New Arrivals
Modular Organ System
Begun in 2017 and developed and refined over the six years since, the Berlin based artists, Phillip Sollmann and Konrad Sprenger, deliver their first LP, via Choose Records, documenting their remarkable Modular Organ System. Comprising a single, long form composition divided into two parts, “Modular Organ System” is a sublime and masterful work of drone, imbued with immediacy and emotion, that culminates as one of our favourite experimental organ records to appear in recent years.
Räkna evighet som intet
*300 copies limited edition* “Räkna evighet som intet” is an electroacoustic composition in two movements and as much an incantation as it is a process of mourning embodied in an aesthetic structure. Throughout the piece Enocksson weaves taut strings, tense static and veils of feedback with fragmented voices, all the while extracting verses from acclaimed Swedish poet Lotta Lotass into emotional chorales on the impermanence of life. Merging the geist of Enocksson’s prior work – the industrial do…
Serwed IV
Flaty & OL’s Serwed return to Huerco S’ West Mineral for their fourth album; straying from their usual bass abstractions into hi-gloss lab experiments with obvious appeal to disciples of Dopplereffekt, Vangelis or the 'Resident Evil'/'Silent Hill' OSTs.
Station To Station To Station
Sparse, drum centered, dubbed out Electronica excursions by CZN, an acronym which stands for for copper, zinc and nickel the raw path of materials used by percussionist and sculptor Joao Pais Filipe, composer and drummer Valentina Magaletti (from the great Tomaga) and producer Leon Marks. This is ritual music for the whole family. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.
Fire Music
2023 restock; originally released in 1965. 2019 reissue. Some of the most exciting jazz albums to listen to are those that try to strike a middle ground between the mainstream and the Avant-garde. One such example is Archie Shepp’s Fire Music: an often-fascinating album, rich in compositional and improvisational prowess. Employing a sextet including drummer Joe Chambers and alto saxophonist Marion Brown, Shepp puts together a record that is both challenging and accessible to most listeners. Fire…
Alone On Penguin Island
Originally released on Dome (Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's seminal label), this is an often overlooked milestone in freefrom and artistic post-punk. A siginficant piece of the UK musical puzzle when a lot of artists were shrugging off the previous decade and embracing the DIY attitude of the 1980s.
Remedy II
"Voted “Best of 2021” by the critics of “The New York City Jazz Record,” the reaction to Remedy’s debut on the FSR label was not only a welcome boost to our morale but also confirmed the musical strategies we have been developing as a band: three equal partners, sharing an artistic vision where structure, collective interplay and individual free expression are evenly matched. While the ingredients will and have to change with each new piece, an instantly identifiable ensemble sound holds it all …
What Else Is There
In late winter of 2021, four improvisers convened in a Chicago studio. This rare event united UK pianist Alexander Hawkins, midwestern bassist Tatsu Aoki, stalwart drummer Michael Zerang, and me, sleepless Oakland guitarist Karl Evangelista (who had arrived in O'Hare mere hours before downbeat). During breaks, the conversation turned to music and family, two threads that seemed to dominate the waking lives of the musicians involved. Pondering this notion, Aoki asked, "What else is there?". "What…
All This This Here
The title of this new work for the Blue Shroud Band comes from Samuel Beckett’s “what is the word“, his last poem and an elegiac meditation on language. Additionally to “what is the word”, I have also used one of Beckett’s late poems “Brief Dream” which refers to the theme of transiting life and the acceptance of ending - “go end there / one fine day” and Barra Ó Seaghdha’s (Irish writer and poet) evocative poem “Waiting”. Two 18th century Edo Haiku complete the texts featured in this piece that…
For The People Of The Open Heart
Three masters in their respective instrumental fields. Wybithy trombonist Steve Swell, one of Germany's most active percussionists Klaus Kugel and Mark Tokar, a Ukrainian double bassist who swapped his double bass for a rifle for the duration of the war with Russia. They are not a working band, but when they stand on stage together you get the feeling that they have been playing together forever and understand each other in half a word and create music of great power and momentum. All the music …
Openness
Let's move to Montreal in 2006, when Francois Carrier's ensemble performed on the La Chapelle festival stage with an unusual and astonishing line-up.
The leader recalls that time: "In late 2005, I was putting together my annual series of concerts with both local and international artists and musicians. Two of these nights were dedicated to special guests. At the time, I had just heard of Tomasz Stanko from his beautiful album, Matka Joanna. Instantly, I knew I had to do something with him. I lis…
Águas
On 31st January 2022, Hydra Ensemble performed at De Pletterij in Haarlem (NL). It was a good one. Luckily our bass player Gonçalo decided to release the (newly mixed and mastered) recording on his label Cylinder Recordings. I'd say this is my favorite Hydra recording thusfar...
Electric Byrd
Considered by some to be trumpeter Donald Byrd's last worthwhile jazz recording, Electric Byrd is a high-flying relic from 1970. This album can be understood as Byrd's formidable response to the musical challenges set down by trumpet-rival Miles Davis with his epic Bitches Brew recordings from a year earlier. Clearly Miles is the ghost presence here, with distinct echoes of his sound permeating the vibe of this exploratory set. Byrd demonstrates on his three originals that he, too, was a force t…
Kaleiding (music for a performance by Lily&Janick)
Kaleiding is the debut show of the contemporary circus company Lily&Janick. It's a play between light, reflections and new perspectives onto partner acrobatics. With a long mirror that lays on the floor, images are getting created that hypnotize – like watching an everyday life situation through a kaleidoscope. This distorted reality invites into a decelerated world where up is down and down is up. Kaleiding is a movement based show working on the border between dance, circus and visual arts.
Outlaw
In the early- to mid-'60s, Gene McDaniels was a successful singing star. He hit the charts with the singles "A Hundred Pounds of Clay," "Tower of Strength," and "Chip Chip". However, McDaniels was a more thoughtful and politically conscious man than his hits would suggest, and after the assassination of Martin Luther King, he left America to live in Europe and focus on songwriting. When he returned to the US in 1970, he was billing himself as Eugene McDaniels the Left Rev. Mc D, and his music to…
Beyond the Reach of Light
*300 copies limited edition* Beyond the Reach of Light is the 4th release from Oakland-based drone musician Field of Fear. The band’s most personal record, Beyond the Reach of Light chronicles the ebbs and flows of depression with harrowing precision. The album is an emotionally raw and sonically varied experience - in a moment changing from aggressive industrial charges in “Darkness” to subdued ambient drone throbs in “Cold.” Album closer “Lost” emparts a sense of someone emotionally spent and …
Incorporeal
Burnt down utopias and urban paranoia, Hidden Horse are back with their second album. “Incorporeal” is the follow-up to 2022’s “Opala” and the band’s first release on vinyl. Composed by João Kyron (keyboards/electronics) and Tony Watts (drums), long-time friends and collaborators on different projects, the most prominent one being the exotic and dreamy Beautify Junkyards (Ghost Box). As a duo they’re a totally different game.
Playing live regularly after the release of “Opala” offered them the p…
It's Full Of Stars / Paisagens
*100 copies limited edition* Rua in Space. In the fields? These are two complementary works, they intertwine and dance together as one. "It's Full Of Stars" (2020) and "Paisagens" (2021) may suggest the heightened ambient world we experienced during the lockdowns, but they neither revisit those times nor they aim to comment on them. What was, was. Because of that fact some of the tracks are the result of generative music, the flow respects its own rhythm, its own timeline, paralleled perhaps onl…
For Franz
*150 copies limited edition* "It starts very simply. March 1988. The birth of an elephant. Basically, not exactly. Hair and teeth, we were told, it’s like that, it happens more often than you think. He was hungry and he was dirty. There he sucks the vacuum cleaner. We couldn’t stop laughing ! There he purrs. Time flies so fast and he has grown. «Aggression, like love», he used to say, «is first projected onto an individual who then introject them». In the introjective phases, identification with…
Sin Comentarios
*150 copies limited edition* This fateful meeting with a tree makes this collaborative album with Anla Courtis take one a more serious aspect that first intended, as it was the last project Perrot completed before his untimely meeting with the tree in the Forêt de Fontainebleau forest, the master completed just two days before the accident. Courtis was of course shocked by his collaborator’s sudden death, the two had never met in person, but he wanted this LP to be a fitting tribute to his late …