MUSIC

mint.conception.recordings: "This record contains four tracks taken from a live performance which took place on December 3rd 2021 at the vinyl harvest record store in Esch-sur-Alzette Luxembourg. The concert was curated by non-profit organisation I am esch twenty too and the label mint.conception.recordings. I am esch twenty too was founded in 2020 as an alternative suggestion to the city of Esch-sur-Alzette being European Capital of Culture 2022 and its role and program. The budget for this concert was generated by the entrance fee to the concert only. Jan Jelinek has for more than 20 years been one of the most essential voices in contemporary electronic music. Arthur Clees is a young percussionist from Luxembourg and a bright talent intent on finding his own way into jazz, improv and electronic music. Both performers had never met each other before."

"It's been nearly five decades since Joe McPhee assembled a group of musicians to perform the weekend concerts that would become Nation Time. It was December 1970, thirty-one-year-old McPhee was inspired by Amiri Baraka's poem 'It's Nation Time,' and the students at Vassar College didn't know what hit them. 'What time is it?' shouted the bandleader. 'C'mon, you can do better than that. What time is it?!'

"The music on Nation Time came out of the fertile, but little-known creative jazz scene in Poughkeepsie, New York, McPhee's home base. Two bands were deployed, one with a funky free foundation featuring guitar and organ, the other consisting of a more standard jazz formation with two drummers and the brilliant Mike Kull at the piano. Across the concert and the next afternoon's audience-less recording session, the band was ignited by McPhee's passion and his gorgeous post-Coltrane / post-Pharoah tenor. On 'Shakey Jake,' they hit a James Brown groove filtered through Archie Shepp, while the sidelong title track is as searching and poignant today as it was during its heyday.

"Originally released in 1971 on CjR, an imprint started expressly to document McPhee's music, Nation Time has a sense of urgency and inspiration. Additional material from those December days would later appear on Black Magic Man, Hat Hut's first release. In fact, the first four records on this seminal Swiss label all featured McPhee.

"Nation Time was largely unknown a quarter century or so later, when it was first issued on CD through Atavistic's Unheard Music Series. On Corbett vs. Dempsey, we reissued the album along with all known tapes leading up to and around it as a deluxe box set, but the standalone LP has long remained incredibly rare. Now is the time for a new generation of freaks to lose their shit when settling into the cushy beat of 'Shakey Jake' and answer McPhee's call with the only appropriate response: It's NATION TIME."

– John Corbett

For over half a century, Takehisa Kosugi was one of the most unique and enduring figures in the Japanese underground. As an art student in Tokyo in the early 1960s, he joined the Fluxus-styled performance unit Hi Re Centre and founded the improvisational ensemble Group Ongaku, but his most legendary project was The Taj-Mahal Travelers – a multicellular organism that included Kosugi, Ryo Koike, Yukio Tsuchiya, Seiji Nagai, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa and sound engineer Kinji Hayashi. With a penchant for long psychedelic jams (some lasting 12 hours or more) The Taj-Mahal Travelers lived up to their name. Touring in a Volkswagen van across Europe and Asia in the early '70s, they eventually reached the actual Taj Mahal in India. Upon their return to Japan, they held a concert to raise more touring funds and released their very first recordings. Their debut album, July 15, 1972, would extend the band's matter-of-fact titling: all the tracks were named precisely for the times they began and ended. With a grab bag of instrumentation (electric violin, double bass, santoor, vibraphone, harmonica, radio oscillators, sheet iron, etc.), The Taj-Mahal Travelers weave together mesmerizing waves of sonic texture. Featuring longtone concepts that Kosugi discovered while working with sound generators in New York in the mid-'60s, July 15, 1972 remains just as much a collective tone poem as psych workout. These leader-less sounds coalesce into a unified whole that feels both subconscious and sublime, as if the waveforms bypass the listener's ears and land directly inside one's synapses. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster.

Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground musicians. Live At The Brand documents the second performance of newly formed LAFMS core groups Le Forte Four and Doo-Dooettes on July 8, 1976 at the recital hall of the Brand Library in Glendale. Le Forte Four (now joined by Tom Potts) did not actually perform live, but rather created 44 pyramid-shaped headphone helmets with internal quadraphonic speakers and countless wires in order to share their latest tape assemblages with showgoers deprived of sight. The recordings delivered in this Fluxus-inspired manner feature the Buchla synthesizer at nearby CalArts, radio interpolations, group improvisations, addled outbursts and splices from source material lost to time. Doo-Dooettes -- Tom Recchion, Harold Schroeder, Juan Gomez, Dennis Duck and Fredrik Nilsen -- performed a series of alternately droning and chaotic duets with guitar, percussion, piano, tape loops and synthesizer, all improvised around loosely structured compositions and culminating in a spontaneous group composition at the end of the program. Originally released in 1976, the double LP would be LAFMS' third release. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with inserts.

A note from Hasegawa... The first LP by the Taj Mahal Travellers was recorded at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo on July 15, 1972, which became the title of the work and was released the same year by CBS Sony Records. A live performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of this album was held on July 15, 2022. The only original members of the Taj Mahal Travellers who attended were myself and Seiji Nagai. This is because two of the six members passed away, two are religiously active and they can not play music according to their belief, and the last one has lost touch with us. Therefore, young musicians were recruited to perform with us. This performance was a spark of improvisation that broke 50 years of my silence. Let me recall a little about the day of the concert. The venue was a live house called Forestlimit Hatagaya, about 20 minutes by car from Shibuya. In the pouring rain, we ended up entering a narrow alley from where it was impossible to reach the place by car, so after unloading my instruments, we had to head back to a wider road and find another route. The venue was small and located on the basement floor. Among performers and stuff members we were more than 10 people, and including the audience, in total about 60 people gathered on that day. Indeed, the place felt packed like a crowded train in Tokyo. Many of the performers were meeting each other for the first time, and not only the audience but the participating musicians themselves could not imagine what the performance would be like. For this live performance, I asked my friends to perform stone, shadow, bamboo, and gorilla.

Keiji Haino is, without question, one of the truly iconic artists to rise beyond the dusk of the 20th century. An artist focused singularly of the beautiful visceral promise of music, his practice is a many headed beast taking in movements from the gentlest of guitar play, through free improvisation and noise. As divergent as the work might be, it is held tightly by his unique way in sound, one that exists moment to moment with a force like no other. 20 years since its first release, Black Blues remains one of his most provocative recordings - a collection of 6 songs, recorded twice over. On version Violent, the other Soft; and the differences could not be more radical. Black Blues exists at both margins of Haino’s sonic spectrum. At the Violent end, each piece is delivered with a sense of tangible intensity. In some moments it is as if we are inside Haino, his voice completely consuming all it comes in contact with. The guitar, carving a path that is part rhythm, part harmony, its tenderness cradling his voice with a determination and generosity. By contrast the Soft versions are almost lullabies, all be it ones that carry a mournful and anguish ladened atmosphere. Here the guitar splays out into clouds of reverb that shimmer at the edges, housing a voice which is constantly seeking a deeper resolution within the songs. Gentle but never settled. Black Blues captures the dynamic form of Keiji Haino’s work in its most raw form; voice and guitar. The songs encapsulate a very particular portrait of an artist whose work only continues to grow deeper in is wonder and profundity.

Originally released digitally by Cafe Oto in 2020, "A Queer Anthology of Drums" is Italo-British percussionist Valentina Magaletti's most satisfying set - a future-fluid evolution of post-punk/industrial murk, free-jazz fizz, electro-acoustic trickery and avant-minimalist mischief. Think Chris Corsano, Morton J. Olsen, Thomas Strønen, Han Bennink. Best known as a prized collaborator who's put in work with Raime, Helm, Jandek, Floating Points, Nico Jaar and numerous others, and making up part of Moin, Vanishing Twin, Tomaga and CZN, Valentina Magaletti is also an accomplished solo artist, and this is where her skills really tend to shine. "A Queer Anthology of Drums" stands as a blueprint for her methodology, rolling through her studied musical philosophy centering percussion without sacrificing structure, cohesion and momentum. Anyone who's heard her performances before won't be completely caught off guard, but this record is the most complete collection she's assembled thus far, balancing lucid rhythmic ritualism with playful psychedelia and fragmented melodic elements. Magaletti recorded the album at home, collaging drums, field recordings, vibraphone, toys and oscillators into a fluxing symphony of rhythm and tone. And while the original album was eight tracks, an additional piece has been added to this new remastered edition to open the record: 'She/Her/Gone', that introduces us to Magaletti's sound in a shower of delayed piano, brushed drums and jangling bells. From here, the set takes a darker turn, pattering into cavernous, metallic spaces on 'The Unity of the Mind', and erupting into a chunky, limber rhythm on the tough-as-nails title track. The fog lifts a little as the set progresses, first with the Steve Reich-cum-Broadcast lounge minimalism of 'Rumors of Bread', and then with 'Per Strada', one of the album's most disarming moments that offsets Magaletti's gamalan-influenced percussive cycles with rousing choral sounds. She utilizes these elements to illustrate her understanding of musical history - her drumming is not tied to the instrument's expected function: it's not simply jazz, or punk, and it's definitely not free improv. Her interests are deep and literate, and her sound reaches thru global folk traditions and ritual practices, touching on pop and experimental forms without mimicking them or operating in template mode. But it isn't an academic exercise either, Magaletti queers her subject matter in a way that makes it accessible and humane. Absolutely essential listening for anyone interested in percussive music, ritual music - even experimental lounge.A Queer Anthology of Drums - "a percussive collage of low-fi frequencies documenting a journey that never took place" (Takuroku), a home recording capturing Valentina's ritualistic free-improv essence, is now being presented to audiences across the world by bié Records, via both streaming services and vinyl for the first time. *A Queer Anthology of Drums was originally released on Cafe Oto's label “Takuroku” with 8 tracks solely in MP3 format. The new version by the Beijing-based bié Records, whose associate acts range across Hualun, Yu Su, Lim Giong, Gong Gong Gong and many more, is specifically remastered for vinyl format and expanded to 9 tracks with the previously unreleased “She/Her/Gone”.

Federico Ughi Together with Leo Genovese and Brandon Lopez Explores the Spaceways in the New Multidimensional LP/CD ‘Infinite Cosmos Calling You You You, Vol. 1’ Federico Ughi, drum wizard and producer, is back with an album under his own name for the first time in five years. The project features outstanding musicians: Leo Genovese, originally from Argentina but now Brooklyn-based on keyboards and synths, and Brandon Lopez from NYC on upright bass. This album celebrates the advanced creative dialogue between these artists by fully immersing the listener in the world of sound conjured by the trio. The expansive scope of this experience suggests that Ughi's artistic enterprise extends beyond the music itself to the idea of connection between artists, music, and the audience. In this conception the musicians are conduits for the delivery of cosmic sound, the music world, the cosmic dimension of sound and light. The message is launched towards the audience and refracted back through them, aspiring to achieve a sort of universal consciousness through presence and participation. The trio moves away from a specific genre, opening up to limitless possibilities. Anything is possible when these improvisers listen to each other so closely. This music is dynamic and defies particular labels. It’s the universal language of sound, frequencies, beat and vibration. The project is strongly influenced by the music, philosophy, and persona of Sun Ra, to whom one of the tracks is dedicated. The album will be followed soon by Vol. 2, containing the other half of the material recorded on the day at Sear Sound, the oldest recording studio in NYC.

Announcement // Due to a pressing fault, this vinyl has been delayed and we are waiting to have more news on when it will be available to start shipping. Sorry for the inconvenience. Masses is an utterly unexpected, and utterly gripping, collaboration between the East London duo, Spring Heel Jack and a group of top-flight improvisers, drawn largely from New York’s ascendant free jazz network but also including Evan Parker and microtonal violinist Matt Maneri. If there are precedents for this particular mix, in which studio-processed audio environments are played back in real time as the triggers for, and fixed components in, a series of group improvisations, they feel few and far between. George Rusell’s 1967 Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature, Bob Ostertag’s Say No More Project, and some of Evan Parker’s explorations in the realm of synergetic electroacoustics provide three possible and very different models. But as Matthew Shipp points out, Masses “creates its own space and time”. Masses opens a tunnel on a space where matter and anti-matter can co-exist without the vernacular power of either state being compromised or diminished. It is a total triumph. (Soundcheck, The Wire - Tony Herrington,2001)

A feverish essay of transcendent drumming: Chris’ solo approach, rooted in the exploration of elements of extended technique, sought another level, via possibilities facilitated by a self-made string drum! The Key (Became The Important Thing [& Then Just Faded Away]) brings his encompassing focus on free improvisation and noise into a granular fusion with acoustic experiments and hot-wired ideations of hard rock riffing and the post-punk sound.

Cassette version of the 2022 album "Hymnes Apophatiques" by the french artist Delphine Dora, previously released on CD by Morctapes. During the summer of 2021, Delphine Dora was invited for a residency at the church of St Saphorin (Switzerland), on the occasion of the Jolie Vue Festival. Having the opportunity to fully explore the organ the days before the festival, Delphine improvised a long, long series of tracks, of which you’ll find a small selection on ‘hymnes apophatiques’. She’s definitely full of respect for the organ, at some moments diving deep in the sound traditionally associated with this rich instrument – the one you’ll recognize from the hours spent in church as a kid. However, at many moments throughout the album the sound is more playful than we’re used to. It’s a fearless approach. The fact that she dares to intervene with her voice quite often really makes her recordings stand out from those of many other artists who have been experimenting with a church organ lately: she definitely has a high regards for the tradition of the organ, but refuses to bow. She’s in charge, not the instrument itself. This way, Delphine manages to bend the sound completely her way. It’s an enthralling listen, that not only takes you along all the possibilities of the instrument, but also through Delphine’s entire musical path. And that’s quite a journey. Review on Fluid Audio by James Catchpole : "Hymes Apophatique is the latest album from French musician Delphine Dora, recorded last year during a residency at the church of St Saphorin, Switzerland. Delphine recorded her improvised music on the church organ, an instrument she fully respects and recognises, and this level of respect comes through in her music. Although traditionally confined to the dusty recesses of a church, the organ is so much more than an instrument of devotion. Delphine isn’t afraid to open the doors and push the sound of the organ out and into the modern world. No hesitation is found in her music, and in her wish to spread its wings. With so many pedals and tonalities, the organ can be an intimidating instrument, not something to necessarily master but to temporarily hold the reins and somehow snake-charm its tones. Delphine manages to remain in control at all times while still respecting its background and rich history. Somehow, the organ exhales with the unfathomable weight of history. One of the most interesting elements of Hymes Apophatique is the introduction of her voice, which accompanies the instrument, partaking in a slow, entangled dance, but never blotting it out or overshadowing it. Trenches of deep reverence, respect, and awe are maintained. Other sections are incredibly melodic, sometimes sounding like an echo from a fantastical forest and at other times carrying medieval undertones. All the while, though, the organ is airy and well ventilated. Its reverent nature is not lost – not even a drop – as it steps forward into the glowing sun of a new dawn." Review on Terrascope by Simon Lewis : Recorded in the summer of 2021 at the Church of St Saphorin (Switzerland), this album is a collection of pieces for voice and Church Organ, that were improvised and recorded during a residency by the artist Delphine Dora. Familiar to anyone who attended church as a child, the sound of the organ is warm and comforting, easily evoking memories, the smell of wooden pews, old books, a quiet chatter and the echo of footsteps, whilst the addition of Delphine's voice adds a slightly stranger feel to the music, taking it into Canterbury sounding music, reminding me of early albums by Kevin Ayers especially on “Ritournelle Scolastisque #2” which has a lovely melody that would sit happily on “Joy of a Toy”. Another charming aspect of the album is the way the pieces just end as the pause button is pressed, each track a raw nugget of sound, the experience as it happened. Over 17 tracks, the music retains a similar pace and feel giving it a wonderful flow, allowing the listener time to just sit and contemplate the simple beauty of the music. Maybe I should be highlighting some individual songs at this point but it is the album as a whole that is its strength, seemingly more than the sum of its components although “. L'immuable sous-jacent “ has a fragile beauty running through it, whilst the six minute “Opus Divinum” is a distillation of the whole album,a gnetly breathing piece that could be the beginning of an early seventies Tangerine Dream track, especially as it contains distant voices picked up by the recording process, I was just waiting for a sequencer to kick in. I have played this album several times now and it gets better every time, the rawness of the recording and Delphines' untrained voice adding a human element to the music that really appeals to me, give it a listen. (Simon Lewis)

Recommended for fans of modern classical music like Another Timbre and Elsewhere! Okkyung Lee is a Korean cellist and improviser who has collaborated with Christian Marclay, Steve Beresford, Phil Minton and many other big names. is out now on Shelter Press! It's from a rather unexpected label. A dreamy chamber music ensemble featuring Okkyung Lee (cello), Eivind Opsvik (bass), Maeve Gilchrist (harp) and Jacob Sacks (piano). The avalanche of sentimental melodies and gentle, melancholic touches, wrapped in a myriad of aspects from chamber to spiritual jazz and folk music, also evoke the beauty of the pull and the aesthetics of "pause" that are common to Japanese environmental music/ambient music by Satoshi Ashikawa and Hiroshi Yoshimura. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.

Sept duos pour guitar acoustique et piano préparé is the second duo recording from Stephen O’Malley and Anthony Pateras. Their first together, Rêve Noir (2018), took an electro-acoustic scalpel to a 2011 duo concert for electric guitar and piano, using Revox and digital treatments to twist and smear gig documentation into ghostly echoes and fractured drones. Here, in contrast, the music is entirely acoustic and presented as it was performed, without overdubs. Both players’ choices of instruments are notable: this is O’Malley’s most extensive recording on steel string acoustic guitar (playing an instrument whose previous owners include Marissa Nadler and Glenn Jones) and Pateras return to the prepared piano, which he has rarely employed in recent years, after spending much of the first decade of the 21st century exploring its possibilities. Recorded during O’Malley’s residency at La Becque on Lake Geneva in the summer of 2021, from the first moments of the opening ‘déjà revé’ the music immediately establishes the distinctive landscape of chiming tones and hovering clouds of resonance explored throughout its one-hour running time. Pateras’ preparations create tolling bell-like tones alive with complex overtones, alongside which O’Malley’s open strings and natural harmonics add a sparkling clarity. While Pateras’ music often uses a densely chromatic harmonic language, these duos are remarkable for their modal simplicity. However, the interaction between the pure intervals of O’Malley’s just-intoned strings and the unstable harmonies created by the piano preparations suspends the music in an oneiric state of hazy ambiguity. Without obvious reference to tempo or meter, the music floats in what the composer Ernstalbrecht Stiebler has called a ‘bottomless sound space’, the temporal placement of events determined by bodily rhythms and the performers’ own listening to (and enjoyment of) the sounds being made. Heard one way, this music can seem striking in its consistency, almost environmental. Attending more carefully, the listener hears the pitch sets and tunings changing throughout the album’s length. Each piece has its own character, subtly distinguished from the others through mood, pacing, and timbre. On ‘déjà voulu’, for instance, O’Malley makes prominent use of slide, the woozy, bending pitches weaving through a series of lush arpeggiated chords from the piano. ‘Déjà senti’, on the other hand, is particularly spare, the gestures spaced out to the extent that they often float in isolation against the background of fading resonance. Much of ‘déjà su’ is built around a slowly pulsing single prepared piano tone, creating an almost ominous tension, whereas the sparkling guitar harmonics and arpeggios of the closing ‘déjà raconté’ have a gently triumphal air. While the music’s calm, rippling surface is immediately entrancing, these seven duos – in the tradition of the best improvised music – also reward close listening, which reveals sonic details and focuses the listener’s attention on how the music unfolds spontaneously from decision to decision, from gesture to gesture. Recorded during a period when O’Malley and Pateras were grieving the loss of recently departed friends and collaborators, these seven duos possess a reflective, at times almost mournful quality. More importantly, though, they are imbued with other qualities that can arise from personal loss: a clarity that allows one to clear away the inessential, to begin again, to renew one’s faith in friendship and music. — Out now on a limited 2xLPs with an etching on fourth side housed in printed heavyweight inner and outer sleeves. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, Artwork by María Jesús Valenzuela Vittini, Design by Bartolomé Sanson.

New York-based artist Eli Keszler is at the apex of his career. This year alone he’s had a three-month-long solo exhibition (“Blue Skies” at Fuse Arts, Bradford, UK), performed internationally in a duo with Laurel Halo, collaborated with noted Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, taught experimental composition and performance at Camp in the Pyrenees mountains, composed music for Turner Prize–winning visual artist Laure Prouvost, and most recently embarked on a world tour with Oneohtrix Point Never.

“Stadium” is his new album for Shelter Press. As his ninth solo record,“Stadium” reflects his move from South Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he produced the album. The constant blurry motion and ever-changing landscapes of the fast-paced island helped him modify and shape his sound into a new kind of film noir. “After we moved into our East Village apartment,” Keszler explains, “we found a guitar pick on the floor that read ‘Stadium’. We looked at each other at the same time and had the same thought. It could have gone any number of ways.” Indeed, there is a startling amount of expression at play on each track, where intersections of melody, restraint and rhythm are used to challenge the idea of memory, impression and space.

Keszler is often mistaken for an electronic musician, but in fact his sounds are raw and natural, produced by hand live in-situ. His performance with the drumset and acoustic percussion are central to his work. He produces almost impossible textures through self-realized methodologies: cascading melodies, a shadow of voices, and a unique pointillistic materiality. Although playing with the intensity of digitally-created music, his communications are done live with no processing. These haptics are what give “Stadium” its depth and its warmth. In a recent interview for Dazed, collaborator Oneohtrix Point Never comments, “I’ve always described his playing as bacterial. He’s able to parallax into very small, very acute, very specific relationships between percussive textures. It’s beyond just being a drummer—he’s a world-building percussionist.”

In “Stadium,” Keszler uses lived experience to realize the most wide-ranging sound he’s created to date. “Stadium” draws out textures from overlapping geographies (from Shinjuku arcades to city streets and Brutalist architecture) and transforms these travelogue field recordings into starting points for composition. He then builds on these environments to create subliminal spaces for his percussion, keyboards and acoustic instruments. His “world-building” techniques are pushed to new levels with mesmerizing string and brass arrangements. Throughout the album, Keszler’s writing, keyboard playing and scoring operate like a sonic channel that transports the listener into a quaking web.

Perhaps this is the “stadium” referred to in the title: a larger network of sound and bodies moving continually, oscillating and turning in on itself. Keszler has explored these ideas before both in his visual work and sound installations—especially notable on projects such as his massive Manhattan Bridge installation ‘Archway’ or his Boston City Hall work «Northern Stair Projection.» “Stadium” takes these long-running ideas to new depths. “My installations work with massive city spaces for a complex of individuals,” Keszler states. “The recordings on Stadium are inverted. They are landscapes scaled for the singular. Like a mass collecting in one arena, this music compresses city spaces, genre and instrumentalism into an amorphous form. On the record, there are ruptures of information and happenstance. Like a game, it could go any number of ways.”

High quality reissue of the monumental work August 1974 by Japanese experimental music ensemble Taj Mahal Travellers. Pressed on 180gr. vinyl with extensive liner notes by Julian Cowley.

In April 1972 a group of Japanese musicians set off from Rotterdam in a Volkswagen van. As they crossed Europe and then made their way through Asia they made music in a wide range of locations. They also paid close attention to the changing scene and to differing ways of life. Midway through May they reached their destination, the iconic Taj Mahal on the bank of the Yamuna river in Agra, India. The Taj Mahal Travellers had fulfilled physically the promise of the name they adopted when they formed in 1969. But their music had always been a journey, a sonic adventure designed to lead any listener’s imagination into unfamiliar territory.

The double album August 1974 was their second official release. The first July 15, 1972 is a live concert recording, but on 19th August 1974 the Taj Mahal Travellers entered the Tokyo studios of Nippon Columbia and produced what is arguably their definitive statement. The electronic dimension of their collective improvising was coordinated, as usual, by Kinji Hayashi. Guest percussionist Hirokazu Sato joined long-term group members Ryo Koike, Seiji Nagai, Yukio Tsuchiya, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa and Takehisa Kosugi.   

The enigmatic Takehisa Kosugi, whose soaring electric violin was such a vital element in their music, had been a pioneer of free improvisation and intermedia performance art with Group Ongaku at the start of the 60s. Later in that decade, before launching the Taj Mahal Travellers, he had become known internationally through his association with the Fluxus art movement. During the mid-70s the Travellers disbanded and while his colleagues more or less stopped performing as musicians Kosugi continued to reach new audiences across the course of several decades as a composer, regular performer and musical director for the acclaimed Merce Cunningham Dance Company. 

August 1974 captures vividly the characteristic sound of the Taj Mahal Travellers, haunting tones from an unusual combination of instruments, filtered through multiple layers of reverb and delay. Their music has strong stylistic affinities with the trippy ambience of cosmic and psychedelic rock, but the Taj Mahal Travellers were tuning in to other vibrations, drawing inspiration from the energies and rhythms of the world around them rather than projecting some alternative reality. Films of rolling ocean waves often provided a highly appropriate backdrop for their lengthy improvised concerts. This is truly electric music for the mind and body.

Limited edition of 150 copies worldwide. For the first time since 1988, Aurora Central Records is proud to present this limited edition re-issue of the first ever Merzbow live show, Recorded Live at Kid Ailack Art Hall, Tokyo, 22 March 198, remastered by Masami Akita.

The improvisational session by trumpet, shamisen, tabla, and electronics creates light and shade. Through J.A.K.A.M.'s reconstruction, it becomes a wellspring of time and space, reflecting soundscapes reminiscent of a Japanese garden. - Chee Shimizu

Mshukai is an improvisation group that revolves around Imao Takuma, known as a contemporary artist and percussionist Pedal.The group performs in unconventional spaces such as baseball fields or inside closets, responding playfully to the environment. This tape documents their performance in the headwaters of a river in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, where they brought equipment and played around a campfire. Additionally, recordings capture their studio session in Kanazawa, where they listened to the above recorded performance while playing with Imao's studio doors open. They also recorded a performance where Imao and Pedal interacted across a road, simulating a dialogue. This project serves as the debut album for Mshukai.

Masami Tada (Marginal Consort) started his career by joining the legendary improvisational group GAP in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, he has continuously embraced improvisation while expanding his creative expression into installations, photography, and more. In recent years, Masami Tada has been capturing Mount Koubou, visible from his home in Kanagawa Prefecture, in photographs every day and sharing them on Instagram, continuing his practice of daily acts of creation. This work features recordings of his actual climb up Mount Koubou, during which Tada brought electronic devices, amps, and percussion instruments. These instruments created sounds in rhythm with the climbing process, and the recordings also capture Tada's improvised performances atop Mount Koubou, including interactions with birds, airplanes, and other elements encountered during his performance.

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”

 

Composed by Jim O’Rourke and pieced together by Jim together with longtime collaborator and trumpeter Eivind Lønning at Jim and Eiko Ishibashi’s home in the Japanese mountains, this engrossing new album blows brass wails and tense fanfares across O'Rourke's manipulated Kyma tapestries for a deep, captivating trip into the aether. As expected, its outlandishly next level. Eivind Lønning has been sharing ideas with O'Rourke for several years: the duo collaborated on music for the Whitney's 'Calder: Hypermobility' exhibition, and Lønning played trumpet on O'Rourke's brilliant 2020 album 'Shutting Down Here'. For this new work, Lønning headed to O'Rourke and EIko Ishibashi's home studio in the Japanese mountains, where he teased unfamiliar, alien textures from his trumpet to open the labyrinthine three-part composition. O'Rourke took the material and subsequently funnelled it through his Kyma system, transforming it into a swirl of sound that hums alongside Lønning's original takes. The album was composed, mixed and mastered by O'Rourke, with everything's based on Lønning's virtuosic performance. The album begins by cautiously introducing us to its sonic palette: wavering, bird-like horn wails that O'Rourke contorts around quiet synth oscillations and computerised swarms. Lønning's spittle-drenched blasts are given the spotlight, but O'Rourke's manipulations - often gentle and illusory, and sometimes utterly lacerating - lift the sounds into completely new territory. When Lønning begins to turn rhythmic cycles using the trumpet keys, popping with his mouth to compliment its leathery timbre, O'Rourke replies with dense, hallucinatory drones, juxtaposing unstable electronics with Lønning's breathy, sustained notes. All these sounds coalesce into a dizzy vortex, but O'Rourke is careful not to overwhelm the senses, dropping to near silence as the first act transitions into the second. O'Rourke pelts Lønning's vertiginous wails, steadily mutating them into Xenakis-like stabs until they sound like cybernetic strings and icy tones that extract the tension from Lønning's brassy harmonics. The third act is more screwed, with O'Rourke allowing Lønning's improvisations wail into cathedral-strength reverb, accompanying the sound with glassy penetrations and throbbing subs. Here, Lønning sounds as if he's heralding the arrival of a celestial being, piercing the atmosphere with bright, sustained tones and muted, jazzy flourishes. O'Rourke hangs back, carefully spinning the notes into naturalistic fibres and orchestral drapery, before he allows the electronics to subside completely and the trumpet to echo into the imposing negative space. 'Most, but Potentially All' is a dumbfounding piece that shifts the dial on contemporary experimental music; dizzyingly complex but never showy, it's the kind of record you can spin repeatedly and hear something different each time. As an exploration of the trumpet, it's a unique expression, and as a progression of electro-acoustic compositional techniques, it draws a deep trench in the sand, setting a new standard. We're floored.

Bomb! * Edition of 200. Hand-made covers (each one is unique), comes with a postcard. *  At the end of October 1973 Ricky Reets Hubba-Hubba Band was disbanded. It had been decided that what was needed was “a band without Musicians” and many wild experimental jam sessions took place. Finally on November 23 a particularly inspired jam was named “Cat Cheese” and the band SMEGMA was born. Although we had only been playing music together (or at all) for a few months, we decided to record a full length “Live in the studio” Christmas album that included three original songs and an Elvis Presley Cover! Budding sound engineer Mike Lastra offered us our first studio recording session in a garage in San Diego, and after a few rehearsals, every track was recorded in one take and history was made.
We wanted to do some old-fashioned songs so we asked two willing “Musicians” Reed Burns and Richard Wagner to help and since only four Smegma members could make the session “Danny” Danton Dodge (14 years old) was recruited as well.
Of course at the time only 2 or 3 copies on Cassette were ever dubbed. The Ace Of Space received one and promptly became the first person to join our group, but now 50 years late this album is finally made available to public for the first time!

Side One:
1. “Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)” Lead Vocal: Ju Suk
2. “Auto Suk” Lead Vocal: Ju Suk
3. “Whatever (for now)” Solo Flute: Amy
4. “Christmas Trees Are Free” (Words: A.B. Lloyd) Vocals: Fats & The Kid

Side Two:
1. “Beans In My Eye” (edit) Solo Flute: Amy
2. The Cheez Stands Alone (Improv.) Group Vocals
3. “Happy Holidays” (TK version) Words, Music & Vocals: Fats

On this Album Smegma was: WhateverWoman (Amy, Amazon Bambi), Chucko-Fats (D.K.), The Quackback Kid (Dennis Duck), Ju Suk Reet Meate with Reed Burns, Richard Wagner, Danton Dodge.

Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground artists. LAFMS primarily reached outside Los Angeles via word-of-mouth and the United States Postal Service, foreshadowing the self-publishing and cassette trading networks of post-punk and industrial subcultures. In 1976, Joe Potts solicited recordings from LAFMS affiliates and admirers to edit and compile I.D. Art #2, utilizing correspondence art's technique of "assemblings." (The first installment in this series was a magazine, and the third was a coloring book.) Potts received dozens of pieces by members of Le Forte Four, Doo-Dooettes, Smegma and Ace & Duce as well as painters, filmmakers and non-artists with few recording credits to their name, creating a delirious, winking sound-art collage of field recordings, voicemails and improvisations. Participants purchased time on the record and received one copy each of the finished LP, realizing the philosophy contained in LAFMS' motto: "The music is free, but you have to pay for the plastic, paper, ink, glue and stamps." This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 500 numbered copies. Comes with insert.

A Colourful Storm begins 2024 with a luxurious suite of daydreaming introspection courtesy of Unchained, the longstanding solo project of Nathaniel Davis. Recorded at home between 2020 and 2023, Gabbeh is the latest expression of Davis’s guitar-based instrumental musings and represents an almost two decade-long stylistic evolution of his self-released noise tapes and CD-Rs into romantic, bossa nova-influenced melody-making. He wrote the tracks sporadically, with minimal instrumentation and intervention. Electric guitar, bass improvisations and rhythms from an old drum machine are layered and given new life, the space between them softly breathing with minutiae of the everyday: the buzz of cicadas, the passing of cars, the whistling of passersby. The psychogeography of Grenoble, Davis’ home since 2018, played a conscious role in the weaving of Gabbeh’s fabric: “I think certain songs reflect, in ways, Grenoble’s natural surroundings. ‘Drac’ is named after the river that flows from the mountains down to the city… ‘Dru’ is the name of a well-known peak near Chamonix”. And from the city’s strange humidity, alpine surroundings and significance in the lives of, say, Henri Fantin-Latour and Stendhal, feelings at once hopelessly romantic and deeply melancholic permeate throughout the album. Opener ‘Largo’ sets the mood, its primitive samba rhythm concealed by a cloud of saudade, guided by the spirit of Wes Montgomery. “I take inspiration from Wes’s disregard for conventional technique and his insistence on feeling above all else,” reflects Davis, who also cites the multifaceted dexterity of Toninho Horta and lucid expressionism of Maurice Deebank as influences on his work. The bebop sensibility follows suit in the title track, the tension between its angular picks and percussive shuffle a wondrous balancing act, while the intoxicating sway of ‘Rambler’, an updated version of a track Davis self-released in 2020, is perhaps the most poignant expression of longing and loss we’ve heard in recent years. Pure atmospheric bliss floating into the clouds, Gabbeh captures a longing for endless, hazy days.