Bruno Duplant is a self-taught composer, phonographer, bassist, and altogether 21st century renaissance man from France. Like many others of his generation, he is a relentless audial explorer and documentarian, and over just the past few years has more releases in more genres and on more labels than one can reasonably keep track of. (This impulse to document may bleed over from the other side of his life as a library sciences teacher.) Unlike some of his peers, however, his releases are not just the product of obsessively recording live sessions. Instead, Duplant seems to have a more concerted program. Per his own testimony, even his field recording releases are thoughtfully composed. And, his electro-acoustic and pure acoustic compositions are meticulous and delicate soundscapes, feedback and frayed edges included. --- Composed by Bruno Duplant Recorded at "la salle de jeu" Waziers, France. Bruno Duplant: percussion and/with electronics --- Released: Zoomin' Night Released July 1, 2019 Photo by Bruno Duplant Art design by Liu Lu

Jikken Weekend, also known as Experimental Music Concert, is a small artist/composer group based in Tokyo. They mainly hold performance events at l-e, a small venue/art space in Osaka. Two CD compilations of their works have been released on the Taku Sugimoto’s label Slub Music, Experimental Music Concert (2015) and Experimental Music Concert Vol.2 (2017). Early on, many of the members of Jikken Weekend were participants of Sugimoto’s composition workshops. Aside from that, the members are almost unknown, even to Tokyo’s experimental music scene. In recent years, some of the original members have left, and some new names have joined in. It is said that some of their latest compositions are not suited to audio recording. So, this cassette can be seen as a chance to check in on Jikken Weekend’s recent work. Hirohiko Yamada, Toshihisa Hirano, Hisayo Kobayashi and Mamoru Nakajo are original members. Similar to their previous releases, each of them brings their own compositions in for recording, while they also contribute as musicians in other pieces. Besides these four, other musicians in the recording sessions include other members from Jikken Weekend, l-e buddies, and even some Korean mystery guys including Ryu Hankil and lo wie. One piece on this cassette was recorded in Seoul. --- A1, B1, and B2: Recorded at l-e, Tokyo, December 21, 2019 A2: Recorded at namsan/flat, Seoul, October 13, 2018  A1 combs Composed by Hirohiko Yamada  Mamoru Nakajo, Reiko Shioda and Hirohiko Yamada: Melodion A2 Don’t Look Away Composed by Toshihisa Hirano  Ryu Hankil, lo wie, Yijinkee, Inkyung Kim, Takuya Sakamoto, Mamoru Nakajo, Reiko Shioda and Guests: Humming Toshihisa Hirano: Conductor  B1 from the faucet Composed by Hisayo Kobayashi Hisayo Kobayashi: Water jug, LED light  B2 DJ (Digest Jockey) Reiko Shioda, Hirohiko Yamada, lo wie and Ryu Hankil: Speaking about 2019 news Toshihisa Hirano, Hisayo Kobayashi and Takuya Sakamoto: Reading about 2019 topics Mamoru Nakajo: Conductor  --- Released: Zoomin' Night Released: April 29, 2020 Recorded by Hirohiko Yamada and Toshihisa Hirano  Mastered by Toshihisa Hirano

A collaboration made in the the throws of the Cocid-19 pandemic between Parisian duo, CIA Debutante (Nathan Roche and Paul Bonnet) and Zoomin' Night head and multi instrumentalistn Zhu Wenbo. 'I first got in contact with Zhu Wenbo through my friend Toni. Nathan and I wanted to contact Chinese musicians to organize a CIA Debutante tour in China. Zhu Wenbo kindly answered me, and when I proposed releasing a cassette of our material on Zoomin' Night in preparation for our tour, he instead suggested that we collaborate on a new release. Zhu Wenbo quickly sent me a collection of recordings. The first phase of our collaboration consisted in Nathan and I recording live on top of these sounds. I had a few books laying around my bed, an edition of Marx's "1844 manuscripts" and HP Lovecraft's collected works. Nathan started recording himself reading these texts, but quickly began to improvise and parody the material, while I was playing simple sounds on a Korg MS20 going through a tape echo. The boundaries between serious music and amusement started getting blurry, and we fashioned ourselves as fancy actors  performing a pretentious stage play. When Covid-19 hit France and we couldn't play together anymore, I transfered these recordings to a 4 tracks tape machine and tried to piece together these various materials. Nathan and Zhu Wenbo kept on sending me new materials, sometimes by my request, sometimes out of the blue. The amount of sounds was overwhelming, and I'm still not sure if these recordings are finished or in a constant state of shifting. It was the first time I used a computer to edit and compose a sound piece. I tried to use the recordings from the 4 tracks as raw material, and arranged our various contribution into something that could feel satisfactory to me. Sometimes it felt like I was merely using  the music as an illustration to Nathan's voice, like those corny radio plays you can hear at 2 AM while driving on the highway. At other times, the combination of voice and sound seemed like something really special. In any way, I hope people can enjoy these recordings made in strange circumstances, and that we will have the opportunity to play all together in China.'   Paul Bonnet, April 202  --- Instruments, voices and field recordings by Paul Bonnet, Nathan Roche and Zhu Wenbo, with guest Zhao Cong and Shi Leqi. Mixed by Paul Bonnet Mastering by Benoit de Villeneuve Painting by Paul Bonnet Design by Liu Lu --- Released May 27, 2020 Released: Zoomin' Night

This set of improvised pieces is made up of Montréalers Raphaël Foisy-Couture (bass), Vicky Mettler (guitar), and Vancouverite Lisa Cay Miller (piano). There's a relaxed atmosphere among the trio, despite seemingly disparate elements that swing and play with a tight cohesion; networked fistulas convey and receive. Along with their industriousness, this keeps their music light and exploratory, appealingly collectively-minded throughout. Miller only occasionally breaks out into fitful knots of block chords, her and Foisy's slyly executed extended techniques keep flowing a steady variety of sounds, and Mettler's crafty instrumental resourcefulness (as in the prismatic folk of her project Kee Avil) results in a deeply pleasing group improvisation that often feels wonderfully domestic.

Another howler from one of Australia’s best, with both sides acting as ostensible opposites. My favorites of Gulbenkoglu’s work involves austere sounds that, in the course of their prolonged existence, take on a subtle yet bewitching peculiarity. The B-side does that well, though it’s in the overtly sci-fi A-side that we’re primed for receiving it as such. - Joshua Minsoo Kim

Ten pieces of LOUD POETRY CHANSON with voice and piano based on Michael Bakunin’s reaction on the circumstance of 22-years old Russian student Sergei G. Netschajev and his actions.„In autumn 1869 Netschajev returned to Moscow with the already printed document of Bakunin’s „Words to the Youth - Principles of the Revolution“ and with a kind of identity card from the „International”, Russian section. This ID gave him „Full powers...“ Netchajev began with great skill and tireless zeal, but also with cunning and ruthlessness, to organise his „Groups of Five“, the extent of which was difficult to assess because of their secrecy.“An acoustic and poetic inquiry into authority and power in human relationships.„VOLLMACHT“ was recorded from March-May 2020 at Kunstverein Röderhof. The four page cover is using the prologue of Michael Bakunin’s book „Words to the Youth - Principles of the Revolution“.Michael Barthel, born 1977, growing up in East-Berlin, is living in Leipzig and works with language in writing, sound and visual arts.

Originally recorded analog between June 1983 and May 1984 in West-Berlin by Graf Haufen. First released on cassette in June 1984 (Graf Haufen Tapes 31) and simultaneously by various other labels around the world.The original master tape was carefully transferred to digital and painstalkingly remastered in 2017. released October 2, 2020Composed, performed, recorded and mixed by Graf Haufen.Transferred to Digital from the original master tape by Thomas Pargmann.Remastered by Lily Vice at Sacred Lust Studios, Japan in 2017.

Alec Livaditis is an improvising cellist, currently residing in Athens (Greece), where he regularly performs in solo and duo settings. Using the cello as a sound object, his music is concerned with space, pattern, timbre, and texture. He first appeared on the scene with Clear and Cloud, an LP released on Kye Records This is his second solo release on the formidable Regional Bears.

Where spring LP Omelette Of Disease was an orgy in painfully hard driven feedback, and the early summer cassette Overdrive focused on rumbling low-end, Benzedrine Bonanza brings a live all-at-once approach. Not unlike Schakalens Bror's earliest cassette excretions, yet now more refined and with the energy of his later live shows successfully transferred to tape. Fully fledged free form guitar noise in a league of its own. released By Regional Bears. August 22, 2018

This studio recording of Jason Kahn (voice) and Ilia Belorukov (modular synthesizer) is tense and taut, as dry, crumbling sonic swathes manifest both as machine and human, facilitating an almost ceremonial liberation. Kahn has historically been known for electronic sounds exhibiting stasis and abrasive, enduring minimalism; as of late his work has been primarily concerned with his own unaltered voice. Belorukov’s work exists within the realm of improvised noise and electroacoustics, as he prioritizes a wide range of collaborations. Kahn's voice provides a stark contrast to Belorukov's jagged synthesis, like examining oneself close-up in a mirror. Here, these prolific musicians share a unique, intimate intensity through drastically different approaches.

Artistry was Sirone's first album as a leader, recorded in 1978, just after the split of the Revolutionary Ensemble. Artistry has an Atypical combination of instruments, bass, cello , flute and percussion and delivers aplenty. Listen and you will know. Sirone ( Norris Jones) had an enormously prolific career as a bassist, both as a member of the Revolutionary Ensemble and playing with many of the best musicians of the 20th century - from Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Gato Barbieri, Noah Howard, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Sonny Sharrock,Marion Brown ... and the list goes on.

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’s latest album, “Ventre Unique”, is a dynamic exploration that seamlessly blends folk, krautrock, post-punk, and African rhythms, delivering an emotionally charged yet exuberant listening experience. Helmed by Geneva-based Vincent Bertholet, the orchestra’s ever-evolving lineup and distinctive sound pay homage to both African music traditions and avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp, while pushing the boundaries of contemporary music.Recorded over ten days in the outskirts of Paris at Studio Midilive, the album features an eclectic international cast of 12 musicians. The result is a beautifully organic sound that balances Bertholet’s simple, loop-based compositions with intricate arrangements of marimba, horns, strings, and angular guitars.Ventre Unique is the group’s sixth album and follows their acclaimed 2021 release, “We’re Ok But We’re Lost Anyway”. While their previous work captured the disarray of the world during the pandemic, “Ventre Unique” reflects on shared human experiences, inviting listeners to find common ground through music.

"Side A, ‘Swinging’, is so titled because the musicians hang three drums from the ceiling and have them create noise – aqueous, haunted, tense – with proximate contact mics and feedbacking mini-speakers. Perhaps improbably, this piece has a rock-adjacent sense of abandon to it, which is less the case for flip track ‘Oscillating’, though intrigue is inherent to these waves of sine (which occasionally coalesce into something foley effect-worthy) and their effect on taut vellum." - The QuietusThe second release from the trio of Conal Blake, Regan Bowering and Li Song. Two Movements extends the ideas which underpinned their first outing, ‘Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers’ (Infant Tree, 2023), by incorporating motion in two distinct ways. The two sides, ’Swinging’ and ‘Oscillating’, were recorded live at Cafe OTO and Hundred Years Gallery, London.Recorded by @billy_steiger and @hbrownsoundMastered by Taku Unami

‘Harmonium II’ is the new album from London-based artist Zheng Hao. Across two side long pieces, she manipulates feedback into clumps of pure tone and interruptions of chirping, chirruping high frequencies. It follows her recent album for Krim Kram, "Breaks", and more directly, "Harmonium", released on Hard Return in 2022. With her duo, Oishi (alongside Ren Shang), she released "once upon a time there was a mountain" on Bezirk in 2023. As Hao explains, Harmonium II should not be viewed as a follow-up to the first Harmonium but a parallel exploration of the same ideas and themes: “’Harmonium’ refers to a type of balanced feedback, more specifically, a resonance,” she says. Where the first Harmonium involved controlling tones from a harmonica, no traditional acoustic instruments are present on this installment. Instead, Hao explores loops of recording devices and listening technology fed into a modular synth. On the first side, 'I', she turns a Zoom recorder – a tool used by field recordists to capture sound - into an instrument. Placing headphones close to the Zoom’s microphones, she tuned the feedback tones generated into sine waves from her modular synth. In a poetic twist, this approach creates an electronic world with the verdancy of a soundscape. Low, rumbling tones give the impression of an aircraft passing overhead. Squeaking high frequencies sound like voluble wildlife. Hypnotic pulses and beating tones emerge as her movements shift the system. Through recursion and gesture comes a tentative approximation of organic life. “I’m moving the headphones around so that it feels a bit like insects coming in and out,” Hao explains. “There’s also a low frequency feedback from the Zoom recorder itself, and I’m fading that feedback into a modular generated low sine wave as a transition, and then gradually fade the modular sound to a phantom rhythm. Then again and again.” For the second side Hao uses a reverb pedal and a mixing desk. Opening with a bed of stridulating bleeps and buzzes, human gestures can be heard in the system once more, gentle sweeps and waves eventually held in a suspended drone. Equilibrium arrives as humming tones bend, curve and fold into each other. It’s a more meditative piece than the first side, a bed of sounds that could be coarse and jarring frequencies coalesced into something utterly other, and utterly compelling. In Hao’s practice, conventional relations between performer and sound sources are twisted. Sound becomes malleable. Graspable without the obstructions and limitations of a conventional instrument or a DAW. Reference points for her music could be the visceral sound explorations of Maryanne Amacher, the haptic feedback sculpting of Rafael Torral, and the no-input mixing board experiments of Toshimaru Nakamura. It undoubtedly also chimes with the recent release on Bezirk by Regan Bowering. Although using different tools and reaching different outcomes, for both, signal paths are hacked and rearranged, feedback is embraced, and gestures are translated into sonic phenomena. Sounds that are typically discarded or avoided are held onto for their affective, textural and interactive possibilities. The unfamiliar sensations residing in unconventional sound sources are embraced. “Feedback- for me, is less about the sound output and more about enjoying the 'control' during the performance process,” Hao explains. “It’s like a tug-of-war between me and the feedback, listening very intently to the sounds in the speakers, my fingers tightly pressing on the mixer knobs cautiously to prevent any distortions. I enjoy the feeling of this back-and-forth and the vibrations that occur when feedback happens, which feels warm to me, or maybe it’s because I’m usually sweating when I’m playing with feedback…” Zheng Hao is a sound artist and experimental musician, born in Wuhan, China, currently based in London, United Kingdom. She is a member of the duos Oishi (with Ren Shang) and ecm (with Joseph Khan). Her solo works explore electronic and electro-acoustic instruments, including modular synthesis and feedback. She has released music on Otoroku, Falt, Molt Fluid, Krim Kram, and Research Laboratories.

Xu Shaoyang makes music about the fragmented beauty of everyday life. Over the years, he has sustained a fresh spirit of amateurism by travelling and performing in many different parts of the world, occasionally as a member of the avant-pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz. His songs are made of simple tunes, sometimes silly sometimes smart, sometimes delivered with a “backing band” of improvising musicians who he met and collected along the way. Sometimes the karaoke worked out musically, sometimes not.In spring 2019, Xu Shaoyang took a trip to East Asia. He performed two gigs in Beijing and Taipei with two small ensembles of local musicians, both taking place in a pedestrian underpass. For this journey, Xu Shaoyang prepared a songbook of 30 tunes he conjured while putting his newborn child to sleep. “When you are putting a baby to sleep, you find yourself having no time to sleep, and that’s when the familiar tunes deep in your heart flow out naturally”, as he explained to the crowd in Taipei.In both gigs, Xu Shaoyang sang these 30 songs with his microphone attached to a FM transmitter. Very different dynamics played out in the North and the South. In Beijing, Zhu Wenbo and Liu Lu smuggled their own composition game into the group jam: the two prepared 30 slips of paper with simple musical themes and instructions, randomly picking one each before a song was played, while a third musician, Ake, joined them with freeform improvisation. The Taipei backing band, consisting of Jyun-Ao Caesar and La-La Reich, improvised along simple principles provided by Xu, to explore the themes of expectations and failures.This cassette provides a documentation of a rare musical journey connecting the two Chinese capitals. Performed live, Xu Shaoyang’s lullabies turned into childish plays of bouncy melodic chaos, unrefined, unsettled, and cheerfully unconcerned. These recordings smell of the sincere joy of collective music making, the joy of connection and communication as well as miscommunication.

In Chinese, “big ghost” is a phrase sometimes used to convey a sense of utter out-of-placeness. If you see a big ghost, you find someone who walks the corporeal world in their own preposterous ways. A big ghost is not a ghost, it does not terrorise, but neither does it belong. It occurred to Li Weisi that this speaks to the very essence of outside music making. One of these days, he started saying “I saw a big ghost playing last night” after going to a very good gig. Ghostmass, then, are a collective of such big ghosts doing music together. Started in 2021 as an improvisation unit based in Beijing, the project gathers kindred souls who share the vision for an open musical space where ghosts feel at home. To this day, the lineup has evolved into some kind of a supergroup of the capital’s music underground: Li Weisi and Li Qing are known more widely as the retro-manic electro-acoustic duo Soviet Pop, and as two thirds of the cult alt-rock act Carsick Cars; Yan Jun has been a veteran experimenter of sounds, words, and ideas for decades across various scenes; the most recent addition to the group was Yang KuKu (YKK), a professional aquascaper who plays music in a band for the first time. While the project grows from a joint passion for drone, doom, and extreme metal, each ghost attends its own duties in building and rebuilding the collective sound of Ghostmass, which stumbles across a trackless delta of harsh noise and free improvisation. In 2023, Ghostmass recorded an improvised session for Dusty Ballz on a hot summer day. The label was told that they would do something jazz. The two tracks on Side B are titled to pay homage to the legacy of late Coltrane. Side A presents an array of ghostly references from an everyday Chinese context: a martial arts fiction masterwork of the Taiwanese “ghost school”, an ancient Taoist master heralding from the ghost valley, a French DIY-music wizard who wanders in Beijing hutongs calling himself “ghost uncle”, and the famous ghost caverns in the Wuyi Mountains where smoky dark oolong tea grows – these references have warrantably turned into ghosts themselves, paling under translation. In a time when being human gives way to humanism, perhaps being ghost promises a more real living reality. Perhaps hell is what we live in right now - who the hell knows - perhaps this is what jazz music should be.

"A classically trained Chinese bamboo flutist, Lao Dan picked up the saxophone again around 2013 as he went wildly astray in the world of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation. While demonstrating an ever-growing ability to deliver explosive force and intensity in his free playing, Lao Dan keeps a brutal honesty in his approach to the instrument. He plays ‘jazz’ as what it is, not what it’s supposed to be. Navigating constantly between the East and the West, Lao Dan embraces a unique aesthetics which fuses all his past influences into a voice of glorious mayhem and sheer zaniness.Recorded in June 2019, this is a solo set in which two instruments – tenor saxophone and Zheng, also known as the Chinese zither – were played successively and simultaneously by hands and feet. The recording was made in one go with no overdub or effect added. Lao Dan never learned to play the Zheng properly before this very first attempt. As a result, he didn’t struggle at all to play it in an awkward way, while with the saxophone he did, as always, try very hard to do that.The cover art, created by Shenzhen-based artist Tiemei, is a portrait of Shennong, the Deity of medicine and agriculture in ancient Chinese mythology. The three tracks in Chinese Medicine are named after three species of herb each believed to have unique medicinal properties. It is our responsibility to remind you to take them with extra caution. In Chinese medicine, after all, every drug is a thirty-percent poison."

begin form here... begin from here...our world lives when their world ceases to exist begin from here...with hopes, between silent skies, while world breathes again and the fever subsides begin from here...and to those who strike blows begin from here...while we keep going begin from here...while we mourn, we also fight We will be wherever the fires are lit! we will be wherever the fires are lit, a sort of sequel to Tashi’s first DC release Stateless, takes the torch and storms forward, with ten improvised acoustic guitar anthems. These musical thoughts are torn from the fabric of Tashi’s life and music. “Strumming in opposition to the towers” (as he puts it) is part of an existence that is always political, even in its most abstract iterations – a truth laid bare in these deep, raw performances.