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I Roam The Cosmos
CD edition, comes in mini LP replica with obi & Japanese insert. Art Yard continues their voyage into the omniverse of unreleased Sun Ra tapes with I Roam The Cosmos, an unreleased, previously unheard 1972 live session recorded at Slug's Saloon in New York. Fronting a stellar 18-piece incarnation of the Arkestra, I Roam The Cosmos finds Sun Ra taking the listener on a poetic journey to the outer limits of planetary awareness. While the captain of the space-ship declaims his message with Arkestra…
The Very Fabric
*300 coipes limited edition* "The Brønshøj Vandtårn is a concrete water tower, built almost a hundred years ago in the suburbs of Copenhagen. It's 20m wide and 34m high - smaller than some similar shapes I've played in, but with a large, lingering reverberation. Some sounds seem to float away as if through liquid, others acquire a shifting haze, and some just prefer to sit around. Thomas Buhl-Wiggers, of the Cejero festival and label, kindly invited me to play there in the summer of 2022 and arr…
Humankind
The fifth installment of Yasushi Utsunomiya's divine sound "Utsunomia MIX" series! Free, immaculate, and unrestrained, even a single note is a miraculous improvisation that is divine. Otomo Yoshihide and Isobata Shinichi, a guitar duo of two former students of Takayanagi Masayuki, Otomo and pianist sara's first duo, and lastly, a trio. An hour of intense human drama! It has been more than 30 years since Otomo and Isobata were students of legendary guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi (passed away in 19…
In Doubt We Trust
After a four-year interval, The International Nothing has come out with a new album! The International Nothing is the duo project of Berlin-based clarinetists Kai Fagaschinski and Michal Thieke. Both musicians are well known as improvisers, but in this project they perform their own compositions. The International Nothing’s previous releases, all on the Ftarri label, are the debut album Mainstream (2006); Less Action, Less Excitement, Less Everything (2010); and The Dark Side of Success (2014). …
A Right to Silence
On the impulse of Jacques Demierre, DDK trio was created in 2014 at the Festival Météo Mulhouse, France. Made up of three major figures on the international music scene, this trio plays music that is totally oriented towards the present moment. It continues the tradition of "instant composition" - going back to Lennie Tristano and passing through the legendary Jimmy Giuffre trio - and deploys an expressive palette ranging from silence to massive acoustic eruptions, while paying particular attent…
In Cotton and Wool
** 300 copies** With his innovative performances, Berlin-based trumpeter Axel Dörner has been a leading figure on the improvised music scene since the 1990s. Internationally popular no-input mixing board player/improviser Toshimaru Nakamura structures sound by controlling mixer feedback. These two musicians released the CD "Vorhernach" on the Ftarri label in 2007, and In "Cotton and Wool" is their second duo album. The four tracks on this album (each between 7 and 12 minutes) were recorded in a …
Guitars
Taku Sugimoto is a Tokyo-based guitarist and composer. Improvisation is one aspect of his work, but currently his main activities are composing and performing composed pieces (including those of other composers). He continues his global and concentrated interaction with composers from around the world, particularly those closely connected with Wandelweiser. Ftarri had previously released two albums under Sugimoto's name alone—Septet (2015) and Quintets: Berlin, San Diego (2017). On both CDs, his…
Deux Songes (Les Jours Sont Faits Pour Expliquer Les Nuits)
** 300 copies** French musician Bruno Duplant is one of the most talked-about artists on the experimental music scene today. In recent years he's presented many outstanding composed pieces and released a succession of excellent recordings on labels around the world. The abundance and vitality of his work are remarkable. On this album, two compositions by Duplant are performed by Ordinary Affects, led by Boston-based musician/composer Morgan Evans-Weiler. Ordinary Affects is an experimental music…
Were Some Sound Days, One Separately Be Placed
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* The recordings were made during January 16th to February 27th, 2022. Recording gear included a cassette tape recorder, a cardioid dynamic microphone and a cassette tape. After some operations, the recorder’s eraser function was temporarily removed so that the sound could be recorded overlapping again and again.
During these days, Zhao Cong and Zhu Wenbo did recordings every day. Every time they chose a random place on tape and recorded a very short length…
Odd Jobs Are the High Road of Work
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks here (31 and 39 minutes respectively) were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka at Ftarri on February 8, 2021. Born in 1995, percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka lives in Tokyo. In this concert he…
2 Compositions
I have collaborated with Bruno Duplant on various projects over the last three years since I participated in Presque Rien (Rhizome-s) in 2013. Only a few people have met actual Bruno, and I have only worked with him via virtual exchanges. It was when I was feeling the limitation to pursue compositional projects only in the net that the idea of this collaboration was brought up. I immediately reacted with hesitation but Ko emailed me; "It would be very interesting to record materials like this. I…
Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth
Magnus Granberg is a composer/musician living in Stockholm. Through experimental music ensembles/projects such as his own group Skogen (which he has led since 2005), Ordinary Affects, Ensemble Grizzana and Insub Meta Orchestra, he has produced outstanding works revealing new compositional possibilities. Performances of his compositions have been released on various labels, chiefly the UK’s Another Timbre. Granberg has earned a great deal of international attention and critical praise. In Novembe…
Downdate
Seijiro Murayama, a percussionist/drummer currently based in Japan, lived in France for a number of years and has received acclaim in the west for his musicianship. He performs frequently both inside and outside Japan. This is Murayama’s first solo album since “Broken Iteration” was released on the Herbal International label four years ago, in 2013. It consists of two tracks of about 20 minutes and one of about 7 minutes (3 in total). Overlapping and combining with percussion and scraping…
Ssi-6
As a sax player, Junji Hirose has been a prominent figure on the free jazz/improvised music scene since the late 1970s. But he has another side: he collects odds and ends and everyday objects and puts them together to create instruments which he uses in noise performance. Hirose calls these noise instruments SSI (self-made sound instruments). He released the CD SSI-4 (hitorri-997) in 2013, and SSI-5 (hitorri-993) in 2015. This is Hirose's new release, SSI-6. In contrast to the roaring sounds of …
Immediate Landscapes
Sound artist Akio Suzuki crisscrosses the world with his self-made instruments. British tenor/soprano sax player John Butcher is a leading figure in improvised music. These two musicians have been carrying out duo performances since 2002. The six tracks on this CD are recordings of their duos in Scotland in 2006 and Tokyo in 2015. In June 2006, an event was held in which Suzuki and Butcher visited and performed in places around Scotland that have highly distinctive acoustic characteristics. Butc…
Quintets: Berlin, San Diego
In recent years, guitarist Taku Sugimoto has been active as a composer, providing works to musicians inside and outside Japan, and also as an improvisational musician. He often works with composers and musicians in the sphere of the Wandelweiser school, and gives many performances overseas. Sugimoto is also a member of the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, which is made up of five Japanese musicians.This CD, Sugimoto’s first release since Septet (on Meenna) in 2015, is made up of two versions, both a…
Phase to Phase
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Katie and Lucio met over the internet almost every Tuesday for one year, composing two pieces, rehearsing, talking about their lives, and recording. The desire to play together began after exchanging work and perceiving a deeply common approach to bass clarinet playing, to sound, and to music. The two pieces offered here are based in a very distinctive but still strictly coherent approach in relation to the work they intend to do.
Phase to Phase 1 is a ce…
Gauche
*2023 stock* Alto sax/clarinet player Akira Sakata is a legend of Japan’s free jazz scene. Ken Ikeda is a musician who resided for many years in New York and London, and has been based in Tokyo since his return to Japan from the UK in 2020. In 2021, Ikeda released "Signal and Signaless," a duo CD with Rie Nakajima, on the Ftarri label. This album, "Gauche," is Sakata’s first release from Ftarri. On May 21, 2022, Akira Sakata and Ken Ikeda gave a duo concert at Ftarri, Tokyo. This CD consists of …
Trio (2CD)
These recordings were mostly made during the daytime at the residency place and concert venue Petersburg Art Space in Moabit, Berlin. While we were recording, people would sometimes show up in the kitchen area on the other side of the room for a coffee break, probably not aware that we were recording music for a potential album. Even though this could have led to frustration and many retakes, it ended up quite unproblematic, and it was nice how it made us aware of both the fragility of our music…
Duo-1
*2023 stock. 400 copies limited edition* Improviser Junji Hirose is not just a sax player; in the 1980s he started playing the SSI (self-made sound instrument), which he created by combining numerous devices and everyday objects from which noise sounds are produced in a scattered way. In 1989, Hirose recorded the SSI/turntables duo album "Silanganan Ingay" with Otomo Yoshihide and released it independently as an LP. Three decades later, in 2022, a new SSI/turntables duo album by Hirose and Otomo…