There is only love and fear
Berlin-based British composer, percussionist, and instrument maker Bex Burch was invited to spend a month in the US by International Anthem in Summer 2022. Burch immersed herself in the label's creative community and listened to what it gave her, making field recordings and allowing There Is Only Love and Fear to emerge from the collaborations and environments she encountered. Sessions for the album spanned multiple non-traditional recording spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago a…
Yagateyamu
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Misaki Motofuji plays baritone sax in all types of free jazz settings. She also carries out performances focusing on acoustic phenomena, based on sound-art-like concepts and incorporating field recordings. But she says her background is in neither jazz nor art—that she actually studied classical music as a music university student. In the bands she leads, Motofuji creates a wide variety of original compositions, from chamber-music-style pop, jazz and mini…
Masahide Tokunaga
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahide Tokunaga is a Tokyo-based alto sax player/improviser who carries out extremely distinctive performances comprised mainly of long tones. On the Hitorri label he has released the improvised performance CDs "Alto Saxophone 2" (2015) and "Bwoouunn: Fleeting Excitement" (2017), as well as "while your master is sleeping" (2020), on which he performs a composition by Taku Sugimoto. With the exception of that composition recording, "Masahide Tokunaga" is…
Cold Light In Warm Blue
*200 copies limited edition* Tokyo-based pianist Fumi Endo has been performing since 2017, playing mainly jazz and improvised music. Her distinctive, minimalistic performances have garnered a great deal of attention. Endo has performed frequently at Ftarri since September 2020.
While she participated in two 2022 Ftarri CD releases—Takumi Ikeda’s "Musical Procedure" (Ftarri Classical, ftarricl-663), and the eponymous "Masahide Tokunaga" (Hitorri, hitorri-970)—Endo had no previous releases on Ftar…
A Wayside Shrine
*300 copies limited release* "In early 2000s New Zealand, Little Skull started as a small project. Smallness was perhaps the defining characteristic. Lathe cut 7”s in vanishingly small editions, the intricate, fiddly covers hand- crafted with what one would have to assume were very small hands. Or just with the aid of tweezers perhaps. The labels of these records provided no information beyond an illustration of a small – little even – skull. The music was also mysterious and miniaturized but al…
Odd Jobs Are the High Road of Work
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks here (31 and 39 minutes respectively) were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka at Ftarri on February 8, 2021. Born in 1995, percussionist Ryotaro Miyasaka lives in Tokyo. In this concert he…
Phase to Phase
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Katie and Lucio met over the internet almost every Tuesday for one year, composing two pieces, rehearsing, talking about their lives, and recording. The desire to play together began after exchanging work and perceiving a deeply common approach to bass clarinet playing, to sound, and to music. The two pieces offered here are based in a very distinctive but still strictly coherent approach in relation to the work they intend to do.
Phase to Phase 1 is a ce…
Metaphor of Metamorphosis
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks on this CD, each around 25 minutes in length, were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with electronics player Leo Okagawa at Ftarri on June 21, 2021. Okagawa is known for releases on overseas labels of many collage works usi…
Gauche
*2023 stock* Alto sax/clarinet player Akira Sakata is a legend of Japan’s free jazz scene. Ken Ikeda is a musician who resided for many years in New York and London, and has been based in Tokyo since his return to Japan from the UK in 2020. In 2021, Ikeda released "Signal and Signaless," a duo CD with Rie Nakajima, on the Ftarri label. This album, "Gauche," is Sakata’s first release from Ftarri. On May 21, 2022, Akira Sakata and Ken Ikeda gave a duo concert at Ftarri, Tokyo. This CD consists of …
Allelopathy
*2023 stock* Ayami Suzuki, a musician based in the Tokyo area, performs a unique kind of ambient drone using electronics and voice. Since 2020 she has been performing at Ftarri in Tokyo, both as a soloist and with other musicians. Acclaimed guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is active on the international improvised music scene. In 2021 Akiyama gave many outstanding performances at Ftarri; recordings of a number of these concerts were subsequently released as CDs. "Allelopathy" is one of these recordings.…
Modular Organ System
Begun in 2017 and developed and refined over the six years since, the Berlin based artists, Phillip Sollmann and Konrad Sprenger, deliver their first LP, via Choose Records, documenting their remarkable Modular Organ System. Comprising a single, long form composition divided into two parts, “Modular Organ System” is a sublime and masterful work of drone, imbued with immediacy and emotion, that culminates as one of our favourite experimental organ records to appear in recent years.
Alone On Penguin Island
Originally released on Dome (Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's seminal label), this is an often overlooked milestone in freefrom and artistic post-punk. A siginficant piece of the UK musical puzzle when a lot of artists were shrugging off the previous decade and embracing the DIY attitude of the 1980s.
Águas
On 31st January 2022, Hydra Ensemble performed at De Pletterij in Haarlem (NL). It was a good one. Luckily our bass player Gonçalo decided to release the (newly mixed and mastered) recording on his label Cylinder Recordings. I'd say this is my favorite Hydra recording thusfar...
Down On Darkened Meetings
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Down On Darkened Meetings, the first solo release on the label from the quietly prolific Giuseppe Ielasi. Recorded at Ielasi’s studio in Monza outside of Milan over two days in February 2022, the seven pieces presented here continue the renewed exploration of the guitar that marks much of his solo work over the last few years. Emerging in the late 1990s as an improviser working primarily with prepared acoustic and electric guitars, the instrument became less …
self-talk
Latest release by Italian London based musician Luciano Maggiore on his own edizioni luma.
Ne Lépj a Virágra
A year and a half has passed since Slovak-Hungarian artist Adela Mede self-released her debut album 'Szabadság'. Its liner notes described it as "a navigation", a search through "the personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic of her past and present." Her second album, 'Ne Lépj a Virágra' no longer searches; here, she puts down roots and delves deeper into the earthy reality of her home, Central Europe. Mede sings in three languages with newfound conviction and grace – this is an alb…
Moonlight Shadoh
After her stunning and well acclaimed debut album ‘For Trainspotters Only’ Ann Eysermans now releases ‘Moonlight Shadoh’, a tribute to her dog Shadoh. A record on which she explores the bond between herself and her faithful canine friend, Shadoh, through an extraordinary musical odyssey. Ann Eysermans masterfully weaves together a tapestry of field recordings, candy-like harmonies and Shadoh's distinctive houndly expressions.
Creating otherworldly compositions that transcends genres which includ…
Liturgy of Lacuna
Vathres is a new project led by Stockholm-based keyboardist and composer Alex Zethson. Their debut record consists of three extensive pieces of cinematic, transcendental, and minimalist post-rock music, with elements of experimental jazz and shimmering electronics. It features a 14-piece ensemble and appearances by guitar-wizard Reine Fiske (Dungen), former Pain of Salvation and Meshuggah-bassist Gustaf Hielm and Cult of Luna-drummer Christian Augustin, among others. The music was recorded, mixe…
In this forever unfolding moment
Vilhelm Bromander centers himself in sound, where listening is no less crucial than playing. His relationship to both the notes produced around him and the musicians making them is at the heart of his work. Whether building harmonic structures where he and his colleagues tune in together, constructing a sonic edifice in which sustained tones facilitate deep bonds, or serving as the musical anchor in more rhythmically active settings, playing music with others is about connection, where sound is …