TRACKLISTING:
1. Space Between
2. Moment
3. Pendulum
4. Drops
5. The Other Side
6. The Boatman
7. Land of None
8. Pizz Trance
9. Pedal Down


OVERVIEW:
London-based trio Quest Ensemble present a distinctive twist on the traditional piano trio format. A collaboration between three powerful performers/composers, 'The Other Side' sees musical styles woven together into a lyrical tapestry of sound, blending improvisation with co-created original compositions. A truly unique ensemble in compositional process and performance style.

On 5th June, Quest Ensemble will release their sophomore album 'The Other Side'. With nods to influences as broad as the contemporary minimalism of John Adams and Steve Reich, the experimental melancholic textures of Radiohead to the progressive jazz precision of Brad Mehldau, 'The Other Side' inhabits its own soundworld somewhere in the gaps between chamber, jazz, folk and contemporary classical music.

From the emotive 'Moments', the elasticated melodies of 'Pendulum', to the fluid lines and compelling urgency of 'The Boatman' and 'Pedal Down', Quest Ensemble's compositions fuse layered melodies and rhythmic patterns to create contrapuntal webs of sound. The process involves sharing improvised ideas, building up layers of music on each instrument to create a patchwork of musical themes with a rich vein of surging Reichian rhythms underpinning each.

Fusing their backgrounds in western classical, Indian classical, jazz and improvisational technique, Filipe Sousa (piano), Tara Franks (cello) and Preetha Narayanan (violin) are all graduates of the Guildhall School of Music Leadership Programme.

In May 2014, Quest Ensemble released their much-lauded debut album 'Footfall', a collection of part-composed and part-improvised original compositions, steeped in the sense of place that inspired the sound and imagination of their stories. From an ancient leper hospice in Oxford to a stark urban underground rehearsal space, each piece poetically reflects a moment in time, a passing footfall.

Since 2009, Quest Ensemble have regularly worked with schools, colleges, youth and community groups across the UK, leading creative music projects with musicians of all ages and backgrounds, transferring their collaborative composition methods to community settings, enabling others to experience their way of working. Most recently, the trio were commissioned to create a show with visual artist Somang Lee that was premiered at Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal as a part of the Big Bang Festival 2018.

Organisations and charities Quest Ensemble have worked with include The Barbican, Aldeburgh Music, Music First, Beita Musica (Palestine), and Sunland Express (Mexico).


Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More

TRACKLIST:
A1. Circadian Rhythm - Shela
A2. Kum - One Day With Kakusuko
A3. 10T - Israel
A4. Abnormal Sex - NHK
A5. T. Isotani - 1/2 Orange
A6. Mask - In and Out
A7. Mosque of Torment - Ceramic Dance

B1. T. Tukimoto - Did The Thought Of Love Surpass Everything?
B2. T. Kamada - Muzikapart
B3. Y. Tabata - Summer Initiation
B4. Cat Dog - Grain
B5. Young Hormones - Egg
B6. K. Usami - Soma Illusion

LP FORMAT DETAILS: standard weight, black vinyl.

OVERVIEW: Japan’s cult, half-forgotten goldmine DD. Records opened and closed within a few frantic years. In that short time (from 1980 to 1985), they released exactly 222 cassettes (and a handful of vinyl records) of the strangest, boldest, most arresting and addictively subversive music within their social and creative circles.

Each of their cassette releases came with abstract, xerographic artwork, often created by the musician themselves, while the label’s recorded output encompassed avant-punk, Cubist ambient music, sound collage, pop concréte, jazz-prog, early computer music, and anything else their roster cared to throw at them. Housed in sleeves of found imagery taken from classical and Medieval literature, contemporary and historic photography, science textbooks, magazines, homemade erotica, and endless more, these records reveal not only the strength of the community the label had fostered, but also the insular self-reference and in-jokes that kept the music from outsiders for decades.

Two facets of DD. Records shine through even this unique story: firstly, they were friends. Founder T. [Tadashi] Kamada formed the label alone, but it wasn’t long before he was joined by like-minded allies T. [Teruo] Nakamura, K. [Koshiro] Yoshimatsu, K. [Keiichi] Usami, and T. [Takafumi] Isotani, among a few others. All were contributors to Kamada’s tape-trading network The Recycle Circle, formed at the University of Yamanashi, most of its members at the time around 20 years old. Their bond was a love of exploratory sounds and a hunger for deeper excavations into the tunnels and caves of experimental music. “An independent, private circle where members who owned expensive records or rare imported vinyl with limited distribution could send a cassette tape and a return postage stamp to dub the record back to each other for free,” Usami explains, in interview with Jon Dale for Bandcamp Daily.

Secondly, the aforementioned cassettes remained almost entirely unavailable to the world outside Japan, with only a single US retailer engaged to carry the releases. Forty plus years hence, many of the records have been lost to time, but occasionally surface when (so writes an online observer) “a private collector has a medical bill to cover.” A German archivist, Jorg Öpitz, is primarily (and almost exclusively) responsible for the entire English-language directory of the label’s output, cataloguing online surviving and lost cassettes with completist dedication. Largely autodidactic and almost always hermetic, this company of hobbyist and amateur (and in many cases, totally untrained) musicians rarely performed live. Many of them collaborated remotely, sending home-recorded tapes and collaged artwork in the post. “[We were] isolated from the rest of the [Japanese] indie movement,” Usami remembers. Strangely, and sadly for many, Tadashi Kamada has completely retired from public view. According to one-time collaborators, it is likely he is unaware of the cult following his label has garnered over the decades. Some sources point to a successful career in consumer electronics, a family, and a contented indifference to his early experiments in record label curation. But no-one seems certain about these details, none of which has harmed the image of a label that revels in mythmaking. An artefact left behind was Disk Musik.

Though compilations were not unknown to DD. Records, vinyl was rare. Only a handful of Kamada titles - presumably self-funded - were released on vinyl, right at the start of the label’s life, and it is not until 1985 and Disk Musik that the format reemerges. It appears to be their final release: a parting gift to neatly bookend five feverish years of new music, rubber stamping their creative identity. In the twenty-first century, the second hand market for original copies is limited to scarce private sales at seriously hefty prices. There are endless and curious gems within.

OTHER ACTIVITY: https://www.phantom-limb.co.uk/

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More

TRACKLIST:
A1. OHYUNG - You Are Always On My Mind
A2. OHYUNG - No Good
A3. OHYUNG - Dog Medicine
A4. OHYUNG - I Swear That I Could Die Rn
A5. OHYUNG - 5 Strings {lake} Ft. J. Fisher
B1. OHYUNG - Crush
B2. OHYUNG - Dancing On The Soft Knife
B3. OHYUNG - Im Holding Close The Memory Fades
B4. OHYUNG - Id Rather Be A Ghost By Your Side Than Enter Heaven Without You
B5. OHYUNG - Years Ago
B6. OHYUNG - Im Coming Towards You

LP FORMAT DETAILS: Standard weight black vinyl.

OVERVIEW:
Vital NYC experimental solo artist OHYUNG explores their own gender transition with arresting new album of trip-hop laced, rave-inspired electronic songwriting You Are Always On My Mind.

Lia Ouyang Rusli describes their new album as OHYUNG as “my trans self and my former self in conversation, from both perspectives.” The record represents their lengthy, complicated, but crucial journey between lives, strewn with both doubt and excitement. It is an ecstatic, pop-oriented shift in direction from an artist primarily known for noise, experimental hip-hop, and ambient music, but carried with sleek confidence, maturity, and a silvery, hallucinogenic shimmer that reveals Rusli’s experimental background. It is, writes Rusli, “sometimes written from a dark place and other times from a place of happiness.” Throughout, darkness and light rise and fall in layers of phased strings, trip-hop drum production, and earworming vocal lines.

Also a film score composer, Rusli’s songwriting craft is meticulous and nuanced. You Are Always On My Mind was, perhaps surprisingly, formed primarily from processed “generic string loops” found in online sample packs - a strange and wilfully jarring reminder that what seems to be is not always what is. Recontextualised, these string loops enshadow the simplicity of their origins and reveal a grace and purposefulness perhaps not even imagined by their authors, subtly drawing out euphoria and tension in equal balance.

Rusli also writes of the influence of rave culture central to their transition, and of the record’s production and theme. “It’s a declaration of love for raves and the dark hazy rooms that helped me to be free and true with myself— seeing other people who are so free and beautiful and thinking that one day that can be me— that’s me in the future.” But there is also a fear and unease present. Key moment “no good” explores “the worst version of myself as a trans person, feeding doubt to my pre-transition self” with its core lyric anyone can see / I’m no good for you, delivered over a relentless beat, swooning strings, and glistening synthesis.

Later, “i swear that i could die rn” renders a Spectreish Motown beat lamenting and lush with breathy synths and knife-edge melodies that eventually yield a hazy, gliding string section, created again from mutated, spliced, and transitioned royalty-free sample packs. The track is about “seeing my beautiful friends at raves and feeling at home appreciating the harsh noises of hardcore techno and acid. Feeling that I could die at this moment and be happy.”

OHYUNG is Lia Ouyang Rusli’s alter ego and solo project. They are an Asian American musician and artist based in Brooklyn. Their first album Untitled (Chinese Man with Flame) was released by Deathbomb Arc. In 2020, OHYUNG released their sophomore album PROTECTOR (Chinabot), an experimental rap cross-genre collision through distorted 808s, pitch-shifted rapping, frenetic pop energy, and ambient loops. In 2022 OHYUNG released their collection of ambient soundscapes on NNA Tapes titled imagine naked! and was described by The Quietus as a “masterful selection of muscular, shuddering, trembling ambient excursions” and was hailed by NPR as one of the best 50 albums of 2022.

As a film composer, formerly known as Robert Ouyang Rusli, they have scored A24's Problemista and HBO's Fantasmas by Julio Torres, Neo Sora’s Happyend (2024 Venice International Film Festival), and the Gotham Award and Independent Spirit nominated films Bruiser on Hulu and Shatara Mitchell Ford’s Test Pattern. They also scored short films Bambirak and Rest Stop which won Jury Awards for International Fiction and US Fiction at Sundance. You Are Always On My Mind is a worldwide co-release between Brooklyn’s NNA Tapes and the UK’s Phantom Limb.

Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More

TRACKLISTING:
1. Space Between
2. Moment
3. Pendulum
4. Drops
5. The Other Side
6. The Boatman
7. Land of None
8. Pizz Trance
9. Pedal Down


OVERVIEW:
London-based trio Quest Ensemble present a distinctive twist on the traditional piano trio format. A collaboration between three powerful performers/composers, 'The Other Side' sees musical styles woven together into a lyrical tapestry of sound, blending improvisation with co-created original compositions. A truly unique ensemble in compositional process and performance style.

On 5th June, Quest Ensemble will release their sophomore album 'The Other Side'. With nods to influences as broad as the contemporary minimalism of John Adams and Steve Reich, the experimental melancholic textures of Radiohead to the progressive jazz precision of Brad Mehldau, 'The Other Side' inhabits its own soundworld somewhere in the gaps between chamber, jazz, folk and contemporary classical music.

From the emotive 'Moments', the elasticated melodies of 'Pendulum', to the fluid lines and compelling urgency of 'The Boatman' and 'Pedal Down', Quest Ensemble's compositions fuse layered melodies and rhythmic patterns to create contrapuntal webs of sound. The process involves sharing improvised ideas, building up layers of music on each instrument to create a patchwork of musical themes with a rich vein of surging Reichian rhythms underpinning each.

Fusing their backgrounds in western classical, Indian classical, jazz and improvisational technique, Filipe Sousa (piano), Tara Franks (cello) and Preetha Narayanan (violin) are all graduates of the Guildhall School of Music Leadership Programme.

In May 2014, Quest Ensemble released their much-lauded debut album 'Footfall', a collection of part-composed and part-improvised original compositions, steeped in the sense of place that inspired the sound and imagination of their stories. From an ancient leper hospice in Oxford to a stark urban underground rehearsal space, each piece poetically reflects a moment in time, a passing footfall.

Since 2009, Quest Ensemble have regularly worked with schools, colleges, youth and community groups across the UK, leading creative music projects with musicians of all ages and backgrounds, transferring their collaborative composition methods to community settings, enabling others to experience their way of working. Most recently, the trio were commissioned to create a show with visual artist Somang Lee that was premiered at Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal as a part of the Big Bang Festival 2018.

Organisations and charities Quest Ensemble have worked with include The Barbican, Aldeburgh Music, Music First, Beita Musica (Palestine), and Sunland Express (Mexico).


Sicherheits- und Herstellerinformationen / safety and manufacturer info (GPSR)
WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
Liebigstrasse 2-20
DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
Contact: [email protected]More