Pioneering Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki has created improvised and transitory performances since the 1960s, investigating the acoustic qualities of selected locations and utilising an array a self-made instruments. For this beautiful and beguiling release for Takuroku, he presents new work using his ANAPOLAS instrument and “I wa fu e” stone flute.  -- Akio Suzuki - all instrumentation & recording -- Oliver Barrett - mastering & artwork design -- Artist’s Notes (English)  “ANAPOLAS -a” & “ANALAPOS -b” 2021 This ON-KI (sound instrument) is a variation of Voice ANALAPOS-a, an instrument which was created in 1970 while exploring the sound of echo at the “self-study event” of the 1960s. This instrument was used in the LP “ New Sense of Hearing” with Takehisa Kosugi, and in Sesshu Kai work “Interactivity for ANALAPOS.” It was also used in compositions by Aki Takahashi and for Toru Takemitsu’s film music… There was a time ANALAPOS was very active. ANALAPOS -a is mainly played by blowing a vice into one of the cylinders connected by a spring, while the -b type is made into a percussive instrument by arranging several of those cylinders upright and playing with drumsticks. In the 1980s, my ANALAPOS was invited to Derek Bailey’s “Company” of Free improvisation, and was able to presented for the first time in London. I also played with Steve Lacy, and more recently John Butcher and Aki Onda using these ON-KI. These groups of ANALAPOS let me play across the field of improvisation from contemporary music.  I’ve found it difficult to carry the heavy iron ON-KI so I have stored them, but I’m grateful that TakuRoku made these ON-KI see the sun again.  “i wa fu e” 2021 In Japan’s Jomon period, which lasted for about 13,000 years from now to 2500 years ago, according to archiological “i wa fu e” (stone flutes) samples may suggest that there have been a festival of blowing natural stones with holes.  There was a “i wa fu e” that I was given from my father, and it was a family treasure that has been passed down to the Suzuki family for generations. I always took it overseas as my mascot, but in the autumn of 2005, at the request of a filmmaker from London, I headed from Paris to Schiphol Airport on the way back from playing this “i wa fu e” at the old crater of the Italian volcanic island Stromboil. This family treasure disappeared from the net shelves of the train together with my suitcase!  Immediately a lost property request call was made on the page of THE WIRE magazine (issue 265), but still no luck after 16 years since then.  In 2019, Carlo Fossati, the owner of Torino’s gallery e/static contacted me that he managed to archive the documentation of me playing the family treasure at the Stromboil. This is the only video record of this “i wa fu e”.  And in February of last year 2020, when I was invited to perform in Auckland, New Zealand. Phil Dawson from Scratch gifted me another stone flute. This is the ““i wa fu e” I use now.  Phil remembered the incident that family stone flute got lost. He had picked up something similar to the lost stone at a nearby beach and kept it for me.  Phil and I have been “stone friends” for many years.  - Akio Suzuki  Notes on the title “ m e r i d i a n s c e n e r y “  As an Eastern person, I wonder if this is allowed, but I made up this word myself.  I put together “meridian” and “light” with a space in between each letter.  Tango, where I live, is the northernmost point on the 135 degree line of Japan Standard Time. I named it honestly according to where I recorded and in this particular time and season.  I dedicate this title to both the seasonal scene and Keiko, “the child of landscape”, too.   Artist’s Notes (Japanese) “ANALAPOS -a”& “ANALAPOS -b” 2021 　‘60年代の「自修イベント」で、エコーポイントを探るなか1970年に創作したVoice ANALAPOS -aのバリエーションがこの音器です。 Takehisa Kosugiと”New Sense of Hearing・・”というLPレコードの中で使用したり、Sesshu Kaiが、”Interactivity for ANALAPOS”の作曲をして下さったり、Aki Takahashiの委嘱で作曲をしたり、Toru Takemitsu の映画音楽にも登場したりと、活躍をした時期がありました。 　ANALAPOS -aは、スプリングでつないだ片方のシリンダーに、主に声を吹き入れて演奏するのですが、それを立てにして幾つかを並べることにより打楽器に仕立てたのが -bタイプで、特性のバチによって演奏をします。 　‘80年代になって、Free improvisationのDerek Bailey “Company”に呼ばれてLondonで初演奏が出来たり、フリー・ジャズのSteve Lacyや、最近では、John Butcherや Aki Ondaと、この音器を使っての共演の例もあります。だから、現代音楽から即興の分野をまたいで遊ばせてくれたのが、これらANALAPOS群です。 　現在は、鉄製の重い音器を運ぶのが億劫になって、お蔵入りをしていましたが、”TakuRoku”が、また陽の目を見させてくれて感謝しています。 “i wa fu e” 2021 　今から2500年前までの約13000年間続いたという、日本の「縄文時代」には、穴の空いた自然石を吹きならす祭り事があったのではと、考古発掘例の「石の笛」から推測されています。 　たまたま父から譲り受けた「石の笛」があって、それは代々鈴木家に伝わってきた宝でした。常に我がマスコットとして海外に持ち出していましたが、2005年の秋にLondonの映像作家の要請に応えて、イタリアの火山島Stromboliの旧火口でこれを演奏した帰りに、ParisからSchiphol空港に向かう列車 Thalysの網棚からケースごとこれが消えてしまったのでした。  直ぐに、THE WIRE Issue265の紙面に消息願いが出されましたが、あれから 16年が経ってしまいました。 　2019年になって、Torinoの画廊 e/staticオーナーの Carlo Fossatiから連絡が来て、video document,2003 を 〈vimeo.com/364584092〉 登録したとの朗報をくれました。これが、動画としての唯一の記録です。 　そして、昨年(2020)の2月に、ニュージーランドのAuclandの演奏に招かれた折、From Scratchの Phil Dadsonから矢庭にプレゼントされたのが、 この「石の笛」です。久しぶりに再会した彼は、以前無くした「石の笛」のことを覚えていてくれたのです。ぼくのために、近くの浜で似たものを拾っておいたんだと。 Philは、長年の”stone friend” なのです。 - Akio SUZUKI “ m e r i d i a n s c e n e r y “  と子午線と景(ひかり)をくっつけてしかも半角あけて作りました (東洋人が勝手にこんなことして良いのかナ) 意味はぼくの住む丹後は日本標準時の135度線上の最北地です この季節に演奏をしたので正直に名付けました 季節の情景でもあり景子さんに捧げてもいます

Samuel D. Loveless' curious and implacable music arrived in our inbox late last year, and we've been spellbound since. Alone himself in a room, 'krɪstəfə [live crypt] is both an excavation of the voice and an improvised reckoning with space and temporality. The work is book-ended by a 25 minute long composed piece, 'Guardian', which turns the clock off, drifting the narrative into free-fall with slowly moving blocks of resonant piano notes. ˈkrɪstəfə, isn’t daring, or perhaps even very interesting in its audible output. It’s not been researched nor is it refined.ˈkrɪstəfə(tracks 1-6), was recorded live at the beginning of March 2021 on a stunning day in a cold, dark, damp room on Euston Road. The room, a crypt, has not been renovated or changed much at all since its construction in 1822, barring a few lights and minimal plug sockets. It is the resting place of so many. It is beautiful, grounding, harrowing and contemplative.ˈkrɪstəfə, is a duet between myself and the space. Nor I or the space are more important than the other. During the time 'krɪstəfəwas inspired, most of us had been between the same four walls for a large majority of the previous year and had experienced the foreign with our own company, for better or worse. For myself, Lent (of which March is in) is a very spiritual and meditative time of year for many reasons that I won’t go into now.  Within my work as a creative, whether it be sound, visual, performative, whatever, everything is purposed; everything is exactly there for a specific reason. It is hugely researched, deliberate and deliberated over. It comments on something. It is what is have to say. During Lent, on my own, within the same four walls, I wanted to introspectively just ‘be’; setting my main creative tools  aside (trumpet and composition) and simply saying what it is I have to say. Something, that although not daring for krɪstəfə, was and is for me. In order to simply ‘be’, it had to be done by my ’self’ alone. Not least of all because it had to encompass my whole being, but because singing, more specifically choral music, was my entry into the musical world as a chorister. Ironically,ˈkrɪstəfə goes right back to my roots in music, whilst also managing to be removed from anything I’ve done before, improvising with just my voice.  So whilst 'krɪstəfə may not be daring or perhaps even very interesting, it is nothing if not open and forth coming. Thank you.  - Samuel D. Loveless -- ˈkrɪstəfə (tracks 1-6) Improvised and recorded by Samuel D. Loveless Space by Crypt Gallery on Euston Road  Mixed by Josh Wolfsohn  -- Guardian  Piano by Roberto Boschelli  Composed and recorded by Samuel D. Loveless Mixed by Edward Cross -- Artwork by Robert George Sanders Mastered by Oliver Barrett

Following on from his duo release with Crystabel Riley (as @xcrswx) on Takuroku Seymour Wright unveils two new solo tracks. These are half of a set of four remembering 'Rites' begun earlier this year (the other two have appeared on AMPLIFY and klasika.lsm.) Recorded as part of his live stream in an empty OTO in August 2020,  Seymour explores the traditions, structures, and spaces of OTO, the saxophone, and memory. 1. Natural Rite [angle] (2020, for Carole Finer) solo for alto saxophone on window, shutters, radiator and wall. 2. Knot Rite (2020, after Frances A. Yates, Jan Kopinski and Tina Brooks) solo for three alto saxophones and their feedback. --- Seymour Wright - saxophone --- Recorded 'live-stream' at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on August 21st, 2020 Mixed by Seymour Wright.

Darcy Spidle (chik white) explores the fugitive spaces in and around his home in Chezzetcook (Nova Scotia), mapping a multi-faceted aural topography with his mouth and various objects. In the old outhouse in his shed he plays some mouth harp, regurgitating his emotions in a series of spasms and tightly controlled muscle flexes. Over in the humble cold porch he treats us to a bit of yodelling that borders both the beautiful and the absurd. Along by the mailboxes down the street a little strip of cove becomes a temporary space for some bird nose flute recordings, whilst back on his property he picks up electronic magnet field recordings using a handy Soma Ether V2. Recordings of the utility box in his driveway and the fuse box in his basement seem to be haunted by the ghost of Merzbow, but we'll leave that problem to Nova Scotia's parapsychologists. In short, in Darcy's own words... "if I can't leave home, I figure I can at least expand my limited location by exploring the multiple realms of sound all around me. All this to say, the album is really a meditation on place..." ... All music written & recorded by Chik White   --- Mastered by Oliver Barrett '207' was originally commissioned by Kraak Records for their Spring Brakers video series. 

Nour Mobarak is a compelling new artist from Los Angeles whose work, as she describes "excavates violence and desire – the compulsions, and glitches in both a person or nation state." We fell in love with what she does thanks to her 2019 album 'Father Fugue', released on Sean McCann's Recital label. In it, the left channel of the audio documents conversations with her father Jean Mobarak - a polyglot who has a 30-second memory and lives in the mountains of Lebanon - while the right channel is composed simply of improvised song. The result conjures a similar effect that of Godard's 'Numéro deux' - whereby documented, composed and improvised elements are projected through two channels, then coagulate to form a multi-faceted, beguiling whole. To understand Nour as a film-maker - someone who acts behind and in-front of the lens - is perhaps easier than that of a musician. When we asked Nour to do a release for Takuroku she kindly responded by offering us compositions used in her multi-disciplinary, multi-channel live performances over the past 2 years, mixed down to stereo as self-contained works. What we hear is just one part of her overall projection, but that of which delves deep; investigating the voices of others, her own voice and vocal material that forms human languages. It's poetry, a Cassavetes set piece, a walk in the park, a voice in abandon, a philosophical meditation on voice, agency and human beings - but of course much more than ideas projected on a flat canvas. Each piece moves and shakes, creating rhythms emanating from the syntax and intonation of language and the voice. Toothtone sounds like rippling streams of water running concurrently, splashing into themselves and overlapping one another. Allophone Movement and its arrangement of voices captures the immediacy of machine-funk sampling techniques, whipping the immediacy of vocal expression into a composition that swings back and forth, like a Ron Hardy edit stripped to its bones. On Phoneme Movement her own vocals take centre stage with spirals, gurgles, purrs and cries that reach ecstatic heights: the voice excavated from its bodily origins. Hopefully we'll be able to present Nour's work in Cafe OTO some time in the not too distant future. -- All music & recording by Nour Mobarak Photo: Performance of “Phoneme Movement II”, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, December 8, 2018. Photo by Marco Kane Braunschweiler, design by Oli Barrett. “Allophone Movement” samples sourced from the UCLA Phonetics Archive. “Toothtone” voices recorded in Pershing Square, Los Angeles, September 2019.This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Editing technical assistance for “Allophone Movement” and “Toothtone” by Sean McCann & Juliette Amoroso

Ute Kanngiesser - cello Daniel Kordík - field recording The release is accompanied by a PDF of writing by Evie Ward in response to the release. -- Please note that the WAV recording of this release has been recommended by the artists involved. -- "At 4AM I slip out of the house to cycle east, towards dawn, with cello on my back and a stool strapped to the rack. The word 'essential' is turning over and around in my head. I am taking the quietest roads, trying to stay invisible, worried that someone might stop me and interfere with our plans. I find Daniel with recording equipment and hand sanitizer and together we walk another distance through dawn and smell of rain. We enter the Marshes, these essential lungs of East London. It is where he had come almost every day of these locked-down weeks to field-record and breathe. And it is where Evie and I met for walks and secret music - carefully bending the laws of the officially ‘essential’. I am wondering about places and times when public music was forbidden and never driven to extinction. This time it is for pandemic reasons and the severity of consequences is unspeakable and has turned into much noise in my head. But the birds, the wind, and the rain offer such relief and I feel so shy in their presence that my music can only become the smallest of offerings to them in the rainless window between 4.48AM and 5.15AM." - (Ute Kanngiesser, June 2020) -- Photography by Daniel Kordík Cover design by Oliver Barrett

Two totally infectious sets from Decoy - the trio of John Edwards, Steve Noble and Alexander Hawkins - reunited with pocket trumpet and saxophone player Joe McPhee on the closing night of his four day residency at Cafe OTO. In the eight years between the recordings which make up ‘AC/DC’ and their last release ‘Spontaneous Combustion’, Decoy and each of its members have been practicing individually at the very top of their form. Coming together again in such celebratory circumstances and in the good company of a fantastic crowd set the scene for a very special night.  As they begin, Alexander Hawkins casts a needling surface between his Hammond organ and John Edwards’ loose splatters and slaps of low end bass. McPhee skitters over them with his pocket trumpet by way of introduction; Steve Noble strikes his rims in anticipation. The mood in the room is that of a rock band reformed, of a certain number of “boys” being “back in town”. The first set sees moments of frenetic free jazz peel off into weirdo soul territory and when switched to saxophone halfway through, McPhee’s romantic lyricism is utterly beautiful. When a groove sets in, Hawkins’ B3 ascension in harmony with an ever powerful Edwards-Noble rhythm section sees the room thicken and swirl to the point of giddiness. There is one unreal part at 22:22 where we’re sure you can hear Edwards’ bass vocalising.  Regrouped for a second set, Steve Noble’s metallic textures meld with detuned arco bass to create an unholy atmosphere, ripe for Hawkins to play out the eerier end of the Hammond. When McPhee sounds a sax motif the band catches it quickly and it’s soon wickedly morphed and stretched by each player, recurring to absurdity in a stoned out funk free for all.  The whole recording bleeds enthusiasm and joyful imagination and is a brilliant document of an unforgettable evening. Decoy are a limitless band who play nowhere near enough. We cannot attest to them any more: Book them, buy this, go and see them if you can.   --- John Edwards / bass Alexander Hawkins / hammond b3 Joe McPhee / pocket trumpet, alto sax, voice Steve Noble / drums --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Shaun Crook on Friday 10th May, 2019. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Artwork and layout by Oliver Pitt. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Printed in an edition of 1000. OTOROKU023CD. 

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

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

New music from XT (saxophone player Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott) in the form of an exhilarating, super compressed, reflective re-assembling of a dozen years working together. Re-animating free improvisation with a Chicago house palette, Deorlaf X is made up of frenetic slabs of mutated multiphonics and triggered percussion, suspended in bouts of possessed reflexive quiet. Where the duo’s 2019 release Palina'tufa on Empty Editions focused primarily on a response to the real (and imagined) landscapes of Hong Kong, Deorlaf X is located in Dalston, and specifically at OTO. Wrung through Shuan Crook’s studio over three nights, the recordings dug from XT’s archive aren’t simply ‘duo’ - instead they actively draw on their public and social contexts, involving the influence of audience, engineers and other visiting musicians - Ghédalia Tazartès, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Senyawa, RP Boo and others. “A changing cast of OTO guests, audience and emotions hosted each time in a new London. XT structures sound an ongoing attempt to listen and learn about the rich and transformative affordances of the situations we occupy.” The resulting record puts a pin through a dialogue between Abbott and Wright, between histories, potentials, fact, fiction, ideas, friends, audiences, and spaces. The heavy use of referencing recalls the footwork or house traditions of sampling across all manner of influences; what’s recalled is primarily the structures of jazz - Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton - but also Ann Quin, Clarice Lispector, Anna Halprin. What’s created in recall is a kind of diary, a hyper re-membering - a blisteringly warped kind of future music. --- Recorded by James Dunn, Shaun Crook and Paul Skinner. Assembled, mixed and re-recorded 19, 20 and 21 January, 2020 by XT at Lockdown Studio, Cable Street. Engineer Shaun Crook. Sounds/design by XT. Cover painting Leon Kossoff 'Dalston Junction No.3, June 1973' oil on board, 20.5 x 25 cm. © The Estate of Leon Kossoff. ROKU026

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)

For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support. 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. 

After rinsing us clean of 2k15, Jamal Moss returned to OTO on New Year's Day for a totally improvised set with London legends Mark Sanders and Orphy Robinson. By the power of the third eye the trio tune into sub-conscious frequencies to cancel your Netflix subscription, corrupt your hard-drive and re-align your chakras. Weirdly therapeutic. "In his spoken word passages, Moss presents a dystopian vision of a planet ravaged by rapacious capitalism - its people disconnected from their history and culture by consumer technology."  Stewart Smith, The Wire --- Jamal Moss / turntables, electronics Mark Sanders / percussion Orphy Robinson / vibraphone --- Recorded by Shaun Crook on Friday 1st January 2016. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by James Dunn. Original photo by Dawid Laskowski --- Tracklisting: 1. Priming The Population Thru Subversive Experimental Sonic Gestures (62mins) 

Continually assessing his surroundings, Paul Abbott’s solo improvisation is as much a collaboration as it is a solitary process. Caught between the affective and the physical, Abbott’s approach to his kit both moves and contains, whilst honestly documenting the tension in between. Terse, political and ultimately very present.  ---Paul Abbott / drum kit --- Recorded on Monday 1st February 2016 by Shaun Crook. Mixed by Paul Abbott. Mastered by James Dunn.  --- Tracklisting: 1. qno (48.27)www.paulabbott.net/qno

Once there were 3 boys from the haunted bits of Michigan who found a dark tunnel in the side of a hill that had 'TRIP METAL' written on the walls (in blood, probably). They entered on a skateboard and emerged as rabid beasts, their hair long and their mouths forever open. In 2014 3 men climbed out of an underground lair for a show at Cafe OTO. Upon hearing the first 'note' of the 'music', the crowd spat out their salted caramel brownies and stamped on them, screaming "WOLF EYES RULE." Mysteriously no iPhone footage of this evening remains, so all we have left is this brutal recording - yours for just £6.  (…\ /..)\….\ /…./ \….\ /…./ \…./´¯\/.¯`\ /… |….|..(¯¯¯\ /I….|….|…¯| \ \\I…..|´¯|´¯|..\…)\…..` ¯..¯ ´ ….'\__________ / |oo o o oo| |oo o o oo| |oo o o oo|

Ghanaian sculptor, inventor, and avant-garde multi-instrumentalist Nii Noi Nortey performs solo and in trio with Mark Sanders and David Panton. Nii Noi’s solo soundscapes a vivid journey through West Africa using traditional instruments, before adding his own adaptions and afrifon inventions in the trio. Although this is the first time Nii Noi and David have improvised with Mark the trio immediately find an unerring natural groove that moves effortlessly through free-improvisation, free-jazz, world music and African inspired melodic and percussive patterns.   ---Nii Noi Nortey / nu waterpipe, atenteben flute, gonje fiddle, algaita oboe, ngoni harp/lute, afrifon reedsDavid Panton /  piano (keyboard & strings), soprano saxophone, bagpipe (without drones)Mark Sanders / drums, percussion---Recorded on Sunday 3rd January 2016 by Shaun Crook. Mixed and mastered by James Dunn.An edited version of a separate recording made by Panton Music of this performance is scheduled for release in June 2016 on disc as PM3116 Nii Noi Nortey with David Panton & Mark Sanders. See details on the Panton Music website http://pantonmusic.com

It is testament to the arresting intimacy of Ashley Paul's live set that between plucked guitar and a wailing sax there's near silence in the venue. Paul creates and controls an eerily concave space - so inward that with every listen the recording mutates in on itself. Highly emotive and strangely addictive.  Tracklisting: 1. Distance (8.34) 2. I'm in You (4.30) 3. It's the Heat (7.21) 4. Line the Clouds (4.58) --- Ashley Paul / saxophone, guitar, voice --- Recorded by Shaun Crook on Sunday 4th October 2015. Mixed by Ashley Paul. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux. Photo by Dawid Laskowski. 

Portland-based composer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Marisa Anderson's headline show at Cafe Oto. Twisted, powerful improvisations blend with her own compositions and the traditional tunes she adores to make hairs bristle and feet stomp. Likely to make you sweat in your own front room.  --- Marisa Anderson/ guitar, voice --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by James Dunn on 06.07.15. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux. Photo by Dawid Laskowski.

On Hyperdelia’s first release 'Erster Teil - Zweiter Teil - Dritter Teil' the recording studio takes eight musicians on astral travelling. The Serenus Zeitblom Oktett’s album is the beautiful result of a complexly processed abstraction of a live acoustic jazz ensemble becoming a hyperdelic space tentacle, reaching into bass depths and pop dimensions: one moment zooming into microscopic miniature sounds only to branch out into free floating airy planes in the next. Erster Teil - Zweiter Teil - Dritter Teil is the debut LP of the Berlin based ensemble Serenus Zeitblom Oktett. The Oktett from Berlin consists of musicians with a broad pop, free jazz and contemporary music background. All eight musicians have worked in various formations and with various musicians, ranging from Efterklang’s Martyn Heyne (who also did post-production on the record) and Matthew Herbert to Ingrid Laubrock, Stargaze, Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra and many more. These diverse backgrounds inform the Oktett’s artificial but organic live sound-production aesthetic.The ensemble is accompanied by a ninth member, the Klanggestalter. Both in the studio as well as live every instrument is being amplified and processed by filters and live algorithms, neutralising the difference of acoustic and electric instruments.The LP comes with a special video documentary by Roman Hagenbrock (i am just a video girl). The video adds another poetic layer of abstraction: confusing sound, action and image. --- Andreas Dzialocha (electric bass, composition), David Meier (drums), Moritz Bossmann (electric guitar), Karsten Lipp (electric guitar), Els Vandeweyer (vibraphone), Isabelle Klemt (violoncello), Shasta Ellenbogen (viola), Richard Koch (trumpet), Matthias Erb (Klanggestaltung)Production: Andreas DzialochaRecording: Antonio Pulli (Vox-Ton Studio, Berlin)Mix Fuzz & Fairy Dust: Martyn Heyne (Lichte Studio, Berlin)Mixing: Matthias Erb, Andreas DzialochaMastering: Francesco Donadello (Calyx Mastering, Berlin)Video: Roman Hagenbrock

Andreas Dzialocha creates an enchanting ghost music. Animated by his solo bass playing and haunted by aleatoric acoustics, 'For Always LP' unearthes the instrument’s low end harmonics.  For Always LP is produced in collaboration with Sam Slater (Hildur Guðnadóttir, Shapednoise, Zebra Katz, Mica Levi) and with support by composer/violist Marta Forsberg (Passepartout Duo, Ellen Arkbro, Stellan Veloce) and sound artist/singer Fågelle (Henryk Lipp). Dzialocha recorded the initial bass material residing at the Baltic Sea in Lithuania. Afterwards and in collaboration with Sam Slater, he reworked the material in Stockholm: there they re-amped the original stems and turned the studio itself into a living dub creature. Dzialocha, who is also a programmer, created an algorithm to sequence and filter the bass inputs. This software in turn randomly enables loudspeakers, headphones and tape machines that were placed in corridors and staircases. As an eerie result, we hear both Dzialocha’s stripped-down bass playing, the (non)logic of the algorithm as well as the specific resonances of the room acoustics: all of these have merged into one sentient instrument. ‘For Always LP’ is populated by a myriad of these machinic, acoustic and indeed personal traces. Marta Forsberg and Klara Andersson join by providing viola (on IV) as well as guitar, voice and lyrics (For Always). The record is animated by all of these forces and in ensemble they sing a wonderfully abstracted ghost music: for always.

Stellan Veloce’s first record for Hyperdelia is not only their debut album but simultaneously the inception of a band: Stellan Veloce’s Complesso Spettro. At Veloce’s disposal, the players have turned into a Frankensteinian super group: with Andreas Dzialocha on electric bass, Bridget Ferrill doing electronics & processing, Julia Reidy on guitars, Marta Tiesenga on baritone sax, Earl Harvin and Jesse Quebbeman-Turley on drums, Elena Kakaliagou playing horn, Carlo Spiga aka Makika at the launeddas, Pierpaolo Lorenzo playing harmonium and Stellan Veloce on cello.The A-side (‘Brackish’), initially recorded live at Robbie Moore’s Impression Studio, is the result of hours of improvisations loosely based on Veloce’s graphic scores. In the hands of the composer, the recording material soon turned into an abstracted collage. Despite the asynchronous addition of further drums and saxophone, the piece remains the outcome of a noisy live band due to the heavy leakage on the different takes and spatial distancing effects inherent in the recordings. The B-Side (‘Briny’) responds to the staggering layers of space and time. ‘Briny’ is a drone piece that emerges from the interplay of cello, bass and horn and acts as a Romanticist counterpart to ‘Brackish’ while the addition of launeddas – a Sardinian woodwind instrument –, harmonium and electronics returns it to rougher timbral territories.Stellan Veloce’s Complesso Spettro is an exceptional music that combines the power of band playing with Veloce’s sense for deconstruction and rearranging. The record takes its cues equally from Talk Talk’s meticulous recording and editing processes, the grand narratives of Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, Animal Collective’s textured noise or the free-wheeling play of Zeena Parkins. The album is the work of a shoegaze ensemble that is indebted to Italian prog rock and Free Jazz as much as to pastoral post rock and spectral composition.Stellan Veloce is a Sardinian composer, performer and cellist living and working in Berlin. They compose pieces for acoustic instrumental ensembles and develop installations and performance pieces focusing on timbre, repetition and sound densities. Veloce also works as a touring band member and studio musician, recently with Peaches, Kat Frankie, Dear Reader, Kenichi & The Sun. They have collaborated with composers Marta Forsberg and Neo Hülcker, choreographer Sheena McGrandles and others. They are co-founder of the collective and online platform Y-E-S.org and are part of the group Fem*_Music*_.  --- Composition, editing, production by Stellan VeloceStellan Veloce - cello, additional bass (A, B)Andreas Dzialocha - electric bass (A, B)Bridget Ferrill - electronics, processing (A, B)Julia Reidy - guitars (A)Marta Tiesenga - baritone sax (A)Earl Harvin - drums (A)Jesse Quebbeman-Turley - drums (A)Elena Kakaliagou - horn (B)Carlo Spiga aka Makika - launeddas (B)Pierpaolo “the coach” Lorenzo - harmonium (B)Recorded by Robbie Moore, Stellan Veloce, Andreas Dzialocha and Ole Jana in Berlin; and by Marta Tiesenga and Jesse Quebbeman-Turley in Los Angeles. Mixed by Robbie Moore at Impression Studio, Berlin. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering, Bonn. Artwork by Ale Rodriguez, Design by Xerox Martins.Grazie a Silvia e alla Monterico Fam.

A few more layers, a few more places and times of emanation. Kajsa Lindgren’s »WOMB« was released as an album, performed as an underwater concert, virtualised as a floaty web installation (inanimate.world) and will now is treated to another re-imagining and re-living as 'For Distorted Worlds'. Three artists and two anthropologists/writers have waded through WOMB’s archive: material from the recording session, field recordings, voices, memories, swimming pool impulse responses, notes, drawings and thoughts. The results and processes – very different in sound and aesthetics – overgrow 'Distorted Worlds', the WOMB Remix EP. --- Source Material: Kajsa Lindgren (WOMB, HEX 002)Compositions: Stefan Helmreich & Eva Hayward, Felicia Atkinson, Teresa Winter, David GranströmMastering: Rupert ClervauxCover: Stefan HelmreichFunding: Kulturbryggan

»WOMB« is a musical narration for abstracted ears and bodies – engulfing a listener simultaneously in subaquatic sonic environments, distant dreams of childhoods, memories and voices from the unknown: where time and space fold into each other. The initial material of field-recordings of nature and body sounds, interviews and compositions has been re-recorded and re-amped underwater in a swimming pool – and has been re-arranged (partly by way of the impulse responses of the pool) now for stereo home listening. It’s like we’ve travelled from the outer space fantasies into the alien underworlds to surface in your homely headspace. »WOMB« at times resembles Gustav Mahler’s offstage soundings, dramatised by Björk, in other moments the sounds become tiny and intimate, when »WOMB« makes one think of Felicia Atkinson’s music, while the environmental ambiences reminisce the static music of Kevin Drumm. The delicate layering of field recordings, re-recordings and environments makes »WOMB« a fascinating phonopoetic fiction that conjures its own surreal virtual ecology: of remote strings, filtered through hydrophones (on cocoon), deep sea creatures singing to a de-tuned toy piano (the garden), of folk songs sung through telephone hiss (on all the other children), of waves crashing at the sea shores of Narnia (the inanimate world pt. 2).

Written and recorded on unceded Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung land during Winter 2020. Music Lisa LerkenfeldtMastering Angelo HarmsworthDesign Severin BlackArtwork Lisa Lerkenfeldt

Mastered by Owen Pratt except 'Of Kingdoms' (mastered by Stan Iordanov) Artwork by Severin Black

Artwork by Severin Black Mastered by Owen Pratt

Composed and recorded by Joseph Johnson Artwork by Severin Black Mastered by Owen Pratt

Recorded live at Cafe Oto, London September 27, 2018 Performed by Christoph de Babalon & WIDTRecorded by Shaun CrookMixed and mastered by Owen PrattImage by Mila Nowacka / WIDTDesign by Severin Black

Recorded and performed by Severin Black and Owen Pratt Mastered by Owen Pratt Artwork by Severin Black

"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"."

"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."

Rain, spit, ice, neon, mercury, arcing electricity, plants, steam, soil, and dust; this is dream music from Sa Pa. Following up on his 2015 debut 風物詩 [Fuubutsushi], In A Landscape provides rich content for fantasy and the fertile imagination, establishing a rich terrain of visual, poetic, and abstract sound that draws on techno and dub ambient. Somewhere between pastoral impressionism and cyber-noir, its surface evokes the tensions of a fluctuating, fizzing atmosphere, pictures emerging and dissolving in the mind’s eye. Thick layers of field recording - some salvaged from a recorder lost in Bassiani during the police raid last year and recovered in January - flood tracks fabricated from erratic, oddly distanced rhythm. The sensation whilst listening is not unlike hearing the world from a place within the body; swimming in the bloodstream, cutting through the turbulent landscape secure in a metal tube. Or being over-exposed to lushly textured environments with the anatomy far receded; an out-of-body experience where subtler senses are heightened and the landscape begins to take on surreal qualities.

Uwalmassa shape their relationship with various forms of musical heritage into technical and stylish forms on Malar, marrying acoustic sonics with a contemporary outlook that reflects their Indonesian identity; evolving, mutating, and scavenging traditions to draw parallels to dance music, and to test the adaptability and flexibility of those sounds.Here the collective go dark and deep in their first album-length collaboration with Mana, casting long shadows and moving snake style at speed across nine tracks. Using a mix of synthetic and acoustic instruments - the texture of Malar feels enigmatic, occasionally industrial, and the result magical in its mystery and fluctuating impact.Uwalmassa is the name with which DIVISI62, arts & music collective from Jakarta, Indonesia, perform and produce music. --- Artwork by Desmond WongVinyl mastered and lacquer cut by Anne Taegert @ Dubplates and Mastering, BerlinDigital mixed and mastered by Wahono @ Studio Oposisi, Jakarta, Indonesia.

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.

The permanence of a whim, like a casual decision to make your first tattoo a butterfly; a choice you regret, or forget, or evolve with over time; a whim for which you needed frivolity in order to take yourself seriously. The superficial nature of standardized beauty can contain contradictory depths - scars are decoration, desire can be destructive, and beauty can be offensive, rough. Clarity and noise aren’t opposites; both exist within the other and provide context for the work of intentional attention. --- Commissioned by andPlay. Dedicated to Maya and Hannah. Many thanks to David and to Joe. – Victoria Cheah--- Performed by andPlay: Maya Bennardo / violinHannah Levinson / violaVictoria Cheah / composition and electronic playback --- Recorded and edited by David Bird at Mise-En Place in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY Photography by Sarah Lloyd

Active vibrations inherent in a disappearing resonance.Repetition and momentum coalesce and decompose.Everything becomes a clue toward nothing.These are memories of the memory of the after party. -- Devin Drobka / drums, cymbals, Roland SPD-SXMatt Blair / fender rhodes, pedals -- Devin Drobka plays Dream Cymbals Engineered and Recorded by Shane Hochstetler at Howl Street Recordings Mastered by Huntley Miller Art by Brian Harte

A sound collage focusing on the interaction between classic acoustic instruments, electronic sound processing and effects and integration of white noise radio transmissions. This work is part of a series on the topic of exploring the contribution between an artist and the environment. -- RVD / electronics, effectsSergei Tumanov / violin, effects -- All music recorded and produced by RVD and Sergei Tumanov during February - March 2021 in the Netherlands and Australia. Mixed and mastered by Sergei Tumanov at NCTMMRN Studio, Melbourne, Australia Photography by Matthias Urban

Works for double bass ensemble and voices, multitracked with all materials played and sung by the composer. Each piece presents a distinct environment exploring contrast and tension to sculpt a dense collage of focused textures. A quartet engaging with a limited set of gestures and articulations, each avoiding rise or decay. Vocals, microtonal and layered atop sparse plucks and spiccato fragments. Bowed swells of delicate, double stop harmonics, detuned yet melodic, a brief sense of serenity emerging from disquieting depths. -- Nat Baldwin / double bass, voice -- Composed, recorded, and mixed at the Apohadion Theater in Portland, ME in January 2021 Mastered by Caleb Mulkerin at Tank 28 Each piece is a multitrack recording with all materials played and sung by the composer Photography by Savvas Metaxas

Interior and exterior sounds, oscillations of home appliances, electronic devices, noises, and interferences.Irregular and irreversibile. Art by Philip Sulidae

A focus on stretching and altering resonances as they leave the body of a drum or the surface of a cymbal, and re-incorporating them as accents and key statements in a realm of pulse and cycle. That which is actually in a state of decay becomes propelled forward as a fixture in the sonic environment. --- Leo Suarez / drum set, mixer and objects --- Recorded and mixed by Leo Suarez, December 2020Mastered by Nathan Corder

Good Diz, Bad Bird is the new album from enigmatic British experimental musician Me, Claudius. Opening with Me, Claudius playing mournful piano chords, something of a curveball for those familiar with her earlier work, the machine soon begins to stutter. The notes skip out of place, before totally tumbling down the stairs into a twisted, stuttering beat. Field recording, found instruments and sampling are key in Me, Claudius’ process, a strive to capture the musical and rhythmic events that exist in the most unexpected places in our environment. In turn, this perverse sense of chaos in order seeps into the dynamic shifts and structures of her music. Throughout the three tracks, Me, Claudius distinct sense for placement and alien groove is felt more concretely than before. Her percussion is sounds just on the edge of familiarity, the creaks, buzzes and whirs that infiltrate our subconscious. But from the murk they congeal again and again into glitched out, dub affected rhythms. The key is that the music should always be playful. “Loops going on for far more than is comfortable is intentional,” she explains. “It's another recurring theme. I find slight glee that it is jarring. Despite the serious themes and nature of some of the stuff I do... I hope the prevailing silliness is always apparent." Me, Claudius is an experimental musician living in a village in Southern England. Good Diz, Bad Bird follows Back to the Sweat-Out Tower (2018 Linear Obsessional) and Reasons for Balloons (2017 Dinzu Artefacts). The cassette edition of Good Diz, Bad Bird comes with handmade artwork, printed on a 1960s Farley 24a proofing press on Takeo Yomushi paper by Me, Claudius herself. Released December 7, 2018

Shadow of a Shadow is the debut release from London-based Taiwanese composer Cyanching, showcasing her unique approach to composition and production. “I try to redefine sampling,” she explains. “If I like a sound, I don’t just record it, I try to recreate it. If I love a bassline on a track for example, I try to play it myself and capture the qualities that attract me. By doing that you create a new sound within an old pattern.” “The biggest part of my process is researching sounds, to get the materials for my compositions,” Cyanching says. “I then try to put these together, almost like collages. To create something new, to express a different narrative.” The title track, Shadow of a Shadow, is a twenty plus minute journey through rustling ambience, mournful synth patterns and a climax of ferocious guitar chug that aims to capture Taiwan’s diversity. On the b-side, Cyanching engages with the country’s tumultuous past. The track titles, Fermentation, Invasion and Elimination, strive to tell the story of the formation of a national identity against terror and suffering. “Taiwan lives in the shadow of a shadow,” she explains. “A history of invasion and cultural combination. I deliberately used the widest mix of frequencies and textures I could, to reflect the different ideologies in Taiwan. The pulses that go in and out of phase in the album are meant to capture the hope that ultimately, we’re all eventually heading in the same direction, towards the same goal.” Despite the 4 tracks being so directly tied to Taiwan, Cyanching was determined to avoid dwelling on the country’s traditional music to signpost her heritage. “This music is all about present ideology, so why do I need to use ‘traditional’ Taiwanese sounds?” she asks. “I should embrace the fact that I live in the west. If the music used sounds that were obviously Taiwanese, it would seem like I was trying to label it as being ‘outsider’. But I’m more interested in making a distinct identity by fusing different elements,” she concludes. Released August 10, 2019

Steps on the Turning Year marks the second release from Nottingham, UK based artist, composer and musician Bredbeddle, aka, Rebecca Lee. The four long form tracks here form a scrapbook built with snippets from Lee’s music collection from found sounds, amateur viol consorts and more. Drawing connections between different sounds creates odd narratives as loops mingle and glitch against each other. Although vinyl, CDs and turntables are part at the heart of the Bredbeddle process, Lee sees herself as a collagist, not a DJ or turntablist. “I’m interested in mixing pre-existing recordings, and their cultural worlds together to suggest new types of song or story,” says Lee. “I have a stack of records with post-it-notes on them, to remind me of the sounds I want to use.” The quirks of her set up: laptop, turntable, and CD player end up shaping the sound. “While it’s possible to play loops on a turntable, it’s harder on a CD. With my old CD player, all I can do is keep skipping back to the start of the track, but that limitation becomes an effect in itself.” The four pieces have been assembled with a delicate attention to detail. There are echoes of Christian Marclay or Joseph Hammer in the process, but the sheer breadth of materials Lee uses, from early music to BBC sound effects records and recycled recordings from her previous musical projects, makes Steps on the Turning Year a uniquely rich tapestry. “I find connections between textures or moments in different pieces of music. Sometimes it’ll be similar chords, or a quality to the voice, the beginning of a phrase, or even the broken down and looped vowels of a spoken-word record. It means that early music gets combined with something much more contemporary, found and noisy sounds with studio albums.” The result is an album of looping, meandering constructions, as sounds overlap before fluttering away from each other. “It’s not about deconstruction, but trying to assemble something new from these different recordings,” Lee explains. “I don’t think too much about whether a sound is particularly uncool, or fits a grid. It’s about letting them evolve and interact with each other.” The artwork for the tape comes from conversations between Lee and designer Anna Peaker. "I really liked Anna’s use of icons and images in her work - the way she brings a variety of materials together into one space - it connected to the way the tracks are formed," Lee explains. "So I tried to map out references for each piece drawing on sounds in the tracks, or the art work from the source music I used. Together we found and made materials that could be used and Anna worked with this collection to develop the design. The tape sleeves have become kind of weird landscapes and the O sleeve is (as you’d hope), a loop of its own." Released June 11, 2021

The Incredible Years is the new solo album from London based musician and composer Gareth JS Thomas (guitarist in USA Nails, and formerly of Silent Front and Sly and the Family Drone). Contrasting intimate recordings on an old family piano with pounding drums tracked on a digital recorder in a London practice room, the record exists between the comfort of home and a frustration at lost momentum. “Around Christmas 2017 I started tracking the piano parts at my mum's old house down on the south coast,” explains Gareth. “This is the same piano that I used to noodle on as a little kid, it's maybe the first instrument I ever touched.” “I'd intended to finish the tracks off at home in the following weeks but in January 2018 I was in a serious road accident while on tour with my old band (Silent Front), which meant I ended up housebound for a few months. I continued to work on them while I was stuck at home recovering, as I had little else to do, I added the drums in London the summer of 2018.” The grey metallic hues of Gareth’s previous Bezirk release, Cruising Hits, remain – yet the synthetic palette of that album has been switched for a mix of organic, acoustic instruments. The result is five tracks that switch between smothering claustrophobia and minimalist ecstasy. “I added big live drums partly to celebrate the freedom I felt when I was able to finally leave the house and use my body again post-accident” he reveals. “The making of this record spanned a very significant period in my life, where I was processing a lot of trauma but also learning to cherish a lot of the things I'd previously taken for granted. I guess it's only natural that that has been reflected in it.” The album is accompanied by a video for Hyphen British. Made by Gareth, its source material is CT scans and X-rays that were taken just after the road accident. “They show me at my most unglamorously vulnerable,” he explains. “You can see all the broken bones, it might be more than some people want to see, but it felt appropriate.” Released January 24, 2020

The Lounge Era is the debut release from Dutch Courage, the new duo of Andreas Klotz (Superskin) and Gabor Kovacs (Új Bála). It’s a work of organic collaboration between the two artists. Jams on synths and drum machines recorded live to an old school tape deck. “A year ago, Andreas came up with the idea of this band. I liked it, so we arranged a weekend in Vienna, just to see what we could do together,” Kovacs explains. “It went pretty well, we jammed out the whole record from scratch during that 2-day period. The process was kind of a 50-50 ping-pong with sounds, if one of us started to write a beat the other finished it.”The results are a deeply rhythmic set of tracks which are, according to Kovacs, more influenced by hip hop and dub than dance music. “I cannot imagine it in a club environment, maybe in an after party of an after party,” says Kovacs. Each of the 8 pieces revels in happy accidents and absurd consequences. Underpinned by off-kilter beats, warped synthesis and a constant sense of sitting on the edge of collapse. This approach bleeds through to the artwork of the release. “Like almost everything from this project, it came from the gut,” reveals Kovacs. “I was looking for an electric chair originally, as I connected to the word lounge in a twisted way. I found that other electric chair, for massages, instead.”Released March 22, 2019

“I wanted to make neopagan folk songs that would imitate the local muiñeiros, taking the interlacing lines of the landscape as harmonic progressions. And this is what came out,” says Greek sound artist Daphne X, about her new album, The Plumb Sutra. The seven tracks here take in everything from the synthetic chirps and splashes of ‘Irimia’s Bones Crackle’ through spooky piano laments on ‘Eliseo’s Teeth Chatter’. While ‘Halo Dragon’ is a rabble rousing electro-acoustic folk dance of bounding percussion and polyphonic vocal lines. Mostly, the eight tracks are a beautiful document of Daphne X’s playful openness to the sounds and stories around her. The Plumb Sutra was recorded in an isolated rural house in a semi-abandoned region of Galicia. Specifically, along the banks of the Miño, a river which, according to Galician folklore, was home to witches, animals and amphibian human in peaceful coexistence. The site is now threatened by pollution from a major landfill in nearby Eiroás. “There we spent our days with the only other neighbour, Otilia, an 85-year-old farmer, who had never left the place,” explains Daphne X. “Her presence and the stories we heard from her, the soft rain that would fall continuously, the absolute serenity of the place, the fog that would cover everything in the absence of sun, the distant moans of the cows, the little squeals of the mink that would nest in our walls, the hooting of the owl in the attic, the purring of our shared cat, the sole company of the birds, the frogs, the crickets, the apparent discretion of human intervention in this vast area that sheltered us in those 6 months made us turn inward and grow like Otilia´s giant zucchinis.” From collages of rain drops to diaristic travelogues with her friends, Daphne X’s recordings are dominated by moments and settings seeping into her music. No doubt the magic and history of Miño and its colourful inhabitants permeate every sound in Plumb Sutra’s fantastic sonic world. “During this time, I moved a few centimetres away from the computer and instead sat at the piano and by my typewriter, researching local folk stories, polyphonic singing traditions and byzantine music notation, and recovering minor Asian refugee songs from the back of my glottis.”Daphne X is a Greek sound artist, based between Barcelona and Linz. Equally infatuated with mundane and virtual objects, she uses collected, amplified, and synthesized sounds, and voice, to explore and expose chimeric and unconventional forms and textures. Her music has been broadcasted on BBC3 Radio, Noods, and Tuskio.se, and written about by publications such as A Closer Listen and the Quietus. Her work discusses the relationships between human and non-human agencies, emerging technologies and spirituality, mundane life, and fiction. Through a variety of formats, she explores economies of collective composition, environmental listening, and communal healing. She’ s currently hosting a show on movement_athens radio called Sonic Utopias, participates in the Linz-based label Wirtshaus Secret, co-running the curating platform Cachichi. Released October 22, 2021

On January 19, 2019, Archive Officielle presented a private showcase including performances from Charles Barabé, Karl Fousek, s.mercure and Philippe Vandal. This is the official recording of these 4 original performances that took place at Apollo Studios in Montreal. Music by Charles Barabé, Karl Fousek, S.Mercure, Philippe VandalLive recording by Karl Fousek and Pascal DesjardinsMix and mastering by Pascal Desjardins and S.MercureDesign by Marie-France GaudetImages by Eliott LégaréEvent coordination by Lydie Bochatay

30:15" is the latest sound work from S. Mercure. The title refers to the length of the 9-track album. It was elaborated with material from Mercure's personal sound archive: unfinished projects and past/recent experimentations. After spending a great amount of time listening through hundred of samples out of their initial context, a limited number of 20 samples were selected and classified in 6 categories: FORWARD, BACKGROUND, RHYTHM, TEXTURE, AS-IS and SOURCE. 30:15" materialized with the basic idea of creating a written structure for each track before diving into any sort of editing and audio processing. Samples, order, the time at which to use them, as well as their eventual manipulation were all informations declared in advance. This "planning" inevitably created some unpleasant results that had to remain in the final mix in order to stay true to the initial structure. Relying on a methodical concept is recurrent in Mercure's work. Using constraints to dictate the source material and method of work have been observed in past projects.

Bur sting brea k’r is the début EP by Montreal's Cloud Circuit. Cloud Circuit is Deanna Radford (poetry) and Jeremy Young (electronics.) The Cloud Circuit Ensemble includes Philippe Vandal (saxophone) and Alexandre St-Onge (bass & laptop.) This project is inspired by the failures of communication technologies as they are tied to human experiences of communication. All efforts are put in place to transport the listener into the grey areas of connection; a space where de-synchronized signals, dropped data packets, repetition and/or deterioration of information is observed. Young develops a magnetic soundscape in which Radford's voice transmits from. Produced using sine wave oscillators and physical interventions on amplified surfaces with saxophone (Vandal) and bass (St-Onge), Bur sting brea k’r evokes the sense that one can hear when the sounds, recognizable and unrecognizable, fall away into particles. Using the soundscape as infrastructure and atmosphere, Radford delivers her poetry guided by the process of deep listening and semi-improvisation. As in live Cloud Circuit performances, her words are spoken in response to sound by Young, Vandal and St-Onge. At the same time, she deconstructs word order so we might question typically intended meanings and better feel the presence of the machines and software which surround us. This demonstrates the ironies that; first, we observe a text deliberately deconstructed by a human to represent the shortcomings of a technology set up to meet an essential and very human need; communication. Second, words sometimes shift from the technical to the emotional as a result of repetition and this process of scattering. Here lies the strength of Cloud Circuit; the ability to create in the listener the desire to re-synchronize disorganized blocks of information and at the same time, accept the tragic end reserved to them. In some ways, Bur sting brea k’r is an invitation to appreciate the failure of our connected world and the void left by it's loss of meaning. -- Deanna Radford: words, deconstructed word events, mouth soundsJeremy Young: sine waves, mouth soundsPhilippe Vandal: saxophone on Side AAlexandre St-Onge: bass, laptop on Side BMixed by Markus LakeMastered by Lawrence EnglishDesigned by Marie-France Gaudet

HYS is a collaboration between sound artist Giovanni Lami and visual artist Clio Casadei. During the summer of 2018, Lami created a 6 minute and 20 seconds sound piece recorded on-site in a park in Faenza ITALY. Casadei was later approached to create a visual transcription of this audio. Both versions, audio and visual, now hold the same title: HYS. Giovanni Lami’s work revolves around field recordings using reel-to-reel recorders. During a recording session, the ambient sound is captured but also altered by the use of different objects, microphones, and manual interventions. The mechanical sound of the recording device itself is sometimes captured and fed back into the magnetic tape. This well developed approach has been used in his latest series Hysteresis I to IV, released on various international labels.

Hymn is the audio companion of the book "Hymnal" by visual artist Jonathan Dankenbring. It was developed by exporting each page as an image. Said images were then imported to a sound program as raw data. These image files are read as basic sound wave patterns and then filtered, expanded, contracted, and arranged into the audio work.

ISOLATION Studies 1 to 4 are outgrowths of the installation 500hz-245hz-500hzø-246hz from artist S. Mercure (Persona Mercure). Developed over the course of 2016 and 2017, the installation consists of a sound exchange between two speakers positioned face-to-face and uses a frequency of 500 hertz as a starting point. These Studies are the result of experiments using only audio from the installation as a sound source. Sound waves have been modified in amplitude, frequency shifted, and, in some cases, multiplied with the help of certain effects and send channel routings. No additional sounds have been used and any kind of editing as been avoided. -- All sounds and words by S. MercureImages by Lydie BochatayLinguistic revision by Karl Fousek and Louis-Olivier Guérin

Daniel Kordik and Edward Lucas are two London based improvisors who play together as a regular duo. They have developed a musical rapport that concentrates at times on the common unconventional ground found between the two instruments, and at other times on their histories in jazz and electronic music. "The trombone and the analogue synth provide a full set of cultural resonances to destabilise, disrupt and destroy. They are avatars visiting worlds where new meaning is forged in rebellious acts of listening."- Tony Hardie-Bick--- Daniel Kordik / analogue synthesisers: vostok + roland mc202 Edward Lucas / trombone ---Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Grays Inn RoadDesign: Ben Polhill; Cover drawing: James Ferris

Tom Wallace presents six forest recordings taken in South East Asia sampling a number of acoustic landscapes at different times of the day, from dawn until dusk, and into the night. Graham Dunning performs a DJ set using dubplates that he has produced with field recordings of the local urban environment and its people; this set was recorded live on four microphones at Corsica Studios, London, in March 2016. --- Tom Wallace / field and voice recordingsGraham Dunning / turntables ---Mastered by Edward Lucas & Daniel KordikCover image by Jim Ferris; Design by Earshots/DEPT2

"A finely detailed and expressive group that is both elegant and eloquent. All aspects of sound production are scrutinized and employed as valid musical material which in turn gives an immersive and complete listening experience." - John Russell "This meet-up recorded in London is something of a textural boxing match. However, the trio involved are playing an analogue synthesizer (Daniel Kordik), a digital synthesizer (Ken Ikeda) and a trombone (Edward Lucas), so the results are consistently intriguing. More often than expected, the synths and trombone mesh indiscernibly into one creaking atonal lattice. The opening track is the oddest and noisiest of the lot, with both synths aggressively carving out some sharper frequencies while the trombone can do little but hurl blunt parps into the battleground. The rest of the release settles into a more peaceful mode, resembling murmured scheming between home appliances." - Tristan Bath, The Wire Jan 2017 -- Daniel Kordik / Vostok synthesiserKen Ikeda / DX synthesiserEdward Lucas / trombone -- Studio recording, London, September 2015Recorded & Mixed by Edward LucasMastered by Rupert ClervauxCover image detail from a drawing by Ross Lambert

Ute Kanngiesser's first cello solo release, recorded direct to tape at two locations: The Cafe Oto Project Space, and the clock room at St Augustine's Tower, Hackney. --- Ute Kanngiesser / cello --- Recorded and mixed in Spring 2015 by Edward Lucas and Daniel Kordik.Embroidery by Meghan Springer Thanks to Cafe Oto and Hackney Historic Buildings Trust.  

Daniel KordikJames L Malone -- Recorded / Mastered by Edward LucasMixed by Daniel KordikCover image by Andrej ChudyDesign by Earshots Recordings/dept2Earshots Recordings 2017 . Digital Edition

This is an archival recording of the first time meeting for vocalists and electronic musicians Anat and Kamura. Recorded live at the Hundred Years Gallery as part of the Earshots concert series on 04/10/2014 -- Anat Ben-David / voice and electronicsAtsuko Kamura / voice and electronics -- Daniel Kordik & Edward Lucas: recording / master / designAndrej Chudy: photograph

Lucy Liyou’s music carries with it deeply personal poetry, in a literal and metaphorical sense, conveyed using sound collage, noise, field recordings, and abstracted pop tendencies. When Notice first heard Lucy’s music, we were struck by its incredible honesty, vulnerability, and originality. For her first collaboration, A Need/A Want, she is joined by Philadelphia-based guitarist and lyricist Yska. Bizarre shards of Yska's electric guitar permeate Lucy’s deft and supple production techniques as the sounds contained throughout the two pieces produce moments of confusion, bliss, and catharsis. Using text-to-voice and largely unprocessed singing, the duo's lyrics present a refreshing and striking potency: “I’ve only been there once; and only for a little while; she walked like lavender; swaying, leaning…”. Music this honest and also so carefully crafted is a true treasure, and A Need/A Want is a testament to musicians honing their visions in a very unique way. --- Written by Lucy Liyou and Yska. Piano and production by Lucy Liyou. Guitar by Yska. Mastered by Branic Howard. Artwork by Sludge Thunder“A Want” contains a sample from “untitled” by Owen Sanger. Used with permission.

“Butterfly Knife” finds two vital musicians in the contemporary music landscape releasing their first duo album together, despite collaborating in a live context numerous times. Charmaine Lee, based in New York by way of Sydney, is known for her unique and playfully intense work in what she very aptly describes as “vocal expression”, forging erosions within deft personal performance. Decoupling breath, mouth, voice, body, and recording apparatus, she supplements a wide variety of techniques with daringly controlled mic feedback. Zach Rowden, a New Havener, utilizes controlled and unaltered contrabass scrapes, stabs, and squalls to pry into the recording space, conversing and engaging with Lee's honed aural language. Both musicians are capable of crossing over into taught bursts of noise, but on Butterfly Knife, they relish in surfing an intense pre-spillover zone, the two performers communicating in combinations of droning static in addition to weirdly generous bouts of silence. --- Recorded and mixed by Ian McColm, New Haven CT, 2019. Mastered by Branic Howard. 

This is Nathan McLaughlin’s latest installment of his Echolocation series. Following releases on Digitalis and Gift Tapes, #5 also continues the organic and thoughtful work of his duo Loud & Sad. Focused on tape loops, layers of delay, and some chordal forms, each piece is meticulously and methodically built, with each sonic element given its due. This sense of pacing and care given to every moment is a crucial element of McLaughlin’s work, and it’s deeply attuned here. The pieces reflect the environment in which they were composed, tight-knit and rural; they mass like storm clouds, and then are barely there, leaving just the fluttering of a distant echo. Stretches of silence, and windblown expanses. Rich chords swell into deeply contemplative passages that are gradually stripped away. A gorgeous, hushed set of tape music. --- "Echolocation #5 extends McLaughlin's exploration of the elegiac and the dirge, adding some crunchy, roiling passages as well. Often McLaughlin's loops gather, in small enough increments to avoid overt, ham-fisted drama, a strong sense of the ominous. These tensions, as well as the fine structural drift McLaughlin is patient enough to permit, make the Echolocation series a fluid one, without a start or an end. Echolocation #5 should be heard as an installation in a big-hearted work, issuing from a musician with an immense gift for subtle music. They are sent from a recondite artist who may well disappear before you receive them, so there's no time to waste." - Jesse Goin / Crow With No Mouth --- Mastered by Eric SteigerArtwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery and N. McLaughlin

Erosion is a sprawling yet focused love affair with the bass drum, allowing myriad objects to playfully interact with its grand form. Kevin and Jacob engage with the instrument in an entirely unrelenting way, traversing textural, pointillist sections, as well as rippling metallic drones. Notice’s admiration of Kevin and Jacob’s work goes back to circa 2008, with Kevin’s album with Tetuzi Akiyama and Christian Kiefer ‎on the much-loved Digitalis Industries, and Jacob’s album with Tony Dryer and Jack Wright on Bug Incision Records. Since then, 2019’s Invasive Species became a stand-by, on which Kevin played and Jacob mastered. Erosion finds the two merging their techniques in a very palpable, sensuous way. As if rendering an amorphous sculpture in minuscule gestures: gathering, releasing, reapplying material in a structured improvisation; new patterns emerge yet resist completion, as if working with weighted feathers which are impossible to manage. The length of Erosion, each piece clocking at 40 minutes, allows for this sense of fascinating endlessness; a constant process of extraction and application of reemerging sonic forms. --- JFH / bass drumKC / bass drum ---Recorded in Berkeley, California on February 12, 2020 (A) and December 18, 2019 (B). Recorded, mixed, and mastered by JFH. Artwork by E. Lindorff-Ellery

On the long-awaited Exaptations, Toronto-based composer Nick Storring presents two highly textural, side-long pieces. On “Field Lines”, originally composed for Yvonne NG Peck Wan‘s dance piece, Magnetic Fields, a certain fragmented, uncertain openness is conveyed: a series of brief, dreamlike clearings are vignetted by pregnant silences or various levels of waking or sleeping states. Storring plays with a variety of tonal instruments that swell and tumble along while being nipped at by expressive percussion. Organic clusters develop within event-based sequences, stretching attention across multiple timbres and rhythms. On “Yield Criteria”, shifting drones move about like independent layers of ice on a lake in the dead of winter, slowing crumbling, sliding, and cracking in perfect harmony. Storring has written for dance and other interdisciplinary settings, and here he brings the delicate resourcefulness of a skilled accompanist, as well as a narrative sense that belatedly, profoundly blossoms. --- Field Lines: Composed and recorded October 2013 - May 2014 for Yvonne Ng's dance piece, Magnetic Fields, which premiered in May 2014.Nick Storring / various percussion and found objects, vibraphone, glockenspiel, balafon, chimes, hand bells, toy pianos, thumb pianos, voice/whistling, electric (NS Designs NXT4) and acoustic cellos, electric bass, electric mandola, violin, hammered dulcimer, Hohner Pianet T, Yamaha CP60M, Hohner Clavinet D6, flutes, harpsicle, strumstick, guitalele, steel pan, harmonica, melodica, pitch pipes, hulosiSpecial thanks to Yvonne, Marie-Josée Chartier, Mairead Filgate, Luke Garwood, Christopher Willes. Thank you to Germaine Liu for the use of her vibraphone, and John Farah for the use of his Pianet.Yield Criteria:Composed and recorded February - June 2014.Nick Storring / NS Designs NXT4 electric cello, electric bass, electric mandola, thunder tubes, Yamaha CP60M, toy piano, harmonica, duck call, voice, hand bells, glockenspielElements were used in Eva Kolcze's film, All That Is Solid. Thank you to Eva, Spencer Barclay, Jason Doell, Brandon Valdivia, and Bryan Bray.Processing and manipulation performed on the above sound sources (and the sound of a blank, chemically-treated 16mm film sound-strip) using combinations of the following: transducer speakers on various resonant chambers, instruments and surfaces; talkbox; spring reverb; recordable cassette walkman; various speakers; (contact) microphones.Special thanks to Nicole Cultraro for her violin and kalimba, her support and inspiration, and patience with my process. Thanks also to Andrew Zukerman.Gratitude also to all who listened and offered feedback.Artwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by John Fitzgerald at Fitzgerald Letterpress, New Orleans

Since the mid-aughts, Chicago trio Haptic (Adam Sonderberg, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Steven Hess—this time around featuring Salvatore Dellaria and The Necks’ Tony Buck) has delivered riveting, meticulously controlled live sets, as well as a handful of releases mainly on the Entr’acte label, all of which reflect the group’s unique attitudes toward collaboration and structure. This release features material sourced from a variety of past recordings; they are without form and yet architectural, and just as uniquely engaging as the group’s previous work.From the perspective of Notice, Haptic’s mixture of the organic and the industrial has been profoundly influential, and could even be said to define a quintessential Chicago ethos channeled through dark ambience: roiling waves of density, structure, work, beauty, and oppression constantly overtaking each other. However, the final silence will always be present—and is expected—just like the spare, steady late-night call of a single circling black bird. --- "While Sonderberg has recently returned to Chicago and Haptic to the stage, neither was the case when they assembled Excess of Vision. They took leftover, previously unused recordings from throughout their existence, including some early improvisations with Necks drummer Tony Buck and  contributions from Salvatore Dellaria, and assembled them into a sonic comment upon their discontinuous state. On “So for the Remainder,” which takes up all of side one of this album length cassette, the long, slowly evolving tones that used to get Haptic rather reductively characterized as a drone outfit are once more presented. But they are layered, interleaved, and twisted together so that they interfere with each other and are in constant low-key flux.  Heard inattentively, it might seem that nothing is happening, but if you get close enough you’ll notice that the constancy is an illusion." - Bill Meyer, Dusted --- Performed by Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills, and Adam Sonderberg with Tony Buck (I) and Salvatore Dellaria (II)Assembled by Mills/SonderbergMixed by SonderbegMastered by Tomas KorberArtwork and layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery

"Fast Edit is the second LP by Still House Plants, the Glasgow and South London-based three-piece collective made up of Finlay Clark, David Kennedy, and Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach. Written aided by mobile phones, dictaphones, laptop recordings of rehearsals, conversations and live shows, Fast Edit is a collage of different fidelities and headspaces, most tenderly exhibited on album centrepiece “Shy Song”. Overlays of past and current sit things on top of each other, fall over one another, get stuck, predicate. Fitting now, but reflective of a period doing shows in South America.The sentiment of the record is probably best described in part of an intervention written for what would have been the 2020 edition of Glasgow's Counterflows Festival by Frances Morgan:"Getting used to the idea of never getting anywhere except for between these three notes, these two words, getting tired, getting beyond it, getting locked in. Trying to get it down, trying to get it written. Like the song that didn’t get anywhere: it still moves, it doesn’t move.It is getting to you that this is heaviest verb to get across. Loaded and overloaded. Getting as in becoming, as in acquiring, as in catching, as in having, as in receiving, as in changing, as in arriving, as in moving through and over, it’s the same....How do you think we should do this. The song does something different now, puts the other foot forward. How do you know when it’s done. End on a verb and it becomes a command: run! Towards the next thing. Do – towards the next thing to be done.What have you been doing today, a day with nothing doing: watching a nesting falcon on a webcam, what’s it going to do. Googling the appropriate prayer, what does it say you should do. Bouncing the sticks off the snare, what does the sound do. How are we all doing. Doing, never done. Listening, never done."www.counterflows.com/intervention-one/   --- Recorded & mixed by Shaun Crook and Darren Clark at Lockdown Studios, London. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates and Mastering.Typeface by Still House Plants, layout by Maja LarrsonProduced in partnership with Blank Forms, New YorkBlank Forms Editions 013BIS005

  “a notea voice, screamsa batterysounds, grating noise, scratcheshere it startsMusic, musicYou who shudderWho makes you dance, singWho moves the buttand now begins Humming Dogs” - Florence Decourcelle, Humming DogsAn absolute pleasure to present ‘Les Borigènes’ - the first LP from France’s Humming Dogs. Born from the radical ‘Oiseau Mouche’ (Bird-Fly Company) - a troupe of actors and comedians who focus on the theatre of gesture - Humming Dogs make joyful, avant rock music, which pooh poohs the po-faced in favour of a party.Humming Dogs are made up of eight members - David Bausseron, Mathieu Breuvard, Florence Decourcelle, Thierry Dupont, Chantal Esso, Léa Le Bars, Florian Spiry, and Valérie Waroquier, who each write and create songs, swap instruments and sing collectively. Guitars, bass, drum kit, and keyboards mix with toy percussion, amplified pine cones, pot lids, iPads, a zither and an arsenal of effects. ‘Ha Ha Ha’ opens the record with the group dispersed and growling at one another, only to break out in infectious laughter, a free word riot and a thick bass melody. The traditional French song, ‘Karnaval’, gets totally sent by keyboards and a slung low guitar scrawl, egged on by the bands hooting and hollering. ‘Ça Me Gratte’ haunts and grates until it splits with a rising synthesizer and squeaking Bonios. The spitting, itching, near exhausted vocals from Chantel Esso are unlike much else we've heard.‘Les Borigènes’ contains the self taught, simple charm of the Shaggs ‘Philosophy of the World’, performed in the spirit of village revelry and recorded and edited beautifully in the tradition of the GRM. Democratized experimentation, low ego rock’n’roll - Les Borigènes is a truly joyous, remarkable and wild record. It arrives in an edition of 500 140g black vinyl LPs, with artwork from London’s Submit to Love Studios and Taylor Silk.Humming Dogs have performed at Sonic Protest, Cafe OTO, and Counterflows.

First full length LP from Still House Plants. "Combining visual strategies, free improvisation, UK garage and punk, Still House Plants build melodic hierarchies scaffolded around ambiguities and intimacy. Fresh from being selected for the OTO Projects UK Artists Fund, and following two sold out tapes on Glasgow label GLARC, the trio’s debut LP 'Long Play' collects their group's raw guitar-drum-vocal palette and stretches it to include violin, piano and intimate home recording. Ranging from seconds-long to seven:minute:somethings, the album coagulates to form a heady meld of rudimentary phrases, kinetic repetition and malleable samples. Experimental songwriting is rarely so forthcoming, emotive, or approachable." "A genuinely challenging and beautiful album." - Stewart Smith --- Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach / vocals Finlay Clark / guitar, piano, violin David Kennedy / drums --- Recorded by Ronan Fay at Green Door Studios, Glasgow, April 2018. Mixed by Ronan Fay. Mastered by Katie Tavini. Artwork by Still House Plants.

New album on bison from Kumio Kurachi, whos only performance outside of Japan was here back in 2009. "After 11 albums and unknown quantities of cassettes, compilations and split releases, Sound of Turning Earth is the first release outside of Japan for one of the most original figures in Japanese music, Kumio Kurachi. Recorded by Jim O’Rourke at his home studio, Sound of Turning Earth is Kurachi solo on vocals and guitar, mixing surreal lyrics and theatrical vocal personas with unorthodox tunings inspired by Japan’s national instrument, the koto. Lyrically Kurachi draws life from the small events of life, the hira, - the joy of choosing a lipstick in springtime, the business of changing the tatami, raindrops deciding whether to fall as snow. Set to his own brand of progressive folk in the Hirajōshi scale and laced with winding melodies which can be hard to forget, Kurachi maps his own territory for the people who inhabit his everyday. As much a visual artist as a musician, we are pleased to present Sound of Turning Earth in the form of a deluxe CD accompanied by new artwork by Kurachi and full translation of his poetic lyrics. These striking songs speak for a liberated imagination." “The music is so melodious that the mixture of the strange wording, guitar and variations of voices thrives all together and it can haunt you without noticing it, just like the small events of everyday life you can't escape from." - Midori Ogata  --- All songs written by Kumio Kurachi Guitars and vocals by Kumio Kurachi Recorded and mixed by Jim O'Rourke Mastered by Daichi Tokunaga (PLUM) Translation by Midori Ogata Design by Maja Larrson Special thanks to Midori Ogata --- Kumio Kurachi has performed actively in Japan since the 80's, and still plays shows in Fukuoka regularly. Past collaborators include Taku Unami and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. He has played with Tenniscoats, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Katsura Yamauchi, Tori Kudo, Jim O'Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi." 

The latest chapter in the unfolding musical story of Bill Wells finds the Scottish jazz outsider’s compositions played by a trio of tuba players with contributions from young brass players from his adopted hometown of Glasgow.The results, The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays The Music Of Bill Wells, are alternately ruminative, playful and profound, ranging from the cyclical opener Fanfare For Three Tubas to a mischievous interpretation of The Midges, a comic tribute to the entomological scourge of the Highlands by Scottish singer Kenneth McKellar, and the doleful Chorale 4K before the arresting finale of Stone Throw Dream Anthem. Throughout the record you are reminded of both the power and tenderness of brass instruments – their capacity to astound and reassure, to soothe and tickle.The trio in the title – Antony Hook, Danielle Price and Mark Reynolds – formed in 2018 to perform in the lee of the Glenfinnan Viaduct as part of the Loch Shiel Festival. Built on the West Highland Line and opened in 1901, the 21-span viaduct is nowadays best known for its appearance carrying the Hogwarts Express. Wells contributed three tunes for the performance, including Fanfare For Three Tubas, and composed the remainder after being commissioned by Glasgow’s underground/experimental festival Counterflows as a direct result of the Glenfinnan Viaduct performance. The trio subsequently performed Wells’ tunes in Glasgow with the Gorbals Youth Brass Band, who play on three of the album’s 10 tracks, sharing a bill with a duo featuring Chicago composer, flautist and educator Nicole Mitchell and London-based percussionist Mark Sanders.The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays The Music Of Bill Wells represents another creative achievement for the prolific composer and multi-instrumentalist, whose output in recent years includes an album for an Estonian indie label (Remixes For Seksound, 2018), the eponymous debut LP by The Sensory Illusions, his guitar-and-tuba duo with Danielle Price (Karaoke Kalk, 2019), and Standards Vol V by his mischievously titled National Jazz Trio of Scotland (Karaoke Kalk, 2019), featuring the voice of Gerard Black (Rozi Plain, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Francois and the Atlas Mountains).Prior to these Bill collaborated with artists including Yo La Tengo, Amy Allison and Syd Straw on Nursery Rhymes (Karaoke Kalk, 2015) and Aidan Moffat on Everything’s Getting Older (2011) and The Most Important Place In The World (2015), both on Chemikal Underground. He has also recorded albums with Jad Fair, Maher Halal Hash Baz and Stefan Schneider of To Rococo Rot among others.The Viaduct Tuba TrioMark Reynolds studied in Glasgow and Munich. During his time there he performed with, among others, the Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Bavarian State Opera and the Munich Symphony Orchestra. In 2001, he was appointed principal Tuba of the Royal Philharmonic of Flanders, Belgium and became a founder member of the Ottone Brass Quintet. He has frequently performed as a soloist including performances of the Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic of Flanders and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.Rising star Antony Hook was Loch Shiel Festival’s Young Artist for 2018 and currently studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.Supported by the Countess of Munster Trust, Danielle Price studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and graduated with distinction from the Master of Music Course in 2013. She has since enjoyed a versatile career playing in a range of projects and ensembles including Pure Brass Quintet, The Sensory Illusions, Dopey Monkey, Red Note Ensemble, The Old Fountain Jazz Orchestra, New Antonine Brass Quintet (current Live Music Now Scotland artists) besides traditional jazz ensembles The Copper Cats and The Red Hot Rhythm Makers. She has also performed in the bands of Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat, Ashley Paul, Bella Hardy and Oxbow, and as an extra musician with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.The Gorbals Youth Brass BandThe band was formed in 2012 in Glasgow to offer local children free instrumental tuition. Each child is provided with a brass instrument and attends weekly lessons and rehearsals. GYBB also attend competitions, masterclasses and concerts.  The Viaduct Tuba Trio Plays The Music Of Bill Wells was recorded at Castle of Doom studios in Glasgow by Tony Doogan, mixed by Bill at Loathsome Reels and mastered by Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub. The cover art is by longtime collaborator Annabel Wright.

“Urs Graf Consort, a collective with a corrupted genealogy, produce trail-blazing simulacra - songs nested within themselves, with the experimental accents of Ursonate. A protean duo operates under the name of Swiss engraver Urs Graf (1485 - c. 1529); Prune Bécheau and Adrien Bardi-Bienenstock are composers and performers for ensembles that are as varied as the motley company brought together in The Peasants War which Urs Graf depicted; Uva Ursi captures on-the-spot at acoustic vigils on the edge of amplified battlefields. Baroque violin, vièle-à-trou, bass, arranged drums, a broad spectrum of vocals, tuba, trumpet, synthesizer, spinet, sanza, shakers, bells and rattles... are all played in different concerts by: Simon Sieger, Mathias Pontévia, Jœl Grip, Samuel Burjade, Sam Langer, Paul Ferbos, Pierre Borel, Adrien Perron, Rachel Ramos, Emmanuel LeGlatin, Mathieu Cahuzac, Camille Émaille, Gabriel Bristow, Antoine Hummel, Makoto Sato, Arden Day, Olivia Scemama, Pascal Sieger, Geoffroy Gesser, Malgorzata Kasprzycka, Gwladys Le Cuff, and many others. The sheer number and differing degrees of participation by these musicians and their voices avoids genre - from passionate, rasping dialogues and the slow sedimentary effort of building the composition, to the use of six languages in various arrangements and surprise oral interventions. The same applies to the modes of recording, whether in the studio, live or by integrating direct sound recordings.The compositions on Uva Ursi - or bearberry, a medicinal mountain plant with small white flowers - confound expectations and established standards and attain new forms of interplay between Italian variety, free jazz, cabaret, instrumental theatre, Lettrist recitation, the disruptive intensities of improvisation and noise, and walrus songs. These disjunctive synthesis do not exclude humming or toe-tapping either, even though they may initially seem untenable as a whole: the airs are captivating but any dancing only arrives in passing, and either gets bogged down by weird meter or catches a chill from deceptive disintegrations and globbed down by macabre sounds.” Gwladys Le Cuff  --- Adrien Bardi Bienenstock : french, italian, spanish, danish, bassesPrune Bécheau : baroque violin, synthesizer, piano, organ, mandolin, french, german, danish Simon Sieger : trombone, accordeon, tuba, radiator, danish, frenchMathias Pontévia : drums (on pair tracks, except track 8)Joel Grip : double bass, danish, swedishSamuel Burjade : drums (on impair tracks)Sam Langer : electric guitarPaul Ferbos : spinetPierre Borel : saxophoneAdrien Perron : zarbRachel Ramos : pandeiro, bell, shakersEmmanuel Le Glatin : acoustic guitarMathieu Cahuzac : congasGwladys Le Cuff : Apocalypsis NovaEnregistré au Tuquet en Dordogne, à Ste Foy La Grande en Gironde, à Euphonia et au 51 rue du petit puits à Marseille. Tecnici di registrazione e mix : Loïc Lachaize, Prune Bécheau e Adrien Bardi BienenstockMastering : Loïc Lachaize and Jan Vysocky.Ooro hihi : frontière ronflanteHülle : Prune Bécheau und Adrien Bichon BardiGrafik : Maja LarssonEnglish translations : Sam Langer & Patrick DahnThanks for the technical support (and more) of Thomas Pujols, Samuel Burjade, Eloïse Burjade, Emmanuel Le Glatin, Mathias Pontevia

"This is a 100 track compilation, over 6 hours duration, representing some of our favourite tracks and collaborations over radio, on stage and in the studio from 1991, which was when we released our first album.Each track has a different flavour, from a different time, another place, and often associated with a different recording medium or varying groups of individuals who inspired or actually took part.Thank you friends, listeners and collaborators for being around, and for all those who inspired and supported the journey so far. Making this available at a Nice Price considering the ridiculous volume of content, and as is the case for much of People Like Us, you can quite possibly find a lot of this in various forms elsewhere on the internet for free, either put there by us, or others. But if you'd like to support us, then we thank you and welcome that. It will help make more happen.

First released in digital-only form in 2004 exclusively for UbuWeb (ubu.com), this album includes Vicki’s John Peel session and performances for WFMU, amongst others, both from 2003, and now with brand new artwork designed by Vicki Bennett. "We strongly believe in the power of profit through free distribution. Often people have never heard of an artist because they aren't being distributed through as many channels as they should be, due to the very poor state of music/media distribution for non-major label music coupled with ignorance of the way that avant garde art forms infiltrate mainstream culture. Also many prints of a work are allowed to go out of circulation or are deleted for no reason other than cost effectiveness by a label/publisher. This makes perfect sense financially, but no sense whatsoever that a year's work by an artist should also disappear for such reasons. So get all of this while you can, and we completely endorse getting one's work out there, no matter what. If you don't share, your profit is limited." - People Like Us, 2004” People Like Us is audiovisual collage artist Vicki Bennett, who has been making work available via CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, performances, gallery exhibits and online streaming for 25 years. Since 1992, she has developed an immediately recognisable aesthetic repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and appropriation as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant.”

"It’s always felt important that my work be a total experience, not singularly appealing to either the eye or ear, for it to be as integrated an experience as possible. The music on this album was composed between 2006 and 2013 initially for five different live performances of moving image and sound. Since publishing formats have developed in recent years we’ve found the internet serves us really well as a distribution tool in the gift economy. One can find the accompanying visual elements of some of this music at ubu.com/film/plu.html. You can find lots of PLU free on the internet. However, we do appreciate it if you purchase things from us to help us sustain this kind of work. Many thanks." ---Performances sources:Lyrics in Libraries (2006) | Genre Collage (2009) | People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz Live at Cafe Oto (2009) | The Magical Misery Tour (2011) | Consequences (One Thing Leads To Another) (2013)

The fruit of many years of work, this album began as People Like Us & Wobbly collected and collaged their way through various depictions of misfired communications and heartbreak sourced from popular culture for a series of live improvisations. Music For The Fire is a plunderphonic concept album depicting the lifespan of a relationship, as told through samples of hundreds of different songs and voices who had no idea they were all telling the same story until they were all spliced together.Strangely direct and evocative for an album assembled entirely from a patchwork of disparate sources and music both obscure and over-familiar, Music For The Fire comes with an illustrated lyric sheet which reproduces the countless sampled voices as a single if utterly schizophrenic text — a bedtime story that is wildly inappropriate for actual children. No reliable narrators, just the familiar and absurd, which on different spins of the disc might strike you as either maudlin, poignant or almost painfully hilarious. There is a way out of the maze, but it’s up to you to find it.Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. She has shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, the National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, Pompidou Center, Sonar in Barcelona, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the BBC and Channel 4, released albums of her work on labels such as Tigerbeat6, Soleilmoon and Touch, both solo and in collaboration with Matmos, Ergo Phizmiz, Christian Marclay and members of Negativland. 2010 will see the completion of a commission for the Edinburgh Art Festival as well as concert appearances at the AV Festival, MACBA, Liverpool Sound City, Copenhagen & Jerusalem.Wobbly is the long-running collage project of Jon Leidecker (US), who improvises live with pre-recordings to coax the harmonies out of recorded sounds of individuals and animals from disparate cultures. Albums have been released on the labels Alku, Phthalo, Illegal Art, Tigerbeat6 and Vague Terrain. Previous and ongoing projects include the bands Chopping Channel, Sagan, the Freddy McGuire Show and Amen Seat, as well as various collaborations with Negativland, Matmos, Thomas Dimuzio, Blevin Blectum, Lesser, Tim Perkis & Xopher Davidson, Otomo Yoshihide and MaryClare Bryztwa. In 2009 he was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona to produce “Variations”, a podcast and lecture series overview of the history of musical collage & sampling.People Like Us & Wobbly have been collaborating since her first visit to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998. Early improvisations as a trio (with The Jet Black Hair People, aka Peter Conheim of Negativland) are documented by the online album What’s The Use, as well as archives of numerous radio and concert appearances recorded both in California and London, including on BBC Radio 3‘s “Mixing It”. The present album for Illegal Art is composed from live recordings, carefully and obsessively edited over a great deal of time, and is their funniest, darkest and yet somehow strangely compassionate work, Music For The Fire tells a story which every listener will recognize in their own unique way.--- "You can find lots of our work free on the internet. WE put it there! However, we do appreciate it if you purchase things from us to help us sustain this kind of work. Many thanks." - People Like Us

First released on Mess Media in 2002 on CD, and then reissued on cassette in 2018 on Sucata Tapes, we've combined the digital files of both to bring this to you all on one place. This was compiled as a Best Of People Like Us from pre-2000. Amazing to think it is almost 20 years later that we write this. This represents an earlier life of PLU, some of which carries through to now, some left long behind...“The work of People Like Us rests gingerly between two dangerous positions: on the one hand, the risk of fashioning merely stylish pastiche out of borrowed finery for the sake of self-conscious kitschiness; on the other hand, the risk of making simplistic, heavy handedly “topical” audio-jokes at the expense of one’s raw material to a smug effect. If the lounge creeps uncritically snack on their sonic ingredients and coast on being “groovy”, the cads of pseudo-critique take cheap shots at straw men and call it subversion. Happily, Vicki Bennett has yet to fall down either precipice, but yodels down contentedly from her own Alpine audio-cottage. There, with loving care, she snips and tucks at the lycra jumpsuit until the fit is snug, places every plastic shrub on the Happy Valley Ranch just so, and throws another dance record on the bonfire. Undercutting her own utopian mirages with formal breakdowns and sneaky semantic pranks, Vicki Bennett is One Funny Lady, with a deadly sense of comic timing that puts her in my personal pantheon of edit intensive music makers: -Steinski and Mass Media, Hank Shocklee, Tod Dockstader, Teo Macero, the Hanatarash, John Oswald, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock. Serving her birthday cake with a turd, her gags are always lined with a virulent creep factor. You get the feeling that the vacancy and pointlessness of empty speech is being lampooned and mourned in equal measure. In sticking to this balance of celebration and critique, People Like Us genuinely hates and loves People Like You. The least you can do is head up to the Happy Valley Ranch for a spell and have a listen.” – Drew Daniel (Matmos) 2002 

Previously released on accompanied by “Gone, Gone Beyond”, “The Mirror” is the dreamy soundtrack of an a/v project from collage artist extraordinaire Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us.With ‘’The Mirror’’ Bennett continues her eternal disassembling of popular music by exploring how the narrative of familiar sounds/songs can change dramatically under a new context, with that context always changing, in a never-ending flow.Each song is singular. And each song is a collage of and undefined number of other songs from other artists. It sounds familiar because that has been the modus operandi of People Like Us since the early 1990s. But “The Mirror” plays with the notion of familiar, driving around a collection of famous pop songs/artists, messing around with the memory of the listener and, of course, his unique comprehension of those specific songs applied in a new context.Because of the use of familiar pop sounds, “The Mirror” is often grandiose. Like an epic film only with highs, never letting the listener down or letting him doubt the power of pop. Even, of course, when the coordinates are twisted, mixed, over or underrepresented. Each moment feels like something that could only happen in a parallel universe. Although that may sound naïve, it’s just a lost thought of reaction to the beautiful collages of People Like Us in “The Mirror”. This mirror doesn’t reflect an image of ourselves or an image of pop. But an image on the way memories drift and are being constant rebuilt. An unfinished collage. 

"Charley recites Apocalypse Rose on one side. Theother side is Bill NACE doing a piece of music inspired by the poem" Charles Plymell's “Apocalypse Rose” was published in 1966 by the City Lights Journal and later that year in his first book of poetry with an introduction by Ginsberg. Charles recited the free-associative poem here, alongside Nace's 16-minutes instrumental guitar abstraction. "Nace mirrors beautifully its dense, hallucinogenic images. Nace arranged a slow, hypnotic drone, first played on a distant, Far Eastern-tinged acoustic guitar, that later morphs into a quiet, and even quieter claustrophobic-electric rustle, that fits the closing lines of the poem: The blood that fell on each new tomorrow And you saw this as I was watching you. Under the influence of all your stars, In mirrors of your galaxies of blue, The hero and his love became your scars But this rose picked could not be picked anew. To measure you and me in full disguise I lay beside our rose of paradise." - The Free Jazz Collective

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)

In the summer of 2018 guitarist Bill Nace and jaw harp player chik white began a long distance collaboration. They put together enough material for a 7", which was released in September 2019 on Bill's Open Mouth Records. Here it is in download format.  --- Bill Nace / acoustic guitar Chik White / vocals, jews harp. --- Cover by Jacy Webster. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Emily Robb

Prior to Body/Head’s Matador release ‘Coming Apart’, Bill Nace quietly put out a limited 12” of the duo’s material on his own label, Open Mouth. Largely instrumental, with lattices of interwoven sustained guitar, “Where Did You Go?” is as much of a ‘song’ as the record holds, with Gordon ditching lyrics in favour of channelling improvising vocalists like Alice Coltrane. Long sold out in print, it’s a pleasure to share this one as a digital release. --- Bill Nace / electric guitar  Kim Gordon / electric guitar, vocals --- Tracklisting: 1. Turn Me On - 4.44 2. Be There Soon - 5.24 3. Take It Down - 0.524. Where Did You Go? - 8.22 --- Recorded at Brief Crossing Studio. Mastered by Mark Miller. 

"John Truscinski has made a solo recording called ‘Bridle Path’, and it’s a document of a journey, a singular meditation - a universal landscape soundtrack. Reflections and refractions of sound swim around in their own subtlety. A conversation gets out of its own way, using an unknown language of letting go. A focused void. Drone slabs and microtones bend and waver, slipping beneath the surface of sound. Using a a mini brute and Korg synthesizer, John carved out time to occasionally sit in a room to work on these recordings. Over a span of two years, he visited this room when he felt like he needed to. Tones travelled through effect pedals and out of speakers, filling up the solitary space with shifting waves. A delicate arrangement of equipment allowed john to be still in the room with this music, immersing himself in it’s subtle guidance. The instruments and recording device were always present and ready when the connection felt right. It feels right. Music underneath. As much as Bridle Path is a venture inward, It’s also a balm for troubled world. There is depth to this recording, and to my ears it’s grounding and illuminating. I listened closely to 'Bridle Path' on my own wanderings, and it became the perfect soundtrack as the moving scenery folded into itself. My days were filled with long drives, airport lines, windy highways, and sweeping views. I I sat still, but also moved at a clip, feeling tired and awake as dramatic landscapes changed with every passing view. ‘Bridle Path’ helped me find stillness in all of the movement. I considered the music a gift. John and I once traveled out to the coast of a famous surf spot in Portugal, Praia Dos Supertoubos, and found ourselves in front of some enormous waves - the biggest I had ever seen. The oceans magnifying energy was surreal, and I sat on the beach with my camera, thrilled as John immersed himself in the wondrous ocean. The massive waves swelled, and there was John, brave and symbiotic - floating, rising, falling, and gliding. This music captures my own vision of him out there on the water. Countless performances, recordings, destinations, discussions, luke warm coffee, big hooded coats, foggy windows, gear in an elevator, junky practice spaces. There was momentum of feeling our own way, laughing, and listening. John always listening seriously. King Tubby pointing to his head. The kind of friend when you get to know their various cars over the years, and enjoy spending time in them. One channel of a stereo working. It always felt good. John has a valued ear and acute sensibility for sound, and ‘Bridle Path’ is new evenidece of his depth. There is a passage that has been offered, and I’m pleased to know that it now exists out there in the world. Listen for yourself." - Steve Gunn November 2019

Gates And Variations rounds out a loose trilogy of records by Jake Meginsky for Open Mouth. Not an intended trilogy on Jakes part but it has become one to my mind. It has come to be how I listen to them and experience them, all informing each other, echoing and challenging each other and growing into each other's space and light like a garden of plants that would never actually coexist anywhere in reality. Jake is always tirelessly reaching for something new yet I'd avoid using the word progression here. It instead feels to me like the last piece of a puzzle, or of a world created by some Jack Kirby demigod. Something has been completed and now all the pieces are interchangeable. The first can go last. The middle can be first. The whole thing becoming a universe looping in on itself with a multitude of entry points and not a lot of exits. These are dense environments where sections can move from microscopic to macroscopic, day to night and back again, so effortlessly that it's hard to tell if it's intended or if something imperceptible within you shifted the locus of your perception. But it is all very intentional, something carefully carved to give the feeling of something, though unfamiliar and strange, organic and grown. There's a sense of danger here like warning transmissions, concussive roiling rhythms and jagged disturbances. Yet also clear straight lines giving way to enveloping curve and staggering beauty. Supplant the beginning with the end with the beginning." --Bill Nace, Philadelphia, PA, September 2017.

Live recording of a totally weird collaboration between flutist Lao Dan and multi-instrumentalist Li Daiguo. A new interpretation of Chinese folk instrumental music. "The collaboration between flutist/saxophonist Lao Dan and multi-instrumentalist Li Daiguo began in 2018. The duo named themselves “Benbo’erba & Babo’erben” (奔波儿灞与灞波儿奔, BBB & BBB for short), after two minions from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Delivering whimsical, improvisation-based melodies woven around the backbone of Li Daiguo’s quirky pipa and Lao Dan’s spiritual flute, Benbo’erba & Babo’erben take their listeners to a grotesque fairy world which presents a radical but light-hearted re-interpretation of traditional Chinese music. In 2019, the duo released their debut on cassette titled Benbo’erba & Babo’erben at Old Heaven, a remixed live recording of their performance at the Old Heaven bookstore in December 2018. In this album, tribute is paid to Fei, owner of the Old Heaven bookstore and pivotal figure of the Chinese avant-garde scene, whose magnetic voice and demonic laughter can be heard at the very beginning of side A." --- Lao Dan / chinese bamboo flute, bawu, jews harp, vocals Li Daiguo /  pipa, mbira, synth, vocals --- Recorded in 2018, Released in 2019

"On October 15th, 2017, after their performance as members of the Yosuke Yamashita Special Quartet at OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival, Shinpei Ruike, Hiroaki Mizutani and Shinnosuke Takahashi were joined by two of China’s fearless avant-garde improvisers, Lao Dan and Deng Boyu, at the Old Heaven bookstore. This jam session, simultaneously pleasurable and mind-blowing, is a definite highlight of the long-standing tradition of the bookstore improvisations during each year’s OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival and Tomorrow Festival." --- Shinpei Ruike / trumpet Lao Dan /  alto saxophone, bamboo flute Hiroaki Mizutani / bass Deng Boyu / drums Shinnosuke Takahashi / drums --- Recorded in 2017, Released in 2018

More 'traditional' dombra solo album from Mamer - more cyclical, less sustain driven reflections on Kazakh tunes.  --- Tracklisting: 1. Bande 土匪 Brigand - 01:42 2. Aylanew 旋转 Rotating - 04:33 3. Jamaw 补丁 Patch - 01:58 4. Dom Mêtal 炼钢 Steel-making - 02:31 5. Kaytalaw 循环 Cycle - 02:29 6. Iyirim 漩涡 Whirlpool - 02:29 7. Xaman Biy i萨满舞 Shaman Dance - 03:09 8. Kêngês 闲聊 Chatting - 02:49

"Born in 1945, Guo Yongzhang has performed zhuizi - a traditional Chinese style of narrative singing - for half a century. An artform whose history spans over a century, zhuizi originated in Henan province. Its main musical instruments are the zhuihu, a two-stringed bowed lute, and the zhuibang, a wooden percussion played with foot tapping.  Almost completely blind, Guo Yongzhang is known for his peculiar, resounding yet smooth vocal style. He sings with deep feelings and great verve. Lyrics deal with both the hardships and good values of life while always maintaining a sense of humour. Despite being long regarded as a folk master, Guo has continued to play tirelessly among ordinary people, often travelling from village to village and performing for a whole day at a time. As he nears the end of his life, Guo regrets that nowadays, few people wish to learn the art ofzhuizi. He worries that this precious art form may soon be lost.  This release, titled after one of Guo Yongzhang’s most well-known songs, Lao Lai Nan, commemorates his performance at the 5th Tomorrow Festival. Guo co-headlined the last day of the festival with French prog-rock act Gong on May 20, 2018. His performance was recorded live and is due to be released on both CD and LP by the Old Heaven label in November 2019. --- Guo Yongzhang /  Zhuihu, Zhuibang, Vocals --- Recorded in the late-1980s, Released in 2018

Recording of Otomo Yoshihide's set at B10 Live, Shenzhen. --- 大友良英 Otomo Yoshihide / 吉他 Guitar / 人声 Vocals --- 录制于2014年4月28日，深圳B10现场. Recorded April 28, 2014 at B10 Live, Shenzhen

Puppet is a rock band that was started in 1991 in Urumqi by Xinjiang musician Feruh (法茹克). It has gone on to become one of the longest living rock bands in China. The backbone of Xinjiang’s underground scene, Puppet has gone through numerous line-up changes while Feruh remains the only constant member and the mastermind behind the project. In 1997, Mamer joined Puppet and has since maintained a close relationship with the band. The band went on hiatus from 2002 to 2005, reformed in 2006, and finally released their full-length debut 'Urumqiin' 2008, a sophomore titled '32 Days' followed in 2014. Feruh is currently working on his new band 6501, named after the first four digits of identity card numbers in Xinjiang, 6501 released their debut 'Endgame' in 2018 under Modern Sky’s Bad Head sub-label.  This is Puppet’s first greatest hits album, compiled by Feruh himself, with songs selected from different periods of the band’s history, the song “3 O’clock Xinjiang Time” is previously unreleased. It's gold. 

Alkisah is the new album by Indonesian duo Senyawa. Alkisah is co-released by a multitude of independent record labels from all over the globe each with different packaging and design, with multiple version of remixes by various artists.Senyawa is an experimental music duo with Rully Shabara (extended vocal technique) and Wukir Suryadi (homemade instrument). The music that they create is a combination of extended vocal technique and a homemade instrument. The instrument was handcrafted by master instrument builder Wukir out of one long piece of bamboo, it is a string instrument with guitar pick-ups—it is amplified and processed through several effects pedals but at times is played as an acoustic instrument, percussion and string instrument.They are located in the ancient city of Jogjakarta, Central Java, Indonesia and their music is a reflection of their traditional Javanese heritage filtered through a framework of contemporary experimental music practices. Senyawa try to push the boundaries of both traditions in an attempt to mix the musics’ of the east and the west to create a new sound.

Live recording of O Yama O at les ateliers claus 9th May 2019. --- Keiko Yamamoto / voiceRie Nakajima / objectsMarie Roux / drumBilly Steiger / violin ---Recorded by Christophe Albertijn at les ateliers claus 9 May 2019Mixed and produced by David Cunningham during the summer of 2021.All titles composed by Nakajima/Roux/Steiger/Yamamoto apart from My Body (David Toop/Steve Beresford)Photo by Laurent Orseau

Live recording of Ignatz at les ateliers claus 18th January 2020, Brussels Belgium. Recorded and mixed by Christophe Albertijn ---- Tracklisting: 1. The Best Little Bar in Brussels 09:572. What a Cute Dog 05:423. You Can't See Me 09:334. About The World 05:005. I Gotta Pee 06:366. Strange How All Is Changed 12:13

"Live recording by Will Guthrie from when he came to les ateliers claus end April 2018. We're big fans of Will his musical universes. On this live recording you can hear him perform solo. Will Guthrie is an Australian drummer / percussionist living in France. He works in many different settings of music: live performance, improvisation and studio composition using various combinations of drums, percussion, objects, junk, amplification and electronics." Recording and mastering by Christophe Albertijn

"Bitchin Bajas came to play les ateliers claus May 2018. During this tour they were robbed twice, so the gear they're playing on at les ateliers claus is not their usual stuff. A mutated Bitchin Bajas. Keep on flowing Bajas, so chill and pretty. Next-man expansions of the walls and bridges of our sonics universe, synthesizing amidst a separate but also growing ecosystem. Bitchin Bajas is a band formed by by Cooper Crain, Dan Quinlivan and Rob Frye." Recorded and mastered by Christophe Albertijn.

"Live recording from Keiji Haino his concert at les ateliers claus on 7th October 2019 - Brussels, Belgium We all know Keiji Haino as a legendary musician and it's always a special experience to host him. The day prior to his concert at les ateliers claus, he came to Brussels and expressed his wish to do some record shopping. And so we did - in between soundcheck and the actual concert. Keiji Haino likes to hear unique sounds and performers and so we went on a search. In a certain store in Brussels I made him listen to one of my favourite albums by Igor Wakhevitch (Hator) - he listened and promised me half-jokingly his performance at les ateliers claus would be better."

"Hailing from China, field recording/noise artist/poet Yan Jun, folk artist Xiao He, Guqin master Wu Na, multi-instrumentalist Li Daiguo and tea master Xijian are The Tea Rockers. The group was formed in October 2010 and released their debut album,Ceremony, in 2012 on the Israeli label EnT-T. Their second album 'Fictions' was an improvised performance recorded in Chongqing, June 2015. It was mixed and mastered by Lasse Marhaug, “the most serious tea drinkers in the entire European Noise scene”, and features calligraphy by Chinese artist Che Qianzi." "The music veers from austere to downright pretty… a case of Chinese musicians confronting their own traditions head-on." (The Wire) --- Li Daiguo / pipa, cello, vocals  Wu Na / guqin Xiao He / ruan, vocal, pedals and laptop Xijian / tea Yan Ju / electronics --- Modern Sky World Music (MW-007) May 2018

"Immaydey is the long-awaited debut album of Bande (meaning “bandit”, formed in 2012), one of the countless band projects of Mamer (IZ, Mekrop, Tat, 51 Rayon, Kunakar) but the only one among them that still performs with traditional Kazakh instruments. Bande is a three-piece band that builds up epic avant-rock soundscapes by distorting the sounds of traditional Kazakh instruments - dombra, kobyz and Sámi drum - with dazzling effects pedals. On stage, the members often turn up with masks and black robes as though performing a mystical ritual. Immaydey, the Umay Goddess, is the goddess of fertility and virginity in Turkic mythology, regarded as the eternal Earth Mother with mystic, almighty power. An ecstatic ritual, an epic riddle, and a psychedelic labyrinth, the album is a true milestone of Mamer’s decade-long battle with his own music traditions." --- Zhang Dong / sámi drum, bells  Mamer / all music, lyrics, vocal, dombra, kobyz  --- Modern Sky World Music (MW-011) October 2019

6501 is the second band project of Ph (formerly known as Feruh), who founded the legendry Xinjiang rock band Puppet in 1991. The band was formed in 2015 in Ürümqi and is named after the first four digits of identity card numbers of Xinjiang Province. In 2018, 6501 released their debut 'End' on BADHEAD.  Nothing but Eye Travelis 6501’s second album. Compared with the music of Puppet, the songs of 6501 are evidently more compressed, confrontational, and explosive, which as believed stick closer to the authentic sound of rock. The lyrics are succinct, often sarcastic, and sung in almost a robotic manner. --- Ph / guitar, bass, vocal  Zhai Xiaoming / guitar, bass, vocal   Faruk / drums --- BADHEAD (B-062). December 2019. All Music & lyrics: Ph

Red Scarf has been described as “a trio of madmen” who deconstruct, reassemble, and then decimate genre after genre, are clearly having a blast with their take on rock, free jazz, and noise. Consisting of guitarist Li Xing, drummer Deng Boyu, and saxophonist/flutist Lao Dan and formed in 2014, the band released their self-titled debut in 2016 on BADHEAD. In 2018, Red Scarf released their sophomore They Know We Know They’re Lying. Later in that year they supported krautrock legend Damo Suzuki on his Chinese tour.  Unlike their improvisation-based debut, They Know We Know They’re Lying showcases the bands ability to deliver tightly structured and carefully balanced prog-rock compositions characterized by harsh textures, rich dynamics, and wicked black humour. As reviewed by Live Beijing Music: “Take the soundtrack to Tom and Jerry, douse it in bath salts and you only have the slightest sense of the glorious mayhem found within Red Scarf’s frantic and beautifully assembled 2018 releaseThey Know We Know They’re Lying. A deep dive into the mouth of madness that pits renegade sax, high-pitched souna against a fierce battle between guitar and drums, eventually transforming into a symphony of metal-tinged breakdowns and free jazz roar before it once again jack knifes elsewhere…”  --- Li Xing / guitar, synthesizer Lao Dan / saxophone, bamboo flute, suona  Deng Boyu / drums   --- BADHEAD (B-052). May 2018. All Music: Red Scarf

"Mamer met the legendary Japanese drummer Tatsuya Yoshida in 2014 at the 1st Tomorrow’s Festival, where the two first shared stage.Wild West Adventure consists of two discs titled “See the Mountain” and “See the River”, the album documents another fearless improvisation session of the duo recorded in October 2016 in Ürümqi. The album showcases both musicians’ remarkable ability as free improvisers and masters of their own instruments, and it takes its listeners to an epic adventure filled with explosive and enchanting dynamics of rock-oriented avant-garde music." --- Tatsuya Yoshida / drums, vocals Mamer / bass, vocals --- BADHEAD (B-051) May 2018

The Nick Mazzarella Trio was formed in 2008 and for several years remained one of the most active working bands in Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene, performing regularly at clubs and festivals across the city, and recording three albums before drummer Frank Rosaly moved to Amsterdam in 2016. When Rosaly returned for a visit in early 2018, Mazzarella composed a suite of six new pieces for a concert commemorating the trio’s tenth anniversary. That performance, given before a full house at Co-Prosperity Sphere in the south-side neighborhood of Bridgeport, was recorded live on reel to reel tape, and the complete, uncut recording is now available as the trio’s fourth album, Counterbalance. On Counterbalance, the members of the trio bring to bear the collective creative experience they have accumulated over the past decade, displaying a new level of maturity in their interpretation of Mazzarella’s latest compositions—which draw as much from contemporary classical music as from the jazz tradition—and a new level of patience and communication in their highly personal improvisations. As critic John Corbett asserts in his liner notes for the album, the trio’s music is "magnificent, relaxed. It has nothing to prove. The sound is proof enough.” --- NICK MAZZARELLA - alto saxophone ANTON HATWICH - bass FRANK ROSALY - drums --- All compositions by Nick Mazzarella (BMI). Recorded by David Allen and Dave Vettraino on January 19, 2018 at Co-Prosperity Sphere in Bridgeport, Chicago. Mixed & Mastered by Dave Zuchowski. Cover artwork by Morris Barazani, untitled, c. 1950, gouache and varnish on cardstock, 11 x 15 inches, private collective. (Courtesy of Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago). Sleeve photograph by Scottie McNiece. Liner notes by John Corbett. Layout by Drew Liverman. Produced by Nick Mazzarella. Exective production by Nate Cross for Astral Spirits & Quin Kirchner for Spacetone. For Mary A and Nick J—Mom and Dad

Desert Encrypts Volume 1 is a two-part suite based on observations from the desert in and around Marfa, TX. It also explores Mazurek's ongoing fascination with social, psychological, and physiological structures, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The composition includes written music and graphic scores for improvisation. For Desert Encrypts Vol. 1 Mazurek has put together an awe-inspiring new ensemble featuring Kris Davis on piano, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on bass & Chad Taylor on drums. Recorded live at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, TX during Mazurek's inaugural Desert Encrypts Festival in August 2018, Desert Encrypts Vol. 1 captures the quartet burning through Mazurek's newest compositions like they've been playing together for years (to be fair some of them have been playing together for years). Mazurek has always been associated with the Chicago scene he spent so many years in (as well as his time in Brazil thereafter), but Desert Encrypts Vol 1 is his first album that feels truly Texan to these ears, and we're excited to present a new exciting development in a long string of exciting developments that have marked Mazurek's long and illustrious career. --- Rob Mazurek / Piccolo Trumpet, Electronics Kris Davis / Piano Chad Taylor / Drums Ingebrigt Håker Flaten / Bass Lynn Xu / voice on The Blue Haze --- All music by Rob Mazurek OLHO ASCAP Double True Stereo + 2 Recording, Mix and Master: Ken Christianson, Pro Musica, Chicago   Recorded Live at the Crowley Theater, Marfa, Texas Produced by Britt Mazurek Thank You - Hotel St. George, Marfa Book Co., City of Marfa, Tim Crowley, Rob Crowley, Tim Johnson, Christopher Wool, Charline Von Heyl, Jeff Elrod, Robert Bielecki, Ken Bauso, Chris Newman, Nancy DeDakis, Paco Barba, Cody Barber, Anthony DeSimone, Nate Cross, Monofonus Press.

On Exoplanet, Rob Frye generates an atmosphere in which drummers and improvisers orbit synthesizers, inhabiting a Goldilocks zone of electronic and biotic components. Some of the tracks were created spontaneously or composed of strict loops, but two of the arrangements are melodic adaptations of the song of Musician Wren. After working as a field biologist with the Institute for Bird Populations in California from 2012-2016, Frye began to slow down and transcribe birdsong, eventually developing a performative lecture called Hearing Hidden Melodies. "XC175020" and "XC222182" are not potential earth-like planets in another solar system, indeed they are individual birds recorded by Peter Boesman in the Amazon. This bird, known as Uirapuru in Brazil and La Flautista in Peru, reminds us of the mysterious sonic knowledge threatened on our very own home planet. On this, his first album for Astral Spirits and his first as a leader, Rob played woodwinds and synthesizers and directed a specialized crew, recruiting Bitchin' Bajas (Drag City) bandmates Cooper Crain and Dan Quinlivan on engineering and electronics. Ben Lamar Gay's cornet (International Anthem) and Macie Stewart's violin (OHMME) pitch and roll, fueled by the dual propulsion of drummers Quin Kirchner (Astral Spirits) and Tommaso Moretti (Amalgam), while Nick Ciontea (brownshoesonly) consults on modular synthesizer. Like the Uirapuru, Edbrass Brasil (Sê-Lo!) also searches through fallen leaves in some of his own work, though for sound not insects. On "Innercosmos" we he hear his unconventional wind tubes, and on "XC222182" his voice calling as instruments gather, playing the bird's melody. --- ROB FRYE - compositions, woodwinds, synthesizersCOOPER CRAIN - electric organ, synthesizersDANIEL QUINLIVAN - synthesizer, electronics, wurlitzerBEN LAMAR GAY - cornet and wurlitzerTOMMASO MORETTI - drums (right channel)QUIN KIRCHNER - drums (left channel)MACIE STEWART - violin on tracks 2, 5, and 7NICK CIONTEA - synthesizer on tracks 3 and 4EDBRASS BRASIL - wind instruments and voice track 3 and 5 ---Recorded by Cooper Crain at DecadeMixed by Cooper CrainMastered by Mikey YoungCover Art by Matias Santa MariaLayout by Dylan Marcus McConnellThanks to Uirapuru, Ted Parker, Peter Boesman, Emily Bax, Adam Wille, Martin Frye, Cristian Pinto, Will Faber, Tadeu Mascarenhas, Estúdio Casa das Máquinas, Nate Cross, Erik Rasmussen, NASA, University of Iowa Space Audio.

Performing in concert at Iklectik in London in 2017, the UK and Norwegian free improvising trio of Pat Thomas on Moog Theremini & IPad based electronics, John Butcher on saxophones, and Stale Liavik Solberg on drums & percussion impress through a mix of masterful free playing and eclectic electroacoustic conversations, an adventurous and wonderfully unpredictable set. --- Pat Thomas / moog theremini & ipad based electronics John Butcher / saxophones Ståle Liavik Solberg / drums & percussion --- In Concert at Iklectik, "Old Paradise Yard", London - 19 July 2017.Recorded by Giovanni La Rovere.Mixed by John ButcherMastered by Alan Jones at Laminal Audio All music by Thomas / Butcher / Solberg (PRS/TONO)Thanks to Eduard Solaz. Layout & Design by Jamie Zuverza.

Since 2001, Spires That in the Sunset Rise (Ka Baird & Taralie Peterson) have been unsettling and thrilling audiences with their brand of sonic alchemy. Described by Jack Rose as a “female Sun City Girls,” they contributed a different slant to the New Folk movement by incorporating various avant-garde and world music influences into their sound.---KA / piano, flute, voice TARALIE / saxophones, flute, clarinet, voice ---Tracks 1,2,3,6,8 recording assistance by Todd Dare at Central Christian Church, Decatur, IL Tracks 4,5,7 recorded in Madison, WI and Brooklyn, NY by STITSR Layout & Design Jaime Zuverza.

"The trio of guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, saxophonist Gregor Vidic, and drummer Nicolas Field introduces Akiyama to Vidic and Field's standing duo. The result is a magnificent set of exploratory improvisation. Vidic and Field's playing has a rich, textural quality, developed through their use of timbre and dynamics. In this way, Akiyama's multiphonic approach to guitar, and his innovative use of effects, offset's Vidic brilliantly. Over the course of 45 minutes, Akiyama, Vidic, and Field generate a nervy tension, walking razor thin lines, such as the ones threaded through the middle of "Inner Circle." In keeping with the overall Astral Spirits aesthetic, and as a capstone to their anniversary year, the trio's music is at times stateless, at other times murky and brooding, and yet it's always highly engaging, rich and thrilling." - Lee Rice Epstein, The Free Jazz Collective --- Tetuzi Akiyama / electric guitar Nicolas Field / drums & percussion Gregor Vidic / tenor saxophone --- Recorded at Gok Sound, Tokyo, July 19, 2017 by Yoshiaki Kondo. Mixed at Konnekt SoundLab by Nicolas Field. Mastered by Mikey Young. Thanks to Rhizome DC for hosting that great Astral Spirits event, Nate and all involved.

"I first played with Derek Bailey in a quartet with Christine Jeffries (voice) & Jonny Dyani on bass. Thereafter we played mainly as a duo. I had frequented the Little Theatre Club since the late 1960s & was a member of FREE SPACE along with Trevor & the second generation of improvisers, but have no recollection of this gig…...! The AMAZING BAND was Mal Dean’s creation, & I was privileged to be amongst the last personnel & play on the last recordings prior to & after Mal’s demise. Sadly Mick Brannen is also not around to enjoy the release of The Last Amazing Band recordings." --- The AMAZING band were: Mal Dean / trumpet Mick Brannen / alto saxRadu Malfatti / tromboneJohn Russell / guitaMarcio Mattos / bassTerry Day / drums --- Recorded circa Early 1970s . Mixed & mastered by Yadley Day

"This session was the only time Bei Bei, Pat & myself played as a trio. Aside from duos with Bei Bei & Pat on a number of occasions, we all played in the London Improvisors Orchestra. This trio was part of a week of gigs at the IKLECTIK with various musicians during which I played on my own Drum KIt for the first time since 1987. Apart from that week I have only played on House Drum Kits since 2009 in London & tours abroad." --- Bei Bei Wang / percussion Pat Thomas / electronics, Terry Day / drums & percussion --- Recorded live at IKLECTIK, 2015

"Having played with Alison, John & David in various groups this was the only time we came together in this combination. We also adopted the format employed at the 100 YEARS GALLERY of combining in duos, hence as a complete group for the last set." --- John Butcher /saxes Alison Blunt / violin David Leahy / bass Terry Day / percussion, drums ---

This session is one of the few times Figgis and Day played as a duo. Personnel of the Continuous Music Ensemble & People Band regularly played on Terry Day’s drums during gigs & “jams” - Mike particularly had a ‘jazzy’ feel. They were, with others, co-founders of the Continuous Music Ensemble and People Band, whilst also collaborating in other configurations.  --- Terry Day / drums, alto sax (track 8) Mike Figgis / trumpet --- Recorded by Mike Figgis in Terry’s attic at Lyonsdown Manor House, London 1969. Mixed and Mastered by Mike Figgis.  Artwork by Terry Day, 2018. 

"This is the second recording of HST at London School of Sound, and in many ways not so relaxed or spirited as the first which was lost. However, it is always a delight to play with Hannah & Satoko in whatever combination & HST is amongst my favourite trios. Hannah & Satoko also have a great rhythmical feel which attracts a particular percussive way of playing with them." - Terry Day --- Hannah Marshall / cello Satoko Fukuda / violin Terry Day / percussion, bamboo reed flutes --- Recorded at London School of Sound.Mixed and Mastered by AJ Pillette.

"Working with the Komungo playing of Eunjung Kim allowed me to be free of percussive concepts that I employ & thus enter a world of abstraction on the drum kit & open space in the music. This studio recording is the only time we have played together, other than an initial get together at my house where only a few tambourines were percussed upon. Other than working with the Shakuhachi playing of Clive Bell, this was my first experience of collaborating with a non-western instrument." - Terry Day --- Eunjung Kim / komungo) Terry Day / drums Steve Beresford (track 6) / objects & electronics  --- Recorded at London School of Sound. Mixed and Mastered by AJ Pillette.

Derek Baron & Zoots Houston with an array of objects and junk. Resonating metal surfaces, chains, paper, thin strips of wood, a broken radio, small battery powered oscillators and a floor tom. Passing cars outside the window. Silence. One microphone recording it all. --- "The well-captured minuscule texture selections of resonant metal, miscellaneous percussion, trivial objects, broken gadgets, chimes, and miniature oscillators map out a detailed environment, confined to a small area but given further reach via the movements of the devices in and out of the recording field as well as the creaks and clunks of the performance surface. There’s no forced claustrophobia, no artificial extrication from circumambience. We hear passing cars in the distance, gusts of air past the window: a wider universe in which these sonic events occur, not necessarily emphasized but present nonetheless." - Noise Not Music --- Recorded in Chicago, December 2015. Released September 25th, 2019

Danny Clay / metal bells, combs, paper, broken light, piano, music box, marbles, cassette tapes, pebbles, plastic bells, small percussion, transducers, wooden blocksMatt Atkins / chopstick on drumhead, crowd murmur, drum filled with seeds, dry plant leaves, homemade banjo strings, jingle bell stick, karma piano, large bell, marbles in drum head, newspaper, piano notes on cassette tape, ping pong ball in drum and saucepan lid, plastic packaging, push flute, sheet of paper, small and large bells, cymbals, wind-up toy --- May 2019, San Francisco & London. Mastered by Francesco Covarino

Masayuki Imanishi / field recordings, speaker, contact microphone Marco Serrato / double bass --- "As a listener, feeling around blindly for the duo’s sonic crossover points throughout is where the proverbial ‘action’ happens. Distant engine-like low end rumbles open the record, and the similarities between rippling arco bass and some mysterious crackling field noise trigger all manner of pleasant sensory confusion. Serrato’s throttling bass bowing gives long passages of the record a hefty sense of muddy doom, while Iminashi’s recordings of construction work, city bleeps, and goodness knows what else, seem to come from a dystopic future metropolis. As an experience, Caura triggers all manner of sensory memories, from trudging through a rainy field to jumping at the sound of a car backfiring. As a duet piece, seems to push both parties out of any familiar comfort zones, and right out there into the unknown, which as ever is energizing and frightening in equal measure." - Tristan Bath --- Recorded in Osaka, Japan and Sevilla, Spain, December 2018 / January 2019. Released April 2nd, 2019

Improvising duo Ed Lucas and Graham Dunning explore texture, timbre, dynamics and drones. Ed Lucas plays trombone, sometimes augmented with controlled feedback, and has had many associations with improvising musicians in London and beyond. Graham Dunning uses turntable with field recordings pressed to dublate, along with snare drum and objects, focusing on tactile soundmaking. “End of a Cable” is their first album together. --- Graham Dunning / turntable, snare drum and objects Edward Lucas / trombone --- Recorded in the lost hamlet of Ratcliffe, London, 2019

Rie Nakajima / a handle of Japanese sliding door (fusuma) from her grandmother’s house, Japanese rice bowls, coils, jars, shells, flower pots, plastic bags, tin foil, tin cans, chopsticks, a bamboo pot, stones, cups, and kinetic objects made by Rie herself. --- Recorded in London, 2016. Released November 29, 2019

Field recordings from different times and places, a walk through the woods or an exotic place far away from home. Studio-made sounds using instruments, tape loops, reel to reel Revox recorder and digital editing. Otherwise insignificant everyday life sounds. Everything mixed together in a diaristic manner, like seamless notebook sketches. --- Dominique Vaccaro / field recordings, tape manipulation, stereo looper --- Recorded between July and September 2018. Released september 25th, 2019  

First studio recording of Louis’s latest group creating great, joyous, South African influenced music. "From its gamelan-like-opening cut, to its closing peaceful moments, this is world-class improvisation and masterful compositional thinking. The star of this session is of course the leader who gives his name to the quartet. Louis Moholo-Moholo, a powerful, effusive and sensitive drummer who moved from his native South Africa to Britain in the 1960s and became an important voice in the then burgeoning improvised music scene seems to have lost none of his exquisite verve and can still lay down some mighty flourishes on his kit. He's joined here by three other blokes who are much younger men, but pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist John Edwards bass and saxophonist Jason Yarde are all up to the task of matching the leader's drive. The insistent, irrepressible "For the Blue Notes" which starts off the set, alludes to the drummer's legendary band of the 60s. Other historical references include the piece "Tears for Steve Biko," which is part lament, part protest song. The title cut is one solid blockbuster of a tune, with everyone going full throttle. The most loveable thing about this session recorded in November 2013 is that there's a balance of what has often been called "inside" and "outside" playing, as this quartet, with a finely-honed telepathic sense, works as a tight unit, even when each musician is pushing at the limit of cohesion and coherence in some of the wilder moments, of which there are many. But the music can downshift to a lullaby softness, as in 'Something Gentle" and sway gracefully in the waltz-time of "Angel-Nomali." There's lots to praise here, but just the magic of Moholo's playing, with its inevitable echoes of his phenomenal free jazz style of the 60s makes this a memorable release well worth having.' --- John Edwards / bassAlexander Hawkins / pianoJason Yarde / saxophoneLouis Moholo Moholo / drums ---

Singer Francine Luce (Viva La Black, Moholo Unit) featuring Evan Parker, Keith Tippet, Claude Deppa, Paul Rutherford, Paul Rogers and Moholo.  --- Recorded and edited by steve Lowe with Ray Matthews at Gateway Studio, Kingston, September 1996. Location recordings of insects, birds and sea made in Martinique by Francine Luce and Dniel Duclos. Mastered by Matt Colton at Porkey's. 

"With the Octet having whetted his appetite for band leading, Louis Moholo-Moholo went on to develop an array of ensemble projects, the longest serving of which he dubbed Viva La Black. It was with Viva that Louis toured South Africa in 1993, and for Louis and some of his compatriots in Viva the tour was nothing less than a personal triumph, a return home after three years spent in exile. Why these studio sessions rested in the vaults for so long remains a mystery. It was a slightly changed band that Louis assembled in 1995: the fresh ingredient that would move Viva into the darker, earthier grooves of Bra Louis - Bra Tebs was singer Francine Luce, originally from Martinique and now one of the vocal treasures of the London improv scene. But here they are, at last." - David Ilic "Full of striking themes and strong improvisation, and continues a tradition that goes back a long way in South African jazz: stripped-down, hymnal themes repeated like mantras, gradually intensifying into free-jam furores, or giving way to racing swing. Some of the songs are as quirkily gentle as a Norma Winstone record, some like Annie Ross in a free-improv band - and though Francine Luce's frantic variations might not work for everybody, she's sonorous and soulful on the brooding traditional song Utshaka, and on a defiant Motherless Child."

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

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

"From the Miller box of tapes and other archives, this music has not previously been released, taken from live performances of different Ispingo formats in the UK and Europe. The music sounds a vibrants as when played in 1973 and 1976, so many memories." - Hazel Miller. "This previously unreleased material comes from 1970s Miller-led gigs in Britain and France, featuring two superb free-jazz pianists (the late Chris McGregor on the first; Britain's Keith Tippett on the second), legendary alto saxophonist Mike Osborne, and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo. Gripping episodes abound, such as the sound of Osborne's vinegary, Ornette-meets-Ayler sax soaring over Miller's whipping bass figures on the gruffly tender Bloomfield, McGregor's fills on the riffy Quandry (made fortuitously more pungent by the off-pitch piano), and two versions of the springy, Mingus-like Touch Hungry – the first with a percussively Monkish McGregor, the second with some fine, Miles-like trumpet from Marc Charig. Those who remember Miller's heyday will love this rough-hewn document, as will fans of the South Africa-celebrating Townships Comets and Moholo-Moholo's current work." - John Fordham --- Harry Miller / bass Louis Moholo-Moholo / drums Keith Tippett / piano Mike Osborne / alto saxophone Mark Charig / trumpet Malcolm Griffiths / trombone --- Tracks 1 - 3 recorded in London, England on June 4th 1973. Tracks 4 - 7 recorded at Chateauvallon Jazz Festival, France, July 7th, 1976.

“The recordings were made over a period of a couple of years. The windmill is located about a mile north of the town where i live, on what i assume is ranch land used for raising cattle. It was once used to pull water from underground to fill a couple of large tanks nearby. It's in a bad state and no longer in use. There are two large crows nests at the top, and the inner workings are laying on the ground next to it.” The recordings were made using a mini-disc recorder and hand made contact microphone. They are monaural recordings. Jeph Jerman is appearing in a variety of musical groups and collaborative projects across different genres for more than three decades. From the nineties, we can see in his extensive work a great interest in the sole act of listening. Rather than a classical musician, he is more suggestive of a sound wanderer who sets off daily from his home to the surrounding Arizona desert (characteristically named Sonoran desert), where he records sound fragments or collects found objects which he uses in his improvisations and performances. As a contemplative walker without a set destination, he is interested in the pure sound without references. To what we listen is not so important, what matters most is the time, place and the way we listen. Unlike other field recording artists, Jerman is not interested in the aesthetic richness or sonic variety, but simplicity, gentle differences, vibrations, moderation, and the primordial animalism on the quiet edge of organic and inorganic nature. The 34° 111' 3" N 111° 95' 4" W named field recording is a collection of three pieces, in which Jerman maps a specific place and which carefully reflect his life philosophy. It’s a recording of an abandoned windmill in different times, stages of decomposition and weather conditions. The symbol of the circle and rotation and the moaning material shaped by nature elements subtly fit in the comprehensive sound diary and environment where Jerman moves and lives. "These days I don't try to evoke anything. I make sound that'll hopefully be listened to.“ Jeph Jerman has already collaborated with artists like Jon Mueller, Ben Owen, Taku Sugimoto, Tony Whitehead, John Hudak, Bernhard Günter, Greg Davis, Tim Barnes, Aaron Dilloway, and others. 

“This recording is based on a particular geographic area of Sydney: the industrial zone around Sydenham Train station. As with many inner city industrial areas in large cities all over the western world, this place is ripe for redevelopment. However, in this case, due to the zone being directly underneath the flight path to Sydney airport, as well as being flood prone due to environmental factors, unscrupulous property developers are not able to completely gut the place and erect hideous apartments. What is interesting to me, and what this recording aims to capture, is that these factors – the aeroplanes and the puddles – act as a form of resistance to the development.” (MP Hopkins) MP Hopkins is a hidden treasure from Australia, a sound artist known for his varied music projects and strange mix of lo-fi urban field recordings and intimate bedroom experiments. Sonic details of empty streets from close neighbourhood, subtle intervention and fragments of lonely voice comments are reminding distinctive forms of sound journalism or a diary for night adventurers. Aeroplanes & Puddles follows the previous Traipse - Marrickville (2015) album which is Hopkins's starting point for his walks along the Sydney suburb. Mappa presents the sonic evidence of this opposition; the non-human voices of resistance that the aeroplanes and water speak with in this acoustic environment. The work features field recordings of the area garnished with a text narrated by Hopkins which combines fragments of the 2017 Australian Federal Budget speech and parts of ‘The Powerhouse’ – a radio play by Richard Packer (Gargoyle Poets series, 1972).”Feel free floating in the holy sound voyeurism and thorough collection of evidence from the other world at the same time." --- Recorded, mixed and mastered by MP Hopkins. Artwork and design by Jakub Juhás, Richard Čecho. Photos by Nina Pacherová. Released by mappa as MAP09 in 2018

As a project, Line Gate has been undergoing a slow, steady transformation, much like the longform drone works that have come to characterise it. What began as a band in 2010 and most recently surfaced as a solitary hurdy-gurdy resonance on 'Den' in 2017 has now flourished into ‘Apex’, Michal Vaľko’s latest album. 'Apex', simultaneously an album about perceiving the beauty around us, about sacredness, and a meditation on a state of timelessness and seeming non-action, is divided into two 30-minute pieces.The gently modulating drone of the hurdy-gurdy remains present during the first piece, along with its very characteristic (almost psychedelic) resonances and overtones. However, the listener's ear is almost immediately drawn to another sound source - the human voice. 'Apex I' presents an interplay between these two instruments, which, strangely enough, are positioned in a similar space on the frequency spectrum. The result is a mind-bending interplay between the hurdy-gurdy and the voice; one weaving around the other in seemingly indeterminable patterns.'Apex II' takes Vaľko’s explorations of the human voice even further: the hurdy-gurdy is withdrawn. Layers of voice, some processed, some raw, are the only building block here. A resonant layer of sampled voice, not dissimilar from the hurdy-gurdy, acts as an unstable, shifting sonic bed around which a gradually growing choir of voices orbits endlessly. Sibilants, consonants and vowels recited in mantra-like cycles form a non-linguistic vocal tapestry, one without explicit meaning, but imbued with huge emotional gravity and a unique enchanting quality. 

"Mappa editions presents special project of Bruno Duplant and Pedro Chambel duo which connects field recordings (2 CD) and Duplant's photographic project emerging from the same concept. “All my new pieces with field recordings are "autofictions/self-fictions". Field recordings, like always with me came from lot of places. I don't care about where were recorded the sound, but much more how to create new entities, territories (the self-fictions/autofictions), which are both fictive, intimate and personal. I like the idea that listeners will enter in that fictive places like if they were real, like they did with a great novel.” Bruno Duplant is sound enthusiast, composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist living in the north of France. In his work he is creating new fictional universes and uncharted territories using many field recordings collected in different parts of world. Architecture and culture of these sonic environments is created in two ways. First one is listening and collecting of surrounding sounds, not especially “natural” ones, but more “cultural” ones. Second one is shaping the sound and the composition itself. “Recording and editing are two different states, one more passive for me (the recording) and the other more active (the work on the sounds, the composition itself). The collection of sounds can be seen as fishing, an artisanal harvest in which one can have good surprises and less good ones. The whole approach is about accepting to make do with this. With this method of work I have to accept the hollow periods, failures and even the doubt.” In this case the role of active listening is shifted from recording in certain time and space towards studio work and to finding new sound elements, relations and spaces. “I see and name my compositional process (whether for instruments or for field recordings) as an "attempt at organizing chance". The composition allows me to assemble more or less logically and incongruously the different sounds collected. I never try to reproduce the sounds that surround me in a logical and precise way. I try to create something new, a new fictional entity that I have named “autofiction”, "self-fiction".” The result is discreet witness of everyday life, where the listening ear is trying to decode and create an imaginative model of well-known place. It is a timeless place, which is possible to visit again and again and explore its hidden corners and details. The orientation in space is not easy since whole surroundings is misted by electronic sounds of Portuguese musician Pedro Chambel. “The use of discreet electronic sounds came from the idea about to ask oneself the question: where does those sounds came from? Are they from the field recordings? Some sounds came from there, some other not, but which ones? I also like the idea of using those sounds as some disruptive elements, like in most of stories, novels or movies.” Duplant is autodidact who following and renewing concepts of John Cage, Luc Ferrari, Rolf Julius or Toshiya Tsunoda. In his work we can also find parallels to literary techniques and space or to forms of reading. “First of all, I am teacher, a librarian teacher. I only make music when I have time, in the evening, on the week-end, in my holidays. I spend most of my time surrounded in books. I have this opportunity. Some authors, some texts, some works have become great sources of inspiration for me. This is the case for all the poetry of Francis Ponge, the texts of Georges Perec, the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard. So, my life, my practices are not compartmentalized. Besides collaborative sound projects duo Duplant/Chambel is also known for their curatorial work in delicious label Rhizome.s. In past they collaborated with Ilia Belorukov, Lance Austin Olsen, Barry Chabala, Nate Wooley, Ryoko Akama, Manfred Werder. Quotes are taken from interview between Bruno Duplant and Tobias Fischer for 15 Questions. www.15questions.net/interview/fifteen-questions-interview-bruno-duplant/page-1/   --- Bruno Duplant / composition, field recordings & discreet electronics Pedro Chambel / discreet electronics  --- Dedicated to Georges Perec. Assembled in Waziers during 2016/2017. Mixed & mastered by Bruno Duplant. Photos from self-fictions/autofictions series by Bruno Duplant. Design by Jakub Juhás. Thanks to Alžbeta Halušková.

Among the musicians whose work closely reflects the reduced forms in experimental music, perhaps the most interesting is Cristián Alvear, a Chilean guitarist performing formally radical post-Cagean music, as well as Laurent Peter aka d'incise, a composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, one of the key figures of the eclectic scene in Geneva. The numerous projects in which they participate prove their strictly defined artistic vision and active involvement in networking the music community, so it’s appropriate to consider them as transitory elements between several scenes on different continents. They have collaborated, among others, with Ryoko Akama, Cyril Bondi, Michael Pisaro, Sarah Hennies, Seijiro Murayama, Taku Sugimoto, Lance Austin Olsen and The Pitch.Bow Down Thine Ear, I Bring You Glad Tidings is a good example of the refinement of the style developed by Alvear and d’incise in recent years. One can observe here how their musical language and range of instrumental techniques in the use of guitar and idiophones got crystallised.The classical form of a musical piece organized in time and characterized by a set of elements that create a coherent narrative is replaced here by the primacy of repetition, pitch, precise articulation and reverberation. Sounds seem to be clearly rooted in specific acoustic spaces, which allows the space itself to be treated as a real instrument that adds another layer of meaning. Repetitive sound sequences operate in a similar way to the metronome, determining an obsessive rhythmic pattern, a kind of matrix on which all the details are inscribed. The static structure of the pieces allows the music to function as a sound sculpture - breaking time constraints in favour of continuous duration and acting in a multi-perspective way. This material, does not promise any solution, but strictly accompanies the listener and tries to close itself in the continuous present.At the same time Bow Down Thine Ear, I Bring You Glad Tidings is a clear dialogue with the work of Henry Purcell. The title of the album is a reference to the anthems written by the British composer (Z11, Z2) and the titles of the pieces refer to his sacred songs (Z192, Z342). Apart from a skillful attempt to decontextualize the lyrics (biblical or rooted in the tradition of baroque religious poetry), we can see here not so much an attempt to give the music a metaphysical character, but certainly Alvear and d’incise tend to replicate a similar mode of listening, as in the case of Purcell's compositions - meditative and at the same time oriented to all elements of the musical situation.  --- Cristián Alvear / guitard'incise / percussion (2 series of "tuned objects"), post-processings recorded in a different space ---Recorded at Insub.studio, Geneva, May 2019Processings recorded at La Senne, Bruxelles, May & September 2019Edited & mixed by d’inciseCover art by Nick Hoffmanpilgrimtalk.bandcamp.comMastered by Adam Badí Donovalabdonoval.comWords by Paweł Szroniakrozkurz.tumblr.comPhotography by Leontína Berkováleontinaberkova.com

"Jani Hirvonen (Uton) and Johannes Schebler (Baldruin) reconstruct the mesmerizing world of the Grykë Pyje swamp tribe. Vinyl in your hands is a ceremonial sonification of the sacred herbarium, painted myths of the animal kingdom and voices behind the thicket. A return to the time when the forests, tree crowns, soil, thickets and heaven were full of continuous murmur. Or, on the contrary, a vision of a future in which the chaos of natural noises will reign. Slimy earthworms and phosphorescent bugs crawl out of the holes and gaze toward the sky. Brightly colored birds pick juicy fruits and there is no silence, because it is absorbed by the buzz of a virgin ecosystem. In the caves, marshes and hollows of trees, the most important questions are decided. A polyrhythmic rain falls from the sky and washes the prehistoric mud from mammalian hair. Somewhere to see human footprints, but those who have left them are long hidden under giant leaves. The light, reflected from the vibrant structure of life itself, dances for all, in full color. The feast of photosynthesis. Nothing to see from the top. Plants, moss and mushrooms grow at a tremendous rate. They climb each other to break through the lush green blanket. And above all, the orange disc shines pleasantly." --- All tracks recorded in Turku (Finland) and Wiesbaden (Germany) by Jani Hirvonen and Johannes Schebler in 2018 & 2019 Cover Art: "Encounter", 2019 by Mevlana Lipp & Gallery KUK Colognemevlana-lipp.com Mastered by Pentti Dassum Thanks to Jakub Juhás

"First 38 minutes were previously released on LP, but now long unavailable. The second part, "My brothers the wind and sun n.9", is a newly discovered piece of over 20 minutes, previously unreleased. Total time: 59'02. Essential Sun Ra, avant-cosmology. Hungry East German audience (1986) flies off to travel the spaceways." --- "A Night in Berlin" recorded live in Berlin at Friedrichstadtpalast on June 28, 1986. "My Brothers The Wind and Sun" recorded live, possibly at the Knitting Factory, NYC, Jan 30, 1988, or in Europe 1990. 

Vocalist and pianist Amina Claudine Myers pays tribute to one of her biggest influences, Bessie Smith. Myers has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1966 and has been composing for voice and instruments ever since. Gorgeous record.  --- Amina Claudine Myers / voice, piano, organ Cecil McBee / bass Jimmy Lovelace / drums, bells --- Recorded and mixed by Roddy Hoi at Big Apple Studio, New York, 19 & 22 June, 1980. Mastered by David Crawford. Front cover photography by Spencer A Richards.

"This recording was released in 1984 as an LP with the same title and was unavailable for fifteen odd years. In artistic terms, it was a shocking statement from Phil Minton and Roger Turner which scared a lot of people. Now, years later, the recording sounds as if it has been recorded today. It has not lost any of its artistic qualities and stood the test of time. The work of great originality and integrity." "Upon its initial LP release, this 1984 improvising session turned more than a few heads. And it would take a fertile imagination for one to reconcile the duo's rendition of Monk's "'Round About Midnight with the original, for example. Armed with boyish enthusiasm, the artists pursue a wanton spirit through their surrealistic game plan. Of course, British freestyle vocalist Phil Minton is a well-known improviser since the advent of this date with his fellow countryman, percussionist Roger Turner. But this recording still resides as an attention-grabbing document." - All About Jazz

"Alexander Kan’s liners do a good job of setting the stage occupied by these pre-perestroika musicians; he recounts scenes that read like LeCarre. And indeed the strongest impression of this music is its urgency. Cliched reflections about the tormented Russian anima are almost unavoidable, but the fact is that music has great immediacy for people in times of crisis; I have seen it in such unromantic settings as an RAF base on the eve of the Falklands gambit. This urgency is what compels Vyacheslav Ganelin (piano, various instruments), Vladimir Tarasov (percussion) and Vladimir Chekasin (saxes, various) to free improvisations of sustained focus and intensity at live sets recorded in Leningrad and West Berlin. The latter appearance greatly impressed the Western critics, and the music stands up well. These men are playing for their lives, and have no time to worry about whether this or that transition might be difficult. As a result potential pitfalls vanish into thin air as they achieve a kind of mobility rare outside of Sun Ra and a freedom that must have been sweet indeed." - Duck Baker --- Vladimir Tarasov / drums, percussion, bells, talking drumVyacheslav Ganelin / piano, bassett, guitar, percussionVladimir Chekasin / as, ts, wooden flute, cl, bassett-horn, percussion, voice --- Part 1 recorded live in Leningrad, Nov 5, 1980. Part 2 recorded live in West Berlin, October 29, 1980. Tapes remastered by Alan Moseley. Special thanks to Liz Trott for smuggling out the tapes. 

This record of zany duets is among Eugene Chadbourne's wildest and dearest recordings, featuring selections from over two decades. These duets with Han Bennink, Derek Bailey, the late Charles Tyler, John Zorn, and others, showcase the woolliest side of Chadbourne's woolly playing and his dodging all over the musical and historical map. The first track is an acoustic version of John Lee Hooker's "Whiskey and Women," accompanied by Bennink playing a pizza box with brushes, a giant bass autoharp played with drumsticks, and, of course, a drum kit. Chadbourne plays the tune straight (for him) at the beginning, even getting all the words right, but then veers off his National Steel onto a "communist" five-string banjo, and he and Bennink run the course, carrying the off-meter 12-bar blues as off-world as they can go, laughing all the way. Next up is Derek Bailey and Chadbourne on two selections. The first, "In Search of Carl La Fong," is filled with commentary by both men. Bailey's guitar and Chadbourne's electric rake and electrified banjo trip and slip all over one another here, with respect and purpose, of course, but nonetheless sloppily. It's a rousing series of musical maneuvers at over nine minutes. When Bennink and Chadbourne reunite, it's a darker, more percussive show: feedback from rhythm and lead instruments becomes the M.O. by which they create something resembling a melodic idea from the wreckage. And it's quite beautiful, as Gershwin's songbook comes through as the melodic framework for the improvisation. The work with Tyler, "In Between Comme C and Come Saw," is balls-out space improv, though the master saxist uses his baritone in striking ways not usually becoming of the instrument itself. It becomes a kind of clogged, scraped, razor-voiced bell in the tower of noise. Tyler draws microtones out of the instrument we have literally never heard before, and Chadbourne is content to lend idiomatic support to this gracious unfolding. "Red Lightning, Pt. 1" by Chadbourne and Zorn is hilarious. This is more in line with Zorn's Classic Guide to Strategy than anything else, in both spirit and execution -- though there are no duck calls credited on this recording. There is space here, sometimes long periods of it, where what is happening between the pair is not readily apparent; there is plenty of trickery and tomfoolery as well, leaving the listener guffawing in more than a few places.

"Recorded live at the Praxis '85 festival in Athens, Greece on May 8, 1985, a night when, by the sound of things, each man was in thorough musical command. A high-energy, high-passion, all-around great recording." - All About Jazz "The concert took place in Orpheus Theatre. In a room behind the stage we found costumes and hats from a previous theatrical performance. We quickly agreed on the unusual headgear and only when somebody announced our trio on stage did I let Famoudou and John know the parameters of the piece. These were the followin: everybody dashes to his instrument onstage as fast as he possibly can and starts to play as loud as possible, as much as possible and as quickly as possible without a second's delay. The intensity of the piece was to be at its peak from the first note. The text of the patriotic poem I recite which is taken up and improvised on by John and Famoudou goes like this: crack, sudden flower, blue bottle, fly bad, beat small, wise glass, equal pain, taste snow, fast button, knee mercy" - Hartmut Geerken (Januarry 1999) trans. Isabel Seeberg --- Recorded live at PRAXIS 1985 by George Ergomenides. Remastered by Mick Richie. Photos by Agis Kelpekis.

After making his debut record for Incus Original Gravity, Bevan returned to the label with a new trio, joined by Steve Noble on percussion (Ya Boo, False Face) and Paul Rogers on bass. Quick intuition, a broad dynamic spectrum, and dazzling tonal colors. On a canvas of metallic percussion by Steve Noble, Bevan manipulates his striated tone like a painter adjusting brush strokes- some sounds are long, wide, and spacious, others squat and impossibly dense. This is at the relatively louder end on Bevan's work on Incus - especially when compared to Bevan / Bailey collabs like Limescale and Good Cop, Bad Cop.  --- Paul Rogers / double bassSteve Noble / percussionTony Bevan / saxophones --- Recorded on 25th July 1991 at Holywell Music Room by Michael Gerzon. Produced by Steve Noble & Tony Bevan. Designed by Steve Noble. Photography By Thomi Wroblewski. Post Production by John Hadden

Incredible ensemble for Company Week in '97. Twenty-six minute opening track sees the whole collective scrambling into full-blown ecstatic chaos,follwed by two mega duos from Anthony Braxton and Steve Lacy. --- Maarten Altena / bass Tristan Honsinger / cello Anthony Braxton / clarinet, flute, alto saxophone, soprano saxophoneDerek Bailey / guitar Wadada Leo Smith / trumpet, fluteEvan Parker / soprano saxophone, tenor saxophoneSteve Lacy / soprano saxophone --- Recorded By Nick Glennie-Smith at The ICA London by Riverside on Thursday 26 May during the 1977 Company Week. Artwork by Iain Patterson. Typography by Nicolette Amettte.

First two days of Company Week 1991 where musicians came together for five days improvisation - most of them meeting for the first time. --- Alexander Balanescu / violin Vanessa Maskness / voice Yves Robert / trombone Derek Bailey / guitar Paul Lovens / percussion Paul Rogers / bass Pat Thomas / electronics & keyboard Buckethead / guitar John Zorn / alto saxophone --- Recorded by Paul Wilson & Matt Saunders. Produced by Derek Bailey. Post production by John Haddon. Artwork & design by Karen Brookman. Photos by Martin L McGain. Made with the assistance of the British Library Sound Archive. 

The Bailey/Gaines duo collides head-on with the IST string trio; the groups fracture & reform in a myriad fascinating ways. "Features a little-league superstar line-up joined by the veteran American hoofer Will Gaines. Some fascinating interplay between guitar, bass, cello, harp and Gaines’s amazing, Duracell-powered feet." Stewart Lee, Sunday Times --- Will Gaines / danse claquettes Mark Wastell / cello Rhodri Davies / harp Derek Bailey / guitar Simon H. Fell/ double bass  --- Recorded on January 13 & 14th, 1999 at the Théâtre des Bernadines, Marseille. Artwork & design by Karen Brookman. Photos by Mark Wastell.

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

"Since leaving Rio, Cyro has been accepted as one of the world's leading Brazillian percussionists, recording with Paquita de Rivera, Ruben Blades, Astrud Gilberto and lots of people like that. We met in New York while I was living there in the winter of 1982 and first played together at the Ear Inn on Spring St. In the following months we played all kinds of places, occasions which figured prominently among the many musical pleasures I enjoyed during that period. One such occasion, thanks to Bill Laswell, was this recording." - Derek Bailey.  --- Derek Bailey / guitar Cyro Baptista / percussion --- Tracklisting: 1. Toca Joga - 5:32 2. Quanto Tempo - 3:53 3. Polvo - 4:53 4. Rio Branco - 5:21 5. Joca Toca - 3:26 6. Que Horas - 5:02 7. Tondo - 7:04 8. Batida - 4:36 --- Recorded by Martin Bisi in October  1982, New York City. Produced by Adam Skeaping and John Haddon. Design by Karen Brookman. Photos by Eleonora Alberto and Karen Brookman.  

Melbourne based artist Arek Gulbenkoglu presents his second full length album for Penultimate Press. Following on from the 2017 release Three days afterwards, A gift like a hollow vessel sees a sharper scalpel at play resulting in a more nuanced release which unfolds a curious journey of suburban psychedelia. Sourced from voice and body sounds, recording of non-musical processes, actions and events, breath, tapes of animal sounds slowed and sped up, processed field recordings, electronics, percussion, tape delay, sample of old folkways records and Esperanto text to voice translations. A gift like a hollow vessel is striking and intimate musique concrete. A work of confounding beauty as created by one of the most unique voices operating in orbit of psychedelic music as it presents itself today. --- Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Matthew Revert --- Tracklisting: 1. A gift like a hollow vessel - 19:24 2. A gift like a hollow vessel - 16:04

Originally released on Graham Lambkin's KYE, Alcor is the debut LP by a voice from the Australian wilderness - Mark Harwood. Alcor gathers together the prime of Harwood's previous CDR micro-editions and presents the material as a seductive and puzzling new whole. Field recordings of humble organic activity bend against a foundation of discreetly processed electronics/piano, creating sonorities that are as undefinable as they are unforgettable. Alcor is the ideal record for fans of fringe position electro-acoustic study, Delphic audio confusion, or anyone who pines for the days when Small Cruel Party still roamed the earth. Mastered by Graham Lambkin. --- Tracklisting: 1. Montenegro - 4:462. II - 5:193. III - 4:424. Q - 4:215. Trumpets - 4:42 6. Guns - 8:007. November - 6:25

Matthew P. Hopkins second full length release for Penultimate Press presents a curious and compelling listen which harnesses his deeply personal and paranoid vision into the ultimate beauty/horror object. Over the last decade Hopkins has distinguished himself as master of multiple musical forms including bent song, freeform concrete, improvised electronics and techno. Under his own name he has produced a most singular take on abstracted voice, feedback, field recordings and found sounds. With Blue-Lit Half Breath Hopkins furthers his domestic enquiry into subconscious sounds with a series of vignettes that hover from hissing clunk, atmospheric creep to improvised piano refrains. Amongst all this the voice of Hopkins appears throughout as a shadowy narrator delightfully disturbing the sonic play.    Blue-Lit Half Breath is a late night oil burning masterpiece which resides within a zone orbiting it’s own logic.

Conceived whilst wandering through the iron bark forests and gold fields of country Victoria the official debut by Melbourne’s Hour House gifts a musical blueprint marinated in mystery, beauty, sound and song. Hour House is the Melbourne based duo of Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna, formerly of the Newcastle based outfit Castings. Penultimate Press is proud to release their official debut LP Chiltern. Comprised of individual tracks folded into two side long suites Chiltern is an unique excursion through foreign encounters, warm surrounds and disorientating comfort. Field recordings, electronics, samples, guitars, voice and atmospherics all contribute to form a bewitching whole.Many questions are raised: Is this a soundtrack to a mental experience or an altered take on a familiar reality? Is section 3 based around the sound of a basketball court? Does section 4 comprise a song? Where do the original soviet science fiction soundtracks fit into all this? Is this sound or music? Simultaneously ambiguous and accessible Chiltern is a ride unlike another and resides as the consciousness tickling release of 2015. Mastered by Jason Lescalleet at Glistening Labs, and with stunning artwork by Alice Wormald. 

Debut LP from New York's Derek Baron. Baron’s work muses on the interior and exterior via explorations of history, memory, listening, domestic ambience and the collective understanding of sound as amorphous matter. Crooked Dances presents a series of Erik Satie’s piano works as played in a flatshare with various interruptions by those who also contribute to the electricity, water and internet bills. Crooked Dances is a melancholic, playful journey rooted firmly in the real. "Satie’s Danses Gothiques (1893) and other keyboard sketches are interspersed/interrupted by conversation, drones both accidental and deliberate, and the ever changing mise-en-scène of rooms opening out onto further hidden rooms." The Wire Bland photographs supplied by Baron. ---

Second in a series of two previously unreleased soundtracks Henning Christiansen made for the films made by his partner and collaborator Ursula Reuter Christiansen. Den Røde Skov (The Red Forest) was Ursula’s second film made in 1986. In stark contrast to the exquisite romantic melancolia of their first collaboration, The Executioner, Den Røde Skov resides as one of the wildest recordings in the entire Christiansen catalogue. Aligned more with works like the legendary collaboration with Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, Abschiedssymphonie, Den Røde Skov unfolds as a delirious and demonic audio exhibit, at once deeply eccentric and utterly enthralling. Featuring the exceptional sound work of Ernst Kretzer and contributions from Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Addamaria Reuter Christiansen, Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Carla Tató and Werner Durand this is a rich tapestry of sounds, voice and obtuse atmospheres drifting from the deeply meditative to the outright hysterical.

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

"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

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

“Not since the early days of MC5 at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, circa 1968, had there been such an organic melding of sheer metalesque maelstrom and free jazz. These archival recordings from the legendary punk club CBGB capture a moment in time when open-minded musicians from the ‘downtown scene’ were exploring the possibility of bringing Lou Reed’s feedback-infested Metal Machine Music together with Albert Ayler’s Love Cry. Dissipated Face guitarist Kurt “Hologram” Ralske and special guest saxophonist Daniel Carter provided that implausible link between punk rock and avant garde jazz on these 1986 live recordings. Fueled by the throbbing rhythms of Steve “X Dream” Popkin and Ben “Face” Munves, who alternated on bass and drums, Ralske’s twisted, thrashing power chords and shrieking licks blend with Carter’s cathartic alto sax wailing to make the perfect union of disparate worlds." “Ralske would go on to attain a certain level of indie rock fame with Ultra Vivid Scene and subsequently make an impact as a London-based producer-conceptualist-avant-popmeister and visual artist. Carter would become one of the most ubiquitous figures on New York’s free jazz scene, recording with William Parker, David S. Ware, Billy Bang, Alan Silva and Matthew Shipp and the cooperative bands Test and Other Dimensions in Music. But for this one moment back in 1986, their paths crossed with bandmates Popkin and Munves, and the results were frighteningly intense.” – Bill Milkowski.  “Don’t let the Raymond Pettibon cover fool you—this ain’t exactly some SST discard that cluttered up the amerindie record collections of the late-eighties! Dissipated Face, although they could have made it as a fringe signing to that infamous label, are a tad different’n the reams of collegeboy experimental bleats that were getting a whole lotta hosannas from cloistered clods like myself. As if you actually knew, Dissipated Face were a hot trio that was romping through the post-fun era of NYC rock back when they laid these sides down at CBGB on July 31st of 1986, and their mix of everything from free jazz and late-seventies avant-prog to punk rock made for some of the wildest mergings of the form since Red Transistor. Nothing as out-there as that group, but better’n many a similar-minded excursion into freedom aesthetics. What’s best is that none other’n noted avant saxist himself Daniel Carter sat in giving a particularly Albert Ayler-ish air to these excursions, so if you were a fan of this guy’s various endeavors on the stage of the CBGB Lounge during the final days of Hilly you’ll be glad to know that he was in on the punk jazz game for a longer time’n you could’ve dreamed!” – Christopher Stigliano, Black To Comm “Oddball discovery of a live meeting of an early group led by Ultra Vivid Scene’s Kurt Raiske with the always amazing Daniel Carter guesting. Carter’s on sax here, and the blend – right near the end of New York City’s post-SIN Club trajectory – is a very cool collision between free jazz and lateperiod scum-rock readymades. Why was this not known of before?” – Byron Coley, The Wire “If you’re like me, and you got into standard rock music that had choruses and verses and bridges as a child, but always longed for something more extreme, you probably remember the moment you first heard Septic Death or Albert Ayler or Wolf Eyes or Mr. Bungle or whatever it was that destroyed the musical parameters previously established by your brain. I bet if I stumbled into CBGB’s in 1986, everyone probably would’ve been like “who the hell let a five year-old in here, where are his parents?”, but supposing I was a teenager or something, Dissipated Face probably would’ve cracked my skull open with their flailing, post-no-wave free-rock assault. They sound like one of those early ’80s downtown NY groups like Lounge Lizards or Material or Golden Palominos, had they crashed into Reagan Youth on the cab ride over with the few surviving members improvising live.” - Yellow Green Red “Frantic free punk, that reminds me of Easter Monkeys, then Flipper, then Pere Ubu… it’s wound up post VU sounds from the streets of NYC when that still meant something, inflections of no wave spurting saxophone and weirdly HC-esque guitars, but the swagger and fuck-you take over and overpower the skronk…It’s reminiscent of MC5′s incursions into jazz, not jam Ginn band shit, but fucked up on PCP Les Dirtbags out for blood, armed with Sun Ra and the Dead Boys. Sick Pettibon cover art too. Eat it or beat it!” – Layla Gibbon, MaximumRockNRoll “In the mid-1980s, Dissipated Face were one of a number of groups weaned on New Music Distribution Service catalogs, cut-out bins, and ready to occupy something of a vacuum. Punk rock, prog, free jazz, funk, modern composition and Downtown art scum were all part of the landscape and exactly what went into their melting pot. Consisting of guitarist Kurt “Hologram” Ralske and Stephen “X. Dream” Popkin and Ben “Face” Munves trading off bass, vocals and drums, their approach ranged from cut-throat punk slop to unhinged bluesy sleaze (the wonderfully bizarre “Streets Of New York” with its hardcore breakdowns). The guest appearance of alto saxophonist Daniel Carter on these four archival cuts recorded live at CBGB in 1986 adds an extra dose of fire to the proceedings. A regular in the groups of bassist-composer William Parker and a fixture in the New York free jazz environment since the mid-70s, his jubilant squall nudges Ralske’s wiry, feedback-drenched statements to unbridled heights. Given more room to stretch it would be interesting to hear what these players could accomplish, but the seven-inch format gives these tracks an extreme urgency, as though if one blinked the music’s gifts would be lost. Thanks are due to Minneapolis’ Roaratorio Records for releasing this snapshot (replete with Raymond Pettibon artwork) of an ecstatic DIY moment.” – Clifford Allen, Tiny Mix Tapes

"In the ever-growing discography of master musician Joe McPhee, his solo albums have stood out as supreme ur-texts of his consummate improvising and compositional skills. Joining the ranks of such landmark records as Tenor, Graphics, and As Serious As Your Life, Everything Happens For A Reason is an unadorned showcase of this influential pioneer in the world of creative improvised music. Recorded live in Austria in November of 2003, Everything Happens For A Reason features McPhee on pocket trumpet, soprano and alto saxophones." “…this is a magnificent recording and bountiful evidence of M