Hunt At The Brook Again / Hunt At The Brook With Neil Metcalfe
Tip! In Vital Weekly 1397, I reviewed a CD by Dirk Serries, Benedict Taylor and Friso van Wijck they released on the Portuguese label Creative Sources Recordings. Now, the Portuguese entered Serries' label New Wave Of Jazz. The improvised music scene is small but very busy. A trio consisting of Carlos "Zingaro" on violin, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello and José Oliveira on percussion. They played on July 30, 2021, in Lisbon and for the title, they took inspiration from Kurt Schwitters. I think the…
Genius Loci
*Limited Edition* Here we have two saxophone masters questioning space through sound and movement, and working in the most inspirational place. "Locus" Puget-ville is a small village in the south France countryside, among vineyards and woods. It's also the place where Barre Phillips spent the most part of his life. And It's the place where the Cepi organization led by him and some brave comrades was born and organized lot of meetings on the topic of mutlidisciplinary improvisation. Torto Edition…
Uragano
Ramble and Torto Editions (Italy) are thrilled to be co- leasing Uragano by Perforto - a string duo for electric guitar and grand prepared piano (wood, metal, paper and other materials).
Praznina / Emptiness
*150 copies limited edition* Emptiness is the second solo record by multi-instrumentalist Iztok Koren, a member of the bands Širom, Škm banda and Hexenbrutal. A result of an outpouring of pent-up creative energy, the album came about after a last-minute force majeure cancellation of a Širom trip to Sarajevo, where the band was to make music for the theatre show Bordel Eden by director Mirjana Medojević. The musician decided to channel his blocked creative flow into new solo material and ended up…
S/t
*Limited Edition* This is the first full-length by the genovese based experimental collective TRÓNCO. Originally live recorded in studio during the summer of 2020, the album has been mixed by Tommaso Rolando and mastered by Domiziano Maselli. It’s a collection of seven pieces that are somehow a multidimensional expansion of the same seed, placed in the ground in an ageless period: a trans-genre and trans-geographic recklessness growth by a wild resonance moving through the body as a spiraloid ar…
Duemiladiciotto
*Handmade Limited Edition* Davide Merlino and Tommaso Rolando have a common interest in improvisation, crazy music and sound manipulation. They also curate releases with Floating Forest and Torto Editions.
Ebb-Tide
*70 copies limited edition* 'EBB-TIDE' is the first release in an upcoming series of limited-run cassettes focusing on Ameel Brecht's "sleep" compositions; music inspired by the vulnerability of sleep, by dream levels, Kleitman and the Wander Company, by sleep's alienation and by the time jungles in the dreaming part of us. As a first CS, 'EBB-TIDE' is about the hushed slow-motion waves of falling asleep, about the moment in-between waking and sleeping, when conscious life ebbs off, daytime rush…
Imerro
Canadian bowed guitarist and multi-instrumentalist C. Diab announces his fifth album Imerro, out February 16th, and presents the trip-infused lead single 'Lunar Barge'.
Solo
TIp! "This tape was the very first idea I had when considering starting the label. Actually, it may have even be the other way around: the possibility of recording and releasing the first Tom Chant solo album acted as the catalyst for Hera Corp. My main concept behind the label was as simple as "release the music you want to listen to”, and I've listened to and played with Tom so many countless times that I didn't need to think twice. It's difficult for me to point to a specific lineage or style…
Catholic Euphoria/Heaven Annihilates
TIp! Quiet and blistering harsh acoustic noise.
Pere Xirau: snare drumÀlex Reviriego: double bass
Textural Studies
*100 copies limited edition* British saxophonist Colin Webster has always had a mono-thematic approach when it comes to making solo albums. From ‘Antennae’ (Gaffer Records, 2013) which dealt purely with micro-sounds and minimal dynamics, to ‘vs. Amp’ (Raw Tonk Records, 2021) which focussed on the sonic capabilities of a baritone saxophone played through a guitar amplifier. Textural Studies – as the title suggests – is no different in approach. Each piece is a deep exploration and thorough interr…
Earthworks
Following 'Gargoyles' and 'Light Industry', Colin Webster and Dirk Serries recorded their third studio album at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio in May 2022. With Colin on the baritone, the pressure is high. Carefully selected from a way longer session, this shorter album is just that : full-on free interaction with no boundaries hold, spiced by the friendship of both musicians and the respect for each other' skills and approaches.
The Big Two
Tip! Here's the last will and testament of Usurper. The final curtain on two decades of heroic toil in the experimental/noise/improv/no-audience underground. Over the course of their twenty year existence, Usurper developed into one of the most original and uncompromising groups to emerge from the early 2000's sub-sub underground, always pushing themselves (and audiences) to new territory. They were fearlessly experimental, with seemingly limitless reserves of creativity. Their performances were…
Hot Plate Only
Honestly Same is an amplified acoustic and synthetic quintet from Chicago. They improvise patient, contemplative and distinctly contemporary music harnessing the sounds of cello, clarinet, electronics, piano, bass, recorder, percussion, synths and accordion. The group is Zachary Good, Lia Kohl, Mabel Kwan, Zach Moore and Sam Scranton. On their second album (and first LP), “Hot Plate Only”, the quintet finds a balance between airy and organic ambience alongside insistent rhythms and dynamic explo…
Sainen Hildo
*300 copies limited edition* Dopelganger is the project in collaboration between classically trained accordion player and singer Garazi Navas (Usansolo, Bizkaia-Biscay, 1995) and Miguel A. Garcia (Vitoria-Gasteiz), an artist living in Bilbao with an extensive career in the fields of experimental music and sound art. Sainen Hildo is an album based on Miguel’s original compositions, recomposed and rearranged for accordion and voice by the two composers. Using the natural resonance and harmonics of…
Abbuio
"Abbuio" is a term that refers to the Italian translation of the English word "Blackout" according to the proposal of the Italian linguist Arrigo Castellani. This new work marks Bignamini's return to the solo acoustic guitar. Moving away from the more classic fingerpicking style, he offers five soft "ballads" (3 improvisations and 2 compositions) inspired by sleepless nights.
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…
Appear To Fade
*100 copies limited edition* Tip! Brooklyn pianist and composer Richard Sears debuts on Shahzad Ismaily’s Figureight records with the hypnotic Appear to Fade, a gentle, melancholic, semi-improvised expression for piano and experimental tape loops, recorded in a single day.
Appear to Fade unveils a realm where the boundaries between jazz and ambient music blur, guided by the skilled hands of Richard Sears on piano and Una Corda. This recording weaves between improvisation and composition, brought…
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…
I was too young to hear silence
A single saxophone, a glockenspiel, two microphones, a zoom recorder. These are the materials Patrick Shiroishi brought down with him late one night into the cavernous parking structure below a hot pot restaurant in Monterey Park. It was around 1:30AM; the spot was not too far from where Shiroishi grew up, a blank slate shown to him by his dear friend, Noah Klein. A vacant space for a new kind of collaboration—between saxophone and silence, between noise and reverberation, between negative space…