Diving into Ramble Records: an indipendent label who loves experimental guitar music
Diving into the huge catalogue of iconic indipendent label Rable Records, specialising in under-represented outsider music: guitar music, exp electro, acid/avant folk, psych, no wave, post-punk, free
Ramble Records Mail-order record shop specializing in niche music
Music | Ramble Records (bandcamp.com)
Ramble Records is an Independent record label based in Melbourne, Australia, following a niche music site. Although the plan to launch a label had been germinating for some years, it did not hatch until Melbourne's first lockdown in 2020. The philosophy and/or motivation of this lavel is to promote underrepresented yet captivating music, challenging, thought provoking, interesting yet undervalued or underrepresented music. The type of music that major labels and most radio stations ignore!
Initially the focus was intended to be purely on fingerpicking and guitar-based music but has now been extended to include jazz/ improvised, experimental/avant-garde, post-punk, psych, outsider, lo-fi, Indian classical and other music forms from around the world.
After releasing 20 LPs in 2021, and receiving favourable response by peers, artists, reviewers and radio shows, Ramble decided to co-release with other simpatico labels and extend its model to include a mail-order focussing on niche labels releasing underground music that would otherwise may not have a platform to sell in the Oceana region.
Labels Ramble Records promotes and sells include but are not limited to: Relative Pitch, Elektrohasch, Echodelick Records, Sulatron, Husky Pants, Tall Grass Records, Riot City, Aum fidelity /Tao Forms, India Music Archive, An' Archives, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, NoiseAgonyMayhem, Carbon Records, Tour de Bras, WV Sorcerer Production, Tompkins Square, Teranga Beat, Feeding Tube, Sahel Sounds, Incus Records, VDSQ, ESP, Black Editions, Feeding Tube Records, Moonlight Cypress Archetypes, Discus Music, Guruguru Brain, Shame File Music, Amalgam, The Crystal Cabinet, Ultraviolet Light cassette label, Home & Garden.
Five favs from the Ramble Records catalogue
The Art of Prepared Guitar Volume One by Jeff Gburek, 2023
Jeff Gburek. Noises, sounds for all occasions. Organic since 1963. Guitar, electronics, instrument design, field.
https://transparent-abelard.blogspot.com/
The titles bear witness to the irony of daring to make those definitions or attributions. This album however bridges a space between those psychedelic music moments of noise guitar (Syd, Jimi, Kath), no wave, free jazz noise like Sonny Sharock, then Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe, players who probably would never have appeared on the stage together but who did and played a lot to improve guitars better. The resultant discoveries via prepared guitar did not speak of a purely abstract space though. The guitar becomes more modular as Keith observed, applying micro-cassettes and radios over the pick-ups, altering the guitar in various ways also revealed traces of more aboriginal music, ethers and archeological bleed. Guitar aslistening device. An intresting attempting to move into the future of the guitar or the post-guitar (as in the case of Kevin Drumm or Annette Krebs where the guitar became deconstructed and/or displaced into other electro-acoustic processes).
released May 19, 2023
Recorded in March 2023.
songs and hymns 1 by Kawol Samarqandi, 2021
Japanese free improvising guitarist Kawol Samarqandi gently picks his way through a selection of standards and spirituals on Songs and Hymns. Each note and space meticulously chosen and executed with great delicacy to create a canvas that speaks volumes with so few strokes.
Kawol Samarqandi's music seems to go in this direction. If the tactic followed by the "traditional" narration consists in providing the complete information, according to the pertinence criteria inherent in the "world" proposed by the narrator, so that the information coincides with the point of arrival of the listener's experience , satisfying her/his desire to understand what happened and why. Instead, one of the salient features in Kawol Samarqandi's musical narrative is deliberate frustration, calculated by the desire to know. These tender interpretations are instantly recognisable yet each track is stamped with Kawol’s gentle introspection. While similarities to Derek Bailey and Loren Mazzacane Connors can be drawn, Kawol’s mellifluous tone and phrasing belong to him.
released June 18, 2021
Βασιλάραψ: 4 καμινέτα για ντούο κιθάρα (Four Kaminetti for Guitar Duet) by Vasilaraps, 2021
Vasilaraps was a Greek composer of Ethiopian origin. He was an innovator composer of an unprecedented musical style, combining elements of the Greek rebetiko with atonality and 12note technique. Born in 10 of May, 1905 in the suburb Skali (Ano Chora, Syros) with royal roots of the Aksumite kingdom, hence his name.
Guitars: Giannis Arapis and Themis Vasiliou.
Samarpan by Manish Pingle, 2022
“It all started with either a guitar, bass or synth improvisation as basis, overdubs and / or guest parts to be added later on - partly spontaneous one-takes, others a bit more refined. Leading to a mix of relatively raw, untreated tracks, and some with full post-recording effect / mixing madness. Mostly home recordings, the sax parts were recorded at 4earstudios in Vienna.”
Karl Pelzmann - e-guitars, classical guitar, synths, violin, percussion, fretless bass, bass ukulele, paintings, mix
Guido Spannocchi - 4, 5,10, 11, 13 alto saxophone
Daniel Vujanic - 9,11 e-guitars, synths, processed field recordings
Charlotte Keeffe - 3 trumpet.
Layout and design - Atharwa Deshingkar
Mastering - Anders Peters @ Ghostsound Studios, Stockholm, Sweden.
released November 21, 2022
FIGURE/GROUND electric guitar duos by Henry Kaiser and Anthony Pirog, 2022
Henry Kaiser (born September 19, 1952) is an American guitarist and composer, known as an idiosyncratic soloist, a sideman, an ethnomusicologist, and a film score composer. Recording and performing prolifically in many styles of music, Kaiser is a fixture on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene. He is considered a member of the "second generation" of American free improvisers.
Anthony Pirog. The guitarist, composer and loops magician is a quiet but ubiquitous force on stages around his hometown. With fearsome chops and a keen ear for odd beauty, Pirog has helped expand the possibilities of jazz, rock and experimentalism in a town long known for its straight-ahead tradition.
ANTHONY PIROG | CUNEIFORM RECORDS
Ramble Records is an Independent record label based in Melbourne, Australia specialising in an unapologetically disproportionate amount of guitar-based music (but not limited too) acid folk, avant-folk, psych, free jazz, Indian classical and avant-garde sounds from around the globe.
Recorded/improvised/composed/produced by Henry Kaiser and Anthony Pirog February 2021.
Cover painting and art direction: Brandy Gale
The concept of figure and ground fully depends on the observer and not on the item itself. In the typical sonic scenarios people encounter auditory figure and ground signals after overlap in time as well as in frequency content. In these situations, auditory objects are established by integrating sound components over time, timbre, space, and frequency.
released June 30, 2022