MUSIC

Historically informed violin player, prize-winning street musician, new age experimentalist, chamber ensemble performer and conservatoire deviant. The career of Valentina Goncharova (b. Kyiv 1953) shares parallels with those associated with the broader new music movement of the 20th century and the dissemination of home recording technologies. Valentina’s was a youth spent immersed in the world of classical music study under soviet rule, first in Kyiv and later in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) from the age of 16. With the supervision of professors M. Vayman and B. Gutnikov she learned concert violin and developed alternate playing styles alongside skilled pianists. A student of the Leningrad conservatoire during the years 1969 through to 1983, her repertoire included music for violin and later expanded to contemporary music composition. The improvisatory nature of free jazz and then budding experimental rock circles also intrigued Valentina during this period in Leningrad. Departing from the rules of the conservatoire, she briefly performed in underground rock clubs alongside future members of the industrial group Pop- Mechanika (Popular Mechanics). This perpetual state of flux is central to the variety found within ‘Recordings Vol. 1’, though as opposed to any degree of uncertainty Valentina’s practice is one in flux by way of earnest curiosity. Pushing further into an exploration of solo electro-acoustic sounds, she took to home taping on a modified Olimp reel to reel recorder. Intrigued by the manipulability of dubbing and the fresh sounds of DIY effects chains, Goncharova developed pickups alongside her husband Igor Zubkov. Her infatuation with the music of Stockhausen, Xenakis, Ganelin Trio and Pierre Boulez channels through considerations of space and erratic sound design, the three movements of ‘Metamorphoses’ embodying this textural approach to musique concrete. The compositional skills developed in Leningrad unfold in the romantic gestures of ‘Higher Frequencies’, whilst manipulated cello combines with synthesise keys across ‘Passageway To Eternity’. The slow, pulsating drone soundscapes recall the likes of Robert Rutman’s US Steel Cello Ensemble or even deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. The juxtaposition of written notation and improvisatory flare is central to Goncha- rova’s sound world. This period of home recording documents a confluence of minimalism, free form and flirtations with new age tropes (inc. bell chimes and cavernous vocal mantras). Experimenting with unusual performance techniques, such as shouting into amplified cello strings, Valentina’s home studio functioned as a place to foster full artistic and creative freedom away from any academic strictures. Relocating to Estonia in 1984, and in parallel to the deeply personal music of ‘Recordings Vol. 1’, Valentina performed at jazz festivals and gave classical concerts across Eastern Europe. In a sense, the recordings on these discs offer only a glimpse into her lifelong body of work. Over the past few decades she has taught at Tallinn Music College, expanded and updated post- Soviet popular music repertoire, collaborated with the Russian Philharmonic Society of Estonia and given concerts and charity events alongside the Catholic Church. Hers is a life dedicated to the exploration of sound, a career forged through careful study and ceaseless intrigue. In a time where technological interconnectedness has allowed for music of the past to be continually mined and evaluated through new lenses, Shukai present an artist whose tendency for private home-taping had allowed recordings to go unheard for thirty years.

Oleksandr Yurchenko (1966—2020) was a Ukrainian musician and illustrator. In 1990s and 2000s he took part in different bands from Kyiv, such as Electricians, Yarn, Blemish, Suphina’s Little Beast etc., and he also collaborated with Svitlana Nianio and Katya Chilly. Yurchenko is one of the brightest representatives of the Ukrainian independent scene in 90s. Meanwhile, he is one of the most mysterious musicians of this era, being a private person, especially in the late 2000s, when Oleksandr had to leave music because of his illness, but he focused on doing book illustrations and graphic works. In 2010s some of his early records were published, and he was asked for an interview, but he refused, suffering from a serious disease at that time. In April 2020, Oleksandr Yurchenko died, leaving behind a great musical legacy. His main work, “Count to 100. Symphony #1,” was documented in August 1994. Oleksandr used strings instrument of his own invention. Yurchenko took the longboard to make the instrument, installed guitar pickups and 4 strings, and played on it with a bow. It was lost in the 2000s, but the musician remembered that it looked like a long zither. The recording session was held by Oleksandr at home, using guitar delay effects, loops, and Oreadna portable cassette recorder. He tuned the instrument in a special tone, improvising on it for 25 minutes. This drone symphony can be compared with the works of such avant-garde composers as Glenn Branca. However, it sounds innovative, especially for Ukrainian music. Despite it, Yurchenko could not publish this work officially in the 90s and made only a few copies for his own friends. At the beginning of the 2000s, he decided to edit the original version of the symphony. Oleksandr tried to restore the recording a bit, using some effects to make the sound more massive and clear. At the end of the work on this project, Yurchenko left this version in his archive but decided to publish the original recording in the late 2010s. “Intro” is the most mysterious recording from Yurchenko’s archive. Nobody could remember where and when it was recorded, so we can assume that it was made at the beginning of the 90s like a sound experiment because it was found on cassette tape with others recordings of the band Yarn. Also, there is a suggestion that it might be a Casio SK-1 sampler and some old Soviet keyboards. Merta Zara was a family project of Yurchenko and his wife, Svitlana Neznal. They had only one home recording session in 1994. Oleksandr was playing an electric cello of his own invention, and Svitlana was playing on mandolin and singing. As a result, they recorded only one track, "Dress," which appeared on the cassette compilation "Skhovaysya" in 1995. Apart from it, they recorded a few instrumental playbacks, which were found on cassette tape in 2021. Yurchenko was a big appreciator and knower of Central Asia’s music, and it influenced his own music, including Merta Zara, where traditional music and his melodist skills are intertwined. Playbacks were recorded in the beginning of 1995. It was also a home session, making instrumental playbacks for the album “Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy” (Know How? Tell Me), recorded in collaboration with Svitlana Nianio. It should be assumed that Oleksandr used the same instrument and effects as he used during the “Count To 100” session. Some of these playbacks survived in his archive, but the rest of them were lost. The first one is an 8 minutes drone composition, which was played on a string instrument with a female voice on the background, and the second is the weird track where whirligig was used as an accompaniment. So, we can consider these recordings not only as playbacks but as Yurchenko’s solo stuff. Solo recordings of Oleksandr Yurchenko, made in 1994—1995, are paying attention, especially in experimenting with sound, searching the new ways of creative freedom, and they give a possibility to learn more about the Ukrainian experimental scene in the 90s.

Svitlana Okhrimenko (artist name: Svitlana Nianio) is a Ukrainian artist, musician, and signer. She is one of the most prominent representatives of the independent music scene of Kyiv in the late 1980s — early 90s. She has repeatedly recorded and performed in collaboration with other musicians and bands, such as Oleksandr Yurchenko, Sugar White Death (Cukor Bila Smert’), Ivanov Down, GeeNerve & Taran, and Blemish. Svitlana still performs and publishes new recordings today. “Transilvania Smile” is one of the first solo works recorded in 1994. During this time, Svitlana repeatedly visited Germany, where she had the experience of playing in parks and on the streets, gathering contacts of the local art scene. Her cooperation with the international choreographic group Pentamonia, based in Cologne and consisting of several girls who performed in theaters, took part in various performances, and were engaged in music. They met in the 1990s during joint performances with "Sugar-White Death." After that, they corresponded, and the idea of doing something together arose. Svitlana attended several of their performances, which inspired her to write music for a new project, and the band members helped to realize their creative ideas. Later, they started rehearsing together. The name “Transilvania Smile” was invented by the project participants, and it symbolized the mold on the mirror and the reflection of a smiling vampire. However, shortly before the premiere, they changed it to “Firefox”, as the participants actively used flashlights and the play of light and shadows in the scenography. The premiere occurred in the local Urania theater, previously a gallery. Isabel Bartensein directed the choreography, and Svitlana played, sang, and improvised. She said it was an excellent experience for her and the band. Besides Cologne, they also performed in Aachen. Later, Michael Springer offered Svitlana to record this material in his "Phantom" studio. They had already worked together and recorded music for their project (Svitlana Okhrimenko / Phanton). Michael was also interested in the Ukrainian independent scene and participated in the creation of several compilations that featured bands from Kyiv and Kharkiv. Svetlana played the piano and harmonium in the studio and also sang. After the recording, the material was never released in its entirety. Two compositions appeared on the cassette compilation “Shovaisia” (Hide) in 1995, some episodes were re-recorded for the “Kytytsi” album in 1999, but for a long time, the full version of this recording remained practically unknown to listeners and was kept in Svitlana's and Michael’s archives. This album is one of the most personal and insightful works of Svitlana Nianio from the 90s, which you can now get to know in its original form and sound.

With 'Respire', Stockholm's Sonja Tofik presents a collection of works that cluster around themes of disunion and contemplation. In two halves, tiers of synthetic materials are layered into sullen reveries with organic components and concrète treatments, and as the obscurity of their genesis reaches a crescendo, these delicate and foreboding compositions find further means of communication the more they blister and bloom.

“I had the honour of remixing all of the Bamboo tapes that J.Derwort ever recorded. Most of my mixes were approved by the master himself during the last days of his life in Oliva, Spain. For ‘Eleven’, I sampled from his last live performance at Jazzcafe Dizzy in Rotterdam on February 11th, 2018. He died on the day of the release of our latest Chi Factory album, ‘The Mantra Recordings’, on February 11th, 2019. We will miss him, life will not be the same. Farewell soul brother!” Words by Hanyo van Oosterom.

Matti Bye is a Swedish composer and pianist with an illustrious catalogue spanning two decades, with numerous soundtracks and releases on Kning Disk, Rotor Records, Tona Serenad and Time Released Sound. He has previously appeared on Northen Electronics via compilations, but Between Darkness and White Snow is his first album for the label. The creation involved playing a 1926 Steinway Grand Piano through his EMS Synthi A. It was recorded onto tape with a vintage Swiss Nagra IV S tape machine giving it a wonderful warm analogue fidelity. We get four shadowy, soul-stirring, brittle ambient pieces traversing light and dark which are a pleasure to get lost inside during the small hours.

This is a limited edition 2x7" edition of a wildly experimental and unique gem from 1981 (originally released on Japan's Pinakotheca). Spread over two records packaged in a bubble wrap outer sleeve - , the set features unreleased full length takes and unheard material from the band's master cassettes. All transferred and mastered with the blessing of the original musicians. The release features heavy involvement from Morioka based musician, Onnyk (key member of the near mythical The Fifth Column group) , an underground behemoth who's released music on seminal labels such as Vanity Records (JP), Insane Music (BE) & Thirdmind (UK) to name a few. 2 discs. 26 minutes of incredibly forward thinking music from 43 years ago... Ships with a scan code to liner notes - the information is as intriguing as the music.

Acclaimed guitar duo Loren Connors and Alan Licht celebrate their 30-year collaboration with release of their eighth album — At The Top Of The Stairs.Across the decades, their improvisations turned increasingly abstract and atonal, while still maintaining complex, ethereal arrangements. The harmonious blend of Licht's meticulously crafted feedback and harmonic patterns with Connors' ghostly blue tones remains the core sound of this partnership. At The Top Of The Stairs was recorded live in 2018. Across two side-long pieces, the duo ascends slowly, through layers of atmospheric tension punctuated by thunderous waves of Connors' effects.For fifty years, Connors's adaptation of acoustic Delta blues has transmuted into miniature gray scale compositions and howling riffs. His collaborators include Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, and Kim Gordon. Rock/experimental musician Alan Licht was a member of the bands Love Child, Run On, and Lee Ranaldo & the Dust, and has released a range of acclaimed rock and experimental albums. He is an author with books published by Rizzoli, W.W. Norton, Faber & Faber and Blank Forms.

Tucson, Arizona interdisciplinary artist Karima Walker walks a line between two worlds. Aside from her long resume of collaborative work with artists in the diverse fields of dance, sculpture, film, photography and creative non-fiction, Walker has long nurtured a duality within her work as a musician, developing her own sonic language as a sound designer in tandem with her craft as a singer/songwriter. The polarity within Walker’s music has never been so articulately explored, or graced with as much intention, as on her new album, Waking the Dreaming Body.

Waking the Dreaming Body was written, performed and engineered entirely by Walker, with the exception of some subtle upright bass from C.J. Boyd on the song “Window I.” Producing the album on her own wasn’t Walker’s original intention, though; after flying to New York in November 2019 to develop some home-recorded tracks with The Blow’s Melissa Dyne, a sudden illness forced Walker to cancel the sessions and return home to Tucson to recover, and soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic ruled out the possibility of a return trip to New York. Instead, Walker decided to finish the album herself in her makeshift home studio. She spent the following months recording, processing and arranging her self-described “messy Ableton sessions” into densely harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and her own dulcet singing voice, allowing trial, error and intuition to guide her way. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient compositions (as in the instrumentals “Horizon, Harbor Resonance” and “For Heddi”) and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting (as in the lyrics-focused tracks “Reconstellated” and “Waking the Dreaming Body”), their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

A cassette version of ‘Croon Harvest’: a performance-installation for voices, field recordings, and white noise by composer and conductor Jack Sheen.

"Beirut group Sanam’s debut record Aykathani Malakon blasts to life with its mix of low-tuned guitar jams, industrial drums, and earthy vocals – an immersive collection of dark and spacious textures” The Guardian “A gritty blend of noise rock, ambient textures and Arabic forms that cast the traditional material in a visceral new context" The Wire "Absolutely love this record, it's amazing” Tom Ravenscroft “A bit post punk and experimental and very very interesting” Gilles Peterson ++++ Debut release from the Beirut-based free-rock post-folk sextet. Album mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem in My Heart) and mastered by Heba Kadry. SANAM's music is a ritual where improvised rock, free jazz and noise underscore an exorcism of traditional Egyptian song and Arabic poetry. SANAM formed following an invitation to perform with Hans Joachim Irmler from the legendary German experimental group Faust, at Beirut's Irtijal music festival in 2021. Sandy Chamoun (vocals), Antonio Hajj (bass), Farah Kaddour (buzuk), Anthony Sahyoun (guitar, synth), Pascal Semerdjian (drums) and Marwan Tohme (guitars) bring a myriad of influences gleaned from years performing either solo or as members of influential acts in Beirut’s tight-knit independent music scene (such as Al Rahel al Kabir, Postcards, Kinematik and Ovid). The musicians had planned to reiterate their fortuitous experience with Irmler but when this plan fell through, they decided to go on a recording residency together instead in a traditional house in the village of Saqi Reshmaya, Lebanon. The recording of the album took place during a particularly difficult time in their native country of Lebanon, which continues to suffer from an unprecedented economic collapse as well as social and political unrest. “We decided to take eight days off in May 2022 in an effort to completely disconnect ourselves from Beirut” says Sahyoun, who also performs in post-rock outfit Kinematik. During their residency, the musicians, who come from distinct musical styles and backgrounds, decided to record the full album live with no overdubs: “The musical direction for SANAM was set out by the improv sessions with Joachim," says Sahyoun. "We weren't looking at doing something specific, it ended up coming out as a weird mix between improvised rock, tarab/arabic song and ambient. Kind of putting different things in a blender (our different musical backgrounds) and never really letting them quite fuse together. Recounting the insular experience of recording this debut, Sandy Chamoun described it as “almost hallucinogenic, as if there was a tacit agreement among us to produce an album that sounded 'unearthly' ”. Combining regional and local folklore and poetry with experimental forms of instrumental music are at the core of Aykathani Malakon. Chamoun, who chose the texts for this album and has performed in the Lebanese satirical music collective Al Rahel al Kabir, turned to modern and contemporary Arab writers and composers such as Lebanese poet Bassem Hajjar whose poem Aykathani Malakon lends the album its title and opening track, Paul Chaoul whose poem Chamoun recites in a state of ascending ecstasy in Ayouha Al-Taiin Fi Al-Mawt and the Egyptian composer Sayyid Darwish in the languorous Ya Nass that features prominently the buzuk played by Farah Kaddour. As Chamoun points out, the poetry or lyrics in the album constitute “a collective call for an escape from a hallucinatory state engendered by love but also the mysteries of life itself”.

The strange thing about the music of Anima is that it’s often considered as strange, while it’s actually very natural. It has a free spirit, analog to nature. For this release the natural spirit is strengthened by the participation of indigenous American flute player and composer R. Carlos Nakai who did a series of concerts in the US and Europe with Paul and Limpe Fuchs in the 1980’s. As with almost all Anima work, the natural feel manifests itself not only by the musical approach and sounds generated by metal, wood, stone and air, but also by the absence of electronic devices. This LP is a reissue of a rare privately released cassette from 1988 and was recorded by the Bayerischer Rundfunk. May this slice of timeless free spirit be a trigger to more awareness concerning our decaying freedom.

Opening the window, I look at the light, it connects me to something more vast. Felicia Atkinson’s music always puts the listener somewhere in particular. There are two categories of place that are important to Image Language: the house and the landscape. Inside and outside, different ways of orienting a body towards the world. They are in dialogue, insofar as in the places Atkinson made this record—Leman Lake, during a residency at La Becque in Switzerland, and at her home on the wild coast of Normandy—the landscape is what is waiting for you when you leave the house, and vice-versa. Each threatens—or is it offers, kindly, even promises?—to dissolve the other. Recognizing the normalization of home studios these days, she revisited twentieth-century women artists who variously chose, and were chosen by, their homes as a place to work: the desert retreats of Agnes Martin and Georgia O’Keefe, the life and death of Sylvia Plath. Building a record is like building a house: a structure in which one can encounter oneself, each room a song with its own function in the project of everyday life. At times listening to Image Langage is immediate, something like visiting a house by the sea, sharing the same ground, being invited to witness Atkinson’s acts of seeing, hearing, and reading in a sonic double of the places they occurred. In an aching moment of clarity in “The Lake is Speaking,” a pair of voices emerge out of the primordial murk of piano and organ, accompanying the listener to the edge of a reflective pool that makes a mirror of the cosmos. “I open my feet to fresh dirt, and the wet grass. I hold your hand. You hold his hand. In the distance without any distance. The comets, the stars.” At other times, listening to Image Language is more like being in a theater, the composition a tangle of flickering forms and media that illuminate as best they can the darkness from which we experience it. On “Pieces of Sylvia,” a noirish orchestra drones and clatters beneath and around a montage of vocal images, stretching the listener across time, space, subjectivities. Atkinson says that Image Language is like the fake title of a fake Godard film. There is indeed something cinematic about Atkinson’s work—not cinematic in the sense that it sounds like the score for someone else’s film, but cinematic in the sense that it produces its own images and language and narratives, a kind of deliberate, dimensional world-building in sound. Image Langage is built from instruments recorded as if field recordings, sound-images of instruments conjured from a keyboard, instruments Atkinson treats like characters, what she calls “a fantasy of an orchestra that doesn’t exist.” And then, speaking of Godard, there are the monologues, operating as both experimental-cinematic device and a literary style of narration. Voice can be a writerly anchor or a wisp of a textural presence. Atkinson’s capacious and slippery speech plunges into and out of the compositional depths, shifting shapes, channeling the voices of any number of beings, subjectivities, or elements of her surroundings—not unlike her midi keyboard, able to speak as a vast array of instruments. Image Langage is an environmental record, in the vastest sense of the world. It is about getting lost in places imagined and real; it registers, too, the dizzying feeling of moving between such sites. It puts forth a concept of self that is hopelessly entangled with the rest of the world, born of both the ache of distance and the warmth of proximity. — Thea Ballard, 02.2022

Trances, Jules Reidy’s follow-up to the celebrated World in World (2022), takes place in between states, tracing a kind of restless movement in search of—or is it away from?—a center. The twelve tracks shift between fragment and epic, returning to familiar phrases between forays outward into uncertain expanses. Through its exploration of the cyclical movements of grief and emotional turbulence, Trances produces a sonic world as raw, absorbing, and surprising as anything Reidy has created to date. Trances’ primary instrument is a custom hexaphonic electric guitar tuned in Just Intonation. Reidy’s combination of fingerpicked phrases, open strums, and corrugated processing push on the grammar of guitar-driven experimentalism, locating expressive heft in open-ended harmonics and the odd angles formed by overlapping elements. Chords are slowed and stretched as if to examine their resonance, then overtaken by subterranean motion. The effect is that of oceanic depth, but the rippling that passes between the compositions’ sedimentary layers often takes on a metallic edge. The addition of synthesizers, sampled 12-string guitar, field recordings, and half-submerged autotuned voice further denaturalize the compositions. Reidy’s vocal interjections—their particular linguistic content rendered inaccessible—are based on counting and self-observational techniques for bringing oneself back into the present; at times Reidy’s picking also assumes a mantra-like quality, though ultimately the flow of the composition subsumes both. There is a heavy sense of the strange throughout these songs, which bleed at their edges into a continuous, questioning whole. That Reidy’s compositions here have a tendency to engulf the listener, like a wave or a squall, can be variously comforting and disorienting. Either way, we are fortunate to follow Reidy on such a journey.

Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smerť, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. For his part, Scott has steadily published solo recordings since the mid aughts on labels such as Bo’Weavil, Students of Decay, and Where to Now?, and worked often in collaboration with kindred spirits like Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik. “Eye of the Sea” began as a series of intimate, muted piano sketches put to tape by Scott, which Nianio embellished and re-contextualized with voice and instrumentation before returning them to Scott for further overdubbing, editing, and mixing. Listening to these recordings, I’m struck most by their patience, frailty, and beauty. Soft piano lines unspool alongside Nianio’s weightless voice on tracks such as “Slowly Turns the Spring,” which achieves a richly devotional air, and “Lotus,” a piece that all but halts the passage of time as it slowly blooms into expression. But despite their elusive, gauzy palette, there is a startling directness to these recordings that feels unique in the oeuvres of both musicians. Much like Nianio’s wonderful “Lisova Kolekciya,” (reissued by Scott on Skire in 2017) there is the sense that this music, particularly the vocal arrangements, is firmly rooted in some hermetic, primordial tradition. Ultimately, “Eye of the Sea” is a work of romantic, phantasmagoric beauty shot through with morning light; one which draws deeply on 20th century classical, chamber and liturgical musics, and ambient minimalism to arrive at a distinctive voice of its own. - Alex Cobb (Students of Decay/Soda Gong) credits

Umeko Ando (1932-2004) was a folk singer from Japan. She was a representative of the Ainu culture on the Hokkaido Island in the north of Japan. “Ihunke” is her first album which was recorded with the Ainu musician and dub producer Oki Kano in 2000. It was released on CD in Japan only and is finally available on vinyl (2LP + linernotes, DL included). “Ihunke” is following last year’s single “Iuta Upopo” [Pingipung 58, incl. M.RUX Remix] which had been received with overwhelming enthusiasm and was quickly sold out. The 16 Ainu songs on “Ihunke” are delicate, natural gems. They are built on Oki Kano’s Tonkori patterns (a 5-string harp), over which Umeko Ando develops her repetitive, mantric vocals, often in a call-response manner. Oki Kano is one of very few professional Tonkori players who performs worldwide with his Oki Dub Ainu Band. The songs possess a mystical energy – when crows call accurately with Ando’s brittle voice in the first song, it seems like natural powers join in with her music. Her voice sounds like animals of the sky and the forest. Oki Kano: “It was a lot of fun to record with Umeko Ando. Many Ainu hesitate to break from tradition - if Umeko hadn’t been so flexible to work with the younger generation and recording technology, this album would never have happened. Our sessions were intense, and we were proud and happy about making such beautiful music.” Upcoming in autumn: remixes of “Ihunke” by Tolouse Lowtrax, M.Rux, DJ Ground, El Buho Mark Peters, Gama, Andi Otto, and Dreems.

Historical background: Only recently (in 2008) have the Ainu officially been acknowledged as indigenous people who are culturally independent from Japan. This record is an example of how their music has been passed on through generations in the underground Ainu communities while it was oppressed by the Japanese hegemony. It deserves a huge audience.

The music could score a romantic drama, an action thriller, or a modern twist on a classic film noir. The spare, cascading vocals accentuate the lush instrumental orchestrations composed, performed, arranged and produced by multi-instrumentalist Seth Applebaum, whose latest brainchild was conceived and conceptualized during The Great Pause of 2020, a time of tension, bewilderment and isolation. Evoking the grooviness of an era which preceded his arrival on earth, Applebaum draws upon sonic devices of mid-century exotica and the succinct but dense arranging style of the leaders of the pop orchestras which dominated the hit parades of the 60s and early 70s. He blends impressions of this bygone era with an expression of his actual experiences as a young filmmaker coming of age in the 21st century, citing influences such as Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings and Antibalas. A New Kind of Love encompasses a reverence for the past without attempting to recreate it. I Each song on Ghost Funk Orchestra’s 3rd album, A New Kind of Love, due to be released on Colemine Records … 2022, resonates like the soundtrack to a scene from an imaginary movie. The music could score a romantic drama, an action thriller, or a modern twist on a classic film noir. The spare, cascading vocals accentuate the lush instrumental orchestrations composed, performed, arranged and produced by multi-instrumentalist Seth Applebaum, whose latest brainchild was conceived and conceptualized during The Great Pause of 2020, a time of tension, bewilderment and isolation. Evoking the grooviness of an era which preceded his arrival on earth, Applebaum draws upon sonic devices of mid-century exotica and the succinct but dense arranging style of the leaders of the pop orchestras which dominated the hit parades of the 60s and early 70s. He blends impressions of this bygone era with an expression of his actual experiences as a young filmmaker coming of age in the 21st century, citing influences such as Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings and Antibalas. A New Kind of Love encompasses a reverence for the past without attempting to recreate it. In the tradition of the “production forward” discographies of such record makers as David Axelrod and the Mizell Brothers, it’s easy to visualize Applebaum as a “mad doctor” figure, hunkered down in a studio channeling this musical representation of his inner world into the 12 compositions which make up A New Kind of Love. His writing stretches his psyche to explore a terrain in which to capture emotional notes of love going well, love gone sour, manifesting love songs based in ghostly affairs. While the studio is obviously a wondrous happy place of experimentation and creativity for Applebaum, he’s a band guy too (having actually fronted punk outfit The Mad Doctors). Applebaum has the wherewithal to bring his dreamy material to the 10 piece all star Ghost Funk Orchestra, leading them to breathe life into this sophisticated body of work which heralds the celebration of a new era for the group. Ghost Funk Orchestra will be touring in concert this summer and fall to celebrate the release of A New Kind of Love, an album which is sure to stand the test of time.

MAAVAK a two 10xCD box sets presenting the intense, present, sometimes fragile & often challenging music of Swedish/Israeli composer, musician, artist and activist DROR FEILER, celebrating 50 years of musical, artistic and political actions in Sweden and around the world. These two box sets presents his wide range of styles; from noise attacks to orchestral compositions, from chamber music to solo saxophone pieces. There is a sort of brutal sensitivity to his works, or maybe rather a sensitive brutality. Let it be works for solo acoustic instruments or full symphony orchestra works (in one of them with Blixa Bargeld as vocal solist). Each volume is limited to 300 copies and is mastered and designed by Lasse Marhaug. To be released in Stockholm on October 7th 2023 on Feiler’s new archival label The Celestial Fire which is a sublabel to iDEAL Recordings.

MAAVAK a two 10xCD box sets presenting the intense, present, sometimes fragile & often challenging music of Swedish/Israeli composer, musician, artist and activist DROR FEILER, celebrating 50 years of musical, artistic and political actions in Sweden and around the world. These two box sets presents his wide range of styles; from noise attacks to orchestral compositions, from chamber music to solo saxophone pieces. There is a sort of brutal sensitivity to his works, or maybe rather a sensitive brutality. Let it be works for solo acoustic instruments or full symphony orchestra works (in one of them with Blixa Bargeld as vocal solist). Each volume is limited to 300 copies and is mastered and designed by Lasse Marhaug. To be released in Stockholm on October 7th 2023 on Feiler’s new archival label The Celestial Fire which is a sublabel to iDEAL Recordings.

Japanese obscure dream pop gem! Two elevator bangers to get through the gloomy holiday season by Japanese artist, Sonoko, probably made somewhere in the 90's. Merry ye ye

Palto Flats / Putojefe Records present the first ever reissue of the work of American composer Dorothy Carter, master of the hammered dulcimer, zither, and other instruments of the hammer chord zither/psalterium family. A true musical vagabond, Dorothy was born in New York in 1935, though her spiritual pursuit of an expansive musical knowledge would take her to monasteries in Mexico, conservatories in France and London, and the founding of the Central Maine Power Music Company (CMPMC), with new-age/minimalist luminaries such as Constance Demby and Robert Rutman. Dorothy Carter was many things - a virtuoso player, storyteller, historian of Celtic and Appalachian folk music, avid lifelong busker, avant-garde musician, and itinerant troubadour, laying a framework for music that existed both within and outside of standard folk idioms - never better represented than on her 1978 masterwork, Waillee Waillee. Underscored by Bob Rutman’s cavernous bowing of the steel cello, the richness of Waillee Waillee’s sound produces an album unlike any other in her discography. In particular, its two side-ending pieces, “Summer Rhapsody” and “Tree of Life,’’ glide with the shimmering filigree of hammered dulcimer and Dorothy Carter’s ephemeral voice floating over Rutman’s droning buzz of the steel cello. The elements of these two tracks suggest something akin to a transcendental Appalachian raga or whirling cosmic folk music, an effortless combination that serves to add additional substance to the remaining tracks on the album. The title track is one of her most enduring compositions, often performed in stripped down versions throughout her career, and one of her sole recordings featuring a full band, with the contrapuntal interplay of tremulous flute, vibrating steel cello, bass and drums. Lyrically and tonally, her voice would never sound as stirring and refi ned as on this, her most outwardly accessible song. She counted musical colleagues as diverse as Constance Demby, Einstürzende Neubauten and Laraaji, as well as her lifelong artistic partner and friend Bob Rutman, whose imprint is felt throughout the grooves of this record. The master tapes for this recording were fortuitously discovered in Rutman’s Berlin studio, many, many years later. As recounted in Laraaji’s contribution to the liner notes, Dorothy was “someone who really influenced my early zither exploration and vocabulary and inspired my shift toward hammered zither performance and recording,” after encountering him busking on the sidewalk one day in the 1970s. Later, when living in Berlin in the early 1990s, Dorothy would begin work on manuscripts detailing the history of the dulcimer family and providing extensive sheet music, selected material of which is reproduced in the twelve page booklet included with this release. Dorothy would find later success touring and performing in the late 90s with the ensemble Mediæval Bæbes, which she led with British musician Katherine Blake, playing a prominent role on their first four albums.

Originally issued by Crammed in 1987, this is one of the most sought-after releases in our legendary Made To Measure series. Known for his numerous albums, soundtracks, and collaborations with an impossibly broad array of artists (from Ryuichi Sakamoto and DJ Towa Tei to Van Dyke Parks, Björk, Manu Dibango and Elvin Jones), composer, saxophonist and producer Yasuaki Shimizu also released several electronic music productions during the '80s, which are currently generating a lot of interest (a.o. his recently reissued Mariah project).

"Music For Commercials" is a brilliant and inventive collection of short pieces, initially conceived as soundtracks for Japanese TV commercials (and bearing sweet titles such as “Seiko”, “Sharp”, “Honda” etc). These twenty-three tracks (each clocking in at two minutes or less, except one longer piece composed for a computer-animation short) abound with hit-and-run sound collages, twittering computers, and energetic ricocheting between myriad styles of music. This album has achieved near-mythical status in the last few years, which have seen artists such as Oneohtrix Point Never sing its praise.

Here's a great one. This is from Death Is Not The End, a great place for digging up antique music from all over the world, from pre-war blues to immigrant music and South American folklore. It's also a great place to dig for antique music from all over the world. This Japanese project follows on the heels of Katsutaro Kouta, which was released in 2018 and was very popular in our store, and contains haunting and unique sounds that show how cultural fusion with the West was beginning to be reflected in popular songs before the influence of Western pop music during the post-war American occupation. This is a work that every Japanese should be exposed to at least once.

MD Pallavi & Andi Otto first crossed paths on a theatre stage in India ten years ago. They started collaborating instantly and in 2016 MD Pallavi's mesmerizing vocals for the downtempo raga Bangalore Whispers warmed hearts and ears. Their musical relationship flourished with artistic residencies in Bangalore and Hamburg, their respective hometowns, and a concert tour in Japan. The album presents an interwoven pop-aesthetic vision of the two artists with their contrasting musical backgrounds. It ranges from organically woven folktronica to cut-up disco tracks and acoustic ballads. MD Pallavi is a singer, actress, filmmaker and performer from Bangalore, South-India, where she trained in Hindustani music and poetry since childhood. On Songs for Broken Ships, poems in her native tongue Kannada*, one of India's many languages, are performed over Andi’s alluring production, translating the stories into musical narratives. The poems address topics that are as timeless as the music itself. Social equality is touched upon in Bayalu (written by Bontadevi in the 12th century). Artistic struggles - communicated on An Unwritten Word (Gangadhar Chittala, 1865) - are almost prophetic and the surreal, dreamlike scenario of Clockshop (KS Narasimhaswamy,1958) brings you further inside the sonic journey. Andi Otto is a composer, cellist and DJ based in Hamburg, Germany, He is known for his idiosyncratic and unconventional dance music productions on labels such as Multi Culti, Shika Shika and Pingipung (which he co-runs and curates). For this collaborative experience his dubbed out basslines gently interlock with the 7/4 and 5/4 beats to create a backbone for the instrumentation and expressive vocal timbres of MD Pallavi. His sound design combines graceful acoustic recordings, juxtaposed against modern drum machines, computer generated noise and vintage synthesizers.