The Poison Pie Publishing House presents:

January 1, 2026
In the darkness of the labyrinth beneath Knossos, Andromache discovered a crude, wooden flute abandoned in the remnants of a miners' camp. Despite the risk of attracting the attention of the Minotaur, she played the instrument until echoes of her song reverberated throughout the stone corridors. Listening to these plaintive, furtive notes, we are moved to reflect that the span from impatience to patience is the gulf between judging life intolerably long in the moment and vanishingly brief in retrospect. Such was the effect of the music of Andromache on her audience, then and now.

written while listening to:  Ermes Pirlo, Paolo Biasi & Emanuele Maniscalco - Bellow's Training (nBn Records, nBn 013, 2014, Italy, cd, discogs.com)

January 2, 2026
Daedalus, architect of the maze, had foreseen the volatile nature of the king who commissioned it. He had therefore included several hidden exits in anticipation of the day when he was made an occupant of the prison. Andromache survived a bleak year, wandering through subterranean passages. She subsisted on water dripping from cracks in the rock overhead and invertebrates who had sought safety in the caves. It was the flute that led her to freedom, for its music sounded differently in the clean, dry air near an unseen gap that opened to the world above.

written while listening to:  Guillaume Gargaud - Miniatures (self-released, no catalog #, 2019, France, cd, discogs.com)

January 3, 2026
With blinding brilliance Andromache was reintroduced to the surface world. Shielding her eyes, she turned away. Sunbeams filtered through the virginal gown in which she had been garbed for sacrifice to the beast of the labyrinth. While her body had escaped the prison, the lengthy incarceration had left its mark on her. Just as the earth of the tunnels had dyed the fabric of her once-white dress a smeared patchwork of umber, soot and slate, so too had blotches of shadow and gloom stained the furrows in her brain.

written while listening to:  Francesca Gemmo & Magda Mayas - Tides In The Mirror (Hat Hut Records, ezz-thetics 119, 2025, Switzerland, cd, discogs.com)

January 4, 2026
She had emerged from the cave on a mountain slope in winter. Wild hawthorn and maple stood as pillars of a roofless hall. Months earlier the trees had shed their green canopy. With her eyes sealed to the sun, her ears offered a sonic portrait of her surroundings. A tireless wind soughed through barren branches. Dry leaves scuttled over hard, rocky ground. Not far away, members of a flock of black redstarts sang to each other, repeating a burst of four measured then four rapid tweets.

written while listening to:  Derek Bailey & Han Bennink - Han (Incus Records, CD02, 1988, United Kingdom, cd, discogs.com)

January 5, 2026
Emotional by nature, Andromache had always been quick to laugh and just as quick to cry. There was nothing premeditated in her melodrama; rather the mental switch responsible for prompting others of a more reserved disposition to censure their outbursts was simply absent in her person. To be cast from the underworld onto the foreign soil of Crete with naught to her name but a dress, a pair of worn sandals and an old flute would once have induced a scene of sobbing despair. Now, however, protracted darkness had tempered Andromache's spirit.

written while listening to:  Keiji Haino & Charles Hayward - A Loss Permitted To Open Its Eyes... (ThirtyThree ThirtyThree Records, TTTT004, 2019, United Kingdom, lp, discogs.com)

January 6, 2026
She stood then on the slope and released a song that rose to weave between the bare branches of the forest. Her accompaniment was provided in gusts by the indifferent north wind. Her audience paused their birdsong to listen to the call of the stranger sprung unannounced into their midst. This music replaced her emotional outburst for it mixed within its melody the burning joy of her renewed exposure to the sun and the shivering fear induced by the chill in the air. Lastly, the flute expressed the defiance of one who had been marked to die in the maze.

written while listening to:  Joëlle Léandre - Lifetime Rebel, disc 1 (RogueArt, ROG-0137, 2024, France, cdx4, discogs.com)

January 7, 2026
She descended the mountainside, a lone woman ill-prepared for the cold season. The fullness of her isolation conjectured by the feathered bystanders was based solely on this instantaneous observation but Andromache refused to allow her history to be erased by her black tenure in the mines. As she walked, guided by the grade in the land, she drew forth images of her mother, father and elder sister. She had not dared to imagine them while trapped in the labyrinth for fear of contaminating them from afar with the miasma of enveloping darkness.

written while listening to:  Tomomi Kubo & Björt Rùnars - Utopirica (self-released, no catalog #, 2025, Spain, digital files, discogs.com)

January 8, 2026
Andromache could not ignore for long the fact that the wonder of her newfound freedom would kill her if she did not soon find the warmth of shelter. The sun crept along its ordinary path from east to west. The temperature rose and the winds subsided as she left the exposed heights of the mountain. In this age, tens of thousands of Cretans dwelt on the island. Even in this remote spot, it was inevitable that she encounter signs of human habitation. The remains of a camp with the last embers of a fire encouraged her not to abandon hope.

written while listening to:  Zlatko Kaučič, Agustí Fernández & Evan Parker - Diversity, disc 1 (Not Two Records, MW969-2, 2018, Poland, cdx5, discogs.com)

January 9, 2026
The two men were trappers, seeking martens, weasels and rabbits for their fur. They made no attempt to conceal their presence in the woods as they followed an unmarked circuit, checking their snares. The wind carried their voices through the forest. When the birds ceased singing, Andromache too became still. The tone of the trappers was gruff, their Doric dialect crude but intelligible to her. They spoke in blunt, irritated fragments, repeatedly cursing a trader who had, in their eyes, reneged on a deal. Andromache opted to remain silent until the men passed.

written while listening to:  Christoph Erb, Keefe Jackson, Fredrick Lonberg-Holm & Tomeka Reid - Duope (Veto Records/Exchange, 008, 2013, Switzerland, cd, discogs.com)

January 10, 2026
Her choice for the harsh sanctuary of the forest over the uncertain reception of the trappers revealed aspects of Andromache that had lain dormant prior to her confinement in the maze. She had formed a deep friendship with solitude. She recognized worse fates in the world than dying. The autonomy to choose the manner not only of her life but of her death was her most prized possession. She spared no words to express this thought but, late at night, she allowed the flute to share her secret with a pair of dormice hibernating in a nest high in the trees.

written while listening to:  Henry Grimes, Roberto Pettinato & Tyshawn Sorey - My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains (Sony Music, 88697931842, 2011, Argentina, cd, discogs.com)

January 11, 2026
Come midnight the winter wind bit viciously at her exposed cheeks and arms. She wandered in cloud-veiled moonlight, moving to stave off a frozen sleep from which she feared she would not wake. She stumbled over roots and stones until the ground leveled and the trees thinned. A dirt trail, worn by boots, bade her cast aside her misgivings and follow. At a fork, she paused. Her mind played a trick on her, for she imagined a faint strain of melody summoning her from the path to the right.

written while listening to:  Roscoe Mitchell & the Note Factory - Nine To Get Ready (ECM Records, ECM 1651, 1999, Germany, cd, discogs.com)

January 12, 2026
As she drew near, the music solidified from a dreamy enchantment to the recognizable strains of an aulos. The double-reeded flute was played very softly as if the performer hoped not to wake the creatures of the wood who slept at this hour. Beside a copse of pine trees, she spied a small encampment. Upon detecting the glow of a fire yet burning and the smell of its smoke, Andromache nearly broke into a run. She halted at a distance when she caught sight of the flutist, warming himself by the blaze.

written while listening to:  London Improvisers Orchestra - Brevity Velocity (self-released, no catalog #, 2020, United Kingdom, digital files, discogs.com)

January 13, 2026
The figure sat on a log with his back to her, a silhouette limned in orange flame. The frame was small, as if that of a child. Whether sentry or insomniac, his familiarity with the aulos was evident for he created a polyphonic sound with both melody and underlying drone. Andromache urgently desired the heat of the fire but her long isolation had dulled her aptitude at social etiquette. She struggled to find words of introduction. Instead, she put the wooden flute to her chapped lips and so responded to the night music.

written while listening to:  Sylvie Courvoisier & Wadada Leo Smith - Angel Falls (Intakt Records, Intakt CD 444, 2025, Switzerland, cd, discogs.com)

January 14, 2026
She first played notes following the lead of the aulos, generating sounds easily mistaken for echoes rebounding from the mosaic of pine pillars. The musician at the fire possessed a keen ear for soon an element of curiosity entered his tune. She replied with subtle flourishes, as if the wind had caused the branches overhead to creak and sway. The musical questions became more pronounced and her responses less attributable to the surrounding environment. In this way, she gradually announced her presence.

written while listening to:  Adia Vanheerentals - Taking Place (Relative Pitch Records, RPRSS050, 2025, United States, cd, discogs.com)

January 15, 2026
Soon there was no mistaking the duet that arose, though her partner did not turn to look upon his unexpected accompanist. The tone of their music refused to stay fixed, one moment lunging forward in a playful overture then retreating per the tentative meeting of strangers. The volume too must have risen for their playing roused grumbling figures, who sleepily emerged from several tents pitched in the leeward side of the pines. Four companions, bundled in blankets, gathered at the fire, their eyes searching the shadows for the second, mysterious flutist.

written while listening to:  Steve Coleman and Five Elements - Live At The Village Vanguard Volume II, disc 1 (Pi Recordings, PI91, 2021, United States, cdx2, discogs.com)