The second release on the Henning Christiansen Archive is a compilation of four works from 1967-1972 including a poem set in a bath, an unknown musical work, the musical backdrop to a horse sacrifice and a soundtrack to a school play. What binds these works together alongside the period when written is their basis in ‘song’ and some traditional ‘musical’ elements. What separates it from said tradition is that they were composed by Henning Christiansen. Op.41 Badet is a simple work featuring 3 elements: Charlotte Strandgaard reading her poem Badet (The Bath), Henning playing melodica and the sound of water splashing in a bath. The result is an unusual and evocative lo-fi setting to the resigned nature of the reading. Not a lot is known about Kom Frem For Satan (Come Forward Satan). Possibly a soundtrack of sorts? It certainly carries that mood with it’ jazz inflicted interludes, melodic organ moments all interlaced with the diegetic sounds of cars, footsteps, gunshots, etc. The result comes across like a gangster tinged musique concrete radio play. Kom Frem For Satan also shares musical motifs that appear in Op.72 on side two of the lp. Min Død Hest was previously released as a single sided 10” under the name Hesteofringen, here restored under it’s correct name. Min Død Hest (My Dead Horse) was written to accompany the Bjørn Nørgaard performance Hesteofringen (The Horse Sacrifice) on the 30th of Jan 1970, one of the most notorious performances in Danish art history. Featuring a poem written by Lene Adler Pedersen, this is a recording made after the performance with Lene Adler Pedersen singing, accompanied by Christiansen on piano (as opposed to the green violin he used in the performance), Min Død Horse is a beautiful haunting fragile song laden with metaphor, a sad lullaby is as simple and unusual as anything in Christiansen’s output. Op.72 Bondeføreren Knud Lavard is a the soundtrack to a school play performed on at the Fanefjord School on the island of Møn, Denmark, where he lived, in 1972. Another surprising work in Christiansen’s oeuvre the 6 pieces that make up this work shift between the sinister and sweet, often in the same track. Falling within the same period Henning made the soundtrack to The Executioner, Bondeføreren Knud Lavard mixes the melancholic romantic mood of that soundtrack whilst deep organ chords, military drumming and an acoustic guitar solo (played by Henning’s first son Esben Christiansen) all make an appearance. This is an sublime collection from one the 20th Centuries most diverse composers at the bridge between his romantic and avant-garde phases. Limited LP in an edition of 500 copies with:  Large bespoke fold out sleeve on craft board with white reverse Printed inner sleeve A2 poster  Postcard Compiled by Thorbjørn Reuter Christiansen and Mark Harwood Design and Concept by Maja Larsson Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi

Icepick is the super-power trio of some of the busiest musicians on this planet – American, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Nate Wooley, Norwegian, Austin-based bass player Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and American, Upstate New York-based drummer Chris Corsano. Hellraiser is already the third album of this trio and was recorded live in February 2018, on the occasion of a gathering supporting the Option series at Experimental Sound Studios (ESS) in Chicago. Originally, this performance was slated for another Wooley-led group, and only last-minute travel issues led to the rare occasion where all three members of Icepick happened to be free for the date in Chicago. The ESS continues to host and facilitate online Quarantine Concert Series even in this coronavirus lockdown era, reminding all of us what we used to celebrate not so long ago. The infrequent meetings of this trio do not affect the immediate flow of the music and the profound, telepathic interplay of Wooley, Håker Flaten & Corsano, all are masters of free-improvised format. The three collective, improvised pieces highlight their great experience and focus on structuring loose compositions through improvisation techniques, on account of powerful, wild eruptions but, still, with the fiery excitement of such a performance. Håker Flaten & Corsano build mighty yet quite flexible rhythmic patterns on the opening piece «El-Bound», fueling the soaring flights and deep whispers of Wooley. Wooley sketches «Chicago Deader» as a moving ballad while Håker Flaten & Corsano color his singing melody with disturbing, restless colors, slowly building a massive pulse. The last and longest piece, the 17-minutes «Blueline» cements the reserved atmosphere of this performance. The fractured rhythmic patterns of Håker Flaten & Corsano are the basis for Wooley’s intense employment of an array of extended breathing techniques, but soon enough all three musicians calibrate perfectly on their own dance. First in wild moves but later in more suggestive, poetic moves, repeating, again and again, the simple, melodic theme, all the way until the ecstatic coda, without raising hell, but still in perfect shape. --- NATE WOOLEY - Trumpet INGEBRIGT HÅKER FLATEN - Bass CHRIS CORSANO - Drums --- Released 2020; Astral Spirits

Patrick Kessler is not afraid to stare death into the eyes. Twelve times in June 2020, he challenged people to a duel, although duelling has been outlawed in Switzerland since 1937. But no fear! Patrick Kessler, founder and director of the Chuchchepati Orchestra, challenged his opponents, who arrived by train and were armed with an instrument, solely musically. When the train arrived at 12:12 noon each day, Patrick met with the challengers for freely improvised tonal battles on the gravel square in front of the bucolic Rietli station in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The project called “Low Noon” references the famous movie “High Noon” by Fred Zinnemann. It tells the story of an imminent fight between Sheriff Will Cane and gangster Frank Miller, whose arrival at the Hadleyville train station is expected at midday. In Kessler’s adaptation, the arrival of the “gangsters” was postponed by twelve minutes for scheduling reasons. But this only heightend the suspense until the train came to a screeching halt at the Rietli station house. The rules: arrive,get off, play, get on, get out! The duels lasted twelve minutes each, then the guests hopped on the next train. The rivals that Kessler met, armed with a double bass and a drawn bow, make up the Chuchchepati Orchestra. Some of them, you will hear, make music faster (or slower) than their shadows... The twelve duels at Rietli station were recorded. You are holding one of the ­limited edition vinyl copies. Frank Heer 

'Sometimes the old hands tell the truth. Cherry made it known some years ago that the cosmic hummus resonates. Bound by bread & blub High Wycombe Wullie (Harrison) & The Guildford Grouch (Murphy) took to Roedale Valley allotments some years back to sow the seeds for 'Slow Lightning'. Which is neither a split or a collab, but rather a love letter forged between close pals of the sonic ital. Let the Lion's gaze turn the weeds to stone! Harrison shows his delicate hand with thin precision loops and strange little snapshots. Scuttering gadgets wheeze ominous scents into the faces of yelping robotic kittens and the dictaphone player in yr mind just keeps intoning “let the low tide tingle, fella!” Murphy proves he is no recycled revenant with a brave and bold bowl of text-sound tit pickle. Huff the high fidelity and let tribute be paid to those voices as they have teachings. The loops and the breaks keep it simmering nice, while flabbergasted turntables press cheeks with prime Bohman-esque yabber. Like Don probably never said “Let the duck honk rasp yr brain, man! ' Dylan Nyoukis, October 2020 Mastered by Julian Tardo at Church Road Studio Photography by Eddie Nuttall Released Sham Repro

After studying with composers John Cage and Earle Brown, Joe Jones became a prominent figure in Fluxus, contributing to the movement's first "yearbox" alongside La Monte Young, György Ligeti and Nam June Paik. Beginning in late 1961, Jones began constructing his own music machines – drawing inspiration from the calliopes, automata and orchestrions of the 19th and early 20th century to create self-playing ensembles of stringed instruments, percussion and woodwinds – "played" through an elaborate (yet decidedly lo-tech) system of rubber bands, balls and tin foil. Christened the Tone Deaf Music Company, this battery of automated musical instruments generates the sounds on In Performance (originally released in 1977 on the Harlequin Art imprint). With exacting conceptual precision and varied subtleties of natural motion – not unlike Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures – Jones' machines produce richly-textured strata of sound and serve as engines of paradox. While bringing the figure of the artist-composer to the foreground, the machines ultimately dispense with the need for the performer entirely – a cunning subversion of the fetish for virtuosity and individual genius. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl.

In this moment of uncertainty and environmental trauma, as we recoil in the face of an emotional overload that demands retreat or even flight, a certain use of solitude in confinement has generated the possibility of taking it all on, of being with others again while still listening in solitude. Music From A Private Hell describes an understanding of sound as a habitable substance from this degree-zero of isolation. A handful of songs written in iron and dust, that allow just enough fiction or myth as to turn technology into a weapon. As Deleuze and Guattari tell us in On The Line: “run away, but when you run, bring a weapon.” A remedy for mass fatalism, Hell begins with the first song, in which a tambourine of some sort plays an ostinato rhythm, punctuating each phrase with a long note that communes with the shadows. Of interest here are not the rhythms that recur throughout the record but their relationship to colors and timbres. The different harmonic openings and resonances evoke the different kinds of tension that occur when skin touches flame. “We’ll burn it down before you land here,” says a disembodied voice, and various noises and sound effects cut through it, indifferent to the threat, as futuristic today as they were at their inception. Al Karpenter’s voice is a weapon. His inexpressive whisper is a weapon. On this record, the human voice is an excess, a surplus of the body; it is at once outside and inside. It can be listened to peacefully, but it can also generate the anguish of a voice attempting to escape from language, setting the logos free in the wilderness, scavenging in the semiotic debris. We glimpse the wound, the fall into this private Hades, in the sounds of profane, everyday technologies, the changes and glissandos of banjos and cellos that tear up the tropes of Heavy Metal and Southern Rock — forgotten welding, archeologies of industrial symbols beyond our reach. Only towards the end of the album do we experience nausea, on the final tracks, adjacent to psychedelic states fed by sinister efforts to tear out the internal organs and destroy the calm that came before in an effort to stop time. A record of songs dependent on a million bits of exhausted cultural knowledge, orchestrated in the sounds of a punitive intimacy, always surrounded by the ghostly presences that allow it to escape urban anxiety, sketching, in a warmer light, the Desert Always Yet to Come.

Available again for the first time since original release in 1974, Outernational Sounds proudly presents one of the deepest custom press jazz recordings of all – Jaman’s spiritualised and funky Sweet Heritage. The history of jazz is often told as though it was principally a history of releases and recordings. On those terms, it’s easy to mistake a small recorded footprint for obscurity or silence. But that is to put the cart before the horse, for the true history of the jazz is the story of the music as it was played night after night in the clubs, bars, concert halls and backrooms of cities and towns across America and the world. Only a tiny fraction of this living tradition ever makes it onto a recording. The far greater part is embodied in the musicians and their music as they play it and live it. And even though 1974’s Sweet Heritage is James Edward Manuel’s only release, the pianist and educator better known as Jaman has undoubtedly lived it. Brought up in Buffalo, New York, Jaman studied classical piano before beginning formal jazz studies under greats including Earl Bostic and Horace Parlan. Quickly becoming a respected regular on the club scene in Buffalo, Jaman held down innumerable residencies and worked with top local musicians – one of his early trios included the renowned bassist John Heard and drummer Clarence Becton, both of whom were poached one night by a visiting Jon Hendricks; sometime Sun Ra Arkestra bassist Juini Booth and regular Ahmad Jamal sideman Sabu Adeyola (also of Kamal & The Brothers) have graced his groups too. At famous night spots all over Buffalo’s East Side and on excursions to Manhattan’s storied jazz clubs, Jaman has shared the stage with some of the most illustrious names in jazz and blues: Big Joe Turner, Muddy Waters, Joe Henderson, Ruth Brown, Frank Morgan, Woody Shaw, Sonny Stitt, and too many others to mention. His eponymous group, Jaman, was formed in 1970; they toured the US and Canada steadily in the years that followed. He became, in short, one of Buffalo’s true jazz stalwarts, and so he remains. But despite a life lived deep within the music, Jaman only recorded a single LP, 1974’s Sweet Heritage. Pressed in tiny quantities by the Mark Records custom service, and issued with a stock landscape cover, Sweet Heritage featured the regular Jaman group playing a mixture of covers and originals. The whole LP showcases an ensemble in compete control, and with the flying, spiritual sound of ‘Free Will’ and the upful, Latin-tinged ‘In The Fall of The Year’ – both Jaman originals – the album has since become a legendary collector’s classic. Unavailable since its original issue, Outernational Sounds is proud to present Jaman’s Sweet Heritage – the soulful and spiritualised sounds of a master at work.

BJ Nilsen is a Swedish composer and sound artist based in Amsterdam. His work primarily focuses on the sounds of nature and how they affect humans. Recent work has explored the urban acoustic realm and industrial geography and mining in the Arctic region of Norway and Russia. His original scores and soundtracks have featured in theatre, dance performances and film. Judith Hamann is a cellist and performer/composer from Melbourne, Australia, now based in Berlin. Her performance practice stretches across various genres encompassing elements of improvised, contemporary classical, experimental, and popular music. She has studied contemporary classical repertoire with renowned cellists including Charles Curtis and Séverine Ballon, and developed a strong practice in improvisation and sonic arts through collaborative projects both in Australia and internationally. Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is an Icelandic musician, painter, sound- and performance artist and founding member of Stilluppsteypa. He studied sound art in Hannover, Germany from 1998 to 2003, where he is currently living. His musical output has been variously described as collage, quiet drone manipulations, and calm and minimal, which offers a range of still, contemplative momants, contrasted with more discordant (though not necessarily noisy) ones. Heiligenstadt is the documentation of an encounter of the three artists in 2018. - - - Released in an edition of 300 copies --- Fragment Factory, 2021

Hockey Night was born accidentally at the Colour Out Of Space Festival in Brighton in 2008. It's a free jazzy brainchild of four Finnish musicians: Arttu Partinen, Jaakko Tolvi, Jonna Karanka and Sami Pekkola.Recorded live at Lal Lal Lal Festival 2012 by Élg and Jussi Ahonen.Mixed by Élg, mastered by Pentti Dassum, covers by Jonna. --- Drums – Jaakko Tolvi Performer – Arttu Partinen, Jonna Karanka Tenor Saxophone – Sami Pekkola --- Ikuisuus Records Jan 2018

Comic book artist, graphic designer and free jazz improviser are only some of the many talents from Beirut born Mazen Kerbaj. After appearing as part of various ensembles on the label, Ariha Brass Quartet (CREP46) and Johnny Kafta Anti-Vegetarian Orchestra (CREP22), Kerbaj finally lands a solo outfit of his own onto the Discrepant dancefloor of insubordination. 14 years after his first (and only) solo album "Brt Vrt Zrt Krt" (Al Maslakh, 2005) Mazen returns with a series of subtle compositions of his own with not one but two(!) solo albums of prepared trumpet that further cement his international position as a serial trumpet botherer. Whilst Vol. 2.1 showcases his (almost) (un)familiar arsenal of squawks, cackles, howls and squeals, Vol.2.2 goes deep into the nether regions of waltzing drones and bell tweaks so deep that would make most cetaceans loose their concentration. The notion of being transported to a luring mutant underwater alien community is still present on these long(er) trips with the added meditative pieces being occasionally pierced by noise creepers, nothing is what you want or expect and that’s the way it should be. If Vol. 2.1 is the classic follow up LP, this one is the beast from the deep, it comes surging and screeching from a deep oceanic sink hole, only to hypnotize you with perverted dance moves before diving back into the sinking, wettest and darkest cave in the world. Vol. 2.2 is a summons album; it shatters any bar there was with its intentional use of everything Vol. 2.1 was denied. It grabs you by wherever available way and it only releases you when you’re ready to listen to it again. Listen to both albums back to back, in no particular order and you’ll know that there’s nothing you can do but come back to it like a doped up seal stranded in a phantom island – appearing and disappearing as the music dictates it to.

The term ‘supergroup’ often comes with tacky connotations, but this is the real deal. Through hard work and a tirelessly inquisitive spirit, Nate Wooley, Dave Rempis, Pascal Niggenkemper and Chris Corsano have become some of the most versatile improvisers of their generation. As From Wolves To Whales, they turn their imposing collective strength into a relentless new whole. Relentless, not just because of the energy levels or the generous amount of freedom, but because of the consistent inventiveness they display. This takes place on an individual level (let it be clear that each musician is a monster on his own instrument), but also because they always keep the bigger picture in mind. As such, Dead Leaves Drop is a terrific example of what all great improvising bands aspire to: find the shortest route from thought to action and turn it into brand new forms that transcend the sum of their parts.

  Conceived whilst wandering through the iron bark forests and gold fields of country Victoria the official debut by Melbourne’s Hour House gifts a musical blueprint marinated in mystery, beauty, sound and song. Hour House is the Melbourne based duo of Mark Leacy and Sam Kenna, formerly of the Newcastle based outfit Castings. Penultimate Press is proud to release their official debut LP Chiltern. Comprised of individual tracks folded into two side long suites Chiltern is an unique excursion through foreign encounters, warm surrounds and disorientating comfort. Field recordings, electronics, samples, guitars, voice and atmospherics all contribute to form a bewitching whole.Many questions are raised: Is this a soundtrack to a mental experience or an altered take on a familiar reality? Is section 3 based around the sound of a basketball court? Does section 4 comprise a song? Where do the original soviet science fiction soundtracks fit into all this? Is this sound or music? Simultaneously ambiguous and accessible Chiltern is a ride unlike another and resides as the consciousness tickling release of 2015. Mastered by Jason Lescalleet at Glistening Labs, and with stunning artwork by Alice Wormald. 

Fluence is the brainchild and first release of sound artist / provocateur Pascal Comelade. Recorded in Montpellier, France in 1974-1975, the project consists of exploratory electronic pieces in the Fripp & Eno vernacular with a Kosmische tinge. 'A Few Reasons To Stay / A Few Reasons To Split,' a title inspired by Swiss conceptual artist Urs Lüthi, features Comelade's kaleidoscopic arpeggios and Richard Pinhas' howling guitar, which variously resembles a dreamlike cello and ghostly human moans. 'Barcelona Tango's' off-kilter exotica with pocket trumpet and looping drum beats foreshadows Comelade's later work, which would create a stir in some avant-garde circles for his use of unorthodox instruments (plastic saxophone, toy piano, etc.) On the side-long 'Schizo,' Comelade's electric organ with probing, Terry Riley-esque swooshes collides with Gabriel Ibanez's thick, reedy buzz -- together forming a truly magical soundscape. These incendiary performances ably join the ranks of other dreamily cosmic, impressionistic guitar-and-synth masterworks like No Pussyfooting and The Serpent (In Quicksilver) as well as Conny Veit's work with Popol Vuh. Originally released in 1975, Fluence offers a remarkable emotional and textural range -- richly experimental and deeply progressive -- that sounds at once timeless and strikingly contemporary. This first-time standalone reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies.

While g a b b r o, Hanne De Backer’s baritone sax project, used a no frills duo concept for its debut album, things take a different turn on Granular. With Marc De Maeseneer again by her side, this album also involves fellow Belgian experimentalist Raphael Malfliet on electric bass, as well as singular vocalist Agnes Hvizdalek. Taken from studio recordings, as well as the quartet’s performance at 2018’s Summer Bummer Festival, Granular turns fragmentation and attention for detail, sound and space into an invitation to listen without prejudice and expectations. The result is a strikingly original impression of a universe full of unconventional techniques, which retains a balance between the highly personal and a remarkable openness, turning the granules of the title into a broader, organic whole.

Ben Ellul-Knight & Tom White - I’ve had it up to hear with fish & chips (CCP006) I've had it up to hear with fish & chips is a hörspiel about 'care work' of all kinds. In part it is auto-ethnographic, as it draws on Ben's experience working as a play worker, social worker and as a volunteer with refugee and asylum-seeker support services. More personal reflections are mixed with conversations Ben had with support workers, social workers, play workers and mental health nurses to form a script. Different speakers/singers were then invited to record themselves reading the script in any way they wanted and this was used as Tom's raw material for the composition. I've had it up to hear with fish & chips was first performed live in the Radiophrenia studio, Glasgow 2016.

Marine weather reports recorded from radio broadcasts by Sven-Åke Johansson in 1970 at the Kollektiv für Kommunikative und Ästhetische Forschung in Mariental, Lower Saxony, Germany. Edition of 300 with printed inner sleeve containing liner notes by Thomas Millroth about forms of artistic appropriation in Johansson's work. "During my communal life at the former Mariental monastery in Lower Saxony, in the late hours behind thick monastic walls – there was no village pub – I played with my radio in my chamber. Often we would sit together and listen to the late-night marine weather forecasts (Seewetterbericht), broadcasted alternately via shortwave and FM. Particularly we liked the navigational warnings (Seewarnnachrichten). In the announcers' way of speaking – very slowly –, we found a new type of poetry; realism. I recorded many hours with my Uher Report tape recorder and a Sennheiser microphone placed in front of the loudspeaker. A small selection is presented on this LP." (Sven-Åke Johansson) "In the unknown and confusing names of this boundless poetry, it's impossible to see your own reflection; your face is not visible here. You have to disrupt your patterns. Find yourself in this psycho-geographic map of storms and winds. Sven-Åke Johansson does not use appropriation as cultural recycling, he creates culture by simply giving the objects new paradigms." (Thomas Millroth) 

Sabine Blödorn and Kai Drewitz return with their fifth album as Floating di Morel, presenting their work under that name with Thorsten Neu on the A-side and their work with Ulf Goretzki as Ulf / FdM on the B-side. As they put it, "The new (5th) Floatin' LP is divided in two parts. On one side you hear the last works together with Thorsten Neu, which you know from the records 'said my said' and 'goal less play'. The other side is a new more electronic experience with ULF." Recorded by Ulf / FdM. Mastered by Jan Wagner.