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Blue Tapes and X-Ray

GUSTAFSSON, MATS - Piano Mating

"Clear 180-gram LP in screenprinted sleeve. Limited edition of 500. The two side-long pieces on Mats Gustafssons Piano Mating sound like two holes puncturing the fabric of reality; holes that disobey laws of time and space; black holes, even. The pieces are pure, simple-sounding, slowly ascending drones that feel convincingly like conveyor belts for the soul. X-Ray Records asked Gustafsson to compose an album using an instrument with which hed never recorded before. He responded with one of the most bizarre instruments ever, the Dubreq PianoMate. Its a synthesizer from the 1970s designed to be operated in conjunction with a piano, but Gustafsson here manipulates the machine on its own to wring out strange, expressive sonic prayers. Microtonal electronic maracas is perhaps an apt description," says Gustafsson. "It is just a totally different beast compared to anything else I ever played. The PianoMate does whatever it wants really. But I can control pitch and volume and detune it while playing. The microtonal clusters that it offers are highly inspirational to work with and really something that is quite hard to achieve on the saxophones. And I just love the sound of it. That color really kicks my mind and ass." Compositionally, Gustafsson let the unique restrictions and limited tonal palette of the PianoMate guide him rather than attempting to bend the unwieldy instrument to his will. "Making this music was a lot about creating a specific state of mind. Letting the music take over," he explains. "Letting the sounds create the music. Slow. Listening for it and going for it. Never pushing it. Hard to describe, actually. And of course, part of the mystery of it all." Although he admits he rarely listens back to his recordings once hes finished with them, Gustafsson says that Piano Mating has brought something new and indefinable to his iconoclastic music. "I really hear very different things every time I listen back to these recordings. I found them still very surprising and, funnily enough, very inspirational to me. In my sax playing, I get a lot of inspiration from listening to the PianoMate. I love my PianoMate! -- there should be one in every household!!!" - Blue Tapes and X-Ray.

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After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
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