★Week-End Records
Album II
The inspiration for 'Album l' and 'Album Il' began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film „Drive My Car" was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/ experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spa…
Album I
The inspiration for 'Album l' and 'Album Il' began with a performance by Japanese musician Eiko Ishibashi at Cologne's Week-End Fest in 2019. For this appearance the renowned experimental musician and composer of the Oscar-winning film „Drive My Car" was joined on drums by Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and Joe Talia; both integral members of the top-level improvisational/ experimental scene in Tokyo. While in town for the festival, Ishibashi met up with the members of the Cologne-Berlin based group Von Spa…
Kiss Me Again
Arthur Russell first visited The Gallery in 1976 with his then boyfriend Louis, who introduced him to Nicky Siano. Arthur became a regular at the space and one night as Siano was playing “Turn the Beat Around”, which had just been released, Arthur waved at him from outside the booth and asked to come in. Nicky opened the door and Arthur suggested they make a record like this together. This ended up being a huge step for Siano as it marked the first ever production by a DJ making a record from sc…
When It Rains It Pours
If there's one musician in the last decade that you may hear in wildly diverse musical contexts it is Belgian electric bassist and sound sculptor Farida Amadou. Not only can you enjoy the unerringly skillful command she has over her instrument but also the transformative power to reinterpret and expand her material in spontaneous and unconventional ways. Amadou is self-taught and radically aware of her idiosyncratic relationship with the bass guitar. She neither emulates the virtuosos of the ele…
Passarinho Urbano
In 1975, Joyce Moreno, who had just wrapped up a tour with legendary Brazilian composer Vinicius de Moraes, found herself in a studio with producer Sergio Bardotti in Rome, Italy. She had been taking a break from writing and she decided to pick up a selection of her favorite compositions from contemporary Brazilian writers who‘s songs were beacons of hope in times of an ongoing intense Military leadership in her home country. Unlike their previous albums, these recordings live from their reducti…
Jards Macale
Jards Macalé’s biography is a testament to the electrifying energy of music and the unwavering spirit of artistic rebellion. Macalé has remained true to his vision, unapologetically embracing the unconventional and challenging the status quo. His music, a conduit of emotion and a mirror to society, continues to weave a sonic tapestry that resonates with the souls of listeners. In 2022, Macalé celebrated the momentous 50th anniversary of his debut solo album, a groundbreaking masterpiece released…
Guitar Solos / Fifty
Big tip! Lunching into 2024 after after a stellar 2023, Week-End Records delivers one of their most important offerings to date, the first vinyl reissue of Fred Frith’s seminal 1974 solo debut, “Guitar Solos”, in more than 40 years, marking the album’s 50th anniversary. A groundbreaking work in the field of avant-garde recordings that changed everything in its wake, incorporating a startling range of sonorities and approaches within constrained means, to celebrate its half-century mark, Frith ha…
Sort of
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* In 1972, the left-wing intellectual film critic Uwe Nettelbeck suggested to Anthony Moore that he should write some (relatively speaking) straight songs. He took up the challenge, inviting his old school friend Peter Blegvad over to Hamburg to form the band Slapp Happy. They were joined for a session in Wümme by the young singer Dagmar Krause and Faust as their rhythm section; the recording became the album Sort Of. After getting the band back together for reunio…
Lifetime of a Flower
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O‘Rourke created the installation Lifetime of a Flower for the Dortmund exhibition Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art. In it they set parameters, but allowed the process itself to literally grow uncontrollably: they planted seeds in the garden of their Japanese house and filmed as the plants grew for the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time, while listening to a composition that reflected the org…
I feel everything you say, I feel everything you hear (Book)
*Hardcover with Embossing. English* Week-End Fest looks back in 2022 on 10 years and encounters with over 100 international artists. Since the beginning in 2011 own fanhood has been a central element of the festival’s curators - this is how the idea came about to inform the artists about the musicians, places or encounters that have shaped them. In „I feel everything you say. I feel everything you hear“. (the title is borrowed from the song „I‘m so Green“ by Can), they tell of decisive moments a…
Improvisation On Four Sequences
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Suzanne Ciani’s Improvisation On Four Sequences somehow represents the complete histo-ry of electronic music, as the enthusiastic audience at Week-End Fest 2021 were lucky enough to experience. From the awakening of American avant-garde music at the end of the 1960s, right through to the development of the electronic sound of the club scene in L.A. and New York. But above all it is the dialogue between artist and machine, which simply ends when the concert is ove…
Stay On It
In 1973, avant-garde ensemble Creative Associates goes on a tour of Europe with Eastman’s brand new piece in their repertoire, and in short: “Stay on It” turns the coordinates of avant-garde music on its head. It is minimal, but unashamedly groovy; it is open to improvisation, grants performers all the freedom they could need, but it isn’t jazz and never slips into the non-committal. It is open to theatrical and performative elements, but also to the poetic and lyrical. It is strict and demands …