The Flow must go on

Three new releases from Accretions

Accretions Records is a slow burner: Initially conceived to be a Print Publication in the mid-80s, it then turned into a company purely designed to release albums by Marcos Fernandes, a Japanese artists now residing in the USA. Fernandes didn't have the big bucks to make it all the way to the billboard charts, but he had a strong vision of what he wanted his music to sound like: Different, foremost, not restricted to any stylistic borders and open for collaborations. 1994 his imprint turned into a fully fledged label and has now reached a catalog of more than 30 CDs overall. Two highly interesting new ones have just been released:

Oetz/Wagner/Stuart's "Permanent Flow" is a fine example of the experimental school of Jazz, which shares a common intersection with radical new acoustic music. The band was set up in Cologne, Germany, as a freely organised ensemble of artists from various genres. Led by Composer and Contra-Bassist Joscha Oetz, they quickly embarked on an American tour, then returned and changed from a Quartet into a trio. "Permanent Flow" catches them on a night in San Diego, when the heat was on. It ain't James Brown, but it's still "paradoxically grooving".

The second new release is by Damon Holzborn, one of Trummerflora's many members and a respectable artist in his own right. "Adams & Bancroft" (don't ask us what that stands for) takes field recordings to a news step: Instead of merely keeping them as they are or manipulating them by the means of computer techniques, he is instead trying to play them. How will a plucked bird sound like? Or a strummed freight train? Answers to questions like these can be found on the album, which, judging from the excerpts on the label's homepage, are subject to heavy mood swings.

Homepage: Accretions Records
Homepage: Joscha Oetz
Homepage: Damon Holzborn