New Arrivals
Daylight
Following on from their highly acclaimed appearance on the Treader Duos, here is a whole CD devoted to the highly compatible and innovative duo of saxophonist John Butcher and percussionist Mark Sanders. Their varied improvisations are heard at two afternoon concerts - one at the 2010 Freedom of the City festival in London, the other nearly a year later at Southampton University
Port Out Starboard Home
Some bands produce a CD every week; by now it seems 'normal' to have three year gaps in releasing records for Beequeen, which is a fresh antidote to the music business of more = more. For Beequeen, like good wine, things mature given more time. Whereas 'Sandancing' (2008) featured Olga Wallis a guest singer, on this new album she's a fully fledged bandmember, adding her beautiful voice to Beequeen's off beat songs. 'Port Out Starboard Home' features surreal dream-pop, but always with that unique…
Mort aux vaches
Pete Swanson (electronics, vocals) and Gabriel Mindel Saloman (electric guitar, electronics). Produced and recorded for Dwars by Berry Kamer, Amsterdam, May 17th 2007. Packaged in a 3-panel cardboard relief sleeve. Artwork & concept by Staalplaat. Limited edition of 500 copies.
Ultrealith
Ultrealith' is an electro-acoustic sound-adventure exploring sounds that exist on the periphery of human perception, such as underwater recordings (such as fish-songs, crustaceans etc), ultrasounds (sonar of bats and dolphins, insects), electromagnetic signals and other textures. These recordings were sourced in the Amazonian rainforest, Africa, Canadian Newfoundland, northern Australia and in various parts of Europe.
Catch-Wave
Takehisa Kosugi is an inter-media artist and performer who started his career back in the '60s in Tokyo. With his first band Group Ongaku (free anarchist-conceptual improvisations) he was introduced to the Fluxus avant-garde movement. During the '70s, he was a member of the mystical, psychedelic, droning rock band Taj Mahal Travellers. He co-founded the band in 1969. Since the end of the '70s until now, he has released several solo albums and commissioned works for events and sound installations…
Old Sights, New Sounds
Recorded at Incus HQ, London, in October 2010, this duo is a delight that should refresh even the most jaded ears. Lol Coxhill and Alex Ward are both veteran improvisers and regular participants on the London scene, so it was inevitable that they would eventually play together as a duo. As evidenced below by YouTube, that happened in August 2010 at John Russell's annual Fete Qua Qua; the pairing was repeated the following month at Sybil Madrigal's monthly Boat Ting gig on the Thames (on the…
Peace Conference
"Mountain Ocean Sun is a project fronted by His Name Is Alive main man Warren Defever, who collaborates with three like-minded drone artists for an hour-long recording of shruti box, harmonium, bells, gongs and violin. The group's first performance was at a 500 year old Buddhist temple in Osaka, and that pretty much sets the tone for the quartet's quasi-mystical approach to soundscaping. Defever himself continues to mythologise, describing the recording as having been made "on a mountain, in the…
Goner
2009 release. Portland, OR. bedroom wanderer Ilyas Ahmed emerges from the shadows and offers up his first new batch of songs in some time. Over a year in the making, Goner sees Ahmed telescoping his previous acoustic wanderings into fuzzed out rockers and a hypnotic set of beautifully tight knit nocturnes. The kick off of 'Earn Your Blood' is probably the most amped up and stoned out Ahmed has ever sounded, a heavy blown out thump of hiss & electric strum. From their Goner really gets los…
Seconds
A beautiful acoustic-based record featuring careful, melancholy arrangements in the tradition set by his famous previous record - but with a few unpredictable musical touches. Seconds weaves black threads of lyrical reflection into its sleeve in the short-lived Higgins tradition. His was never a hippie-dippy perspective - back in the day, his songs featured a thoughtful, but worldweary, occasionally even paranoid perspective. Accompanied by his fellow travelers (including a couple Red Hash playe…
Castings
The title of Fern Knight’s 2006 release, Music for Witches and Alchemists, served simultaneously as a wonderfully apt description and an unambiguous product warning. If you prefer the mundane to the magical, move on: These are not the druids you’re looking for. Since then, the group has relocated to Arlington from Philadelphia, and while Fern Knight’s music evokes far-away times and places, it turns out the band fits in nicely with the D.C. area’s musical history—assuming you can stomach …
Window dressing
'Jean-Luc Guionnet and Seijiro Murayama have been playing and performing a lot over these last past years. Their unique approach is based on space exploration and intensive relationship to sounds and silence. The first piece - Procédé - was recorded live at Radio Slovenija (Ljubljana - Slovenia) on june 2010. The three other pieces - Processus, Procession, Procès - were recorded by Eric La Casa in Paris on december 2010. The main purpose was to work out a specifically designed process for…
Perpetuum Mobile
“Perpetuum Mobile” is the result of a uniquely schizophrenic “open source” compositional process: the UK's finest collage composers (collage-posers?) Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) uploaded files to a shared server, downloaded and processed each other's work, and flung the resulting fragments back at each other. The result is an interpenetrating audio-collage so intricate that neither party can recall who did what to whom. So far, so avant-garde; but what makes this record d…
Five American Portraits
“Ridges and creases / high on the middle forehead / The right temple near the eyebrow / A small ridge under the right eye / The right side of the tip of the nose / The opening of the right nostril / The middle lower lip / The inner ear of the right ear.” Can you tell who it is yet? It’s George W. Bush, of course, or at least part of his head, as seen (or rather heard) in the second of five “American portraits” in words and music by legendary experimental rock outfit the Red Krayola, in collabora…
Uncommon Sense
This is: brass to the power of three, and a lot more besides. John Clark, Dave Taylor and Franz Hackl on French horn, trumpet and bass trombone are not just a brass trio but create a whole cosmos of sounds, styles and techniques. In their musical actions and reactions, each of the three is always also each of the other two, with the voices merging into complex moods and styles. On this album the trio reveal their sense of humor, and a moment later become absorbed in hymnic devotion. Big-band ges…
Charlemagne & Pippin
Single 35+ minute excursion in typical BtC drones w/ added violin. Really organic sounding, loads of textures.
Making Words
Realized at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah in Brooklyn, New York, April of 2010.Recorded live, mixed, and mastered by Adam Diller.Featuring the invaluable contributions of: Ann Adachi (flute), Adam Diller (tenor saxophone), Tucker Dulin (trombone), Kenny Wang (viola), Andrew Lafkas (bass, composition), Margarida Garcia (electric guitar), Gill Arno (electronics), Keiko Uenishi (electronics), Barry Weisblat (electronics), Bryan Eubanks (electronics), Sean Meehan (snare drum and cymbals)
Natsu No Sebone
Alto saxophonist Masayoshi Urabe and percussionist Toshi Ishizuka recorded this extended improvisation at Tokyo's Apia Club, quietly ferocious music with a unique physicality. "Thrilling, blood-shaking, soul-scraping and defiantly non-sexless improv set from two Japanese titans. Recorded live at the Apia club in Tokyo in December last year, this set showcases Urabe's uniquely physical approach to improvisation -- ferociously concentrated, contorted, sweating and eruptive with physical power. Hi…
Manfauna
Miasma are a band comprised of various members of Guapo, Cathedral, Chrome Hoof and Elsa Drake all playing at the top of their form on this three-part sequence of instrumentals. The band court references to prog, the occult and Victoriana - at least that's what the press release is saying, and I'm not one to argue. The group's fearsome instrumental abilities are the real source of Miasma's strength, with sophisticated, thorough arrangements boasting some of the finest implementation of bassoon y…
All Aboard!
For more than 15 years, Tokyo, Japan's Tenniscoats have been keyboardist/vocalist Saya and guitarist Takashi Ueno. The duo have brought equal parts meditative intensity and whimsical humor to a series of acclaimed psychedelic albums, beginning with 2000's The Theme of Tenniscoats. But Tenniscoats have rarely released music without collaborating with others. Most famously, they teamed up with Scottish indie-pop legends The Pastels in 2009 for the wonderful Two Sunsets album on Domino Records…
Zwitzerland
Ursula Maehr, recorder. Carles Peris, saxophone, flute. Francis Petter, saxophone, bass clarinet. Valentin Vecellio, basset horn. Marco von Orelli, trumpet. Sabine von Werra, voice. Christoph Baumann, piano. Markus Fischer, double bass. Jacques Widmer, drums. Recorded 9-11 November 2007