From Lawrence English  "I am ceaselessly fascinated by how memory operates and, I’m regularly struck by how individually subjective a collective experience can be when recalled by its participants. Lynch’s Lost Highway comes to mind here, specifically Bill Pullman’s character Fred Madison who says “I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.” Like Madison, I can’t help but sense that memory takes shape through an accumulative process that reflects how each of us have lived (and maybe even wanted to live) up to that point in time.  Going back to listen again to these recordings of which I was a part with David and Akio, I was surprised by what elements had stayed with me and what others had slipped into the eternal greying of my mind. I have vivid recollections of listening to a Lyre bird before recording the pieces together at Witches Falls. I remember both Akio and David finding musicality in decaying palm fronds. I remember Akio’s voice, amplified through his Analpos, bouncing off the stones and trees. I remember David’s flute, so quiet in the pitch black of the night forest as to appear like a hushed tone of wind or a distant animal calling. I also remember trying to match my modest hand held electronics with the pulsing and pitching of the insects around me.  Reading David’s text, which is included in the book published alongside this edition, he recounts several things I had forgotten. Conversations about memory, ironically enough, had vanished from my mind until reading his words. I also didn’t really remember my role as tick surgeon, removing a living insect from David’s ear. I do remember his cooking though, as does Akio (captured aptly in his drawings), no doubt a testament to David’s improvisational culinary expertise.  Breathing Spirit Forms represents a distinctive exchange between friends and collaborators. Tamborine commands a special presence and encourages a deep patience from those who are willing to give time to its varied environments. For the three of us, we were fortunate to share these moments together, fleeting in our lives as they might be, to sense the mountain’s unique qualities, to respond to them through our exchanges and to form memories (as disparate as they might be) we carry forward with us in time."

At last: the long-awaited box set surveying The Shadow Ring's prolific, decade-long existence. Eleven CDs, one DVD, and a more than 450-page book featuring a detailed biographical essay, hundreds of photographs, ten interviews, a complete discography with lyrics, and rarely-seen ephemera. The Shadow Ring (1992–2002) presents a comprehensive overview of the work produced by British musicians Graham Lambkin, Darren Harris, and later Tim Goss over the course of a decade. Throughout their legendary ten-year run, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of teenagers in the port town Folkestone, were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. The group have left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7-inches, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic. Collected here for the first time are The Shadow Ring’s live cuts, rarities, and complete commercial releases, spread out across eleven CDs and a DVD, accompanied by an nearly five-hundred-page book that includes a monographic biographical survey, more than one hundred color photos, a comprehensive discography with transcribed lyrics, and a selection of zine appearances, fliers, postcards, and other miscellanea. In aggregate, this significant collection not only plums the depths of the band and its attendant lore, but reveals a vivid minor history of mail-order networks, bedroom recording sessions, cross-USA couch-surfing, and encounters with fellow travelers such The Dead C, Harry Pussy, Charalambides, Richard Youngs and the No-Neck Blues Band. Where is the connecting thread between Ralf Wehowsky and Squirrel Nut Zippers? Inquire within. The roughly 200 songs in this set trace the band from its earliest days recording in Lambkin’s parents’ house (SHP Studios), through its brooding mid-period, garnering word-of-mouth notoriety that peaked with the trio turning down an invitation to tour with Pavement, to a string of increasingly uncompromising experiments with electronics, voice, and tape. Although the band’s sound morphs considerably during this time period, from spartan beginnings using pots and pans as a drum set to their ultra-deconstructed latter-day approach, certain core sensibilities are apparent throughout: brash youthful rawness, wry and morbid lyricism, stripped-down angularity, and a penchant for atmospherics. This boxset, featuring every record and single, and buttressed by twenty-nine rarely-heard recordings, including proto-Shadow Ring projects such as the Cat & Bells Club and Footprint cassettes, and their unearthed final CD-R Darren Harris Reads Graham Lambkin, presents the first opportunity to hear this arc in full. The ebbs and flows of the band—their schoolboy beginnings, initial successes, first shows and tours, life milestones, and Lambkin’s gradual development as a solo artist—are painstakingly detailed in a sizable band history-cum-Künstlerroman by Blank Forms artistic director Lawrence Kumpf, illustrated with candid photos, sketches, letters, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera. The music and videos can speak for themselves, but taken as a mass, this collection makes sense of the group’s utter uncanniness without comprising one iota of their mystique, bringing something new to the table for completionists and the uninitiated alike.  The Shadow Ring: Graham Lambkin, Darren Harris, Tim Goss Audio transfers and remastering: Graham Lambkin with Daniel Martin-McCormick and Jade Guterman Mastering: Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering, Bonn, Germany DVD mastering: C. Spencer Yeh Design: Lucas Quigley

"Both pieces tremble with giddy energy, but also exude a calm atmosphere in their chiming overtones. In the end, flute and guitar fully unite: The former folds into the latter in a triumphant refrain that soars so high it sounds light-headed, as if Chatham is dizzied by his own playing" - Pitchfork "By layering loops of his own playing – on trumpet, guitar and flute – Chatham’s Pythagorean Dream delivers a pair of captivating, hypnotic performances" -The Guardian "By contrast (to his previous work with 100 guitars), “Pythogorean Dream” is almost shocking in its subtlety. The music has a distinctly New York feel to it. The dark, guitar-based resonance from the first part feels like the alleyways of downtown in the more foreboding ’70s and ’80s, while the serene second part evokes images of the well-groomed riverfront areas of lower Manhattan today. Chatham (although) deep into his career, has found interesting new ground in genres of instrumental music that deserve more attention." -Wall Street Journal "Hearing Chatham's solo music thorugh home speakers is deeply moving... The evolution of Chatham's music may move too fast to see, but one can still bear witness." -The New York City Jazz Record "(Chatham) understands that great sounds and altered states result when simplicity gives rise to complexity. Whether he gets that result by having a legion of guitars play a simple passage or dropping a few notes he played himself into a chain of delays, he knows how to get those sounds to bloom like a flower and flare like a supernova.." -Dusted "A deftly constructed piece... A fingerpicking style inspired by John Fahey has been influential here. The higher notes rain down, anchored by a low, slow fundamental. The harmonics shift into place, and by the time a drone has smeared the sound into a mass, the work is done." -The Wire (Issue #387, May 2016) "The music is, on its own, fascinating... Pythagorean Dream, in its two-part construction, stands alone as a great composition and performance by Rhys Chatham, a reminder of his ability as a player in his own right and not only a composer or fisher of guitarists." -Popmatters “Rhys Chatham leaves an orchestra-sized audio footprint without any overdubbing or any other musician invo

Martin Bartlett should be a familiar name. As well as working with a who's who of electronic music, he was an inspiring and original thinker, composer, performer and organiser. His music is distinctive for its warmth and fleshiness, for taking joy from the incidental and anecdotal, and it remains a characterful counterpoint to much contemporary electronic music. It is his preoccupation with building aleatoric elements into electronic music that distinguishes his work, and he devised elegant and open interactions for instrumental performers and computer-controlled synthesizers. This included building his own electronic devices, and extensive work on the Buchla 400. Born in Croydon in 1939, he was adopted as a baby, and later moved with his family to Canada. He did a short stint in the Navy and completed a music degree at the University of British Columbia, studying under Barbara Pentland, before going on to study composition at Mills College in the late 60s. In 1973 Bartlett and seven others founded the Western Front in Vancouver – a cultural cooperative, gallery and performance space that still exists today, housed in the old meeting hall of the Knights of Pythias (a mason-like fraternity). He continued with his research and teaching, and in 1982 was made professor at Simon Fraser University where he remained for the rest of his life. His performances were often collaborative – for the Western Front's second anniversary in 1975 he devised the four-channel piece One Piece for Everyone, a composition where he prepared and cooked a cauliflower curry on a table connected to a synthesizer he had built, while reading from texts on food. When the curry was cooked, the piece ended, and everyone was fed. Bartlett was a prolific writer, and he expresses himself in fresh, lucid, and wonderfully descriptive prose, offering clear thinking on social aspects of electronic music performance; on the barriers between the performer and the 'black box' and on possibilities for organic systems in electronic music. He also wrote accounts of his sailing trips, treatise on performance practices, and technical academic articles on the systems he built, along with the incandescent manifesto-like piece Electronic Recalcitrant, in which he hoped that electronic music would be imbued with “organic codes of growth and metamorphosis” so that he could “pluck elegant and fleshy electronic sound fish from the frothy algorithmic sea of possibilities”. Key influences were Pauline Oliveros, John Cage and David Tudor, all whom he studied under. Like many of his generation, he became interested in non-Western compositional and philosophical practices, and in 1981 he travelled to India to study Carnatic vocal music with V. Lakshminarayana Iyer in Madras and then on to Burma, Thailand and Indonesia where he studied shadow theatre. He studied South Asian music with Pandit Pran Nath, gamelan with K.R.T. Wasitidipuro, and closely collaborated with Don Buchla on live performances and synthesiser design. He was particularly interested in the Javanese gamelan, which led to him founding the Vancouver Community Gamelan in 1986. On his travels to Indonesia he made hours of field recordings, many of which are accompanied by vivid narrations on the rituals and ceremonies he was documenting. It is unclear why Bartlett’s work remains unknown. Perhaps it is because it remained largely inside the academy. Perhaps his commitment to live performance and community activity means it was more transient than the work of others. Perhaps his openness about his sexuality played a part in his music not receiving much recognition – one can only speculate. But correspondence in his archive shows that rejection and general lack of interest from labels was a source of great personal discontent, leading to Bartlett working again with the Western Front to release his final opus Pythagoras’ Ghost shortly before his death. Bartlett died young, of AIDS-related causes, in 1993, but his music remains a rich source of inspiration, and is characterised by an irresistible and unselfconscious charm that renders his sound unique. These selections, along with the companion LP Anecdotal Electronics, and Luke Fowler’s film Electro-Pythagoras, aim to redress this prior neglect, shedding light on this little known personality from electronic music history, who still has so much to say. Arc Light Editions was formed by ex-Wire magazine staffer Jennifer Lucy Allan and James Ginzburg as a reaction to the over-priced and deluxed-out reissue market. Our releases are packaged simply in kraftliner stock and are reasonably priced. We do not release anything we cannot listen to on repeat for weeks at a time, or which we do not believe is totally essential.   less  

For those unfamiliar with John Macedo’s work, he presents what I consider a precious quality in a musician. The one that makes you ask yourself endless questions of how someone can piece together such intricate qualities of audio, in such detail, be it in composed works or improvisation. I’m yet to see a concert of his where I don’t leave totally unable to answer questions about how he does the thing he does. Up to this point I've associated all of this with, for lack of a better term, ‘electronic’ sources, synthesisers and varying feedback systems. So it carries a bizarre and exciting feeling to announce his first album of guitar music on Infant Tree, ‘Truss’. Macedo started to piece the album together in 2014, after an eight year stint away from his guitar exploring the potential of various other combinations of devices. The album marks a distinguishable change in attitude towards his music. Away from a more technical approach, it invites something more personal; experimenting with an instrument both recognisable and relatable, yet somehow also novel. For fans of previous work, ‘Truss’ follows without fault. It carries Macedo’s distinctive manner and character throughout. Tracks like ‘Phase’ and ‘Bridge’ bury themselves deep in your ear, pulling up sounds so far from what I previously understood could come from a guitar. ‘Binding’, which features Phil Julian, is perhaps the moment in the album where you hear the instrument as we understand it the most, and that says a lot for how unexpected the whole thing is - Bailey or Rowe comparisons won't cut it. Across its length we encounter appearances on guitar by friends Daniel Bennett, Kostis Kilymis and as previously mentioned, Phil Julian. Tying together a feeling of importance of acknowledging the instrument as a gateway into music making, the relationship that all of these players have to it and how that relationship can change and evolve over time. The album was mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and is available digitally and in a CD edition, featuring a photo of a young John Macedo and his guitar, with layout design by Andrea Kerney. 

Musician and field recordist Action Pyramid finds magic in the everyday on Mardle, a compelling and confounding suite of hydrophone compositions revealing the sonic 24-hour cycle of the UK’s freshwater ponds. Rooted in Jack Greenhalgh’s sonic research on pond biodiversity, Mardle brings to the surface the delicate sounds of aquatic insect stridulations, plant respiration and photosynthesis - an ecology of otherworldly rhythms and alien hyper-sounds that feel more like early synth experiments than biological processes. As Greenhalgh explains, “It's so exciting that we've discovered the woodland bird song dawn chorus equivalent for ponds, in the form of nocturnal aquatic insect choruses at night-time, and the whining of aquatic plants as they photosynthesise like busy factories during the midday sun.” In doing so, Mardle takes the daily cycle as its compositional cue. Beginning above water, the listener is plunged into a “strange and mysterious” world, peaking in the frenzied, pulsing activity of midday and midnight, before the calm of the early morning rain returns above. Inspired by Jana Winderen’s creative underwater soundscapes, the result is quietly breath-taking. “To actually consider the living presence of plants with direct sonic evidence is quite profound,” Action Pyramid says. “It's such an evocative way to capture people's attention and highlight these fragile and maligned habitats. There have definitely been moments where I think I can’t believe I'm listening to this.” Accompanied by detailed liner notes that explain Greenhalgh’s findings and the implications of acoustic ecology in freshwater monitoring, Mardle is a perspective-shifting, mind-expanding missive from the shallows of one the most familiar and overlooked ecologies on Earth. 

First volume of solo piano compositions, originally released in 1963, by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, finally back in print. Born to an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa in December of 1923, Emahoy spent much of her youth and young adulthood studying classical music in Europe. She returned to Ethiopia in the 40s, where the war interrupted her musical studies. In 1948 during a church service in Ethiopia, she found her faith and began years of religious training. Throughout her physical and spiritual journeys, Emahoy continued to compose for the piano. She first released this album in Germany 1963 as small private press record. The tracks reflect her own travels, seamlessly moving between Western classical and traditional Ethiopian modes, evoking Erik Satie, the orthodox liturgy, and meditative Christian music all at once. Her work is like no one else in the world, lyrical, hypnotic, full of spiritual warmth and a direct connection to the divine.

Recorded at Incus HQ, London, in October 2010, this duo is a delight that should refresh even the most jaded ears. Lol Coxhill and Alex Ward are both veteran improvisers and regular participants on the London scene, so it was inevitable that they would eventually play together as a duo. As evidenced below by YouTube, that happened in August 2010 at John Russell's annual Fete Qua Qua; the pairing was repeated the following month at Sybil Madrigal's monthly Boat Ting gig on the Thames (on the occasion of Madrigal's birthday, actually). After they repeated the success of their previous meeting, it was clear that the two should record together—so Karen Brookman asked them if they would for Incus; without hesitation, they each agreed. The pairing of Coxhill and Ward is a far from obvious one. Despite Coxhill being the senior partner by over forty years, without forewarning it would be difficult to tell that from their music; both sound remarkably spry and lively—one of the joys of the duo. Just as important to its success is the instrumentation; Coxhill's soprano saxophone and Ward's clarinet are close enough in pitch to be highly compatible, yet their timbres are different enough for the two to be easily distinguishable, their individual contributions easy to separate. In addition, each plays their instrument straight, with no electronics or other effects, meaning that this is a text book example of good old-fashioned improv." Coxhill and Ward have playing styles that are remarkably similar, making them highly compatible as improvising partners. They each play free-flowing lines, seeking to compose spontaneous melodies, something at which they are often successful. For much of the time on these seven tracks, the two improvise simultaneously, following parallel paths that intertwine and interact, with neither leading nor following the other. By the slightest of adjustments they respond to and accommodate each other in subtle ways, giving the strong impression that telepathy is at work. A delight from start to finish.(All About Jazz)

Double Bass – John Edwards Drums, Cymbal, Mixed By – Steve Noble Organ [Hammond C3] – Alexander Hawkins Recorded at Eastcote Studios London 20/03/09.

A new improv trio from drummer Steve Noble, bassist John Edwards and guitarist Alex Ward, N.E.W. marries the unbridled instrumental creativity of free jazz with the chaos and abrasion of noise-rock. Much in the same mold as the genre destroying Smalltown Superjazzz releases featuring Paal Nilssen-Love, Mats Gustafsson and their celebrity pals like Thurston Moore and so on, these recordings are brimming with energy and a revitalised, gleeful approach to the avant-garde. These guys have some serious chops to dole out, though: all three players exhibit an astonishing level of form, with a combined technical dexterity to be reckoned with. As noisy and clamorous as it gets, certain jazz traditions still shine through: the musicians take turns at offering one another the spotlight, resulting in some amazing soloing from all parties. Deadeye Tricksters is a lot of fun, not taking itself nearly as seriously as it could, but it still commands your respect and attention.

Two duets and a quartet recorded at Iklectik, London on 5th May 2017 --- Edward Lucas / trombone & feedbackRachel Musson / tenor saxophoneN.O.Moore / guitar & electronicsSteve Noble / drums --- Recorded at Iklectik, London on 5th May 2017 by Giovanni La RovereMixed by Edward LucasMastered by Rupert ClervauxCover Artwork: Detail from a painting by Mirei Yazawa and Sarah Woolfden

JOHN EDWARDS: double bass JOHN BUTCHER: tenor & soprano saxophones MARK SANDERS: percussion Released on Relative Pitch records "These three hugely experienced British improvisers have played together in various duo formations and other groups over the years. but, strangely enough, this is their first ever trio date. With players of this calibre — all working at the very pinnacle of European improv — it hardly matters: the level of rapport and collective virtuosity is astonishing, as the trio negotiates rapidly transforming moodscapes with attentive and playful creativity. While there's often a bullish energy at work — particularly when Butcher plays tenor — the improvisations effectively steer clear of any predictable free-jazz tropes, largely thanks to the extended techniques that lie at the heart of all three musicians’ lexicons: Butcher's tightly controlled trills, whistles and wispy overblowing; Edwards’ thick-fingered, globular plucks and porcine arco snorks; Sanders’ miniature pings and rattles and Papyrus brush shuffles. Veering from punchy confrontation to breath-held spacious emptiness via distant rumble-gong-shimmer, each track — the longest clocking in at nearly 18 minutes — contains more ideas than most other bands’ entire albums." Jazzwise - Daniel Spicer

New band from three UK masters of contemporary improvised music – they released a trio cd under this title on Relativ Pitch (NYC) in 2017, now choosing it for their bandname for continuing activities.  Crucial Anatomy is their follow-up album which was recorded live at Cafe OTO in 2018. "With players of this calibre - all working at the very pinnacle of European improv -- it hardly matters: the level of rapport and collective virtuosity is astonishing." - Jazzwise "A lucid exposition of how the concept of musical chiefs and leaders becomes an irrelevance to this trio, so much are they as one with a sonic unity, a metaphor for a different kind of society expressed with so much clarity in the realms of free jazz." – Morning Star" --- John Butcher / tenor and soprano saxophones John Edwards / double bass Mark Sanders / percussion. --- Recorded by Shaun Crook, live at Cafe Oto, London on August 8, 2018. Mixed and Mastered by John Butcher. 

Recorded at The Moat, London on 15 February 2002

"The 36-minute recording begins with Gal’s quiet sound of bells, extended breathing techniques of Butcher, and distant and sustained lap steel guitar lines, and soon these sparse sounds feel like melting into each’s other, sketching an imaginary, leisured and breezy scenery. Slowly, Butcher, Gal and Toop expand this delicate and suggestive sonic envelope in unpredictable ways and with imaginative sounds - subtle electronics and feedbacks, bubbling breaths, exotic flutes and resonating percussive objects, but maintain the collective trio sound. Gal acts like she was possessed by an enigmatic shamanic spell with her wordless vocalizations, processed voice and assorted bells, while Butcher’s brief and urgent blows on the sax and Toop’s noisy and distorted sounds build the tension.But even in the most abstract and almost silent segments, Butcher, Gal and Toop operated in mysterious and poetic ways, always attentive to every gesture but letting the sounds and their fragile dynamics lead them all. The interplay becomes more intense and fierce only in the last minutes of this improvisation when Gal’s processed shouts collide with the tortured breaths of Butcher and the distorted lap steel guitar sounds of Toop. But, surprisingly, Gal opted to conclude this arresting improvisation with an emotional, caressing touch, beautifully answered by Butcher and Toop." Free Jazz Blog - Eyal Hareuveni

Recorded at Avi Studios, Beit Hakerem, Jerusalem, 1980. First issued as an independent cassette.