Emerson Kitamura
The Countryside Is Great EP

EM Records: ...From Scratch was an innovative and highly influential New Zealand-based sound-performance group, making extensive use of found and repurposed objects as well as custom-made instruments in their intricately interlocking percussion music. One of their signature instruments consisted of carefully tuned PVC pipes, played with foam rubber mallets; arrays of these feature prominently, along with drums and tuned percussion, in Gung Ho 1,2,3D, an extended composition which sumptuously investigates polyrhythmic relationships indicated by the number sequences which title each section of the piece. Featured here is the original 1982 recording of the "8, 9, 10" and "9, 10, 11" sections of the piece, previously issued in 1988 by Flying Nun.Rounding out this 2LP and CD release are three 2016 translations of the piece, based on the original score. Japanese group goat provides a driving rhythmic and mathematical analogue, which From Scratch's Phil Dadson, who provides liner notes, describes as "a fast moving shadow, familiar in outline but from another world". German producer Don't DJ imbibes the tribal spirit of Gung Ho and its sense of ritual to deliver a hypnotic immersion, and Utena Kobayashi Group adds wordless voice-worlds and distorted blasts to the ever-onward mix, before a final tropical down-shift.

ORANGE MILK RECORDS:...“Mirage Repair” is an album that explores our delusions, and the manner in which we willing construct them around ourselves - as a means of self defence. Unfolding like a dream sequence “Mirage Repair” envelopes you in a warm slippery haze, seducing you into analternate sensual dimension. However, logic doesn’t abide there - Songs rarely end as they should...they wither away, trail off, or transform into something completely different, and unexpected. Written in the strange liminal space between the elated anticipation of enteringparent-hood, and watching helpless as loved-ones wither away - it is an expression of utter shock at our corporeality, and the stubborn refusal to accept we are mortal. Music lasts forever, music withers away. Anxiety Funk. The hard limits of flesh, and loss of memory."

smilingc: ...Muž Ze Skla seems to be one of the few house records of its style coming from Czechoslovakia during the ‘90s, and with good reason. Labels like the government-run Supraphon dominated the electronic music industry during the communist party rule through the '70s & '80s, controlling the styles of music that artists were allowed to release. In 1990, Czechoslovakia had its first free elections in nearly 45 years. What came of it was the installation of a new democratic party, and new opportunities for artists like Jindřich Parma to release the music they wanted to.