Holidays Records

Pygmy Unit

Signals From Earth LP
HOL-133

Blending Native American references into a body of sonority that draws on free improvisation, experimental electronic music, and spiritual jazz, Pygmy Unit’s “Signals From Earth” - originally self-released by the band in 1974 - forges a singular and almost entirely unknown path, and stands almost entirely on its own in the history of west coast American jazz.

First appearing on the San Francisco scene sometime during the early 1970s, almost nothing is know about the Pygmy Unit, a seven piece band steered by Darrel De Vore, who contributed flute, bass, percussion, piano, and vocals to the band's lone LP, first appeared with percussionist Terry Wilson within the psychedelic folk rock band, The Charlatans, who belonged to the legendary Family Dog scene. Jim Pepper, a Native American tenor saxophonist known for being a member of the Mal Waldron Quartet, played with Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, and numerous others, and produced the cult favourite, “Pepper's Pow Wow”, for Embryo Records in 1971. John Celona, who contributes parts on sax, synthesizer, and percussion, would later go on to be regarded as an electronic composer of some note. Of the remaining members, saxophonist Frank Albright, bassoonist Ron Grunn, and percussionist Marvin Kirkland, very little else is known. It seems this LP is more or less all they recorded.

While undeniably jazz - riding a remarkable line between avant-garde electronic music, spiritual jazz, and free improvisation - the band was very much a product of the diverse creative ferment that developed in their hometown of San Francisco during the 1960s. Embodying the raw spirit of DIY (many of the instruments used in the recordings were made by DeVore himself, self-described as an “itinerant flute-maker”) the ensemble channels references - via passages of chanting and percussion, as well as conceptual underpinnings - from Jim Pepper’s Native American roots, intuiting them with the soulfulness of spiritual jazz, wild moments of avant-gardism centred around synths and electronic effects, and explosions of wild free improvisation.

“Development of new music is a continuous path that grows directionally according to psychoacoustical phenomena available for unification. This record is evidence of that development, containing 12 performance pieces, at 12 separate times in different acoustical spaces with various combinations of musicians and instrumentation. The music is shaped by signals, received and sent by life forms on this planet. It is unwritten, unrehearsed, utilizing new and traditional approaches to energy, motion, and form. Eventually, music develops as a natural extension of the environment in which it exists. It is the aim of the traditions… to signal the universe from the Earth.”

Pressing info:
500 copies, black vinyl, includes two booklets / replicas of original DeVore's publications

Delivery Health

SuperDeluxe! 2xLP
HOL-131

For more than a decade, Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto have been coming together in various combinations - duos, trios, and larger ensembles - slowly becoming one of the most noteworthy, understated collaborations in the landscape of experimental sound. In 2015, the trio recorded a brilliant LP entitled “Delivery Health” ‎for Silent Water, laying the groundwork for an enduring project that adopted that album’s title as its name, debuting properly in 2017 with the stunner “Hard Off”. Over the years since, we’ve encountered Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto playing together in Bonjintan, their project with Akira Sakata, and in further collaborations with Eiko Ishibashi and Joe Talia, not to mention O'Rourke and Di Domenico’s prolific work as a duo.

Of course, O’Rourke needs little introduction. Initially emerging in Chicago during the late 80’s and based in Japan since the mid-2000s, for more than three decades he has carved a relentless path through the field of experimental sound, creating a body of work - hundreds of albums deep - that refuses any form of stasis and obligation to genre or idiom. He is an artist driven by a singular quest, his endless curiosity driving him to constantly forge into uncharted, visionary realms. Slightly younger but nearly as prolific, Di Domenico - Italian born and Brussels based - has constructed a striking solo practice over the last two and a half decades, bridging numerous forms of improvised and electroacoustic music, all the while rigorously working within various ensembles - Abschattungen, AufHeben, Bonjintan, Cement Shoes, etc. - and an endless stream of collaborations. Among the most noteworthy drummers currently working in Japan, over the last decade and a half Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, in addition to his many efforts with Di Domenico and O'Rourke, has collaborated steadily with noteworthy figures like Otomo Yoshihide, Phew, Eiko Ishibashi, Sakaguchi Mitsuhisa, and Akira Sakata, as well creating a body of solo works.

Like its predecessors, “SuperDeluxe!” rides a beautiful line between striking singular creative ambition and accomplishment, and simply feeling like a free-wheeling conversation between friends who have relinquished their egos and presumptions out of a deep sense of mutual respect. The album is a kind of retrospective rewind, comprising five documents recorded live - between 2012 and 2014 - at the legendary SuperDeluxe, Tokyo, by Masahide Ando, then mixed by Giovanni Di Domenico, and finally mastered and cut by Frédéric Alstadt at Angstrom Mastering, Bruxelles. Taking us deep into the very beginnings and previously unheard activities of Di Domenico, O'Rourke, and Yamamoto, the trio weaves a knotted tapestry unfurling as sheets of sound, that sidesteps signifiers and the expectations that one might have of each of these artists on their own. Ranging from brisling ambient passages drawing on latent melodic flirtations, heavy jams on guitar, drums, electronics, and keyboards, and outright, full throttle noise, each moment represents a visionary excursion into the depths of experimental, improvised sound, revealing a shocking sense of real-time dexterity from each player, as much as the collective whole experiments in improvised sound.

Pressing info:
300 copies, black vinyl, b/w insert with Japanese text on colored paper + obi

James Rushford

Block Gifts LP
HOL-126

Block Gifts is a collection of three works for organs composed by James Rushford between 2015 and 2018. Using harmonium, portative organ and electric organ, each piece is linked by Rushford’s idiosyncratic combination of strict intervallic systems in different tunings (Werckmeister, quarter-tone, equal temperament), and haptically-informed rhythmic and expressive freedom. Creaks, stutters and sweeping fingers on keys become instrumental sounds in their own right, creating a further logical layer in Rushford’s compositional world.

An intimate, nocturnal, and slightly suffered dialogue between the instrument and the body building a shining and fragile monument to the ephemeral nature of the organ, one of the most intriguing and ancient families of musical instruments in history.

Mixed by Joe Talia, mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, cut by Daniel Krieger at SST, Frankfurt am Main. Composed and recorded 2015-2018 at Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), California Institute of the Arts (by Sam Dunscombe) and Chinatown Studios, Melbourne (by Joe Talia). Cover artwork and fold out poster by Graham Lambkin.

Pressing info:
300 copies, black vinyl, fold out A2 poster

Jean-Yves Bosseur

Musiques Vertes LP
HOL-128

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. Utilising 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.

Jean-Yves Bosseur is a relatively obscure figure in the history of the French avant-garde. A student of Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as a close associate of Knud Viktor, he belonged to the legendary collective Groupe d'Etude et Réalisation Musicale GERM, widely celebrated for their realization of Terry Riley's Keyboard Study 2, issued by BYG / Actuel in 1970.

The “Musiques Vertes” project began in South East France during the late 1970s, spearheaded by Christine Armengaud, who was investigating, via elderly people in the region, a long tradition of musical instruments made with organic materials and plants. With their help, she was able to construct 240 instruments, collected in her book “Musiques Vertes”, published in 1978 by Christine Bonneton éditeur, that had long been used for bird calls, dancing, toys of young shepherds and children, and much more, but had been lost to common usage following the First World War.

In 1980 the Direction de la Musique awarded the composer Jean-Yves Bosseur a grant to start a collective practice of music using the instrument constructed / reconstructed by Armengaud. Rather than working with professional musicians, he chose to use locals and children he encountered in Aix-en-Provence between 1981 and 1982. The Musiques Vertes album is the result of hours of practice and recording by these players, in each case, within the album 11 musical excursions, utilising a series of instructions or games set up by the composer in an attempt to create collective musical exchange, as well as a dialogic exchange between this practice and active listening within a natural environment.

While the acoustic practises that underscore Musiques Vertes display a deep resonance with those embarked upon by artists like Akio Suzuki, Toshiya Tsunoda, and Jeph Jerman, the structural resemblance, held deeply within utopian avant-garde principles, falls far closer to experimental electronic works that might have emerged from experimental electronic studios like Groupe de Recherches Musicales or EMS, or subtle object oriented efforts in free improvisation. Bubbling textures and atonalities, blended with sounds from the natural environment, intermingle with staggering birdsong-alike tonalities and rattling percussive passages, producing striking moments of abstraction that retain a remarkable sense of humanity and ease. A document of pure sonic magic and stunningly organic creativity.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black, 20 page booklet

Tongues of Mount Meru

Naga Mountain 4xCD Box Set
HOL-121

Lasse Marhaug and Jon Wesseltoft have collaborated in a variety of projects over the years, but started the Tongues of Mount Meru duo back in 2008 as a collaboration to pursue their shared interest in sustained and closely calibrated sounds, and the phenomenological impact they have on the act of listening. They started recording a session each year from 2008 to 2011 in Oslo utilising harmoniums, organs, shruti boxes, oscillators, and computers and accumulated a large pool of material. Some of that material wound up on tapes and vinyls over the years, but they kept the hour-long pieces with an intended major future release in mind. These pieces are now collected in this monumental 4 disc box set.

Clocking in at the total of over 4 hours, with over 10 years in the making, this music was crafted with a clear intent to influence its listeners sense of time and mental colour analogous to the music’s stringently, and at times claustrophobic, unfolding narrative. Slowly blooming clusters of wave interference kaleidoscopic blending together with lower frequency binaural pulse patterns. It is as if light has been pitched down, and its oscillating and shimmering coating of gradually shifting overtone cycles opens up and crashes down again into the ocean of waves continually churning around its own time axis.

Drawing upon their joint interest in minimalism and long-form music, raga theory and electro-acoustics, Marhaug and Wesseltoft conjures up a focused power of both beauty and unease to deeply establish a state of hypnotic attentiveness. The result is a hallucinatory and intense set of finely tuned and tectonic long-form pieces, and is a must for anyone even remotely interested in any form of sustained sounds, and its impact on the mind.

Pressing info:
200 copies, black cardboard box set with gold print

Alessandro Bosetti

Plane/Talea 31-34 2xLP
HOL-120

Since a few years Alessandro Bosetti has been collecting voices that become part of the Plane/Talea archive. The creation of the archive stems from dozens of individual meetings and recording sessions, in which each voice is detached from its owner or originator and anonymized. With each new iteration and performance, Bosetti plays the archive as if it were an instrument. He searches for hidden details and correspondences through exploration, immersion and contemplation. Each re-activation of the archive results in a dense and swarming polyphony made up of thousands of short utterances - shorter than any word bearing a meaning - recombined and interwoven into complex textures. The particularity of the grain of Plane/Talea lies in the autonomous and darting life that each of these fragments lives in a teeming community of voices. Such polyphonies are rich in microtonal detail emerging from the incessant juxtaposition of vocal objets trouvés. Harmonic relationships are sometimes rough and chaotic, other times surprisingly just. The voices are never treated electronically but only recombined and musical tension is provided by the particular grain, inflection, energy of each one of them in counterpoint to the others and to a frugally used instrumentarium (Harpsichord, Ondes Martenot, Cristal Baschet, grand piano, analog synth, Hammond organ). Implicit reference goes to ancient, modern and postmodern forms of vocal polyphony. "Plane/Talea 31-34" - the continuation of the homonymous 2016 LP - is a work of sampling that projects an imaginary community and a disembodied choir. The four arching and extensive tracks were created between 2017 and 2018 and bear the trace of two specific moments: August nights in a country house in Vicobarone, in the hills of Piacenza (31-32) and a week-long residency at the "Studio Venezia", an environment created by French artist Xavier Veilhan in the French pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale (33-34).

« Encounters of this sort did happen, with the voice still clinging onto its own origin, and then seen, as it were, coming out of the original mouth and caught saying other things, with a slightly different intonation, a slightly different timbre, maybe due to a little aging, an extra cigarette, a cold. At that point we would come out unsettled, or maybe convinced that it was not the same voice anymore, but another. »

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble

Music for Angela Davis LP S/Sided
HOL-135

During our long friendship and incredibly prolific collaboration with Hartmut Geerken - who sadly left this planet on October 21, 2021 - he never ceased to surprise us. He lived many lives, traveling the world as an employee of the Goethe Institute, playing with other incredible musicians, and being smart enough to record most of the concerts he did. His archive is in fact full of treasures, and any conversation with him could lead to the rediscovery of unheard master tapes preserving true music gold. It was during one of these conversations we had at his house - while searching for pictures to be used for the 50th anniversary reissue of "Heliopolis" - that he pulled the original score of "Music for Angela Davis No. 2" out of a folder, saying with a smile: "Let's see... I should have the complete recording of this one"!

Recorded at Nile Hall, Cairo, on December 4, 1971, "Music for Angela Davis" is a 24-minute composition that encounters two full ensembles - respectively conducted by Geerken himself and Hubertus Von Puttkamer - playing simultaneously without listening to each other, rising and falling within a brilliant and structurally complex expression of call and (non) response. Collective improvisation in its most heightened and sophisticated form.

As described by Geerken in the liner notes: «One of my attempts with the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble was my time-related, but timeless composition “Music for Angela Davis”. I divided the ensemble into two groups of roughly the same size, each with a conductor, and both groups played simultaneously, according to the different hand signals of the conductors, without one group reacting to or considering the other. The only two tone sequences consisted of the musicable notes of the name Angela Davis, i. e. a-g-e-a and d-a s. The composition was an attempt to get together in society through the medium of improvisation and a protest against the racial measurements of the American governments.»

Pressing info:
500 copies on black

Akira Sakata and Giovanni Di Domenico

And Life Also Same LP+7"
HOL-132

A mind-blowing collaborative artefact from the long-standing partnership between the seminal Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata and the Italian pianist and composer Giovanni Di Domenico.

Born in 1945 and trained as a marine biologist, for decades Akira Sakata has stood at the forefront of Japanese jazz and improvisation, first emerging during the early '70s as a member of the Yamashita Yosuke Trio, before venturing out as a solo performer, recording widely and collaborating with a vast number of distinguished players from the global scene.

Giovanni Di Domenico, currently based in Brussels, over the last two decades has emerged as a definitive voice, bridging improvised music and advanced forms of electroacoustic music, producing a discography of critically heralded solo efforts, and intimate collaborations with Jim O'Rourke, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Arve Henriksen, Alexandra Grimal, Nate Wooley, Chris Corsano, and others. His collaboration with Sakata began during the 2010s and has since produced nine releases with numerous configurations and line-ups.

While most of Di Domenico’s recent releases have veered toward the electronic and electroacoustic realm, "And Life Also Same" - stretching across a full LP and a 7" - refreshingly encounters him returning to his roots as an absolutely brilliant pianist. Recorded in May of 2018 at Studio 107, Radio France, both players are in top form, firing out complex arrangements and clusters of tonal interventions that collide in a stunning display of conversant artistry, ranging from restrained passages within which Sakata delivers beautiful primal vocalizations backed by the patterns of Di Domenico’s notes, to full on hard blow free jazz fire.

Cover illustration by Ciro Fanelli.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Mette Rasmussen and Pak Yan Lau

Traditional Noise LP
HOL-127

A collaboration between two up and coming stars of experimental music - Mette Rasmussen and Pak Yan Lau - offering glimpses of probable futures of improvisation.

Mette Rasmussen is a Danish saxophone player based in Trondheim, Norway, who first gained attention as a member of Trio Riot, before increasingly branching out as solo artist, working with the likes of Alan Silva, Chris Corsano, Fire! Orchestra, Tashi Dorji, and Ken Vandermark. Drawing from a wide range of influences, from free jazz to textural soundwork, Rasmussen’s practice delves into the exploration of the natural rawness of her instrument and its capacity for expression, with and without preparations.

Based in Brussels, Pak Yan Lau is a sound artist, improviser, musician, and composer. Over the last decade, she has developed her own singular sonic universe blending acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic approaches and working both as a vocalist, as well as with prepared pianos, toy pianos, synths, electronics and various sound objects across a number of solo efforts, in addition to live and recorded collaborations with Chris Corsano, Akira Sakata, Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Tetuzi Akiyama, Rie Nakajima, and Darin Gray.

Recorded in Antwerp during late 2017, "Traditional Noise" features Rasmussen on alto sax, preparations, objects, voice, and Lau on toy pianos, synth, sampler, modified wok, typatune, and electronics, locked in an evolving, conversant sound expanse that pointedly avoids the explicitly musical as the two artists bristle against each other, delivering textural and tonal interventions defined by careful restrain and space.

Cover drawing by Virginia Genta.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble

Heliopolis LP
HOL-124

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.

Pressing info:
500 copies on black, 6 page foldout booklet

Horrid Red

Radiant Life LP
HOL-3001

After years apart, Horrid Red return with their fourth LP, Radiant Life. Twelve tracks of their unmistakable blend of exotic kraut-punk, dreamy psychedelic tunes, Neue Deutsche Welle, industrial jangle, muffled drum machines, and decadent synth-pop.

Recorded in San Francisco, Aachen, Los Angeles and Madison between 2019 and 2020 by core members Edmund Xavier (Glenn Donaldson), Bunker Wolf (Karsten Scholl), and Clay Ruby (of Burial Hex) – with William P. Produced by Edmund Xavier and Clay Ruby. Mastered by Nathaniel Ritter (Kinit Her, Second Family Band).

Pressing info:
100 copies on red, paste on cover image

Available in the US by Soft Abuse Records.

Michael Zerang

Assyrian Caesarean LP
HOL-122

Chicago-based percussionist Michael Zerang presents his first solo recording after a long career as an exploratory musician and composer. Recorded and mixed by Matt Bordin in the woods at (the new) Outside Inside Studio, the album features a range of approaches to percussion that Zerang has developed over the years, including the use of vibrating drumhead surfaces, expressive friction passages, multiple timbre percussion, and straight up trap-set drumming - all infused with a rich sense of melodic, rhythmic and textural innovation.

Zerang has performed and recorded with some of the most adventurous artists of his era, including a fourteen-year stint with The Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, Joe McPhee’s Survival Unit III, and an extended collaboration with drummer and percussionist Hamid Drake. Frequent collaborators also include cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, pianist and synthesist Jim Baker, bassist Kent Kessler, trumpeter Axel Dorner, along with an ever-widening pool of international improvisors. He also recently began performing with the experimental Middle-Eastern super group Karkhana - with Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui, Maurice Louca, Tony Elieh, Sam Shalabi and Umut Çağlar.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Hüseyin Ertunç Sextet

A New World 2xLP
HOL-119

We consider ourselves extremely fortunate having met Hüseyin Ęrtunc during his terrestrial transit. After we reissued his wonderful album Mûsikî (privately released on Intex Sound in 1974) and a few collaborative albums with the Konstrukt collective, in 2017 we finally managed to invite him, Doğan Doğusel, Cem Tan and Umut Çağlar to play some shows in Italy as a quartet. Things got really complicated when their visas got rejected - one week before their plane was scheduled to take off - but we found a stalwart supporter of free jazz music at the phone when we contacted the Italian Embassy with a tiny bit of hope and (incredibly) we got the visas in time so we could spend a whole week with Hüseyin and his band, touring Italy and playing four shows of the best spiritual free jazz we heard in a long while. 

Right after that, we took the chance to book a recording session at the good old Outside Inside Studio where our loyal partner Matt Bordin captured on tape two days of improvisation by Hüseyin Ęrtunc (Fender Rhodes electric piano, Philicorda organ and chant), Umut Çağlar (percussion and bamboo flutes), Doğan Doğusel (double bass), Cem Tan (drums), joined for this special occasion by the Jooklos Virginia Genta (tenor and sopranino saxophones, clarinet, flutes), and David Vanzan (percussion) leaving an incredible musical document, not only for the fact that - unfortunately - it was Hüseyin's last session on this world.

"Most of Ertunç’s recorded appearances have been on drum set, where he’s employed a massive and materialist cymbal approach that takes Sunny Murray’s explosive chatter as a lifting-off point. Ertunç waxed one LP as a leader in 1974, Mûsikî (with then-regular partners Michael Cosmic and Phill Musra, issued on the tiny Intex label), and returned to Turkey in the early 1990s. Ertunç’s playing, relentless as it might be, evinces a strident, swinging quality that reaches back decades. His pianistic approach is rooted in the outpouring of voluminous, allover rhythm in concentrated shards. One might first think of early Cecil Taylor, though another Boston resident is also worth mentioning – Jaki Byard, who could move from barrelhouse to crepuscular romanticism and dense chordal superimpositions at the drop of a hat. If he and Ertunç didn’t necessarily work together, their spirits are kindred." (Clifford Allen)

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Konstrukt

Bloppin' 7"
HOL-117

To be considered a twin release of the previous For Ornette 7". The single consists of two more short tracks - taken from the same Hayyam session - where the five-piece goes bebop, building some rhythmic and harmonic complexity filled by solo virtuosisms of core-members Korhan Futacı (saxophone) and Umut Çağlar (electric guitar).

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Konstrukt

For Ornette 7"
HOL-116

Two short tracks (out of four) taken from the same Hayyam session which gave birth to the contemporary Oryantal EP. Two funky shots dedicated to the memory of the one and only Ornette Coleman. Some real intense (double) drumming animating a full-band jam on side A, while the B-side of the single consists of a nervous duo of saxophone (Korhan Futacı) and drums (Berkan Tilavel).

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Konstrukt

Oryantal 12"EP
HOL-115

Istanbul based multi-instrumentalist Umut Çağlar founded the Turkish free jazz band Konstrukt at the beginning of 2008. Since then the band went through many line-up changes and collaborated with with the likes of Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, William Parker and Keiji Haino, continuously evolving its sound.

The band is currently formed by Çağlar, Korhan Futacı, Apostolos Sideris, Erdem Göymen and Berkan Tilavel and this EP - recorded at Hayyam Studio in Istanbul in 2017 with two drummers and a double bass player on board - shows a more melodic and groovy side of the band. The session explores their rhythmic roots with the use of traditional instruments such as bendirs, tefs and double reeds, trying to carry these sounds to the future with the help of electronics.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Four Horsemen

Nada Canadada LP
HOL-114

The Four Horsemen was a sound poetry group of Canadian poets composed of bpNichol, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton and Steve McCaffery. The group started performing in 1970 and quickly moved from radical improvisation to the use of a notational system - with an effort to develop a scoring method adequate to the group's dynamic and visceral sound show - designed to give them even more freedom of expression. The group became then a living workshop with regular weekly rehearsals leading to the best refined group-conceived and group-written compositions. The excitement generated by composing and performing poetry separately is magnified when these acts are in conjunction. Nada Canadada - nine outbursts of controlled madness dedicated to the memory of Hugo Ball - is one of the highest examples of poetry as product of a community.

"The number of words we still use in our poetry comes as somewhat of a surprise to us, especially in the light of this album. Strictly speaking we cannot call what we do sound poetry if by it is meant that poetry which has its basis in non-verbal, vocal, and sub-vocal elements of sound. Nor are we into the electronic ramifications of sound in any sense beyond doing a record. We are in fact reluctant to pin the aesthetic continuum on which we operate to the first wall available. Still, perhaps the best name for what we do is what it always has been – poetry". (Rafael Barreto-Rivera)

Pressing info:
250 copies on black

Karkhana

For Seun Matta LP
HOL-113

Featuring some of the most innovative players from Beirut, Cairo and Istanbul, Karkhana met for the first time in Beirut in 2014, bringing together influences from the three major experimental music scenes of the region and beyond. Through their live shows, the band's seven multi-instrumentalists build a transcendental atmosphere developing what could possibly be called free Middle Eastern music. Shades and traces of shaabi, tarab, sufi and much more are heard in the distinct blend of free jazz and psychedelic krautrock they've created.

Recorded and mixed by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio - in only two days - and mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering Studio in Chicago, For Seun Matta is the first studio album by the band, following Nafas (Omlott, 2016) and Live At Metro Al-Madina (Sagittarius A-Star, 2015). Featuring Sharif Sehnaoui on electric guitar, Sam Shalabi (The Dwarfs of East Agouza) on oud and electric guitar, Maurice Louca (The Dwarfs of East Agouza) on organ and synth, Umut Çağlar (Konstrukt) on zurna, gralla, bamboo flutes, and percussion, Mazen Kerbaj on trumpet, Tony Elieh on electric bass, and with the recent addition of Michael Zerang on drums.

"I wish I could track down more of this tantalising outfit's music to share...This Middle Eastern supergroup first got together to celebrate the music of Egyptian surf guitarist Omar Khorshid – who was also a key figure in Oum Kalthoum's orchestra – but their remit has expanded somewhat and now they're fully committed to outer-perimeter explorations in Krautrock-leaning, cosmic free jazz" (John Doran, The Guardian)

Pressing info:
500 copies on black

Henning Christiansen

Hesteofringen 10"
HOL-111

On January 30, 1970 Henning Christiansen and Bjørn Nørgaard - a figure nearly radical as Christiansen himself - hit the Danish national consciousness when a large portion of the Danish population watched a TV broadcast performance piece in protest to the Vietnam War. Hesteofringen (The Horse Sacrifice) features the work Min døde hest (My Dead Horse, 1970) OPUS 55 for piano, voice and violin (green), a beautiful haunting fragile song featuring a poem written by Bjørn Nørgaard and performed by Lene Adler Pedersen, accompanied by Nørgaard and Christiansen on piano and (green) violin. Laden with metaphor, this beautiful, sad lullaby, is as simple and unusual as anything in Christiansen’s output.

Released in collaboration with the Henning Christiansen Archive.

Pressing info:
350 copies on black, embossed lettering

Primorje

Etymology (I, II) 7"
HOL-110

Primorje is the most recent collaboration between Giovanni Donadini (Ottaven, Fantamatres) and Matteo Castro (Lettera 22), focusing on the use of the 4 track recorder as their only instrument. Tape loops, field recordings, dub echoes, damaged beats and downgraded tempos creating two short, minimal and slithering compositions.

Pressing info:
100 copies on black

Lasse Marhaug / Jon Wesseltoft

Nature Lovers LP
HOL-109

Norwegian musicians Lasse Marhaug and Jon Wesseltoft team up for a computer duo. Pretty abstract but not too noisy computer music this. Marhaug is well known in the field of noise music but has frequently drifted into other areas such as improvisation and jazz, contributing throughout his career to well over three-hundred releases, and also publishing the amazing fanzine Personal Best under his own imprint Marhaug Forlag. Jon Wesseltoft is a multi-instrumentalist actively performing in a wide variety of projects, shifting from acoustic sources to electronics. The record features five dynamic but strict tracks recorded in 2016 at the best studio in Oslo, edited and mixed by Wesseltoft.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Henning Christiansen

Stone-song 2xLP
HOL-108

A one-hour performance presented in 1990 at the 8th Biennale of Sydney (The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art) where time is being scanned and animated by matter and where the genius of Henning Christiansen - with fellow artist Bjørn Nørgaard and Ken Unsworth, to whom this performance is dedicated - establish a deep dialogue with the nature (of sound) watching the time, stone on stone, being at the same time actors and audience of its ephemeral and violent manifestations. What time is it? Is it what time? Time is it what?

Released in collaboration with the Henning Christiansen Archive.

Pressing info:
350 copies on black

Squadra Omega

Nervoso LP
HOL-107

The Squadra Omega teams up again revealing itself in the shape of a trio composed - exactly as for the session which gave birth to Il serpente nel cielo - by OmegaFrank (drums), OmegaG8 (bass, electronics) and OmegaMatt (guitar, organ, sax and electronics).

An improvised session recorded live by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio, where the Squadra goes nervously FREE - constantly suspended and harmonically non resolved - following a trail of skilled atonal jazz rock guitar tunes leading to moments of dazed electronics. Definitely not an easy-listening album, wonderfully rendered by a masterful cut made by Daniel Krieger at SST in Frankfurt. For fans of early ECM records. Cover artwork by Re delle Aringhe.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black

Henning Christiansen

Schafe statt Geigen / "Verena" Vogelzymphon LP
HOL-106

"I have worked together with sheep before" - says Henning Christiansen - introducing the performance he did in front of the Brucknerhaus in Linz in July 1988. But this time he went beyond, building a "Concert-Castle" with hay blocks where thirty sheep could perform music. Another time the animals - Christiansen's obsession and passion - become the musical instruments used for his compositions: "Originally most of instrumental sounds derived from animal voices or other sounds of natural phenomena. The violins, for instance: someone found out that stretched intestines, dried bowels, could produce a sound. This has simply been civilized, refined".

Schafe statt Geigen (Sheep Instead of Violins, 1988) and "Verena" Vogelzymphon (Bird Symphony, 1990) first appeared as a small CD edition issued by Galerie Bernd Klüser in 1991. Both works, each one occupying a full side of this LP edition, extend from one of Christiansen's long standing conceptual strategies - deploying recordings of animals as stand-ins for musical instruments, sheep and birds respectively. While each work allows these source to take the natural lead, at times masquerading as field recordings, both feature subtle tonal and electronic interventions by the composer, creating strange and brilliant compositions which shift the terms and subjects of music as they were long understood. Accompanied by a twenty page booklet featuring drawings and texts by Henning Christiansen, as well as pictures of the performance by René Block.

"The background, the space where music happens is what I want to put into the foreground." (Henning Christiansen)

Released in collaboration with the Henning Christiansen Archive.

Pressing info:
500 copies on black, 20 page photographic book

Maria Monti

IL BESTIARIO LP
HOL-105

There was never anyone like Maria Monti. Knew for her renderings of Italian popular songs, she is an Italian singer and actress with a noteworthy career: cabaret singer in the ‘60s, ambitious avant-garde folk artist in the ‘70s, and starring in films by directors as such as Sergio Leone (Fistful of Dynamite) and Bernardo Bertolucci (1900).

IL BESTIARIO - a prime example of the avant-garde art-song of the 1970s - is a near perfect emblem of the fascinating territory gained through collaboration. It enlisted the radical poet Aldo Braibanti as its lyricist, features arrangements and synthesizer from Alvin Curran (Musica Elettronica Viva), the baritone saxophone of Roberto Laneri (Prima Materia), as well as the soprano saxophone of jazz legend Steve Lacy. The result is absolutely stunning, musically unique within the respective outputs of its participants’ long and noted careers.

Pressing info:
First edition – 500 copies on black, 16 page booklet with lyrics and translations
Second edition – 500 copies on black, 16 page booklet with lyrics and translations
Third edition – 250 copies on black, 16 page booklet with lyrics and translations

Akira Sakata / Manuel Mota / Giovanni Di Domenico / Mathieu Calleja

Jomon LP
HOL-104

Japanese saxophone transgressor Akira Sakata meets with his long-time collaborator and Fender Rhodes virtuoso Giovanni Di Domenico, Portuguese guitarist Manuel Mota, and drummer Mathieu Calleja for a session recorded at Les Ateliers Claus in Brussels.

Named after the Jomon period of the Japanese prehistory - when Japan was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer culture rich in tools, clay pottery, and jewelry made from bone and stone - the record features three tracks: Jomon (縄文), Kaen (火焔), and Dogu (土偶). The Dogu (literally: "clay figures") were small humanoid and animal figurines made during the Jomon period for religious purpose: it may have been believed that illnesses could be transferred into the Dogu, then destroyed, clearing the illness, or any other misfortune. The record itself is a musical healing ritual invoking and unleashing a powerful demon with Sakata's throat singing, then slowly hypnotizing it in the second half of the album, putting it back into its vault before it's too late. Beautiful artwork made with Sakata's hand-painted Kanji characters.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black

Konstrukt and Alexander Hawkins

Live at Cafe OTO 2xLP
HOL-103

Istanbul-based free music ensemble Konstrukt perform alongside special guest Alexander Hawkins building the perfect groove in a sweaty Cafe OTO on August 10th 2015.

Two sets from the same night, each a 40 minute long improvisation. First set is a psychedelic warm-up where the Turkish quartet welcomes Hawkins in a whirlwind of hypnotic funky tunes going electric in the Miles way. The second set starts with Hawkins piano keys bouncing along a silent background soon to be filled with a groovy odd drum tempo leading to a wall of sound where all parts build a perfectly unpredictable dialogue.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Konstrukt

Molto Bene CD/LP
HOL-102

In Summer 2015 A L’ARME! Festival invited Konstrukt to perform with William Parker and we teamed up with Matt Bordin of Outside Inside Studio to invite the quartet to play two shows in Italy on their way to Berlin. Plans overlapped leaving two days off spent playing with no interruption at Matt's studio in Montebelluna and capturing four incredible tracks.

Now, Konstrukt are well known for their many collaborations with key players and real giants of worldwide jazz scene, but – once again – having the chance to listen to the music they produce when they play "alone" is something special. Their tribute to the past is paid with every single tune they play, but what we hear in these recordings is something that we can only describe as "new music".

Pressing info:
CD 300 copies / LP 250 copies on black

Henning Christiansen

Musik Essayistik 2xLP
HOL-101

Henning Christiansen (Copenhagen, 1932 – Isle of Møn, 2008) was a Danish composer and an active member of the Fluxus movement. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen and at the more liberal Ex-School (Eks-Skolen) embracing soon its radical approach in study and creation of art and developing his own musical thinking. In 1962 he attended the George Maciunas’s International Festspiele Neuster Musik in Wiesbaden, where he probably experienced an epiphany that caused a significative shift in his artistic practice and musical composition.

Musik Essayistik is the combined reissue of twin releases Fluxyl (1983) and Fluxid (1984) – two of the most obscure and enigmatic records in Christiansen's discography – previously issued separately by Borgen Records in Denmark. Four minimal pieces exploring the clash between instrumental composition-improvisation and pre-recorded real sounds.

Released in collaboration with the Henning Christiansen Archive.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black, embossed Green Ear on front cover

Hüseyin Ertunç / Doğan Doğusel / Cem Tan / Umut Çağlar

Gümüslük Sessions: At Lon's 4xLP Box
HOL-100

Recorded over two days yet retaining a continuous, immediate vibe, the Sessions feature a stirring quartet with Ertunç on piano, Doğan Doğusel at double bass, the young drummer Cem Tan, and Umut Çağlar - a stalwart of the Konstrukt group - on reeds and percussion.

"In the caliber of multi-album statements like Taylor's Nuits de la Fondation Maeght (Shandar, 1969) and string instrumentalist and composer Alan Silva's Seasons (BYG, 1970), Gümüslük Sessions: At Lon's stretches out texturally and conceptually, although there's a loose, homegrown informality unique to these musicians' orbit (partly attributable to the dry, open recording quality). The initial marathon pace relaxes into nattering trails and the full ensemble falls away to reveal spare duos and trios over the course of eight sides. Ertunç's piano ebbs as zurna, flutes and bamboo reeds, auxiliary percussion and voices draw out the music's connection to folk forms, as well as the interleaved East-West textures of Yusef Lateef and the AACM. As 'out' as the music gets, there's always a center in Ertunç's keyboard approach; moreover, his linkages with the pliable, allover percussive buzz and thrumming pizzicato create a constant burble of jabbing movement. This is a clunky, Monkish swing or a playful push-pull, rather than the 'tinka-tinka-ting' of bebop. Concentrated, unflagging and incredibly spiritual, Ertunç, Cağlar, Doğusel and Tan have convened to structure an incredibly personal artistic document that speaks to the universal possibilities of freedom." (Clifford Allen)

Turkish liner notes by Volkan Terzioğlu.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black, colored carboard box set, printed inner sleeves

Hüseyin Ertunç Trio

Mûsikî LP
HOL-099

Released in 1974 as a private press LP on Intex Records, this cosmic free jazz improvisation by this legendary trio guided by Hüseyin Ertunç - on drums - with his then-regular partners Michael Cosmic and Phil Musra - on saxophones and additional percussion - reveals the primitive and physical approach of the trio, with Ertunç's massive cymbals drumming building a carpet of trance-driving vibe where the reeds can freely dance without any structure.

"A new world of improvisational freedom opened up for me when I first heard drummer Huseyin Ertunç's 1974 LP Mûsikî (Intex), with reedmen/multi-instrumentalists/brothers Phil Musra and Michael Cosmic. Ertunç returned to his native Turkey about twenty years ago (and performs with the Konstrukt collective), but Musra - this tune's composer - now resides in Los Angeles and, as regular readers of this blog know, is still active in music. Although I initially assumed that Mûsikî and Musra's companion LP The Creator Spaces were recorded at the same session, in truth Mûsikî was recorded months earlier. The Creator Spaces is a bit more spacious than Ertunç's date, though both are quite intense documents of self-produced and spiritually-directed improvisation. Knotty and weird, there's a folksy unhinged-ness that really spoke to me in a way quite different from Albert Ayler, the AACM, and other music I was spending time with when I dropped the needle on the trio's debut album. Ertunç's percussion work really shocked me and it's still absolutely fascinating, and Cosmic's organ playing behind/around Musra's tenor is just...something else." (Clifford Allen)

Pressing info:
400 copies on black

Arrigo Lora-Totino

Toccata vocale / Ursprache 7"
HOL-098

Working at the vinyl release of the Trio Prosodico we had the chance to meet Arrigo Lora-Totino and to go with him through his archive of reel tapes and unreleased material, bumping into these two pieces belonging to a completely different nature compared to the ones we were acquainted with - less "acting" and much more "exercise" - where the voice is stressed to its limits in two opposite ways. Toccata vocale is a boiling chorus of short vowel sounds - like hiccuping bullets of a jammed machine gun - while Ursprache is a creepy flow of stretched growling voices ending with a multilingual echoing scream.

Pressing info:
100 copies on black

Ghérasim Luca

Théâtre de bouche LP
HOL-097

Ghérasim Luca (Bucarest, 1913 – Paris, 1994) was a Romanian-Jewish poet, co-founder and theorist of the Romanian Surrealist artists group. Harassed in his country, after World War II and a local exile he finally moved to Paris through Israel in 1952. His work on French language - characterized by the stammering effects described by Gilles Deleuze - attains its highest degree of expression during the public reading of his writings thanks to the whole-body work.

Théâtre de bouche, recorded on 21 February 1984 at Studio Sofreson by Rémi Goux and originally appeared as a cassette included in a special book edition published in 1984 by Criapl'e (Le Soleil Noir), highlights all axiomatic human torments. This edition, second volume in a series of sound poetry releases coordinated by Luca Garino, comes in a deluxe edition featuring the complete recording of the entire text by the author, and the reproduction of a drypoint drawing by Micheline Catty which was originally included in the limited book edition.

"Ghérasim Luca was the man who relentlessly pushed language toward its limits, which he transmuted from a mere instrument of representation into an extreme style of intensities. Luca knew how to stammer not just words, but language itself." (Gilles Deleuze)

Pressing info:
250 copies on black, embossed lettering

Alessandro Bosetti

Plane/Talea LP
HOL-096

The cycle of compositions collected under the title Plane/Talea reflects my interest in vocal polyphonic music. They envision an "impossible choir" constructed through the sampling of thousands of fragments and pieces of voices, my own and those of others, and their recomposition into polyphonic garlands and textures. This cycle can be intended as the utopic sonification of an impossible community in which the voice is atomized into primary particles and later reconstituted into sonic masses and clouds. These are too dense and complex for a chorus of real human beings to sing. The music of Plane/Talea" is the sonic projection of such a community. The voice is not processed or altered in any way but subjected to molecular reorganization. Theoretically, a hyper-chorus could sing material of this type but, perhaps fortunately, such a choir does not yet exist. Up until now, in the process of creation of my vocal music, I've kept two poles and influences in balance: that of madrigalism in its late renaissance and contemporary incarnations and that of hyper-polyphony, which is close to spectral music. Though not ever having actually written in one or the other of these two styles, I've always felt this unresolvable and fertile tension in my work. (A.B.)

Recorded, composed and mixed by Alessandro Bosetti at GMEM (Centre National de Création Musicale in Marseille). Additional recordings by Attila Faravelli at Spazio O', Milano. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black, embossed lettering

Konstrukt / Peter Brötzmann / Hüseyin Ertunç / Doğan Doğusel / Barlas Tan Özemek

Eklisia Sunday LP
HOL-095

Recorded live in front of a small audience on May 15th, 2011 at Eklisia - an old chapel built in the 17th century in Gümüşlük, a small village near Bodrum - this improvisation features the Konstrukt collective - which is Korhan Futacı (tenor & soprano saxophones), Umut Çağlar (electric guitar), Özün Usta (double bass, djembe, gong, bells), Korhan Argüden (drums) - incredibly enriched by the presence of Peter Brötzmann (on tenor), Hüseyin Ertunç (acoustic piano, küstüfon, gong), Doğan Doğusel (double bass, küstüfon) and Barlas Tan Özemek (electric guitar). The result of the combination is simply marvelous, because Brötzmann's unique phrases perfectly match with the sound of what confirms to be a well-coordinated collective.

The Turkish free jazz outfit Konstrukt might be considered the most evolved improvisational band working in jazz today. Founded, not in the hotbeds of jazz, London, New York, Chicago, Wuppertal, or Krakow, their isolation is the key to their success. Well, isolation and observation. (Mark Corroto, All About Jazz)

Pressing info:
350 copies on black

Hartmut Geerken

Orpheus LP
HOL-094

Fantastic sound poetry piece by Hartmut Geerken restringing the Sun Harp, the Ukranian bandura that Sun Ra gave him in 1971 when he visited Egypt for the first time. The acoustics of his manual workings emerge without any esthetic intention: the bandura's voluminous resonating body forms the reverb of the room. Each manual action and each contact of the tuning key with the wooden body is 'reverbed'. The instrument creates its audio space. A mythic dream play is evoked: the myth's space of reverb. An ear ready to absorb, hears the labor pains of voice and string ahead of language and music. A human voice in search for language and thus for communication. A string instrument in search for sound and thus for music. Based on this phonemic pre-space, words do rise only sporadically. Through certain techniques of vocal chords the phonemes move close to the meditative Indian Dhrupad-singing, as well as to lunacy and disturbance. Animal languages, signals, shepherds' calls, silvered drum-language, hamboning, calls, litany, subconscious voicings, sirens: the search for Eurydike and the search for the origin of letter and syllable, out of the breath.

Besides one single 'superimposition' no further mounting, no computer-generated sounds, no digital gimmicks, no remix or art mix do exist in this live-recorded dream play.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Arrigo Lora-Totino

Trio Prosodico LP
HOL-093

Arrigo Lora-Totino (Torino, 1928–2016) is considered one of the fathers of Italian sound poetry. He's mostly known for having curated the anthology "Futura: Poesia Sonora" (Cramps Records, 1978), where he collected the voices of the most interesting sound poets of the twentieth century, but also for being a key figure in the Italian experimental poetry. Active since the late Sixties, he gave more than 200 performances of “Gymnastic Poetry” and “Liquid Poetry” (using the Idromegaphone, a tool invented on purpose to let the voice sound through water) and a series of mimic declamations of avant-garde texts, from Futurism to Dadaism, Russian ‘Zaum, Expressionism, Surrealism, Lettrisme and Concretism.

This sound poem in six movements - performed as a vocal trio together with Sergio Cena and Laura Santiano - was recorded in 1976 in Torino at Studio di Informazione Estetica (S.I.E.) and is considered by the author himself one of his most important works. First volume in a series of sound poetry releases coordinated by Luca Garino, comes in a deluxe edition with the complete reproduction of the handwritten original scores.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black, embossed lettering

Virginia Genta

Rough Enough 7"
HOL-092

Virginia Genta is a self-taught musician who plays all saxophones (tenor, soprano, baritone, alto) mainly known for being part of the astonishing Jooklo Duo, the project she shares with drummer David Vanzan since 2003, often playing as a drums and tenor duo, but regularly including other guests evolving into new forms as Neokarma Jooklo Trio (or Sextet, Octet, Experience), Golden Jooklo Age, Jooklo Finnish Quartet, New Jooklo Age, and so on –

But - no matter how many musicians she's sharing the bill with - the sound of her saxophone is always standing out, clearly discernible, like an ear-massage that helps you discovering parts of your own auricle you didn't even know were there. And at last, for all those who always wanted to hear a solo recording of her, two short improvisations skillfully recorded at home by Riccardo Sinigaglia of Futuro Antico.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black

Joe McPhee Survival Unit III

Barrow Street Blues 2xLP
HOL-091

"This – says Joe McPhee – is the third and final iteration of a musical survival concept, which began in as solo project in 1969. Survival Unit III was formed in 2004 at the invitation for a recording date. Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Zerang and I were members of the Peter Brotzmann Chicago 10tet and by that time, we had been working together for five years. So in preparation for the recording, a tour was organized but the recording was cancelled at the last moment. Left to our own devices and thanks to the tireless efforts of Fred and Michael, we play."

This record is a tribute to the memory of Ornette Coleman. For many of us, we are because he was, on many levels.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black

Konstrukt and Peter Brötzmann

The Message: Live at Kargart 2xLP
HOL-089

A meeting with the giant. In this live session recorded in 2014 the quartet's basic lineup reunites again with Peter Brötzmann, with whom they already teamed up recording the amazing studio album Dolunay (2008) and Eklisia Sunday (2011, also with Hüseyin Ertunç and Doğan Doğusel).

As the title says, we are all invited to listen to the message hidden in these rhapsodic vibes, where the energy of an elephant stampede is channeled into a coherent structure made of percussions (and the drumming here is mind-blowing since the very beginning!), electric guitar, double bass and two whirling - but still clearly discernable - saxophones.

Pressing info:
First edition – 200 copies on black
Second edition – 200 copies on black

Lettera 22

Legacy Map 2x7"
HOL-088

Four short compositions of the finest contemporary electro-acoustic concrete sound by this justifiably acclaimed duo consisting of Matteo Castro and Riccardo Mazza.

Textured noise and field recordings manipulated with analogue tape creating a wall of distorted electronics, feedback and naturally reverberated ambient sound and quickly climbing it with a firm grip. This research is a chase to the shape of the "natural rhythm" hidden in the pulses of the machine, a skilled on-site observation of an ever-morphing landscape.

Pressing info:
150 copies on black

Maurizio Abate

Live at eLaSTiCo 12" S/Sided
HOL-087

Another wonderful live session by the multi-instrumentalist Maurizio Abate, captured by Ulrich Rois (Bird People) in 2014 during his exhibition at the old location of the art association eLaSTiCo - in the centre of Bologna - then mixed and edited by Maurizio himself.

To be considered a twin release of the Live from the border EP published in 2012, this single-sided release features a twenty-minute track building a ritual and meditative soundscape made with the processed sound of a hurdy-gurdy and a harmonica. Limited to 150 copies.

Pressing info:
150 copies on black

Hartmut Geerken / John Tchicai

Insistency! LP
HOL-086

Third - and sadly last - chapter of the archival recordings fixed on tape by Hartmut Geerken during his stay in Kabul in the Seventies.

Insistency! was recorded at the Goethe Institut of Kabul on same day of the duo session of Hindukush Serenade - May 22, 1977 - but sees also Maqsud Schukurwali and Ghafur Rasul - members of the Free Jazz Group Kabul - joining Geerken and Tchicai and playing an insistent anthem, featuring also an eight year old Olaf Geerken at congas. On side B, the music gets quieter and Tchicai finds the perfect moment to release his yelled, ecstatic chant - slowly turning into a hypnotizing song.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black, with a special limited edition of 50 copies including an extra 7" (signed, numbered and hand-stamped by HG) and a copper plate

Konstrukt and Akira Sakata

Kaishi: Live at Kargart 2xLP
HOL-085

A new chapter of the ongoing series of live recordings of the Turkish quartet Konstrukt, this time teaming up with saxophonist Akira Sakata, already a key character of the Japanese free jazz movement since the 1970s.

Recorded at Kargart in Istanbul on January 17th 2015, this seventy-minute long jam is one of the most psychedelic act of the band so far, with Sakata's growling shomyo-alike chant finding the perfect setting - like a snake charmer - in a jungle of constantly reinvented sound.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Arbre du Ténéré

La pelle del fantasma LP
HOL-084

L'Arbre du Ténéré, known in English as the Tree of Ténéré, was a solitary acacia that was once considered the most isolated tree on Earth, standing alone for over 400 kilometers. It was a landmark on caravan routes through the Ténéré region of the Sahara in Northeast Niger, until it was knocked down by a drunk truck driver in 1973.

La pelle del fantasma is the debut full length ot the duo composed by Maurizio Abate and Giovanni Donadini (Ottaven, Fantamatres) building a dialogue between open improvisation and armonic structures, moving from ambient soundies to a texture of soft psychedelia, trying to create a musical portrait of this special tree and its history, from the lonely past to the shape of today, a metallic sculpture which replaced it.

Pressing info:
150 copies on black

Ghédalia Tazartès

Il regalo della Befana 12" S/Sided
HOL-083

In Italian Folklore, Befana is an old woman who visits all the children riding a magic broomstick on the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany and filling their stockings with candies and presents if they were good, with coal if they were bad. Now, we really don't know how good you were last year, but together with Ghédalia we decided to offer a coal-black vinyl record to all those of you who will be fast enough to order it before it gets out of print. Each copy is numbered and carries the name of its owner.

Recorded in Paris in 1996, Il regalo della befana is a 23 minute long track conceived as a bonus track to the CD edition of une éclipse totale de soleil.

Pressing info:
200 numbered copies on black

Ghédalia Tazartès

5 Rimbaud 1 Verlaine 10"
HOL-082

Vinyl reissue of this great tribute to the poetry of Rimbaud and Verlaine made by our favorite French sorcerer, who exceptionally abandoned his typical imaginary language to reinterpret six small poems in his own way, jumping from one musical genre to the other and happily letting them crunch together in a childish, enthusiastic play.

Recorded in Paris in his flatelier around the same time he recorded the wonderful Hystérie Off Music and previously available in an almost unnoticed mini CD edition published by the French label Jardin au Fou, it's now available in a remastered vinyl version - with an excellent 45 rpm cut made by SST in Frankfurt.

Pressing info:
350 copies on black, embossed lettering

Konstrukt and William Parker

Live at NHKM 2xLP
HOL-081

Konstrukt recently shared the stage with such names as Evan Parker, Marshall Allen, Joe McPhee and Peter Brötzmann showing their great ability to adjust their instantly composed music to the presence of a guest.

And we can only say that this latest collaboration with the legendary American double bassist William Parker is another evidence of their prowess. The live recording of their show at Nazım Hikmet Kultur Merkezi, Kadıköy, Instanbul on September 12th 2014 produced this one hour long output of outstanding music with the use of a real arsenal of instruments. Four sides of pure spiritual fullfillment!

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Gianni Giublena Rosacroce

Musica da camera oscura LP
HOL-080

Gianni Giublena Rosacroce is the solo project of Stefano Isaia (Movie Star Junkies, La Piramide di Sangue) born with the aim to explore soundwise the Middle-Eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

After two tape releases and a split 12inch, here's the debut longplayer recorded between home and the mountains with the participating help of Galilea Mallol between 2013 and 2014 and featuring companions Reverend F. Murphy and Mai Mai Mai in the side-long track Compendium Maleficarum. A caravan of percussions - lead by the haunting sound of the clarinet - wandering and dancing between the stands of a crowded market.

Pressing info:
First edition – 250 copies on black
Second edition – 200 copies on black

Konstrukt

Live at Tarcento Jazz LP
HOL-078

Konstrukt is the free jazz revelation of the last ten years. This incredible quartet of saxophonist Korhan Futacı, guitarist Umut Çağlar, drummer Korhan Argüden and percussionist Özün Usta is blowing a real stream of fresh air, like the Art Ensemble of Chicago did in the Seventies.

This live multi-channel recording by Giulio Moratti captures their whole performance at Tarcento Jazz Festival (July 18th 2014) giving a perfect taste of their Cosmic–Turkish free jazz with an electronic touch - brought by the use of a Farfisa organ and tape echoes - that will help the listener building a stairway to the spaceways!

"Live at Tarcento Jazz" has been voted ALBUM OF THE YEAR for the category BEST NEW RELEASES 2015 by The New York City Jazz Record magazine.

“These guys are the real deal.” (Joe McPhee)

Pressing info:
First edition – 200 copies on black
Second edition – 200 copies on black

Squadra Omega

Il serpente nel cielo LP
HOL-077

This release marks the beginning of a long year for the members of Squadra Omega, since they decided to break the silence announcing three brand new records to be released in less than six months.

And first comes this two-piece jam recorded live at Outside Inside Studio, where we find the always evolving group reduced to three core elements - OmegaFrank (drums, xilophone), OmegaG8 (synth, bass) and OmegaMatt (sax, acoustic and electroacoustic percussion) - hauling their instruments in a free-form impro-ambient session frequently peaking with moments of free jazz, sustained by a skeleton of intense droning electronics, wonderfully rendered by an exquisite cut made by SST in Frankfurt. Cover artwork by Re delle Aringhe.

Pressing info:
250 copies (50 on clear blue haze, 200 on black)

Enhet för Fri Musik

Dokument 1: Improvisationer och bandmusik för vilt dansande själar LP
HOL-076

Arisen from the always surprising Swedish Underground (or - shall we say - undergrowth) this new unit - featuring members of Sewer Election, Ättestupa, Neutral, Makthavestan and Blod - gathered in the woods and recorded this music to make all wild souls dance.

A real gem. Folk unit mixed with tape music. Loose thin line between composed and improvisation or, as member Dan Johansson himself defines it: "quite sparse outsider anti-music". The Enhet starts where Ättestupa ended. Strictly limited to 150 copies, then looking forward to Dokument 2.

Pressing info:
150 copies on black

Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza

Eroina LP
HOL-075

There are still so many treasures to be discovered out there, but once you find a gem like this you can definitely put the research on hold for a little while and give it a deep listen.

Recorded at Fono Roma in 1971, Eroina is a series of haunting improvisations - each one inspired by the effects of a different drug - made of whirling electronic glitches, skronky horns, pounded piano, funky drums and weird tape experiments delivering the best drone/spaced/drugged out free jazz performed by the legendary ensemble of Ennio Morricone, Mario Bertoncini, Egisto Macchi, Battisti D'Amario, Franco Evangelisti and Walter Bianchi. A timeless masterpiece available for the first time in a deluxe vinyl edition.

Pressing info:
400 copies on black

Ghédalia Tazartès

Hystérie Off Music LP
HOL-074

At the beginning, Hystérie off Music was conceived as a catalogue record, an open field where the author could play with all musical genres and their stereotypes, but then evolved rapidly into an uncompromising clash of field recordings, sampled instruments and Tazartès' incomparable vocal eclecticism, made of emotional psalms and shamanic hymns. The Encyclopédie of genres turns into a childish - and sometimes scary - play and the song titles mislead the listener introducing him to a completely new classification.

Recorded in early 2000s and released on CD in 2007 by the French label Jardin au Fou, it's now available in a remastered vinyl version - with an excellent cut made by SST in Frankfurt - for the best listening experience of this cinematic electronic collage. A true movie for the ear.

Pressing info:
350 copies on black, embossed lettering

Vom Grill

Lerend Luisteren 7'"
HOL-073

Two tracks fitting the best format to choose when you have to capture the music of Dennis Tyfus, the Antwerp-based hyperactive artist who draws, paints, takes photographs, makes films, plays music, sings, creates books and magazines.

The A side of this single - Leren zwijgen - is an organ melancholic glitched song diving on a fanatical shrieking crowd. The flip - Lederen spelen - starts with a limping accordion and ends with a choral multi-track warped vocalization.

Pressing info:
100 copies on black

Konstrukt / Marshall Allen / Hüseyin Ertunç / Barlas Tan Özemek

Vibrations of the Day 2xLP
HOL-072

Finest free jazz from Istanbul meets the alto saxophonist who travelled the spaceways side by side with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, and that's quite a thing indeed. Konstrukt, the Turkish revelation of the last few years, becomes a sextet ganging up with guitarist Barlas Tan Özemek and drummer Huseyin Ertunç to create a percussion-based environment where all the elements cautiosusly contribute to a collective meditation and where two saxophones are free to dance into a dreamy parade. Recorded in 2010 and self-released in a limited CD edition, this expanded ensemble trip to the Other World finally gets its deserved double LP limited edition.

"Konstrukt has performed with the likes of British free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker, Dutch pianist Michiel Braam's Bik Bent Baam, Swiss saxophonist Jürg Solothurnmann and recently saxophonists Peter Brötzmann and Marshall Allen. To record with these jazz giants is, indeed, a stamp of approval and hopefully their message of liberating music can be heard by a larger audience. And lately, the band has had a bunch of impressive CDs in a row. Here's looking forward to more". (Mark Corroto, All About Jazz)

Pressing info:
250 copies (50 on clear red w/ yellow, white and black splatter, 200 on black)

Hartmut Geerken / John Tchicai

Hindukush Serenade LP
HOL-071

Remembering his old friend and the days when this live recordings were taken, says Hartmut Geerken: "When John came to visit us in Afghanistan and in Greece, where we lived in the 70's and 80's, my wife Sigi had to extend his bed always with fruit boxes. His height didn't fit into a normal sized bed as well as his musical dimensions were too far out to fit into the mainstream taste of the masses. It was wonderful to hike with him in the Hindukush mountains up the Salang Pass. Afghanistan was a very peaceful and hospitable country before the westerners destroyed this unique paradise".

We know that every time Hartmut Geerken unveil one of the many tapes he recorded and archived in the extraordinary life he spent travelling around the world it's an incredible gift. But listening for the first time after 40 years to these tunes, especially in the moment when John Tchicai stops playing and start his wild high-pitch singing...oh, that will really make you feel dizzy.

Pressing info:
250 copies (30 on blue, 220 on black), first 30 copies come with a screenprinted wooden plate (signed and numbered by Hartmut Geerken), a different color cover and blue vinyl

oAxAcA

Salvatora LP
HOL-070

Salvatora is the second incredible album from this sextet from Cuneo actively researching in the realm of unstructured free jazz from 2008.

Since then, the group grew more and more by adding new elements and enriching the sound with new thing echoes inspired by the likes of John Coltrane, James Brown and Miles Davis. This last session in particular - mixed and mastered in 2012 at Blue Record Studio by Mano Moccia - sees a more active participation of the electronic instruments, rejecting traditional jazz rhythms in favor of a Bitches Brewesque rock influenced improvisational style. And who does not love that sound of an electric piano?

Pressing info:
First edition – 100 copies on black w/ clear green and blue splatter
Second edition – 200 copies on clear red

Nicola Ratti

Ossario 12"
HOL-068/069

Through the use of sound generated from modular synthesizer, tapes and samples Ossario is a collection of ten separate and independent songs - in two volumes, available separately - introducing a new and radical composing method.

The aim is to build some kind of musical skeletons designed not to be covered in flesh and tissues, but trying to reduce everything to the bone. This double release marks the end of the journey started with 220 Tones (Die Schachtel, 2011) and continued with Streengs (Senufo Editions, 2012), focusing the research on the use of well-defined sound to be used now as a rhythmic element, now as en electronic impulse or eventually as a self-standing musical element. Simple sounds generated with magnetic tape saturation or electric pulses match with elements belonging to the language of techno music, shifting the focus away from its usual (and predictable) axis to a new (and eccentric) point of view.

Nicola Ratti is one of the artists invited to perform at Festival Presences Electronique INA GRM 2014, Paris.

Pressing info:
300 copies on white vinyl, screenprinted pvc sleeve

Hartmut Geerken

Live in Kabul 1976 2xLP
HOL-067

Outstanding archival recordings by Hartmut Geerken. German author, poet, composer, film-maker, and gifted musician who collaborated with John Tchicai, Sun Ra, Embryo, Michael Ranta, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, and many more.

An incredible live session hosted by the Goethe Institut of Kabul on September 22, 1976. More than sixty minutes of convulsive jams - and hypnotic obscure interludes to loop your head to - captured on reel-to-reel tape, edited and mastered for the best vinyl listening experience that will definitely prove you how free Afghanistan once was. The public too has never been this reactive, shouting and clapping and singing to the music of the quartet directed by our beloved Hartmut, who also plays piano using both the keys and the chords.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black, gatefold cover, first 20 copies come with an original copy of the program of the concert numbered and signed by the artist

No-Neck Blues Band

Furamingo Josei LP
HOL-066

This hidden gem - likely recorded sometime in the mid 2000's around the time they made Qvaris, according to what NNCK's Pat Murano remembers - is another astonishing output of Harlem's seven-member free-form improvisational collective.

A luminous string sprung from their collectively trepanned third eyes that will put the listener in an altered state of consciousness as erratically respirating freeform freakouts and lumbering ragas disintegrate and spontaneously re-assemble amidst dense thickets of percussive clatter. This session, previously revealed in an archival post by the always-missed Mutant Sounds blog and later recovered in a forgotten folder, has finally been mastered and put on wax for this one-time pressing vinyl edition.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Adam Asnan / Giuseppe Ielasi

Quarry 12" S/Sided
HOL-065

Quarry is the latest chapter in the ongoing collaboration between the London-based composer-performer of musique concrète Adam Asnan and the Italian sound artist and mastering engineer Giuseppe Ielasi.

As the title may suggest, this encounter produced a dusty sculpture whose shape has only been drafted on a stone excavated from the ground and where it is hard to distinguish the acousmatic touch of Asnan from the rhythmic textures of Ielasi.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Renato Rinaldi

Time Machine Volume IV CD
HOL-064

Fourth Volume of the series recorded directly from the Time Machine, a magic case containing an array of home-built oscillators activated by Rinaldi to create pulsing rhythms and noise patterns using the mixer feedback. Edited and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

"The Time Machine project was conceived in order to find a simple and immediate way to work with rhythm. I built two cheap and imprecise, almost-square wave oscillators with a wide range of frequencies. These oscillators can sweep and cross-modulate from sparse pulses to high frequency audio signals. I use a mixer to create feedback between the filters, CV and audio signals and simply record the output; there are no overdubs.” (Renato Rinaldi)

Pressing info:
200 copies

Jon Wesseltoft / Okkyung Lee

Piper 12" S/Sided
HOL-063

A single nineteen minute track captured live in Oslo, 2010 in the same period of the astonishing Cold Burn LP (Feeding Tube Records, 2012) recorded by the duo together with Anla Courtis and C. Spencer Yeh.

Another stringed drone ritual here - but less choral than the quartet session - where the cello and the harmonium (or the accordion organ) are endlessly chasing each other aiming to the perfect sinergy around the same tune, resulting in a deep and intense meditation practice. Exquisitely mixed and mastered by Jon Wesseltoft in Oslo, 2013.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Fantamatres

Delitto antico 7"
HOL-062

Fantamatres is the duo formed by Giovanni Donadini - former member of With Love and Nastro Mortal also known for his solo-project Ottaven - and the slang-poet Sissy Biasin, who's been active since the 70's as a pioneer of the Italian industrial scene with Teatro Satanico and Teatrino della Volpe.

Fantamatres is their weird collaboration whose output is a regional surreal poetry performed - or more often improvised - over some sleazy organ grooves and pulsing italo disco electronics. After the stunning debut tape release Contacto Salino (Hundebiss Records, 2012) this is their first vinyl release, prepared for a challenge in less than 48 hours and resulted in three real hits trying to capture the irrepressible rampage of their rare and umbelievable live acts.

Pressing info:
Limited to 100 copies on black, wraparound sleeve with lyrics

Jo Thomas

Mermaids LP
HOL-061

Mermaids includes four tracks composed and recorded in early 2013. The concepts of the work are built around freedom - expressed by the use of the audio ‘glitch’ - and unity framed in metaphors of water and transformation. All sound sources are mostly from the human voice.

Jo Thomas is a London-based composer teaching sound design, composition and music technology at the University of East London. Her compositional work is primarily focused on the use of human voice, microsound and technological artefacts. She has written electronic works in the studios of INA-GRM in Paris and EMS in Stockholm. She won the Golden Nica for Digital Music at Prix Ars Electronica 2012 for her work Crystal Sounds of a Synchrotron, and her album Alpha (Entr'acte) was nominated for a Qwartz 7 Award in 2011.

Pressing info:
250 copies on black

Lettera 22

Physical Point 12" S/Sided
HOL-060

Lettera 22 is the duo of Matteo Castro and Riccardo Mazza, two main characters in the Italian noise and experimental scene, building incredible collages of field recordings and abused dynamics.

The lucky few who attended their live set at the Dome in London for the Broken Flag 30th Anniversary - where they caused a speaker stack to fall over, almost setting fire to it - saw their potential unleashed and knows what we mean by saying that they have an incredible control of the multi-layered texture they produce. Physical Point is a perfect demonstration of this skill, where the pair builds up a simmering tension made of captured sounds and hissing tapes, keeping a grip on it with the cold blood of a snake charmer.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

Les Conversions

Snowwhite LP
HOL-059

Second effort from this NYC trio composed by Jason Meagher (NNCK, Coach Finger), Pat Murano (NNCK, Decimus, Key of Shame) and Dave Shuford (NNCK, Rhyton) after their private press self titled debut LP released on Kelippah.

An improvised ritual of metal percussion and electronic modulation recorded at Black Dirt Studio in 2012. As in previous NNCK and Decimus works there is a lot of buzzing drones and flickering electronics, just less haunting and more tripping. Nature boys gone electronic.

Pressing info:
200 copies on black

U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble

Bitter Suites LP
HOL-058

Deluxe repress edition of this incredible masterpiece made out of two live performances of the U.S. Steel Cello Ensemble recorded in 1979 at The Showing Room in NYC and at Helen Shlien Gallery in Boston.

The Ensemble performs playing large sheets of metal and producing amazingly droning sounds. These live recordings are the result of an evolutionary refinement of instrumental design and playing techniques which Robert Rutman explored and develped after a ten year period of practice. He invented the two only instruments played by the Steel Cello Ensemble: the Bow Chime - a six foot sheet of steel formed into a horizontal curve with an iron bar attached to the top corners of the metal sheet - and the Single String Cello - an eight foot sheet suspended vertically from a stand. This limited reissue has been released in occasion of Bob Rutman's 83rd birthday party concert at Cookies, in Berlin.

Pressing info:
300 copies on black

Present and Future

• Pygmy Unit
  Signals From Earth LP
  HOL-133
• Delivery Health
  SuperDeluxe! 2xLP
  HOL-131
• James Rushford
  Block Gifts LP
  HOL-126