Vinyl


Elodie’s Andrew Chalk & Timo Van Luijk present their soundtrack for Peter Hutton’s ’Skagafjörður’, responding to the film’s desolate imagery of Iceland with half an hour of exquisite, weather-beaten, smoke-curl atmospheres, highly recommended if yr into the cold tonalities of Kevin Drumm's 'Imperial Distortion' or Aphex Twin's 'SAW II'... Recorded as part of ‘Night of Experimental Film’ event in Ghent, Belgium, 2018 that also saw screenings of Derek Jarman’s ‘The Angelic Conversation’ and performance by Tom James Scott, the recording captures the quintessence of Chalk and Van Luijk’s richly evocative music and the natural mystery of Hutton’s film, which is handily available on YouTube for you to synch with its suggested soundtrack for optimal zoner times. Following a cassette edition in 2020, this vinyl edition gives the performance more room to breathe, with Chalk and Van Lujik’s patented atmospheric magick seeping out from the peripheries to best envelope the listener in their tantalising descriptions of the Icelandic landscape. Chalk & Van Luijk are masters of this kind of layer-within-layer rendering, where you no longer know if you’re listening to vast winds or analogue interference, where harmonic washes are often punctuated with frequency fuckries; feedback, jolts of electricity. The effect is quietly stunning and effortlessly transfixing; like so much of their peerless catalogue --- Faraway Press 2021

Andrew Chalk & Timo van Luijk – SKAGAFJORDUR

Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, the Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning this year with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre-Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions is conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group, including a multi-year LP reissue effort and a forthcoming comprehensive CD box set and an over five hundred page book. Recorded and self-released by the group’s own Dry Leaf Discs in 1993, City Lights is the debut record of the then duo Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris—an assured arrival statement teeming with stripling angst and ambition. Lifelong chums Lambkin and Harris were barely nineteen and living at home in the seaside town of Folkestone, Kent, with few overhead expenses. The two were freshly employed as a forklift operator at a hardware store and an aide at a home for children with disabilities, respectively, affording them the time and funds to commit to a proper full-length release. Frontman Lambkin describes the album as a “microscopic examination of leisure activities, this time centered around a nightclub,” a conceit surging through its lyrics, song titles, cover art (depicting an audience of cats and mice at the Leas Club, a Folkestone fixture), and flip side (replete with fictional bandmates and pseudonymous liner notes). On a recently-acquired secondhand guitar, Lambkin plays repetitive, brooding licks that form the record’s backbone, weaving in and out of sync with Harris’s free-form percussion and the pair’s sing-song poetry. Tracks range from unraveling nursery-rhyme ditties to extended jams awash with Casiotone and toy piano noodling. The duo’s musical hobby-horses work themselves in: the influence of Mark E. Smith’s breathless deadpan, the headless outer-edges of ESP-Disk’s back catalog, the eerie atmospherics of Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa, and the deconstructed rock tunes of the Dunedin scene are all detectable, although there is a sui generis quality to the Shadow Ring’s artless temerity. “I’ve got to see and taste those city lights,” intones Lambkin on the album’s title track—indeed, this is a record of naked drive and pent-up desperation, and a shimmering glimpse of what’s to come.

The Shadow Ring – City Lights

The first vocal album by beloved Ethiopian nun, composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru - profound and deeply moving home cassette recordings made amidst political upheaval and turmoil. These are songs of wisdom, loss, mourning, and exile, sung directly into a boombox and accompanied by Emahoy’s unmistakable piano. Though written and recorded while still living at her family’s home in Addis Ababa, Emahoy sings of the heartache of leaving her beloved Ethiopia, a reflection on the 1974 revolution and ensuing Red Terror in her homeland, and a presentiment of her future exile in Jerusalem. In the 21st century, Emahoy has become known worldwide for her utterly unique melodic and rhythmic style. Commonly misinterpreted as “jazzy” or “honky tonk,” Emahoy’s music actually comes from a deep engagement with the Western classical tradition, mixed with her background in Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music. These songs, recorded between 1977-1985, are different from anything previously released by the artist. Rich with the sound of birds outside the window, the creak of the piano bench, the thump of Emahoy’s finger on the record button, they create a sense of place, of being near the artist while she records. Emahoy’s lyrics, sung in Amharic, are poetic and heavy with the weight of exile. “When I looked out / past the clouds / I couldn’t see my country’s sky / Have I really gone so far?” she asks in “Is It Sunny or Cloudy in the Land You Live?” Her vocals are delicate and heartfelt, tracing the melodic contours of her piano on songs like “Where Is the Highway of Thought?” “Tenkou! Why Feel Sorry?,” a career highlight that closes out her self-titled Mississippi album (MRP-099), is revisited here with vocals. Originally composed for her niece, Tenkou, the lyrics clarify the song title we’ve wondered about for so many years. “Don’t cry / Childhood won’t come back / Let it go with love Emahoy dreamt of releasing this music to a larger audience before her passing in March of 2023. We are proud to release this music, in collaboration with her family, now, in what would have been her 100th year. LP comes with a 16-page booklet full-color booklet. Gold cover first edition, pressed in both black and gold vinyl editions. All songs composed and recorded by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, Addis Ababa, 1977–1985

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru – Souvenirs

LP / CD / Tape

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

'GAX is the duo of Seymour Wright (alto saxophone) and Vasco Alves (gaita de fole) and ‘as tradiçōes/the traditions’ is their first published recording. They started playing together in 2008 as regular participants in Eddie Prévost’s weekly, London workshop. GAX have rarely performed publicly, which only adds to the pleasure of being able to share this inimitable first release. Seymour Wright is known for his solo work, the duos XT with Paul Abbott, @xcrxswx with Crystabel Efemena Riley, and GUO with Daniel Blumberg, as well as his part in larger groups including أحمد [Ahmed] and X-Ray Hex Tet. Vasco Alves has previously released a solo record with gaita de fole and electronics ‘Gaita Contra Computador’ on After Action Review. ‘Estrada Longa’ for synths and voice was released on Cafe OTO’s TakuRoku, and reissued by Feedback Moves in 2024. He currently leads the exploratory bagpipe ensemble As Rochas da Ajuda. As well as GAX, his other ongoing collaborations include OndaXoque (with Pedro Rufino), a duo with Margarida Garcia. He has also performed extensively as a part of VA AA LR with Adam Asnan & Louie Rice. '‘The traditions/as tradiçōes’ was recorded across two days in the summer of 2023. Both pieces accentuate micro-motions in the interplay between Alves and Wright’s instruments. ‘The traditions’ folds and cuts, placing silent blocks between the duo’s play of sounds. The physicality of the performers is audible through the psychoacoustic oscillations and investigation of rich overtones. On ‘As tradiçōes’ Alves and Wright each play layered glissandi spanning the entire side of the record. Squalls of air from bellows and lungs control the slow, rising movement, grounded by and juxtaposed with a drone from one of Alves’ chanters which sharply fizzles at the pieces’ end, leaving in its shadow a short, continued blast of complex high tones.The 10" record comes housed in a matt-finish sleeve designed by Vasco Alves and includes a fold out poster. The photographs on the front cover and "as tradiçōes" side label are taken from the book 'Gaiteiros de Sesimbra' published by Associação Portuguesa Gaita de Foles.'

GAX (Seymour Wright and Vasco Alves) – the traditions / as tradiçōes