Barene
"August 2019; Piacenza. The warm padano, sticky, inexorable, which marks the hours from dawn to evening and the flu in the night. Almost by mistake, in the automatic gestures of false computerized researches, after having registered the mail, read messages and fulfilled the electronic deontology, I come across Barene. I knew nothing about them. I look at photos, videos and read articles. Suddenly present. They attract me. I imagine. And immediately I put in memories, paradoxically distant in tim…
Gona Rubian Ranesa
*Edition of 218. Tip!* Reynols is a storied band with endless lore. Many history lessons have been written about them, still they remain one of the world's most mysterious and challenging groups. "Gona Rubian Ranesa" is Reynols' first studio album in 17 years and it updates their classic sound to new realms of hypnotic psych-rock immersion. This record was cut by the classic Argentinian quartet of Miguel Tomasin, Anla Courtis, Rob Conlazo and Pacu Conlazo and it stands as 100% proof that Reynols…
SOL OP - Music For Midified & Modified Pipe Organs
*300 copies limited edition* SOL OP is based on a collective composition for unconventional pipe organs made by the three Danish composers and musicians Jonas Olesen, Anders Lauge Meldgaard and Sandra Boss. On three mobile, midified and modified pipe organs,the trio has constructed a musical universe inhabited by animals, humans and machines. SOL OP is based upon an exploration of the organs' more alternative sonic features. Incorporating the full instrument in the compositions – including the a…
Gospel Et Le Râteau
* Digipack CD edition * Ghédalia Tazartès left us in February 2021 when we had just finalized the editing and the cover art of his new album with him. Unfortunately he will never see the finished object. This record is therefore particularly important for us. He opened his archives to us so that we could select unpublished pieces with him and organize them in two long suites. This work took almost two years (finding the pieces among dozens of sometimes very old CD-Rs, checking that these pieces …
Hoya
»Hoya«, the first collaborative record from Fhunyue Gao and Sven Kacirek, is a site of encounters. There’s the encounter between two different media and artistic conceptions: Gao, on the one hand, a stage director | performer | musician based in Switzerland, a frequent collaborator of Annalena Fröhlich’s, Thom Luz’s and many others, who works for a most colourful variety of venues all over Europe and is a member of the music association Bongo Joe. Kacirek, on the other, an established musician l…
A Short Story
For almost ten years, Ruben Machtelinckx has followed an extraordinary path in Belgian and European improvised music. As a guitarist, but equally as a composer. It began in 2013, when the quartet Machtelinckx/Badenhorst/Jensson/Wouters released their debut, ‘Faerge’. The album was praised by international press and was listed ‘Best Belgian jazz release’ by Knack magazine. In 2020 he won the Klara Award for Best Belgian Jazz release for his latest record: Porous Structures (Aspen 009). In between…
Goud
Nicola Giunta and Gioele Valenti (the musicians creating the Lay Llamas dimension) seem to communicate from a different solar system their ecstatic gaze towards an imaginary future world. They rely mainly on a narrative tone of mysterious and spectral dark-psych shades, digging abyss of glacial depht of the self, where light filters through lysergic languors and radiant progressions of luminous dust. Oneiric voices refer to the hybrid chaos of a metropolitan jungle, as a hypnotic and psychic di…
Ghosted
It was early in 2019 — no, November 2018! — that Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin met at Studio Rymden, in a quiet suburban district of Stockholm, to make the music that became Ghosted.
Sonescent
*In process of stocking* With Sonescent, Matchess unifies her folk-psych pop and experimental styles in a transcendent full-album trip unlike anything she's done before. After hearing songs in her head during a 10-day silent meditation retreat, Whitney Johnson gathered a band of Chicago contemporaries (Haley Fohr, Rob Frye, Tim Kinsella, Kalina Malyszko, Brian Sulpizio) to realize her arranged recollections of the tunes, the sounds of which she then passed through an atmosphere resembling the on…
Work
Chicago Research presents the latest release on tape by History of Leather.
CCTK Music
CCTK Music combines Gabriella Isaac's exploitative use of laptop as feedback loop / sound source / physical device and James Fella's electro-acoustic / tape as instrument approach. The duo incorporates each other's material in real time (on Side A), cutting the content onto 6 singles-sided reference lacquers. The lacquers were used to assemble a collage in a performance setting in late 2019, and again in a studio setting for Side B. The result is a record that is both scathing but at times harmo…
Moving My Body Through Space
Recognized as a skilled and sought after collaborator, Ted Byrnes solo albums cast a wide net that capture Byrnes' adventurous and omnivorous approach to solo percussion. An alumnus of Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, Byrnes has made his home in the center of a Venn diagram that includes free improvisation, studied electro-acoustic work, fearless new music and harsh noise. Recognizing the porous borders between these modes, Byrnes' work on Moving My Body Through Space is a flailing medita…
As Slow as the Stream
*75 copies limited edition* "After several stand out collaborative releases, including a duo LP with Mark Shippy and another duo LP with Claire Rousay, violinist Alex Cunningham returns to solo form with As Slow as the Stream, an album made up of one 33-minute cat and mouse game titled "As Slow as the Stream Cuts the Dirt from Beneath." If you've ever watched a cat sneak up on a mouse, you've seen the cat making its way towards it's prey so slowly that you barely even notice the cat is moving at…
The Gleam
Tip! *In process of stocking* Like its predecessor, Philos, The Gleam is a completely solo work, all the music composed and played by Park Jiha on the piri, a type of oboe, the saenghwang, a mouth organ (shown on the album cover art), the hammered dulcimer known as the yanggeum, and glockenspiel. There’s a stark clarity to the sound, yet it’s never spare or empty. There’s a searching warmth to what she does. It’s minimal without being minimalist, occasionally presenting itself with the formality…
Cani Lenti
Tip!! Italian duo Rosso Polare 2nd album, originally issued by Ototoku, following the wonderful 'Lettere Animali' album, which was one of Oto highlights of 2020. Cani Lenti is a collection of duels, some may say. As the two minds of Cesare Lopopolo and Annna Vezzosi converge, a dichotomy of harmonious and contrasting sounds ebb, swirl and clatter in and amongst themselves. Using techniques from call and response improvisation, tape manipulation, experimental music and free-form folk, their appro…
Music For Modified Melodica
*200 copies limited edition* Music for Modified Melodica by Japanese composer Kaori Suzuki was born out of two explorations: one of tuning (and subsequently degrading) the small reeds of a melodica, and the other to modify it playable with foot pumps, allowing for the sustained excitation of the reeds. Playing with the highly resistive foot bellows introduced massive ‘volumes’ of air to the reeds, overblowing them to vibrate loudly. This aspect led me to work with the sound potentials of combina…
Recordings from the Åland Islands
*2023 repress* In 2017 Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer traveled together to the Åland Islands (an archipelago that is host to around 6,500 islands) in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. They headed to the islands with the intention of helping two friends (mother/daughter duo Jannika/Sage Reed) barn raise a small inn named Hotel Svala in Kumlinge (a municipality consisting of a small group of islands and a population of about 320). The idea was that, once completed, Svala would host art…
Cells #2
Atsuko Hatano is a contemporay classical Viola player who works with electronics to add textures and layers to her sound. Located in Tokyo, Japan, she is a commanding instrumentalist and composer who constructs innovative compositions with strings and layered electronics. When not playing solo Atsuko is extremely active recording, collaborating and playing live with Jim O’ Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Mocky and many more acts....
Texturalis
If Texturalis was a real word it might have something to do with the density or porosity of organic compounds. In the case of Machinefabriek's Texturalis, the word fits the sounds on this album. Sounds indeed, not songs. Anyone familiar with Machinefabriek knows his interest in anything crackling, fizzling and buzzing. For Texturalis, Machinefabriek choose to work on just that; not to be bothered with creating elaborate compositions, but to focus on creating intriguing textures. This resulted in…
Metta, Benevolence BBC 6Music : Live On The Invitation Of Mary Anne Hobbs
* Double LP, Black Vinyl * In late October 2019, following a successful UK tour ending in a sold-out concert at the mythical Roundhouse in London, Sunn O))) entered studio 4 of the BBC Maida Vale. On invitation to record a live session for Mary Anne Hobbs to be broadcast on Samhain via her excellent radio show on BBC6. To enter the legendary John Peel studios was to enter a temple of music and experimentation, liberty in ideas and sound. The band was nearing the end of a long touring year aroun…