The Observer raved about a recent performance of this at the Wigmore Hall: ‘Solo for Cello (and fixed audio) was the highlight, an extensive, ghostly work played by Apartment House’s indefatigable artistic director, Anton Lukoszevieze. Imagine a baroque dance suite — with the familiar figurations of arpeggios, quick finger work and string crossing — played muted and whispered a few galaxies away, and you get the idea.’
The performer of this recording, Anton himself has written that Solo is ‘an extended exploration of the resonant body of the cello, but also a kind of flickering, glitchy and incessant ‘moto perpetuo’ of extreme intensity and a delicate beauty. The cello has a particular scordatura tuning, which creates an enigmatic harmonic ‘space’ to its sounding throughout the work. As the cellist constantly bows the heavily muted cello with varied arpeggiated freneticism, the instrument emits a particular halo of harmonic resonances creating a spectral and ghostly effect, deceptive and illusory. The work gradually morphs into different sections, each with their own particular motivic identity, at times accompanied by an audio playback of various densities. The latter sections of the work have a baroque-like lightness and ornamental quality, but do not allay the dramatic incisiveness of the the work, which ends with a final enigmatic spasm of sounds.’
And the composer Sheen advised the mastering engineer that ‘the cello is muted with a very heavy metal mute which thins out the sound massively, and Anton plays a super-light bow with extreme flautando, which creates a strange thin wispy sound. I’d like it to sound as distant and liminal as possible, with a lot of bow sound and strange resonances from the harmonics of the cello. With the exception of a few obvious spots where it gets louder and fuller, there should be as little ‘core’ to the sound as possible, but as many strange resonances as possible. The words we used a lot of in rehearsals were ‘baroque’ and ‘internal’ and ‘light’. I hope this helps.’

Transfixing, and good for ears; with luminous strands of Marin Marais, Derek Bailey, and Eliane Radigue.
Check it out!

Grieving, hushed, involving music for voices, field recordings, and white noise, performed by Kantos.

A piano quintet composed for and recorded by Apartment House. 

‘The instruments are muted and heavily prepared. Players are instructed to perform very quietly with an exaggerated flautando, using as much of the bow as possible while producing minimal sound. Sheen often even asks them to mime. The result is an unsettling disconnect between the intensity of physical exertion and the sound produced’ (Ed Cooper, VAN).
‘Press moves with grossly impoverished intent… trembling and stumbling on the cusp of accident… right on the edge of culture, just before language. Most of the time, it is enough simply to breathe and move: the complexity of these actions alone is astonishing… And then, through the buzz of wood, guts, and bluebottles, a piano appears—all shining lacquer, muscle, and grammar’ (Ed Atkins).

“When people play my violin pieces, I always joke with them that when you start playing them, the audience should feel like they’ve gone deaf or something. The sound is so not there that you should think there’s something wrong for a second…
“It’s so disappointing when you see a bunch of instrumentalists walk on stage and you already know how the piece is going to sound. It’s not what music is about for me…
“The word ‘liminal’ is such a cliché but it’s annoyingly pertinent for my music. Trying to find a sweet spot between states: in between presence and not presence, in between tonality and not tonality, whatever that is, between noise and pitch. I really want things to sit in an uncertain middle ground between everything.”

‘In August of 1961, the John Coltrane Quintet played an engagement at the legendary Village Gate in Greenwich Village, New York. Coltrane’s Classic Quartet was not as fully established as it would soon become and there was a meteoric fifth member of Coltrane’s group those nights — visionary multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Ninety minutes of never-before-heard music from this group were recently discovered at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, offering a glimpse into a powerful musical partnership that ended much too soon. In addition to some well-known Coltrane material (My Favorite Things, Impressions, Greensleeves), there is a breathtaking feature for Dolphy’s bass clarinet on When Lights Are Low, and the only known non-studio recording of Coltrane’s composition Africa, from the Africa/Brass album. This recording represents a very special moment in John Coltrane’s journey — the summer of 1961 — when his signature, ecstatic live sound, commonly associated his Classic Quartet of ‘62 to ‘65, was first maturing. He was drawing inspiration from deep, African sources, and experimenting with doubled-up basses both in the studio (Ole) and on stage. This truly rare recording of Africa captures his expansive vision at the time.’

Both sides are knockout.
The Willacy is terrific roots, rough and mystical, compacted and bristling, with fine trumpet.
On the flip is Big Youth’s toast of Gregory’s Look Before You Leap.

With Joshua Abrams, Hamid Drake, Jonathan Doyle, and Josh Berman.

‘At the beginning of 2017, Chicago vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz brought a quintet into the hallowed halls of Electrical Audio, Steve Albini’s legendary studio, to record the soundtrack for a new film, Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago, a documentary by Rob Christopher based on the Roy’s World series of short stories by Barry Gifford.
‘It’s really an ensemble effort, the spotlight on the gorgeous compositions and spacious sensibility, a perfect complement to Christopher’s fascinating, beautiful film, which has a noir vibe set in a fifties version of the Windy City conjured by means of vintage found footage, narration by Willam Dafoe, Matt Dillon, and Lilli Taylor, and Adasiewicz’s score. Check the balafon-led groove of Blue People, nodding to Fela… and bluesy, swinging charts throughout, with elements that might recall the post-hard-bop Blue Note records of folks like Andrew Hill, Sam Rivers, and Grachan Moncur III, Roy’s World is more than a great soundtrack record, it’s a killer programme of new tunes played by a monstrously strong band recorded and mixed at one of the world’s finest studios.’

‘Alto saxophonist Luther Thomas was the loose cannon of the Black Artists Group milieu, with a raw freedom and keening, braying, gut-bucket blatancy funkily attuned to the no-wave crew. Besides recordings with Charles Bobo Shaw and Jef Gilson, he was a regular with James Chance and Defunkt, among others. (His collaborator here, the flutist Luther Petty was hot, too, for a brief moment in these years, playing with Lester Bowie’s Sho Nuff Orchestra.)
‘Recorded in 1978, soon after the pair moved from St Louis to NY, this is an emotional, volatile set of blues-drenched duets. The openness of mid-western AACM-style space-play, replete with little instruments, chasmically underpins evocations of the ferocity and unforgivingness of the Big Apple and its competitive loft scene.’

Funky Donkey is brawling, invigorating, all-in, full-throttle fire music by the Human Arts Ensemble, recorded live in the Berea Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, in 1973, with Lester Bowie and co giving it some hoof. Charles Bobo Shaw’s composition Una New York is more spaced-out, limber, melodious, and funky. Guitarist Marvin Horne plays a blinder.
A key Black Arts Group recording.

Startling 1975 excursions into Tarantism — a kind of hysteria ostensibly triggered by spider bites, for which dancing is the only cure, with its own set of cultural traditions based in Basilicata, Apulia, Sicily.
Obsessive, hypnotic chants, rhythms, and drones, mixing together folk, avant-gardism, and psych, with shots of Dylan and North African drumming.

Originally released by the Folkstudio label in 1976, this is infectiously exuberant, eighteen-piece spiritual jazz in the tradition of the Arkestra, the Organic Music Society, and Mingus; strung between the post-war big bands and the Italian outernationalism of projects like Aktuala and Futuro Antico, drawing in music from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

A terrific, fresh techno EP by Robin Stewart. Minimalist and dubwise, but fizzing with physical energy, and loaded with thrills and spills, like fairground ghost trains clanking and rattling through Rome, at a clip.
Check it out!

‘Regrows dub techno from the seeds,’ says Boomkat, ‘with a set of twisted warehouse melters that apply advanced dub logic to pointillistic technoid rhythms.
‘The off-grid, lolloping kicks are interesting enough on their own, but it’s how Stewart treats them that makes opener Stomach pop, sinking them in swirling, lysergic goop rather than drowning them out with rinsed tape FX. The oscillating, demonic subs that heave just beneath the surface don’t muddy things completely, they crack the sunroof on the top end, letting the industrialized foley clanks and hoarse vocaloid stutters boot us towards an unexpected destination. And although Compact is more trad on the surface — a gated peak-time roller, natch — Stewart’s canny processing makes the kicks tickle more than they thump. Everything builds up to the title track, where Stewart freezes mind-rinsing dissociated echo spirals into their own rhythmic forms that push against the relentless double-time thuds, weaving phantom polyrhythms out of thin air while spectral voices whisper overhead.’