Amirtha Kidambi, Lea Bertucci Phase Eclipse

Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones join We Jazz Records for their third LP New Monuments, to be released on March 15th.

We can reasonably assume that New York avant-gardist Amirtha Kidambi does not want us to "eat the rich." That being said, she delivers the oft-quoted line with enough snarling disdain to approximate what a more literal order would sound like. By the time she completes the thought — "or die starving" — don't be surprised if you find yourself contemplating its ethics just a bit too deeply.

The second release by Amirtha Kidambi's ensemble Elder Ones, From Untruth is comprised of four pieces grappling with issues of power, oppression, capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, violence and the shifting nature of truth. This music means to give the listener momentary relief from the anxiety and pain caused by living in our current reality.

As Ben Ratliff wrote in the New York Times, the aggressive and sublime first album by the band Elder Ones, Holy Science, is a kind of gauge for how strong and flexible the scene of young musicians in New York's improvised and experimental music world can be. At the center of it are drones and phonemes. The group's leader, the 30-year-old composer and singer Amirtha Kidambi, holds forth behind a harmonium, the small keyboard instrument with hand-pumped bellows; it's commonly used in bhajan, the Indian devotional-singing tradition that was central to her musical experience while growing up in a South Indian family.

In the middle of a two-week residency at Sonoscopia by American saxophonist and composer Lea Bertucci, the first national state of emergency is declared. Circulation restrictions, canceled concerts and flights, and above all, an awakening to a completely new reality. In an almost apocalyptic scenario, where uncertainty and fear were complemented with some fascination for living in a science fiction scenario, the first days of isolation were spent recording and rethinking a large part of our lives as musicians.

Acclaimed NYC experimental musician Lea Bertucci explores dissonance, drone and dynamics with two new longform compositions for strings, electronics, harp and percussion on "Of Shadow and Substance".

On April 15th SA Recordings present a new LP and sample library from the acclaimed New York composer, performer and sound designer Lea Bertucci. A work of three interlinked incarnations, ‘Acoustic Shadows’ began as an event, which then became an album and has inspired a sample library for other musicians.

Winds Bells Falls is the meeting between two of New York’s most unconventional musicians, sound artist Lea Bertucci and multi-everything instrumentalist Robbie Lee. The duo mix colorful free improv with musique concrete, sculpting experimental instrumental noise into a fascinating and even joyful encounter. On the album Lee plays medieval and baroque woodwinds, celeste (bell keyboard), and tubular chimes, while Bertucci live-manipulates and mangles his playing, hands inside a reel-to-reel tape machine, transforming and transfiguring in real time.

We’re excited to welcome New York City-based composer and performer Lea Bertucci back to NNA for a brand new full-length LP, ‘Metal Aether.’ Lea’s early 2017 cassette release ‘All That Is Solid Melts Into Air’ focused on her role as a composer, with a hand-picked selection of talented musicians performing her minimal compositions. ‘Metal Aether’ instead showcases her role as a performer, revealing four pieces that represent approximately 3 years of ideas and gestures for alto saxophone and magnetic tape. Expanding on 2014’s ‘Light Silence, Dark Speech’ as well as 2015’s ‘Axis/Atlas,’ ‘Metal Aether’ develops a language of extended technique for alto saxophone that is based on a spectral, psychoacoustic, and non-linguistic approach to the instrument.