Sounding reminiscent of old 78's, with dark rumbling low notes underpinning sweet swirls and delicate flurries of minor key melody. Now in her nineties, living in Jerusalem but nearing death, a foundation in her name has been making concentrated effort in trying to preserve her legacy by transcribing her numerous compositions to benefit future generations.Īnd like her fantastic and adventurous life, her music is equally as remarkable, the sound and feel is so dense with memory and imagery, musical but somehow quite visual, warm and woozy, a fuzzy, sepia toned old timey feel, due in no small part to the recording. She has dedicated her life and musical practice in pursuit of charity for children. These compositions were recorded in the sixties following a tumultuous life as a musical child prodigy, prisoner of war, nun, national bandleader and fleeing refugee. These recordings, originally collected in the incredible Ethiopiques anthologies, were the first signs that we were hearing a uniquely distinct musical voice for the first time, and we've been hooked ever since. Now Mississippi Records have gifted us with a second collection of Guebru's recordings. Dark and contemplative, moody but subtly playful too, her music is like exotic lamentations that have an impressionistic lyrical melancholy. Her playing is devastatingly lovely and haunting, a curious hybrid of old time jazz and classical of the Satie variety, but still truly Ethiopian. The incredible solo piano compositions of an Ethiopian nun named Tsegue-Maryam Guebru have always had a place in our hearts. All those elements are grounded by Takada's compositional personality resulting in an album that is at the pinnacle of Japanese ambient music. Takada's work shows an understanding of such varied traditions as Balinese gamelan, African mbira and marimba, Japanese traditional music and the works of such 20th century composers as Glass and Reich. Long chased by collectors and recently only available for outrageous sums, it's a blessing to have this beautiful record back in print thanks for the joint efforts of Palto Flats and We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records.Įntrancing recorder and marimba melodies are slowly overtaken by disquieting, throbbing bongos, which eventually give way to harmonium drone. Through The Looking Glass, her first solo recording, was released in 1983 and became almost instantly unavailable. She first performed in the percussion trio Mkwaju Ensemble, who have two highly sought after LPs from the early 80s. Midori Takada is a Japanese composer and percussionist who combines influences from African and East Asian traditional percussion music with American jazz, new age and avant-garde practices. Midori Takada - Through The Looking Glass LP For connoisseurs of postwar composition, fans of ambient electronic music and students of California counterculture, this is not to be missed. Daniel Schmidt's music is a delight – gracefully ethereal and very Californian. Released on composer Sean McCann's Recital imprint, this limited second edition of a sold-out 2016 release comes in a gorgeous package, with a booklet of notes, scores and archival photographs. Ambient but not otherworldly, the music here is strongly evocative of the San Francisco Bay Area's endless tides of ocean and fog – patterns of ringing tones evolve and dissolve over shimmering sustained notes and droning strings, ever-so-subtly distorted. The most obvious difference between the music here and the work of Philip Corner and other contemporary pioneers of Western gamelan is Schmidt's confident foregrounding of repetition. Lines can be just as easily drawn to Java as they can to Steve Reich or Schmidt's longtime collaborator Paul Dresher. Schmidt is one of the primary architects for a distinctly American gamelan style, influenced as much by Javanese traditions as it is by American minimal process music. Berkeley Gamelan is the name bestowed by Schmidt onto both his one-of-a-kind instruments and the ensemble he formed to play them.

Schmidt studied traditional Javanese music and electronic composition at Cal Arts in the early 1970s before moving to Northern California, where, with the encouragement of the composer Lou Harrison, he built a gamelan by hand from aluminum and wood. Daniel Schmidt & The Berkeley Gamelan - In My Arms, Many Flowers LPĭaniel Schmidt has been a Bay Area new music institution for generations, but the release of In My Arms, Many Flowers marks the first time any of his recordings have been available to the public, save for an obscure 1986 cassette.

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