"Based around the married couple Paul and Limpe Fuchs, the group Anima, also known as Anima-Sound, was one of the most radically avant-garde and creative groups to emerge from the thriving Krautrock scene of Munich at the end of the 1960s. In fact, their improvised atonal sounds and unconventional instrumentation is much closer to the spirit of experimental free jazz than anything remotely close to rock music. The Fuchs began in the late '60s as part of the counterculture at the time. Adding to the conventional instruments such as drums, bass, and cornet, as well as wordless vocal yelps and screams, they created their own homemades, like the Fuchshorn, Fuchszither, and Fuchsbass to further enhance the strangeness of their structure-less music. A 1970 appearance of them in an X-rated exposé movie, Sex Freedom in Germany, finds Limpe, naked except for black body paint, banging away on drums and Paul on various inventions creating musical anarchy. Anima-Sound's first album, Stürmischer Himmel, was recorded in a 1,000-year-old cottage and released by Ohr Records in 1971. That summer, they also played the Ossiach, a three-day outdoor festival organized by famed Austrian classical/jazz pianist Friedrich Gulda that included Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd. By then, Gulda had become close friends with the Fuchs and even joined them on their next few albums, including Anima released by the Pilz label and Musik für Alle, both of which came out in 1972. During the next few years, the Fuchs would often tour with Gulda and make guest appearances on his records as well. "Anima" continued to release records of their eccentric music, from the double It's Up to You in 1974 to Monte Alto in 1977. Recorded between 1978 and 1982, the double LP Der Regt Mich Auf/A Controversy included new bandmember Zoro Fuchs, son of Paul and Limpe, on drums. This same lineup of the three Fuchs is also on the double album Bruchstucke für Ilona, recorded in the summer of 1985 and released later that year. By 1987's Via, Anima had become Limpe Fuchs' solo project. She continued this solo career after that with an album every several years in a similar vein to the Anima records, with a high emphasis on creativity." - Rolf Semprebon

For the time being we are unable to get to the post but if you order now your item will be posted as soon as things return to normal. Thank you for your support. Maryanne Amacher (1938 - 2009) was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization, creative intelligence, and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called “sound art,” although her thought and creative practice consistently challenge key assumptions about the capacities and limitations of the genre. Amacher’s work anticipates some of the most important developments in network culture, media arts, acoustic ecology, and sound studies, yet due to its expansive interdisciplinary nature it has rarely been documented. Following two CDs for Tzadik and her inclusion in the monumental collection OHM: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music (1948-1980), this publication of Amacher’s 1991 piece Petramarks her first commercially available instrumental work as well as the first time her music has ever been available on vinyl. Petra was originally commissioned for the ISCM World Music Days in Switzerland. Written for two pianos, the piece is a unique example of Amacher’s late work, a direct extension of her working methodologies for electronic composition taken into an acoustic realm that alludes to the music of Giacinto Scelsi and Galina Ustvolskaya. Petra is a sweeping, durational work based on both Amacher’s impressions of the church in Boswil where the piece was premiered and science-fiction writer Greg Bear’s short story of the same name, in which gargoyles come to life and breed with humans in a post-apocalyptic Notre Dame. This solemn interpretation of Petra was recorded at its 2017 American premiere at New York’s St. Peter’s Episcopal Church with pianists Marianne Schroeder, who originally performed the piece alongside Amacher in 1991, and Stefan Tcherepnin, who performed it alongside Schroeder in 2012 at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. Weighing tranquilizing passages of glacially-paced serenity against stretches of dilapidated, jagged dissonance, the recording illuminates a crucial node in the constellation of Amacher’s enigmatic oeuvre. Artistic director of the Giacinto Scelsi Festival in Basel, Marianne Schroeder is a Swiss composer and pianist specializing in the interpretation of New Music. She has collaborated with and premiered work by John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dieter Schnebel, Anthony Braxton, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros and Giacinto Scelsi, with whom she studied. She is currently a professor at Hochschule der Künste Bern, and has also taught at the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt. Stefan Tcherepnin is an American electronic music performer, contemporary artist, and composer in fourth generation, continuing the family heritage of his great-grandfather Nicholas, grandfather Alexander, and father Ivan Tcherepnin. As a family friend of Amacher’s and a student of hers at Bard College he is uniquely qualified to navigate the labyrinth of Amacher interpretation.

In Japanese folklore, Afuma indicates a time of day marked by spiritual or mysterious encounter. In Latin, one who inhales. Together as Afuma, Stefan Tcherepnin, and Taketo Shimada breathe sepulchral energies into the brooding, cosmic fringes of guitar-based song vernacular. Tcherepnin’s baritone and Shimada’s lap steel guitar intertwine, smearing across world’s-end horizons that propel Tcherepnin’s ragged, foreboding vocal delivery and its lyrical portents of departure, of life’s vessel unmoored onto a fathomless periphery. Shimada, a Tokyo-born musician and artist who has lived with Herbert Huncke and worked with Henry Flynt, also contributes Indian double-reed instrument shehnai to the band. And Stefan Tcherepnin, a contemporary artist and composer in fourth generation (continuing the family heritage of his great-grandfather Nicholas, grandfather Alexander, and father Ivan Tcherepnin), embellishes their dirge-scapes with electronics from the Sonica, a lute shaped version of the Serge synthesizer developed by his uncle. A family friend and student of Maryanne Amacher, Tcherepnin’s piano playing alongside Marianne Schroeder’s additionally graced Blank Forms Edition’s publication of Amacher’s Petra. Tcherepnin and Shimada are joined by drummer David Silver for Songs From The Shore, their debut LP, featuring artwork in the form of A Rip In The Void, a newly commissioned painting by Bobby Beausoleil.

First ever Vinyl and CD reissues of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's seminal 1969 debut,  31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta (The Black Record) La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With his collaborator since 1962, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day. Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script. Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity. Track Listing: 31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta

Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Cohelmec Ensemble's Hippotigris Zebra Zebra, originally released in 1971. The Cohelmec Ensemble celebrate, above all, the pleasure of collective music-making. A group without a designated leader, they base their approach on reciprocal listening, but also on a dialogue between written and improvised material, in which all members have an equal responsibility whatever their instrument. This is even demonstrated in their name: COH as in Jean Cohen (saxophones), EL as in Dominique Elbaz (piano) and MEC as in the brothers François and Jean-Louis Méchali (respectively, amongst others, bass and drums), joined for this album by Evan Chandlee, known for his participation in Love Rejoice (1969) by Kenneth Terroade, and accepted, of course, as a full group member. Fitting together like hand in glove, the five musicians build something together, rather than trying to destroy an established order, as was the thing to do at the start of the 1970s, leaving the expression of an openly political agenda to others. In France, there was a tendency to explore an imaginary folklore which allowed certain elements of free jazz to be circumvented without being ignored. Which is why it is reminiscent of, in the melody of "Hippotigris Zebrazebra" when played with collective intensity, the best of American cosmic jazz, while also occasionally hearing McCoy Tyner or even Cecil Taylor under the fingers of Dominique Elbaz, or the vibraphone of Walt Dickerson evoked by Jean-Louis Méchali. Globally, however, their identity is original (even seminal), a fact which was to be confirmed by their next two recordings. For the record, it should be noted that the first album by the Free Jazz Workshop (from Lyon), another French group with a similar approach, would only be published two years later. Licensed from Cohelmec Ensemble. Deluxe reissue with high definition remastered audio; 12-page booklet on 200 gsm art paper. Includes liner notes and rare pictures; Gatefold LP with obi strip; Edition of 700.

Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Cohelmec Ensemble's Next. The Cohelmec Ensemble celebrate, above all, the pleasure of collective music-making. A group without a designated leader, they base their approach on reciprocal listening and equal responsibilities. This is reflected in their name, created from the first syllables of the founding member's names, which would remain unchanged in spite of the subsequent personnel changes: COH as in Jean Cohen (saxophones), EL as in Dominique Elbaz (piano) and MEC as in the brothers François and Jean-Louis Méchali (respectively, amongst others, bass and drums), Evan Chandlee joined them after they had already been playing together for a while, at the time they recorded their first album, 1971's Hippotigris Zebra Zebra (FFL 019LP). The follow-up (appropriately named Next) saw the original pianist leave, to be replaced by guitarist Joseph Dejean, who had already played with the Full Moon Ensemble, known for having accompanied Archie Shepp at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1970. In spite of the personnel changes, the understanding and cohesion remain total within Cohelmec. They also maintain their trademark ambitious mix of written and improvised material. From this point of view, Next is even more audacious than its predecessor Hippotigris Zebra Zebra. Relatively brief tracks follow hot on the heels of one another, bolstered by a poly-instrumentality which stands out even more than in the past, giving the album the feel of a contrasting suite. There is a lot going on, leading to evocative atmospheres in which rigor and fantasy go happily hand in hand. Which is enough to say that this album should please fans of a style of free (chamber?) jazz which includes intelligent composed structures, a form in which French musicians have always demonstrated a personal approach, as in the example of Oeil Vision by Jef Gilson in 1964 (OI 012LP). Profoundly original and, it has to be said, seminal. Licensed from Cohelmec Ensemble. Deluxe reissue with high definition remastered audio; 12-page booklet on 200 gsm art paper. Includes liner notes and rare pictures; Gatefold LP with obi strip; Edition of 700

First ever vinyl reissue of highly sought after French experimental jazz from the legendary Jef Gilson Remastered from the master tapes. * In 1971, the day after the death of Igor Stravinsky, Jef Gilson and his Unit (Pierre Moret and Jean-Claude Pourtier) made this curious homage to classical music. It is jazz, contemporary and electroacoustic music that the trio interrogate through a wild ‘noise’ session evoking as much John Cage as Pierre Henry, John Coltrane as the Percussions de Strasbourg, the Art Ensemble of Chicago as the Tacet by Jean Guérin. Le Massacre du Printemps, (the Massacre of Spring) is a strange kind of homage to Igor Stravinsky, who had just died when, in 1971, Jef Gilson recorded this not-to-be-missed album of French experimental jazz. “Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end” the Russian composer was quoted as saying and here is Gilson offering us... six! A funny bird (of fire) was Jef Gilson. Clarinetist who came up playing in the basement clubs with Claude Luter and Boris Vian, he turned to piano and multiplied his experiences in jazz: bebop, choral, modal, free, fusion... As a free spirit, Gilson welcomed many ‘up and coming’ French musicians in his bands (Jean-Luc Ponty, Bernard Lubat, Michel Portal, Henri Texier...) as well as being associated with Woody Shaw, Nathan Davis or Byard Lancaster. Later he would go on to create, Europamerica, a transatlantic formation in which Butch Morris, Frank Lowe, and Joe McPhee would play... But for the time being it’s a massacre! With Pierre Moret on organ and Jean-Claude Pourtier on drums, Gilson improvises with style and gusto. On the eponymous title track of the album, he also plays tuba and invites Claude Jeanmaire to get involved on prepared piano. Spring, for the four musicians here, is windswept: billowing, rumbling, frantic, it sounds like Stravinsky played by the ‘Percussions de Strasbourg’ without a scoresheet! After which, behind his electric piano, Gilson with Moret and Pourtier offers us five more “unpremeditated spontaneous expressions”, as he wrote on the back of the album sleeve. Five wily and electric expressions which are like the soundtrack to a film which could also have been played by the Art Ensemble or Jean Guérin. So, when, in the same text, Gilson expresses the hope that we will get “from this album the same pleasure that we had making it”, we can but reply: how could it be otherwise? --- Released December 2020, Souffle Continu

"Derek Bailey’s guests for Company Week at London’s ICA in July 1982 were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and from Japan free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki. Altogether they performed the stunning extended improvisation Epiphany.In different, more intimate lineups they detonated numerous Epiphanies. Here, to start, Yoshizawa and Oppens (both on the keyboard and inside her piano) bounce ideas off each other like ping-pong balls. Then Tippetts, Wachsmann and Bailey do extraterrestrial cubist flamenco; and Lewis and Frith rumble at everyone magnificently.Tippett and Oppens kaleidoscope the entire history of the piano into just over fifteen minutes (Fourth and Fifth) with added seasoning from LeBaron and Wachsmann. To close, Akio Suzuki — despite once describing himself as “pursuing listening as a practice” — makes one hell of a racket with his self-made instruments: a flute, a spring gong and his analapos (two single-lidded cylinders attached by a long steel coil, which he can manipulate and strike, besides vocalising into the tube). Yoshizawa and Bailey give him a real run for his money, and it all builds to an ecstatic, swirling, grinding climax, with Suzuki whooping and hollering wildly."

Edition of 500 copies, featuring photography by Mark Fell. Mixed by Sasu Ripatti and mastered by Rashad Becker. Finally compiled on CD, Mark Fell & Will Guthrie’s Infoldings / Diffractions is an inspirational, almost 80 minute long study in four parts, informed by Gamelan and South Indian Carnatic musics. Essential listening if you’re into Autechre, Michael Ranta, The Necks, Milford Graves. Infoldings / Diffractions combines synthesis and acoustic percussion in unpredictable, pointillist arrangements where Guthrie plays against patterns derived from Max MSP patches by Fell. The album’s four longform expositions are in this sense different to the man-machine concept of Fell’s acclaimed ‘Intra’ album, where he triggered performances by Portugal’s Drumming Grupo De Percussão to play a metallophone designed by Iannis Xenakis. Here, the pair find common and sometimes contrasting purpose in a probing of rhythmic signatures, with groundbreaking results. Recorded at HFG, Karlsruhe (where Fell is guest professor), and finished later in respective isolation, the pieces were edited from iterations of call-and-response between Fell’s rhythmic patterns and Guthrie’s overdubs. They effectively propose beguiling solutions to electronic music’s problems with grid-lock, using generative processing to make physical actions seem unfeasibly effortless, while melting the computer’s clock to a real-time, free-hand syncopation. Taking the influence of gamelan and fusing it with the fractal computer music that Fell has obsessively picked-at over the last four decades, the duo zoom into a sound that’s completely captivating; mutating into polyrhythmic outer-realms and eerie universes of microtonality that are hard to fathom in a single sitting. There are trace echoes of free jazz hanging from the rafters, the post-everything chatter of Humcrush and Food drummer Thomas Strønen’s mind-expanding solo material or even Autechre at their most confounding. The genius here is that just as you convince yourself that the music could only possibly have been generated by a computer, Guthrie’s unmistakably human flex edges into focus - playing with perception and expectation in the most wild, liquid way imaginable.

There ARE no simple songs — only simple people. And since guns don't kill people, "Simple Songs" will have to do. Super-sweet terrorism from our very own latter-day Spector!

"Breathing in, breathing out. Tide comes in, tide goes out. The sun rises and it also sets: beginnings and endings. These are the first impressions given by The Visitor: a build-up and break-down. One seamless, 38-minute piece of music that completely engages its listeners. An extremely thoughtful piece that even a year later, still retains all of the qualities it had upon first listen. This record made me realize the full potential music can have when someone who actually gives a damn does something about it. Here, O'Rourke constructs an intricate and personal piece of music that unveils its beauty with every listen. Open your ears, put this record on the platter, close the door behind you, shut your eyes, and prepare for the trip. Remember to be a good visitor - and visit often..."

Félicia Atkinson’s Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe) is approached as a meditation, not as meditative music, but as a reflection on the art of creation: how to inhabit one’s creation, how to convey it, domesticate it and live with it. Drawing inspiration from the artist Georgia O’ Keeffe, both in her work as a painter and in the houses in which she lived in New Mexico, and even in the landscapes that surround them, Félicia Atkinson has composed a piece that evokes and celebrates, in a poetic and holistic way, the mystery of art, the somnambulic oscillation that accompanies the act of creating. Blending fragmentary voices, islands of piano, electronic textures and patterns, and field recordings, Félicia Atkinson’s music is sincere and inspired, a meditation, then, but also a lesson we sometimes forget: being an artist is not an activity, even less a profession, it’s a singular way of approaching the world and, in so doing, densifying it. Richard Chartier’s music takes up residence at the frontiers of the audible, on the edge where sound diffracts into an inter-dimensionality where sounds, space, listening and silence recombine in an arborescence of becomings that present themselves to us and then disappear. The space-time in which Richard Chartier’s music unfolds is a stretched space-time, barely emerging in the world of sound. The delicacy, precision and accuracy of the composition Recurrence.Expansion lies precisely in this dialogue between a shape that is exposed and developed in an inspired and masterful way, and the sonic biotope in which this shape develops. It is from such an encounter that the singularity of Richard Chartier’s music emerges, music of attentive listening, but also sensitive, inhabited music, a music of discreet metamorphosis. —Francois J. Bonnet, Paris, March 2023  Multichannel electroacoustic piece for electronics and voice (stereo version) Can be performed in concert with additional live voice, grand piano and/or Fender Rhodes Composed and performed by Félicia Atkinson Published by Mute Song Limited Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, February 2023 Photos by Éléonore Huisse Sleeve design by Stephen O’Malley /// Stereo reference of original multichannel work for 26 speakers premiered at INA grm’s Présences électronique festival, Maison de la Radio et de la Musique (Paris, France), April 16, 2022 Formed, composed and recorded by Richard Chartier Richard Chartier is published by Touch Music/Fairwood Music UK Ltd.

Living Torch, through its unique structural form and harmonic material, is a bold continuation of Kali Malone’s demanding and exciting body of work, while opening new perspectives and increasing the emotional potential of the music tenfold. As such, Living Torch is a major new piece by the composer and adds a significant milestone to an already fascinating repertoire. Departing from the pipe organ that Malone’s music is most notable for, Living Torch features a complex electroacoustic ensemble. Leafing through recordings from conventional instruments like the trombone and bass clarinet to more experimental machines like the boîte à bourdon, passing through sinewave generators and Éliane Radigue’s ARP 2500 synthesizer. Living Torch weaves its own history, its own genealogy, and that of its author. It extends her robust structural approach to a liberated palette of timbre. Living Torch was initially commissioned by GRM for its legendary loudspeaker orchestra, the Acousmonium, and premiered in its complete multichannel form at the Grand Auditorium of Radio France in a concert entirely dedicated to the artist. Composed at GRM studios in Paris between 2020-2021, Living Torch is a work of great intensity, an oeuvre-monde that is singularly placed at the crossroads of instrumental writing and electroacoustic composition. Living Torch proceeds from multiple lineages, including early modern music, American minimalism, and musique concrète. It’s a work as much turned towards exploring justly tuned harmony and canonic structures as towards the polyphony of unique timbres, the scaling of dynamic range, and the revelation of sound qualities. GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), the pioneering institution of electroacoustic, acousmatic, and musique concrète, has been a unique laboratory for sonorous research since 1958. Witnessing the extreme vitality of the music championed by GRM, the Portraits GRM record series extends and expands this momentum with Kali Malone’s Living Torch. The French label-partner Shelter Press is proud to continue the collaboration with GRM, which Peter Rehberg of Editions MEGO set the foundation for in 2012. 

XKatedral Anthology II is the second installment in a series of archival releases dedicated to presenting music by composers affiliated with XKatedral working within the realm of slowly evolving harmonic and timbral music. This double-vinyl set contains an array of pieces written from 2018 to 2020 by composers Kali Malone, Jessica Ekomane, Mats Erlandsson, Theodor Kentros, Wilma Hultén and Maria W Horn. This collection of pieces focuses on the use of synthetic sound and algorithmic composition languages as tools for precise work within the realm of spectral exploration. In addition to this, the electronic instrumentation in many of the pieces is augmented by acoustic instruments.

“F(r)icciones is a complicated piece of miscellaneous works. A set of experiments in preparation for a gig at a noise convention in Orozco that never happened, an 18 women choir piece composed for a soundtrack to a documentary that doesn’t have a release date yet or trying to create a drone piece by accumulating guitar noise. The result? Burnt psychedelic blues with electronics ” Partly an official soundtrack to “Durangas”, a documentary focusing on women and heritage, discussing civil war, education, sex or violence in the town of Durango, Basque Country. And partly a non musical accompaniment to an imaginary movie, F(r)icciones is the new album by A. Maiah. Self described as Guitarist / Composer / Improviser of Idiomatic Noise / Microtonal Blues Ist or Psychedelic Populist, Asier has been self-releasing albums for nearly a decade now, focusing mostly on prepared guitar or improvised noise. Durangas was composed by Asier, arranged/conducted by Garazi Navas, performed by an 18 women choir from Durango and recorded live at San Agustin Cultural Centre. All of the other tracks were recorded between 2021-2022 in between portable recorders in Burgos or at Estudios Nomadas. 

As the mist clears from their Sift LP (hop9) Eyes of the Amaryllis return to Horn of Plenty with the equally enigmatic Perceptible to Everyone. Recorded in various remote locations around the northeast of the US over a few warm months in 2022, Perceptible to Everyone maps the band's poetry in nebulous song forms that dance on their constant fission between pastoral and ghostly inner galaxies. Its eight tracks utilize a wide range of instruments and techniques to span an alien, ritualistic territory where melodies and rhythms appear from meandering passages of sound and ramshackle sci-fi settings. The culmination leaves Perceptible to Everyone gesturing as if it were an alluring otherworldly ethnographic document. EotA’s non-idiomatic methods make comparisons difficult but traces of Smegma, early D.D.A.A, Garbage and the Flowers, The Tower Recordings, and Flaming Tunes will get you some of the way there. The rest is uncharted.

Back in the early 2000s, after locating those first Moondog 78s, and adding them to the mix at Honest Jons, assembling the compilation that became The Viking of Sixth Avenue, was a kind of musical cloud nine - a voyage of discovery, attempting to chart the worlds that Moondog had created. Now it's Spring again - as winter encroaches - and Mississippi expose us to some never before heard material. It's killer grade, recorded by yet another genius, Tony Schwartz, the pioneering Folkways field recordist, the first man to record Louis Hardin, aka Moondog, who in the 1950s also recorded a day in the life of a dog [canine variety] and a New York cab driver, among many others.Behold! A survey of Moondog’s earliest recorded works - many of them unreleased until now - through a collaboration by Mississippi Records and Lucia Records. From 1954 - 1962 field recordist Tony Schwartz frequently checked in with Moondog, his favorite street musician. Tony Schwartz made recordings of Moondog’s earliest compositions as they were coming into focus. Sometimes these recordings were made right on the street as Moondog busked, sometimes they were made in Schwartz’s studio, and sometimes they were made on NYC rooftops. The resulting recordings, many of which had never been released, were deposited at the Library Of Congress as part of the Tony Schwartz Collection in 2006 when Schwartz passed away, and this record was culled straight from these original tapes.Side one kicks off with an unreleased version of Moondog’s classic composition “Why Spend The Dark Night With You?” followed by the first ever complete recording of his “Nocturne Suite,” a beautiful piece of classical music performed with members of the Royal Philharmonic. The side ends with the complete “On The Streets Of New York” 7” EP, which was released on Mars records in 1955 and subsequently re-released by Honest Jon’s Records in 2004 on their excellent Moondog anthology. Side B features sketches of Moondog compositions never released, many with the man himself howling and chanting over his homemade percussion set.Moondog’s music is as universal as it gets - part classical music, part Native American, part European folk, and part something completely unique. Moondog is one of the towering figures of 20th century music. This record comes with liner notes featuring never before released interviews with Moodog by Tony Schwartz and is housed in an old school “tip on” cover. All tracks fully licensed from the Library of Congress.

LSD March is a band from Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, whose members revolved around Shinsuke Michishita, guitarist/singer, the band’s black star, before being reborn nowadays, after several years of hiatus, as a duet with Ikuro Takahashi, legendary drummer who was the heart muscle of Fushitsusha, and of most of the underground Tokyo bands. Shinsuke Michishita has a taste for immersion, for plunging into the electric waves of gaping amplifiers, psychedelic surfer haunted by this sonic ocean and its crushing shore breaks, where the self dissolves, becomes one with the sound, where the self escapes to his dreams and nightmares. This album recorded in 2008 is caught in a crazy time spiral, as in a dream where one desperetaely runs without moving, with the ground slipping away under our feet. The clock turns celibate, Ikuro Takahashi fractures the rhythm, hammers it further like an impossible point to reach. Sometimes, the guitar follows or precedes him, resets the clock, with its chords slammed on the ticking, a ceremony of fleeing time. And the voice weeps like rain, or a prayer. LSD March has often been compared to the Rallizes Denudes, a sort of poisonous resurgence of them, with Shinsuke Michishista being seen as a revenant from those psychedelic dark times. The same dark Moire, spilling from a bog overflowing with distortion, the same nihilistic, maladjusted, collapsed lyricism, a similar sad voice singing from within the ruins of time.  --- Shinsuke Michishita : vocal & guitar Ikuro Takahashi : drums --- Released: An' Archives, 2021