Spencer Doran and Maxwell August Croy Start New Label, Reissue Hiroshi Yoshimura's Music For Nine Post Cards

In 2010, Spencer Doran (best known now as a member of Visible Cloaks) uploaded a mix to SoundCloud entitled Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo. Featuring tracks from YMO (and its members), Mariah, and the Mkwaju Ensemble, the mix can now be seen as one of few key moments that ushered in intense interest in 80s Japanese music in the West throughout the past decade. He along with Maxwell August Croy, one of the guys behind Root Strata, have just launched a new label called Empire of Signs. For its first release, the two are reissuing the inimitable 80s ambient album Music For Nine Post Cards by Hiroshi Yoshimura. You can listen to the first track from the album above.

This release marks the first time the album has been reissued outside of Japan, and is the first of numerous Yoshimura reissues to come. The LP comes with liner notes from both label owners as well as Yoko Yoshimura, Hiroshi Yoshimura's widow. It's being distributed by Light in the Attic and the initial pressing is limited to 1500 copies—1200 on black wax, 300 on clear wax. Light in the Attic has an option where you can pre-order this LP with the upcoming reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura's Pier & Loft. You can pre-order the albums and read more information about Music for Nine Post Cards here.

Music for Nine Post Cards tracklist:

1. Water Copy
2. Clouds
3. Blink
4. Dance PM
5. Ice Copy
6. Soto Wa Ame - Rain Out Of Window
7. View From My Window
8. Urban Snow
9. Dream

Black Truffle Releases New Annea Lockwood LP Featuring Two Unreleased Works

Oren Ambarchi's Black Truffle label has released a new Annea Lockwood LP. It features "Tiger Balm", a composition that Lockwood wrote while living in the UK that was meant to explore "the possibility of evoking ancient communal memories through sound." Listen to the track below. The album is also backed by two unreleased works on the B side—"Amazonia Dreaming" and "Immersion". The former was composed in 1987 and is performed by Dominic Donato. On the track, Donato utilizes his voice and a snare drum to "evoke the nocturnal soundscape of the Amazon rainforest". "Immersion" was composed in 1998 and is performed by Frank Cassara. It's a more meditative piece for marimba, two tam-tams, and a gong. According to Lockwood, it "grew out of a fascination with the rich beating frequencies generated by long cluster rolls in the low register of the marimba and the interaction between the marimba and a quartz bowl gong tuned to F." You can purchase the LP now from Forced Exposure (US), Boomkat (UK), Bleep (UK), Kompakt (Germany), and A-Musik (Germany). The LP also comes with a score for "Amazonia Dreaming".

Craftman Records Reissue Rare Masayuki Takayanagi & Kaoru Abe Live LP

Early last month, Masayuki Takayanagi & Kaoru Abe's Kaitai Teki Kōkan went up on Yahoo! Auctions and sold for $6000. Supposedly released in a limited run of 100 copies, this incredibly rare record is finally getting its first vinyl reissue via Craftman Records. It comes out August 23rd and is being sold for ¥7980.

The album features a recording of the duo's live performance at the Kōsei Nenkin Kaikan concert hall in Shinjuku on June 28th, 1970. The reissue is pressed on 180g vinyl and replicates the original LP's textured sleeve. It also includes a replica flyer that advertised the original event. You can currently purchase the album at Disk Union and Tower Records. Do note that this release is different from those that featured live performances of the two in Shibuya during the same year. You can stream the full album below.

Midori Takada and Masahiko Sato's Lunar Cruise Gets Reissue

In Discogs' 2017 Mid-Year Review, it was revealed that the reissue of Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass was the highest selling new release of the year on the marketplace. Given its success, it only seems natural that WRWTFWW Records would decide to reissue Takada's collaboration with Masahiko Sato, Lunar Cruise. The album was originally released in 1990 on CD and is getting reissued on vinyl for the very first time. You can pre-order the CD or Deluxe Vinyl Edition on the label's Bandcamp page here. The reissue comes out September 15th.

As a note, the Deluxe Vinyl Edition comes with a CD that features an "extra track". This extra track, however, appeared on the original CD and was entitled "Iron Paradise". It's presumably taken off the LP as it shies away from the minimalism of the other tracks. What's unclear, though, is whether it's the first or second version that appeared on the original CD that's included since the label's SoundCloud album preview doesn't feature either. Even then, know that only one of the two versions appears on the CD. Lunar Cruise track "Madorone" features Haruomi Hosono on bass and Kazutoki Umezu on sax and clarinet.
 

Lunar Cruise Deluxe Vinyl Edition tracklist:

A1. Nahm
A2. Ancient Palace
A3. A Vanished Illusion
A4. Jyomuran
A5. Monody
B1. In "D"
B2. Madorone
B3. Chang-Dra
B4. Lunar Cruise

Lunar Cruise CD tracklist:

1. Iron Paradise
2. Nahm
3. Ancient Palace
4. A Vanished Illusion
5. Jyomuran
6. Monody
7. In "D"
8. Madorone
9. Chang-Dra
10. Lunar Cruise

17853 Records Reissue Hiroshi Yoshimura's Pier & Loft, Pre-Orders Available Now

If you're like me, you consider Hiroshi Yoshimura to be one of the greatest ambient/new age artists of all time. If you're even more like me, you've been on the look out for his best releases on Discogs, eBay, and Yahoo! Auctions for quite some time, only to be consistently discouraged by the exorbitant prices they sell for. Luckily, Pier & Loft is getting reissued on vinyl for the very first time in late September via 17853 Records. Originally released in 1983 on cassette, Pier & Loft was created to soundtrack a fashion exhibition in Tokyo. The album was released on Fukusei Gijutsu Kohboh, a label run by Yoshio Ojima. Ojima produced it as well, and also released some of his own cult classic ambient/new age records during the 80s.

You can see the cover above, which was taken from an image in the original cassette's J-card. The tracklist and clips from the album can be found below. Pre-orders are currently available from distributors around the world. This includes Red Eye (UK), Phonica (UK), Pacific Beach Vinyl (USA), Rush Hour (Netherlands), and hhv (Germany). Japanese stores don't have the record currently listed but you can be sure to expect it from 17853 label boss Chee Shimizu's own Organic Music and other (killer) stores who have received the label's output in the past—HMV, Disk Union, Lighthouse Records, EAD, Los Apson?, Obscuro, Newtone, Rare Groove, and more.

Pier & Loft tracklist:

1. Horizon I've ever seen before
2. Signal F
3. Tokyo Bay Area
4. Wavy-patterned ice cream
5. Kamome dayori
6. The sea in my palm
7. In the sea breeze

Makoto Oshiro and Takahiro Kawaguchi Reissue Cassette Featuring ISSUE Project Room Performance

This past December, Makoto Oshiro and Takahiro Kawaguchi released a limited run of cassettes featuring a performance they had at Brooklyn's ISSUE Project Room in March 2016. They've just reissued the cassette in a small batch of 30. As before, the tape's B Side features remixes from Masahiko Okura, Giuseppe Ielasi, and Dawang Yingfan Huang. You can see an image of the colored cassettes above and the tracklist below. The tape costs ¥2000 and comes with a digital download code. If interested, you can order the tape directly from Makoto by emailing bsf.releases@gmail.com. Act quick though, as he is approximately down to fifteen tapes at the time of this post.

Recently, Makoto recorded, mastered, and appeared on a new album from Kakudo Manami. You can find more information about that pop-leaning project here. You can watch a music video of one of the tracks here. Makoto does have copies of those CDs as well.


Makoto Oshiro/Takahiro Kawaguchi tracklist:

Side A:
1. Makoto Oshiro/Takahiro Kawaguchi
Recorded at ISSUE Project Room 2016 by Bob Bellerue

Side B:
1. Masahiko Okura Remix
2. Giuseppe Ielasi Remix
3. Dawang Yingfan Huang Remix

Black Truffle Records Reissue AMM's Seminal AMMMusic

AMMMusic, the landmark debut album from AMM, is getting its first official vinyl reissue courtesy of Oren Ambarchi's Black Truffle Records. The album was remastered and cut by Rashad Becker and is available for preorder right now at Forced Exposure (US) and Boomkat (UK). Copies will also be available in the future at Metamkine (FR) and Kompakt (DE). If you want to remind yourself what the album sounds like, stream the whole album (in low quality) via YouTube below. The press release for the reissue is as follows:

Black Truffle is honoured to present the first vinyl reissue of the classic debut album from AMM, AMMMusic. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form, replete with Keith Rowe’s beautiful pop art cover and the terse aphorisms by the group that served as its original liner notes. A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label’s founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd‘s first manager Peter Jenner. (Pink Floyd paid tribute to AMM’s influence on their improvisational sensibility with the track ‘Flaming’ on their debut album, named after the piece that occupies AMMMusic’s first side, ‘Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset’).   

Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British jazz avant-garde – Keith Rowe and Lou Garehad played with the great progressive big band leaderMike Westbrook and Eddie Prévost played in a post-bop group with Gare – AMM quickly evolved from a free jazz group into something decidedly more difficult to categorise. By the time these recordings were made, two more members had joined the group: another Westbrook associate, Lawrence Sheaf, and the radical composer Cornelius Cardew. Then at work on his masterpiece of graphic notation Treatise, Cardew brought with him extensive experience of the post-serialist and Cageian currents in contemporary composition. Using a combination of conventional instruments and unconventional methods of sound production (most famously Keith Rowe’s prepared tabletop guitar, but also prepared piano and transistor radio), the group performed improvised pieces often running for over two hours and ranging from extended periods of silence to terrifying cacophonies.

Evan Parker famously described the improvisational logic of AMM’s music as ‘laminal’, in contrast to the ‘atomistic’ approach more common among the generation of British improvisers (Bailey, Rutherford,Stevens and co.) to which he himself belonged. AMM improvised in layers: layers of sound subtly rising and falling or abruptly starting and stopping without being propelled by the implied pulse of free jazz improvisation. Rather than a pulse, AMM’s music began with the sound of the room in which it was played, the Cageian anarchy of silence. By embracing the non-synchronous simultaneity of layered sound, AMM was able to create a musical container into which nearly anything could be incorporated at any moment: on AMMMusic, long tones sit next to abrasive thuds, the howl of uncontrolled feedback accompanies Cardew’s purposeful piano chords, radios beam in snatches of orchestral music (and, on the LP’s second side, an extended fragment of ‘Mockingbird’).

AMM’s clearest break with jazz-based improvisation concerned the idea of individuality. Where improvised music has tended to foster the development of idiosyncratic stylists who move freely from one group to another, AMM, initially through an engagement with eastern philosophy and mysticism and later though a politicized communitarianism, sought to develop a collective sonic identity in which individual contributions could barely be discerned. In the performances captured on AMMMusic  the use of numerous auxiliary instruments and devices, including radios played by three members of the group, contribute to the sensation that the music is composed as a single monolithic object with multiple facets, rather than as an interaction between five distinct voices.

– Francis Plagne

Superior Viaduct Reissue Ellen Fullman's The Long String Instrument

At the Kansas City Art Institute, Ellen Fullman studied sculpture and started to become interested in the sonic qualities of metal, electronically manipulating acoustic sounds, and defining the reality of space via art. Along with this, she was particularly influenced by the Judson Dance Theater and the way they took banal, everyday actions and made it the foundation for their performances. Both of these eventually led to the The Long String Instrument, a large scale musical sculpture which consisted of long metallic wires anchored by a wooden resonator. You can check out the technical information of the sculpture here.

A performance of The Long String Instrument was recorded in 1985 during her residency at Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It was then released via their Apollo Records but hasn't been reissued since. Super Viaduct is changing that on October 23rd, and pre-orders for the LP are available now. The tracklist and an excerpt from the record can be heard below.

There are also a slew of other great releases that Superior Viaduct are releasing soon and I'd personally recommend snagging the Harry Pussy debut, Ilitch's 10 Suicides, and L. Voag's The Way Out. If you live near Oakland, I'd also suggest you check out their brick-and-mortar store. When I visited a couple months ago, they had some rare LPs like Friction's debut and Wolfgang Dauner's Output.

In other sound sculpture-related news, Important Records is releasing an 11 CD boxset containing the entirety of Harry Bertoia's Sonambient LPs. You can pre-order that here. If you're in Chicago, make sure to check out Olivia Block's Somnambient Pavilion sound installation in Millennium Park throughout the month of November.

The Long String Instrument:

1. Woven Processional
2. Langzaam
3. Swingen
4. Memory Of A Big Room (For Matthew)
5. Dripping Music