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BT 037LP
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$32.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/4/2018
Tint is the first new solo recording from Joe Talia in over a decade. Australian-born but now based in Tokyo, Talia is known to many listeners as a drummer (frequently collaborating both live and in the studio with artists such as Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke) and as a recording and mixing engineer responsible for dozens of releases across the fields of contemporary experimental music, wayward pop, and jazz. Alongside James Rushford, he is also responsible for one of the most legendary releases in the Kye records catalog, the creaking electronic morass of Manhunter (2013). Lovingly crafted over many months in his tiny Tokyo studio, Tint is an album-length electroacoustic suite that brings together Talia's expertise as percussionist, studio engineer, and performer on analog electronic instruments (primarily modular synth and Revox tape machine). Ranging from minimalist austerity to kosmische lushness, Tint refreshingly refuses the dark and moody sonic palette of much contemporary electroacoustic music in favor of an airy, at times almost weightless sound-world of gliding tones, skittering percussion, and burbling field recordings. Drawing inspiration from Jean-Claude Eloy's epic concrète love letter to Tokyo, Gaku-No-Michi (2010), Talia makes extensive use of his own recordings of his new home, but removes any sense of audio verite, abstracting them into transparent glosses of outdoor ambience or unidentifiable chimes and creaks. Flowing seamlessly between distinct episodes, Tint is compositionally controlled while retaining a sense of played spontaneity, eventually building to a maelstrom of analog synth zaps and tape manipulated percussion that reflects Talia's deep engagement with the relentless yet constantly shifting dynamics of free jazz. Stunning photographs by Joe Talia; Album design by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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2LP
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BT 036LP
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Black Truffle make Oren Ambarchi's Grapes From The Estate available once more on vinyl. Originally released on CD on Touch in 2004 (TO 061CD) and reissued on Southern Lord as a limited double-LP in 2006 during Ambarchi's tenure as a member of Sunn O))), Grapes From The Estate was a landmark release for Ambarchi, seeing him expand his sonic palette beyond the clipped, bass-heavy electric guitar tones he was known for at that point. Incorporating subtle layers of strings, keyboards, percussion over a bedrock of his signature guitar tones, in retrospect this album can be seen as the beginning of a broadening and evolution in Ambarchi's work that would lead to his acclaimed, densely layered epics for Editions Mego, Quixotism (EMEGO 202CD/LP, 2014) and Hubris (EMEGO 227CD/LP, 2016). Beginning with the shuddering pure tones of opener "Corkscrew", which looks back to previous guitar-only releases such as Suspension (TO 033.18CD, 2001), the album's next two pieces show a progressive broadening of the instrumental palette and a corresponding move away from textural abstraction and sustained tones towards more traditional notions of musicality. This reached its high point on the album's third piece, the fifteen-minute long "Remedios The Beauty", where guitars, both acoustic and electric, strings, piano, and bells build from a murmur to an interlocking web of repeating melodic patterns over gently swinging brushed snare and cymbals. The epic closer, "Stars Aligned, Webs Spun", returns you to a space populated only by the electric guitar, but unlike everything Ambarchi had produced up until this point in his career, the piece has a liquid, psychedelic edge that looks forward to the shimmering harmonics of his more recent work. As Brendan Walls wrote at the time of the original release, this is "another outpouring of personal, intimate and enduring music from Oren Ambarchi". Original artwork and design by Jon Wozencroft. Redesigned by Stephen O'Malley. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Gatefold sleeve.
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LP
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BT 034LP
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Black Truffle present a reissue of a landmark UK release, Max Eastley, Steve Beresford, Paul Burwell, and David Toop's Whirled Music, originally released on Quartz in 1980. Remastered and cut at 45RPM by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering Berlin. Includes a 24-page booklet with archival materials and notes from David Toop, alongside contemporary reviews, flyers, notes on the instruments and performance documentation; Gatefold sleeve.
"[Whirled Music is] one of the key documents of the inventive and energetic scene around the London Musicians Collective in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Originally released on Toop's own Quartz label in 1980, the LP features a remarkable series of performances made entirely with whirled and swung instruments and objects. Part of the second generations of British free improvising musicians, the prolific scene centered around the performers heard here chafed at the limitations present within the music and ideology of improvising legends such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Tony Oxley, and John Stevens. Where the first generations of British free improvisers often demonstrated a rigorous commitment to non-idiomatic free improvisation and instrumental virtuosity, musicians like Beresford reconnected with the dada antics of figures like Han Bennink and surrendered to joyful musical promiscuity, gleefully disrupting expectations around 'serious' improvised music through quotations (of anything from Beethoven to reggae) and deliberate amateurism. . . . Beginning in 1979, Whirled Music was the title given to a series of performances in which a variety of instruments and objects, both home-made and store bought, traditional and invented, would be whirled to produce sound. In addition to variations on traditional instruments such as the bullroarer, Whirled Music also made use of whirled whistles, hand drums, radios, and microphones. Due to the danger this represented for both performers and audiences, the performers wore protective masks and were separated from the audience by a net. . . . Presented in glorious cassette-recorded room fidelity, the LP's first side features a single extended live performance in which percussive chattering, resonant gong-like tones, mysterious wind tones, and swells of delirious noise join together to create a sonic landscape as reminiscent of an environmental recording (wind in the trees, the squawking of birds) as of an ethnographic recording of the music of an unknown civilization. Although purely acoustic, the music has an unstable, dispersed quality reminiscent of the pioneering live electronics of the Sonic Art Union or even early Voice Crack. The LP's second side presents a series of shorter excerpts, including some beautifully sparse outdoor recordings where the sounds of the whirled instruments blend indistinguishably into the backdrop of environmental sounds." --Francis Plagne
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LP
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BT 033LP
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Black Truffle present the premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s and is perhaps best known for his 1970 piece I Am Sitting In a Room (LCD 1013CD). He has written a remarkable catalog of instrumental works that focus on phenomena produced by the interference between closely tuned pitches, often using pure electronic tones produced by oscillators in combination with single instruments. Demonstrating the restless creative drive of an artist now in his 80s, the two recent works presented here both feature the electric guitar, an instrument Lucier has just recently begun to explore. In "Criss-Cross", Lucier's first composition for electric guitars, two guitarists using e-bows sweep slowly up and down a single semitone, beginning at opposite ends of the pitch range. The piece exemplifyies Lucier's desire not to "compose" in the conventional sense, but rather to eliminate everything that "distracts from the acoustical unfolding of the idea". In this immaculately controlled performance of "Criss-Cross" by Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley, for whom the piece was written in 2013, a seemingly simple idea creates a rich array of sonic effects -- not simply beating patterns, which gradually slow down as the two tones reach unison and accelerate as they move further apart, but also the remarkable phenomenon of sound waves spinning in elliptical patterns through space between the two guitar amps. In the comparatively lush "Hanover", Lucier draws inspiration from the photograph on the cover, an image of the Dartmouth Jazz Band taken in 1918 featuring Lucier's father on violin. Using the instrumentation present in the photograph, Lucier creates an unearthly sound world of sliding tones from violin, alto and tenor saxophones, piano, vibraphone (bowed), and three electric guitars (which take the place of the banjos present in the photograph). Waves of slow glissandi create thick, complex beating patterns, gently punctuated by repeated single notes from the piano. The result is a piece that is simultaneously both unperturbably calm and constantly in motion. LP design by Stephen O'Malley; Includes inner sleeve with a portrait of Alvin Lucier by Kris Serafin. "Criss-Cross" recorded at Studios Ina GRM, Paris by Francois Bonnet and mixed by Alvin Lucier. "Hanover" recorded in Zurich and mixed by Alvin Lucier. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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2LP
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BT 030LP
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Black Truffle presents the eighth full-length release from the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi. Over the course of four LP sides, the October 2014 concert documented here ranges from rock power trio dynamics to maelstroms of analog electronics. Once again, the three demonstrate their commitment to pushing into new areas of instrumental exploration and group interaction. Where their previous releases featured extended vocal workouts from Haino, his vocalizations here are restricted to the occasional impassioned cry, putting the focus squarely on instrumental interplay. More than ever before, this feels like the work of three equals, with O'Rourke or Ambarchi taking the lead role as often as Haino does. The four pieces presented here each focus on extended development. The first side is propelled by Ambarchi's busy, Jack DeJohnette-esque cymbal and tom work, which provides a skittering yet insistent pulse over which Haino and O'Rourke's FX-saturated strings rise and fall, momentarily converging for passages of near stasis before wandering through areas of gently sour discord; O'Rourke's use of a six-string bass here boosts the harmonic density of the music and often makes his contribution difficult to distinguish from Haino's guitar. On the second side, O'Rourke uses his pedals to make his bass near unrecognizable, generating a squelching, harmonically unstable riff that Ambarchi accompanies with a semi-martial snare pattern. Haino moves between frenetic octave-doubled fuzz riffing and streams of feedback. The third side is the most abstract; Continuing Haino's explorations of new instruments, the side opens with a long passage of toy piano. Alongside occasional vocal interjections from Haino (singing in English), Ambarchi creates delicate textures on cymbals and metallic percussion while O'Rourke, for the first time in this group, performs on the EMS Synthi. With Haino joining in with his own electronics, the side eventually builds to a chaotic climax. Beginning with a sequence of "fourth world" drums and flute, the final side unfolds an epic build-up over a hypnotic foundation of pounding toms. Moving from flute to vocals to electronics, Haino eventually picks up the guitar in the second half of the piece, igniting a spectral blur over driving rhythms from bass and drums that eventually builds to a frenzied climax. Cover image by Traianos Pakioufakis; Live action pics by Mike Kubeck. LP design by Stephen O'Malley; Gatefold sleeve. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.
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LP
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BT 031LP
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Black Truffle present the first ever vinyl reissue of legendary performance and sound artist John Duncan's forgotten gem Klaar, originally released by Extreme in 1991 and partly created in collaboration with Andrew McKenzie (The Hafler Trio). Duncan is perhaps most well-known for his notorious early performances pieces, which explored violence, self-denial, and the establishment of extreme psychological and physical states in both artist and audience. Alongside these transgressive experiments, Duncan began to create audio works primarily using short wave radio. Where some of Duncan's earlier recordings are composed of magnificently sculpted but abrasive walls of noise, Klaar, recorded while Duncan was living in Amsterdam, occupies a more meditative territory. Opening with "Delta", which layers long tones seemingly sourced from slowed down voices over a distant, watery field recording, the remainder of the first side is occupied with the epic title piece, which arranges shortwave radio abstraction, vocal experiments, and field recordings (street sounds, fireworks, monastic chants) into an episodic cinema for the ear. The second side is dominated by the long, brooding "The Immense Room", where layers of shortwave interference and field recordings are gradually built up into a pulsing, wavering bed of sound infused with a subtly disturbing sense of psychological unrest. This rises to the surface near the end of the piece as sexual moans and ominous rumbles crisscross the stereo image before being abruptly brought to a halt. A singular work of electroacoustic composition, Klaar is both compositionally sophisticated and infused with a sense of mystery and a vital reality often lacking in more academic experimental music; it sits proudly alongside contemporaneous recordings by Duncan's friends and collaborators Jim O'Rourke and Christoph Heemann and is a must for anyone interested in their work. Cover image and John Duncan portrait by Traianos Pakioufakis. LP design by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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12"
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BT 032EP
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What happens when Oren Ambarchi is backed up by the world's greatest monster riff legends from his beloved homeland? Find out in the second volume of this infamous series where endless riffing and ecstatic shredding is the order of the day. Bonus intro track features some band from New York. Yah Boobay! Deluxe sleeve with photography by Crys Cole and Theresia Pfaender. Design by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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2LP
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BT 029LP
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Sold out, no repress planned. Hotel Record is the second release from the duo/couple of crys cole and Oren Ambarchi, following on from Sonja Henies vei 31 (PLANAM 031LP, 2014). Where their debut recording presented a disquieting portrait of the erotic dimension of romantic intimacy, the follow-up continues to explore the pair's simultaneously musical and romantic relationship in a more subtle fashion, presenting four long-form pieces that touch on the variety of forms the life of this couple takes: as a musical duo, as a pair of travelers to exotic locations, as opponents in a game of cards... Each of the double LP's four sides presents a distinct sound-world, yet each manages to attain the same suspended, half-sleeping feeling, outlining a space where improbable combinations of the electronic and the acoustic, of extreme closeness and amorphous distance, occurring with the gentle insistence of a dream. The opening "Call Myself" calmly unfolds a fabric of long tones from electronic organ and guitar, combining the sliding, aleatoric effects of classic David Behrman with a more hands-on feel. Over the top of this slowly shifting tonal bed, cole's voice mutters unintelligibly into a Buchla synth, teasing the listener by suggesting a meaning that remains always out of the ear's reach. "Francis Debacle (Uno)" builds on the foundations of a heavily amplified session of the titular card game, overlaying vocal murmurs and exhalations and mysterious room-sounds to create an impossible aural environment. On "Burrata", a palette of vintage 1980s digital synthesizer sounds combined with guitars create an irregular texture of lush chords and bubbling melodic details, into which cole's voice processed by a vocoder, is interwoven, reading fragments of romantic correspondence. Finally, on "Pad Phet Gob", field recordings made in Thailand become an ambiguously acoustic/electronic rainforest, eventually giving way to a mysterious, wavering electronic tone-field punctuated by sibilant, popping mouth-sounds. Carving out an intimate and human sonic space across a diverse array of compositional approaches, sound sources, fidelities, and textures, Hotel Record is the latest dispatch from the continuing explorations of a unique duo. Ambarchi and cole reimagine electro-acoustic music, not simply as "abstract" sound, but as a diary, a love poem, a dream. Comes in deluxe gatefold sleeve with photography by crys cole and LP design via Stephen O'Malley; Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.
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LP
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BT 028LP
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Limited repress. Black Truffle presents a new issue of Annea Lockwood's classic 1970 tape piece "Tiger Balm", unavailable on vinyl for over thirty years, accompanied by two exquisite unreleased works for percussion and voice. "Created while Lockwood was living in the UK, the side-long 'Tiger Balm' is a singular work within the canon of tape music. Inspired by research into the ritual function of music, the piece explores the possibility of evoking ancient communal memories through sound. Breaking entirely with the dynamic language of the musique concrète tradition, Lockwood uses a select palette of mainly unprocessed sonic elements chosen for their mysterious and erotic characteristics (a purring cat, a heartbeat, gongs, slowed down jaw harp, a tiger, a woman's breath, a plane passing overhead), presenting at most two sounds at once. As one sound flows organically into the next, their shared characteristics are highlighted, opening a space of dream logic and mysterious associations between nature and culture, the ancient and the modern. The B side presents two pieces for percussion recorded here for the first time. 'Amazonia Dreaming' (1987), performed by Dominic Donato, uses unaccompanied snare drum and voice to evoke the nocturnal soundscape of the Amazon rainforest. Unorthodox techniques and materials (marbles, chopsticks, a plastic jar lid) transform the snare into a resonant field of sensual textures. 'Immersion' (1998), performed by Donato and Frank Cassara, is a slow-moving exploration of gentle beating tones, performed on marimba, tam tams, and gong. Like the other two works presented on this LP, it provides captivating proof of Lockwood's belief in the complexity that deep listening can reveal within seemingly simple sounds" --Francis Plagne. Comes in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with archival pictures and liner notes by Annea Lockwood; Includes the score to "Amazonia Dreaming"; LP design by Stephen O'Malley; Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.
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LP
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BT 027LP
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Nantes, France-based drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie presents People Pleaser. Initially rising to prominence in Australia as a drummer in the fields of jazz and improvised music, Guthrie later turned increasingly toward electronics and amplified percussion, developing an idiosyncratic style of electroacoustic performance characterized by shimmering metallic textures, rapid-fire textural transformations, and aggressively high volume. Guthrie has since returned to the drum kit in both solo and collaborative work, pushing at the limits of his formidable technical abilities as a player in the free jazz tradition and working variations on short rhythmic units into an endless flow of non-metered pulse. Although drawing on many aspects of Guthrie's past work, People Pleaser stands alone in his catalog. Working intuitively over a period of three weeks, Guthrie crafted a suite of song-length pieces that combine his drumming with electronics, field recordings, and sampled detritus. Inspired by the rough-and-ready sampling style of producers like the RZA, J Dilla, and Knxwledge, and by the endless possibilities of musique concrète, People Pleaser uses a highly divergent array of sound sources, building pieces from drum and percussion tracks left over from other projects, audio ripped from skate videos, noise electronics, fragments of a police interrogation, and anything else ready to hand. Guthrie's unique rhythmic sensibility is the thread drawing all these elements together, his drum performances propulsively rhythmic yet insistently irregular in a way that sometimes brings to mind the uniquely open rhythmic space carved out by early Weather Report and other classic fusion. Drawing together manifold influences in an entirely sui generis way, People Pleaser is a raw, exciting, and surprisingly accessible peek into the laboratory of a unique sensibility. Designed by Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, August 2016.
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LP
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BT 025LP
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Black Truffle present Reverse Tree, the new LP from the acclaimed duo of Eyvind Kang and Jessika Kenney. The two are musicians who have established themselves as powerful voices working at a unique intersection of contemporary composition, improvisation, and Asian traditional music forms. Either individually or as a pair, they have worked in contexts ranging from performances of traditional Persian and Javanese music to collaborations with Sunn O))), but their work together as a duo, on The Face Of The Earth (2012) and Aestuarium (SOMA 002LP, 2011), most clearly represents the central concerns of their diverse practices: a music of the inner life of sound, demanding ritualistic focus and promising heightened sensations. On Reverse Tree, the duo expand their work together into the realm of the chamber ensemble, presenting two side-long works that feature Kenney's voice and Kang's viola alongside a multitude of other instrumentalists. Kang's "Thoughts On Being Exiled To The Frontier, For Lord Wei", inspired by a text by the Tang dynasty poet Hsueh T'ao, features an all-star international ensemble: Kang, Kenney, maverick Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov on violin, Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir, and guitarists Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley. The piece is primarily composed of irregular patterns of pizzicato notes and guitar harmonics, gently falling in and out of sync and providing a subtly unstable support for Kenney's voice, which at times is reminiscent of Michiko Hirayama's classic performances of Scelsi. Drawing on 20th century instrumental techniques, alternate tuning systems, non-western music and the experience of nature, the piece opens a space both serene and subtly uneasy. Kenney's "Elm" features Kenney and vocalist Nova Ruth (Filastine, Twin Sista) alongside an ensemble of strings and Seattle's Gamelan Pacifica, performing on Javanese instruments tuned to the slendro scale. An uncanny timbre created by bowing the keys of the Gamelan's instruments, supported by bowed harmonics from the strings, is heard consistently throughout the piece. After a long introductory section in which this harmonic cloud slowly descends from shimmering high notes to rumbling bass, the vocalists enter, singing a slow and stately setting of a 19th century Surakarta poem (attributed to Mangkunegara IV). The poem deals with the idea of a form of knowledge achieved through deeds, as a practice and state of the heart. Presented in a deluxe sleeve designed by Stephen O'Malley; Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker; Cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity.
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12"
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BT 024EP
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Oren Ambarchi's Editions Mego release, Hubris (EMEGO 227CD/LP, 2016), gets the remix treatment courtesy of electronic music legend Ricardo Villalobos. Villalobos expertly transforms Ambarchi's layered web of countless sustained and pulsating palm-muted guitars into a funky, mesmerizing and propulsive long-form piece. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin March 2016. Photograph by Estelle Hanania. Sculptures by Daniel Druet. Design by Stephen O'Malley.
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LP
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BT 026LP
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Black Truffle present the first vinyl issue of Keiji Haino's Milky Way. Originally released as a limited CD in Japan by the short lived Mom 'N' Dad Productions in 1993, this release documents a blistering live performance recorded in Kyoto in 1973, five years before the formation of the first line-up of Fushitsusha, and eight years before Haino's first solo album. Working with a mysterious set-up including primitive electronics, homemade acoustic instruments, piano and voice, Haino lets loose a single 48-minute psychedelic maelstrom, marrying the immersive echo-fields of kosmische music to the rough and ready hands-on feel of classic 1960s live electronics à la MEV or Robert Ashley's Wolfman. Despite the absence of guitar, this recording clearly lays the groundwork for the epic blowouts which were to make Haino's name in years to come, building up to a point of almost unbearable intensity in its final minutes as Haino's voice wails over a wall of distorted DIY electronics. At times presaging the psychedelic noise of C.C.C.C., Milky Way shows Haino's singular intensity and ritualistic performance style already in full flower at this early date in his long career. Presented in raw and immediate room fidelity (complete with dramatic tape drop-out), this is both an essential historical document and a classic performance in its own right. Presented in a deluxe heavyweight sleeve with an inner sleeve featuring Haino's poetry in Japanese, with an English translation by Alan Cummings. Original design by Keiji Haino & Yasunori Arai. LP reissue design via Stephen O'Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin June 2016.
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LP
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BT 023LP
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Black Truffle present Speak To Me, the sixth full-length release from 3/4HadBeenEliminated, the Italian trio of Stefano Pilia, Claudio Rocchetti and Valerio Tricoli. Based on source material recorded in Bologna and Berlin over the course of several years, the album is made up of two side-long pieces meticulously constructed in post-production by Tricoli in his singularly dense and unpredictable style. Although their live performances have always been entirely improvised, in their recorded work the group focuses on using improvised recordings as source material for compositions built up through layering, editing and analog manipulation, extending the practices of Teo Macero, Faust and This Heat. Melancholic instrumental ruminations sit alongside cracked electronics, concrete sounds and Tricoli's whispered vocals, drawn together into dense assemblages animated by gradual transformations and sudden jump cuts. Beginning from the abstractions of their self-titled debut release in 2004, the group embarked on a trajectory that saw them move toward near-song structures, Tricoli's voice becoming a dominant element amid an increasingly dense and layered production style. On Speak To Me, however, the listener feels confronted by the ghost of music, sonic memories echoing across a psychedelic expanse. Evacuated of any clear structure, the music becomes a reverb-saturated morass, from which crystalline details momentarily emerge: shimmering echoed guitar, bowed double bass, tactile hand percussion, skittering electronics. Suffused with a darkly pensive atmosphere, Speak To Me is an elegant summation of the distinctive blend of electroacoustic techniques, instrumental improvisation and contemporary psychedelia pioneered by 3/4HadBeenEliminated over the last decade. LP design by Stephen O'Malley with striking artwork by Stefano Pilia. Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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BT 022LP
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Restocked; Black Truffle present the first-ever vinyl issue of Alvin Curran's Natural History, originally released on cassette by Edition Giannozzo Berlin in 1983. A founding member of the radical electronic improvising group Musica Elettronica Viva, since the early 1970s Curran has developed an idiosyncratic body of solo work that occupies a unique position in the post-Cageian experimental tradition. Singularly undogmatic, Curran's work takes the Cageian experience as the starting point for a radical openness to all forms of music and sound. Refusing to abstract music from its human functions, his work draws on existing musical genres, cutting-edge electronics and environmental recordings to craft compositions that mimic the hazy texture of everyday life, moving from the abstract to the referential, from the observational to the emotive, from the structured to the random. As he reflects in the liner notes written especially for this edition: "This infinite stream of sound became my life and my music all at once". Curran's other classic solo works of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden (1975) and Canti Illuminati (1982) are elaborate collages that combine keyboard and voice improvisation and composition with field-recorded environments. Natural History consists entirely of field recordings from Curran's archive, arranged as a series of "still lifes", sometimes layered, but without any additional processing. Sounds recorded over the course of nearly twenty years, at Curran's home in Rome or while traveling: constructions sites, insects, children's toys, a piano being tuned, foghorns, familiar to admirers of Curran masterful Maritime Rites (2004), lovemaking, a singing neighbor. It is, as Curran says, an attempt to "put the sound of the entire world on a cassette tape". Heard against the backdrop of the increasing prevalence of field recordings in contemporary music over the last few years, Natural History is like a refreshing breeze, suffused with the joy of discovery. Gatefold sleeve with liner notes and photos by Alvin Curran and design by Stephen O'Malley. Vinyl cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates.
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2LP
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BT 021LP
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The remarkable series of releases from the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi continues with I wonder if you noticed "I'm sorry" Is such a lovely sound It keeps things from getting worse, which presents the entirety of an 80-minute set performed at Tokyo's SuperDeluxe in March 2014. While the trio's 2012 performance was divided into two releases (BT 011LP (2014) and BT 012LP (2015)), the single extended performance presented here ranges widely over terrain both new and familiar, from acoustic strings and collective chants to thunderous power trio moves. Throughout all of its transformations, the music here is some of the riskiest and most abstract the trio have yet committed to record. Beginning with chiming percussion reminiscent of Haino's 1995 classic Tenshi No Gijinka, the first side is dominated by Haino's impassioned vocals and performance on the bulgari, a traditional Turkish string instrument. The end of the second side presents a special treat: Haino's first recorded outing on the contrabass harmonica, from which he coaxes bizarre, wheezing textures against a backdrop of spacious bass and percussion. O'Rourke and Ambarchi rarely adopt here the classic rock roles essayed on earlier releases. O'Rourke's bass, which takes center-stage surprisingly often, is sometimes so heavily processed by his array of pedals that it becomes a shifting electronic mass; at other times his roving chromaticism suggests a sort of fuzzed-out free jazz. Ambarchi spends much of the set exploring areas of tumbling free pulse; and even when he locks into a constantly repeated figure on the set's third side, he gestures as much toward Ronald Shannon Jackson's stuttering marching band funk as toward any classic rock moves. When the trio finally moves in the final quarter of the performance into an extended passage of rock riffing, the payoff is immense, as they craft a thudding one-chord epic reminiscent of some of the early Fushitsusha classics before Haino returns to the bulgari, bringing the set back to where it began. Continuing to explore new instrumental and dynamic possibilities while remaining grounded in the trio's previous work, this set also brings with it a unique pleasure for the non-Japonophone listener: for the first time Haino sings many of his metaphysically brooding lyrics in English. Gatefold sleeve with gorgeous photographs by Jim O'Rourke, designed by Stephen O'Malley. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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LP
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BT 020LP
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"Pale Calling presents the fruits of the first collaboration between Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger and James Rushford, recorded at GRM studios, Paris in 2014. Although drawing on aspects of each member's solo works, the trio mark out their own unique territory, a mysterious space of slowly cycling electronics, distracted vocal mumbles and often unidentifiable field recordings. These two side-long pieces are composed of distinct layers that gently rise up and recede, obeying a dream-logic that feels entirely disconnected from traditional electro-acoustic composition, forming surreal sonic images in which half-remembered fragments of everyday life mix with the quiet intensity of dreams haunted by natural forces. Over the course of the first side a slowly thudding electronic pulse eventually gives way to a distant organ, detouring through reverberated guitar shimmers, moments of Ashley-esque vocal automatism and waves of insects and bats. The second side utilises similar ingredients, this time layered over the top of what sounds like radically slowed down film music. As the field recorded and electronic spray slowly builds, the listener is left with the impression of hearing the last moments of a dying television abandoned in a field overrun with animals and insects" --Francis Plagne. Artwork designed by Stephen O'Malley. Cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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BT 018LP
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2018 repress! First vinyl reissue of the landmark 1967 debut album by AMM, AMMMusic. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Exact replica sleeve by Stephen O'Malley. "Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form, replete with Keith Rowe's beautiful pop art cover and the terse aphorisms by the group that served as its original liner notes. A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label's founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager, Peter Jenner (the title of Pink Floyd's 'Flaming' is a tribute to AMM's 2018 repress forthcoming, available March/2018...'Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset'). Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British jazz avant-garde -- Keith Rowe and Lou Gare had played with the great progressive big band leader Mike Westbrook and Eddie Prévost played in a post-bop group with Gare -- AMM quickly evolved from a free jazz group into something decidedly more difficult to categorise. By the time these recordings were made, two more members had joined the group: another Westbrook associate, Lawrence Sheaff, and the radical composer Cornelius Cardew. Then at work on his masterpiece of graphic notation Treatise, Cardew brought with him extensive experience of the post-serialist and Cageian currents in contemporary composition. Using a combination of conventional instruments and unconventional methods of sound production (most famously Keith Rowe's prepared tabletop guitar, but also prepared piano and transistor radio), the group performed improvised pieces often running for over two hours and ranging from extended periods of silence to terrifying cacophonies. On AMMMusic, long tones sit next to abrasive thuds, the howl of uncontrolled feedback accompanies Cardew's purposeful piano chords, radios beam in snatches of orchestral music. AMM's clearest break with jazz-based improvisation concerned the idea of individuality. Initially through an engagement with eastern philosophy and mysticism and later though a politicized communitarianism, AMM sought to develop a collective sonic identity in which individual contributions could barely be discerned. In the performances captured on AMMMusic the use of numerous auxiliary instruments and devices, including radios played by three members of the group, contribute to the sensation that the music is composed as a single monolithic object with multiple facets, rather than as an interaction between five distinct voices." --Francis Plagne
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BT 019LP
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Limited repress. "The first vinyl release of Charlemagne Palestine's Godbear, a 1987 solo piano recording originally scheduled to sit alongside Sonic Youth and Swans in the catalogue of Glenn Branca's Neutral Records but eventually released on CD by the Dutch Barooni label in 1998. Although Palestine has worked in an enormous variety of media, his long form performances for solo piano are perhaps his most acclaimed works. Palestine immersed himself in the study of overtones throughout the 1960s, working first with carillons and then with electronic synthesis, searching for the 'golden sound'. Beginning in the early 1970s he continued his exploration of the complexities hidden within seemingly simple tones and intervals on the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano, the 'Rolls Royce' of pianos. With the piano's sustain pedal constantly depressed, Palestine hammers out rapidly repeated notes, allowing a complex cloud of overtones to rise above the percussive texture of the struck keys. Initially working with simple intervals such as octaves and fifths, Palestine gradually expanded the harmonic range of his piano performances over the years, while still retaining their ecstatically single-minded nature. Revisiting his signature piano style in 1987 after several years focusing on visual art, Godbear presents three distinct variations that demonstrate the development of his piano music after the classic recordings of the early 1970s. Occupying the entire first side, 'The Lower Depths' stages a slow descent from the piano's mid-range to the Bösendorfer's cavernous additional low octave, building into a thundering swarm of booming overtones. Breaking entirely with the stereotype of clinical minimalism, Palestine's journey to the depths embraces passages of darkly romantic melody before slowly ascending to its starting point. The version of 'Strumming Music' performed here condenses the developmental arc of the piece into eleven minutes, fanning out from a single octave to a complex harmonic wash that calls to mind Palestine's enthusiasm for Debussy and Ravel. 'Timbral Assault' is like an evil twin of 'Strumming Music,' transforming its insistency and harmonic complexity into aggressive intensity and creeping dissonance, foreshadowing Palestine's later collaborations with Christoph Heemann. A classic release, and one that, because of the variety of approaches surveyed within, serves as an ideal introduction to Palestine's ecstatic and mysterious sound world" --Francis Plagne. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve designed by Stephen O'Malley.
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BT 017LP
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"Sand/Layna is the first full-length solo release by Canadian sound artist crys cole. While cole is known to many through her collaborative work with a host of Canadian artists and internationals such as Oren Ambarchi, Keith Rowe, and James Rushford, this LP presents the first opportunity for an extended appreciation of her singular approach to amplified sound. Using contact and other microphones to amplify her interactions with small objects and the surfaces on which they rest, cole's work exists in a lineage of heavily amplified 'small sound' that stretches back to Cage's Cartridge Music. cole's approach to these materials and techniques is distinguished by its single-mindedness: rather than simply searching for interesting or attractive sounds, her performances attempt to illuminate the sonic properties of the specific objects and amplification devices she uses. Devoid of looping and complex processing, the sonic outcome of her work always retains an audible link to the handling of microphones and what they amplify. The awkward and sometimes even 'ugly' sounds of manipulated microphones and recording equipment thus sit comfortably alongside the mysterious crackle of amplified salt and the deep, musical resonance of a rubbed tabletop. This LP presents two pieces, recorded almost ten years apart. Sand, recorded in 2004, crafts a sustained texture from rubbed surfaces that transcends academic sound art tropes to recall the haunted environments of Massimo Toniutti and Small Cruel Party. The seemingly static structure of the piece allows the multitude of dynamic and timbral variations caused by the basic instability of cole's sound sources to come to the fore. In contrast, Layna, constructed between 2012 and 2013, lets loose a volatile stream of microscopic activity. Adding extremely amplified voice and domestic field recordings to the mix, the piece inhabits a space of bodily, almost sensual intimacy, moving beyond the Cageian tradition of small sounds to somewhere uncomfortably human" --Francis Plagne, Melbourne, January 2015. Artwork design by Lasse Marhaug. Vinyl cut made by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. LP-only release; edition of 300. ][Please note: there was an error with the labels which state 33rpm, it was actually cut at 45rpm]
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BT 015LP
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2017 repress. "Sleepwalker's Conviction documents a 2014 performance by Oren Ambarchi in collaboration with a 20-piece ensemble conducted by Ilan Volkov and featuring members of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Speak Percussion. Foregoing the rhythmic propulsion and distortion-saturated harmonics that have featured in much of Ambarchi's recent work, the LP's single 40-minute piece inhabits a hushed, almost static space of extended tones, percussive shimmer, and creaking strings. Rather than adopting the position of a soloist, Ambarchi allows his sub-bass guitar tones and swirling Leslie textures to blend seamlessly with the ensemble, made up of double basses, horns, and percussion. The group sound has a near-cavernous depth, as waves of low beating tones and distant percussive textures gently wash over one another, coalescing into an undulating mass. Steering clear of bombast and new music clichés, the result is a work of meditative beauty that touches on the haunted ambience of late Luigi Nono, the submerged sonics of Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic, and the melancholy rituals of Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk's Mirror, while remaining unmistakably marked by the singular sensibility Ambarchi has developed over countless performances and recordings" --Francis Plagne. Design by Stephen O'Malley with cover artwork by crys cole. Vinyl cut made by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
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LP+CD
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BT 014LP
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A milestone originally released in 1985 on the legendary Broken Flag label, Giancarlo Toniutti's La Mutazione is renowned in certain circles as a classic and with good reason. The album comprises two subtle and haunting side-long explorations of dark cosmic electronics akin to Klaus Schulze, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Conrad Schnitzler filtered through the lens of Maurizio Bianchi, Whitehouse, Nurse With Wound, and The New Blockaders. At the time, Toniutti had just enrolled at the Venice Conservatory of Music with a heady amount of education in Stockhausen, Schaeffer, et al. These three musical poles come together in this beautiful and unsettling construction of layered static, analog synth explorations, concrete sounds, and field recordings. This limited edition reissue is an exact replica of the original Broken Flag LP release, with remastered audio and an inner sleeve containing archival photos and sketches from the period in which the work was created. This edition also includes a bonus CD of unreleased material from Toniutti's cassette archive featuring a collage of sound sketches recorded during the same time period, thus giving the listener a wider view into the sound-world that helped form La Mutazione. Black Truffle is proud to present La Mutazione on vinyl for the first time since its original 1985 issue. A landmark release, its influence is still being felt throughout the dark corners of experimental music.
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BT 012LP
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"At this point, it can justifiably be said that Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi have become one of the leading groups in experimental music. This, their sixth release, presents the entire second set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the first set is available on Black Truffle as Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully Away Is It a Lack of Contentment That Stirs Affection for Those Things Said to Be as of Yet Unseen). While the first set of the evening saw the trio branching out into new instrumental configurations, here they return to their signature line-up of guitar, bass and drums. The LP begins abruptly, with one of the finest performances by the trio captured on record thus far already in full swing. Throughout the course of this 12-minute piece, O'Rourke and Ambarchi lay down a thudding, meterless pulse, the impossible midway point of Milford Graves and motorik Krautrock, over which Haino unfurls a number of distinct strategies developed in his work since the 1980s: formless blurs of reverb-drenched guitar noise, looped pointillist fragments and wandering, dissonant lines obscured in clouds of distortion. Continuing Haino's habit of naming albums with phrases that seem to obliquely comment on the music they contain, it could definitely be said that this is music made by three people 'determined to completely exhaust every bit of this body they've been given.' Showing the trio at new heights, this track carries on in the spirit of some of Haino's greatest work: music made with the ingredients of rock that somehow manages to sidestep all of its forms and traditions while retaining and amplifying its fundamental power. If this track alone lays to rest concerns about whether the trio has exhausted the guitar/bass/drums format, the remainder of the record serves as a demonstration of the multitude of possibilities still available for their continued exploration. The three are now so in-tune with one another that almost anything can be integrated into their improvisations: in the slow-burning second piece, O'Rourke's heavily effected bass wanders from anti-music thuds to an almost funky passage with Ambarchi sounding not unlike Buddy Miles circa Hendrix's Band of Gypsys -- it bespeaks the hours of listening to fusion and classic rock that continue to form an important part of O'Rourke and Ambarchi's musical personalities. The final piece is a continuous side-long performance that moves through a number of discrete episodes, from vocal and flute solos by Haino delicately accompanied by O'Rourke's sparse bass and Ambarchi's sizzling cymbals, to a final stumbling dirge over which Haino unleashes a stunning torrent of in-the-red guitar skree." --Francis Plagne; Design by Stephen O'Malley with high quality live shots by Ujin Matsuo and stunning artwork by Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug.
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BT 011LP
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LP version. "Begun as a one-off collaboration in 2009, the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi has now become a solid working group, refining its craft through a series of annual concerts at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe. Much of their recorded work has focused on their intense, ritualistic take on the rock power trio of electric guitar, bass and drums. Presenting the entire first set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the second set will follow on Black Truffle later this year), Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully Away Is It a Lack of Contentment That Stirs Affection for Those Things Said to Be as of Yet Unseen is their fifth release and blows the instrumental palette wide open for a single continuous piece focused on acoustic strings, synth, flute and percussion. Featuring one of Haino's most delicate and moving recorded vocal performances, the opening section of the record takes the form of a spare duet between O'Rourke's 12-string acoustic guitar and Haino's kantele (a Finnish variant of the dulcimer), behind which Ambarchi provides a hovering backdrop of wine glass tones. While on previous releases the listener has often sensed that Haino was firmly in the driver's seat, here O'Rourke takes center stage with an acoustic guitar performance that takes the lyricism of John Abercrombie or Ralph Towner and refracts it through the free improvisation tradition of his mentors Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser. The atmosphere of meditative, abstracted song is reminiscent of some of Haino's greatest recordings, such as the legendary Live in the First Year of the Heisei volumes recorded with Kan Mikami. After this stunningly beautiful opening sequence, the performance moves organically through a number of episodes, including a dramatic central passage in which Haino moves to synth and drum machine, crafting a current of raw electricity that unfurls slowly over the gently pulsing foundations of Ambarchi's cymbals and builds to heights of manic intensity. When Haino later turns to wooden flute, Ambarchi answers him with nimble hand-drummed percussion in a passage that calls to mind Don Cherry's liberated combination of free-jazz improvisation and non-Western musics. The trio's move away from the power trio dynamic bespeaks a risk-taking and questing spirit that refuses to be satisfied with repeating past glories, and yet the organic, immersive flow of this single improvisation attests to the intuitive bond that has formed between them over the last five years. Exuding the signature mystery and emotion of Haino's greatest works, this release is perhaps the strongest statement yet from this acclaimed trio, and holds out a tantalizing promise for everyone hooked on their continuing exploration of 'those things said to be as of yet unseen.' --Francis Plagne; Design by Stephen O'Malley with high quality live shots by Ujin Matsuo and stunning artwork by Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug.
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BT 011CD
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"Begun as a one-off collaboration in 2009, the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi has now become a solid working group, refining its craft through a series of annual concerts at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe. Much of their recorded work has focused on their intense, ritualistic take on the rock power trio of electric guitar, bass and drums. Presenting the entire first set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the second set will follow on Black Truffle later this year), Only Wanting to Melt Beautifully Away Is It a Lack of Contentment That Stirs Affection for Those Things Said to Be as of Yet Unseen is their fifth release and blows the instrumental palette wide open for a single continuous piece focused on acoustic strings, synth, flute and percussion. Featuring one of Haino's most delicate and moving recorded vocal performances, the opening section of the record takes the form of a spare duet between O'Rourke's 12-string acoustic guitar and Haino's kantele (a Finnish variant of the dulcimer), behind which Ambarchi provides a hovering backdrop of wine glass tones. While on previous releases the listener has often sensed that Haino was firmly in the driver's seat, here O'Rourke takes center stage with an acoustic guitar performance that takes the lyricism of John Abercrombie or Ralph Towner and refracts it through the free improvisation tradition of his mentors Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser. The atmosphere of meditative, abstracted song is reminiscent of some of Haino's greatest recordings, such as the legendary Live in the First Year of the Heisei volumes recorded with Kan Mikami. After this stunningly beautiful opening sequence, the performance moves organically through a number of episodes, including a dramatic central passage in which Haino moves to synth and drum machine, crafting a current of raw electricity that unfurls slowly over the gently pulsing foundations of Ambarchi's cymbals and builds to heights of manic intensity. When Haino later turns to wooden flute, Ambarchi answers him with nimble hand-drummed percussion in a passage that calls to mind Don Cherry's liberated combination of free-jazz improvisation and non-Western musics. The trio's move away from the power trio dynamic bespeaks a risk-taking and questing spirit that refuses to be satisfied with repeating past glories, and yet the organic, immersive flow of this single improvisation attests to the intuitive bond that has formed between them over the last five years. Exuding the signature mystery and emotion of Haino's greatest works, this release is perhaps the strongest statement yet from this acclaimed trio, and holds out a tantalizing promise for everyone hooked on their continuing exploration of 'those things said to be as of yet unseen.' --Francis Plagne; Design by Stephen O'Malley with high quality live shots by Ujin Matsuo and stunning artwork by Norwegian noise legend Lasse Marhaug.
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