Rökkur
*2024 stock* Øra Fonogram announces the worldwide release of Rökkur, the joint album of Norwegian composer and performer Maja S. K. Ratkje and Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect (Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, Marie Stockmarr Becker, Hanna Loftsdóttir, Guðrún Óskarsdóttir).
What is ‘rökkur’?
‘Rökkur’ is the Icelandic word for twilight — the hour when shadows fall, a time of transition, ambiguity, and magic. When ‘rökkur’ fell in pre-electric times, a space appeared for storytelling, reading, yarn s…
What Is What
There is a delicacy and a passionate hardness, stripped bare of cloying sentiment. Its rawness is the exuberance of sound overflowing, basking in its self-created luxury…. It is, every bit of it, composed the same moment you hear it.
Maromas
Maromas is the debut recording of the duo of Ingrid Laubrock and Cecilia Lopez. Recorded in April 2022, the album is a collection of improvised pieces for tenor and soprano saxophone, processing and electronics. Maromas refers to the doing of tricksters, conjurers and acrobats. The music is dark, harsh but also playful in its pirouettes. The electronics process the saxophone as much as the saxophone plays the electronics. Both voices became a third two-headed creature sometimes alienating the so…
Sob Story
"If you're feeling pressed by the demands of the Imaginary Empire's vicious circuitry, whether you're on the outside or a little too inside for your comfort, here's an opportunity to experience something real, satisfying, and original. Most of the world may be going all wrong, but The Fully Celebrated Orchestra are always 'Right On.'" - Brad Lingham
VOSTOK: Remote Islands
*2024 stock* This music is improvised and inspired by Judith Schalansky’s book "Atlas of Remote Islands: 50 islands I never set foot in and never will." The music is an echo of her writing, of inspiration by islands, entities with different and changing characteristics.
Mature Defense Mechanism
Mature Defense Mechanism is an improvised experiment in the relationships between rock and jazz characterized by whimsy amidst seclusion. It’s natural territory for guitarist Kirsten Carey and drummer Aaron Edgcomb, who are both gaining reputations for adventurous and wide-ranging approaches to music making.
Reid/Edwards/Coudoux
We maneuver through woody sounds created by individual movements and decisions. Our cello playing is free from classical patterns, a real achievement! It is not natural to develop one's own approach to this high culture instrument. In this trio there are three multi-layered variations of personal expressive will and power.
Filament
This recording documents the first ever meeting between Susan Alcorn and Catherine Sikora. When musicians improvise with each other, a space is created that is unique and specific to the musicians who are playing. With Susan and Catherine, the space that presented itself was enormous, with great freedom and tonal flexibility, opening up endless possibilities for expression.
Dans Le Morvan
Tip! French free vocalist Isabelle Duthoit and trumpeter Franz Hautzinger recorded these highly unusual duos to celebrate Hautzinger’s 60th birthday year. Using extreme techniques to create 11 uniquely aberrant accompaniments to your most subtle and strange dreams.
Silver Dawn
Silver Dawn is an ethereal collection of improvised vignettes performed on solo Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed relative of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Resonant strings and wordless vocals are gently guided by the cyclical momentum of dance and the instrument’s lingering overtones, magnifying moments of transience in suspensions of time.
Conic Tube
Conic Tube comes from the idea that the saxophone is nothing but a metal conical tube that amplifies, modifies and pushes the air through the room, if the instrument is just an object and sound is just air and air is inside-out of us, pushing this air becomes the tool to structure our space and surroundings making possible changes on our environment and energies. With this in mind and spirit this record was produced with the intent to fulfill and open new possibilities for the minds and spirits …
Rotarota
The first solo release of baritone saxophonist Sofia Salvo, “Rotarota” consists of a series of improvised pieces. They evoke emotional memories aspiring to set them free and mutate them into blaring music.
Monophonic
Monophonic is the name of the new album by Maria Bertel. As the title hints the album is a study of music played with 'one voice'. The amplification of the trombone mimics the effect of a magnifying glass, that let otherwise inaudible sounds be heard and brought forward. The compositions are long swathes of sound slowly developing, heavily inspired by drone and noise.
In Search Of A Real World
"Tenor saxophonist Ada Rave, born and raised in Argentina, decided to move to Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2013. She had heard ‘the call’, followed her musical intuition and became part of the colorful community of Dutch creative improvised music. Educated in the jazz tradition she started to look for a more personal language. A deep search. Not an easy path to go. The destination is always changing. Each step made will call for a next step. A slow process of collecting material, sounds, techni…
Natura Mimesis
Huuuuge Tip! Gustavo Costa is a central figure in the experimental Portuguese scene, being active as a musician, composer and promoter for the past three decades in diverse musical configurations, and also renown as one of the leaders of Porto’s collective Sonoscopia. Following his first solo percussion record Entropies and Mimetic Patterns, released in 2020, on Natura Mimesis the original composition techniques, which are mostly based on musical transcriptions from natural phenomena, are now ap…
Essais
Third in a series of ten reissues of the cult French underground Futura label. Featured on the legendary Nurse With Wound, this is one of Steven Stapleton’s favorite. Semool were the trio of Philippe Martineau, Olivier Cauquil and Rémy Dédé Dreano. Comprising Philippe Martineau, Olivier Cauqui, and Remy Dede Dreano, Semool turned in a pretty hard to swallow set of tunes, recorded between 1969 and 1971. For the most part, the disc is populated by a series of cut up and spliced together tape pie…
No Man's Land
Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Jean-Francois Pauvros and Gaby Bizien's No Man's Land, originally released on Un-Deux-Trois in 1976. Whether it is with the label Palm, or for Un-Deux-Trois, Jef Gilson has produced some of the best albums of French free jazz and improvisation. But that's not all: he also offered perfect recording conditions enabling some of the fresh young talent to emerge, including Daunik Lazro, André Jaume, and Jean-François Pauvros, all three of whom released …
Emphatic Now
Douglas Ewart is no stranger to present moments. He has been a creative force – and AACM pillar – for decades and brings his life-affirming energy and formidable artistic prowess to bear wherever he goes. Emphatic Now finds him in Provo with fellow improvising gurus, Christian Asplund and Steven Ricks. The E A R Trio (get it?) found time to record their musical encounter at Brigham Young University during Ewart’s 2022 residency there (12 years in the making). They planned for a long session in M…
Avant Toute
A radical album with uncompromising blasts of atonal electric guitar, free-form sonic explorations and richly layered passages. "Have you ever imagined what a meeting between the Silver Apples and Sonny Sharrock would sound like? In 1974, Jean-Jacques Birgé, one of the first French synthesizer players (ARP 2600) along with Francis Gorgé, virtuoso guitarist, created some unique improvised pop music.The unreleased and flamboyant recordings featured on Avant Toute would be the source for the cult 1…
Holde Träume, kehret wieder!
A double album consisting of two versions of Magnus Granberg's 2021 composition 'Holde Träume, kehret wieder!' The first version is for the Nattens inbrott quartet, for which the piece was originally written. The second version, with some extra parts added, is perfomed by Magnus Granberg's longstanding group Skogen, and is performed by a septet. Also includes high-quality jpegs of the superb artwork for the CD by Magnus Gramén, a pdf of the cover artwork and an interview with Magnus Granberg abo…