★Another Timbre

A duo encounter between two of the most distinctive voices in European improvised music: Welsh violinist Angharad Davies and German trumpeter Axel Dörner. Recorded in December 2008 at a West London house, A.D. documents an intimate meeting between two musicians who share a profound commitment to extended technique and sonic exploration, creating music that transcends the conventional boundaries of their instruments. Dörner has long been recognized as one of the most consistently innovative trump…

Roberto Fabbriciani, bass flutes. Robin Hayward, microtonal tuba. 'This is the first CD of improvised music featuring Roberto Fabbriciani, one of the giants of contemporary music. Fabbriciani was the instrumentalist with whom Luigi Nono worked most closely in the last two decades of his life, playing in the premieres of virtually all of the composer's late works. On nella basilica Fabbriciani improvises with Robin Hayward, the phenomenal Berlin-based tuba player with whom he has worked on …

Dominic Lash, double bass. Patrick Farmer, percussion. Sarah Hughes, zither & piano. A 20-minute improvisation plus realisations of scores by the Wandelweiser composers Eva-Maria Houben & Taylan Susam, including an extraordinary outdoor performance of Houben's Nachtstück recorded in a wood in Derbyshire during a rainstorm. 'It's exciting to play Wandelweiser music because of its difference from improvisation, the satisfaction of being given specific tasks to carry out and attempting to do so to …

French cellist Martine Altenburger and British guitarist John Russell recorded this live performance at the Musique en Mouvement Festival in Jarny, France in November 2008. Altenburger, Toulouse-based and conservatory-trained, moves between performances of Cage and Scelsi and improvisation with sound explorers like Michel Doneda and Lê Quan Ninh (who mastered this session). Russell, a London hardcore improviser, brings decades of experience to this encounter. One reviewer describes listening to …

Norwegian guitarist Håvard Volden (12-string guitar, objects) and Japanese master Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) recorded these two pieces in Norway in 2008, creating what one Norwegian reviewer calls "a timbre based album with some auditory surprises." The music is "slow and quiet, with contrasting elements. A cutting tone, a crackling flicker, or a deep bass tone gives the progress colour. It is exciting to listen to an expression that moves with this much unpredictability." Norman…

Barcelona-based Ferran Fages is known both for his lyrical acoustic guitar playing (on solo discs such as Cançons a per un Lent Retard and Al Voltant d'un Para/'lel) and for hard-edged electronics (with groups such as Cremaster and Octante). His work in Ap'strophe—a duo with Athens-based zither player Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga—is an intriguing combination of these two sides of his music: there is plenty of resonant acoustic playing, but this is set against both the metallic textures of Lazari…

Long-awaited gem featuring John Tilbury performing five solo piano compositions by little-recorded Fluxus minimalist Terry Jennings (1940-1981), followed by a forty-minute realization of John Cage's Electronic Music for Piano with Sebastian Lexer on electronics. Recorded in London, November 2007 and September 2009. Tilbury - best known for his membership in AMM and renowned for recordings of Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Morton Feldman, Howard Skempton and Christian Wolff - brings his unique sensibili…

'Stephen CORNFORD is better known for his work in sound sculptures and installations than as an improvising musician. But on ÔTurned Moment, weighting' (at-b07) he uses the piano as a source for feedback patterns, which he blends with the gentle Feldmanesque playing of pianist Samuel  RODGERS to produce three extended improvisations of astonishingly delicacy. Samuel  RODGERS has said that 'though being aware of and struggling with the tradition and limitations of the instrument, I have found the…

Named after the slow loris—an animal beloved by Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes for its shy, gradual movements—this London trio creates music that moves at a similarly unhurried pace. Farmer (natural objects, e-bow snare, tapes), Hughes (chorded zither, piano, e-bow), and Daniel Jones (turntable, e-bow, piezo discs, electronics) recorded these three pieces at Middlesex University in 2009, producing what Richard Pinnell in The Watchful Ear describes as "a calm but invigorating massage of the eard…

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…

Trio improvisations for two pianos and double bass

Few albums have been more accurately titled. Though Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn) and Ernst Karel (trumpet) come from acoustic backgrounds, analogue electronics dominate these five pieces, creating what Gino Robair termed "voltage made audible." The duo manages their modular synthesizers the old-school way—"by twisting knobs, flipping switches, yanking patch cords in and out, and sometimes using their own fingers as conductors between cables and instruments," as Bill Meyer describes in Dus…

Radical collaboration between two of European improvisation's most innovative voices, recorded in Berlin in April 2008. Annette Krebs (guitar, mixing board, tapes) and Rhodri Davies (electric harp & electronics) created hours of raw material during sessions in Krebs's apartment, which she then spent months editing and mastering into this intriguing three-part suite. Krebs - one of contemporary improvisation's most distinctive and selective voices - has built her reputation through carefully chos…

Barcelona's Octante—Ruth Barberán (trumpet, speaker, microphones), Alfredo Costa Monteiro (accordion, objects), Ferran Fages (oscillators, pick-ups), and Margarida Garcia (electric bass)—create what one reviewer calls "a crackling and crunching kind of sound" that's "utterly condensed." The quartet has essentially become "one common music machine" where distinguishing individual instruments becomes nearly impossible. The two extended improvisations (each around 29 minutes) recorded in Barcelona …

“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…

2009 release ** "Two improvisations-one live, one without audience-by an Anglo-French trio of new voices from trombonist Forge, electronics artists Julian and cellist Papapostolou. The music is quiet and spacious....there is a wonderful sense of slowness to the music that suggests each sound, every contribution comes only after careful consideration."

The excellently titled Loiter Volcano was a constant source of somewhat surprising pleasure the first time I listened. "Surprising" because the general attack leans a bit more toward efi (I suppose "post-efi" has been appropriate for a good while) than I normally care for. But this mix of electronics, percussion and cello simply filled the space in a manner that held me rapt throughout. As with the other release featuring Dumont, it's partially about the textures and their creative deployment bu…

Solo improvisation for cymbal and rotating objects

A duo improvisation recorded in an exhibition space with several of Max Eastley's sound sculptures, and next door to a park where a firework display was taking place...

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…

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…

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…

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…

Trio improvisations recorded at festivals in Esslingen, Germany (2005) and Klagenfurt, Austria (2008). Axel Dörner (trumpet), Thomas Lehn (analogue synthesiser) and Phil Minton (voice) - TOOT's second album, following One on Sofa Records. Two extended collective improvisations finding three masters of European improvisation in absolutely fine form. Dörner brings his trumpet deconstructions - brassy hisses, burred growls, sputtered flurries. Lehn provides warm analogue synth grit and oscillations…

Extraordinary homage to pioneering instrument-builder and improviser Hugh Davies (1943-2005), recorded in January 2008. Adam Bohman (prepared balalaika & amplified objects), Lee Patterson (amplified objects) and Mark Wastell (cello) - three improvisers heavily influenced by Davies's work - improvising alongside solo recordings Davies made in the 1970s. A virtual quartet where one voice is fixed, unable to respond. Davies - who worked as Karlheinz Stockhausen's assistant in Cologne in the mid-60s…

Trio improvisations recorded at the Eremita de la Anunciada, Urueña, Spain, August 2007. Esteban Algora (accordion), Alessandra Rombolá (flute and tiles installation) and Ingar Zach (percussion) - three Madrid-based improvisers creating music where the room became a fourth member of the group. An entirely acoustic affair. The title, taken from a poem by Pablo Neruda, suggests the use of the space where the recording was made - an old stone church where the instruments amplify and extend the pote…

Trio improvisations recorded at the Church of St. James the Great, Friern Barnet, north London, November 2007. Matt Davis (trumpet & field recordings), Matt Milton (violin) and Bechir Saade (bass clarinet & flute) - three improvisers following that strain of British improv interested in amplifying the quiet and concentrating on minute gestural nuance. An entirely acoustic affair meets electronics in reverberant sacred space. The music opens with "a spectrum of Saade's bass clarinet multiphon…

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…

Duo improvisations for shakuhachi and ney recorded in Ealing, west London, July and October 2007. Clive Bell (shakuhachi) and Bechir Saade (ney) - two deeply committed improvisers working at the intersection of traditional practice and contemporary exploration - unite for their first recording as a duo. An entirely acoustic affair. Both instruments are made of plants from the same grass family - the shakuhachi from bamboo, the ney from reeds - and share fundamental similarities in timbre, breath…

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 …

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 …

Late-night improvisation captured on a stormy November evening in an old church during the 2006 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. John Butcher's soprano and tenor saxophones intertwine with Xavier Charles' clarinet and Axel Dörner's trumpet across 51 minutes of remarkable sustained exploration that stands as one of the defining documents of contemporary European improvised music. Tempestuous moves between the poles of calm and urgency that the setting might suggest, with the trio navigat…