Vinyl


At 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. The recording of “Exactement” required two sessions in the studio: February 1st and May 18th 1974 – in between the two dates, Lancaster recorded, alongside Clint Jackson, the excellent “Mother Africa”. Two names appear on the cover of “Exactement”: Lancaster (Byard) and Speller (Keno). Byard Lancaster wanted to be precise, moving regularly from one instrument to another: first on piano, which was the first instrument he learned. On “Sweet Evil Miss Kisianga”, his inspiration is first and foremost Coltrane (even if leaning more towards Alice than John), this announces the storm to follow. It is Lancaster’s horn-playing which really stands out: on alto (the sound of which is transformed by an octavoice on one track, "Dr. Oliver W. Lancaster") or soprano saxophones, as well as on flute or bass clarinet, the musician walks a tightrope making the most of all the risks he takes. Using the full register of his instruments, he has fun with the possibilities. Then, Lancaster invokes or evokes Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and even Prokofiev, before going into a danse alongside Keno Speller on percussion. Above all, he has a unique sound. Byard Lancaster, on whatever instrument he plays and by continually seeking, always ends up hitting the right note… ends up by playing exactement the note he had to play.

Byard Lancaster – Exactement

Includes 16 page booklet and 30 day free MUBI subscription. AGON is the directorial debut of Giulio Bertelli. It follows a triptych of female athletes as they prepare and then compete in LUDOJ 2024, a fictional Olympic Games, in their personal disciplines - judo, fencing, and rifle shooting. Informed by the historical figures of Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Nadezhda Durova, these women are portrayed against the political, social, technological and physical contexts that dominate the highest level of sports competition and performance.AGON explores a contemporary account of the contradictions of these sports, which began as peacetime practices for war, as their disciplines are institutionally sanitised, recast as wholesome global entertainment, and ultimately dematerialised altogether in new digital arenas. The events at LUDOJ are conducted not in sports arenas but on soundstages, with no live audience. These spartan spaces are populated only by athletes, sports officials, and film crew, capturing every audio-visual layer of information. Within this environment, every mat crash, sword clash and gunshot is experienced in exacting detail.Tom Wheatley’s score began as a conceptual mirror to this. He took three musicians, each with a singular approach to their instrument, each instrument having a language of articulation that relates to each sport: percussion for judo, cello for fencing, saxophone for rifle shooting. Added to this were claustrophobic analogue electronics, and bagpipes, to represent a state beyond competition: war. The rich, detailed signals from these players underwent extreme processing live in the studio, at times moving the music into a grey area between score, sound design and foley.“I saw a material parallel between the sportsperson and the musician. That you have these tools which you carry through life, which hold complex histories of use. These techniques and traditions are studied, and combined with contemporary technologies to unlock new potentials. As Alex Sokolov is to her gun, Jean-Luc Guionnet is to his saxophone.From this model sprung many ideas, which lay the foundation for the score: applying the gestural language of the fencing epee to Ute’s bow; the ‘tuned air’ of both the rifle and the saxophone; taking the judo concept of barycentre and applying that to a form of rhythmic gravity with Seijiro. It was a rich seam”– Tom Wheatley“Where realism and fiction are blurred in the world of AGON, Tom accomplished the same for the score, obfuscating the boundary between the acoustic landscape of the film and the music, respecting the theoretical framework of the film itself.”– Giulio BertelliAGON premiered at Venice Film Festival 2025, was awarded the Luciano Sovena Award for Best Independent Production, and the FIPRESCI Award (International Federation of Film Critics). It is a MUBI/Match Factory production.  Written & composed by Tom WheatleyFeedback Synthesizer by Grundik KasyanskyBagpipes by Harry Górski-BrownPercussion by Seijiro MurayamaCello by Ute KanngiesserSaxophone by Jean-Luc GuionnetRecorded by Matt Jaggar at Konk Studios, LondonAdditional mixing by Matt Jaggar and Tommaso BarbaroAdditional editing by Tommaso BarbaroMastered by Rashad Becker

Tom Wheatley (With Grundik Kasyansky, Harry Górski-Brown, Seijiro Murayama, Ute Kanngiesser, &Jean-Luc Guionnet) – AGON (OST)

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

Children Of The Sun – Ofamfa

Regan Bowering’s first LP, A Technology of Feeling (Infant Tree, 2025), builds on the ideas and techniques of her debut solo album, Solos for _ _ _ _ Spaces (Bezirk, 2023). Her practice centres on drums, amplifiers and microphones intertwined in a multi-layered feedback system. Where the debut exposed the tensions and rhythms of control within this system to shape a distinct vocabulary, the new record deepens that exploration, reaching toward fresh terrains of musical and sonic expression. A Technology of Feeling continues to navigate the contrasts between spaces, materials and the body; control and release; percussive rupture and feedback’s continuity. Where Solos for _ _ _ _ Spaces attended to the acoustic, technological and architectural conditions shaping the performance, “driven by the desire to craft electrifying drama,” (The Quietus), A Technology of Feeling turns inward. Through her percussive feedback language, Bowering maps the shifting borders between inner emotional states and the external environments that shape them. The result is a work that crafts moods and architectures of sound—delicate, resonant, and unresolved—without seeking to contain the contradictions of lived experience. Its title points to this focus, framing technology as a means of producing, mediating and reflecting the atmospheres and feelings that shape the environments we move through. Side A unfolds across five interconnected pieces, constructed from fragments of live and studio sessions recorded in London and New York. Each piece isolates and expands a different facet of Bowering’s practice—texture, feedback, rhythm, atmosphere, and emotion through layering and the recursive return of gesture and form. Side A charts several climactic arcs, moving through intensities that shift from overwhelm to fragility to euphoric collapse. Side B (Track 6) captures a live performance at Boston’s Waterworks Festival (April 2025), where Bowering’s feedback system reaches its most expansive form. The cavernous acoustics of the old water pump station reveal timbral nuances and tactile detail, infusing herimprovisational palette with vast natural reverb, resulting in a performance that is both chilling and echoes with melancholic yearning.

Regan Bowering – A Technology of Feeling

Original GRM member Beatriz Ferreyra deploys a gripping trio of concrète works spanning 40 years (1977-2007) and revealing some of her most mysterious, freeform and otherworldly work comparable to Schaeffer and Parmegiani, but with a poetic playfulness of her own. This vinyl record brings together three pieces that play mischievously with the voice as a sound source, narrative source or diverted object: "Huellas Entreveradas" (2018), "La Baballe du Chien Chien à la Mé-Mère" (2001) and "Deux Dents Dehors" (2007). “Beatriz Ferreyra has been at the forefront of electroacoustic music composition since 1963 when she joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales as one of Pierre Schaeffer’s research assistants. She is one of very few composers still performing who was instrumental at the beginning of Schaeffer’s theories of sound objects and reduced listening techniques. She continues to compose commissioned works and perform around the world in a career that has spanned some sixty years. From the 1960s until 1997 Beatriz composed tape pieces for multi-speaker performance using three or four Revox reel-to-reel tape machines at each concert. She now works on Pro Tools with GRM plug-ins but still uses the Revoxes for certain tape techniques that can’t be achieved with computer software. Beatriz discusses her music in the Schaefferian way, as a series of impulsions [sharp attacks], iteratives [repetitions], percutés [percussive hits], and trames [sustains] whilst also using her own onomatopoeic descriptions such as ‘schkllang, prrrrwip, ferrrwisssssh, takatak’ communicating sounds freely and directly as she hears them. Her music is about movement; the movement of sounds around a performance space, or the positioning of sounds as point sources within the illusory stereo field between loudspeakers. It is also about movement within individual sounds, where each one is a composition of different shifting components and a ‘little structure’ in its own right, with its own character. She likens her sounds to a Russian doll, inside each is another one, which contains another, and so on. During her time at Schaeffer’s studios, Beatriz developed her own research project, Objets Construits, (constructed objects). These are layers of short sounds, chords made of different noises. Each layer is isolated on a separate piece of tape to analyse the relationships between components and the effect of minimal alterations in pitch, dynamics or timing, to the overall perception of the chord. This was a way of thinking about sound slowly and patiently, of taking time to experiment, analyse and contemplate each manipulation, that is lost in the speedy world of vast ready-made digital sound libraries and the immediacy of save and recall buttons. In Beatriz’s work, small, playful sounds interact like chattering creatures and merge into vast cavernous and mysterious immersive landscapes. These three signature pieces use snippets of speech which are gradually deconstructed to create abstract textures, interweaving vocals with percussive and sustained sounds. Small, playful sounds interact like chattering creatures and merge into vast cavernous and mysterious immersive landscapes. La Baballe du Chien Chien [The doggie’s little ball] (2001) is a playful take on the way that we speak in a childlike way to pets. A brief narrative at the start invites the listener into this ‘pet speak’ scene, with the sound of footsteps and chatter. These gradually crescendo and morph into a cacophonous swirling explosion. Deux Dents Dehors [two teeth sticking out] (2007) is a pun on Bernard Parmegiani’s piece Dedans Dehors [Inside Outside] (1977), composed for his birthday. It takes snippets of lively vernacular and processes these into complex patterns of unintelligible and unrecognisable speech, in sustained or percussive sequences and glissandi. Heullas Entreveradas (2018) is a new commission that transforms vocal sounds into choral textures which fragment, granulate and transform into continuous whorls and tidal washes interspersed with her trademark short silences.”

Beatriz Ferreyra – Huellas Entreveradas