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*75 copies limited edition* From the label: "On the occasion of Eric Thielemans' japanese tour, we have published 75 numbered cassettes with which Eric will go on tour."
"2022 was a shit show. I moved three times. I lived in San Francisco for a sudden moment in time. About eight months to be exact. But I jumped through a wormhole . An atmospheric anomaly that rippled across and through my familial center, taking us into a chaos of cardboard boxes, temporary living spaces, a collapse in our art practices, only to be pulled through the other end of the time warp, re-emerging back where we convened in 2019 in Tucson, Arizona--but now it is 2023 and life has changed…
We are thrilled to introduce the world to the innovative sounds of the Japanese improvisational music trio ‘I-I’. Composed of three exceptionally talented musicians, Kazuhisa Uchihashi (guitar, daxophone, pedals), Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi (synthesizers, pedals) and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (percussion). This dynamic ensemble has embarked on a remarkable musical journey with their homonymous debut album. "There's no inspiration from others. We just played." With this raw and unfiltered approach to music, ‘I…
*100 copies limited edition* A strange and alluring admixture of guitar and sine tones, electronics, and field recordings. The sounds have a crystal-like clarity that allows for the perception of their depths and distances. Its episodic form is structured by a compositional spine — with its irregular vertebrae both cohering its shape and allowing it flexibility. As its title suggests, Looking For A Ruler is involved in the construction of space, the stitching together of a world wherein perspect…
*50 copies limited edition* The Delphi was one of the greatest silent movie cinemas of Berlin. It was in operation since the late 20s, it shone in its own golden era, was bombed during the Second World War, was closed and then reused as a warehouse; its walls faded, its floor grew mildewy and its facade today does not indicate anything about what once went on the inside. The interior itself maintains a faded echo of its former glory and its integration in this century’s 20s makes it a hidden gem…
"Intense and stormy "vintage" electronic music - ethereal loops or organ or keyboard effects - synalgias of the unresolved - (AKS by Jean-Marc Foussat) goaded and torn by the extreme bites of the soprano saxophonist (Guy Frank Pellerin). The feeling of duration of their improvisations (22, 19 and 25 minutes) diminishes as the spells fall in this weather of the emerging moment. A nice variety of games in the game phases means that we no longer follow the order of the music, nor its logic. We find…
Arbitrary presents Terrain Vague – the debut of Danish group Mesmer. The album is a series of (deconstructed) live-recordings taken from three live concerts. The sounds on this record are taken from two years’ worth of sound research and creative outbursts with inspiration from field trips to the outskirts of Copenhagen. Intrigued by the auditive landscapes of places where nature and culture meet and challenge each other. Listening to the field-recordings led Mesmer to interpret the moods, music…
DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! In the newest record by the iconoclastic Brooklyn-born composer Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947), find two mesmerizing works for carillon, the keyboard-controlled bell tower derived in the 16th century. On side A, a new piece recorded at the artist’s studio in Belgium—a high-ceiling, stuffed-animal-packed paradise he calls Charleworld—among friends and “divinities,” his name for the thousands of plush toys he’s amassed since the ’60s. On the flip side, Blank Forms…
Sax player Junji Hirose and guitarist Kazuo Imai, both Tokyo residents born in 1955, are renowned Japanese improvisers who have long propelled the country’s improvised music scene. Australian drummer Darren Moore, who is currently based in Singapore, carries on his performance activity while also teaching at Lasalle College of the Arts.
Darren Moore lived in Tokyo for several years in the mid-2010s. Since then he has often visited the country and performed with Japanese musicians. In 2022 he cam…
On the impulse of Jacques Demierre, DDK trio was created in 2014 at the Festival Météo Mulhouse, France. Made up of three major figures on the international music scene, this trio plays music that is totally oriented towards the present moment. It continues the tradition of "instant composition" - going back to Lennie Tristano and passing through the legendary Jimmy Giuffre trio - and deploys an expressive palette ranging from silence to massive acoustic eruptions, while paying particular attent…
Berlin-based British composer, percussionist, and instrument maker Bex Burch was invited to spend a month in the US by International Anthem in Summer 2022. Burch immersed herself in the label's creative community and listened to what it gave her, making field recordings and allowing There Is Only Love and Fear to emerge from the collaborations and environments she encountered. Sessions for the album spanned multiple non-traditional recording spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago a…
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Misaki Motofuji plays baritone sax in all types of free jazz settings. She also carries out performances focusing on acoustic phenomena, based on sound-art-like concepts and incorporating field recordings. But she says her background is in neither jazz nor art—that she actually studied classical music as a music university student. In the bands she leads, Motofuji creates a wide variety of original compositions, from chamber-music-style pop, jazz and mini…
*200 copies limited release* One of our recent favourites that hasn't travelled far enough. A brooding beast of a record beautifully packaged in silk screened cover & sleeve. Mit insert. Emergence and retreat.
*200 copies limited edition* "Abstand" was conceived to enhance the particularities of the combination of accordion and melodica, both wind instruments, one played with movement and the other by blowing. This dichotomy of difference and similarity resulted in intricate textures, not only thanks to the instruments’ particular timbres, but also through the natural microtonal distances in their fixed tunings, especially when it comes to old and worn out instruments like the ones used here.
These mi…
*200 copies limited edition* Born in 1943, Lance Austin Olsen is a Canadian artist and composer. He started painting in his youth and has continued his work as an artist up to the present. In the late 1990s, Olsen became fascinated by experimental music. He has released numerous CDs and digital recordings of both solo performances and collaborations with other musicians. In his creative process, composition and painting are closely related and draw inspiration from one another.
Olsen released a …
*300 copies limited release* "In early 2000s New Zealand, Little Skull started as a small project. Smallness was perhaps the defining characteristic. Lathe cut 7”s in vanishingly small editions, the intricate, fiddly covers hand- crafted with what one would have to assume were very small hands. Or just with the aid of tweezers perhaps. The labels of these records provided no information beyond an illustration of a small – little even – skull. The music was also mysterious and miniaturized but al…
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks here (31 and 39 minutes respectively) were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka at Ftarri on February 8, 2021. Born in 1995, percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka lives in Tokyo. In this concert he…
*2023 stock. 400 copies limited edition* Improviser Junji Hirose is not just a sax player; in the 1980s he started playing the SSI (self-made sound instrument), which he created by combining numerous devices and everyday objects from which noise sounds are produced in a scattered way. In 1989, Hirose recorded the SSI/turntables duo album "Silanganan Ingay" with Otomo Yoshihide and released it independently as an LP. Three decades later, in 2022, a new SSI/turntables duo album by Hirose and Otomo…