★Hitorri
110v, 220v
*200 copies limited edition* Beijing-based Sun Yizhou (born in 2000) represents the young generation of artists on the Beijing improvised/experimental music scene established by Yan Jun, Zhu Wenbo, and others. He also runs a label and organizes events. Using electronics, Sun produces unexpected sounds through unconventional operations, nonetheless creating works with splendid overall structure.
On July 3, 2023, Sun Yizhou gave a solo concert at Ftarri, Tokyo. It was such a great performance that…
Prosa
*150 copies limited edition* Sergio Merce (born in 1973) is a sax player and sound artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is well known for his unique musical style, which makes full use of a wide range of instruments, electronics and field recordings. In 2023, Merce released two solo albums in succession on the Hitorri label: "Traslasierra (expanded landscape)" in April, and "Amplified Resonances" in December. "Prosa" is his third solo album on Hitorri.
This CD is made up of two pieces rec…
Sweet and Poisonous
*200 copies limited edition* Leo Okagawa is a Tokyo-based musician. Just months after the December 2023 release of his field recording CD "just another day" on the Hitorri label, Okagawa has released his new work, "Sweet and Poisonous," consisting of improvised music on electronics. The CD consists of two works of 28 minutes each, performed by Okagawa at Ftarri, Tokyo, in September 2023.In 2019 Okagawa released the solo electronics improvisation CD "in the quiet room" on Hitorri. This new album,…
L’égarement
*200 copies limited edition* Frédéric Tentelier is an artist and composer residing in the Opal Coast region of northern France. He creates music using a variety of instruments including organ, Fender Rhodes, banjo, percussion, voice and objects, as well as field recordings. He also composes music for and directs many musical theater productions.The CD "L’égarement" is comprised of three works produced by Frédéric Tentelier between May and October 2023, taking inspiration from the labyrinth legen…
Vacances
*250 copies limited edition* Minami Saeki is an actor who also has experience as a film director. Energetically engaged in musical activities as well, she is known for her work as a voice performer on the experimental/improvised music scene inside and outside Japan, mainly through collaborations with composer/guitarist Taku Sugimoto.This album introduces Minami Saeki the composer to the world. Just one of her compositions, "vacances" (2018), is recorded in this 2-CD set. Comprised only of a set …
This Summer...
*200 copies limited edition* Tokyo-born recorder player/improviser Eiko Yamada has lived in Germany since 1984 and currently resides in Heidelberg. Yamada performs in formations ranging from solo to large ensemble, as well as with a variety of artists including dancers and poets. She returns to Japan once or twice a year and appears in a small number of concerts in Tokyo.During her stay in Japan in summer 2023, Yamada performed with pianist Fumi Endo at Ftarri on August 13. In addition to their …
Amplified Resonances
*200 copies limited edition* Born in 1973, Sergio Merce is a saxophone player/sound artist based in Buenos Aires. Known for his use of microtone sax, Merce has released CDs on the experimental/improvised/contemporary music labels Potlatch (France), Edition Wandelweiser (Germany) and Marginal Frequency (U.S.). In August 2023, he released the solo album "Traslasierra (expanded landscape)" on the Hitorri label. His second solo album, "Amplified Resonances," is set for release on Hitorri just four m…
Just Another Day
*200 copies limited edition* Leo Okagawa has recently been known for performing improvised music on electronics at venues in the Tokyo area. On the other hand, he has long been creating “composed” works using environmental sounds, analog noises and electronics. This CD consists of pieces in the latter category. Okagawa made 43 tracks from his direct recordings (each a few minutes long) of sounds he encountered in various locations between June and August 2023, then put them together without edit…
Live At Ftarri
*200 copies limited edition* Miki Yui is a musician and artist who was born in Tokyo and now lives in Dusseldorf, Germany. Since her 1999 debut album "Small Sounds," she has been creating a delicate, unique world of sound through the skillful manipulation of field recordings, faint noises and electronic sound and, more recently, the use of a modular synthesizer. In parallel with her solo performance activities, Yui has released collaborative works with Rolf Julius and Asumus Tietchens, and she i…
Play
*250 copies limited edition* "Play" is a set of 100 cards with instructions for ensembles of any size and instrumentation. The individual instructions vary from precise (two contrasting sounds, a very long sound) to vague (something funny, thinking of something you smell), sometimes requiring a high degree of interpretation. The release combines two excellent recordings of the piece: one including the composer himself with a group of Israeli musicians, the other introducing an ensemble around th…
Hummingbird and Four Flowers: Turntable and Harmonium Solo Live
The year 2022 was the 10th anniversary of the opening of Ftarri’s physical store in Suidobashi, Tokyo. To mark this milestone, several solo concerts by musicians with whom Ftarri has had close ties since the time of its predecessor, Improvised Music From Japan, were held in the Ftarri store performance space in autumn 2022. The musician who performed on October 3 was Otomo Yoshihide. That day Otomo planned to play turntable only, but when he spotted the store’s harmonium, he had the idea of usin…
To Listen To As Far As Possible
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* Seijiro Murayama is a drummer/percussionist and improviser/composer who lives in Paris. His first CDs on Ftarri's three labels (Hitorri, Ftarri and Meenna) came out in 2009, and he has since released a total of 12 solo, duo, trio and quartet albums on Ftarri labels. Of the solo albums, the first was "Downdate" (2017), followed by "The Empire of Slip of the Tongue" (2018) and "mi-tai" (2020). While "Downdate" and "The Empire of Slip of the Tongue" are elec…
CTX1
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahiko Okura is a Tokyo-based reed player (clarinet, alto sax, etc.), improviser and composer. Apart from his performances on reed instruments, he is energetically engaged in performance activities with his solo project Active Recovering Music. Okura is also a member of the experimental music group Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble.
In 2004, Okura released the solo album "Time Service" on the Improvised Music from Japan label. The highly original performance …
Material Unity 2
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Active Recovering Music (ARM) is the solo project of Tokyo-based reed player Masahiko Okura. When he launched it in 2008, ARM was not a solo project, but a slide whistle ensemble with multiple players. In 2013, ARM performed as an eight-member group at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. In the same year a CD documenting three performances from that concert was released on the Meenna label with the title "Active Recovering Music."
ARM later transformed into its …
Yagateyamu
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Misaki Motofuji plays baritone sax in all types of free jazz settings. She also carries out performances focusing on acoustic phenomena, based on sound-art-like concepts and incorporating field recordings. But she says her background is in neither jazz nor art—that she actually studied classical music as a music university student. In the bands she leads, Motofuji creates a wide variety of original compositions, from chamber-music-style pop, jazz and mini…
Masahide Tokunaga
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahide Tokunaga is a Tokyo-based alto sax player/improviser who carries out extremely distinctive performances comprised mainly of long tones. On the Hitorri label he has released the improvised performance CDs "Alto Saxophone 2" (2015) and "Bwoouunn: Fleeting Excitement" (2017), as well as "while your master is sleeping" (2020), on which he performs a composition by Taku Sugimoto. With the exception of that composition recording, "Masahide Tokunaga" is…
Cold Light In Warm Blue
*200 copies limited edition* Tokyo-based pianist Fumi Endo has been performing since 2017, playing mainly jazz and improvised music. Her distinctive, minimalistic performances have garnered a great deal of attention. Endo has performed frequently at Ftarri since September 2020.
While she participated in two 2022 Ftarri CD releases—Takumi Ikeda’s "Musical Procedure" (Ftarri Classical, ftarricl-663), and the eponymous "Masahide Tokunaga" (Hitorri, hitorri-970)—Endo had no previous releases on Ftar…
Traslasierra (expanded Landscape)
*200 copies limited edition* Sergio Merce is a saxophonist and sound artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is known for his use of a microtonal sax that he built by radically modifying the mechanisms of an alto saxophone and synthesizers to create rich harmonics and slowly moving tonal works, layering aberrant and alluring tones in restrained configurations that allow each stratum of sound to be distinguished and appreciated, creating mesmerizing compositions of elusive and illusionistic s…
Abstand
*200 copies limited edition* "Abstand" was conceived to enhance the particularities of the combination of accordion and melodica, both wind instruments, one played with movement and the other by blowing. This dichotomy of difference and similarity resulted in intricate textures, not only thanks to the instruments’ particular timbres, but also through the natural microtonal distances in their fixed tunings, especially when it comes to old and worn out instruments like the ones used here.
These mi…
Tayutauta
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* While continuously engaged in the field of traditional Japanese music, female-school gidayu shamisen player Yumiko Tanaka has since the 1990s been carrying out multifaceted musical activities including contemporary classical music, improvisation (in 1996-97 she was a member of Otomo Yoshihide’s band Ground-Zero), experimental music, and theater performance/composition, performing and exchanging ideas with many musicians from Japan and other countries. While Tana…