The Time Of The Ancient Astronaut
2001 release ** "The Spaceheads and Max Eastley have sculpted a complete work from a clash of ancient and future technologies. Music as, crafted soundscapes, sculptured washes of sound, deep textures, broad melodic invention, spontaneous meetings. The Spaceheads have been hurtling down a unique path of their own for many years now. This duo mix trumpet and electronics with drums and percussion. Plaintive trumpet calls are looped across pulsing beats that propel us into sheets of metal crashing a…
Prequel Oct. 1998 - Mar. 1999 + 1
2008 release ** "This is the first album by Mitsuru Nasuno (Altered States, Fushitsusha, Ground Zero, Korekyojinn, etc.), the top bassist in Tokyo's most cutting-edge scene, also known as the groove master. As the title suggests, the recording took place between 1998 and 1999. Two of the tracks (the third and fourth) were already included in the 10-disc box set "Improvised Music from Japan." This work is the complete version, so to speak. This complete version, which has finally seen the light o…
Solid Layers, Deafening Shapes
2016 release ** "A solo percussion album from Francesco Gregoretti, employing traditional instruments and unusual object to create unique audio environment that use predictable rhythmic elements against capricious approaches, giving his playing a personal style fueled by resonance and natural feedback; an album that balances chaotic and structured environments in riveting ways."
À Chacun Son Dépanneur Cigares Cubain
2002 release ** Andrea Martignoni offers us a work that can be listened to like a film somewhere between documentary and fiction, whose hero is the repairman.
Guo1
2017 release ** "GUO is the duo of guitarist and singer Daniel Blumberg (Hebronix, The Howling Hex) and saxophonist Seymour Wright. Both use heavy distortion and extreme amplification which is later processed and manipulated with metal cassettes to create a multi-layered, lacquered object of sinister, fizzing, metallic beauty. GUO1 with text by David Toop, was the beginning of an on-going series of releases that include etchings made by the duo and a piece of ekphrasis from a creative writer res…
Transition
2011 release ** Limited edition of 450 hand-numbered copies. "Tetuzi Akiyama, an improviser who plays both acoustic and electric guitar, performs in Japan and other countries, including on yearly overseas tours. Takuji Kawai, born in 1963, studied classical piano as a child and received a master's degree from the graduate school of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He started improvising in the mid-1980s, and in addition to improvised music he currently performs works by contempo…
Ella
With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano. Com…
Fifteen Point Nine Grams
2009 release ** "SLW is a multinational group that can claim to include in its ranks some of the most respected voices in today’s improvisation community. The four musicians have worked together on occasions since their first meeting in October 2006 and presented their debut eponymous recording through formed records in early 2008. Fifteen point nine grams picks up from where that album left off, introducing even greater dynamic tension to their ever-tranquil field of sound. Recorded live at the…
Touch
2012 release ** "Touch is the new sound work by Tiziano Milani. Published in CDR digipak by Setola di Maiale, Touch confirms Tiziano’s status as one of the best and most appreciated Italian experimental and research composers, especially since, for this new work, he was able to avail himself of the collaboration of musicians of the caliber of Koji Nishio on piano, Hiromi Makaino on objects/electronic percussion/rhythms, Lars Musiikki on double bass/acoustic guitar, Cristian Corsi on tenor sax an…
Matta
2007 release ** "In April 2007, Ramuntcho Matta went to Tokyo to play with Mama Milk, a Japanese duo, and came back with hours of live recording done by Romain de Gueltzl. From this meeting of three different instruments, accordion, double-bass and guitar, above which Ramuntcho sometimes sings, a unique music was born, mixing jazz, tango and the new music in a movement which is both Zen and sincerely contemporary. SometimeStudio decided to publish these recordings in order to share these moments…
Composition No. 12.5 (Compilation II For Improvisers, Jazz Ensemble And Electronics)
1999 release ** "An outstanding record that demands a place in any comprehensive collection... some of the most vivid and creative improvisation/composition fusions in recent times... wholly individual mixtures of realtime improvisation and writing that cheerfully filches from all post-bop and compositional areas, yet which depends as much on the colour and intensity of the individual improvisations"
Dō Ya Sa´ Di Dō
1992 release (RARE) ** "Anna Homler (Los Angeles, 1948) is a performance artist, vocalist and composer whose vocal acrobatics fall halfway between Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson. She started out in 1980 with performance art and around 1985 began to focus on the human voice and invented a language of her own. Her first triumph was the phantasmagoric album Do Ya Sa' Di Do (AMF, 1992), featuring Ethan James, Steve Moshier, David Moss and Bernard Sauser-Hall. She fully revealed her surreal perso…
Linea D'Ombra
1993 release ** "Linea d'ombra is the CD from more than twenty years ago with which the author inaugurated his personal journey as an interpreter-composer on the border between the languages of jazz, classical music and rock. At the time, Roberto Verti wrote about it in the presentation of the CD: “A musician with a cult background who moves between the moods of the new age and the high craftsmanship of the academy, between the La Scala scene and minimal, jazz; plays with flutes and combines t…
Manchmal Vertrödelt Christa S. Den Tag
Rare original issue. Recorded by the husband and wife duo of Kurt Schwertsik and Christa Schrwertsik, “Manchmal Vertrödelt Christa S. Den Tag” is a dreamy gestalt, an album that borders Chanson, spoken-word, Ubu-esque passages, chanting and singing, against a variety of textures and jazz noir. Kurt Schwertsik (b. 1935) is an Austrian experimental/avant-garde composer. His music is mercurial and idiosyncratic with a refreshing lightness of touch. Though a pupil of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the compo…
Echolocation
'Echolocation' is the astonishing debut album from Mendoza Hoff Revels, a formidable new unit led by Ava Mendoza & Devin Hoff and featuring James Brandon Lewis & Ches Smith. While Mendoza and Hoff have floated around each other's musical orbits for decades, and have been friends for some time, this is their first work together on record. It is an electric & holy harmonic fusion of highly estimable musical forces; wholly rendered. The original impetus of this group was Mendoza’s, based on the lov…
Readings By Jack Kerouac On The Beat Generation
In his third and final album, recorded ahead of the publication of his novel, Doctor Sax, Jack Kerouac uses his voice as an instrument, weaving his words inside of patterns and percussive accents the way a horn player solos over the changes of a well-known standard. The set is presented with an immense focus and energy to keep the listener engaged for a full 40 minutes. The Verve By Request Series features 180-gram vinyl, pressed at Third Man in Detroit.
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.
Tengu et Kitsune
2006 release ** "Sparse mandolin music (very slow & deliberate plucking reminiscent of Derek Bailey), with a couple spurts of electronic noise throughout the duration."
M’Uoaz
1997 release ** "Japanese bassist Tetsu Saitoh stands out as a new hope from across the ocean. He's the new ray in the sea of bodies that play the same standard fare. These two recordings, released on his own Scissors label, outline the here and now in his present body of work. On "M'uoaz", Tetsu is surrounded by an all-star cast, which includes saxophonist Michel Doneda and percussionist Alain Joule. [Vocalist Antonella Talamonti joins the trio on one track.] The music is rather sparse. Joule i…