Vinyl

Flower Travellin' Band, 50 motorcycles and others - Beam Penetration and Mad Computer, plus the Minimal Sound of Motorcycles =Regular Edition= 10-inch LP & CD Expo 70, held in Osaka, was a pivotal event for the Japanese people and their relationship with the rest of the world, demonstrating both the nation’s ongoing economic recovery from World War Two and the creative spirit of Japanese society and its artists. The event gained international acclaim for its adventurous architectural design, visual art and electronic music. Some of Japan’s most renowned composers were involved, but also present were the now-legendary rockers, the Flower Travellin' Band. A series of performances, billed as “Night Events” were held at the Expo; the most radical of these was "Beam Penetration and Mad Computer, plus the Minimal Sound of Motorcycles”, but its anti-establishment feel and general madness took the Expo organizers by surprise and it was cancelled after only one night, despite being scheduled for a longer run. An air of myth developed around the event, but a recording of the event has been discovered and this release is the result. And what an event it was: a night-time sound-bomb with a fabled band, electronic sound and 50 motorcycles with horns blaring, spotlights, electronic billboards and a robot ― all flashing, roaring and howling at the night sky. This release comprises a CD, a 10-inch record with fold-out sleeve and large obi, plus fascinating notes in Japanese and English by Kenichi Yasuda, an expert on Japanese rock music, and Koji Kawasaki, a renowned researcher of Japanese electronic music, as well as rare photos. No download code/ticket available. TRACKS: CD “Beam Penetration” (full-length) [45:49] 10-inch (excerpts) Side A “Beam Penetration” [14:52] Side B “Beam Penetration”

“Beam Penetration and Mad Computer, plus the Minimal Sound of Motorcycles” – Flower Travellin' Band

Kata No Wadachi is the latest album by Banetoriko, the solo noise project of Tamaki Ueda. Her first release both on An’archives and on vinyl, it follows several albums for the Neurec imprint – 2017’s Beside the Sluice and 2022’s Yorioto Hogiokuri – and several other cassettes and CD-Rs. With Kata No Wadachi, the Banetoriko world, inspired by the Yokai (“strange apparitions” – supernatural figures, ghosts, spirits) of Japanese folklore, is at its most resonant yet. Recorded across 2022 and 2023, the three tracks on Kata No Wadachi have Ueda performing in a particularly elevated manner. Her sound is highly tactile and grittily sensuous, the better to capture the ritualistic repetitions, and hypnotic methodologies, core to Banetoriko. The scrape and scratch of Ueda’s self-made metal instrument, the Banetek, gives these improvisations a unique throb, even as their mood, of introverted focus and elaboration of minutiae, gestures towards broader histories of noise and abstract art. Kata No Wadachi evokes, to some degree, the urban ritual noise of the likes of The New Blockaders, Organum, or Ferial Confine; elsewhere, the abraded, rough-housing textures bring to mind the eighties tape works of Hands To and John Hudak. Ueda embraces the dream evocation that’s possible when loops of blurred texture collide with the gnaw and groan of energised metal, while mantric, dissociated vocals, and the oppressive weight of deep breath, gather around these compositions like a ghost’s shroud. While she’s been making noise for some time, since the nineties, Banetoriko was formalised as a project in 2011, while Ueda lived in Los Angeles. Relocating to Osaka in 2021, she’s carved out an utterly unique space for herself in Japanese noise, and her music contains an absolutely elemental vibration. Framed beautifully with poetic liner notes by Aurélien Rossanino, Kata No Wadachi is an oppressive, yet quixotically blissful trip.

Banetoriko – Kata No Wadachi

An’archives is proud to present the latest album by Japanese free saxophonist and vocalist Harutaka Mochizuki, Doppelgänger ga boku wo. Since the early 2000s, Harutaka has quietly, yet steadily, released a string of solo and collaborative releases that have allowed multiple perspectives on one of the most singular voices in modern music. In collaboration, he seems to prefer the duo format, and digging through his discography, you’ll find releases where he pairs with Tomoyuki Aoki (of Up-Tight), Michel Henritzi, and Hideaki Kondo. But Harutaka’s solo performances, with their lyricism and physicality, are where the magic truly happens. If earlier albums, like Solo Document 2004 (Bishop, 2005) and Pas (no label, 2014), were raw documentations of solo alto saxophone performances, in recent years, Harutaka’s solo albums have become more complex, more mystifying. Most significantly, they’ve become more personal; there are few musicians extant whose albums feel quite so much like diaristic interventions, and Harutaka’s music now is deeply moving in its intimacy. Developing that thread of revelation, Doppelgänger ga boku wo offers a still richer exploration of many facets of Harutaka’s artistry. The two double-tracked alto saxophone performances here feel consummate, with Harutaka shadowing himself, exploring the possibilities of the multiple self: Doppelgänger is me, indeed. The playing here is rich with affect, but still exploratory, voiced with rigour and intent. Two short pieces for keyboard and voice (about Giacometti and Genêt, respectively) are fragile miniatures, with clusters of chords, and passing phrases, wrapping around Harutaka’s untutored but lovely singing. The ‘karaoke’ performance that closes the album, of “Woman ‘W no higeki’ yori”, speaks to the iterative aspects of Harutaka’s music. A cover of the Hiroki Yakushimaru song, the theme to Shinichirō Sawai’s 1984 film W’s Tragedy, he’s returned to this song several times, and here, his delivery perfectly captures the spirit of what Michel Henritzi, in his typically beautiful liner notes, evocatively details as “one of those sad love songs that accompany lonely sake drinkers in smoky night bars, sharing their spleen.” Gorgeous, human, heartrending - Doppelgänger ga boku wo is Harutaka Mochizuki in element and in spirit. 

Doppëlganger Ga Boku Wo – Harutaka Mochizuki

Saltern present a remastered edition of Yoshi Wada’s The Appointed Cloud (1987), a work which Wada has often said is his favorite of his own. Staged at the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science, The Appointed Cloud was Wada’s first large-scale, interactive installation and featured a custom pipe organ, among other homemade instruments, controlled by a computer equipped with a customized interface and software designed by engineer David Rayna, known for his work with La Monte Young. This recording captures the opening performance for which Wada brought together four musicians on bagpipes (Wada, Bob Dombrowski, and Wayne Hankin) and percussion (Michael Pugliese) to perform with the installation, operated by David Rayna. In Wada’s own words: “This performance [of The Appointed Cloud] was one of the most memorable performances I've done. The space itself—the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science—was incredible. The building was designed for the 1964-65 World’s Fair and had spaceships hanging from the ceiling so people felt like they were traveling in outer space. It was an amazing experience with the sound of the pipe organ, sheet metal, pipe gong, and bagpipes all together. 60 minutes may seem like a long duration, but it didn't feel like it.” --- Composed by Yoshi Wada Sound installation instruments—pipe organ, sirens, tall sheet metal, pipe gong, etc.—provided by Yoshi Wada Computer interface engineering and software: David Rayna Bagpipes: Yoshi Wada, Bob Dombrowski, and Wayne Hankin Timpani and tam-tam: Michael Pugliese Recorded live by John Driscoll on November 8, 1987 Digital transfer by Sonicraft A2DX Lab Mastered by Stephan Mathieu --- Saltern, 2021

Yoshi Wada – The Appointed Cloud

First ever reissue of OFAMFA by CHILDREN OF THE SUN, a legendary and virtually unobtainable artifact of St. Louis' Black Artist Group from 1971 Original released in 1971 by the BAG groups own label “Universal Justice Records” this album has for years been an impossible to find/listen to album, and this is its first reissue ever .. Ofamfa by The Children Of The Sun, a band lead by poet/musicien Ajule/aka Bruce Rutlin Is a heady mix of poetry/jazz/political songs/ and a document of a comunity avent. The BAG group being about all the arts theater and dance. The original liner notes by Ajule are great Insight in to the creative/vibrant politically aware jazz scene of St Louise in the late 60s early 70s. This album is an important piece of black American history, and even as a visual artifact it is the thing! “All of the brothers playing and writing on this record are members of the Black Artist Group (BAG) which is based in St. Louis, "Misery." The Black Artist Group, a loose association of young Black men & women, is a potent/fertile creative force; a group which has contributed strong/fresh/inspirational creativity in the fields of Music/Writing/Dance/Drama. The Children of the Sun is one of the units operating under the BAG umbrella; others are or have been, The Oliver Lake/BAG, The 'BAG' Ensemble (Big Band), Red Black & Green Solidarity Unit, Onawali Dancers, Malinque Rhythm Tribe, BAG Drama Dept., Great Black Music Orchestra of St. Louis, Fire-Earth-Air-Water, Me We & Them, Julius Hemphill Quartet and some others.......all different creative approaches and reflecting a sum of influences and wisdoms which ranges across 500 years from here to Africa.......During their brief creative association the COS etched themselves into many hearts and minds. The group was together for little more than a year. Playing college concerts (when $ lucky), playing benefits for all kinds of groups of Black people and progressive whites. "A spiritual oasis in the baren desert of Amerika..." They would say, sometimes...... The conceptions reflect experiments which sought to establish a balance/harmony between the mediums of muse/ic and the spoken/sung word, (often the motions of dancers added still another depth) a balance which would catch the pulse and flame of the will of our people even tho they and we had already condemned the english language as the criminal insignia of the privileged class/es. (...Still, english wuz the only language we had in common so it was a dilema of how to reinspire the language). But because the members had to spend a majority of their time food getting their experiments and investigations were abandoned short of their goal which was/is to find a way to restablish the natural harmony of the Spiritual World; which has been upset and polluted to the same extent as our physical world: SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY?? Unfortunately, as it was, the experiments had to be cut short just as the techniques of communication were being perfected. Cut short by a manifestation of whut George Jackson called "over oppression." These young Black men look, walk, talk, eat, love, trip like us all but (unlike most) life is incalcuably more important to them than property values, hot dogs, cadillacs, or even "civilization;" if u can dig where i'm comin from! Their compassion for the Black, the poor, and the disadvantaged in general is reflected by the staggering numbers of free concerts they give/have given or the free classes they offer at BAG in the 4 major disciplines. And by the fact that they seek to maintain their comittment to life and creativity even as they exist at or near the starvation level. So these young Black men are emissaries of the Spiritual Universe....... the lost/abandoned universe they seek to describe in their creativity. "The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe."* All these things are being said ...... u see ...... in an attempt to distinguish them favorably from their contemporaries in the Kapitalist "superstars"/entertainers/puppets who frolic like gelded puppies across the stages/footlights of the nation; at the end of the silver gaudy chains held by the bloody hands of the richest pale faces and their legions of sattelites and lackeys; who do come in all colors and races. This expression was recorded (by BAG) at various concerts and all of it was recorded "live"/accomplished in one taping. Other than regular microphones no electronic devices shaped this creativity (BLACK). we are new yes we are old before and after the mighty winds of change and revolution The "Black Artist Group" wuz there yes we are the shambles, ruined tones of ancient memories and the sound of running waters, singing leaves flirting the silly air and yes sunlight splashed against dark wrinkled faces sighed winds driving the seasons the gifted moans of cherished lovers yes yes yes serene faces of beautiful children Ours..........” *John Coltrane - Ajulé  credits released June 3, 2024 The Muse/icians on the album are…. Rashu Aten / conga, small instruments Oliver Lake / soprano &Alto sax, flute, poems, small instruments Floyd LeFlore/ trumpet, small instruments Ishac Rajab/ Trumpet Arzinia Richardson/ bass, small instruments Vincent Terrell / cello Charles “bobo” Shaw / drums, small instruments Ajule / poetry, arrangements, small instruments, drums

Ofamfa – Children Of The Sun

On April 15th SA Recordings present a new LP and sample library from the acclaimed New York composer, performer and sound designer Lea Bertucci. A work of three interlinked incarnations, ‘Acoustic Shadows’ began as an event, which then became an album and has inspired a sample library for other musicians. The Event (recalled by Lea Bertucci) “Acoustic Shadows I-III was a series of site-specific musical performances and a sound installation that took place in the enclosed hollow body of the Deutzer bridge in Koln, Germany, 2018. Spanning approximately 440 meters across the Rhine river, the extraordinary acoustics and rich existing aural architecture of this site became crucial components of the installation and musical compositions. An 8-channel speaker system distributed throughout the bridge became activated by three instrumental performances that happened throughout the course of a week. Fragments of each performance were captured by microphones installed in the space and then played back through the 8-channels after the performance was over in a loop of overlapping moments, creating a sonic accumulation that takes place over long stretches of time - a musical performance with no clear ending. The first performance, for solo alto saxophone, served as the basis for the rest of the piece, as the sounds generated during this performance were played back as an installation throughout the following days. The second performance built upon the first, this time with an 8-piece brass ensemble. Again, the sounds produced here were captured in a similar fashion from the first performance and continued as an installation for the next few days. On the last day, a performance for three percussionists closed out the event and completed the project. I wanted to create elements within this project that directly responded to the auditory richness of the site. In each composition, I looked for particular instruments that would excite the acoustic characteristics of the space. With approximately 14 seconds of reverb, distinctive delay effects and a room tone of approximately 65 hz, the hollow body of the bridge provided a lush sonic backdrop to stage these pieces."

Lea Bertucci – Acoustic Shadows

Solo Guitar 2 was recorded by Bill Nace in 2008, in a good-sounding room in Bennington, Vermont. This year the record, originally released as a now (nearly) extinct cassette, is reissued without it's mysterious and (maybe?) long-lost sibling Solo Guitar 1 (Like any good punk demo -- which, both aesthetically and energetically, Solo Guitar 2 is -- the thrill of discovery is made only sweeter by the potential of future discovery). The vinyl release comes a little less than a year after Bill's first 'official' solo record, Both, which was released by Drag City in May, 2020. The two records don't necessarily stand in opposition, but they are at different points on the spectrum of production, tone, mood, time, place, age, career. Where Both is softened by the warmth and precision of a studio, there's a wildness to Solo Guitar 2 which approaches the experience of witnessing Bill perform live. Made up of mostly brief pieces - songs, practically - Solo Guitar 2 winds tight, then unwinds, or sometimes snaps apart. Crackling, itchy static morphs into heavy, watery vibration, layered on metallic rattle. There are moments where that Bennington room sounds as sterile and lonely as a deserted art gallery. And then it becomes spacious and warm, like a cathedral filling with the hum of the universe. The bulk of Bill's releases are collaborations with other artists, who are drawn to him (at least in part) because he's an innovative player and a deep listener. Those qualities hold, and in certain ways intensify when he's on his own. As he takes a series of unlikely tools across his prone guitar with the grace and urgency of someone at a loom or an aircraft control panel, there's a sense of reaching inward. But where some might meander or navel-gaze, Bill's playing is a process of constant dynamic construction. What unfurls can feel intensely personal, and often - for reasons I don't always understand - very moving. Bill isn't interested in micromanaging his listeners' experiences, but he does make room for us. Composer Pauline Oliveros observed that when we listen deeply to the world around us, we sometimes notice very subtle and quiet differences in sounds that we thought were familiar. As a result, she writes, 'the slightest difference may lead you to a new creative relationship.' Bill is, I think, tuned in to these subtle and quiet differences. But, in a truly punk fashion, he flips this for the listener, making unfamiliar and not-very-subtle noise into something akin to (but also distinct from) familiar sounds: traffic outside your window, the soft roar of a conch shell to your ear, static between radio stations. Solo Guitar 2, full as it is of shades and moods and life, offers a fresh way of hearing. -Margaret Welsh Philadelphia, PA 2021

Bill Nace – One Note (Solo Guitar 2)

Playing up to and into DDS’ freeform aesthetics, O’Rourke renders 40 minutes shearing hyaline synth tones and ruptured rhythm generated at his Steamroom facilities in Tokyo, a modular out-zone trawling that harks back to his iconic Mego releases and some of the more recent Steamroom experiments. It’s an ideal addition to the ever expanding DDS cosmos, following Demdike’s recent ‘Drum Machine’ expo with a slice of purist and screwed modular magick that transcends early electronics and modern styles in pursuit of musical sensations that defy stylistic brackets. 'Too Compliment’ was assembled using a bespoke Hordijk modular system, a rare West Coast-style setup hand made by Dutch engineer Rob Hordijk. O'Rourke focuses on the frequency shifter here, using it to coax out fluxing tone thickets, haphazard frequencies and elongated drone corridors. It's transportive stuff, harking back to the early days of private press academic synth music but also sitting on edge alongside Autechre's recent long-form work, as well as O'Rourke's classic "I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4” In O’Rourke’s hands, the mass of electronics takes on throbbing, organic dimensions, congealing grey matter and purplish veins of fluid in viscous transitions that glisten and spark with invention as they form new tissue. What comes out is as unearthly as the earliest electronic music, but also blessed with a psychedelc spirit in a way that’s long kept O’Rourke right out on his own, teetering between paradigms yet never settling into any single style. If you’ve always been keen on finding a way into that sprawling soundworld, 'Too Compliment’ is a perfect entry point into a highly rewarding creative macrocosm. --- DDS, 2021

Too Compliment – JIM O'ROURKE

Legendary Japanese noise band, Hijokaidan, team up with electronic avant-pop pioneer Togawa. Hijokaidan was formed in Kyoto in 1979 by Jojo Hiroshige and Naoki Zushi, and are undisputed leaders of the Japanese noise scene. Jun Togawa's first recordings as writer producer and singer were in the early 80s, sometimes working with Haruomi Hosono among others. This new and cataclysmic collaboration is produced by  Hiroshige and Togawa. Pressed on translucent red wax, 180g audiophile record, with 48x72cm fold-out poster and full English lyrics. Includes  high-quality digital download code with exclusive bonus tracks - Made in Japan. Released in 2017, these are the last copies available. "For the first time, art-pop goddess Jun Togawa meets on disc noise icon Jojo Hiroshige for a fantastic album, a twin-pronged sonic attack to melt your ears in disbelief. As maddening as one can expect, the music is an invitation to the worlds of both artists – a surrealistic tour de force to knock your loose socks off. Former actress Jun Togawa is an eccentric pop singer, a poisonous flower that sprouted in 1980s new wave bands like Halmens, Guernica and Yapoos. The famous “insect woman” worked with such masters as Haruomi Hosono and Otomo Yoshihide, before lending her voice and lyrics to half the tracks presented here on Togawa Kaidan – including hit song “Suki Suki Dai Suki”. And it feels like a comeback! Pursuing his latest works with pop idols, Jojo Hiroshige is better known as the founder of cult band Hijokaidan, aka one of the most prominent and violent noise-improv acts ever fomented in Japan. His influence over the Japanese underground scene is limitless with more than 200 album credits in his entire output, including Ultra Bide, Acid Mothers Kaidan, Bis Kaidan and many more. Together, they form an unexpected duo, a monstrous and absurd collaboration seeking to water down pop music into an ecstatic cacophony for the sake of it! This striking record sounds like a dragonfly trapped in the emergency staircase of an ever-collapsing structure, trying to survive between guitar shreds and clusters of blistering noise. Every two tracks, Jun’s quirky vocals add a layer of sweetness over the clanky maelstrom created by “God Hand Jojo”, her squeals shattering on a wall of brutal noise. Hearing Togawa and Hiroshige, you will face a virtual onslaught in staggered rows. Now available on vinyl with download codes for exclusive bonus tracks, you may fully experience their take on what music is all about. – B.M."

Togawa Kaidan – Hijokaidan, Jun Togawa

Building on nearly a decade of friendship, with an evolving creative partnership spanning roughly half that time, Swedish/Australian synthesist, John Chantler, and Danish saxophonist, Johannes Lund, return with Andersabo, their second outing as a duo.An intricate, thrillingly unbridled blast of carefully controlled sonic anarchy, pushing at the perceptual boundaries of conversant sound, Andersabo captures the collision of two sympathetic, but often radically different, creative pursuits - Chantler’s subtle complexity, composing for electronics, modular synthesis, and acoustic instruments, and Lund’s full tilt constructions for various saxophones, pointedly defying long standing expectations and syntaxes applied to his chosen instrument — in open dialog with landscape beyond.Recorded during the summer of 2019, while the duo were on a residency in rural Sweden, the LP’s three works present a radical rethinking of aural collectivism. Each is a space within which the environment and its many actors — the floorboards of a barn, a grassy field, distant hills, insects, the pulse of an electric fence, or a passing tractor, threaded with the tones and responses of Lund’s saxophone and Chantler’s pump organ and synth — are given equal presence and voice. A clear, conceptual extension of both artists’ long standing pursuits of collaboration and the building of context, whether creatively or as facilitators, notably via Chantler’s Edition Festival in Stockholm, and Lund’s work within the Danish community as a founder of the legendary space, Mayhem. Andersabo represents a rigorously forward thinking rendering of utopian sound, inextricable from the joy, playfulness, and humour with which it was made. Two artist bound by friendship, dramatically opening the sense of creative possibility for the next.A poignant reminder that art and its making, as serious as it is, can be thrilling, adventurous, and fun, the album’s opener, Back of the House, weaves an immersive and emotive tapestry of dancing texture and tone where the identity of generative sources flutter in and out of view, stripped of hierarchy. Shifting gears with the final minutes of the first side of the LP, Open Field & Forest packs a remarkable density into its length. Long, harmonic tones of a pump organ fall within a cavernous landscape, captured from beyond the farmhouse walls, its breadth riddled with unplaceable rumbles, clatters, and chirps, giving way as the animalistic howl of saxophone takes hold. With Under Barn Floor, stretching across the entirety of the LP’s second side, Chantler and Lund depart into a gripping, abstract portrait of time and place. Playfully pushing at the conceptual boundaries of drone, the hand of the artists rise and fall as the low frequencies of the bass saxophone and Chantler’s synthesized organ tones are challenged with interventions of insect sounds and countless, happenstance incidents, dancing with electronically generated images of themselves. A journey toward the future, locked within a discrete moment in time, which culminates as a collective intervention between voice, geography, ideas, and chance. An unpredictable bridge between acoustic and electronic composition and field recording, Andersabo offers a remarkable image of the rewards found through friendship, community, and uninhibited experimentation.     ---   Johannes Lund / bass saxophoneJohn Chantler / synthesizer, pump organ   --- Recorded by John Chantler and Johannes Lund, August 2019 on location at ANDERSABO, Sweden. Residency graciously hosted by Jason Dungan.Open Field & Forest and Under Barn Floor were mixed by John Chantler at The Royal College of Music (KMH) and Silence is Golden in Stockholm. Back of The House was mixed by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering who also mastered the record. Vinyl was cut by Andreas 'LUPO' Lubich and pressed at Pallas.With support from Koda's Cultural Funds.

John Chantler & Johannes Lund – Andersabo