MUSIC

The distant echoes of the musical refinement of the ancient Khmer court, where every morning orchestras with crystalline gongs, female choir and female dancers rehearsed music for a coming ceremony. 
The 1960's... The Royal Palace, the seat of the Khmer monarchy since the end of the preceding century, then sheltered many musicians and dancers who were the base for the prestige of which these venerable walls were so proud. Every morning as one walked down the boulevard in front of the entrance façade, one could hear fireworks of limpid sonorities: for four hours the pinpeat orchestra with its crystalline gongs joined in the training of the royal dancers or by itself rehearsed music for a coming ceremony. 

At that time, there was hardly a month when court rituals did not require the presence –or rather the participation– of palace musicians and almost as often ballerinas whose fame was world-wide in spite of their rare public appearances. Of these bayaderes, as they were then called, the sculptor Rodin, who was able to admire them in France in 1906, said: “It is impossible to see human nature carried to such perfection (...) There are so many who claim to have beauty, but who don't give it. But the king of Cambodia gives it to us. Even the children are great artists. This is absolutely unimaginable!” At that time, they were present at all occasions of pomp and splendour in the palace. 

The positions of the musicians were often passed on from father to son. They also maintained the tradition by demanding rigor towards the musical heritage of their ancestors and held in memory, as the tradition was generally oral, a repertoire of more than three hundred compositions. Each one of them was assigned to precise moments of a ritual or definite moments of a choreographed piece. 

“Horizons” is an album by COMPUMA, developed from his 2023 digital-only “Horizons EP” released via Bandcamp. Inspired by his roots in Kumamoto and the landscapes he encountered during walks in various locations, the album captures the calm and comfort of everyday life. Blending ambient, downtempo electronic, and imaginary environmental sounds, it offers a minimal yet richly atmospheric listening experience.

Ocora masterpiece recurrence! A live recording of music for rituals handed down in Bon, an ancient Tibetan religion that is said to have existed before the introduction of Buddhism. Re-release of the first album in 1983.

01 Chant dedicated to the protective divinity Midü
02 --13 Nag-zhig ’s propitiatory ceremony (nag-zhig bskang-ba)
14 Tea Offerings (ja-mchod)
Tea offering
15 Drum-beating in Praise of Shenrab (gshen-rab mchod-rgna) A drum praising Shenrab

Recording: March 1981, April 1983 Live recording of rituals in Tibet

Last year's collaboration album with Ulla, a popular female experimental writer in the United States, was very good, by Perila, a Berlin-based DJ/producer who is also known as the co-founder of The latest album is released in vinyl from . A masterpiece of a gloomy electroacoustic/drone ambient that unfolds surrealism with a cool and vast soundscape reminiscent of the polar environment, deep introspection and sadness! Mastering specification by master craftsman Rashad Becker.

The OCORA recording of Sanza (thumb piano) by the Gubaya tribe in Central Africa, one of the best recordings of all traditional music, not just in Africa, has been repressed for the first time in 25 years!

Music played only with Sanza, Shaker and muttering songs is a deep sound world that can not be believed from the simplicity of its composition. In the silence of the voices of insects and the sound of the forest, different rhythms and timbres support each other and are in harmony. It has a very real and direct feel to appear as if you were waiting to be born. The chirping sound of metal pieces attached to the keys, the sound that resonates with the space in the big gourd and disappears, and the sound of the floating keys themselves are wonderful, and the moment when the concept of tone as an element of music cannot be captured. There is strength. I can't help but wonder if it's the music of people who lived with nature in an empty African country village.
A masterpiece that even people who don't usually listen to folk music want to pick up. By all means before it runs out!

Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and Sam Karugu emerge from Nairobi's flourishing underground metal scene as former members of the bands Lust of a Dying Breed and Seeds of Datura. Together in 2019 they formed Duma (Darkness in Kikuyu) with Sam abandoning bass for production and guitars and Lord Spike Heart providing extreme vocals to the project. 

Recorded at Nyege Nyege Studios in Kampala over three months in mid 2019 their self-titled debut album fuses the frenetic euphoria, unrelenting physicality and rebellious attitude of hardcore punk and trash metal with bone-crunching breakcore and raw, nihilist industrial noise through a claustrophobic vortex of visceral screams. 

The savant mix of brutally adrenalized drums, caustic industrial trap, shredding grindcore inspired guitars and abrupt speed changes create a darkly atmospheric menace and is lethal on tracks like the opener "Angels and Abysses" , "Omni" or "Uganda with Sam". 

The gruelling slow techno dirges and monolithic vocals on "Pembe 666" or "Sin Nature" add a pinch of dramatic inevitability bringing a new sense of theatricality and terrifying fate awaiting into the record's progression. 

A sinister sonic aggression of feral intensity with disregard for styles, Duma promises to impact the burgeoning African metal scene moving it into totally new, boundary-challenging experimental territories. 

Roberto Musci, born in Milan in 1956, studied guitar, music and electronic instruments. From 1974 to 1985 he traveled the world studying African, Indian, Arab and Oriental music recording ethnic music “in the field,” studying and collecting ethnic musical instruments from all parts of the world. His self-produced debut album, “The Loa of Music,” is a seminal work of staggering originality and extraordinary beauty in which field recordings, musique concrète, electronics, synthesis and instrumentation are interwoven, drawing on the countless musics from all over the World that he recorded. The subsequent “Water messages on desert sand,” composed with Giovanni Venosta, was nominated for a Grammy in the UK in 1987. In the 1980s 'and 90s' he broadcast ethnic and electronic-experimental music from Rai and Radio Popolare radio stations. He has also composed and played music for videos, commercials, dance, poetry, theater, composed soundtracks and accompanied silent films live. From 1980 to the present, he has played with many Italian and European musicians: Giovanni Venosta, Claudio Gabbiani, Walter Prati, Giorgio Magnanensi, Massimo Cavallaro, Massimo Mariani, Moni Ovadia, Roberto Zorzi, Chris Cutler, Jon Rose David Moss, Steve Piccolo, Elliott Sharp, Keith Tippett and the Third Ear Band. The theme of travel, ethnicities and mysticism are a pivotal point in this new album of his as well, demonstrating once again how music needs absolutely no sharp lines of demarcation. The music is one. It goes from the search for deep meanings in a time spent in a Hindu monastery (Ashram) listening to mantras and studying Buddhist philosophy to space explorations and human settlements on the Moon or Mars wondering how man will live and what he will bring to the new worlds imagining that Sufism, an Islamic mystical religion, will accompany him in the discovery of new worlds. An inspired Roberto Musci is increasingly aware of his hypnotic and visionary language.

Refracted's "In Veil" materialises as the third emission in the Titrate series. A gradual unfolding across six passages, each step a study in the dissolution of boundaries. 

Here, time becomes elastic - synthetic textures breathe alongside captured moments of reality, neither demanding prominence nor seeking refuge in the background. Percussion appears as memory rather than rhythm, while drones hover like fog over unknown lands. 

Cut to 180g vinyl and embraced by 350gsm reverse board, "In Veil" doesn't announce its presence but rather seeps into awareness.

Italian sound artist Marco Shuttle debuts on Astral Industries with AI-39. Alluring and evocative, ‘Sonidos y Modulaciones de la Selva’ is a journey deep into the Amazon rainforest, seeking to capture its power and vastness, but also a rumination on the problem of its impending destruction.

In this album Shuttle sees the continuation and further ripening of an ongoing creative process, utilising both audio and visual documentations as source material. On this occasion most of the field recordings were taken in the Tupana Arü Ü nature reserve in the Amazonas region of Columbia, between Leticia and Puerto Nariño.

For the compositional process Shuttle employs a distinctly minimalist approach, achieving highly rich and articulate soundscapes with relatively little. Painting with an almost impressionistic stroke, the depth of imagery is underpinned by a strong experimental leaning and a sophisticated musical language.

Within its wild freeform, the seamless interplay between nature and the machines sees them merge into a mysterious dance - a liquifying sequence of scenes that shimmer with flora, fauna and the unmistakable aliveness of the jungle. A procession of sputtering and cavernous pulsations, sprawling biologies and hidden mysteries, the jungle as an entity, a spirit, begins to emerge. With all its peculiarities and strangeness, it reveals a world of seeming chaos, yet underneath it all a thread of something innately conscious.

Although it could be considered a form of sound diary, the scope spans much further than a standalone creative work. Within its intoxicating montage of shifting forms, ‘Sonidos y Modulaciones de la Selva’ stands as a sonic ethnography, and a contemplation on time, space, and our evolving relationship with nature.

Ongoing large-scale logging, agriculture and infrastructure projects are leading to significant deforestation in the Amazon, and continues to threaten biodiversity, the global environment and the livelihoods of indigenous communities. Part of the proceedings from this release will be donated to Amazon Watch (amazonwatch.org), a nonprofit organisation that works to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin.

“Special thanks goes to Marco Cruz from Amazon Jungle Trips and to Aberlardo and Manuel (who is also the narrator of the story at the end of Part 2), the indigenous guides who took me deep into the forest and made me experience its overwhelmingly powerful beauty. This record is dedicated to Colombia and all the fantastic people I met in this wonderful country” - Marco Shuttle 

AI-36 comes from Ear to Ear - the debut collaboration between label regular Samuel van Dijk (Multicast Dynamics) and Ukrainian artist Yevgen Chebotarenko. Taken from a series of live recording sessions, the album explores in four parts a markedly darker realm of soundscape music. A cornucopia of abstract morphing scenes and heady synesthesia, the album brims with rich sonic detail and evocative gestures. Deftly blending organic sound textures with an experimental austerity, ‘Live Recordings’ displays potent and accomplished storytelling. The album opens to a grey overcast vista, a natural landscape that slowly melts into a descending chasmic dysphoria. The mood transitions to a drone-based piece on the B-side, characterised by a more psychologically suspenseful framework and exotic blend of sound design. The atmosphere lightens, yet equally pensive as side C takes on a more elemental form, invoking water and its array of microbial and metabolic ecosystems. Brief cathartic moments in the final section pave the way for deeper wayfaring on the D-side. Stray signals and unknowable artefacts skitter across a vast subaqueous domain, a fathomless womb of potentialities that ebbs into eternity.

In the summer of 2010, “Zomeki Ichi” was released with a recording by Makoto Kubota of the Koenji Awa Odori dance in Tokyo. It was a big hit, receiving a great response from not only persistent Awa Odori fans, but also from world music fans and club music fans. The “Zo-meki” series has released eight CDs so far.
This is the first analog version of the “Zo-meki” series as a 12-inch single.

Tuning the Wind was created in 2022 as an installation piece. Since then, it has been adapted into multichannel, 4DSOUND, and stereo installations, as well as performed live on numerous occasions around the world. The piece has a duration of 36 minutes and 15 seconds. For the vinyl pressing, it has been divided into two parts.

Composer Aimée Portioli, known professionally as Grand River, recorded various types of wind and then reworked them through layering and pitch adjustment to create a musical piece where the wind itself becomes a prepared instrument. At times, the sound of the wind is tuned to the 440 Hz reference, while at other times, the instruments are tuned to the sound of the wind. In Tuning the Wind, nature and music merge seamlessly. Synthesizers and wind recordings become indistinguishable, blending natural sounds with human-made instruments. The boundary between a gust of wind and an instrument-generated sound fades away. Human artistry and nature’s symphony merge to become one.

Wind is air in motion. It makes no sound until it encounters an object. The sounds it produces depend on the strength of the wind and the shape and material of the object it touches. When the wind blows, trees sway, buildings rattle, materials move, and sound waves are generated. Some believe that temperature changes create layers of air, and that the friction between them forms a unique sound—perhaps the true voice of the wind, which birds may be the only creatures capable of recognising. Sometimes the wind howls; at other times, it sings or whistles, shifting from a gentle murmur to an angry roar. The wind’s range of frequencies, tones, and timbres is vast and varied. Tuning the Wind is a piece about the wind, made with the wind—an abstract expression of our ongoing conversation with nature. 

"GLOW WORLD is Rod Modell's new project resulting from his collaboration with Taka Noda. The duo delivers what could be an example of perfect elegance and musical refinement, but the resulting sounds are once again dirtied, ruined and ravaged by a noise capable of deafening us, sounds that come from afar, that seem to fade away but suddenly illuminate the world around us, which lands on us and which no longer belongs to us, leaving us lost in an infinite melancholy. GLOW WORLD is a work characterized by buoyant ambient sounds from which delicate rhythmic textures emerge, and never speeding up they run along the routes of an electronic music that surely knows how to be as minimal and suffused as it is distressing. Touches of piano, slow pulsations of bass lines and constantly disturbed sounds that nevertheless almost lull the listener into listening to this timeless music, perfect for letting go, observing time inexorably slipping out of our hands forever. Sounds that are timeless, it was said. Rod Modell and Taka Noda are visionaries, and GLOW WORLD is a rare gem. Simply another masterpiece."

 

Ambient field recordings collected across the Western Sahel. Sounds of desert oases, late night radio broadcasts, village calls to prayer, and riverboats drifting down the Niger river. A nice companion piece to the musical work from the blog, this an hommage to the sounds that don't always find their way onto records.

"Harmony / Balance is a piece of meditative, drone-based music that sometimes flirts with dystopian horror, but always resolves itself, throbbing and glistening with a quietly ecstatic joy.”
The Guardian

"Perfect harmonies and piercing synths rise together...Mesmerising"
The Quietus

"Sets a new benchmark in Afro-ambient"
DJ Mag

Nigerian electronic musician and violist Ibukun Sunday debuts on Phantom Limb with Harmony / Balance, a brooding, introspective take on Afro-ambient music that follows two acclaimed digital-only albums for Phantom Limb imprint Spirituals.

Based in Lagos, Ibukun Sunday has expertly positioned himself between the rarely-married cultures of ambient and West African musics. He entwines his compositions with field recordings from his native Nigeria and deeply considered philosophies of existence, humanity, and society. The themes of Harmony / Balance derive from Swami and Hare Krishna founder A. C. Bhaktivedanta and his work Bhagavad-Gita [Eng: “As It Is”], a script on the duality of human nature. In Bhaktivedanta’s text, two cousins - warriors from the sacred Hindu text the Mahābhārata - and their armies are pitted against each other. The humility, self control, and devotion of one cousin against the arrogance, envy, and pursuit of power of the other. Bhaktivedanta writes that from this battle we see the necessity to cultivate and nurture our love and faith, but to simultaneously understand our selfishness and hubris. Appropriately, in Ibukun Sunday’s music, a heavy, apocalyptic dread contrasts fascinatingly with passages of light. The static-spiked, corrosive sound design of Harmony / Balance conjures darkness, but its skipping rhythmic patterns and melodic contours are made of beautifully vibrant colours.

Though Sunday excels in drawn-out elegance and magisterial repetition, his unique practice, classical training, and core culture shine through in a pure and singular way. Scattered throughout Harmony / Balance are unexpected melodic antiphonies closely aligned with African music, interspersed between huge, spacious drones and field recordings. 

Κλίμα (Klima) is the third album by CV & JAB, the duo of Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett. An assertive step forward in the two artists' investigations into melodic interplay, acoustic processing and field recordings, the full-length conjures the modus operandi of archaeologists searching for unheard soundscapes. Structured as an itinerant mise-en-abyme, Κλίμα (Klima) summons worldwide submarine circuits and tropospheres populated by sudden findings and progressive re-encounters - hazy dreams amalgamate with mosaics of reality. Catalyzed by a 2021 invitation to perform at the UNESCO world heritage site Santuário Bom do Jesus do Monte in Braga, Portugal, the music of Κλίμα (Klima) then fermented across a period of two years, during which live experiments, cyclical studio sessions, and travels across the Island of Tenerife’s effervescent ambiences gradually contributed to its completion. It is on the volcanic island that the narrative core of the album materialized, prompted by a month of recordings across the radically different microclimates populating the landscape. CV & JAB’s flashing transpositions from desert to rainforest are evoked over ten tracks operating as an abstract audio-guide of the outer and inner realms permeating the pieces. Κλίμα (Klima) is conceived as a rhizomatic composition rather than a sequential excursus; percussion, refracted voices, chirps and gurgles, other-worldly synthetic winks, reverberated piano chords, and yearning flute circumnavigations all surface sometimes in solo, sometimes synchronically to eventually dissipate again. The remote and enigmatic atmospheres that characterized previous CV & JAB albums acquire an intimate intensity in the solo piano excursions - “Klima” and “Lands of Permanent Mist” - and a penetrating emotional resonance with the instrument’s flirtatious entanglements with JAB’s bass flute on “Dwelling” and “Pottery Fragments” or with CV’s flickering plasma voice in “Jetstream”. Suggesting timeless wanderings in ambient études and classical minimalism, the album deploys as a mirage, inducing listeners into a contemplative state through mellifluous repetitions and offshore sci-fi inflections. The palpable depth of the recordings bestows each track with a distinctive density and presence: sounds and chords materialize and dematerialise as landscapes at which we gaze, half-asleep over a long journey. Ten sips of a familiar rapture which ooze a renewed sense of expansion in sound, informed by more than five years of CV & JAB’s continuous sonic wanderings and wonderings together. The labyrinthine and meteorological odyssey becomes tangible in the artwork, realized by the duo’s long-time collaborator Zin Taylor, mind and hand behind their two previous albums’ covers. Κλίμα (Klima)’s simulacra evokes a map in which curves transform into a score with “small systems of differences emerging side by side”. - Vittoria de Franchis, July 2023

Pedro Vian and Merzbow Present Their First Collaboration: "Inside Richard Serra Sculptures"

Pedro Vian and Merzbow release their first joint work, an unbounded expression of creativity and experimentation. Over the album's forty-minute duration, listeners can experience a blend of field recordings made by Pedro Vian at the DIA Beacon Foundation, specifically inside Richard Serra's sculptures. These recordings are interwoven with the ambient percussion and melodies characteristic of Vian's work, alongside the piercing and sharp frequencies produced by Merzbow, one of the most acclaimed artists in the global noise scene.

"Inside Richard Serra Sculptures" is both a complex and spontaneous piece, an abstract journey into the unconscious that may be difficult to grasp for closed minds. This work stands as a masterpiece of contemporary expressionism, merging ambient sound and noise in a way that challenges and redefines the boundaries of sound art.

The collaboration between Vian and Merzbow is notable not only for its innovation but also for its ability to transport listeners to a space where sound becomes an immersive and visceral experience. The use of Richard Serra's sculptures as a source of inspiration and sonic material adds a unique dimension to the project, emphasizing the interaction between physical space and musical creation.

"Inside Richard Serra Sculptures" is now available on all digital platforms, promising to be an essential reference for lovers of experimental art and avant-garde music. 

The third part of Ideologic Organ Music’s trilogy of field recordings of sacred flute music from Papua New Guinea, recorded by Ragnar Johnson and Jessica Mayer in the 1970s. A book titled “A Papua New Guinea Journey” consisting of RagnarJohnson’s account of the circumstances behind the recordings will be published simultaneously with this music release.

“The recording of a male initiation ceremony with sacred flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was only possible after fifteen months residence during anthropological research. From the same Ommura villages in the Eastern Highlands there are bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing. Nama (‘bird’) sacred flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village in the town of Goroka. There are Mo-mo bamboo resonating tubes and singing from the Finisterre Range of Madang. From the Ramu Coast region of Madang there are: Waudang flutes, garamut slit gongs and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar village and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum Village. These previously unreleased recordings were made in 1976 and 1979.”
–Ragnar Johnson, London 2021

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Ragnar Johnson's liner notes for the release

This music comes from the Eastern Highlands and Madang provinces of Papua New Guinea. The recordings of the Ommura Iyavati male initiation ceremony, the different bamboo jews harps, yam fertility flutes and singing were the result of fifteen months residence for anthropological research 1975- 1976 and a one month return in 1979. The Iyavati male initiation ceremony with its spirit cries of bamboo transverse blown and water flutes, bullroarers and ‘crying baby’ leaves was recorded at night outside the men’s house with the sounds of instruction and singing from inside the men’s house audible in the background. Nama ‘bird’ transverse blown paired bamboo flutes were recorded in a Gahuku Gama village inside the town of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands. The Mo-mo resonating tubes and singing were recorded at Damaindeh Bau on the Markham Valley edge of the Finisterre Range. The other Madang recordings of long paired bamboo flutes and garamut wooden slit gongs come from the Ramu coast region. There are Waudang flutes, garamuts and singing from Manam Island, Maner flutes from Awar and Siam and Guna flutes and garamuts from Nubia Sissimungum.

The Ommura lived in the Yonura villages of Samura, Sonura and Moussouri which were next to the Obura Patrol Post and in the neigbouring villages of Kurunumbaira and Asara. The1975 Government Census listed a population of 1,140 inhabitants of whom 437 lived in Yonura. The Ommura, the collective name for the inhabitants of these villages, spoke a dialect classified as Southern Tairora. The Obura Patrol Post, established in 1965, was 32 miles from the town of Kainantu in the Dogara Census Division of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The altitude was 4,000 to 5,300 feet on the valley floors and up to 8,000 feet on the mountain ridges. The arrival of steel tools, traded along the Markham Valley, into what was previously a stone age technology, preceded the establishment of the patrol post by about fifteen years. The first government patrol to reach the Ommura area was in the early 1950s and the area was regularly patrolled by the 1960s. Inter-village warfare was endemic.

The Ommura were slash and burn cultivators growing sweet potatoes, yams, taro, bananas, sugar cane, various beans, pit-pit, maize, squashes and greens. Arabica coffee was introduced as a cash crop in the early 1970s and young men were sent as plantation labourers to New Ireland.

Every Ommura patri-lineage (okyera) had a mountain demarcating a traditional area of lineage residence and a mythical lineage ancestor (uri). Ommura social life revolved around the staging of various kinds of ceremonies. There were fertility ceremonies to promote the growth of yams, sweet potatoes and pigs. Major events in individuals lives were marked by the enactment of the life cycle ceremonies of birth, male or female initiation, marriage and death. All Ommura ceremonies involved payment of some kind varying in amount from large payments between lineage groups for life cycle ceremonies consisting of traditional valuables, earth oven cooked pig meat and food, and money to small payments of food.

The Ommura practised three types of curing ceremony; Ua-ha in which the illness was chased away by armed men, Vu-ha in which the afflicted were fed a mixture of pork and medicinal herbs and their illnesses were transferred into a device made of sugar cane and washed away by flowing water and Asochia where diviners chewed hallucinogenic tree bark (Galbulimima Belgraveana) to see the cause of the illness and then treat it.

The Ommura performed the following male and female initiations: Nihi Rara the piercing of the nasal septum for male and female children; Kam Karura performed in the women’s house for girls, Ummara and Iyavati performed in the men’s house for boys and the male and female pre-marriage ceremonies performed respectively in the men’s house and woman’s house.
These initiations were enacted to discipline youth into their respective male and female roles with bleeding the nose and beatings with taroah stinging nettles to promote heath. Male and female initiates were instructed to practice the same food taboos and were educated by means of gender specific secret stories and songs. Burlesque mimes of the opposite sex occurred in both and at the end the initiates were decorated in new clothes, ornaments and paint. A feast of pig meat and vegetables had to be given by the father at the end of an initiation ceremony together with a payment to the eldest mother’s brother for his participation.

Nose bleeding was performed to remove the dangerous accumulation of blood that became lodged inside the bridge of the nose at conception in the womb. To strengthen the penis young males had the urethra of the penis bled sometime between the final stage of male initiation and marriage. During the Iyavati initiation the male initiates were beaten with taroah stinging nettles, secret taroah songs were sung and exaggerated mimes of aggressive male sexual behaviour involving the use of taroah were enacted with much chanting of the male ’Wo-Wo’ war cry. Initiates were told what acts and foods were forbidden to them and given instructions regarding permissible sexual relations and their duties to assist their relatives and future wife. Iyavati initiates wore a pair of pigs tusks points upwards through a hole in the nasal septum.

Marriage was centred around the bride price which was given to the wife’s father by the husband, his paternal kin, mother’s brother and relatives. During the marriage ceremony, grooms were warned about the disastrous consequences of contact with female menstrual pollution and brides were warned not to poison a husband in this way.
Peace was made between enemy villages by an exchange of cooked pigs in a ceremony called Obu. A death compensation ‘head’ payment
in traditional valuables or a woman in marriage was the only act that eliminated the need for a payback killing in retribution for a death in war. Inter-village trade was carried out between two individuals rather than groups from different villages, frequently with partners from the lower altitude Bush Markham villages. 

The long-awaited re-press of the famous recording of pygmy from the prestigious French folk music label OCORA in the domestic version! !!
Among the various pygmy tribes, Aka Pygmy has a particularly high musicality, and the social and religious life of the group is closely linked to music, and there is no day without music. This recording also includes songs for rituals before hunting, songs for finding honey in the forest, songs sung at feasts after hunting, and oral traditions of history and knowledge. It is an anthology of Aka Pygmy, as the title suggests, including songs that sing myths and stories while telling stories, songs of mourning for the dead, and so on. In addition, the recording period is 1972-1977, which is the golden age of field recording of traditional music, and extremely dense and deep performances centered on voice and rhythm are recorded with full sound quality. The complex and beautiful polyphony, in which the rhythm and voice of Aka Pygmy are united, is full of irreplaceable charm. With Japanese commentary

Disc 1
Soboko (ritual prior to the departure of hunting) [Kingo Yamo E / Wango / Cocora Efese / Bora Bosombo] Mongonbi (Call of hunting)
Zombie (song of return from hunting)
Monzori (dance after killing an elephant)
Mobandi (ritual prior to honey gathering) [Epanda / Angonga-Ekdu Moseke / Evete Kele-Mona Sumbu-Ma Nama Dizamba / Ngangele (song of mockery) / Eponga mo Beva na Mokupina / Longokodi / Ekpandaro-Monbinhi / Mo Boma / Ndoshi]
Three children's play with songs [Nze Nze Nze / Kuru Kuru / Congo Belle] Music for the dance "Mubenzele" [Divot / Anduwa]

Disc 2
Mokondi
Music for the dance "Ngbol" Music for the dance "Aeonbe" [Nduda / Bobangi]
Two song stories [Nyodi (bird) / Nanga Ningi (with a thin body)] Boywa (song of mourning for the corpse) Bond (fortune-telling music) [Dikobo / Die / Apollo] Coco Ya Ndongo
Yaya
Mubora (version 1)
Mubora (version 2)

The explorer Walter Maioli makes his most amazing adventure, the journey to the center of the Earth. Retracing the exploits of the Platonic demiurge, he identifies in the cave the deepest meaning of myth. Primordial sounds, not shadows, are at the center of this magical path straddling geology and Paleolithic polyphony. The recordings between 1985 and 2002 capture the sonic imperceptibility of the great subterranean womb, investigate the secret dialogue between the trickling of pond waters and the faint percussive reverberation of stalactites and stalagtites. Rocky sediments are played as tubular organs, glockenspiels, xylophones or stone marimbas. Crystalline timbral variations and subtle microtonal passages recall the chimes of Tibetan gongs and bells, of the scales of Java and Bali. Amidst muffled pauses and silences, trills and rings, echoes and tremolos, hisses and pops of vibration, Maioli builds his most imaginative niche of sound, a magnetic and telluric chant that is pure symphony and archetypal synaesthesia. Co-produced with Holidays Records.

Henry House is a recurring dream song. Combining closely tuned instruments and sinetones, tape-music editing techniques, field recordings, and voice, this eighty-minute, five-part song cycle is an evolutionary step away from the spontaneity of the free jazz/noise aesthetic usually found in the music of Nate Wooley. Henry House expands on the ecstatic, durational work found in Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, a six-part composition that has been premiered over the last ten years by an ensemble that now includes multiple drummers, guitarists, a twenty-one-person choir, and the composer on amplified trumpet. But its ritual is more serene, more natural, slower. Henry House is the first long-form piece that doesn’t feature Wooley’s trumpet. It is also the first to be constructed around his poetic writing. Wooley weaves a strange funeral mass for a fictional everyman from isolated phrases culled from essays, poems, and non-fiction written by Wendell Berry, John Berryman, Joseph Mitchell, and Reiner Stach. After organizing the fragments into a dream narrative, Wooley rewrote the text dozens of times, manipulating the stitched-together story until only glimpses of its sources remained. These texts become a slowly developing story of care and too much care in living. They are spoken by Mat Maneri and Megan Schubert and set amidst masses of instruments. The outer and middle movements explore the interactions between slowly shifting sine tone frequencies and massed, slightly detuned instruments—vibraphones, brass, pianos—to affect a warmly wobbling harmonic pad that undulates and revolves under Maneri’s performance of the text. The remaining movements move quickly, combining field recordings with hard cuts of Schubert’s singing voice constructed into a massive, tape-affected choir interspersed with her readings.

"Yesterday it started to rain… The smell of damp tarmac rising up through open windows, a smell which is uniquely evocative for us all depending on our individual histories: a suburban pavement, a school playground, a basketball court. The rain cut through a band of low pressure that had been lying over the city for days, pinging rhythmically off metal, causing rolling tyres to hiss and spit. The music that soundtracked this meteorological shift was the debut full length from Rain Text (Giuseppe Ielasi & Giovanni Civitenga), simply titled III. Scattered throughout the nameless eight tracks there are moments of low-end pressure relieved by the fizz and clatter of metallic rhythms; there is static, there is discord, there is release. The individuals comprising Rain Text have a long history of manipulating sounds for evocative ends, Giuseppe Ielasi has been making music as one half of Bellows for many years, each album stretching and destroying their sound in beautiful increments. He has also released reliably inspirational music either solo or in collaboration for the likes of Editions Mego, Shelter Press and Faitiche. His sensitive ears are also in high demand as a mastering engineer. It is worth perusing the 800+ releases he has technical credits for on Discogs: from classics of the avant-garde to the freshest faces of the Swedish underground, the chances are some of your favourite albums are included. Giovanni Civitenga helms the SKYAPNEA long-running NTS show. Joining him, you can enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of deep listening through shows that flit between the industrial and the devotional, a space that is fully explored on III. The album was recorded quickly over three fertile days in Ielasi’s studio in Monza, but of course results like this can only be achieved at such a pace by spending a lifetime obsessing over the mechanics and possibilities of sound. Those who are enamoured by the rain—who are returned by it to the surfaces, smells and sounds of a lost and idealised youth; who feel themselves restored—are known as ‘pluviophiles’. Their response to rain may well have a biological explanation: when rain hits tarmac negative ions are released into the air, which are thought to result in feelings of wellbeing and positivity. All the more reason, then, to return to the vivid ecosystem that Rain Text has so carefully cultivated for III." Words by The Dengie Hundred – August 2024

Den Helder is the northernmost city of the province of Holland in the Netherlands. It is largely surrounded by water and seems to edge into the North Sea. It has had a military function since the 16th century, but few know that it is the most heavily bombed city in the Netherlands. Seventy years ago it was almost completely wiped off the map. The following is a story imagined in Den Helder. 1. The shadow of a bird on the North Sea. A herring gull moves effortlessly, wings outstretched. We follow its flight up the Dutch coast to a crowded beach near Den Helder. 2. In the distance, a dot barely distinguishable from the shadows of the waves, a swimmer struggles to stay afloat in a roiling sea. A moments coordination between lifeguards before they enter the water and the swimmer is pulled ashore. A resuscitation follows, beachgoers gather around. An emergency helicopter arrives. The swimmer is lifted into the cabin of the helicopter. Now, for the first time, we see our protagonist, J., from behind, looking up at the helicopter. 3. J. moves past rows of wooden bicycle racks typical of bike parking at Dutch beaches. Brushing past the one to which his bike is locked, a tiny splinter penetrates the skin of his right thumb. It stings. A quick glance. For a second he puts his thumb in his mouth. A bike ride through the dunes follows, greeting passers-by and acquaintances. 4. J. arrives home. He enters, a kiss on the cheek, a meal on the table, a conversation about the incident with the swimmer. They ready for bed. The splinter already forgotten. 5. It is night, around 2 am. A putrid smell drifts into Den Helder from the sea. Awakened by this smell, J. finds himself beside his bed. Quietly he moves out into the upstairs hallway, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Occasionally the kitchen is lit up, then dark again. With a throbbing right thumb, half awake, half asleep, J. opens the kitchen door and stumbles out into the night. 6. J. is standing on the sea wall that separates Den Helder from the sea. On the right a lighthouse (Kijkduin), on the left emptiness. Out at sea, the sound of trawlers. The silhouette of a freighter on the horizon. J.'s right thumb, heavy and feverish. The lighthouse sends beams of light in a repeating rhythmic pattern in all directions (Fl(4) W 20s). The foaming heads of the surf are distinctly visible. Rippling lines, that are strangely interrupted by something. A shape... A figure! 7. First one, then multiple semi-translucent snail-like figures slither up from the rippling water onto the basalt blocks at the foot of the sea wall. 8. Now, less than a meter away from where J. is standing, one of the semi-translucents halts. J. feels no fear, no urge to flee, but an involuntary sympathy awoken deep within him. An unimaginable calm fills J. 9. J. is gone. At least, he has turned inwards. In there, together with J., is the creature, singing in a fragmented language, made up out of historical scraps projected directly into J.’s visual cortex. J. sees the past of Den Helder, Spanish prisoners of war forced to build a Napoleonic fortress, the city burned, swept away by floods, bombed and rebuilt over and over again. 10. Night gives way to morning, a storm passes, the rising sun warms J's face. His eyes are open but unresponsive. He is bent backwards, his knees at an odd angle. From a distance, a runner approaches with her dog. 11. We see J. from above, still in the same pose. The runner at his feet. Slowly we float upwards. We see more people gathering on the seawall. A police car arrives and stops near J. We continue to float upwards. Higher and higher. A herring gull passes below us, circles back and hangs there, motionless in the wind. ‘the third of may’ was written and recorded in 2020 over the course of six days spent in an old pumping station in the dunes of Huisduinen near Den Helder.

This is the latest EP work by Kaoru Inoue, a DJ, musician, and music producer who has been internationally renowned for his activities under the name Chari Chari and Kaoru Inoue for 30 years since his debut in 1994.