MUSIC

Original deadstrock copy. Japanese Obscure Private Issue New Age gems!

Original dead stock. "MU V / MU VI" released in 1984 by Michael Ranta (1942-), an American percussionist known for his collaboration with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takehisa Kosugi on "Improvisation Sep. 1975"! This is a great album recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's Studio in 1984, featuring Mike Lewis and Conny Plank performing the masterpiece "Mu" No. 5 and No. 6.

Latency present Danish artists Cæcilie Trier (CTM), Jakob Littauer and Mads Kristian Frøslev with their first collaborative album as TLF Trio. Chamber music for cello, piano and guitar; moving between written composition, improvisation and de-construction; channeling free jazz and minimalism and playing with the stiltedness of Central-European Classical of the Late Renaissance and Early Baroque. Named after the 1991 hardcore rave classic by Liquid, this acoustic almost beat-less album contains music that is more sculptural than narrative and that fluidly shapeshifts from being an object in the room to being the room itself – just as Louise Lawler’s distorted image from the Stedelijk Museum that adorns its cover..

Tidal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides. Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific collaborator who has released albums with Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, among many others, initiated the collaboration with Bennett after the two met at a record fair in Saint-Gilles, Belgium and bonded over a shared inquisitiveness for unconventional sonic combinations. Along with Pak Yan Lau, a Belgian-born sound artist and improviser who has developed her own rich and unique sonic footprint, the trio entered the studio with little, if any, discussion beforehand, jumping right into playing without preconceived structures. The resulting recordings had a depth of sound and emotional resonance surprising even them, with finished pieces emerging from single live takes and minor edits. Bennett, known for his solo work as well as his collaborations with Christina Vantzou as CV & JAB, gives us here a taste of his bass flute in free flowing form. Unconstricted by concept, joyfully and lazily bouncing off the melodic shimmers of Di Domenico’s Rhodes, Bennett uses his flute’s pitch information to trigger long tones that emerge like rays of light piercing through low hanging clouds - moments of clarity among a clicking world of sonic stimuli. Meanwhile, Lau’s crackling and sometimes dissonant contributions on prepared piano, live hydrophone, and custom ceramic sound objects balance out the triangle, adding a sense of microcosmic intrigue that allows the music to seamlessly ebb and flow between moments of comfort and foggy uncertainty. The album’s title track and climax, the eighteen minute “Tidal Perspectives”, drifts in with some kind of clarity, Lau’s glinting tonal waves edging in just beyond the horizon lines drawn by Di Domenico’s Rhodes and Bennett’s bass flute. But like the tidal flows of the Atlantic that inspired its title, just as you begin to perceive what’s happening, the currents have already taken you out to sea.

After many years drifting in and out of each-other’s orbit, ‘Jazz Plates’ finds Ulla and Perila making music in the same room for the first time, exhaling a double album’s worth of gorgeously evocative mood music, gently crackling with a dream-textured haze for the ages. It's remarkably intimate material, linking the duo's own hypnagogic portrait of jazz, in all its hushed permutations. ‘Jazz Plates’ catches the mutual spirits measuredly channelling their shared love of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, making use of voice, clarinet, guitar, piano, vocals and various non-musical objets - logs, leaves, an aquarium - until they hit their emotional core. Previously separated by an ocean, their first recording sessions in person find an intoxicating play of slow and atmospheric sounds porous to the shifting weather outside, with one plate subtly guided by the sun, and another by heavy rain. Unhurried, etheric, and wistful, the album’s 13 parts wash over the senses with a soothingly meditative resonance that emerges from their “mutual dialogue of our instruments and souls”, as Perila puts it. Distant voices swirl around the duo's dampened instrumentation on opener 'lasting like a grass leaf', as themes duck and dive over plangent ambience. It isn't a capital A Ambient record, by any means, but Perila and Ulla's approach is impressionistic rather than figurative. They form ghostly half-songs around hollow trace rhythms on 'a josh outside the window', coating the breathy romance of modern jazz in a layer of dust, and let the clarinet do most of the work on 'placing in shell parcels' as it slow dances around a reverberant vocal. More than anything, ‘Jazz Plates’ seems to highlight the sensuality of collaboration; you can almost hear the duo trading glances and allowing the mood to dictate the momentum. When they switch things up on the second disc, they pull their ideas more tightly together without losing any of the intimacy. Muffled electric guitar prangs punctuate woody rhythms on 'messages from a floor', as if the two are trying to rethink the logic of free jazz, and on the heart piercing 'cheese homework', blues-y guitar phrases are sunk under a powerful, loping bassline.

Remastered double LP with 12 page booklet including liner notes by Tim Lawrence, Ernie Brooks and Arthur Russell. All material previously released on the Audika CD compilation First Thought Best Thought (2006). Before disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur wanted to be a composer. His journey began in 1972, leaving home in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Heading west to Northern California, Arthur studied Indian classical composition at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music followed by western orchestral music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, before ending two years later in New York at the Manhattan School of Music. Traversing the popular and the serious, Arthur composed Instrumentals in 1974, inspired by the photography of his Buddhist teacher, Yuko Nonomura, as Arthur described, 'I was awakened, or re-awakened to the bright-sound and magical qualities of the bubblegum and easy-listening currents in American popular music.' Initially intended to be performed in one 48 hour cycle, Instrumentals was in fact only performed in excerpts a handful of times as a work in progress. The legendary performances captured live in New York at The Kitchen (1975 and 1978) and Franklin St. Arts Center (1977) feature the cream of that eras downtown new music scene including Ernie Brooks, Rhys Chatham, Julius Eastman, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Garrett List, Andy Paley, Bill Ruyle, Dave Van Tieghem, and Peter Zummo. Pitchfork lauded Instrumentals Vol. 1 as a masterpiece and one of Arthur's 'greatest achievements'. Americana touching on Copeland, Ives, and maybe even Brian Wilson. Instrumentals Vol. 2 is a moving, deeply pastoral work performed by the CETA Orchestra and conducted by Julius Eastman. Also included are two of Arthur's most elusive compositions, 'Reach One', and 'Sketch For Face Of Helen'. Recorded live in 1975 at Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Foundation, 'Reach One' is a minimal, hypnotic ambient soundscape written and performed for two Fender Rhodes pianos. 'Sketch For Face Of Helen' was inspired by Arthur's work with friend and composer Arnold Dreyblatt, recorded with an electronic tone generator, keyboard and ambient recordings of a rumbling tugboat from the Hudson River. For this remastered vinyl edition, a key part of Arthur's musical life has been restored. The sparkling, multidimensional results take the listener closer to Arthur's coast-to-coast journey: his iconoclastic determination to combine pop and art music; and his desire to make music that would resonate in the present and, ultimately, across time.

Recorded in a live setting and played with instruments conserved in the collections of the MEG Museum, Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter is Midori Takada’s very own rendition of "Nhemamusasa", a traditional work emblematic of the musical repertoire for mbira of the Shona of Zimbabwe, well known worldwide, thanks notably to its version by Paul F. Berliner included on the famed 1973 album The Soul of Mbira.

The choice of this title by Midori Takada evokes the links between traditional African and contemporary music which are the foundation of this work, and it also translates the resolutely multicultural vision of the artist.

Midori Takada explains: "African music is remarkable for its polyrhythms. Not only are there simultaneously several rhythmic motifs, sometimes as many as ten, but furthermore it may be that the part played by each musician has its own starting point and its own pace, all combining to form a cycle. All the cycles progress at the same time according to a single metrical structure which functions as a reference point, but which is not played by any one person from beginning to end. The structure emerges out of the multi-level parts, all different. With the Shona, the musical system is based on the polymelody: one performs simultaneously several melodic lines which are superimposed, each having its own rhythmic organization. It is truly captivating. In Western classical music, one four-beat rhythm induces some precise temporal framework and regular reference points, which come on the strong beats 1 and 3. But in the logic of the Shona musical system, and in other African music, the melody can begin in the very middle of the cycle and be continued up to some other place in an autonomous manner, as if it had its own personality. It’s very rich."

The album comes with in-depth liner notes that include an interview with Midori Takada, a point of view by Zimbabwean scholar, musician and activist Forward Mazuruse, and background information on the project by Isabel Garcia Gomez and Madeleine Leclair from MEG Museum.

The sleeve features an artwork by celebrated Zimbabwean painter Portia Zvavahera.

Part of the budget for the album was donated to Forward Mazuruse’s Music For Development Foundation whose aim is to identify, nurture, and record young but underprivileged musicians in Zimbabwe.

'alvo noto + ryuichi sakamoto . vrioon 2001-2002' Remastered with extra track. Remastering by bo @ calyx/berlin. 'landscape skizze was originally recorded for 'MATADOR I: ORIENTE' - high quality photographic edition by spanish specialised art house la fabrica thanks to kab america inc. and ryuichi sakamoto.

Meaning shifts throughout Martha Skye Murphy's debut album ‘Um’ with songs that meld moments of baroque beauty with crashes of electronic noise, employing textures that are by turns organic and artificial, hi-fi and lo-fi. Collaborations with the likes of Claire Rousay and Roy Montgomery are finely intertwined with the fruits of rigorous studio sessions with producer Ethan P. Flynn. Lyrically Murphy conjures images inspired by everything from Ancient Roman hand-binding torture to a Fred and Ginger tap routine. A deep sense of longing and echoes of lost, distant memory haunt the record. “I wanted the album to feel like this constant tension between being in a very intimate domestic space, and then being propelled into a far stranger environment that is difficult to situate,” she says. “I want people to feel disoriented, erotically charged by the intimacy of a bedroom, then catapulted into a desert.”

On the 6th of October 2023, the release date of her third solo album ‘Ghosts’, Hania Rani organised a special album release concert with a string ensemble in a very unique location - Witold Lutosławski's Concert Studio at the Polish Radio in Warsaw. “Over the years, the spaces of Polish Radio became an important part of my life - both privately and professionally. I visited it for the first time as a student of Chopin University of Music and came back to make my first recordings in late 2018, just before the release of the debut album ‘Esja’. Since then I have been a regular guest.” The building is located in the Mokotów district in Warsaw and has served generations of musicians and sound engineers for decades. For Hania it is a home from home; a beloved recording studio but something more important and resonant too. Nostalgia does more than just present a memorable concert; it celebrates a space and an idea as through the mediums of photography and recorded sound. Hania creates something profound and enlightening. “Some months after this special concert in Studio S1 I came back to the chambers of Polish Radio. This time not as a musician, but as an observer. It was one of the coldest Mondays of January and Warsaw was adorned with fresh, plush snow. The building seemed completely empty, so I was able to navigate freely with my camera from space to space without interruption. I relished each object and each room waiting patiently to be consumed by a film roll. The obscure lighting was putting things in a subtle movement, the strong white beams were making them still again” Through Nostalgia, Hania presents the studios in her own perspective, as somewhere unique and unknown. A place of work, but something more. A place of ghosts and hidden meanings, of inspiration and mystery; The deluxe LP comes with a 16-page booklet featuring Hania’s unique analogue photos, along with her thoughts on the recording process, studios, and the compositions themselves. The CD includes these photos in a beautifully glued-in 12-page booklet.

On the 6th of October 2023, the release date of her third solo album ‘Ghosts’, Hania Rani organised a special album release concert with a string ensemble in a very unique location - Witold Lutosławski's Concert Studio at the Polish Radio in Warsaw. “Over the years, the spaces of Polish Radio became an important part of my life - both privately and professionally. I visited it for the first time as a student of Chopin University of Music and came back to make my first recordings in late 2018, just before the release of the debut album ‘Esja’. Since then I have been a regular guest.” The building is located in the Mokotów district in Warsaw and has served generations of musicians and sound engineers for decades. For Hania it is a home from home; a beloved recording studio but something more important and resonant too. Nostalgia does more than just present a memorable concert; it celebrates a space and an idea as through the mediums of photography and recorded sound. Hania creates something profound and enlightening. “Some months after this special concert in Studio S1 I came back to the chambers of Polish Radio. This time not as a musician, but as an observer. It was one of the coldest Mondays of January and Warsaw was adorned with fresh, plush snow. The building seemed completely empty, so I was able to navigate freely with my camera from space to space without interruption. I relished each object and each room waiting patiently to be consumed by a film roll. The obscure lighting was putting things in a subtle movement, the strong white beams were making them still again” Through Nostalgia, Hania presents the studios in her own perspective, as somewhere unique and unknown. A place of work, but something more. A place of ghosts and hidden meanings, of inspiration and mystery; The deluxe LP comes with a 16-page booklet featuring Hania’s unique analogue photos, along with her thoughts on the recording process, studios, and the compositions themselves. The CD includes these photos in a beautifully glued-in 12-page booklet.

It's a weird time in the world, but luckily we have Bremer/McCoy's really lovely music to listen to. Natten, which is Danish for “The Night,” takes inspiration from the end of day, that regenerative time under the constellations when our lives look different. Let it be your companion on this Earth, under the stars, as you contemplate this crazy time we’re in.

Edward Artemiev's re-recording of his scores to Andrei Tarkovsky's classic films Зеркало (Mirror) (1975) and Сталкер (Stalker) (1979), reissued on 180-gram vinyl. When Artemiev recorded these scores in Moscow in 1989 and '90, there were no legitimately available releases of the original soundtracks. Artemiev chose to fill that void himself with these recordings, released on Torso Kino in the Netherlands as part of a 1990 double-LP set also containing re-recordings of Artemiev's score to Солярис (Solaris) (1972). This set is now long out of print, and Mirumir is pleased to present the collection on two separate LP releases, remastered, with new artwork, and officially licensed by the artist himself.

14 short melancholy tape-loops from the early eighties. Remastered and now available on conventional pressed CD in Trim-Pak (previously available as a very limited CDR. "Melancholia is probably the best Basinski's record until now, even if this is hard for me to say given my love for each one of his releases. Contrarily to his 'continuing' projects such as Disintegration Loops and Water Music, this is a sort of a sketch album, made of short pieces all created with tape loops and some synthetic wave here and there. This music is so beautifully delicate and sad in its auto-reflective moods, it stands right there with everything ranging from the usual suspects in the 'ambient' field, to a distorted damp ghost of Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel put into a time machine. Just ravishing as you can imagine, William's almost suffocated loops celebrate the burial of any enthusiastic thought, to make room to the most difficult introspection -- the one growing you in a hurry and leaving you alone, observing from a safe distance. This beauty is for any human being who's not afraid to understand life's happenings -- maybe the hard way, but who cares?" --Massimo Ricci, touchingextremes.org.

Ryuichi Sakamoto's seventh solo album, "Neo Geo," co-produced with Bill Laswell for global release, showcases a fusion of top musicians across various genres, including Sly Dunbar and Bootsy Collins. Infused with electronic tones intertwined with organic and ethnic flavors like traditional Okinawan and Balinese music, the album was meticulously crafted in both Tokyo and New York, reaching audiences in over 20 countries and marking a significant milestone in Sakamoto's solo journey.

Ryuichi Sakamoto held a no-attendance online solo piano concert "Ryuichi Sakamoto: Playing the Piano 12122020" on December 12, 2020. The live performance was directed by Rhizomatiks and filmed by Zakkubalan, and was simultaneously broadcast worldwide from a studio in Tokyo. The live performance was a one-night-only event with no archive, making it a rare and precious event that will never be seen again.

It was the lonely, overwhelming early days of the pandemic. Topu Lyo was living in Georgia, feeling distant from his home in New York City, and Salenta De Badisdenne was in Wisconsin helping an elderly relative. When Topu sent Salenta the files of Moon Set, Moon Rise, the project of wistful, contemplative cello and piano music they had recorded over the previous two years, she put off listening for a few weeks because of the stress of her daily life. When she finally played the music, she was blown away by what they had created together. The 17 songs on this album are patient, exploratory, and dynamic. The keys tiptoe through space at some moments, and pirouette ecstatically at others. The cello provides a sonic backbone that glows like amber. With song titles like “Woman Reading a Letter” and “Light Coming On The Plains,” the album evokes vignettes of home, falling asleep with someone you love, learning to soothe yourself. Topu and Salenta had met in 2018 at a mutual friend’s house in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn and decided to jam together. Their connection was instant: though they weren’t recording with the intention of releasing the music they were making, the very first session they played together made its way onto the album. They continued to meet up and improvise every week until the start of 2020. The two established rituals while recording: Topu would bring dark chocolate to their sessions that they would eat while talking about their days, herbalizing, and eventually playing. Topu and Salenta made very few edits to the live recordings. The album we hear is a document of their shared bond and their time together. If you listen closely, you can even hear the two artists breathing on the recording. “This music was liberating because both Topu and I were just allowed to be,” Salenta says. “There was no right or wrong way, we were creating this atmosphere together. We were right there with the listener learning about and experiencing it.” “What I love about Salenta as a human and a musician is how honest she is,” adds Topu. “You hear when we’re playing, suddenly she’ll start laughing. There’s such a human aspect to it that makes me so happy when I listen to the music.” Both artists, as well as their community of friends and fellow musicians, see the music as healing. Topu and Salenta hope that listeners feel the peacefulness and liberation they experienced while creating these songs. — Vrinda Jagota

Labels Theory Therapy and co:clear come together to release the debut album by Italy-based artist CHANTSSSS. ‘Shyness’ suggests something subtle, intricate and ethereal – but it also demands your attention. Over 10 tracks of spacious, sub-aquatic ambience, CHANTSSSS pulls you deep into his vaporous sound world. The songs themselves, a blend of ambient pop, chamber music and pulsing low end rhythms, feel cloaked in mystery. Layers of reverb and zonked vocals float in the atmosphere, moving between and through one another, mist on mist. It’s not necessarily a quiet record, the low end can shake a room if you turn the volume up, but it does feel extremely intimate – proof that some art speaks loudest in its quietest moments. We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional custodians of the Country upon which Theory Therapy and Low End Theorists was founded, and recognise that sovereignty has not been ceded. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Moon Glyph Records head Steve Rosborough returns as Omni Gardens with a brand new album entitled “Golden Pear”. The fuzzy, warm and buoyant moog timbres of “Moss King” return but “Golden Pear” is a dreamier and more lush affair; incorporating a wider palette including mellotron flutes, vibraphones, marimbas and self-captured field recordings. A tranquil, pop atmosphere permeates the album as the songs flutter between bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons. Created for relaxed home listening, this is “Golden Pear”.

Moon Glyph Records head Steve Rosborough returns as Omni Gardens with a brand new album entitled “Golden Pear”. The fuzzy, warm and buoyant moog timbres of “Moss King” return but “Golden Pear” is a dreamier and more lush affair; incorporating a wider palette including mellotron flutes, vibraphones, marimbas and self-captured field recordings. A tranquil, pop atmosphere permeates the album as the songs flutter between bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons. Created for relaxed home listening, this is “Golden Pear”.

It’s not difficult to find beauty in the sounds of nature – ocean waves, birdsong, rainfall – but it's easy to overlook the charm and wonder of everyday anthropogenic sounds. Equal parts reverent and playful, Normal Sounds is built around field recordings of human-made, non-musical sounds: fridge drones, grocery store beeps, car horns. Lia Kohl alternately hallows and mimics them, offering them to the listener in a new light. Using a textural cloud of cello and synthesizers, with a few notable contributions from wind players Ka Baird and Patrick Shiroishi, Kohl brings out beauty in the world’s inane noise. This interest in the mundane is not new to Kohl. Normal Sounds follows a series of pieces – The Ceiling Reposes, Untitled Radio, Variations on a Topography – which use field recordings of AM/FM radio as centerpieces. Her work hones in on unnoticed or under-documented sounds: the things we tend to tune out or hear passively. Many of the field recordings on Normal Sounds are functional, indicating danger (tornado siren, car alarms), fun (ice cream truck) or change (“the seatbelt sign is on”, “please take your receipt”). Others are simply byproducts of machine function: the drone of a fridge or airplane. While they’re sometimes intended to be heard, they’re not intended to be listened to. For Kohl, her treatment of these sounds acts as a practice of attention, or in her words “a practice of trying to be more alive.” Often this practice takes the form of mimicry: harmonizing the already-present frequencies of a tennis court light with cello harmonics, or cheekily pairing car horns with Shiroishi’s saxophone. Sometimes, she augments the soundscape more dramatically, pulling it in a new direction with melodic cello or arpeggiated synths. It’s occasionally unclear whether a sound comes from her or the world around her. She nestles each field recording into a bed of her own sounds, inviting us to listen to the world through her ears.

Originally released on tape in 2019, 'Big Room' helped establish Philly's Ulla Straus as one of the key figures in the post-"bblisss" wave of nu-ambient practitioners. Interchangeably glacial, gaseous and liquid, it's a rare downtempo tome that never shies away from sensuality and raw, messy emotionality. Gorgeous material: essential listening for anyone into Jake Muir, Perila, Shuttle358, Oval, Pendant or Space Afrika. 'Big Room' is a technically advanced record that never dangles its prowess in your face. Ulla's sound sculpting is remarkable, but the key to 'Big Room' is not her processing skill, it's her open-hearted emotional honesty. And if contemporary ambient and experimental music has been pocked by the Instagrammable nostalgia drip and hacky tacked-on PR narratives, 'Big Room' succeeds because it offers us a clear, demarcated alternative. Ulla doesn't need to shoehorn in a grandstanding press release or video footage of an elaborate modular setup to get our attention, the music does all the heavy lifting, drawing us in with clouded bathhouse textures and soft-focus dub rhythms, chiseled digital hiccups and levitational synthesizer loops. From the opening tones of 'Nana', with its sloshing pads and subtle glitches, to the dislocated wind chimes and blurry electronics of 'House', there's a resounding faded texture to Ulla's music that helps set a picture perfect mood. 'Big Room' is an album to lose yerself in - Ulla's able to dial in an aesthetic that goes beyond the surface level, piercing not just the production elements but the writing itself. Using relatively few elements, she's able to bridge the gaps between dub techno ('Net'), Mille Plateaux-esque processed glitch ('Past'), glowing Eno-influenced ambient ('Billow') and breathtaking arpeggio-led kosmische sounds ('Sister'), linking each track with her diaristic subtlety and careful choice of processes. In a forest of withered ambient mediocrity, 'Big Room' is a lonely, pristine evergreen - we just can't recommend it enough.

'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.

Music From Memory is delighted to present ‘Elevations’, a new album from Manchester based artist Tom Burford, aka Contours. Drawing heavily on his background as a drummer and percussionist, ‘Elevations’ began as an exploration of the Balafon, a Malian tuned percussion instrument, before organically growing into its final form; a delicate suite of compositions centered around rhythmical interactions of percussion, synthesizer and strings. Recorded during the pandemic and the period following, the album reflects a desire to lose oneself in the expanse of nature - the title ‘Elevations’ being a direct nod to the mountainous area of Cumbria where Tom grew up. The album also represents the joy of creating with friends; it features performances from several of his musical contemporaries, many of which were recorded at his home in Manchester. Slowly taking shape, the final result is a record that seamlessly blends electronic and acoustic, operating at the intersection of Minimalism, Jazz, Fourth World and Contemporary Classical music.