Revelation
Having worked silently in her sonic philosophy for almost a decade, vocalist, music producer and Dj Telva has launched her music label byt’, starting with the publication of her debut album. The album, ‘Revelation’, opens with an unusual and experimental offering, which sets the tone for the label's subsequent eclectic and unexpected releases. The compilation of 10 tracks, has been documented for 5 years through an experimental vocal, instrumental sonic journey, that is composed of Telva's life …
Marsaskala
*50 copies limited edition* Pieces of debris washed up on a coastline shrouded in mist. Gratification comes from an eternal search for solace. Locked away at the top of a lighthouse somewhere on an unnamed isle, Grady Steele broadcasts to those within the beacon’s reach. A soundsystem built of driftwood and salvaged car stereos is pieced together with precision and laboriously dragged to the top of the obelisk. A timeless fugue state spent playing arpeggios on a Spanish guitar, the PA system ebb…
Sleepless
This album was recorded at Liu Ying Studio in Shenzhen. An improvised session on acoustic guitar from start to finish, it nonetheless demonstrates a highly original, coherent artistic conception: a distinct “Oriental” aesthetic redefined by Mamer’s own creative vision. In tracks like “Sleepless”, “Man from the East”, and “Backyard”, Mamer ingeniously deconstructs and deploys traditional Han Chinese music scales to serve his own purpose, adding artful ambivalence and rich subtleties to an unmista…
Saxophone Solo For Reel-to-reel Tape Recording
*2024 stock* This series of reel-to-reel tape recordings, to be jointly released by Old Heaven Books and Liu Ying Studio, aims to offer to our listeners the best quality of sound we can achieve so far. Whilst a small part of these releases come from historical archives, the majority are freshly made by musicians we invite to our studio. We record these studio sessions − some of which free-improvised, others more composition-based − on reel-to-reel tapes. With high-quality studio equipment, we ma…
Lo-Fi Machine
*2024 stock* "This is one of the many solo albums that Mamer completed in 2013. At that time Mamer's desire to create erupted like a volcano. I remember that bookstores had just released his solo albums "Stars" and "Cycles", as well as IZ's "Echoes"; many fans were slowly accepting music like IZ's "Shadows", and some people started to talk about the expansion and "revolutionization" of folk instrumentation on "Stars", while Mamer was already immersed in another world.
One day he handed me a bun…
Control And Its Opposites
“Eighty minutes of trumpet/electronics and alto sax. Here, the length works in its favor. An advantage, oddly, to listening at home (and reading the back of the sleeve): You know it's 80 minutes long so you "read" it as such, as it's happening, sitting back a bit, seeking a wider focus. Wright gets nicely strident here and there, Coleman generally staying with breath tones early on, getting more vociferous later, Kasyansky hither and yon, doing a fine job integrating and coloring. There's a brea…
A Life Saved By A Spider And Two Doves
Three extended improvisations recorded at the church of St. James the Great, North London, September 2007 - the first convocation of this unexpected quartet crossing different generations and playing styles. Max Eastley (arc - electro-acoustic monochord), Graham Halliwell (computer & electronics), Evan Parker (soprano saxophone) and Mark Wastell (tam-tam, metal percussion & harmonium) document a meeting of three generations of London free improvisation.
Parker has had a venerable presence as bot…
Endspace
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 …
Hum
Quartet improvisations recorded at London's Red Rose in June 2007. Rhodri Davies (harp & objects), Matt Davis (trumpet & electronics), Samantha Rebello (flute) and Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet) unite for intimately detailed collective sound explorations mining the lower boundaries of dynamics and densities. Davies and Davis are well-established improvisers; Rebello is a new name; Saadé is a member of the Lebanese improv scene along with Sharif Sehnaoui, Christine Sehnaoui, and Mazen Kerbaj.
It's …
Tasting
Recorded live at the June 2006 Jazz à Poitiers festival, this gem pairs two extraordinary musicians in an unusual and very welcome configuration. Phil Minton - the legendary British vocalist with decades of experience exploring the outer possibilities of the human voice - meets Sophie Agnel, one of the most interesting and original voices on today's scene, though still largely undiscovered given her small discography. Her approach to piano is truly surprising: a mysterious and fascinating mixtur…
Mouth To Mouth
Four compositions by the US-Chinese composer:
'Of Monsters' - Ingrid Lee, piano Merima Kljuko, accordion'Cells' - Ingrid Lee & Rowan Smith, amplified snare drums'Bead Spit' - Ingrid Lee, piano, Max Kutner, electric guitar, Tony Gennaro, percussion'Another' - Eric KM Clark & Andy Studer, violins, Heather Lockie, viola, Meldoy Yenn, cello, Jake Rosenzweig, bass & Tony Gennaro, vibraphone
Spiral Inputs
Four beautifully crafted improvisations by an exceptional European trio: French pianist Sophie Agnel, French saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, and German sound artist Andrea Neumann. Recorded between 2008 and 2010 at various locations in France – La Filature in Mulhouse, La Maison de la Musique in Le Garric, and Bibliothèque Grand'Rue in Mulhouse – Spiral Inputs documents performances using a spatialized sound system developed by Benjamin Maumus, which had the effect of troubling the musicians' sens…
The Middle Distance
Trio improvisations for two pianos and double bass
And We Disappear
The Sealed Knot—Burkhard Beins (percussion, objects), Rhodri Davies (pedal harp, e-bow), Mark Wastell (double bass, bow, beaters)—are what Clive Bell in The Wire calls "one of the great free improvisation groups, comparable to the classic 1980s SME line-up of John Stevens, Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith for edge-of-your-seat attentiveness and sheer inter-group telepathy." This single 40-minute piece, recorded live at the Ear We Are Festival in Biel, Switzerland in February 2007, captures the trio…
Empty Matter
Lucio Capece (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, preparations, sruti box) and Lee Patterson (CD players, pick-ups, e-bowed springrods, springplate, hazelnuts) recorded these eight pieces in what Norman Records describes as "absolutely beautiful music" where "two masters of tiny sounds meet up." Capece approaches his reeds "more as tubes for breath than as traditional 'instruments,'" while Patterson uses all sorts of sound processes—including amplifying burning hazelnuts.
Nick Cain in The Wire not…
Arethusa
Wade Matthews (software synthesis, manipulated field recordings) and Stéphane Rives (soprano saxophone) recorded these four pieces in Madrid in July 2008, creating music that speaks to transformation, identity, and the improviser's paradox. The album takes its name from Ovid's tale of Arethusa—a nymph fleeing the river god Alpheus who, in attempting to escape change, becomes water itself. As Matthews writes in his liner notes, "in her quest to remain herself, she has become exactly what she fled…
5 {Zwischenfälle}
2007 release ** "5(zwischenfaelle) is the latest release by dutch electronic musician Roel Meelkop. It is a special release in Meelkop’s catalogue because it is consist of five piece that were originally used in the context of sound installations running over a certain period of time in specific special surroundings. For 5(zwischenfaelle) Meelkop has set himself the task to compress these soundscapes into five dense and still minimal audio pieces that could work outside the context of the origin…
Tidal Perspectives
Big Tip! Tidal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the depth and effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides.
Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific …
Out Of Standard !! France 3
*2024 stock* This is the third Out of Standard!! compilation dedicated to the French oblique musics we like. The former two where edited in the 8o's in the cassette format. Artists featured were Armand Miralles (Heratius Music Corporation), Aversion Sonore, Costes, DDAA, Denier du Culte, Die Form, Dz lectric, Etant Donnés, Moly, La STPO, Les 3 Phallus, Nu Creative Methods, Orient-Express, Pascal Comelade, Stenka Bazin, Toupidek Limonade, Vivenza, Vox Populi.
This time we have French underground …
Stone
"With concentration, or elevated tension as he has called it, Akio Suzuki enters completely into the substance of sound, its emergence and its passing. What he does with sound may propose a rarefied world to many people, and yet it possesses a persuasive quality of rightness. One of the most difficult aspects of music and soundwork to explain is the concept of ‘right action’. How is that music can be evaluated almost immediately, just as quickly as a fire alarm or a baby’s cry? When Akio perform…