Apologies for multiple postings.... I wanted to put in a strong word of recommendation of this box set from Erstwhile Records. Admittedly, I had a very tiny part in its release, so I'm biased, but this is a great set. The box contains seven CDs and one DVD by Jonas Leddington of the Amplify festival of electroacoustic improv in Tokyo in October 2002. The DVD is superb. Jonas did a great job of editing and using effects. He captured some terrific footage of the performers as well as interviews, including some interesting ones with Keith Rowe, Gunter Muller, and Marcus Schmickler. He has additional footage of tangential events as a bonus on the DVD. The CDs are very well recorded. Four are of the festival itself. One is of outside shows involving Toshi Nakamura and another is of a guitar septet, featuring Rowe, Oren Ambarchi, Nakamura, Taku Sugimoto, Otomo Yoshihide, Burkhard Stangl, and Tetuzi Akiyama performing a part of Cornelius Cardew's Treatise as well as a separate improvisation. This CD is one of the highlights of the set. But my favorite of all the CDs in this box is #2, a duo with Nakamura and Gunter Muller called ".tint". This particular recording is unbelievably great and probably will rank as the best thing I've heard all year. It's an indispensable studio set, separately recorded from the other live events, and very, very inspired. The recordings of the actual festival are stellar. Eight of the twelve sets were included and were well-selected. My favorites are the Otomo Yoshihide/Gunter Muller duo and the Cosmos duo of Ami Yoshida and Sachiko M, which sounds much better on record and on DVD than I remember it being at the festival itself (one of the problems with sitting at the back of the venue). One of my favorite sets was the duo between Stangl and Christof Kurzmann, which, unfortunately, isn't included in the box, probably because the sound is rather similar to their previous Erstwhile recording Schnee, which might well be my overall favorite on the label. However, a good portion of this set is included on the DVD, including a "remix" of the accompanying Schnee video, itself a remix of video footage from the four films that served as titles of the tracks on the CD. The box is beautifully packaged with artwork by Friederike Paetzold, and there's an accompanying booklet with brief essays and remarks by most of the performers. It's selling for $150 direct from the label and about $200 at distributors. A lot of time and money has gone into producing this package and I would consider it well-worth the investment. It's a limited one-time release of 800 copies, so it won't be around forever. Get it while you still can. http://www.erstwhilerecords.com