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"Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions we’ve ever heard - the one off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter.
It’s an unlikely pairing which works from the first breath. Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter’s words. They unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It’s impossible not to follow, not to look for where they point. When the piri sounds for a flooded town on the B side, the water flows between your own feet; Potter’s words a sometimes frightening hörspiel in scouse.

Though the details are fine, the space each artist gives one another and their instruments, their language, is given to the listener in turn. A careful melody picks out a route for words with no fixed meaning, a body with no fixed direction, and we are invited to listen and see a kind of music made visible in its inference. A truly very special record we are very proud to share.
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Influenced by linguistics and performance theory, Roy Claire Potter makes performance, text, drawing, installation and film, and oen collaborates with musicians and sound artists to make audio for music festivals and radio. Across the wide range of their practice, Roy tells stories built from fragmented, intense images that depict moving bodies or domestic scenes and architectural settings. Roy’s interest in subtext and narrative sequencing is felt in the way they use fast-paced talking or reading speeds, and restricted or partial views of space. Complicated social or group dynamics, and the aftermath of violent events are common themes in Roy’s work and are usually treated with a dark, sometimes wilful humour.

Park Jiha creates exploratory music rooted in traditional Korean instrumental performance. To this session she brings three instruments: a Korean hammered dulcimer called a yanggeum, a saenghwang which is an instrument made of 24 slender bamboo pipes attached to a bowl and played like a harmonica and a double-reed bamboo flute called a piri, which sounds similar to an oboe.
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Recorded and mixed on: 30 January 2020 by Rob Winter, Pete Smith and Andy Rushton at Maida Vale Studios, London for “Late Junction - Roy Claire Potter and Park Jiha in session”. Produced by Rebecca Gaskell, Katie Callin and Alannah Chance at Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 3."

This limited reissue of Arjen Lucassen’s (of Ayreon fame) second solo album from 2012 comes in a gatefold jacket and features the original booklet. The story of “Lost in the New Real” follows Mr. L, a twenty-first century man who was cryopreserved at the moment of clinical death from a terminal disease. The album begins as Mr. L is being revived at a point in the distant future, when technology has advanced enough to cure his disease. Mr L finds himself in a world that has drastically changed — to the point that the line between what’s real and what’s not is no longer clear. Arjen Lucassen as “Mr. L” Vocals, instruments, music, lyrics Rutger Hauer as “Dr. Voight-Kampff” Instrumentalists Arjen lucassen: all instruments, with the exception of those listed below Wilmer Waarbroek: backing vocals Ed Warby: drums Rob Snijders: drums Ben Mathot:violin Maaike Peterse: cello Jeroen Goossens: flute Elvya Dulcimer: Hammered dulcimer on “Battle of Evermore”

The Spy from Cairo (aka Moreno "Zeb" Visini) returns with his 5th studio album on Wonderwheel Recordings: "Animamundi" features some special collaborations from his travels & live shows from over the past few years. The album reflects the move from his home in NYC to his mother's home in a quiet village in Italy to take care of her in her older age. It's been a difficult transition with Italy's challenging experience with the pandemic, including some of the strictest measures enforced on the public. He recalls by stating "This album was conceived between 2020 and 2021 in Italy, between lockdowns, restrictions, and various pandemic mandates. Its message is of hope and positivity - a reminder that we are all spiritual beings… Free spiritual beings… and that freedom can't be broken."

"Animamundi" is a reconfirmation that The Spy from Cairo overcomes all obstacles & delivers a diverse progression of his iconic "Arabadub" sound, with the help of collaborators like Andalucian vocalist Carmen Estevez, Mexican vocalist Mambe Rodriguez on the heavy hitting "Criminal," Egyptian vocalist Adii Small on "Beautiful Baraka," and former touring band member, the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Fatima Gozlan from Hungary. The music can vary from heavy deep electronic synths and live eastern instrumentation with Zeb playing oud, saz, chiftelli, bass, percussion, and other instruments, all along giving it his signature dub mixing style.

The songs take inspiration from a wide range of musical traditions and cultures, including Turkish (on "Cosmic Pasha," "Qanun in Dub" – using the qanun, an instrument popular across the Middle East, with a sound between the European harp and a dulcimer – and "Black Sea," which utilises a typical Dabke melody), Egyptian ("Mizmirized," sampling riffs from a mizmar), Indian ("Seeds of Culture), and Sufi ("Divination," a devotional composition), fusing these reference points with healthy doses of cumbia, funk, reggae, psychedelic, and dub. Thematically, "Animamundi" deals with some of the struggles Zeb – and all of us – have faced the last two years, through the lens of his personal experiences. Yet, the tone of the record manages to remain positive, like an uplifting dance through the world's sounds; after all, "Animamundi" means "soul of the world" in Greek. With album art by Sam Angeli and layout design by Marcial Arts, this beautiful album is a truly well-rounded worldwide collaboration.

"Animamundi" will be released digitally on March 4th, 2022, with the LP to follow shortly after.

"The beauty of Jiha's work lies in the spaces she leaves" - The Guardian
The highly acclaimed Korean multi-instrumentalist and composer Park
Jiha, returns with a luminous third album
A deep meditation on the intersection of music and light, The Gleam further
extends Jiha's reputation for uncompromising sonic explorations. Pop Matters
called her musical art "a near flawless fusion of folk tradition and new
composition."
How often do we consider light? We revel in the soft wonder of a sunrise or the
majesty of a glorious sunset, but all through the day its quality and texture is
continually changing, second by second, in ways we rarely register. That beauty is
the inspiration for The Gleam.
"The Gleam continues Park Jiha's solo expedition into experimental Korean
neoclassical braindance. Once again, she plays all the instruments herself – piri
(an oboe), saenghwang (a multi-pipe mouth organ), yanggeum (a dulcimer) and
glockenspiel – overdubbing multiple parts to build songs that shimmer with
levels and degrees of light." - The Wire: Adventures In Modern Music Upcoming
live shows

This album is a critical meditation on variations of Orientalism practiced by Arabs themselves, as well as those who were born and raised within the diaspora. It originally began as a documentation of extended drum techniques, but eventually morphed into a project of more ambitious scope. Having an open timeframe, Julius Masri gave himself reasons to include all the instruments he obsessively picked up and learned over the years. The work accumulated intentions and guiding principles, and it became rather autobiographical in nature. Some of the tracks either refer to or were recorded in the actual physical spaces he grew up near, in Tripoli, Lebanon during the 1980s. The "Arabic Room" of the title refers to the sitting room in his family‘s house that was decked out in hyper orientalist exoticism, mashing together furniture, fixtures, paintings from all over the Arabic speaking world. The sitting room, or salon, is common in Lebanese homes made specifically to host and entertain guests. Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade and other western made Orientalist cultural artifacts not only had ubiquitous presence in the house, but also found their way onto tv shows and commercials. After moving to the US, his parents recreated this room in their home. Additionally, his father's generation was one that saw their country transform from a post-agrarian trading society after WWII to a center of banking and finance within the span of a few decades. The sense of some lost Eden like innocence of the interwar years permeated much of the media that was available to him growing up there. This album is neither ironic nor some judgmental pronouncement. Call it critical nostalgia. For Masri, there isn't much difference between this form of exotic fantasy creation, and his own adolescence steeped in comic books and listening to bands like Voivod. They both seem to him part of what's known in German as Fernweh, "a nostalgia for a place one's never been". All instruments are performed by Masri himself, (drums, Egyptian rababa, Azeri kamancheh, circuit bent electronics, keyboards, hammered dulcimer, and vocals). Genre-hopping is foundational to the album’s ethos; jazz, metal, experimental, electro-chaabi, and sound collage all appear within the framework of Arabic music, creating the sense of adventurous possibilities best associated with well curated mixtapes. Julius Masri is a Philadelphia based multi-instrumentalist and performer/composer, originally born in Tripoli, Lebanon. The Arabic Room is his debut solo-album. Currently he is working and playing with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The album will be released on vinyl only in an edition of 300 copies.

Faitiche presents, for the first time on vinyl, a selection from the 84-track (!!) remix project originally released in 2013 as a three-tape set by Trip Shrubb aka kptmichigan aka Michael Beckett. Known to many from bands like Tuesday Weld or The Schneider TM Experience, Beckett remixed his way through Harry Smith’s famous Anthology of American Folk Music – a compilation of American folk, blues and country recordings released in 1952, soon to become key point of reference for the emerging folk revival movement. Having translated the title into the local dialect of the part of Germany where he lives, Beckett began reinterpreting all of its 84 tracks using sampler, effect pedals and loops – sometimes making several tracks in a single day. A colossal undertaking whose results are beyond accomplished and that is summed up in the selection of thirteen tracks on 'Trewwer, Leud un Danz'.

Murray Royston-Ward writes about 'Trewwer, Leud un Danz':

"Total sacrilege ... A collection of remixes of tracks from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music which was originally released in its entirety. The album is titled Trewwer, Leud un Danz (sorrow, song and dance) which is drawn from an endangered ‘Low German’ dialect (lippisch Platt) and is poetically approximating Smith’s volumes Ballads, Social Music and Songs. 

The hardware employed encompasses analogue, virtual analogue and digital. A primordial soup of electrical fields, striated granulation, micro-circuitry, molecular oscillations and mathematical manipulation; communicating directly with the guitars, zithers, mountain dulcimers, fiddles, jaw harps, banjos, harmonicas and human voices of 1930’s America: itself a reterritorialization of African and European folk traditions that reach back farther and farther into our collective pasts. (…)"

Joshua Abrams’ first album Natural Information from 2010, superb avant-jazz, newly remastered at Dubplates & Mastering.

In his book Powershift, published in 1990, writer and businessman Alvin Toffler predicted that the century ahead would be defined by speed and that time itself is destined to become our most valuable commodity. When Joshua Abrams recorded Natural Information, originally released by Eremite in 2010, he was reacting against such commodification of time and the diminishing attention span that accompanies it by offering music with an irresistible groove, rooted in the sinuous rhythms of the human body and the full play of our senses.

At the heart of this music is the sound of the guimbri, a North African three-stringed bass lute, which Abrams started to play following a visit to Morocco during the late 90s. Traditionally the instrument has a key role in mystical healing ceremonies. Abrams, already a well-established figure in Chicago’s vibrant musical communities, had no desire to repackage tradition. He recognized however that the involving, springy and percussive sound of the guimbri was just the right voice to communicate vital data, to relay the natural information we all need in order to get back in touch with the pulsating continuities of a world we all share.

With Natural Information Abrams entered a new phase of his musical life, extending an invitation to the trance, where time intersects with timelessness. He carried with him a wealth of playing and listening experience. As a bass player he had worked with a host of notable musicians including guitarist Jeff Parker and percussionist Hamid Drake, and had been a member of back porch minimalism outfit Town And Country and the improvising trio Sticks And Stones.

The guimbri is a shaping presence on this remarkable recording, but Abrams also plays bass, bells, kora, sampler and synthesizer. Sympathetic friends including guitarist Emmett Kelly, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and drummers Frank Rosaly and Nori Tanaka join him for the project. They set out not to contrive some neat hybrid but to enable coordinated energies and enriching influences to pulse and flow through living, breathing music. Ten years further into a century seemingly dedicated, as Toffler foresaw, to the survival of the fastest, the deep involving groove of Natural Information seems still more relevant, more illuminating, more vital.

Joshua Abrams: guimbri, mpc, percussion, harmonium, bass, bells, dulcimer, donso ngoni, ms20
Jason Adasiewicz: vibraphone
Emmett Kelly: guitar
Frank Rosaly & Noritaka Tanaka: drums

Legacy Chicago craftsman Mark Nelson’s latest offering as Pan. American is less a distillation or divergence than it is a return to his musical and spiritual beginnings. Spare, subdued, and largely acoustic, A Son unfurls like late summer dusk on the edge of town, expansive but intimate.

Motivated by notions of “moving backward” and tracing roots – as well as a couple years of hammered dulcimer lessons – the album’s nine songs were written and recorded in his home in Evanston, Illinois, and honed during a recent solo tour in Europe. The emphasis on uncluttered arrangements and the centrality of the guitar and vocals reveal these songs as the most direct and emotional statement of his career.

Nelson cites everything from June Tabor, The Carter Family, Suicide and Jimmy Reed as oblique inspirations, though his truest muse was creative self-inquiry: “What does music do, Where does music start? How simple can it be? How honest can it be?”

After decades of mining post-rock pathways and latticework electronics in Labradford and early Pan. American, A Son strips away ornament and distraction in favor of a direct gaze into the heart of what is.

Jatinder Singh Durhailay and David Edren released Tea Notes as a cassette back in April of 2018. London-based Jatinder Singh Durhailay is a painter and student of Indian Classical music. He has trained in both the sitar and the Hindi singing technique, Dhrupad. He also plays two traditional Sikh instruments; the bowed, stringed Dilruba and Taus. Poetic Pastel Press issued his solo debut, The Last Ballad Of Mardana, in 2017. David Edren`s expertise lies with machines and modular synthesis. His Kosmische and New Age-Inspired electronics have featured on numerous cassettes, and compilations, produced for imprints from the current Belgian underground, such as Jj Funhouse, Social Harmony, and Ultra Eczema. These recordings appearing, since the turn of the millennium, either under his own name, or the moniker DSR Lines. Jatinder and David’s collaboration, Tea Notes, is a celebration, a meditation, on both the beverage, and the communal time shared imbibing. The coming together to partake in its ritual. Each of the six tracks represents a different infusion. The opening piece is a tribute to semi-oxidised Oolong, from China`s Wuyi Mountains, with hammered dulcimer-like glissando. Gongs shimmering, gently crashing, as if signaling a change in the weather. A calm of thin, stretched synths and Ai angels introduces Tulsi from India. The Holy Basil of Hinduism, used in the worship of Vishnu, Krishna, and Rama. A traditional herb of Ayurveda and Siddha medicine. Automated arpeggiated sequences raising a vibrating wall of hallucinatory sound. Pairing swooning strings with a racing robot heart. Ceylon is a modern twist on the classical raga. Serving to tell the story of a tea smuggled into Sri Lanka in the 19th century. Plants stolen from South West China, where the brew had been enjoyed since the days of the Shang Dynasty (1766 to 1122 BC). The contraband founding fresh industry in its new home when the indigenous coffee crops failed. Muted organ and sleepy, treated sine wave microtones describe Kava, the Polynesian fireweed root, whose extract serves as both sedative and euphoriant.Shincha are the first young leaves of the season. Picked in Southern Japan and steamed to prevent oxidization, retain their flavour and green / gold colour. Their musical counterpart finds Edren establishing an ecclesiastical drone, while Durhailay`s strings chart an ancient romantic ache. Sonic stars shine. Singing out to the infinite, the universe, before dissolving into knots of Radiophonic Workshop noise.Melodies treated with subtle sustain and delay denote Pu-Ehr, from the Yunnan province. The only truly fermented black tea - made distinctive by the action of bacteria, moulds, and yeasts. Its musical themes hovering in the vapour trails, the atmospheres, they themselves create. Spiraling, soaring, reaching for the heavens, while pretty music box glitches - tiny chimes turned in on themselves. Catching, reflecting, like light at play on fresh running water. (words: Robert Harris)

It gives me the greatest honour to finally be able to announce the release of this amazing triple vinyl masterpiece by log(m) and Laraaji on Invisible, Inc.

It's been over a decade since Laraaji first joined forces with log(m) in their Canadian studio in early 2007. In those ten years the trio recorded many hours of music. Over time these recordings, beginning essentially as live jams, were polished, dissected, processed, re-arranged and then finely and painstakingly distilled down to the 105 minutes of music that now form this album, which finally reached completion just earlier this year. The wait has been more than worth it.

The Onrush Of Eternity is a melding of minds like no other. Ever the pioneer of experimental ambience, Laraaji's signature hammered dulcimer, zither, mbira, auto harp, sruthi drone box and of course his exceedingly positive vibes are here combined with log(m)'s unique vision of gronky hi-tech psychedelic space dub. The resultant voyage into deeply meditative ambience and trance-inducing dub is as unexpected an outcome as it is a bona fide "Eureka" moment. It sounds neither like log(m) OR Laraaji....but of course like both. It is one of those rare collaborations that is, without a doubt, even greater than the sum of its already great parts.

Log(m) started making waves in the early '90s as Legion Of Green Men with their visually striking 12"s, complete with eternal opuscules (locked grooves) and mathematically inspired titles, all lovingly issued on their own Post Contemporary imprint. These deservedly got the attention of Richie Hawtin who promptly asked the duo for an album on his own classic Plus 8 Records. 20+ years later and the music (much like their name) has morphed into something more sophisticated: even more complex, atmospheric and deeper than ever.

Laraaji's reputation of course precedes him: he first came to wider attention when Brian Eno released his "Day Of Radiance" as part 3 of his Ambient Series in 1980. Since then, Laraaji has released over 40 albums, yet his stellar path seems still to be on the ascendant - a recent landmark being the 2017 "Sun" series of albums for the wonderful All Saints' Records.

This unique triple LP in tri-fold sleeve is limited to 200 copies on coloured vinyl and 300 copies on black vinyl featuring ten of log(m)'s signature eternal opuscules and cryptic engravings on all three discs.

Dark Entries reissue the 3rd full length from Carolyn Fok / CYRNAI, an Asian-American female solo artist from the Bay Area. Carolyn's adventures in sound began with recording stories on a tape recorder at age 9 in 1976. A short time later, exploring the scattering of musical instruments and effects units her father left lying around the family home. She became especially fascinated by his TEAC reel-to-reel recorder that set off a lifelong fascination with sound design. By the age of 16 Carolyn had become inspired by industrial electronic act Cabaret Voltaire, as well as anarcho-punks Crass. Creating the stage name CYRNAI, a rearranging alphabet of Carolyn Fok, she played in several Bay Area bands including Treason, A State Of Mind, Trial and Rhythm & Noise between 1983 and 1991.

In 1987, towards the end of art school, Carolyn won another award from the New York Society of Illustrators. During the trip to New York to accept the award, she met electronic/dulcimer musician, Dan Joseph. After writing some letters they decided to make a split cassette titled 'Hypno-Seizure'. CYRNAI contributed 30 minutes of music to Side A of the cassette, 10 untitled pieces that ran into each other. She had just bought a round-the-world ticket going from China to Europe via Eurails, to Egypt, where she liked to wander. She picked up instruments from several countries and recorded the sounds of her new surroundings. Technology was changing into early sampling and she used a Commodore 64 with large floppy disks to record loops. Originally self-released in 1988, this reissue adds 3 unreleased bonus tracks recorded during the same period. Each copy includes a double sided insert with lyrics, photos and notes by Carolyn. All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios.

Unusual Colour And Complex Microtonality Found In The Classical Music Of Iran / Blurts Of Noise, Sour Tones, And A Vaguely Technoid Or Dubwise Impression Expose The Inner Rhythm And Counterpoint Embedded In This Strummed Music / Emotional, Mathematical And Polyrhythmic Principles Underpinning Persian Music, The Record Reveals A Dramatic Blend Of Acoustic Persian Instrumentation And Contemporary Electronics. Sote Aims To Devise An Idealised Fusion Of The Musical Heritage And Tradition Of Iran With The Forward-thinking Vision Which Has Propelled His Storied Career Producing Techno, Hardcore And Computer Music For Labels Like Warp, Ge-stell, Morphine And Repitch. Now Living In Tehran, His Music Has Frequently Grappled With The Strict Cultural Restrictions Imposed In His Country Over The Past Few Decades, Finding A Space And Setting To Nurture New Developments In Experimental Sound And Performance. Working With Arash Bolouri Who Plays The Santour (persian Hammered Dulcimer), And Behrouz Pashaei On The Long-necked, Four-string Setar, Sote Frames And Responds To Their Traditional Artistry. On Occasions He Directly Manipulates The Music Emanating From Their Ancient Instruments, Cultivating And Thickening Up A Surreal And Beautiful Tonality Plucked From Their Strings With A Series Of Processing Techniques, But Mostly Each Track Is A Peaceful Arrangement And Partnership, Sote Electro-acoustically Augmenting Their Movements Within His Own Cybernetic Framework.

Forest Bathing, or Shinrin-yoku, is a term that means taking in the
forest atmosphere.' It was developed in Japan during the 1980s and has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine.
Taking in the forest atmosphere' became the inspiration for A
Hawk and A Hacksaw's newest album. Their forest bath of choice is the Valle De Oro National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. This new album features ten original compositions by Heather Trost and Jeremy Barnes. The opening track Alexandria' features Barnes on the Persian Santur, an ancient hammer struck dulcimer, and Trost's string and woodwind melodies. The composition evokes the long trader's route between what is now Bulgaria and the wealthy cities of Istanbul and Alexandria.
The band has always had a bird's eye view of this part the world—
looking for the connections between places and even eras: a belief in the power of music to reach across borders and unite.
The band is based on the idea of collecting music and inspiration
through travel. They are not of a place, but their music evokes places along a route. This is not urban music. It's rural: songs of the woods and roads where there are no sidewalks or street lamps to light your way.
While the bulk of the music heard on this record is played by Barnes and Trost, they do have some incredible guest performances, namely the clarinet virtouso Cüneyt Sepetçi, from Istanbul, Hungarian cimbalom master Unger Balász, and closer to home, Chicago trumpeter Sam Johnson, Deerhoof's John Dieterich and Noah Martinez, of the band Lone Piñon.

This release blows the trio's instrumental palette wide open for a single continuous piece.
Begun as a one-off collaboration in 2009, the trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi has now become a solid working group, refining its craft through a series of annual concerts at Tokyo's legendary SuperDeluxe.  Much of their recorded work has focused on their intense, ritualistic take on the rock power trio of electric guitar, bass and drums, with last year's 'now while it's still warm let us pour in all the mystery' (BT09) containing a series of instant compositions of stunning power and concision that demonstrated how familiar and attuned to one another the three have become.

Presenting the entire first set of the trio's March 2013 concert at SuperDeluxe (the second set will follow on Black Truffle later this year), 'only   wanting to melt   beautifully away is it a lack   of contentment  that stirs affection   for those   things  said to be as of yet unseen', their fifth release,  blows the instrumental palette wide open for a single continuous piece focused on acoustic strings, synth, flute and percussion. Featuring one of Haino's most delicate and moving recorded vocal performances, the opening section of the record takes the form of a spare duet between O'Rourke's 12-string acoustic guitar and Haino's kantele (a Finnish variant of the dulcimer), behind which Ambarchi provides a hovering backdrop of wine glass tones. While on previous releases the listener has often sensed that Haino was firmly in the driver's seat, here O'Rourke takes centre stage with an acoustic guitar performance that takes the lyricism of John Abercrombie or Ralph Towner and refracts it through the free improvisation tradition of his mentors Derek Bailey and Henry Kaiser. The atmosphere of meditative, abstracted song is reminiscent of some of Haino's greatest recordings, such as the legendary 'Live In The First Year Of The Heisei' volumes recorded with Kan Mikami.