AnimauX veGeTal is the second release of the collaboration between Anne Gillis and XT (Seymour Wright & Paul Abbott). The trio began working together in 2018. Slowly, remotely (in Brussels, London and Paris respectively), they developed and grew the work ‘Our/s Bouture(s)’. It was broadcast to an in-person and on-line audience at Cafe OTO (London) in 2021 and later released on ArtIntoLife (Japan) in 2023.In 2022 they performed more together at Cafe OTO and Q-O2* (Brussels), growing, grafting, pruning and diffusing volatile elements of the broadcast (and accompanying film), planting and seeding new sounds and movement into and over what grew from the speakers.In September 2024 the three met again to record at XTUDIOs (London). 'AnimauX' and 'veGeTal' are what emerged. Shared, discrete and whole these two blocks show how the trio grow its own sound, and move on and into new things. The titles are named after the doings – audible and palpable, heard and felt – they capture the pulsing fact, fabric, and flourish of the matter, pace, and space of what grew and bloomed that day.-----------The zonal wheezing of a compression artifact projected through the inverted curvature of a slip-n-slide, coiling, tumescent, love's last gasp. The deadline has been exceeded. - Sunik Kim

‘Almost Something’ is the debut release of the long standing collaboration between artist/dj Laura Not and Andrew Hulme of O Yuki Conjugate. The two pieces cover a musical domesticism, developed around location recordings made in London and Berlin. The duo, known separately for their considered and attentive handling of collaged textures, rhythms and ambiences, offer up a sonic landscape where fugitive moments of creation meet the concrete sounds of everyday life. The unfamiliar is what sticks and encourages repeated listening, moving you back and forth between cities, dissonance and harmony. The tone of the album has a sustained dustiness, shrouded in a thick smog where feedback tones and scrapings on thick metal lurch at you. Sounds that can one minute appear as distant aeolian sediments suddenly become compact and then break into shards - you’re constantly in motion. You could almost liken it to feeling transported to an inner city reconstruction of Gordon Monahan’s ‘Aeolian Winds Over Claybank Saskatchewan’, if it stretched between the tunnels of the underground and the dark corner of a household boiler room.

We use the same method of what we did on Responses (Zappak, 2022): being in a place for a whole afternoon, but not playing together. We took turns on recording solo piece, and each session was a responses to the former one. Even the length was same with the former album (each one 7 minute). Only one difference: on this time we played outside but last time we played in room. There were lots of limitations from the lack of alternation electric power (and also the hot temperature and mosquito). But the open fields brought some possibilities on the other hand. Same as the former one, Sun Yizhou selected and paired these solos into duos, and I did the mixing work. I drew the cover of Responses, which was designed by Leo Okagawa. Thank you Leo, for accepting my submission and releasing it in 2022. It was the starting place of our new work.----Zhu Wenbo

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

Wind Tide is a multidisciplinary art presence inhabiting the sonic, visual, and conceptual realms of Gretchen Korsmo and Andrew Weathers. Wind Tide also functions as their recording space in Texas, while extending to off-site locations in the field, as both artists have a relationship with nature and landscapes. “Blue Breaking Brown” is both sprawling and focused, with mysterious drifting vocals emerging and receding along swathes of resonant guitar drones. Room tone, bells, synthesizer, lap steel, and percussion elements drift over one another like transparent textiles, or variants of light and shadow on distant surfaces. Gretchen and Andrew are both involved in the Full Spectrum Records collective, whose supportive energy is present here: sounds exist as singular entities, yet coalesce to create two beautiful, intense, and engaging side-long documents of performance. Andrew Weathers / synthesizer, lap steel, recorder, electronicsGretchen Korsmo / voice, electric piano, synthesizer, percussion Recorded, mixed, and mastered at Wind Tide, Littlefield TXSome components recorded live at Chapter, Denver CO

Camilo Ángeles and Joanna Mattrey present a striking set of pieces culled from an improvised live set at Museo Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, recorded and filmed February 2022, with a dual recording and video release presented here as “Hailstone Temple”. Both musicians have fascinated Notice Recordings for quite a while, and both exhibit deep relationships with their instruments: flute and viola, respectively. Ángeles originally caught our attention via the TVL REC label, which he co-directs with Violeta García and Carlos Quebrada. Originally from Peru and now based in Mexico City, his non-traditional approach to flute involves extended techniques, electronic alterations, and microtonal textures. Working also as composer and producer for film, dance, and theatre, curator of music festivals, playing in various ensembles, and collaborating with such artists as Ka Baird, Anaïs Maviel, and Mabe Fratti, it is truly rewarding to hear a such a raw and cathartic set with NYC's Joanna Mattrey, a Notice Recordings alum, having been involved in two past releases (her third solo album, "Soulcaster", was released earlier this year). We’ve been following Mattrey’s viola explorations for years now, and her honest, playful, intense, unpretentious, and dedicated solo and collaborative performances have consistently floored us. A 2021 ISSUE Project Room and 2022 Roulette resident, and graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, Mattrey continues to exist in both established music worlds and also on the very fringes of outsider art, with her heart clearly in the avant-garde. This recording exemplifies that: Ángeles and Mattrey perform in the former Santa Teresa la Antigua church and monastery complex which is now home to the Ex Teresa Arte Actual contemporary art space, a venue dedicated to contemporary performance and installation. The contrast of their unconventional, strange, and often cutting playing reverberating throughout the towering 17th century building is indeed poignant. 

The collaboration between these two North Carolina projects feels, upon listening, almost inevitable. Magic Tuber Stringband (Evan Morgan and Courtney Werner) is an instrumental duo often employing traditional Appalachian-style playing within contemporary drone and song-oriented contexts to create undulating, cathartic, organic compositions. Weirs (Justin Morris and Oliver Child-Lanning) is a bit more stylistically diverse, but very much rooted in the fascinating crossover of traditional and contemporary music which is recently abundant in the mid and south-Atlantic states.Recorded live with field recorders inside Virginia’s pitch-black Crozet Tunnel, the album presents four individuals experiencing the beautiful and intense sonics of both interior and exterior space, and their own forms of communication with one another. The singing in particular is powerful. Flat, strong broad voices without vibrato evoke a sense of the tragic or stern, notable in opener “Bright Morning Star” (originally a Masonic hymn which entered the American folk lexicon)—as if things might at any moment descend into dissonant sadness—but then become gentle and anodyne, trafficking not in freak-folk innocence but authentic connection to their sources. As potentially radical as the old music is, the solidly unhurried pacing of both the “song sections” and “drones” allows each word of each line, each vocal plait, each scrape of echoed object, to ring with surprise.The performances emphasize the distinctively rich reverb of the physical space, using the acoustics to re-situate the art in the heart of the land. Side B is an entrancing altered playback of the music from Side A, re-recorded under a dome behind a science museum in which the surrounding ambience layers seamlessly with the music: bird and insect sounds, shuffling movements, a child’s voice. Far from feeling performative or even conceptual, this feels earned and intimate, teaching the listener about the interplay between the music and the site of its creation. That the musicians semi-jokingly refer to this side as a “dub version” reflects the depth and breadth of their vision.

This meet-up between two thoughtful practitioners of minimal and process-oriented music succeeds not because it is resourceful but because its gestures are clearheaded. Disciplined and exploratory, it is like observing someone fixing a watch: methodical and calm, periodically getting up and selecting a tool, working for stretches of full concentration, and hearing the footsteps and rustle of clothing. The titles of the pieces – “Distinct” and “Concealed” – suggest tensions between public self-presentation and private self-knowledge, and yet these recordings were made live, with sounds of the room and the activity and movements of the players suggesting a theatricality that complicates both poles. “Distinct” plays like a long-delayed catch-up session between friends, seriousness arising periodically before resolving into active and glassy communication. If “Distinct” is a catch-up, “Concealed” plays as a tense second meeting: piano-led, with zipped spoken-word loops and long stretches of pause, eventually falling into a satisfying equilibrium. The barely controlled nature of no-input mixing confronts the more manageable elements of electronics and tape, with keyboards complicating the relationship. In thThis meet-up between two thoughtful practitioners of minimal and process-oriented music succeeds not because it is resourceful but because its gestures are clearheaded. Disciplined and exploratory, it is like observing someone fixing a watch: methodical and calm, periodically getting up and selecting a tool, working for stretches of full concentration, and hearing the footsteps and rustle of clothing. The titles of the pieces – “Distinct” and “Concealed” – suggest tensions between public self-presentation and private self-knowledge, and yet these recordings were made live, with sounds of the room and the activity and movements of the players suggesting a theatricality that complicates both poles. “Distinct” plays like a long-delayed catch-up session between friends, seriousness arising periodically before resolving into active and glassy communication. If “Distinct” is a catch-up, “Concealed” plays as a tense second meeting: piano-led, with zipped spoken-word loops and long stretches of pause, eventually falling into a satisfying equilibrium. The barely controlled nature of no-input mixing confronts the more manageable elements of electronics and tape, with keyboards complicating the relationship. In the hands of Baron and Martin, minimalism is a constant and active search.

The Pennsylvania improvising trio of Kevin Sims, James Searfoss, and Justin Dorsey continue to hone their fierce and potent relationship with texture, rhythm, and amorphous sound forms. This album is laced with musical paths travelled and skirted, conversant with drone, electroacoustics, and free jazz. “Glint” functions as a bit of an overture, and as “Once Threw” expands on the clatter and clamber, Dorsey’s bass becomes a focal point, taking a prominent position in the mix and making radically clear signal-point gestures that bring about significant changes, exploring new rooms and leading the way into them. The arresting “Chiffon Blues” opens with Sims’ psaltery, leading a mournful bluesy atmosphere into melodic sweetness, tumbling into undulating percussion held lovingly by a walking bassline and Searfoss’ honest and energetic saxophone playing. The assuredly paced “Until” orbits eccentrically between vertiginous sustained passages and swirling, fragmented chases of resonant metallic percussion and mysterious and distant textural tape loops. Tension is a central tenet of this trio, and here they keep things so taut that an engaging dynamic balance is maintained throughout. --- Kevin Sims - percussion, trombone, psaltery, fluteJames Searfoss - alto sax, tape loopsJustin Dorsey - upright bass --- Recorded July '23 in Aaronsburg PAMixed by Kevin SimsMastered by James SearfossArtwork by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Small Fires Press 

Resourcefulness is sometimes presented as a humble quality born of necessity. But it’s a foundational tenet of the exceptionally unconstrained members of improvising trio Tamarisk, consisting of Christina Carter, David Menestres, and Andrew Weathers. Their latest is a continuation of the interplay they’ve developed for a few years now on a handful of releases and while touring. Like the most bizarre sort of jazz combo, Tamarisk grazes the orbits of outré free improv, moody balladry, object play, staccato scraping, and the contemplation of vistas and landscapes. Vocals vacillate between polished and raw, reaching bravely toward the upper and outer ranges, long-intoned, with spoken word elements and dramatic pauses between broken phrases and wordless utterances, all awash in arrivals and departures. The recordings are anchored with a broad array of techniques that admirably deconstruct an understanding of pacing and conventional movement in music, instead favoring constantly fluctuating textures and timbral variety. Unhinged chords, dissonant counterpoints, sprinklings of prepared work, scraping, and bowing. This is a trio of sharp listeners who are unafraid of intimacy or dynamic extremes, and it enables a deep exploration into their own core. Tamarisk seems to ignore time altogether, dropping into a shared state of receptiveness that yields strange and compelling results throughout the album. --- Christina CarterDavid MenestresAndrew WeathersRecorded at Wind Tide, Littlefield TXMarch 29 - 31, 2022Mixed and Mastered by Andrew WeathersAlbum sequenced by E. Lindorff-ElleryArtwork by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Small Fires Press

Erica Dawn Lyle has been described by Pitchfork as a “punk hero,” which, though true, feels like an insufficiently specific term to describe her multifaceted presence and work. Colonial Motels is in fact rawly personal, a ladder out of an abyss of mourning as well as a determination to persevere and connect. Playing less but achieving more, this album captures the engaging intensity and directness that defines Lyle’s art, performance, and activism. Part I builds on patient looping and guitar body play, then gradually disintegrates into a gale of analog and digital noise stabbed with howling guitar calls. A blaring coda strips the electric guitar down to the primes before an abrupt end. Part II starts intense and cathartic, and stays that way, a heavily textured sonic wall which slowly undulates like an animated topographical map simultaneously receding and growing. The pieces seem to encourage a listening level that could be described as provocative, and Lyle’s guitar contains elements of squallish noise, employing to its advantage the overload of all apparatuses involved. But it also contains a masterful degree of space in which to catch the hypnotic repetition of desert blues, subtly weird pedal experimentation, unselfconscious playfulness, and aural hallucinations. Astonishingly, these pieces feel meditatively paced even as they reach peak intensity, enabling the listener to briefly rest in contemplation while in the eye of a storm about which most guitarists can only cower or fantasize. --- Erica Dawn Lyle - electric guitarRecorded by EDL, Aug 1 2023 at The Buoyant Heart, Birge Street, Brattleboro VTimprovised, single takes --- Mastered by Grant RichardsonPhotograph by EDLLayout by E. Lindorff-ElleryPrinted by Small Fires Press  

"Soulcaster" is the third solo record by Brooklyn-based composer/performer Joanna Mattrey. Following Live in Accord and various Notice Recordings-curated performances in the Hudson Valley, this album is a further development in our years-long friendship. With "Soulcaster", Mattrey scrapes, scratches, and wails on viola, prepared viola, and a tromba marina, built by Webb Crawford. Mattrey’s love of unique and unusual sounds has inspired her to alter the pure tone of the viola through preparations with styrofoam, plastic toys, chains, and other objects. But the newest sounds in her arsenal come from the tromba marina, which has one primary playing string and thirteen sympathetic strings. Rather than gently coaxing out the harmonics, as the historical playing style suggests, Mattrey employs a raucous and roaring approach.The title, "Soulcaster", is borrowed from Brandon Sanderson’s book series, "The Stormlight Archive". In the fantasy series, a soulcaster is an instrument that transforms one object or life form into another. Mattrey’s practice connects heavily to the idea of transformation. She uses preparations and objects not only to create new sounds from her instruments, but to embrace the unknown. No matter how many times the same object has been used, depending on the vibrations on a given day, the preparations might bring out totally different sounds. This randomness creates a joyful challenge for Mattrey, who believes that especially during improvisation, music has its own life that activates and guides the sound forward. Mattrey surrenders to this energetic line of sound over the eleven tracks featured on this tape.

Patrick Shiroishi returns with his second Notice album, a duo with double bassist Kyle Motl. “Apparitions” opens this album of the same name, and we are greeted with wispy and amorphous trails of wind-blown textures, as if the very first layer of an abstract painting fell to the floor of an old house and followed the contours of the walls and door frames, under shafts of light and in-between the fine cracks of floors. This is an album full of expressive and poetic phrasings, jittery movements and dry abrasions, constantly shifting and opening spaces for air to breathe by itself. Motl’s bowing is at once light and textural and later deep and full-bodied; his plucking is loose, patterned, and metallic. Shiroishi’s playing is frenetic and incredibly focused, playful and intense, at times intoning into the horn lengthy vocal expressions which only heighten the mysterious and cathartic energy running throughout these pieces.

"A Beaded Gesture" captures Sandy Ewen and Jason Nazary in a bewildering live set recorded at Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. Ewen’s prepared guitar and Nazary’s drums and percussion share a deeply stimulating dynamic. Ewen has recorded with such diverse folks as Tamio Shiraishi, Roscoe Mitchell, and id m theft able, while Nazary has worked with Travis Laplante, Chris Williams, Notice Recordings alumnus Leo Chang, and the late great Jaimie Branch, among others. Having admired both their relentless collaborative energies over the past few years, it is with great joy that we present this tightly woven, roiling, playful, and cathartic album from two vital players in New York City’s free improv scene.

Recorded live in Accord, New York, this recording stands not only as Notice Recording’s 70th album, but also the first release to document an event organized by Notice as well. June 6th was one of the hottest days of that summer, and the wooden platform on which the performances occurred was on the top of a small hill on Deer Creek Farm. Many sweaty trips up and down that hill carrying gear ensued. Luckily, the performance and audience space was nestled under a shadowy tree canopy of thick leaves, allowing intermittent patches of sunlight. Charmaine Lee performed solo and was soon joined by Weston Olencki. Following this, featured on Side B, was a first meeting of Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joanna Mattrey, and Gabby Fluke-Mogul, with dance accompaniment by Emily Kessler, Sienna Blaw, and Chelsea Enjer Hecht, whose footsteps can be lightly heard in the leaves throughout the recording, a textural element joined by various distant birdsong and other indeterminate shuffling. The final performance of the afternoon was Fred and Weston, another first meeting, a duo of trombone and cello, also joined by the dancers. This album exists as basically a high quality field recording of the event: atmospheric and intense, ephemeral and grounded, an experience amorphous in one’s memory as are the undulating birdsongs that interlaced the entire afternoon.

Fire Point is multicolored and elusive. The sounds contained therein are agitated, fluid and amorphous, as if listening to the sonic realizations of various characteristics of multiple landscapes. Branches intersect, tree foliage collectively billows, and groundwater seeps into the encompassing substrate. The interactions of these three musicians are effortless, and is the result of both remote and physically-collaborative engagements. Starting with percussion tracks laid down by Louis Wall, Damon Smith soon improvised upright bass over these tracks, and NNN Cook added such layers as synthesizer, electric organ, and saxophone. All members contributed deftly to edits and arrangements, and notably Fred Tompkins, a past Elvin Jones collaborator, played flute on “Spectre of Los” and the title cut of the album. That this album exists so organically despite the variety of instruments and recording sessions used, is not only a testament to the musicians’ prowess, but also to the current hyper-ability of long distance music creation.

Adrianne Munden-Dixon and Leo Chang’s “Some Time” presents stuttering physical exchanges between Munden-Dixon’s violin and electronics and Chang’s amplified piri. These pieces are tense and tightly-woven, yet constantly unraveling and reforming. Chang’s “ampiri” is a Korean double reed instrument running through electronics and played in unconventional and non-traditional ways. Recontextualising the instrument “quasi-autodidactically” aligns with Chang’s approach to free improvisation and his artistic practice, as it forms a dynamic relationship with more established tradition and lineage. Munden-Dixon has seasoned experience in the new music, contemporary ensemble, and orchestral worlds, with more recent forays into free improvisation using her violin in conjunction with electronics. Our first exposure to Munden-Dixon’s work was oddly via a genuinely bizarre Youtube video of an improvisation involving prerecorded and manipulated Irish music, metallic objects, sinuous violin playing, recorded sounds of gulping water, and coffee mug rattling. Munden-Dixon’s and Chang’s unrelenting diversity and adherence to honest and unpretentious playing is evident throughout “Some Time”.

"Magnet Blues" presents Zhu Wenbo and Zhu Songjie’s unique and utterly bizarre take on American blues, as if filtered through layered variations of darkness. Throughout the recording, we hear barely audible vocals, minimalist, smart, and subtle guitar work, and the folkish atmosphere of what sounds like distant train activity and dying radios. Instrumentation is notable here: Songjie uses the peculiar Casio EG-5 electric guitar, with a built-in cassette deck, while also playing harmonica. Wenbo plays a Fisher-Price toy cassette player, sings, and also plays harmonica. Throughout bursts of noise and rustling midrange timbres, Zhu and Zhu navigate an understated, focused, and dreamlike realm of song and texture.