Gyatso is the 1994 album by legendary “industrial noise jazz” outfit 16-17 produced by Kevin Martin (Techno Animal, The Bug) and first released on CD on his Pathological label, re-released on Savage Land in 2008. Gyatso is the only pure studio album recorded by the original 16-17 line-up of Alex Buess, Markus Kneubühler and Knut Remond and besides Martin also features G.Green from Godflesh as a guest musician.
Praxis is teaming up with Skin & Speech, Alex Buess’s label, to bring forth the first ever vinyl release of this crucial album and releases a 6-track LP edition with all the other tracks (there are 13 in total) available as a download.
16-17 started in 1983 in Basel, Switzerland. They released a number of cassettes, before debuting with their self titled and self released album in 1987. Two years later this was followed up by When All Else Fails, an LP of treated live record- ings on Vision, the precursor label to Praxis.
By this time 16-17 had already garnered a cult following with their incredibly forceful live performances.
Gyatso is a crucial release where the raw power of 16-17’s live appearances clashes with a studio-as-instrument approach, as Kevin Martin and Alex Buess add effects and dub techniques to the band’s recordings.
Further collaborations between Martin and Buess include the ICE project which also included Justin Broadrick aka J.K.Flesh of Godflesh, the other half of Techno Animal, as well as Human Distortion, released on Digital Hardcore Record- ings in 1998. Buess also took part of the Sprawl project with Peter Brötzmann, William Parker, Michael Wertmüller and Stephan Wittwer which appeared on Trost Records in 1997.
This vinyl release of Gyatso comes hot on the heels of two important records that came out in 2020: The album Phantom
Limb on Trost, based on band recordings from 1995 and finished in the studio in 2019 by Alex Buess, and most recently
Praxis is very happy to present this release in collaboration with Skin & Speech, for the first time on vinyl and download! Available now through all the usual outlets and directly from Praxis!
pre-Praxis days of the Vision label, continuing with the 1999 release of Mechanophobia on Praxis as well as the more re- cent Vacuum Theory by Cortex and “Skin Craft” by Alex Buess and Daniel Buess.
