NEW ARRIVALS

Limited edition of 150 copies worldwide. For the first time since 1988, Aurora Central Records is proud to present this limited edition re-issue of the first ever Merzbow live show, Recorded Live at Kid Ailack Art Hall, Tokyo, 22 March 198, remastered by Masami Akita.

In Late 2023, Om Unit and Marta Pang were invited to perform a special performance at the Caixaforum in Barcelona. The invitees being ‘Lapsus’ who brought the pair together for a performance of 'Acid Dub : Redux’ as part of their DNIT series of events. This cassette is a complete recording of the 45 minute session which consists largely of ‘ambient takes’ on some of tracks currently released from Om Units ‘Acid Dub Studies’ series, as well as some new material specially prepared for the show which featured live visuals by Marta Pang. Some clips of the visuals can be found in the 6-Panel full-colour J-Card booklet which accompanies the cassette. ‘Acid Dub : Redux’ is an unexpected tangent of Om Unit’s ongoing exploration of the 303-in-dub and features a more minimalist approach to the concept, using more of a sense of space to accompany the visual elements. We hope you enjoy the recording as much we enjoyed performing it!

Ambient craftsman Tomokazu Fujimoto aka Multi-Surface describes the 11 tracks on his 2nd album for NNF as “nap-like” – vignettes of FM synths and smeared melody, looping across lost hours of the afternoon. Recorded throughout a year of intermittent sessions at his home studio in the Japanese countryside, the music moves in soft-focus swells and glistening arcs, gently swaying like paper lanterns. A few outliers expand the palette – kosmische percussion voyager “I'll float a boat on those clouds,” churning lo-fi whirlpool “Through the forest,” jittery gamelan edit “One rat” – but otherwise the mood skews opaque and oblique, chiming hazes half-heard on the breeze. Fujimoto’s muse is inward but attuned, reflecting on “the paths one has taken” and, in fleeting dreams, “visiting those places again.”

The improvisational session by trumpet, shamisen, tabla, and electronics creates light and shade. Through J.A.K.A.M.'s reconstruction, it becomes a wellspring of time and space, reflecting soundscapes reminiscent of a Japanese garden. - Chee Shimizu

Brooklyn's illbient cult Sensational meets Kyoto's composer unbuilt.

Mshukai is an improvisation group that revolves around Imao Takuma, known as a contemporary artist and percussionist Pedal.The group performs in unconventional spaces such as baseball fields or inside closets, responding playfully to the environment. This tape documents their performance in the headwaters of a river in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, where they brought equipment and played around a campfire. Additionally, recordings capture their studio session in Kanazawa, where they listened to the above recorded performance while playing with Imao's studio doors open. They also recorded a performance where Imao and Pedal interacted across a road, simulating a dialogue. This project serves as the debut album for Mshukai.

Masami Tada (Marginal Consort) started his career by joining the legendary improvisational group GAP in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, he has continuously embraced improvisation while expanding his creative expression into installations, photography, and more. In recent years, Masami Tada has been capturing Mount Koubou, visible from his home in Kanagawa Prefecture, in photographs every day and sharing them on Instagram, continuing his practice of daily acts of creation. This work features recordings of his actual climb up Mount Koubou, during which Tada brought electronic devices, amps, and percussion instruments. These instruments created sounds in rhythm with the climbing process, and the recordings also capture Tada's improvised performances atop Mount Koubou, including interactions with birds, airplanes, and other elements encountered during his performance.

Late 2016’s Highway Songs brought Papa M back to us, after many years of silence and several harrowing dances with death for his Id-ego/host body, David Pajo. Now, two years on down the road, we’re all here again to witness A Broke Moon Rises. The five songs of A Broke Moon Rises find David focusing his technique in unknown directions, to find out what he can do with them. When that happens, he finds himself on the very spot where Papa M music becomes alive! We call this, “the sweet spot.” As the quietly funereal march of the opening track resonates with a spare drum beat, we are completely transfixed into the open spaces around the guitars: damn, son — it’s the M-scape! David’s been engineering and mixing his records for years, so the sensation of his sound-thoughts doesn’t entirely surprise us, even in their latest, acoustic anointment. Layers of guitars curl and unfurl, falling away from the center with feathery softness. Slide figures cut through the progressions with a rusty glide. Arpeggiations flicker with light, leading into a change that’ll break on yer ear like a small revelation. Even the sound of Papa M playing in the room, leaning forward or untouching the strings, provides textural byplay in created space. A Broke Moon Rises is meditative in the most active sense, with the unquiet mind leaping from place to place in a static, spartan theater. All of which action makes hypnotic music, perfect for listening.

Following its release in the winter of 2018, "Landmarks", a collaboration between veteran ambient artists Celer and Forest Management, initially drew quiet accolades and a steadfast listenership that has since swelled to unimagined proportions (~20 Mil. streams), resonating with listeners perhaps now more than ever and cementing its status as an experimental classic. Inspired by Paul Theroux's novel "The Mosquito Coast" and Peter Weir's 1986 film adaptation of that book, "Landmarks" sets out 14 tracks in a "stunning hour of music" (The Quietus) that creates a "general sense of foreboding, critique of romantic retreat into individualism and colonialism" (A Closer Listen). The album is now offered on vinyl for the first time (originally out on cassette tape), newly remastered by Stephan Mathieu to enhance the depth and richness of this oneiric soundscape. Both Americans, Celer (Will Long) resides in Tokyo, Japan and Forest Management (John Daniel) in Chicago, USA. "Landmarks" was born of their months-long collaboration, trading music back and forth and reshaping each other's work using a series of patches, tape looping, and electronic manipulation. As a throughline in each piece we hear their distinct voices and cultural contexts blend to unique, often otherworldly effect, conjuring a dreamlike tension that refuses easy resolution. We are hooked by a mood that captured listeners back in 2018 and continues to hold us today in the context of current events, related disquietudes, and a nostalgic longing for solutions that may be more imaginary than real.

Klara Lewis and Yuki Tsuji's collaboration builds on Tsuji's singular guitar playing and Lewis's resolutely explorative soundscapes. Salt Water is their debut album. Klara Lewis is a sound sculptor and loop finder. She has spent the last decade creating albums equally tender and brutal for Editions Mego as well as in collaborations with Nik Colk Void, Peder Mannerfelt and now Yuki Tsujii. Lewis has presented her audiovisual work at festivals such as Sonar, Mutek, Dark Mofo and Atonal. Yuki Tsujii is a guitarist from Japan-via-London, now based in Stockholm. In the last 15 years, as a member of Bo Ningen, Tsujii has performed extensively across the world in festivals such as Coachella, Glastonbury, and Yoko Ono’s Meltdown and collaborated with artists across different disciplines such as Faust, Lydia Lunch, Keiji Haino, Alexander McQueen and Juergen Teller.

Following the untimely passing of Planetary Peace’s Will Sawyer last year we thought it was past time that we completed their story, and it is in his memory that we offer this compilation which collects the remaining compositions the duo of Kalima & Will Sawyer recorded as Planetary Peace across a small handful of impossible to find cassettes in the 1980s. Combining a deep seated & cosmic spirituality with the advanced geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller, they took their love of the Incredible String Band, Moondog, and Indian Classical music and combined it with a hand built mail order Serge Synthesizer kit. In the process they created what is possibly one of the most singular and visionary manifestations of DIY artistry of that decade (or any other)! There is such a clear eyed vision of hope here that is sorely needed in these desperate times, with the Sawyer’s gentle rounds, hymns, and folk tunes delicately floating above the percolating rhythms of their modular synths. In addition to the synth, there’s a bit more of an emphasis on acoustic instruments here than there was on our previous reissue of “Synthesis”, particularly in the use of Kalima’s enveloping tamboura and the addition of small percussive accents. If you come to this music with an open heart and mind you will be astonished at the vistas it offers, and how deeply it can move you. “It’s a song… without words… it goes on & on… it goes on & on… it’s a river of sound… just let it flow… it goes on & on” -Michael Klausman

Mysterious Japanese singer song writer. Originally released 2009.

Mysterious Japanese singer song writer. Originally released 1999.