Ephemeralds
Ephemeralds is the first recording by Finn Loxbo’s new ensemble Kommun and marks a distinct development in the guitarist’s compositional practice. Performing together with pianist Lisa Ullén, kontrabassist Vilhelm Bromander and percussionist Ryan Packard, Loxbo has set up a situation of intense focus, dissolving individual identities into a collective sound world of resolute clarity. Each musician manipulates a collection of tightly stipulated pitch material whilst bringing the shared timbral qu…
Troca Iônica
*100 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Tsss Tapes presents Troca Iônica by Abby Lee Tee and Philip Sulidae. These two musicians are quite active in the sound art/abstract music circuit, and this is the result of a long-distance collaboration between Austria and Australia, two long pieces of electronic sounds mixed with field recordings, all very calm and dotted here and there with microscopic details.
Mycelium
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* 20 Year Anniversary! Since 2002, Berlin based musicians Tony Buck and Magda Mayas have been developing their duo music as SPILL — recording, touring and occasionally collaborating with international guests. Having spent the last 20 years establishing their unique approach to the piano and percussion combination, SPILL celebrates this milestone with the release of their 5th album mycelium, on Corvo Records as well as a series of concerts across Germany this comin…
Bass Duos 2000-2007
*2023 stock* "I met Joëlle Léandre when she was a visiting professor at Mills college in 2002. This was very exciting, as I had been collecting her albums since I started to play the double bass and she was an important influence on my work. I had a bass lesson scheduled with her the day we lost Maestro Kowald. She was very close to him and it was devastating to her. For me, it meant losing a role model; for her, it was losing a close friend and supporter. We had a long phone conversation and sh…
God Made My Soul An Ornament
*2023 stock* "There are some people who are very singular in their conception of improvisation. People whose music embodies them as much as they embody the music. People who take from their life experience and put it into their sonic practice. People who search every crevice of their instrument to find sonic potential. These practices are beyond what may or may not be learned at a conservatory, no matter how deep the teaching goes. Listening to these improvised moments between Sarah Ruth Alexand…
Preserves
"Sights and sounds move from place to place with promiscuous gesture. Ships, airplanes, and churning whirlpools appeal more to mechanical economies than street feet sharing pulse rate interiorities. The people twist on metric rails. Oxygen converters reflect swinging diatonics. Blackouts resound. Triggers blackout pots, pans, tin cans, and appropriate Lydian roots, talking tanks, and time-sliced wildlife. By 1950, modernist cultural curdling sacrificed aesthetic convenience for intuitive product…
...There Must Be A Reason For Generating Sounds... (11 Duos For Wolfgang Fuchs (1949-2016))
*2023 stock* "From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Jerome & I toured & recorded with the great Wolfgang Fuchs. It was a formative experience for both of us. All titles are quotes by Fuchs. He was a constant source of wisdom and humor." - Damon Smith
Purecircle
"Applying to their utmost the timbres, textures and tessitura from the double bass and percussion, veteran drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and younger bassist Damon Smith play up the instruments' orchestral as well as rhythmic functions. Moses, whose career began in the 1960s, and Smith who has partnered numerous international improvisers have played together in larger groups. But as a duo none of the 14 tracks sound reductionist.
That's because each uses his instrument to its utmost. Moses, as he d…
Hugo Ball: Six Sound Poems, 1989 & 2013
*2023 stock* "This recording is a modern interpretation of sound poems written and performed by German Dadaist Hugo Ball more than a century ago. Those familiar with Ball know him as the author of these innovative works and founder of the Cabaret Voltaire, Dada’s Zurich birthplace. Despite the sound poems’ artistic legacy, they constitute only a small part of Ball’s creative output. The purpose of these liner notes, then, is to consider the complex life and work of the man behind the sound poems…
Quartet:Quartet:Trio
*In process of stocking* "A double album of electroacoustic improv sessions from Sommerville, MA, centered around electronic artist Andrew Neumann on the Buchla Music Easel--a complex additive analogue synth--heard in quartet and trio sessions with Forbes Graham (trumpet), Sandy Ewen (guitar & objects), Junko Fujiwara (cello), Damon Smith (double bass) and Eric Rosenthal (drums & percussion). Neumann, also an artist, sculptor and installation artist, can be heard on the Driff album Bathysphere w…
Houston 2012
*In process of stocking. 2023 stock "Lady Band (of Various Fruit Names) is an all-female experimental music ensemble founded by Sandy Ewen in 2009. Performances are singular, often site-specific events, featuring a rotating lineup (and different fruit-themed name for each show), with members contributing graphic and text-based scores for structured improvisation.
Drawing parallels between Ewen's group and Scratch Orchestra, the 1960s-70s London experimental music ensemble Rowe was involved in, S…
Precipitation of a Decision
Tip! *In process of stocking* "Two distinct session, the first CD presenting free improv trio perfomances in St. Louis, MO between Paul Hartsaw on soprano & tenor saxophones, Damon Smith on double bass and Jerome Bryerton on percussion, the 2nd CD finding Hartsaw and Smith in the studio in Oakland CA for a more experimental session, Smith adding laptop & field recordings and both employing extended techniques." - Squidco
Duals
"In this 3-CD set each disc contains one duo session between the three musicians: trombone-bass, piano-bass and piano-trombone. Recorded over the course of Bishop's last year of residency in Boston and soon after Smith had moved to St. Louis, these recordings capture a glimpse of the city's creative music scene at a particularly active time between 2016-22, when, the three musicians interacted frequently in many settings in the Boston area. The Smith/Bishop disc consists of all improvised music,…
Groundwater Recharge
*2023 stock* "Explorative improvisation, from mysteriously quiet moments to scrabbling and determined conversation, configured as trios and quintets by Rebecca Novak on piano, cornet, radio & glassware, Danny Kamins on baritone saxophone, Sandy Ewen on guitar, Damon Smith on double bass and Jerome Bryerton on percussion, all bringing unique moments through extended techniques, objects & radio.
"Groundwater recharge is an important water management practice in California. ... Recharge can also h…
The Eternity-Cult
*2023 stock* "A blend of intonation and improvisation, The Eternity-Cult is a harmonies-across-the-seas program featuring the trumpet and objects of Birgit Ulher from Northern Germany with the double bass (Damon Smith) and percussion and electronics (Chris Cogburn) from the southern US. Despite geographical distances the three are equally committed to free-from improvisation. This disc's single 37-minute track finds the trio exploring textures and pitches from minimalist to embellished, while ma…
Incanto
*300 copies limited edition* Another collection of music that, instead of offering an escape route, loads you with questions. Music that originates in a grey, intermediate zone: pieces conceived and performed by an informal group of musicians which were not written. They are improvised but, instead of existing only in their own time, they are rooted in deep interpersonal relationships. A perfect balance between freedom and rigour, between visions and penumbra, between long and complex relationsh…
Don’t Tell No Tales Upon Us
Channeling their shared interest in noise, drone, freak folk, liturgy, and some real haunted New England atmosphere, Tongue Depressor and Weston Olencki unfold their singular vision in two wild pieces of rapturous intensity and resonance. Weston Olencki is a musician, composer, and sound artist from South Carolina, now living and working in Berlin. Their work is centered around questions of instrumental music and its contexts/constructs, various mediated practices of listening and improvisation,…
Entre Pliegos
Entre Pliegos embarks on a quest through shared sonic ancestry to explore the immediacy of communication, invoking a mercurial, yet at times uplifting, musical environ. The drones and growls of low strings flow into explosive electronics, while ecstatic vocal spikes morph into rambunctious linear intertwinings that settle into an interminable, grating exhale. Chilean-based double bassist Amanda Irarrázabal and Brooklyn, NY-based pianist Eli Wallace crossed paths in the summer of 2019, where they…
Raspberry Hotel
Tip! *170 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Having lived and worked in numerous musical directions for many years, Semay Wu’s begrudgingly faithful cello still remains at her side: from Merseyside, to Manchester, to The Netherlands, and now to Central Scotland. Always trying to push age-old boundaries of how the instrument is viewed and heard, her focus has led her to explore further collaborative and everyday improvisations, blending electronics with mixed media and a variety of g…
Do Disturb
Capturing two exceptional concerts at London's Cafe OTO in 2021 & 2022, in the launch of a new quartet expanding the longstanding trio of N.O. Moore on electric guitar, John Edwards on double bass and Eddie Prévost on drums, with Alan Wilkinson on baritone & alto saxophones, and for one performance on each night, tenor saxophonist Nathaniel Catchpole joining.
"Launch show for the quartet to mark the release of new CD 'EMPoWered' on Brooklyn's 577 Records. Edwards, Moore and Prévost have comprise…