In stock
LP
David GRUBBS & Taku UNAMI
“Failed Celestial Creatures”
The release was recorded by Taku Unami at Soto, Kyoto, August 7th and 9th, 2017 and mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M. The LP is produced in an edition of 500 on 180 gram vinyl.Empty Editions is pleased to present Failed Celestial Creatures, an unexpected collaboration between composer-guitarist David Grubbs (Gastr Del Sol, The Red Krayola) and Tokyo-based musician Taku Unami. Primarily recorded in Kyoto, the album takes inspiration from the duo’s shared musical and literary influences, emerging just as much from their improvisatory explorations as from an eclectic reading list exchanged prior to the recording sessions. The album’s narrative inclinations are rooted in both artists’ previous experiments with the complex reciprocity between sound and text, including Grubbs’ work with the poet Susan Howe and Unami’s collaborations with writers such as Eugene Thacker and Evan Calder Williams.Failed Celestial Creatures draws in particular upon a group of short stories by the short-lived Japanese author Atsushi Nakajima (1909-42) - perhaps best known for inflecting Classical Chinese folktales with a modernist vein of absurdist and existential foreboding - as the imaginary backdrop for its set of guitar-based instrumental explorations.The album’s title-track consists of a side-long progression of dirge-like riffs enveloped by clouds of vaporous electronics - eventually erupting into unruly squalls of feedback as Unami joins Grubbs on electric guitar. The B-side features a cluster of luminous guitar duets which are beguiling in their seeming effortlessness and simplicity. Threadbare and fallen, Grubbs and Unami invoke the failed ritual, the spilling at the altar, always suggested at the precipice of sonic emergence.
24,00€
In stock
LP
Jean-Luc GUIONNET & Daichi YOSHIKAWA
“Intervivos”
Empty Editions is pleased to present Jean–Luc Guionnet and Daichi Yoshikawa’s collaborative debut, Intervivos. Recorded during a week-long residency at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery, Intervivos (Latin for “between the living”), refers to the vital and unexpected acoustic synergy that developed between Guionnet’s extended alto saxophone techniques and Yoshikawa’s feedback systems during these sessions.
Although Guionnet and Yoshikawa both come from prolific backgrounds in free jazz and electroacoustic improvisation -- Guionnet plays in The Ames Room with Will Guthrie and Clayton Thomas and Yoshikawa studied with AMM’s Eddie Prevost -- Intervivos sees them developing an approach to improvising which seeks to escape the increasingly narrow stylistic confines of these musical provinces. The album is characterized by a brutal foregrounding of process and material lacking from the experimental music of so many of their contemporaries. Rather than seeking refinement or resolution through existing structures, Guionnet and Yoshikawa prioritize a sort of collaborative musical searching in which the aural entanglement, layering and folding of their scorched intonations creates an emergent musical form -- a non-linear music which sounds both ancient and futuristic.
Corruscating alto saxophone riffs appear suddenly, before disintegrating amidst slabs of feedback and flurries of metallic percussion. Other times, Yoshikawa and Guionnet conjure shifting clouds of sustained tones from the timbral meshing of their instruments - yielding a sound somewhere between the dense textures of Iancu Dumitrescu and the floating harmonics of Gagaku. Far from improvisation as we know it, this album instead gestures towards a speculative “electronic” music created through the ritualistic misuse of acoustic instruments. Intervivos is a fierce, undecorated triumph in the ruinous expression of instruments -- exalted in both its turbulence, and in its extreme testing of improvisational reality. Put summarily by Seymour Wright in the album’s liner notes: “You don’t need me to tell you how it sounds, or how to listen [...] this record begins when you play it.”
The release is mastered by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring artwork by Jean-Luc Guionnet and 8 page liner notes by saxophonist Seymour Wright. The LP is produced in an edition of 500 on 180 gram vinyl in a letterpress on Foldkraft paper sleeve.
26,00€
In stock
2 LP
Eli KESZLER
“Last Signs of Speed”
Empty Editions is proud to present Eli Keszler’s Last Signs of Speed as our inaugural release. This release, our first vinyl record, has represented a labor of love for both Eli and ourselves.
Last Signs is Eli’s first solo release since 2012’s Catching Net (PAN Records) and explores a very different side of his unique acoustic universe. One in which the macrocosmic percussive collisions of his earlier work give way to a gradual unfolding of dub-influenced rhythmic constellations. Eli has described Last Signs as his response to playing in club environments over the last few years; an attempt to negotiate a delicate balance between the materiality of his acoustic
instrument and the hyper-mediated sonic ecosystem of the club sound system. Coming off like an inspired synthesis between Scientist and Xenakis, Last Signs of Speed is a truly unique work by an artist at the height of his powers.
Eli Keszler plays drums, percussion, fender rhodes, piano, mellotron, celeste, vibraceleste, glockenspiel, rocks, gravel. String Orchestra of Brooklyn. Leila Bordreuil, cello. Geoff Mullen, glass, metal, wood fragments. Recorded at
Bunker Studio, Seaside Lounge, and Ohio, NY, 2014-2016. Engineered by nolan thies and mitch rakin. Mastered by rashad becker. Cover Illustration by eli keszler
Liner Notes by david grubbs.
26,00€