MUSIC

Music From Memory is excited to introduce ‘Total Blue’, the Los Angeles-based trio of Nicky Benedek, Alex Talan, and Anthony Calonico. Despite collaborating for over a decade, ‘Total Blue’ represents a new chapter in their artistic journey together as a trio. Embracing chance, inviting the unknown, and guided by a spirit of sheer play and exploration, ‘Total Blue’ was driven by a desire to ‘touch the beyond’ in pursuit of an elusive vibe the three had been chasing for years. Alex, Nick, and Anthony envision ‘Total Blue’ as the all-encompassing full picture, a place where the real and the imaginary begin to blur; a destination reached not through escapism but by expanding one's perspective; a widened scope of vision where personality both shines and disintegrates. Across the album, their mission statement is expertly achieved with subtlety and delicate human touch; painting with a lush palette of digital synths, Akai EVI wind synthesizer, fretless bass, and guitar, the trio masterfully balance texture and color, evoking wide expansive vistas that stretch from Los Angeles right out to the furthest reaches of sky and sea. This is ‘Total Blue’ - a place of time and timelessness where echoes of history and tradition merge with rootless inhuman sonics. MFM071 will be released as 1xLP on vinyl and in digital format on July 19th 2024. Art and design by Michael Willis.

“Things fade into obscurity when a populace has no interest” - Meitei / 冥丁

Meitei considers himself an old soul, often preoccupied with the customs and rituals of the past. Recently Meitei lost his beloved 99-year-old grandmother, a woman who he considered to be one of the last remaining people to have experience and understanding of traditional Japanese ambience. His music and art is driven by a desire to cast light on an era and aesthetic that he believes is drifting out of the collective Japanese consciousness with each passing generation, what he calls "the lost Japanese mood". He chose to dedicate Komachi to his late Grandmother.

“I want to revive the soul of Japan that still sleeps in the darkness” - Meitei / 冥丁

Haunting and delicate, distant and timeless, Komachi is awash with white noise, complex field recordings and the hypnotic sounds of flowing water. Though confidently contemporary, like a bucolic J-Dilla, Komachi’s lineage can be traced back to the floating worlds of Ukiyo-e and Gagaku via the prism of 80s Japanese ambient pioneers, and 90s pastoral sample-based artists such as Susumu Yokota and Nobukazu Takemura.

Composed as individual sonic dioramas, each of the twelve tracks have been crafted to not only evoke feelings of nostalgia but to also explore the dichotomy of ancient and new in modern Japanese society. This pervasive narrative runs throughout, calling to mind the work of authors Yasunari Kawabata and Natsume Soseki, as well as the films of Yasujirō Ozu and Hayao Miyazaki, artists similarly fascinated by the reflective tranquillity that permeated traditional Japanese domestic life.

The limited vinyl release, produced in collaboration with label and distributor Séance Centre, includes a super limited special edition complete with beautiful twelve-page booklet featuring a number of prints in the Ukiyo-e style, a traditional style of woodblock print that dates back to 17th century Japan. The images were chosen by Meitei to showcase the old style Japanese sentiments that form a core inspiration to his musical output. 
 

〈Honest Jon's〉が60年代に南米エクアドル・キトで活動していた知られざるスイートスポット的レーベル〈Caife〉に残された魅力的なカタログを紐解いたシリーズから新たな発掘音源が登場！アフリカ先住民の伝統と豊かな音楽の伝統が融合した、エクアドル北端エスメラルダス州のユニークなアフリカ系エクアドル文化の素晴らしい記録を収めたアルバム『Juyungo』がアナログ・リリース。マリンバを中心に、コール&レスポンスのチャント、アンデスのギターのフィンガースタイル、パンパイプなどによる深い没入感に溢れる音楽作品を余すところなく収録。ゲートフォールド・スリーヴ仕様。洞察に満ちたメモと貴重写真が満載のブックレット(16ページ)が付属。

0on Zero-on, a label run by the percussion group "Kodo 鼓童" which has its roots on Sado Island, has released a cassette recording of a solo performance by percussionist Yuta Sumiyoshi, a member of the "Kodo" group. 

KENTATAKU YUTATAKU’s 3rd album “Zero On” is the eponymous first release on Kodo’s new label 0on.
Featuring four improvisational tracks, ranging from large ensemble works without musical instruments to vast sound collages, KENTATAKU YUTATAKU’s latest work is packed full of heart, soul, and fresh new sound.
Limited release of 200 cassettes + download code. 

Recorded in a live setting and played with instruments conserved in the collections of the MEG Museum, Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter is Midori Takada’s very own rendition of "Nhemamusasa", a traditional work emblematic of the musical repertoire for mbira of the Shona of Zimbabwe, well known worldwide, thanks notably to its version by Paul F. Berliner included on the famed 1973 album The Soul of Mbira.

The choice of this title by Midori Takada evokes the links between traditional African and contemporary music which are the foundation of this work, and it also translates the resolutely multicultural vision of the artist.

Midori Takada explains: "African music is remarkable for its polyrhythms. Not only are there simultaneously several rhythmic motifs, sometimes as many as ten, but furthermore it may be that the part played by each musician has its own starting point and its own pace, all combining to form a cycle. All the cycles progress at the same time according to a single metrical structure which functions as a reference point, but which is not played by any one person from beginning to end. The structure emerges out of the multi-level parts, all different. With the Shona, the musical system is based on the polymelody: one performs simultaneously several melodic lines which are superimposed, each having its own rhythmic organization. It is truly captivating. In Western classical music, one four-beat rhythm induces some precise temporal framework and regular reference points, which come on the strong beats 1 and 3. But in the logic of the Shona musical system, and in other African music, the melody can begin in the very middle of the cycle and be continued up to some other place in an autonomous manner, as if it had its own personality. It’s very rich."

The album comes with in-depth liner notes that include an interview with Midori Takada, a point of view by Zimbabwean scholar, musician and activist Forward Mazuruse, and background information on the project by Isabel Garcia Gomez and Madeleine Leclair from MEG Museum.

The sleeve features an artwork by celebrated Zimbabwean painter Portia Zvavahera.

Part of the budget for the album was donated to Forward Mazuruse’s Music For Development Foundation whose aim is to identify, nurture, and record young but underprivileged musicians in Zimbabwe.

Ultimo Tango (Milan) & Glossy Mistakes (Madrid) are thrilled to announce the release of "Tribal Organic: Deep Dive into European Percussions 79-90", a compilation of otherworldly percussion-driven tracks, digging deep into this unknown realm of a past era.

Compiled by Luca Fiore and Glossy Mario, the album takes listeners on a rhythmic journey through the diverse sounds of Europe from 1979 to 1990. This collaboration between two like-minded labels highlights forgotten recordings from across Europe, including works by artists from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands...

Opening with the ethereal “Rainforest” by British female duo Ova, this collection weaves together nine tracks from artists who were deeply influenced by global percussion traditions. With hints of jazz, new age, gamelan, and West African rhythms, these tracks feature instruments like congas, tablas, and shekeres, and reflect a shared fascination with the organic beat of the drum.

From the industrial-meets-African grooves of Jean-Michel Bertrand’s “Engines”, to the hypnotic accordion and tribal chants of Cuco Pérez’s “Calabó Bambú”, the compilation offers a cross-cultural listening experience that is both meditative and invigorating. Despite creating these works in isolation during the last years of the Cold War, each artist was inspired by a borderless world of sound. The compilation pays homage to these nomadic musicians who respected the traditions they drew from, while contributing their own experimental takes on percussion-led music.
In Tribal Organic, Glossy Mario and Luca Fiore have unearthed a treasure trove of rhythm-driven tracks that blur the lines between nations, genres, and cultures. This compilation offers more than just music; it’s a listening experience that is both spiritual and grounded—bold, exploratory, and deeply rooted in the beat of the Earth. <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3608275395/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://glossymistakes.bandcamp.com/album/tribal-organic-deep-dive-into-european-percussions-79-90">Tribal Organic: Deep Dive into European Percussions 79-90 by GLOSSY MISTAKES</a></iframe>

Absolutely essential. Deluxe 2LP edition of this impeccable album from 1988. The spot glossed Gatefold jacket features artwork including archival photos & drawings from Woo’s archives as well as liner notes by Clive Ives (one half of the band). Issued for the first time in its entirety on vinyl, spread over two LPs, and remastered from newly discovered hi-quality DAT sources, we’re thrilled to present the definitive version of Woo’s most fully-formed album. A cosmic testament to the healing power of love, utilizing vocoded clarinets, pastoral guitars, homespun folk lullabies, and lilting electronics, coalescing into a an hour plus long journey through their otherworldly soundscapes. A prime entry point to Woo’s sound, containing some of their most beloved songs, such as ‘Make Me Tea,’ ‘It’s Love,’ ‘Hopi’ and many others, and also including a never-before heard bonus track – the vocal version of ‘It’s Love.’ Into The Heart Of Love was originally self-released on cassette in 1988, with a wider cassette release in 1990. Compiled from home recordings from the preceding years, and released during a transitional point for the band, the Ives brothers see this album as their most complete work, offering space to the listener to stretch out and immerse themselves into the warmth of their sound. Woo is the uncategorizable project of Clive and Mark Ives from Brighton, UK. Since the 1970s, the duo have been recording a plethora of eclectic sounds, most falling under the blanket genre of new age, but spiraling out toward notions of ambient sounds, jazz, and other spiritual takes on modern music. They received some acclaim for their early releases, including 1982's Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong and 1989's It's Cosy Inside, but their work began to receive renewed appreciation during the 2010s, when labels such as Drag City and Palto Flats reissued the band's albums. The brothers remained active all the while, digitally self-issuing material.

“Live at Sound City” is an instrumental collaboration between bassist Pino Palladino, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/producer Blake Mills, and LA-based saxophonist Sam Gendel. Recorded in one day at the legendary Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, the EP presents new versions of compositions from Palladino & Mills’ Grammy-nominated 2021 album “Notes with Attachments” in an intimate chamber trio setting. Across four tracks, the accomplished trio explores common musical vocabularies, then goes about the work of defamiliarizing them in search of something new, blending the sounds of West African and Cuban music, jazz, R&B, English folk, pop, and beyond. Pino Palladino is a Grammy Award winning songwriter, producer and bassist who helped create the rhythm-section sound of D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Black Messiah, and over a four-decade career has worked with artists including Keith Richards, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Nine Inch Nails, Questlove, John Mayer, Paul Simon, Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock and Adele. Blake Mills is a two-time Grammy Awards Producer of the Year nominee. He has released four solo albums and produced and recorded with artists such as Alabama Shakes, Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, John Legend, Perfume Genius, Jim James, Moses Sumney, Laura Marling, Phoebe Bridgers, Cass McCombs, The Killers, Sara Bareilles, Weyes Blood and Randy Newman. His most recent album Mutable Set, released last year, was praised by Pitchfork as “a hushed collection that floats through the subconscious like a tender dream,” and earned their Best New Music title. Sam Gendel is a musician living in Los Angeles, CA. He is most known for his work with the saxophone, though he is proficient on multiple instruments. His work is diverse and includes collaborations with a wide range of artists including Ry Cooder, Laurie Anderson, Mach-Hommy, Sam Amidon, Perfume Genius, Moses Sumney, Knower, Vampire Weekend, and inc. no world.

Joshua Abrams’ Chicago-based avant-garde collective Natural Information Society, also known for their collaboration with Bitchin Bajas, return with a long-awaited repress of their 2024 masterpiece Since Time Is Gravity on eremite records. Anchored by the deep pulse of the guimbri and the sustained tones of the harmonium, the music interweaves heavy rhythmic foundations with the spiritual cry of the saxophone, uniting minimalism and spiritual jazz. The expanded ensemble surges in spirals or drifts in hushed stillness, creating an immersive experience that seems to transform time itself. Rooted in the traditions of Chicago jazz, infused with the trance-like mysticism of North African folk, and sharpened by a contemporary minimalist sensibility, this album stands as a pinnacle of truly living music.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Alvin Curran’s classic Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri, originally issued in 1978 on Ananda, the cooperative label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi. Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri (Light Flowers Dark Flowers) – its title inspired by an intersection in Milan – is the second in the series of four solo recordings Alvin Curran issued in the 1970s and early 1980s, preceded by Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden (1975), followed by The Works (1980) and Canti Illuminati (1982).

Each of these solo works combines field recordings with performances on synthesiser, various acoustic instruments, and voice, arranged in languorously paced, dreamy sequences. Far from the bracing pointillism of much musique concrete, the elements encountered on the meandering course followed by Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri – whether a frenetic piano improvisation, dense layers of Serge synthesiser and ocarina, or a monologue from Frederic Rzewski’s five-year old son, Alexis – often occupy the foreground of our attention for minutes at a time. As Curran explains, his approach is like that of a filmmaker in the editing process, working with “whole blocks of recorded time”.   The purring of a cat, toy piano, a child counting, plaintive synthesiser tones, the cacophony of exotic birds at the London Zoo – each disappears into the next, until, on the LP’s second side, a solo piano performance takes centre stage, moving unexpectedly from percussive minimalist permutations to a halting rendition of Georgia on My Mind. A subtle yet stunning work that more than forty years on still seems charged with possibility, Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri arrives in a loving reproduction of the original sleeve, featuring Edith Schloss’ beautiful cover painting, remastered audio and with new liner notes by Alvin Curran and Francis Plagne.

This album is a solo album by SINKICHI, the label owner of MATSUNOMI TO SENSO REC. It is a collection of field recordings made during the lockdown of the COVID19, live to 2 track recordings of improvised performances with hardware equipment, and modular synthesizer performances on the holy mountains and spiritual rivers. Please enjoy. SINKICHI A pioneer ambient DJ in Japan who has been playing at many rave parties since the early 90's. He has participated in many bands such as SOFT, AOA, Based on kyoto, and Churashima Navigator.He has also worked as a mastering engineer on vinyl mastering for 17853 Records and Crosspoint label.

Having led the legendary avant-garde ensemble Ché-SHIZU and performed under Takehisa Kosugi with East Bionic Symphonia, Chie Mukai has become a defining figure of Japanese improvisational music. Originally released on cassette in 1989 via Steeple & Globe and reissued the following year on CD by P.S.F. Records, her solo masterpiece Kokyo Solo Improvisation now sees a long-awaited cassette reissue from Beijing’s UFO Creations. The profound resonance of her kokyū (erhu), exhausted and spectral vocalizations, and the use of metal fragments and cymbals create a performance that fuses Chinese musical traditions, rustic incantations, Eastern spirituality, and surrealist visions into a twisted sonic swell. A singular form of otherworldly music where the ferocity of improvisation collides with moments of prayer-like stillness. Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies.

Shomyo of Koya-san & Midori Takada YOU WHO ARE LEAVING TO NIRVANA WRWTFWW Records and MEG Museum (Geneva) are ecstatic to announce a new full length album by celebrated Japanese percussionist Midori Takada (Through The Looking Glass), in collaboration with Buddhist monks belonging to the Samgha group of the Shingon school of Koya-san, led by Reverend Syuukoh Ikawa. You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana is available on half speed mastered vinyl LP, housed in a 350gsm sleeve, with OBI, and liner notes, as well as on digipack CD. Recorded at The Premises Studio (London) and in Tokyo in 2019,You Who are Leaving to Nirvana is a majestic work combining a suite of six Buddhist liturgical chants and a musical creation by Midori Takada. The Buddhist chants come from three types of repertoires: shomyo ("Teisan", "Unga-Bai", "Sange", "Taiyo"), but also goeika ("Kannon-Daiji") and mantra ("Hannya-Singyo"). After supervising the recording of the Buddhist chants, Midori Takada added her own compositions, with subtle layers of percussion and the melodies of her beloved marimba, giving full life to the sacred texts. Reverend Syuukoh Ikawa explains: "Shomyo is a form of declamation of sacred esoteric texts, inherited over many generations. The power of words goes far beyond their mere pronunciation. I think there is something that words alone cannot really convey. If I recite prayers in a musical way, the feeling transmitted will be even stronger than if I say it normally, in everyday language. I think that the musicality of a work carries a hidden power that cannot be expressed in words alone. The setting of the music has an additional power for you and for those around you who listen to it. The words of a song are not just words set to music. They carry an additional hidden power that cannot be expressed in any other way. Listening to Midori Takada's musical performance, the words truly seem to come alive." Original recordings of the Buddhist chants are held in the International Archives of Folk Music (IAFM) at the MEG Museum in Geneva. The album sleeve features an artwork by famed Japanese sculptor Katsura Funakoshi selected by Midori Takada. You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana is released in conjunction with Midori Takada's Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter, also available on LP and CD on WRWTFWW Records. Buddhist Chants / Environmental / Ambient / Percussion

Praised by The Wire as “mystical, expansive and serene.” Oren Ambarchi—renowned Australian experimentalist, head of the influential imprint Black Truffle, and long-time collaborator with Jim O’Rourke, Keith Rowe, and Keiji Haino—joins forces with Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten, known for releases on Edition Wandelweiser, Sofa, and Meenna, for this striking 2025 collaboration. Released on the adventurous Belgian label VIERNULVIER (home to Claire Rousay, Hieroglyphic Being, and Miaux), the album offers a newly composed score to Eduard Grečner’s 1967 Slovak cult film Dragon’s Return. Recorded live at the Videodroom Festival during Film Fest Ghent in 2024, where the score was premiered alongside the screening, the performance captures a singular moment of improvisation between sound and image. Interweaving 12-string guitar, voice, flutes, percussion, and shells, Ambarchi and Rasten conjure a soundworld at once folkloric and contemplative, suffused with the aura of ritual prayer. The result is a breathtaking evocation of a forgotten myth reborn in the present.

Available on vinyl for the very first time: “The Trance Of Seven Colors” by master Gnawa musician MALEEM MAHMOUD GHANIA and free jazz legend PHAROAH SANDERS. Produced by BILL LASWELL and according to The Attic “one of the most important albums of Gnawa trance music released in the ‘90s”. 

Originally released in 1994 on BILL LASWELL’s AXIOM imprint, “The Trance Of Seven Colors” is the meeting of two true musical masters: MALEEM MAHMOUD GHANIA (1951 – 2015), son of the master of Gnawa music MALEEM BOUBKER GHANIA and the famous clairvoyant and "moqaddema" A'ISHA QABRAL, and a master of the traditional Gnawa style in his own right. MAHMOUD learned this craft as a youth along with his brothers, walking from village to village, performing ceremonies with his father BOUBKER and was one of the few masters (Maleem) who continued to practice the Gnawa tradition strictly for healing (the central ritual of the Gnawa is the trance music ceremony – with the purpose of healing or purification of the participants). With 30 cassette releases of music from the Gnawa repertoire with his own ensemble and performances at every major festival in Morocco, including performing for the King in various contexts, MAHMOUD GHANIA was also one of Morocco's most prominent professional musicians. 
In 1994, BILL LASWELL and PHAROAH SANDERS went to Mocrocco, equipped with just some mobile recording devices, to record GHANIA and a large ensemble of musicians (to a good part family members) in a very intimate set up at a private house with the legendary free jazz musician contributing his distinctive tenor saxophone sounds that gained him highest praise as a truely spiritual soul right from the days of playing with JOHN COLTRANE and his wife ALICE and on seminal solo albums like „Karma“. 
The aptly titled „The Trance of Seven Colors“ ranks among the best Gnawa recordings ever released , made it onto the list of “10 incredible percussive albums from around the world” by Thevinylfactory.com and is 25 years after its original CD release on finally available on vinyl! 

This is a milestone in Japanese psychedelic folk music, originally released CD only. Based on field recordings made in India and Karuizawa, the album blends sitar, tambura, various ethnic instruments, and electronic processing to create a dreamy, floating atmosphere. The sound is a masterpiece of acoustic beauty, coexisting nostalgia and exoticism, while wearing a serene and mysterious psychedelia reminiscent of Tsuki No Wa and Sakana.

Boards of Canada's masterpiece single. released in 2000.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Spilla, the second album from Nantes-based Ensemble Nist-Nah, 48 minutes of music for Gamelan, drum kits, wood and metal percussion instruments, and plucked strings that will surely count as one of the most electrifying records you hear this year. Founded by the Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie in 2019, continuing the explorations begun in solo form on Nist-Nah (Black Truffle, 2020), the ensemble (eight or nine core members with occasional guests) has been consistently active in the half-decade since: composing, rehearsing, recording and touring Europe (with a mass of equipment in tow) to great acclaim. Spilla tracks the continuing evolution of the project since the recording of their first album, Elders (Black Truffle, 2022). The two sides of this record document two different iterations of the group, and the members' compositional input has increased: each side contains one piece by a member other than Guthrie. It has become clearer than ever that Ensemble Nist-Nah is not an attempt at a European Gamelan ensemble but rather a hybrid percussion ensemble that uses instruments from a Javanese Gamelan alongside other percussion to perform original music informed by a variety of South East Asian music but also by everything from free jazz to contemporary hip-hop: while Nist-Nah and Elders both featured traditional Javanese pieces, on Spilla the only tune not generated by a member of the group is by Guthrie’s long-time musical hero and occasional collaborator Roscoe Mitchell.The two short pieces that open the record could almost be the two sides of a wild 7” selected to show off what the Ensemble can do. On opener ‘Gerak Maju’, intricately skittering open-snare patterns bounce over clanging metal, chiming bell-like tones and deep gong hits, adapting the rhythm-register connections heard in traditional Gamelan musics—where the lowest pitched sounds are heard least frequently—to a cut-up breakbeat straight off Feed Me Weird Things. ‘Strollabout’ then moves into an entirely different realm of meditative repeating patterns, performed entirely on Chinese, Javanese and Vietnamese gongs. The remaining seven pieces, ranging from three to twelve minutes, offer up a wealth of different percussive, compositional and arrangement possibilities. On ‘Ghostly Klang’, two drumkits mirror each other’s moves, bouncing hats and snares across the stereo field in a way that recalls On the Corner and the jittering hi hat patterns of trap, while slow moving melodies on the tuned instruments add a sense of majesty contrasted by scurrying details in resonant wood. The epic closing track presents a take on Roscoe Mitchell’s ‘Uncle’, performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago on their classic Urban Bushmen live album. Where the Art Ensemble used Mitchell’s dirge-like melody as a jumping off point for virtuosic improvisational flights, Ensemble Nist-Nah rethink the piece as a near-static dialogue between the monumental, slow-moving sequence of unison tuned percussion notes and a textural cloud that grows in richness and intensity from whispering cymbal rolls into a mass of gong overtones and bowed metal.Beautifully recorded and mixed, Spilla arrives in a sleeve decorated with core member Charles Dubois’ drawings of cymbals and gongs. Against the backdrop of a wider musical landscape dominated by over-produced electronic slop and bland harmonic wallpaper, Ensemble Nist-Nah stands out as a reminder, vital and unpretentious, of the joys and possibilities of human beings playing instruments together.

Meitei’s 2020 album 'Kofū' was the bold bookend to an expedition, where sounds were first navigated and then subverted in 2018’s 'Kwaidan' and 2019’s 'Komachi'.

All three albums were Meitei’s attempt at immersive storytelling, reimagining moments of Japanese history he felt were being washed away – not least by the unforgiving sands of time – through wistful compositions that stretched across ambient music, hauntology, and musique concrete.

When it came to finalizing 'Kofū', Meitei found he was left with over 60 fully realized tracks, bursting with ideas that fired in divergent, curious directions. Meitei was content with the 13 tracks he had selected. But when it came time to begin his next album, he found that it had been sitting in front of him all along. He realized his work wasn’t over yet.

Meitei sounds right at home celebrating the past he first reimagined in his previous work. The merriment is palpable in its first two tracks of 'Kofū II' – a loop of cheery whistling amidst the clanking of wood leads into strings, cricket sounds and flutes, all united in bustling harmony.

'Happyaku-yachō' is where it comes into focus. Pitch-shifted vocal samples roam around in the crowded sonic field. “My image of this music is that it expresses the vibrant mood of Edo's merchant culture,” says Meitei, “where old Japanese dwellings were densely packed together in a vast expanse of land.” The affair becomes bittersweet as the track leads into the desolate 'Kaworu', a compositional piece lifted from his 'Komachi' sessions – a final requiem to his late grandmother.

The album is bursting with spectral vignettes of wandering samurais, red lanterns, ninjas, puppet theatres, poets, even a vengeful assassin ('Shurayuki hime', known to Western audiences as ‘Lady Snowblood’).

'Saryō' is as elegant and refined as you would expect. It induces stillness in its repetition, with each synth note a brushstroke. It was inspired by a Sengoku-era tea house he once visited, designed by national icon Sen no Rikyū. Meitei tied it to the reaction he felt while poring over the ink paintings in his grandmother’s house. “The decayed earthen walls and faded tatami mats gave me an emotional impression,” he says. “And the cosmic flow of time drifting in the small room. I decided to put my impression of this into music.”

In 'Akira Kurosawa', an appropriately thunderous track, Meitei finds deep resonance in his vast filmography, which drew equally from Japan’s rich heritage and troubled circumstances post-WWII.

'Kofū II' is not a leftovers album, nor is it a straightforward companion piece. In this album, Meitei has his biggest reckoning with the Japanese identity yet. Over the years, he has attempted to peel back what he believes has defined Japan and its people. After seeking answers with three full-length albums, his fourth poses more questions.

If his first three albums inspired a sense of longing – or, perhaps inevitably, fed an irreparable nostalgia doomed to history – 'Kofū II' compels us to reassess our relationship with the past. By constantly looking back, are we ever afforded a clearer present? After capturing the “lost Japanese mood”, where does that leave its country in the modern world? Meitei offers no immediate answers with 'Kofū II'. It forces you to sit with its disparate moods, to meditate amidst the textured fragments.

'Kofū II' will be released on 180g LP, CD and digital format on December 10, 2021 (LP expected to land January 28, 2022) via KITCHEN. LABEL. Both LP and CD format are presented in a debossed sleeve with obi strip and include a 16-page insert with words in Japanese and English from Meitei, printed on premium paper stock with design by KITCHEN. LABEL founder Ricks Ang, and is mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama in Tokyo, Japan. 

In November 2022 world-renowned kora player Ballaké Sissoko and acclaimed guitarist Derek Gripper spend just three hours recording a wordless album together. The kora and guitar in the hands of masters - a session where New Ancient Strings meets One Night On Earth. “Musically we tested each other,” says Sissoko, explaining that the most magical aspect of their initial encounter was the spontaneity of the whole thing. “We have the mastery of our instruments, the technique and a good ear. Derek is very curious, that’s very important.” “He’s just such a good listener,” says Gripper about Sissoko. “It’s not what he plays, it’s how he plays it. He’s an amazing interpreter, the prime master of timbre.” “It’s a remarkable album,” says Lucy Duran, professor of Music at SOAS. “It’s the furthest away that Ballaké has gone from his own idiom and it’s brilliant – not world music, it’s in a totally different realm, entering new territory”

 

FJLP-05 continues with Forest Jams recent trend of Japanese re-issues from the 90’s. This one is E.S. Island’s “Southwind from Hachijo” a deep ambient exploration that is more tribal and spiritual than prior E.S. Island releases. This was recorded on Hachijo Island featuring several traditional instruments with the bulk of the music being played by Eisuke Takahashi (R.I.P.) and Nene Sanae. Limited copies.

Occasionally, you find music outside the commercial mainstream, outside of everything – the music of visionaries, eccentrics, inventors, loners, the keepers of secrets, the path-finders. Moondog, Daphne Oram, Harry Partch are from this mould. And so too is Lori Vambe. New on Strut, the first ever reissue of Vambe’s privately pressed original albums from 1982, Drumland Dreamland and Drumgita Solo. A self-taught drummer, inventor, and sonic experimentalist, Lori Vambe is a unique figure in British music. Creator of his own instrument, the drumgita (pronounced ‘drum-guitar’) or string-drum, Vambe intended to create a kind of music that had never been made in order to pursue access to the fourth dimension. Vambe was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and his father, Lawrence Vambe, was a noted Zimbabwean journalist and author. Moving to London in 1959, Vambe immersed himself in the Brixton squat movement of the early 1970s, teaching himself to drum and creating a short-lived performance group, The Healing Drums of Brixton (Vambe, the sculptor Alexander Sokolov and outsider musician Michael O’Shea). Vambe later had a dream-vision involving a feeling of ecstasy while playing an unknown instrument that extended from his own umbilical cord; the instrument would manifest itself as the drumgita. In 1982, he privately produced a pair of home recordings, the diptych set Drumgita Solo and Drumland Dreamland, releasing them on his own label Drumony. On these records, he rejected any commercial aesthetic and employed tape effects, temporal shifts, reversed sound and overdubbing to investigate space-time and access the fourth dimension. Combining layered drums with the rhythmic throb of the drumgita and, on Drumland Dreamland, an improvised piano performance by Brazilian concert pianist Rafael Dos Santos, the albums are both hypnotic and perturbing. Both albums were cut at Portland Studios by Chas Chandler and stand as a concealed monument of Black British experimental music. 500 copies of each record were originally pressed, and both were released together. The albums were never performed live. For this first ever reissue of Drumland Drumland and Drumgita Solo, Strut presents the two albums in their original artwork, housed in a deluxe slipcase including an additional 8-page 12”-sized booklet featuring unseen photos, liner notes and an interview with Lori Vambe by The Wire magazine writer Francis Gooding. Both albums are fully remastered by The Carvery.

Marewrew (pronounced: Ma-leoo-leoo) is a female vocal group that sings traditional Ainu songs. The music of the long-suppressed people from northern Japan has been a particular focus of the Pingipung output in recent years. Following various re-releases by Umeko Ando, the late grande dame of traditional Ainu music, the spotlight is now on the a cappella music of Marewrew, which by the way means ‘butterfly’ in Ainu. Attentive listeners will recognise the voices, as some of the band have already performed as backing singers on recordings by Umeko Ando. Their a cappella versions of traditional Ainu music shed a whole new light on the fascinating songs that have been passed down through generations exclusively through song. 'Ukouk' means 'round singing', which refers to the form in which Marewrew perform and record. Many of the songs are set as tightly interwoven canons: one starts, the others join in, but slightly out of phase: Almost like dub echoes, except that they are sung and not created in post-production. The short songs sometimes unfold into a wondrous trance ('Sikata Kuykuy', 'Honkaya') that seems to spin round and round - if singing can actually dance, then this is how. Nature sounds and woodpeckers can be heard ('Hawsa’), and there is a funny miniature in which the ladies imitate birdsong ('Takuro'). Things get hypnotic with an evocative song about stranded whales ('Hunpe Yan Na’) or an ode to the Orca as ‘Little Sea God’ (‘Pon Repun Kamuy’). The album culminates in unexpected pop ('Yaykatekara') or cumbia moments ('Kanerenren') with a band line-up including percussions and Oki Kano on the famous Tonkori harp. Marewrew are Rekpo, Hisae and Mayunkiki. Rim-Rim was a member of the group until 2022. Oki Kano is responsible for recording and production. Mayunkiki reflects on the ambivalence of performing traditional music as a contemporary band: "When we first started performing, we all thought we had to perform in an Ainu way. But over time we have become more and more open to new ways of singing. I think if our way of singing is seen as the only, correct way of our tradition, then it won't spread, it's not alive. We like it when it's traditional, but it changes, just like our voices have changed over time.” (Quote from the film 'Marewrew's Voice' by Eiko Soga (2021)) 'Ukouk' is a selection of Marewrew's work from the last 13 years, compiled from CD releases by Pingipung's Andi Otto. Oki Kano has contributed unreleased material and added new versions of the songs which had only been released in Japan. The album has been remastered by Kassian Troyer and is now available on LP for the first time.

"Drag City presents the first official reissue of Dorothy Carter's 1976 album debut, her folk-music exegesis, Troubadour. In her lifetime, Dorothy, a self-made traveling musician and folklorist, brought forth masterful evocations on hammered dulcimer and psaltery from a myriad of times and places. Her music was played, produced and sold outside of that era's mainstream music distribution. Troubadour reissue producer Eric Demby can look back to a childhood spent off the grid: the early '70s in rural Maine, and later on, in Boston -- wherever his freewheeling father brought the family, at one point or another, there too was Dorothy, as she lived and breathed, playing her hammered dulcimer. The early '70s found everyone living up on the farm up in rural Maine; it was here that Rutman, Constance, Dorothy and some others formed Central Maine Power Company, a troupe of almost feral improvisers playing on a combination of self-made and found instruments, with live video feedback to boot. In 1976, Dorothy had been playing music for decades, but had yet to record any of it. That year, she went to Cambridge's Studio B with Rutman and friend Steve Baer at the console. Constance and Sally Hilmer accompanied her. The performances captured there were released later that year as Troubadour. In addition to hammered dulcimer and psaltery, Dorothy played the flute and sang. She chose songs from all over: Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, with a few of her own songs for good measure. They all flow together effortlessly under Dorothy and friends' hands in a syncretic space that we can identify today as a garden of world musics -- a highly energized, alternately meditative and proselytic recital whose vitality has only burgeoned in the decades since it appeared. As it should be: the music of Dorothy Carter is akin to a portal, linking her with the eternal. This edition of Troubadour reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments, as well as notes from Eric Demby exploring the era -- his childhood -- from a vantage point of some 50 years. This reissue is a long-held family dream come true, and it is dedicated in loving memory to Bob Rutman, Constance Demby, David Demby and Dorothy Carter."