Of
The Quartz Pond
Jewelled Antler
CDr, 2004

01. The Quartz Pond I (5:39)
02. The Quartz Pond II (20:07)

zip

Various Artists
Welcome To Dreamland
Celluloid LP, 1985

01. Fake – Dig
02. Saboten – Low Chair
03. Luna Park Ensemble – Scramble Suite
04. Akira Iijima / Seiji Murayama – Timon’s Navel
05. Katra Turana – Yatara-Chan’s Annoying Noise
06. Sodaneva – 42
07. The Honeymoons – The Formula Of Silence
08. The Polka Dot Fire Brigade – The Moon Which Lies
09. After Dinner – The Room Of Hair Mobiles
10. Kenichi Takeda – Dumb Like A Fox
11. Keiji Haino – As It Is, I Will Never Let It End …
12/13. A-Musik – The Black International / Chie Mukai – Wandering Hindu
14. Ché-Shizu – Festival Song

Fred Frith curated mix of mid-80’s Japanese New Wave, Art Rock, Avant-garde and experimental weirdos (whom Mr. Frith often participated with on many of these recordings). Includes early ‘hits’ from some of my absolute favorite Japanese underground artists including Chie Mukai performing with A-Musik, her band Ché-Shizu (+Tori Kudo), Keiji Haino, and an 18 second piece of sped-up koto by Ken-Ichi Takeda.

zip

Bearns & Dexter
The Golden Voyage Vol. 1
Awakening Productions
Cassette, 1977

01. Golden Voyage (5:24)
02. Heart Light (4:46)
03. Temple Garden (4:45)
04. Crystal Carousel (5:04)
05. Quasars (6:12)
06. Timeless Love (4:52)
07. Temple Garden 2 (3:41)
08. Flowers Of Our Childhood (5:02)

zip

Richard Youngs
House Music
Meme CD, 1997

01. Hilary (18:19)
02. Fire Realm (5:58)
03. Regent (10:45)
04. Frigid Air (8:46)

zip

PS: CD cover art is all white so I thought a photo of Richard would be nice.

Braille
Partir
Angström Records CD, 2004

01. Postal (4:36)
02. Presente (5:00)
03. Player 1 (3:45)
04. Rencontre (5:23)
05. Apartamiento (5:40)
06. Trapecio (4:08)
07. Denso (4:02)
08. Nudo (2:51)
09. Player 2 (2:46)
10. Recover (4:53)
11. Rollercoaster (5:02)
12. Wonderland ? (4:36)

I posted the first track off this back in 2008 but it’s been long out of print so here’s the whole thing. Originally discovered on a listening station in the now-closed Shinsaibashi (Osaka) Tower Records, recently unearthed post move from my boxes of CDs. Despite how processed it sounds, really into the use of horns, percussion and vocals.

zip

Higuma will have copies of their new RS LP ‘Pacific Fog Dreams’ for sale!

Root Strata friend Stephan Mathieu sent over his new CD on 12K recently, and it’s a real beauty. His description of the work is probably better said than anything I can come up with. Check the track ‘Dawn’ below.

“A Static Place is about the journey of sound. Between 1928 and 1932 the earliest recordings of historically informed performances of music from the late Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque era were etched into 78RPM records. I used some of these records from my collection, playing them back with two mechanical acoustic HMV Model 102 gramophones. The initial soundwaves produced back then by period instruments like the clavichord, viols, lute, hurdy-gurdy are read from the grooves by a cactus needle to be amplified by the gramophones diaphragm housed in a soundbox. Those vibrations travel through the tonearm which is connected straight to the gramophones horn, which releases the music to my space.Here the sound is again picked up by a pair of customized microphones and send to my computer, to be transformed by spectral analysis and convolution processes.”

– Stephan Mathieu, Madrid, Nov. 31, 2010

DAWN

PS: Stephan asked me to re-up the track ‘Planets’ from his lovely collaboration with Janek Schaefer, Hidden Name.
Grab it here.

Tuva Ensemble
Echoes From The Spirit World
Pan Records Cassette

01. Side A (27:19)
02. Side B (26:41)

zip

Thanks to RS buddy Zachary James Watkins for the rip & scans of this one!