★Ftarri
Trio (2CD)
These recordings were mostly made during the daytime at the residency place and concert venue Petersburg Art Space in Moabit, Berlin. While we were recording, people would sometimes show up in the kitchen area on the other side of the room for a coffee break, probably not aware that we were recording music for a potential album. Even though this could have led to frustration and many retakes, it ended up quite unproblematic, and it was nice how it made us aware of both the fragility of our music…
Dented Time
Jazz drummer Per Oddvar Johansen was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1968. He has earned six Spellemannsprisen, Norway's equivalent to Grammy Awards. One of Norway's leading drummers, he has participated in over 80 albums. In May 2018, Johansen came to Japan with his own trio. Paris-based drummer/percussionist Seijiro Murayama is familiar to Ftarri listeners for his many releases of solo and collaborative performances on the Ftarri, Hitorri and Meenna labels. The eight tracks on this CD (each 5 to 10 …
A Rose with No Name 'Sorry'
**Edition of 200** Tokyo-based sound artist and improviser Makoto Oshiro carries out live performances and installations in which he creates sound using self-made devices and remodeled pre-existing objects. Beijing-based musician/poet Yan Jun, one of the leading Chinese artists on the experimental/improvised music scene, creates music and produces installations freely utilizing electronics, field recordings and voice.
This album was studio-recorded on February 22, 2017, when Oshiro was visiting …
6 Chords
Guitarist Cristián Alvear was born in 1979 and lives in Santiago, Chile. Active on the international contemporary/experimental music scene, he has since 2010 released numerous recordings on labels in various countries. Musician and programmer Klaus Filip was born in 1963 and resides in Vienna, Austria. ppooll, the software he developed, is used regularly by many improvisers, including Filip himself.
This album is comprised of a single track of 40 min., 58 sec., divided into six parts. Klaus Fili…
Guitars
Taku Sugimoto is a Tokyo-based guitarist and composer. Improvisation is one aspect of his work, but currently his main activities are composing and performing composed pieces (including those of other composers). He continues his global and concentrated interaction with composers from around the world, particularly those closely connected with Wandelweiser. Ftarri had previously released two albums under Sugimoto's name alone—Septet (2015) and Quintets: Berlin, San Diego (2017). On both CDs, his…
In Cotton and Wool
** 300 copies** With his innovative performances, Berlin-based trumpeter Axel Dörner has been a leading figure on the improvised music scene since the 1990s. Internationally popular no-input mixing board player/improviser Toshimaru Nakamura structures sound by controlling mixer feedback. These two musicians released the CD "Vorhernach" on the Ftarri label in 2007, and In "Cotton and Wool" is their second duo album. The four tracks on this album (each between 7 and 12 minutes) were recorded in a …
Electric Powered Music Concert
This is the 2nd CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri,
the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. In recent years composer Masamichi
Kinoshita, cello player Tomoki Tai, and composer/computer musician
Takumi Ikeda have departed from their usual musical activities to hold
“Electric Powered Music” concerts–periodic improvised music performances
featuring electrical machinery and devices. These three plus guest
Takuya Harashima (biwa, flute, voice) performed together in an Electric
Po…
Duo
This is the 4th CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri, the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. Suzueri uses prepared piano and several self-made instruments placed nearby to produce a variety of original sounds, which she combines in constructing her performances. Makoto Oshiro continues to create new sounds with the many new self-made instruments he devises. A duo performance by these unique musicians is recorded on this CD. Amid the drone formed by the roar of many sounds, suzueri f…
Trio and Septet
This is the 3rd CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri,
the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. It documents a concert held at Ftarri
in June 2018, featuring Beijing-based musicians Zhu Wenbo and Zhao Cong.
The first set was an improvised performance by Zhao Cong (electronics,
objects), guitarist Takashi Masabuchi, and alto sax player Masahide
Tokunaga (25 minutes). In the second set, a septet consisting of these
three musicians plus Zhu Wenbo (buzzer, clarinet, whistle), Yuma
T…
Sextet
While touring Europe in autumn 2017, Minami Saeki (voice), Wakana Ikeda (flute), Yoko Ikeda (viola), and Taku Sugimoto (guitar) visited Switzerland and joined up with Swiss composer/musicians Stefan Thut and Manfred Werder. This CD is a recording of five pieces they performed at the concert venue Theater Delly in Solothurn, Switzerland, on October 9, 2017. Thut played cello, and Werder used glockenspiel and typewriter. Each of the five musicians other than Saeki provided a composition of his or …
Breathing
Singer-songwriter Tomoe Takizawa has two previous album releases, Watashi, Kona ni Natte (Narisu Compact Disc) and a b c b (Headz). Additionally, Takizawa is an improviser who regularly gives improvisational performances at Ftarri using various instruments and objects as well as voice. This album explores her appealing qualities as an improvisational musician. Tracks 1 and 5, short pieces of 2-3 minutes recorded by Takizawa at her home in January 2016, serve as the album’s introduction and endin…
Tumo Plays Cristián Alvear
Yuma Takeshita, who plays a modified bass guitar that he calls an electro-bass, and drummer/percussionist Yuji Ishihara have established reputations for musical excellence. Takeshita and Ishihara perform improvised music together in their duo project, Tumo. In 2017 Tumo gave a series of four concerts at Ftarri in which they performed composed works. On the occasion of a visit to Japan by Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear, the duo performed “DosCuatro” [2017], a text score work they had commissio…
Songs
The concept of Songs, the duo project of guitarist Taku Sugimoto and vocalist Minami Saeki, came about in the second half of 2016. By that December they had already made recordings of their music, and the following February they released their debut album, Songs (CD), on Sugimoto’s label, slubmusic. Since then, the duo has had an active performance schedule in Japan and overseas, including European tours in 2017 and 2018. Now they have released their second album, the 2-CD set Songs.Most of the …
Duo and Trio
This is the 1st CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri, the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. Seijiro Murayama, who lives in France, is active mainly in Europe, giving truly original performances using drums, percussion and voice. Toshihiro Koike is a trombone player who lives in Nagoya. He is the leader of the trio Fuigo, whose other members are Kanji Nakao and Takero Sekijima; and he is also a member of the Satoko Fujii Orchestra. His improvised performances freely using expanded p…
Skullmarks
The group Common Objects was formed in 2005 by the British harpist/composer Rhodri Davies. The group has had a fluid membership, but in recent years its core members have been the six musicians performing on this album: John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Lina Lapelyte, Lee Patterson, Pat Thomas, and Rhodri Davies. Common Objects performs a wide range of music, from composed works to improvisation. Skullmarks documents the group’s first project in which objects are used as scores.In 2016 Common Objec…
Idiophonic
Seijiro Murayama (percussion, voice) lived in France for many years and is currently based in Paris. Alto sax player Jean Luc Guionnet, who lives in Paris, is also known as a pipe organist. The two musicians have released three CDs to date: Le Bruit du Toit (Xing-Wu Records, 2007), Window Dressing (Potlatch, 2011), and Mishima, Day & Night (Ftarri, 2015). Guionnet played the sax on each of these albums. Their fourth release, Idiophonic, is the first on which Murayama performs with Guionnet the o…
Taku Sugimoto / Stefan Thut
Guitarist, composer and improviser Taku Sugimoto frequently performs overseas as well as in Japan. He's also a member of the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, which consists of five Japanese musicians. Stefan Thut is a Swiss cellist and composer. Both Sugimoto and Thut are known as unique performers and composers, and both have close ties with the contemporary classical Wandelweiser group. The two have a long association, performing together when Sugimoto visits Switzerland and when Thut comes to Jap…
Molecules
Limited edition of 400. This masterful performance was born of the meeting of two master improvisers, Kazuo Imai from Japan and Roger Turner from the UK. Imai, who studied with Masayuki Takayanagi and Takehisa Kosugi, is one of Japan's leading improvisers and guitarists. Turner is a drummer and percussionist who has been actively performing throughout the world since the beginning of the 1970s. His Japan tour in October 2017 included concerts with Japanese musicians in various locations, includi…
Land of the Hermits
Improviser/composer Hiroyuki Ura, sculptor Kenichi Kanazawa, and classical pianist Satoko Inoue released two CDs on the Meenna label in 2017, and the three artists are united again in Hermits. The earlier CDs, Scores and Scores at Ftarri (both released in 2017), are made up of their live performances of a composition by Ura, which was based on a sculptural work by Kanazawa. The performance heard on Scores took place at The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, in October 2016; the performance on Scores a…
In Doubt We Trust
After a four-year interval, The International Nothing has come out with a new album! The International Nothing is the duo project of Berlin-based clarinetists Kai Fagaschinski and Michal Thieke. Both musicians are well known as improvisers, but in this project they perform their own compositions. The International Nothing’s previous releases, all on the Ftarri label, are the debut album Mainstream (2006); Less Action, Less Excitement, Less Everything (2010); and The Dark Side of Success (2014). …