Solo

	ABRAHAMS, CHRIS: Glow Code:ABRAHAMSGlow Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
The Necks pianist solo CD. Own label. Australian import .Limited Supply.
	ANGELI, PAOLO and NANNI: Tibi (CD/DVD Hybrid disc) Code:ReRPA4 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
This disc will play in stereo on a CD player and with film and 5.1 surround sound (or stereo) on a DVD player or computer. The music, as always, is prodigious, sounding like a small band, but played by one person in real time (as the film attests). In this format, you can also see the instrument close-to - a highly rebuilt and extended giant Sardinian guitar - with many sympathetic and extra strings, motor driven hurdy gurdy wheels, whirling strings, springs and other appendages, played, like a cello, vertically, with bow, fingers, plectra and machines. However Heath Robinson it may appear, however, it is clearly, under Paolo's hands, a highly serious and extraordinarily flexible beast - that requires and has given rise to new playing techniques. The programme of compositions here navigates through highly organised additive rhythms, freer Frith-like pointillism and some seemingly impossible mini-orchestrations. The film, professionally made, follows the performance, occasionally interpolating abstract passages and processed images. A remarkable player with a unique instrument, playing a music entirely his own.
	ANGELI, PAULO : Linee Di Fuga Code:ERH012 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
An excellent and imaginative collection of pieces for Sardinian Guitar (larger and tuner lower than the Spanish variety) to which Paulo has added 12 pickups (in order to be able to treat the sound from each string and various parts of the instrument individually) a foot-board linked to the strings for simultaneous rhythmic accompaniment and electric motors. All manner of techniques are applied to both composed and improvised pieces. The possibilities of the instrument are thoroughly explored. A mature and definitive record.
	ANGELI, PAULO: Bucato Code:ReRPA1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Extraordinary player - extraordinary instrument. Paulo plays a highly modified and treated Sardinian Guitar - in many styles, some of them apparently impossible. Innovative techniques, a deeply musical sensibility and a rich, occasionally baffling, palette of sounds. Inevitably, comparisons will be made with Fred Frith, though not by me, Paulo is his own man. A fine and original work.
	BACHMANN, LEO: Palette of Sounds Code:UTR4131CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Solo tuba pieces that exploit extended techniques, circular breathing, harmonics and so on. Nice work.
	BAHN, CURTIS : R!g Code:EMFCD030 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Pieces for sensor bass and live electronics, Bahn has designed a highly sensitive and interactive instrument with which he can generate real-time electronic music, though unlike Rose he is aligned more to the genre of computer music than to charting the experimental badlands, still it's solid work, if a little narrow and rather hectic.
	BLONK, JAAP: Ursonate Code:BASTA3091452 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Kurt Schwitters' legendary 'sonata in primordial sounds', a tour de force of abstract voice composition (the entire phonetic text is printed in the book) here in two versions by Jaap Blonk, one made in 1986 (and not released then for legal reasons) and a live version made in 2003 in a powerful acoustic space. In structure, there are 4 movements, with themes and developments, each centred on a clear structural idea, with a cadenza as the 4th part. A critical art-historical work, very plausibly performed (maybe a little overserious). Dry, austere and not for everyone.
	BUCK, TONY: Self-contained_underwater_breathing_Apparatus Code:TESCDO102 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Solo percussion, after the spirit of The Necks by Necks drummer Tony Buck. A slowly evolving and very satisfying non drum solo,. Drum solos are somehow directed, and tend to be technically and purposefully driven. This is rather an organic web of developing sound, seemingly driven by its own logic, the sound hoping that the player has the technique not to stand in it's way. This player does. And interestingly, because the technique is never the point, one notices how extraordinary Tony's technique is, not for itself but for its ability to do whatever the music needs.
	BUCK, TONY: Solo Live Code:WR003 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Tony Buck takes his STEIM interactive Drum/Perc/Sampler system through it's paces, not that listening you'd know where the hell the sound was coming from most of the time. An interesting set of pieces by one of the more interesting drummers around on that noise/electronic/rock fringe, and the only one I can think of to use triggered samples in a way that really works...
	CONCA, PAD: Cleee Code:CONCA,PAD:Cleee Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Bass guitar multitracked by Pad.
	CUTLER, CHRIS: June 12 1998. Edge of Chaos Code:cutlerChaso Price: £22.00 Quantity in Basket: none
THE LAST 10 copies of a film by Shinji Aoyama that documents a solo concert in Tokyo, with set-up, sound-check and interview material. While we have them. Shinji Aoyama's documentary of an early solo concert in Tokyo, with soundcheck and Interview materials. 65 minutes. "This is a documentary recording of a solo concert I did in Tokyo in 1998 (first part is set-up and sound-check interpolated with interview extracts) made by award winning director Shinji Aoyama. It captures a moment, and finds your reporter refreshingly (or irritatingly) incoherent (it's no flattering confection); and while the set-up is long, maybe overlong (with interesting extraneous stuff going on) on the other hand, it's really not glamorised or staged - so there is a strangely artless feeling about it (they filmed very discreetly). And the concert is, well - what it is - as improvised concerts are. I may be the worst person to ask, but I do find it pleasingly straightforward, warts and all."
	CUTLER, CUTLER: Solo Code:ReRCC1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
It took long enough. The electric kit finally gets a chance to speak for itself. I won't try to describe it, but it's been pretty much my main work of the last three years. I can't say it reminds me of anything else but, naturally, I suggest you buy it.
	DENIO, AMY: Birthing Chair Blues Code:KFWCD-111 Price: £5.00 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	DIRK WACHTELAER: konstruction/deconstruction Code:FMRCD84-0701 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Interesting for the method: he sampled his kit, processed the samples, assigned them to pads and then used the pads as triggers, adding additional real-time processing. So they sound like drums and not like drums and some of the stretches work quite well. For me, it's more like an experiment than a properly evolved instrument. Of interest.
	DUTTON, PAUL : Mouth Pieces Code:OHM/AVTR021 Price: £13.00 Quantity in Basket: none
With Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk, Bob Cobbing, Dutton is one of the very few solo vocal improvisers - here he goes through the range from throat singing, noise and sung/spoken word. For me, more informative than aesthetic. But he's one of the leaders in his field.
	FJELLSTAD, HANS : Hans Fjellstad 33 Code:Alp032 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
13 pieces for piano (plain, vanilla, bowed, e-bowed, scraped, coaxed) and various other things (field recordings, sampler, computer accordion, megaphone and mysterious..) all constructed and reworked into a persuasive coherence. Varied and often intriguing, certainly an interesting investigation of the piano and its possibilities. Some information in the booklet, but not quite enough. Sadly that seems the rule now... and probably it only bugs me.
	FLYNT, HENRY: Back Porch Hillbilly Blues Vol.1 Code:locust16 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	FRITH, FRED: Cheap at half the price Code:ReRFRO Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Fred's third LP for Ralph Records, back in 1983, was a collection of four-track home studio songs (and a couple of instrumental pieces) in which Fred played all the instruments (exceptions: two bass cameos from Tina Curran and Bill Laswell, and some great drum samples from Hans Bruinnsson. Causing raised eyebrows at the time (from, as Fred calls them 'progressive music snobs' - of which I guess I was one) for its apparent simplicity and departure from what was then thought of as Fred Style, this work has matured with age and perspective and no longer seems (to this former critic) to stand outside the oeuvre, but rather to exemplify a persistent strand within it. Echoes appear in many later works. In context it's a record that makes sense - what was all the fuss about? - and it has become a record that's refreshing to listen to. And political - political and personal. In fact, as well as being a very rewarding, darkish, toe-tapper of a record, it seems also to have tapped an important biographical moment. There are some great guitar sounds, production ideas and of course the expected exemplary playing of everything, all the time. A good argument for reissues. Very nicely re-mastered, and in a nice new package.
	FRITH, FRED: Clearing Code:TZ7605 Price: £15.86 Quantity in Basket: none
Fred's first solo recording in over a decade.
	FRITH, FRED: Guitar Solos Code:ReRFRO02 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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. Listen to a sample of this release
	GREAVES, JOHN : Loco Solo- Live in Tokyo Code:LSR004 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
At last John, a piano and his songs. Taken from a concert at Star Pines, Tokyo and wisely minimally edited, this follows the dynamic of the concert and lives in the minutiae of its performance. Persuasive and gripping because so real - warts and struggle and all. What comes out is the essence of a performance that is engrained with character and engagement.
	HIDEKI, KATO : Turbulent Zone Code:ME89801 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
A CD of Electric Bass solos? Yes. A multiplicity of techniques imaginatively deployed to produce a sequence of fragile sound events. Delicate noise.
	HODGKINSON, TIM: Klarnt Code:ZRTH3 Price: £14.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Tim's second solo clarinet CD, very different from the first. Not casual listening, this is a very concentrated, exposed and close reading of the instrument and its possibilities. Initmate and immediate.
	KAZUHISA, UCHIHASHI: Guitar Solo Code:Zen002 Price: £15.28 Quantity in Basket: none
Extraordinary guitarist of 'Altered States', 'Ground Zero' etc. puts the guitar through it's paces. Japanese pressing. Few copies only
	KLEIER, ROGER : Deep Night, Deep Autmn Code:St-211 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
9 carefully made pieces for Guitar, ranging from deep textures through thick, Velvet Underground inflected, slabs to picked cascades and singing melodies. Many pedals wisely employed. Predominantly textural but subtle and never dull. There is always movement and structure.
	KRAABEL,CAROLINE: Now We are One Two Code:dbc207 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Caroline is a Saxophonist and Performance Artist and this is a remarkable solo album. Palpably personal and present - using extended techniques, no technique, atmospheric noise, strangled cries, fragments of dialogue, suspense - this removes itself from the normal and conventionally musical to arrive at a kind of invocation of performance; I mean, of what is it to be alone in front of an audience and invent. And the cover, extraordinary...
	KURYOKHIN, SERGEY: Some combinations of fingers and passion Code:LR179 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
The incomparable Sergey, recorded in London, hauls his piano through thickets of sound with deceptive ease. Protean, hopping from one genre to another, scarily free of gloss and bluster, this is direct, sometimes irresponsible music that plays endlessly with form. A long cat and mouse performance with Brubeck's 'Blue Rondo a la Turque' forms the centrepiece; as cavalier with time as the early Dollar Brand.
	KURYOKHIN, SERGEY: The Ways of Freedom Code:GY14 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
The legendary release reissued. A lot of vari-speeded pianos and some phenomenal playing.
	LERNER, MARILYN: Luminance Code:AM115CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Excellent Solo Piano pieces stretching the instrument in all dimensions (Cowell, Cage, Scott &c) but most interestingly through the planned use of microphone placing. You'll be amazed what this seemingly simple procedure can mean. It helps that Lerner's playing intelligence - and technical facility - are exemplary, but there is more than that. I'd go so far as to say that this is important work. Excellent.
	LUSSIER, RENE: Quatorze Improvisations a la Guitare Electrique Code:AM075CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Solo Improvisations. Recorded simultaneously by 8 different microphones in different locations. An interesting method- although there is no editing, overdubbing or equalisation, there is radical mixing of the different sound sources (like filming one event from 8 positions- so that the point of view -of audition - is always changing. Then Rene employs very extended techniques. He is a virtuoso after all, with an aesthetic uniquely his own. Prodigious. Good taken in sections.
	LYTTON, PAUL , JOHN STEPHENS, FRANK PERRY, EDDIE PREVOST, TREVOR TAYLOR: Improvising Percussionist Code:FMRCD81-0501 Price: £13.51 Quantity in Basket: none
Recorded in the early 70's this is an excellent snapshot of the styles and approaches of 5 influential and very different improvising percussionists who were working in London at the time. Especially remarkable is Lytton, whose early use of amplification is highly evolved. Eddie Prevost is subtle and the most rhythmic, Frank Perry dwells on every sound from his massed collection of materials (mostly metallophones). Trevor Taylor also with extended kit and amplification is already more in the sound sphere than the percussive, and John Stephens is - John Stephens. I wish there were more information and documentation - there are not even pictures of the equipment used. Still, a useful and historic document.
	MACLEAN, STEVE: EXPRESSIONS on Piano Code:ReRSM4 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Steve's fourth CD for us is a remarkable set of pieces for mediated acoustic piano that operates in the shadowy territory between what is playable and what is programmable; between narrative simplicity and performative complexity; between hopeful intentionality and flawless execution. Unusually, Steve has put our ear right inside the piano, sans artificial reverberations and blurring tools and, over the course of the CD, various musical dialects are explored and extended - from the plausible through the exquisite to the impossible. MacLean also mines a subtle complexity that offers more on each audition and, occasionally, an extreme (of Nancarrowistic speed or sound amplified through gongs). The process remains impenetrable, so what remains is the listening. In Steve's long and varied musical career he has consistently explored new compositional techniques and new technologies (he teaches at Berklee in Boston) and this is no exception; a unique take on the acoustic piano.
	MALCOLM, GREG: Homesick for Nowhere Code:Hermes039 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
An excellent CD of pieces for guitars, usually more than one at a time, played in unconventional ways - in real time - with little in the way of electronic processing but rather using electric fans, ebow, slide, violin bow, multiple simultaneous instruments. What makes it especially interesting is the content: these are interpretations of tunes by Ornette Coleman, The Beatles, Connie Bauer, Charlie Haden and of traditional Klezmer, Japanese and Islamic melodies. Very unusual, very successful. A fine work, and nicely packaged.
	MARGORANI, LUCIANO: Solo Concert Code:margoraniSolo Price: £14.50 Quantity in Basket: none
5 well-recorded and quite different pieces, performed at a solo guitar festival in Desenzano del Garda. The first piece is acoustic, the others electric with pedals, gliss and simple processing. Guitaristic rather than abstract. Piece 4 stands out.
	MYERS, DAVID /ARCANE DEVICE: Engine of Myth Code:ReRDLM1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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. Listen to a sample of this release Listen to sample #2 of this release Listen to sample #3 of this release
	PARKINS, ZEENA: Nightmare Alley Code:TOTE1 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
At last a solo album from Zeena where she plays only harps, acoustic and electric. These are studio recordings. Meditation, violence, noise, lyricism, radical electronic treatment - and a good chance to listen to what the instrument can do. See also ReR
	REDON, PIERRE: Solo Code:PIERREREDON:Solo Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Pieces for Electric Guitar and radical stereo set up. In a very nice package bound by exquisitely riveted metal rods.
	RILEY, TERRY: Solo Piano Concert, Moscow Conservatory Code:CDLA01032 Price: £14.10 Quantity in Basket: none
Russian release of a remarkable concert where Riley swings through a programme of very varied music with a lot of additive rhythms, strongly inflected by jazz, show music, ragtime (prodigiously in 7/4), speed, tonal architectures with serious rhythmic underpinnings, relaxation, post jazz elaborations, pure pianistics and some piled up repetitions. A pleasure to listen to and conceived and performed entirely without braggadocio. The recording is fine and the music superb. Limited Supply.
	ROSE, JON: The Hyperstring Project Code:ReRJR6 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Subtitle: The dynamic of rogue counterpoint. Jon, alone, with some of his interactive, midified, altered and invented instruments (eg the whipolin, a disembowelled cello, fitted with a variety of not exactly centred hurdy gurdy type wheels made of various materials). There's also civilian violin and midified bow without violin at all. And an automatic violin quartet for good measure. None of this tells you a lot. Hyperstring is a very intense and dense CD (we put some recovery time blank tracks in) and listening in sections is advised. Sometimes hard, it's an extraordinary document of a rare case in which processing and interactivity conspire with musical intelligence and virtuosity to evolve a genuine cyborgian artform. No shit. Listen to a sample of this release
	ROWE, KEITH: A Dimension of .. Code:MR19 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
AMM guitarist and radio player at last with a solo work. Many have been influenced by his techniques (Syd Barratt and Fred Frith to name two) but seldom has he received the attention that is surely his due. But it is the musical conception and the sonic and expressive minutiae of the performance that matter here; in this Keith Rowe is sans pareil.
	SCHWARTZ, MARK: The Black Oil CDR Code:markSchwartOil Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
(imited supply) Solo guitar - powerful and dark; a long unfolding performance that employs many pedals, treatments and innovative techniques. Evolved and substantial work by an original and interesting player. Very limited CDR edition..
	SKOCZYNSKI, STANISLAW: Per Un Solo Code:POLONIACD027 Price: £15.57 Quantity in Basket: none
Solo percussion pieces, organised sound-blocks. A very scarce and unobtainable item. Last 3 copies.
	SOYBELMAN, LEONID: Surfing in my Bed Code:rere195 Price: £14.30 Quantity in Basket: none
Leonid with Spanish Guitar, preparations, Piezos and Amp(s) finds extreme distortion, feedback and other enormous and extraordinary sounds, with the help of metal and wooden objects. A lot of terror, dedications to Otomo Yoshihide, Marc Ribot, Eugene Chadbourne and Ry Cooder. Powerful, if unremitting. Very charming cover/sleevenotes.
	SUN RA: Monorails and satellites Code:ECD22013-2 Price: £15.28 Quantity in Basket: none
The classic SUN RA solo piano record from 1966-68 S
	SUN RA: Solo piano, Venezia Code:GY21 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Sonny plays his own and other people's compositions (Handy, Strayhorn, Waller) in his own inimitable way.
	TETREAULT, MARTIN: La nuit ou j'ai dit non Code:AUDIOVIEW003 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Turntables as sound sources (abstract rather than recognisable) with a lot of effect processing. Interesting for it's techniques and it's distance from all other 'turntable' musics.
	TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA: No Input Mixing Board Vol 3 Code:ALTN1CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Extreme pitches, raw cracklings, tiny sounds, loops.
	TREE, CHRISTOPHER: Spontaneous Sound Code:locust15 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Solo performance recorded at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York. Recording of a performance for a vast array of drums, bells, cymbals, metallophones, gong, tympani, wood percussions and anything hittable, as well as whistles and wind instruments, mostly concentrating on blocks and mysterious sweepings of sonorities and overlapping sheets of sound. An impressive performance.
	VARIOUS ARTISTS: Turntable Solos Code:AMO-VA-01 Price: £23.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Produced by Otomo Yoshihide who commissioned pieces from Christian Marclay, Erik M, Massimo Simonini, Frank Schulte, Martin Tetreault, Xtasis, L.K.O., Merzbow, Rik Rue, Takeshi Fumimoto, Tsunoda Tsugato, PNF, Crawling with Tarts, George Budd, Mood Man. And, of course, himself. Japanese Import.
	VOGT, MICHAEL: Tuba Intim Code:ReRTUBA1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Contemporary music for tuba and a revelation of an under-utilised musical voice. For stretched and traditional techniques. Includes works by Lutz Glandien (Tuba and Tape), Morton Feldman, Igor Stravinsky and Michael himself. Excellent collection; and unusual. Listen to a sample of this release
	VOGT, MICHAEL: Argonautika Code:ReRTUBA2 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
A sound drama for tuba and electronics that constructs its own rich, twilit, rather alien, world. Only the sound of the tuba (sometimes), a few waves and a little thunder sound familiar, everything else is a mysterious presence; the electronics are not at all conventional and though much of the sound is clearly derived somehow from the tuba, it offers no foothold in a familiar place. If landscape were ever an appropriate metaphor for the product of a congeries of sounds, it would be applicable here. Strange, low, melodic lines emerge and submerge; winds from uncharted places bring threat and promise, perfume and debris. A genuinely unusual record that follows its own path all the way off the map. In five episodes, scored variously for single and double tubas, acoustic and electronic tubas, electronics, all manner of processing, and tape.