Admira is sourced from original master recordings discovered by Kluster member, and Tangerine Dream engineer, Klaus Freudigmann. Along with Vulcano, also being released at the same time on Important, Admira is presented here for the first time in this deluxe package. These intense sessions were made with Schnitzler at the helm, as always, after the departure of Mobius and Roedelius from the group. Conrad Schnitzler founded Kluster in 1969 along with Roedelius, Mobius and often Klaus Freudigmann who had multiple roles within the group as a player, engineer and instrument inventor. Eventually Roedelius and Mobius left Kluster and continued on as Cluster while Schnitzler and Freudigmann continued as Kluster often exploring the communal aspects of music by bringing new people into the group. "I founded the music group Kluster after my exit 1969 from the group GERÄUSCHE (Zodiak with A.Roedelius and Boris Schak). Between 1969 to 1972 I worked with different friends,with TD among others. With them I tried to perform the music of my imagination . "Finally Klaus Freudigmann and Wolfgang Seidel remained at the work continuously over the years. In addition there were several actions with A.Roedelius and D.Möbius where the LPs KLUSTER Klopfzeichen,Osterei and Eruption were made. Instruments, amplifier and effects I gave D.Moebius because he had had no own equipment. I didn't want the music to remind of the normal. My criterias were not folk music, not rock music, not pop songs and not dance music. The idea for 'Cluster' later 'Kluster' (I wanted to avoid Americanisms) is not only a name for a group but a form of music. "I had amplifier, instruments, contact mic's and effects, that could used by the others, too. Klaus had tape machines and microphones. In addition he constructed instruments and electronical sound generators, which made the most undescribable sounds. Wolfgang had everything connected with drum and bass and in addition amplifier and effects. "Klaus had rooms where we could work out our music performances. The tapes 'Electric Meditation' with TD were made in one of that spaces. Most of the performances happened with friends who took part in the actions; therefore Conrad,Klaus,Wolfgang and friends. I've got all rights at that music. The numberings of the single CDRs have nothing to do with the date of the creation of the music. I've numbered them, because I've dubbed them. "That was difficult and I tried to do it as best as possible on CDR. A special date for the creation of the single tapes couldn't be find out, therefore the date of the creation - years 1969 - 1973. After that there were only sporadical actions with KLUSTER, no money for place to play, only cold winter." ~ Conrad Schnitzer "When you look at documentaries from the late sixties, it looks like California was everywhere. Endless Summer. Or a never ending Woodstock. What we did not know then was that the Woodstock movie showed the pictures people wanted to see. The guys who made the film knew that and the success at the box office was their reward for not disappointing their audience’s expectations. Berlin was quite different – West-Berlin, the half of the city where Kluster was founded. When my mind wanders back it was always Winter. These Winters were bitter cold. We lived in old houses with little coal ovens. Keeping them working and finding the money for coal was a task that could consume half of your day. No wonder that in German the word ‘Kohle’ (= coal) stands for money. "Two years ago I visited Klaus Freudigmann, member of Kluster and sound engineer for a lot of other bands from those early days of what eventually was coined ‘Krautrock’ (a term I did not like because it puts totally different people and music under one label that do not fit together). The reason for this visit was a planned book on one of these bands. It turned out that Klaus Freudigmann still kept some of their recordings in a suitcase, mainly the intermediate stages of the recording process. Multi-track still lay in the future. He worked with two tape recorders playing ping pong between them (for Kluster he’d made long tape loops we used in our sessions). To our surprise out of that suitcase that hadn’t been opened for twenty years popped a bundle of tapes from the Kluster sessions (1970 – 1973). They had stood the time quite well and the sound wasn’t so bad either because we had amplifiers with direct recording outputs, which was an unusual feature at that time. Two of these recordings had been chosen as bonus tracks for the Captain Trip re-releases of the first two Kluster LPs. For that purpose we had to give names to them, something Conrad Schnitzler had abandoned years ago and from then on only numbering his work. When we had to think about names for ‘songs’ the first memories that sprung to our minds were: ‘cold Winter’ and ‘black Spring’. As the Winters were cold, Spring was black. Over the months of the cold season the snow got drenched with the ingredients of the smoke pouring out of a million chimneys (plus the product of Berlin’s largest population: dogs). And while the snow melted away the cinder stayed and covered the streets with a black mud. What made things worse – in the Eastern half of the city they fuelled their ovens with cheap brown coal. Its smoke smelled like rotten eggs. Not only to the nose the socialist paradise was more like brimstone from hell. And the poisonous exhaust wasn’t stopped by the wall, the East had built to keep their share of the people happily flocked under what they mistook as socialism. The wall was not high enough to stop the smoke going from East to West. And it was not high enough either to stop rock and roll and Coca Cola from transmitting their message from West to East. Something were the East could not compete. The reason was that their country christened as ‘German Democratic Republic’ was not much democratic but very, very German letting their army parade with the same goose step that the neighbouring countries had learned to fear. "Rock and roll and its most adventurous sibling psychedelia were effective remedies against climatic, political and mental cold. To perform our brand of music from an outside world, we sat up a little tent in a ballroom that went out of business years before. We built it from transparent plastic and heated it with electric fans. The room was painted completely black except for one wall that was covered with aluminium foil – a novelty in those days – reflecting and warping the lights from our tent. I still wonder who paid the bill for the electricity we’d consumed. Nobody – that was one of the reasons why we had to find another place. The next stop was one floor of an abandoned factory were Klaus Freudigmann lived and recorded. Downstairs was a print shop where a large portion of the posters, newspapers and books of the radical left had been printed. The rata-ta-clac of the printing machines mixed with our music. For me that connection led to a twenty years engagement, earning my living in print shops, until I decided to switch, finding myself a job with a television company. It turned out to be a wise decision in times where fewer and fewer people read books. "The factory at Admiralstrasse housed us for a year or so. Things changed quickly at the end of the 60s/early 70s. Everybody was on the move, experimenting with live without long discussions over the possible risks involved. Behind us was a prosperous decade and everybody lived in the belief that things can only get better. The only thing people feared, was stagnation. West Berlin was the last place the German ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ had arrived, but the optimism that ruled these years was felt there, too. And we had chosen this backyard of prospering West Germany, because living was cheap and it was easy to find a place to stay in a city where lots of people and a large portion of the companies had left heading west. We moved back to the ballroom. This time to a smaller room under the roof. Conrad had painted it completely white – walls, ceiling and floor. And he tagged white fabric to large frames. Behind these frames went the speakers, other stuff we did not need at hand and neon lights. As a result we found ourselves with our instruments in a white, featureless place that appeared much larger than it actual was. It looked a bit like the interior of the space ship in Kubrick’s 2001. And as experienced space travellers we knew ways to achieve weightlessness. "Our wallets could have done better with some weight. You could not easily starve in West Berlin’s ghost economy that ran mostly on state subsidies to keep it functioning as showcase of the free West. But getting rich was difficult either. Not with a normal nine to five job – and that was definitely not what we were after. So the white room was another short lived episode. Earning sufficient amounts of money with music proved to be difficult, too. What we did was only for a small audience – and we knew it. But even if you aimed at a larger market, things were not easy. Rock music and what went with it was largely believed as critical against capitalism. This involved that your audience expected that culture is something that has to be accessible to everybody without any profits involved. I still believe that these ideas are worth thinking about. But it doesn’t make the life of artists or musicians easier. You end up understanding what Adorno meant when he wrote: 'there is no right life within wrong life.' But what we could do was getting our little whiff of a life outside that ‘wrong.’ A lot of what is written about the term ‘Krautrock’ circles around esoteric beliefs, a search for your inner self. That’s one of the reasons why I dislike that label. You’re a product of the society you are living in. What you see reflected when you look into you is that society. But you are no robot either. You can make decisions. But to change your inner self, you have to change society, too. That implies that your fantasy steps as far outside this society as possible instead of huddle in your self like a child. That’s why I remember that transparent plastic tent at the old ballroom that floated like a little bubble of light in the darkness of space. It seemed to come out of one of the science fiction novels I’ve read during my school years. At that time such stories had been my vehicle to get ‘outside’. In later years music did this job." ~ Wolfgang Seidel  

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia’s thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney’s underground music community. The pair’s collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi’s pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim’s visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio’s efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album’s two sides draw on each artist’s enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams’ interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work’s duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble’s members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve. While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams’ launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim’s machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi’s masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work’s inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim’s decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it’s two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms. 

Void Ov Voices : Baalbek I started Void Ov Voices in 2006 to create ritualistic music for the moment, to play only live performances while capturing and interfering with the energy of the space and the time of the location. The first time I travelled to Lebanon was in 2008 for one particular reason: to visit the Trilitons and the giant Monoliths of Baalbek. I was deeply impressed by the level of ancient civilisations engineering technology and the intense magical atmosphere of the whole area. I have been fascinated by ancient ruins, prehistorical sites and monoliths for a long time. In the last decades, I visited many of these places around the world. I always felt this very particular fine physical energy among those ancient ruins, which interestingly opened my imagination and mind’s eye. Besides that, all these structures are footprints of a forgotten high advanced technology and civilisations. Moreover, these masses of stone often lie in alignment with astrological events and sacred geometry. The Trilitons of Baalbek are extraordinarily special to me as they are pure evidence of technology from before the Roman period, a technology which could lift and transport blocks of stones, each weighing around approximately 900 tons (which equals approximately the weight of 900 VW Golfs, but in one piece!). To do that transportation itself today would be a huge challenge even with our cutting edge technology, if it’s possible at all. There is a massive plateau in Baalbek made of these sized stones, on top of which the Romans built their famous Jupiter Temple, considered to be one of the largest Roman structures in the world. Baalbek used to be called The City Of The Sun in ancient times, and I might have one theoretical question: could it be connected to the story of The Tower Of Babel? There are many stories and theories around these mystical places. But, those stones have been just standing and waiting there in time and space throughout history. And they will be there till the end… To make recordings as close as possible to these unique structures always triggered my mind. When finally I could make a recording outdoor on the top of the “Stone of the South” in Baalbek, I fell into a trance kind of meditative state of mind, in that welcoming an enormous ancient energy which is present and is also captured on these recordings. Music is magical itself on many levels as it goes through all of our bodies, not only through the sensations of our ears. As years passed, I researched Baalbek more. One of Hungary’s most significant painters, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar (1853-1919), was also deeply touched by the same spot in Lebanon. When I dug more into Csontváry’s life story, I found many similarities between his and my personality and artistic philosophy. He was profoundly spiritual yet not religious. He was an apothecary and scientist who started to paint in his middle age only because of a transcendental impulse he received. He gave up his pharmacist career and, for the rest of his life, focused only on art and painting to fulfil his soul’s desires and not for any other earthly or egoistic reason. He never had an exhibition, and he never intended to sell any of his paintings. He became a vegetarian and an outsider of society. Towards the end of his life, he even wrote some advanced philosophical writings challenging the hidden hands behind the governments and world leaders. Unfortunately and typically, he was only recognised decades after his death. His paintings were forgotten and almost sold as canvas to cover trucks after WWII. Then, at the last minute of an auction, somebody recognised their artistic value, bought up and saved these priceless paintings, which was like a miracle itself. Csontváry is now considered to be one of the most critical and influential Hungarian painters of all time! Sometimes I wonder how much invaluable art might have disappeared through the dark times of our history. Anyway, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar and Baalbek gave me such deep inspiration that in 2012 I decided to travel back to Lebanon to the same ruins to Baalbek to create a ritualistic recording and try to capture that energy for myself and for forever. I chose this rare painting from Csontváry called “Sacrificial Stone” for the album’s cover artwork. He painted this surrealistic painting in Baalbek too. No debt to me that he was inspired by “The Stone Of The South”, which became the “Sacrificial Stone” in his vision. When I first saw that painting, I could not believe my eyes: in Void Ov Voices, I use blocks of sounds repeatedly to create a wall of sound. I could not visualise my music better than Csontváry on this beautiful painting. I was not sure if I should ever release this personal recording but thank my friend Stephen O’Malley’s strong inspiration through the years. Finally, it can happen. – Attila Csihar

It is a huge honour to publish Peter Brotzmann’s final concerts on OTOROKU. When we invited Peter to do a residency at Cafe OTO back in February 2023 we had no idea these would be his last ever shows and he played with such power it would have been hard for anyone present to believe he would never play publicly again. Recorded over two nights this grouping of Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, John Edwards on bass and Steve Noble on drums feels especially resonant and personal to Cafe OTO. The first time Peter performed at the venue back in 2010 it was in a trio with John and Steve, (released as The Worse The Better kick starting our in-house record label) so it feels fitting that the last shows he ever played here should also have that trio at its core. The quartet last played together at OTO back in 2013, (released as Mental Shake on OTOROKU), and Brotzmann humbly opened the return of the group saying, "it's a pleasure to be back” before launching straight into a long blast on the alto sax, swiftly met by the relentless energy and engagement of Adasiewicz, Edwards and Noble. There are moments of tenderness to Brotzmann’s playing that feels specific to this small group - one that cuts across three generations - and in a space that’s come to feel like home. Of course, there is dizzying, forceful, singleminded playing, but even amongst a relentless chorus of cymbal splashes and busy vibraphone clusters the lyrical, spacious moments are savoured and held onto. As he remarked after at the end of the group's first visit to OTO, “the Quartet is, for us, a great adventure.” Peter clearly wanted to play to the end. Did he know these might be his last shows? We will never know. What is clear is he wanted to go out in style and on his terms. For anyone in the room at the time or listening to these recordings it’s clear he achieved that. It was Peter’s wish that these recordings should be made public and he was due to finalise the cover design on the week he passed away. We would like to thank Peter’s family for working with us to fulfil Peter’s wishes to release this material but more than anything we would like to thank Peter for all the extraordinary memories, his generosity and all he has given the music. On a personal level for us, like so many, he meant a huge amount and we miss him deeply. --- Peter Brotzmann / reeds John Edwards / double bass Steve Noble / drums Jason Adasiewicz / vibraphone  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 10th and 11th February 2023. Mixed by James Dunn. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielesi. Photos by Dawid Laskowski. Pressed in the UK by Vinyl Press. Artwork by Peter Brötzmann. Design by Untiet.  

Finis Africae, a group without fixed members organized in Spain in the early 1980s by Huang Alberto Arteshe Guell, is a studio project that emphasizes work, especially "Amazonia" (1990) in the far north. It is a standing masterpiece. Inspired by Conan Doyle's adventure novel that he once read, Huang Alberto develops a soundscape that depicts the fantasy unexplored Amazon that circulates in his brain. In the late 80's, Arteshe upgraded his studio equipment to 16 tracks, and the technique he had tried on his two albums was complete. Manipulating many European and African instruments, overdubbing most of them alone, and combining the natural sounds of wind and rain, birds, insects and creatures, this "Amazonia" has a mysterious atmosphere and a mysterious sign. Expression. His unique organic groove feeling is also very comfortable, and it became a masterpiece worthy of its name (* note).* "Africae" is an old name for "Africa" in Europe based on Latin, and adding "finis" creates nuances such as the farthest land and unknown places.+ Japanese / English publication+ CD version: Paper jacket, liner included

In October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock", as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases, three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordings in this series are previously unreleased. A major historical trove, unearthed. The performances on this tour featured Cage and Tudor with some noteworthy Japanese musicians playing pieces by Cage and a number of other composers. Volume 1 begins with Toru Takemitsu's "Corona for Pianists" (1962), played by Tudor and Yuji Takahashi, an indeterminate piece scored using transparencies, a sign of Cage's influence on younger Japanese composers of the era. Following this is "Duo for Violinist and Pianist" (1961) by Christian Wolff, written specifically for David Tudor and violinist Kenji Kobayashi. The final piece, a near-twenty-minute realization of "Variations II" (1961), is a rare example of the rougher side of Cage, work that presaged much of the live electronic music and noise of the following decades, an aspect of his oeuvre which is woefully under-represented on this album. Cage and Tudor, using well-amplified contact microphones on a piano, deliver an electrifying performance, alternating distorted stretches of harsh 60s reality with bountiful silences. 

n October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock", as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases, three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordings in this series are previously unreleased. A major historical trove, unearthed. The performances on this tour featured Cage and Tudor with some noteworthy Japanese musicians playing pieces by Cage and a number of other composers. Volume 2 lifts off with a fiery example of Tudor's piano virtuosity, his mastery of dynamics well evident in a performance of "Klavierstück X" (1961) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The titular shock of this series is delivered even more forcefully with the next piece, Cage's "Aria and Solo for Piano with Fontana Mix" (1957-58/62), which was first performed the year before in Darmstadt by Tudor and Kobayashi, a combination of two of Cage's solo pieces. The performance here, from Osaka, has a slightly altered title and the composition becomes a seismic quartet with the addition of Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono, with the four performers providing acutely-angled blasts of sound. 

In October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock", as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases, three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordings in this series are previously unreleased. A major historical trove, unearthed. The performances on this tour featured Cage and Tudor with some noteworthy Japanese musicians playing pieces by Cage and a number of other composers. The final of the series features Cage's "0'00"" (1962), also referred to as "4'33" No.2", performed by the composer, with daily activities such as writing and drinking coffee amplified by contact microphones into sonic abstraction, following the score's directions: "with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action". Next is "Composition II for 2 Pianos" (1960/61) by Michael von Biel, lovely and sparse, performed by Tudor and Ichiyanagi. The disc closes with Ichiyanagi's "Piano Music #7" (1961), performed also by Tudor and Ichiyanagi, beds of silence disrupted by pianistic stabs, music box madness, traffic recordings, percussive thumps, tape manipulations and more. 

Mustapha Skandrani. Besides having an excellent name, this man, a luminary of Algerian music, possessed a unique musical sense, able to transcend the borders of musical cultures to create a distinctive fusion of Arabo-Andalusian and European styles. "Istikhbars and Improvisations", recorded in 1965 in Paris, is a solo piano album presenting a trans-Mediterranean crossover based on traditional Algerian vocal pieces known as Istikhbars. Playing these istikhbars (which have roots in the Islamic Arabo-Andalusian culture which flourished in Spain) on the piano, that quintessentially European instrument, Skandrani was greeted with derision by some purists. Skandrani's powerful musical vision, however, perceives the European element involved in Arabo-Andalusian musical culture, a world of exchange and co-existence, and his decision to play this music on the piano reminds us of this European influence. Skandrani's modus operandi on this release is to present each istikhbar, modal in nature, then to play an improvisation based on the istikhbar and its attendant mode. This A/B alternation continues throughout. The pellucid clarity of Skandrani's playing on this album may remind the listener of a modal Goldberg Variations, Bach and Glenn Gould transplanted to Andalucia. Other ears will hear the Arabic/Maghreb elements more strongly. Skandrani's precise touch and clear, symmetrical rhythmic sense links both worlds, assuring us that the Mediterranean is not a barrier, but a unifier, and that the differences between the cultures are not vast. This is an admirable acheivement, resulting in beautiful music of a rare charm. Mustapha Skandrani was born in Algiers in 1920, and died there in 2005. He mastered a number of instruments at an early age, and his musical prowess led him to work with the great singers and ensembles of his day, in live performances, recordings, and radio broadcasts. Later in his life, he devoted much energy to education. --- Em Records, 2021

"When I was around five years old in Kyoto, Japan, I followed my mother to our family’s Zen temple, where we listened to monks chanting. The chanting lasted a long time and became quite hypnotic. I almost fell asleep. These rituals were some of the first music I heard. "In 1972, I began studying with the great Indian master Pandit Pran Nath. His improvised style of singing was an important influence on me. I would take lessons from him when he stayed at La Monte Young’s studio on Church Street. I went once a week or when I could afford it. During these sessions, I learned to follow his singing with precise intonation. It was a difficult task but gradually I got into it with practice. I would get up around 5am and sing with tambura for at least one hour. After that I went to work. My lessons with Panditji were the best studies in music I had during my life. I realized singing is one of the most difficult ways of making music, more than playing most musical instruments. "In the mid-70s, I went to the Ethnic Music Festival in Queens, NYC, where I heard all types of ethnic music. There was some Macedonian women’s singing that was outstanding. They created fine tolerance in pitch by singing the same pitches together. This inspired me to try similar things out with male voices. "I started to develop group singing around 1976. After doing solo singing for a while, I noticed it was also interesting to sing with other people. I already knew Richard Hayman. He was running an artists’ bar called Ear Inn. I came across Imani Smith at a Sufi center in Manhattan. He was a Sufi follower and sang well. I wasn’t into Sufism but I was curious about their singing. I organized the male choir around modal improvisations from my solo singing. The interaction between the three voices singing closely in tune produced very clear microtonal partials. I later used this method in my pieces for bagpipes. "Singing in Unison was performed and recorded at The Kitchen, located in SoHo on Broome Street. It was a huge space with a lot of traffic noise. It’s been a long time but I still hear value in this work. Singing in Unison isn’t about New Age or avant-garde, it has to do with what we can communicate without words." —Yoshi Wada "Another stunning archival unearthing in this necessary series of historical recordings from Japanese drone/minimalist Yoshi Wada: Singing In Unison is a historically potent recording from a performance at The Kitchen Center, NY, on March 15, 1978 with Wada, Richard Hayman and Imani Smith using massively droning amplified and unaccompanied vocal chants to generate brain-massaging microtonal partials. The space was subject to heavy traffic noise, which comes through on the recording to great effect, with distant industrial sounds somehow falling into place in the background like the city itself has taken voice. Wada had studied singing with Pandit Pran Nath in the early 70s, when he was staying at LaMonte Young’s, and the music takes off on Nath, Young and Zazeela’s zoned tongue ascensions but w/a heady polyphonic/devotional feel that owes as much to early European religious music as it does to raga forms or even the Gyuto Monks. The trio pick out simple ascending and descending melodies, while moving parallel and just out of synch with each other in order to create areas of flux where the voices give birth to all kinds of sonic spectra. In many ways Singing In Unison comes over as a sort of ‘unplugged’ take on Wada’s pieces for invented bagpipes, locating his practice back in very dawn of the combinatory potential of music and language. This is a stunning recording, one that unites avant garde, psychedelic and folk-primitive techniques to dazzling effect, a form of ancient holy music set to levitate the future. Another massive side from Wada, beautifully presented with a fold-out insert featuring English and Japanese liners from Wada himself, very highly recommended!" —Volcanic Tongue  Composed by Yoshi Wada Richard Hayman, Imani Smith, and Yoshi Wada, voices Recorded on March 15, 1978, at The Kitchen, New York, NY

"Off The Wall belongs somewhere between the exuberant harmolodic ritual of Ornette Coleman's Dancing In Your Head, a damp, medieval dirge and the inner ear soundings of composer Maryanne Amacher." —David Keenan, The Wire "It may be more accurate to think of Wada as a sculptor than as a composer, because his music seems to be a physical reality, like wood or stone, and also because of the way he treats this material. Most composers work with ideas. Their basic interest is in melodies, harmonies, thematic relationships, tone rows, tonal centers, emotional qualities, and other rather abstract things, all of which can then be conveyed in sound, but none of which really are sound. Wada, on the other hand, works directly with the sound itself. His music would sound silly arranged for church organ for example. And if he prefers to preserve some improvisatory freedom rather than to notate specific musical ideas, this is at least partly because he is not so interested in the kinds of musical ideas that can be written down on paper. He wants to maintain direct contact with the physical reality of the sound." —Tom Johnson (from the original liner notes) Composed by Yoshi Wada Yoshi Wada and Wayne Hankin, bagpipes Marilyn Bogerd, adapted organ Andreas Schmidt Neri, percussion

Earth Horns with Electronic Drone (original program notes) "The electronics is an open system that processes and stores information about real-time acoustic activity, and recycles it back into the acoustic environment where it becomes a part of a further tone cycle which is again fed into the system and back into the acoustic space…etc. "The resonance of each Pipehorn is in tune with the AC line cycle of the room. Seven electronic tones, tuned harmonics of the line cycle, are independently generated. Because the sounds are harmonics of overtones of each other, all changes become modulations of a single resonating acoustic environment. Each of the tones can be varied independently or in their combination in an open system. The electronic system is always sensitive to real time activity as well as summing and deriving changes from Pipehorn loudness and duration. Here the electronic controls that add, subtract and multiply are derived directly from changes in Pipehorn loudness, duration and interaction. Electronic sound and Pipehorn sound mix in the acoustic time/space of the performance, recycling and reinforcing sound change. People can hear this sound of subtle movement, the interacting of electronic sound and Pipehorn sound. This creates a dynamic sound environment. "The point is to create a sound environment (or performance situation) where people are able to listen to this almost primitive, visceral, acoustic sound of the Pipehorns (constructed from ordinary plumbing materials and steam fittings) together with their matching, electronically transformed sounds, for extended periods of time. These instruments, musically, have a precise pitch, and can generate these pure electronic sounds, as well, which are unique to this situation. I am most interested in the effect, psychologically, of these subtle tones and movements on both players and audience alike, particularly played, as I plan, over an extended period of time." —Yoshi Wada

Yoshi Wada's "Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile," originally released in 1982 on India Navigation, remains one of the most remarkable flowers to grow in the rarefied air of American minimalism—akin to Terry Riley's "Reed Streams" and Pauline Oliveros' "Accordion & Voice," yet with a wild, liberated energy all of its own. After graduating from Kyoto University of Fine Arts with a degree in sculpture, Wada moved to New York City in 1967 and quickly fell in with the community of artists known as Fluxus. In the early '70s, he began building his own instruments and writing musical compositions, studying with La Monte Young and Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. Recorded during an epic three-day session in an empty swimming pool in upstate New York, Wada's first album brings together two of the oldest drone instruments—the human voice and bagpipes—to simple and glorious effect. A visit to the Scottish Highlands spurred Wada's interest in bagpipes, which the composer integrated into these sparse, otherworldly sounds heard on "Lament." "That swimming pool was quite hallucinatory," recalls Wada. “It was another world. I felt it in terms of resonance. I slept in the pool, and whenever I moved, I woke up because of the reverberations.... The piece itself is an experiment with reeds and improvisational singing within the modal structure." _____ "Yoshi Wada’s masterpiece bends the boundaries between expansive ambience and the intimate harmonics of the inner self, imbuing the world of avant-garde sound with a remarkable and deeply personal sense of humanity." —Bradford Bailey, Soundohm 

From David Toop What are field recordings? “My memory is not what it used to be, David,” my grandfather, Syd Senior, said to me as we huddled round a fireplace in 1979. Thanks to a cassette tape I have the memory of his gradual loss of memory, hearing him speak of Queen Victoria’s funeral and the severity of patriotism back in those old days, 1901. Syd Senior is long dead, no longer part of the field of living relations but still within the field of memories that can be revived by technology, albeit an old one that squeaks like a mouse, hisses like a cat.Where is the field? The field is populated by all the ravishing, painful, poignant, nondescript moments of remembered life. Field recordings forget, just as memories forget. My recording of Ornette Coleman forgets that he fell asleep as we were talking together. I sat quietly, waiting for him to wake; the tape machine continued its work, oblivious.During lockdown, a warm spring day, I sat working in the garden. A small fox appeared close to me, started, retreated into the shelter of plants by my pond. I took a photo with my phone but when I looked at the image no fox was visible. Earlier that day I had been reading Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a collection of short stories written by Pu Songling during the course of his life in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. In many of these tales, fox spirits inhabit the physical spaces of living humans in a variety of guises. Some are malicious; some benign. Their presence in the material world is wrong and yet accepted as either a temporary nuisance or a blessing that would later be regretted.“All the memories are very incomplete,” said Annabel Nicolson during a conversation I recorded with her in the early 1990s. “It’s like trying to substantiate something that was important to us . . . When I was younger I thought that didn’t matter. I thought everything could be transient because people would always be creating more . . . when you get older it seems rather different because you realise many wonderful things have just vanished. Which in some ways doesn’t matter but it also means that they can’t be shared with anyone other than those who were there.” 

GONDOLAS Graham Lambkin/James Rushford CD 1: Through Clouds or Something You Know What Mountain Silver Rain Wild Rainbows A Leaf Under Our Control Rise of the Machines CD 2: Playbit Traditional Noise Wall Gondolas recorded/mixed at LHSH, London with additional recording at OTO Project Space, London and Neues Schloss, Stuttgart 2019-2023