The Eastcote Studios Session by Borbetomagus

 new LP coming 25th November

We are thrilled to announce the release of the new and very rare studio album by US noise legends Borbetomagus titled “The Eastcote Studios Session” – Dancing Wayang Records’ 11th offering. Recorded at the eponymous studio it unites fire-breathing saxophonists Jim Sauter, Don Dietrich and face-flaying guitarist Donald Miller whom together summon one of their most forceful yet detailed sonic onslaughts to date.
This limited edition LP is pressed on 180 gram black vinyl and comes housed in our customary hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves featuring a specially created collage by renowned British artist (and Royal Academician) Richard Wilson. Liner notes were produced courtesy of Edwin Pouncey (Savage Pencil / The Wire).

Release is slated for 25th November. Pre-order your copy (with free digital download) HERE.

Stream an excerpt of Side A’s “DIS” from the album HERE.

Pre-order a copy of the album or hand-screenprinted cover art poster in our STORE.

All LP pre-orders will ship on or shortly after 25th November. Downloads will automatically become available on the 25th.

LP Launch & Premiere of A Pollock Of Sound

The Only Documentary On Borbetomagus

Londoners will have the opportunity to grab an early copy of the LP and watch the brand new feature length documentary A Pollock Of Sound which charts the music and history of Borbetomagus. With contributions from Byron Coley, Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano and, of course, the band themselves, the film exhibits a raw, urgent and unpolished vision of a band that has spent almost four decades defining and redefining their music.

This event takes place at Close-Up Cinema off Brick Lane at 8 pm on Sunday 20th November.

Watch the trailer of A Pollock Of Sound.

Our Back Catalogue Is Back

We’ve purged our archives and have unearthed more copies of ALL of our releases. And that’s not all, many of them include the much coveted free 3″ bonus disks that were released with the first 100 copies of our first ten LPs. We’re no longer producing these, so this is your very last chance to get your hands on them.

Amongst all other releases we have back in stock the long sold out Needs! by Mats Gustafsson, Tsktsking by Chris Corsano & John Edwards and Anicca by Phil Minton & Okkyung Lee.

Don’t sleep, we have extremely low numbers of some of these LPs and once they are gone, they’re gone. So head right over to our store.

And last but not least…

Digital Is Coming. Promise.
We’ve been talking about offering all our releases in the digital format for some time and this project has not been shelved. We’re working on it and will soon be launching our Bandcamp page where you will be able to buy all eleven releases as downloads only. In the meantime, remember that the latest four titles all come with a free download when you buy the LP.

BRING US SOME HONEST FOOD by Alan Courtis & Aaron Moore – OUT NOW!

We are very excited to announce the release of Dancing Wayang’s 10th LP – the studio recording by Argentine guitarist Alan Courtis (Reynols) & British drummer / multi-instrumentalist Aaron Moore (Volcano The Bear) called Bring Us Some Honest Food. Recorded last year at London’s Fish Factory this limited edition LP album is pressed on 180 gram black vinyl and comes housed in our customary hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves.

It is a disorienting experience to listen deeply to Bring Us Some Honest Food. These lengthy pieces sound densely structured and composed with the precision of a Glen Gould tape edit, but with a seat-of-yr-pants improv feel which brings the threat of collapse and chaos. In that sense it echoes krautrock pioneers going crazy with tape and razor blades decades ago, with a similarly kosmische expansiveness, but filtered through a wealth of avant knowledge and praxis. In short, neither salon nor sweat-pit, though informed by both.

Liner notes come courtesy of Tom Recchion (LAFMS, Smegma) who says that “These guys aren’t following anyone. Stopped dead in my tracks, trying to be fair, objective, but when music humbles you, that is when it becomes so glorious, stupefying and has the power to bring one to their knees.“

The LP comes with a free digital download when purchased directly from our web store HERE. The first 100 copies also come with a free 3″ bonus CDR featuring an extra special blend of Courtis / Moore sounds.

Stream a track from the album on Soundcloud.
Buy a copy in our STORE.

Oren Ambarchi & Eli Keszler ALPS – new LP out now

Today marks the release of ALPS – the first collaborative album by Oren Ambarchi and Eli Keszler. It is available for purchase HERE.

Two side-long pieces that mix improv, noise, rock, and drone, Alps is never an easy listen but always a compelling one. Both musicians are compulsive collaborators, with individual oeuvres that span all those genres and others yet to be labelled, and this album reflects and distills their hard-working heritage. They have a similar approach to questioning the fundamentals and exploring the sonic properties of their chosen instruments in a way that is informed by musical theory and learning but manifests itself in a defiantly non-academic, visceral and physical sound, both in intent and experience.

Listen to Alps I extract: http://bit.ly/1qhT2QQ

A truly international record, Alps was recorded at our usual haunt Eastcote Studios, London. Mixed by Oren and Joe Talia in Melbourne, it was then mastered and cut by Rashad Becker in Berlin and finally pressed onto 180 gram black virgin vinyl by Record Industry in the Netherlands.

Wrapped in hand-screenprinted and hand-numbered fold out sleeves designed by Eli specifically for this LP, Alps also features insightful and rather appetizing liner notes by C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core).

The first 100 copies are accompanied by our customary free 3″ bonus CDR featuring an exclusive mix called Alps Combined. On top of that a free digital download of the album is available with each direct purchase of the vinyl from us.

For the first time we are also selling a very limited number of cover art posters. Screenprinted on 300 gsm heavy Heritage White paper in London by the Dancing Wayang crew, these would look amazing framed! Purchase one by selecting the relevant option HERE.

And finally a reminder that, in celebration of our ninth release, we are offering a 15% discount on all of our previous in-stock LPs from now until the end of the month.  This includes the recently released album Motion by N.E.W. of which we have only a few copies left. If you don’t own Peter Evans‘s solo platter, Astral Social Club‘s ecstatic cacophony or Directing Hand‘s beautiful and dramatic free-folk LP, this is a good time to complete your collection!

N.E.W.’s “Motion” LP out today!

We’re super excited that our brand new longplayer “Motion” by Steve Noble, John Edwards and Alex Ward aka N.E.W. is officially out today!

…”this is a free-jazz-rock-thrash-metal-noise-swing-impro trio, what more can you want?” – Free Jazz Blog

If you haven’t yet bought your copy, we still have a few of the super limited 3″ bonus disk edition left in our store. These are only available from the musicians and us directly and are sold on a first come first serve basis. Each purchase from our store will also get a free instant download of the album.

“Nippy, hyperkinetic percussion and head-down bass thrummage gel into a thickly propulsive surge, which Ward smears with aching, in the red histrionics. […] Sure, it’s preposterously overblown. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun.” – The Wire Magazine

“Dancing Wayang has bottled lightning with this one.” – Ears For Eyes (How could we possibly disagree?)

All pre-orders are being sent out this week along with their bonus disks. Downloads will become automatically available to all that have purchased the vinyl.

For those of you residing in London, we will be celebrating the launch of “Motion” with a gig at Cafe Oto this Friday, 7th March. Brave the rain and come rock out with us! Doors open at 8 pm, tickets are £6 adv / £8 on the door. Further details can be found at Cafe Oto’s website HERE.

We are still offering a 15% discount on our other in-stock LPs until the end of March. If you don’t own Peter Evans‘s solo platter, Astral Social Club‘s ecstatic cacophony or Directing Hand‘s beautiful and dramatic free-folk LP, this is a good time to complete your collection!

“Motion” reviewed on Ears For Eyes

By Michael Holland, published 25th February 2014
http://ears4eyes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/new-motion-dancing-wayang.html

The psychic communion of bassist John Edwards and Steve Noble has been commented on many a time, but here it reaches a level of near absurdity; ‘Betting On Now’, the first piece on this explosive slab of vinyl, has a section so completely locked-in that your brain tells you it must be rehearsed were it not for the staggering almost-chaos of its non-structure. This ably displays what makes N.E.W. not only an incredible band, but one of the best improvising groups currently in existence. They collide rock, free-jazz, and improv, in an atom-smashing tight-rope-in-a-hurricane high-energy power-trio; Alex Ward on guitar completing the ensemble. Their live performances are remarkable for their ferocity and fully-committed racket; however, they are never merely a noise splatter; they combine moments of stillness and light winding interplay with sections of careening downhill no-hands-on-the-wheel madness.

The recording of ‘Motion’ captures this all beautifully; you could be in the room with them. It ranges from the already mentioned punkish squall of ‘Betting On Now’ to the austere scraping gong-filled percussive miniature of ‘How It Is’; from the intricately unfolding rhythmic construction of ‘4th & Three’ to the head-smashing instrument destruction at the end of the title track.

N.E.W. are never less than an essential live proposition and ‘Motion’, as brilliant as previous releases ‘Newtoons’ and ‘Deadeye Tricksters’ are, is the album that captures them most accurately; the sort of music that, once heard, I couldn’t imagine not existing. ‘Motion’ is a wonderful document of a band that shouldn’t be taken for granted; see them again and again, and listen to this amazing album with the same attitude. Dancing Wayang has bottled lightning with this one.

“Motion” reviewed at Free Jazz Blog

By Joe, published 24th February 2014
http://www.freejazzblog.org/2014/02/new-motion-dancing-wayang-records-2014.html
****1/2

N.E.W. equals Steve Noble, John Edwards and Alex Ward. I thought this was their debut release, but if you look at the comments section (below) you’ll notice this their 4th release. Anyhow, “Motion” is one killing album. Firstly, just to clear up and any misunderstandings, Alex Ward, normally known as a clarinettist, is playing guitar on this record. Steve Noble – drums, has played with Rip Rig and Panic, Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Peter Brötzmann and about everybody (whose anybody) on the UK free-jazz scene. John Edwards, whom you’ll find liberally throughout this blog, is one of the UK’s top bass players on the improv’ scene. Add those elements together and that means that this is a free-jazz-rock-thrash-metal-noise-swing-impro trio, what more can you want?

Right from the very start the trio launches straight into hard hitting improvised rock. There’s no gentle introduction to this trio, they fire off all guns immediately and then don’t stop until the end of the album 5 tracks later. For anyone familiar with those great improvised sections in King Crimson’s music, then this could be (sort of) the next step in the musical process. The guitar playing of Alex Ward reminds me of the style that Fripp used back in those early Crimson days, although here Alex gets a chance to push boundaries in other directions.

The music focuses around Ward’s guitar which points the trio in the different directions. He winds his way through hard rock and even jazzy ideas on “Betting on Now” (tk1). Here Noble and Edwards support him with swinging drums and walking bass lines. In “Tall & True”(tk3) Steve Noble and John Edwards jump in with some manic rhythms, leaving Alex to gradually creep in with chunky riffing power chords to ‘rock’ the group.

“4th and Three” (tk4), the longest piece on the album (10 minutes) builds from a tremolo idea. The band spends plenty of time exploring space and rhythm, but as the music progresses the guitar gradually steels in with some slide (?) playing, squealing into high registers, whilst the bass and drums rock away – reminding me of some of Rip, Rig and Panic’s musical outings. On “Motion” (tk5), the group bring many of the ideas heard on previous pieces together – silent sections, powerful guitar sounds, hard hitting drums and bass. What makes it all so listen-able is the way they develop the ideas ‘tonally’, and although there’s plenty of sonic probing they always use rhythm or melody as a focal point – if you call distorted bashed chords melodic?

Lastly I should mention the label Dancing Wayang. They produce a very small amount of releases and this is a 300 limited edition LP, as are all their records. Anna (Tjan), the founder of the label tells me that the first 100 copies include a bonus 3″ CDR of the band live, so if you’re interested, don’t hang about!

Highly recommended – could be a good one for all those who like air-guitar also!

“Motion” reviewed in The Wire

By Daniel Spicer, published in The Wire issue 361, March 2014

It’s an enduring cliche that improvisors who play well together enjoy a certain level of telepathic rapport. But with Steve Noble and John Edwards it seems to be the real deal. The drummer and bassist have been working together for so long, and in so many different contexts – including Peter Brötzmann’s European trio, Decoy with organist Alexander Hawkins and countless gigs as a regular rhythm section at London’s Cafe Oto – that they don’t so much react to each other as act as one organism. It’s partly a case of very different personalities finding perfect foil for each other: Noble, a prodigious raconteur, is a hawk-like figure behind the drums, constantly scanning the room, and playing with the same restless energy he brings to conversation; while Edwards, a much more reflective individual, invariably shuts himself into a private world on stage, eyes closed in deep absorption. Then throw Alex Ward into the mix – a true English eccentric with a polite and diffident manner that belies his fondness for searing guitar shredding. Over the last ten years the three of them have forged a collective identity as an unlikely power trio exploring the point where jazz and heavy rock meet free improvisation.

You could call it a kind of free fusion. Ward’s overwrought licks and devilishly fretwork owe a lot to the Olympian feats of post-McLaughlin guitarists like Al Di Meola and Larry Coryell. But, surfing on the edge of Noble’s and Edwards’s constantly mutating inventions, he’s given enough freedom to escape the straightjacket of high seriousness and enjoy himself. This, in essence, is NEW’s secret ingredient: an impetuous sense of humour and an impulse to undermine their own grandiloquent excesses. It’s all there in microcosm in “Betting On Now”, the nearly ten minute opening track on this new studio album. Nippy, hyperkinetic percussion and head-down bass thrummage gel into a thickly propulsive surge, which Ward smears with aching, in the red histrionics. Near boiling point, a lumbering power rock riff suddenly appears from nowhere, holds for around ten seconds before dissolving into a maelstrom of freeform flailing, which in turn flips into an interlude of cheesy cocktail jazz swing with smooth, white-teethed chords bleeding into feedback dive-bombs. Sure, it’s preposterously overblown. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun.

“Motion” reviewed on Touching Extremes

Motion by N.E.W. – LP coming March 2014

After a voluntary hiatus, we’re back with some exciting news to announce.

On the 3rd March we’ll finally be releasing a new LP. It’s called “Motion” by Steve Noble, John Edwards and Alex Ward – collectively known as N.E.W. And we’re taking pre-orders right now.

For anyone who’s seen them live, N.E.W. seem to embody the classic power trio… whether we’re talking jazz or rock, it’s the power that counts! Alex on guitar contorts wildly, both sonically and physically, thrashing in his chair to the death metal moves in his head, Steve sits rock steady and immutable at his drum kit, other than his limbs, which form a chaotic blur producing the most precise of sounds, and John has eyes tight shut and explores, brutalizes and caresses every facet of his bass. This record is as close as you get to the exhilarating experience of seeing N.E.W. play live.

In true Dancing Wayang tradition, this album was recorded at London’s Eastcote Studios, has been pressed on 180 gram vinyl and comes packaged in screenprinted sleeves. All copies are individually hand-numbered. The first 100 will be accompanied by our customary bonus 3″ CDR this time featuring two studio outtakes. Liner notes were specifically penned by Thurston Moore, a collaborator of all three protagonists, and they are some liners!

Finally moving into the 21st Century, we’ll be offering a free digital download with every direct purchase of the LP from our new online store. The bonus edition will be sold on a first come first serve basis, so click HERE to pre-order your copy now.

To celebrate the release of “Motion” we’re offering a 15% discount on our other in-stock LPs. If you don’t own Peter Evans‘s solo platter, Astral Social Club‘s ecstatic cacophony or Directing Hand‘s beautiful and dramatic free-folk LP, this is a good time to complete your collection!

Moving ahead we are super excited to be able to announce that our next LP will be a collaboration of Oren Ambarchi & Eli Keszler. It’s already been recorded and mixed and is sounding AMAZING! We’re now working on putting the rest of the jigsaw together. So keep checking our website, our Facebook or Twitter feeds for updates.

And lastly, we are also working on offering digital releases of all of our older LPs very soon and will be letting you know as and when these are ready. Keep your ears pricked!

preparing a N.E.W. album

After taking a year out from making albums, we are excited to be working on a new release by… N.E.W.

N.E.W. is the trio of Steve Noble on drums, John Edwards on double bass and Alex Ward on electric guitar. All three stalwarts of the London improv scene, this super tight unit works at the junction of jazz and rock. And they’ll put a smile on your face!

The LP, which will feature the traditional 3″ bonus CDR with the first 100 copies of the vinyl, was recorded at our old haunt Eastcote Studios and is currently being mixed.

We’ll be posting more updates here as and when… so keep checking back.

Drums

Bass

Guitar