Anders Lauge Meldgaard releases his first album as part of the composer collective and label År & Dag (Eng. Year & Day) ”At Synge Verden Ind I En Ny Og Mangefoldet tid” (Eng. Singing The World Into A New And Manifold Time) will be released on the 6th of April 2018 on vinyl and digital. This is the first release by the composer Anders Lauge Meldgaard, after his alias Frisk Frugt has vanished in the sky. ”At Synge Verden Ind I En Ny Og Mangefoldet tid” was composed during Anders Lauge Meldgaard’s period as composer in residence at the old Danish castle Rønnebæksholm on the south of Zealand. He has previously released music as Frisk Frugt, Supermelle, Music for Six Electric Guitars, Kirsten Ketsjer and been a part of the experimental collective yoyooyoy. This release marks, that Anders Lauge Meldgaard has taken on new musical adventures by composing for an ensemble of classical musicians. But the music still holds flavours and colours form his earlier works, because of the fact that it combines elements of minimalism, romanticism, electronic music, contemporary composition and improvisation. The piece of work is a sound experiment in eight different tempi. Like crystals turning round on a string, where the light splits in every changing ways. Where every musician plays his/her own individual tempo, assisted by an Arduino mini computer. An autonomous ensemble of eight young musicians from the Danish contemporary music scene is performing “At Synge Verden Ind I En Ny Og Mangefoldet tid”. This ensemble was put together with the help of violinist Bettina Marie Ezaki who is also a member of the string quartet Halvcirkel. The piece was premiered at Rønnebæksholm and has since been performed at Click Festival, Copenhagen Jazzhouse and Copenhagen Jazzfestival. Anders Lauge Meldgaard ”At Synge Verden Ind I En Ny Og Mangefoldet tid” will be released on vinyl + digital the 6th of April 2018 on År & Dag. The vinyl edition features an engraving by the composer and the album cover is cut out in paper with a silkscreen print by visual artist Kasper Lynge Jensen. Released in 300 hand-assembled copies.

Aar & Dag is a collective of four Danish composers: Andreas Pallisgaard, Mads Forsby, Anders Lauge Meldgaard and Michael Mørkholt. Each of the four members has an independent practice as a musician/composer, working with instrument-building, computer programming, live improvisation, and notated composition. In bringing the four members together, Aar & Dag’s intention is to create an open field for the examination and exploration into new methods, instruments, and systems for composing and performing music as a collaborative entity. The music on the LP Tifold af Fri Form og Fælles Motiv is the product of several years of development, live performance, and studio recording, documenting Aar & Dag’s work with a large ensemble of 10 musicians that includes self-built synthesizer and electronic instruments, reeds and brass, and percussion. The uniqueness of Aar & Dag’s sound has a great deal to do with the lack of hierarchy in their approach to composition and performance, and the collective element of Aar & Dag is essential to understanding how their music is made. Large groups have often approached the question of structure through either notation or the dynamic of the player/composer as bandleader, with the leadership taking musical form as a melodic or rhythmic figure, from which the other players either support or embellish. Rather than the composer at the top of the pyramid sending their orders downward to the players, Aar & Dag functions more like a series of ever-widening circles, where sound flows inwards and outwards, generating further commands or conditions for the players, who can then respond and reintroduce elements into the sound field. To start simply, one could look at the object depicted in the center of the LP’s cover: a circular wooden object which the group calls a “clock wheel sequencer”. The sequencer wheel is mounted on a stand, with a crank handle and a series of small metal points attached to the wheel’s body. As the wheel is rotated, magnets placed in different positions trigger an electronic sensor on the wheel’s base, creating a pattern of sound at different pitches and speeds, with variations dictated by the hands of the musicians. Since the whole logic of the music on Tifold af Fri Form og Fælles Motiv revolves around these self-built wooden wheels, circular form, wonky movement and uneven time flow like undercurrents throughout the LP. The nature of the wheel is adopted by and shared between the 10 musicians in their way of playing, and a shattered multi temporal time signature presents the listener with an often dense, layered and unstable experience of time, pulse and period. As three members of Aar & Dag turn the sequencer wheels, tone patterns and rhythms are created that are fed into the organic mesh of the group. And, as with the hand driven wheel-sequenced synthesizers, each of the four percussion players play in a different time domain to one another, creating weirdly natural and yet novel and unfamiliar macro patterns together. The wind players share a group of note constellations with the synths, creating a canonic relation between the two, cross-mirroring and offset in dimensions. From this starting point, as each musician begins to respond, and thus introduce new sounds in the system, Aar & Dag begins to function like a giant feedback loop, expanding and contracting over the course of the album, like rolling, rotating waves of sound within a hand-drawn grid, vibrating in space, constantly changing and yet maintaining a tangible form. Aar & Dag describe this approach as “the collective instrumentarium”, the idea being that this entire construction of instruments and players is, in some sense, one instrument. This is clear from the first track “CTSOPÅS” on the new LP, which drops straight into the collective sound of brass, reeds, synths, and percussion, with no clear “lead”, and no obvious center to the music. One can follow a single instrument, or the complex interweaving of each layer as it develops. At around the two minute mark, most instruments drop out, leaving a pattering percussion figure, which is then joined by a new set of patterns, tones, and rhythms by the synths and winds. Addition and subtraction of phrases or rhythms create counter- reactions among the other players, gradually altering the fabric of the music. The relation between the individual player and the ensemble is kept in a state of productive tension, each musician’s freedoms tested against the interdependence to the rest of the group. The LP’s title is quite playful with its use of Danish, but it can be translated to mean something like “Tenfold of Free Form and Shared Motif”. The word for “motif” in Danish can also mean “motive”, and this ambiguity seems important. The contradictions in the title, between something “free” and something “shared”, between a form and a desire, seem key to the making of the music on the LP. One can tend to classify free/abstract/open music as being in some kind of opposition to the motif, the melody, or the score, but here Aar & Dag have developed a model for music-making which suspends these two compositional approaches in a kind of permanently unfolding interaction. It hardly needs spelling out that the collective approach of the music found here on the LP has taken on new meanings and dimensions within our current moment. But even without the radical experience of isolation of the past year, the record would still be a thrill, because it’s always a thrill to hear a group of people finding a form, a sound, in real time.

Easy Listening For The Hearing Impaired is the full length debut album by danish composer and producer Andreas Pallisgaard. The album is released under his solo alias Son Ash. The album is a collection of calm, explorative timbral studio experiments for analog synthesizers, sequencers and reel tape. Parts of the material stems from free improvisation, while other parts are composed from more strict organisational principles. The collection of tracks form of a cycle of poetic sonorities. The listener is presented with an organic electronic music, which aims to leave room for immersion and dwelling. The album is concerned with the idea of beginning and becoming. An increasing expanse is embedded in the progression of the album, that gradually stretches its ramifications over time.
 Evolution, demerging, splicing, filtering and proliferation are among the thematic movements that are reappearing along the record. ‘Easy Listening For The Hearing Impaired’ is driven by a circular logic that unfolds the energy of repetition onwards through the shifting plateaus of the album. The musical constructions of the album are in many ways without hierarchy; it’s the many, not the one, being in focus.

Martin Bartlett was an inspiring and original thinker, composer, writer, performer, and organizer. His preoccupation with building aleatoric elements into electronic music distinguishes his work. He devised elegant and open interactions for instrumental performers and computer-controlled synthesizers which included building his own electronic devices and extensive work on the Buchla 400. He worked with or studied under Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, and David Tudor, and collaborated extensively with Don Buchla, and some of their live performances are included on the LP Anecdotal Electronics. He also studied Carnatic vocal music with V. Lakshminarayana Iyer in Madras, South Asian music with Pandit Pran Nath, and gamelan with K.R.T. Wasitidipuro. He founded the Vancouver Community Gamelan in 1986. His performances were often collaborative -- for the Western Front's second anniversary in 1975, he devised the four-channel piece "One Piece for Everyone", where he prepared and cooked a cauliflower curry on a table connected to a self-built synthesizer, while reading from texts on food. When the curry was cooked, the piece ended, and everyone was fed. Bartlett was a prolific writer, and he expresses himself in fresh, lucid, and wonderfully descriptive prose, offering clear thinking on social aspects of electronic music performance; on the barriers between the performer and the "black box" and on possibilities for organic systems in electronic music. He also wrote the incandescent manifesto-like piece "Electronic Recalcitrant" (which forms the cover artwork for Anecdotal Electronics), in which he hoped that electronic music would be imbued with "organic codes of growth and metamorphosis" so that he could "pluck elegant and fleshy electronic sound fish from the frothy algorithmic sea of possibilities". It is unclear why Bartlett's work remains unknown. Perhaps it is because it remained largely inside the academy. Perhaps his commitment to live performance and community activity means it was more transient than the work of others. Perhaps his openness about his sexuality played a part in his music not receiving much recognition -- one can only speculate. But correspondence in his archive shows that rejection from labels was a source of great personal discontent, leading to Bartlett working with the Western Front to release his final opus "Pythagoras' Ghost" shortly before his death. Bartlett died young, of AIDS-related causes, in 1993, but his music is characterized by an irresistible and unselfconscious charm that renders his sound unique.Arc Light Editions releases an LP "sketchbook" of live recordings, experiments, and spoken word titled Anecdotal Electronics, and a CD of Bartlett's longer electroacoustic and orchestral works, titled Ankle On (ALE 010CD). Compiled and edited by Luke Fowler with Jennifer Lucy Allan. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. "Three Songs" features Dan Shiedt + Doug Collinge.

Carving a brillaint path between jazz, rythmic tribalism, and noise, Copenhagen's Selvhenter return with their first first physical album release in nearly a decade and their debut on the French label Hands in the Dark. Going past musical genres and instead straight towards something more elemental - Selvhenter’s music creates a strikingly direct, physical experience of sound composed of polyrhythms, acoustic and electric melodies, heavy music and improvised beauty. Since forming in Copenhagen in 2010, drummers Jaleh Negari and Anja Jacobsen, saxophonist Sonja LaBianca and trombonist Maria Bertel have forged a unique approach to making music that starts with their instrumental setup: two drummers that interlock as frequently as they go their own way, a trombone put through a bass amplifier loud enough to rattle your chest and a saxophone put through a range of effects so that it often sounds unrecognisable. Selvhenter work within their own idiom, drawing from the individual players’ personalities and interests to make a highly collective music, where all four musicians are absorbed into a total sound where an improvised free jazz approach collides with experimental electronic music and avant-garde noise/post-punk sonorities. Their new LP 'Mesmerizer' - which marks their first physical album release in nearly a decade and their debut on the French label Hands in the Dark - carries forward this process of exploration, deploying original and complex patterns of rhythm through various percussive instruments and finely textured horns and synths. The attention to sonic details is also almost pushed to an extreme on this new offering, making the open auditory adventure suggested by the title of the album all the more captivating. These creative developments have brilliantly kept Selvhenter’s music alive to new uncharted moods and possibilities, while at the same time strengthening their core elements: a propulsive, dense and often ecstatic music.

Another incredible archival release from Lugar Alto, plumming the depths of the Brazilain underground, comprising 42 tracks of LO-Fi, left-field queer songcraft at the juncture of electroacoustic music, tape collage, synth-pop, and noise by Akira Umeda. The term cruising refers to the practice of seeking and obtaining instant, no-strings-attached sexual gratification with strangers. Akira Umeda was well-acquainted with this term, but his practice of it was not restricted to the aforementioned context. Rather it extended into all spheres of his life and work. A historian by training, he later became a ceramicist, a photographer, a visual artist, a draftsman, a graphic designer, a DJ, a musician, an audio technician, a writer, a researcher... He made forays into a myriad of artistic and academic fields – with a single intention: to achieve a specific objective and promptly exit stage left, as it were. Restless, and easily bored, Akira moved seamlessly from one activity to another – he was a little bit of everything (and nothing at all). Such people usually go unnoticed and unrecognized, something which Umeda found perfectly acceptable. Nevertheless, unlike most people, he had no right to see himself in this light – in the light of ephemerality and anonymity –, for in everything he tried his hand at, he inevitably left an impressive and distinctive mark. In this album, Akira Umeda mixes 42 recordings, dated between 1988 and 2018, which, in a sense, reflect the incredible range of his creative work: from songs, to ambient music; from field recordings to prank calls. The cassette tapes, whose contents make up this double-LP, had been stored in Umeda’s house in São José dos Campos, in São Paulo, Brazil.

A new pressing of the first Wildflower LP: a mixture of live and studio recordings. ‘The trio takes you on an intense, meditative and spiritual musical journey that embodies the spirit of freedom. Based around hypnotic grooves laid down by Leon Brichard’s unswervingly solid bass lines, drummer Tom Skinner plays around artfully with the beats, grooving hard in constantly shifting, unexpected turns of rhythmic play. Saxophonist Idris Rahman’s contributions range from subtle conversational interplay to loudly expressed angry passion to the most delicate of whispers, conveying a depth of emotion and a deep sense of musical structure withIn an ever changing musical conversation. ‘Using simple, arresting melodies as a starting point, the trio create freely improvised waves of emotion ranging from powerful climaxes to hauntingly beautiful breath-like passages and everything in-between, creating unique forms and structures that react to the acoustics and the atmosphere of the situation. ‘Taking inspiration from the spiritual jazz pioneers such as John and Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef and Sun Ra, compositional influences range from Gnawa music to modal jazz to Bengali folk music but the scope is wider still and the important unifying factor is the spontaneous communication and interplay between the three musicians. Rather than having a tight rigid structure, the tunes are allowed to breathe and develop into new unexplored forms, allowing fresh interpretations that make each performance a unique experience.’

Long awaited, first-ever vinyl reissue of this ambinet / PINA (Private Issue New Age) holy grail. Essential! "The Fact of Being is excited to announce the first release in a series of reissues of early works by Peter Davison. The first step into a realm of peace and love will be the long-awaited re-edition of "Music On The Way" to celebrate its 40th anniversary. "Music On The Way" was the artist's debut in 1980 and has not been reissued since its initial release. A mesmerising ambient recording with just a touch of early new-age music in its finest incarnation. An absolute classic in the spirit of Iasos, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Michael Stearns...finally available again on limited vinyl and extremely limited CD. The outstanding mastering works has been prepared by Grammy-nominated Jessica Thompson which guarantees an immersive deep sound experience and an unforgettable journey inwards.Peter Davison has composed music scores for Indie Features, the History Channel, A+E, Biography, PBS, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, Discovery, Gaiam (Yoga/Relaxation music) and others. Over 25 CDs of his music are available on EMI/Higher Octave, Gaiam, Davisounds and TSR/Baja.His instrumental "Sip of Wine" (from his CD "Future, Present, Past") received the Best Song of the Year Award, Hollywood Music in Media Awards, (New Age/Ambient), 2010. Both "Fern Valley" and "Mount Tahquitz" from his CD "Forest Home" and "Possibility" (from his CD "Possibility") have also received nominations. Peter's score for the PBS Series "The Endless Voyage" was nominated for the "Best Score of the Year, TV Show." Peter Davison has composed the memorable music for over 45 of GAIAM's award-winning DVDs featuring master instructors yoga and meditations Rodney Yee, Patricia Walden, Suzanne Deason, David-Dorian Ross, and others."

After almost two years of work, we're glad to invite you to a new journey through the fog of time and enjoy the upcoming reissue of the great Ambient/Folk record from 1984. A well-known to collectors but extremely rare record by Jon Iverson a multi-instrumentalist from Palo Alto and his college friend, mandolinist Tom Walters. They shared a love for singer/songwriter fare and gigged around campus playing covers of Neil Young, CSN, and Loggins/Messina in the late '70s. "First Collection" was recorded during the Spring of 1984 in a small garage that had been converted to a one-room apartment in the seaside community of Los Osos, California. With an instrumentation of 12-string guitar, piano, mandolin, analog synthesizers, and sampler, the duo has recorded nine bright, weightless, and diverse compositions where electronic experiments mix with ethnic rhythms, sweeping through inspired folk reminiscent of the work of William Ackerman, John Fahey, Master Wilburn Burchette, and Robbie Basho, to homemade pastoral space folk exuding sophisticated, pale, lunar sonic moods that somehow might remind of the work of Roedelius from the early 80s. Equipment used for tracking included a rented 1/2" 8-track Otari MX5050 analog tape machine and assorted mics. With only a few thousand albums pressed, First Collection has become a collectable in some circles. Now, almost forty years later, First Collection has been remixed and remastered from the original 1/2" tapes for this release.

Some albums are certainly a kind of holy grail for music lovers and collectors of a certain genre, style and era. FAR OUT with their eponymous debut and unfortunately also farewell album from 1973 have created such a sacred gem. Original copies in good condition change hands for up to 2000 USD and there are certainly a few not so official reprints on vinyl and CD out on the market which do not even come close to do justice to the greatness of the old original black gold. But here we go with the first ever official vinyl reissue taken directly from the original mastertapes supplied by Nippon Columbia. EVERLAND MUSIC did a brilliant job as usual with their reissue. The coverart with a white glove hanging on a washing line to dry comes on an awesome heavy gatefold sleeve. Including 2 inserts with live photos from back in the day when the band was going wild on stage. Now for the most important part, the music. There are certainly not too many wild moments here since both long tracks „Too many people“ and „Nihonjin“ have a melancholic, dreamy approach with a desperately howling and sighing lead guitar that spouts some utterly intense melodies. These two tracks are epics in the pure sense of the word. They start both with a rather gentle part which develops into a journey of sound that bring either vast landscapes of enchanting beauty untouched by modern human life or quite dramatic scenes to your mind’s eye. The lead guitarist often uses some strange instrument which is a kind of electric sitar to add the atmosphere of eastern mystic. So while falling into a state of deep trance while letting the music rush through my ears into my brain my spirit that has left my body embarks on a trip from the smokey volcanic hills around Pompeji to the icy permafrost wastelands of the Northeastern lands and arrives somewhere in the East Asian jungle on a gold plated pyramid of an unspeakable age where laughing demons dance around mystic fireplaces. Yes, this is the real journey to the center of your mind and despite having no really abstract freak out parts, tricky instrumental runs and twisted rhythm figures this music will capture your whole existence for the next 38 minutes. The end of „Nihonjin“, the second tune, shows an ambient like section with synthesizer background, echoing atonal sitar, a brightly squeaking flute, organ carpet and some percussions. This is indeed a rather extreme part, due to the pointed tone of the flute but quite soon the music stops and leaves the listener back in reality. This second track later on got a kind of reappearance on the FAR EAST FAMILY album „Nipponjin“, also retitled as „Nipponjin“. Mastermind behind both acts is multi instrumentalist Fumio Miyashita, so there is no wonder. The later version has more space rock elements and electronic sounds than the original FAR OUT tune and is a little bit shorter all in all. But I digress. This is the real thing for those who still miss the melodies and atmosphere of the late 60s and very early 70s when people had a dream of a peaceful world and who enjoy early German cosmic kraut rock like AMON DÜÜL II, ORGANISATION (later to become KRAFTWERK), the debut album by TANGERINE DREAM and more obscure stuff but also international bands like PINK FLOYD, GONG, TWINK and HAWKWIND just as an East Asian version. A real gem and finally available with the real sound and package again. ℗ 1973, 2019 Nippon Colombia Co., Ltd.

In the mid-'60s, Albert Ayler found himself at the center of major transformations within jazz. On his albums for ESP-Disk', his delivery was radically aggressive and his tone blistering – aiming for something beyond the New Thing. His music would be further energized when (at the behest of John Coltrane) Bob Thiele signed him to Impulse! As Ayler told The Plain Dealer at the time, "It's not about notes anymore. It's a sound – a feeling. The approach we're taking will discontinue the use of the word 'jazz.'" In Greenwich Village, Ayler's first LP on Impulse!, perfectly captures the Cleveland-born saxophonist's radiant intensity. Sourced from a pair of live engagements – February '67 at the Village Theatre on New York's Lower East Side and December '66 at the Village Vanguard – these recordings show an improved clarity in production and performance. Both sets feature two basses (including Alan Silva and Henry Grimes) which allowed the ensemble to go in different harmonic directions while maintaining an organic unity. Of particular interest are "For John Coltrane," a tribute to Ayler's mentor who would pass later that year, and "Truth Is Marching In" where trumpeter Donald Ayler joins his brother to celebrate and ultimately deconstruct several jazz traditions to stunning effect. Vibrant in sound and vision, Albert Ayler's In Greenwich Village is a landmark statement in free jazz and a career high-point for this truly original artist. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this classic album on vinyl for the first time domestically in 30 years.

Byard Lancaster was a composer/multi-instrumentalist born in Philadelphia in 1942. He started playing alto saxophone at an early age and later took up flute and bass clarinet. While attending Berklee College of Music, Lancaster and pianist Dave Burrell organized late-night jam sessions with fellow students and touring musicians. In 1965, he moved to New York and quickly became part of the city's burgeoning scene – playing with jazz luminaries such as Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, Bill Dixon and Marzette Watts. It's Not Up To Us, Lancaster's 1968 debut as a leader, was originally released on Vortex, a subsidiary of Atlantic responsible for first albums by Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Sonny Sharrock. Featuring guitarist Sharrock (another Berklee alum), It's Not Up To Us is true fire music – fusing elements of free jazz, soul/R&B; and traditional folk song. On the opening title track, Lancaster's luminous flute draws the listener in, while bassist Jerome Hunter grounds the tune with a simple descending theme over Keno Speller and Eric Gravatt's syncopated rhythms. "John's Children," a reference to the group's status as post-Coltrane players, showcases the modal strumming of Sharrock's steady drones as Lancaster cries into the void. After repeated listens, Lancaster's original compositions become visceral aural memories ingrained in the ear, while the standards ("Misty" and "Over The Rainbow") sound the most avant-garde pieces on the album. This first-time vinyl reissue is recommended for fans of Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Pharoah Sanders.

In 1975 Wallace ‘Wally’ Smith Broecker published a paper that popularised the term ‘global warming’ and against a backdrop of change and environmental uncertainty, a musical concept album was commissioned. ‘Wilderness America / A Celebration of the Land’ - is a musical exploration of our place within the cycle of living things. All compositions were specially commissioned for the album and blended with natural sounds recorded in the wild – lending the entire project a conceptual air that still feels fresh today. The journey begins with the sun rising in the atmospheric haze of 'Dawn' - a track composed by new-age innovator Iasos. Gospel singer Walter Hawkins soon drops in with the soulful but ever so funky 'Metropolis' backed by a heavy array of session musicians with Patrick Gleeson, Ed Bogas and Tom Salisbury all adding their own misty magic to the album. David Riordan is the sorcerer conjuring up many of the compositions and also takes vocal duties on the evocative 'Mountain' and the climatic 'Before I'm Gone'. ‘Wilderness America / A Celebration of the Land’ was born when environmentalist Emily DeSpain Polk assembled a group of California residents to participate in a groundbreaking conservationist project. Christening the group SWAP (Small Wilderness Area Preservation) Emily needed funds and began a project to produce a promotional nature based music album. To acquire the financial backing Emily would need to source a musician of some calibre. Contacting Cliff Branch from ‘Warehouse Sound Co.’ she was told the man she was looking for was David Riordan. David Riordan had been around the music business for several years, first with The Yankee Dollar, then Sugarloaf and then Sweet Pain, he saw huge success with the single 'Green Eyed Lady'. David had worked on Cliff Branch’s 'Warehouse Sound Co. & Friends' albums and then released his solo album, 'Medicine Wheel'. But bored of touring he made the move to more concept-driven albums. First with ‘Christmas in San Francisco’ and then, in quick succession, 'Wilderness America, A Celebration Of The Land'. Riordan, along with Peter Scott, a music producer friend in San Francisco, began piecing together an idea for the album. They brought in Ed Bogas to do string arrangements and Tom Salisbury to conduct. David had also asked his friend Patrick Gleeson if he knew of any R&B;/Gospel singers in the Bay Area, and they soon added gospel singer Walter Hawkins into the mix. Other than the track ‘Metropolis’, which was recorded in LA, the rest of ‘Wilderness America, A Celebration Of The Land’ was recorded and mixed by Richard Beggs at the San Francisco studio of Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was filming ‘Apocalypse Now’ at the same time – so in between studio sessions, the musicians were able to view the seemingly never-ending film rushes arriving from the Philippines. Eventually, the record produced by David Riordan and Peter Scott drifted onto the radar of vinyl obsessives and selectors as several of its key tracks began popping up on mixtapes and sales lists. It wasn’t long before this privately pressed, art-funded masterpiece became something of a holy grail for collectors. At long last, a re-issue of this masterpiece is now available on EBALUNGA!!! Records.

A real avant-garde curio and fascinating historical document capturing experimental pioneers Charlie Morrow, Sten Hanson, and Carles Santos having a soundclash in 1981, NYC, held inside a boxing gym and replete with hoots of laughter and applause from the crowd plus reflections by Charlie Morrow that's almost a new piece in its own right. A precedent of sorts to, erm, Armand van Helden vs Fatboy Slim’s 1999 bout, ‘The Heavyweight Sound Fight’ takes pride of place among iDEAL’s hall of oddities with one of the zaniest recordings by three international leaders of the avant-garde. Adapting all the pomp and ceremony of a boxing match to ludicrous ends - including a flier depicting each artist with their dukes up - they produced what sounds like a great night out for NYC’s experimental cognoscenti with Charlie Morrow (USA) vs Carles santos (Spain) each backed by a band - Soho Baroque Opera Company with the assistance of the New Wilderness Foundation - while Sweden’s Sten Hanson acts as referee, and Armand Schwerner takes the role of announcer in thick, nasal New York brogue. It’s brilliantly daft and subversive but accomplished in a witty way that maybe escapes too many solemnly po-faced avant-garde conceptualists nowadays, and  remains a strange outlier in the history of NYC avant garde and beyond. “Operating as an aural window into an happening that occurred more than 40 years ago, “The Heavyweight Sound Fight” unveils a different context of experimental music than is not often encountered today. Running across the album’s four sides, within all the seriousness of art and technique, is the unmistakable presence of humor, play, and the absurd. The audience can’t help but laugh and cheer as the announcer - effecting a deep New York accent and nodding toward notable attendees like Allison Knowles, Dick Higgins, and Jackson Mac Low - takes an active role in the fight, each artist delivering an array of vocalizations - from extended technique utterances to rants - against the next, with the bands weighing in and engaging in their own battles, ranging from big band dirges and marches, to outright experimental electronic madness. It's a trully raucous affair that brings that radicalism carried by its sounds into entirely new zones. According to Marrow, he was deemed “winner” in an “off-script” move by the judges, and Santos never spoke to him again, continuing the wild and wonderful mystery and humor of the performance into the present day. Who knows what Santos, who sadly passed away in 2017, would say."

Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC   “Fusées” isn’t the first collaboration between Thomas Bonvalet and Jean-Luc Guionnet, their first joint effort “Loges de Souffle” appearing on Be Coq last year. The same label also put out a vinyl edition of “Fusées”, but now Sarah Hennies’ label Weighter Recordings has thankfully stepped in with a CD and download release for the rest of us. Although the two artists are primarily known for their attachments to a particular instrument (guitar for Bonvalet, saxaphone for Guionnet), these instruments are only recognisably audible towards the end of the album, with the majority of sounds belonging to the percussive and analogue-electronic domains. In fact, so rhythmically driven is the album that I would’ve guessed that one of them was a percussionist. The album has a roughness and warmth to its timbres that is very appealing. Ideas unfold at a steady pace, not remaining static but not rushing anywhere either — a pleasure in sounds, but also in their organisation. The album title translates into English as ‘rockets’, and while there’s plenty of chemical energy and fire, there are also clear trajectories and flight plans. Whether these trajectories were planned out in advance or made up on the fly is, from the listener’s point of view, perhaps not so important. Developing structure can be clearly heard on tracks such as ‘2 mer D_v3’, where the interplay between synth stabs and pounding percussion twists and turns in an intricate dance. Even at its most off-kilter, such as in the broken ringtone melody of ‘1 mer B_v6_oct’, the music retains a sense of intention and direction; the transition through several shades of chaos is as detailed and as captivating as the harmonic micro-shifts of Hennies’ percussive rolls, just with much brasher colours. The guitar playing on ‘3 mar N_v3’ produces both percussive rhythm and modulating sinewave-like pitches, a synecdoche for the shapes of the album as a whole. Later in the piece, long single-note sax crescendos mould timbre and volume like clay on a potter’s wheel, inflected by stop-start percussion — a stunning effect. Only very rarely, such as on the last track, does the music slide into stock free improvisationish territory, competently done but already explored. “Fusées” is a propulsive album bursting with ideas, distilled into lucid and finely-balanced forms that dazzle and enthral." - Fluid Radio --- Thomas Bonvalet / audio ducker, microphones, amplificateurs, frappements de pieds et de mains, peau de tambour, banjo six cordes, componium, diapasons, plectre de pavot sec … Jean Luc Guionnet / deux vieux orgues électriques (Bontempi Tempest & Farfisa Matador), trois petits harmoniums, une table de mixage bouclée et quelques micros contacts et magnétiques, un petit trumpet speaker mobile, trompette de poche, saxophone soprano --- Recorded at Instants Chavirés, January 2014 by Adrian Riffo. Thanks to Instants Chavirés, Adrian Riffo, La Fonderie and François Tanguy.

"Ruedi Häusermann’s Galerie Randolph, a masterpiece of solo multi-tracking originally released on CD by Unit Records in 1995. Born in 1948 and residing in the medieval Swiss town of Lenzburg, and virtually unknown outside of the German-speaking world, Häusermann is a multi-instrumentalist and enormously prolific composer who works primarily in the medium of absurdist music-theatre. A virtuoso wind player and free improviser who also composes for traditional classical instrumentation, his work is characterised by subtly surreal humour and the unlikely combination of extended technique and simple, at times almost child-like, melodic ideas. Named after his rehearsal room in Lenzburg, Galerie Randolph uses an enormous array of instruments to craft a work of singular compositional vision. Each of the twelve pieces begins from the same two elements: a woozy, sliding scatter of tones played on a home-made contraption stretching two guitar strings between the top of Häusermann’s alto saxophone and an amplified cup, and a series of uneasy block chords sounded on accordion and reeds. On each piece these two elements (whose pitch gradually raises throughout the record) are complemented by entirely different material, all of it played by Häusermann. Ranging from layered flutes to one-finger piano melodies to unintelligible vocals to musique concrete interjections to free jazz saxophone explosions, these additional layers combine with the endlessly returning idée fixe of the foundational elements to create a truly dream-like listening experience, a gently deranged realm in which we lose all sense of linear time. Calling up the most unlikely combinations of possible predecessors – Erik Satie, Gerry Mulligan, and Helmut Lachenmann perhaps? –Galerie Randolph ultimately defies comparison. Almost unknown except to a select group of cognoscenti such as Jim O’Rourke, yet destined to become a cult classic, Galerie Randolph is an instance of that most rare thing: music the likes of which you have never heard before. Design by Stephen O’Malley. Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M;, Berlin.

"Black Truffle proudly presents The Refrain from Melbourne-based artist Francis Plagne, whose growing catalog of collaborative and solo releases range from song-based work to abstract audio collages.Closely aligned with Plagne's Moss Trumpet LP (released by Penultimate Press in 2018), The Refrain’s two side-long tracks mix sounds of the mundane with the otherworldly; rising, receding and overlapping. The result feels like being led through a series of scenes devoid of context or direction. Furthermore, it’s hard to define the scenes as either inviting or disconcerting, as they’re often both at the same time. As the record progresses sounds reappear and are juxtaposed so as to only hint at the familiar. A hall of mirrors, perhaps?Completed in 2020 using material recorded from 2012-2020, the record uses tapes of shelved, unfinished, and forgotten projects that featured field recordings from various locations, domestic sounds of plastic bottles, bubble wrap, creaking chairs, voice, and instrumental recordings, including an appearance from crys cole on Casio. These pieces were re-amped, processed and edited, then additional instrumental pieces featuring synths, guitars, plastic saxophone, melodica, and percussion were added, the results shaped into drifting, episodic assemblages.Although essentially a tape piece, The Refrain presents as a crude, non-idiomatic composition that feels both timeless and transitory. It’s a million miles from the polish and rigour of GRM, perhaps more in line with Jacques Bekaert’s eponymous Igloo LP, or Costin Miereanu’s Luna Cinese. The Refrain could be read as a psychedelic Krapp’s Last Tape; one man’s response to listening through forgotten and discarded tapes, reflecting, reconciling, and forging a new path. A potent tonic for these absurd times."-- Nick Hamilton, August 2021