Vinyl


**Second edition of 250 copies, 20 page photographic book** Henning Christiansen was an incongruous mirror for the paradoxes of 20th century creative practice. He gave his context what it demanded - visionary and singular work, but was so radical that almost no one knew what to do with him, forcing him into the position of an outsider. Of all the composers working within the cradle of Fluxus, his work falls among the closest to its primary intent, destroying hierarchy, orthodoxy, and categorization - dissembling long cemented ideas about what music was understood to be - a truth, crystallized through the purity of ideas, which threads its way across the two releases in our hands. Schafe statt Geigen (Sheep instead of Violins) and “Verena” Vogelzymphon (Bird Symphony) were composed in 1988 and 1990, first appearing as a tiny CD gallery edition issued by Bernd Klüser. Both works, each occupying a single of this LP edition, extend from one of Christiansen’s long standing conceptual strategies - deploying recordings of animals as stand-ins for musical instruments, cows (with dogs) 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. Brilliant and beautiful challenges to the ear and mind, laying out of reach for decades, this stunning LP, issued in a limited edition of 500 copies, comes with a 20-page photographic booklet. Essential for any fan of avant-garde practice, artist music, and experimental sound. Accompanied by a twenty page booklet featuring drawings and texts by Henning Christiansen, as well as pictures by René Block. Translation from German by Michael Muennich. The sound installation Schafe statt Geigen is owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark. "Verena" Vogelzymphon op. 194 (1990) is dedicated to Verena and Bernd Klüser on the occasion of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Text by Robert Musil: Nachlass zu Lebzeiten (Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, 1936).  Lacquer cut at SST, Frankfurt am Main. Cover artwork by Henning Christiansen, 1985.

Henning Christiansen – Schafe statt Geigen / “Verena” Vogelzymphon (LP + Book)

Having each followed their own distinct trajectory of exploration for decades - interweaving rigorous experimentalism with transcultural conversations - and building upon roughly 20 years working as a duo, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang return with Azure, their third full-length with Ideologic Organ. Among their most riveting outings to date, comprising five new compositions recorded in Seattle during the spring of 2022, this remarkable body of sonority culminates in a singular gesture of contemporary minimalism that slowly unfolds across the album’s length. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest, Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang have retained a strong presence within the context of North American experimental music since the mid 1990s, each producing some of the most grippingly original music to have appeared over the subsequent years. Kenney is a vocalist and composer internationally regarded for her spellbinding timbres and her in-depth study of oral traditions. Her work takes the form of sound installations, talismanic scores, music for film, electronics, and choir. She released the groundbreaking experimental gamelan album Atria (Sige) in 2015, and has collaborated with Lori Goldston, Holland Andrews, Niloufar Shiri, Tashi Wada, Alvin Lucier, Sarah Davachi, Melati Suryodarmo, Ensemble Nist-Nah, Sunn O))), and numerous others. Kang, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger, works across genre and discipline, bringing subtlety, fluidity, and emotional intensity to each of his varied projects. In addition to creating a striking body of solo works that has traced its way across the last two and half decades - most recently including Sonic Gnostic (Aspen Edities, 2021) and Ajaeng Ajaeng (Ideologic Organ, 2020) - he has played on albums by Bill Frisell, Joe McPhee, Sun City Girls, Ikue Mori, Laurie Anderson, Blonde Redhead, William Hooker, Animal Collective, and numerous others. Since beginning to work together as a duo in the early 2000s, Kang and Kenney have collaborated on sound installations, music for orchestra, choir, and mixed ensembles in addition to releasing numerous widely acclaimed full-lengths: Aestuarium (2005), The Face Of The Earth (2012), Live In Iceland (2013), At Temple Gate (2014), Reverse Tree (2016), Seva (2017), The Cypress Dance (2020). A hypnotic return to the duo’s unique expression of “unison music", Azure is among Kenney and Kang’s most pared-down efforts in more than a decade. Its five compositions are underscored by allusions to the natural world and drifting temporalities, producing a profound calm that rises in arcs of tonal color. The album’s opener, Eclipse, is a composition built around the phrase “eclipse…inside the eclipse”, drawn from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s book, Dictee. Leaving aching silences between each utterance - Kenney’s sparse vocal interventions enmeshed with Kang’s delicate viola d’amore tones - the piece’s collective elements produce a remarkable tension bubbling within its spacious calm. The title track, Azure, takes its name from a pun on the Persian "az u" or "from her/him/them”, and is a meditation on the closing rhymes of ghazal 413 from the Divan of Hafez, such as mâh az u, râh az u, and âh az u, “the moon from them, the path from them, the sighs from them”. Imbued with sorrow and release, across the piece Kenney’s vocals and Kang’s viola d’amore weave and dance against a shruti drone, calling forth echoes of lost moments in far off worlds. This is followed by three pieces that incorporate traces of wide-ranging techniques into their forms. Ocean is an experiment with different intensities of pulsation, with inspiration from ring modulation’s use of two simultaneous frequencies, which assemble an enveloping expanse of intoxicating harmonics and vibrato. For Forest Floor, Kenney’s long-tone vocalizations play on the meanings of ‘tan’ or body, and ‘nur’ or light, and the town names of ‘Chegel’ and ‘Khotan’ from ghazal 327 from the Divan of Hafez. Dancing at the boundaries of sorrow and joy, her voice, paced in perfect harmony to Kang’s viola, seems to propose alternate realities of what ecstatic music might be. The album’s final piece draws upon Glenna Cole Allee’s book, Hanford Reach, incorporating photographs and words spoken within by interviewees living or working in the tribal territories of Wanapum, Yakama, Cayuse, Umatilla, Nez Perce, and many others on or near the Hanford Nuclear Site in the state of Washington. Among the album’s most dynamic and powerful efforts - drones and pizzicato tones playing counterpoint to Kenney’s soaring vocals - the duo, inexplicably, imbues strong impressions of that landscape. As Suzanne Kite states in the album’s liner notes, with each of Azure’s discrete expressions Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang “ask our ears to hold/stop/wait/listen closely to the edges of knowability, while the world continues around our sounding bodies… [they] draw our ears so closely that if we are not careful, the listener’s breathing could interfere, our blinking could interface with each tone, and we would blindly intercede into what is a landscape being formed before our ears. Azure pushes us to find a deeper rhythm, to move, grow, and form our listening bodies towards each composition.” Azure is available via Ideologic Organ as a vinyl LP, mastered by their original sound collaborator Mell Dettmer, cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle and pressed at Optimal, CD, and digital download, with sleeve photos by Glenna Cole Allee / Text by Suzanne Kite, and a live photo by Kali Malone.

Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang – Azure

edition of 200 lps with hand-written sleeves. Reading Group is thrilled to release Contradictions (plays 4 writers), the new LP by legendary musician and poet Yan Jun. Yan Jun has been a central figure in the (non-)music, noise, sound, and experimental performance scenes both in his native Beijing and in the global subterranean community for decades. He founded the Beijing-based experimental label Sub Jam in 2000 and has since collaborated with Lionel Marchetti, Axel Dörner, Toshimaru Nakamura, Torturing Nurse, and many more. On Contradictions, Jun “plays 4 writers”––interpreting, across five pieces, the formal, conceptual, and linguistic challenges of literary and theoretical figures as constraints and guides for sound composition and experimental performance. On tracks A1 and A2, Jun “plays” Lu Xun, the early twentieth-century Chinese literary critic and associate of the League of Left-Wing Writers in the 1930s. These two iterations of “behaviors in environment” explore Lu Xun’s contradictory descriptions of sound and silence, forming two seemingly “empty” field recordings as containers for the full silence of non-intentional action. The following track, uses “acoustic mechanisms” to interpret a provocation from post-Marxist theorist Slavoj Žižek about the mechanization of sexuality and desire in expanding global capitalism, resulting in a noise sequence indexing the battery-operated commodification of eroticism. On the B-side, Jun “plays Jean Baudrillard” by exploring the “hyper-real” of audio feedback without a manual interface. The final track recalls Jun’s work for voice and speech, interpreting Samuel Beckett by reading through the Chinese translation of Beckett’s Texts for Nothing silently––except for the enunciated floating signifier 我 (I, my, me). In the extensive liner notes by the artist, he sums up this piece in language that provides a clue to the record as a whole: “How about colliding and annihilating everything through the voice of this ‘I’ then we deal with the limit of the form?”

yan jun – contradictions (plays lu xun, žižek, baudrillard and beckett)

New project by Apolline Schöser (half of Nina Harker) & Thomas Coquelet. Apolline & Thomas have been performing since 2022 under the KOU guise with 24 electronic harmoniums. Producing dense layers of tones & overtones. On their debut album KOU steers in another direction. The harmonium appears occasionally, but more prominent are delicate guitar pluckings, distant vocal effects, synths, flutes, piano strokes, a touch of musical magic and Apolline’s jazz not jazz vocals. As soon as the needle drops it’s clear we are jump-cutting straight to the other side of the mirror. Cats purr, a woman sings as if asleep, drum machines stutter and warp and Alvin Lucier is not 'sitting in a room that is not different to the one you are not in now’. If you’re already confused, join the club. But, it’s the good kind of confused, a bewildering experience akin to the first time hearing the Faust Tapes or watching Inland Empire. Wait though, as pigeons coo and the tape machine clunk-clicks a gorgeous weirdo version of Roger's and Hart’s Blue Moon emerges to let you know this isn’t just dada splurge, there’s a genius pop sensibility at work here too. Side two takes us further into the murk with mournful detuned brass, stoned Joan La Barbara-esque vocalese and a droning Farfisa hymn, before ending with another too-tempting snatch of DIY pop. Some of the references are recognisable. All kinds of 70s/80s European art prog - think early Battiato, Pierot Lunaire’s Gudrun, Lucia Bosè and Gregorio Paniagua's Io Pomodoro etc etc. There’s a strong whiff of 90s us goof-off surrealism too- Bongwater, Siltbreeze, Royal Trux’s Twin infinitives, the damaged folkier side of Alastair Galbraith, Half-Japanese, early Beck even all feel relevant. Like an oddball group of friends you might meet by chance and end up weirding-out with for days, the minds behind this deliciously odd music allow you to stay for a while in their strange subcultural world. You might not want to live here forever but a short trip, while it lasts, rewires your brain for the better.

KOU – KOU

Biarrezgaur (not tomorrow, today) is a blissful and misty set of guitar tones entangled with effects and reverberation. Dreamy and reflective proto-blues-folk sketches that suggest a sense of matured serenity that only comes with years of practice. Spontaneous, gentle and free-flowing in equal parts, Biarrezgaur is a perfect autumnal recipe for those looking in the direction of Six Organs of Admittance, Loren Connors with Alan Licht, or even Robbie Basho or Albert Gimenez if you listen to the closing track Itzulera. Bidai (Trip) is the new collaborative project between two emblematic figures of the rich Basque musical heritage, Xabi Strubell & Mikel Vega. It took more than 30 years for their paths to cross, but we are very pleased they finally did in 2022. Entirely improvised with two guitars and effects, it was recorded at Bonberenea, the independent and self-funded cultural hub housed in an abandoned warehouse in Tolosa (in the valley of the river Oria). Xabi is a writer, poet and musician from Hondarribia, a fishing village on the border with France. He started his career as a member of Dut, the seminal Post Hardcore band that any Basque kid growing in the 90’s and interested in feedback and distorted guitars will sorely remember, still a cult these days. He formed Zura in 2005, a solo mature project focusing on acoustic guitar. Mikel is an accomplished musician and all-around cultural activist from Bilbao. Has collaborated in numerous projects (Conteiner, Killerkume, Loan, Orbain Unit) and more recently with Miguel A. Garcia (also a member of Dopelganger, Heg008) and Joseba Agirrezabalaga (Lepok, Urpa i Musell beginning of 2023).

Bidai – Biarrezgaur

Dopelganger is the project in collaboration between classically trained accordion player and singer Garazi Navas (Usansolo, Bizkaia-Biscay, 1995) and Miguel A. Garcia (Vitoria-Gasteiz), an artist living in Bilbao with an extensive career in the fields of experimental music and sound art. Sainen Hildo is an album based on Miguel’s original compositions, recomposed and rearranged for accordion and voice by the two composers. Using the natural resonance and harmonics of these two instruments to influence their introspective interactions, resulting in evolving drones and tones and puzzling percussive outbursts. Unusual and at times unsettling, they manage to create a calibrated, deep and complex exploratory universe of ambience and drone where listening becomes a ritual. Highest recommendation for fans of Pauline Oliveros, Eliane Radigue or Phill Niblock. Garazi Navas was classically trained at Musikene School of Music in San Sebastian with a masters in traditional music, Garazi, is a restless accordionist who, despite her young age, has taken part in a multitude of projects in theater, poetry, ballet, art installations and even playing with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra. Her works are a personal interpretation of the close relationship which she feels exists between cutting-edge and traditional music. Miguel A. García has performed extensively in Europe, America and Asia, both as a solo artist, improvising and in multiple ensembles. He has collaborated with dozens of artists (Al Karpenter, Jean Luc Guionnet, Sébastien Branche...) in studio and live, and appeared in more than a hundred albums. At the same time, he is organizer and curator of events, being founder of Club Le Larraskito, director of Zarata Fest, and part of the coordination of the cycle Hotsetan at Azkuna Zentroa itself.

Dopelganger – Sainen Hildo

Chicago-based guitarist / composer Eli Winter’s new self-titled album finds him building on the promise of his recent records—like 2020’s Unbecoming and his 2021 collaboration with Cameron Knowler, Anticipation—with a gem of an album on which he leads an ad-hoc group that delicately balances a range of colors and moods. Winter is an accomplished player with impeccable technique and an unassuming virtuosity, capable of both mesmerizing intricacy and florid romanticism, but on Eli Winter he frequently plays a supporting role, creating ample room for his collaborators. The result is the sound of an artist escaping any lingering shadows of his primary influences and coming into his own; ironically, Winter does this by deemphasizing his role as traditional bandleader. Assisted by a murderer’s row of peers and contemporaries including Cameron Knowler, Yasmin Williams, David Grubbs, Ryley Walker, Tyler Damon, jaimie branch, and others, Eli Winter showcases a compositional depth and authoritative skill only hinted at on Winter’s rightfully acclaimed previous work. “For a Chisos Bluebonnet” begins the album on a perky and playful note, placing Winter in conversation with guitarist Knowler and pedal steel dynamo Sam Wagster, displaying in microcosm the dialectical, sympathetic collaborative language that is a hallmark of the album. The sound, largely captured by engineer Cooper Crain, is light and tight, with a panoramic clarity that renders the music lifesize. “Davening In Threes” continues, at first, the galloping, exuberant feel of its predecessor, as the harmonizing guitars of Wagster, Knowler, and Winter manage to extract beauty from a bluegrass breakdown tempo. Then, suddenly, Williams joins the trio for an interlude of harmonics before the suite concludes with a martial third act in 6/8 time. At this point it’s as if Winter begins to intuitively worry that all this prettiness is making us a tad too comfortable. The antidote arrives in the form of the dark-hued “No Fear,” which sounds like a prelude to a showdown; the slow-burn improvisation blends Wagster’s slingshots of whinnying pedal steel, Jordan Reyes’ rangy synthesizer scramble, and all manner of tube-sizzling, tremolo bar scree by Winter, Knowler, and Walker. The track provides no catharsis but rather hums with a sustained, agitated intensity. Side two begins with the pastoral post-rock of “Brain on Ice,” a soaring piece almost tender in its elegance, punctuated by the telepathic rapport of Damon’s percussion and Knowler’s nimbly ruminative acoustic guitar. “Dayenu” sounds at first as if it were composed on a commission or a dare to convey in sound a twinkle of the eye, before its fake-out ending pivots to a dramatic crescendo of branch’s proclamatory flugelhorn, Knowler’s rabbit-punch guitar interjections, and a shower of cymbals courtesy of Damon. The album saves the best for last, in the form of “Unbecoming,” which features Winter on 12-string guitar alongside Grubbs’ spectral harmonium and the harmonic, birdsong-evoking trills of Whitney Johnson’s viola, before gradually clearing a space for Liz Downing’s bowed banjo and a distant choir, courtesy of Downing and vocalist Giulia Chiappetta, whose lush harmonies provide the welcome and unexpected sound of heavenly human voices just as the song begins to fade, concluding the album with a tacit reminder, perhaps, that when God is busy or silent or absent, angels often pick up the slack.

Eli Winter – Eli Winter

If there’s one word that describes Eli Winter, it’s precocious. At twenty-three, the Chicago musician and writer (named an artist to watch for 2020 by The Guardian and “generational talent" by NYCTaper) has performed with Ryley Walker and David Grubbs and toured the country by bus and train. His first album, The Time To Come, explored the difficulties of coping with grief and Hurricane Harvey with finely wrought melodic solo instrumentals belying his age. Unbecoming, his virtuosic second album, is bolder, uncompromising yet accessible, showcasing ambitious, spacious compositions and a heightened command of the guitar, and providing measured catharsis during intertwined political crises. The album opens with the nearly twenty-three-minute “Either I Would Become Ash,” a mature, epic solo piece that winds through beautiful, robust passages, dense cacophony and insistent silence, calling to mind inspirations Jack Rose, Daniel Bachman and Pauline Oliveros. The song takes its name from an essay in which the late poet and critic Tory Dent notes her surprise at having lived with AIDS for a decade while remaining "no closer to cured”: “Either I would become ash or I would survive fully, completely, resuming all the dreams and potentials I assumed myself capable of experiencing before I tested.” The song suggests the difficulty of resolving such tensions and a way through them, speaking to the power of vulnerability and the significance of shared struggle. Lead single “Maroon” is a blossoming, joyous song marking Winter’s first time leading a band, featuring Sam Wagster (American Dreams band Mute Duo) on pedal steel guitar, Tyler Damon (Circuit Des Yeux) on drums, and Cameron Knowler on nylon string guitar. “Maroon” is the shortest and most straightforward track on the record - it’s also catchy as all get out, and ripe for repeat listens. Like "Dark Light” - a spare, rich exploration of space and feedback sourced from a concert recording - “Maroon” evinces the importance of fostering communities on scales large and small. Unbecoming showcases Winter as an invigorating, talented presence, and alludes to his bright future as a voice - or perhaps set of well-trained hands - in the constantly evolving guitar music canon.

Eli Winter – Unbecoming

曲目简介 Tracks in Detail 01. 驼队 Kêrwên / Camel Caravan 02:33塔塔尔族民间乐曲 Tatar folk music 02. 你的眼睛 Kɵzdêring / Your Eyes 02:29塔塔尔族民间乐曲 Tatar folk music 03. 卡拉特根 Ⱪara têgin / Kara tegin 02:19塔吉克族民间乐曲 Tajik folk music 04. 十五满月 On bês kundik twƣan ay / Full Moon on the 15th 01:57蒙古族民间乐曲 Mongolian folk music 05. 锡伯族民歌 Sibê haleⱪ ǝni / Folk Song of the Sibe 00:56 06. 劝导 Nasyhat / Persuasion 02:43柯尔克孜族民间乐曲 Kyrgyz folk music 07. 萨热阿尔卡 Sararⱪa / Saryarka 02:36作曲 Composed by:库尔曼哈孜·萨赫尔拜吾勒 Kurmangazy Sagyrbaev《萨热阿尔卡》是库尔曼哈孜的巅峰之作,据说是库尔曼哈孜逃离伊尔库茨克监狱后,在阿尔卡地区看望作曲家塔特穆别特(Tǝttimbêt)时献给对方的作品。Considered Kurmangazy’s masterpiece, “Saryarka” was said to be a tribute to his fellow composer Tǝttimbêt, whom Kurmangazy paid a visit to in the area of Saryarka after escaping from the Irkutsk Prison. 08. 阿克拜 Aⱪbay / Akbay 04:21作曲 Composed by:库尔曼哈孜·萨赫尔拜吾勒 Kurmangazy Sagyrbaev阿克拜是曾经迫害库尔曼哈孜的村中恶霸奥巴克尔的父亲,库尔曼哈孜以这首作品痛诉乡绅的恶行。Akbay is the father of Aubaker, a village bully who used to persecute Kurmangazy. Kurmangazy wrote this piece to denounce the evil deeds of the country squires in his time. 9. 阿拉山 Alataw / Alatau 03:03作曲 Composed by:库尔曼哈孜·萨赫尔拜吾勒 Kurmangazy Sagyrbaev《阿拉山》是库尔曼哈孜在某次关押期间创作的曲子。Alataw音译为“阿拉套”,是位于中国新疆博尔塔拉蒙古自治州与哈萨克斯坦七河地区之间的山脉。“Alatau”, named after the Dzungarian Alatau, a mountain range that lies on the boundary of the Dzungaria region of China and the Zhetysu region of Kazakhstan, was written during one of Kurmangazy’s prison sentences. 10. 卸脚镣 Kisên axⱪan / Unshackling 02:21作曲 Composed by:库尔曼哈孜·萨赫尔拜吾勒 Kurmangazy Sagyrbaev这首曲子名字就反映了库尔曼哈孜多舛的命运。1857年,库尔曼哈孜因带头反抗沙俄殖民者对自己所在部落的恶行而被捕关押于奥伦堡监狱,之后在一次逃狱途中被牧民收留,《卸脚镣》就是躲藏在牧民家养伤时创作的曲子。The title itself epitomises Kurmangazy’s turbulent life. In 1857, Kurmangazy was arrested and held in Orenburg Prison for leading a rebellion of his clan against the Russian colonisers. During a subsequent prison escape, he was given shelter by a herdsman. “Unshackling” was written when he was hiding and recuperating in the herdsman’s home. 11. 令妇 Kêlinxêk / Virtuous Wife 02:00哈萨克民间乐曲 Kazakh folk music 12. 游击队之歌 Partyzandar marxe / Song of Guerrilla Forces 01:25作曲 Composed by:贺绿汀 He Luting

Daulet Halek – Dombra Solo