing it and the measurement of that response. Here’s where I’d tell you about Corner’s history in the arts but let’s skip that for now and concentrate on the gong show at hand, a beatific sound that seems to go beyond the realm of meditative and into the connections between our atoms. You can feel this. Edition of 305 with a metal gong mounted on the cover with silkscreened calligraphy. Seriously, you need to experience this.” – Doug Mosurock, Still Single “Recorded at his New York City loft on two separate dates in April 1989, Gong/Ear: Dance-ing, 1 & 2 forms part of Corner’s continuing metallic meditations exploring the reverberating qualities of bells and other metal objects. Unfolding over many decades, the Gong/Ear series explores the spontaneous feedback between a gong player and a dancer, interacting with each other as they perform together. “Responsive movement is turned back into sound,” he notes of these sessions. “Musicianly attentiveness sends it back and it continues.” The two performances preserved here, one with Claude Cossette and the other with Elisabeth Vittori, convey with direct simplicity the physical intensity of the sounds produced. Corner’s favourite Paiste tam-tam becomes a sounding board for the entire room: the natural timbre of the instrument is intensified not only by the often vigorous tempi with which he keeps pace with the individual dancers but also by the unpredictable distortions produced as the recording device becomes overloaded by the extreme volume levels produced. These, as Corner specifies in the short sleevenotes to this LP, “are inherent and desired”. The tape machine becomes in effect a third participant in the performance: everything it picks up is accepted as part of the finished piece. There is a wonderful moment near the start of the Vittori session when a telephone rings somewhere in the room, the metallic chimes of its bell contrasting neatly with the resonant swell of the gong; rather than stop the recording and start again, Corner briefly answers the call, barely missing a beat before he continues playing. This acceptance of the complete and unedited performance as it was recorded is indicative of Corner’s rejection of those aesthetic distinctions that separate music from noise, unanticipated occurrences or the movements of the body.” – Ken Hollings, The Wire

It takes a certain amount of confidence for a musician to stand alone on a stage or in a recording studio and play an instrument. One of the few masters of jazz reed instruments, Joe McPhee still proceeds to make music as if for the first time. He is a master of the instruments he plays because, like an athlete, he maintains the physical chops as well as an openness to the application of the musical vocabulary he has cultivated over time. The music was recorded at a live performance on May 4, 2009, at Local 269, a small club on the Lower East Side of New York City. And, for this performance, he chose to play two instruments rather than one: the alto sax and alto clarinet. --- Tracklisting: 1. Lower East Side Shout (for Alton Pickens) - 13:082. Old Eyes (for Ornette Coleman) - 6:403. W.I.S. (for Warren Smith) - 6:364. Soul Of A Poet (for Steve Dalachinsky) - 8:315. Take The V Train - 6:27

Fresh output from John Chantler's 1703 Skivbolaget - the new duo from two masters of very different string instruments. ‘The Air Around Her’ beguiled its audience when recorded live in a bakery at Edition Festival in 2016, and carries beautifully through to this release. Microtonal timbres meet gnarled defiance - the result is surprisingly symbiotic. Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument has been a long-term life-work of incredible ambition and dedication. The result is immediate, exciting and inspirational. Okkyung Lee has completed rewritten the possibilities for the cello in solo and group improvisation whilst maintaining a steadfast defiance to the many attempts to contain her work within pre-defined genres. ‘The Air Around Her’ was recorded on 20 February 2016 during the First Edition Festival for Other Music in Stockholm, Sweden at Kronobageriet — the former bakery to Swedish Royalty that dates back to the 17th Century and is now the site of the city’s Performing Arts Museum. The Edition Festival was given access to the space while renovations took place and Fullman allowed the requisite time to install and tune her long string instrument along the full 26 metre length of the room. --- Music by Ellen Fullman and Okkyung Lee. Recorded during the First Edition Festival for Other Music, Stockholm on 20th February 2016. Concert producer: John Chantler. Recording Engineer: Maria W Horn. Mixed by Ellen Fullman and Thomas Dimuzio. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Artwork by Bill Nace. Made possible in part by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2015). The title, "The Air Around Her" is a quote from "Vermeer Interiors" a poem by Margaret Rabb, from her book, "Granite Dives". This release has been supported by the Swedish Arts Council. © 2018 Ellen Fullman (BMI) / Okkyung Lee (ASCAP) Released by 1703 Skivbolaget in cooperation with Ideell Edition

Still Light, Outside is the fourth album by John Chantler, and one which marks his departure from London and his relocation to Sweden. Over the four month period leading up to his departure, Chantler made several hours of raw recordings of the pipe organ at London’s St John-at-Hackney church. These were then subject to extended processing at Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS and combined with additional electronic parts created there. Still Light, Outside is an extended suite in four parts that combines passages of stark minimalism centred at the bodily invasive extremes of the organ’s register with striking explosions of colour; massed chords shot through with heavy distortion and electronics that operate according to their own dream logic. --- Recorded August–November 2014 at St John-at-Hackney, London & Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm. Additional recording/mixing January–March 2015. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Design: John Chantler / Photography: Fabio Lugaro  --- John Chantler / pipe organ, processing --- Recorded August–November 2014 at St John-at-Hackney, London & Elektronmusikstudion EMS, Stockholm. Additional recording/mixing January–March 2015. Mastered by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx, Berlin. Design: John Chantler / Photography: Fabio Lugaro. Thanks to Bradford Bailey, Lawrence English, James Hammond, Mike Harding, Carina Thorén & Kate Walters. This work was made possible with support from the Australia Council for the Arts, the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body.

This recording shares music from the first time public concert of a new trio formed by John Chantler — best known for his solo synthesizer recordings and work with pipe organs — and two instantly recognisable voices in improv — drummer Steve Noble and saxophonist Seymour Wright. --- John Chantler / synthesizerSteve Noble / drumsSeymour Wright / alto saxophone --- Tracklisting: Front 1 - 5:45Front 2 - 3:20Front 3 - 6:00Above 1 - 12:20Above 2 - 5:07Above 3 - 5:38 --- Recorded 7 May 2017 at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook. Mix/edit by John Chantler. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.

This is a recording of the ten minute piece kindly commissioned by Alan F Jones for the Organ for the Senses festival held annually at the Spreckels Pavilion in San Diego using their open air organ. The music was performed by Justin Murphy-Mancini and recorded by Alan Jones. This audio is from a rehearsal performance a few days before the public premiere on 27 May 2017. --- Justin Murphy-Mancini / organ --- Tracklisting: 1. Move Along, Nothing To See Here - 10:14 --- Recorded by alan jones/laminal audio at spreckels pavilion organ, san diego, may 2017

Selected works from John Chantler's time at Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS.  --- John Chantler / reed organ, serge synthesizer --- Tracklisting: 1. ( part I ) 13:02 2. ( part II ) 08:44 3. ( part III ) 14:47 --- Recorded and arranged March 2016—November 2017 at EMS, Stockholm; ZKM, Karlsruhe; NOTAM, Oslo and 1703, Stockholm. Thanks to staff EMS, ZKM and NOTAM for their help and support. KM residency was supported by The Australia Council for The Arts. Elements of '( part III )' originally commissioned by Audiorama, Stockholm.

A duo for saxophone and synthesizer. Johns/John lock into a series of cycles and frequency systems that while loosely in the tradition of the patterned saxophony and accompanying string drone of La Monte Young and the Theatre of Eternal Dream Music’s B Flat Dorian Blues. The pair obliterate the instrumental hierarchy that Young espouses for an altogether more unknowable intensity of experience. -- John Chantler / synthesizer Johannes Lunds / alto saxophone  --- Liner notes: Two Dreams For Endless Skies Music makes my mind drift uncontrollably. When I saw John Chantler and Johs Lunds perform at Copenhagen’s Mayhem venue I had a vision: I awake suddenly to discover that I have been sleeping on a beach. It’s a rainy early morning and I’m laying on my back in the open on the sand, the hood of my jacket blinding my peripheral vision. I have no idea how I got there and only see grey clouds above and hear the waves and wind. I stare into the sky blinking from light speckles of falling rain, my mind reeling from two dreams. I try to stem the rapid decay that dreams inherently suffer from: 01 Static I’m a child living on a west coast Canadian island and the nights I hate most are the silent ones. To fall asleep to anything other than silence is preferable – rain the best, howling wind reassuring, a violent storm just fine – it’s an emptiness broken sporadically by a creaking tree, a snapping branch and other terrifying small sounds that emanate from the encroaching forest. It’s the terrifying absence of background sounds that makes me aware of how far away from everything I am here. It makes me claustrophobic – the dark edges of the forest encroach, the only thing keeping them from closing in is the light outside the front door washing the dark green trees, ferns and rocks with a creepy dim light. Around this time, while I start to understand my fear of silence, I am given a portable radio. I spend nights slowly panning the tuning dial through the shimmering static noise of the radio spectrum, picking up the odd AM channel that somehow has made itself audible all the way out here where I am. Faint songs blend into speech into rich hisses into warbling glissandi and squeaks and pops – engrossing noises that I imagine come from orbiting satellites, distant planets and other worlds. 02 Waves In the next dream I travel with my father to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. We hike through the forests of Cape Scott Park towards the sea. It takes us all day to get there. Along the trail I listen to the relentless roar of the wind and crashing waves coming off the ocean. The coast persistently seems just over the next hill but doesn't appear – the white noise grows more wearing and the hike turns to a slog. The park we are in contains a series of overgrown fields and dilapidated farm houses. Built by late 19th century Danish colonists, they were abandoned just over a decade later when the roads and utilities the government had promised didn't materialise. The settlements have a spooky peacefulness, beautiful but mournful in the subsuming nature. Through ghost farms and fields, then some low bushes, we finally arrive at the shore. Here the white noise of wind and waves takes full hold. The white-capped sea churns out to the horizon and the pale bright sandy beach stretches to either side of us for kilometres. Far down the beach we see a number of large dark lumpen shapes plonked upon the sand. As we walk towards them the shapes slowly reveal themselves to be a colony of recently deceased sea lions. In the heat of the blaring sun some of the giant cadavers have become bloated enough to cause their boiled and steaming guts to explode out onto the beach. Dotted in constellations around the carcasses and across the shore are hundreds of brightly coloured size 10 Nike running shoes, all for the left foot. A shipping container must have fallen off a freighter during a heavy storm, breaking apart and dumping the left footed shoes into the sea, where they drifted to the shore and washed up on this beach. They look so peculiar and fake against the guts and endless nature – vibrant running shoes, floating through infinite space, bobbing across the swelling grey sea, in the brilliant rays of sunshine, or the luminous light of the moon, blown on by howling wind through the slow motion murk of my memory. A large black bear emerges from behind one of the giant sea lion carcasses and raises itself up onto its hind legs. I jump up but instead of the beach I am back in the venue and my ears are ringing. Finish There’s an idea that the essential human use of music is as a mask – that at its core music is a way to drown out all the external noises that our most inner primordial self automatically processes as a warning, setting our nerves alight. What this understanding of music might mean for, say, love songs, dance or noise music is hard to fathom, and the idea becomes too reductive to be interesting. But it is useful sometimes, inasmuch as the idea connects music directly to animals, landscape and endless cosmos – dumping us humans and our machines and activities into what was once called nature. Sound and silence drift uncontrollably, endlessly, until they find music. Music makes our minds drift uncontrollably but gives us an interface with the world. Nathaniel Budzinski 

Soft streams of air.aeolina 1, aeolina 2 and aeolina 3. "There is hardly anything you may hear. The organ – its windness being rediscovered over and over again – releases as a jewel each single sound; each stream of air; each noise: disappearing into the space of the hall." --- Tracklisting: 1. Aeolina 1 -25:372. Aeolina 2 - 26:373. Aeolina 3 - 7:00 --- Eva-Maria Houben / organ Recorded by Bileam Kümper in Magdalena, Dortmund-Eichlinghofen (Germany).

Bruno Duplant: là où nos rêves… two organ pieces:
là où nos rêves se forment (to eva-maria houben)
 là où nos rêves s’éffacent (to jakob ullmann) Le rêve de la nuit est un rêve sans rêveur. (Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de la rêverie, 1960). Der Traum der Nacht ist ein Traum ohne Träumer. The dream of the night is a dream without dreamer. --- Bruno Duplant / organ ---

drei choräle für klavier (penser à satie) (2007) (arr. for organ by Eva-Maria Houben) Eva-Maria Houben / organ Recorded by Milo, Christianskirche, Hamburg-Ottensen (Germany), 2011. Intalniri fugitive (flüchtige begegnungen) (casual meetings)  12 short sketches Eva-Maria Houben / organ Recorded by Bileam Kümper, St. Marien, Witten (Germany) 2010 Twelve-tone chords – single tones – silence. There is a very long silence at the end of the piece. You listen to the space of the hall. Eva-Maria Houben / organ. Recorded by Bileam Kümper, St. Marien, Witten (Germany). Five mouvements: 1. maestoso, un poco pomposo; 2. andante cantabile; 3. scherzo. giocoso; 4. andante amoroso; 5. grave. un poco misterioso.For Milo.Eva-Maria Houben, organ.Christianskirche, Hamburg-Ottensen (Germany).Recorded by Milo (live, concert in 2011).

A long drone of the organ: overtones singing melodies.The organ: endless breath. Finished – unfinished. One hour fifteen. --- Eva-Maria Houben / organ. --- Recorded by Bileam Kümper in 2013, St. Marien, Witten (Germany).

Recorded ocean sounds, a walk through different soundscapes on the seashore. One hour fifteen minutes. Recorded by Eva-Maria Houben. 

Eva-Maria Houben und Bileam Kümper : landscapes 1-4 for one or two players (2012) Recordings of soundscapes and instruments. "Houben’s ear for how sounds, both instrumental and environmental can be put together has always driven her work. She has spoken and written about hearing music in everyday life and the silences between events in our lives and how she uses this in her work. Landscapes is then a very simple, and yet stunningly beautiful set of studies that extend these ideas. In Kümper she seems to have found a like mind and a valuable collaborator. Combining acoustic instruments with field recordings in this way isn’t a new idea, but the pair’s touch here, the ear for fragile beauty and the way sounds come together to form new sounds again make this a truly lovely release." - Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear landscape 1 (organ and train) 11:39landscape 2 (tuba and wind) 6:06landscape 3 (viola d’amore and steps) 4:02landscape 4 (bar chimes and balcony) 6:00 --- Eva-Maria Houben / organ and bar chimes.Bileam Kümper / tuba and viola d’amore. --- Recorded by Eva-Maria Houben and Bileam Kümper at Thomas Morus, Krefeld (Germany).

Working both inside and outside the instrument's body, Pat Thomas presents a compelling vision of what the piano can do in the 21st century. At times playing with recognisable musical material and at others going deep into sonic abstraction, Pat's playing encompasses massive extremes: solidity and flow; seriousness and laughter; uproar and imperturbability. A major solo statement, Al-Khwarizmi Variations traverses the history and the physicality of the piano. Pat rules. "Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end. Their impact is enhanced by one of the more effectively engineered piano sounds in recent memory, one that puts the piano right in your lap. The value of this is felt immediately, as the first variation is brimming with above-the-staves clusters that are wincingly bright. Conversely, Thomas creates china-rattling thunder when he plunges into the bass register." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure  ---  Pat Thomas/ piano --- Recorded and mixed by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios on 19 June 2011. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road. Artwork from a 15th century Mamluk tile, adapted for print by Paul Abbott. With thanks to Trevor Brent  ---

Fascinating combination of two uncompromising saxophonists. Seymour Wright grew up listening to Evan Parker's radical reshaping of the saxophone and both develops and deconstructs it in his own playing. Together, the two interrupt and augment each other incessantly, creating tight spirals of difference and similarity that crackle with ideas and energy. "Wright’s penetrating attack stands out throughout, providing an effective foil for Parker’s more serpentine phrasing. One thinks here of Parker’s duo outings with reed players like Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Wolfgang Fuchs, or Lol Coxhill and Wright certainly holds his own." - Michael Rosenstein, Point of Departure --- Evan Parker / soprano and tenor saxophones Seymour Wright / alto saxophone --- The title comes from the writing of Daniil Kharms. Thank you Ute, Evin, the Kernel Brewery, Geoff and Derby Jazz. Recorded by Sebastian Lexer on 5 October 2014 at the Kernel Brewery, London (1-2) and by David Reid on 12 October 2014 at The Studio, Derby (3-5). Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road. Artwork/Design by James Vickery. Music by Evan Parker and Seymour Wright. Produced by Trevor Brent

Sebastian Lexer (piano+) and Steve Noble (drums and percussion) first played together in the winter of 2011 and what seemed like an unlikely, even oppositional, pairing quickly proved itself to be an extremely well-matched one. Noble's sharp vertical hits and Lexer's sustained horizontal textures echo, disrupt and enrich each other, producing music full of complex slants and intricate resonances. "They sync together immediately, entwining natural resonances of strings and cymbals, percussive attack of keys and drums, and the variegated textures of electronic processing and shuddering, abraded percussion. The two leave behind any notion of conversational give-and-take, instead diving in to the development of a constantly morphing collective voice." - Michael Rosenstein, Point of Departure "a dialect nourished by sequential superimposition and counteraction of alien, nigh impossible noises, they spawn incongruous yet mesmerizing musical patterns" - Antonio Poscic, The Free Jazz Collective "the descriptions 'drummer' and 'pianist' are barely adequate, only scratching the surface of what each of them does" - John Eyles, All About Jazz "It’s incredible what strange and beguiling music they make. As well as the tinks, plinks, taps and crashes that you might expect, here are planar whorls and laminal tones closer to electronic music than anything in orthodox pianism; and amid the stacked metal clatter, percussive emphases and taut skin and rim shots of Noble’s playing sit shimmering tones and plaintively vocal-like sounds, either scraped-up or bowed from sympathetically resonating materials. These sonics out-strange anything most percussionists ever dream of. And better yet, this is all done with as much restraint and sensitivity as animation." - Tim Owen, Dalston Sound --- Sebastian Lexer / piano+ Steve Noble / drums and percussion --- Recorded by Giovanni La Rovere at Cafe Oto, London on 25 October 2011 (1) and 18 June 2014. Mixed by Sebastian Lexer. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road. Artwork/Design by James Vickery. Music by Sebastian Lexer and Steve Noble. Produced by Trevor Brent

About Trumpet and Saxophone brings together New York based trumpeter Nate Wooley and London based saxophonist Seymour Wright for a series of intensely material duo improvisations that inhabit the tricky overlap between these two instruments. Recorded on their second encounter, there's an intriguing balance of freshness and reflection in the music here, one that matches their deep knowledge of improvised music's various pasts as well as their commitment to experiment and discovery. "a spiky, raw collection of brief improvisations that see them pushing at each other rather than slipping into comfort zones . . . full of a palpable tension but somehow also very simple and unadorned . . . a fine set of recordings that showcase the act of improvisation in its bared boned glory." - Richard Pinnell, The Wire "Wooley and Wright have both made extraordinary solo recordings: these duets might represent their sum and difference or their square root. About Trumpet and Saxophone is eminently worthy of close listening. It might enrich or impoverish a listener in a new way." - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure "if the history of jazz can be told via great trumpet/saxophone pairings (Bix/Tram, Diz/Bird, Chet/Gerry, Miles/Trane, Don/Ornette, Kenny/Evan...add your own favourites) separated by stylistic quantum leaps, then the pairing of Nate/Seymour might just represent the latest such leap." - John Eyles, All About Jazz — Nate Wooley / trumpet Seymour Wright / alto saxophone — Recorded by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios on 4 July 2012. Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road. Edited by Trevor Brent. Cover painting by Geoff Wright (Svetlana, 1968). Music by Nate Wooley & Seymour Wright

At times barely more than breathing, at others breaking into full-throated song, A Doughnut's End is a highly concentrated sequence of solo improvisations that captures the full range of Minton's vocal powers. As he says in the accompanying notes, while there is continuity between this record and previous "doughnut" albums, this latest offering is "less optimistic than forty years ago" when he still "thought stuff would get better", an optimism diminished by the continued political dominance of "slush-spraying doughnut-scoffers". A Doughnut's End is a stark and affecting testament to one man's ongoing exploration of the potential of the human voice. "Minton has forged an alternative lexicon, one that seemingly forgoes the constraints of tradition and language. The result is a perverse, evocative set, the kind of performance that forces a reaction and demands attention be paid to it — music that has the power to cause unrest and revulsion in the listener. . . . An air of fragility lingers throughout, a reminder that even Minton’s finely honed, idiosyncratic delivery is all too susceptible to the inevitable pitfalls of existence. . . . The primal outpouring of A Doughnut’s End is all-consuming, and without language to dirty the proceedings, it is as much a personal meditation as it is a display of pure virtuosity." - Soe Jherwood, Tiny Mix Tapes "Many of the sounds on the album’s 15 short tracks are unpleasant, but they’re all the more powerful for it. This work is in no way deprived of wonder, and you have to marvel at the breadth of what Minton can do. “Breaking News” bleeds from high pitched warbling to multiphonic density, the throat pushed to the weirdest limits of its potential. “There’s A Reason” reprises this sonic field, almost electronic in texture, while “Set In Stone” takes these techniques and flirts with the operatic. “Grandish”, the album’s final track, works through a series of high pitched peeps that could come from an as yet unidentified beast." - Matt Krefting, The Wire "Things flap and billow a bit more than they used to, which Minton accentuates in the formation of starker, more striking vocal shapes – unstable vibratos, phlegmy belching baritones. What if it isn’t volume and clear articulation that renders a voice audible amongst the masses, but visceral wordless eccentricity?" - Jack Chuter, ATTN Magazine --- Phil Minton / voice --- Recorded (April & June 2013) and mixed by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road. Photography by Jocelyn Low. Music by Phil Minton (PRS) Produced by Trevor Brent

"it is odd to talk about a piano/bass/drums trio as a radical departure. But it is impossible to think of this meeting between bassist John Edwards, drummer Mark Sanders, and pianist John Tilbury in any other way . . . from the first notes, the three erase any notion of piano trio conventions . . . the three build tensile drama from moments of fractured intensity which break against pools of calm . . . you should jump on this one quickly" - Michael Rosensten, Point of Departure "this one-off encounter is truly an exceptional listening experience" - Burning Ambulance "London has long had a pedigree of crossbreeding improv's various styles and generations, but few have been as successful as this" - Richard Pinnell, The Wire --- In his review of Exta, the critic Brian Olewnick commented that “there's a tendency on the part of [John Tilbury's] younger companions to defer a bit to him”, adding that, in his view, this was not “necessarily a bad strategy”. In this encounter, their first as a trio, John Edwards and Mark Sanders do not defer to Tilbury at all, and it proves to be perhaps the best strategy of all. This is a vigorous music of equals, the democratic clamour of three distinct personalities committed to occupying a common space and working together to create something collective without erasing their differences in the process. There's tension, even friction, at times between Edwards and Sanders' quickness and Tilbury's more measured approach, but it's a productive tension and one that enables all three to explore areas of their playing that perhaps aren't always foregrounded: Edwards' ability to wait and patiently twist long resonant notes out of near nothingness; Sanders' sense of space and sharp delicacy with small sounds; and Tilbury's thunderous density and energetic attack. It's a startling performance and one that, like all great improvisation, exceeds, and perhaps even upsets, expectations. --- John Edwards / double bass Mark Sanders / drums and percussion John Tilbury / bird calls, piano and tape --- Recorded by Katherine Arnold at Cafe Oto on 17 June 2013. Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road. Title from Martha Rosler, Culture Class (Sternberg Press, 2013). Music by John Edwards, Mark Sanders and John Tilbury (PRS). Produced by Trevor Brent 

Exclusively released through OTO, 'Priest's House' documents The Seen's Dorset outing, with a line up including Dominic Lash and Seth Cooke alongside local improvisers. Mark Wastell has been organising larger formations of musicians, collectively known as THE SEEN, for over 10 years, and thanks to Stuart Riddle the group were able to travel to Wimbourne Minster to form a new South West iteration. Using predominantly improvised material with occasional instructions or themes distributed to individual musicians just prior to performance. No formation has ever been repeated, THE SEEN never stays static.  Register of previous participants include Tetuzi Akiyama, Mattin, Michael Duch, Graham Halliwell, Andrea Neumann, Rhodri Davies, Paul Hood, Takehiro Nishide, Annette Krebs, Lee Gamble, Matt Davis, Joe Williamson, Wolfgang Fuchs, Burkhard Beins, Tomas Korber, Paul Abbott, Ben Owen, Jonathan McHugh, Jane Dickson, Olie Brice, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Bertrand Denzler, Angharad Davies, David Toop, Chris Burn, Richard Sanderson, Dominic Lash, Yoni Silver, Graham MacKeachan, John Butcher and Jason Kahn. “With The Seen, everything is up for grabs. Even the act of listening – so sacrosanct in the world of improvisation – becomes problematized, for in such a tapestry of sound and silence how can one process what’s happening at any one moment? Yet this impossibility of total response provides opportunities to form clusters within the whole, that break apart and reform in different configurations as things develop. For listeners, too, there are possibilities for moments of both detailed focus and wider-scale immersion.” (Paul Margree) --- Adrian Newton / electronicsTom Cleverly / guitar, trumpetPaul Allen / drums, percussionStuart Riddle / soprano saxophone, electronicsSeth Cooke / resonatorDominic Lash / double bassMark Wastell / tam tam --- Recorded at the Priest's House, Wimbourne Minster, 21.09,2018 by Adrian Newton. Mixed by Adrian Newton. Thanks to volunteers at The Priest’s House Museum.

IST went to New York in April 2001 to participate in Derek Bailey's Company Week at Tonic. Before Company proper started however, the two UK groups (the other being the Derek Bailey / Will Gaines duo) took part in a preview concert playing in their habitual groupings. The resulting trio recordings have never been previously released; as a special bonus the album also includes an unreleased quartet of IST + John Zorn, which took place during the Company event itself.  --- Rhodri Davies / harp Mark Wastell / violoncello Simon H. Fell / double bass John Zorn / alto sax [track 6]  --- Recorded at Tonic, Norfolk St., New York, 17 & 19 April 2001

"The Sealed Knot are one of the great free improvisation groups, comparable to the classic 1980s SME line-up of John Stevens, Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith for edge-of-your-seat attentiveness and sheer inter-group telepathy. Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell and Burkhard Beins have been a unit since 2000, a melding of London and Berlin. Recent sightings have been rare, but they played in Berlin this May, and now Wastell's revived Confront label is releasing this live album from January 2009. The purpose of the 2009 show was to celebrate Another Timbre's release of And We Disappear, recorded live in Switzerland at a 2007 festival titled Ear We Are. That album was about the yawning gulf between Davies's high, piercing ebow work and Wastell's glacial double bass. Whereas the new record has Wastell switching to tam tam, and all three musicians employing electronics - but lo-fi mechanical electronics, rather than digital processing. So there's a pleasing, subdued industrial fury lurking beneath the music. Filigrees of rapid clicking make way for subterranean pulsing, and Beins adds the super-pure tones of bowed cymbals, to blur the electric/acoustic distinction further. Around 18 minutes the group contemplate silence, before launching into a further 13 minutes of patient exploration and metallic mystery. Wastell has grumbled that critics are "always 12 months behind the flow" when it comes to describing what musicians are up to, and here he is, helping us along by releasing a four year old recording. Never mind that the trend-buzz around Lower Case Improv, New London Silence & co has worn off; with music of this quality we're dealing with simple excellence, and any opportunity to see this group at work should be seized." (Clive Bell, The Wire) --- Burkhard Beins / percussion, electronicsRhodri Davies / harp, electronicsMark Wastell / tam-tam, electronics --- Recorded live at the 'Another Timbre' Festival, Cafe OTO, London on January 21st, 2009.

Originally released in a tiny edition of 50 copies in 2000, this recording officially marks the beginning of The Sealed Knot as a regular group. Interestingly, the liner notes that accompanied that release make mention, for the first time in print, of the terms 'the new silence' and 'Berlin reductionism' ......... although listening now, all these years later, the music sounds far from silent and/or little reduced."The music on this cd was recorded live at All Angels, West London and documents the exciting ongoing collaboration between young musicians working in London and Berlin. Although all three performers have travelled between the two capital cities since the early 1990's playing in various combinations, this is their first concerts as a trio. Beins co-runs the 2.13 Berlin improvisation club, with guitarist Michael Renkel, in conjunction with it's sister organisations in London and Athens. All three clubs are named after a stopped clock at the original London venue. Critics have dubbed Wastell and Davies' music 'the new silence' and Beins' German counterpart 'new Berlin reductionism'. Categories aside, this is improvised music concerned with space, texture and time, emphasised by the gently ticking clock at the back of All Angels as sounds fade into silence." (Original liner notes) --- Burkhard Beins / percussionRhodri Davies / harp Mark Wastell / violoncello ---Recorded live in concert by Tim Fletcher at St. Michael & All Angels Church, West London on 14 April 2000.

"...Overall, they give the impression of a gradual ebb and flow of layered soundfields over a bedrock of silence. Confronted with the trio's intricately plaited tones, sometimes it's hard to tell the provenance of a particular sound - like many musicians exploring extended techniques, they're at war with their instruments...Gradual shifts and the kind of communication that develops within longstanding musical relationships are central to the group aesthetic. The slow, deliberate movement of The Sealed Knot's music often sounds semi-composed, a testament to the close bond that they have developed over the years..." - The Wire --- Burkhard Beins / percussionRhodri Davies / harpMark Wastell / double bass --- Recorded live in concert at the Red Hedgehog, Archway, London, 29 October 2006. 

Berlin is truly the spiritual home of The Sealed Knot - with the trio having played there numerous times since it's debut in the city at Ramschift Zitrone in 2002. In more recent times we've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to perform at regular yearly intervals, the most recent of which is the concert captured on this recording from Exploratorium in March 2015. Many thanks to Matthias Schwabe for the invitation. --- Burkhard Beins / percussionRhodri Davies / harpMark Wastell / double bass --- Recorded live at Exploratorium, Berlin on 19 March 2015 by Johannes von Wrochem.

Third solo record from Corsano. One drum set augmented by various re-purposed metal objects, modified reed instruments and bowed strings stretched across drums. 19 tracks--9 of which are interwoven throughout the record in a very loose retelling of the Calon Arang story portrayed in Balinese gamelan music. --- Chris Corsano / percussion --- Tracklisting: 1. Twice Removed - 4:062. The Widow - 0:383. Shank And Spindle - 3:414. The Four Apprentices - 1:165. Scalpels - 1:446. The Attendant - 0:357. Famously Short Arms - 4:208. The Widow's Daughter - 0:269. These Things Are Not Fancy - 6:5410. Two Leyaks And A Minister - 1:3711. Not Now Not Later Not Ever - 4:3212. The Disciple - 1:0813. Fed Ex'd Gorilla - 3:4614. The Irate Prime Minister - 0:5715. My Face, Spited - 2:3016. The Sacred Beast - 0:1117. Regrets, I've Had A Few - 2:0518. Warrior With Dagger Pointed Inward - 0:3319. Suppli E Domanda - 1:58 --- Recorded January-March 2012 except #1 (December 2009), #5 (March 2008), #13 (December 2011) and #15 (May 2010). All acoustics, no overdubs, some edits here, some fades there. 

First meeting of Mette Rasmussen and Paul Flaherty, with Corsano providing connective tissue behind the drums.   "There's plenty of all-out, high energy playing on Star-Spangled Voltage, but there's also an underlying sensitivity to musicality and collective sound, so the proceedings never turn into a battle of egos. And the group has freely improvised/spontaneously composed architecture, breaking down at times into solos and duos. 'Salt', a duet between Rasmussen's prepared-sax and Corsano's bowed metal, builds an alien inner-ear landscape of difference tones, unisons and near-unisons to end side A. The album closes with a sax duet, 'In the Light of Things,' with Rasmussen and Flaherty already sounding like old friends." - SoundOhm. --- Mette Rasmussen / alto saxophone Paul Flaherty / alto & tenor saxophone Chris Corsano / drums --- Recorded June 14, 2014, at Never Ending Books, New Haven, CT, USA by Chris Corsano. Mixed by Chris Corsano. Mastered by Patrick Klem. 

Chris' no drum solo record. "It wasn’t an exercise in constraint necessarily; it was just what I was feeling. I made that record because those were the sounds I was hearing in my head. The first solo record [Young Cricketer]...it wasn’t like it changed the world, but it did change my little world. It was a first statement, and that’s a powerful thing—it gives context to everything that comes after it. Since there's no point in saying the same thing twice, I felt like the second solo record should be as far away from the first as possible, while still feeling honest to me." Chris Corsano - Bomb Magazine --- Chris Corsano / keyboards, electronics, microphone --- Recorded April 10 & 15th, 2006.

"The Young Cricketer plays out like a showreel for Corsano’s miraculous dexterity and virtuosity as a drummer. It’s a set of recordings made during Corsano’s time living in Manchester back in 2006 utilising all manner of objects and apparatus to offset and treat his drumkit, often morphing its sound into something unrecognisable. The Young Cricketer is a beautifully recorded album, with Corsano’s expanded kit occupying a vast stereo field, and every percussive gesture allotted its own distinct place in the mix. Consequently, this is probably the most thorough representation of Corsano’s near peerless drumming yet committed to record and stands as a pretty indispensable document for all lovers of free music and percussive invention. Stunning.” - Julien Héraud  --- Chris Corsano / percussion --- Recorded in Manchester England Feb 1-3, '06 (Except for side a track 2, recorded Jan. 6). Using drums, cymbals, baritone & alto saxophone mouthpieces with plastic tube and/or funnel, and/or shower attachment apparatus, pot lids, lamp base, scotch tape, violin-string-snare-drum contraption, bows, sticks, butter knives, and a superball on a stick, some distortion used on side B when mixing tracks 7 and especially 8, but other than that, no electronics either.

Fantastic trio made up of three of the best London free improvisors. Lol's lyricism combined with the depth of skill and restraint in the Noble / Edwards rhythm section is as good as it gets.  --- Lol Coxhill / soprano sax John Edwards / double bass Steve Noble / drums --- Tracklisting: 1. Tijuana Rendezvous - 5:482. Episode No.1 - 6:303. Coming Through - 5:074. Hook Point - 7:475. The Set Up - 5:596. Stray Dog - 3:337. Out Of The Past - 10:108. 3 Tales - 5:279. Endgame - 6:25 --- Recorded by Mick Ritchie at Barefoot Studios on 11th January 2004. Post production by Noble & Ritchie. Sleeve design by Noble & Denning. 

Noble's duo with Bailey, 'Out of the Past' documents the two in duel modes - that sensitive drumming we've come to know so well with Noble with the more percussive aspects of Bailey's playing style, alongside thick, distorted guitar and fuzzed out drums on the aptly named, 'Time Regained'. --- Steve Noble / drums, cymbals Derek Bailey / electric guitar --- Tracklisting: 1. The Long Wait - 3:302. Four For 4 - 2:463. Breakaway - 4:154. Raw - 5:075. Unfiltered - 3:306. Motion - 5:417. Out Of Sight - 2:288. Bright Moments - 4:349. Pick Up - 4:2110. Decoy - 1:4611. Time Regained - 2:3712. 7 Shades - 7:13 --- Recorded by Tony Robinson at Moat Studios, London, February 1999. Produced by Steve Noble. Post production by Mick Ritchie & Steve Noble. Thanks to Karen Brookman Bailey & Tony Robinson. Design by Noble & Denning. Original photo by Amalia Pistilli.

First release on Steve Noble's Ping Pong Productions. Having recorded Say What! and Transmutating with together a few years earlier, the trio was reunited in London for more hard hitting free improvisation. A truly unique trio - Davey Williams' history in rock music pushes this further into Noble's 'Rip, Rag and Panic' days, yet Oren Marshall's unique FX laden tuba techinique brings compelling experimentation to their sound.  --- Steve Noble / drums, turntables Davey Williams / guitar Oren Marshall / tuba --- Tracklisting: 1. Can It All Be So Simple?... - 0:502. Flathead Reunion - 3:013. Early Days - 4:034. Episode No 7 - 4:105. I Could Presume - 0:296. Out Of Any Gain - 5:027. Shadows - 1:518. 59 Farewells - 2:559. All Too Soon - 9:0910. Forever & 4th - 0:5911. Say What? - 5:2512. Coming Through - 1:5113. Just Another - 3:3014. Double Play - 0:3315. Hog Stomp - 4:2516. …Some Final Thoughts - 4:17 --- Recorded in London, September 1995. Post production by Dave Hunt and Steve Noble. Thanks to the LMC.

Second release on Steve Noble's Ping Pong Productions. Noble on percussion, Oren Marshall on tuba and Steve Buckley on reeds. Having made three records for Incus already, and produced his first Ping Pong record 'Flathead Reunion' with Oren Marshall, Noble invited Buckley to the studio.  --- Steve Buckley / alto saxophone, bass clarinet, tin whistle Steve Noble / drums, turntables Oren Marshall / tuba --- Tracklisting: 1. Bud Moon - 10:032. The Cane Pilling Dance -7:503. Xantung - 7:134. Big Juice - 3:065. Episode 58 - 2:216. T Blower - 6:277. Spoon Tongue - 2:048. Tails With Tales - 2:099. Drunken Intimacy - 2:4110. Shimmy Shally - 4:3211. The Declining Use Of Reckless Grooves (Part II) - 7:20 --- Recorded by Dave Hunt in London, February 1996. 

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

Effigy is Pelt's first new batch of new recordings since 2007, and their first album since Jack Rose's death in 2009. Simultaneously frenetic and meditative, it's a raga seared in pulsating low-end piano, scorned and mournful strings and swarming harmonium.  “What separates Pelt … is the willful sonic escalation from monk chant and Appalachian bowed sitar to Blue Ridge mountain grinding ear-death. … They’ve not become giants; they’ve become the mountain.” - The Washington Post From the original MIE press release: MIE Records are unbelievably honoured to be releasing, the first album recorded since 2007 by the acoustic-only droners Pelt. Recorded live in June 2011 in an old yoga studio in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin and a decommissioned synagogue called the Gates of Heaven in nearby Madison, the band have laid down their most accomplished and fully realised work to date. Epic in every sense of the word, Effigy is a sprawling journey through their singular plan on the musical map. Layer upon layer of droning strings melt over never-ending harmoniums which threaten to engulf you whilst peals of gongs ring out to mesmerising effect. Effigy sees Pelt reaching their blissful sonic enlightenment. Effigy is a testament to the ancient animal shaped mounds called ‘effigy mounds’ which dot the landscape in and around Madison, Wisconsin. No one has yet managed to work out who built these creations. Over the centuries they have greatly reduced in size but still the largest can measure up to 400ft in length, and the outlines of birds, lizards, deers and bears are all clearly visible to the observer. Soil would have been carried from afar to construct these huge monuments with only crude implements to hand. The erection of the monuments would have surely have to have been carried out by practically an army of workers or inhabitants and taken a very long time to build indeed. --- Recorded by Pelt. Mixed by Jason Meagher. Mastered by James Plotkin. Artwork by Jake Blanchard. With thanks to Henry MIE. 'Ecstatically dedicated and indebted to eternal spirit of Jack Rose.'  

Blood n guts folk from the Anglo-American duo. Searing harmonies and sparse, vital instrumentation breath new life into timeless tales of love, loss and death. Originally released to critical acclaim by No-Fi Recordings and then reissued by MIE Music in 2011, Dumb Supper is by all means one of the most interesting and exciting revivalist recording of traditional songs we've heard in years. Cath and Phil believe in folk retaining its original storytelling function, so all the songs on the album are adaptations of songs they have unearthed or which have been passed on to them through family members, musical collaborators, and their own love of the original information highway - folk music. If you missed the physical, snap this up and get yourselves down to see them here this Thursday. “Dumb Supper is one of those rare modern folk albums that will find a home in both the longstanding ‘traditional’ music community and among those attracted to the form’s more experimental and lo-fi possibilities….It’s a weird looking-glass effect many folk fans will be familiar with: the straighter you play it, the stranger it gets…Shirley Collins always understood this and so do Cath & Phil Tyler.” – Frances Morgan, Plan B Magazine --- All songs traditional except: Farewell My Friends & Morning - adapted from Sacred Harp. Death of Queen Jane - Words trad. Music Tyler Yellowhammer - Tyler Dewdrop - Words trad. Music Tyler Wild Stormy Deep - by Homer Cornett Slumber Boats - by Alice Riley/Jessie Gaynor  --- Recorded at Summerhill Square, Newcastle Upon Tyne in the first half of 2007. Arranged by Cath and Phil Tyler. Artwork by Jim Oss. Produced by Andrew Hodson.