September '21
Before the concert, we hadn’t discussed much of what we will be playing. Kirill proposed to place the "June ’21" score on the table, to follow the impression, the feeling, the direction of what it suggests to play. Sometimes we noticed how one part of the score or another would lead us to new ideas whilst we were playing. It was a special concert because of its circumstances. We decided to have one big table for both our setups, and to be standing up during the performance. Kirill used some obje…
Dali Sections 2018-2021
"In 2017 after I finished a tour of Taiwan and returned to Beijing, I left my hard drive on one of those share bikes and it was lost forever. I had close to ten years’ worth of live recordings on that hard drive (I never made any backups). Since then, I’ve made sure to keep recordings of my live performances well organised. To a certain extent, it’s through live performance that I create new ideas. What I regret, then, is that every performance from different phases of my music making life will …
Killed As Time
Conscious Feedback Group (C.F.G.) is a gang of three formed in 2018 by MAI mai, Xu Cheng and Jun-Y Ciao. Improvisation is their way. They use mediums of music, sound, text and performance to explore a non-identifiable style that has nothing to do with fancy illusions.
June '21
The score for June '21 was made in early summer of 2021, in a dialogical process of close live collaboration. Everything we talked about — music, time, politics, and place — was treated as a kind of material with the possibility of being brought into the piece. We didn’t aim to use sound to express such concepts directly, but rather created music with attention to the circumstances: when it was written, where, to whom and by whom it would be played. There was a mutual understanding that we were …
Recytle
This album wouldn’t exist without clarinetist Gareth Davis, with whom I’ve collaborated several times. When I asked him to participate on my + album, he was working with Monika Bugajny. She got wind of my project and asked if she could join. I agreed and reworked her beautiful clarinet recording into a ghostly one-minute piece. Apparently my concoction was convincing enough for Monika to propose another, more elaborate collaboration. Her suggestion was to use the same working method again, but t…
Momentary Lapses
*100 copies limited edition* Spoken word, synth, modules & beats invite the listener into an electronic landscape where smell is colour and sound has weight. 'Momentary Lapses' is the second collaborative album from London based artists BAG (Jody DeSchutter and Daniel Allison), and Collapsing Drums (Charlie Behrens). This is a deeply artful work that is simultaneously engrossing and challenging, and one that benefits from repeated listening.
Eidolon
To understand tuning systems, to peer into the infinity of microtonal compositional strategies, is to imagine a sense of musicality that extends far out beyond the familiar harmonies of the western ear. Iranian composer Siavash Amini, a self-confessed tuning obsessive, has dedicated much of his musical investigations over the past half decade to unlocking new relationships between harmonic events. Moreover, he has sought new timbral relations too and in doing so has honed a particular sonic-aest…
Der Krater
A note from Valerio Tricoli: "It is always very, very difficult for me to write about the music I was personally involved in making. As a matter of fact, a good reason for me to make music is precisely that I don't want to be a writer, and also to be able to shut up... for once. Yet, once a record is finished, invariably arrives the request from the publisher - in this case the great Lawrence English -- asking for a 'press sheet', a very weird, but apparently necessary form of literature in whic…
Spalona Ziemia
The trio is a perfect composition for broadly understood improvised music, sufficient in terms of minimum and generally reflecting to the maximum what the musicians want to convey to the listener. In the case of the Wrocław-based trio Marek Otwinowski, Michał Sikorski and Marcin Witkowski, this "width" of understanding improvisation is particularly visible. This is not a classic free-jazz band or even free-improv, because the musicians go far beyond these frames, touching noise, avant-garde, ind…
This Is What People Think Mountains Look Like
*100 copies limited edition* An absolutely gorgeous long-form piece for trombone, its sustained tones billowing into spectral rumbles that open up trance-inducing harmonic spaces. Simultaneously monumental in scale and introspectively meditative, This Is What People Think Mountains Look Like leaves the brain swirling for days with its reverberations. The venue is vital to the overall recording given its reverberant nature, allowing Barbier to follow the sound of their own trombone as it develops…
Hatomatsuri
*200 copies limited edition* Unfettered harsh noise from the legendary Japanese noise artist Masami Akita aka Merzbow. Tirelessly churning layers of distortion are punctuated across two tracks with glistening, jagged feedback and thrashing pulsations that lash at the ears and utterly invigorate the senses.
Fen
*100 copies limited edition* Fen is a selective evocation and invocation of a Kildare fenland. Focusing on the vocalisations and physical communication sounds of three bird species, it is comprised of field recordings of Grasshopper Warbler, Sedge Warbler (both Summer migrant breeders) and Snipe (resident breeder), alongside tuned percussion and synthesiser textures. As a birdwatcher and sound recordist the communication and language of birds fascinates me. The singular sounds made by the these …
Enz
"After two and a half years of refining, calibrating, and reconceptualising their approach, pianist Darius Heid, cellist Emily Wittbrodt, and double bassist Jonas Gerigk are now releasing their debut CD. With great enthusiasm, the trio met frequently for playful and dedicated rehearsals, improvising freely then observing and discussing the resulting phenomena, delving further into the depths of their music. A long and involved process - creating trialogues that weave through constant re-examinat…
Kuden
"Kuden is a method of communicating information verbally in Japan. The word also refers to the knowledge of secret techniques traditionally passed on orally, be it from martial arts or from music and the performing arts. An apt title for this exceptional, non-arranged meeting of three musical experts who tell each other about the rich vault of their sound treasures in order to enrich it with something new through this musical dialogue, which is immediately passed on to the spellbound, amazed aud…
The Tape
*60 copies limited edition* Live in concert at A New Wave Of Jazz festival, Hundred Years Gallery (London, UK) on February 8th, 2020.Graham Dunning : turntable, dubplates & spring reverbs, Benedict Taylor : viola, Daniel Thompson : acoustic guitar.
Black Tape, Clear Box With Pins, Sealed. Design By Rutger Zuydervelt
Anthology Of Electroacoustic Music From Finland
*200 copies limited edition* There is a long tradition of Electroacoustic music in Finland beginning in the 1950’s with the experimentation of tape music. Finland’s first electronic musical instrument the "Sähkövalopiano" or "Electric Light Piano" was built before this in 1894. It was constructed in the Polytechnic Institute (now Aalto University) in Helsinki. Finland also has a tradition of blending archaic traditional music in the contemporary music scene. The Kalevala tradition for example da…
The Pels Organ and Hemony Carillon
A double CD with location recordings - recorded by Christophe Albertijn - of organ and carillon music plus a 32 page booklet of/for the unveiling of Katharina AW, a relational artwork by Joris Martens.
The Elusive Flexure
Helicopter is proud to present the first trio album of Joseph Hammer (Solid Eye, Dinosaurs With Horns, LAFMS), Joe Potts (Airway, Extended Organ, LAFMS), and John Wiese (Sissy Spacek, Strain of Laws).
Solid State of Time
Robert Turman is an American sound artist best known for his innovative and experimental work in the field of ambient and minimalism. Beginning in the mid/late-1970s, Turman became involved in the world of experimental music, being particularly drawn to the work of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and began to experiment with tape loops and other forms of sound manipulation.Turman’s first solo release, the cassette album “Flux” (1981), is a landmark in ambient and minima…
Plays
Available for the first time as the artists originally intended!