Jason Kahn "Noema" // Editions 003

[Jason Kahn]

Jason Kahn
"Noema"
Editions 003
Double LP

http://jasonkahn.net/editions/catalog/noema.html

Edition of 250
Heavy weight 180 gram vinyl.
Hand-painted covers on thick gray cardboard.
Liner notes.

Source material recorded July to October 2012 in Kyoto.
Pieces composed January 2013 to March 2014 in Zürich.
Mastering, liner notes and LP artwork Jason Kahn

Side A (15.51):
1. Warning Tone (1.14), 2. Temple Dance (1.55), 3. Checkout (1.38), 4. Haunted House (2.05),
5. Winds Away (1.21), 6. Sporting (1.56), 7. Musician (1.16) 8. 100 Yen (1.59)
9. Shopping Arcade (1.38)

Side B (17.32):
1. Kids (2.05), 2. Outside Karaoke (1.47), 3. Hara (2.07), 4. Kyoto Station (1.22), 5. Big Ship (1.30),
6. Parlor (1.51), 7. For Alms (1.12), 8. Fire Warning (1.34), 9. Flea Market (1.34),
10. Ghost Pond (1.36)

Side C (18.49):
1. Sender (2.00), 2. Summer Phase (2.01), 3. Shopping (2.06), 4. Kamogawa (1.38),
5. Temple Ground (2.09), 6. Daybreak (2.10), 7. Footstep (1.55), 8. Enryaku-ji (2.05),
9. Little Shrine (2.00)

Side D (17.16):
1. Shimogama (1.57), 2. Rains (1.35), 3. Underground (1.55), 4. Above (1.43), 5. Coffee Shop (1.43),
6. Announcement (1.25), 7. Night Out (2.19), 8. Sword Fight (1.40), 9. Casting Wish (2.11)

Noema is a collection of 37 short pieces composed from source material I recorded in and around Kyoto
during a three-month stay there with my family in 2012.

The over-arching theme of the record is the idea of exploring social space through everyday sound--and
especially in the case of Kyoto, not just focusing on what we've come to know the city for (temples,
shrines, etc.--though some of these are in there as well).

The pieces also deal with the idea of memory, much as the famous "episode of the madeline" in Marcel
Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, in which the taste of the madeline dipped in tea triggers a flood
of involuntary memories. For me, many of the sounds used in these pieces work the same way.

The word noema is often used in philosophical discourse to describe the object of thought--and in the case of
this record, the sounds themselves and the structures they contribute to in the production of social space.

Excerpts and purchase here:
http://jasonkahn.net/editions/catalog/noema.html

Price including post to Europe: 25.00 euros
Price including post to rest of the world: 30.00 euros

For those in North America the cheapest option would be to order this from Squidco
http://www.squidco.com

For those in Europe, either from myself or Metamkine:
http://www.metamkine.com

Thanks!

[Jason Kahn]

Review from Frans de Waard at Vital Weekly

This double album is packed in the same cardboard that Kahn used for his CD releases when
he still had the Cut label. Now his new enterprise is called Editions, and releases his own work.
With this thick grey cardboard and two pieces of vinyl, this feels like a heavy package. The
music is something different than you would expect from Kahn. Normally you'll find him with
an analogue synthesizer, percussion or laptop playing minimally dense patterns of sounds; on this
double LP he offers a collection of thirty-seven short pieces all recorded in Kyoto. A Polaroid if you
will from the city, 'exploring social space through everyday sound', and not just focusing on things
you may associate Kyoto with, shrines and temples. Each piece is described on the insert, which
provides some nice reading material. I visited Kyoto many years ago, and it's a beautiful Japanese
city - but I might be biased: I think I like Japan - so you could think these sounds are familiar to
me, but they aren't.

It's been seven years ago and perhaps I was listening in the same way as Kahn did. However the
sounds he recorded, the interaction between people in everyday situations, from perhaps odd recording
perspectives, allowing sounds to drop in which you might not expect makes this a truly fascinating,
aural trip to the city. Street sounds, shops, temples, pachincko, semishigures and other nature sounds.
Topped with Kahn's writing on the cover it might even make sense for those who never been to Kyoto.
A beautiful product. It makes me wanna go back straight away (ok, perhaps not in July, the hottest of
all months over there, I believe).

[Jason Kahn]

Review from David Keenan at Volcanic Tongue:

Stunning 2xLP 180g art edition LP from composer/sound thinker Jason Kahn, with deep
connections to the Australian/Breakdance The Dawn underground as well as NZ avant-thought,
in a hand-numbered private press edition of only 250 copies, all copies of which are individually
hand-painted by Kahn himself: a departure from Kahn’s last celestial big band working and
somewhere altogether from his jams with Bruce Russell of The Dead C and Richard Francis,
Noema documents a three month stay in Kyoto in Japan in 2012. Across 37 short piece Kahn
creates an hallucinatory and very personal sound journal by using field recordings culled from
shopping centres, deep haunted pools, subway sirens, conversation, snippets of popular and
traditional song, street noise, temple rituals and more, cutting them together in a way that
expands on how the sounds of social spaces work their particular magic while riffing on fragments
of sound and sight that work as nostalgic jumping-off points for the process of memory. The set
comes with extensive liner notes and track-by-track commentary and it works best when read
alongside the record, mapping Kahn’s movements and memories of the city via “a rain of nunchuks
splintering the hot summer night”, melting in the summer heat, dropping microphones into secret
waters and other geomantic workings across his stay. The tracks themselves are deep, laminal
constructions that conflate environmental sound and song, the drone of the city asleep at night
with minimalist composition and the sound of madmen on the streets with the music of the spheres.
A beautiful set, endlessly replayable and a truly magickal transport – very highly recommended!

Copies still available at:
http://jasonkahn.net/editions/catalog/noema.html

Thanks!

[Jason Kahn]

a couple new reviews from Brian Olewnick / Just Outside and Matt Wuetrich / The Wire

copies still available at http://jasonkahn.net

thanks!

Man, I miss those beautiful covers by Kahn for his sadly defunct Cut label. It was a pleasure seeing this
one, hand done in, I think, gouache; just fantastic.

The cover, made of a kind of cardboard open on three sides so, in a way, a folder, houses two LPs which
contain 37 short tracks, all recorded in and around Kyoto in 2012. Kahn writes, "The over-arching theme of
the record is the idea of exploring social space through everyday sound-and especially in the case of Kyoto,
not just focusing on what we've come to know the city for (temples, shrines, etc.-though some of these are
there as well)." It's clearly a very personal collection, which Kahn acknowledges via a reference to Proust's
madeleine. Kahn devotes a descriptive paragraph to each track int he accompanying insert.

I won't comment on each of the tracks but at the same time, generalizing does them a disservice as does
calling them sonic snapshots" or some such. Each deals with a specific environment or set of environments,
each appears to have been constructed from several recordings, sometimes overlapping, sometimes spliced
together roughly. There's little pure "naturalism" despite, as near as I can determine, all the sounds being
sourced directly from real world activities, natural or man-made. "Memories" isn't a bad, if banal, signifier, in
the sense of someone recalling a small sequence of events from, say, a few days prior, certain events/sounds
foregrounded in retrospect, including things that may have seemed trivial at the time and, one assumes, "major"
occurrences forgotten. Canned music and various electronic manifestations figure prominently, as do voices,
conjuring (often) nighttime images of the sort Westerners often have of Japan, the crowds, the sales, the bright
displays but also the single events happening amidst the quiet darkness. Kahn manipulates the sounds,
sometimes overtly ("Parlor", for instance, or "Kamogawa") but I have the feeling that there's often post-recording
construction going on that's more seamless and has escaped me. It's difficult picking stand-outs, senseless
perhaps, but the radio scans of "Sender" are pretty fabulous.

My natural tendency is to find the short form in use here to be a bit disorienting; I want to hear these type of things
(and the sounds themselves are virtually all quite wonderful) explored at length. So I have to readjust my listening
aspect and almost hear these as songs, pop songs maybe. So here's a brief suzumushi (bell cricket) duet, there's
a chorus of shoppers. The sporadic appearance of actual pop music (often seized upon and looped by Kahn, as in
"Shopping"), something that seems to ooze out of many Kyoto crannies, makes this approach a conducive one.
The closing track, featuring coins jangling in a cup in front of an ambient urban hum, is quite moving.

I still find it a tough album to grasp in its entirety, tending to isolate this or that track but individually, all of those cuts
are fine and fascinating. I'd certainly recommend giving it a try and especially so for field recording fans and, of course,
it's automatic for admirers of Kahn's fine body of work.
>Brian Olewnick, Just Outside, 9.2014


The third release on Jason Kahn's excellent private press Editions continues his interrogations of social space and interaction,
this time through location recordings of Kyoto. He casts his net wide, takin gin people, public places, street scenes, radio grabs
and more. But rather than long captures, he has broken up his recordings into 37 crisp miniatures, and further sliced those into
fragments lasting no more than a few seconds. It's the intervention that makes these pieces work, as Kahn teases out momentary
rhythms, hidden resonances and strange repititions.

But more importantly, these recordings are dense with memories, specifically Kahn's, if you read along with the Proust-inspired
sleevenotes where he riffs on what each of them triggers. The notes, along with Kahn's deft treatments, are essential, because they
otherwise deepen what would be a series of rich but anonymous place recordings. They remind you what's vital in location recordings:
personal perspective, and the way a space gets charged with meaning through memory and interpretation.
> Matt Wuetrich, The Wire, 9.2014

[Jason Kahn]

a new review from Bill Meyer at Dusted In Exile

Part of what makes a drummer good is his or her awareness of what goes on beyond the drum kit.
Obviously, it helps to listen to what the other players are playing, and to adjust accordingly. But
beyond that, there’s listening to the space you’re in, and how it transforms whatever sounds pass
through it. The trap kit stopped being Jason Kahn’s primary instrument a long time ago, but he plays
the ones he’s taken up — electronics and collected sounds — with an awareness of the influences
of acoustic space.

Noema’s material was collected during a three month residency in Kyoto, Japan. Kahn’s wife and
children accompanied him there, and they are recurring presences across the album’s four sides.
“Sweet deal,” you might be thinking. “The guy not only gets someone to put him and his clan up for
a season in a foreign land, they get to call their audio souvenir an art project.” It is true that he did
just that, but what he does with these mementos is hardly obvious and definitely rigorous. Within a
track, you’ll hear pauses, juxtapositions of in and outdoor events, and echoes and other effects. The
sounds of old women catching up in an alleyway cut away to a loop of a karaoke bar heard from the
sidewalk. Rain on a roof competes with incidental music blaring in a train station. Again and again,
inside and outside jostle against one another, sometimes complimentarily and other times in carefully
constructed conflicts.

The word Noema denotes an object of thought, and what elevates its 37 tracks from mere documentation
of space is the thought he put into deciding what he would turn them into. Kahn didn’t just present sounds;
he thought about what stories they might tell if assembled in a particular way, and what else they’d say if
he chopped them up into pieces so small, there’s no telling what they once were. By the time they get to
the LP, they no longer belong to the spaces and people who made them; they have become things that
Kahn manipulated and remade into something else. Thus it makes sense that he would press them into a
couple of vinyl records, since they are solid objects created to preserve expressions of his ideas, and also
since it’s hard to tamper with his sequences of sounds.

> Bill Meyer, Dusted In Exile, 10.2014