French musician & performance artist Manon Anne Gillis came to Japan to perform in 2016 following the 2015 release of the 5-CD archive box set from Art Into Life, which was a compilation of earlier recordings. Now at last, for the first time in 27 years since 1994’s “Euragine” in CD format, her long-awaited 7th solo album is completed. As she still continues to progress and evolve musically, this work is constructed primarily around primitive hiss noise and error sounds. Here she has woven a musical tapestry that is more blurred, obscured, and noise-oriented than her earlier work. With the strong cohesiveness of her disquieting singing voice in a thunderous roar bellowing from the inner depths, the repetition of the dense glitch sounds, and the nostalgic concept of the obscure rhythm track (track 5) will remind us of her days when she went by the alias Devil’s Picnic.
Anne Gillis – "..."
The first Manon Anne Gillis release was a single-sided mini-album titled “Angebiguë”, which was Manon’s self-release in 1983. “Angebiguë” was 6-track mini-album in a cold-minimal-synth vein, and any track from “Angebiguë” were not included in her retrospective 5CD Box “Archives Box 1983-2005”, which Art into Life released in 2015. “Angebiguë” was privately released in tiny edition for her friends only and has been a highly sought-after item among collectors. “Vhoysee” is Manon’s long-awaited new album, and the album collects her latest six pieces and four re-worked / re-mixed tracks from “Angebiguë”. The latest six pieces are physical subject-based composition with minimum elements, whereas re-worked / re-mixed tracks from “Angebiguë” are simple rhythm-oriented pieces with her glacial sound texture. In “Vhoysee”, the past and present are interwoven and linked together in a kind of labyrinth.
Anne Gillis – Vhoysee
Recorded by Holger Scheuermann and Jost Gebers, October 30 and 31, 1991, in Berlin. First released on FMP as FMP CD 53 in 1994. "In perhaps the most understated performance of his entire career, German saxophone giant Peter Brötzmann played in a trio with American free jazz legends Fred Hopkins and Rashied Ali back in 1991 at the now mythical Total Music Meeting. . . . Brötzmann appears to have been in awe on this date so great is his restraint. There are literally no passages in the entire concert where he attempts to push his way through the rhythm section to get to the other side. No mean feat when you consider the man's powerful personality both on and off the stage. But Hopkins was a founding member of Air with Henry Threadgill, and Ali, of course, played with John Coltrane. Given these proceedings with their haunted, hunted, beauty, it would be fair to say that -- even on his own compositions -- the mighty Brötzmann was humbled in the presence of these great musicians. Does that mean he was humbled by them? Hardly. Brötzmann's playing here is so fiery and lyrical, so completely focused on his rhythm section that he turns harmonies on their heads and finds intervals in places where the only thing that should be happening is free blowing. He is the band's leader by the force of that lyricism and restraint. He makes room for the other players to move through and around him rather than behind him. His sheer 'musicality' is wondrous. Hopkins and Ali are no strangers to each other -- there is telepathic communication; the shift from one modality to the next is seamless and grounded, each player by the other. There are six compositions on this record; it comes off as a very intense, extremely quiet kind of blowing gig, where this trio were looking to discover things about each other and the music they were making. As a result, it is one of the finest performances issued from that festival, and a landmark in Brötzmann's career in particular." -- Thom Jurek, --- Peter Brötzmann / tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, tárogató Fred Hopkins / double bass Rashied Ali / drums.
PETER BROTZMANN/FRED HOPKINS/RASHIED ALI – Songlines
Black Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages. The pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream. At the time of its first release, Quixotism was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms.
Oren Ambarchi – Quixotism (10th Anniversary Remaster)