Label: Ubi Ku

200部限定帯付き、ナム・ジュン・パイク展でのライブ録音!!当店にて異例のセールスを記録した、あのパティ・スミス&Soundwalk CollectiveのLPを出版したイタリアのレーベルUbi Kuによる第二弾タイトル!!00年代初頭より活動するエクスペリメンタル・バンドXiu Xiuに参加、個人ではマルチインストゥルメンタリストとして活動するAngela Seo。10年以上にわたりソロ作品を追求、本作では流麗ながらも鬼気迫るピアノ即興を主軸に、BサイドではPhewのサポートを受けノイズと沈黙が絶えず入れ替わる予測不能のジェスチャーを継続。付属のブックレットには、即興と仏教思想の深い繋がりを探るエッセイと、作家自身による耳を傾けるという実践についての考察を掲載。

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A cascading piano improvisation by Xiu Xiu's Hyunhye Seo, recorded live during a Nam June Paik exhibition in Turin. On Side B, Japanese avant-garde pioneer Phew reinterprets Seo's performance into a new electronic landscape. Music as surrender, dialogue between performer, space and the present moment.
200 copies. Comes with Obi. For over a decade, Hyunhye Seo a core member of Xiu Xiu, in her solo work navigates the precarious edges where composition dissolves into pure gesture. Through ecstatic piano improvisations, restless percussive attacks and an expansive use of acoustic space, she constructs layered sonic environments that move across the boundaries of noise, avant-garde jazz, ambient and contemporary classical music. Her performances reveal an unfiltered process of listening and creation - a practice in which thinking becomes the enemy, and surrender the only viable strategy.

Continuation captures one such surrender. Recorded live at MAO - Museo d'Arte Orientale in Turin during the exhibition Rabbit Inhabits the Moon – The Art of Nam June Paik in the Mirror of Time, this cascading piano improvisation unfolds as a dialogue between performer, space and the particular acoustics of a museum built to house contemplative objects. Jamie Stewart processes the sound in real time; Giuseppe Ielasi shapes the final mix. What emerges is a work of charged immediacy - restless gestures giving way to passages of unexpected tenderness, noise and silence trading places in continuous exchange. The title is precise: this is music that refuses conclusion, that exists in a state of perpetual becoming. On Side B, Continuous Extension offers an unprecedented response. Phew - the pioneering figure of Japanese avant-garde music since the late 1970s - was invited by curators Chiara Lee and Freddie Murphy to reinterpret Seo's performance. Working with synthesizer and subtle processing, Phew distills the resonances of Continuation into a new electronic landscape - waves of abstraction that echo like reflections in sound, tracing the harmonic tensions of Seo's playing into territories she herself did not visit.

The accompanying booklet includes an essay by Bruno Lo Turco exploring the deep connections between improvisation and Buddhist thought, and a written reflection by Seo on her own practice of surrender and listening.

Continuation is released on Ubi Kū, the record label of the Unione Buddhista Italiana. The cover reproduces Avalokitesvara "Water and Moon" from the Museo d'Arte Orientale "E. Chiossone" in Genoa - the bodhisattva of compassion gazing at the reflection of the moon in water. Like that reflection, this music exists fully in the present, complete and unrepeatable.