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2 LP

Luigi ARCHETTI – Bo WIGET
“Weltformat”

Edition of 200 copies pressed on 2x 180g clear vinyl housed in a six-panel gatefold cover that unfolds to reveal the musical score of the album. Ending the decade of silence which followed more than ten years of remarkable, critically acclaimed activity by the partnership of veteran experimentalists, Luigi Archetti and Bo Wiget, the duo returns with what may be their most ambitions effort to date, "Weltformat", issued by Die Schachtel. Switzerland-based Luigi Archetti and Bo Wiget began collaborating in 1998, the fruits of which initially emerged as the critically heralded, three-part "Low Tide Digitals" series, released by Rune Grammofon between 2001 and 2009. "Weltformat", like its predecessors, builds on decades of solo and collaborative efforts by its creators - Archetti with famed Krautrock pioneers, Guru Guru, among many others, and Wiget with Werner Lüdi, Taku Sugimoto, Tetuzi Akiyama, and others. Sculpted from the intricate tonal interventions and responses of Archetti on guitar, mandolin, and electronics, and Wiget on cello, electronics, and vocals, across the album's four sides the duo constructs a remarkably diverse landscape in sound, folding touchstones of modern classical, free improvisation, minimalism, harsh noise, and ambient music, into a seamless, singular expanse. Clusters of tone and dissonance merge, collide, and abrade against drones, textures, and pulsing electronics, each element a representative voice of its creator, caught in an imagistic conversation beyond words, which feels as immediate and intuitive, as it does perfectly balanced and thoughtful. "Weltformat", encountering Archetti and Wiget just past the 20 year mark of their collaborative partnership, bears the fruit of rigorous experiments in sound - an immersive, effortless form of sonic realism, built from the optimism and hope which lays at the root of the avant-garde. As beautiful, inviting, immersive, and slow moving, as it is challenging, destabilizing, and thought provoking, Die Schachtel is overwhelmingly proud to release "Weltformat" in both clear double LP and CD formats.

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Donald McPHERSON
“Some Songs”

Alga Marghen present a reissue of Donald McPherson's Some Songs LP, self-released in 1994 in an edition of 20 lathe-cut. As Stefan Neville, coordinator for this edition, suggests: "... the first time I heard anything about Donald McPherson was when my friend David Muir told me excitedly about this guitarist from Ravensbourne who could play really beautifully properly but also just as wonderfully wrongly. I first heard him playing a rare live performance in Dunedin in about 1997. It remains one of the most heavily self-deprecating sets I've ever seen. Abandoning songs halfway through, Donald couldn't contain his belief that his efforts were worthless and that he hadn't practiced as much as we were idiots for listening. He made a good show of appearing not to care but the quality of the few pieces of music he did play showed a personality and idiosyncratic natural ability that could only come from the most meaningful places. And he was totally right... we were idiots tolerating any old shit, just as he was an idiot for being so ridiculously good. Donald is most well-known for the free range guitar instrumentals of his Bramble CD (Metonymic, 2001) and the Vinegar & Rum (WEAVIL 012CD/LP, 2006) collaboration with Tetuzi Akiyama, but it's his 1994 album Some Songs that his friends and fans hold in the highest regard. It sparkles with beauty, wit, and wonder and it crumbles under its own self-sabotaging cynicism. Lyrical flowing folk melodies with playful irritations and grafted on textures, bare-boned hyper-sensitive pop songs, and scrambled spontaneous sketches. Donald always sounds to me like he is resisting his talents as they are too embarrassing, but at the same time embracing the chance to express everything he is feeling no matter how awkward or humiliating it may be. It seems like such a crippling difficult perspective to create from but Some Songs always sounds playful, honest, humble and hopeful to me!" Includes extra tracks taken from Decap (1995) and The Trees (1996) 7" lathe editions. Edition of 200.

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Hüseyin ERTUNÇ Sextet
“A new world”

We consider ourselves extremely fortunate having met Hüseyin Ęrtunc during his terrestrial transit. After we reissued his wonderful album Mûsikî (privately released on Intex Sound in 1974) and a few collaborative albums with the Konstrukt collective, in 2017 we finally managed to invite him, Doğan Doğusel, Cem Tan and Umut Çağlar to play some shows in Italy as a quartet. Things got really complicated when their visas got rejected - one week before their plane was scheduled to take off - but we found a stalwart supporter of free jazz music at the phone when we contacted the Italian Embassy with a tiny bit of hope and (incredibly) we got the visas in time so we could spend a whole week with Hüseyin and his band, touring Italy and playing four shows of the best spiritual free jazz we heard in a long while. Right after that, we took the chance to book a recording session at the good old Outside Inside Studio where our loyal partner Matt Bordin captured on tape two days of improvisation by Hüseyin Ęrtunc (Fender Rhodes electric piano, Philicorda organ and chant), Umut Çağlar (percussion and bamboo flutes), Doğan Doğusel (double bass), Cem Tan (drums), joined for this special occasion by the Jooklos Virginia Genta (tenor and sopranino saxophones, clarinet, flutes), and David Vanzan (percussion) leaving an incredible musical document, not only for the fact that - unfortunately - it was Hüseyin's last session on this world. "Most of Ertunç’s recorded appearances have been on drum set, where he’s employed a massive and materialist cymbal approach that takes Sunny Murray’s explosive chatter as a lifting-off point. Ertunç waxed one LP as a leader in 1974, Mûsikî (with then-regular partners Michael Cosmic and Phill Musra, issued on the tiny Intex label), and returned to Turkey in the early 1990s. Ertunç’s playing, relentless as it might be, evinces a strident, swinging quality that reaches back decades. His pianistic approach is rooted in the outpouring of voluminous, allover rhythm in concentrated shards. One might first think of early Cecil Taylor, though another Boston resident is also worth mentioning – Jaki Byard, who could move from barrelhouse to crepuscular romanticism and dense chordal superimpositions at the drop of a hat. If he and Ertunç didn’t necessarily work together, their spirits are kindred." (Clifford Allen)

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OTO HIAX
“Two”

"Second phantasmagorical audio outing from former Seefeel and Loops Haunt members, Mark Clifford and Scott Gordon. ‘Two’ expands the duo’s unique take on spectral synthesis incorporating a diverse amount of approaches to experimental sound. Two expounds a hybrid mix of acoustic based audio design, ambient tonality, sound effects, music, abstraction and world’s hybrid video game soundtrack.There is something of an onomatopoeia quality to the release as the six tracks take on the character of their individual title. Silt, Dapple, Overcurve, Scutter, Strain and Plates appear as extremely well executed versions of the inferred intent of their namesake. This inquisitive approach will appeal to those interested in the more exploratory end of sound production providing hope as newly formed methods and colours are exposed from the duo’s contemporary audio tactics. Seasoned veterans can lie in a bed of laurels whereas ‘Two’ is an exemplary release revelling in the enthusiasm that comes from the joy of nabated exploration."

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Sir Richard BISHOP & Ed YAZIJIAN
“s/t”

"Ex-Sun City Girls master guitarist Richard Bishop teams up with Cul De Sac’s long time Girls live collaborator Ed Yazijian. Two Grand Seigneurs of underground deliver an unique album deeply Western rooted, filled with the musical spirit and structures of Indian music at the same time. Elegant interplay, brilliantly arranged, using mostly guitar (lapsteel, tenor) and strings (viola), and some Indian stringed instrument which I can’t pronounce, and some piano… A classic Saraswati Series sonic adventure. A contemporary polaroid, state of the art in today’s underground music."

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William ENGELEN
“32 bpm”

After "Today, the organ has played beautifully again", released earlier in 2019, Edition Telemark presents the second instalment of what will become a series of LPs of sound works by Dutch artist William Engelen. "32 bpm" was recorded at Kunsthalle Mannheim for an exhibition in summer 2019 and is a slowed down version of "38 bpm", previously released on Engelen's double LP "Partitur Belval" in 2016. The piece – played here by Mannheimer Schlagwerk – is written for 8 percussionists, each using a set of 9 different instruments varying in their timbre and in the duration of their resonance. The composition is played in a monorhythmic pulse of 32 beats per minute and in unison. To determine the order in which the instruments are played, each percussionist draws their own path through the score consisting of a 32x32 grid of dots of different sizes, with larger dots representing instruments with long resonance and smaller dots those with short resonance. Because each musician has chosen their own path, different instruments are played at each pulse. Neither does the pulse ever change nor do the musicians play out-of-sync at any time. As the piece progresses through its 5 parts, more and more dots are skipped, leaving only 64 beats per musician in part 5, as opposed to 320 in part 1. The composition "38 bpm" was written in 2016 and now adapted by Engelen to take into account the acoustic qualities of the atrium of the Kunsthalle Mannheim, leading to the slower tempo and a different selection of instruments, now focusing on more resonant ones. The instruments played are mokushos, wood blocks, bongos, reyongs, crotales, triangles, timpanis, gongs, and tubular bells. For the performance, each player stood at a different spot and the audience moved freely between them, feeling out the space by listening to the resonance. The piece thus turned into a sound sculpture inside the architecture of the museum. The LP is a co-release between Edition Telemark and Kunsthalle Mannheim and comes in a full-color gatefold sleeve with a 12-page LP-sized booklet with photos, a reproduction of the score, and extensive liner notes by Björn Gottstein, director of the Musiktage festival in Donaueschingen, and Sebastian Baden, curator at Kunsthalle Mannheim.

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TONUS
“Segment Tones”

Dirk Serries: soprano melodica, accordeon. Martina Verhoeven: concertina, cello. Colin Webster: clarinet, alto sax. Performed, recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium) on November 24th 2018. "Despite the low volumes, the generous use of space, the long, explorative tones and surprisingly subtle harmonies, the subdued and intimate music on Segment Tones (and other related albums) keeps the flame of dissent burning. Just as the clattering of rambunctious free jazz can be regarded as a tumultuous answer to political provocations and general madness, the minimalist means of this album are as determined in their refusal to comply. While all these droning textures and unusual techniques might sound like a concentrated private affair, bundled together they also turn into an act of resistance, showing there is an alternative to greed, rancor and prejudice, and also to fear and uncertainty. This might be a ‘small’ release on a little DIY- label from Belgium (of all places), but it represents a larger world of possibilities. " Guy Peter

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SERRIES / VANDERSTRAETEN / VERHOEVEN
“Impetus”

Dirk Serries: acoustic guitars - Kris Vanderstraeten: percussion - Martina Verhoeven: piano. Performed, recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium) on December 16th 2018. "With all its creaking, rustling, quacking, plucking and plonking sounds and restlessness, this album is a feast of abstraction, but listen carefully, and you will find so much more between all those awkward sounds. This is strikingly open, spontaneous and intimate music, but there’s a glue that keeps it all together. Not childish, but repeatedly childlike in its sense of wonder. With music as free as this, it is hard to put your finger on what exactly it is that makes it tick, but the explanation might be a simple one. Amidst this colorful, intricately detailed sound painting, there is the realization that these three artists speak the same language indeed. " Guy Peters

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Daniel THOMPSON & Colin WEBSTER
“Boskage”

Daniel Thompson: acoustic guitar. Colin Webster: alto saxophone. Recorded on 15th June 2018 at Soundsavers, London by Mark Jasper. Mixed by Dirk Serries. Mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. studio, Anderlecht (Belgium). "Thompson and Webster excel in interaction that verges from minimalist flourishes to nervous interaction that demands the listener’s utmost concentration, testing the elasticity of their connection with a dualism that Evan Parker once described so aptly: “The last thing you need to do is rely on material that’s already fixed in your mind, but if you don’t have anything fixed in your mind, you have no starting point. That’s the central paradox, really: the more control you have, the freer you are.”" Guy Peters

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Benedict TAYLOR & Anton MOBIN
“Close – Quarters”

Benedict Taylor: viola Anton Mobin: prepared chamber Recorded on 4 & 5 September 2017 and mixed in 2018 by Anton Mobin at La Ferme Ta Gueule, Olivet, France. Mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. studio, Anderlecht (Belgium). "The end result effortly straddles the lines between free improvisation, musique concrète and minimalist noise music. And even though it might sound unconventional and quite demanding without any visual aid, it is guaranteed to set both your ears and your imagination on fire." Guy Peters

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RENALDO AND THE LOAF
“The elbow is taboo / Elbonus”

The Elbow is Taboo was Renaldo & The Loaf's fourth and last album of their initial phase prior to their return in 2010. Released by Ralph in America and Some Bizzare in the UK in 1987 this work represents a development in the overall sound as they utilize an 8 track recorder along with early digital effects. A large arsenal of acoustic instrumentation gives the record an additional unsettling atmosphere. Recorded over a 3 year period this remains the definitive statement by the group in this early period. As clarified by Brian from the band, the themes remain as obtuse and alluring as ever with each song containing it’s own story. “be it a child's desire to control (A Street Called Straight), the ridiculous purdah of an innocent part of the body (The Elbow is Taboo), a call for help in times of angst (Here's To the Oblong Boys), the rigours of a bread fetish (The Bread Song), the anger of a dance teacher to the terminally inept (Critical/Dance) or a ritual call to prayer, somewhere (Extracting the Re-re)”. Disorientating and delightful this is a must for all fans of the Loaf and for those tickled by the more deranged spectrum of song.

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Thomas BRINKMANN
“Raupenbahn”

Editions Mego is proud to present the latest addition to the compelling discography of Thomas Brinkmann. Throughout his career Brinkmann has focussed on the human operating amongst industry alongside rhythms that manifest as a result of technological advancement. With this new release Brinkmann makes a u-turn, looking back to the early industrial age. Comprised of recordings of various looms, Raupenbahn investigates the sonic properties and consequences of the first automatic loom as constructed by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1745. Thomas Brinkmann once again adheres to his tendency for clarity and simplicity whilst further investigating not only the sound and rhythms of the machines (looms) but also what role they serve in society and what consequences they have on the environment. Raupenbahn presents 21 tracks in total, 11 feature on the vinyl, the remaining 10 as digital bonus tracks. The majority of recordings were undertaken by Brinkmann in 2017 with a Neumann KM 184 stereo set. Additional recordings were sourced with permission from Monika W. recs. from 2014 Central Museum of Textiles Łódź, Poland. Each piece presents a diversity of material which borders on the breathtaking and beautiful in richness and complexity. The various looms unravel rhythms and patterns unexpected from machines of the early industrial age. The loom holds a significant role in shaping our world being the catalyst for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine which, alongside the subsequent work of Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace, paved the way for modern computing. There is a linage of the loom that fits succinctly in Brinkmann’s overall argument. Here we encounter a parallel between machine driven economies and the music that rose from such places, consider the Sheffield steel industries, the Manchester weaving industry or the Rhineland / Düsseldorf loom and machine industry. Is it a coincidence that the practice of such machines in the environment gave rise to today’s predilection for electronic dance music, in pop, soundtracks, etc Raupenbahn features no treatment or processing and explicitly displays varying tempo and timbres which ascertain a wide range of acoustic structures. The artwork features Ingrid Wiener, Rosemarie Trockel and Alexandra Bircken, three different generations who would with ideas of fabric weaving, loming and the like. This exceptional release works on a number of levels alongside it’s striking sonic palette.

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SHASTA CULTS
“Configurations”

A ship sinks beneath the silver mirror of the sea-top, temple gongs ring through an empty valley, industrial machinery sputters, heaves, lurches forward, stops, falls apart… These sound events may be the most acute musical referents of Shasta Cults, the music project of Canadian synthesizer technician Richard Smith. Using obsolete electronics, Shasta Cults pursues the true sound of the instrument, freed from the tyranny of emulation, no strings/woodwinds/piano presets. Shasta Cults' compositions seek out unchartered territories where sustained drones may swell, build, or evaporate; where timbres collide, amplitudes fluctuate, sounds emerge, raw, primeval, new hybrids form from the collisions of electricity and frequency. There may be stretches of silence punctuated by bell-ish tones from futures unheard; a sequence of notes may verge upon melody before mutating into ugly moans, the sonic equivalent of funhouse mirrors. But the end result is far more than chance operation, sporadic sound fields, or indeterminate academic exercise. Instead, Shasta Cults brings us back to nature, back to the possibilities inherent in nature, to the truth of evolution, stitching both musical tones, and the sounds of 21st century living into a form which is as real, as imponderable, and as ungovernable as our own memories. Recorded in 2017, employing the processes of non-linear waveshaping, frequency modulation and feedback, Configurations consists of eight programs captured live to multitrack using a rare, fully functional Buchla 700 digital-hybrid instrument designed in the late 1980s. Whereas previously released works made with the 700 almost always consist in simple manipulations of the single factory preset, this album delves deep into the instrument's rich sonic vocabulary to offer the listener a more elaborate demonstration of the system's capabilities. Presented here in limited quantities this release is intended as a high fidelity audio archive of this obscure musical artifact.

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RTVS
“1981-2001 … approximately”

"The connection with and love for Radio Centraal runs through Ultra Eczema’s veins. The Antwerp-based station has functioned as a voice for myriad local underground movements for nearly forty years. From its inception, architect and ex-Situationist Rudi Renson and restaurateur Roland Rom were a critical, hilarious, and provocative voice in its repertoire of weirdos, chiefly via the weekly RTVS (Radio & Television Salon) programme. Lots of ‘music’ was made within this show, largely enabled by its presenters’ revolving door policy of regularly inviting others to contribute or host: musician and artist George Smits, actionist and performer Jacques ‘Jack The Rapper’ Ambach, artist Jörgen Voordeckers, jazz saxophonist Mike Zinzen, aspiring philosopher and bass player Filip Baert, political activist Peter Terryn, troublemaker Jan ‘JAC’ Van Den Eynde, renaissance man Mark Meulemans, graphic designer Dominic Gregoire, fashion photographer Ronald Stoops, communist activist Leo Dierckx, feminist Ellen Verryt, translator and teacher Linda Greeve, biologist and Cassis Cornuta’s sole member Daniel Renders… You get the picture. This compilation is far from complete. It is merely a selection from over 200 cassettes from the archives of Rudi Renson and Roland Rom’s families. The book features interviews (in Dutch) with some of the show’s main protagonists, and a long essay by Peter Terryn (in English). Limited edition of 250 copies.

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PITA
“Get on”

With over 2 decades of formal exploration and exhilarating abstraction Get On is, somewhat surprisingly, only the fourth solo Pita full length. Peter Rehberg has always been vouched for pushing the very limits of the technology du jour, be it software or in recent years a complex modular set. Rehberg’s motives are one of unbridled exploration often resulting in extreme and exhilarating audio works. Having spearheaded the contemporary electronic sound with his uncompromising explorations of noise, rhythm and extreme computer music, he has also worked with numerous experimental musicians in collaboration. Rehberg stands in the wake of a sonic revolution, once fringe, which transformed over time into the sound of a generation of experimental geeks and club freaks worldwide. Get On follows on from the 2016 release Get In. As with other titles in his ‘Get’ series we have an unwieldy blend of noise, abstraction, gnarled rhythm and blurred melody. Both analogue and digital tools are deployed as a means of expressing something outside of everyday electronics. ‘AMFM’ launches proceedings with some delightfully disorientating ricocheting electronics setting off a subversive sonic spectrum. ‘Frozen Jumper’ presents some ugly skittering electronics which rotate into exquisitely mangled forms before launching into an unsettling euphoria. The last piece ‘Motivation’ is a towering sensitive work, simultaneously haunted and emotionally moving. Get On marks another monumental work in the ongoing evolution from one of the ground zero pioneers of contemporary radical electronic music. As uncompromising as ever this is Pita in his prime. Emotion rung from the most twisted of frames. Recorded and mixed by Peter Rehberg at Twisted, Wien, 2018/2019 Mastered by Russell Haswell, July 2019 Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin, August 2019

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HECKER
“Inspection II”

Florian Hecker’s latest CD release continues his work with computational techniques for analysis and resynthesis. In Inspection II we hear the progressive reconstruction of original source material using algorithms based upon human hearing and designed to capture timbral characteristics of sound. As the source is iteratively extracted from featureless noise, a complex ongoing dialogue commences between formal model and empirical experience of sound. Like Charon, the boatman who ferries souls of the dead across the styx, Inspection II crosses perpetually from one bank to the other: from the formal anticipations of analysis to the unexpected artefacts of synthesis. In Robin Mackay’s libretto, recited by a synthetic voice, this inspective dialogue is transferred to the introspective psychoanalytic situation, where the continual re-narration of the self creates further disturbances and transformations—to attain a definitive image of oneself would be to face one’s own death. As discussed in Amy Ireland’s essay Beside a Cold Statue commissioned for the CD sleevenotes, this process, whose symptomatology is recognisably that of masochism, sees the coldness of the formal model subverted as Hecker’s continual resynthesis delivers up a series of harsh, tantalising, and bewildering textures and timbres: ‘the resynthesized sound is more intractable, more disorienting, and more empirically obscene—a contingency that always disrupts the plan […] synthetic progeny, nourished on nothing but ice and noise…’. Florian Hecker is an artist who works with synthetic sound, the listening process and the audience’s auditory experience, traversing performance, installation, and publications. Since 1996 he has exhibited and performed internationally.

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Max EASTLEY – Fergus KELLY – Mark WASTELL
“The map is not the territory”

Max Eastley : arc (electro-acoustic monochord) Fergus Kelly : invented instruments, found metals, electronics Mark Wastell : tam tam, metal percussion, piano frame Recorded at Studio 3, Stoke Newington, London on 8th March 2017 by Rupert Clervaux. Edited, mixed and mastered by Fergus Kelly. Produced by Mark Wastell.

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Mike COOPER
“Distant Songs Of Madmen”

« Distant Songs of Madmen was recorded live in Palermo and was my solo set in a concert organised by Lelio Gianetti and Curva Minore which included my trio Truth In The Abstract Blues and Eugene Chadbourne. My set was free improvisation; some cover versions of folk and pop songs and some of my own songs. The title of the record and some of the improvised pieces were taken from Sam Shepard's writing. Sam, one of my favourite writers, has sadly died since I recorded this record and I dedicate it to his memory ». Mike Cooper Available in a beautiful designed cover with an exclusive amazing artwork made by Italian artist Carla Indipendente. Mastered for vinyl by Brian Pyle (Ensemble Economique). 200 black copies. 100 red copies.

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Yvan ETIENNE
“Twist”

For Serge Modular and field recordings. French artist/activist Yvan Etienne, is engaged in research in the field of sound art. As a musician, he composes and plays pieces using electronic, phonography, analog synthesizers and the hurdy-gurdy. His sound art research questions the perception and physicality of sound spaces. Collaborations with Phill Niblock, Yann Gourdon, Richard Glover, Brice Jeannin, Patrice Grente, Robert Poss, Paul Panhuysen, Marie Verry, la novia, Perinne Bourel… CD : Mastered by Yvan Etienne / LP : Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cut by Mike Grinser at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Artwork by Gregory Weiss

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SINS FOR BEGINNERS
“Fireburn the Bloodlot”

‘Fireburn the Bloodlot’ commits crenellated walls of guitar noise by CM Von Hausswolff and Joachim Nordwall under their Sins For Beginners alias for avant-garde powerhouse, iDEAL Mantled after a phrase Richard Kern graffitied on the bathroom wall of Hausswolff’s Lower East Side apartment in the late ‘80s, ‘Fireburn the Bloodlot’ dispatches a pair of unrelenting and incendiary exercises in amp worship and FX-mutilated electric guitars - which is perhaps not what one might expect from these masters of the oscillator. Unflinchingly recorded by Linus Andersson (Goat, The Skull Defekts, The Leather Nun), the music surely warrants comparisons with Glenn Branca’s massed armies of strings, or Sunn 0))) at their crankiest, but it’s simply a swaggering swell of pure, white hot evil destined to get under the skin of fans of all kinds of extreme metal, drone and noise.

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Hans-Jürg MEIER
“colours de la rose . presso il passo di cristallina . diaphanés”

Colours de la rose (2001) for flute, oboe, saxophone. A work in nine parts contrasting the music by Guillaume de Machaut. Presso il passo di cristallina (1993) for 2 recorders. "the piece was preceded by the real experience of surprising silence just before crossing the Passo di Cristallina" (Hans Jürg Meier) Diaphanés (durchscheinend), 2015, for three baroque transverse flutes and percussion. Music to Santo Stefano in Rotondo in Rome, the musical sensation while entering the room and its architectonical athmosphere. In Hans-Jürg Meier's music, translations from architecture have become increasingly meaningful. On the one hand, in both art forms, the power of imagination is of fundamental importance. On the other, both work with holistic formal inventions that unfold in time or/and in space. Endeavouring to make physically tangible the sensual qualities of the musical material (tones, intervals, texture), his compositions are committed to exploring the interaction of nature, form and beauty.

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CITY OF WOMEN
II

Jimi Tenor and a group of friends visited twice at Edward Vesala's unique home (Sound and Fury Studio) in Korkeakoski in southwest Finland. It was winter 1998. Matti Knaapi and Jimi Tenor have been designing and building instruments since early 80s. They brought vanful of apparatus to Sound and Fury which already had a large collection of Vesala's exotic and self built instruments. During the two rather extreme sessions 13 songs got finished. The first part was released in year 2000. Sadly Edward Vesala passed away before the first part City of Women I was released. Now after 20 years of calming down we are ready to evoke the second part of the sessions. City of Woman is Edward Vesala, drums, vocals, instruments - Jimi Tenor, flute, instruments - Iro Haarla, harp - Jimi Sumen, programming - Matti Knaapi, instrument design and construction

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Bana HAFFAR
“Genera, Live at AB Salon, Brussels”

A lifelong expatriate, Bana Haffar was born in Saudi Arabia in 1987 and spent much of her childhood in the GCC. Through her switch from 10 years of electric bass, preceded by classical violin, to modular synthesizers in 2014, Bana is attempting to dismantle years of institutional conditioning in traditional systems of music theory and performance. She is interested in exploring sonic disintegration and coalescence into new forms and synthesized experiences. Bana lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

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EXTENDED ORGAN
“Vibe”

Important Records announces Vibe, the new LP from Extended Organ, the Los Angeles-based quintet associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Vibe, Extended Organ’s first full-length studio LP since 2000’s XOXO was recorded in April 2016 by members Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, and Alex Stevens. The album consists of two side-long tracks, Hate and Vibe, recorded live at LACM Studio in Pasadena, California by acclaimed engineer André Knecht. On Vibe, the band employs prepared piano, junk percussion, Joe Potts’ Chopped Optigan, electric guitar, voice, Rheem organ, various electronics, and homemade instruments. Each track is improvised, then assembled and edited without overdubbing in studio. The music moves with velocity and direction revealing surprises at every turn. The resulting sound is ominous, humorous, harmonious, chaotic and at times quietly erotic. This is abstractly powerful music. The highly provocative cover image, created collaboratively by Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, and Tom Recchion, is shrouded inside a unique laser-cut outer sleeve. Like the music contained within, the cover reveal is a beguiling experience in and of itself. This intriguing package was art directed and designed by Tom Recchion. Formed in 1994, Extended Organ produces a dynamic otherworldly ambience which can be simultaneously hilarious and frightening. Joe Potts lays down a carpet of sound using and his self-engineered drone instrument, the “Chopped Optigan,” over which Paul Mc-Carthy performs vocal and guitar improvisations channeled and processed by Alex Stevens. Alex also adds his own keyboard triggered synthesized sounds. Tom Recchion, renowned as an inventor of homemade instruments, a free improviser, and an accomplished composer of acoustic, electronic and tape music, performs an array of sounds folding lush beauty and horror sensibility into the matrix. Fredrik Nilsen plays an antique Rheem Mark 7 organ along with electronic sound and recordings created by Mike Kelley. Kelley was a member of the group from 2000 until his death in 2012 and continues to be a contributing member by virtue of sound recordings he provided before his death; “In case I can’t make a gig, I can still play.” The LAFMS formed in the early 1970s around a loosely knit group of like-minded musical improvising sound experimenters in eastern Los Angeles who discovered their mutual interest and banded together to design modes of self production and distribution of recordings and publications, helping to develop and propel the DIY movement. In the ensuing 45 years the LAFMS has gone on to create dozens of records and groups (including Doo-Dooettes, AIRWAY, Le Forte Four, Smegma, John Duncan and Extended Organ), hundreds of concerts, festivals in both US and Europe, a full-scale gallery retrospective and volumes of artwork, sculptures, homemade instruments, videos, recordings, and other ephemera.

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Eddie PRÉVOST
“Matching Mix”

Solo percussion pieces recorded in a single day around Matching Tye, Essex, October 2018. “In October 2018 we took several recordings in and around Eddie Prévost’s home village of Matching Tye in Essex, where he has been living for the past fifty years. The majority of the pieces that made it to this LP took place in All Saints Church, High Laver, the burial site of John Locke. This fact was notable in the choice of title for this set of recordings, and it seemed necessary to put forward Eddie’s own take on Locke that he offered in our correspondences: “Scholars of Locke’s philosophy will be familiar with the idea of mixing labour with materials as a fore-running notion of possessive individualism and basis for private property. Such ‘mixing’ is a persuasive description of a creative act. But the theory is more worthy of a social dimension.” As for the individual titles for each of the studies on the LP, each takes ideas and elements from music past. For example, MaxPlus makes a nod towards bebop pioneering drummer Max Roach who offered an earlier hit-hat study. Eddie utilises such examples, offering further creative insights which can then be woven back into the common wealth of sound. The final track, returning to the bowed cymbal method of the first, was recorded outdoors on a breezy green, and is pictured on the back cover of the sleeve. It was an attempt to capture the playing in its ‘metamusical’ relationship with the untempered sounds of the external environment. Eddie has written about Metamusic in his book The First Concert (Copula, 2011): invoking childlike ‘protomusical’ behaviour, or the sense of music that a person might possess before the inevitable influences come to play any role in their productive, and appreciative, musical development. Ross Lambert provided a few words along side his cover drawing entitled ‘The Metamusician’: “The eyes would symbolise for me things like searching, examining, closeness or friendship I think; engagement with the world. Decisions in making the image were completely intuitive, this is just me looking for the meaning, post-analysing, post rationalising.”” - Daniel Kordik & Edward Lucas, March 2019

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JUNG AN TAGEN
“Proxy State”

CD version. On Proxy States, his third release on Editions Mego, Jung An Tagen continues to expand his unique vision of oblique electronic music mixed with future dance club sound. On Proxy States techno is evolving into another realm, manifesting as his most formulated attempt to combine modern composition techniques with ritualistic techno aesthetics. Here he takes his obsession with structure to a more narrative build-up, creating new paths and textures around his infectious beats. With this structure, Jung An Tagen develops an emotional relationship between repetition and dissonance -- it's addictive music, music in constant explosion. The 12 seconds of the first track, "Spill (False)" sound like a recreation of The Big Bang, creating the perfect intro for this molecular polyrhythmic adventure. It also creates the connection/disconnection with his previous work, Agent Im Objekt (EMEGO 248LP, 2018), bridging the two but also creating a space to embark on a new sonic trip. This self-contained explosion offers the right coordinates and propels the listener to Jung An Tagen's sonic realm. All of this is done with his usual fearless but mindful approach. His unique exercises with structure, time and sound create an ecstatic familiarity with the sounds while at the same time inducing a creeping physical alienation. In other words, some parts may be rhythmically infectious, others will give you no chance to immerse. The stimulation is astute and continuous, encouraging an out-of-this-world experience. The main arc of Proxy States consists of a 16 against 17 poly-rhythmic synth line that through different intonations of the kick drum always transforms its syntax. This synth line always scales up 1 key, in the middle of the track, foreseeing the upcoming structure. While these tracks (3, 4, 5, 6: "Wreath Products") follow an almost obsessive-compulsive order, the remaining tracks seem to blow up the structure entirely like the last scenes of the 1970 Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point, creating an event inside the event. Proxy States was impossible to press on vinyl but the fast, sharp and wild grooves of Jung An Tagen's new album are incredibly synched with the concept of an ever accelerating future.

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Oren AMBARCHI
“Simian Angel”

Oren Ambarchi - guitars & whatnot Cyro Baptista - percussion & voice After a trilogy of spectacular explorations of relentlessly driving rhythms – Sagittarian Domain (2012), Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016) – Simian Angel finds Oren Ambarchi renewing his focus on his singular approach to the electric guitar, returning in part to the spacious canvases of classic releases like Grapes from the Estate while also following his muse down previously unexplored byways. Reflecting Ambarchi’s profound love of Brazilian music – an aspect of his omnivorous musical appetite not immediately apparent in his own work until now – Simian Angel features the remarkable percussive talents of the legendary Cyro Baptista, a key part of the Downtown scene who has collaborated with everyone from John Zorn and Derek Bailey to Robert Palmer and Herbie Hancock. Like the music of Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira, Simian Angel places Baptista’s dexterous and rhythmically nuanced handling of traditional Brazilian percussion instruments into an unexpected musical context. On the first side, ‘Palm Sugar Candy’, Baptista’s spare and halting rhythms wind their way through a landscape of gliding electronic tones, gently rising up and momentarily subsiding until the piece’s final minutes leave Ambarchi’s guitar unaccompanied. While the rich, swirling harmonics of Ambarchi’s guitar performance are familiar to listeners from his previous recordings, the subtly wavering, synthetic guitar tone we hear is quite new, coming across at times like an abstracted, splayed-out take on the 80s guitar-synth work of Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell. Equally new is the harmonic complexity of Ambarchi’s playing, which leaves behind the minimalist simplicity of much of his previous work for a constantly-shifting play between lush consonance and uneasy dissonance. Beginning with a beautiful passage of unaccompanied percussion dominated by the berimbau, the side-long title piece carries on the first side’s exploration of subtle, non-linear dynamic arcs, taking the form of a gently episodic suite, in which distinctive moments, like a lyrical passage of guitar-triggered piano, unexpectedly arise from intervals of drifting tones like dream images suddenly cohering. In the piece’s second half, the piano tones becomes increasingly more clipped and synthetic, scattering themselves into aleatoric melodies that call to mind an imaginary collaboration between Albert Marcoeur and David Behrman, grounded all the while by the pulse of Baptista’s percussion. Subtle yet complex, fleeting yet emotionally affecting, Simian Angel is an essential chapter in Ambarchi’s restlessly exploratory oeuvre. Recorded by Randall Dunn, Joerg Hiller, Iuri Oriente and Oren Ambarchi. Edited by Joerg Hiller and Oren Ambarchi at Choose Studios, Berlin. Mixed by Joe Talia and Oren Ambarchi at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Executive Producers: Konrad Sprenger & Dick Wolf. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis. Design by Lasse Marhaug.

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Alessandra ERAMO
“Tracing South”

Alessandra Eramo, voice, electronics, field recordings, theremin, harmonica. Alessandra Eramo’s new solo album Tracing South is a sonic enchantment through the use of extended vocal techniques, analog electronics and her hypnotic field recording of bagpipe (zampogna) during the Carnival rites in Southern Italy. She shapes mouth noises, breath, whispers, her invented languages, fragmented words, the sound of old tape recorders, handmade theremin and synth, and she creates a sound poetry composition that seems to evolve into a shamanic trance music. Polyphonic singing, repetition, dissonance and overtones are tearing the listener out of the comfort zone. Tracing South is centered on the last three years of her artistic research and concerts in Europe, the Mediterranean region and Chile. Reflecting on the Mediterranean Sea as a human and spiritual dimension, as a crossroad for cultural exchanges and passages of all sorts, but now also as a vast and silent migrant cemetery, Eramo’s work oscillates between the caress of tender melodies and the brutal energy of noise eruptions. She says ”Like the sound of the sea, repetitive, always different and in constant moving, I’m interested to explore the concepts of Global South and Instability, by tracing a South as a non-geographical condition, an imaginary sonic cosmos, which is open, crude and undefined, giving space to conscious freedom of the listener.” Alessandra Eramo is best known for her extraordinary and unconventional vocal performance art, with a prolific concert activity in the context of contemporary music, and also having a career as artist with the production of audiovisual works, drawings and installations.

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RENALDO AND THE LOAF
“Songs for Swinging Larvae / Songs from the Surgery”

A biomedical scientist and an architect form a band in the early 70’s with nothing by the way of traditional musical talent or skill but with endless enthusiasm and their own unique musical sensibility. The ensuing career and creative output of this ongoing home studio / bedroom band remains one of the most significant song based ‘outre’ catalogues ever produced in the United Kingdom. This comprehensive 2 LP (+7” for first 300 copies) set contains their first official LP (originally released on The Residents legendary Ralph records label) along with an extra album of different versions and extra tracks which reside here for the first time on vinyl. The duo Renaldo & The Loaf, originally Portsmouth based, now in Portsmouth and Mid-Wales, remain an enigma whilst amassing an enormous cult following worldwide. Their singular take on music encompasses wit, strange melodic construction and an off kilter sensibility which successfully rendered them engaging for each emerging generation. The ability of Renaldo & The Loaf to unnerve and entertain in equal measure is what binds these songs to a musical universe outside of all other forms that existed around the time of release. The Residents are obvious spiritual heirs. Songs For Swinging Larvae is a classic collection of confounding songs which lead the listener into a surreal world of twisted tunes and perverted pop. Songs from the Surgery is made up of improvisations, early/alternative versions of various Larvae tracks and unreleased pieces from the same period. The results leave one laughing through a thick veil of unease. As the original Ralph records press release said of Songs For Swinging Larvae: “This is an album of primitive modernism, energetic obnoxious noises, manic high pitched vocals and sweet brilliance.

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HELM
“Chemical Flowers”

Luke Younger returns to PAN with an eight-track album of his most direct work to date. Composed alone at NO studio in the Essex countryside, to start an album with a piece called ‘Capital Crisis (New City Loop)’ seems an intentional misnomer. Long, sustained periods in the rural studio setting see Younger working with an array of fragmented, disassociated sound sourcesto build upon 2015’s ‘Olympic Mess’. It shares a similarly inclined vision of the urban environment, but here ‘Chemical Flowers’ makes reference to paradoxical notions of authenticity and creative practice by way of questioning the structures around us. Collages are assembled and dismantled, temporal and spatial boundaries fluctuate and movement is an overarching theme. Surrealist drowned world atmospheres sculpted far enough away from the source of inspiration leave plenty of room for ambiguity. The nocturnal nature of the recording process is self-evident, and pieces like ‘Leave Them All Behind’ tap into a deep psychedelic undercurrent. Confused narratives, emotions and aleatory hallucinations ebb and flow throughout. ‘I Knew You Would Respond’ evokes murky soundtrack terrain with eerie repetitive strings and ambient respite, disrupted periodically by brief bursts of granular noise. It’s one of the records most unnerving moments, possibly as it’s one of the most recognisably human. The album navigates dense passages with recurring signifiers. Hollow percussion, modulating delay and curious field recordings come and go, maintaining a perpetual state of flux where nnothing stays the same for long. The drowned world theatricals return on the swamp-like ‘Lizard in Fear’ whilst string rhythms creep in on the penultimate track to incite momentary electroacoustic harmony. Floating synthesis slowly washes over and the title track unfolds - five minutes of reverb-laced portamento, visions of decay and Editions EG influenced world-building. ‘Movement is key’..

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Sholto DOBIE & Mark HARWOOD
“The Blue Horse”

Sholto Dobie is an artist and performer born in Edinburgh and living in London. His solo output is marked by live performances that are characteristically delicate, evocative and absurd. He uses his own instruments, crudely assembled from materials such as reeds, whistles, bin bags, fans and air compressors, alongside loose performative structures, to respond to places and situations. He plays in Al Fresco (with Lia Mazzari & Tom White) and regularly collaborates with Ben Pritchard, he has also worked with Ashley Paul. He continues to run the event series Muckle Mouth which he founded in 2014. Mark Harwood is a musician and performer born in Ferntree Gully and living in London. His output veers towards uncanny audio both delicate and unsettling whilst his performances rely on teasing out and playing with the mood embedded within any given environment and audience situation. He has collaborated with Graham Lambkin, Aine O’Dwyer, Timo Van Luijk and MP Hopkins and runs the Penultimate Press label which brings forth this very release. The Blue Horse is a beautiful strange journey through a landscape where little is familiar but all are welcome. Made from predominantly acoustic sources, The Blue Horse gracefully hisses, puffs, wheezes, whirls, and clunks it’s way through a series of distinct musical and non musical environments. Sounding both at times like a dark and stormy night… and “an elephant trying to get laid”, the ambiguous style of The Blue Horse conceals the artists’ unsettling, fantastical and quietly humorous sensibility. Whilst The Blue Horse lacks any obvious precursors, it’s elemental and environmental leanings potentially tread a path initially mapped out by Moniek Darge and Godfried-Willem Raes in the works coming out of the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium in the mid 80’s. The Blue Horse is the debut recording from Sholto Dobie and Mark Harwood and features a guest appearance from cellist Judith Hamann.

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SANDOZ LAB TECHNICIANS
“Grey Orders, Distant Trails”

Improvised soundtrack to a non-existent Western, recorded in the late ‘90s by James Kirk, Nathan Thompson and Tim Cornelius. "Deep South kitchen-sink explorers have been circling the drain in counterclockwise fashion for at least half my life and yet I am still reduced to shameless gobsmackery in the presence of this sterling new collection of historic treasures. Committed live-to-tape in the comfy climes of a living room/recording studio/temple affectionately known as 'Canongate' (a kinda homespun CBGBs of Dunedin's out-sound universe) Sandoz here bristle with the million-ideas-per-minute glory that hovers over their finest blossoms. Unrivalled in their inventiveness and the seemingly infinite permutations of 'shouldn't work but does' instrumentation, 'Grey Orders...' creaks and rattles like ringing spurs on the empty bar floor of some unseen antipodean western. Whether this makes more sense envisioning the cactus-pronged wastes of Arizona or the deserted main streets deep in the blistering badlands of central Otago is best left to the ear of the beholder, but one things for goddamnsure... there's gold in these here hills and I'm gettin' me a mule and a pick-axe." - Campbell Kneale James Kirk • Nathan Thompson • Tim Cornelius - Playing electric and acoustic guitars, drums, violin, autoharp, bass, reed and bamboo flutes, clarinet, vocals, ukulele, electric piano, analog synthesizer, tapes/field recordings, toys, percussion, whistling. Recorded by James Kirk live to Sony TC-580 quarter-inch tape recorder at 8 Canongate, Dunedin, New Zealand 1997-1999. Mastered by Forbes Williams. Edition of 250 copies.

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