★Room40
Totemo Aimasho
*2024 stock* In essence Tokyo’s Tenniscoats celebrate all that makes song vital in our collective conscious. Matching emotive live performance against delicately psychedelic folk songs, the duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno (assisted by a plethora of floating members), create some of the most compelling music currently emanating from Japan.
On Totemo Aimasho – loosely translated as 'Lets Meet Very Much' – Tenniscoats find themselves traveling across countries, scribing audio journal entries from Aust…
Alluvial
*2024 stock* Crafted throughout 2004 and early 2005, Rösner’s original source material stems largely from instruments (guitar, percussion, analog electronics), and through his detailed processing and production methods he’s been able to counterpoint a desire for raw digital overtones against earthy acoustic qualities.
The results are simply a pleasure for the ears – course passages of hiss and electronic splutter give way to lilting moments of sheer melodic beauty. With strong humming bass heavy…
Constants
*2024 stock* UK-based artist Chris Herbert is a man of intermittent communications. Over the past decade he has published a select oeuvre of crushingly lush and elegant records. Fittingly then, Constants, his new edition for Room40 is a transmission from an overtly private realm. Working in a relative vacuum, beyond the reach of contemporary electronic music trends, Herbert has focussed his interest in intuitive composition. Drawing on a mixed musical palette and interweaving sounds sourced from…
Ballad(s) for Quiet Horizons
*2024 stock* Incredible collection of Scott Morrison's audio visual works. Presented in a gatefold monochrome printed and matte laminated jacket with insert cards.
July 15, 2022
The first LP by the Taj Mahal Travellers was recorded at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo on July 15, 1972, which became the title of the work and was released the same year by CBS Sony Records. A live performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of this album was held on July 15, 2022. The only original members of the Taj Mahal Travellers who attended were myself and Seiji Nagai. This is because two of the six members passed away, two are religiously active and they can not play music according to their b…
1982
I stayed in Iwate, where I was born, for a few days and created some sound materials using limited materials and old media. Over ten years ago, Iwate was devastated by the Great East Japan earthquake. Many old things that remained in my memory became rubble, dismantled, and new scenery was there. I bounced every song from “1982” straight onto an old tape recorder.
This album that comes out of my interest in sonic "degradation and rebuilding". I treated the guitar and synthesiser in a lot of new …
Tropical Church
I was waiting for the bus to arrive at the stop when the rain started pouring. I quickly escaped into a chapel nearby, and that’s where the idea of this album came to be. Inside the chapel, I was reminded of the scent of Mauritius, where my father was from, and the pillars of dampen woods mixed with the ritualistic frankincense. The rain continued to hit violently on the metallic church roof as the road outside grew overwhelmed with angry drivers, honking their way through, their frustrations ec…
Aeolian Tendency
Characteristically invisible and inaudible, the wind is made manifest solely by its agency and performance on objects: huge waves crash to shore, sand dunes edge forward over millennia (rumbling as they go), cyclones uproot trees and houses, intergalactic winds confound the planets. On a more modest scale, I’ve been building aeolian instruments since 1979, part of my investigation into the innumerable aspects of the vibrating string. I designed the two recent aeolian instruments heard on this al…
Infinite Probabilities (Particle 2)
"Quantum mechanics unfolds an intricate realm of limitless possibilities and probabilities, eluding easy definition. It paints a picture of the universe vastly different from our perceptible reality. What captivates me is the lens through which I perceive sound, akin to the principles of quantum physics—I don't merely hear the audible, but rather, I extract elements to construct novel auditory experiences. My profound interest in science, particularly quantum mechanics, originates around 2008-20…
Bodies
With Bodies, Australian composer Madeleine Cocolas unlocks an embodied tidal force. Asmany of her antipodean compatriots would appreciate, water plays a huge part in the under-standing of Australia. Vast fluid bodies spill out from its shores and the dynamism and intensityof these oceans - physically and psychologically - act as a guide to the forms of this record.Like these fluid bodies themselves, the record shifts between violent ruptures, as waves of soundcollide, before giving way to passag…
Cursory Asperses
As Celer, Will Long and Danielle Baquet laid out a framework for extended exercises in ambience, texture and atmosphere. Their work, much of which was initially circulated through collectors, traders and fanatics, went on to become a blueprint for an approach to sound that was equal parts patient, generous and drifting. Cursory Asperses collects a unique set of shorter form works that typify the pairs interested in warmth and subtle density. Recorded between 2007 and 2008, it captures a culminat…
Your Music Encountered in a Dream
Remember hearing music while dreaming, fully confident that you’ll be able to reconstruct it once awake? Music that, as it turns out, you were the sole witness. In retrospect, why ruin the experience by something so vulgar as hearing it a second time, much less having to share it? We don’t mean to alarm you, but David Grubbs and Liam Keenan have returned from the dark side of the pillow bearing Your Music Encountered in a Dream.
If We Could Hear
"If we could hear. Wenn wir hören könnten… dann ? Who Hears It All. Als würde das etwas ändern - Noise in thermodynamics - an average low level warmth. Let`s go back to the pre-orthodox world, the ancient one, which gave us mythology, extreme experiences, congealed in stories. Echo was a storyteller herself, distracting from what was going on around her, up to the point when she got punished, and from then she was only able to repeat the last words spoken to her, to her, to her… A loop is a loop…
Circle Drum Music
"Occasionally ideas present themselves in ways that no one can expect. This recording from Australia’s Eugene Carchesio and the UK’s Adam Betts is one such unexpected presentation. A couple of years ago, Eugene passed me a collection of recordings that he explained were in the orbit of his now legendary Circle Music series. The recordings, in Eugene’s particular manner, maintained an intensely rhythmic quality rooted in a deep and unwavering sense of minimalism. Eugene has a way of making a tiny…
Totemo Aimasho (15th Anniversary Edition)
"Some time in the early 00s John Chantler, who was living in Japan at the time, sent me a couple of curious sound pieces he’d just recorded with musicians he’d met from Tokyo - Tenniscoats. This was my first introduction to Saya and Ueno, who have subsequently gone on to become longtime friends and a wellspring of sonic inspiration. In 2005, through their connections to Guy Blackman in Melbourne, Tenniscoats under took a tour of Australia and as part of that visit I arranged a concert for them i…
The Shell That Speaks The Sea
"I first met David Toop some 20 years ago. I think we were in touch shortly before that, but our first meeting took place when I invited him to Australia to perform and to speak as part of REV, a festival held at Brisbane Powerhouse. It was a memorable meeting, I vividly remember his solo performance and the edition A Picturesque View, Ignored, documents an improvised meeting during that time. Over the years, David and I have shared an interest in both the material and immaterial implications of…
Reality Opposition
A note from Christina Giannone
Dissociation is the driving force behind the composition. The act of surrendering, the attempt to observe our existence from the outside.
Giving in feels like giving up.
Acceptance feels like resignation.
The process included digital sound experimentation by means of observance and detail orientation and the idea of sound presenting itself in different identities depending on the listener. This attention to detail acts as a hologram, changing shapes depending on th…
Eidolon
To understand tuning systems, to peer into the infinity of microtonal compositional strategies, is to imagine a sense of musicality that extends far out beyond the familiar harmonies of the western ear. Iranian composer Siavash Amini, a self-confessed tuning obsessive, has dedicated much of his musical investigations over the past half decade to unlocking new relationships between harmonic events. Moreover, he has sought new timbral relations too and in doing so has honed a particular sonic-aest…
The Voice of Theseus
From Yann Novak In Greek mythology, the legend of Theseus describes how the king-founder of ancient Athens rescues the children of his city from King Minos’ minotaur on the island of Crete. In commemoration, Athenians began a pilgrimage to honor his victory, taking the ship of Theseus and sailing it from Athens to Delos. It was with this tradition that a philosophical paradox about the historic ship was raised: As the ship was repaired, piece by piece, until it was no longer composed of any orig…