What?? is a focused and grounding work produced by Swedish composer Folke Rabe in 1967. From his interest in sound phenomena and harmonics Rabe was able to make one of the most deep, moving pieces of sustained sound generated in this formative era of minimalist electronic composition. Initially reissued on Dexter's Cigar in 1997 and now available on Important with expanded packaging including archival materials furnished by the composer. Amplified infinity. "My interest in the makeup of various sound phenomena began many years ago. The basic physical preconditions were familiar to me, but I wanted to experience the components of the sound with my hearing. I attempted to 'hear into' the different sounds in order to grasp the components that made them up. I experienced how the overtones in a tone sounding on the piano change slowly as they die away. I also attempted to grasp the brittle arpeggio of formants that arises when a vowel is slowly changed at a particular pitch. I also tried, as far as possible, to train my hearing to tease out the complex processes that occur at the origin of sound. "At the same time as this listening, I was concerned with monotony. My first feeble attempts yielded little: later, more systematic repetitions led to findings. I found methods by which the transitoriness of sound could to some extent be compensated. Small details and micro-variations between the repeated elements that would not have been noticed in a context richer in contrast then come to the fore. Extended sounds that change and move into one another very slowly have a similar effect. "Hobby experiments of the sort described, as I conducted them, are of course primitive from a theoretical point of view. But this basic experience was exactly what was important to me. "The musical field indicated here is perhaps somewhat foreign to the Western musical tradition. In other living cultures it is entirely relevant. This state of affairs is, I believe, connected with the development of musical notation. As this method of fixing sound developed, all the subtler qualities of pitch, sound, and time relationships had to be leveled off. On the other hand, systems of notation first made possible meaningful musical constructions. This fact compensated for the loss just described, making possible the great tradition of European music. "In Western composition, intervals, rhythms, and tone color – to the extent that they eluded notation – were subordinated to a philosophical idea, or at least a motivic/formal one. The sounding fact as such retreated into the background, and the West, in ethnocentric self-idolization, erected its own cultural tradition (be it Beethoven or Coca-Cola) as an example to the world. "But there are in the world many fields of music in which the qualitative element grows from the immediate sound. In such music, one looks in vain for formal elements in the Western sense; this music may thus seem primitive, senseless, or even provocative. In reality, however, these are two different possibilities of musical organization. "Indian musicians said to me that Western music is certainly good music, but they found its technique of phrasing incomprehensible: 'The music always breaks off before it has begun!' "What What?? means: As you will hear, What?? is constructed from harmonic sounds. These sounds move into one another by means of enharmonic melding of the partials. I chose harmonic sounds because a pleasing richness results from them, but more particularly because the partials reinforce one another through their inner hierarchy, and can thereby produce certain illusions. "I chose the extended, seemingly endless form in order to enable peaceful journeys of discovery in the sound, but also in order to work with this particular material. Electronic devices have no muscles. 'Breathing' expressiveness is contrary to their nature; their characteristic quality is an enormous, tireless endurance. "About 85% of the material is made up of electronically generated tones, which however are never present in their static, original form. Each partial has been specially treated in itself, which can at times yield a very rich result.

Edition of 500 LP on black vinyl. Audiophile pressing. Gatefold cover, including printed inner. Perfect replica of the original packaging (with additional translated liner notes) and newly remastered for optimal sound.** Of all the historic labels associated with experimental music, few have garnered as much affection, or as devoted a following, as the Italian imprint Cramps. Its catalog reads like a who's who of the 1970s musical avant-garde, housing seminal albums by John Cage, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Giusto Pio, Demetrio Stratos, Juan Hidalgo, Robert Ashley, Walter Marchetti, Cornelius Cardew, Raul Lovisoni / Francesco Messina, Alvin Lucier, Derek Bailey, and so many more, the vast majority of which have remained largely out of print and nearly impossible to obtain for decades. Now, at long last, the Milan based imprint, Dialogo, has begun a stunning series of vinyl reissues from Cramps' Nova Musicha series - dedicated to contemporary avant-garde composers - beginning with Costin Miereanu’s Luna Cinese, originally released in 1975. Fully remastered and housed in a sleeve that beautifully reproduces the album’s signature design, complete with brand a new English translation of the original liner notes, this is a truly historic event. For its impact, Cramps was a relatively short-lived endeavor, running for roughly seven years between 1973 and 1980. Founded in Milan by the producer, publisher, and graphic designer, Gianni Sassi - publisher of counter-cultural magazines like Bit and Frankenstein, and the designer behind numerous covers for Bla Bla, including Franco Battiato's Fetus and Pollution - Cramps was the pitch perfect emblem of revolutionary Italian temperaments of its era; creatively radical, globally minded, without profit motive, and bridging numerous musical idioms, from progressive rock and jazz, to some of the most forward thinking and singular expression of sonic experimentalism the world has ever seen. Of all the seminal figures that recorded for Cramps, the Romanian / French composer, Costin Miereanu, remains among the most distinct and under-appreciated. The reemergence of his debut LP, Luna Cinese, issued by the label in 1975, will likely change that. Over the last decade or so, Miereanu has developed something of a cult following among experimental fans because of his stunning series of albums issued during the 1980s on his own Poly-Art imprint, skirting the border of ambient music and minimalism in highly individual ways. Luna Cinese, which dives into far more explicitly experimental territory, will undoubtedly be a revelation and expose the true underpinnings of the work that would begin to emerge of the next decade and a half. During his early years, Costin Miereanu was something of a wunderkind of avant-garde and experimental music. Born in Bucharest, between 1960 to 1966 he was a student of Alfred Mendelsohn, Dan Constantinescu, and Lazar Octavian Cosma, before moving to Paris where he earned a Doctor of Letters and a Doctor of Musical Semiotics, winning numerous prizes in writing, analysis, music history, esthetics, orchestration, and composition. Between 1967 and 1969 he was a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, and Ehrhard Karkoschka at the Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik in Darmstadt, laying the final groundwork for a stunning career as both a composer and noted academic over the years since, often combining techniques drawn from Satie with the abstraction of Romanian traditional music into a sonic fabric that is guided by systems associated with Musique concrète. Luna Cinese, issued as the composer's debut LP by Cramps in 1975, is a stunning combination of all these elements. The work - stretching across the album's two sides, consists of continuous low-density repetitions, build from what the composer describes as “the kind of 'woven' silence you find on mountains – occasionally disturbed by irregular and very dense insertions – the kind of intense noise you find in the city.” The result, combining a vast range of environmental sound, voices chattering in various languages, fragments of acoustic instrumentation, and the pulsing and ambiences of synths and electronics, is about as singular and beautiful as experimental works from the 1970s come, while never for a moment sacrificing rigour or tension. A truly stunning, interwoven sonic expanse that lays pregnant with multiple meaning and interpretations - conceived by the composer to illuminate the complex ways in which meaning and narrative are constructed across time - and imbued with surrealism and the 'schizoid', Luna Cinese stands as an entirely distinct and original gesture within the canon of experimental music, displaying a remarkable density, while open, airy, and encouraging the subjectivity of the listener to play an active part. Easily among the best and important works from the original Cramps catalog, but sinfully overlook over the years since its release, Luna Cinese is as good as they come and an absolutely riveting and immersive listen. Issued by Dialogo in this newly remastered vinyl edition - the first since 1975 - with its original liner notes by Miereanu in a brand-new English translation, this one is impossible to recommend enough and will leave the composer ringing in your mind for a long time to come.

Glass mastered CD, edition of 500, with insert and notes by the composer. Marc Sabat's Gisoeffo Zarlino is "the third in a series of pieces inspired by ideas in the history of music theory, which I seek to experience and unfold in a sounding world" (taken from the liner notes by the composer). In the piece, unfolding cyclically over 70 minutes, voices, strings, harp, and flute, weave through each other exploring a novel tonal space developed by the Renaissance Italian Composer-Theorist, Gioseffo Zarlino in 1558 and reinterpreted in the 21st Century by Sabat. By articulating minor differences in tone and interval (through instrumentation and vowel formants) during successive interpretations of the piece, Sabat conjures the spirit of restless innovation put forth, and all too often forgotten in modernity, over 400 years ago by music theorists such as Zarlino. Rebecca Lane quarter tone bass flute Fredrik Rasten guitar Marta Garcia-Gomez harp Thomas Nicholson positive organ Catherine Lamb & Yannick Guedon voices Silvia Tarozzi violin Marc Sabat viola Deborah Walker cello 1. viola & cello 2. voices, (+violin), viola & cello 3. (+harp), organ, violin, viola & cello 4. (+guitar), harp, organ, violin 5. guitar, harp, organ, voices, violin, (+viola & cello) 6. bass flute, guitar, harp, organ, voices, violin, viola & cello 7. [-bass flute], guitar, harp, viola & cello 8. (+bass flute), [-guitar], organ, voices 9. [-flute], (+guitar), organ (instrument enters midway through a cycle) [instrument ends midway through a cycle]

“Some of it sounds so pure and clear and I am picturing him huddled around all that gear, simply magical. In my memory he didn’t play ‘for’ the audience but was rather trying to perfect these various permutations of sound within himself…and a few of us just happened to be present.” – Tom Lee Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come in And Out & Sketches For World of Echo offers two intimate unedited Arthur Russell solo live performances recorded at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation in Downtown NYC on 12/20/85 and 06/25/84 as a limited edition double CD. Phill curated and produced with Arthur both concerts at EI that would become an integral part of the foundation for the World of Echo album. Arthur titled the performances “Sketches for World of Echo” (originally released on cassette/DL in 2020) and “Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come in and Out”. These extraordinary performances were recorded 18 months apart between 1984/85 by Steve Cellum and overseen by Phill and Arthur. Arthur would later edit sections from both concerts merging it with studio material recorded at Battery Sound to finalize the World of Echo album released in 1986.

The mid-90s were particularly abundant years for harsh noise, producing many albums which are now considered masterpieces. One of the most beloved classics from this period is "As Loud As Possible" by Incapacitants. Active since 1981, the duo of Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai found their stride in the early 90s and set off on an unrelenting course which produced countless gems of noise. Many of these have been well preserved and documented elsewhere, compiled on "Box Is Stupid" and "Alchemy Box Is Stupid", however, "As Loud As Possible" has never been reissued since its original release on Zabriskie Point. It is now made available for the first time since 1995, with no corner cut in preparation of its reissue. The audio was transferred from the original tapes by Din-I-Ilahi, and re-mastered for digital and vinyl formats by Rashad Becker. The iconic cover photographs by Naomi Hosokawa have been scanned from the original negatives and enlarged for the expanded format, along with outtakes and unused shots, which are now included here for the first time. T. Mikawa also dug into the Incapacitants archives and unearthed two additional tracks of previously unreleased material, recorded around the same time as the album. These two tracks, entitled "As Loud As Possible Revisited" are included as a bonus 7" with alternate picture sleeve. Features extensive liner notes written by Sam McKinlay aka The Rita. A personal all-time favourite, it is an honour to present "As Loud As Possible" as a double LP in deluxe gatefold sleeve. Includes digital download.

Alto Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone – Anders Svanoe Cello – Marcio Mattos Clarinet – John Rangecroft Design – Sascha Kleis Double Bass – Barry Guy, Jaribu Shahid Drums, Percussion – Paul Lytton, Tani Tabbal Engineer [Assistant] – Giulio Gallo, U.T. Gandhi Ensemble – The Transatlantic Art Ensemble* Flute – Neil Metcalfe Illustration [Cover Image] – Max Franosch Photography By [Photos] – Caroline Forbes Piano – Craig Taborn Producer [Produced By], Liner Notes – Steve Lake (2) Recorded By [Concert Recording] – Manfred Eicher, Stefano Amerio Soprano Saxophone, Music By – Roscoe Mitchell Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Evan Parker Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Corey Wilkes Viola – Nils Bultmann Violin – Philipp Wachsmann

EVIEWS "A splendid studio session by Alexander von Schlippenbach’s large ensemble, recorded over three days of November 1975 The guest soloists are Enrico Rava and Anthony Braxton who both contribute one composition – and those two tracks are the album’s highlights. Rava’s “Marañao” is lively and noisy, with multi chaotic tuttis, while Braxton’s “U-487” uses the orchestra’s power to hammer in complex lines with uncanny joy. Also on the program are two Schlippenbach compositions and one by Peter Kowald. Excellent recording, smoking performances - why the heck hadn’t these been released earlier? Grab this one while it’s hot!" - Monsieur Délire "Baden-Baden '75 - Globe Unity Orchestra + Guests kicks things off in style with a quintessential example of what FMP has always been about, combining a core group of German free players with visitors like Enrico Rava, Kenny Wheeler, Anthony Braxton, and Paul Rutherford. While Globe Unity could always brew up a mighty roar, this recording shows the importance of compositional forms. Rava's "Marañao" is a free lilting swing that brings to mind Brotherhood of Breath, and Braxton's "U-487" a tour de force of ensemble colors with a proto-march theme that acts as a connective thread for features by Schlippenbach, Lovens, Wheeler, Braxton, Schoof, and Brötzmann. Kowald's "Jahrmarkt", the only previously issued piece on the CD, breaks the ensemble down in to various sub-groupings to romp through skirling, cacophonous roars shot through with deconstructed kernels of Monk, Charlie Parker and polka along with killer solos by Mangelsdorff and Braxton. And Schlippenbach's "Hanebüchen" and "The Forge" show the pianist's knack for improvisational orchestrations, whether massing the sections of the ensemble or hocketing lines around the group in swirling, spontaneous antiphony." - ParisTransatlantic "The opening track, composed by Enrico Rava, is a good way for listeners to ease into the FMP journey. The second track (by Braxton) is also nothing short of marvelous - with sounds both meandering and jarring before the ensemble makes it way to a wailing improvisation layered on top of an industrial, organized march. Over the course of the recording the music leans further and further out, although there are obvious but not belabored nods to Bebop, Monk, and Breuker, to name a few . The last two tracks by Schlippenbach deliver us to the threshold of the territory eventually defined by FMP." - Cadence Magazine Globe Unity Orchestra & Guests Enrico Rava: trumpet Manfred Schoof: trumpet Kenny Wheeler: trumpet Anthony Braxton: alto saxophone, clarinet Peter Brötzmann: saxophones & clarinets Rüdiger Carl: alto & tenor saxophone Gerd Dudek: soprano & tenor saxophone, flute Evan Parker: soprano & tenor saxophone Michel Pilz: bass clarinet Günter Christmann: trombone Albert Mangelsdorff: trombone Paul Rutherford: trombone Alexander von Schlippenbach: piano Peter Kowald: double bass, tuba Buschi Niebergall: double bass Paul Lovens: drums Recorded by Schuster/Wagner from November 25th to 27th, 1975,

Alto Saxophone – Finn Peters Bass Trombone – Sarah Williams Double Bass – Dave Whitford Drums – Jeff Williams Electric Piano  – Hans Koller French Horn – Jim Rattigan Guitar – Bill Frisell Soprano Saxophone – Evan Parker (tracks: 5, 8) Tenor Saxophone, Clarinet – Robin Fincker Trombone – Mark Nightingale Trumpet – Percy Pursglove, Robbie Robson

Real-time improvisations, to be played at maximum volume. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London, UK, May 4th, 2008. Cover collage by Cody Brant.

Recerded: live at the Cerkno Jazz Festival in Slovenia in May of 2018. ​ What the critics say: This disc was recorded live at the Cerkno Jazz Festival in Poland in May of 2018. This disc is a celebration for Slovenian drummer, Zlatko Kaucic, whose long career stretches back some 40 years. Although Mr. Kaucic is currently 67, I’ve only noticed his playing since the turn of the millennium.                                           He has worked with a long line of European’s best: Steve Lacy, Peter Brotzmann, Barry Guy and many more. He has organized a great European all-star quartet. This is a marvelous quartet, all four members at the top of their abilities. The music is tight, focused, well-integrated and consistently reinventing itself. This sounds like a group effort with no one person leading, all members integral to the group sound. There is some incredible interaction going on here, often one or two instruments will start a line or string of notes which will soon be connected to another line and completed by a second or third instrument. Extraordinary! There is quite a bit of magical, spiritual, consistently interconnected playing that will keep you at the edge of your seat throughout! - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG

50th Birthday Concert is a double CD live album by British saxophonist and improviser Evan Parker recorded at Dingwalls in 1993 and released on the English Leo label

Evan Parker is one of the world's greatest saxophone virtuosos, a revolutionary innovator who has almost single handedly changed the language of the instrument. House Full of Floors is the exciting follow up to his incredible studio composition Time Lapse, released to great acclaim on Tzadik in 2006. Working with three of London's most accomplished improvisers, Evan has fashioned a new world of sound in this exciting new recording. Radical soundscapes from one of the most important musical figures in contemporary music.     Personnel: John Edwards: Bass Evan Parker: Soprano Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone Aleks Kolkowski: Stroh Viola, Saw And Wax Cylinder Recorder John Russell: Guitar

In 2001, Phill Niblock wrote, "You should play the music very loud. If the neighbors don't complain, it's probably not loud enough." "In 2019, Niblock can no longer host his annual 6 hour-long solstice concert at the Experimental lntermedia loft; not only did the neighbors complain, the landlord sued. But the validity of his prescription is undiminished, for it takes sonic volume and spatial confinement to unlock his music's true nature. Give the sound waves a boost and something hard to smack against, and they begin to shiver and multiply so that tones transform tones and every turn of the head  (or every new room) yields a new listening experience. But Guitar too, for four is notable in Niblock's oeuvre for its independence from loudness. While it sounds great turned up, the additive process that yielded the CD's two versions has resulted in music that changes most rewardingly, even when heard at modest volume.      Victor Frankl opined that in the hierarchy of essential human motivations, meaning eclipses pleasure. In some ways, this music hews closer to the pleasure principle. Once you let go of the yearning for tunes and grooves, it's a sensuous delight to dunk yourself in the warm sound-bath of his music. And Niblock would be the first person to scotch any efforts to assign the sort of cosmic significance fhaf certain other drone-oriented minimalists did to their art. But consider this notion; Niblock's music is fundamentally social. It only truly happens in spaces where people gather.      While he does much of the composing and assembling of this music alone, Niblock didn't treat Guitar too, for four as finished until he got some more people in on the act. He asked Rafael ToraI and Jim O'Rourke to contribute to a CD edition. And when O'Rourke declined to play on his own production, but instead invited Kevin Drumm, Alan Licht, Thurston Moore, and Lee Renaldo to do the honors, Niblock's reaction was the more, the merrier.  To the extent that connecting people is an essentially meaningful activity, this music is the connective tissue of meaning."

GONDOLAS Graham Lambkin/James Rushford CD 1: Through Clouds or Something You Know What Mountain Silver Rain Wild Rainbows A Leaf Under Our Control Rise of the Machines CD 2: Playbit Traditional Noise Wall Gondolas recorded/mixed at LHSH, London with additional recording at OTO Project Space, London and Neues Schloss, Stuttgart 2019-2023

JOHN BUTCHER + 13 dieb13 ~ turntables Liz Allbee ~ trumpet Sophie Agnel ~ piano Hannah Marshall ~ cello Angharad Davies ~ violin Pat Thomas ~ electronics Mark Sanders ~ percussion John Edwards ~ double bass Ståle Liavik Solberg ~ drums Matthias Müller ~ trombone Isabelle Duthois ~ voice, clarinet Pascal Niggenkemper ~ double bass Aleksander Kolkowski ~ stroh viola, musical saw John Butcher ~ saxophones, recordings, composition Robin Smith (hcmf// 2021 preview) Where ‘fixed’ and ‘fluid’ might seem to present a conflict of interests, Butcher’s new piece presents them in a kind of harmony. His score positions these two musical qualities on a spectrum, making use of both. “This is a delicate thing”, he says, “If you pin things down too much you can kill them. I want to give instructions that run from the very precise to the almost intangible, in a way that allows the musicians to mould their playing into the piece”. There’s a lot of subtext to Fluid Fixations – Butcher is writing for thirteen other musicians, all of whom he has collaborated with throughout his career – mutuals who meet in a relentlessly overlapping Venn diagram of the experimental music underground. “Ultimately, I’m the common denominator: the people within the group haven’t all played with each other, and there are some who won’t even have met before”. John Butcher (2024) Fluid Fixations places 14 highly individual players into a framework built from instructions that direct ever-shifting groupings, materials and relationships. Overall, the piece was informed by what I think of as psychological orchestration – imagining how specific people might respond to particular ideas, and to the sonic company they find themselves a part of. In places the sound world incorporates saxophone recordings cut earlier to vinyl by dieb13. His improvising with them – for example; the mouth sounds in pt 2 (with Isabelle Duthois’ voice) and the feedback-saxophone in pt 6 (with Aleks Kolkowski’s musical saw) – tangibly changing the fixed into the flowing. Some sections use photographic imagery, mostly drawn from nature, to suggest spaces where the musicians can step away from the score to create their own worlds. Specified solos, duos and small groupings were woven into the piece, but my aim for much of the time was to engage the entire ensemble in a multifaceted group music. One whose internal workings both reflect and refract these musicians’ very unique energies.

"Scrutables, recorded in 2000, is a work of classic British free improvisation, if "classic" can be applied to the kind of sonic mayhem practiced regularly by Butcher, the late guitarist Derek Bailey and percussionist Gino Robair, whose instrument here is described as "energized surfaces". The interactive mechanics of every genuine improvisation are unique, an incalculable intersection of habit, synapse, randomness, extrasensory perception and listening that ranges from microscopically detailed to non- existent. At any moment it might sound as if each musician is creating his own continuum or as if each is responding to the infinite nuances of the others. Either way, the lines and sounds continuously interact in a scattershot effect that has a line moving from guitar to drum to saxophone and back again." NEW YORK JAZZ CITY RECORD - Stuart Broomer. Six years since his death, instant composition’s original Zen master has been busy in absence as usual. with a reissue of .......... and this previously unheard late-period gem, scratched out in Stockwell, south London in 2000. The Yorkshire yogi plays electric guitar here, snaking sustained hums over simpatico bustle from saxophonist John Butcher and percussionist Gino Robair. Pan walks abroad. The string-stretching satyr of non-idiomatic improvisation is back. Again. SUNDAY TIMES - Stewart Lee.