The artist record Call and Response brings together pieces created in connection with performances and exhibitions by Jimmy Robert, including a booklet wrapped around the record. These pieces provide insights into his collaborative practice in conjunction with his performances. The record is released following the exhibition la musique dans la chambre which took place in 2022 at Künstlerhaus Bremen. It addressed the question of how his performance works can continue to be shown apart from being performed again in exhibitions: How can one approach a performance work anew without re-staging it? The exhibition focused partcularly on sound and brought together videos, works on paper, as well as sculptural elements and sound created in the framework of his performances. Call and Response expands the exhibition and gathers sound pieces produced by Robert as well as by other artists—often in connection with Robert's works.Featuring Ain Bailey, Emma Hedditch, Jane Ellison, Rosa Barba, Jimmy Robert, Nadja Quante, Mason Leaver-Yap. Jimmy Robert (born 1975 in Guadeloupe, France) produces works on paper, photographs, collages, sculptures, videos and artist books. His artistic practice explores the points of contact between body and material, as well as the representations and material conditions of bodies.

Emerging incognito, with synthesizer and powerbook under arm, Mr. Socket takes an excursion into outer now-ness. Reveals a poet in the making, a tone poet, that is. Here's the essential info for all of you persistent code-crackers: Mr. Sockett plus synth and powerbook = melancholy electronics! The LP version available in hi-fidelity pink vinyl. Dig it!

Icelandic artist and musician Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is known for his work with Stilluppsteypa, numerous solo albums and collaborations with other artists, such as Swedish composer BJ Nilsen. Into The Second Half takes the listener into a mysterious, yet calming sound world, where carefully composed textures weave hypnotically in and out of each other, as subtle as the changes of light in the forbidden zone in Andrej Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

Brunhild Ferrari returns to the scene with this new solo album. Extérieur Jour is comprised of two previously unreleased electroacoustic compositions – the first, a piece of cinéma pour l’oreille, a movie for the ears, and the second, a meditation on the loss and reappearance of memory and silence, recorded in various places across the globe over a period of 15 years.

nehan is a Japanese free improvisation/avant-garde rock quintet formed in 2022. Their performance is initiated by a 9HZ brain wave emitted from a testee who has been brought into a deep meditative state. nehan respond with gongs, typani, tabla and other percussion, crumhorn, bagpipes, oscillator and mellotron, passing tranformatively through a musical prism, from east to west, from traditional folk and classical to rock, jazz, and electronic.

The future is a flash-back! Having dynamited the end of the 70s, in the next decade, Philippe Doray was still alive and kicking. With Laurence Garcette, he juggled with keyboards and all their simulations to begin the “second period” of the Asociaux Associés (the Antisocial Associates). Labyrinthine programming lead to songs which go crazy: electro, pop, krautrock, no wave…? In a word, French chanson as it was never heard before or since. “Nobody Move!”, so says Philippe Doray and his Asociaux Associés (the Antisocial Associates)! Having dynamited the end of the 70s with two radical albums – Ramasse-Miettes Nucléaires in 1976 & Nouveaux Modes Industriels in 1978, both reissued by Souffle Continu – Doray still hadn’t finished singing. Throughout the next decade he began his Composant compositeur which would document the “second period”, as he calls it, of his Asociaux Associés. The record includes new schizo-electro songs which make the most of his association with Laurence Garcette, who also plays any and all sorts of keyboards. A prolongation of the first period of the Asociaux Associés, the duo updates Doray’s poetry: in reaction to the current overcast atmosphere, here are some hallucinatory fantasies to the rhythm of an infernal circle dance (« Le petit géant ») or an ecstatic waltz (“Bombés fluo”) or even coded messages stuffed into bottles and thrown into space (“Secoue le flipeur”, “Choc d’amour”). On the bonus CD there are further iconoclastic examples: rare recordings (unpublished or even “inaudible”) of the Asociaux Associés but also by Crash, a duo that Doray formed with Thierry Müller (Ilitch, Ruth). At the controls of their experiment-bending machine the musicians multiply the possibilities: peripheral rock, arias in orbit, broken swing, industrial mantras and other joyful falsities. Enough to make you lose your mind ? No… as Philippe Doray promised: it is the “jackpot qui frissonne” (the shivering jackpot) which is there to excite.

For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French bassist/vocalist Joëlle Léandre is equally at home playing free or performing works by Cage and Scelsi, while Vinko Globokar is an acclaimed composer as well as a trombonist of monstrous virtuosity. He and British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before a brief stint with Robert Fripp's King Crimson, percussionist Jamie Muir was, with Davies, on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970. Bailey once described playing solo as a "second-rate activity"; while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can, if they're not careful, descend into the musical equivalent of a rugby scrum: dangerous, but thrilling -- listen to what happens when Brötzmann comes barreling into the final track here. Sometimes one instrument takes center stage, as Parker's circular-breathing soprano does at the beginning of "Trio Five", but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere "Trio Three", is just as crucial to the success of the whole. Muir makes sure he doesn't get in the way of Globokar and Parran's leisurely exchanges on "Trio Four", but the trombonist is all over the place on "Trio One" -- transcribe what Globokar does here and it might be the most difficult trombone music ever written -- with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles, after which "Trio Two" is a lighter affair, Parran's flute and Léandre's vocals twittering together while Derek's acoustic twangs merrily along. With a touch of dry Bailey humor, two of the seven tracks aren't trios at all: "Trio Minus One" is his duo with Reijseger, running the gamut from crazed polyrhythmic strumming (imagine Reinhardt and Grappelli playing Schoenberg and Nancarrow simultaneously) to what must be the fastest cello pizzicati ever recorded. And on the closing ecstatic nonet, Brötzmann and trumpeter John Corbett prove that too many cooks don't necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell spice it up.

"Quite simply, Company produced some of the most stimulating improvised music you will ever hear." - John Eyles 1982 line-up of Company. Keith Tippett, Fred Frith and George Lewis are joined by concert pianist Ursula Oppens and composer & harpist Anne LeBaron. After playing more frrequently in Japan in the late seventies, Bailey had also invited Motoharu Yoshizawa on bass and Akio Suzuki on assorted instruments like glass harmonica.  --- Derek Bailey / guitarJulie Tippetts / guitar, voice, fluteMoto Yoshizawa / bassFred Frith / electric guitar, electronics, percussionAkio Suzuki / glass harmonica, spring gong, kikkokiririkiAnne LeBaron / harpKeith Tippett / pianoUrsula Opens / pianoGeorge Lewis / trombonePhil Wachsmann / violin, electronics --- Recorded by Jean-Marc Foussat. Produced by Derek Bailey & Evan Parker. Design by Karen Brookman. Financial assistance by The Arts Council.  

Another essential Incus reissue by Honest Jon's.  "Percussionist Jamie Muir was a member of King Crimson during the recording of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, in 1973. Staying less than a year with Robert Fripp, the Scot had already cut his teeth with another master guitarist, Derek Bailey, as part of the Music Improvisation Company, along with Evan Parker, Hugh Davies and Christine Jeffrey, whose eponymous 1970 album was one of the first releases on ECM. Muir and Bailey recorded Dart Drug eleven years later, in 1981. There’s no shortage of great percussionists in the brief history of free improvised music but on the strength of Dart Drug alone Jamie Muir deserves a place at High Table. Unlike for example Han Bennink and John Stevens, though, you can’t hear echoes of any particular jazz drummer in Muir’s playing, even if he has expressed appreciation for Milford Graves (who himself sounded like nobody else who’d come before him). What on earth did Muir’s kit consist of? Some instruments are clearly identifiable (bells, gongs, chimes, woodblocks); others could be… well, anything. Old suitcases thwacked with rolled up newspapers? Tin cans and hubcaps inside a washing machine? Who cares? It sounds terrific – but if you’re the kind of person who faints at the sound of nails scraping a blackboard, you might want to nip out and put the kettle on towards the end of the title track. Dart Drug is consistently thrilling, and often very amusing – but it’s certainly not easy listening. In music we talk about playing with other musicians, whereas in sport you play against another opponent (or with your team against another team). Why not play against in music, too? That’s precisely what happens very often in improvised music, and Bailey was particularly good at it. How can a humble acoustic guitar hope to compete with a Muir in full flight?  Sometimes Bailey’s content to sit on those open strings, teasing out yet another exquisite Webernian constellation of ringing harmonics and wait for the dust to settle in Muir’s junkyard, but elsewhere he sets off into uncharted territory himself. “The way to discover the undiscovered in performing terms is to immediately reject all situations as you identify them (the cloud of unknowing) – which is to give music a future.” Bailey evidently concurred with this spoken statement by Muir, including it in his book Improvisation.Derek Bailey is no longer with us, of course, and Muir gave up performing music back in 1989. All the more reason for seeking out this magnificent, wild album. Very hotly recommended." - Honest Jon's

For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support. Originally released by Incus in 1974. Recorded at a private house in Catford, south-east London, the side-long title track is a masterwork: a twenty-two-minute, starkly personal, freely expressive, itchily searching re-casting of orders of rhythm and sound into a new, quicksilver kind of affective and musical polyphony. Never mind the guitarist’s championing of ‘non-idiomatic improvisation’, the poet Peter Riley gets the ball rolling in his identification of the various hauntings of Bailey’s playing at this time: ‘mandolins & balalaikas strumming in the distance, George Formby’s banjo, Leadbelly’s steel 12-string, koto, lute, classical guitar… and others quite outside the field of the plucked string.’  The five pieces on side two were recorded back home in Hackney around the same time — with the exception of Improvisation 104(b), from the year before (and issued by Incus in its TAPS series of mini reel-to-reel tapes) — opening with ventriloquised guitar feedback, and taking in some cod banter about colleagues like Mervyn Parker, Siegfried Brotzmann and Harry Bentink. Crucial. "In 1974, when Derek Bailey was planning his second solo LP on Incus, he decided to include a side-long solo using his stereo electro-acoustic set-up. Unfortunately, he never seemed to have a 20-minute stretch of time free of interruptions in his home, so he asked if he could record it at my place. After a fairly lengthy drive across London on the arranged date, he discovered that he had brought all his gear except the actual guitar. So he had a cup of tea and a chat, then drove home again. He came again about a week later, on May 13th, this time with everything. I set the level too high for the first two takes, not quite allowing for his enormous dynamic range (which really was not suitable for analogue recording and reproduction equipment). The result was too much distortion for his liking. The level was corrected for the third take which was the one used as the title track on the LP, even though he preferred the music on the earlier takes. All but one of the short pieces on the second side of the LP were recorded by Bob Woolford around the same time, probably at Derek's home. (The exception, 'Improvisation 104(b),' was recorded the previous year and originally released on one of the Incus TAPs -- mini reel-to-reel tapes that were an attempt to bypass the technical problems of going from tape to vinyl. They were reissued by Organ of Corti.) 'Pain In The Chest' and 'In Joke (Take 2)' feature the unamplified 19-string (approx) guitar, which was probably the only instrument that Derek modified -- he otherwise used standard guitars. There was a shortage of good vinyl at the time, making it difficult to get decent pressings. (The original pressing of the solo Steve Lacy Emanem LP sounded as though it had been recorded in a hail-storm.) We were recommended to go to a pressing plant that specialized in 'classical' music. (At the same time that Derek was trying to get Lot 74 pressed, I was also working on his duo album with Anthony Braxton.) The first test pressing of Lot 74 was very muffled, and we discovered that the cutting engineer had played the tape up-side-down, so that the music had been filtered through the tape backing (used on professional tapes to reduce print-through). The cutting was subsequently redone correctly, resulting in an acceptable test pressing. However, the plant manager was completely incredulous and perplexed, as he was used to checking pressings using his library of scores of Beethoven sonatas and the like. How could he tell if the vocal and feedback howls at the start of side two ('Together') were correct? Over thirty years later, advances in technology have eliminated most of the technical problems we had then, so that this magnificent music can be heard sounding better than ever. Every so often, I get someone asking me to issue things on vinyl -- my response is usually not very polite." Martin Davidson --- Please note the LP available is the 2018 Honest Jons reissue

Honest Jon's reissue of this classic Incus record.  "Multi-reedist Tony Coe was born in 1934, four years after guitarist Derek Bailey. He cut his teeth as a career jazzman with Humphrey Lyttleton, before an extended stint with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band. On this rare 1979 duo outing, he sticks to clarinet. And though that instrument has an illustrious jazz pedigree, Coe’s playing here is something else. It’s worth noting that the clarinettist has also played under the baton of arch-modernist Pierre Boulez, the kind of composer Derek Bailey enjoyed taking to task in his book Improvisation. You might think the Frenchman’s uncompromising serialism and the free playing Bailey defended with such passion all his life would have little in common, yet both men were hugely influenced by Anton Webern. It’s an influence you can hear right through Bailey’s career in his obsessive exploration of tight parcels of registrally-fixed pitches, notably those trademark ringing harmonics. Meanwhile, Coe’s meandering semitones and sinuous arabesques here recall both Boulez’s clarinet writing in Domaines, and the harmonic world of Boulez’s own teacher Olivier Messiaen. Still, no traditional classical musical notation could ever render the extraordinary rhythmic subtlety and timbral complexity of this music. It’s at one and the same time dazzlingly virtuosic — Coe and Bailey are on stellar form throughout, and have enough sense to, yes, accompany each other where needs be — and supremely lyrical and spacious.  An absolute delight." - Honest Jon's

"More buried treasure from Company Week 1982: seven previously unissued Epiphanies by lineups involving Derek Bailey, Ursula Oppens, Julie Tippetts, Keith Tippett, Philipp Wachsmann, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Akio Suzuki. Fred Frith is a stellar improviser — 1974’s Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv — and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. Eleventh is a tour de force of extended technique, with George Lewis working slowly but surely through a variety of trombone mouthpieces, while Frith’s guitar, strummed, bowed or prepared, could be a theremin, a koto, a mouse trapped inside a grandfather clock or a lion cub inside a shoebox. Bookending the album, on Seventh he swaps Webernian shards with Lewis and harpist Anne LeBaron and on Thirteenth, with pianist Keith Tippett, he condenses a whole lifetime of musical exploration into a mere twelve minutes. When it’s over both musicians are so amazed they burst out laughing. Elsewhere, on Eighth, Wachsmann reveals his understated mastery of both his violin and the electronics he’s devised to extend its range, and pianist Ursula Oppens proves she’s as adept as conjuring forth magic from inside her instrument as she is at the keyboard. Major and minor triads too! Ninth is spikier, with Lewis quacking, spitting and wheezing like a flock of geese let loose in a fairground, while Derek Bailey and Motoharu Yoshisawa patiently explore the outer limits of acoustic guitar and double bass. Bailey and Lewis team up again on Twelfth to take on Oppens — and everybody wins. Voice is more to the fore on Tenth, with Julie Tippetts’ coloratura and flute and Akio Suzuki’s analapos and spring gong flying high, while LeBaron, Wachsmann and Yoshizawa weave intricate webs of pizzicati, spiccati and glissandi beneath."

On Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves the Buenos Aires-based AlanCourtis—composer and artist, Reynols mainstay, prolific collaborator heads to the studio in Brooklyn with David Grubbs, himself in unprecedented form after a wild run of duos with Ryley Walker, Manuel Mota, and Jan St. Werner.Anyone who’s scratched the surface of Alan’s discography knows he’s a monster guitarist (dig, for example, his duowith Tetuzi Akiyama), a sensitive monster guitarist and a monster of sensitivity, period. Evidently those endless hours of playing guitar while watching television in 2020 and beyond did Grubbs good—like Erik Satie deciding in middle age to study medieval music Alan Courtis: electric and acoustic guitarsDavid Grubbs: electric and acoustic guitars Cover image: Graham Lambkin, Silk Lion (2018) released September 8, 2023

Multi-instrumental master McPhee and his longtime colleague, French saxophonist and clarinetist Jaume, joined forces for this studio recording in 1979 that was prepared but never released. It is primarily structured around pairs of tunes by Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington (or Billy Strayhorn), adding Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" for good measure. The results are stunningly intimate and show the twosome's capacity for creative interplay at a fairly early stage in its unfolding. Mingus's "Pithecanthropus Erectus," which was performed by a larger group on Topology, gets pared down to its essential walking-bass-ness, while Monk's "Evidence" is taken apart, and solo spots by both men are riveting as one would expect. Part of CvsD's ongoing historical effort to unearth and reissue McPhee's important discography, this previously unknown recording will delight existing fans and make new ones. Joe McPhee, alto and tenor saxophones, pocket cornet, adapted pocket cornet André Jaume, alto and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet

Black Truffle present In Real Life, the latest in a flurry of releases from Berlin-based guitarist and composer Julia Reidy. Having drawn acclaim for solo performances on 12-string acoustic guitar that bridge microtonality, ‘American primitive’ stylings and classic minimalism, Reidy’s recent releases have utilised an increasingly broad sonic palette, fleshing out guitar-based composition with electronics, field recordings, and – most strikingly – heavily auto-tuned vocals. On In Real Life, Reidy pushes one step further, crafting an epic LP-length suite that moves from abstracted song to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrète. Beginning with a passage of eerie electronics and creaking percussive interjections, Reidy’s heavily auto-tuned voice quickly takes centre stage. Surrounded by explosions of electric guitar and synthesised arpeggios, the auto-tuned voice delivers a melancholic ode, bringing together poetic images to reflect on the instability of experience and mutability of identity in a contemporary world saturated by digital technology. This concern with the unsettled relationship between the physical and digital is reflected musically by the constantly shifts in emphasis between Reidy’s physically demanding guitar-picking and the various forms of synthesis deployed. Similarly, the dynamic imagery of cutting, shattering, and ‘racing streams’ present in Reidy’s lyrics also serves to characterise the structure of In Real Life, which ceaselessly shifts between distinct episodes. The song-based opening, long sequences of frenetic 12-string guitar shadowed and eventually overtaken by synth tones, passages of delicate chiming harmonics, electro-acoustic cut-ups – each flows seamlessly into the next, often recurring throughout the record’s duration, which lingers over interstitial moments between these episodes. -- Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Vinyl cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Suze Whaites. LP desgn by Lasse Marhaug.

After years of exchanging ideas, Translation from Unspecified marks David Grubbs and Jan St. Werner's studio debut locking horns as a duo. Evolving from a microscopically disordered set of sounds and words into a reconstituted monolith of sound, it’s clear this deck-clearing collaboration was long overdue.

Arthur Petronio – LP Metaphon 016 – 2023 With fold-out poster and original sleeve design by Alain Geronnez Arthur Petronio: Born Switzerland 1897. French-Italian musician, poet and painter. Lived in Belgium and The Netherlands between 1910 and 1924 and since then in France. Young violin virtuoso studying with Belgian master violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Played solo violin for Belgian King Leopold II, at the age of 9. Attracted to the avant-garde and visionary ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk. Develops and presents his “Verbophonie” in 1919, integrating sound poetry into regular music scores. Friend with Kandinsky, Mondrian, Cocteau and Picasso. Published several avant-garde journals and poetry books with participation of like minded artists. Wrote many scores for solo instruments, small ensembles, orchestral works, opera,… Met Henri Chopin in 1950 and extended his musical ideas with new possibilities of tape composition. His one and only LP, now reissued by Metaphon, was originally published by the Belgian Igloo label in 1979. An extravagant DIY montage of musique concrète and sound poetry. In addition to Petronio’s voice several female readers/performers contribute to this theatre of voices as guest vocalists. An album as unusual as his lifecycle.