A Short Story
For almost ten years, Ruben Machtelinckx has followed an extraordinary path in Belgian and European improvised music. As a guitarist, but equally as a composer. It began in 2013, when the quartet Machtelinckx/Badenhorst/Jensson/Wouters released their debut, ‘Faerge’. The album was praised by international press and was listed ‘Best Belgian jazz release’ by Knack magazine. In 2020 he won the Klara Award for Best Belgian Jazz release for his latest record: Porous Structures (Aspen 009). In between…
Moving My Body Through Space
Recognized as a skilled and sought after collaborator, Ted Byrnes solo albums cast a wide net that capture Byrnes' adventurous and omnivorous approach to solo percussion. An alumnus of Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, Byrnes has made his home in the center of a Venn diagram that includes free improvisation, studied electro-acoustic work, fearless new music and harsh noise. Recognizing the porous borders between these modes, Byrnes' work on Moving My Body Through Space is a flailing medita…
The Gleam
Tip! *In process of stocking* Like its predecessor, Philos, The Gleam is a completely solo work, all the music composed and played by Park Jiha on the piri, a type of oboe, the saenghwang, a mouth organ (shown on the album cover art), the hammered dulcimer known as the yanggeum, and glockenspiel. There’s a stark clarity to the sound, yet it’s never spare or empty. There’s a searching warmth to what she does. It’s minimal without being minimalist, occasionally presenting itself with the formality…
Music For Modified Melodica
*200 copies limited edition* Music for Modified Melodica by Japanese composer Kaori Suzuki was born out of two explorations: one of tuning (and subsequently degrading) the small reeds of a melodica, and the other to modify it playable with foot pumps, allowing for the sustained excitation of the reeds. Playing with the highly resistive foot bellows introduced massive ‘volumes’ of air to the reeds, overblowing them to vibrate loudly. This aspect led me to work with the sound potentials of combina…
Visitations
London-based guitarist and producer Leo Abrahams and NYC master musician (and boss of figureight records) Shahzad Ismaily unite for a unique imagining of guitar music on Visitations. The work of two highly skilled, highly celebrated musicians, Visitations marks a curious, mysterious, uncanny collection of music, offering a take on guitar playing that snakes and collides with unexpected turns. It encourages - requires even - a deep listening experience, every discordance balanced with harmony, ev…
Chapel
"Sometimes I wonder why it takes years for something to find its way to a release, but in this case, you could think: wow, that's really fast. The concert that we find on these recordings dates from September 4. I must assume the CD went into production the day after the concert. I believe I had not yet the pleasure to hear music as part of a duo (in some bigger groups, yes), and he teams up with recent improvised music convert Dirk Serries. The latter is on guitar. I would think this CD covers …
Solo Acoustic Guitar Improvisations I
**Limited edition of 100 copies** “Following some forty CD releases on his imprint New Wave Of Jazz, Dirk Serries thinks the time is right to expand to the world of vinyl. Here he plays a 1957 Hoffner archtop guitar, and recorded with a single microphone, some 50 centimetres from the guitar and there has been no other audio processing. The liner notes, as always by Guy Peters, are on the front cover, and he uses the extra space the format allows him, to talk some more on the history of free jazz…
Glints
"The three musicians seem to exchange and overlap tones, creating the feeling of a single and continuous arc extending, curving in space, a kind of bridge or thoroughfare outward." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Magda Mayas piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Tony Buck drums
La Pierre Tachée
"… a kind of ideal duet, no imitation conversation but two simultaneous composers each repeatedly provoked and silenced, prodded and enchanted by the other…" – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Sophie Agnel piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones
Induction
"Improvised music at this level of concentration may touch the roots of human culture, the transformative power of the cave and the paintings of Lascaux and Altamira." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Burkhard Beins percussion John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Werner Dafeldecker double bass
Impermanence
Tip! “When choosing a title for an audio document of improvised music, you really can’t go wrong with Impermanence; it’s not exactly original, in terms of either the specific genre or music as a whole, but it will never not be accurate. In the case of Violeta García (a cofounder of the splendid TVL Rec imprint) and Émilie Girard-Charest’s first meeting as a duo, the word accumulates a more unique meaning because of the two musicians’ chosen instruments. Cellos are often associated with their abi…
Knotted Threads
Tip! "I met Benedict Taylor in London in 2017 where I was doing a six month residency thanks to the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec. I heard Benedict perform in ensemble and solo contexts and rapidly felt a strong connection with some of my musical concerns. I was particularly caught by his ability to listen to what sound elicits or suggests as he articulates and shapes it; a dynamic interplay of sensitivity and agency, at times yielding pretty surprising results. We managed to meet for a …
Oxygen Room
“Oxygen Room is a wonderfully moody, at points downright haunting/uneasy trip into primally slurred and ritual tipped improv. The four-track CD appears on Slovenia’s Inexhaustible Editions, and I must say it’s a most compelling and often eerier ride of an album – really taking the improv form down a fairly original and distinctive path.The CD comes presented in a white six-panel digipak – this features on its cover and first inside flap two different green circles made up of different shapes, th…
Noir Paradis
Mathieu Werchowski's latest album draws its sounds from improvisations generated by a violin, a few dozen freshly awakened birds, highly reverberant spaces, a voice saying words of Roberto Juarroz and Paul Verlaine, the nostalgia of childhood westerns, a viola mounted with electric guitar strings and the memory of those who left too soon.
Probables
On his first solo LP, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy (the spectacular drummer of Pneu, Binidu, la Colonie de vacances among many other projects) explores a feild between contemporary music, minimalism and sound art.
Spectre
Improvisers Xavier Charles and Bertrand Gauguet have been playing duets since 2013. They produce frequency landscapes that change slowly and thus move the listener towards a contemplative listening. With the multiple sounds of the clarinet and the saxophone, other inflated spaces based on breaths arise... Spectre, which was released on CD in early May 2020 at Akousis Records, contains six pieces exploring multi-phonic spaces on the clarinet and alto saxophone (Phonomnèse 1, Phonomnèse 2 and Pho…
Contre-Courbes
John Tilbury's latest duo piano and saxophone improvisations
聽風 (Tape)
* Edition of 70 copies * Blending several musical traditions as western music, Chinese classical music, Finnish folk music, Carnatic music and much more Li Daiguo creates an extended sound world with a variety of instruments as pipa, erhu, ethnic flutes, shona mbira, violin, viola, cello, overtone singing and lots more pushing their sonic capabilities into uncharted territory
Iker
New album from Richard Youngs that, similar to a lot of his work, happened fairly spontaneously following our having heard one of Richard's sketches utilising a Spanish guitar during the spring of 2021 and being duly impressed. We then proposed releasing a CD album of such work, where Richard uses the same guitar alongside real-time street sounds, birdsong, tape loops, synth, FM radio and runout grooves to create a setting that's comparatively gentler than most of his work thus far on Fourth Dim…
Anthology of Exploratory Music From India
**200 copies** The new Unexplained Sounds Group’s compilation of exploratory music and sound works from India intends to present a comprehensive collection of sonic practices that have emerged from the desire to break away from India’s traditional sounds, e.g. classical music and folk tunes, while simultaneously drawing on ideas and inspirations from these lineages and auditory heritages in the form of recurring motifs and sonorities as well as textures and open-ended compositions. It features B…