Feedback Moves returns with the reissue of Estrada Longa by Vasco Alves, originally released in 2021 on Cafe Oto’s digital label, Takuroku. Built in the 1940s, Estrada Nacional 2 is 720km long and spans the length of Portugal, from Chaves in the north to Faro on the southern Atlantic coast. Vasco Alves cycled the route in summer 2020, across 8 days and documented the names of each town and village by recording them on his phone. The tracks are named in accordance with the distance travelled each day and the town name presented in chronological order. These words are set against a utilitarian set up of synthesis and rhythm. We hear a familiar set of sounds across each track, though Alves has a way of adding, subtracting and layering them, to create new spaces and situations for each composition. The music clicks and stutters, like the sound of a bicycle changing gears. The tracks are awash with bass tone and static texture, which recall his earlier, radio focussed work. It’s hard to draw comparisons with this music, moments from of Mika Vainio’s Ø project and Muslimgauze’s ‘Azzazzin’ come to mind, though Alves has conjured a unique world of absorbing sound which exudes a sense of focus and introspection. Vasco Alves is a musician from Lisbon, Portugal. His work explores the physicality of sound through the use of electronic and acoustic processes, including synthesis and amplification techniques, and the gaita de fole (Portuguese bagpipes). He is a member of VA AA LR with Adam Asnan and Louie Rice, known for their electroacoustic works and radical performance - live shows have included the use of distress flares and wheeling the PA through the audience. His solo music has been released by We Can Elude Control and After Action Review, who in 2020 released Gaita Contra Computador - a set of works for gaita de fole and computer. For this album Alves pares back his tools, using synthesiser and voice across 8 pieces, which act as an imaginary audio diary to his cycle journey along the Estrada Longa. "Part experimental audio diary, part road movie and part psychogeographic meditation, Estrada Longa is an absorbing work of chiselled, enveloping sound and haunting textual exploration" - Fielding Hope, Cafe Oto

John Hubbard, who is also a book designer and based in Finland, had released the sole recordings of the legendary project “Vogelscheiß Und Seine Verrückten Kröten” in 1989 in a limited edition of just 50 copies on his Strength Through Joy label. Now these rare recordings are re-issued for the first time by Art Into Life. In 1988, upon meeting Steve Stapleton while on vacation in Europe, John then went to Aachen and visited Christoph Heemann & Andreas Martin, and the enigmatic sessions they recorded are revealed here.

"I made the basic recordings of Tim Goss's voice during a recent return trip to England. Despite some initial reservations Tim ended up giving an animated and robust reading, drawn exclusively from work of his own creation. These tapes were then transported back to Poughkeepsie, NY, where the project was teased to completion." (Original LP sleeve notes)

A study in anticipation, Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) repurposes the expectant rumblings of an audience-in-waiting, lifted by Lambkin from various concert recordings of the German kosmische band Tangerine Dream. These bootlegged clips provide a skeleton for various sonic scraps and interludes—including distorted and abandoned fragments from Lambkin’s archive, new recordings on guitar and violin by Austin Argentieri and Samara Lubelski, respectively—that, together, form a composition suffused with the atmosphere of potential energy. With this Blank Forms reissue, Softly Softly Copy Copy is available on LP for the first time.

Edition of 500 copies, screen printed cover. Includes two inserts: a replica of the original insert and the english translation Henry Krutzen is a relatively shadowy figure in the history of experimental sound. Between the early 80s and the 2010s, there are only a handful of albums that bear his name, and very little information about them. A multi-instrumentalist and composer who studied percussion, saxophone, and harmony in various schools and jazz clinics across Belgium, over the years he played in a diverse range of musical projects across the idioms of jazz, new wave, heavy metal, experimental, chanson française, world music and progressive rock, before relocating to Brazil during the early 2000s. “Silances”, originally released by Igloo Records – the Belgian imprint founded in 1978 by Daniel Sotiaux – sitting alongside astounding and remarkably unique albums by Leo Küpper, Jacques Bekaert, Henri Chopin, Arthur Pétronio, André Stordeur, and numerous others, is an entirely singular gesture at the borders of sound poetry, musique concrète, and radical electroacoustic practice that draws upon disparate elements of drone, jazz, minimalism, ecstatic tribalism, and various traditions of music from across the globe. Decades on from its original release it remains as striking, unique, and compelling as it did upon its release. In a note that Krutzen penned in 2022 when he was contacted for the reissue of “Silances”, Krutzen recalls: “Since I was 16, I had been experimenting with concrete music with a technician friend and we used all a teenager’s room could offer to make sounds into music: faucets, glasses of water, metal springs on ladders, objects of any kind… I had hours of recordings I pitched to Daniel [Sotiaux], to see if he was interested in making an album. I also had other ideas I wanted to be able to develop. What a joy when he accepted to work on the project! So I got to work. First, I set up a vocal improvisation quartet, and we spent long afternoons rehearsing using input I provided… We went into the studio and recorded almost two hours of improvisation, from which I then chose the best moments for the final product”.

Coupla Triples is a collection of two recordings made by MP Hopkins in 2014. The first piece, Spins, Groans, Tones, was previously self-released as part of a CDR/chapbook edition, while the second piece Waves, Feedback, Thoughts, has remained unreleased until now. Both pieces were created using a simple compositional method, in which random word prompts were selected from a list of sounds and ‘interpreted’ in an immediate manner with only basic recording equipment - a microphone, a tape loop, a voice recorder and an amp. Three sounds, twice. Arranged carelessly but carefully. A coupla triples, nothing fancy. Recorded and mixed on the land of the Gadigal people, Sydney, 2014. MP Hopkins is a sound artist and musician working on Wangal land in Sydney, Australia. He uses voice, feedback, recording/playback devices, and text scores within different acoustic environments, which are deconstructed and presented to the listener in delicate and degraded ways.

Atrás del Cosmos have been called Mexico’s first free jazz ensemble. Founded in 1975 by pianist Ana Ruiz, saxophonist Henry West, and percussionist Evry Mann, the trio soon became a central force in Mexico City’s creative arts community, mentoring a generation of improvisers, incorporating a revolving cast of artists into their immersive happenings, and sustaining a scene through their legendary weekly performances at El Galeón theater. The group’s celestial name stems from the reality of these daily activities: untold hours spent living and rehearsing in a residential building behind (‘atrás) the Cosmos cinema, honing their improvisatory alignment with the kind of everyday intensity that animated the Arkestra pad in Philadelphia or the Tapscott houses in Los Angeles. In 1977, Atrás invited Don Cherry to play and instruct on his organic approach to music and improvisation, leading to new levels of national recognition for the group. Despite their catalytic creative presence in Mexico City between 1977 and 1983, Atrás never broke through abroad—not least because they were rarely recorded and only released a single cassette before their disbandment. Now issued on LP for the first time, the aforementioned cassette, Cold Drinks, Hot Dreams, is an exhilarating live recording documenting the core group plus double-bassist Claudio Enriquez performing in 1980—an expansive improvised journey marked by contrasting moments of explosive heat and cool hypnotic calm. Atrás skilfully lead the listener through this varied terrain, drawing seamlessly on their experiences of the New York loft scene, classical pianism, and the surrealistic theatrics of Alejandro Jodorowsky. Ruiz’s distinctive sound—recalling Cecil Taylor’s percussive touch, Mal Waldron’s blues minimalism, and Horace Tapscott’s meditative radiance, but remaining entirely her own—holds the session from first to last. Evry Mann’s broad palette of percussion adds a welcome element of surprise to the proceedings, enriching the music with a graceful balafon solo, sonorous hand drums, and bursts of high octane trap set playing. Henry West’s saxophone rides high throughout, weaving around the ensemble with a fierce elegance. Now finally available after forty years, the music of Átras del Cosmos will be sure to captivate spiritual jazz veterans and newcomers alike.

The latest in a prolific string of solo and collaborative releases by James Rushford, Turzets collects a pair of new works primarily created and recorded last year while the Australian composer-performer was in residence at La Becque, an art center on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The side-length piece “Fallaway Whisk” explores hesitation in its many forms—reticence of speech, sonic restraint—using live, abstracted translations of text from English to German against a lush and swelling soundscape. On the flip side, “Quire” is a work in ten movements influenced by the composer’s study of late medieval repertoire on portative organ, weaving the instrument’s woodsy interlocking melodies with angelic Yamaha CS-80 synth sweeps and stuttering glitches. The combined effort is somewhat a departure for Rushford, working in traces of Klaus Schulze, concrete poetry, and ars subtilior into a precise and ever-unfolding tapestry. Rushford’s work draws from a wide range of collagist and improvisatory musical languages, staking out an idiosyncratic stylistic space that has been variously described as “electro-acoustic experimentation with a beating heart” (Boomkat) and “haunted Jacobean ASMR” (The Wire). Investigating the creases, cracks, and folds in traditions ranging from early music to New Age, Rushford’s work subtly exaggerates seemingly liminal aspects such as atmosphere and the bodily presence of the performer until these take on a weight equal to musical elements such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre. In recent years, Rushford’s solo work has been guided by his theorization of sonic images, particularly the shadow, which has inspired pieces as diverse as an hour-long companion to Federico Mompou’s 1959–67 piano cycle Música Callada (2016) and a sumptuous translation of the play of light across flat surfaces into synthetic sound (The Lake from the Louvers, Shelter Press, 2021). His long-standing performance practice for piano, portative organ, synthesizers, and electroacoustic devices, is constantly infused with a delicacy of touch and a harmonic sensibility in which unorthodox tunings coexist with influences from fin de siècle Impressionism, the twentieth century avant-garde, and popular musical structures. He has worked with a vast range artists including Klaus Lang, Annea Lockwood, David Behrman, Tashi Wada, Haroon Mirza, Dennis Cooper, Ora Clementi, crys cole, Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger, Will Guthrie, and Graham Lambkin. He has performed as Golden Fur (with Sam Dunscombe and Judith Hamann) and Food Court (with Joe Talia and Francis Plagne).

DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! In the newest record by the iconoclastic Brooklyn-born composer Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947), find two mesmerizing works for carillon, the keyboard-controlled bell tower derived in the 16th century. On side A, a new piece recorded at the artist’s studio in Belgium—a high-ceiling, stuffed-animal-packed paradise he calls Charleworld—among friends and “divinities,” his name for the thousands of plush toys he’s amassed since the ’60s. On the flip side, Blank Forms Editions’ very first and long-out-of-print release appears on vinyl for the first time: a cathartic street recording of the maximalist composer’s 2018 musical eulogy for his late friend Tony Conrad, performed on the bells of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, where the two first met. Two mesmerizing “klanggdedangggebannggg” sessions in the Quasimodo of 53rd Street’s inimitable, trance-induced style. Perhaps more than any of his contemporaries in the bustling, cross-disciplinary downtown New York arts scene of the ’60s and ’70s, Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947) has embodied the notion of the artist as playful polymath, testing and transcending nearly every creative form imaginable in his more than six-decade career. Originally trained in Jewish sacred singing to be a cantor, he began his artistic life as a musician, studying piano and accordion, accompanying figures like Tiny Tim and Allen Ginsberg on percussion, using early synthesizers as an assistant to Alwin Nikolais, and eventually landing a long-running gig as the carillonneur at Midtown’s St. Thomas Episcopal. This libertine spirit of experimentation soon led to adventures in other aesthetic arenas: making kinetic light sculptures with Len Lye, devising choreographed performances with Simone Forti, and producing a series of visceral videotapes with the Castelli-Sonnabend collection. In the ’70s, he was particularly prominent on the burgeoning loft movement, becoming well-known for his sparse, intense, and exacting long-form piano concerts that seemed to bend the very nature of time and space. Beginning in the ’80s, he spent decades in self-imposed exile from the new music scene, living variously in Europe and Hawai'i and privately honing his hermetic sonic and visual practice. This was followed by a period of triumphant resurgence beginning in the mid-’90s, since which he has performed and exhibited globally. This release is on the occasion of Blank Forms’ sixth annual gala honoring Charlemagne Palestine.

Preorder! Graham Lambkin (of Shadow Ring fame) returns with a long awaited epic double LP, Aphorisms, his first major solo outing since Community (Kye, 2016). Recorded mostly during the early winter months of 2022, in post-pandemic New York and post-Brexit London, Aphorisms assembles the sonic detritus of daily life into hauntingly intimate aural soundscapes. Made between Lambkin's residence in East London and Blank Forms in New York, Aphorisms superimposes the two spaces onto one another creating an imaginary stage where his musical dramas unfold. A transatlantic mediation on the rooms where Lambkin has lived and worked, Aphorisms summons up hallucinatory vistas by way of the composer’s collage technique, layering field recordings, piano, guitar, percussion, vocal fragments, and repurposed elements on top of one another in double, triple, and quadruple exposures. Like the Shadow Ring’s Lindus (Swill Radio, 2001)—recorded between Folkestone and Miami—Aphorisms ruminates on estrangement and displacement, catching Lambkin as he returns to London after two decades of living in the States, in his words, “leaving home to return home.” Aphorisms continues Lambkin’s synthetic-naturalist approach to sound-making, twisting disparate and unique elements together to create the sensation of a coherent sonic space. At the heart of his practice is the illusion of form, whereby Lambkin combines sonic elements, documenting the moment that they coalesce into music only to disintegrate back into incidental sound. The album is centered around two pianos, one in New York and one in London, sounding together as if through the ether, creating a spectral atmosphere that Lambkin fills with melodic snippets, fragments of songs, spoken-word musings, and guttural barks or “the animal purity of voice,” as he has it. The superimposition of the two spaces is maximized in the album's closing titular track, where, much like on earlier works such as Salmon Run (Kye, 2007) and Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) fragments of familiar melodies float through the mix as though being played from afar. Aphorisms is Lambkin at his best, extending methodologies only hinted at previously and taking his now-idiosyncratic mission statement to a new chapter. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Unbegrenzt is the third in an ongoing series of archival records of the unheard music of Swedish composer Catherine Christer Hennix, co-released by Blank Forms Editions and Empty Editions. It follows Selected Early Keyboard Works and Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku (named the #1 archival release of 2019 by The Wire), in addition to a two-volume collection of Hennix’s writing titled Poësy Matters and Other Matters. Recorded in February of 1974 and featuring Catherine Christer Hennix (recitation, percussion, and electronics) and Hans Isgren (bowed gong), Hennix’s realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Unbegrenzt” (German for “unlimited”) from Aus den Sieben Tagen is an elaboration both rigorous and radically different from the canonical 1969 recording issued by Shandar. The collection of 15 text pieces written in Paris during May of 1968, Aus den Sieben Tagen, denies its performers notated direction and instead provides poetic cues that hinge upon Stockhausen’s conception of “intuitive music,” a Eurocentric perspective on improvisation antithetical to the vernacular forms Hennix had engaged with as a young drummer performing in Stockholm jazz clubs with musicians like Bill Barron, Cam Brown, Hans Isgren, Lalle Svenson, Allan Vajda, Bo Wärmell, and many others. While both Hennix and Isgren saw the formal prospect of Aus den Sieben Tagen as a productive development of and beyond La Monte Young’s event scores, she here steadfastly counters his rationalization of intuition with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. (Cf. Brouwer’s Lattice.) Eschewing the busy, conservatory-addled lapses into idiomatic citation of Stockhausen’s 1969 recording, Hennix’s alternative realization of the “Unbegrenzt” score’s instructions to “play a sound with the certainty that you have an infinite amount of time and space” is based on her concept of Infinitary Compositions, the trademark of her ensemble The Deontic Miracle which, at one time, considered adding Stockhausen, La Monte Young and Terry Jennings scores to its repertoire. Taking a mature, minimal iteration of Stockhausen’s compositional method of “moment-forming” to heart, her version’s dark, controlled feedback and amplified bowed gong subtly shift through an immanent sequence of formative moments, step by step. Its bubbling computer noise, percussion, and repeated ominous transient sounds of temple blocks over the bowed gong terminate with the integrated recitation of exotic text fragments from Hevajra Tantra which faithfully take Stockhausen’s score into deeper vistas of the unconscious and a more devastating opening to the unlimited time and space of a dreaming mind. Audio restoration and mastering by Stephan Mathieu, with an essay by Bill Dietz as well as a conversation between Dietz and Hennix. Catherine Christer Hennix (b. 1948) started her creative life playing drums with her older brother Peter, growing up in Sweden where she heard jazz luminaries, such as John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp, and Cecil Taylor perform from 1960 to 1967. Directly after high school, Hennix went to work at Stockholm’s pioneering Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), where she developed early tape music, incorporating computer generated speech done at the Royal Technological University (KTH), where she was an undergraduate student. After traveling to New York In 1968, she met artists Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles who invited her to stay at the Something Else Press Town House where she had the opportunity to meet, among others, composers John Cage, James Tenney, and Phil Corner. During the following years she developed fruitful collaborative relationships with many composers in the burgeoning American avant-garde, including, most significantly, Henry Flynt and La Monte Young. Young introduced Hennix to Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath and she would later study intensively under him as his first European disciple. While Hennix continued to make music performing alongside Arthur Russell, Marc Johnson, Henry Flynt, and Arthur Rhames, she also served as a professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at SUNY New Paltz and as a visiting Professor of Logic (at Marvin Minsky’s invitation) at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In recent years Hennix has led the just-intonation ensemble the Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which has featured musicians Amelia Cuni, Amirtha Kidambi, Chiyoku Szlavnics,  Hilary Jeffrey, Amir El-Saffar, Benjamin Duboc and Rozemarie Heggen. She currently resides in Istanbul, Turkey pursuing studies in classical Arabic and Turkish makam.

Before any instrumentation, Francisco Mela addresses his fellow musicians, pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker, with a sense of anticipation and affirmation, “Okay guys, ready? Rolling!” The sense of camaraderie and his artist-focused approach is heard throughout the album’s majestic improvisation—as well as in its inspiration, dedicated to Mela’s longtime musical partner, the legendary jazz musician McCoy Tyner. Tyner was well-known for his boundless musical talent, and perhaps best-known for playing in John Coltrane’s quartet, which revolutionized the jazz world and reverberated through the music world at large. But it was his mentorship that truly touched Francico Mela: Tyner encouraged him to explore the boundaries of both his personal expression and his musical ability, affirming the philosophical conviction that music was a gateway to liberation. That pursuit of freedom was a lifelong aspiration, and one borne from community. Mela recalls performing at New York City’s Blue Note with McCoy Tyner, on a specific night when maestro Cecil Taylor came to listen to McCoy’s trio. Tyner and Taylor shared a conversation, and afterwards Tyner returned backstage, gently confiding in Mela, “I wish I were that free. We play music to free our souls.” Likewise, Tyner encouraged Mela to pursue his broadening interests, inspiring Francisco to embrace experimentation and musical freedom. In Music Frees Our Souls Vol. 1, Mela, Shipp and Parker compose an album that is equally innovative and welcoming, offering the best of experimental jazz and paying homage to McCoy Tyner’s indelible creative influence. This is the first chapter of Francisco Mela’s Music Frees Our Souls trilogy dedicated to McCoy, always featuring William Parker on bass but with different piano players on each volume. The album, Francisco Mela’s second from 577 Records following MPT Trio (2021), will be available on limited edition blue vinyl (100 copies), black vinyl, CD, digital. Music Frees Our Souls Vol. 2 & 3 will be released in the near future.

Can music liberate us? Francisco Mela, who worked and partnered with the legendary jazz musician McCoy Tyner, believes so. On this album, the second volume of Music Frees Our Souls, Mela collaborates with pianist Cooper-Moore and bassist William Parker to build a 2-part extended track project of advanced dialogue between 3 of the genre's most important instruments. Tyner was well-known for his boundless musical talent, and perhaps best-known for playing in John Coltrane’s quartet, which revolutionized the jazz world and fundamentally influenced the music world at large. Despite his indelible, wide-reaching impact on experimental jazz, it was Tyner’s mentorship that truly touched Francisco Mela: Tyner encouraged him to explore the boundaries of both his personal expression and his musical ability, affirming the philosophical conviction that music was a gateway to liberation. This album is again dedicated to Tyner’s mentorship and encouragement, suggesting we all embrace experimentation and musical freedom. This second volume/album will be available on limited edition burgundy red vinyl, black vinyl, CD, or download in January 2023. Music Frees Our Souls Vol. 3 is also planned for release in the near future. Cooper-Moore - Piano William Parker - Bass Francisco Mela - Drums Recorded November 13, 2020 by Jeremy Loucas at Douglass Recording, Brooklyn, New York

eo Genovese - Piano, sax William Parker - Bass Francisco Mela - Drums Recorded November 13, 2020 by Jeremy Loucas at Douglass Recording, Brooklyn, New York

Outernational Sounds present a reissue of Nate Morgan's Retribution, Reparation, originally released on Nimbus West Records in 1984. A core member of the circle around Horace Tapscott, pianist Nate Morgan was a key member of the Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra, known as The Ark. Here is the second of his two LPs for Nimbus West. His first, Journey Into Nigritia had been a declaration of arrival laced with energies drawn from Cecil Taylor and Coltrane. One year later, in 1984, with nods to Herbie Hancock ("One Finger Snap") and Ellington ("Come Sunday"), Retribution, Reparation was a confident statement of purpose. Politically charged with pan-Africanist Black nationalism, and titled with uncompromising directness, the album focusses the sound world of the Ark into a surging, restless masterpiece of spiritualized modal jazz. Danny Cortez on trumpet and Jesse Sharps on saxophones comprise an explosive frontline. Fritz Wise and Ark regular Joel Ector hold down the rhythm section. Morgan's forceful, Tyner-like chords and virtuosic solos bind the music together. From the poised drama of the opening dedication to Tapscott's U.G.M.A.A. organization, through the propulsive militancy of the title track, "Retribution, Reparation" spreads the word: "Advance to Victory, Let Nigritia Be Free!" Fully licensed from Nimbus West founder Tom Albach.

"Joe McPhee's first international release, Black Magic Man, was issued on the newly formed Hat Hut imprint in 1975. It was a watershed moment for the 35-year-old musician. Based in Poughkeepsie, New York, he was too far away from Manhattan to have participated extensively in the Loft Jazz happenings of the decade. European exposure, however, would give McPhee an alternative circuit, something of an escape route from the trappings of American cultural myopia. "In support of the new record for this Swiss label, McPhee invited John Snyder on a European tour in October 1975. Snyder was a synthesizer player with whom McPhee had made the duet LP Pieces Of Light, released a year earlier on CjR. The two musicians developed an extensive repertoire, playing diverse spaces in the Hudson Valley. Geographically close gigs were a plus, since it took extra energy to hoist Snyder's ARP 2600. "McPhee and Snyder were invited to play at the Willisau Jazz Festival in Switzerland. If you compare this live record with Pieces Of Light, a studio effort, it's considerably more open. South African drummer Makaya Ntshoko is rolling thunder on the choral 'Voices,' shuffling under Snyder's bubbly beat on 'Bahamian Folksong.' It is quite a special combination, enough so that Hat Hut chose to release it as their next LP, Hat Hut B in their alphabetical series. The Willisau Concert represents the sound of Joe McPhee opening up, opening out, expanding his field of operations to include new figures, fresh experiences, new continents of sound."

Grapefruit Records is proud to introduce Stenhjärta, a new duo consisting of Gustaf Dicksson & Magnus Jäverling. Both are active in the Swedish Underground music scene centered in Gothenburg. Gustaf is known for his shape-shifting prolific solo project, Blod, as well as his participation in the notable music collective, Enhet för Fri Musik. Magnus is somewhat newer to the scene, appearing on some Blod recordings as well as releasing a fascinating concept album called Bowdark on the Discreet Music label in 2022. As a duo here they are exploring classic prog-folk motifs with very Swedish influences. Gryning Kommer Röd is yet another gorgeous album delivered to us from the heads and hearts of two active musicians of the Swedish Underground.