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Mono, 50th Anniversary edition.

The son of the world-renowned tar and setar virtuoso Hossein Alizadeh; a true master of the Iranian spike fiddle, or kamancheh; and a key voice in contemporary Iranian music, blending classical Persian traditions with avantgarde experimentation.
The two Rituals presented here are deeply immersive, epic, meditative soundscapes, charged with memory, emotion, and the spirit of resistance.

‘Luminous meshes of colours and textures, vaulting between free jazz, dub, raga, ambient, and ritual music. Riveting polyrhythms underpin towering arrangements for flutes, synths, and processed acoustic instruments. The drumming and psychoactive, ceremonial melodies evoke the fourth world of Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Popol Vuh et al. An alchemical, Buddhist/Taoist/Hindu slant guides the narrative.’

This is a blast — a tremendously entertaining survey, centred in the Basque country, uproariously mangling together everything from Suicide to dub, Surf to tribal-style chanting, Satanism to toothpaste, with zinging wit, energy and intelligence, and knockabout anti-authoritarianism.
Well-presented; warmly recommended.

Four portions of lonesome country, by Toody Cole from Dead Moon, and The Rats.

Ignatz is the alter-ego of Belgian musician Bram Devens, who has released a string of albums for labels like (K-RAA-K)³, Ultra Eczema, Fonal, Mort aux Vaches, and Okraïna, over the last twenty years.
Devens recorded this wonderful, haunted music at home in Landen, on the family piano.
There is pervasive, ambient Dub, mesmerically shifting; sometimes aghast. Somewhere in the swirling mist are the guitarist Hans Reichel, and blues pianists like Jimmy Yancey, amongst other ghosts. Time Well Spent even musters a kind of motorik energy, determinedly mis-firing.
It is quite unlike any other piano record.
Beautifully presented, too, to the customary high standards of this label.
Check it out!

Edwin Morgan read by Dominic West, Mahmoud Darwish read by Khalid Abdalla, and Jorie Graham read by Adjoa Andoh.
A handmade box-set, with a forty-page photographic booklet, in a numbered, limited edition of just 360.

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