New Arrivals
Rainmaker
The day has come! We’re kicking off 2012 with a deluxe reissue of Michael Chapman’s debut Rainmaker. Originally released on Harvest Records in 1969, Rainmaker is a psychedelic-guitar-folk delight. Featuring some of Chapman’s best loved songs, “It Didn’t Work Out,” which features a stellar cast of legendary English musicians of the era; Guitarist “Clem” Clempson was in the prog-band Bakerloo (soon after playing with Chapman he’d join jazz-rockers Colosseum and then Humble Pie) Drummer Aynsley Dun…
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
Live at the Rothko Chapel
Mural's lush and inviting sound-world incorporates a wide range of percussive, harmonic, and timbral effects and suggests the vastness and mystery of time, as do Rothko's paintings. With Jim Denley on flute and saxophone, Kim Myhr on acoustic guitar, and Ingar Zach on percussion, the trio created a site-specific and improvisational work relating to, and inspired by, the Rothko murals in the Chapel. Recorded at the Rothko Chapel, March 4, 2010. (metamkine)
Axiom for the duration
'Japanese percussionist Seijiro Murayama has been working in France since 1999. His musical approach is based on extreme attention to the performance space, the energy of the audience and the quality of silence. He is interested in how continuous sounds and microscopic events can delicately revitalize the environment. Now established in Beirut (Lebanon), french saxophonist Stéphane Rives has spent over last ten years developing new sonic array of extended techniques on the soprano. On thi…
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…
D minor / Bb major
Composed by Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto. Performed by Casey Anderson: computer, Matt Barbier: trombone, Eric KM Clark: violin, Devin Disanto: clarinet, Paul Fraser: trumpet, Kristin Haraldsdottir: viola, Stefan Kac: tuba, Ingrid Lee: piano, Daniel Letourneau: guitar, Heather Lockie: viola, Sepand Shahab: keyboards, Cassia Streb: viola, Christine Tavolacci: flute, Chaz Underriner: guitar, Michael Pisaro: guitar, Taku Sugimoto: guitar. Recorded by Michael Pisaro at the Wulf, Los Angeles…
Spiritual Jazz
Now-Again Records, in conjunction with Jazzman Records, presents an expanded version of the compilation that introduced many listeners to the sound of the unsung musicians who - in the midst of the Vietnam War and the fallout of the Civil Rights struggle - created some of the most beautiful spiritual and meditative music of the 60s and 70s. The music was at times funky, at times contemplative, but it always strived to say something about the world in which the musicians lived.
139
Six untitled pieces compiled from improvisations recorded 2–3 July 2011 at Utterpsalm studio. The sound sample is an unused excerpt from the second recording session which took place on 14–15 September 2011 at Mark Durgan’s studio in Bristol. Edited by Mark Durgan.
Puzzle
"Produced by Centre international de recherche musicale, Nice, France. Project involving 22 instrumentists featuring Pierre-Yves Artaud (flutes), Alexandre Ouzounoff (bassoon), Daniel Kientzy (saxophone), Vinko Globokar (trombone), Elisabeth Chojnacka (harpsichord). Puzzle 1999 (14-17) commissioned by INA-GRM." (Discogs)"An extension of the 'virtual orchestra' in which composer Pascal composes music out of gathered individual instrumental tones and lines (with the musicians never having met …
Silent City
Features Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) on vocals, and is a fascinating, compelling collaboration that mixes the last three centuries into one beautifully haunting, cryptic flow of idea-sound. Presented in a quietly handsome paper folio package!
Foley Folly Folio
Pinkcourtesyphone is the not so secret alter ego of renowned sound artist Richard Chartier, and while it seems to be geared more towards a looser, more relaxed sensibility than the serious artist guise that is usually thrust upon him, it lacks none of his careful attention to structure and detail. Quite a bit of the material on this compilation (recorded erratically between 1997 and 2011) could pass for his normal work, but throws enough curve balls to give it a distinct identity all its…
MP3 Deviations #6+7
Yasunao Tone creates music by means of disrupting MP3-files. Sound files that were corrupted in the MP3 generate error messages, which are then utilized to assign various lengths of samples automatically. Feeding also different play back speeds creates a sound which is always different – unpredictable and unknowable. The MP3 Deviation album contains pieces that are results of the collaborative research by a team of the New Aesthetics in Computer Music (NACM) and myself, led by Tony Myatt…
Live One
Michael Bullock (contrabass & feedback), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Vic Rawlings (cello & surface electronics). “Mary Staubitz emailed me asking, “do you and Vic want to play with this guy from Lebanon?” Mary was booking a series of noise shows at the Midway Café in Jamaica Plain, MA, and had been contacted, apparently out of the blue, by “this trumpet player from Beirut.” She wanted to help him out but wasn`t sure what to do, since none of us in Boston really knew anything about him. Vic and I hav…
Solo Andata
12k presents Australian duo Solo Andata along with their second album, self-titled. Translated literally from the Italian as 'one way,' Solo Andata portrays the theme of a one-way journey that moves from (and represents a thread between) water and land, fluid/stasis, cold/hot. Following Solo Andata's debut album Fyris Swan (Hefty, 2006) and their 12k inception on Live in Melbourne, Solo Andata presents us with an ambient affair, with dark drones coupled with ethereal sonic environments. It could…
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.
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…
Luz Azul
Ah now, this is a lovely little CD. The group i treni inerti began life a decade or so ago now as the trio of Ruth Barberan, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Matt Davis, and when their first album came out as one of the very first Creative Sources releases however long ago Brian Olewnick wrote what to this day remains one of my favourite opening lines to a review- something like “Yeah I can hear you sigh, yet another trumpet/trumpet/accordion trio…” In 2012, as David has long left Barcelona the group …
Live In Leugen
In December 2009 Zebra (Roel Meelkop & Frans de Waard) were invited to play a hommage to Martin Hannett, the legendary producer of Joy Division, A Certain Ratio and Section 25 (to mention Zebra's favorites). This was the start of a long Factory Records weekend in Brussels. Zebra picked their favorite Martin Hannett productions and sprinkled them some further with their extraordinary electronic means to create a groovy, dense slab of music. This album is called 'Live In Leugen'. Leugen is the dut…
Leyfou Ljosinu
Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir presents a new album, Leyfdu Ljósinu (trans. "Allow The Light"), recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012, by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones (NB -- it was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience). To be faithful to time and space -- elements vital to the movement of sound -- this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering …
Asleep On The Floodplain
Ben Chasny has spent many years at this point perfecting his very personal vision of the American landscape. With his early LPs he managed to grab a groundswell of support for his distinctly lo-fi recordings, and since hitting the Drag City label with the breathtaking 'School of Flower' he has managed to extend his vision to countless others. 'Asleep on the Floodplain' continues his exploration, and while it doesn't change up the formula too much (apart from the odd analogue synth blurt here and…