Available as a 320MP3 or 24bit FLAC Please note - the LP and 2CD contain different material. If you'd like to order both at once, please select LP/CD.  LP Tracklisting: A1. Donnie and Zouïna A2. Are You Ready / Sans-Papiers (Original poem by Vicky Scrivener)A3. Steady Eddie and the FireflyA4. Like the LotusB1. La Vie S’en Va (Life Is Fleeting)(Improvisation around original song by Zouïna Benhalla. “What’s the ugliest part of your body?” is a quote from Frank Zappa’s song of the same name.) CD1 Tracklisting: “Songs” 1. Slow Within The Urgency - 6:12(Inspired by mindfulness teacher Jeff Warren)2. Donnie and Zouïna - 5:423. Are You Ready / Sans Papiers - 5:49(Original poem ‘Sans Papiers’ by Vicky Scrivener)4. You Darkness - 8:26(Original poem by Rainer Maria Rilke)5. Steady Eddie and The Firefly - 6:096. Like The Lotus - 2:187. Music Is The Healing Force of The Universe - 5:10(Music and lyrics by Mary Maria Parks) CD2 Tracklisting: “Whatever Arises” Part 1 - 5:59Part 2 - 1:58Part 3 - 3:18Part 4 - 3:43Part 5 - 6:55Part 6 - 4:40Part 7 - 3:16Prelude - 9:36First physical solo release from legendary vocal improvisor, dancer, and performer Maggie Nicols, and the follow up to Creative Contradiction (Takuroku 2020). "This is music as social commentary, memoir, love letter, confessional. It’s Nicols doing what comes naturally, on a basis of practice and trust." Julian Cowley, The Wire While she might be best known as an improviser (most notably in Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the Feminist Improvising Group and more recently with the likes of Les Diaboliques), Maggie Nicols’ talents stretch into song, dance, poetry, performance and composition. When Cafe OTO was shut over lockdown we invited her to follow up the wonderful solo ‘Creative Contradiction’ with some time spent singing alone at the piano. ‘Are You Ready?’ comprises an LP of songs and a 2CD edition which includes a companion disk of freely improvised meditations entitled, ‘Whatever Arises’. Songs - seemingly contradictory to the practices of free improvisation - have been a vital part in Nicols’ relationship to music. It was singing bebop with pianist Dennis Rose which nurtured and challenged Nicols, allowing her to develop her own skills and sound amongst a repertoire of standards sung in clubs and pubs. Vocalising alongside Julie Tippetts in Centipede showed her how heady experimentation could be woven into composition, and more recently a gig with pianist Steve Lodder played out ‘The Maggie Nicols Songbook.’ 'Are You Ready?' recalls Nicols’ own compositions from memory, working out tunes and turning them over. New routes down old paths form in moments of improvisation and all wrong turns are played out with joyous discovery. What John Stevens dubbed Maggie's “ability to find the ‘rhythmelodic’” meets a willingness to be understood and to understand. Solo at the piano, Nicols is still firmly rooted in the collective however - “Sans Papiers” sets the words of poet Vicky Scrivener to tune; a story of migration and struggle which is as important to Nicols as the songs her mother wrote.  Such an intimate recording of her own compositions came with a certain amount of reflection and anxiety - best confronted with time spent freely improvising. ‘Whatever Arises’ - a companion disk to ‘Songs’ - is a meditation of sorts, a process of ‘following the energy’ which has its roots in John Stevens’ work. “Improvisation gives the confidence to compose,” Nicols told us in an interview about some of her archival tapes, and here the two are as important as each other. Beginning with breath and repetition, ‘Whatever Arises’ allows Nicols’ to find new voices, accompanied by the piano and over dubbings of her tap shoes on the concrete floor. Brilliantly she is able to share her moments of discovery with the listener, finding comfort in vulnerability. Whilst rooted in Stevens’ work, Nicols’ improvisational techniques also remind us of Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations. They are what has allowed Nicols to find her own sound, to ‘teach herself to fly.’ They have allowed Nicols to grow and share and to be able to keep close the songs that mean so much to her, now shared with us. — Please note - the LP and 2CD contain different material. If you'd like to order both at once, please select LP/CD.  Recorded at Cafe OTO on July 15th, 16th and 17th 2021 by Shaun Crook. Mixed by Shaun Crook. Mastered by Sean McCann. Artwork by Annalisa Colombara. Lettering by Rosella Garavaglia. Layout by Maja Larrson. ‘Slow Within The Urgency’ inspired by mindfulness teacher Jeff Warren. Original poem ‘Sans Papiers’ by Vicky Scrivener. Original poem ‘You Darkness’ by Rainer Maria Rilke. Music and lyrics to ‘Music Is The Healing Force of The Universe’ by Mary Maria Parks. LP printed on 100% recycled black vinyl.

Coming 8 years after Volume 2 and 23 years after the first installment, Volume 3 of Music And Words is the 4th solo release by Adam Bohman on Paradigm Discs. All 4 releases have focused on his earliest recordings, mostly from the 80s, mostly domestic and all using cassette recorders. There are 4 principle styles that are employed in this early phase of Adam’s work - most unexpectedly there are songs, often constructed with trumpet as the lead instrument, then more typically there are improvised experimental pieces using home made stringed instruments. Thirdly we have ‘pause pieces’ - consisting of rapid edit collages using found media (typically radio and bargain bin LPs), and the 4th element is Adam’s spoken word recordings. Anyone who has met Adam will have seen him recording his observations and thoughts onto a small tape recorder, documenting his way through life. In fact the Music And Words CD series is roughly 50% composed from these peripatetic ‘talking tapes’. On Music And Words 3 we hear him at the seaside in both Brighton and Clacton-On-Sea. Overall the CD ranges widely over these various styles, and bursts with ideas and humour. In addition to the 4 solo releases on Paradigm Discs there is also a compilation track plus his contribution as a member of Morphogenesis on 3 further CDs. I’m proud to say that Adam is by far the most represented artist on the label.

Night Flights is a groundbreaking work from one of the most influential of the first generation sound artists. For some reason this staggering work has been left out of print for over 20 years. Night Flights has been remastered and includes updated liner notes from Christina Kubisch. Night Flights is being released in conjunction with Kubisch's release of new work for Important Records titled, Audible/Inaudible: Five Electrical Walks. “The compositions for Night Flights were realized in Milano in the period between 1983 and 1986. Milan at that time was a vivid and experimental place, with many international (mostly American) guests performing like Robert Wilson, John Cage, Trisha Brown, The Living, Laurie Anderson, etc.. At that time we were a group of several musicians working loosely together, exchanging knowledge about custom made instruments, the latest electronic devices, rare records, and information about where to go and what to listen to. "The lack of digital information and internet was one of the reasons for frequent meetings and musical experiments. We were determined to be the avant garde in a classical world of virtuosity. Davide Mosconi, Raffaele Serra, Riccardo Sinigaglia and others included myself had small but, seen from today's point of view, very artistic and exotic looking studios with many strange, often non-European instruments and all kinds of keyboards, electronic drums and tape recorders. The official studios from the conservatory were not available for us but not interesting as well. We tried to make multichannel recordings and mixes by ourselves, we invented long tape loops going through the whole room, echo effects and reverb. We became specialists in cutting and manipulating tapes. "The so-called non-European musical tradition was a permanent source of inspiration. The meeting and performances with Roberto Laneri, overtone singer and Indian music specialist, opened up new horizons. For several years I worked as well for the record company Raretone and was responsible for the release of the recordings of Giaconto Scelsi. I spent wonderful long days at his home, full with conversations about art and music. Alvin Curran, who took care of Scelsi's tapes and archive, often came by. "There was a special fertile atmosphere in the early eighties in Milano. Somehow all these activities and the search for new sound worlds and techniques were a vital step on the way to what today is called sound art, though the term was not common then. Some characteristics of what is defined as soundscapes or sound environment are included in Night Flights: a special interest in sound colours, musical structure based on may layers of natural recordings and the intent to open up the listener's space even with the limited means of a vinyl recording.” ~ Christina Kubisch

"The second release is Shape Shifters by This Friendship Is Sailing...the tone is set by the playful, childlike sounds permeating "We hear you, we hear you". Several minutes into the mewling cacophony, Nicols launches into a story about hearing a baby cry during a visit to Sicily. Instead of trying to quiet the infant, the adults of the community took a position of solidarity with it, meeting its need to make noise with reassuring vocalisations of their own. In Nicols telling, this anecdote becomes a powerful affirmation of prelinguistic sonority. Although devoid of semantic content, a baby's cries are intensely communicative- an apt metaphor for Nicol's own improvisatory practice" - The Wire ---  Maggie Nicols / voice, piano, tap danceOdie JI Ghast / voiceSam Andreae /  homemade electronics + alto saxophoneDavid Birchall / electric guitar ---Recorded live at Cafe Oto, London on 25th August 2021 by Adam MatschulatMixed by Sam Andreae and edited by David BirchallCover and the other paintings by Mio EbisuBand photographs by Andrew BrooksDesign by David Birchall

Special bundle price for the two Decoy releases on OTOROKU - AC/DC (CD) + Spontaneous Combustion (2CD).

"Bassist Joëlle Léandre and pianist Elisabeth Harnik have only been playing together since 2016 but this debut CD – a recording from their third ever performance – reveals a duo who have already developed a highly simpatico and sophisticated approach to spontaneous composition that draws equally on elements of free improvisation and contemporary classical music. Rather than the waxing and waning 40 minute set that presently constitutes a lot of live recordings, there is an adroit attention to form in operation here, as the duo present half a dozen perfectly shaped and finely delineated miniatures, ranging from six to 11 minutes long. For much of the time, Léandre favours a high, tightly controlled arco full of fragile harmonic overtones that often sounds more like a cello than a double bass. When Harnik responds with pellucid splashes and rippling hazes, the two are capable of creating sustained moods of gentle wonder and delicacy. Léandre adds an element of enigma with her slightly off-mic vocalising: somewhat absent-minded, more overheard than performed, it´s ephemeral, transitory and soothing in its wordless calm, evoking the private musings of a washerwoman at work or a nursing mother cooing her love. One almost feels compelled to lean in and strain the ears, searching for fleeting meaning in her mysterious mutterings.Many of the pieces are so balanced and sensitively executed that they possess a kind of inevitability. Call it perfection if you prefer. By contrast, the more abstract and experimental gambits gleefully ride a puckish unpredictability: the scritch-scratch of agitated piano strings and polystyrene squeak slotting into Léandre´s multiphonic gossamer arco textures; dirge-like dabs of unhurried bass with arachnoid scuttlings in the body of the piano. But, even at its furthest extent, this music emanates a warmth, a patience and, yes, as the title suggests, a tenderness that´s rarely heard." - Ken Vandermark --- Elisabeth Harnik / piano Joëlle Léandre / double bass --- Mastered by Jean-Marc Foussat. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.

“ … an elongated and amorphous soundscape, fogged in reverb and scattered with unsettling percussive detritus. Issued by Faversham, Kent based label False Walls, the piece is a rumbling roam through dimly lit corridors that, over the course of 60 minutes, feels like being swallowed into the belly of reverberant catacombs. Around melodic xylophone-like percussion, [Kay] Logan establishes that this is high fantasy rather than realist terror, melodramatic synth cutting through ferric warble to create a hypnagogic, almost fairytale feel.”— Spenser Tomson, Wire magazine, on Music for Counterflows (July 2022)   “Quietly it fades in, making its origins almost imperceptible as it goes, but ratchets up the brain-throb drama in due course. Taking on information and context from its surroundings, you feel it could go in pretty much any direction next, and often it does. It’s been created in the service of something exciting and will improve your life, no questions asked.”— Noel Gardner, The Quietus, on Music for Counterflows  For the 2021 online edition of the Counterflows festival, Glasgow-based Kay Logan (aka Helena Celle) created the hour-long electronic Music for Counterflows, accompanied by an interview with Stewart Smith. For the CD and digital release, the music has been mastered by Stephan Mathieu, and the interview along with visual artwork by Kay are included in a 20 page booklet. Extracts from Stewart’s interview with Kay can be read here. The first Helena Celle album, If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst, was released on the Night School label in 2016. Since then, Kay has released work under an array of aliases, including Helena Celle’s Haunted Mirror, Helena Celle’s Mimetic Desire, Helena Celle’s Correspondence Table, Otherworld and Time Binding Ensemble. Kay’s Patreon supporters also receive regular transmissions from Helena Celle’s Observer Effect. Music and artwork by Helena CelleMastered by Stephan MathieuDesign by David CainesGatefold sleeve, with 20 page booklet

Omaggio a Giuseppe Ungaretti, the second Recital album of composer Loren Rush (b. 1935), contrasts the orchestral grandeur of last year’s LP Dans le Sable with plaintive just intonation piano improvisations. Loren Rush has been active in the Bay Area new music scene since the late 1950s alongside composers such as Terry Riley, Robert Erickson, and Pauline Oliveros, and also co-founded Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975. His music has been performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Though few of Rush’s compositions have been published, he has garnered deep respect from his peers and colleagues over the decades.
The album is directly inspired by poems from “L’allegria” (The Joy, 1914-1919), the collection of poetry by Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888, Egypt – 1970, Italy) written in the trenches of World War I. During these brutal years Ungaretti struggled to maintain his humanity by creating the most beautiful images he could imagine and by recalling experiences of his earlier life in Alexandria and Paris. By this, he both revolutionized Italian poetry and demonstrated that the creation of beauty is a most effective life preserver and political statement.  
 Veglia (Night Watch)An entire nightcast beside a comrademassacred,his snarling mouthturned to the full moon In my silenceI have written letters full of loveNever have I held so fast to life.Rush’s melancholy preludes are treated with The Enhanced Piano in Just Intonation, developed at Good Sound Foundation by the composer and Alfred Owens. The process electronically enhances and increases perceived resonance, sustaining, coloristic and expressive capabilities. Just intonation describes a system of tuning in which the greatest level of consonance and resonance is achieved by adjusting intervals to the whole-number ratios of the harmonic series, the natural mode of vibration. The suite concludes with the silken chamber piece Mattina (Morning), reflecting Ungaretti’s stark words, “I illumine me, with immensity.” The addition of violin and cello suspends the listener in a prolonged space of dread and beauty.

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."

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC LP version arrives in a gatefold LP. Both CD and LP include a written response to the record by Frances Morgan.  --- Tracklisting: Side A  1. Saenghwang for the milky boys - 06:10 2. Yanggeum for Trwyn Du, at Penmon - 7:41 Side B 3. Piri & Yanggeum for a flooded town - 8:35  4. Saenghwang for King's Palace tonight - 3:57  5. Yanggeum for snapped ankle - 6:05  Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions we’ve ever heard - the one off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter. Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter’s words. Together they unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It’s impossible not to follow, not to look for where they point. When the piri sounds for a flooded town on the B side, the water flows between your own feet; Potter’s words a sometimes frightening hörspiel in scouse.  Though the details are fine, the space each artist gives one another and their instruments, their language, is given to the listener in turn. A careful melody picks out a route for words with no fixed meaning, a body with no fixed direction, and we are invited to listen and see a kind of music made visible in its inference. A truly very special record we are very proud to share. --- Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter makes performance, text, drawing, installation and film, and often collaborates with musicians and sound artists to make audio for music festivals and radio. Across the wide range of their practice, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings. Roy’s interest in subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds, and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy’s work and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes wilful humour. Park Jiha creates exploratory music rooted in traditional Korean instrumental performance. To this session she brings three instruments: a Korean hammered dulcimer called a yanggeum, a saenghwang which is an instrument made of 24 slender bamboo pipes attached to a bowl and played like a harmonica and a double-reed bamboo flute called a piri, which sounds similar to an oboe. --- Park Jiha / yanggeum, saenghwang, piri Roy Claire Potter / voice --- Recorded and mixed on: 30 January 2020 by Rob Winter, Pete Smith and Andy Rushton at Maida Vale Studios, London for “Late Junction - Roy Claire Potter and Park Jiha in session”. Produced by Rebecca Gaskell, Katie Callin and Alannah Chance at Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 3. Originally broadcast on Friday 28th February 2020, apart from Track 4 which aired on Late Junction the 21st February 2020.  Mastered by Katie Tavini. Original artwork: “Three Boys” by Claire Cansick. Liner notes by Frances Morgan.

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC    Tracklisting: CD1 “Put the Brakes On” - 50:08 CD2 “Some Good News” -  56:43Double CD documenting the magic meeting of one of the all-time great rhythm sections in jazz: percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker, with London’s brilliant Black Top (Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas) and Elaine Mitchener. Across two sets the quintet are infectiously energetic and inspired, striding from synchronised heavy groove to star bright solos, whilst incorporating dub effects, guimbri and sumptuous blues piano playing.  Formed by Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas but always realised with an ever changing number of invited musicians, Black Top's blend of lo-fi samples, dub effects and experimental electronics has been daring free improvisation since 2011. Their virtuoso performances draw on their Afro-Caribbean roots with delicious spontienty and humour; the histories of Ridley Road Market, the LIO and Islamic West Africa are sounded out side by side on iPad, marimba and vibraphone. Having met in 2006, Black Top played with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake as part of their residency at Cafe OTO in 2016; forming a quartet grounded in transatlantic kinship but which looked outward to the Carribean, calypso music and Saharan gnawa rhythms. When Parker and Drake returned to OTO in 2019 Black Top reformed again, but this time with the brilliant addition of vocalist Elaine Mitchener.  Over the last few years the clarity with which Mitchener has explored vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde has been stunning, but here the range in her influences is manifest, moving effortlessly between phonetic and poetic experimentation and spoken word, all the while at ease with soul soaked jazz and dissonant free fall. A hand drum duet with Hamid Drake astonishes before being laced perfectly with cosmic theremin and Parker’s fantastic acid shehnai.  --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on Sunday 28th July 2019 by Paul Skinner and mixed and mastered by James Dunn. Photos by Dawid Laskowski and artwork by Oliver Pitt.

Discs: 1.) Blue Limelight - Featuring  Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez & Ensemble 2.) Child of Sound - Featuring Eri Yamamoto 3.) The Majesty Of Jah - Featuring Ellen Christie/Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson / William Parker 4.) Cheops - Featuring Kyoko Kitamura & Ensemble 5.) Harlem Speaks - Featuring Fay Victor / Hamid Drake / William Parker 6.) Mexico - Featuring Jean Carla  Rodea & Ensemble 7.) Afternoon Poem - Featuring Lisa Sokolov 8.) Lights in The Rain - Featuring Andrea Wolper & Ensemble 9.) The Fastest Train - Featuring William Parker / Coen Aalberts / Klaas Hekman 10.) Manzanar - Featuring Universal Tonality String Quartet10 Albums – 91 total tracks – 594 minutes (10 hours) of all new music created expressly for this collection. That William Parker is a bassist, composer and bandleader of extraordinary spirit and imaginative drive is common knowledge among any with an interest in the progressive jazz scene of the past 25 years or more. What’s become increasingly apparent, though, is Parker’s stature as a visionary of sound and song – an artist of melody and poetry who works beyond category, to use the Ellingtonian phrase. The latest multi-disc boxed set from Centering Records/AUM Fidelity devoted to Parker’s expansive creativity underscores his virtually peerless achievement in recent years. Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World (Volumes 1–10) is a 10-album collection of vocal and instrumental suites all recorded expressly for this set between late 2018 and early 2020, with women’s voices at its core. This is music as empathetic as it is intrepid, as philosophical as it is visceral, as resolutely modernist as it is attuned to tradition. Parker’s art not only draws from the deepest well of African-American culture; it breathes in inspiration from across the globe, with sounds drawn from Africa, Asia and Indonesia as well as Europe and the Americas; there is free improvisation and re-imagined sonic collage; there are album-length explorations of solo piano and solo voice, along with string ensembles and ancient wind instruments. There are dedications to jazz heroes, Native Americans and Mexican migrants, plus tributes to the great African-American culture of Harlem and the mix of passion and compassion Parker found in vintage Italian cinema. Migration of Silence Into and Out of The Tone World conjures a vast world of music and feeling, and its creation is a feat that ranks with that of the most ambitious talents in any genre.  --- MUSICIANS William Parker: compositions, bass & addt’l instruments Featuring: an international, inter-generational array of singers & musicians, drawn from both long-standing colleagues and a new generation of devoted artists. --- Composed, Arranged & Produced by William Parker for Centering Records, © Centering Music (BMI) Recorded, Mixed & Mastered by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios, Brooklyn, NY : November 2018 – February 2020 [ except THE MAJESTY OF JAH - click on 'lyrics' above, and as noted in booklet ] All text written by William Parker (except as noted in booklet) Artwork throughout this work by Jo Wood-Brown Box Set Production & design by AUM Fidelity

Remastered CD edition of Une éclipse totale de soleil, Ghédalia Tazartès' third LP, originally released in 1984. Far away from contemporary music intellectualisms and the works of synthetic noise purists, this album features a new form of musical expression and is certainly one of the most original and creative records of the '80s. The value of this work was at the time underestimated and only a few people had a chance to listen to this beautiful music. The record utilizes collage, Tazartès' unique vocals, trance-ethno backing splices, droning organ, and childish naiveté, in a spirit all its own. Originally conceived in two parts, Une éclipse totale de soleil is here supplemented with a 25-minute piece titled "Il regalo della befana" or "Une éclipse totale de soleil (Part III)," composed expressly for the original 1996 release of this CD edition. The original two parts are constructed from sung passages of Middle Eastern musics, drum machine noises, distorted signals, and the voices of small children. The newer third part takes some of the same sorts of cues but is more in keeping with turntablism or sampling culture, dipping into recordings recycled from pop culture. Tazartès' music compiles fragments from a wide variety of sources in a stunning, idiomatic fashion, still undiminished by the passage of time. --- Vocals, Music, Recording, Mixing: Ghédalia TazartèsVoices: Alain Rigout, Bruna Filippi, Daniel Kenisberg, Rafaël Glucksmann, Yumi Nara Released by: Alga Marghen

2001 release. The compact disc by Anton Bruhin issued by Alga Marghen is titled r o t o m o t o r and covers two different areas of the artist's research. The first one is represented by a group of works including the short and mysterious environmental recording "ORAX" as well as "Lange Tone," "VERSUCHPILZ 6," and "Paul Is 35," three excerpts from the epic "MC-10 zyklus" created between 1976 and 1977, recording various layers of sound sources on two cassette recorders with loudspeakers. T he complete zyklus consists of 12 different episodes (each one 10 minutes long) which investigate the multi-layer ping-pong recording technique; the spatial illusion of the monoaural replay which moves away from the listener's ears into the depth of space. Far away sounds coming from a cosmic dimension or from an abyssal space, moving fore and back. The loss of sound quality considered as stoned space improvement. The title-track is a 28 minute-long reading of one of Bruhin's major works. Rotomotor is a poetic Idiotikon of the Swiss-German dialect where, instead of the straight alphabetical order, the words are organized according to the similarities of their letters (each word differs from the previous one by just one letter). For this reading, a delay is repeated in the signal after 0.6 seconds and each word is superimposed into the echo of the preceding one. On one hand this echo generates the rhythm of the performance, on the other it supports the acoustic metamorphosis of the words. Again, a very simple concept perfectly accomplished. What results from the whole program is maybe difficult to describe, and maybe more easily perceivable in a state of alternate consciousness. But surely, it is a quite unique sense of acoustic approach; so no surprise to see him mentioned in the mythical Nurse With Wound reference list.

LP is out-of-printCD includes two short duo sets originally available as digital-only bonus tracks. Download available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC. This recording gathers all of the music from the final night of Otomo and Sachiko's first residency in 2009 which saw the pair joined by the long running trio of Evan Parker, John Edwards and Tony Marsh and special guest John Butcher. Butcher played duos with both Otomo and Sachiko and joined the quintet for a rousing sextet: stunning twin saxophone interplay, the unparalleled open-ness of the Marsh/Edwards rhythm pairing, Sachiko's deft high frequency interventions and Otomo's guitar at the centre - moving between abrasive textural invention and suggestive single note runs of ever-shifting melody. REVIEWS "As for indicating a place in the curiously sculpted bridges between improvised music and sound art, well, the simple singularity of these daring and committed performances should bear out their significance." Clifford Allen, Tiny Mix Tapes "This Quintet/Sextet album is recorded beautifully and it needed to be to capture all the nuance involved ... These are musicians at the top of their craft." Free Jazz Blog "...fresh and inspired. The recording stands as a finely-honed classic of classically approached free improvisation: the players dance and flow smoothly and effortlessly with and around the sounds of their partners." - Henry Kuntz Point of Departure Review

Anthony Braxton - reeds, compositionsTaylor Ho Bynum - brassDan Peck - tubaJacquline Kerrod - harpShelley Burgon - harpTomeka Reid - celloAdam Matlock - accordion, aerophonesJean Cook - violinStephanie Richards - trumpetIngrid Laubrock - saxophonesBrandee Younger - harpMiriam Overlach - harpComes in Blu-ray sized Gatefold Digipack with 16-page booklet featuring liner notes by Anthony Braxton and score excerpts. Early in his career, Anthony Braxton established a foundational taxonomy of musical concepts and gestural categories for improvisers and performers to use in the interpretation of his music - what Braxton calls Language Music. You can hear his first rigorous exploration of many of these on his celebrated 1969 record For Alto. There are only twelve basic varieties to his Language Music: long sound, accented long sound, trills, staccato formings, intervallic formings, and so on. An association with a particular variety of one of the Language Musics is a defining aspect of any of his individual works.Braxton has also developed a series of compositional modalities: different ways of imagining and structuring how a musician, or musicians, may participate in a given piece. Since 1995, he has been primarily concerned with his Holistic Modeling Musics. Each is associated with one of the Language Musics: Ghost Trance Music (long sound), Falling River Music (accented long sounds), Diamond Curtain Wall Music (trills or ornamentation), Echo Echo Mirror House Music (multiphonics), and Pine Top Aerial Music (short attacks).Firehouse 12 Records is pleased to release the latest iteration of Braxton's musical system, called ZIM Music, which is derived from language number 11: gradient logics. Gradient logics pertain to aspects of music that continually change, faster and faster, slower and slower, brighter and brighter, darker and darker. 12 Comp (ZIM) 2017 documents 12 performances over the course of two years, showcasing the development of ZIM music as the compositions and ensemble adapted to new musical situations.The very first ZIM Music composition was in fact presented to the quartet with Nels Cline, Greg Saunier, and Taylor Ho Bynum documented on Quartet (New Haven) 2014. During that session it was used only sparingly, and later became the first of four ZIM compositions (398 - 401) to be recorded during a residency at the University of Alabama in the summer of 2015.While the first four ZIM compositions were short, linear, single-lined and mostly graphic, Composition No. 402 was scored for a quintet of reeds, brass, tuba, and two harps. Combining traditionally notated sections with sections of individual and tutti graphic notation, Composition No. 402 was premiered in Poland in November 2015, and appears on this Blu-ray as the opening track, recorded live at Wake Forest University in March 2017. At the Big Ears Festival in 2016, Braxton debuted Composition Nos. 403 & 404 which are primarily non-linear graphic compositions.After the Wake Forest performance of Composition No. 402, the recordings in this set move through Composition Nos. 408 through 420. Recorded in a variety of contexts, these compositions maintain the gradient logics of dynamic and timbre change, but infuse gradients into the notated material itself. He dubs this computer-aided notation "extraction notation": the musicians are given technically impossible music and are expected to "extract" a performance from the notation as part of their improvisational process. This resulting transformation, from notated to performed is in itself a gradient process.The stellar core ensemble of Taylor Ho Bynum, Dan Peck, Jacquline Kerrod, and Shelley Burgon is augmented and altered with roster of star emerging musicians, including Tomeka Reid, Adam Matlock, Jean Cook, Stephanie Richards, Ingrid Laubrock, Brandee Younger, and Miriam Overlach.12 COMP (ZIM) 2017 is available as a single disc Blu-ray, as well as high-resolution digital files through Firehouse 12 Records' Bandcamp page and the usual streaming and download outlets. "For a project of this scope, more than 11 hours or music, Blu-ray was the obvious release format for us. To make each performance available in the native high-sample rate and also to issue immersive surround mixes of the incredible soundscapes generated by this ensemble, there was really no other option" says Firehouse 12 Records co-founder and chief engineer Nick Lloyd. "We were lucky to be able not only to record a number of the pieces on this release at Firehouse 12, but also to make location recordings in North Carolina and Montreal of ZIM in its natural habitat - in front of a live audience!!"

Since his 2006 debut under the L'Ocelle Mare moniker, Bonvalet has gradually moved away from traditional notions of composition and diverted his attention purely to the textural and timbral quality of sound. His tenure playing guitar in various bands - notably Cheval De Frise and Powerdove - provides the experience needed to isolate his instruments, zeroing-in on the gestures of performance - plucks, strums, vibrations - using them to assemble component parts that are essentially free by design.  Flute, piano, strings and various percussive instruments collide with all manner of effects and assorted sound objects like a telephone, metronome - even masking tape, each recorded and assembled through a no-method process that rejects traditional notions of composition. But while the assembly is for all intents and purposes dispassionate - just take a look at the track names - the resulting recordings are a marvel, gradually building into individual mood pieces that betray a buried instinct for harmony.  Take 'Guitare Classique, Métronome, Tambourins…’ as an example - Spanish guitar, pitch bent, a frenzied metronome, an arpeggio, something rattles - a non-linear, complex rendition, a miracle of sound that lands like the most inspirational film music you’ll have heard in years. Or on 'Piano, Banjo, Orgue, Métronome' - a more angular, interesting take on the sort of thing Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto have tried over a number of collaborative albums - a 3 minute recital punctuated by increasingly agitated piano notes, all moving key changes and brittle strings.  Through its curious construction, 'Sans Chemin’ (literally, ‘without path’) feels to highlight the way our instinctive interaction with harmony, beauty, and dissonance can quickly ignite or extinguish heightened feelings without easy explanation. Perhaps all the pieces here were really made without direction - an aimless meander through sound - or maybe there’s something significantly more intricate and complicated at play. Either way, the result is the same; a richly textured and evocative, often startling transition from chaos and into the sublime, mirroring our own complex existential topographies. --- CREDITS Music : Thomas Bonvalet Recording : Manuel Duval and Pierre-Henri Thiébaut* Mastering : Manuel Duval Photography : Thomas Bonvalet Design : Bartolomé Sanson --- Shelter Press, Murailles Music, 2021

Pug Life worked on L`Annee Perrotique during the time of Covid-19 pandemic. The tracks were recorded separately in accordance with the social distancing protocol. Having lost the opportunity of playing together, it was no longer an option to improvise in real-time. This led to introducing compositional elements, new to our joint venture, which has now been on-going for roughly ten years. In result, this is Pug Life. --- Taneli Viitahuhta / amplified alto sax, baritone sax, flutephone, mouth harp and cymbal, loop and effect pedals Lauri Hyvärinen / electric guitar, fuzz box, laptop Ilia Belorukov / mixing and mastering Niilo Viitahuhta / design --- Edition of 100