MUSIC

repressed! jeff parker's magnificent first solo album -slight freedom-, a new york times best albums of 2016. 2nd edition pressed on premium 120-gram audiophile vinyl by RTI, presented in a retro flipback jacket.

slight freedom, jeff parker’s first ever solo record, presents the first opportunity to hear the guitarist in fully self-revealed circumstances. recorded 2013 & ’14 in the hollywood hills as he relocated from chicago to los angeles, parker combines the dark tonal palette & percussive attack he’s long been known for with real-time processing elements & field recordings, deftly crafting a unique world of solo guitar music --multilingual, mysterious, alive with extraordinary sonic events, with a sturdy intelligence in charge & a raw homestyle vibe. the record is yet another defining moment for parker in 2016, a year that already includes a brilliant ensemble album (the new breed) & tortoise’s 25th anniversary tour & record (the catastrophist).

parker’s title composition sets the album’s cavernous mood. terse lines & ricocheting loops morph into a gnarly ambient section that resembles neil young droning out over a vg+ copy of discreet music. parker creates a different sort of ambient space in his take on frank ocean’s 'super rich kids,' bending the melody around a bossa nova rhythm into a moodsville tone poem. parker makes an extraordinary long-form statement out of chad taylor’s ‘mainz,’ a piece he first recorded with taylor & chris lopes on the album bright light in winter. twice the length of the trio recording, the multi-layered soliloquy finds parker leaping from the high rung to damn near orchestral heights, pushing his techniques & concepts to their breaking points. it’s one of the great solo performances you’ll hear from a musician this year. to say “lush life” comes with formidable baggage is an understatement. parker achieves instant classic status with a rendition that sounds beamed-in from a decommissioned satellite --burned out, covered in space grit, yet still formally nuanced & beautifully reflective of strayhorn’s world-weary lyrics.

twenty years into the game it’s a joy for eremite to present work by an artist who’s clearly taking his music to the next level.

We are delighted to be able to bring you these gorgeous field recordings from the Sumedang Province of West Java which, over their 50 minutes, present two distinct sides of Sundanese musical and devotional culture.

Although West Java is a Muslim country, these recordings highlight currents of pre-Islamic animist beliefs and practices that continue to flourish in the small towns and villages of the highlands of West Java. The recordings showcase two forms of trance music that are essential to the spiritual life of the Sundanese people in the highland regions.

Tarawangsa trance music is a traditional ceremonial genre known for its deep spiritual and hypnotic qualities. This music is made using only two instruments, the tarawangsa, a two-stringed fiddle, accompanied by the jentreng, a seven-stringed zither, creating a unique blend of resonant, droning sounds. Historically, tarawangsa music has been performed as part of sacred rituals and agricultural celebrations to honor local deities and ancestors, particularly associated with the Sunda culture. The minimalist, repetitive melodies gradually build, guiding participants and listeners into a meditative, trance-like state, during which dancers can be possessed by the spirits of ancestors or deities from the spirit realm, the music serving as a link between the two worlds.

In stark contrast to the calm, medititive sound of tarawangsa, we also present here two long pieces from Panca Buana Reak Group. Sundanese Reak trance music is like the punk rock of Sunda folk music, combining powerful and driving rhythms played on a number of hand drums and percussion instruments with the buzzing sound of the tarompet, a double reed wind instrument often amplified through whatever mobile speaker system might be at hand. Sometimes the group will play gamelan gongs, as heard on the first piece on the album, although this remains a music that is popular mainly with the working class youth of the rural villages, many of whom will also be fans of Indonesia's burgeoning metal and punk scenes. Reak performances are often wild, anarchic events that feature masked dancers, costumes, public trancing and spirit possession.

These recordings were made by Xenia At during her travels through West Java earlier this year. The tarawangsa recordings were made in a home in the village of Rancakalong on the evening of 17th January 2024, while Panca Buana Reak Group were recorded during rehersals in the village of Cinunuk on 19th and 20th January 2024.
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 307px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3330427737/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://hivemindrecords.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-heart-of-sumedang-field-recordings-from-west-java">In the Heart of Sumedang: Field Recordings from West Java by Hive Mind Records</a></iframe>

In the 90's, Rafael Toral was considered "one of the most talented and innovative guitarists" and was a favorite of the members of Sonic Youth. In 1998, he released his early masterpiece on Perdition Plastics, an experimental label run by Kurt Griesch of Illusion Of Safety (whose roster includes RLW, Kevin Drumm, MIMEO, His Name Is Alive, etc.), and now it's available for the first time in vinyl on Black Truffle, run by Australian mastermind Oren Ambarchi. Recorded at Noise Precision in Lisbon between December 1997 and April 1998, this is probably their fourth album. It is a masterpiece of drone/ambient with a unique sense of emptiness, built around minimal electronics and feedback loops with a melancholic atmosphere. Remastered by Tral himself, with a new design by Lasse Marhaug. In addition to David Toop's liner notes, which were included on the original CD release, the album also includes new liners by David himself.

Presented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire’s Pulse Music series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe’s angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock serialism’s warped geometries onto an evenly spaced grid, perfectly preserving serial music’s multi-dimensionality while smoothing its wildest disjunctures and sharpest angles. If serialism is Montreal’s Habitat 67 modular housing complex, McGuire’s Pulse Music compositions are the primary-colored grids of Le Corbusier’s L’Habitation apartment complex — an exuberant expression of the same materials and principles. Every layer of pulses is made distinct through its timbre, register, and tempo. We hear them as a plurality, organized like stars in the sky. Every so often the sky rotates and the stars appear in a different arrangement. Our ear naturally starts to draw connections and, as it sweeps between one layer and another, what was discrete becomes continuous. Pulses become flows; quantitative reality becomes qualitative experience. McGuire’s pulse pieces were realized electronically, in the newly built Studio for Electronic Music at the State University of Cologne and WDR, but Pulse Music II adapted his ideas to an orchestral canvas. Commissioned retrospectively by the composer and radio producer Hans Otte for his Pro Musica Nova festival at Radio Bremen. Alongside the Bremen orchestra, conducted by Klaus Bernbacher, were four pianists—Christoph Delz, Herbert Henck, Deborah Richards, Doris Thomsen—and McGuire himself playing a series of twelve drone-like chords on the organ. The techniques of the electronic Pulse Music pieces required a speed and precision too great for live musicians, so for Pulse Music II McGuire adapted his method to an expanding progression of durations; this had the advantage of being much slower and requiring none of the carefully calibrated tempo changes of Pulse Music I or III. It was still based, says the composer, “on what seemed to me an interesting foray into a completely different kind of time structure. Complex time structures had, by 1975, become a condition for me in two senses: a compositional requirement and maybe an illness.” The present recording was made by Radio Bremen at the work’s first and only performance, and has been held in their archive until now. “108 Pulses” – originally composed a proof-of-concept piece and realized as a single, repeating loop in a 20 minute tableau – is also presented here for the first time.

The latest release from Blank Forms, a curatorial platform and non-profit organization dedicated to the presentation and preservation of experimental performance, and one of the most respected reissues of works by Catherine Christer Hennix and Masayuki Takayanagi, is a collection of archival recordings from the 1970s. Catherine Christer Hennix is a Swedish musician, philosopher, poet, mathematician and visual artist who has already released three works from her archives in the 70's. She pursued the minimalist path after meeting La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath, and later collaborated with Henry Flynt. Recorded in February 1974, this is the third in an ongoing series of recordings of unreleased music by Catherine Christer Hennix, a female composer, philosopher, poet, mathematician, and visual artist known for her collaborations with Henry Flynt. Recorded in February 1974, Catherine Christer Hennix (recitation, percussion, electronics) and Hans Isgren (bowed gong) performed "Unbegrenzt" (German for "unlimited") from Aus den Sieben Tagen, a collection of fifteen texts written in Paris in May 1968, one of Stockhausen's most famous works. (German for "unlimited") from Aus den Sieben Tagen, a collection of 15 texts written in Paris in May 1968. A sophisticated, minimalist take on Stockhausen's compositional technique of "moment forming"!

Salamanda is the collaborative alias of South Korean producer/DJ duo, and close friends, Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda). Together they create avant-garde electronic music inspired by minimalist concepts, harmonious rhythms and the work of American composer Steve Reich.

Across the eight tracks of Sphere, their debut for Small Méasures, the pair conjure spherical worlds inspired by bubbles, refracting light and planet earth. Soundscapes laden with percussive elements ebb and flow as arpeggiated stanzas cede to misty synths and shimmering plates, conjuring images of solitary temples sat in vast open plateaus.

“For Sphere, we came up with an abstract concept and image to explore more diversity and encourage imagination. Each track is related to different kinds of sphere we found or imagined. From the big round planet embracing every creature to dancing little bubbles underwater, fragments of ideas floating around, exploding tomatoes, and movement of lights flashing and tickling the eyes…

Or the tracks can be about completely different types of spheres in other people's perspective. We hope Sphere can unleash the imagination and take you on a delightful journey of music.’’

ルーマニア出身、フランスを拠点を拠点に活動した前衛的作曲家／音楽学者であり、〈Cramps Records〉の名シリーズ〈Nova Musicha〉にも傑作を残すCostin Miereanu。現在のミニマル～ニューエイジ再評価文脈においても密かに注目されるべき存在である同氏が自身のレーベルである〈Poly-Art〉に76年から82年にかけて残した幻の作品群が6枚組CDボックスセットとして〈Metaphon〉から奇跡の再登場！ジャーマン・エレクトロニクスを想起させるような外宇宙的憧憬を、現代音楽やミニマル・ミュージックの文脈でより親密かつ天上的に独自解釈した、幽玄なコズミック・ミニマル・アンビエントが満載。本当に素晴らしい逸品です。名匠Stephan Mathieuによるオリジナル・テープからリマスタリング仕様。28ページに及ぶブックレットが付属。この機会を絶対にお見逃し無く！

"...Maria Kapel is exemplary, a solo guitar record that sounds like nothing, really, outside of itself, while communicating in tongues that are instantly explicable to anyone with a pair of ears." - Volcanic Tongue Originally released on my Pavilion imprint in 2011 in edition of 500. I was invited by the Incubate Festival and the city of Tilburg to participate in an artist residency where I would explore the region’s unique chapels built for the Virgin Mary. After writing the music for about six months by drawing on memories of the encounters with the chapels and using techniques inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics Of Reverie, I flew back to Tilburg to perform the music at the Incubate Festival. We recorded the evening and I released the result on my Pavilion label. Each cover was hand painted white on white in the old Pavilion style. I created a stencil and used graphite powder to make the design that is inspired by the sun imagery in Athanasius Kircher diagrams.

How do I know if my cat likes me? is the first offering from organists Ellen Arkbro and Hampus Lindwall with visual artist Hanne Lippard, an existential meditation on the empty expanses of our automated everyday. First developed during Arkbro and Lippard’s 2023 residency at La Becque in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, the album satirizes, in prim deadpan, the stultifying aesthetics of corporate life, from hold music to online banking. How do I know if my cat likes me? extends the lineage of Roberts Ashley and Barry’s droll concept poetry, hammering at the sounds of language until they dislodge all signifieds through pleasurably numbing repetition. Listening to the record is like doing a Captcha over and over until all the characters fuzz to hieroglyphs, or finding yourself mired in a tautological customer-service argument—except that, after you dead-end at nonsense, you stumble into an unexpectedly transcendent beauty, where language flips from pure function to pure aesthetic, shimmering with possibility.

Even subtle ruptures in lyrical or musical patterns can trigger a fundamental shift in the world of the song. Throughout the record, strict formalism and minimalism beget narrative. “The long goodbye” imagines an excruciating dialogue between acquaintances who can’t politely disengage: “It’s my pleasure!” deadpans Lippard, who replies to herself, “Pleasure is all mine! / See you soon! / See you next time! / See you then!” Though the lines recycle the same few parting words, a mysterious causality accumulates in the minute variations, creating a narrative arc less for the characters of the song than for the listener, who might confront despair, nihilistic humor, or profound gratitude at the capacity of art to encompass any of this—not necessarily in that order. Elsewhere, as “Modern Spanking” free-associates its way from the phrase “online banking” toward “breathing down your neck banking” and “sexy but bankrupt banking,” a whole world of perfunctory pleasures comes into focus. While minimalist movements in music and visual art foster a certain situatedness of the view, “Modern Spanking” evokes the slick, frictionless minimalism of an upscale mall: a crowd of desultory passersby drifting between sex and money, fantasy and reality, scattered attention and intense distraction. In a world like this, the distinction between banking and spanking becomes negligible.

RIYL: Jacqueline Humbert and David Rosenboom, Robert Ashley, Robert Wyatt.

Aunes is a rare solo album from peripatetic Australian cellist-composer-performer Judith Hamann, presenting six pieces recorded across several years and countries. Developing the collage techniques and expanded sound palettes heard on their previous releases, Aunes makes use of synthesizers, organ, voice and location recordings alongside the dazzlingly pure, enveloping tones of Hamann’s cello. The record takes its name from an old French unit of measurement for fabric, varying around the country and from material to material. Unlike the platinum metre bar deposited in the National Archives after the Revolution as an immovable standard, an aune of silk differed from an aune of linen: the measure could not be separated from the material. In much the same way, in these six pieces—which Hamann thinks of as ‘songs’—formal aspects such as tuning, pacing, melodic shape and timbre are not abstractions applied universally to musical material but are inextricable from the instruments and sounds used, even from the places and communities in which the music was made.

Audible location sound embeds the music in its place of making, as in the delicate duet for church organ and wordless singing ‘schloss, night’, where shuffles and cluttering in the reverberant church space form a phantom accompaniment, gradually displaced by a uneasy shimmer of wavering tones from half-opened organ stops. ‘Casa Di Riposo, Gesu’ Redentore’ documents a walk up a hill to an outdoor mass in Chiusure, layering voices near and far with footsteps, insects and other incidental sounds. Like in the work of Moniek Darge or Luc Ferrari, location recordings are folded on themselves in space and time, their documentary function dislocated to dreamlike effect. On other pieces, it is the emphatic presence of the performing body that grounds the music, whether in the intimate fragility of Hamann’s softly sung and hummed vocal tones or the clothing that rustles across a microphone on the opening ‘by the line’. The idea of a music inextricable from its material conditions is perhaps most strikingly communicated on the album’s briefest piece ‘bruststärke (lung song)’, composed from layered whistling recorded while Hamann suffered through an asthma flare up, the results halfway between field recordings of an imaginary aviary and the audiopoems of Henri Chopin.

More than any of Hamann’s previous solo works, a strong melodic sensibility runs through Aunes, even when, like on ‘seventeen fabrics of measure’, the music hangs together by the merest thread. At other points, Hamann’s love of pop music is more obvious: the rich synth harmonies of ‘by the line’ could almost be a melting fragment of a backing track from Hounds of Love. The expansive closing piece ‘neither from nor toward’ exemplifies the highly personal musical language that Hamann has developed in recent years through constant solo performance (and a rigorous discipline of instrumental practice), pairing two overdubbed voices with the boundless depth and harmonic richness of just-intoned cello notes, calling up Ockegham or Linda Caitlin Smith in its elegiac slow motion arcs. Hamann’s most personal work yet, Aunes arrives in a striking sleeve reproducing a section of a painting made from sewn pieces of dyed wool by Wilder Alison, a friend and fellow resident at Akademie Schloss Solitude, one of the temporary homes where much of this music was recorded. <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 340px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1362798960/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://shelterpress.bandcamp.com/album/aunes">Aunes by Judith Hamann</a></iframe>

To be heard with ears half bent, or with one side facing what Maryanne Amacher calls “the third ear”.

The great reverence in which the Tanpura is held by Indian classical music, its transcendental but occulted place in the tradition alongside its normal function as a drone, made a strong impression on the composer such that it has taken decades to formulate even a simple Tanpura Study.

The fundamentals, the Om, as well as the overtones, the music of the spheres -all these have their valid rights, but in Tanpura Study they are embedded in a series of gestures, what I call signatures, on the melodic level.

In Tanpura and Harpsichord, there is an encounter of overtones with chords braided into pun-notes, what Gerard Grisey calls “degrees of transposition”. Taken together, this amounts to a non-spectralism in which, contrary to first impressions, there are no fundamental frequencies, even in the bass.

Ajaeng Ajaeng: with respect to European string instruments, the technique col legno affords the direct encounter of wood and string, opening the way to a more tactile conception of the sustained sound, while bringing the materiality of the bow and its practices into question. In violin, viola, cello bows, Pernambuco wood offers an ideal example of extraction, colonialism, deforestation.

With the Ajaeng, a Korean musical instrument, the situation is more complex. The dialectic of court to folk music, always political, always incendiary, may be heard here in the encounter of forsythia and silk, of Dae Ajaeng to So Ajaeng, and on a broader level of Dang Ak (Tang Dynasty music) to Hyang Ak (native Korean music) and their representations.

Alternating music and sound, overtone arrays mingled with noise, marked by the bow change, in flamelike patterns which flicker, emerge, and fade again. A slow down structure, also formalized in Time Medicine, seems to produce a long decrescendo, with the technique of the players drawing out the flicker patterns in a kind of game.

The point here is not to produce a drone but to delve into the question of life in sound. This apparent emergence of life is due to the apparatus, what Marx calls a “social hieroglyphic”, which brings forsythia and silk together in technique, cultivated by practices which are themselves sustained by the real relations of student to teacher to student.

The recording engineer too, by placing one mic below and one above each Ajaeng, bifurcates the listening space; the mix, one Ajaeng in each speaker, again produces a bifurcated image of the sound. Thus the sound is split in four directions, to be reconstituted in the cochlea, but with the center of the body as the real target.

This music is made for meditation. On retreat in 2019 I had a revelation: there is no difference between the prayer, the hearing, and the void. There is nothing original in this idea; Wonhyo and many sages have thought it before.

—Eyvind Kang, April 2020 

Svaneborg Kardyb are Nikolaj Svaneborg – Wurlitzer, Juno, piano and Jonas Kardyb – drums, percussion a multi award winning duo from Denmark, where they won two “grammys” at the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2019: New artist of the year and Composer of the year.
Drawing on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences, including Nils Frahm, Esbjörn Svennson and Jan Johansson’s landmark recording Jazz På Svenska, their music is an exquisite and joyful melding of beautiful melodies, delicate minimalism, catchy grooves, subtle electronica vibes, Nordic atmospheres and organic interplay, all underwritten by the sheer joy of playing together. Following on from their Gondwana Records debut 'Over Tage', 'Superkilen' their forthcoming album, is named after a public park in the ethnically diverse Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. This erstwhile strip of waste ground was repurposed by the Superflex art group in the early 2010’s to bring together immigrants and locals in a mood of tolerance and unity. Its title feels emblematic of their music, which, equally inventively, creates space and serenity as a tonic within the tense and cluttered environment of 2020’s living. In the same way that the regeneration project has transformed that neighbourhood, Svaneborg Kardyb have drawn on that positive energy to help instigate changes in their own music.

Klara Lewis’ latest offering is undoubtedly a heartfelt tribute to her friend, mentor and former label boss, Peter Rehberg. The opening track Thankful resides as a direct tribute to the track recorded under his PITA moniker, the timeless ‘Track 3’. A track of which the impact has been vast and deep, still rattling the walls of the now enormous worldwide experimental electronic scene. Countless new youth carve and project wildly distorted melodic digital matter which all falls back with a knowing or unknowing wink back to this original ground zero monster. Klara’s take on this is one that resides as a tribute to Rehberg with a cascading emotional melody gradually succumbing to a euphoric digital abyss. Thankful also comes across as a farewell gesture to her deceased friend with its beautiful, almost funerale tone. The abrupt ending is not only a method Rehberg would have relished but also a signifier of a life suddenly cut short. Lewis was 21 when her first album Ett was released by Editions Mego in 2014. Now at 31 years of age Editions Mego is very proud to present Thankful, a profoundly mature and emotional peak in Lewis’ career thus far. The track Ukulele 1 is another tender tribute within an album made by a human, utilising contemporary technology with absolute sincerity, surprise twists and sublime emotion. The sound of the instrument in the title gently loops and deconstructs in a recording replete with the sound of the room it is recorded in. A human element appears at exactly the point an increasingly inhuman approach is becoming the forced raison d'etre today. Top! One of Peter’s many repeated phrases was the word ‘top’. One he used at any occasion to agree with a vast array of subjects. With this musical tribute to Rehberg’s favourite phrase, Lewis conjures a short blast of mutant acid techno which shrivels and thrives as much as it lives and dies. Following Top we have the reflective and deeply moving 4U. No words. Just sounds. As it was. And lives on. Ukulele 2 sits at the end, as an epilogue of sorts, fashioning itself as an ouroboros with the return of the initial methodology of the previous track Thankful (track 3 tribute). This time around the sublime melody of the previous Ukulele 1 plays out in returnal as it is gently swarmed by all manner of digital play. Thankful is an emotionally considered and precise homage to the methodology and spirit of Peter Rehberg. A new work which inhabits the spirit for what this was written for and the general guise devised with the launch of the original MEGO label many moons ago.

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.

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.

Queens Of The Circulating Library stands alongside Time Machines and Nurse With Wound’s Soliloquy For Lilith as a post-industrial pinnacle of sensory-warping long-form drone. Crafted by the distilled duo of Thighpaulsandra and John Balance, the 49-minute piece unfurls in swirling, cyclical waves, tidal as much as textural, channeling the spirit of levitational minimalism pioneered by La Monte Young. Touted as the first part in "a continually mutating series of circulating musickal compositions” upon its initial release in 2000, the album remains a compelling case study in Coil’s exceptional capacity for mutation and extremes. The theatrical introductory monologue delivered by Thighpaulsandra’s mother – a career opera singer, in her 80’s at the time of recording – sets the stage for a grandiose ascension. Written by Balance, the text is declamatory but dreamlike, refracted through megaphone echo: “Return the book of knowledge / Return the marble index / File under "Paradox" / The forest is a college, each tree a university.” As her voice fades, the lulling synthetic infinity deepens, congealing into transient crests of volume and haze, like slow-motion surf misting in moonlight. Thighpaulsandra describes their aesthetic intention as a “bliss out,” static but shape-shifting, an amniotic drift towards an eternal vanishing point. A supreme sonic embodiment of the slogan on the sleeve of Time Machines, two years prior: "Persistence is all." Dais-exclusive Lenticular Limited Editions : Come in lenticular plastic jacket that animates when tilted, using frames of projections from Coil's live performances during the era.

Official reissue supervised by the artist Sourced from the original masters A rare and sought-after item among collectors and enthusiasts of early Japanese electronic music Never released on vinyl before Club is a stunning and timeless collection of avant-garde electronica, proto-techno, mecha-ambient, and ear-pleasing experimentations from the master behind Music for Spiral and producer of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Pier & Loft, Motohiko Hamase’s #Notes of Forestry, and Satsuki Shibano's iconic Rendez-Vous Experience the roots of Japanese electronica

LIMITED JAPAN EXCLUSIVE "Asagao" EDITION. Flora is an album that is listened to perpetually,
Passed on from one listener to another,
And the charm of the sound- and music-loving figure 
known as Hiroshi Yoshimura,
Just might come drifting through.
Like the scent of a small flower.
—Junichi Konuma

Announcing the worldwide reissue of Flora, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s underrated work originally recorded and completed in 1987 and first released on CD in 2006, three years after his passing in 2003.

Flora is chronologically and stylistically a follow-up to Hiroshi Yoshimura’s acclaimed 1986 works Green and Surround, wherein Yoshimura continues to play with the ambience of sound and the sound of ambience, underscoring his mastery in the field of environmental music. Listening to Flora is like taking a stroll in a park, absorbing the colors and textures of the natural environment—flowers, insects, the swaying of the leaves—as Yoshimura often did at his beloved Edo-era park near his home in Tokyo. As Junichi Konuma describes in his liner notes, Yoshimura’s music “only begins to emerge as it exists at the intersection of passive and active.” Yoshimura's approach to sound and melody invites the listener to hear the intricacies of the music with intent, while simultaneously allowing the aural textures to exist as part of the background of our everyday life.

This reissue marks the first time the album will be available on vinyl (2LP, 45 rpm) and cassette, and includes liner notes written by music scholar Junichi Konuma and remastered audio by Grammy-nominated engineer John Baldwin. Reissue design and layout was handled by Tiffanie Tran. 

In his “Pulse Music” compositions of the mid-1970s, composer John McGuire forged a unique interpretation of European serialism. A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Gottfried Michael Koenig, McGuire moved to Cologne, Germany in 1970, where he become associated with the world-leading Studio for Electronic Music at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. Like Stockhausen, McGuire found his musical imagination both constrained and inspired by the technology that was available to him.A conversation with sculptor Hans Karl Burgeff led McGuire to think beyond the horizon and into limitless space. For “Vanishing Points” (1985–1988), McGuire used an entirely digital set-up for the first time: a digital sequencer, eight Yamaha DX-7 synthesizers and a Studer 24-track digital tape recorder. The piece was conceived as a “sequel” to the Pulse Music series, but also a step forward from it. Whereas the Pulse Music pieces had employed steady streams of pulses, with Vanishing Points McGuire employed pulse layers that accelerate or decelerate against one another, vastly increasing the resulting rhythmic complexity.McGuire's exploration of music technology continued in “A Cappella” (1990–1997), written for his wife, the soprano Beth Griffith, known for her recording of Morton Feldman’s “Three Voices” made in 1983. Using samples, he created a four-voice choir of voice samples and arranged them into interacting parts. The composition faced challenges due to the organic nature of the human voice compared to the precision of synthesized sounds. This process involved extensive editing and a negotiation between the "material" and the "original conception". This sort of negotiation applies as much to the composition of a single piece as it does to the work of two decades.

いざ、第4の扉へ。自国のソウル、ゴスペル、ファンクにとどまらず、ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖ヤソスや日本からは原マスミまで、世界各地のオブスキュアなサウンドを掘り起こしてきた米国の大名門であり、コンピに定評のある〈Numero〉から新物件！ニューエイジ・ミュージック始祖の1人IasosやLaraaji、Joanna Brouk、Don Slepian、Master Wilburn Burchetteといったレジェンドが残した傑作曲を一挙特集した、「Private Issue New Age (PINA)」の世界への、新たな入門盤的コンピレーション・アルバム『Bliss Out For Days』が登場！シアトルの〈Light in the Attic〉が手掛けた自主盤ニューエイジ・コンピ金字塔『I Am The Center』と是非セットで聴きたい内容！静かに漂う弦楽器や、くすんだ録音の、しかし美しいピアノがアンビエンスの宇宙として広がる、極上の逸品！オールドスタイルなチップオンジャケット仕様。32ページのブックレットが付属。

A thrilling collaboration between major experimental maestros from slightly different sound worlds. Don Cherry, in the middle of a very free-ranging phase, plays his majestic trumpet over the shimmering organ tones of Terry Riley, while Karl Berger adds vibraphone. Heady stuff. Reissue of a rare concert recording from 1975, in an edition of just 500. On Modern Silence.

Phi-Psonics is a meditative, deeply soulful, immersive instrumental group from Los Angeles, led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums. Their beautiful music draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young’s own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age. Along the way they create something uniquely their own, sharing beautiful landscapes for your spirit to roam freely within. Octava is their second album and like their debut The Cradle, it’s emotional, introspective, and unusual approach to meditative jazz offers us a beautiful space for uplifting contemplation and wields a quiet power to create a spiritually inspiring world of timeless, warm melodies and instrumental exploration for the deep listener and thoughtful voyager. Seth explains: “This album is about change and evolution to a higher version of ourselves. Understanding this journey through the idea of ascending a musical scale and arriving at a new, higher octave is natural especially for a musician. We move, struggle, and work through the various steps or tones and arrive at the octave a new version of ourselves, still the same person, but vibrating at a higher frequency.”

What an amazing pair of compositions, beautifully balanced music that transports me to a deep zone where time stands still.

— Jonny Nash (Musician / The founder for Melody As Truth)

"KANNON" achieves a profound listening experience by deliberately avoiding the diverse techniques of the shakuhachi and instead focusing on simple, sustained tones. This approach allows one to concentrate on the inner richness of a single note’s resonance and its delicate nuances, creating a sense of release into the infinite expanses within its deep layers. The moment a sound emerges, passes through, and fades away is truly beautiful.
"RAVEN" showcases the shakuhachi’s expansive yet delicate tonal expressions with remarkable beauty. I was astonished by its level of perfection, making it hard to believe it was recorded live. The piece harmonizes with the steady pulse of the mukkuri, evoking a sense of music that connects to a spectral dimension. I particularly love the latter half, where the high-register tones of the shakuhachi intertwine with the breath-infused mukkuri, resonating with deep overtones. I was utterly captivated by the gentle unfolding of this piece.

— Ko Ishikawa (Shō player / Ancient Kayō performer)

This is captivated by an auditory landscape of deep listening—an immersive soundscape of the mind. Could this not be one of the most uniquely innovative expressions in the current realm of traditional Japanese instruments?

— Kaoru Inoue (DJ / Musician)

Although I often say, "Genres of music don’t really matter," I was truly surprised when I listened to it and thought, "Is this really a shakuhachi?" It made me realize how trapped I had been by my existing preconceived notions. It's like a "eureka moment" for my ears! The deep resonance that is incredibly pleasing to the ear, along with the sonic development that feels like it’s breathing in unison with the natural environment, gradually led me to feel as if I had wandered into a bamboo forest, losing track of where I was—a meditative labyrinth-like experience. It reaffirmed for me the truth that sound tells the whole story. The balance of the sound is also exquisite and remarkable. Such improvisational performance reminds us of the forgotten awe that in the natural world, nothing is ever the same—while each individual expresses their uniqueness, they also form part of the overall harmony.

— Nami Hōtatsu (Vocalist / Synthesizer player / Composer)

I'll be terribly honest: those two tracks are the deepest and most intense I've heard from a long time, a vibrant sound that takes hold of your attention and takes you far, but without moving a step, as if it sounded inside, touching hidden and alive chords. Beauty, like a long breath, a story that the sea gives us, fast clouds that announce spring, wind that smells of flowers and meadows and a thousand leaves of dancing trees.... Gorgeous music that speaks to the heart.

— Gigi Masin (Musician)

I was surprised by the abstract tone, which is not unlike that of old instruments. The dense soundscape shows a love of musical culture.

— Jun Morita (Electronic instrumentalist / DJ)

'Apodelia' is Hotspring's second solo release on Mood Hut, and is partly a further exploration of song forms, studio techniques and instrumentation explored on 2020’s 'Obit for Sunshade'. 'Apodelia' explores lifting into revealing; scouring fidelities, playing with emotion, and improvising by night.