MUSIC

'Teratai Åkande' explores electronic techniques transforming sounds, melodies, and rhythms from balinese gamelan. It's an interaction and synthesis of acoustic and electronic expressions, exploring an imagined territory between two otherwise separate cultural worlds. On 'Teratai Åkande' the Copenhagen-based producer and electronic musician Anton Friisgaard travels new paths, as he explores gamelan music from his own artistic perspective in close collaboration with Balinese musicians, afliated with Ubud’s acclaimed Gamelan scene. After experiencing a concert with the Gamelan ensemble 'Gamelan Salukat' at Roskilde Festival in 2018, Friisgaard became inspired to contact Dewa Alit from the ensemble. With the aim of bringing forth a unique expression through the meeting of two distinct musical traditions, Friisgaard traveled to Ubud, Bali to record, compose and improvise in close collaboration with artists from the esteemed Gamelan scene in Ubud. The result is 'Teratai Åkande', which features Pande Made Gangga Sentana, I Nyoman Suwida, Dewa Badukz, Suryana Putra and Pande Made Gangga of Gamelan Salukat. Anton Friisgaard (fka Hviledag) is an electronic producer and musician based in Copenhagen. Known primarily for his experimental work with tape loops and ambient soundscapes, he’s become an established figure both in the Danish music scene as well as internationally.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Jesse Peterson is the heart and constant thread of the musical project Turn On The Sunlight. 'You Belong' is the fifth in an ongoing series of records that Peterson has made with a community of his close friends and collaborators, including his beloved wife, Mia Doi Todd, bright Orange laughter luminary Laraaji, experimental and folkloric visionary Luis Pérez Ixoneztli, and his frequent partner in rhyme, percussionist and producer Carlos Niño. The sound here is a perfect mixture of folk, ambient, spiritual jazz and peaceful open space improvisational flow. 'You Belong' was made in the Glendale, California, Home Studio of Peterson and Todd during 2021 and 2022. "The sudden shift in expectations and trajectory that I and many people have experienced in the past couple of years allowed me to access certain feelings and memories from the more distant past that might have been less accessible before, which probably accounts for my sudden urge to reach out to Cavana," recounts Peterson of the album's main featured collaborator Cavana Lee. "Making the album was a helpful way of working through these thoughts and feelings because of the high level of expression that the participating musicians brought to it, like I was being led by their example. ‘You Belong’ is the most collaborative of all the Turn On The Sunlight records," Peterson continues, "in that almost every song features different musicians. It grew out of a variety of collaborations in our home studio and incorporates friends recording themselves in other locations throughout the world, so it felt like the circle was growing as the album grew, which was a nice feeling. Cavana's singing is a new element and it was exciting to hear how her voice brought out the heart of the music." At the center of the 4 key pieces that weave this album together is a truly unique symbiosis between Peterson and Cavana Lee (who met in boarding school in 1992). Lee (the daughter of magical jazz, avant-garde singer Jeanne Lee and multi-instrumentalist, composer, band leader, independent record label pioneer Gunter Hampel) remembers what it was like when she heard from Peterson out of the blue about whether she was open to writing and recording to several of his new pieces. "We were in the middle of the pandemic," recalls Lee, who lives in Berlin, "and the music industry had stopped where it was. As a singer, I suddenly had no access to public venues… I had just given up my singing space because that was forbidden in Germany at that time. Just then Jesse reached out and asked if I was interested… I was very slow in recording because I had very low digital skills at the time… I am quite an analog person. I remember the reaction I had when I heard the piece we now call “You Belong", with Laraaji. It was so full of life’s facets and in touch with Nature, I felt inspired to dedicate my voice in this song to the natural spirit of the Universe (at least how I perceive it). Also inspired by the space journeys of Sun Ra and my own father's improvised compositions, I imagine that this is what the wind, the sun, any of the elements that travel through space and the ethers would say to human beings right now. A message full of Love and Connection at a time where things felt really disconnected and disjointed. I needed this message for myself, I suppose. That’s how that track developed," Lee reflects, "it brought me there." 'You Belong' finds Peterson as the catalyst for and caretaker of advanced togetherness where an array of adventurous musicians and creative artists are featured atop and intertwined with his swirling foundations and welcoming arrangements. In addition to everyone mentioned above, “You Belong” has contributions from gyil master SK Kakraba, saxophonist Randal Fisher, trumpeter Sean Okaguchi, guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento, keyboardist Surya Botofasina, experimentalist Sam Gendel, bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes, bass clarinetist Pablo Calogero, flautist Aisha Mars, pianist Jamael Dean, drummers Andres Renteria and Efa Etoroma Jr., and his close friends from New York, Mike Wexler and Koen Holtkamp. Produced and mixed by Jesse Peterson,'You Belong' is remarkable and diverse, a cohesive album that sings of Universal Family, Caring, Being, and openness. Lee reveals, “‘You Belong’ is a Love declaration from Nature to us. It is a salve. It is a reminder of what we have forgotten. That forgetfulness is causing collective pain. ‘You Belong’ is an invitation to remember." Peterson concurs, “‘You Belong’ affirms that we can all be our whole beings and are all part of the whole of being. Music is a force that moves through us all, and that feeling can be transmitted through our expression, whether we're consciously aware of it or not, we all belong… we are all involved…”

'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' by composer Luka Aron is a suite in four parts, in which a selected acoustic ensemble, consisting of bass clarinet, contrabass, euphonium, foghorn organ, harpsichord, serpent, shō, and trumpet coalesces with analog as well as digital synthesis, into one unified mass of sound. Following 2022’s 'Tinctures', which centered on raw and unadorned chord-zither and pipe organ recordings in just intonation, Luka Aron’s new work expands the landscape manifold. Emerging as his solo debut on Warm Winters Ltd., 'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' connects to tropes first developed on Minua’s 'Simulacra' (also released by the Slovak label), to which Aron contributed significantly. An opaque juxtaposition between the steadfastness of electronic sound synthesis and the fragility of the human touch inherent in acoustic instrumentation is a through line in Aron’s work and at its most developed here. By painstakingly tuning sustained tones towards precision upon occupying the same pitch space, the various timbres in 'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' are as much canceled out as reinforced, resulting in flux states of spectral fusion. This effect is further achieved through traversing a labyrinthine structure of multiple closely related overtone series, serving as a harmonic framework for the piece’s ever-shifting bedrock. Via the appliance of heavy distortion, a secondary structure (that, in fact, exposes the undertone series) is gradually unveiled: like light rays meeting the surface of water, partially reflecting back to air, and refracting at once, as they pass from one medium to the other. As per the title, numerical relationships are ubiquitous here—and yet, this is not music merely arising from mathematical calculation; instead, it is one shaped by the direct experience of sound phenomena themselves, prior to preconceived ideas or beliefs about their potential symbolic meaning or function. During studies at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, Aron spent days on end observing the physiology of hearing through minute listening tests, not seldomly resembling a visit to the ear doctor. The specific tone combinations he discovered in this empirical process quite instrumentally “play the ear” and are potent catalysts for reaching states of mind that transcend the mundane, challenging matters of subject-object relations. As such, 'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' stems from an artistic approach where one’s perception is not only an endpoint but also a beginning—and the composer’s task is to uncover what is already present. On a structural plane, the pieces stem from multi-layered golden mean relationships that permeate all levels of the composition, ranging from the overall arc to the formal and rhythmical aspects of each variation. Every sound event spirals out of the previous one, and the final instant is determined right at the initial stroke before ever unfolding over a total runtime of 38 minutes. Put forth by an almost self-generating system (here, the math does come into play), the time domain is determined with minor algorithmic interventions set beforehand. Gradually, the omnipresent sequence nests in consciousness and instantiates arresting attention in the listener. With Aron operating the Buchla 200 and EMS VCS3 synthesizers, in addition to the SuperCollider and Pure Data coding environments, the cast of musicians includes an array of Stockholm-based artists, such as Mattias Hållsten on shō—a Japanese mouth organ—and Susana Santos Silva on trumpet (both members of the late CC Hennix’ Kamigaku ensemble), just intonation contrabassist Vilhelm Bromander, along with Amina Hocine and her unique self-built foghorn organ. Frequent collaborators Fabian Willmann on bass clarinet and Raphaël Rossé on serpent and euphonium join from the electroacoustic group Minua, which Aron co-founded.

For over a quarter of a century, sound artist and composer Richard Chartier has interrogated an ever deepening thread of minimalist sound that meshes questions of stasis, pulse and timbre. The results of this work is some of the most quietly intense compositions of this century. His is a music of subtle variation, unwavering concentration, and also patience. This five-part work created between 2020 and 2022 is dedicated to his friend and fellow sound artist Steve Roden. "I first became friends with Steve Roden (and later his wife, Sari) back in 1998 when my first album 'direct.incidental.consequential' was released. He was one of the first group of artists to whom i sent the album. Almost instantly he had been there on the other side of the phone (or email) and ever since. His way of listening and attention to details (no matter how small) was inspirational — the clarity and complexity of his understated and only seemingly simple compositions, engaging. Underneath it all, 'the less' truly opened your ears to 'the more.' Steve saw and heard everything between the noise, no matter how faint. Some of the last times I was able to see Steve were right before the pandemic. The effects of his advancing Alzheimers were present, still somewhat subtle, but increasing. I am still regretful that we were unable to spend more time together prior to his succumbing to his condition's cruel effects. Another regret is not engaging in the collaboration we had both talked about for YEARS. 'We should really start on that sometime soon' Steve and I would say with each passing year. I worked on the compositions included on this album as Steve gradually slipped away from communication. He was not in my life like he had been before. During this time it became apparent that these pieces were for Steve. A reflection of his ability to find beauty in the most minute details. Even when finally reviewing the final masters after his passing, I tried to think about how Steve would listen. What would Steve hear in the details? His effect on this album is strong... the accumulation of influence and inspiration. This album feels organic and warm and was developed during a time when his absence in my life increased. That warmth is reflective of the nature of who Steve was himself, his friendship, and his visual & sound work. on listening... on loss... on leaving... As Steve and I mutually suggested... for quiet amplification or headphone listening."

Rachika Nayar's fragments (expanded) is a collection of sonic miniatures constructed from guitar loops created in the familiar comforts of her own bedroom. These cyclical, meditative pieces stem from an intimate part of Nayar's creative practice, revealing a deep source of self-exploration and restoration. A collision of midwestern emo and post-rock influences with virtuosic minimalist guitar, fragments (expanded) provides an intimacy between Nayar and those listening in parallel spaces, activating our collective past and shared unconscious experience. This expanded vinyl edition adds a full extra side of previously unreleased pieces and includes a high quality multi-format digital download.

Marking its first decade of activity, Blume returns with the composer Ben Vida’s “Vocal Trio”. An intoxicatingly beautiful, groundbreaking work of compositional conceptualism - combining the ideas of systems based synthesis with real-time vocal collaboration - the album represents a striking step forward for one of the most ambitious and outstanding sonic artists working in the United States today. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
** 200 copies. Color Vinyl. 140gr Audiophile pressing. Including printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus an original insert that functions as Obi. Comes with a leporello insert offering the piece visual score. ** Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the works by Werner Durand, Sarah Hennies, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Valentina Magaletti, Alvin Curran, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and shortly after returning with the first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney’s legendary “Postal Pieces”, the label is now offering a brand new, ambitious work by the American composer Ben Vida, entitled “Vocal Trio”, conceived, performed, and recorded in Bremen, Germany, during the Spring of 2022. A truly stunning work of compositional conceptualism, combining the ideas of systems based synthesis with real-time vocal collaboration - issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 200 copies mastered by Stephan Mathieu, featuring specially commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey and a leporello insert offering the piece visual score - it’s a landmark in contemporary experimental practice and arguably the most forward-thinking and exciting piece by one of the most exciting American artists working today.

Ben Vida first emerged during the mid 1990s within a loose constellation of experimental musicians, centred around a performance series of improvised workshops at the Myopic Bookstore in Chicago, alongside Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Chad Taylor, and the other future members of Town and Country - Jim Dorling, Joshua Abrams, and Liz Payne - the band within which he would gain widespread recognition over the following years. Like many other members of that scene, Vida remains a restless product of a fleeting context - Chicago during the 1990s and early 2000s - continuously undermining concrete notions of idiom and signifier within a practice that witnessed him rendering bristling abstractions within Pillow, glacial melodies with Town and Country, the art-rock mayhem of Bird Show Band, and the angular, driving indie rock of Joan of Arc, before becoming immersed in a practice of systems based synthesis, beginning in the 2010s, that guided much of his first decade of output as a solo performer and composer.

As early as 2013, he began to incorporate acoustic sound sources - specifically the human voice - into his work. It was this shift, evolving and refining itself over the last decade, that underscores radically the leap in his practice represented by “Vocal Trio”, a work that encounters Vida composing for the human voice with the ideas that allow for synthesis - transferring the underlying concepts and structures of both subtractive and additive synthesis to the acoustic realm - without using a synthesiser.

During the Spring of 2022 Vida was in Bremen, Germany, collaborating on a dance piece with the choreographer Fay Driscoll, when the production fell into delays. Finding himself with time on his hands, a space at his disposal, and the company of two dancers - Amy Gernux and Lotte Rudhart - who were also singers, the idea for the piece - to utilising the larynx as audio paths (multi-harmonic or harmonically pure) while conceptualising each person’s mouth as a filter to sculpt the timbre and resonance of a given tone - began to take shape in his mind. Considering how typographical scores might be developed into a non-linguistic social framework, Vida drafted a single page of text - what became the score for “Vocal Trio” - accompanied by a set of harmonic suggestion and loose parameters, seeking a core meaning from each word's phonic make-up by each of the three singers (Vida, Gernux and Rudhart) singing as slowly as possible.

At the core of the pulsing vocal drones - intoxicating, harmonically rich long-tones - that make up the duration abstraction of “Vocal Trio”, is Vida’s regard for music as a social space. It is an experiment that seeks liberation through the act of collective music making, by challenging the terms through which the act of composing is perceived and then relinquishing control. The piece’s rehearsals were simply the three performers hanging out, allowing their knowing each other and natural dynamics to contribute to its form as the score, before recording during a single afternoon at the end of a number of days sharing company and space.

Creatively visionary and groundbreaking on numerous terms, as well as being intoxicatingly beautiful and remarkably listenable, Ben Vida’s “Vocal Trio” represents a striking step forward for one of the most ambitious and outstanding sonic artists working in the United States today. Issued by Blume in a highly limited vinyl edition of 200 copies mastered by Stephan Mathieu, featuring specially commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey and a leporello insert offering the piece visual score, this is hands down one of the most important contemporary records we’re likely to encounter in 2024.

1982 by Yui Onodera In Wishlist view x Share Tweet Share on Tumblr Embed this albumsmall medium large Email supported by NxT Village Records thumbnail teeth dreams thumbnail Bruce Christensen thumbnail Jonathan Herweg thumbnail Simon Burdett thumbnail diane~marie thumbnail wiley soule thumbnail davdawid thumbnail KottonKrown thumbnail Jeramboquai thumbnail Fetafunk thumbnail williegarvin99 thumbnail Haunted Hymns thumbnail Timothée Comte thumbnail Adam Aronson thumbnail Samuel Reggio thumbnail Kyohei Kudo thumbnail Scott Moore thumbnail mgpeters thumbnail CH thumbnail leksand thumbnail Petr Studeny thumbnail coserju thumbnail John Battema thumbnail kanekofumiko thumbnail Ryan thumbnail Franetta McMillian thumbnail Dan Stark thumbnail leethu thumbnail Dan Shoebridge thumbnail Jeffrey Capshew thumbnail lawrence english thumbnail criticalpath thumbnail caigera thumbnail Joseph Gelfand thumbnail richardautry thumbnail Kseif thumbnail iit thumbnail legal_bizzle thumbnail kalmykov0615 thumbnail kastauyra thumbnail dan ichinose thumbnail 1982 III 00:00 / 01:42 Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album package image Matte laminate, monochrome printed and embossed sleeve with insert card. Includes digital pre-order of 1982. You get 2 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released. shipping out on or around August 23, 2024 $12 USD or more Streaming + Download Pre-order of 1982. You get 2 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released. releases August 23, 2024 $9 USD or more 1. 1982 I 2. 1982 II 3. 1982 III 01:42 4. 1982 IV 5. 1982 V 6. 1982 VI 7. 1982 VII 04:09 8. 1982 VIII 9. 1982 IX 10. 1982 X about A note from Yui I stayed in Iwate, where I was born, for a few days and created some sound materials using limited materials and old media. Over ten years ago, Iwate was devastated by the Great East Japan earthquake. Many old things that remained in my memory became rubble, dismantled, and new scenery was there. I bounced every song from “1982” straight onto an old tape recorder. This album that comes out of my interest in sonic "degradation and rebuilding". I treated the guitar and synthesiser in a lot of new ways, so using a lot of tape recorders and/or pedal effects. I wanted the guitar to be an extension of the ambient textures rather than technology and imperfection. The raw and the processed. We benefited greatly from the evolution and democratization of computer and audio technology in the early '00s. I was fascinated by sounds that could not be created by humans, such as real-time audio synthesis and granular synthesis. Now, 20-odd years later, I am fascinated by sounds that cannot be created with a computer. It was a unique acoustic texture created by deterioration and wear, including accidental wear, due to old technology that is disappearing. It's like a memory of my old days in Iwate.　

Phill Niblock is an 85-year-old minimalist mogul and a true pillar of the NY avant-garde scene, who is active not only as a composer but also as a videographer / photographer. The monumental second album released in 1984 is reprinted in analog with the lead player Joseph Celli, who has collaborated with John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Ornette Coleman and others. A seamless and fascinating drone minimal masterpiece consisting of dense oboe and horn sounds. One piece that I would like to recommend to fans of Alvin Lucier, Yoshi Wada, and Dome!

Limited Clear Vinyl. Despite his status as a key figure in the history of Japanese ambient music, Hiroshi Yoshimura remains tragically under-known outside of his home country. Empire of Signs – a new imprint co-helmed by Maxwell August Croy, Spencer Doran and distributed by Light In The Attic – is proud to reissue Yoshimura’s debut Music for Nine Post Cards for the first time outside Japan in collaboration with Hiroshi’s widow Yoko Yoshimura, with more reissues of Hiroshi’s works to follow in the future.

Working initially as a conceptual artist, the musical side of Yoshimura’s artistic practice came to prominence in the post-Fluxus scene of late 1970s Tokyo alongside Akio Suzuki and Takehisa Kosugi, taking many subsequent turns within Japan’s bubble economy afterward. His sound works took on many forms – commissioned fashion runway scores, soundtracking perfume, soundscapes for pre-fab houses, train station sound design – all existing not as side work but as logical extensions of his philosophy of sound. His work strived for serenity as an ideal, and this approach can be felt strongly on Music for Nine Post Cards.

Home recorded on a minimal setup of keyboard and Fender Rhodes, Music for Nine Post Cards was Yoshimura’s first concrete collection of music, initially a demo recording given to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art to be played within the building’s architecture. This was not background music in the prior Japanese “BGM” sense of the word, but “environmental music”, the literal translation of the Japanese term kankyō ongaku [環境音楽] given to Brian Eno’s “ambient” music when it arrived in late 70’s Japan. Yoshimura, along with his musical co-traveler Satoshi Ashikawa, searched for a new dialog between sound and space: music not as an external absolute, but as something that interlocks with a physical environment and shifts the listener’s experience within it. Erik Satie’s furniture music, R. Murray Schafer’s concept of the soundscape and Eno’s ambience all greatly informed their work, but the specific form of tranquil stasis presented on releases like Nine Post Cards is still difficult to place within a specific tradition, remaining elusive and idiosyncratic despite the economy of its construction. This record offers the perfect introduction to Hiroshi’s unique and beautiful worldview: it’s one that can be listened to – and lived in – endlessly.

Quantum mechanics unfolds an intricate realm of limitless possibilities and probabilities, eluding easy definition. It paints a picture of the universe vastly different from our perceptible reality. What captivates me is the lens through which I perceive sound, akin to the principles of quantum physics—I don't merely hear the audible, but rather, I extract elements to construct novel auditory experiences. My profound interest in science, particularly quantum mechanics, originates around 2008-2009 during a resurgence of enthusiasm for string theory, (10-33cm released on ROOM40) hinting at the prospect of a comprehensive theory of everything. The notion of existing within 11 dimensions, as opposed to our familiar four, held a mesmerizing allure. Lacking a background in quantum mechanics intensified the challenge of my exploration, yet I stayed attuned to emerging theories, albeit at a surface level due to time constraints. The advent of the pandemic granted me the opportunity to immerse myself in the intricacies of quantum mechanics, with a particular focus on the bizarre phenomenon of quantum entanglement, which stands as one of the most enigmatic aspects of modern physics, alongside gravity. Embarking on this intellectual journey presented a steep learning curve, leaving me in a state of bewilderment for the initial six months. Yet, amid the confusion, I gleaned a profound insight: the intrinsic nature of probabilities within quantum mechanics means that feeling adrift and perplexed isn't a hindrance but rather an advantage. It becomes a preparation for the myriad possibilities and uncertainties that define this captivating and eccentric realm. Moving forward to 2021 brings me to the four sources of inspiration for the Entanglement project: the fluidity of time, the principle of entanglement, the Copenhagen interpretation and many worlds interpretation. Three iterations have been created so far with visual artist Markus Heckmann: Entanglement AV, Entanglement XR, Entanglement Dome and finally, a fourth one, a series of four albums entitled “ Entangled quantum states”. Finally, I leave you with this quote : ““Bohm believed the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion.”

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Resonant Trees, the first vinyl release from French composer-performer Léo Dupleix. An active member of the international community of younger musicians working with just intonation, Dupleix has composed works for solo instrumentalists and ensembles in Europe and Japan, as well as performing extensively on harpsichord, piano and electronics. His music is distinguished by a formal clarity and elegance of surface, gently shaping pure intervals into delicate melodic patterns and shimmering harmonic planes. Resonant Trees presents two side-long pieces for harpsichord and ensemble, both setting slowly repeating patterns played on harpsichord and guitar within an environment of sustained tones. Dupleix performs on a French double manual harpsichord (tuned to a just intonation scheme of his own devising) and Prophet synthesizer, joined by Juliette Adam (bass clarinet), Johanna Bartz (traverso flute), Cyprien Busolini (viola), Fredrik Rasten (6- and 12-string guitars), and Mara Winter (traverso flute). The harpsichord begins Resonant Tree I alone, slowly sounding out a series of arpeggiated chords that emphasise the unique (and for unaccustomed listeners, sometimes unsettling) harmonic and timbral qualities of justly tuned intervals. Long tones from synthesiser, bass clarinet, viola and Baroque traverso flutes slowly creep into the spaces between the arpeggiated chords, joined after several minutes by delicate patterns of harmonics played by Rasten on acoustic guitars. On Resonant Tree II, a similar structure and ensemble (without the flutes) are used with quite different results. We again hear only the harpsichord at first, but this time playing a series of flowing melodic lines, each of which is repeated several times. Joined again by long tones from the ensemble, here the viola is particularly prominent and its interplay with the harpsichord creates fascinating acoustic effects. In both pieces, repetition gives the music a static, stable quality while, at the same time, the exact shape of the repeating patterns remains difficult to grasp. As Dupleix writes, these pieces dream of music as ‘space and a sound that one could grasp in one’s hand.’ As the near-static quality of the repetitions and long tones with little incident make these two stretches of musical time feel like spaces for the listener to inhabit, the small variations on a narrow range of related material act like a three-dimensional object whose each facet is examined in turn. At once austere and seductive, Resonant Trees takes its place beside the work of contemporaries like Catherine Lamb, while also calling up the languorous melodic world of Mamoru Fujieda, the dignified melancholy of Satoshi Ashikawa’s classic Still Way and the espaliered chamber atmospherics of the Obscure catalogue.

2023 marks the tenth year of Music From Memory; a decade of groundbreaking archival releases, cross-generational collaborations and long-standing creative partnerships with our ever-expanding community of artists. To celebrate this milestone, earlier this year we asked our roster of artists to submit a piece of music for an anniversary compilation. As submissions gradually came in, we were blown away by what we received and slowly began to piece them together into what was to become “10”. Featuring work from artists who were present during the formation of the label, such as Gigi Masin, Joan Bibiloni and Michal Turtle, as well as artists like The Zenmenn, RAMZi and Dea, who have helped the label expand over subsequent years, “10” serves as a natural bookmark of where we are musically, whilst simultaneously reflecting on the label's rich musical past. In keeping with the Music From Memory ethos, the music of “10” spans both time and space, with submissions ranging from Vito Ricci's 'Da Hamptons' (1985) to Yu Su & J. Wilson's 'Mitti Atar' (2023). It crosses the globe, with a total of 10 countries represented across 17 tracks. The final result is an immersive musical compilation that flows perfectly from start to finish. Tragically, during the last few weeks of finalising MFM066, label co-owner Jamie Tiller passed away in a sudden accident. “10” was always intended to be a way to reflect on the journey of Music From Memory. The fact that it is now also one of the last releases that the team all worked on together adds a whole other level of reflection and makes it all the more special.

Music From Memory is excited to introduce the self-titled debut album of Habitat Ensemble, a new musical collective headed up by musician Marius Houschyar. The collective originates deep in the south of the Czech Republic, on the border with Austria, amongst the idyllic hills and fields of a village called Maříž, where a summer school of outsiders and creatives have been gathering since the 1990s. Enriching each other through intercultural exchange, summer school participants have created a unique gathering of artistic expression and interdisciplinary research. Originally grown out of the idea of translating the unique energy of the community and its environment into a musical journey where each member makes their own individual contribution, during the summer of August 2022, Habitat Ensemble became an exciting vehicle for connection and co-creation. Whether it be musical experimentation, composition, poetry, song or dance, Habitat Ensemble, having started as a series of multidisciplinary workshops, slowly developed into a unique musical recording. The album serves to conjure the unique nature, community, experimentation surrounding the school and the collective’s search for harmony across all of these, both musical and spiritual. MFM065 will be released in LP and digital format, comes with artwork by David McFarline, and is expected to release in November 2023.

Alga Marghen very proudly presents Opus 17, a major turning-point in the sonic oeuvre of Eliane Radigue. Finished in 1970, it was the last work composed with feedback materials. From that experimental period, Opus 17 preserves a plastic character: a music made of rough sonic phenomena, at once harsh and granular, possessing a quality of materiality and tactility. Its vibrations structure the air surrounding the listener with densities, thicknesses, indeed with palpable movement. Her compositions are frames which let us hear these phenomena, open frameworks from the sonic installations of her Endless Musics and here reinserted in the five scenes making up Opus 17. In 1970, in her studio of very rudimentary means, she developed a completely unique body of work centered on sounds produced by feedback. Opus 17 has the quality of showing off the sum of the achieved techniques and methods. Eliane Radigue's music has never been rooted in ideas but in practice, the intimate experience of things in the wild which she has known how to tame. This dialog both intense and poetic which she keeps up with the solid matter of sound finds a remarkable concretization in Opus 17. It is to be underlined that with Opus 17 Eliane Radigue inaugurates a technique of composition which will be her footprint, her trademark: imperceptible transformations. For that she has developed a technique of meticulous mixings, based on the slow passage from one section to the next. Imperceptible all during the piece, we pass, ceaselessly and without noticing the changes, from one frequency flux to another. Time is suspended, smoothed out, stretched. It is this technique which Eliane Radigue will be essentially using for all the electronic works to come and which she will never cease to refine and render always more subtle. Opus 17 is the great panoramic voyage through material sound, its electronic phenomena detailed as if in a microscope. As Rhys Chatham recalls: "Eliane Radigue (...) had just moved to New York and had the idea of acquiring an analog modular synthesizer, which is why she worked at NYU in order to try out the possibilities of the Buchla 100 series which we had there. One day, while gossiping, she invited me to her loft, which was just on the corner. She had me listen to a piece composed in France; the piece called 'Opus 17'. (...) What I heard changed to course of my life as a composer. (...) That piece, impressive source of inspiration, gave the impression of being in a grand cathedral, both for the sensation of immensity of being in such a large cathedral, as for the effect of being so close to God." Opus 17 was created at the artistic center of Verderonne on May 23, 1970, for the Fête en blanc (i.e. White Festival) organized by the visual artists Antoni Miralda, Joan Rabascall, Dorothée Selz and Jaume Xifra. Previously unreleased,

TRACE is a collection of 11 unreleased tracks produced by Yutaka Hirose during the Sound Process Design sessions, right after the release of his classic Soundscape series album Nova. Sound Process Design was Satoshi Ashikawa's label, home of his Wave Notation trilogy (Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Music For Nine Postcards, Satsuki Shibano's Erik Satie 1866-1925 and Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way). Following Wave Notation, Sound Process Design worked with museums, cafes and bars to create site-specific soundscapes, starting with the sound design of the Kushiro Museum. Yutaka Hirose was called to work on sound for these spaces.

Rather than simply providing pre-recorded compositions, Hirose sought to create a "sound scenery". To achieve this, he participated in the conception of the space and paid particular attention to the accidental combination of sounds by placing the speakers and using a multi-sound source, and following the concept of "sculpturing time through sound".

The composer explains: "sculpturing time through sound means that the time, the space itself, the sound played in it, and the audience all become one sculpture. It is close to the idea of a Japanese tea ceremony where you use all of your 5 (or 6) senses to taste the tea."

TRACE: Sound Design Works 1986-1989 is divided into two parts. "Reflection" is based on an ambient soundscape. It narrates "a sleep that starts with the sound of water droplets at dawn and slowly disappears into darkness" and feels like a natural and soothing progression of Nova. It was played at entrances of spaces, at events, in cafes and bars. "Voice from Past Technology" expresses the dream world born out of that sleep and is based on what Yukata Hirose calls hardcore ambient, environmental music with a noise approach. It was played in museums and science centers.

All in all, TRACE is a crucial addition to every Japanese environmental music fan’s collection, alongside Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Green, Satoshi Ishikawa’s Still Way, Motohiko Hamase’s Notes of Forestry, Inoyamaland’s Danzindan-Pojidon, and Yutaka Hirose’s very own Nova.

WRWTFWW Records is proud to announce the highly anticipated official reissue of holy grail album MKWAJU by acclaimed Japanese percussionist Midori Takada’s MKWAJU ensemble, sourced from the original masters and available in two versions: a vinyl LP cut at Emil Berliner Studios (formerly the in-house recording department of Deutsche Grammophon) and a digipack CD.

Originally recorded in February and March 1981 and released by fabled Japanese avant-garde label Better Days (home of Ryuichi Sakamato’s debut album, Yasuaki Shimizu’s Kakashi, Colored Music self-titled LP and many more) MKWAJU is the fruit of the collaboration between Takada’s crew and world-famous composer/musical director Joe Hisaishi, the man behind most of of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli anime soundtracks and over 100 other films scores, including Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine, Hana-Bi, and Kikujiro. The ensemble’s transcendental wonder is, in fact, the first-ever Midori Takada album and the first-ever Joe Hisaishi-produced album. Historic.

Led by Midori Takada on marimba, gong, vibraphone, and tom tom, MKWAJU is an inventive and riveting take on Eastern and Western minimalist traditions, African rhythms, and early electronica. Drawing from its jazz-rooted polyrhythmic improvisations in the most inventive ways, the album covers a wide spectrum of sounds, from colorful dance floor-ready percussion pieces that stand somewhere between proto-techno and experimental synth-pop, to cinematic ambient landscapes and ethereal drone delicacies. The feverishly sought-after full-length is a stepping-stone in Midori Takada’s career and an all-around pioneering album.

Alongside Takada and Hisaishi (who not only produced the album but also played synthesizers), personnel on MKWAJU includes famed Japanese musicians Yoji Sadanari and Hideki Matsutake of KI-Motion fame, Junko Arase (heard on Satoshi Ashikawa’s legendary Still Way - Wave Notation 2), and Pecker (whose stacked resume boasts collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jun Fukamachi).

Living Torch, through its unique structural form and harmonic material, is a bold continuation of Kali Malone’s demanding and exciting body of work, while opening new perspectives and increasing the emotional potential of the music tenfold. As such, Living Torch is a major new piece by the composer and adds a significant milestone to an already fascinating repertoire. Departing from the pipe organ that Malone’s music is most notable for, Living Torch features a complex electroacoustic ensemble. Leafing through recordings from conventional instruments like the trombone and bass clarinet to more experimental machines like the boîte à bourdon, passing through sinewave generators and Éliane Radigue’s ARP 2500 synthesizer. Living Torch weaves its own history, its own genealogy, and that of its author. It extends her robust structural approach to a liberated palette of timbre. Living Torch was initially commissioned by GRM for its legendary loudspeaker orchestra, the Acousmonium, and premiered in its complete multichannel form at the Grand Auditorium of Radio France in a concert entirely dedicated to the artist. Composed at GRM studios in Paris between 2020-2021, Living Torch is a work of great intensity, an oeuvre-monde that is singularly placed at the crossroads of instrumental writing and electroacoustic composition. Living Torch proceeds from multiple lineages, including early modern music, American minimalism, and musique concrète. It’s a work as much turned towards exploring justly tuned harmony and canonic structures as towards the polyphony of unique timbres, the scaling of dynamic range, and the revelation of sound qualities. GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), the pioneering institution of electroacoustic, acousmatic, and musique concrète, has been a unique laboratory for sonorous research since 1958. Witnessing the extreme vitality of the music championed by GRM, the Portraits GRM record series extends and expands this momentum with Kali Malone’s Living Torch. The French label-partner Shelter Press is proud to continue the collaboration with GRM, which Peter Rehberg of Editions MEGO set the foundation for in 2012.

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.”

For the first time, The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble’s seminal album "Mr. Machine" is being re-issued on coloured vinyl. This is a record that put them alongside names as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but with considerably more groove. More than anything, Daniel, Jan and Paul are keen that the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble are not written off as a curiosity: “Often people focus a lot on this whole "cross-over" aspect,” says Brauer. “We wish people would simply notice we have good chords, melodies etc. and take the music as it is. Because we make it the way we feel, and not for other, let's say purely conceptual reasons. Some only seem interested in how it’s made. Some reviewers perceive us as minimal techno, some as modern classical, some as nu jazz and so on. But we don’t divide the world into techno and non-techno.”

On rare occasions, all the stars align. This is how it was when composer-musician and instrument-maker Bex Burch jumped into her car and drove eight hours across Europe to Utrecht in November 2021. “Mostly life isn’t like that,” she says. “We’re here to figure things out and struggle. But occasionally things just fall into place. Sometimes the world is magical.” The car trip began in Berlin, where she was living after a long stint in London, where she’d made her name in the layers that exist between jazz and improvised experimentalism. The journey ended at Le Guess Who? Festival and an invitation from International Anthem’s Alejandro Ayala. Or perhaps it ended in a ground floor studio in Chicago’s South Side with light streaming through a skylight onto her newly-finished wooden xylophone and a stream of musicians selected by International Anthem’s Scottie McNiece and Dave Vettraino. Or maybe, like a wave travelling across the ocean, the travels continued until Bex Burch finally finished editing thirty-two days of exceptionally tender improvised recording sessions into the forty gossamer minutes of this stunning debut solo record, which oscillates between modes of quiet open-heartedness and powerful expression. There is only love and fear is the sound of Bex Burch in communion with some of the finest sonic communicators in International Anthem’s extended family. These include woodwind player Rob Frye, who gave Burch a tour of the Illinois Audubon Society’s Gremel Wildlife Sanctuary the day after she arrived in Chicago. Also Tortoise drummer Dan Bitney and Ben LaMar Gay, who both took Burch through her first few days in the studio, tuning into her communicative harmonics and responding with their own. And double bassist Anna Butterss and violinist Macie Stewart, who participated separately but both became key collaborators in the album’s post-production, accenting their respective string improvisations with additional sounds remotely recorded per Burch’s direction. Everyone on this record is highly skillful, a rare talent, but drawn together by Burch they were invited to inhabit something even more extraordinary: their most open selves, requested only to bring the sounds they liked – or even needed – in the moment of recording. “What has come through in this album,” she says, “is a more domestic style of music: the simplicity of life and sound-making. The word I’m shy to use is ‘feminine’ but it’s true, and I reclaim it in all its power.” She describes her sound as “messy minimalism.” The twelve tracks evoke variously the sweet kind of zoning-in that allows the listener access to their own feelings; the generative meditations of First Thought, Best Thought-era Arthur Russell; Vivaldi or Laurie Anderson – if they’d been ultra-gentle satellite reflections of Chicago’s minimalist and avant-garde music histories. Burch has previously released as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and with the critically acclaimed Strut-released Flock with Londoners including Sarathy Korwar and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. She also runs the band and label Vula Viel and has collaborated with artists from Peter Zummo to Dame Evelyn Glennie. This album also welcomes in the sound of the natural world; ‘hip as fuck’ wood pigeons and resonant nightingales recorded in Berlin parks and forests, dreamy waves lilting onto the sand on the Baltic coast of Rügen Island for the unforgettable closing track ‘When Love Begins’ – and some extreme Chi-Town weather. “There was this ignition moment,” she says of ‘You thought you were free’, the carnival-coloured mid-point of the album. “There was a tornado warning, our phones were all going off: ‘go into the basement’.” The players collectively shrugged their shoulders – until siren sound waves began ghosting through the studio walls. “I turned one of the microphones up to catch the thunder and the rain under the skylight,” she says. “I was properly scared, not just because of the storm, but because I was nervous. I was trying to stay open and be conscious of the fact that I didn’t know what to expect – and that doing so means surrender. That knife edge of presence was really intense. We all just played through.” Playing through was possible, at least in part because of a 90-day practice Burch calls Dawn blessings, which also provided some of the ‘heard sounds’ that dance around the music generated during these collaborative recordings. The practice refers to a friend called Dawn, not daybreak, although at least one of the Dawn blessings that ended up on There is only love and fear was recorded when the sun came up. The Dawn blessings required Burch to make one piece of music daily, in answer to the question: ‘what sounds do I like today?’ “My intention was to cultivate this feeling of expansion and magic that I felt when I was invited to the US. The music is already there, and I have to let go and allow myself to be in it. The 90-day practice was to strengthen that muscle. You know if

Svaneborg Kardyb's Tiny Desk (Home) concert was recorded in the countryside of Djursland, Denmark. "You have to drive for a while on a gravel road, and then you come to a lovely old house surrounded by hills and a stream on one side and a very flat landscape on the other, where you can see 10 miles away,". It's this place that inspired Svaneborg Kardyb's second album, Haven (or "garden" in English). "Haven celebrates places we like to be," the duo said. Svaneborg Kardyb is composed of Nikolaj Svaneborg on the Wurlitzer, synthesizer and piano, and Jonas Kardyb on drums and percussion. Their instrumentation set-up is untraditional, with the drums and keys facing each other, a position that they play in on stage just as they do in Kardyb's kitchen and living room on this session. They open up their set with the title track from Haven, which begins with a quiet melody over an effervescent loop. The sound mimics the shimmy of leaves in the breeze.

To get a good handle on ‘Aslope’ look no further than the intricate ‘Scattered sprinkle, no turn’, a 12+ minute collage of moonlit organ vamps, stifled voices and disembodied, robotic poems. Heaving from smeary abstraction to penetrable drama almost imperceptibly, featherlight rhythms are cut short by uncanny voices: “stop, turning, a page,” like some rogue navigation assistant, slicing into ticking clocks and xerox noise. It’s like listening to a film without access to the visuals - all the foley sound remains (car blinkers, trains passing, conversations) and we’re left puzzling over what may or may not be happening. The only context provided is from Nika Son herself, who says that although the album doesn’t have a consistent theme, the link is that each piece is inspired by the night’s “capability to shift our perception and memory”. It comes off like a crepuscular sketchbook of ideas and themes that coalesce into a bumpy, endlessly rewarding sonic landscape. Son’s more bite-sized compositions are just as mind-altering. ‘Trinsar Gobble’ is one of the record’s more twitchy tracks, replete with thrumming, inhuman polyrhythms that skitter around booming thuds, French voices and oscillating, filtered synths. It’s music that defies simple categorisation - Son doesn’t tie herself to any particular type of identifiable expression or another. The music sounds as if it’s evolved outside expected contemporary influences: there are no knowing nods to early electronic innovators. Rather, Son follow her own nose, using the sonic characteristics of each element to draw us into an elusive personal narrative. On ‘It’s just a cucumber’, environmental recordings are edited just enough to enhance the illusion, before voices curl and decompress into rousing bass womps and unmetered rhythms prickle around punkish shouts. The use of voices is omnipresent throughout, even when they’re not there, they sound close: on ‘La nuit tombe’, they’re muffled behind echoing footsteps and creepy synth wails, and on ‘Gelbes Feld’, incomprehensible chatter envelopes cricket chirps and b-movie arpeggios. Many artists have tried to map out the dreamworld using sound, but Nika Son manages to make music that genuinely feels in-between worlds, capturing those seconds before vivid memories slip away from the mind’s eye.

The final studio recording of the late, great Tony Conrad, and the first duo release with Jennifer Walshe. A wild, improvisatory flaying of song; the sheer sonic force recalls the ecstatic charge of Conrad’s Slapping Pythagoras, with Walshe’s clarion voice at the heart of it. A one-of-a-kind concoction whipped up by two fearless and often peerless souls. It’s a joy to hear their manifest mutual regard and commitment to busting a gut.

A live performance of four early works by Steve Reich: “Four Organs”, “My Name Is”, “Piano Phase” and “Phase Patterns.” This performance marked an important moment in San Francisco bay area new music history with the triumphant return to the east bay by Reich, who studied at Mills College with Luciano Berio, and who performed the 1964 world premiere of Terry Riley’s seminal work, “In C”, at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. The resonant acoustics of the University of California at Berkeley Museum’s concrete interior were especially appropriate for “Four Organs”, with its long additive sustained chords over a maraca pulse. Repressed in a limited edition of 500 copies on transparent vinyl.