Orcutt Shelley Miller is an avant-rock trio comprised of three highly celebrated figures of experimental music: Bill Orcutt (Harry Pussy), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) and Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets On Fire).  Their debut self-titled album will be released September 5th on Silver Current Records.  Following in the footsteps of the high-firing free jazz and European outer-rock bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the Pacific Rim’s subterranean reimagining of “rock” form in the 90s, Orcutt Shelley Miller utilize explosive group chemistry, focused intention and chance to pursue the creation of song in its rawest, purest form. “The landscape Orcutt Shelley Miller inhabits lies deep in the stoner American bedrock, fed by volcanic riffage and hypnotic phrasing with rhythmic nods to the SoCal ‘60s and atonal slash piled on a mid ‘80s SST punk-fusionoid substrate, ultimately blasting a "big rock statement" that treads the line between good times and blown minds.” --Tom Carter (Charalambides) Bill Orcutt is renowned for his incendiary guitar work with the seminal '90s noise-rock band Harry Pussy, Orcutt has since carved a niche in the experimental music scene with his raw, deconstructed guitar improvisations and recent quartet compositions. His solo work blends elements of blues, punk, and free improvisation, earning acclaim for its intensity and originality. Steve Shelley is best known as the drummer for alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth, Shelley has been a driving force in the indie and experimental music scenes since the early 1980s. His dynamic drumming style has contributed to numerous projects, showcasing his versatility and commitment to pushing musical boundaries. Ethan Miller is a central figure in the psychedelic and outer-rock movements, Miller has been at the bow of influential bands such as Comets on Fire and Howlin' Rain. His work is characterized by high-energy performances and a fusion of classic rock influences with experimental sounds, solidifying his reputation as a visionary guitarist and vocalist.

A sequel. An escalation. Pressure spikes from bar one: future-facing, low-latency. A firmware update for the body. Cuts bite into cuts. Fragments swarm, collide, die out. Drums stumble until they speak; samples crop up without names and leave without warning. Momentum is the one and only rule. Unpredictable, gridless, post-genre. From TikTok feed to vinyl: born digital, cut for the floor. The glitch grows a body, develops a nervous system. Match it or get out of the way. Damned be the ones that are stuck on tradition.

"More buried treasure from Company Week 1982: seven previously unissued Epiphanies by lineups involving Derek Bailey, Ursula Oppens, Julie Tippetts, Keith Tippett, Philipp Wachsmann, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Akio Suzuki. Fred Frith is a stellar improviser — 1974’s Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv — and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. Eleventh is a tour de force of extended technique, with George Lewis working slowly but surely through a variety of trombone mouthpieces, while Frith’s guitar, strummed, bowed or prepared, could be a theremin, a koto, a mouse trapped inside a grandfather clock or a lion cub inside a shoebox. Bookending the album, on Seventh he swaps Webernian shards with Lewis and harpist Anne LeBaron and on Thirteenth, with pianist Keith Tippett, he condenses a whole lifetime of musical exploration into a mere twelve minutes. When it’s over both musicians are so amazed they burst out laughing. Elsewhere, on Eighth, Wachsmann reveals his understated mastery of both his violin and the electronics he’s devised to extend its range, and pianist Ursula Oppens proves she’s as adept as conjuring forth magic from inside her instrument as she is at the keyboard. Major and minor triads too! Ninth is spikier, with Lewis quacking, spitting and wheezing like a flock of geese let loose in a fairground, while Derek Bailey and Motoharu Yoshisawa patiently explore the outer limits of acoustic guitar and double bass. Bailey and Lewis team up again on Twelfth to take on Oppens — and everybody wins. Voice is more to the fore on Tenth, with Julie Tippetts’ coloratura and flute and Akio Suzuki’s analapos and spring gong flying high, while LeBaron, Wachsmann and Yoshizawa weave intricate webs of pizzicati, spiccati and glissandi beneath."

"Quite simply, Company produced some of the most stimulating improvised music you will ever hear." - John Eyles 1982 line-up of Company. Keith Tippett, Fred Frith and George Lewis are joined by concert pianist Ursula Oppens and composer & harpist Anne LeBaron. After playing more frrequently in Japan in the late seventies, Bailey had also invited Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and Akio Suzuki on assorted instruments like glass harmonica.  --- Derek Bailey / guitarJulie Tippetts / guitar, voice, fluteMoto Yoshizawa / bassFred Frith / electric guitar, electronics, percussionAkio Suzuki / glass harmonica, spring gong, kikkokiririkiAnne LeBaron / harpKeith Tippett / pianoUrsula Opens / pianoGeorge Lewis / trombonePhil Wachsmann / violin, electronics --- Recorded by Jean-Marc Foussat. Produced by Derek Bailey & Evan Parker. Design by Karen Brookman. Financial assistance by The Arts Council.

"Though music journalists made a big deal recently about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey’s Joseph Holbrooke trio with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley, those early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane. There’s still a whiff of jazz to Bailey and Parker’s work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968’s Karyobin but with the addition of Jamie Muir — the first great free improvising percussionist who didn’t start out as a jazz drummer — and the way-leftfield electronics of Hugh Davies, the MIC leapt right off that cliff.  These six tracks — tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating — sound like nothing else that came before.  In a word, seminal." - Honest Jon's

For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French bassist/vocalist Joëlle Léandre is equally at home playing free or performing works by Cage and Scelsi, while Vinko Globokar is an acclaimed composer as well as a trombonist of monstrous virtuosity. He and British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before a brief stint with Robert Fripp's King Crimson, percussionist Jamie Muir was, with Davies, on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970. Bailey once described playing solo as a "second-rate activity"; while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can, if they're not careful, descend into the musical equivalent of a rugby scrum: dangerous, but thrilling -- listen to what happens when Brötzmann comes barreling into the final track here. Sometimes one instrument takes center stage, as Parker's circular-breathing soprano does at the beginning of "Trio Five", but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere "Trio Three", is just as crucial to the success of the whole. Muir makes sure he doesn't get in the way of Globokar and Parran's leisurely exchanges on "Trio Four", but the trombonist is all over the place on "Trio One" -- transcribe what Globokar does here and it might be the most difficult trombone music ever written -- with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles, after which "Trio Two" is a lighter affair, Parran's flute and Léandre's vocals twittering together while Derek's acoustic twangs merrily along. With a touch of dry Bailey humor, two of the seven tracks aren't trios at all: "Trio Minus One" is his duo with Reijseger, running the gamut from crazed polyrhythmic strumming (imagine Reinhardt and Grappelli playing Schoenberg and Nancarrow simultaneously) to what must be the fastest cello pizzicati ever recorded. And on the closing ecstatic nonet, Brötzmann and trumpeter John Corbett prove that too many cooks don't necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell spice it up.

The first of two editions capturing Pat Thomas and XT's (Seymour Wright & Paul Abbot) enduring creative partnership, dedicated to renderings of Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary). This, the vinyl edition, encounters the trio in their second brilliant set at Cafe Oto on June 22, 2022 (while the second, X2 CD edition, listed separately, was recorded a Rote Fabrik in Zurich on June 10 + 11, 2022) Pianist Pat Thomas, saxophonist Seymour Wright (both of [ahmed]) and drummer Paul Abbott - the latter two working as XT - deliver a remarkable set of new music, each, re-imagining improvisation and synthetic ideas with acoustic and electronic tools. This monumental new suite Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)* released by We Jazz Records on 30th January 2026 is spread across three release formats, the complete album includes more than 2 hours and 15 minutes of music recorded live in London and Zurich in summer 2022. Five tracks in total. complex, iterative whole that makes ideas live - back into tradition/s and out, on, into an infinite future. In 2018 the trio recorded a remarkable 80-minute tribute to the late Cecil Taylor "Akisakila" / Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees) vigorously re-visiting his 1973 Tokyo trio Akisakila recording. Re-convening five years later to celebrate that release they imagined a-new, expanding that attitude to history through connected lenses of the traditions of British electro-acoustic-mystery: from the live electronics of Tony Oxley’s February Papers or Howard Riley’s Synopsis, to Leviticus’ Burial and Splash’s Babylon, plus of course Derek Bailey’s Domestic Jungle, and now up to their overlapping global-temporal experiments with, between them, Mark Fell, Anne Gills and RPBoo. The subtitles of each disc reveal something essential about the three musicians’ shared histories and ways of thinking-through-synthesizing ideas, time, space and sound. The LP, titled Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)* London draws from UK improvising pioneer, guitarist Derek Bailey (on playing with Cecil) in its subtitle: “*(it's quite different to the other stuff, the earlier stuff. Without going into all kinds of detail which usually undersells the music, can't describe it. But it was a fine experience, and very memorable.)” Captured at London’s Cafe OTO, the LP hears Thomas & XT expand their acoustic trio each with liquid (dry and wet) electronics, as real and imagined instrumentation. We hear sounds of keys, sticks, reeds, pedals, (i)pads, plug-ins, body and breath and their potentials. We also hear the unique energy, space and feel of OTO a sui generis ecology in which all three musicians have worked and learned since its doors opened in 2008. And as you will hear, this night was a particularly wild, multi-species reception. Released as a double CD, Strata, Act (Joy Contemporary)* Zurich takes its sub-title from the great drummer, and live electrician, Tony Oxley (also on playing with Cecil): “*(is so much more immense if you prepare yourself to go where the music will take you, and not try and make the music go where you want it perhaps, or think it might go)”. Here we hear the music grow across two nights (one per disc), synthetic, bionic expanding, evaporating, electric, charging through time in ways that renders “genre” indistinguishable, irrelevant and even impossible. Two additional digital tracks added, “London FIRST SET” and “Zurich THREE” round up the release and connect back, in redux-miniature, to Attitudes[...]. This set is a multi-format document of some of the most adventurous, rare (and radical) creative musicians working today. Electronic-and-acoustic, real and imaginary, sounds, times, scales and proportions that extends out of and collapses into musical space in dialogue with past and future.

The latest installment of Paradigm Discs’ incredible initiative dedicated to the work of Anthony Moore with the experimental filmmaker David Larcher during the 1960s and 70s. The collaboration between Anthony Moore and filmmaker David Larcher began in the late 60s, at the start of both their respective careers and lasted many years. Following on from last years release of the soundtrack to Mare’s Tail (the first collaboration with Larcher), this year sees the release of the soundtrack to his 2nd film, Monkey’s Birthday. This LP is a condensation of the essence of this 6 hour film. The sound is partly taken directly from the existing soundtrack and partly from stereo masters that have survived through the decades. Shot and edited between 1973 and 1975 this epic film moves through a variety of landscapes, both physical and abstract. It was filmed in various locations, starting in Germany and moving through Hungary, Romania and most substantially in rural Turkey. In large part this is a road movie that takes the filmed events and locations and uses them as sources for further experimentation. In much the same way, the location recordings made by Anthony Moore are used as raw material for creating much of the soundtrack, working from a battery powered studio in the back of his truck in this east bound convoy. The previously released excerpt, Plains Of Hungary (ReR Quarterly Vol.2 No.1) is included on this album in its rightful place among the collages of Islamic chant, field recordings, tape loops, jam sessions etc., alongside quotes from esoteric texts read by Heathcote Williams. We also hear, alongside various voices from the crew and general public, a repeated theme using the looped cut up voice recordings from the 2 other members of Slapp Happy (Dagmar Krause and Peter Blegvad), who also took to the road for part of this gruelling journey. Comes with large 4 sided insert. Numbered edition of 500.

in 2023, sound artist and composer Weston Olencki toured across the American South. Beginning in their hometown in South Carolina, they snaked a circuitous path from the mountains of West Virginia to the banks of the Mississippi River. As the miles accumulated, so did the initial seeds of new work. Instruments and artifacts they acquired hitched a ride in the backseat, while songs and sounds filled their portable recorder: water in its various states, the familiar insectoid buzz of those summer nights, trains cutting through the landscape, the traditional music that lived alongside the communities that kept it. Olencki took it all in, and over time, found ways that these experiences coalesced into a bramble-like perspective of time, where past, present, and future intersect in ways both barbed and beautiful. Broadsides, Olencki’s newest solo full-length is the multilayered result of this journey. The album follows their landmark release Old Time Music from 2022, which presented radical interpretations of traditional tunes from Appalachia and throughout the South alongside original compositions that drew significantly on archival recordings. On Broadsides, Olencki rejects delineations between the unmoored avant-garde and the rootedness of one’s cultural heritage, revealing their porous and intertwined nature. “My mother was a quilter. Her mother before that,” they write in the album’s liner notes. “Quilting, like music, is a practice of embedding knowledge and remembrance into the very core of the thing you are making. It’s not just about the materials, but how they’re reassembled, recontextualized, stitched, woven to form new patterns - the minutiae of craft holding significance to those looking to find it. Stories woven from stories, never told the same way twice.” Like all great road trips, Broadsides unfolds slowly and continuously, with moments of dramatic reverie punctuating the endless melt of highway in the rearview. We’re immediately confronted by the uncanniness of revisiting old haunts, as Southern storms break through the initial churn of the freight locomotives of Alabama. Olencki’s interpretation of the bluegrass standard “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” captures the euphoria of melancholy in motion. The permutational plucks of banjo are bounced around the frame by a computer, its pitches determined within algorithmic sequences and transcriptions of classic three-finger licks. The tonalities of old-time are smeared and stretched until all that’s audible is the insistence that Heaven might be real. In the album’s second half, “Omie Wise,” a murder ballad made famous by Doc Watson, follows an interlude recorded on the river in North Carolina in which the titular character’s body was laid. Ghostly echoes of a dozen other renditions float through the substrata as Tongue Depressor’s Henry Birdsey accompanies them on the pedal steel guitar. The album’s central composition, “all my father’s clocks,” is a profound meditation on entropy and impermanence. The sound of their father’s extensive clock collection ticks away as Olencki pulls a bow across the length of an autoharp sourced from a rural strip mall. The instrument was left as detuned as it was found, the resonance of its deep bass drone and clanging high-end the result of years of neglect and the warping effects of Southern humidity. Historically, broadsides were an early form of broadcasting, an often-musicalized telling of current news pasted in the public square. The name was later taken up by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen in the 1960s, whose Broadside magazine published songs and social commentary when American folk music resurfaced as an urgent way of communicating the multifaceted politics of its time. Olencki borrows the phrase to recall both this old form of songmaking and that later prominent reexamination of traditional music’s role in modern life, but also to draw attention to the fragmented and machine-mediated way heritage is diffused in this very different, but no less pivotal, moment. As a sanitized past is used as justification for current violence and domination, we can turn to these artifacts to better understand the history of ourselves, but only if they are consciously pushed to evolve. Broadsides represents one personal, striking vision of what far-flung futurisms could be respun from these high, lonesome sounds: a reflection of the unbridled joy and deep sorrow inherent to living together through time, and a desire to push further into the untold and unknown.

For years, Jackson C. Frank was as ghostly a legend as they come. Even the relatively few record collectors who revered his work were only aware of the lone LP released during his lifetime. For all most listeners knew, Frank made an incredible album in 1965 and then vanished, despite that record having been produced by Paul Simon. 1975 Mekeel Sessions features six tracks recorded in the mid-'70s at a studio in Lake Hill, New York about five miles from Woodstock where Frank was living at the time. Only uncovered decades later, these recordings hum with the same mysterious warmth that defined Jackson at his peak. His guitar work, alternating between strummed and fingerpicking, is perfectly understated. His stark and somber voice, more weathered than the lighter tone on his debut. While the Mekeel tapes were intended for Frank's sophomore album, it never came to be. What one hears is not a singer-songwriter fading out of view, but rather a singular artist who never stopped trying to build his own world – even when no one was watching. For fans of everyone influenced by Jackson: from Nick Drake, Sandy Denny and Bert Jansch to more contemporary acts like Elliott Smith, Vincent Gallo and Iron And Wine who surely used Frank's sparse approach as a template.

Second LP of duets by these longtime VHF family staples, here delivering 2 side-long epics of “minimalist” bliss. Both sides feature Daniel on piano and Richard on zither, with rippling waves of sound recalling classics like Charlemagne Palestine’s “Strumming Music” (Dan is a frequent collaborator with C.P.) and Richard’s “Advent.” “Persian Carpets I” is a real-humans performance full of tiny variants in rhythm and attack, rising and falling in intensity – sometimes a rush of sound, sometimes a cloud of soft overtones and phantom notes. “Persian Carpets II” is more spare, with quiet and careful piano alongside Richard’s subdued accompaniment – a gorgeous bath of pointillist sound that rewards close listening. A glorious balm for dark and weird times. Superb, quiet pressing by Smashed in Chicago.

t the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. A few months after recording “Us”, Lancaster recorded “Mother Africa” along with Clint Jackson III, a trumpeter, partner of Khan Jamal or Noah Howard on other recordings. On march 8th, 1974, Lancaster and Jackson headed up a group composed of Jean-François Catoire (electric and double bass), Keno Speller (percussion) and Jonathan Dickinson (drums). Together, they create an immediate impression. From the first seconds of “We The Blessed”, they develop a free jazz which rapidly abandons any virulence under the effect of blues and soul based interventions. When Gilson’s composition “Mother Africa” begins, listeners are transported into the studio, listening to the musicians setting up: chatting and joking… Then comes the melody: a dozen or so notes of a repeated theme which is accelerated and deformed according to their whims… The jazz played by the association Byard Lancaster / Clint Jackson III is rare: creative AND recreational. “We the blessed”, is apt listening to this again today! This CD edition contains a bonus track, the magnificent “Love Always” that was originally released on the fourth (and last) volume of the Jef Gilson Anthology series released in 1975. Recorded on 8th March 1974, it is a beautiful 15-minute-long modal jazz piece. Four notes from the bass (the relentless Jean-François Catoire, who makes up the rhythm section alongside drummer Jonathan Dickinson and percussionist Keno Speller), and the group is up and running! On piano, Gilson shows the subtle tact of a sideman, leaving the lions’ share of the place to the horns. This allows us to hear the trumpet of Clint Jackson III and the alto (which sometimes sounds almost flute-like) of Byard Lancaster each staking their claim in a long hallucinatory march which moves from moments of direct exaltation to profoundly sensitive collective playing.

Roberto Cacciapaglia is an Italian composer and pianist who started out in the fertile Milan avant-garde scene of the 1970s, which included Franco Battiato, Giusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, Francesco Messina, among others. After studying at the conservatory, he worked at RAI's Studio of Musical Phonology – an electronic music laboratory similar to NDR/WDR in Germany, GRM/IRCAM in France or BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Originally released in 1979, Sei Note In Logica (Six Notes In Logic) is Cacciapaglia's second album. While his debut, Sonanze, offers a series of ambient mini-soundtracks, Sei Note presents a singular, sinuous piece. The composition is based on a finite set of musical notes, yet this limitation is the point of departure for a grand tour of possible combinations and enthralling timbres (marimbas, strings, reeds and human voice). Like Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, the joyous experiment of Sei Note is grounded in constant variation. Often doubled by multiple instruments, non-repeating patterns are exquisitely layered, while electro-acoustic signals transform and further refract through visceral effects. Within this conceptual framework, Cacciapaglia does not so much juxtapose rigid dichotomies – acoustic vs. electronic, melodic vs. dissonant, simple vs. complex – as fuse them into an expansive whole. What started as an inspired study in Minimalism becomes a bold feat of 20th century music. Sei Note In Logica is deeply sincere and, at the same time, quite playful. With one foot firmly planted in the past and the other steeped in technology, Cacciapaglia's influence can be heard in the work of Jim O'Rourke, Fennesz and Ben Vida

Joyful rug-cutters and sweet soul-uplifters from the town of Morogoro, in early-1960s Tanzania: muziki wa dansi, inspired by Cuban 78s, and dance crazes like the twist and cha cha cha, but making them its own. Here is the cream of over a hundred recordings by Salum, mostly for Mzuri Records of Kenya; pretty much lost till now. In an old-school tip-on cover, with lyrics in Swahili and English on the inner sleeve. Lovely stuff.

Drawn from his six monumental singles for the Philips, Amha and Yared labels between 1970-73, revolutionising traditional Eritrean music via the innovations of amplified kirar, electric guitar and horns. Thick, deep declarations and considerations of love over a mixture of sombre and joyous tunes (with the hand-clapped beat often shifting into double-time near the end). Co-released with Mitmitta Musika in Addis Ababa; handsomely presented in a tip-on sleeve, with extensive liner notes, translations and exclusive photos. Fab.

Deeply resonant spiritual music transmitted via piano, organ, and harmonium by beloved composer and Ethiopian Orthodox nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru. Church of Kidane Mehret collects all the musical work from Emahoy’s 1972 private press album of the same name, alongside two additional unreleased piano recordings, exploring Emahoy’s take on “Ethiopian Church Music.” Recording herself in churches throughout Jerusalem, Emahoy engages directly with the Ethiopian Orthodox musical liturgy. For the first time, we hear Emahoy on harmonium and massive, droning pipe organ, alongside some of her most moving piano work. “Ave Maria” is one of our favorite pieces Emahoy ever recorded, her chiming piano reverberating against ancient stone walls. Her familiar melodic lines take on new resonance when played through the harmonium on “Spring Ode - Meskerem.” Two towering organ performances comprise the B Side, combining Emahoy’s classical European training with her lifelong study of Ethiopian religious music. Nowhere is Emahoy’s unique combination of influences more apparent than on “Essay on Mahlet,” a meditative slow burner in which Emahoy interprets the free verse of the Orthodox liturgy note for note on the piano. This revelatory piece, alongside the dramatic piano composition “The Storm,” comes from another self-released album, 1963’s Der Sang Des Meeres. Only 50 copies were ever produced (and no cover). One of the only known copies was saved from the trash and shared with Mississippi by a fellow nun at Emahoy’s monastery when we visited for Emahoy’s funeral in March of 2023.

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

Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.  One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow. Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.” The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time. Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.