★Ftarri
Whose Words ?
Guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is an influential improviser who performs inside and outside Japan and has numerous CD releases on Japanese and overseas labels. The five tracks on this CD are improvisational performances by the trio of Akiyama and Swedish musicians Magnus Granberg and Henrik Olsson, studio-recorded when Akiyama visited Stockholm in November 2013. Magnus Granberg is active as a composer through projects such as his own ensemble, Skogen, and as an improviser using mainly the clari…
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…
Scores at Ftarri
It’s been five years since Ftarri, an online CD shop and record label specializing in improvised music, opened a physical store of the same name in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This is the fourth title in a four-CD series celebrating the store's fifth anniversary. "Scores 1200," the CD's 60-minute track, is a composed work by Hiroyuki Ura based on a sculpture by Kenichi Kanazawa. A live performance by the trio of Kanazawa (steel square tubes, hammer), Ura (VSS-30 sampling keyboard, drums) and pianis…
Ftarri After Tomorrow
It’s been five years since Ftarri, an online CD shop and record label specializing in improvised music, opened a physical store of the same name in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This is the first title in a four-CD series celebrating the store's fifth anniversary. It consists of four performances (three solos and one duo) by a total of five musicians. The first track is an electronic sound piece by Hideki Umezawa (born in 1986) in which myriad wriggling, slithering sounds are released little by little …
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…
Ftarri de Solos
It’s been five years since Ftarri, an online CD shop and record label specializing in improvised music, opened a physical store of the same name in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This is the third title in a four-CD series celebrating the store's fifth anniversary. The two tracks are solo performances by female sound artists who play self-made instruments. Track one is a live performance by suzueri, which took place at Ftarri on March 18, 2017. In addition to self-made instruments, she uses an uprigh…
Ftarri Jam
It’s been five years since Ftarri, an online CD shop and record label specializing in improvised music, opened a physical store of the same name in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This is the second title in a four-CD series celebrating the store's fifth anniversary. The single 33-minute track is a group improvisation by all five musicians who appeared at Ftarri on May 5, 2017, performed at the end of the concert. Masashi Takashima (drums, electronics), who lives in the city of Koriyama in Fukushima …
Music Performance 'KIYOH'
Yumiko Tanaka is a gidayu shamisen player active in the fields of contemporary classical and improvised music as well as traditional Japanese music. Tanaka performed as a musician and actress in Hashirigaki (premiered in 2000), a music theater production by German composer/director Heiner Goebbels; and created the music for and performed in Dogugaeshi (premiered in 2004), an object theater work by American puppeteer Basil Twist. Based on these experiences, in December 2010 she created, pr…
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…
Listening to the Footsteps of Living Ones Who Are Still on the G
This is a duo album by Toshimaru Nakamura, a mixer player based in Tokyo, and Martin Taxt, a tuba player living in Oslo. Instead of a conventional tuba, Taxt plays a custom-made “microtonal tuba” capable of producing microtones. In this album, Nakamura incorporates Taxt’s tuba sounds in his mixer through a microphone instead of playing his usual instrument, the no-input mixing board, which does not take in external sounds. The project started with the concept of Nakamura processing the tub…
Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble
Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble (SCE), formed in spring 2016 on the initiative of flute player Wakana Ikeda, is a chamber group which periodically performs contemporary/experimental music concerts. The five members are Wakana Ikeda, Yoko Ikeda (viola), Aya Naito (bassoon), Masahiko Okura (clarinet, bass clarinet), and Taku Sugimoto (guitar). In concerts held at Ftarri, Tokyo, in May and July 2016, SCE performed works by the composers of the Wandelweiser group. The five tracks on this album include p…
A Crescent and Moonflowers
The musicians who appeared in the concert at Ftarri, Tokyo, on June 5, 2016, were young improvisers active in the Tokyo area: Straytone (modular synthesizer), Yui Nakamura (voice), Takashi Masubuchi (guitar), and Masahide Tokunaga (alto sax). Three of the musicians (without Nakamura) performed the first set, followed by all four. Each set was a little less than 30 minutes long. This CD consists of those two sets. In both of these superb performances, an indescribable feeling of unity was produce…
Septet
Guitarist Taku Sugimoto continues his long-term musical activities, with a focus on composing, and also collaborates closely with some of the composers in the Wandelweiser Group. This release is one of the summits of his recent work. Septet is a work of just under 40 minutes, performed by seven musicians on clarinet, flute, viola, contrabass, cello, electric guitar and sine-tones. Throughout, numerous diffuse sound reverberations emerge and overlap, then fade away. The sound progression is simpl…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.1
With Yoko Ikeda (viola), Léo Dupleix (electronics), Hikaru Yamada (alto saxophone, microphone) & Hayato Kurosawa (guitar), ffrond (Yoshinori Shiraishi, drums, percussion, Shiro Ochiai, electric piano, Tyler Eaton, double bass). The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary …
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.2
With Daysuke Takaoka, tuba, Takuro Okada, synthesizer, Hiroyuki Ura, drums, Shinjiro Yamaguchi, guitar, electric metronome, sine wave. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary concerts in July and August. For each concert we produced a CD-R (each with different music)…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.3
With Masashi Takashima, piano, drums, G.I.T.M. Yumiko Yoshimoto, electric guitar. Tomoko Kageyama, marimba, vibraphone, bowl, bells, vocal, voice, field recordings, lyrics & Kei Tainaka, guitar, effects. Takashi Masubuchi, full hollow-body guitar. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held s…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.4
With Yuji Ishihara, drums, percussion. Kayu Nakada, bug synthesizer. Tetsuro Fujimaki, drums, percussion. Riuichi Daijo, acoustic guitar. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary concerts in July and August. For each concert we produced a CD-R (each with different music…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.6
With Yuhei Saito, tape recorders. Tomoe Takizawa, guitar. Yui Nakamura, throat, room. Keitetsu Murai, 4 parallel-connected oscillators with photosensors, stabilized DC power supply, Japanese candle cut in length to burn in about 15 minutes. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3r…
Ftarri 3rd Anniversary Vol.5
With sawako, laptop. Yuma Takeshita, electro-bass. Tomoyoshi Date, piano. Straytone, modular synthesizer. The label made 80 copies each volume and gave some copies to audience members. These are the last copies. The Ftarri store/live performance space in Suidobashi, Tokyo, celebrated its 3rd anniversary in August 2015. To mark this occasion, we held six 3rd anniversary concerts in July and August. For each concert we produced a CD-R (each with different music) which was presented as a gift …
Routing Lynn
This is the first duo album since 2010 by leading British improvisers Rhodri Davies (harp) and John Butcher (saxophone). In January 2014, together with respected musician and sound recordist Chris Watson, they visited Routing Lynn, an area of ancient rock carvings in Northumberland, northern England. In this natural setting, Davies and Butcher played music and Watson recorded. Two months later, at a festival in Gateshead, England, Davies and Butcher performed along with the 4-channel play…