New Arrivals
M.O.S.
'A new series designed by Clare Cooper. M.O.S. is Ingar Zach's second solo release for Sofa, six years after the critically acclaimed 'Percussion music'. M.O.S. reveals a large and almost monolithic sound world. Zach's horizontal bassdrum (gran cassa) functions as a gigantic, resonating membrane, where metallic and ceramic percussions create articulations over the bass vibrations in a ritualistic dance of pulses and overtones. The music moves slowly, but with a continuing drive, and stretc…
Show em the door
Show Em The Door presents the first collaboration between Joseph Hammer and Jason Crumer. The pair come from very different backgrounds and are separated in age by a generation but have found in each other a surprisingly sympathetic and compatible musical partnership. Joseph Hammer has been a fixture of the west coast experimental music scene since the early 1980s. He remains one of the most active and visible members of the LAFMS collective, and has founded a long list of legendary bands incl…
Radiant intervals
Radiant Intervals' is the first Eleh LP on Important since '08s 'Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis Vol.3', and follows one of the Wire magazine's (and our) top records of 2010, the incredible 'Location Momentum' for Touch. Continuing with investigations into physically tactile tones and drones, this LP offers four further modular synth expeditions eternally moving towards the distant point depicted on the gorgeous, letterpress printed sleeve. After a stoically inert start 'Night Of Pure E…
Somethingtobesaid
Specially written for the John Butcher Group, this is the first full performance of somethingtobesaid - recorded live at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival in November 2008. Chris Burn (piano), John Butcher (saxophones & pre-recordings), Gino Robair (percussion), John Edwards (bass), Thomas Lehn (synth), Dieb 13 (turntables), Clare Cooper (harp-guzheng), Adam Linson (bass & electronic processing).
Anro
A narrow path of safety extending through the gloom, its edges bleeding into the fearful zones of disorder and formlessness that enclose it. Paths create borders, they limn the known from the unknown, the clean from the unclean, the citizen from the exile, the present from the past. But while paths create boundaries, they themselves are ambivalent, neither here nor there, neither now nor then. The act of making a path where none existed always involves the subjugation of the unknown and f…
Less Is More
The piano trio is probably one of the most common ensembles to be heard in jazz, and truth be told, I am a little weary of them, preferring the expressiveness of a horn section. Yet once in a while, a piano trio comes forward that has something new to tell. When I listened to WHO Trio's "The Current Underneath" (Leo Records) a couple of years ago, I was immediately enchanted by the sheer musicality of the project. This one, "Less Is More", is even better. The trio consists of Michel Wintsch on p…
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…
Live at Café Oto
The live music experience is what it’s all about! Let’s face it, the recording, the thing (CD, vinyl, ipod), that you’re listening to now is a luxury – a convenient form of storing and a flawed attempt at revisiting the ecstasy of the live experience. Live music is at the heart of civilization and culture. Live music is real music – the recording is simply the run out groove of time, a means to try and capture the experience. This trio is defined by live performance. The relationship between the…
5 More Dialogues
Here are two men whose musical natures are obviously rich and their backgrounds complex - back to Stinky Winkles in the pianist's case, back to Amalgam and the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the saxophonist's - but who reduce, in the critic/analyst's shorthand, to tiling or fabric. Tessellations. Moiré. Does that convey all you need to know about Veryan Weston and Trevor Watts, secure in the understanding that these are self-chosen metaphors, not imposed from outside? Needless to say, no, …
Tenkujin
Fifth and final release by Far East Family Band (if you include the 1973s Nihonjin released under the Far Out banner), Tenkujin was the first of the bands albums to be released in the US on the small and short-lived Calfornian-based All Ears label. Without Kitaro, who by this time had departed to persue a solo career, the band reverted to its earlier balled-based sound, this time supported on drums by former Samurai alumnist Yujin Harada. The expected Pink Floyd influences appear in abundance, a…
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…
Unknown skies
...Every trio without a piano, or without a drums, or as in this case without a double bass, gains in incline what it loses in “balance”. It only takes a little sometimes. Everyone plays at ease across. Everyone can split themselves. There are no more solos as solos but phases, circles of influence and predominance which do not last. The duos bind and unbind more clearly, the contrasts stand out better. The theme is no longer material to develop but, as in Unknown Skies, a lyrical and volatile s…
2011
Normal edition : 400 copies. Collaboration between Marc Hurtado, former of Etant Donnés, with Vomir (aka Romain Perrot). Marc Hurtado: Instruments, voice, mix, production. Vomir: static sound. Marc Hurtado, musician, film director, painter, poet and producer is the founder with his brother Eric Hurtado of the french multimedia band Etant Donnés, since 1977 he made 20 albums collaborating with people like Alan Vega, Genesis P Orridge, Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Marc Cunningham or Bachir Attar and…
Mubomuso
Mubomuso is a neologism, made up from two extant words. Mubo suggests the unadorned and unaffected, while muso means to be in a state without thought or preplanning. All parts of the release lead the listener towards the consideration of a very specific topic Ð namely, war and violence, and the deeper connections to human nature. Stripped of the clothing of civilization, etiquette and socialization, we slowly become aware of reactions and purposes that exist deep within us embedded comma…
Alchemic Heart
"Alchemic Heart is a special project presented by Vampillia who have colored these two colossal compositions with beautiful contributions by members of the Boredoms, Jarboe (ex-Swans), Inswarm and Japanese Noise-God Merzbow. Layered strings, piano, bass, noise and voices are weaved mysteriously and expand as two magnificently parallel aesthetic worlds. Comprised of two pieces, 'Sea'/'Land,' a primitive landscape is created via listening and destroyed when the pieces are complete. Vampilli…
Barbecue Bob in Fishtown
3rd highly anticipated album in solo guitar circles by critically acclaimed CUL DE SAC founder. This guitarist/composer claims a lengthy, rich relationship to what his longtime friend John Fahey so famously dubbed "American Primitive Guitar." He is able to discover & project wide-screened cinema from just 6 & 12 strings, coaxing vivid panoramic images from his sparkling fingerstyle playing. This also features Jones performing solo on 5-string banjo for the 1st time on record, exhuming the spirit…
Kataract
This album is a single forty-minute track exclusively made up from recordings of waterfalls within America's Pacific Northwest. The source material was cultivated and mixed over a two-year period and takes the form of a monstrously powerful, ferociously noisy concrète piece. Menche has always situated his work towards the extremes of electroacoustic music and Kataract is no exception, but for all the turbulence and extreme frequency manipulation here there's a level of detail on show th…
Stockholm, Berlin 1966
Hard to believe that this far down the line there would still be unreleased recordings of Albert Ayler, never mind a full live set from the apex of his reign, the glorious 1966 tour of Europe, so I nearly did a double take when I first saw this title listed. The Berlin set which the CD is bundled with turned up in lesser fidelity and in the incorrect order on Revenant’s disputed Ayler box, but the Stockholm set has never even been booted and both receive their first release fully authorised by t…
42 Vexations
16 page booklet including Cage's Place In the Reception of Satie by Matthew Shlomowitz. Erik Satie's 1893 Vexations is musique d'ameublement - literally, "furniture music", the phrase coined by Satie in 1917, where he identifies sound as drapes, tiling, wallpaper - items belonging to the environment and changing it simply by being in it, by actually becoming elements of the space. This recording is the second instalment in a series of furniture music (after Marcel Duchamp's Musical Erratum), and…
13 13
'First reedition. Recorded in 1981. Originally released in 1982. Lydia Lunch: vocals, piano. Dix Denney: guitar. Greg Williams: bass. Cliff Martinez: drums, percussion. Digipack.'