Avant-Garde / Contemporary

Modern Love debut from Delia Beatriz aka Debit; a study of Mayan wind instruments from the late post classical period, rebuilt as synth instruments and deployed with ultimate heft and wooooze. Delia Beatriz’s musical output straddles two distinct artistic poles; her debut solo album, 2017’s acclaimed “Animus”, oozed from sensual, beatless soundscapes to high-octane club music, while her 2019-released 'System' harnessed tribal guarachero elements while simultaneously scraping ideas from industrial techno. On 'The Long Count', the Mexican-American producer has inked her most rigorous statement to date, sublimating opaque ancestral knowledge into vaporous AI-stirred fog banks, activating an ancient rite that reaches into tomorrow. It’s audacious electro-acoustic archaeology that sounds disorientating, anachronistic and arcane. 'The Long Count' is rooted in research Beatriz made into Mayan wind instruments - whistles, ocarinas, flutes and trumpets - using the archive of the Mayan Studies Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the oldest and largest collection of its kind. Developing a set of digital instruments that could be played using different types of temperaments and scales, Delia processed these sounds using machine learning techniques to shuttle the distant past into our extant artistic universe, peering into Mexico’s pre-colonial history and weaving those ideas into complex tonalities gleaned from musique concrète and contemporary electro-acoustic music. Beatriz describes the Mayan instrumentation as ancestral technology, part of a world that’s not so much been forgotten, but purposefully erased. And although it’s impossible to know exactly how Mayan music may have sounded, it’s feasible to converse with history using modern technology to conduct a ceremony of remembrance. Featuring soundscapes that are haunted by indistinct, shared memories and centuries of pent-up emotion, the material here is as intentional, direct and meticulously crafted as the work of Deathprod or Thomas Köner; Debit's microtonal compositions are psychedelic to their core, shapeshifting through dimensions and painting complex mental images while retaining a stylistic focus and lucidity that’s all too rare. Although 'The Long Count' was nurtured by machines, human experience is coded into its DNA - an ancient-future heirloom that whispers through countless generations. File under: magick concrète.

You will be swallowed by the beauty, depth, and sharpness of the "over there" side. Kali Malone, a female minimalist living in Stockholm, Sweden, who is familiar with our big and big bestseller "The Sacrificial Code" and produces extremely excellent drone / experimental works from the depths of the current underground such as and The extremely rare debut work left in 2017 is jointly reissued by and ! The original was privately pressed as a numbered record with only a limited number of 100 copies, and it is a very popular work that has also added over $300 in the marketplace, and it is a miracle reprint! Works composed, recorded and produced in Stockholm from 2015 to 2016. R1 Reaktorhallen (Sweden's first nuclear reactor), electroacoustic studio EMS, and a unique hardcore minimalist made with strings, gongs, lutes, electronics, tape, etc. at various locations such as the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. / Noise Drone Masterpiece! Limited to 1000 copies.

Michel Banabila is an indispensable part of the Dutch experimental music scene, where he has acquired a special place with many, in the 40 years that he has been releasing music. Michel is also just as active as a composer for the theater and ballet world, as well as for TV productions, to considerable fame. The threat of drowning in the sea of his oeuvre is real in view of the unprecedented amount of output, but once sailing unmissable monolithic rock formations loom up rapidly. Echo Transformations' is one of them. It's a magical album, where everything falls into place in a rich domain inspired by the Fourth World dimension. A world of sound arises from our imagination, stimulating the senses. A concept album where every sigh has its place and where no superfluous tone can be heard. What remains is to embrace the inevitable surrender that accompanies unstoppable change. This is Banabila at his best.

From Pacific City Discs, to you the listener, this summer, a DJ mix of fantasy and splash-energy is coming to you in a small edition of vinyl. Fantasy writer/recording artist, Francesco Cavaliere, while visiting his seaside childhood vacation location, was extended an impromptu invitation, to DJ an 80s swimming club. He had this to say about his experience: “I was at Shangri-La and a boy and girl from the bathhouse in silver swimsuits and sand-colored streaks waved me over with a drink and asked me if I would like to DJ the next day during my lesson on the beach at Tana del Pirata! I then and there I laughed but then I accepted (I had nothing at home just my mp3 player and a Nokia with music inside) The next day there was a little wind on the beach and the umbrellas swayed to the left. From the heat they could catch fire, white flames, instead the sea was rough and that wind with very long wrists cheered us up, blowing gaseous clouds in our faces. Perfect for the day ahead. After the first few pieces, I began to see that a group of kids jumped into the adjacent pool trying flips bombs and candle dives. Someone at the bar was playing Altered Beast .. so sipping a drink with ice I imagined DJ werewolf repeating catchy pieces while a kite half cobra half skyscraper inflated above us.” This Impromptu Disc is fresh now, for you to frolic with this summer, while entertaining a daydream in the midst of entering a body of water while witnessing an apparition in the sky.

This is alga marghen’s third installment of Smegma’s original “Suburban Primitive Avant-folk music” Period (1973-1975) based in Pasadena, featuring three previously unreleased tracks from the deep vault of their home recordings. In the beginning, the Band Smegma had only one rule. No Musicians. Starting from scratch, they took the Road much less traveled. They were inspired by outsider musical artists of the time such as John Cage, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fisher, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, etc. and they recorded every experiment with youthful enthusiasm. Mostly they only succeeded in tormenting their own friends and neighbors (except for the few who joined the band), but somehow they never chose imitation, but stumbles on a path that allowed Past (shamanistic) and Future (space) sounds to lead the way. The titled track gently pulls you in and carries you off with a way-out inner-mind group Jamming/not-Jamming trip, featuring Prepared Piano, Modular Synthesizer, Human Mouth sounds, Pan Pipes, Tabla and Electric Bass Guitar. “Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow” (definitely not the 1960s pop Hit) rips you straight into a high energy New Year's Eve Party Jam, in a romping free jazz style with stream of consciousness vocals and exuberant alto sax solos. Side B starts with Beatnik finger Popping and wild dogs barking from a record player, while breathless flute playing leads you down the rabbit hole of mysterious group vocalizing, including imitating the cry of the wild Tropical Parrots that lived in the palm trees in the front yard of the house in Pasadena that they had lived in. Always out of sync with their own time, 49 years later, these tracks still throb and pulsate Beautifully with their own inner logic.

Henri Chopin also praised. Katalin Ladik, a poet, actress and visual artist based in Budapest, Hungary, who was born in former Yugoslavia (now Novi Sad, Serbia) and now lived in the 1990s. One of the most pioneering artists of our time, who has worked in connection with the feminist problem of Eastern Europe, Ladik's work reflects the personal, social and existing difficulties faced by female artists. Double structures, sexually ambiguous figures, gender-neutralizing elements, etc. appear repeatedly in. From the 1960s to the 1970s, she was also an actress of the Serbian avant-garde theater group . Limited to 300 copies.

A masterpiece that updating the lineage of Italian avant-garde music, which has been reevaluated in recent years, to the present day! He is known for his prolific compositional activities, and this year he has already dropped a number of works on prestigious labels such as Die Schachtel, 901 Editions, and Matière Mémoire. He has also collaborated with powerful artists such as Jim O'Rourke, Akira Sakata, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, and Eiko Ishibashi. Belgian cellist/maestro Jean-Paul Dessy, jazz bassist Manolo Cabras, and other performers participate in the project. Three full-length modern classical/minimal drone pieces by different ensembles, with an obscure, clean and sublime sound image that is recommended for those who like Hans Otte and Charlemagne Palestine. This is a must have for analog. Limited edition of 300 copies.

Roberto Laneri's works always convey a clear artistic certainty: a total composer with an eclectic cultural background. In this latest adventure it seems to propose a kind of weird and curious Exotica music; his Mediterranean ragas release glows and shadows, but the music plays more the plateaus of the Maghreb than the Indus Valley. Like a sorcerer piper, the sax shapes alchemy and hypnotic phrasing become: vague dances of camels, ecstatic progressions of an aboriginal vortex or a mystic arabesque tropicalisms. He doesn't neglect his training as a jazz clarinetist, with gentle and smooth orchestral veins that are decidedly retrò and old-style; remembering the dreamlike compositions of Nino Rota for Fellini's movies. There is no lack of esoteric voices from distant islands, Amazonian soundscapes, or rocking Brazilian moods. Laneri filters hidden traces of different traditions, creating unknown geographical syntheses without borders, furious extrapolations of compositional elements and famous themes misrepresentations. A visionary gaze, but also a good dose of ironic plaesure and fairytale humor. Not surprisingly, the original cover-art of Noura Tafeche does nothing but suggest the idea of a tasty psychedelic fruit-salad.

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)

On February 19, 1972, a crew of mostly Louisiana-raised musicians came together at the Leo Castelli Gallery on West Broadway in Soho to perform a wholly improvised concert. This ensemble’s solos spring from collective improvisations and a tumultuous backbeat, loosely inspired by the creations of Coltrane, Coleman, Albert Ayler, and their brethren. The de facto leader was Richard “Dickie” Landry, a saxophonist and keyboardist who joined composer Philip Glass’s group in 1969. Landry had become a fixture in downtown New York’s loft and art scenes at the close of the 1960s, after he high-tailed it by car from Louisiana to the Lower East Side and auspiciously encountered Ornette Coleman at the Village Gate the night of his arrival. For this concert, fellow Glass reedists Jon Smith and Richard Peck joined in, alongside Rusty Gilder and Robert Prado, both doubling on bass (upright and electric) and trumpet. The drum chair was occupied by New Orleans firecracker David Lee, Jr., who brought alto saxophonist Alan Braufman along for the session (Braufman was the only non-Louisiana player in the band). The ensemble stretched out in the gallery for several hours in a configuration reflecting those that took place at Landry’s Chinatown loft, documented in photos by artists Tina Girouard and Suzanne Harris that adorn the inside of the original gatefold album jacket. Recorded live by Glass’ sound engineer Kurt Munkacsi, the album was released as a double LP on Chatham Square, the small imprint Landry and Glass co-ran, in a stark greyscale cover and simply titled Solos. The order of the players’ improvisations was laid out on the album inner labels, though unsurprisingly there’s a fair amount of blend. At the end of the day Solos is beyond category, a rousing exploration of instrumentation, rhythm, and life. This first-time reissue is remastered from the original master tapes, released as a 2LP gatefold with period photos and new liner notes by Clifford Allen, and an additional 30 minutes of bonus material in the digital edition, included with the download code.

Meditations highly recommended. This is J.S. Bach: Das Wohltemperierte Clavie Vol.2 by the Romanian pianist Andrei Vieru. His father was a composer, and he himself seems to be a very intellectual person, not only playing the piano but also painting and writing. His playing is not instinctive and hedonistic as a pianist, but with intellectual restraint and a hint of a seeker of truth. Rather than rolling along with the flow of the music, he lets the sounds become music through the workings of his mind, and as you drift through the world of sound that emerges, it seems to penetrate your inner self before you know it, creating an addictive allure. Also, it is not a classical expression, which is peculiar to classical music, but has a sense of contemporaneity, which I think is also very meaningful. This is a must-listen for people who are not classical music lovers.

After "Bristol Pirates" in '19, it's pirate radio all over again! From "Death Is Not The End", a great place to dig up antique music from all over the world, from pre-war blues to immigrant music and South American folklore, comes a super-impressive compilation of pirate radio commercials from the heyday of London stations between 1984 and 1993. Attack! This is a collection of about 10 years of pirate radio advertisements from the station, which is well known as a regular program on NTS Radio, and includes material provided by Simon Reynolds and the Pirate Radio Archive. "I find a recording of a pirate radio DJ set somewhere and listen to it whenever there's a commercial break. Most of the time, however, the people who recorded them stopped the tapes when the ads came on. It is truly a feat of hard digging, and the fact that most of the clubs, pubs, businesses, DJs, and promoters mentioned here no longer exist is a stiff antique... It is a historical documentary of the past, far from the present, and "the nostalgia associated with them has a certain It is a historical documentary about a past far removed from the present, and "the nostalgia surrounding them has a certain socio-historical significance" (Luke Owen, Death Is Not The End). This is a very valuable film that contains 40 air check scenes.

Legendary Texan artist Terry Allen occupies a unique position straddling the frontiers of country music and visual art; he has worked with everyone from Guy Clark to David Byrne to Lucinda Williams, and his artwork resides in museums worldwide. Widely celebrated as a masterpiece—arguably the greatest concept album of all time—his spare, haunting 1975 debut LP Juarez is a violent, fractured tale of the chthonic American Southwest and borderlands. Produced in collaboration with the artist and meticulously remastered from the original analog tapes, this is the definitive edition of the art-country classic: the first reissue on vinyl; the first to feature the originally intended artwork (including the art prints that accompanied the first edition); and the first to contextualize the album within Allen’s fifty-year art practice.

The last Henry Cow record made after the group had officially disbanded. I'm biased of course but I believe this was a milestone recording, and perhaps the closest we came to getting the music to sound the way we wanted on disc. Guest appearances by Irene Schweitzer and Anne-Marie Roeloffs.

The latest reissue from chOOn!! is Giedrius Kuprevičius’ Erotidijos, the sixth release from the label that specialises in obscure, archival and forgotten releases. Erotidijos translates from the Lithuanian to “Erotidies” – these were festivals held in honour of Eros, God of Love in Ancient Greece. They were organised every five years and were famous for their celebrations, decorations and luxury. Ritual games were played during the festivals, musicians and poets competed, worshipping Eros. Erotidijos is a haunting yet hypnotic tableaux Kuprevičius originally created for a Stanislovas Rubinovas theatre play staged in 1994 in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Lithuanian composer was one of the founding members of the pioneering electronic pop outfit Argo and has written dozens of scores for stage and film over the past several decades, imbuing his soundwork with a multitude of artful moods and emotive depth. The story of Erotidijos unfolds in both melancholic and serenely lush scenery, in turn mysterious and playful. Memories of places you’ve never been drift into frame, from bedroom womb into a foliage of phantasmal keys and gently psychotropic symphonies. A collection that glissandos between notes, place, and time. Erotidijos is guided by an intuitive, improvisational dream logic that threads the line between waking and sleeping revelations. It offers a hazy, voyeuristic lens into another world with dusty ambience and eccentric keyboard effects, warm synth pads and shimmering vistas serving as soft accents to the angelic murmur of giggling voices. As you listen, you are invited to apply your own interpretation of Erotidijos’ narrative of a new land, its climate, sounds, and geography. A contemplative, celestial electronic work in a gentle, often beautiful ambient style which breezily swings with exquisite analogue synth textures and infinity loops. Jazz spontaneity and organic pop impulses lift the meditative veil, ending with a climactic final scene: a sensuous reverie complete with shedding light and gently opening synapses. Available for the first time on vinyl, including over twenty minutes of music not featured on the original cassette release and produced in cooperation with Giedrius Kuprevičius for chOOn!!

Following releases for The Tapeworm and 12th Isle, Christos Chondropoulos lands on The Death Of Rave with this incredible album of "Athenian Primitive” riffs on ancient Greek music and proto-techno prisms, highly recommended if yr into Paul DeMarinis, Rashad Becker, Jonathan Bepler’s soundtracks for Matthew Barney, Black Sabbath or Aphex Twin. Continuing Christos’ singular fascination with, and reappraisal of, Ancient Greek modes, ’Relics’ further excavates the deeptime topography of Greek music prior to the ban of “oriental” or 1/4 tone microtonal modes nearly 100 years ago. Clandestine, euphoric, hyperreal and otherworldly; it takes shape as faintly familiar forms of new age folk, avant-techno and metal musicks, but with an alien appeal that treats the past almost like another planet, never mind a foreign land. Christos studiously raids the past for lost treasure, navigating his tuned instincts as an improvising percussionist, and lover of non-Western composition, to create a uniquely absorbing soundworld that resembles an AI’s dreams after ingesting encyclopaedia entries on thousands of years of Greece prior to 1936. In the process, the album acutely questions his and our relationship to the past, and what has become lost in translation with reliance on prelaid templates and the “wisdom” of elders. Bursting to life with the iridescent arps and new age AI chorale of ‘First Love Fereter’, and concluding with bone-clacking raverie of ‘Jungle X’, the album offers a stunning advance of the themes and aesthetics in Christos previous records, from the self-released free jazz of ‘Fingerpainting’ (2013) to 2021’s 12th Isle released ‘Athenian Primitivism.’ Thanks to meticulous detailing, ‘Relics’ allows a finer play of textured light and almost tangible - yet entirely generated - voices into his music: most strikingly on the sublime songcraft of ‘Regret’ and ‘I Dream Of You’, while the likes of ‘Asham’ are bathed in deeply uncanny atmosphere, and his percussive proprioceptions are most heightened in the delirious battery of ‘War Horns’ and ‘Sacrifice’, with ‘Cyber Crust’ calling up demonic, cthonic pagan spirits resembling Black Sabbath undergoing regression therapy.

Sow Your Gold in the White Foliated Earth exists first as a curator's fancy – in this case from Oslo's Ultima Festival for contemporary music in 2014. The idea was to give revered Norwegian experimental electronic musician Helge Sten, aka Deathprod, access to seminal avant-garde composer Harry Partch's self-designed, custom-made, specialized, invented instruments – an orchestra tuned to just intonation, using up to 43 intervals instead of the standard 12 for the most commonly used Western equal temperament. An artist with a 30+ year career and an uncompromising reputation that reflects the emotional specificity of his uneasy, yet compelling sound, maintained throughout his expansive discography, Sten was an intriguing choice for such a project. Although he attended art school, training in electronic music and sound art, he had little experience with acoustic instruments and can neither read nor write music notation. Yet he's been engaged with Partch's music, and outsider art more generally, since he was a teenager. His resulting piece/composition for the project was originally intended only for performance by Cologne-based Ensemble Musikfabrik, for a series of concerts in five European cities between 2015 and 2018. It's Musikfabrik that undertook the painstaking, expensive process of building an entire set of the composer’s creations – the second only to the originals built by Partch himself. They are the professional musicians and virtuosic instrumentalists that had to re-train and re-educate on these unknown and experimental sound sculptures in non-standard tunings. And they house this large, gorgeous physical instrumentarium and deal with the enormous logistics of working with it, sometimes shipping the fragile pieces to other locales via semi-trucks or ships. Because of such monumental efforts, Musikfabrik are notoriously guarded with recordings of the instruments. And rightly so. They're the only ones allowed to perform on them, too. But Sow Your Gold isn't Musikfabrik playing. Instead, Sten spent days and nights alone with the instrumentarium in Cologne. He played the instruments himself while recording, layering the recordings and editing without effects to compose an 'audio score' for Musikfabrik to work from in order for the ensemble to perform the piece. (Partch also regularly worked this way, although he would transcribe afterwards. Likewise, Sten worked with a professional arranger to create a detailed score, too.) So, that makes Sow Your Gold an even less likely rarity – partly why its release comes seven years after its creation. If you ask Sten about the album's title, he’ll point you to the text he borrowed it from – Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens by H.M.E. De Jong, a 1969 study of a 1617 book of alchemical emblems – and notable passages dealing with alchemy, chemistry, and agriculture, all transformative processes. And while that may sound complicated, his takeaway is simple: "You have to break something down to create something new," – a lesson he felt related strongly to his own musical process, especially in this project. So, while Sow Your Gold in the White Foliated Earth is a piece written for specific, oddly tuned, extremely rare and unusual instruments, and for a certain ensemble – namely, some of the finest contemporary musicians in Europe – Sten grew fond of the audio score, recognizing it as coming directly from the creative process in its purest, most natural form. And so from a foliated earth, where obscure tradition, treasured scarcity, immense effort, and patient certainty layer and criss-cross, comes rugged gold, polished to shining by one outsider for another.

AE-30 is both a film and audio album of the 2021 Sam Gendel x Roland AE-30 / Aerophone / Pro Digital Wind Instrument documentary. In August, musician Sam Gendel and filmmaker Marcella Cytrynowicz traveled to Iceland and filmed Gendel performing the instrument in unique locations outdoors around the country - most locations remote and accessed only via their friend Viktor, a search-and-rescue volunteer for Iceland who expertly navigates the country's challenging terrain in his modified Toyota Land Cruiser. The full documentary film and audio companion album will be released December 8th 2021 via Leaving Records.

Just in time for the holidays.... 
A new expanded reissue of the sold out & extremely limited LP from 2017. 

Her son Loren Connors writes... 
"These recordings, no matter how rough the sound quality, capture the essence of the art of bel canto soprano Mary Mazzacane. Born in an Italian American neighborhood (Fairhaven) near Yale, she was one of the first women to graduate from the Yale School of Music. Ms. Mazzacane, who was active on the opera stage from 1947 through the 1970’s, playing leading roles in Madame Butterfly, Tosca, Amahl and the Night Visitors and other works, left no commercial recordings. All we have is a shoebox full of muddy practice sessions and live performance recordings on barely playable cassette tapes, along with a few radio broadcast acetates... Throughout these pieces, her voice has a unique inner warmth and a beautifully clear tone, the closest I know to the pure clarity of bells."

Japanese bluesman Kan Mikami is nothing less than an unalloyed force of nature. A skin-shredding blast of frozen wind from the poor, rural north of Japan that he calls home. In the late 1960s, like thousands of other Japanese young people Mikami made his way to Tokyo in search of a life different from that of his parents. Since then he has forcefully carved out a space for himself in the culture as a modernist poet, a raging folk singer, an author, a actor, an engaging TV personality, and one of Japan’s most uniquely powerful performers. For most of Mikami’s career as a singer, he has performed solo. Just him and his electric guitar against the world, creating jagged A-minor vamps to drive along the surreal wisdom of his lyrics. But he’s equally at home in more demanding improvisational contexts such as those provided here by John Edwards on bass and Alex Nielson on drums. Their dense propulsive textures seem to spur on Mikami, his voice arcing powerfully into fragmented spaces, his guitar darting, colliding, shedding jagged and angular splinters of sound. A pulsing, raging maelstrom of serrated-edged energy. Gruff, rough, honest and very, very real.

"On an east London side street, Café Oto hosts a programme of international experimental sounds to shame subsidised arts temples, drawing demographic-defying crowds of all ages through its doors. The first release on Oto's own label, available as an authentic vinyl slab or a slippery download, is a 40-minute splurge of sax, drums and bass skronk, live at the venue in 2010, from the German free-jazz giant Brötzmann and two stars of the London improv scene. Unrepeatable moments of collective inspiration and sudden sunlit shafts of modal near melody punctuate the continuing energy blur. Business as usual down Dalston Junction." Stewart Lee, The Sunday Times "Since it opened in Dalston in April 2008, Café OTO has become London's new music venue of choice for the likes of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Joe McPhee, Mats Gustafsson – and Peter Brötzmann, whose first residency at the club in January 2010 yielded this inaugural release on OtoRoku, Café OTO’s new in-house label. The night in question was the first time Brötzmann had played with bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, and the decision to team them up was inspired. With Alan Wilkinson, or in Decoy with Alex Hawkins and NEW with Alex Ward, Edwards and Noble have a deserved reputation as a thrilling high-energy rhythm section. And as Brötzmann is no slouch when it comes to high-energy playing, the combination is explosive. Right from the start of the set – the first that evening – it's obvious why this was selected to christen the label. All three players jump straight into top gear, with Brötzmann setting a cracking pace, his torrent of sound characterised by that hard-edged tone which makes him such compelling listening. ...the worse the better sets a high standard for subsequent releases to match. But, as every night at Café OTO is recorded and there's a wealth of fine music waiting in the wings, including quality recordings from Otomo Yoshihide and Wadada Leo Smith, OtoRoku looks like a label to watch." John Eyles, Paris Transatlantic "These two extended improvisations, recorded in January 2010 during Brötzmann’s first residency at OTO, finds the group attaining near-telepathic modes of interconnectedness, despite this being the trio’s first outing together. From the off, Brötzmann’s gills are gurning, throwing up torrents of molten roar, while Noble’s mule-kicking at the traps reels out ride hits like a baby sporting a bonnet of bees." - Spencer Grady, BBC Music "Does the world need another Brötzmann album? Probably not, but as the inaugural release on Cafe OTO's in-house high quality vinyl-only label, this one is cause for celebration. Recorded there - superbly well, too - during Brötzmann's residency in January 2012, this is no frills straight-up free jazz, solos and all, pitting the Firebreather of Wuppertal against the might local rhythm team (yes, they can and do swing hard) of John Edwards and Steve Noble. All three are on outstanding form, from the opening yelp - when it comes to Big Bang beginning, nobody does it better than Brötzmann - to Edwards's snarling drone 38 minutes later. Shame engineer Shane Browne slammed thos faders down so brutally: for once, you feel like joining in with the whoops and hollers of the punters." - Dan Warburton, The WIREiframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/37772304&color=%239a8d5e&auto_play=false&hide_related=true&show_artwork=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false" allow="autoplay" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="166" frameborder="no">

MONOBIRDS From Ahmedabad to Xenon, 1969 / 1979 In December 1969, David Tudor made a series of recordings at the Electronic Music Studio at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, using Moog Synthesizers that he himself had brought from the United States and installed there. Ten years later, on March 1, 1979, Tudor used one of these recordings, which he now called Monobird, as the primary source track for a recording session at the New York discotheque Xenon. This album includes two 33rpm vinyl records of these works and an essay by You Nakai, When David Tudor Went Disco, that provides an in-depth study of Tudor’s performance at Xenon and its relation to Monobird. VINYL 1 A: Monobird (NX) 26”28’ / B: Monobird (SX) 29”31’ Recorded at the Electronic Music Studio at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, December 1969 VINYL 2 A: Laser Performance (Take 1) 29”23’ B: Laser Performance (Take 2) 27”43’ Recorded at Xenon, New York City, March 1, 1979 David Tudor: Monobirds - Edition of 200

In late 1965, Billy Klüver, a research engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, arranged for ten New York artists -- John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman -- to meet with a group of his fellow engineers and scientists from Bell Laboratories to work together to develop technical equipment to be used as an integral part of the artists’ performances. 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering took place at the 69th Regiment Armory at 25th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City, October 13 to 23, 1966. More than 10,000 people attended the performances over the nine evenings, where each artist presented his or her work twice. 9 Evenings is recognized as a major event of the 1960s. It was the culmination of extraordinary activity in art, dance and music in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as the beginning of a new era in which artists in these fields explored the use of technology in their work. Variations VII was the next to last of Cage’s Variations, a series of indeterminate compositions begun in 1958, for a variety of instruments and performers which in the mid-1960s made increasing use of electronic equipment and systems. Cage described the work in the 9 Evenings program: "It is a piece of music, Variations VII, indeterminate in form and detail, making use of the sound system which has been devised collectively for this festival, further making use of modulation means organized by David Tudor, using as sound sources only those sounds which are in the air at the moment of performance, picked up via the communication bands, telephone lines, microphones together with, instead of musical instruments, a variety of household appliances, and frequency generators." For the performance, these sources were from radio stations, Geiger counters, and contact microphones placed on household appliances like a food blender, juicer, fan, and toaster, as well as sensors attached to one of the performers to pick up body sounds. In addition, Cage had ten open telephone lines to bring sound from places in New York City, like the restaurant Luchow’s, The New York Times press room, the ASPCA stray dog holding pound, the 14th Street Con Edison electric power station, choreographer Merce Cunningham’s dance studio, and the turtle tank in composer Terry Riley’s apartment. The mechanical and electronic components were placed on two long tables facing each other. The four performers, David Behrman, John Cage, Anthony Gnazzo and David Tudor, worked in a free and unscripted manner connecting, activating, and modulating the various sound sources. Photocells were mounted on the performance tables aimed at lights placed at ankle level under the facing tables. As the four performers moved along the aisle between the tables, the light beams were broken and different sound sources were triggered and sent to speakers around the Armory. The shadows cast by these lights created what Cage later described as “enlargement of activities” as “inside composers picked up outside sources... Fishing.” For the second performance of Variations VII, Cage invited the audience to leave their seats, and they approached the performance tables, wandered around the Armory space, or sat on the floor listening to the performance. A sound recording of Variations VII was made on 7" reel-to-reel audio tape. TOPOS proposed making vinyl records of the full recording of the performance; and they worked to prepare this master recording to fit the requirements of the vinyl medium: dividing it into four roughly equal parts, but preserving the integrity of the composition by making breaks where there was a transition happening in the sound, for example when one sustained sound would die out and another begin. - Julie Martin, New Jersey, 2019

Vladimir Ivkovic主催の〈Offen Music〉からも編集盤が組まれていたウクライナの女性建築家で詩人、音楽家のIhor Tsymbrovskyが、ポーランドの〈Koka Records〉から96年に人知れず発表し、今や入手困難を極める希少カセット作品『Come, Angel』が〈Kontakt Audio〉と〈Infinite Fog Productions〉の共同により、2022年度、史上初の単独再発。ネオ・クラシカルから前衛音楽、ドローン、ジャズまでもが、東欧的なあちら側のフォークロアと共に溶け合う、未知なる絶景の如し大傑作盤！