Avant-Garde / Contemporary

Irrflug are:

Mark Kanak - Concept, sound design, electronics, noise, lyrics

Ian King - Voice

BoBo - Voice

Ella Sturmvogel - Voice

Also featuring:

Blixa Bargeld Voice on “Pulse” and “She lights the earth with her silver”

recorded March 2025 for the “Lügendetektor” sessions

at AndereBaustelle Tonstudio in Berlin by Boris Wilsdorf

Text on “Spirals” taken from WB Yeats “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz”

Text on “She lights the earth with her silver”, Ovid (translation Mark Kanak)

Recorded at Die Höhle, Berlin-Niederschöneweide 2024-2025

Mastered by Ilari Larjasto

Cut by Stefan Mitterer at Manmade Mastering Berlin

Front sleeve painting by Arsi Keva

Painting disobeyed by Tanja Koljonen

Graphic design by Tommi Grönlund

Sähkö Recordings 2025

PUU-61

'noisembryo' definitively presented here on cd with bonus disc noise matrix including unreleased material from the same sessions as noisembryo and counterpart 'hole' and selected recording from the time period.

absolutely can’t be missed for fans of this period of noise deity merzbow. the bonus disc alone makes this essential for any merzbow fanatic as well as new listeners. When people ask where to start with merzbow? this is the answer!

the holy grail, not only of merzbow’s obsessive discography, but of the entire 90’s noise movement. you’ve heard the stories surrounding the infamy of this release, but beyond that stands the depth and wild energy over two decades later that ‘noisembryo’ encapsulates. velocity loops, roving automotive bass and cacophonic drum machine gel together with the surprising inclusion of a sound rarely heard within merzbow’s many years...masami akita’s own voice. akita’s surrealism of the past stands prominently relevant to this day. art images from unseen classic paintings and collages of masami from the original ‘noisembryo’ session.

The original 'noisembryo' on disc one as well as the following tracks included on the 'noise matrix' bonus disc:

1. Noisembryo Extra 01
2. Noise Matrix Extra 01
3. Noise Matrix Extra 02
4. Noise Matrix Extra 03
5. Noise Matrix Extra 04
6. The Amazing Maya H
7. 94526

Track 1: taken from original DAT tape which including ‘noisembryo’ recording on 1994.
Track 2-5: taken from original DAT tape which including ‘noise matrix’ (in ‘hole’) on 1994.
Track 6: a track recorded on 1995 for releasing eskimo compilation.
Track 7: taken from original cassette tape which recorded on 1994 and remixed on 2019.

all music by masami akita
all remastered on 2020 at munemihouse, Tokyo

portion of proceeds go to animal rescue. 

Rosacea sounds as strange and demented as all the previous albums by this Norwegian one-man project (on Feeding Tube and Ultra Eczema). But it sounds right. Just like he claimed in a recent interview about his untraditional approach to writing songs: "I just make stuff until it sounds right". It sounds absolutely right in fact.

As puzzling and lunatic as he may seem, yet a sense of order emanates from the idiosyncrasies featured on this album. Ghédalia Tazartès is a cursory reference. Especially on Carmelade. However, the spectrum of sound and compositions on Rosacea manage to actually transcend the late French eccentric composer and singer.

This is truly unique.

Compilation of our favorite Arvo Part pieces. All sparse and beautiful arrangements. Some solo piano pieces, some duets with piano, violin cello and viola and one string quartet. The pieces on this record are all unique to the style of Arvo Part – deceptively simple compositions that force you to live in the moment you are listening to them. A Part quote from the back of the record – “You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free—you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary.”

In 1978 Having Been Built on Sand was conceived as a vinyl edition and released by the Rüdiger Schöttle gallery in Munich with sleeve design by Weiner. The piece consists of eight untitled tracks. Lawrence Weiner, Tina Girouard, and Britta Le Va recite text with Dickie Landry’s woodwinds, all recorded in the natural reverb of Robert Rauschenberg’s studio, a former mission and chapel in Lower Manhattan. Layering Girouard in English, Le Va in German, and Weiner in English and German blocks of related or physically proximal texts repeat, invert, and intersect with Landry’s music as a constant. The layers of text and sound have meanings that fluctuate in complexity and scope, and like much of Weiner’s work, beyond mere facts. The first piece is a trio for Landry’s keening tenor, repeating winnowed but breathy lines that contrast with and buoy Le Va’s clear, husky phrases, building in intensity as Weiner, in English, offers statements that are caught just off mic. The third cut adds Girouard, and one can hear woven parallels in the two women’s voices, cadences, and pitches, with Weiner’s cutting inflection dancing amid them. Landry’s bass clarinet is rich in its warble, full and gentle with woody footfalls that demarcate shapes through the chorus. Vocal rhythmic cycles, wordless in nature, are the energy that courses through the fourth song, urgent and sweaty as Weiner recites statements of political position in the Middle Ages, Le Va declaiming alongside in German. On soprano saxophone for the fifth tune, Landry pierces and darts in a bright manner in a private dialogue with himself, echoing Steve Lacy as female voices nearly bury one another in closely valued hues. Weiner, meanwhile, volleys between the LP’s title phrase and cornerstone proclamations such as “the artist may construct the piece. The piece may be fabricated. The piece need not be built.” The closing cut makes curious use of delay and alto flute, Landry’s breath and the inherent percussiveness of the instrument’s keys creating a slick rhythmic support that courses through overlapping vocal phrases, advancing and receding declarations of presence and intent.

For five decades, Michael Smith’s performance art has inhabited bland domestic spaces, mass media and its promise to keep us company and failing business ventures that misread the moment. Through art installations, theater, video, television and live performances, Smith’s comedic work lives inside the identity models that both constitute and disassociate our shared experience. His two performance personae, Mike and Baby Ikki, plumb the depths of American and culture to perform the discrepancies between what is promulgated by controlling interest and what actually exists in the reality of our day-to-day worlds. MIKE’S BOX is an immersive 8-disc DVD collection of his work up until now, including the complete collaborative video work of Smith with both Joshua White and Doug Skinner, collaborations with William Wegman, Seth Price, Mike Kelley and many others. It is accompanied by a richly illustrated book with an essay by Tim Griffin, featuring documentation from shows exhibited at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museo Jumex, along with filmed conversations between the artist, curators and collaborators.

MIKE'S BOX includes 8 DVDs along with a 128-page booklet packaged in a printed slipcase.

Gastr Del Sol emerged from the remains of Bastro in 1992 with the brooding, mostly drumless album, ‘The Serpentine Similar’. This represented an unlikely evolution from the fury of Bastro, but evolution was only getting started - and ‘unlikely’ was one of the ongoing principles in Gastr Del Sol’s approach. Before the sessions for the second album, Bundy Brown left the group and David Grubbs asked Jim O’Rourke to come play. 1994’s ‘Crookt, Crackt Or Fly’ tangled the clean lines of the original band in the writing, playing and editing of the music. This was all very fascinating, but it wasn’t until the five songs of ‘Mirror Repair’ that the compelling space of Gastr Del Sol could be fully perceived. ‘Mirror Repair’ was rife with guitar interplay, but Gastr coloured the palette with piano, drums and a sudden and rattling variety of woodwinds, all evoking the obsessive pull of a deep-seeded conviction, an insistent image that one cannot forget in a dense atmosphere with riffs patterning over each other and fading into landscape. The quieting of Gastr Del Sol had been dialling down since the start; here the silences were as essential a part of the sound as the sound was. In a fast five song mini album, length and depth were impossibly extended as part of the many moods of Gastr Del Sol. Albert Oehlen’s cover art provided a perfect counterpart to the sounds within, providing also a shout out to The Red Krayola, where David and Albert met during their mutual involvement with Mayo Thompson. The best in this vein was yet to come - but with ‘Mirror Repair’, Gastr had made something definitive. Now, the bold sounds of nearly twenty years ago are back in the groove, freshly cut for 21st ears to hear. You need ‘Mirror Repair’.

Minimalist avant-rock from experimentalist Dreyblatt: ultra-rhythmic overtones created from striking piano strings strung to a bass.

LP originally released in 1982 by India Navigation Records

BJ Nilsen returns with True than Nature, a collection that elevates everyday and environmental sounds through subtle electronic manipulation. Focused on the intrinsic properties of sound itself, the album draws attention to often-ignored sonic phenomena—industrial hums, echoes, labour, and material textures—transforming them into abstract, shifting soundscapes.

By withholding details about source locations and techniques, Nilsen encourages listeners to engage without preconceived anchors, allowing meaning to emerge through deep listening. Titles are left deliberately open-ended, offering symbolic cues rather than fixed narratives. The result is a contemplative, perception-altering experience that blurs the line between the known world and imagined sonic possibility.

Based in Amsterdam, BJ Nilsen has worked since the early 1990s across music, theatre, film, and sound design. His long-standing interest in field recording, environmental acoustics, and the psychological dimensions of sound has led him to explore both natural and industrial terrains, including recent studies of Arctic mining regions and urban soundscapes.

Originally released on CD in 2002, this LP features archival recordings dating back to 1959 alongside recordings made by Hal Willner in January 2001 (Jan 7th - 10th).

For the first time ever on vinyl, ‘DIE ON ME’ has been re-mastered & newly edited by Kramer. Within this historic collection are the last voice recordings of the legendary Beat poet Gregory Corso.

Intimate and raw, he muses on his life in conversation with friends Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull, and the legendary Chicago writer Studs Terkel, discussing and reciting some of his most beloved poems. The recording process illuminates Corso’s thoughts on his own work in deeply revealing detail.

No other spoken-word LP shines a brighter light on its subject.

Marianne Faithfull playfully incites him to tell stories, and upon his request, graces him with her own recitations of his poems.

This LP is a unique compendium collecting the works of the single most underappreciated master of American poetry, produced by the late great Hal Willner.

Corso's closest friend Allen Ginsberg told Kramer, “People say that I’m the greatest American poet of the 20th Century. I tell them they’re wrong. GREGORY CORSO is a far greater poet.”

Gregory Corso died on January 17th, 2001 at the age of 70, just a few days after many of these historic recordings were completed.

Corso’s ashes were laid to rest in Rome on May 5th, 2001 at the foot of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s grave in the Cimitero Acattolico. John Keats lay nearby.

Gregory Corso was both the youngest and one of the most prominent members of the Beat generation, alongside notable figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Born in 1930 in Greenwich VIllage, Corso survived a traumatic childhood which included orphanages, foster homes, reform school, prison and mental hospital experiences. It was during his prison term he was able to self-educate and develop a unique poetic style that combined classical language alongside the newer lexicons of modern verse.

He became involved with the Beat literary scene, meeting influential writers and traveling with them extensively. His first book of poetry, ‘The Vestal Lady on Brattle’ was published in 1955. His subsequent published output was sparse, as he would labour for years over a handful of poems.

His closest friend Allen Ginsberg told Kramer, “People say that I’m the greatest American poet of the 20th Century. I tell them they’re wrong. GREGORY CORSO is a far greater poet.”

In the words of Hal Willner Excerpted from the original liner notes* (2002):

“Michael Minzer and I had been trying to produce a Gregory Corso album for years. For our series that featured Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, as well as Kathy Acker and Terry Southern, Gregory was someone we needed to include - besides, he was always my favorite poet to listen to. He had a wonderful, romantic, and beautiful voice; his readings never lost the sense of the unexpected and dangerous.” …

“Somehow the record that emerged is (in my opinion) incredibly beautiful, moving, sad—but not depressing, and often funny. Not to sound silly, but I felt that we had help with this record from some unknown source that guided and directed it. Just writing about how the record was made makes it even more amazing to me that it got done at all- and I’m very proud that it came together in this way. …”

Jessica EKOMANE « Manifolds » Entirely computer-generated, Manifolds is a work that explores the multiple possibilities of polyphonic writing, extending it to the “multiphonic” universe where sources and timbres diffract themselves in the listening space. The different voices of the composition no longer follow the traditional parallel trajectories of musical dialogue, but find themselves propelled as if into a particle accelerator, a “collider” freed from all formal rhetoric to reach a state of liberation of energies that is truly confounding. It is then that, in the multi-layered universe of sonic electrons, as if against its own will, a “chant” of overwhelming humanity is revealed. Laurel HALO « Octavia » (2022) Octavia, a piece for piano and electronics, explores the relationship between melodic motifs and textures in a singular way, intermittent moments of melody, harmony and sound materials connecting and disconnecting, to indicate a series of nets or webs, swaying in and out of one another. These sonic nets gently float, spin and merge, and the effect is one of gently floating over an abyss. The work is inspired by the “spiderweb city” of the same name in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities: “Below there is nothing for hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past; further down you can glimpse the chasm’s bed….Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long.” — François J. Bonnet, 2023

During the transitional period in which Coil’s primary leadership (Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and John Balance) reorganized their creative direction by taking on new membership in the group through their inclusion of Drew McDowall, Coil took a drastic turn towards the metaphysical unknown. Employing the subtle handiwork of Coil’s “real life” members, as well as cleverly guised aliases and spiritual collaborators, the band chose to filter their identity through a the nome de guerre, 'Black Light District', setting the precedent of Coil’s future exploration of otherworldly influence. Recorded during the Winter of 1995/96, 'Black Light District' leans more on their formal avant-garde pursuits and academic interests rather than their industrial pedigree resume. Starting off with an obvious nod to John Cage with their introductory “Unprepared Piano”, the tone is prepared in exactly the same way… unpredictable. Conceptually abstract, Black Light District shows Coil’s old guard disregarding the pop rhythms found on previous albums, such as Love's Secret Domain, and fully embracing their experimental electronic trajectory. Subtle patterns of looping melancholy and malaise are placed delicately underneath ghostly electronic timbre. Approaching their creative method as something from the beyond, another realm in which sounds blur and performers seemingly appear from the ether.

Legowelt & Takafumi Noda aka Mystica Tribe with their third Noda & Wolfers album, this one is for the real dub headz!

“Corpus Delicti EP” marks the first vinyl release by Mazlika, a Tokyo‑based trackmaker and DJ who is also active as a dancer.

This album finds internationally active turntablist and sound artist dj sniff reconstructing material from the Japanese avant‑garde label doubtmusic. Through a process of constant destruction and regeneration of the source recordings, he creates an entirely new sonic form—an invigorating work that sits at the intersection of turntablism and experimental music.

John Hubbard, who is also a book designer and based in Finland, had released the sole recordings of the legendary project “Vogelscheiß Und Seine Verrückten Kröten” in 1989 in a limited edition of just 50 copies on his Strength Through Joy label. Now these rare recordings are re-issued for the first time by Art Into Life. In 1988, upon meeting Steve Stapleton while on vacation in Europe, John then went to Aachen and visited Christoph Heemann & Andreas Martin, and the enigmatic sessions they recorded are revealed here.

Sound Reporters was a Dutch publishing company that specialised in anthropology, religion, and history, releasing unique documents of the cultural multiplicity of human societies and their importance. These recordings were originally released on cassette in 1988, and consist of field recordings made on the Greek island of Amorgos, part of the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea. The release was jointly credited to the painter Harry Van Essen, who lived for several years on the island and recorded its soundscapes, and also to the ethnomusicologist and founder of Sound Reporters, Fred Gales, who mixed the recordings.

The recordings consist of sketched amalgams of local sounds from Egiali, a port in the northeast of the island. The first half is a soundscape deeply rooted in the island people’s daily lives, alternating sounds of the sea with popular music, recitations of poetry, the sounds of fishing boats, people playing boardgames, a party. The second half takes us out of the village and into the mountains, unveiling the island’s unadorned natural environment: the sounds of cicadas, the buzz of honeybees, the bells of the large herds of goats left out to pasture, etc.

Rob Mazurek’s 'Alternate Moon Cycles' was International Anthem's first release. The incredibly spare single-note-centered cornet, bass and organ chant was recorded to tape at pint-sized Chicago bar Curio as part of a performance series that predates any notion of our label’s existence. Documenting this performance – highly unique even within the depths of Mazurek’s vast catalog – stirred those notions, and soon talks began of releasing the recording on a fresh imprint.

Performed by Mazurek with Matthew Lux and Mikel Patrick Avery, the music unfolds glacially amongst the gentle creaks, clinks, whispers, and scuffles of the active room. It’s difficult to imagine a more honest rendering of the two sidelong pieces of organic minimal music, and nearly impossible to separate the sounds from their performance context.

Now this long-gone gem of supernatural frequency excavation is back in print, wrapped in our IARC 2025 obi strip, with a new 4-page insert booklet featuring additional session photos and fresh liner notes by Mikel Patrick Avery.

LP version. Includes eight-page booklet; 425 gsm brownboard outer sleeve; 180 gram vinyl. "Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country..." So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc'h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, -- taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At the beginning of the 1970s, she discovered the Breton song tradition (soniou and gwerziou) through Yann Poëns and became involved in Névénoé, a cooperative of traditional expression founded by Gérard Delahaye and Patrick Ewen. It was under this label that her first album Marc'h Gouez, was released in 1976. With a dozen friends playing guitar, piano, violins, flutes..., Noguès composed not Breton music, but music from Brittany: a type of shared folklore in which imagination is married to the reality of the moment, that of social demands and companionship. At the very beginning of the record, we can hear her drawing up a chair, before the plucked notes of the harp become a cascade: "Enez Rouz", is an invitation to listen up close. You are reminded here of the Meredith Monk of "Greensleeves", there of the early albums of Brigitte Fontaine/Areski, elsewhere of Emmanuelle Parrenin, Pascal Comelade... Noguès rhyming pattern is ever changing: airy ("Hunvre"), cosmopolitan ("Pinvidik Eo Va C'hemener"), enigmatic ("Ar Bugel Koar"), profound ("Ar Gemenerez"), or enchanting ("Hirness An Devezhiou"). And then there is the track from which the album takes its name: "Marc'h Gouez" which, between nursery rhyme and chamber music, weaves a fabulous web in which the auditor is obliged to be caught. "Brittany equals poetry": so, said André... Breton; and Kristen Noguès proves it to be true. Licensed from Katell Branellec. Carefully remastered from the master tapes by Gilles Laujol. Graphic design by Stefan Thanneur.

0on Zero-on, a label run by the percussion group "Kodo 鼓童" which has its roots on Sado Island, has released a cassette recording of a solo performance by percussionist Yuta Sumiyoshi, a member of the "Kodo" group. 

KENTATAKU YUTATAKU’s 3rd album “Zero On” is the eponymous first release on Kodo’s new label 0on.
Featuring four improvisational tracks, ranging from large ensemble works without musical instruments to vast sound collages, KENTATAKU YUTATAKU’s latest work is packed full of heart, soul, and fresh new sound.
Limited release of 200 cassettes + download code. 

There are certain works by minimalist pioneer Terry Riley that are rightly celebrated as classics, paradigm-shifting masterpieces that exerted a wide influence within classical music, but also well beyond its often hermetic borders. Hello, “Baba O’Riley!” But there is so much more in his repertoire deserving the same accolades. On “Terry Riley: Keyboard Studies”, released by Another Timbre, one of the premiere contemporary music labels of our time, three mid-1960s masterpieces are interpreted by the brilliant pianist John Tilbury - known well for his long-time membership in AMM, to say nothing on his authoritative readings of music by Morton Feldman and Cornelius Cardew - sometime in the early 1980s, offering dazzling evidence of his inventive interpretations and Riley’s boundless importance. The British pianist John Tilbury has been intimately connected with AMM for more than four decades, joining the legendary improvising group back in 1980. He filled the chair once held by Cornelius Cardew, who left the group a year earlier (and who died in a tragic bike accident in 1981). Long before joining the group Tilbury had established himself as one of England’s finest contemporary classical musicians, with a particular expertise int the work of Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Howard Skempton as well as Cardew. Apart from recording the latter’s music, he also penned an authoritative book about his life and music, publishing “Cornelius Cardew - A Life Unfinished” in 2008. Tilbury is a pianist of rare erudition and technical precision, surveying long-form works with a keen architectural knowledge, and his refined skills as an improviser are rooted in high-level listening abilities. He has thrived in collective enterprises, giving and taking in varied contexts in a way that emphasizes collaboration, care, and sensitivity while downplaying bald virtuosity. Outside of his brilliant work in AMM (and outside of it with core members Keith Rowe and Eddie Prevost) he’s improvised with a broad array of sonic explorers including Oren Ambarchi, Marcus Schmickler, John Butcher, Evan Parker, and Derek Bailey. He cleaves to an immaculate strain of austerity, operating with remarkable restraint and rigor that generally has no interest in excess or virtuosity for its own sake. Over the years he’s made several recordings for Sheffield’s Another Timbre imprint - one of the best, most thoughtful labels devoted to a post-Cagean music landscape - including one as part of the collective Goldsmiths in addition to titles featuring the music of Feldman, Cage, and Terry Jennings. Another recording for the label features his clavichord playing on work by John Lely and Christian Wolff. While working with Another Timbre capo Simon Reynell on a different long-term project, Tilbury played him some old recordings featuring several keyboard works by minimalist pioneer Terry Riley, an old and dear acquaintance of the pianist. Tilbury doesn’t recall the exact provenance of the recordings, but it seems likely they were made in Hamburg in the early 1980s. “Keyboard Studies” offers a crucial facet of Tilbury’s musical world, one that’s poorly represented by recordings, while at the same time offering new interpretations of some of Riley’s most important work. A handful of pianists, such as Sarah Cahill and Steffen Schleiermacher, have recorded the first two of his seven “Keyboard Studies”, but getting to hear Tilbury’s ravishing, breathtaking accounts of these works reveals new perspectives. Riley himself never recorded the first study, while an attractively raw iteration of the second was made under the title “Untitled Organ”, released on the 1967 album “Reed Streams” on the Mass Art imprint. Riley only notated the first two of these pieces, composed between 1964-67, as they were designed largely as piano exercises for ideas he was working through at the time - during the same period he wrote his masterpiece “In C” - and each piece requires significant improvisation on the part of the interpreter. Naturally, Tilbury was up for the task. Both of these “Keyboard Studies” use a fixed but implied pulse, with a jaw-dropping rhythmic attack rooted in fifteen foundational three- or four-note phrases that cycle over and over, with the performer determining when to move forward, although the opening figure must always remain present. As far as I can tell Tilbury’s account of “Keyboard Study 1”, with its vaguely hocket-like alteration between two phrases at a time, is a single live take on piano, but the technical difficulty of these works has required overdubbing, and that’s what we get from Tilbury on “Keyboard Study 2”, which contains five separate voices, where he plays piano, electric organ, celeste, and harpsichord in dizzying cycles of rapidly swirling, rhythmically identical passages. The writing allows the listener to trace the ecstatic shifts between those core cells, even as the lines fly by at super high velocity. Phrases seem to emerge and disappear in almost psychedelic excess. The album’s final piece is a version of Riley’s “Dorian Reeds”, a 1965 work he composed for saxophone and electronic delay - and also included on the “Reed Streams” album - which shares many of the same concerns as “Keyboard Studies”, albeit with a far more limited harmonic profile. In Riley’s own recording of the piece, which incorporated his Time-Lag Accumulator system as a delay device to allow for the removal and introduction of phrases, he plays saxophone, although subsequently the piece has been adapted depending on the instrument as Dorian Voices or Dorian Brass. Although it sticks with the original title, Tilbury’s version is for electric organ. It’s a wonderful sonic mind-storm, as terse phrases stack up, phase in and out of each other, only to be pushed aside by new iterations, bouncing across the stereo field. Obviously, John Tilbury took his practice in a direction far removed from these minimalist gems, but here he not only proves his remarkable facility for this aesthetic frame, but he reveals a creative connection to the composer. He seems to inhabit these works with rare insight, a quality surely enhanced by his personal friendship with Terry Riley.

Pierre Bastien’s "Tools" pays tribute to the Meccano screwdriver, the origin of his mechanical instruments. Using self-made devices, Bastien explores sound’s raw materiality, embracing chance and discovery, and inviting listeners to experience new musical worlds.

“On my end, I had to sooner or later pay a similar tribute to the tool that allowed for the crafting of the Mecanium, from 1976 to this day. [...] Origin of origins, which even preceded the shaping of the sound-generating device, the Meccano screwdriver stands out from the regular screwdriver because of its singular shape: a simple metal rod flattened at one end, and rounded into an oblong loop at the other. [...] This all-new, streamlined, purposeful design helped me, once more, to compose the current record.” - Pierre Bastien

In Tools, Pierre Bastien explores his long-standing fascination with the concept of “elsewhere” from a new perspective. The title echoes an article by René Van Peer, which opens with this concise formula: “I compose with a screwdriver”. Bastien performs on instruments of his own making —mechanical assemblages built primarily from Meccano parts— which structure not only the music itself but also an image of music. Rather than seeking narrative or metaphor, let’s not imagine anything just yet, Bastien invites us first to observe the raw materiality of his mechanisms: the clash of gears, the hum of rotation, the tension between precision and accident.

The machine-instrument at the origin of this record was composed of a rhythm section, a harmonic section with six valves playing six major chords, a rotating nail violin, eight rotating flute mouthpieces, and an automated skeleton of a record player. The device holds its hidden secrets. What emerges, unplanned, carries the essence of discovery. The unexpected remains invisible until it materializes. To discover something is to understand that the world we knew has widened. As such, Bastien’s creative process is a precious reminder that “elsewhere” (and its multitude of worlds) is always lurking around us.

A collection of outtakes from the First Blues sessions along with other tracks, live recordings & rehearsal cuts including Bob Dylan and/or Arthur Russell and a cameo by Don Cherry on kazoo.

Track 1 taken from rehearsal tapes December 9th 1975: Allen Ginsberg (Vocals) accompanied by the Blues/Sholle Band.

Tracks 2-4 taken from the Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Electric Music Poetry Improvised sessions.

Tracks 5-8 taken from the First Blues Hammond sessions.

Track 9-10: recorded live at Gerdes Folk City, June 16th 1984: Allen Ginsberg (Vocals), Don Cherry (Kazoo), Peter Orlovsky (Banjo + Lead Vocal on "Feed Them the Raspberries to Grow"), Steven Taylor (Guitar) & Mark Kramer (Bass).

Track 11: Session at Bob Dylan's Santa Monica Studio, February 23rd 1982: Allen Ginsberg (Vocals), Bob Dylan (Bass), David Mansfield (Mandolin, Guitar), Steven Taylor (Steel String Acoustic Guitar) & Arthur Rosato (Drums).

Issued under license from the Allen Ginsberg Estate. All songs written by Allen Ginsberg and published by May King Poetry Music administered in North America by Music of Virtual and for the Rest of the World by BMG Rights Mgt.

Out of press in its original form for years, controversial beat poet Allen Ginsberg's East Village love-in 'First Blues' - a vast double-album of collaborations with everyone from Arthur Russell to Bob Dylan and Don Cherry - is newly reissued via Death Is Not The End. It's hard to deny Ginsberg's impact; his poetry alone was enough to shift the course of US counter culture, and you can visualise his contributions to downtown punk and folk. But his music career isn't quite as intimately understood, which makes 'First Blues' a pretty vital artefact for anyone looking to investigate further. Ginsberg wrote and recorded the material between 1971 and 1983, taking the opportunity to leaf through his lengthy phonebook and call up anyone he admired or had collaborated with in the past. So Dylan - who Ginsberg had collaborated with before - shows up on the first few tracks, helping to balance out his friend's wobbly-voiced, country-fried recitations with tangled acoustic twangs. The money shots comes with the majority of the remaining tracks, produced and featuring cello by Arthur Russell, given free rein to rumble through folk, blues, jazz and gospel over Ginsberg’s sexcapades, Buddhist revelations and conspiracy theories with bare-faced joy. 'CIA Dope Calypso' is a bonkers highlight, a chirpy Harry Belafonte reinterpretation that lambasts the Central Intelligence Agency for its under-the-radar drug peddling, while 'Sickness Blues' uses Russell's bendy cello tones as a crash mat for Ginsberg's pained lamentations.