'The end sounds like the angels opening up heaven... Should we say euphoria?" This is Julius Eastman himself, speaking about his 1974 piece Femenine, a repetitively hypnotic, gently melodic and uplifting experimental composition for chamber ensemble, and a beautiful example of what he coined "organic music" - slowly evolving pieces that often flowed into a gradual disintegration. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. Alongside Petr Kotik, he was a founding member of the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1970, and was one of the first composers to combine classical minimalism with popular music, paving the way for innovators such as Arthur Russell, whom he later befriended and collaborated with. Eastman was politically committed, a figure of queer culture, and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny. Invoking his work as a composer, dancer and performer with his identity as both queer and Black, Eastman would never realise the same level of success as contemporary New York minimalist composers such as John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Morton Feldman, and in the winter of 1981-82 was evicted from his apartment, resulting in him becoming homeless, and many of his scores and recordings impounded and destroyed by the police. Declared missing, and suffering from various addictions, he was found dead on the streets of Buffalo, NY in 1990, aged just 49, following years of vagrancy. With much of his work lost, and notation of the remaining manuscripts unconventionally written, deliberately loose and open to interpretation, it would not be until the late 1990's when, headed by fellow composer and performer in New York's 1980's downtown music scene, Mary Jane Leach, those who knew and worked with Eastman began to piece together his legacy, and salvage recordings and scores. Leach made this resource freely available on her website, and in the decades that followed, made a renewed recognition of Eastman's work possible. This release, performed by Ensemble 0, follows the discovery of a 1974 recording of 'Femenine' by the S.E.M. Ensemble. --- Ensemble 0 is a "variable geometry group" formed in France in 2004 by Joël Merah, Stéphane Garin, and Sylvain Chauveau, whose line-up and instruments change according to the repertoire performed, working with many regular and invited collaborators. For this 71-minute piece, Ensemble 0 are joined by Aum Grand Ensemble including Melaine Dalibert (piano), Sophie Bernado (bassoon), Cyprien Busolini (viola), Jozef Dumoulin (Fender Rodhes, synthesizer), Céline Flamen (cello) Stéphane Garin (percussion), Ellen Giacone (voice), Jean-Brice Godet (bass clarinet), Amélie Grould (vibraphone), Alexandre Herer (electronics), Tomoko Katsura (violin), Julien Pontvianne (saxophones, orchestration) and Christian Pruvost (trumpet). --- Sub Rosa, 2021

Despite the all-time top-ten C.P. GOAT title "Greek Electronic Music-1" & it's counterpart "Works of Electronic Music", the series has seen precious little Greek Early Electronic Music. Attempts to secure copies of key Nikiforos Rotas, Nikos Mamagakis, & Dragatakis Koutouki sides have been futile for some time, until one of the key C.P. cabal struck gold in the form of this epic double-LP Tape Music suite by Greek Composer Kyriakos Sfetsas, released alongside the two Roland Hollinger LPs on the French Scorpios label in early 1974.  Touted, dubiously perhaps, as "one of the first pieces written for four-channel tape in the world", Sfetsas' score for the Ballet "Smog" is a wonder of arbitrarily layered Analogue Synth patches & gated electric organ filigree, coming in somewhere between the drone-psych undertones of It's "Viaje", the raw concrète sprawl of Jean-Claude Eloy's majestic "Shanti" & "Gaku-No Michi" sets, and the burbling, modular automatons of Conrad Schnitzler, Pierre Henry's "Mise En Musique" & Carter Thomas' "Sonoma".  This is one of those pieces that, much like Dariush Dolat-Shahi's "Electronic Music, Tar, and Sehtar", combines a number of ideas that I've been working with personally for the past few years into a combination that is far more pleasing than anything I've personally been able to muster; which is both frustrating & entirely amazing - astonishing to me that this has lain dormant for so long! One of the absolute highlights of the series thus far... --- Creen Pone, 2018

This boxset compiles some of the inter-related releases that Sarah Davachi’s Late Music label put out in 2020 of her own solo work. Including the first album featuring her own vocals (Cantus, Descant), the two disc live set (Figures In Open Air) and an extended EP of sketches for these releases.  Cantus, Descant largely consists of droning organs which slowly morph over the course of several minutes. Occasionally these drones etherise into something unsettling - the ‘Passing Bell’ interlude being the most obvious example - but by and large this is a positive-sounding record. Sometimes Davachi’s tones are curious, sometimes uplifting, sometimes almost joyous, but whatever mode she’s operating in the general mood of Cantus, Descant is one of upbeat drift.  One notable evolution of Davachi’s sound here is the use of vocals, an element which hadn’t previously featured in her music. ‘Play The Ghost’, for instance, is an inviting number which plays Davachi’s gentle singing and techniques influence by Black Sabbath’s Planet Caravan against woozy organs and languid, cascading melodies. It’s a dreamworld delight, one with an ethereal feel that means it wouldn’t sound out of place in a David Lynch film. Davachi is a very productive artist who has released several albums of keyboard music over the past few years. However, Cantus, Descant is a generous offering even by the standards that Davachi has previously set - this album runs to seventeen tracks and well over an hour in length.  Figures In Open Air is described by Davachi as a ‘complement of sorts’ to her 2020 studio LP Cantus, Descant. As such, it’s no surprise that different versions of several tracks from that album can be heard here - an instrumental take on Cantus, Descant highlight ‘Canyon Walls’, for instance, spins out the etherised dream-pop of the original into almost fifteen minutes of eerie FM drones and pensive woodwind harmonies. Laurus, an extended EP previously only available on cassette is a collection of demos and sketches for these sessions. Taped in the Summer of 2017, these pieces are, in Davachi’s own words, “a more raw and improvisational representation of the composition process [for Cantus, Descant] in its early stages”. --- Late Music, 2021

Matt 6-page Digipack with drawings by Luciano Maggiore on the inside panels. It contains one long track. --- 150 copies limited edition. Recorded and edited in London between November 2020 and April 2021. --- edizioni luma, 2021

After leaving Subterranean Records, Z' ev moved on to the fabulous German label Dossier for his next two albums. "Schönste Muziek" and "Bust This!" were released in 1986/1988 and bring you the classical Z'ev percussion sound. Rarely has he been more innovative and more experimental in his work, a great variety of sounds is being created out of all kinds of percussion instruments. On this CD re-issue, both these albums have been carefully remastered. Possibly a perfect starting point if you want to know more about Z'ev's music, for a fan a must-have as these have never before been available on CD. --- Klanggalerie, 2011

CD & Booklet of Z'EV's An Uns Momento, Life Sentence & Save What? Release by CIP in 1999. This is the regular 28 page booklet version. From the Life Sentense notes:"uns is Z'EV, vocals and instrumentals. Original recordings by Rex Probe at Aldo's, San Francisco, California, March 17, 1980. Restructured by Z'EV at OD Studios, Eindhoven, the Nederlands, June 26, 1981. Instrumentation: Farfisa 'Professional' organ, Echo-Plex, Superscope c105 cassette machines (3), Realistic mixer, bullhorn voice processing, Peavey 'Musician' amplifier, Cerwin Vega speaker system. Music and lyrics were (c)1981 Hand Window Music, BMI.Originally released October 1986 by Subterranean Records (Sub 29) in a boxed edition of 100 copies (cassette, booklet and broken vinyl). Additional track numbers have been added to this edition so that one can use the shuffle mode to make continually changing cut ups or the repeat to make loops."From the Save What? notes:"uns is Z'EV, vocals and instrumentals ... 'Save What? was performed at Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven, the Nederlands, September 19, 1982 at a party for Kremlin Product, who released some few lps, some cassettes, some t-shirts, and other oddities. The edition was 50 ... limited to a copy for each of the people who had come to the party ..."

The name is new, but the four members of The Cutmen all come from such storied backgrounds that it s reasonable to call them a supergroup. M (AKA Reeve Malka), the multi-talented leader of ensemble, has his fingers in more pies than can be listed here, but a brief overview includes recordings with Jarboe (Swans) and membership in Orchestre Noir and Sol Invictus. He runs his own label Infinite Document, co-runs the Sol Invictus label Tursa Records with Tony Wakeford, and offers his mobile engineering and studio services to bands of all genres World-famous percussionist Z'EV needs no introduction. His career spans more than 30 years, 50 albums, countless performances, and collaborations with Glenn Branca, Organum, Merzbow and Psychic TV. Stephen Flinn has been playing professionally as a percussionist and drummer for more than 20 years, performing across America, Europe and Japan. He collaborated on an album with cyberpunk author Kenji Siratori, and has been written about in numerous jazz publications. Giles Leaman began his professional career 30 years ago as a member of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, and has recorded with Rip Rig & Panic, Thomas Dolby, The Drones, Echo City, and a special performance of Brion Gysin s Cut-Up Poetry in London. He builds musical instruments, teaches, and performs regularly. The music of The Cutmen is made from found sounds and unconventional instruments (including several built by Giles), skillfully arranged and performed in an engaging and playful style that constantly surprises and pleases the ear, as if one was tasting a salad made of previously unknown but delicious herbs and flowers. The songs are spacious and refined, and the overall atmosphere is one of measured and deliberate restraint rather than frenetic chaos. You can't call it experimental music because it s fully realized and complete. --- Soleilmoon Records, 2011

A truly stunning accomplishment from Unseen Worlds, building on their long-standing relationship with the late, great "Blue" Gene Tyranny, comes 'Degrees of Freedom Found', a towering 6 CD box set of material recorded between1963-2019, hand selected from the archives by the artist before his passing in 2020. Spanning countless musical forms and as ever refusing to be nailed down, it’s a visionary excursion into the irreverent world of one of the most import musical figures of the last 50 years. So good... **6CD Box. Includes 24 page booklet with liner notes by "Blue" Gene Tyranny and download card.** There have been very few artists as singular, unique, and difficult to define as the late, great "Blue" Gene Tyranny. A maverick of the highest order who blended a near countless number of musical idioms into a definitively unique form, his long-standing relationship with Unseen Worlds breathed new life into his practice and fan base over the last decade or so of his life. As a final parting, the label has now embarked on their most ambitious release attending to this incredible artist’s legacy, Degrees of Freedom Found, a six CD set of material recorded between 1963-2019, that was hand selected by Tyranny from archival, live recordings, and brand new first recordings, before his passing in 2020. This is a truly stunning accomplishment that represents the most comprehensive immersion into Tyranny’s incredible world of sound, we couldn’t possibly recommend it enough.Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, "Blue" Gene Tyranny began studying piano at an early age and launched his performance career while still in high school, already drawn toward the avant-garde by the work of composers like John Cage. Across the 1970s and early '80s, he taught at the legendary Mills College, and toured with The Carla Bley Band, The Prime Movers (which included Iggy Pop and Michael Erlewine), and Iggy & The Stooges, as well as embarking upon extensive work with composers like Robert Ashley, Peter Gordon, and Jacques Bekaert. In the words of Kyle Gann, Tyranny had "Cecil Taylor's keyboard energy, [and] Morton Feldman's ear. The most original aspect of [his] works is the way they create continuity: they're tonal, yet rigorously asymmetrical. They satisfy the ear without letting it take anything for granted. They evolve...with the labyrinthine irreversibility of deep psychic forces."A number of years before his move to NY in 1983, Tyranny recorded his debut LP, Out of the Blue - for many his most definitive and most striking statement - issued by Lovely Music in 1978. While currently not the earliest of his available recordings - Unseen Worlds’ incredible archival issue of Trust In Rock, for example, predates it by a couple years - Degrees of Freedom Found takes unprecedented steps to fleshing out our understanding of his activities for the decade preceding and following, as well as what has come since, of this seminal work.Degrees of Freedom Found, sprawling across 6 CDs, features recordings dating to as early as 1968, and builds across the '70s, '80s, and first two decades of the 2000s, curated conceptually and for playability, rather than chronologically. Featuring live and studio recordings, that encounter Tyranny solo on the piano, in numerous stunning duos, and working within ensembles of varying sizes - featuring astounding players like Leroy Jenkins, Conrad Harris, Jon Gibson, Richard Landry, Peter Zummo, and a near countless who’s who of the American experimental vanguard, the degree of creative diversity and scope is absolutely astounding across the album’s length, ranging from emotively melodic minimal piano excursions embarked upon solo, works for tape and electronics, expansive orchestral works, abstraction laden efforts of startling harmonic interplay, fascinating ventures into the fourth world, and playful rethinking of the nature of song, the set really has it all and brings an artist like no other into crystalline focus.A truly monumental gesture that couldn’t be bested as a farewell to one of the most singular artists of the last 50 or so years. Unseen Worlds has done it again, reminding us not only of Tyranny’s seminal place in the history of music, but of the importance of record labels in the support of their work. Issued in a beautiful box with extensive notes on each work made by the artist himself, stunning colour photographs by Phil Makanna and a black and white portrait by Pat Kelley, this is absolutely essential and not to be missed.

Composition from 2020 by Jim O'Rourke for vocalising string trio, written for and performed by Apartment House --- Cover photograph by Anton Lukoszevieze  Apartment House: Mira Benjamin (violin), Bridget Carey (viola), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello) --- Another Timbre, 2021

Two improvised concerts where are woven between the piano and the saxophone subtle games of harmonic textures, appearances of differential sounds, resonances and sometimes some more noisy sequences. CD1 was recorded 2016 April 16 in the Saint-Maximin church in Metz, France. CD2 was recorded 2019 November 22 by the Radio France teams for Anne Montaron's programme "À l'improviste" broadcast 2019 December 15 on France Musique with also an interview with John Tilbury and Bertrand Gauguet. John Tilbury and Bertrand Gauguet improvise a music of slowness, sometimes silent, sometimes tempestuous. Playing with the acoustic qualities of the place, are woven between the piano and the saxophone subtle games of harmonic textures, appearances of differential sounds, resonances and sometimes some more noisy sequences. A music to stretch the listening like a bow. The artwork on the cover is a drawing made in 2016 by the French artist Pierre Mabille. --- Bertrand Gauguet : alto saxophone John Tilbury : piano --- Graphic design: Atelier Ter Bekke & Behage. --- Akousis Records, 2021

Joggers and Smoggers is an extraordinary album, both adventurous and unparalleled. It’s so full of ideas you are simply blown away during your first listen, and at the same time so intriguing through all it has to offer, you can’t wait to press play again when it ends. The incredibly free and unrestricted compositions resulted in a sheer masterpiece. And masterpieces are created best either when the artist knows exactly where they’re going or if their genius musical mind can roam free; placing Joggers and Smoggers in the latter category. The songs and compositions on the record’s four sides bounce from furiously intense, stormy punk (the ‘style’ the band is known for) via avant-garde jazz and (European) folk, to noise and dominating brass chaos. Drenched in experimentation, riddled with improvisation, the songs and compositions contain their first lush translations of the band’s World influences they would later go on to impress with on a much larger scale. Joggers and Smoggers maximizes the use of soundscapes, controlled by producers Jeroen and Dolf who gave the album just that bit of oomph. --- Players: Terrie (guitar), G.W. Sok (vocals), Luc (bass), Katrin (drums, vocals), plus grill, birdcage, double-bass, fire-extinguisher + hammer, bamboos, piano, electric razor, dobro, spoons, human batbox, wire, glass, castanets, bow, crackle-box, cowbells, kabassa. Guest musicians - Wilf Plum (organ 02, drums 03,21,24, birdcage 03, voice 12, bodhran 23, kabassa 26, bamboos 27, spoons 32, backing-vocals 31), Jeroen (birdcage 03, voice 12,23, backing-vocals 31, piano-sequenzer 12, various soundscapes), Dolf (guitar 02, acoustic guitar 05, voice 24, space-stations 26), Ab Baars (saxophones 14,15,18,32,34), Bram (guitar 10,34), Doan Gurkensalat (saz 09), Dorpsoudste de Jong (voice 01,19), Ferrie Meurkerrie (trumpets, trombones 22), Floris van Manen (control-programma orkaterdrum 20), Gabi Kenderesi (voice, violin 16), Gerhard Bornefeld (piano 33), Harry Roberts (bamboos 27, backing-vocals 31), Jeroen de Groot (bagpipes 02,07), Lee Ranaldo (guitar 08), Lena (accordion, voice 20), Nick Hobbs (voice 27, announcement 25), Thurston Moore (guitar 11), Thijs Vermeulen (bass 06,17,21), Wolter Wierbos (trombone --- Released 1989, Ex Records

These two discs reveal Christian Wolff as a composer fully exploring, in different ways, the continuum between music which is highly fragmented, embracing extended silences (composed or indeterminate), to that which is more progressive and seemingly driven, albeit taking in disarming and unconventional routes. As a body of repertoire, these works are remarkable for their freshness of musical thought and energy (John Cage considered Wolff to be the most "musical" of the experimental composers). Performer Philip Thomas (b.1972, North Devon) specializes in performing experimental notated and improvised music as a soloist and with leading experimental music group Apartment House. He is currently Professor of performance at the University of Huddersfield, co-director of Cerenem, and co-editor of Changing the System: the music of Christian Wolff (2010). Digipack; includes 16-page booklet.Philip Thomas on the release: "In all my performances of Wolff's music, I aim for interpretations that both interest and surprise me, allowing the notations to lead me to new ways of playing and thinking about music, whilst at the same time trying to lead the notations toward the unexpected --- Philip Thomas - Piano --- Sub Rosa, 2019

Ballads of a troubadour from Gobi Desert in Central Asia. Wang Xiao was born in Karamay, Xinjiang in 1966. His parents are oil exploration workers. From childhood, he followed his parents to live and grow up in the wilderness of Gobi Desert. In 1989 he quit his oil field job and started traveling as a troubadour. He has lived in Tibet for 10 years and now resides in Yunnan. “In my memory, there is no ‘home’ concept, just keep moving from place to place”. The album is clearly not “indie city folk”, nor is it “world music”. However, after years of immersion in the vein of Central Asian culture, the influence of traditional music from various Central Asian regions is obvious. The whole album is dark and deep, like the rocks in the desert. The occasional overtone singing plays well with the dombra tone, the musician is seeking the divine nature of the universe. “Folk singers in the past were poets and sorcerers themselves. They could only sing after divination and sacrifice, or by helping people to predict diseases, fortunes, planting and family affairs. Folk singers should be the ones who atone for the lives.”The symbolic and poetic lyrics are also an important part for the album. With Lu (Heartless/Vergissmeinnicht/Mandarava), Edward Sanderson and Josh Feola's help, we included the full Chinese lyrics with English translation, it will help the listener to have a better understanding of Wang Xiao’s music.The album was recorded in the winter of 2007 in Beijing. “At that time, it was just me, Wu Junde and Wu Tun to do this recording. They bought me some wine, we drank them and recorded the album (dombra and vocal) for only two hours, then I went back to Tibet right after.” Wu Junde and Obul added tanbur, mouth harp, more vocals and percussions afterward. “We didn’t feel it’s a very good album at first. The tempo is not always right because we didn’t use a metronome, but as you listened to it for a long time, it was great. It's a record that can't be repeated, because it's made at one go, and it's very straight.”Previously self-published as CDr in 2010, now we reissue this album as a Ten Year Anniversary Edition, with new graphic design and a bonus track “Refugee of Faith on the Ancient River Bank” recorded in 2016. All tracks are carefully remastered by our friend Cyril Meysson.“Black Horse River, for me, is my real motherland.” – Wang Xiao“His voice is original, it’s a blend of a shaman and the characteristics of the nomadic people. His way to play dombra is unusual, not with the finger but a plectrum, that makes the music fiercer and more rhythmic. Wang Xiao spent many years in Lhasa, he also put the rhythm of the monks chanting into his music, all these make his works dialoguing with the sun and the earth, it contains the essence from the land and the passing time.” - Zhang Zhi 張智（旅行者樂隊）“I came up with the nickname ‘Folk shaman’. I met Wang Xiao back in 2002-2003, when he was still a rock-n-roll young guy in Shenzhen, but his mental state was like channeling with a shaman or a minstrel. It may have something to do with his life experience, mysterious and unique.” - Wu Junde --- Music/Lyrics/Vocals: Wang Xiao(Except "Wild Geese" Lyrics by Sa Dao & Wang Xiao, "Cover Song" Original singer Li Shirong, Music/Lyrics by Lei Zhenbang, rearranged by Wang Xiao)Dombra: Wang Xiao (Track 1-10)Guitar: Wu Junde (Track 1)Mouth Harp: Wu Junde (Track 5)Chorus: Wu Junde (Track 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10)Tanbur: Wu Junde (Track 4,8)Percussions: Obul (Track 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10)Recorded by Wu Weiyi in Beijing, China, winter 2007, previously self-released in 2010(Except bonus track “Refugee of Faith on the Ancient River Bank” recorded in 2016)Remastered by Cyril Meysson in Saint-Étienne, France, January 2019English lyrics translated by Lu (Heartless/Vergissmeinnicht/Mandarava)Proofread by Edward Sanderson & Josh FeolaCover art: Wang Yuanqing, Photography: Li Ming, Design & Layout: ruò tánSpecial thanks to Wu Tun & Wu Junde

This is a recording of the entire -- nearly three hour -- performance of the great Sun Ra Arkestra, live at Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf, Austria on March 11th, 1984.  Personnel for this show was Sun Ra (piano, synth, vocals); John Gilmore (tenor saxophone, clarinet, evi, vocals); Marshall Allen (alto saxophone, flute, kora, percussion); Danny Ray Thompson (baritone saxophone, flute, percussion); Eloe Omoe (Leroy Taylor) (alto saxophone, bass clarinet, percussion); James Jackson (basoon, flute, drums, vocals); Ronnie Brown (trumpet); Rollo Radford (standup bass); Don Mumford (drums); Matthew Brown (congas, dance); Myriam Broche (dance); Greg Pratt (dance).

Selections from Song of the Avatars : The Lost Master Tapes (5CD Box set.) Robbie Basho (1940-1986) is widely regarded as one of the progenitors of what's commonly known today as American Primitive guitar. Growing up in Maryland alongside neo-traditional guitar explorers John Fahey and Max Ochs, Basho's path would take a decidedly different turn, bringing Hindi, Indian, Japanese and Native American musical traditions into his work. His albums for Takoma and Vanguard have left an indelible trail of influence across generations of musicians, from William Ackerman and Pete Townshend to Ben Chasny and William Tyler. Liam Barker first became aware of Basho having purchased Tompkins Square's reissue of Venus in Cancer, released in 2006. This led him on an incredible fact-finding expedition, unraveling the many layers of mystery surrounding Basho's life and death, all deftly compiled and depicted in his documentary film, Voice of the Eagle : The Enigma of Robbie Basho. During the research process, Barker came across a large cache of unheard Basho tapes recorded throughout his career, ranging roughly from 1965-1985. By arrangement with Basho's Estate and the original custodians of the tapes, Tompkins Square is set to release Song of the Avatars : The Lost Master Tapes, a 5CD set of previously unreleased material. The label has released a single disc vinyl LP as well. The set includes notes by Barker, Henry Kaiser, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Glenn Jones and Richard Osborn, as well as many unseen photographs.

Published: Infinity Land Press Second edition of 100 copies - Book + CD Softbound with flaps 238 pages // 103 illustrations 148 x180mm ISBN 978-0-9927366-8-2Hector Meinhof has written a book that is both beautiful and cruel. His poetic prose and the doom-laden pictures from his extensive collection of vintage photographs have bled into one tortured, corporeal unity. All these pictures have played a significant part in the writing of Three Nails, Four Wounds. Meinhof has used a tableau of chosen images to keep the narrative flowing, each chapter being concentrated around a specific set of photographs. This is the illustrated scripture for the new dark ages, it will be read and beheld again and again - Martin BladhOn the outskirts of a small town, on top of the mound called Wolf Hill, lay the insane asylum. It was a neo-gothic edifice made of brick, with long winding corridors and a hundred and eleven rooms: sterile rooms, electric rooms, padded rooms, interrogation rooms with one-way mirrors, a kitchen, a large dining room and a photographic studio in the attic.In conjunction with the asylum there was a small chapel, a mortuary, staff quarters and a barn. Behind the barn, beside a forest of spruce and fur, the patients’ cemetery stretched itself across the north side of the mound. It was as though the area had been struck by a peculiar curse. Strange incidents kept occurring, acts of insanity, abuse of animals, unexplained disappearances.

Pica Disk is extremely proud to present “Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018” – a box-set dedicated to the cult Argentinian band Reynols that features 52 audio tracks (mostly previously unreleased), 90 minutes of video and extensive liner notes and visuals.Reynols started in 1993 in Buenos Aires and is famous amongst many things for its unique Down’s syndrome drummer/vocalist Miguel Tomasín, who is the band’s spiritual architect. Reynols is also known its musical diversity, which spans everything from cosmic free rock and lo-fi drone electronic music, to conceptual sound art and social/political/esoteric observations. The world of Reynols is a universe completely of its own, and inhabits so much that even an extensive box like this only scratches the surface. Although Reynols have worked with an open-process DIY philosophy and been subject to multiple documentaries the band has still managed to sustain an element of mystery, so the release of “Minecxio Emanations 1993-2018” marks the first time the band has allowed an extensive overview of their work to be made.

Masayuki “Jojo” Takayanagi (1932 - 1991) was a maverick Japanese guitarist, a revolutionary spirit whose oeuvre embodied the radical political movements of late ‘60s Japan. Having cut his teeth as an accomplished Lennie Tristano disciple playing cool jazz in the late ‘50s, Takayanagi had his mind blown by the Chicago Transit Authority’s “Free Form Guitar” in 1969 and promptly turned his back on the jazz scene by which he was beloved, going as far as to call his former peers and admirers “a bunch of losers” in the press. Takayanagi had found a new direction, an annihilation of jazz and its associated idolatry of hegemonic American culture. Aiming his virtuoso chops towards the stratosphere, Takayanagi dedicated himself to the art of the freakout, laying waste to tradition left and right, most notably via the all-out assault of his aptly-named New Direction for the Arts (later New Direction Unit) and collaborations with like-minded outsider saxophonist Kaoru Abe. His innovations on the instrument parallel those of Sonny Sharrock and Derek Bailey and paved the way for the Japanese necromancy of Keiji Haino and Otomo Yoshihide, but even at its most limitless hurdling Takayanagi’s playing is propelled by the dexterous grasp of his foundations, to which he paid tribute with elegant takes on flamenco and Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman.” In the autumn of his life, Takayanagi’s solo Action Direct performances made him one of the first guitarists, alongside but independent of Keith Rowe, to use tabletop guitar for pure noise improvisation. Culled from 1975 sessions by the Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit, April is the cruellest month was originally slated for release on ESP-Disk before the pioneering free jazz label’s untimely demise that year, eventually being released on a 1991 CD in Japan. Part of the period of Takayanagi’s career which he termed “Non-Section Music,” one can only imagine how its unholy racket might have altered an international understanding of Japanese noise had the LP reached American shores upon its inception. On “We Have Existed” and “What Have We Given?”, the classic lineup of Takayanagi with Kenji Mori (alto sax, flute, bass clarinet), Nobuyoshi Ino (bass, cello), and Hiroshi Yamazaki (percussion) prove that free improvisation was thriving well beyond Western Europe with a set of dilapidated, spacious clanging, Takayanagi’s squalling feedback and Mori’s Eric Dolphy moves undulating atop the joyous clamor. The cataclysmic “My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart” is another story altogether. With the vertiginous abandon of a jet engine, the unit immediately launches into an unrelenting sidelong barrage of frenzied, blistering noise. Infernal sheets of contorted sound find the berserk instrumentalists hopelessly entangled as they urge the explosion deeper and deeper into ecstatic oblivion. Takayanagi’s finely honed guitar abuse, Ino’s demonic squirming, and Mori’s ferocious reed attack occasionally rise above the din only to subsumed once more by the maelstrom. And then, twenty minutes later, it’s over as quickly as it began. Rivaled in intensity only by John Coltrane’s The Olatunji Concert, Peter Brötzmann’s Machine Gun, and Dave Burrell’s Echo, April is the cruellest month finally, deservedly sees the light of day on the vinyl format for which it was originally conceived, marking the first issue of Takayanagi’s music outside of Japan.