All products

Initially released in 2006, ‘Revep’ is the third collaboration album between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto and the third installment of V.I.R.U.S.’s five albums series. Remastered in 2021 in collaboration with Calyx Studio, the album’s recordings are accompanied by three new compositions titled ‘City Radieuse’, ‘Veru 1’, and ‘Veru 2’. ‘City Radieuse’ was composed for the 2012 short cinematic essay titled ‘Cité Radieuse’ and part of Carsten Nicolai’s ‘future past perfect’ series. The video shot at le Corbusier’s Unité D’Habitation in Nantes (called ‘cité radieuse’) takes the viewer through the modular system and design applied to the residential buildings. The film’s narrative unfolds through a sequence of images tracking the apartments’ indoor space and details, and points to the different benchmarks of standardized production as they correlate to their environment and its inhabitants. The album’s original recordings resulted from musical exchanges that began with ‘Vrioon’ and revolved around a collaborative arrangement of Sakamoto’s classic ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,’ the theme music to the 1983 movie starring David Bowie, Takeshi Kitano, and Ryuichi Sakamoto himself. In ‘Revep,’ the piano takes the lead while the padded bass and pitched electronic frequencies mark sudden change. Deeply evocative and effortlessly colliding worlds of analog beauty and digital mastery, this album is considered another indispensable record from the duo’s ongoing collaboration. ALBUM ART DESIGNED BY CARSTEN NICOLAI MASTERING BY BO @ CALYX TRACKLIST:

SUMMVS IS THE FIFTH COLLABORATION ALBUM BETWEEN ALVA NOTO AND RYUICHI SAKAMOTO. THE RECORD WAS FIRST RELEASED IN 2011 AND IS THE FIFTH AND FINAL INSTALLMENT OF THE ‘VIRUS SERIES’. THE TITLE SUMMVS REFERS TO THE LATIN WORD “SUMMA” (ENG. SUM) AND “VERSUS” (ENG. TOWARDS), AND SERVES AS A METAPHOR FOR THE WORK BEING ORIENTED TOWARDS A COLLABORATIVE RESULT. THE ALBUM FEATURES “MICROON” COMPOSITIONS CONTAINING RECORDINGS OF A 16TH TONE INTERVAL TUNING PIANO—PIANO METAMORFOSEADOR CARRILLO EN DIECISEISAVOS DE TONO. THE ALBUM ALSO FEATURES TWO COVERS OF THE TRACK “BY THIS RIVER” ORIGINALLY COMPOSED BY BRIAN ENO, DIETER MOEBIUS, AND HANS-JOACHIM ROEDELIUS IN 1977.

'alvo noto + ryuichi sakamoto . vrioon 2001-2002' Remastered with extra track. Remastering by bo @ calyx/berlin. 'landscape skizze was originally recorded for 'MATADOR I: ORIENTE' - high quality photographic edition by spanish specialised art house la fabrica thanks to kab america inc. and ryuichi sakamoto.

Released for the first time in 2009, ‘utp_’ is the third installment of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s V.I.R.U.S.'s series. It was commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Mannheim, Germany. The flowing 10-section multimedia work derives its shape from a rasterized structure of the southwestern city, founded in 1608. The recording documents the work’s debut performed by Ensemble Modern at the National Theatre in Mannheim. The music embraces the electronic, piano-based palettes, an expanded array of avant-garde chamber instrumentation and natural timbres. It combined the digital visual score created by Carsten Nicolai and Simon Mayer, and lighting design by Nigel Edwards.

Alva Noto’s award winning score for the 2022 German documentary film This Stolen Country of Mine directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese features nineteen compositions to be released on NOTON in July 2023. The documentary film explores the question of a state’s sovereignty in the face of foreign powers. The film portrays Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country’s resources to Chinese investors. Alva Noto’s music subtly accompanies the struggle of a mountain village, immersing us into the film’s narrative and pathos. Across nineteen compositions, the music exposes and holds back when the images and statements of the protagonists speak for themselves, reflecting the dark shadows and the glares of hope of communal resistance. The documentary was the recipient of the German Documentary Film Music Award 2022.

NOTON is pleased to announce the release of Subterraneans, a collaborative EP featuring Alva Noto, Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore and William Basinski’s cover of David Bowie’s homonymous song. Recorded in 1975, Subterraneans is the closing song of David Bowie’s 1977 album Low. The composition was initially intended for the soundtrack to the 1976 science fiction drama film The Man Who Fell to Earth. This song has a personal meaning to me. It was partly recorded in West Berlin at the Hansa Studio. According to Bowie, “Subterraneans” refers to the people who remained in East Berlin and lived in East Germany after the wall was built. In 1977 I was twelve years old and among the “Subterraneans” the song evoked. It still resonates within me, forty-five years after its original release.” – Carsten Nicolai A tribute of the three artists to Bowie’s work, the EP features an instrumental version and an edit by Alva Noto on electronics with Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore on the vocal and William Basinski on the saxophone.
 Composed by David Bowie Cover art designed by Carsten Nicolai Mastering by Bo @ Calyx

Originally released in 2005, Insen is the second collaboration album between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto and the second installment of V.I.R.U.S.‘s five albums series. Remastered in 2021 in collaboration with Calyx Studio, the album’s recordings are accompanied by an unreleased composition titled Barco. Initially composed for Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 2005 Insen tour, the audio material used in this piece is based on the subtle sounds of Barco projectors, whose tonalities served as a ground for the artists’ live improvisation. In Insen, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto explore the potential for interaction and tension between electronic and acoustic instrumentation. Across eight compositions, the echoes of the cascading piano combine, collide, and dissolve with the tapestry of digital breakages in sheer vibrancy. This relationship lies at the album’s core. It subtly continues Vrioon‘s calm melancholia, becoming a vessel for all the emotions and memories nourished by the listener. As you hear the opening, lonesome notes of Aurora, you realize that the pair have once again conceded an ambition to embed elaborate disciplines into an archetypal sound of soul-searching beauty. Album art designed by Carsten Nicolai Mastering by Bo @ Calyx

On Malarial Dream, Alvarius B. drifts out of Cairo with a fevered, mostly instrumental songbook that bends late‑period Sun City Girls melancholy through Middle Eastern modes, psych‑warped folk and the quiet volatility of a hand‑picked Cairo/avant‑jazz ensemble. With Malarial Dream, Alvarius B. - the solo avatar of Alan Bishop - resurfaces from his adopted home of Cairo with a record that feels less like a follow‑up and more like an apparition. Tracked in and around a tangle of other projects over the past several years, it captures Bishop in a different register from his recent, caustic singer‑songwriter outings. Instead of venomous monologues and cracked torch songs, this album drifts closer to the twilight zone of late Sun City Girls - think Mister Lonely and Funeral Mariachi - where melody, atmosphere and a kind of exhausted tenderness slip in through the back door. The “malarial” in the title is apt: the music moves in waves of clarity and delirium, heat‑blurred and slightly poisonous, yet weirdly soothing. The setting is a psych‑warped folk landscape steeped in Middle Eastern modes and the broader “beyond” that Bishop has been chasing for decades. Mostly instrumental, the record leans on winding themes and small, memorable motifs rather than song‑form in the strict sense. Two obscure covers surface like half‑remembered radio ghosts, but the bulk of the material is original, written to take advantage of a remarkable cast of players orbiting Cairo’s experimental and jazz scenes. You can hear the city in the details: stray percussion patterns that feel like they escaped from a street procession, microtonal inflections in string lines, the way drones and harmonies seem to curl around each other like incense smoke in a too‑hot room. Bishop’s guitar and compositional voice sit at the centre, but Malarial Dream is very much a collaged ensemble record. Adham Zidan, Aya Hemeda, Cherif El Masri and Morgan Mikkelsen - all associated in one way or another with The Invisible Hands - bring a lived‑in flexibility, able to shift from skeletal folk frameworks to denser, almost prog‑like passages without losing the thread. Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi, known for their work with The Dwarfs of East Agouza, help tilt the arrangements toward trance and destabilisation: keyboards, electronics and guitar colour smear the edges of otherwise simple progressions, turning them into slowly rotating mobiles of sound. Elsewhere, contributions from Amélie Legrand, Asher Gamedze, Eyvind Kang, Hana Al Bayaty, Huda Asfour and Sammy Sayed add strings, reeds and rhythmic detail, widening the palette until it feels less like a band and more like a small, shifting orchestra. The mood throughout is nocturnal, more candlelit than sun‑blasted. Pieces often start with a bare figure - a fingerpicked pattern, a muttered line on oud or guitar, a skeletal rhythm - then accumulate detail: a bowed counter‑melody here, a percussion flourish there, faint electronics seeping up from the floorboards. The psych element is less about fuzz and freak‑outs than about subtle warping: pitches bend just off centre, tempos waver like someone breathing through a fever, harmonies resolve in slightly unexpected places. At times the music settles into a kind of desert‑chamber minimalism; at others, it hints at film score, as if these were cues for a movie that flickers in and out of existence while you listen. Produced by Alvarius B. with Adham Zidan, Malarial Dream carries the handmade, one‑off aura that has always surrounded Bishop’s work, but it doesn’t feel minor or throwaway. Instead, it reads like a sideways summation of where he’s arrived after fifteen years in Cairo: a space where the ghosts of Sun City Girls, Arabic song, free improvisation and private‑press folk records all converse at low volume. For longtime followers, the album offers the pleasure of recognising familiar impulses - the bittersweet melodies, the taste for the obscure, the dark humour lurking at the edges - in a new, humid environment. For newcomers, it’s a gently disorienting entry point: a fever dream you step into halfway through, and leave unsure of exactly what happened, only that you want to go back in.

It has taken me over 50 years to write these words. Since my initial successes in the 1970’s many have urged me to “release” unpublished works from the same period, pieces that featured the VCS3 synths or the amazing Serge (which I regret not having used enough) or pieces featuring soundscapes from my classic environmental composition style. For reasons of persistence and empathy, Lawrence English at Room 40 was the most persuasive; now, nearly 3 years after our agreement, a new publication composed with materials from that inceptive period has come to fruition. While I’m condemned to live evermore in the past, it is the future where I continue to put my remaining creative energies. Nonetheless, in the creation of these 2 “new” works I did all I could to avoid sentimentalism or get buried by my own history and the musical riches of the late 20th Century. Relistening to these forgotten fragments of old tapes included inspiring and useful surprises.

Alvin Curran, an American composer / multiplayer who studied under Ron Nelson and Elliott Carter and was known to be active in Musica Elettronica Viva, which was formed with Frederic Rzewski during his stay in Italy, is Roberto Laneri and Giacinto. The gem's first album released in 1975 by his own label, Ananda, formed with Scelsi and others, is a re-vinyl reissue from Superior Viaduct!

One of the legends left by Karan when he was most experimental! Natural sounds such as the sound of waves, wind, birds, dogs, and insects, the sound of a rich synthesizer, and the minimalist melody of Kalimba that makes you feel the lyeism. A modern classical masterpiece. One piece that I want to push as much as possible from the current flow of new age / ambient re-evaluation. Francesco Messina, Steve Reich, Franco Battiato and Superior Viaduct, who evoke the musical heritage of all over the world beyond time and space, are the moments that pass through the mysterious gate. Recommended for those who like Lino Capra Vaccina, Roberto Musci and Sean McCann.

Previously unissued music by Alvin Curran. Collecting works recorded between 2018-2021 and a side-long epic dating back to the early 80s, as the title suggests, »Drumming Up Trouble« focuses on a hitherto almost unknown aspect of Curran’s encyclopaedic and omnivorous musical world: his experiments with sampled and synthesised percussion. As Curran’s wonderful, wildly sweeping liner notes make clear, his fascination with drumming belongs to the radical investigation of music’s fundamental elements that has marked his output since the beginnings of MEV, who aimed (as he says in a recent interview) to return 'in some collective way to a non-existent start time in the history of human music'. Whatever kind of music our proto-human ancestors played, he writes, 'drums were front and centre in the mix. Drums rule!' In a paradox typical of Curran’s approach, »Drumming Up Trouble« interrogates this most ancient dimension of music with contemporary technology. On the first side, we hear recent pieces performed using the sampling software and full-size MIDI keyboard setup Curran has refined since the 1980s. Two of them are wild real-time improvisations, primarily utilising an enormous bank of hip-hop samples. Building from polyrhythmic layers of drum machine fragments to wild cacophonies of clashing vocal samples, scratching, and frantic pitch shifting, these energetic and at times hilarious pieces occupy a space somewhere between John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, Pat Thomas and Matt Wand in the Tony Oxley Quartet, and the propulsive Kudoro/Grime fusion of Lisbon’s Príncipe label. They are improvisations are accompanied by two austere, minimal compositions realised in collaboration with Angelo Maria Farro: »End Zone« for orchestral bass drum and high oscillator, and »Rollings«, where a snare roll is gradually stretched and filtered by digital means into ‘floating electronic gossamer’. The incredible breadth of Curran’s output makes it pretty unlikely that a listener familiar with his work would be surprised to find it branching out in a new direction. But no degree of familiarity with his work can really prepare for side B’s epic and bizarre »Field it More«. It’s perhaps best to let the maestro describe this unhinged and infectious offering in his own words: ‘It features an 8 bar funky minimal riff à la James Brown, played on synth and an-out-of-tune piano, synced to a pre-paid patch on the Roland drum machine. Over this is laid a heavily processed track of the voices of dancer Yoshiko Chuma and movie-maker Jacob Burckhardt discussing an upcoming performance of theirs at the Venice film festival, capped by a track of my playing an increasingly out of control blues over the top of all of the above’. Only Pekka Airaksinen’s Buddhas of the Golden Light comes to mind as a reference point that might even vaguely compare to this wild home-brew of drum-machine funk, mad improvisation and squelching electronics, which eventually dissolved into a massive, layered cluster. Ancient and modern, synthetic and human, hysterical and rigorous, Drumming up Trouble is 100% Curran.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Alvin Curran’s classic Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri, originally issued in 1978 on Ananda, the cooperative label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi. Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri (Light Flowers Dark Flowers) – its title inspired by an intersection in Milan – is the second in the series of four solo recordings Alvin Curran issued in the 1970s and early 1980s, preceded by Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden (1975), followed by The Works (1980) and Canti Illuminati (1982).

Each of these solo works combines field recordings with performances on synthesiser, various acoustic instruments, and voice, arranged in languorously paced, dreamy sequences. Far from the bracing pointillism of much musique concrete, the elements encountered on the meandering course followed by Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri – whether a frenetic piano improvisation, dense layers of Serge synthesiser and ocarina, or a monologue from Frederic Rzewski’s five-year old son, Alexis – often occupy the foreground of our attention for minutes at a time. As Curran explains, his approach is like that of a filmmaker in the editing process, working with “whole blocks of recorded time”.   The purring of a cat, toy piano, a child counting, plaintive synthesiser tones, the cacophony of exotic birds at the London Zoo – each disappears into the next, until, on the LP’s second side, a solo piano performance takes centre stage, moving unexpectedly from percussive minimalist permutations to a halting rendition of Georgia on My Mind. A subtle yet stunning work that more than forty years on still seems charged with possibility, Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri arrives in a loving reproduction of the original sleeve, featuring Edith Schloss’ beautiful cover painting, remastered audio and with new liner notes by Alvin Curran and Francis Plagne.

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of getting them to put together a trio that would perform several concerts and recording was one of the most exciting moments of my career. Our three languages found a common ground of expression where different musical backgrounds came together and created a unique blend for that period of time. (Andrea Centazzo)
Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert Rome, Italy December 13, 1977
Engineer: Nicola Bernardini
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

 ** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline purity that the recording captured and the CD newly presents in all its singular beauty."(Andrea Centazzo)

Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

"I'm sitting in a different room than you are now. I'm recording my own voice. By the resonant frequency of the room strengthening itself, my voice is excluding only the rhythmic elements. Repeat recording and playback until completely destroyed. At that point what you hear is the very natural resonance frequency of the room expressed by my voice. I have this movement in my voice. I think of it as a way to smooth out band irregularities, and I'm not conscious of revealing this phenomenon itself. "

A repress of the classic "I'm Sitting in a Room (1969)" by contemporary musician Alvin Lucier (1931-), originally released in 1981.
By repeatedly recording and playing back the sound of voices echoing in a particular space until the voices become indistinct, the work explores the acoustical engineering of the space to reveal its specific frequencies. It is a work that can only be realized by actually being there, and although it can be perceived as a mere acoustic work just by listening to the recorded sound source, its original purpose is a groundbreaking content that allows the listener to embody a vast and infinite space.

1980 super masterpiece. A work released in 1972, in which a wire with a length of 15 meters was pasted, huge magnets were installed at both ends, and the vibration relationship between air and wire was emitted by an oscillator. This CD contains four tracks of about 18 minutes, but it seems that it was actually an installation for 72 hours in a row. A meditative ecstatic continuous sound that changes depending on the ceiling of the place, the flow of air, the comings and goings of people, etc.

Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon. The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.

Coinciding with the release of the compilation "1972-1985 KATEBEGIAK Prog-Rock, Psych-Folk & Jazz-Rock Music from the Basque Country [Compiled by DJ Makala]", in which has been included Amaia Zubiria & Pascal Gaigne's "Itsasoa Laino Dago" song, we've just reissue for the very first time this rare & hard to find cult record of Basque music, released on 1985 by Elkar label. AMAIA ZUBIRIA & PASCAL GAIGNE "EGUN ARGI HARTAN" (ELKAR 1985) After the well-earned "Adarra" prize awarded by San Sebastián city council in 2021, the name of Amaia Zubiria is back on people’s lips, one of the most outstandingly beautiful voices in the history of folk and Basque music in general. In fact, thanks to the albums recorded with Haizea and with Txomin Artola and many other collaborations, she has been a constant presence in a long, fruitful career spanning over 40 years. However, despite this popularity, much of her extensive body of work is unknown or remains almost forgotten, apart from four or ve records and her most popular songs. This is a shame, because her forgotten back catalogue contains many of Amaia’s most moving songs. Among them, as a taster and an invitation to get into her music, we encourage you to listen to the enchanting “Itxasoan Laino Dago”, recorded together with Pascal Gaigne in 1985. A track featuring the electronic sounds created with great care by Pascal and adorned by Michel Doneda’s saxophone, and guided with a magical sophistication by the talented sound engineer from Hendaye, Jean Phocas. It is an impossibly beautiful melt of avant garde and traditional music (Text: Antton Iturbe)

Okraina Records present an LP by Mauricio Amarante and Marine Debilly Cerisier as Amarante-Cerisier. "What if, alongside the mainstream history of music, with careers and discographies spanning ten or fifty years from album to album, there was an underground, minority history, that of artists and projects with only one record? A flash, a burst of brilliance, a gem, but no follow-up, no repetitions, no decline. This will most likely be the case for this album by Amarante-Cerisier, a duo formed by Mauricio Amarante (Radikal Satan, Équipage, travelling companion of Canan Domurcakli and Austin Townsend) and Marine Debilly Cerisier (dancer, performer, writer, co-founder of alternative cultural venues in Marseille and Brussels), with these eight poetic songs in French having more in common with the visionary essence of certain songs from the early 1970s (Brigitte Fontaine-Areski, for example) than with the post-modernism of the ‘nouvelle chanson française’ of the 1990s and 2000s."

The American jazz-funk/boogie group Ambiance, led by Nigerian player Daoud Abubakar Balewa, who played saxophone, flute and clarinet, was active in LA from the late 70s to early 80s. spiritual jazz funk/fusion masterpiece released by Ambiance in 1980! This is the first analogue reissue of this spiritual jazz funk/fusion masterpiece from the connoisseurs HIGH JAZZ! "Drift Up To Space" is an anthem with sweaty interplay that explodes from the very beginning, and "Devika" is a spiritual jazz fusion that blows a cool breeze with divine grace. Just By Chance" with the amazing female scat is also amazing!

Unearthed by The Mighty Zaf for BBE Music, Into A New Journey by Ambiance is an impossibly rare and sought-after private label spiritual jazz masterpiece from 1982 with Latin, Brazilian and Afro overtones. Ambiance was the ‘nom de guerre’ of an ever-shifting jazz collective headed up by Nigeria-born, LA-tutored multi- instrumentalist, arranger, producer and photographer Daoud Abubakar Balewa.

Balewa studied composition and jazz improvisation at the feet of innovators such as Frank Mitchell (Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers), Jackie McLean (Blue Note) and other masters from the golden Blue Note era. Although he favoured alto, soprano and tenor, he was equally happy on flute, keyboards, and Latin and Brazilian percussion. What’s more, he had the knack of using musicians who were bold enough to welcome being part of such multi- faceted sessions: guitarist Jim Lum’s flexibility suits the theme of this album perfectly, as does prolific Japanese soul-jazz drummer Danny Yamamoto; the stunning Hawaiian pianist Kino Cornwell (Yamamoto’s colleague from funk-fusion supergroup Hiroshima); and the wonderful Jean Carn-like tones of Daoud’s wife, jazz vocalist Monife Balewa.

From the band’s reading of Joe Henderson’s modal masterpiece Black Narcissus, through the deep multicultural percussive jazz-dance workout that is the title track, and on to the three-octave vocal embellishments of Monife, on her own composition Something Better as well as on the Chick Correa fusion classic 500 Miles High, nothing here is generic, nothing taken for granted, nothing comfortable or predictable.

All of the half-dozen or so albums recorded and released by Daoud and Ambiance during just six years of frantic creativity between 1979 and 1986 are well worth seeking out, but in BBE Music’s opinion Into A New Journey is the pinnacle: spiritual jazz worthy of the very best practitioners of the genre, by an obscure group of ludicrously talented artists on a tiny, self- financed indie label with an equally tiny promo budget: that’s what great jazz is all about.

Freestyle Records are proud to reissue Ambiance II Fusion's mid-80s fusion rarity "Come Touch Tomorrow" - originally recorded in Hollywood CA October/November 1984 and released in 1985. Following a yearly run of 4 albums self-released between 1979 and 1982, Nigerian-born saxophonist, flutist, and clarinettist Daoud Abubakar Balewa then took a few years off before returning with 1985's "Come Touch Tomorrow", the first of two albums issued under the updated name of Ambiance II Fusion. Combining the afro-spiritual jazz & be-bop inflected fusion of his earlier work as Ambiance, this record took the project into more modern & distinctly cosmic planes with the introduction of spacey pads and drum machines working alongside somewhat tighter arrangements and solid rhythm sections. Of particular note here is the B1 track "Boy What a Joy" on which a sublimely funky synth & drum machine throwdown is presented in prophetically lo-fi fashion - recalling recent stylistic approaches from the likes of Dâm-Funk among others.

Limited 200 copies, Black Vinyl. On behalf of re:discovery records, it is with great excitement that we announce the release of 'Ambient7 - Excepts from 1995-2000' compilation. Ambient7 was a threesome out of Japan that included Chica Asamoto, Masayuki Momo and Shuichi Ikebuchi. Chica Asamoto, an accomplished saxophone player while Masayuki Momo and Shuichi Ikebuchi both talented synthesizer players and producers in their own right. Together, they released 3 full albums during a 6 year span from 1995-2000. Ambient7's sound was a blend of chill out styles including ambient, techno, balearic house and everything in-between. A unique and heartfelt far east version of chill out techno music . 'Escape' is a soft ambient techno track with a touch of dub that is sure to sit along the greats of genre and the time. Surrounding 'Escape', are two short but worthy examples of the Ambient7 sound. First, is the unique tribal attention getter that is 'Prologue' then ending with the beautiful balearic saxophone serenade that is 'Epilogue'. Flip the record and you 'Deep Sea' that comes in just under 11 minutes. A very unique track that we will just encourage you to take the trip and describe it how you would like. Lastly, is the balaeric ambient house lullaby that is 'Orange Sunshine'. Some who have heard this track call it a reason to buy the record alone for not even hearing the other tracks on this EP. A standout and a perfect set opener or closer, this is sure to be the re:discovery track for the summer for 2022. Genre: Techno, ambient, balearic, chill out, dub

AMBIENT × KYOTO - AMBIENT KYOTO is the world's premier ambient-themed audiovisual arts festival held in the world cultural city of Kyoto. AMBIENT KYOTO and Meditations have collaborated to create a new line of fully organic, natural hand-dyed tote bags from South India, which are now available for order at Meditations.

The tote bags are natural dyed in Auroville, South India, using local organic cotton canvas, Ayurvedic herbs, and indigo that has been fermented and aged for years.