★Hitorri
CTX1
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahiko Okura is a Tokyo-based reed player (clarinet, alto sax, etc.), improviser and composer. Apart from his performances on reed instruments, he is energetically engaged in performance activities with his solo project Active Recovering Music. Okura is also a member of the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble.
In 2004, Okura released the solo album "Time Service" on the Improvised Music from Japan label. The highly original performance …
Material Unity 2
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Active Recovering Music (ARM) is the solo project of Tokyo-based reed player Masahiko Okura. When he launched it in 2008, ARM was not a solo project, but a slide whistle ensemble with multiple players. In 2013, ARM performed as an eight-member group at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. In the same year a CD documenting three performances from that concert was released on the Meenna label with the title "Active Recovering Music."
ARM later transformed into its …
Yagateyamu
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Misaki Motofuji plays baritone sax in all types of free jazz settings. She also carries out performances focusing on acoustic phenomena, based on sound-art-like concepts and incorporating field recordings. But she says her background is in neither jazz nor art—that she actually studied classical music as a music university student. In the bands she leads, Motofuji creates a wide variety of original compositions, from chamber-music-style pop, jazz and mini…
Traslasierra (expanded Landscape)
*200 copies limited edition* Sergio Merce is a saxophonist and sound artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is known for his use of a microtonal sax that he built by radically modifying the mechanisms of an alto saxophone and synthesizers to create rich harmonics and slowly moving tonal works, layering aberrant and alluring tones in restrained configurations that allow each stratum of sound to be distinguished and appreciated, creating mesmerizing compositions of elusive and illusionistic s…
Abstand
*200 copies limited edition* "Abstand" was conceived to enhance the particularities of the combination of accordion and melodica, both wind instruments, one played with movement and the other by blowing. This dichotomy of difference and similarity resulted in intricate textures, not only thanks to the instruments’ particular timbres, but also through the natural microtonal distances in their fixed tunings, especially when it comes to old and worn out instruments like the ones used here.
These mi…
Tayutauta
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* While continuously engaged in the field of traditional Japanese music, female-school gidayu shamisen player Yumiko Tanaka has since the 1990s been carrying out multifaceted musical activities including contemporary classical music, improvisation (in 1996-97 she was a member of Otomo Yoshihide’s band Ground-Zero), experimental music, and theater performance/composition, performing and exchanging ideas with many musicians from Japan and other countries. While Tana…
The Pit
*200 copies limited edition* Born in 1943, Lance Austin Olsen is a Canadian artist and composer. He started painting in his youth and has continued his work as an artist up to the present. In the late 1990s, Olsen became fascinated by experimental music. He has released numerous CDs and digital recordings of both solo performances and collaborations with other musicians. In his creative process, composition and painting are closely related and draw inspiration from one another.
Olsen released a …
The Very Fabric
*300 coipes limited edition* "The Brønshøj Vandtårn is a concrete water tower, built almost a hundred years ago in the suburbs of Copenhagen. It's 20m wide and 34m high - smaller than some similar shapes I've played in, but with a large, lingering reverberation. Some sounds seem to float away as if through liquid, others acquire a shifting haze, and some just prefer to sit around. Thomas Buhl-Wiggers, of the Cejero festival and label, kindly invited me to play there in the summer of 2022 and arr…
Bottomless/Blank
** 200 copies** Electronic sound artist Takuma Kuragaki was born in 1968. Since he began his musical activity in the 1990s, he has presented his creations not only in live music venues, but also in museums and galleries. In 2009, Kuragaki earned an award for excellence in a contest featured in Sound & Recording Magazine in which entrants produced works incorporating material field-recorded by Ryuichi Sakamoto in the Arctic Circle. In 2017, Kuragaki took part in the 3-CD compilation album Prix Pr…
Rotating, Rotating
** 200 copies** Zhao Cong is a Beijing-based experimental and improvisational musician. In addition to performing in live events in Beijing such as Zooming' Night, organized by composer andperformer Zhu Wenbo, she has in recent years been expanding her range of activity, visiting Japan each year and performing in various locations around the country. She has also released solo and duo albums on Zhu Wenbo's cassette label, Zoomin' Night. This CD contains three solo tracks: tracks 1 and 2, each ab…
No-Instrument Air Noise
As a sax player, Junji Hirose has been a prominent figure on the free jazz/improvised music scene since the late 1970s. But he has another side: he performs on non-electronic noise instruments called SSI (self-made sound instruments), which he creates by putting together odds and ends and everyday objects. Hirose has released (on the Hitorri label) the CDs SSI-4, SSI-5 and SSI-6, which respectively document performances on the instruments of the same names. No-Instrument Air Noise, compris…
Ssi-5
As a sax player, Junji Hirose has been a prominent figure on the free jazz-improvised music scene since the 1970's. But he has another side: he collects everyday odds and ends and puts them together to create instruments which he uses in noise performance. Hirose calls these noise instruments SSI (self-made sound instruments). In 2013, he released the CD SSI-4 (hitorri-997). This is his new release, SSI-5. To make the SSI No. 5 instrument, he put together about 30 vinyl chloride pipes and, using…