MUSIC

Electronic Music from 1972-2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone's compositional activity, starting with Stone's earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 ("Three Confusongs" and "Ryound Thygyzunz", featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z'EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Carl Stone’s evergreen 70th birthday and a document of archival art. In the spirit of disorienting repetition and layering, call it an archive of archiving. Stone’s practice emerged from the repetitive archival process of his graduate job at CalArts preserving vinyl recordings by dubbing them to tape. With perhaps 10,000 albums ranging from Renaissance and electronic works to music from across the globe, he had to re-record multiple discs concurrently, creating chance collisions and coincidences. In the decades since, he’s explored various ways to compose this process, creating temporal envelopes in which found sounds – existing tracks or field recordings – can take form. Whilst the technologies he’s used have changed and samples have varied beyond categorization, what’s remained consistent is his concern for organizing temporal experience using fragments of pre-existing sounding events. Stone's impish collage-like constructions of times cut from time suggest that archival records are neither wholly in documents preserved from change nor in living memories and use, but in their interaction.

Rediscovered and compiled for release shortly before her death in November 2023, Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord presents a never-before-heard recording of composer and artist Catherine Christer Hennix’s early magnum opus. Originally debuted in 1976 at the festival Brouwer’s Lattice at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, The Electric Harpsichord has steadily mystified fans and students of Western minimalist music for its implacable, transformative qualities, and the long-held, relative obscurity of its creator. Like the work of Hennix’s close friend La Monte Young, the piece is set in just intonation and focuses on the transcendental potentials of precise tuning, inspired by their studies with Pandit Pran Nath. Composed of bursts of oscillating, synthetic tones using a carefully retuned synthesizer and a tape-based system for feedback delay, the sounds swirl, twinkle, and appear to bend time, space, and perception. Additional, sustained chords on the sheng, most likely played by her Deontic Miracle bandmate Hans Isgren, are present at the opening of the piece and reemerge towards the end of the recording.The release of Further Selections constitutes the most comprehensive original recording of this foundational work to date. Originally billed as The Well-Tuned Organ during its debut in Sweden, The Electric Harpsichord has developed a legendary reputation, predicated on a twenty-six minute fragment salvaged and circulated by Hennix’s friend Henry Flynt. Promoting its importance on multiple occasions, Flynt aired the work on WBAI radio, organized a pair of tape concerts at New York alternative arts spaces in 1970s, and later penned a 1998 essay which served as the liner notes to its eventual CD release in 2010. For him, this work not only represented a sterling milestone in minimal sonic aesthetics, but also spawned a new genre that he dubbed “hallucinogenic/ecstatic sound environments (HESE),” which in turn inspired his own drone-like compositions. Gradually, interest in the recording led to a spate of archival projects, public performances, and new compositions by Hennix in the 2010s, in turn drawing into focus her multifarious practice, which includes serious contributions towards mathematics, poetry, sculpture, Noh drama, philosophy, and light art. Since 2018, Blank Forms has spearheaded a comprehensive publication effort in support of her work, including the writing collection Poësy Matters and Other Matters (2018); archival recordings like Selected Early Keyboard Works (2018) and The Deontic Miracle’s Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku (2019); and recent compositions such as Blues Alif Lam Mim (2021) and Solo for Tamburium (2023).

We are pleased to reissue the masterpiece cassette of the early Acid Mothers Temple, which is an exquisite mix of psychedelic and noise that creates an unidentifiable sound. The reason for the mysteriousness of the sound is the editing that forms the composition and development of the sound in a way that would normally be unthinkable, and will reaffirm the uniqueness of Acid Mothers Temple.

(advaita records)

Le Jardin des Plantes, in four parts, for cello and electronics. A place in Paris and a novel by Claude Simon. Memory spaces, a source, a scrying of time. – Anton Lukoszevieze

Latency present Danish artists Cæcilie Trier (CTM), Jakob Littauer and Mads Kristian Frøslev with their first collaborative album as TLF Trio. Chamber music for cello, piano and guitar; moving between written composition, improvisation and de-construction; channeling free jazz and minimalism and playing with the stiltedness of Central-European Classical of the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque. Named after the 1991 hardcore rave classic by Liquid, this acoustic almost beat-less album contains music that is more sculptural than narrative and that fluidly shapeshifts from being an object in the room to being the room itself – just as Louise Lawler’s distorted image from the Stedelijk Museum that adorns its cover..

De Leon returns to Mana, following their 2018 LP, offering a suite of new material that adds further waypoints to the map of their cryptic soundworld, deepening and expanding the direction of travel they began within the Aught collective. The dual legacies of Javanese gamelan and minimalist composition remain clear touchstones on this second, untitled album, which employs architectures of repetition and microtonality and evokes the musical heritage of the Bay Area whilst folding in the arid landscapes of Tucson, Arizona, where its compositions were conceived in part. Featuring a broad vocabulary of source material, notably Daniel Schmidt’s gamelan at Mills College and the spherical gongs on the album’s cover, combined with a homespun collection of prepared instruments and faint vapours of synthesis, De Leon crafts a distinct signature sound that evades alignment with conventions of academic composition and contemporary electronica but nods to both as it carves out its unique direction of travel. This album inscribes itself into a tradition of works that enable listeners to perceive deeper valences of time and psychedelic aesthetics of scale. Percussion and metallophones fluctuate within the virtual space of the recording and the sounds avoid stasis, rather undulating restlessly or flickering in and out of perception in a manner consistent with the mercurial sensibilities of their early De Leon recordings.

TRACE is a collection of 11 unreleased tracks produced by Yutaka Hirose during the Sound Process Design sessions, right after the release of his classic Soundscape series album Nova. Sound Process Design was Satoshi Ashikawa's label, home of his Wave Notation trilogy (Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music For Nine Postcards, Satsuki Shibano's Erik Satie 1866-1925 and Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way). Following Wave Notation, Sound Process Design worked with museums, cafes and bars to create site-specific soundscapes, starting with the sound design of the Kushiro Museum. Yutaka Hirose was called to work on sound for these spaces.

Rather than simply providing pre-recorded compositions, Hirose sought to create a "sound scenery". To achieve this, he participated in the conception of the space and paid particular attention to the accidental combination of sounds by placing the speakers and using a multi-sound source, and following the concept of "sculpturing time through sound".

The composer explains: "sculpturing time through sound means that the time, the space itself, the sound played in it, and the audience all become one sculpture. It is close to the idea of a Japanese tea ceremony where you use all of your 5 (or 6) senses to taste the tea."

TRACE: Sound Design Works 1986-1989 is divided into two parts. "Reflection" is based on an ambient soundscape. It narrates "a sleep that starts with the sound of water droplets at dawn and slowly disappears into darkness" and feels like a natural and soothing progression of Nova. It was played at entrances of spaces, at events, in cafes and bars. "Voice from Past Technology" expresses the dream world born out of that sleep and is based on what Yukata Hirose calls hardcore ambient, environmental music with a noise approach. It was played in museums and science centers.

All in all, TRACE is a crucial addition to every Japanese environmental music fan’s collection, alongside Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green, Satoshi Ishikawa’s Still Way, Motohiko Hamase’s Notes of Forestry, Inoyamaland’s Danzindan-Pojidon, and Yutaka Hirose’s very own Nova.

Paradigm-shifting percussionist Valentina Magaletti stops time on 'La Tempesta Colorata', a long-form set that rolls thru tempos and time signatures with gymnastic flexibility, offering another spectacular entry to A Colourful Storm’s gravity-defying recent run of releases. Magaletti is a regular and constant presence on these pages as a member of Moin, Vanishing Twin, Tomaga and CZN, as well as thru endless collabs with everyone from Floating Points to Nicolas Jaar, Jandek to Helm. For our money, though, she's at her most arresting when operating in solo mode. "La Tempesta Colorata" was recorded at Cafe Oto in October 2021 and follows her astonishing 2020 solo set "A Queer Anthology of Drums” with a virtuoso performance that never drags for a moment, fluctuating from ASMR scraping to angular post-punk rhythmic pulsewerk. With a full drum set, a handful of additional small instruments and a delay pedal, Magaletti somehow captures a full spectrum of sound, employing only minor additional elements to flesh out her sound. From the dewdrop swagger of the opening minutes, thru rolling tom-led seismic activity - complete with customary screams - and into echoing industrial dub-improv experimentation, she's able to assemble her rhythms with metronomic accuracy, but with enough space in the gaps to enhance inherent human qualities - a far cry from fully electronic studio productions. It’s a spellbinding display of polymetric complexities where no two seconds repeat themselves, persistently pulling patterns apart and restitching them in diffractive slow-fast-slow temporalities that arc from showers of cascading hi-hats, to pugilistic breaks, to an unexpected trough of Twin Peaks-y drones around the mid-section, only to climb out of it via icicles of melodic chimes and into more humid areas of her imagination, ultimately shoring up in pitch black Amazonian zones. If you're into anyone from Autechre to Eli Keszler, Milton Graves to Han Bennink, this one's a mindmelt.

Six Pianos is a minimalist piece for six pianos by the American composer Steve Reich. It was completed in March 1973. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ – again – emerged in the same year. The piece is scored for glockenspiels, marimbas, metallophone (vibraphone without resonator fans), women's voices and organ. The piece is in four sections, played without a break, marked off by changes in key and meter.

Divine Comedy stands as a magnum opus crafted by two of the foremost composers of their era, boasting a musical ambition akin to Dante’s poem and its visual interpretation by Sandro Botticelli or Gustave Doré. For a long time, this triptych was presented as a two-sided work in which Bernard Parmegiani’s Hell and François Bayle’s Purgatory responded to and extended each other, guided by Michel Hermon’s voice through the listener’s imagination. Because Paradise, a mixed piece co-composed and performed live, had never been released on record before. Indeed, fifty years after its premiere, Paradise is unveiled to our ears, thereby rounding off the very first complete edition of the Divine Comedy.

An archaeological sound source from the famous label Unseen World, which continues to send obscure electronic music. An early collection of early recordings by Carl Stone, an American composer who studied under Morton Subotnick and is a professor at Chukyo University, and a master of sampling and cut-up collage.
This work consists of 6 unreleased songs from the 70's and 80's and 7 songs of "Shing Kee" excerpted from the work "Mom's" released by New Albion in 1992. "Shing Kee" (1986), which is a sampling of Schubert's "Bodhi" sung by Akiko Yano, has a great sense of ambience for sustained sounds, and Seth Graham and Kara-Lis Coverdale are also surprised by the timeless three-dimensional electronic sound. , "Shibucho" (1984) and "Dong Il Jang" (1982) are also ambitious works in which cut-ups were attempted using sampling methods. Our Rashad Becker is in charge of mastering. An avant-garde electronics masterpiece that unfortunately demonstrated a strange soundscape like melting modern architecture. Even if I listen to it now, it doesn't feel old at all. Recommended for a wide range of people from DJ material to new age to ambient drone lovers. A gatefold specification & booklet & DL code limited track is also included.

U.X.O. is unexploded ordnance is landmines is cluster bombs. Yanqui is post-colonial imperialism is international police state is multinational corporate oligarchy. Godspeed You! Black Emperor is complicit is guilty is resisting. The new album is just raw, angry, dissonant, epic instrumental rock. Recorded by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago and mixed by Howard Bilerman and Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the original Hotel2Tango in Montreal.

The latest release from Blank Forms, a curatorial platform and non-profit organization dedicated to the presentation and preservation of experimental performance, and one of the most respected reissues of works by Catherine Christer Hennix and Masayuki Takayanagi, is a collection of archival recordings from the 1970s. Catherine Christer Hennix is a Swedish musician, philosopher, poet, mathematician and visual artist who has already released three works from her archives in the 70's. She pursued the minimalist path after meeting La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, and later collaborated with Henry Flynt. Recorded in February 1974, this is the third in an ongoing series of recordings of unreleased music by Catherine Christer Hennix, a female composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist known for her collaborations with Henry Flynt. Recorded in February 1974, Catherine Christer Hennix (recitation, percussion, electronics) and Hans Isgren (bowed gong) performed "Unbegrenzt" (German for "unlimited") from Aus den Sieben Tagen, a collection of fifteen texts written in Paris in May 1968, one of Stockhausen's most famous works. (German for "unlimited") from Aus den Sieben Tagen, a collection of 15 texts written in Paris in May 1968. A sophisticated, minimalist take on Stockhausen's compositional technique of "moment forming"!

A thrilling collaboration between major experimental maestros from slightly different sound worlds. Don Cherry, in the middle of a very free-ranging phase, plays his majestic trumpet over the shimmering organ tones of Terry Riley, while Karl Berger adds vibraphone. Heady stuff. Reissue of a rare concert recording from 1975, in an edition of just 500. On Modern Silence.

A Day of the Sun is a spiritual jazz masterpiece full of poetry by two geniuses of the Japanese musical scene. Masahiko Togashi and Isao Suzuki, pivotal figures in jazz with a unique talent and sensitivity that transcends conventional jazz forms and styles. In addition to being skilled performers they demonstrate extraordinary compositional talent that transcends their sensibilities and wisdom of more conventional jazz. They are together a wonderful combination of techniques, but without the eyes and ears of these two artists, the mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation that only certain artists are able to recreate together, would never have given rise to this music. The album is based on Togashi's drums/percussion and Suzuki's bass, with occasional changes to cello and piano/synths, and is skillfully performed by just the two of them, creating a unique worldview; a performance that far exceeds expectations. The mystical melodies of the East, earthy percussion, and the sensibilities of the two intertwine to create a unique groove, resulting in a universal masterpiece that will never fade away and connects with today's sound makers and DJs. Top sound quality from original master tapes. Includes 4-sided insert with a very interesting interview at the time with the two musicians regarding the record.

Re-release of Blue Chemise's debut LP, which originally appeared in 2017 as a limited private release of 105 copies. We are proud to make this much sought-after record available again on both physical and digital, with remastered sound by Christophe Albertijn and updated artwork, all true to the original intentions of, and in close collaboration with, the artist. ‘Influence On Dusk’ forms an idiosyncratic cycle of fourteen mysterious, sometimes uncanny electroacoustic compositions, a personal and subdued eruption of 'melancholy of the healthy kind’, suddenly here and suddenly gone… This is the second release on B.A.A.D.M. by the Australian artist Mark Gomes, following his equally atmospheric but more romantic 'Flower Studies' from 2021.

A limited edition 2024 repress of 'Descending Moonshine Dervishes' by Terry Riley. Originally recorded live in Berlin in 1975 and released by Kuckuck in 1982, Beacon Sound reissued the album in 2016 to widespread acclaim.

Unbound by place or genre, mercurial, experimental pop duo Soft as Snow find freedom to intuitively reflect the disarray of human connection with their intricate, shape-shifting pop production. With each successive release, the duo evolves, unfurling into their own poetic sound, now fully realized on their intimate, third full-length, Metal.wet. The oft-present trappings of male-female duos are eschewed here as the Berlin-based Oda Starheim and Øystein Monsen contribute equally across a canvas of analogue synthesizers, samplers, live drums, and processed guitars. At once a part of and yet apart from the zeitgeist, their forward-thinking modernity stretches the limits of expectations across Metal.wet's ten insouciant tracks. Fans of Tirzah, Hype Williams, and even Angelo Badalamenti will find much to love in this haunting work peppered with ASMR moments and rough sampling wrapped in high production –– twinkling glasses and sirens in the distance, rhythms and voices up front. The result is synth-driven, noisy, and dripping with laidback, confident sensuality. Although Starheim's voice begins the album in a whisper, it quickly becomes apparent that the group has jettisoned their previous tendency to bury and distort her vocals. Nested in a bed of thorny electronics and broken rhythms, her multifaceted vocals might bring to mind Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead or Hope Sandoval fronting Massive Attack. London MC Brother May (Mica Levi, CURL) makes an appearance on the driving and ethereal “Whip,” while Øystein’s own voice appears for the first time in a state of languid background haze. Soft as Snow create and record across Europe. Defiantly averse to genre, the pair become vessels for their “electronic music pushed to the brink of collapse” (The Wire), previously released by Infinite Machine and Houndstooth. Informed by backgrounds in film and performance art, “there’s a surrealism that comes with watching Soft as Snow in the flesh,” (Vice) as seen at L.E.V. and Lunchmeat Festivals. Collaborations with visual artist Guynoid, designer AGF Hydra, and sculptor Camilla Steinum add depth to the corporeality of their “strange, mesmerising and utterly unforgettable” electronic experimentations. (DJ Mag).

This tape contains a recording of a live of NPLGNN recorded atHuman Razzmatazz (Barcelona) on March 2023.Everything you hear it comes from two Korg Electribe EMX1 +Pioneer DJM900 NXS + Traktor. To describe the sound it makes sense to bring back what was the press release of “Sigma/Tau” the first record of NPLGNN released in 2014 on Where To Now? (RIP): “NPLGNN creates a less pampered style of body music, stripping away the usual signifiers such as melodies and bass lines to create something more utilitarian, brutal and pure. This is the pre-babel language of dance music - it's cadences are rhythmic and its meaning is comprehensible to all on an innate, primal level.” Ten years later this tape makes those words still remarkable to describe the sound of the Neapolitan head.Among a bunch of unreleased sounds you can go through all the NPLGNN recent records for LavaLava, Youth, Hundebiss and it own lathe cuts series dubbed here and there with vocal cuts intersections. Coming off like the rude son of early ‘00s breakcore heroes, quoting the Manchester Boomy heads, NPLGNN delivers a 45 mins mutant soundsystem recording. It's acid dancehall punk, amorphed ragga riddimz, or whatever you want to call it. 100% dancefloor melting. Ask Aphex Twin for a couple of IDs ; Soundsystem mutant NPLGNN shells blistering and bone rattling yardcore styles in his recording made at Barcelona’s Human Razzmatazz in 2023 A decade since they emerged via Where to Now? and the NZO-related OKNO label, with subsequent turns for everyone for Reel Torque to Youth and their rhythms rinsed by likes of AFX, plus killer programming of the MBE mix series and Forever Now with Dave saved; NPLGNN has surely held his ground in ruggedest mutant dancehall terrain. ‘Live At Human Razzmatazz’ catches them in full flow rattling thru stacks of custom soundsystem dubplates that roughly resemble the millennium era surge of scuzzy breakcore by Ambush don DJ Scud or DJ /rupture as much as his contemporary, Ossia, or even Rat Heart’s rudest; harnessing coarse machine rhythms of spark-sputter hi-hats and nervy snares with depth charge subs and ragga chat, crudely dubbed into the red and maximized for steppers pressure and battling stacks.

Acoustic Rhythm & Texture Sequencer Available as C60 Limited Edition of 50 mirror dubs- (same on both sides) + Inserts written and produced by S.Gordon 2024. additional percussion by Islay Spalding - TRK 7, recorded at SFS studios 2024 Synths & Radial - SDGordon. The Radial instrument was designed to explore various material's acoustic characteristics in ways that could only be achieved through mechanical and electronic control. It creates sporadic dense percussive sequences & sharp reciprocating sweeps or can focus in on tiny acute angles to produce deep shaking drones among a host of other planned and unplanned acoustic sounds. Radial uses 5 voltage controlled motors and interchangeable textured cylinders captured via contact microphones positioned within the chassis. The cylinders can be synchronised or independent & the blades are interchangeable allowing the flex of certain materials to skew and augment the movements and sounds and sequences. Playing the Radial instrument is a direct visceral experience. Its sequences sound unlike anything else i have used and the simple design by no means limits the scope of its rhythmical output. After feeling out the controls you arrive somewhere in-between the rubbery juddering fuzz or clockwork blasts of percussion and can step back allowing the physicality of the instrument itself to dictate how things proceed. Minor adjustments can have a butterfly effect on the entire tone inmate rewardingly unpredictable but controllable way. On certain tracks there’s some synth work in a move away from the potential “instrument study” vibe of the release and Islay Spaldings blistering scrap metal percussion on Track 7 was incredible to watch.. Additional thanks to Stephan P Richter “SPR” for the advice and encouragement through the whole build.

Japan’s KAKUHAN deliver a futureshock jolt on their incred debut album ‘Metal Zone’ - deploying drum machine syncopations around bowed cello and angular electronics that sound like the square root of Photek’s ‘Ni Ten Ichi Ryu’, Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’, Beatrice Dillon’s ‘Workaround’ and Mica Levi’s ‘Under The Skin’ - or something like T++ and Errorsmith dissecting Laurie Anderson’s ‘Home Of The Brave’, her electric violin panned and bounced relentlessly around the stereo field. It really is that good - basically all the things we love, in multiples. While "Metal Zone" might be their debut, KAKUHAN are hardly newcomers. Koshiri Hino is a member of goat (jp), releasing a run of records under the YPY moniker, and heading up the NAKID label, while Yuki Nakagawa is a well known cellist and sound artist who has worked with Eli Keszler and Joe Talia among many others. Together, they make a sound that’s considerably more than the sum of its parts - as obsessively tweaked, cybernetic and jerky as Mark Fell, frothing with the same gritted, algorithmic intensity as Autechre's total-darkness sets, stripped to the bone and carved with ritualistic symbolism. The album’s most startling and unexpected moments come when KAKUHAN follow their 'nuum inclinations, snatching grimey bursts and staccato South London shakes and matching them with dissonant excoriations that shuttle the mind into a completely different place. It's not a collision we expected, but it's one that's completely melted us - welding obsessive rhythmic futurism onto bloodcurdling horror orchestration - the most appropriate soundtrack we can imagine for the contemporary era. By the album's final track, we're presented with South Asian microtonal blasts that suddenly make sense of the rest of the album; Nakagawa erupts into Arthur Russell-style clouded psychedelia, while wavering flutes guide bio-mechanical ritual musick formations. It’s the perfect closer for the album’s series of taut, viscous, and relentless gelling of meter and tone in sinuous tangles, weaving across East/West perceptions in spirals toward a distinctive conception of rhythmic euphoria with a sense of precision, dexterity and purpose that nods to classical court or chamber music as much as contemporary experimental digressions. Easily one of the most startling and deadly debuts we’ve heard in 2022; the louder we’ve played it, the more it’s realigned our perception of where experimental and club modes converge - meditative, jerky, flailing genius from the outerzone. Basically - an AOTY level Tip.

Elvin Brandhi and Nadah El Shazly refuse to turn away from the horror. The intercontinental duo’s Pollution Opera album is an uncompromising futurist depiction of our disfigured, dystopian, and dying reality. Facing hell in full defiance, the experimental noise album catapults itself through a volatile compound of breathless shouts, screams, and screeches, in collision with vocal samples, environmental recordings, and acousmatic sounds. Ten tracks cover the spectrum of electroacoustic fragments and vocalizations, treacherously suspended between the roar of engines and synth distortion, of evocative intonations or guttural retching. First conceived in 2020, Pollution Opera bubbled up organically from a first tandem motorbike ride through El Shazly’s hometown of Cairo. Singing and screaming through the second-loudest city in the world, Brandhi and Shazly found the extreme noise pollution served as catharsis from the suffocating smog that surrounded them. They then took these sonic specimens into studios across years and countries—from the initial recording and sessions in Egypt to Uganda, where their so-called “cacophony carbon orchestra” would carry into simultaneous but separate residencies at Nyege Nyege in Kampala. There, Brandhi and Shazly reprised the role of the motorbike as their “stage,” in a city where motorbikes are the main mode of public transport. They then developed a live A/V performance from video material captured by Arno Mery, collected from their travels, and reworked by Egyptian artist Omar El Sadek during Banlieues Bleues Festival 2023 in France. The result is what the artists themselves describe as “an uncompromising world-spew, a shameless alloy of love and hate.” Haptic knocking, barking dogs, and human growls trample El Shazly’s famously evocative Egyptian singing style on “CRÎi Me A River.” Breathless vocal cut-ups and samples are bulldozed by arrhythmic acoustic percussion on “Danse Le Flou.” There are moments of respite within all the chaos, however, whether in the heavily pitched, Auto-Tuned opening of “Pollute Bold” or the wonderfully melodic closer of “Crisp Heart”—its derelict rhythmic thrust giving a listener something to dance about. Both artists lend their unique positioning and idiosyncrasies to Pollution Opera, whether it’s in artist, vocalist, and musician Brandhi’s avant-garde noise music pedigree as both a solo artist and member of father-daughter duo Yeah You, or singer, composer, and producer El Shazly’s hybrid catalogue combining electronic music with contemporary classical. Together, in asking the question of what a postmodern opera might sound like, the duo offer their existential answer in the true spirit of the often playful and ironic philosophical position by offering no answer at all.

The founders of Cukor Bila Smert’ (Ukrainian: Цукор – Біла Смерть, English: Sugar – White Death) band were Svitlana Okhrimenko (a.k.a. Svitlana Nianio), Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi, and Tamila Mazur, who studied at the Reinhold Glier Kyiv Academy of Music in 1984-1988. In the summer of 1988, they got acquainted with Eugene Taran, a young guitarist and artist. He joined the band and also became the ideologist of Sugar – White Death. Moreover, Eugene coined the name for the band: the irony towards the Yellow Press. The musicians gathered at Kohanovs’kyi’s house, where they spent their free time not only playing music but also listening to and discussing new records and thinking about the conception of their new project. For two years, the band recorded a few home-made albums, such as “Rhododendrons Coral Aspides” in 1988 (which is considered lost), where Kostyantyn Dovzhenko took part as a guitarist and sound engineer. He also replaced Taran during the recording session because Eugene was passing an exam at that time. The band also recorded another album – “Lilies and Amaralises,” in 1989, which is also considered lost. Eugene remembers that the band made a lot of recordings but did not pay so much attention to them. Sugar – White Death played live occasionally but spent more time creating their own sound, which was named by Oleksii Dekhtyar (a founder of “Ivanov Down”) as a “sugar calypso sound.” At that time, the music was mostly created by Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi, and the lyrics were written by Svitlana Okhrimenko and Eugene Taran. In February 1990, a quartet came to the Scientists House Studio in Kyiv, where they had one studio session only, recorded by Valerii Papchenko. Musicians played live for about one take. This session was represented on the “Mannered Music” compilation by several blocks – “Venus with Long Neck,” “The New Sissies,” and “Rhododendrons Coral Aspides,” which was shortened to “Rhododendrons” on the cassette (two songs from which – “Summer Will Not Come” and “The Great Hen-Yuan’ River,” dedicated to Grigorii Khoroshylov, the sinologist from Kyiv). The compilation cover design was created by Eugene Taran. Later, this tape got to Vlodek Nakonechnyj, the founder of Koka Records, a young Polish label, who released “Mannered Music” on cassettes and made efforts to invite Sugar – White Death to play several gigs in Poland. In November 1990, Sugar – White Death played their last gig as a quartet in Kharkiv. They were invited by Sergii Myasoyedov, who curated the art association “Nova Scena” (The New Scene). The band played selected tracks from the albums “The New Sissies” and “The Shellfishes in Gold Wrappers” (the last one is also considered lost). Due to Sergii Myasoyedov's efforts, the performance was documented: he saved a lot of photos and fragments of soundboard recordings on reel-to-reel tape. Later, Oleksandr Kohanovs’kyi and Tamila Mazur left Sugar – White Death: Oleksandr founded his own project Pan Kifared, and Tamila became a bass player of Shake Hi-Fi (whose co-founder was Eugene Taran). Sugar became a duo of Svitlana and Eugene. They started to focus on their next work: “Antinoy Is Leaving” in late 1990. In 1992, they were also invited by Sergii Myasoyedov for a studio session in Kharkiv, where due to the efforts of Oleksandr Vakulenko, Sugar recorded the new album called “All Secrets Of A Poem”. Some tracks from the work (“Dead Ceremony,” “Vienna Is Sleeping,” and “Untitled”) were released on their next and last album, “Selo” (“The Village”). The rest compositions were published as a part of the compilation for the first time. In the autumn of 1992, the musicians went to Poland, where Vlodek Nakonech- nyj, who wanted Sugar to come to a “real” studio, organized their last recording session. Although the journey’s beginning was unsuccessful (Eugene’s guitar was taken away by a customs officer when crossing the border), the musicians worked fast during the session at the Arek Waś studio at Marki on an 8-track reel-to-reel machine. Boleslav Blazhchyk took part as a cellist, playing the parts created by Svitlana. The album was completed in three days – the musicians spent two days recording and one-day mixing, mostly done by Eugene Taran. In 1993, this work was released as “Selo” (“The Village”) album on cassette tapes by Koka Records (remastered by Tadeusz Sudnik). Later, Sugar – White Death was disbanded.

blueblue is the latest full-length from multi-instrumentalist and all-around vibe wizard, Sam Gendel. The record, out October 14 via Leaving Records, is a concise, tightly wound song suite whose 14 tracks each correspond to a pattern within sashiko, a traditional style of Japanese embroidery. This conceit remains playfully ambiguous — to what extent, if at all, is Kagome (籠目, woven bamboo) meant to evoke the pattern of the same name, for example? But there is an intuitive sense, throughout blueblue, that Gendel has, in this instance, narrowed his focus. To say that blueblue feels richly textural might be a little on-the-nose, thematically, but alas…it does. There is an intimacy, a humility, and a strength at play here that typifies the work of a master craftsman. Only an artist could make it sound so effortless. A Los Angeleno by way of Central CA, Gendel is by now an institution. Across a dizzying slate of solo releases and collaborations, he has amassed a reputation for not only virtuosic musicianship (primarily as a saxophonist, though the songs that would become blueblue were all initially composed on guitar), but also for his mercurial and prolific output — a corpus of work, which, while obviously indebted to jazz and hip hop (and the farther flung, experimental corners of both) is, in a word, unpindownable. In this regard, Leaving Records, with its cri-de-cœur of “All Genre,” is a natural home for Gendel. The bulk of blueblue was recorded in isolation in a makeshift studio built in a cabin floating atop a tributary of Oregon’s Columbia River. Having sketched out a set of guitar melodies, Gendel recorded the album in five-or-so weeks, during which time he became well-acquainted with the river’s tidal rise and fall. This organic rhythm, which daily lifted the house to meet the horizon, later setting it down gently upon the riverbed, permeates the record. There are pops and groans and artifacts, and, in Tate-jima (縦縞, vertical stripes)—one of blueblue’s more plaintive tracks—even the faint lapping of water. Equally essential to the feel of blueblue is Craig Weinrib’s kit work. Gendel and Weinrib collaborated long-distance during Gendel’s time in Oregon, with Gendel sending Weinrib half-finished songs, and giving him carte-blanche to record percussion. The end result is a relaxed, confident exchange between two clearly simpatico musicians, particularly evident in Weinrib’s gorgeously attentive brush technique. blueblue is a conceptually sound, mesmerizing, evocative, and sonically idiosyncratic LP. In keeping with its name, blueblue functions as Gendel’s color study, conveying, through repetition and deviation, his devotion to a certain mood — unnamable, but certainly noirish, nostalgic, quasi-psychedelic, and existing in some permanent twilight. Real ones know, and for those who don’t yet, blueblue is an accessible and intoxicating entry-point into Gendel's ever-expanding catalog.