Spring

Akari is the third album from Tokyo duo Illuha. Following 2011’s debut Shizuku (12k1067) and 2013’s Interstices (12k2028), Akari takes the next artistic step for the band. While Shizuku was recorded in the US and completed separately by the artists, Interstices captured the duo creating their exceptionally detailed music together live during a Japaneses tour. Akari, in turn, is the first studio album where Illuha recorded and mixed together, throughout the entire process. The beautiful st-robo studio in Tokyo put a collection of amazing equipment at their fingertips, from vintage mics and outboard gear to a vast collection of instruments, both acoustic and electronic. Their writing sessions were numerous and long with details meticulously obsessed over for nearly a year. The result is the most bewildering music Illuha have created to date. An album swimming with the most delicately tactile sounds and instrumentation that draws the listener in with hushed, motionless attention.

While Illuha’s Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date are often drawn to the most sparse notes of Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric pianos, acoustic grand piano and guitar, the breadth of instrumentation is partially what makes Akari so abosrbing. They have succeeded in creating their own universe of sound, so beautifully recorded, where each element not only has its own space but connects and interacts so fluidly with the other sounds. It is as if they are placed perfectly by nature, the compositions are fluid and organic, a far cry from anything calculated or structured. It is this open space that the music exists in which in turn defines the music itself. There is ample room to breathe within this forest of gentle tines, bubbling analogue synthesizers, clicking percussion and quiet field recordings. This is subtlety at its most refined; hushed without being saccharine, distant without being morose.

Akari is the Japanese word for light. Conceputally the duo used this word as a guide, as if they were searching through the dark, trying to keep the light alive, as if one is cradling a candle doing everything in their power to keep it alight in a storm. It is this almost visceral sense of sheltering, of protection, that gives Akari a very human and personal sound whose intensely deep focus is as impressive as it is arresting.

Akari

Structures Based on the Plasticity of Sphere Surface Tension

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Structures Based On The Plasticity Of Sphere Surface Tension

This piece was composed and recorded between November 2013 and April 2014.

A new version of this track is part of the cassette "The Sky Had Vanished" released in July 2015 by Ecstatic Recordings.

https://ecstaticrecordings.bandcamp.com/merch/abul-mogard-the-sky-had-vanished-cassette-2nd-edition-white-cassette


My other works can be found at my bandcamp page:
https://abulmogard.bandcamp.com/


Desires Are Reminiscences By Now

from the "Mold on Canvas" LP
https://lejsovkaandfreund.bandcamp.com/album/mold-on-canvas

Lejsovka & Freund - "Ah Shit, My Heart Is Full"

Taken from the album 'Quixotism' released as CD and Download.

Oren Ambarchi 'Quixotism Part 5' (eMEGO 202)

Synthetic Birdsong

Yoshi Wada - Off The Wall LP (SLT-003)

First vinyl reissue of composer and Fluxus artist Yoshi Wada's second album, Off The Wall, originally released in 1985 by famed free jazz label FMP. Recorded in Berlin on May 11 and 12, 1984, by a quartet featuring Yoshi Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ (hand-built by Wada), and Andreas Schmidt Neri on percussion. Edition of 750. Mastered by Rashad Becker and housed in old-style gatefold jackets printed by Stoughton.

"Off The Wall belongs somewhere between the exuberant harmolodic ritual of Ornette Coleman's Dancing In Your Head, a damp, medieval dirge and the inner ear soundings of composer Maryanne Amacher." – David Keenan, The Wire

"It may be more accurate to think of Wada as a sculptor than as a composer, because his music seems to be a physical reality, like wood or stone, and also because of the way he treats this material. Most composers work with ideas. Their basic interest is in melodies, harmonies, thematic relationships, tone rows, tonal centers, emotional qualities, and other rather abstract things, all of which can then be conveyed in sound, but none of which really are sound. Wada, on the other hand, works directly with the sound itself. His music would sound silly arranged for church organ for example. And if he prefers to preserve some improvisatory freedom rather than to notate specific musical ideas, this is at least partly because he is not so interested in the kinds of musical ideas that can be written down on paper. He wants to maintain direct contact with the physical reality of the sound." – Tom Johnson

Yoshi Wada – Off The Wall I (excerpt)

Early last year, Punctum finished recording their debut record, Remote Sensing, at the legendary EMS studio in Stockholm. After nearly a year and a half, the album is finally ready for public consumption. I have an oddly personal relationship to an album that is not yet released. I first got a taste of their work in a mix from Maria W Horn, which featured the heavy and hypnotic ‘Quick Botta’. This became a major go-to headphone listen. Strongly recommended for long journeys in the dark.

Technically speaking, a lot of the music on this record quite simple to describe. 303s, 606s and Buchlas dance around each other like an harmonic kaleidoscope. But listen to ‘Glory Bitch’ below. There’s a lot more going on here than simple synth meanderings, the likes of which every bedroom producer knows all too well. There is a meticulous care that has been taken in its entrance and exit. It’s like a set of opening credits, or an tuning orchestra, setting the stage for something huge, before snaking away into the distance. Fitting then, this should be the opening for one of the most exciting records in recent memory.

Remote Sensing

Premiere: Punctum - Glory Bitch [SUMME]

"Reiterations" by First Tone from "Reactions" 2xLP/Digital due out October 2019.

"Reiterations" by First Tone

From the album Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two), released on Ndeya 24 July 2020 https://ndeya.ffm.to/seeingthroughsound

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Synthetic Birdsong

Andrew Pekler