MUSIC

David Behrman's work released in 1978. A masterpiece that includes "On the Other Ocean," in which flute and bassoon performances are modulated by a handmade synthesizer and computer to develop beautiful sustained sounds, and "Figure in a Clearing," which was composed by David Behrman for the first time using a computer.

Sydney-based jazz trio triosk and jan jelinek from Berlin have opened up a common equation. The title reflects their production method : jelinek mails selected samples and textures to australia, Triosk use these as a basis for composition and recording, the enhanced material then returns to Berlin for Jelinek to finalise.

But the mileage covered does not become audible - "four different instruments multiplied by four different approaches make one sense". Triosk and Jelinek play together with eerie assurance and emphatic sensibility. Archetypal, dissolving jazz elements correspond to repetitive patterns not known to the genre, electronics and acoustics circle each other but remain conjoined. A perfect evolution from the micro-contained glitch-house that Jelinek has adapted so brilliantly - forever searching for a myriad colour of jazz traditions and influences that have finally expressed themselves with a less contained form on this wondrous album.

Perhaps geographical circumstances have something to do with the fact that Jelinek and Triosk approach a similar musical task from completely different directions - but the result is a deep, timeless and brilliantly executed slice of machine soul music for the mellowest of blue nights - and another maverick album from a man who can seemingly do no wrong.

Masterpieces from Australia-based label that seems friends of the current dub ambient landmark West Mineral led by Huerco S. The debut album under the name of "J" by Australian experimental musician = Justin Cantrell, who is also known as the name of Ju Ca and collaboration with mdo as a popular unit called "picnic", has appeared. A daydream or heavenly fantasy, an intimate & nocturnal fantasy ambient / modern classical masterpiece that keeps swaying and swaying forever, it can only be said to be the best! Mastered by Shy (uon).

180g vinyl pressing. - “A love letter to the masters of Japanese ambient and environmental music.” During the late 2010s, music lovers around the world began obsessively listening to increasingly esoteric albums on Youtube. More often than not, they’d leave the browser on autoplay. This was how Facundo Arena, the composer and producer behind The Kyoto Connection, discovered the technonaturalistic pleasures of Kankyō Ongaku (environmental music), a distinctly Japanese interpretation of European, British and American minimalist composition and ambient music. “It was a kind of algorithmic magic,” he says. Upload by upload, the utopian music of Hiroshi Yoshimura and his 80s Japanese contemporaries transported Facundo back to his childhood. When he was five, his father placed him in karate lessons and began watching martial arts movies with him. From those early experiences, Facundo became fascinated Japanese history, tradition, and culture, particularly that of Kyoto - the cultural capital of Japan. Kankyō Ongaku reminded him of hearing the sounds of Japanese folkloric instruments as a young boy, and suddenly, the way the influence of Japan had manifested in his music made sense. “I had the sensation that for many years, I’d been doing something similar to the style,” he explains. Inspired, Facundo used an iPad and an old Akai cassette deck to record Postcards, his homage to Japanese minimalism and Kankyō Ongaku. By this stage, he was twelve years deep with The Kyoto Connection, the musical project he launched in 2005 in his hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over that late 2000s and 2010s, Facundo, later on joined by collaborators Rodrigo Trado (drums), Jesica Rubino (violin) and Marian Benitez (vocals, now his wife), released numerous D.I.Y albums. Project by project, they followed the threads between 80s synth-pop, ambient, new age, house, techno and acoustic composition. Postcards introduced The Kyoto Connection to listeners around the world and brought Facundo into our orbit. During Argentina’s covid lockdown, Facundo received a set of soundscapes recorded in Kyoto by the Japanese musician and sound designer Masafumi Komatsu. Over several insular months, he decorated them with synthesisers, samples and subtle rhythms, creating The Kyoto Connection’s next album, The Flower, The Bird and the Mountain to be released via Isle Of Jura offshoot Temples Of Jura. Ostensibly made up of twelve distinct tracks, listening to The Flower, The Bird and the Mountain feels more akin to spending calm, meditative time in twelve specific environments. Although the foundations they rest on are recordings made in geographic locations around Kyoto, Facundo has yet to visit Japan. As a result, the landscapes he paints sit somewhere between fiction and fact, richly pictorial sonic imagination juxtaposed with echoes of reality. Regardless, as his bubbling melodies and glistening synthesisers glide against Masafumi Komatsu's recordings, Facundo guides us into a blissful zone of tranquillity well worth spending time within.

There are certain works by minimalist pioneer Terry Riley that are rightly celebrated as classics, paradigm-shifting masterpieces that exerted a wide influence within classical music, but also well beyond its often hermetic borders. Hello, “Baba O’Riley!” But there is so much more in his repertoire deserving the same accolades. On “Terry Riley: Keyboard Studies”, released by Another Timbre, one of the premiere contemporary music labels of our time, three mid-1960s masterpieces are interpreted by the brilliant pianist John Tilbury - known well for his long-time membership in AMM, to say nothing on his authoritative readings of music by Morton Feldman and Cornelius Cardew - sometime in the early 1980s, offering dazzling evidence of his inventive interpretations and Riley’s boundless importance. The British pianist John Tilbury has been intimately connected with AMM for more than four decades, joining the legendary improvising group back in 1980. He filled the chair once held by Cornelius Cardew, who left the group a year earlier (and who died in a tragic bike accident in 1981). Long before joining the group Tilbury had established himself as one of England’s finest contemporary classical musicians, with a particular expertise int the work of Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Howard Skempton as well as Cardew. Apart from recording the latter’s music, he also penned an authoritative book about his life and music, publishing “Cornelius Cardew - A Life Unfinished” in 2008. Tilbury is a pianist of rare erudition and technical precision, surveying long-form works with a keen architectural knowledge, and his refined skills as an improviser are rooted in high-level listening abilities. He has thrived in collective enterprises, giving and taking in varied contexts in a way that emphasizes collaboration, care, and sensitivity while downplaying bald virtuosity. Outside of his brilliant work in AMM (and outside of it with core members Keith Rowe and Eddie Prevost) he’s improvised with a broad array of sonic explorers including Oren Ambarchi, Marcus Schmickler, John Butcher, Evan Parker, and Derek Bailey. He cleaves to an immaculate strain of austerity, operating with remarkable restraint and rigor that generally has no interest in excess or virtuosity for its own sake. Over the years he’s made several recordings for Sheffield’s Another Timbre imprint - one of the best, most thoughtful labels devoted to a post-Cagean music landscape - including one as part of the collective Goldsmiths in addition to titles featuring the music of Feldman, Cage, and Terry Jennings. Another recording for the label features his clavichord playing on work by John Lely and Christian Wolff. While working with Another Timbre capo Simon Reynell on a different long-term project, Tilbury played him some old recordings featuring several keyboard works by minimalist pioneer Terry Riley, an old and dear acquaintance of the pianist. Tilbury doesn’t recall the exact provenance of the recordings, but it seems likely they were made in Hamburg in the early 1980s. “Keyboard Studies” offers a crucial facet of Tilbury’s musical world, one that’s poorly represented by recordings, while at the same time offering new interpretations of some of Riley’s most important work. A handful of pianists, such as Sarah Cahill and Steffen Schleiermacher, have recorded the first two of his seven “Keyboard Studies”, but getting to hear Tilbury’s ravishing, breathtaking accounts of these works reveals new perspectives. Riley himself never recorded the first study, while an attractively raw iteration of the second was made under the title “Untitled Organ”, released on the 1967 album “Reed Streams” on the Mass Art imprint. Riley only notated the first two of these pieces, composed between 1964-67, as they were designed largely as piano exercises for ideas he was working through at the time - during the same period he wrote his masterpiece “In C” - and each piece requires significant improvisation on the part of the interpreter. Naturally, Tilbury was up for the task. Both of these “Keyboard Studies” use a fixed but implied pulse, with a jaw-dropping rhythmic attack rooted in fifteen foundational three- or four-note phrases that cycle over and over, with the performer determining when to move forward, although the opening figure must always remain present. As far as I can tell Tilbury’s account of “Keyboard Study 1”, with its vaguely hocket-like alteration between two phrases at a time, is a single live take on piano, but the technical difficulty of these works has required overdubbing, and that’s what we get from Tilbury on “Keyboard Study 2”, which contains five separate voices, where he plays piano, electric organ, celeste, and harpsichord in dizzying cycles of rapidly swirling, rhythmically identical passages. The writing allows the listener to trace the ecstatic shifts between those core cells, even as the lines fly by at super high velocity. Phrases seem to emerge and disappear in almost psychedelic excess. The album’s final piece is a version of Riley’s “Dorian Reeds”, a 1965 work he composed for saxophone and electronic delay - and also included on the “Reed Streams” album - which shares many of the same concerns as “Keyboard Studies”, albeit with a far more limited harmonic profile. In Riley’s own recording of the piece, which incorporated his Time-Lag Accumulator system as a delay device to allow for the removal and introduction of phrases, he plays saxophone, although subsequently the piece has been adapted depending on the instrument as Dorian Voices or Dorian Brass. Although it sticks with the original title, Tilbury’s version is for electric organ. It’s a wonderful sonic mind-storm, as terse phrases stack up, phase in and out of each other, only to be pushed aside by new iterations, bouncing across the stereo field. Obviously, John Tilbury took his practice in a direction far removed from these minimalist gems, but here he not only proves his remarkable facility for this aesthetic frame, but he reveals a creative connection to the composer. He seems to inhabit these works with rare insight, a quality surely enhanced by his personal friendship with Terry Riley.

A 4-disc box-set with Apartment House playing all of John Cage's 'number pieces' for mid-size ensembles (from 'Five' to 'Fourteen', with 'Four5' as an added extra, along with alternative versions of three of the pieces). These extraordinarily beautiful works were all composed in the last 5 years of the composer's life, as Cage approached his 80th birthday. These recordings by Apartment House are the first recordings for 15 years of almost all of the pieces. An essential release of wonderful but somewhat neglected music. Downloads include a pdf of the 44-page booklet with extensive notes about Cage's number pieces, and the cover artwork

The album TICHAZOMUONA by Dumisani Abraham “Dumi” Maraire was a pioneering effort to promote mbira music. It is a family effort involving his wife Chengeto Linda “Mai Chi” Nemarundwe and their daughter, Chiwoniso “Chi” Maraire. Maraire was a mbira and marimba player, who taught for many years on the west coast of the United States, and was the moving spirit behind the popularity of Shona music in the USA and more widely. Born in 1944 in Chakohwa Village in Mutambara, Eastern Zimbabwe, Dumi began learning music from family members early. In his late teens, he began to pursue music more seriously; in 1966, Dumi went to the Kwanongoma College of Music in Bulawayo and started to learn instruments like the nyunganyunga mbira and the marimba. The nyunganyunga mbira is a 15-Note kalimba (or lamellophone), named after the community from which it originated; thousands of youths learnt traditional songs on this instrument at Kwanongoma. Before colonialism, the mbira was considered sacred; though vital to Shona culture, its importance in traditional ceremonies suffered during and after colonialism. With the arrival of the settlers, many locals converted to Christianity, where the colonialist missionaries preached that mbira music was connected to evil spirits. The rise of pan-Africanism and patriotism in the postcolonial era brought a more tolerant and respectful stance towards musical instruments like the mbira. At independence in 1980, traditional Zimbabwean music, following heavy Rhodesian censorship, began receiving more airtime on radio and television. After independence, artists like Thomas Mapfumo, Zexie Manatsa, Marshall Munhumumwe, Jonah Sithole, and Robson Banda started performing popular guitar music that replicated the mbira’s sound. Dumi and others, including Ephat Mujuru, Beulah Dyoko, Cosmas Magaya and Stella Chiweshe, played traditional mbira music, sometimes accompanied by the ngoma (drum) and hosho (shakers) as well. Dumi is credited with developing the 1–15 number notation used on the nyunganyunga mbira, and notating the song Chemutengure; this song is used to teach mbira learners the technique of playing the instrument. Dumi was a visiting professor in the University of Washington’s ethnomusicology department from 1968 to 1972. Composing in Shona, he specialised in marimba, singing, dancing and drumming. He taught at The Evergreen State College in Olympia in the 1970s, giving private lessons and touring the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia with several marimba groups he founded. After watching a young Linda Nemarundwe perform one of his mbira arrangements at a 1972 workshop in Zimbabwe, Maraire offered to teach her more, and they worked together for the rest of the conference, playing together at a final performance. Dumi eventually married Mai Chi in 1975, and she joined him in Seattle, where he continued teaching and performing Zimbabwean music, while she earned her BA in Early Childhood Education. In 1982, the family returned to Zimbabwe; Mai Chi worked for the Save the Children Fund, while Dumi developed the ethnomusicology programme at the University of Zimbabwe. During this time, in 1986, they recorded the album TICHAZOMUONA, featuring their 10-year-old daughter Chiwoniso on the title track. The entire recording is a masterpiece of traditional mbira playing, combining the intimate with the spiritual to fashion a genre-defining sound. When you pick up a mbira, you feel you are picking up the history of a part of Africa, a complete way of making music, a whole social system of music and religion and history. As such, it can be confusing as to who is, in fact, playing who. In Dumi’s own words: “When a mbira player plays his instrument, he is not playing it for the world. He is not trying to please people, nor is he performing. What he is doing is conversing with a friend. He teaches his friend what to do, and his friend teaches him what to do... To me, a mbira is a lively instrument. It amazes me when I hear all these different things in my way of playing. This is not because I am playing different patterns without knowing what I am doing, but because, as I give the mbira more, I get more from it. So, in simple terms, I can say that the mbira is always in front, giving the materials to the player, and the player follows behind, emphasising these while at the same time asking for more. What more can one say of such an instrument but that it is a friend indeed?” Indeed, this personal relationship with his instrument led Dumi to credit the Nyunganyunga Mbira separately on the original album cover (even while his daughter’s name, Chiwoniso, was slightly misspelt). Four years later, he was back in Seattle, teaching and earning his doctorate in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington. When Dumi finally returned permanently to Zimbabwe in 1990 to take a position at the University of Zimbabwe, Mai Chi remained in the US, making her home in Portland, Oregon, where she developed her renowned love of cooking into a catering business. Mai Chi was a multi-dimensional musician in her own right - vocalist, marimba player, drummer, dancer - who involved herself deeply with the African music community in the Pacific Northwest, sharing her musicality freely and openly until she died in 1997. Dumi himself died in 1999, having inspired thousands to explore Shona culture by providing a vivid example with his own family. Chiwoniso also passed away in 2013 after an inspirational career of her own. The first-ever release of Nyami Nyami Records was the song Zvichapera by Chi, which she recorded a few weeks before she passed; this song was the reason this label was created. Dumi similarly influenced countless musicians. From his years of residence in the US as a visiting musician, Maraire catalysed a network of Americans playing Zimbabwean music across the United States, focused primarily on the West Coast in Oregon, Washington, and California, with other communities in Colorado and New Mexico. During his years spent teaching in Zimbabwe, many important mbira players crossed Dumisani Maraire’s path, and many musicians inspired by him have worked to perform, teach, and spread Zimbabwean music around the world. Several of Dumi’s surviving children have also gone on to be musicians themselves.

The influence Steve Reich had on contemporary music can hardly be put into words. As one of the great innovators, he started playing around with tape loops and created rhythmic and tonal effects while recording the sounds of rain, it formed the basis of his ambitious project called " It's Gonna Rain". The great depth and complexity make this an outstanding song in his repertoire - an incredible tape loop piece that starts with the words of a gospel preacher, then takes a snippet ("it's gonna rain") and repeats it over and over itself, endlessly looping, and messing with the words and tones as it goes in and out of phase. Incredible stuff – and far more revolutionary than a lot of Reich's later work. The A-side of the LP contains “Violin Phase”, featuring Paul Zukofsky. This masterpiece in minimalist music is grand and epic. The two pieces were recorded live together under the title Live/Electric Music.

Like a rediscovered Viking burial ship, Electro Nova compiles near-mythical drone recordings produced in 1998 and described by Helge Sten aka Deathprod as some of the most important music to ever come out of Norway. It's the work of Kåre Dehlie Thorstad and compiles two of the earliest releases on Smalltown Supersound, back when it was basically no more than a bedroom operation. It’s taken over two decades, but finally the label have given the material a first ever proper release on vinyl, complete with mixing and mastering by Deathprod. If you’re into the ice cold swells of anyone from Thomas Köner to Harley Gaber, Biosphere, Kali Malone or, of course, Deathprod - this one's as essential as they come. Kaare Dehlie Thorstad's Elektro Nova produced just two releases during the late ‘90s that have since slipped into drone lore - Trans-Inter-Ference and Elektro Nova/Electro Nova. Admired not only by Deathprod and Joakim Haugland of Smalltown, but also by his contemporaries Lasse Marhaug and Biosphere, his work has evaded pretty much any attention outside of Norway these last two decades. Following a chance meeting with Thorstad at Oslo airport a few years back, Smalltown were prompted to give the recordings a second wind, presenting what is essentially a captivating new release, and crucial addition to the Norsk drone canon. As the story goes, Thorstad was studying photography in the late 90’s in Scotland, but instead of delivering a photo for his final exam he made a record - a double album (2CDs) and a 10” to be precise. That should provide some idea of the textural synaesthetic and landscaping qualities evoked by his music, which he ended up sending to a then-young Smalltown label, who were mostly issuing tapes at the time. With no proper distribution the records largely bypassed wider attention, and become a personal favourite of Smalltown’s Joakim Haugland, as well as avowed fan Helge Sten (Deathprod), who helped render its diaphanous scale in mix down, and Lasse Marhaug who describes them as "two perfect records that deserved much bigger attention”. Between its jaw-dropping opener; the post-apocalyptic vision of its untitled part; and the cinematic white-out of the 10” tracks; Thorstad comes as close as we’ve ever heard to evoking the inhospitable nature and stark beauty of the wild far north. We can hear those landscapes palpably internalised and alchemically transmuted into its coarse grained textural swells and a reverberating multi-dimensionality, variously sustained to extents that evoke an abandonment of the senses, or likewise squashed and isolated to imply the relative anxiety relief of atmospheric flux, where a few degrees temperature rise or a drop in the wind speed can make the difference between life and death. Impressively, Thorstad realised after the release of Elektro Nova and just two live shows that he couldn’t really follow up the work and instead pursued a career as professional cyclist, eventually combining his visual skills to become a pro cycling photographer. In that sense, he’s a bit like composer-turned-tennis coach Harley Gaber, whose almighty ‘The Winds Rise In The North’ (1976) is in some ways richly prescient of this work. Like Gaber, Thorstad can remain safe in the knowledge that his contribution to the drone sphere will endure for the ages, especially with this important, impressive new edition.

"Applying elements of minimalism or electronic music to their compositions, Carcascara's second studio album is deeply rooted in folk, blues or jazz. Borrowing from American primitivism, this acoustic guitar trio based half way between London and Zumaia, stretch the boundaries of tradition with a fluid and developed command of the string instrument. Coming out 14 years after their self-titled debut, highly recommended for fans of Robbie Basho, Steve Reich or John Fahey."

A new album of piano driven ambient music from British composer Robert Haigh. Following in the path of his albums for the Japanese Siren label, Creatures of the Deep is an underground vantage of a meeting between the musical worlds of Harold Budd and Erik Satie. With a storied musical career that has ranged widely in style ― from his industrial-avant-garde works on Nurse With Wound’s United Diaries label as SEMA to his legendary ambient drum and bass records as Omni Trio on Moving Shadow ― Robert Haigh's work occupies a space between music and mystery. With Creatures of the Deep, Haigh is at the peak of his powers. Among noir, minimal, neo-classical landscapes are robust scatterings of bright reflection and a musical expression that is subtle and elusive yet uniquely Haigh’s in its voice and masterful execution. The closer we examine, the more is revealed, and the less is defined.

Following on from one of the most sought after reissues of recent years ‘MUSICA PARA EL FIN DE LOS CANTOS’ on Berlins Cocktail D’amore, Iury Lechs debut LP ‘Otra Rumorosa Superficie’ is made available for the very first time on Vinyl and digital launching the reissue division of London based Utopia Records set up in 2015 by Alexander Bradley. This cassette only release from 1989 is a minimal masterpiece practically unheard until now. Arguably a more complete album than De Los Cantos, Originally composed for two short films ‘Final Sin Pausas’ and ‘Bocetos Para Un Sueno’ as a full score the arrangement is a beautiful listening experience spanning through ambient, meditational and cinematic minimalism of real depth, romanticism and sincerity. Iury Lech is a Ukrainian born multidisciplinary artist, whose main focus now is as the curator of ‘Madatac’ a festival based in Madrid focused on new media art, video art and audio visual technologies which has featured the work of Brian Eno amongst many others. During the late 1970’s and 80’s he rose as a pioneer within a moment focussed on electronically generated audio and visual media. Drawing on the ground gained by Minimalist pioneers like Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass - built from repetitive rhythm and sheets of rippling resonance, drone, and ambience, Lech’s work of the period is so striking and beautiful, that it seems shockingly unjust that it was overlooked until now. The album comes in 180 gram vinyl edit form with full cassette version on USB on purchase of record. Utopia Originals sets out to promote and reinvigorate music and artists in the most authentic way possible. 'OTRA RUMOROSA SUPERFICIE’ has been remastered from original master tapes at Central Dubs, Bern Switzerland and the original artwork licensed through argentine visual artist Pablo Siquier.

Originally released on CD by Cramps Records in 1989, this is a work by Walter Marchetti (1931-), a central figure in the Italian conceptual art group ZAJ, also known as Europe's Fluxus, and a master of the avant-garde in Italy.This is a masterpiece with a melody that seems to be based on a certain mysticism, floating in the water in perfect stillness, and is highly recommended for those who like Morton Feldman.

Green-House's latest EP is a collection of unheard & rare recordings from 2021 & 2022. Imaginary department stores, Wendy Carlos-infused virtual classical, soundscape slices and bonus tracks are all situated radiantly along the spectrum of Solar Editions.

Mekonium is Michael Anklin’s solo debut. He is a drummer, electronic musician and producer living in Switzerland. To expand his sound spectrum, he uses field recordings, analog synthesizer, tape machines, as well as self-constructed instruments and sound objects. His sound is characterized by prepared acoustic drums, various objects and sound manipulations. Anklin collaborates with artists such as Dim Grimm, Kilchhofer, Janiv Oron and Wordcolour. He is one of the founding members of the open structured band «UFO» and the science-fiction ritual band «Liebeslied». He produces music for theater, dance and sound installations. Inspired by the pureness of ritual and traditional music, Mekonium sounds like a documentation of a fictional ceremony. Topics such as temporal consciousness, minimalism and anti-virtuosity as well as sounds barely perceptible by our auditory system influenced the production process Drones, soundscapes and slowly morphing repetitive patterns establish a state of time. To represent the concept of reduction, each track starts off with a single instrument or sounding object on which the composition slowly started to grow. Like grapes fermented into wine, acoustic sounds developed into different sound manipulations, still preserving the „taste“ of the original sound sources. The Tracks „Exon“ and „Zymosis“ contain a musical deconstruction of Lucas Rössner’s bassoon. Sounds from the Instrument were dissected with different types of microphones and rejoined into a collage. Hagneck, a hydroelectric powerplant next to Lake Biel was stocked with a number of contact microphones resulting in a huge powerful drone which built the fundament of the track. Mekonium deals with the feeling, condition and dilation of time. Musical fragments are played simultaneously at different speed, acoustic sounds were frozen, deformed, stretched and rearranged.

After releasing their aptly titled first three LPs (I, II & III) GODTET concluded their triptych with the idea of a 'clean slate'. To allow the universe of GODTET to grow the band hit reset somewhat. Returning to their original conception of the band; Hitting record in the studio without preconceived thought or discussion on the outcome. After recording Meditations GODTET were asked to pay homage to the great John Coltrane at The Sydney Opera House during their lockdown web series in 2020. To celebrate the 50 year anniversary of 'Giant Steps' GODTET reimagined the seminal body of work into one long set. The band collaborated with local artists Chris Cooper & Sam Whickham who designed the audio visual aspect of the show. And after an astounding reception, decided to utilise the two artists to build upon Meditations. The 'Suite' EP (which features on the B side of 'Meditations') is the amalgamation of the earlier GODTET LP sounds and Godriguez's produced albums, through-composed as a 15 minute suite. To be true to the long-form, through-composed piece, the band recorded this release live; one take, no over-dubs and straight to tape much like the 'Meditations' sessions, but composed. The cathartic opening of 'Suite' awakens the gods with a sombre Welsh men's choir. Their vibrato ripples across the ocean as the second movement lands the listener in the Solomon Islands where bamboo sticks are tapped against rock. As the band nods to 'Struck Bamboo Pipes' from their last LP. Dub Horns blaze out of the calming movements, fractured polyrhythmic, post-dub-step energy takes hold. 'The sounds bleed into a neighbouring Trinidadian street festival as they march across the Atlantic. The end is nigh, Moroccan percussion and vocals dance as Godriguez's roots shine bright. What it all a dream? A Ghanian 'Women's Choir' lulls back consciousness. The 5-piece bids us farewell, sounds of the forked harp and Baoule men singing is all that remains. And just like that, the trip is over.

Af Ursin, a project of Timo Van Luijk, who also works with Andrew Chalk in the units Elodie and Mirror, and organizer of La Scie Dorée, released this work in 2017. The work is a masterpiece in which his worldview is deployed without regret, with improvisations that gradually build up heat with an unobtrusive yet drone-like energy, and sound works that have the feel of In Camera/Mirror. The natural analog soundtrack further enhances the perfection of the piece.

Three introspective instrumental compositions for English horn, flute, percussion, double bass, Hammond organ. Performed, recorded and mixed by Timo van Luijk at Kulta Saha, 2010-2012. Remastered May 2020.

Pauline Oliveros's The Wanderer is available on LP for the first time since it was originally released in 1984. Cut at Golden and pressed at RTI for maximum fidelity. An utterly essential document of early American minimalism from Pauline Oliveros. The Wanderer is the sister record to Accordion & Voice (IMPREC 140LP). "The Wanderer" is based on a single modal scale (B C# D D# E F# G#) and rhythmic modes based on a meter consisting of ¾ and ⅜. Part I, "Song", is intended to explore the unique resonant qualities of accordion reeds through long sounds. Subtle variations come about from differences in tuning and air pressure. Part II, "Dance", demonstrates the sharp accenting power of the accordion bellows in a mixture of cross-rhythms characteristic of jigs, reels, batucadas, Bulgars, klezmer forms, Cajun dances, and music of other diverse cultures. The Wanderer was composed in November, 1982 especially for the Springfield Accordion Orchestra, directed by Sam Falcetti. This recording documents The Wanderer's world premiere, as it was performed January 27, 1983 at Marymount Manhattan Theatre. The orchestra consists of twenty accordions, two bass accordions, and five percussionists, with Pauline Oliveros as soloist, Sam Falcetti conducting. "Horse Sings From Cloud", written in 1975, is one of Oliveros' best known works. Like most of her Sonic Meditations, it can be performed vocally and/or instrumentally, solo or in collaboration. A solo version of "Horse Sings From Cloud" has been recorded on Accordion & Voice. An early version of the score reads, "Sustain a tone or sound until any desire to change it disappears. When there is no longer any desire to change the tone or sound, then change it." This time, "Horse Sings From Cloud" is performed in ensemble. Joining Pauline Oliveros on bandoneon are Heloise Gold on Harmonium, Julia Haines on accordion, and Linda Montano on concertina. This quartet version incorporates the microtonal differences in tuning of the selected instruments, creating shimmering reed sounds somewhat similar to the shimmering of a Balinese gamelan.

Pauline Oliveros' Accordion & Voice is available on LP for the first time since it was originally released in 1982. Cut at Golden and pressed at RTI for maximum fidelity. Pauline Oliveros was an electronic music pioneer, accordionist, composer and educator who resided in Kingston, New York. Her instrument was tuned in Just Intonation and she often included it in her meditative improvisational music. Her music is not meditative in the sense that it is intended for listening to while meditating, rather each piece is a form of meditation, such as her aptly titled Sonic Meditations. A central figure in post-war electronic art music, Oliveros is one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (along with Morton Subotnick, Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, and Anthony Martin), which was the resource on the US West coast for electronic music during the 1960s. The Center later moved to Mills College, where she was its first director, and is now called the Center for Contemporary Music. Oliveros often improvises with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.

"Accordion & Voice was the first of my recordings as a soloist. I was living in an A-frame house in a meadow just below Mount Tremper at Zen Mountain Center. I had a wonderful view of the graceful saddle mountain top. When away on a performance trip I would imagine the mountain as I played 'Rattlesnake Mountain'. I followed the feelings and sensations of my many experiences of the mountain -- the changing colors of the season, the breezes and winds blowing through the grasses and trees. 'Horse Sings From Cloud' taught me to listen to the depth of a tone and to have patience. Rather than initiating musical impulses of motion, melody and harmony I wanted to hear the subtlety of a tone taking space and time to develop. The tones linger and resonate in the body, mind, instrument and performance space. My thanks to Important Records for bringing these pieces to be heard again." --Pauline Oliveros, 2007

オリジナル盤カセットは最早入手不可能にも近い一枚！配給元最終ストック。ウクライナ出身の作曲家、映像作家、ライターであり、70年代中盤から90年代にかけてスペイン・マドリッドの前衛音楽シーンで絶大な影響を誇っていたIury Lechが同国地下実験音楽の聖地〈Hyades Arts〉より1989年に発表した1作目のアルバム『Otra Rumorosa Superficie』が〈Utopia Records〉からアナログ・リイシュー。〈Grabaciones Accidentales〉の〈El Cometa De Madrid〉（マドリッドの彗星）シリーズで紹介されたアクトを筆頭に筆頭に独創的なアーティストたちが世界でも類を見ないクリエイティヴなシーンを興隆させたマドリッド音響派周辺のシーンを代表する１枚。先に再発されていた次作同様、天上風景を醸すモダン・クラシカルの傑作ですが、こちらにはよりアヴァンギャルドかつ仄暗い影を滲ませており、深い内省を感じさせる一枚となっています。そこ知れず幽玄にして幻影的なモダン・クラシカルの傑作。180g重量盤。限定300部。

OOIOO has always created a musical language all its own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, also a founding member of Boredoms, the group has recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music. Four years of work went into making Gamel, their bold new album inspired by the Javanese style of gamelan and the first new music from Yoshimi in over five years. Gamelan is an ancient form that has inspired a great many composers and musicians over the past century, from Erik Satie and Claude Debussy to Mouse on Mars and Sun City Girls. The introduction of this traditional form transformed the group into a super tribe, side-stepping the road between the past and the future. Their focus is not to replicate these ancient styles, but to incorporate them into their consistently inventive, constantly shifting musical frameworks. They take their love of indigenous music into an entirely new dimension by freely weaving organic and electric tones into a vivid tapestry, employing their keen sense of color and texture.

While previous OOIOO albums have been largely studio creations, Gamel is the most accurate portrayal of the band’s overwhelming, forceful live presence they have released yet. Yoshimi leads her minimalistic rhythm ensemble by making quick, impulsive shifts in tone and attack, the group acting as one mind under her expert instruction. While the gamelan elements will be brand new to many listeners, the band offsets the bizarre with familiar, at times even nostalgic and childlike, melodies. Gamel is euphoric, bursting at the seams with an exhilarating frenzy that is universal yet uniquely their own. OOIOO’s music is reflected in the ear of the beholder, with each listener taking away something different.

Yoshimi began her music career in 1986 playing drums in UFO or Die with vocalist Eye, and later joined him in the revolutionary noise-pop group Boredoms. Her explosive drum performances captivated audiences and even inspired Wayne Coyne to name a now-famous Flaming Lips album in her honor. While the band’s tours of the United States are infrequent, they are as The New York Times has stated, transcendent. 

From the landlocked tropical savanna of Upper Volta, an ever-evolving cast of musicians brought the world’s rhythms to the streets of their native Bobo-Dioulasso. Combining Congolese rhumba, American R&B, French yé-yé, Cuban son, and regional Senufo and Mandingo traditions, Orchestre Volta Jazz was at the epicenter of the West African musical explosion of the ’60s and ’70s. Air Volta compiles nine original songs originally issued on the Disques France-Afrique and Sonafric labels, a peerless primer of a group that turned the brutality of colonialism into something beautiful and enduring. “Boisterous and simmering in equal measure.”—Pitchfork “Infectious and filled with joy.”—The New Yorker

Discovered by Stapleton of Nurse With Wound, Robert Haigh, a famous British writer and pianist known for his work on United Dairies and his activities as Sema and Omni Trio, has released a new album from Seal Pool by John Podeszwa, one of the world's leading collectors of NWW. In 2007, Robert Haigh, a famous British writer/pianist known for his work with Omni Trio and Omema, released his first album on Seal Pool, a label run by John Podeszwa, one of the world's leading collectors of NWW. Through the use of many different names and participation in multiple groups, Haigh has returned to his early modern classical style from his post-90s worldview, which included house, drum 'n' bass, and even ambient, and has made a miraculous comeback under his own name for the first time since "A Waltz In Plain C" in 1989. This is a monumental work that marked his miraculous return under his own name since "A Waltz In Plain C" in 1989. This is a monumental album that marks his miraculous return under his own name since "A Waltz In Plain C" in 1989. It presents a unique worldview among Robert Hay's works, with a certain heat in the pretty sound that is connected to the post-minimalist lineage. Digipak edition. Limited to 400 copies.