Kindred spirits Passepartout Duo and Inoyama Land embody the essence of play – charting a new chapter and reinvigorating the environmental music and electronic landscape.Passepartout Duo is formed of Nicoletta Favari (IT) and Christopher Salvito (IT/US), who since 2015 have been on a continuous journey travelling the world’s corners, engaged in a creative process they term “slow music”. Having been guests of many notable artist residencies and with live performances in cultural spaces and institutions, their evocative music escapes categorisation. With no fixed abode their musical pilgrimage brought them to Japan first in 2019, which prompted a deep connection to Kankyō Ongaku ‘environmental music’, a genre in which Inoyama Land is often associated with, soundtracking the duo’s first immersive experience. In 2023 the duo revisited Japan and set out to reconnect in particular with the music of Inoyama Land, performed by Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita. The highly revered album ‘Danzindan-Pojidon’ (1983) produced by Haruomi Hosono amongst other well publicized and acclaimed reissues (Light in The Attic Records’ Grammy-nominated compilation ‘Kankyō Ongaku’), produced a global resurgence and admiration of the environmental music movement. Nicoletta took the lead to seek out Inoyama Land and in making contact successfully their intrigue and eagerness to meet was warmly reciprocated, and the group scheduled to meet in the form of a spontaneous improvisation session.“We’re deeply concerned with what it means to be a duo, and what it means for people to connect through music.”'Radio Yugawara' was recorded in 2023 in Makoto Inoue’s hometown of Yugawara where his family runs a kindergarten, whose space has doubled as a Sunday recording studio. Upon arriving a circle of four tables was set up in the school’s auditorium - the tables were carefully populated with children’s instruments: a full set of handbells, a glockenspiel, a xylophone, recorders, melodicas, and harmonicas. Surrounding the tables were racks hanging all sorts of bells and wind chimes and within this environment each performer set up their own electronic instruments. Dialling into each other, a simple set of playground ‘game rules’ was devised where time was divided into three separate sessions (1) ‘only electronic instruments’, ‘only acoustic’, and ‘a mix of both’, (2) ‘revolving duets’ each taking turns to play through a cycle of ‘four duos’ and (3) ‘anything permitted’, accumulating to more than three hours of material which was then carefully distilled into succinct tracks. The alluring album opener ‘Strange Clouds’ oscillates into view, setting a lush scenery built from a bed of synthesisers and the first glimpse of the chromaplane, the hand-built analogue instrument designed by Passepartout Duo, featuring a touchless interface and endless organic sounds that underpin the album’s 11-track inlets. Percussive pulses act as the heartbeat to ‘Abstract Pets’ before earthy sub-swells open the pathway to glistening glockenspiels and wind chimes. The atmosphere shapeshifts with ‘Simoom’ and ‘Tangerine Fields’ with swirling synth lines and subliminal beats resembling changes in weather patterns. At the centre points the idyllic ‘Observatory’ and ‘Mosaic’ could illuminate the deepest oceans before the hypnotic, arpeggiating synth lines in the otherworldly ‘Xiloteca’ propel the album towards ‘Solivago’, with its gentle lullaby of playful ambience. The reflective closer ‘Axolotl Dreams’ resolves their somewhat chance meeting with elegant pastoral chord strokes and uplifting synth swells, sending final signals upwards into the ether. 'Radio Yugawara' is a unique one-off transmission from a specific place and point in time, unlikely to ever occur again. The respective duo’s approach can really be described as “tuning in”, a tuning into each other, to themselves, and to the surrounding nature of Yugawara. Like waves that travel off-world, sounds travel through the universe and can be lost forever if we don’t seek them out. In finding a harmonic affinity within their instruments and a spiritual kinship in their interwoven performance, Radio Yugawara at its core is an interpretation of feeling, of close human interaction and the true essence of discovery. “The album is both a transmission from a location, but also a tuning into the surroundings and to each other. Music in this kind of ephemeral moment is much less about active creation and more about discovering something which is already there in the air.”  

Brilliant Experimental album by the Merzbow co-founder, recorded in 1989 - with sticker and insert

Originally named „Merz“, this album should have been Merzbow's first vinyl release, but never came out on vinyl. So actually "Yantra Material Action" is „Material Action 1“, recorded in 1981 - with sticker and insert

After two and a half years out of print, Corsano/Orcutt's most popular album, Made Out of Sound, returns in a limited edition pressing. Best of 2021 — The Guardian, Pitchfork, Wire, Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, Magnet & Raven Sings the Blues.Pitchfork : "It’s a joyful noise. This is one of the more uplifting records of experimental music in recent memory. There’s something about how Orcutt and Corsano push each other that leads to work that pulses with the life force—these pieces bring to mind sunlight hitting a maple leaf, cells dividing under a microscope, a deep thirst quenched. Mark Richardson"Wire : "When you listen to Made Out Of Sound, you feel encouraged to immerse yourself in every note, cherishing the beauty of this otherworldly space. Joshua Minsoo Kim"

Finally on CD!!!  In a trajectory full of about-faces, Music for Four Guitars splices the formal innovations of Bill Orcutt's software-based music into the lobe-frying, blown-out Fender hyperdrive of his most frenetic workouts with Corsano or Hoyos. And while the guitar tone here is resolutely treble-kicked — or, as Orcutt puts it, "a bridge pickup rather than a neck pickup record" — it still wades the same melodic streams as his previous LPs (yet, as Heraclitus taught us, that stream is utterly different the second time around). Although it's a true left-field listen, Music for Four Guitars is bizarrely meditative, a Bill Orcutt Buddha Machine, a glimpse of the world of icy beauty haunting the latitudes high above the Delta (down where the climate suits your clothes). I've written before of the immediate misapprehension that greeted Harry Pussy on their first tour with my band Charalambides — that this was a trio of crazed freaks spontaneously spewing sound from wherever their fingers or drumsticks happened to land — but I'll grant the casual listener a certain amount of confusion based on the early recorded evidence (and the fact that the band COULD be a trio of crazed freaks letting fly, as we learned from later tours). But to my ears, the precision and composition of their tracks were immediately apparent, as if the band was some sort of 5-D music box with its handle cranked into oblivion by a calculating organ grinder, running through musical maps as pre-ordained as the road to a Calvinist's grave. That organ grinder, it turns out, was Bill Orcutt, whose solo guitar output until 2022 has tilted decidedly towards improvisation, while his fetish for relentless, gridlike composition has animated his electronic music (c.f. Live in LA, A Mechanical Joey). Music for Four Guitars, apparently percolating since 2015 as a loosely-conceived score for an actual meatspace guitar quartet, is the culmination of years ruminating on classical music, Magic Band miniatures, and (perhaps) The League of Crafty Guitarists, although when the Reich-isms got tossed in the brew is anyone's guess. And Reichian (Steve, not Wilhelm) it is. The album's form is startlingly minimalist — four guitars, each consigned to a chattering melody in counterpoint, repeated in cells throughout the course of the track, selectively pulled in and out of the mix to build fugue-like drama over the course of 11 brief tracks. It's tempting to compare them to chamber music, but these pieces reflect little of the delicacy of Satie's Gymnopedies or Bach's Cantatas. Instead, they bulldoze their way through melodic content with a touch of the motorik romanticism of New Order or Bailter Space ("At a Distance"), but more often ("A Different View," "On the Horizon") with the gonad-crushing drive of Discipline-era Crimson, full of squared corners, coldly angled like Beefheart-via-Beat-Detective. Just to nail down the classical fetishism, the album features a download of an 80-page PDF score transcribed by guitarist Shane Parish. And while it'd be just as reproducible as a bit of code or a player piano roll, I can easily close my eyes and imagine folks with brows higher than mine squeezing into their difficult-listening-hour folding chairs at Issue Project Room to soak up these sounds being played by real people reading a printed score 50 years from now. And as much as I want to bomb anyone's academy, that feels like a warm fuzzy future to sink into.. — TOM CARTER 

Originally released and sold on their fall 2009 US tour, Flower-Corsano Duo’s “The Chocolate Cities” stands as one of the group's most spirited releases. Recorded live in Cambridge, England and Geneva, Switzerland these recordings capture the power and energy being harnessed by the duo at a time of frequent touring, just after the release of their monumental double-LP “The Four Aims.”Michael Flower is perhaps best known for his work in Vibracathedral Orchestra, along with a slew of other bands, collaborations, and solo work. Meanwhile, Chris Corsano is well known as one of the premier drummers of modern times, and a frequent collaborator of Joe McPhee, Bill Orcutt, Bill Nace, Paul Flaherty, and many more. As a duo Flower and Corsano present an endlessly shifting and transforming sound, meshing elements of free jazz, drone, and ecstatic psychedelia into something all its own. While Corsano guides with his nimble and dynamic drumming, Flower plays amplified Japan Banjo (also known as a Shahi Baaja) providing melody, lead, and drone, often simultaneously. Gripping even in its quietest passages, thoughtful even in its most unrestrained crescendos, “The Chocolate Cities” documents a duo at the height of their collective prowess.Saved from the obscurity of its original CDr format and presented for the first time on vinyl with stunning new artwork by Chris Corsano, “The Chocolate Cities” stands as testament to the power of two magnificent players even 15 years on.

  “Fusées” isn’t the first collaboration between Thomas Bonvalet and Jean-Luc Guionnet, their first joint effort “Loges de Souffle” appearing on Be Coq last year. The same label also put out a vinyl edition of “Fusées”, but now Sarah Hennies’ label Weighter Recordings has thankfully stepped in with a CD and download release for the rest of us. Although the two artists are primarily known for their attachments to a particular instrument (guitar for Bonvalet, saxaphone for Guionnet), these instruments are only recognisably audible towards the end of the album, with the majority of sounds belonging to the percussive and analogue-electronic domains. In fact, so rhythmically driven is the album that I would’ve guessed that one of them was a percussionist. The album has a roughness and warmth to its timbres that is very appealing. Ideas unfold at a steady pace, not remaining static but not rushing anywhere either — a pleasure in sounds, but also in their organisation. The album title translates into English as ‘rockets’, and while there’s plenty of chemical energy and fire, there are also clear trajectories and flight plans. Whether these trajectories were planned out in advance or made up on the fly is, from the listener’s point of view, perhaps not so important. Developing structure can be clearly heard on tracks such as ‘2 mer D_v3’, where the interplay between synth stabs and pounding percussion twists and turns in an intricate dance. Even at its most off-kilter, such as in the broken ringtone melody of ‘1 mer B_v6_oct’, the music retains a sense of intention and direction; the transition through several shades of chaos is as detailed and as captivating as the harmonic micro-shifts of Hennies’ percussive rolls, just with much brasher colours. The guitar playing on ‘3 mar N_v3’ produces both percussive rhythm and modulating sinewave-like pitches, a synecdoche for the shapes of the album as a whole. Later in the piece, long single-note sax crescendos mould timbre and volume like clay on a potter’s wheel, inflected by stop-start percussion — a stunning effect. Only very rarely, such as on the last track, does the music slide into stock free improvisationish territory, competently done but already explored. “Fusées” is a propulsive album bursting with ideas, distilled into lucid and finely-balanced forms that dazzle and enthral." - Fluid Radio --- Thomas Bonvalet / audio ducker, microphones, amplificateurs, frappements de pieds et de mains, peau de tambour, banjo six cordes, componium, diapasons, plectre de pavot sec … Jean Luc Guionnet / deux vieux orgues électriques (Bontempi Tempest & Farfisa Matador), trois petits harmoniums, une table de mixage bouclée et quelques micros contacts et magnétiques, un petit trumpet speaker mobile, trompette de poche, saxophone soprano --- Recorded at Instants Chavirés, January 2014 by Adrian Riffo. Thanks to Instants Chavirés, Adrian Riffo, La Fonderie and François Tanguy.

"Tim Feeney seeks to explore and examine the timbral possibilities inherent in everyday found and built objects. He treats his percussion setup as a friction instrument, using bows, scrapers, and rosined drumheads to capture and amplify frequencies that go unheard when an object is struck with a traditional mallet. He supplements this acoustic console with an electronic instrument, arranged from mixers, contact microphones, and effects pedals, that synthesizes and alters the spectral characteristics of low-fidelity tones, feedback, and noise. Tim worked for years within Boston’s timbral improvising community, a group of musicians interested in unstable sounds and silences, exploring austere#combinations of sound and the otherworldly ripple effects that pulse through#a silent space and alert ears. He has performed with musicians including thereminist James Coleman, cellist/electronic musician Vic Rawlings, pianist Annie Lewandowski, tape-deck manipulator Howard Stelzer, trumpeter Nate Wooley, sound artists Jed Speare and Ernst Karel, saxophonist Jack Wright, the trio Meridian (with percussionists Nick Hennies and Greg Stuart), and#the trio ONDA (with vocalist Ken Ueno and violinist Hillary Zipper. His concerts have been held at experimental spaces such as the Red Room in#Baltimore, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut, the Knitting Factory New York, and the Stone, as well as the Center for New Music and Audio Technology at UC-Berkeley, the Stanford#Art Museum, Princeton University, and Dartmouth College." --- Performed and recorded by Tim Feeney in Berkshire, NY, and Tuscaloosa, AL, 2010-2013.

"The three duets on the record (respectively written by John Cage, Peter Ablinger, and Hennies) all feature a “solo snare drum performer in duets with three non-performative musical elements.” All three of the elements presented here (silence, noise, and tone) in some way reflect a sonic component of the snare drum’s sound, and tonal differences between each track is striking. On Hennies’ own “Cast and Work,” the composer explores the tonal variations that can occur when the snare on her instrument is turned off and then mixed with other pitched elements. Like Cage’s and Albinger’s compositions, “Cast and Work” is mostly a subtle piece until a barrage of pitched noise from Vanessa Rossetto, Brent Fariss, and Henna Chou comes in near the end. When taken together, these compositions alter the listener’s perception of what a snare drum can do sonically and succeed in taking the instrument out of its often typecast role in music." - Tiny Mix Tapes --- A solo snare drum performer in duets with three non-performative musical elements: Cage - silence Ablinger - noise Hennies - tones --- "Cast and Work" includes contributions from Henna Chou, Brent, Fariss and Vanessa Rossetto. Performed and recorded by Sarah Hennies, 2012-2013.

Audio version of the DVD release of ‘Clots’, which sits somewhere between performance documentary, artist’s film, audio-visual installation, and music video. “The music follows Hennies’ penchant for subtle affective states arising from extended repetition, while retaining the strong sense of performing agency heard in recent releases by him for Weighter, Consumer Waste, and Quakebasket. However, O’Neill’s contributions on electronics also come through strongly, particularly in later sections. This brings a sense of multiple discrete layers to the composition, with each section comprised of a number of interlocking parts — an orchestration that fits well with the audio-visual immersion conjured by the project as a whole.” - Fluid Radio --- Sarah Hennies / percussion, concept Clay Odom / design Sean O‘Neill / electronics, design Visual documentation / Raphael Umscheid ---  Filmed during the Clots live performances in Austin, TX, March 23 & 30 2013.

"The remarkable Boston violinist and composer Morgan Evans-Weiler doesn’t have a score for this record, but its focus is ultra-precise. The piece, dedicated to the stalwart experimentalist Jed Speare, a close friend of the musician and who died in 2016, is a rigorous exploration of pitch, specifically in the microtonal complexity of the simplest bowed gestures. Evans-Weiler relies on a handful of simple pitch variations from memory, but ultimately the results don’t rely on any sort of melodic movement. Rather, the violinist pulls his bow across the strings in richly striated tones both gentle and piercing, marbled by a bounty of sounds—high-pitched squeals, abraded drags, intensely ringing double stops—that eventually bypass the lack of compositional shape to create an enveloping experience all its own. Evans-Weiler explained that “the performance of the piece is specifically dictated by my experience of the repetitions and the fatigue that accompanies,” and that certainly can apply to the listener, whose level of engagement depends on a certain freshness of the ears, the volume of playback, and attention level. The performance draws heavily on psychoacoustics, where an immersion in the sounds creates an almost psychedelic experience—where the bowed violin seems to produce ever-fattening tones, both viscous and biting. Extended passages are interrupted by brief moments of silent repose, with the violinist changing his fingering before embracing a slightly different pitch—it also allows the listener to recalibrate and retrench for another study that builds in volume and attack. It’s probably not for everyone, but the degree of focus and the richness of Evans-Weiler’s sound-worlds are nothing short of astonishing." – Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily --- Morgan Evans-Weiler / violin--- released November 1, 2017

Prune Becheau's 'Tone strains, guts and hair' is full of colorful, expressive and vivid melodies and fresh timbres, mixed with a sense of fun. Becheau's other work in Pancrace and Urs Graf Consort attest to her free sense of experimentation - it's super nice to hear where she takes it solo.  --- Prune Bécheau / violon baroque --- Tracklisting: 1. introduction - 01:54 2. tlelel letl - 05:49 3. gegze tulilu - 08:04 4. hgjh hgjh - 02:31 5. fsiu fsiu fsiu - 01:03 6. lui tsk ui - 03:38 7. thschjre - 02:29 8. zzffk zzffk - 10:43 --- Enregistré au Tuquet en janvier 2018. Mastered by Thomas Pujols.

Matt Sargent teaches music at Bard College, which lies close by the Hudson River, and percussionist Bill Solomon, the sole performer on Ghost Music, is a member of Ensemble Signal. Since the music of Steve Reich figures prominently in the Ensemble’s repertoire, and this piece is composed of spare, often repetitive bell tones, it would be easy to file it under New York minimalism – easy, but incomplete. Solomon is also a member of Queer Percussion Research Group, and Weighter Music is operated by Sarah Hennies, whose own music has articulated the isolation and confusion she experienced before coming out as a trans woman. When Sargent first composed the piece a decade ago, he conceived it as “a movable sanctuary.” This music isn’t about following in anyone’s footsteps; it uses bare resources to establish a bounded and essential space. – Bill Meyer, The Wire Magazine August 2018

CAGE began as a loose collective of musicians surrounding Cornell University in 2009, including faculty, students, and community members interested in improvisation and experimentation with sound. Feeney and other founding members Kevin Ernste, Chris Miller, and Annie Lewandowski have collaborated with improvisers and experimental musicians from around the world, including Peni Candrarini, Ellen Fullman, Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang, and Theresa Wong.  --- All tracks improvised by CAGE (Kevin Ernste, Tim Feeney, Annie Lewandowski, and Christopher J. Miller) on sculptures by Harry Bertoia in the collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Recorded in the Museum in August 2015 by Kevin Ernste. Mixed and mastered by Kevin Ernste and Tim Feeney.

Astute solo percussion! "Enrico Malatesta’s recent release Benandare is one of those works that I truly don’t understand on a sonic level and I absolutely love it for this reason. I’d guess that these works were made digitally if the album didn’t credit Malatesta with only “skin instruments and metal objects”. - Tiny Mix Tapes "That all three tracks are titled “Immersion-Artifice” is perhaps more descriptive than one would have thought: each offers an immersion in an elemental sound world, which is gradually and subtly revealed to be the product of human theatre, which itself is the result of objects interacting physically with each other, and so on. Solo percussion as dialectics, as the hyphen in the track title suggests." - Fluid Radio.  Performed and recorded by Enrico Malatesta, August 2013. Skin instruments and metal objects. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.