Dissonant Plane

A year is a long time.  So I have probably forgotten a few things.  But here is what comes to mind as my favorite new releases and reissues that came out in 2009:

• AFCGT - AFCGT (Uzu Audio) LP
• Laurie Scott Baker - Gracility (Musicnow) 2xCD
• L. Berner - Blackout Nights (Zen Enthusia) 2xCass
• Sir Richard Bishop - The Freak Of Araby (Drag City) CD
• Crystal Hell Pool - Wind Blows Through Me (Crippled Symmetry Recordings) CDR
• Dropp Ensemble - Safety (and/OAR) CD
• Luc Ferrari - Labyrinthe De Violence / DANCE (Alga Marghen) 12″
• Ibliss - Supernova (Garden Of Delights) CD
• The Inner Space - Agilok & Blubbo (Wah-Wah Records Sound)
• Demian Johnston - Forever (Dead Accents) Cass
• Demian Johnston - Still (Dead Accents) Cass
• Dave Knott - Sweet Little Guitar Ditties (Not On Label) CD
• R Millis - 120 (Etude Records) CD
• Hiroaki Minami - Obscure Tape Music Of Japan Vol.10: Electronic Symphony No. 1 (Edition Omega Point) CD
• People Band - People Band 69/70 (Emanem) 2xCD
• Eliane Radigue - Triptych (Important Records) CD
• Eliane Radigue - Vice Versa, Etc.… (Important Records) 2xCD
• Matt Shoemaker - The Sunken Plethora Consumes All (Mystery Sea) CDR
• Omar Souleyman - Dabke 2020: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria (Sublime Frequenices) CD
• Sperm - Shh! Heinäsirkat (De Stijl) LP
• Sun City Girls - Napoleon & Josephine (Sun City Girls Singles Volume 2) (Abduction) CD
• Akio Suzuki - Ki-date (Ichinomiya City Memorial Art Museum of Setsuko Migishi) DVD
• Giancarlo Toniutti - The Early Tapes Period (Vinyl-On-Demand) 3xLP + 10″
• UnicaZürn - Temporal Bends (uZu Music) CD
• Simon Wickham-Smith - A Seventh Persimmon (Tape Drift Records) CDR
• Zaïmph - Serpent’s Bite (Heavy Blossom) CD
• Various - 1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground (Sublime Frequencies) CD

AMBIENT/DRONE:

Deceh LP  (Important Records)  $21  - acoustic/electronic drone, screenprinted insert, ltd 400

Eleh  ”Homage To The Sine Wave”  LP  (Taiga)  $22  - minimal drone electronics, numbered edition of 500

FM3  ”Buddha Machine II - Lime”  Soundbox  (FM3)  $24  - new loops, pitch control, better speaker, lime case

Radigue, Eliane  ”Triptych”  CD  (Important Records)  $14  - awesome archival minimalism from France

Radigue, Eliane  ”Vice Versa, Etc…”  2 x CD  (Important Records)  $16  - awesome archival minimalism from France, 2 discs

CLASSICAL:

Brown, Earle  ”Folio and Four Systems”  CD  (Tzadik)  $15  - early avant-garde & graphic scores, friend of John Cage

Gibson, Jon  ”Criss X Cross”  CD  (Tzadik)  $15  - solo flute & saxophone, worked with La Monte, Riley, etc

Stockhausen, Karlheinz  ”Spiral I & II, Pole, Wach, Japan, Zykus, Tierkries”  2 x CD  (EMI Classics)  $14  - reissue of amazing 2 LP box of experimental pieces

EXPERIMENTAL:

Airway  ”Live at LACE”  LP  (Harbinger Sound)  $25  - 1st vinyl reissue of early (1978) influential wall of noise

Conrad, Tony & Olson, Tovah  ”Let There Be Music”  LP  (Tovinator)  $13  - ltd 200, instantly sold out from the label, one side only

De Martinville, Edouard-Leon Scott  ”Au Clair de la Lune”  7″  (Parlortone)  $8  - 1st experiment in recording sound from 1860!!!

H.N.A.S.  ”Im Schaten der Möhre”  CD  (Streamline)  $14  - finely crafted German weirdness, their best album

Starving Weirdos  ”Father Guru”  CD  (Azul Discografica)  $14  - long trancey tracks

Winderen, Jana  ”Noisiest Guys on the Planet”  C40  (Ash International)  $7  - field recordings of underwater crustaceans, ltd 250

JAZZ/IMPROV:

Supersilent  ”7″  DVD  (Rune Grammofon)  $23  - stellar DVD video of a live concert

ROCK:

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The  ”Gorilla”  CD  (EMI)  $12  - humorous English music w/Neil Innes, Vivian Stanshall

Fushitsusha 2 x CD  (P.S.F. Records)  $38  - heavy rock w/Seijiro Murayama, Yasushi Ozawa, 2 CD

Neung Phak  ”Fucking USA”  7”  (Abduction)  $8  - great cover of Korean anti-American rock tune, ltd 300

Sic Alps  ”A Long Way Around to a Shortcut”  2 x LP  (Drag City)  $20  - lo-fi garage noise rock

Six Organs of Admittance / Azul  ”Split”  LP  (P.S.F. Records)  $21  - meditative & folky, ltd 800, already sold out from label

SOUNDTRACK:

Seazer, J.A.  ”Den’en Ni Shisu”  CD  (Showboat / Sky Station)  $28  - for Shuji Terayama film w/members of Tenjo Sajiki

WORLD:

Souleyman, Omar  ”Dabke 2020: Folk & Pop Sounds of Syria”  CD  (Sublime Frequencies)  $14  - fantastic Arabic pop music that really moves

Various  ”String of Pearls”  LP  (Mississippi Records)  $14  - cool collection of rare 78s from around the world

Two very special items from Japan:

Akio Suzuki “Ki-date” DVD & book
A beautiful retrospective of this very special Japanse sound artist.  The 210 minute all region NTSC DVD features live performances on Akio’s instruments such as the Analapos and Suzuki Type Glass Harmonica, as well as exhibition views and field recordings.  The performances are sublime as Suzuki lets loose delicate and magical sounds from his instruments and plays with small objects.  Also in the box is a 190 color catalog with texts in Japanese and English (translations by Alan Cummings) documenting 40 years of sound creation with many lovely photographs.  Also included in this set is a map of the location that Suzuki marked for ‘Oto-Date’.   This on going projects marks good listening spots in urban areas with Suzuki’s whimsical icon combining feet and ears.  This map shows the locations around the museum that Akio liked and the DVD documents these spots.  In a stroke of genius the video faces the opposite direction of any action so that sounds are heard, but the visuals are mostly stationary, yet impart the sense of the place.  The performance recordings on the DVD, these sounds are also recorded by Kuwayama Kijima of Lethe.  Documents of Suzuki’s work are always hard to find and therefore in demand, so don’t miss your chance to pick up this set!

Lethe “Catastrophe Point #6″ CD
Privately released limited edition CD from 2005 packaged on an A4 (about letter size) cardboard sleeve with beautiful artwork by Isao Mizutani.
Nagoya based Kiyoharu Kuwayama has an interest in reverberant spaces, recording under bridges and flyovers as well as in warehouse and Shinto temples at night. Although he occasionally employs cello, his works tends to explore space and perspective in utterly unconventional ways. Typically, he favours objects found in situ to sound the acoustic environment and is as likely to use a chair scraped along the floor as a standard musical instrument. But music this most definitely is. The first piece on offer here foregrounds what sounds like a handful of pebbles being clicked together against a distant backdrop of scraped sheet metal. The thickness of the room’s acoustics lends the whole an almost frightening clarity, and there’s an unreality to the way the two different reverberant layers combine that only adds to the sense of unease. We’re thrown into a subtly heightened acoustic realm, in which scale and perspective are altered, to disquieting psychological effect. The second piece heightens and complicates the acoustic picture even further, and increases the density of the sonic activity. The sound sources here seem to be bundles of sticks, bottles, tea trays and iron girders thrown down lift shafts. Once again the ear tries to make sense of the altered relationships Kuwayama set up between loud and soft, close and distant. Slowly, the piece starts to focus more and more strongly on a huge, dark vibration at the furthest end of the acoustic spectrum, which builds in intensity, racking up the tension and subtly disturbing the mind’s equilibrium. By this point, the music sounds like it’s taking piece in a vast, pitch black aircraft hangar of the soul. - Keith Moline (Wire No. 264)
Volcanic Tongue made comparisons with Christoph Heemann, Sean Meehan and AMM when describing this one.

Over the weekend, Jesse Paul Miller played what he estimates as only his second solo performance.  For this he mixed together field recordings and played them back through 6 speakers surrounding the audience.  It started incredibly delicate and slowly built into a mass of sounds.  I recognized several things as being from Asia as I’ve heard these wonderful self produced CDRs of his recordings from there.  The latest one is “Asia Radio Environments“, a fairly self descriptive title.  However in addition to picking up frequencies in Asian countries, Jesse has recorded the environment around him as he was exploring the shortwave dial.  So the unstable signals are paired with bird singing, traffic and other ambient noises heard in Java, Bali, Lombok, Myanmar, Thailand and Japan.  The results are suprisingly calm.  However, I think the most meditative title he has done is the popular “Asia Archive 2008 Volume 2: Muslim Call to Prayer, Java, Indonesia” which we finally got restock of.  Both discs are quite limited and come in hand numbered editions.

Did you know there is an experimental music scene in Malaysia?  It’s pretty small still, but there are two labels that are putting out things on CD fairly regularly.  The most active is Herbal International run by Goh Lee Kwang, but the Xing-Wu label has also put several titles as well.  Both labels seem really keen to release European artists at the moment, especially ones from France.  In the most recent batch from Herbal are a double CD by Jean-Luc Guionnet, a collaborative disc by Eric La Casa and Cédric Peyronnet, and a reissue of the second Beequeen album.  Beequeen are a Dutch duo and create really nice ambient textures with minimal organic rhythms and “Time Waits for No One” is one of their better early works.  Cédric Peyronnet is better known as toy.bizarre and like his collaborator Eric La Casa is known for working field recordings into lovely compositions.  Their duet together is entitled “La Creuse” and finds them mapping a particular area in central France.  Eric La Casa was previously in a trio called Afflux, and one of the other members of this group was Jean-Luc Guionnet.  On his double CD “Non-Organic Bias” he presents three long works.  They focus on the organ which he plays in a very experimental way exploiting lone tones and silences with great dynamic effect.  These works would have sounded at home in Deutsche Grammophon’s Avant-Garde series of LPs.  Quite a different facet of Jean-Luc’s work is heard on the CD “Le Bruit Du Toit” where he plays saxophone.  This album released by Xing-Wu is a duet with original Fushitsusha drummer Seijiro Murayama.  Recorded at a temple in Japan, the two improvisations reveal a delicate attention to timbre and close listening to each other.  The third member of Afflux. Eric Cordier, is represented on another Xing-Wu disc called “Dispositif: Canal Saint Martin“.  Recorded in collaboration with Emmanuel Mieville, this disc takes another approach to field recordings as it is a real time composition made by placing 30 microphones around the Paris city hall and manipulating them via laptop triggered ’sonic objects’.  Although not French, Michael Northam and Seijiro Murayama met in France and Switzerland and slowly developed the album “Moriendo Renascor“.  A meeting of acousmatic composter and free improviser has resulted in a finely detailed meditation on small sounds and drones.  But that is not all from Xing-Wu as we also got the one release they have done featuring only Malaysian musicians.  “Shàng” presents the three artists who I believe to be behind the label. Each presents a very different work.  Tham Kar Mun is very minimal with sudden outbursts of sound and Yandsen presents solo improvised acoustic guitar.  However for me, the best track here is the 26 minute “Funeral” by Yeoh Yin Pin.  Based on a recording of a Chinese Taoist funeral ceremony, the sounds here are just magical and reason enough to own this disc.

We’ve rounded out our selection of privately published CDRs by Jesse Paul Miller.  Actually one of the three titles we just got is a DVD-R titled “Ambient Thailand and Laos” which he describes as “static one-perspective videos (”pillow shot” style) made in 19 locations thailand and laos january / february 2005“.  Beautiful scenes of South East Asia and what better way to compliment that than with “Luk Thung & Molam LP Archive Vol. 1“?  A selection of tracks from Thai vinyl picked up on his travels, this CDR is a fantastic collection of pop music unknown to western ears.  What makes it even better is the cover collage featuring many album covers in miniature.  This disc sounds great and keeps all the vinyl noise intact.  And if you like vinyl noise, definitely check out “Taemgip Mahkram and Eilrahc Rekrap“.  This is a slightly older JPM title packaged in a fantastic sleeve that apes the classic Folkway LP design.  Here the sounds are thick with scratches and pops making the backwards music sound even more ancient.  As before, these are all numbered editions of either 30 or 40 copies, so don’t hestitate to snap these up.  The previous batch certainly found its fan and has people excited about these discs (which is why we are sold out of several earlier titles).

Matt Shoemaker grew up over on Mercer Island and has lived in the Seattle area his entire life.  That’s all about to change as his better half is going to grad school in San Francisco and they are moving in August.  I’ve known Matt for a long time as he used to be a regular customer at the Anomalous Records shop on Capital Hill back in the mid-1990’s.  We’ve become good friends and played music together many times.  In his free time, Matt has devoted himself to creation of beautiful sound worlds.  First released on bernhard günter’s trente oiseaux label in the early part of this decade, Matt’s solo works have found a steadily building fan base leading to more releases around the world.  Matt has brought us a few of these latest releases for the shop.  The oldest is 2008’s “Mutable Depth“, a 3″ CD released on the French label Ferns.  Using only ice as source material Matt created a 20 minute work exploring aural textures.  Following this have come two full length releases in rapid succession.  In May, the Belgian CDR label Mystery Sea released “The Sunken Plethora Consumes All“.  Limited to only 120 copies in full color package, this disc blends field recordings with rich ambient sounds.  In June this was followed by “Erosion of the Analogous Eye” on Jim Haynes’ Helen Scarsdale Agency label.  Here the sounds play out more delicately.  “Sunken Plethora” has deep washes of sound whereas “Erosion” strikes me as more of a composed work with highs and lows.  Though in a slightly larger edition, “Erosion” is limited to only 300 copies due to the unique artwork on each cover.  Matt has been one of Seattle’s silent masters, playing out rarely.  He will be playing at least one last show at the Chapel Performance Space on July 18th.  And of course there will be more releases, such as the limited edition picture disc coming from Elevator Bath.

• Acephale  “Mord und Totsclag”  CD  (Aurora Borealis)  USED  $10  - audio CD in DVD case
• Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.  “Electric Heavyland”  CD  (alien8 Recordings)  USED  $8  - zonked out Japanese psychedelia
• Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.  “Never Ending Space Ritual”  2 x DVD  (Swordfish)  USED  $24  - documentary and live footage
• Alatar, Mohammed  “Iron Wall, The”  DVD  (PalestineOnlineStore)  USED  $10  - documentary about Jewish settlements in West Bank
• AMK/GX  “Two Dead Guys”  CDR  (Banned Production)  USED  $3  - CDR, cut-up best of with GX (Haters)
• Andorkappen  “Assorted Live Shits - Vol. 1″  DVDR  (Bastardized)  USED  $3  - DVDR  of crazy vocal noise
• Angel Witch  “2000: Live at the LA2″  CD & DVD  (Zoom Club Records)  USED  $8
• Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra  “Muse”  CD  (Creative Nation Music)  USED  $8
• Bream, Julian  “plays Dowland and Bach”  2 x CD  (Deutsche Grammophon)  USED  $10  - 1950s recordings of master lute & guitar performer
• Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band  “Safe as Milk”  CD  (Buddha Records)  USED  $8  - amazing debut from 1968 with wonderful bonus tracks
• Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band  “The Best Of”  CD  (EMI Gold)  USED  $8
• Cavity  “Laid Insignificant”  CD  (Hydra Head Records)  USED  $8
• Chrystal Belle Scrodd  “Beastings”  CD  (United Dairies)  USED  $15  - out of print anthology of NWW side project
• Clouds  “We Are Above You”  CD  (Hydra Head Records)  USED  $8
• Courtney, Andrew & Perry, Emily  “The Israeli Wall in Palestinian Lands”  DVD  USED  $10  - documentary on the wall separating Jerusalem
• Deathprod  “Morals and Dogma”  CD  (Rune Grammofon)  USED  $8  - deep and solemn music from Norway
• Einstürzende Neubauten  “Drawings of Patient O.T.”  CD  (Thirsty Ear)  USED  $8  - 1983 album of metal percussion and German angst
• Fab Trio  “Live in Amsterdam”  CD  (Porter Records)  USED  $8
• Fennesz  “Endless Summer”  CD  (Editions Mego)  USED  $8
• Fewell, Garrison  “Variable Density Sound Orchestra”  CD  (Creative Nation Music)  USED  $8
• Foreman, Richard  “Sophia: The Cliffs / 35+ Year Retrospective Compilation”  DVD  (Tzadik)  USED  $18  - experimental theater from 1972
• Gas  “Nah und Fern”  4 x CD  (Kompakt)  USED  $22  - 4 CDs of minimal ambient techno
• Gorguts  “From Wisdom to Hate”  CD  (Olymipic)  USED  $8  - Tech avant garde Death
• Gotan Project  “Santa Maria”  CD EP  (XL Recordings)  USED  $4  - downtempo / future jazz
• Haddad, Bassam  “Arabs & Terrorism”  DVD  (Arab Film Distribution)  USED  $10  - neocons vs so-called Arab “terrorists”
• Hakmoun, Hassan  “Fire Within - Gnawa Music of Morocco”  CD  (Music Of The World)  USED  $8
• Health CD  (Lovepump United)  USED  $8  - LA noise rock
• Heavy Lids  “Things are Happening at the Same Time”  CDR  (Dragon’s Eye Recordings)  USED  $4  - audio CDR, 36 minutes of delicate & spacy guitars
• Holy Modal Rounders, The  “Bound to Lose”  DVD  (Carnivalesque)  USED  $14  - crazy psychedelic folk group with LPs on ESP
• International Nothing, The  “Mainstream”  CD  (Ftarri)  USED  $10  - very pure sounds
• irr.app.(ext.)  “An Uncertain Animal, Ruptured; Tissue Expanding In Conversation”  CD  (Errata In Excelsus / Fire Inc.)  USED  $8  - early release from this current NWW collaborator
• Isis  “In the Absence of Truth”  CD  (Ipecac)  USED  $8  - Atmospheric Sludge
• Krokodil  “Krokodil / Swamp”  CD  (Azir)  USED  $8  - Swiss bluesy psych/prog w/sitar from ‘69/’70
• Krokodil  “Sweat and Swim”  CD  (Azir)  USED  $8  - Swiss blue rock; reissue of 1973 Bacillus double LP
• Merzbow  “Space Metalizer”  CD  (alien8 recordings)  USED  $8  - more cosmic noise on this one
• Mitchell, Roscoe  “Solo Concert”  CD  (AECO Products / Katalyst Entertainment)  USED  $8  - Art Ensemble of Chicago member recorded 1973-74
• Möbius, Guido  “Gebirge”  CD  (Karaoke Kalk)  USED  $8  - funky electronic music with plenty of clang & clunk
• Moondog CD  (CBS)  USED  $10  - out of print CD which reissues LPs from 1969 and 1971
• NON  “God & Beast”  CD  (Mute Records)  USED  $8  - noisy album with Douglas P. & Rose McDowell
• Nurse With Wound  “Rock’n Roll Station”  CD  (United Dairies)  USED  $16  - UD edition, features Peat Bog & Chrystal Belle Scrodd
• Popol Vuh  “Aguirre”  CD  (SPV)  USED  $8  - reissue of 1976 LP; soundtrack for Herzog film
• Pyramids 2 x CD  (Hydra Head Records)  USED  $12  - remixes by Blut Aus Nord, Colin Marston, Plotkin, etc
• Quiet American  “Plumbing and Irrigation of South Asia”  CDR  (and/OAR)  USED  $6  - ,CDR field recordings, title really says it all
• Roedelius, Hans-Joachim  “Jardin Au Fou”  CD  (Bureau B)  USED  $8  - ‘79 album of light electronic music from half of Cluster
• Rollins, Sonny  “Saxophone Colossus”  DVD  (Acorn Media)  USED  $10  - legendary jazz improvisor
• Rollins, Sonny  “Silver City”  2 x CD box  (Milestone Records)  USED  $10  - anthology covering 1972 to 1995
• Shalabi Effect  “Pink Abyss”  CD  (alien8 Recordings)  USED  $8  - slow moving, psychedelic & experimental
• Shedding  “What God Doesn’t Bless, You Won’t Love; What You Don’t Love, The Child Won’t Know”  CD  (Hometapes)  USED  $8  - lonely ambient soundtracks
• Skinny Puppy  “Brap (Back & Forth Vol. 3 & 4)”  2 x CD  (Nettwerk)  USED  $10  - unreleased early tracks & “Too Dark Park” outtakes
• Sonic Youth & Yamatsuka Eye  “TV Shit”  CD EP  (Ecstatic Peace!)  USED  $8  - short EP of crazy noise, out of print
• Swans  “Body To Body, Job to Job”  CD  (Young God Records / Sky Records)  USED  $8  - early heavy material
• Theoretical Girls  “Theoterical Record”  CD  (Acute Records)  USED  $8  - unreleased 70’s NYC no wave w/Glenn Branca
• Throne of Katarsis  “An Eternal Dark Horizon”  CD  (Candlelight Cult)  USED  $8  - Norwegian BM
• Trial of the Bow  “Ornamentation”  CD EP  (Release)  USED  $5  - eastern inspired ambient with acoustic instruments
• Urdog  “Eyelid of Moon”  CD  (Secret Eye)  USED  $8  - low key trancey grooves
• Urdog  “Garden of Bones”  CD  (Secret Eye)  USED  $8  - contemporary psych rock from Rhode Island
• Various  “Audible Geography”  CD  (Room 40)  USED  $8  - w/La Casa, Vitiello, Jerman, Tsunoda, Berhens, López
• Various  “I Am The Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey”  CD  (Vanguard)  USED  $8  - covers of Fahey by Devandra Banhart, Pelt, Peter Case
• Various  “In Formation - A Tribute to Throbbing Gristle”  CD  (Attention Deficit Recordings)  USED  $8  - 2000 album of TG covers w/Non, Melvins, MSBR, etc.
• Windy & Carl  “Songs for the Broken Hearted”  CD  (Kranky)  USED  $8  - ethereal female voice, guitars & wash of sound
• Woman Year  “Aeon Centers Faded”  CD  (Porter Records)  USED  $8  - weird songs
• X, Malcolm  “In His Own Words…”  CD  (KRB Music Companies)  USED  $6  - black power straight from the source
• Zenlo  “Skelethal Antics”  CD  (Porter Records)  USED  $8  - archival 1983 minimal synth / experimental recordings
• Zivich, Alivia & Young, Nate  “Video Madness IV”  DVDR  (AA Records)  USED  $8  - DVDR, Nate is in Wolf Eyes & Demons, 19 minutes

FREE IN STORE PERFORMANCE

SIMON WICKHAM-SMITH

JONATHAN WAY

THURSDAY, MAY 28th, 2009

7:00 PM

Simon Wickham-Smith is an English musician who has been pumping out great records for a good two decades now.  Ranging from noisy and droney to more delicate acoustic improvisations, his work has covered a wide range.  Mostly in collaboration with Richard Youngs, Simon has released a large number of classic CDs and LPs through labels such as No Fans, VHF, Majora, Forced Exposure, Fourth Dimension, Ignivomous, PseudoArcana, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Insignificant and Pogus.  They still record together, however less frequently now and more of Simon’s recent recordings have been solos.  On top of all this, Simon was a Buddhist monk in the Karma Kagyü tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and has lately been busy with translation Mongolian literature into English.  You can find out a lot more about him here:

http://www.wickhamsmith.net/

http://www.myspace.com/simonwickhamsmith

From what I gather, Simon will be providing a nice drone for his in store performance at Dissonant Plane.

Also playing a short set this night will be Jonathan Way.  Like Simon, Jonathan is also a translator of Asian texts as well as a sound artist.  So it should come as no surprise that the two became friends when Simon relocated to Seattle.  Jonathan is probably best known for playing with the Seattle Phonographers Union.  Nonetheless, he has also had a CDR released by Greg Davis’ Autumn Records and a track on the “phonography.org 7″ compilation.  For this solo performance he will be mixing recordings of snow, brush and trees and combining them with the sounds of small improvisations.

Jesse Paul Miller and his wife Linda Peschong packed up and traveled through Asia for six months in 2008.  I reckon about two months of that was in Indonesia on the islands of Bali, Java and Lombok.  While there Jesse made numerous recordings of music and the sounds of life which he has started publishing on limited edition CDRs.  “Asia Archive 2008” is concerned solely with the Muslim call to prayer heard throughout Indonesia.  Most of the disc was recorded in Solo (Surakarta), an old royal city in central Java.  The call to prayer comes from all directions in Javanese cities as mosques are everywhere.  Not only that, they seem to all run on a slightly different clock as the calls from each mosque start at different times.  This means that five times a day there is a beautiful overlap of loudspeakers, often broadcasting quite distorted, mixing with the sounds of the town, in this case the sleepy city of Solo.  It is constantly variable and Jesse even captured the sound of the tape being reversed one day, as well as several nice musical performances which appear toward the end of this 77 minute disc.  A small fragment of call to prayer (ironic recorded at the Buddhist momument Borobudur) is also included on “Jalan Jalan - Street Atmospheres and Music in the Heart of Java“.  There are 16 tracks on this disc and they cover a wide range of material including street musicians, markets, food courts, rain and radio.  A more varied disc, this should definitely appeal to fans of the Sublime Frequencies label.  Compiled in a similar manner is “Bali - Converging Orchestras of Life and Rebirth on the Island of the Gods“.  While obviously shifting its focus to another location, it also reveals how different culture is on these two neighboring islands (they are separated by a mile wide strait).  The Bali disc is full of ceremonial gamelan including much from a mass ceremation of 54 bodies in Ubud.  Also added to the mix are cock fighting, beach drumming, children, birds, night sounds, kecak and of course more gamelan - all filled with the wonderful energy of Bali.  The whole disc is fantastic, but is easily worth it alone for the Gamelan Beleganjur recording (marching gamelan).  Rounding out our Jesse Paul Miller selection is “Constellation” which collects recordings made closer to home in Colorado, Hawaii and Washington States.  A 53 minute collage of monsoon rain, frogs, highway overpass, hummingbirds and children, ice breaking in a tiny bay, oysters, bamboo forest, and “all that accompanies”.  This disc is subdued, a relaxed exploration of sound.  All four are exceptional and frequently enjoyed at home.  Also, they are very limited self published released CDRs in editions of only 20 to 40 hand numbered copies.  Given that Jesse also sells these discs to shops in Japan, they probably won’t be around too long.