WADA, YOSHI - OFF THE WALL (CD)

"Digitally remastered, cardboard paper, gatefold sleeve, original 1985 liner notes English & Japanese text Scarce photo. Third installment from the joint production of EM Records & Omega Point. The long-awaited reissue of Wada's 1985 LP Off the wall, recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ('massive', as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), Off the wall features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri. The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by Jost Geber, who captured the power and dynamics of the quartet without losing the meditative delicacy of the bagpipes and the intricacy of their interplay with the homemade organ, resulting in a slowly evolving mosaic of combination tones and overtones. Simultaneously static yet changing, rooted and ethereal, homespun and alien, ancient and very modern, the music is created entirely with acoustic instruments but has 'electronic' textures at times, yet is very warm and human, always pulsing, shifting and mutating. EM Records is pleased indeed to release Off the wall for the first time ever on cd, with the bonus track 'Die Konsonanten Pfeifen (The Consonant Pipes)', a slightly earlier recording with Wada and Hankin on bagpipes and Kevin Newhoff on percussion, originally released as a cassette." (label info)