New Arrivals
Live at Hachioji Alone Sep.3 1977
Kaoru Abe was an influential Japanese free jazz alto saxophonist, who is often regarded as being the greatest abrasive sounding saxophonist.
He generally performed solo, and died young from a drug overdose, and has since been immortalized in the jazz scene. He became close friends with Milford Graves, Masayuki Takayanagi, Derek Bailey, and Motoharu Yoshizawa, and was married to the author Izumi Suzuki. His cousin was the famous singer Kyu Sakamoto.
Cochin Moon
Yes, you’re reading this correctly. A legit, non-bootleg vinyl reissue of one of the holy grails of fourth-world avant-ambient synthesis, and believe it or not, this was a Record Store Day release in Japan this year. Originally released a few months after Haruomi Hosono’s 1978 Paraiso LP — famous for featuring the first trio grouping of the band that would become Yellow Magic Orchestra — Hosono’s Cochin Moon, an album credited to himself and famed graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo, who provid…
X
Gaudenz Badrutt electronics & analog synthesizer Christian Müller electronics & contrabass clarinet
"X" as the unknown, "X" as a reference to time. "X" as a definite position between possibility and contingency. The album X by the Swiss band Strom works with remix as a method, explores the potential of the origin. Or the result's? The work on the concept album started with an improvised piece by Gaudenz Badrutt (analog synthesizer) and Christian Müller (contra bass clarinet and live effects). In…
The Bakery
Keith Rowe electronics, guitarMartin Küchen alto- and baritone saxophones, radio, iPod
Keith Rowe was invited to a residency that Martin Küchen, through support from the Swedish Arts Council, was granted a few weeks in the autumn of 2013 at the Vor Anker artist residency, Vienna, Austria. The artist Johannes Heuer and his wife Sandra Baer had invited Martin Küchen for this residency. The artist studio is located in the old Anker bread factory complex in Vienna. During these weeks work included r…
Rim
Kurt Liedwart, lloopp, electronics, percussion. Phil Raymond, computer, percussion. Phil Raymond lives in Moscow and has been working with microlevels of sound for ten years. In 2009 he worked mainly with electroacoustic manipulations of percussion using different methods of computer processing and recording. 'Rim' is his second recording released by Mikroton family of labels following critically acclaimed 'Absence' released by Mikroton Digital in 2008. In 2009 he joined his forces with Kurt Lie…
Future Perfect
Serge Baghdassarians, mixing desk, delays, electric guitar. Boris Baltschun, computer, sampler. Burkhard Beins, percussion, zither. The three gentlemen formed a live performing electroacoustic work unit throughout the first decade of this century, exploring hybrid musical areas shaped by digitized samples, analogue circuits and acoustically produced sounds stemming from a diverse range of materials and objects. This first phase has been documented on the 'Labor' compilation (Charhizma, 2003) and…
Stop Time
Robin Hayward plays microtonal tuba in Catherine Christer Hennix's ensemble and Stop Time is his first composition to be released on Important Records. Stop Time was commissioned for a festival of the same name taking place in Leuven in 2013. It is the first piece to use a subset of the three-dimensional physical version of the Hayward Tuning Vine, invented in 2012, as a musical score. The harmonic space implied within the four cubes contained within the subset, based on prime numbers two (octav…
Ultraviolet
Nick Mazzarella is a singular voice in a late generation of free jazz formalists. The 31-year-old devotee of the alto saxophone spends days in a shop repairing woodwinds and nights playing gigs at diverse venues across the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene. In less than a decade, working with the likes of Rob Mazurek, Dana Hall, Ken Vandermark and The Eternals, he has quickly established himself as a vital contributor to the city’s creative music lineage. Far from just a sideman, Mazzarell…
Arrebato
On Arrebato, Asheville's Ahleuchatistas embellish their trademark intensity with a more pensive and existential amble. These six pieces channel recollections of a natural kinship the band struck up with a number of communities they played to on an Iberian tour in early 2014. The resulting story threads together a suite of lyrical instrumentals showing a deepening meticulousness for structure—elastic and labyrinthine.
Spanish for "passionate outburst," Arrebato aptly evokes a rapturous rising fro…
Get Dressed
Lead single from Jeff Parker's forthcoming full-length International Anthem release The New Breed. Released digitally and on limited 7" phonograph flexi disc with gold foil titles and glossy photo print of Ernie Parker and friends.
Jeff Parker is an American jazz and rock guitarist based in Los Angeles. Parker is best known as an experimental musician, working with avant-garde electronic, rock, and improvisational groups. Parker currently plays guitar in the post-rock group Tortoise and also was…
Il Deserto / Pittura Contemporanea / Moderna N. 1 & 2
**Lavish 3 CD box set in bespoke packaging, collecting the Egisto Macchi's recent and almost instantly sold-out LP releases by Cinedelic, housed in a canvas covered outer box ** Cinedelic has thankfully made a very limited run boxet in 300 hand-numbered copies, that brings together "Il Deserto" , "Pittura Contemporanea" and "Pittura Moderna n. 1 and 2." Now, taken as a whole, this set is wonderfully consistent, a comprehensive collection of the best material by the legendary Maestro!Released in …
Alessandro Alessandroni
Italian gem on the highly sought after label Sermi. What we have here is Alessandro Alessandroni's extremely rare LP called "Farfalla". The cover alone is outstanding. The music ranges from Jazz to Psyche to just about everything you can imagine. Multifaceted Maestro Alessandro Alessandroni: composer, conductor, and arranger. Among the various activities that he still performs to this day, he is also a mandolinist, guitarist, fisarmonicist, sitarist, whistler, and pianist. Most of all, he i…
Modern Pressure
You might not have come across Melbourne's Kane Ikin before, but he's far from a newcomer. A member of experimental duo Solo Andata, Ikin also released material on Taylor Deupree's influential 12k imprint, working with a variety of different sounds and elements over the last decade. Modern Pressure is a milestone for Ikin, written at a trying time that was the producer's hardest financially but most creative musically. Selling equipment to pay the rent, Ikin wrote track-after-track in quick s…
Aakash
Aakash marks the debut recording of the Portland, Oregon-based trio of Matt Carlson (Golden Retriever), Michael Stirling (a disciple of the late Hindustani master Pandit Pran Nath and a student of Terry Riley), and Doug Theriault. Derived from live improvisational performances, the record finds Carlson's rich analog synthesizers joined by real-time processing of Stirling's lilting voice and Theriault's idiosyncratic guitar work and electronics. Dipping into a kind of liminal void, Aakash isn…
Music Exists Disc 1
Alien Transistor and Tokyo-based label Afterhours release a vinyl-version of tenniscoats' masterpiece "music exists". It consists of 4 LPs, which will be released over the year, full of intimate, wonderful, psychedelic folk-music. With the fourth LP, there will be a strictly limited box available, either for putting in your already purchased other 3 records, or as the whole glorious 4-LP-package. Tenniscoats have devoted followers allover the world, but their releases were always hard to find o…
Damned Piano
"This epic and at times over the top work fully delivers on its forthright title, which suggests the instrument in question at best deserves expletives and at worst warrants an exorcism. There’s no melodic ivory tinkling to be found here – Bellerue positions various objects on the body of the piano and its soundboard to draw out their resonant properties, then amplifies the results to cacophonous volumes. Over its four-part 64 minute duration, Damned Piano segues from looming, opaque, abraded dr…
Eskimo
The Residents had passed their own punk stage in 1976 with the release of Satisfaction and were feeling that 1979 disco, while using the studio in new ways, did not actually offer much in the way of depth. So they decided it was a good time to make the jump into world music, since by their own calculations it was not to become popular for several more years. They scanned the map for a proper culture to exploit. Immediately they realized the North Pole had been overlooked because it is made …
Dreamboat
Dreamboat is the collaboration between dream-folk singer / guitarist Ilyas Ahmed and the lunar-inclined analog synthesizer/processed bass clarinet duo Golden Retriever (Matt Carlson / Jonathan Sielaff ). The collaboration between these long time friends began with a shared admiration for each others' work as well as a commonality in approach to making music, which one day begged the question, "What if our individual sound worlds intersected?". The result yielded a unifying love of exploded modal…
Disruptive Muzak
Sam Kidel's debut for The Death of Rave is a deft subversion of Muzak's meaning, application and affect, employing government call centers as unwitting agents in a stroke of Cagean and Kafka-esque compositional genius. It's a remarkably innovative, emotive and incisive 20 minute sound piece (with an additional 20 minute version on the other side) that reflects and refracts an aspect of the modern world in a way that arguably few other records have achieved. In aesthetic, Disruptive Muzak highlig…
Music works 1977-2015
Bernard Donzel-Gargand (1955-2015) was a French electro-acoustic composer. He did found the studio Collectif & Cie in 1982 in Annecy and worked there until 1998. Then he was part of Studio Forum with Philippe Blanchard (Lieutenant Caramel) who produced this double CD. A nice introduction to his electroacoustic and instrumental works from 1977 to 2015.“For me, Bernard, was always the best example of real artist-enthusiast, professional and talented. His music is an incredibly poetic and subtle, e…