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viewing 1 To 13 of 13 items
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TW S-LP
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On While Whirling, French-Japanese violist Frantz Loriot unleashes the essence of the viola as an explosive expressive force. Pushing the instrument to extremes, he ceaselessly explores its most subtle and unexpected sonorities. From a single acoustic string instrument, he miraculously teases and evokes hallucinatory impressions of harpsichords pounded, bells struck, electronics cracked, dirt shoveled; Loriot has created a unique, personal music filled with moments of textured transcendence and tension-filled tenderness. While Whirling is Loriot's second solo album and a masterclass on how to develop a radically personal musical language. As a third-generation classically-trained musician, Loriot's rupture with that tradition is striking as he continues to challenge every pre-conceived relationship between instrument and instrumentalist. Having first been inspired to rethink the physicality of musicianship by hearing Tom Cora's playing on his collaboration with the Dutch punk-rock band The Ex, Loriot sought out a series of teachers that could further expanded his sense of the musically possible/possibly musical. From Joëlle Léandre, he was opened up to the combination of aesthetics and politics; from Barre Phillips and his "large calm energy," Loriot learned about the necessity to get uncomfortable in his music-making. And from David S. Ware, he took an understanding of music as a matter of life and death. To his biological and pedagogical foundations in classical music, Loriot supplemented his understanding of music's force with realizations of vitality, awareness, and danger. While Whirling was recorded in the acoustically balanced space of Das Institut in Zürich, a small, intradisciplinary art space with angled walls on the top floor of a residential building on a quiet street. Because Loriot knew that he wanted to focus on both capturing and unspooling specific acoustic phenomena that he sought to manifest, he had to choose a place that would be ultra-conducive to intense focus, yet still casual enough to make room for life to burst in. As a sequence of solo excursions, each track on While Whirling rewrites the balance between improvisation and composition. The drama of Loriot struggling to complete a sequence after arriving at a texture he so clearly strove for puts the listener in an extremely privileged position; you have the pleasure of hanging on to each desperate subtlety of his decision-making process as he pushes himself and his music further and further across the vanishing edges of ever-expanding horizons. Deluxe LP with download; Heavy tip-on jacket with embossing and spot finishes; Full color inner sleeve and insert.
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2LP
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TW R-LP
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Thin Wrist Recordings release L'épaisseur de l'air (the thickness of air) by Jean-Luc Guionnet. After more than three decades playing the alto saxophone, this is the French artist's first solo saxophone album. Since the 1990s, Guionnet has built a renowned and thrilling oeuvre of works with pipe organs, electronics, and field recordings as both an improvisor and composer; L'épaisseur de l'air finally documents his dedication to exposing sides of the alto saxophone that quite simply never existed until he developed them. His tone is as clear as direct sunlight, so when he boils it in mud or scratches at it as if for air, his emotion is palpable. A double-LP masterpiece and a definitive statement about the profound physical relationship between an improvisor and their instrument. A student of Xenakis at the Sorbonne, Guionnet has constantly explored the philosophical side of music; his work interrogates fundamental questions about skill, intuition, experience, and performance that arise through improvisation. He has instigated and featured in unexpected collaborations such as performances with noted British philosopher Ray Brassier and artists Seijiro Murayama Mattin as well as his long running artistic partnerships with dancer and choreographer Lotus Edde Khouri. For this album, Guionnet retreated to a barn in Brittany, where he recorded by himself at night over the course of a few weeks. Each of the nine improvisations -- spanned across two LPs -- uncovers such particular sonic territory that it's a miracle the whole adds up to such a complete statement. But by pushing space and silence so startlingly and oblongly into the pieces, the gnarled, gritty textures of his tone begins to make sense as a response to time that is forever shifting in such unpredictable ways that you better get into it while it's still coming out. Direct metal mastering at Calyx Mastering Berlin. Pressed at Record Technology, Inc. (RTI). Deluxe gatefold double LP with download; Heavy tip-on jacket including debossed and embossed inserts.
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LP
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TW O-LP
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Patrick Shiroishi's Descension is a beautifully elegiac and unflinchingly primal album. With richly layered solo saxophone, electronics, and voice, the album is a meditation on the legacy of a dark history and its echoing relevance in the present era. Descension is a spiritual journey that reveals Shiroishi's deeply reflective and unique musical vision. Over the past decade Shiroishi has established himself as one of the key artists in Los Angeles's free improvisation and avant-garde undergrounds. An incredibly inventive and versatile player, Shiroishi has collaborated with everyone from epic post-rock maximalists Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Radu Malfatti, the Austrian composer who pioneered the ultra-quiet reductionist school of improvisation. Shiroishi has also led or been at the center of innumerable ensembles which currently include Danketsu 10, Borasisi, Nakata, Kogarashi, Komeshi Trio. His previous groups include in the Womb, Oort Smog, oxox, Hoboglyphs, and Upsilon Acrux. On his debut album for Thin Wrist Recordings and his first solo vinyl release, Shiroishi makes a deep examination of his own ancestral history. "In the fall of 2016 I started researching heavily into the concentration camps of Japanese-American citizens during World War II," says Shiroishi. "My grandparents on my father's side met and married in the camps at Tule Lake, a place my grandmother never spoke about to me when she was alive. As I began to dive deeper, it naturally began to sink into my improvisations and work." In the context of events that were unfurling in real time, Shiroishi's work began to bridge the past with the present, using improvisation as the most immediate means of expression: "Everything on Descension was recorded in one take in the order that it appears," recalls Shiroishi. "I didn't prepare any melodies or form prior to the session; I anticipated playing layers and layers of noise. The record is a representation of how I had been processing the horrors of the present -- the sadness of the loss of life not only in the states but through the genocides in Sudan, Myanmar, Iraq and Syria, anger that migrant children are being separated from their parents and being held in concentration camps again, the frustration that times really are frighteningly similar to when my grandparents were growing up." Rather than create any sort of literal or agitprop statement, Shiroishi's work tapped into a timeless spiritual tradition of music -- closer to those of artistic heroes such as Coltrane or Ayler.
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2LP
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TW Q-LP
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#1 2019 Album of the year in The Wire magazine! Restocked. 75 Dollar Bill is one of the essential groups at the heart of NYC's underground. Driven by the telepathic union of Che Chen's microtonal electric guitar and Rick Brown's odd metered percussion their long-form sound is unmistakable and compelling. On their third album I Was Real, the group expands in bold new directions, embracing brilliant fuller orchestrations, joyous rockers and entrancing new textures. Having emerged as a vibrant musical force with their previous effort -- with Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock (GB 047CD, TW J CS/LP, 2016) -- 75 Dollar Bill have spent the last few years bringing their music to new places and people, delivering what NYC locals have known for years, with their dedication to performance in venues of all shapes and sizes. The fruits of this work can be heard here on their expansive new double-LP I Was Real. The album, its title's origin a jumbled misremembering of the lesser-known Motown song "He Was Really Saying Something", is 75 Dollar Bill's third, featuring new directions accompanying the band's previously established interest in sprawling, unusual grooves and microtonal melodies. The record is enhanced by the presence of eight additional players in various combinations over its nine tracks -- but also shows off the duo's strength when stripped down to the core. Requiring a variety of approaches, the album was recorded over a four-year period, in four different studios, with the band's closest associates and collaborators in a range of different ensemble configurations. The album also features several "studio as instrument" constructions that harken back to the collage-experiments of the band's early cassette tapes, while at the same time pointing to territories altogether new. The players involved highlight the "social" aspect of the band and the eight guests that appear on the record are some of the band's closest friends and collaborators. Some pieces were conceived in the band's very early days and others are much newer, but the music is unmistakably 75 Dollar Bill. As Steve Gunn said about the previous record: "Strings come in underneath Che Chen's supreme guitar tone. Rick Brown's trance percussion offers a guiding support with bass, strings, and horns supporting the melody. They have gathered all the moving parts perfectly." Double-LP version presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold jacket with textured clothe wrap and matte foil stamping.
Personnel: Rick Brown - plywood crate, hand and foot percussion, crude horns; Che Chen - 6 and 12-string and quarter-tone guitars, percussion; with: Sue Garner - guitar and bass guitar; Cheryl Kingan - alto and baritone saxophones; Andrew Lafkas - contrabass; Karen Waltuch - viola; Jim Pugliese - percussion; Barry Weisblat - signal processing, Casio SK-1; Steven Maing - quarter-tone guitar; Carey Balch - hi-hat.
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TW Q-CS
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Cassette version. 75 Dollar Bill is one of the essential groups at the heart of NYC's underground. Driven by the telepathic union of Che Chen's microtonal electric guitar and Rick Brown's odd metered percussion their long-form sound is unmistakable and compelling. On their third album I Was Real, the group expands in bold new directions, embracing brilliant fuller orchestrations, joyous rockers and entrancing new textures. Having emerged as a vibrant musical force with their previous effort -- with Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock (GB 047CD, TW J CS/LP, 2016) -- 75 Dollar Bill have spent the last few years bringing their music to new places and people, delivering what NYC locals have known for years, with their dedication to performance in venues of all shapes and sizes. The fruits of this work can be heard here on their expansive new double-LP I Was Real. The album, its title's origin a jumbled misremembering of the lesser-known Motown song "He Was Really Saying Something", is 75 Dollar Bill's third, featuring new directions accompanying the band's previously established interest in sprawling, unusual grooves and microtonal melodies. The record is enhanced by the presence of eight additional players in various combinations over its nine tracks -- but also shows off the duo's strength when stripped down to the core. Requiring a variety of approaches, the album was recorded over a four-year period, in four different studios, with the band's closest associates and collaborators in a range of different ensemble configurations. The album also features several "studio as instrument" constructions that harken back to the collage-experiments of the band's early cassette tapes, while at the same time pointing to territories altogether new. The players involved highlight the "social" aspect of the band and the eight guests that appear on the record are some of the band's closest friends and collaborators. Some pieces were conceived in the band's very early days and others are much newer, but the music is unmistakably 75 Dollar Bill. As Steve Gunn said about the previous record: "Strings come in underneath Che Chen's supreme guitar tone. Rick Brown's trance percussion offers a guiding support with bass, strings, and horns supporting the melody. They have gathered all the moving parts perfectly."
Personnel: Rick Brown - plywood crate, hand and foot percussion, crude horns; Che Chen - 6 and 12-string and quarter-tone guitars, percussion; with: Sue Garner - guitar and bass guitar; Cheryl Kingan - alto and baritone saxophones; Andrew Lafkas - contrabass; Karen Waltuch - viola; Jim Pugliese - percussion; Barry Weisblat - signal processing, Casio SK-1; Steven Maing - quarter-tone guitar; Carey Balch - hi-hat.
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2LP
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TW N-LP
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A Handful of Dust was founded over three decades ago by two giants of the New Zealand underground, Bruce Russell (The Dead C) and Alastair Galbraith. Declaring their raison d'être in the now infamous Free Noise Manifesto the group has advanced a radical aesthetic; rejecting any notion of structure or comfort they've ground music to its sub-elemental parts. A scraping and howling electricity, spontaneous, unrestrained, physical. Contains expanded and unreleased works spanning the group's history including their first studio recordings since 1995 and new writings, a late coda to The Journal of Vain Erudition, Logopandocy. Includes download. Deluxe 2LP Edition - contains expanded and unreleased works spanning the group's history including their first studio recordings since 1995.
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LP
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TW L-LP
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A trumpeter and improviser living in Mexico City, over the last ten years Jacob Wick has become known for deconstructing the instrument itself and any expectations of how it "should" be played. The explorations on Feel focus on sound as it relates to specific spaces and in turn the subtle but profound connections they have to emotions and the body. The result is a highly personal music that is both unique and immediate, abstract yet undeniably visceral. On Feel, Wick creates two intense side-long improvisations. On the surface they appear to be works of rigorous minimalism; on closer listen they reveal sounds that slowly but constantly shift and evolve. Texture and plosives replace melody and rhythm. Body and breath become indistinguishable from the instrument, the moment is stretched and expanded. Each sound is so closely linked that the player and listener are drawn completely into the present. Feel is an uncompromising and entirely original album -- an intimate sound experience that rewards anyone that chooses to enter.
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TW M-LP
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Michael Morley has long been acclaimed for his electric guitar and electronic forays in New Zealand's legendary The Dead C and Gate. On Heavens Idleness Awaits, he strips his music to its most elemental state. Recorded at home and using only a single-tracked acoustic guitar, Morley creates an intimate and intensely meditative work. Over four, side-long tracks, he weaves hypnotic melodic figures that slowly unfurl to reveal a minimalist masterwork and one of his most powerful statements to date. Gatefold sleeve; Includes download.
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2LP
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TW-IA
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2010 release. An expanded and definitive double LP edition of Kevin Drumm's groundbreaking first album, originally released on Perdition Plastics in 1997. Featuring some of the most fiercely abstract and organic guitar work ever heard, Drumm's debut is both jarring and completely alien. Dubbed by some as the greatest prepared guitar record ever recorded it prefigured (and continues to trump) almost an entire decade or so of contemporary "out" music that would follow. Beautiful and completely essential. This edition includes an entire fourth side of previously unreleased recordings from Drumm's personal archive, all recorded in the same era as the original album. It also includes entirely new artwork featuring the body of the actual guitar used to record the album. Kevin Drumm - guitar. Recorded directly to tape in the fall of 1996; Tracks A1-C1 were first issued in 1997 (Perdition Plastics). 180 gram vinyl; Includes two full-color inserts; Includes download code; Heavy "tip-on" gatefold jacket with spot gloss and matte finishes, textured de-bossing.
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3LP
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TW-I
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2013 release. Six sides, indeterminate order, 720 sequences titles: What Stun's the Sky, Cold Pink Cloud, Softer Light, the Black Lands, Lost Eras, Tusk then Tusk(s), More Time, Return Backwards, Soft Silhouettes, White Selector, The Black Selector, Black Plates / Black Face, Old Blood / Other Names. Music, Production, Design: Peter Kolovos; Photography: Zoe Crosher; Mastering: Rashad Becker, Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin; Pressed at Pallas, Germany. 180 gram vinyl; Includes download code; Full-color heavy tip-on slipcase and three full-color jackets.
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LP
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TW-H
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2009 release. Bruce Russell (The Wire) on New Bodies in August 2009: "Peter Kolovos, guitarist in Los Angeles trio Open City, presents here three tracks of electric guitar improvisations. In New Bodies, his first solo release, Kolovos lets rip with all the skronk and blurt he's been holding in for the last decade, in tiny, tightly gated segments. His sound vocabulary is very broad, and his control of texture and timing is masterful. Using equalisation, reverb, envelope shaping and volume control... He rapidly opens and closes the volume window on a dizzying series of extended guitar techniques, creating the inescapable impression of Derek Bailey covering The Residents' Duck Stab. If that won't sell records, I don't know what will. This electrifying effect is enhanced by the crisp digital recording and the superb D&M pressing job -- every clang and buzz is right up in your grill. The packaging continues the good work. The cover features a magnificent photograph of the guitarist taken by Joyce Campbell using the mid-19th century tin type process, which requires a sitting of over three minutes. The resulting image is as physically 'time based' as the recording it encloses, and has the distinctive look of a Victorian death mask -- no 'posing' or even facial expression is possible. In this regard the cover is an exact metaphor of the recording - what you perceive is exactly what you get."
Music, production, design: Peter Kolovos; Photography: Joyce Campbell; Mastering: Rashad Becker, Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin; Pressed at Pallas, Germany. 180 gram vinyl; Includes download code; Full-color heavy metallic tip-on cover.
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Cassette
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TW J CS
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Cassette version. 75 Dollar Bill, a project by Che Chen and Rick Brown present Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. "Che's interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm 'boom' sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we're likely to do in the percussion realm. Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, this new record, differs quite a bit from the previous one, notably in the rhythmic 'tone.' Wooden Bag (2015) was all forward momentum, stomping and shaking, but the new record explores a long-standing interest of mine: odd and 'compound' meters. In most of my previous musical activities, I've convinced my partners to delve into this, but in 75 Dollar Bill it has just felt natural and I believe Che's modal investigations and melodic/harmonic tendencies enhance (and are enhanced by) this combination. The current record differs from the last in another big way: reinforcements! Over our few years together, Che and I have frequently had friends play with us at some of our gigs. There have been all sorts of permutations of instruments and some great friends/players who don't all appear on this record but here we are lucky to have a bunch of them: Cheryl Kingan (of The Scene Is Now) on baritone and alto saxes, Andrew Lafkas (of Todd Capp's Mystery Train) on contrabass, Karen Waltuch (of Zeke & Karen) on viola, Rolyn Hu (of True Primes) on trumpet and Carey Balch (of Knoxville's Give Thanks) on floor tom. Please enjoy Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. 'Earth' saw is one of our earliest tunes and, I think, the first result of this 'compound meter' approach. It's a slow 9 beat phrase Che came up with for this odd groove. 'Beni Said' has no fixed rhythmic cycle but a roughly unison melodic phrase and a pulsing, loose feeling of 3s and 4s played using a box full of bottle caps. 'Cummins Falls' features Carey Balch on Diddley-beat floor tom and me reprising the maracas. 'I'm Not Trying To Wake Up' is another of our compound meter songs, this one using an 18 beat scheme." - Rick Brown
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LP
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TW J LP
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Sold out, 2021 repress forthcoming, expected in October. 75 Dollar Bill, a project by Che Chen and Rick Brown present Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. "Che's interest in the Arabic modes of Mauritanian music has marked our sound quite a bit but I have brought some things, too. The plywood crate I play is a big factor, defining, by its positive qualities (a nice warm 'boom' sound) as well as by its simplicity, what we're likely to do in the percussion realm. Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock, this new record, differs quite a bit from the previous one, notably in the rhythmic 'tone.' Wooden Bag (2015) was all forward momentum, stomping and shaking, but the new record explores a long-standing interest of mine: odd and 'compound' meters. In most of my previous musical activities, I've convinced my partners to delve into this, but in 75 Dollar Bill it has just felt natural and I believe Che's modal investigations and melodic/harmonic tendencies enhance (and are enhanced by) this combination. The current record differs from the last in another big way: reinforcements! Over our few years together, Che and I have frequently had friends play with us at some of our gigs. There have been all sorts of permutations of instruments and some great friends/players who don't all appear on this record but here we are lucky to have a bunch of them: Cheryl Kingan (of The Scene Is Now) on baritone and alto saxes, Andrew Lafkas (of Todd Capp's Mystery Train) on contrabass, Karen Waltuch (of Zeke & Karen) on viola, Rolyn Hu (of True Primes) on trumpet and Carey Balch (of Knoxville's Give Thanks) on floor tom. Please enjoy Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. 'Earth' saw is one of our earliest tunes and, I think, the first result of this 'compound meter' approach. It's a slow 9 beat phrase Che came up with for this odd groove. 'Beni Said' has no fixed rhythmic cycle but a roughly unison melodic phrase and a pulsing, loose feeling of 3s and 4s played using a box full of bottle caps. 'Cummins Falls' features Carey Balch on Diddley-beat floor tom and me reprising the maracas. 'I'm Not Trying To Wake Up' is another of our compound meter songs, this one using an 18 beat scheme." - Rick Brown
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