★Room40
Ku
*2024 stock* The act of conjuring remarkable sound from found objects is at the very heart of this recording from American musicians Greg Davis and Jeph Jerman. Having met in Arizona some years back, Davis and Jerman commenced working together on a series of recording projects.
Improvising with a range of implements and devices ranging from sticks, stones and low-fi electronics to prepared instruments, gongs and broken percussion, the pair sought to develop a personal language that reflected th…
A Picturesque View, Ignored
*2024 stock* Echoes of disconnected sound reverberate meshing together into a cascading river of intersecting sound elements – occasionally confrontational, ultimately unforgettable.
Night Passage
"I’ll take a guess and say I first heard Alan Lamb’s Night Passage in 1999. Released by Darrin Verhagen’s seminal Dorobo label, the record birthed an approach that wove together themes of materialism, field recording and a reimagining of the abandoned utilities of human habitation. Night Passage is one of those recordings I feel has always been with me, it’s that foundational. It completely reshaped the way a generation of audio explorers thought about how sound and music might exist in the orbi…
Arms
"There’s two things I can tell you about Ueno Takashi, without reservation. The first is he knows the best coffee spots in Tokyo. I am the happy recipient of this knowledge. The second thing I can tell you is that he is someone for whom the guitar is a platform of exquisite promise. Ueno Takashi, who many of you would recognise as one half of the legendary unit Tenniscoats, is also responsible for an impressive series of solo guitar recordings which stake out a claim that tests the fringes of ex…
Slow Motion Lightning
Slow Motion Lightning; deadly and unpredictable never strikes twice in the same place except when it does.
A Colour For Autumn
"Somehow, 15 years has passed since I worked on A Colour For Autumn. This recording was, in many ways, a critical one for me. In some respects, it rounded out a period of work that was focused on a particular marriage of thematics and harmony. Like For Varying Degrees Of Winter, it dwelled on old world impressions of the seasons, something that, in the southern hemisphere, isn’t intrinsically part of our way of approaching place. I think it was this incongruity with my own lived experience that …
Neuromancer
"It’s hard to imagine that this year William Gibson’s Neuromancer celebrates its 40th anniversary. Having recently re-read the book for the first time in a great many years, the world building Gibson undertook in that text and the lingering cultural spectres he conjured, feel ever so evocative of moments of our contemporary lived experience. The books continued cultural resonance has resolved in a way that captured a future reading of an, at that time of its release, unknown internet era. It was…
Totemo Aimasho
*2024 stock* In essence Tokyo’s Tenniscoats celebrate all that makes song vital in our collective conscious. Matching emotive live performance against delicately psychedelic folk songs, the duo of Saya and Takashi Ueno (assisted by a plethora of floating members), create some of the most compelling music currently emanating from Japan.
On Totemo Aimasho – loosely translated as 'Lets Meet Very Much' – Tenniscoats find themselves traveling across countries, scribing audio journal entries from Aust…
Alluvial
*2024 stock* Crafted throughout 2004 and early 2005, Rösner’s original source material stems largely from instruments (guitar, percussion, analog electronics), and through his detailed processing and production methods he’s been able to counterpoint a desire for raw digital overtones against earthy acoustic qualities.
The results are simply a pleasure for the ears – course passages of hiss and electronic splutter give way to lilting moments of sheer melodic beauty. With strong humming bass heavy…
Constants
*2024 stock* UK-based artist Chris Herbert is a man of intermittent communications. Over the past decade he has published a select oeuvre of crushingly lush and elegant records. Fittingly then, Constants, his new edition for Room40 is a transmission from an overtly private realm. Working in a relative vacuum, beyond the reach of contemporary electronic music trends, Herbert has focussed his interest in intuitive composition. Drawing on a mixed musical palette and interweaving sounds sourced from…
Ballad(s) for Quiet Horizons
*2024 stock* Incredible collection of Scott Morrison's audio visual works. Presented in a gatefold monochrome printed and matte laminated jacket with insert cards.
Evening Air
Evening Air is the result of Loren Connors and David Grubbs’s first trip to the recording studio in the two decades since their first duo album, Arborvitae (Häpna). Arborvitae stood out for its spellbinding, utterly unhurried meshing of electric guitar (Connors) and piano (Grubbs). With this long-awaited return, Connors and Grubbs take turns trading off on piano and guitar, with Grubbs at the keyboard for the two gently expansive pieces on the first side and Connors taking over the instrument fo…
Black Blues
Keiji Haino is, without question, one of the truly iconic artists to rise beyond the dusk of the 20th century. An artist focused singularly of the beautiful visceral promise of music, his practice is a many headed beast taking in movements from the gentlest of guitar play, through free improvisation and noise. As divergent as the work might be, it is held tightly by his unique way in sound, one that exists moment to moment with a force like no other. 20 years since its first release, Black Blues…
July 15, 2022
The first LP by the Taj Mahal Travellers was recorded at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo on July 15, 1972, which became the title of the work and was released the same year by CBS Sony Records. A live performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of this album was held on July 15, 2022. The only original members of the Taj Mahal Travellers who attended were myself and Seiji Nagai. This is because two of the six members passed away, two are religiously active and they can not play music according to their b…
1982
I stayed in Iwate, where I was born, for a few days and created some sound materials using limited materials and old media. Over ten years ago, Iwate was devastated by the Great East Japan earthquake. Many old things that remained in my memory became rubble, dismantled, and new scenery was there. I bounced every song from “1982” straight onto an old tape recorder.
This album that comes out of my interest in sonic "degradation and rebuilding". I treated the guitar and synthesiser in a lot of new …
Tropical Church
I was waiting for the bus to arrive at the stop when the rain started pouring. I quickly escaped into a chapel nearby, and that’s where the idea of this album came to be. Inside the chapel, I was reminded of the scent of Mauritius, where my father was from, and the pillars of dampen woods mixed with the ritualistic frankincense. The rain continued to hit violently on the metallic church roof as the road outside grew overwhelmed with angry drivers, honking their way through, their frustrations ec…
Aeolian Tendency
Characteristically invisible and inaudible, the wind is made manifest solely by its agency and performance on objects: huge waves crash to shore, sand dunes edge forward over millennia (rumbling as they go), cyclones uproot trees and houses, intergalactic winds confound the planets. On a more modest scale, I’ve been building aeolian instruments since 1979, part of my investigation into the innumerable aspects of the vibrating string. I designed the two recent aeolian instruments heard on this al…
Infinite Probabilities (Particle 2)
"Quantum mechanics unfolds an intricate realm of limitless possibilities and probabilities, eluding easy definition. It paints a picture of the universe vastly different from our perceptible reality. What captivates me is the lens through which I perceive sound, akin to the principles of quantum physics—I don't merely hear the audible, but rather, I extract elements to construct novel auditory experiences. My profound interest in science, particularly quantum mechanics, originates around 2008-20…
Stone
"With concentration, or elevated tension as he has called it, Akio Suzuki enters completely into the substance of sound, its emergence and its passing. What he does with sound may propose a rarefied world to many people, and yet it possesses a persuasive quality of rightness. One of the most difficult aspects of music and soundwork to explain is the concept of ‘right action’. How is that music can be evaluated almost immediately, just as quickly as a fire alarm or a baby’s cry? When Akio perform…