MUSIC

‘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.

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.

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, 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

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.

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] 

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!

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.

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.

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.

Before there was Rimarimba, Suffolk-born, Felixstowe-based musician and home recording enthusiast Robert Cox assembled a cast of friends, some musicians and some not so much, for an experiment in group exploration and ecstatic expression under the name The Same. Sonically and gravitationally defined by Cox’s collaboration with guitarist Andy Thomas (a partnership which formed in 1976 to record as General Motors), Sync or Swim, The Same’s one and only album, also featured keyboards by Florence Atkinson and Paul Ridout, and vocals by Robert’s sister Rebecca.

Originally released in small cassette and vinyl quantities on Unlikely Records, Cox’s imprint and a meeting point for many other musicians found at the fringe, the back cover of the original album jacket is as much a map of the personnel, place, and process fundamental to Sync or Swim as it is a table of contents for DIY music-making at the beginning of the 80s: “Recorded in peaceful Wiltshire between September 18th and October 6th 1981 (using a miscellany of home made devices) onto a Teac A-3300SX via a Teac A-3440. No noise reduction systems were used.”

Cox’s own definition of British psychedelia is “folk music meeting technology and going bonkers.” It’s by this definition that Sync or Swim takes unexpected forms, from tape-speed tomfoolery, concrète sound collage and analog delayed marimbas, to the colorful spectrum of interwoven guitar play between Cox and Thomas reminiscent of Ghanaian Highlife but more accurately indebted to Jerry Garcia.

On the album’s culminating final track, “E Scapes,” all of these elements are brought together in twenty-minute journey through layers of chiming guitar loops and spritely solos, keyed percussion, and tape experiments, all played as though the sun were rising over the standing stones of Salisbury Plain. Cox would later go to similarly greath lengths with certain solo sound endeavors, but the confluence of musicians on “E Scapes” pushes the piece to exceptional, unforgettable heights.

Transferred and remastered from the original tapes, The Same’s Sync or Swim arrives June 4, 2021 on Freedom To Spend, just in time for the album’s 40th anniversary.

This collaboration by Tokyo producers/musicians Shintaro Sakamoto and VIDEOTAPEMUSIC is the first of two EM Records 12-inch vinyl-only “tribute releases” in support of the film “Bangkok Nites”, produced by Kuzoku. Based on samples from Dao Bandon, Hongthong Dao-udon, Phairin Phonphibun, Thailand and Tokyo dreamworlds meet in these songs.

The gold standard for Hawaiian lounge miracles! This is the first analog reissue of Martin Denny's 1959 album "Hypnotique", the undisputed king of exotic fantasy music! Once you drop the needle, you'll be transported to another world... this record fully showcases space age music overflowing with imaginary appeal, armed with dripping melancholy and an exotic and fantastic mood. Limited edition of 1000 copies.

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.