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viewing 1 To 7 of 7 items
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LP
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DWR 011LP
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Dancing Wayang present a new and rare studio album by US noise legends Borbetomagus titled The Eastcote Studios Session. Recorded in 2014, it unites fire-breathing saxophonists Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich and face-flaying guitarist Donald Miller whom together summon one of their most forceful yet detailed sonic onslaughts to date. The bulk of Borbetomagus releases over the last forty years have been taken from live recordings. This particular workout, however, took place in the eponymous studio in London and was captured, mixed and mastered with exacting care and attention. That means all the amps lived to tell the tale. It means that the listener can really focus on just what is going on in this music, the individual elements that form the unique "what the...?" that is the Borbetomagus experience. Not that this record isn't monolithic. It's as dense and slab-like on first approach as the vinyl it's pressed on, initially impenetrable and resistant. But that's monolithic as in an Ayler solo, a Bomb Squad production, or a Hijokaidan live meltdown. Or indeed like the structure in Kubrick's 2001. Get close, there are whole worlds in here. It takes serious improv chops and acute listening to carve the detail deep throughout the red meter levels that you'll find in this music. Sauter, Dietrich and Miller have been playing together more than long enough to take their music to that level and beyond. It is a work by musicians who know their instruments and how much they can subvert, distort and reverse engineer them and keep them sounding just the way they want. This studio recording is a new kind of peak. In Jim Sauter's own words: "This is unlike anything we've ever recorded before." Borbetomagus are Jim Sauter (sax), Don Dietrich (sax) and Donald Miller (electric guitar). They have played together since 1979 and have released over 30 albums, cassettes and 7"s. The trio cast a seething, many-tentacled shadow of influence over the Japanese and American noise scenes and stand as wild, brutish brethren to many of our finest European improvisers. Merciless, undeniable and monstrously beautiful. Housed in Dancing Wayang's customary hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeve featuring an explosive collage designed by renowned British artist Richard Wilson. Liner notes by Edwin Pouncey (Savage Pencil, The Wire). 180 gram vinyl in an edition of 500.
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LP
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DWR 010LP
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Pressed on 180-gram vinyl; housed in Dancing Wayang's customary hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeve featuring a bold potato-print design by the label's own Anna Tjan. Exclusive liner notes courtesy of Tom Recchion (Smegma, Los Angeles Free Music Society). Dancing Wayang is thrilled to release Bring Us Some Honest Food, a collaboration between Argentine guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Alan Courtis and Brooklyn-based British drummer Aaron Moore. Recorded at London's Fish Factory Studio in 2014, it sees both musicians explore sounds and instruments far beyond their regular guitar and drums setups, utilizing anything from grand piano and balafon to metal lampshades and wooden staircases. Courtis (formerly Anla Courtis) co-founded Argentine power trio Reynols, and has collaborated and performed with Kawabata Makoto, Oren Ambarchi, Lasse Marhaug, and many more; Moore has détourned music most regularly as part of Volcano the Bear, who came to attention in the late 1990s through their imaginative live performances and recorded output. Bring Us Some Honest Food merges and develops the postal collaboration techniques of their previous releases; this is music created in real time, face-to-face in London, then layered and collaged afterward by (digital) post across continents to produce the intricate découpage effect heard here. It is a disorienting experience to listen deeply to this music. These lengthy pieces sound densely structured and composed with the precision of a Glenn Gould tape edit, but with a seat-of-yr-pants improv feel that brings the threat of collapse and chaos. In that sense it echoes krautrock pioneers going crazy with tape and razor blades decades ago, with a similarly kosmische expansiveness, but filtered through a wealth of avant knowledge and praxis. In short, neither salon nor sweat-pit, though informed by both. Bring Us Some Honest Food is all noir and shadow. The slammed piano chords of "Portions of Honesty" are repeated maddeningly, feeling like the shadow of Nosferatu creeping up the stairs. The muted trumpet of "Dishonest Dessert" accrues portentousness over 20 minutes, echoing the ever-more-insistent piano. Throughout the album sounds drift in and out, from foreground to background, cut off, backwards. Vocals are muffled, distorted; recognizable sounds redacted. The listener's ears skitter across the stereo envelope like an extra-wired sentry on guard duty. This is an involving, demanding, rewarding, and immersive album. Chance encounters are mercifully all around us but while all are welcome few are as serendipitous as this bizarre and blessed encounter of Brooklyn and Buenos Aires, and now London.
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DWR 003LP
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2009 release. Dancing Wayang Records are proud to present the studio-recorded, full-length album by Neil Campbell's Astral Social Club. Featuring two tracks of fearless sonic bliss and two long journeys to a state of sustained ecstasy, Plug Music Ramoon was recorded in one day on analog 2" tape. This limited edition LP comes housed in a gorgeous hand-printed silkscreen sleeve, with insert. Sequenced in chronological order on the LP as the tracks were recorded in the studio, the opener "Flamingo Moon" takes off into outer space. It's a gentle start to the impending Astral chaos as the rambunctious "Punk Rocker/Mug Cracker" noisily propels itself and its passengers forwards. This 14-minute showdown is divided into two parts with the loose, drum-led "Punk Rocker" submerging into the swooping sonics of the "Mug Cracker." Side 2 introduces a playful element into the spiral density with percussive sticks and bells providing a tribal backdrop for resonant electronics, keyboard odysseys and some experimental vocal work from helmsman Neil Campbell. After a wild solar adventure, the album culminates in "Ramoon Ramoon," a considered and tight improvisation that steers the Club homeward. While Club member John Clyde-Evans' laptop contributions provide much of the backbone groove of the album, Stewart Keith adds light and shade on a variety of keyboards and toys. But it's Campbell's dense guitars that thicken the very stem of these four tracks and leads his Astral Social Club to conjure up his dreams and visions. Neil Campbell is a stalwart of the UK experimental music scene who began making music in the early 1980s. Originally a member of loose improvisational collective A-Band, he established himself more firmly in the '90s as a founding member of Vibracathedral Orchestra. Campbell utilizes guitars, electronics, vocals and laptop-generated and manipulated sounds in his freeform improvisations. In 2005, he embarked on his solo project Astral Social Club, often drawing on the talents of kindred spirits. Stewart Keith is a long-time friend and collaborator of Neil Campbell and one of the main members of Nottingham's A-Band, playing free drone and high-energy rock music and championing an un-tutored, elemental and almost primitive approach to music-making. John Clyde-Evans aka Tirath Singh Nirmala, has played with artists such as Richard Youngs and Vibracathedral Orchestra, contributing computer-generated sounds, electronics and violin. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies.
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LP
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DWR 002LP
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2008 release. The Dancing Wayang record label is based a short distance from the Honest Jon's 'hood, in Eastcote Studios. Sessions for the label are released in a limited run of 500 LP copies packaged in hand-screenprinted sleeves. The second release, Directing Hand's What Put the Blood, blends free-jazz with chilling folk. Features drums, harp, wordless vocals and interpretations of traditional English folk songs. The band is Lavinia Blackwall on vocals and Alex Neilson on drums. Alex has worked with Richard Youngs (who features on the Honest Jon's album Migrating Bird), Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Baby Dee. Lavinia is a classically-trained singer in early music and is a member of The Pendulums. This is her debut with Directing Hand.
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LP
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DWR 007LP
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2011 release. The new solo album by American maverick trumpeter Peter Evans, titled Beyond Civilized and Primitive after a thought-provoking essay by philosopher Ran Prieur, is a heavyweight pressing and comes housed in hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves, featuring the forceful brushwork of 15-year-old artist Owen Gould. Recorded during two sessions at Eastcote Studios, London, this album sees Evans push into uncharted territory by utilizing the recording facilities as compositional tools. Overdubbing and looping are the two significant techniques employed here to expand on Evans' already boundary-pushing musical exploits. The opening track, entitled "complexity, change, invention, stability, giving, freedom, and both the past and the future" starts the album off in a quiet and concentrated, even demanding way, exploring space and minute sounds. "History Is Broken," a 12-minute circular breathing piece performed at breakneck speed, picks up the tempo and puts both Evans' and the listener's stamina to the test. In these first two tracks alone, Evans pushes his instrument and his lungs to its opposite extremes. Hand-numbered limited edition of 500 copies with insert.
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LP
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DWR 008LP
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Motion is the new full-length studio album by London-based power-jazz trio of Steve Noble on drums, John Edwards on double bass and Alex Ward on electric guitar. This trio has played together for over a decade and have become one of London's tightest units, locking in and breaking apart with uncanny telepathy and synchronicity. Operating at the junction of free improv and rock, they swing and shred in equal measure. Both modes, and the effortless, deft moves across the spaces between, are represented in fine style on this release. Live, N.E.W. seem to embody the classic power trio -- whether we're talking jazz or rock, it's the power that counts. Alex on guitar contorts wildly, both sonically and physically, thrashing in his chair to the death metal moves in his head, Steve sits rock-steady and immutable at his drum kit, other than his limbs, which form a chaotic blur, producing the most precise of sounds, and John has eyes tight shut and explores, brutalizes, and caresses every facet of his bass. This record is as close as you get to the incomparably exhilarating experience of seeing N.E.W. play live. Beautifully recorded with fine attention to detail, Motion puts you within a headbanging flick of Alex's bouffant hair, within the blast-zone of that power that has shaken the walls many times at all of London's long-standing improv nights, within infectious distance of the evident joy that these three musicians bring to creating this sound, moment by unrepeatable moment. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London and pressed on heavyweight 180 gram black vinyl in a limited edition of 300. It comes packaged in hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves, featuring ancient cave drawings chosen specifically by Steve Noble for this release. The insert features liner notes by Thurston Moore.
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LP
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DWR 009LP
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Dancing Wayang Records is thrilled to announce the imminent release of the label's ninth album -- Alps by Oren Ambarchi & Eli Keszler; a fresh yet seemingly inevitable collaboration of two musicians kicking against limits and genre definitions, recorded and presented with a similar disregard for anything but quality. Alps was recorded in June 2013 at Eastcote Studios in London. Thereafter mixed by frequent Ambarchi associate Joe Talia in Melbourne and mastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin, it comes pressed on 180 gram black virgin vinyl housed in the label's traditional hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves featuring cover art by Eli Keszler. Liner notes come courtesy of U.S. musician C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). Two vinyl-side-long pieces that mix improv, noise, rock, and drone, this is never an easy listen but always a compelling one. Both musicians are compulsive collaborators, with individual oeuvres that span all those genres and others yet to be labeled, and this album reflects and distills their hard-working heritage. They have a similar approach to questioning the fundamentals and exploring the sonic properties of their chosen instruments in a way that is informed by musical theory and learning but manifests itself in a defiantly non-academic, visceral and physical sound, both in intent and experience. Listening to Alps is a discomforting, uneasy and massively rewarding exercise, which denies the listener any steady ground on which to stand. This is evident from the moment that "Alps I" kicks off with piercing bowed cymbals. Percussive elements emerge from deep in the mix, drums without rhythm nor meter. Background and foreground shift tectonically and queasily. A chopping helicopter pulse hovers omnipresently over the battlefield of attacking drums and splintery bass beneath. It is a liquescent, rolling, never-still 20 minutes of multiple musical narratives. From the outset side B upholds the intensity. The conflagration of "Alps II" comes off like a tribute to classic Japanese psych; guitar proudly and consistently in the red, tsunamis of drum rolls. It has a defiant crudeness and rawness to its attack, which belies the intelligence needed to create such a rough-edged sound, the deftness needed to keep the truck-driving momentum on the road. 500 copies worldwide limited edition, pressed on 180 gram vinyl.
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