MUSIC

The 2015 edition of Winnipeg’s send + receive festival, focussed on rhythm, turned out to be a generative meeting of minds. There, Mark Fell encountered the music of Will Guthrie, a meeting that was eventually to result in the frenetic acoustic drumkit and digital synthesis pairing heard on Infoldings and Diffractions (2020). At the same festival, Limpe Fuchs first heard and appreciated the music of Mark Fell, planting the seed of a collaboration that came to fruition when Fell (along with his son Rian Treanor) visited Fuchs at her home in Peterskirchen, Germany in September 2022. Black Truffle is pleased to announce the release of the results of this extensive session in the audacious form of a triple LP, housing over two hours of music across its six sides. The collaboration might appear unlikely: what common ground could exist between Fuchs, classically trained pianist, legend of improvised music, instrument builder and sound sculptor active since the 1960s, whose group Anima Sound connected the dots between free jazz, krautrock and ritual, and Fell, proponent of radical computer music, known for his bracingly austere productions that twist remnants of club music into algorithmic stutters? For all their seeming disparity in technology, approach and background, the music on Dessogia/Queetch/Fauch makes it immediately evident the pair share a great deal in their essentially percussive approach and ability to, in Fuch’s phrase, ‘establish silence’. Recording at her home studio, Fuchs had the use of her entire array of instruments, found, invented, and traditional, and treats the listener to some that don’t often make their way to concerts, including extensive passages performed (with Gundis Stalleicher) on pieces of wooden parquetry. Alongside metallic, wooden and skin percussion of all kinds, sounded and struck in every conceivable way, we also hear bamboo flute, viola, and Fuchs’ distinctive free-form vocalisations. Fell also stretched himself, with his contributions ranging from characteristically fizzing pitched percussive pops to swarms of sliding tones and abstract digital noise. Showing both remarkable restraint and improvisational freedom, much of the music consists of duets between a single percussion instrument and a distinctive mode of digital sound, often lingering in one timbral-rhythmic space for minutes at a time. Improvisational forward momentum coexists with a free-floating, wandering quality. On opener ‘Dessogia I’, the shimmering almost-gilssandi tones of Fuchs’ enormous set of microtonally tuned metal tubes ripples across Fell’s rubbery pulse, which moves up the frequency spectrum as Fuchs becomes more animated and switches to horn. At some points, as on the metallic chiming tones that open ‘Fauch I’, only the unexpected dynamic behaviour of Fell’s sounds distinguish them from Fuchs’ acoustic instruments. At others, like on ‘Queetch III’, the waves of sliding tones and noise textures are bracingly synthetic, joined by piercing squeaks and scrapes from Fuchs’ metal objects. Epic in scope, immersing the listener in an entirely distinctive world of sounds, and thrillingly bold in its melding of the most ancient musical procedures with cutting edge technologies, Dessogia/Queetch/Fauch is an unexpected major statement from two of the great mavericks of contemporary music.

The first-ever official vinyl edition, completely remastered by Josh Bonati. The turn of the millennium ushered in an apex visionary phase for English esoteric duo Coil. Relocating from the city to the coastal quiet of Weston-super-Mare freed them to follow even more fringe obsessions, fully untethered from peer influence. During a single six-month stretch in 2000 they released the devious underworld sequel to Music To Play In The Dark, arcane drone summit Queens Of The Circulating Library, and a malevolent hour-long synthesizer exorcism prophetically titled Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil. This latter work remains one of the group’s most miasmic and mind-expanding creations, on par with Time Machines – a sustained divination of shuddering, psychoactive noise, rippling with the motion sickness of an all-seeing eye. Thighpaulsandra characterizes the album as “an exercise in brutality,” born from a thorny patch of his Serge modular unit that Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson found entrancing. Processing this sliver of electronics into a ravaged labyrinth was a trial and error process, aided by Christopherson’s visual sense of sound, stretching and manipulating it for maximum spatial disorientating. Frequencies nauseously crawl across the stereo field, burrowing into the ear like a sinister brainwashing experiment. An outlier / centerpiece is the 13-minute alien tribalist sea shanty, “I Am The Green Child,” guided by John Balance’s sung-spoken free verse concerning vengeance, oblivion, and insanity, culminating in the memorable refrain, “We're swimming in a sea of occidental vomit.” But the rest of the record seethes in unhinged instrumental chaos, divided into 18 micro-movements of a composition called “Tunnel Of Goats.” Intended to scramble the functionality of a CD player’s shuffle mode, the piece throbs, thrashes, and flatlines in compressed frenzies of twisted synthesis, at the threshold of some bottomless purgatory, forbidding and unknown.

Presenting our second look at the music of Roger Doyle and Operating Theatre, a little known proto synth-pop act and experimental theatre group that he led, what you have here is a remastered and repackaged collection of two very different sides of this project. In reverse chronological order the second disc contains music from the United Dairies release of 1979 – ‘Rapid Eye Movements’. Experimental tape work heavily influenced by the French school of music concretists and recorded at various points during the 70s in Finland, Holland and Ireland, although it is most certainly a Roger Doyle solo record the label ran by Nurses With Wounds John Fothergill decided to release it under the group name for reasons now lost to the fog of time. After this a volte-face towards a more accessible sound, coming via his friendship with future Hollywood actress Olwen Fouéré and her connection to the theatre. It also featured the vocals of a young Spanish immigrant Elena López- bucking the 80’s trend by moving to, rather than, from Dublin. With Fouéré adding the theatrical element to the group (an almost essential part of any early 80s synth act) alongside pulsing synths, brass, a vocoder and the electro acoustic production talents of Doyle himself, it was the first time a Fairlight sampler was used in an Irish studio setting and gives a prescient but alternative take on the new wave sound that came to dominate the charts soon after. Doyle’s work on the newly released Fairlight sampler had brought him to the attention of U2’s Bono who had seen a feature about his sampling experimentations and reached out to him for piano lessons. This led to a deal on the bands embryonic Mother records for what Doyle calls his first “popular song” - Queen of No Heart - which alongside “Spring is Coming” made up the backbone of the EP which was released some years later (1986) on the Mother Records label. Established by U2 in 1984 and initially intended to launch Irish bands, many of the acts – including this one – were subsequently unhappy about the label’s haphazard approach to releases and lack of promotion. The record was released as a die cut 7 inch with the two main tracks and a 12 inch EP with additional tracks – ‘Part of My Make-Up’ / ‘Atlantean’ / ‘Satanasa’. The Mother experience was for Doyle and the rest of the group a frustrating one with no promotional plan and no tour. After that Operating Theatre as a quasi pop project ‘just kind of fizzled out’ says Doyle. Doyle, the musical maverick at the heart of the act, continues to produce to this day and has released 30 albums. A frequent collaborator we round out the record with a remix from another Irish outsider - Morgan Buckley of the Wino Boys.

Mesh-Key is thrilled to announce a deluxe, expanded reissue of Moon Beams by Tokyo visionaries, Tsuki No Wa. Originally released on CD by Japan's Soundscape label in 2003, Moon Beams is a bonafide opus -- a masterful mix of jazz, latin, folk and electroacoustic, topped with bandleader Fuminosuke's soaring, spectral vocals. Bassist Takuyuki Moriya was also a member of Ghost, and drummer Yuta Suganuma is a long-time member of the Shintaro Sakamoto band. The quartet's third album in as many years, Moon Beams found Tsuki No Wa taking a gigantic leap forward in both compositional sophistication and sonic experimentation. Beautifully recorded in a (since demolished) Meiji-era ballet studio, and featuring guest performances from such underground luminaries as Yoshihide Otomo and Ami Yoshida, this timeless, ambitious work sounds just as spellbinding today as it did a couple decades ago. Our reissue features an updated mix from the band and brand new album art with unseen photos of the group in their heyday. The vinyl (2LP, mastered by Josh Bonati and pressed at RTI) comes in a full-color, double panel gatefold jacket with eye-popping gold foil lettering.

In his “Pulse Music” compositions of the mid-1970s, composer John McGuire forged a unique interpretation of European serialism. A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Gottfried Michael Koenig, McGuire moved to Cologne, Germany in 1970, where he become associated with the world-leading Studio for Electronic Music at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. Like Stockhausen, McGuire found his musical imagination both constrained and inspired by the technology that was available to him.A conversation with sculptor Hans Karl Burgeff led McGuire to think beyond the horizon and into limitless space. For “Vanishing Points” (1985–1988), McGuire used an entirely digital set-up for the first time: a digital sequencer, eight Yamaha DX-7 synthesizers and a Studer 24-track digital tape recorder. The piece was conceived as a “sequel” to the Pulse Music series, but also a step forward from it. Whereas the Pulse Music pieces had employed steady streams of pulses, with Vanishing Points McGuire employed pulse layers that accelerate or decelerate against one another, vastly increasing the resulting rhythmic complexity.McGuire's exploration of music technology continued in “A Cappella” (1990–1997), written for his wife, the soprano Beth Griffith, known for her recording of Morton Feldman’s “Three Voices” made in 1983. Using samples, he created a four-voice choir of voice samples and arranged them into interacting parts. The composition faced challenges due to the organic nature of the human voice compared to the precision of synthesized sounds. This process involved extensive editing and a negotiation between the "material" and the "original conception". This sort of negotiation applies as much to the composition of a single piece as it does to the work of two decades.

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.

‘The surrealist, psychedelic brain-burps of notorious all-caps-tweeting wind-up-merchant Louis Johnstone aka Wanda Group. Twenty-six congealed morsels of spur-of-the-moment sound-art executed with genuine economy of means, namely… a phone. An impulsive, scatter-brained trip into the inner circles of regional weirdness, secreting a creeping unease which really gets under your skin. Fragments of aural rubble haphazardly cohere into galvanising spacial tones and textures, punctured by Johnstone’s garbled Essex rantings. The long-distance stare of warbled tape loops is abruptly fractured by a drunken sing-along in a care home for the elderly. As hallucinogenic takes on the utterly mundane, there’s an obvious kinship with Lambkin’s nocturnal, straight-to-dictaphone sound-pieces. Dan Johannsen’s splintered classical collages on that PIG tape and the suburban soliloquies of Regional Bears alumnus Russell Walker also feel closely aligned.’ (All Night Flight) With an A4 riso insert.

 

"When it travels, the voice is a double agent, a trickster, or a dubious guru, but when it pauses for a recording, it's historical, capturing a mood or an emotion for all time. I didn't expect that I would hardly recognize the people who made Salt — myself and Hessel Veldman — a year and a half after recording it, but this is where I find myself now, so I'll say a few words about this temporary prosopagnosia.

Twelve years ago, when I moved to the Netherlands from Japan, I made a piece called How to Lose Your Voice. It was a YouTube hit because people wanted to learn how to actually lose their voices, though I doubt they found what they were looking for in the video. But I mention it because it's like a diary for me: my voice simply isn't the same now as it was then.

I wonder where my voice has gone.

I just listened to a radio interview with a woman who had her larynx removed.

About fifteen minutes after listening to her new voice, altered by the use of a voice prosthesis to make her audible, the interviewer played a recording of her pre-surgery voice. Of course, I was curious to hear it, and although it was immediately obvious that the gentle ease of her first voice was gone, this new voice, with its raw, gravelly sound, was even more intriguing because of its determined power to express that which needed to be expressed.

When Hessel and I first listened to the Salt in its entirety, I said in astonishment, "who wrote this?"
Marianna Maruyama, sure, but this artist goes by more than one name. Many voices spoke through me in this album. You might even recognize one of them as yours."  

Ten years on, Joana Gama and Luís Fernandes show no signs of slowing down. Over the past decade, the duo has released five albums, composed soundtracks for film and television, and created pieces for performing arts. With “Strata”, they embark on a bold exploration of their musical identity, breaking new ground by seeking the primordial, the raw, and forging a deeper creative synergy. This evolution makes their music feel less like a conversation and more like a unified, introspective monologue.
Until now, their work has largely been defined by dialogue—a dynamic exchange of ideas evident in their earlier records. However, in their relentless drive to push boundaries, they now turn inward, embracing a monologue as a pathway for growth, innovation, and celebration of their journey so far. Two key elements shape this transition: Joana’s growing affinity for synthesizers over piano, a direction initiated in “There’s no knowing”, and her integration of field recordings gathered from diverse locations around the world. Rather than stepping into each other’s domain, the duo finds common ground, creating music that thrives on harmony and introspection.
“Strata” stands as Joana and Luís's quieter and most cohesive record to date. It reflects their desire to craft music that resonates with the natural world, unfolding as a seamless stream of sound that enhances their connection and invites the listener into their creative process. While their previous works were compelling, they often felt distant, as if the listener was observing from the sidelines. “Strata”, by contrast, draws the listener in, encouraging them to fill the spaces and find their own place within the duo’s monologue.
This process climaxes in the closing track, "Geode," where the subtle sounds of debris underscore the tightly woven structure of “Strata”. It’s a testament to the duo's commitment to evolution and their ability to surprise both themselves and their audience. A decade into their collaboration, “Strata” reaffirms Joana and Luís's creative vitality, offering a record that feels both fresh and deeply rooted in their artistic vision. 

Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex – a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall – have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration. Blueprints For A Blackout, The Ex's fifth album and first double LP, combines caustic studio experimentations and loose songs from their gripping live-set at the time. The band consisted of singer G.W. Sok, guitarist Terrie Ex, two new recruits on bass, Luc and Yoke, and drummer Sabien Witteman, along with a plethora of guests including Mekons' Jon Langford and long-serving sound engineer Dolf Planteijdt, among others. Originally released in 1984 on the band's own Pig Brother Productions, Blueprints veers from jagged punk explosions to sharply focused improvisations featuring field recordings that would become a hallmark of their subsequent forays into free jazz and experimental music. The overall effect is not unlike the menace of a slowly building winter storm. Tracks like "Rabble With A Cause," "U.S. Hole" and "Scrub That Scum" stand out as exemplars of this phase of The Ex. Comparisons can be made to contemporaries Einstürzende Neubauten, NoMeansNo and Svätsox as well as later Crass label bands. This first-time vinyl reissue comes with 24-page booklet.

In the swirl of kaleidoscopic recordings that is Spacemen 3's discography, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To occupies a pivotal position – one at the nexus between their garage beginnings and expansionist future. Spacemen 3 capture the inspired spark of mid-'80s psychedelia, offering a distinct variation on high pop through layered feedback, a formidable rhythm section and shining vocals. Taking Drugs features the legendary Northampton demos, which secured the band's first record deal with Glass. While much of this material would be expanded upon on their first two albums, Sound Of Confusion and The Perfect Prescription, many devotees consider these early 1986 demos to be the vital document of Spacemen 3 at this primal stage. With urgent, minimally treated versions of "Sound Of Confusion" (aka "Walkin' With Jesus"), "Losing Touch With My Mind" and "Come Down Easy," this double LP collection serves to exalt the strength of Spacemen 3's songwriting over the deep-dive, sonic ruminations that would permeate their later studio efforts. Includes download card and new insert with liner notes by Byron Coley.

So excited and honored to finally release the vinyl document of my realization of JOHN CAGE’s ROZART MIX. Back in the extremely strange year of 2020, I was approached by Wave Farm and John Cage Trust to stage a performance of this seldomly performed piece that Cage wrote for Alvin Lucier. The piece is comprised of 88 tape loops (one for each key of a piano), spliced together with multiple non-musical sounds played back on 12 reel to reel machines.

In January of 2021 I spent a wonderful and intense week researching ROZART MIX at John Cage Trust at Bard College. It was the first place I had visited during the pandemic. On October 23, 2021, with the assistance of Rose Actor-Engel, Twig Harper, C. Lavender, Quintron, Robert Turman, and John Wiese, I presented a 6 hour performance of ROZART MIX at John Cage Trust. Six hours of 12 individually amplified reel to reel tape machines, placed around multiple floors of a house, playing 88 tape loops spliced together by 5 to 175 splices, created an overwhelming and joyous environment of cacophonous sound. The performance culminated with John Wiese touching a frog for the first time as the final sound croaked through the speakers. The frog contact was just one of many magical moments that occurred during the preparation and presentation of the piece. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed performing it. Special thanks to Galen Joseph-Hunter of Wave Farm and Laura Kuhn & Emy Martin of John Cage Trust for trusting me with this material.

"Best New Reissue" - Pitchfork (May 6, 2023) Legendary debut album by Junko Tange, originally issued by Osaka’s Vanity Records in 1979. Dadaesque recitations and sparse guitar, piano and electronic meanderings combine for a beguiling, hypnotic dreamworld. Officially licensed from the custodians of Yuzuru Agi's Vanity Records archives, this edition has been fully remastered from new transfers of the original analog tapes by Stephan Mathieu.

The Handover

There is, and has been, a prevailing orthodoxy permeating the Egyptian musical hierarchy that would render this spectacular piece as scandalous. But let us remember that over the past 100 years, Said Darwish, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Halim El Dabh, Ahmad Adaweya, and the modern Mahraganat movement have all experienced their fair share of scandal and opposition. Music must always be pushed forward – it may not always succeed as revelatory, but in this particular case, it does. Much like the venerable magic carpet, the Handover slowly builds to escort you into its swirling, ascending expression of the psychedelic, eventually descending, step by step, back to earth, landing as a wondrous spaceship with wide open doors inviting us inside for repeat listening. Perhaps this should have been happening in Egyptian music 50 years ago but it's here right now, and that's what matters. We are often asked an impossible question to answer: "What constitutes a Sublime Frequencies release?" For the moment, we can point to this record as the answer to that question.
- Alan Bishop/Sublime Frequencies (March 2024)
¬
In The Handover, Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien explore the common and uncommon senses of Egypt's ritual music. It is clear that Aly Eissa's original composition is deeply rooted in Egyptian and Arabic traditions. At the same time, this band is one of the most progressive coming out of Egypt today. This is in big part thanks to Eissa, who has proven time and again to be not only an extremely skillful composer, but also a real visionary, combining tradition with modern experimentation.

A performance by The Handover is typically one stretch without break: a long build-up that lasts for the duration of the concert. Towards the end of the performance, all the tension is released in an exuberant, joyful climax, when wild improvisations are driven forward on top of exciting dance-rhythms from rural Egypt. The Handover elegantly combines the delicacy of classical Arabic music, the raw expressiveness of Egypt's countryside music, and the spontaneity of free improvisation, carefully obliterating the artificial separation between acoustic and electronic instruments. Despite the remarkable absence of any percussion or drums, The Handover is an extremely groovy band, with an ability to slow down and accelerate the tempo in almost telepathic synchronization at exactly the right moments.

Alongside the tight ensemble playing there is plenty of room for individual expression as the oud, synthesizer and violin take turns playing solos on top of repetitive riffs. Throughout the album, native Alexandrian Ayman Asfour plays the violin with breathtaking beauty, while not being afraid to make the violin buzz, squeak and rattle at times. Belgian/Norwegian keyboardist Jonas Cambien makes the synthesizer a melodic instrument in its own right, at times evoking almost classical Maqam, while in other moments it seems like he comes straight out of an Egyptian wedding. The oud forms the backbone in the composition's structure, as Aly Eissa's solos guide the listener from minimalist, meditative drones, to a compelling climax, and back to earth.

There is much more to The Handover's sound then the obvious references to Arabic and Egyptian music. The opening drone section of the album is pushed towards abstraction and even noise, and the vintage Farfisa organ gives the music a touch of 70s psychedelic rock. The repetitive riffs can be reminiscent of Embryo's experiments combining krautrock with influences from the middle-east, but the use of repetition to induce trance dates way back in Egyptian music, and is present in many rituals like Sufi and moulid celebrations. The composed melodies on this album couldn't be possible without Eissa's deep love for this music. And what The Handover does with this composed material couldn't be possible without three strong individual voices, their love to play music together and their dedication to push the traditions forward.

(Recorded in Alexandria Egypt in January of 2023, this Limited-Edition vinyl LP includes a two-sided insert with additional photos, liner notes and bios of the musicians)

Tracklist:

Side A

1. The Handover (Part 1)

Side B

1. The Handover (Part 2)

Highlights:

1. The Handover is a trio consisting of: Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien
2. Influences of Arabic Classical, rural Egyptian music, psychedelic, Krautrock and free improvisation
3. Perhaps this should have been happening in Egyptian music 50 years ago.
4. Limited-Edition vinyl LP includes a two-sided insert with additional photos, liner notes and bios of the musicians. 

John Duncan's "SAXMIX" is one massive piece of contemporary experimental music, which lets noise collide with free jazz and extreme minimalism. Duncan is a master when it comes to these things, and he is an artists constantly evolving, mutating and challenging. The sax thing then? JD has invited some of his fav sax players to collaborate with him; Mats Gustafsson, Antoine Chessex, Martin Escalante, Dror Feiler and Ulrich Krieger. Did I say MASSIVE? Well, it is.

Scheintot is a new debuting trio consisting of Mats Gustafsson (sax/flute), Henrik Rylander (mixing desk) and myself on Korg MS20 which might be my fav synth ever, or right now at least. This is weird stuff. Not sure where this is going but I guess you will enjoy it if you are into stuff we have done before, but this sits comfortably in its own corner, and we are not smart enough to be ashamed over sounding so infected.

Nice cover by Tochnit Aleph boss Daniel Löwenbrück.

Hot stuff, basically!

‘Quintela’, the debut album by Carme López, a performer, teacher and researcher of traditional oral music from Galicia, is a new experimental work for Galician bagpipe. Influenced by the approach of composers like Éliane Radigue or Pauline Oliveros, the Spanish composer creates slowly modulating sound environments, and stretches the sonic the possibilities of the bagpipe to its absolute limit. ‘Quintela’ is structured in four movements, plus a prologue and an epilogue, which serve as a link to the contemporary language of the instrument.

The bagpipe is strongly tied to traditional musics; its use in different genres and musical contexts is extremely limited and unimaginative. ‘Quintela’ brings it to a wholly unknown field, decontextualising the bagpipe in order to elevate a personal approach, and leaving behind its male-dominated past (in which it relates to ideas of prestige, dominance or carries even sexual connotations). López expertly demonstrates its grandeur and breadth; the music on ‘Quintela’ ranges from barely audible sounds of air passing through the hide bag through rhythmical use of its reeds to all-encompassing drones with complex harmonic structures and vibrant overtones.

The narrative arc focuses on the composer’s past, its people and places, and could be conceived as a journey in and of itself. A homage to those in our memories, but also a step into the unknown, ‘Quintela’ is an ambitious, graceful and captivating debut.<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 340px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1107883793/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://carmelopez.bandcamp.com/album/quintela">Quintela by Carme López</a></iframe>

THE LAMPINAK came first out in 1982 on Merzbow's own label ZSF Produkt in a small edition. Since than, this tape was never re-released in its entirety (a couple of tracks are available only on the "Merzbox") and is is much sought after. Finally OEC is re-releasing such tape in 149 hand-numbered copies. Special Yellow Cassette shell with full print / Special Yellow Cover Handanumbered eidition of 149 copies. All sounds by Masami Akita using metals, loops, voice, percussions, flute, chains, cymbals, effects, ritual orchestrations and chants. Recorded and mixed at ZSF Produkt - August / September 1985 Remastered at Munemihouse June 2019.

Merzbow (Masami Akita), the seminal Japanese noise project since 1979, remains one of the most influential and prolific figures in modern electronic composition. Originally a limited CD-only release on Waystyx in 2005, ‘Scene’ is now available on vinyl for the first time with remastering by Masami Akita and an exclusive bonus track from the original recording session. Scene is revered by fans as one of Merzbow’s best surrealist works from the mid-2000s ‘laptop era’. The intro track, Part 1, immediately grabs listeners with hysteric carnival music. The ascending parts then warp into hallucinatory passages with rhythmic drum patterns, metalworks, echoing bird calls, and eerie wind chimes tinkling atonally in the gossamer moon. Ultimately, Scene is a vital part of Merzbow’s ever-evolving experimentations with analog and digital manipulations. Limited to 300 copies, the long unavailable Scene is officially back in our hands.

Great news for fans of electronic music: Reiger Records Reeks is set to release a new 5-CD box set dedicated to Roland Kayn’s Cybernetic Music. The collection is based on the original recordings from the Lydia and Roland Kayn Archive, which were sensibly remastered by Jim O’Rourke,

The box set includes the tracks from legendary opuses MAKRO I, II, III, created at the Institute for Sonology, and Elektroakustische Projekte, featuring works like Cybernetic I, II, and III, which were recorded at the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, alongside Entropy PE31, Monades, and Eon. These pieces – previously available only on rare out-of-print vinyl editions – highlight both Kayn’s innovative approach to musical structures and his significant impact on the development of electronic and cybernetic compositions.

Recent years have seen the release and reissue of dozens of hours of Roland Kayn’s music, on several labels and in both physical and digital formats. Our interconnected yet chaotically imbued age seems to be the setting in which Kayn has truly found his audience. The scene is now set for one of the most momentous works in his oeuvre to return to the shelves. ‘Infra'. One of the titanic cybernetic works Kayn originally released on the Colosseum label in early 80s, ‘Infra’ (1978-79) has come to occupy a very special place in the hearts of fans lucky enough to have copies of the original vinyl box sets. Now lovingly remastered from the original archive masters by Kayn devotee Jim O’Rourke, ‘Infra’ has finally found its way to CD for a new generation of admirers to discover.

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..

Slavic Folk Songs is a collection of songs and sacred chants from diverse Slavic regions, based on oral traditions and melodies often without authors or composers, with a special emphasis on Ukrainian songs. The songs have been arranged by the duo for two voices and are performed a cappella by Latvian singers Ansis Bētiņš and Artūrs Čukurs, in various techniques, characteristic to the specific Slavic singing traditions. The songs are performed in a traditional style of singing called "white voice" which requires no significant amplification or accompaniment. The record outlines a path of perils, struggles and the misfortunes of the world, yet is full of longing, respites, fleeting moments of joy and relentless hope and love throughout. This release is the duo’s first on XKatedral and consists of a double album containing a studio recording and a live performance at Fylkingen in Stockholm on March 3rd 2023. “In Latvia we are surrounded by melodies of folk songs – they have been sung to us by our mothers before we were even born, long before we started to speak and sing ourselves. These melodies are passed from generation to generation and they continue to be an essential part of our culture today. Throughout centuries they have been influenced by other cultures of the region interacting with each other – they have been shaped and reshaped together, traveling from mouth to mouth without borders. And you can find themes, characters, even melodies and attitudes towards life in the folks songs near and far – akin to the ones that were sung to us when we were kids. So, in this way our process of researching and collecting Slavic folk songs has been a process of understanding more about ourselves – through others, through our neighbors. We haven't aimed to achieve historically informed performance and authenticity with these recordings. But we believe we have made them with utmost respect and honesty. These songs have brought a huge amount of joy and ensnared us in their beauty. And we are excited and beyond grateful to share them with others through our voices.” Ansis and Arturs met when singing in a youth choir and singing together has been an integral part of their friendship. When they first came across music sung in the Slavic male tradition they were primarily struck by its power and beauty. ”It touched us directly, beyond words, and made us dig for more, to dive into it and – naturally for our friendship – to experience it with our own voices.” As they started researching this vocal tradition they were taken by the incredible richness and variation found in the material – the magnificent strength, humor, wit and wisdom, hope and defiance contained within. When Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a number of digital archives sprung up made by dedicated people increasingly digitizing sound recordings of folk songs and early chants from the regions affected by war in order to save their rich immaterial culture from destruction. Ansis and Arturs started collecting and transcribing the melodies and texts, eventually arranging them for two voices. Ansis Bētiņš studied academic singing and early music at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, Italy. Artūrs Čukurs has studied at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In their newly formed vocal duo Ansis and Arturs are driven by their organic interest in different singing traditions of various periods, regions, and styles.

Masma Dream World, a self-described multi-ethnic, non-binary, multi-disciplinary artist named Devi Mambouka who has roots in Gabon and Singapore, with her second album. Please Come To Me is an intense, beautiful, and haunting album that finds the technical developing with the spiritual, and the electronic with the natural. Masma Dream World reaches deep down to the interior of herself as its most vulnerable, proving that sorrow can be transformative, and music can be transformative.

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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).