Explosions
Probably the first recording (1965!) of improvised jazz combined with electronic music, as well as playing inside the piano and other new music techniques. Bob James (piano); Barre Philips (bass); Robert Pozar (percussion). Also including Bob Ashley and Gordon Mumma (electronic tape collage). The recording is made of an assembly of estranging electronic sound effects, trite sports commentaries, and the music of a beautifully improvising jazz trio. Bob James has, through this convulsion of out-of…
Void Transactions
2017 release ** Void Transactions is the most recent album of Alterations, released in 2017. Recorded at Cafe Oto during the live performance at Alterations Festival 2016. Peter Cusack: acoustic guitar, field recordings. Steve Beresford: piano, electronics, objects; Terry Day: drums, percussion, objects, balloons; David Toop: electric guitars, bass, flutes, objects.
Jukebox-Series 006
Trost continues its Trost Jukebox Series of 7"s. Okkyung Lee - cello; Lasse Marhaug - electronics. Recorded at Lasse's studio in Oslo. No overdubs, minimal editing. Mastered by Martin Siewert. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.
Jitterbug
This is the third album by Norway's Bushman's Revenge (Even Helte Hermansen, Gard Nilssen, Rune Nergaard). Like great records from Elephant9, Scorch Trio, Supersilent, In The Country, Spunk, Fire! and others, Jitterbug was recorded in the old fashioned way, meaning the musicians played together and interacted live in the studio with few or no overdubs. With classic recording studios closing down all over the world, this way of recording could indeed soon be a thing of the past, and the world …
120112
2014 release **
"The three pieces presented by Borg (piano) and Nørstebø (trombone) are spellbinding explorations of the low tone. Three pieces but they segue into one another effortlessly and, with the possible exception of slight variation in pitch (and I'm not even sure of that) are pretty much indistinguishable from each other unless I missing some subtle pattern shift. The sounds are all low and sustained--bottom of the keyboard piano and extremely low trombone (the disc says, simply, "trom…
Leaves Fall
2008 release ** Limited edition of 25 copies: 3" CDR affixed to a 5" square piece of 1/4" plywood with twine. the plywood is sprayed and stenciled on one side. disc is also sprayed/splattered. "Nearly 17min of solo electric guitar. three, almost equal length pieces. The middle, lighter one, is sandwiched in between two slabs of thick heavy guitar throb, ala Alasehir/Alumbrados".
Caroline
2014 release. More solo percussion from Weighter Recordings, this time from Tim Feeney, whose work I had been unfamiliar with up to this point. The long, drawn-out drum rolls from which the album's two tracks are formed invite immediate comparison with the work of Weighter director-in-chief Nick Hennies, with whom Feeney performs in the trio Meridian. However, much as artists of the Sixties and Seventies explored the shared format of monochrome painting with very different concepts in mind…
Whitewashed With Lines (Common Objects)
A double CD featuring two extended live performances by the electroacoustic quartet of John Butcher (sax), Angharad Davies (violin), Rhodri Davies (harps) & Lee Patterson (amplifed devices)
Music For Piano
"Although it might sound perverse to say so, Music for Piano may well be my favorite Gary Wilson record. Most people who dig Wilson are very into his lyrics, but I actually find them to be a bit taxing after a while. Those early records all sound and feel amazing, but what I really wanted was to hear the music without the words. I had high hopes when I found a copy of Another Galaxy, the 1974 Gary Wilson Trio LP, but it had a very different heft than that which Gary displayed on You Think You…
Truancy
Jim Denley and Dutch musician Cor Fuhler first met at the Taklos Festival in Switzerland in the early 1990s and Cor's frequent visits to Australia over the years gave them the opportunity to occasionally play. In 2012 Cor moved to Sydney, allowing them to ramp up the duo - this is their first release together. Over 7 weeks at the end of 2013 they recorded weekly in Cor's backyard studio, eventually choosing take 9 and 12, titling them Skive and Wag. Their imaginative preparations and inventions …
The Golden Hour
Portland guitar wizard Marisa Anderson's long-awaited solo guitar record. Marisa has been a fixture on many a music scene for years and years, playing with everyone from the Evolutionary Jass Band to Tara Jane O'Neil to The Dolly Ranchers. In any context, she can't escape her rag/blues/folk roots, no matter how hard she tries. On this LP featuring only guitar, no vocals, no overdubs, we are treated to a very intimate-sounding home recording filled with delicate grace. Comparisons to John F…
Tokyo 1972
Tip! *2022 stock* Some of the best recordings from Sydney's vibrant exploratory/spontaneous music scene ever released. Teletopa was “one of the earliest recorded examples of improvisation in Australia“. The trio was formed in Sidney in 1970 by Peter Evans, David Ahern and Roger Frampton, with various guests for each performance. Using conventional instruments like flute, saxophone, piano and percussion, Teletopa explored extended technique, unusual ways of playing, dissonances and silences, in …
Scrumptious sabotage
A recording of live performances which brought together two essential figures of the contemporary scene: an oustanding Norwegian composer and vocal artist Maja S.K. Ratkje and a celebrated improviser and composer, former DNA drummer, Ikue Mori. The common sound territory, created together by Mori and Ratkje, balances between quietly growing tension and powerful outbursts of unrestrained, relentless noise. Within this harmony, Ratkje takes adventurous excursions towards the borders and unknown fa…
Bruxelles
Bruxelles unites GOL, Mik Quantius (of Embryo), and Dave Nuss (No-Neck Blues Band) for a wild, improvisational journey blending art rock, krautrock, and avant-garde experimentation.
Temperament as Waveform
Temperament as Waveform is a transatlantic exchange in process and poetics. Between 2010 and 2012, UK-based sound artist Lee Patterson and Austin’s Vanessa Rossetto traded recordings, objects, and digital files by post - each response reshaping and folding the other's sonic worlds. The album merges four wide-ranging improvisational/concrète works, each combining manipulated field recordings with amplified objects, cassette fragments, instrumental events, and filtered signal noise.
Opener “Every…
Gestalt & Death
2012 release ** Limited hand-numbered edition of 500 copies in cardboard sleeve. "Dead Country (Sevket Akinci, electric guitar. Umut Çaglar, electric guitar, monophonic synth, tape delay. Murat Çopur, electric bass. Kerem Öktem, drums, percussion) + Alfred 23 Harth, alto sax, clarinet, vocal, electronics. Recorded at Deneyevi, Maslak by Ergin Ozler on the 21st of november 2011, artwork and design by Mazen Kerbaj.
Moulins
Tomasz Krakowiak's latest work on Bocian Records is a purely sonic affair. Performed on acoustic percussion instruments, it has little to do with percussion music. Each piece is named after a particular location and or a sonic event present there. Krakowiak's monotonous playing a specific instrument seems to achieve an effect of a field recording made at the given location. What makes this effort successful is a broad range of his techniques and sonic intuition. These excellent recordings…
Live
* Edition of 200 * Convergence was formed in 1976 (and disbanded around 1980), with written music for the ensemble scarce, improvisational sessions became more frequent. Their first few concerts at The Music Gallery had a somewhat haphazard and random mix of students, some of whom didn’t quite get the notion of free improv. Recorded live at the Music Gallery in September 1979, their instrumentation includes trumpet, trombone, piano, percussion, home-made instruments and toy instruments, which p…
Stroke by stroke
2011 release ** All the recordings were made at home in Athens between June 2010 and April 2011. No electronic effects, overdubbing or processing used. Ambient noise from several parallel events taking place in Greece at the time of recording has deliberately not been removed. "On Stroke by Stroke, the windows in Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga’s house are thrown open; you can hear the streets of Athens enlaced in her apothegmatic pieces for a radically prepared and refashioned zither. Knowing this…
The Seven Storey Mountain
a groundbreaking musical project by Nate Wooley, unites legends like Paul Lytton (Evan Parker’s longtime collaborator) and David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, Bastro) in an ecstatic sonic journey. Inspired by Thomas Merton’s spiritual exploration, the piece transcends religion, channeling the raw energy of free jazz and modern noise. Premiered at NYC’s Festival of New Trumpet Music, it blends improvisation, ambient textures, and bold experimentation—a testament to Wooley’s visionary artistry.