Shanghai Quintet (with A23H): ShangShan/Stone Age Music (KSE #379)

Shanghai Quintet

Alfred 23 Harth’s BERLIN ENSEMBLES, KSE #363

with Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Clayton Thomas, Fabrizio Spera, Elliott Sharp, A23H

recorded live at Aufsturz, Berlin 2015

Kepler 452b Edition

Kepler 452b Edition (KSE #336)

Kendra Steiner Editions 10th Anniversary Album (KSE #331)

KSE #331

Camellia (KSE #318)

Alfred 23 Harth & John Bell

Stellenbosch (KSE #298)

GIFT FIG: 

the duo of ALFRED 23 HARTH & CARL STONE, “STELLENBOSCH” (KSE #298), live in South Africa 9/2014

link to Kendra Steiner Editions (KSE)

China Collection (KSE #275)

July 2014

Including sound sources from:

Cheng Xu, Jun-Y Ciao, MaiMai, Yi Tao, A23H (Shanghai Quintet),

Alok, Dickson Dee, Sherman Ho, Sin:Ned (Hong Kong),

Duo Goebbels/Harth LP Frankfurt/Peking + Otomo Yoshihide’s / Ground Zero’s Revolutionary Pekinese Opera Ver.1.28 (Peking Opera Remix III), Albrecht Kunze

Link to Kendra Steiner Editions (KSE)

The ambitious and audacious CHINA COLLECTION is proof that A23H has no peers in the international underground. This 70+ minute assemblage is truly epic in scope and dense in texture, while still having room to breathe—-in the tradition of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow or Melville’s Mardi or Moby Dick, it’s got EVERYTHING in it, and something else comes into focus with each listening. It’s also full of references and allusions and mirrorings that keep the mind swimming…

From recontextualized slice-and-dice opera to riveting improvisational sequences to  electronics to string passages to disembodied voices to turntabling to lyrical reed passages to every imaginable permutation of a seemingly limitless collection of sound sources, the CHINA COLLECTION is a massive release, and every copy comes with a liner-note insert where Mr. Harth discusses the overall project and each track in detail. It’s not just a comprehensive “sampler” of Harth’s China-related activity the last few years; it’s also a sound-sculpture created FROM those pieces of activity. Although this is Harth’s 6th release for KSE, it is totally different from each of the others, and as someone who has been listening to experimental music since my teenage years, I can say that I’ve NEVER heard anything remotely like this. You could isolate any two minute chunk of this album and spend a day getting into its construction and its juxtapositions and the world it creates.

Bill Shute