★Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu
Cinnte le Dia
It all started with a crashed computer and it certainly didn’t end there. »Cinnte le Dia« is the third collaborative album by Hanno Leichtmann and Valerio Tricoli, their first entry into Ni Vu Ni Connu’s duo series that focuses on Berlin’s Echtzeitmusik scene and beyond. Having already released two joint records on the now-defunct Entr'acte label, the two musicians wanted to document a 2018 concert in Berlin, but technology failed them. Undeterred, the sound artist and percussionist and the elec…
Embrace
Mega tip! *300 copies limited edition* ‘This celebration of the group’s 30th anniversary is composed entirely of recent works, but each will move around in time as well as in form, in ways that belong to traditions of both improvised and composed music, but also in ways that belong distinctively to this group. It demonstrates breadth and depth that suggest great temporal reach, embracing musical values that touch the art’s ritual origins and offering a sense of ongoing relevance and renewal. Tru…
Bengt "Frippe" Nordström
Second edition. 300 copies, all parts identical to the first edition For the past decade, Mats Gustafsson has fastidiously produced and compiled the most thorough and comprehensive collection of archival solo recordings of the late legendary Swedish saxophonist and eccentric archivist of free music activity in Sweden, Bengt “Frippe” Nordström (1936–2000). Bringing together rare and unreleased recordings taken from an extensive collection of home-recorded solo sax improvisations, it documents his…
Monte Carlo Fallacy
In the lockdown of early 2020, Berlin fell silent. As reflects Nicholas Bussmann, “it felt like the early 90s in East Berlin”, the place where he grew up and experienced social change and uncertainty, and presumably a lot of empty, silent space. Here, on this duo with his long-term accomplice Werner Dafeldecker, we hear the sound of two instrumental practitioners as they explore the nature of their respective instruments with a paced and thoughtful guidance, with little intervention or overt de…
Fläche & Figur (14 Duos Für Akkordeon Und Drumsets)
Rüdiger Carl and Sven-Åke Johansson are two fellow travelers on the path of experimental music who have worked together since the late 1960s in many formations, most notably as the wild-card Fluxus pranksters on Peter Brötzmann’s legendary 1969 recording Machine Gun, and on many more recordings and stagings of sonic interventions over the decades. In the words of Peter Margasak writing in the Chicago Reader in 2012: “Where to begin with percussionist and polymath Sven-Åke Johansson: Is he a beb…
Stumps
* 75 copies limited edition * In times of vinyl shortage and production backlog, resourcefulness is key. In keeping with his well-established practice of replacing original materials with surrogates to generate new sonic experiences, Sven-Åke Johansson has devised a digital reinterpretation of the historic flexidisc in the shape of a 10inch rubber disc with engraved QR codes that let buyers access the music online.
About the music: "The six compositions titled ‘stumps’ are based on a potential f…
Rhythm Ace & Slingerland
Rhythm Ace & Slingerland, a co-production by Ni Vu Ni Connu and Galerie Max Hetzler, is one of numerous collaborations between longstanding friends Oehlen and Johansson, following from their 2003 album Shotgun Wedding, also featuring Mayo Thompson of Red Krayola. This album explores how art infuences music and vice versa – a question often explored in Oehlen’s work. The idea originated from Johansson’s visit to the artist’s studio in 2018. Oehlen showed the drummer his collection of rhythm machi…
Glints
"The three musicians seem to exchange and overlap tones, creating the feeling of a single and continuous arc extending, curving in space, a kind of bridge or thoroughfare outward." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Magda Mayas piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Tony Buck drums
Lamenti Dall'infinito
"If this quartet most resembles a jazz band among these Berlin recordings, it might be in its speculative assembly. [...] It’s akin to a novel, Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, designed with multiple reading sequences, or Nanni Balestrini’s Tristano, in which the order of paragraphs is different in every single copy." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Liz Allbee trumpet John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Ignaz Schick turntables, sampler, electronics Marta Zapparoli tapes, reel to reel tape machin…
Shaped & Chased
Tip! "Lehn and Robair are particularly well-matched. Lehn is a musician who came to electronics from the piano, while Robair’s resources include both electronics and percussion. Each matches readily with acoustics and circuitry and creates a remarkable bridge between the two with Butcher, whose saxophone playing can assume both percussion and oscillator-like characteristics." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Thomas Lehn analogue EMS Synthi AKS Gino Robair …
La Pierre Tachée
"… a kind of ideal duet, no imitation conversation but two simultaneous composers each repeatedly provoked and silenced, prodded and enchanted by the other…" – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Sophie Agnel piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones
Induction
"Improvised music at this level of concentration may touch the roots of human culture, the transformative power of the cave and the paintings of Lascaux and Altamira." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Burkhard Beins percussion John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Werner Dafeldecker double bass
Internationale Solidarität
"Kapital Band 1 – Internationale Solidarität” is the third album of Martin Brandlmayr & Nicholas Bussmann. Since their first album “Kapital Band 1 – 2CD" in 2004 the duo explores the possibilities of improvising music with machines. Investigating parallel existences and mimetic affirmations of machine structures and human patterns. For their third album they revised their experimental settings once again. “Internationale Solidarität” is a search between impulse and logic, algorithms and attitude…
Blue for a Moment
Blue for a Moment retraces the artistic career of the Berlin-based Swedish jazz musician, avant-garde composer, poet and visual artist Sven-Åke Johansson, one of the most singular and exciting figures in European improvised music.
Johansson (born 1943 in Mariestad) moved to Berlin in the late 1960s, where he has since been active in a variety of music and artistic contexts. His first performances took place in the context of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab on Hallesches Ufer, where young musicians and …
Taking the Dog for a Walk
After Sunny’s time now, his authoritative portrait of the American Free jazz drumming legend Sunny Murray, Luxembourg filmmaker Antoine Prum turns his attention to the British Free Improvised Music scene in this new feature-length music documentary. Branching out from a three-day festival in Berlin conceived and organised for the purpose of the film, Taking the Dog for a Walk maps the scene of British Improvisers, past and present, retracing the road that led from its emergence and emancipation …
Sunny’s Time Now
The documentary feature Sunny’s time now explores the life and work of the avant-garde drummer Sunny Murray, one of the most influential figures of the Free Jazz revolution. Through a series of interviews with key time witnesses as well as historic and contemporary concert footage, it reassesses the relationship between the libertarian music movement and the political events of the 1960s whose social claims it so intimately reflected. It also recounts how the most radical forms of musical expres…
N.E.W.
Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu presents a live concert by N.E.W. recorded at Cafe Oto, London, 17 January 2012. The album includes three tracks performed by Steve Noble - drums, John Edwards - double bass and Alex Ward - electric guitar.
Intercommunal Dialogue 1&2
In process of stocking. Between 1969 and 1971, Francois Tusques and Sunny Murray were often accomplices in rebellious music. After other recordings, their collaboration culminated in an album that became mythical, Intercommunal Music, the site of a joust within the orchestra. The ephemeral and demanding label Shandar had invited François Tusques to lead a recording session on his own suggestion. Sunny Murray, one of his guests, arrived at the studio at the eleventh hour with a group of musicians…
Puls-Plus-Puls
Jan Jelinek and legendary jazz percussionist Sven-Åke Johansson probe ideas about the “anthropology of drumming” with entrancing results for Luxembourg’s Ni-Vu-Ni-Connu label. A sterling addition to Jelinek’s catalogue of solo releases and experimental collaborations, ‘puls-plus-puls’ finds the German artist properly indulging a formative passion for jazz music alongside one of free-jazz music’s most respected percussionists. Of course, this being Jelinek, the results are craftily complex but un…
Grau-Grün-Welk-Satt
solo set recorded at SÅJ Studio in Berlin in 2017 that reconnects with Sven-Åke Johansson’s 1972 seminal first solo record Schlingerland originally released on Fmp, presenting just the man and his drum set, and it's a fascinating listen. "You can hit beats so that they betray an intention – through accentuation or emphasis. Or you can hit them so that they seem mechanical, devoid of intention, a pure pulse, as in much minimalist music. Both possibilities abound in different genres. But there is …