Black Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages.

The pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream.

At the time of its first release, Quixotism was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms. More

Preview: https://soundcloud.com/dkr-nyc/sets/dkr-286-v-a-prince-philip

This compilation is dedicated to the memory of the late great “Prince” Philip Smart - the first apprentice of King Tubby and the first engineer at Tubby’s studio besides Tubby himself. Alongside Tubby, Philip was integral to the innovation that took place at Tubby’s studio in the mid 1970s, where the mixing of new roots reggae revolutionized the sound of Jamaican music and created styles and techniques that are still being echoed today, nearly 50 years later.

Though rarely credited on records in comparison to Tubby, Philip also mixed a lot of the paramount music produced by those close associates of Tubby’s studio such as Bunny Lee, Yabby You, and Augustus Pablo. Philip was closely tied to Pablo due to their childhood friendship and was a partner in his stylistically significant early production works. In the early years of Tubby’s studio, both men were making and cutting custom dubs there for their sound systems before starting to produce their own tunes from scratch, and Philip becoming the second chair engineer.

Several of the songs on this compilation are a selection of the aforementioned work. All of the songs here are sourced from Philip’s personal tape archive, and basically all of these mixes and versions have been scarcely if ever heard, and never released before. This double album comprises a rare and genuine glimpse into the dubplate workings of the inner circle of Tubby’s studio in the mid 1970s, where the prime players and emerging giants of reggae music production and sound system versioned, remixed and voiced rhythms for custom and exclusive cuts. Some of the cuts heard here were formerly exclusive power plays on King Tubby’s own legendary sound system, and unlike some previous issues of such material, these are genuine mixes done at the time. Some other tracks clearly exude the youthful enthusiasm of the participants. In both cases we find this collection of tracks to be truly compelling, so please enjoy this glimpse into such rare air. Rest in power Prince Philip Smart.

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Tracklist 2LP:
A-Seite
1. Black Poppies
2. denver luna
3. Techno Shinkansen
4. and the colour red

B-Seite
5. Sweet Lands Experience
6. Lewis In Pomona
7. Hilo Sky
8. Burst Of Laughter

C-Seite
9. King Of Haarlem
10. Ottavia
11. denver luna (acapella)

D-Seite
12. Gene Pool
13. Oh Thorn!
14. Iron Bones
15. Stick Man Test
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