Kindred spirits Passepartout Duo and Inoyama Land embody the essence of play – charting a new chapter and reinvigorating the environmental music and electronic landscape.Passepartout Duo is formed of Nicoletta Favari (IT) and Christopher Salvito (IT/US), who since 2015 have been on a continuous journey travelling the world’s corners, engaged in a creative process they term “slow music”. Having been guests of many notable artist residencies and with live performances in cultural spaces and institutions, their evocative music escapes categorisation. With no fixed abode their musical pilgrimage brought them to Japan first in 2019, which prompted a deep connection to Kankyō Ongaku ‘environmental music’, a genre in which Inoyama Land is often associated with, soundtracking the duo’s first immersive experience. In 2023 the duo revisited Japan and set out to reconnect in particular with the music of Inoyama Land, performed by Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita. The highly revered album ‘Danzindan-Pojidon’ (1983) produced by Haruomi Hosono amongst other well publicized and acclaimed reissues (Light in The Attic Records’ Grammy-nominated compilation ‘Kankyō Ongaku’), produced a global resurgence and admiration of the environmental music movement. Nicoletta took the lead to seek out Inoyama Land and in making contact successfully their intrigue and eagerness to meet was warmly reciprocated, and the group scheduled to meet in the form of a spontaneous improvisation session.“We’re deeply concerned with what it means to be a duo, and what it means for people to connect through music.”'Radio Yugawara' was recorded in 2023 in Makoto Inoue’s hometown of Yugawara where his family runs a kindergarten, whose space has doubled as a Sunday recording studio. Upon arriving a circle of four tables was set up in the school’s auditorium - the tables were carefully populated with children’s instruments: a full set of handbells, a glockenspiel, a xylophone, recorders, melodicas, and harmonicas. Surrounding the tables were racks hanging all sorts of bells and wind chimes and within this environment each performer set up their own electronic instruments. Dialling into each other, a simple set of playground ‘game rules’ was devised where time was divided into three separate sessions (1) ‘only electronic instruments’, ‘only acoustic’, and ‘a mix of both’, (2) ‘revolving duets’ each taking turns to play through a cycle of ‘four duos’ and (3) ‘anything permitted’, accumulating to more than three hours of material which was then carefully distilled into succinct tracks. The alluring album opener ‘Strange Clouds’ oscillates into view, setting a lush scenery built from a bed of synthesisers and the first glimpse of the chromaplane, the hand-built analogue instrument designed by Passepartout Duo, featuring a touchless interface and endless organic sounds that underpin the album’s 11-track inlets. Percussive pulses act as the heartbeat to ‘Abstract Pets’ before earthy sub-swells open the pathway to glistening glockenspiels and wind chimes. The atmosphere shapeshifts with ‘Simoom’ and ‘Tangerine Fields’ with swirling synth lines and subliminal beats resembling changes in weather patterns. At the centre points the idyllic ‘Observatory’ and ‘Mosaic’ could illuminate the deepest oceans before the hypnotic, arpeggiating synth lines in the otherworldly ‘Xiloteca’ propel the album towards ‘Solivago’, with its gentle lullaby of playful ambience. The reflective closer ‘Axolotl Dreams’ resolves their somewhat chance meeting with elegant pastoral chord strokes and uplifting synth swells, sending final signals upwards into the ether. 'Radio Yugawara' is a unique one-off transmission from a specific place and point in time, unlikely to ever occur again. The respective duo’s approach can really be described as “tuning in”, a tuning into each other, to themselves, and to the surrounding nature of Yugawara. Like waves that travel off-world, sounds travel through the universe and can be lost forever if we don’t seek them out. In finding a harmonic affinity within their instruments and a spiritual kinship in their interwoven performance, Radio Yugawara at its core is an interpretation of feeling, of close human interaction and the true essence of discovery. “The album is both a transmission from a location, but also a tuning into the surroundings and to each other. Music in this kind of ephemeral moment is much less about active creation and more about discovering something which is already there in the air.”  

Brilliant Experimental album by the Merzbow co-founder, recorded in 1989 - with sticker and insert

Originally named „Merz“, this album should have been Merzbow's first vinyl release, but never came out on vinyl. So actually "Yantra Material Action" is „Material Action 1“, recorded in 1981 - with sticker and insert

After two and a half years out of print, Corsano/Orcutt's most popular album, Made Out of Sound, returns in a limited edition pressing. Best of 2021 — The Guardian, Pitchfork, Wire, Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, Magnet & Raven Sings the Blues.Pitchfork : "It’s a joyful noise. This is one of the more uplifting records of experimental music in recent memory. There’s something about how Orcutt and Corsano push each other that leads to work that pulses with the life force—these pieces bring to mind sunlight hitting a maple leaf, cells dividing under a microscope, a deep thirst quenched. Mark Richardson"Wire : "When you listen to Made Out Of Sound, you feel encouraged to immerse yourself in every note, cherishing the beauty of this otherworldly space. Joshua Minsoo Kim"

Finally on CD!!!  In a trajectory full of about-faces, Music for Four Guitars splices the formal innovations of Bill Orcutt's software-based music into the lobe-frying, blown-out Fender hyperdrive of his most frenetic workouts with Corsano or Hoyos. And while the guitar tone here is resolutely treble-kicked — or, as Orcutt puts it, "a bridge pickup rather than a neck pickup record" — it still wades the same melodic streams as his previous LPs (yet, as Heraclitus taught us, that stream is utterly different the second time around). Although it's a true left-field listen, Music for Four Guitars is bizarrely meditative, a Bill Orcutt Buddha Machine, a glimpse of the world of icy beauty haunting the latitudes high above the Delta (down where the climate suits your clothes). I've written before of the immediate misapprehension that greeted Harry Pussy on their first tour with my band Charalambides — that this was a trio of crazed freaks spontaneously spewing sound from wherever their fingers or drumsticks happened to land — but I'll grant the casual listener a certain amount of confusion based on the early recorded evidence (and the fact that the band COULD be a trio of crazed freaks letting fly, as we learned from later tours). But to my ears, the precision and composition of their tracks were immediately apparent, as if the band was some sort of 5-D music box with its handle cranked into oblivion by a calculating organ grinder, running through musical maps as pre-ordained as the road to a Calvinist's grave. That organ grinder, it turns out, was Bill Orcutt, whose solo guitar output until 2022 has tilted decidedly towards improvisation, while his fetish for relentless, gridlike composition has animated his electronic music (c.f. Live in LA, A Mechanical Joey). Music for Four Guitars, apparently percolating since 2015 as a loosely-conceived score for an actual meatspace guitar quartet, is the culmination of years ruminating on classical music, Magic Band miniatures, and (perhaps) The League of Crafty Guitarists, although when the Reich-isms got tossed in the brew is anyone's guess. And Reichian (Steve, not Wilhelm) it is. The album's form is startlingly minimalist — four guitars, each consigned to a chattering melody in counterpoint, repeated in cells throughout the course of the track, selectively pulled in and out of the mix to build fugue-like drama over the course of 11 brief tracks. It's tempting to compare them to chamber music, but these pieces reflect little of the delicacy of Satie's Gymnopedies or Bach's Cantatas. Instead, they bulldoze their way through melodic content with a touch of the motorik romanticism of New Order or Bailter Space ("At a Distance"), but more often ("A Different View," "On the Horizon") with the gonad-crushing drive of Discipline-era Crimson, full of squared corners, coldly angled like Beefheart-via-Beat-Detective. Just to nail down the classical fetishism, the album features a download of an 80-page PDF score transcribed by guitarist Shane Parish. And while it'd be just as reproducible as a bit of code or a player piano roll, I can easily close my eyes and imagine folks with brows higher than mine squeezing into their difficult-listening-hour folding chairs at Issue Project Room to soak up these sounds being played by real people reading a printed score 50 years from now. And as much as I want to bomb anyone's academy, that feels like a warm fuzzy future to sink into.. — TOM CARTER 

Originally released and sold on their fall 2009 US tour, Flower-Corsano Duo’s “The Chocolate Cities” stands as one of the group's most spirited releases. Recorded live in Cambridge, England and Geneva, Switzerland these recordings capture the power and energy being harnessed by the duo at a time of frequent touring, just after the release of their monumental double-LP “The Four Aims.”Michael Flower is perhaps best known for his work in Vibracathedral Orchestra, along with a slew of other bands, collaborations, and solo work. Meanwhile, Chris Corsano is well known as one of the premier drummers of modern times, and a frequent collaborator of Joe McPhee, Bill Orcutt, Bill Nace, Paul Flaherty, and many more. As a duo Flower and Corsano present an endlessly shifting and transforming sound, meshing elements of free jazz, drone, and ecstatic psychedelia into something all its own. While Corsano guides with his nimble and dynamic drumming, Flower plays amplified Japan Banjo (also known as a Shahi Baaja) providing melody, lead, and drone, often simultaneously. Gripping even in its quietest passages, thoughtful even in its most unrestrained crescendos, “The Chocolate Cities” documents a duo at the height of their collective prowess.Saved from the obscurity of its original CDr format and presented for the first time on vinyl with stunning new artwork by Chris Corsano, “The Chocolate Cities” stands as testament to the power of two magnificent players even 15 years on.

Night Flights is a groundbreaking work from one of the most influential of the first generation sound artists. For some reason this staggering work has been left out of print for over 20 years. Night Flights has been remastered and includes updated liner notes from Christina Kubisch. Night Flights is being released in conjunction with Kubisch's release of new work for Important Records titled, Audible/Inaudible: Five Electrical Walks. “The compositions for Night Flights were realized in Milano in the period between 1983 and 1986. Milan at that time was a vivid and experimental place, with many international (mostly American) guests performing like Robert Wilson, John Cage, Trisha Brown, The Living, Laurie Anderson, etc.. At that time we were a group of several musicians working loosely together, exchanging knowledge about custom made instruments, the latest electronic devices, rare records, and information about where to go and what to listen to. "The lack of digital information and internet was one of the reasons for frequent meetings and musical experiments. We were determined to be the avant garde in a classical world of virtuosity. Davide Mosconi, Raffaele Serra, Riccardo Sinigaglia and others included myself had small but, seen from today's point of view, very artistic and exotic looking studios with many strange, often non-European instruments and all kinds of keyboards, electronic drums and tape recorders. The official studios from the conservatory were not available for us but not interesting as well. We tried to make multichannel recordings and mixes by ourselves, we invented long tape loops going through the whole room, echo effects and reverb. We became specialists in cutting and manipulating tapes. "The so-called non-European musical tradition was a permanent source of inspiration. The meeting and performances with Roberto Laneri, overtone singer and Indian music specialist, opened up new horizons. For several years I worked as well for the record company Raretone and was responsible for the release of the recordings of Giaconto Scelsi. I spent wonderful long days at his home, full with conversations about art and music. Alvin Curran, who took care of Scelsi's tapes and archive, often came by. "There was a special fertile atmosphere in the early eighties in Milano. Somehow all these activities and the search for new sound worlds and techniques were a vital step on the way to what today is called sound art, though the term was not common then. Some characteristics of what is defined as soundscapes or sound environment are included in Night Flights: a special interest in sound colours, musical structure based on may layers of natural recordings and the intent to open up the listener's space even with the limited means of a vinyl recording.” ~ Christina Kubisch

Central Palace Music, performed by Catherine Christer Hennix's just intonation ensemble The Deontic Miracle, is the first in a series of archival Hennix releases to be issued via Important Records. This previously unheard piece was taken from an eight day festival organized in the Spring of 1976 at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. The group features Catherine Christer Hennix on Renaissance oboe and custom sinewave generators, Peter Hennix on Renaissance oboe and Hans Isgren on sheng. Central Palace Music is packaged in a deluxe letterpress package and is being released at the same time as a recent recording of Hennix's new ensemble, Live At Issue Project Room. "...Hennix has created a sound that reliably taps into our subconscious and frees us from linear time...." ~ The Quietus Catherine Christer Hennix (1948, Stockholm) is an artist, poet, composer and philosopher with a strong interest in logic and formal music theory. She was among the pioneers in Sweden experimenting with main-frame computer generated composite sound wave forms in the late 1960s, and in the 1970s she was a key protagonist in the Downtown School along with La Monte Young and Henry Flynt, with whom she has collaborated on numerous occasions. She pursued studies with raga master Pandit Pran Nath and led the Just Intonation live-electronic ensembles Hilbert Hotel and The Deontic Miracle, the recordings of the latter are presently being released by Important Records. She was a professor of mathematics and computer science, and assistant to and co-author with A.S. Esenin-Volpin for which she was given the Centenary Prize Fellow Award by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. Hennix's interest in drone music and the meditative, trance-like state it induces is apparent in her exploration of similar music in many other cultures and traditions, drawing inspiration from the Japanese Gagaku music and the early, vocal, thirteenth-century music of Perotinus and Leoninus, for example. In 2003 she returned to computer generated composite sound wave forms now called Soliton(e)s of which Soliton(e) Star was the first result. Subsequently she formed the Just Intonation ensemble The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage which performs Blues Dhikir al- Salam (Live at the Grimmuseum, Vol. 1, Berlin, 2011, Important Records 2012). In 2012 Henry Flynt asked Hennix for a new, expanded realization of ISE for an installation at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, to be featured in his retrospective/prospective show Henry Flynt Activities 1959 – at ZKM. In response Hennix realized a 4-channel composition, Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis, her first 4-channel computer assisted composition since 1969.