MUSIC
6091 products
ぜひお聞きください。
Released in 1970, Funkadelic’s self-titled debut was a radical collision of psychedelic rock, gospel, blues, and soul — a chaotic, genre-defying statement that redefined the possibilities of Black music. Where Motown aimed for polish and crossover appeal, Funkadelic dove headfirst into distortion, improvisation, and spiritual ambiguity, offering a sound as gritty and unpredictable as the era itself. Backed by a ferocious young band — including Eddie Hazel, Billy Bass Nelson, Tawl Ross, Tiki Fulwood, and Mickey Atkins — the album rejected convention in favor of raw groove and existential noise. Tracks like “I Got a Thing…” and “What Is Soul” pulse with menace and joy, bookended by surreal monologues that echo both street philosophy and space-age gospel. As part of Org Music’s Westbound Records reissue series, this edition restores the album’s full impact across multiple formats. The deluxe double LP, mastered at 45RPM directly from tape by Dave Gardner at DSG Mastering, offers the highest fidelity to date. Gardner and restoration specialist Catherine Vericolli archived and restored the original master tapes at 54 Sound Studios in Ferndale, Michigan, with assistance from in-house engineer Nick King. A single LP edition, cut from high-resolution tape transfers, is also available, alongside CD, cassette, and digital formats. A sonic revolution in its time and a lasting influence ever since, Funkadelic remains a groundbreaking testament to music without rules and freedom without limits.
Four pieces by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, a pioneer of “holy minimalism.” The album centers around a never-before-released rendition of “Silentium,” the second movement of Pärt’s most famous concerto, Tabula Rasa, performed by Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry. The group plays “Silentium” at nearly half the speed of the best-known version, released on ECM in 1984. The piece, known for its healing properties for the dying and often used in palliative care facilities (one patient famously called it “angel music”), is breathtaking at half speed, seemingly stilling time itself.
The album compiles some of the most stunning renditions of Pärt’s music ever recorded. “Vater Unser (Arr. for trombone & string ensemble)” is somehow warm and austere at once. A miniature epic. Pianist Marcel Worm’s solo version of “Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka” is as beautiful as anything we’ve ever heard. “Fratres for Strings and Percussion” is one of Arvo Pärt’s most celebrated works. The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra’s version is iconic, filled with emotional playing right on the verge of overly romantic, but never tipping over.
Pärt’s approach to both music and life is as sparse as the compositions he creates. He once said, “I have nothing to say… Music says what I need to say. And it is dangerous to say anything, because if I’ve said it already in words there might be nothing left for my music.” Silentium continues Mississippi Records’ fascination with this great contemporary composer.
New album of peaceful explorations by The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. This, their second record, maintains the space and long tones that made their debut, "All Is Sound" a successful anecdote to the loud and fast times we live in. It also expands their musical palate with powerful rhythmic elements.
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio have been breaking new ground with healing / meditation music that also honors their roots in Gospel and Blues...and hints at forward looking Spiritual Jazz. Through their Cello, Saxophone, Piano and Flute playing they bring a new sound to the table. Ancient to the future.
Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. This edition from Freedom To Spend is the first authorized reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with love from the best available sources by Jessica Thompson.
"Sametou Sawtan translates from the Arabic to “I Heard A Voice”. Spooky or spiritual, however one reads the phrase, it speaks to the ability of sound and language to cause pause, steal attention, and open us to the moment. Likewise, the music of SANAM blurs tender frenzies and fire-scorched ballads, collapsing free-flowing rock and jazz frameworks into deeply rooted Arabic tradition. To hear them in full flight is to be held in the present and reorientated towards an open horizon.
The record processes feelings of distance and dislocation. Whether in the yearning ballad “Goblin” or the slow-burning, autotune-doused freakout of “Habibon”, Sametou Sawtan captures the striving for stable ground in a world seldom capable of offering it. It rides the mesmerizing intensity of the SANAM live experience while affording their music nuance, depth, and tremendous dynamic range.
Like their debut, lyrics for many tracks are borrowed, words placed into new contexts to process the present. “Hamam” reinterprets an Egyptian folk song. In “Hadikat Al Ams”, the cracked hard-rock stomp propels text by contemporary Lebanese writer Paul Shaoul. And both “Sayl Damei” and the title track use poems by twelfth century Iranian poet and groundbreaking mathematician Omar Khayyam."
In July of 2022, just one month before jaimie branch’s death sent shockwaves around the world, the trumpet player and composer was in Chicago at International Anthem studios putting finishing touches on an album. It was a suite of music she had composed and then recorded with her flagship ensemble, Fly or Die, over the course of a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In her wake, the album was near complete, with only mixing tweaks, final titles, and artwork to be fully realized. In the months following, her family (led by sister Kate Branch), her band (Jason Ajemian, Lester St. Louis, and Chad Taylor), and her collaborators at IARC banded together to gather memories, texts, emails, photographs, artwork and fragments belonging to jaimie to light the path forward. The goal was always to do what jaimie would have done. Packaged in stunning artwork by John Herndon, Damon Locks, and branch herself, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) is jaimie’s final album with her Fly or Die quartet.
From the album's liner notes, written by jaimie's Fly or Die bandmates:
“jaimie never had small ideas. She always thought big. The minute you told her she couldn’t do something, or that something would be too difficult to accomplish, the more determined and focused she became. And this album is big. Far bigger and more demanding — for us, and for you — than any other Fly or Die record. For this, jaimie wanted to play with longer forms, more modulations, more noise, more singing, and as always, grooves and melodies. She was a dynamic melodicist. jaimie wanted this album to be lush, grand and full of life, just as she was. Every time we take a listen, we feel the deep imprint of her all over the music, and we see all of us making it together.”
First time on CD for this classic Merzbow duo album from 1983...
......Material Action is a favorite among early Merzbow free-music, junk-noise workouts. Psychedelic improvised instrumental energy abounds on this essential early recording that is PURE MERZ.
Masami Akita plays tapes, percussion, electro-acoustic noise, organ
Kiyoshi Mizutani overdubs tapes, synthesizer, violin, machine noise
Imagine it’s late afternoon, you’re outside by the lake, and there’s sunlight on the water. This is the peaceful and contemplative scene that Matt Gold and Resavoir set on their collaborative LP Horizon. Across 10 lush and exploratory tracks, it’s the product of two Chicago-based musicians—Will Miller, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer, and producer who’s worked with SZA, Whitney, and more, and Gold, a seasoned multi-instrumentalist and accomplished guitarist—effortlessly combining their distinct sensibilities for something hypnotic and tangibly inviting. What started as a love letter to their shared admiration for ‘60s and ‘70s Brazilian music evolved into a dynamic and sprawling body of work. These sunny and expansive tunes are as immersive as they are endlessly replayable.
Both Miller and Gold attended Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music together and in the years after graduating, they orbited each other around Chicago’s music communities. “We were showing up for each other as friends and taking an interest in each other's projects, noticing a lot of resonances and similarities working within in our music,” says Gold, who’s collaborated with artists like Makaya McCraven and Jamila Woods and stretched the bounds of jazz and Americana on solo albums Imagined Sky and Midnight Choir. “We had talked so much about eventually working together that it was almost like an ongoing bit at a certain point,” says Miller. Though they had known each other for over a decade, they first had their chance on “Inside Minds,” the breezy lead single on 2023’s Resavoir. While those sessions were remote, two had palpable chemistry.
It wasn’t until Miller left the touring band of the Chicago group Whitney in 2023 that their plans to make music together in person came to fruition. “When I first started Resavoir, I was chasing the desire to produce records and now that I had time to focus exclusively on that, Matt was the first person I called to come to the studio,” says Miller. The two had bonded over an admiration for the Brazilian guitarist Luis Bonfa and songwriter Milton Nascimento, especially the latter’s work with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, so they decided to use nylon string guitar as a starting point for these early sessions. “Canopy,” which opens Horizon, was the earliest track. Kicking off with bright acoustic chords, the song slowly unfurls into a slinking groove, samples, and fluttering leads from soprano saxophonist Tim Bennett.
As these initial experiments proved successful, Gold and Miller felt they could broaden the scope of their vision. “We were initially conceiving of it as this acoustic guitar driven record but eventually we wanted to frame it orchestrally and see how many shades and colors we can bring in around that sound,” says Gold. “Dewy” thrives within this orchestral palette of woozy synths, strings from Macie Stewart, Claire Chenette’s oboe, flautist Wills McKenna, and French horns from Lloyd Billingham. “We discovered that our multi-instrumentalist mentalities—using piano and bass, samplers, drum grooves, guitar ideas all as starting points— nurtured the broad orchestration across this record,” says Miller.
“The LP took about a year with on-and-off sessions,” says Miller. “The songs benefit from letting them ferment for a couple months, coming back to it, and seeing what sort of new flavors have developed.” Co-produced by Miller and Gold (and mixed by Dave Vettraino), Horizon proudly reflects the artists’ vast artistic community and musical network in Chicago and beyond. Along with Gold, Eddie Burns (Clairo), Peter Mannheim (Tony Glausi), and Carter Lang (SZA, Lil Nas X) provide drums and percussion throughout. On the dreamlike single “Diversey Beach,” New York songwriter Mei Semones lends vocals and along with her band members Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, collaborated on a mesmerizingly conversational string arrangement. “We wrote "Diversey Beach" on the coldest day of the year watching a blizzard coming down out of the window, where the sounds of the cars driving by sounded like waves crashing on a beach,” says Miller. “I sent it to Mei Semones, who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. She's absolutely incredible and it’s amazing what she did with it.”
Horizon is a testament to the feeling of endless possibilities that come from collaboration. It’s a remarkable synthesis of two artists who share musical community and an artist lineage but have carved their own paths in unique ways. Nowhere is this more evident than “Hazel Canyon,” which boasts Gold’s silky pedal steel and a subtly enveloping arrangement that evokes Erasmo Carlos. “Musically, we're always trying to capture a fleeting moment of infinite expanse, feeling the vastness of things while knowing they'll always change,” says Gold. “This record keeps the light reflecting on the water just a little longer -- our collaborative process running through the backbone of these songs and rippling out in so many beautiful directions..”
Strut present the first ever official compilation bringing together the complete in-demand reggae / disco singles of Risco Connection between 1979 and 1980.
Drummer “Drummie” Joe Isaacs had already created history as the house drummer at Studio 1 in Jamaica on countless pre-reggae classics before moving to Canada in 1968 and is credited with slowing down the fast pace of ska during the rocksteady era. With Risco Connection, Isaacs released a series of choice reggae / disco covers, from ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’ and ‘Good Times’ to ‘I’m Caught Up (In A One Night Love Affair)’ and ‘It’s My House’ as limited 12” singles on his own Black Rose imprint. “Arriving in Canada, we were one of the first set of musicians out of Jamaica coming here,” explains Isaacs. “With Risco Connection, we wanted to try something new, songs that would have a crossover between disco and the rocksteady feeling and the right lyrics. We had trouble getting them well distributed widely at the time but people still picked up on the sound.”
Recorded at Glen Johansen’s small studio Integrated Sound in Toronto, musicians included Jamaican, US and Canadian players with Isaacs on drums and percussion, bassist Clarence Greer, guitarist Tony Campbell and keyboardist/singer Glen Ricketts. Isaacs also called on a number of great independent vocalists including Terry Hope (‘It’s My House’), Merlyn “Lorna” Brooks, (‘Caught Up’), Otis Gayle and Juliette Morgan (‘Bringing The Sun Out’ and ‘Sitting In The Park’) and Tobi Lark (‘Good Times’). The biggest hit of all the singles was Risco’s dynamite cover of McFadden and Whitehead’s ‘Ain’t No Stopping Us Now’. selling over 5,000 copies in Toronto and New York with the dub version becoming a firm favourite of David Mancuso at his famed Loft parties.
‘Risco Version’ brings together all of the vocal versions, dubs and extra tracks from the singles. Both formats feature an interview with Joe Isaacs and liner notes by journalist Angus Taylor. Audio is restored by Sean P and fully remastered and cut loud and proud by The Carvery.
January 2nd, 2023. Aside from being the second of a new year, it was a pretty ordinary night at ETA in Los Angeles, where guitarist Jeff Parker - alongside his ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose - had been holding down a regular Monday gig since 2016. At the time, nobody knew it was the first gig of the last year that ETA would be open for business.
Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music.
With that musical growth, the crowds for Parker and his band at ETA grew across the years too. What started as a sparse gathering of weeknight drinkers, friends, family, and Chicago expats (coming to get a shot of nostalgia for the atmospheres Parker used to create at Rodan across the ‘00s and early ‘10s) grew into a Los Angeles nightlife staple with a packed house and a line down the block for every show.
By January 2023 interest in Parker’s music was stronger than ever, coming off successes with the December 2021 International Anthem/Nonesuch release of Forfolks – a collection of solo guitar works – and the October 2022 Eremite release of Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, a double LP chronicling the ETA IVtet’s distinct, expansive approach to improvisation across four side-length tracks recorded and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales.
Mondays introduced the world to the ETA IVtet’s signature sound with a gathering of unnamed recordings from dates between 2019 and 2021. Parker’s new ETA IVtet offering stays true to that formula in some ways – as he returns to Gonzales’s archive of analog captures to gather four long recordings totalling around 80 minutes – while zooming in on a more particular moment in his journey. The Way Out of Easy provides us a macro-lens view of the ever-refining, infinite organic essence of the ensemble as they stretch out across a single night of soundmaking on January 2nd, 2023.
The engineer Gonzales is well known for the high-end audio gear he builds as Highland Dynamics, and even designed a custom mixer to be able to record the ETA IVtet, specifically, while only taking up a single space at the bar. In his liner notes for The Way Out of Easy, he colors his process and approach: “There are many different ways to make recordings and they all have their place. But for this band, the most important thing to consider is: not doing anything to get in the way of what they are saying to each other.” He refers to the simple schematic he used for capturing these performances – “basically only 4 level controls for one microphone per player” – which allows us an incredibly pure, honest, transparent and transporting experience of the music as it unfolds and is created in real time.
The set begins with an extended take on Parker’s composition “Freakadelic” – a tune he originally recorded for his 2012 Delmark release Bright Light in Winter. The B-side piece “Late Autumn” finds Parker swaying in alliterative, arpeggiating cycles, using just a few plucked notes as he lays the compositional foundation. At first it almost sounds like an echo of the humble tunes he wrote alone with his guitar on Forfolks, but in this space his ensemble joins him to help build a beautifully multi-textured, gently-shifting four-dimensional construction out of a simple idea. On “Easy Way Out,” Butterss’s bobbing bass line leads, paddling the ensemble into a placid expanse of tender psychedelia while Bellerose dusts off the drums like an archaeologist unearthing ancient artifacts.
It had become customary for the IVtet to end their shows every week with a standard or a tune – a practice that Parker embraced for wanting to give the audience something warm and familiar to take home after a long night of taking them out on creative limbs. Some of Parker’s more common calls were “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Burt Bacharach, “1974 Blues” by Eddie Harris, or “Peace” by Horace Silver. In this set, the IVtet closes not with a familiar song, but a familiar sound in the form of a dub/reggae groove (given the name “Chrome Dome” by Parker in post), developing spontaneously out of lyrical ad libs by Johnson on solo saxophone.
In early December of 2023, ETA co-owner Ryan Julio was forced to make a sudden announcement that the venue would permanently shutter at the end of the year. On December 23rd, Parker and the band played at ETA for the last time.
On July 22nd, 2024, the ETA IVtet gathered to perform together for the first time since then, playing for a sold-out crowd of several hundred listeners – a smiling Ryan Julio among them – at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Gonzales was there, recording with his compact analog setup just behind the band on stage. The space may be gone but its spirit lives and the music moves forward into new vessels.
Regardless of the confluence of events that led to this dream pairing, there’s a strong hint of clear-minded innovation to Promises. The debut collaboration LP from electronic musician Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points and legendary saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, backed to a lavish fullness by The London Symphony Orchestra, feels like the murmurs of an entirely new language for jazz, quite distinct from either participant’s prior output — in fact, it seems to illuminate a hidden lexicon we didn’t know either artist had in the first place.
We say jazz, but Promises truly defies categorisation with its moody atmosphere and indeterminate music-like patience. The nine movements of the LP gently cradle a circular note pattern in the way of a minimalist classical piece, as a flood of synth and string drones gradually fill the empty spaces in-between. As this deep meditation progresses, Sanders recalls his adventurous past work with the Coltranes by undergoing his own inner journey, his sax flitting between conversational licks, esoteric mouth sounds and white-hot fury, bobbing against the rising tide of electronics, organs and orchestra swells.
Ambre Ciel is a composer and singer who hails from Montreal, Canada and is a purveyor of dreamy, expansive, spacious music that draws influence from contemporary classical influenced artists, as well as the impressionist world and American minimalists.
Ambre who sings in both English and her native French, hails from a family of singers and artists, “I started my journey learning violin at six and began experimenting with pedal effects and looping melodies later on”. University followed with a focus on composition and recording. “That’s when I started exploring composing and songwriting more deeply—both the world of sounds in itself and songs built mostly with layers of violin and voice. It was also during this time that I returned to my ‘first’ instrument, the piano, which opened more harmonic possibilities.”
Her debut album still, there is the sea, represents a beginning, a first and imperfect attempt to create this other world that was living in her mind. She has crafted a beautifully refined album making a lot of space for strings arrangements and other acoustic instruments, as well as her own beautiful voice.
“Phi-Psonics is a spiritual exploration of being together and connecting,” says acoustic bassist Seth Ford-Young of the immersive project he initiated in East Los Angeles in 2016. For his third long-player under the Phi-Psonics banner, Ford-Young marshalled a series of live recordings at Healing Force Of The Universe records in Pasadena, sculpting fourteen tracks, largely composed in the moment with a fluctuating cast of players, which wonderfully transmit his ideals of community and inner peace.
Ford-Young says of Expanding to One..."We live in increasingly dark times and while I intend our music to be a balm to those who connect with it, I also want the context of our musical conversations to include the outer as much as our inner worlds. The music we make doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the backdrop of injustice and tragedy in our world has to be part of our music.”
Performers:
Seth Ford-Young - acoustic bass, percussion
Sylvain Carton - tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, alto flute, bamboo flute, percussion
Randal Fisher - tenor saxophone, flute
Mitchell Yoshida - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Zach Tenorio - Wurlitzer 200a electric piano
Gary Fukushima - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Dylan Day - guitar
Dave Harrington - guitar
Rocco DeLuca - pedal steel guitar
Minta Spencer - harp
Sheila Govindarajan - Voice
Spencer Zahn - acoustic bass
Josh Collazo - drums
Jay Bellerose - drums, percussion
Mathias Künzli - percussion
Produced by Seth Ford-Young
Recorded February 7, 21 March 6, 20, April 3,17 - 2024
Live at Healing Force of the Universe Records, Pasadena California
Engineered by Seth Ford-Young
Mixed by Seth Ford-Young
“Composition い” is a 2005 compilation CD featuring Henri Chopin, Pan Sonic, and Achim Wollscheid. It fuses cold sonic particles with the aesthetics of noise, creating an abstract and poetic soundscape. The cover artwork was created by Tatsuo Ikeda.
Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.
One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow.
Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.”
The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time.
Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.
“Perseverance Flow is skipping rope in slo-mo. A dance of co-operation to rally guts & humors & keep marching through pouring tears” (Abrams).
Release date 2025-10-24. 1st eremite edition pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140 gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing from Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod). 1st 300 direct order copies include eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. CD & EU vinyl edition available from our partner Aguirre Records.
"An outstanding Chicago bassist, Joshua Abrams regularly contributes to a host of bands, drawing on roots from hip-hop to free jazz. He also leads a singular project, Natural Information Society (NIS), a band that stretches across time, origins, technologies and sources, and one which has mutated significantly in its 15-year history, documented on a series of Eremite LP releases. Abrams also plays guembri, the bass lute of the Gnawa people of North Africa, introduced to free jazz circles by Moroccan master Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, who in the ’90s stepped outside traditional circles to play with saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Peter Brötzmann and percussionist Hamid Drake, the latter an occasional member of NIS. Recent NIS recordings include two double-LP sets, Since Time Is Gravity, by an 11-member Community Edition and descension (Out of Our Constrictions) by the current core quartet of Abrams, Lisa Alvarado (harmonium), Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) and Jason Stein (bass clarinet), with Evan Parker (soprano) joining them on a single 75-minute piece.
With Perseverance Flow, Abrams, as composer and producer, takes NIS in another direction, composing a piece for the quartet’s distinctive members and instruments, then editing and processing the results into a serene, pulsing, repeating work with regular shifts and time markers, transforming instrumental identities into novel sounds and short modular phrases. There’s a melody that’s regularly an extended and shifting ostinato, there’s another that’s a high-pitched soprano, more minimal still and not readily traceable to an originating sound, though the bass clarinet may be the likeliest contender. These alterations are such that only percussion and guembri are frequently identifiable. Stein’s bass clarinet only becomes strongly evident as itself nine minutes in. A certain repeating jump-start suggests a grand piano’s bass figure or the clicking of an MRI machine, yet this technological dream with its resonating soprano melody remains so fiercely human and fundamentally American that the album forms loose affiliations with music as far flung as Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Furies. The submerged instrumental identities contribute to the dream-like state, as if original sonic personalities have gone to sleep, and the results suggest a sustained techno-lullaby, a kind of mechanized bliss, a harbinger, perhaps, of the music currently most needed". --Stuart Broomer, New York City Jazz Record
"Joshua Abrams leads the Natural Information Society quartet into battle, or at least toward it, on the joyfully meandering instrumental album Perseverance Flow. Proceeding in a march of trancelike, intoxicating repetition, Abrams and his bandmates embark on a 35-minute pilgrimage to the place where jazz, contemporary classical, and multinational folk convene, achieving singularity in a state of ritual rhythm." --Pitchfork
"Spacemen 3 used to promote their music as being for the 'fucked up children of the world,' in addition to the more famous part about taking drugs to make music, etc. Natural Information Society could be described in a similar fashion, except they make music for the fucked up adults of the world, the kind who still take drugs and are baffled by their peers bending over backwards to make 'the kids' think they’re cool by slobbering over music clearly made for children. If you count yourselves among the former, the Chicago band’s latest is made for you: sophisticated psychedelia pulsing with rhythmic intensity and rich with droney waves of harmonium. Made up of a single slow-burning, 37-minute long jam, the movement here is subtle yet in its own way aggressive and sharply focused, carefully drawing the listener into the widening gyre at the center of the band’s humane, organic trance." --Mariana Timony, Bandcamp Daily Essential Releases
"The piece, called “Perseverance Flow,” began slowly, with Abrams playing rhythmically on a gimbri—a Sub-Saharan, three-stringed, skin-covered box—in his lap. Alvarado, on hand-pumped harmonium, let the reeds make chords that filled the room. Mikel Patrick Avery, on a drum kit, launched a bass drum’s beat through mists of percussion, and on bass clarinet, Jason Stein made sounds like swells and piercing winds. It was rhythms intersecting rhythms, and the room felt like an ocean, the seas shifting, tide coming in. But then, after an hour that felt like minutes, Alvarado’s chords led us home safe, the sounds calming, the room still vibrating, the chords resolved, the world a different place." --Robert Sullivan, Vogue
Anyone who’s studied meditation or watched a Formula 1 race knows you can travel great distances without going anywhere at all—and enjoy the process of not getting there. There’s pleasure in following a circuit so frequently and so closely that everyday bits of the landscape become landmarks (we always pass that bullet-holed stop sign on this route) and a pang when those landmarks change (they replaced the stop sign!). Natural Information Society’s music operates on similar principles, drawing together the thrum of Moroccan gnawa, the austere profundity of Philip Glass, and the circular structures of John Coltrane at his most spiritual into a sound that doesn’t progress so much as it rotates. Its pleasures come from the steady accumulation of repetitions and all the little tweaks and evolutions and devolutions that composer Joshua Abrams and his band have built into their music.
Perseverance Flow is Natural Information Society’s first non-collaborative record since 2023’s jazz-fractaled Since Time Is Gravity. That album presented a more relaxed version of the group, unfurling its music as though rolling out a dusty Turkish carpet. Perseverance Flow’s tight focus—one theme looped ceaselessly, with modest embellishment, for 35 minutes—feels like a microscopic view of that same rug. The phrase is initially tight and loping: a two-note harmonium riff, a lightly heraldic bass clarinet, Abrams’ clip-clopping guembri, a little one-two drumbeat, all of it held together as tightly as pencils bundled by a rubber band. The group performed the piece live for a year before recording, which gives the album a warm and lived-in feel despite its formal constriction; imagine the Sun Ra Arkestra in big-band mode, playing a single bar over and over until achieving liftoff. Taking equal inspiration from Jamaican dub and Chicago dance music, Abrams edited the one-take performance in post-production, dropping in tonal tweaks and rhythmic inversions with a jeweler’s eye for detail.
In the same way that a diamond’s symmetrical shine is both easy to admire and requires an eyepiece to appreciate in full, Perseverance Flow’s charm is shaped by the tiny variations built into the score. Once the theme is established and allowed to settle, harmonium player Lisa Alvarado flips her pattern, playing a palindrome of the simple rise-and-fall melody. The shift is so smooth it can take a moment to notice it’s happened, and even then you might second-guess the extent of the change. Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery loosens his percussion a few minutes later, playing something that sounds like pebbles sloshing in a plastic bucket. The soft shuffle is soon absorbed—whether actually or just by a kind of aural illusion—into the original pattern. Abrams anchors the sound with his Moroccan guembri, occasionally halting the steady limp of the primary line to tie a fluid knot without losing a step.
While it’s not unusual for repetition to turn a musical phrase inside out, similar to the way a word loses its meaning once you’ve said it a few times, Perseverance Flow’s emotional register stays constant. The phrases gradually begin to lengthen—at one point, Alvarado’s harmonium sounds more like an accordion playing a Cajun song in slow-mo—which gives the piece enough momentum to stay grounded. At no point does it even glance in the direction of chaos; you could probably thread a needle with the sound wave. Around the 19-minute mark, the entire ensemble pulls up together in a way that suggests a vamp, then immediately falls back into the pattern without anyone losing their place. It’s such a weird little thrill that, if you’re properly locked in, it feels like peaking in sync with a 2 a.m. bass drop.
While the instrumentation wouldn’t be out of place at your local roots festival, the dance music influence on Perseverance Flow is undeniable. Abrams’ frequent switches and intertwined notes mimic the braided bass hits and glitchy rhythms of footwork without ever leaving the aesthetic context of gnawa. Little clap-back rhythms pop up occasionally. At one point, something that sounds like a bag of shells being dropped on a snare drum introduces a new back-and-forth to the theme that matches the harmonium and brings the piece’s shuffle closer to something like hip-hop. It’s a canny way of making sure the listener’s body stays tuned in to what could easily become cerebral; you will not nod your head more insistently to a piece of experimental music this year.
Two-thirds of the way through, Avery pounds what sounds like a heavily padded kick drum in double time, just off-beat and distant enough to make it feel like the thump of a poorly insulated club. Abrams picks up the new rhythm and follows it, and for a few moments, the band seems to be playing both the main Perseverance Flow theme and a separate dance song at the same time, though the theoretical line between the two is impossible to find. Eventually, that intervention fades, too, revealing that each of the musicians is off doing their own thing, and despite that, feeling more like an ensemble than ever.
Music like this sometimes gets called “durational,” or likened to the theoretical impermanence of Zeno’s Arrow—an object that appears constant yet is recomposing itself in every moment. It is hard, listening to Perseverance Flow, not to think of the Buddhist notion of becoming, or something like philosopher Henri Bergson’s conception of the élan. Both of which are fair descriptions and logical reactions to a music that seems to do nothing but go in circles with academic confidence. But merry-go-rounds go in circles, too. As do pinwheels. You want durational? Major League Baseball teams play 162 games every season, usually for the same few thousand people. Despite the weight of the intellectual concepts and the elegance of the score, despite the band’s association with the cream of Chicago’s always-rich avant-garde scene, this record is no less approachable than an afternoon Cubs game. Appropriately enough, it gets better with each spin, too. --Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork
We at EM Records love to transport our listeners to new worlds, other worlds; “Pantilde”, this magical new album from Cornish avant-folk performance artist The Worm (they/them), is indeed an ethereal new world: otherworldly, but somehow rooted; an imaginary oral and musical story of everyday village life in an alternative Celtic landscape. The music here is strange yet familiar, fantastical and enchanting while remaining simultaneously attached to the earth. Amy Lawrence (they/them), aka The Worm, plays cello, harp, recorders and percussion, accompanying and framing her rich voice, which is often overdubbed into lovely homespun vocal ensembles; they tell song-stories of mythical and mystical village life, of nature and the human relationship with the natural world. The Worm can be considered part of a lineage which includes The Incredible String Band, Shovel Dance Collective, Bridget St John, Dorothy Carter, Vashti Bunyan, Jessica Pratt, Cathrine Howe, Mary Lattimore, Tristwch Y Fenywod and of course many others. “Pantilde”, a time-trip to a dreamlike, pastoral world that nevertheless feels distinctly realized, is a remarkable avant-folk fantasia, co-released with Prah Recordings. Available on 12-inch LP & CD, with English and Japanese liner notes and lyrics. The CD format also feature a Yama Warashi remix bonus track.
From the 1950s, Masaaki Takano (1927-2007) worked as a freelance "sound planner," mainly creating sound effects for stage productions. In the mid-1980s he began performances called "Sound Play" where he would perform on his own self-created sound instruments and his collection of ethnic instruments. Growing out of his work with sound effects, he became obsessed with the recording of natural sounds from the 1970s onwards, and this album "Shizukutachi" is a record of a high-quality recording of water droplets that he created in the studio using his own self-created suikinchiku system. This reissue recreates the original LP, using special paper to create beautiful packaging and duplicating the original, ultra-transparent vinyl. The reissue includes newly penned, detailed liner notes by Tomotaro Kaneko (owner of the Japanese Art Sound Archive).
Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
The LP jacket is made from two layers of chipboard cardboard and washi-like "shindanshi" paper that reproduces the feel of the original. The LP also comes with two postcards and a 20-page A4 booklet (Text in Japanese and English),a download code.
The Kiyosato Museum of Contemporary Art was located in Kiyosato, Yamanashi prefecture from 1990 to 2014. It was a private art museum with a permanent exhibit based on a collection of unrivalled scale. The museum also collected and mounted exhibitions on the work of radical contemporary composers, including John Cage. The museum’s primary informant on music was sound designer Yutaka Hirose, one of the pioneers of Japan’s environmental music (kankyō ongaku) movement in the 1980s.
In 1992, the museum mounted a John Cage Memorial exhibition, and this release showcases Hirose’s work on the overall exhibition design and the creation of the sounds that were played in the museum during the exhibition, through a re-edit and reissue of the sound materials.
The sound materials that Hirose created for the exhibition environment were only ever distributed on CDr to members of the curatorial team so this is their first formal release. Hirose’s work for the exhibition was radical in its use of musique concrète and collages of noise and everyday sounds, and in his homage to Cage’s methods, these pieces represent a distinct departure from his normal approach at the time.
The A4 booklet includes texts about the exhibition by members of the team, Hirose’s own description of the pieces, and photographs of the exhibition. (Text in Japanese and English).
The fifth and final volume of World Arbiter's Japanese Traditional Music marks the completion of the label's excavation and restoration of 60 10" 78RPM discs of Japanese traditional music, bringing a great body of lost music to light and offering in full a legacy that has been almost entirely unavailable until now, even in Japan. The original set was manufactured in 1941 by a company now called the Japan Foundation, and was intended to be presented exclusively to libraries (though the Japan Foundation now has no record of having produced it). There are only two known sets of these discs, both missing the same final 10". World Arbiter acquired one original set of 59 from Beate Sirota Gordon (daughter of pianist Leo Sirota) in the 1990s, and, after a ten-year search, finally located a test pressing of the 60th disc in a theater museum in Japan. Upon first hearing these recordings, World Arbiter's Allan Evans was shocked to hear that the discs contained every species of traditional music, from the court's origins in shamanic rites, Buddhist chant, Noh plays, kabuki, and blind biwa players' haunting songs of chilling epics, to the recordings presented here: a final volume full of folk songs that captures rice planters, weavers, tuna and herring fishers, and children, all funkier than one could imagine and with the presence of eternity in their every sound and breath. The sounds and intensity of Volume Five's folk music surpass anything heard in the classical music of Japan. With Japan's ongoing modernization and loss of its traditional music, World Arbiter's audio restoration removes artifacts from chronological chains to resonate in the eternal flow of sound that defies time and space, remaining vital and always in the present. Includes 24 tracks of performances by anonymous Japanese singers.