Recorded at night by candlelight in the Temple of La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, Music for Intersecting Planes captures the immediacy of sound in space. Cellist Leila Bordreuil and organist Kali Malone join in a work of austere, ritualistic presence, where the granularity of air, the vibration of strings, feedback, and subdued sine waves intersect in sculptural form.Minimal in means yet expansive in effect, the music slowly unfolds like beads on a thread, punctuated by silence and deep breaths. Bellows whistle within feathered string harmonics, interference patterns pulsate throughout the chapel, and the environment itself becomes part of the composition, with ringing church bells and motorcycles passing in the distance.Performed live in single takes, the music balances patience and intensity, composure and chance. The collaboration reveals new terrain: more tonal and composed than Bordreuil’s work, more textural and raw than Malone’s.Music for Intersecting Planes is both severe and tender, an elemental convergence of cello and organ that resonates with the timeless intrigue of acoustic phenomena.Released by Ideologic Organ in collaboration with La Becque Editions.
Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone – Music for Intersecting Planes
2023 repress of the OTOROKU re-issue of the legendary English free improvisation LP 'The Topography of The Lungs' by Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Han Bennink. This was Evan Parker’s first recording as a "leader" and was the first release on Incus, the label Parker founded with guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Tony Oxley. This re-issue has been produced from an original vinyl pressing from Evan's archives - carefully transcribed and restored by Andreas [LUPO] Lubich at Calyx in Berlin and features the original liner notes from Parker along with updated notes penned in 2014. "To talk further of the music we play is difficult. It’s criteria for success exist, but are elusive and indefinable beyond the intuitive level. We operate without rules (pre-composed material) or well-defined code of behaviour (fixed tempi, tonalities, serial structures etc.), and yet are able to distinguish success from failure." - From Evan Parker’s original liner notes (1970) This pressing of The Topography of The Lungs comes in a limited edition of 500 copies.
Evan Parker / Derek Bailey / Han Bennink – The Topography of the Lungs
Maple's third full-lenth outing and the first offering on Drag City. Produced by Michael Gira of The Swans. This is their unique take on Rock n' Roll High School.
U.S. Maple – Talker
Rock. It's still angular, rubbery and twitchy, but this fifth full-length contains their most straight-up Rock 'n Roll since their debut.
U.S. Maple – Purple On Time
pre-order, arriving late december / early jan Amazing duo perfromance by Hamid Drake and Piano, recorded at the Shenzhen Jazz Festival in China, during late Cotober of 2019, issued by the always amazing Shenzhen based imprint Old Heaven. Hamid Drake - 鼓 Drums / 打击乐 Percussion / 框鼓 Frame Drum / 人声 Vocals Pat Thomas - 钢琴 Piano 录制于第九届 OCT-LOFT 国际爵士音乐节,深圳 B10 现场,2019 年 10 月 20 日 Recorded at the 9th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival, B10 Live, Shenzhen, October 20th, 2019
Hamid Drake & Pat Thomas – A Mountain Sees a Mountain
Music in Continuous Motion, Bill Orcutt’s latest entry in his 21st-century repertoire of quartet guitar music, pointedly steps away from the cut-and-paste constructivism of Music for Four Guitars into a sonic stratum that's yearningly melodic, resolutely human, and built for performance. Conceived for a 2026 NYC concert, Music in Continuous Motion shares the concision of its predecessor -- but rather than the discrete, mechanistic precision of Music for Four Guitars, the tracks on Music in Continuous Motion unify — each song weaving four gleaming threads into the warp and weft of an evolving, complex texture that employs simple, repeating motifs to build new melodies from counterpoint itself. It accomplishes this in the most efficient manner possible: most of these 12 tracks hover around two-and-a-half minutes, each iterating first the substrate, then the melody and its variations, then slamming shut like a clockwork music box.Based on previous recorded evidence, Orcutt is fond of boundary conditions for his studio guitar records. Much of the time, his launchpad is obvious (The Four Louies, How to Rescue Things); with others, it’s intentionally obscured. When recruiting me to write about each release, he might send me a clue (“This is a bridge pickup record more than a neck pickup record,” Orcutt helpfully offered for Music for Four Guitars). Although any given dispatch is a potential red herring, up until now, each has implied an Oulipian conceit (however obtuse) that at least somewhat determines the outcome. Thus, I was a bit surprised by his statement on Music in Continuous Motion -- “The mystery of how [the] same person, same process, same gear produces different results." When pressed, he elaborated that the record features “no triplets,” something I’ve yet to count out to determine for myself.Whatever overarching form the recording process may have mapped out, the path of the finished album is explicitly poetic. Echoing its predecessor, the song titles, read in sequence, paint fleetingly-glimpsed forms -- but in contrast to the distant shapes described in Music For Four Guitars, the present narrative spotlights the dance of polygons momentarily grasped (and then lost) as they spin through space: “Because sharp also smooth,” “And warm to the touch,” “Now nearly gone,” “Yet always moving,” “Impossible to reach.” Ultimately, the key difference between the albums (and what places Music in Continuous Motion in the realm of poetry) is its celebration of movement over immutability, of melody over form, of music as a hot wire to the heart rather than another upped ante in an arms race of inscrutability. — TOM CARTER
Bill Orcutt – Music in Continuous Motion
As Bill Orcutt’s most mature and exhilarating LP to date, Music for Four Guitars was a slab of undeniable Apollonian beauty. Its approachability and obvious novelty landed it not only on the year- end lists of every key-pushing codger in the underground in 2022, but also on NPR in the form of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, an ensemble assembled to perform this music and featuring Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish. But while their Tiny Desk Concert gave a whiff of the quartet’s easy intimacy, the sterile confines of the virtual recital medium still left a puzzle unsolved: how might these brutally mannered bricks of minimalist counterpoint sound on a stage in front of actual breathing bodies?This was the question foremost in my mind when I first saw the quartet in San Francisco a few months before this double live LP was recorded. I was already familiar with the prowess of Eisenberg and Mendoza, two of the most technically intimidating shredders to blast out of the noise/improv underground, and knew Parish as the mastermind behind the epic translation of Orcutt's quartet recordings into a fully notated score. I was ready to be “blown away" — and I most assuredly was. The quartet navigated Orcutt's jaggedly spiraling right angles into the shining core of the compositions with joyous ease, faithful to the originals in nearly every way (though their tempos were slightly ramped up, Blakey style, to communicate their breathless rush). The renditions were flawless, stellar and inspiring. I had expected nothing less.Which leads us to this album, Four Guitars Live, recorded in November of 2023 at Le Guess Who? festival during the quartet’s first European tour. The true essence of this set is not simply in its faithfulness to the source compositions, but in the group's easy familiarity (no doubt the result of weeks on the road) and the generosity of their improvisations, both collective and solo. Orcutt, clearly cognizant of both the caliber of his collaborators and the singularity of their voices, has given everyone room to stretch out, and all have delivered some of their most moving passages to date.One of this record's great thrills for me is imagining a listener, perhaps unfamiliar with the outer limits of contemporary guitar improvisation (or the Tzadik catalog), slammed into catatonia by Mendoza's liquefying lines on Out of the corner of the eye, then revived and healed by the languid, breathy lines of Parish's unaccompanied, spaced-out breakdown of the track's main theme, finally only to be crushed by Eisenberg’s staggering extended solo on Only at dusk (somehow channeling both Eugene Chadbourne and Buck Dharma).There's another peak, which begins at the end of side B, in Orcutt's own languid solo, encapsulating the flowing focus of his recent solo LPs, and serving as an introduction to the next side's ensemble tour de force, the psychic heart of the album, On the horizon: its melodic core passing first to Orcutt, launching into a sublime solo turn by Eisenberg, a duo of Parish and Mendoza, before parachuting back into the ensemble for a smashup rendition of Barely visible and Glimpsed while driving (renamed Barely driving) knitted together with an softly bubbling ensemble improvisation. The transfer is orchestrated yet seamless, its tonal form undeniable even in the presence of obvious dissonance.The breadth of Four Guitars Live gives lie to the false notion that agile, polytonal improv is necessarily without soul, is necessarily inaccessible. Rather, Four Guitars posits a human avant-garde music that the most conservative will recognize as virtuosic and revel in its classic intervals, boiling counterpoint, and precisely- layered facets. Even the rockers in your life might dig it, so why not pass it on?" — TOM CARTER
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet – Four Guitars Live
stunning new solo Orcutt recorded live at Oto Another Perfect Day is Bill Orcutt's first solo electric guitar record since 2017’s eponymous Bill Orcutt. While that eight-year gap might not seem like a ton of time on the cosmic scale, it nonetheless represents a busy half-decade plus for Orcutt projects: a raft of improv collaborations, an acclaimed run of chopped and looped albums on Fake Estates, and the collision of Orcutt's computer and guitar music on Music For Four Guitars and last year's How to Rescue Things, both on Palilalia. The undeniable alchemy of those latter mashups inspired not only a wider appreciation of Orcutt-as-composer, but also the resurrection of Orcutt-as-bandleader, as the Bill Orcutt Quartet hit the road in support of Four Guitars, Orcutt's first work with a proper score (courtesy of Shane Parish). All of the above makes 2025 the perfect year to reacquaint ourselves with Orcutt-as-solo-performer, wielding his trademark four-string rather than a mouse, running the neck rather than shuffling waveforms, blasting through Cafe Oto's tattered Fender Twin (the cover model for the aforementioned How to Rescue Things) rather than a pair of ancient NS-10s. Indeed, this 2023 performance at Oto, East London's finest music establishment, boomerangs back into the slashing chords and frenzied double-picking of the Harry Pussy years, tossing the gentler melodic glow of the last few solo records into the dustbin. In other words, this may be Orcutt's most overtly punk-rockist record since Gerty Loves Pussy, his first solo electric LP from a decade ago. It's an affirmation that Orcutt is above all a lead player -- angular runs scaling the heavens, ricocheting back to ground zero before climbing again. Orcutt builds tension with short phrases, repeated with slight variability until it seems like they’ll never stop, finally slamming into a fresh line like the dawning valley at the crest of the mountain pass. Another Perfect Day is, ultimately, something of a solo guitar Nouveau Roman, an exhilarating run through melodic reiteration, impossible crescendos (check out those ecstatic crowd hoots on "For the Drainers") breaking into — a moment rarely found on an Orcutt record — soft, whisper-quiet tracer notes at the end of "A Natural Death." Another Perfect Day returns Orcutt to the immediacy of his earliest records while maintaining the melodic complexity, phrasing, and flow of a player, who's been going, what — four-plus decades now? And when he taps his roots, it's a reminder of exactly what was so exciting about Orcutt's playing in the first place. — TOM CARTER
BILL ORCUTT – Another Perfect Day
At long last, Rafael Toral delivers 'Travelling Light', his stunning, wildly anticated follow-up to 2024's critally acclaimed ‘Spectral Evolution’, via Drag City. Sprawling across beautifullay produced double LP and CD editions — complete with liner notes by Oto’s own Bradford Bailey — encountering the Portuguese, experimental journeyman embarking into the some of the most ambitious territory of his career, 'Travelling Light' is one of those rare wonders that unfolds over time and has to be heard to believed.
Rafael Toral – Traveling Light
For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support. Kicking off a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: Solo Guitar Volume 1, a reissue of Derek Bailey's Solo Guitar release on Incus in 1971, with additional tracks included on previous reissues and a performance at York University in 1972. Recorded in 1971, this was Bailey's first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years -- Incus 2 and 2R -- with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey's performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars, and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972, a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It's a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence, and wit. As throughout the series, the recordings are newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, remastered by Rashad Becker, and available for download exclusively here. --- Derek Bailey / guitar, synthesizer — Tracks 1-13 recorded by Bob Woolford and Hugh Davies. Photographs by Roberto Masotti. Mastered by Rashad Becker.
Derek Bailey – Solo Guitar Volume 1
“Dec. 2015: I received an invitation from Old Heaven to participate with FaUSt to the 3rd edition of “Tomorrow Festival” at B10 Live, Shenzhen, China! A few months later, May 2016, we were on our way to the most exciting concert experience. A loooong flight-haul and then, such a warm welcome, such a perfect organization… the most charming, dedicated, competent crew around us… the largest cement mixer I ever used on stage, and an audience so vibrant, so focused. I was and still am in memory, overwhelmed by the endless energy of all the people I met: technicians, promoters, music fans, the so-creative Knitting Ladies, my old-time friend Keiji Haino, and my comrade Maxime. The music we created together had been accurately recorded. As Old Heaven proposed to release this concert, I immediately was enthused by the idea. Even more so when I heard the perfect mix of Liu Ying. Two tracks were beautifully post-produced, edited and mixed by Amaury Cambuzat. I loved the B10 Live performance and place it in my top ten FaUSt concerts ever and I love this album, I do. ” —— JHP / art-Errorist --- Recorded at the 3rd Tomorrow Festival on May 14, 2016. B10 Live, Shenzhen, China. Published by Old Heaven Books & B10 Live, Shenzhen 2022. Tomorrow Festival Series OH 036 录音 Recording:曾君 Zeng Jun;罗绿野 Luo Lvye混音 Mixing & 母带处理 Mastering:刘英 Liu Ying编辑 Editing & 混音 Mixing:Amaury Cambuzat(track 06/C2 & 08/D1)制作人 Producer:涂飞 Tu Fei统筹 Coordinators:李书琴 P.G,尹思卜 Yin Sibo设计 Design:Nino摄影 Photography:艾飞 Effy,大米,惠子@DAFA,肖蔚鸿 Xiao Weihong,子弹,左氏文化特别鸣谢 Special Thanks:黄可 Huang Ke,李秭林 Li Zilin,邹佳伟 Zou Jiawei Jean-Hervé Péron - 人声 Vocals / 贝斯 Bass / 原声吉他 Acoustic Guitars / 小号 Trumpet / 水泥搅拌机 Cement MixerWerner “Zappi” Diermaier - 鼓 Drums 特邀嘉宾 Very Special Guests:Maxime Manac’h - 键盘 Keyboards / 吉他 Guitar/ 煤气罐 Gas Cylinder / 手摇风琴 Hurdy-Gurdy灰野敬二 Keiji Haino - 人声 Vocals / 电吉他 Electric Guitars / 电子设备 Electronics魏籽 Wei Zi, Tina, 郦亭亭 Li Tingting - 针织行为表演 Knitting PerformanceB10 Live, Shenzhen, China!
FaUSt, feat. 灰野敬二 Keiji Haino – 这条路是正确的 This Is the Right Path
Bayawan:The Call of the Wild and Free "Bayawan" is the common name for Muqam music used by the Dolan people. Bayawan, or Dolan Muqam, is a unique form of folk music and one of the most important cultural heritages of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. Generally speaking, Muqam is a form of large-scale suites which include songs, dances, and instrumental sections, in which the development of music often features a significant degree of improvisation. The Muqam of the Uyghurs is characterized by its diversity of musical styles. Apart from the classical Twelve Muqam, there are also multiple folk Muqam traditions with distinct regional characteristics, including Kumul Maqam, Turpan Muqam, Dolan Muqam, and Ili Muqam. Among them, Dolan Muqam is often considered as the wildest, if not the uncanniest tradition that still exists. "Dolan" is the name of a people, typically considered as an ethnic sub-group of the Uyghurs, who historically inhabits the banks of the Yarkand and Tarim rivers on the northwest edge of the Tarim Basin. Dolan Muqam has been circulating by and large in the Dolan region—which now mainly includes Makit County and Maralbexi County in Kashgar Prefecture, and Awat County in Aksu Prefecture—and its influence has also reached places such as Kargilik, Poskam, Kuqa, Korla, Turpan, and Kumul. The Dolan people refers to the Muqam music they play as "Bayawan", which literally means "the desert and the wildland". Bayawan, in their common language, is not something to be sung, but rather to be "shouted out". It is said that there were originally twelve sets of Dolan Muqam, three of which have now been lost. Each set of Dolan Muqam is approximately six to nine minutes in length. The remaining nine sets last about one and a half hours in total. Dolan Muqam is marked by its simple, unadorned instrumentation, strong and intense grooves, and a distinctively hoarse, air-rending style of singing. The lyrics draw from folk songs and oral poetry, maintaining an overall sense of rugged raw beauty. A unique and rare cultural treasure worldwide. In May 2023, the Mekit Dolan Muqam Group performed at the 7th Tomorrow Festival in Shenzhen. Taking this chance, we invited the artists to a session at Liu Ying Studio, which gave birth to this one-of-a-kind record. This was our great good fortune. We wish these magnificent sounds and voices travel far and reach more ears.
麦盖提刀郎木卡姆乐队 Mekit Dolan Muqam Group – 巴亚宛 Bayawan
First ever reissue of OFAMFA by CHILDREN OF THE SUN, a legendary and virtually unobtainable artifact of St. Louis' Black Artist Group from 1971 Original released in 1971 by the BAG groups own label “Universal Justice Records” this album has for years been an impossible to find/listen to album, and this is its first reissue ever .. Ofamfa by The Children Of The Sun, a band lead by poet/musicien Ajule/aka Bruce Rutlin Is a heady mix of poetry/jazz/political songs/ and a document of a comunity avent. The BAG group being about all the arts theater and dance. The original liner notes by Ajule are great Insight in to the creative/vibrant politically aware jazz scene of St Louise in the late 60s early 70s. This album is an important piece of black American history, and even as a visual artifact it is the thing! “All of the brothers playing and writing on this record are members of the Black Artist Group (BAG) which is based in St. Louis, "Misery." The Black Artist Group, a loose association of young Black men & women, is a potent/fertile creative force; a group which has contributed strong/fresh/inspirational creativity in the fields of Music/Writing/Dance/Drama. The Children of the Sun is one of the units operating under the BAG umbrella; others are or have been, The Oliver Lake/BAG, The 'BAG' Ensemble (Big Band), Red Black & Green Solidarity Unit, Onawali Dancers, Malinque Rhythm Tribe, BAG Drama Dept., Great Black Music Orchestra of St. Louis, Fire-Earth-Air-Water, Me We & Them, Julius Hemphill Quartet and some others.......all different creative approaches and reflecting a sum of influences and wisdoms which ranges across 500 years from here to Africa.......During their brief creative association the COS etched themselves into many hearts and minds. The group was together for little more than a year. Playing college concerts (when $ lucky), playing benefits for all kinds of groups of Black people and progressive whites. "A spiritual oasis in the baren desert of Amerika..." They would say, sometimes...... The conceptions reflect experiments which sought to establish a balance/harmony between the mediums of muse/ic and the spoken/sung word, (often the motions of dancers added still another depth) a balance which would catch the pulse and flame of the will of our people even tho they and we had already condemned the english language as the criminal insignia of the privileged class/es. (...Still, english wuz the only language we had in common so it was a dilema of how to reinspire the language). But because the members had to spend a majority of their time food getting their experiments and investigations were abandoned short of their goal which was/is to find a way to restablish the natural harmony of the Spiritual World; which has been upset and polluted to the same extent as our physical world: SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY?? Unfortunately, as it was, the experiments had to be cut short just as the techniques of communication were being perfected. Cut short by a manifestation of whut George Jackson called "over oppression." These young Black men look, walk, talk, eat, love, trip like us all but (unlike most) life is incalcuably more important to them than property values, hot dogs, cadillacs, or even "civilization;" if u can dig where i'm comin from! Their compassion for the Black, the poor, and the disadvantaged in general is reflected by the staggering numbers of free concerts they give/have given or the free classes they offer at BAG in the 4 major disciplines. And by the fact that they seek to maintain their comittment to life and creativity even as they exist at or near the starvation level. So these young Black men are emissaries of the Spiritual Universe....... the lost/abandoned universe they seek to describe in their creativity. "The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe."* All these things are being said ...... u see ...... in an attempt to distinguish them favorably from their contemporaries in the Kapitalist "superstars"/entertainers/puppets who frolic like gelded puppies across the stages/footlights of the nation; at the end of the silver gaudy chains held by the bloody hands of the richest pale faces and their legions of sattelites and lackeys; who do come in all colors and races. This expression was recorded (by BAG) at various concerts and all of it was recorded "live"/accomplished in one taping. Other than regular microphones no electronic devices shaped this creativity (BLACK). we are new yes we are old before and after the mighty winds of change and revolution The "Black Artist Group" wuz there yes we are the shambles, ruined tones of ancient memories and the sound of running waters, singing leaves flirting the silly air and yes sunlight splashed against dark wrinkled faces sighed winds driving the seasons the gifted moans of cherished lovers yes yes yes serene faces of beautiful children Ours..........” *John Coltrane - Ajulé credits released June 3, 2024 The Muse/icians on the album are…. Rashu Aten / conga, small instruments Oliver Lake / soprano &Alto; sax, flute, poems, small instruments Floyd LeFlore/ trumpet, small instruments Ishac Rajab/ Trumpet Arzinia Richardson/ bass, small instruments Vincent Terrell / cello Charles “bobo” Shaw / drums, small instruments Ajule / poetry, arrangements, small instruments, drums
Children Of The Sun – Ofamfa
The second LP compendium of Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru’s early solo piano works, recorded throughout the 1960s – finally available again. Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear! These original compositions, performed by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru herself on solo piano, were originally self-released in Germany in small editions as fundraisers for orphanages, support organizations for widows of war victims, and other philanthropic causes. We are humbled and proud to present this album in collaboration with the EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM MUSIC PUBLISHER and Foundation, and to assist in continuing her life-long mission of using music as a vessel to care for those who have been abandoned by society, or harmed by strife. Black vinyl LP comes in black inner-sleeves and heavy cardstock jacket with color printing and gold-foil stamping, and song notes by the composer herself. Restored and remastered by Timothy Stollenwerk.
Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru – Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guèbru
On Fathom, we hear the sound of the world mirrored back to us. An improvisational collaboration from legendary British multi-instrumentalist John Butcher, Pat Thomas on piano, Dominic Lash on Double Bass, and Steve Noble on Drums, the four artists play generously together. Fathom is an impressive work of avant-garde jazz that’s reminiscent of the non-musical world: squeaky wheels, growing tension, a babbling brook, all winding into lush harmonies. This marks Butcher’s debut for 577 Records.
John Butcher, Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash, Steve Noble – Fathom