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During his time with the Yosuke Yamashita Trio, he poured his heart and soul into every single note. In the early 1970s, he wove flashes of inspiration and impulse into his melodies, blowing with powerful intensity. And now, on this album, Seiichi Nakamura undergoes yet another transformation. As he himself says, “It’s the feeling of sharing a space together and soaring freely like a bird. That’s the ideal,” the overlapping sounds and pauses richly expand the space, through which Nakamura’s saxophone dashes with exuberance. The expansive and exhilarating “Wolf’s Theme,” inspired by author Kazumasa Hirai’s “Wolf Guy” series, “Harappa,” where a nostalgic melody shines against a laid-back groove; “Body & Soul” and “I Can’t Get Started,” which weave together standards with care and elegance; and “Viva Giappone,” with its delightful sense of dynamism and openness—here, Nakamura’s ideal is magnificently realized. Featuring Toshiyuki Daitoku, Aki Takase, and Ryojiro Furusawa.
Dog’s light, dog’s light… a product of the fog itself. Illuminated mists flicker in the fog, swallowed by bells, skin torsion and finger squeaks. Here, mud made a rhapsody of distortion and sand. Dunes, where raised magnets at the dusk hour, receive textures and hints of country melodies, melodies mostly generated by limbs. Anon mists form a curtain hovering above the suburb of sand.
One of the most important works in hip-hop history, Nas's legendary 1994 debut album, Illmatic. Nas, hailing from Queensbridge, New York, crafted lyrics at the age of 20 that blend the harsh realities of the streets with poetic imagination, achieving an astonishing level of perfection. The album features a lineup of producers including DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, and Q-Tip, with beats rooted in jazz and soul samples, blending hard-hitting rhythms with lyrical depth. In just 10 tracks and under 40 minutes, the album condenses the aesthetics and realism of East Coast hip-hop. It is a masterpiece that maximizes the potential of rap as an art form and serves as definitive proof of hip-hop's establishment as an art form.
Dark Entries picks up Severed Heads yet again for Ear Bitten, a double LP reissue of some of the band’s earliest material. As originary Aussie industrial legends - although founder Tom Ellard would balk at being branded as such - Severed Heads shaped the continental subcultural sound with their kitchen electronics, chaotic tape loops, and quietly infectious nursery-rhyme-esque melodies. In 1979 Ellard, Richard Fielding, and Andrew Wright abandoned the moniker Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign and adopted the edgier name Severed Heads “to pretend to be an industrial band such as Surgical Penis Klinik & Throbbing Gristle.” Noise-rockers Rhythmx Chymx had placed an advertisement in a local shop looking for a band to share the costs of pressing an LP. The Heads set about recording a Dadaist racket on a pair of open reel dictaphones and a cassette deck using a TRS-80 computer, Kawai Synthesizer 100F and Korg Mini Pops drum machine. Ear Bitten was released in 1980; original copies now fetch obscene sums, in part due to most of Severed Heads’ copies perishing in a fire at Richard’s home. The band’s next endeavor was a cassette titled Side 2, a collection of free-form experiments fashioned as Ear Bitten’s second side. For this reissue, Dark Entries has collected both Ear Bitten and Side 2 on the first disc, presenting the album in its full form. Disc two includes the original first version of Ear Bitten, which was only unreleased because it was recorded in a format not suitable for pressing. The album comes in a gatefold sleeve designed by Eloise Leigh and includes photos, liner notes, and reproductions of the original Xerox inserts from the 1980 issue. Ear Bitten delivers 22 tracks of pain you can dance to!
At the end of June 2025, the Krakow-based label Instant Classic will release the album "Bura" by Raphael Rogiński and the group Ružičniak Tajni, which includes Serbian artists: Svetlana Spajić, Marina Džukljev and Tijana Golubović. The album also features guest appearances by Piotr Zabrodzki (LXMP, Mitch & Mitch) and Mila Gavrilovič. Ružičniak Tajni is a unique meeting of Polish and Serbian musical traditions, the result of cooperation between artists seeking new forms of expression based on the cultural heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. The initiator of the project is Raphael Rogiński - a Polish guitarist, composer and researcher, known for his experimental approach to traditional music and his love of improvisation. In the project, he is accompanied by three outstanding Serbian artists whose work is a conscious combination of local traditions and modern expression: Svetlana Spajić – a renowned ethnomusicologist and singer, specializing in old vocal techniques and archaic song forms. Her interpretations combine authenticity of message with sensitivity to the contemporary context. Marina Džukljev – a pianist moving in the area of improvised and experimental music, known for deconstructing harmonic and rhythmic structures. Tijana Golubović – a violinist and vocalist, drawing from folk performance practice, while simultaneously exploring new sonic narratives. Their collaboration resulted in the album “Bura”, recorded in Serbia in November 2024. The title refers to the characteristic wind from the northern Balkans, symbolizing both the forces of nature and the cultural tensions shaping the identity of the region. The album is a musical encounter of traditional Serbian songs – reconstructed on the basis of oral traditions and archival materials – with modern means of expression. Another key element are Raphael Rogiński’s original compositions, inspired by Sufi poetry, which was translated into Serbian in the 19th century. The sound layer of the project is based on the dynamic interaction of voice, stringed instruments and piano. Spajić brings the depth of archaic vocal techniques, Golubović combines the violin idiom with the vocal one, Džukljev creates complex harmonic structures, and Rogiński transforms the guitar tradition, enriching it with microtonality and modality. The Ružičniak Tajni concert tour will take place in May and June 2025, covering five Serbian cities. The inaugural concert is scheduled for May 16 in Belgrade. The project was created with the support of the Polish Institute in Belgrade. The concert tour is carried out in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the cultural programme accompanying the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2025.
KAKUHAN haven't released much, but what's out there is some of the most astonishing hybrid electroacoustic music that's emerged in the last few years. Owing as much to Autechre as it does to Arthur Russell, it's dizzyingly psychedelic music that flits between wild free improvisation and obsessive, micro-edited precision, unclassifiable rhythmic and tonal experimentation that nods to the renaissance era and the contemporary dancefloor sometimes in the same breath. And in 2023, not long after the release of their now-classic debut album "Metal Zone", KAKUHAN were invited to perform live at Unsound in Kraków. The duo were offered the opportunity to collaborate with a local artist, so after serious consideration decided on percussionist and musicologist Adam Gołębiewski, a veteran improviser who's performed and recorded with everyone from Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore to Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark.
Hino and Nakagawa were struck by Gołębiewski's unique tone and his very specific, immediately recognizable approach to drumming, realizing immediately that the collaboration would stretch their concept even further. "Personally, I was looking forward to hearing how Hino's rhythmic sequences and Adam's percussion would interact," says Nakagawa. But it's Gołębiewski's interaction with his cymbals particularly that bridges a gap in KAKUHAN's sound, existing in the space between Nakagawa's cello and Hino's stuttering samples. In fact, the performance was so successful that the trio headed to Kraków's KPD Studio shortly afterwards, dubbing an exclusive session with engineer Rafał Drewniany that would become "Repercussions". The session's vision is captured perfectly by the album cover, a painting from Polish artist Alicja Pakosz that shows a knife edge splitting a jet of water. It's the relative sharpness of Gołębiewski's sound that defines this project, cutting through Nakagawa and Hino's musical rituals and creating something new in the process.
Using a bow to extract eerie metallic resonances from his kit, Gołębiewski often sounds like another string player, punctuating Hino's exacting rolls and Nakagawa's blood-curdling pizzicato echoes with knife-edge squeals on opening track II. And when the flurries of beats vanish completely on VII, Gołębiewski and Nakagawa are left to create xenharmonic ambience with their scraped, atmospheric drones, letting Hino's low-end rumbles and boiled textures suggest a rhythm from the periphery. Nakagawa's cello practically sings on 'IV', sounding more like woodwind or bird calls than strings, and Gołębiewski acts as a cracked mirror, replying with uneasy scrapes and acrobatic rhythmic bursts that neatly augment Hino's complex electroid sequences. Not jazz exactly, it's hallucinatory expressionism that straddles the line between harmony and dissonance, control and chaos or human and computer.
Saxophonist, flautist and producer Chip Wickham casts a formidable shadow across the UK jazz landscape. Originally from Brighton, Chip Wickham first came to prominence in the UK breakbeat scene playing with the likes of Nightmares On Wax and Graham Massey. But at heart Chip has always been a jazz musician (he played on Matthew Halsall’s debut album 'Sending My Love' in 2008 beginning a relationship with Gondwana Records that now spans 17 years) and now dividing his time between the UK, Spain and the Middle-East, he has made a name for himself with a series of beautifully crafted solo albums that draw equally on hard swinging spiritual jazz, the classic sounds of 60s British jazz and the more contemporary sounds of artists such as Jazzanova, The Cinematic Orchestra, and Nicola Conte.
'The Eternal Now’ is Chip’s most progressive recording to date and represents a heartfelt ode to submitting oneself to the practice of creating art, and the freedom that’s derived from letting go.
Co-produced by Matthew Halsall, 'The Eternal Now' features two mainstays of the Manchester scene, legendary drummer Luke Flowers of The Cinematic Orchestra and well-loved bass-player Sneaky who played on Mr Scruff’s classic Keep it Unreal. Largely flute-led it’s his most rhythm heavy offering to date taking the listener on an expansive journey that touches on the influences of Lonnie Liston Smith, Sven Wunder, David Axelrod and even library music as Chip pushes his sound into exciting new spaces without ever losing the soulful groove and heartfelt melodies that make his music so loved.
Recording Personnel
Chip Wickham: alto flute, flute, soprano saxophone & tenor saxophone
Peach: vocals
Eoin Grace: trumpet & flugelhorn
George Cooper: Fender Rhodes
Simon ‘Sneaky’ Houghton: double bass
Luke Flowers: drums
Christophe Leroux: cello
Snowboy: congas & percussion
Mohamed Oweda: violin
Lia Wickham: vocals
Gondwana Records
Chanteur et musicien algérien, Lili Boniche est né le 14 mars 1921 à Alger et décédé le 6 mars 2008. Il était célèbre pour sa contribution à la musique judéo-arabe et particulièrement associé à la musique chaâbi, un genre musical populaire en Algérie qui mêle des influences arabes, berbères et françaises. Eliaou Élie Boniche, de son vrai nom, a grandi dans une famille juive séfarade et a commencé à s'intéresser à la musique dès son plus jeune âge. Sa carrière musicale a vraiment décollé dans les années 1940 et 1950, où il a enregistré de nombreux succès qui ont contribué à populariser le répertoire judéo-arabe. Son style unique mêlait des éléments de la musique arabe, du jazz et du tango, créant ainsi une fusion musicale captivante. Il est largement reconnu pour sa maîtrise du luth et sa voix distinctive. Les paroles de ses chansons étaient souvent poétiques et reflétaient la vie quotidienne, l'amour et la culture de son époque. Lili Boniche a laissé une empreinte indélébile sur la scène musicale d’Afrique du Nord. Son héritage perdure à travers ses enregistrements, qui continuent d'être écoutés et appréciés par les amateurs de musique du monde entier. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Algerian singer and musician Lili Boniche was born in Algiers on March 14, 1921, and died on March 6, 2008. He was famous for his contribution to Judeo-Arabic music, and particularly associated with chaâbi, a musical genre popular in Algeria that blends Arab, Berber and French influences. Born Eliaou Élie Boniche, and he grew up in a Sephardic Jewish family and became interested in music at an early age. His musical career really took off in the 1940s and 1950s, when he recorded numerous hits that helped popularize the Judeo-Arabic repertoire. His unique style blended elements of Arabic music, jazz and tango, creating a captivating musical fusion. He is widely recognized for his mastery of the lute and his distinctive voice. His lyrics were often poetic, reflecting the everyday life, love and culture of his time. Lili Boniche left an indelible mark on the North African music scene. His legacy lives on in his recordings, which continue to be listened to and enjoyed by music lovers the world over.
Japan’s electroacoustic vanguard reconvene for their second album proper, once again shining light on previously unoccupied space somewhere between Arthur Russell and Autechre. It’s supremely moody, impossibly innovative business, folding Yuki Nakagawa's no-wave'd cello vamps into Koshiro Hino (aka YPY)'s brittle electroid syncopations, absolutely essential listening if you’re into SND, Pan Sonic, DNA, Suicide.'KAK' - what a title - is the next stage of KAKUHAN’s evolution, seemingly self-titled but hiding plenty of clues if you understand Japanese. "KAK" can evoke a number of different characteristics: edge or angularity, core, expansion, agitation or absence. The duo meditate and refract these guiding principles over nine tracks (and a bonus digital addendum) with their usual focus on the interplay between man and machine - something Hino's been exploring for many years with both his solo work as YPY, and with his pioneering band, goat (JP). Working with electronics (drum machines, samplers, oscillators) Hino infuses weightless rhythms with rare fluidity, as if tracing an algorithm trained on Milford Graves. His rubbery, bio-mechanical outbursts are formed into jagged, continuum-confusing trajectories - prismatic spaces where grime intersects footwork and jersey club, and drill corkscrews thru gagaku and Americana.Yuki Nakagawa's emphatic improvisations are just as mind-altering. While he holds back at first, accenting Hino's rapid-fire sequences with hollow, resonant scrapes and junked Downtown distortions, he eventually edges further towards centre stage. Featherlight cello squeals are elongated, imagining a decelerated hoedown, angling folk-y, ecstatic shapes while Hino responds with drum machine prangs. Soon, the duo skewer nervy baroque ornamentation with clockwork whirrs that trip over themselves, the insectoid rhythmic fractals gradually scuttling around a droning cello. By the end of the album, the duo have somehow completely switched roles; Hino's grey boxes now sounding as if they've been excavated from ancient ground, while Nakagawa's strings throb with cybernetic energy, beamed in from a far dimension.
FUMU christens the promising new label Return To Zero (RTZ) with Funeral Rites on Planet Saturn, the surrendering sophomore album from Nigerian artist, self-described “negro-producer”, hedonist, and iconoclast LINTD. With production collaboration from Porter Brook and features from Samrai (Swing Ting), Porter Brook, Sam Scott Francis (GOMID), Rizmi, and Imani Jendai. LINTD’s work emerges as a call and response between the tender, dynamic sounds of Black music across history and the surreal reality of contemporary, vulnerable Black life – a haunting dialogue. These themes are catalysed in the Black Impossible LP Trilogy, reclaiming Black utopia through sound technologies via ‘Smooch Soundsystem [Live at The White Hotel]’ for Second Born (Kop-Z, Porter Brook), and ‘DOGTOOTH. And Other Such Tales of the Macabre’ on The White Hotel’s HEAD II outlet. While earlier works engaged with the mania, joy, and paranoia of this impossible experience, Funeral Rites on Planet Saturn arrives at a soulful conclusion, allowing grief to tell a truer story. In the vein of Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, and Octavia Butler, LINTD introduces the speculative planet Saturn as a site where impossible Black being across the world can come and rest: a site for liberation and emancipation. “This one is an act of care towards myself, and hopefully others like me. I have proven everything I want to prove this year; this one is my elixir from all the lonely grief, a place of rest.” — LINTD “The results serve to consistently fuck with presumptions of Black music within a contemporary context that’s been prised open, upended by likes of Klein & Space Afrika in the modern field, and also tie back to historic, progressive Black music of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane, and their shared extra-musical themes in the work of sci-fi writer Octavia Butler.” — Conor Thomas, Boomkat
MJ Guider returns to Modern Love’s fantasy jukebox series with a fog-bound piece of nu-gaze that blurs dream pop sweetness with rough-edged texture. New Orleans artist Melissa Guion builds the track from chugging, re-amped goth guitars, blown-out drums and suspended, diaphanous vocals, as if a classic shoegaze sound were viewed through thick frosted glass. The result echoes the blurred intensity of My Bloody Valentine, the sleek gloom of Curve, and the hazy atmospheres of Cocteau Twins, while retaining MJ Guider’s own nocturnal mood. The flip moves into more abstract territory: slow, humming waves of harmonic noise drift like a hymn before a powdery rhythm gradually unsettles the calm, hinting at the dub-tinged ambience of Bowery Electric.
New from Modern Love; diamond-cut club fancies x tripped-out energies from a longtime pal of the label, oiling the wheels before a full album drops later this year. Nothing But Fixes spans the A like some lost Gerald whitelabel; 12 minutes of expressive, golden era romance spiked with absolute delirium on the drums. On the flip, Carinho loosens the hips with the kinky swivel of his Lisbon locale, Dojo lifts a half-step fidget, and Echochrome cuts thru liquid Eski, spiked with expressive trills.
A dream-within-a-dream sequence of chopped & screwed cumbia that occupies a very specific spot on our shelves somewhere between The Caretaker and DJ Screw - Debit’s new album for Modern Love is a history lesson, hallucination and ghost-dance all in one, a vault of lost memories that’s intended neither for the club, nor as furniture music - but for full contemplative immersion.
Desaceleradas is Debit’s love-letter to the sounds of Rebajada - half speed cumbia pioneered by Sonido Dueñez in the early 1990’s and recently featured on a pair of first-time tape reissues. As the legend goes, Dueñez had been playing cumbia at a club in Monterrey when his turntable's motor overheated and slowed down to half-speed, turning the dance into slo-mo delirium which the crowd unexpectedly loved - cumbia rebajada was born.
Over the next few years, Dueñez dubbed a popular series of mixtapes, hawking them at the flea market on the dried-up Santa Catarina riverbed beneath El Puente del papa, the bridge that links downtown Monterrey with Independencia. These woozy archives became the stuff of legend, poetically but subconsciously shadowing DJ Screw's series of epochal cassettes that appeared over the border in Houston - and which have now inspired this latest concept-driven masterstroke from Delia Beatriz, who incidentally grew up in that same bustling city in the north of Mexico.
Beatriz uses Dueñez's first two tapes as the starting point for 'Desaceleradas', entering into a dialogue with time, culture and geography as she recalls the sonic ecosystem that surrounded her decades ago, long before she emigrated to the USA. If 2022's acclaimed 'The Long Count' was an attempt to recover concealed pre-Columbian history in the face of colonisation, 'Desaceleradas' jumps forward, figuring out how memory and shared celebration can resist a more contemporary form of cultural erasure.
In Beatriz's hands, cumbia rebejada is sculpted into a symphony of psychedelic breaths and dreamy gestures as the tapes are re-voiced with her ARP 2600 and re-played on her mother's accordion before being pulverised by her careful granular processes. "The goal was not to sample," she explains, "but to engage in conversation." And from track to track, the slowed down sonics, that follow the lead of scratchy sun-baked wax dragged across cheap hi-fi needles and stretched tape winding over busted heads, make salient connections to electronic music's tangled web of subgenres, from dub reggae in Jamaica to vaporwave and its TikTok-friendly "slowed + reverb" progeny.
On 'La ronda y el sonidero', cumbia's familiar syncopated 2/4 shuffle is ground down until its street corner sway becomes a cloud of ruptures and distortions. She pays respect to Monterrey's tape culture on 'bootlegs', introducing her impressionistic harmonies with crackle, and gives a nod to Monterrey's Cholombianos - groups of cumbia fans who dressed in brightly coloured baggy clothes, slathering their long sideburns with gel - on the wistful 'Cholombia, MTY'. By harnessing her memories and casting Sonido Dueñez's legacy in amber, Beatriz provides a space for listeners to hear history itself: to wander down 'El Puente del papa' and breathe in the atmosphere of Monterrey. It's an archive with a pulse.
An air of ancient ritualism cloaks Modern Love’s midnight meeting between UK producer MOBBS and French-Egyptian spellcaster Susu Laroche, carving out a channel between hexed trip hop and shoegaze that’s one part DJ Screw, one part MBV, operating within a long shadow of influence cast by Curve, Leila, Cocteau Twins, Nearly God.
Clasping chiral energies on their debut collab, MOBBS brings a history spanning shadowy production work for big name artists to the grimly stylised vein of performance art and musick explored by Susu Laroche, an Egyptian-French with strong binds to chthonic contemporary London.
Their maiden sacrifice heightens the senses to blends of monotonic, sandalwood scented incantations and carpet-burned downbeats swept in slurred dub. Songs are subtly variegated in tone to spell out shifting plays of light evoking bedsit antechambers and warehouse innards lit by iPhone candle or extractor hood and emergency light bulbs on their last lumens.
It's music that's as elaborately serrated and blemished as early MBV, but positioned in a vastly different cultural landscape, drawing from hip-hop, drone, psych and basement noise. The pair’s range of cultural obsessions maintains a precarious balance between shadowy histories and an asphyxiating present; all too often, when the past is projected it's thru a mollifying, nostalgic lens, so their critical, prudent hybrid sound is a vital, chilling corrective.
From the bell-ringing, chain-rattle jag of ‘Throne’ thru the sleepwalker drift of ‘Roam’, and concrete plangency of ‘Forest’, the marriage of MOBBS’ illusive textures with Laroche’s feel for analog image and film (as evinced in her art for the likes of Blackhaine and Mica Levi) imprints their sound in gauzy layers that leave fleeting impressions on the mind’s eye. At their heaviest, Laroche’s arcane declarations descend in impressive enactments, undressing the excesses of over-glossed trip hop to reveal and revel in the sound at its starkest, sexiest, for new waves of washed up souls.
Edition of 250. Deluxe edition + insert. For eighteen months, between 1984 and 1985, Patrick Lysaght played flute, strings, and percussion inside the Rainforest Birdhouse at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His audience and collaborators: 150 birds of 42 species.
The result is one of the earliest and most radical documents of interspecies improvisation. Predating the current wave of sound ecology by decades, For The Birds sits comfortably alongside the biophonic research of Bernie Krause, the ornithological field recordings of Jean C. Roché, the Deep Listening practice of Pauline Oliveros, and the interspecies experiments of Jim Nollman. A missing link unearthed.
Lysaght didn't record the birds. He played with them. On Downstream, the talking drum establishes a backdrop while the birds take the lead. On Mourning Music, a threnody for his father, the birds seemed to be respectfully listening. On Light Sensitive, delicate percussion triggers avian response. Complex clouds of point notes build to rich density, following what the original notes call "the excitement of chance and the probability of experience."
Originally released in 1985 on Frank Records, Santa Fe. Now reissued with mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi
** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of getting them to put together a trio that would perform several concerts and recording was one of the most exciting moments of my career. Our three languages found a common ground of expression where different musical backgrounds came together and created a unique blend for that period of time. (Andrea Centazzo)
Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones
Recorded live in concert Rome, Italy December 13, 1977
Engineer: Nicola Bernardini
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio
** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline purity that the recording captured and the CD newly presents in all its singular beauty."(Andrea Centazzo)
Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones
Recorded live in concert at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio
** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** This album is a historical document in several respects: echo of a creative season in its early, vigorous blossoming, it presents groundbreaking music as it was performed and listened to in a moment that now seems very distant, not just chronologically but also in terms of its cultural context. Furthermore, it serves as a testament to the initial opening of the emerging Italian free music scene to Northern European experiences, which had already been in communication for years.
The collaboration between Evan Parker and Andrea Centazzo had begun a few months before this concert held in Padova on December 12, 1977. In July, Parker came to Italy, specifically to Tuscany, for a series of concerts, including a duo performance with Derek Bailey in Pisa. Then he joined Centazzo, who had organized a seminar with him (likely the first of its kind in Italy) in San Marcello Pistoiese. At that time, Centazzo lived and worked in the countryside between Pistoia and Montecatini. On that occasion, Centazzo recalls recording studio material, which, along with material collected during the concert in San Marcello, became the album Duets 71977 (CD Ictus 178). Shortly after, the duo temporarily expanded into a trio with Alvin Curran, who recorded Real Time (CD Ictus 124). By then, the Centro d'Arte had existed for more than thirty years as an association connected to the University, presenting seasons with a very open and research–oriented profile. These seasons featured classical chamber music alongside occasional but significant episodes of contemporary music, jazz, and even ethnic music.
However, it was only since 1973 that the Centro d'Arte had started an autonomous jazz series, favoring contemporary and avant–garde artists such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sam Rivers, Anthony Braxton, and musicians from the emerging European free jazz scene. The concerts were held in a temporary structure, a circus tent located in the area of the old slaughterhouse. The audience was quite large, ranging from 500 to over 1000 people, which may be surprising for an avant–garde jazz series, considering the size of the city, with no more than 250,000 inhabitants. At that time, Italy, and Padova in particular, was going through a particularly turbulent political period. The ideas of radical democracy that circulated among the youth masses often meant that participation in a collective event, such as a concert, was not to be simply passive. In addition, a recent series of incidents and clashes had resulted in a near–total ban on rock concerts across the country; consequently, much of the young audience had turned to whatever appeared contemporary and alternative to the commercial scene, such as the new jazz. Anything that seemed radical was generally well–received, even better if it was entertaining.
But perhaps this wasn't the case. The Centazzo/Parker duo was indeed one of the most experimental episodes presented by the Centro d'Arte in those years. Parker had already developed his characteristic style, and as John Zorn observed in his introduction to Duets 71977, "during this intermediate phase between what was documented in Saxophone Solos (1975) and Monoceros (1978), Parker was still using plastic reeds that defined the sharp articulations of his early sound and was beginning to refine the circular breathing that would become a major focus of exploration in the years to come". Meanwhile, as is apparent in the cover photos, Centazzo was already working with a custom–built expanded drum kit made by the English Premier company, with cymbals and gongs that he had designed and produced in collaboration with UFIP in Pistoia. In addition to percussion, Centazzo used one of the first percussion synthesizers, the Synare, and a range of electronic sound objects, including the 'crackle box,' designed and produced in small quantities by Michel Waisvisz (a specimen that had been given to him by Steve Lacy), and also lo–fi sound toys, such as the 'laughing bag.' To many ears at the time, all of this was more astonishing than appreciated for the quality of a new and unheard–of musical practice. Some of the audience expressed their confusion, but those who made a fuss didn't seem to disapprove as much as they aimed for a 'creative' involvement with the scene, in an effort perhaps to raise the level of their intermittent interest. Under the tent, people drank, some smoked, not everyone was seated, and even a few dogs wandered around. Something of this atmosphere, so far removed from today's norms, can be heard in the residual bustling soundscape of voices in the background of the music. However, it takes an additional effort of imagination to realize the intense tension that immediately arose between the performers and the audience, ultimately determining the high 'temperature' of the improvised event. One could recall that only ten days before, in Milan, John Cage had heroically faced for almost three hours an extremely tumultuous crowd of 2,000 people challenging him to complete his solo performance of Empty Words, often reaching the brink of physical threat. The musical material heard on this album does not correspond to the entire concert but is a selection that emphasizes some particularly intense long sequences. It is worth remembering that about twenty minutes into the actual concert, some voices from the audience began to howl and even mock what they were listening to. Parker expressed his irritation through the music, but also with words in which he ironically described himself as a gladiator in the arena. In this portion of the concert, which is not included in the album, spoiled as it is by annoying distortions, you can hear him addressing the audience: "Bring back bullfighting, Bring back bullfighting... whoa... Bullfighting on ice!" and later shouting, "Bring on the lions!" Thus, the title of the album also seeks to evoke these significant aspects of the way free music was made and listened to in many situations that occurred in those epic 1970s. – Veniero Rizzardi (October 2023)
Technical Note: The recording originates from the Centro d'Arte archive. Although there is no precise information available about the source, it is highly probable that the performance was recorded by capturing a mono signal from the mixing board and routing it to two tracks on a reel–to–reel Revox A77 at 7.5 ips. The recording engineer is unknown. In 2000, Stefano Bassanese converted the tape into a digital file (44100 Hz/16 bit) in his home studio. This forms the basis of the current restoration process, conducted at Outside Inside Studio by Matt Bordin, who is also responsible for editing and mastering.
personnel: Andrea Centazzo percussion and electronics / Evan Parker soprano and tenor saxophones - Recorded live in concert december 12, 1977 at Teatro Tenda, Padova, Italy. produced by Centro d'Arte dell'Università di Padova. All tracks are free improvisations by the duo. Restoration, editing and mastering by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio. Liner notes by Veniero Rizzardi. Photos by Michele Giotto.
The archive is not neutral. In 2019, Andrea Centazzo discovered unlabeled tape reels in his mother's attic in Udine - boxes assumed lost seven years earlier. What emerged from these deteriorating reels, transferred by engineer Sergio Tomasini during COVID lockdowns, was unexpected: unreleased recordings from the original Elektriktus sessions of 1973-76, alongside other archival materials including previously unknown collaborations with Steve Lacy and Evan Parker from the same period.Centazzo's solution was conceptually elegant: add contemporary digital electronics to the original analog Elektriktus recordings, creating temporal palimpsest in which the seventy-something composer engages in dialogue with his younger self. Crucially, his fundamental approach hasn't changed. "Making a 10-minute loop meant playing and overdubbing for 10 minutes!" This rejection of computer automation, this insistence on the hand-played and physically executed, links 2025 to 1975 through continuous methodology.Vol. 2 operates in complex register: contemporary electronics don't "update" the original recordings but exist in conversation with them. By overlaying 2025 digital work onto 1975 analog recordings, Centazzo creates proof that affinities between cosmic drift and percussive grounding were present in the original conception, waiting to be heard.The reborn Ictus label presents both volumes as complementary documents: Vol. 1 preserving the original artifact in its analog integrity, Vol. 2 revealing latent possibilities through temporal superimposition. Together, they map territory that standard histories have overlooked - the Italian synthesis of kosmische consciousness and Mediterranean sensibility.This temporal doubling produces music that is neither nostalgic recreation nor radical revision but something more complex - a conversation between past and present, between the composer who created these sounds in the mid-1970s and the artist who now understands their full implications. The phantom that PDU Records once denied a proper name finally speaks, twice, across fifty years.
In the summer of 1976, a peculiar album appeared in Italian record shops bearing no artist name - only the cryptic moniker Elektriktus. The music posed a question that wouldn't be answered for decades: who had created this hybrid of jazz sensibility and kosmische synthesis? The answer was hiding in plain sight. Andrea Centazzo - recognized figure in European free improvisation who had shared stages with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, and Derek Bailey - had been leading a double life between touring with Giorgio Gaslini's quartet, conducting experiments with Minimoog, Davolisint, and the GEM Rodeo 49 synthesizer.
PDU Records - owned by pop icon Mina and Italy's primary distributor for German avant-garde labels including Brain, Kosmische Musik, and Pilz, making PDU the Italian gateway to Ash Ra Tempel, Popol Vuh, Cosmic Jokers, and the broader kosmische scene, often releasing these albums in prestigious Quadraphonic editions - recognized the value of what Centazzo had created but worried his jazz identity would confuse the cosmic electronics market. The solution: create Elektriktus as pseudonym, fusing "electronic" with "Ictus," the name Centazzo would give to his own label and percussion series.
Where German kosmische musik tended toward the infinite and abstract - Conrad Schnitzler's austere minimalism, Tangerine Dream's sequencer-driven expanses - Centazzo's electronic music retained tactile, physical quality. Franco Feruglio's upright bass walks and breathes, remembering northern Italian folk traditions. Centazzo's percussion maintains the rhythmic intelligence of jazz improvisation even when filtered through electronics. Electronic Mind Waves presents a heady dive into mystical electronics at the intersection of kosmische consciousness and jazz improvisation. Each of the eight tracks unfolds as its own sonic meditation, incorporating otherworldly themes through wild synth lines played against meandering bass patterns and Centazzo's driving yet nuanced percussion - pushing the listener into cosmic spaces while maintaining the tactile, almost physical quality that distinguishes Italian cosmic music from its German counterparts.
These eight synth-fueled tracks sound close to what kraut/cosmische heads were doing at the time - think Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter, or Cosmic Jokers, and also other European experimentalists like Richard Pinhas' Heldon, Spacecraft, Didier Bocquet, Seesselberg, F.G. Experimental Laboratory, Roberto Cacciapaglia, or Hydrus. Elektriktus represents the most adventurous experimental sounds under kosmische influence to emerge from Italy. What made Electronic Mind Waves significant wasn't imitation of German models, but transformation of them through Mediterranean sensibility and freeform jazz ethos.
The album's 1976 appearance came at a pivotal moment. Rock Progressivo Italiano - the movement that had produced the political complexity of Area, the folk-inflected experimentation of Stormy Six, the symphonic ambitions of Le Orme - was entering terminal crisis. Elektriktus arrived into this collapse: anonymous, difficult to market, structurally uncommercial. Poor distribution ensured its swift disappearance. But as often happens with prematurely buried artifacts, the album acquired an afterlife in collector circles, becoming whispered legend - a forgotten electronic gem that not only reflected the Italian craze for space synth, but looked north to the genius of electronic Krautrockers while maintaining distinctly Mediterranean character.
Strongly recommended to fans of minimal electronic music, kosmische sounds and ambient soundscapes.
Edition of 300. Includes 8-page booklet. In 1969, while American minimalism was consolidating into its most recognizable forms, Charlemagne Palestine was conducting solitary experiments with oscillators and sine waves that only now reveal their visionary scope. This was the New York of lofts and abandoned industrial spaces, of artists pushing sound toward its physical limits -- a city where the boundaries between music, performance art, and bodily endurance were dissolving. Battling the Invisible unearths two electronic studies from that crucial year, paired with rare 1972 Bösendorfer sessions -- a document that illuminates the passage from pure electronics to the keyboard as an instrument of prolonged ecstasy. "Low Sounds 3" opens the record with fifteen minutes of low frequencies that seem to emerge from the very foundations of the sonic edifice. There is no development in the traditional sense, but a static presence that gradually colonizes the listening space. Think Eliane Radigue's meditative drone work filtered through a raw, almost brutalist sensibility. "Sine Tone Study" on Side B extends this practice for nearly nineteen minutes -- sine waves overlapping, creating beating patterns, zones of interference explored with the patience of an entomologist. The two 1972 Bösendorfer fragments function as bridges toward the Palestine the world knows better -- the strumming ecstasies, the hypnotic accumulation of overtones, the piano as a vehicle for transcendence. Here the physical approach to the keyboard is already evident -- what he would describe as a "battle." This release is part of Alga Marghen's The Golden Research series -- a concept devised by Palestine himself around the idea of "perfect sound." The series focuses exclusively on completely unreleased archival materials, bringing to light legendary recordings that have never been heard before. The LP includes a 8-page interview conducted by Sumner Crane and Rudolph Grey in January 1979 at Palestine's NYC loft, with Arto Lindsay present, later redacted by Alan Licht. The insert is an anastatic reproduction of the original 12-page typescript. Unfiltered, explosive -- Palestine on violence, on the body as battleground, on his Brooklyn childhood. Essential reading.
Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century. The recordings partly reflect repertoires borrowed from Chinese music between the 5th and 9th centuries. The incredible variety of timbres of the instruments greatly amplifies our exotic imagination: the eternal breath of the flutes (ryuteki and hichiriki) creates a sort of suspension of time, together with the hypnotic and hallucinatory atmosphere of the mouth organs (shō). The meditative tone of the string instruments (bika and koto) that punctuate the voids and silences is impressive, as is the enigmatic percussion section, with the tolling of the gong (shōko) and the calibrated beats of the drums (taiko and kakko).