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Piano/trumpet duets already carry their own dose of intimacy. Crystal and brass, woodwind and breath, there are many precedents in the history of our music, starting with Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor, two tender departed we spoke of a short while ago. This is exactly what Bernard Aimé explains in the liner notes to Soul Eyes, the new release from Jean-Marc Foussat's Fou Records label, which of course features a pianist and a trumpeter. The pairing is unprecedented, at least on record: Cécile C…
SOFA is proud to have discovered a great jewel in Spanish music. The Madrid based soundartist and composer Miguel Angel Tolosa has during the last five years become a special member of the SOFA family, having contributed on several SOFA albums both as an artist and as a recording and mastering engineer. Now, on "Ephimeral" we hear him all alone. Tolosa says about his music that it's not meant to convey extramusical contents, such as philosophical or religious ideas, political propaganda or adver…
Mille Feuille was recorded during three days at Flerbruket, an old school builiding at Hemnes which now is a workplace for artists of all sorts. OWL (Signe Emmeluth & Karl Bjorå) worked here together with sound technician Magnus Nergaard with recordings that later would turn into the duo’s debut album. The music is the result of a couple of years working with different ideas of improvisation and composition. Both musicians have their opinions on how much or little control you bring into the musi…
shapes & phases is the debut release of the duo vertex, consisting of Petter Vågan (lapsteel, acoustic guitar, electronics) and Tor Haugerud (percussion, signal generator, field recordings). Together they have delved into their own blend of electro-acoustic improvisation, with elements ranging from lowercase electronic drones, via country/folk-influenced minimalism, to distorted industrial walls of sound. Vertex manage to move between these diverse sources without losing touch of their own sound…
In the early 80's future producers began to veer towards a form of dance music not yet defined, what once seemed like an experimental form, today sounds like a cornerstone for future development in the club scene of key city as Berlin, Paris, Stockholm and Amsterdam. Italo disco was first mistreated, then exalted, forgotten and rediscovered a thousand times and today it is one of the most respected genres in club music. Fred Ventura, musician and producer - here curator of the compilation - has…
*2024 repress* Remastered edition of Janko Nilovic's album Super America, originally released in 1976. Janko Nilovic was one of the greatest European studio talents in the '70s. He is a musician who devotes himself to music, which resulted in a great number of published works, but most of them are on library labels not available for sale. His oeuvre stretches from classical, jazz and funk to pop, psych and easy listening. Sampled many times by hip-hop artists such as Jay-Z, Dafuniks and Guts.
"I…
*2024 stock* 1"‘The Devil Rides Out’ is a 1968 Hammer horror film. The score, by James Bernard, perfectly amplifies the film’s scary nature, moving from sparse string and woodwind arrangements, emphasising the creepy bits, to full on orchestral power to aid the film’s more dramatic, edge-of-the-seat moments." - normanrecords.com
Spencer Clark is back with Vol.2 of his eco-friendly extravaganza Avatar Blue. It’s life on earth as you never heard it. The story goes like this: Spencer Clark wanted to do a soundtrack for the yet to be made Avatar 2. And if you know Spencer’s work, you’ll know that he engaged on this mission reading material that influenced the rich and crazy imaginary world of Avatar. If you think about it a little bit, something like Avatar could have really come out from the mind of Spencer Clark. But it d…
Reissue of the double cassette releases in 2010 on Second Sleep, by the duo of Matteo Castro and Riccardo Mazza. Hailing from the farthest North-East glacial tip of Italy, Lettera 22 utilize elements of musique concrete sound sources, delicately sampled, looped and edited; here is a heavy focus on textures and harsh noise with bouts of restraint and full assault, as usual via analogue tapes manipulation and feedback.
*2024 stock* This eclectic group features the legendary multi instrumentalist Daniel Carter as well as the scientist/pianist Matthew Putman, drum wizard and 577 Records co-founder Federico Ughi, together with the brilliant up-and-coming member of the New York downtown scene, Texas-born clarinet player Patrick Holmes plus veteran bassist Hilliard Greene, a mainstay of the avant-garde for the last 20 years.
2024 stock. The Telepathic Band is named after the sort of improvisational style that can only be accomplished with a decade or two of collaboration, playing a signature ghostly, boundary-pushing music between friends. In their fourth album, Daniel Carter, Patrick Holmes, Matthew Putman, Hilliard Greene, and Federico Ughi exemplify the possibilities of in-person improvisation, offering extemporized performances with their characteristically daring instrumentation. Telepathic Mysteries, Vol. 1 ma…
Master pianist, New York-based, originally from Argentina, Leo Genovese, just won a grammy as a ‘Best Improvised Jazz Solo’ - an award considered by many as ‘mainstream’. This certainly did not stop his creative path, only to encourage him towards further researching creative music. His debut album ‘The Art of Not Playing’ with fellow musicians John Lockwood on bass and drummer Nat Mugavero proves it. The trio celebrates the practice of disappearing during the process of creating. Trusting the ‘…
*2024 stock* "Prophecies Come to Pass is the debut recording of Sabir Mateen's compositions by his group The Shapes, Textures, and Sound Ensemble. Recorded live in Brooklyn in September 2005, the CD was edited by Mateen and Swell and mastered under Mateen's direction. It's dedicated to the late great Raphe Malik, who at one time played with the group. The ensemble is composed of an impressive roster of creative musicians: Mateen on saxophones, flute, and clarinets; Matt Lavelle on trumpet, fluge…
The world is more elusive than simple cause and effect imply, more typically, life circumvents causation in favor of an unknowable correlation. It seems like the more we know, the less we know. On this first volume from Zoh Amba and Francisco Mela, the duo brings their regional traditions, from Tennessee and Cuba respectively, and musical inclinations to the cause and effect behind their own life stories. Causa y Efecto, Vol. 1 is an ode to the unknown, transporting audiences between the New Yor…
2024 stock. After decades of collaboration, scores of musical projects and 28 releases, old friends and professional musicians might find themselves searching for either novelty or a return to the foundations. In the case of UK-based saxophonist Paul Dunmall and UK-based drummer Mark Sanders, it was both. The two musicians have had prolific careers—and made much of their work together—but in a recent phone call, they realized that they had never created a project that featured just their preferr…
Abstraction, with feeling. Saxophonist Paul Dunmall, a veteran experimental jazz musician, was feeling drawn to vitality. He wanted to organize a group of musicians that were driven by an underlying pulse and a central energy, beyond the abstract improvisations he had been familiar with for years. He had always appreciated jazz that had a driving, uplifting energy, and organized this quartet, inspired by these musicians’ previous improvisational performances. Alongside guitarist Steven Saunders,…
Originally from Kingsport, Tennessee, New York-based Zoh Amba is a notable rising star in the avant-garde music scene. Growing up in the Appalachian mountains, Amba practiced saxophone to the forest that surrounded her home before she later traveled to study with David Murray in New York, and also at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music & New England Conservatory in Boston. Today, her music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, repeated incantations and powerfully executed Free Jazz…