New Arrivals
Running away
Guillaume Viltard, doublebass. Recorded in 2008 studio and outdoor. The CD comes in a very special package made by visual artist Zéhavite Cohen. 300 copies. 'There followed a solo double bass performance that was added late to the bill from Guillaume Viltard, a young musician that has been playing a lot at the weekly Eddie Prevost workshop. I had seen him play before, most recently in a duo with his frequent playing partner Ute Kanngiesser, but never solo, and I have to admit to being taken by s…
Crossing Into The Electric Magnetic
This is an exceptional collection of pieces by one of the pioneers of electronic and tape music. Halim El-Dabh began experimenting with wire recorders in Egypt even before Pierre Schaeffer inaugurated the practice of Musique Concrete in France - one piece here dates from that period ('Wire Recorder Piece', 1944) and is thus of great historical importance. Most of the other works were recorded in 1959 and evidence a remarkable body of work and experimentation. El-Dabh does not sound like his fell…
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…
Objects Sense Objectes
Ap'strophe is the duo of Ferran Fages (acoustic guitar) and Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga (zither). Recorded by Christian Pallejà at Maik Maier studios in Barcelona, december 2008. Mixed and mastered by Ferran Conangla. With their music they investigate the perception of the distinctive timbre of the guitar and the zither alongside the differences and similarities of their string instruments.
Watershed
If the three compositions proposed by Denis Fournier have already been recorded, they merit to be here as resurgences, like scenarios encouraging the freedom of transformation without which free interpretation is nothing. “I often say that I don’t make improvised music, but that I improvise music. In other words, I put together there and then elements of my life, of my history, of my culture…” In other words, no structure commands the action. Every structure opens to the action (to sharing) whic…
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…
As a Leaf or a Stone
For this release Mathieu Ruhlmann uses a lot of sound sources and per track he lists them. We see listed a coffee grinder, ukelin, e-bow, moss, denture cleaner, bubble wrap, dried plant, cactus, speaker and gate (and that's just the opening track!)... The gain is very much alive here, so there is occasionally some feedback leaking through here. That adds a strange component to the highly acoustic music. Ruhlmann plays his stuff with great care. His music is open, spacious, but also intimate. The…
Invisible
A new series designed by Clare Cooper. Xavier Charles is an active clarinetist in the world of improvised music, known from a variety of constellations and ensembles like Dans les arbres and Contest of Pleasures. This is his first solo release for Sofa. Listening and perception are important elements in Invisible, which consists of both solo clarinet and field recordings. A total openness to moment and utterance characterizes his sound explorations, where we in a poetic fashion, are led to a pla…
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 …
It\'s Time For Tristram Cary
'Classical. Electro acoustic and widdly weird noises from the big brain. Over the last few years intrepid music lovers have been investigating and enjoying the work of pioneering electronic musicians, electro-acoustic artists and all the groovy folks who spent hours manipulating and cutting tape to make new and exciting sounds. It's meant that lots of interesting figures have been brought back into our musical view. But one of the most important, innovative, influential and almost forgotten arti…
Courant.Air
It is the continuation of a body of work intertwining instrumental and electronic music following the acclaimed 2004-2008 work les arbres (Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2009). The mixture this time is more edgy : a rich and complex electronic sound composition alongside the folk inspired guitar played by Simon Trottier (member of the extraordinary haunted blues band Timber Timbre). After 2 albums of improvised folktronica with Simon Trottier, Nicolas Bernier decided to explore that singu…
The Fat Is Gone
Recorded live at Molde International Jazz Festival in 2006. The meeting between the godfather of free-jazz & the innovators of the modern free-jazz scene in Scandinavia, Mats Gustafsson & Paal Nilssen-Love, resulted in this mastodon of an album. This is the European free-jazz underground at its best. A devastating, blasting, raw, ferocious sonic assault on all senses. And beautiful, painfully beautiful.
The Yelm Sessions
Another important piece of the elusive and hermetic Eyvind Kang puzzle. This newest studio project from one of the most consistently interesting young composer/performers working today is instantly Kang’s most adventurous, varied and ambitious recordings to date. Featuring many of his most illustrious musical associates as well as several orchestral ensembles from around the world, this new CD brings Kang’s exuberant gift for orchestration and lyricism together with a keen sense of the miraculou…
Vayu Rouah
Cosmic like Three Organic Experiences, esoteric like Password for Entheogenic Experience, Vayu Rouah perform a kind of synthesis of the researches by Alio Die and Aglaia. Vayu Rouah is the primordial wind that join cabala and sonorous alchemies, an inexorable flux with extended electro-acoustic solutions, by a wide range of frequencies. A very long and slow gestation of about eight years have absorbed different musical moods and have stratified itself throw the time.. sound after sound.. t…
1934-1935
More than seventy years since his death in 1937, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan retains his reputation as one of the greatest singers India ever produced. Possessed of an elastic, honied voice that poured out like mercury, he influenced generations of singers including Mohammed Rafi, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, and Pandit Pran Nath. Born at the end of the 19th century to a family of musicians that extended back in time for centuries, his art was formed in the culture of the courts of the maharajas under Briti…
Soil Creatures
The name under which Melbourne singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Paddy Mann records and performs, Grand Salvo has quietly and unassumingly developed a body of work that has inspired both hardcore devotion and more recently, wider recognition, stemming from his previous album, Death. The ambitious fairytale orchestration received rave reviews from all over the country. With Soil Creatures, Grand Salvo has returned with no less scope but sits within quieter surroundings. This gorgeous s…
The Last Recording
Final solo alto sax blasting from the late legendary Japanese underground hero Kaoru Abe. Abe was an inspiration to free/jazz and Japanese noise lovers world-wide, lived a fast and hard life and ripped his guts inside out on each and every of his many releases. Extreme music for those who need it.
Live in concert
Denman Maroney (piano) & Mark Dresser (bass). Vision Festival NY - June 11, 2008. This is the third duo album by bassist Mark Dresser and pianist Denman Maroney, after Duologues and Time Changes. In contrast to some of the other material by the two players, this one is fully improvised in three long pieces. The first 30 minute track was recorded live at Vision Festival on June 10, 2008, the two other pieces date from a performance in Chicago in 2001. It's hard to call this jazz, since none of th…
Moon Over Torrelorca
Cold and glacial drone recorded at the prestigious EMS in Stockholm. 58 minutes of northern iciness. Moon Over Torrelorca, the second album from Keränen, serves as a great follow up to his amazing debut album Bats In Attic that Lasse Marhaug's Pica Disk released last year. In contrast to the high energy multi-layered noise- bomb the debut offered, Moon Over Torrelorca instead showcases a carefully composed drone piece from this highly skilled sound artist. It’s cold up north.