"Atlantis is an exhilarating listen, equally thanks to its fierce free jazz and brightly textural abstraction" Antonio Poscic, The WIRE, Feb 2020 Following closely on the heels of his ravishing solo album Tomorrow is Too Late, Stockholm-based synthesist and improviser John Chantler switches gears to unleash the stunning second album by his trio with saxophonist Seymour Wright and drummer Steve Noble, Atlantis. Chantler is well-known for his solo electronic work, which frequently explodes richly layered ambient soundscapes into visceral explosions and thrilling physicality, to say nothing of his imaginative experimentation with the organ, heard in radically transformed mode on the recent solo recording. But Chantler is equally invested in real-time improvisation and he’s developed a dazzling rapport and sound world with Wright and Noble, two of England’s most distinctive, active, and turbulent figures in spontaneous music over the last couple of decades. The pair has worked together in numerous contexts over the years, but it took Chantler to create an ongoing context for them, and since forming in 2017 the trio’s rigour and level of communication have steadily expanded.“My fantasy idea in the beginning when I wanted to do this trio was thinking about taking Derek Bailey’s role in the Topography of the Lungs trio,” he says, referring to the classic 1970 album with Evan Parker and Han Bennink. “That’s not what happened, but that was my way of imagining how I could make the synthesizer have the kind of range and ability to both comment on stuff and guide and push in certain ways, like Derek did in that group. That remains a kind of ambition even if aesthetically it doesn’t feel very close to that, but that’s how I first thought about what my role would be.” Indeed, Chantler serves as a pesky interrogator, his serrated tones and viscous globules cutting through the kinetic din dished out by Wright and Noble, and on the new album his integration is more fully realised to the point where it’s often impossible to decipher where the output of one musician ends—the sibilant bowed cymbals of Noble or the feedback-laced lines of Wright—and the pushback of another begins.The album was cut and mixed in a single day with in-house engineer Janne Hansson at Stockholm’s legendary Atlantis Studio, a facility made famous by the chart-topping albums recorded there by Abba in the 1970s, when the place was known as Metronome. Prior to entering the studio the trio spent an exhausting, all-in week rehearsing at the arts space Fylkingen—where they also played a show—in addition to playing a handful of gigs in Norway. Locked in, they discovered much different acoustic qualities at Atlantis from what they’d previously encountered. “There’s a very specific sound at the studio, and we’d been playing for a week together at Fylkingen, so we started to develop a thing that really works in that room, and then you move somewhere else, and the drums in particular sounded really different, and in some ways they had a bit more of a rock ‘n’ roll kind of feeling.” explains Chantler. Responding to that radically different, reverb-soaked ambience, he and Wright took advantage of a pair of matching Fender tube amps, charging their individual signals to match the booming, resonant sprawl of Noble’s pinpoint clatter.Compared to the group’s debut album Front and Above—a live recording of the trio’s very first performance at London’s Café Oto—which Chantler edited to emphasise the sparser expanses of the raucous, performance, the new album reveals a more open-ended spectrum, from delicate to crushing. Noble’s beautifully metallic rustling and throbbing snare bombs hang pregnantly in the air, and Chantler and Wright thicken the atmosphere with twinned abstractions, alternately ethereal and punishing. The transitions between calm and chaos are sometimes seamless, sometimes abrupt, but the full landscape transports the listener to another realm regardless of how ferocious or gentle the attack may be. As strong as the trio’s first album was, Atlantis marks a massive step forward. “The more you play together the more it starts to cohere into some kind of specific language,” says Chantler. “You start to understand the point of what a particular constellation might be.” With Atlantis there’s little doubt these three improvisers know exactly what the point of it all is, which thrillingly means that many new paths in the future have opened up.    ---   John Chantler / synthesiser   Steve Noble / drums   Seymour Wright / alto saxophone   --- RECORDED AND MIXED AT ATLANTIS GRAMMOFON AB, STOCKHOLM 24 JANUARY 2018ENGINEER: JANNE HANSSONMASTERING: STEPHAN MATHIEUPAINTINGS: LESTER WRIGHT   RECORDING SESSION MADE POSSIBLE WITH SUPPORT FROM THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS

After 10 years of making music together, Oceans Roar 1000 Drums is finally releasing a proper vinyl document of their work. Recorded on a rainy day in the Summer of 2017, the trio's first release in 5 years features the floating presence of Catherine Lamb's "secondary rainbow synthesizer", which is filtering both recordings of the band and environmental recordings to add another layer to the trio's dense and loving music.

Double LP version. Four long and vaporous unreleased tracks that document the Juri Camisasca's first mystical afflatus, bringing to light the moments of "collective meditation" of some events in 1978, including the recordings drawn from the exhibition "L'evoluzione interiore dell'Uomo", which took place at the Villa Reale in Monza. After his participation in the Telaio Magnetico project in 1975, and in parallel to his contribution in works like Franco Battiato's Juke Box (1978) and Lino Capra Vaccina's Antico Adagio (1978), and in Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina's Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo (1979), a more general syntony of Camisasca for different aspects of Eastern philosophies seemed to conceive his first personal form of music as a "celestial ocean" in which to break the eternal divine love. The mantra nature of deep drones of a natural reverberated harmonium literally introduce you to another level of consciousness; harmonic chants of dhrupad inspiration expanding the ethereal voice in the transcendental plot of all, while Roberto Mazza's oboe intervenes to paint this perfect osmotic sound echoing motifs of ancient medieval saltarello. For Camisasca, "the vibration of sound is something primordial which contains the mystery of creation"; and in this sense "the musician is a medium through which the Nature is expressed". This makes Evoluzione Interiore an intense minimalist work where singing generates a universal and archetypical spiral of purity and candor that suggests the Pandit Pran Nath's lesson as well as dialogues in concept with the mutability flux of seminal works as Terry Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes (1972), Peter Michael Hamel's The Voice of Silence (1973) and Nada (1977), or with research on the overtones as that of Roberto Laneri's Prima Materia. Includes liner notes with archival photos.

'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

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.

recorded at DE Studio, Antwerp, November 23rd, 2016 mixed by Mikael Werliin mastered by Lasse Marhaug cover illustration / design by Lasse Marhaug Anna Högberg - alto and baritone sax Mats Gustafsson - baritone sax and conduction Susana Santos Silva - trumpet Per-Åke Holmlander - tuba Hedvig Mollestad - guitar Dieb13 - turntables Christof Kurzmann - lloopp, voice Massimo Pupillo - bass Gert-Jan Prins - drums and electronics Ivar Loe Bjørnstad - drums

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?

The third release in a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: a reissue of Derek Bailey & Han Bennink, originally released in 1972. The tussling vegetables in Mal Dean's cover-sketch somehow befit perfectly this extraordinary duo of Bailey and the great Dutch drummer Han Bennink. Recorded in London in 1972, Incus 9 was their second record (after an Instant Composers Pool in 1969), becoming a blueprint and inspiration for generations of free-improvisers. It is paired here with a brilliant session from the following year, with the same power and friendly combativeness, and oodles of creativity, technique, and humor. It's obvious how much they loved playing together. Newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, and remastered by Rashad Becker. Available exclusively for download here. Derek Bailey / guitar, voice Han Bennink / percussion, saw, reeds, brass, strings, voice --- Engineered by Bob Woolford (tracks: A.1.-B.3.). Mastered by Rashad Becker. Cover by Mal Dean.

For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support. Kicking off a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: Solo Guitar Volume 1, a reissue of Derek Bailey's Solo Guitar release on Incus in 1971, with additional tracks included on previous reissues and a performance at York University in 1972. Recorded in 1971, this was Bailey's first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years -- Incus 2 and 2R -- with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey's performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars, and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972, a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It's a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence, and wit. As throughout the series, the recordings are newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, remastered by Rashad Becker, and available for download exclusively here. --- Derek Bailey / guitar, synthesizer — Tracks 1-13 recorded by Bob Woolford and Hugh Davies. Photographs by Roberto Masotti. Mastered by Rashad Becker.

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.

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

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.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first LP documenting master khene player Sombat Simla, the label’s first collaboration with Japanese sound artist, field recordist, and researcher Yasuhiro Morinaga. Simla is known in Thailand as one of the greatest living players of the khene, the ancient bamboo mouth organ particularly associated with Laos but found throughout East and Southeast Asia. His virtuosic and endlessly inventive renditions of traditional and popular songs have earned him the title ‘the god of khene’, and he is known for his innovative techniques and ability to mimic other instruments and non-musical sound, including, as a writer for the Bangkok Post describes, ‘the sound of a train journey, complete with traffic crossings and the call of barbecue chicken vendors’. Aided by a group of Thai friends, in 2018 Morinaga travelled to the Maha Sarakham province in the Isan region, arranging to meet Simla in a remote spot surrounded by rice fields. Then and there, Morinaga recorded the solo performances heard on the LP’s first side. At Morinaga’s request, Simla began with a rendition of the train song ‘Lot Fay Tay Lang’. Beginning with long tones that seem to mimic a train horn, the performance soon moves into a rapid chugging rhythm, interrupted at points by vocal exclamations and the remarkable timbre Simla produces by singing through the khene. To listeners unfamiliar with Thai music, the pentatonic scales and rhythmic chug of many of the pieces can have surprising echoes of the rawest American blues. The range of Simla’s performance is astonishing, moving from compulsive rhythmic workouts on single chords and rapid-fire runs of single notes to gentle sing-song melodies, and using a fascinating array of techniques, including a rapid tremolo that sometimes sounds almost electronic. Later the same day, Morinaga followed Simla to a cattle shed where he met percussionist Mali Moodsansee to play some molam (folk songs found in Isan and neighbouring Laos), with Pattardon Ekchatree joining in on cymbal. At times, these molam songs have a wistful, romantic character quite different from the solo pieces. Backed up by the propulsive hand drums, Simla again dazzles with his melodic fluidity, rhythmic drive, and wild displays of unorthodox technique. As Morinaga writes, ‘It felt like they had been playing together so long that their breathing was perfectly in sync, and it was like listening to the precision of James Brown’s funk’. Accompanied by extensive liner notes by Morinaga detailing the day of recording, this is a stunning document of a master musician, seamlessly integrating tradition and innovation.

Following on from the psychoacoustic concrète of Outside Ludlow / Desert Disco LP (BT075), Sam Dunscombe returns to Black Truffle with Two Forests / Oceanic. Dunscombe has been active in recent years on multiple fronts, including as a key member of the Berlin community of Just Intonation researchers and practitioners; working with composers like Taku Sugimoto, Mary Jane Leach, and Anthony Pateras; and the release of Horatiu Radulescu - Plasmatic Music vol. 1 (the result of many years performance research into the thought and music of this seminal Romanian spectralist). In parallel with these activities, Dunscombe has been deeply involved in research on the role of music in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, prompting these two side long pieces, composed using field recordings and digital synthesis. As Dunscombe explains in the accompanying liner notes, music plays a key role in psychedelic-assisted therapy, yet it is often restricted to stock forms of New Age, ambient and electronica. Taking seriously the potential for spatio-environmental sonic experiences to add to the therapeutic process, these two pieces are intended to suggest how ‘a music-as-environment approach may help to add options to the therapist’s toolbox’. ‘Two Forests’ begins in a central Californian sequoia grove. Bird songs and buzzing insect life are treated with a variety of time-based processing methods (slicing and recombination, primitive granular synthesis, delay, and so on), which strip the field recordings of their linear, documentary character, reframing them in an enchanted web of traces and echoes. Analysing the pitches found in the original recordings, Dunscombe used them to generate a large Just Intonation pitch set. These tones are woven slowly into the field recordings, gradually building in density and complexity until the forest has been transformed into an unreal space of infinite proportions. Emerging from this cosmic expanse in the final minutes of the piece, we find ourselves in the Amazon rainforest outside Manaus, Brazil. As Dunscombe writes, the piece creates ‘a sense of place-gone-strange, of space and time simultaneously expanding and contracting across octaves, miles, and minutes’. On ‘Oceanic’, several recordings of different beaches fade in and out to create a texture both homogenous and constantly shifting in both the rhythm of the waves and each recording's sense of depth and distance. Tones relating in simple ratios to the average rhythm of each beach float over each other, colouring the white noise texture of the field recordings with shifting hues. In both pieces, Dunscombe forgoes the easy consonance that bogs down much contemporary ambient music for a richer harmonic array informed by extended tuning practices and spectralism. The end results suggest a hitherto undreamt-of meeting of Radulescu’s undulating sonic masses and the discreetly processed location recordings of Irv Teibel’s ‘psychologically ultimate’ Environments. Looking beyond the insularity that can afflict experimental music culture, Dunscombe’s work is a moving argument for the healing power of expanded approaches to sound and music. Even outside of a psychedelics-assisted therapy, frequent immersion in Two Forests / Oceanic is almost guaranteed to produce beneficial psychological results.

The second release in a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: three double-LPs of the legendary free-improvising guitarist Derek Bailey, solo (HJR 200LP) and in duos with Anthony Braxton and Han Bennink(HJR 202LP), augmenting the original releases with marvelous, previously unissued music. Recorded in 1974, at the Royal Hotel in Luton, with Braxton playing soprano and alto saxophones, and Bb and contrabass clarinets. Two volumes were planned; only one was issued, till now. This was an early transatlantic meeting between the leading free improvisers. Many of Braxton's signature techniques and ideas were gestated in such sessions. It still brims with inquisitive musical creativity and knockabout jazzbo allusiveness. Newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, and remastered by Rashad Becker. Available exclusively for download here.  --- Derek Bailey / electric guitar Anthony Braxton / saxophones, clarinets --- Recorded during a concert played at the Royal Hotel, Luton, England on July 2, 1974. Sides 1 and 2 were issued as Royal Volume 1 in 1984; 3 and 4 are released here for the first time by Honest Jons. Thanks to Karen Brookman-Bailey and Tim Fletcher.

"Quite simply, Company produced some of the most stimulating improvised music you will ever hear." - John Eyles 1982 line-up of Company. Keith Tippett, Fred Frith and George Lewis are joined by concert pianist Ursula Oppens and composer & harpist Anne LeBaron. After playing more frrequently in Japan in the late seventies, Bailey had also invited Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and Akio Suzuki on assorted instruments like glass harmonica.  --- Derek Bailey / guitarJulie Tippetts / guitar, voice, fluteMoto Yoshizawa / bassFred Frith / electric guitar, electronics, percussionAkio Suzuki / glass harmonica, spring gong, kikkokiririkiAnne LeBaron / harpKeith Tippett / pianoUrsula Opens / pianoGeorge Lewis / trombonePhil Wachsmann / violin, electronics --- Recorded by Jean-Marc Foussat. Produced by Derek Bailey & Evan Parker. Design by Karen Brookman. Financial assistance by The Arts Council.

Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind. Working closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood’s Back to the Woodlands will be issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary Where the Woods Begin, with new liner notes by Michael Klausman.

"Since leaving Rio, Cyro has been accepted as one of the world's leading Brazillian percussionists, recording with Paquita de Rivera, Ruben Blades, Astrud Gilberto and lots of people like that. We met in New York while I was living there in the winter of 1982 and first played together at the Ear Inn on Spring St. In the following months we played all kinds of places, occasions which figured prominently among the many musical pleasures I enjoyed during that period. One such occasion, thanks to Bill Laswell, was this recording." - Derek Bailey.  --- Derek Bailey / guitar Cyro Baptista / percussion --- Tracklisting: 1. Toca Joga - 5:32 2. Quanto Tempo - 3:53 3. Polvo - 4:53 4. Rio Branco - 5:21 5. Joca Toca - 3:26 6. Que Horas - 5:02 7. Tondo - 7:04 8. Batida - 4:36 --- Recorded by Martin Bisi in October  1982, New York City. Produced by Adam Skeaping and John Haddon. Design by Karen Brookman. Photos by Eleonora Alberto and Karen Brookman.