First ever vinyl reissue of Jean-Yves Bosseur's visionary LP Musiques Vertes, recorded by the legendary French ornithologist and wildlife field recordist Jean-Claude Roché, originally issued by Atelier 82 in 1982. Utilizing handmade instruments constructed from plants and other natural materials, played by a collective of children and untrained musicians, its radically experimental sounds build a revelatory bridge between the avant-garde and ancient forms of folk.

One of the great projects in Egyptian jazz, the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble was formed by Salah Ragab and Hartmut Geerken as an avant-garde offshoot of the Cairo Jazz Band - the first jazz big band in the country - formed in 1968 when Ragab was appointed chief of Egypt’s Military Department of Music and had at his disposal a vast staff of musicians (almost three thousand!), an entire military building, and a full range collection of musical instruments. When encountering this recording, issued in 1970, the deep resonance found between the ensemble and its American counterparts becomes startlingly clear. Heliopolis is a stunning blend of big band spiritual jazz, the music of the Middle East, and the fire and energy of free jazz, unveiling a deep creative resonance with the contemporaneous efforts of Pharoah Sanders, Phil Cohran, and - of course - Sun Ra, combining jazz instrumentation and musical style with indigenous melodies and instruments to create a musical object with few parallels. The album is a throbbing, squealing, wild journey through the creative heights of sound channeling swirling, focused artistry that taps future and past in a single blow. Copies of the original pressing are between the rarest and most sought-after records in canon of recorded jazz. This is the first ever authorized repress released under license from Hartmut Geerken.

Making the invisible visible? Circumscribing the incorporeal ? Through the contemplation of sound, in sound. Are these sounds spiritual exercises? Are they perhaps prayers? "What one cannot talk about, one can, and indeed must, sing and make music, if one cannot be silenced" “Ad Invisibilia” seems to connect to the current of what we could define as “mystical minimalism”, of recordings released in Italy between the 70s and 80s, works such as “Motore Immobile” by Giusto Pio, “M.lle le Gladiator” by Franco Battiano, “Antico Adagio” by Lino Capra Vaccina or the very first compositions by Alvin Curran from the period in which he was close to Giacinto Scelsi. “Ad Invisibilia” was composed and recorded in numerous villages across the expanse of Italy - (Rocca Malatina in the Apennine Mountains; Ostuni in the deep south, close to the sea; Traversella, Chiara and Fondo in Val Chiusella, a valley about 1,000 meters above sea level in the north-western Alps - between 2014 and 2020. VINYL VERSION, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, RELEASED BY HOLIDAYS RECORDS

OTOROKU is extremely proud to present a reissue of Evan Parker's legendary boxset "Collected Solos".  Originally issued in 1989 and long ago sold out, "Collected Solos" brings Evan Parker's first four solo LPs issued on Incus - "Saxophone Solos", "The Snake Decides", "Monoceros" and "Six of One" together, alongside a cassette featuring extra cuts from the sessions at FMP studios which didnt make it onto "Saxophone Solos" and an accompanying booklet written by the late writer, Paul Haines. Housed in a specially made and screenprinted box, and numbered in an edition of 250, the collection celebrates Evan Parker's remarkable commitment to a creative life and work.

Recorded May 1968 at "Lila Eule", BremenPeter Brötzmann: baritone saxophone, tenor saxophonePeter Kowald: acoustic bassBuschi Niebergall: acoustic bassSven-Ake Johansson: drumsHan Bennink: drumsFred Van Hove: pianoEvan Parker: tenor saxophoneWillem Breuker: tenor saxophoneFirst time on vinyl, appeared first on FMP CD 24 Machine Gun & later on Atavistic's "Complete Machine Gun Sessions".Screenprinted cover

Lucy Railton trusts in the nuance of her own creative instincts on an intensely modern, quietly radical new album, her second for Modern Love. Following her 2018 solo debut Paradise 94 (LOVE 108LP), and countless collaborations in the time since, Railton's diverse musical circles here bleed into each other, creating an insoluble testament to a lifelong pursuit of sound. The multi-instrumentalist further articulates her own tonal register, embracing her solo strengths and trusting the process to reveal vulnerable and compelling emotional facets through a fluid mix of composition, and pure expression. On the simplest level, Corner Dancer is a record that revels in the momentum of creation. Through a range of approaches, Railton gradually loosens her grip and allows her identities to expose themselves; cut to the bone, sinew and spirit of music making. Reaching outside tried and tested zones, she lands at a charged space characterized by unmetered pacing and an embrace of imperfection, using cello, viella (a medieval cello), Buchla, 808, a fan, synths, horse hair whips, a handheld harp and her own voice, across eight tracks that arc from an opening sequence of ruptured asymmetries, to something bordering the sublime on "Blush Study," the album's masterful closing flourish. In between, Railton invokes psychoacoustic, heady spins and repetitions, while also allowing space for live performance, a mode to which she feels most attuned, and here captured best on "Held in Paradise" (her violin debut) and "Rib Cage." Collapsing boundaries, Railton harnesses a lifetime of formal training in order to patiently trace more ambiguous, intimate and sometimes deviant shapes, operating to a fuzzed logic that loops back to themes with an ingenious underlying dramaturgy of energies, dismantling the form from the inside out, in a way that bends through feeling, rather than design.

New project by Apolline Schöser (half of Nina Harker) & Thomas Coquelet. Apolline & Thomas have been performing since 2022 under the KOU guise with 24 electronic harmoniums. Producing dense layers of tones & overtones. On their debut album KOU steers in another direction. The harmonium appears occasionally, but more prominent are delicate guitar pluckings, distant vocal effects, synths, flutes, piano strokes, a touch of musical magic and Apolline’s jazz not jazz vocals. As soon as the needle drops it’s clear we are jump-cutting straight to the other side of the mirror. Cats purr, a woman sings as if asleep, drum machines stutter and warp and Alvin Lucier is not 'sitting in a room that is not different to the one you are not in now’. If you’re already confused, join the club. But, it’s the good kind of confused, a bewildering experience akin to the first time hearing the Faust Tapes or watching Inland Empire. Wait though, as pigeons coo and the tape machine clunk-clicks a gorgeous weirdo version of Roger's and Hart’s Blue Moon emerges to let you know this isn’t just dada splurge, there’s a genius pop sensibility at work here too. Side two takes us further into the murk with mournful detuned brass, stoned Joan La Barbara-esque vocalese and a droning Farfisa hymn, before ending with another too-tempting snatch of DIY pop. Some of the references are recognisable. All kinds of 70s/80s European art prog - think early Battiato, Pierot Lunaire’s Gudrun, Lucia Bosè and Gregorio Paniagua's Io Pomodoro etc etc. There’s a strong whiff of 90s us goof-off surrealism too- Bongwater, Siltbreeze, Royal Trux’s Twin infinitives, the damaged folkier side of Alastair Galbraith, Half-Japanese, early Beck even all feel relevant. Like an oddball group of friends you might meet by chance and end up weirding-out with for days, the minds behind this deliciously odd music allow you to stay for a while in their strange subcultural world. You might not want to live here forever but a short trip, while it lasts, rewires your brain for the better.

Piotr Kurek’s new album “Smartwoods” is a sprawling root system of tiny melodic phrases that loop and curl around subtly evolving instrumental thickets. The Warsaw-based producer and composer takes his cues from early music, baroque music and experimental jazz, entangling his influences with filigree traces of contemporary computer music and fueling it with sonic vapors from the near future. Made up of seven distinct segments, the album blurs its acoustic and electronic elements into an illusory hedge of abstract sound. Harp, saxophone, clarinet, double bass, voices and guitar twist into computerized processes and synthesizer chirps, creating an uncanny dreamworld where the real isn’t always what it seems. Each player is entwined with the other to create a living, breathing whole. Like Kurek’s painterly 2021 album “World Speaks”, “Smartwoods” is also inspired by visual art - particularly the whimsical work of Algerian-French graphic designer Jean Sariano. The album cover features artwork by Polish painter Tomasz Kowalski, whose shapeshifting creatures and miniature stories aptly reflect the music’s wild fantasy. The first manifestation of “Smartwoods” – a live show at Unsound in Kraków in 2022 – featured animations by Italian artist Francesco Marrello, who put together a visual treatment for the single “Harps”.

ohannes Björk is a musician and literary critic based in Gothenburg. His music combines drones, pop melodies and field recordings to produce refined sketches rather than fully formed songs – resembling slowly refurnished interiors, rather than scenes with a clearly discernible subject. Originally released in a mini-edition of 12 copies for a show in Stockholm earlier on in the year, it is now presented in an expanded LP form with two tracks added in, and another two re-recorded. Accompanied in parts by renowned and emerging Swedish writers – such as Siri Ahmed Backström, Johan Jönson and Johanna Sköldbäck Martell – the music offers an electro-acoustic shelter, which houses both luminous and gloomy textures. Whilst the album shares an atmosphere with the emerging years of the Gothenburg scene to some extent, the songwriting bears witness to a production that treats lo-fi elements as integrated parts of the soundscape, though not in a way that overpowers the recording. For his debut solo album, Johannes carves out a landscape where pulsating drones form the background for the perfect melody, where field recordings and noise co-exist with harmonical dyads, and the feeling of an assuasive epiphany flow out of an ever-looming tragedy.

Hassan Wargui is a self taught musician, composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and an expert in the songcraft and poetry of the Tachelhit speaking Amazigh tribes of the Anti-Atlas mountains in the south of Morocco. He was born in 1985 in the rural community of Issafen, which lies between Taroudant and Tafraoute in the Anti-Atlas mountains of Southern Morocco. His music draws from the deep well of Amazigh, or Berber, cultures that have long been suppressed across North Africa after the region underwent a process of Arabization following the Arab invasions of the 7th Century. Hassan grew up in an isolated mountain community in which art and music is embedded into daily life. This allowed him to develop an excellent musical sense, a deep understanding of the complex poly-rhythms that underpin Amazigh music, and time to become proficient on the banjo which, since the ascendency of the popular modern folk movement involving groups such as Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala in the late '60s and early '70s, has been the preferred instrument of the region. Like many musicians from the region, Hassan built his first instruments himself, and it wasn't until he moved to Casablanca in his teens to find work which was scarce in his local community, that he was able to save for his first real banjo. Since then Hassan has been active in the Amazigh musical community and has worked with a number of groups, notably Groupe Lbouchart, Imanaren and Etran Tiznit, as well as recording prolifically as a solo artist using Fruity Loops as a home studio. In 2009, Jace Clayton (DJ/Rupture) stumbled across a CD by Imanaren on a stall in Casablanca medina and this led to a fruitful series of collaborations in 2009 and 2011 (you can learn more about their work together here: www.dublab.com/archive/louder-than-the-noise-jace-clayton-hassan-wargui) Tiddukla (which translates to Friendship) is one of Hassan's numerous group projects and he recorded the album with friends in 2015 and self released it through YouTube due to the lack of music infrastructure in Morocco. The Tiddukla album is raw and hypnotic and sees Hassan and his group channeling the deep and contemplative sounds of classic Amazigh groups such as Izenzaren, Archach, Izmaz, all of whom risked their freedom by daring to sing in Tachelhit at a time when the language was still forbidden, and when Amazigh people were fighting for their rights to be recognised. Hive Mind are thrilled to be able to release Hassan's beautiful music, and to introduce the fascinating rhythms of the Anti-Atlas Mountains into the wider world. We're incredibly proud to be able to support this fiercely independent and hugely resourceful and tenacious artist who has been able to continue creating music for over a decade without any real support from Morocco's music industry and while holding down a variety of day jobs. We really hope you enjoy his music as much as we do.

The Art Ensemble of Chicago has been at the forefront of creative improvised music since 1969, and has long served as the flagship ensemble of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the august Chicago-based organization that also fostered the careers of members such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith, among many others. The greatness of the Art Ensemble has always been the shared commitment of its original members – Roscoe Mitchell, Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, and Famoudou Don Moye – to the total realm of African diasporic music: what they have long-termed “Great Black Music—Ancient to the Future.” Also important are the group’s disparate musical and artistic personalities, comprised of jazz, advanced compositional techniques, theatrical performance, poetry, Pan-African percussion, all tied together with improvisational flair and the exploration of pure sound. Comprised of two discs: a meticulous studio session and the capture of a rousing live set at Edgefest in Ann Arbor, MI, We are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration is exactly that, a commemoration of a half-century of magical music making. Not content to rest on their laurels, surviving members Mitchell and Moye have recruited a diverse group of fifteen highly-individual talents who bring their own approaches to the Art Ensemble aesthetic. Together, these virtuoso musicians honor the group’s history and help advance the legacy of Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, and the recently departed Joseph Jarman. With clear intent towards representation, the group’s engagement of musicians such as Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), Christina Wheeler, Silvia Bolognesi and Jean Cook – women who are without peer as improvisers and performers – help bring a new perspective to the music. The sheer breadth of the ensemble’s collective expression is staggering, and it serves as a clarion declaration that Mitchell and Moye are intent on carrying forth the powerful ethos of the Art Ensemble forcefully into its sixth decade. As Moor Mother declares: “We are on the edge!” MUSICIANS Roscoe Mitchell – sopranino, soprano and alto saxophones Famoudou Don Moye – drums, congas, djembe, dundun, gongs, Congo bells, bendir, triangles, Thai bells, shakers Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) – voice, poetry (Disc One #3, 4, 10) Rodolfo Cordova-Lebron – voice (Disc One #1, 6, 9) Hugh Ragin – trumpets, flugelhorn, Thai bells Fred Berry – trumpet, flugelhorn Nicole Mitchell – piccolo, flute, bass flute Christina Wheeler – voice, Array mbira, autoharp, Q-Chord, Moog Theremini, sampler, electronics Jean Cook – violin Edward Yoon Kwon – viola Tomeka Reid – cello Silvia Bolognesi – bass Jaribu Shahid – bass, tuned brass bowls Junius Paul – bass Dudù Kouaté – djembe, tama/talking drum, calabashes, kanjira, whistles, chimes, bells and small percussions (Disc One only) Enoch Williamson – bongos, congas, djembe, kenkeni, okonkolo, Congo bells, chekeré, shakers, tama/talking drum Titos Sompa – vocals, congas, mbira, Congo bells, cuica, shakers Stephen Rush – conductor

Tracklisting: In The SeaStaggered StasisWork For Four Players And 90 Strings (excerpt)Work For Two (excerpt)"Ellen Fullman began developing The Long String Instrument in her St. Paul, Minnesota studio in 1980 and moved to Brooklyn the following year. Inspired by composer and instrument builder Harry Partch, Fullman's large-scale work creates droning, organ-like overtones that are as unique in the world of sound as her vision of the instrument itself. Along with her 1985 debut album – appropriately titled The Long String Instrument – Fullman's only output in the 1980s would be two self-released cassettes, In The Sea and Work For Four Players And 90 Strings, recorded in 1987 at an unfinished office tower in Austin, Texas. This double LP collection features music from both cassettes as well as a previously unreleased piece from 1988 at De Fabriek in Den Bosch, Holland. Ethereal and exquisitely paced, these rare recordings capture minimalism's quiet radiance. Within a musical landscape that has seen the rise of contemporary drone practitioners like Ellen Arkbro and Kali Malone, Fullman is sure to find a legion of fans. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this long overdue archival release that marks a particularly vibrant period of Fullman's pioneering and timeless work."

For people on visa in the United States during lockdown, it was impossible to leave and re-enter the country without permanent residency. During that time, my partner’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. My partner could not go home if they wanted to return. We had already decided to get married, but the cancer diagnosis spurred the timeline. One saving grace – our saving grace – was that, with a finished green card application, it was possible to leave and come back. As soon as possible, my partner took off. In 2022, we got the all clear: remission. To celebrate, we had a party, inviting friends and family, international or otherwise. My mother-in-law had always wanted to see the “American West,” so we planned a trip through several National Parks: Arches, Canyonlands, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion. At an outlook in the Grand Canyon, I took in the stratification and striation – dear one, I’m coming. And yet, in the face of deep time, in the face of slab upon slab for millions of years, I was most moved by cancer in remission. Chthonic is the result of long-distance collaboration and mutual considerations. Lea Bertucci and Lawrence English met in 2019 at the Novas Frequencia festival in Rio de Janeiro and quickly became friends and collaborators, driven by musings on geological scale, movements – tectonic or otherwise – of the Earth, and subterranean density and pressure. Within seconds of first track “Amorphic Foothills,” I am back at that outlook. Cavernous percussion, tension by way of wind and string, duration – something shifting underneath – so much moved, pushed, prodded to get here. Remission. Continental divide. Remission. Strata. Tectonic plates moved before the first cancer cell reared its head, before the coronavirus started thumbing rides at airports, before someone tried to organize sound. It’s all here – the emotion, the scale, the density, the fear, the wonder, the dirt. I’m at that outlook, groping rock and gray matter. This is excavation. Let’s enjoy this blip.

Comprising 10 tracks of creative expression, veteran experimentalists, Ben Vida and Lea Bertucci, deliver “Murmurations”, their first release as a duo, incorporating live tape manipulation, modular synthesis, sampling, and real-time instrumental and vocal improvisation, into a joyous tapestry of playful, boundary blurring sound. Longstanding figures in New York City experimental music scene - both noted for pushing electroacoustic music into highly individualized realms - Ben Vida and Lea Bertucci began collaborating during the Summer of 2021, while living on opposite sides of the same mountain outside of Woodstock, NY. What began as a series of conversations between friends, slowly formed into the development of a unique form of nonhierarchical improvisation that challenged and rethought the nature of dialog and language itself; intertwining their respective practices into a series of fluid compositions where the identities and locations of each artist become progressively obscure. Issued by Bertucci’s Cibachrome Editions, “Murmurations” is the first culmination of this process. Comprising six instrumental works, as well as four that place both artists’ long-standing engagement with the human voice, the album presents a fascinating, uncharted position between the efforts of experimental vocalists like Joan La Barbara, Katalin Ladik, Jeanne Lee, and Linda Sharrock, musique concrète, sound poetry, free improvisation, and electroacoustic music; abstractions and deconstructions of language that form an ecosystem unto themselves. A deeply interior, human music that confounds the expected relationship between improvisers, “Murmurations” is a dazzling series of crisscrosses; each artist challenging perceptions of identity, temporality, and location by placing aspects of themselves in the other’s hands. Giving these moments form, is the duo’s unique approach to instruments and electronics. Rather than exclusively utilizing oscillators, Vida’s modular synth often manipulates pre-recorded samples of Bertucci playing bass clarinet, sax, and wooden flute; rendering his own image as a warped mirror - in and out of time, and in and out of harmony - of the artist with whom he converses. Against this, Bertucci’s real-time tape manipulation - addressing the artefacts of both artists simultaneously - further abstracts senses of who, what, and where, while her practice of over-amplification - capturing, in addition to tones and timbres, the discrete sounds occurring within the chambers of her instruments - constantly reimagines and reinvents their possibilities, identity, and scope. More than any other feature, it is the sense of exuberant experimentation and playfulness that defines “Murmurations”, two artists lost in conversation, propelling textures, tones, fragments, and utterances rippling through ambience drenched spaces, as though searching deeper and deeper within a cave for the root of human communication through sound. Across this series of electroacoustic works, Vida and Bertucci shift between compositions centered around their own vocalizations and instrumental pieces, deconstructing each sound element - vocal, instrumental, electronic - through intervention and action, to an elemental form. Relational in process as much structure, creating a striking equivalency between each, the resulting abstractions - bubbling and scrapping within the open air - continuously challenge the terms of conversation, collaboration, and improvisation with a youthful sense of glee. “Murmurations” is issued by Cibachrome Editions on vinyl in two editions, the standard vinyl LP edition of 500 copies with custom artwork by Pittsburgh based artist, Erin Womack, a special silk-screened poster of album artwork, and a download code for the full album. The poster will also be available to purchase on its own.

Joint, X2 LP reissue of Lea Bertucci's  'Metal Aether' (2018) & 'Resonant Field' (2019) housed in a beautiful gatefold jacket—download card for 'Metal Aether' & 'Resonant Field' included.   Lea continues her devotion to the exploration of physical spaces by way of sound, channeled through her alto saxophone. Where her previous work investigated a variety of locations around the globe, ‘Resonant Field’ narrows her focus to one space in particular - the Marine A Grain Elevator at Silo City in Buffalo, New York. Using her horn, Lea awakens certain resonances within the space which have laid dormant and forgotten for decades. In this sense, ‘Resonant Field’ is the documentation of a human’s profoundly personal interaction with an inanimate space through the medium of sound.   The decommissioned structure at Silo City is a massive, cavernous space filled with large cast concrete cylinders, measuring approximately 18 feet wide and 130 feet tall. A grain silo that was once active, noisy, loud, and filled with kinetic energy now lays dormant as a silent, hulking concrete corpse, as is the case with many industrial sites across the United States. Through playing her saxophone inside this structure, Bertucci’s goal was to excite and activate the space by playing certain pitches and extended techniques. By engaging with the acoustics in this manner, particularly the 12 seconds of natural decay, Bertucci is able to reimagine the saxophone as a polyphonic instrument, creating unique effects of microtonality and complex rhythmic phenomena, facilitated by the distinct delay as the sound bounces from one end of the silo to the other. Her microtonal playing moves delicately through the octaves, creating an interactive, responsive dance up and down the frequency scale. These overlapping tones form an extreme density and fills the ears and head with an eternal buzz, while also revealing an array of fluttering psychoacoustic phenomenon to the listener. By using these raw recordings of saxophone as the foundation for more intricate studio compositions, ‘Resonant Field’ transcends mere documentation and evolves into a focused, comprehensive and total work at the hands of the artist. Due to the specific architectural and sonic conditions of the Marine A Grain Elevator, Lea has captured new, never-before-heard sounds that truly cannot be duplicated by any other means. Her playing is improvisatory and reactive to the space’s unique acoustics. By allowing imperfections to exist within the recordings, the compositions evoke a distinct rawness and vulnerability. Free of premeditation or calculation, there is an emotional surrender to the bestial, monumental atmosphere and presence of Silo City. This formation of an intimate connection with her surroundings is both scientific and spiritual, putting Lea in a duality of roles as both an archaeologist of sound and as a sonic medium. The fact that these recordings took place during the partial solar eclipse of 2017 further contributes to the ceremonial, ritual quality of the work, making ‘Resonant Field’ a profound, industrial meditation on beauty, emptiness, and the deep melancholy of forgotten spaces.

Searchlight Moonbeam is the new narrative compilation from Time Is Away (Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney) whose eponymous monthly NTS Radio shows, tinctured fusions of fugitive sounds and reverie-inducing archival speech, have won them an ardent following. It follows from the London-based duo’s Ballads, a remarkable driftwerk released on A Colourful Storm in 2022. 
 Searchlight Moonbeam is an autumnal dreamscape, intimate and vespertine, pensive and irresolute. An imagined community where differences drop off and resonances emerge – between Maher Shalal Hash Baz affiliates Kasumi Trio, Taiwanese score composer Chen Ming Chang whose ‘Rainwater’ (written for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1986 film Dust In The Wind) is exquisitely heartbroken, and the plangent improvisations of self-taught French pianist Delphine Dora. 
 Revelations are frequent: the bedsit isolationism of Bo Harwood and John Cassavetes’ ‘No One Around to Hear It’ (from The Killing of a Chinese Bookie); the narked minimalism of Klang (an early 2000s band formed by ex-Elastica guitarist and featuring prize-winning experimental novelist Isabel Waidner on bass); the etude-grooves and echoic wobble of below-the-radar French avant-gardists Omertà ; the beautiful, plaintively dubby ‘Is It You?’ by Slapp Happy; a psych-tinged reimagining of PiL’s ‘Poptones’ by Simon Fisher Turner (one half of Deux Filles, and here, recording for él as The King of Luxembourg) that's as perverse as the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. 
 Searchlight Moonbeam is the musical analog of an Italo Calvino novel or a medieval fable. Associative, intuitive, borderless. Emotional and mysterious. Endowed with the tactility of Braille. A private language that is both unknowable and understood. It is a record of the seasons, for the seasons. 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of Time Is Away’s first broadcast. Featuring an evocative essay by writer Jeremy Atherton Lin and disarming cover art by Penny Davenport, Searchlight Moonbeam showcases Rollo and Tierney’s still-unrivalled talent for gloaming melodies, disques du crépuscule and ensorcelled storytelling.

Perhaps for the first time in the history of music, here is two violas, double bass, and drums quartet featuring the New York-based Mat Maneri & Tanya Kalmanovitch, and Copenhageners Tomo Jacobson & Kresten Osgood. Calling their music chamber free improv gives some clues about the sound world you are entering, but it also falls very short in the face of the multitudes presented here. ‘Variations On No Particular Theme’ is a pregnant name in which we can look for the key to this album. Of course, it brings to mind the classical tradition, yet with a twist. Free improvisation might be understood through the prism of the title as an act of constant variating on being-playing in that act itself, with no particular theme nor agenda other than doing it. 'Non-particularity' on the other hand (with 'particularity' defined as “the quality of being individual”) brings forth an idea of leaving the individualistic tendencies in order to together reach for 'wholeness', which the Oxford dictionary defines as “the state of forming a complete and harmonious whole; unity”, or “the state of being unbroken or undamaged.” And indeed, there is something very 'now' and very 'together' about this spacious music, that might give you a sense of time stopping. Mat Maneri needs no introduction, he is probably the most respected and celebrated jazz and improv string player alive. Tanya Kalmanovitch is a Canadian violist, ethnomusicologist, the Associate Professor at The New School in NYC. She and Mat released in 2016 an insanely beautiful highly acclaimed duo album ‘Magic Mountain’. Kresten Osgood is one of the most versatile drummers we know, who played with pretty much anybody from Roscoe Mitchell, and Paul Bley, to Brad Mehldau, and Kurt Rosenwinkel. Last but not least, Tomo Jacobson, the youngest of the four, with over 30 albums to his credit has proven himself to be an adventurous improviser on numerous occasions over the years.

Lo and behold, the second and final part of the diptych from the unusual free improvising quartet featuring two New York-based viola players Mat Maneri & Tanya Kalmanovitch, and Copenhageners Tomo Jacobson on double bass & Kresten Osgood on drums, is finally here! This time, we enter into a darker, fiercer, seemingly telepathic exchange - a powerful finale to an unprecedented musical journey. Mat Maneri - viola Tanya Kalmanovitch - viola Tomo Jacobson - double bass Kresten Osgood - drums