Slide guitarist Jimmy Agren with a fine collection of Beefheart influenced pieces, wonderfully played. He's also a mean harmonica player, manodolinist, sometime percussionist and singer. Guests include Mats Oberg and Morgan Agren (who's drumming on this record is frighteningly good), and vocalists Freddie Wadling and Magnus Olsson. Beautifully deployed additive rhythms, always moving, with nothing extraneous or unnecessary. This is an impressive, world-class record that rips from start to finish. I can't praise it too much.
Yes, this legendary LP has been reissued at last. A collaboration between Marc Hollander, Catherine Jaunieux, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Denis van Hecke ('The Hendrix of the cello'), Frank Wuyts and Michel Berckmans, recorded by Etienne Conod at Sunrise in 1979, it contains great compositions (Marc's epic 'Cinema' and 'A Modern Lesson' are classics, Fred contributed the tightly formed 'Geistige Nacht' featuring his unmistakable Bass playing), some extraordinary studio improvisation, and highly eclectic influences throughout. Includes one bonus track and comes beautifully packed (the famous cover picture seen in colour for the first time). Highly recommended.
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The definitive 1966 recordings, complete, available for the first time as they were recorded. Plus 35 minutes of extra music from the same sessions. No history of contemporary music is written without reference to AMM, and in particular to these recordings. Cornelius Cardew: Piano, Cello, Transistor Radio; Lou Gare: Tenor Saxophone, Violin; Eddie Prevost: Percussion; Keith Rowe- Electric Guitar, Transistor Radio; Lawrence Sheaff- Cello, Accordion, Clarinet, Transistor Radio. Usefully indexed, full booklet.
The fourth Volume is lighter on the early landmarks, though there are some gems here, including one of Halim elk Dabh's prescient 1944 wire recorder experiments, Olivier Messiaen's 1937 Oraison for an ensemble of Ondes Martinots, Gottfireid Michael Koenig's remarkable 1967 Funktion Grau, Steve Reich's Pendulum Music a short 1958 electronic work by Ligeti, a rare appearance from Beatriz Ferreya (1967) and a Broken Music piece by the groundbreaking Milan Knizak. There are also some interesting '70s pieces by Laurie Speigel, Alvin Lucier and Francois Bayle (this with Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers). The rest, for the most part, are more recent pieces which stand closer to the industrial noise aesthetic, though carefully selected. Stephen Vitiello (2003), and James Whitehead (Air Attack over Kabul Airfield, 2005) both stand out. Another important collection.
Completes the availability of the three Ballet Mecanique scores. This is the last, the shortest and the most stripped down. It's interesting to compare it with the others and it's also a fine piece in its own right. And it's very cheap. Serenade is a very charming late work, very defined, rather cinematic, Symphony, from 1924 is Stravinskyan, and Concert marks the time (1932) when Antheil left Paris and returned to the USA.
This is a first recording of a reconstruction of the earliest (1924) version for sixteen synchronised player pianos, 2 grand pianos, seven percussionists (4 xylophones, 4 bass drums, tam tam, pitched electric bells, siren and aeroplane propellers) which was never performed (because impossible at the time). It was a reduced version that caused such a sensation at its premiere in Paris. This realisation was made possible, finally, through computer and midi power (to co-ordinate those 16 player pianos). An historic recording of a groundbreaking work. The rest of the CD contains other pieces for player pianos, percussion and electronics by John Cage and Lou Harrisson, Richard Grayson, Amadeo Roldan and Felix Mendelssohn (a version of the presto from the 4th Symphony remade for 16 player pianos). Classic.
David Myers has invented an instrument (see the ReR Quarterly Volume 2, Number 3 for details) that produces sound, as it were out of nothing:Feedback music - it screams, it whispers, roars, ululates, explodes, divebombs, twitters and reverberates endlessly in vast and detailed soundscapes; it sets two sound-mirrors face to face creating infinite reflections. DM struggles to control this machine and to give its massive voices shape. The result is huge, intimate and altogether remarkable.
An uncategorisable CD that moves from the echo of one half-recognisable musical language to another; there is always a sense of melody, though often stretches seem apparently abstract; the structures are always focused and seductive. Great use is made of the harp (Rhodri Davies) and, on two tracks, acoustic guitar (Tim Cole), and of thematic materials, including those of the great Bert Jansch, Duke Ellington, Ann Briggs and Anon. Abstract sound and instrumental performance are dreamily blended. There is also a strong biographical feeling and a sense of seething, sometimes fragmentary recollection held firmly together by a coherent and precise sense of order and careful placement of materials. There is performance and not merely the shifting of waveforms around, retaining a sense of gesture and spontaneity. The CD is as diverse and surprising as it is consistent - in itself a remarkable fact. And as you realise how many opposites and incompatibles are negotiated and accommodated here, the scale of Archer's musical achievement begins to become apparent. There's nothing flashy or fashionable, just the quiet sense of a new road taken and a job well done. The result is personal and novel, and to these ears very substantial. A great record.
The first Art Bears LP, mostly made by the band formerly known as Henry Cow and completed by Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause who went on, as '[Art Bears', to investigate this short song format further over the next two years, once Henry Cow had ceased to exist. Experimenting with the song form and the productive possibilities of the recording studio, this was hailed in its time (1978) as a landmark recording, and has been constantly in demand ever since. Therefore this new version, re-mastered by Bob Drake, and sounding for the first time like the original tapes. Repackaged.
1. The three original releases, properly re-mastered, - when we did them before, the technology was much poorer. Stunningly re-mastered by Bob Drake from 24 bit transcriptions of the original tapes and in newly designed Digipacks, same cover art, of course.
2. Art Bears Revisited -A double CD of re-mixes, re-workings and (mostly) new pieces made from Art Bears multi-track masters by JOHN OSWALD, THE RESIDENTS, CHRISTIAN MARCLAY, FRED FRITH, CHRIS CUTLER, BIOTA, OTOMO YOSHIHIDE/GROUND ZERO, BOB DRAKE JON ROSE, OSSATURA, WARRIC SWINNEY/KALAHARI SURFERS, WHEN, THOMAS DIMUZIO, ANNIE GOSFIELD ROGER KLEIR,ANDREA ROCCA, VITOR RUA, JOCELYN ROBERT,MUSCI/ VENOSTA/ MARIANI, MASSIMO SIMONINI, HERB HEINZ. MARTIN ARCHER, YASUSHI UTSUNOMIYA, JON LEIDECKER/WOBBLY, STEVAN KOVACS TICKMAYER and BRIAN WOODBURY. 6 years in the making, this is an amazing catalogue of imagination and great music. Digi-packed with a cover art by EM Thomas, who did all three original art bears covers and containing Art re-mixes in the booklet as well as comprehensive information. This double also contains Collapse from the Ralph Records single, All Hail from the Recommended Sampler and one previously unreleased and unfinished track completed by Fred Frith and Chris Cutler for this release.
3. A free extra CD only available with the box (there are reasons) containing further re-workings by John Oswald, Bob Drake, Fred Frith, Biota, Yasushi Utsunomiya, as well as live Art Bears tracks and a Duck and Cover cover.
4. A thick book of artwork, articles, notes, interviews and commentary on the material, the work process, the tour and the band in general, with photographs, documents and artwork.
John Zorn suggested to Derek that he make a CD of Standards, his way. Derek did what Derek does, with chunks of standards seamlessly integrated. Of course it works perfectly, and it makes one wonder why such material has routinely been so absent, even forbidden, in music that is described as free. More curiously the sleeve notes feel they have to explain and justify the admixture - a squirm Derek himself wisely keeps out of. I'd forget the packaging and the idea that this is something odd or special. It works.
The first book to read on the subject, a broad and well written introduction by a scholar and a gent who knows of what he speaks - in spades. Highly recommended.
Clothbound 72 page 25 x 14 cm book with two CDs. CD1: The Symphony of Sirens. In 1922 Arseni Avraamov composed and conducted a visionary public sound event, activating the entire port city of Baku: its factory sirens, the ships horns of the entire Caspian flotilla, two batteries of artillery, several full infantry regiments, trucks, seaplanes, 25 steam locomotives, an array of pitched whistles and several massive choirs. Constantly referenced but forever lost, this extraordinary event is here painstakingly reconstructed and spatialised to approximate the original experience. Plus 39 other priceless sound works, including the legendary Victory over the Sun and other lost documents of Malevich, Dziga Vertov, Nikolai Foregger & his Orchestra of Noises, Sergei Prokofiev, El Lissitsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Ivan Ignatyev & The Ego Futurist Group, Mikhail Matiushin, Alexei Kruchenykh, Georgi Yakoulov, Konstantin Melnikov, Igor Severyanin, Vasilisk Gnedov, Vladimir Kasyanov & The Futurist Circle, David Burliuk, Elena Guro, Olga Rozanova, H2SO4 Group, Simon Chikovani, The Nothingists, Vasily Kandinsky, Danil Harms, Igor Terent'ev, Mikhail Larionov, The Psycho-futurists group, Vasily Kamensky, Varvara Stepanova and Roman Jakobson. CD2: Enthusiasm! The Dombass Symphony (1930) is possibly Dziga Vertov's most revolutionary achievement: a symphony of abstract industrial noise for which a specially designed giant mobile recording system was constructed (it weighed over a ton) in order to capture the din of mines, furnaces and factories. For Vertov, the introduction of sound film didn't mean talkies, but the opportunity to collage, montage and splice together constructions of pure environmental noise. In addition, this CD collects together for the first time a definitive library of original sound documents from the Russian Avantgarde: contemporary recordings of Alexander Mossolov, Julius Meytuss, Roman Jakobson, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lili Brik, David Burliuk, Sergei Esenin, Vasily Kamensky, Semen Kirsanov, V.I. Lenin, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Alexandra Kollontay, Leon Trotsky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam, Ilya Ehrenburg, Marina Tsvetaeva, Naum Gabo, Noton Pevsner and Dmitri Shostakovich. BOOK: A comprehensive overview of the complexity and breadth of the many early C20 Russian avantgarde movements, followed by detailed notes and contexts for the individual recordings - including summary biographies of the main actors; additional work notes about the process of the extraordinary Baku reconstruction; a bibliography, rare photographs, web research links, artwork, facsimiles of contemporary documents, a comparative timeline of European and Russian Avantgardes and the first English translation of an article by Avraamov about the symphony. This is a definitive library collection, some seven years in the making and possibly our most important release of recent years.
Three dense movements (25.36 total) for Orchestra (BBC Symphony). Remarkable in that the orchestra is organised like a small ensemble, with a complexity and clarity of organisation and timbre that is surprising, even extraordinary. In fact the orchestra becomes, effectively an invented instrument. A great achievement, and a readable sign in the murk of orchestral composition. Prodigious.
One of the masters. Intuitive and non-mechanical, crystal clear acousmatic sounds brilliantly organised. Radical and densely complex but still a dream of eloquence.
This is a true no-ground item. 4 pieces for tape plus 'The Louie Louie variations' for Mandolin Quartet. 'Cows' and the excellent 'Dark Winds Rising' use text in a highly sensitive way, 'Dark Winds' being especially well pitched between voices, content and instrumental setting. 'Louie' is what it says. 'The Door' updates Pierre Henry with a great piece made of doors and creaks, sampled and arranged like rock music. Vox=Dominium is a complex piece for sounds as voices and voices as sounds and carries enormous emotional power. Samples here shift into the realm of expression, humour, sorrow and political anger, a rare and impressive achievement, seemingly lightly realised.. A fine work. Buy it.
Stunning work that breaks new ground; an extraordinary achievement that was 3 years in the making and rewrote lot of rules in passing. With texts and singing by the inimitable Susanne Lewis, the CD also features contributions from Charles Vrtacek (Piano), Andy Kredt (Guitar) and Chris Cutler (percussion, electrics, and some texts). A Dense, profound field of sound, music and silence.
Iva on top form and multi-tracked with the great Vladimir V and playing, between them, violin, electronics, guitar, mandolin, kailimba, percussion and singing, with numerous guests, including Tom Cora. A very great collection of complex, subtle and inventive pieces, exquisitely arranged and full of surprises. Piled up cycles of strange additive rhythms with winding interpolations, in the Dunaj style, but in a layered soundscape .. My personal favourite work of Iva's for a while. Two CD's in a substantial box with a fat book of texts and photographs. Pretty indispensable.
For my money, the best yet. Great songs performed by Peter, John Greaves, Chris Cutler and various guests including B.J. Cole, Kristoffer Blegvad and Jakko Jakszykx. Roll back the carpet, turn up the stereo.
A coherent, integrated work of art. Spoken texts in a world of sounds; concise, complex and for the most part delicately or obliquely set. A model work of experimental radio, but wrapped in a dvd case with a set of dedicated pictures pitched somewhere between a rayogram and '60's bohemian underground graphics alternating with the printed text. Distinguished by a serpentine interconnectedness and a fastidious attention to sonic detail. Different approaches, different voices and different treatments for each tableau keep the ear in the air and the mind off the ground.
Reissue on CD of the debut album from one of the definitive noise groups, often copied, never equalled. Positioned from the first in the Schaeffer- Stockhausen clade, with a 'Pollock of Sound' tag to locate them in art space (legitimately, I think), whose instrumentation (not that you'd recognise it) consisted of two highly amplified saxophones, an electric guitar - and electronics, which disappeared after the first LP. The three main protagonists endure through all the recordings and their aesthetic holds (much like AMM). This is noise that had character and subtlety, that propels. You can feel it. Newcomers start here. Old hands, an extra track, a lost concordat is here included.
64pp A5 flatbound booklet with CD. The book consists of interviews made in small villages in Burkino Faso. Bosetti plays noise/music (Derek Bailey, Hugh Davis, Berio, Parch, Messaien, Yoshihide, Lucier, Chion, Parmegiani &c.) individually (via headphones) to people of all ages - who have never heard anything remotely like this before - and asks them first what they hear - eliciting the most extraordinary, elaborate, graphic and mystifying responses - and then what they make of it: whether it's music and what music is, &c. This is deep matter and the answers are sometimes luminous and always fascinating. It's rare to escape so completely from our own cultural frames of reference, and instructive how possible it is, notwithstanding, to approach and share experiences and concepts on the apparently fragile ground of language (even when that ground is compromised through interpretation). What is common as well as what is alien is made manifest and, above all, a kind of mental hospitality that seems hardwired is revealed. Bosetti is very sharp and accurate in his accompanying footnotes and doesn't mythologize or idealise. He is perfectly aware of his inescapable role as outsider and of the quasi parasitical relationship between white strangers like himself - neither tourists nor administrators -and indigents who know and will supply - for complex sets of motives - what they think is wanted of them. Many levels of information and of misunderstanding are at play here and they shift and elide as you read. Each short interview is accompanied by photographs of the people or the locality and a list of the specific music played. The CD is gripping - it's worth buying the book for alone. Made of the voices and vocal sounds of the questionees, imitations and musical sounds (Western and local) and the proximate soundscape - variously raw and processed - and brilliantly organised into a form that is like nothing I have heard before. I can't recommend it too strongly. But that's me. PLUS POSTAGE.
Dormant Craters, Ceremony, Homeless People Three excellent pieces very well recorded of fairly recent works (1954, 1995, 1993) by the last of the great American maverick composers (he's 95 and still busy); the master of spatialised acoustic composition -all his pieces feature ensembles and musicians arranged around and through the listening space: never loudspeakers or electronics. Great nets of noise and polyphonic, polymetric, simultaneous but uncannily coherent sounds whirl about, and settle into conversational groups or randomised chatter, almost genre-free, always human and filled with complexity and moment-to-moment detail. Craters is for several percussion groups: two jazz kits, a gamelan ensemble, eight tympani, 14 gongs and other metallophones, a steel drum ensemble, handbells and the usual Chinese blocks, gran casas and multiple snare drums. Ceremony features a four-hand piano and most of a small orchestra divided into small groups distributed around the room, with prominent percussion and 4 singers (chorally organised). Homeless People is for a string quartet - one member in each corner of the room, the inside of a piano (here played by Brant himself) and a distant accordion. Inevitably the 360 sound picture is absent from these recordings but the clarity, originality and power of the compositions is manifest. A great CD from an important composer. Nice booklet with useful notes.
Second volume of the Brant retrospective. Brant, a unique voice in Amercan music, has been a pioneer of spatialised music (using diverse ensembles positioned around auditoria playing simultaneous, often non synchronised, parts) for the last 60 years. Nomads is for voice, percussion, brass and wind orchestra and was recorded live in 1974, Solar Moth (1979), composed for 8 track tape, is a concerto for Violin (played by the legendary Daniel Kobialka), 4 violas, C and Bass flutes, harp, piano and marimba - all played by Brant himself - and voice (Amy Snyder, seldom sounding human). This is a remarkable work and a vanishingly rare example of direct composition for tape in the 'classical' musical world. And it's absolutely great. Ghost Nets is for double bass, two chamber orchestras and one isolated horn. Another brain scrambler. These are substantial, unusual and important works. File with Ives, Partch, Nanacarrow, Varese; radical pioneers.
A monster of a work, and massive, this originated in a harpsichord commission Cage was reluctant to undertake but eventually completed in the course of three years work with (early computer programmer) Lejaren Hiller. It turned into - for its 1969 premiere - a four-hour multimedia overload for seven harpsichord soloists, electronic keyboard and 52 pre-prepared tapes (with material in 52 different computer generated microtonal divisions of the octave). A lot of existing music was used, especially Mozart - using his dice method - but also Beethoven, Chopin, Schoenberg, Busoni, Gottschalk and others. The result is a massive cacophony of wide spectrum pitches and melody fragments, like nothing before or since. This version was made by Joel Chadabe, the harpsichords played by Robert Conant. It lasts 65 minutes and there are two short demos of the materials used as extra tracks. The packaging is stunning. Flourescent colours and great design based on the small edition screened posters overseen by Cage for the first concert. The full and informative text is printed on 16 full colour cards which, when laid out form a wildly lurid poster themselves. It all comes in a psychedelic slipcase. Altogether a great work.
CD reissue of the classic 1977 release by the Italian experimental label Cramps, performed by Cage himself and recorded by David Behrman and 'Blue Gene' Tyranny at Mills College. This is a linear piece for solo piano, derived initially from Erik Satie's Socrate in which an endless modular melody unfolds, without pianistic expression or lyrical articulation. Notes by Cage himself, including an imaginary conversation with Satie.
The entire series, composed between 1939 and 1985 gathered together on one CD. No.1, the first to use the gramophone as a performing instrument (alongside three piano notes and a cymbal) is visionary; Nos.2 & 3 (1942) for amplified springs, percussion, electric buzzers and, again, vari-speed turntables, clatter and explode like rather psychotic junkyard skirmishes; No.4 for 12 radios was another landmark and, for No.5 (1952), Cage moved to straight ahead plunderphonics, using 42 taped recordings of extracts from (jazz) gramophone records instead of radios. 6 (1982) mixes the sound of crumpled, torn and waved paper with wood and water. These are new performances of the pieces by the maelstrom percussion ensemble conducted by percussionist and old Cage hand Jan Williams. Performances are all fine. The first 5 landscapes are the most radical and imaginative and occupy about half the time, No.6 is 26 minutes long, and is the one that sounds most meditative and 'Cagean' ('I have nothing to say and I'm saying it'). A good collection with useful notes.
The entire series, composed between 1939 and 1985 gathered together on one CD. No.1, the first to use the gramophone as a performing instrument (alongside three piano notes and a cymbal) is visionary; Nos.2 & 3 (1942) for amplified springs, percussion, electric buzzers and, again, vari-speed turntables, clatter and explode like rather psychotic junkyard skirmishes; No.4 for 12 radios was another landmark and, for No.5 (1952), Cage moved to straight ahead plunderphonics, using 42 taped recordings of extracts from (jazz) gramophone records instead of radios. 6 (1982) mixes the sound of crumpled, torn and waved paper with wood and water. These are new performances of the pieces by the maelstrom percussion ensemble conducted by percussionist and old Cage hand Jan Williams. Performances are all fine. The first 5 landscapes are the most radical and imaginative and occupy about half the time, No.6 is 26 minutes long, and is the one that sounds most meditative and 'Cagean' ('I have nothing to say and I'm saying it'). A good collection with useful notes.
The entire series, composed between 1939 and 1985 gathered together on one CD. No.1, the first to use the gramophone as a performing instrument (alongside three piano notes and a cymbal) is visionary; Nos.2 & 3 (1942) for amplified springs, percussion, electric buzzers and, again, vari-speed turntables, clatter and explode like rather psychotic junkyard skirmishes; No.4 for 12 radios was another landmark and, for No.5 (1952), Cage moved to straight ahead plunderphonics, using 42 taped recordings of extracts from (jazz) gramophone records instead of radios. 6 (1982) mixes the sound of crumpled, torn and waved paper with wood and water. These are new performances of the pieces by the maelstrom percussion ensemble conducted by percussionist and old Cage hand Jan Williams. Performances are all fine. The first 5 landscapes are the most radical and imaginative and occupy about half the time, No.6 is 26 minutes long, and is the one that sounds most meditative and 'Cagean' ('I have nothing to say and I'm saying it'). A good collection with useful notes.
CD reissue of the classic 1974 release by the Italian experimental label Cramps containing 4 excellent pieces: the exquisite Music for Marcel Duchamp (a very early classic for prepared piano, written for Hans Richter's Dreams that Money can Buy), Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (also featuring a revolver, glass, a tobacco tin, jew's harp, cardboard, newspaper, cymbals, keys and a music stand), the historic Radio Music (time capsule as well as a music piece), 4:33 (I believe the first recording) and Sixty two Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham, performed by the late great Demetrio Stratos. Walter Marchetti, Gianni-Emeilio Simonetti and Juan Hidalgo are the other performers. This is a very listenable and charming record, with an opinionated but informative 36pp booklet of original sleeve-notes which contextualises each piece and also includes a useful general biography. Digipack facsimile of original cover.
Being the unreleased Bat Chain Puller LP (tracks came out on later LP's mostly in re-recorded versions with different personnel). I remember when this showed up at Virgin's A&R dept., we all thought it was the best thing since trout mask (and like TM was also recorded by Frank Zappa). Because of sordid and petty money and attorney dramas, it never saw the light of day; so it's great to see it out at last, not in the best reproductive condition but still extremely good. And the songs are stunning. Floppy Boot Stomp is one of the very great Beefheart songs, Owed t' Alex shows, like Veteran's Day Poppy, what a great original John French was, Harry Irene is so much more than it seems, Poop Hatch is scary, A Carrot· breathtaking, 1010th day and Apes-Ma ...prophetic - and so on. Trout Mask may have been the strangest but Batchain was the most rounded and complete of Beefheart's works - in my opinion, whatever all the other commentators have said. I certainly would not choose between them. In addition there are 7 extra tracks here, 5 of which are absolutely indispensable, being (though not credited here information on the CD is meagre to say the least the short-lived band consisting I'm almost certain of Elliot Ingber (Winged Eel), John French, Tom Fowler, Denny Walley and Eric Drew Feldman. The last two tracks, well, it would have been better to put them on another compilation. Don't miss this CD.
One of the pioneers of Electronic music - he set up the first electronic music studio in the UK and was co-founder of EMS, source of the legendary VCS3 - and a jobbing composer, Cary was ubiquitous in English musical life outside the academy, employed frequently by the BBC as well as making soundtracks for documentary, corporate and public information films and designing sound for installations, EXPOs and exhibitions that freely mixed electronics, tape manipulation and conventional instruments. This excellent and timely collection gathers together a wide range of works (selected with Cary before his death) that gives a better sense of his flexibility and diversity than anything else released to date (and there is precious little out there). It also includes two rare-as-hen's-teeth '70s 7" releases that are miniature classics: A study on limited resources and Narcissus (an early process piece for flute and 2 tape-recorders and the only 'art' piece in the collection). All the recordings here were made between 1967 and 1973 - a fascinating period and one in which the limits of a young technology produced more human and inventive, and more interesting sounding, results than full digitalisation does today. What makes these pieces different, and of particular interest, is that they are applied musics - they have a job to do, and aren't just objects of aesthetic contemplation, making them more eloquent of the era in which they were made than are the academic electronic compositions of the same period. Parts of this release offer fragmants from a working diary - with introduced elements, samples and explanations followed by their applications... and so thoughtfully sequenced that the whole CD works as a single extraordinarily divers composition. That said, Shaped for living - a long soundtrack - is an individual gem. Nicely packaged with a short biography, useful notes, pictures and memoir.
An important release by one of the pioneers of electronic music, much referenced but seldom heard. Born In the UK, he started to experiment independently with electronics in the late '40s, founding the electronic music studio at the Royal College of Music in 1967. He was also a founder Director of EMS and co-designer of the legendary VCS3 Synthesiser. In 1979, he emigrated to Australia, taking his studio with him. CD one contains pieces for Tape made between 1955 and 1978 covers a lot of ground, including two concert pieces (made for the first ever major public concert of British Electronic Music in 1968) and 3 radio pieces: a very early work (1955) for the BBC play 'The Japanese Fishermen' (about America's Pacific bomb tests here reconstructed from acetates, and the 1978 'Steam Music' which follows in the great concrete tradition of deriving pieces from recordings of trains. CD 2 features computer and synclavier compositions made between1979 and 1996, and finishes with Cary's tribute to Conlon Nancarrow.
Christoph Anders, Heiner Goebbels, and Chris Cutler. "A Face" breaks new ground altogether; it is a single work with texts by Chris Cutler, Rainald Geotz and Thomas Pynchon and documents the last days of a political nightmare. Beginners start here.
From the luminous Festival of Mictrotonal Music; we are off the map here. This is what the most experimental rock group you ever heard would sound like if the context weren't a contemporary music festival. But director Reinhard's scope is so wide that the categories have collapsed (as in fact at the fringes of the old genres, once segregated genres, they have anyway). His is a catholic understanding of music with its doors wide open - so long as the investigation of microtonalities, close composition and alternative tunings are set at centre stage. Catler - a guitarist who plays specially designed acoustic and electric guitars in just intonation, 31 tone and 64 tone tunings, as well as wholly unfretted - has composed a set of pieces here that range from four or five piece rock band (with bassoon) for many pieces, to small and large contemporary music ensembles. Apart from guitars, instrumentation includes hammer dulcimer, fretless bass, electric bassoon, drums, viola, cello, double bass, oboe, trumpet, tympani and tuba. The piece for electric guitar and orchestra, written in ' 13 limit just intonation' unfolds an overtone structure. The music is never less than ear-opening. In a genre of its own.
The first 2 tracks on CD 1 reproduce 1985 LP that embodied one the key electronic performance pieces of the mid '80s. Devils Music uses only sounds captured in real time from a small radio, which are then processed on the spot through three primitive sample and hold boxes, fairly extensively customised by Nick with additional circuitry and controllers. A music snatched from the air (in quite small bites) and spontaneously formed into a jittery soundscape with rhythm but no beat, sonically concrete but structurally abstract. Loopish in essence but irregular and (for the most part) without the irritating quality that make most loops (to this ear) hateful. This is followed by another - and very different - radio-based piece The Spark heard around the World, commissioned in 1988 by New Radio and Performing arts and formed of a collage of all manner of radio fragments. This is my favourite piece: between station noise, call signs, police and CB traffic and layers of shortwave world radio, news, music, talk, complex blips and bleeps, distortion and spoken word. This is a classic work, that raises many questions about listening, structure, composition, originality, plunderphonia, intentionality, mmFor this track alone I'd buy the CD. CD2 Real Landscape A and B, originally released in 1988 is a compilation live Devils Music recordings from 7 1987 concerts. For these you need to like loops to enjoy. The CD also contains software written by Nick (PC and Mac) with which to generate your own Devil's music and a 4-minute grainy video extract of a performance in 1988. Beautifully packaged In a threefold digipack with fold out insert and useful contemporary notes by Nick.
The classic.. A vital Minimal electric violin drone with microtonalities by La Monte Young affiliate Conrad, and scary machine beats from the Faust rhythm section (Jean-Herve Peron and Werner Diermaier) and Faust guitarist Rudolph Sosna (who plays some synthesiser here) This was undoubtedly one of the more remarkable projects to come out of Faust's famous Wumme schoolhouse (Slapp Happy's Sort Of was another). And it still holds fast as a definitive - and primal - musical statement. Added to the original (remastered) LP are other out-takes from the original sessions and another version of the ur-piece without an extra violin overdubbed later. A landmark. Nice packaging, though the text is more promotional than useful. If you already have the single CD, not a lot is added, but the quality is better. Sorry it's so expensive. But still worth it
Consists of the whole of the LP previously issued as Re/arc and most of "The Golddiggers". Featuring Lindsay Cooper, Sally Potter, Phil Minton, Georgie Born, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Marilyn Mazur, Kate Westbrook, Collette Lafont, Eleanor Sloan, Lol Coxhill and Dave Holland. Explores the song form as so many of the early post Henry Cow records by ex alumni did. With a full book of texts and pictures (74+ minutes).
A fine and important collection of so-called maverick works by women in the 20th and early 21st centuries. Very varied, always challenging. The first two pieces - by Mildred Couper (written in 1930, before any of the other contributors were even born) and Annie Gosfield (b.1960) - are exemplary: Couper's for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart and Gosfield's for brain-twisting percussion and bass-clarinet, employing complex simultaneous metres. Pauline Oliveros does what she does; Eleanor Hovda (born 1940) manages, more or less, to make an electronic work with acoustic resources, Beth Custer, using sound sculptures and invented instruments, offers an eccentric song and Zeitgeist ensemble realises a Yoko Ono/Fluxus score. In addition, there is an improvisation using the legendary Arthur Ferris' forgotten instruments. Built mostly in the 1920s these were extended string families: many necked viols, harps, &c. I'm not at all sure how this track fits here (Ferris was male and all the players bar one are male too, but I'm not complaining. It's good to hear the instruments). There are three extra pieces accessible only from a computer, another 1/4 tone piano duet by Mildred Couper, another Ferris instrument improvisation, and Johanna M Beyer's 1932 Suite for Bb Clarinet. 26 minutes in all. If only for the chance to hear Mildred Couper, Ferris' instruments and Annie Gosfield, this is a hit.
A splendid and much appreciated collection; unusual and prophetic music, all of which is uncompromisingly excellent. Particular mention for Berg: music in twelfth-tones (each tone divided in twelve) and Komorous (enormously inventive, especially the piece for mouth organs and bass drum). This is music that was missed, showing that the spirit of experiment lived and thrived, heard or unheard, every- where, and it is still coming to light. Highly Recommended.
A rare release from this seldom sited and unique trumpeter, joined here by a glorious ensemble comprising harpist Zeena Parkins, violinist Carla Kihlstedt and Ikue Mori (electronics). With a guest appearance by singer Amy Denio. Timelines is a fairly abstract but highly disciplined work that models cosmic, animal and human histories. In the first piece we move from the birth of the sun to the present Ice Age; in the second from Dinosaurs and Mammals (via various mass extinctions); in the third from Homo Sapiens' appearance in Africa until 2000 years ago. Speech emerges only near the end. Lesli has supplied an annotated key to the time/music parallels which we will send with the copies of this CD so long as stocks last. It's otherwise pretty impossible to characterise the music, which is complex, open, multilinear, contemporary, transparent, directed and understatedly brilliant. Nicely packaged too.
Amy solo with her best so far, playing guitar, bass, saxes like a demon and singing better than ever. Strong arrangements, exact and exiting use of musical sound, and beautiful, seductive recording. Lyrical, tough, mysterious in proportions not available elsewhere. Amy's is a unique voice, as player, singer and composer. Addictive repeated listening and highly recommended.
A stunner. Jean and a big band rehearse perfect Exotica, 40's, 50's and 60's generic band music, TV music, Latino, Hot Jazz, early rock, Tangos and other perfectly realised slices of memory, transformed by wit and intelligence to be much much more than pastiche - this is also HI FI, microgroove music and so perfectly realised I had immediately to listen to it again. A gift - I hope Jean mines this seam some more.. That's 2/3 of the CD (44 mins) the rest is a collection of 'game' improvisations with 2 all-star bands. Phew.
A massive work. 2 CD's and a book thicker than a jewel case full of information and biographies and tributes (In French and English). Issued to celebrate the composer's 65th birthday. The music is exquisite, surprising, lyrical and uncompromising. Classic Acousmatic music. Perfectly realised and beautifully presented.
The legendary collaboration between a leading American Musique Concrete composer and an instrumental ensemble directed by James Reichert where, for I think the first and to date only time, there was full integration of the written, played and manipulated sounds. The instrumental parts were derived from Îcells' of concrete sound and in turn were electronically transformed (in Robert Moog's then state of the art studio), Then the whole mass of material was organised together. A true hybrid, and a one-off. Long out of print since it's appearance on vinyl in 1966. With two extra pieces by Tod Dockstader a new stereo version of No.7 (from the 1961 Î8 Electronic Pieces' and very late and very different - piece from 1990 which has never escaped his studio until now. A classic and a milestone in the evolution of electronic, mediated sound.
The third in the set for those of you who have been collecting from the beginning. This CD is also, in my opinion, the one to have if you only have one. Made from between-channel radio sounds collected over many years, then assembled and processed over more, these are complex, deep and rather human pieces, neither synthesised nor acoustic - musique concrete without the concrete; sounds no one has made, plucked from nowhere; unwanted interference that exists only as cross-contamination, cosmological noise or leakage: Sternklang - sounds that only radios can hear....The entire 240 minute 3 CD work is, in a strangely fractal way, wholly represented in this final volume, so if you haven't dipped in yet, now is the time.
Reissue of Dockstader's crucial and remarkably advanced early concrete pieces, originally released privately and then reissued by Folkways in 1961 - with a recent interview with Dockstader himself and his original notes, which themselves make this release invaluable. These are 8 classic pieces from the time when the form was being created and extended by one of its great practitioners. The range and detail of sounds and applications is prodigious. A classic.
Two computer assisted pieces from Iancu and one for Voice (Keiko Hatanaka), Tenor Saxophone (Robert Regle) and Percussion (Gustavo Aguilar), recorded at a concert in Tokyo. Ana Maria contributes a piece for solo saxophone (Robert Regle - also recorded in Tokyo) and a large work for the Hyperion Ensemble, Computer and Bass Clarinet (Tim Hodgkinson).
Pieces for Tape, Percussion, 12 cellos; Double Bass, 3 groups of Percussionists, String Orchestra, Strings, Amplified Percussion by the extraordinary and uncategoriseable Dumitrescu/Avram team. Pursuing the intimate grain of sounds through the directed inspiration of performers who somehow produce music while uncovering it, escape control by going through it. Movement and stillness. Even in the storm of percussion (Orion) is a slow centre.
5 pieces- three new works by Iancu (two for chamber ensemble (with electrics) tracking sound to its furthest lairs, and one for Orchestra) two by Ana-maria Avram, one for Orchestra (de Sacrae - an indispensible classic) and one for Tape. A Great CD.
The author of the groundbreaking Chaos and the Emergent Life of the Pond (an '80s soundscape classic) and inventor of many highly specialised microphones, here reveals another unexpected and complex sonic universe, that of the navigable layers between the outer bark and the inner xylem of a single species of American pine. It's a world that bustles with an amazing variety of noisy life as it goes about its (mostly destructive) business. The main players are pinyon engraver beetles (size: about one rice grain), though there are walk-on parts for other species. What is extraordinary - and this is the aesthetic point of the recording - is how varied, intense and mysterious this soundworld is. Superficially similar to some of the more radical 'small sound' sampling experiments released in the last years, this CD offers both a more interesting and a more meaningful experience; it's subtle, but you can hear the purposiveness and the life of these sounds, a dimension wholly lacking in the narrow world of samples, glitches and algorithms. And these are sounds inaudible to the human ear, however close you approach their source. A fascinating work, it comes with a serious and excellent essay by Dunn on the ecology and possible significance of the sounds, and the technical details of their capture and collage.
Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell and Clive Brooks. For my money one of the most interesting and least acknowledged of the groups of the early '70s, explorers of additive rhythms, complex through-composition and occasional stretches of psychedelic noise. They released three CDs in their lifetime, all still intermittently available, but this collection - all of unreleased recordings complied by the band (mostly from radio broadcasts and well recorded live performances between 1969 and 1972) gives the best impression of the scope and talent of their very substantial enterprise. Released on their own label in a solid digpack with an excellent and informative 20pp booklet, this has some great - and really original - music on it.
Unjustly overlooked, Egg was one of the most original and interesting of the early '70s bands, and this was, in my opinion, their best record. A classic.
This is an exceptional collection of pieces by one of the pioneers of electronic and tape music. Halim El-Dabh began experimenting with wire recorders in Egypt even before Schaeffer inaugurated the practice of Musique Concrete in France - one piece here dates from that period ('Wire Recorder Piece', 1944) and is thus of great historical importance. Most of the other works were recorded in 1959 and evidence a remarkable body of work and experimentation. El-Dabh does not sound like his fellow Electronic Music brethren (he was working at The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Centre) but is more organic, physical and eccentric; more like Sun Ra than Mario Davidovsky. There is much use of objects and some instruments, as well as electronically generated tones and concrete techniques of tape manipulation and electronic processing. And very imaginative use of the human voice. Most of the groundbreaking 'opera' 'Leiyla and the Poet' is included here for the first time on record. Indispensible.
A revelation. First released in Hungary in 1987, this is an extraordinary work combining ensemble playing, documentary recording, studio manipulation, electronics and some stunning compositional conception. Featuring Marta Sebastjen, the Amaninda group, WYXOMPHONIC group, Mandel Quartet and a star gallery of other instrumentalists of all kinds. A unique work we worked years to acquire - a masterwork in every sense.
After many years a new CD from the studio of Lach'n Jonsson, rare but always welcome. This is no exception. Essentially musical, ranging from studio experimentation to fairly straight stretched rock, with significant oriental inflections and careful attention to sound, a lot of thought and care has gone into this CD, which comes out with a unique musical character. An acquired taste maybe, but an interesting confection. Nice fold out lily paintings.
Compiled from "lost" and unreleased material released to us on the 10th Anniversary of their disbandment (inc.prophetic pre-dub mixing) as well as most of the unreleased "FAUST PARTY 3" LP.
At last, a well made film that captures the intensity, caprice, craziness and visionary beauty of Faust's late '90s performances, when, for a moment the core members of the original band were temporarily reconciled. Professionally filmed at the legendary 1996 Faust Garage concert, this release fills in what has until now been sorely missing from the record - the sheer physicality of Faust's performances: the litter of scrap, cement mixers, hay blowing machines, angle-grinders and instruments that form their workplace (shared here with sculptress Insa Winkler, toiling away on sheet steel with an oxy-acetylene welder throughout the show). In the middle of the stage hangs a battery of drums, chunks of wood and metal, mounted on a massive open frame, and around it bassist Jean-Herve Peron and drummer Zappi Diermier prowl and play in constant motion. Peron takes time out to strip and fling buckets of paint at a huge white wall of blank LP covers; Zappi attacks his kit with sticks like tree trunks. Meanwhile, organist Jochen Irmler sits placidly in the wreckage, smiling the same smile whether he is unleashing the hounds of hell or underpinning the chaos with meditative drifting pitches. Alongside, guest guitarist Steven Wray Lobdell creates sheets of noise that keep the whole juggernaut rolling, now and then stepping out to tear a hole in it. Between firestorms are quieter moments, enigmatic events, which emerge and then sink back into time. This is not quite the dignified revival expected of rock legends: no question of a perfect sound or mature stage act for Faust. This show, like all their shows during this period, is a tempest of chaos, disruption and moment to moment action. No band was ever more phenomenologically driven than Faust. Sparks fly, machines rattle, the room fills with smoke, and eventually we all wind up on the street as the band stumbles out, and the fire engines arrive. Classic. The DVD also includes 'Struktur' - an exclusive 50 minute behind-the-scenes document shot by the late Arthur Howes, and a bonus performance of Flashback Caruso. It is packaged with commissioned liner notes from Andy Wilson author of 'Stretch Out Time'. And indispensable release for any Faust fan.
Official release date 23 April. Sign up now and it will go out to reach you just before it hits the shops.
Contains- The first two Polydor albums, Faust and Faust So Far; The Faust Tapes (re-mastered with track listing); 71 Minutes and BBC Sessions + (includes the historic radio session, and substantial extra material, some of it never released); a 40 page booklet including specially made interviews with band members Jean Herve Peron and Jochen Irmler, reclusive producer Uwe Nettlebeck and legendary sound engineer Kurt Graupner, an eyewitness memoir by Peter Blegvad and many photographs, some from private collections, seen here for the first time. In a word, definitive. Note- The booklet alone can also be had (by demand I have to say) at a prohibitive 10 pounds.
Reissue of the much missed CRI CD. The title track is a 29 minute piece for viola and small ensemble, conducted by Feldman himself: endlessly suspended and endlessly listenable - it could go on forever; cleanly articulated, always concentrated, in constant motion but without a goal; just rich in its going. There are longeurs that sink into silence, and there is great, and unfamiliar, use of blurry, quiet percussion. It is a work that transfigures time into pure qualia. If you are not familiar with Feldman, this, or Rothko Chapel, would be a good place to start. There are two other pieces on the CD, inhabiting the same timeless zone, 'Why Patterns', with Feldman himself at the piano, and 'False relationships and the extended ending.' For flute, percussion and piano.
Indispensable. In 1969 Ferrari made Music Promenade, one of the key works of tape music, using environmental recordings throughout. He followed it in 1970 with Presque Rien (at the seaside), again using documentary recordings only, but this time, les eventful, more environmental. He returned to the process in 1977 with a night piece that extended the documentary night into One more return in 1989 (with young women) recorded in Tuscany. The whole sequence is on this CD.A classic.
A remarkable collection of hillbilly minimalism, by one of the forgotten heroes. These are blocks of generic material subtly changed by reiteration and lack of development. Like Beefheart, Henry Flynt is one of the rare examples of musicians who fearlessly experimented with the blues and folk forms in the face of all contemporary and experimental music orthodoxies. An important recording and a great listen.
A fascinating collection of hits containing many classics which doesn't stop at the hermetic world of early academic electronics, or the obvious. There are pieces here by Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann, Pierre Schaeffer, Herbert Eimert /Robert Beyer, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul Gredinger, Henri Pousseur, Louis and Bebe Barron, Herman Heiss, Iannis Xenakis, Kid Baltan (inc. the great Evolution Ballet), Daphne Oram, Tom Dissevelt, Edgar Varese, Gyorgi Ligeti (a seldom heard electronic work) and Henk Badings. A great record to listen to, always interesting, offering good choices, well programmed. Even if you know a lot of this material it's a good CD to have. And cheap. Intended as a popular collection, so the documentation is minimal. Double CD with a nicely designed oversize booklet in slipcase.
At last this classic record is back in print in its original form. Fred's first post Cow solo album of great tunes and dancing rhythms with Samla Mammas Manna, The Muffins and various guests. A major work that mixes infectious compositions, great performances, innovative techniques, advance recordings and an overarching structure that binds the entire work together. Still a definitive statement and a great record to listen or jump around to.Remastered, repackaged.
Long awaited reissue of this excellently made (and serial award-winning) film about and featuring Fred - at work, rest and in interview mode - moving through Japan, Italy, France, Germany, England, Switzerland and America, alone and in the musical company of Iva Bittova, Tom Cora, Joey Barron, Rene Lussier, Haco, Zeena Parkins, Bob Ostertag, John Zorn, Art Lindsay, Tim Hodgkinson and others. Part documentary, part visual meditation with soundtrack, this edition comes with a great deal of extra footage. Pretty indispensable. Film 1 hour 23. Plus Bonus tracks, 30 mins. French, German, Japanese, Portugese and Spanish subtitles. (Friends of Fred price 22)
The original breathtaking solo record that introduced Fred's new instrument and his radical new playing techniques - already in a high state of evolution. Nearly 30 years later it's still almost shocking and has deservedly become a landmark record in the history of C20 guitar. Remastered by Fred to be as close as currently possible to the original recording and repackaged.
A major composition performed by the Bolognese ensemble EVA KANT under the direction of Fred and produced and mixed by him. A long, permanently mutating and breathing piece, where repetition and mutation constantly entwine; a piece ceaselessly changing and at the same time cycling around a massive immovable core. Precision of sound, terrific dynamics and unusual scoring.
Gann, composer and author of 'The Music of Conlon Nancarrow' here uses MIDI and the Disklavier to work through his own original and highly imaginative approach to the mechanical piano, in these pieces tackling not only rhythmic and polyphonic possibilities - like Nancarrow himself - but also mictrotonality and alternative tunings. Though all the pieces are fiendishly and impossibly complex, they are also easy to listen to - by turn, breathtaking, witty and intelligent. They mostly draw on Jazz, Blues, Folk and popular music forms, though in vastly alien configurations, and each works around a strong central idea. For instance: 'Petty Larceny' is all made from fragments of Beethoven piano sonatas, 'Bud Ran Back Out' references Bud Powell, but in multiple times and at impossible speeds over a walking Bass, 'Despotic Waltz' puts regular Nancarrow in the Left hand and rubato Chopin in the right, 'Folk Dance for Henry Cowell' uses Cowelesque subdivisions of beats in a simple Folk setting while 'Unquiet Night' uses seven bebop chords and seven tempo layers to stake out a mysterious soundscape. The title track is Gann's Ave and Vale to the futurists.10 very different pieces explore 10 very different ideas. Excellent. Sleeve notes. A jewel.
American national treasures Annie Gosfield and Roger Kleier present 2 classic pieces, the title track and the amazing EWA7. LetÕs start with the second, a serious, industrial - and undeniably musical - composition made of one or other species of noise. Developed in the course of a 6 week Art and Industry residency in the factories of Nuremburg, this sets a standard for any machine or industrial music. It may sound like factories, railheads, sparks and smoke but itÕs played by human beings (with some sampled machinery). ItÕs a great ensemble: Annie herself (samples), Roger Kleier (electric guitar, treated), Ikue Mori and two other percussionists, Jim Pugilese and Sim Cain (playing a lot of metal and machine parts as well as more standard drums). Clean, often poundingly rhythmical but unusual at every turn, this is just a classic work. The title track, played by the Flux (string) quartet and the Talujon (percussion) quartet was written a little later, with the machines still very much in mind. Closely notated for two quartets, this is wholly convincing music. Excellent notes, nice package. You probably want to buy this.
Otomo Yoshihide and frightening band deconstruct and rebuild the already sampled and reconstructed 'Peking Opera' of Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth. In conception, execution and in plain terms of aural excitement and intelligence, this is hard to beat. Stunning recording - with a drum sound to gasp at...
Just when you thought it would be safe... Ground Zero are back with a CD of extraordinary covers, some are massive, others strange, all add something to their originals and were selected because of their importance to founder Otomo Yoshihide's personal musical biography - all explained in his excellent accompanying notes. Just the version of Shed a Little Tear is worth the whole CD.
Unreleased recordings made between 1967 and 1969 by this legendary and historic group made up only of composers: Ennio Morricone, Franco Evangelisti, Mario Bertoncini, Walter Branchi, Ivan Vandor, Roland Kayn, Egisto Macchi, John Heinemann & additionally here, Frederick Rzewski. Founded by Evangelisti, GNIC played an important part in the general opening-up of contemporary music in the wake of the Cage/Darmstadt debates. Decentered forms, unconventional techniques, inclusion of electronics and a highly disciplined approach to 'unmusical' performance made them pioneers in a specifically European language of sonic abstraction. Without wanting to open any debates, there are strong links to AMM, their British contemporaries. The DVD - a film made for Norddeutscher Rundfunk in 1967 by Theo Gallehr is a gripping journey through preparation, extended instrumental techniques, live performance and interviews - with intelligent questions, thoughtfully answered. Plus a great deal of cigarette smoke. Improvisation poses questions; it isn't yet a style. Altogether a priceless document. Three Digipacks in a very sturdy box with a poster and a useful 76pp booklet in Italian and English. LIMITED EDITION OF 500.
Reissue of a classic. Originally released in 1992 this is a CD with four tracks, each of which carries very quiet, small sounds. Often imitated since, this particular work embodies an original thought; and as such bears the echo and substance of its breakthrough power. Now the idea is out there, that energy is not required. And, historically, the earliest works do tend to retain their aesthetic productivity, since it is in them that a critique is most clearly appreciated and posed. It's also a definitive CD artwork: surface noise would defeat it - and you need a quiet system to listen on.
An extraordinary collection of songs by Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake. A cross between Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and early Jefferson Airplane (best I can do). Strong, apparently simple tunes with subtle and very powerful arrangements - not shy of enveloping bass and emotional vocal delivery. Unequivocably performed, minimal and very much to the point. Perfect songs, perfectly realised.
THE 40th ANNIVERSARY HENRY COW BOX SET 9 CDs and 1 DVD with 2 substantial books - in two solid Boxes. LIMITED EDITION.
Assembled over 15 years, this collection gives for the first time some idea of the breadth and depth of Henry Cow's work. Always very much a live band, performance was their metier, and a concert might range far - always driven by an intense dialogue between tightly knit compositions and radically open improvisation. The officially released LPs tell at best only half this story, and one purpose of this definitive collection is to set the work back into its broader context. These are all previously unreleased recordings, that include many compositions and improvisations new to anyone who only knows the official releases, documentation of a number of one-off projects and events and - where different or remarkable enough to justify inclusion - live versions of parts of the LP repertoire. Many of these recordings are high quality radio transcriptions taken directly from the original masters, others are less hi-fi, but justified we think by their historic and musical quality. And everything has been carefully transferred and re-mastered by Bob Drake to the best audio quality that current technology allows without interference or tampering. It's all a million times better than the terrible bootlegs that are swimming around. Altogether, these 9 CDs embody some extraordinary, and occasionally prescient music. Taking this box together with the officially released albums, it is possible at last to get some impression of the extensive ground Henry Cow covered in it's 10 short years. Finally, there is the DVD: 80 minutes of the 1976 Cow (with Georgina Born and Dagmar Krause) performing many unreleased pieces as well as Living in the Heart of The Beast, Beautiful as the Moon &c. This is the only known video recording in existence - professionally made, multi camera - and has not been recovered since its original broadcast (just scour U-Tube, HC is conspicuous by its total absence). And last but not least, there is a great deal of written, photographic and textual documentation. Since this will probably be the last and definitive collection, it has to be thorough. For reasons of fairness and cost we have decided to split the set into two boxes - which can be bought separately or together. VOL 1 covers the period 1971 to the 1976 Hamburg radio show which documents John Greaves' last concert with the band, as well as the extraordinary Trondheim concert from the quartet tour that immediately followed. VOL 2 takes the story through to 1978 and includes more previously undocumented compositions as well as the Bremen radio recording. The Stockholm CD belongs to this second box, which also contains the DVD.
THE 40th ANNIVERSARY HENRY COW BOX SET 3 CDs, DVD, box, book. LIMITED EDITION.
Assembled over 15 years, this collection gives for the first time some idea of the breadth and depth of Henry Cow's work. Always very much a live band, performance was their metier, and a concert might range far - always driven by an intense dialogue between tightly knit compositions and radically open improvisation. The officially released LPs tell at best only half this story, and one purpose of this definitive collection is to set the work back into its broader context. These are all previously unreleased recordings, that include many compositions and improvisations new to anyone who only knows the official releases, documentation of a number of one-off projects and events and - where different or remarkable enough to justify inclusion - live versions of parts of the LP repertoire. Many of these recordings are high quality radio transcriptions taken directly from the original masters, others are less hi-fi, but justified we think by their historic and musical quality. And everything has been carefully transferred and re-mastered by Bob Drake to the best audio quality that current technology allows without interference or tampering. It's all a million times better than the terrible bootlegs that are swimming around. Altogether, these 9 CDs embody some extraordinary, and occasionally prescient music. Taking this box together with the officially released albums, it is possible at last to get some impression of the extensive ground Henry Cow covered in it's 10 short years. Finally, there is the DVD: 80 minutes of the 1976 Cow (with Georgina Born and Dagmar Krause) performing many unreleased pieces as well as Living in the Heart of The Beast, Beautiful as the Moon &c. This is the only known video recording in existence - professionally made, multi camera - and has not been recovered since its original broadcast (just scour U-Tube, HC is conspicuous by its total absence). And last but not least, there is a great deal of written, photographic and textual documentation. Since this will probably be the last and definitive collection, it has to be thorough. For reasons of fairness and cost we have decided to split the set into two boxes - which can be bought separately or together. VOL 1 covers the period 1971 to the 1976 Hamburg radio show which documents John Greaves' last concert with the band, as well as the extraordinary Trondheim concert from the quartet tour that immediately followed. VOL 2 takes the story through to 1978 and includes more previously undocumented compositions as well as the Bremen radio recording. The Stockholm CD belongs to this second box, which also contains the DVD.
We know it's expensive, and that's a problem. But it really is expensive to make, and there's no way around that. However, from feedback we've had we can proposes a special payment method. If you desperately want the box but just can't spend so much at once, you can buy in installments (at £12.5 per CD) and we'll send the boxes with CDs 5 & 10, as well as the extra box for the studio CDs. At any time you can pay the balance and get the rest of the set all at once (when you win the lottery, for instance). Hopefully this will make it a more manageable proposition for some of you.
Just add to the cart as many items as you want at any time, and then in the note section at the bottom of the shopping cart (Use this area for alternate selections and additional sale items) specify the title or titles you want. Please note: CDs 4 & 5 must be bought together, that's 2 items, and the DVD must be the last item you orderÊ - we will send the 2nd and 3rd boxes and the 2nd booklet out with it. Please order this seperately - it is the item listed after this one called: INSTALLMENT PLAN COMPLETION PAYMENT. Thanks.Installment unit Vol 1 £12.50 Installment unit Vol 2 £12.50 Installment unit Vol 3 £12.50 Installment unit Vol 4 & 5 £25 Installment unit Vol 6 (optional) £12.50 Installment unit Vol 7 £12.50 Installment unit Vol 8 £12.50 Installment unit Vol 9 £12.50 Installment unit DVD £15
A great CD by this Rolls Royce of improvised - but tuneful and rhythmical and wild - trios from Tennessee who are at the a top of their game, like an experimental rock band that took the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury Pike, just beyond Dean's Corners - only they didn't get all flustered, like those uptight new Englanders. To put it another way, this is great sounding, never less than gripping, relaxed, inventive and inspiring music. Here Shaking Rays Dennis (synthesisers and) and Bob (drums and) join Appelachian trance metal microtonal too-many strings customised guitar player Eric Hinds. They even cover the Residents' Red Rider. Try it, you'll like it.
Compilation from the classic out of print 5 LP's. What to say about Lasse? That he's one of a kind? That he writes tunes you want to listen to over and over again? That his is a combination of the experimental and the architypical, the carnival folkmeet and every mortal's existential solitude? These are songs and instrumental pieces that will haunt and caress. For soul and body
The classic 1972 record reissued again, with additional track. The long sound-experimental and abstract sections are a tribute to the possibilities of the bass guitar, and still fresh and inspiring- exquisite sounds intelligently deployed, at once hypnotic, abrasive, engaging. Interspersed are post Soft Machine band pieces (John Marshall, Pye Hastings, Lol Coxhill, Gary Windo, Malcolm Griffiths, Nick Evans) which are fine, but very much of their time, and to me dated in a way that the other pieces are not. Recommended.
Robert transcends the divisions between music, documentary and radio art. The bulk of this CD is built around the extraordinary testimonies of aboriginal teenagers, prisoners and witnesses of a world in which the interviewees are continually told that they are surplus to requirements. All are set in musical frames - using both instrumental and environmental materials. The result is constantly gripping, scary and convincing. Truly remarkable and highly recommended. Sometimes a description can't do a record justice, you just have to hear it. Full texts and pictures.
This realisation of Ives' unfinished, stunningly original, and prescient score was assembled and conducted by Johnny Reinhard (composer, performer, academic and founder of the Festival of Microtonal Music). It is a nothing less than a revelation. Beautifully recorded, this is a massive, timeless work that seems to hang free in musical space, slowly existing, like a ghostly nebula. Unprecedented both in its use of multiple tempi and epic dynamically-static structure, this is a work you really have to hear. Just the first 19 minutes of enormous, inevitable, impenetrable percussion, embodying an extremely slow, felt rather than heard, pulse with instruments moving in their own orbits, seemingly at their own, mysteriously changing tempi, is a step into another world and into another way of listening.
In a green card folding case, this CD contains one track consisting of 17 concerts by leading composers of the 20th century, ranging from Cage to Xenakis, 'simultaneously performed' (punderphonically).The quartet, un-named on the CD, then performed individually, without listening to one another, mixing their tracks down to make an 18th work, mixed in with the rest. The result is a kind of ideal, massive Xenakis-like (but better, much better) symphonic roar that makes a perfect plea for the spirit of the first 2/3 of C20 music. It really is completely great. And likely to vanish. A great plunder classic.
'Aide Memoire'('Seven Nightmares From The Thousand Year Night') is a classic work. Commissioned by GDR Radio on the 30th Anniversary of Hitler's rise to power (to counter the nostalgia coming from West German TV and Radio at the time) it uses the treated voices of the old nazi leaders and other contemporary documentary materials in the construction of a musical and dramatic structure of hair-raising intensity. This is a major work, and unequivocally a political one. It comes with full English text and notes. 'Folk Music' is Breughelian chaos of decentred folk musics, about 100 melodies simultaneously played by autonomously organised sub- groups within the Polish Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra at the Warsaw Autumn 1972. 'Sonaty' is a concrete work based on a phonetic medieval text of nightingale songs. Two voices provide the source material, radically processed. Exquisite, clear and haunting. 16pp Book.
At last a CD by this undeservedly hardly known Jugoslavian composer and performer, now in his mid seventies. 30 years ago, while doing folk music research, he dreamed of a massive electrified multi-zither. He woke up and built it and here he plays it - somewhere between Fred Frith and Keith Rowe, but from another musical world. Plus other compositions for orchestra, ensembles of various sorts, electronics and tape.
A rarity. Kirchin made jazz recordings 50 years ago and then suddenly two experimental LPs in the '60's - more referred to by the few than heard - otherwise only rumours, footnotes circulated. But he was a pioneer, and the marks pioneers make persist, as this recovered recording - thanks to Jonny Trunk, one of those specialists who went looking and found, not only the author, but unreleased work -demonstrates. Subtitled ' A journey through sound' and made between 67 and 71, this mixes, in a coherent but highly abstract way, environmental recordings (insects to trams), instruments (inc. sax - evan parker -, flugelhorn, marimaba, whistles, rock guitar, bassoon), histrionics, voices and swathes of sound into an evolving drama. Absolutely not dated; it still falls between all styles and boundaries into a fascinating sonic no man's land. Historic and a milestone.
An exquisite and subtle new composition by Macedonian composer Nikola Kodjbashaia exquisitely realised by a broad and mixed ensemble of exemplary - and mostly Macdonian - instrumentalists: a suite of highly imaginative variations on a theme that meanders purposively through an unusual - I'd say unique - musical landscape in which reflections of everything from lounge music, Macedonian folk instrumentals, Byzantine church liturgy, contemporary orchestra composition and exotica rub shoulders without parody or embarrassment. Constantly mutating, constantly fascinating, this follows the path opened up in his first CD into a completely personal but accessible musical language. Subtle, complex, profane music, that is at the same time easy, even a joy, to listen to.
The legendary swedish reptile asylums, comprising telepathic twins Stefan and Thomas Agaton (Guitar, Bass) with the prodigious Michael Maksymenko (Drums). Nobody has yet got closer to the lurching swing complexity of the old magic band, I mean thinking like not imitating.
Reissue of the genuinely strange and idiosyncratic masterpiece reclusive and light-sensitive LV. In the guise of VERY OPEN and stretched pop songs, experiments stream out at A LOT per minute. A melange of snappy tunes, highly unobvious arrangements, left handed humour, sound research, super radical mixing and one off words and singing style. With extra material including the legendary and wholly perfect Beauty Spreads 7-inch. In my view, this is a benchmark best of the late 70's Magnum Opus.
The real Elevator Music.16 exemplary tracks of (mostly Parisian) lifts in La Defense, Radio France, La Villette and the Metro, plus a pedestrian tunnel in Anvers and the Unilodge building in Melbourne. A great example of where less is definitely more. A classic.
A 2 hour, 47 minute aural journey along the length of the Donau, Europe's second longest river that runs from Germany through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, finally winding out into the Black Sea, collaged from recordings made during 5 trips in 3 years by Annea Lockwood, one of the early sound pioneers (soon to be 70). It's a work that has the pace and wisdom one would like to hope age will confer. As water seen day by day, water heard too constantly mutates, bound into the sounds around it: fields, settlements, insects, birds, boats and bells; it takes its own time, navigating endless bends and the occasional lock or weir. These are intimate recordings made from the banks, sometimes dipping beneath the surface of the water. Thirteen short interviews appear en route (translated in the accompanying documentation), but mostly the river just rolls on, endlessly changing. It's a joy. These are sounds graven into our genes and speak to ancient human instincts; they collapse a fleeting sense of linear time into an ageless, endless present. Men may come and men may go, but I go on forever, as we all learned in school (at least we did when poetry was thought of as something of value). There's also a foldout map, and useful notes. It's not art, but then art isn't everything. Or perhaps, if art is the transfiguration of time, this is art; just a new kind of art. PS. What this work is not is a sound map of The Danube - a river that runs through several capital cities and many large and small conurbations. So far as possible Lockwood avoids anything indicating urban life or anything that would let you know it was not still the C18. What is human is mostly represented in the ubiquitous sound of near or distant bells. This CD is deeper and more primal than a mere collation of documentary sounds.
The classic recording for voice and tape that set a whole movement in train. For 45 minutes Alvin's original recording, which describes the process he is undertaking, changes from coherence to pure noise as it follows the process: first it is played back into the room in which it was recorded, then that playback is recorded in the same room and in its turn played back - and so on until all that remains is an unintelligible, inhuman sound that bears the print of the acoustics of the room itself. A landmark work. Indispensible.
First - the original release, a work of luminous excellence and one of the truly great records of the last 40 years in which Rene instrumentally shadows and orchestrates all manner of speech - quotidian, documentary, banal, significant, political - in the most breathtaking manner, hopping genres or escaping them altogether, and using considerably extended musical resources, though much of the vocabulary is unashamedly rock inflected. It's a record no collection should be without. Then there is an hour and three-quarters of extra, closely related and stunningly good material consisting of a film short soundtrack, La Mort de Concorde, and over 90 minutes culled from concert performances of the groups assembled to perform Tresor material. But these are not, for the most part, live versions of the recorded pieces, but new pieces, of great variety and featuring some extraordinary playing. You can consider CD3 as a new, brilliant entirely self-sufficient work, scarily brilliant. Musicians include Rene himself, Bob Ostertag, Jean Derome, Pierre Tanguay, Alain Trudel, Jean Francois Martel, Tom Walsh, Fred Frith and Richard Desjardins. This is really as good as it gets. A great release.
A work of extraordinary accomplishment and vision. Years in the making (all feature transcripts, instrumentations and orchestrations of the human voice), sometimes breathtaking in its effect and technique. Won the French language radio Prize, not surprisingly.
Also from the legendary Paris Olympia concerts 9, 10, 11 June 1980 with Paganotti (bass), Widemann and Gauthier (pianos) Didier Lockwood (violin) and 5 singers, plus Vander himself. CD one is a radically different THEUSZ HAMATAAHK first movement, streetching the composition far from its familiar interpretation. In my opinion this is a classic piece of work. CD 2 is another MEKANIK. For friends of Magma this is an important document.
Recordings from the legendary OLYMPIA concerts in June 1980. 'Retrovision' is one of the best recordings of the Magma breakneck orgasmic post soul style, and a classic. Followed by a full length version of HHAI and the 4 min. 'LA' DAWOTSIN. Don't be surprised - it's only 36 minutes long.
At last, the reissue, on their own label, of the classic first Marcoeur Brothers' album; one of the great landmark records of the early 70s and still a model of originality and imagination today. Like nothing and no one else, this collection of eccentric songs, with extraordinary and extended arrangements immediately became a classic. Deservedly.
At last M3 have released the missing AM title from 1978, more fast and furious than some of their other releases but with the same inventive and eccentric constructions; no one else made music like this, nor will. Funny, desperate and very musical. With extraordinary arrangements, including a couple of a capella blocks, one with trains, real and musical, that is a real gem.
Reissue of the classic second Marcoeur LP on CD. There is as much complexity, detail strangeness, exquisite arranging, humour, great playing and straightforward original thinking here as anyone could want. Like Van Dyke Parks, Albert makes few records, and he's a tireless perfectionist. This dates to the RIO days, and AM was one of the few...
An really excellent collection of pieces featuring WM's sound sculptures, recorded in caves, quarries and studios. Bamboo and Slate predominate. These are highly musical, exquisite pieces, subtle and often mysterious. Some are almost unbelievable.The line between playing and happening is hard to draw. Nice package and pictures. Excellent. Buy this
At last the classic Mnemonist LP made available again (the band were holding out for 24bit mastering technology). A masterpiece by the ensemble that would later become Biota, and a wonderful example of their method of work. Up there with the first AMM as a noise classic.
Reissue of a classic LP. The pre Biota Mnemonist Orchestra was a dark, meticulous, inspired ensemble and this is a Rolls Royce of a recording. Their method was a slow, painstaking assembly from materials processed to the point of complete unrecogniseability,, though still derived from acoustic sources: piano, cello, electric guitar, double bass, viola, sitar, hapsichord, shawm, bagpipes, clarinet, crumhorn, curtal, cornetto, trombone, voice, metronome, bassdrum, bodhran and side drum, in this case. The original LP was recorded in 1983, as two long pieces (one per side) and explores density, microtonal shifts, klangfarben, time, abstraction, noise, structure, intensity, dynamics - Varese's concept of Organised Sound can properly be applied to such work which is both composed and organic and works with shifting masses and dynamic tension. Constantly mysterious, constantly engaging, eventually hypnotic, this release also collects together two other very rare Mnemonist pieces: Nailed and Tic, which were released only in a limited edition as a 7" single with the now mythical Recommended Xmas Magazine in 1984. The whole CD has been re-mastered by the band to fix frequencies and dynamics previously inaccessible to vinyl, and comes beautifully packaged with the Mnemonists trademark visual art gallery. There is also a limited number of the original folio of prints that came with the original release, which we will number and send out with the first orders received, until they run out. Highly recommended.
MOE, JOE: Mainland Code:moeMainland Price:
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Once in a while a really great song album comes along, with exquisite arrangements, surprising harmonies, intriguing texts and sideways melodies that exhibits both a sharp musical intelligence and a deep immersion in popular forms for their own sake (Van Dyke Parks sets a standard). This is one such. Joe Moe has managed to make a record that constantly shifts and twists yet remains firmly rooted and coherent - not an easy thing to pull off. He is much assisted by the arranging and producing talents of the not inconsiderable Brian Woodbury, Marc Doten, and Michael Webster, as Cheez Masheen. Van Dyke Parks also appears on two tracks, one of which is a luminous cover of his own Cowboy. There is a great deal of impressive composition at work, always leavened by a performative insouciance; and these are proper, not clever, songs that speak to the emotional complexity of life. If you appreciate the medium, I strongly recommend this rare example of brilliance in the field. Limited Edition.
The first time I heard R. Stevie Moore was when the Residents played me goodbye piano - which would have been sometime in early 1978. Soon after that, I got in touch with him to import some copies for Recommended - followed over the years by many of his other releases. Phonography was Stevie's first, and a masterpiece. Terminally idiosyncratic but with all the compositional qualities of great pop. R Stevie Moore is a gifted songwriter and marches to his own drum - as this strange and compelling record attests. It's been out of print for some time and we have taken the opportunity to restore it to its original form and carefully re-master it. A classic.
Very welcome reissue of this classic collection of (mostly) songs from a criminally neglected master of pop. I mean pop in the best possible sense. A series of eccentric, but entirely plausible gems, each with enough ideas, imaginative playing, devious studio work and detail to fill a side. Every song a short story or a miniature play. This is a breathtaking parade of mild mannered hits, just a stone's throw from the telephone booth. So, why didn't RSM ever get the Emmys he deserves? It's a good question. Probably because he's too smart, too original, too funny and way too eccentric. Still the pleasure is here for those that want to listen. Infectious, addictive, and unique. In addition to the classic LP there is the EP Stance, and 6 previously unreleased pieces.
Four great pieces, unimaginably different from one another, that explore sonorities and ways of coaxing and treating sound from a drumhead you couldn't imagine. On both a musical and a technical level, this is an extraordinary release. Hats off to someone who did something new with a drum. An impressive release - and it comes in hand silk-screened covers In a limited, numbered edition of 100 copies.
Classic work. Overlays and constructs rhythmic and harmonic vignettes of transparent sound (at once complex and simple) from electronic, acoustic and documentary sources, taking ethnic field recordings as it's thematic centre. In the realm of 'My life in the Bush of Ghosts' but far more accomplished and developed.
This issue, a tribute to John Cage, includes a really indispensible and long talk he gave in 1948 'A Composer's Confessions', lucidly describing the genesis of his musical (and philosophical) ideas, his musical history, the early work with percussion (noise) and prepared piano etc, as well as prophetic glimpses into his future; this alone is worth the whole thing. There are also articles about Cage, texts, scores and pictures. The CD contains new recordings of Cage works and 3 musical tributes.
In 1988, I received a tape from David Myers consisting of music made purely from the internal conflicts of machines; sounds made from no sound - no input, only output emerging from the unstoppable flow of electrons within and across machines plugged into one another the 'wrong' way; these outputs then being controlled by David in real time using a mixing desk. The sounds were exquisite: ethereal, glassy, powerful, gritty, rich and strange by turns - and surprisingly varied. Clearly too, this was no surprised experiment but a mastered and subtle new instrument. This CD reissues that historic release, along with extra contemporaneous material. And now that input-less music has re-emerged in Japan - though with a totally different aesthetic - it is informative as well as fascinating to revisit this earlier, and very different, work. This is great music: shifting strange masses of unidentifiable sound moving in mesmeric and organic waves as - unhindered by any originary impulse -electricity sings.
Another remarkable performance from a group that has no peer and belongs to no genre or movement. Minimal in an essential and structural sense, they succeed where more formal attempts founder, in re-forming subjective time in a way that is genuinely gripping and as far from theoretical as great interpreters can get. Applying extraordinary technique in a remarkably discrete way, they here transfigure a single chord over a long duration, imperceptibly arriving far from their starting place meanwhile all values are subsumed into, and work only at the service of, a music that seems almost unplayed, emergent, inevitable. After all the statements are made there is a resurgence here of the sublime, in the last place you'd expect it, and through the unlikeliest means. An important project.
New studio recording by the great rhythm minimalists. Somewhere between Hanging Gardens and Aether, this is a steady moderate tempo piece with some beautiful floating chords and inspired drum passages. The usual masterful playing and restraint; forward movement and stasis. A classic band.
Completely unique, stunningly musical, technically impressive & breathtakingly simple. The Necks have defined an endlessly productive area of performance that is at once both minimal and gripping, obvious yet profoundly subtle. Easy to say, hard to achieve. It can take time for a group with a completely original idea to find its public & The Necks have been pursuing this one for over a decade in their native Australia - but it doesn't age, it just matures.
On the one hand, they seem to be releasing too many CDs - on the other, they are so different and so good you really need to have them. This time they offer two long pieces, both exquisite, of which Mosquito is, in my opinion, destined for greatness. Since the demo arrived in the office it's been on continuously. Minimal, with every sound perfectly imagined and perfectly placed, it achieves almost total timelessness. Essential. [OFFER. Get the NECKS last CD 'The Boys' for £5 - only with this double.]
Negativeland's website says 'bootleg" versions of our banned EP have appeared over the past decade, including some forgeries that are so well-designed that it's hard to tell them apart from the original, but none of them have come even close to encapsulating the bloody history of that old release as this brand-new CD on the suspicious "Seelard Records" label. We don't even know where this "label" is located'. This ' is an album-length collection of just about every darn gasp uttered by Negativland which relates to the notorious and banned EP, from early run-thrus of the material (taped from our weekly radio show, OVER THE EDGE), to live versions both pre-lawsuit and post, and to the actual single itself. We are amazed at the extremely high-fidelity and professional presentation of this material, which even includes the only top-notch recordings available from our "Music For Lawyers" tour of 1993 (several lawsuit-related compositions which never saw the light of day on any other "legitimate" Negativland album)'. Historic. Buy it while you can.
The old '60s actionist troublemaker, mellowed by time it seems, triumphantly reappearing here with a (graphically) composed piece for 42 piece orchestra. Originally made for a 6-day event in 1998, this version was (very well) recorded in 2004. Though Hermann still talks in an Artaudian way about the scream, sado-masochism, warm entrails and accompanying ecstatic noise, this has more the sound of Brandt, Scelsi, Partch or Universe Symphony Ives. It is extremely coherent and highly unusual - strangely meditative and thoughtful. And it works stunningly well on a purely musical level. In fact few composers today make music so radical and interesting to my ear; partly perhaps because Nitch's approach, from the other side of the sensory divide, has given him an ear for the theatre of sound that is unhampered by conformism or rebellion or the opinion of his peers. This is a music free of the cul de sac that music has of late backed into. A breath of fresh air. In a threefold digipack with a 28pp book with scores and photographs printed on strong art board. Comes in a slipcase.
Three related works: Quando Stanno Morendo, Canciones a Guiomar and Omaggio a Emilio Vedova, the first (1982) for four women's voices, bass flute, cello and live electronics, the second (1962-3) for soprano, six-voice women's choir and small ensemble, the last (1960) a short, important early tape piece. These are spooky, tense, ethereal works, filled with silences and surging noise; nothing is as solid as is suggested by the instrumentation (which is mostly transformed through real time electronic processing); the women's voices are mostly attenuated, high and diaphanous, or abstracted and distant, and the compositions hang by a thread. These are very substantial works, and significant historical documents.
One of the great, and generally overlooked American modernist (and then individualist) composers (famously: Suicide in an Airplane, 1913) with a collection of pieces, all very different, and all very listenable, written between 1913 and 1988. Very few records exist of his, and this is not only good, but thanks to Naxos' interesting business plan, cheap.
Long out of print, now reissued in limited edition metal boxes by Bob himself,Sooner or Later is a powerful piece (for sampler) derived from the sounds of a Salvadorian boy burying his father: a shovel striking rock, a voice, a buzzing fly. Some guitar sounds by Fred Frith are added in part two. This tells only of the sources; what Bob does with them is compelling and hypnotic.categories CC, SAPT, EL, CL
Likely the most essential release of 2001. 60 tracks covering the period 1969 to 1996 - including all 25 tracks from the infamous banned Plunderphonic CD -in re-mastered and alternate versions. Plus a 44-page, handbound, hardcover book, featuring a 30,000 word interview with Oswald who discusses the process and the cultural and historical context of the tracks, plus many of his own full-colour photo-collage images. Along with Cage's 4-33, Schaeffer's Etude aux Tourniquets, Oswald's Plunderphonic has to be one of the pivotal musical paradigm shifters of the second half of the C20.
John takes 25 years of GREATFUL DEAD concerts (100+ live performances) and from them creates (seamlessly) a platonic ideal version of 'Dark Star' one second short of an hour. No Plunderphonic pyrotechnics here but a dead-paced unfolding that imbricates times and places, staying pretty much freeform (with psychedelic climax) until 40 minutes in when there's a rock burst burst followed by a Phil Lesh feature and then echoes of old Mexico. For Grateful dead fans, close listeners and the curious.
- Excuse the length of the review. Summary: Buy it.
As in his short piece Klangfarbenprobe for the Re Records quarterly many years ago, John here explores in two 30 minute pieces how much variety and structure is obtainable from a single pitch. Western ears are indoctrinated to listen through pitch, to find binding narratives in melody, harmony and their variations, the rest at best is secondary, at worst just colour. The reason so much Baroque music translates so easily to different instruments, including heavy metal guitar, is because it's the notes that really count. The notes and their ratios and their relationships. Harmony was considered part of a scared mathematics and the relations between pitches expressed absolute, fundamental cosmic realities. Pure music, the music of the spheres related directly to the Platonic forms, the unchanging verities that we can approach but never grasp. That's why it is the form that matters, the pattern behind the notes, and not the temporary body in which these are clothed. In the age of the Manufacturer and the Usurer - the age of Beethoven and after - while holding to the spiritual in theory, music was progressively seduced by the material. Orchestration came to matter more and more. And once sound recording was invented, the materiality of sound itself became an unegotiable fact. Varese, pre-eminently, relegated notes to a secondary position in his work, pursuing timbre, dynamic, mass, spatiality and contrast, but generally, all the way through to the late 1950s, especially under the sway of post serialism, notes continued to hold their own, even though their grip was slipping. That decade, however, saw two radical responses that recognised and between them reified the dilemma: In the left corner, John Cage shifted his attention to rhythm - which is the organisation of time and which, significantly, is made equally of sound and silence - for him pitch was just material to be poured into structured time; it could be anything - let the sounds be themselves; while, for La Monte Young, in the right corner, pitch became absolutely supreme. John Oswald follows neither route but approaches the problem from a completely different perspective. His work, initially closer to Schoenberg's famous short orchestra piece and Varese's explorations into dynamic, timbre and spatiality goes beyond these to an exploration of what happens when pitch becomes informationally redundant - or transparent - forcing other qualities of sound to be heard through it, and making thereby what is always missing or suppressed significant. By this simple device - the most original things are always this obvious and one wonders how come it took so long to reach them - the answer is, as always, that it takes a different kind of thinking to see the obvious. By this simple device of removing tonal data by levelling it, John is able to accentuate and make essential parts of hearing we take for granted and, when in art mode, largely ignore. He takes acoustic space, natural and un-natural sound, the outside world and the discourse of music - and by merging and flattening them arrives at strikingly unfamiliar listening aesthetic.
Of course, John's work with recordings has always been about listening - as well as to a certain extent about perspective, and both concerns are strongly represented here. His method of work involves gradually tuning every sound to a single pitch (an A). There are 10 audible octaves and so 10 degrees of this pitch with which to work. Two human performers are featured, a piano tuner and a cellist, the rest of the material is derived from a library of recorded sounds built up over time - pure sine tones, orchestral instruments playing A's, voices, environmental sounds: birds, weather, animals, insects, spaces - and so on. It is all - naturally or un-naturally - pitched to an A. This is the material. The second crucial technique employed throughout this piece is morphing: that is, gradually blending one thing into another. A note becomes a storm becomes a flock of birds - think of some of Trevor Wishart's extraordinary work in this area, except that here the pitch is uniform and the blend can, if desired, be almost imperceptible. A change of object or event becomes simply one of timbres and detail; to morph is effectively to crossfade very slowly. Sounds may gradually turn into one another, or be sunk inside one another like harmonics, to create shifting banks of timbres. An entire aviary of birds winds up at A and A becomes the aether in which they, and everything else, moves.
Because of the variety of sources and the individual recording of them, spatiality moves to the fore; there is much work here with soundscape, interior and exteriority, distance and shape. Such work with scale and reflection and with the sounds of weather and nature inevitably invokes a visual response, and John often speaks in narrative and visual terms in his interview, 'it's raining in the piano', 'a conical clarinet curls into a french horn and then straightens out into a didgeridoo', 'like a giant hummingbird' &c. But because the pitch is constant, our hearing is focused in an entirely unfamiliar way. He quotes Stockhausen's comparison between the filmic model of seeing a variety of things under a constant light as opposed to seeing the same thing continually under differing lights. Perspective, space and scale permeate this work, in a way I can not refer to any other work. In one section all 88 notes of the piano sound as an A. And how are we to hear this? John in his excellent and comprehensive accompanying interview points out that this could usefully be described as a shift in scale: the piano notes do not change, but the size of the piano does; the lowest note on the keyboard sounding the A would be strung in a 10 inch concert grand, the highest in one over 100 feet long. This is in some ways analogous to the effect of light speeds on length and time: the light is moving at a constant speed while objects shrink and elongate and time stretches and expands.
There are two versions of the piece on this CD, which is an indispensable work. Not merely a piece of music - or a parade of organised sounds - but a meditation on listening.
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Commissioned project from Chris Cutler for the 25th Frankfurt Jazz Festival 1994, featuring Marie Goyette, Zygmunt Krauze, Otomo Yoshihide, Lutz Glandien and Chris Cutler (score contemporary composers: 2, Sound debris organisers: 2, virtuoso pianists: 2, Virtual instruments: 2, Rythmn, Melody, Chaos: 2,2,2, more of the same: nil). His first without sung text. Instruments: Two Grand Pianos, Turntables, Random-tuned Guitar, Drums/Electronics, Computer and real-time processing. A single, complex narrative of sound; but track marked for listening convenience. Cover by Peter Blegvad. Notes and Pictures.
4 works by this interesting American composer: an 8 channel prelude to Les Cenci for 24 flutes, 3 percussionists and singers, based on a work by Antonin Artaud, followed by act 1 of the same - for Orchestra, soloists and voices; Cosmos, a big bang orchestra piece, full of swirling dynamics and violent events, and finally a 2002 tapework - derived from Tibetan musical sources - essentially a mobile drone. A rare third party release from the Dumitrescu Avram Editions Modern label.
On the occasion of their 50th anniversary INA GRM have collected together in 12 CDs the major works of one of their leading composers - until now scattered across many different labels and much no longer in print. The collection covers the period 1964 - 2007 and all of Parmegiani's major works. Of all the French masters of the form Parmegiani has always stood out for his compositional clarity and attention to minute detail. This is a great treasure trove of concrete and post concrete works, and very reasonably priced. For anyone interested in the field, this is exemplary - and compact: even with the excellent (90pp) booklet (BP interview, pictures, scores and full notes on each piece in French and English) it takes up less than 2.5 centimetres of shelf space. It is also a textbook opportunity to follow a single artist through the enormous changes in technology over the last 50 years. Contents: Violostries, Jazzex, L'Instant Mobile, Capture Ephemere, Bidile en Re, pop' eclectic, du pop a l'ane, ponomatopes, musico picassa, et après, L'oeil ecoute, pour en finir avec le pouvoir d'Orphee, la roué ferris, enfer, de natura sonorum, dedans-dehors, la table des matieres, des mots et des sons, la creation du monde, excercismes, litaniques, rouge mort: thanatos, a pericoloso sporgersi, trilogie plain temps, sonare, sons-jeix, la memoire des sons, immer/sounds, especes d'espaces, au gre du soufflé, le son s'envole, reveries. A gem. Limited edition.
This collects - extensively restored and re-synched - the content of two earlier videos. One containing the 4 excellent films made by Madeline Tourtelot: Music Studio Harry Partch (1958) in which Partch takes a tour of his Chicago home, plays his instruments and demonstrates a prescient use of overdubbing in the demonstration of the production of his recording for the soundtrack of Windsong (1958) - the ancient Greek legend of Daphne and Apollo transported to Lake Michigan; U.S. Highball (1958, completed in 1968) where Partch and his ensemble perform a dramatized account of riding the rails in depression America and Rotate the Body in All Its Planes (1961), apparently Harry's favourite: a ballet for gymnasts. Then there are the later, longer, films: Delusion of the Fury (his last ritual-theatre work) and the 1968 San Diego TV documentary The Music of Harry Parch. Added here, for the first time in any medium, are two performances made after Partch's death in 1974: a 1981 staged production of Barstow, directed by Danlee Mitchell and a 2006 choreographed version of Castor & Pollux, performed by John Schneider's Ensemble Partch, using replicas of Partch's original instruments. The DVD is accompanied with a 12-page booklet of writings by Philip Blackburn, Danlee Mitchell, and Partch himself. Indispensible
This one is obligatory. A classic. The Revue was a one-off concert in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1975 - part of the second Raudalunas Exposition - trapped on tape by chance or no one would have believed it. A revue that remains consistently outside any genre, culture or canon of taste: from breathtaking versions of 'My kind of Town' and 'Volare' - Las Vegas style, feat. the delirious and scary Debonairs Bigband - through Anne Lebaron's score for taped frogs, oboe, voices and guitar (Davey Williams). Then there's The Captains of Industry, who play domestic appliances, the legendary Blue Denim deals without the Arms; and Neo Roman combo Nubis Oxis Quarum - with their hit 'The Chief Divisions of the Peoples of Gaul. All this is tied veeringly together by ubiquitous MC Fred Lane - master of bad taste. Performed by a large company (including LeBaron, Williams, laDonna Smith and Craig Nutt) to an audience who have to make themselves heard during rather than after the pieces. Taking no chances, the company piped in their own hysterical applause through the PA. This was and is an adamantine gem.
A great live recording of the sadly short-lived version of the band that existed between the arrival of Eric Drew Feldman and the departure of Chris Cutler. By far the best recording of the Scott, Cutler, Maimone rhythm section, I think, and the whole band is on intense concert form: David racked up to 11, Eric working equally on foundations and fine details as to the out-there manner born and Jim Jones somewhere in the stratosphere. Coming back to it, this was a pretty great band. The songs are economical, tightly arranged and take no prisoners. And there's that live energy - the closest we can get to being when and where we weren't. Studio recordings can't do this. Mastered by Bob Drake, and it stings like a bee - with a beret. Play it loud.
Every once in a while something comes along that mightily stirs my enthusiasm. This is one of those. Pedal Steel guitarist Mike Perlowin paid his dues in bars and clubs, dong what the instrument is famous for doing. But for his own project, released on his own label, he chose to attempt a set of transcriptions and arrangements of C20 compositions by Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, Copland, Satie, Shostakovich, Gershwin and Mingus. So far so interesting - the greatness is in the result. With Les Paulian savoir faire, Perlowon has multi-tracked and - on occasion - vari-speeded to get the job done - that is to say, to do the music justice. These are inspired arrangements and great performances and they work brilliantly in their own right as musical objects. They reinvent the music they embody. One expects the Firebird to be prodigious - because of the complexity involved in any half-way accurate realisation of it using only an orchestra of pedal steels (and some lap-steel, mandolin, autoharp, banjo and bass; plus minimal percussion) - but then the rest of the CD is pitched at the same level of perfection: swooningly microtonal and still perfectly articulated; contrapuntal, multilinear, transcendently exquisite. The Pedal Steel, always a glorious instrument, is here, at last, made to show that its greatness transcends the limits of its usual narrow application, that it can be an interpretive instrument of the highest subtlety and sensitivity in any context. The other pieces are: Fanfare for the Common Man, L'Apres Midi D'un Faun e(which is made to reveal its structure in a way even the original doesn't.), Prelude No.2 (which might have been written for pedal steel), Gymnopedies, Le Petit Negre, Polka, The Maid with the Flaxen Hair (stunning; I would say better than the original piano version) and Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. I know the territory has been broached before, but not like this. This is a gem.
A CD reissue at last of the long unavailable CRI collection featuring very early US tape music pieces by Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky (1952-56) including Fantasy in Space, Moonflight and Low Speed; 'Stereo Electronic Music No.2' by Bulent Arel, Mario Davidovsy's famous 'Synchronisms' No.5' for percussion ensemble and electronics and 'Pril Miley's 'Kolyosa'. Then there are early computer pieces by Ussachevsky and Alice Shields' 'The Transformation of Ani'. An historic collection with useful sleeve notes.
This is a model, a standard, a template for how such collections should be assembled and presented. Four CDs in a substantial box with seven booklets (180pp) comprehensively written, beautifully documented and illustrated in full colour on nice print stock with 3 fold-out replicas: a score, a schematic, an early newspaper article - and a fold out time chart. The texts are excellently researched and written (with exemplary materials on the Philips laboratory, electronic scoring for film, the three featured artists: Dick Raaijmakers aka Kid Baltan. Henk Badings and Tom Dissevelt, and extensive track notes, beautifully designed. The CDs concentrate only on the popular and functional productions of the studio, meaning ballet music, industrial film soundtracks and experimental productions of what was intended to be 'popular electronic music', that is non-academic electronics pitched somewhere between science fiction beeps and swoops, tunes, lounge and jazz. That said, most is not sleazy (as much later work in the field tended to be) but really straddles worlds in a fascinating (and very listenable) way. CD1 presents 2 ballet scores by Henk Badings, 'Cain and Abel' (1956) and 'Evolutionen' (1958), plus 'the world's first attempt at popular electronic music' - a single by Kid Baltan (1957) with an unpublished B-side for 3 ondes martinots and backward piano, Tom Dissevelt's extraordinary 'Intersection' for electronic sound and jazz orchestra (1961), plus a few other pieces from 1959 & '60. CD2 features concert and film soundtrack music ('57 - '66) including a pretty wild 16 minute unpublished industrial film track by Dick Raaijmakers (using his own name for his non popular productions). CD 3 reproduces Tom Dissevelt's 'Fantasy in Orbit' LP (1963) and CD 4 contains great alternate versions of some of the pieces on the other CDs, some extra, short, unpublished pieces and 75 'sound example' tracks which are not only fascinating and instructive but also make great listening just as they are, in sequence. The CD ends with a spoken letter from Fred Judd (1966) to Tom Dissevelt about the problems of popular electronic music and the state of play in the UK as well as Holland at the time. This CD is a gem. But then so are volumes 1 and 2. Vol 3 is a more standard electronic/lounge production, interesting but not exceptional. Overall, I would say that this is as much of a must-have set as Raymond Scott's 'Manhattan Research' which it in many ways resembles and which was also produced by Basta. This was a critical and interesting period in the history of early electronics, and the Dutch productions have until now been rather ignored. They were important and here they have been given the best presentation anyone could want. Essential. And cheap!
Patrick Portella (of ZNR and Les Flots Blues fame) here with an extremely radical reworking of Schubert's 'Winterreisse'. Electronics, Plunder, environs and the hair-raising voice of Brigitte Balian. A 20 minute miniature gem, tightly focused and sharply realised. Exactly - A winter journey.
LP: MYERS/ LUTZ GLANDIEN, ZYGMUND KRAUZE, RASMUS B.LUNDING, CHARLES SOUTHERN, MECCANIUM, NE ZDHALI. Magazine: PHILIP TAGG: Reading Sounds, Teletours in NEGATIVLAND, DIRK VALLONS/ANNICK CASTRO: Scenes from the Pre-sampling era. More.THIS IS A VINYL RELEASE
CD contains commissioned works by Q.R. Ghazala: Sacrifice To Isis, , Mike Hovancsek/Paul Guerguerian:Three Cold Floors, Tom Dimuzio: Inception, Marie Goyette: Short-Cuts: Brahms, Ken Ando: Danseuse, Robert Iolini: Congo, Zimbabwe, Giovanni Venosta: Le Ombre Di Otello, Keith Rowe/A. De Fillips: Feu Brilliant, Brian Woodbury's Variety Orchestra:Shenandoah/Innsbruck, Richard Barrett: The Unthinkable, Stevan Tickmayer: Heterophony, Volapuk: Des objets de la plus grande importance, Boris Kovacs: Extract, Philip Perkins: Virgo Ramayana, Shelley Hirsch/ Jon Rose/Chris Cutler: After Hours/The Colour Of Blood.
Selections from VOLUME 1 of the ReR Quarterly,including the legendary recording of the so-called 'supergroup' DUCK AND COVER (Tom Cora, Chris Cutler, Heiner Goebbels, Fred Frith, Alfred Harth, Dagmar Krause and George Lewis), BIOTA, Steve Moore, CASSIX, 5UU's, John Oswald. Wirth generous book.
Commissioned materials from Robert Wyatt, Iva Bittova / Pavel Fajt, LA 1919, Jocelyn Robert, James Grigsby, J. Lachan, Henry Kaiser, Increase The Angle, Bill Gilonis, David Thomas, Jospeh Racaille, John Oswald, Musci / Venosta, Luciano Margiorani, 5UU'S, When, Jean Derome. Taken from Volume 2 of the influential Quarterly, remastered, with an exquisite book by Dirk Vallons.
On the CD: John Oswald/John Zorn, Biota, Cornelius Cardew, ZGA, If Bwana, Kalahari Surfers + Lesogo Rampolokeng, Koongoortoog (Tuva),Blitziods, Al Margolis, Tom Nunn, Thinking Plague, Adenoid Quartet, N.O.R.M.A., Les Sales Combles, R.Deutsch, Martin Burlas, Peter Machajdik, David Myers, Chris Cutler/Fred Frith. New, found and commissioned work.
Founder of GMEM electronic studio and early computer music, composer Redolfi became famous for his underwater recordings and concerts, where sound is broadcast through water instead of air and listeners float. This excellent CD is a collection of 3 works made between 1991-2004 for a 60-channel installation at the Nausicca Sea Centre, using underwater and forest soundscapes mixed with crystal and conventional instruments - all very much transformed and electronically reshaped. Rich and engulfing and profoundly sonorous, these pieces achieve an extraordinary rapport between organic and acoustic complexity, and electronic depth. Highly recommended.
New work from JR to listen to or to not listen to; 'environmental' but very much present, this is an impossible work to categorise, but an evocative and innovative one; and to my taste a keystone of a new form.
Documentary recording, tapework, electrics and some instrumental playing woven into a dramatic whole. Like Steve Moore, Jocelyn offers a peep into the possibilities of a new field of work altogether; witness to the emerging contours of an as yet unmapped domain.THIS IS A VINYL RELEASE
Plunder, sample, electronics and instruments in carefully composed and highly original pieces (originally for film, theatre and dance). Breaks new ground and is brilliantly listenable. RECOMMENDED
ROSE, JON: Perks Code:ReRJR3 Price:
£12.50
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Jon's latest and, I think, best studio production- an interactive Badminton Game where the two sides of the court are the left and right hemispheres of Australian composer, improviser, eccentric and keen sportsman Percy Grainger's brain. A whirlwind of playing, samples, speech, grippingly organised and musically a step ahead. Nice work
2 excellent pieces - The Fence, about borders and fences all over the world, using very long amplified strings and documentary voices; a serious and substantial work. Bagni di Dolabella, "a violinists guide to the treatments and political intrigues of an ancient roman bath" - featuring the orchestra of ancient guts. Both originally made for radio.
A limited edition release, in a presentation box with a mounted strip of barbed wire in each. This is a record of Jon's mammoth round- Australia tour with violinist Hollis Taylor, playing fences - the endless fences that divide the country. Hundred of resonating metres of them. This may read as a bit of conceptual nonsense, but these long wires are surely instruments, and the results are intensely musical, and unbelievably diverse. So many sounds and different ways of exiting these wires into sounds that laptop electronic performers probably wouldn't even dream about. And played with imagination and great musicality. A classic. Not to be missed
In FrankÕs latest work, echoes of early synthesised electronic music take a decidedly spooky turn - which the packaging (sepia photographs) and the Ð as usual excellent - accompanying text reinforce. This is highly atmospheric: between stations, between frequencies, between worlds, and rewards and supports immersive as well as casual listening. There is more here than meets the ear. Narrow, but excellent.
Soundtrack to Albie Thoms' 1969 full length experimental movie (about a 1/3 of the audience left during the premiere) that in some ways was a distillation of a year or two of down-underground happenings and multi-media shows. This is the late '60s in a precious phial. Hard to imagine any other way in which such a sound document might have been preserved. But here it is in all its late sixties chaos, featuring a select gang of performers from Australian psychedelic and experimental bands, plus a great deal of captured sound, plunderphonia and unidentifiable racket. In three parts, it starts modestly with conversation (about Marinetti and the Futurists) half drowned out by playing and noise and snatches of... stuff ... layered over the top. Part 2 drops the Marinetti while still retaining a cacophony of speech fragments and a lot more noise, debris and improvisation. This is pretty great, but then comes part three, which is just a piled-up din of talking, pop snatches, animals, instruments and the kitchen sink. Beautifully mixed and full of rich swirling detail. You could listen to this a lot of times.
2 CDs in a hard bound 148 page (colour) book, beautifully illustrated and laid out, well documented. What to say about this extraordinary document? Raymond Scott, best known as a bandleader and composer whose quintet performed fast and furious pieces - many of which found their way into Bugs Bunny cartoons - was also an inventor and pioneer of electronic instruments (Sequencers, Bass line Generator, Elektronium, Clavivox, Bandito the bongo artist), ran electronic R&D for Motown and produced a significant amount of electronic music for soundtracks, commercials, demonstration purposes - and for the hell of it. Many of the pieces painstakingly assembled here have never been heard outside Scott's studios. Musical content. Stranger than Negativland, stranger than fiction are the real commercial's of the late 50's and early 60's that were the bread and butter work of Manhattan Research, making much of this collection more post modern than post modern. I mean some of these pieces are deeply odd, others breathtakingly kitschy. And so much great copy-writing. A minute is the average length. Sometimes Raymond talks about the pieces (from lectures). It says a lot about the "future" as conceived in the late 50's and early 60's. Then there are demonstration recordings, work tapes and experimental extracts featuring some of RS's many invented electronic instruments (he designed the first sequencer in 1960 - way ahead of the game - which like another great pioneer, Les Paul, he first kept to himself. Then there are short film soundtracks and instrumental pieces - in the Forbidden Planet vein (or even electro-poppy) rather than art-electronic, but still using state of the art technology and techniques. So much that seems contemporary is already stated here, and sometimes what is achieved is up to and beyond any art electronics of the period. Still the approach is always popular, if sometimes warped. This collection hits on so many levels- musical, experimental, sociological, historical that it is impossible to exaggerate it's importance. And it makes great listening. The book is superb and the research impressive. This is a thing of beauty, of history and of strangeness. It's not stunning but it is incomparable- a glimpse into one eccentric life. Priceless. And cheap.
5 pieces - for clarinet and string quartet; small ensemble and computer; cello; flute and electronics; small orchestra. The compositional premiss is a division of 72 parts to the octave. This is a music with a deep logic, which you can hear. Even if there seems to be nothing going on, after a while you've heard a whole lot. Subtle and satisfying. Highly unorthodox.
(Henry Cow Definitive Reissue series No. 4)In 1974, Henry Cow took a sabbatical while it considered what to do next. SlappHappy meanwhile was planning its second record for Virgin. One night the trio showed up at the quartet's door and proposed that the two groups make the second Slapphappy LP together. So incompatible - Slapphappy was making eccentric pop songs and Henry Cow was composing complex epic instrumentals - so how could a merger fail? Henry Cow jumped at the chance and Desperate Straights -was the result. It's still a gem to my ears, and now at last it's possible to release it, properly re-mastered (by Bob Drake), its sound closer to the original tapes even than our earlier Nimbus vinyl pressing. Great songs, great arrangements, great performances and Dagmar on top of her form... real people in a room together, playing straight to tape. Those were the days..
The two Virgin LP's reissued on one CD. 'DESPERATE' was the classic 'merged' supergroup with HENRY COW and 'SLAPPHAPPY or' was the remake without FAUST of our own 'ACNASLBASAC NOOM'.
Soft machine recordings from November 1969 and May 1970 (the 7 piece with Marc Charig, Lyn Dobson and Nick Evans added), plus the Robert Wyatt Moon in June demo (1968/9). This is definitely one of the ones to get, a classic.
Hot on the heels of 'Spaced'. This exceptional Cuneiform release contains late 'Third/Fourth' era Soft Machine pieces recorded for radio Bremen in March 1971. The drums are very clean and forward in the mix, and for this alone the CD is a fan must-have. Everyone is on late tour confident form and the recording is studio quality. Indispensable really.
At last a reissue on (double) CD of these two great and unusual LP's. The SLB was set up by Heiner Goebbels, as a large, portable group comprising many wind players able to perform at a moments notice in the street, on stages and in diverse political situations. They played music by Eisler, Zappa, Trad, themselves (Goebbels, Hart, Reihm) in inventive and engaging arrangements. No playing down to the masses here (as with contemporaries like Peoples Liberation Music in the UK) but an appeal to the intelligence as well as the marching foot and harmonic ear. Eclectic, timbrically rich, imaginative and versatile, they blew fresh air into the somnolent, unambitious music scene of mid '70's Germany. Still incomparable, this double CD is a pleasure, an entertainment and a tribute to a group of people for whom engagement, fun and intelligence were inalienable. Names ReR regulars will recognise- Wolfgang Reihm, Christoph Anders, Alfred Harth and Ernst Stotzner. And spot the early Plunderphonic moments.
A 3 CD reissue of the celebrated 6 x 10" LP set that came with the New Music journal Source in 1973.
It's an all-star cast: Works by Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Larry Austin, Allan Bryant, Alvin Lucier, Arthur Woodbury, Mark Reiner, Stanley Lunetta, Lowell Cross, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Alvin Curran and Annea Lockwood, and performances by the above and Gordon Mumma, David Tudor, Fred Rzsewski and Kurt Bischoff. Some well known classics appear: Robert Ashley's Wolfman, David Behrman's Wave Train, Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room, Annea Lockwood's Tiger Balm and Alvin Curran's Magic Carpet. There qre a few pieces exploring the new PDP 10 computer, and interesting works for invented, modified or electrified instruments, sound sculptures and pure electronics. These are historic recordings, there is plenty of variety and there are many excellent pieces included. Electricity plays the starring rôle.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Issue 2 features a curious interview with Prince. Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Irresponsible and outrageously funny magazine written, illustrated and edited by Alan Jenkins (author of 'How to be in a pop group' in the last issue of the ReR 1/4ly). Definitely actionable, lawyers will not be supplied, for everyone els,: a treat.
Transparency's 20th RA release - and a real gem: a complete two and a half hour concert in high broadcast quality by the 29 piece early '70s band with June Tyson. Everyone on top form, it evolves like a great nomadic civilisation with one fine solo after another, great arrangements, lengthy extraterrestrial Moog solos, some great vibraphone and a succession of classic Ra compositions. And it's impressively cheap. The DVD contains a short interview with Sun Ra filmed on the day of the concert which has not been seen since its original broadcast. The whole thing licensed from The Finnish Broadcasting Company, with nice photos in the booklet. Tracks for those who wish to know are: Stargazers, Enlightment, Love in Outer Space, Watusi, Calling Planet Earth, Space is the Place, Angels ands Demons at play, Satellites are Spinning, Second stop is Jupiter, Somewhere Else, Nature's God, Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child and a couple of Discipline numbers.
A complete, great, Arkestra gig recorded in LA in 1981, with the classic band, the Moog and June Tyson. A long, winding journey that covers all known bases from barrelhouse to cosmic, free to super synchronised, hyper-energised to coolly laid back and taking in all points between; and then beyond. New material, many Ra classics (inc. Astro Black, Space is the Place, Watusi), a wild Moog solo, and a heated atmosphere that shimmers with life and wakefulness. After the first 35 minutes the sound (which was OK) suddenly improves a lot (and gets louder) and there are occasional drop-outs, but none of this matters; the gig is unstoppable. And great. None of these Transparency Ra CDs have any track or band data, just a few nice photographs and a few of Ra's poems. 184 Minutes.
SUN RA: Atlantis Code:ECD22067-2 Price:
£15.28
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1967-67. The first RA album to use extensive massed African cross-rythmns. Also the first where RA played exclusively electric keyboards. The title track is an Arkestra classic: 21+ minutes of ecstatic noise.
This one a classic. Includes a great RA noise solo and a lot of Ra organ.
SUN RA: Disco 3000 Code:ArtYardCD001 Price:
£12.50
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Restored to its original luminous form, this was one of Ra's great classic era releases - with a band in radically stripped-down form: John Gilmore, Michael Ray (trumpet) and the minimal but perfect Luqman Ali (drums). Ra plays piano and a lot of electronic keyboards, including the mysterious Crumar Mainman, which he describes as being 'like a piano, organ, clavichord, cello, violin and brass instruments' and which also, importantly, has a facility for pre-programmed bass-lines and electronic percussion - which Ra uses constantly and to great effect in this small ensemble setting. Very electronic, often rhythmical and melodic, always economical, these tracks are like no other jazz ensemble and, although recognisable as Ra, are also unlike any of his other ensembles. A classic
SUN RA: Horizon Code:ARTYARDCD008 Price:
£12.50
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In 1971 Sun Ra and the full Arkestra of the time went to Egypt. Three Saturn LPs were released memorialising this visit: Horizon was the last (it has also been known as Starwatchers and Sun Ra in Egypt Vol.2). It's a fine recording of a classic band - in great shape here -and comprises a big chunk of the now legendary Balloon Theatre concert (there's more on the companion CD Nidhamu). The first three tracks (what was side 1 of the LP) form a continuous uncut block, and feature a lot of Ra's all-hell-let-loose Moog soloing, some (borrowed)Tiger Organ, and a great version of Discipline 2. Side 2 kicks off with an instrumental version of Enlightment, (restored in its place from the original concert. It was not on the original LP) segueing slowly into Space is the Place - followed by drum orchestra, more solo Moog (bloops, hoovers, whistles, concords taking off, insect hordes.) which leads to a first lurching, then wild, Discipline 8. There are two bonus tracks, heard for the first time here - also restored from the original concert: We'll Wait for You, with June Tyson and The Satellites are Spinning, culminating in a full-on percussion fest. The version of Shadow World is also longer than the edited version on the LP.
Great concert. Excellent fidelity, close to studio quality a lot of the time. Recorded in Rome in March 1980, it opens with Kora, then a nice piece for flutes, a double drum solo - add tenor, (excellent), trumpet solo , driving hand percussion; now 100 mile an hour double drums section followed by a screaming Marshall Allen; more drums; the whole band in free flight, leading after 20 minutes, to an almost acapella Tapestry from an Asteroid (June Tyson); then more free flight. I won't go on with the blow by blow account, but it continues to be constantly inventive. Emerging organically out of this fluid programme are great, sometimes surprising, arrangements of Astro Black, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, Mr. Mystery, Discipline 27, Springtime Again, Limehouse Blues, Watusa, Lights on a Satellite, Enlightment, Space is the Place, We Travel the Spaceways, Nothing Is, Children of the Sun, Calling Planet Earth, On Jupiter, Hit that Jive Jack, King Porter Stomp and Sun Ra and his Band from Outer Space - all interspersed with great solos, drum interludes and swoony collective bridges. Ra himself is pretty much quiet until a long way in when he takes storming piano solo (on a classy grand) followed by a bit of barrelhouse and a medley of super up-tempo swing classics. Some modest electronics appear on CD2. There's not much fat anywhere, it just keeps driving forward.
From the Unheard Music series, a luminous document from formative period of the Arkestra while they were resident at the Wonder Inn in Chicago (1960). There are 7 tracks from there and 10 from a concert at Majestic Hall (also Chicago) in the same year. The band for both includes Gilmore, Allen and Boykins but the rest of the lineup changes. There are 6 players at the Wonder Inn and 8 at the Majestic. The recording at the Wonder Inn (the stuff of legend and long thought lost) has a fabulous open, relaxed quality, rough but clear. You can hear the room, and a time separate from the playing (I'm not going to try to explain that). Material includes Ra compositions and two Gershwin Songs - and great audience and bar ambience. Serious Ra fans need this recording.The Majestic sound is fuller and more lush (as are the band arrangements) with more Ra originals. It's less experimental and more of a performance. And it's more safely jazz too, great soloing but less of the radical strangeness of the Wonder Inn. With thorough, informed and exemplary booklet notes by John Corbett. An important document.
A guaranteed hit. Live recording of the Arkestra playing and singing Ra arrangements of Disney classics. Put it on at your party and watch those jaws drop. You wouldn't believe it if you read it.
A harp showcase. 6 pieces, starting with a multitrack latin dance/rock?? shocker - very convincing, this did it for me. The next four pieces are more conventional, but good, contemporary works by Mexican and Agentinian composers. The last an excellent piece for Harp and Tape.
The result of a lifetime of research, Hollis Taylor presents a CD of Hoedowns - traditional fiddle tunes, somewhat adapted and rendered more contemporary by arrangements that include fences, positive organ, camel piano, flies, spoons, banjo, bass, various pianos (played by Rose and a dog), banjo, cello, tenor violin and viola. This is both a scholarly and an inspired record. Eminently listenable, virtuosic, popular, honest and fun. Go on. You'll never hear anything like this again.
Just stunning. I have followed Kiohiko Semba since I first encountered Wha Ha Ha, in Tokyo, in the early '80s: master drummer, eccentric genius and all round prankster, he then produced one of the truly great records of the decade: Kanishabali. Now, this DVD documents another of his '80s projects: The Haniwa Allstars - in this version, a massive 54 piece costumed ensemble, featuring both western and traditional, electric and acoustic instruments, accompanied by a succession of singers who collectively rip through a programme of original and covered materials. There is an open-ness to every level of serious and frivolous music here, and a kind of joy in mixing it all up that I have only ever seen work convincingly in Japan (Zappa covered much of the ground, but always came to it through the dark glass of irony, Sun Ra was closer, but eschewed normality and made high cultural claims. Haniwa does neither of these things, resting its case instead on intelligent fun). The DVD is beautifully and professionally made, and a joy to watch and listen to: the musicianship is breathtaking, the arrangements fantastic, and there is minute attention to detail with no apparent effort as well as humour with no implicit criticism. Add discipline, a kind of enigmatic modesty, and a refreshing respect for the essence of things (their version of YMCA is an education) and you get pure 90 minutes of pure pleasure.. That they managed to do it at all, and then that it was so well documented - well what are the odds of that? A phenomenon. Japanese import in limited supply.
Remarkable song group from Denver whose state-of-the-art work is breathtakingly well represented on this CD, which features new pieces (a new 'LP') plus 'Moonsongs' completely remixed and remastered. 71 Minutes. 20pp Booklet.
Every now and then a landmark group emerges. Thinking Plague in my opinion belongs in that category. Being an interesting group isn’t a matter of learning to imitate some favourite bands' style, it's having an original musical vision and the skills to bring it into being; it's breaking new ground. That's why Thinking Plague qualifies in my book. These are fully realised compositions whose innovations are as much in their use of recording technology as in the organisation of musical materials. Songs like Warheads are textbook examples of an original voice that comes apparently out of nowhere, fully formed and brilliantly executed. After a long period of unavailability, these two original LPs have been re-mastered on one CD by original group member Bob Drake.
THIS HEAT: Deceit Code:thisis2 Price:
£12.50
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The classic second album, re-mastered and repackaged. Now available alone.
The complete official lifetime releases of This Heat: This Heat, Deceit, Health and Efficiency, Made Available and Repeat, re-mastered and re-packaged, with a substantial (48pp) book of interviews, recollections, information, documents and photographs in a sturdy box, PLUS a new CD of concert recordings
A landmark recording by one of most important British bands, full stop. This, their first release, tore up the book and laid new rules for band composition and performance. First, the music: without precedent, then, the musicians: all extraordinary, all uncompromisingly radical, then the way it was all put together: endlessly surprising, hammeringly intense, and the sound: hard, radical, crafted, rich, with complete control of the frequency range. Beautifully recorded, radically mixed, this was breathtakingly present . Stripped back to the bone but never simplified. And it hasn’t aged. This is deep, complex work that creates its own world, anticipating much that was to follow in the next 15 years. A luminous release out of print (for almost a decade?). Re-mastered by the group for this re release.
Four CD set in a slipcase box containing- THE SOUND OF THE SAND (with Richard Thompson, Philip Moxham, Anton Fier) VARIATIONS ON A THEME (Thompson, Hamann, Fier, Lindsay Cooper, Chris Cutler, Jack Monck) MORE PLACES FOREVER (Cooper, Tony Maimone, Allan Ravenstine, Cutler) MONSTER WALKS THE WINTER LAKE (David Hild, Maimone, Ravenstine, Garo Yellin) BLAME THE MESENGER (Jim Jones, Ravenstine, Maimone, Cutler. Produced by Chris Cutler.
U TOTEM: U Totem Code:RUNE24 Price:
£12.00
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West Coast state of the art chamber?/rock? group. Now consisting of 5uu's Dave Kerman (Drums etc) and Sanjay Kumar (Keys, Sitar) and old hands James Grigsby (Bass, Guitar, Vibraphone etc), Eric Johnson (Bassoon, Contrabassoon, Soprano) and Emily Hay (Singing, Piccolo, Flute). The closest thing to Henry Cow in complexity 'Attractors' is their most impressive collection so far; beyond chamber rock and toward a meeting of extremities. World class playing and singing and inspired drums from 5UU David Kerman. There is nothing else like this now.
The Classic. By consent, the most extraordinary and successful of UZ's recordings. Formerly released by ReR as RR 10, now re-released as a co-production with Cuneiform. Not to miss. Repackaged. The 2 Classics 'Ceux' and 'Heresie' for 18.
The only recordings of this shortlived but important group. In-Forms is a particularly accomplished work, mangling ∓ renewing 'In' Forms. Full of ideas and excellent playing.THIS IS A VINYL RELEASE
Samples, but very very interesting recompositions. Not media debris, scrap-irony, pick 'n' mix, but solid, thorough compositions that have great tension and fascination in their structural unfolding. Great sensitivity to the minutiae of sound. First piece is a classic.
248 large format pages with an unusual orientation that follows a line through John Dankworth, Stan Tracey and Humphrey Littleton to Alexis Korner, Ian Carr and Graham Bond, then out into to blues, soul, Soft Machine, Gong, Henry Cow, Lol Coxill, Jon Hiseman, Jack Bruce, Caravan, Egg, Matching Mole, Henry Cow, Paul Buckmaster and many others - all the way down to Brand X on one side, and through Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Tony Oxley, SME, AMM, LJCO and the hard core experimenters on the other, as well as taking the more expected route through Mike Westbrook, Keith Tippet, Chris Macgregor, John Surman, Harry Becket, Norma Winston and Co. Divided into easy, headed blocks, often biographical (but small print Ð there is a LOT of data here), this also covers early race issues, poetry connections, the unfairly forgotten indo-jazz fusions, the UFO club, the Musicians collective, the South Africa connection, Women in Jazz, The Amazing band, Mike Cooper and a lot else. The names listed above are just a tiny selection of a vast number dealt with in this history. There are quibbles one could make, errors and omissions and what I would consider wrong interpretations, but overall the sheer scope and structure of this book is impressive. And unique. I have never seen this story told this way. And the so called progressive and Canterbury groups get put into a serious context and seen as part of a greater story that is about music, its connections and ramifications Ð all clearly situated into a socio-historic context. Not the last word but a book immeasurably better than anything near it. Properly Indexed too. A vital resource. Apologies but because of weight, the postage for this outside Europe is 8 pounds (actually 10 but we charge you 8)
Another landmark release from paradigm. Assembled between 1969-1971 this visionary work uses multiple recorded power station, factory and machine sounds (as well as air raids, radio noise, the Apollo landing, a Saturn rocket launch, the sea, body-sounds, exotic musics, a Palestrina mass and voices) to construct a dense, grounded, complex, organic and powerful unfolding of the clash - or infatuation - between humanity and technology as it was manifested in the white heat of technology/nuclear terror/Frankenstein years of the late '60s ands '70s. Aesthetically informed by the dreams of futurism and early modernism, and by the revolutions of electronic and musique concrete, this makes the industrial musics of the mid '70s through the laptop era seem rather one-dimensional. Get there early
Red Bird is a reissue of the classic LP by maverick British electroacoustic and vocal composer Trevor Wishart, unifying concrete scissors and tape technology, computer work, the human voice and environmental sound under a clear emotional and political agenda of content without finger pointing or didacticism. Rare achievement. Anticredos, for 6 amplified voices ('the most versatile instrument we have') is quite extraordinary.
Red Bird (a political prisoner's dream) is the 1977 work where 'birds, animals, words and mechanisms' are 'orchestrated and transformed into one another'. A classic introduction to Wishart's trademark morphing procedures, as well as being a powerful and extraordinary creation. And unique in the catalogue of electronic/concrete/electroacoustic works. Anticredos, for six amplified vocalists, was reviewed (see website) when previously released. It is also available separately on Trevor's own imprint. Classic.
Tracks generated around the human voice (though with many other environmental, concrete and processed sounds). Four take political and social shape - cartoons almost - around the voices respectively of Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana; a longer work circles around three icons of the American Dream (King, Armstrong, Presley); Anna's Magic Garden starts from a three year old and takes in scaffolding, pears and parquet; Blue Tulips recounts the unsettling dream of an eighty year old woman. Finally there is the large work Tongues of Fire (see website or old updates for review of this on an earlier release. It is still available separately on Trevor's own imprint).
Remember songs ? Ochs, Van Dyke Parks, Tom Lehrer, R.Stevie Moore, Steely Dan - intelligent texts that mean something well sung, good tunes, nifty arrangements, surprises, satire, deadly undercurrents. Here's an anomalous contemporary production in the classic mould. Highly recommended.
A substantial and excellent piece of work by Charles, in 9 parts, built on distinctive and varied urban and rural soundscape recordings, with occasional perfectly judged live additions by Charles himself (heÕs a clarinettist, not that youÕd realise it. Packed in a large postcard size folio with a sheaf of fine photographs. Made for a sound art exhibition in collaboration with the Georgia State school of Art and Design. A classic. Limited supply
On CD 1, mostly large swirling, thunderous pieces for mass resources: ST/48 (1972) for orchestra, Polytope de Montreal (1967) for four similar orchestras, Nomos Gamma 1967-8) for 98 piece orchestra, Terretekorh, (1965-66) for 88 instruments - scattered about in the auditorium -, Syrmos (1959) for 18 strings and Achorripsis (1956-7) for 21 instruments. On CD2, electroacoustic tape music: Perseopolis - long, slow, swelling drones (re-mastered 2003) and Polytope de Cluny (1972) a sometimes ominous, sometimes dizzying, tinkling, mysterious, neurotic monster of a piece that stands out as a classic. Xenakis fans will be happy. And, as ever with RZ, it's nicely presented with an intelligent and informative booklet, and is beautifully mastered.
Extraordinary project written by Nick Sudnick and performed by a 5 piece Zga (adding trombone, voices, bass and drums to Nick's electroacoustic sound-sculpture instruments), plus Opus Posth a 9-piece string ensemble conducted by Tatiana Gridenko. These are fully scored pieces, with some great string writing and arrangements. A cycle of songs, spooky, powerful and monumental, sung in Latin. Electronic, acoustic, tonal and microtonal elements are fully integrated. And it's very nicely recorded. The CD comes packaged in a 36pp 21cm x 15cm full colour book made up of original paintings and the (short but substantial) texts translated into Russian and English. A remarkable and admirable work. Sadly in very limited supply.
Classic recording by the ever deeper Russian instrument builders and masters of live electroacoustic/song/sound sculptures. Dangerous, Bitter, Desperate and Down to the Bone, but carrying a huge emotional charge and a rare beauty. This is lived music, both mature and profound.
ZGA: Zga (vinyl) Code:PE02 Price:
£12.34
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This is an extraordinary record from a group who build their own instruments from metal, springs, transducers, electronic parts, as well playing more conventional instruments unconventionally. Somewhere between electronic contemporary composition and a kind of subliminal rock sensibility that emerges now and then in surprising guises.THIS IS A VINYL RELEASE
ZNR: Barricades 3 Code:ReRZNR1 Price:
£12.50
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The legendary first LP reissued. One of the more extraordinary groups of all time; bizarre, minimal, Satiesque, Les Six and Brasilian echoes; clear as crystal, completely impenetrable, innocent and ironic. There never was before, nor has been ever again anything quite like it.
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Amy solo with her best so far, playing guitar, bass, saxes like a demon and singing better than ever. Strong arrangements, exact and exiting use of musical sound, and beautiful, seductive recording. Lyrical, tough, mysterious in proportions not available elsewhere. Amy's is a unique voice, as player, singer and composer. Addictive repeated listening and highly recommended.
in front of a description indicates Of Interest, a category that is not specifically recommended but stocked because they are...of interest; for specialist users.