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Vol. 4 Jo Maka
Music-lovers of all lands, rejoice! Here you have the re-release of the fourth album of the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra recorded with the Guinean saxophonist Jo Maka. The title says it all: Vol.4: Jo Maka. But before that, a bit of history: The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by an "old hand" of French free jazz, François Tusques. "Free Jazz" was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François J…
Àlááfíà
Honour’s debut album is a ligament stretching from Lagos to London and to New York, curling across the diaspora and brushing the darker hues of blues, hip-hop, free jazz, ambient, gospel with Christian mythology and Yoruba folklore. As cinematic as it is painterly, Àlàáfíà is a meditation on themes of life, death and love that pulls inspiration from the poetic profundity of God, remembered dreams, unexpected casual conversations, field recordings, literature, ephemera, and personal archives. The…
4 Cuts Placed In "A First Quarter"
4 Cuts Placed In "A First Quarter", the companion piece to Solos, is the sonic result of a collaboration with artist Lawrence Weiner. As Landry remembers, “I was working for Keith Sonnier at Castelli Gallery and met Lawrence. He asked ‘can you make a video for me?’ So we did "To and Fro..." At some point he was working on "A First Quarter" (1973) and wanted me to do the music. I said ‘I already have the music.’ He said ‘what do you mean?’ I had recorded several pieces with Kurt Munkcasi and walk…
The Tables Are Turning
Although you're more likely to find :zoviet*france: soundtracking art installations and performances, 2012 saw the release of the studio album 7.10.12 released as a boxset edition on alt.vinyl. On The Tables Are Turning the duo of Ben Ponton and Mark Warren present a studio version of their live soundtrack to Designer Body, a contemporary dance production by Ballet Lorent. Ballet Lorent's 2009 production featured dancers on revolving plinths. At first fully dressed with hats, scarves and full ma…
A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth
Tip! In a generation of musicians that came of age in postwar Japan, Kazuki Tomokawa stands as a pioneer of radical individualism, with a sound marked by shocking intimacy and blistering honesty. In his third album, A String of Paper Cranes Clenched between My Teeth, released by Harvest Records in 1977, Tomokawa creeps “ever more inward,” as Kiichi Takahara writes in the record’s original introductory text—embracing an attitude pervasive amongst musicians of the time who interrogated the prosaic…
Herzschlag Erde / Verdunkelt die Sinne
** Edition limited to 350 copies including a large booklet with sinister photos, surreal drawings and lyrics in German and English. ** Right on time for its 30th anniversary, “Herzschlag Erde”, cassette debut album of Die Welttraumforscher, is being re-released in a collaborative effort between the labels Planam and A Tree In A Field. The new, limited vinyl edition includes a large-format, 20-page booklet as well as the previously unreleased follow-up album, “Verdunkelt die Sinne”. Die Welttraum…
Symphony No. 3: Siddhartha Gautama O El Poder De La Nada
When psycho-spatial composer Nelson Gastaldi passed away in 2009 at the age of 77, he left behind a unique musical legacy that is only now beginning to be unveiled. A self-described “musical nihilist with noble and mystic origins” (as well as an accomplished visual artist), Gastaldi supported himself and his family with a job at an electric company in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while creating an astonishing body of work that went virtually unheard during his lifetime. Synthesizing his wide-ranging…
Troupe Asnimer & J.H. Burch
A trance-inducing journey into Morocco’s Ait Bouguemez valley: multi-instrumentalist J.H. Burch joins the all-female Troupe Asnimer to revive Amazigh oral traditions. Their hypnotic choral songs, enriched with global instrumentation, bridge ancestral ritual and contemporary sound.
Joseph Kabasele And The Creation of Surboum African Jazz 1960-1963
*2025 stock* Planet Ilunga continues its mission to uncover and highlight the overlooked yet epic achievements in the world of Congolese rumba. This time to tell the most spectacular story of all. This is the story of the creation of Surboum African Jazz, the first Congolese music label founded by a Congolese. Surboum African Jazz was owned and managed by the best singer of all time, Joseph Kabasele, alias Grand Kallé. The label's catalog during the period 1960–63 is largely dominated by Grand K…
Snapshot from the Island
A rare pearl of Hungarian experimental music, Tibor Szemzo’s sublime debut album Snapshot From The Island [1987] is widely regarded as one of the best ambient & minimalist music of the time. Remastered from the original tapes, limited edition
Rhythm And Sound
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Sonor Music Editions is bringing out a previously unknown Italian Library session from the golden era: Rhythm And Sound by Mandrassi & Zollinger with the I Beati studio band. Mandrassi - alias for Anna Maria Assunta Andreassi - is one of the first female composers of Library Music in Italy while Zollinger is assumed to be Sergio Pagano, brother of the famed Italian author, composer and singer Mario Pagano. Originally released in 1974 for the private studio label …
Ethnoelectronics
**Edition of 300** Ethnoelectronics, issued on cassette by Sound Reporters in 1986, exists beyond the realm of easy definition. Very little information about the album exists, other than the fact that it involved the contributions of a remarkable group of sonic explorers - Walter Maioli, Nirodh Fortini, Fred Gales, Raffaele Serra, John Zandijk and the sculptor Edward Luyken, and was conceptualised as the soundtrack for an obscure science-fiction saga. Or was it?The title makes clear allusion to …
Lettera Cosmica
Huge Tip! Since the 1970s Mario De Leo works as a musician and visual artist. His mechanical paintings are hybrid works that reveal the cosmic spiritualism hidden in the meanders of electronics. With Riccardo Sinigaglia (Futuro Antico, Correnti Magnetiche, Doubling Riders) De Leo consolidates an artistic and human partnership with Lettera Cosmica, a work unpublished to date, produced and recorded in 1981. In a wacky electronic vision of the succession of time, the tracks trace the four seasons i…
1972 Blues Jazz Session
Unreleased recordings of future members of Aktuala and I.P. Son Group! The history takes us back in the alternative Milan of the early 70’s, to the flavour of the first jam-blues of that era when musicians from different parts of the world (India, Africa or South-America), of disparate background and culture were used to gather to experiment just with an authentic sense of stay together. Here, the devotion to the blues roots remains strong but leaks in the compositions an aerial and wandering c…
So It Goes...
*2025 stock* "Barry Guy and I first met and played together in a version of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the days of the legendary Little Theatre Club. The late John Stevens, visionary prophet of the coming music was the key figure at the centre of things who brought us together. “So it goes“ – John often used this figure of speech.
I was reminded of this when I was looking through Samuel Beckett’s Collected Letters, hoping to glean some titles, knowing that Barry would be happy with a Beck…
Sidereus Nuncius – The Starry Messenger
*2025 stock* "It was at Ramón’s suggestion that we record as a duo in the downtime of another studio session, and perhaps it was his constellation of drums and cymbals that prompted the thought of a metaphorical planetary system. So Sidereus Nuncius - The Starry Messenger the title of Galileo Galilei’s short astronomical treatise published in early 1610, did not necessarily stretch the imagination unduly – there it was in front of me!
Galilei’s telescopic observations of the moon and other celes…
Schweben – Ay, But Can Ye?
*2025 stock* Important for this composition commissioned by the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra from Barry Guy, is the unity of composed and improvised passages, the concern for the capabilities and strengths of individual players, the way in which small groups are part of the larger structures. Based on “Ay, but can ye?” a Russian poem translated into Scots by Edwin Morgan and using images of Wassily Kandinsky, this mostly graphically notated score is a musical adventure for the players as well a…
Aurora
*2025 stock* "In this provocative journey towards lost innocence, the pianist imposes restraint in the use of instrument not only upon himself, but also asks his colleagues Barry Guy and Ramón López, to simplify their interventions in a similar way. Who would have thought it of these three indomitable, red-hot hyper-virtuosos? However, this three-way understanding goes back a long way, for they have been generating high-voltage spontaneous combustion together in different formats for years, and …
Zafiro
*2025 stock* One live improvisation of over an hour that zips by with the velocity of a three-minute single, Zafiro confirms that one of improvising music’s most enduring partnerships – 25 years and counting – is still a potent and electrifying force. Refining their interaction every time they play together – saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Barry Guy and percussionist Paul Lytton don’t lack for other gigs, but express instinctive rapport here. Veteran British improvisers, the three use a variet…
Errant Ear
The legendary electroacoustic composer presents her most intimate work yet, weaving five decades of sonic memories into a profound meditation on time, perception, and the treasures of lived experience