Easily among the most historically important, not to mention sonically and creatively engrossing, releases of 2022 so far, Tochnit Aleph delivers the first ever reissue of Asger Jorn & Jean Dubuffet’s legendary "Musique Phénoménale”, originally issued in a tiny, virtually unobtainable edition of 50 copies in 1961. Now stretching across a full two CDs, it captures two of Europe's most important visual artists embarking on wildly experimental, raucous improvised excursions on numerous acoustic instruments that predate anything similar (the closest being 1970s free jazz) by many years. It's an absolute revelation from the first sounding to the last, upending historic perception every step of the way.

Over the last 100 years, the creative juncture between the fine arts and music has produced endlessly thrilling territories of sound. Not only has it bubbled below aspects of popular music - psychedelia, prog, ambient, punk, new wave, and beyond - but great swaths of avant-garde and experimental music, sound art, and sound poetry. Standing slightly adjacent to it all, is the sinfully under-acknowledged realm of the artist record; documents of artists who predominately worked within the visual realm, making forays into the world of sound and music. This creative territory blossomed during the second half of the 20th century, opening new avenues of possibility for artists like Dieter Roth, Martin Kippenberger, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Michael Snow, Albert Oehlen, Hanne Darboven, and others. Now, Tochnit Aleph returns with the first-time reissue of one of the rarest, earliest, and most important of them all, Asger Jorn & Jean Dubuffet’s legendary "Musique Phénoménale”. Not only do its sounds remain thrilling more than half a century after it was first released, but it’s just about as historically important as reissues come for any fan of experimental music, sound art, and artist records.

While many of his peers made forays into literature, photography, and film, the French painter, Jean Dubuffet, was among the first visual artists to delve toward sound and music in a focused way. As the main protagonist of the Art Brut movement - seeking something raw, intuitive, and fundamental through inspiration taken from untrained artists - Dubuffet’s interest in music as a creative vehicle seems logical with distance. In his own words, "Certain unexpected windfalls ... come of improvising on an instrument one doesn't really know how to use." It was into this realm, in 1960, that he ventured with the Danish painter and sculptor, Asger Jorn, a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International.

Released the following year in a tiny edition of 50 by Edizione Del Cavallino as an x4 10” box set, “Musique Phénoménale” is the document of these adventures between the pair. Virtually unavailable in its complete form since its original release, the set’s 8 sides now sprawl across 2 stunning CDs.

Comprising 10 compositions jointly created by Dubuffet and Jorn, “Musique Phénoménale” encounters the artists, neither of whom were musically trained, delivering a brazenly experimental sonic assault on convention via saxophone, bassoon, detuned piano, hurdy-gurdy, cabrette, bombard, and a number of other instruments, captured by two tape recorders purchased by Dubuffet in order to manually edit the results. He later fondly recalled the recordings' crudeness and sense that they "had no beginning and no end but were simply extracts taken haphazardly from a ceaseless and ever-flowing score."

While inextricable from the fine art context, “Musique Phénoménale” is arguably one of the most historically important documents of avant-garde music ever created, capturing a form of raw and emotive sonic expression which has few equivalents outside of free jazz, a movement that would reach the wild fever pitch encountered here in 1960 for a number of years. Resting at the juncture of hyper consciousness and the completely intuitive, while predating anything that could claim a close sonic equivalent - Musica Elettronica Viva, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Scratch Orchestra, etc - the album upends the perceptions of history across its collection of raucous explosions on acoustic instruments.