New Arrivals
In Each Day, Something
Eri Yamamoto released two recording in 2008, each of which—in different ways—demanded attention. In a series of duos with friends such as William Parker and Hamid Drake (Duologue), Yamamoto was expansive and free, readily finding ways to play beyond conventional harmony without sacrificing “beautiful” pianism. With her trio (Redwoods), she was more in the pocket, mining vamps and grooves for what they could say about the blues, but always keeping things intelligently sweet. If you’d barely heard…
Volume objects
In the desire to make recorded sound as tactile as possible Autistici (UK), recently featured on 12k’s Blueprints compilation (12k1039), has sculpted found objects, broken acoustic instruments, synthesizers and environmental recordings into Volume Objects. Expertly realized and designed, Volume Objects is loose and organic and demands careful listening. Melody and form are hinted at and then in a whisper, a crackle, are gone. A sense of narrative and place created as if a hundred tiny objects ar…
My Life On The Plains
Lee Hyla is a composer of rare power and versatility whose work combines the complexity of atonal classical concert music with the energy of experimental jazz, rock and improvised music. Truly part of the American tradition, his work is imaginative, fresh, and embraces a widerange of diverse influences. Lee Hyla’s third Tzadik CD presents a collection of recent works large and small. Colorful and startling pieces filled with surprises and wild bursts of energy. This is a fabulous and varied prog…
s/t
Collaboration between Canada's prolific neo-doom duo (NADJA) & New Zealand's pitch black droners (BLACK BONED ANGEL - featuring Campbell Kneale of BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL). These two 20-plus-minute instrumental tracks have a less accessible vibe then the Jesu-like track on last year's Christ Send Light EP. They are comprised in equal parts of Nadja's fuzzed-out, lurching, hazy dream-doom, & Black Boned Angel's razor-sharp, metallic riff-shards. Eventually, the whole thing collapses under the weight…
Daydreaming
Debut album by Seattle's Rafael Anton Irisarri, released in 2007 on Deaf Center's Miasmah label. A splendid but pitch black album based on long piano melodies, distant drones and even more distant glitches, "Daydreaming" is a particularely sad and introvert CD, which takes the most emotional and melancholic side of the other Miasmah releases, but expresses them in a very direct and stripped down way. Splendid.
Two lakes
In April 2010 12k recording artist Seaworthy (the recording project of Cameron Webb) and Matt Rösner travelled to the south coast of New South Wales to undertake a detailed field recording study of two coastal lake ecosystems at the Lakes Meroo and Termeil. The aim of the project was to explore the sounds of a fragile coastal Australian environment and to build from those sounds unique musical pieces that provide a place for listener contemplation and reflection.Field recordings were taken from …
Foundations
With an explorative approach Orquere organizes concrete sounds into experimental structures of cold and dry sonic landscapes where sounds appear as objects. Stripped down to their bare essence. No effects. No electronic noise. Just raw analogue manipulations with magnetic tape which carves out a sound that has its roots in both industrial, field recording and sound art. Orquere is Viktor Ottosson, a sound artist active in Gothenburg, Sweden. V O was one of the key figures of the now defun…
Nowhere
1998 reissue, orginally released in 1984. A combination of spacey electro-pop, dub and dark avant-rock influences, Phantom Band is one of the most authentically weird, essential and yet surprisingly overlooked organisms orbiting the Can universe. This is the third and final album from the project, masterminded by Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, featuring Dominik von Senger (Dunkelziffer, Damo Suzuki Band/Network) on guitar, Helmut Zerlett (e.g. Dunkelziffer, Unknown Cases) on keyboards and Sheldon A…
Beam Stone
Per Anders Nilsson (computer and synthesizer), Sten Sandell (piano, prepared piano, electronics and voice) & Raymond Strid (percussion). Beam Stone was founded a year before this October 2007 recording. The trio consists of three free improvisers, each with a distinctive personal sound. Their aim with Beam Stone is to explore sonic territories with the guidance of different pre-defined concepts. Listening and sonic exploration are considered the essential points of departure.
In The Mouth - A Hand
Rune Grammofon presents the third album from Swedish trio Fire! -- something of a supergroup with members from already well-known projects. And again, it's a collaboration, this time with the extraordinary and prolific guitarist Oren Ambarchi. With their heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic rock'n'jazz explorations, they have carved out a different sound than any of the groups they are normally associated with. Sax player, improviser, composer and fervent record collector Mats Gustafsson is proba…
Freedom, Rhythm & Sound
This collection of rare album artwork reflects the independent energy of the African American jazz movement. Located in the heart of Soho in London, Soul Jazz Records is a musical oasis. While many of the quality record shops that once graced this area have closed their doors Soul Jazz seems to go from strength to strength. Stuart Baker and his partner Karen Tate oversee a thriving business which is driven by their own tastes and beliefs. A pragmatic duo, they recognize that the survival of Soul…
Near And Faraway
Joint release by Italian ambient musician FABIO ORSI & SEAWORTHY, a 3 piece collective from Sydney. Each artist contributes a solo track which in turn bookend a collaborative composition that forms the album's centerpiece.
Troubled, Shaken Etc
Another album of unclassifiable experimental songs from British band the Sian Alice Group, who blend elements of avant-rock, folk and dark, cinematic tones for a uniquely atmospheric, inter-disciplinary sound. A Stereolab-like mix of pop modernism and Terry Riley minimalism gets the album started ('Love That Moves The Sun'), before all momentum is dismantled in favour of fluid ambience on 'Airlock'. From here on the band continue to genre-hop before stumbling upon a rich vein of balladry on trac…
Camber Sands Sunday
Recorded live at Camber Sands Holiday Park, England on May 14, 2006. Featuring RICHARD YOUNGS (bass guitar) & ALEX NEILSON (drums)"At this 2006 concert, we have Jandek with a sympathetic rhythm section, and like a rhythm section that would back, say, a Lightnin’ Hopkins or a John Lee Hooker, they adapt themselves to the artist’s flow and provide a kind of pillowy environment or canvas on which he can do his thing. To give you an analogy from the free jazz world, some of the recent Jandek p…
Figures And Grounds
'My role in bringing together this group was to provide a new context for the diverse talents of these musicians. From the outset, the aim of the group was to explore the range of possibilities at the intersection of jazz and computer music.' Adam Linson. This is a terrific CD with this stellar line-up: Axel Dorner (trumpet, electronics), Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet), Adam Linson (double bass, electronics) and Paul Lytton (drums, percussion). Recorded on 14 January 2008 in AL's studio, Josetti Hö…
Unheard spaces
'Absence and Presence (2006). Absence and Presence was originally written for five musicians and four loudspeakers positioned throughout the site of performance in order to explore the traction between amplified and acoustic space. The performance was predicated on a set of directions that determined the combination of musicians at specific times and the duration of their performance. Within these structural parameters the musicians chose what they played and how they responded to one another. T…
Puzzle
"Produced by Centre international de recherche musicale, Nice, France. Project involving 22 instrumentists featuring Pierre-Yves Artaud (flutes), Alexandre Ouzounoff (bassoon), Daniel Kientzy (saxophone), Vinko Globokar (trombone), Elisabeth Chojnacka (harpsichord). Puzzle 1999 (14-17) commissioned by INA-GRM." (Discogs)"An extension of the 'virtual orchestra' in which composer Pascal composes music out of gathered individual instrumental tones and lines (with the musicians never having met …
Planetary Unknown
"It's a great summer for music, with some excellent albums just released - and more reviews to come ... Let's start with the great David S. Ware and his new quartet, a great quartet, with William Parker playing the bass as on all other David S. Ware albums, with Cooper-More on piano instead of Matthew Shipp, and with Muhammad Ali on drums (the latest in a long list, with Susie Ibarra, Guillermo E. Brown, Warren Smith, Whit Dickey, Hamid Drake, ... and quite a phenomenal list at that).It is no do…
Untitled
Blood & Time is an offshoot of Neurosis, featuring band members Noah Landis, Scott Kelly and Josh Graham, who take country blues into some seriously dark territory. Like, country navy blues, perhaps? As with all the releases in Southern Records' consistently excellent Latitudes series this set was recorded as a specially commissioned session, designed to capture a band at its rawest - or at least as raw as a band is likely to get in a studio environment. The results here are especially bewitchin…
Live at the Rothko Chapel
Mural's lush and inviting sound-world incorporates a wide range of percussive, harmonic, and timbral effects and suggests the vastness and mystery of time, as do Rothko's paintings. With Jim Denley on flute and saxophone, Kim Myhr on acoustic guitar, and Ingar Zach on percussion, the trio created a site-specific and improvisational work relating to, and inspired by, the Rothko murals in the Chapel. Recorded at the Rothko Chapel, March 4, 2010. (metamkine)