Five Wooden Frames marks the return of Italian artist Giueppe Ielasi to 12k after his captivating polyrhythmic explorations on Aix (12k1051, 2009). He completely abandoned the guitar in the mid 2000’s to explore minimal electro-acoustic abstractions (see his releases on his own Senufo Editions) or rhythmic and groove-based music (see his Stunt series, the Inventing Masks project, and Aix and Tools on 12k). Once again, however, the guitar has become his main focus, both as an instrument in the traditional sense and as source of sound material. The sections on Five Wooden Frames were produced using continuosly shifting and modulating loops of acoustic guitar glissandos resulting in pitches that slide around in a haunting, yet spirited juxtaposition of delicate and strangely playful textures.

AMM formanex play Treatise Composed By Cornelius Cardew! Performer – Anthony Taillard, Christophe Havard, Eddy Prevost*, Emmanuel Leduc, John Tilbury, John White, Julien Ottavi, Keith Rowe, Laurent Dailleau Recorded in June 2002 at the Musique-Action Festival in Nancy, France, for the 20th anniversary of the death of Cornelius Cardew.

Martin Bartlett should be a familiar name. As well as working with a who's who of electronic music, he was an inspiring and original thinker, composer, performer and organiser. His music is distinctive for its warmth and fleshiness, for taking joy from the incidental and anecdotal, and it remains a characterful counterpoint to much contemporary electronic music. It is his preoccupation with building aleatoric elements into electronic music that distinguishes his work, and he devised elegant and open interactions for instrumental performers and computer-controlled synthesizers. This included building his own electronic devices, and extensive work on the Buchla 400. Born in Croydon in 1939, he was adopted as a baby, and later moved with his family to Canada. He did a short stint in the Navy and completed a music degree at the University of British Columbia, studying under Barbara Pentland, before going on to study composition at Mills College in the late 60s. In 1973 Bartlett and seven others founded the Western Front in Vancouver – a cultural cooperative, gallery and performance space that still exists today, housed in the old meeting hall of the Knights of Pythias (a mason-like fraternity). He continued with his research and teaching, and in 1982 was made professor at Simon Fraser University where he remained for the rest of his life. His performances were often collaborative – for the Western Front's second anniversary in 1975 he devised the four-channel piece One Piece for Everyone, a composition where he prepared and cooked a cauliflower curry on a table connected to a synthesizer he had built, while reading from texts on food. When the curry was cooked, the piece ended, and everyone was fed. Bartlett was a prolific writer, and he expresses himself in fresh, lucid, and wonderfully descriptive prose, offering clear thinking on social aspects of electronic music performance; on the barriers between the performer and the 'black box' and on possibilities for organic systems in electronic music. He also wrote accounts of his sailing trips, treatise on performance practices, and technical academic articles on the systems he built, along with the incandescent manifesto-like piece Electronic Recalcitrant, in which he hoped that electronic music would be imbued with “organic codes of growth and metamorphosis” so that he could “pluck elegant and fleshy electronic sound fish from the frothy algorithmic sea of possibilities”. Key influences were Pauline Oliveros, John Cage and David Tudor, all whom he studied under. Like many of his generation, he became interested in non-Western compositional and philosophical practices, and in 1981 he travelled to India to study Carnatic vocal music with V. Lakshminarayana Iyer in Madras and then on to Burma, Thailand and Indonesia where he studied shadow theatre. He studied South Asian music with Pandit Pran Nath, gamelan with K.R.T. Wasitidipuro, and closely collaborated with Don Buchla on live performances and synthesiser design. He was particularly interested in the Javanese gamelan, which led to him founding the Vancouver Community Gamelan in 1986. On his travels to Indonesia he made hours of field recordings, many of which are accompanied by vivid narrations on the rituals and ceremonies he was documenting. It is unclear why Bartlett’s work remains unknown. Perhaps it is because it remained largely inside the academy. Perhaps his commitment to live performance and community activity means it was more transient than the work of others. Perhaps his openness about his sexuality played a part in his music not receiving much recognition – one can only speculate. But correspondence in his archive shows that rejection and general lack of interest from labels was a source of great personal discontent, leading to Bartlett working again with the Western Front to release his final opus Pythagoras’ Ghost shortly before his death. Bartlett died young, of AIDS-related causes, in 1993, but his music remains a rich source of inspiration, and is characterised by an irresistible and unselfconscious charm that renders his sound unique. These selections, along with the companion LP Anecdotal Electronics, and Luke Fowler’s film Electro-Pythagoras, aim to redress this prior neglect, shedding light on this little known personality from electronic music history, who still has so much to say. Arc Light Editions was formed by ex-Wire magazine staffer Jennifer Lucy Allan and James Ginzburg as a reaction to the over-priced and deluxed-out reissue market. Our releases are packaged simply in kraftliner stock and are reasonably priced. We do not release anything we cannot listen to on repeat for weeks at a time, or which we do not believe is totally essential.   less

For those unfamiliar with John Macedo’s work, he presents what I consider a precious quality in a musician. The one that makes you ask yourself endless questions of how someone can piece together such intricate qualities of audio, in such detail, be it in composed works or improvisation. I’m yet to see a concert of his where I don’t leave totally unable to answer questions about how he does the thing he does. Up to this point I've associated all of this with, for lack of a better term, ‘electronic’ sources, synthesisers and varying feedback systems. So it carries a bizarre and exciting feeling to announce his first album of guitar music on Infant Tree, ‘Truss’. Macedo started to piece the album together in 2014, after an eight year stint away from his guitar exploring the potential of various other combinations of devices. The album marks a distinguishable change in attitude towards his music. Away from a more technical approach, it invites something more personal; experimenting with an instrument both recognisable and relatable, yet somehow also novel. For fans of previous work, ‘Truss’ follows without fault. It carries Macedo’s distinctive manner and character throughout. Tracks like ‘Phase’ and ‘Bridge’ bury themselves deep in your ear, pulling up sounds so far from what I previously understood could come from a guitar. ‘Binding’, which features Phil Julian, is perhaps the moment in the album where you hear the instrument as we understand it the most, and that says a lot for how unexpected the whole thing is - Bailey or Rowe comparisons won't cut it. Across its length we encounter appearances on guitar by friends Daniel Bennett, Kostis Kilymis and as previously mentioned, Phil Julian. Tying together a feeling of importance of acknowledging the instrument as a gateway into music making, the relationship that all of these players have to it and how that relationship can change and evolve over time. The album was mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and is available digitally and in a CD edition, featuring a photo of a young John Macedo and his guitar, with layout design by Andrea Kerney.

In its short life, London's Café Oto has played host to more than its share of memorable gigs by such improvisers as John Tchicai, Marshall Allen and Evan Parker, but surely none more remarkable than the December 2009 meeting of the veteran American saxophonist Joe McPhee and the British trio Decoy: the organist Alexander Hawkins, the double-bassist John Edwards and the drummer Steve Noble. It was a night of unceasing reward from music distinguished by such intensity of spirit and richness of timbre. Hawkins is a young composer and keyboardist with a rapidly growing reputation and a clear interest in working with musicians of diverse backgrounds. His early training as a pipe organist surely encourages him to exploit the full range of textures offered by the Hammond C3 and its accompanying Leslie speaker. John Edwards may well be the busiest musician on the improvising scene, his near-ubiquitous presence an infallible guarantee of vitality and substance; only his noted ability to bring a sagging session to life is not required here. Steve Noble, who is among Edwards' regular partners, provides a fine combination of stealth and swing, of drama and discretion, although the dexterous aplomb with which he negotiated a solo passage for small, untethered cymbals really had to be seen as well as heard. McPhee may be a man of an earlier generation, but he shares their absolute devotion to cliché-free spontaneity. Listening to him working in this unusually stimulating context, and appreciating his eloquence, sensitivity and pronounced gift for timbral variation, it is difficult to understand why he is not spoken of more often in the same breath as some of the more renowned free saxophonists. His ability to sing through the trio's array of pointillist textures, or to launch himself full-tilt into the churning maelstrom, adds a significant element to an already remarkable organism. - Bo'Weavil Recordings

What is the object with the most sensational magical and alchemical properties, if not glass? A permeable membrane that filters the real through the unconscious, an access portal with divinatory and therapeutic qualities, the glass has always been seen as the guardian of daring allegories and symbols. Aware of this, the artist Roberto Campadello conceived "The Game of Persona", in the context of an installation for the XII Biennale of Sao Paolo in 1973. Discovering the visual properties of gilded glass, he investigated the effects of the overlay of images, a mysterious moment of transparency in which two single people melt into the reflection of the image, creating a single fantastic person. Thus, his "Casa Dourada", also became the space for “Intro-nautical Journeys”: meditations and cosmic dances. The history of this LP (originally published in a 10’’ box set, in 1975) starts right to support those collective initiation sessions. Each track is inspired by an I Ching element (Mountain, Heaven, Earth, Water, Lake, Wind) which represented a primary source of inspiration for Campadello. The dreamlike and occult sound not only suggest the atmosphere of that experience but still reveal the echoes of the best season of the Brazilian rock and Tropicalismo. The music has been composed and played by Roberto Campadello and the brazilian super-star guitarist Luis Carlini, the leader of the Rita Lee's band Tutti Frutti. Fuzz guitars, dirty percussion, Echoplex delays, are the perfect elements for the final trip into your own consciousness. The edition comes with two unreleased tracks, an amazing booklet and the poster; also available the box set special edition with the reproduction of the game, including the magical mirror. Co-produced with nossos amigos Nada Nada Discos.

Reissue with unreleased tracks  from the only one tour of this super group composed in 1975 by Franco Battiato, Lino Capra Vaccina, Juri Camisasca, Mino Di Martino, Roberto Mazza, Terra Di Benedetto. In the mid 70's the Italian underground scene also seemed to mature an existential priority of yearning toward a new psychological universe, with the firm idea to colonize an uncharted space of a necessary and infinite path of spiritual redemption. In this context, the short experience of Telaio Magnetico was born from the confluence of the Battiato’s experimental efforts in works such as Sulle Corde di Aries, Clic and M.elle the Gladiator and the Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale’s new esotheric electronics. Mosaic of  metamorphic sounds and frequencies of unfamiliar constellations, the music of Telaio is a imaginary trimurti  of “energy-cosmos-mind”. Synths and lowrey organs draw sidereal labyrinths and landscapes scanned to infinity by a harmonic percussions arsenal. Whispering and radical impro-vocals are lost as delusional fugues in centrifugal vortices and at the same time seem to offer a compendium of religious chants which evoke both Tibetan chorus such as Indian pujas or the Gregorian tradition. Re-emerge  sometimes Sufi cadences and relaxations or pastoral-tribal elements on which the chamber carpet of oboe blows like Arabs, Egyptians or Moroccans pifferos. That traced is not only a galactic river but also a Mediterranean circumnavigation: a unique creative moment that in addition to the references with the German Kosmische Musik  and the British space-rock seemed to be perfumed by the influence of Gurdjieffian mystic and had roots even in minimalist drone of Terry Riley and La Monte Young as well as parallels with the contemporary research of authors such as Alvin Curran and the following explorations of Futuro Antico.

A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. The well-educated drummer Tiziano Tononi, together with David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, while working at the temple of classical music, Il Teatro alla Scala of Milano decides to realize a personal compendium of sounds using only purcussion instruments. The recording offers to us an amazing concert of sounds with acoustic purity, in perfect balance between wild rhythm and deep relaxation. Ecstatic elements of Japan ambient minimalism dialogue with contemporary musical solutions (Varese, Ligeti), in the stream of a harmonious fusion of ancient and modern. It’s a propitiatory ceremony of supernatural happenings that open portals of blissfulness, tribal and shamanic darkness, and,timeless jungles. Between amazon fires and African safaris, we float in the Asian rivers of meditation, lost in water games, echoes of caves and rocks in the night, synergies of frogs, birds, snakes, marimbas, chimes, gongs, and wooden drums.

An amazing adventure of a musicological and botanical research on the psychoacoustic qualities of the Green World recorded in 1986-89. It’s the investigation of an organic symbiosis, real and mysterious at the same time, between the pharmacological properties of the plant and the sound emitted by the same material essence. From the single natural element comes the vibration permeating the whole Universe; an indissoluble binomial for which "everything that makes up existence contains the information of itself in all its parts". Here, the visionary Walter Maioli (Aktuala, Futuro Antico, Synaulia) collaborates with the music therapist and eclectic composer Agostino Nirodh Fortini, for more than thirty years specialist in the field of sound and video applied to body therapies and meditation. By exposing the archetype breath of the stem, slowing its speed and manipulating and filtering it electronically, the two explorers get a bath of harmonic games with purifying and regenerating powers; a deep and nebulous drone inhabited by insects, alien sounds similar to the vibrates of Fender Rhodes or tonal interludes with plays of stones in the water, on the surface of an inner lake, learning to observe and dive into love and awareness.

Double LP version. Four long and vaporous unreleased tracks that document the Juri Camisasca's first mystical afflatus, bringing to light the moments of "collective meditation" of some events in 1978, including the recordings drawn from the exhibition "L'evoluzione interiore dell'Uomo", which took place at the Villa Reale in Monza. After his participation in the Telaio Magnetico project in 1975, and in parallel to his contribution in works like Franco Battiato's Juke Box (1978) and Lino Capra Vaccina's Antico Adagio (1978), and in Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina's Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo (1979), a more general syntony of Camisasca for different aspects of Eastern philosophies seemed to conceive his first personal form of music as a "celestial ocean" in which to break the eternal divine love. The mantra nature of deep drones of a natural reverberated harmonium literally introduce you to another level of consciousness; harmonic chants of dhrupad inspiration expanding the ethereal voice in the transcendental plot of all, while Roberto Mazza's oboe intervenes to paint this perfect osmotic sound echoing motifs of ancient medieval saltarello. For Camisasca, "the vibration of sound is something primordial which contains the mystery of creation"; and in this sense "the musician is a medium through which the Nature is expressed". This makes Evoluzione Interiore an intense minimalist work where singing generates a universal and archetypical spiral of purity and candor that suggests the Pandit Pran Nath's lesson as well as dialogues in concept with the mutability flux of seminal works as Terry Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes (1972), Peter Michael Hamel's The Voice of Silence (1973) and Nada (1977), or with research on the overtones as that of Roberto Laneri's Prima Materia. Includes liner notes with archival photos.

1. Alvin Lucier: August Moon (2015)2. Morton Feldman: Two Instruments (1958)3. Alvin Lucier: Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba (2008)4. Morton Feldman: Three Clarinets, Cello And Piano (1971)5. Alvin Lucier: Step, Slide and Sustain (2014)6. Morton Feldman: Durations 2 (1960) Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present this collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, August Moon and Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier.   “For Feldman, dynamics serve an acoustical function. When he mitigates a piano attack he reduces that spike of noise that’s at the onset of every piano sound leaving only the sinusoidal pure after-sound. It’s as if he invented electronic music with the piano.” Alvin Lucier from liner notes.      “Lucier manages to hear a layer of acoustical physics in Feldman’s music that perhaps no one else would hear. He’s hearing something in Feldman that is actually coming from his own musical world; in a way, hearing his own music in Feldman’s, and drawing inspiration from that.”

Preorder! Graham Lambkin (of Shadow Ring fame) returns with a long awaited epic double LP, Aphorisms, his first major solo outing since Community (Kye, 2016). Recorded mostly during the early winter months of 2022, in post-pandemic New York and post-Brexit London, Aphorisms assembles the sonic detritus of daily life into hauntingly intimate aural soundscapes. Made between Lambkin's residence in East London and Blank Forms in New York, Aphorisms superimposes the two spaces onto one another creating an imaginary stage where his musical dramas unfold. A transatlantic mediation on the rooms where Lambkin has lived and worked, Aphorisms summons up hallucinatory vistas by way of the composer’s collage technique, layering field recordings, piano, guitar, percussion, vocal fragments, and repurposed elements on top of one another in double, triple, and quadruple exposures. Like the Shadow Ring’s Lindus (Swill Radio, 2001)—recorded between Folkestone and Miami—Aphorisms ruminates on estrangement and displacement, catching Lambkin as he returns to London after two decades of living in the States, in his words, “leaving home to return home.” Aphorisms continues Lambkin’s synthetic-naturalist approach to sound-making, twisting disparate and unique elements together to create the sensation of a coherent sonic space. At the heart of his practice is the illusion of form, whereby Lambkin combines sonic elements, documenting the moment that they coalesce into music only to disintegrate back into incidental sound. The album is centered around two pianos, one in New York and one in London, sounding together as if through the ether, creating a spectral atmosphere that Lambkin fills with melodic snippets, fragments of songs, spoken-word musings, and guttural barks or “the animal purity of voice,” as he has it. The superimposition of the two spaces is maximized in the album's closing titular track, where, much like on earlier works such as Salmon Run (Kye, 2007) and Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) fragments of familiar melodies float through the mix as though being played from afar. Aphorisms is Lambkin at his best, extending methodologies only hinted at previously and taking his now-idiosyncratic mission statement to a new chapter. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Since its formation in 1984, there have been several distinct phases of Kapotte Muziek in which the group changed. The group commenced as a duo of Frans de Waard and Christian Nijs, and operated as such until 1987 when Nijs left and started to learn to play the guitar. Then followed a phase in which De Waard actively searched for other musicians to contribute sounds to be used as source material. In 1993 a new phase commenced when the group were invited to play a series of concerts in the USA. Initially, this was a tour with the Dutch group THU20, and Kapotte Muziek planned a show with pre-recorded tapes and slides. One by one, the members of THU20 backed out of the tour, leaving only Peter Duimelinks in the end, at which point it was decided to play as a duo under the name Kapotte Muziek. Having spent the first week of the tour in New York purchasing equipment and rehearsing, a general plan of '15 minutes of drone, 15 minutes collage-like music and 15 minutes of noise' was formulated. As the tour (17 concerts) progressed, however, new elements were incorporated into the music, with the lineup for the first number of performances expanded to include Daniel Burke's long-running post-industrial group, Illusion of Safety. In 1995, the duo became a trio, adding Roel Meelkop (also from THU20). Since then, the trio (sometimes duo, once solo) has played 121 concerts in Europe, the USA, Canada, Russia and Japan. The group took something of an informal hiatus in 2017 after a duo concert by Peter and Frans in Norway, but regrouped on December 30th 2023 to perform as a trio again (for the first time since 2012) in Germany.Until 2004, Kapotte Muziek also released studio recordings by Frans de Waard, although these recordings had very little connection with the live sound. It was decided to stop these studio-based activities, and Kapotte Muziek would exclusively play live. Recordings of concerts would be released, with very minimal editing in most cases, on CD, cassette or vinyl.The 2017 concert in Trondheim, Norway mentioned above is particularly significant in the Kapotte Muziek trajectory, not only as it marked the beginning of a period of live inactivity. The concert took place at Klubb Kanin on its 20th anniversary, the group also having performed at the opening of the venue in 1997. To mark the event, the group were asked to do a cassette to document these two concerts. To fit both performances onto a single cassette, the 1997 recording was heavily cut up, leading to the current phase of Kapotte Muziek. One thing that has been a constant factor for Kapotte Muziek is the recycling of sound - in concert, by using junk from the streets, and in the studio, through the continuous re-use of sounds. In the first phase, Christian Nijs recorded sounds and instruments, and Frans de Waard created collages using these recordings. The intensive editing of the 1997 Trondheim recording led Frans to a natural conclusion, that live recordings from the group's history could be used as source material for future releases. After three trial pieces for compilations, an entire album came to life. The result is 'Discon', a made-up word for 'distilled from concerts'. Each of the 13 pieces is created by cutting, pasting, superimposing, and editing one concert. No other electronic treatments were used, no granular synthesis, etc. The cover is a collage from the booklet that came with Kapotte Muziek's release, 'Columbus, Ohio', from 2004, which was created from a black and white painting Frans exchanged with an unknown painter for some merchandise at that concert.  Released: Krim Kram, 2024

Zalhietzli is the experimental noise project of French artist, Jean-Baptiste Lévêque. This release is the first CD by the project and follows a recent string of excellent tapes on Satatuhatta, Narcolepsia, and Bent Window Records. Employing tapes, effects, microphones, junk metal and computer, Étreinte presents a set of meticulously executed harsh noise compositions incorporating a diverse range of styles, from skillfully manipulated junk metal recordings to blown-out ripping and fluttering textures (always on the verge of implosion/explosion).The CD comes in a 4-panel digisleeve with a full colour fold-out poster (35cm x 35cm). All artwork by Zalhietzli. Released: Krim Kram, 2024

Michael Speers and Luciano Maggiore make music contemplating the kernel of black metal.Michael Speers is a musician from Portaferry (NI), currently based in Neuilly-Plaisance (FR), who works with natural & synthetic sound material - using drums, computer, microphones, feedback - towards performance, installation and composition. Collaborations include: John Wall, Louise Le Du, Luciano Maggiore and Paul Abbott (as yPLO). His work has been published by Anòmia, Takuroku, Wasted Capital Since 2013 and C.A.N.V.A.S.Luciano Maggiore is a Palermo-born, London-based musician whose work is characterised by the use of speakers and several analogue/digital devices (samplers, CD players, walkmans, tape recorders) and addresses the performativity of the musical act, the perception of it, and the obscurity that emanates from it. His main interests include mechanisms of sound diffusion, performance, repetition, endurance, non-human animal languages, dance, and folklore. With Louie Rice, he started NO-PA/PA-ON, a project that deals with performing score-based works, both acoustic and amplified. His works have been published by Balloon & Needle, Consumer Waste, Hideous Replica, Senufo editions, and Xing, among others. The wonderful adhuman label, based out of Brighton UK, very recently released an utterly essential CD of Luciano's long-standing duo with Louie Rice (album of the year, or any other year, round these parts by a long shot).

Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he comes from a jazz background and has since made his home in the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise.Ted primarily works in ad hoc improvisational settings, but has long standing improvisational groups including duos with Jeff Parker, Chris Cooper, Charlie Mumma, Sam McKinlay, William Hutson, and a trio with Jacob Wick and Michael Foster, among others. Additionally, Ted has played in duo, trio, or ensemble settings with Mazen Kerbaj, Matt Weston, Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, Charlemagne Palestine, Alfred 23 Harth, Arrington de Dionyso, Jaap Blonk, Torsten Muller, Kim Myhr, Jim Denley, Lloyd Honeybrook, Chris Schlarb, Mike Watt, Paul Masvidal, the LAFMS (including Smegma, Airway, Ace Farren Ford's Artificial Art Ensemble, Rick and Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Tom Recchion, Vetza, etc.), Sissy Spacek, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and more. Released: Krim Kram, 2023

Rick Potts is a founding LAFMS member, active in experimental music since the early 70's, and enormously influential on five decades worth of musical practitioners with a penchant for outer/freakdom sounds. Don't Think is a 2CD compilation of rare and unreleased recordings, spanning 37 tracks and 2.5 hours, and covering the entire range of Potts' musical output - from song-based new wave/art rock to more abstract loop-based noise (note the lowercase 'n') and mutant disco (disco of the Dennis Duck variety that is). Also included is a 12 page booklet of art and notes."When I was a teenager I discovered research that the brain had two separate parts, a logical left side and a creative right side. I decided that the left, the logical, rational, critical side was filtering out too much of the right side's intuitive brilliance and cancelling out thoughts before I was aware of them. I wanted to tap into those discarded ideas so I developed ways to avoid the editing that the left side was doing to the right side's mysterious stream of consciousness. Spontaneity and improvisation in the early days of the LAFMS was one way. Making drawings without planning them sometimes brought surprising results. Creatures emerged before my eyes one shape at a time. I practiced speaking backwards, wrote the first thing that popped into my mind and spoke before I knew what I was saying. Experimenting with freeing myself from the critical inner voice let magical things happen. Creating this way puts me into a zone that feels like a high and it's addictive. It feels best when I don't know what I'm doing but I do it anyway. For me, reason is unreasonable."- Rick Potts  Released: Krim Kram, 2023

Cyess Afxzs is a relatively new harsh noise project from Belfast-born, Swiss-based artist, Stuart McCune. Over the past year, McCune has released a string of highly acclaimed tapes and CDs on many of the most vital noise labels currently active, including Rural Isolation Project, Satatuhatta, Abhorrent A.D., and White Centipede Noise. Much has been made of McCune's use of sounds and structural elements not commonly associated with contemporary harsh noise, and the project's conceptual alignment with abstract art (most obviously through releases directly referencing Max Ernst, Antoni Tàpies, Alfred Kubin, and Daniel Richter). While it is true that contemporary harsh noise has mostly shied away from overt art world influence (with some obvious exceptions), it is worth remembering that noise has a long and existential relationship with abstract art, Merzbow being perhaps the most obvious and literal example. And, although occupying a very different sonic terrain, the likes of P16.D4, Achim Wollscheid, and Rudolf Eb.er, to name just a few examples, all have long histories of incorporating conceptual or abstract art practices in their work. All that is to say that there is nothing that warms my cockles quite as much as when this lowly genre called "noise" that we love so dearly (with all its inherent contradictions) reaches out of the gutter and pulls influence from otherwise "respectable" art forms. Whether that elevates noise or debases art is open to interpretation.No Bull One Left Behind was recorded between August and October 2022 and expands upon techniques explored in previous releases, offering perhaps the widest palette of sounds and compositional approaches to date. The album opens with what my grandmother, as a lifelong harsh noise aficionado, would have described as an absolute banger, a roaring behemoth of joyous blasting, before subtly shifting gear to more experimental ground. There is a very singular musical quality to each of the tracks, each containing its own distinctive character. And while the album as a whole certainly falls within the harsh noise realm, the lines between noise and musicality are continuously blurred.  Released: Krim Kram 2023