Jack Symonds is a composer, conductor, pianist & the Artistic Director of Sydney Chamber Opera. SCO is a resident company at Carriagworks, Australia’s answer to The Park Avenue Amoury. His productions are always daring, both musically & theatrically. They tend to garner 5-star reviews and affronted walkouts in equal measure. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music, London & the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he received the university medal. He has written pieces for Jane Sheldon (John Zorn Band) & New York’s JACK Quartet & staged almost 20 modern opera productions included 3 of his own - Nunc Dimittis (2011), Climbing Toward Midnight (2013) & Notes from Underground (2011 & rewritten in 2016 for Carriageworks). Jack has conducted works by Pascal Dusapin, Fausto Romitelli, George Benjamin & Gyorgy Kurtág. He has been involved in the Sydney Festival, Sydney Biennale, Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music & Resonant Bodies Festival. Jack on the pieces - The pieces on this album reflect my obsession with miniaturisation & love of song. They are all related by a desire to cannibalise - in the most loving way - vocal works I find endlessly fascinating from composers as diverse as Schubert & Sciarrino. Song Cycle, the earliest work here is modelled on the proportions of the songs that its various movements reflect. At the time I wanted to find a rigorous way of making a very personal ‘history of art song’ coexist across purely instrumental movements of extremely diverse expression, without pastiche or sarcastic deconstruction. It has been an ongoing preoccupation of mine to filter a kind of Romanticism through what I believe to be a still-living tradition, & Song Cycle showed me the way to find hundreds of points of connection along the complex continuum of harmonic history. This is equally true of Ein Fremder in fremden Land - another suite-like piece but here a portrait of a single composer who I shockingly omitted from Song Cycle due to received ignorance - Zemlinsky. I find enormous personal resonances with the way he viewed the world & the music around him. The two smaller violin works perhaps betray my immersion in Kurtág as I was preparing to perform his life-changing song cycle …pas à pas- nulle parte… Dealing with his music for an extended period applied a harsh mirror to any extraneous development or gesture & I felt a healthy compression of my own ideas take place. These pieces’ focus on warped classical processes gave me a platform to apply the same to actual song: the Rilke Lieder give literal & metaphorical voice to the whole gamut of my preoccupations, all in the smallest possible space. 01 - 06 Still the Light Burns (10’) 07 - 11 Ein Fremder in fremden Land (20’) 12 - 19 Two Rilke Lieder (8’) 20 - 28 Song Cycle (33’) 29 - 33 Five Postscripts (5’)

Bud Petal is the stage name of musician Eran Asoulin. His music has been described as ‘cerebral art-folk’ & ‘the music Lord Byron would be making had he lived in the 21st century’. Bud is a true outsider, a freak-folk wunderkind who has been compared to Syd Barret & Daniel Johnston. But don’t for a minute think him primitive or naive - Bud is worldly & word-wise beyond his years. He was ‘discovered’ when his self-produced first album was pulled from the trash at a local radio station. A self-taught musician from The Levant, he spent his teenage years immersed in the bohemian/DIY art scene of Newtown, Sydney. His music collides Mediterranean 70s/80s folk pop (Lucio Battisti, Nada Malanima, Aviv Geffen), the Middle Eastern/Arabic music of his childhood (Marcel Khalife, Oum Khaltoum) & from the West: early Joan Baez & elements of free jazz. His voice is a glorious, effortful glissading din with stuttering vibrato. Lyrically you’ll find an oddly surreal, socialist-utopian world with strands of Emile Zola, A. B. Yehoshua, Yaakov Shavtai, Andre Breton, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn & Stephen J. Gould. The making of Fabric Cordial was a two year adventure. Written in small German towns, cities of The Levant & the inner west of Sydney. It sees Bud Petal create an idiosyncratic world of sounds & stories. Folk songs dressed in screeching sax, free-form guitars, makeshift choirs, droning e-bows & Bud’s mesmerising voice.

The Topography of Ascending Frameworks marks the final instalment of the Constructions Trilogy; a longform conceptual recording project that explored a large scale idea-based framework to guide improvised composition. The trilogy began in 2011 with The Geography of Collapsing Structures, a study of deconstructive forces as applied to composition. In 2012, Cycle~ 440 recorded The Cartography of Shifting Planes, an exploration of the musical potential of the line and of constant variation through minimal gestures. Finally, 2015's The Topography of Ascending Frameworks explores the power of growth, utilising musical structures characterised by excessive development & departure. The Topography of Ascending Frameworks boasts a strikingly scientific title, but it is by no means a cold or clinical listen. It ticks forward with quiet, sanguine momentum, bubbles under its still surface, surges with warped strands of noise pitted against contemplative piano chords & seethes with ominous drones & unsettling oscillations. Every moment exudes a unique blend of granular detail & zoomed-out expansiveness. - Lyndon Blue

A Hiss of Light is the first recording made by sound artists Alanas Gurinas and Sholto Dobie. Both artists work with acoustic sound sculptures and self-made instruments made with everyday materials. In the case of Gurinas, vibrating and taught paper objects emit pulsing sine tones, organic chirps and shimmering noise that drift like weather fronts whilst in Dobie’s work, air is the main material, compressed and channeled through a set of valves, tubes and timers, into pipes of various origins. In these pieces, assembled and recorded in Dobie’s studio in Vilnius, Lithuania their sonic world's combine, and fold into an embrace with each other. Forming invisible landscapes and channels, in which the listener, with an ear to the ground, moves through.

A beautiful edition of only 150 glass mastered CDs in a clear poly sleeve with hand stamped cover and a 22 page full color booklet featuring photos, drawings, and text by Laura Steenberge, with additional text by Michael Winter, Rebecca Lane, and Catherine Lamb. "In medieval chant, music seems to have come from elsewhere. It is the angels that are singing, they said, like gourds hung up for purple martins. By the time notation started coming around, hundreds of chants were already hundreds of years old. New chants followed in their footsteps, trying to seem unwritten. In some monasteries, the monks sang for six hours a day. Through the daily toil of reenacting eternity, subtler shapes become audible. Sometimes the angels show up when the consonants are taken away, or some other change is made that renders the language unintelligible. Swedenborg said there are some angels who speak with U and O and other angels that speak with E and I, but that in the center, inmost heaven, language is made of patterns of numbers. The labor required to hear the angels is mundane and physical. Singing for hours a day sounds idyllic but also laborious. Singing for so long in such reverberant spaces, I wonder about the complexity of harmonics, combination tones or whatever other sonic artifacts that the monastic singers gained sensitivity to. In this collection there is a piece for one performer, a piece for two performers, a piece for three performers, and a piece for four performers. But even in the solo it is about relationships, as the two parts are created with the same breath. The demonic energy is in between things, the sounds cast shadows upon each other." - Laura Steenberge all music by Laura Steenberge Performers: Rebecca Lane - bass flute, voice Catherine Lamb - voice Julia Holter - voice Yannick Goudon - voice Evelyn Saylor - voice

Limited edition of 300 glass mastered CDs in gatefold card with arwork by Gwendolyn Lovequist  "Recorded in one sitting in 2016, the four pieces of Natural Realms present a rather crude, yet elegantly networked system of musical logic combining natural harmonics, rhythm, and feedback. Ringing in increased zones with the shimmer and tempo of audible processes, Lopez and Eubanks assemble visions of a music both old and novel. Foreshadowing the sonic edifice of their 2019 collaboration Wave Forming with Catherine Lamb, this is truly a music at play with the proliferation of ellipses, bifurcations, and doublings and in the sabotage of time and number." - Jenny Haniver Between 2014 and 2018 Bryan Eubanks and Xavier Lopez developed an analog networked duo music based on the harmonics of random feedback, using this information to shape generative rhythms and other juxtapositions in real time. Adding soprano saxophone and percussion to the mix made what could be a stable machine system human again – a machine is not a thought - flaws and fluctuation giving life to momentary crystal time forms. The music in this debut recording captures this idiosyncratic work at it’s height, recorded on an August afternoon in the front room of Studio 8, a bar in Berlin-Wedding which regularly hosted concerts from 2013 – 2018. The recordings are raw, unprocessed improvisations, capturing a decisive music at work.

An extremely limited numbered and stamped edition of 50 glass-mastered CDs with individual covers painted by artist and philosopher Tim Bradley. Packaged in a beautiful painting on paper and polyvinyl sleeve. Three live recordings of an electro-acoustic work developed and performed in 2013. A mesmerizing fusion of sine tones, open-circuit electronics/feedback, samples, and tuned noise, these structuralist compositions navigate the intersection of compositional rigor and the spontaneous energy of live performance. Captured during a double solo tour across the Northeastern USA alongside Hong Chulki in February 2013. Series (E/A) [2013[ sine tones, noise, samples, open-circuit electronics Bryan Eubanks

Magazine is a new work for solo cowbell by Sean Meehan. It began with the serendipitous purchase of a small cowbell from the bric-a-brac section of a charity shop, and was composed initially on walks in the city and country, as the bell was an easy companion. As the piece was beginning to take form Meehan was visiting Governors Island, off of the southern tip of Manhattan. There he happened upon the powder magazine of Fort Jay and began finishing the piece over returned visits. The powder magazine is an underground vault and therefore very quiet (rare in New York City). It is also entirely made of stone, has an arched ceiling and no parallel surfaces, so it is live and responsive but with a quick decay. Ideal conditions for recording an entirely staccato work. Just as the acoustics of the space began to inform the piece, so did thoughts of the room's history and purpose, its modern day equivalents, and their mutual futility. Though not originally intended (or desired), these ideas became inseparable from the work for Meehan

CD in Digisleeve case with bi-lingual text in June 2024 MAI mai visited London on a family holiday. He was asked to play 2 concerts, one at Hundred Years Gallery with Zheng Hao, Li Song & Blue Harbour. The second at a private address with The Real Leyton Library, Conal Blake, Li Song & Rory Salter. This CD documents 2 sets from the second concert. MAI mai : amplified guitar (electric & acoustic), voice & feedback Li Song : laptop Rory Salter : amplified guitar (electric) & self oscillating amplifier

Recorded the same year as the legendary Osaka Bridge was released, “Bill Wells Presents” is a document of a life changing tour of Scotland and its Highlands by Bill Wells and his friends Kazumi Nikaido, KAMA AINA, Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Tenniscoats. Brought together via Stephen Pastels’ Geographic Records, “Bill Wells Presents” is a reminder of the life affirming musical relationships that can form with the support of labels and funding bodies who act with open minds and hearts. “Bill Wells Presents” contains a condensed version of the Scottish tour, featuring previously unrecorded music from KAMA AINA, Kazumi Nikaido and new compositions written on the occasion of the Scottish tour by Tori Kudo.“Kazumi Nikaido was introduced to me by way of Koki Yahata who was working for the Japanese label P-Vine who had released Also In White (Geographic, 2002). When I toured Japan with Maher Shalal Hash Baz in 2004 Nikaido joined for a couple of the dates and also appeared on GOK (Geographic, 2009). When I first heard her he thought that she was a remarkable artist and mesmerising performer. Similarly, I met Takuji (KAMA AINA) while on the same tour; we did some recording together and he also played and recorded as part of the band in Tokyo. I knew about him previously as we were both on Stephen Pastel’s Geographic Records.That was also how I met and got to know the Kudo family and Tenniscoats. Regarding the music; this record is an attempt to make a condensed version of the full show that was played nightly on the Scottish tour. Everyone played different sets each night, though some were more different than others. However, as far as I know, the CD features the only recording (at Wick) of pieces which Tori wrote for Maher Shalal Hash Baz while on that tour.” - Bill Wells  --- Kazumi Nikaido - guitar, vocalsTakuji Aoyagi - vocals, banjo guitar, percussion, bassSaya - vocals, keyboards, pianoUeno Takashi - guitarReiko Kudo - vocalsTori Kudo - keyboards, piano, guitar, vocalsNamio Kudo - drums, percussion (Tolbooth)Mitch Mitchell - drums, percussion (Aberdeen & Wick)Robert Henderson - trumpet (Tolbooth)Bill Wells - keyboards, piano, bassTracks 1, 4,5, 10-14 & 23 recorded by Dave Lewis at the Tolbooth, Stirling on 13.4.2006Tracks 3, 9 & 21 recorded by Bill Wells at The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen on 16.4. 2006Tracks 2, 6-8, 15-20 & 22 recorded by Bill Wells at Lyth Arts Centre, Wick on 21.4.2006Tracks 1-3 written by Kazumi NikaidoTracks 4, 6 written by Takuji AoyagiTrack 5 written by John OxenhamTracks 7, 9, 10, 11 written by Saya & Ueno TakashiTrack 9 Trad arr. Saya & Ueno TakashiTracks 13 ,14 written by Reiko KudoTracks 12, 15- 21 written by Tori KudoTrack 22 written by Bill WellsTrack 23 written by Reiko Kudo & Bill WellsCover image by Jad Fair, design by Hannah Marine.Thanks to Jackie Shearer, Wendy Niblock, John the bus driver, Alasdair Campbell, William Wilson, Evan Henderson, Gordon Maclean, Koji Saito, Koji Shibuya and Thorsten Lütz.Bill Wells acknowledges the support from the Scottish Art Council’s ‘Tune Up’ award scheme.

If Alan Licht ever continues with his revered Minimal Top Ten lists then Sam Esh would surely be added to the pile.Penultimate Press is proud to release one of the most audacious and unrelenting entries in the entire minimal cannon. A collection of recordings from a true American eccentric maverick pioneer, Sam Esh. Originally available as 2 x cassettes in tiny editions on Mike Rep Hummel’s Old Age / No Age label these are now bound together on a 2CD set which does not interrupt the unrelenting creativity of Mr Esh. What does it sound like? Picture Moondog taking a turn for the far worse morphing into a way further crazed Legendary Stardust Cowboy who eschews any song tradition for an unrelenting hypnotic acoustic hurricane complete with glossolalia vocals.This is raw primitive repetitive street blues, an acoustic freight train barreling through your brain. It is unlike anything you have encountered prior.

"For his second album as a full leader, Nilssen-Love could not have brought together three more positive influences." -Andrey Henkin, All About Jazz — Recorded and engineered at decibel.no, at Byorkesterets Hus during the Kongsberg Jazzfestival 2002. Double Bass – Ingebrigt Håker Flaten Drums, Percussion – Paal Nilssen-Love Piano – Sten Sandell Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Evan Parker

Recorded at the Dixon's Theatre, Westcliff on Sea, Essex at 8pm on 8th August 2003 as part of the 'New Music Days' series of concerts for the 2nd Southend International Jazz Festival.

Recorded live at The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2016) soprano saxophone – Evan Parker (tracks: 1) drum set, percussion – Roger Turner (tracks: 2) electric violin, electronics – Hideaki Shimada

Live album by saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy, and drummer Paul Lytton. It was recorded on June 26, 1996, at The Vortex in London, and was released by Emanem Records in 1998 Excerpts from sleeve notes: Two sets of circumstances, both too involved to be fully detailed here, resulted in the Parker/Lytton Duo of the 1970s transforming into the Parker/Guy/Lytton Trio of the last dozen or so years. The first was the 1981 duo record INCISION by Parker & Guy, which led to Guy being added to the group. (He had, of course, previously worked with one or both of the other two in various groups as far back as 1966.) The second, a few years later involved a time when Lytton's mighty percussion and electronics kit was in a different country to himself, so he had to borrow a fairly conventional drum kit. This worked out well musically, and was much more practical for club gigs, so from then on his own fairly conventional drum kit became the norm. The instrumentation thus became the same as that of certain classic Jazz and Free Jazz trios, and the music became influenced by these precursors, even though it has remained Free Improvisation. The trio has performed fairly frequently ever since, even though all three members often perform in other groups and situations as well, so there is no shortage of excellent CDs and LPs by them. This CD, however, is different in that it features longer performances moving at a more natural pace than hitherto available. The relaxed and freewheeling music reflects the situation of performing in a club before an audience of mostly hard core fans - home territory, as it were. The Vortex is an excellent, smallish club in Stoke Newington, an inner suburb of London, with an eclectic programme that features Jazz, Free Improvisation, Folk Music, Cabaret, and various combinations of these.  When it is full, as it was on the evening in question, there is literally no space between the musicians and the audience, but by contorting the mike stand, I managed to get the lone stereo microphone into a position over the front of the audience, and get a recording representing what one would hear if one stood just in front of the band. I subsequently digitally remixed it slightly to get a more acceptable balance for home listening. Since both Barry Guy and Paul Lytton live abroad, this trio is rarely to be seen in London, so that when it does play there, a large enthusiastic audience is guaranteed. Such an audience generally feeds-back to the musicians, spurring them on to even greater heights than usual, as happened on this occasion, resulting in music that is more outgoing than would probably occur in a studio situation. All of the music performed that evening is presented here unedited - a complete document of this trio working at full steam. MARTIN DAVIDSON (1998)

British sax giant Evan Parker has a good number of recordings in duo with other saxophonists, and the list of notables includes Ned Rothenberg, Peter A. Schmid, Joe McPhee, Wolfgang Fuchs, Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Lol Coxhill, Hans Koch, and Louis Sclavis. Now, we can add Urs Leimgruber to that pantheon. In truth, the Swiss tenor and soprano explorer was already their pair among the most inventive, skilled and individualistic reedmen in activity – finding him in the company of one of the great pioneers of free improvisation signifies a definitive and more than just recognition. Using the same tools and the same procedures don’t prevent that everything else distinguishes the two saxophone players: Parker is a physical, sometimes visceral, musician, even when his phrasings get complex and tricky, and Leimgruber is cerebral and mathematic in every situation, including the moments in which the music boils. Those differences don’t imply a lack of communication between the two improvisers, but the opposite: the disagreements, more than the encounters, are what makes “Twine” such an amazing, puzzling and defying CD. This is a music of creative dissent, not of false peace.

Real-time improvisations, to be played at maximum volume. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London, UK, May 4th, 2008. Cover collage by Cody Brant.

Long, long ago there was a time when the gods had their say our worldly goings on and the nymphs, hetaerae, centaurs and satyrs had not yet been banned to the outer regions. In these mythic times, the goddess Athena invented the double-reed flue or Aulos. Legend has it that the Aulos was the first ever reed instrument; it was the first time a vibrating reed was ever used to make music. However, her vanity got the better of her and made her throw away the instrument: the other gods mocked her for the way her cheeks ballooned out when she played the double reed. From that moment on goddesses have never played the double reed again. By chance or rather by fate, the satyr Marsyas found Athena's double reed. Marsyas, being a shepherd, had nothing else to do the livelong day than tend his sheep and play the flute and he soon became a virtuoso double-reed player. There are conflicting reports and legends about how all this went and how it ended. According to some, Marsyas, blinded by hubris, challenged the god Apollo, the lyre player par excellence, to a match to see who could play the most beautiful music. The muses, those knowers of beauty would act as the judges. The winner could do whatever he wished with the vanquished. Others relate that it was Apollo who, in a fit of jealousy upon hearing Marsyas brilliant playing, insisted on a duel. So, it wasn't a matter of earthly overweening pride after all but the actions of a jealous over-sensitive, intolerant god. Of course, Marsyas lost the match. These muses were highly untrustworthy, biased, tendentious referees. Some sources say that it was initially a draw, after which Apollo played his lyre upside down with the same virtuosity as right side up. As Marsyas could not play his flute upside down or back the front, he lost the match for a completely unmusical circus act-like reason. Apollo's music did not sound any different or better when played upside down. Others claim that Marsyas won the competition outright from the outset, after which Apollo, feeling cornered, began to sing accompanied by his lyre. Marsyas protested fiercely: this was a match of instruments and not of singing. Apollo then argued that blowing on an instrument and singing were pretty much the same thing. Yet other sources claim that Apollo cast a spell on Marsyas such that all he could produce were raw squeaking, squawking screaming sounds... Whatever the true story may be, the untrustworthy muses declared Apollo the winner. As a result, Apollo punished Marsyas for his pride, nailed him to a tree and skinned him alive. The gods can never be trusted: they are jealous and overweening; they manipulate and cheat, to be brief nothing human is strange to them. Here is Marsyas the satyr's redress or 'Wiedergutmachung': the virtuous double-reed playing of that maestro in under- and overtones, circular breathing and multiphonics, Evan Parker, accompanied on the double bass by Peter Jacquemyn, who, next playing the strings in a variety of conventional and unconventional ways, also makes use of his own voice as the ultimate musical weapon. He seldom if ever plays his double bass upside down, however.