Out of stock
LP
Derek BAILEY & Paul MOTIAN
“Duo in Concert”
frozen reeds is proud to present the only recorded duo playing of two legendary musical figures.
Derek Bailey and Paul Motian – two longstanding pioneers of distinct strains of improvised music – came together for a brief period of collaboration in the early 1990s. Tapes of their two known live performances (one at Groningen’s JazzMarathon festival in the Netherlands, the other a year later at New Music Cafe, NYC) were recently unearthed in the Incus archives, and their contents will surprise and delight fans of both supremely idiosyncratic musicians.
The Groningen concert (1990) is released on vinyl, while the New York date (1991) is included with the digital download, free of charge for all purchasers. A conversation between Bill Frisell and Henry Kaiser on Bailey, Motian, their intertwined backgrounds, and the significance of these recordings is included as sleeve-note insert.
Each player bringing decades of crucial experience to their encounters – with histories taking in vast swathes of the development of jazz and free improvisation – these fleeting shared moments provide some of the most riveting playing in the career of either.
There is precious little recorded evidence of Motian as a free improviser, but his mastery is beyond any doubt in these recordings. From knife-edge precision to textural haze, Motian’s palette is astounding, but perhaps even more impressive is his confidence in the non-idiomatic conversation itself. Pushing far beyond the established vocabulary of free percussion, his playing allows a measured degree of repetition to take form, giving rise to almost song-like structures. The covert influence of the drummer’s work on the post-rock genre (just taking its first nascent steps in the early 1990s) is made overt here.
In turn, Bailey allows some of his most unashamedly melodic passages to unfold without a mote of his trademark contrariness or antagonism. Patterns that would be acerbically disrupted elsewhere are allowed to settle, with variations of note and timbre introduced more gradually than is typical of his playing. When forceful changes in dynamics or tone do arrive, they do so in such close tandem with Motian’s rhythmic and textural transitions as to beggar belief. The guitarist’s duos with percussionists (Jamie Muir, Han Bennink, John Stevens…) arguably provide some of the highlights of his discography. ‘Duo in Concert’ represents a strong addition to the list.
An elegant sense of construction pervades the sets, as the duo ably fulfil the promise of free improvisation: carving out hugely compelling, expertly balanced, and thrillingly paced music as if from thin air.
25,50€
In stock
LP
Pierre BASTIEN & Michel BANABILA
“Baba Soirée”
Two visionary maestros, Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila, unite in their first collaborative album, Baba Soirée. The veterans of electronic music bring their unique expertise to the table, resulting in a captivating fusion of experimental styles. Bastien’s mechanical loops and fantastic instrumental setups merge seamlessly with Banabila's sound design and impeccable skills of sampling collages. It's not a dance party, nor is it an avant-garde intervention. It's a soirée: a cultivated evening of sonic alchemy hosted by these two charismatic gentlemen.
Pierre Bastien is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with a background in French literature. He has spent decades crafting an idiosyncratic world of experimental sound with his self-built mechanical orchestra Mecanium. It was most notably showcased in audiovisual releases on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label. Bastien's creations are a mesmerizing combination of traditional instruments (he has a vast collection) and mechanical automatons. The violin in the track Rotomotor, for example, is physically played by one of his machines. In Baba Soirée, Bastien also plays a prepared cornet (Slow Dance, Banbas Aura), infusing the recordings with a breathy, dreamy dimension.
Michel Banabila, a sound artist, composer and producer, possesses an eclectic musical repertoire that defies genres. His blend of minimal electronica, tribal ambient, and neo-classical influences has earned him a prominent place in the world of experimental music, and an impressive discography (Knekelhuis, Bureau B, Séance Centre, a.o.). Banabila serves as the creative sampling editor for Baba Soirée, expertly weaving together the recordings to craft an evocative sonic tapestry.
The two share a curiosity for traditional instruments from various cultures. The instruments used in the recordings are shown in the cover artwork. A mutual admiration for each other's work paved the way for this fruitful artistic partnership of the Rotterdam-based artists: Collaborating on a single as a fundraiser for Yemen in 2022 set the stage for the creation of Baba Soirée.
For Pierre Bastien, Dada, Fluxus and International Situationism have played a significant role in shaping his artistic vision. The title Baba Soirée is an homage to Kurt Schwitters and Theo van Doesburg's "Kleine Dada Soirée" collaboration which took place exactly a century ago. There's an unmistakable stoicism and an anarchic not-giving-a-f*** attitude in these recordings by Bastien & Banabila, which resonates in the light of this Dada reference.
23,00€
In stock
LP
EYES OF THE AMARYLLIS
“Perceptible to Everyone”
As the mist clears from their Sift LP (hop9) Eyes of the Amaryllis return to Horn of Plenty with the equally enigmatic Perceptible to Everyone.
Recorded in various remote locations around the northeast of the US over a few warm months in 2022, Perceptible to Everyone maps the band's poetry in nebulous song forms that dance on their constant fission between pastoral and ghostly inner galaxies. Its eight tracks utilize a wide range of instruments and techniques to span an alien, ritualistic territory where melodies and rhythms appear from meandering passages of sound and ramshackle sci-fi settings. The culmination leaves Perceptible to Everyone gesturing as if it were an alluring otherworldly ethnographic document.
EotA’s non-idiomatic methods make comparisons difficult but traces of Smegma, early D.D.A.A, Garbage and the Flowers, The Tower Recordings, and Flaming Tunes will get you some of the way there. The rest is uncharted.
25,50€
In stock
LP
IDEA FIRE COMPANY
“Bathroom Electronics”
2023 marks the 35th year of Idea Fire Company’s ongoing commitment to the radical avant-garde. To mark the occasion, Horn of Plenty is proud to present the band’s latest campaign statement Bathroom Electronics.
IFCO’s core members are Scott Foust and Karla Borecky who operate from rural Massachusetts. Early despatches came via Scott’s Swill Radio imprint alongside titles by The Shadow Ring, RLW, and Asmus Tietchens. The last decade or so has seen them work with other notable labels including Kye, Recital, Feeding Tube and Ultra Eczema.
Early IFCO releases included mission statements like the Anti-Naturals manifesto where they outlined their pursuit of a new total-aesthetic to challenge the ongoing pervasion of the Spectacle. Their growing catalogue, although honouring these early intentions, also nodded to the sacrifices undertaken in their pursuit. References to being Lost At Sea, or coming Live From The Impossible Salon acknowledged a wry sense of resignation and a dogged romanticism.
By avoiding sequencers, computers and overdubs and focussing on drawing the most from their instruments and recording equipment their music carries a seductively human character that allows the music to breathe and puts the listener in the room with the band. Although rooted in their formative post-punk / early industrial years, IFCO have incorporated kosmische, minimalism, jazz, classical and avant-garde techniques into their always-the-same-but-always-different sound. Staying true to an original concept yet constantly pushing it in new directions is no easy task but IFCO can claim the mantle and show no signs of tiring.
On Bathroom Electronics Scott and Karla are joined on two of the four tracks by long-term compadres Matt Krefting and Timothy Shortell. As the title implies, the LP consists of electronic instruments recorded in bathrooms. The stark interior certainly plays a role here. Side A’s three tracks have a compellingly unsettling and claustrophobic feel. Side B’s The End of the Line (alternative versions of which appeared on a limited Recital tape in 2018) feels like a long, ambiguous goodbye. It’s what not said here that speaks the loudest though, this is much more of an odyssey than a comfort break.
Bathroom Electronics marks IFCO’s 35th year in confident and uncompromising fashion. Here's to the next 35 years and, as ever, here’s to love!
25,50€
In stock
LP
Francis PLAGNE
“Udge”
Melbourne-based Francis Plagne returns to Horn of Plenty with possibly his strongest statement to date, Udge.
Since his appearance on the Australian scene in the early 2000’s Francis has pursued a unique trajectory, bridging left-field song-craft, experimental electronic composition and improvisation. In addition to solo works issued by Black Truffle, Penultimate Press, and his own Mould Museum imprint, he has worked in various collaborations with Andrew Chalk, crys cole, James Rushford, and Joe Talia. Defining the entirety of his output is the pursuit of radical autonomy, sculpting musical gestures, spanning numerous idioms, which take nothing for granted and manage, in each iteration, to declare their own territory and terms while acknowledging their place within a long continuum of musical practice.
Udge takes us further along the path carved out on the Rural Objects LP. Employing a similar palette of sounds, including that wild guitar synth, and a cameo from Joe Talia on drums. The record takes the form of two untitled side-long suites built from a series of portastudio jams and miniatures. Played against bristling passages of acoustic and electronic textures, fragments of melody and rhythm thread their way across the album’s length only to be broken and undermined by interventions into the tape onto which they were laid. Similar to Teo Macero’s electric Miles tape treatments or John Oswald’s restitching of The Grateful Dead, Udge is a deceptive work of musique concrète that sits adjacent to some of the more singular prog / RIO records by Nascita della Sfera, Albergo Intergalattico Spaziale, Roberts Owen, and Look de Bouk.
27,00€
In stock
LP
William BURROUGHS
“Ali’s Smile”
**2023 stock**
This record is divided into 2 sections. The first part is the title track and takes up most of side 1. Ali’s Smile was first published in 1971 and was privately released as a one sided LP, in an edition of 99 copies. It came in a plain sleeve with a hardback copy of the spoken text, and was sold exclusively through Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, UK. Bill Butler, the bookshop owner, was still paying off a viciously punitive fine and associated court costs imposed in 1968 after a guilty verdict in an obscenity trial. Burroughs, a ‘fellow American’, was only too happy to help out by letting him have the rights to the recording. Rumours abound as to how many copies of the LP actually sold and how many were damaged after having been left on a heater, but, whatever the facts, this magnanimous gesture would still have been very handy. This is the first official reissue of this lost audio recording. A tale of revenge, heartless cruelty and amulet power, muddied with frequent recourse to Scientological references.
The rest of the LP is taken up with 30 minutes of audio tape supplied by Burroughs in answer to various questions mailed to him by a freelance journalist. It also includes several readings from material he was working on at the time. The recordings date from 1963, which places them as some of (if not the), earliest in depth recordings of his readings and thoughts. As this material dates from just before the publication of Nova Express, much of it serves as a useful companion and commentary on his Nova mythology. In the end only about 10 minutes of this material ever got broadcast, and was used as part of an illustrated talk on the BBC’s Third Programme.
Released in an edition of 1000 with sleeve notes on a numbered insert.
25,00€
In stock
LP
Ellen FULLMAN
“Music for the man who grew common in wisdom”
**2023 stock**
besom presse announces the release of Ellen Fullman’s Music for the Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom. Known prominently for her sculptural Long String Instrument (LSI), these musique concrete pieces showcase an underrecognized side of Fullman’s sound investigations. In two expansive works, Fullman voyages through the comic, the menacing and the blissful all while evoking the unique kinetic and timbral aesthetic for which she is widely praised. Composed between 1987-1989, while living in Austin, Texas, the music originally served as accompaniment to choreographer Deborah Hay's dance piece of the same name. The besom presse release presents the last two movements of the full composition.
In 1985, Hay, a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, commissioned Fullman to collaborate on a new work. Hay was deeply influenced by her experience as a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and to the way John Cage and Cunningham collaborated. As such, the only relationship planned between Fullman’s music and the choreography was timing. Inspired by Hay’s open-ended approach and encouraged to use a new set of musical implements, Fullman explained, “I found this way of working to be remarkably refreshing and respectful of my process. I felt free to delve into my attraction for absurdity, knowing that I would not be judged.” With a variety of acoustic sound sources, Music for the Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom finds Fullman exploring the possibilities of the Prophet sampler. Describing her experience of using this tool she explains: “I was fascinated by what could be done with the Prophet and worked in a way that could be seen as an outgrowth from the musique concrete approach that I had used with a reel-to-reel tape recorder in earlier years.”
One of the most interesting contextual aspects of Music for the Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom is the flux under which it was created. Recently relocated and using unfamiliar equipment after having dedicated so much of her time and energy to advancing her knowledge of the LSI, this record provides an ultra-rare snapshot of Fullman’s journey as a composer: a suspended moment wherein her earlier phase of sound collaging comes into direct contact with her sensibilities of movement and sound as refined by her work with the LSI.
The excursion rewards careful, repeated listening. Its musical events arrive spontaneously while striking a rare balance between the poetical and unaffected. While the work is time-stamped by its technology, it evades the quaintness that beleaguers so many novel releases from the past. On side A, titled Music for the Gardener, Fullman triggers an assortment of exquisitely recorded acoustic sounds from a variety of quotidian sources including bits of glass dropped on a concrete slab, the gentle clanking of suspended woodscraps, water swishing back and forth, and her own voice. The piece begins with the glass, arranged chromatically, which Fullman playfully improvises with by triggering individual notes from a series of chord shapes. The effervescent chime and bounce is punctuated with sudden cluster chords that explode like a six-pack against a brick wall. This gives way to the round and muted tones of the swinging timber—a generous sonic foil to the icy digital aliasing of the glass samples. Shifting focus again, we hear the hi-fi swishing of water in a tub reproduced in a dazzlingly wide stereo field made possible by microphones arranged at either end of the bath. Fullman’s sampled voice, played in a meditative modal melody, signifies a kind of coda anchored by the rhythmic pulsing of clanking wood.
Side B’s Music for the Aviator is rooted in Deborah’s directive: "We contain the mystery, but we don't know what it is." Like an alternative soundtrack to Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre, starter guns, percolating bubbles, cheering crowds, and a calliope organ conjure a lysergic day at the circus. More or less abrupt disturbances take place throughout. The circus is consumed by cetaceous blowhole sounds, which in turn fade into something vaguely like the Hindewhu whistle of Ba-Benzélé Pygmy music (think the intro to Herbie Hancock’s Watermelon Man). Eventually the piece settles into a satisfying rhythmic pulse of tuned breath sounds set in a cloud of woozy voice loops while a tightly packed spectrum of overtones springs forth.
The Man Who Grew Common In Wisdom was performed in August 2019 at the Tanz im August Festival, Berlin, in their RE-Perspective Deborah Hay, Works from 1968 to the Present. Eva Mohn of the Cullberg Ballet, Stockholm, was the soloist, and the work has become part of their repertoire. Music from the first movement of this piece, The Navigator (aka “Staggered Stasis”), was made available earlier this year by Superior Viaduct on a reissue of Fullman's 1987 self-released cassette, In The Sea.
25,00€
In stock
LP
Tetuzi AKIYAMA
“Thaumaturgy”
**2023 stock**
The intimacy of Akiyama’s Thaumaturgy is immense. In nine short through-composed pieces written over a ten-year period, Akiyama captures something melodic, simple, and utterly transfixing. In his first instrumental solo acoustic guitar record in more than a decade, Akiyama, widely known for his improvisatory collaborations as well as his hypnotizing boogie-drone guitar pieces, here works without effects and maintains a strict harmonic palette throughout. Every note is given ample space to ring out and decay, together slowly and deliberately building the frame that is to become the completed structure. The resulting atmosphere of his pared down grammar threads each individual track to the next as the songs work together with the gravity of a single object. In fact, one might think of each track like a room in a house.
The record, as its name hints, is suffused with phenomenological magic. The pieces function architecturally, in a Bachelardian sense, sheltering the daydreamer and encouraging charged stillness. The record envelops like a long-vacant shelter, made sacred by memory. Repeated motifs, like building blocks, waft through the air, exacting the psycho-durational and transportive power of a music box. And while, like a music box, the music lends itself to the tracing of inner landscapes, critical listening reveals that this is no mere background music. The acoustic field is richly ornamented with combination tones that are intensified by a pacing in step with Rothko-philes, Morton Feldman and Loren Connors.
While the enclosure of home serves for many as refuge from the world, Akiyama’s Thaumaturgy speaks to a basic drive for a sense of place in an epoch dominated by the disassociation of global nowhere-culture. The simplicity-bordering naivete of the pieces evokes a discomfiting nostalgia and melancholy pointing us home or, as Bachelard would suggest, to the “miniscule phenomenon of the shimmering consciousness.”
25,00€
In stock
LP
Alvin LUCIER
“Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II”
Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II continues Black Truffle’s documentation of the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who sadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the two works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble founded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the music Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to explore in 2013. Played with e-bows, in these works electric lap steel guitars take on roles akin to the slow sweep pure wave oscillators heard in many of Lucier’s works since the early 1980s. This strikingly elegant pair of compositions would serve as an ideal introduction to Lucier’s late music for a listener as yet unfamiliar with its graceful exploration of beating patterns and other acoustic phenomenon.
The two pieces have quite different characters, exemplifying Lucier’s ability to harvest a remarkable range of musical results from closely related compositional procedures and concerns. In Arrigoni Bridge (2019), Lucier uses a technique familiar from earlier works such as Still Lives (1995), where sine waves traced the shapes of household objects. Here, three lap steel electric guitars (played by Oren Ambarchi, Bernhard Rietbrock, and Jan Thoben) follow the form of the Arrigoni Bridge that connects Middletown and Portland, Connecticut. The bridge’s two enormous steel arcs become slowly sweeping pitches, alongside which alto saxophone (Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos), violin (Rebecca Thies) and cello (Lucy Railton) sustain long tones, creating a variety of audible beating patterns depending on their distance from or proximity to the guitars. With its stately pacing, warm middle register tones, and rich timbral variety in the sustaining instruments, Arrigoni Bridge is a beautiful example of compositional reduction producing immersive results. Flips (2020), on the other hand, is more austere. Scored for two lap steel electric guitars (Rietbock and Thoben), double bass (Ross Wightman) and glockenspiel (Trevor Saint), the two acoustic instruments played with bows, the piece zooms in on the range of a major second (two semitones). The two guitars sweep in opposite directions within the range, crossing every four minutes; the double bass and glockenspiel sustain long tones, producing beats of different speeds determined by their distance from the guitar tones. This limitation of the tonal range means the music is often dissonant and forces the phenomenon of audible beating to the surface, resulting in a paradoxical music composed entirely of long tones yet alive with pulsating rhythm. Exemplifying Lucier’s ability to uncover near-infinite complexity within seemingly simple materials, Works for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II is a fitting tribute to one of the major figures of the experimental music tradition and a testament to the continuing power of his work.
25,00€
In stock
2 LP
Ustad Zia Mohiuddin DAGAR
“Vrindavan 1982”
Black Truffle is thrilled to present a previously unheard performance by rudra veena master Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, recorded in the North Indian city of Vrindavan at the Druhpad Samaroh festival in 1982. Z.M. Dagar was a nineteenth-generation descendant of the Dagar family of musicians, famed for their profoundly meditative approach to the tradition of Hindustani court music. Perhaps the most revered members of the family were the brothers Mohinuddin and Aminuddin Dagar, who played a key role in reawakening interest in dhrupad in the mid-20th century. The great exponents of the tradition from whom Z.M. Dagar descended were all singers, and dhrupad is essentially vocal music. However, as Z.M. Dagar explained, the veena family of instruments plays an important role in the education and practice of dhrupad singers, especially as an aid to mastering the fine microtonal nuances of pitch essential to the genre. Introduced as a child by his father to the rudra veena, a large and low-pitched veena amplified by two enormous gourds, Z.M. Dagar became the first modern dhrupad musician to perform with it as an instrumental soloist, giving his first recital at the age of 16. Devoted to the instrument throughout his life, he made innovations to its design and materials, as well as introducing novel techniques (such as playing without the use of the traditional wire plectrum, resulting in the remarkable warmth of his tone). In the great Dagar family tradition, his approach to the various ragas that make up the dhrupad repertoire was stately, slow, and considered, with a great emphasis on the alap, the heavily improvised exposition section. True to form, in this recording of Dagar performing the night raga Yaman Kalyan, the alap section stretches out to more than forty minutes of slow-motion bliss, a frozen tanpura drone hovering above Dagar’s gracefully bent notes and elegantly twisting phrases. In the alap’s first half, Dagar’s figures are so intently focused on the lower reaches of the rudra veena’s range that they register more as shudders and moans than melodic patterns. As the performance continues, he slowly climbs in pitch, though continuing with the same intent focus on the articulation of single notes and subtle microtonal variations. This leads to the jod section of the performance, which, though still accompanied only by the tanpura, gradually takes on a more rhythmic character. Developing almost imperceptibly over the course of nearly thirty minutes, the jod moves from the stillness of the opening alap to a rapid pulse that announces the closing section of the piece, where Dagar is joined by Shrikant Mishra on the pakhawaj (a double headed hand drum). Where many performers use the final section of the raga as an exercise in unrestrained virtuosity, Dagar and Mishra subtly weave a web of finely shifting accents and hypnotic melodic variations, bringing the recording to a fitting conclusion while remaining within the meditative space occupied by the performance as a whole. Adorned with beautiful archival photographs of Dagar taken by Swedish percussion legend Bengt Berger and accompanied by detailed notes from Bradford Bailey, Vrindavan 1982 is a stunning document of music unmatched in its patient focus and mysterious emotional depth.
35,00€
Out of stock
LP
Eiko ISHIBASHI – Jim O’ROURKE
“Lifetime of a Flower”
For the exhibition “Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art“, Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O‘Rourke had created the installation ”Lifetime of a Flower“ in which they set parameters but allowed the process itself to grow uncontrollably. Literally: in the garden of their Japanese house, they planted seeds and filmed the plant growing and thriving throughout the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time - and they heard a composition in which Ishibashi and O‘Rourke reflected the organic process in sound. The eponymous composition now available on LP, is an enigmatic and sophisticated layering of sounds, melodies and rhythms, noises from everyday life, all of which are repositories of associations, memories and expectations.
32,00€
In stock
LP
COMPILATION
“In Fractured Silence”
LP version.
Compilation curated by Steven Stapleton (of Nurse with Wound) of creative-experimental-unlikely music, originally released in 1984. Released on his United Dairies label that he had created with John Fothergill, he naturally called on Jean-Jacques Birgé and Francis Gorgé, who were then playing with Bernard Vitet in Un drame musical instantané. The compilation would be named In Fractured Silence. Alongside Nurse With Wound and Un drame musical instantané, could be heard Hélène Sage (whom Birgé introduced to Stapleton) and Sema, a project from the experimental British musician Robert Haigh who had participated in key records in the Nurse With Wound discography, such as Homotopy to Marie and Spiral Insana.
24,00€
In stock
LP
COMPILATION
“In Fractured Silence (Smoke Vinyl)”
LP version. Smoke color vinyl.
Compilation curated by Steven Stapleton (of Nurse with Wound) of creative-experimental-unlikely music, originally released in 1984. Released on his United Dairies label that he had created with John Fothergill, he naturally called on Jean-Jacques Birgé and Francis Gorgé, who were then playing with Bernard Vitet in Un drame musical instantané. The compilation would be named In Fractured Silence. Alongside Nurse With Wound and Un drame musical instantané, could be heard Hélène Sage (whom Birgé introduced to Stapleton) and Sema, a project from the experimental British musician Robert Haigh who had participated in key records in the Nurse With Wound discography, such as Homotopy to Marie and Spiral Insana.
26,00€
In stock
LP
David TOOP & Lawrence ENGLISH
“The Shell That Speaks The Sea”
A note from Lawrence English
I first met David Toop some 20 years ago. I think we were in touch shortly before that, but our first meeting took place when I invited him to Australia to perform and to speak as part of REV, a festival held at Brisbane Powerhouse. It was a memorable meeting, I vividly remember his solo performance and the edition A Picturesque View, Ignored, documents an improvised meeting during that time.
Over the years, David and I have shared an interest in both the material and immaterial implications of sound (amongst other things). Moreover we’ve connected many times on matters which lie at the fringes of how we might choose to think about audition, our interests seeking in the affective realm that haunts, rather than describes, experience. The Shell That Speaks The Sea very much resonates from this shared fascination.
I’m not exactly sure when we first mooted this duet, but I sense its initial trace is now more than a decade ago. I tend to live by the motto of ‘right place, right time’ and I believe David likely also subscribes to this methodology. A couple of years ago, David and I reignited the duet conversation and began exchanging materials. As a jumping off point, I explored a series of field recordings that, for me at least, captured something of this affective haunting that I mentioned previously.
One such recording was of a Tawny Frogmouth at Nugum (White Rock) on the lands of the Yugarabul people. The frogmouth is an utterly elusive creature whose voice is like a modulating low frequency oscillator. They are a magical bird, and like the Potoo, have captivated David and I at various points in our lives. The recording seemed to suggest a whole way of approaching sound and, for me at least, it opened an entirely new range of sound worlds which are present in the final version of this recording.
This edition is the product of spontaneous burst of exchanges, buffered by periods of tempered silence. A patient work, charged with unexpected dynamics.
It’s with great pleasure we share this recording with you.
David Toop - Voice, digital electronics, Spanish, electric and lapsteel guitars, bowing, whistling, percussion, flutes.
Lawrence English - Electronics, field recordings, shortwave radio, bass drum, ghost flute, bamboo, stones.
24,00€
In stock
LP
Francesco FABRIS & Ben FROST
“Vakning”
A Note from Lawrence English on Vakning
Nothing is fixed, nothing is permanent, nothing holds for anyone, any time or anything.
As stable as we might choose to think it is, this planet is anything but that. A paper thin crust, the zone in which we find ourselves, and mostly concern ourselves with, exists as a modest veil cloaking a dynamic seismic turbulence that is as powerful as it is unknowable.
There are moments though where ruptures occur. The pressure from within carves its way to, and through, the surface of the planet simultaneously delivering destruction and virgin landscapes, as primordial as any we might care to imagine. It is here, in these places, where we can literally see the living planet, that geologic time is condensed and world building is made visible, and audible to us, in an unrestrained and provocative detail.
These volcanic ruptures, such as those captured on Vakning by Francesco Fabris and Ben Frost, speak to the very living geology of Earth. These recordings, captured at close range, exist at a nexus where liquid rock becomes solid. They capture moments of transformation, of obliteration and of creation, often all at once.
These are recordings of a living, material planet, dynamic and unrestrained.
24,00€
In stock
LP
PRIMITIVE MOTION
“Portrait Of An Atmosphere”
A Note From Leighton Craig
Portrait of an Atmosphere was recorded with the intention of crafting a long duration work of constituent parts; a suite of related compositions to be listened to as a singular narrative. It focuses on acoustic elements to achieve the kind of sound immersion that is central to our practice, without using the typical palette of reverb and delay. It is rewarding for us, that in the absence of these tools, it still enters the dream-float realm, attaining that sense of something 'other'. It is at once the least and most Primitive Motion-sounding album to date.
The title of the album has been taken from one of Sandra's cut-poems, an ongoing series of work where she reduces/cuts the text on the page of a found book to arrive at a poetic denouement. In this context it seems fitting that some recordings on the album also have the sense of being cut together, although perhaps more as collage than reduction. Most obviously Portrait IV joins a piano track with fragments of studio improvisation, a drifting fog that finally clears by restating the single-string guitar motif of Portrait I. The beginning at the end; mirror in a mirror.
The final track on the album, Trenches of Time (another cut-poem title), sits outside the Portrait suite but shares the same path of call and response intra-studio exchanges and acoustic intervention. But this album is more than a recording project. It represents the ongoing thread of non-verbal conversation that passes between sound makers, and has been exchanged between these band members for over a decade, captured here in an evolving dialect. It's a peculiar language that can be understood through the bowing of a cymbal and the wheezing of a reed organ. It's this conversation that is the joy and otherness of making music.
Recorded and produced by Primitive Motion between 2018 and 2020 at Kindling House and Woodburn Laboratory, Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia.
Sandra Selig: voice, handclap, flute, cymbals, melodica, radio, saxophone, glass bowl, drums, marble in bamboo, zither, wind chimes, bowed cymbal.
Leighton Craig: acoustic guitar, reed organ, cymbals, field recordings (Kyoto Japan), tremolo guitar, miniature saxophone, voice, piano, metal stool, bird call, synthesiser, wind chimes, shaker, timber box.
24,00€
Out of stock
LP
Félicia ATKINSON / Richard CHARTIER
“Ni envers ni endroit … / Recurrence.Expansion”
Félicia Atkinson: »Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe)« (2021)
Félicia Atkinson’s Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe) is approached as a meditation, not as meditative music, but as a reflection on the art of creation: how to inhabit one’s creation, how to convey it, domesticate it and live with it. Drawing inspiration from the artist Georgia O’ Keeffe, both in her work as a painter and in the houses in which she lived in New Mexico, and even in the landscapes that surround them, Félicia Atkinson has composed a piece that evokes and celebrates, in a poetic and holistic way, the mystery of art, the somnambulic oscillation that accompanies the act of creating. Blending fragmentary voices, islands of piano, electronic textures and patterns, and field recordings, Félicia Atkinson’s music is sincere and inspired, a meditation, then, but also a lesson we sometimes forget: being an artist is not an activity, even less a profession, it’s a singular way of approaching the world and, in so doing, densifying it.
Richard Chartier: »Recurrence.Expansion« (2020)
Richard Chartier’s music takes up residence at the frontiers of the audible, on the edge where sound diffracts into an inter-dimensionality where sounds, space, listening and silence recombine in an arborescence of becomings that present themselves to us and then disappear. The space-time in which Richard Chartier’s music unfolds is a stretched space-time, barely emerging in the world of sound. The delicacy, precision and accuracy of the composition Recurrence. Expansion lies precisely in this dialogue between a shape that is exposed and developed in an inspired and masterful way, and the sonic biotope in which this shape develops. It is from such an encounter that the singularity of Richard Chartier’s music emerges, music of attentive listening, but also sensitive, inhabited music, a music of discreet metamorphosis.
25,00€
In stock
LP
KMRU
“Dissolution Grip”
The inaugural release on KMRU's own fledgling OFNOT imprint, 'Dissolution Grip' is an ambitious project that emerged from his studies at Berlin's prestigious UDK. The Kenyan composer and sound artist is best known for his field recording work, and as he traveled across Europe and the wider world for regular live performances, he made a point to snapshot each city. But the more he studied and the more he examined his practice, the more KMRU began to wonder what the purpose of these recordings were, and what bearing they might actually have on his self-expression. Simultaneously, he'd begun to dive more wholeheartedly into the world of synthesis. In a way, synthesis is the most basic form of sound, and KMRU started to wonder not just how he could harness these sounds but how he might be able to more dynamically combine them with field recordings.
Guided by Jasmine Guffond at Berlin's Universität der Künste (better known as UDK), KMRU looked at waveforms - the visual representation of sound itself - and embarked on a process where he would write scores from the shapes, gradually turning the scores into raw synth sounds. Considering the spaces he was inspired by and shuttled through, KMRU decided that instead of using environmental recordings as an aesthetic marker, he would use these captured moments to guide the waveforms. So each sound is birthed from a field recording, but none of those recordings are audible in their original form. For example, on the digital bonus track 'Along A Wall', KMRU recorded in an old shack on his family's compound in Nairobi, where wind was shaking the building to its foundations. Listening to the finished piece, we can hear subtle electronic tones that rub and vibrate against each other, slowly saturating and mimicking the erratic motion of the wind. The original recording has been removed, but the feeling remains.
The album's opening side 'Till Hurricane Bisect' is a 15-minute epic that evolves at its own glacial pace, carefully transforming blustering wind sounds into gasping drones, glassy oscillations and choked distortion. Cosmic and meditative, it's a testament to KMRU's skill as a sound engineer and patience as a composer, combining the gentle world building of his acclaimed Editions Mego album 'Peel' with the rumbling energy of 'Limen', last year's collaboration with Aho Ssan. On the title track, KMRU takes the opportunity to flex his orchestral muscle, conducting a cast of warbling synth tones into a durational symphony. Starting as quietly as a whisper, 'Dissolution Grip' expands at its own pace until it's a dense wall of harmony, powerful but never completely overwhelming. It's music embedded with a rich sense of place that informs us of KMRU's past and present, and signals where his musical philosophy might take us in the future.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
KMRU – Abul MOGARD
“Drawing Water”
In November 2020, KMRU self-released »Drawing Water«. The release contained 3 supple works of porous resonance and intimate motion, giving way to a very heartfelt body of work that peers directly into the fabric of the everyday; gestures, movement, conversation, rendered graciously into waveform.
Now, Vaagner is proud to present a special edition vinyl and cassette reissue of »Drawing Water« via its A Sunken Mall imprint, with the original material spanning the first side of the record in remastered from.
For the second half of the record, the label has taped none other than Abul Mogard, who prepared a new piece by reworking various layers from KMRU’s original compositions.
This new 17 minute long piece, tilted »Drawing Water On Matching Teal Surfaces’« is defined by a continuously cascading and deeply resounding solemnness, which, towards the work’s concluding moments, gradually disperses through a subtle downpour of warm pads, delicately rippling through the fabric of the work, before gently dissolving into thin air.
23,00€
In stock
LP
Maria W HORN & Mats ERLANDSSON
“Celestial Shores”
The music heard on this album was originally the result of a commission to score the second half of the film Nico/Nico Crying made by Andy Warhol in 1966. The commission was made by Art Cinema OFFoff in collaboration with B.A.A.D.M for a screening of the film together with a live presentation of the score in September 2021 at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The recording presented here was made in the last week of that year and mixed soon after in January 2022. These recordings are essentially live-recordings performed by the composers together in the same room and recorded in a manner reminiscent of the record making process as it was in the late 1960s. The instrumentation used to make the sounds on this album consists of modular synthesis, zither, voice, contaminated field recordings and metal percussion.
Mats Erlandsson is a composer and musician part of the vibrantly re-emerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, and is associated with practices characterized by the extensive use of sustained sound. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman and Maria W Horn. Recent releases include Gyttjans Topografi on XKatedral, Minnesmärke on Hallow Ground and the collaboration Emanate made with Yair Elazar Glotman on the label 13070. In addition to his own artistic practice Erlandsson holds a position as studio technician and was temporarily, from October 2022 to September 2023, the acting studio director at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm.
The compositions of Maria W Horn implement synthetic sound, electroacoustic and acoustic instruments and audiovisual components, often devicing generative and algorithmic processes to control timbre, tuning and texture. She employs a varied instrumentation ranging from analog synthesizers to choir, string instruments, pipe organ and various chamber music formats. Acoustic instruments are often paired with digital synthesis techniques, in order to extend the instruments timbral capacities. Often based on minimalist structures, her music explores the inherent spectral properties of sound and their ability to transcend time and space, reality and dream.
24,00€
In stock
LP
CONTINUITY
“Continuity”
Eponymous first album by ‘Continuity’, the new project of Swedish artist Martin Herterich, whose sonic explorations of memory and imagination have come to full bloom in this atmospheric and elusive narrative of seven intense cityscapes.
Martin Herterich previously released music (as Sand Circles, etc) on labels like Posh Isolation, Not Not Fun Records, iDEAL and Irrlicht.
“Have you ever felt like all you want is to go back?
Continuity is a sonic narrative, a story arc set in a fictional East Asian metropolis. It is not a city you have been to.
When you have fallen in love with a place, you long to go back; but it’s a memory; fiction if you like. You want to catch the fleeting moment of leaves rustling in the wind, the sun reflecting from the glass panels of the roof above.
These memory cycles create emotional patterns. But unlike reality, these spaces are limited. They carry elements of reality in them, narrative components that evoke feelings and signify meaning. Traveling there becomes impossible. Through streetview surfing and 4K walking videos on Youtube, these spaces that are very much real become fictionalized, much like the virtual spaces of video games. Movement is narration. Fiction is something that is, but at the same time isn’t, real. In order to understand an imaginary place, one needs to travel there.” (Martin Herterich, 2023)
24,00€
In stock
LP
MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS
“Barbados Wild Horses”
After the not-quite-reissue of »Prince of Parrot Shooters/The Aqueducts of Cannel Island«, wide-eyed mystic and tireless searcher of the netherworld Spencer Clark returns to the Discrepant fold with »Barbados Wild Horses« under his Monopoly Child Star Searchers moniker. Recorded while Clark was living in the Canary Island's by Tupperware and Lagoss' Dani Tupper, 'Barbados Wild Horses' brims with insular romanticism and escapist bliss, with sunkissed synth-lines interwoven around his trademark hand percussion bouncy rhythms reflecting the scenery of the islands as a liberating utopia.
With track titles taking an almost self explanatory stance, the album starts with the crepuscular vibes of »Upper Romantico«, a poetic meditation on the lovelorn potential of the fading sunlight, setting the tone for the rest of the tour. »Lava Tube Solos on Horseback«, the first of two tracks featuring Sun Araw's Cameron Stallones, sees the latter's guitar noodles riding the cascading rhythms and digital choir harmonies while in »Neopreno Antiguo« he solos freely around an hypnotic synth line. Finishing off the escapade, »Nightcharcos Punta Brava« drifts in ethereal starlit contemplation, with the percussion taking a more backseat approach, setting into a steady pulse for Clark's gliding synth tapestries. Nightswimming as transcendence. Another piece of the fascinating puzzle Clark's been assembling for over two decades now, 'Barbados Wild Horses' glimmers with a laid back sensibility that's as unhinged as enveloping. Not an easy feat by any measure. Clark succeeds again.
24,50€
Out of stock
LP
The PITCH & Julia REIDY
“Neutral Star”
The Pitch is a quartet made up of Boris Baltschun, Koen Nutters, Michael Thieke and Morten Joh. Founded in Berlin in 2009, they play a hypnotic form of structured improvisation full of acoustic exploration and electronic intervention. On Neutral Star, The Pitch are joined by Australian guitarist/composer extraordinaire Julia Reidy for a record of star gazing electro-acoustic jazz.
Reidy's playing and compositional technique between Takoma-style fingerpicking and Glenn Branca'esque microtonality, perfectly complements the loose improvisational framework The Pitch is providing. Endless ≠ Limitless, a recent piece by Reidy and Joh, is transformed from a washed-out/obscured tape delay composition into a colorful, meandering ensemble piece with a swarming character - blooming with intrigue for the patient ear. The B-side strikes a more gentle tone: the 24-minute Neutral Star begins with a siren-like overtone whose drone-like flowing slowly morphs into a deterritorial modality with jazzy undertone. Accompanied by constant eruptions of vibraphone, clarinet, electronics and double bass punctuation – while permanently questioned by Reidy's drippingly pearly steel guitar work. Slowly evolving into new territories through the expansive instrumentation and keen listening between the players.
The fact that Neutral Star was recorded in one take (by Rabih Beaini in his Morphine Raum studio/venue) in front of a live audience and without overdubs is hard to believe, even for the trained ear. The recording appears to be too multilayered for a single snapshot, with its compositional structures constantly shifting and moving against themselves, counterintuitively and anti-cyclically. Reidy´s playing has been described as "unstable harmonic territory, and the collaboration with The Pitch interprets this concept brilliantly - adding further non-places to the territory. And the listener, however, is never left alone in the process of tectonic shifts - at least as long as their listening is attentive and contemplative at once.
28,50€
In stock
LP
VOMIR & Anla COURTIS
“Sin Comentarios”
The dense HNW blocks of sound does not dominate or overpower the more dynamic guitar excursions of Courtis, but instead there is a good balance of the elements, making room for both artists to shine. The two sidelong pieces that makes up “Sin Comentarios” appears to be composed in a considered manner. The first piece is a full-on ferocious hailstorm of electronic shards, like a thousand pieces of scarp metal disappearing into a prehistoric black hole. Midway through piece a metallic drone appears and slowly takes over the music. This leads us into the second part, which feels like the grinding cosmos of part one twisted inside out, like an alternate reality, all elements in an inverted state of weightlessness. The piece is more open, the elements more clearly defined, there’s a different sense of both space and pace, but the piece is no less intense. Towards the end the music slowly builds down, almost like a sonic origami that folds itself into nothing. I’m sure it was not intended as a symbolic Zen-like closure, but it in the context of what happened, it’s hard not let the thought cross your mind when listening to this remarkable last Vomir recording. (extract from Lasse MARHAUG's liner notes)
22,50€
In stock
LP
Z.B. AIDS
“For Franz”
A bad torrent file for the theme from Miami Vice rings in your ears as you struggle to get out of an elevator that’s crashing real fast while you were waiting for a phone call from Bill Orcutt. Enjoy life while it lasts.
– Guy Mercier
22,50€
Out of stock
LP
Michel HENRITZI – Michael MORLEY
“Mirrors”
For their first collaboration as a duo, rather than succumb to the devastating fury that is the hallmark of so-called 'noise' music, Michael Morley (electric guitar) and Michel Henritzi (lapsteel) have opted for the open sea, and the interior landscapes with the ghostly strangeness that is usually associated with them. The emergence of embryonic melodies under their fingers never frightens them. On the contrary, it allows them to delve deeply into the contemplative and hypnotic dimensions of listening, through skilful interweaving of constantly shifting masses of sound. Although they conceived Mirrors at a distance from each other, what emerges is a fascinating maelstrom, sculpted over time like a long blast spread over two sides. The first, in the form of effluvia, relays primitive forces in gestation since the appearance of the blues. The second, majestic and devoid of ostentation, explores a succession of stases that could have been extended ad infinitum, so much so that the suspension that constantly postpones the fall abolishes any notion of time.
(Philippe Robert)
22,50€
Out of stock
LP
ORION MUSIC WORKSHOP
“Mâlemort”
« We left our hero in his previous adventures embarking on a journey to the edges, where the music of a fantasized desert was playing in an outsider art gallery. Percussions of death, flutes leading to a weird ceremony, the new chapter hits hard. We sail in a canoe on a flow of organic sounds, this second volume follows the quest for a cosmic Grail where the dancefloor makes primitive rhyme with pleasurable. A fruitful novelty, the machine invites itself into the ancestral cave, a metronomic pulse plays the spinal column of an exciting and wonky groove. Result, a record taking his source in an after punk under the Bazooka standard. Kind of Throbbing Gristle in the forest of Brocéliande, La Perversita and Neu wandering off in the Atlas… A sonic restlessness which certainly evokes a venerable sensibility. Caught between two stools but the choice of not choosing will be the chosen option. Here and there, today and tomorrow, this music of the future and past is mesmerizing to the highest degree. »
Electronics, flutes, voice, zither, kalimba, glass, percussions (darbuka, hand percussion, balafon) by Tom Val. Recorded and mixed at Bâtiment 8 between October 2022 and December 2022.
200 copies
26,50€
Out of stock
LP
ROEDELIUS / HAUSSWOLFF
“II” [!!damaged cover!!]
Pochette abimée avec au minimum 2 coins pliés.
Damaged cover with at least 2 corners bumped / folded.
Deep and beautiful ambient experimentalism from two true masters. “Roedelius / Hausswolff II”is this duo’s second album. The two met in Vienna in 2016 when Carl Michael invited Hans-Joachim to participate in the collective sound-installation and concert””freq_out ”. Since H-J had been, and still is, organizing the festival “More Ohr Les“ in his home town Baden just outside Vienna it has been natural for him to invite CM to collaborate and perform here. As a result of this iDEAL Recording released the CD “Zurufe“ in 2021 where H-J and CM collaborated with American Tim Story and Brit/Swiss Christopher Chaplin. Like the duo’s first album - ”Nordlicht” (released in the USA in 2017) - this new one follows the path where a dark ambient drone style reveals several epic landscapes and formulas.
Original price was: 23,50€.10,00€Current price is: 10,00€.
In stock
LP
Marja AHTI
“Tender Membranes”
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Tender Membranes, the label’s first release from Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Marja Ahti. Active for a decade in the Finnish underground music scene, in recent years Ahti has developed a distinctive approach to patiently unfolding electro-acoustic constructions, documented on a string of solo releases and collaborative projects with Judith Hamann and her husband Niko-Matti Ahti. Working with concrete and instrumental sounds, field recordings, and electronics, Ahti favours neither disjunctive collage nor monolithic consistency; rather, her work is composed of organically unfolding sequences of details and textures, which, as she says, ‘can stretch out or cut fast as long as they have a sense of inner stillness’, a sense that she connects to moments of heightened attention in everyday life. Tender Membranes consists of four lengthy pieces, partly inspired by the image of the senses and mind as membranes allowing for the passage between inner and outer spaces, sensation and its causes, creating a world. Ahti’s unhurried pacing encourages this sense of listening as an opening or surrender to sound, which can often create the impression that the listener is moving through a space zooming in on details. The opening Shrine (Aether) exemplifies this aspect of Ahti’s approach: a bell clears the air with a single long tone, followed by the ambience of outdoor spaces, crackling electronics, an archival recording of a horsefly on a windowpane. Dozens of these moments, varying in length, density, and intensity, move past the listener’s attention, momentarily brought into focus then slipping away. Like those of the masters of the French musique concrète tradition, Ahti’s sounds are not often recognisable, though they might suggest proximity or distance, open environments or closed spaces, the urban or rural, day or night. In Ahti’s work, we do not encounter spectacular metamorphoses à la Parmegiani but rather a state of ambiguity where the listener is often unsure what is organic and what is inorganic, where the careful productions of the synthesizer might end and sounds discovered in the environment begin. What Ahti calls her ‘poetic way of experiencing and organising the familiar and the unfamiliar’ is sustained throughout Tender Membranes, but each piece has its own character. On Dust / Light, human presence is more overt, as what appear to be whispers, singing, and distant speech thread between high frequencies, untraceable drips and pops, and metallic shimmers. In all this there is a melody that you can sing and to which you may dance makes more prominent use of musical instruments, gaining a sombre beauty from half-buried piano chords and organ tones. On the closing Oh Fragrant Witness, a delicate cloud of subtly bending pitches is repeatedly disrupted by a resounding, almost ominous mass of low tones, at once a strange detour from much of what has gone before and an almost classical finale. Arriving in a sleeve reproducing contemporary Finnish photographer Sini Pelkki’s fragmented visions of the everyday, Tender Membranes is a balm to reawaken tired ears.
26,00€
In stock
LP
Cassandra MILLER
“Traveller Song / Thanksong”
Black Truffle is pleased to announce its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody; in 2019, it was selected by The Guardian as one of the ‘best classical music works of the 21st century’. Traveller Song / Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller’s gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work.
Like many of Miller’s compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. Traveller Song (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Miller’s untutored voice is an unsteady, wavering wail that has, in her words, ‘more in common with a quasi-shamanistic keening than anything Sicilian’. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre-recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London’s Plus-Minus Ensemble. In the first section, Miller’s exposed warble is set to a spare piano accompaniment, somehow both faintly preposterous and magisterial. Following the voice note for note, the piano part often makes use of almost mechanical sequences of parallel chords, reminiscent both of Satie’s Rosicrucian period and the abrupt harmonic movements of a chord organ. The orchestration then opens up to guitar, clarinet, and sliding strings, a delicate environment for Miller’s voice, which, especially when it begins to be layered, generates a powerful sense of intimacy. In its concluding minutes, the folk roots of the original melody return in the form of a glorious full ensemble setting dominated by accordion, clarinet, and strummed guitar. Thanksong begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven’s late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the ‘holy song of thanks’ the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet ‘as slowly and quietly as possible’. The atmosphere of the opening of Beethoven’s Dankgesang, of hushed reawakening and thoughtful reflection, is sustained throughout the fourteen minutes of Miller’s piece, building at points almost to sentimentality before the five individual parts again fall back into a gentle burble of unsynchronised melodic gestures. Like Traveller Song, here the use of the voice is a long way from the mannered performance of much contemporary music, reaching for a human and bodily presence more connected to the reality of the everyday, albeit suffused with wonder. Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.
25,50€
In stock
LP
Joe McPHEE – Mette RASMUSSEN – Dennis TYFUS
“Oblique Strategies”
Black Truffle is pleased to welcome free jazz legend Joe McPhee back to the fold with Oblique Strategies, a wild trio recorded in Antwerp in 2018 in the company of Mette Rasmussen’s fire-breathing alto saxophone and Dennis Tyfus’s post-Fluxus antics on tape, voice, and percussion. Rasmussen and Tyfus have previously recorded together as Bazuinschal, and some similar strategies are on display here: mysterious metallic scrapes, extended tones in which voice and sax become indistinguishable, comic explosions of varispeed tape. With McPhee on board, however, proceedings are more sumptuous, with the two horns moving fluidly from expeditions into the extremes of their instruments’ registers to pointillistic note-splatter and Ayler-esque folk melodies; we even get to bask in some of the slow-motion free blues that McPhee has now been playing for half a century.
McPhee is heard primarily on tenor, Rasmussen mainly on alto, but with Rasmussen doubling on sundry objects, and the whole trio contributing vocals, certainty about who is doing what becomes nigh impossible. The recording and production add to this hazy unclarity. Where much contemporary improvised music aims at dryly clinical hi-fi, the lively reverberant space of Oblique Strategies calls to mind the less-than-pristine sonics of classic free jazz artefacts like John Tchicai’s Afrodisiaca or McPhee’s own Underground Railroad. A further dimension of oblique unpredictability is added by subtle changes in the sense of space: at times merely a reverb tail glimpsed between phrases, at other points the whole mix seems to be momentarily swallowed up in slap-back, blurring the lines between acoustic instruments and the decayed fidelity of Tyfus’ tape playback.
Spread across four pieces ranging from four to nineteen minutes in length, Oblique Strategies moves with anarchic swagger from explosions of clattering cymbals and bellowing horns to near-silent episodes of mysterious rumble and clunk. ‘Death or Dinner?’ opens the record with a lovely duet of climbing melodic patterns shared between the two saxophones, played with a buzzing oboe-like tone. A long, wavering note sung by Tyfus cues the first of countless changes of direction, eventually leading to a crescendo of watery splutters and duelling saxes. At points Tyfus’ keening resemble the signature moves of his friend and collaborator, Ghédelia Tazartès; at others, his tape-sped huffs and puffs possess a rawness reminiscent of Henri Chopin or Gil Wolman. The dialogue between wailing saxophones and vocal cries, punctuated by percussive thuds and crashes, can at times feel less like a musical performance and more like the calls of some mysterious forest creatures, possessing a primordial energy that might remind some listeners of the outdoor antics of Brötzmann and Bennink’s Schwarzwaldfahrt.
Oblique Strategies can also be delicate at times, as on the beautiful third piece, ‘Destilled Edible’, dominated by a slow, microtonal melody played with a breathy tone resembling a shakuhachi. The closing side-long ‘Light My Fire’ ranges across classic improv call and response, skittering trumpet blurts, inept cymbal clatter, mock-operatic vocals, and crude tape manoeuvres. Momentarily pausing at the ten-minute mark for an interlude of ghostly room sound and crackling texture, its closing moments unfurl a glorious dual saxophone finale, the almost epic tone subtly undermined by Tyfus quietly tapping out swing rhythms. Arriving in a striking sleeve adorned with Tyfus’ drawings, Oblique Strategies is an invigoratingly free-spirited blast of improvisation.
25,50€
In stock
LP
MUSICA ELETTRONICA VIVA
“Symphony No. 107 – The Bard”
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Symphony No. 107 –The Bard, a previously unheard archival recording of the legendary improvising ensemble MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), captured in concert at Bard College, New York in 2012. Formed by a group of American expat composers in Rome in 1966, the MEV ensemble played an important role in the development of free improvisation, bridging the live electronics tradition begun by Cage and Tudor and the high-energy squall of free jazz. Early recordings like Spacecraft or The Sound Pool unleash volleys of metal and glass amplified with contact microphones, howling winds, primitive synthesizer bleep and raucous audience participation, the intensity of which puts much later ‘noise’ to shame. In later decades, the ensemble would go through many iterations, often including legendary free players like Steve Lacy and George Lewis. In its final years, MEV settled into the core trio of founding members heard here: Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum, using piano, electronics, and small instruments.
Curran, Rzewski, and Teitelbaum were life-long friends blessed, as Curran says, with ‘incompatible personalities’: major figures in the post-Cagean experimental tradition, they explored countless divergent and even contradictory paths as composers and performers, from agitprop songs to brainwave-controlled synthesis. MEV is the sound of these three personalities coming together, their contributions radically individual yet attaining a state of ‘fundamental unity’ that Rzewski, in a text written in the collective’s earliest years, defined as the ‘final goal of improvisation’. Of course, listeners familiar with aspect of the trio’s individual works might hazard some guesses about who is doing what: the crisp piano figures are probably Rzewski’s, the cut-up hip-hop samples most likely Curran’s, the sliding, squelching synth possibly Teitelbaum’s. But often these identities are dissolved in a constantly shifting hall of mirrors, the listener unable to tell which of these pianos is live and which is a sample of a past virtuoso, or whether a horn blast derives from ethnographic documentation or Curran cutting loose on Shofar.
The two side-long sets here occupy a similar terrain of constantly shifting texture and instrumentation, unexpected interruptions, and moments of sudden beauty. The first set is sparser, at times almost ominous, as a bell repeatedly sounds across wheezing harmonica, seasick orchestral textures, and creaking wood, making room for episodes of yodelling and delicate prepared piano before exploding into a storm of buzzing synth and piano fragments. The second set is more frenetic, moving rapidly across centuries and continents: cars crash into post-serial piano pointillism, wailing voices collide with chopped and screwed hip-hop samples, Hollywood strings are buried under layers of electronic gurgles. The performance slows in its final moments, making way for a sampled voice repeating the phrase ‘protest and the good of the world’, reminding us that MEV’s idea of freedom was always more than musical.
Symphony No. 107 –The Bard is a beautifully recorded example of the endlessly multi-layered later MEV sound, accompanied by new liner notes by Alvin Curran (now the only surviving member of the group) and a selection of previously unseen photographs from across the many decades of the group’s activity. Arriving in an elegant sleeve bearing a beautiful photograph by Francis Zhou of the Olin Hall at Bard College where the concert was recorded, this is an essential document from a major group in the history of experimental music. As Rzewski wrote, this music is ‘like life, unpredictable, sometimes making sense, mostly not’.
28,00€