PRE-ORDERS

If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated. — Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” designed to enhance the company’s newly built living spaces. In his original notes for the album, Yoshimura recommends that Surround be placed in the same family of sounds “as the vibration of footsteps, the hum of an air conditioner, or the clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup.” And, as he suggests, “with the addition of city noise from outside the window,” you may hear Surround in a completely new way. A pioneer in the field of environmental music, Yoshimura’s previous works included Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and designing sound environments for public spaces and subway systems. Surround was recorded almost concurrently with the acclaimed and popular GREEN (1986); the two albums are described by Hiroyoshi Shiokawa in his liner notes as being Yoshimura’s yin and yang. 12月上旬入荷。遂に満を持して登場。あの『Green』を凌ぐ人気を誇る、長年失われていた吉村弘最高峰のアンビエント・クラシックこと1986年作品『Surround』が〈Light in the Attic〉配給の〈Temporal Drift〉レーベルより待望の公式アナログ再発！日本の環境音楽のパイオニアであり、都市/公共空間のサウンドデザインからサウンドアート、パフォーマンスに至るまで、傑出した仕事を世に残した偉才、吉村弘。その最難関の音盤として君臨してきた幻の一枚が、今回史上初の公式アナログ・リイシュー。ミサワホームから依頼されて録音された作品で、これらは同社の新築居住空間をより充実させるために設計された「アメニティ」として機能することを目的としていた環境音楽作品。吉村自身による当時のライナーノーツに加え、オリジナル・プロデューサーであった塩川博義氏による新規ライナーノーツも同封（日／英）。 MASTERPIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Side A
1. 自分のことだけ考えよう (Remixed by Cornelius)
2. Flow (Remixed by YANN TOMITA  ”A BRAND NEW CADILLAC AND ETERNAL LIFE MIX”)

“All possible processes. All channels open. Twenty-four hour alert." This Heat’s eponymous debut album, also known by fans as the 'blue and yellow', is a masterpiece of experimentation. This Heat's exploratory practice was based on extended collective improvisation that incorporated not just guitar and drums, but also viola, melodica, organ, household objects, and broken toys. They used tape machines to stretch the fabric of time and creative mic placement to warp space. They were fuelled not just by formal restlessness but also by rage at consumer society. Although widely considered to be Post-Punk’s finest, This Heat had actually begun performing at the start of London’s punk era. They developed new strange and volatile strains of avant-garde music that time has proved to be hugely influential, a blueprint for much that would follow. Featuring material recorded as early as their first public performance on 13th February 1976 and compositions that appear on the 1977 BBC Peel Sessions, their debut album was finally released in 1979.

“All possible processes. All channels open. Twenty-four hour alert." This Heat’s eponymous debut album, also known by fans as the 'blue and yellow', is a masterpiece of experimentation. This Heat's exploratory practice was based on extended collective improvisation that incorporated not just guitar and drums, but also viola, melodica, organ, household objects, and broken toys. They used tape machines to stretch the fabric of time and creative mic placement to warp space. They were fuelled not just by formal restlessness but also by rage at consumer society. Although widely considered to be Post-Punk’s finest, This Heat had actually begun performing at the start of London’s punk era. They developed new strange and volatile strains of avant-garde music that time has proved to be hugely influential, a blueprint for much that would follow. Featuring material recorded as early as their first public performance on 13th February 1976 and compositions that appear on the 1977 BBC Peel Sessions, their debut album was finally released in 1979.

Luciano Cilio was born in Naples, Italy, in 1950. He studied music and architecture and, in the late '60s, collaborated with local artist Alan Sorrenti, American expat Shawn Phillips and various avant-garde theater groups. A virtuoso guitarist and self-taught composer, Cilio released only one LP before his untimely death at the age of 33.

Dialoghi Del Presente (1977) is a work like no other, one that sounds both ancient and ahead of its time. Produced by Renato Marengo, it features a series of muted tableaux for strings, woodwinds, guitar, chorus, piano and percussion. Cilio carves out a space where subtle, repetitive phrases yield – almost imperceptibly – to breathtaking silence.

As Jim O'Rourke writes, "These recordings sound as if they were to please no one but himself; they feel self-contained, introspective, and determined ... You can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found, like in This Heat's debut or Nick Drake's Pink Moon."

While each subsequent "quadro" grows more abstract, Cilio draws the listener into an expansive, pastoral soundscape. The closing piece, "Interludio," begins with a plaintive guitar, which is joined by haunting strings and woodwinds before concluding, poignantly, as the album began, with Cilio and his guitar, alone once more.

Superior Viaduct's edition reproduces the original sleeve design. Sourced from the original master tapes. Recommended for fans of Johann Johannsson, Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, Arvo Part and Popol Vuh.

In the pantheon of classic free jazz, Noah Howard's The Black Ark looms large. Recorded at Bell Sound Studios in New York City in 1969 - just prior to the alto saxophonist's relocation to Europe - the album was eventually released in 1972 on Alan Bates's Freedom label, and has since acquired near-mythical status among collectors and devotees of the music. Now, Superior Viaduct presents the definitive remastered edition on vinyl, restoring this landmark to the visibility it has always deserved. Born in New Orleans in 1943, Howard grew up saturated in gospel and the deep traditions of the Crescent City before making his way west to Los Angeles, where he studied with Dewey Johnson, and eventually to New York, where he fell into the orbit of Sun Ra. By the mid-1960s he had already cut two remarkable records for ESP-Disk - Noah Howard Quartet and At Judson Hall - but The Black Ark was something else entirely: a quantum leap, the moment when everything locked into place.

The Black Ark exhibits not only the power and imagination of Howard's playing, but also his breadth as a composer and bandleader. Listeners expecting unrelenting blasts of "energy music" might be surprised to find a cohesion atypical of free jazz; amidst the wild, impassioned solos, Howard weaves in Latin rhythms and fat-bottomed grooves. The first side, consisting of Domiabra and Ole Negro, sets the album's tone - both tracks sound as if they could have appeared on some of Blue Note's proto-spiritual jazz, groove-heavy releases, evoking the likes of Horace Silver or Bobby Hutcherson, before ceding the floor to the horn players' anarchic firepower. Mount Fuji, the extended centerpiece, builds from a spare, almost Japanese-inflected melody into fifteen minutes of breathtaking interplay, while Queen Anne closes the record as a ballad of devastating lyricism - proof that Howard's command of his alto was as refined in whisper as it was in fury.

The ensemble Howard assembled is nothing short of extraordinary. As John Corbett writes in the liner notes: "Two players stand out. Bassist Norris Jones - who would soon consolidate his name into a one-word reversed amalgamation/permutation of the two, Sirone - is given ample room, largely unaccompanied; his corporal approach foreshadows later work with the Revolutionary Ensemble. But the secret weapon on The Black Ark is Arthur Doyle. Straight from basement rehearsal sessions with Milford Graves, whose ensemble he had joined and who remained a favorite of the drummer for decades, Doyle is a human flamethrower." Trumpeter Earl Cross's guttural, vocal effects complement Doyle's take-no-prisoners approach, while the estimable combination of Muhammad Ali (Rashied's brother) on drums and Juma Sultan on congas adds an ever-shifting propulsion. The septet is rounded out by the enigmatic pianist Leslie Waldron, who anchors the group with imaginative accompaniment and occasional boppish flourishes.

Noah Howard would go on to record prolifically through the 1970s and 80s, founding his own AltSax label and living between Paris, Nairobi, and Brussels before his death in 2010. But The Black Ark remains the burning heart of his legacy - every bit worthy of its reputation as an "out-jazz" holy grail, a record that only sounds better with age. It remains the ideal album to convert the remaining free-jazz skeptics.

“If I have anything to contribute to this art form . . . It’s a voice of our culture. This is a voice right out of them cotton fields—this ain’t out of the conservatory. This is out of the neighborhood. And that’s where my impetus comes from . . . I have seen it from the bottom up.”.—Julius Hemphill

“Throughout my years of talking with Julius, the desire on his part to reach a directness of expression, to communicate in a direct way, was an ongoing imperative in his thoughts. The Dogon A.D. recording session introduces him to the world as a protean composer, as a singular and passionate improviser and instrumentalist, and as a cultural thinker. In this striving toward transcendence, he brings in a sense of celebration and high spirits, of tough loss and sadness, and of proud resistance and survival. This recording, made on a cold February day in St. Louis in a studio with little heat, has lit up the musical world for so many for so long. It is wonderful to have it available again in this iteration for a new generation of listeners.” -- (from the liner notes)

Meticulously remastered & includes a 28-page booklet with new notes by Marty Ehrlich, complemented by several stills from a 30-minute film of an early ’70s dance performance featuring complete performances of Dogon A.D. and Rites with Hemphill, Baikida Carroll, Phillip Wilson, and John Hicks.

This, at long last, is the definitive edition of this seminal jazz masterwork.