★Notice Recordings
Live at Opus 40
*100 copies limited edition* ⎤⎤⎤, the duo of Chantal Michelle and Grace Villamil, are interested in what they term "sound obliteration"—a paradoxical process that, in their hands, reveals teeming masses of sonic detail. The pair works in a variety of modes, including composition, installation, and performance. Live at Opus 40 begins with machinic drones that expand and dissolve into the warm, open-air environment where it was recorded, initially anchored by the site's rock formations. The piece …
The Sea
*100 copies limited edition* The Sea is a fine example of a beautiful exchange between composer and performer, with Francisco del Pino’s precise and rhythmically intricate compositions brought vividly to life by Charlotte Mundy’s clear, subtly emotive and powerful voice. Despite having unmistakable reference points in early polyphony, The Sea employs harmonies, rhythms, and articulations that reach out gently but firmly. The repetition of syllables in “Material” brings out the thrill of small ch…
Vagary Suite
*100 copies limited edition* The Pennsylvania improvising trio of Kevin Sims, James Searfoss, and Justin Dorsey continue to hone their fierce and potent relationship with texture, rhythm, and amorphous sound forms. This album is laced with musical paths travelled and skirted, conversant with drone, electroacoustics, and free jazz. “Glint” functions as a bit of an overture, and as “Once Threw” expands on the clatter and clamber, Dorsey’s bass becomes a focal point, taking a prominent position in …
Comes From Far Away From Here
*100 copies limited edition* Resourcefulness is sometimes presented as a humble quality born of necessity. But it’s a foundational tenet of the exceptionally unconstrained members of improvising trio Tamarisk, consisting of Christina Carter, David Menestres, and Andrew Weathers. Their latest is a continuation of the interplay they’ve developed for a few years now on a handful of releases and while touring. Like the most bizarre sort of jazz combo, Tamarisk grazes the orbits of outré free improv,…
Colonial Motels
*100 copies limited edition* Erica Dawn Lyle has been described by Pitchfork as a “punk hero,” which, though true, feels like an insufficiently specific term to describe her multifaceted presence and work. Colonial Motels is in fact rawly personal, a ladder out of an abyss of mourning as well as a determination to persevere and connect. Playing less but achieving more, this album captures the engaging intensity and directness that defines Lyle’s art, performance, and activism. Part I builds on p…
Distinct and Concealed
*100 copies limited edition* This meet-up between two thoughtful practitioners of minimal and process-oriented music succeeds not because it is resourceful but because its gestures are clearheaded. Disciplined and exploratory, it is like observing someone fixing a watch: methodical and calm, periodically getting up and selecting a tool, working for stretches of full concentration, and hearing the footsteps and rustle of clothing. The titles of the pieces – “Distinct” and “Concealed” – suggest te…
Magnet Blues
*100 copies limited edition* "Magnet Blues" presents Zhu Wenbo and Zhu Songjie’s unique and utterly bizarre take on American blues, as if filtered through layered variations of darkness. Throughout the recording, we hear barely audible vocals, minimalist, smart, and subtle guitar work, and the folkish atmosphere of what sounds like distant train activity and dying radios. Instrumentation is notable here: Songjie uses the peculiar Casio EG-5 electric guitar, with a built-in cassette deck, while a…
Blue Breaking Brown
*100 copies lmited edition* Wind Tide is a multidisciplinary art presence inhabiting the sonic, visual, and conceptual realms of Gretchen Korsmo and Andrew Weathers. Wind Tide also functions as their recording space in Texas, while extending to off-site locations in the field, as both artists have a relationship with nature and landscapes. “Blue Breaking Brown” is both sprawling and focused, with mysterious drifting vocals emerging and receding along swathes of resonant guitar drones. Room tone,…
Hailstone Temple
*100 copies limited edition* Camilo Ángeles and Joanna Mattrey present a striking set of pieces culled from an improvised live set at Museo Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, recorded and filmed February 2022, with a dual recording and video release presented here as “Hailstone Temple”. Both musicians have fascinated Notice Recordings for quite a while, and both exhibit deep relationships with their instruments: flute and viola, respectively. Ángeles originally caught our attention via the TVL …
Live Recordings
*Edition of 100.* "Live Recordings" presents MAW—the trio of Frank Meadows (bass), Jessica Ackerley (guitar), and Eli Wallace (piano/synth)—fully testing the possibilities of their creative dialogue in front of a live audience for the first time. Two concerts in Brooklyn and Saugerties, both staged in October 2021, display the performance of an acute democratic understanding, acquired across formative years of private sessions and conversation, including the late 2020 recording session that prod…
01.30.22
Tip! *Edition of 100.* Stella Silbert and Nat Baldwin’s "01.30.22" starts with a disorienting and curt mixture of vinyl static, chopped and skewed mysterious acoustic guitar strings, and a loud, acoustic “thud”. It’s an introduction to a strange piece of music from a strange album by two fascinating players in the current improvised and contemporary music landscape. This first piece, “5”, warbles and wobbles its way though oddly lyrical passages, framed in sporadic collaged format by the rapidly…
Dig Up Roots
*100 copies limited edition* "Dig Up Roots" is a document of a live performance at Tokyo Arts and Space on July 1, 2022. Ryosuke Kiyasu plays snare drum and table, presenting an extreme and cathartic relationship with physical surfaces and their characteristic tolerances, as exploited with wood, hands, and body. Notably the distinctive acoustics of the space can be felt deeply throughout the performance, not to mention the overblown recording. The space’s container is audible, fluctuating, and s…
Fire Point
Tip! *Edition of 100.* Fire Point is multicolored and elusive. The sounds contained therein are agitated, fluid and amorphous, as if listening to the sonic realizations of various characteristics of multiple landscapes. Branches intersect, tree foliage collectively billows, and groundwater seeps into the encompassing substrate. The interactions of these three musicians are effortless, and is the result of both remote and physically-collaborative engagements. Starting with percussion tracks laid …
Missa Amissa
*In process of stocking. Edition of 100.* Malcolm Goldstein has long been an admired figure for Notice Recordings; such albums Soundings and The Seasons: Vermont were foundational for our early forays into contemporary music. It is with great honor, then, that we present a document of a 2003 live improvised duo set with Fred Lonberg-Holm recorded at 3030 in Chicago. With ample room-tone, sounds of people shuffling into place, atmospheric sounds from the occasional interior/exterior crossover, Lo…
Raid On The White Tiger Regiment
*In process of stocking. Edition of 100.* Sunik Kim’s Raid on the White Tiger Regiment arrives three years after 2019’s Zero Chime on First Terrace Records. Raid has strong political undertones and is named after one of the eight core revolutionary operas produced during the Cultural Revolution. This particular opera focuses on the joint struggle of Chinese and Korean communists during the Korean War, during which there were devastating US attacks on the northern part of the peninsula. Raid is a…
Live In Accord
*In process of stocking. Edition of 200.* Recorded live in Accord, New York, this recording stands not only as Notice Recording’s 70th album, but also the first release to document an event organized by Notice as well. June 6th was one of the hottest days of that summer, and the wooden platform on which the performances occurred was on the top of a small hill on Deer Creek Farm. Many sweaty trips up and down that hill carrying gear ensued. Luckily, the performance and audience space was nestled …
Apparitions
Patrick Shiroishi returns with his second Notice album, a duo with double bassist Kyle Motl. “Apparitions” opens this album of the same name, and we are greeted with wispy and amorphous trails of wind-blown textures, as if the very first layer of an abstract painting fell to the floor of an old house and followed the contours of the walls and door frames, under shafts of light and in-between the fine cracks of floors. This is an album full of expressive and poetic phrasings, jittery movements an…
Some Time
Tip! *In process of stocking.* Adrianne Munden-Dixon and Leo Chang’s “Some Time” presents stuttering physical exchanges between Munden-Dixon’s violin and electronics and Chang’s amplified piri. These pieces are tense and tightly-woven, yet constantly unraveling and reforming. Chang’s “ampiri” is a Korean double reed instrument running through electronics and played in unconventional and non-traditional ways. Recontextualising the instrument “quasi-autodidactically” aligns with Chang’s approach t…
Erosion
Tip! *100 copies limited edition* Erosion is a sprawling yet focused love affair with the bass drum, allowing myriad objects to playfully interact with its grand form. Kevin and Jacob engage with the instrument in an entirely unrelenting way, traversing textural, pointillist sections, as well as rippling metallic drones. Notice’s admiration of Kevin and Jacob’s work goes back to circa 2008, with Kevin’s album with Tetuzi Akiyama and Christian Kiefer on the much-loved Digitalis Industries, and J…
A Need/A Want
Lucy Liyou’s music carries with it deeply personal poetry, in a literal and metaphorical sense, conveyed using sound collage, noise, field recordings, and abstracted pop tendencies. When Notice first heard Lucy’s music, we were struck by its incredible honesty, vulnerability, and originality. For her first collaboration, A Need/A Want, she is joined by Philadelphia-based guitarist and lyricist Yska. Bizarre shards of Yska's electric guitar permeate Lucy’s deft and supple production techniques as…