Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation. The musicians choose which part to play among the 8 staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work in Music with Changing Parts, written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially the opera Einstein on the Beach. When Philip Glass began rehearsing the piece, he was surprised to hear long notes when everything was written in eighth notes. After making sure that none of the musicians were playing held notes, he realized that the fact that the same notes were played by all the instruments in the ensemble produced, through a psycho-acoustic effect, a harmonic substrate of resonant frequencies. He then decided to add to the score the possibility of playing long notes to reinforce this effect. For this recording, we chose to record first the eight notes, then the long notes in re-recording. This utopian version, with each musician playing short and long notes at the same time (!), illustrates the minimalist aesthetic that plays with our perception and allows us to reconcile opposites and cultivate the apparent paradox of a music that moves forward without Moving and changes constantly while remaining the same. Dedalus Ensemble Founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour, Dedalus is a musical ensemble associated with the GMEA - Centre National de Création Musicale d'Albi-Tarn._Specializing in open-instrumentation scores, Dedalus is organized as a collective in which arrangements, orchestrations, and interpretations are developed collaboratively._Their repertoire ranges from classics of minimalism (Tom Johnson, Philip Glass...) to commissions from composers, and also includes recreations of works by unclassifiable artists (Moondog, Brian Eno...). Defying traditional categories, the ensemble performs conceptual and sensitive music that is radical and captivating, subtle and powerful. Dedalus performs in France, Europe and North America: Roulette (New York), Café Oto (London), Angelica (Bologna), Sacrum Profanum (Krakow), Philharmonie de Paris, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Bozar (Brussels), L'Auditori (Barcelona), Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Festival d'Automne à Paris... Didier Aschour, guitar, artistic direction Alexandra Gimal, voice Amélie Berson, flute Denis Chouillet, keyboard Sakina Abdou, alto saxophone Barbara Dang, keyboard Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, soprano & barytone saxophones Stéphane Garin, vibraphone, glockenspiel

The Vanishing is the long-awaited return of abstract electronic duo Oren Ambarchi & Martin Ng, in a remarkable collaboration with the acclaimed new music group Ensemble Offspring. Working together with the ensemble in 2013 for a series of concerts & recording sessions, Ambarchi & Ng developed a suite of pieces that build on the distinctive sonic language established by their three previous duo albums - released between 2000 & 2006 - of ringing bell-like tones & sustained hums with a new palette of acoustic textures. Recording material together as a duo as they had in the past, Ambarchi & Ng then supervised Ensemble Offspring as they recreated these recordings on their instruments, using the original recordings as audio scores.The result is a disorienting play of mirroring & imitation that blurs the boundaries between acoustic & electronic sound. On the opening piece, the aptly named ‘Simulacrum I’, bowed violin harmonics mimic feedback tones & dispersed vibraphone attacks recall the glitching bell textures prominent in Ambarchi & Ng’s earlier work for electric guitar & turntable, which were themselves often uncannily reminiscent of acoustic sounds such as Tibetan prayer bowls. On ‘Woods’, two vibrating bass drums create an ominous landscape of rumbling tones that call to mind Ambarchi’s past work with abstract doom lords Sunn O))). Channelling giants of 20th century music such as Giacinto Scelsi & Luigi Nono, as well as contemporary composers like Klaus Lang, the restrained palette of strings & percussion present throughout the record creates a distinct sound world, yet each of the five pieces possesses its own compositional identity. On ‘Recife’ (arranged by Australian composer James Rushford), Ambarchi & Ng’s guitar & turntables join Ensemble Offspring for one of the record’s highlights, a delicate tapestry woven from subtly overlapping sonic events. Finally, the closing side-long title piece acts as the perfect summation of the record as a whole: beginning in silence, it builds into a densely buzzing texture of closely tuned harmonics before gently returning to the silence from which it came. Intended as the next step in a continuing project in which Ambarchi & Ng will go on to use these two LPs directly as part of their live performances, The Vanishing is a unique document of two artists reimagining the potential of their previous work, made possible through collaboration with a group of world-class musicians.

What happens when you bring together familiar faces at London experimental music venue Café OTO, Charles Hayward (drummer Abstract Concrete, This Heat) and John Edwards (double bass), and the Total Refreshment Centre (hub of new london jazz scene recording studio ) like Alabaster DePlume (singer and saxophonist) and Danalogue (synths from Soccer96, The Comet is Coming), and the learning disability autism art scene like singers/spoken word artists Sebastian Golgiri and Dean Rodney Jnr (Fish Police), on a magic carpet with space trumpeter Robyn Rocket? The answer materialises in the groundbreaking collaboration 'Robyn Rocket and People You May of Heard of'.Recorded across three days in three different studios connected to the three communities Robyn Rocket calls home, each session brought together musicians from these diverse backgrounds—many meeting for the first time. Together, they improvised and created a musical journey that transcends conventional boundaries.This cosmic voyage features more than 20 musicians and a dog ( Taz from lost socks), gliding through free jazz, danceable tunes, loopy vistas and spoken word doors into different ways of seeing the world. At its heart lies a profound message about community as a vital part of existence and difference as something to embrace and value.The project culminates in the final single and focus track 'We Are All Human', featuring a poignant speech by Rocket from her night 'Robyn's Rocket - a residency at cafe OTO featuring experimental music and live visuals by artists with and without Learning Disabilities/ autistic and non autistic artists ' in the speech rocket talks about supporting each other—words she actively lives by and encourages others to embrace.Like many autistic people, Rocket has experienced abuse, bullying, isolation and feeling unwelcome in the world. “This project is like my nights but you can carry it around with you”, she explains. “I started my own night to share my work. I also recognised, it was a privilege to have my own night, I wanted to help other artists share their work too, and create an environment where people with and without learning Disabilities/Autistic and non autistic people as audience and performers could come together and get to know each other”.Historical ContextFrom the 1800s until the late 1980s, people with learning disabilities (some of whom would have also been autistic) were sent to long stay hospitals, often far from their families and forgotten about, and not believed in. In 1990, the law changed, hospitals closed, people were moved back to where they were born, they were separated from society, as they were sent to special day centres. Charities like Heart n Soul (who support Robyn) started going to these centres and taking people into community spaces and believing in people being able and having a right to take part in the world around them.

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

WV Sorcerer Productions (FR) and Dusty Ballz (UK) join forces to present two new releases by Beijing-based noise/drone/doom metal group, Ghostmass. “The ghost it is, who has come into possession of the Tao, reigns over gods and demons, and gives birth to heavens and earth. It kills the undying, and breathes life into the unborn. The sounds it creates, there is nothing it cannot still, nothing it cannot heave, nothing it cannot destroy, and nothing it cannot make.” In Chinese, “big ghost” is a phrase sometimes used to convey a sense of utter out-of-placeness. If you see a big ghost, you find someone who walks the corporeal world in their own preposterous ways. A big ghost is not a ghost, it does not terrorise, but neither does it belong. It occurred to Li Weisi that this speaks to the very essence of outside music making. One of these days, he started saying “I saw a big ghost playing last night” after going to a very good gig. Ghostmass, then, are a collective of such big ghosts doing music together. Started in 2021 as an improvisation unit based in Beijing, the project gathers kindred souls who share the vision for an open musical space where ghosts feel at home. To this day, the lineup has evolved into some kind of a supergroup of the capital’s music underground: Li Weisi and Li Qing are known more widely as the retro-manic electro-acoustic duo Soviet Pop, and as two thirds of the cult alt-rock act Carsick Cars; Yan Jun has been a veteran experimenter of sounds, words, and ideas for decades across various scenes; the most recent addition to the group was Yang KuKu (YKK), a professional aquascaper who plays music in a band for the first time. “Ghost Meditation” was recorded at GEBI, a legendary underground venue and studio in Yiwu, China. In this album, the band delves into a meditative sonic intensity that lies between drone/doom and harsh noise, drawing inspiration from artists like Sunn O))) and Merzbow, while adding their own eerie vocal and percussion elements. The album evokes a profound sense of stillness amidst chaos. Vast walls of sound blend seamlessly with fragmented noise, creating a heavy, mysterious atmosphere. Each side of the album features a long-form track—“Wu” on Side A and “Hu” on Side B. These titles, though merely onomatopoeic, carry the power to immerse listeners in the depths of dark mountains and rivers, the desolate landscapes.

Aunes is a rare solo album from peripatetic Australian cellist-composer-performer Judith Hamann, presenting six pieces recorded across several years and countries. Developing the collage techniques and expanded sound palettes heard on their previous releases, Aunes makes use of synthesizers, organ, voice and location recordings alongside the dazzlingly pure, enveloping tones of Hamann’s cello. The record takes its name from an old French unit of measurement for fabric, varying around the country and from material to material. Unlike the platinum metre bar deposited in the National Archives after the Revolution as an immovable standard, an aune of silk differed from an aune of linen: the measure could not be separated from the material. In much the same way, in these six pieces—which Hamann thinks of as ‘songs’—formal aspects such as tuning, pacing, melodic shape and timbre are not abstractions applied universally to musical material but are inextricable from the instruments and sounds used, even from the places and communities in which the music was made. Audible location sound embeds the music in its place of making, as in the delicate duet for church organ and wordless singing ‘schloss, night’, where shuffles and cluttering in the reverberant church space form a phantom accompaniment, gradually displaced by a uneasy shimmer of wavering tones from half-opened organ stops. ‘Casa Di Riposo, Gesu’ Redentore’ documents a walk up a hill to an outdoor mass in Chiusure, layering voices near and far with footsteps, insects and other incidental sounds. Like in the work of Moniek Darge or Luc Ferrari, location recordings are folded on themselves in space and time, their documentary function dislocated to dreamlike effect. On other pieces, it is the emphatic presence of the performing body that grounds the music, whether in the intimate fragility of Hamann’s softly sung and hummed vocal tones or the clothing that rustles across a microphone on the opening ‘by the line’. The idea of a music inextricable from its material conditions is perhaps most strikingly communicated on the album’s briefest piece ‘bruststärke (lung song)’, composed from layered whistling recorded while Hamann suffered through an asthma flare up, the results halfway between field recordings of an imaginary aviary and the audiopoems of Henri Chopin. More than any of Hamann’s previous solo works, a strong melodic sensibility runs through Aunes, even when, like on ‘seventeen fabrics of measure’, the music hangs together by the merest thread. At other points, Hamann’s love of pop music is more obvious: the rich synth harmonies of ‘by the line’ could almost be a melting fragment of a backing track from Hounds of Love. The expansive closing piece ‘neither from nor toward’ exemplifies the highly personal musical language that Hamann has developed in recent years through constant solo performance (and a rigorous discipline of instrumental practice), pairing two overdubbed voices with the boundless depth and harmonic richness of just-intoned cello notes, calling up Ockegham or Linda Caitlin Smith in its elegiac slow motion arcs. Hamann’s most personal work yet, Aunes arrives in a striking sleeve reproducing a section of a painting made from sewn pieces of dyed wool by Wilder Alison, a friend and fellow resident at Akademie Schloss Solitude, one of the temporary homes where much of this music was recorded.

“Some of it sounds so pure and clear and I am picturing him huddled around all that gear, simply magical. In my memory he didn’t play ‘for’ the audience but was rather trying to perfect these various permutations of sound within himself…and a few of us just happened to be present.” – Tom Lee "Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come in And Out" offers an intimate unedited Arthur Russell solo live performance recorded at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation in Downtown NYC on 12/20/85. Phill curated and produced with Arthur two concerts at EI that would become an integral part of the foundation for the World of Echo album. Arthur titled this performance “Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come in and Out”. This extraordinary performance was recorded by Steve Cellum and overseen by Phill and Arthur. Arthur would later edit sections from this performance merging it with studio material recorded at Battery Sound to finalize the World of Echo album released in 1986. Side four of the vinyl includes two instrumental tracks from "Sketches For World Of Echo", "Changing Forest" and "Sunlit Water"

The first official reissue of Dorothy Carter’s folk-music exegesis comes 46 years after its original release, 20 years after Dorothy passed, and 11 years before the centennial of her birth. Yet it seems right on time for a new celebration of her music. Appalachian folk tunes, old and ancient psalms and hymns, Scottish, Irish, French and Israeli melodies, and original tunes flow together effortlessly in a hypnotic garden of eternal world musics.

More in tune now with the rhythm of the sun and moon, Xylouris White speak to each other across great distances with the intuition and fellowship that can only be found over years in each other’s company. With fewer distractions, appreciative of the freedom to play with new sounds and spaces, they carve The Forest In Me from unbelievably thin air.

Unearthed from the neolithic tar that eventually swathes all history, Aerial M’s early-98 Peel Session is once again among us. Compared to the studio takes, played strictly and singly by Aerial/Papa M-astermind David Pajo, these versions swing from the necks of road-burned players, breathing more bestially than their canonical cousins, glinting ‘pon the dark metallic roots that fed all of Pajo’s best guitar lines, winding thru time immemorial.

The final studio recording of the late, great Tony Conrad, and the first duo release with Jennifer Walshe. A wild, improvisatory flaying of song; the sheer sonic force recalls the ecstatic charge of Conrad’s Slapping Pythagoras, with Walshe’s clarion voice at the heart of it. A one-of-a-kind concoction whipped up by two fearless and often peerless souls. It’s a joy to hear their manifest mutual regard and commitment to busting a gut.

"Improvised music at this level of concentration may touch the roots of human culture, the transformative power of the cave and the paintings of Lascaux and Altamira." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) ---Burkhard Beins / percussionJohn Butcher / tenor and soprano saxophonesWerner Dafeldecker / double bass --- a-side recorded on 19 June 2019 at KM28, Berlinb-side recorded on 18 June 2019 at KulTurnhalle, Leipzigwith the kind support of Musikfonds e.V.engineered by Andrew Levineedited and mixed by John Butchermastered by Andreas ‘Lupo’ Lubichliner notes by Stuart Broomerlp design by Yaqin Siinner sleeve photography by Cristina Marx/Photomusixmanufacturing by Daniel Klotz/Die Lettertypen

"Lehn and Robair are particularly well-matched. Lehn is a musician who came to electronics from the piano, while Robair’s resources include both electronics and percussion. Each matches readily with acoustics and circuitry and creates a remarkable bridge between the two with Butcher, whose saxophone playing can assume both percussion and oscillator-like characteristics." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) --- John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophonesThomas Lehn analogue EMS Synthi AKSGino Robair percussion, Blipoo Box, objets trouvés ---recorded on 29 November 2019 at ausland, Berlinengineered by Andrew Levineedited and mixed by John Butchermastered by Andreas 'Lupo' Lubichliner notes by Stuart Broomerlp design by Yaqin Siinner sleeve photography by Cristina Marx/Photomusixmanufacturing by Daniel Klotz/Die Lettertypenall music by Butcher/Lehn/RobairNi-Vu-Ni-Connu Productions, 2021

"The three musicians seem to exchange and overlap tones, creating the feeling of a single and continuous arc extending, curving in space, a kind of bridge or thoroughfare outward." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) ---VellumMagda Mayas pianoJohn Butcher tenor and soprano saxophonesTony Buck drums ---recorded on 30 November 2019 at ausland, Berlinengineered by Andrew Levineedited and mixed by John Butchermastered by Andreas 'Lupo' Lubichliner notes by Stuart Broomerlp design by Yaqin Siinner sleeve photography by Cristina Marx/Photomusixmanufacturing by Daniel Klotz/Die Lettertypen

The record can be considered a sort of farewell note to one of London’s most crucial venues for improvised music and sound art after its unexpected closure in late 2023 due to gentrification. Butcher had previously collaborated with these three musicians in different contexts, but Unlockings documents a first-of-its-kind quartet line-up. »I wanted a new combination, but made of players I’d worked with over the years,« says Butcher. »Choosing is probably 75 % about the player and 25 % about the instrument—trying to imagine how it might work sonically, but also setting up a situation that is able to surprise everyone, that takes everyone beyond their personal ideas. I’m still always slightly amazed how individual approaches interact and entwine in a collaborative improvisation.« Kristoffer Patrick Cornils John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Angharad Davies violin John Edwards double bass Mark Sanders percussion Pat Thomas electronics

New double-LP edition of a selection from Saltern's acclaimed collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist, Charles Curtis. Features the music of Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself. Includes liner notes by La Monte Young and Tashi Wada, as well as a new text by Curtis, and a download of the full original album. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu, and cut to vinyl via DMM by Hans-Jörg Maucksch at Pauler Acoustics. Pressed at RTI and printed at Stoughton. Saltern presents its fifth release, Charles Curtis: Performances & Recordings 1998-2018, the first comprehensive collection of recordings surveying the career of renowned, American cellist Charles Curtis. Selected by Curtis and Tashi Wada from recordings spanning the past two decades, the collection offers a broad, inclusive view of Curtis’s activities across the diverse worlds of music he inhabits, containing rare, unreleased recordings, and never-before-released music by Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield, Éliane Radigue, Alison Knowles, and Curtis. The wide-ranging scope of this release speaks not to a musical restlessness, but to a genuine spirit of inquiry, as these areas of activity for Curtis have existed concurrently in dialogue, not simply in succession, for decades. Over two hours of music by composers and artists with whom Curtis is closely associated including Éliane Radigue, Guillaume de Machaut, Tobias Hume, Silvestro di Ganassi, Terry Jennings, Morton Feldman, Anton Webern, Olivier Messiaen, Alison Knowles, Richard Maxfield, and Curtis himself.   --- “Underpinning everything [Curtis] has achieved is a deep communion with, and a profound technical understanding of, the stuff of sound itself.” – Philip Clark, The Wire   Produced by Tashi WadaAdditional mixing by Anthony BurrMastered by Stephan Mathieu   Second edition of 500. Liner notes by La Monte Young, Spencer Gerhardt, Curtis, and Tashi Wada. Custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry.

LP + 10" Over the course of a nearly 50 year romantic and creative partnership sound artist Annea Lockwood and the late pioneering electronic composer Ruth Anderson have shared space on a number of significant releases of early electronic and tape music, including Charles Amirkhanian’s trailblazing 1977 anthology of women electronic composers New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, a 1981 split LP on Opus One, a 1997 CD for Phill Niblock’s XI imprint, and 1998’s Lesbian American Composers compilation on CRI. The couple additionally taught a course on the history of women’s music-making, at Hunter College, called Living Women, Living Music. Throughout their time together, they co-authored a number of Hearing Studies designed for people with no formal musical training, which were collected for a 2021 book publication by Open Space Music. They spent most of their private life between Crompond, NY and the house they built themselves at Flathead Lake, Montana. Although Ruth passed away in 2019, the composers’ dialogue continues today with Tête-à-tête, a collection of unreleased archival and new material spread across an LP and a single-sided 10” record. It all began with a telephone call. In 1973, Ruth Anderson was seeking a substitute to cover a yearlong sabbatical from her position as the director of the Electronic Music Studio she had founded at Hunter College in New York City. Her friend Pauline Oliveros too was on sabbatical, but recommended Ruth call Annea Lockwood—then living in London—about the post. Already drawn to America by the work of the visionary composers with whom she would soon be labelmates on Lovely Music, Annea jumped at the opportunity and within days of meeting in person the pair were, in her words, “joyously entangled.” Over the next nine months, while Ruth was living in Hancock, New Hampshire, the couple would speak daily by phone in between visits. Ruth recorded these phone calls and, in 1974, surprised Annea with a cassette containing “Conversations,” a private piece she composed by dexterously collaging fragments of their conversations alongside slowed and throwed snatches of old popular songs: “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby”; “Oh, You Beautiful Doll”; and “Bill Bailey.” The centerpiece of Tête-à-tête, this side of intimate musique concrète extends to its listeners a rare invitation to eavesdrop on the halcyon phenomenon of two people falling in love. Tender and playful throughout, “Conversations” comes to its zenith with a cut-up of relentless laughter of a contagious beauty that is, for once, properly convulsive. “For Ruth” is Annea’s elegy to her life partner. In 2020, Annea returned to Hancock as well as to Ruth’s resting place at Flathead Lake to make field recordings, which she wove together with further excerpts of the couple’s 1974 conversations for a commission presented as part of the 2021 Counterflows Festival in Glasgow. A consummate field recordist, Annea imbues the simple sounds of church bells, birds, wind, and the bodies of water that permeated her time alongside Ruth with an otherworldly depth and sense of narrative akin to that of her celebrated sound maps of the Hudson, Danube, and Housatonic rivers. An oneiric, subtly tonal evocation of a meeting at the shores of existence. The collection opens with “Resolutions,” Ruth’s last completed electronic work, from 1984. A meditation for the individual listener composed as the result of her study of Zen, it’s a rigorous, process-driven piece that charts the very slow, smooth descent of a 5th from the octave above middle C down to sub-bass frequencies. Minimalist in execution, yet powerful in effect, it glides by almost imperceptibly, with new tones arriving and hovering or levitating upwards, seemingly out of nowhere. A healing piece, it harnesses the highly focused energy of pure tones as a means to, in Ruth’s words, “further wholeness of self and unity with others.”

Reinvigorated by months of shutdown woodshedding, David developed new works for guitar, as well as a piano piece and an exceptionally eerie bit of musique concrète. Inspired by the deep dive into Gastr del Sol’s duo magic that facilitated last year’s compilation box, David opened his deeply personal solo pieces for engaging conversational gambits with modern masters Rhodri Davies, Andrea Belfi, Nikos Veliotis, Nate Wooley, and Cleek Schrey