MUSIC

"I don't hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning." ~ Harry Bertoia, 1976

Harry Bertoia's Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 of Bertoia's original records newly restored from their master tapes and housed in replica jackets. A heavy duty box, printed with metallic inks, holds the 11 discs as well as a 100 page book containing a lengthy historic essay, Smithsonian interview with Harry Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn as well as reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia's children. The Complete Sonambient Collection celebrates 100 years of Harry Bertoia in 2015, the centennial of his birth.

In the late 1950s Harry Bertoia (1915-1978), already a renowned American sculptor, began creating long-form, improvised pieces of music utilizing pure acoustic tones evoked from his sound sculptures. Around this time Bertoia came up with the term "Sonambient" to describe the music and environment created by his tonal sculptures and their lush harmonic overtones. In a renovated barn on his property deep in the Pennsylvania woods Harry curated a harmonious selection of his sculptures and gongs, often recording his frequent, intuitive sound experiments using fout overhead microphones and a 1/4" tape recorder. Bertoia dedicated the last twenty years of his life to his Sonambient work and in 1970 he released the first Sonambient LP. In 1978, in the final months of his life, he selected recordings from his archive and produced ten more Sonambient records. He would not live long enough to see or hear these records himself. Bertoia died in 1978, at age 63, and was buried beneath a giant gong behind his Sonabmient barn.

Bertoia's recordings are as much a celebration of sustained tones, slow decay, healing vibrations and shimmering harmonics as Indian Classical music, singing bowls, The Well Tuned Piano or Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica. Through these rich harmonics, pulsing tones and pure gongs Bertoia was able to more clearly articulate his inner spirit than he could with sculpture alone – a point he made himself many times in interview. Harry's single greatest piece of art is the totality of his life which is nearly impossible to measure but easy to feel. It's our hope that somehow this box set evokes some of the same sacred, personal feeling that one has in Bertoia's barn.

Your purchase directly supports the preservation of Harry Bertoia's Sonambient archive. 

Eliane Radigue's complete Opus 17 (1970), her finest and final work created using feedback, is contained on this double CD. With Opus 17 Radigue perfected her slow mixing technique with sublime results. Imperceptible transformations envelop the attentive listener who is confronted with an immensely physical experience. Time is suspended in powerfully poetic and artful ways as Radigue masterfully sculpts the physical matter of sound using feedback for the last time.

Opus 17 is an absolutely essential masterpiece in the realm of early electro-acoustic/drone/minimalist composition.

Metallic silver ink printed on high gloss paper.

Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience – at once forlorn and eerily calming – through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time.

This 2-LP set and CD from EM Records chronicles the legacy of underground Japanese techno legends Cycheouts - pronounced ‘psyche outs’ in English. Originally formed in 1994, the group quickly became a centerpiece of Osaka's underground electronic scene. Led by main producer Akira Ohashi, Cycheouts melded influences from jungle, drum'n'bass, digital hardcore, and experimental noise music, all of which are explored in this compilation of tracks painstakingly selected by two true Cycheouts experts. Cycheouts' music and live performances went on to inspire a number of successful Japanese dance music acts, and can be seen as an origin point for the "nerdcore techno" movement of the early 2000s. This archive of the early work of Cycheouts provides an essential look at the birth and development of hardcore jungle in Japan, including multiple tracks featuring the full Cycheouts lineup with original vocals and multiple MCs. Most of these tracks are available on LP for the first time, and have been newly remastered for the format; the set also includes extensive liner notes in both English and Japanese.

A reissue series of OCORA, a treasure trove of folk music by Radio France. It is a piece that fully enjoys the charm of the Chinese Pipa. Xiao, who can be called the Chinese bamboo flute, also participates in one song.

First emerging during the early years of the new millennium, over the last two decades, the Palermo born, Munich based composer, Valerio Tricoli, has forged a singular path within experimental sound practice, continuously rethinking the relationship between electroacoustic composition and narrative possibility. Say Goodbye to the Wind, his first LP with Shelter Press, stands among his most poetic and groundbreaking efforts to date. Across three intricate, deeply personal works of concrète music - dense with themes drawn from J.G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, theosophy, and the temporal blur of DMT - the composer blurs the boundaries between the tangible and abstract, weaving complex allegories for the self. Exploring auditory phenomena and the narrative potential of electronic and acoustic sound sources, Valerio Tricoli’s work - as it has appeared across a carefully executed body of solo recordings, as well as noteworthy collaborations with Stefano Pilia, Dean Roberts, Thomas Ankersmit, Hanno Leichtmann, and numerous others - rests at the shadowy juncture of internal and external worlds; a meeting place where the synthetic and organic give way to utterances of the existential, psychological, physical, and occult. Most commonly created on a Revox B77 reel-to-reel - manipulating, live sampling, and real-time editing / mixing of field and studio recordings - in Tricoli’s hands, estranged moments of sonorous ephemera transmogrify and intertwine as metaphorical and allegorical sums, far greater than their parts. Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s sixth full-length, gathers three works of musique concrete, thematically bound by notions of absence, loss, stillness, and release. The album’s title is taken from a story by J.G. Ballard, set in the desolation of a holiday resort that rests among a landscape of endless rolling dunes that are populated by ʻsound sculptures’ and monsters. The otherworldliness of this reference is further expanded by the depth exposed by the many possible implications and meanings implied by the combination of words; wind being a metaphor of the breath of life, and its absence meaning death. If the wind is a storm, what is the abstraction that remains in the absent void when it leaves? Historically, one of the primary pursuits of musique concrete is the transformation of everyday sonority - field recordings, found / incidental sound, etc. - into abstractions of profound meaning and weight. While this process unquestionable played a heavy hand in the composition of Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s approach to the idiom sets the stage for something entirely unique. Not only are the practices of tape music applied to field recordings, but to the sounds of piano, synthesizers, objects, and the composer’s voice, in addition to interventions by Ecka Mordecai on cello, Lucio Capece on soprano saxophone, and Ida Toninato on vocals. Further expanding to potential of meaning, are the references - literal and abstract - that guided each work into being. The album’s opener, Lo Spopolatore, draws its title from Samuel Beckett’s short story Le Dépeupleur, translated in English as The Lost Ones. Formed from dense but spare prose, the story describes a world consisting of a flattened cylinder, where each inhabitant is “searching for its lost one”. Devoid of plot, Beckett frequently repeats certain phrases and bits of information, setting up both conceptual and structural mirror’s Tricoli’s work, which weaves , from a multitude of sonorous fragments - field recordings, voice, and diverse instrumentation - a similar sense of density within its minimal expanses; clusters of textures forming as haunted ghosts, shifting between pure abstraction and conscious imprints of the sources from which they were drawn, before drifting into a space of placid, ambient calm. It is arguably the versatility of possible meanings, harnessed by Tricoli from his sound sources, through which the composer’s greatest talents come to light. Say Goodbye to the Wind’s second composition, Mimosa Hostilis - the name of a Brazilian plant which contains DMT - begins with same recording as its predecessor, made of his son’s breathing, a few months after his birth, in the Sicilian sea wind. In place of abstract images of place and the futility of being, Tricoli pursues something closer to a state of mind. An expanded or exploded consciousness that encounters the self, bleeding into and becoming a natural environment. “A jungle of contrasting noises and perceptions, of childhood memories that translate without coherence into adult desires.” Here Tricoli treats his sources with pointillistic precision, intermingling vocal and minimal instrumental gestures into a polyrhythmic patter that transforms commonplace sonority into aural echos of wind, rain, the shadowy species within. The album’s final work, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus, is a love song in a dystopian world. Its title is taken from the name of the first paper published by Otto von Guericke - a 17th century, German scientist, inventor, and politician - relating to his experiments with the Magdeburg hemispheres, a pair of large copper hemispheres, that were used to demonstrate the power of atmospheric pressure. These two mated objects are a metaphor for the work’s theme; two halves which become a sphere by the power of the void, the void that they contain, or the void that they embraced. While no less oriented around the abstract possibilities activated by field recordings, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus is the album’s most explicitly musical work. Warbling instrumental sounds and vocal interventions, bent by the hand tape manipulation, push toward heightened states of drama and tension, pushing and pulling against a vast pallet of textures drawn from the natural word and beyond. A masterstroke of contemporary musique concrète and auditory conceptualism, dense with metaphor, allegory and meaning, Shelter Press is thrilled to present Valerio Tricoli’s ‘Say Goodbye to the Wind’. Issued in a limited edition CD and Digital, mastered by Rashad Becker, with artwork by Mårten Lange.

Studio recordings from 1988 are officially released after 34 years of absence.

The tape recorded by Yuji Takahashi (synthesizer, sampler) and Masahiko Togashi (percussion) in a studio on November 23, 1988 was found for the first time in 34 years and is now officially released as a CD album. This album is the culmination of the Takahashi/Togashi duo, which began in the spring of 1988 at the Shinjuku Pit Inn, and is an improvisational performance in which Togashi responds to Takahashi's leads without a score. Each member's different musicality is inspired by the other's, and the music is built up in dialogue. The electronic sounds of Takahashi's early samplers and digital synths, the calculated acoustic percussion of Togashi, and the lush interplay make this sound journey a rare and precious work.

Certainly the most unusual reggae album ever made.Her breathy Chordettes meets Susan Cadgan vocals, multi-tracked whisperings about inter-galactic Bluebeat starlights over what sounds like a modulated cut of heavy rhythm. Brenda Ray will be familiar to observers of the Liverpool scene as part of the NAFFI organization through the '80s, also famed as Brenda & The Beachballs. Over the past years, together with cohort Sir Freddie Viadukt (aka The Minister of Noise), she has been aiding and abetting the reggae producer Roy Cousins, once of The Royals, in his program of remastering and reissuing selections from his Tamoki Wambesi imprint. Cousins suggested she record an album using original roots reggae tracks from original tapes. The whole album was overdubbed, played, recorded and mixed between 1995-2005 at NAFFI Studios. Everything was done by herself except the final mix-down with Sir Freddie. The cover photo has Brenda in a pose somewhere between Pharoah Sanders' Thembi and Augustus Pablo's East of the River Nile with a melodica pointed towards the water.

-Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy-, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet is at last here. Recorded live at ETA (referencing David Foster Wallace), a bar in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, & alto saxophonist Josh Johnson to convene in extraordinarily depthful & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 by Bryce Gonzales, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- is a darkly glowing séance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker's first double album & first live album, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- belongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast as Lee Morgan’s -Live at the Lighthouse-, Miles Davis' -In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco- & -Black Beauty-, & John Coltrane's -Live in Seattle-. While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It’s tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras —dub & Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone— suffuse the proceedings. listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, “we sound like the Byrds” (to certain ears, the Clarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it). A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they’ve established in Parker’s -The New Breed- project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker’s beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose's animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers —as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming— bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet's language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet's grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom. For all its varied sonic personality, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- scans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker‘s unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker’s music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power. On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together. —Michael Ehlers & Zac Brenner Pressed on premium audiophile-quality 120 gram vinyl at RTI from Kevin Gray / Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Triple Point Records, Queens, NY. First eremite edition of 1799 copies. First 400 direct order LPs come with eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Alan Sherry, Siwa Studios, northern New Mexico. CD edition & EU x2LP edition available thru our EU partner, Aguirre records, Belgium. Jeff Parker synthesizes jazz and hip-hop with an appealingly light touch. The longtime Tortoiseguitarist has a silken, clean-cut tone, yet his production takes more cues from DJ Premier than it does from a classic mid-century jazz sound. In the early ’00s, when Madlib ushered a boom-bap sensibility into the hallowed halls of the jazz label Blue Note, Parker conducted his own experiments in genre-mashing in the Chicago group Isotope 217, dragging jaunty hip-hop rhythms into the far reaches of computerized abstraction. More recently, Parker enlivened quantized beats and chopped-up samples with live instrumentation, both as leader of the New Breed and sideman to Makaya McCraven. Inverting rap’s longtime reverence for jazz, Parker has gradually codified a new language for the so-called “American art form” with a vocabulary gleaned from the United States’ next great contribution to the musical universe. Parker’s latest, the live double LP Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, was largely recorded in 2019, while his star as a solo artist was steeply ascending. Capturing a few intimate evenings with drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and New Breed saxophonist Josh Johnson at ETA, a cozy Los Angeles cocktail bar, the record anticipates his 2020 opus with the New Breed, Suite for Max Brown. Yet Mondays amounts to something novel in 2022: It lays out long-form spiritual jazz, knotty melodies, and effortless solos over a slow-moving foundation as consistent as an 808. The results are as mesmerizing as a luxurious, beatific ambient record—yet at the same time, it’s clear that all of this is happening within the inherently messy confines of an improvisatory concert. Across four side-long tracks, each spanning about 20 minutes, Parker and Johnson trade ostinatos, mesh together, split again into polyrhythmic call-and-response. Butterss commands the pocket with a photonegative of their lead lines, often freed from rhythmic responsibilities by the drums’ relentlessness. Bellerose exhibits a Neu!-like sense of consistency, just screwed down a whole bunch of BPMs. His kit sounds as dusty as an old sample, and his hypnotic rhythms evoke humanizers of the drum machine such as J Dilla or RZA. You could spend the album’s 84-minute runtime listening only to the beats; every shift in pattern queues a new movement in the compositions, beaming a timeframe from the bottom up. Bellerose’s sensitive, reactive playing, though, is unmistakably live. We can practically see the sweat beading on his arm when he holds steady on a ride cymbal for minutes on end, or plays a shaker for a whole LP side. He begins the understated opener “2019-07-08 I” with feather-soft brush swirls, but on the second cut, he sets Mondays’ stride, as a simple bell pattern builds into a leisurely rhythmic stroll. Thirteen minutes in, the mood breaks. Bellerose hits some heavy quarter notes on his hi-hat; Butterss leans into a fat bassline; saxophone arpeggios, probably looped, float in front of us like smoke rings lingering in the air. It’s a glorious moment, punctuated by clinking glasses and a distant “whoo!” so perfectly placed we become aware of not only the setting, but also the supple knob-turns of engineer Bryce Gonzales in post-production. Anyone who’s heard great improvisation at a bar in the company of both jazzheads and puzzled onlookers knows this dynamic—for some, the music was incidental. Others experienced a revelation. Lodged in this familiar situation is the question of what such “ambient jazz” means to accomplish—whether it wants to occupy the center of our consciousnesses, or resign itself to the background. The record’s perpetual soloing offers an answer. Never screechy, grating, or aggressive, each performance is nonetheless highly individual. Even when the quartet settles into an extended groove, a spotlight shines on Johnson, Butterss, and Parker in turn, steadily illuminating a perpetual sense of invention. Their interplay feels almost traditional, suggesting bandstand trade-offs of yore, yet the open-ended structure of their jams keeps it unconventional. Mondays works in layers: Its metronomic rhythms pacify, but the performers and their idiosyncratic expressions offer ample material to those interested in hearing young luminaries and seasoned vets swap ideas within a group. In 2020, Johnson dropped his first record under his own name, the excellent, daringly melodic Freedom Exercise, while Butterss’ recent debut as bandleader, Activities, is one of the most exciting, undersung jazz releases of 2022. Akin to Parker’s early experiments with Tortoise and Chicago Underground, Johnson and Butterss’ recordings both revel in electronic textures, and each features the other as a collaborator. Mondays captures them as their mature playing styles gain sea legs atop the rudder of Parker’s guitar. The only track recorded after the pandemic began, closer “2021-04-28” sculpts the record’s loping structure, giving retrospective shape to the preceding hour of ambience. In the middle of the song, Parker’s guitar slows to a yawn; the drums pipe down. After a couple minutes of drone, Bellerose slips back into the mix alongside a precisely phrased guitar line strummed on the upper frets, punctuated by saxophone accents that exclaim with the force of an eager hype man. Beginning with a murmur, the album ends with a bracing statement, a passage so articulated that it actually feels spoken. Mondays drifts with unhurried purpose through genres and ideas, imprinted with the passage of time. The deliberate, thumping clock of its drumbeat keeps duration in mind, and, as with so many live albums, we’re reminded of how circumstances have changed since the sessions were recorded. Truly, life is different than it was in 2019—and not just in terms of world politics, climate change, the threat of disease, or the reality that making a living in music is harder than ever. Seemingly catalyzed by COVID-19’s deadly, isolating scourge, jazz has transformed, hybridized, and weakened tired arguments for musical stratification and fundamentalism. Even calling Mondays a “live” album is a simplification, considering how Parker and other top jazz brains have increasingly availed themselves of the studio—including, in a sparing yet dramatic way, on Mondays. Near the end of the first track, the tape slows abruptly. The plane of the song opens to another dimension: This set, Parker seems to be saying, can be manipulated with the ease of a vinyl platter beneath a DJ’s fingers. Parker’s latest may be his first live album, but it’s also the product of a mad scientist, cackling over a mixing board. Time is dilated, curated, edited, and intercut, and the very live-ness of a concert recording turns fascinatingly, fruitfully convoluted—even when the artists responsible are four players participating in the age-old custom of jamming together in a room. --Daneil Felsenthal, Pitchfork, 8.4 Best New Music Turn to Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and you’re in another world. Recorded live (it’s apparently Parker’s first live record) between 2019 and 2021 at a bar in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood that’s named for the principal setting of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest(and Parker’s ETA 4tet named, in turn, for the room). As producer Michael Ehlers points out in a press sheet, It is “largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term.” Mondays… will include all the things that free improvisation leaves out, modes, melodies, key centres and regular (though often multiple) rhythms; in effect, the musicians are free to include the conventionally excluded. It’s a kind of perfect opposite of Eastside Romp – clear tunes rarely define a piece, there’s no solo order, actually few solos, no formal beginnings or endings – instead substituting the extended jam for the tight knit composition. It’s a two-LP set, each side an excerpt from a long collective improvisation, a kind of electronic jazz version of hypnotic minimalism with Parker and saxophonist Josh Johnson both employing loops to build up interlocking rhythmic patterns and a kind of floating, layered timelessness, while bassist Anna Butterss and drummer/ percussionist Jay Bellerose lay down pliable fundamentals. Often and delightfully, it answers this listener’s specific auditory needs, a bright shifting soundscape that can begin in mid-phrase and eventually fade away, not beginning, not ending, like Heaven’s Muzak or the abstract decorative art of the Alhambra. It can sound at times like, fifty years on, Grant Green has added his clear lines to the kind of work that over 50 years ago filtered from Terry Riley to musicians from jazz, rock and minimalism. Though the tunes are described as excerpts, we often have what seem to be beginnings, the faint sound of background conversation and noise ceding to the music in the first few seconds, but the “beginnings” sound tentative, like proposals or suggestions. The most explicit tune here is the slow, loping line passed back and forth between Parker and Johnson that initiates Side C, 2019 May-05-19, the earliest recording here. The music is a constant that doesn’t mind omitting its beginnings and ends, but it’s also, in the same way, an organism, a kind of music that many of us are always inside and that is always inside us. All kinds of music stimulate us in all kinds of ways, but for this listener, Jeff Parker’s ETA Quartet happily raises a fundamental question: what is comfort music, what are its components, and could there be a universal comfort music? Or is comfort music a universal element in what we may listen for in sound? Modality, rhythmic and melodic figures/motifs, drone, compound relationships and, too, a shifting mosaic that cannot be encapsulated? The thing is, any music we seek out is, in our seeking, a comfort, whether it’s a need for structures so complex that we might lose ourselves in mapping them, or music so random, we are freed of all specificity, but something that may have healing properties. This is not just bar music, but music for a bar named for art that further echoes in the band’s abbreviated name. Socialization is enshrined here. There’s another crucial fiction, too, maybe closer, The Scope, the bar in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 with its “strictly electronic music policy”. Consider, too, the social roots reverberating in the distant musical ancestry, that Riley session with John Cale, Church of Anthrax, among many … or the healing music of the Gnawa … or the Master Musicians of Jajouka with Ornette Coleman on Dancing in Your Head. And that which is most “natural” to us in the early decades of the 21st century? … Jamming, looping, drones…So perhaps an ideal musical state might be a regular Monday night session with guitar, saxophone, loops, bass and drums…the guitarist and saxophonist using loops, expanding the palette and multiplying the reach of time, repeating oneself with the possibility of mutation or constancy. In some long ago, perfect insight into a burgeoning age of filming and recording, Jay Gatsby remarked, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” We might even repeat the present or the future.

Matthew Halsall - Changing Earth A sublime meditative EP on limited 12”, CD, DL and streaming Design by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic Matthew Halsall shares the 'Changing Earth' EP – another exquisite and spiritual four track offering. The title track Changing Earth is a soulful, elevating groover featuring sublime work from the whole band but especially, Matt Cliffe on flute and Maddie Herbert on harp. Positive Activity is one of Halsall’s most charming compositions, built round a hypnotic bassline from Gavin Barras it’s melody is plaintive but also uplifting and hopeful and harpist Herbert again shines brightly here. Yogic Flying is another soulful, uplifting tune as Halsall and percussionist Jack McCarthy take us on a transcendental journey upwards. Finally our journey inwards and upwards takes us to Upper Space, a quintessentially Halsall tune built around glistening harp and a sublime, soulful sanctuary elevated through beautiful work from the whole band but especially saxophonist Matt Cliffe. Changing Earth features Matthew Halsall trumpet and electronics, Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Gavin Barras, bass, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion. Changing Earth is produced by Matthew Halsall and Daniel Halsall, recorded by Matthew Halsall, mixed by Greg Freeman, mastered by Peter Beckmann of Technology Works and vinyl cut by Norman Nitzsche at Calyx.

Here's a great one. This is from Death Is Not The End, a great place for digging up antique music from all over the world, from pre-war blues to immigrant music and South American folklore. It's also a great place to dig for antique music from all over the world. This Japanese project follows on the heels of Katsutaro Kouta, which was released in 2018 and was very popular in our store, and contains haunting and unique sounds that show how cultural fusion with the West was beginning to be reflected in popular songs before the influence of Western pop music during the post-war American occupation. This is a work that every Japanese should be exposed to at least once.

Here's a great one. This is from Death Is Not The End, a great place for digging up antique music from all over the world, from pre-war blues to immigrant music and South American folklore. It's also a great place to dig for antique music from all over the world. This Japanese project follows on the heels of Katsutaro Kouta, which was released in 2018 and was very popular in our store, and contains haunting and unique sounds that show how cultural fusion with the West was beginning to be reflected in popular songs before the influence of Western pop music during the post-war American occupation. This is a work that every Japanese should be exposed to at least once.

Gondwana Records and Portico Quartet announce a strictly limited edition collectors-item Featuring an expanded version of their long-form composition Terrain and re-arranged for the Portico Quartet Ensemble and recorded live in Studio One Terrain (Extended) features an expanded version of the composition re-arranged for the Portico Quartet Ensemble – a subtle re-configuration of the band that features a string quartet - and which allowed for the composition's deeper textures and resonances to be fully explored, along the way expanding the dialogue between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, that makes Terrain such a beautiful, powerful piece. 9th November 2021 was a very special session. The band (who had first recorded at Abbey Road for their second album Isla back in 2009), brought long-term collaborator, recording and mix engineer, Greg Freeman over from Berlin to work with Abbey Road’s Chris Bolster and the resulting concert film Terrain (Extended) - Live in Studio One An Abbey Road 90th Session received it’s world premiere broadcast on the Gondwana Youtube channel on Thursday 20th October. Now Gondwana Records is super proud to announce the ultimate collector’s edition of this special recording. Limited to just 1500 individually numbered and stamped LPs and 1000 CDs. Recorded live at Abbey Road Studio One. Mixed in Berlin by the band’s longterm collaborator Greg Freeman. Audio mastered by John Davis at Metropolis Studios. Vinyl cut by John Davis at Metropolis Studios Available only on beautiful transparent clear two disc vinyl pressed at Optimal in Germany or on limited edition CD or digital download LP and CD are presented in an uncoated gatefold sleeve printed in Pantone Cool Gray 4 with release details sticker. In addition, the LP features a 12 page booklet with a half front page and translucent paper overlay, glued into a gatefold and the CD features 12-page booklet, glued into a gatefold. Designed by veil projects. Each LP and CD are hand stamped and the LP comes packed in reusable 'Japanese style’ polyprop sleeves - with sealable flap - for protection

This is the 30th anniversary CD reissue of an amazing and all-encompassing album by American composer and sound artist David Dunn, highlighting two extremes of communication: the supernatural, celestial names of angels; and the natural, subaquatic world of pond insects. EM Records is currently researching the rather unexplored domains of what can be called cyber-occult music, with an emphasis on the hidden, the enigmatic, the arcane; this release can be located at a distant edge of this area of interest, in its use of technology to give us access to previously unheard communicative phenomena. Dunn’s interest in the broad contexts of communication finds links between macro and micro, heavenly and earthly, music and environmental sound. Dunn sees these pieces as a human effort to respect and perhaps comprehend the non-human universe. The angels of the title are based on Renaissance attempts, by occultists John Dee and Edward Kelly, to communicate with angelic beings. The insects are aquatic creatures, recorded with hydrophones in North American and African ponds. This special edition of “Angels and Insects” features the insightful original English liner notes (PDF) and a Japanese translation, with new cover art.

All music written & produced by Belacqua
Mastered by The Bastard

Artwork by DD & DMG

Published by wherethetimegoes
Catalog No. WTTG010

Early Basinski works, released on professionally pressed CDs (not CDR's!) for the first time. Minimal packaging in the style of the original release (from 2003). These works have been spoken of in hushed tones for a few years, as they have never been widely available. But the Basinski legends grows as the full catalog becomes accessible. "The first two discs of the 9 month generative ambient experiment conducted over the turn of the century. Very tranquil and soothing. Remastered and now available on CD in C-shell." "A one-hour track entirely composed on a Voyetra synthesizer, Water Music is a perfect antidote to the saccharin-drenched ambient cakes released nowadays by hundreds of self-producing wannabes. It's a never-too-present low humming lullaby, caressing the brain and the ears and slowly developing from silence. Comparisons could be made with some of Eno's best old releases, but please be advised this is not Music for films 2002 -- instead, the author gets right to the point with a simple idea, a small plant that needs to be growing in the semi-obscurity of your deep feelings. What a nice sensation." -- Massimo Ricci

OrganumのDavid JackmanやNew Blockaders、Giancarlo Toniuttiといったノイズ・レジェンドたちとの仕事でも古くから知られる、英国にて孤高にドローンを造り続ける巨匠。Christoph Heemannとの伝説的プロジェクトMirror（1999-2004)の活動でも知られている重鎮Andrew Chalkの2022年10月発表の最新アルバム『The End Times』がColin Potter主宰の〈ICR〉よりCD&カセット・リリース。幻想的な郷愁と温かなアンビエンス息づく彼岸の地の音楽が全13曲収録されています。Denis Blackhamによるマスタリング仕様。

Tetsu Umehara was born in Yokohama, Japan, but spent much of his childhood in Dusseldorf, and it was in the western German city that his nascent interest in architecture first blossomed. His debut album, Handwritten, is a personal journey that explores the intersection between architectural urbanism, acoustic ecology and human emotion. Formed from a diverse range of sounds created from field-recordings taken in, and inspired by, various cities and urban settings, Handwritten pairs guitar, piano and angular percussive elements to create a rich world of aural depth and intricacy. “If music is a site-specific culture, then the process of making music is nothing more than creating an imaginary place within oneself.” Whilst Tetsu learned to play music from a young age, architecture always remained a driving passion and he would go on to study architectural design at Tokyo University of the Arts. His studies have continued to create an inner dialogue around sound and space, imagining music for specific sites and visualising architectural designs in his own sonic creations. Handwritten is an ode to the diverse styles of architecture that have influenced Tetsu. From the modern urban planning of Yokohama’s harbour to the inorganic sprawl of Berlin, Tetsu sees the fluid hand of the artistic creator in a building’s immobile geometry. In an attempt to mirror the disciplined complexity of a city within music, Tetsu has found a way to talk about the interaction of spatial and auditory dynamics. “It is important that the Handwritten be a record of my musical journey. For me, making the album was like a short trip through the landscapes of my memory.” Handwritten is released by Métron Records on 08/06/22 with the album’s artwork a collage of various sketches taken from Tetsu’s time studying. A portion of profits will be donated to Human Rights Now (HRN), a Japanese organisation looking to improve human rights around Asia.

Impeccably produced and gripping West Mineral wooze from Naarm’s Yunzero, adding to our sizeable appreciation for the Aussie school with a sublime and frazzled set of gaseous, crumbling loops and effervescent soundscapes that plays like a mixtape we can imagine a descendant of Left Ear would grip in 2045. Based in Naarm, Jim Sellars is a strong new addition to the West Mineral stable, bringing with him a profound understanding of textural ambient, bass-heavy dubwise sounds and fractured beat music. After a few cassette releases for Naarm's own .jpeg Artefacts and the Chicago-based Lillerne Tape Club - home of West Mineral's Mister Water Wet and Ben Bondy - Sellars has assembled a record that jumps through sonic wormholes as it drags through soundscapes and meticulously chiseled technoid sketches. Dancing in and around an airspun grid weft with sampledelic fragments of ‘90s ambient dance music, Yunzero lucidly works a sound close to the expansive heart of West Mineral, measured with an equilibrium of drifting out-of-the-lines gauze and cogent, semi-melodic structures that move against convention. From our detached perspective, in the humid post-industrial flatlands of south Manchester, Yunzero’s music feels as though it maps mountain ranges and subtropical climes in its scale and democratic ecology of sounds, projecting escapist sojourns on the back of the eyelids. ‘Butterfly DNA’ lands gently on the mind, with imperceptible jump-cuts and transitions lending to the rolling rural simulacra feel. Plunging in with the cool splash and viscosity to ‘Drop of Honey’, the breezy tendrils of ‘Leaf’ give way to recycled ambient beat loops in ‘Ice Punk’ and the album’s most substantial cut - a nugget of a DJ Plead-like groove on ‘Cupid Television’. From herein the thread gets beautifully frayed between the kaleidoscope turns of slurred downbeats in ‘Snail’ and ambient floor hugger ‘Graffitti In The Pond’, while bush doof echoes perfuse ‘Acrylic Germ’ in a more fractious outburst that brings the album down to close with a surprise in the tail, a reminder that nature can nip as well as soothe.

Recent years have seen the release and reissue of dozens of hours of Roland Kayn’s music, on several labels and in both physical and digital formats. Our interconnected yet chaotically imbued age seems to be the setting in which Kayn has truly found his audience. The scene is now set for one of the most momentous works in his oeuvre to return to the shelves. ‘Infra'. One of the titanic cybernetic works Kayn originally released on the Colosseum label in early 80s, ‘Infra’ (1978-79) has come to occupy a very special place in the hearts of fans lucky enough to have copies of the original vinyl box sets. Now lovingly remastered from the original archive masters by Kayn devotee Jim O’Rourke, ‘Infra’ has finally found its way to CD for a new generation of admirers to discover.

Kita --------! It's like presenting a new style and outlook on music through a "book-off" music dig that is unique to Japan. also got a score of "8.4" and BEST NEW MUSIC, but 10 points are necessary for historical significance ... The last sanctuary released on CD in Japan in the 90's Heisei. It's no exaggeration to say that the overwhelming piece "Heisei No Oto", which is a compilation of unknown left-field pop music, has ignited various revival since the 10's and is a prestigious name in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Appeared from the label ! Including Jun Sato and Love, Peace & Trance, which were also published in "New Age Music Disc Guide", Haruomi Hosono produced Yosui Inoue's Japanese realic "Pi Po Pa", and Toshifumi Hinata produced Xácara, Sakurai. Keisuke's statement Deep House "Harai", Yoshihiko Yokokawa (P-Model, 4-D, etc.) and Kazuko Hashimoto's new-age, ambient, and experimental sounds, as well as An ambitious compilation album that includes the abstract texture peculiar to 90's J-POP, which has not been revival yet like POiSON GiRL FRiEND and Tomoko Kino, which were mentioned before. It seems to be the freshest lineup among the editing boards released from the neighborhood that has promoted the obscure analog recurrence boom since the 10s. The music was selected by Norio Sato of and Eiji Taniguchi of , both the managers of a well-known niche store in Osaka. Supporting is a heart-warming gem called ! And the perfect liner notes by Chee Shimizu. It's a monument! MUST !!!!!!!!!!!

EM Records celebrates Roland P. Young’s 80th adventurous year on the planet with “Spontaneous Bounce”, the sixth RPY solo release on the label. After a musical youth in Kansas City followed by audio activities in San Francisco and New York and elsewhere, he began releasing self-produced solo music in 1980 with “Isophonic Boogie Woogie”, the title of which hints at the forward-thinking yet earthy nature of his sound, a soulful and spiritual multi-world avant-music, drawing on elements of ambient, jazz, soul, new age and electronic music. His ‘Isophonic Music’ concept crystallizes these elements through a comprovisational use of soprano sax, keyboards, drum machines and the possibilities of the recording studio. This release features 13 new pieces, a diverse array of appealing and joyful celebrations of music and life. Available on CD, LP and (DL/download). Come and join the celebration!

Les Filles de Illighadad present their first ever studio album “Eghass Malan.” The female led avant rock group hailing from the village of the same name bring their new genre of Tuareg guitar mixed with traditional rural folk. Versed in tradition, Fatou Seidi Ghali and her band have created contemporary studio versions that are unlike anything ever before recorded, transporting rural nomadic song into the 21st century. Les Filles are all from Illighadad, a secluded commune in central Niger, far off in the scrubland deserts at the edge of the Sahara. The village is only accessible via a grueling drive through the open desert and there is little infrastructure, no electricity or running water. But what the nomadic zone lacks in material wealth it makes up for deep and strong identity and tradition. The surrounding countryside support hundreds of pastoral families, living with and among their herds, as their families have done for centuries. The sound that defines rural Niger is a music known as “tende.” It takes its name from a drum, built from a goat skin stretched across a mortar and pestle. Like the environs, tende music is a testament to wealth in simplicity, with sparse compositions built from a few elements, vocals, handclaps, and percussion. Songs speak of the village, of love, and of praise for ancestors. It is a music form dominated by women. Collective and communal, tende is tradition for all the young girls of the nomad camps, played during celebrations and to pass the time during the late nights of the rainy season. In the past years, certain genres of Tuareg music have become popular in the West. International acts of “desert blues” like Tinariwen, Bombino, and Mdou Moctar have become synonymous with the name “Tuareg.” But guitar music is a recent creation. In the 1970s young Tuareg men living in exile in Libya and Algeria discovered the guitar. Lacking any female vocalists to perform tende, they began to play the guitar to mimic this sound, replacing water drums with plastic jerrycans and substituting a guitar drone for the vocal call and response. The exiled eventually traveled home and brought the guitar music with them. In time, this new guitar sound came to eclipse the tende, especially in the urban centers. If tende is a music that has always been sung by woman, the Tuareg guitar was its gendered counterpart, and Tuareg guitar music is a male dominated scene. Fatou Seidi Ghali, lead vocalist and performer of Les Filles is one of the only Tuareg female guitarists in Niger. Sneaking away with her older brother's guitar, she taught herself to play.While Fatou's role as the first female Tuareg guitarist is groundbreaking, it is just as interesting for her musical direction. In a place where gender norms have created two divergent musics, Fatou and Les Filles are reasserting the role of tende in Tuareg guitar. In lieu of the djembe or the drum kit, so popular in contemporary Tuareg rock bands, Les Filles de Illighadad incorporate the traditional drum and the pounding calabash, half buried in water. The forgotten inspiration of Tuareg guitar, they are reclaiming its importance in the genre and reclaiming the music of tende. Recorded on their debut tour in Europe after just a handful of concerts, “Eghass Malan” maintains a feeling that is spontaneous and inspired. With a minimal effects in an artist led production, Les Filles stay true to their form and origin. Hypnotic guitar riffs, driving rhythm, and polyphonic resonant vocals combine to create an organic sound that is timeless and ancient, bridging ancient tradition and modern worlds. With songs of love, celebrating the village, and praise for the desert and its people, Les Filles create a repertoire of ancient songs, village tende favorites, and new classics. Les Filles de Illighadad breath new life into the genre, and "Eghass Malan” promises to shake up Tuareg guitar both at home and abroad.

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.