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Compact Disc


MICHAEL GREGORY JACKSON‘FREQUENCY EQUILIBRIUM KOAN’ EXPANDED!DOUBLE VINYL LP & CD + 2 UNRELEASED TRACKS FROM NEW SUPERIOR SOURCE Michael Gregory Jackson released "FREQUENCY EQUILIBRIUM KOAN" as a 4 track digital release in 2021. We got in contact with him to make an LP copy, as historic loft jazz recordings like this don't crop up every day, and this recording with Julius Hemphill, Abdul Wadud and Pheeroan aKLaff deserves physical form.To make it even more irresistable a project, Michael said he had 2 more tracks from the same session that we could add to the collection, making this our first Moved-by-Sound double vinyl release, and our first record that's not a reissue. The LP is limited to just 500 copies. Michael has signed the photo print insert of the first 100 orders. "These guys are all heroes of mine. I’ve learned so much (still learning) from all of them. To hear them all together like this is a real gift. What a combo! I can’t believe this happened more than 40 years ago. It sounds like the future. I’m so thankful the tape was running to document this extraordinary moment.” - Bill Frisell "FREQUENCY EQUILIBRIUM KOAN"Frequency • the rate at which a vibration occurs that constitutes a wave, either in a material (as in sound waves), or in an electromagnetic field (as in radio waves and light).Equilibrium • a state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced: a calm state of mind.Koan • a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.Many, many, years ago in a once enchanted place they called The Big Apple, New York City, on the Lower East Side, a scene congealed, a significant cultural revolution/renaissance was happening…it was later to be labeled “The Loft Jazz Scene”.This period was a magical time in my young impressionable life, I was 23 years old, I dove straight into the deepness. This scene was vibrant, encompassing, ebullient, original and incendiary. We all did our own thing, separately and together, contained and motivated, fully immersed in the richly encompassing comfort of our ancestral connections.Musicians, artists, poets, playwrights, actors, investors, galleries, clubs, museums and institutions of higher learning were mostly in cooperation…to showcase and revel at the torrents of music created and played on the Lower East Side, and beyond…reaching out to impact a vast world, to appreciative audiences of adventurous listeners.I was playing and collaborating with musicians that could only be described as autonomous islands of individuality, with whom l connected on potent, spiritual frequencies, and deep aura communing. We shared our ideas, experimentations, and voyages in the most personal of ways.I don’t recall the exact moment that I met Julius, but I do remember being immediately struck by his keenly intelligent, deliberate manner, by the low warm leisurely cadence of his voice, and by his wide, knowing, infectious and mischievous smile. Julius was one my favorite people, a master musician, a pioneer of sound, an innovator and magisterial composer. I was honored to have him play my music…to share ethereal air with him. His contributions were always blazing, heartfelt and breath taking. Rest In Peace Sir Julius.I met Cellist Abdul Wadud around the same period, I didn’t get to know him very well personally, but our connection in the music was strong. Simply put, Abdul is a genius, a man and musician of deep intensity, integrity, fire, knowledge, experience and wisdom. His incredible playing knocked me out, it brought me great joy every time we played together.I met drummer Pheeroan aKLaff at the La Mama Theatre in Alphabet City, not sure what year. Pheeroan was always there, a constant presence at our shows. I was playing a lot with the great master, saxophonist and composer Oliver Lake. Once we heard Pheeroan play it was clear, we knew, aKLaff would be the perfect drummer for our music.“Frequency Equilibrium Koan” is one of my personal documentations of that scene. These pieces were some of the many long form compositions that I was writing and performing at that time. F.E.K. was recorded live at the late great singer Joe Lee Wilson’s venue The Ladies Fort in 1977 on my trusty Sony field recording cassette machine. a stamp of time passed, in music that is wholly present.- Michael Gregory Jackson (2021 ) Michael Gregory Jackson- Electric guitar, acoustic guitar body percussion, chimes, bamboo flutes, recording, post production, digital editing & compostion.Julius Hemphill - Alto SaxophoneAbdul Wadud - Cello Pheeroan aKLaff - Drums

Michael Gregory Jackson (with Julius Hemphill, Abdul Wadud, and Pheeroan aKLaff) – Frequency Equilibrium Koan

First Official Reissue of Conspiracy. NOT TO BE MISSED!! (due to a slight delay at the pressing plant, this release has been put back to the end of July) Jeanne Lee (1939-2000) was an African-American vocalist, poet, composer, improvisor, activist and educator. In her 40 year career she performed with Archie Shep, Marion Brown, Gunter Hampel, Frank Lowe, William Parker, Andrew Cyrille, Anthony Braxton, Ran Blake, Billy Bang, Cecil Taylor, John Cage, Rashsaan Roland Kirk, Pauline Oliveros, Reggie Workman, and many others. "jazz is a music that combines so many opposites...you have to fined that balance, then you have a guideline between freedom and discipline, between rhythm and melody, between body and spirit, between mind and instinct" (Jeanne Lee) This is the first official reissue of "Conspiracy" since its limited release in 1975, it was her first record under her own name as a solo artist. It is a true lost gem, with a unique and beautiful sound. Musician Elaine Mitchener describes "Conspiracy" as "one of greatest free-form albums of the1970s". "i feel the music like a dance, I think it's an important part of the music, it has to be felt like a dance" (Jeanne Lee) --- Jeanne Lee - vocal Gunter Hampel - flute, piano, vibraphone, alto clarinet, bass clarinet Sam Rivers - soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute Steve McCall - drums Alan Praskin - clarinet Perry Robinson - clarinet Jack Gregg - Bass Mark Whitecage - alto clarinet Marty Cook -trombone Recorded in New York, 1974 Originally released in 1975 on "Seeds records" and Jeanne Lee's own "Earth-forms records"

Jeanne Lee – Conspiracy

LP / CD / Tape

First ever reissue of OFAMFA by CHILDREN OF THE SUN, a legendary and virtually unobtainable artifact of St. Louis' Black Artist Group from 1971 Original released in 1971 by the BAG groups own label “Universal Justice Records” this album has for years been an impossible to find/listen to album, and this is its first reissue ever .. Ofamfa by The Children Of The Sun, a band lead by poet/musicien Ajule/aka Bruce Rutlin Is a heady mix of poetry/jazz/political songs/ and a document of a comunity avent. The BAG group being about all the arts theater and dance. The original liner notes by Ajule are great Insight in to the creative/vibrant politically aware jazz scene of St Louise in the late 60s early 70s. This album is an important piece of black American history, and even as a visual artifact it is the thing! “All of the brothers playing and writing on this record are members of the Black Artist Group (BAG) which is based in St. Louis, "Misery." The Black Artist Group, a loose association of young Black men & women, is a potent/fertile creative force; a group which has contributed strong/fresh/inspirational creativity in the fields of Music/Writing/Dance/Drama. The Children of the Sun is one of the units operating under the BAG umbrella; others are or have been, The Oliver Lake/BAG, The 'BAG' Ensemble (Big Band), Red Black & Green Solidarity Unit, Onawali Dancers, Malinque Rhythm Tribe, BAG Drama Dept., Great Black Music Orchestra of St. Louis, Fire-Earth-Air-Water, Me We & Them, Julius Hemphill Quartet and some others.......all different creative approaches and reflecting a sum of influences and wisdoms which ranges across 500 years from here to Africa.......During their brief creative association the COS etched themselves into many hearts and minds. The group was together for little more than a year. Playing college concerts (when $ lucky), playing benefits for all kinds of groups of Black people and progressive whites. "A spiritual oasis in the baren desert of Amerika..." They would say, sometimes...... The conceptions reflect experiments which sought to establish a balance/harmony between the mediums of muse/ic and the spoken/sung word, (often the motions of dancers added still another depth) a balance which would catch the pulse and flame of the will of our people even tho they and we had already condemned the english language as the criminal insignia of the privileged class/es. (...Still, english wuz the only language we had in common so it was a dilema of how to reinspire the language). But because the members had to spend a majority of their time food getting their experiments and investigations were abandoned short of their goal which was/is to find a way to restablish the natural harmony of the Spiritual World; which has been upset and polluted to the same extent as our physical world: SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY?? Unfortunately, as it was, the experiments had to be cut short just as the techniques of communication were being perfected. Cut short by a manifestation of whut George Jackson called "over oppression." These young Black men look, walk, talk, eat, love, trip like us all but (unlike most) life is incalcuably more important to them than property values, hot dogs, cadillacs, or even "civilization;" if u can dig where i'm comin from! Their compassion for the Black, the poor, and the disadvantaged in general is reflected by the staggering numbers of free concerts they give/have given or the free classes they offer at BAG in the 4 major disciplines. And by the fact that they seek to maintain their comittment to life and creativity even as they exist at or near the starvation level. So these young Black men are emissaries of the Spiritual Universe....... the lost/abandoned universe they seek to describe in their creativity. "The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe."* All these things are being said ...... u see ...... in an attempt to distinguish them favorably from their contemporaries in the Kapitalist "superstars"/entertainers/puppets who frolic like gelded puppies across the stages/footlights of the nation; at the end of the silver gaudy chains held by the bloody hands of the richest pale faces and their legions of sattelites and lackeys; who do come in all colors and races. This expression was recorded (by BAG) at various concerts and all of it was recorded "live"/accomplished in one taping. Other than regular microphones no electronic devices shaped this creativity (BLACK). we are new yes we are old before and after the mighty winds of change and revolution The "Black Artist Group" wuz there yes we are the shambles, ruined tones of ancient memories and the sound of running waters, singing leaves flirting the silly air and yes sunlight splashed against dark wrinkled faces sighed winds driving the seasons the gifted moans of cherished lovers yes yes yes serene faces of beautiful children Ours..........” *John Coltrane - Ajulé  credits released June 3, 2024 The Muse/icians on the album are…. Rashu Aten / conga, small instruments Oliver Lake / soprano &Alto; sax, flute, poems, small instruments Floyd LeFlore/ trumpet, small instruments Ishac Rajab/ Trumpet Arzinia Richardson/ bass, small instruments Vincent Terrell / cello Charles “bobo” Shaw / drums, small instruments Ajule / poetry, arrangements, small instruments, drums

Children Of The Sun – Ofamfa

Adam Bohman / amplified objects and stringsSue Lynch / tenor sax, clarinet, fluteCrystabel Efemena Riley / drums, metallics --- Recorded and mixed by Billy Steiger on 31st January, 2025. Mastered by Taku Unami. Artwork by Adam Bohman. Liner notes by Seymour Wright. Photographs by Crystabel Efemena Riley. Layout by Jeroen Wille.  ‘Me, you and Sue’ - the triangulation of improvisers Adam Bohman, Sue Lynch and Crystabel Riley, and the original name for the hand-picked three way of drums, wind and amplified objects responsible for Lynboril Lisinopril. The informality of their original name belies the groups origins - three players naturally drawn to each other via London’s longstanding Horse Improvised Music Club, each of them more concerned with the action of playing than the naming of their sounds.  However, the occasion of their first trio release forced a title, and Lynboril Lisinopril works perfectly - a play on the words Lyn(ch), Bo(hman) and Ril(ey), searched for and spat back at you. “The second word is what you get if you Google the made-up first word” remarks Seymour Wright in the liner notes - the second word being the name of a drug taken for lowering your blood pressure. And although probably not prescribable for hypertension, the music on Lynboril is approached with such a generosity and tenderness that it feels properly airy and light; as equally positive and playful as it is eccentric and uninhibited. Riley’s bouncy drums keep the trio in a state of permanent uplift, as if being buffeted along by a pleasant tailwind, each player perfectly unhurried in their turning over of a new sound. Alternating between tenor saxophone and clarinet, Sue Lynch is crystalline calm, blowing beautiful lines across the metallics of Riley and Bohman. When the trio dials up for their second half, the intensity lifts but the clarity remains - swirling skin patterns subverted with precision by each scratch and scrawl of the table and the punctuation of the saxophone. Grounding tonic from some of the best free musicians we know.

Adam Bohman / Sue Lynch / Crystabel Efemena Riley – Lynboril Lisinopril

CD 1, Unitarian Chapel, Warwick, 1994 and 2023:“Andy Isham organised a concert in the Unitarian Chapel, Warwick on 29 June 1994. As part of a longer concert I played a solo piece on soprano which is the first track on CD 1.  It was not long enough to issue on its own and things moved on. Since then I have kept coming back to it because I think it is some of the best solo playing I have ever done. The idea came to me that I should go back to the chapel and see what it was about the space which drew that playing out. As the idea took shape, the saying of Heraclitus about not being able to step in the same river twice started swirling around too. And there it was – I had the title. The “concept”, even – or at least, the conceit … ”CDs 2-4, a sequence of solo recordings made at Arco Barco, Ramsgate, 2018-24:“I was introduced by Matt Wright, the other half of Trance Map, to Filipe Gomes and his Arco Barco studio in Ramsgate on the Kent coast. The studio is located in the upper floors of one of the former chandlers’ work spaces overlooking the harbour. A loft space with control room, a live main room and a smaller, less reverberant room. The acoustic response of the live room and Fil’s passion for sound recording has made Arco Barco my favourite studio and I have recorded there as often as possible.
 Over the many visits Fil has tested various microphones and their positioning. The variation means that some recordings are noticeably “dryer” and/or “closer” than others. Much of the thinking was inspired by the work of the late Michael Gerzon and his pioneering ambisonics. What I brought to the occasions was variability in reed behaviour and embouchure and perhaps most importantly my state of mind.”
THE HERACLITEAN TWO-STEP, etc.
BOOK CONTENTS:-- Writing by John Corbett (writer, curator, producer; Corbett vs Dempsey Gallery, Chicago), Filipe Gomes (Arco Barco, Ramsgate), Richard Leigh (writer), Stephen C. Middleton (writer/poet) and Robert Stillman (musician).-- An extended interview with Evan Parker by Martin Davidson (Emanem label).-- An email exchange between Evan Parker and Hans Falb (Konfrontationen Festival, Nickelsdorf).-- Writing and visual artwork by Evan Parker. 

Helping to mark Evan Parker’s 80th birthday in 2024, the book compiles both historical and contemporary perspectives on Evan’s work, by a range of contributors as well as Evan himself. The book also includes a selection of Evan’s visual collages, which are shared publicly for the first time.

The Heraclitean Two-step, etc – Evan Parker

‘May Spring Last a Lifetime’ is the first duo release from improvising tenor saxophonists Tom Challenger and Evan Parker. The album emerged after years of informal practice sessions; then, following two live performances, the duo recorded this session at Arco Barco in Ramsgate. The album is Evan Parker’s fifth appearance on the False Walls label.Extracts from the CD booklet conversation between Tom and Evan:Evan: “Duo is the simplest form of group playing. And so it’s the simplest, the purest in a certain sense, and the most challenging. There’s nowhere to hide, really. It’s about the exchange. With two tenor saxophones, they have a shared language as instruments and I think we both have a relationship with the saxophone which is about: what does this thing do, what can it do? And then I’ve learned things from Tom that he has discovered: you can do this and can I approximate that? Can I incorporate that into my language or my relationship with the output of the instrument?”Tom: “I mean, as much as there is just two of us and you can tell there’s two of us, there are moments where there’s no one [laughs], and then there’s moments where there are four or five. This duo has challenged the way that I listen, or the way I don’t listen sometimes. But there are these weird moments where there might be three perceivable, four perceivable things going on, you know, in terms of what you might call a voice.”

Tom Challenger & Evan Parker – May Spring Last a Lifetime

The six works represented on these two compact discs might be heard as historical artefacts in the sense that they exist as documentation of performed events that are not repeatable in the same way that notated musical works generally are. However, while they involved improvisational elements, they are not to be regarded as improvisations since they were rigorously composed for the environmental circumstances in which they took place. They represent an attempt to articulate an aesthetic of environmental interactivity through sound-making, which occupied me over a fifteen year period. During that time I generated a diverse body of work from which these six examples have been chosen in order to illustrate the range of those activities. All of these works share the characteristic of having been outdoor performances. They also demonstrate a purposeful transition that my investigations pursued over those fifteen years: a progressive expansion of context, moving from my interactions with a single member of another species toward interactions with complex environments. Foremost in these experiments was a concern for sound as a means to explore the emergent intelligence of non-human living systems. My interest was in regarding the complex web of environmental sound-making as evidence of complex-minded systems – a way of experiencing what Gregory Bateson has called “the integrated fabric of mind that envelopes us.”These recordings were often made under less-than-ideal technical circumstances. The listener must tolerate a wide range of unusual acoustic spaces and an even greater range of technical quality. I recommend that listeners adjust their audio expectations to accommodate these eccentric demands through understanding that the non-studio production values were intentional and inseparable from the reality of the art.- David Dunn

David Dunn – Music, Language and Environment. Environmental Sound Works 1973 - 1985

“If stained glass windows could sing they would sound like Josephine Foster, and her interpretations of the songs of Víctor Herrero are as artful and finely detailed as motes of dust falling through shafts of light in the libraries of your childhood, engrossing in their restraint. Josephine's naked voice an echoing truth in repose against the existential question mark of Víctor’s guitar. In a world that can feel bewildering and relentless, this music is shelter. Adormidera is the sound of a hypnotised mind; the shadow-dance of old souls.”~ Alex NeilsonJosephine Foster is a Colorado-born singer, composer, and lyric poet. A former opera student turned visionary folk experimentalist, she breathes new life into archaic forms. Her music channels the spectral glow of the cultural archaeology of Harry Smith's old weird America while simultaneously conjuring a scrambled past that exists only in her vision. Across 25 years of singular work, Foster plays at the boundaries of psych-folk hymnody, country blues, lieder and avant-song, lending her characteristic mezzo-soprano and interpretive wit to collaborations with fellow underground musicians around the globe.As homage to her longtime collaborator, Josephine invited Spanish composer Víctor Herrero to curate a selection of his own songs for her voice. Herrero's classical guitar accompanies Josephine's gossamer singing, in compositions that reanimate the lineage of Amancio Prada and Victor Jara.

Josephine Foster – Adormidera

“artful and disorienting” — Mojo “abstract, unpredictable and weirdly beautiful” — The Quietus. “moving and meditative… plays around with notions of nostalgia, hauntology, the strangeness of place” — Klof Magazine "While playing Midsummer, London, even the longest of days seems too short." A Closer Listen "...there’s a musicality in the shape of a whole ambient suite here sat underneath the clanking of buses, the emptying of bins, the distant chatter of human voices and the occasional playing of station pianos. It’s a wonderful listen, especially with headphones on." -- Moonbuilding "In Midsummer, London everything is real and at the same time nothing is." The New Noise (translated from Italian) "As much about the journey as the destination, Midsummer, London is quite a ride" Electronic Sound "her way of working with recordings and sounds, has something alchemical and transfiguring" Blow Up (translated from Italian) "In the canon of contemporary sound art, "Midsummer, London" is an atmospheric achievement, an artificial facsimile that captures the essence of a city in all its chaotic, beautiful, and ever-changing glory." --Psychonautelite "holds among her evocative best, subtly conveying the city’s unique sort of humidity and barometric pressure with a layered, soupy, miasmic frisson of tones..." Boomkat "it is one wonderful journey through London in all its facets.." Radiohörer (translated from German) "torrential, discreet, spontaneous and equal to a story without words!" Against the silence (translated from Greek) -------- “Midsummer, London was composed with recordings taken on the Summer Solstice June 21, 2023, as I attempted to journey from one side of the city to the other along the Thames on this longest of days. The journey began in Loughborough Junction with stops at Clapham Junction, Staines, Shepperton, Hampton, Twickenham, Ravenscourt Park, Blackfriars, Deptford, Woolwich Dockyard and Slade Green.” Kate Carr, 2024

Kate Carr – Midsummer, London

Original GRM member Beatriz Ferreyra deploys a gripping trio of concrète works spanning 40 years (1977-2007) and revealing some of her most mysterious, freeform and otherworldly work comparable to Schaeffer and Parmegiani, but with a poetic playfulness of her own. This vinyl record brings together three pieces that play mischievously with the voice as a sound source, narrative source or diverted object: "Huellas Entreveradas" (2018), "La Baballe du Chien Chien à la Mé-Mère" (2001) and "Deux Dents Dehors" (2007). “Beatriz Ferreyra has been at the forefront of electroacoustic music composition since 1963 when she joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales as one of Pierre Schaeffer’s research assistants. She is one of very few composers still performing who was instrumental at the beginning of Schaeffer’s theories of sound objects and reduced listening techniques. She continues to compose commissioned works and perform around the world in a career that has spanned some sixty years. From the 1960s until 1997 Beatriz composed tape pieces for multi-speaker performance using three or four Revox reel-to-reel tape machines at each concert. She now works on Pro Tools with GRM plug-ins but still uses the Revoxes for certain tape techniques that can’t be achieved with computer software. Beatriz discusses her music in the Schaefferian way, as a series of impulsions [sharp attacks], iteratives [repetitions], percutés [percussive hits], and trames [sustains] whilst also using her own onomatopoeic descriptions such as ‘schkllang, prrrrwip, ferrrwisssssh, takatak’ communicating sounds freely and directly as she hears them. Her music is about movement; the movement of sounds around a performance space, or the positioning of sounds as point sources within the illusory stereo field between loudspeakers. It is also about movement within individual sounds, where each one is a composition of different shifting components and a ‘little structure’ in its own right, with its own character. She likens her sounds to a Russian doll, inside each is another one, which contains another, and so on. During her time at Schaeffer’s studios, Beatriz developed her own research project, Objets Construits, (constructed objects). These are layers of short sounds, chords made of different noises. Each layer is isolated on a separate piece of tape to analyse the relationships between components and the effect of minimal alterations in pitch, dynamics or timing, to the overall perception of the chord. This was a way of thinking about sound slowly and patiently, of taking time to experiment, analyse and contemplate each manipulation, that is lost in the speedy world of vast ready-made digital sound libraries and the immediacy of save and recall buttons. In Beatriz’s work, small, playful sounds interact like chattering creatures and merge into vast cavernous and mysterious immersive landscapes. These three signature pieces use snippets of speech which are gradually deconstructed to create abstract textures, interweaving vocals with percussive and sustained sounds. Small, playful sounds interact like chattering creatures and merge into vast cavernous and mysterious immersive landscapes. La Baballe du Chien Chien [The doggie’s little ball] (2001) is a playful take on the way that we speak in a childlike way to pets. A brief narrative at the start invites the listener into this ‘pet speak’ scene, with the sound of footsteps and chatter. These gradually crescendo and morph into a cacophonous swirling explosion. Deux Dents Dehors [two teeth sticking out] (2007) is a pun on Bernard Parmegiani’s piece Dedans Dehors [Inside Outside] (1977), composed for his birthday. It takes snippets of lively vernacular and processes these into complex patterns of unintelligible and unrecognisable speech, in sustained or percussive sequences and glissandi. Heullas Entreveradas (2018) is a new commission that transforms vocal sounds into choral textures which fragment, granulate and transform into continuous whorls and tidal washes interspersed with her trademark short silences.”

Beatriz Ferreyra – Huellas Entreveradas