Tapes

A collaboration made in the the throws of the Cocid-19 pandemic between Parisian duo, CIA Debutante (Nathan Roche and Paul Bonnet) and Zoomin' Night head and multi instrumentalistn Zhu Wenbo. 'I first got in contact with Zhu Wenbo through my friend Toni. Nathan and I wanted to contact Chinese musicians to organize a CIA Debutante tour in China. Zhu Wenbo kindly answered me, and when I proposed releasing a cassette of our material on Zoomin' Night in preparation for our tour, he instead suggested that we collaborate on a new release. Zhu Wenbo quickly sent me a collection of recordings. The first phase of our collaboration consisted in Nathan and I recording live on top of these sounds. I had a few books laying around my bed, an edition of Marx's "1844 manuscripts" and HP Lovecraft's collected works. Nathan started recording himself reading these texts, but quickly began to improvise and parody the material, while I was playing simple sounds on a Korg MS20 going through a tape echo. The boundaries between serious music and amusement started getting blurry, and we fashioned ourselves as fancy actors  performing a pretentious stage play. When Covid-19 hit France and we couldn't play together anymore, I transfered these recordings to a 4 tracks tape machine and tried to piece together these various materials. Nathan and Zhu Wenbo kept on sending me new materials, sometimes by my request, sometimes out of the blue. The amount of sounds was overwhelming, and I'm still not sure if these recordings are finished or in a constant state of shifting. It was the first time I used a computer to edit and compose a sound piece. I tried to use the recordings from the 4 tracks as raw material, and arranged our various contribution into something that could feel satisfactory to me. Sometimes it felt like I was merely using  the music as an illustration to Nathan's voice, like those corny radio plays you can hear at 2 AM while driving on the highway. At other times, the combination of voice and sound seemed like something really special. In any way, I hope people can enjoy these recordings made in strange circumstances, and that we will have the opportunity to play all together in China.'   Paul Bonnet, April 202  --- Instruments, voices and field recordings by Paul Bonnet, Nathan Roche and Zhu Wenbo, with guest Zhao Cong and Shi Leqi. Mixed by Paul Bonnet Mastering by Benoit de Villeneuve Painting by Paul Bonnet Design by Liu Lu --- Released May 27, 2020 Released: Zoomin' Night

CIA Debutante, Zhu Wenbo – 老耗子 小老鼠

Notice Recordings’ Chicago origins were heavily galvanized by regularly seeing sets by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and multi-instrumental improviser Zoots Houston. Both have since separately relocated to Kingston, NY, where they continue to engage with the kinds of musical exchanges exemplified here. This set, recorded live at Chicago’s Elastic Arts, finds them performing with percussionist Ben Bennett. Bennett, a musician and performance artist, is a notable figure in the current and vibrant free improv and jazz scene in NYC; recent collaborations include Michael Foster and Jack Wright, among others. All three players metaphorically deconstruct their instruments while scattering pockets of agitated hot air on the performance floor, augmented with pedals, radioesque static sweeps, tightly propelled breaths, and extended techniques. This is dry, heavily structural, bristling stuff, with periodic digressions into melody and a strong control of focused and at times uncomfortably magnified timbres. Much of the material is urgent and electronic, filling the space and remaining firmly gestural. These two sidelong sets display slices of time coming from strong voices within this niche of contemporary improvisation. released November 18, 2019Ben Bennett - percussionZoots Houston - synthesizer, objectsFred Lonberg-Holm - celloRecorded live at Elastic Arts, Chicago by Dave Zuchowski, July 21, 2016Mastered by Branic Howard, Open Field, Portland, ORArtwork and layout by E. Lindorff-ElleryLetterpress printed by Small Fires Press, New Orleans

Pinkie No – Ben Bennett/Zoots Houston/Fred Lonberg-Holm

"Born in 1945, Guo Yongzhang has performed zhuizi - a traditional Chinese style of narrative singing - for half a century. An artform whose history spans over a century, zhuizi originated in Henan province. Its main musical instruments are the zhuihu, a two-stringed bowed lute, and the zhuibang, a wooden percussion played with foot tapping.  Almost completely blind, Guo Yongzhang is known for his peculiar, resounding yet smooth vocal style. He sings with deep feelings and great verve. Lyrics deal with both the hardships and good values of life while always maintaining a sense of humour. Despite being long regarded as a folk master, Guo has continued to play tirelessly among ordinary people, often travelling from village to village and performing for a whole day at a time. As he nears the end of his life, Guo regrets that nowadays, few people wish to learn the art ofzhuizi. He worries that this precious art form may soon be lost.  This release, titled after one of Guo Yongzhang’s most well-known songs, Lao Lai Nan, commemorates his performance at the 5th Tomorrow Festival. Guo co-headlined the last day of the festival with French prog-rock act Gong on May 20, 2018. His performance was recorded live and is due to be released on both CD and LP by the Old Heaven label in November 2019. --- Guo Yongzhang /  Zhuihu, Zhuibang, Vocals --- Recorded in the late-1980s, Released in 2018

Guo Yongzhang – Lao Lai Nan (Old Man’s Blues)

"The  Godfather  of  Wild  Pop." "'Trouble  Number'  is  a  major  retrospective  of  four  decades  of  peerless,  visionary,  and  feral  production  from  Gwilly  Edmondez  -  the  dad  from  Yeah  You.  This  90  minute  package  cherry  picks  from  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of  hours  of  psychoanalysis  through  pop  waste,  performed  by  Gwilly  upon  himself  since  the  founding  of  his  '80s  outfit  Radioactive  Sparrow.  Bewildering  and  basically  incomparable  in  its  entirety,  'Trouble  Number'  mongrelises  strains  of  hip-hop,  black  metal,  folk,  power  balladry,  more  more  more,  with  a  properly  prophetic,  popwise  soul.    Pay  your  respects." Says  Gwilly: Gwilly  Edmondez  just  grew  as  a  character  project  in  the  mid-1980s,  offshoot  from  the  to’l-spon/non-com/pop-kak  invention-pool  that  was/is  Radioactive  Sparrow,  itself  founded  by  a  group  of  Bridgend  (13-year-old/non-voter)  elements  in  1980.  Gwilly  is  a  solo/collaborative  improvisation  that  started  out  making  fake,  unwritten  rock,  then  progressed  in  the  1990s  to  real  unaccompanied  rock,  before  settling  into  a  mode  of  practice  defined  by  sampling,  tapes  and  vocals.  Over  many  years,  Gwilly  has  struck  up  many  material  partnerships  and  misadventurist  associations  of,  with  the  likes  of  James  Joys,  Val  Persona,  Faye  MacCalman,  Karl  D’Silva,  Tobias  Illingworth,  Laura  Late-Girl,  b-cátt,  Odie  Ji  Ghast,  THF  Drenching,  Tony  Gage,  Richard  Bowers,  People  Like  Us...  But  in  the  end  none  more  so  than  Elvin  Brandhi.  ‘Gnarlage  of  Self’,  the  C30  album,  was  made  on  Newcastle’s  hottest  day  in  2017,  in  an  upstairs  room  in  Heaton,  recorded  by  Dario  Lozano  Thornton  with  Schoeps  MK2/MK8  pair  to  Sonodore  preamps  in  one  take  subsequently  edited  and  disorganized  by  Dario.  ‘Gwilly  Edmondez:  A  Retrospective  Mixtape  Made  Questionably  &  Unquestioningly  by  Himself’  started  out  as  a  kind  of  slapstick/slapdash  best  of...  but  quickly  became  its  own  entanglement  of  old  stuff,  new-but-unused  stuff  made  for  the  C30,  and  bits  of  recent  live  sets.  The  first  half,  side  one,  tries  to  bungle  blindly  into  the  nature  of  supplication,  confession  and  self-condemning  introspection  –  find the  self  then  kill  it;  side  two  starts  on  the  other  side  of  death  inhaling  wafts  of  cheap  air  freshener  as  a  means  to  hallucinate a personal  history  that  never  could’ve  happened  anyway,  before  scrambling  back  through  the  rear  end  of  personality  only  to  be  consigned  to  liturgical  palliatives  in  a  manner  carried  out  by  his  countless  forebears  of  the  cloth.  It  could  only  end with “Walken’s  Kiss”,  a  sardonically  pronounced  cliffhanger.  --- Music  & Artwork by Gwilly Edmondez. Mix and Edits by Dario Lozano Thornton and  Gwilly  Edmondez. 

Gwilly Edmondez – Trouble Number