Avant-Garde / Contemporary

“Spuren & Gegenworte” began with a quasi-telepathic collaboration between KM and RW. Both recorded a track on May 3, 2021, from 8:00 PM to 8:10 PM. These recordings were subsequently transformed, combined, juxtaposed, and further modified over the course of several months, resulting in the completion of the four pieces on the CD.
“Spuren & Gegenworte” can be translated as “traces & antonyms”, opening up a wide range of interpretations. “Traces” may refer to the remnants of the original sounds that have been transformed in the process of reworking, or it can symbolize the cultural and musical influences that can be discerned. “Antonyms” oscillates between contrasting/contradictory and complementary meanings. Of course, other interpretations are also possible.
The 4 titles are indicated as Japanese terms on the cover:  痕跡、対立、変動、補完. They stand for the themes of traces, confrontation, fluctuation, completion.
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Kohei Matsunaga is a musician and illustrator, born in Osaka in 1978. He has been actively making music since 1992, with notable releases on labels such as Raster Noton, Wordsound, Mille Plateaux, Important Records and PAN. He has collaborated with many artists, including Mika Vainio, Sean Booth from Autechre, Conrad Schnitzler, Merzbow and Asmus Tietchens. He lives in Osaka and Berlin.

Ralf Wehowsky is one of the most respected electronic composers of our day and was also a founder member of the seminal German group P16.D4 and label Selektion whose ground-breaking releases influenced many working in today’s experimental music scene. His work is split between solo releases (under the moniker RLW) and collaborations, exploring all fields between media exchange and realtime presence recordings. His music is impossible to pigeonhole into one simple bracket. It is neither industrial or musique concrete, nor computer music nor improvisation. In fact, it could be all of these.

Masayuki 'Jojo' Takayanagi (1932 - 1991) was a Japanese jazz / free improvisational musician. He was active in the Japanese jazz scene from the late 1950s. He was one of the earliest noise guitar improvisers, and the first (with Keith Rowe) to use the table-top guitar.

Maestro melodist Christophe Petchanatz (aka Klimperei) and all around music fanatic David Fenech engage remotely in a repetitive exchange of recordings and overdubs on their debut album titled ‘Rainbow de Nuit’, sporadically spanning over the last decade. Evocations of experimental and improvised jazz, chansonesque songs, bluesy folk, and outsider music undulate harmoniously across the record. From music boxes and walkie-talkies down to plastic straws, plucking various stringed instruments such as the charrango and banjo, kazoos and snake-charmer ocarina and flutes, all the way through the sweet accordion and melodica, found and traditional tuned percussion - there is far from a shortage of sound sources on this freakishly inviting record. What germinates as an imaginative and emotional chord progression played by Klimperei, evolves with Fenech layering additional recordings, which would then find their way back home to Klimperei yet again, and so on, and so forth. This recursive compositional and improvisational loop, combined with Fenech’s musique-concrete-like mixing and editing techniques, transforms the acoustic recordings by way of compression, saturation, and reverberation or simple pitch changes - resulting in the duo’s recordings seemingly sound like they may very well be an octet in real time. While the majority of the recordings have been ping-ponged remotely, David and Christophe unite under one roof to record the closing track of the album.

The pieces presented on ‘Rainbow de Nuit’ treat the ears to a carousel ride waltzing through a multiverse made up of surrealist puppet theaters, dramatic film noir act changes, and a mosaic of polyphonic instruments and toys alike. In other words, a score to a fable brought to life with haunting yet charming melodies and occasional hallucinatory voices reminiscent of laughter and infantile epiphanies which we hear on Tarzan en Tasmanie and Madrigal for Lola. This is taken a step further by Fenech, to a brief libretto of incomprehensible tongues on Pocarina. Amid the mysterious and dark (Septième Ciel and Rugit Le Coeur) also lies tender and simple compositions (Rainbow de Nuit and Chevalier Gambette), murky suspenseful melancholy (Levy Attend and Eno Ennio), and casually slipping into pensive psychedelic backdrops (Un Cercueil à Deux Places) - forming a colorful blend of sounds. A world of echoes. A tale of tales. One persistent earworm that you’ll likely be whistling and humming along to on a first listen.

Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smerť, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. For his part, Scott has steadily published solo recordings since the mid aughts on labels such as Bo’Weavil, Students of Decay, and Where to Now?, and worked often in collaboration with kindred spirits like Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik. “Eye of the Sea” began as a series of intimate, muted piano sketches put to tape by Scott, which Nianio embellished and re-contextualized with voice and instrumentation before returning them to Scott for further overdubbing, editing, and mixing. Listening to these recordings, I’m struck most by their patience, frailty, and beauty. Soft piano lines unspool alongside Nianio’s weightless voice on tracks such as “Slowly Turns the Spring,” which achieves a richly devotional air, and “Lotus,” a piece that all but halts the passage of time as it slowly blooms into expression. But despite their elusive, gauzy palette, there is a startling directness to these recordings that feels unique in the oeuvres of both musicians. Much like Nianio’s wonderful “Lisova Kolekciya,” (reissued by Scott on Skire in 2017) there is the sense that this music, particularly the vocal arrangements, is firmly rooted in some hermetic, primordial tradition. Ultimately, “Eye of the Sea” is a work of romantic, phantasmagoric beauty shot through with morning light; one which draws deeply on 20th century classical, chamber and liturgical musics, and ambient minimalism to arrive at a distinctive voice of its own. - Alex Cobb (Students of Decay/Soda Gong) credits

ハード・ディガーVišeslav Laboš & Zeljko Luketić監修！現在のクロアチア・ザグレブを拠点に、現地の大衆音楽やルーツ・ミュージックのみならず、ディスコ、プロト・ラップ、ニューウェイヴ、ポスト・パンク、インダストリアルに、初期電子音楽、前衛音楽まで幅広い作品が遺された旧ユーゴスラビアの最大級のレーベル〈Jugoton〉（現・Croatia Records）に残されたエレクトロニック、ミニマル・シンセ、アヴァン・ウェイヴを一挙コンパイル。当初、2014年にCD発売されていた画期的な編集盤の〈Everland Music〉からのアナログ・ヴァージョン。1964年から1989年に至るまでの全47曲・150分以上！オリジナル・マスターテープから修復された音源を収録しています。ゲートフォールド・スリーヴ仕様。23年にはPart 2がリリース予定とのことです。

Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, including a multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over five hundred page book. Recorded and self-released by the group’s own Dry Leaf Discs in 1993, City Lights is the debut record of the then duo Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris—an assured arrival statement teeming with stripling angst and ambition. Lifelong chums Lambkin and Harris were barely nineteen and living at home in the seaside town of Folkestone, Kent, with few overhead expenses. The two were freshly employed as a forklift operator at a hardware store and an aide at a home for children with disabilities, respectively, affording them the time and funds to commit to a proper full-length release. Frontman Lambkin describes the album as a “microscopic examination of leisure activities, this time centered around a nightclub,” a conceit surging through its lyrics, song titles, cover art (depicting an audience of cats and mice at the Leas Club, a Folkestone fixture), and flip side (replete with fictional bandmates and pseudonymous liner notes). On a recently-acquired secondhand guitar, Lambkin plays repetitive, brooding licks that form the record’s backbone, weaving in and out of sync with Harris’s free-form percussion and the pair’s sing-song poetry. Tracks range from unraveling nursery-rhyme ditties to extended jams awash with Casiotone and toy piano noodling. The duo’s musical hobby-horses work themselves in: the influence of Mark E. Smith’s breathless deadpan, the headless outer-edges of ESP-Disk’s back catalog, the eerie atmospherics of Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa, and the deconstructed rock tunes of the Dunedin scene are all detectable, although there is a sui generis quality to the Shadow Ring’s artless temerity. “I’ve got to see and taste those city lights,” intones Lambkin on the album’s title track—indeed, this is a record of naked drive and pent-up desperation, and a shimmering glimpse of what’s to come.

MAAVAK a two 10xCD box sets presenting the intense, present, sometimes fragile & often challenging music of Swedish/Israeli composer, musician, artist and activist DROR FEILER, celebrating 50 years of musical, artistic and political actions in Sweden and around the world. These two box sets presents his wide range of styles; from noise attacks to orchestral compositions, from chamber music to solo saxophone pieces. There is a sort of brutal sensitivity to his works, or maybe rather a sensitive brutality. Let it be works for solo acoustic instruments or full symphony orchestra works (in one of them with Blixa Bargeld as vocal solist). Each volume is limited to 300 copies and is mastered and designed by Lasse Marhaug. To be released in Stockholm on October 7th 2023 on Feiler’s new archival label The Celestial Fire which is a sublabel to iDEAL Recordings.

MAAVAK a two 10xCD box sets presenting the intense, present, sometimes fragile & often challenging music of Swedish/Israeli composer, musician, artist and activist DROR FEILER, celebrating 50 years of musical, artistic and political actions in Sweden and around the world. These two box sets presents his wide range of styles; from noise attacks to orchestral compositions, from chamber music to solo saxophone pieces. There is a sort of brutal sensitivity to his works, or maybe rather a sensitive brutality. Let it be works for solo acoustic instruments or full symphony orchestra works (in one of them with Blixa Bargeld as vocal solist). Each volume is limited to 300 copies and is mastered and designed by Lasse Marhaug. To be released in Stockholm on October 7th 2023 on Feiler’s new archival label The Celestial Fire which is a sublabel to iDEAL Recordings.

Michael Gendreau and Suzanne Dycus-Gendreau have been working under the name Crawling With Tarts from 1983 to 1998. They have released musical work on cassette and vinyl and have appeared on several compilations. In 1991 they released a video collection which included their works made with video, 8mm film, and with the PXL2000 camera. Their musical work ranges from structured composition to free improvisation, and their output documents a varied approach to music as well as highlighting collaborative efforts which have spanned the years and the globe. While Crawling With Tarts (Michael Gendreau and Suzanne McKee) are now best remembered for their lengthy experimental works, their 1984 cassette Tearoom, reissued on LP for the first time by Concentric Circles in an edition of 300, reaches back to a more primitive, elemental time for the duo. Tearoom is a notable document of Gendreau and McKee’s early music, where guitars and voices collide in unexpected ways, with buzzing organs and wispy clarinets tangling over thudding drums. While it sits comfortably within the parameters of the eighties cassette underground, Tearoom has its very own character, one untroubled by any need to align with the dominant stylistic moves of the music made by their peers. Opening track “Ithurial’s Spear” remarkably foreshadows the pared-back, home-baked non-rock of labels like Siltbreeze and Majora. With wah-fuzz guitar scrawled over a Peter Hook-esque bassline and McKee’s naive, almost childlike voice murmuring in the listener’s ears, it’s a perfect example of kitchen-sink psychedelia. From here, Tearoom continually unravels itself, taking off layers as it progresses to its close. The delay-drenched guitar of “Gentle Wind” could have fallen from an early Roy Montgomery release, while “Chilada” takes slurred, slowed voices and rubs them up against clattering guitar, tin can percussion and tetchy bass. The rest of the second side is a wild ride, shuffling between organ/clarinet spray, scrawling tape spew, and on closer “House Spirit,” a typewriter ticking out letters as the city goes about its everyday business outside the bedroom window. Tearoom is the perfect example of an album with surprises lurking around every corner, ricocheting from and finely riding the line between the most abstract of pop and experimentation in the truest sense of the term. With the humblest of means Crawling With Tarts created a musical world all their own, in the process making a truly revelatory experience for curious ears and gently twisted brains alike.

Palto Flats / Putojefe Records present the first ever reissue of the work of American composer Dorothy Carter, master of the hammered dulcimer, zither, and other instruments of the hammer chord zither/psalterium family. A true musical vagabond, Dorothy was born in New York in 1935, though her spiritual pursuit of an expansive musical knowledge would take her to monasteries in Mexico, conservatories in France and London, and the founding of the Central Maine Power Music Company (CMPMC), with new-age/minimalist luminaries such as Constance Demby and Robert Rutman. Dorothy Carter was many things - a virtuoso player, storyteller, historian of Celtic and Appalachian folk music, avid lifelong busker, avant-garde musician, and itinerant troubadour, laying a framework for music that existed both within and outside of standard folk idioms - never better represented than on her 1978 masterwork, Waillee Waillee. Underscored by Bob Rutman’s cavernous bowing of the steel cello, the richness of Waillee Waillee’s sound produces an album unlike any other in her discography. In particular, its two side-ending pieces, “Summer Rhapsody” and “Tree of Life,’’ glide with the shimmering filigree of hammered dulcimer and Dorothy Carter’s ephemeral voice floating over Rutman’s droning buzz of the steel cello. The elements of these two tracks suggest something akin to a transcendental Appalachian raga or whirling cosmic folk music, an effortless combination that serves to add additional substance to the remaining tracks on the album. The title track is one of her most enduring compositions, often performed in stripped down versions throughout her career, and one of her sole recordings featuring a full band, with the contrapuntal interplay of tremulous flute, vibrating steel cello, bass and drums. Lyrically and tonally, her voice would never sound as stirring and refi ned as on this, her most outwardly accessible song. She counted musical colleagues as diverse as Constance Demby, Einstürzende Neubauten and Laraaji, as well as her lifelong artistic partner and friend Bob Rutman, whose imprint is felt throughout the grooves of this record. The master tapes for this recording were fortuitously discovered in Rutman’s Berlin studio, many, many years later. As recounted in Laraaji’s contribution to the liner notes, Dorothy was “someone who really influenced my early zither exploration and vocabulary and inspired my shift toward hammered zither performance and recording,” after encountering him busking on the sidewalk one day in the 1970s. Later, when living in Berlin in the early 1990s, Dorothy would begin work on manuscripts detailing the history of the dulcimer family and providing extensive sheet music, selected material of which is reproduced in the twelve page booklet included with this release. Dorothy would find later success touring and performing in the late 90s with the ensemble Mediæval Bæbes, which she led with British musician Katherine Blake, playing a prominent role on their first four albums.

Is this a projection of the world bursting out of a formula?
Or is this an indistinct report from a three-dimensional intersection where indifference and anonymous malice scramble?

After the breakup of the legendary psychedelic rock band White Heaven and The Stars, Yo Ishihara, who in recent years has been active as Hiroshi Ishihara with Friends, has now completed his solo album.
Ishihara is also known as a sound producer for the bands "Yurayura Teikoku" and "Ogre You Asshole," but this is his first solo album in 23 years.

The music and songs that can be faintly heard from the depths of the urban hustle and bustle are not ambient, avant-garde, or so-called mellow, but rather a sensual music that has never been heard before,
It is an extremely conceptual and innovative work that shows the distance between music (Ishihara) and the world.

The musicians include Michio Kurihara, who has worked with Ishihara for many years in White Heaven and The Stars, Tomohiro Kitada and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, and Soichiro Nakamura, a former member of White Heaven who also serves as engineer.

Originally released on the tiny Sonet label, Live Ankara captures Don Cherry's concert at the American embassy in Turkey on November 23, 1969. Cherry performs with an entirely Turkish rhythm section that includes drummer Okay Temiz, bassist Selcuk Sun, and percussionist/tenor saxophonist Irfan Sumer. The repertoire balances original Cherry themes with Turkish folk melodies arranged by Turkish jazz trumpeter Maffy Falay; there are also a couple of Ornette Coleman themes and a take on Pharoah Sanders' "The Creator Has a Master Plan." Nothing is really explored for too long; the music is played as two continuous suites, and they usually shift to new material fairly quickly (only three of the 15 tracks are significantly longer than three minutes). The ensemble has a pretty sparse sound, with Cherry the sole lead voice (on trumpet, piano, flute, and trumpetzurna) for much of the concert. All of this serves to emphasize the melodicism of Cherry's playing here, and the Turkish material sits pretty comfortably alongside the jazz compositions. It's not quite essential, but it is very intriguing, and Cherry's more devoted fans will find it more than worth their time. [Live Ankara was reissued in full as part of the two-disc set The Sonet Recordings.] ~ Steve Huey

"The trio takes you on an intense, meditative and spiritual musical journey that embodies the spirit of freedom. Based around hypnotic grooves laid down by Brichard’s unswervingly solid bass lines, drummer Skinner plays around artfully with the beats, grooving hard in constantly shifting, unexpected turns of rhythmic play. Rahman’s contributions range from subtle conversational interplay to loudly expressed angry passion to the most delicate of whispers, conveying a depth of emotion and a deep sense of musical structure withIn an ever changing sea of musical conversation. Using simple, arresting melodies as a starting point, the trio create freely improvised waves of emotion ranging from powerful climaxes to hauntingly beautiful breath-like passages and everything in-between, creating unique forms and structures that react to the acoustics and the atmosphere of the situation. Taking inspiration from the spiritual jazz pioneers such as John and Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef and Sun Ra, compositional influences range from Gnawa music to modal jazz to Bengali folk music but the scope is wider still and the important unifying factor is the spontaneous communication and interplay between the three musicians. Rather than having a tight rigid structure, the tunes are allowed to breathe and develop into new unexplored forms, allowing fresh interpretations that make each performance a unique experience. The album is a collection of live and studio recordings that have been recorded and mixed by the band."

LuckyMe present the new album from New York based percussionist and composer Eli Keszler Previously releasing music on Empty Editions, ESP Disk, PAN as well as ‘Stadium’ on Shelter Press – Boomkat’s 2018 Album Of The Year A frequent collaborator to Oneohtrix Point Never, Laurel Halo and Rashad Becker Keszler’s work has shown at The Lincoln Centre, MoMA PS1, MIT List and The Barbican.

Keszler’s latest solo venture offers up a latticework of melodic percussion, drum set, and electro-acoustic instrumentation, built upon fragments of American abstraction, ancient scales, industrial percussion, and jazz-age film noir to achieve its feeling of imperial decay. Keszler’s instrumental performances are framed by panoramic recordings of New York City and the Odyssey Cave, along with other on-location audio from his global travels, defining an expansive music that takes on hyperreal forms difficult to describe outside of the loss and wonderment that defines our age.

Electronic Works by Osmo Lindeman compiles electronic music works of a Finnish hybrid of Monty Norman, Krzysztof Penderecki and Edgar Varèse first time on an album. Lindeman composed these works in his private home studio during 1969–1974. “Electronic music represents the future. Today, its use is limited due to the complexity of available methods. Eventually, when the technical production of electronic music becomes simpler, its use will undoubtedly increase. I doubt it will replace a live performance, but you never know. Electronic music is in some way cold, but isn’t our current world cold? In politics they talk about ”cold war”, to give an example. Undoubtedly, there is something really cold about electronic music, but every era creates art that is related to itself. And art is an essential part of the life we ​​live. Eventually, I faced the same problems in electronic music composition than when composing orchestral music.” – Osmo Lindeman 1959–1961 and 1974

FLOCKS is a new duo, formed by drone specialist WERNER DURAND and ULI HOHMANN. Musical landscapes that move between traditional as well as experimental sounds with influences from Krautrock and JON HASSEL's "fourth world" aesthetics. WERNER DURAND has made himself a name with various projects with Dhrupad singerAMELIA CUNI, playing with URBAN SAX, ARNOLD DREYBLATT, HENNING CHRISTIANSEN, DAVID BEHRMAN, ELLEN FULLMAN, CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX, as the co-founder of THE 13th TRIBE, ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER and TONALIENS (with ROBIN AYWARD and HILARY JEFFERY) plus numerous solo albums, released on labels like Black Truffle, Unseen Worlds or Edition Telemark. Having studied saxophone as well as Indian / Persian flutes, the Berlin based DURAND is a highly reputated protagonist in the drone scene, famous for his self-built wind instruments like buzz-clarinets or his PVC neys & horns. His partner in FLOCKS (and longtime personal friend) is ULI HOHMANN whose early encounters with music from Asia, India and Africa led to studies with the Ghanaian master drummer MUSTAPHA TETTEY ADDY and later Tombak and Daf with NEMAD DARMAN (Iran). HOHMANN played in a couple of projects that explored the language of classical Persian music, and started building his own stringed instruments (being an educated carpenter). In 2014 he joined DURAND and AMELIA CUNI for the album "Clearing", and 2018 DURAND and HOHMANN decided to continue as a duo: FLOCKS was born. On their selftitled debut they shape drone-y soundscapes based on their self-built wind- & stringed instruments, Persian percussion and subtle electronics, drawing additional inspiration from Krautrock (listen to the irresistible, hypnotique groove of "Quicksand") as well as JON HASSEL's "fourth world" aesthetics, placing the duo nicely between tradition and experiment!

FLOCKS is a new duo, formed by drone specialist WERNER DURAND and ULI HOHMANN. Musical landscapes that move between traditional as well as experimental sounds with influences from Krautrock and JON HASSEL's "fourth world" aesthetics. WERNER DURAND has made himself a name with various projects with Dhrupad singerAMELIA CUNI, playing with URBAN SAX, ARNOLD DREYBLATT, HENNING CHRISTIANSEN, DAVID BEHRMAN, ELLEN FULLMAN, CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX, as the co-founder of THE 13th TRIBE, ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER and TONALIENS (with ROBIN AYWARD and HILARY JEFFERY) plus numerous solo albums, released on labels like Black Truffle, Unseen Worlds or Edition Telemark. Having studied saxophone as well as Indian / Persian flutes, the Berlin based DURAND is a highly reputated protagonist in the drone scene, famous for his self-built wind instruments like buzz-clarinets or his PVC neys & horns. His partner in FLOCKS (and longtime personal friend) is ULI HOHMANN whose early encounters with music from Asia, India and Africa led to studies with the Ghanaian master drummer MUSTAPHA TETTEY ADDY and later Tombak and Daf with NEMAD DARMAN (Iran). HOHMANN played in a couple of projects that explored the language of classical Persian music, and started building his own stringed instruments (being an educated carpenter). In 2014 he joined DURAND and AMELIA CUNI for the album "Clearing", and 2018 DURAND and HOHMANN decided to continue as a duo: FLOCKS was born. On their selftitled debut they shape drone-y soundscapes based on their self-built wind- & stringed instruments, Persian percussion and subtle electronics, drawing additional inspiration from Krautrock (listen to the irresistible, hypnotique groove of "Quicksand") as well as JON HASSEL's "fourth world" aesthetics, placing the duo nicely between tradition and experiment!

CALAMITA = KARKHANA members TONY ELIEH, SHARIF SEHNAOUI and Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH join forces with the Egyptian singer AYA METWALLI - the result is the improbable meeting between free jazz / improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum! CALAMITA is the “rock project” of SHARIF SEHNAOUI and TONY ELIEH, two of the most active musicians on the Lebanese experimental scene (among others projects, both are members of the “free Middle Eastern music” collective KARKHANA). SEHNAOUI comes from a jazz and improv music background, ELIEH is primarily a rock musician and founding member of the Lebanese post-punk band THE SCRAMBLED EGGS whose work in the last decade has covered many directions from pop-rock to plain experimental. They are joined by Lebanese drummer MALEK RIZKALLAH (WHO KILLED BRUCE LEE, ex THE SCRAMBLED EGGS). As trio they develop instrumental pieces that draw their inspiration from artists as diverse as Tony Conrad, Last Exit or Oum Kalthoum. AYA METWALLI is an Egyptian singer/songwriter, composer and sound artist currently based in Beirut. Grown up in Cairo, her father would play non-stop Oum Kalthoum songs on road trips to the beach and Aya’s mother; known to have the most beautiful voice in the family, she always sang at home and at family gatherings, so long before Aya was able to form her own music taste, immense amounts of Arabic classic songs and melodies already settled in her subconsciousness … After her first EP „Beitak“ in 2016, Metwalli (named “a musical enigma” by The Guardian) started to integrate more experimental and eerie sonic excursions into her avant-pop, so the collaboration with CALAMITA feels like a natural or logic step. The roots for „Al Saher“ („stay awake“) were laid when SEHNAOUI and METWALLI first worked together in “Night”, a dance piece by ALI CHAHROUR which included a wide collection of Arabic songs and ancient poems, later Sehnaoui invited her to work with CALAMITA. The four met in a recording studio in Beirut, using songs by "The Voice of Egypt" Oum Kalthoum as starting point. Together they aim to fully revisit the song format and explore the possibilities of classical Tarab songs, extracted from their origins and reframed within the music of the twenty-first century. The result is a mix of various styles and influences that often seek to stretch the contrasts to towering extremes - an improbable blend between free jazz & improv, punk rock & Oum Kalthoum!

Written and recorded in 1980-83 by (Aksak Maboul & Crammed Discs founder) Marc Hollander and (Honeymoon Killers/Aksak Maboul vocalist) Véronique Vincent, this trailblazing avant-pop album album predated certain hybrid musical trends which may have emerged later on (think pop meets proto-techno, with African, Middle-Eastern, dub, jazz & cinematic French flavours…)

The album remained unfinished and unreleased for 30 years, and finally came out for the first time in Oct 2014.

When Billy Eckstine's band dissolved in the mid-1940s, adventurous drummer Art Blakey spent two years in Africa, where he briefly converted to Islam; back in New York, he gigged with Miles and Monk, before fronting his own Jazz Messengers. 1957's Orgy In Rhythm drew on the sounds of North Africa and the Middle East, Blakey's unfettered drumming accompanied by Latin percussionists such as Potato Valdez and Evilio Quintero, with Herbie Mann on flute. The musical arrangement is stunning, at times melodic or primordially rhythmic, but never short of pure brilliance. Overall, an excellent and astounding release!

Vinyl version. Edition of 1,000 copies. Includes hand-numbered certificate, 10 LPs in faithful replicas of the original covers and polylined inner sleeves, an 80-page LP-sized book in English, all housed in a custom lavish linen box. Over the last few years, the Italian imprint, Dialogo, has showed a remarkable dedication to the history of experimental music via reissues of seminal artefacts from the Cramps catalog, and important albums by Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Enrico Rava, and others. This initiative now takes on a towering scale with the first ever box set gathering the entire ten album collection of Brian Eno's Obscure Records, originally issued between 1975 and 1978. A truly groundbreaking body of recordings - many of which have remained out of print and difficult to find for decades - it contains some of the most important, influential, and enduring music to emerge during the second half of the 20th Century, which collectively reconfigured the terms of minimalism and laid the groundwork for the emerging movement of ambient music over its short, three-year run. This historic collection marks the first time such a seminal series has received a complete repress and is certainly one of the year's most interesting, essential, and widely anticipated releases, stunningly produced with the complete involvement of all the artists or their estates. Includes texts / contributions by Gavin Bryars, Bradford Bailey, David Toop, Max Eastley, Richard Bernas, Tom Recchion, Carlo Boccadoro, Walter Rovere and Bruno Stucchi, and rare photos, including several by Roberto Masotti. When viewed collectively, the Obscure catalog reveals a remarkable, and previously unexplored counterpoint – bridging the United Kingdom and the American West Coast – to the dominant threads of minimal and experimental music, centered in New York that had long dominated the public consciousness. LP1 Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic LP2 Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, Gavin Bryars - Ensemble Pieces LP3 Brian Eno - Discreet Music LP4 David Toop, Max Eastley - New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments LP5 Jan Steele, John Cage - Voices and Instruments LP6 Michael Nyman - Decay Music LP7 The Penguin Café Orchestra - Music From the Penguin Café LP8 John White, Gavin Bryars - Machine Music LP9 Tom Phillips, Gavin Bryars, Fred Orton - Irma LP10 Harold Budd - The Pavilion of Dreams

Timeless atmospheres, hypnotic sonorities, minimal arrangements. And a composer gifted with a never ending passion for music, experimenter in his genetic code, innovator by vocation, at ease with various instruments in order to forge avant-garde themes. Piero Umiliani was already forward in building completely new sounds in the late Seventies. “Tra Scienza E Fantascienza” finds his alter ego Moggi experimenting with alternative grooves, electronic music, jazz tunes and soundtrack motifs. One of the most interesting music libraries in the Italian composer's discography, reissued with a new remastering by Musica Per Immagini, is in full harmony with its title. Science fiction has opened up our eyes to a variety of scenarios, possible or impossible, sometimes with a happy ending, sometimes apocalyptic, at times familiarly near, more often disarmingly far away, and always capable of inspiring our imagination. For the histrionic artist it took, perhaps, less of a cosmic leap to create this masterpiece. Centred on the cover, a strange creature with only one eye, its hands on a beaker containing a mysterious red liquid. To its right, a symbolic circle is imprinted on a sandy surface, and three bizarre constructions, similar to the volumetric flasks found in a laboratory, of differing heights and shapes. There is a strange blue planet in the distance. (Notes and images of a dystopian future according to Piero Umiliani)

Unorthodox saxophonist Albert Ayler straddled different jazz streams during his brief career. After playing with Stanley Turrentine and Harold Budd in the late 1950s, a move to Sweden brought him into the limelight, fronting his own trio. Debut album Something Different!!!!!! comprised four dissonant songs delivered live with bassist Torbjörn Hultcrantz and drummer Sune Spångberg, with a barely recognisable rendition of showtune “I’ll Remember April,” an off-kilter take of Sonny Rollins’ “The Stopper” (retitled “Rollins’ Tune”) and a wobbly cut of Miles Davis’ “Tune Up,” along with the original “Free.” An exceptional musical experience!

2023.8.13 Recorded at Recording Studio, Acoustic Research Center, Ohashi Campus, Kyushu University.