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What A Beautiful Place
*Comes in a CD-sized papersleeve album replica (gatefold), with obi-strip and insert of notes mostly in Japanese..2024 repress* The cover, with a young girl standing by a pond, tells the story. This debut album, released in 1971, was recorded with superb production, with lyrics describing the mind of a naïve girl and Catherine Howe's simple, plaintive voice. The album is one of the most expensive female folk albums of all time, along with Vashti Bunyan's LP, and is now being released for the fir…
Joys Of Summer
2007 release ** "Atonal ragadelic phreak-out noise jam with an extra helping of free-jazz style surf guitar on top."
Prequel Oct. 1998 - Mar. 1999 + 1
2008 release ** "This is the first album by Mitsuru Nasuno (Altered States, Fushitsusha, Ground Zero, Korekyojinn, etc.), the top bassist in Tokyo's most cutting-edge scene, also known as the groove master. As the title suggests, the recording took place between 1998 and 1999. Two of the tracks (the third and fourth) were already included in the 10-disc box set "Improvised Music from Japan." This work is the complete version, so to speak. This complete version, which has finally seen the light o…
Life Is Complex
2017 release ** "Building beats and sounds with electronics is a huge part on the record. The drums and the electronics prime the whole album without being reduced to a straight beat. Patrick Schimanski moves from abstract sounds to micro rhythms to straight beats (saturated by any background you can think of) and back again. The drum sound has a percussive tone to it as well: There are bells and congas and more like it. Patrick Schimanski is working a lot with different theaters around Germany …
Solemn
2007 release ** "I've rarely heard anything this slow avoid being repetitive this successfully and, in fact, it wouldn't be too difficult for other bands to take a leaf out of Solemn's book and try a similar approach. One of the ways in which this does well is down to the structuring of the album. The two opening songs are both colossal slabs of slow doom that include lots of subtle keyboards and soundscapes, as well as an outstanding vocal performance, more on which later. They pack in just abo…
Frieda Bertelsohn Martholdy: Streichquartette – Entschlummern Sollst Du, Sollst Entschlummern
2024 stock. The album Entschlummern sollst du, sollst entschlummern (engl.: Thou shall slumber, slumber, shall thou) brings us the first ever released recordings of four string quartets by Frieda Bertelsohn Martholdy (1878 -1907), a composer yet unknown to most of us. The first listening makes undoubtedly clear what an original voice as a composer and what an astonishing achievement from the performers we are witnessing here. Frieda Bertelsohn Martholdys thoroughly modern sounding music fluently…
Perspectives And Echoes / Tautologos III
-bRt- group for music creationGaudenz Badrutt, live electronics / Estelle Beiner, violin / Jacques Demierre, piano / Jonas Kocher, accordion (Tautologos III) / Stephen Menotti, trombone / Manon Pierrehumbert, harp / Christian Wolfarth, percussion
Artistic direction: Gaudenz Badrutt & Jonas Kocher
Liner notes by Lê Quan Ninh:Free improvisation is defined, among other things, by its practioners' refusal to rely on a form composed by others. Partially, perhaps, from pride, but above all from playfu…
Premonitions: Underground Cassette Network 1989-90
Infinite Expanse follows up their first two LPs with a return to the cassette format, diving deep into the world of the underground cassette network with a focus on SoundImage, a label founded by Martin Franklin and active in Slough between 1989-91. Presented is a compilation of two compilations – Premonitions (1989) and Spiritual (1990) – featuring stalwarts from the scene, including The Vitamin B12, M.Nomized, Konrad Kraft and Hybryds, as well as a host of ungoogleable artists, such as The Hap…
Éthiopiques 5: Tigrigna Music (Tigra / Eritrea 1970-1975)
*2024 stock* "Tigrigna music" refers to music of Tigray and Eritrea. The majorities in each of these territories share the same language, Tigrigna. Tigrigna music, dominant in Tigray and Eritrea, is quite distinct, both rhythmically and melodically, from 'Ethiopian' music, though both share the pentatonic scale. However, the instrument and traditional musical practices are similar, while their names may vary. Aside from the Tigrean Bèzuayènè Zègèyè, most of the artists featured on this album are…
Éthiopiques 6: Almaz
*2024 stock* For many years everything we knew about Mahmoud Ahmed (and Ethiopian music in general) was limited to the cult album Erè Mèla Mèla (Ethiopiques 7 CD 829802), recorded in 1975 but released for the first time in Europe in 1986. Mahmoud's first LP, Almas ("Almaz men eda nèw"), recorded two years before Erè Mèla Mèla, now bears new witness to the talent of one of the greatest Ethiopian artists of the past 35 years.
Éthiopiques 8: Swinging Addis
*2024 stock* In the 1960s there was a Swinging Addis just as there was a Swinging London. In Ethiopia, as in Europe bor the USA, the first generation born after the war made their noisy, colourful breakthrough onto the scene. A veritable cultural revolution rather than a simple generational conflict. With music as its detonator and its common denominator. This volume aims to collect the clearest examples of soul, R'n'B and even twist in the recordings of the Ethiopian 'sixties'. The quintessence…
Éthiopiques 9 (1969-1974)
*2024 stock* The Alèmayèhu songs already presented in Ethiopiques 3 and 8 have given a foretaste of this outstanding stylist of Ethiopian pop, a singer as remarkable for his frenetic rock numbers as for his heartrending ballads. By dint of rampant Americanism, he earned himsef such nicknames as The Ethiopian James Brown or the Abyssinian Elvis. With his dazzling stage presence, nimble voicebox and wicked pompadour, he is a strutting show-off, straight out of American Graffiti or Saturday Night F…
Éthiopiques 10: Tezeta - Ethiopian Blues & Ballads
*2024 stock* Emptiness, melancholy, nostalgia; doom and gloom, morbid musings; heartache or homesickness: such is the stock in trade of the misery and mournful memories expressed by the song Tezeta - Ethiopia's majestic hymn to the blues. Etymologically, the word itself means memory, nostalgia, and several Ethiopian authors have used Tezeta as the title for their memoirs. For Ethiopians, it is the Tezeta genre that seems to capture the essence of the blues.
Éthiopiques 18: Asguèbba!
*2024 stock* «Asguèbba!» is the Azmari’s cry urging listeners to enter into the dance, an invitation carrying the same sexual innuendo as Latino’s ¡Va dentro! The recordings on this CD are intended as a continuation of those in Tètchawèt! (Ethiopiques 2) and feature most of the artists from the first edition.The songs are accompanied on the mèessenqo (one string fiddle), the krar lyre, the kebero drum and the accordion.
Éthiopiques 19: Alèmyé
*2024 stock* «An authentic legend in Ethiopia, Mahmoud Ahmed has laid down the basis of a music style which is resolutely original in the way it synthesizes the most diverse influences into a language both typical and universal. With his haunting, serpentine voice, at the same time raucous and velvety, Mahmoud Ahmed has invented a world of uncertain borders, an improbable mix of Eastern-African rhythmic lines, mysterious laments with refined ornamentation and melodies of unexpected Indian modula…
Éthiopiques 20: Live In Addis
*2024 stock* Russ Gershon and his Grammy-nominated Either/Orchestra have included many Ethiopian pieces into their repertoire in recent years. In January 2004, the Boston big band travelled to Addis for a dream-come-true concert featuring prestigious Ethiopian guests, among them Mulatu Astatqè (Ethiopiques 4, «Broken Flowers») and Gétatchèw Mekurya (Ethiopiques 14). This recording perfectly renders the energy and emotion of this gathering, with beautiful arrangements remarkably performed by exce…
Éthiopiques 29: Mastawesha
*2024 stock* Kassa (1927-1973) belongs to the long tradition of melancholy raconteurs with a decided gift of gab. The unique embrace of his deep voice heightens the emotion generated by the hum of his lyrics. For Ethiopians he is, along with such other great post-war voices as Assèfa Abatè, Fréw Haylou, Asnaqètch Wèrqu or Kètèma Mèkonnen, a perfect example of the culture of the word: poetry and freedom of expression, wit and impressive verve that hits the mark, quiet vehemence and merciless loqu…
OWsT
** Collector's edition of 20 copies, each featuring bespoke talismans, painted by the artist in squid ink, to be worn as patches or kept safe somewhere to ward off misanthropists **
Xing presents the new LP OWsT by Elvin Brandhi, eighteenth release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited and numbered edition of 150 copies, including a collector's edition of 20 copies, each featuring bespoke talismans, painted by the artist in squid ink, to be worn as patc…
Singe Tema
The return of the Zanzibara series: a Deep Taarab masterpiece from legendary singer Zuhura Swaleh, recorded in Nairobi in 1981.
Zuhura Swaleh & Party rose to fame on the Mombasa scene in the 1970s
with a new fast-paced taarab style based on local ngoma rhythms and its
melodies. The group sound was lead by an electrically amplified
tashkota (actually a Japanese instrument correctly spelled as
taishokoto), its shape best rendered as being a kind of “typewriter
banjo”—a trio of strings shorted…
Soundscape 1: Surround
"If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated."- Hiroshi Yoshimura
Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” desi…