Utsunomia Mix - 007 "Soul Boat"
In May 2023, the experimental music/acoustic project "Utsunomia" was launched by acoustic geniuses Yasushi Utsunomiya + Gallery Nomart + .es (dot es). MIX". Starting with the simultaneous release of their debut trilogy in May of the same year, Utsunomia Mix has released five albums in six months and two more in the following year, 2024. The Utsunomia Mix series is packed with unique features, including the first-ever combination of live performances, links with contemporary art, and unique recor…
Breaks
Debut solo CD by Wuhan-born, London-based artist, Zheng Hao, who also performs in the duos Oishi (with Ren Shang) and ecm (with Joseph Khan). Four lean and sinewy improvisations; the sound of tightly controlled buzzing and rippling electric currents, pointillistic splintering rhythms and textures, sparse jagged incursions, and wiry static blasts. In the artist's own words, Breaks explores "rhythmic patterns from dusty potentiometers and dirty electronic circuits in modular synthesis improvisatio…
An Island Is An Island
*300 copies limited edition.* An Island Is An Island is a correspondence musical project of two respectable islanders, Michael Morley (of The Dead C, based on Te Wai Pounamu / South Island, New Zealand) and Joachim Nordwall (Ideal Records, Island of Brännö, Sweden).Two tracks touching the 40 minutes mark are as unique as it can get, magical and just sort of hard to define folktale of hypnagogic dream landscapes full of haunting micro tones and fragments of cursed melodies.While listening to this…
Creiriau Y Delyn Rawn / Relics Of The Horsehair Harp
"This collection is a companion piece to my solo album ‘Telyn Rawn’ AMGEN 001 (2020). I have invited some of my favourite musicians to respond to the eighteen improvised pieces on ‘Telyn Rawn’. I asked each contributor to imagine that the musical material improvised in 2020 was an ancient musical form that had fully existed in the medieval period, and, that each of their responses were to have happened centuries after the imagined formation of the ‘Telyn Rawn’ pieces. This album therefore propos…
Telyn Wrachïod
Cildraeth Sienco is an improvisation based on an amalgamation of the notation and structure of Angharad Jenkins’ Brandy Cove with the alternative string tuning of ‘Cywair yn Nghywair y Wrach’ from Robert ap Huw’s manuscript."Ceimion wrachïod cymwysYn siarad bob teimlad twys""Precise, angled braysSpeaking every profound feeling."From a cywydd requesting a harp by Huw Machno fl. 1560-1637
Notte
Taping, expanding, and challenging the parameters of how we perceive rhythm and percussion, comes “Notte”, the debut solo LP by the Italian journeyman drummer and composer Piero Perelli. Ranging from the infectiously hypnotic to complex abstractions and sheets of ambience, every step of the way it's an engrossing listen that shouldn't be missed.
Fire & Ice
**Original 1982 copies, still sealed and log time stored (copies may have minimal wear on covers)** Intriguingly sets the apocalyptic Robert Frost poem, with trumpeter Yousef Yancy as the ice and Garrett List as the fire. Haunting settings of vital dada poet Blaise Cendrars' incandescent lines and Sweetness, an ineffably lovely poem by Bayard Lancaster, whose alto parallels soaring synthesizer parabolas, and the riveting voice of Genie Sherman, whose sinuous, sibilant messages are those of pure…
Furtuna Virilis Plus...
2024 stock. "Decibel is a fundamental point of reference for the preservation and refurbishment of the rock in opposition genre in Latin American lands. Originally released 20 years after the excellent, challenging debut effort "El Poeta del Ruido" (and soon afterwards rereleased with bonus tracks), "Fortuna Virilis" happens to be the ultimate statement of decibel's musical vision. This album, unlike its distant predecessor, does not give preferential room to sound processing and tape effects, b…
Sleepless
This album was recorded at Liu Ying Studio in Shenzhen. An improvised session on acoustic guitar from start to finish, it nonetheless demonstrates a highly original, coherent artistic conception: a distinct “Oriental” aesthetic redefined by Mamer’s own creative vision. In tracks like “Sleepless”, “Man from the East”, and “Backyard”, Mamer ingeniously deconstructs and deploys traditional Han Chinese music scales to serve his own purpose, adding artful ambivalence and rich subtleties to an unmista…
Saxophone Solo For Reel-to-reel Tape Recording
*2024 stock* This series of reel-to-reel tape recordings, to be jointly released by Old Heaven Books and Liu Ying Studio, aims to offer to our listeners the best quality of sound we can achieve so far. Whilst a small part of these releases come from historical archives, the majority are freshly made by musicians we invite to our studio. We record these studio sessions − some of which free-improvised, others more composition-based − on reel-to-reel tapes. With high-quality studio equipment, we ma…
Control And Its Opposites
“Eighty minutes of trumpet/electronics and alto sax. Here, the length works in its favor. An advantage, oddly, to listening at home (and reading the back of the sleeve): You know it's 80 minutes long so you "read" it as such, as it's happening, sitting back a bit, seeking a wider focus. Wright gets nicely strident here and there, Coleman generally staying with breath tones early on, getting more vociferous later, Kasyansky hither and yon, doing a fine job integrating and coloring. There's a brea…
Meshes
Trombone, electronics and cello, the trio opts for a sparser, more irregular path, with perhaps a higher degree of difficulty. Two cuts, both emerging more or less unscathed, but somehow striking me as overly forced. Actually, it's a tough one for me to call; sometimes it has a searching quality that's very appealing, other times I hear it less as "searching" and more as "casting about". Again, I don't believe this series of discs are meant as statements or finished projects, more as snapshots; …
A Life Saved By A Spider And Two Doves
As George Lewis recently said, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between improvised and composed music. It’s a distinction he would like to see dropped. For much of its length this delicately nuanced recording could quite easily be a formal electroacoustic composition, an impression strongly reinforced by the fact that Evan Parker sounds curiously unfamiliar in this new grouping. He’s well used now to working with electronics, but this was a first convocation of this quart…
Endspace
Duo improvisations recorded at Goldsmiths College in South London
Hum
Quartet improvisations for trumpet, flute, harp and bass clarinet
Tasting
Recorded live at the June 2006 Jazz à Poitiers festival this little gem features the work of two truly extraordinary musicians, both of whom are giants from a technical and creative point of view: Phil Minrton and Sophie Agnel, an unusual and very welcome pairing in that ceaselessly changing world which is the improv scene. The former is well-known, and has the weight of many years’ experience on his shoulders, but refuses to give up and continues indomitably to explore the outer possibilities o…
Mouth To Mouth
Four compositions by the US-Chinese composer:
'Of Monsters' - Ingrid Lee, piano Merima Kljuko, accordion'Cells' - Ingrid Lee & Rowan Smith, amplified snare drums'Bead Spit' - Ingrid Lee, piano, Max Kutner, electric guitar, Tony Gennaro, percussion'Another' - Eric KM Clark & Andy Studer, violins, Heather Lockie, viola, Meldoy Yenn, cello, Jake Rosenzweig, bass & Tony Gennaro, vibraphone
Spiral Inputs
Trio improvisations with Sophie Agnel - piano, Bertrand Gauguet - alto & soprano saxophones and Andrea Neumann - piano frame, electronic devices
The Middle Distance
Trio improvisations for two pianos and double bass
Arethusa
Wade Matthews, software synthesis & manipulated filed recordings, Stephane Rives, soprano saxophone