Watch Michael Pisaro Discuss "Ricefall" in Short Documentary

Last month, Michael Pisaro's pieces were performed at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. One such piece was "Ricefall (1)", and you can watch Pisaro discuss it in a short documentary created by the Banff Centre above. Pisaro mentions that he made the piece in response to reading John Hull's Touching the Rock.

Last year, Peter Middleton and James Spinney directed a documentary about Hull entitled Notes on Blindness. The film went on to win the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary. Earlier this year, Michael Pisaro had a collaborative album with Keith Rowe entitled 13 Thirteen released by Erstwhile Records. Pisaro also released Resting In A Fold Of The Fog via Potlatch.

Matthew Revert Releases New Book Human Trees

Matthew Revert has just released a new book, which marks his first in four years. It's entitled Human Trees and is published by Portland-based Broken River Books. Revert has designed numerous covers for books published by the company. You can order the book on Amazon here. The synopsis for the book is as follows:

Following news of a mysterious condition threatening to take their parents' lives, two brothers are thrust into one another's reluctant company. Within the disquieting absurdity of Kubler Hospital, time loses meaning and reason dissolves. As their wait continues and unattended patients die around them, the brothers are forced to confront the confusing abuse of their past.

Matthew Revert released Being Small via Kye Records earlier this year. Revert is also slated to release a collaborative record with Vanessa Rossetto on Erstwhile Records.

Graham Lambkin and Áine O'Dwyer Announce New Collaborative Album

Erstwhile Records has just announced that a new collaborative album between Graham Lambkin and Áine O'Dwyer is to come in 2018. This marks the first time O'Dwyer will be featured on the label. Erstwhile had the following text accompanying the announcement:

Áine O’Dwyer and Graham Lambkin are multi-disciplinary artists whose work explores the nexus between music, text, illustration, theater, and the dissolution of the audience/performer divide. Both individually and in collaboration they have explored the latent potential of acoustical space, transforming both fantastical and mundane environments into aesthetic centrums of possibility.

O'Dwyer and Lambkin began their collaborative endeavors in December 2016 with a performance at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, NY, and have since gone on to present their work in London at Cafe OTO and the Horse Hospital, and most recently on the Greek island of Syros where they were the invited artists in residence for the 10 day Sound Paths workshop. 

The pair will be visiting Ireland this September to undertake the creation of a topographical 'sound map' connecting real and imagined Irish heritages through a series of localized site-specific performances that mark O'Dwyer's first homeland concerts in over a year, and Lambkin's debut in the country. The resultant work will see publication in 2018 through the esteemed Erstwhile label.

Graham Lambkin released an album with Taku Unami entitled The Whistler earlier this year. Lambkin is also slated to have a release with Michael Pisaro and another with Jürg Frey for Erstwhile Records. Áine O'Dwyer recently released Beast Diaries via her Bandcamp page.

Impulsive Habitat Releases New Album from Una Lee

Impulsive Habitat has released a new album from Una Lee. It's entitled in Transit: [& transitions] and is available for free download from the label's site here. This marks Lee's second release for the label; her previous album being Dah eum back in 2013. Lee said the following of the album:

When before and/or during traveling for work, not always feeling exactly excited, taking sound recordings or better described as listening to the environment through a sound recording device in a concentrated form is helpful to me in calming myself down and making me feel safe. This 31 minute long composition consists of 12 sound recordings taken over the course of 5 days in 3 countries, 6 cities and 3 houses between 2 homes of mine via 1 international airspace.
The recordings are primarily simply juxtaposed after one another, somewhat depicting the last intercontinental journey that I’ve made, which was long and subsequently made me restless.

The first third of the piece is rather contemplative and relaxed, in which I listen to the natural environment that surrounds one of the homes of mine. The later two thirds of the piece is busier, louder, more crowded, aurally describing the constantly changing, uneasy environment by comparison that one goes through when traveling far and/or for a long time. I close the piece with the sound recording of my environment when having arrived in my other home, which also concludes the journey itself.

The piece is not only about being on the road; en route; in transit: it is also about the transitions that tag alongside being in transit. Some transitions happen more sensibly, some others rather noticeably, and some at times rather unpleasantly. I intended that the transitions between the sound recordings within the piece do speak for themselves as well as on my behalf.

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

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

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

Music for Nine Post Cards tracklist:

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

Caduc Releases Gabi Losoncy's Nobody's Pushing You

Gabi Losoncy's newest album has just been released by caduc. It's entitled Nobody's Pushing You and you can hear an excerpt from it above. Last year, she released Judgment on the same label. Earlier this year, Losoncy released Security Besides Love via Recital. Nobody's Pushing You is limited to 100 copies and comes with a 12 page color booklet featuring Losoncy's own writing, photography, and art. You can order the album on the caduc. site here.

Black Truffle Releases New Annea Lockwood LP Featuring Two Unreleased Works

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

Craftman Records Reissue Rare Masayuki Takayanagi & Kaoru Abe Live LP

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

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

Editions Mego Releases New Album from Yasunao Tone

The incredibly undersung Fluxus and Group Ongaku member Yasunao Tone has just released a new album via Editions Mego. It's entitled AI Deviation #1, #2 and features live performances that took place at ISSUE Project Room on June 9th, 2016. Russell Haswell handled the album's mixing and mastering. You can purchase the CD from the Editions Mego site here. The two tracks span a total of 74 minutes and can be streamed in their entirety below courtesy of the label. 

Tone had the following to say regarding the performances:

I have had an idea if I apply the neural network to create my sound work for long time. When I had a performance at Centre Pompidou with Peter Rehberg and other friends I tried to talk about the idea with a French guy from IRCAM. But, he couldn’t understand my idea, which by using neural network the sound I create would never have any repetitions. 

That was 2002 and I had to wait until 2015 when I had a grant from New York State Council on the Arts through ISSUE Project Room, then its director Lawrence Kumpf applied for my new work. The grant finally made possible for making my cherished idea, the neural network piece, reality.

I had talked about the idea with Prof. Tony Myatt at Surrey University, UK and he developed the software for the piece with a team included Dr. Paul Modler. At the lab in the University a series of my performances of my MP3 Deviation were captured and used to train Kohonen Neural Networks to develop artificial intelligences that simulate my performances. Hence a birth of new piece AI Deviations.

I had a premiere at Issue Project Room on June 9th 2016 and the venue was more than packed and here is the performance of the piece. 

Midori Takada and Masahiko Sato's Lunar Cruise Gets Reissue

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

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

Lunar Cruise Deluxe Vinyl Edition tracklist:

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

Lunar Cruise CD tracklist:

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