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.

‘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.”

Nyahh Records is delighted to present a collection of contemporary noise and experimental musicians from all across the island of Ireland. All crammed into this two disc set with wonderful artwork by Alan Doyle.This significant collection covers multiple generations of artists in the field of audio experimentation, including Danny McCarthy (turned 75 in 2025) and some new heads on the block like Francesca O and Enola Christ Metalizer. These 32 tracks cover noise, acoustic, electroacoustic, electronics, Musique Concrete, tape music, and drone. Some with academic backgrounds and some total bedroom studio weirdos who don’t get out much.We hope you enjoy this compilation and it brings you some kind of joy and/or discomfort.

Mohammad’s own brand of ecstatic music takes elements from Middle Eastern and North African music to create an atmosphere of joy, love and happiness.WHO IS MOHAMMAD SYFKHANMohammad Syfkhan is a Kurdish/Syrian Singer and Bouzouki player. He began playing music in 1980 while he was in college studying nursing. When he got his degree in 1983, Mohammad moved to the city of Raqqa, Syria where he began working as a professional singer and started his own band, The Al-Rabie Band which played concerts, parties, weddings and festivals all over Syria. The Al-Rabie Band were a much sought-after group. Their live sets included Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and some Western songs as well as Mohammad’s own original material.

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

‘Essential Tremors’ is the debut solo showcase of Cathal Roche, an improvising saxophonist based in Co. Sligo, in the Atlantic north west of Ireland. The extended performance for baritone, alto, and soprano saxophones was recorded at St George’s Church and Heritage Centre, Carrick on Shannon, 2021, in the Nyahh label’s native Co. Leitrim, by Willie Stewart.Here, left to his own devices, Roche colours the air with a seductive display of versatility and virtuosity; initially hovering around liminal levels of extended instrumentals, and stealthily growing to a more full-bodied silhouette, and around the 1o minute mark commanding swarming dynamics comparable to Alex Zhang Hungtai. Cathal’s disciplined control of volume and tone is key to its grip, as he proceeds, pregnant with noirish dread, to blow ribbons of anguished blues - sax keys audible in the space - that hits all the right notes for lovers of late night musical introspection.Comes in lovely gatefold card with art by Alan Doyle

“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.

In the early 1970s San Diego was a sleepy Southern California Navy town on the Mexican border and a seemingly unlikely gathering point for some of the most innovative, unclassifiable American artists of their era. Yet the presence of Harry Partch - hobo composer, iconoclast and inventor of instruments such as the Harmonic Canon and Quadrangularis Reversum - and a newly established and highly experimental music department at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) ushered in a revolution that was as much social as it was musical. Drawing from the occult, self-realization and radical political movements of 70s Southern California, these artists sought to dismantle the established control systems of American life, looking to the future even as they sometimes referenced a distant, idyllically imagined past. In their pursuit of “Irrelevant Music” - Kenneth Gaburo’s term for an untainted music free of constraint and compromise - these disparate artists constitute a shadow history of American experimental music far removed from the European and East Coast models of the time. Sonic Meditations, compositional linguistics, microtonality, invented instruments, cutting edge electronics, underwater synthesizers, Tibetan throat singing, environmental sound and pure noise were their tools. My 2023 book, Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental and Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego, presents the story. In this collection are the sounds.

“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

Reconfiguring the Landscape was an artistic research project investigating how 3-D electroacoustic composition and sound-art can evoke and provoke a new awareness of our outdoor sound environment. The integration of art and technology was central to the investigation that focused on sound, space, time and the utility of outdoor areas. The ideas were tested in artistic creations, and during a three-year period Natasha Barrett created a series of site-specific, outdoor sound installations. These works were installed in public spaces for durations ranging from a few days to a few months. The tracks on this CD are remixes of three installations and one two-part work that hovers in between installation and concert format. They are composed from the installation materials and unmodified site-specific recordings, and intend to capture the immersive personal listening experience of ‘being there’.

This collection of pieces originates from environmental sounds recorded using 3D ambisonic microphones. The recordings have been deconstructed, processed, and composed into abstract musical journeys that no longer transport the listener to the original recording locations. Instead, they tell stories— partly of human-made dystopias and partly in search of a melancholic beauty in what the future may hold.

Persistence of Sound celebrates the composer Richard Orton (1940–2013) with a selection of electroacoustic and computer music from across his career. Orton is known for developing early electronic music in the UK, establishing the country’s first university-based electronic music studio, writing seminal texts on tape composition, then overseeing the transition from analogue tape to computer-aided composition. In 1986 Orton introduced the UK’s first Music Technology course, and authored music software as co-founder of the influential Composers Desktop Project (CDP). As a composer, Orton’s music often ranged beyond electroacoustic music – the focus of this album. He was a founding member of Gentle Fire – the electronic music ensemble including Hugh Davies and Graham Hearn – and of the Monteverdi Choir. The earliest piece here is Kiss from 1968, using open reel tape machines and contact microphones, often pulling the recordings through the tape heads manually at varying speeds. The most recent work on this album is its near title track, Three Monoliths: No.1 The Hemlock Stone, from 2004. This is the only piece on this collection to use tools developed by the CDP – a composers’ collective responsible for generating a vast collection of non-real time signal processing software.

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.”

In Beijing, slated for release around June, fuses free-improv, chaotic noise, and avant-garde electronics into a ^*{}$}$\ sonic experience.Debutantes, known for their genre-defying somewhat ”industrial” approach, have appeared on labels like sensei Tom Lax’s legendary Siltbreeze. Meanwhile, Zhu Wenbo, a mainstay of China’s underground scene, brings his signature brand of strange & clatter.If you’re into twisted textures, fractured (non-)rhythms, and music that unravels itself at every turn, this is your AOTY. La théorie des ensembles, quand appliquée à l’ontologie, révèle des paradoxes fascinants sur la structure de la réalité. You knooow!

Ultan O’Brien is a fiddle player and composer from the wilds of County Clare in the West of Ireland. Ultan is a performer as well as a regular at sessions all of Ireland and can be found by chance in any pub in Dublin, Cork or some remote village on the edge of nowhere, flying jigs and reels around the room. Ultan was reared in the rich tradition of Irish music which is so commonly found and heard in Co Clare, but he also delves deep into sound art and experimental music. He has often been heard in the back of a car after a few pints quoting lines from Alvin Lucier or speaking at length about improvisation and it’s place in modern Irish music. Ulatn O’Brien is a fresh and vital player who has much to offer with his unique approach and technique to a tradition so old and ever ready for a subtle change every 100 years or so.Ultan has played and recorded with people and bands such as Skipper’s Alley, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, John Francis Flynn, Slow Moving Clouds, Cuar, Laura Jurd, Martin Green, Natalia Beylis, Paul Roe and Nic Gareiss.‘in its [Ultan’s fiddle playing] sincerity of tone it reminds me somewhat of those great caoineadh which were played with such elusive grandeur by Denis Murphy and Pádraig O’Keefe’Adrian Scahill

/ For Rob Green (1964-2010) “A bydded i’r arth a ryddhawyd drochi ei gorff yn llifoedd y gogledd rhewllyd a pheidio â dihoeni yn acwariwm dŵr distyll yr ardd academaidd.” Kazimir Malevich, O Giwbiaeth a Dyfodolaeth i Swprematiaeth: Y Realaeth Arlunyddol Newydd (1915) “And may the freed bear bathe his body amid the flows of the frozen north and not languish in the aquarium of distilled water in the academic garden.” Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Manifesto (1916)creditsreleased February 24, 2021 Telyn benglin / Lap harp Telyn benglin, troswr, meicroffon cyffwrdd (Trac 7), pedal trosyriant, pedal sain a dau chwyddseinydd. Lap harp, transducer, contact microphone (track 7), overdrive, volume pedal and two amplifiers. Recordiwyd ar Rhagfyr 11, 2011 yn Tŵr Morden, Newcastle upon Tyne / Recorded on 11th of December 2011 at Morden Tower, Newcastle upon Tyne.Cynhyrchydd gweithredol / Executive producer: Richard Dawson.Recordiwyd a chymysgwyd gan / Recorded and mixed by Phil Begg.Meistrolwyd gan / Mastered by Sam Grant.Dylunio gan / Design by Anna Peaker.Darlun gan / Drawing by Jean-Luc Guionnet. Benthycwyd y teitlau o weithiau / Titles borrowed from the works of Thomas Bernhard, Jorge Luis Borges, Heather Fuller, Elizabeth Price, J H Prynne, Sarah Riggs, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Leslie Scalapino. Rhyddhawyd Wound Response yn gyntaf ar finyl gan Alt Vinyl, av038 (2012).Wound Response was first released on LP with Alt Vinyl, av038 (2012). Diolch i / Thank you to: Paul Kelly, Adam Parkinson, Connie Pickard, Sioned Puw Rowlands, Angharad Closs Stephens and Graham Thrower.Rhodri Davies self reissue of  Wound Response originally released by Alt Vinyl in 2012. Reissued alongside the solo acoustic 'An Air swept Clean Of All Distance', Wound Response is loud, distorted and forms an attempt to work with rhythm and pitches in an open and fluid way. --- Wound Response was first released on LP with Alt Vinyl, av038 (2012) and formed a radical departure for Davies’s solo work. Inspired by the ‘Destruction in Art Symposium’ (1966). Davies used two main techniques: over-articulate the strings (what harpists are taught notto do) and attack the strings with a plectrum, forcing the tuning into new relationships until the strings eventually broke. This is the first time that this album will be released on CD. “Wound Response is a raw recording scored for solo lap harp, overdrive, volume pedal and twin amplifiers. The fuzz is particularly cranky here, giving Rhodri’s obsessively repetitive harp soundings the kinda scorch of solo Masayuki Takayanagi.” - David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue 2012 ---

Ndox Electrique results from the collaboration between François R. Cambuzat, Gianna Greco (also known for their work with Ifriqiyya Electrique), and the n'doëp community in Senegal. The project originated from the duo's quest to trace the origins of North African rituals, which led them to the Lebu community in Cap-Vert, an isolated region at Africa's westernmost point.The album seamlessly blends the duo's electronically-infused avant-rock with the intense, ritualistic vocal chants and rhythmic percussion of the n'doëp ceremony. It serves as a captivating bridge between these two musical worlds, capturing the essence of this cross-cultural collaboration.The text also highlights the challenges of merging Western rock and experimental influences with the sensibilities of their Senegalese collaborators, ultimately resulting in a unique and powerful musical experience. "Ndox Electrique" transcends cultural boundaries, immersing listeners in the enchanting sounds and mystical narratives of Western Africa.

For Elliw & Brychan Telyn benglin / Lap harp Recordiwyd ar Ionawr 31, 2014 yn Stiwdios Blank, Newcastle upon Tyne / Recorded on 31st of January 2014 at Blank Studios, Newcastle upon Tyne.Cynhyrchwyr gweithredol / Executive producrs: Richard Dawson, Graham Thrower.Recordiwyd, cymysgwyd a meistrolwyd gan / Recorded, mixed and mastered by Sam Grant.Dylunio gan / Design by Anna Peaker.Darlun gan / Drawing by Jean-Luc Guionnet. Benthycwyd y teitlau o weithiau / Titles borrowed from the works of Carlos Castaneda, Kate Fagan, Alec Finlay, Nathaniel Mackey, Redell Olsen, James Purdy, Sun Ra, Nick Thurston, Sue Tompkins. Rhyddhawyd An Air Swept Clean of All Distance yn gyntaf ar finyl gan Alt Vinyl, av057 (2014) / An Air Swept Clean of All Distance was first released on LP with Alt Vinyl, av057 (2014). Diolch i / Thank you to John Bisset, John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Ann Davies, John Davies, Richard Dawson, Angharad Closs Stephens and Graham Thrower.Rhodri Davies self reissue of fantastic acoustic lap harp solo record. First released on LP with Alt Vinyl, av057 (2014) alongside the amplified 'Wound Response', 'An Air Swept Clean of All Distance' sees the harp tuned to a different set of fixed pitches and played without preperation or distortion.  "...hearing An Air Swept Clean of All Distance I think also of Cy Twombly, burning a path to the ancient classical world through a mess of rough scribble, vivid marks, smears and graffiti. There is a static character to the playing here, rising and falling, arrested and stuttering, rolling and tumbling...returning compulsively to the same passage as if caught in that same tangled web of strings once violently cut, now reconstituted into a set of revenant problems." - David Toop, 2020.  “Davies settles obsessively on tumbling phrases, arpeggios and articulate rhythms, turning them over and over, letting them develop only within strict limits, as though this fine, prolific adventurous musician is freshly discovering a harp that has been there all along.” - Julian Cowley, Wire Magazine, 2014 --- Rhodri Davies / telyn benglin (lap harp) --- I / For Elliw & Brychan Recordiwyd ar Ionawr 31, 2014 yn Stiwdios Blank, Newcastle upon Tyne / Recorded on 31st of January 2014 at Blank Studios, Newcastle upon Tyne. Cynhyrchwyr gweithredol / Executive producrs: Richard Dawson, Graham Thrower. Recordiwyd, cymysgwyd a meistrolwyd gan / Recorded, mixed and mastered by Sam Grant. Dylunio gan / Design by Anna Peaker. Darlun gan / Drawing by Jean-Luc Guionnet. Benthycwyd y teitlau o weithiau / Titles borrowed from the works of Carlos Castaneda, Kate Fagan, Alec Finlay, Nathaniel Mackey, Redell Olsen, James Purdy, Sun Ra, Nick Thurston, Sue Tompkins. Rhyddhawyd An Air Swept Clean of All Distance yn gyntaf ar finyl gan Alt Vinyl, av057 (2014) / An Air Swept Clean of All Distance was first released on LP with Alt Vinyl, av057 (2014). Diolch i / Thank you to John Bisset, John Butcher, Angharad Davies, Ann Davies, John Davies, Richard Dawson, Angharad Closs Stephens and Graham Thrower. AMGEN CD003