Blank Forms Upcoming Releases

Source: Blank Forms.

Catherine Christer Hennix
Unbegrenzt LP
Recorded in February of 1974, Hennix’s realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Unbegrenzt” is an elaboration both rigorous and radically different from the canonical 1969 recording issued by Shandar. Taking a mature, minimal iteration of Stockhausen’s compositional method of “moment-forming” to heart, her version’s dark, controlled feedback and amplified bowed gong subtly shift through an immanent sequence of formative moments, step by step. Its bubbling computer noise, percussion, and repeated ominous transient sounds of temple blocks over bowed gong take Stockhausen’s score into deeper vistas of the unconscious and a more devastating opening to the unlimited time and space of a dreaming mind.

Still House Plants
Fast Edit LP
The second LP by the Glasgow and South London-based Still House Plants, Fast Edit is an astonishing cohabitation of fractured R&B, wistful sensitivity, and harmolodic guitar. With punk autonomy, Still House Plants navigate a similarly divergent approach to ostensibly kindred artists Linda & Sonny Sharrock or James “Blood” Ulmer, but instead cite the cut-up affect of UK garage as the impetus for their sparse treatment of chords and words as samples; stuttered, fragmented, and permuted by living drums, guitar, and Hickie-Kallenach’s unmistakable husky voice.

Exotic Sin
Customer’s Copy LP
Debut LP of contorted cosmic jazz and eccentric minimal electronics by Exotic Sin. This duo of Naima Karlsson and Kenichi Iwasa first came together for a performance celebrating the art and music of Karlsson’s grandparents, Moki and Don Cherry, before continuing as an independent unit that still incorporates some of the Cherrys’ instruments as well as their synergetic integration of music with artistic practice. Reminiscent of a number of leftfield jazz-meets-electronics ‘70s duos from Don Cherry’s maverick collaborations with Jon Appleton and Terry Riley through to Anthony Braxton’s work with Richard Teitelbaum and İlhan Mimaroğlu and Freddie Hubbard’s Sing Me a Song of Songmy.

Masayuku Takayanagi
New Direction Unit
Axis/Another Revolvable Thing
The second installment of Blank Forms’ archival reissues of the music of Japan’s eternal revolutionary Masayuki Takayanagi. Comprised of recordings of a September 5, 1975 concert, the two-part set showcases Takayanagi in deep pursuit of what he began calling “non-section music” after leaping beyond the confines of his prior descriptor “real jazz.” The quartet of Takayanagi, Kenji Mori, Nobuyoshi Ino, and Hiroshi Yamazaki deftly explores the twin poles of Takayanagi’s spacious “gradually projection” and explosively virulent “mass projection” concepts across six pieces, titled Fragments I – VI.