★Confront Recordings
Bagpipes and blackberries
Adam Bohman : unamplified objects. Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg : voice.Recorded at Oxo Studio by Adrian Northover on 18th July 2014. Edited and mastered by Adrian Northover. A senses stimulating meeting, recorded in central London's former slaughter house, Oxo Tower. Piching Adam Bohman's scraped and scrunched clutter with the hum and bubble of Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg's voice. Unimagined pitches and timbres collide and oscillate, drawing the listener into an ever deepening, real-time sound scu…
F.E.R. (For Eliane Radigue)
The composition began at home studio in September 2013 and then in 2 weeks residency in September/October 2014 at the GMEM in Marseille with the technical support of Jérôme Decque, then recorded in October 2014 at GMEM concert room in real time & finally mixed in September 2015 in GMEM studio.A piece in tribute to the French composer pioneer of the minimalist electronic music 'drone' (continuous sound), Eliane Radigue.'Since 2002 and the edition of the trilogy piece 'Adnos', on the American labe…
Tides
"I had sent Neil an electronic ‘backing track’ to improvise on, with the idea to keep my part intact as the spine of this new piece. But once I received Neil’s recording, things turned out differently. While toying around with his saxophone improvisation, I noticed it was full of fantastic details, and wanted to emphasize these. I tried overlaying looped parts, with wonderful results. So the original idea went out the window, and I decided to solely work with Neil’s improvisation. I approached ‘…
Quartet
The newly formed quartet is making its debut performance at the gallery. Alan Wilkinson (alto saxophone), Olie Brice double bass,Dominic Lash (double bass), Mark Wastell (cello). Mark Wastell Quartet is combining the unavoidable and reverential influence of the great jazz pioneers of the 20th century with the sophisticated integrity of the modern day improviser.
Social Insects II
Social Insects are the bass clarinet player Hans Koch and the electronic musician Gaudenz Badrutt. They have collaborated on various musical projects for years and in 2011 founded the duo. Hans Koch is mainly known as a member of the Hardcore Chambermusic Trio Koch-Schütz-Studer, but also as a soloist as well as for his collaborations with Phil Minton, Fred Frith, Paul Lovens etc. As a bass clarinet player he has developed a very personal style. The electronic musician Gaudenz Badrutt is m…
Playing The Schoolhouse
Playing The Schoolhouse, a new CD EP length composition by David Sylvian recorded in March of this year in Norway. Based on an improvisation by Jan Bang and Sylvian it also features contributions from Otomo Yoshihide and Toshimaru Nakamura. 'Confront is a small bespoke label, that specialise in small run editions. David has been a long time admirer of what we do and the way we do it - and a loyal customer too - as well as a contemporary of a number of the artists on our roster. I asked David t…
Sunday afternoon (live at the Hundred Years Galley)
Live recording of Steve Noble, percussion with Daniel Thompson, acoustic guitar. Recorded in London in 2014. Repetitive accidents share space with manicured gestures and punctuation shocks to produce a pure abstract matter from the instrumental virtuosity.
Broken Light
Recently formed quartet composed of Mark Wastell, violoncello with Olie Brice and Dominic Lash, basses, and Alan Wilkinson, alto saxophone and bass clarinet. Improvisations of Huntington Ashram Monastery '(Alice Coltrane) and' Lonely Woman '(Ornette Coleman). Two interpretations and two originals. Registered in 2015.
North and South
Alan Wilkinson, saxophone, clarinet, Kim Johannesen, electric guitar, Ola Hoyer, bass, Dag Erik Andersen Knedal, battery. Live at Café Oto, London in 2014. Power and emotion of a seasoned saxophonist against routine improvisation with young musicians from the Norwegian scene already well informed on the issues of the scene!
For John Ayrton Paris
Recorded in Barcelona on 20 May 2013. Thaumatrope: a card with different pictures on either side, which, when the card is twirled rapidly, appear to blend into one. For John Ayrton Paris is the discographic debut of Taumatrop, a duo formed in the year 2013 by Ferran Fages and Eduard Márquez. During the months of March, April and May 2013, Taumatrop worked on the construction of long, dronic pieces (initially with guitar and ultimately with electronic devices), in which the intention was to prod…
Live At I'klectik
"This was my first trip to series of improvised music curated by Sue Lynch at The Horse at Cafe I'Klectik in SE London. What a treat! The evening opened with a sensitive and controlled duo of Hutch Demouilpied (trumpet, flute), Keisuke Matsui (guitar, electronics) this was followed by an intense and beautiful trio of Maggie Nichols (vocals), Caroline Kraabel (alto saxophone) and Charlotte Hug (viola, voice).This I thought a very hard performance to follow. But the trio of Richard Sanderson (ampl…
Prepresence
Recorded live in concert at iDEALFEST, Fylkingen, Stockholm on February 28th 2011. Heavy, lo-fi, monster drone set, featuring two of Sweden's most engaging performers. Sounds generated from the combination of electric hair clippers and analogue synthesiser are amplified, smashed and ground to a pulp, reformed and catapulted into the stars.
Featuring John Zorn - New York
Recorded at Tonic, Norfolk St., New York, 17 & 19 April 2001Alto Saxophone – John Zorn (tracks: 6)Cello [Violoncello] – Mark WastellDouble Bass – Simon H. FellHarp – Rhodri Davies
Morph
Recorded in concert at Église Saint-Merry, Paris, 27.06.2014
Horns 1.2
Recorded at Atelier Polonceau Thomas-Roudeix, Paris, 18.05.2014 Alto Saxophone – Pierre-Antoine BadarouxTenor Saxophone – Bertrand DenzlerTrombone – Fidel FourneyronTrumpet – Louis Laurain
Ulrichsberg
Concert recording from Jazzatelier, Ulrichsberg, Austria - 12 June 2009. In co-operation with Linz09 - European Capital of Culture 2009.
Membrane
This marvellous release from Mark Wastell’s Confront label documents a meeting of these three heavy hitters convened at Dalston’s Cafe Oto, last March. This was the first time all three had played together, although, as John Eyles remarks in his liner notes, they had all worked with each other, before, in outfits such as Powelchsel (Butcher and Beins), The Sealed Knot (Beins and Wastell) and Chris Burn’s Ensemble (Wastell and Butcher).
This familiarity, combined with rigour and expertise o…
...And Everything Inside Came Down As Dust
During October 2013, Martin Kuchen participated in an residency in Vienna called Vor Anker, hosted by the artist Johannes Heuer. Throughout the residency, Martin embarked on an intense recording schedule located in the city's structually unique Expedithalle. Built in 1912 and formally Europe's largest bread factory prior to World War II, the enormous hall in which the recordings took place was the dispatch depot were horse drawn carts would distribute bread to the population of Vienna.Recorded 1…
Untitled
Re-issue of one of the earliest Confront releases, originally available in an edition of 50 in 2001. Matt Davis : trumpet. Phil Durrant : violin. Mark Wastell : violoncello. 'The All Angels concert series ran between 1999 and 2001. Co-curated by Rhodri Davies and myself, we wanted to find an environment that was acoustically articulate enough to present our own quickly developing style of music. Rhodri found the perfectly beautiful Norman Shaw designed church, close to his then home, in Chiswick…
The complete 15th August 2001
Derek Bailey: acoustic guitar. Simon H. Fell: double bass. This is the full recording - freshly remastered - of the 2001 duo gig, an excerpt from which appeared in 2002 on a long-deleted Sound 323 mini-CD which was voted a record of the year by The Wire magazine. Here at last is the full performance in all its exhilarating acoustic power; an unplugged (but very intense) set from a hot and summery Wednesday afternoon, recorded in the basement of Sound 323 in London by Tim Fletcher.