New Arrivals
Free Jazz Communism
Rab-Rab Press announces the publication of Free Jazz Communism, a new book actualising Archie Shepp–Bill Dixon Quartet at the 8th World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki 1962. Including archive material and documents, commissioned theoretical and historical texts, and interviews, the book edited by Sezgin Boynik and Taneli Viitahuhta contextualizes politics of free jazz music in light of global decolonisation movements, anti-war activism, structures of racial capitalism, and forms of av…
The Second Sound
The Second Sound is an imaginary conversation between musicians and sound artists on the role of gender and sex within their field. Gathering testimonies from artists of different backgrounds into a single stream of (often contrary) opinions, the text addresses discrimination as a paradigm of otherness, the possibility of gendered music and sound art, and how sound artists and musicians navigate the field.
The text raises questions such as: How do life circumstances find their way into music and…
Y '59°54’54,76”N 10°44’46,03”Ø'
**500 copies. Double vinyl + publication (32 pages)** The H-block, or Høyblokka as it is called in Norwegian, was the Government Quarter’s main building. The was building was completed in 1958. Architect Erling Viksjø was inspired by the French modernist Le Corbusier, and set out to create an elegant, monumental but sober functionalism.
On 22 July 2011 at 15:25:22 (CEST), a car bomb was detonated outside H-block. The car, a Volkswagen Crafter, was parked just outside the main entrance. The bomb …
Imminent Death
The Flying Luttenbachers’ “Imminent Death” is the second release by the seminal cult band since its reincarnation in 2017. “Imminent Death” is very different in many ways from the previous Luttenbachers releases, but then again, you could consistenly say that about most of them. The group has always followed the direction set by its leader Weasel Walter, and reflects his desire to create music of a determinately less common quantity in any given era. The Flying Luttenbachers have always been sta…
Blue for a Moment
Blue for a Moment retraces the artistic career of the Berlin-based Swedish jazz musician, avant-garde composer, poet and visual artist Sven-Åke Johansson, one of the most singular and exciting figures in European improvised music.
Johansson (born 1943 in Mariestad) moved to Berlin in the late 1960s, where he has since been active in a variety of music and artistic contexts. His first performances took place in the context of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab on Hallesches Ufer, where young musicians and …
Taking the Dog for a Walk
After Sunny’s time now, his authoritative portrait of the American Free jazz drumming legend Sunny Murray, Luxembourg filmmaker Antoine Prum turns his attention to the British Free Improvised Music scene in this new feature-length music documentary. Branching out from a three-day festival in Berlin conceived and organised for the purpose of the film, Taking the Dog for a Walk maps the scene of British Improvisers, past and present, retracing the road that led from its emergence and emancipation …
Sunny’s Time Now
The documentary feature Sunny’s time now explores the life and work of the avant-garde drummer Sunny Murray, one of the most influential figures of the Free Jazz revolution. Through a series of interviews with key time witnesses as well as historic and contemporary concert footage, it reassesses the relationship between the libertarian music movement and the political events of the 1960s whose social claims it so intimately reflected. It also recounts how the most radical forms of musical expres…
Iberorromance
**60 copies** Paralelo is the solo project of Raul Q. de Orte (also member of Wind Atlas). Since his early dark wave and synth pop recordings he has evolved with strong personality to his own style that could be redefined as cold electronic amidst anxious pop. His last tape “Synth Protesta” can be consider as a pure underrated gem of the spanish synth wave. Retro and contemporary at the same time, Raul sings against the modern reality demanding explanations to the world.
This new record “Iberrom…
Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus (from Quatuor pour la fin du temps) - 10"
Louange à l'éternité de Jésus is the fifth movement for cello and piano from Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time), adapted here for cello and organ. It was composed while Messiaen was a prisoner of war in Stalag VIII-A, Görlitz, Germany, and first performed with other detained musicians inside the Nazi camp in January 1941. Inspired by the Book of Revelation, this music invokes the composers vision of "immutable peace", in its infinitely slow, ecstatic pa…
Long Decay And New Earth
Jiyeon Kim is Seoul-based musician and sound artist. Over the past decade she has devoted her time to developing a vocabulary based on field recordings and format-specific sound making, with close-listening deeply embedded in her practice.“This cassette is a document of a performance and its rehearsal, in Seoul, December 2019. The piece performed was a “decomposition” of a previous cassette release of mine, “piano mixtape”. "For this live show I employed two distinct techniques. Firstly, I took …
Matheus Segundo Matheus
Born in Rio in 1940, Helio won a guitar from his father at age 12.After working in sugar mills or as a sales clerk in record stores, he started performing at Rio nightclubs (like Plaza) and São Paulo.
In 1975 he signed to RCA Victor on which he released his first LP, "Matheus Segundo Matheus"
With arrangements by Oberdan "Black River" Magalhães, Zé Rodrix and Chiquinho de Moraes with participation of Azymuth as a support band withg a total of 128 musicians involved in the recording.
Elevation
Born in Paris, raised in Vienna, resident in Ibiza, saxophonist and composer Muriel Grossmann embodies the borderless, pan-continental energies of contemporary European jazz. Her music emerges from the lineage of European jazz that’s absorbed the progressive music of Coltrane, Dolphy and Sanders.
Today, she cites players such as Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young in the same breath as the masters of the avant-garde, and her playing marries the directness and eloquence of the older generation with…
Migrations
**300 copies** Recorded in Holme Fen nature reserve, Cambridgeshire, with two JrF contact microphones on 22nd to 25thMay 2020. The long lines of wires and wooden posts stretched across the sunken landscape of the Fens follow the man-made drainage canals and rivers for hundreds of miles. Bowed, plucked and struck by natural phenomena (strong winds caused by climate change) and indigenous flora, reveals dynamic sonic intra-events and hidden acoustic ecologies.
A. Red Square 14’ 14”Field recordings…
Swamps/Things
Over the last decade, Kassel Jaeger, the moniker of the Paris-based composer, writer / theorist, producer, and director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), François Bonnet, has meticulously sculpted a body of multidisciplinary work that rests at the forefront contemporary electronic and electroacoustic practice. He will release his new album ‘Swamp/Things’ on Shelter-Press.
Rigorously experimental without sacrificing the intimacies of self, his efforts as a composer and musician extend …
Seamons
Chra is the artist moniker for Austrian Christina Nemec (Bray, Shampoo Boy). Seamons is the latest missive in her ongoing exploration of suffocating abstract audio. At once designed and falling apart Seamons is rough and crude, a stumbling and staggering electronic expedition where nothing presents itself explicit in intent. It’s a tense obscure record that teases you into it’s peculiar vortex from it’s suggestive nature of exploring the enigma beyond it’s haunted facade.
VICIOUS WATER REGIMES s…
Arba, Dak Arba
Frédéric D. Oberland and Irena Z. Tomažin’s »ARBA, DÂK ARBA« was conceived as the soundtrack for the eponymous installation piece by the French artist Fanny Béguély. First presented as part of the group exhibition »Panorama 21 - ›Les Revenants‹« at Tourcoing’s Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains in December 2019, Béguély’s chemically painted photographs focused on humankind’s propensity for self-examination and its attempts to probe the mysteries of the past, present and future. Ob…
Miscellanea
**150 copies, black vinyl** Miscellanea – originally released in 1969 on cult italian label Sermi SR Records (home of famous composer such as Bruno Nicolai, Francesco De Masi, I Marc 4 and more) – is the debut of composer Luigi Zito, an in-demand session player and music director throughout all the seventies. An extremely brilliant music library with lots of jazz licks, descriptive and improvisational themes composed with a multitude of instruments, including the famous whistle by the one and on…
Threesome Slitting
**In process of stocking. 300 copies white label 45 RPM 12".** Live collaboration between these titans of harsh noise. Recorded February 2014 at Dead Audio studio, in Houston, Texas. Double sided offset printed DIY style pasted covers, including A4 insert, plus fliers from live events taking place surrounding these sessions. Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering for maximum fidelity. Absolutely brutal record, you know what to expect with this one.
A Name, For Desire
**In process of stocking. 225 copies** Active since 2013 with a multitude of acclaimed cassette releases on Summer Isle, Strange Rules, Clandestine Compositions, and our own imprint; “A Name, For Desire” is the debut V. Sinclair LP and vinyl release. Twelve movements composed of piano, synth, and field recordings display significant growth from the earlier works. Includes a 12 page booklet with photography from V. S
Death Of The Slave
**In process of stocking. 249 copies 7" vinyl in heavyweight pocket sleeve with spine** Death Of The Slave is the debut 7" EP from new Japanese heavyweight Linekraft. The ideas presented on the recent "Engineering Analysis Of Inner Death" LP on Hospital Productions, and cassettes on Zaetraom & Old Europa Cafe are condensed into a veritable 1-2 punch industrial single. Human screaming, distorted vocals, crashing junk and oil drum abuse layered on top of analog synth lines go to further the existi…