MUSIC

A 4-hour work recorded at Steamroom (composer’s studio) between 2017 and 2018.
Detailed and delicate electronic layers, processed instruments, and ambiguous field recordings come together in a slow-moving, fascinating kaleidoscope with multiple reflections and wrong turns, always in constant state of flux. The finely crafted art of subterfuge.
“To magnetize money and catch a roving eye”, four CD’s – a hypnotic, multi-faceted, labyrinthine piece which flows as slowly as a river while speeding back through memory, and shows all the talent of Jim O’Rourke.
Composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, born in Chicago in 1969, Jim O’ Rourke is a veritable chameleon, working at the frontiers of very diverse musical genres.

Constructive are proud to announce the release of the original soundtrack for the British film 'Surge' by Tujiko Noriko and Paul Davies. Directed by Aneil Karia and starring Ben Whishaw, the film is set in London over twenty-four hours and is a stripped back thriller about Joseph. A man who goes on a bold and reckless journey of self-liberation.The album consists of sixteen tracks and presents the soundtrack in a non-conventional form. Sound design and composition are presented side by side as equal components in the score. The album consists of sixteen tracks and presents the soundtrack in a non-conventional form. Sound design and composition are presented side by side as equal components in the score. The album starts with Davies’ piece ‘TV Dinner’ where shifting plates of aqueous white noise finally give way to a hint of tonality. Tujiko on ‘Broken Glass’ develops the tonality further adding bells, sliding tones and slithers of brass. This alternating of sound design and composition and the blurring of its source material continues throughout the album. Except for the three tracks where they both collaborate on the writing, as on the delicate ‘Empty Rooms’. The music conveys polar extremes at the same time. Ethereal and urban, delicate yet powerful, juxtaposing the internal landscapes of the film's protagonist against the environmental sounds of a city. Highlights include the unconventional beauty of ‘Children’, the deconstructed jazz of ‘And then to Home’ by Tujiko and the powerful Deathprod-like tectonic plates of sound by Davies on ‘In Street after First Robbery’. An album of music and sound that works alone away from the film and rewards with repeated attention and deep listening.

IS THERE ANYTHING AFTER NOTHING IF EVERYTHING IS ALREADY HERE IN A VIBRATION OF A FEEL STRING “SPACE IS AIR I BREATHE” SHE SAID BODY NARRATING MEMORIES THERE IS NO GOOD OR BAD ANYMORE ONLY WHAT IT IS HEAR ME HEAR THE WIND HEAR THE GRASS DANCING ONE BIG PAINTING CALLED LIFE FROM ONE TO ANOTHER GIVING FROM OTHER TO SELF CARE HOLDING FOAM OF DAYS IS PRECARIOUS CAN BE PRECIOUS FENCE UP AND WATER THE GARDEN LAST CALL LASTS FOREVER GROW GONE WILD INTO CRUMBLES OF TIME CAR ROOM WITH A VIEW REMEMBER HOW A NIGHT COULD BE A DAY … AREN’T WE ALL HERE TO EXPERIENCE SOMETHING WE HAVEN’T

Highly recommended for music fans interested in birds and animals.
A concert where composers compete with birds

Birds have been singing long before humans started making music. While humans create perfect music calculated and thought out, birds naturally produce strange tunes.
Composers have attempted to express natural phenomena and certain types of noise, but birdsong has been turned into music all over the world, each with their own ingenuity. In addition to Renaissance and Baroque paintings, you can also enjoy modern bird depictions by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Britten.
Furthermore, I listened to "Carnival of the Endangered Species" made by Vincent Bouchot by punning on Saint-Saëns' work. In the style of a classical suite, it draws unfamiliar animals, and the ending with "Humanity" is also meaningful and makes me think about various things. The booklet is full-color and has detailed explanations of various birds and animals.
La Réveuse is a period instrument group founded in 2004 by Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrault. Although he mainly works on works from the 17th and 18th centuries, he has become a hot topic for composing works with themes that combine music and current affairs.

[Recording information]
1. Purcell: Prelude to Birds from "Fairy Queen"
2. Van Eyck: England's Nightingale - from "The Flute Paradise"
3. Theodor Schwarzkopf: Sonata in imitation of Nightingale and Cuckoo: Allegro/Gigue
4. F. Couperin / La Revouse: Nightingale in Love ~ from "Clavesin Songs Volume 3"
5. Jean-Baptiste Bousset/La Réveuse ed.: Why, sweet nightingale - from "Ale Volume 14"
6. Monteclaire: Chirping - Concert No. 5 for 2 flutes
7. F. Couperin/La Réveuse ed.: Lamenting Bunting - from "Clavesin Songs Volume 3"
8. Colette: Cuckoo
9. Saint-Saens/Vincent Bouchot: Cuckoo in the depths of the forest - from "Carnival of the Animals"
10. Britten/Vincent Bouchot Arr.: Cuckoo from "Friday Afternoon"
11. Rameau/Vincent Bouchot: Hens
12. Saint-Saëns/Vincent Bouchot: Hens and Roosters from "Carnival of the Animals"
13. Ravel/Vincent Bouchot: The Queen's Pottery Doll Redronet ~From "Ma Mère Roi"
14. Vincent Bouchot: Carnival of Endangered Species
Prelude: Sorrow of the Pangolin
Armando: Javanese Slow Loris
Courant: old poultry dodo
Intermezzo: Lesomira 63
Sarabande: white and black owls
Gavotte: Indian gharial (crocodile)
Intermezzo: Lesomira 92
Varus Twist: Sea Cucumber
Jeeg: Mankind, its evolution

The Gerogerigegege, the Japanese avant-blues music that has been attracting noise music lovers all over the world, is now available on long-awaited vinyl from The Trilogy Tapes, a limited edition cassette released last year by the popular fashion brand CAV EMPT.

This summer, I read Kenji Miyazawa's children's story (illustrated by Takeshi Motai), "Gauche the Cellist" (1934, illustrated by Takeshi Motai, 1956). Just a few days before I made this recording, I was on stage. As a result, I had to be in the same state of mind as Gauche at the beginning of the story. It was not a good feeling, but I knew it was not a coincidence that this book was in my possession, so I read it again and again, looked at Mr. Motai's picture of the raccoon boy again and again, and headed for the park before dawn. The only instrument I used was a Hapidrum, and the sticks were mallets that looked just like the ones the raccoon boy was holding...Juntaro Yamanouchi

COMPUMA has released his long-awaited first solo album "A View" on his own label <SOMETHING ABOUT>.

This is an full-length album based on the music for the play "View" commissioned in fall of 2021 by the theater group "Blue Egonak" based in Kitakyushu. The album contains 9 original songs and 2 dub mixes, totaling 11 songs, newly reworked with co-producer hacchi (Urban Volcano Sounds / Deavid Soul).

In addition to his inexhaustible DJ and music selection activities, COMPUMA has released a number of collaborations and remixes, including a 2007 album
as Smurphies' Fearless Bunch [Smurph-Otokogumi] (reissued on vinyl in 2021) and its predecessor Asteroid Desert Songs [ADS], as well as duo works with Ken Takehisa (KIRIHITO)). COMPUMA has also released a number of collaborations and remixes, but this is his first album as a solo artist. Recently, his DJ trio "Akuma no Numa" with Dr. Nishimura and Awano, has been getting a lot of attention, and their performances have been introduced on radio shows overseas.

The sound, including electronic sounds, field recordings, and the space between them, evokes a variety of landscapes, and that quietly stimulates your imagination. It is a work that will have a unique presence in the next wave of the new age ambient/environmental music revival that has been emerging in the global ambient/IDM scene.

One of the two dub mixes included on the album, "Vision(Flowmotion in Dub)" is a re-work of "Flowmotion(IN DUB)" which will be included in  "Midnight is Comin'", a compilation curated by ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U scheduled for release in May on the Singapore label Midnight Shift. The other dub mix is a version of "View 2", done by Naoyuki Uchida who is known for his work on LITTLE TEMPO, Oki Dub Ainu Band and more recently GEZAN's "KLUE".

Album is mastered by Soichiro Nakamura of Peace Music, who has worked with Shintaro Sakamoto, OGRE YOU ASSHOLE, and countless artists. Artwork is by Tomoo Gokita, a world-renowned painter who is also known in Japan for his jacket art for META FIVE and TOWA TEI. Design is by Satoshi Suzuki. Gokita and Suzuki, both of whom have worked on COMPUMA's previous products.
(text by Yusuke Kawamura)

LIL MOFO

Includes Download Code for the live recording and a new remix "View 2 Electro" (remix of "View2" from the
album "A View").

Compuma : Electronics, Synthesizer
Naoyuki Uchida:Dub Mix
Kiyotaka Sumiyoshi:Movie

"A View" release party held at WWW Shibuya on Sept.30 2022 has been reproduced on video. Video footage
was added to the live recording from the show.

Mastered by Naoyuki Uchida ( except “View 2 Electro” by hacchi )
Produced by Compuma for Something About Productions 2023
Design : Satoshi Suzuki

The 3rd album "Mujo" (meaning "transience" in Japanese) by the Japanese sound artist Kazuya Matsumoto.

The album was made from 2014 to 2022. It is an album of improvisation and recording simultaneously, using non-instrument objects along with the sounds that occur from a frosted lake and drifting ice, and recordings made by affecting the environment itself.

This album is comprised of 2 discs. Disc 1 features performing and interaction with sounds that occurs above the ice. Disc 2 features performing and interaction with sounds that occurs below the ice using hydrophones.

It is an album opposed to his first album "Mizu No Katachi (Shape of Water)" confronting the harsh and ever changing environment and he recalls those recording days as "transience", also expressing his feeling towards the never ending explorations.

The recording captures the dynamic and delicate sounds of the ice and nature as well as his soul put into the 9 years. Includes 32 pages full color booklet with photography of the ice and nature taken by Matsumoto at the time of the recordings.

Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Limpid As The Solitudes cuts through sound-making techniques to enter a new zone of sonic revelations. The record recalls the turn-of-the-century Mille Plateaux glitch era, the warmth of La Monte Young's drones, acousmatic non-space recordings made by GRM artists, 4AD's floor-gazing guitar sound, and blissfully diverse field recordings. But, one could equally equate it with entirely different recording sources. Limpid As The Solitudes has a widescreen sound that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Warm, comforting and also unsettling in unpredictable ways. Deliberate yet exploratory, it's a record composed of opposites and contrasts, following historical guidelines yet also throwing them out of the window. To describe the album as ambient would indicate passive engagement with the sound; leave it to play in the background and one could miss a lot of the joy. Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma describe the record as a series of postcards - things and sounds that happen vertically as a slow ascension, vessels communicating in dreams. In this collaborative recording, there is a feeling of "becoming" - a concrete sound turns into a electronic sound that turns into a spiral-like melody which then furls/unfurls at the same time. The album title as well as track titles, are all verses stolen from Sylvia Plath's poems, Atkinson notes, "like dropped pearls from a lost collar." Trying further to capture the record's poetic impulses, it reflects "Empathy to objects and nature's elements, meteorological states, seasons that answer to your heart, granular etchings carved and sustained to create a blurred sentimental landscape. The finale is more optimistic than Plath's poetry. Love and lyricism win, the music soaring from deep water to interstellar galaxies." The cover is another key, an image by Julien Carreyn of a young woman wearing destroyed jeans, playing with bubble wrap. The image is intended to give the viewer an eerie 1990's feeling that echoes the recording and films by Hal Hartley or Wong Kar Wai. Be sure to come back to this record more than once; it's then that it's power will work. Recall the sound of a lover, a garden once walked through, an echo of a record once loved. To be appreciated, "Limpid As The Solitudes" requires immersion as if in a hot spring, letting the sounds float and alter perceptions and memories. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at D+M. Printed photographs by Julien Carreyn on glossy inner and outer sleeve.

Aclod is the first fruit of the telekinetic long distance collaboration between Juho Toivonen and Loren Chasse. The artists shared environmental recordings from Coyote Wall, Washington and Pori, Finland to create music for an implied landscape that is located neither here nor there. Toivonen and Chasse began working together in 2021 after Toivonen reissued Chasse`s seminal field-recording based album “Synthesis Of Neglected Places” on his label Akti. Working on the reissue, the artists noticed that they shared a similar interest towards the microscopic details of sound and that they both actively listened and immersed themselved in the everyday sonic experience of their surroundings. One thing soon led to another and they realized that they had created a new 30-minute piece, Aclod. Hive Mind are excited to present this deeply immersive work which seemlessly blurs environmental and natural sound from the two outdoor recording locations with ephemeral whispers of melody recorded on melodeon, metalophone, gong, guitar, Juno synth, water bowls and pebbles. * * * * Loren Chasse is based in Portland, Oregon and has a long history in the underground and experimental music scene having been a a key figure in the Jewelled Antler Collective. Central to his practice is an interest in listening in the moment and a deep and reverential attention to the sound-worlds of our immediate surroundings. Juho Toivonen is from Pori, Finland and currently runs the Akti Label as well as performing in Free Tala and improvisational collective, Vahvistusharha. His recent solo releases on Ikuisuus and C/Site have been garnering some well-deserved attention over the past couple of years.

NTS DJ, label boss and fabled collector Howard Williams lands on DDS with an etheric communique under his Japan Blues moniker, inspired by early C.20th Min'yō folk and avant-dub, richly spirited with field recordings and ghostly ephemera. Six years since his debut Japan Blues album ‘Sells His Record Collection’, Williams is back - and it’s been worth the wait. Based around enka and minyo recordings made with London based singer Akari Mochizuki and Tsugaru shamisen master Hibiki Ichikawa at London’s Earthworks studio back in 2018, Williams adds field recordings made while traveling through Japan, inviting The Dengie Hundred to co-produce, bringing his own sound worlds into the mix. The two spent several months shuttling ideas back and forth, processing mixes and adding environmental recordings, like snatched penny whistle melodies or the familiar whirr of an extractor fan. Singer Tamami Pearl is the final piece of the puzzle, providing an almost imperceptibly breathy aura to proceedings. The obsessively researched archivist’s resolve is still very much present, but the processing style and overall sound here is more faded than the Japan Blues of yore, transmuting discernible sounds into magickal textures that boil and bubble until all that’s left is vapour. On 'Sazanka, Hokkai Bon Uta', Japanese vocals are dubbed into bare syllables, juxtaposed with flute improvisations and muddy whirrs. Eventually, the instrumental elements turn to noise, like some shortwave radio transmission slowly falling out of range. Environmental sounds become uneven, clunking percussive currents offer a sort of dream logic, morphing into faint choirs. In the final third, Williams pulls away the veil almost entirely. The album's most compelling section is the side-long 'Soran, AIzu Bandai-San, Shimabara Lullaby'. If you've heard Robert Turman's 1981 album "Flux" - a reel-to-reel recorded slo-mo kalimba and piano masterpiece - you'll have an idea of how this one rolls. Williams and The Dengie Hundred work into the source material like modelling clay, dubbing and distorting shamisen twangs and echoing vocals into half-speed, dissociated dream visions. It's not Ambient by any means, but there are undoubtedly traces of Brian Eno's earliest, most crucial experiments. It's not Folk music either, but Williams' deep obsession with Japanese traditions allows him to integrate sounds holistically, provoking a conversation rather than simply cherry picking aesthetic decorations. He works like a dedicated DJ, giving The Dengie Hundred room to tweak the spaces in-between. Together, they create an atmosphere that's fiendishly hard to put into words, and even harder to forget. If you're into tape-damaged industrial experiments (think Skaters, Spencer Clark, Aaron Dilloway et al), the surrealist global exploration of labels like Stroom, or simply after a new perspective on Japanese folkways, "Japan Blues Meets The Dengie Hundred" is unmissable.

The decision to assemble a boxed set titled Luc Ferrari, l’œuvre électronique [Luc Ferrari, Electronic Works], defining the word electronic in the widest sense possible, meant bringing together an essential part of the composer’s work: tape music without any classical instruments.
From Étude aux accidents (1958) to Arythmiques (2003), the 31 works in this compilation will help the listener to discover all the facets of his art based on “captured” sounds. He tried and tested all the different techniques of studio work: brilliantly elaborated electroacoustic works, radiophonic story-telling or Hörspiele, which he particularly relished, or other semi-improvised works.
This editorial choice is not a way of drawing a hierarchy between on the one hand so-called mixed music (with instruments), which he excelled at, and on the other hand the type of music published here, which only includes recorded sounds. On the contrary, what we aimed to do was to show the strong links he drew between natural sounds and the way he scored them. On this subject, Pierre Schaeffer often talked of the necessary balance between sounds and musicality. The power of recorded sounds alone (voices, landscapes, strange sounds, everyday scenes, etc.) without formal mastery is not enough to hold the listener’s attention for long.
From that point of view, each work of Ferrari’s is a discrete lesson in music. Ferrari was always very lucid when he claimed that a composer was a little like a “journalist” who, through his compositions, witnessed the state of the world while at the same time creating a work of art.
This is another aspect of this edition: as we listen and in filigree, half a century unfolds before us. A committed artist bears witness to technological progress, political awareness, reports and crucial encounters. More than an essential compilation, this boxed set reflects the personality of a diverse, inventive and extraordinarily musical man.

Daniel Teruggi / David Jisse, 2008

The Wire's critically acclaimed 1999 album is now available on LP and CD for the 21st year. His 1999 work, praised by The Wire, has been reissued on LP and CD for the 21st year. It is an ink painting-like sound work created with his own voice and found sound loops, weaving dry sounds. New mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.

The Wire's critically acclaimed 1999 album is now available on LP and CD for the 21st year. His 1999 work, praised by The Wire, has been reissued on LP and CD for the 21st year. It is an ink painting-like sound work created with his own voice and found sound loops, weaving dry sounds. New mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.

A reissue series of OCORA, a treasure trove of folk music by Radio France. It is a piece that fully enjoys the charm of the Chinese Pipa. Xiao, who can be called the Chinese bamboo flute, also participates in one song.

Debut album that serves as both an optimistic statement of intent and a final glance back at the painful places it explores

FRACTALS (1981), 21’26

Composed at the GMVL from December 1979 to September 1981, this work was commissioned by Fnac.

Fractals are mathematical oddities that, when crossing our path, turn the smallest island into an immensity to be explored.
FRACTALS is a series of short studies, all based on the same sound source. Seeking in the sound and its very logic a proposal upon which a construction is elaborated, each Fractal remains open and is a mere fragment of itself.
FRACTALS, music pieces sculpted in four dimensions, are vast microcosms that can only be inhabited by the mind. Each Fractal can be approached from several angles, far, near, etc. Some can be listened to at different speeds, forwards or backwards.
FRACTALS: amorphous and endless music pieces whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
FRACTALS are available in stereo (34'32), in 8 tracks for concerts, and as "spare parts" (separate mixing tracks open to new combinations).

Brain Fever (2017), 18'00

Wherever you may be in the forest of South India, the Brain Fever bird, together with the Seven Sisters, literally gets into your head. Whether it be early morning, daytime, or nighttime, amidst the stridulations of insects, its song utterly reflects Indian life: sonorous, noisy, insistent, dense, overcrowded, mobile, swarming, frantic, overheated, deprived of rest and sleep.
Brain Fever echoes sonic images caught in the Aurovillian forest, near Pondicherry, and rich fragments of improvisations made in Lyon on analog sound synthesis or feedback devices, the kind I used to do in the first GMVL studios.

Brain Fever is dedicated to Sofia Jannok, a musician and sàmi singer.

First emerging during the early years of the new millennium, over the last two decades, the Palermo born, Munich based composer, Valerio Tricoli, has forged a singular path within experimental sound practice, continuously rethinking the relationship between electroacoustic composition and narrative possibility. Say Goodbye to the Wind, his first LP with Shelter Press, stands among his most poetic and groundbreaking efforts to date. Across three intricate, deeply personal works of concrète music - dense with themes drawn from J.G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, theosophy, and the temporal blur of DMT - the composer blurs the boundaries between the tangible and abstract, weaving complex allegories for the self. Exploring auditory phenomena and the narrative potential of electronic and acoustic sound sources, Valerio Tricoli’s work - as it has appeared across a carefully executed body of solo recordings, as well as noteworthy collaborations with Stefano Pilia, Dean Roberts, Thomas Ankersmit, Hanno Leichtmann, and numerous others - rests at the shadowy juncture of internal and external worlds; a meeting place where the synthetic and organic give way to utterances of the existential, psychological, physical, and occult. Most commonly created on a Revox B77 reel-to-reel - manipulating, live sampling, and real-time editing / mixing of field and studio recordings - in Tricoli’s hands, estranged moments of sonorous ephemera transmogrify and intertwine as metaphorical and allegorical sums, far greater than their parts. Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s sixth full-length, gathers three works of musique concrete, thematically bound by notions of absence, loss, stillness, and release. The album’s title is taken from a story by J.G. Ballard, set in the desolation of a holiday resort that rests among a landscape of endless rolling dunes that are populated by ʻsound sculptures’ and monsters. The otherworldliness of this reference is further expanded by the depth exposed by the many possible implications and meanings implied by the combination of words; wind being a metaphor of the breath of life, and its absence meaning death. If the wind is a storm, what is the abstraction that remains in the absent void when it leaves? Historically, one of the primary pursuits of musique concrete is the transformation of everyday sonority - field recordings, found / incidental sound, etc. - into abstractions of profound meaning and weight. While this process unquestionable played a heavy hand in the composition of Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s approach to the idiom sets the stage for something entirely unique. Not only are the practices of tape music applied to field recordings, but to the sounds of piano, synthesizers, objects, and the composer’s voice, in addition to interventions by Ecka Mordecai on cello, Lucio Capece on soprano saxophone, and Ida Toninato on vocals. Further expanding to potential of meaning, are the references - literal and abstract - that guided each work into being. The album’s opener, Lo Spopolatore, draws its title from Samuel Beckett’s short story Le Dépeupleur, translated in English as The Lost Ones. Formed from dense but spare prose, the story describes a world consisting of a flattened cylinder, where each inhabitant is “searching for its lost one”. Devoid of plot, Beckett frequently repeats certain phrases and bits of information, setting up both conceptual and structural mirror’s Tricoli’s work, which weaves , from a multitude of sonorous fragments - field recordings, voice, and diverse instrumentation - a similar sense of density within its minimal expanses; clusters of textures forming as haunted ghosts, shifting between pure abstraction and conscious imprints of the sources from which they were drawn, before drifting into a space of placid, ambient calm. It is arguably the versatility of possible meanings, harnessed by Tricoli from his sound sources, through which the composer’s greatest talents come to light. Say Goodbye to the Wind’s second composition, Mimosa Hostilis - the name of a Brazilian plant which contains DMT - begins with same recording as its predecessor, made of his son’s breathing, a few months after his birth, in the Sicilian sea wind. In place of abstract images of place and the futility of being, Tricoli pursues something closer to a state of mind. An expanded or exploded consciousness that encounters the self, bleeding into and becoming a natural environment. “A jungle of contrasting noises and perceptions, of childhood memories that translate without coherence into adult desires.” Here Tricoli treats his sources with pointillistic precision, intermingling vocal and minimal instrumental gestures into a polyrhythmic patter that transforms commonplace sonority into aural echos of wind, rain, the shadowy species within. The album’s final work, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus, is a love song in a dystopian world. Its title is taken from the name of the first paper published by Otto von Guericke - a 17th century, German scientist, inventor, and politician - relating to his experiments with the Magdeburg hemispheres, a pair of large copper hemispheres, that were used to demonstrate the power of atmospheric pressure. These two mated objects are a metaphor for the work’s theme; two halves which become a sphere by the power of the void, the void that they contain, or the void that they embraced. While no less oriented around the abstract possibilities activated by field recordings, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus is the album’s most explicitly musical work. Warbling instrumental sounds and vocal interventions, bent by the hand tape manipulation, push toward heightened states of drama and tension, pushing and pulling against a vast pallet of textures drawn from the natural word and beyond. A masterstroke of contemporary musique concrète and auditory conceptualism, dense with metaphor, allegory and meaning, Shelter Press is thrilled to present Valerio Tricoli’s ‘Say Goodbye to the Wind’. Issued in a limited edition CD and Digital, mastered by Rashad Becker, with artwork by Mårten Lange.

This is the 30th anniversary CD reissue of an amazing and all-encompassing album by American composer and sound artist David Dunn, highlighting two extremes of communication: the supernatural, celestial names of angels; and the natural, subaquatic world of pond insects. EM Records is currently researching the rather unexplored domains of what can be called cyber-occult music, with an emphasis on the hidden, the enigmatic, the arcane; this release can be located at a distant edge of this area of interest, in its use of technology to give us access to previously unheard communicative phenomena. Dunn’s interest in the broad contexts of communication finds links between macro and micro, heavenly and earthly, music and environmental sound. Dunn sees these pieces as a human effort to respect and perhaps comprehend the non-human universe. The angels of the title are based on Renaissance attempts, by occultists John Dee and Edward Kelly, to communicate with angelic beings. The insects are aquatic creatures, recorded with hydrophones in North American and African ponds. This special edition of “Angels and Insects” features the insightful original English liner notes (PDF) and a Japanese translation, with new cover art.

This is one of the best long-lost treasure from the 80s – and it's one long composition filled with raw sounds from the jungle, natural objects and electronic treatment. The idea to evoke a deep journey in the Amazon rainforest has affected various musicians in the history of popular and experimental music, but comparing to other works this rare Amazonia 6891, released only on cassette in 1986, appears as totally original and extreme in his conception. Here, the interest in ethnomusicology of the expert Walter Maioli (mind of Aktuala and Futuro Antico projects) is linked to a precise and comprehensive ecological, botanical, ethological and ethnographic perspective. In fact, starting from the sound recording of the ethnographer Pit Piccinelli's collection of natural objects, the collected material for this work is re-elaborate in different times by the anthropologist and electronic pioneer Fred Gales and by Maioli him-self. The result of this multi-disciplinary approach its 'a long concrete poem of plant organisms, fields recordings of verses and calls of tropical animals futuristically mixed with electronic sounds, as already happened for the great experimental trials of Futuro Antico and Ariel Kalma's Osmose. Listen this imaginative collage look like to entering in a precious cabinet of antiquities and curiosity whose wonders of multi-coloured cellular fragments are shaped in the synthesis of a single universal sound matter. The merger between the wild jungle, the mysterious voices of the Indians and the oscillation of the electronic waves creates a spasmodic tension between amazing and heavenly moments that leaked also obscure paths and alien sequences. So, Amazonia 6891 it's a magic trip into the unknown wild, into abyss of creation of kaleidoscopic floras and faunas, simply a proposal for a synesthetic experience and multi-sensory.

In 2019, American conceptual artist John Duncan and Swedish noise/future techno duo Saturn and the Sun made a trip to Porto, Portugal for a concert weekend set up by the Materia Prima crew in town. During the gig at the Teatro Rivoli, the artists found that their music touched a lot of common ground. They spoke about recording together. Years later, that was done and the result is this futuristic, raw, rather primitive and psychedelic thing consisting of shortwave radio, no input mixing desk feedback, analogue synths and effects. Joachim Nordwall mixed it at the Gothenburg Sound Experiment and Philip Marshall gave it its iDEAL234 personality! Deep stuff, perfect for driving your car fast in a darkened tunnel with your lights off. JOHN DUNCAN has operated for decades at the cutting edge of performance, video, experimental music, installation, pirate radio and television. He has played a pivotal role in the development of performance art in Los Angeles, of experimental music as a member of LAFMS, of Japanese noise and pirate radio in Tokyo. SATURN AND THE SUN is Henrik Rylander and Joachim Nordwall and they have collaborated since 2005 creating ritual rock music as The Skull Defekts and circular electronic music and noise as Saturn and the Sun since 2015 and with their latest album, tastefully entitled ”The New Age Is Shit”, they have found their place as the link between Robert Hood, Pan Sonic and avant garde noise.

This is a masterpiece that throws a huge stone into the re-evaluation of the Italian underground scene! Recorded from 1986 to 1989 by Walter Maioli, a solitary artist / flute player from famous Italian groups such as Aktuala, Art Of Primitive Sound, Futuro Antico and Gruppo Afro Mediterraneo, and a music therapist named Agostino Nirodh Fortini. The unreleased album that had been released has been unearthed and released by Black Sweat, a famous label that digs into the depths of the Italian underground scene! This work was born after an endless quest for psychoacoustics and botany, and is a super masterpiece alongside the phantom masterpiece "AMAZONIA 6891" that was reissued in 2016. It is already an overwhelming masterpiece from the opening song where the solitary meditation drone sound that projects the appearance of vegetation in the natural world and its freshness as it is as a fill record material is amplified infinitely. A beauty that calms the mind and calms down in the latter half, which depicts the natural beauty of water and develops in a healing and ambient manner. The sound that can be heard cyclically is also an index for all people, pointing to what humans should be. Includes a 4-page insert. Limited to 500 sheets.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Recital, we present Autumn Fair. A group LP comprised of 44 guest players (full list below), curated and edited together by Sean McCann. Autumn Fair aptly embodies the feeling of Recital as a record label; the infusion of abstract sound art and sentimental beauty – performed by both younger and older generations of artists. Oren Ambarchi - guitar, Ed Atkins - paper shredder, Jason Bannon - family, Derek Baron - keyboard, Karla Borecky - upright piano, Andrew Chalk - guitar, crys cole - birds, Loren Connors - guitar, Philip Corner - grand piano, Maxwell August Croy - whistle, Sarah Davachi - electronics, Aaron Dilloway - SFX, Delphine Dora - voice, Giovanni Fontana - voice, Scott Foust - trumpet, Peter Friel - impression, Malcolm Green - camera, Judith Hamann - cello / voice, Mark Harwood - speech, Forest Juziuk - voice, Johnny Kay - tapping, Kajsa Lindgren - hydrophone, Rob Magill - guitar, Lia Mazzari - whip, Molly McCann - flute, Sean McCann - editing / voice, Nour Mobarak - voice sampler, Azikiwe Mohammed - interview, Charlie Morrow - MIDI piano, Kiera Mulhern - SFX, Zachary Paul - violin, claire rousay - SFX, Michel Samson - violin, Troy Schafer - strings, Eric Schmid - tone generator, Ben Schumacher - SFX, Tom James Scott - keyboard / SFX, Asha Sheshadri - reading, Patrick Shiroishi - winds, Sydney Spann - voice, Matthew Sullivan - instruments, Flora Sullivan-Kelly - percussion, Connor Tomaka - SFX / synth, Alex Twomey - upright piano. I wont go into too much detail on the album itself, but after many twists and turns, the album concludes with “Recital Program,” an intense track that manically collages two-second excerpts from every Recital album to date. I extend a sincere ‘thank you’ for all the incredible support for Recital over the past decade.

A collection of non-album singles, tracks recorded for compilations, and new material.

Track 1 For Tom Carter compilation on Deserted Village, 2013
Track 2 Strange Eden cassette comp on Independent Woman, 2019
Tracks 3 - 6 I Dischi Del Barone 7”, 2018
Track 7 Lullabies For Sleepless People In A Tired World cassette comp on Kashual Plastik, 2021
Tracks 8 - 10 unreleased
Tracks 11 - 14 Chemical Imbalance 7”, 2020
Track 15 lathe cut on Epic Sweep, 2011

All songs written by Maxine Funke. Front cover painting is a portrait of Mrs Thomas Pavletich (née Ann Connell) reference 4A15, collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. Used by kind permission of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. Layout by Studio Tape-Echo. Compiled by Disciples. This is DISC17.