Jomon-sho 縄文頌
Peaceful, percussive and idyllic. Three words that describe perfectly ‘Jomon-sho’, the key New Age album from Japanese composer and expert of gamelan music, Yas-Kaz. This seminal composition is a cornerstone to understand the Japanese ambient and environmental movement, heavily influenced by this record and the whole New Age scene that developed in Japan throughout the 80s. The album features a wide range of entirely acoustic instruments and field recordings and was made for stage performance by…
Vol. 9 After the Circle
Outsider Portuguese artist Filipe Felizardo delivers a singular album of 21stcentury loner folk from the confines of his apartment. Performed, recorded and mixed at home over the course of two days during the Summer of 2019, the music captured on this record resonates now more than ever to our current housebound times. Construction site noises, leaking sinks, random conversations, cat meows and guitar strums all interact with each other in this origami field recording from the interiors of one’s…
Oneiric Formulary
Master of myriad styles, Sir Rick Bishop takes in baroque, flamenco, surf, and harder to place fusions of phantasmagoric sound design, Gaelic folk and Indian Raga, and more lysergic expression in this bounty of a new album.
Five years after Tangier Sessions, Sir Richard Bishop, we presume, is back from his travels around the world. With Oneiric Formulary, he’s dug deeper into his bag of extra-musical gestures from the eternal and unknowable, along with a few sounds we might recognize, all transm…
Far And Wee
Black Editions present a reissue of Kazuo Imai's far and wee, originally released in 2004. Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan's early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970s, his 2004 P.S.F. album far and wee was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations -- Imai's playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrumen…
Superstition
The members of Minamo(Keiichi Sugimoto and Tetsuro Yasunaga) have known Moskitoo (Sanae Yamasaki) for many, many years and have worked together in all sorts of ways. They have not, however, performed a live set or recorded together before what has become Superstition. Superstition is a gathering of close friends creating music they love to create and exploring the small crevices and details of electric, electronic, and acoustic sounds. While the songs sound intentionally composed and arranged, t…
The Neptune Collection
**New vinyl reissue remastered from the original 1976 master tapes, packaged in classic Folkways-style tip-on jackets with liner notes.** An epigraph to the liner notes of The Neptune Collection, the second album by The Entourage Music and Theater Ensemble, reads, “We are a group flexible in size and temperament. Our purpose is to create original works in a collective manner. We utilize music, dance, poetry, and theatre skills.” Plainly stated, this dictum represents the core of the dynamic, mul…
Avin
**CD version** Avin is the solo project of musician Christian Meaas Svendsen. The album consists of Norwegian lyrics in a traditional singer/songwriter-style wrapped in a somewhat challenging and unconventional format. The music is arranged for an 8-piece band consisting of some of Norway’s finest musicians. Avin is a Kurdish maiden name meaning love. Avin is also the name of Svendsen’s girlfriend. The central theme on the album is their unfinished love, and the texts and the music describe Sven…
Do. So
Tommaso Rolando and Jean Renè met thanks to Paul Goodwin (front cover painter) and Paolo Bonfiglio. After some live experiences together, in June 2018 they decided to try to record something: the result of a short term session eventually ended with a full album recording.
The album is published by Torto Editions, a label run by Rolando and Bonfiglio.Two people, two musicians, two generations, two instruments. Music as a language, a common language."It takes two to know one" - Gregory BatesonPer…
Anthology of Contemporary Music From Indonesia
**200 copies** "For many centuries Indonesia, from the Malay Peninsula throughout the vast archipelago, has been subjected to successive foreign cultural invasions which have left their deep imprint on the indigenous way of life. Among the first was the Mongolian intrusion from central Asia. A later cultural wave came from India when Hindu merchants and immigrants introduced Hinduism and Buddhism into the islands. Subsequently, about the 13th century A.D. Islamic influences penetrated the archip…
Specifically the Water
Astral Spirits presents the debut duo recording from Alex Cunningham (violin) and Claire Rousay (percussion) entitled Specifically the Water.Alex Cunningham is a violinist, improviser, and visual artist based in St. Louis, MO. His work explores free improvisation, drone, noise, and minimalist composition. Cunningham has recently performed with Mark Shippy, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Stefan Gonzalez, and Lisa Cameron and has ongoing collaborations with Chris Trull (under the Apathist! moniker), Kev…
L'Inattingible
With L’Inattingible, Delphine Dora’s music unfolds by drawing upon a new palette of colors. It will not escape anyone, that after having sung, in foreign, invented languages, or through extended vocal techniques, the musician resorts for the first time, to solely using the French language; and that after having often set texts and poems by other authors to music, she authorizes herself here to sing her own texts and fragments.But beyond these formal enrichments, the new musical ambitions develop…
Vive
**CD version** "This is Annie Barbazza’s first solo album. She was a young drummer in love with progressive rock when Greg Lake discovered her talent as a singer and wanted her on stage with him for the concert which would later become the posthumous “Live in Piacenza”. Again Lake produced Moonchild, the duo with pianist Max Repetti for Manticore Records where she sang many songs formerly sang by Lake with ELP and King Crimson. If these were the beginnings of Annie’s career, now she is a rising …
The Last Song of My Life
"This album documents a recording of Tori Kudo’s Last Song of My Life. Some may know Kudo already as prime mover in pop-naïf collective Maher Shalal Hash Baz; his history stretches back over four decades, and he’s a significant figure in the Japanese underground, thanks to his membership of groups like Noise (with his wife Reiko Kudo), Guys ’N’ Dolls, Snickers, and Sweet Inspirations. Untold numbers of said underground have passed through the ranks of Maher Shalal Hash Baz, among them members of…
Kernel Panic
"You wake up and find a room full of things, but no music. Music has to be reinvented every day. You take your instrument and play - and there it is. Others come and talk about "influences" and f... jazz and clusters and all their helpless keywords. Joe Williamson and Olaf Rupp met in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg in 1999 and played just from their simple inner impulse. They wanted to produce the sound that had to be produced. And why shouldn't they? Every craw does it. And every rusty garden door."Ol…
Corridor of Daylights
**Deluxe edition** Black Editions present the first ever vinyl edition of Go Hirano's third album, Corridor of Daylights, originally released in 2004. Corridor of Daylights is a quiet work of dreamlike brilliance. A home field recording where fragile piano melodies float alongside wind-chimes and wistful melodicas - insects hum in the distance and a breeze gently rustles as summer day eases toward evening. Originally released in Japan by P.S.F. Records in 2004, Corridor of Daylights is a beautif…
Sir Richard Bishop and Ed Yazijian
Yet another luxurious spectacle from the Saraswati Series. Ex-Sun City Girls master guitarist Richard Bishop teams up with Cul De Sac’s long time Girls live collaborator Ed Yazijian. Two Grand Seigneurs of underground deliver an unique album deeply Western rooted, filled with the musical spirit and structures of Indian music at the same time. Elegant interplay, brilliantly arranged, using mostly guitar (lapsteel, tenor) and strings (viola), and some Indian stringed instrument which I can’t prono…
Porous Structures
**250 copies** Ruben Machtelinckx has a new quartet. It is not a coincidence that the guitar is central, in particular the steel-string with its typical western sound. 2019 was a fruitful year for Ruben Machtelinckx (BE). This project is the last part of a triptych: in the spring Poor Isa, his duo with Frederik Leroux, released its debut album; in the summer he came out with the cassette Sualme with field recordings, improvisations and compositions; the winter appears to be the proper season for…
Same Animal, Different Cages Vol. 1: Etudes For Acoustic Guitar
Fabrica Records announces the first volume in the Same Animal, Different Cages series by American composer and improviser David First. On Études for Acoustic Guitar, First twists and bends notes from his steel-string acoustic guitar, an instrument traditionally associated with American folk, country and blues music. And in fact, those genres are central to First's explorations here, constituting portions of a palette that also encompasses jazz and Indian classical music. In this series of s…
Divers
The dreamer dreams again with her 4th album of otherworldly microcosms, 'Divers', recorded by Steve Albini and featuring contributions by Nico Muhly and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, arriving five years since her last opus for Drag City. Still possessed by a voice that teeters between sublime and ridiculous (I honestly laughed out loud at the first song), Joanna Newsom remains a precious spirit within the indie folk paradigm, blessed with an air of stately patience and poised, imma…
Truancy
Jim Denley and Dutch musician Cor Fuhler first met at the Taklos Festival in Switzerland in the early 1990s and Cor's frequent visits to Australia over the years gave them the opportunity to occasionally play. In 2012 Cor moved to Sydney, allowing them to ramp up the duo - this is their first release together. Over 7 weeks at the end of 2013 they recorded weekly in Cor's backyard studio, eventually choosing take 9 and 12, titling them Skive and Wag. Their imaginative preparations and inventions …