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Martin Denny - Quiet Village (LP)
Martin Denny - Quiet Village (LP)Jackpot Records
¥4,397
This is an analog reissue of the 1956 album "Exotica" by Martin Denny, the undisputed king of exotic fantasy music! Once you drop the needle, you're transported to another world... A monumental album that launched Denny's 30-year career and opened up a whole new genre of exotica music! As the tropical mood from the iconic artwork suggests, the album showcases the full range of fantastic space-age sounds that reek of exoticism and imaginary charm.
Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang - Dixie Fever (LP)
Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang - Dixie Fever (LP)Wewantsounds
¥4,597
Third reissue in our Makoto Kubota reissue program with the release of "Dixie Fever" recorded in Hawaii in 1976 and co-produced by Haruomi Hosono. Like its predecessors, 'Sunset Gang' and 'Hawaii Champroo', 'Dixie Fever' continues to explore American and Island music through a Japanese prism with a skilful mix of blues, swamp funk and America adding an exotic edge to the whole. It is the first time the album is released outside of Japan and the LP features remastered audio by Makoto Kubota himself.
Makoto Kubota & Sunset Gang - Sunset Gang (LP)
Makoto Kubota & Sunset Gang - Sunset Gang (LP)Wewantsounds
¥4,597
Wewantsounds' Makoto Kubota retrospective continues with the reissue of "Sunset Gang" recorded in 1973 for Showboat. The album, co-produced by Kinji Yoshino (Haruomi Hosono, Akiko Yano, Sachiko Kanenobu) and featuring Haruomi Hosono, Minako Yoshida and Taeko Ohnuki, was released as Kubota had just recorded his classic first solo album, 'Machibouke'. It marks the start of the group's unique sound mixing Japanese music with R&B, Blues and New Orleans influences, a sound that would have a lasting impression on the Japanese music scene. This is the first time the album is released outside of Japan, remastered by Makoto Kubota himself
Les Halles - Invisible Cities (CS+DL)Les Halles - Invisible Cities (CS+DL)
Les Halles - Invisible Cities (CS+DL)Constellation Tatsu
¥1,348
The 2014 debut solo collection by French wind-walker Baptiste Martin aka Les Halles remains a masterpiece of soft light and subdued yearning, woven from grainy panpipe samples, tape hiss, and spectral delay. Recorded late at night in a tiny room in Montpellier, Invisible Cities quivers like a candle by the sea, its fragile illumination flickering against an expanse of sky, silence, and sorrow. The pieces feel both ancient and immediate, glimpsing currents behind the veil, at the threshold of presence and absence. The track titles evoke similarly transient states of echo, memory, and negative mirrors. This is music of solitude and devotion, of empty streets and unremembered dreams, fleetingly captured via the eternal alchemy of FX pedals and a 4-track. (Britt Brown) All tracks recorded by Baptiste Martin, in Montpellier (France), in late 2013. This collection of tracks is named after Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
Piero Umiliani - Polinesia (LP)
Piero Umiliani - Polinesia (LP)DIALOGO
¥4,044
Belonging to a series of geographical-themed albums that draw upon numerous indigenous traditions from across the globe, like the previous releases in Dialogo’s Piero Umiliani Legacy Series - Continente Nero and Africa - Polinesia, issued by Piero Umiliani’s own Omicron imprint in 1975, highlights the composer’s travels and his striking ability to mirror these physical movements through sound, activating a seemingly unstoppable realm of creative freedom and exploration for composer and musician alike. Rooted in a foundation of rich percussion, soft tribalism, and exotic suggestion, Polinesia renders an abstract mirage of white beaches kissed by the ocean via its colorful cocktail of sonority, dancing blissfully across the album’s 15 songs, and covering a startlingly amount of creative territory as it goes. From the loungy kitsch of its opening tracks, or the overwhelmingly beautiful vocal melodies of Sotto le Palme, to the percussive minimalism of Canoe, Erbe Magiche, Danza Magica - each calling to mind Moondog at his best, with a bit of Midori Takada thrown in - and the dense ambiences of Pellegrinaggio, the composer takes us deep into an imagined realm, moving freely across its geographies and drenching the ears in its sounds. Beautiful and striking from the first turn to the last, Umiliani’s Polinesia fleshes out the world we began to explore with Dialogo’s reissues of Continente Nero and Africa, adding breezy sounds to the mix and plenty of dynamism across its length. Never before reissued on any format, with original copies commanding top dollar on the secondary market, Dialogo’s fully authorised vinyl reissue of Polinesia is a stunning thing to behold. Also available on CD, the album was remastered from the original analogue master tapes.
Hoavi - Posle Vsego (CS+DL)Hoavi - Posle Vsego (CS+DL)
Hoavi - Posle Vsego (CS+DL)Quiet Time
¥1,948
Hoavi channels the solitude of nature in winter direct from his native city of St Petersburg, Russia on his 11 part album “Posle Vsego” - Quiet Time’s first release of the year. This collection of works from 2013 to 2020 departs from his recent work, forgoing dubby jungle breaks for more abstract ambience comprised of layered analog synths and sample recordings. Hoavi’s moody ambient has a warm retro feel to it, but is decidedly unique and contemporary in its composition and mood. Like a walk through a forest in winter, it feels lonely and foreboding, yet simultaneously serene and full of beauty.
Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing (LP)
Robert Ashley - Automatic Writing (LP)Lovely Music
¥3,578

Lovely Music present a reissue of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing, originally released as an LP by Lovely Music in 1979. Over the course of Robert Ashley's career his preoccupation with language and the voice took many forms. He became known in his librettos as a wonderful, funny, moving writer. But with Automatic Writing he examines language at a very "primitive" level -- the human impulse make sounds to express his inner state, whether it be regret, embarrassment, fear, or happiness -- even though there is no one else to listen. Talking to oneself.

Personnel: Voices - Robert Ashley and Mimi Johnson; Electronics and Polymoog - Robert Ashley; Words: Robert Ashley; Translation: Monsa Norberg; Silhouette: William Farley. The switching circuit was designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. Recorded, produced, and mixed by Robert Ashley at the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills College (Oakland), the American Cultural Center (Paris), and Mastertone Recording Studios (New York). This reissue was remastered and cut, from the original reel-to-reel tape, by Scott Hull, Masterdisk (New York). Manufactured at Record Technology Inc/RTI (California). 180 gram vinyl; Stoughton Old Style sleeve. Includes an insert with a transcription of the words, and the Automatic Writing notes Ashley wrote for Lovely's 1996 CD (that included "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor").

"On Automatic Writing, Robert Ashley composes under the influence of his 'involuntary speech.' (In his liner notes, Ashley revealed that he suffered from 'a mild form of Tourette's.') The piece starts quietly, with scraps of Ashley's mild, tremulous voice arranged next to more fluid French translations and barely-there touches of Moog. After Ashley's phrases lengthen enough to encompass sense-making phrases, a bass-register groove briefly appears, vanishes, then returns. Few pieces so quiet have proven as captivating; many that intend to be equally startling can't capture Ashley's range of surprises." --Seth Colter Walls, from Pitchfork's "Fifty Best Ambient Albums of All Time"

Marco Shuttle - Cobalt Desert Oasis (2LP)
Marco Shuttle - Cobalt Desert Oasis (2LP)Incienso
¥4,679
This is a tribal experimental sound where the horizons of another world appear, whether it is a fantasy or a cutting edge? Marco Shuttle's third album, Cobalt Desert Oasis, features a varied collection of music recorded across a two year period. Often traveling to remote destinations, Marco would come back to Berlin with field recordings, images, and other inspirations to process in his studio and turn into sound. The theme of the journey turns into a something more abstract than a travel diary, where environmental sounds blend in with modular synthesis, drum machines, effects and analog oscillators resulting in a cinematic listening experience where psychedelia, ritualism, and mysticism weave together in a sort of alien soundscape - that as the title of the album suggests, is reminiscent of a parallel utopian world. The album is rich in complex rhythmics, and more than in any of his previous work, has strong acoustic elements. Amongst other percussion instruments, Marco used the Tombak, a traditional Persian hand drum capable of reaching a very wide range of frequencies - from deep round subby toms, to high pitched sharp rimshots, throughout the record. Marco Shuttle is certainly not new to these sort of elements, but in Cobalt Desert Oasis he brings the environmental element of his sound into the forefront in a way that takes the listener into a hazy expanse where it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the machine elements from the natural - and where the music almost becomes a visual experience, which relates to Marco's own photography used throughout the cover and insert images.
V.A. - Antologia de Música Atípica Portuguesa Vol.3: Canto Devocinário (LP)
V.A. - Antologia de Música Atípica Portuguesa Vol.3: Canto Devocinário (LP)Discrepant
¥2,578
Third time’s a charm. Or a chant in this case. “Antologia De Música Atípica Portuguesa” is back. Following two sold out volumes, the unplanned trilogy comes to a close with chants and hymns whilst continuing to merge music genres and presenting them as a world building concept. If the first two volumes were dedicated to work (“O Trabalho”) and regions (“Regiões”), it only made sense to close the trilogy with ceremonial music, connecting the real – each musicians’ creation – with a fantasied celebration of Portuguese folk, traditions, and ghost methods within these unusual anthems. If you’ve listened to Niagara before, you probably felt this whole ceremonial thing going on. A perfect opener then, for this volume with Niagara’s deep dive into proto religious-ambient music with “Paulo, Apolo e Pedro”. It sets the tone for the next 35-minutes of ethereal like songs. Either you listen to musicians working within their natural habitat (João Pais Filipe or Filipe Felizardo) or feel them exploring new areas in their realm (Niagara, Joana Guerra or Serpente), this third volume manages to combine eight of the best underrated visionaries working in current day Portugal. In the past, “Antologia da Música Atípica Portuguesa” created an imaginary folktale where current day creations could live with the idea of archive or fake-folk. This volume forgets the world building and actually lives in it. Because this is the real Portugal. This is our folk. These are our chants. Embrace the otherworldly.
Kink Gong - Zomia Vol. 1 (LP)
Kink Gong - Zomia Vol. 1 (LP)Discrepant
¥2,418
Kink Gong is back with his unique take and re-interpretation of the music he’s been recording and documenting for years in the South East Asian highlands. Zomia Vol.1 takes the conceptual idea of ZOMIA, proposed by James C Scott in The Art of Not Being Governed, an Anarchist History of Upland South East Asia, to construct its very own mythological soundscape inspired by a semi-utopic region where state rules don’t apply. Zomia might be (almost) gone but Kink Gong is keen keep its spirit alive by releasing a series of albums celebrating the region’s quasi mythological features. ‘’Zomia is an idea, a concept that, not so long ago, there were two very distinct worlds in southeast Asia, the valley VS highland/hinterland, the civilisation VS the primitive, paddy rice VS slash and burn agriculture, Buddhism VS Animism, fixed territory VS movement/migration, written system VS oral culture, the state VS anarchy, property VS squat, controlled population VS autonomy, bricks VS bamboo and wood and, at my level museumified traditional mainstream music VS real emotions/songs of devastated lives and/or gongs ceremonies with buffalo sacrifices, extreme heat in the valleys VS shade in the jungle. I could go on and on but let’s not forget that ZOMIA is disappearing fast, if not altogether already. How many of the people I’ve recorded are still alive? As you might know, before composing new music from my own ZOMIAN experience (from 2001 to 2014 in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China) I had to find those musicians, be able to communicate with them, record them as good as I could with very limited finances and gradually release a collection of 160 CDrs. It is very important for me to make sure you to listen to the fantastic original recordings before or after you’ve listened to this experimental reconstruction I called ZOMIA! Expect more volumes to come, this is my biggest source of inspiration, and the reason why I’ve been involved for years in constructing a mythological experimental musical ZOMIAN soundscape.’’ Laurent Jeanneau, Berlin 2020
Monopoly Child Star Searchers - Prince of Parrot Shooters / The Aqueducts of Channel Island (LP)Monopoly Child Star Searchers - Prince of Parrot Shooters / The Aqueducts of Channel Island (LP)
Monopoly Child Star Searchers - Prince of Parrot Shooters / The Aqueducts of Channel Island (LP)Discrepant
¥2,568
In an interview for The Wire magazine back in January 2012, Spencer Clark claimed that one the most important "lesson" learned while performing with The Skaters was "stay true to your imagination". Taking this life motto at heart, Clark's world today is still a place of wonder and myth, conveyed through a myriad of aliases and invocations like Vodka Soap, Fourth World Magazine or Typhonian Highlife. Always the wide-eyed mystic and searcher of the netherworld, Clark surfaces again on Discrepant sister label Pacific City Discs, straight from the Canary Islands with this not quite but somewhat reissue under his celebrated and celebratory Monopoly Child Star Searchers alias. Combining visions from two long, long sold out and hardly traceable releases on Clark's own Pacific City label, pressed for the first time ever in wax with a new master by D&M - as it should - 'The Aqueducts Of Channel Island/Prince Of Parrot Shooters' stands as a vital piece in an ever changing and deeply personal mandala-like oeuvre. An hypnotic and appropriately lo-fi flux of bouncy hand percussion loops, nature calls and celestial synth harmonies that weave themselves into trance inducing rituals. Levitating fever-dream recordings from imaginary topographies, or perhaps a gateway to fortean alternate realities just lurking around the corner. Stay true to your imagination indeed.
Daniel Bachman - Axacan (2LP+DL)Daniel Bachman - Axacan (2LP+DL)
Daniel Bachman - Axacan (2LP+DL)Three Lobed Recordings
¥3,648
"Axacan" is the fourth album from Daniel Bachman for Three Lobed and his first album in three years. It was recorded in 2020 at various locations in Virginia. It will be pressed on two 140 gram 12" records in Virginia by Furnace and housed within a full color gatefold jacket bearing new photography by Bachman. As a part of the Three Lobed Recordings 20th Anniversary series it features an OBI strip bearing an essay about the LP by Aquarium Drunkard's Tyler Wilcox.
Tobias. - Hall ov Fame
Tobias. - Hall ov FameConcentric Records
¥3,629
“I have movies in my head” describes Tobias Freund the source that inspired his new album to fill it with a fantastic life of its very own. Consequently, each of the eight tracks represents a scene out of a fictitious short film, some of them with a claustrophobic and tense atmosphere while others appear light and hopeful on the screen of imagination. What they have in common is an adventurous spirit that is inherent in and played out by three main characters: repetitive electronic and acoustic patterns, voices from far away and field recordings of obscured origin. All the episodes combined introduce this “Hall Ov Fame” as a psyche-cinematic event which resonates with “ambience in its natural shades” to evoke the whole range of sensations that make a proper, suspenseful mind movie.
Laughing Hands - Dog Photos (LP)
Laughing Hands - Dog Photos (LP)B.F.E Records
¥2,778
Laughing Hands worked in the experimental music scene in Melbourne in the very early 1980s. They were an improvisation group using tapes, synthesisers, guitar and hand percussion much of which was then treated through the synthesisers, producing their soft, insistent and rhythmic sound. “Dog Photos” was originally releasedin 1981 by band´s own label Adhesive records. The sounds in these 11 pieces are a combination of direct to tape & cassette to tape recordings, a perfect mix of electronic tape explorations, spectral synths shadings and foreground rhythm abstractions. For fans of Chris & Cosey, Dome, Cabaret Voltaire, Coil… Engineered by David Chesworth. Remastered at Plataforma Continental by José Guerrero. Released under exclusively license by B.F.E records 2020 *Postage prices are for standard mail. It has no tracking code. If you want registered mail with tracking code, airmail or any other way please get in touch.
D.K. - Eighteen Movements (LP)
D.K. - Eighteen Movements (LP)Abstrakce Records
¥2,924
‘Eighteen Movements’ is a collection of recordings captured at live performances between 2017 – 2019. The record’s rich textures combine ambient, tribal rhythms, field recordings, ritualistic vibes, and a meditative feeling that runs through the entire LP. Đ.K. is in full flight mode, illustrating the project’s aptitude for deep transcendence. Đ.K. is a DJ, composer & producer based in Paris, France. A versatile and prolific artist, D.K. has cultivated an eclectic body of work in recent years, with acclaimed output on renowned labels including Antinote, Melody As Truth, 12th Isle, Good Morning Tapes, Music From Memory’s Second Circle imprint, and L.I.E.S. (as 45 ACP). Luminous and mesmeric, D.K.’s work combines finetuned traces of house, synth pop, ambient, balearic, minimalism, and fourth world music, creating energies and soundscapes which aim to invoke elevated forms of consciousness. Prismatic tones exchange space with devotional drums on ‘Clarity’ and ‘Echo Chamber’, as Đ.K. hits a hypnotic stride somewhere between Jon Hassell, HTRK & a Folkways percussion ensemble. With ‘Full Consciousness’ meditation bells ring out across a progression of gleaming new age emanations, conjuring an entrancing spell. Movements of pulse and ether. On ‘Mirror’, sonorous, elaborate percussive phrases are interwoven with drifting ambient vapours, while ‘The Other Side’ veers into broad, rolling blasts of dub and Antipodean drone, a cavernous trance evoking the early roots of Ras Michael and Yabby You, pared back to resolute drum sequences and infused with esoteric chimes and sultry synthesis. The finale of ‘Eighteen Movements’ represents one of Đ.K..’s most ambitious recordings. ‘Awakening’ is an epic tone poem of aqueous, outer planetary resonance that completes this mercurial cycle with a poignant, euphoric fadeout. Chronicled in the moment, alternating between rhythm and repose, momentum and aviation, 'Eighteen Movements' sees Đ.K. voyaging further, into vast, uncharted outskirts of sound. A collection of movements for heightened states and new diversions.
Piero Umiliani - Continente Nero (LP)
Piero Umiliani - Continente Nero (LP)DIALOGO
¥3,953
Released three years later in 1975, “Continente Nero” - issued by the composer’s Omicronis imprint - is the perfect complement to “Africa”. Where the former channeled sounds and influences drawn from the African diaspora into decidedly abstract terms, with “Continente Nero” Umiliani pays a similar homage by incorporating a vast pallet of rhythmic variations into a visionary rethinking of the idiom of jazz, channeling Fela Kuti, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, and hundreds of others into a free-flowing vessel that’s entirely his own. Chugging and free flowing, driven by tonal and rhythmic depth that only large bands can achieve, “Continente Nero” possesses such a remarkable sense of emotiveness and creative honesty that the fact that it was made for use in films, rather than being issued within the broader context of jazz, seems to defy reason. It easily stands among the greatest documents of the idiom to have emerged from Italy during any period. Closely related to multiple threads of spiritual jazz that were emerging within the United States during roughly the same period, the band locks in and plows forward with African tinged melodies and carefully orchestrated distances, guided Umiliani’s startling vision, repetitive structures - often bordering on the minimalistic - and unique rhythmic sensibility that runs like a river beneath it all, sending the listener plunging into a deeply personal, imagined world; a hypothetical forth world concept of jazz. Impossible to sum up, “Continente Nero” is incredible from start to finish. Long deserving of wide recognition, if not outright celebration, Dialogo’s reissue of this masterpiece is nothing short of momentous event. Pressed onto glorious vinyl, the format for which it was conceived, remastered from the original analogue master tapes, and housed in a sleeve that immaculately reproduces the album’s stunning, original cover design and also include a obi-strip.
M.Zalla - Africa (LP)
M.Zalla - Africa (LP)DIALOGO
¥3,953
Africa, released by Liuto Records - the label founded in 1970 by Piero Umiliani and his wife Stefania - belongs to the canon of library music produced in Italy across the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, which encountered many of the country’s most talented composers employed within the film industry, where they were offered unparalleled creative freedom to experiment and produce radical and forward-thinking sounds. A long-standing holy grail for collectors of visionary Italian music, Africa emerged under Umiliani’s moniker M. Zalla, the pseudonym he used when tidying up uncompromising and avant-garde music textures. It was years ahead of its time upon release in 1972, encountering the maestro locked within the walls of his Sound Work Shop Studio, weaving complex narratives and sonic collisions, while incorporating dozens of influences from a life spent experimenting and discovering new sounds. Launching from the prog-tinged rhythms of “Africa To-Day”, the album immediately shifts toward radical waters with the glacially paced pulsing rhythms and abstract electronics of “Echos” and “Sortilege”, the rippling minimalism of Savana, and the ‘fourth world’ temperaments “Green Dawn”, but still refuses to be nailed down. Across the two sides, experimentation drives the sound, as the hypnotic drumming and bass lines of “Rhythmical Stress” break through, opening space for the flute driven works, Sadness”, “Folk Tune”, and “Mysterious, “ as much as diving, percussive and tonally rich works that make up the majority of the second side. If ever there was an LP to expand the notions of Library music’s vast potential and scope, M. Zalla’s Africa has to be it. Nearly 50 years on, it feels as fresh and forward thinking as anything that has come since. A true masterpiece of the genre, that stands with best of any other idiom of experimental music, it’s impossible to recommend enough. The album comes remastered from the original analogue master tapes, and housed in a sleeve that faithfully reproduces the original cover design and also include a obi-strip,
Finis Africae - Amazonia (LP)
Finis Africae - Amazonia (LP)Em Records
¥2,750
Finis Africae, a group without fixed members organized in Spain in the early 1980s by Huang Alberto Arteshe Guell, is a studio project that emphasizes work, especially "Amazonia" (1990) in the far north. It is a standing masterpiece. Inspired by Conan Doyle's adventure novel that he once read, Huang Alberto develops a soundscape that depicts the fantasy unexplored Amazon that circulates in his brain. In the late 80's, Arteshe upgraded his studio equipment to 16 tracks, and the technique he had tried on his two albums was complete. Manipulating many European and African instruments, overdubbing most of them alone, and combining the natural sounds of wind and rain, birds, insects and creatures, this "Amazonia" has a mysterious atmosphere and a mysterious sign. Expression. His unique organic groove feeling is also very comfortable, and it became a masterpiece worthy of its name (* note).

* "Africae" is an old name for "Africa" in Europe based on Latin, and adding "finis" creates nuances such as the farthest land and unknown places.

+ Japanese / English publication
+ CD version: Paper jacket, liner included
+ LP version: Liner included
Asa Tone - Live at New Forms (CS+DL)Asa Tone - Live at New Forms (CS+DL)
Asa Tone - Live at New Forms (CS+DL)Leaving Records
¥2,197
Don’t DJ meets Fourth World, Indonesian Music and Exotic Ambient Sound! Asa Tone is a multidisciplinary, multinational group formed in New York City comprised of Melati Malay, Tristan Arp and Kaazi. Originally commissioned by Yu Su as an event-specific work for the New Forms Festival in Vancouver in 2020, Asa Tone worked together virtually during quarantine, embracing new approaches in chance-based composition. The group’s members individually recorded a pool of generative loops and field recordings in lieu of performed “songs,” adhering to general tempo and key parameters, yet each responding to their respective lockdown environments in Mexico City, New York and the Australian rainforest. From this nonlinear web of possibilities, Asa Tone prepared a continuous 30 minute piece via zoom, which was later adapted and spatialized for the 4D sound / 32-channel audio system at Lobe Studios in Vancouver by producer and festival curator Yu Su.
Barton & Priscilla McLean - Electronic Landscapes (CD)Barton & Priscilla McLean - Electronic Landscapes (CD)
Barton & Priscilla McLean - Electronic Landscapes (CD)Em Records
¥2,750

Although Barton and his wife Priscilla McLean have had a long and distinguished history of LP and compact disc albums throughout their professional composer/performer career, this album is unique in that it is the first one to present, on one CD, such a broad and comprehensive picture of their purely electronic music, spanning 1975 through 2001. Interestingly, although their materials and equipment have changed, their ideas of musical composition are still basically the same, creating a unity throughout the CD.

Regarding the graphic score of "Song of the Nahuatl" which comprises the cover of this CD, Barton McLean and graphic artist Gary Pyle felt a need to explore the subconscious visual domain suggested by the sounds. The artistic rendering preserves dynamics, timing, relative high and low pitch areas, and textural/timbral aspects, while presenting a truly artistic expression in its own right.

To impart a sense of the meaning and composition of these works, along with offering a glimpse into the milieu in which they were created, the following excerpts are quoted here from Priscilla McLean's new autobiography "Hanging off the Edge: Revelations of a Modern Troubadour", published by iUniverse (New York, Lincoln, NE, Shanghai) and also available with corresponding CD, featuring excerpts of her music described in the book, at:
Throughout the time span of the works on this album, Priscilla McLean kept detailed journals of her experiences, forming the basis of her autobiography. These excerpts, abridged and slightly altered, are imbedded in the more specific program notes on each work below.
Book Excerpt: from HANGING OFF THE EDGE, pp. 149 - 159

1973 -1978: South Bend, Indiana to Austin, Texas:
In 1973, Indiana University at South Bend (where Barton McLean taught) ordered from the EMS Studios in London a Synthi-100 synthesizer and digital 256 sequencer, which comprised the first commercial digital sequencing capability in the USA. By 1971 we had also begun our own home studio, purchasing a new Arp 2600 Synthesizer and three reel-to-reel tape recorders: two two-channel half-track Revoxes and a four-channel quarter-track Sony, and borrowing from the college a small Synthi AKS Synthesizerムan update of the EMS Putney, with a ribbon keyboard and 256-note real-time sequencer.

When Bart introduced me to the new studio with the Synthi-100, I stared unbelievingly here was a huge synthesizer, along a whole wall, with hundreds of push-pins (a matrix setup for connecting sounds, rather than the old patch cords), and twenty-two oscillators! The Synthi-256 Digital Sequencer was a full-sized keyboard, standing alone diagonally to the analog synthesizer, but connected internally.
In that studio with the giant machines, one raced from one end of the room to another to play and record the sounds, never sitting down, and in removing unwanted noise or editing out a recorded section, the composer had to take a metal splicing block and sharp razor blade, and pressing down very hard, cut through the 1-inch wide acetate tape in two places, remove the unwanted time segment, and rejoin the two remaining ends with special splicing tapeノSo we three Bruce, Bart, and I worked all our spare time, alternating with each other, in the I.U.S.B. Studio. I spent whole days there, sometimes 22 hours long, working and working to get just the right sound-combinations and record them

The McLean Mix
[NOTE: The McLean Mix, composing/performing duo of Barton and Priscilla McLean, has toured worldwide since 1974, and annually since 1983.]
The McLean Mix was born on September 19, 1974, in our World Premiere concert at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. The faculty, of which I was an adjunct professor, was delighted when I offered to perform with Bart our new electronic music, consisting of Gone Bananas by Bart, as he soloed on the Arp 2600. This was a light piece, and ended with Bart, having set the synthesizer to play the music by itself on its sample and hold controller, sitting on the edge of the stage eating a banana! Second was my Night Images six-minute stereo tape work. Next came my "Dance of Dawn", 22 minutes long. We finished the evening with a jazzy piece by Bart called Groove, which had us jamming on two synthesizers the Arp 2600 for me, and Bart on the Synthi AKS. These early live-performance compositions suffered the demise of all such pieces of the period, but fascinated the audience at the time they who had never heard any live electronic music. The works for stereo tape lived on, however.

"During the halcyon days of the 70's, when all electronic music was enthusiastically received and the audiences large and eager, an album produced out of this concert (CRI SD 335 with Priscilla's "Dance of Dawn" and Barton's "Spirals") garnered a dozen reviews from all over America, and the composers were looked upon as courageous explorers into a vast musical continent unknown and beckoning.

In August of 1976 we moved to Austin, Texas. After the Synthi-100 was removed from the Indiana University, South Bend Electronic Music Studio in 1974, we were left with its digital sequencer, a small ElectroComp 101 Synthesizer, the mini-synthesizer Synthi AKS, and the tape recorders and mixer. This wasn't enough to continue any quality work, so we added our own home studio equipment, and turned back to manipulating found soundsムsteak knives bouncing on violin strings, tennis balls on the piano harp, banging pots and pans, etc. All of these sounds in addition to ones from the synthesizers and sequencer I used in my next major electronic piece, "Invisible Chariots". Because of the unwieldiness of the musique concrete (recorded, not synthesized, sounds) medium, composing the piece was glacially slow.

For instance, the first sound is a scrape up a bass piano string with a metal bar. I wanted the echo from the piano to last over thirty seconds, so I had to record it onto a master tape, then re-record the echo from this tape to each of four channels of another tape recorder, recording each successive one a few seconds ahead of the last one, over and over, until thirty seconds evolved. Then I combined the beginning piano flourish, recorded at home, with a similar keyboard flourish created on the Arp 2600 Synthesizer and performed, playing (forwards and backwards) on the Synthi 256 Sequencer. Much more was involved to complete this complex beginning sound, and two months of time for thirty seconds of music!
After lying low since our performance in the old UT electronic music studio a few weeks after we arrived in Austin in 1976, The McLean Mix was revived and had several engagements the spring of 1979. This included Bart's new electronic piece "Song of the Nahuatl", finishing with my "Invisible Chariots", with all three movements. This varied according to the audience and schedule. [end of paraphrased excerpt] 

Paradise Cinema - Paradise Cinema (LP+DL)Paradise Cinema - Paradise Cinema (LP+DL)
Paradise Cinema - Paradise Cinema (LP+DL)Gondwana Records
¥2,984
The long-awaited repress. Limited edition. Paradise Cinema, a new project by multiplayer Jack Wyllie, who is also known to participate in the next-generation jazz trio "Szun Waves" formed by Luke Abbott. An ambitious work recorded with Khadim Mbaye (saba drums) & Tons Sambe (tama drums), a percussionist of the country's dance music "Mbalax" in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is released as an analog from Manchester's . A masterpiece of gems that blends from Balearic to ambient, drone, minimal rhythms derived from West African music, and even Jon Hassell's Fourth World in a rich jazz feel!
Andreolina - An Island In The Moon (LP)
Andreolina - An Island In The Moon (LP)Aguirre Records
¥2,879

An Island In The Moon is the perfectly conceived minimal ambient project from Italian composers Pier Luigi Andreoni (Doubling Riders, ATROX) and Silvio Linardi. Andreolina being a mix of the names of the two musicians who were both deeply involved with the label Auf Dem Nil on which the album was originally released in 1990.

The duo stick to a disciplined and simple palette using only two synthesizers and a Roland S50 sampler. They are joined by fellow electronic journeyman Riccardo Sinigaglia who contributes piano and samples on two tracks. Taking influences from Italian minimalism while adding some jazz hints Andreolina sprawls, weightless instrumentals that never stay soporific for too long on this singular rare album.

Auf Dem Nil or ADN was one of the most adventurous Italian record labels of the 80's and early 90's with releases by De Fabriek, Riccardo Sinigaglia and Pierre Bastien. Leaving their mark on the experimental music scene back than and influencing musicians worldwide up until today.

Edition of 500 copies.

Christos Chondropoulos - Athenian Primitivism (2LP)
Christos Chondropoulos - Athenian Primitivism (2LP)12th Isle
¥3,358
ISLE011 is a collection of cassette recordings made in Athens by Christos Chondropoulos over the last five years. Coming from an avant-garde percussion background, Christos calls upon themes of ancient Greek folklore and musical tradition through a futurist lens depicting robotic societies in post-human harmony. He constructs worlds reminiscent of Marcello Giombini’s Mondial Folk series or Umiliani’s exoticised Omicron outings. By looking to the future rather than the far-off past, he builds upon these early instances of technologically charged cultural geography and presents an authentically Greek reading of a parallel Athenian basin. Where his last work for 12th Isle explored once-forbidden tunings and unplaceable tonalities, these recordings further expand on the artist’s simultaneous concern for heritage and imaginary projection. Across the final Side D, Chondropoulos explores themes of maternal love present across the album by working with local singer Sofia Sarri to record six piercing, beautiful acapella phrases.
Martin Denny - Primitiva (LP)
Martin Denny - Primitiva (LP)Destination Moon
¥2,398
Clear vinyl. This is the miracle of Hawaiian lounge music! The third album "Primitiva" from 1958 by Martin Denny, the undisputed king of exotic fantasy music, is now available as an analog reissue! This is a great masterpiece by the "father of exotica" who was the first to incorporate Asian, Polynesian and Latin music into his own music and broaden the horizons of American audiences. A masterpiece of the century, Primitiva is an imaginative and fascinating space age music with dripping melancholy and exotic and fantastic moods.

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