Vinyl


Electrucs’ is a previously unpublished LP of works by former INA-GRM chief François Bayle, recorded 1974-1995, and now finally issued on the 60th anniversary of the world-renowned facility he managed between 1966-1997. Comprising four distinct sections of acousmatic study ranging from playful AKS Synthi “hand games” to the blooming ‘Rosaces’, a test-piece for the Acousmonium, and a dedication to his peer, Bernard Parmegiani; ‘Electrucs’ follows Recollection GRM’s series of Bayle reissues to offer a diverse and spellbinding survey of his pioneering work spanning the past half century. The A-side is taken by 10 oozing, viscously shapeshifting ‘Electrucs’ that give the LP its title, rendering a series of highly dynamic pieces made on the Synthi AKS between 1974-2018, and veering from chaotic polymetrics to pulsating, almost melodic vignettes, and many moments of tense, atonal abstraction that wouldn’t sound out of place on a good hour or thriller soundtrack. The other side breaks down to three distinct sections. ‘Cinq dessins en rosace’ [1973] is a five part study of increasingly complex geometries, transiting from sharp, simple oscillations to filigree, spatialized arrangements of electronics and keys. ‘Foliphonie’ [1974-2011] follows with a beautifully alien scene of chirruping voices and whirled woodwind originally hatched for use on the GRM’s Acousmonium speaker/diffusion system, and ’Marpège’ [1995-2007] finds him dissolving a trace of Bernard Parmegiani’s ‘Sonare’ into sonic delirium.

François Bayle – Electrucs!

Please write to abby@cafeoto.info to request a press pack.Pat Thomas is one of the most extraordinary pianists of our time. In a first time duo with saxophonist Matana Roberts, the lyricism of his distinctly dexterous and curious approach to the piano paints pathways for Robert’s poignantly vocal saxophone. Together the two speak; locked grooves and neat switchbacks on the keys form dialogue with long deliberate lines on the alto, punctuated by Roberts’ ecstatic vocalisations.  The trio of improvised pieces which make up the record’s first side are rich phrases, pitched at each end of the piano and stretched and pulled by Pat. His simple, repetitive cycles yield space and colour for Robert’s song, then let sounds build to a flourish; an armed run on the keys and some wonderfully soft landings.    The second side, a whole part in itself, goes deeper - hammered armfuls of piano and torn top breath blasting from Roberts fall in a flutter of delicate keystrokes. Call and response halves collide in a wonderful thunder before finding the edge of another line to hang onto. There is a remarkable sense of purpose, precision and restraint at play, as well as a peaceful milieu, which no doubt stems from the two players' fierce individual intelligence, creativity and curiosity.  The record arrives housed in a screen printed Kraftboard sleeve, die cut to reveal photographs taken by Dawid Laskowski and Fabio Luguro. Mastered by Giuessepe Ielesi who also mastered Pat Thomas’ The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari, we pressed this on 180g black vinyl. You can’t press a work called ‘The Truth’ on much less, can you? ---   Pat Thomas / piano   Matana Roberts / saxophone   --- Recorded by James Dunn live at Cafe OTO on the 8th December 2018. Mixed by James Dunn and mastered by Guiseppe Ielasi. Photographs by Dawid Laskowski and Fabio Lugaro. Design and layout by Maja Larrson.

The Truth – Matana Roberts & Pat Thomas

!!! --- Lucrecia Dalt channels innate sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where traditional instrumentation encounters adventurous impulse and sci-fi meditations on atemporality in an exclamation of liminal delight. Dalt’s introspective approach to composition, last surfaced on her entrancing 2020 album No era sólida, refracts across ¡Ay! in a subconscious spectrum of the music genres she absorbed as a child. Treasured sounds and syncopations of bolero, mambo, salsa, and merengue rooted in Dalt’s early surroundings awaken on ¡Ay! and give glow to the album’s contours. The intuitive melodic structures of this music, processed by memory and modular synths, led Dalt to a mirage of her creative origins and the album she has always wanted to make. ¡Ay! is a tincture of rich acoustic textures filtered through the warmth of Dalt’s signature machinic distortion, diffused of easily-defined edges as previously explored on No era sólida and her 2018 album Anticlines. Here, vivid incantations of upright bass, wind ensembles and brass form shimmers of harmonic motif, distilled across radiant rhythms. Dalt worked closely with friend and collaborator Alex Lázaro to cultivate new shapes and colors for slowed down tumbaos and bolero percussion patterns. Together they deconstructed the traditional drum kit into serpentine expansions of congas, bongos, temple blocks and timbales, all of which they tuned to dance among Lucrecia’s lucid vocal processions. Into this hallucinatory crossing of time and space, Dalt projects a sci-fi mythology rendered through theoretical exchanges with philosopher Miguel Prado. Their mutual interest in consciousness and atemporality summoned the tale of a metaphysical odyssey, cast by Dalt through silken lyrics in her native Spanish tongue. The lush musical world of ¡Ay! offers a soft but obscure landing for an alien entity called Preta, who has gathered a body in the hydrosphere from evaporated dead skin. We follow her first experiences of containment and composure as she navigates our geology and earthly markers of love and time, in contrast with her state as a timeless entity. Through Dalt’s soaring vocals, the intimate monologues of this ethereal being oscillate with the album’s vibrant instrumental arrangements. ¡Ay! stages a rare encounter between tropical rhythms and sci-fi storytelling, where Dalt devises her amorphous character to explore love without the expected cliches of romantic genres. Dalt brings lightness and humor to the arc of this melodramatic tale, once again shedding the restraints of convention to break boundaries into abstract, fragmentary relics. ¡Ay! is an interjection through which Dalt enters a new dimension in her work – one which connects her legacy of electronic revelations with the moment she reaches a panoramic view of her musical source. In sound and spirit, ¡Ay! is a heliacal exploration of native place and environmental tuning, where Dalt reverses the spell of temporal containment. Through the spiraling tendencies of time and topography, Dalt has arrived where she began. --- Composed and arranged by Lucrecia Dalt in Berlin in 2021Percussion by Alex LázaroTrumpet by Lina AllemanoClarinet and flute by Edith SteyerDouble bass by Nick DunstonDouble bass on “El Galatzó” by Isabel RößlerBacking vocals by Camille Mandoki and Alex LázaroLyrics by Miguel Prado and Lucrecia DaltWind instruments and bass (Nick Dunston) recorded by Alberto Lucendo at Lucrecia’s home studioPercussion recorded by Eric Bauer at Bauer Studios (Berlin, Germany)Premixed by Lucrecia DaltMixed by Marta Salogni (London, UK)Mastered by Sarah Register (New York, NY)Vinyl cut by Anne Taegert, Dubplates & Mastering (Berlin, Germany)Standard edition artwork details:Album concept written by Miguel Prado and Lucrecia DaltCover photo by Aina ClimentOriginal artwork and design by Will Work For GoodAlbum cover concept derived from the project Pedis Possessio, created with Aina Climent, Judit J. Ferrer, and Miguel Prado. With movement realized by Judit J. Ferrer.Limited edition artwork details:Cover artwork courtesy of Regina de Miguel. Nerve bushes as coral forests, 2021Design by Will Work For GoodSupported by Initiative Musik gGmbH with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media.

Lucrecia Dalt – ¡Ay!

LP / CD

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC  Tracklisting: 1. Blanquita2. Reflection3. Bounce, Bounce4. Night Howl5. The Between6. Breathless Air7. Frayed Dreams8. What Happens9. Two Ships10. Delirium11. Broken Limbs "'Lost In Shadows' is American composer/performer Ashley Paul's bewitching Slip debut: an expansive, deeply personal excavation of recent motherhood, told through songs dissolving and re-crystallising at the threshold of free improvisation. At the LP's heart is Paul's mercurial multi-instrumental style, which renders the primal wails, clunks, and twangs of clarinet, saxophone, percussion, and guitar uncannily melodic, alchemised by frank, vulnerable vocals. The deft negotiation of the fragile and the coruscating evidenced on Paul's ‘Line The Clouds’ (2013) and ‘Heat Source’ (2014) has now reached a kind of hesitant sublime. Recorded over 3 weeks at a FUGA residency in Zaragoza, Spain in December 2016, 'Lost In Shadows' documents a cathartic outpouring; the first time Paul had been able to write since the birth of her daughter 11 months earlier. The record is completely influenced by "many hours spent awake at night in a dream like state of half consciousness, darkness and solitude; an overwhelming feeling of loneliness and exhaustion made light by a profound new love", with Paul's solo playing bolstered by additional baritone saxophone, cello, tuba, and percussion. This ensemble set-up, which premiered much of this work at 2017's Counterflows festival, gives the LP a fresh sense of luxuriousness, bounce, and rich possibility.'" — Artwork by Gayle Paul. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

Ashley Paul – Lost in Shadows

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC  Tracklisting:1. Sniffin' Samgh - 6:262. Peejayargh - 2:313. RP Beal - 3:284. Lime Rugis - 2:505. Charterhouse, Vinci - 7:32 'Ample Profanity' is composer Laurie Tompkins and cellist Oliver Coates' collaborative debut: coagulated gristle surfacing from a Beal, Brooklyn-brown, Ray V, Bangs, GAN, Rugs and Works acid bath. The EP collects 5 pieces composed by Laurie and then co-edited and performed with Olly. The former plays keys, tape player, and samples, the latter cello with effects. Both sing.  Here is grazed, contorted classicism, here post-binge hallucinations, here gunky funk.  "I met [Laurie] when I was 16, at school. I don’t know where along the way he’s found that he can make a piece out of flower pots and shouting, and it can be genuinely moving. With Laurie, there’s this thing with Netflix culture and tropes in the promotion of electronic dance music. Like, “you must all listen to footwork now” because they market that at you. Ample Profanity is all about awkward juxtapositions: bits of music from House Of Cards coupled with RP Boo. That’s the headspace he’s in and he’s trying to articulate these as cello rhythms. I find that really satisfying. It looks really spidery and architectural on the page. You’ve got to repeat it 17 times and then shout the next thing, so it’s absurdly difficult to play. To play it physically, the energy of playing it, that’s why I do it." - Oliver Coates, The Wire, September 2018. --- Laurie Tompkins / vocals, keys, tape player, samples Oliver Coates / vocals, cello, effects --- Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Artwork by Laurie Tompkins and Suze Whaites.

Laurie & Olly – Ample Profanity

Available as 320k MP3 or 24bit FLAC  'Ray' is Ashley Paul's bright, sensual return to Slip: a lifting, delighting suite of yearning winds, loose beats, and cocooning, humid bass coming together and falling apart as songs. The LP airs Paul's new trio, alongside bass clarinettist Yoni Silver and bassist Otto Willberg, who fatten out and shine light on her singularly intimate, multi-instrumental with mystery and grace. 2018's 'Lost In Shadows' wrote into the bewildering ecstasy of recent motherhood with a tingling resolve. On 'Ray' - recorded remotely during lockdown - Paul's deliciously hesitant songcraft is an outpouring and an anchor in freshly tumultuous times. Says Ashley: Over the past six months I've found myself needing music in a new way, a way of coping. I found again albums I had loved in the past, full of melody and humour, to cancel out the barrage of terrible news happening outside. I think this album is a reflection of that need. There is the playfulness of spending my days with our four year old, and the hours spent tending to plants in the garden and examining bugs, and also the pain of missing family and friends. It’s hard for me to fully comprehend the breadth of emotion I've felt recently but maybe this is a small window. The trio idea had been formulating in my head for months, and then lockdown happened. At first I was very disappointed and thought I'd be waiting forever to finally make it a reality, but time passed. I started working on a new album and could only hear it with these guys. We recorded remotely. I sent material in a variety of ways; written, aurally and verbal ideas/queues, sometimes with just a shell of a track and other times nearly completed. I wanted all our voices to be present, and to allow freedom in the parts for interpretation and improvisation. Maybe because we've all worked together in various situations and are friends, I’m not sure, but it came together naturally, magically and quickly. --- Ashley Paul - voice, alto saxophone, clarinet, guitar, percussion Yoni Silver - bass clarinet Otto Willberg - double bass Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi Painting by Gayle Paul Design by Ashley Paul --- Slip Records, 2020

Ashley Paul – Ray

Black Truffle is pleased to present Sylva Sylvarum, an epic new work from Ora Clementi, the collaborative project of crys cole and James Rushford. Primarily conceived and recorded over several months together in Melbourne, Sylva Sylvarum is a stunning step forward from the mumbled, creaking sound world of the duo’s debut, Cover You Will Softer Me (Penultimate Press, 2014). From the opening ‘Peach of Immortality’, which takes an unpredictable journey from layers of chiming bells, vocal harmonies and lush synth pads to a desolate landscape of half-animal, half-digital wooshes and cries, it is immediately clear that cole and Rushford are working here with an entirely unique sound palette. Throughout the record’s four sides, we hear a large array of carefully detailed synthesizer sounds (many of them recorded at the remarkable Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio), sparse drum machine hits, wind instruments and field recordings of animals, often with a twistedly late 80s/early 90s flavour that at various points calls up New Age references, Robert Ashley’s later operas or the thinned-out textures of early digital GRM. Threaded through this distinctive array of sounds are the two musicians’ voices, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking through varying degrees of manipulation. A guiding thread through the pair’s collaboration, beginning with their initial experiments with lip-readings, the presence of these two voices – cole’s crisp and sibilant, Rushford’s rich and low – reinforces the sense that the music is immersed in itself, less performed by two people than occurring between them. On Sylva Sylvarum, these voices first come to the forefront on the third piece, ‘Dialogue Between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller and a Genoese Sea Captain’, where in unison they intone fragments of a description of an imaginary space taken from a 17th century utopian text. The two voices resurface periodically thereafter, most stunningly in the unexpected turn into cushiony dream pop on ‘Magic Mountain’. At other points, the subtle manipulation of pitch and intonation in the close-miked vocal performances filters the recitations through a fog of abstraction that climaxes with the almost incomprehensible alternating syllables of the side-long closer ‘Forest of Materials’. --- Black Truffle, 2021

Ora Clementi – Sylva Sylvarum

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Parampara Festival 13.3.1992, a stunning performance by Amelia Cuni captured live in Berlin almost thirty years ago. Milanese by birth and resident in Berlin for many years, Cuni lived in India for over a decade, studying the classical vocal style of dhrupad under masters of the form. Though perhaps known to many listeners primarily through her performances of the vocal music of John Cage and collaborations with Werner Durand and Terry Riley, she is recognised internationally as one of the great contemporary proponents of traditional dhrupad singing. These recordings document her performance at the 1992 Parampara Festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, a landmark event celebrating the global spread of Indian classical music, bringing together Indian teachers with their international students. Accompanied by Gianni Ricchizzi on vichitra vina (a plucked zither played with a glass ball slide) and her own tanpura, Cuni stretches out for a languorous side-long performance of the late night Raag Bageshri, the limpid tones of her vocal improvisations illuminating the droning strings like flashes of the moon revealed by rushing clouds. Initially working patiently through a series of subtle dialogues between Cuni’s melodic extemporisations and phrases in response from Richizzi’s vichitra vina, the performance builds to a series of strikingly beautiful, virtuosic held notes from Cuni at the beginning of its second half, before picking up some brisker rhythmic articulation on the way to its conclusion. On Devino Amor, Cuni presents her own composition, a setting of mystical texts by the 13th century Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi, elaborated through various traditional raags. Like the words used for most dhrupad compositions, the text Cuni has selected from da Todi praises divine love, thus linking her otherwise unorthodox use of Italian text to the dhrupad tradition. The result is a performance of a yearning intensity that communicates across any language barrier. On the final performance, Cuni and Ricchizzi are joined by Helmut Waibl on the two-headed pakhawaj drum for a piece using a 14 beat rhythmic pattern that sets in motion a cycle of tension and release, metrical dissolution and resolution, possessing a subtle grandeur. Illustrated with archival images of the performance and accompanied by new liner notes from Peter Pannke and Lars-Christian Koch, Parampara Festival 13.3.1992 invites listeners to lose themselves in Amelia Cuni’s unique approach to ancient tradition --- Black truffle, 2021

Amelia Cuni – Parampara festival 13.3.1992

Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT027), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia. The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie’s travels in Indonesia and study of various forms of Gamelan music, from the stately suspended temporality of the courtly Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat. However, far from an exercise in exoticism, Nist-Nah develops out of Guthrie’s extensive work with metal percussion in recent years (as heard, for example, on his 2015 LP for iDEAL, Sacrée Obsession), where gongs, singing bowls and cymbals are used to build up walls of hovering tones and sizzling details. Though Guthrie is broadening his palette to explore Gamelan instrumentation and pay tribute to his love of this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music, the pieces presented here are equally informed by Guthrie’s interests in free jazz, electro-acoustic music and diverse experimental music practices, exploring long tones, extended techniques, and non-metered pulse.Nist-Nah presents a variety of approaches across its six pieces, from the crisp, precise rhythmic complexity of the opening title track to the droning textures of ‘Catlike’ and ‘Elders’. On the epic closing ‘Kebogiro Glendeng’, Guthrie offers an extended, layered rendition of a Javanese piece belonging to a repertoire primarily used for warmups, beginner’s groups and children first learning Gamelan, elegantly gesturing to his own amateur status while using the piece’s insistently repeated melody as an extended exploration of the hypnotic effects of repetition, falling in and out of time with himself to create woozy, narcotic effects until the piece eventually dissolves into a wavering fog.

Will Guthrie – Nist Nah

Available as a 320kps MP3 or 24bit FLAC Luke Stewart Exposure Quintet · Harp and Concrete Silhouette Pt. I (feat. Avreeayl Ra, Edward Wilkinson Jr, Jim Baker, Ken Vandermark & Luke Stewart) "Back in 2018, I was invited by Dave Rempis to participate in the Exposure Series at Elastic Arts in Chicago. The Series was for me a shining example of artist-lead organizing of different yet connected communities around the Music. From my standpoint, it is yet another in the continuum of such actions, specifically in Chicago, and has been a major inspiration for my work as an artist and for the material on this recording. The ensemble was assembled by Mr. Rempis, and was the first time the group had ever played together. The experience was immensely moving and was a major event in my own musical development, having the chance to lead a collective ensemble of true pillars in Creative Music. Later that year, I was invited back to Chicago by Ken Vandermark for the Option Series at Experimental Sound Studio. It was then when I was able to schedule a recording and subsequent concert with the group, revisiting the material conceived by the ensemble earlier that year. As for the actual composition, I wanted to showcase the collectivism of the sounds produced in that first meeting. With that in mind I listened back to the first recording and transcribed different movements, motifs, and themes, plus added a few original composition ideas. We then recorded these collective compositions, first in a private recording session, second in front of an audience at Elastic Arts, where the Quintet first met. What is presented here on this double album is a collection of both sessions. I want to convey again the collectivity of the Quintet. The concept of being a (C)omposer is a result of centuries of musical hierarchy, regarded and celebrated as the ultimate form of a musical artist. The example set out by the journeys of many in Improvised Music, including the gentlemen on this recording, allows for exploration of "composition" in true collective non-hierarchical form. There are no single series of notes, timbres, and dynamics conceived previously by an individual that was then imposed. Rather the Music was allowed to be presented with equal representation from each individual. The "Composer" here, is merely the organizer of the spirit energy of the ensemble. This is the nature of the beautiful offering that This Music provides." - Luke Stewart, July 2020.  --- Luke Stewart - Bass, Compositions Edward Wilkerson, Jr. - Reeds Ken Vandermark - Reeds Jim Baker - Piano Avreeayl Ra - Drums --- Released: Oct 2020, Astral Spirits

Luke Stewart – Exposure Quintet