Stringing the Telyn Rawn from Culture Colony on Vimeo. --- "This album's 18 short improvisations on the instrument are brilliant. There is play and twang, a sense in which the instrument is being tested and sounded. Sometimes it sounds wobbly like a fawn on new legs, in other moments it has grit and shuffle. To make an instrument that hasn't been heard for 200 years, and then play brand new improvisations on it is bold and refreshing – a forward movement that brings the past along." - Jen Allan, The QuietusDating back to the 13th century in Wales, the Telyn Rawn is a nearly forgotten horsehair harp; UK improvising harpist Rhodri Davies researched the instrument and its unique sound, commissioning the construction of a harp on which he performs 18 improvisations of impressive technique and sonority, launching his new Amgen Records label with this album named for the instrument. Harp design by Rhodri Davies, body of harp by Alun Thomas, leather work by Gaynor Davies-Howell, pegs turned by Alan and Milissa Dewey, horse hide supplied by Barrhead Leather, plaited and wound horse hair strings supplied by Simon Chadwick. The building of the harp was made possible through a Creative Wales Award. Recorded, edited and mastered by Sam Grant.Recorded 22nd and 23rd of January 2020 at Blank Studios, Newcastle upon Tyne.Drawing by Jean-Luc Guionnet.Design by Anna Peaker. Diolch i / Thank you to: John Butcher, Richard Dawson, Audrey Evans, Delyth Evans, Robert Evans, Ann Griffiths, O’r Pedwar Gwynt, Robert Hadaway, Huw Ceiriog Jones, Michał Poręba, Llio Rhydderch, Gorwel Roberts, Sioned Puw Rowlands, Elan Closs Stephens, David Sylvian, Sesiwn Werin Tŷ Tawe, Bill Taylor.

Relics of the Horsehair harp This collection is a companion piece to my solo album ‘Telyn Rawn’ AMGEN 001 (2020). I have invited some of my favourite musicians to respond to the eighteen improvised pieces on ‘Telyn Rawn’. I asked each contributor to imagine that the musical material improvised in 2020 was an ancient musical form that had fully existed in the medieval period, and, that each of their responses were to have happened centuries after the imagined formation of the ‘Telyn Rawn’ pieces. This album therefore proposes a new imagined repertoire that emerges from an already speculatively built instrument and equally re-imagined repertoire. As guitarist C Joynes comments, these creative responses offer a kind of ‘speculative fiction’ approach to the source material. At the point where this music reaches you, it has been filtered through imagined passages of time, various musical languages and histories, and channelled through the fictional ecologies of musicians, locations and instrumentation. The title given to this album of imaginary musical histories, ‘Creiriau y Delyn Rawn’ or ‘Relics of the Horsehair harp’, is inspired by the title Edward Jones gave to his manuscript ‘Musical, Poetical, and Historical Relicks of the Welsh Bards and Druids’ (1802), a title I have always loved. Rhodri Davies, Abertawe

Syed Kamran Ali (Hunter Gracchus, Harappian Night Recordings) introduces ‘Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs’; the first album from his newly minted Fish el Fish project. As if to kick the existing ideas of his Harappian Night Recordings work into all new orbits of singularity, ‘Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs’ wrenches a dense throng of voices, electronics and busted instrumentation thrashing and wailing through filters of avant-psychedelic glimmer, mock exotica and atrophied, fusion-esque sheen. A dry, mysterious spoken prose underpins the sonics, appearing to speak in terms of daunting geopolitical allusions in one breath, then glib, tongue in cheek piss-taking sarcasm the next. These narratives pull you immediately into what feels like an entire universe of vivid though scarcely penetrable imagery, begging to be decoded and explored in detail.Yet even through repeat listens of this enticing work it is difficult to fathom exactly the type of thinking this music has sprung from. Far too crude and homespun to be the product of arch cultural strategy, ‘Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs’ is possessed of a blown out fidelity indicative of untarnished, DIY spontaneity and the willingness to let things emerge as they will. Clear as day from the moment of playback, however, is a confident, fully realised other worldliness to this music that is anything accidental. Comprised chiefly of shortish, song length pieces, each notably varied in shape and feel, there is a fully formed ‘proper album’ quality to ‘Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs’ which only reinforces curiosities about exactly where the fuck this has all come from. Whatever the answer, whatever its secrets, this is probably the most weird and wonderful release adhuman has had the pleasure to take on so far.

Polish composer and sound artist Robert Piotrowicz presents his first work for Penultimate Press, one which outlines an uncanny sound world with a series of fictional organ pieces.Whilst resembling a pipe organ alongside other acoustic sources all material is strictly synthetic. The impression of air being swept through the bellows… false. The spatial organisation suggesting it was recorded in large physical space, false! The long middle solo passage in Noumen must have been performed by some kind of wind instrument, no? False.All of these are elaborate tricks of the ear.The music of Afterlife is an artificial construct, one that is not able to be played on a traditional 12-tone organ, especially as one encounters a tuning based on 1/3-tone intervals. The result are three compositions which comprise a rather unique harmonic composition. One that comes across both familiar and foreign.Afterlife is an ambitious exploration of sound modelling and sound manipulation. Manipulation of both the tools deployed and to the listener with regards to the synthesis of acoustic deception. The result is a bold and dramatic shimmering mass of music. A fluid and visceral audio rendering with sheets of colourful sound pouring around the listener.Like much of Piotrowicz’s output this is more extraordinary exploration of the constituent relationship between harmonic and frequency components whilst investing a deep engagement with the synthetic as acoustic ruse.

Milo Thesiger-Meacham’s Audible Heat is an extended documentary, a fitful academic essay, a mass-media probe, an idiosyncratic piece of travel writing, a densely illustrated sound-art montage, and a deep dive into man’s complex relations with the seemingly eternal sound of the cicada as ‘audible heat’ in human consciousness.Featuring original music and field recordings, and spoken contributions by writer and translator Cristina Viti and filmmaker Ahmed Yassin Aldaradji, Audible Heat ranges across continents, embracing Greek tongue twisters, the poetry of Ibn Quzmān and Harry Crosby, African-American mathematician Benjamin Banneker’s lost wooden clock, Plato’s Phaedrus, cicadas on the film sets of Sergio Leone’s ‘Spaghetti Westerns,’ the body language of Clint Eastwood, the apocalyptic premonitions of the Wampanoag, Geronimo’s hatred of telegraphy, and botanist Donald C. Peattie’s terror of the inescapable buzz of mortality.Equal parts academic argument, travelogue, and critical collage, this synthesis of ideas pulls upon a wide-ranging bibliography of materials to examine the omnipresent sound of the cicada throughout human history and culture. Herein, this climatic sound acts as a conduit between ecology, identity and mortality, and the cicada’s sonic inference emerges as a codification of the unknown and unfamiliar—as a spiritual weathervane in desert settings—and as a means of teasing out the sensorial limits of human understanding.Audible Heat was written, read, recorded, produced & scored by Milo Thesiger-Meacham. It was first commissioned and broadcast as a work for radio by Radiophrenia, September 2023.

Frames that lean, pictures that roam’ is a collection of instrumental works by Ailie Ormston for tape, electric guitar, cello and double bass. This ensemble of instruments achieves a complex sound ranging from fully electronic (tape) to fully acoustic (strings), with the guitar occupying space in-between. The freeing of fixed material is the common thread throughout these six works – riffs and motifs are established before being reinvented and reimagined, bending and twisting within the bounds of their own frames then reemerging in new pastures. This is employed using different methods in each voice – through processing in the electronics, improvisation on guitar, and detailed notation for the strings.Ormston crafted the foundational electronics by processing fragments of improvised recordings using household objects and instruments, then assembling the results. These source materials are repurposed and brought back into real time as filters which the guitar is channelled through, subtly revoicing them and providing space for new melodic flares. The guitar is further abstracted through preparation with paper woven through the strings to disguise its well-known timbre and to afford new ways of playing. Ultimately, Ormston uses the guitar as a percussive device and sampling tool, bridging the gap between electronic and acoustic realms within the group. Ormston adds further dimension to the ensemble with cello and double bass parts that ground the abstract textures with nourishing melodic passages, informed by pitches, rhythms and gestures found in the other voices.Early interactions of these works were written as part of a commission for experimental music festival Tectonics in 2022. They were further developed whilst in residence at Church Walk, Aldeburgh and completed at home in Glasgow in March 2024. For this album, Ormston is joined by Joanna Stark on cello and Rhona MacDonald on double bass, for whom the string parts were written. Recording of the string instrumentation, as well as studio production on the album, was made possible through support by Help Musicians.  released March 19, 2025

Very pleased and grateful to announce this ‘Home Comfort’ reissue by Mark Glynne and Bart Zwier, originally self-released in 1980. Maybe a bit of an unexpected title to appear in the LSD catalog but my love for this album goes back to my late teenage years and has had an addictive effect since, like a spleen infused magnet.  With this album Glynne and Zwier (†), based in the Netherlands and connected to the Ultra scene, drew an insular blend of intimate post-punk and chamber (bedroom) songs with surreal scenic reflections. Probably its naked singularity defying categorization has left it so unnoticed, even 43 years after the making. It also features a reciting Marlène Dumas still quite unknown at the time. With biggest gratitude to Mark Glynne who instantly felt confident with my proposal to reissue this silent witness of lasting beauty.   My long-time Japanese friend You Ishihara (White Heaven, The Stars) who bought the LP when it came out in 1980 still considers it as one of his all-time favourites. This is what he writes about ‘Home Comfort’:   “Resignation and fear in a desolate mental landscape. This album, which exists like a shelter for those who have quietly escaped through the backdoor of the world, vividly reflects the inner depths of the devastated Amsterdam of the early 80's. A beautiful and sad, unmistakable masterpiece.”

11 track album of previously unreleased music for a ballet choreographed by Philippe Talard. Composed, performed and recorded by Michael Ranta in 1988/1989.

Even though only being fully terminated 50 years after its conception, ‘Azabu’ can be regarded as the starting point of Michael Ranta’s creative self-discovery. The recordings that form the base of ‘Azabu’ were mostly made in the Tokyo district with the same name (Azabu-Juban). Next to abstracted field recordings ‘Azabu’ is also pervaded by a rich variety of percussion, string and wind instruments, all played by Ranta himself. Subsequently Ranta edited, layered and processed the recordings at the NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo. Both pieces display a vast array of acoustic, electronic and concrete sound events meticulously sequenced to a complex fusion symbolizing the entire spectrum of earthly and heavenly sounds. Dynamic extremes evoke a restless flight through space, or through the depths of human subconsciousness, between dream and reality. Ultimately the music disappears, like a dot in the sky gradually fading into nothingness – an “ascension” that closes the loop in a ritual of life that can begin anew again at any time.

This deluxe CD/DVD is packaged in a heavy duty tip-on style gatefold sleeve with a glued in 12 page accordion style booklet. Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia is a deluxe CD/DVD package containing historic recordings made in Harry Bertoia's Sonambient barn.The DVD, a film titled Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia, by Jeffrey & Miriam Eger, was shot in 1971 and follows Harry Bertoia in performance and interview throughout his Sonambient barn deep in the Pennsylvania woods. This film offers a rare opportunity to follow the artist in practice, listening carefully as he moves contemplatively through his sculptures and gongs. Interview footage offers rare insight into Bertoia's inspiration and process.A separate CD contains four exclusive, recently discovered audio recordings. Included are the two earliest known collaborative tapes from Harry and brother Oreste, morning and evening sessions dated October 12, 1969, as well as a collaboration between the Bertoia brothers and their sister Ave who sings in careful unison with the overtones being produced by the sculptures. With the passing of Oreste Bertoia in 1972, these recordings mark the last meeting of all three Bertoia siblings.A 16-page booklet includes many never before seen production stills shot by Jeffrey Eger. These iconic images capture the essence of the artist in practice. All of this is packaged in a heavy duty, tip-on style, gatefold sleeve printed with metallic inks at Stoughton Printing in California.

Two brand new pieces from one of the most exciting, active & relevant members of the first generation sound artists. Magnetic Flights is a perfect follow up to Five Electrical Walks (IMPREC167) and it is being released at the same time as a collection of two of Kubisch's unreleased archival pieces, also on Important. Magnetic Flights is entirely made of electromagnetic field recordings of international airports and inside airplanes. The recordings of this piece were made by Christina Kubisch on her travels in 2007 from and to the airports of Bukarest, Manchester, Chicago, Seoul, Munich, Amsterdam, Zurich, Frankfort, Paris, Lisbon, Berlin, Pisa, Milan and London. The sounds were neither altered electronically nor changed in any other way. The only tool which was used, and only for a part of it, was a filtering program (DINR). All recordings were made with the help of special sensitive wireless headphones, by which the aboveground and underground electromagnetic fields are detected, amplified and made audible. The headphones are custom made, developed by Kubisch, and constructed by the engineer Manfred Fox, Berlin. The sounds are much more musical than one could expect. There are complex layers of high and low frequencies, loops of rhythmic sequences, groups of tiny signals, long drones and many things which change constantly and are hard to describe. Magnetic flights consists of three parts with a short special sound at the beginning, and another one at the end. The piece starts with an electromagnetic sound recorded just before departure, and continues with the material of flight radiations recorded inside different airplanes. These electromagnetic fields slightly change pitch during departure and arrival, but remain quite constant during the flight itself. The relatively high and compact sounds gradually build up a dense layer of vibrations with continuous minimal variations. In the second part, some of the previous flight radiations gradually become filtered. The single signals mingle into a mix of small, short, nervous and very rhythmic signals. Their origin might be radio waves, communication signals with the tower, internet and atmospheric disturbances, but these are only guesses. The third part, the situation of arrival or transition, is a mix of typical electromagnetic sounds in the waiting areas of airports such as the deep vibrations of the screens of monitors which slowly fade in and out. The piece ends with the electrical flickering of an electromagnetic field of unknown origin.

Turner's supportive playing is well matched with Van Hove's probing and voluminous drive, and is perfectly in tune during the introspective moments. Both of which occur amply during the 26 minute opener 'Life Dealers'. The duo's repartee is in fine order from the get-go. For example, about ten minutes in, moments of light pianistic whimsy meets Turner's crisp percussion and the two instruments begin pushing each other to extremes. 'Shopped', the second track, is a concise seven minutes and begins on a more tenuous and mysterious ground than the exuberant opener. Van Hove's chords are bright and welcoming, but unusual. Their intrigue emanates from their lush and unique voicing. The duo's dramatic dynamics are certainly present on the twenty minute 'The Hat'. Van Hove has all the pedals pressed as he builds a wall of sound that we would all happily pay for. This track ends with Van Hove suddenly dropping out, giving Turner a few moments of skittering solo percussion alone time. Van Hove eventually rejoins to bring the epic to a close. The last track, 'More Light' is another terse follow up. Where the previous tune was a dense construction, this one is structurally light and open, like a sweet digestif after the heavy aural meal. - Paul Acquaro

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

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

Tracklisting: 1. Tools Of Imagination - 60:00"With Tools of Imagination we are treated to a tremendous long form improvisation from Evan Parker and Eddie Prévost recorded in the clubroom of Poland’s Pardon To Tu in September of 2017. Eddie Prévost, a co-founder of AMM and the group’s only physical constant is one of the foremost proponents and practitioners of free improvisation in the world today. His companion for this improvisation is the great English saxophonist Evan Parker, another pillar of the European free improvisation community that’s made this strange and wonderful music his life’s work. The two have recorded together fairly extensively, both as a duo and as part of a larger group, always with spectacular results. Here is no exception as the two masters interlace ideas unhurriedly and with great care for the details.The single track, Tools of Imagination, begins with the sounds of Prévost’s reverberating bowed metal to which Parker offers refined, bubbling shapes, surging occasionally into squelches of harmonics and resonance. Prévost is a master of atmosphere, having honed his skills in his 50+ year career as a professional noise maker. I have no idea how he achieves some of the sounds he does with his bow-work, but it’s fascinating to listen to. Groans and deep shudders are intermingled with piercing scrapes and razor barbs. Parker’s tenor gushes like an artesian well of molten chrome, a turbulent outpouring of aural globules that flow like a river across Prévost’s extraterrestrial atmospherics. At ~ 20 minutes in, the track shifts gears, the din receding momentarily before revealing Parker playing plaintively over gong-work that reminds me a little of La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela’s Study for the Bowed Disc. Parker continues to push forward, to weave webs of ectoplasm in his distinct cadence, his circular breathing technique tracing its heavy fractals in the thick ambience stirred up by Prévost. At around the midpoint the song shifts gears again and the musicians regroup into a quiescent hum interrupted intermittently by cymbal clatter and supine sax shapes. For the final half Prévost gets back to work bowing, scraping, and striking at his contraptions, framing Parker’s saxophone playing with a dense thicket of sound that he plays off and against, alternating between subtle percussive tongue slapping and breathy multiphonics. The final 10 minutes or so begin probing and sparsely adorned before bursting back into Parker’s woven harmonics and the groaning, squealing sound world of Prévost.There are certain practices that in my opinion really benefit from preparation and experience, free improvisation being among them. For as free as the playing is on this release, it’s refined in a way that is almost inexplicable to those that are not well versed in it. That’s not to say that there aren’t any surprises here, it’s just that these gentlemen know how to take surprises and run with them. A highly recommended release, there isn’t a dull moment with this one." - Free Jazz Collective

At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. “Funny Funky Rib Crib” is an unforgettable recording (made up of several sessions dating from the middle of 1974) of creative jazz overwhelmed by funk and soul. If Lancaster had already made successful albums in the same genre – notably New Horizons, under the name Sounds Of Liberation which he co-led with Khan Jamal –, this one is an homage to James Brown and Sammy Davis enjoying the company of a host of guests including François Tusques (electric piano), Clint Jackson III (trumpet), François Nyombo (guitar), Joseph Traindl (trombone)… Funny Funky Rib Crib’s cover is a three-quarter profile portrait of the saxophonist (who can also be heard on flute, piano and even vocals), however, on the record, it is the whole group, inspired and frenetic, that tests the melodies of “Just Test”, “Dogtown” or “Rib Crib” – the two versions of which display leader Lancaster’s art of nuance. On both sides of the album, the group also moves into a calmer groove, infused by blues and soul, “Work And Pray” and “Loving Kindness” are meditative tracks where listeners can lay back and relax before asking for more: Funny Funky Rib Crib!!!

"4CD homage to 4 drummers who have been a constant inspiration since the day I bought my first drum set back in 1972 - they are H = Han Bennink, E = Ed Blackwell, M = Milford Graves, P = Phil Seamen. It is a series of solos and duos with Alex Ward, Gabriel Wonck, Alan Wilkinson and James Allsopp." "My homage to the four drummers I came across on the day I bought my first drum kit and who have remained a constant source of inspiration to this day.  I am not trying to be them - just trying to convey what they have inspired in me over the last five decades. For each I have put together a specific drum and cymbal set up, attempting to get close to the sound I associate with each of them, and likewise chose the musicians for the duets accordingly.  The photgraphs are the first images I saw of them - hearing them came later.  I saw Blackwell and Graves live a couple of times, Bennink many times (and played with him on four occasions). Seamen? Not live - he passed away on Friday 13th October 1972 - but one of the first concerts I attended in London was the Phil Seamen Tribute concert at 100 Club on 31st May 1976 (when I saw John Stevens, Ginger Baker and Brian Spring for the first time).  Thanks to Alan, Alex, Gabriel and James and to all at OTO for their support in helping me realise this project. And especially to Shaun Crook who recorded, mixed and mastered all the material."