Search "lazer+sword+memory" 16 Items

Vinyl with a dent on the first track

Clear vinyl seems unlayed. Hole in back cover. With stickers.

Limited Edition Cloudy Clear Vinyl.Combining Processed Recordings Of Wind And Water With Analog Synthesizers And Chamber Orchestra, Elori Kramer's The Blue Of Distance Is An Audio Dissertation On The Role Technology Plays In Our Relationships To Geography And Nature, Unspoolinginto An Examination Of Memory And Longing Across Seven Sections That Layer Filmic Minimalism Over Churning Electronic Soundbeds. Half Of The Suite Was Written In The Adirondack Mountains During Summer Amid Lakes, Rivers, And Moss-Ladenforest Floors, While The Other Half Was Conceived On A Frozen Lake Superior Island In Deep Winter, Creating A Subtextual Dialogue Between The Two Extreme Settings. Kramer, Who Was Born In 1990 And Grew Up Alongside The Internet, Uses Her Musicto Explore Nature In The Actual And The Virtual World, Through Direct Experience And Facsimile Alike, Focussing And Blurring The Line Between The Two. "Looking Back At My Videos Of That Summer-- Which Is Where The Processed Audio Came From-- I Triedto Remember What It Had Felt Like To Be There," She Recalls, "Thinking About Questions Of Reality Versus Imagination; Physical Versus Digital; And The Ways In Which Memory Shifts Through Our Minds And Technology." The Title The Blue Ofdistance Was Derived From Rebecca Solnit's Book A Field Guide To Getting Lost, Referring To The Phenomenon Of Faraway Mountains Appearing Blue Due To Light Particles Getting Lost Over Distance. "If We Were To Go Up To The Mountains Thatappear Blue From Far Away, We Would See That They Weren't Actually That Color." She Says. "This Beauty Is Made Possible Because Of Their Distance," Much In The Same Way That The Splendor Of A Lush Season Is Only Fully Realized In The Throes Of A Bleak One, And The Joy Of An Event Can Only Be Felt When It Has Long Since Been Consigned To Remembrance.R.I.Y.L Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Josiah Steinbrick, Emily Sprague

Post-punk/new wave hero Ann Margaret Hogan’s second album of solo piano and field recordings for Downwards is a box of subtle wonders, mastered by Veronica Vasicka and highly recommended if yr into Satie, Virginia Astley, Sarah Davachi. A weight of history flows through Hogan’s keys with a stark intimacy, beautifully illuminated by naturally effortless, quietly grand songwriting. It’s a direct continuation of the landscaped themes and atavism of 2020’s ‘Honeysuckle Burials’ and the ‘Reversing Into Tomorrow’ collaboration with Karl O’Connor, vividly capturing the slow passage of time in a way that has quite literally compelled us to stop the relentless mind-grind for its 40 minute duration on more than one occasion. After previous fixations on the iron age forts and burial mounds of the Clywdian Range in North Wales, Hogan transmutes the scenery of her more immediate locale, Oxton on The Wirral - from the cadence of its red sandstone landmark Thor’s Rock, to memories of its boating lake, for example - into a quiet yet ravishing suite inflected with traces of wildlife and industry recorded on long walks, all subsumed within a deep blue estuarial atmosphere silted by the strange reality of life in the current era, echoing the surreal, sunny period when the album was conceived. A generation on from her pivotal work with spar Marc Almond and likes of Deux Filles and Nick Cave, and forty generations since The Wirral hosted, as she says “a Norse parliament at Thingwall”, Hogan weaves time and place into a reflective, funereal sort of parlour music, turning daily ambulations amid the gorse and under luminous skies into gorgeous, life affirming and intimate self expressions. The eight pieces are mostly improvised and flow with a free, fleeting concision from the palpable warmth of ‘Forgotten Prelude’ and bluesy ache of ‘Fragile Elements’ to more funereal modes in ’Mesto’ and ‘Funeral Cargo’ suggestive of a Viking burial soundtrack. At its core, ‘Wolfswalzer’, a dedication to her one time collaborator and erstwhile Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür - is described by Hogan as “a simple waltz of coffee, food, friends and music”, and ‘Impromptu’ is the album’s slowest, soaked in the feeling of atmospheric immanence that defines the album’s timeless appeal. It’s an unspeakably moving album, words really do it no justice.

"Absence of the loved one is a theme running through both films, but during the creative process we never discuss with the Havels the themes, symptoms or attributes of the characters. We do not specify any meanings. Our collaboration is intuitive, based on interconnectedness. We neither explain things to each other nor analyse. From the outset we have a common goal: to quieten the viewers’ perception, to attune them to certain vibrations by visual, musical and acoustic repetitions, thus enabling them to focus on every tiny detail, every subtle aesthetic quality, so that by the end of the film they have a sense of reconciliation. In fact it is a state similar to meditation or prayer. The aim is being shown Mercy. Each time, the linking of the filmed images with Irena and Vojtech’s music has uncovered a new quality that we have named: a commentary on eternity. Characters cease to be determined by their senses, psychological motivations, or the times they live in. They find liberation in the stream of eternal time." /Václav Kadrnka

"We would like to thank all our friends, sound engineers and musicians. The main thanks go to director Václav Kadrnka, his family and all his collaborators for the precious opportunity to assist them in creating both films. We have worked on our music for the film Saving One Who Was Dead for three years. We met with Václav, discussed the screenplay while it was being born and many other things. We have gradually prepared several working versions that included compositions for piano, Indonesian gamelan, gongs, Tibetan bowls, bells and mini-bells. Yet, step by step, we made it simpler and simpler and eventually only kept violas da gamba, organ and chanting. Everything else was redundant. We made most of the recordings of the compositions for viola da gamba in a church in Prague. The composition for organ was recorded in Milan where we performed a concert shortly before the pandemic arrived in December 2019. We tried to record it in various churches in Bohemia but it was not until the church in Milan that we found the best sounding organ.

As for Little Crusader, we recorded the music for the film after it was completed. We had several versions and used the piano version for this album. Together with Václav, we searched for instruments that would work the best for this Medieval story. Eventually, we opted for harmonium with simple chanting which accompanies the character little boy Jenik. Violas da gamba intertwine, move close and then apart from each other the same way as paths of little boy Jenik and his father who is searching for him. Simple chanting and Tibetan bowl accompany scenes with little boy Jenik’s mother who awaits them at home. Trombone and saxophone are like metal swords and the knights’ armor. Violoncello and viola da gamba walk in the rhythm of horse’s hooves, in the rhythm of heartbeat of both the horse and his rider – a father searching for his lost son." / Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi

Cologne - based composer and multi - instrumentalist Ozan Tekin’s second studio album “Anarya” will be released via Gülbaba Records on May 27 th . Tekin winds his musical journey back from Cologne to Adana with a long layover in Istanbul in “Anarya”. A triangle of migration drawn by musical notation and performance. The album is composed of 14 tracks and each one of them is a sound story that echoes Tekin’s distinct memories from these three cities. “Anarya” is the end product of a process in which Tekin and his upright piano co - tuned each other. It is an artistic representation of the idiosyncratic phenomenon called stimmung in German; a spectrum of tones, moods and atmospheres expressed in personal and instrumental terms. Tekin concludes the piano conversations from his previously released EPs in 2021 (“Anarya I” and “Anarya Ii”). The remarkably catchy melodies and immersive melancholic arpeggios fl ow throughout. The transposed narrative of “Anarya” sprung up from its roots when Tekin came across with a 66 - years old worn out piano in Cologne. Mesmerized by its unique sound, he felt the urge to make recordings with this piano before it fell apart. Aft er spending months learning its mechanics, Tekin recorded his second album with the old upright piano he repaired and brought back to life. The uneasy changes in time signatures and ambient ornamentations with gloomy synths of 80’s, lush strings and room tones set up the atmospheric stage of “Anarya I” in the first five tracks. Following six tracks of the album attempts to revisit Tekin’s emotional and episodic memories in Istanbul. His unaffected absorption into piano music in the first two parts of “Anar ya” are followed by his coyishly joyful tracks later in the album: an idle “ode”, a lost “lament” and a colorful “jam”. These three tracks blend the neoclassical, jazz and ambient sounds of Cologne and Istanbul with sentiments of childhood and rascality in Adana. The piano conversations of Tekin throughout “Anarya” are accompanied by his analogue synthesizers, vocals, bass guitar, Hanitra Wagner’s violin and Berke Can Özcan’s drums , percussions and vibraphone, and Emre Malikler’s mix and mastering. The sou nds of collaboration go deeper and louder as the album’s tracks move forward and Tekin’s memories go backwards simultaneously. Anarya gitmek (“to go back”) is a vernacular saying from Tekin’s hometown Adana and Tekin makes a figurative attempt to migrate b ackwards via the compositions that came into being in his most recent home, Cologne. Having been born out of an upright piano, Tekin’s compositions have instrumental origins, however, due to his constantly mutating sense of belonging, his melodies can’t be pinpointed to any specific heimat . Tekin’s continuously transforming music is an invitation to his listeners to explore and experience his music in their own terms. Tekin’s personal memories that shape “Anarya” is open to new forms of sonic exploration and rearrangement. This openness lies in Tekin’s determined faith in not to be entrenched in any single genre. The immersive intimacy radiating from the collaborative piano conversations in “Anarya” is an invitation signature to his music’s current and fut ure followers. Text by Mehmet Ekinci

A suite of raga-inspired compositions and improvisations that grew from a fertile collaboration between Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett centered around a devotion to just intonation tuning, deep listening, and resonant spaces.

Michael Harrison is a composer and pianist who is a dedicated practitioner of just intonation and North Indian classical music. He was La Monte Young's protégé and piano tuner during The Well-Tuned Piano years and a disciple of Pandit Pran Nath, and has since developed his own customized tuning systems. Guided by conversations with Christina Vantzou, who provided structural frameworks for each piece and directed the sessions, the compositions drew from Harrison's daily raga practice, using its ancient forms as starting points from which the compositions could blossom and morph. A resonant backdrop of modular synthesizers played by John Also Bennett, who also contributed piano improvisations played on Harrison’s custom tuned Steinway concert grand, expanded the sessions into true collective praxis.

As noted by Parul Gupta, a conceptual artist based in New Delhi who contributed the stunning artwork for the album, “the songs feel like an extension of silence.” The notes from the piano emerge, resonate, and dissolve in measured and meditative sonic fields, allowing for a concentrated listening experience where every sound lives, breathes, and ultimately returns to silence. Contained within these aural ecologies are potentialities that emerge from a collective listening and improvising experience, and a resonant rebuttal of the standard equal tempered tuning system that has dominated Western music for centuries.

This release collects the verdant recordings from the trio’s 2019 Berlin sessions on two 45rpm records, accompanied by a risograph printed insert featuring track credits and Harrison’s handwritten tuning charts used on the album.

Artist Statement

An observer, a pianist and a synthesist form a triangle. The observer (Christina) is both witness and guide, the pianist (Michael) is precise and intuitive, and the synthesist (John) provides a palate of drones which offer increased resonance and a supportive framework. The piano has been carefully prepared to become a resonant body. This enhancement was achieved by tuning it to two of Michael’s just intonation tunings, based on his work, “Revelation,” and North Indian classical music, or ragas. These tunings maintain mathematically precise intervals. In place of voice, sitar or tabla, is the piano, and in place of the tanpura, is the synthesizer. Playing ragas is an ancient practice of structured improvisation. Time, knowledge and memory interplay in the body and mind of the practitioner and this is a large part of the raga practice. The raga combines with muscle memory and personal aesthetics to individuate results. Through the formation of a trio, multiple perspectives and timelines collapse and the raga mutates again. These twists and turns seem to only fall back on themselves as the raga shows us that there are multiple compositions already stored in our collective memory. They blossom, morph and spring forth like nature.

Nothing was written down to execute these recordings. The simplest forms were explored in the least complicated way. The first reflection of this process is what happens in the mind and body of the listener. The observer is always observing. Regions of sound tap into memory and imagination and the sound of the raga itself becomes a prismatic event.

Tülü is an avant-garde piece composed by Pierre Redon. It is one of his iconic creations played around the world to “weave the memory of humanity in a hair carpet.” This album is a captivating sound experience, recorded in 2013 by the ensemble Tülü with rare instruments such as sarangui, sorud, Viola di amor and Santiago, double bass or percussion.

“Shotns - Shadows: Songs from Testimonies, Volume 3” - is the latest addition (2024) to the Fortunoff Video Archive’s Songs from Testimonies project., brought by the Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble featuring Sasha Lurje. The project brings to life painful memories of surviving the genocide, and memory of those who did not make it, but first and foremost these are the stories of these people’s lives. Volume 3 stays as linguistically and musically diverse as the previous two albums. Songs in Greek, Ladino, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Czech; music from concentration camps and ghettos of Vilna, Warsaw, and Lodz; music of cabaret and theatre from across the globe— adapted to tell the stories of suffering and betrayal, hope and loss.

A Ballet Through The Mud is presented in a pink and purple mixed color pressing housed in a gatefold jacket featuring photos of a ballet performance with the Colorado Symphony and a 12 page graphic insert outlining the narrative of the ballet A Ballet Through Mud is a poignant coming-of-age story that delves into the complexities of love, the loss of innocence, the bonds of friendship, and personal growth. Drawing inspiration from RZA's own lyrics and the candid memories he penned in his teenage notebooks, the narrative also embodies his profound philosophical journey influenced by Chan Buddhism. As RZA eloquently states, “out of the mud grows the lotus.”

ind is 12 pieces written and performed by CTM and produced by Jakob Littauer.

The album consists of cello compositions with few exceptions - a daf enhancing the rhythm, a distant memory of the kora, a pensive flute or folly sounds. The softness of the acoustic instruments is counterplayed by concise compositions and hyperreal productions.

The music presents itself as part spirit, part form; the movement in the moment, repetition, anticipation, what happened and what is to come. It's a sensuous search into stretched out moments, captured and held in one’s hand for a little while. It finds play and devotion, love and light.

Dedicated to Jannis Noya Makrigiannis

With "Ululo", pianist and composer Koki Nakano immerses us in the depths of his emotions, carried by the striking voices of Jordy, WAYNE SNOW and Yael Naim.For his fourth album, Japanese pianist and composer Koki Nakano moves beyond the conceptual to reveal an intimate and visceral musical expression, a reflection of his deep emotions. Each piece conveys the desire and passion of a cry. The title "Ululo" (which translates to "Howl" or "Cry" in Latin) echoes a childhood memory of being in his father"s arms, yearning to touch the moon. This unfulfilled desire, reminiscent of a famous haiku by famous poet Issa Kobayashi, symbolizes his early realization of his limitations in the face of the vastness of the world and the seemingly unattainable. Koki reinvents himself with a unique fusion of piano and modern vocal collaborations. He is joined by UK rap sensation Jordy and the captivating voices of WAYNE SNOW and Yael Naim. He offers an avant-garde music style distinguished by its emotional simplicity and sonic depth. Beyond virtuosity, Koki explores his classical sensibilities by blending subtle ambient textures with his poignant and sophisticated melodies. While "Ululo" is a cry of frustration with melancholic tones, it is also romantic, filled with beauty, humor, and light.