Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their approach while simultaneously pushing into challenging new areas. Comprising nine pieces ranging between two and seven minutes in length, the album’s opening title track promptly introduces the distinctive palette of just-intoned electric guitars, subtle electronic processing, and voice that is rigorously explored throughout.Where much of Reidy’s guitar work on previous recordings explored rapidly pulsed cycling figures, here notes often hang in the air in a more spacious, lyrical fashion. The elasticity of rhythm and non-linear repetition of pitches initially suggests improvisation until the listener becomes aware of the precise arrangements of spatialised lines. At times, World in World suggests classic bedroom electric guitar works of the 1990s such as Loren Connors’ Airs or Roy Montgomery’s Scenes from the South Island; like those works, Reidy’s possesses a wonderfully live ambience, with frequent pedal clicks adding to the music’s powerful sense of intimacy. In Reidy’s case, however, the yearning, melancholic mood of Connors or Montgomery is tempered by the unorthodox guitar tuning, which at points produces a unique and uncomfortable effect somewhere between the hyper-precision of Harry Partch or Lou Harrison and Jandek’s slack-stringed descent into the void.While World in World plots out its terrain with a bold single-mindedness that allows some pieces to appear almost as variations on a common theme, subtle changes in emphasis distinguish each track. Tactile percussive interjections skitter across the tremolo tones of ‘Paradise in Unrecognisable Colours’, while ‘Ajar’ ramps up the role played by the electronics, with glitching pitch-shifted and back-masked textures threaded through the guitars and thickly harmonised vocal layers. Ranging from autotuned melodic lines to buried murmurs, Reidy’s voice is a frequent presence throughout these nine pieces, at times creating the impression that a more conventional series of songs lurks underneath the chiming microtonal guitars. On the stunning ‘Poised’, whispers and distant, ghostly wails surround the layers of guitars, at times suggesting the foggiest outer reaches of Liz Harris’ Grouper. Both rigorously experimental and emotive, World in World is undoubtedly Julia Reidy’s finest work yet. 

Folk Magic Band represents one of the most interesting and original, yet lesser-known experiences of the italian jazz scene of the 1970s. In the legendary alternative environment of the Folk Studio in Rome, an open 18-members lineup is inspired by the free jazz of its time, a music that encompasses the whole world and its polychromy of sound. The echo seems to resonate the pan-ethnic motifs of Don Cherry and his Organic Music Society, but also the spiritual jazz of Pharoas Sanders and the orchestrations of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The textures chase a chinese melody, ignite with african scents and south american jungles, flow into fusion violin drifts a la Archie Shepp's Attic Blues or Mingus-like orchestral sections. The fascination of this collective affair still strikes for its playful and ironic nature, still impressing for its strength and willingness to open and influence new directions.

Very special release from filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. Highly reccomended.  --- "I first discovered khroniky – Ukranian folk songs – in the Highlands of Scotland. I was watching a screening of Bajka, a mesmerising documentary made by the filmmaker Lucia Nimcová and sound artist Sholto Dobie. I knew nothing about these ballads beforehand, but I was fascinated by these odd, beautiful songs, especially the easy way in which they mixed misery and levity, where gentle melodies blend with tales of dark violence. The folk songs describe hardship, murder, torture, death in gulags, heavy drinking, outsmarting men, love affairs. But they’re often very funny too – many of the songs make fun of marriage, and there’s an amazing subcategory of khroniky songs called potka (vagina) songs.The khroniky have never been properly documented because they were considered too crude, or contained lyrics that were problematic, politically. When Ukrainian folk songs have been archived in the past, it’s normally a sanitised, more polite version of the ones that Lucia remembers from her childhood. Lucia grew up on the other side of the Ukrainian border in Slovakia. She is part of the Rusyn (Ruthenian) minority ethnic group found in the borderlands of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine and Poland. Rusyn is a centuries-old Slavic language, looked down upon as a poor, uneducated dialect by the neighbouring Ukraine and Slovakia. It was forbidden to talk about Rusyn culture at Nimcova’s primary school, but the khroniky stayed in her memories.“I remember weddings when I was young,” says Lucia, who now lives in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia. “At the end of the night, when everyone was drunk and the young couple would go around their guests, people would sing in Rusyn. There was singing and dancing, and songs about being in prison or falling in love. I picked up the lyrics and sometimes my mum would make my sister and I sing them for people we met on the train. I was about five or six but the lyrics still come back when I sing to my kids.”Determined that these rich, nuanced, unique songs shouldn’t be forgotten, she decided to record them. Over two years, Lucia, joined by experimental musician Sholto Dobie, visited Rusyn villages high in the Carpathian mountains to rediscover the songs and make the documentary. It was at the beginning of war breaking out in Ukraine in 2014.“The Rusyn community is a very closed one,” explains Lucia. “Sometimes we’d have to wait several days to hear someone sing; we had to earn their trust before they shared something very personal to them. We’d stay up ‘til 5am at a wedding, then go straight to a morning baptism, or collect haystacks with the villagers, hoping they’d sing while they were working.”DILO is named after an important independent Ukrainian daily newspaper that was shut down when the Red Army entered Lviv in 1939. The four long tracks on DILO blur field recordings with song; an unpolished, privileged glimpse into a private world. We hear dogs barking and insects buzzing in the summer heat, then a blast of hurdy gurdy or violin will drift in, or a plaintive song soars softly over the rural background noise, with casually harrowing lyrics about a cuckoo, “lifeless in a world of misery”, as translated in the album’s booklet.For both Lucia and Sholto, it was important not to tamper too much with what they heard. “When you think about ethnography,” Lucia explains, “you have to have a lot of time, love and respect to document it with sensitivity.”“The songs all have their own atmosphere and intimacy from the spaces they were recorded in and it was important to maintain these particularities and move with them,” adds Sholto, who now lives in Vilnius, Lithuania. “They guide and sometimes interrupt a journey between interiors – domestic spaces; in kitchens, by the fire – and exteriors; marketplaces, cow sheds. We used contact microphones to record metal bridges and fences, and we spent one afternoon recording a wool processing machine, the details of the rattling and tuning wheels are the ground layer for the third track.”Lucia took rough notes and diary entries during the recording process, which are now shared in the booklet alongside a selection of lyrics, loosely translated, but revealing the depth and astonishing beauty that sometimes lies in the language of these folk songs.The feel of the album is intimate, flipping between laughter, where a woman sings about selling her pussy to buy a cow in one track, then shifts to a raw, painful truth; an adult son asks his mother why his dad won’t be back for dinner, as he’s gone to war.Since Lucia and Sholto began working together in 2014, they have shared the audio recordings on radio and film and shown photos in gallery spaces, making sure these special, smutty, poignant songs don’t get lost. This new record and booklet joins that same continuum, another glorious fruit from the same rare tree. " ---- Concept, photography, notes, and research by Lucia Nimcováwww.luco.skRecorded and mixed by Sholto Dobiesoundcloud.com/sholtodobieDesign by Ondrej Jóbwww.setuptype.comMastered by Tomáš Vtípil / dinn (dinn is not noise)www.vtipil.czWords by Claire Sawersclairesawers.comPhotography by Lukáš Rohárikbit.ly/2QT4r49Released by mappa as MAP025 in 2021This project has been supported using public funds provided by Slovak Arts Council.    

Black Truffle is pleased to welcome free jazz legend Joe McPhee back to the fold with Oblique Strategies, a wild trio recorded in Antwerp in 2018 in the company of Mette Rasmussen’s fire-breathing alto saxophone and Dennis Tyfus’s post-Fluxus antics on tape, voice, and percussion. Rasmussen and Tyfus have previously recorded together as Bazuinschal, and some similar strategies are on display here: mysterious metallic scrapes, extended tones in which voice and sax become indistinguishable, comic explosions of varispeed tape. With McPhee on board, however, proceedings are more sumptuous, with the two horns moving fluidly from expeditions into the extremes of their instruments’ registers to pointillistic note-splatter and Ayler-esque folk melodies; we even get to bask in some of the slow-motion free blues that McPhee has now been playing for half a century.McPhee is heard primarily on tenor, Rasmussen mainly on alto, but with Rasmussen doubling on sundry objects, and the whole trio contributing vocals, certainty about who is doing what becomes nigh impossible. The recording and production add to this hazy unclarity. Where much contemporary improvised music aims at dryly clinical hi-fi, the lively reverberant space of Oblique Strategies calls to mind the less-than-pristine sonics of classic free jazz artefacts like John Tchicai’s Afrodisiaca or McPhee’s own Underground Railroad. A further dimension of oblique unpredictability is added by subtle changes in the sense of space: at times merely a reverb tail glimpsed between phrases, at other points the whole mix seems to be momentarily swallowed up in slap-back, blurring the lines between acoustic instruments and the decayed fidelity of Tyfus’ tape playback.Spread across four pieces ranging from four to nineteen minutes in length, Oblique Strategies moves with anarchic swagger from explosions of clattering cymbals and bellowing horns to near-silent episodes of mysterious rumble and clunk. ‘Death or Dinner?’ opens the record with a lovely duet of climbing melodic patterns shared between the two saxophones, played with a buzzing oboe-like tone. A long, wavering note sung by Tyfus cues the first of countless changes of direction, eventually leading to a crescendo of watery splutters and duelling saxes. At points Tyfus’ keening resemble the signature moves of his friend and collaborator, Ghédelia Tazartès; at others, his tape-sped huffs and puffs possess a rawness reminiscent of Henri Chopin or Gil Wolman. The dialogue between wailing saxophones and vocal cries, punctuated by percussive thuds and crashes, can at times feel less like a musical performance and more like the calls of some mysterious forest creatures, possessing a primordial energy that might remind some listeners of the outdoor antics of Brötzmann and Bennink’s Schwarzwaldfahrt.Oblique Strategies can also be delicate at times, as on the beautiful third piece, ‘Destilled Edible’, dominated by a slow, microtonal melody played with a breathy tone resembling a shakuhachi. The closing side-long ‘Light My Fire’ ranges across classic improv call and response, skittering trumpet blurts, inept cymbal clatter, mock-operatic vocals, and crude tape manoeuvres. Momentarily pausing at the ten-minute mark for an interlude of ghostly room sound and crackling texture, its closing moments unfurl a glorious dual saxophone finale, the almost epic tone subtly undermined by Tyfus quietly tapping out swing rhythms. Arriving in a striking sleeve adorned with Tyfus’ drawings, Oblique Strategies is an invigoratingly free-spirited blast of improvisation. 

CD1 (track 1-12)马木尔 Mamer - 木吉他 Acoustic Guitar / 人声 Vocals夏力 Xalhar - 木吉他 Acoustic Guitar / 和声 Backing Vocals张东 Zhang Dong - 打击乐 Percussion民谣IZ乐队2021年1月2日在旧天堂书店演出的现场录音IZ Band (folk) live at Old Heaven Books on Jan 2nd, 2021 CD2 (track 13-19)马木尔 Mamer - 吉他 Guitar / 人声 Vocals夏力 Xalhar - 贝斯 Bass张东 Zhang Dong - 打击乐 Percussion马木尔、夏力、张东2021年1月2日在旧天堂书店自由即兴演出的现场录音Mamer, Xalhar, and Zhang Dong improvisation at Old Heaven Books on Jan 2nd, 2021   CD3 (track 20-29)马木尔 Mamer - 冬不拉 Dombra / 古典吉他 Classical Guitar马木尔2021年1月3日在旧天堂书店冬不拉和古典吉他独奏的现场录音Mamer dombra and classical guitar solo at Old Heaven Books on Jan 3rd, 2021   录音 Recording：曾君 Zeng Jun，罗绿野 Luo Lvye母带处理 Mastering：刘英 Liu Ying木刻 Woodcut：刘庆元 Liu Qingyuan制作人 Producer：涂飞 Tu Fei统筹 Coordinator：尹思卜 Yin Sibo设计 Design：Nino，尹思卜 Yin Sibo摄影 Photography：阿瓜 Wain，大发录像 DAFA特别鸣谢 Special Thanks：唐加力克 Karatorhay  

老丹 Lao Dan：萨克斯 Alto Saxophone, 笛子 Di Zi, 自制笛 DIY Flute, 人声 Vocal, 效果器 Effects Unit 李带菓 Li Daiguo：古筝 Guzheng, 低音提琴 Double Bass, 大提琴 Cello, 塔不拉鼓 Tabla, 模拟合成器 Analog Synthesizer, 中国鼓 Chinese Drum, 锣 Gong, 踩镲 Hihat, 地鼓 Bass Drum 录制于2021年11月 云南·大理Recorded in Dali, Yunnan in November 2021 录音/混音 Recording & Mixing: 李带菓 Li Daiguo母带 Mastering: 刘英 Liu Ying制作人 Producer: 涂飞 Tu Fei统筹 Coordinator: 陈铁梅 Chen Tiemei / 尹思卜 Yin Sibo封面木刻作品 Front Cover Woodcut Artwork: 刘庆元 Liu Qingyuan设计 Design: 林溪 Lin Xi（来信收悉工作室）

Previously released on accompanied by “Gone, Gone Beyond”, “The Mirror” is the dreamy soundtrack of an a/v project from collage artist extraordinaire Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us.With ‘’The Mirror’’ Bennett continues her eternal disassembling of popular music by exploring how the narrative of familiar sounds/songs can change dramatically under a new context, with that context always changing, in a never-ending flow.Each song is singular. And each song is a collage of and undefined number of other songs from other artists. It sounds familiar because that has been the modus operandi of People Like Us since the early 1990s. But “The Mirror” plays with the notion of familiar, driving around a collection of famous pop songs/artists, messing around with the memory of the listener and, of course, his unique comprehension of those specific songs applied in a new context.Because of the use of familiar pop sounds, “The Mirror” is often grandiose. Like an epic film only with highs, never letting the listener down or letting him doubt the power of pop. Even, of course, when the coordinates are twisted, mixed, over or underrepresented. Each moment feels like something that could only happen in a parallel universe. Although that may sound naïve, it’s just a lost thought of reaction to the beautiful collages of People Like Us in “The Mirror”. This mirror doesn’t reflect an image of ourselves or an image of pop. But an image on the way memories drift and are being constant rebuilt. An unfinished collage. 

Alkisah is the new album by Indonesian duo Senyawa. Alkisah is co-released by a multitude of independent record labels from all over the globe each with different packaging and design, with multiple version of remixes by various artists.Senyawa is an experimental music duo with Rully Shabara (extended vocal technique) and Wukir Suryadi (homemade instrument). The music that they create is a combination of extended vocal technique and a homemade instrument. The instrument was handcrafted by master instrument builder Wukir out of one long piece of bamboo, it is a string instrument with guitar pick-ups—it is amplified and processed through several effects pedals but at times is played as an acoustic instrument, percussion and string instrument.They are located in the ancient city of Jogjakarta, Central Java, Indonesia and their music is a reflection of their traditional Javanese heritage filtered through a framework of contemporary experimental music practices. Senyawa try to push the boundaries of both traditions in an attempt to mix the musics’ of the east and the west to create a new sound.

Hyperactive since the late 1980s, Youngs is widely celebrated for his remarkably extensive and varied body of recordings. His works range freely over a vast terrain, wandering from tender acoustic balladry to raging psychedelic noise and orchestral D-beat, always imbued with his distinctive, often mournful, melodic sensibility and irrepressible sense of joyous experimentation. Comprised of two side-long pieces, CXXI carried on the experiments with chance operations used to generate material on many of Youngs’ recent releases. On ‘Tokyo Photograph’, a slowly changing, randomly generated sequence of 121 minor chords played by sine waves and accented with a brushed snare hit on every change provides the harmonic foundation for Youngs’ fragile yet impassioned vocal performance, shards of field recordings and electronics and Sophie Cooper’s long, tape-echoed trombone notes. While the melancholic drift of the chords calls up prime Robert Wyatt sides like Old Rottenhat or Dondestan, only the most vestigial sense of song remains here, as Youngs arranges his minimal ingredients over a spacious fifteen-minute expanse that often drops to nothing more than the rich hum of sine waves. ‘The Unlearning’ carries on directly from the first side, presenting another, more harmonically varied, sequence of randomly generated chords played by sine waves, distressed with tape echo flourishes and sparsely sprinkled with electronic touches. Like some of Youngs’ most single-minded instrumental works in recent years, such as his recordings of foot-played guitar or his shakuhachi pieces, ‘The Unlearning’ is deeply meditative but entirely remote from ambient or minimalist cliches. Named after the number of chord changes on the opening piece and (Chicago-style) the number of records Youngs has released, CXXI arrives in a striking monochrome sleeve featuring play-along chord charts for both pieces. Both rigorously conceptual and endearingly off-the-cuff, CXXI is classic Richard Youngs. --- Black Truffle, 2021

Born in 1945, Guo Yongzhang is a true maestro of Henan Zhuizi, a traditional Chinese talking-singing art that has a history of over 100 years. Almost blind, he plays Zhuihu and Zhuibang to accompany his own singing. His vocal style is peculiar, resounding yet smooth, adopting various types of arias from traditional local operas such as Shandong Bangzi and Shandong Zaobang, and he always sings with deep feelings and great verve. Originated in Henan, Zhuizi is included in the national intangible cultural heritage list and has been popular in Henan and its nearby regions. Its main accompaniment musical instrument is Zhuihu, a two-stringed bowed instrument made of wood, and secondly the Zhuibang, a wooden percussion played with foot tapping. Since Zhuihu has a wide diapason with a soft sound and relatively high volume, the performer can use it to imitate the voice of human and animals. Guo was born with bad eyesight. Growing up in poverty, he never had enough food and had been living on begging in the nearby village with his parents. It was during that period he discovered Zhuizi for the first time, and was so obsessed with its unique charm that he decided to learn playing by himself. He bought a second-hand Zhuihu from the local opera troupe with wages from hard physical labor, and soon managed to play some short pieces by hard practice. However, it was still difficult for him to gain respect from the local folks without training under the traditional master-apprentice system that he couldn’t afford, and even worse, his eyesight went worse and worse to nearly blind. Not until he turns 17 was he reluctantly accepted by a Zhuizi master and has been assiduously learning and playing until now. Lyrics of Guo’s Zhuizi are about respecting the old, valuing the righteousness and compassion, while keeping a sense of humor. Today, he is widely-known in the border region of Suzhou, Shandong, Henan and Anhui, and is commonly regarded as a Zhuizi master. Guo has been playing among people tirelessly for decades. As he ages, Guo knows there is not much time left for him, and he feels sorry that nowadays only few people want to learn Zhuizi. He is worried that this precious art form would disappear someday. This studio album is recorded after Guo Yongzhang performing on the 5th Tomorrow Festival stage. Released by Old Heaven Books, 2019

Souffle Continu's first-ever reissue of Kristen Nogues's legendary 1976 debut Marc'h Gouez. Mindblowing holy grail of French folk that's totally essential for fans of Brigitte Fontaine / Areski, Catherine Ribeiro, Emmanuelle Parrenin, etc. “Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country…” So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc’h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening. Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, – taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At the beginning of the 1970s, she discovered the Breton song tradition (soniou and gwerziou) through Yann Poëns and became involved in Névénoé, a cooperative of traditional expression founded by Gérard Delahaye and Patrick Ewen. It was under this label that her first album Marc’h Gouez, was released in 1976. With a dozen friends playing guitar, piano, violins, flutes…, Noguès composed not Breton music, but music from Brittany: a type of shared folklore in which imagination is married to the reality of the moment, that of social demands and companionship. At the very beginning of the record, we can hear her drawing up a chair, before the plucked notes of the harp become a cascade: “Enez Rouz”, is an invitation to listen up close. We are reminded here of the Meredith Monk of “Greensleeves”, there of the early albums of Brigitte Fontaine / Areski, elsewhere of Emmanuelle Parrenin, Pascal Comelade... Noguès rhyming pattern is ever changing: airy (“Hunvre”), cosmopolitain (“Pinvidik Eo Va C'hemener”), enigmatic (“Ar Bugel Koar”), profound (“Ar Gemenerez”) or enchanting (“Hirness An Devezhiou”). And then there is the track from which the album takes its’ name: Marc’h Gouez which, between nursery rhyme and chamber music, weaves a fabulous web in which the auditor is obliged to be caught. “Brittany equals poetry”: so said André… Breton; and Kristen Noguès proves it to be true. 

  “Urs Graf Consort, a collective with a corrupted genealogy, produce trail-blazing simulacra - songs nested within themselves, with the experimental accents of Ursonate. A protean duo operates under the name of Swiss engraver Urs Graf (1485 - c. 1529); Prune Bécheau and Adrien Bardi-Bienenstock are composers and performers for ensembles that are as varied as the motley company brought together in The Peasants War which Urs Graf depicted; Uva Ursi captures on-the-spot at acoustic vigils on the edge of amplified battlefields. Baroque violin, vièle-à-trou, bass, arranged drums, a broad spectrum of vocals, tuba, trumpet, synthesizer, spinet, sanza, shakers, bells and rattles... are all played in different concerts by: Simon Sieger, Mathias Pontévia, Jœl Grip, Samuel Burjade, Sam Langer, Paul Ferbos, Pierre Borel, Adrien Perron, Rachel Ramos, Emmanuel LeGlatin, Mathieu Cahuzac, Camille Émaille, Gabriel Bristow, Antoine Hummel, Makoto Sato, Arden Day, Olivia Scemama, Pascal Sieger, Geoffroy Gesser, Malgorzata Kasprzycka, Gwladys Le Cuff, and many others. The sheer number and differing degrees of participation by these musicians and their voices avoids genre - from passionate, rasping dialogues and the slow sedimentary effort of building the composition, to the use of six languages in various arrangements and surprise oral interventions. The same applies to the modes of recording, whether in the studio, live or by integrating direct sound recordings.The compositions on Uva Ursi - or bearberry, a medicinal mountain plant with small white flowers - confound expectations and established standards and attain new forms of interplay between Italian variety, free jazz, cabaret, instrumental theatre, Lettrist recitation, the disruptive intensities of improvisation and noise, and walrus songs. These disjunctive synthesis do not exclude humming or toe-tapping either, even though they may initially seem untenable as a whole: the airs are captivating but any dancing only arrives in passing, and either gets bogged down by weird meter or catches a chill from deceptive disintegrations and globbed down by macabre sounds.” Gwladys Le Cuff  --- Adrien Bardi Bienenstock : french, italian, spanish, danish, bassesPrune Bécheau : baroque violin, synthesizer, piano, organ, mandolin, french, german, danish Simon Sieger : trombone, accordeon, tuba, radiator, danish, frenchMathias Pontévia : drums (on pair tracks, except track 8)Joel Grip : double bass, danish, swedishSamuel Burjade : drums (on impair tracks)Sam Langer : electric guitarPaul Ferbos : spinetPierre Borel : saxophoneAdrien Perron : zarbRachel Ramos : pandeiro, bell, shakersEmmanuel Le Glatin : acoustic guitarMathieu Cahuzac : congasGwladys Le Cuff : Apocalypsis NovaEnregistré au Tuquet en Dordogne, à Ste Foy La Grande en Gironde, à Euphonia et au 51 rue du petit puits à Marseille. Tecnici di registrazione e mix : Loïc Lachaize, Prune Bécheau e Adrien Bardi BienenstockMastering : Loïc Lachaize and Jan Vysocky.Ooro hihi : frontière ronflanteHülle : Prune Bécheau und Adrien Bichon BardiGrafik : Maja LarssonEnglish translations : Sam Langer & Patrick DahnThanks for the technical support (and more) of Thomas Pujols, Samuel Burjade, Eloïse Burjade, Emmanuel Le Glatin, Mathias Pontevia

أحمد [Ahmed] – the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the 2 LPs which make up ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West] ’the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling.  Abdul-Malik was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher who fused aspects of American, Arabic and East African thought, ethics, meanings and beliefs in open and experimental ways to make vital, forward leaning jazz. [Ahmed] reimagine the notes of Malik as they push for new ground. Melodies respirate, swell, escalate and combust in a driving jazz which yes is technical, yes is accomplished, but ultimately just foot-to-the-floor swings.  ‘Super Majnoon [East Meets West]’ is a title fused from the leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka Bechir Attar’s description of [Ahmed] after hearing them in Switzerland last year (Majnoon is the arabic slang for ‘crazy’), and Abdul-Malik’s 1959 album East Meets West. Arriving as a double LP, the first comprises studio recordings of [Ahmed] at Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery in 2018 and the second a scorched live recording at OTO from August 2018. The record features photos by Bert Glinnand Taku Unamiand ‘in and out’ liner notes by James G. Spady – historian and journalist from Philadelphia, the author of books on Marcus Garvey and the trilogy of groundbreaking books on hip hop (Nation Conscious Rap, Street Conscious Rap, The Global Cypha).  --- [Ahmed] are: PAT THOMAS / piano  ANTONIN GERBAL / drums  JOEL GRIP / bass  SEYMOUR WRIGHT / alto saxophone  --- LP 1 recorded by David Sum at Empty Gallery Hong, March 31, 2018. LP 2 recorded by Paul Skinner at Café OTO London, August 25, 2018. LP1 mixed by David Sum. LP 2 mixed by Pat Thomas. Mastered by James Dunn. Liner notes © James G. Spady. Cover photo © Burt Glinn/Magnum Photos. Design by Maja Larsson. Produced by John Hawthorn, Jens Löwius and Seymour Wright.

"Yeah You's black-hearted return to Slip: poisonous, weaponised pop, spat out on the roam. Father-daughter Mykl Jaxn-Elvin Brandhi's defiantly other improvisations tangle up defouling sermons with ragged beats, gnashing bass, and ear-worm synths. Recorded in a black Renault Clio in Holland and Germany, and at Aurora, Budapest throughout early 2017, 'KRUTCH' is the 'You at a freshly terrifying apex, filtering the desperation of black metal through an unerring pop nous." “The  music  and  letting-go  part  of  it  is  already  sort  of  social  suicide  –  and  then  on  top  of  that  I’m  doing  it  with  my  dad.”  –  Elvin  Brandhi  interview  with  Tristan  Bath  for  the  Quietus  “...the  best  father/daughter  duo  sinceSerge  and  Charlotte...”  –  Boomkat --- Artwork by Elvin Brandhi. Mastered by Stephen Bishop.

First full length LP from Still House Plants. "Combining visual strategies, free improvisation, UK garage and punk, Still House Plants build melodic hierarchies scaffolded around ambiguities and intimacy. Fresh from being selected for the OTO Projects UK Artists Fund, and following two sold out tapes on Glasgow label GLARC, the trio’s debut LP 'Long Play' collects their group's raw guitar-drum-vocal palette and stretches it to include violin, piano and intimate home recording. Ranging from seconds-long to seven:minute:somethings, the album coagulates to form a heady meld of rudimentary phrases, kinetic repetition and malleable samples. Experimental songwriting is rarely so forthcoming, emotive, or approachable." "A genuinely challenging and beautiful album." - Stewart Smith --- Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach / vocals Finlay Clark / guitar, piano, violin David Kennedy / drums --- Recorded by Ronan Fay at Green Door Studios, Glasgow, April 2018. Mixed by Ronan Fay. Mastered by Katie Tavini. Artwork by Still House Plants.

Pat Thomas is one of the most extraordinary pianists of our time. In a first time duo with saxophonist Matana Roberts, the lyricism of his distinctly dexterous and curious approach to the piano paints pathways for Robert’s poignantly vocal saxophone. Together the two speak; locked grooves and neat switchbacks on the keys form dialogue with long deliberate lines on the alto, punctuated by Roberts’ ecstatic vocalisations.  The trio of improvised pieces which make up the record’s first side are rich phrases, pitched at each end of the piano and stretched and pulled by Pat. His simple, repetitive cycles yield space and colour for Robert’s song, then let sounds build to a flourish; an armed run on the keys and some wonderfully soft landings.    The second side, a whole part in itself, goes deeper - hammered armfuls of piano and torn top breath blasting from Roberts fall in a flutter of delicate keystrokes. Call and response halves collide in a wonderful thunder before finding the edge of another line to hang onto. There is a remarkable sense of purpose, precision and restraint at play, as well as a peaceful milieu, which no doubt stems from the two players' fierce individual intelligence, creativity and curiosity.  The record arrives housed in a screen printed Kraftboard sleeve, die cut to reveal photographs taken by Dawid Laskowski and Fabio Luguro. Mastered by Giuessepe Ielesi who also mastered Pat Thomas’ The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari, we pressed this on 180g black vinyl. You can’t press a work called ‘The Truth’ on much less, can you? ---   Pat Thomas / piano   Matana Roberts / saxophone   --- Recorded by James Dunn live at Cafe OTO on the 8th December 2018. Mixed by James Dunn and mastered by Guiseppe Ielasi. Photographs by Dawid Laskowski and Fabio Lugaro. Design and layout by Maja Larrson.     

"'Lost In Shadows' is American composer/performer Ashley Paul's bewitching Slip debut: an expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation. At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's ‘Line The Clouds’ (2013) and ‘Heat Source’ (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime. Recorded over 3 weeks at a FUGA residency in Zaragoza, Spain in December 2016, 'Lost In Shadows' documents a cathartic outpouring; the first time Paul had been able to write since the birth of her daughter 11 months earlier. The record is completely influenced by "many hours spent awake at night in a dream like state of half consciousness, darkness and solitude; an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and exhaustion made light by a profound new love", with Paul's solo playing bolstered by additional baritone saxophone, cello, tuba, and percussion. This ensemble set-up, which premiered much of this work at 2017's Counterflows festival, gives the LP a fresh sense of luxuriousness, bounce, and rich possibility.'" — Artwork by Gayle Paul. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

Akosh S. (Szelevényi) is a Hungarian saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, improviser and composer. He has been living in France since '86. As the leader and founder of his group Akosh S. Unit, he has released many records at Universal. He once records and tours with the rock band Noir Désir, and he works with choreographer Josef Nadj, cultivates improvised music with Joëlle Léandre, Gildas Etevenard, Hamid Drake, etc. He composes music for theater, contemporary dance, films, and collaborates with French rappers Marc Nammour. Since 2016, he has been working with Hungarian musicians - double bassist Peter Ajtai and drummer Szilveszter Miklòs. These two young figures are already emblematic of current creative music in Hungary and a joy to see. the trio were invited to play in a trio at OCT-LOFT festival 2019, and the whole show was recorded and released as LP, DVD and CD here.  “Regarding the title of the album what I found by looking further is ‘Inside Out’. To explain in a few words from Hungarian: at the base, there is ‘itt’ = ‘here’, and ‘ott’ = ‘there’. From ‘itt’ derives ‘ide’ = ‘from there to here’, from ‘ott’ follows ‘oda’ = ‘from here to there’, so there is a dynamic in ‘ide’, which there is not in ‘itt’, which is stable. ‘Kint’ is ‘outside’. ‘Idekint' therefore means, that we are outside and we invite to be outside (while ‘Odakint’ would mean that we are inside, to designate the outside), not locked in our certainties, but in outside of it all, like free animals, or like homeless ones too, but also alive, outside our mother...” - Akosh S. --- 作曲 Composed by：Akosh Szelevényi (1, 3, 5, 7, 8)；Akosh Szelevényi, Péter Ajtai, Szilveszter Miklós (2, 4, 6)录音 Recording：曾君 Zeng Jun；罗绿野 Luo Lvye混音 Mixing：刘英 Liu Ying；Akosh S.母带处理 Mastering：David Mascunan at Mastermixlabs制作人 Producer：涂飞 Tu Fei统筹 Coordinator：周雁朝 Zhou Yanchao；尹思卜 Yin Sibo Recorded at the 9th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival on October 18, 2019B10 Live, Shenzhen, China  旧天堂书店出品 Published by Old Heaven Books 2020