Orbit-Son, a split CD from the trio of Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, Sue Lynch & Adam Bohman and Jackson Burton Sophie Sleigh-Johnson spoken word, electronics & cassettesAdam Bohman amplified objects, strings, text & voiceSue Lynch tenor saxophone, clarinet & voice Jackson Burton voice, cassettes & liquidsRory Salter pianoAditional text by Ash ReidInfant Tree, 2023

Unity Variations is an album by British jazz saxophonist Evan Parker and German pianist Georg Gräwe, which was recorded in 1998 during the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music and released on Okka Disk. Before this live performance, they had played in duo just once before at the 1991 October Meeting at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam

This music was inspired by Lynn Margulis’ serial endosymbiosis theory (SET), and is dedicated to her and her amazing insights into the mechanisms of biological evolution.In inviting Paul Lytton, Barry Guy, Walter Prati, Marco Vecchi, Lawrence Casserley and FURT, I was trading on the pre-existing musical structures that these musicians brought with them: the solo works of Guy, Lytton , Casserley and myself; the duos with Lytton, Guy, Prati and Casserley, the trio with Guy and Lytton, the trio with Guy and Casserley; my asking FURT added a further music with its own history. (Evan Parker).Commissioned by Donaueschinger Musiktage 2003. Previously unissued.

Tracklisting: 1. As The Wind - 13:362. Seeking The Bubble Reputation - 6:593. Like A Wild-goose Flies - 4:424. Make Noise Enough - 11:535. Ambitious For A Motley Coat - 10:386. As A Weasel Sucks Eggs - 1:217. Come Warble, Come - 1:218. Pipes And Whistles In His Sound - 3:529. Sane Everything - 6:41A 2012 set of trio improvisations by Evan Parker playing soprano saxophone, Mark Nauseef playing metallophone based percussion and Toma Gouband playing lithophone based percussion. Recorded by Evan's friend and brilliant engineer Adam Skeaping in the warm, natural acoustics of St Peters, Whitstable. "Lacking the pyrotechnics of some of his recordings, such as his solo circular-breathing marathons, As the Wind is a slow-burner that ends up being just as impressive in different ways. In time, as well as one of Parker's best it seems likely to be judged one of 2016's best releases." All About Jazz

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

Recorded at Outside In Festival, Crawley, 1989 Cello, Electronics – Marcio Mattos Drum Machine [Rx5 Drum Machine], Electronics – Geoff Serle Electronic Wind Instrument [Wx7 Wind Synthesizer] – Pete McPhail* Keyboards, Electronics, Computer, Conductor, Composed By – Pat Thomas Percussion – Matt Lewis (7), Roger Turner Trumpet – Jon Corbett Turntables – Neil Palmer (8) Violin, Electronics – Phil Durrant Voice – Phil Minton

Composer Tashi Wada has performed for years with his father Yoshi Wada—artist, composer, and early member of the Fluxus movement. However, they have rarely appeared together in studio settings. Nue, the fourteenth entry in RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational FRKWYS series, finally brings Tashi and Yoshi, along with an eclectic group of close friends and extended family, together on tape. Nue draws on aspects of Tashi’s background for his widest vision to date—among them the minimalist bagpipe music of Yoshi, who co-composed three of the tracks, the psychoacoustic and perceptual explorations of his mentor, composer James Tenney, and reimagined forms of ancient and devotional music. The album, however, is not a tribute to the past or a recapitulation of familiar sounds. Instead, Nue is an intertwining of people and ideas as a means of growing, of looking inward to move outward, and of looking back to move forward. To achieve this growth, Tashi assembled a core group of fellow travelers, including Yoshi, composer Julia Holter, producer Cole MGN, and percussionist Corey Fogel, to give life to this multifaceted suite. As an experience, Nue subtly navigates the interactions, intimacy and spaciousness of this group. The album’s title itself is a nod to Tashi’s abiding interest in duality and the unknown: nue is a mythological Japanese chimera with the face of a monkey, the legs of a tiger, and a snake for a tail, a composite form, at once disturbing and otherworldly. But, as the composer points out, nue is also French for naked—stripped of complexity, bare and exposed, but also raw and essential. From the doubling of tones—and the world of harmonic nuances such an action produces—to the rich interplay between individual musicians, all baring their own personalities and experiences through shared performance, Tashi’s compositions allow space for these elements to join and grow. The multipartite creature that is an ensemble melds in the simplicity and purity of the music itself. As explained by Tashi, each part was written with an individual in mind, not simply an instrument. And each individual performer makes their mark, from Holter’s vocal performances on the cresting, oceanic “Mutable Signs” and “Ondine” with guest vocalists Simone Forti, Jessika Kenney and Laura Steenberge, to Fogel’s resonant, precise percussion on “Bottom of the Sky.” Producer Cole MGN, who has worked extensively with artists like Beck and Ariel Pink, helped to create a world of sound with minimal yet multi-dimensional materials. Like many of its influences, Nue uses deceivingly simple means to create complex, coherent worlds and narratives. Tashi notes the influence of legendary Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, whose work looked inward, investigating memory and emotion and dream, to understand the often overwhelming world outside the self. Like Lispector’s classic novel Near to the Wild Heart, Nue cleaves these archetypal dualities—world/self, old/new, complex/simple—to create a work that allows them to coalesce into something singular. As Tashi states in his liner notes: “My desire was to create something both old and new sounding—ancient and futuristic—and ultimately something of its own world and other. Nue is a vision, an endless night of dreams, and a personal history of sorts, full of joys and demons.”

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

Sound Reporters was a Dutch publishing company that specialised in anthropology, religion, and history, releasing unique documents of the cultural multiplicity of human societies and their importance. These recordings were originally released on cassette in 1988, and consist of field recordings made on the Greek island of Amorgos, part of the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea. The release was jointly credited to the painter Harry Van Essen, who lived for several years on the island and recorded its soundscapes, and also to the ethnomusicologist and founder of Sound Reporters, Fred Gales, who mixed the recordings. The recordings consist of sketched amalgams of local sounds from Egiali, a port in the northeast of the island. The first half is a soundscape deeply rooted in the island people’s daily lives, alternating sounds of the sea with popular music, recitations of poetry, the sounds of fishing boats, people playing boardgames, a party. The second half takes us out of the village and into the mountains, unveiling the island’s unadorned natural environment: the sounds of cicadas, the buzz of honeybees, the bells of the large herds of goats left out to pasture, etc.

In 1973, the Sound Sculpture Show took place at the Vancouver Art Gallery. An LP audio catalogue (with a booklet) of the exhibition, entitled “The Sounds of Sound Sculpture”, was released in 1975 under the supervision of the Canadian sound sculptor John Grayson and US composer David Rosenboom. Grayson had edited an important early book on the field, “Sound Sculpture”. The LP included rare takes of Rosenboom and Grayson, amongst others, playing famous pieces by pioneering sound sculptors including the Baschet brothers and Harry Bertoia, the latter best known for his Sonambient series. It also included some of the few recordings by Stephan Von Huene, who had begun to create his kinetic sculptures, and the profound atmospheric pressure systems constructed by the New York sound artist David Jacobs. The LP comes complete with a booklet of visually arresting photos and other materials about these historic sound sculptures.

Spectacular live recording from 1986 of two seminal figures of the Japanese avantgarde -- Akira Sakata on saxophone and Takeo Moriyama on drums. Mitochondria captures the reunion of the two free jazz masters, who started playing together in the Yosuke Yamashita Trio in 1972 until 1975. For both, the experience with the trio was an important step in the development of their own career and musicianship. The recordings are a remarkable performance in which each successfully highlights the essential elements of his playing while giving of room for the other musician. Recorded at Kashiwa Church Chiba Pref. in Japan on May 24, 1986 by Yukio Tezuka on Sony stereo cassette recorder. Mixed by Jim O'Rourke, Mastered by Martin Siewert. Graphic design/cover photo by Lasse Marhaug. Liner notes by Kazue Yokoi.

TRACKS: 1. Mode: Raml Maya 2. Improvisations 3. Mode: Moual 4. Improvisations 5. Mode: Sika 6. Improvisations 7. Mode: Araq 8. Improvisations 9. Mode: Mezmoum 10. Improvisations 11. Mode: Sahli 12. Improvisations 13. Mode: Ghrib 14. Improvisations 15. Mode: Zidane 16. Improvisations 17. Mode: Kourdi 18. Improvisations Mustapha Skandrani. Besides having an excellent name, this man, a luminary of Algerian music, possessed a unique musical sense, able to transcend the borders of musical cultures to create a distinctive fusion of Arabo-Andalusian and European styles. "Istikhbars and Improvisations", recorded in 1965 in Paris, is a solo piano album presenting a trans-Mediterranean crossover based on traditional Algerian vocal pieces known as Istikhbars. Playing these istikhbars (which have roots in the Islamic Arabo-Andalusian culture which flourished in Spain) on the piano, that quintessentially European instrument, Skandrani was greeted with derision by some purists. Skandrani's powerful musical vision, however, perceives the European element involved in Arabo-Andalusian musical culture, a world of exchange and co-existence, and his decision to play this music on the piano reminds us of this European influence. Skandrani's modus operandi on this release is to present each istikhbar, modal in nature, then to play an improvisation based on the istikhbar and its attendant mode. This A/B alternation continues throughout. The pellucid clarity of Skandrani's playing on this album may remind the listener of a modal Goldberg Variations, Bach and Glenn Gould transplanted to Andalucia. Other ears will hear the Arabic/Maghreb elements more strongly. Skandrani's precise touch and clear, symmetrical rhythmic sense links both worlds, assuring us that the Mediterranean is not a barrier, but a unifier, and that the differences between the cultures are not vast. This is an admirable acheivement, resulting in beautiful music of a rare charm. Mustapha Skandrani was born in Algiers in 1920, and died there in 2005. He mastered a number of instruments at an early age, and his musical prowess led him to work with the great singers and ensembles of his day, in live performances, recordings, and radio broadcasts. Later in his life, he devoted much energy to education. --- Em Records, 2021

Saltern presents a thrilling new live recording of Naldjorlak for solo cello, composer Éliane Radigue’s first piece for an acoustic instrument, paired with a remastered version of the long out-of-print, original 2006 recording. Composed in 2005 in close collaboration with cellist Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak marked a striking shift in the music of Radigue, who has since composed exclusively for instrumentalists with her celebrated Occam series. This album brings together two complete performances by Curtis, recorded nearly 15 years apart (Paris in 2006 and Los Angeles in 2020), drawing attention to the evolution of the piece and to its inherent mutability. The sound and spirit of Naldjorlak are centered around the re-tuning of the entire cello to the wolf tone, a uniquely unstable frequency, creating a haunting, almost feedback-like resonance within the instrument itself. From Gascia Ouzounian’s liner notes: “Even as it expands conceptions of what sound is, and thus what music can be, to understand Naldjorlak only as music would be to limit its scope. It is music, but it is also physics and philosophy. Naldjorlak is a detailed investigation of the physical properties of resonating bodies and dynamic systems; it is a meditation on the condition of instability; it is a metaphysics of chaos and uncertainty.” "In bringing these recordings together, the album presents the composition as a living, breathing document, illustrating how Radigue’s music embraces time’s unpredictability in both structure and performance." —Vanessa Ague, Pitchfork

Saltern presents Al Di Là, the first full-length collection of recordings by renowned dancer/choreographer, artist, and writer Simone Forti. Forti (born 1935, Florence, Italy) has influenced generations of artists through her innovative approaches to dance and movement. Forti is noted for her extensive work with musicians, including Charlemagne Palestine, La Monte Young, Jon Gibson, Peter Van Riper, and Z'EV, among others. With Al Di Là, we hear Forti musically in her own right through a diverse collection of never-before-released pieces, ranging from the early '60s to mid-80s, that highlight Forti's use of her voice, folk songs, handmade instruments, and physical space. The album, compiled by Forti with the assistance of Tashi Wada, includes a rare guest appearance by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela and features a 28-page color booklet of writings, drawings, and photos by Forti. Al Di Là is a uniquely personal and intimate portrait of one of the truly visionary artists of our time. Edition of 550. Printed at Stoughton Printing Company. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu. --- Produced by Simone Forti and Tashi Wada Mastered by Stephan Mathieu Cover image by Simone Forti --- Saltern, 2018

Yoshi Wada's "Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile," originally released in 1982 on India Navigation, remains one of the most remarkable flowers to grow in the rarefied air of American minimalism—akin to Terry Riley's "Reed Streams" and Pauline Oliveros' "Accordion & Voice," yet with a wild, liberated energy all of its own. After graduating from Kyoto University of Fine Arts with a degree in sculpture, Wada moved to New York City in 1967 and quickly fell in with the community of artists known as Fluxus. In the early '70s, he began building his own instruments and writing musical compositions, studying with La Monte Young and Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. Recorded during an epic three-day session in an empty swimming pool in upstate New York, Wada's first album brings together two of the oldest drone instruments—the human voice and bagpipes—to simple and glorious effect. A visit to the Scottish Highlands spurred Wada's interest in bagpipes, which the composer integrated into these sparse, otherworldly sounds heard on "Lament." "That swimming pool was quite hallucinatory," recalls Wada. “It was another world. I felt it in terms of resonance. I slept in the pool, and whenever I moved, I woke up because of the reverberations.... The piece itself is an experiment with reeds and improvisational singing within the modal structure." _____ "Yoshi Wada’s masterpiece bends the boundaries between expansive ambience and the intimate harmonics of the inner self, imbuing the world of avant-garde sound with a remarkable and deeply personal sense of humanity." —Bradford Bailey, Soundohm

Saltern present a remastered edition of Yoshi Wada’s The Appointed Cloud (1987), a work which Wada has often said is his favorite of his own. Staged at the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science, The Appointed Cloud was Wada’s first large-scale, interactive installation and featured a custom pipe organ, among other homemade instruments, controlled by a computer equipped with a customized interface and software designed by engineer David Rayna, known for his work with La Monte Young. This recording captures the opening performance for which Wada brought together four musicians on bagpipes (Wada, Bob Dombrowski, and Wayne Hankin) and percussion (Michael Pugliese) to perform with the installation, operated by David Rayna. In Wada’s own words: “This performance [of The Appointed Cloud] was one of the most memorable performances I've done. The space itself—the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science—was incredible. The building was designed for the 1964-65 World’s Fair and had spaceships hanging from the ceiling so people felt like they were traveling in outer space. It was an amazing experience with the sound of the pipe organ, sheet metal, pipe gong, and bagpipes all together. 60 minutes may seem like a long duration, but it didn't feel like it.” --- Composed by Yoshi Wada Sound installation instruments—pipe organ, sirens, tall sheet metal, pipe gong, etc.—provided by Yoshi Wada Computer interface engineering and software: David Rayna Bagpipes: Yoshi Wada, Bob Dombrowski, and Wayne Hankin Timpani and tam-tam: Michael Pugliese Recorded live by John Driscoll on November 8, 1987 Digital transfer by Sonicraft A2DX Lab Mastered by Stephan Mathieu --- Saltern, 2021

Admira is sourced from original master recordings discovered by Kluster member, and Tangerine Dream engineer, Klaus Freudigmann. Along with Vulcano, also being released at the same time on Important, Admira is presented here for the first time in this deluxe package. These intense sessions were made with Schnitzler at the helm, as always, after the departure of Mobius and Roedelius from the group. Conrad Schnitzler founded Kluster in 1969 along with Roedelius, Mobius and often Klaus Freudigmann who had multiple roles within the group as a player, engineer and instrument inventor. Eventually Roedelius and Mobius left Kluster and continued on as Cluster while Schnitzler and Freudigmann continued as Kluster often exploring the communal aspects of music by bringing new people into the group. "I founded the music group Kluster after my exit 1969 from the group GERÄUSCHE (Zodiak with A.Roedelius and Boris Schak). Between 1969 to 1972 I worked with different friends,with TD among others. With them I tried to perform the music of my imagination . "Finally Klaus Freudigmann and Wolfgang Seidel remained at the work continuously over the years. In addition there were several actions with A.Roedelius and D.Möbius where the LPs KLUSTER Klopfzeichen,Osterei and Eruption were made. Instruments, amplifier and effects I gave D.Moebius because he had had no own equipment. I didn't want the music to remind of the normal. My criterias were not folk music, not rock music, not pop songs and not dance music. The idea for 'Cluster' later 'Kluster' (I wanted to avoid Americanisms) is not only a name for a group but a form of music. "I had amplifier, instruments, contact mic's and effects, that could used by the others, too. Klaus had tape machines and microphones. In addition he constructed instruments and electronical sound generators, which made the most undescribable sounds. Wolfgang had everything connected with drum and bass and in addition amplifier and effects. "Klaus had rooms where we could work out our music performances. The tapes 'Electric Meditation' with TD were made in one of that spaces. Most of the performances happened with friends who took part in the actions; therefore Conrad,Klaus,Wolfgang and friends. I've got all rights at that music. The numberings of the single CDRs have nothing to do with the date of the creation of the music. I've numbered them, because I've dubbed them. "That was difficult and I tried to do it as best as possible on CDR. A special date for the creation of the single tapes couldn't be find out, therefore the date of the creation - years 1969 - 1973. After that there were only sporadical actions with KLUSTER, no money for place to play, only cold winter." ~ Conrad Schnitzer "When you look at documentaries from the late sixties, it looks like California was everywhere. Endless Summer. Or a never ending Woodstock. What we did not know then was that the Woodstock movie showed the pictures people wanted to see. The guys who made the film knew that and the success at the box office was their reward for not disappointing their audience’s expectations. Berlin was quite different – West-Berlin, the half of the city where Kluster was founded. When my mind wanders back it was always Winter. These Winters were bitter cold. We lived in old houses with little coal ovens. Keeping them working and finding the money for coal was a task that could consume half of your day. No wonder that in German the word ‘Kohle’ (= coal) stands for money. "Two years ago I visited Klaus Freudigmann, member of Kluster and sound engineer for a lot of other bands from those early days of what eventually was coined ‘Krautrock’ (a term I did not like because it puts totally different people and music under one label that do not fit together). The reason for this visit was a planned book on one of these bands. It turned out that Klaus Freudigmann still kept some of their recordings in a suitcase, mainly the intermediate stages of the recording process. Multi-track still lay in the future. He worked with two tape recorders playing ping pong between them (for Kluster he’d made long tape loops we used in our sessions). To our surprise out of that suitcase that hadn’t been opened for twenty years popped a bundle of tapes from the Kluster sessions (1970 – 1973). They had stood the time quite well and the sound wasn’t so bad either because we had amplifiers with direct recording outputs, which was an unusual feature at that time. Two of these recordings had been chosen as bonus tracks for the Captain Trip re-releases of the first two Kluster LPs. For that purpose we had to give names to them, something Conrad Schnitzler had abandoned years ago and from then on only numbering his work. When we had to think about names for ‘songs’ the first memories that sprung to our minds were: ‘cold Winter’ and ‘black Spring’. As the Winters were cold, Spring was black. Over the months of the cold season the snow got drenched with the ingredients of the smoke pouring out of a million chimneys (plus the product of Berlin’s largest population: dogs). And while the snow melted away the cinder stayed and covered the streets with a black mud. What made things worse – in the Eastern half of the city they fuelled their ovens with cheap brown coal. Its smoke smelled like rotten eggs. Not only to the nose the socialist paradise was more like brimstone from hell. And the poisonous exhaust wasn’t stopped by the wall, the East had built to keep their share of the people happily flocked under what they mistook as socialism. The wall was not high enough to stop the smoke going from East to West. And it was not high enough either to stop rock and roll and Coca Cola from transmitting their message from West to East. Something were the East could not compete. The reason was that their country christened as ‘German Democratic Republic’ was not much democratic but very, very German letting their army parade with the same goose step that the neighbouring countries had learned to fear. "Rock and roll and its most adventurous sibling psychedelia were effective remedies against climatic, political and mental cold. To perform our brand of music from an outside world, we sat up a little tent in a ballroom that went out of business years before. We built it from transparent plastic and heated it with electric fans. The room was painted completely black except for one wall that was covered with aluminium foil – a novelty in those days – reflecting and warping the lights from our tent. I still wonder who paid the bill for the electricity we’d consumed. Nobody – that was one of the reasons why we had to find another place. The next stop was one floor of an abandoned factory were Klaus Freudigmann lived and recorded. Downstairs was a print shop where a large portion of the posters, newspapers and books of the radical left had been printed. The rata-ta-clac of the printing machines mixed with our music. For me that connection led to a twenty years engagement, earning my living in print shops, until I decided to switch, finding myself a job with a television company. It turned out to be a wise decision in times where fewer and fewer people read books. "The factory at Admiralstrasse housed us for a year or so. Things changed quickly at the end of the 60s/early 70s. Everybody was on the move, experimenting with live without long discussions over the possible risks involved. Behind us was a prosperous decade and everybody lived in the belief that things can only get better. The only thing people feared, was stagnation. West Berlin was the last place the German ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ had arrived, but the optimism that ruled these years was felt there, too. And we had chosen this backyard of prospering West Germany, because living was cheap and it was easy to find a place to stay in a city where lots of people and a large portion of the companies had left heading west. We moved back to the ballroom. This time to a smaller room under the roof. Conrad had painted it completely white – walls, ceiling and floor. And he tagged white fabric to large frames. Behind these frames went the speakers, other stuff we did not need at hand and neon lights. As a result we found ourselves with our instruments in a white, featureless place that appeared much larger than it actual was. It looked a bit like the interior of the space ship in Kubrick’s 2001. And as experienced space travellers we knew ways to achieve weightlessness. "Our wallets could have done better with some weight. You could not easily starve in West Berlin’s ghost economy that ran mostly on state subsidies to keep it functioning as showcase of the free West. But getting rich was difficult either. Not with a normal nine to five job – and that was definitely not what we were after. So the white room was another short lived episode. Earning sufficient amounts of money with music proved to be difficult, too. What we did was only for a small audience – and we knew it. But even if you aimed at a larger market, things were not easy. Rock music and what went with it was largely believed as critical against capitalism. This involved that your audience expected that culture is something that has to be accessible to everybody without any profits involved. I still believe that these ideas are worth thinking about. But it doesn’t make the life of artists or musicians easier. You end up understanding what Adorno meant when he wrote: 'there is no right life within wrong life.' But what we could do was getting our little whiff of a life outside that ‘wrong.’ A lot of what is written about the term ‘Krautrock’ circles around esoteric beliefs, a search for your inner self. That’s one of the reasons why I dislike that label. You’re a product of the society you are living in. What you see reflected when you look into you is that society. But you are no robot either. You can make decisions. But to change your inner self, you have to change society, too. That implies that your fantasy steps as far outside this society as possible instead of huddle in your self like a child. That’s why I remember that transparent plastic tent at the old ballroom that floated like a little bubble of light in the darkness of space. It seemed to come out of one of the science fiction novels I’ve read during my school years. At that time such stories had been my vehicle to get ‘outside’. In later years music did this job." ~ Wolfgang Seidel

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia’s thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney’s underground music community. The pair’s collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi’s pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim’s visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio’s efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album’s two sides draw on each artist’s enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams’ interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work’s duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble’s members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve. While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams’ launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim’s machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi’s masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work’s inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim’s decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it’s two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms.