★Ftarri
Septet
Guitarist Taku Sugimoto continues his long-term musical activities, with a focus on composing, and also collaborates closely with some of the composers in the Wandelweiser Group. This release is one of the summits of his recent work. Septet is a work of just under 40 minutes, performed by seven musicians on clarinet, flute, viola, contrabass, cello, electric guitar and sine-tones. Throughout, numerous diffuse sound reverberations emerge and overlap, then fade away. The sound progression is simpl…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.1
With Yoko Ikeda (viola), Léo Dupleix (electronics), Hikaru Yamada (alto saxophone, microphone) & Hayato Kurosawa (guitar), ffrond (Yoshinori Shiraishi, drums, percussion, Shiro Ochiai, electric piano, Tyler Eaton, double bass). The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary …
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.2
With Daysuke Takaoka, tuba, Takuro Okada, synthesizer, Hiroyuki Ura, drums, Shinjiro Yamaguchi, guitar, electric metronome, sine wave. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary concerts in July and August. For each concert we produced a CD-R (each with different music)…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.3
With Masashi Takashima, piano, drums, G.I.T.M. Yumiko Yoshimoto, electric guitar. Tomoko Kageyama, marimba, vibraphone, bowl, bells, vocal, voice, field recordings, lyrics & Kei Tainaka, guitar, effects. Takashi Masubuchi, full hollow-body guitar. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held s…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.4
With Yuji Ishihara, drums, percussion. Kayu Nakada, bug synthesizer. Tetsuro Fujimaki, drums, percussion. Riuichi Daijo, acoustic guitar. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary concerts in July and August. For each concert we produced a CD-R (each with different music…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.6
With Yuhei Saito, tape recorders. Tomoe Takizawa, guitar. Yui Nakamura, throat, room. Keitetsu Murai, 4 parallel-connected oscillators with photosensors, stabilized DC power supply, Japanese candle cut in length to burn in about 15 minutes. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3r…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.5
With sawako, laptop. Yuma Takeshita, electro-bass. Tomoyoshi Date, piano. Straytone, modular synthesizer. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary concerts in July and August. For each concert we produced a CD-R (each with different music) which was presented as a gift …
Routing Lynn
This is the first duo album since 2010 by leading British improvisers Rhodri Davies (harp) and John Butcher (saxophone). In January 2014, together with respected musician and sound recordist Chris Watson, they visited Routing Lynn, an area of ancient rock carvings in Northumberland, northern England. In this natural setting, Davies and Butcher played music and Watson recorded. Two months later, at a festival in Gateshead, England, Davies and Butcher performed along with the 4-channel play…
Mishima, Day & Night
Seijiro Murayama (percussion), who is currently based in Japan, lived in France for a number of years and since that time has performed frequently with the French alto sax player Jean-Luc Guionnet. Mishima, Day & Night is their third duo album after Le Bruit du Toit (Xing-Wu Records, 2007) and Window Dressing (Potlatch, 2011). These four tracks document their improvised music performances in Mishima City at Hongaku Temple (day) and Teke Bar (night) on the same day in July 2013. Murayama uses…
3 amps
Katsuyoshi Kou is an improviser who performs frequently, mainly in venues around Tokyo. Currently he's also gaining a great deal of notice as the director of MultipleTap, a project (launched in 2014) that takes large groups of Japanese improvisational/experimental musicians overseas to hold live events. Toshimaru Nakamura is an improviser who performs throughout the world using his no-input mixing board. This CD is comprised of three pieces performed in concerts by Kou and Nakamura at Ftarri, To…
Between Two
Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar) and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) of Japan and Switzerland-based American drummer Jason Kahn are all leading musicians on the contemporary improvised music scene who perform internationally and have many album releases. The 4 pieces on this CD were performed live by Akiyama, Nakamura and Kahn at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo, during Kahn's stay in Japan in May 2014. Akiyama's softly resonating guitar makes subtle inroads into the pulsating electronic sounds cre…
Compilation
This 7-CD set contains 19 selected performances from the Ftarri Festival, held in April 2008 (Kyoto / Tokyo), and the Ftarri doubtmusic Festival, held in September 2010. The 7 CDs, together with a sequentially numbered Ftarri Collection card, come in a special handmade felt bag about 18 cm high and 17 cm wide. Each bag has a different design. Ftarri Collection 1 with Opera Southern Cross (Taku Sugimoto: composition, images. Katsuaki Iida: words, reading. Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board…
Active recovering music
Active Recovering Music (ARM) is a slide whistle ensemble led by sax player Masahiko Okura. All of the members play the slide whistle. Okura debuted ARM in concert with a five-member formation in 2008. He's since continued the group's activity (though their live performances are infrequent) with changing numbers of players. This is the recording of a performance by ARM--this time with eight members--which took place at Ftarri, Tokyo, in February 2013. Each of the three pieces was composed by Oku…
Hello
Takahiro Kawaguchi began making field recordings and performing improvised music in 2000, and in recent years has attracted a great deal of attention as a sound artist. In January 2009 he released, on Taku Unami's label Hibari Music, the solo album n, on which he uses several remodeled counters. Shinjiro Yamaguchi, born in 1983, is an electronic music player. in October 2008 he released the minimal ambient solo album Kogai on the Japanese label Cherry Music.This is the debut album of Kawaguchi a…
Carliol
'John Butcher: tenor or soprano saxophones - plus feedback, motors, embedded harp speaker. Rhodri Davies: pedal harp, lever harp with embedded speaker and electric harp, aeolian electric harp. John Butcher is one of the leading sax players on the free improvisation scene. Rhodri Davies transcends conventional ideas about the harp--an instrument rarely associated with improvised music--in his wide-ranging projects. The two British musicians have worked together in a variety of contexts sin…
Hello
Takahiro Kawaguchi: tuning fork. Shinjiro Yamaguchi: guitar. Composed by Takahiro Kawaguchi. Edited by Shinjiro Yamaguchi. Recorded by Takahiro Kawaguchi at 102 Studio, Tokyo, November 9, 2008. Mastered by Taku Unami. Takahiro Kawaguchi began making field recordings and performing improvised music in 2000, and in recent years has attracted a great deal of attention as a sound artist. In January 2009 he released, on Taku Unami's label Hibari Music, the solo album, on which he uses several remodel…
Mainstream
The debut album of The International Nothing -- the duo project of Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke, two Berlin-based clarinetists who are composers as well as improvisers. All eight of the tracks on this recording are composed works. In addition to five pieces focusing on the resonance of the mellow, limpid timbres produced by the two clarinets, there are a couple of tracks seasoned with songlike elements and vocalization by guest musicians, and one tune featuring two contrabass players. The…
Vorhernach
This is a duo album by trumpeter Axel Dörner, who is one of the leading artists on the new Berlin improvised music scene, and no-input mixing board player Toshimaru Nakamura, who garners critical acclaim in the West as well as in Japan. Dörner's playing is far removed from conventional trumpet styles: he constructs his sound mainly from hissing noises, clicks and sputters. Nakamura spins out a delicate electronic sound using only the mixing board's internal feedback. At times they produce sounds…