{"title":"Black Truffle","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle Records is an Australian experimental\/improv\/noise\/abstract\/etc. music label, founded in 2009 by Oren Ambarchi. Launched with a couple of Ambarchi's long out-of-print vinyl reissues on CD, Black Truffle then released a remastered version of seminal 'Afternoon Tea' collaborative album with new artwork. The most well-known releases on the label are three albums exclusively produced for Black Truffle by Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi trio. Other notable collaborations that Ambarchi recorded for his own label include 'The Mortimer Trap' with Thomas Brinkmann and 'Cat's Squirrel' with Masami Akita.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAll releases on Black Truffle feature artworks designed by either Stephen O'Malley or Lasse Marhaug.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe French black truffle is considered the finest of the edible fungi and has a place in gastronomy alongside saffron, caviar, foie gras, and the finest wines. Widely regarded as the jewel of French cooking, it is prized for its unique flavor and intoxicating aroma. At Black Truffle Records, our resident chef has discovered that finding this \"diamond of the kitchen\" requires using a divining stick while facing into the sun.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"sagittarian-domain-reissue","title":"Sagittarian Domain (Reissue)","description":"\u003cp\u003e10th anniversary reissue of this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album, recorded in a single inspired studio session and originally released in 2012 on Editions Mego.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50383092318539,"sku":"1143759","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/31b0740e-33e4-40d1-b44a-3da98e4f30b0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726262871"},{"product_id":"filth-original-score","title":"Filth - Original Score","description":"\u003cp\u003e“One of Hollywood’s most exciting film composers” – DAZED \u0026amp; CONFUSED Official soundtrack of the movie 'Filth' Scheming Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), a bigoted and corrupt policeman, is in line for a promotion and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Enlisted to solve a brutal murder and threatened by the aspirations of his colleagues, including Ray Lennox (Jamie Bell), Bruce sets about ensuring their ruin, right under the nose of unwitting Chief Inspector Toal. As he turns his colleagues against one another by stealing their wives and exposing their secrets, Bruce starts to lose himself in a web of deceit that he can no longer control. His past is slowly catching up with him, and a missing wife, a crippling drug habit and suspicious colleagues start to take their toll on his sanity. The question is: can he keep his grip on reality long enough to disentangle himself from the filth? James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class) gives the performance of his career and he is joined by a fantastic cast, including Jamie Bell (The Adventures of Tintin), Imogen Poots (Fright Night), Oscar winning actor, Jim Broadbent (The Iron Lady), Joanne Froggatt (‘Downton Abbey’), Shirley Henderson (Trainspotting), Eddie Marsan (The Illusionist), Emun Elliott (Prometheus), Martin Compston (Sweet Sixteen), Shauna Macdonald (The Descent) and Gary Lewis (Gangs of New York). Written by Jon S. Baird who also directs, Filth is produced by Ken Marshall, Will Clarke and Irvine Welsh.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Records","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50384045703499,"sku":"2180753","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50384045965643,"sku":"2205346","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_eab89c33_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726284464"},{"product_id":"two-forests-oceanic","title":"Two Forests - Oceanic","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from the psychoacoustic concrète of \u003ci\u003eOutside Ludlow \/ Desert Disco\u003c\/i\u003e LP, Sam Dunscombe returns to Black Truffle with \u003ci\u003eTwo Forests \/ Oceanic\u003c\/i\u003e. Dunscombe has been active in recent years on multiple fronts, including as a key member of the Berlin community of Just Intonation researchers and practitioners; working with composers like Taku Sugimoto, Mary Jane Leach, and Anthony Pateras; and the release of Horatiu Radulescu - Plasmatic Music vol. 1 (the result of many years performance research into the thought and music of this seminal Romanian spectralist). In parallel with these activities, Dunscombe has been deeply involved in research on the role of music in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, prompting these two side long pieces, composed using field recordings and digital synthesis.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs Dunscombe explains in the accompanying liner notes, music plays a key role in psychedelic-assisted therapy, yet it is often restricted to stock forms of New Age, ambient and electronica. Taking seriously the potential for spatio-environmental sonic experiences to add to the therapeutic process, these two pieces are intended to suggest how ‘a music-as-environment approach may help to add options to the therapist’s toolbox’. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTwo Forests\u003c\/i\u003e begins in a central Californian sequoia grove. Bird songs and buzzing insect life are treated with a variety of time-based processing methods (slicing and recombination, primitive granular synthesis, delay, and so on), which strip the field recordings of their linear, documentary character, reframing them in an enchanted web of traces and echoes. Analysing the pitches found in the original recordings, Dunscombe used them to generate a large Just Intonation pitch set. These tones are woven slowly into the field recordings, gradually building in density and complexity until the forest has been transformed into an unreal space of infinite proportions. Emerging from this cosmic expanse in the final minutes of the piece, we find ourselves in the Amazon rainforest outside Manaus, Brazil. As Dunscombe writes, the piece creates ‘a sense of place-gone-strange, of space and time simultaneously expanding and contracting across octaves, miles, and minutes’. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn \u003ci\u003eOceanic\u003c\/i\u003e, several recordings of different beaches fade in and out to create a texture both homogenous and constantly shifting in both the rhythm of the waves and each recording's sense of depth and distance. Tones relating in simple ratios to the average rhythm of each beach float over each other, colouring the white noise texture of the field recordings with shifting hues. In both pieces, Dunscombe forgoes the easy consonance that bogs down much contemporary ambient music for a richer harmonic array informed by extended tuning practices and spectralism. The end results suggest a hitherto undreamt-of meeting of Radulescu’s undulating sonic masses and the discreetly processed location recordings of Irv Teibel’s ‘psychologically ultimate’ Environments. Looking beyond the insularity that can afflict experimental music culture, Dunscombe’s work is a moving argument for the healing power of expanded approaches to sound and music. Even outside of a psychedelics-assisted therapy, frequent immersion in Two Forests \/ Oceanic is almost guaranteed to produce beneficial psychological results.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP.","offer_id":50390002336075,"sku":"2164186","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/200314-sam-dunscombe-two-forests-oceanic_f05b32ef_thumbnail_4096.webp?v=1726378895"},{"product_id":"in-real-life-3","title":"In Real Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn Real Life\u003c\/em\u003e is the latest release from Berlin-based guitarist and composer \u003cstrong\u003eJulia Reidy\u003c\/strong\u003e. Reidy has received acclaim for her solo performances on the 12-string acoustic guitar, blending microtonality, 'American primitive' stylings, and classic minimalism. Her recent releases have expanded her sonic palette, incorporating electronics, field recordings, and heavily auto-tuned vocals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIn Real Life\u003c\/em\u003e takes Reidy's music one step further, presenting an epic LP-length suite that transitions from abstracted songs to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrète. The album begins with eerie electronics and creaking percussive sounds, before Reidy's auto-tuned voice emerges as the focal point. Surrounded by electric guitar explosions and synthesized arpeggios, her voice delivers a melancholic ode, reflecting on the instability of experience and the mutability of identity in a digital-saturated world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe album explores the relationship between the physical and digital worlds, shifting between Reidy's intricate guitar-picking and various forms of synthesis. The dynamic imagery in Reidy's lyrics, such as cutting, shattering, and 'racing streams,' mirrors the structure of \u003cem\u003eIn Real Life\u003c\/em\u003e, which moves continuously between distinct episodes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the song-based opening to sequences of frenetic guitar playing and delicate harmonics, the album flows seamlessly from one moment to the next. Interstitial moments between these episodes are emphasized, creating a unique listening experience that showcases Reidy's diverse musical talents.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP.","offer_id":50398641717579,"sku":"2171488","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE051_067412c5_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726497554"},{"product_id":"master-of-bamboo-mouth-organ-isan-thailand","title":"Master Of Bamboo Mouth Organ – Isan, Thailand","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle release the first LP documenting master khene player Sombat Simla, the label’s first collaboration with Japanese sound artist, field recordist, and researcher Yasuhiro Morinaga. Simla is known in Thailand as one of the greatest living players of the khene, the ancient bamboo mouth organ particularly associated with Laos but found throughout East and Southeast Asia. His virtuosic and endlessly inventive renditions of traditional and popular songs have earned him the title ‘the god of khene’, and he is known for his innovative techniques and ability to mimic other instruments and non-musical sound, including, as a writer for the Bangkok Post describes, ‘the sound of a train journey, complete with traffic crossings and the call of barbecue chicken vendors’. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP.","offer_id":50402652848459,"sku":"2167402","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE112_49e4eb02_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726554030"},{"product_id":"for-mccoy","title":"For McCoy","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor McCoy is a new work by \u003cstrong\u003eEiko Ishibashi\u003c\/strong\u003e dedicated to the widely loved character of Jack McCoy, portrayed by \u003cstrong\u003eSam Waterston\u003c\/strong\u003e in Law and Order.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from \u003cem\u003eHyakki Yagyō\u003c\/em\u003e, For McCoy finds Ishibashi further exploring the unique space she has carved out in recent years. She brings together musique concrète techniques, ECM-inspired jazz, lush layers of synths, and hints of pop into immersive and affecting structures crafted in her home studio, aided by a group of close collaborators.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":50403106554187,"sku":"1139102","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/4eb59b24-1a10-4213-ac6f-b1b6a3e494df_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726557720"},{"product_id":"hyakki-yagyo","title":"Hyakki Yagyo","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle release a new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, her first since her acclaimed 2018 Drag City release \u003ci\u003eThe Dream My Bones Dream\u003c\/i\u003e. Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke.\u003cbr\u003eThis album finds Ishibashi shifting further away from her earlier piano-led songwriting and showing a deepening interest in electronics and audio collaging. \u003ci\u003eHyakki Yagyō\u003c\/i\u003e (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the ‘Japan Supernatural’ exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards and is a response to troubling questions about Japanese history, and the influence of the past upon the present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProduced with regular collaborators Jim O’Rourke (double bass) and Joe Talia (percussion), O’Rourke’s immersive mix creates a three-dimensional effect, with Ishibashi’s various sound sources enmeshing and interacting in captivating ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe two sidelong parts of \u003ci\u003eHyakki Yagyō\u003c\/i\u003e feature layered synthesisers, acoustic instrumentation, recited verse and field recordings, at times densely mixed but always with a subtle interplay of changing elements, hinting at an influence of European and American forerunners as diverse as Alvin Curran, David Behrman and Strafe Für Rebellion.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":50403115172171,"sku":"1096329","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/0fb3d738-9427-4079-91b9-ce7b752319b9_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726557778"},{"product_id":"blood-and-fire-2","title":"Blood and Fire","description":"\u003cp\u003eTHE EIGHTIES MATCHBOX B-LINE DISASTER emerge from the mire - having found a new home at Black Records - with album, ‘Blood and Fire’. ‘Horse Of The Dog’ introduced the most visceral, spiritual, colourful and intense howlabilly head-fuck of a band ever to dive screaming from the front of a stage to chew off your face. ‘The Royal Society’ made them one of the most inventive: the raw ore of the debut honed into mighty slabs of skewed melodic majesty. And now, with ‘Blood And Fire’ - brought to you via Russia and rehab and forged in the searing heat of unquenchable souls on fire – they’ve shown themselves to be true rock survivors too. The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster; they’re just too special to die. “The drugs nearly killed me,” says bassist Sym Gharial of the fraught months after the release of their last single, the self-released ‘In The Garden EP’ in July 2007. “I was out of my mind, I had to be sectioned for a month, I went to a treatment centre. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. Hopefully that’s all behind us. There was always some confusion whether we were teetotal or raging heroin addicts - it was somewhere inbetween. But that was before the start of the New Beginning.” Despite increasing chart success, by the end of 2004 they were without a label, by 2005 they were without a lead guitarist as founding member Andy Huxley left to form the even more extreme horror-jazz outfit Vile Imbeciles, and by 2008 they were without many of their marbles too. See, following the release of the ‘In The Garden EP’ in 2007 and a subsequent tour with Queens Of The Stone Age, Guy had taken time out to dip his toe into acting, flying to Russia to play the lead role (in French despite not speaking the language) in a short film called Skies Black Out, written and directed by FJ Ossang. Within months of his return he found they were splitting with their management, their replacement lead guitarist Rich Fownes was leaving to join Nine Inch Nails and Sym was only fit for rehab. Many lesser bands would have hung up their hairspray, but TEMBD? Instead they recruited another new guitarist – local Brighton acquaintance Tristan McLenahan – after he walked into the video rental shop Guy was working in and “I could almost hear music emanating out of his head. I’d been teetotal for about six months by that point.” “It was like the band had restarted when Tristan joined,” says Sym. “It felt like we were starting again, new songs, new era, new management.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50405561237835,"sku":"2191128","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_4f770387_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726579092"},{"product_id":"world-in-world","title":"World in World","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWorld in World\u003c\/i\u003e, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere the recent trilogy of LP releases – \u003ci\u003ebrace, brace\u003c\/i\u003e (Slip, 2019), \u003ci\u003eIn Real Life\u003c\/i\u003e (Black Truffle, 2019), and \u003ci\u003eVanish\u003c\/i\u003e (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, \u003ci\u003eWorld in World\u003c\/i\u003e finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their approach while simultaneously pushing into challenging new areas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eComprising nine pieces ranging between two and seven minutes in length, the album’s opening title track promptly introduces the distinctive palette of just-intoned electric guitars, subtle electronic processing, and voice that is rigorously explored throughout. Reidy’s voice is a frequent presence throughout these nine pieces, at times creating the impression that a more conventional series of songs lurks underneath the chiming microtonal guitars. On the stunning ‘Poised’, whispers and distant, ghostly wails surround the layers of guitars, at times suggesting the foggiest outer reaches of Liz Harris’ Grouper. Both rigorously experimental and emotive,\u003ci\u003e World in World\u003c\/i\u003e is undoubtedly Julia Reidy’s finest work yet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere much of Reidy’s guitar work on previous recordings explored rapidly pulsed cycling figures, here notes often hang in the air in a more spacious, lyrical fashion. The elasticity of rhythm and non-linear repetition of pitches initially suggests improvisation until the listener becomes aware of the precise arrangements of spatialised lines. At times, World in World suggests classic bedroom electric guitar works of the 1990s such as Loren Connors’ Airs or Roy Montgomery’s Scenes from the South Island; like those works, Reidy’s possesses a wonderfully live ambience, with frequent pedal clicks adding to the music’s powerful sense of intimacy. In Reidy’s case, however, the yearning, melancholic mood of Connors or Montgomery is tempered by the unorthodox guitar tuning, which at points produces a unique and uncomfortable effect somewhere between the hyper-precision of Harry Partch or Lou Harrison and Jandek’s slack-stringed descent into the void.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile \u003ci\u003eWorld in World \u003c\/i\u003eplots out its terrain with a bold single-mindedness that allows some pieces to appear almost as variations on a common theme, subtle changes in emphasis distinguish each track. Tactile percussive interjections skitter across the tremolo tones of ‘Paradise in Unrecognisable Colours’, while ‘Ajar’ ramps up the role played by the electronics, with glitching pitch-shifted and back-masked textures threaded through the guitars and thickly harmonised vocal layers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50418914165067,"sku":"2171483","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE088_60c586fd_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726744369"},{"product_id":"with-parts-on-the-head-just-one-too-few-is-evil-one-too-many-is-good-thats-all-it-is","title":"With Parts On The Head, Just One Too Few Is Evil One Too Many Is Good That's All It Is","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe heavyweight trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return with their 12th and most epic release to date, the triple LP \u003ci\u003eWith pats on the head, just one too few is evil one too many is good \u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003ethat's all it is\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eArriving in a deluxe trifold package with photos by Lasse Marhaug alongside inner sleeves with extensive live images, this epic release is perhaps the most remarkable document yet of this unique trio’s stamina and continuing inventiveness..\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDocumenting the entirety of their final performance at the dearly departed Roppongi home of Tokyo underground institution SuperDeluxe in November 2018, the music spread across these six sides splits the difference between the guitar-bass-drums power trio moves and experiments with novel instrumentation that have defined the trio’s decade of working together. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eContaining some of the most delicate music the three have committed to wax since the gorgeous 12-string acoustic guitar and dulcimer tones of Only wanting to melt beautifully away is it a lack of contentment that stirs affection for those things said to be as of yet unseen (BT011), this wide-ranging release also offers up some of their most blistering free rock performances yet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx3","offer_id":50418924159307,"sku":"2173711","price":54.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE113_1446e593_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726744452"},{"product_id":"works-for-the-ever-present-orchestra-vol-ii","title":"Works For The Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWorks for the Ever Present Orchestra Vol. II\u003c\/i\u003e continues Black Truffle’s documentation\nof the late work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, who\nsadly passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. Like the first volume of the series, the\ntwo works recorded here were written for The Ever Present Orchestra, an ensemble\nfounded in Zürich in 2016 to perform Lucier’s work exclusively. At the core of the\nmusic Lucier wrote for the ensemble is the electric guitar, an instrument he began to\nexplore in 2013.\n\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50425328206155,"sku":"2054802","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE109_2c0a277b_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726789194"},{"product_id":"criss-cross-hanover","title":"Criss Cross \/ Hanover","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is honoured to present the premier recordings of two recent works by legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. A friend and contemporary of pioneers like Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, and Christian Wolff, Lucier has been crafting elegant explorations of the behavior of sound in physical space since the 1960s. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDemonstrating the restless creative drive of an artist now in his 80s, the two recent works presented here both feature the electric guitar, an instrument Lucier has just recently begun to explore. In \u003ci\u003eCriss-Cross\u003c\/i\u003e, Lucier’s first composition for electric guitars, two guitarists using e-bows sweep slowly up and down a single semitone, beginning at opposite ends of the pitch range. The piece is a model of simplicity, exemplifying Lucier’s desire not to ‘compose’ in the conventional sense, but rather to eliminate everything that ‘distracts from the acoustical unfolding of the idea’. In this immaculately controlled performance of \u003ci\u003eCriss-Cross\u003c\/i\u003e by Oren Ambarchi and Stephen O’Malley, (for whom the piece was written in 2013), a seemingly simple idea creates a rich array of sonic effects – not simply beating patterns, which gradually slow down as the two tones reach unison and accelerate as they move further apart, but also the remarkable phenomenon of sound waves spinning in elliptical patterns through space between the two guitar amps. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the comparatively lush \u003ci\u003eHanover\u003c\/i\u003e, Lucier draws inspiration from the beautiful photograph that provides the LP with its cover, an image of the Dartmouth Jazz Band taken in 1918 featuring Lucier’s father on violin. Using the instrumentation present in the photograph, Lucier creates an unearthly sound world of sliding tones from violin, alto and tenor saxophones, piano, vibraphone (bowed) and three electric guitars (which take the place of the banjos present in the photograph). Waves of slow glissandi create thick, complex beating patterns, gently punctuated by repeated single notes from the piano. The result is a piece that, like much of Lucier’s instrumental music, is simultaneously both unperturbably calm and constantly in motion. 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The first three album sides present the quartet, complete with long standing band members Matt Ulery (double bass) and Neil Hemphill (drums), under the heading Furniture Of the Mind. The remaining two tracks on side D fall under the title The Mind Rearranging, with Black and Diamond presenting a meditative duo encounter of two tenor saxophones. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFurniture Of the Mind Rearranging\u003c\/i\u003e is an assemblage of new compositions and improvisations that develop the band's established sound and exemplify the way in which this band folds into the Chicago creative music community. The quartet traverses their familiar aesthetic ranges between driving off-kilter groove, plaintive minimalism, and intimate chamber music, with the everpresent spirit of small-group jazz and a hovering influence of Chicago’s improvised music culture. 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This is very simply the latest work in what continues to be an expanding body work founded on a guiding principle: cultivation without expectation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe four sides with two formations flow together in a natural way, forming an idiosyncratic musical entity that is sure to grow with each new spin on the turntable.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"We Jazz","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50426626244939,"sku":"2207917","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a0557678994_16_6f26deca_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726814819"},{"product_id":"making-conversation","title":"Making Conversation","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrys Cole returns to Black Truffle with \u003ci\u003eMaking Conversation\u003c\/i\u003e, her third solo release for the label. After the intimate song-like constructions of \u003ci\u003eOther Meetings\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMaking Conversation\u003c\/i\u003e documents a different facet of cole’s work, presenting three rigorously conceptualised commissioned pieces, each of which extend her signature approach to highly amplified small sounds into new directions.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe side-long title piece is a stereo version of an 8-channel sound installation exhibited in 2023 at the Tabakalera Art Center in Donostia \/ San Sebastian, Spain. The piece uses a multitude of instrumental, vocal, concrete and electronic sounds to evoke the soundscapes cole encountered during nocturnal listening session in Bali, Indonesia in 2018 and 2019. In this world of night sounds, she explains, she ‘observed the complex interplay between amphibian, lizard, bird and insect communication, domestic animals (roosters, dogs), man-made sounds (airplanes, vehicles, conversations and evening activities) and sounds that were difficult to place’. Drawing on field recordings as memory aids (but including none in the finished piece), cole’s piece uncannily reproduces the spatiality and pacing of environmental sound without attempting strictly to replicate it. We hear insect-like twittering and birdsong fragments, resonant thuds and distant roars, furtive crunches and taps, muffled breath and metallic scrapes. While at times it can be difficult to imagine the source of these sounds, at other points they are clearly instrumental or electronic in origin; in its placement and layering, though, the whole assemblage suggests the glorious, unthinking richness of a non-musical sound environment. Suggesting at once the electronic gardens of Rolf Julius and the little instrument expanses of classic AACM, the piece is a brilliant enactment of the Cagean drive to ‘imitate nature in her manner of operation’.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e‘Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr… (pt. 1)’ began as cole’s contribution to an Issue Project Room commission to realise a score from Alison Knowles and Annea Lockwood’s Women's Work, a 1975 collection of text and conceptual scores by women artists and composers. cole’s piece begins from Beth Anderson’s Valid for Life, a complex arrangement of the letter R in various typefaces. Where the composer suggests a realisation on a trio of acoustic instruments (playing rolls with velvet beaters), cole translates the piece into her characteristic sound and object language as a trio of rolling sounds on ‘two large similar paper things and one 5-pin bowling ball’. Rolling from one side of the stereo field to the other, the bowling ball’s uneven movement is the heart of this immersive textural array, created with the simplest materials, which generates phantom sensations of pitch and phasing effects solely through amplified friction. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn ‘Valid ForeverrRrrRRrrr… (pt. 2)’, cole makes a first foray in translating her signature approach into conventional instrumental sounds, here in the form of a transcription for MIDI percussion ensemble. The result is refreshingly puzzling, comparable perhaps only to the sparsest moments of Keiji Haino’s classic “C’est parfait…” Accompanied with extensive liner notes, photographic documentation and a download code, Making Conversation is an exciting next step in cole’s work, extending her signature concerns in new sonic and conceptual directions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50427067793739,"sku":"2217530","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE123_a5e93888_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726821219"},{"product_id":"moon-original-score-2","title":"Moon - Original Score","description":"\u003cp\u003e“One of Hollywood’s most exciting film composers” – DAZED \u0026amp; CONFUSED Clint Mansell’s emotionally gripping and melodically thrilling score for psychological cult classic luna-drama Moon is now again available on Black Records on White Vinyl Directed by Duncan Jones, starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey, Moon is a science fiction thriller about a solitary lunar employee who finds that he may not be able to go home to Earth so easily. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee contracted by the company Lunar to mine on the Moon the natural gas Helium 3, which could reverse Earth's energy crisis. Stationed alone on the lunar base Sarang with only a robot named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), Sam is two weeks away from completing his three-year assignment, when he begins feeling out of place... Former ‘Pop Will Eat Itself’ frontman Clint Mansell - now based in Los Angeles - has become the go-to composer for independent Hollywood cinema. Producing peerless soundtracks to award winning Darren Arronofsky films Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Records","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50433710391627,"sku":"2203896","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_b9d9aeb4_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726882285"},{"product_id":"meith","title":"Meith","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to present \u003ci\u003eMeith\u003c\/i\u003e, a new composition in two parts from prolific composer \/ theorist François Bonnet. Usually operating under his Kassel Jaeger moniker, Bonnet is a major figure in contemporary electronics and electro-acoustic music, collaborating with artists such as Lucy Railton, Jim O’Rourke, and Stephen O’Malley, and releasing his work on labels including Editions Mego, Senufo, and Shelter Press. Always meticulously detailed yet immediately affecting, Bonnet’s work situates itself at a very personal intersection between the traditions of academic electronic and electroacoustic music, and a more shadowy, underground group of approaches to experimental sound: kosmische Musik, the tape murk of the 1980s underground, the haunted ambience of Christoph Heemann and Co. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eMeith \u003c\/i\u003eimmediately welcomes us into its densely layered sound world of electronic tones, positive organ, and unidentifiable field-recorded textures. Almost static yet constantly in flux, it deliberately opens itself up to repeated and varied listening: from a distance, its many voices cohere into a monolithic plane of sound, while closer inspection reveals myriad details and momentary events. Like a drop of ink spreading through water, harmonic material present in one voice gradually fans out into the whole arrangement, creating fleeting moments of unity amid the constantly shifting waves of tone and texture. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Far from the austerity of some contemporary electro-acoustic music, \u003ci\u003eMeith\u003c\/i\u003e affects the listener as overwhelming organic; its individual layers are unstable and at times near-chaotic, imbued with life. Though it can appear almost formless, the piece undergoes major shifts throughout its duration, from the austere dissonance of the opening moments to the surging harmonies that appear midway through the second side before the piece gradually dissolves into a spectral glimmer. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50436544921931,"sku":"1103861","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ce74e8ae-456f-4d86-8953-6711ee5925b1_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726918652"},{"product_id":"traveller-songthanksong","title":"Traveller Song\/Thanksong","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle with its first release from celebrated London- based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody; in 2019, it was selected by The Guardian as one of the ‘best classical music works of the 21st century’. Traveller Song \/ Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller’s gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike many of Miller’s compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. \u003ci\u003eTraveller Song\u003c\/i\u003e (2016\/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Miller’s untutored voice is an unsteady, wavering wail that has, in her words, ‘more in common with a quasi-shamanistic keening than anything Sicilian’. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre- recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London’s Plus-Minus Ensemble. In the first section, Miller’s exposed warble is set to a spare piano accompaniment, somehow both faintly preposterous and magisterial. Following the voice note for note, the piano part often makes use of almost mechanical sequences of parallel chords, reminiscent both of Satie’s Rosicrucian period and the abrupt harmonic movements of a chord organ. The orchestration then opens up to guitar, clarinet, and sliding strings, a delicate environment for Miller’s voice, which, especially when it begins to be layered, generates a powerful sense of intimacy. In its concluding minutes, the folk roots of the original melody return in the form of a glorious full ensemble setting dominated by accordion, clarinet, and strummed guitar.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThanksong\u003c\/i\u003e begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven’s late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the ‘holy song of thanks’ the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet ‘as slowly and quietly as possible’. The atmosphere of the opening of Beethoven’s Dankgesang, of hushed reawakening and thoughtful reflection, is sustained throughout the fourteen minutes of Miller’s piece, building at points almost to sentimentality before the five individual parts again fall back into a gentle burble of unsynchronised melodic gestures. Like Traveller Song, here the use of the voice is a long way from the mannered performance of much contemporary music, reaching for a human and bodily presence more connected to the reality of the everyday, albeit suffused with wonder. Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50441519857995,"sku":"2045851","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE107_a7b52605_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726981694"},{"product_id":"guitar-mural-1-featuring-the-machines","title":"Guitar Mural 1 featuring The Machines","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Remko Scha’s \u003ci\u003eGuitar Mural 1 featuring The Machines\u003c\/i\u003e, originally published as a rare cassette edition by Taal Beeld Geluid in 1982. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePresented as a limited edition clear vinyl 2LP set in a deluxe gatefold sleeve accompanied by stunning visual documentation of the original installation, remastered audio and new liner notes from Alan Licht and Van Lagestein, \u003ci\u003eGuitar Mural 1\u003c\/i\u003e is an exhilarating document occupying a unique space between kinetic sculpture, hardcore minimalism and rock and roll. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA computational linguist by profession, Scha played an important role in the development of sound, installation, and digital art in the Netherlands from the late 1970s onward, co-founding the performance and exhibition space Het Appolohuis in Eindhoven in 1980. Alongside Paul Panhuysen and Jan Van Riet, Scha was a founding member of the radical improvisation group The Maciunas Ensemble, though he is best known for his work with mechanised electric guitars, documented on the legendary 1982 LP Machine Guitars.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGuitar Mural 1\u003c\/i\u003e documents an installation of Scha’s mechanical guitar ensemble The Machines held at a Groningen gallery space in 1982. Five electric guitars hang from the wall, their strings sounded by rotating rubber strings and a sabre saw controlled by a mechanical apparatus, as well as four ropes criss-crossing the five instruments on the wall. Once the mechanism was set up, Scha’s only intervention was to vary the speed at which it operated. Where Machine Guitars presents short excerpts clearly distinguished by rhythmic and timbral variation, here we are confronted with four enormous side-long slabs of percussive string attack and the resulting clouds of harmonics. Variation is minimal across the duration of each side, making for a sculptural listening experience, as if we are patiently examining each facet of a static object. But significant variety exists between the four sides, each of which shows off a different facet of what The Machines were capable of. The first two excerpts feature open strings sounded at rapid tempos, dissolving the percussive attack into a continuous stream of sound reminiscent of Charlemagne Palestine’s ‘strumming’ technique. On the third side, the strings are partly muted and the tempo slightly lowered, resulting in layers of relentlessly chugging rhythm somewhere between an ensemble of hand drums and an early Velvet Underground bootleg. On the fourth side, havoc breaks loose in percussive waves of asynchronous repetition that bring Scha’s sound world close to that of another pioneer experiment in musical mechanisation, the Solar Music of Joe Jones.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Clear | LP | x2","offer_id":50452427768139,"sku":"1121188","price":31.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/727b4a5f-8462-4595-ad56-67b3d0e94844_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727152286"},{"product_id":"chico-mello-helinho-brandao","title":"Chico Mello \/ Helinho Brandao","description":"\u003cp\u003eA reissue of Chico Mello and Helinho Brandão’s self-titled release from 1984, the first return to vinyl of this classic of Brazilian experimental music with its original cover art and complete track listing. An under-recognised figure whose work inhabits a singular terrain where radical new music techniques and music theatre meet musica popular brasileira, Mello has lived and worked in Berlin since the late 1980s. A student of Dieter Schnebel, Mello played in the 90s iteration of Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings alongside compatriot Silvia Ocougne, with whom he produced a radical and hilarious deconstruction of MPB classics on Musica Brasileira De(s)composta (an early and rather atypical release on Edition Wandelweiser).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn this release, his only recording predating his move to Europe, Mello works with the alto saxophonist Helinho Brandão, who appears to be otherwise unknown outside Brazil. The record’s six tracks range from solo saxophone improvisation to densely layered ensemble works bridging minimalism, acoustic sound art and a plaintive melodic sensibility that calls up Edu Lobo or Milton Nascimento. Beginning with a dramatic, dissonant wind and string surge from which emerge ominously pounding piano chords, opener ‘Água’ slowly builds in intensity, a halo of clustered vocal harmonies gradually closing in on Brandão’s squealing sax until the piece opens up to reveal a gorgeous passage of melodic singing. The piano accompaniment reduces to tolling bass notes as the voice begins a repeated incantation, suggesting a ritualistic atmosphere reminiscent of parts of Xenakis’ setting of Oresteia. Dissonant, sawing tremolos on the strings climb to a crescendo before disappearing into the sounds of water being poured and splashed into metal vessels, presented not as a field recording but as a percussive element performed by the ensemble. A child’s voice then appears, singing to piano accompaniment the same melody heard earlier in the piece. After a brief solo alto improvisation from Brandão, working with the guttural pops and fleeting melodic gestures of Braxton or Roscoe Mitchell, the remainder of the first side is dedicated to the leisurely unfolding of ‘Baiando’ over the course of twelve minutes. A trio for Brandão on soprano saxophone, Mello on a very period-appropriate phased nylon string guitar and Edu Dequech on bongos, the performance eases its way hypnotically through subtle variations on a set of rhythmic and melodic patterns, almost derailed at points by Brandão’s wild forays into extended technique but held together by Mello’s droning guitar notes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe second side opens with another multi-part epic for a larger ensemble, ‘Matraca’, which makes use of strings, electric guitars and a wide range of South American percussion instruments. Rasping violin harmonics hover as drum hits, repeated guitar notes and triangle accompany a slowly descending bass glissando. A sudden change in direction introduces a thrumming, incessantly repeated bowed bass tone, beginning a series of episodes of minimalist phasing and pattern variation, the combinations of electric guitars and orchestral instruments giving the ensemble an ad hoc charm like the early Penguin Café Orchestra but with more percussive drive. Eventually the piece is overrun by a cacophony of the titular matracas (a kind of ratchet\/cog rattle). Following a lyrical trio improvisation by Mello, Brandão and Gerson Kornin on bass, the final ‘Danca’ focuses entirely on Mello’s layered acoustic guitars and vocals, using this restricted palette to build up a haunting piece of almost orchestral density, reminiscent of the 70s work of Egberto Gismonti in how it thickens a folkish ambience with harmonic sophistication. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eArriving in a starkly beautiful gatefold sleeve and sounding better than ever in its new remaster, one might call the stunning music contained on Chico Mello\/Helinho Brandão ahead of its time. But what (other than some of Mello’s own work) produced in the years since its initial release has really touched the organic fusion of minimalism, free improvisation, radical instrumental technique and popular song achieved here? Forty years after its first release, Chico Mello\/Helinho Brandão remains music of the future. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50454718153035,"sku":"2210516","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/4250101470769_3f46844f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727185766"},{"product_id":"future-travel","title":"Future Travel","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is thrilled to present the first vinyl reissue of David Rosenboom’s unique \u003ci\u003eFuture Travel\u003c\/i\u003e, originally released on the short-lived Detroit label Street Records in 1981 and here presented in an expanded edition with an additional LP of wild, previously unheard live and studio material from the same period.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFuture Travel \u003c\/i\u003eemerged from the confluence of two important streams in Rosenboom’s work at this time. First, his exploration of ‘propositional music’, defined as ‘complete cognitive models of music’ that start from the radical question, ‘What is music?’ In this case, the music belongs to the universe of Rosenboom’s In the Beginning (1978-1981), in which proportional relationships determine the material available to the composer in all musical parameters (harmonic relationships, melodic shapes, rhythmic subdivisions, dynamics, and so on). Second, the work documents a key moment in Rosenboom’s long collaboration with synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla. Having played a role in developing concepts for some of the modules of the Buchla 300 Series Electric Music Box (an innovative analogue modular system controlled by micro-processors), Rosenboom went on to write the software for Buchla’s hybrid analogue-digital keyboard synthesiser, the Touché, the instrument heard most prominently here.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a way that no purely analogue synthesizer could, the 300 Series and Touché allowed Rosenboom to work with the In the Beginning algorithms in real time, the synthesizers becoming ‘intelligent instruments’ that actively collaborate with the performer. Developing the open structures of the electronic pieces from In the Beginning, Future Travel explored the possibilities of simply ‘playing the system’, recording live at Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope studio in San Francisco. Working from loose sketches, Rosenboom added acoustic instruments to the electronic sounds and, on some pieces, the processed voice of Jacqueline Humbert. Like Rosenboom’s collaboration with Humbert on the abstracted synth-chanson of Daytime Viewing, this music set out deliberately to challenge the ‘stratified and illusorily coagulated identities in the musical culture of the time,’ refusing distinctions between ‘serious’ and popular music. But where Daytime Viewing achieves this in part through genre references, Future Travel is bracingly sui generis, existing in a unique universe where radical formalisation à la Xenakis spontaneously gives rise to expressive jazz harmonies and old-timey folk melodies.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe crystalline quality of many of the Touché sounds gives Future Travel a sparkling, immediately enticing surface, its layers of shifting ostinato patterns pulsating outside conventional meter, rippling like waves on the surface of water. On opener ‘Station Oaxaca’, ping-ponging synth arpeggios and hand percussion accompany a sentimental violin melody, abruptly overtaken by layered keyboard runs, before the entry of tinkling marimba-like sounds reframe the scene as sci-fi Martin Denny exotica. ‘Time Arroyo’ begins as an austere study in staccato synth sounds in multiple overlapping tempi, reminiscent of Ligeti’s famous ‘clock’ rhythmic effects. Before long, it opens up into a melodic passage with the gentle heroism of classic Roedelius, which proves to be only a brief interlude before the layers of rhythmically distinct synthesiser patterns begin to build and accelerate into an increasingly dense cacophony. The wildest twists and turns are saved for the epic closer ‘Nova Wind’, where the arrangement focuses on Rosenboom’s virtuoso piano playing, perfectly embodying the project’s radical disregard of stylistic orthodoxies as he moves from hyperactive pointillistic flurries to a kind of space-age gospel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt several points throughout the record, the distinctive voice of Jacqueline Humbert is heard reading passages from the text component of In the Beginning, a dialogue between The Double (an embodiment of humanity’s timeless desire to replicate itself in spiritual and technological copies) and two Spirit Characters. Fittingly, as all are conceived as embodiments of a future form of techno-human collective consciousness, distinctions between the three characters are not immediately evident in Humbert’s delivery, just as the music blurs the boundaries between intelligent computing and human spontaneity. Adorned with a striking retro-futurist cover (and here accompanied by extensive new liner notes and archival images), Future Travel is a time capsule of radical imaginings at the birth of our digital age, reminding us of utopian possibilities of which our own present seems so often to fall short.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":50455187423563,"sku":"2210515","price":44.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a0567497764_16_8853d9a6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727189014"},{"product_id":"trancedance","title":"Trancedance","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe first vinyl reissue of \u003ci\u003eTrancedance\u003c\/i\u003e, a wild slice of Swedish Afro-fusion from Christer Bothén, originally released in 1984. A major figure in Swedish jazz and improvised music since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet and tenor sax, Bothen studied doso n’koni (the large six-stringed ‘hunter’s harp’ of the Wasulu) in Mali in 1971-2 before turning to the guinbri (the three-stringed lute of the Gnawa\/Gnauoua) in Marakesh later in the decade. In between, he performed extensively with Don Cherry during his Organic Music Society period and taught Cherry the doso n’koni. In the later 70s and 80s he worked with the most important figures in the distinctive Swedish jazz-rock-world fusion scene, joining Archimedes Badkar for their African-influenced Tre and participating in Bengt Berger’s legendary Bitter Funeral Beer Band.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany of the musicians who played on the Bitter Funeral Beer Band’s ECM LP (including Berger on drums, Anita Livstrand on voice and percussion and Tord Bengstsson on piano, violin and guitar) joined Bothén for one of the sessions that produced Trancedance, the first release under his own name, dedicated to his compositions. The other session introduced his seven-piece group Bolon Bata, heard on the second track of each side. The title track opens the album with the rubbery buzzing strings of the doso n’goni playing a hypnotic ten beat pattern, soon joined by bass and piano before the entire nine-piece group kicks in with a rollicking Afro-jazz workout, Berger’s drums driving an intricate, winding melodic line played by the horns with Mattias Helden’s cello throwing in pizzicato slides and smears. Bothén then takes centre stage on tenor sax, soloing with a wide, vibrating tone and moving seamlessly from soaring melodies to guttural stutters. After a return to the composed horn lines and a solo from Elsie Petrén on alto sax, the piece builds to an ecstatic conclusion of yelping voices and handclaps, gradually simmering down to return to the solo doso n’koni where it began. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe hypnotic sounds of the hunter’s harp carries over to ‘Mimouna’, where it is joined by Bothen’s overdubbed guinbri. The piece develops into a haunting whispered and sung invocation, gradually building momentum until the organic textures of strings, voices, and hand percussion are ruptured by Lennart Söderlund’s distorted guitar, which brings an unmistakable touch of 1984 to the otherwise timeless sound. Joined by chicken scratch guitar and increasingly dominated by the insistent clang of three of Bolon Bata’s members on karqab (a kind of cast-iron castanet), the grove develops frenetically.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe B side opens with the multi-part epic ‘9+10 Moving Pictures for the Ear’, at over 16 minutes the record’s longest piece. Though Bothen is heard only on horns on this piece, the hypnotic repeating bass line carries on the first side’s link to African musical traditions. Using an expanded 16-piece ensemble, the music balances untethered improvisation with carefully arranged passages of knotty ensemble playing that at points suggest Mingus, Moacir Santos or some of the ambitious post-free work being done in the same years by figures like David Murray or Henry Threadgill. The piece ends with a triumphant passage of looping unison melody reminiscent of the Scandinavian folk explorations of Arbete och Fritid (whose Kjell Westling is heard on bass clarinet and soprano sax here). The sound of Bjorn Lundqvist’s fretless bass introduces the odd left turn made by the record’s final track, a spaced-out expedition into bluesy horn lines and distant guitar atmospherics set to a semi-reggae beat, perfumed by the core Bolon Bata group and bearing the appropriate title of ‘The Horizon Stroller’. A must for fans of the Swedish scene around groups like Arbete och Fritid and Archimedes Badkar, as well as any listener who has been seduced by Louis Moholo’s Spirits Rejoice!, The Brotherhood of Breath, or, more recently, the guinbri grooves of Natural Information Society, Trancedance is a lost classic ripe for rediscovery.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50455303782731,"sku":"2210513","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a3219065934_16_356a15d7_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727190281"},{"product_id":"resonant-trees","title":"Resonant Trees","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eResonant Trees\u003c\/i\u003e, the first vinyl release from French composer-performer Léo Dupleix. An active member of the international community of younger musicians working with just intonation, Dupleix has composed works for solo instrumentalists and ensembles in Europe and Japan, as well as performing extensively on harpsichord, piano and electronics. His music is distinguished by a formal clarity and elegance of surface, gently shaping pure intervals into delicate melodic patterns and shimmering harmonic planes. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eResonant Trees\u003c\/i\u003e presents two side-long pieces for harpsichord and ensemble, both setting slowly repeating patterns played on harpsichord and guitar within an environment of sustained tones. Dupleix performs on a French double manual harpsichord (tuned to a just intonation scheme of his own devising) and Prophet synthesizer, joined by Juliette Adam (bass clarinet), Johanna Bartz (traverso flute), Cyprien Busolini (viola), Fredrik Rasten (6- and 12-string guitars), and Mara Winter (traverso flute). The harpsichord begins Resonant Tree I alone, slowly sounding out a series of arpeggiated chords that emphasise the unique (and for unaccustomed listeners, sometimes unsettling) harmonic and timbral qualities of justly tuned intervals. Long tones from synthesiser, bass clarinet, viola and Baroque traverso flutes slowly creep into the spaces between the arpeggiated chords, joined after several minutes by delicate patterns of harmonics played by Rasten on acoustic guitars. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn \u003ci\u003eResonant Tree II\u003c\/i\u003e, a similar structure and ensemble (without the flutes) are used with quite different results. We again hear only the harpsichord at first, but this time playing a series of flowing melodic lines, each of which is repeated several times. Joined again by long tones from the ensemble, here the viola is particularly prominent and its interplay with the harpsichord creates fascinating acoustic effects. In both pieces, repetition gives the music a static, stable quality while, at the same time, the exact shape of the repeating patterns remains difficult to grasp. As Dupleix writes, these pieces dream of music as ‘space and a sound that one could grasp in one’s hand.’ As the near-static quality of the repetitions and long tones with little incident make these two stretches of musical time feel like spaces for the listener to inhabit, the small variations on a narrow range of related material act like a three-dimensional object whose each facet is examined in turn. At once austere and seductive, Resonant Trees takes its place beside the work of contemporaries like Catherine Lamb, while also calling up the languorous melodic world of Mamoru Fujieda, the dignified melancholy of Satoshi Ashikawa’s classic Still Way and the espaliered chamber atmospherics of the Obscure catalogue.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50455370891595,"sku":"2210514","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a1604855685_16_1e92014d_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727190732"},{"product_id":"duo-geloso","title":"Duo Geloso","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is thrilled to continue its program of archival releases from Arnold Dreyblatt with a recently unearthed concert recording from Dreyblatt and Paul Panhuysen’s \u003ci\u003eDuo Geloso\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile isolated examples of Dreyblatt’s collaboration with the legendary Dutch multi-media artist appeared on the CD reissue of Propellers in Love and Black Truffle’s wide-ranging archival Second Selection, this is the first release to document the variety and playfulness of the concerts that Duo Geloso performed throughout Europe in 1987-88.\u003cbr\u003ePresented in a gatefold sleeve with archival photos and illuminating liner notes from René van Peer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50457899434315,"sku":"1160918","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/8a8f5ea8-0a63-4d7c-87a2-76524b904744_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727208967"},{"product_id":"chasing-the-phantom","title":"Chasing the Phantom","description":"\u003cp\u003eDewa Alit, Bali’s master of contemporary Gamelan composition, returns to Black Truffle with \u003ci\u003eChasing the Phantom\u003c\/i\u003e, presenting two recent works played by the composer’s Gamelan Salukat, a large ensemble that performs on instruments specially built to his designs, using a unique tuning system that combines notes from two traditional Balinese Gamelan scales.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlit explains that the ensemble’s name suggests “a place to fuse creative ideas to generate new, innovative works” and both compositions demonstrate the composer’s ability to wring stunning new possibilities from variations on the traditional Gamelan ensemble. While using familiar elements of Balinese Gamelan music, such as unison scalar melodies and stop-start dynamics, Alit’s music is overflowing with harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral inventions, the latter often facilitated by unorthodox playing techniques.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Ngejuk Memedi”, an English translation of which gives the LP its title, results from Alit’s reflection on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Balinese culture, particularly in the way that belief in the phantoms or spirits known as ‘memedi’ are shared through social media using digital technologies. Embodying this uncanny co-existence, the opening passages of the piece are at once immediately recognisable in their use of the metallophones of the Gamelan ensemble and strikingly reminiscent of electronics in their timbre and movement. At points, what we hear seems to have been fragmented with digital tools, or even to originate in some incessantly glitching DX7. Short melodic figures loop irregularly, with the ensemble splintering into polyrhythmic shards before unexpectedly recombining for intricate unison passages. After several minutes of this manically tinkling metallic sound world, the metallophones are joined by drums for a meditative passage of lower dynamics, as the uniformly high pitch range explored in the opening sections gradually opens up to include resonant low gong hits. Recovering some of the manic energy of the opening, but now enhanced with the full range of percussion, the piece weaves through a series of tempo changes to a stunning passage of rapid-fire melodies and ringing chords that sweep across the metallophones, their unorthodox tuning creating complex clouds of wavering harmonies.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Likad”, written during Covid-19 lockdowns, channels anxiety and uncertainty into musical form, resulting in a piece that, even by Alit’s standards, is stunning in its complexity and the virtuosity it demands of Gamelan Salukat. Its opening section is perhaps most remarkable for its mastery of texture, with rapid transitions between dry, muted strikes and metallic shimmers calling to mind the use of filters in electronic music. At points, the complex irregular repetitions of short melodic patterns, where the music seems to get stuck or be suddenly interrupted by a skip, recall the mad sampler works of Alvin Curran or the skittering surface of prime period Oval more than anything familiar from acoustic percussion music. Moving through a dizzying series of twists and turns, the piece ends with a majestic sequence of chords possessing an almost hieratic power. A major statement from a radical contemporary composer, one cannot help but agree with Alit when he sees \u003ci\u003eChasing the Phantom\u003c\/i\u003e as an answer to the “question of the future of Gamelan music”.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50460458418507,"sku":"1157179","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/3ae83a11-5303-481a-b86c-b23ce502ad60_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727232806"},{"product_id":"mumbai-04-02-1996","title":"Mumbai 04.02.1996","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from the stunning recording of her 1992 performance at the Berlin Parampara Festival (BT079), Black Truffle is pleased to continue its documentation of the work of Berlin-based Italian singer Amelia Cuni, one of the great contemporary exponents of dhrupad, the oldest surviving style of North Indian classical vocal music.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eArriving in a gorgeous gatefold featuring stunning colour photographs of Cuni taken by legendary Australian fashion photographer Robyn Beeche (who resided in India from the early 90s), Mumbai. 04.02.1996 is a document of indescribable beauty and a moving testament to music’s ability to cross national and cultural borders.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeautifully recorded in concert at Vishweshwarayya Hall, Mumbai. 04.02.1996 presents expansive performances of three ragas stretching across four sides and almost one and a half hours of music. Beginning with the serene Raga Lalit, Cuni dwells for over twenty-five minutes on its opening alap movement, accompanied only by tanpura, her limpid yet full-bodied voice moving from graceful exposition in free tempo to increasingly rhythmically active variations, gradually spiralling upward in register.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe is then joined by master pakwahaj player Manik Munde for the raga’s dhrupad and dhamar sections, the resonant tone of the drum and his constant invention with the complex 14-beat cycle serving as the perfect accompaniment for Cuni’s ecstatic melodic developments.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the more solemn Raga Bhairav, Cuni’s alap, again stretching out over a whole side, is particularly notable for its powerful held notes and mastery of microtonal movement of pitch. After Munde returns for another rhythmically intricate dhamar movement, the record ends with the buoyancy of the Raga Alhaiya Bilaval, whose mode has, for the Western listener, an unmistakably ‘major’ quality. The rapturous applause that greets the performance is reflected in a remarkable selection of press clippings contemporary with the recording, which demonstrate Cuni’s success with Indian critics.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50465858519371,"sku":"1159250","price":39.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/be4056fa-44dd-4b57-be64-6ab4c20264b9_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727297599"},{"product_id":"live-82","title":"Live 82","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to announce a major archival discovery from the wildest outer fringes of the FMP universe, the Bergisch-Brandenburgisches Quartett’s Live ’82\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Bergisch-Brandenburgisches Quartett (BBQ) was formed in 1980 in Rostock, East Germany, when three of the most radical and riotous members of the West German free music scene—reedist \/ accordionist Rüdiger Carl, percussionist Sven-Åke Johansson and Hans Reichel on violin and his modified ‘strange guitars’ — first played as a quartet with East German saxophonist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky. A rare example of a working band with members from both sides of the wall, during its lifetime the BBQ left only one recorded document, a studio LP on Amiga, the pop and jazz sublabel of the GDR state-run Deutsche Schallplatten Berlin. Neither pure fire music nor orthodox free improvisation, the four members of the BBQ shared an all-embracing aesthetic where quotes and jokes sat comfortably alongside radical extended techniques and sonic experiments.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeautifully recorded at the 1982 Moers festival, the music presented here is a kaleidoscopic demonstration of what Johansson has called the BBQ’s ‘free postmodernism’. Beginning with a fractured landscape of clarinet flourishes from Petrowsky, Johansson’s spacious drums accents, banjo-esque plucks from Reichel’s handmade guitar and the groans and squawks of Carl on cuica, the music lurches between flowing melodicism and stunted locked grooves, settling after a few minutes into a lyrical clarinet and bass clarinet duet accompanied by shimmering guitar chords and some inexplicable percussive rotations. When Petrowksy starts to unfurl long, flowing flute lines accompanied by hand percussion, the music suddenly recalls Don Cherry’s global fusions, but this turn to the folkish quickly takes on a more European character when Carl and Johansson pick up accordions for the first of several comical but oddly moving duets. The more frantic second half of the set takes in a raucous digression into honking R\u0026amp;B, an Ayler-meets-Schlager romp with almost rockish chordal accompaniment from Reichel and an outrageous free jazz blowout with Carl on accordion, not to mention episodes of Johansson’s signature improvised Sprechgesang and antics with his expanded percussion set up, including items such as shoe stretchers and the Berlin yellow pages, which more than once cause the audience to burst into laughter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eArriving in a beautifully designed sleeve with copious archival photographs and flyers from Johansson’s collection and extensive new liner notes from Francis Plagne, Live ’82 is a major historical document that remains both musically challenging and immensely entertaining forty years on.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50465979171147,"sku":"1161988","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/756774c8-80be-4df6-aee9-5d1bb0003ba6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727299882"},{"product_id":"drumming-up-trouble","title":"Drumming Up Trouble","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is thrilled to announce \u003ci\u003eDrumming Up Trouble,\u003c\/i\u003e the first release of previously unissued music by Alvin Curran on the label.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCollecting works recorded between 2018-2021 and a side-long epic dating back to the early 80s, as the title suggests, \u003ci\u003eDrumming Up Trouble\u003c\/i\u003e focuses on a hitherto almost unknown aspect of Curran’s encyclopaedic and omnivorous musical world: his experiments with sampled and synthesised percussion. As Curran’s wonderful, wildly sweeping liner notes make clear, his fascination with drumming belongs to the radical investigation of music’s fundamental elements that has marked his output since the beginnings of MEV, who aimed (as he says in a recent interview) to return ‘in some collective way to a non-existent start time in the history of human music’. Whatever kind of music our proto-human ancestors played, he writes, ‘drums were front and centre in the mix. Drums rule!’\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a paradox typical of Curran’s approach, \u003ci\u003eDrumming Up Trouble\u003c\/i\u003e interrogates this most ancient dimension of music with contemporary technology. On the first side, we hear recent pieces performed using the sampling software and full-size MIDI keyboard setup Curran has refined since the 1980s. Two of them are wild real- time improvisations, primarily utilising an enormous bank of hip-hop samples. Building from polyrhythmic layers of drum machine fragments to wild cacophonies of clashing vocal samples, scratching, and frantic pitch shifting, these energetic and at times hilarious pieces occupy a space somewhere between John Oswald’s Plunderphonics, Pat Thomas and Matt Wand in the Tony Oxley Quartet, and the propulsive Kudoro\/Grime fusion of Lisbon’s Príncipe label. They are improvisations are accompanied by two austere, minimal compositions realised in collaboration with Angelo Maria Farro: ‘End Zone’ for orchestral bass drum and high oscillator, and ‘Rollings’, where a snare roll is gradually stretched and filtered by digital means into ‘floating electronic gossamer’.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe incredible breadth of Curran’s output makes it pretty unlikely that a listener familiar with his work would be surprised to find it branching out in a new direction. But no degree of familiarity with his work can really prepare for side B’s epic and bizarre ‘Field it More’. It’s perhaps best to let the maestro describe this unhinged and infectious offering in his own words: ‘It features an 8 bar funky minimal riff à la James Brown, played on synth and an-out-of-tune piano, synced to a pre-paid patch on the Roland drum machine. Over this is laid a heavily processed track of the voices of dancer Yoshiko Chuma and movie-maker Jacob Burckhardt discussing an upcoming performance of theirs at the Venice film festival, capped by a track of my playing an increasingly out of control blues over the top of all of the above’. Only Pekka Airaksinen’s Buddhas of the Golden Light comes to mind as a reference point that might even vaguely compare to this wild home-brew of drum-machine funk, mad improvisation and squelching electronics, which eventually dissolved into a massive, layered cluster. Ancient and modern, synthetic and human, hysterical and rigorous, Drumming up Trouble is 100% Curran.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50466083832139,"sku":"1161990","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ca5917c6-1ef1-469c-a8d0-f1d45d3ff475_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727304470"},{"product_id":"tonic-19-01-2001","title":"Tonic 19-01-2001","description":"\u003cp\u003eCelebrating its one hundredth release, Black Truffle is honoured to present a major archival discovery: a stunning document of the only performance by the trio of Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Jim O’Rourke. Across a two-night programme organised by David Weinstein at legendary New York experimental venue Tonic in January 2001, Conrad, Dreyblatt and O’Rourke presented individual projects before performing a collaborative set each night, the first with members of Dreyblatt’s ensemble and the second the trio heard here.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50469114216779,"sku":"2006414","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE100_77f1424a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727356510"},{"product_id":"caught-in-the-dilemma-of-being-made-to-choose-this-makes-the-modesty-which-should-never-been-closed-off-itself-continue-to-ask-itself-ready-or-not","title":"Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: Ready or not?","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe renowned trio of Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke and Oren Ambarchi return to Black Truffle with their 11th release, \u003ci\u003e“Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: “Ready or not?”\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2LP set presented in a lavish gatefold sleeve on heavy stock along with inner sleeves containing live pics by Tsuyoshi Kamaike. Photography by Jim O’Rourke, design by Lasse Marhaug and translation by Alan Cummings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDemonstrating once again their commitment to continual experimentation in instrumentation and approach, the record begins with a long-distance collaboration made in response to a commission from New York’s Issue Project Room in 2021 during widespread lockdowns and travel limitations. A unique piece in the trio’s extensive body of work, this side-long epic finds Haino performing on metal percussion, O’Rourke on electronics and Ambarchi on gongs and bells. Initially dominated by rapid patterns on resonant, high-pitched tuned percussion, the piece sets Haino’s dynamic and dramatic performance against a calm backdrop of cycling electronics, thrumming gong strikes and hanging bell tones. The performance develops a heightened, intensely concentrated atmosphere reminiscent of Haino’s classic Tenshi No Ginjinka or his Nijiumu project; when Haino moves to clashing hand cymbals in its second half, the piece’s ritualistic energy suggests aspects of the music of Tibetan Buddhism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe remainder of the double LP documents the trio live at Tokyo’s SuperDeluxe (the location of all but their very first recording) in a wide-ranging set recorded in December 2017. The concert opens, in another first for the trio, with Haino on drums, O’Rourke on Hammond organ and Ambarchi on his signature Leslie cabinet guitar tones. Haino’s explosively untutored approach to the drumkit will be familiar to some listeners from the radical duo iteration of Fushitsusha heard on Origin’s Hesitation. Setting flurries of rapid activity against moments of silence, his drumming here at times suggests Milford Graves in its tumbling toms and thudding kick-drum propulsion. Accompanied by O’Rourke’s organ and Ambarchi’s guitar, which in their shared use of long tones and shifting modulation speeds almost blend into a single voice, the opening sections of this performance are some of the most magical music the trio has committed to tape thus far.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter an interlude of spoken vocals in both Japanese and English, Haino makes a dramatic entrance on guitar. Against O’Rourke and Ambarchi’s increasingly intense electronic backdrop, Haino unleashes a stunning passage of slowly moving chromatic melodies and sudden shrieking explosions bathed in distortion and reverb. By the time we reach the third side, the guitar\/bass\/drums power trio is established and lurches into a passage of massive, lumbering rock that threatens to fall apart at every beat, O’Rourke’s strummed chordal work on six string bass creating a harmonic density equivalent to a second guitar. An abrupt edit throws the listener in media res into a frantic locked groove grounded by fuzzed out bass patterns and caveman drums. As Haino moves through a variety of approaches, from massive edifices of stuttering fuzz to ominous swarms of feedback, the trio eventually stumble into a kind of Harmolodic military tattoo, Haino’s guitar weaving and slashing across the rhythm section’s irregular accents. Moving through an epic opening duet for O’Rourke on Hammond and Haino’s wailing guitar, the fourth side eventually ramps up into a frenetic finale of mad bass riffing, crackling snare hits and guitar squall.“Caught in the dilemma of being made to choose” This makes the modesty which should never been closed off itself Continue to ask itself: “Ready or not?” is a testament to the continuing power and invention of this trio, who continue to seek out new terrain after over a decade working together.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50469771215179,"sku":"1166499","price":39.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/99be351f-83b4-4b50-8294-d011588c0155_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727367198"},{"product_id":"ammmusic","title":"Ammmusic.","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe first vinyl reissue of the classic debut album from Amm, \u003ci\u003eAmmmusic.\u003c\/i\u003e Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form, replete with Keith Rowe’s beautiful pop art cover and the terse aphorisms by the group that served as its original liner notes. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D\u0026amp;M Berlin and presented in an exact replica sleeve of the original 1966 release by Stephen O'Malley.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label’s founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager Peter Jenner. (Pink Floyd paid tribute to AMM’s influence on their improvisational sensibility with the track \u003ci\u003eFlaming\u003c\/i\u003e on their debut album, named after the piece that occupies \u003ci\u003eAmmmusic’s \u003c\/i\u003efirst side, \u003ci\u003eLater During a Flaming Riviera Sunset)\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFormed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British jazz avant-garde – Keith Rowe and Lou Gare had played with the great progressive big band leader Mike Westbrook and Eddie Prévost played in a post-bop group with Gare – Amm quickly evolved from a free jazz group into something decidedly more difficult to categorise. By the time these recordings were made, two more members had joined the group: another Westbrook associate, Lawrence Sheaf, and the radical composer Cornelius Cardew. Then at work on his masterpiece of graphic notation Treatise, Cardew brought with him extensive experience of the post-serialist and Cageian currents in contemporary composition. Using a combination of conventional instruments and unconventional methods of sound production (most famously Keith Rowe’s prepared tabletop guitar, but also prepared piano and transistor radio), the group performed improvised pieces often running for over two hours and ranging from extended periods of silence to terrifying cacophonies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50471149404491,"sku":"1094741","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ddbee423-e589-46ee-a4bb-2e652dcad461_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727393146"},{"product_id":"grapes-from-the-estate","title":"Grapes From The Estate","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to make Oren Ambarchi’s \u003ci\u003eGrapes from The Estate\u003c\/i\u003e available once more on vinyl. Originally released on CD on Touch in 2004 and reissued on Southern Lord as a limited double LP in 2006 during Ambarchi’s tenure as a member of Sunn O))), \u003ci\u003eGrapes from the Estate\u003c\/i\u003e was a landmark release for Ambarchi, seeing him expand his sonic palette beyond the clipped, bass-heavy electric guitar tones he was known for at that point. Incorporating subtle layers of strings, keyboards, percussion over a bedrock of his signature guitar tones, in retrospect this album can be seen as the beginning of a broadening and evolution in Ambarchi’s work that would lead to his acclaimed, densely layered epics for Editions Mego, \u003ci\u003eQuixotism\u003c\/i\u003e (2014) and \u003ci\u003eHubris\u003c\/i\u003e (2016). \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":50471544357195,"sku":"1030293","price":42.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE036_84cfcde6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727406892"},{"product_id":"berlin-1964-live","title":"Berlin 1964 - Live","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from last year’s acclaimed Vrindavan 1982 by rudra veena master Z.M. Dagar, Black Truffle is thrilled to present a pair of archival releases from the Dagar Brothers, among the most revered 20th century exponents of the ancient North Indian dhrupad tradition. The vocal duo of Moinuddin and Aminuddin Dagar (sometimes referred to as the ‘senior’ Dagar Brothers to distinguish them from their younger siblings, Zahiruddin and Faiyazuddin Dagar), belonged to the nineteenth generation of a family of musicians in which dhrupad tradition has been kept alive through patrilinear transmission, each generation undergoing a rigorous education of many years’ duration that can include singing up to twelve hours each day. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFamed for the meditative purity of their approach to dhrupad, the Dagar Brothers helped to keep the tradition alive in the years after Indian independence in 1947, when the royal courts that had traditionally patronised dhrupad musicians were abolished. Many Western listeners were first introduced to dhrupad by the Dagar Brothers’ tour of Europe in 1964-65 and their LP in UNESCO’s ‘Musical Anthology of the Orient’ collection, both organised by pioneering musicologist and scholar of Indian culture Alain Daniélou. Documents from this tour are especially precious, as Moinuddin Dagar passed away in 1966. Unheard until now, \u003ci\u003eBerlin 1964 – Live\u003c\/i\u003e (released alongside, a newly discovered studio session from the same trip) documents a concert held at the Charlottenburg Palace in September 1964.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAccompanied only by Moinuddin’s wife Saiyur on tanpura and Raja Chatrapati Singh on pakhawaj (a large double-headed drum), the brothers present stunning performances of two ragas stretching out over 65 minutes, exemplifying what a journalist at the time called the ‘pristine severity’ of their style. Much of each piece is taken up by the alap, the highly improvised exposition section where the notes of the raga are gradually introduced as the singing builds in intensity. As Francesca Cassio points out in her extensive liner notes, both performances are somewhat unorthodox in beginning with the raga scale being sung in its entirety, ascending and descending; this is probably, as she suggests, a strategy to introduce the European audience to the language of the music they are about to hear. From there, both ragas settle into alaps of breathtaking beauty, with the two brothers trading long solo passages that move gradually from extended held notes at the bottom of the scale to animated melodic variations as it ascends in pitch. Within the atmosphere of meditative attention, the range of melodic, rhythmic, and timbral invention is remarkable. Especially on the opening ‘Rāga Miyān kī Todī’, the final moments of the alap find the voices at a peak of intensity, their microtonal ornamentation taking on an ecstatic, warbling quality. Only once the wordless, free-floating alap is over and the composition proper begins to the brothers sing in unison, joined by the pakhawaj for a rhythmic section that in both ragas develops gradually into a propulsive display of melodic invention and metrical nuance. Accompanied by detailed liner notes and striking archival images, \u003ci\u003eBerlin 1964\u003c\/i\u003e – Live is a rare document of these masterful exponents of one of the world’s most profound musical traditions. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50474980966731,"sku":"2210512","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a3191326174_16_3ce91ee6_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727440822"},{"product_id":"other-meetings","title":"Other Meetings","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from last year’s acclaimed Sylva Sylvarum, the epic double LP from Ora Clementi (her collaborative project with James Rushford), crys cole returns to Black Truffle with \u003ci\u003eOther Meetings\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003eOriginally commissioned and released on cassette by Boomkat Editions in 2021, \u003ci\u003eOther Meetings\u003c\/i\u003e is a major addition to the body of carefully hewn solo work cole has released over the last decade, offering up two side- long suites of her radically intimate approach to sound.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50476704465227,"sku":"1163909","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a2c3ccf9-adbc-4c13-a365-d5510efd2cdd_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727462733"},{"product_id":"viewfinder-hide-and-seek","title":"ViewFinder \/ Hide and Seek","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eViewFinder \/ Hide and Seek\u003c\/i\u003e, a new release from acclaimed American experimental composer David Behrman, presenting recordings made in collaboration with Jon Gibson and Werner Durand between 1989 and 2020. Last heard from on Black Truffle as part of the collaborative art song\/live electronics madness of She’s More Wild, these recordings find Behrman continuing the pioneering work in interactive electronics that have established him as one of the major living experimental composers\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50479001829707,"sku":"1131716","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/c17211ba-c028-4f13-a3db-f883523e1a5e_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727497512"},{"product_id":"scheisse-71","title":"Scheisse 71","description":"\u003cp\u003eFollowing on from the Bergisch-Brandenburgisches Quartett’s anarchic Live ’82, Black Truffle continues its deep dive into the archives of legendary\ndrummer\/accordionist\/photographer\/composer\/conceptual prankster Sven-Åke\nJohansson with \u003ci\u003eScheisse ’71\u003c\/i\u003e. Recorded in November 1971 during the Berliner\nJazztage at a heavy-hitting concert that also included the Spontaneous Music\nEnsemble and groups led by Peter Brötzmann, Manfred Schoof, and Masahiko Sato,\nScheisse ’71 is the only document of a wild, otherwise unrecorded quintet featuring\nJohansson on drums, accordion and oboe d’amore, legendary free jazz vocalist\nJeanne Lee, her husband Gunter Hampel on vibes, flute and bass clarinet, live\nelectronics pioneer Michael Waisvisz on modified Putney (VCS 3) synthesizer, and\nthe unknown Freddy Gosseye on electric bass. Part of a festival centred on giants of\njazz like Duke Ellignton and Dizzy Gillespie, the radical performance shocked its\naudience, who can be heard heckling and yelling abuse at points, including the titular\nexclamation of ‘Scheiße!’\n\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50485914599755,"sku":"2022747","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE103_82f814d0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727604753"},{"product_id":"hubris-variation","title":"Hubris Variation","description":"\u003cp\u003e2023 repress. Oren Ambarchi’s recent Editions Mego release \u003ci\u003eHubris\u003c\/i\u003e gets the remix treatment courtesy of electronic music legend Ricardo Villalobos. Villalobos expertly tranforms Ambarchi’s layered web of countless sustained and pulsating palm-muted guitars into a funky, mesmerising and propulsive long-form piece. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black 12\"","offer_id":50490287653195,"sku":"1002256","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/62772c86-5131-43de-a696-bf8a8cb7b545_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727657265"},{"product_id":"down-on-darkened-meetings","title":"Down on Darkened Meetings","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to announce \u003ci\u003eDown On Darkened Meetings\u003c\/i\u003e, the first solo release on the label from the quietly prolific Giuseppe Lelasi.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded at Ielasi’s studio in Monza outside of Milan over two days in February 2022, the seven pieces presented here continue the renewed exploration of the guitar that marks much of his solo work over the last few years. Emerging in the late 1990s as an improviser working primarily with prepared acoustic and electric guitars, the instrument became less prominent in his work over the next decade, ceding to loop-based constructs that would eventually split into abstracted takes on club music and hip-hop (including his work as Inventing Masks), on the one hand, and spectral electroacoustic explorations (such as the stunning triple disc 3 pauses), on the other. Returning to the guitar in recent years, he has approached the instrument as a source of shimmering metallic glissandi (Five Wooden Frames) or as the vehicle of elegiac double-tracked lines that feel almost like Frisell playing Feldman (The Return). Here the focus is on electric guitar filtered, looped, and splayed out into fields of irregular echoes through a bank of pedals.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike many of Lelasi’s releases, \u003ci\u003eDown On Darkened Meetings\u003c\/i\u003e is structured as a set of short untitled pieces (here ranging between two and six minutes in length) that single-mindedly explore a single instrument or source throughout. The opening track immediately introduced the distinctive timbral world of fizzing, heavily filtered tones, chiming harmonics, and woozy looping bass figures inhabited throughout. At points it becomes near impossible to trace these sounds to the strings of an electric guitar; at others, as on the final two pieces, the instrument is unmistakable, as Ielasi builds up his shifting loops from snatches of almost unintentional sounding half-playing that give these closing tracks a hushed, private atmosphere reminiscent of Tolerance’s Anonym. While the repeating chords and hanging melodic figures present on many tracks call to mind earlier Ielasi classics like Gesine and Untitled, here the music feels less meticulously constructed than played: Ielasi’s lyrical guitar lines obscured by a battery of effects at times come across like a dilated take on the outer-fringe fretwork of improvisers like Henry Kaiser and Raymond Boni, and the muddy, asynchronous fields of pops and hiss at times wander into areas reminiscent of the hand-played dub techno of Vladislav Delay’s Multila.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike much of Ielasi’s work in recent years, these seven pieces perform a delicate balancing act: between abstraction and immediacy, austerity and abundance. Imbued with Ielasi’s distinctive lightness of touch, considered approach to pacing, and subtly psychedelic approach to the stereo field, \u003ci\u003eDown on Darkened Meetings\u003c\/i\u003e is a major new work from a quiet master of contemporary experimental music.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50490372555083,"sku":"2018616","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE102_49b33df7_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727660165"},{"product_id":"oblique-strategies","title":"Oblique Strategies","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to welcome free jazz legend Joe McPhee back to the fold with \u003ci\u003eOblique Strategie\u003c\/i\u003es, a wild trio recorded in Antwerp in 2018 in the company of Mette Rasmussen’s fire-breathing alto saxophone and Dennis Tyfus’s post-Fluxus antics on tape, voice, and percussion. Rasmussen and Tyfus have previously recorded together as Bazuinschal, and some similar strategies are on display here: mysterious metallic scrapes, extended tones in which voice and sax become indistinguishable, comic explosions of varispeed tape. With McPhee on board, however, proceedings are more sumptuous, with the two horns moving fluidly from expeditions into the extremes of their instruments’ registers to pointillistic note-splatter and Ayler-esque folk melodies; we even get to bask in some of the slow-motion free blues that McPhee has now been playing for half a century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50490633486667,"sku":"2028895","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE105_6647eb18_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727668827"},{"product_id":"the-leisure-principle","title":"The Leisure Principle","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle release \u003ci\u003eThe Leisure Principle\u003c\/i\u003e, a new solo LP from London-based bassist and sound artist Otto Willberg. A key player in the London underground, Willberg is often heard on acoustic and electric bass in free improv settings and bands with Laurie Tompkins (Yes Indeed) and Charles Hayward (Abstract Concrete), as well as the fractured No Wave unit Historically Fucked. His previous solo releases have ranged from extended technique double bass to explorations of the acoustics of a 19th century artillery fort. But nothing Willberg has committed to wax so far prepares a listener for The Leisure Principle, six unashamedly melodic improvisational workouts created almost entirely with heavily filtered bass harmonica and electric bass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the opening ‘Reap What Thou Sow’, a single-note bass harmonica loop pulses along underneath a roaming bass solo, the side-chained envelope filtering (where the dynamic behaviour of the bass determines the filter for both bass and harmonica) fusing the two instruments into a single stream of burbling shifts in resonance. After several minutes of patient exploration of this low-end landscape, the music suddenly opens up in widescreen with the entrance of Sam Andreae’s graceful melodica chords, spreading out across the stereo field. From this epic opener, each of the remaining pieces goes on to explore a slightly different aspect of the terrain. On ‘Shadow Came into the Eyes as Earth Turned on its Axis’, a similarly buoyant harmonica bass line provides the foundation, but this time playing a soulful descending riff, its almost R\u0026amp;B feel abstracted and half-obscured by the filtering. On ‘Mollusk’,\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eechoed bass arpeggios skitter between elegiac chords somewhat reminiscent of the opening of John Abercrombie’s ‘Timeless’, before settling into a hypnotic groove.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the record’s second half, Willberg pushes further into the possibilities of his idiosyncratic instrumentation. On ‘Wetter’, bass and harmonica come together into a monstrous, growling jaw harp; on ‘Had we but world enough and more time’, the subtly shifting pulsating patterns start to feel almost like a kind of evaporated, drum-less dub techno until an eruption of wheezing bass harmonica gives the piece a comically folkish turn. Willberg’s melodically inventive and virtuosic bass performance calls to mind any number of fusion touchstones, from Jaco Pastorius to Mark Egan’s singing tone in the early Pat Metheny Group—even Anthony Jackson’s work with Steve Kahn. But with its radically reduced instrumentation, The Leisure Principle is also an exercise in minimalism, and the absence of percussion gives even its funkiest moments a strangely abstracted quality. At times, its uncanny blend of the abstruse and the immediate suggests the fried pop experiments of David Rosenboom or the skewed but deeply musical DIY of 80s underground groups like De Fabriek. Both easy on the ear and profoundly strange, The Leisure Principle proudly takes its place among the most eccentric offerings on the Black Truffle menu.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50490799685963,"sku":"2028894","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE106_3558ce18_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727674782"},{"product_id":"ashioto","title":"Ashioto","description":"\u003cp\u003e Black Truffle is pleased to announce Ashioto, the first international solo release from Japanese drummer-percussionist-composer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. Active for over a decade, Yamamoto has performed and recorded extensively with artists such as Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, as well as participating in innumerable improvised and ad hoc groups.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAshioto\u003c\/i\u003e presents two wide-ranging pieces that combine Yamamoto’s percussion work with piano, field recordings, electronics, and contributions from guest musicians Daisuke Fujiwara and Eiko Ishibashi. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Beginning with a passage of chiming metal percussion, the first side slowly builds into a rolling, open groove reminiscent of Yamamoto’s work on Eiko Ishibashi’s acclaimed Drag City LP \u003ci\u003eThe Dreams My Bones Dream\u003c\/i\u003e. Spacious piano and synth notes, along with Ishibashi’s spare melodic figures on processed flute, hover above this propulsive rhythmic foundation, the whole effect adding up to a more abstract take on the area explored on Rainer Brüninghaus’s ECM classic \u003ci\u003eFreigeweht.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The LP’s second side opens up a cavernous space filled with ominous electronics and shimmering metallic percussion, which organically transitions into a passage of rumbling piano chords and mysterious concrète sound. Later in the piece, Daisuke Fujiawara’s saxophone enters, playing melancholic melodic fragments that are looped and layered, creating a seasick swaying effect familiar to listeners of James Tenney’s works with tape delay systems. Beginning as delicate bass drum pulses, Yamamoto’s accompanying percussion eventually builds the piece into a raging torrent of free-improv splatter, processed sax and fizzing electronics. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Though grounded in instrumental performance, Ashioto is very much a studio construction, making inventive use of electro-acoustic principles in its editing and mixing. Together with its sister Ashiato – a different take on the same ‘script’ released simultaneously on Japanese label Newhere – Ashioto demonstrates to an international audience for the first time the true breadth and ambition of Yamamoto’s work.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Blue | LP","offer_id":50490885865803,"sku":"1109322","price":34.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/46768d9c-8e6c-4bc3-8d1a-66eaea6b91a3_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1734642785"},{"product_id":"dessogia-queetch-fauch-2","title":"Dessogia \/ Queetch \/ Fauch","description":"\u003cp\u003eEpic in scope, immersing the listener in an entirely distinctive world of sounds, and thrillingly bold in its melding of the most ancient musical procedures with cutting edge technologies, \u003ci\u003eDessogia\/Queetch\/Fauch\u003c\/i\u003e is an unexpected major statement from two of the great mavericks of contemporary music.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx3","offer_id":50504380088651,"sku":"2225632","price":49.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE125_6cab36d9_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727804654"},{"product_id":"moon-original-score-white-vinyl","title":"Moon - Original Score White Vinyl","description":"\u003cp\u003e“One of Hollywood’s most exciting film composers” – DAZED \u0026amp; CONFUSED Clint Mansell’s emotionally gripping and melodically thrilling score for psychological cult classic luna-drama Moon is now again available on Black Records on White Vinyl Directed by Duncan Jones, starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey, Moon is a science fiction thriller about a solitary lunar employee who finds that he may not be able to go home to Earth so easily. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is an employee contracted by the company Lunar to mine on the Moon the natural gas Helium 3, which could reverse Earth's energy crisis. Stationed alone on the lunar base Sarang with only a robot named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), Sam is two weeks away from completing his three-year assignment, when he begins feeling out of place… Former ‘Pop Will Eat Itself’ frontman Clint Mansell - now based in Los Angeles - has become the go-to composer for independent Hollywood cinema. Producing peerless soundtracks to award winning Darren Arronofsky films Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Records","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50527523733835,"sku":"2056378","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Moon_Original_Score_aad6984f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728054619"},{"product_id":"tender-membrane","title":"Tender Membrane","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to announce \u003ci\u003eTender Membranes\u003c\/i\u003e, the label’s first release from Swedish-Finnish sound artist and electro-acoustic composer Marja Ahti. Active for a decade in the Finnish underground music scene, in recent years Ahti has developed a distinctive approach to patiently unfolding electro-acoustic constructions, documented on a string of solo releases and collaborative projects with Judith Hamann and her husband Niko-Matti Ahti. Working with concrete and instrumental sounds, field recordings, and electronics, Ahti favours neither disjunctive collage nor monolithic consistency; rather, her work is composed of organically unfolding sequences of details and textures, which, as she says, ‘can stretch out or cut fast as long as they have a sense of inner stillness’, a sense that she connects to moments of heightened attention in everyday life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTender Membranes\u003c\/i\u003e consists of four lengthy pieces, partly inspired by the image of the senses and mind as membranes allowing for the passage between inner and outer spaces, sensation and its causes, creating a world. Ahti’s unhurried pacing encourages this sense of listening as an opening or surrender to sound, which can often create the impression that the listener is moving through a space zooming in on details. The opening Shrine (Aether) exemplifies this aspect of Ahti’s approach: a bell clears the air with a single long tone, followed by the ambience of outdoor spaces, crackling electronics, an archival recording of a horsefly on a windowpane. Dozens of these moments, varying in length, density, and intensity, move past the listener’s attention, momentarily brought into focus then slipping away. Like those of the masters of the French musique concrète tradition, Ahti’s sounds are not often recognisable, though they might suggest proximity or distance, open environments or closed spaces, the urban or rural, day or night. In Ahti’s work, we do not encounter spectacular metamorphoses à la Parmegiani but rather a state of ambiguity where the listener is often unsure what is organic and what is inorganic, where the careful productions of the synthesizer might end and sounds discovered in the environment begin.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat Ahti calls her ‘poetic way of experiencing and organising the familiar and the unfamiliar’ is sustained throughout Tender Membranes, but each piece has its own character. On Dust \/ Light, human presence is more overt, as what appear to be whispers, singing, and distant speech thread between high frequencies, untraceable drips and pops, and metallic shimmers. In all this there is a melody that you can sing and to which you may dance makes more prominent use of musical instruments, gaining a sombre beauty from half-buried piano chords and organ tones. On the closing Oh Fragrant Witness, a delicate cloud of subtly bending pitches is repeatedly disrupted by a resounding, almost ominous mass of low tones, at once a strange detour from much of what has gone before and an almost classical finale. Arriving in a sleeve reproducing contemporary Finnish photographer Sini Pelkki’s fragmented visions of the everyday, Tender Membranes is a balm to reawaken tired ears.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50530436120907,"sku":"2051284","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Unknown_892f8e2d_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728079019"},{"product_id":"a-song-for-two-mothers-occam-ix","title":"A Song For Two Mothers \/ Occam IX","description":"\u003cp\u003e Accompanied by notes from Sonami, her longtime collaborator Paul DeMarinis, and Radigue, and illustrated with scores, photographs and images of the Spring Spyre, \u003ci\u003ea Song for two Mothers \/ Occam IX\u003c\/i\u003e is an essential document celebrating an under-recognised pioneer of electronic music and performance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is thrilled to present \u003ci\u003ea Song for two Mothers \/ Occam IX\u003c\/i\u003e the first ever solo release from Laetitia Sonami. Born in France in 1957, Sonami studied with Éliane Radigue in Paris before moving to California in 1978 to study electronic music at Mills College, going on to make important innovations in the field of live electronics interfaces and multi-media performance. Sonami is perhaps most closely associated with one of her inventions, the Lady’s Glove, an arm-length tailored glove fitted with movement sensors allowing the performer fluidly to control digital sound parameters and processing, as well as motors, lights and video playback. Having performed with the Lady’s Glove for 25 years, Sonami retired it in 2016, turning her attention to the interface\/instrument heard and pictured here, the Spring Sprye.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Sonami’s own description, “The Spring Spyre is composed of three thin springs that are attached to reverb tank pickups, mounted on a metal ring. The audio generated when the springs are touched, rubbed or struck is analyzed in Max\/MSP. The extracted features are then used to train machine learning models in Wekinator and Rapidmax and control the audio synthesis in real time. We never actually hear the springs.” After decades of aversion to documenting her work on recordings, a Song for two Mothers \/ Occam IX treats listeners to two side-long performances with the Spring Spyre: the very first piece developed for the instrument and the most recent, the two contrasting remarkably in sound palette, energy and form. \u003ci\u003eA Song for two Mothers\u003c\/i\u003e (2023) spins an intricate web of rippling synthetic burbles, rapid sweeps and fizzing textures. Performed in real time with the sensitive and partly uncontrollable Spring Sprye (\"a bit tyrannical,\" Sonami calls it), the music is delicate yet chaotic. Abrupt gestures hover against a backdrop of silence, \"devoid of spatial or temporal direction\". After several minutes, the sound-world becomes metallic and percussive, tapping and ticking in pointillistic flurries before a wavering harmonic cloud emerges, sprinkled with resonant drips and pops.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOccam IX\u003c\/i\u003e is a radically different proposition. At the outset of Sonami’s exploration of the Spring Sprye, she asked her former teacher Éliane Radigue to compose a piece for it—and her: like all of Radigue’s work since she ceased working with analogue electronics at the beginning of the 21st century, \u003ci\u003eOccam IX\u003c\/i\u003e is written not only for an instrument but also for a particular performer. These scores are developed verbally, through meetings and conversations between performer and composer; each is grounded in an image (usually kept from listeners, to avoid influencing their experience); all magnify the subtlest acoustic phenomena and require great commitment and patience from the performer. Sonami’s is one of the few Occam pieces to make use of electronics, bringing it closer to Radigue’s famous longform pieces for ARP 2500. Beginning from a rumbling low tone, the listener is gradually immersed in slowly lapping waves of synthetic tones, eventually thinning out into delicate bell-like pings against a background of white noise, reminiscent of one of the most beautiful sections of Kyema from the Trilogie de la Morte.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50531720036683,"sku":"2215360","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE122_9c69ae63_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728111602"},{"product_id":"quixotism-10th-anniversary-remaster","title":"Quixotism (10th Anniversary Remaster)","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s \u003ci\u003eQuixotism\u003c\/i\u003e, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the time of its first release, \u003ci\u003eQuixotism\u003c\/i\u003e was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, \u003ci\u003eQuixotism\u003c\/i\u003e presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFormally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50531878699339,"sku":"2220876","price":33.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50531878043979,"sku":"2220875","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE124CD_49a880da_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728112838"},{"product_id":"raag-kirwani-on-tabla-tarang-2","title":"Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang","description":"\u003cp\u003eCarrying on a string of stunning archival releases from major figures of Indian classical tradition (including releases from members of the Dagar family and Amelia Cuni), Black Truffle is pleased to announce an unheard recording from tabla master Kamalesh Maitra (1924-2005).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAccompanied by beautiful archival images and extensive liner notes from Laura Patchen, for many listeners Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang will be the perfect introduction to the magical world of Kamalesh Maitra, released to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the master musician’s birth. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor over fifty years, Maitra devoted himself to the rare tabla tarang, a set of between ten and sixteen hand drums tuned to the notes of the raga to be performed. While the tabla tarang has its origins in the late 19th century, Maitra was the first to recognise its potential as a solo concert instrument, using the set of tuned drums to perform full-length raags. Seated behind a semi-circular array of drums, Maitra produced stunning waves of melodic improvisation enlivened with the rhythmic invention of a master percussionist.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAcross his career, Maitra performed in ensembles led by Ravi Shankar, collaborated with George Harrison, and led his own East-West fusion group, the Ragatala Ensemble. However, it is in the solo setting that his remarkable artistry and the otherworldly timbral qualities of the tabla tarang are most strikingly on display. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded during the same 1985 Berlin sessions that produced Maitra’s self-released solo LP \u003ci\u003eTabla Tarang\u003c\/i\u003e: Ragas on Drums, on Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang we are treated to Maitra stretching out for over forty minutes on the late night Raag Kirwani, accompanied by Laura Patchen on tabla and Mila Morgenstern and Marina Kitsos on tanpura. The performance begins with the traditional free-floating exposition section, where Maitra’s spacious melodic improvisation at times almost resembles a plucked string instrument (like the sarod, which Maitra also played). For the listener unaccustomed to the tabla tarang, the sound of these microtonally inflected melodic patterns played on drums has a magic quality. As Maitra begins to imply the rhythmic cycles more strongly, Patchen joins on tabla, beginning half an hour of rhythmic-melodic exploration, where virtuosity sits side by side with delicacy and meditative attention. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50894580121931,"sku":"2231209","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE126_b1c1050a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1732641790"},{"product_id":"set","title":"Set","description":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Truffle is thrilled to begin 2025 with a rare solo release from Konrad Sprenger, alias of elusive Berlin composer-producer-instrument builder Jörg Hiller. A prolific collaborator, Sprenger has worked extensively with icons of American minimalism such as Ellen Fullman (with whom her recorded the gloriously eccentric song album Ort) and Arnold Dreyblatt (as a core member of the Orchestra of Excited Strings since 2009), as well as releasing their music on his impeccably curated label, Choose. As an instrument builder and installation artist, he has overseen the creation of a computer-controlled multi-channel electric guitar and, with Phillip Sollmann, a modular pipe organ system designed to be reconfigured from space to space.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn much of Hiller’s work, a scientific approach to acoustic phenomena co-exists with a pop sensibility and a sly sense of humour. Nowhere is this unique combination more in evidence than in his slim body of solo work, beginning with the startling diversity of instrumentation and compositional approaches heard on the short pieces of \u003ci\u003eMiniaturen\u003c\/i\u003e (2006) and \u003ci\u003eVersprochen\u003c\/i\u003e (2009), followed by the more single-minded exploration of the computer-controlled electric guitar on \u003ci\u003eStack Music\u003c\/i\u003e (2017). Set brings together these various strands of Sprenger’s work into a wildly infectious, playful epic, performed by the composer and the mysterious Ensemble Risonanze Moderne. On the LP’s second side, we are also treated to a guest appearance from longtime collaborator Oren Ambarchi, on whose recent solo releases Simian Angel and Shebang Sprenger has made key production contributions. Ambarchi’s signature stuttering, swirling harmonics weave through a sparkling assemblage of electric guitars, acoustic instruments, percussion and electronics—though, given the deft use that much of Sprenger’s recent production work makes of midi-controlled sampled instrumentation, it’s anyone’s guess where the acoustic ends and the digital begins here. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs soon as the needle drops on the first side, we are inside a musical world that Set will inhabit for its 33 minutes: sparkling guitar harmonics and palm-muted notes, tuned percussion, crisp electronic drum hits, flashes of horns, and untraceable bursts of synthetic sound are arranged into a skittering polyrhythmic framework calling up the detail-rich percussive constructions of contemporary techno filtered through the pointillism of the post-serialist European avant-garde. Behind this shifting mist of particulate sound, winds and strings sound out held chords, reminiscent of Arthur Russell’s \u003ci\u003eTower of Meaning\u003c\/i\u003e in their epic yet seemingly aimless drift. The relationship between elements is mysterious, appearing both carefully considered and almost random. Though never straying too far from where it begins, as the piece moves along, it spotlights increasingly bizarre instrument choices (shakuhachi and steel drums, anyone?) as well as momentary liftoffs into motorik propulsion. Set is a fascinating, mercurial thing: at once propulsive and fragmented, essentially static in form yet ever-changing in detail, unabashedly egghead in its construction yet sure to get the feet tapping. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50975997100363,"sku":"2236293","price":31.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/BLACKTRUFFLE127_d344575e_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1734180700"},{"product_id":"vrindavan-1982","title":"Vrindavan 1982","description":"\u003cp\u003eA previously unheard performance by rudra veena master Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, recorded in the North Indian city of Vrindavan at the Druhpad Samaroh festival in 1982. Z.M. Dagar was a nineteenth-generation descendant of the Dagar family of musicians, famed for their profoundly meditative approach to the tradition of Hindustani court music. Perhaps the most revered members of the family were the brothers Mohinuddin and Aminuddin Dagar, who played a key role in reawakening interest in dhrupad in the mid-20th century. The great exponents of the tradition from whom Z.M. Dagar descended were all singers, and dhrupad is essentially vocal music. However, as Z.M. Dagar explained, the veena family of instruments plays an important role in the education and practice of dhrupad singers, especially as an aid to mastering the fine microtonal nuances of pitch essential to the genre. Introduced as a child by his father to the rudra veena, a large and low-pitched veena amplified by two enormous gourds, Z.M. Dagar became the first modern dhrupad musician to perform with it as an instrumental soloist, giving his first recital at the age of 16. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDevoted to the instrument throughout his life, he made innovations to its design and materials, as well as introducing novel techniques (such as playing without the use of the traditional wire plectrum, resulting in the remarkable warmth of his tone). In the great Dagar family tradition, his approach to the various ragas that make up the dhrupad repertoire was stately, slow, and considered, with a great emphasis on the alap, the heavily improvised exposition section. True to form, in this recording of Dagar performing the night raga Yaman Kalyan, the alap section stretches out to more than forty minutes of slow-motion bliss, a frozen tanpura drone hovering above Dagar’s gracefully bent notes and elegantly twisting phrases. In the alap’s first half, Dagar’s figures are so intently focused on the lower reaches of the rudra veena’s range that they register more as shudders and moans than melodic patterns. As the performance continues, he slowly climbs in pitch, though continuing with the same intent focus on the articulation of single notes and subtle microtonal variations. This leads to the jod section of the performance, which, though still accompanied only by the tanpura, gradually takes on a more rhythmic character. Developing almost imperceptibly over the course of nearly thirty minutes, the jod moves from the stillness of the opening alap to a rapid pulse that announces the closing section of the piece, where Dagar is joined by Shrikant Mishra on the pakhawaj (a double headed hand drum). Where many performers use the final section of the raga as an exercise in unrestrained virtuosity, Dagar and Mishra subtly weave a web of finely shifting accents and hypnotic melodic variations, bringing the recording to a fitting conclusion while remaining within the meditative space occupied by the performance as a whole.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAdorned with beautiful archival photographs of Dagar taken by Swedish percussion legend Bengt Berger and accompanied by detailed notes from Bradford Bailey, Vrindavan 1982 is a stunning document of music unmatched in its patient focus and mysterious emotional depth..\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":51246095597899,"sku":"2164185","price":39.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/blacktruffle110-vrindavan_1982_83af40de_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1739231929"},{"product_id":"on-fractured-ground-skin-resonance","title":"On Fractured Ground \/ Skin Resonance","description":"\u003cp\u003eLegendary New Zealand-born experimental composer and sound art pioneer Annea Lockwood returns to Black Truffle with On Fractured Ground \/ Skin Resonance, her third release for the label. Having recently celebrated her 85th birthday, Lockwood shows no sign of slowing down in her exploration of new sound sources and collaborations with an ever-growing intergenerational pool of performers – here with Vanessa Tomlinson. Her creative vibrancy is alive as ever on the two recent works presented here, which demonstrate both her engagement with the social dimensions of sound and the deeply reflective, meditative aspect of her art.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn Fractured Ground derives from material recorded with Pedro Rebelo and Georgios Varoutsos for the soundtrack of Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon’s opera-film, History of the Present (2023). Working together in Belfast, Lockwood, Rebelo and Varoutsos made extensive recordings of the city’s ‘peace lines’, the dozens of walls erected since the beginning of the Troubles in the late 1960s to separate Catholic and Protestant areas of the city. Struck by the immensity of these barriers, ‘the brutal way they sever neighbourhoods’, Lockwood and her collaborators focused not on the sound environment of the city, but on the walls themselves, playing them as gigantic resonant instruments, using their hands and objects such as stones and leaves. Continuing to work in her studio with the material collected for the soundtrack after its completion, Lockwood composed the work presented here, occupying a space somewhere between her own extended-technique percussion music and the Cagean tradition of hyper-amplified small sounds. From deep, gong-like metallic tolling to dry scrapes and uneasy groans, the piece’s sustained attention to single sounds derived from unorthodox sources draws a line all the way back to Lockwood’s classic Glass World (1967-1970). Its spaciousness and delicacy are at odds with the dark historical background of the Troubles, creating a moving listening experience somehow haunted by the shadow of violence and conflict.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSkin Resonance is a collaboration with Australian composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson. Developed through conversations in which the two discussed the idea of ‘sonic attraction’, the piece focuses on Tomlinson’s relationship to the bass drum, reflecting on the complex web of connections embodied in this seemingly simply instrument, which is at once ‘animal, wood, and metal’. Approaching the instrument in a suitably elemental fashion, Tomlinson’s performance strips away conventional technique to explore the resonance and timbral properties of skin, drum, and metal hardware, producing overlapping waves of texture that at times seem closer to wind swishing through leaves or the ocean than anything usually associated with a drum. Emphasising the symbiotic relationship between performer and instrument, Tomlinson’s voice is heard at times, exploring the field of associations and connections the bass drum suggests to her: ‘Maybe the bass drum skin is an ear as well?’\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAccompanied by insightful liner notes on both pieces and photographs documenting the recording of On Fractured Ground and a performance of Skin Resonance, this LP is a moving testament to the engagement, generosity, and openness that sustain Annea Lockwood’s work, still finding new directions after more than fifty years of activity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":51461669880139,"sku":"R5640-1759","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/blacktruffle128-on_fractured_ground_skin_resonance.jpg?v=1742227132"},{"product_id":"metamusik-festival-berlin-74","title":"Metamusik Festival Berlin ‘74","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCarrying on from recent archival releases from masters of Indian classical tradition such as Kamalesh Maitra and the Dagar Brothers, Black Truffle is pleased to present a previously unheard recording of a concert by Pakistani vocalist Salamat Ali Khan. Born to a musician family in Hoshiarpur in the northwestern state of Punjab, Khan moved with his family to Lahore in Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India, becoming a child musical prodigy. Khan was a master of the kyhal form of Hindustani classical vocal music, a style integrating influences from Middle Eastern musical traditions that gives the singer a great deal of improvisational freedom. Travelling widely across the globe from the 1960s until his death in 2001, Khan approached ragas performed in the kyhal style as expressive forums for risk-taking improvisation, enlivened by ceaseless ornamental invention. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis remarkable recording was captured by Michael Hönig (of krautrock legends Agitation Free) in concert at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie as part of the MetaMusik festival in 1974 (which also featured Nico, Tangerine Dream, and Roberto Laneri’s Prima Materia, among many others). Khan, who is also heard accompanying himself on a specially tuned alpine zither (in place of the traditional swarmandal, an Indian style of zither), is joined by Shaukat Hussein Khan on tabla and Hussein Bux Khan on harmonium. The lack of a familiar underlying tanpura drone gives this performance a weightless, floating quality, with all three of the musicians playing masterfully with the interaction between silence and the pulse propelling each section of the raag.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAs Khan explains in his opening remarks, this performance of the rainy season Raag Megh is divided into three parts, each with its own tempo and rhythmic scheme (tala). The opening vilambit, in a twelve-beat tala, stretches out for over twenty minutes, lingering for a long time in a space of meditative calm, Khan lightly strumming the zither while exploring the lower end of his range in languorously extended notes. Virtuoso tabla interjections at first barely state the tempo, and the interplay between musicians is so spacious that we hear scraps of audience noise and the squeak of the harmonium’s mechanism in between the notes. Gradually picking up rhythmic definition and melodic complexity, after around fifteen minutes the music builds dramatically, with Khan letting out emotive yelps and swooping scalar shapes ranging across his full vocal range. This flows seamlessly into the following jhaptal, at a faster tempo in ten beats, which then makes way for the concluding teental, very fast in sixteen beats, which becomes a frantic improvisational exchange of daring rhythmic disruptions from the tabla, flowing harmonium melodies, and a stunning variety of vocal approaches from Khan, ranging from rapid-fire staccato consonants to guttural growls.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAccompanied by stunning black and white concert photographs, the LP also contains a moving and entertaining recollection from acclaimed German musicologist Peter Pannke, looking back on his experience assisting Khan and his musicians in Berlin at the Metamusik festival (including a mouth-watering description of a feast cooked by the maestro himself). As Pannke describes in his account of attending the concert, the beauty and spiritual intensity of this music leaves the listener speechless.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Black Truffle","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":51613275324747,"sku":"R2368-6410","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/unnamed_46.jpg?v=1744207615"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_e896cb49_thumbnail_4096_8e36ccbd-b33b-4b97-94a9-9f3ee790feab.jpg?v=1726033593","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/black-truffle.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}