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Arranged, produced, mixed and mastered by Ivan Dubious (April, 2024) __________________________________ A - Ivan Dubious "Flamboyant" AA - Wilbur "Impassive" __________________________________ (c)+(p) Ivan Antezza 2024 __________________________________ nunkirec.bandcamp.com
Swiss powerhouse The 18th Parallel presents another slice of fine modern roots reggae! All Fruits Ripe is a heavyweight showcase album rooted in the foundations of reggae while firmly anchored in the present. Recorded between 2015 and 2025, the project brings together a powerful lineup of Jamaican vocalists — Micah Shemaiah, Keith Rowe (from rocksteady duet Keith & Tex), Rod Taylor, Var (Inna De Yard, Pentateuch), Hezron, and Itral Ites — each representing a different generation of conscious reggae music. The album features six vocal cuts and five dub versions, highlighting both lyrical strength and sound system culture. Carefully mixed by master engineer Roberto Sánchez, All Fruits Ripe stands as a transnational reggae statement: Jamaican voices carried by a European band deeply connected to the roots with a profound respect for the culture that gave birth to reggae and dub. It features legendary guest Jamaican musicians Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, Scully Simms, Dalton Browne, or Errol ‘Blacksteel’ Nicholson. A mature and carefully crafted release where every track feels essential — like fruit finally ready to be harvested.
Live At Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali sees Grischa Lichtenberger transfigure a forty-minute set into a tactile, visual, and kinetic experience. Industrial clangor, mechanical pulses, and fleeting ambience merge, sculpted with rigor. Issued by Hermit Records as a collector’s vinyl, it stands at the edge between noise, rhythm, and abstraction With Live At Fondazione Museo Pino Pascali, Grischa Lichtenberger distills the art of sound into forty minutes of fiercely organized chaos. Recorded in the unique space of the Pino Pascali Museum in Polignano a Mare and released by Hermit Records, the album is a study in constructive friction—mechanical pulses and ferrous textures recurring, splintering, and coalescing in real time. Lichtenberger's palette draws from the imaginary of Russolo and Brinkmann, yet forges its own path: rhythm and abstraction in an endless handshake, frequency as sculpture, and every crackle a gesture or a mark. This release, limited to a black vinyl edition and including original music and artwork conceived over more than a decade, is purposefully an object as well as a document. No digital footprints, just a testimony pressed in the grooves—an encounter with matter, with noise, with control. Here, listening is not passive; it is as much a process as the performance itself, alive with tension and raw poetics. [Soundohm] An abstract painting with expressionist hues and futurist echoes, a mix between action painting and informal art: this is the first impression from Grischa Lichtenberger's live performance recorded at the Pino Pascali Museum in Polignano a Mare. The artist, based in Berlin, makes the rhythms creak, cuts them with a laser, weaves imaginative harmonic coils, smoothes with electric razors and draws figures with echoes and industrial clangs. Then he uses ferrous materials that, with a precision lathe, are abraded and cause sparks. Suddenly steel springs fall to the ground, generating a cascade effect. In the distance, you can hear the roar of speeding cars and the ringing of bells. Lichtenberger pulps, compresses, dilates, mixes, electrifies, heats up, liquefies: he does all this in just less than forty minutes, treating the sound material with violence, transforming it from time to time, shaping it and succeeding in the arduous task of controlling its effects. It is as if Luigi Russolo, Alva Noto and Thomas Brinkmann were closed in a workshop on the edge of a highway, parodying the famous definition of techno.
In May 1984 I appeared at a German festival called Pro
Musica Nova, organized by Radio Bremen. I then travelled to
Berlin by car with Rolf Langebertels, the owner of Galerie
Giannozzo who had driven to Bremen to hear me perform. I still
remember very vividly the experience of passing through the
checkpoint to enter West Berlin, a city that floated like an island
in the middle of the still socialist GDR. I had previously visited
Berlin in 1982 to perform at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien at an event
that Rolf had organized. This time too Rolf had organized a
concert for me at the Technische Universitat. Playing off the title
of the piece (“Study Time”) I had performed at Pro Musica
Nova, I titled the piece for this concert “Zeitstudie”.
I owe Rolf a great deal of gratitude, as it was him who
encouraged me by releasing my very first cassette tape,
“Zeitstudie von Akio Suzuki”. In recent years it has become
difficult for me to carry heavy instruments around with me, and
I have started to do simpler performances with objects
assembled on site. So it feels wonderful to have the sound of
the battery of instruments I used back then to be returned to the
light of day.
On “Zeitstudie von A.S.” I used an ANALAPOS, the echo
instrument I invented in 1970, and the Suzuki-type glass
harmonica that I created in 1975. The ANALAPOS resembles the
tin-can telephone that children used to play with: two metal
cans, open at one end and connected by a coil spring. You
play it by stretching out the spring horizonally and then
projecting your voice into the open end of one of the
cylinders. The second piece features a variation, where I
would suspend several ANALAPOS vertically and play them like
a percussion instrument.
The Suzuki-type glass harmonica is in a simpler form than the
pre-existing glass harmonica, and consists of five long glass
tubes of varying diameters suspended horizontally in a metal
frame. As well as rubbing the tubes with wet hands, I developed
my own style of playing it using sticks. Once when I was
practicing with it in the Netherlands, outside the window I was
surprised to hear a bird imitating my sounds. However, later I
discovered that the bird always sang that way, and as a token
of my regret for having ever doubted it, I borrowed the bird’s
Dutch name, De Koolmees, and I s till use it for my instrument.
Recently, as I listened back to the cassette of “Zeitstudie von
A.S.”, one of Hiromi Miyakita’s drawings was lying in front of me.
There was a sympathetic resonance between the sounds and the
drawing, so I decided to use it on the cover. This is a joyful music.
Great little record here from Brisbane based Drew Id. "Intersteller Dub" on the A-side is a real corker that combines the driving bass weight of steppers with the spacey atmospherics of dub techno, all tied together with some spectacular Tubby-esque mixing desk prowess. Then flip it over for the the more meditative delights of "Aphid Steppa" which slows the pace and brings in some dreamy guitar and melodic melodies.
Emerging from the European roots scene, conscious singer Congo Lion delivers his long‑awaited full‑length album Silver Dragon. Having moved to Africa in his teens and drawing deep inspiration from legends like Burning Spear and Peter Tosh, he channels sharp social commentary through a classic roots reggae framework. Produced by Karigan, the album blends warm, vintage‑style analog textures with a clean, modern sound. From the title track “Silver Dragon” to songs confronting colonial legacies and cycles of violence, the record is rich in message and spirit, with dub versions on the B‑side adding further depth. A standout contemporary roots release for 2026.
Undisputed grime heavyweight and sublow architect Jon E Cash is spotlighted on an overdue retrospective hustling rare plates back on vinyl for 1st time in decades - utterly essential tackle for UK ‘nuum fiends on the line from jungle to UKG, grime and dubstep. A serious VIP for Sneaker Social Club and the grime scene at large, ’SUBLOW’ scrolls back a quarter century to grime’s earliest days - before it even had a name - when artists such as Jon E Cash, Jammer, and Wiley were reshaping prevailing UKG styles and patterns in their own image, coming out with something rudely altered in translation - or by their technical limitations. While the latter melded Jamaican sound system inspirations of dancehall and jungle into their grimy prototypes, Jon E Cash would bring a ruggeder swerve, carried over from his early ‘90s days as part of the pivotal Britcore hip hop sound with Construction, and prevailing traces of later ’90s R&B and D&B, to his take on the 140bpm framework, with the exaggerated bass levels of his productions, and their bashy drums, bestowing the sound its mantle, SUBLOW, and soon recognised as a whole subgenre in its own right. These are sacred plates for grime, a key part of its DNA, and Sneaker Social Club are doing the Lord’s work by saving you a month’s rent in Zone 3 if you were to pick them up individually. All from the fascinating interzone 2000-2004, when the sound was shaped as an ecology of pirate radio, white labels, and raves, it’s burstign at the seams with legendary gear from the murky steez of ‘Hoods Up’ thru the NSFW intro of his absolute steamer ‘Kettle’, brukking out the digi-dub style horns on ‘War’ and ‘Battle’, or ramping R&B with speedy G pressure on ‘All About the Sex’, not to mention his Timba-turned-horny Terminator turn ’Spanish Fly (V.I.P.).’ If you ask us, it’s one of the hardest reissues/compilations of 2025, bar none, and a strong example of how much perceptions of grime have changed over the decades, from outlaw genre to something to be fetishised, archived, admired as distinguished cultural artefact, rather than feared and legislated against.
Originally recorded and released in 1977 on Sky Records, the first collaborative album by Brian Eno and Cluster was the first ambient record produced in Germany, and is considered the seminal, defining work of the genre. Brian Eno was certainly instrumental in creating and popularizing the concept of "ambient music" -- but it was not his invention alone. The German musicians Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (Cluster) were brothers in spirit. As so often in music, the idea of ambient was in the air -- both Eno and Cluster experimenting with the form in the 1970s, rendering any debate as to who influenced who redundant. What is certain, is that Brian Eno attended a Cluster concert in Hamburg in 1975, strategically positioning himself in the front row. Sure enough, he was invited on stage to jam with the band and, after the show, the participants arranged to meet up again. They did so two years later at the Old Weserhof in Forst, the domicile of the German duo. Eno and Cluster spent three weeks in Conny Plank's studio, resulting in two albums: Cluster & Eno and After The Heat (1978). In the liner notes, Asmus Tietchens (who also plays on the record along with Can's Holger Czukay) writes: "Clearly, all three musicians inspired each other during their three weeks together without any clash of personalities. Nevertheless, some tracks sound more like Cluster, some more like Eno. So it made perfect sense to collect the tracks with a Cluster flavor on Cluster & Eno." The importance of this record can never be overstated, nor can its elegance of diverse forms be matched. From Indian sitar and tamboura, to synth warbles and airy tributes to Western groove, it is a rare glimpse at what happens when masters meet.
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Sakura is without doubt the most loved and lauded entry in Susumu Yokota’s catalogue.
The music unravels like cascades of petals falling from the eponymous cherry blossom trees. Yokota intended to ‘express ki-do-ai-raku (the four emotions; joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness) through music’, and throughout Sakura, the effect fluctuates between profound tranquillity, hesitation, melancholy and joy with ease, addressing the fickle nature of human emotion, while transcending the inclination to label moods entirely.
Sakura became Yokota’s best selling album. It was greeted with universal acclaim, lauded by Philip Glass and Brian Eno and launched Yokota internationally.
‘A bittersweet beauty, heightened by the sadness that all things must one day end.’ - Martyn Pepperell
First chapter of a futuristic dub experiment series by The 18th Parallel. Geneva based collective invites engineer extraordinaire Roberto Sánchez to revisit 10 scorcher riddims from the Fruits Records vault to craft this inventive modern classic. Reminiscent of the greatest dub albums by King Tubby, Scientist, Prince Jammy, or Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.
Fruits Records presents the first volume of a series of dub albums by Swiss collective The 18th Parallel. Following in the tradition of Jamaican producers who revisited their catalogues in dub versions, such as Bunny Lee and his Aggrovators with King Tubby, Junjo Lawes or Linval Thompson teaming up with Roots Radics and Scientist, or Joe Gibbs and his Professionals with Errol Thompson, Fruits Records is launching a series of dub albums produced by the label's studio band, The 18th Parallel, which will invite different sound engineers to (re)mix the tracks throughout the albums: DUB AVALANCHE. This first volume offers a deep dive into the label's catalogue through ten classic or unreleased riddims revisited by Fruits Records' long-time partner, Spanish sound engineer extraordinaire Roberto Sánchez. The instrumentals are brilliantly performed by The 18th Parallel and punctuated by the voices of legendary artists such as The Viceroys, Lone Ranger, Cornell Campbell, and Dennis Walks, who appear fleetingly before disappearing into clouds of echo. Roberto Sánchez performs ten explosive, creative sound deconstructions, playing with stylistic codes to stimulate our memory and offer a timeless sensory experience.
Like the classics of the genre, the cover art evokes a quirky retro-futuristic imaginary space where, breaking with convention, the talent of Mexican artist Melissa Santamaría is expressed through a striking metaphor of a sonic avalanche.
DUB AVALANCHE VOL. 1 is already establishing itself as a future must-have for fans of uncompromising reggae and dub!
Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven’s brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo’s Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought-after artifacts of the 90’s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead guitar on the group’s first two albums. The pairing is revelatory as they weave luminous melodic lines, sometimes in parallel, sometimes opening into sustained intricate counterpoint. Bassist Koji Shimura and drummer Ken Ishihara shuffle and swing in parallel with a fluid, sinuous rhythm, while flourishes of synthesizer, mellotron and the introduction of Go Hirano on keyboards and piano deepens the group’s sound with orchestral colors and a soft cinematic haze. Across the album, clear, shimmering guitar tones and gentle chord progressions are layered with bright arpeggiated figures and darker minor-key passages. The songs develop through gradual changes in tone and dynamics as Ishihara's voice reveals a gentle yearning and wistfulness. An extended version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “The Look of Love” serves as the album’s entrancing focal point; Stretching the song’s familiar lounge-pop swagger, the group renders it as a slow-burning, psychedelic meditation crackling with electricity as it drifts into the night. Available for the first time on vinyl in over 30 years and for the first time ever digitally (a truncated four song CD EP was also released in 1994). Remastered and expanded to include a second LP featuring three previously unreleased song versions cut at 45RPM. Presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold with metallic and ink pigment foil stamping, spot colors as well as a gatefold insert. House in a custom vellum wrap with a mirror metallic sticker seal. Lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Mastering, pressed at Record Technology Inc.
This double LP of instrumental Hindustani, Carnatic and folk 78rpm shellac records from India comes with a full color 12-page insert of gramophone record ephemera, shops, labels, manufacturing details and graphics. The LPs feature over 25 artists recorded between 1904 and 1959 playing a panoply of instruments: jalatarang, dilruba, sarod, clarionet, pakhawaj, violin, been, kazoo, shehnai, tabla, sarangi, sitar, vina and more. Artists include Imdad Khan (the first sitarist ever recorded), Ahmedjan Thirkhawa, Bundu Khan, Amir Hussain, Allauddin Khan (who taught Ravi Shankar), and others both forgotten and revered. The Indian classical instrumental tradition is one of incredible proficiency and expressiveness using instruments and techniques created over generations that seem to perfectly and uniquely compliment Indian culture, landscape and tradition. Sympathetic strings resonate inside sitars and sarangis to manifest shimmering reverberant spiritual spaces; horns, reeds and flutes extend the range, volume and melodic inventiveness of the voice; a mind-boggling array of elaborately turned percussion instruments allow for rhythms as complex or as simple as the flowing Ganges river. Classical music in India was perhaps at its height during the 78rpm period as the raj era was ending and the world was globalizing. 2-LP gatefold with 12 page full-color booklet insert - features never reissued recordings and is the long-anticipated follow up to the Indian Talking Machine book/CD (Sublime Frequencies 099), which was also produced by Robert Millis from his collection of 78rpm records and ephemera.
All rhythm tracks by Bunny Lee at Studio One. "This form of music started in the dance halls in the early '60s by some of the pioneer record producers. Mainly Lee 'Scratch' Perry and Bunny 'Striker' Lee, by both of whom I've been tremendously influenced... As a youth, from Jones and Trench Town, I've learned you must have an adequate power amplifier, right preamp and speakers... For the right sound and effect, King Tubby's 'the dubmaster' is a must, knowing when to bring in the rhythm and leggo the bass and drum. This album, it's clean, heavy and right effects; we digged into the rhythm vault and came up with ten of the hardest rhythm tracks. You'll be convinced that this is the King Of Dub." --
Electrifying heavy sessions recorded in 1997 featuring the classic Mainliner + Musica Transonic lineup of Nanjo Asahito (High Rise), Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mother) and Yoshida Tatsuya (Ruins) driving into new divergently fried terrain(s). Here, Nanjo and co. are on a quest to find new directions, and while the sessions were for an abandoned Mainliner album, a good portion of Solid Static hews more closely to the moment-to-moment deconstructions of Musica Transonic. The propulsive ten-minute opening title track is a lost gem in the canon of Japanese psychedelia and rock and roll -- beginning with one of Mainliner's bludgeoning motor-psycho riffs, it veers off into auratic space, Kawabata's snake-charming guitar weaving around Nanjo's buzz-fire bass and Yoshida's multi-limbed drumming. Musica Transonic's improvised and jazz-informed take on psychedelic rock is writ across the distended rhythms and arcing bass and guitar lines that scrawl across "Prosecutor" and "Topsy Turvy," or the slurry of distorted tone that rolls through "Rot Way." Available for the first time on LP or any physical form aside from a clutch of CDR's sold at a few live dates in the late '90s. Housed in a custom die-cut, "Uni-Pak" style gatefold with metallic ink, spot finishes and matching La Musica inner sleeve.
When it was first released in 1997, White Heaven founder You Ishihara’s solo debut Passivité seemed to vanish into the ether, going largely unnoticed; the scant coverage it did receive in the Japanese music press was confused or even dismissive and it hardly reached an overseas audience in that moment just before the online music era. It was released by the short-lived Japanese Creativeman Disc label, which also produced albums by other luminaries of the Japanese underground, including Phew, Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, C.C.C.C. and Ground-Zero. Yet, even in that eclectic company, Ishihara’s album stood apart in a world all its own, out of time in that, or any other, era.
Passivité arrived at a pivotal point in Ishihara’s career, just as White Heaven dissolved and before the formation of his next group, The Stars. To realize the album, he recruited a choice group of players, including Michio Kurihara (White Heaven) on guitar, Chiyo Kemekawa (Yura Yura Teikoku) on bass, and Koji Shimura (Acid Mothers Temple) on drums, arranging them in no less than five configurations. The result revealed an expansive creative and even conceptual vision that could only find expression outside the band context. In the twenty-odd years since, the album has found adherents who, like P.S.F. Records founder Hideo Ikeezumi, praised its tremendous depth and discovered that they experienced something new each time they listened to it. Listening back today, Passivité sounds timeless and, in a sense, encapsulates the concepts, feeling, and brilliance that have marked the near 50-year career of one of the key figures in Japanese underground music.
Passivité is an entrancingly beautiful album that draws from rock and psychedelic music, the sounds of 60’s America as well as elements of jazz, bossa nova, soul, and even electronic music. It’s an enigmatic late-night meditation that unfolds in a cool darkness pierced by scattered flashes of light and heat. The album’s opening tracks “K” and “Nachbild,” as well as the second side’s nearly 15-minute “Nightwalker,” slowly float in the night, quietly seductive, stripped down, and soulful. Even as Ishihara seems to surrender to these nocturnal atmospheres, he cuts to songs that erupt with urgent energy, overdriven fuzz guitars, and even dives into an electronic excursion recorded 18 years before. Through all of this, there is a clarity and cohesion of vision. On Passivité, Ishihara both embraces and departs from his work with White Heaven. The music is deeply personal and intimate even as it operates on a conceptual level with a masterful nuance and subtlety.
Black Editions presents Passivité for the first time on vinyl in a meticulously remastered deluxe edition, including metallic silver tip-on jacket with gloss film laminate finish, matte pigment stamping, two inserts with liner notes in Japanese and English newly written by renowned music critic and editor Masato Matsumura (Studio Voice, Tokion) and the original notes by Shinji Shibayama (Nagisa Ni Te, Hallelujahs, Org Records).
2026 repress. "Sister Nancy's 'Bam Bam' on the Stallag Riddim is arguably the most licensed dancehall track for advertising and film backgrounds with multiple uses since 2000. The song has also displayed amazing lasting power for club DJs, with its instantly recognizable hooks. This album, originally released in 1982, showcased Sister Nancy for the world on the heels of a hit that has only gotten bigger over the decades. This is the first legitimate re-issue of the album, since the death of producer and techniques label founder, Winston Riley. Demand will be strong for this rare gem."
Nearly a decade ago, music fans were entranced by a viral clip of two young women playing improvisatory music on mandolin. The video quickly made the rounds across the Internet, with viewers drawn to their virtuosic performances on the small instruments. Known as the Mandolin Sisters, the duo’s mesmerizing skill integrated the rippling resonances of the mandolin within the ever-deep world of Carnatic music — a journey of sound that made time melt away.
The Mandolin Sisters have traveled the world playing their music, including a celebrated European tour after the popularity of their video. Until now, they’ve yet to release a full-length record that properly captures their infinite sonic universe. Discostan is proud to release the first vinyl release by the Mandolin Sisters, remastered and available in a limited run. Over the course of seven songs on the record (with one long bonus track available for digital download), the Sisters showcase their dedication to revitalizing centuries-old songs with a pulsating new energy.
Even before the two sisters could read, the duo have been singularly devoted to the expression of Carnatic music through this unlikely instrument in South Indian classical music for a quarter century. Over their career they have played more than 3,500 shows — performances that have taken them from Chennai — the center of the Carnatic universe — to Europe and South America.
The mandolin is only a recent addition to the world of Carnatic music. However, there is no disputing the role that Uppalapu Srinivas (more widely known as simply U. Srinivas) played in bringing the instrument to wider acclaim and as a respected part of South Indian classical music. A child prodigy like the sisters themselves, Srinivas was soon bringing alive age-old traditions on an unlikely instrument.
Today, the Mandolin Sisters are carrying on the legacy of Srinivas. Sreeusha relates to the way he interpreted the instrument in the tradition: “Playing Carnatic music on mandolin is like finding a way through a jungle or a forest, through which you have to forge your own path. Because of the speed with which the instrument is played, you cannot learn by watching another player. It is like learning a language without a script.”
Through their renditions of eight standards, the Mandolin Sisters imbue their signature sound onto raga compositions drawn from the deep well of the Carnatic tradition. Because of the amount of improvisation in Carnatic music, no song is ever played the same twice. Each performer adjusts the song every time to create an all-new version, even playing them for years. While they are inspired by deep tradition and the mastery of Srinivas and others, their search for new paths is unrelenting. In the words of Sireesha: “In Carnatic music there’s no end to learning, it keeps going. It’s like a sea. No matter how deep you go, there is always more depth.”
Blue Abstraction compiles a selection of Jessica Williams’ lost prepared piano recordings. These recordings document the beginning of a vital, solitary phase in her career: a period of intense sonic experimentation that began with physically altering a 6’4” grand piano—creating a new instrument, and from there, creating a new music. The results are breathtaking; from melancholic soundscapes with Satie-esque lyricism to forcefully controlled cacophony, always grounded by the distinct emotional voicing of her melodic lines. Jessica Williams (1948–2022) was a pioneering trans jazz pianist and composer from Baltimore, where she studied at the Peabody Conservatory. Among countless other greats, she gigged with Philly Joe Jones, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Tony Williams, Charlie Rouse, Jackie McLean, Roy Haynes, Charlie Haden, and Bobby Hutcherson, and recorded with Eddie Henderson, Eddie Harris, Leroy Vinnegar, Victor Lewis, and Ray Drummond. She received accolades from piano greats McCoy Tyner and Dave Brubeck. Williams could play anything and knew the standards deeply—expanding from there through her composing and arranging. Her first LP, The Portal of Antrim (Adelphi, 1976), included six solo piano improvisations, four pieces as a trio, and “Plath’s Return,” where she played all the instruments. After finishing her second album—a double LP of solo piano improvisations titled Portraits (Adelphi, 1977)—she moved to San Francisco and became the house pianist at the city’s premiere jazz spot, Keystone Korner. Thelonious Monk was one of Williams’ biggest influences. Her fifth LP, Update (Clean Cuts, 1982), features a take on “Ruby My Dear” and her sixth LP, Nothin’ But the Truth (BlackHawk, 1986), includes “’Round Midnight,” “Ugly Beauty,” and her tribute, “Monk’s Hat.” In a 1997 interview with Terry Gross, she recalled first hearing It’s Monk’s Time (Columbia, 1964): “[It] sounded like he was wearing boxing gloves, because I had heard all this precision piano playing—like Oscar [Peterson]—and this was a totally new thing for me. I grew to love Monk’s music, and I still do, but I had some questions about how he would do certain things.” Monk’s famous maxim—“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes”—opened up something essential for her. In 1985, with a head full of Monk’s dissonant harmonies, Williams began her prepared piano project. She altered the piano by placing vibrating and/or muting elements on top of and between the strings at varying distances across the harp—some sounding like bells or gongs (screws, bolts), others like percussion instruments (clothespins, hairpins, washers, erasers). The effect radically expanded the instrument’s possibilities, sometimes making it sound metallic or ghostly, other times muted, tactile, almost broken. Though pioneered by John Cage—who embraced chance and a sparse, meditative atmosphere—Williams brought an entirely new sensibility to the prepared piano, forging a personal musical language grounded in improvisation, nuanced timbral control, and compositional precision. Even the most dissonant elements land precisely within the parameters of her tonal framework. The resulting beauty and listenability of these works are a testament to Williams’ vision and mastery. The recordings on Blue Abstraction came out of three years of experimentation. She recorded at her own Quanta Studios and at Moon Studios (both in Sacramento), and two live performances at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco, on January 11 and May 10, 1986, as part of the Noe Valley Music Series. For Williams, these recordings were a personal transformation through the musical process. She described them as “temporal arrangements of sound and timbre... my self encoded on a chrome oxide surface [audio tape].” The process of listening back, she said, was “further investigation into my becoming.” The prepared piano gave her a language beyond technique—a direct link between sound, sensation, and the shifting contours of identity. She never returned to the prepared piano but continued to adopt its techniques—for example, emulating a koto on “Toshiko” from Songs for a New Century (Origin, 2008), or depressing multiple keys and reaching into the piano, strumming the strings to create a chord, on her compositions “Soldaji” from Live at Yoshi’s Volume Two (MAXJAZZ, 2005) and “Love and Hate” from Unity (Red and Blue, 2006). Though known for her recordings and live performances—especially of Monk tunes—Williams made some of her most forward-thinking music privately. Describing her childhood connection to the piano, she said, “I hit the notes, and I saw colors.” This immediate, sensorial relationship to sound persisted throughout her career, whether she was playing bebop standards or muting strings with hairpins. The music on this record disappeared for almost four decades. Perhaps the few who encountered it back then couldn’t fully understand what she had made. I’m excited to see what happens this time around. –Kye Potter Los Angeles
Martin Rev’s fifth solo album – Strangeworld – was released on the cusp of the new millennium. The label responsible was Puu, a Finnish imprint belonging to Tommi Grönlund and Mika Vainio’s Sähkö Recordings which came to fame in the 1990s on the strength of its uncompromising minimalist sound.
Four years earlier, in 1996, Rev had unleashed See Me Ridin, an album which surprised its listeners with keyboard melody sketches and distilled doo-wop compositions. It was also the first solo album to feature Martin Rev on vocals.
Strangeworld started where its predecessor left off. Melodic passages dissolved into a thicket of fragments and set pieces, coalescing in a celestial shimmer between rhythm loops and Rev’s voice, which assumed the role of an additional instrument rather than a standard singing part.
"The third full-length release for Portland, Oregon-based Liz Harris. Harris might have achieved a significant fan base thanks to the whispering, near-ambient vocal crusades of her debut album Way Their Crept and its follow-up Wide, but those with a careful ear would have heard slightly more trapped beneath her fuzzy chain of effects. Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill marks a departure of sorts for Liz, which sees her turn down the fuzz boxes which caged (and to some degree defined) her sound and allows her voice to ring out above everything else. It is an album steeped in the world of dream-pop and far from shying away from the reference, Liz has instead grabbed on with both hands, creating an album's worth of perfect, left-field pop songs. Using delicate song structures which are at once both familiar and somehow alien, her vocals cry out hauntingly over stripped-down guitar lines and looped environmental recordings. These are the future soundtracks to love, despair and ultimately, hope." "This remarkable album is actually what I personally always wanted 4AD records to sound like, only they never quite delivered the hazy pleasures their beautiful sleeve art promised." --Pitchfork (8.2)
