MUSIC

Salutations signals a series of meetings, greetings, group assemblies and exercises along the invisible plane created through correspondence. This is the inaugural compilation of new music from RVNG, inspired in part by a collaboration with Adult Swim. The question of how similar we are arises in the simple form of contact, and how we choose to embrace the potential of that moment and one another. Through correspondence, we connect, communicate, and form community. At first, correspondents with one another, and through the processes of collaboration and transmission, we correspond to parallel and intersecting collective cores. This eternal network, perhaps informed (consciously or subconsciously) by some celestial or spiritual force, becomes a portal to practice social responsibility and an access point to a wider, inclusive universe of information. In turn, the network becomes a human phenomenon, as well as a potent demonstration of art and collectivism. As the world heals, and evolves through future changes, having this network in place provides a vessel to and grow / glow beyond our corporeal state.

With a sound that was swampy, primal and modern-urban all at once—as much in the tradition of rock n’ roll and punk rock as it was a rejection of those things, the Scientists’ formula was as universal as it was specific to their own experience. The themes of getting wasted, driving around in hotted-up cars, being trapped in crap jobs, and paranoia were their subject matter. Machine throb bass and drums with jagged car-wreck guitars were their modus operandi. Fitting into no place or time they spurned all but the most rudimentary and elemental of rock structures to create a sound all their own. Quadruple CD includes their complete studio recordings, live recordings, and a previously unissued set from Adelaide UniBar, plus dozens of previously unpublished photographs, discography, and fold out Perth Punk family tree. Double LP version boils the box down to 22 essentials, plus unpublished photographs, discography, and fold out Perth Punk family tree.

A silken, minimalistic stream of electrified soul, Magnetic Eyes is Jeff Phelps’ peerless contribution to the tapestry of analog drum machine music that graffiti’d the mid-‘80s. Tracked in his Missouri City, Texas, bedroom studio in 1985, Phelps effortlessly steeps together the electro stylings of Afrika Bambaataa with the matured caress of Anita Baker’s soulful R&B. This 2021 edition presents fresh remasters of the album’s second mix, completed after discovering flaws in the initial 1985 pressing, all housed in replica tip-on jacket with artwork that remains just as evocative as the music it represents. Enjoy this technically perfect, artist-approved version of a visionary techno-adjacent masterwork.

Benny says, “First and foremost, I’m a beat-maker. I started making music in the mid-90s while listening to De La Soul. When I write songs, I always start with the beat. Like a songwriter strumming their guitar, I drag kicks and snares.” After releasing his album Music in April 2021, Benny had several beats he hadn’t used, and decided to follow up his original self-released Beat Tape (2018) with a new collection. “The idea came to me to ask some rappers to join on the beats, to pay homage to where it all started: hip-hop. It was all very effortless, because there wasn’t a higher goal of wanting to write the perfect song. I was just having fun doing what comes naturally.” The many guests on Beat Tape II include British R&B singer JONES on “Look What We Do”, Stones Throw MC The Koreatown Oddity on “Song 13”, and Mocky, Cola Boyy, and Marc Rebillet on “Beat 100”. Kenny Beats produced “Don’t Look” with Cory Henry, while Canadian rapper and singer Rae Khalil appears on “Beat 5” and “CGEOOL”. PawPaw Rod, MadeInTYO, St. Panther, Oddisee and Faberyayo also feature. Benny says: “I feel so grateful to have all these new and established talents on here that make Beat Tape II what it is. I got people who are not very well known for rapping to rap. Mocky’s first albums, which I played a lot when I was younger, were rap albums, so it was great to ask if he would do that again, go back in time. Cola Boyy is a great singer, but his voice is perfect for rapping, so I was really excited to hear him do that. I’m also excited for my first collab with Kenny Beats. Hope this can be a start of some new stuff, who knows :)”

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

Another Timbre releases a new CD by Barbara Monk Feldman, wife of American avant-garde music legend Morton Feldman, featuring five chamber and solo pieces composed between 1988 and 1997. Performed by the "GBSR Duo" consisting of George Barton & Siwan Rhys and Mira Benjamin from Apartment House! This is a fantastic chamber music piece that envelops you in a very ethereal tranquility.

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

The scene is sunny, smoggy Southern California, early 1980s. Traffic is barely moving. In the passenger seat of one of those cars there is young Jason Jackson, spinning the dial on the FM radio. R&B, early hip-hop, electro, new wave, independent jams, and music from the superstars – it was all a few notches away when the airwaves were wild and free. And when the radio dial was not enough, Jason Jackson got his first pair of turntables. The DJ known as J.Rocc was born, like a character in a Marvel comic book learning how to use a super power. J.Rocc and his crew the Beat Junkies have been a seminal force in the rise of instrumental hip-hop, and were among a handful of DJs who transformed the craft into an art form. All along the way J.Rocc has been making his own beats, and A Wonderful Letter – his letter to Los Angeles, and his dedication to a lifetime of L.A. music scenes – is only his second full-length album.

As a grade-schooler listening to the radio in his dad’s car, Stimulator Jones thought Prince was singing “round spiritual ring” on the hook of “Raspberry Beret.” The adult Stimulator Jones, aka Sam Lunsford, now knows all the lyrics to “Raspberry Beret” – and can play the song on virtually any instrument, from bass to sitar – but when the time came to title his new album, he decided to name it after that misheard lyric. Round Spiritual Ring shows a more personal and vulnerable side than Stimulator’s debut Exotic Worlds and Masterful Treasures, with lyrics that touch on his struggles with depression and chronic pain. But Sam is an optimist at heart, and his album’s overarching message is that love and connection are the forces that will ultimately save us. Round Spiritual Ring also symbolizes the connectedness of everything, what Sam calls “repetitive forces in the world” – think DNA, the planets, or vinyl records.

Dance Ancestral is the latest addition to producer and keyboardist John Carroll Kirby’s fast-growing and distinctive body of work. Dance Ancestral sees the acclaimed solo artist teaming up with Canadian producer Yu Su for an album whose central theme is the “intuitive dance” we perform throughout our lives. More electronically focused than Kirby’s previous albums, the result is a vividly imagined yet eminently listenable instrumental record.

〈Record Store Day〉限定商品！オリジナルは五万円越えの高値もつける鬼レア盤につき絶対にお見逃しなく。1970年にイギリスのアーティスト、Christine Harwoodによって、同国のスモール・レーベル〈Birth〉からリリースされた唯一のアルバム『Nice To Meet Miss Christine』がアナログ・リイシュー。King Crimson OBのIan McDonald（サックスとフルート）に、天才ドラマーPete York、Roger Suttonを始めとした英国のプログレとサイケ・フォーク・シーンの銘酒をフィーチャーした傑作であり、ブルーアイド・ソウルからアシッド・フォーク、ヨット・ロック・マニアまでも必見の一枚！

TIZIANO POPOLI - Sull’accordo mimetico
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SV30 / 1st time on LP Limited edition. Side A: 1. Sull’accordo mimetico - Parte 1 (28:00) Side B: 1. Sull’accordo mimetico - Parte 2 (28:00) Total time: 57 minutes Tiziano Popoli: Yamaha Dx7 synth, Korg MS1O-MS50 synth, Akai S900 sampler, tapes, FX.

 Recorded at home on Teac A 3440 4 tracks tape recorder, mixed on Revox 2 tracks. Sull’Accordo Mimetico (On the Mimetic Chord) dates back to the end of the 80’s. It was commissioned by the artistic director of the ParcoScenico Festival, held in Treviso, Italy. Since the area where artists and the public gathered after the Festival was located to a very busy street, Marco asked me for a sound installation that could work as some sort of a defensive barrier for the street noise. I suggested that my work, rather than hiding the noise, should aim to harmonize the disturbances coming from the street within musical structures and forms, without burdening or saturating too much the acoustic spectrum of the place. In this way, I thought about sonic veils, consisting of repetitive – but also light and discreet – harmonic-rhythmic structures. Since the Festival took place in a beautiful centenary park, I also integrated the music with natural sounds and animal calls, always as an attempt to bridge these sound events and the other materials that made up the composition. The human voice constitutes a central element in this musique d'ameublement project, as a constant source of memory of places and times – here with many references to traditional music for children. A pearl of ambient electroacoustic minimalism with field recordings components in which the nostalgia of Maestro Tiziano Popoli shines through in painting landscapes that slowly change to be seen with the ears. Nocturnal, emblematic, Lynchian.

Samba Esquema Novo is the 1963 debut album by Brazilian artist Jorge Ben. It includes the original recording of the international hit “Mas Que Nada”. It was listed by Rolling Stone Brazil as one of the 100 best Brazilian albums in history. While many of the performers during the heyday of Tropicalia and the rise of MPB (música popular brasileira) opted for a more radical stance in their challenge to Brazil’s political and cultural authorities, artists like Jorge Ben took a more understated approach. Rather than use overly theatrical performance to shock the audience or write songs loaded with political content, Ben became known as one of the country’s great musical alchemists, a furiously eclectic songwriter who combined elements of indigenous Brazilian music with a groove from the west coast of Africa. Never a controversial figure in the manner of the tropicalistas like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, Ben became one of the most respected and resilient figures in Brazilian pop. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1940, Ben took up bossa nova guitar playing after hearing João Gilberto but found the style too complex to execute. This led to his developing his own approach to the bossa nova that focused on playing the guitar as one would a bass — his early recordings are in fact bass-less. His first big hit as a singer/songwriter came at the age of 23 with “Mas, Que Nada.” The song’s subtle bossa nova groove proved so seductive that it was quickly covered by a number of Brazilian artists, most successfully by Sergio Mendes. During the military dictatorship’s cultural crackdown in the late ‘60s Ben, whose music wasn’t scrutinized as rigorously as that of tropicalistas like Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, was able to perform without too much trouble into the early ‘70s. Still, he felt the long arm of Brazilian censorship when a 1971 performance was stopped in midsong because censors felt as though Ben’s backup singers were dancing too suggestively. Benjor It was from the late ‘60s to mid-’70s that Ben established himself as a songwriting force within Brazil. Over the next ten to 15 years he expanded his reach, with varying success, to Europe and America (he’s more popular in Europe than America). In 1989 he released the album Benjor, simultaneously announcing that he was changing his last name to Benjor. During that same time period Ben realized his dream of working with prominent African musicians when he collaborated with Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade, and also was represented on an anthology of Brazilian music compiled by former Talking Head David Byrne. Although not as politically radical as many of his contemporaries, Ben proved that in certain contexts and under unusually repressive restraint, music takes on a radical political dimension. – Allmusic.com

Miller Anderson is a guitarist and vocalist, born on April 12, 1945, in Houston, Renfrewshire, Scotland. Since cutting his musical teeth in bands with Ian Hunter (pre-Mott the Hoople) and Bill Bruford (pre-King Crimson and Yes), Anderson has been a member of such bands as the Keef Hartley Band, Savoy Brown, T. Rex, Mountain, the Spencer Davis Group, and in groups led by Deep Purple's Jon Lord and folk-rock balladeer Donovan. His 1971 debut Bright City was released on the legendary Deram, sub-label of Decca that released new records from 1966 onwards for the likes of Moody Blues, Caravan, Camel and several british jazz-rock legends. The album is a brilliant example of modern folk with lush strings arrangements thanks to guitarist and producer William ‘Junior’ Campbell, leader of the Scottish pop-rock group The Marmalade. A brilliant songwriting alongside a pastoral feeling, gentle melodies and a solid background with several amazing players literally bridging the gap between contemporary pop and blues. Harold Beckett (John Surman, Graham Collier) on flugelhorn and Lyn Dobson (The Keef Hartley Band, The People Band, Third Ear Band) on flute were literally stalwarts of the british jazz-rock and experimental scene, their contributions is behind greatness. Same with keyboard player Mick Weaver another Keef Hartley alumni. The album - faithfully remastered - offers a vision of urban Scotland with a bluesy feel and it has to be ranked alongside the work of such luminaries as Donovan or Nick Drake.

After the 1974 release of The End...the magnetic and controversial Warhol muse went on a fruitful partnership with French director Philippe Garrel, for almost seven films. Back in New York in 1979 she started to perform again live, appearing firstly at the CBGB with John Cale and musical partner Lutz Ulbrich (former guitarist of Agitation Free and Ash Ra Tempel)... Back in France, she met young and talented Corsican bassist Philippe Quilichini who produced her comeback, Drama of Exile, in 1981. The album was released twice, in two different versions. Hereby we present the second, appearing in 1983, after a legal controversy was settled with Aura Records that released the first issue. While the first press was a 9-track offering, this second issue excludes "Purple Lips" but adds the tracks "Saeta" and "Vegas" released on a 7″ single in 1981. For this album, Nico recorded covers of the Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man" and David Bowie's "Heroes".

Composed by legendary library guitarist and founding member of I Gres, Silvano Chimenti, and accompanied by his orchestra, "Disco Music" is an essential release of the Usignolo catalog and probably one of the most sought after titles of the series. This album displays a broad range of styles masterfully blended together by Chimenti, going from disco-funky bangers "Happy California" and "Autostrade Americane" that lead way to the more dramatic and suspenseful vibes of "Society Problem" and "Tragedy", finishing off with the rock vibes of "Indian Summer" and the mellow atmospheres of softer, lounge-like songs such as "Lady Primavera" and "Chiara". One of the most complete and well-rounded library albums of its era, "Disco Music" is finally available on vinyl once again after a very long time.

»江戸 Edo« is a cosmic ambient experimental piece conceived in 1977 by Masashi Komatsubara and developed alongside with Hideki Matsutake (a.k.a. Logic System and reductively defined by many as the "fourth member of the Yellow Magic Orchestra"). As a true sound scientist, he pours all his efforts into this record, and aimed at the widest possible use of an electronic instrument that was at the forefront at that time — the Moog IIIc.

George Russell's third release as a leader combines two adventurous sessions. The first features two pianists, Bill Evans and Paul Bley, and a large ensemble including Ernie Royal, Dave Baker, Walt Levinsky, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, and Don Lamond, among others. The three-part suite "Chromatic Universe" is an ambitious work which mixes free improvisation with written passages that have not only stood the test of time but still sound very fresh. "The Lydiot" focuses on the soloists, while incorporating elements from "Chromatic Universe" and other Russell compositions. The second session adds trumpeter Marky Markowitz, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, alto saxophonist Hal McKusick, and drummer Charlie Persip to the earlier group, in the slow, somewhat mysterious "Waltz From Outer Space," which incorporates an Oriental-sounding theme, and "Dimensions," described by its composer as "a sequence of freely associated moods indigenous to jazz." Previously available as an LP and as a two-LP set combined with New York, NY, this CD represents some of George Russell's greatest achievements. ~ Ken Dryden

Cryptozoo is an animated feature-film drama, written and directed by Dash Shaw, featuring the voices of Lake Bell, Zoe Kazan, Michael Cera and Louisa Krause. The film won the NEXT Innovator Award at Sundance, and premiered internationally at the 2021 Berlinale. It will be released on August 20 in theaters and on demand. This is John Carroll Kirby’s first time bringing his talents as a composer and producer to film scoring. His score resists easy genre classification, melding together sounds from New Age, exotica, library music, and the sweeter side of electronic music, and makes for a perfect match with artist and filmmaker Dash Shaw’s vibrant animated feature.

Highly recommended. Kiefer, also known as post-Robert Glasper. The West Coast giant, also known for studying under Kenny Burrell, drops the latest EP from the Sanctuary again! The final title of the EP trilogy by the ace, who swallows urban vibes, earthy odor, and funkness and sublimates into outstanding beat music, has arrived. Seamlessly cross from spiritual jazz to neo-soul and instrumental hip-hop. A good work that shows off an excellent sound image as usual! Mastering by Matthewdavid. The magical sound that makes you feel as if you are watching the dream co-star of The Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra x Robert Glasper x Ras G (isn't it ?!) is exceptional.

Los Retros - Looking Back is 7 tracks recorded 2017-2018, written and produced by Mauri Tapia, aka Los Retros. “Likewise” and “Moon Ride” written by Chaisson Nuusolia & Los Retros. Mastered by Jake Viator. Cover art by Gabriel Alcala.

Have you ever heard of a record called "Chorus Big Demonstration with Japanese Songs"? The "Tokyo Academy Mixed Chorus" covered Kumamoto's folk song "Tawarasaka. The arrangement is a thrilling jazz-funk style with Toshio Fukui (former Tokyo Cuban Boys pianist/arranger), and it is also a remarkable work. This time, ZKA FOR GRUNTERZ has mastered the original recording in the presence of MACKA-CHIN and released it as a remastered version in 2022, respecting the original source material and emphasizing the bass line, which can be said to be the axis of modern music. There is no doubt that this is a sound source that deserves attention as a new interpretation of the dance music scene after a lapse of about 50 years.

The 1974 season finale of the Chicago based Soundstage series came billed as "Dr.John’s New Orleans Swamp". A wild southern party featuring the cream of New Orleans music scene. Some sort of Louisiana soup bone including Earl King's downhome blues, Professor Longhair's colorful creole pianism, The Meters's swampy, gritty grooves and Dr. John himself with his special mix of funk, blues, psychedelia and African music. Gumbo is ready! Are you?

The great Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron makes his debut on Naked Lunch with a collection of his own compositions recorded in New York City during the early 60’s on a Trio formation with George Tucker on Bass and Al Dreares at the Drums. The composing skills of Waldron as a post-bop key figure are here on full display on both sides, although pieces like “Modal-Air”, “Summerday”, “Ollie’s Caravan” and “Quiet Temple” really squeeze the creative juice off the Trio’s playing, with Tucker and Dreares laying the rhythmic textures on Mal’s many piano’s inventions.