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Restock 2023. I visited Saya and Ueno at the Majikick house in June last year to catch-up, hang out and chat about what another record from them on ROOM40 might feel like. I'd come fresh from RM40 HQ in Brisbane, working with Lawrence on Noriko's 'U' and was packing a clutch of his recent solo stuff. The house was fascinated with 'Studies for Stradbroke' a CDr released on Wind Measures of hydrophone recordings made in the gorgeous natural lakes on Stradbroke Island, just off the coast of Queensl…
Restock 2023. Tokyo quartet Minamo occupy a privileged place in the Japanese music scene.They remain one of the few ensembles to consistently produce work that simultaneously refines and expands upon their existing themes and aesthetics. Their largely improvised interactions have produced a collection of recordings that benefit equally from considered listening amongst the groups members and a willingness to stray from the path without warning.Documental, their new edition (a follow up to ‘A Pat…
Restock 2023. 'Someone a long way off, or in the next street on a still day, or in the office across the hall in the rain, might be playing something that sounds a bit like music.'
Following the success of the 'Tokyo Glow' compilation, Wewantsounds once again teams up with Japanese Tokyo-based DJ Notoya to dig the rich Electric Bird catalogue and come with a versatile selection of sunny Jazz-Funk gems recorded between 1978 and 1987 for the label. A tasty selection featuring Yasuaki Shimizu, Toshiyuki Honda and Mikio Masuda, together with a few American musicians such as Ronnie Foster and Bobby Lyle. Most tracks make their vinyl debut outside of Japan and the album has been…
Wewantsounds is delighted to reissue Fumio Itabashi's sought-after album "Watarase" hailed as one of the great Japanese jazz albums and featuring Itabashi on piano playing an inspired mix of standards and originals. Recorded in 1981 for Denon and released the following year, the album has since reached cult status among jazz connoisseurs, thanks to Itabashi's inventive piano playing and to its cult title track, a superb soulful and spiritual composition. Newly remastered by Nippon Columbia using…
A peak album for Joni Mitchell and genuinely one of the greatest singer-singwriter albums of the '70s, of not ever, all the greater for the intimacy of the songs and beauty of her voice! Perfect isn't a word you want to throw around too often, but Joni Mitchell's Blue might be one of the rare perfect albums. They way personal storytelling soars as relatable poetry, the sparest acoustic backing feels a whole buzzing environment for her voice to soar over. It deserves every bit of praise it's gott…
Ladies Of The Canyon was originally recorded between 1969 and 1970, and serves as a transition from her earlier folk inspired release to the more sophisticated albums Joni Mitchell would go on to release. Many of the songs feature lengthy instrumental passages, something would become fully realized on albums like Court And Spark. The flute and saxophone that appear on "For Free" and "Conversation" give a taste of the influence of jazz over many of Mitchell's subsequent recordings. The singer cov…
With Good night the pleasure was ours, David Grubbs melts down and recasts three decades of playing music on tour into a book-length poem, bringing to a close the trilogy that includes Now that the audience is assembled and The Voice in the Headphones. In Good night the pleasure was ours, the world outside the tour filters in with eccentric sparseness. From teenage punk bands to ensembles without fixed membership, and from solo performance to a group augmented by digital avatars, Grubbs presents…
Between 1895 and 1920, the United States saw a sharp increase in commercial sound recording, the first mass medium of home entertainment. As companies sought to discover what kinds of records would appeal to consumers, they turned to performance forms already familiar to contemporary audiences—sales pitches, oratory, sermons, and stories. In A Most Valuable Medium, Richard Bauman explores the practical problems that producers and performers confronted when adapting familiar oral genres to this i…
"Friendly Electrons" presents the electronic side of the original Ton Steine Scherben drummer, book author and longtime Conrad Schnitzler friend / collaborator Wolfgang Seidel.
Composer, performer, instrument builder, teacher, and writer Gordon Mumma has left an indelible mark on the American contemporary music scene. A prolific composer and innovative French horn player, Mumma is recognized for integrating advanced electronic processes into musical structures, an approach he has termed "Cybersonics." Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma's writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every st…
*250 copies limited edition CD in 6-panel digisleeve* Cade is Bruno Dorella and Giovanni Lami. We come from different backgrounds and trainings, but we found a common ground in our open view to different disciplines, and our curiosity towards unorthodox approaches to music. "Cade" is our first ever album to be released, part of a wide archive of sessions that we recorded in 2019-2020, with no kinds of pressure. Dorella plays some traditional instruments such as guitar and percussions, while Lami…
Isolde Touch is Asha Sheshadri, a composer and multimedia artist based in Southern California. Secretary of Sensation is a seven-chapter narrative occurring in Our Town (1052–1119). Voice, synthesis and original text. The music Asha Sheshadri makes as Isolde Touch is boldly literal. Perhaps literal is inexact; concrete is closer, as her sounds have a clarity that ties them directly to their origins (a piano is exactly a piano). Conceptually she deals in abstraction, but sonically she’s unafraid …
This is the second edition of the Idle Chatter curated series. "Held There, Beside The Signified" was curated and designed by Drekka (aka Michael Anderson). It features new music by the Drekka, Pillars and Tongues and Skrei. This triple cassette set comes packaged in a white plastic three-cassette album. Working under the name DREKKA since 1996, Mkl Anderson has released large body of work on his own BLUESANCT label and many other labels internationally, including a series of three full-length L…
Svensk Jazzhistoria is a unique series about the evolution of jazz in Sweden, published by Caprice Records. While the first ten volumes reflect the years between 1899 and 1969, this red-hot eleventh installment delves deep into the 1970s. On four albums with a total of 62 tracks, and a book of 188 pages, we summarize a vigorous, explosive, and many-sided decade of Swedish jazz. Like with the preceding ten volumes, volume 11 is the masterstroke of jazz archaeologist Jan Bruer. Assisting him this …
The project Swedish Jazz History is a CD series issued by Caprice Records. The research for this is subsidized by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the production is partly financed by the Swedish Council for Cultural Affairs. Our ambition has been to reflect the development of Swedish jazz up to and including the 1960s, and Volume 10, the final album in the series, covers the latter half of that eventful decade. Like its predecessor, Vol. 9 (“Brand new!”), the box contains 4 CDs an…
Tip! CD Edition. Available from Blank Forms for the first time since its original 1980 release on ALM-Uranoia, New Sense of Hearing documents a collaboration between Takehisa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki, two luminaries of Japanese experimental music in the lineage of Fluxus. Blank Forms’s high-quality reissue of the sought-after, long out of print LP, is produced by musician-artist Aki Onda and mastered from the original tapes recorded on April 2, 1979, at Tokyo’s Aeolian Hall.
Described by Suzuki …
This release comes in a 2×digipak format in a slipcase with new sleeve notes by Robert Fripp and King Crimson biographer Sid Smith along with rare photos and archive material. Islands is the sixth in a series of audiophile King Crimson vinyl reissues. The album's return to the 12" vinyl format is newly cut from masters approved by Robert Fripp. Manufactured on 200g super-heavyweight vinyl, housed in a reprint of the original sleeve with lyrics insert. The album is a hodge podge of ideas and ther…
This the fifth, and final before the break up, album released by The Mothers of Invention. It was released through Bizarre/Reprise on April 21, 1969 as a double album. It was meant to be the soundtrack to a film, that was sadly never finished.
The album was recorded from October 1967 to February 1968, the exceptions being the CD bonus tracks. Made up of both live and studio material, Uncle Meat has been praised by critics for the diversity of its compositions, the virtuosity of its performances,…
AVVA is the duo of Toshimaru Nakamura and Billy Roisz, based in Tokyo and Vienna respectively. AVVA stands for "Audio Video/Video Audio", referring to the working method of the duo. Nakamura produces the music using the internal feedback from his no-input mixing board, Roisz uses that as the basis for her optical moving patterns, and Nakamura has a TV monitor showing Roisz' output, so the whole process is circular and created in real time.Since 1998, Nakamura has been exploring the possibilities…