Chìsake [Algonquin]: to chant; to conjure; to cast a spell; this generally involves a shake-house, or shaking tent, in which the conjurer goes into a trance; the conjurer then has an out-of-body experience, going into the future to predict coming events, or into the past; as well as going into any locality in the universe to seek out someone or something generally practiced for ancestral divination. Indigenous flute solo: Timothy Archambault. Digitally recorded December 31, 2014 Beijing, China. Sound engineer: Victor Luan; Cover photography: Sascha Kleis; Flute & portrait photography: CYJO Algonquin Couple circa 1750-1780 watercolor by unknown Artist/Courtesy of the Public Library of Montreal, Salle Gagnon; Produced by Timothy Archambault; Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, April 2021 Berlin; Dedicated to Timothy's father: Philip Cyril Archambault.
"Return Of The Super Ape is the follow-up album to the highly acclaimed dub album Super Ape. Just like its predecessor, the album was produced by Lee 'Scratch' Perry. It was the last album by The Upsetters before Perry closed down his Black Ark Studio. The album showcases yet again the prodigious production skills of undisputed dub master Lee 'Scratch' Perry's insanely layered textures and technical wizardry. With The Upsetters providing their musical backing. The MOV reissue of Return Of The Super Ape is based on the 'green' sleeve version from 1978. Return Of The Super Ape is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on orange colored vinyl."
"To celebrate the 45th anniversary of iconic Dutch jazz label Timeless Records, Music On Vinyl is releasing a series that features albums that are part of the Timeless Records legacy and will be released mainly throughout 2021/2022. Archie Shepp's Black Ballads first came out in 1992 and celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2022. This 2LP features eleven great jazz ballads including classics such as 'Embraceable You' and 'Georgia On My Mind' by the tenor saxophonist. Shepp is supported by pianist Horace Parlan, bassist Wayne Dockery and drummer Steve McRaven. To celebrate the legacy of Wim Wigt's Timeless Records 45th Anniversary, Music On Vinyl is releasing the 45th anniversary Jazz Series. Each release includes the Timeless Records insert showing the first 8th albums on limited colored vinyl. Black Ballads is available on vinyl for the very first time as a limited edition of 500 individually numbered copies on translucent magenta colored vinyl. The package comes with an insert with upcoming titles from The Timeless Records 45th Anniversary Jazz Series."
Over the last five years, the duo of Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma have intertwined sublime sonorities across the geographic expanses between their respective homes in France and the United States. Their third album for Shelter Press, Un Hiver En Plein Été ("A winter in the middle of summer") -- the first to have been largely recorded by Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma together in the same space -- distills a mesmerizing pallet of acoustic and electronic sources into an open discourse of radically poetic forms. Both veteran experimentalists with celebrated bodies of solo work behind them -- each traversing the challenges of electroacoustic practice in their own singular ways -- prior to their first recorded outing in 2016 (SHELTER 070LP), Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma had only crossed paths in person once, initially meeting in San Francisco during 2009. The mutual bond formed during that brief encounter flowered into their first LP, Comme Un Seul Narcisse, followed two years later by 2018's Limpid As The Solitudes (SHELTER 101LP). Both recorded remotely, these two albums were guided by impassioned conceptual nods to Guy Debord, Baudelaire, Brion Gysin and Sylvia Plath, while seeking resolutions for the challenges and unique possibilities that working at a distance provoked. Un Hiver En Plein Été culminates as a celebration of closeness, a result of Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma working together in the studio, responsively in real time, for the first time. Recorded in Brooklyn during August of 2019 -- a handful of months before the pandemic would impose chasmic distances across the globe -- its six discrete works, carefully crafted and finalized over the ensuing year, evolve seamlessly across the album's two sides, weaving a sprawling tapestry of sonority, within which both artists retaining their own voices and visions, while drawing each other towards uncharted ground. Atkinson likens the recording of Un Hiver En Plein Été to have been akin to "a playground", each artist "hungry for each sound, a bit like the rush in the Louvre in Godard's Bande à part", to which Cantu-Ledesma adds that the process seemed to have had "a mind of its own", with both "along for the ride". This organic sense of entropy and enthusiasm -- a joyous exploration of the unknown -- guides the momentum of the album's evolving arc. Un Hiver En Plein Été is crafted from deconstructed melodic elements and drifting long-tones -- laden with subtle nods to Indian classical ragas and free jazz -- searching patterns of speech, textural elements captured within the studio and the outside world, and searching tonal and percussive interventions.
SPECTRES
Spectres III Ghosts in the Machine Book
The expression "ghost in the machine" emerged within a particular context, namely as a critique of Cartesian dualism's separation of soul and body, and thus served to revive a certain mechanistic materialism. In simple terms, this critique denies the existence of an independent soul (the "ghost") contained in a corporeal organism (the "machine"). It asserts, on the contrary, that the "soul" is just a manifestation of the body -- that ultimately, they are one and the same. The artificial always brings with it the fantasy of emancipation and autonomy, and a break with a supposedly natural order of things. In a certain respect, the domain of musical creation constitutes a kind of front line, at once a terrain of exploration for possible applications of AI and a domain that boasts an already substantial history of the integration of machines and their calculative power into creative processes. From algorithmic composition to methods of resynthesis, from logical approaches to the creation of cybernetic systems, from the birth of computer music to neural networks, for more than half a century now music has been in continual dialogue with the binary universe of electron flows and the increasingly complex systems that control them. Each of the texts included here, in its own way, reveals a different facet of the strange prism formed by this alliance. Each projects its own particular spectrum -- or spectre; each reveals a ghost, evokes an apparition that is a composite of ideas, electricity, and operations. This book, then, does not set out to cut the Gordian knot constituted by the question of the possible mutations and becomings of binary logic, and in particular its most recent avatar, AI. On the contrary, it seeks to shed a diverse light upon the many possible ways of coming to grips with it today, and upon the dreams, promises, and doubts raised by these becomings, whether actualized in the creation of codes and programs to assemble sounds or infusing a whole compositional project. Above all, though, what is at stake here is to discover how these developments resonate together, and how this resonance manifests itself through all these approaches, all these reflections, all these modes of creation and of living. For the artificial, the artefact, is always the extro-human brainchild of a human, all too human dream. Authors: Keith Fullerton Whitman, Émilie Gillet, Steve Goodman, Florian Hecker, James Hoff, Roland Kayn, Ada Lovelace, Robin Mackay, Bill Orcutt, Matthias Puech, Akira Rabelais, Lucy Railton, Jean-Claude Risset, Sébastien Roux, Peter Zinovieff.
"The classic 1977 folk album and follow up to Savage Amusement. Featuring Mick Ronson, Andy Latimer, and Keef Hartley. Recorded at Sawmills Studios, Cornwall, Tapestry Studios, London and Fairview Studios, Hull. Includes extensive sleeve notes from Andru Chapman and Marc Higgins with bonus track: 'Steel Bonnets (Instrumental)'. Limited edition on 180 gram vinyl."
"The Magic Mixture were a London based psychedelic band comprising Terry Thomas (guitar/vocals), Melvyn Hacker (bass), Jack Collins (drums) and Stan Curtis (organ) . The 60's were productive years, though if one explores these years, you'll find that most of the bands that rose during those heady days had some real talent, some sincere visions, and a burning desire to shape a bit of the music scene with their sonic atmospheres. The magic found within these highly prized and rare grooves shows they did pulsate with the moment, This Is The Magic Mixture, should certainly be considered an essential part of the garage psych movement that flowered during 1968."
LP version. A ritornello that awakens, unfolds, disappears, resurfaces, transforms, forgets itself, awakens again. A ritornello in folds and hollows, which gives us something to see as well as to listen, a theater of acoustic shadows where each timbre, each rhythm, each modulation, is born from a meticulously refined gesture. "I don't write music, it's an assemblage of gestural memories", says Thomas Bonvalet. Gestures found, accidentally or not, through long practice: such keyboard rubs on such guitar while preparing a concert, such tambourine vibrates in a singular way when placed on such amp, the duration and intensity of breath given to the flute so that the strings of the open piano decline and reverberate the harmonics... Gestures that are both very skillful and very simple, that sovereignly refuse the categories of modern and archaic, natural and cultural. Instead, they summon an entire genealogy, both intimate and collective, musical and technical, the memory of a thousand different pieces from a thousand different eras. There is no path, in fact, no path at all in this dismantled world. There are, however, these gestures that allow us to search for the human measure, that allow for a new attention to be given to bodies, objects, space. Gestures that invent new relationships between themselves and other ways of being alive, gestures to be worked on and shared endlessly. "It's fragile, it can always fall apart. I have to fight, to stay in tune with what is at stake in a piece, to breathe into it what will make it stand up. And so, the ritornello continues its mutations in the folds and hollows of our own memories."
"Originally issued in 1998, Wormwood became one of The Residents' grandest, most ambitious and, ultimately, most rewarding projects. Featuring all of your favorite tales of chaos and carnage, incestual rape, brutality, murder, sacrifice, retribution, bloodshed and, of course, circumcision that made The Bible the must-read #1 best-seller it became. For sure, Wormwood finds The Residents on fine, thought-provoking form. Be warned, though -- The Residents DO NOT intend to mock or undermine the Good Book in any way. As ever, they come in peace, more interested in shedding new light than bringing about even more disharmony to a world already full to bursting on that score. Never before released on vinyl, this edition, finally, meets public demand. Remastered and resplendent in original artwork and inner sleeves featuring the work of the wonderful Leigh Barbier."
Future Shock present a reissue of Pink Fairies' Kings of Oblivion, originally released in 1973. Kings of Oblivion is one of the best-kept secrets of hard rock -- and an important part of its history. If you like your rock and roll "real", it doesn't get much more real than this. Just don't go expecting Judas Priest, AC/DC, or Black Sabbath; This is high-energy rock that truly belongs on the streets, and a landmark album in its genre. Truly a classic.
VA
Tafari All Stars: Rarities From The Vault LP
"Mid-seventies Munchie Jackson productions, strongly flavored with Wackies."
BAUHAUS
Live at Tiffany's, Glasgow, Scotland June 27th, 1983 FM Broadcast LP
Pink vinyl. Bauhaus live at Tiffany's, Glasgow, Scotland on June 27th, 1983. FM Broadcast recording.
A proper reissue of Minnie Riperton's debut album Come To My Garden on GRT, originally published in 1970. Her name came to prominence with the highly influential Chicago band Rotary Connection, forerunners of the rock n' soul crossover. In addition to their own recordings, including their 1967 debut album Rotary Connection, the band is notable as the backing band for Muddy Waters on his 1968 psychedelic blues album Electric Mud. Standing on her own, Minnie cut a series of sublime albums moving in a more soulful way. Opening track "Les Fleur" is a shiny cover of a Ramsey Lewis -- who is musical assistant and contributor here -- classic number penned in 1968, literally a cornerstone for contemporary hip-hop and R&B being sampled by the likes of Jurassic 5 feat. Nelly Furtado, Damu the Fudgemunk, Dr. Octagon, and Cut Chemist, among others. Produced by Charles Stepney (already in with Rotary Connection and subsequently behind the desk with Earth Wind & Fire), the album benefits from its lushy orchestral arrangements, pushing the vocal duties of Minnie even forward (her five-octave vocal range, enabled her to sing in "whistle register" nevertheless). The jazzy soft-pop feel overall will mark comparison with Stevie Wonder, Riperton's future employer/mentor. Fully licensed. 180 gram, clear vinyl.
Reissue of Flower Travellin' Band's debut album Anywhere, originally released in 1970. Anywhere is the first album from the legendary Japanese rockers fronted by Yuya Uchida. Although an album consisting mainly of cover versions, Anywhere still exhibited many of the musical traits that were to come to the fore on the band's next release, the classic 1971 album Satori, an album of original material delivered with panache by the increasingly confident Uchida. An album made memorable by its risqué cover as well as its ground-breaking approach to Western rock music. Orange vinyl.
"Winged Wheel is made up of four musicians whose worlds have intersected for years without them ever all being in the same room. Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray), and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo, solo) have been longtime participants in various diy communities, crossing each other's paths through shared gigs, working on releases, or taking the stage at Cory's small upstate NY bar. Each player has developed their own personal practice of improvisation and home-recording, and Winged Wheel began by chance when Cory asked Fred to send over some rawly recorded drum loops to jam over. Cory tracked rangy guitar and bass parts over these repetitive loops and songs slowly started taking shape. Matthew's guitar layers took these foundations to a whole new level, and Whitney's submerged vocal tracks solidified everything, elevating the project from a soup of partially formed ideas into something intelligible. The entire album was written, recorded, and mixed in remote collaboration, eventually turning into a balancing act of precisely arranging sonic details and maintaining the formless excitement the music began as. This paradoxical process can be heard in the final form of the album, a continuous zone that manages to be strange and amorphous while still carving out space for four distinctive musical personalities. It's a sound that hovers and stumbles as often as it takes declarative turns in unexpected directions, the circles getting smaller the closer you zoom in."
"Sometimes change comes with big shocks, sometimes it comes with small steps. On In Your Hands, Lewsberg's new album, a bit of both seems to be happening. Take the second song, 'The Corner'. A remarkably discreet song: a violin plays a simple melody; a gentle drum loop keeps its finger on the pulse. 'This brick is a brick to build', it sounds, though a little later: 'This brick is a brick to throw'. A brick offers many possibilities, for those who want to see it. One time as a part of something bigger to come, the next time just as a simple stone, left on the ground. After all, most things are relative. Sometimes one can achieve more by breaking something than by building something. If you think you can determine which of the two is needed, you'd be fooling yourself. In Your Hands embodies the moment when all the bricks are there, but the wall has yet to be built. It's a moment with perspective, a moment where everything still seems possible, but caution is advised. The album sounds both smaller and more spacious than the previous albums. Guitar chords are plucked instead of fiercely struck, the bass guitar is given more room for melodic explorations, the drum kit is dismantled to just a tom and a tambourine. There is doubt in the lyrics, but it's a strong kind of doubt. A doubt that can stand in the way of a wrong decision but also invite for a good conversation. The old Lewsberg has been professionally demolished and the building blocks are on display. Ready for future applications and already finished at the same time. In Your Hands is therefore an ode to the potential and a call to carefully give way to it. Just what we need right now. But if I were to claim this so boldly, I wouldn't have learned much from Lewsberg." --Niek Hilkmann, October 2021
Color vinyl reissue of the first album of Delta blues legend Son House on the Columbia label, originally released in 1965. Canned Heat founding member Al Wilson appears. Includes the 9+ minute closing track "Levee Camp Moan."
DJ SNIFF
Parallel Traces Of The Jewel Voice LP
Multi-groove single-sided LP. Parallel Traces Of The Jewel Voice by dj sniff is a project that takes inspiration from historical narratives and personal memories constructed around The Jewel Voice Broadcast (Gyokuon Hoso) that took place on August 15th, 1945. Contrary to common belief, Emperor Hirohito did not speak live on air to announce the surrender of Japan on this day. Instead, two lathe-cut discs with his recorded voice were skillfully mixed and played by NHK engineer Shizuto Haruna. Haruna's proto-DJ/turntablist performance was heard not only in Japan but also throughout the colonized territories in Asia, marking the end of World War II and Japanese rule. Interested in these aspects which often have been overlooked within the Japanese narratives of this historical event, dj sniff conducted research in both Taiwan and Japan. Over the course of three years, he collected various materials that include; interviews and field recordings, audio samples extracted from phonograph discs and recordings sessions with improvising musicians, and a re-reading of the Imperial Rescript on Surrender in Chinese. These were used to compose two compositions that are paired differently depending on their distribution format. The vinyl release is a multi-sided disc with two parallel grooves cut on one side, which in effect plays a different composition depending on where the stylus is cued. The other side has no audio but features two silkscreened lines that refer to how Haruna played the original lathe-cut discs. Additionally, an extensive text written by dj sniff accompanies this release. Sniff uncovers technical details of the recording and broadcasting of the emperor's voice that took place over 75 years ago. He also reflects on his encounters with the elderly community in Taiwan who spoke fluent Japanese and shared their personal stories after listening together to records from their childhood.
VA
Super Bad! Hits And Rarities From The Treasure Isle Vaults 1971-1973 2CD
"Many tracks unavailable on any format since the early seventies. 33 tracks new to CD including numerous significant Jamaican hits of the early 1970s."
Even The Chimera is the debut album by Wild Terrier Orchestra, a new project by Dimitris Papadatos, aka Jay Glass Dubs, based on interchangeability and open improvisation. A newer, freer incarnation of Papadatos's creative intent, the project acts more like an open container of disparate and idiosyncratic contributions from a mutable cast of musicians and artists. Often times not provided according to a pre-planned structure, these contributions are actually more likely to arrive in the form of free improvisations, unconnected musical segments and fragmented splinters of sound. This allows Papadatos to aggregate all the constituent parts according to an intuitive process that bridges between the detailed craft of electronic music production and surrealist techniques such as the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) and the cut-up. It's both a harmonization of contrasting tones and a research for commonality within difference, although none of the wild terriers are ever nearly tamed. Unsurprisingly, the main inspiration for this new chapter came from a pinnacle of avantgarde literature: poet Andreas Embirikos's, considered Greece's first surrealist and all-out paradoxical figure. Specifically, this release is guided and instigated by his poem "OKTANA", in which Embirikos inscribes a manifesto for a hedonistic utopia years ahead of any accelerationist theories, bursting with contradicting presences and mutating identities. Written in the aftermath of the Greek civil war, the poem calls for a time of eternal poetry and spiritual intoxication that can only be reached through a painful process of violent deconstruction. Thus, Even The Chimera was born: a culmination of Papadatos's decades long research on traditional Greek and Byzantine music, free jazz and free improvisation. Firmly spread between two side-long tracks, the contributions of American singer and musician Cruel Diagonals on vocal duties as well as Greek artist and musician Fotini Korre on ney suggest the existence of a filament that connects the west and the east through the creation of "possible musics". This happens in accordance to Papadatos's practice of a counterfactual approach to the process of what music history dictates. It is also directly shaped by the musician's frequent dwellings in the isle of Cyprus, a land in which the clash of worlds and culture has often taken both violent and beautiful shapes. The long drones, acoustic ghosts, and unbalanced choirs that form the album seem to call from the Mediterranean itself, not only from its history but also from its possible futures and unreal narrations, invoking it as a nexus of diversity and possibility.
LP version. Reissue of the legendary Brant Bjork album. Somera Sól is the second album from the stoner rock band Brant Bjork and the Bros. It features former Kyuss drummer Alfredo Hernandez and guest appearances by Sean Wheeler of Throw Rag and Mario Lalli of Fatso Jetson. This is the second LP released by Brant Bjork in 2007 following the solo acoustic Tres Dias. A true desert gem in new artwork by Branca Studio.
Yearly compilation album Radar by Keroxen, introducing the second volume in the series of themed based albums showcasing the talents and misfortunes of carefully selected musicians/bands based in the Canary Islands. Where Radar Vol. 1 (2020) focused its sights on rock oriented music, Vol. 2 looks at the more experimental, free flowing side of electronic and sample based music, also made in Tenerife this last year. The format stays the same as Vol. 1: four different artists are invited to contribute two tracks, no rules other than do their own thing. The result being an extraordinary amalgamation of various genres and styles of the electronic music cannon including: smoky dub beats by King L. Man, tropical Casiotone divagations by Usted, inverted and polyrhythmic workouts from the Tupperwear duo, ultra precise dub-tech-2step edits by Postman, and organic psychedelics by freak trio Lagoss. Yet another crucial document from a region you usually do not associate with forward thinking music, more than a simple compilation, Radar 2 unveils the thin veil of new and uncompromising music being produced in and around the orbit of the Keroxen collective. It seems the Atlantic isolation works as a catalyst here, judging from the copious amount of different and challenging music that has been coming from this corner of the world over the last few years. Keroxen invite you to dive in the wild remote tropical waters of Radar 2. Usted's "Salió De La Nevera" features Okydoky. Artwork by Pura Márquez. Mastering by Daniel Báez.
The 12-year anniversary edition of Imperial Tiger Orchestra's Mercato includes the best of both albums Mercato (2011) and Addis Abeba (2010). Remastered with bonuses live recordings in London, Paris, Addis, Tokyo, and Cape Town. Imperial Tiger Orchestra, the finest connoisseurs and grooviest performers of Ethiopian music from the golden age. Back in 2007 in underground Geneva, band leader Raphaël Anker decides to gather musicians for a one-off live performance revisiting the golden age of Ethiopian music. A memorable event that forced all the musicians to carry on. As Imperial Tiger Orchestra. Consisting of members with very diverse backgrounds (free jazz, noise experimentations, contemporary music, twisted pop...) the Orchestra soon travels to Addis-Abeba where they perform with local luminaries and deep learn about the large diversity of Ethiopian music. A life-changing experience which brings them back to the studio and to a plethora of successful gigs around Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, and Africa. The Tiger's unique sound is a mesmerizing re-interpretation of Ethiopian music's golden age mixed with the digitalized themes that appeared in the '80s and filtered through their eclectic influences, a sort of retro-futuristic and progressive Ethiopian rock. This 12-year anniversary edition brings back thunderous rhythms and feverish hooks, down tempo moments and fast paced epiphanies, electronic sounds and ambient nirvanas.
LP version. Back in 2020, Kafé Hærverk, Oslo's live hotspot for a wide range of jazz and experimental music invited Master Oogway to do monthly concerts from August to December, bringing along a guest for each occasion. Two had to be moved to 2021 due to Covid restrictions, but the other three were recorded for possible use later. Initially, Rune Grammofon thought about doing a "best of" from all of the recordings, but after further listening it soon dawned on the label that the concert with Henriette Eilertsen was nothing less than magical. To make room for the 45-minute vinyl edition, Rune Grammofon had to drop one of the five pieces that were played on the night, and also make two minor edits. Other than that, this is what was played, there are no overdubs or cosmetic treatments. Henriette Eilertsen is part of the fertile and exciting environment around the Motvind label, and a member of Billy Meier and Andreas Røysum Ensemble. She released her solo debut Poems For Flute on Motvind in 2021. Håvard Nordberg Funderud finished his Bachelors at the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2018 and also studied in Gothenburg and Copenhagen. He is involved in several projects, Master Oogway being his priority. Lauritz Lyster Skeidsvoll and Karl Erik Horndalsveen are both educated from the same academy in Oslo as Håvard, while Martin Heggli Mellem is educated from the jazz program at NTNU in Trondheim. Happy Village is Master Oogway's third album, their second on Rune Grammofon. The music on the previous outing two years ago, Earth And Other Worlds (RCD 2213CD/RLP 3213LP) was all written by Håvard, while the music on Happy Village is written by Karl Erik, one track co-written with Håvard. Happy Village finds the band in a more lyrical and exuberant mood than before, in no small part due to Henriette's beautiful contributions. Personnel: Håvard Nordberg Funderud - guitar and 12-string guitar; Lauritz Heitmann Skeidsvoll - saxophone; Martin Heggli Mellem - drums; Karl Erik Hornsdalsveen - double bass; Henriette Eilertsen - flute. The album was brilliantly mixed in Athletic Sound by Dag Erik Johansen.
Mindgames follows Strangelove Music's previous issue of Sjunne Ferger's early singles and soundtrack work on Childrens Mind (SL 106LP, 2021). Occupying its own hinterland within Scandinavia's early '80s electronic/progressive movements, Mindgames navigates a lifetime of musical and personal exploration by Sjunne Ferger. Child jazz drummer prodigy, arts venue operator, music teacher and Aikido practitioner, a bewildering array of personal and creative influences are distilled into the Örebro native's only long player. Written around a new wave context, his own jazz fusion roots and at times with an unintentionally Balearic outcome, Sjunne goes some way to conjuring up a singular sounding album of the time. Narratives of love and loss, calls to self-empowerment and mindfulness, the new age zeal throughout follows Sjunne's own awakening. Its music caught in meditative reflection one moment before propelling into ecstatic revelation the next, with Sjunne's collective Exit providing electric backing throughout. Propelled by the drummer's beat, it's hard not to be caught up with Sjunne's personal vision of a "Polymood Music" LP painstakingly transferred and fully remastered from the original tapes, with new liner notes and photography.
LP version. 180 gram clear vinyl. For Susanna, nothing happens in a vacuum. Every creative act responds to what's come before. And by exploring this dialogue, you can learn new things about ourselves and the world. This idea has inspired the Norwegian artist throughout her near two-decade career. It's behind her unforgettable covers of classic songs and her interpretations of the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch. And it found its purest expression on 2020's Baudelaire & Piano, a stripped-back song cycle setting texts from the 19th century French poet's "The Flowers of Evil". In Elevation, its follow-up, Susanna's engagement with Baudelaire's work blossoms into a collaborative enterprise, combining tape, spoken word, and song. The result is a unique musical conversation spanning centuries and disciplines; a "time travelling" project, as Susanna puts it, that moves between creative dimensions. She brings collaborators back into the process, nurturing connections made over a series of Baudelaire & Piano live shows presented in 2020 and 2021. Composer improviser Delphine Dora offers teasing renditions of the original French texts, layering spoken recitation and otherworldly singing in a set of atmospheric vignettes. And tape recorder soundscapes from Stina Stjern -- familiar from Susanna's Hieronymous Bosch project Garden of Earthly Delights (2019) -- frame the album with hiss, hum, and soft fingers of melody, like mist settling on a landscape. These contributions deepen the album's mystery and its evocative power. The result is an engrossing interleaving of sounds and registers; and, as Susanna describes it, "an intuitive and collective ceremony of the ethereal and mystical in life." Elevation features work by American occultist artist Cameron (1922-1995), an adherent of Aleister Crowley's Thelema movement. Her illustrations "Witch Woman", "Pan", and "Danse" adorn the release.
Oslo-based artist Susanna has released music as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra and "just" Susanna since 2004, through labels like Rune Grammofon, ECM Records, and her own outlet SusannaSonata. She has collaborated with artists like Jenny Hval, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and John Paul Jones, highly active with different projects, songwriting/composing, and making personal interpretations of other people's songs.
"Legitimate 450 pressing on black vinyl with insert. Super Rare Florida swamp psych from 1972."
"The following story might be bullshit (drug use and memory enhancements): years ago, I was sitting at home staring into the middle distance and the phone on the wall rang (that should denote how long ago this was). On the other end was the booker from The Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, who had never called me before. She was excited about the show they had that night and was calling people to invite them. Apparently, the night before a band called Laddio Bolocko had played and were so mesmerizing, so strong that they had offered them the next night, which was open. I was intrigued as no band had ever warranted this invite previously to my knowledge. This was new and exciting territory. I had my ass and ears handed to me that evening. Scorching, pummeling, deep waters ran over me as I stood, beer in hand, mouth open. My memory may be embellishing but I remember a sax as big as me, drums that were physically hanging on by a thread, and twin electric strings that reeled sinister sprites over my head in outwardly circular patterns. Aggressive, far-out fractals burned in my brain. I had never seen anything like this band, and never have again. That's why it's so shocking to wait around all these years for someone to pick up the thread and re-release these three perfect recordings on LP for the first time... and still be waiting. So, I'm happy to announce, Castle Face is here with a 3xLP remedy. We've been working with all the original members of Laddio Bolocko and sifting through to put together this concise LP box set of what is arguably their strongest home studio recorded material. Included here (for the first time on wax) are 'Strange Warmings Of Laddio Bolocko', 'In Real Time' and 'As If By Remote'. Includes former members of Dazzling Killmen, Panicsville, the Psychic Paramount, and Mars Volta. For fans of Can, This Heat, The Residents, improvisation (really, they are hard to compare, they are so singular in sound)." --John Dwyer
Éliane Radigue: "We live in a universe filled with waves. Not only between the Earth and the Sun but all the way down to the tiniest microwaves and inside it is the minuscule band that lies between the 60 Hz and the 12,000 to 15,000 Hz that our ears turn into sound. There are many wavelengths in the ocean too and we also come into contact with it physically, mentally and spiritually. That explains the title of this body of work which is called Occam Ocean. The main aim of this work is to focus on how the partials are dealt with. Whether they come in the form of micro beats, pulsations, harmonics, subharmonics -- which are extremely rare but have a transcendent beauty -- bass pulsations -- the highly intangible aspect of sound. That's what makes it so rich. When Luciano Pavarotti gave free rein to the full force of his voice the conductor stopped beating time and you could hear the richness in its entirety. Music in written form, or however it is relayed, ultimately remains abstract. It's the performer, the person playing it who brings it to life. So, the person playing the instrument must come first. I've always thought of performers and their instruments as one. They form a dual personality. No two performers, playing the same instrument, have the same relationship with that instrument -- the same intimate relationship. This is where the process of making the work personal begins. The purely personal task of deciding on the theme or image that we're going to work from. Obviously, because this is Occam Ocean, the theme is always related to water. It could be a little stream, a fountain, the distant ocean, rivers. Out of the fifty or so musicians I've worked with no two themes have been the same. Each musician's theme is completely unique and completely personal. The music does the talking. This is one of those art forms that manages to express the many things that words aren't able to. Even at an early stage, all those ideas need to have been brought together."
Composed by Éliane Radigue. Performed by Frédéric Blondy. Commissioned by Organ Reframed, curated by Claire M Singer. Recorded on January 8, 2020 by Daniel Halford at Union Chapel on the organ built by "Father" Henry Willis, 1877. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Cover organ photography: Daniela Sbrisny. Designed by Philip Marshall, Berlin, June 2021. This commission was generously supported by Arts Council England, the London Community Foundation/Cockayne, PRS Foundation, and SACEM.
Famed free jazz concert registration of an early New Direction for the Art performance. Recorded in 1971. The performance by Takayanagi Masayuki New Direction for the Art at the Gen'yasai festival on August 14, 1971 was an intense, bruising collision between the radical, anti-establishment politics of the period in Japan and the febrile avant-garde music that had begun to emerge a few years before. 1962, Takayanagi, bassist Kanai Hideto and painter Kageyama Isamu went on to form an AACM-style musicians' collective called the New Century Music Research Institute. Every Friday, members gathered at Gin-Paris, a chanson bar in the fashionable Ginza district of Tokyo, to push the outer limits of jazz creativity. But the pivotal moment for his music was the creation a new trio version of his New Directions group in August 1969, with the free bassist Yoshizawa Motoharu and a young drummer Toyozumi (Sabu) Yoshisaburō. Experiments eventually led to the creation of two basic frameworks for improvisation that Takayagi referred to as "Mass Projection" and "Gradually Projection". La Grima (tears), the piece that was played at the Gen'yasai festival, is a mass projection and listening to it, you can get a clear sense of what Takayanagi was aiming at. Mass projection involves a dense, speedy and chaotic coloring in of space that destroys the listener's perception of time, and thus of musical development. The ferocity of the performance of La Grima at the Gen'yasai Festival in Sanrizuka on August 14, 1971 was consciously grounded by Takayanagi in a particular historical moment, ripe with conflict and violence. A month after the festival, on September 16, three policemen would die during struggles at the site. This was the context that the three-day Gen'yasai Festival existed within. The line-up reflected the radical politics of the movement, with leading free jazz musicians like Takayanagi, Abe Kaoru, and Takagi Mototeru appearing alongside radical ur-punkers Zuno Keisatsu, heavy electric blues bands like Blues Creation, and Haino Keiji's scream-jazz unit Lost Aaraaff. New Direction for the Arts trio topped the bill on the opening day, playing an aggressive, uncompromising "mass projection" set of polyphonic improvisation. Alongside drummer Hiroshi Yamazaki and saxophonist Kenji Mori, Takayanagi soloed hard and continuously for forty minutes. This was performance as precisely calibrated metaphor: three musicians responding to the demands of the moment with instinctive force and fury, untethered by rules, leaderless yet not rudderless (the direction part of the group's name was no accident). The piece was entitled La Grima and the fusion between the palpable anger of the performance and hopeless sadness of its title were also perfectly apt for the situation. This was a fight that the state was always going to win. A union of anger, sorrow and malevolence that can be placed nowhere effective, all it can do is find expression and channeling. Old-style gatefold with rare photographs and extensive liner notes by Alan Cummings.
Ferocious JP/US free jazz bomb. A rare meeting between the NYC free jazz scene and the Japanese free music scene. Following hot on the heels of the first, mid-sixties generation of Japanese free jazz players like Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi, Yōsuke Yamashita, Motoharu Yoshizawa, etc., an exciting second wave of younger players began to emerge in the seventies. Two of its leading members were the saxophonist Kazutoki Umezu and multi-instrumentalist Yoriyuki Harada. Both were post-war babies and immigrants to the city, Umezu from Sendai in the north and Harada from Shimane in the west. They first met as students in the clarinet department at the Kunitachi College of Music in western Tokyo. The two began to play together in an improvised duo, with Umezu on clarinet and bass clarinet and Harada on piano. Experiments led to the creation of a trio, with a high-school student called Tetsuya Morimura on drums, that they decided to name Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai (Lifestyle Improvement Committee) in joking reference to the Marxist discourse of the student radicals of the time. Around 1973, Umezu and Harada decided to call it a day and go their separate ways. Umezu began playing with the Toshinori Kondo Unit and Harada with the Tadashi Yoshida Quintet. In 1974 Harada formed his own trio and began to play at jazz coffeehouses across Japan. In September 1974 Umezu travelled alone to New York. Umezu soon became known on the scene as Kappo and he started to make connections with some of the young musicians. Umezu wrote to Harada and invited him to come to New York. He accepted and arrived in the city in July 1975. Harada and Umezu took the opportunity to resume their artistic collaboration. Their first concert together in over two years took place on July 20th at another loft, Sunrise Studios at 122 2nd Avenue. Umezu invited along trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah. Abdullah led his own group and was a long-term Sun Ra sideman. William Parker, one of the key figures in the loft jazz scene of the period, was on bass. Abdullah also brought along Rashid Sinan on drums. Sinan played on Frank Lowe's immortal Black Beings (1973) and Arthur Doyle's Alabama Feeling (1978). By all accounts the evening was a huge success, with speed and dynamism of Harada's piano playing gaining him lots of support. Since they had managed to save some money from their day jobs, Umezu and Harada decided to set up a recording session with the same line-up on August 11 at Studio We, where there was a well-equipped studio on the third floor. On their first recordings, the humor element, which is key to their sound, is not yet present. Instead, there is a febrile sense of joy in creation and connection. Old-style gatefold with rare photographs and liner notes by Alan Cummings.
2022 repress. R.I.P. Milford Graves, 1941-2021. Please watch the amazing Jake Meginsky documentary film "Milford Graves Full Mantis" if you haven't had the chance (streaming freely in the world).
Corbett Vs. Dempsey presents a reissue of Milford Graves's Bäbi, originally issued in 1977 on Graves's own IPS label. This is the first reissue of one of the most legendary albums in the history of free music. Recorded live in concert in 1976, when Graves' trio with saxophonists Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover was at the height of its powers, Bäbi is a testament to the absolutely unique approach the drummer had established for himself. He had reconfigured the drum kit, removing the second heads on all the drums and replacing the snare with two toms, which allowed him a much more nuanced sense of indirectness in his multi-directional adventures in time. The track "Ba" remains one of the most astonishing feats of percussion alchemy ever waxed, as funky as ten slap bassists and as free as an exploding grenade. Doyle and Glover are incendiary, too, inspired by Graves to new and shocking heights of achievement, their hoarse cries and whistling split-tones carried to thrilling plateaus on the energy of Graves' hands and feet. The original tapes for the session have been lost, so the reissue was lovingly remastered from virgin vinyl, itself now worth a mint. In 2017, Graves discovered a previously unknown tape in his archives featuring the same trio at its inception, in home recordings made seven years earlier, in 1969. Graves pummels a huge gong while Glover plays an instrument that, after sounding like none ever known, turns out to be bass clarinet. Extreme music recorded up close and very hot, it is among the most searing sessions never heard, until now. Rounding out the two-CD package are three previously unpublished photos by Gérard Rouy, and the original LP cover design by Graves himself.
In the first years of its existence, starting in 1997, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet worked as a collective, inviting all and any of its participants to contribute compositions to the band's repertoire. Eventually, the Tentet would jettison scores and pre-planned structures altogether, opting for free improvisation, but on their early tours and initial recordings they played pieces written by the various band members. A marathon set of summer studio sessions in 2002, just off a US tour, yielded two CDs for Okka Disk, A Short Visit to Nowhere and Broken English. Of two Mars Williams compositions from the session, one was recorded but never issued... until now. Featuring the original line-up of the band, which combined seven stellar Chicagoans -- Williams, Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang, and Hamid Drake -- with Mats Gustafsson, Joe McPhee, and the band's namesake, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet was a sensationally versatile free music ensemble, capable of going into all sorts of unexpected territory. The group sports a four-saxophone frontline, with twin trombones (McPhee is on valve trombone here), two strings, and a ferocious drum section featuring Zerang and Drake, who had already worked together intimately for more than 25 years at this point. Recently rediscovered in his vaults by Williams, newly mixed by original engineer John McCortney, Ultraman vs. Alien Metron is a lost classic of improvised music by one of the premier improvised music bands of its era. With preposterous juxtapositions of mood, from monstrous lurching heavy rock (underpinning the Japanese Godzilla-esque theme) to hard-swinging free bop and even an incredibly delicate, poignant ballad section, this feature-length track (18+ minutes) is chock full of rock 'em sock 'em goodness. For its maiden voyage on vinyl, Corbett vs. Dempsey has prepared a special package, with artwork and design by Brötzmann, a one-sided LP, the other side featuring a silkscreened work by Brötzmann.
Tribal electronics, dubby downbeat, sedated house, and disoriented breaks coming from Molto Brutto's Andreas Kunzmann. Following on from his essential reissue of II aka Molto Brutto's feverish and freaky second LP (GBR 034LP, 2021), Basso fires up the Growing Bin lathe for a further foray into AK's eccentric catalog. Recorded between 1998-2005 and unreleased until now, these genre-fluid tracks retain the unorthodox charm central to the Austrian's art. Sometimes dancing is just falling to music, and Andreas lives the life unbalanced.
"A classic masterpiece from 1981, never re-released on CD before. Originally 1000 copies pressed on orange/red vinyl. 120 copies were sold through Rough Trade and Virgin Records. 800 copies were bought and later destroyed by the United Dairies label, making this record even more rare. Hastings of Malawi were Heman Pathak, David Hodes and John Grieve. They recorded the album in one night in 1981 with no plan and no idea of what they were doing. They played drums, clarinet, synthesizer and piano but also made use of things that they found lying around the studio -- old records, cookery books, telephone directories and a telephone. The recordings were played down the phone to randomly dialed numbers and the reactions added to the recording. All three had been involved in the recording of the first Nurse with Wound album Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella and had contributed metal scrapings, piano, effects, clarinet and guitar during the session."
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