Girl Talk completes the "trilogy" of great records that started with Midnight Sugar and Misty, Girl Talk solidified Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's reputation as Japan's premier jazz pianist. Though he would continue to tour and record for Takeshi "Tee" Fujii more than a decade, Girl Talk became the pinnacle of his career. This trio of classic LPs together are a benchmark in Japanese jazz records in particular and recording engineering in general. As usual, master recordist Yoshihiko Kannari worked with Yam…
Following his success with “Blow Up,” the once-weekly favorite bassist Isao Suzuki returns with his fourth release under the Three Blind Mice label. The heavy, groovy sound he crafts alongside the eccentric talent Kenji Mori remains timeless and undiminished by the years.
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Fascinating and highly attractive project which returns the music of Gurdjieff (c. 1866 – 1949) to its ethnic inspirational sources. To date Gurdjieff’s compositions have largely been studied, in the West, via the piano transcriptions of Thomas de Hartmann. Armenian composer Levon Eskenian now goes beyond the printed notes to look at the musical traditions that Gurdjieff encountered during his travels, and rearranges the compositions from this perspective. Eskenian…
Meredith Monk and her vocal troupe cut a line between experimental theatre and music, marking a passage through the Ancient Greek tragedy, the opera, world-music, the archaic ritual and the mystical chant. It started with "Gotham Lullaby", presenting a contralto over a desolate and stark piano sonata. Then "Travelling" set a feverish gypsy dance, a wild ritual stirring the primeval forces at play. The sonata returned in "The Tale", as the backbone to an offbeat pantomime/ theatrical performance.…
This is the complete soundtrack – music, dialogue, sounds – of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. "In making this film," Godard said at a press conference later that year, "I heard a great deal of music; music produced by Manfred Eicher. I can well imagine how musicians are inspired and influenced by these sounds. And I too have immersed myself in this music, and I have felt,in my work, like a musician." Interviewed at the Toronto Film Festival of 19…
This concert recording from Munich’s Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. “To work with these colours is a great challenge and joy!” says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating from Jordina Millà’s freely associative piano. Like Guy, Millà is both a player of prodigious technical capacity and a fearless improvisational explorer, and her highly creative use of the piano interior opens up …
2011 release ** "This album is Gianluca Codeghini's return to his origins, and the 14 tracks were recorded after long improvisation sessions which inspired each musician with unpredictable scores, visual stimuli and stories. The starting point is "Coffee-table book" (2011), a collection of quatrains by Alessandro Broggi published by Transeuropa edizioni, and the poet actively collaborated in the composition of a few tracks and in the production phase. The sequence of the tracks lines up the rhyt…
2017 release ** "This duo started in 2014 with the idea to transform the acoustic instrument into a real electroacoustic one. Transducers, springs and microphones are attached to the cello which is then processed through electronic and tape. This CD comes from several hours of improvisations recorded in studio and reorganised to build six pieces of abstract electroacoustic music. "
Duo improvisations recorded at Goldsmiths College, London, July 2007. Angharad Davies (violin) and Tisha Mukarji (inside piano) - two of the most distinctive young improvisers on the UK scene - unite for their first recording as a duo. An entirely acoustic affair impossible to ignore the heritage that goes before such a recording of piano and violin: the slow pace of Feldman and the New York School, the grey austerity of the Wandelweiser collective echo through these five improvisations.
Davies …
Following the meltdown of the original King Crimson lineup, Ian McDonald and Michael Giles brought brother Peter Giles back, which helps to account, in some ways, for the resemblance of this album to the 1968 Giles, Giles & Fripp recordings -- though the songs here tend to go on at some length, combining prog rock's traits of length and multiple sections with some of the lighter feel of the GG&F days. The 20-minute "Birdman" tends toward self-indulgence, while "Tomorrow's People - The Children o…
Adrián Demoč writes "gentle and soft, non-violent music." The Slovak composer, based in Spain, reduces chamber music down to near-monody—single melodic lines articulated through subtle timbral shifts and microtonal deviations. Zamat, his fourth Another Timbre release, presents three chamber works where Apartment House navigates music that moves "back and forth on the spot between a handful of notes." The title track—zamat means "velvet" in Slovak—deploys clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, and cello…
New York-based duo andPlay – violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson – present two extended works exploring the sonic possibilities of just intonation tuning systems. Both pieces were commissioned for andPlay's concert series Translucent Harmonies and premiered in 2018.
Catherine Lamb's Prisma Interius VIII (Melodic Duo) (22 minutes) strips her Prisma Interius series down to its bare essence, removing the electronic spectral resonance of earlier versions. Here, violin and viola plot …
This album contains three works by Seamus Cater, including his creative response to the work of Alexander John Ellis (1814-1890), who presented a paper 'The History of Musical Pitch' to the Royal Society in 1880. Ellis was a mathematician, collector, philologist and musical enthusiast, who spent a lot of time measuring the exact frequencies of contemporary and ancient musical instruments, and so is remembered as one of the founders of comparative musicology. Two of the pieces on the disc are 're…
A 45-minute single movement piece for shō, Hammond organ and cello, exploring ways of combining the differing tuning systems inherent in the instruments.
'A Coiled Form' by UK-based composer Bryn Harrison. The piece was originally composed as a shorter solo in 2020, and then revised and expanded in collaboration with violinist Sarah Saviet, who gives an astonishing virtuosic performance, to become a 50-minute solo work. It was released on CD by Another Timbre in November 2022.
Six pieces developed by Johnny and Keir from music by Hildegard van Bingen and Orlando de Lassus. Three violin duets, + three tracks for violins and the voice of Celeste Oram.
A concert-length work for pipe organ, piano and percussion, created by the composer and the GBSR Duo (Siwan Rhys and George Barton) at the recent Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Wonderfully brooding music, beautifully played.
Another Timbre presents Verses, five chamber and solo works by the Canadian composer Barbara Monk Feldman. "I have been thinking about what is inside and what is outside. The everyday life and tragedy of what goes on around you, and the fact that to accomplish anything you need the isolation in the studio - I think about this moral issue. And then on another level, I think about an inside and an outside for art itself, and how ephemeral that is.... What I am looking for is a way to notate the mo…
Five pieces by the radical young Belgian composer, Maya Verlaak, impeccably performed by Apartment House, and the soloists Sarah Saviet (violin) and Mark Knoop (piano)"Subversion has destructive connotations. However, subversion can also mean reversing a current standard: being subversive can be anything that challenges an existing system. My approach to subversion doesn’t destroy current standards, but it uses the standards to create, while developing solutions to its own characteristics and p…
Unbalanced Out (Unbalanced In)'. A powerful, challenging 50-minute collaborative piece constructed over a year through file-sharing by a sextet of leading musicians across the world, with Barry Chabala (USA, guitar), Bonnie Jones (USA/Korea, electronics), Louisa Martin (UK, laptop), Tisha Mukarji (Germany, piano), Toshi Nakamura (Japan, no-input mixing board) and Gabriel Paiuk (Argentina, piano)
Abdul Wadud's 1977 solo cello album, privately released and never reissued until now, cut from a DSD transfer of the only surviving master tape. Wadud plays the cello much as a jazz bassist would.
Edition of 300. Based in Copenhagen, Sandra Boss is a member of the young generation of European avant-garde / experimental composers who are pushing the form forward into new and exciting realms, splicing rigorous musical ideas with those of sound art. Often based at the juncture between performance and installation - musical objects becoming sculptures of sound, her work incorporates a series of diverse sound sources - antique tone generators, hearing test machines, bird flutes, children choir…
2006 release ** "All tracks on Purr have originally been composed for choreography. Laurent Perrier, the mastermind behind Zonk t, has reconstructed the tracks for his third release to make it a coherent album to listen to. And he definitely succeeded in that. The musical outbursts of the Frenchman are very minimalistic and could best be categorized as ambient. The fact that he uses only minimal sources and sounds for his creations doesn t mean that the tracks are boring, predictable or easy. O…
2008 release ** "Schloss Tegal's The Myth of Meat is an intense exploration of the darker aspects of human nature, released on the band's own Tegal Records label. This sonic experience delves deep into the themes of cannibalism and meat consumption, using them as metaphors to reflect the violent tendencies of the human race. The album's unsettling atmosphere pushes the boundaries of dark ambient and industrial music, creating a visceral and unnerving soundscape. With disturbing imagery and extr…
2007 release ** "NEWS is a new work, whose ingredients, on the surface, are quite simple. Lukas Simonis wrote the music, while Takayuki Kawabata wrote the lyrics, which are featured on the CD cover, and also spoken or sung, in Japanese or in English. Simonis plays the guitar, which mostly appears as "sound" (the main exception being an arpeggio sounding halfway between Thinking Plague and Pink Floyd which appears more than once in the track titled Original NEWS), and also "effects", which judgi…
2008 release ** "An experimental electro-acoustic duo formed by Wong Chung-fai (Sin:Ned) and Chau Kin-wai (KWC) from Hong Kong. Their collaboration first started in 2003 for the audio/visual internet project “60 seconds” and participated in the multi-media live event “Media Jam” for Hong Kong Sound & Vision Festival in 2003. The two formed as No One Pulse in 2006, exploring the concept of free improvisation and the world of free-from electronics that embraces randomness, chaotic structure, and …
2006 release ** "This is the 2nd album by the incredible Polish Jazz ensemble Sing Sing Penelope, led by drummer Rafal Gorzycki and also including trumpeter Wojciech Jachna, saxophonist Tomasz Glazik, keyboardist Daniel Mackiewicz and bassist Patryk Weclawek. Violinist Sebastian Gruchot guests on one track. They play all original music, composed mostly by Gorzycki and Jachna or credited to the ensemble. Stylistically this is an incredible mixture of many elements from Jazz, Rock, Ambient, RIO a…
2004 release ** "With his 8th solo album, French composer Laurent Pernice presents the pure electronic music, providing fresh views for academic avantgarde, from the different sides of microtonal music, reductive minimalism and other methods of digital decomposition. Ever since his first album (Details, 1988), Pernice has been collecting certain sounds which came into being all on their own, so to speak, the haphazard result of certain manipulations. By letting them run free, he realised that t…
2015 release ** "As Cummi Flu, Doerell mainly does sound design. There is not a sound on Z that has been included by chance. Each acoustic event has been painstakingly carved, demonstrating its creator's attention to detail. The squeak of a computer, the sound of a door shutting, the drawn-out hum of a cello -- everything here is of equal importance, positioned democratically side by side. Each track feeds on a wide variety of sound sources. And even when there is a lot going on, there is immen…
2009 release ** "Melbourne minor key pop magicians Crayon Fields announce the release of their long awaited second album, All the Pleasures of the World. In 2006, their airy, chiming debut, Animal Bells, was one of the year's most acclaimed releases, earning 7.8 review on Pitchfork and voted #2 in the Mess + Noise end of year critics poll (#4 in the general read poll). Crayon Fields have been working industriously on a follow up ever since. After several singles over the last 9 months, both dom…
2012 release ** "Eventless Plot is a trio from Thessaloniki, Greece. They borrow elements from different genres and aesthetics to build their own hybrid of sound. From free impro and noise to new electronica, electroacoustic composition and jazz, their music remains always unconventional and contemporary. They are experimenting with a variety of instruments, analog sources, field recordings and Max/Msp patches."
The sophomore effort from Gray/Smith refines their petroleum-based, hard-lullaby sound with a decidedly dusty precision. Formed in the outer-edges of Kings and Richmond counties circa 2020, Gray/Smith is something of an East-coast involution. L. Gray (guitar and vocals) and Rob Smith (drums, guitar and vocals) are both trusty veterans of “band’s bands” like Pigeons, No-Neck Blues Band, Rhyton, and the Suntanama, freewheeling groups known for mining from polyglot sources: rough-hewn folk and the …
2006 release ** "Avant garde jazz, it's all just a load of old guys making squeaky sounds with long pauses isn't it? Well yes, to a point it is but I think Rune Grammofon have taught us that it can, occasionally, be a lot of fun. Over two giant sprawling live improvisations (one 40+ mins and the other 30+), Bob Marsh and co proceed to learn and unlearn their craft, weaving in and out and creating some quite terrifying sounds. You don't need a degree in avant garde musical forms to enjoy this, b…
2009 release ** The ultimate version of the ultimate Blackhouse album. Brian Ladd presents you WWFB as it was recorded and meant to be heard. Due to the time restrictions on vinyl, several tracks had to be taken off the album. Now, this classic record comes to you full-length, with the original intended running order and a booklet explaining more about the recording and some rarely seen band photographs. Tracks include "We will fight back", "Rock Rock", "Granite Grind" and "Totally Gone". An Ind…
2010 release ** "In the late 1990s, New Yorkers became enamored with a brash group of freewheeling improvisers from Atlanta going under the name Gold Sparkle Band. The chemistry of their fresh and ambitious style clicked with the New York establishment, and the group members soon began integrating with the entrenched Downtown musicians in taking the music forward at events like the Vision Festival and venues where free speech was practiced. Drummer Andrew Barker and reed player Charles Waters a…