Vinyl


Black Truffle is pleased to announce its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody; in 2019, it was selected by The Guardian as one of the ‘best classical music works of the 21st century’. Traveller Song / Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller’s gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work.Like many of Miller’s compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. Traveller Song (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Miller’s untutored voice is an unsteady, wavering wail that has, in her words, ‘more in common with a quasi-shamanistic keening than anything Sicilian’. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre-recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London’s Plus-Minus Ensemble. In the first section, Miller’s exposed warble is set to a spare piano accompaniment, somehow both faintly preposterous and magisterial. Following the voice note for note, the piano part often makes use of almost mechanical sequences of parallel chords, reminiscent both of Satie’s Rosicrucian period and the abrupt harmonic movements of a chord organ. The orchestration then opens up to guitar, clarinet, and sliding strings, a delicate environment for Miller’s voice, which, especially when it begins to be layered, generates a powerful sense of intimacy. In its concluding minutes, the folk roots of the original melody return in the form of a glorious full ensemble setting dominated by accordion, clarinet, and strummed guitar.Thanksong begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven’s late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the ‘holy song of thanks’ the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet ‘as slowly and quietly as possible’. The atmosphere of the opening of Beethoven’s Dankgesang, of hushed reawakening and thoughtful reflection, is sustained throughout the fourteen minutes of Miller’s piece, building at points almost to sentimentality before the five individual parts again fall back into a gentle burble of unsynchronised melodic gestures. Like Traveller Song, here the use of the voice is a long way from the mannered performance of much contemporary music, reaching for a human and bodily presence more connected to the reality of the everyday, albeit suffused with wonder. Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.

Cassandra Miller – Traveller Song / Thanksong

"Premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. A friend and contemporary of pioneers like Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, and Christian Wolff, Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s. Lucier is perhaps best known for I Am Sitting in a Room (1970), in which he repeatedly re-recorded his own speaking voice being played back into a room until the room’s resonant frequencies entirely obscure the spoken text. Beginning in the early 1970s, he has written a remarkable catalogue of instrumental works that focus on phenomena produced by the interference between closely tuned pitches, such as audible beating, often using pure electronic tones produced by oscillators in combination with single instruments. Demonstrating the restless creative drive of an artist now in his 80s, the two recent works presented here both feature the electric guitar, an instrument Lucier has just recently begun to explore. In Criss-Cross, Lucier’s first composition for electric guitars, two guitarists using e-bows sweep slowly up and down a single semitone, beginning at opposite ends of the pitch range. The piece is a model of simplicity, exemplifying Lucier’s desire not to ‘compose’ in the conventional sense, but rather to eliminate everything that ‘distracts from the acoustical unfolding of the idea’. In this immaculately controlled performance of Criss-Cross by Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley, (for whom the piece was written in 2013), a seemingly simple idea creates a rich array of sonic effects – not simply beating patterns, which gradually slow down as the two tones reach unison and accelerate as they move further apart, but also the remarkable phenomenon of sound waves spinning in elliptical patterns through space between the two guitar amps. In the comparatively lush Hanover, Lucier draws inspiration from the beautiful photograph that provides the LP with its cover, an image of the Dartmouth Jazz Band taken in 1918 featuring Lucier’s father on violin. Using the instrumentation present in the photograph, Lucier creates an unearthly sound world of sliding tones from violin, alto and tenor saxophones, piano, vibraphone (bowed) and three electric guitars (which take the place of the banjos present in the photograph). Waves of slow glissandi create thick, complex beating patterns, gently punctuated by repeated single notes from the piano. The result is a piece that, like much of Lucier’s instrumental music, is simultaneously both unperturbably calm and constantly in motion." Design by Stephen O’Malley. Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M; Belin. “Criss-Cross” recorded at Studios Ina GRM, Paris by Francois Bonnet and mixed by Alvin Lucier. “Hanover” recorded in Zurich and mixed by Alvin Lucier.

Alvin Lucier – Criss Cross / Hanover

Long overdue 2024 repress of this gem! "Hotel Record is the second release from the duo/couple of crys cole and Oren Ambarchi, following on from Sonja Henies Vei 31 (Planam, 2014). Where their debut recording presented a disquieting portrait of the erotic dimension of romantic intimacy, the follow-up continues to explore the pair’s simultaneously musical and romantic relationship in a more subtle fashion, presenting four long-form pieces that touch on the variety of forms the life of this couple takes: as a musical duo, as a pair of travelers to exotic locations, as opponents in a game of cards… Each of the four tracks presents a distinct sound-world, yet each manages to attain the same suspended, half-sleeping feeling, outlining a space where improbable combinations of the electronic and the acoustic, of extreme closeness and amorphous distance, occur with the gentle insistence of a dream. The opening Call Myself calmly unfolds a fabric of long tones from electronic organ and guitar, combining the sliding, aleatoric effects of classic David Behrman with a more hands-on feel. Over the top of this slowly shifting tonal bed, cole’s voice mutters unintelligibly into a Buchla synth, teasing the listener by suggesting a meaning that remains always out of the ear’s reach. Francis Debacle (Uno) builds on the foundations of a heavily amplified session of the titular card game, overlaying vocal murmurs and exhalations and mysterious room-sounds to create an impossible aural environment. On Burrata, a palette of vintage 1980s digital synthesizer sounds combined with guitars create an irregular texture of lush chords and bubbling melodic details, into which cole’s voice processed by a vocoder, is interwoven, reading fragments of romantic correspondence. Finally, on Pad Phet Gob, field recordings made in Thailand become an ambiguously acoustic/electronic rainforest, eventually giving way to a mysterious, wavering electronic tone-field punctuated by sibilant, popping mouth-sounds. Carving out an intimate and human sonic space across a diverse array of compositional approaches, sound sources, fidelities and textures, Hotel Record is the latest dispatch from the continuing explorations of a unique duo. Ambarchi and cole reimagine electro-acoustic music, not simply as ‘abstract’ sound, but as a diary, a love poem, a dream." Photography by crys cole and design via Stephen O’Malley. Mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M;, Berlin February 2017.

Crys Cole & Oren Ambarchi – Hotel Record

Feedback Moves returns with a vinyl reissue of Pat Thomas’ New Jazz Jungle: Remembering. The album was originally released on CD in 1997, at a time when Pat had already spent years playing on the free improvisation circuit with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey. Thomas is largely known as a jazz and improvising pianist, but can be heard using electronics as far back as 1989 on an electro acoustic work called Monads and on the Bailey-led Company ’91 recordings. Thomas identified jungle’s weirdness and intensity and saw a space open for his own interpretation. On New Jazz Jungle: Remembering, he utilises his classical training and knowledge of the tonal systems used by 20th century composer’s Schoenberg and Webern, and fuses that with his earlier experiences using electronics, keyboards & sampling techniques. What we end up with is 10 tracks of bass heavy jungle breaks which are intersected with vocal and orchestral samples and layers of percussion rotating at varying time signatures. It’s in this fashion that the album seems to present itself: in layers. Layers of samples, keyboards and FX, deployed at varying speeds, never losing their intensity. The re-issue of this lost classic comes at a time when Thomas continues to go from strength to strength, having recently released various solo and collaborative works with a wide range of musicians and projects such as Matana Roberts, Elaine Mitchener, حمد [Ahmed], Black Top, XT and many more.2 x 12" vinyl w/ liner notes and interview by Edward George (The Strangeness of Dub, Black Audio Film Collective).Edition of 500.

Pat Thomas – New Jazz Jungle: Remembering

For her first album releases as a soloist, nomadic Australian cellist and composer Judith Hamann presents two collections of her sonic inquiries into shaking and humming. Her LP, "Shaking Studies," is a collection of iterative cello performance that foregrounds shaking as a generative subject. In addition to an arsenal of techniques for registrable shaking, Hamann’s conception of the term emphasizes micro and macro pulsing, including tremors, vibrato, wolf tones, and complex partial activity. Hamann begins with a sphygmological reading of the pulse of her cello, inciting it to shake audibly and visually as a symbiotic basis for determining the rate of her own left hand’s tremor and consequent direction of resonant frequencies. Following a thorough harmonic investigation of her shaking practice in two parts, she directs us to look outwards, combining beating chordal structures with electronics and recordings of real world shaking. From inner pulse to more macrocosmic quaking, Hamann’s alternative conception of shaking rejects measurement and regularity, order and control, instead alluding to a more responsive and intuitive mode of convulsive sounding. Judith Hamann undertook her doctoral studies with renowned cellist Charles Curtis, with whom she is currently engaged in a discourse based project, ‘Materialities of Realisation.’ She has additionally demonstrated a superlative capacity for improvisation and engagement with sonic arts through work with artists Dennis Cooper, Éliane Radigue, Áine O’Dwyer, Ilan Volkov, Toshimaru Nakamura, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, Golden Fur, Jessika Kenney, Anna Homler, Yvette Janine Jackson, and Lori Goldston, among others. Her recorded appearances include Tashi Wada’s Duets, Graham Lambkin’s Community, Alvin Lucier’s Illuminated By The Moon, and Gossamers, with Rosalind Hall. released October 30, 202. Blank Forms EditionsAll music composed by Judith Hamann in collaboration with the cello.

Judith Hamann – Shaking Studies

LP
  • LP SOLD OUT

'If I don't make it, I love u’ is Still House Plants’ third LP and the fullest embodiment of their sound to date. Where ‘Fast Edit’ formed with quick attachment and jump cuts, ‘If I don't make it’ is shaped by persistence - a commitment to the songs that makes the music solid, warmer and accepted. Marking the trio’s decade of friendship, this is the first record written whilst all live in the same city since 2017's ‘Assemblages’. The band rehearsed it relentlessly, playing for nobody except themselves, consistently building support for one another and growing the way they play. Jess’ voice is deeper. Fin’s guitar is full size, richer. David drums harder. Focused on one point together, everyone gets bigger and nothing falls apart. The guitar and the drums blend, raise the voice, make room for what is being said, what is felt. When able to finally record, production allowed layers, gave elasticity, a chance to fully stretch. Playing with length and connections, the band brought in analogue techniques - a Lesley cabinet on ‘Headlight’, sidechaining the snare with the guitar, pushing vocals through cheap DJ software - each process an attempt to bring one instrument closer to another, to give bass, body, backup. ‘If I don't make it, I love u’ seeks beauty, holds feeling maximum and builds surety with its sound. The most generous SHP record to date, the music is wide open, demands less. Play it again, it will come clear. --- Finlay Clark / guitarJess Hickie-Kallenbach / vocalsDavid Kennedy / drums

Still House Plants – If I don’t make it, I love u

Ideologic Organ is pleased to present Kali Malone’s new album Does Spring Hide Its Joy as a triple LP set of two-hours duration. Does Spring Hide Its Joy is an immersive piece by composer Kali Malone featuring Stephen O’Malley on electric guitar, Lucy Railton on cello, and Malone herself on tuned sine wave oscillators. The music is a study in harmonics and non-linear composition with a heightened focus on just intonation and beating interference patterns. Malone’s experience with pipe organ tuning, harmonic theory, and long durational composition provide prominent points of departure for this work. Her nuanced minimalism unfolds an astonishing depth of focus and opens up contemplative spaces in the listener’s attention. Does Spring Hide Its Joy follows Malone’s critically acclaimed records The Sacrificial Code [Ideal Recordings, 2019] & Living Torch [Portraits GRM, 2022]. Her collaborative approach expands from her previous work to closely include the musicians Stephen O’Malley & Lucy Railton in the creation and development of the piece. While the music is distinctly Malone’s sonic palette, she composed specifically for the unique styles and techniques of O’Malley & Railton, presenting a framework for subjective interpretation and non-hierarchical movement throughout the music. Does Spring Hide Its Joy is a durational experience of variable length that follows slowly evolving harmony and timbre between cello, sine waves, and electric guitar. As a listener, the transition between these junctures can be difficult to pinpoint. There’s obscurity and unity in the instrumentation and identities of the players; the electric guitar's saturation timbre blends with the cello's rich periodicity, while shifting overtone feedback develops interference patterns against the precise sine waves. The gradual yet ever-occurring changes in harmony challenge the listener’s perception of stasis and movement. The moment you grasp the music, a slight shift in perspective guides your attention forward into a new and unfolding harmonic experience. Does Spring Hide Its Joy was created between March and May of 2020. During this unsettling period of the pandemic, Malone found herself in Berlin with a great deal of time and conceptual space to consider new compositional methods. With a few interns left on-site, Malone was invited to the Berlin Funkhaus & MONOM to develop and record new music within the empty concert halls. She took this opportunity to form a small ensemble with her close friends and collaborators Lucy Railton & Stephen O’Malley to explore these new structural ideas within those various acoustic spaces. Hence, the foundation was laid for Does Spring Hide Its Joy. In Kali’s own words: “Like most of the world, my perception of time went through a significant transformation during the pandemic confinements of spring 2020. Unmarked by the familiar milestones of life, the days and months dripped by, instinctively blending with no end in sight. Time stood still until subtle shifts in the environment suggested there had been a passing. Memories blurred non-sequentially, the fabric of reality deteriorated, unforeseen kinships formed and disappeared, and all the while, the seasons changed and moved on without the ones we lost. Playing this music for hours on end was a profound way to digest the countless life transitions and hold time together.” Does Spring Hide Its Joy has since been performed live on many European stages, in durations of sixty and ninety minutes. Including at the Schauspielhaus in Zürich, the Bozar in Brussels, Haus Der Kunst in Munich, and the Munch Museum in Oslo. Concerts are forthcoming at Unsound Festival in Krakow, Mira Festival in Barcelona, the Venice Biennale, and the Purcell Room at the Southbank Center in London. In addition to live concerts, the Funkhaus recordings of Does Spring Hide Its Joy have evolved in parallel as a site-specific sound installation. Malone has also invited the video artist Nika Milano to create a custom analog video work that interprets and accompanies the musical score as a fourth player, creating a visual atmosphere inspired by the sonic principles of the composition. Eight sequential video stills from Milano’s work are featured in the album artwork. Does Spring Hide Its Joy is packaged in a heavyweight laminated jacket with full-color printed inner sleeves with artwork by Nika Milano. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu and cut at Schnittstelle Mastering, the record is pressed in perfect sound quality by Optimal in Germany.

Kali Malone (featuring Stephen O’Malley & Lucy Railton) – Does Spring Hide Its Joy

3LP / 3CD

Brand new 2024 Clear Vinyl repress "Fast Edit is the second LP by Still House Plants, the Glasgow and South London-based three-piece collective made up of Finlay Clark, David Kennedy, and Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach. Written aided by mobile phones, dictaphones, laptop recordings of rehearsals, conversations and live shows, Fast Edit is a collage of different fidelities and headspaces, most tenderly exhibited on album centrepiece “Shy Song”. Overlays of past and current sit things on top of each other, fall over one another, get stuck, predicate. Fitting now, but reflective of a period doing shows in South America.The sentiment of the record is probably best described in part of an intervention written for what would have been the 2020 edition of Glasgow's Counterflows Festival by Frances Morgan:"Getting used to the idea of never getting anywhere except for between these three notes, these two words, getting tired, getting beyond it, getting locked in. Trying to get it down, trying to get it written. Like the song that didn’t get anywhere: it still moves, it doesn’t move.It is getting to you that this is heaviest verb to get across. Loaded and overloaded. Getting as in becoming, as in acquiring, as in catching, as in having, as in receiving, as in changing, as in arriving, as in moving through and over, it’s the same....How do you think we should do this. The song does something different now, puts the other foot forward. How do you know when it’s done. End on a verb and it becomes a command: run! Towards the next thing. Do – towards the next thing to be done.What have you been doing today, a day with nothing doing: watching a nesting falcon on a webcam, what’s it going to do. Googling the appropriate prayer, what does it say you should do. Bouncing the sticks off the snare, what does the sound do. How are we all doing. Doing, never done. Listening, never done."www.counterflows.com/intervention-one/     ---   Recorded & mixed by Shaun Crook and Darren Clark at Lockdown Studios, London. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at Dubplates and Mastering.Typeface by Still House Plants, layout by Maja LarrsonProduced in partnership with Blank Forms, New YorkBlank Forms Editions 013BIS005

Still House Plants – Fast Edit

Horace Tapscott’s Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (P.A.P.A.) was one of the most transformative, forward-thinking and straight-up heavy big bands to have played jazz in the 1960s and 1970s. If P.A.P.A. doesn’t have the interstellar rep of that other famous Arkestra, and if the name Tapscott doesn’t ring bells like Monk or Tyner, there’s a reason why: in an industry dominated by record labels, a band that doesn’t record doesn’t count. And the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra didn’t record for nearly twenty years. But recording success was never their concern — they weren’t about that. First formed as the Underground Musicians Association in the early 1960s, Tapscott always wanted his group to be a community project. From their base in Watts, UGMA got down at the grassroots. The group was renamed the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in 1971, and soon after they established a monthly residency at the Immanuel United Church of Christ which ran for over a decade, while still playing all over LA and beyond. But they never released a note of music. It was the intervention of fan Tom Albach that finally got them on wax. Determined that their work should be documented, Albach founded Nimbus Records specifically to release the music of Tapscott, the Arkestra, and the individuals that comprised it. The first recording sessions in early 1978 yielded enough material for two albums, and the first release was Flight 17. The album commences with the magnificent title track. It is effectively in three parts. It begins with unaccompanied pianos. Then the ensemble embark on a dense, circular and mechanical movement, a platform for horns and pianos to swoop and dive. We return to Earth with a beautiful solitary flute. The second track, the piano-centric, ‘Breeze’ is different to ‘Flight 17’ in intensity and also brevity but it is quietly as daring as the title track. It concludes with a moving lush wash from the full Arkestra, which sound almost like strings only more substantial. These first two tracks take full advantage of the texture of the unusual mix of the various instruments. Next though, it’s a significant change with ‘Horacio’, which is an exuberant Latin infused jingle. It’s unlike anything else on the album. I like to think it was named after the conductor’s Cuban alter-ego! ‘Clarisse’ gracefully switches between slow blues and bop and is bookended with a grand vaguely East Asian theme. The busy bass line introduces ‘Maui’. As with the previous track, it moves between a number of contrasting melody lines and rhythms but there’s still space for a tuneful sax solo. This is a must-have album. I think the first two tracks on their own make this release essential.

Horace Tapscott Conducting The Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra – Flight 17

2LP
  • 2LP SOLD OUT

To abandon animals for music – and avant-garde jazz at that –, could seeming shocking to some people. However, it is exactly what Manuel Villarroel did, as he was a vet for three years before leaving his native Chili for Europe and a career in music. And though the animals may have suffered, the world of music can be grateful. Born in 1944, Manuel Villarroel lent an ear to the best pianists from North America: Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner then Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. Manuel left Santiago in September 1970 to participate in the Contemporary Music Workshop in Berlin. To pursue his musical career, he rapidly decided to remain in Europe. The following year in Paris, Manuel began a quartet with saxophonist Jef Sicard (who would also play with his brother Patricio, in the Dharma Quintet). But the group would rapidly expand: Villarroel and Sicard added Gérard Coppéré (saxophone), William Treve (trombone), François Méchali (bass) and Jean-Louis Méchali (drums). And with the arrival of Sonny Grey, a Jamaican trumpeter heard ten years earlier with Daniel Humair, the Matchi-Oul Septet was complete. Complete and ready: on May 8th, 1971, Matchi-Oul was in the studio for Gérard Terronès’ Futura label. The septet recorded seven of the pianist’s compositions. A succession of tracks which flow magically from one to the next: from the first drum strokes to the last deep notes of the bass, the successive waves roll over the piano and whistle through the wind instruments. And when they all come together it gives even greater force to Villarroel’s beautiful songs. Terremoto is a masterpiece of collective expression: but what else could we expect from a “supergroup’’ of this stature?

Septet Matchi-Oul – Terremoto

LP / CD

Reet’ is a lost treasure of late 1960s folk/psych-folk. The only album she ever put to tape, with clear pure voice and guitar. luckily recorded by Andres Raudsepp in 1969. Reet will be loved in the same breath as ;Sibylle Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Molly Drake & Bridget st John. Reet Hendrikson deserves wider listening and we hope this reissue will help . Reet Hendrikson was born in Estonia only months before the “great escape” into exile in 1944. Brought up and educated in Sweden, she went to study in the US in 1967 on a Fulbright scholarship, before she made her mark as an Estonian musician in Canada. While her arrangements of Estonian folksongs on the guitar reflected the styles of the sixties, her voice and choice of material sounded authentic and made a connection with ages past. When Hendrikson arrived in Canada in 1968 via the US, her Estonian was native-like because of the high quality of Estonian schools in Sweden. She was thus able to characterise the identity of young ex-patriate Estonians – especially those born in exile from Soviet occupation – in a new and meaningful way. A formal musical background allowed her to create the arrangements that accompanied her simple but pure singing voice. Having heard her under northern Muskoka pines at an Estonian summer seminar, it didn’t take Andres Raudsepp ( of raindeer records) long to bring her to a recording studio. “Reet – Estonian folksongs” appeared in 1969. Hendrikson soon found her way to the scholarly atmosphere of Boston where, as a multi-instrumentalist, she joined a group of musicians who favoured traditional folk music. Back in Sweden in the 1980ies, she was invited to join a scholarly society of Estonian young women, which she led during musical sessions. She visited Estonia as frequently as possible, trying in particular to be helpful to Estonian musicians by providing sheet music and much-needed repertoire from the Swedish National Radio Archives, where she worked for a while.. Reet Hendrikson died in Stockholm in the autumn of 2000.

Reet Hendrikson – REET

Those who have caught @xcrswx live have seen the intensity at which drummer Crystabel Riley and saxophone player Seymour Wright blast improv's cobwebs away. Utterly ripped drum patterns meet subs and sax for their first physical release. A hot 7". Edition of 150.  "Feedback Moves launches with ‘Call Time / Hard Out’ by @xcrswx. @xcrswx are London based artists Crystabel Riley (drum-/human-skin) and Seymour Wright (saxophone), who alongside performing as a duo have appeared in projects such as أحمد [Ahmed], GUO, Maria & The Mirrors and RP Boo & XT.
Call Time / Hard Out presents us with a contrast of opposing recording techniques - the LIVE and the ANDROID. Call Time is largely made up of phone recordings, mashed up to create a layered mix of mini aural breaks, which scatter barbed sax and motoric drum patterns through a cloud of bass tone and feedback. Hard Out is an edited in-house live recording from Cafe Oto which sees the duo communicating through a live language of repetition and interplay. Sparse, rotating snare and sax blows are met with pulsing subs as the mix gradually folds back on itself. 7” comes with folded @xcrswx artwork, A4 insert by @xcrswx with words by Janina Pedan and label business card. Edition of 150."  Call Time recorded by @xcrswx
. Hard Out recorded by Shaun Crook, with reflections from Amy Gwatkin and Billy Steiger. Mastered by John Hannon

@xcrswx – Call Time​/​Hard Out

Tracklisting: 1. I - 6:30 2. II - 6:49 3. III - 17:43 4. IV - 6:18 5. V - 16:56Keiji Haino, one of the foremost exponents of the Japanese avant-garde, always provides a masterclass in constantly shifting improvisation. John Butcher is a saxophonist of rare grace and power, who has expanded the vocabulary of the saxophone far beyond the conventions of jazz and other musics, to encompass a staggering range of multiphonics, overtones, percussive sounds, and electronic feedback. Haino and Butcher met when Butcher opened for Fushitsusha at the show Cafe OTO arranged at St. John, Hackney - 5 years ago. In 2016 they were invited to play two duo concerts – at The Empty Gallery in Hong Kong and at Cafe OTO in London. Otoroku is proud to present the audio documentation of their first UK meeting. Recorded live at Cafe OTO in July 2016 the results are an uncompromising milieu of swirling sound played out as a total union of these two legendary performers.  Haino’s blues drenched guitar entices skittering notes from Butcher’s sax playing as numerous sonic clues unravel over the course of of this unique and compelling journey. Light Never Bright Enough comes in a limited edition of 500 LPs and 500 CDs with matt sleeves and japanese removable obi-strip. --- Keiji Haino / vocal, guitar, flutes   John Butcher / saxophones and feedback --- Recorded live at Cafe OTO on the 9th July 2016 by Luca Consonni. Mixed by John Butcher. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Photography and design by ORGAN.

HAINO KEIJI / JOHN BUTCHER – LIGHT NEVER BRIGHT ENOUGH