Ahead Of Two Thoughts
Melbourne's ExEk began as a studio project with frontman Albert Wolski before the 2014 formation of the four-piece line up with Andrew Brocchi (synthesizer), Henry Wilson (bass) and Sam Dixon (drums). With the addition of Nell Grant on saxophone, the group's sound entered another dimension that reveals EXEK to be conjuring the ghosts of PiL, This Heat and Swell Maps. Ahead Of Two Thoughts, EXEK's sophomore release, pushes headlong into haunted, post-punk territories. Opening track "U Mop"…
Act Of Tenderness
Cindy Lee is the diva alter-ego of singer / guitarist / drag queen Patrick Flegel, the one-time captain of heralded Canadian experimental guitar pop act, Women. In Flegel's working on / as Cindy Lee exclusively over recent years, their songwriting makes a move toward high atmospherics, often achieving a mysterious sweetness rooted equally in beauty and ache. As Cindy Lee's first long-form statement, Act Of Tenderness makes use of antipodal themes to create a living sound: static with grace…
Étant Donnés
A six-track album based almost entirely on samples (from Curtis Mayfield to John Carpenter). "The really striking thing, though, is the kinship between Pisaro’s approach here and his other music. Many of his previous compositions have taken simple, granular sounds as raw materials, building blocks to be arranged into larger constructions through a combination of the composer’s parameters and the performer’s choices. On this album’s sister work, Shades of Eternal Night, piano chords played by Rei…
Shades of Eternal Night
Field Recordings from Syros, Greece and Southern California in 2015 and 2017. Piano performed by Reinier van Houdt, recorded in The Wild Beast, CalArts, June 2015Inside image by Michael Pisaro / Thanks to Keith Rowe.The sounds come and go against a backdrop of silence and stillness; the silences aren’t long but there’s a definite sense of a canvas only partially filled. Frequently, sounds are allowed to reverberate and decay into nothingness. It’s perhaps this quality that most communicates a se…
Mosquitoes and Crabs
Chulki Hong, turntables, guitar, electronics. Will Guthrie, drums, percussion, electronics. Recorded by Taku Unami, Mullae Arts Village, Seoul, South Korea, 20-22 October 2016. Mixed and edited by Taku Unami.Will Guthrie is an Australian drummer/percussionist living in France. He works in many different settings of music: live performance, improvisation and studio composition using various combinations of drums, percussion, objects, junk, amplification and electronics. Born in 1976, Hong Chulki …
Communion
LP version. 180 gram vinyl; Includes download code. "I don't want to play only traditional music. I want to play my own music... my own stories." --Park Jiha Over the last few years a rising tide of new Korean artists have staked a place in the global music conversation. Groups like Jambinai, Black String and Park Jiha's earlier duo 숨[suːm] have created exciting soundworlds that deftly combine the instrumentation and complex expression of Korean traditional music with an array of contemporary so…
À Travail Égal Salaire Égal
À Travail Égal Salaire Égal was Un Drame Musical Instantane's third album, originally released in 1982 on the group's own GRRR label. Since its creation in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé, the group has decided to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in themselves, or their live shows which they try to renew every time they play.Un Drame borrowed their sources from rock (synthesizer player Birgé and gui…
Ginparis Session
For the better part of the 50s and 60s, Masayuki Takayanagi was among Japan's best-respected jazz guitarists. But it wasn't until his experiments with tabletop guitar led him down the seductive path of sonic experimentation that he became the stuff of legend. “Ginparis” (literally translated as Silver Paris) was known as the chanson cafe in Tokyo, Ginza, and the performances often centred around chansons but eventually became the session venue for young jazz musicians. They left their mark on a…
Mouvements
Mental Experience present the first ever reissue of Mouvements, originally released in 1973. An impossible to find artifact from the Swiss underground avant-garde scene of Geneva, originally released as a private boxset limited to 150 copies in 1973, only sold at art galleries. A unique, instrumental mix of free-jazz, classical, psych-rock, folk, improv, kraut, funk, and musique-concrete with tape effects. In the late 60s, musician/guitar player Christian Oestreicher, "a savage in the era …
Plant
**Screen printed edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. Edition comes packed in inner cardboard disco sleeve, high-quality open screen printed sleeve, and heavy outer screen printed PVC sleeve.** Working the sweet spot where noise communication decisively rubs up against textural experimentation are the verdant improvisations that make up Plant, the new LP from Rimouski-based electric bassist Éric Normand and Australian alto saxophonist and bass flautist Jim Denley. Don’t be fooled by the title, t…
Zonder Webben
After years of scheming indoors, the duo Leroux + Vanderstraeten now presents its first album: ‘Zonder Webben’. The sounds speak for themselves and develop in an unconventional way. The improvisations are gossamered at times, and on other occasions they are closely interwoven by different elements that happen at the same time and without hierarchy. This album maintains the spontaneity of the moment - the duo always starts from a blank canvas - however without being isolated from the environment…
When The Shade Is Stretched
A split album is a marriage of autonomous partners. On each side of the vinyl, one artist presents a limited selection of music. Both sides relate to each other, but they do not intertwine. On Aspen’s first split, guitar brothers Ruben Machtelinckx and Frederik Leroux each contribute twenty minutes of solo performance. Both Machtelinckx and Leroux make use of the oating sounds of the banjo, but in a quite distinct way. While the former presents a determined and solid selection of music, the latt…
Evergreen
Belgian euphonium player Niels Van Heertum leads the acoustic quartet Veder. After the minimalism of his solo album JK's Kamer +50.92509° +03.84800° (on Smeraldina-Rima)—on which he also played tuba, trumpet & electronics—Van Heertum turns to the sort of chamber jazz played on his previous collaborations with guitarist Ruben Machtelinckx. Felt like old folk (Smeraldina Rima, 2015) and especially mono no aware (Aspen Edities, 2017) presented him as part of an acoustic, often improvisational ensem…
Mono No Aware
The first release on the new Belgian label Aspen, mono no aware is clearly the product of a carefully refined aesthetic. From the Cy Twombly-like cover art provided by Ante Timmermans to the peculiar lineup listed on the back — among other instruments listed are baritone guitar, banjo, alto clarinet, hardanger fiddle and euphonium — it is evident before one even hears the album that this is going to be a unique and thoughtful experience. Mono no aware (pronounced: moh-noh noh ah-wah-ray) is a …
Visceral Underskinnings
35 years after the release of their critically acclaimed 1981 album, Vibrant Stapler Obscures Characteristic Growth (SR 428LP), the British dadaist group Hastings Of Malawi release their second album, an epic sound poem entitled Visceral Underskinnings. It is a 40-minute film without light that reflects on the human condition, on modern society, on the nature of telephony and electricity and an attempt to make sense of the world in which we live that provides no answers. It is a sound collage of…
Distant Voices
Aguirre Records present a reissue of Distant Voices, Steve Lacy's rare Japanese collaboration album, originally released in 1976. Renowned for remarkable solo concerts that confirmed his mastery of the soprano horn and that carried its instrumental language into previously unexplored regions, Lacy also loved to collaborate with musicians who could inspire him to stretch the boundaries of his own artistry. During the summer of 1975 Lacy toured Japan, and on June 24th he entered a Nippon Columbia …
August 53rd
The Fossil Aerosol Mining project continues their post-industrial dialectics through their "songs of enhanced decay and faked resurrection." this cryptic ensemble from the american midwest has been quietly producing such works since the '80s, with a deep catalogue highlighting a uniform brilliance in the exquisite reconstruction of exhumed cassette tapes and moldering 35mm film stock.On august 53rd, fossil aerosol has collaged their reclamations of found sounds into an inquisitive, dynamic cinem…
Tender Music
Beautiful, insightful improvisation pieces by two master-musicians full of creativity and musical knowledge. Mastered by Jean-Marc Foussat. Liner notes by Ken Vandermark. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.Personnel: Elisabeth Harnik - piano; Joëlle Léandre - double bass.
Fartwind - Complete Discography (1967-1979)2Cd
Novaks Kapelle were one of the most legendary bands of the Austrian underground, famous and feared for their wild live performances and strict anti-establishment/music-business/audience/everything attitude. They went from raw psychedelic rock in the late '60s to proto-punk to some kind of weird glam/hard rock at the end. 1978 saw later jazz-star guitarist and Gipsy Love member Harri Stojka joining. Beside some bootlegs available on the internet, many labels tried over the years to release …
A Distant Hand Lifted
Massimo Pupillo (heavy bass player of ZU) teams up with the mesmerizing voice of Cindytalk, Gordon Sharp. Recorded live at Cafe Oto, UK at their first meeting -- producing haunting music from another sphere. Dark, atmospheric, wondrous. Personnel: Massimo Pupillo - electric bass; Gordon Sharp - voice, computer.