MUSIC

Mary Jane Leach is a composer focused on the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. She has played an instrumental role in NYC's pioneering Downtown scene alongside Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Peter Zummo, Philip Corner, and Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as devoting years to the preservation and reappraisal of Julius Eastman's work since his death in 1990, compiling Unjust Malaise (2005) and editing the book Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music (2015). Woodwind Multiples features four pieces for multiples of the same instrument: four bass flutes, nine oboes, nine clarinets, and seven bassoons. Each piece works closely with the unique sound of each instrument, combining pitches that create other, sometimes unexpected, tones, primarily combination and interference tones, as well as rhythmic patterns. What you hear is what happens naturally -- there is no processing or manipulation. 8B4 (1985/2022), played by Manuel Zurria, is for four bass flutes. It is a revision of 8x4, which was written in 1985 for the DownTown Ensemble and was only performed once, due to its unusual instrumentation: alto flute, English horn (originally bass oboe), clarinet, and voice. Xantippe's Rebuke (1993) was written for Libby Van Cleve, for eight taped oboes and one live, solo oboe. The eight taped parts are equal and dependent, while the solo part is meant to be a solo with the tape as accompaniment. The piece works with the unique sound of the oboe, starting with unison pitches that create the richest sound, building the piece from there. Pitches and rhythmic patterns that occur naturally are notated and then played later, which in turn create other pitches and rhythmic patterns. Charybdis (2020), played by Sam Dunscombe, is for solo clarinet and eight taped clarinets. It combines a somewhat obscured reference to Weep You No More, a John Dowland piece, which combines with the sound phenomena created from the melody and supporting chords of the Dowland. Feu de Joie (1992) was written for bassoonist Shannon Peet and is an homage to the bassoon and its wonderful sound. It is for seven parts -- six taped and one "live." The taped bassoons combine to create a bed of sound that exploits the unique qualities of the bassoon, creating combination and interference tones, starting off with unison pitches, creating a rich sound that builds from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases occur naturally, and are then notated later on in the piece, which in turn creates other notes and phrases. Engineered by Manuel Zurria, Bryce Goggin, and Sam Dunscombe, mastered by Rashad Becker.

“Unlike much of my work recently, it is not a ‘concept album’ and is without any collaborators. I just wanted to focus on my core sound really but without any of the genre tropes that may have been present the last time I made a solo album. I had hoped that the album could work on multiple levels. In that respect, it is intended as a psychedelic album as much as anything. You can listen to it in a more meditative way without getting distracted by the details. I suppose that is why the frequency spectrum is more similar to my earlier work, but there is a lot going on under the surface and it can be quite demanding if you are paying attention as there are odd time signatures and dissonant elements in there too. Light and shadow I guess. I am hoping that it may be the kind of album that people play at the end of an excessive night, like after a club being back home with some friends, sleep deprivation and whatever else kicking in together with the music helping to launch your mind into space! I am also hoping though that it will be interesting enough to stand up in the cold sober light of day as ‘just good engaging music’. It is quite foggy and scuzzy in feel and I am using a lot of filtering and reverb to get this. I think the vocal samples are an attempt to offset this, to bring a bit of light to the murkiness. I also wanted the vocal aspects to reflect influences or things I could closely identify with for the most part, so there are a few hints at British folk songs in amongst the music, albeit rather ghostly and not directly recognisable. But anyway, all this is much more a question of feel, rather than a signifier in this respect. I like the haunting, melancholic aspects of these songs I suppose. I am putting it out on my own label, Woe To The Septic Heart! I just felt it was time for that. It is a bad time for pressing records but conversely, Bandcamp has proved to be useful in showing you do not need to have the backing of an established label. I think I can do something independently and hope that it will still reach the public.” — Shackleton

Black Truffle announce the release of Le Piano Englouti (The Sunken Piano), the first collaboration between Brunhild Ferrari and Jim O’Rourke, offering up two side-long realisations of Ferrari’s tape compositions recorded in concert at Tokyo’s SuperDeluxe in 2014, revised and mixed by O’Rourke in 2019. The title piece weaves an immersive web of electronics, pre-recorded piano, and field-recorded sounds, including the raging Aegean sea, the tranquil atmospherics of a Japanese island, and the roar of a pachinko parlour. Far from a slice of audio vérité, these geographically distant sites intermingle in an unreal space where they often become indistinguishable. Shadowed by electronics and reverberant snatches of piano, the field recordings rise up and recede like ocean waves, creating a constantly shifting texture that is nonetheless warmly inviting. Chirping birds are confused with their electronic doubles; snatches of footsteps and voices are engulfed by ambience of unclear origin. Increasingly present throughout the piece, the piano rises up one last time before being swallowed up for good by the pachinko parlour. Tranquilles Impatiences (Quiet Impatiences) takes as its source material the electronic sounds produced by Luc Ferrari for his 1977 Exercises d’Improvisation, seven tapes intended to be heard alongside instrumental improvisation. Brunhild Ferrari’s piece layers Luc Ferrari’s sounds into a dense new work that emphasises the insistently pulsing rhythms of the source material. In this realisation with O’Rourke, the piece becomes a monumental sound-object, a slowly shifting mass of skittering electronic tones, shimmering reverb, and growling bass from which field-recorded events occasionally arise. At times, the placement of these fragments of real life in a pulsing, insistent musical landscape calls up Luc Ferrari’s classic Petit Symphonie; at other points, the swarming electronics bring to mind O’Rourke's Steamroom work or even the vast expanses of Roland Kayn.

SONG 08

For more than a decade, Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have been coming together in various combinations - duos, trios, and larger ensembles - slowly becoming one of the most noteworthy, understated collaborations in the landscape of experimental sound. In 2015, the trio recorded a brilliant LP entitled “Delivery Health” ‎for Silent Water, laying the groundwork for an enduring project that adopted that album’s title as its name, debuting properly in 2017 with the stunner “Hard Off”. Over the years since, we’ve encountered Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto playing together in Bonjintan, their project with Akira Sakata, and in further collaborations with Eiko Ishibashi and Joe Talia, not to mention O'Rourke and Di Domenico’s prolific work as a duo. A bit more than five years on from “Hard Off”, Delivery Health finally return with “SuperDeluxe!”, a stunning new double LP on Holidays Records. Comprising roughly four years of early activity from the trio that rests at a fascinating juncture of electroacoustic composition, free improvisation, and noise, it’s easily among the most engaging and intoxicating efforts we’ve yet to hear from one of the most dynamic bands working today. Even by the standards of experimental music - international and cross-cultural in its make-up - the collaborations of Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have always seemed to defy the challenges of geography, coming together with surprising regularity between Europe and Japan. The three represent a remarkable joining of distinct artistic talent and creative vision, the like of which rarely occur. Like its predecessors, “SuperDeluxe!” rides a beautiful line between striking singular creative ambition and accomplishment, and simply feeling like a free-wheeling conversation between friends who have relinquished their egos and presumptions out of a deep sense of mutual respect. Ironically, as forward thinking as it feels, the album is a kind of retrospective rewind, comprising five live documents recorded, of course, at the legendary SuperDeluxe! in Tokyo between 2012 and 2016 across its four sides. Taking us deep into the very beginnings and previously unheard activities (at least for those who were there on these nights) of Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto, the trio weaves a knotted tapestry unfurling as sheets of sound, that sidesteps signifiers and the expectations that one might have of each of these artists on their own. Ranging from brisling ambient passages drawing on latent melodic flirtations, heavy jams on guitar, drums, electronics, and keyboards, and outright, full throttle noise, each moment represents a visionary excursion into the depths of experimental, improvised sound, revealing a shocking sense of real-time dexterity from each player, as much as the collective whole experiments in improvised sound. Absolutely thrilling from start to finish - not that we’d expect anything less from three masters of their art forms - “SuperDeluxe!” is an immersion into the joys of music making, collaboration, and ultimately listening. It’s an album that traverses a startling and unexpected range, new worlds emerge and evolve from within the fog - rippling textural ambiance, harsh interlocking atonality, subtle and delicate interplay - without losing a moment of coherency. Issued by Holidays as a beautiful produced double LP, this is contemporary improvised music at its absolute best.

sound of the drizzle hitting the skylight, summer bonfire at la caillère, chimes in le bono’s cinerary garden, pat patrol’s phone beep beep, a jogger, a tap, patrick’s bees, the oven before cooking the pizza, a regional express train, a hst, a belt sander…

Another lost musical treasure unearthed by the Everland-YU imprint! Seven years have passed since this material landed in our hands and we counted the days since we could give it the justice it deserves. Fully licensed and remastered from original master tapes, this chronologically arranged LP is a collection of previously unreleased radio recordings all of which have one thing in common: the unmistakably original musical ideas and vocal performances of Marin Škrgatić (1950-2014). Marin was a Croatian prog-rock pioneer, who as a result of a series of unfortunate circumstances, did not receive much recognition in the dawn of the Yugoslavian prog-rock era. In their prime, his groups were an active and well-acknowledged underground phenomenon, filling stadiums and music halls all over Yugoslavia. This material represents some of the first attempts to record complex progressive rock arrangements in Yugoslavia – sourcing heavily from local folk music, jazz, and classical influences. Interestingly enough, most of the songs presented here were dismissed as being too progressive at that time - by the largest Yugoslavian record company Jugoton. This gatefold LP includes thus far unpublished photos and detailed liner notes about the evolution of Marin’s groups resulting from interviews with former band members with whom we’ve uncovered some of the mysteries of Yugo-prog-rock’s annals.

Síntomas de techno : Ondas electrónicas subterráneas desde Perú (1985​-​1991) Symptoms of techno: Underground electronic waves from Peru (1985-1991) This compilation presents for the first time various underground techno groups and projects that emerged in Lima in the mid-1980s. Projects such as Disidentes, Paisaje Electrónico, T de Cobre, Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí, Cuerpos del Deseo, Círculo Interior, Ensamble and Reacción were responsible for introducing styles such as techno-pop, EBM, industrial and minimal synth in Peru. Coinciding with the explosion of punk in Lima and the appearance of the so-called Rock Subterráneo [underground rock], these techno groups shared the same DIY spirit, performing in many punk concerts and even creating their own fanzines, and, above all, opening a space for other types of sonic experiences. Meine Katze Und Ich, El Sueño de Alí and Paisaje Electrónico were also the parallel projects of the members of Narcosis, the iconic punk band, one of the founders of Rock Subterráneo. Disidentes and T de Cobre brought extreme sounds to local electronics: viscerality, mechanical rhythms and the use of Casiotones or synthesizers, which resulted in an atypical sound that, in turn, portrayed a critical time in Peru, and which has made them an unavoidable reference for any historical account of techno and industrial music in Latin America. The title of this compilation is inspired by the name of a concert held in Lima in 1991, considered to be the first techno concert to have taken place in Peru. Even though not all intervening groups were doing techno at that time, they did share the fact that they all used keyboards. Four of them, however (Cuerpos del Deseo, Ensamble, Círculo Interior and Reacción), were in fact affiliated to an electronic sound (techno-pop, EBM). The concert was a sign of the diversification of musical styles in Lima's alternative scene, and in particular of the emergence of a micro scene, for which the concert Síntomas de techno [Symptoms of Techno] represented an important step towards the development of a local culture of electronic music during the 90s. Many of the recordings included here are extracted from demos with limited circulation, practically impossible to find. Other tracks are unpublished pieces which come from the private archives of the artists themselves. The compilation has been made by Luis Alvarado and is part of the Essential Sounds Collection, with which Buh Records is making available a vast archive of avant-garde Peruvian music. This compilation is published in vinyl format in a limited edition of 300 copies, with extensive information and visual documentation. Mastered by Alberto Cendra. Art by René Sánchez. Cover photography by Rogelio Martell. This project was awarded with funding from the Economic Stimuli program of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.

Dewa Alit, Bali’s master of contemporary Gamelan composition, returns to Black Truffle with Chasing the Phantom, presenting two recent works played by the composer’s Gamelan Salukat, a large ensemble that performs on instruments specially built to his designs, using a unique tuning system that combines notes from two traditional Balinese Gamelan scales. Alit explains that the ensemble’s name suggests “a place to fuse creative ideas to generate new, innovative works” and both compositions demonstrate the composer’s ability to wring stunning new possibilities from variations on the traditional Gamelan ensemble. While using familiar elements of Balinese Gamelan music, such as unison scalar melodies and stop-start dynamics, Alit’s music is overflowing with harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral inventions, the latter often facilitated by unorthodox playing techniques. “Ngejuk Memedi”, an English translation of which gives the LP its title, results from Alit’s reflection on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Balinese culture, particularly in the way that belief in the phantoms or spirits known as ‘memedi’ are shared through social media using digital technologies. Embodying this uncanny co-existence, the opening passages of the piece are at once immediately recognisable in their use of the metallophones of the Gamelan ensemble and strikingly reminiscent of electronics in their timbre and movement. At points, what we hear seems to have been fragmented with digital tools, or even to originate in some incessantly glitching DX7. Short melodic figures loop irregularly, with the ensemble splintering into polyrhythmic shards before unexpectedly recombining for intricate unison passages. After several minutes of this manically tinkling metallic sound world, the metallophones are joined by drums for a meditative passage of lower dynamics, as the uniformly high pitch range explored in the opening sections gradually opens up to include resonant low gong hits. Recovering some of the manic energy of the opening, but now enhanced with the full range of percussion, the piece weaves through a series of tempo changes to a stunning passage of rapid-fire melodies and ringing chords that sweep across the metallophones, their unorthodox tuning creating complex clouds of wavering harmonies. “Likad”, written during Covid-19 lockdowns, channels anxiety and uncertainty into musical form, resulting in a piece that, even by Alit’s standards, is stunning in its complexity and the virtuosity it demands of Gamelan Salukat. Its opening section is perhaps most remarkable for its mastery of texture, with rapid transitions between dry, muted strikes and metallic shimmers calling to mind the use of filters in electronic music. At points, the complex irregular repetitions of short melodic patterns, where the music seems to get stuck or be suddenly interrupted by a skip, recall the mad sampler works of Alvin Curran or the skittering surface of prime period Oval more than anything familiar from acoustic percussion music. Moving through a dizzying series of twists and turns, the piece ends with a majestic sequence of chords possessing an almost hieratic power. A major statement from a radical contemporary composer, one cannot help but agree with Alit when he sees Chasing the Phantom as an answer to the “question of the future of Gamelan music”.

First ever reissue of an influential and much sought-after norsk drone masterpiece originally self-released in 1996 in an edition of just 108 copies, tipped by all the people you ought to be taking tips from, most notably Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi. Deeper than deep, it's a durational masterwork that connects ley lines between Ramleh, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Deathprod, When and Antena, taking unexpected turns and sounding better than ever on this new edition, mastered by Lasse Marhaug and finally available for wider public consumption. Selected by Jim O’Rourke for his Tone Glow list of 25 albums that “never got their due”, Org was founded in the early 90’s by Espen Jensen and Kjetil D Brandsdal who would later go on to variously record as Elektrodiesel, Noxagt and Ultralyd in the swirl of the highly active Norwegian underground. “Org" was the only album the pair recorded as a duo, pressed in a meagre edition of just over 100 copies which disappeared almost as soon as they were made, lodged in the memory of the select few who have managed to hear it in the years since. Made up of three long tracks, the near 20-minute ‘001’ opens the album with an extended organ zone-out matched with scraping factory machinery saturated into a dense cloud of harmonic fuzz. There's something transcendental about the sound that intersects with microtonal Alice Coltrane (particularly the unfairly maligned organ-only edition of "Turiya Sings"), as well as Pauline Oliveros and Ramleh. It’s music that pulls you in subconsciously; before you know it, you're fixating on the uncomfortable grind of metal on metal, buried mechanical rhythms and liturgical organ vamps that wind between industrial cacophony and sacred ritual music. For its last few seconds, we go into a full death metal tearout that fades out before it takes full flight, a glorious wtf. ‘002’ connects between minimalist drone styles and shoegaze, distorting fuzzed organ into pliable, dreamlike warbles that end up sounding like Kevin Shields' ‘Loveless’-era glides, or even Sunn O))) at their most devotional. Never losing the numbing overdriven mettle, its a piece that sounds spiritually entwined with Matthew Bower's Skullflower - a minimalist re-reading of high-contrast guitar music that takes all the psychoacoustic power and none of the annoying posturing. For ‘003’, subaqueous organ is joined by synth and drum machine, sounding like the inspirational spark for Religious Knives' screwed 'n chopped cosmic psychedelia. The choice of sounds links it to Antena's foundational electro samba recordings too, but the overwhelming drone - a constant on all three compositions - connects the music to minimalist spirituals that have simmered beneath the DIY/avant garde for decades. ‘Org’ sits heavy on the nerves with overproof levels of mulched amp worship and ungodly, palms-down organ chords and wheezing, bezonked lines of melodic thought. 25 years out of sight and marinading in the archives, with the benefit of hindsight we can better understand the role these sounds played in the development of music in the contemporary sphere. It’s an important piece of the puzzle, one that makes valuable connections that, over time, have looked progressively more faint.

オランダ・アムステルダムにて、1979年に結成された伝説的アナーコ・パンク・バンド、The Exが1982年に録音した7インチ4枚組のサード・アルバム『Dignity Of Labour』が、〈Superior Viaduct〉より、史上初のLP仕様で待望のヴァイナル・リイシュー。フロントマンであるG.W.Sokは、「我々の考える即興のインダストリアル・パンク・ノイズ」とも述べた、The Exの40年以上の歴史の中で最も衝撃的かつ不朽の名作です！24" x 18"サイズのポスターと24ページに及ぶブックレットが付属。

Recorded in Lary 7’s legendary apartment studio Plastikville over nearly a decade, Larynx is the first full-length retrospective of the East Village icon’s hybrid music and engineering practice. The record mobilizes 7’s array of homemade instruments, which he ‘frankensteins’ together from offcast and outmoded bits of technology. An ode to the long-lost Canal Street junk shops he frequented in the 1970s and ’80s, Larynx brings together numerous thrift finds and sonic inventions used in his theatrical performances and installations. To play “le concretotron,” a board covered with twenty years worth of unspooled magnetic tape, 7 runs a tape head topographically over the flattened strips, picking up snippets of their recorded contents. The spring tree, another of his contraptions, is simply turned on and left to its own devices; feedback loops cause the amplified coils to resound in space and slowly increase in volume. The track “Mechano-Bleep” features a pattern generator constructed from a telephone sequence switch, 150 oscillators from an electric accordion, a sewing machine motor, and an early computing system called a “select-a-board.” Meanwhile, antiquated electronic instruments abound—7 employs the Ondioline, a precursor to the synthesizer; a Philicorda organ; and a homemade Trautonium, among other gadgets. Following Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Raymond Scott of Manhattan Research, 7 adopts a painstaking editing process that is entirely analogue. With lacquer cut directly from reel-to-reel and mastered by Paul Gold, Larynx is, in 7’s words, “the sound of the twentieth century going haywire.”

Guitar and bass duo Gong Gong Gong (工工工) charge out from Beijing’s underground scene with a distinct vision and uncompromising sense of purpose. The duo taps into a wavelength uniting musical cultures, drawing on inspirations ranging from Bo Diddley to Cantonese opera, West African desert blues, drone, and the structures of electronic music. Gong Gong Gong’s debut LP, Phantom Rhythm, is their mission statement: between the locomotive chug and banjo twang of Tom Ng’s guitar and Joshua Frank’s thumping bass harmonics, an aura of ghostly snare hits and timpani overtones emerges. Over Frank’s enigmatic melodies, Ng sings in Cantonese, piecing together abstract tales of absurdity and doubt, desire and lust. Formed in 2015, the band’s earliest shows were in Beijing underpass tunnels and DIY spaces. Ng and Frank are both outsiders who call the city their home: Ng, who was born in Hong Kong, defiantly sings in his native tongue, while Frank, originally from Montreal, has lived in Beijing on and off since childhood. (He is the English translator of Ng’s lyrics, adding another layer to the duo’s close collaboration). A compact, almost telepathic unit, Gong Gong Gong use their minimalistic tools and idiosyncratic playing style to challenge the notions of rock n’ roll, stripping the form down to its bare essentials: rhythm, melody, and grit

Soave Records dusts off in limited edition the psych/synth album by Doctor Steven T. Birchall recorded in 1973 in Indiana, U.S.A. with the following equipment: VCS-3 (The Putney) by EMS, Ampex MM-1000 16 trk, dbx noise reduction, SpectrasSonics Console, Studer A80 Recorder, Eventide Clockworks, Instant Phaser, Cooper Time Cube, EMT Reverb. The absolutely penetrating high tones of the opening track 'Music Of The Spheres' announce us that we are on board, passengers in the hands, or perhaps better to say in the mind, of Birchall who aims to go beyond those "normal" boundaries that we call reality. It is a new world of music that still amazes after half a century. A higher stage of truth projected into the cosmos. Cover art by Earl. E. Hokens..

In 1981, encouraged by Jac Berrocal, Axolotl (Etienne Brunet and Jacques Oger on saxophones and clarinet, Marc Dufourd on electric guitar) recorded an album of French-style free music as iconoclastic as it was unsettling: free improvisation, jazz, no wave, contemporary, punk… a dance of labels which leaves plenty of place for the direct expression of a monstrous trio of regenerated agitators! The axolotl is a species of salamander native to Mexico, living in a state of larva and having the capacity to regenerate damaged organs. This brief introduction doesn’t tell us if the axolotl sings. But, for the one that concerns us here: yes indeed. In Paris, at the end of the 1970s, Etienne Brunet and Marc Dufourd would improvise regularly, inspired by some other saxophone-guitar duos: Claude Bernard-Raymond Boni firstly, then Evan Parker-Derek Bailey. When Jacques Oger (a saxophonist whom Brunet had met at a workshop given by Steve Lacy at the Châteauvallon festival in 1977) joined the duo Brunet-Dufourd, Axolotl was born. Iconoclastic, the trio was bound to please Jac Berrocal, and he proposed to record their first album on the label ‘D’avantage’. In spring 1981 three days were just enough for Oger (tenor and barytone saxophones), Brunet (alto saxophone, bass clarinet and ‘things’) and Dufourd (electric guitar) to complete Axolotl, the first album by a group which would record … two. If there was a collective of iconoclasts, the trio would be there with some relatives: Alterations, Fred Frith, John Zorn, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet… and then because we mention a collective, Axolotl steps (considerably) beyond the domain of free improvisation to lean towards jazz (“Illusion”, “Paris, froissé”), No Wave (“Ombre pilée”, “Trottoirs défunts”), contemporary (“Oreiller”, “D’autres seuls”), and even what we could call … acid fun (“Dehors”). Above all, Axolotl wanted to really get to grips with sound via an expression as direct as it was liberating, as can be heard on “Ozone, flocon, torsion”, producing a noise that, even today pierces the brain. All we can hope is that now, thanks to this wonderful reissue, listeners will be able, like the axolotl, of regeneration.

noise matrix unleashes material from the same sessions as noisembryo and counterpart 'hole' and selected recordings from the time period. 
 originally released as a bonus disc on the definitive ’noisembryo' 2xcd edition noise matrix absolutely can’t be missed for fans of this period of noise deity merzbow. When people ask where to start with merzbow or the entire 90’s noise movement in japan - this is an answer! 
 masami akita’s surrealism of the past stands prominently relevant to this day combining the expansive textures of electronics, effects, aluminum soaked winds of the tokyo metropolis and metals. presented in deluxe wide spine metallic reflective ‘mother of pearl’ jacket. digital download code included.

INFO is pleased to announce Voices Fill My Head, Kristin Oppenheim’s second double LP release on the label documenting her early sound works from the 1990s. Recorded between 1993 and 1999 in her Brooklyn studio, Voices Fill My Head features eight pieces composed solely of the artist’s voice. For listeners who were fond of Night Run, Oppenheim’s first release on the label, this record reveals yet another important chapter in Oppenheim’s oeuvre.

Since the early 1990s, Oppenheim has produced vocal compositions for gallery and museum settings, making compositions not as music, but as repetitious sound installations designed to drift back and forth across wide stereo fields. Oppenheim’s installations saturate space, touching on fragmented memories that blur the lines between reality and abstraction.

Kristin Oppenheim is an American artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for installation art based in performance, film, and sound. She is represented by greengrassi in London and 303 Gallery in New York.

9ms is the duo of Simon Popp and Florian König. On their wide ranging debut album ‚Pleats‘ the tech-savvy drummers offer grooves from the dubbier realms of World Music and Krautrock - some meditative and light, some thick as wall and steady as a clock. The album was recorded live in a large wooden hall in the Bavarian Alps with only three microphones. Using various infrared and magnetic field sensors, Popp and König were able to translate their movements into control voltage, which they then used to trigger and tweak synthesizers and a myriad of effects. A way for two humans to become one with their mystic machinery.

Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s debut full-length collaboration deploys an engrossing suite of noirish nocturnes based around Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera’s muzzy vocal loops and Ben Vince’s accompaniments on saxophone, synth and piano. Born out of wonder, innocence and creative discovery, it’s the sound of two exploratory collaborators swimming into each other's ideas, from Terry Riley-esque transcendence to late-night sax swirls shrouding Rossi’s distinctive voice in dimly lit psychedelic smoke. London’s abundant waterways and parks provide an oneiric muse for Cucina Povera and Ben Vince’s resounding debut full-length collaboration, an engrossing suite of weightless sax, synth and disklavier-bedded soundscapes that land somewhere between Grouper and Terry Riley. As a newcomer to London, Rossi was caught up in a sort of wondrous reverie - a feeling that seeps through every movement of thia almost hour long album. Vince's plasmic echoes and Rossi's aerial delivery form a poetic union, twisting and painting each sound in pearlescent shades, finding a musical confluence between Rossi's words - fluid, dreamy, hazy ideations - and Vince's shadowy renditions. Rossi's folk roots shine through like cracks of dawn sunlight on 'Sumu Puistossa' ("fog in the park"), reverberating over organ and dream-zone sax; her words tip into muted surrealism thanks to the controlled chaos of Vince's bleak treatments. His grasp of jazz is transfixing: bending sax motifs like ghostly memories of music from another timeline, smudging them into the soundfield. It’s most effective on the title tracx, where sickly, dissonant notes flicker like an almost-extinguished candle alongside motorised furniture music courtesy of a Disklavier. From the Terry Riley-esque transcendence of '∞' to the sacred incantation of long-form closer 'Pikku Muurahaiskeko' ("little anthill"), the pair expose a new layer of creativity with each turn, gradually zooming out from discreet, vulnerable beauty to encompass a gently orchestrated chaos of sustained, sublime tension. Stunning.

“The Concert” is the first discographic collaboration between percussionist Alexandre Babel and visual artist Latifa Echakhch. The record is intimately linked to the eponymous exhibition presented at the Swiss Pavilion during the 59th Venice Art Bienniale. For her exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion, Latifa Echakhch created an orchestrated and enveloping experience, a rhythmic and spatial proposal that allowed the visitor a complete perception of time and of his own body. What is the origin of rhythm? How does the body perceive time? How does the mind rearrange it? Can we substitute one perception for another, the visual for the sound? Can fragments of memory go back in time and recreate a different story? Her proposal entered a dialogue with the building around it, designed by Bruno Giacometti. The artist revisited its architectural programme as well as the prototypical progression of these exhibition spaces, originally defined for the display of classical art. She appropriated the entirety of the spaces, simultaneously exploring continuity, movement and sequence. Their relationship to light, and the different sounds that emerge from them. Yet the exhibition was entirely silent and the musical composition “The Concert” functions as its sound rendering, by following a similar path. This one-sided vinyl is a complementary and inseparable partner piece to the exhibition and its eponymous catalogue, the latter having been published in April 2022 by Sternberg Press. The music features field recordings made at the Swiss Pavilion itself as well as pre-recorded percussion sounds and significant contributions by the Berlin-based musicians Jon Heilbronn, Rebecca Lenton, Theo Nabicht, Nikolaus Schlierf. The record, available only after the closing of Latifa Echakhch’s exhibition offers a concluding phase to the project. The resonance of its sensory score. It reactivates the experience of the physical journey of the installation, without imposing itself as a transcription or an illustration. Through texture, temporality and its totality, the record stands as a resonance of the rhythms that have structured the pavilion, the harmonies that have composed it and the sounds that have inhabited it.

Foam On A Wave is proud to present the first international issue of this chameleonic, shapeshifting record, from one of Hungary's most prolific musician and film composers, János Másik. At times it calls to mind 23 Skidoo, Talking Heads and The Pop Group, at others it sits in its own corner of the room. 1989 was a revolutionary year. For many in the West the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the Autumn of Nations; the End of History and the triumph of progress. In Hungary, the year saw the Round Table Talks establish a new multi-party democracy and the effective end of communist rule after 40 years - Rendszerváltás; 'regime change'. It's hard to ignore these cataclysms while listening to Trance Balance. After all, its initial release was on Hungaropop, 'one of the first privately owned, independent labels launched after the liberalization of the market in Warsaw Pact-era Hungary' (we highly recommend delving further into their remarkable catalogue). Is music always an expression of the shifting political landscape? Or does it exist beyond it? These are all questions that percolate as the needle drops. Freud, a ghost from the Dual-Monarchy, runs in streams through the album sleeve. Trance Balance itself is reminiscent of a trip, transporting the individual through a semi-conscious dreamland. Synthesisers woosh and swirl overhead. The percussion is propulsive. Voices take on the guise of characters, guide-like, beckoning. There are Brechtian interludes where the musical fourth wall is punctured. At points, the listener awakes to playful refrains, bohemian folk song and calypso detours. This is a masterwork of musical surrealism - an act of pure intuition - free and honest. A manifesto in all but words. We'll let you decide how much it has to do with politics.

Origin of the Alimonies is Liturgy’s fifth full-length album and their first to fully integrate Hunter Hunt-Hendrix’s vision of total art, or what she calls Perichoresis, with her musical compositions. The music amplifies a dramatic narrative addressing the question of the origin of all things, which itself aesthetically grounds the content of Hunt-Hendrix’s ongoing philosophical YouTube series on her System of Transcendental Qabala. The album is by far Liturgy’s most meticulous and radical statement, pushing their characteristic synthesis between black metal, minimalism, experimental club music, and 19th–century romanticism to new extremes. Exploring microtonality, free improvisation, polymetric structures and Richard Wagner’s ideas of musikdrama and leitmotif, Hunt-Hendrix employs her unique “burst beat” technique to bind together the rhythmic signatures of metal, experimental club and classical music in the service of speech patterns and narrative flow. Featuring the virtuosic playing of bandmates Leo Didkovsky, Tia Vincent-Clark and Bernard Gann, the entire album also includes flute, piano, harp, strings and horns performed by a 8-piece chamber ensemble drawn from New York’s various avant-garde music scenes. Influenced by kabbalah, German Idealism and French post-structuralism, the opera tells the story of a cosmogonical traumatic explosion between OIOION and SIHEYMN, a pair of divine beings whose thwarted love tears a wound from which civilization is generated, producing the Four Alimonies of the intelligible universe and the task of collective emancipation. Outside the narrative frame, the piece is meant to foster productive discord between the modes of attention and political commitments that implicitly accompany its various genres, as well as to hover in the liminal territory between the music industry, the art world and the contemporary philosophy community, reiterating the message of Jesus via William Blake by belonging nowhere, only half-comprehensible within any established framework, puncturing hypocritical ideologies while crying out in the name of love. The album is accompanied by a new, eponymous album-length operatic video written, directed, shot, edited by and starring Hunt-Hendrix, who uses her evolving body, in the wake of her recent gender affirmation as a trans woman, as the medium for the story. credits released November 20, 2020

I started Void Ov Voices in 2006 to create ritualistic music for the moment, to play only live performances while capturing and interfering with the energy of the space and the time of the location.

The first time I travelled to Lebanon was in 2008 for one particular reason: to visit the Trilitons and the giant Monoliths of Baalbek. I was deeply impressed by the level of ancient civilisations engineering technology and the intense magical atmosphere of the whole area.

I have been fascinated by ancient ruins, prehistorical sites and monoliths for a long time. In the last decades, I visited many of these places around the world. I always felt this very particular fine physical energy among those ancient ruins, which interestingly opened my imagination and mind’s eye. Besides that, all these structures are footprints of a forgotten high advanced technology and civilisations. Moreover, these masses of stone often lie in alignment with astrological events and sacred geometry.
The Trilitons of Baalbek are extraordinarily special to me as they are pure evidence of technology from before the Roman period, a technology which could lift and transport blocks of stones, each weighing around approximately 900 tons (which equals approximately the weight of 900 VW Golfs, but in one piece!). To do that transportation itself today would be a huge challenge even with our cutting edge technology, if it’s possible at all.

There is a massive plateau in Baalbek made of these sized stones, on top of which the Romans built their famous Jupiter Temple, considered to be one of the largest Roman structures in the world.
Baalbek used to be called The City Of The Sun in ancient times, and I might have one theoretical question: could it be connected to the story of The Tower Of Babel?
There are many stories and theories around these mystical places. But, those stones have been just standing and waiting there in time and space throughout history. And they will be there till the end…
To make recordings as close as possible to these unique structures always triggered my mind.
When finally I could make a recording outdoor on the top of the “Stone of the South” in Baalbek, I fell into a trance kind of meditative state of mind, in that welcoming an enormous ancient energy which is present and is also captured on these recordings. Music is magical itself on many levels as it goes through all of our bodies, not only through the sensations of our ears.

As years passed, I researched Baalbek more. One of Hungary’s most significant painters, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar (1853-1919), was also deeply touched by the same spot in Lebanon. When I dug more into Csontváry’s life story, I found many similarities between his and my personality and artistic philosophy. He was profoundly spiritual yet not religious. He was an apothecary and scientist who started to paint in his middle age only because of a transcendental impulse he received. He gave up his pharmacist career and, for the rest of his life, focused only on art and painting to fulfil his soul’s desires and not for any other earthly or egoistic reason. He never had an exhibition, and he never intended to sell any of his paintings. He became a vegetarian and an outsider of society. Towards the end of his life, he even wrote some advanced philosophical writings challenging the hidden hands behind the governments and world leaders. Unfortunately and typically, he was only recognised decades after his death. His paintings were forgotten and almost sold as canvas to cover trucks after WWII. Then, at the last minute of an auction, somebody recognised their artistic value, bought up and saved these priceless paintings, which was like a miracle itself. Csontváry is now considered to be one of the most critical and influential Hungarian painters of all time! Sometimes I wonder how much invaluable art might have disappeared through the dark times of our history.
Anyway, Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar and Baalbek gave me such deep inspiration that in 2012 I decided to travel back to Lebanon to the same ruins to Baalbek to create a ritualistic recording and try to capture that energy for myself and for forever.
I chose this rare painting from Csontváry called “Sacrificial Stone” for the album’s cover artwork. He painted this surrealistic painting in Baalbek too. No debt to me that he was inspired by “The Stone Of The South”, which became the “Sacrificial Stone” in his vision.
When I first saw that painting, I could not believe my eyes: in Void Ov Voices, I use blocks of sounds repeatedly to create a wall of sound. I could not visualise my music better than Csontváry on this beautiful painting.

I was not sure if I should ever release this personal recording but thank my friend Stephen O’Malley’s strong inspiration through the years. Finally, it can happen.

– Attila Csihar
Budapest, September 2021 

On April 7th the Berlin-based Peruvian musicians Alejandra Cárdenas, AKA Ale Hop, and Laura Robles present their debut album together, released via Buh records. With a foundation informed by decolonialism and organology, ‘Agua Dulce’ is a radical deconstruction of traditional rhythms of the Peruvian coast, in which the cajón instrument plays a central role. ‘Agua Dulce’ is named after the most popular beach in Lima, near where both artists lived during their childhood, houses apart, without ever meeting one another. Now, years later, the pair have joined forces, with Robles on a self-built electric cajón and Cárdenas on electric guitar and electronics. Together they explore rhythmical structures that form the backbone of the complex Afro-Peruvian music and dance traditions – a broad term used for the various musical developments that occurred in the last two centuries, at the shores of the Peruvian Pacific. The cajón originated in coastal Peru as a percussion instrument that the black slaves created from wooden fruit boxes, when foot drums were banned at the end of the Spanish colonial-era, in the 19th century. From its birth the cajón was a symbol of resistance, experimentation and transformation, so Robles and Cárdenas strive to maintain the instrument’s spirit and qualities by pushing the boundaries of its sound into the future. However, although buzzing with an intense voltage and proffering a fresh contribution to modern experimental/noise/low fi/percussive music, the duo’s mission isn’t merely capturing something sonically futuristic, but is primarily concerned with shaking off the dust: “These rhythms have become ossified nowadays, heard in Peruvian folklore shows, and on the ‘global music’ circuit, but our desire is to experiment and do something more radical with them, connecting to the instruments more radical past”, comments Cárdenas. The two musicians take the pulses of dances like Landó, Zamacueca, Festejo, Alcatraz, Lamento and Son de los diablos, electrifying and mutating them into pure textures, or reinforcing the physical character of the cajón through repetition and distortion. The LP began with recorded improvisations between the duo at Ale Hop’s studio, which she then edited, adding synths and more guitar. Following that it was performed live for the Heroines Of Sound festival, accompanied by the dancer/choreographer Liza Alpiźar Aguilar, which was described as “nothing short of amazing” by The Wire. Following the show Cárdenas added further edits and post production, resulting in the finished article. ‘Agua Dulce’ is published through Buh Records, on all digital platforms and in a vinyl edition, limited to 300 copies. Cover Art by Eduardo Yaguas. --- Ale Hop is an artist, researcher and experimental musician. Her work includes live shows, record releases, sound and video artworks, research on sound and technology, and original music for film and dance. Her live performances merge the physical qualities of music with raw emotional states. She builds layers of sounds by blending a complex repertoire of guitar techniques processed by synthesis devices, to create a music of deep physical intensity. She came up in Lima's experimental underground during the 2000s, and currently resides in Berlin, where she caught the attention of the city's electronic scene, with her visceral live guitar performances, in which she loops out layers of sound, creating densely woven atmospheres. She has recorded mixes for Crack magazine and The Wire, and performed and exhibited work at Unsound, Rewire, Boiler Room, HÖR, New York’s Museum of Arts and Design and Somerset House. Her previous album, 2021’s ‘Why Is It They Say A City Like Any City?’ featured contributions from KMRU and Concepción Huerta, amongst others. alehophop.com Laura Robles was born in Swaziland and grew up in Lima. She is a percussionist and bassist formed from a very young age in the rich Afro-Peruvian and Cuban musical traditions. Her approach to jazz, funk and free improvisation is informed by the rhythmic elements of Latin American popular music. Robles founded the socio-educational initiative Parió Paula’. She has played with theater and dance companies and renowned folk, jazz and rock musicians worldwide, as diverse as: Maria Schneider, Christian Weidner, Almut Kühne, Pablo Held, Niels Klein, Ensemble Neue Musik Zürich, WDR Big Band, Christian Steyer, Wanja Slavin and Steffen Schorn. Laura lives and works in Berlin. In 2022 she was nominated for the German Jazzpreis award in the drums/percussion category, and in 2014 she won Berlin’s Studio Prize in with her band Astrocombo. She is reputed to be one of the best cajón players in Peru.