Empty smile
*100 copies limited edition* This solo could have been titled "16 Caprices for cello.” As in Paganini's Caprices, all the techniques and virtuosity of the classical tradition are used here, expanded and enriched by the sounds and research of the contemporary one. However, the approach to the instrument is physical and bodily characteristic of European free improvisation and jazz. But as in Tristan Honsinger, Leroy Jenkins or in Cage's Freeman Etudes for violin the focus is always The Music, whos…
Azure
Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang return with Azure, their third full-length with Ideologic Organ. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contem…
Blind ecosystem
We are nine voices, sighted and blind, who have been singing and exploring together for 11 years. Our practice consists of listening to and imitating sound ecosystems. We become the sounds of biotopes, machines, endangered species, humans and non-humans. Our songs blend ancestral and experimental vocal practices. We are the stumbling blocks of a memory populated by tunes, buried melodies that emerge and carry us away for hybridizations, mutations.
Fine Tuning: The Gradisca Concert
The ubiquity of Coxhill’s sax lines are here answered, cherished, enhanced by the excellent guitar touch of Enzo Rocco. It’s a sort of subtle anarchic dance, intriguing and true.
Trap
Michal Vaľko, aka Line Gate makes a return to mappa with his third cassette for the label. Once again the material is deeply minimalist, but shows marked evolutions in the Slovak, Prague-based artist’s unique trajectory. This time comprising two relatively short pieces (compared to the 40- and 60-minute works previously published on mappa), 'Trap' is perhaps Line Gate’s darkest yet. Whereas previously his works focused on psychoacoustic phenomena, or highlighted the sacredness and timelessness o…
But Everything Now Left Before It Arrived
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …
To Listen To As Far As Possible
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Seijiro Murayama is a drummer/percussionist and improviser/composer who lives in Paris. His first CDs on Ftarri's three labels (Hitorri, Ftarri and Meenna) came out in 2009, and he has since released a total of 12 solo, duo, trio and quartet albums on Ftarri labels. Of the solo albums, the first was "Downdate" (2017), followed by "The Empire of Slip of the Tongue" (2018) and "mi-tai" (2020). While "Downdate" and "The Empire of Slip of the Tongue" are elec…
CTX1
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahiko Okura is a Tokyo-based reed player (clarinet, alto sax, etc.), improviser and composer. Apart from his performances on reed instruments, he is energetically engaged in performance activities with his solo project Active Recovering Music. Okura is also a member of the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble.
In 2004, Okura released the solo album "Time Service" on the Improvised Music from Japan label. The highly original performance …
Cold Light In Warm Blue
*200 copies limited edition* Tokyo-based pianist Fumi Endo has been performing since 2017, playing mainly jazz and improvised music. Her distinctive, minimalistic performances have garnered a great deal of attention. Endo has performed frequently at Ftarri since September 2020.
While she participated in two 2022 Ftarri CD releases—Takumi Ikeda’s "Musical Procedure" (Ftarri Classical, ftarricl-663), and the eponymous "Masahide Tokunaga" (Hitorri, hitorri-970)—Endo had no previous releases on Ftar…
Tayutauta
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* While continuously engaged in the field of traditional Japanese music, female-school gidayu shamisen player Yumiko Tanaka has since the 1990s been carrying out multifaceted musical activities including contemporary classical music, improvisation (in 1996-97 she was a member of Otomo Yoshihide’s band Ground-Zero), experimental music, and theater performance/composition, performing and exchanging ideas with many musicians from Japan and other countries. While Tana…
Phase to Phase
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Katie and Lucio met over the internet almost every Tuesday for one year, composing two pieces, rehearsing, talking about their lives, and recording. The desire to play together began after exchanging work and perceiving a deeply common approach to bass clarinet playing, to sound, and to music. The two pieces offered here are based in a very distinctive but still strictly coherent approach in relation to the work they intend to do.
Phase to Phase 1 is a ce…
Dig Up Roots
*100 copies limited edition* "Dig Up Roots" is a document of a live performance at Tokyo Arts and Space on July 1, 2022. Ryosuke Kiyasu plays snare drum and table, presenting an extreme and cathartic relationship with physical surfaces and their characteristic tolerances, as exploited with wood, hands, and body. Notably the distinctive acoustics of the space can be felt deeply throughout the performance, not to mention the overblown recording. The space’s container is audible, fluctuating, and s…
Archaisms I
Sorey and Rudolph began performing as a percussion duet in 2018. Sorey states “we seemed so in sync with each other, in part, perhaps, because we are both composers as well as percussionists.” Archaisms 1 is the recorded document of that concert. Sorey & Rudolph brought their unique and evolved rhythm and sonic languages to the fore, through inspired and spirited dialogue. The music flows as one complete piece with several movements or sections. This music exists on its own terms reflecting the …
FFlair III
"Basically, we witness an intimate dialogue between two improvisers. If there had not been a special circumstance leading to this result. Christine Abdelnour and Hans Koch could not hear each other. In fact, "FFlair" is based on two separately recorded solo improvisations, which were superimposed at the end. Mind you, without any subsequent editing." - Rudolf Amstutz
dissolution of the other
Tip! Banjo and woodblocks are the scarce ingredients of Poor Isa's second album, ‘dissolution of the other’. The instruments can be used not only in their usual form, but in alternative tunings, with preparations and additional attributes. This creates an otherworldly vacuum, rich in silence and shadow, with sounds that seem equally familiar as mystical. The music is broken up from its classical form and sounds like an instrumental eld recording or a musical ceremony. In contrast to the rst al…
Pre-Existence
*2023 stock* Limted 2022 restock, last copies. Originally released in 2006. Tetuzi Akiyama has been a major player on the free music/improv scene in Tokyo for over 20 years. Pre-Existence first came out on CD as a part of the great Wooden Guitar series from Locust. Akiyama's playing here is one of a minimalist approach, discovering and investigating the empty spaces between each note. He does not follow the Takoma guitar school style of finger-picking, but instead invokes a far more warped primi…
Roads
Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he comes from a jazz background and has since made his home in the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise. Ted primarily works in ad hoc improvisational settings, but has long standing improvisational groups including duos with Jeff Parker, Chris Cooper, Charlie Mumma, Sam McKinlay, William Hutson, and a trio with Jacob Wick and Michael Foster…
Soma
*2023 stock* The duο’s work focuses on the creative fusion of composition and improvisation, where links between experienced and ideal sound are constantly being formed and deformed. This double CD reflects the two dimensions of Soma. The first CD presents the close musical liaison between Anisengos and Atzakas, along with three additional trios with Michalis Siganidis. The second CD features guest musicians, Savvina Yannatou, Maria Thoidou and Michalis Siganidis, who form trios, quartets and qu…
The Art Of Noticing
'Making a journey to a Bright Nowhere' series - marking Eddie Prévost's 80th birthday.
Volume 2, Cafe OTO 16th July 2022
Z Druhé Strany
*100 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* This new collaboration of Jakub Šimanský and Jiří Štěpán is sort of happy coincidence. They are both active musicians, both coming from different background and performing in within slightly different scenes. Jakub Šuminaský has been cultivating his guitar playing based on the echoes of american primitive guitar style. Bass player Jiří Štěpán is active in his group Národní Divadlo, which steer towards free improvised and dissonant music.
They both met at …