Novità In Uscita Dalla Discus. Click Per Infos.Hi folks, hope you can take a few minutes to read about the latest releases on Discus. This is my traditional slot for moaning that in a world stuffed with new CD releases it’s becoming more and more difficult to sell anything at all, so thanks once more for supporting Discus in the last period, and I hope some of the new releases will tempt you. Remember all CDs are £10 each, but you can buy any 3 for £20. Full details of how to order on www.discus-music.co.uk.
One major change to Discus over the last 12 months is the increasing input from Mick Beck into the label. The label is becoming ever more diverse, but releases still fall broadly into the category of either Archer or Beck related projects.
Please take a look at the reviews below – we’re proud to say that just about every Discus release earns a string of great reviews – please help to turn these into a few sales to finance the next few releases!!
Martin Archer
23CD Outward Sound Ensemble – as yet untitled
First off we’re looking for advance subscriptions to the new OSE release, which should be out 12/05 approx. Advance subscribers (we need about 50 to finance the release) have their names printed in the CD booklet. Over the summer Chris Meloche (tabletop guitar, effects) played his first live concert in around ten years at our Over The Top venue in Sheffield. He was joined variously by Martin Archer (software instruments) Charlie Collins (vibraphone) Mick Beck (bassoon) and Nick Robinson (guitar). The concert was recorded by the redoubtable Chris Trent. Back in Canada, Chris edited concert highlights into a single 77 minute piece and then (masterstroke!) had regular OSE partner Herb Bayley (trombone, percussion) play a continuous minimal improvisation along with the concert material. The result is a shifting electronic texture piece studded with tiny detail, and makes for a great new release. Fans of krautrock thru low activity improv will enjoy. Please subscribe to ensure this can appear! Details of how to subscribe are on the site under www.discus-music.co.uk/dissubscribe .
Review of the previous OSE release on Discus:
“A tremendously subtle work for which you need to devote the hour’s attention it deserves as it slowly reveals its secrets, like a labyrinth…..an amazingly vivid sound….. you can almost smell the freshmints on the breath of the two Canadian performers….. Measured, quiet and deliberative, producing effects that are ethereal and fugitive, but there’s no concealing the wiry strength at the core” – Ed Pinsent, Sound Projector
Discus 22CD
Grew Trio – It’s morning
Stephen Grew (piano) Mick Beck (tenor sax, bassoon) Philip Marks (percussion)
Out now – brand new release 10/05
A beautiful recording by Richard Scott of this finely detailed live improv. The group has been together for five years, has played many tours, and it shows. Grew is simply unlike any other pianist, and his playing here has clarity and attack. Marvellously sympathetic playing from all, quite special.
Discus 21CD
Derek Bailey (electric guitar) Mick Beck (tenor sax, bassoon) Paul Hession (drumset)
Meanwhile, back in Sheffield…….
Again captured live by Chris Trent, this is a fine document of the trio’s Summer 2004 concert in Sheffield.
Derek Bailey can’t put a foot wrong these days, but he’s often only as interesting as those he chooses to work with. Back home in Sheffield, he found himself withtwo of the most sympathetic collaborators he or we could wish for” – Brian Morton, Wire
Discus 20CD
Combat Astronomy – The dematerialised passenger
James Huggett (bass guitar, keyboards, programming) with Martin Archer, Mick Beck, Charlie Collins (horns)
This transatlantic spanning projects pits Huggett’s prog / industrial / zeuhl relentlessness against energetic free jazz horns from the UK contingent. Fans of Godflesh / Magma will love this. Second album already in progress.
“Heavy as plutonium this, like a 21st century incarnation of Magma’s operatic “zeuhl” onslaught. Disjointed, pounding drum programs mix with deep, detuned bass riffs and electronic buzzsaw drones to create a relentless suite of industrial sludge-prog heaviness. In places…the listener is invited to enter a trance like state of submission, whisked down a tunnel of single minded rhythmic insistence where, like all good white knuckle rides, terror soon gives way to exhilaration. Archer blows up a storm over these otherwise implacable doom laden templates. Elsewhere…the horns work themselves up into a kind of symphonic death-pomp, providing an undeniable martial flourish: the sound of a terrifying, imaginary invasion” – Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise “Industrial strength rhythms courtesy of Huggett’s seismic fuzz bass and some impressively versatile programmed percussion, with powerful freewheeling jazz excursions….There are plenty of peak moments of elegant brutality and fluid invention….always walking a fine line between virtuosity and naked force.” – Tom Ridge, Wire
Discus 19CD
Masayo Asahara – Saint Catherine Torment
Asahara (composer) Martin Archer (violectronic) Philip Thomas (prepared piano)
“A 64 minute excursion into the possibilities ofprepared piano and electronics generated from atable top violin. And, as it turns out, the possibilities seem near endless. Within these somewhat limited parameters,manages to conjure densely gripping worlds of sound. We encounter muffled gamelan, ghostly glitch, satellite communications, wonky zithers, nursery rhyme balafon, phased robot mumblings, high frequency twitter and swish, precision laser scalpels slicing the skull, rickety creaks and drips below deck, the moist squelching of pulsating brain tissue and sighing, infinitesimal sub-atomic expanses. Exhausting, mind-blowing fun.” – Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise
Discus 18CD
Martin Archer – Heritage and ringtones
“A great achievement, a breakthrough, a quiet gem….. An uncategorisable CD that moves from the echo of one half-recognisable musical language to another; there is always a sense of melody, though often stretches seem apparently abstract; the structures are always focused and seductive. Great use is made of the harp (Rhodri Davies) and, on two tracks, acoustic guitar (Tim Cole), and of thematic materials, including those of the great Bert Jansch, Duke Ellington, Ann Briggs and Anon. Abstract sound and instrumental performance are dreamily blended. There is also a strong biographical feeling and a sense of seething, sometimes fragmentary recollection held firmly together by a coherent and precise sense of order and careful placement of materials. There is performance and not merely the shifting of waveforms around, retaining a sense of gesture and spontaneity. The CD is as diverse and surprising as it is consistent – in itself a remarkable fact. A nd as you realise how many opposites and incompatibles are negotiated and accommodated here, the scale of Archer’s musical achievement begins to become apparent. There’s nothing flashy or fashionable, just the quiet sense of a new road taken and a job well done. The result is personal and novel, and to these ears very substantial. A great record.” – Chris Cutler, ReR
Discus 16CD
ASK – The formulary of curses
“ASK have made one of the essential jazz records of the decade…..they cover an astonishing amount of musical ground without ever losing coherence and focus…..work that’s microscopic in detail…..a masterpiece” – Duncan Heining, Jazzwise
Discus 17CD
Outward Sound Ensemble – Cloudburst”For this opulent, absorbing release, the prolific Martin Archer joins forces with the improvising duo of Herb Bayley and Chris Meloche. Closer to the dark ambient stylings of, say, :zoviet*france: or Main than hardcore Improv, it swathes a wealth of instrumental detail in the reverb-drenched atmospherics of Archer’s processed violin. Occasionally over saturated with this sepulchral echo. it’s nevertheless a hugely enjoyable 60 minutes. Bayley’s miniature splutters and smears dance around the stereo spectrum, showing his inventive use of the binaural mic system, and the thunderstorm that appears two thirds of the way through adds more than a touch of magic to the session” – Keith Moline, WIRE
