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Ten-Shi With Hirose Junji & Otomo Yoshihide
A live album featuring the unit Ten-Shi, consisting of Takayuki Kato and Masataka Fujikake, with two improvising giants, Junji Hirose and Yoshihide Otomo. From the beginning of the album, which begins with a guitar duo, the two groups respond to each other and express themselves in diverse ways one after another, developing a sound that is full of originality throughout.
Stone Stone Stone
*2023 stock* "This album, the first under the band's name in six and a half years, is a jazz alternative album with a multilingual and hardcore taste that differs greatly from previous albums.
The recording for this album started in June 2020, during a period when many of our activities were being cancelled due to Covid-19. It had been a while since I last met or played with the members of this band, with whom prior to the pandemic I would regularly get together for gigs at various venues or tr…
Mail from Fushitsusha
Mail from Fushitsusha, which Keiji Haino himself calls 21st-century blues, draws out exquisite dynamics and 'space' - like a nerve being passed through the eye of a needle. Carrying out their sonic explorations while adhering to the Fushitsusha method, these three tough artists create a muscular sound - a sound that turns the rock - blues concept on its head! Keijo Haino sent Seijaku out into the world as his permanent band. At the time of recording, this was to be a single album, but the combin…
Phantom Note
Trumpeter Itaru Oki's third album from 1975 reissued, a flamed out free jazz masterpiece. Itaru Oki (trumpet), Yoshiaki Fujikawa (alto sax), Keiki Midorikawa (cello, bass, piano), Gozo Yoshimasu (poetry reading on 5). We are very glad to inform that a long time out of printed OffBeat label LP is reprinted on CD. Itaru Oki visited Paris, France in the 70s and when he came back to Japan temporarily in 75, he organized a elite free jazz troop and recorded in studio. 'Phantom Note' is his 3rd album,…
Complete Grune Revolution (1975)
A much-needed and expanded reissue of this 1970s Offbeat label LP of cellist Keiki Midorikawa in duo with Masahiko Togashi, Masayuki Takayanagi and Masahiko Sato. Keiki Midorikawa (cello, bass), Masahiko Togashi (percussion, drums), Masayuki Takayanagi (guitar) et Masahiko Sato (piano). Recorded on January 16, 1976 at Nichi-futsu kaikan, Tokyo. The original LP of this work has duo with Takayanagi on A side and duo with Sato on B side. But in the concert, Midorikawa played duo with Togashi about …
After Seijaku
The Seijaku Trio of Keiji Haino (electronics, guitar, voice), Mitsuru Nasuno (bass, electronics) and Yoshimitsu Ichiraku (electronics), recording 2 years after the "Last Live" album, in an epic voyage of meditative and intricate electronics performed live in Tokyo in 2014 at Club Goodman. As "Last Live" explains, Yoshimitsu Ichiraku can no longer play drums due to physical issues, necessitating this transformation from a heavy abstract blues band into this ritualistic trio. It's a fitting and ea…
Who Knew That So Many Blues...
A singular record, measured with a mastery of self and patience that’s utterly arresting in its stoic elegance and sound sensitivity. Keiji Haino plays Gamelan...
Satsujin Kyoshitsu
**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** Trumpeter Itaru Oki Trio's landmark debut album from 1970 reissued, a flamed out free jazz masterpiece. Itaru Oki (trumpet), Yoshiaki Fujikawa (alto sax), Keiki Midorikawa (cello, bass, piano) for sure one of the earliest free jazz players and albums from Japan. And this album is possibly his finest effort, eclectic and saturated with ethnic elements, quirky, free form.Japanese trumpet player Itaru Oki represents one of the very firs…
Deformation
**2006 release, long out of print, very few copies available** OK, if obscure and hard to track down Japanese avant-garde and free jazz is your thing then look no further. This disc, released in 1969 is a hard nut to come by since due to extremely poor sales only a handful of copies and some promo copies are known to have hit the streets, making it now one of the hardest free jazz documents to track down. This one comes on bloody red wax. But all this idle talk aside, it's the music that really …
Mooko
**2009 release, long out of print, very few copies available** Mooko was the first installment of a short-lived "power trio" comprised of Japanese free saxophonist Akira Sakata, bassist Bill Laswell, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. At the time of this recording, the latter two were deeply into their Last Exit project, a band with whom Sakata sat in during their tour of Japan. This trio is a bit like a pared-down version of Last Exit, without the incendiary guitar work of Sonny Sharrock…
Solo Works 1 Guitar And Turntable
This album is a collection of 20 solo guitar and turntable improvisations performed and recorded by Otomo Yoshihide in his home studio in March 2023. Otomo has released solo guitar and turntable works in various forms in the past, but this is the first time he has recorded an entirely improvised studio performance. This will also be the first time that Otomo himself has illustrated the jacket.
しずくたち / Shizukutachi
From the 1950s, Masaaki Takano (1927-2007) worked as a freelance "sound planner," mainly creating sound effects for stage productions. In the mid-1980s he began performances called "Sound Play" where he would perform on his own self-created sound instruments and his collection of ethnic instruments. Growing out of his work with sound effects, he became obsessed with the recording of natural sounds from the 1970s onwards, and this album "Shizukutachi" is a record of a high-quality recording of wa…
Record: The Space Between
A rare classic of sound art from Brazilian avant-gardist and provocateur Antonio Dias, available in a limited edition
2017-2020
"2017-2020 is a box set of five original albums by Merzbow released on Slowdown Records. Since 2018, Merzbow has been running an archive series on the same label that contains mainly unreleased and unearthed material from the past, and while each series is organized according to production period and musical concept, this box is a collection of original albums produced individually. However, this box is a collection of original albums produced individually, and each one has a very different musi…
Live At Pit-Inn Tokyo, Japan, 8, 8, 1988
Sun Ra Arkestra, Live in Japan! Recorded at Shinjuku Pit Inn on August 8, 1988, this recording has undergone fresh remastering from the master tape, marking the first reissue in 36 years
Magina
“Born in Tokyo in 1971, this artist, composer and performer has been living in Germany for some years, mainly in Dusseldorf, where she studied at the prestigious Kunstakademie, and in Cologne, where she first seriously started working with sounds (small sounds, as she calls them). Lastly, she has accentuated the more visual aspects of her research, which by now is characterized by the use of diverse – yet complementary – “media” such as sound itself, drawing, the written word, silence... Yui tur…
K7 Box
This CD is consisting of 9 tracks mainly his self-made sound object 'Analapos' and 'De Koolmees', and 2 tracks of them are recorded for announce sound of opening and closing of Yokosuka Museum of Art. They are so clear and spacy. Booklet is written by himself, David Toop and others. Text in Japanese and English.ALM Records is well known label that has released many avant-garde LP titles in 70-80's. Especially about Akio Suzuki, two LPs has been released - obscure solo LP (limited 100 copies) and…
Sen No Ongaku
Legendary debut album from Japanese composer Jo Kondo, originally released in 1974 on the highly collectable ALM Records label (East Bionic Symphonia, Takehisa Kosugi, Somei Satoh, Yuji Takahashi, John Cage, Akio Suzuki). Since the early 1970s, Jo Kondo's compositions have stood on a concept he has named "Sen no Ongaku" (i.e. "Linear Music"), music consisting of a "line" of single notes, hocketted over different instruments. Over the years, the "line" of notes has gradually evolved a much thicke…
Overhang Party
Stellar duo head on collision bet ween Kaoru Abe and free hitter/ skin mangler Toyozumi. The interaction between the t wo of them creates fire works of improvisational exquisiteness, free rambling seat sniffing combustion that on some occasions instigated Abe to divert his attention from his beloved sax to wards marimba and piano hammerings joined with harmonica blo w-outs. Ferocious, ghastly and kerosene charged head slamming action bet ween t wo of Japan's first wave free jazz terrorists.. Tak…
O, Sun
*In process of stocking.* Hailing from Tennessee and now residing in New York, Zoh Amba is a 21 year-old tenor saxophonist who performs with a deep sense of spirituality and emotional power. Growing up in the mountains she practiced and played in the forest before continuing her studies in San Francisco and Boston. For her first CD she has chosen a fabulous quartet featuring her close friend, rising NYC star Micah Thomas on piano, and the formidable rhythm section of Thomas Morgan and Joey Baron…