MUSIC
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Cold Spring proudly presents the new studio album from MERZBOW. As a life-long campaigner of animal rights, Masami Akita has delivered a brutal assault on those that cage and murder animals. 'ANIMAL LIBERATION - UNTIL EVERY CAGE IS EMPTY' is 5 tracks (49 mins) of total noise assault that only the King of Japanese Noise can provide.
"There is a theory that Covid-19 broke out from the poor conditioned wet markets where live animals are sold. If there were no poultry farms, there would be no mass destruction of chickens due to the spread of bird flu. Human beings' cruelty to animals, animal abuse and species discrimination are all adding up to a disaster for mankind and the whole planet. The pandemic is an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between animals and humans. Veganism is the future for humanity" (Masami Akita, 2021).
The artwork is a reflection of the animal rights and anarcho-punk movements of the 80's. Proceeds from this release will benefit animal rights charities.


A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965...
Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and monophonic nature of Persian classical music on this western instrument - mimicking the tar, setar & santur and extracting sounds from the piano which are still unprecedented to this day.
An active performer and composer from a young age, Mahjubi made his most notable mark as key contributor and soloist for the Golha (Flowers of Persian Song and Poetry) radio programmes. These seminal broadcasts platformed an encyclopaedic wealth of traditional Persian classical music and poetry on Iranian national radio between 1956 until the revolution in 1979.
Presented here is a collection of Morteza Mahjubi's stunningly virtuosic improvised pieces broadcast on Golha between the programme's inception until Mahjubi's death in 1965 - mostly solo, though at times peppered with tombak, violin & some segments of poetry.
The vast collection of Golha radio programmes was put together thanks to the incredible work of Jane Lewisohn & the Golha Project as part of the British Library's Endangered Archives programme, comprising 1,578 radio programs consisting of approximately 847 hours of broadcasts.








Slow, methodical organ recordings on this major new work from Kali Malone; a quietly subversive double album featuring almost two hours of concentrated, creeping organ pieces governed by a strict acoustic and compositional code with ultimately profound emotional resonance. Featuring additional organ pieces performed by Ellen Arkbro and mastering by Rashad Becker, you’re gonna wanna spent time with this one. ‘The Sacrificial Code’ takes a more surgical approach to the methods first explored on last year’s ‘Organ Dirges 2016 - 2017’. Over the course of three parts performed on three different organs, Malone’s minimalist process captures a jarring precision of closeness, both on the level of the materiality of the sounds and on the level of composition.The recordings here involved careful close miking of the pipe organ in such a way as to eliminate environmental identifiers as far as possible - essentially removing the large hall reverb so inextricably linked to the instrument. The pieces were then further compositionally stripped of gestural adornments and spontaneous expressive impulse - an approach that flows against the grain of the prevailing musical hegemony, where sound is so often manipulated, and composition often steeped in self indulgence. It echoes Steve Reich’s sentiment “..by voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind, we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind.” With its slow, purified and seemingly austere qualities ‘The Sacrificial Code’ guides us through an almost trance-inducing process where we become vulnerable receptors for every slight movement, where every miniature shift in sound becomes magnified through stillness. As such, it’s a uniquely satisfying exercise in transcendence through self restraint - a stunning realisation of ideas borne out of academic and conceptual rigour which gradually reveals startling personal dimensions. It has a perception-altering quality that encourages self exploration free of signposts and without a preordained endpoint - the antithesis to the language of colourless musical platitudes we've become so accustomed to.




Black Sarabande expands upon pianist-composer Robert Haigh’s beguiling debut for Unseen Worlds with a collection of intimate and evocative piano-led compositions. Haigh was born and raised in the ‘pit village’ of Worsbrough in South Yorkshire, England. His father, as most of his friends’ fathers, was a miner, who worked at the local colliery. Etched into Haigh’s work are formative memories of the early morning sounds of coal wagons being shunted on the tracks, distant trains passing, and walking rural paths skirting the barren industrial landscape
The album opens with the title track — a spacious, plaintive piano motif develops through a series of discordant variations before resolving. On ‘Stranger On The Lake,’ sweeping textures and found sounds lay the foundation for a two chord piano phrase evoking a sense of elegy. ‘Wire Horses’ is an atmospheric audio painting of open spaces and distant lights. ’Air Madeleine’ uses variations in tempo and dynamics to craft the most seductively melodic track on the album. ‘Arc Of Crows’ improvises on a single major seventh chord, splintering droplets of notes as ghostly wisps of melodic sound slowly glide into view. ‘Ghosts Of Blacker Dyke’ is a melancholic evocation of Haigh’s roots in England’s industrial north — intermingling dissonant sounds of industry within a set of languid piano variations. ‘Progressive Music’ is constructed around a series of lightly dissonant arpeggiated piano chords which modulate through major and minor key changes before resolving at a wistful and enigmatic refrain. In ‘The Secret Life of Air’, a nocturnal, low piano line slowly weaves its way through the close-miked ambience of the room, nearly halting as each note is allowed to form and reverberate into a blur with the next. The ambitious ‘Painted Serpent’ calmly begins with drone-like pads and builds with the introduction of counterpoint piano lines and an orchestral collage of sound underpinned by a deliberate bass motif. ’Broken Symmetry’ and ‘Lady Lazarus’ highlight Haigh’s gift for blurring the line between dissonance and harmony - opaque piano portraits of moonlight and shadows glancingly evoke the impressionistic palettes of Harold Budd, Debussy and Satie.



Limited Clear Vinyl. Despite his status as a key figure in the history of Japanese ambient music, Hiroshi Yoshimura remains tragically under-known outside of his home country. Empire of Signs – a new imprint co-helmed by Maxwell August Croy, Spencer Doran and distributed by Light In The Attic – is proud to reissue Yoshimura’s debut Music for Nine Post Cards for the first time outside Japan in collaboration with Hiroshi’s widow Yoko Yoshimura, with more reissues of Hiroshi’s works to follow in the future.
Working initially as a conceptual artist, the musical side of Yoshimura’s artistic practice came to prominence in the post-Fluxus scene of late 1970s Tokyo alongside Akio Suzuki and Takehisa Kosugi, taking many subsequent turns within Japan’s bubble economy afterward. His sound works took on many forms – commissioned fashion runway scores, soundtracking perfume, soundscapes for pre-fab houses, train station sound design – all existing not as side work but as logical extensions of his philosophy of sound. His work strived for serenity as an ideal, and this approach can be felt strongly on Music for Nine Post Cards.
Home recorded on a minimal setup of keyboard and Fender Rhodes, Music for Nine Post Cards was Yoshimura’s first concrete collection of music, initially a demo recording given to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art to be played within the building’s architecture. This was not background music in the prior Japanese “BGM” sense of the word, but “environmental music”, the literal translation of the Japanese term kankyō ongaku [環境音楽] given to Brian Eno’s “ambient” music when it arrived in late 70’s Japan. Yoshimura, along with his musical co-traveler Satoshi Ashikawa, searched for a new dialog between sound and space: music not as an external absolute, but as something that interlocks with a physical environment and shifts the listener’s experience within it. Erik Satie’s furniture music, R. Murray Schafer’s concept of the soundscape and Eno’s ambience all greatly informed their work, but the specific form of tranquil stasis presented on releases like Nine Post Cards is still difficult to place within a specific tradition, remaining elusive and idiosyncratic despite the economy of its construction. This record offers the perfect introduction to Hiroshi’s unique and beautiful worldview: it’s one that can be listened to – and lived in – endlessly.


A bearhug of chill-out room gouching gear from MFM spanning the golden era of ‘90s ambient dance music with gems from David Moufang, LFO, Global Communication, Kirsty Hawkshaw, Sun Electric and many more notables of that era. Since the world turned into a big chill out room in early 2020, albeit with a heavy sense of anxiety, this set could hardly be better placed for downtime in the comfort of your own home, rolling out mystic highlights such as LFO’s MDMA-tingle arps and pads in ‘Helen’ and the sublime suspension systems of Global Communication’s remix of ‘Arcadian’, along with Move D’s early nugget ‘Sergio Leone’s Wet Dream’, and the lush pads of his close spar Jonah Sharp’s Spacetime Continuum, plus a strip of killer slow acid in Sideral’s ‘Mare Nostrum’, and the blissed romance of ‘Love 2 Love’ by Sun Electric. One for the lovers and the ravers.








"I was invited to an art gallery in Los Angeles to hear a solo String Bass recital by Stefano. I arrived late and the concert was in progress, I was walking down a series of concrete halls to reach the galley chamber where the music was taking place. In the distance I could hear the sounds of french horns, trombones, strings and brass all mixing in a beautiful modal ensemble, and at the time I thought that Stefano must be playing his bass with a chamber group. I was amazed when I entered the gallery to find Stefano all alone playing his bass ... " - Terry Riley, 1997
Organum for Stefano, the third record that i dischi di angelica dedicates to the work of Terry Riley, represents a significant example of “coming full circle”: indeed, in 1997 AngelicA Festival organised a concert in Bologna for Terry Riley and Stefano Scodanibbio – it was their first tour together, and the beginning of a collaboration that would last for years, promoting their first album Lazy Afternoon Among the Crocodiles (AIAI 008), recorded in the Shri Moonshine studio in Riley’s home between 1994 and 1995.
After his magnificent piano solo at the 2000 edition, AngelicA invited Riley back in 2013 to dedicate a special tribute-portrait to him, presenting his music in a series of concerts held in three different cities (Bologna, Modena, and Lugo), with different line-ups: The 3 Generations Trio (with Tracy Silverman and Gyan Riley, documented on the record IDA 034); the ARTE saxophone quartet from Switzerland; and indeed a concert, commissioned as a world premiere, dedicated to Stefano Scodanibbio who had passed away the year before, in January 2012.
The venue selected for the concert was the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Servi, hence Riley decided to use its historic Tamburini opus 544 pipe organ for the concert paying homage to the memory of Stefano. The organ was built in 1968 based on a design by Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, with a total of approximately 5000 pipes divided into 60 registers – incidentally, this is the same instrument used four years later in 2017 by Francesco Filidei in his duet with Roscoe Mitchell, documented on the record Splatter (IDA 040), and in 2019 by Hermann Nitsch on the record Orgelkonzert (IDA 045).
As Riley himself explains in the liner notes:
“I arrived in Bologna with no idea of what I would play, only thinking that I would make this concert a reflection on our deep association, friendship, and music adventures together. I was given a few days prior to the concert to rehearse and compose ideas on the ancient organ. These were magical times for me to also imbibe the resonances of the history of the Basilica and its organ as I composed.
Stefano and I had a long history of touring and playing concerts together and one of the features of our concerts was always an arrangement of a vocal raga for bass, voice and tamboura. Stefano, although not trained in Indian Classical music, had an uncanny ear for the right choices in pitch and rhythm to accompany my traditional vocal renditions.
Two of Stefano’s favourite ragas were Malkauns and Bageshri, late night ragas with deep feelings ideally suited to the profound sounds emanating from his string bass. The concert was completely improvised, introducing the melodies of ragas Malkauns and Bageshri, both vocally and in the harmonized organ passages of an intuitively structured form. The last section is an improvisation upon the passages of my composition Simply M…, a piece I frequently played for Stefano”.
The result was a very precious concert – the only official recording of Riley on the pipe organ – which ranges from minimalism to Indian music, grandiose Bachian architectural constructions, even progressive echoes – in a kaleidoscopic flow of ideas which, both spontaneously and with a great clarity of intention, travels through topical moments and reminiscences of the respective musical identities and experiences shared by the two musicians.
Organum for Stefano is release n. 50 by the label i dischi di angelica, which celebrates its 30 years of activity in 2022.

Exclusive box set with a large live selection
Tracklist:
Cd 1
1 Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl
2 Tuning
3 Beat It On Down The Line
4 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
5 I'm A King Bee
6 Cryptical Envelopement
7 Drums
8 The Other One
9 Cryptical Envelopement
Cd 2
Avalon Ballroom- 1969
Death Don't Have No Mercy
Turn On Your Lovelight
Tuning
Viola Lee Blues
Cd 3
Minnesota- 1971
Introduction To Set One
Bertha
Me & My Uncle
Sugaree
Beat It On Down The Line
Cumberland Blues
Tennessee Jed
Black Peter
Jack Straw
Big Railroad Blues
Brown-Eyed Woman
Mexicali Blues
Comes A Time
Cd 4
Northtrop Auditorium, Minnesota- 1971
Playin' In The Band
One More Saturday Night
Casey Jones
Introduction To Set Two
Truckin'
Ramble On Rose
Me & Bobby Mcgee
Brokedown Palace
Disc 5
Northtrop Auditorium, Minnesota- 1971
Cryptical Envelopment
Drums
The Other One
Cryptical Envelopment
Wharf Rat
Sugar Magnolia
Uncle John's Band
Not Fade Away
Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad
We Bid You Goodnight Jam
Not Fade Away
Cd 6
Capitol Theatre- New Jersey 1978
Jack Straw
Sugaree
Me & My Uncle
Big River
Stagger Lee
Passenger
Candyman
From The Heart Of Me
Cd 7
Capitol Theatre- New Jersey 1978
Loser
The Promised Land
I Need A Miracle
Good Lovin'
Friend Of The Devil
Cd 8
Capitol Theatre- New Jersey 1978
Estimated Prophet
Shakedown Street
Drums
Ollin Arageed (With Hamza El-Din)
Fire On The Mountain
Sugar Magnolia
Johnny B. Goode (Encore)
Cd 9
Shoreline Amphitheatre- Mountain View 1989
Touch Of Grey
Minglewood Blues
Ramble On Rose
Box Of Rain
Dire Wolf
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Estimated Prophet
Eyes Of The World
Drums
Cd10
Shoreline Amphitheatre,- Mountain View 1989
Space
Truckin’
The Other One
Morning Dew
Turn On Your Lovelight
Brokedown Palace (W/Clarence Clemons)

