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The Abrahadabra Letters 1984 - 1988 (Book)
From 1984 to 1988 Anthony Blokdijk frequently visited Threshold House in London and corresponded with John Balance of Coil about playing live, releasing music and personal affairs. This book collects scans of Balance's original letters, including idiosyncratic decorative flourishes and provides insight into his colourful world. Also included two articles on Coil from Blokdijk's Abrahadabra magazine, and an interview with Coil he conducted for the Dutch magazine Opscene. Translations included. Fo…
Uzun Havalar
Anadol is a psychedelic synth folk project by Gözen Atila, a Turkish sound artist and photographer based in Berlin. Her third album Uzun Havalar is based on collective improvisations of middle eastern folk songs called „uzun hava“. They turn out as rich, atmospheric synth ballads. A diverse roster of improvising musicians creates their fascinating complexity. Anadol recorded them during extensive sessions in Istanbul. You can hear drummers laughing and playing guitars, composers howling, announc…
Upopo Sanke
“Upopo Sanke“ means “Let's sing a song" in the Ainu language. Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was one of the best-known artists of the Ainu, an indigenous, long-suppressed community in northern Japan. She sings their traditional songs together with Oki Kano on the Tonkori harp, who also recorded the album. The two are supported by members of the female vocal group Marewrew as well as Ainu percussionists, a string player and a male singer who provides rhythmic shouts and also throat singing. The call-and-…
Hatıralar
Hatıralar was Anadol's second album, originally composed between Berlin and Istanbul around 2012 and released years later only in digital form on the Istanbul based label Inverted Spectrum. The title Hatıralar (Memories) is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anadol recalled and revisited the music in 2023, gently editing and mixing the compositions for the newly mastered LP format in which they now see the light of day. Hatıralar represents an early version of the melodic, instrumental synth-pop that A…
Ihunke
Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was a folk singer from Japan. She was a representative of the Ainu culture on the Hokkaido Island in the north of Japan. “Ihunke” is her first album which was recorded with the Ainu musician and dub producer Oki Kano in 2000. It was released on CD in Japan only and is finally available on vinyl (2LP + linernotes, DL included). “Ihunke” is following last year’s single “Iuta Upopo” [Pingipung 58, incl. M.RUX Remix] which had been received with overwhelming enthusiasm and was…
Lifetime of a Flower
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O‘Rourke created the installation Lifetime of a Flower for the Dortmund exhibition Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art. In it they set parameters, but allowed the process itself to literally grow uncontrollably: they planted seeds in the garden of their Japanese house and filmed as the plants grew for the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time, while listening to a composition that reflected the org…
Armitage Road
**Seminal Spiritual Jazz from South Africa, 1970. Officially licensed and re-mastered re-issue**. With a unique sound founded on a persuasive mix of American and African jazz, Armitage Road, originally released in 1970, was the only studio recording released by South Africa’s Heshoo Beshoo Group. As a highly prized collector’s item, a re-issue and re-appraisal of this lost gem from the apartheid era has been long overdue. Heshoo Beshoo loosely translates from the inter-tribal lingo of the townsh…
Progressive Jazz From Italy 1977 - 1989
*2023 stock* "I started my musician career in 1970 as devoted jazz fan and hard practicing drummer. But I was also interested in electronics and experimental music, in improvising and composing. My goal was to blend in an unique form of musical expression all my interests, dream that 30 years later, I can happily say that I fully accomplished. Following the previously released Ictus collection in two discs (ICTUS 503) presenting the best of my early music recorded in solo and with my groups, her…
Indian Tapes
*2023 stock* This award winning CD contains the masterpieces of the percussive art of Andrea Centazzo. Realized in 1980, has been re-mastered and augmented with new pieces in 1993. This album took Andrea Centazzo at the peak of his percussionist career.Indian Tapes is not, as one might be led to think, an album inspired by the music of native Americans (which consists mostly of simple monadic and monorhythmic forms of expression) but an original work of art which pays homage to these peoples, to…
Snowplow
*2023 stock* "hi Andrea - here it's just cold - I'd love to have some real snow here like we used to have in my childhood, even up to the 1980's! My children have never been in snow up to their knees and their knees are not that tall!"
I wrote these words to Andrea as we discussed our upcoming performances and recording during his visit to NYC in February 2009. As they say,"Be careful what you wish for..." So it snowed. Not a blizzard, but it was snow and it came down relentlessly. We play…
The Complete Recording Vol. 1 - Velocities
*2023 stock* Andrea Centazzo, LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams met for the first time in December 1978. They recorded the first part of this album in 1979 and the second in 2010. An exquisite and celebrated example of improvised music.
The Complete Recording Vol. 3 - Rituals
*2023 stock* Violinist LaDonna Smith and Guitarist Davey Williams teams up with Andrea Centazzo in this third release of their complete recording collection. Recorded in NYC at the Stone during the Ictus Nights Festival celebrating 35 years of Ictus, this CD is a must for improvised music lovers.
The Complete Recording Vol. 2 - Halcyon Days
*2023 stock* Having been fortunate enough to witness these three masters of improvisation reconvene after nearly thirty years of separation at the 2010 Improvisor Festival, I can say with the utmost confidence that time has not diminished the creative fire that first led them to collaborate so many years ago. Driven by the same passion and intensity for sonic shapeshifting that sparked their first European and American tours together in the late 1970's- and some of the first transcontinental int…
Silent Vociferation
*2023 stock* A tandem of two ingenious personalities presents an improvised music album - French guitarist Marc Ducret and Lithuanian saxophonist Liudas Mockūnas. These musicians have collaborated for several years already - they both are featured on bands such as Toxikum and Megaphone with Stefan Pasborg and Paul Brosseu also with Copenhagen Art Ensemble.
Transcendental Numbers
*2023 stock* "Flanked by a pair of stalwarts who, in his own words, “have a history going back over thirty years”, guitarist Terrence McManus brings the right attitude and a considerable number of no-frills approaches to an instrument that, especially in jazz, has the potential to become the mother of all commonplaces. On the contrary, ever since the opening track “Written In The Cracking Of The Ice”, an unexpected subversion slashes the ears: not a clean pitch in sight, clumsily introverted str…
Channels Of Consciousness
*2023 stock* "Recorded at Roulette in New York City, Channels of Consciousness is a rollercoaster of polyrhythmic madness, which is hardly surprising regarding the fact that the rhythm section consists of Hooker on drums and voice, Sanga on percussion and Adam Lane on bass. The whole set starts with the three outlining the musical framework before Dave Ross (guitar) and Chris DiMeglio (trumpet) join the crew contributing tons of cracked solos full of fragmented and dislocated phrases. The tracks…
Black Man's Blues
Violinist Billy Bang made his recording debut as a leader with the Survival Ensemble, the first working band he ever led, on New York Collage in 1979. Bang, saxophonists Bilal Abdur Rahman and Henry Warner, bassist William Parker, and percussionists Rashid Bakr and Khuwana John Fuller played incendiary free jazz more clearly indebted to the New York avant-garde of the preceding decade than any album Bang would record again. The music’s urgency and passion arose from the exhilaration of artistic …
Live at Kerrytown House
*2023 stock* "Though modern, “avant-garde” jazz is an ensemble music often based on collective improvisation, solo performance is its own extraordinarily fruitful sub-area of investigation for the creative improviser. Without a reactive, interpretive partner (or several), the solo recital blurs the lines between composition and improvisation as the performer enters a world of unfettered development. Greene has been performing and recording solo since the 1970s, and these settings have yielded so…
Upcoming Hurricane
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* "I was already familiar with Pascal Niggenkemper's work as a result of the release, Klippe by Thomas Heberer, early this summer and a superb trio with Robin Verheyen and Tyshawn Sorey, PN Trio. So this was always going to be an exciting adventure to see what his new trio would put forth. And the new album, Upcoming Hurricane, pretty much says it all. This is a heavy storm of sound that comes on quietly but resonates brightly over 60+ minutes. Clean, open …
Katarsis4
*2023 stock* Katarsis4 - saxophone quartet from Lithuania founded by Arminas Bižys, Kazimieras Jušinskas, Algirdas Janonis, and Danielius Pancerovas. Their music moves between structurally free improvisation, which makes it sound each time differently, as well as academic music and the motives of Lithuanian folk music. The saxophone quartet creatively presents the instrument itself - extending the use of saxophone by unusual methods. Also, the quartet not only uses extended techniques for extrac…