MUSIC

Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, including a multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over five hundred page book. Recorded in summer of 1994 at S.H.P studios (frontman Graham Lambkin’s parents’ home), the group’s sophomore record Put the Music In Its Coffin is a more sinister, saturnine affair than their debut City Lights. Coffin was many listeners’ introduction to the Shadow Ring, who had hitherto self-released their music, courting a steady stable of international fans through the magazine and mail-order catalog Forced Exposure. For their follow-up, the duo reached out to the ascending Philadelphia label Siltbreeze, whose eclectic roster of sneering, low-fidelity rock and noise connected disparate subterranean scenes from rust-belt America to the English Midlands, Dunedin, and beyond. As luck would have it, Siltbreeze proprietor Tom Lax was already a fan of the band’s first record and arranged to release both a 7” and their “difficult second album.” The connection proved to run deeper than vinyl—within six months, Lax would pick up the pair from the airport for their spring 1995 US tour. This episode marked not only their first trip to the States but their first live performances at all, formally introducing the Shadow Ring to the American underground and solidifying the allure of the Folkestone pair. From the get-go, the record has a menacing, vile ambience. Its opening track “Horse-Meat Cakes,” inspired by an anecdote by pulp author Philip K. Dick about how he and his wife subsisted off low-grade pet food when he first arrived in San Francisco, sets the tone lyrically and sonically. Subsequent tracks are filled with Rabelaisian body horror and sinewy, haptic diction. “I try to pass out vital organs, convinced that they are waste,” intones Lambkin in “Heart, Liver & Lungs,” before a chorus of detuned guitars kicks in, nearly drowning out the speaker’s account of consuming chevaline intestines. Later songs similarly detail vernacular cooking (“Caribbean Porridge,” about a cornmeal hangover cure), bodily processes (“Nocturnal Middle Rumbles,” about nighttime defecation), and creaturely conflict (“Crystal Tears” and “Spin The Animal Dial”). The album’s makeshift percussion and teenaged rawness resembles the verve of City Lights, while its screeching strings and gnarly distorted vocals give it a sparse, miasmic atmosphere that look towards the uncompromising, otherworldly experimentation of the band’s Hold Onto I.D. (1996) and Lighthouse (1997), making this one of the Shadow Ring’s most distilled musical statements.

A forward thinking collaboration between electronic music pioneer Jon Appleton and trumpet great Don Cherry, that explores the relationship between the humanity and the manufactured robotic future. Using the techniques associated with Musique Concrete the ensuing improvisations create a unique entry into the great trumpeter's discography. It was an in vogue attempt to render the music of tomorrow, and today sounds more like the soundtrack to a truly great sci-fi movie Reissued in a fascimile of the original gatefold sleeve, and remastered from new 24/96 transfers, this is part of Ace's HiQ LP series

This selection of obscure eighties and nineties experimental and industrial music was taken from even more obscure cassette releases on labels such as Nihilistic Recordings, Harsh Reality, Cauchy Productions, Cafardage, Illusion Production, Watergate Tapes, Afterbirth Records, IEP and Out Of Nowhere. Crazy selection of cult noise and experimental from the 80s and the '90s. Edition of 300 copies. Featuring Kinexus Stringenus, Bernard C., Winter, Lyke Wake, Varoshi Fame, Toshiyuki Hiraoka, Mortification To The Flesh, Louis Pasteur, Det Wiehl, Nox, and A Violated Body.

Ritmiche Italiane transports the listeners through an anomaly in the fabric of musical space-time, connecting the distant past with the modern era and the plains of a lost continent with the cities of the Italian peninsula. The artists featured in the compilation strongly believed in the absence of barriers and conventions between genres, fully able to effortlessly put together West-African influences, World music, Jazz and crime movie soundtracks to achieve a boundless, meditative and hypnotic kind of music that still feels relevant today.

Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon. The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.

Black Truffle announces its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody. Traveller Song/Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller's gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work. Like many of Miller's compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. "Traveller Song" (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre-recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London's Plus-Minus Ensemble. "Thanksong" begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven's late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the "holy song of thanks" the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet "as slowly and quietly as possible." Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.

While she was still a member of Nasmak, one of the leading bands of the Dutch ultra-movement, Truus de Groot started Plus Instruments in 1978 with herself as the sole member. When the project evolved, she found a wide range of rotating collaborators like Michel Waisvisz, Lee Ranaldo and James Sclavunos. Plus Instruments was about freedom and the live performances were largely improvised. The sound minimal but captivating. The music always came from within, but De Groot was also triggered by bands like Red Crayola, Suicide, DAF, Wire, Per Ubu, Devo and the No Wave scene in NY. She was always experimenting with primitive multi-track recording and whatever crappy gadgets she could find. Always looking for a gritty, dirty sound and bizarre overtones. At a young age she travelled to New York and began to immerse herself in the nightlife of the city that never sleeps. Here she found true creativity, passion and expression. The club scene was alive but highly competitive, so this fearless Dutch girl would just knock on promoter’s doors to get gigs booked at places like CBGB’s, Peppermint Lounge, Underground and the Pyramid. De Groot eventually settled in the United States and never stopped experimenting with sound. In recent years she reinvented Plus Instruments and led the group into new territory. The recordings for this LP were made by De Groot at home and the music is experimental, minimal, industrial but also playful, sounding nothing like most of the later material. 14 tracks in total of which 8 are taken from the elusive and impossible to find self-released debut cassette as ‘Truss Plus Instruments’ which was sparingly distributed by Nigel Jacklin and his legendary Alien Brains fanzine in 1980. The remaining 6 tracks are from the same period (1979-1980) and were carefully selected from the vast archive of De Groot. We are glad to present this anthology that serves as a long overdue testimony to the formative phase of a unique female pioneer of electronic music. The recordings for this LP were made by De Groot at home and the music is experimental, minimal, industrial but also playful, sounding nothing like most of the later material. 14 tracks in total of which 8 are taken from the elusive and impossible to find self-released debut cassette as ‘Truss Plus Instruments’ which was sparingly distributed by Nigel Jacklin and his legendary Alien Brains fanzine in 1980. The remaining 6 tracks are from the same period (1979-1980) and were carefully selected from the vast archive of De Groot. We are glad to present this anthology that serves as a long overdue testimony to the formative phase of a unique female pioneer of electronic music.

Dai Sayozoku (大サヨ族) is Sayozoku Septet avant-garde, free music, improvisational ensemble. live at Namba BEARS ,Osaka on 2021 August19th. イエレキルピネン Jere Kilpinen ..Shakuhachi, Drums 向井千惠 Chie Mukai ...Voice, Recorder, Percussions 佐藤史 Fumi Sato ...El-guitar 沼 タカハシシカロ Shicaro Takahashi ...Recorder, Toys, Percussions, Voice 　 染谷藍 Ai Sometani ... Recorder, Toys, Percussions サ 天神さやか Sayaka Tenjin ...Gopichand, Recorder, Percussion, Voice ヨ 宮岡永樹 Yonju Miyaoka ....Recorder, El-guitar, Hichiriki 族 Recorded by Yonju Miyaoka Mastered by Masami Baba Special thanks to Satoru Higashiseto (Forever Records), Naomi Kurimoto (Bears)

Relapse presents a remastered reissue from the undisputed king of Japanese noise-MERZBOW. Pulse Demon is one of the most celebrated releases of Masami Akita's storied 4 decade long career. Composed entirely by live noise concrete and the use of a fuzz box, Pulse Demon eschews all overdubs and studio trickery, laying MERZBOW bare. What follows in these recordings is the pure essence of unfettered noise. The rawness in Pulse Demon is palpable; praised as "genuinely extreme, downright torturous sounds that are strangely compelling in their shredding intensity." (A.V. Club) upon its original release in 1996.

Remastered by James Plotkin (ISIS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, FULL OF HELL, and more,) the Pulse Demon reissue features "Extract 1", a never-before released track that was recorded as part of the original Pulse Demon sessions.

The undisputed king of Japanese noise MERZBOW returns, as the landmark album Venereology celebrates 25 tinnitus-inducing years with its inaugural vinyl pressing! Remastered by James Plotkin (ISIS, ELECTRIC WIZARD, FULL OF HELL, and more) and featuring reworked art, this is the most extreme recording of harsh electronic sickness you will ever own! Venereology features a second LP with more than 20 minutes of unreleased bonus material.

"The Septuagint is the name in which the first Greek translation of the Old Testament is identified, datable to the 2nd century A.D. According to Aristea's letter to Philocrates, in which the genesis of this version is mentioned, 72 sages from Alexandria commissioned by Ptolemy II were responsible for the translation. Within the text, the term "prodigy" (τέρας, tearas) is never found alone but forms an inseparable binomial with "sign" (σημεῖον, semèion), thus forming the expression σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα (semèia kài tearata). Recorded in September 2019, Semèia Kài Térata is the first work by Ensemble Ektòs, a quartet of composers and performers based in Copenhagen. The work describes an austere yet imaginative path combining stillness with the use of silences. A ritual reiteration recalling the most extreme experiences of certain minimalism and microscopic attention to timbral stratification. Rigorous and evocative, with radical attention to the beauty of the whole sound set, Semèia Kài Térata well manages to identify that sense of mysterious inevitability evoked in the title, as well as the dark wonder that miracles often bear." Marco Baldini

Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisational group comprised of sound artists Kazuo Imai (a student of Japanese free jazz linchpin Masayuki Takayanagi and occasional performer in both Taj Mahal Travellers and Takayanagi’s New Direction Unit), Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii, and Masami Tada (also in group GAP). Formed in 1997, the four members of Marginal Consort attended Takehisa Kosugi’s music classes at the Bigakkō art school in Tokyo in the mid-1970s, where they teamed up with other students to record East Bionic Symphonia’s debut album “Recorded Live” in 1976. Since its inception, each year Marginal Consort holds one (or more when invited) annual concert at spacious venues in which they perform continuously, without interruption, for over three hours. Their extended set explores forms of sound and ways of playing that never coalesce into music but create a group dynamic of ebb and flow, exploration and fluidity. Their performance, which is completely free from abstract, political or sometimes mystical ideas about improvisation, neither contraposes the immediacy of action or anonymousness of sound against music nor dramatises the dialectics between the individual and the whole. Even the general idea of the words “collective”, “improvisation” and “project” do not really tell the way they work. Marginal Consort performed at South London Gallery; St. Elisabeth Kirche, Berlin; Asahi Square, Tokyo; Kotoku Morishita Bunka Center, Tokyo; Mikawadai Junior High School, Tokyo; Super Deluxe, Tokyo; Tokyo Arts and Space, Tokyo; Macao, Milan; Instal 08, The Arches, Glasgow; St. John at Hackney Church (33-33), London; The Substation, Melbourne; Carriageworks, Sydney; Third Edition Festival, Stockholm; nyMusikk, Bergen; Borderline Festival, Athens; On the Boards, Seattle; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; PuSh Festival, Vancouver; Zebulon, Los Angeles; Pioneer Works, New York. ​​​​​​​“A form of sound that does not turn into music and a group that does not produce harmony; individual concepts and group fluidity; individuals who are at once independent entities and components of the whole; coexisting time frames and intersecting rhythms – these are among the images of group improvisation that have occupied my mind since the ’70s. These images neither presuppose specific elements nor regulate the entire process. There always remain, however, the fundamental premises that sounds are separately produced phenomena and that their accumulation forms the whole”. – Kazuo Imai

For its second release, Elmir once again puts 1980s pop-raï in the spotlight with the identical reissue of Cheb Kader's masterpiece: El Awama. Originally self-produced on cassette in 1986, this album was then released on vinyl by Michel Lévy, who was then Cheb Mami’s manager and producer. Back then, the album was not the hit it was expected to be, because a little too avant-garde for the time. But more than 35 years later, fans and collectors consider the few remaining copies as priceless. The raï of Cheb Kader is a subtle compromise between the melodies of Oranese suburbs, the electricity of Casablancan guitars and the roaring layers of reggae. The listener can only be fascinated by this "Awama" (witch) who burns in his heart and to whom he declares his love; they can only be carried away by his hypnotic Reggae-Raï. This record is a rejuvenating find that makes you fall in love with the raï of the beginnings all over again.

Celebrating its one hundredth release, Black Truffle is honoured to present a major archival discovery: a stunning document of the only performance by the trio of Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Jim O’Rourke. Across a two-night programme organised by David Weinstein at legendary New York experimental venue Tonic in January 2001, Conrad, Dreyblatt and O’Rourke presented individual projects before performing a collaborative set each night, the first with members of Dreyblatt’s ensemble and the second the trio heard here. As Dreyblatt points out in the wonderfully informative and reflective liner notes written for this release, this was a collaboration across generations, reflecting the profound impact of Conrad’s pioneering minimalism on Dreyblatt and O’Rourke. Both Dreyblatt and O’Rourke came to this collaboration armed with a deep appreciation of Conrad’s music and the just intonation principles at its core, Dreyblatt having first encountered the incredible power of Conrad’s precisely tuned violin chords during his tenure as an archivist for La Monte Young in 1975, while O’Rourke had performed with Conrad in various settings since the mid-1990s (as well as admiring, reissuing, and performing Dreyblatt's music). The flyer for the concert promised ‘massive, ecstatic, pulsating overtones’, and the trio certainly delivered. From the moment this keening stream of bowed strings begins, it is clear, as Dreyblatt writes, that we are in ‘Tony’s sonic universe’, as massively amplified, slowly shifting combinations of precisely chosen pitches fill the room with complex beating patterns and ghostly difference tones. For more than twenty-five minutes, the music operates at a level of intensity comparable to classic recordings such as Conrad’s Four Violins, until the texture thins out slightly in the performance’s final quarter, allowing for the listener’s first recognition of the individual voices that make up this enormous, overwhelming harmonic edifice. The constant stream of bowed tones is broken by a beautifully rich pizzicato from Conrad on monochord, the sliding low tones and metallic shimmer of the other strings taking the set's final moments on an unexpected detour into spacious pastoral psychedelia. Though produced by three individuals known for their own distinctive bodies of the work, this is egoless music, the perfect expression of Conrad's desire 'to move away from composing to listening', to 'working "on" the sound from "inside" the sound'. Historically important and overwhelming in sonic impact, this release also serves as a moving tribute to Tony Conrad from two musicians profoundly marked by the example set by his art and life.

Matière Mémoire presents the MMXX Series. In anticipation of the year 2020, Matière Mémoire asked 20 great artists to create an original 20 minutes piece and an artwork. Throughout this year, each quarter will see the release of 5 new vinyls, available individually or as a bundle. Each record is limited at 500 copies and comes as a crystal clear vinyl featuring an original track of 20 minutes on one side, and a laser engraved artwork on the other. Each contained in a transparent sleeve printed with the MMXX logo, and each coming with a print of the artist artwork.

Recital is honored to present a new double album of rarely heard Robert Ashley compositions performed by baritone singer Thomas Buckner.x In the 1960s, Robert Ashley pioneered the American avant garde with the ONCE Group and festivals, before irrefutably changing the face of American opera later in the 20th century. Buckner, in addition to running the fabulous 1750 Arch record label in the 1970s and 80s, is a noted baritone who has collaborated for decades with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and the late Noah Creshevsky, amongst countless others. The title of the album, Spontaneous Musical Invention, refers to Ashley’s method of instructing the singer to do what he called “spontaneous musical invention based on the declamation of the text.” A vocal practice that Thomas Buckner perfected over the 33 years that he collaborated with Ashley. First performing in Ashley’s 1984 opera Atalanta (Acts of God), Buckner continued on as an integral performer in the ensemble until Ashley’s death in 2014. The album is composed of two halves, the first is a new rendering of Ashley’s second opera Atalanta (Acts of God). Robert Ashley wrote about ten hours of music for the opera Atalanta, divided into three acts: ‘Max', for the surrealist artist Max Ernst; ‘Willard', for the composer’s uncle, Willard Reynolds, a great story teller; and ‘Bud', for Bud Powell, the great jazz pianist and composer. One is invited to construct a version using any material from these ten hours. Over the years they worked together, Thomas Buckner commissioned three reworkings of arias from Atalanta that he could perform in concert: the ‘Odalisque' aria from Max, 'The Mystery of the River' from ‘Willard', & 'The Producer Speaks' from ‘Bud'. So this first section of the album is one of many possible versions of Atalanta, albeit in strikingly different versions from the originals. The second section of the album is dubbed Occasional Pieces, and holds two unpublished Ashley works. ‘When Famous Last Words Fail You' & 'World War III Just the Highlights' are not from any Ashley opera. However, each is highly dramatic and theatrical. They were written as standalone pieces for Thomas Buckner. Buckner’s distinct vocal cadence projects the sharp wit and wry storytelling of Ashley’s librettos. A portion of the record was recorded live at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, at an intimate memorial concert held for Robert Ashley in 2014. Spontaneous Musical Invention, in essence, functions as a tribute to both exceptional artists, and to their decades of collaboration.

Recital is honored to present a new double album of rarely heard Robert Ashley compositions performed by baritone singer Thomas Buckner.x In the 1960s, Robert Ashley pioneered the American avant garde with the ONCE Group and festivals, before irrefutably changing the face of American opera later in the 20th century. Buckner, in addition to running the fabulous 1750 Arch record label in the 1970s and 80s, is a noted baritone who has collaborated for decades with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and the late Noah Creshevsky, amongst countless others. The title of the album, Spontaneous Musical Invention, refers to Ashley’s method of instructing the singer to do what he called “spontaneous musical invention based on the declamation of the text.” A vocal practice that Thomas Buckner perfected over the 33 years that he collaborated with Ashley. First performing in Ashley’s 1984 opera Atalanta (Acts of God), Buckner continued on as an integral performer in the ensemble until Ashley’s death in 2014. The album is composed of two halves, the first is a new rendering of Ashley’s second opera Atalanta (Acts of God). Robert Ashley wrote about ten hours of music for the opera Atalanta, divided into three acts: ‘Max', for the surrealist artist Max Ernst; ‘Willard', for the composer’s uncle, Willard Reynolds, a great story teller; and ‘Bud', for Bud Powell, the great jazz pianist and composer. One is invited to construct a version using any material from these ten hours. Over the years they worked together, Thomas Buckner commissioned three reworkings of arias from Atalanta that he could perform in concert: the ‘Odalisque' aria from Max, 'The Mystery of the River' from ‘Willard', & 'The Producer Speaks' from ‘Bud'. So this first section of the album is one of many possible versions of Atalanta, albeit in strikingly different versions from the originals. The second section of the album is dubbed Occasional Pieces, and holds two unpublished Ashley works. ‘When Famous Last Words Fail You' & 'World War III Just the Highlights' are not from any Ashley opera. However, each is highly dramatic and theatrical. They were written as standalone pieces for Thomas Buckner. Buckner’s distinct vocal cadence projects the sharp wit and wry storytelling of Ashley’s librettos. A portion of the record was recorded live at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY, at an intimate memorial concert held for Robert Ashley in 2014. Spontaneous Musical Invention, in essence, functions as a tribute to both exceptional artists, and to their decades of collaboration.

Recital presents a book and CD homage to the New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood (b. 1939). The unique concept for this album was conceived by artists Noel Meek (New Zealand) and Mattin (Spain), who each share a deep admiration for Lockwood. A longform Skype conversation between the three artists was arranged at the end of 2020. They discussed politics, aesthetics, and Annea’s compositional practice among other things. Noel Meek & Mattin had from the beginning decided that the conversation itself would be used as a score for this album, Homage to Annea Lockwood. “My work is my way of exploring the world” says Lockwood. Each piece on the album reflects her prismatic compositional practice: sound maps, scores that unfold temporally or environmentally, synchronous with nature, and pianos transplanted to exotic locations (often engulfed in flames). Meek & Mattin maintain a playfulness and curiosity of Annea’s sound world; from electronic verbal fizz, a recording of lighting a laptop on fire, hydrophonic diaries from underneath an old oak tree in New Zealand, to a polyphonic choral piece which concludes the album. Homage to Annea Lockwood is housed in a hand-numbered paperback book, which carries a full transcription of the conversation, in this case… the score, along with lush photographic documentation, and ending with a lovely afterword written by Annea Lockwood. Recital is especially happy to be working with Annea again years later, after publishing her 2014 album Ground of Being (R7, CD). What a joy it is to celebrate Annea, and how appropriate it be done through the ritual of music.

Composed and performed by Valentina Magaletti Recorded by Thomas Poli at Impersonal Studio - February 5th and 6th 2021 (Rennes - FR) Mixed and edited by Leon Marks and Valentina Magaletti at Abbey Road (London - UK) Mastered by Brice Kartmann (Tours - FR) Published by Mute Song.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce The Leisure Principle, a new solo LP from London-based bassist and sound artist Otto Willberg. A key player in the London underground, Willberg is often heard on acoustic and electric bass in free improv settings and bands with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort. But nothing Willberg has committed to wax so far prepares a listener for The Leisure Principle, six unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass. On the opening ‘Reap What Thou Sow’, a single-note bass harmonica loop pulses along underneath a roaming bass solo, the side-chained envelope filtering (where the dynamic behaviour of the bass determines the filter for both bass and harmonica) fusing the two instruments into a single stream of burbling shifts in resonance. After several minutes of patient exploration of this low-end landscape, the music suddenly opens up in widescreen with the entrance of Sam Andreae’s graceful melodica chords, spreading out across the stereo field. From this epic opener, each of the remaining pieces goes on to explore a slightly different aspect of the terrain. On ‘Shadow Came into the Eyes as Earth Turned on its Axis’, a similarly buoyant harmonica bass line provides the foundation, but this time playing a soulful descending riff, its almost R&B feel abstracted and half-obscured by the filtering. On ‘Mollusk’, echoed bass arpeggios skitter between elegiac chords somewhat reminiscent of the opening of John Abercrombie’s ‘Timeless’, before settling into a hypnotic groove. On the record’s second half, Willberg pushes further into the possibilities of his idiosyncratic instrumentation. On ‘Wetter’, bass and harmonica come together into a monstrous, growling jaw harp; on ‘Had we but world enough and more time’, the subtly shifting pulsating patterns start to feel almost like a kind of evaporated, drum-less dub techno until an eruption of wheezing bass harmonica gives the piece a comically folkish turn. Willberg’s melodically inventive and virtuosic bass performance calls to mind any number of fusion touchstones, from Jaco Pastorius to Mark Egan’s singing tone in the early Pat Metheny Group—even Anthony Jackson’s work with Steve Kahn. But with its radically reduced instrumentation, The Leisure Principle is also an exercise in minimalism, and the absence of percussion gives even its funkiest moments a strangely abstracted quality. At times, its uncanny blend of the abstruse and the immediate suggests the fried pop experiments of David Rosenboom or the skewed but deeply musical DIY of 80s underground groups like De Fabriek. Both easy on the ear and profoundly strange, The Leisure Principle proudly takes its place among the most eccentric offerings on the Black Truffle menu.

Part fantastical historic sonic biopic, part anthropologic journey into the deep roots of Belgium’s monstrous cosmic rock sound, this wholly individualistic concept album combines the lead members of the mighty COS (Daniel Schell and Pascale Son) with studio genius Alain Pierre (Ô Sidarta/Des Morts) and celebrated Dutch progressive rock singer Dick Annegarn, for what many consider to be both the overlooked hiding place of Belgium’s deepest psychedelic moment and European prog’s lost map to the ‘Franco-Flemish Boom’. Emerging from the wider musical family that counted Marc Moulin, Placebo and Marc Hollander amongst its creative kin, Daniel Schell’s most profound conceptual project ambitiously combines the tale of the heroic historical figure of Count Egmont, while simultaneously tracing the evolution of the ud, or oud, (‘the grandfather of the guitar’) in this multifarious hallucinogenic epic. Featuring key members of other collectable groups such as drummer Felix Simtaine from Solis Lacus and bass player Jean-Louis Baudoin from the mythical Classroom (COS predecessor), this best-kept secret vinyl release also harbours the voices of Dirk Bogaert (of Belgian hard rockers Waterloo) as well as Catalan singer Ilona Chale (Marc Hollander/Aksak Maboul) before her later tenure as the COS front woman. Initially released in 1978 via Zeuhl school distributors Free Bird alongside French pressings of Don Cherry, Jacques Thollot and CAN, it is plain to understand the niche nature of this maligned “lost COS” LP as it finally blooms from between the cracked branches of European jazz-rock-synth-psych-prog-pop history… and beyond!

Demdike Stare reunite with guitarist Jon Collin for a new album of concréte dreamweaving performed on tape, pedals and a homemade Swedish nyckelharpa - a type of keyed fiddle. More psychedelic than either of the trio's previous records, 'Minerals' drops the blues to dive headfirst into the smudged folk wellspring, touching on the pastoral ambience of Andrew Chalk via Loren Connors’ immersive drift and Tongue Depressor's subterranean drone expeditions. With the trio all hailing from the Pennine moorlands just above the manc sprawl, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare’s shared musical expression understandably reflects a parallax purview that follows leylines between lusher nooks of the inner city and windswept, barren landscapes. Never ones to play it straight, the Swedish Nyckelharpa - a sort of hybrid viola/hurdy gurdy - is deployed deep into a mix of oblique soundscaping, seeping into a swirl of field recordings, screwed spoken word and phosphorescent drones pinging with tape delay. Split into two distinct sides, the album opens with a scrape of wood and metal that introduces us to the nyckelharpa. Scratching its surface and strings, Collin reveals its peculiar tonality, while Demdike cut through its dissonant textures. Like ancient campfire rituals recorded to decaying 1/4" tape, the music on ‘Minerals’ feels as if it's in dialog with the past, shuttled into the present by abstract processes. By the side’s third act, resonant gongs billow around pitched wails that eventually collapse into silence. The second side is more spirited, opening with a thumbed kalimba cut through reverberant strings that recall Arthur Russell's iconic echo-drenched recordings. Through elaborate concréte techniques, Collin's ancient fiddle dissolves into a ferric gloop that’s slowly pulled apart like toffee, taking it to a place where you can no longer really tell what you’re listening to or how it was made. In fact, unlike pretty much everything we’ve heard from Demdike before, the material here feels mechanical rather than electronic, making for one of the most impactful, unusual releases in the vast sprawl of their catalogue thus far.

“Blue” Gene Tyranny’s debut album Out of the Blue — newly remastered with original cover art — which was among the first to releases on Lovely Music in 1978 alongside Robert Ashley Private Parts, David Behrman On the Other Ocean, Jon Hassell Vernal Equinox, Meredith Monk Key, and Peter Gordon Star Jaws. Disarmingly direct, funky, and profound, Out of the Blue is an equanimous, wide-open exploration of Tyranny’s musical world: equal parts song cycle, tone poem, keyboard fantasia, and avant-garde pop record. Recorded and mixed by Tyranny at Mills College, this album emerged following the legendary 1976 Trust in Rock concerts, where Tyranny and collaborator Peter Gordon presented New Music for rock band. “Next Time Might Be Your Time” and “For David K.” were co-produced by Gordon, and also feature Mills’s Maggi Payne on flute as well as Oingo Boingo’s Steve Bartek on guitar; “Leading a Double Life” is sung by Lynne Morrow and Jane Sharp, accompanied by Tyranny on piano and polyMoog synthesizer; “A Letter from Home” is a half-hour electro-acoustic narrative meditation on “the Doppler effect as a metaphor for the development of consciousness.” Out of the Blue lives up to its name: it is both surprising and familiar, revealing for the first time something that was always already there.

The trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi return to Black Truffle with their 10th release, recorded live in Tokyo in February, 2017. While many of the trio’s recent works have seen them focussing primarily on their core guitar/bass/drums power trio format, on Each side has a depth of 5 seconds A polka dot pattern in horizontal array A flickering that moves vertically these three multi-instrumentalists strike into new territory, utilising an almost entirely electronic set-up, with Haino on electronics, drum machine and suona (a Chinese double-reed horn), O’Rourke on synth, and Ambarchi on pedal steel and electronics. 

Dedicated to the memory of legendary Tokyo underground figure Hideo Ikeezumi, founder of PSF Records and the Modern Music shop and a long-term collaborator with Haino, the LP, (recorded the night Ikeezumi passed away), begins in a sombre, meditative space of rippling, burbling electronics and distant jets of white noise. Though much of the ‘Introduction’ that occupies the record’s first side is spacious and at times almost hushed, the performance is full of unexpected twists and turns, momentary events, and fleeting impressions. The trio conjures up a free-flowing surge of sound in which individual contributions are often difficult to distinguish, calling up echoes of vintage live-electronic sizzle like It’s Viaje or the cavernous expanse of David Behrman’s Wave Train. 

The LP’s second side opens in a similarly reflective realm, before Haino’s suona enters, taking the music in a more austere, hieratic direction, as the reed’s piercing tones are accompanied by O’Rourke’s uneasy, sliding synth figures and Ambarchi’s shimmering Leslie cabinet tones. On the side’s second piece, Haino’s signature hand-played drum machine takes centre-stage, at first sounding out massive, isolated strikes, before eventually building to a tumbling, Milford Graves-esque wall of thunder. As O’Rourke’s synth squelches and stutters and Ambarchi’s heavily effected pedal steel somehow begins to sound like a kind of hellish blues harmonica, this passage offers up one of the most electrifying and bizarre moments in the trio’s catalogue to date. 

Containing some of the most abstract music the trio have waxed since their very first collaboration over a decade ago (Tima Formosa, BT04), this new missive from underground experimental music’s preeminent power trio shows them restless and risk-taking, clearly enjoying their remarkable improvisational chemistry while also continuing to push themselves into new directions. 

Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with artwork and design by Lasse Marhaug and an inner sleeve with live pics by Ujin Matsuo.