The recent rediscovery of J.D. Emmanuel by critics and audience, and his comeback to underground scene from 2010 was crucial to reweave the development of electronic music in the early Eighties. This new publication cast new light on his first activity of composing and performing electronic music during 1979-83, experiments totally unreleased and never before published on vinyl. Certainly seminal minimal works such as Four Organs or Violin Phase by Steve Reich, A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley as well Cluster, Harmonia or Peter Michael Hamel's works of the early Seventies had a decisive impact on the Emmanuel's debut. However, since the beginning he proves to reshape and reformulate the lymph of his sources of inspiration with a consolidated maturity and accurate vision unparalleled. His poetry it's  closely tied to the will to expand consciousness and explore his altered states, but more than a "cosmic courier" he rather appear as "courier of soul and heart" and "a student of metaphysical Nature of the Universe". Magician of a incredible variety of analog keyboards JD conceives the sound as dynamic translation of forces and organic fluid expanding flows of energy mass. The cyclicity of patterns and phrases refer to minimalist iteration but his music has little in commune with something purely mathematical; but also using an approach to improvisation filtered by his interest in jazz and in the temporal expansion of rock-jams, harmonic sections are charged with a intimate spontaneity and freedom without boundaries. These 14 "vaporous drawnings", released in a deluxe edition with photos, writings and digital download code donate a primordial state of grace to the listener, in parallel to contemporary ancestral work Wizards in 1982 (containing two tracks that was originally included in Wizards, but replaced by other tracks just before the final master). 

After the exploit of Osmose in 1978, Kalma returns into the studio in 1980 with Interfrequence, an ambient space library record. Interfrequence is a continuation of his personal research based on the combination of electronic machines with natural sounds and acoustic instrumentation. The french musician fully wears the robe of master of ceremonies of the synths. However, the path taken is not that symphonic of the minimalist and galactic suites composed by other standard bearers like Richard Pinas and Klaus Schulze. Here, we find 18 short pictures sound (few of them in collaboration of M. Saclays) that emanate a variety of ideas and ethno-cultural influences unparalleled. A distinctive compositional style always returns an crescendo of ecstatic emotions, a reflection on the hidden and secret aspects of the micro and macro cosmos. If in Osmose the sampling sound from the mother Gaia was more explicit, here the Nature is investigated not only in terms of pure tones, but especially in the dynamics of flows and movements dictated by the frequency of moogs and organs and embellished with hyper-space flutes, saxophones and clarinets. Kalma wrote yet another chapter of his personal saga of a new world of sound imagery.

An amazing Krautrock / nature hybrid masterwork. Warm washes of synthesizer, tribal war drums and drones galore all mixed with the sounds of the rainforest, crickets, frogs, even flies - Osmose was originally released in 1978 and found minimalist composer Ariel Kalma using all manner of keyboards, saxophone, harmonium, delays, effects, even circular breathing, to compose gorgeously minimal, softly spacey slow drifting ambient soundscapes, which were then mixed with the sounds of the rainforest (recorded by Richard Tinti).It's a single LP reissue of the double album of 1978.

Sarah and Ariel blend their strong individual personalities in a single trip on the edge of time. Their kosmiche music is pure, magnificent and elegant, an intergalactic hypnosis that seems to tell of distant times, a millenary vortex of a lost Era. In the first phase of departure, the mysterious song of the sax winds in archaic echoes, supported by the electronic inlays of the synth (Arp Odissey). Flowing between space rumbles and astral progressions, we sight high celestial bodies. When the infinite drones of the tampura start, we take part in the night ceremonial, surrounded by the deep harmonium and the Tibetan bell chimes. This music releases a sort of mythological warmth, secret codes of a lost purity, which lets us dwell in the labyrinths of a pyramid or in the sacred space of a cosmic pagoda.

A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. The well-educated drummer Tiziano Tononi, together with David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, while working at the temple of classical music, Il Teatro alla Scala of Milano decides to realize a personal compendium of sounds using only purcussion instruments. The recording offers to us an amazing concert of sounds with acoustic purity, in perfect balance between wild rhythm and deep relaxation. Ecstatic elements of Japan ambient minimalism dialogue with contemporary musical solutions (Varese, Ligeti), in the stream of a harmonious fusion of ancient and modern. It’s a propitiatory ceremony of supernatural happenings that open portals of blissfulness, tribal and shamanic darkness, and,timeless jungles. Between amazon fires and African safaris, we float in the Asian rivers of meditation, lost in water games, echoes of caves and rocks in the night, synergies of frogs, birds, snakes, marimbas, chimes, gongs, and wooden drums.

New Lp-edition of an obscure un-released library of the early ‘70s. Together with Florian Fricke, Peter Michael Hamel and Stephan Micus, Deuter is certainly the main responsible of a fruitful encounter between European sensibility and Eastern aesthetics in the German music of the 1970s. Soundtrack was originally produced by Kuckuck in 1973 not for an official and public release, but as a “library” to be used for films, TV and radio. As a library it respects the canonical and typological structure of the genre with 26 short sonic fragments, sequences imagined and conceived like fulminating illuminations. There's still a solid electronic vocation that, however, has put aside the most disruptive effluvia of D (1971) of pure “kraut” ancestry. In fact, the album is more like an ideal passing bridge between some ritual instances of the previous Aum (1972) and the following successful phase of Deuter during the period when he stays in the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's ashram in Poona realizing, in parallel to a renewed inner life, masterpieces like Celebration, Haleakala, Ecstasy and Silence is the Answer. Musically speaking, Soundtrack presents itself as a heterogeneous work with nocturnal, cinematic, galactic and atmospheric-environmental implications. Electronics remains the predominant factor but can vary from mantra drones of more ceremonial and meditative “space-relax” tones of some tracks (Triad, Deep Sea, Gothic Velvet or Evening) to the most amused formulations of pulsating analog synths that in the hands of Deuter become “toy-equipement” to modulate and explore (Desert Rock, Synth Effect, Flea Dance or Laser). There is no lack of acoustic moments more ethnically inspired with Arabian and Indian (Reed, Arabia) or devotionally solar themes (Tom Bombaddils Dance), so evoking an air of diffuse peace then completely conquered in the beloved India.

Originally released on tape by Sound Reporters in 1986. Het Jacoba Prieel is a very weird compendium of imaginary soundscapes, in which every coordinate seems lost and totally deviated. Fred Gales, in collaboration with Walter Maioli and Pit Piccinelli, presents his idea of ​​a concrete organic music, a diary of signals and sound impressions inspired by the great tradition of primitive music, an extreme investigation of love on the primordial beauty of sound expression. Travelling into the properties of all matter of the sonic environment, the members of the legendary Sound Reporters generate, transform, mix, filter and modulate natural and electronic sounds in the magical analogical studio of the Utrecht Institute of Sonology. From a single movement of sound fragments are opened catalyst flows and circuits, flickering sequencers and oscillations of luminous channels. Futuristic tribalism, hypnotic fossil percussion, alien sounds, dreamlike trips in the jungle, echoes of rustling and rumbles otherworldly, rain waterfalls and shells in the pond, calls of animals and insects, heart beats and radar waves. Everything is just pure sound and surrounds us

Originally released on tape by Sound Reporters in 1986. Ethnoelectronics is a further episode of pioneering fusion between ethnic and electronic music, involving dauntless explorers such as Walter Maioli, Nirodh Fortini, Fred Gales, Raffaele Serra, John Zandijk and the visionary sculptor Edward Luyken. As the soundtrack of an obscure science-fiction saga, the six parts of these recordings retain something profoundly osmotic and sidereal. In these hybridizations, it’s the heart of personal spiritual cosmos and stratospheric portals to pulse, but always remains the devotion to wild nature and ethnographic differences. In this way, the sinusoidal movements of electronic synthesizers and radiophonic frequencies interact with the pounding sounds of the jungle, with frogs, sea waves, buzz insects, leaves and rain. From flutes, rattles, steel sound sculptures or rustling idiophones, mysterious samples appeared like weird interferences, with rhythms and ritual voices from Tibet, West Papua, Burundi, Tahiti or the shamanic Japan of the Ainu.

LP +7" With their second album of 1981, the ensemble Zeit re-propose their own vision of a new cultural multi-geographical mosaic without boundaries. The sound confirms the inspired and eclectic vein of previous work suggesting even a greater conviction and maturity of intent. The arrangements tend to dilate in more alchemical and hypnotic sequences, while the range of inspirations (Balkan music, Greek, Turkish, Persian, African etc.) and the poly-instrumentalism are even more precious and varied. Decisively more experimental compositions as Gli Antichi Colori, Nuovo Orizzonte or Kalimba are indicative of an unparalleled executive expertise that flows into meditative and introspective delights by resonances now more obscure or more solar. The conpresence of popular european and middle-east atmospheres as a strong reminder to the world of dance suggest once again the charm of the meeting between East and West, in view of brotherhood and solidarity among peoples. So, the "Circle" releaves itself almost like a sound tale of distant and ancient Byzantine, Arab and Christian novels, according to a nomadic spirit that finds in music the preferred journey to joy and love. In these re-issue also appear Kolo e Variazione and Corde D'Amore, two live tracks unreleased that further enrich the repertoire of one of the most original group that Italy has ever known.

In the late 70’s the Italian music scene recorded a renewed interest in a sound research involved to a stimulating fusion of popular elements, jazz improvisation and suggestions of the middle-oriental classical heritage. Starting from the experience of Aktuala the idea of a common "Mediterranean air", that could compare and harmonize rhythms and timbres of various regions, enlivened a large number of musicians. In this context, it also placed the short history of Zeit and of his main member Andrea Tamassia who played and recorded with Aktuala. This first album of 1979, seems to be a continuation of Aktuala music, it presents a compendium of styles and shapes, a collection of letters, visual notes from various places (Greece, Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Maghreb, Balcan Area etc.) rearranged in the form of an hypothetical diary, in order to create an unknown narrative scenario. In the music of the Zeit there’s no formalistic or philological purposes but triumphs an attitude to imaginative incorporation always changing. The rich poly-instrumentalism brings the rhythms of dance and ancient melodies, but also results in a palette of more abstract and ecstatic sounds with rare experimental lyricism that approach the florentine ensemble to the significant european experiences of The Incredible String Band or Third Ear Band.  

Art Of Primitive Sound is a sensational journey to the origin of Music. In his crucial research chapter on the Paleolithic, Walter Maioli between 1986 and 1991 investigates the soundscape of different geographical, climatic and botanical environments, in which the mystery of the ancient human-nature relationship resides. What emerges is an expanded and unprecedented Paleorganology, with a range of acoustic and natural instruments from all over the World. Rubbing of fossils, animal artefacts, plant elements of all sorts, everything becomes sound and each object opens up forms of imaginary communication, psychic effect and unexplored languages. Whistles, flutes, leaf and shell rattles, rhombuses, horns, bone pipes, slate slabs, bamboo arches, stones, vertebrae, seeds, stalagtites etc...how great can be the Natural Orchestra inherent in the spirit of forests, rivers, caves, seas, swamps or Amazon jungles? Thanks to an interdisciplinary partnership (Anthropology, Archaeology, Botany, Ethnomusicology) of collaborating friends, Maioli directs an Opera of universal character inspired by the archaic essence of sound and infrasonic dimension.

If «Conversations» celebrates the memory, the artistic and spiritual heritage of bassist Fred Hopkins, - an historical member of the revolutionary AACM of Chicago - who died in January 1999, it also marks the amazing collaboration between the Ritual Trio of Kahil El'Zabar (with Ari brown and Malachi Favors) and the intrepid veteran Archie Shepp, the great voice of the '70 afro-free-jazz. Being a tribute that invites to an intimate memory, almost an antidote to exorcise the loss of a brother, the music is spiritual hymn to life. Between ballads, hard-bop and free-improvised accents, blow winds of vibrant pianistic chiaroscuros, which reminds the best Mccoy Tyner in the great blinding quartet of John Coltrane in the 60’s. Furthermore, when an angular rhythmic base decisively follows the typical hypnotic ostinato of the ancient tribal rituals, the voice is expressed in the purest black spirituals (Big Fred and Brother Malcolm), pervading some moments of that “Holiness” culture dear to the dawn of Afro-American identity. Here, Shepp brings back the flaming shivers of the golden age, when his message of freedom resonated the true spirits of primordial Africa.

The explorer Walter Maioli makes his most amazing adventure, the journey to the center of the Earth. Retracing the exploits of the Platonic demiurge, he identifies in the cave the deepest meaning of myth. Primordial sounds, not shadows, are at the center of this magical path straddling geology and Paleolithic polyphony. The recordings between 1985 and 2002 capture the sonic imperceptibility of the great subterranean womb, investigate the secret dialogue between the trickling of pond waters and the faint percussive reverberation of stalactites and stalagtites. Rocky sediments are played as tubular organs, glockenspiels, xylophones or stone marimbas. Crystalline timbral variations and subtle microtonal passages recall the chimes of Tibetan gongs and bells, of the scales of Java and Bali. Amidst muffled pauses and silences, trills and rings, echoes and tremolos, hisses and pops of vibration, Maioli builds his most imaginative niche of sound, a magnetic and telluric chant that is pure symphony and archetypal synaesthesia. Co-produced with Holidays Records.

"I made the basic recordings of Tim Goss's voice during a recent return trip to England. Despite some initial reservations Tim ended up giving an animated and robust reading, drawn exclusively from work of his own creation. These tapes were then transported back to Poughkeepsie, NY, where the project was teased to completion." (Original LP sleeve notes)

'Salmon Run' is Graham Lambkin's most acclaimed full-length and it's easy to see why. The ex-Shadow Ring outsider has made a name for himself over the last couple decades with a slew of solo sets and heady collaborations (with Áine O'Dwyer, Moniek Darge, Joe McPhee, Keith Rowe and others), but few records capture his craft as effortlessly and joyfully as this one.     Here he combines narrative storytelling with outsider art, daubing classical music recordings with filthy ferric paint strokes that drip with mischievous human eccentricity. The album began as tape recordings of Lambkin listening to music while photographing himself, then these pieces were manipulated and accented with additional sounds. It makes for a more-human-than-human listening experience: we all know the feeling of listening to music alone as sounds of people laughing, running water and whatever random acts of living permeate the scene almost imperceptibly. All that is brought into the foreground: wind chimes are amplified to sound like church bells and laughs, coughs and bird chirps like horns. The reality of Lambkin's listening environment is impossible to ignore, making us think more deeply about our own ritual of listening.     Lambkin's use of the room or the situation as an instrument brings a storyline and a glorious hyperreality to the record. It's impossible to listen to "Salmon Run" and not consider our own listening habits; in making something so completely personal, Lambkin allows us to reflect effortlessly. Striking a bizarre mid-point between peaceful and chaotic poles, "Salmon Run" is a truly unmissable record and a shining beacon in an ocean of experimental DIY recordings.      

Taped largely in a Honda Civic, Amateur Doubles (Kye, 2011) is a portrait of an oft-overlooked domestic stage: the car. Graham Lambkin captures the sounds of a family-in-motion as they fiddle with windows, play with toys, bicker, pass traffic, and listen, as the track titles reference, to French prog artists Besombes/Rizet and Philippe Grancher. While the set-up at first appears simple—a car ride taken by the artist and his family through upstate New York—Lambkin subtly and slyly manipulates the recordings, and even the background music itself, to unsettling effect, assembling a hazy, disorienting simulacra of a journey and quintessential domestic scene.

A study in anticipation, Softly Softly Copy Copy (Kye, 2009) repurposes the expectant rumblings of an audience-in-waiting, lifted by Lambkin from various concert recordings of the German kosmische band Tangerine Dream. These bootlegged clips provide a skeleton for various sonic scraps and interludes—including distorted and abandoned fragments from Lambkin’s archive, new recordings on guitar and violin by Austin Argentieri and Samara Lubelski, respectively—that, together, form a composition suffused with the atmosphere of potential energy. With this Blank Forms reissue, Softly Softly Copy Copy is available on LP for the first time.

These recordings were made in Bombay in 1968 by Bengt Berger (Bitter Funeral Beer Band) during a stay with Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, who was primarily responsible for the revival of the Rudra Veena as a solo concert instrument. His home in the suburb of Chembur was at the time the magical haunt of a plethora of fantastic musicians, including Ritwik Sanyal and K. Sridhar, who took part in the session. In perfect and stern Duphrad vocal style, these two Raga lead us to different atmospheres and perceptions : Malkauns is the contemplative state of the evening, of the abandonment of the senses before the breaking of the silence in the night; Miyan Ki Todi is the first breath of the morning, the gentle awakening of the limbs before a puja. The two Dagar brothers, Mohiuddin on the Rudra and Fariduddin on the chant, complement each other, become ocean and fire, stillness and storm, in an intimate and tight dialogue of exploration and expressive subtlety, in which the purity of an Indian summer becomes the highest symbol of beauty and freedom of spirit. Originally released on CD by Country & Eastern.