Fuel 217 / Sacre'
Private Edition of 230 copies. Historical 'lost' 1982 recordings issued on a 7" picture disc, blending the wonderful voice of Jacques Doyen, the music by Jac Berrocal and a background collage of distant, heavily-treated and distorted sounds from Anne Gillis (whose voice is also filtered through a De Dion Bouton oil can) "Yet another Jac Berrocal picture disc! Is there another member of the French underground more dedicated to this format than Berrocal? I say no! And this one’s as good as all the…
Agitation | Stagnation
Double CD, the first one containing Zeitkratzer's instrumental interpretation of Kasper Toeplitz's electronic score from Disc 2. Though these works are intended to be heard separately, the two discs can also be played simultaneously"The idea behind the composition for the Zeitkratzer ensemble, "Agitation / Stagnation", was from the very beginning to work in the pure sonic domain, and not to give to the musicians a score written on paper (be it in traditional notation or some more fancy graphic w…
Space Happy
In the first episode of the new Twin Peaks series, a man - a security guard or janitor kind of guy - is staring intensely into a human sized glass compartment. There is nothing Inside it but the image of his own reflection, but the intensity of the scene and the man’s gaze is high, as if a monster could appear inside the compartment at any time. We get the feeling this box is a portal to another dimension. Space Happy sounds like this kind of mysterious box or portal. Several pieces are built ar…
Like Driving
Streifenjunko has taken a shift towards electronic sounds. Their previous albums "No Longer Burning" (SOFA 2009) and "Sval Torv" (SOFA 2012) was remarkable in the magnificent sound achieved only with a saxophone and trumpet. With the seemingly endless possibilities of electronic instruments their strategy of finding simple tasks has been put to the test, and in the making of this album Streifenjunko was put back to the starting position to re-discover their focus and recognisable simplicity. The…
14
Currently a trio featuring Helge Sten, Arve Henriksen and Ståle Storløkken, Supersilent ’s album number 13 marks a turning point in the group’s two-decade career. After a dozen recordings under the umbrella of the diverse Rune Grammofon label, Supersilent have now signed to Oslo based Smalltown Supersound, where they join the likes of Lindstrøm, DJ Harvey, Prins Thomas and Andre Bratten as labelmates. After live and studio dalliances with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones in the last few years, the…
Transportation Eps
Chandra Oppenheim was a child star like no other. As the daughter of famed conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim. By age nine, Chandra was staying up late at her parents' art-world parties, collaborating in her father's projects, and performing her own plays at downtown hotspots such as The Kitchen and Franklin Furnace. This set the stage for Chandra's course-altering collaboration with members of The Dance, who were looking to form yet another project and found their muse/fuse in ten-year-old Chan…
Different Train
Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition that year, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition—mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman, and pressed on 140-g…
Ann Arbor
Reissue of an obscure 1978 LP in Ash-Ra Tempel/Stooges vein. The tracks forming Tötenköpfs first album were composed between 1970 and 1976 by the Frenchman Bruno Rooke. Eventually, they have been put to tape (in gogolphonic sound) during his stay in Karlstad (Sweden) in February-March 1978. Rooke (vocals, drums, keyboards, percussions) recorded with the help of his cousin Erland Malberg (bass, guitar, effects) and a friend of the latter, Mats Meyer-Lie (guitar, tapes, violin), a chaotic album ti…
Two Degrees of Separation
A compact monograph containing gathering a visual documentation, two essays and a conversation with Tony Conrad, whose multi-faceted contributions since the 1960's have influenced and redefined music, filmmaking, minimalism, performance, video and conceptual art.Tony Conrad, who can be described as an artist, composer, musician, filmmaker, and performer, might be considered the first true “crossover artist.” For the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien, Conrad built a replica of a jail cell that wa…
A Life Is a Billion Heartbeats
A Life Is a Billion Heartbeats continues Yannis Kyriakides and Andy Moor's
exploration and mining of the rich and mysterious terrain of Greek
rebetika music from the early 20th century. Their first release of this
project (simply titled Rebetika (2010)) was for the most part
taken from a live recording at the Centre for Contemporary Arts,
Glasgow, in 2006. In the years that they have been performing the set
since, the songs and improvisations featured on this LP have grown and
expanded in…
Oooo
Earlier this decade, when Óscar Silva chose his alias Jibóia, he was already thinking of the variations his music would take on in each record. Jibóia is Portuguese for boa constrictor and by his fourth record his instincts and ability to change over his sound and search for different collaborators to reach his intentions was manifest. After collaborating with the likes of Makoto Yagyu, Sequin, Xinobi, Ricardo Martins, and Jonathan Saldanha on his previous records, in OOOO he goes deep into i…
Leading Stolen Horses
Edition of 300 copies. “One of the best shows I went to in San Francisco during 1984 was the Glorious Din & Trial gig. This show really changed my life & made realize that I had to follow my dreams. Both of these bands were local bands, but they had created this killer post-punk sound that could hold its own with any band from anywhere. Around this time, Glorious Din released their classic album Leading Stolen Horses. This album is a post-punk gem that many people have never heard – trust me, af…
Sahrah
Official reissue of the excellent first mini album by End Of Data, originally released in 1984 by Divine records (Tuxedomoon, Fra Lippo Lippi, Mecano…). End Of Data existed in Rennes, Brittany (France) during the early eighties and shared members with Charles De Goal. They released only 2 records that are classics of the minimal synth pop and new wave. “Great and rare French album. Minimal Synth,post punk and some art rockish hints. Would appeal to all fans of Autopilot, Kas Product, Dark Day, …
Gaseneta
"Good things come to those who wait. It's a yellowing cliche but it also applies handily to the life, death, and eventual rebirth of Tokyo's Gaseneta. Formed at university in 1977, the volatile quartet barely lasted long enough to compose four perfect songs, none of which were released during the band's two-year existence. But the music's influence on subsequent generations of punk, psych, and avant-garage rockers belies such inauspicious beginnings. Jun Hamano's prickly, high-velocity guitar sp…
Breathing
Singer-songwriter Tomoe Takizawa has two previous album releases, Watashi, Kona ni Natte (Narisu Compact Disc) and a b c b (Headz). Additionally, Takizawa is an improviser who regularly gives improvisational performances at Ftarri using various instruments and objects as well as voice. This album explores her appealing qualities as an improvisational musician. Tracks 1 and 5, short pieces of 2-3 minutes recorded by Takizawa at her home in January 2016, serve as the album’s introduction and endin…
Tumo Plays Cristián Alvear
Yuma Takeshita, who plays a modified bass guitar that he calls an electro-bass, and drummer/percussionist Yuji Ishihara have established reputations for musical excellence. Takeshita and Ishihara perform improvised music together in their duo project, Tumo. In 2017 Tumo gave a series of four concerts at Ftarri in which they performed composed works. On the occasion of a visit to Japan by Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear, the duo performed “DosCuatro” [2017], a text score work they had commissio…
Songs
The concept of Songs, the duo project of guitarist Taku Sugimoto and vocalist Minami Saeki, came about in the second half of 2016. By that December they had already made recordings of their music, and the following February they released their debut album, Songs (CD), on Sugimoto’s label, slubmusic. Since then, the duo has had an active performance schedule in Japan and overseas, including European tours in 2017 and 2018. Now they have released their second album, the 2-CD set Songs.Most of the …
Duo and Trio
This is the 1st CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri, the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. Seijiro Murayama, who lives in France, is active mainly in Europe, giving truly original performances using drums, percussion and voice. Toshihiro Koike is a trombone player who lives in Nagoya. He is the leader of the trio Fuigo, whose other members are Kanji Nakao and Takero Sekijima; and he is also a member of the Satoko Fujii Orchestra. His improvised performances freely using expanded p…
Skullmarks
The group Common Objects was formed in 2005 by the British harpist/composer Rhodri Davies. The group has had a fluid membership, but in recent years its core members have been the six musicians performing on this album: John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Lee Patterson, Pat Thomas, and Rhodri Davies. Common Objects performs a wide range of music, from composed works to improvisation. Skullmarks documents the group’s first project in which objects are used as scores.In 2016 Common Objec…
Nebular Trajectory
Edition of 300. Quasar's debut LP , originally released in 1979. Nebular Trajectory's deceptively straight opening salvo scarcely prepares one for the deeply blasted kraut inspired vision of jazz rock that ensues. Dzyan's "Time Machine" is the most immediate and obvious reference point for the sizzling but liquidly loose interplay of their power-trio-plus-effects set-up. Man Coda if anything raises the stakes further by plunging the entire proceedings even deeper "into the pudding" via a further…