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In September 2011, Erstwhile producer Jon Abbey was invited to curate two weeks of shows at John Zorn's legendary Manhattan venue The Stone, which he used as an opportunity to invite many of his favorite musicians from Japan, Europe and the US to perform. A second three night festival at Issue Project Room was later appended onto the end, making the AMPLIFY 2011: stones festival a 35 set, 17 night extravaganza in all. Four of those thirty-five sets will now be available in the ErstLive se…

Ami Yoshida and Christof Kurzmann are both well-respected artists within the international community, each performing in a wide range of contexts from abstract to pure pop. Both are best known for their long-running duos, Yoshida for Cosmos (with Sachiko M) and Kurzmann for schnee (with Burkhard Stangl). This project finds them in far less comfortable territory, and a s o is the outcome of two years of hard work.Ami Yoshida strives to create a pure sound, abstracting her voice until it becomes a…

Right After is a remarkably subtle album of duo electronics by two relatively young Italians with roots in avant-garde improvisation. While Giuseppe Ielasi began his career as a guitarist and Domenico Sciajno was an improvising bassist of note, both gradually moved into the area of pure electronics and sound manipulation. A fine balance of pristine, crystalline sounds and earthy scrabbling noises is shown from the first track, ²at a greater distance² which offsets pinging, high pitched tones tha…

Free improvisation has rarely seen significant new movements as influential as the small group of Tokyo musicians once labeled as "onkyo", who have now been a primary driving force in contemporary improvisation for a full decade. Over that decade, these musicians have been responsible for some of the strongest and most radical work on Erstwhile, and Soba To Bara sits firmly in that lineage.Ami Yoshida strives to create a pure sound, abstracting her voice until it becomes almost completely unreco…

** Six-panel digipak, photos by Yan Jun/Zhu Wenbo, design by Yuko Zama ** Erstwhile Records presents Twice by Yan Jun and Zhu Wenbo. Yan Jun: recorded in Beijing, Feb 2021. Zhu Wenbo: recorded in Qingdao and Beijing, Sept 2020 - Feb 2021. Photos/image scans by Yan Jun/Zhu Wenbo. Design by Yuko Zama. Produced by Jon Abbey.

Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet stand side by side in the vanguard of contemporary sound exploration. Since the initiation of their collaborative endeavors in 2006, the duo have crafted a nice combination of audio vérité and musique concrète, together building a highly personal body of work. 2008's critically acclaimed The Breadwinner illuminated the artistic potential found in mundane and commonplace circumstances. 2010's Air Supply showcased a darker side, nudging the civilian themes of it…

"Erstaeu 003 is, at once, the most "traditional" of the first three releases and, perhaps because of that, the most difficult to approach, at least for this listener. My previous experience with Graham Stephenson's work (I think this is my first exposure to Aaron Zarzutzki) has often followed the pattern of initial opaqueness followed by gradual transparency, eventually resulting in enjoyment and appreciation. I say "traditional" a bit tongue in cheek, although the set here, trumpet and electron…

The first words of Toshiya Tsunoda and Taku Unami’s liner notes to the double CD under consideration here are, “Wovenland became a band.” It should be noted that Wovenland was the name of an earlier album by Tsunoda and Unami, the digipak’s spine still credits this recording to the two individuals. And while it is within Unami’s skill set to pick up a guitar and play a song, nothing like that happens on Wovenland 2. The notes continue: “Our band activities are mainly editing in a studio. Our goa…

With fifteen untitled vignettes and varying source material, Parazoan Mapping often feels like an aural scrapbook. And when looking through any scrapbook, the different photos and pieces of ephemera always point to something bigger: a sort of unraveling of the people contained within. The pictures of your family’s vacation from several years ago may not explicitly show it but you very well understand how then compares to now that feeling of joy when you conquered your first wave after hours…

Cinevox Record, in collaboration with Pick Up Records and Beat Records presents the CD featuring the OST of Squadra Antigangsters, composed by Goblin, 5th movie with Tomas Milian in the role of commissioner Nico Giraldi. At the time speaking Cinevox released an album with 8 cues, included two songs singed by Asha Puthli that bring the listener into late 70s American discotheques. Goblin (Fabio Pignatelli, Claudio Simonetti, Agostino Marangolo and Carlo Pennisi) composed a brilliant OST, with dif…

Reissue of Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to director Luigi Comencini's 1977 film with two previously unreleased bonus tracks added, alternate versions of 'Mariangela E La Seduzione' & 'Il Gatto'. 15 tracks total, with all delicately balanced between being refined classical arias and erotic themes. This is yet another extraordinary soundtrack by the genius master of Ennio Morricone. This is wonderful music that takes you back to the wonderful seventies.

Cinevox present a 2-CD expanded edition of cult score Profondo Rosso, Recorded in 1975, the score finds the band at the height of their creativity and features the incredible lineup of Simonetti, Morante, Pignatelli & Martino. Bass & drums are so tight on this record and provide the foundations for the entire score. Jazz, Prog and Rock signatures all fight for center stage yet always manage to be precise, clear and perfectly executed. Synths and organs tinkle, wail and moan and more than provide…

The soundtrack to Dario Argento’s 1982 giallo was written and performed by Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Pignatelli, and Massimo Morante – three musicians from Goblin’s initial lineup who were responsible for some of that band’s most memorable work. But by this point, only one of the three was still in the band; Fabio Pignatelli. In the years before Tenebrae, Goblin had changed hands and the band of old was no more.At the request of Argento, these three musicians got back together to give it one more…

Finally, justice has been done and maestro Ennio Morricone has managed to bring home the coveted Oscar statuette. Multi-awarded and acclaimed by a vast public, the Roman composer had come close five times, but had never been on stage to receive the award for an extraordinary career.Among his unforgettable compositions was Metti una sera a cena with which he won his first Nastro d'Argento in 1970. The film, based on a play (1967) by the same director G. Patroni Griffi, tells the story of a rich b…

Franco Battiato moved into the 1970s on the crest of the progressive rock wave. This 1972 impossibly strange record inhabits that nether world of pop music, electronics, politics and experimental rock. Fetus is an album beyond all definition. It's a masterpiece of daring and wild risks that work every single time. Battiato takes us through eight uniquely super-detailed songs that tug at the heart strings as no other experimental record ever could."Fetus is an album beyond all definition. It's a …

Franco Battiato's wonderfully lively 1973 concept album Pollution is an audaciously psychedelic album drawn from the space rock dimension with good portions of electronics and keyboard layers. Drawing heavily on the VCS3 synthesizer, Battiato and company (besides himself, three backing band members play synth as well) give Pollution an extreme electronic edge. With comparisons to Ash Ra Tempel, Faust, and Pink Floyd, Pollution was declared 'genius' by Frank Zappa.

One of my favourite walk is in the harbour of my hometown, because of the sound brought by the wind. For long time I have day-dreamt about including that sound in my own music. I got to the point reading the poem Prologo al buio by Erri De Luca (from Opera sull’Acqua e altre poesie, Einaudi 2002). In the poem there is a Hebraic quote from Genesis, before the third verse (hence the title of my composition, the Italian for “before the third”): “vrúah Elohím merahèfet al penè hammàim”, that means, …

*175 copies limited edition* NEY, a self-titled debut, is an unbridled exploration of a band’s beginning, a tapestry of intimate field recordings, deconstructed fragments and spontaneous encounters, pieced together in two long-form recordings. During the isolated years of the pandemic, Lisa Fabian, aka Mondlane on ‘The Blue Hour’, traced thoughts, sung melodies and fleeting sentiments into an archive of extemporary field recordings and scattered written notes. In dealing with the loss of a loved…

"Recorded and produced during late night sessions from 2019-2022 while re-watching archive episodes of the German TV show Space Night from the late 90s."

Tip! Just when you think you’ve heard everything you want to hear from a solo piano record, something comes along that challenges your preconceptions all over again. Efstathiou has been developing a unique language with the instrument for some time, building up a reputation for idiosyncratic preparations and extended technique. All that’s illuminated in flickering candlelight on ‘Edge of Chaos’; moody and deliciously ambiguous, it’s based on mathematical systems, specifically the transition stat…