Ambient / Minimal / Drone

The return of Terre Thaemlitz / DJ Sprinkles with a first solo vinyl release in over five years, features an exclusive 17 minute vinyl edit of 'Names Have Been Changed’ from the Deproduction album and DJ Sprinkles’ incredible House Arrest mix - which totally destroys us each and every time...

Asking pertinent questions about the hypocritical nature of relations between LGBT agendas and Western Humanist notions of the nuclear family, Terre’s Deproduction sensitively yet unflinchingly broaches topics usually considered taboo by a mainstream who are all too happy to pick and choose parts of radical, fringe culture to fetishise, while swerving the bigger questions proposed by those niches.

In the vinyl edit of Names Have Been Changed, exclusive to this LP, Terre contracts the original, 43 minute blend of strings and unsettling scenes of domestic violence into a 17 minute version, beautifully suspended in the cut at 45rpm in order to best represent the work’s unique democracy of frequency - from the muffled row heard next door, to its hyperrealistic avian chirrups and modestly spare, foregrounded strings. 

On DJ Sprinkles' extended House Arrest mix on the B-Side, Terre’s ideas feel even more radical when juxtaposed with a sublime deep house production, placing them in context of what was and still can be a radical artform when done with insight and consideration. The result is one of this decade’s most sublime yet unsettling house tracks, bar none.

sample-Names Have Been Changed (Sound/Reading for Incest Porn) (Vinyl Edit)
sample-Names Have Been Changed (Sprinkles' House Arrest)

Khotin by Vancouver producer Dylan Khotin-Foote is a reissue of the cassette release that sold out instantly at bandcamp in 2018! The profound ambient sound is a chill-out refinement of the unfathomable depth of the previous work, which is both immersive and sleepy, and has been beautifully incorporated into the lo-fi feel of the artwork while maintaining the vibrancy of the spiritual & naturalistic sound world. This is a masterpiece of beauty that cannot be described in words, with a profound sound world that creates a dreamy fantasy land on a windowsill in broad daylight, only to sink into the border between Hades and reality. A masterpiece of unspeakable beauty. Highly recommended for all music lovers from new age to ambient and Balearic.

You can't just soak it in and sleep to it, you'll melt. From "Mood Hut" to "1080p" to "Summer Cool", Khotin, a popular Vancouver producer by the name of Dylan Khotin-Foote, has taken over the charm of the cool house coming out of Canada. The cassette, which sold out in 2017 on Bandcamp, has been reissued with 2LP! It's a lone ambient sound with a sweet layer of synthesizers drifting with dreamy ambience, a gentle beat with a hint of sanctuary, and immersive concrete sounds floating in the air. This is the culmination of the lo-fi house movement. A mysterious sound with an unfathomable depth. If you like ambient, deep house, new age, or Balearic music, this is a must have!

Mshukai is an improvisation group that revolves around Imao Takuma, known as a contemporary artist and percussionist Pedal.The group performs in unconventional spaces such as baseball fields or inside closets, responding playfully to the environment. This tape documents their performance in the headwaters of a river in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, where they brought equipment and played around a campfire. Additionally, recordings capture their studio session in Kanazawa, where they listened to the above recorded performance while playing with Imao's studio doors open. They also recorded a performance where Imao and Pedal interacted across a road, simulating a dialogue. This project serves as the debut album for Mshukai.

The Expanding Universe is the 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The original album is reissued here as a massively expanded 3LP or 2CD set, containing all four original album tracks plus an additional 15 tracks from the same period, nearly all previously unreleased and many making their first appearance on vinyl in this brand new 2018 edition. Since this album's first reissue in 2012, it has gone on to be widely established as a classic of electronic, ambient, and 20th century classical music. Some of the well-loved works included in this set are "Patchwork", the "Appalachian Grove" series, "East River Dawn" and "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds", which was included on the Golden Record launched on board the Voyager spacecraft. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover's notes), all built of electronic sounds using the GROOVE system at Bell Laboratories during the 1970s. The 3LP vinyl edition was cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin.

US-born, Norwegian-Mexican artist and producer Carmen Villain's fourth album Only Love From Now On is out February 25th, 2022 on Smalltown Supersound. The culmination of a build-up that began with a turn in sound evident on 2019's Both Lines Will Be Blue, Only Love From Now On presents Villain’s aesthetic blossoming into something unexpected, benevolent in its composure and altogether luxuriant in its sensuality.If her themes are wide, philosophical, and occasionally abstract, the emotional tenor of Hillestad's music is clear and purposeful. Makes sense that her key musical touchstones are dub, ambient, and cosmic jazz – flexible vehicles for tranquil wonder.Listening to Only Love From Now On is simultaneously comforting and alluringly strange. Partly it’s the contributions of guests Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics) and Johanna Scheie Orellana (flutes). Partly it’s the fluidity between instruments – such as clarinets – field recordings, the studio, jam, and careful composition. She calls the process a conversation with sound that occurs in her deliberate attempts to experiment with new methods, like granular synthesis, for her music-making.Only Love From Now On is fueled by the sense of scale in feeling small in the face of things so large, the contemplation of how the biggest impact we can have is in the people close to us, the attempt to make sure that impact is a positive one, and the choice to try to focus on love instead of fear. Hillestad describes it as "wishing to maintain a sense of careful optimism for the future, while on the cusp of something unknown."

As one of the very few true 'Godfathers' of Ambient Music, Laraaji has forged a unique path forward (always, always forward) since his groundbreaking 1980 LP for Eno's Ambient label, "DAY OF RADIANCE'. It remains one of the eternal pillars of the genre. His extraordinary contributions to modern music over the course of four decades highlight his lifelong dedication to the belief that Peace can be achieved through audio serenity. Kramer's work in Ambient Music is less universally known, but no less pioneering. His most recent Shimmy-Disc LP, 'Music For Films Edited by Moths', suggests that his immersion in the genre is now complete. Cerebral yet simple, intoxicating yet tranquil, Kramer's newest and more elusive body of work gently heralds what lies ahead. His commitment to quiet music is complete. LARAAJI & KRAMER - "AMBIENT SYMPHONY #1" is the first window into their collective muse - a collaborative LP of shimmering clarity and vision, defying all expectations for the fans of each of these two diversely pioneering artists. Containing three 'Movements' (along with an additional 4th Movement on the digital release), this first Ambient Symphony is a beatific exercise in the sublime, unfolding dreams to waking life. Quiet music has never been so colorfully detailed, or so nakedly honest. Ambient Music has a new beginning.

Like a perennial that returns with each new spring, the Mort Garson archives (Plantasia, Ataraxia, Lucifer) have brought to bear yet another awe-inspiring bloom. Journey to the Moon and Beyond finds even more new facets to the man’s sound. There’s the soundtrack to the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Eye (starring Fred Williamson), some previously unreleased and newly unearthed music for advertising. Just as regal is “Zoos of the World,” where Garson soundtracks the wild, preening, slumbering animals from a 1970 National Geographic special of the same name. The mind reels at just what project would have yielded a scintillating title like “Western Dragon,” but these three selections were found on tapes in the archive with no further information. The crown jewel of the set is no doubt Garson’s soundtrack to the live broadcast of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, as first heard on CBS News. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Moogkind. For decades, this audio was presumed lost, the only trace of it appearing to be from an old YouTube clip. Thankfully, diligent audio archivist Andy Zax came across a copy of the master tape while going through the massive Rod McKuen archive. So now we get to hear it in all its glory. Across six minutes, Garson conjures broad fantasias, whirring mooncraft sounds, zero-gravity squelches, and twinkling études. It showcases Mort’s many moods: sweet, exploratory, whimsical, a little bit corny, weaving it all together in a glorious whole.

WRWTFWW Records is proud to announce the worldwide reissue of Midori Takada’s solo album from 1999, Tree of Life, available on vinyl for the first time ever in a new audiophile mix by the Japanese percussionist herself, and in full half-speed-mastered glory. The 180g LP comes in a heavy sleeve with a beautiful design by Kohei Sugiura. Tree of Life is also available in CD (digipack) and digital formats. Originally recorded in September 1998 at legendary Ginza (Tokyo) studio Onkio Haus (founded in 1974 and where Ryuichi Sakamoto’s "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" and many more were recorded) and released on CD only for the Japan market in 1999, Tree of Life is Midori Takada’s best kept secret, a lost gem of minimalism and percussive ambient. The album is separated in two parts, the first one finds Takada exploring her trademark environmental soundscapes with precise mastery of marimba, drums, and bells, notably on the magnificent fan-favorite "Love Song Of Urfa". The second half is a collaboration with Chinese virtuoso Erhu player Jiang Jian Hua, allowing Midori Takada to unveil new layers of her artistic mind with a slightly more theatrical approach and a beautiful crystallization of complex simplicity. The entire album was given a fresh new audiophile mix by Midori Takada herself and was mastered at Emil Berliner Studios, with half speed cutting for the vinyl version, to ensure an audio presentation aligned with the Japanese pioneer’s vision. This Tree of Life reissue follows two newly recorded Midori Takada albums, Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter and You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana, both available on WRWTFWW Records, along with her 1983 masterpiece, Through The Looking Glass.

Moritz von Oswald's latest solo album is his most startling, time-bending material since the Basic Channel days, a collaboration with a 16-voice choir that refracts techno and choral music into dizzying psychedelic traces, exploiting mind-altering xenharmonic synth tones, Ligeti-like operatic phrases and abyssal kicks with a veteran's cunning. We've been knocked sideways by this one - trans-dimensional afters music at its absolute best. We realise that there's been a lot of electronic music released recently saddled with these buzzwords. Choirs, unusual tunings, deconstructions of early music - elements almost mandatory for artists eyeing the lucrative Euro festival circuit. But to our mind that's what makes von Oswald's latest all the more astonishing. He's stepped in with an album that's so definitive, it reminds us just how foundational and game-changing his early material was, and how less can so often amount to more. Opening track 'Silencio' is a dazzling proof of concept that winds lilting, oddly-tuned synth tones around the barest percussion. There are no vocals on this one, instead the traces of early Detroit techno hang heavy around its frayed edges. Working like a scientist with the stereo field, von Oswald introduces familiar elements into the mix in unexpected places. Wormy,cascading synth tones are met by driving whirrs, and the kickdrum sounds so submerged that it's almost an illusion. When he does introduce noisier sounds, they color the track like drybrushed highlights, and he saves the best until the final moments, energising the mood with monumental Millsian stabs that reference the past without retreading churned mud. It sets us up for the album's biggest tonal shift, when Oswald presents the choir on 'Luminoso'. He's worked extensively with ensembles in the last few years, his own - the constantly-shifting Moritz von Oswald Trio - the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Kyrgyz ensemble Ordo Sakhna, and the experience has furnished him with the ability to treat the choir with just the right amount of reverence and distance. Here, the Berlin singers' voices swirl into ghosted tones, nestling beneath a layer of mixing desk noise that feels like von Oswald's little wink to the camera, an acknowledgement of past glories. Moritz also provides a more abstracted rework of the track (along with three other versions of the choral compositions) that deepens the narrative. Losing the vocals completely, this take references the original's framework while adding impalpable, off-grid beats and cottony, rumbling textures that pirouette between the speakers. The synths and voices meet somewhere in the middle on 'Infinito', and von Oswald's remix shuttles them further into outer space, fogging them into spectral impressions and building a lithe rhythm over the top that hiccups and stutters with poise and momentum. 'Colpo' is even more impressive, offsetting the suggestive chorals with mechanical oscillations and thunderous sub bass tones. Like the earliest Detroit experiments, it's material that positions electronic music as a way to speculate about the past's relationship with the future. Von Oswald has formulated a minimalist masterpiece that interrogates not just technology, but the conceptual technologies of cultural invention. It's a highly rewarding, engrossing listen, certain to become a classic for the most adventurous after-hours listeners.

Still Way" by Satoshi Ashikawa, one of the pioneers of Japanese environmental music, who founded the famous Sound Process label (Sound Process Design Co., Ltd.) and has brought out famous artists such as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Oscilation Circuit, and Satsuki Shibano, has been reissued on CD and LP! Finally, the new age revival/domestic ambient reevaluation has come to an end! Originally interested in contemporary music when he was in college, he worked at Art Vivant, a store specializing in art books and contemporary music, and has been active in experimental performances since the late 70s, collaborating with Mamoru Fujieda, Midori Takada, and Hiroshi Yoshimura. The following year, he passed away at the age of 30. This album has a clear concept of ambient music in the lineage of Brian Eno, and was created as a work that can be listened to casually as a "sound landscape" or "sound object. Four players, including Midori Takada, perform music composed by Satoshi Ashikawa. Although the composition varies from piece to piece, piano, harp, and vibraphone are used. It is a beautiful work that depicts an emotionally rich landscape that passes through contemporary/minimal music and is very simple, but also has the beauty of a Japanese pull. In his own words, the music is like a series of still moments. The cover design is by Hiroshi Yoshimura. Liner notes by Midori Takada, Satoshi Ashikawa and Gareth Quinn Redmond are included.

牧歌的ニューエイジ・フォーク大傑作『Pentimento and others』を残した人物であり、サンフランシスコ拠点のフォークロック・バンド、Citayのメンバーとしても知られるニューヨークを拠点とするギタリスト/作曲家のEzra Feinbergによる最新アルバム『Soft Power』が〈Tonal Union〉からアナログ・リリース。当店お馴染みの名ハーピストMary Lattimoreに、シューゲイズ・ドローン/アンビエント名手Jefre Cantu-Ledesma、マルチ奏者のRobbie Leeといった面々と共に精巧に作り上げた親密でゆとりのある珠玉のアンビエント・フォーク作品！限定300部。

'Imerro' is a collection of song odes to both heat and desire, closely felt. Its title literally presented itself to Diab from a random page contained in a poem by Ezra Pound found in the book ‘The Imagist Poem’. Searching for its meaning, Diab discovered that Imerro is “a Greek word for ‘desire for, I desire you’, yet nothing could substantiate its truth. “It made sense, almost like it had chosen me. An obscure word for Desire, one that might not even exist, or is so ancient that nobody really remembers it meaning anything. It's just a sound, like an album.” Imerro finds Caton at his most expressive and free-spirited. Inviting the music to find him, almost by osmosis, foregoing any preconceptions of playing any instrument he is unfamiliar with or regrets not learning during adolescence. This is music for wide screens: the result is an undeniably evocative, moving and mysterious voyage. Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer’s unprecedented second “heat dome”, which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of “simple ecstatic improvisation.” Diab explains: “I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music ‘shows its face’ as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play.” ‘Ourselves At Least’, the rhythmic album opener gracefully leaps and bounds with a human-like metronome at its core, capturing a rush of elatedness felt by Diab over the course of its late night creation. ‘Lunar Barge’ bursts into life with tone-bending bow strikes that glide across Diab’s guitar towards a climatic peak before the track drops into an electronic/acoustic trance. Inspired in part by the rhythmical works of Huun-Huur-Tu and the animated cello play remindful of Arthur Russell. “Lunar Barge is a track for a dry, hot night in the forest (which it quite literally was.). I roamed around the floors of the studio picking up any instrument standing out in the moment, and tried to see if it had anything to say.” ‘The Excuse of Fiction’ sees Diab return to free-flowing guitar play, the chosen instrument of his youth. He loops layers to form an ethereal backbone before plucking further melodies from the air on top. The result is a cinematic guitar-laden expanse brimming with optimism and nostalgia. The title references a quote by Zizek: “We need the excuse of a fiction to stage what we really are.” Themes of remembrance, yearning and desire pervade the album's 9-tracks with a palpable presence as we reach ‘Quatsino Sound’, named after an inlet on Northern Vancouver Island where Diab grew up. It features hoopoe birdcalls which were sampled from a found cassette tape of African sounds before being randomized until it became rhythmic, then embellished with synth lines, bass drops, and bowed layovers. The album centres around the nocturnal ‘Crypsis’ with Diab sleepily playing notes on a switched-off Wurlitzer before dampened piano chords, bow scrapes, and noisy glitches reverberate. ‘Erratum’ erupts with untamed force from a war cry of screaming saxophone layers reminiscent of Colin Stetson. Its visceral thirst and energy seem to be a response to the heat of the night and Diab’s urge to play the instrument he loved but had yet learnt. ‘Tiny Umbrellas’, an improvised pass of banjo, bowed guitar and ethereal modular synths breathes a contemplative pause before ‘Surge Savard’ chimes in. This whirlwind closer started life as a longform jam under the influence of psychedelics; its modular synth, air organ, guitar and sax lines were initially improvised with final touches made at Watch Yer Head studio.

Following its release in the winter of 2018, "Landmarks", a collaboration between veteran ambient artists Celer and Forest Management, initially drew quiet accolades and a steadfast listenership that has since swelled to unimagined proportions (~20 Mil. streams), resonating with listeners perhaps now more than ever and cementing its status as an experimental classic. Inspired by Paul Theroux's novel "The Mosquito Coast" and Peter Weir's 1986 film adaptation of that book, "Landmarks" sets out 14 tracks in a "stunning hour of music" (The Quietus) that creates a "general sense of foreboding, critique of romantic retreat into individualism and colonialism" (A Closer Listen). The album is now offered on vinyl for the first time (originally out on cassette tape), newly remastered by Stephan Mathieu to enhance the depth and richness of this oneiric soundscape. Both Americans, Celer (Will Long) resides in Tokyo, Japan and Forest Management (John Daniel) in Chicago, USA. "Landmarks" was born of their months-long collaboration, trading music back and forth and reshaping each other's work using a series of patches, tape looping, and electronic manipulation. As a throughline in each piece we hear their distinct voices and cultural contexts blend to unique, often otherworldly effect, conjuring a dreamlike tension that refuses easy resolution. We are hooked by a mood that captured listeners back in 2018 and continues to hold us today in the context of current events, related disquietudes, and a nostalgic longing for solutions that may be more imaginary than real.

Recorded in sessions spanning eighteen months, Magnificent Little Dudes Vol.1 is full of obscure beats and samples, ethereal droning synth lines, and drumming that lifts and drive the record into new territory. The duo are also joined by Japanese guest vocal performer Hatis Noit (Erased Tapes) in the penultimate track “M4”, which his released today as the first single.

“M4” perfectly exemplifies the album’s atmospheric and subtly intricate makeup, combining

mellifluous guitar lines with memory-evoking, slaloming electronics, while Ishiwaka’s drums ruminate in the background of the track and Noit’s otherworldly vocals add an element of wistful drama.

Speaking on the recording process, Hatakeyama says “No overdubbing was done. I like the 70's style of recording and wanted to give it an old-time jazz feel.” Speaking about his influences when writing the album, he goes on to say “It may not sound like much, but it's free jazz, spiritual jazz. I love Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra. Conceptually, we didn’t prepare anything in advance, but chose to take inspiration from the place, the studio, the venue, the weather, the temperature of the day, and so on – the album is full of short improvisations. I love Les Rallizes Dénudés, Keiji Haino, and My Bloody Valentine as well, so that's where a lot the guitar-based influence comes from”

Giovanni Di Domenico has now achieved a personal and unmistakable style within contemporary minimalism. His music always expresses a state of concentration, of recollection and contemplation toward a focal node. Repetition is experienced as alchemical state, as truth contained in the small nuances of change, in a crescendo that never reaches a climax. The atmosphere is intuition and is made up of a few compositional touches. To compose is to make synthesis, to unearth purity, simplicity and exactness. This new work for solo piano is almost an imaginary novel...the notes seem to tell of deserted streets, lonely walks in the night or runs down stairs. In this sense the musician is the writer of silence and the fleeting moment. And so, amid slow chords like Chopin or Satie, moods oscillate between brio and allegro, evoking the lightness of love, greater sadness and melancholy, as well as more restless and agitated ostinatos, the product of a more cathartic worldview.

Klara Lewis and Yuki Tsuji's collaboration builds on Tsuji's singular guitar playing and Lewis's resolutely explorative soundscapes. Salt Water is their debut album. Klara Lewis is a sound sculptor and loop finder. She has spent the last decade creating albums equally tender and brutal for Editions Mego as well as in collaborations with Nik Colk Void, Peder Mannerfelt and now Yuki Tsujii. Lewis has presented her audiovisual work at festivals such as Sonar, Mutek, Dark Mofo and Atonal. Yuki Tsujii is a guitarist from Japan-via-London, now based in Stockholm. In the last 15 years, as a member of Bo Ningen, Tsujii has performed extensively across the world in festivals such as Coachella, Glastonbury, and Yoko Ono’s Meltdown and collaborated with artists across different disciplines such as Faust, Lydia Lunch, Keiji Haino, Alexander McQueen and Juergen Teller.

It is highly recommended from electronic music fans to New Age !! The editing board that recorded the first recording (with Takehisa Kosugi) made in the 1980s by David Behrman, the most important experimental electronic musician in the United States, who is familiar with our long-selling store, is Italy. Announced by Alga Marghen, the prestigious musician!

David Behrman is also known for using "microcomputers" with "memory" used for live performances and installations, along with great figures such as Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, and Alvin Lucier in postwar American experimental music. A writer who occupies an important position. On the A side, Interspecies Smalltalk commissioned by John Cage and Merce Cunningham in 1984 is recorded, and it was formed as a collaboration with Takehisa Kosugi (violin) and completed as a minimalist masterpiece full of fantasy beauty.

On the B-side, starting with the early version of Leapday Night, "Circling Six," six synthesizer loop phrases were used, and German experimental writer Werner Durand was in charge of the saxophone, avant-garde jazz. It is finished in a strange minimalist refraction that crosses jazz. The final "All Thumbs" is a song for two mbiras, which George Lewis and David Behrman dedicated to the opening of the Paris Science Museum "La Villette" in the spring of 1986. The metal tip of was a sound installation that was connected to a computer music system through a sensor.

Why don't you pick up the excellent unreleased sound source of a rare writer who represents the history of American electronic music after a long time. Includes liner notes and performance photos by David Behrman. Limited to 400 copies.

«I met Simone through Dr. Richard Alpert, a professor at Columbia University who went to India to study with a Hindu guru and he himself became a guru afterwards called Baba Ram Dass. Coming back to US he brought Pandit Pran Nath with him. It was a time when everybody was experimenting. All came with a lot of orientalism because people were into timelessness, meditation and being stoned. It was in that atmosphere that I met Simone because she also knew Pran Nath. Around that time I moved from NY to California to work with electronic music at the newly invented school California Institute of the Arts. Simone was also living in LA and even though she was not officially connected to CalArts she knew many of the artists who were teaching there. It was in the halls of CalArts that Simone first approached me around the possibility to have Pran Nath invited to LA. In summer 1970 Simone was invited by Allan Kaprow (one of the Deans of CalArts) to do an evening of dance at the Pasadena Art Museum. One day she came to me and said “I’ve been given this commission to do a piece and I’d like to do it with music and I was wondering if you would want to do it with me?”. So I replied “Well why don’t you come to the electronic studio where I work and see how it goes? I’ll put on some sounds, we’ll make some space and see how you feel”. It immediately clicked!!!! So we decided to perform a duet together. In January 1971 in Pasadena we did our first “Illuminationss”. I played the piano, I sang a little bit, she moved a little bit when I was singing, I moved when I was singing. A Jewishy-kinf-of singing. Not only singing, but singing and running, singing and falling. I did all what eventually became my “Body Music”. Simone was also doing it but coming from a different tradition. All of a sudden we were doing a new kind of jamming together. Everybody in the audience loved it because it was so dreamy and they found amazing how a man and a woman can act in that strange, very dreamlike oriental way as in trance,,,,,together. This kind of collaboration between man and woman was uncommon at that time. Mostly other artists were doing very structural works while our performances were totally like we were on magicness drugs. Our performances had certain fixed elements like the piano or some electronics. It turned out we liked red lights so we started to always do it in red light. We liked to do it in a resonant spaces. It became more an approach than a piece, because there were never two Illuminations that were alike.» - Charlemagne Palestine «The aspect of Charlemagne’s music that most inspired my imagination was his melodies. Sometimes their texture of repetitions and evolving variations are so close that the term melody doesn’t seem to apply. What most determined our “Illuminations” was Charlemagne’s way of letting the elements in the music develop only very gradually. Once, just before a performance, Charlemagne sang to me, “Simoney don’t worry, you will dance and sing all right.” And of course I did as we walked arm in arm circling the wide-open space, a grand piano to one side shining black and covered with Teddy Bear deities, Charlemagne reflecting his childhood time as devotional cantor, and I, my childhood time striding along in the Tuscan hills, belting out Italian folksongs with my cousins. And sometimes when Charlemagne drew clear, high tones from his brandy snifter we would play our voices together more softly. Our recurring melodies were mostly Charlemagne’s. But I brought one too, with a song about not drifting away into the beyond.» - Simone Forti

Awesome Alga Marghen re-release presenting "Illuminations", or Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti duo interactions, illuminated with dim red lights. In early 1970 Morton Subotnick asked Charlemagne Palestine to join his soon to be created Media Department at the new “Dream School of the Future” endowed by the Disneys to be called the California Institute of the Arts. Charlemagne and Simone Forti met there in 1970, when La Monte Young asked them to arrange a California concert for Pandit Pran Nath. They decided to try an improvisation session together and Charlemagne invited Simone the first time to the electronic music studio where he worked regularly. Their medium blended as a play of interacting sound waves and solid matter in motion as Charlemagne and Simone shared energy and focus. The three previously unreleased recordings on this LP were made between October and December 1971. The first take titled "Illumination" is for two voices moving in the space with small bells and crystal glasses while Simone Forti plays the molimo, a corrugated tube meant for connecting the gas stove. The second take titled "Wed Oct 13th 1971" has Simone and Charlemagne in a song dialogue as animals do. It was also at Cal Arts that Charlemagne Palestine first encountered a Bosendorfer Imperial Piano of Vienna. He played it often as Simone danced during their "Illuminations". Take three is a song sang in falsetto while playing the Bosendorfer Imperial in an arpeggiated style that predates the "strummings". Listening to these "Three Takes" 40 years later they oooozza timeless carefree mystical magical dreamy atmosphere that evoked the times of the late '60s to early '70s in Charlemagne and Simone part of the California Art Scene. Illuminations were a unique open spontaneous form of performance, ritual and prayer. Edition limited to 365 copies with an essay by both Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti, as well photos of the performances reproduced on the LP front sleeve.

fully remastered from the original tapes** A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. Moon On The Water were a trio of percussionists based in Italy - David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, both American tympani players in the Scala Philarmonic Orchestra, with the legendary Italian jazz drummer Tiziano Tononi, who worked with everyone from Roberto Musci, to Muhal Richard Abrams, Pierre Favre (who later joined the group), Andrew Cyrille, Barre Phillips, and Steve Lacy. Drawing on a diversity of experience, joined collectively by a unified love of rhythm and sound, they assembled a percussion record of the highest order - an unclassifiable work which should be legendary, and leaves you confounded that it’s not.

Within the history of efforts dedicated to percussion, Moon On The Water’s debut stands apart. A singular work, made remarkable by the diversity and range of its sonorities and structures. The scope of its ambition is startling. Utilizing the full intellect, experience, and talent of its creators, it employs field recording against a stunning array of instrumentation - seemingly everything from which rhythm and resonant tone could be drawn. The result renders a remarkable effect. From the delicate pulse of nature, deep resonances and carefully placed tone, intricate structures and tempos as slow as they go, across its movements the album rewrites how composition for percussion should be understood, before giving way to consuming and ecstatic rhythms which reference the Brazilian tradition of Batucada, various trance and ritual traditions of Africa, and drum solos from Free Jazz and Rock. This is as good as percussion records get. A lost marvel - accessible while distinctly avant-garde. The throbbing pulse of creative joy, distilled onto two sides of wax.

Ecstatic elements of Japan ambient minimalism dialogue with contemporary music solutions (Varèse, Ligeti), in the stream of a harmonious fusion of ancient and modern. It’s a propitiatory ceremony of supernatural things that open portals of blissfulness, tribal and shamanic darkness, timeless jungles. Between amazon fires and African safaris, we float in the Asian rivers of meditation, lost in water games, echoes of caves and rocks in the night, synergies of frogs, birds, snakes, marimbas, chimes, gongs, and tubular woods.

The album also includes one of the sickest percussion jam we’ve heard from 1980’s Italy: the mystically-named In the Land of the Boo - Bam. Exploring a wide range of percussions, from mallet instruments to drums, the band tightly builds a hypnotic jam with a strong Mediterranean feeling, maybe partly provided by the «Tullio de Piscopo-esque» drumming pattern. As the song goes by, the vibe gets more and more shamanic, often changing directions before climaxing in an epic final. True uplifting trance music!

After the exploit of Osmose in 1978, Kalma returns into the studio in 1980 with Interfrequence, an ambient space library record. Interfrequence is a continuation of his personal research based on the combination of electronic machines with natural sounds and acoustic instrumentation. The french musician fully wears the robe of master of ceremonies of the synths. However, the path taken is not that symphonic of the minimalist and galactic suites composed by other standard bearers like Richard Pinas and Klaus Schulze. Here, we find 18 short pictures sound (few of them in collaboration of M. Saclays) that emanate a variety of ideas and ethno-cultural influences unparalleled. A distinctive compositional style always returns an crescendo of ecstatic emotions, a reflection on the hidden and secret aspects of the micro and macro cosmos. If in Osmose the sampling sound from the mother Gaia was more explicit, here the Nature is investigated not only in terms of pure tones, but especially in the dynamics of flows and movements dictated by the frequency of moogs and organs and embellished with hyper-space flutes, saxophones and clarinets. Kalma wrote yet another chapter of his personal saga of a new world of sound imagery.

Delphine Dora is a prolific composer, improviser and musician who has released on a plethora of labels including Recital, Morc, Sloow Tapes, Feeding Tube, Okraïna and more, and ‘Le Grand Passage’ is her Modern Love debut, a stunning set of songs for piano and voice, recorded in one take without overdubs or edits. We don’t think theres much, if anything, quite like it, but if you’ve been snagged by transcendent, advanced and amateur music by Andrew Chalk, Virginia Astley, Dominique Lawalrée, or Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, we think this one might just be for you. In an act of pure expression, Delphine Dora recorded the 8 songs of ‘The Great Passage’ in a single take, succumbing to a whirlwind of inspiration that transported her beyond the material world. Baroque paradigms bleed into fragile, introspective mantras, expressed through a made up language of existential yearning and channeled through piano and voice. It’s music that caresses the sublime, made without any premeditation. Delphine was nearing the end of a three-day prepared piano residency when an technician stepped in to tune her grand piano for her final performance. He removed the objects from the strings and fixed the pitch, leaving Dora with a freshly tuned instrument. Mesmerised by its new sound, she proceeded to switch on her recorder and pour out her soul, channeling, in her own words, "something greater than myself". The result is some of the most unusual but elevated material the prolific composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist has ever recorded, rooted in a deep understanding of European musical history but willing to push at its boundaries, questioning the earthly logic of life and death, asceticism and impiety. Glistening imperfections lash 'The Great Passage' to the physical world, but Dora - seemingly possessed as she quivers in a fictional dialect - lets her fantasies intensify her spirit, lifting the music towards the heavens. It's not sacred music, per se, but it is unashamedly mystical. On the luxurious, languid opening, Dora dissolves eerily familiar romantic piano motifs into an attentive ceremony, singing with charged emotion. Her words aren't really decipherable, but their resonance vibrates beyond language; it's striking to hear how confident she is in vulnerability. She lets the piano wrap into her voice, connecting us directly to a unique mode of emotional expression by urging us - the listener - to project our own meaning onto her abstracted words. Dora refers to the act of improvisation itself as a way to indicate "the fragility of being”, and as her words blur in and out of focus, dipping from a hoarse croak to a choking wail, she places herself at the very edge of musical formality, questioning strictures put in place to suffocate self-expression. Her music has often been labeled "outsider", but here she sounds intimate and interconnected, more self-consciously candid than anything traditional might have allowed. She conjures affecting, plainspoken poetry, like a bedside diary written in a hypnagogic, delirious state: a stream-of-unconsciousness, channelling the beyond. The album title connects to a book dedicated to French philosopher and activist Simone Weil, who famously pored over global religions to ascertain spiritual truths. To Weil, meditation was a passage to access mystical experience, or a bridge between humanity and divinity. In Dora's hands, this idea is a corridor between herself and the listener, a liminal place where she's able to address feelings without making anything explicit. The title, of course, also refers to life, its impermanence, finitude, and fragility, presenting the complex, multi-dimensionality of being through one of the most undiluted, unbridled set of songs imaginable.

"In the core of the album’s creation, lies my fascination with unveiling the piano overtones by harnessing the properties of complex systems, which emerge when competing oscillations of strings interact with room acoustics, microphone placements, the piano's pedals, and its soundboard. Through long forms, incremental gestures, and nuanced timbral artifacts, the album aims to distort the perception of time and invite an introspective experience of multiple and expanded temporalities." - Zoe Efstathiou. "Following collaborations with Egil Kalman and Oda Dyrnes, Greek pianist Zoe Efstathiou investigates chaotic overtone systems on this pecuilar solo piano excursion, teasing inscrutable, hypnotic drones that sound utterly alien. RIYL Akira Rabelais, John Also Bennett, Kassel Jaeger." - Boomkat. Bio: Zoe Efstathiou, pianist and electro-acoustic composer, originally from Greece, has lived in Sweden since 2015. Her interest shifts between the intricate relationships of the overtones of acoustic instruments, electro-acoustic textures, and the sonic potential of light installations. Her music interpolates the momentary with the ever-evolving, exploring ideas related to time, expectation and memory. Physical copies of the ltd LP is available from Boomkat, A Musik, Discreet Music, etc!