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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

	AVRAM, ANA MARIA, IANCU DUMITRESCU: iO String Quartet Code:ED.MN.1025 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Four radical pieces for a great - and young - American string quartet who give life and power to four intense compositions (3 for quartet, one for quartet and tape). Spectralism is slowly becoming more accepted and located in the listening world, and the reduced nature of a string quartet, combined with the great sensitivity of these players, urges minute concentration on the part of both performers and the listeners (digital silence also helps) which is repaid in an edge-of-seat, time-locked existentiality. The four pieces move in different directions and are saturated with detail, the compositions seeming to rise out of the grain of the performance, rather than being an anachronous imposition upon it - a tribute to the vision and skill of the composers, who tread a perilous path between precision and dependency - demanding immediacy through prevision, open scoring and will; a dangerously ambiguous endeavour that erases the power relations between individuality and collectivity at the point of realisation. There are three pages of clunking text by Ben Watson in the accompanying booklet that, to this reader, seem completely inappropriate - an incomprehensible antithesis to the subtlety, depth and sensitivity of the music. Unhappily the delivery of this text as part of the concert is included as an unannounced final track on the CD. toe-curlingly inappropriate. But skip-able.
	AYERS, KEVIN and The WHOLE WORLD: Hyde Park Free Concert Code:RR002 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Summer 1970 and a great band that drew in Lol Coxhill (national treasure), David Bedford (enfant terrible), Mike Oldfield (wildly over-qualified bass-player) and both Robert Wyatt and bandleader Kevin Ayers (respectively current and ex Soft Machiners). Someone recorded it all, and here, cleaned up as much as possible, are the traces. '70s PA system, big noisy space, wind blowing the sound about; it's all engraved into this CD. And through the lo-fi you can hear what made this period so interesting; bands didn't try to sound alike, they took risks, they shuffled up the genres and they found their own way to a musical language that was full of ideas, details and imagination. The Whole World was exemplary, and you can just about hear what it was all about here. Fans will like it, researchers will be informed and it's nice to hear Robert in this fluid, melodic context; if you were there, this will bring it all back; but doubters should go first to the studio CDs. These are precious documents, however.
	AZZARIA, GEORGE: Concret (for headphones) Code:OHM/Avtr31 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Spatialised binaural work, ideally for headphone listening; a web of positioned and moving sounds, a central thread of cello (using plain and extended techniques, player unattributed), intermittent voice (tells complex, morbid, tenuous, tale; language: French), mysterious unidentifiable sounds (acoustic rather than electronic) and occasional field recordings. Fascinating and convincing. With a 5-foot concertina fold-out booklet containing text, some notes (rather minimal) a few photographs and a long, coloured, graphic score..
	AZZARIA, GEORGE: Monopole Code:OHM/Avtr028 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
A CD whose content is neither obviously composed nor improvised but which bears the strong stamp of post-production organisation. All the sounds are made by an army of complex as well as rather beautiful invented instruments, in which loudspeakers, gramophone records, strings, metal tongues, springs, horns and wires predominate. The sounds are fascinating and obviously organic (as opposed to electronic - though some are obviously amplified) in origin and the procession of their sounding seems coherent, if mysterious There is a certain logic. Very nicely packaged in a gold embossed strong black board cover with a 36pp full colour book of photographs documenting the instruments or installations -, and some rather uninformative notes. Unique.
	BABIN, BELANGER, BRAND, CUTLER, DOYON, DUMAS, LEBRASSEUR, d'ORION, OSWALD, SENEZ: Covers Code:OHMAVTR042 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Ten musicians (above) each chose a commercial recording that they thought could benefit from something being added to it. Each musician received all 10 tracks and each added something to all of them. Nobody heard anything but the original pieces, so no one knew what anyone else had added. Jocelyn Robert gathered all the recordings together, lined up the 10 added tracks from each - still synched to the original commercial recording - erased the originals and mixed the remaining overdubbed parts into a self-standing piece. Each piece, therefore, owed its existence to a commercial recording, but nothing of that recording remained. The result is this CD - which was commissioned to accompany a conference on copyright in Quebec. It's complicated, rich - and experimental - since there is always the phantom of the erased structure holding everything together. Not everything works, but.. In common with many recent releases, there is a minimum of information on the digipack, just a list of names - see above - but no indication of what each of them played, plus a list of the original tracks erased. A fascinating project, nicely realised, by a pretty good band.
	BACH/SCHNEBAL: Curved Bow, Diess Code:MODE52 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	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.
	BADINGS, HENK: More Electronic Music by (dbl CD) Code:BASTA91-712-2 Price: £21.00 Quantity in Basket: none
Another collection of prescient and historic works by the remarkable and pioneering Badings, not sketches but fully formed pieces which, though dating from the late 1950s, sound more engaging and imaginative than much that is produced today. CD one holds 3 pieces: Capriccio (1959), one of the first works for acoustic instrument (violin) and (2) tape(s), Genese,(1958) for 5 frequency oscillators, and Dialogues for man and machine ((also 1958, busy man) a 20 minute radio piece for electronics and (processed) voice that is pretty off the map. CD2 features the 45 minute soundtrack for a multimedia event The woman of Andros (1959) which mixes pitched and unpitched sounds, melodies and rhythms, abstract textures and moods, and sits somewhere between a music that might have been composed for monophonic instruments and purely electronic sounds. It's closer to a strange, abstract, kind of pop music than anything else; an epic curiosity. This is followed by act 3 of Martin Korda D.P (1960) an opera for many voices and, in this extract, electronics - otherwise it's very conventional. The last track is Toccata (1964) a fugue of bleeps and bloops. In a very nicely designed package with useful booklet.
	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.
	BAILEY, DEREK, GAVIN BRYERS, TONY OXLEY: Joseph Holbrooke '98 + '65 Code:IncusCD39 Price: £17.63 Quantity in Basket: none
Possibly the first of the British free improvisation ensembles, dating back to 1963 (evolving into free playing around 1966), here reformed for a single concert on the occasion of Tony Oxley's 60th birthday in Koln. It's nicely recorded (Geman Radio). A rare chance to hear a legendary group, which didn't make any released recordings in its own time and to contemplate a musical form that after 33 years is, in the hands of these performers, remarkably similar to the way it was in its youth. A useful mirror to an influential school of improvising. And sharp. You may think you're going to be bored, but you never are.PLUS the incus CD of a 10 minute rehearsal recording from 1965 (a very stretched version of Coltrane's Miles Mode). Fascinating comparison and about the only recording of the original group you can hear. First orders only, I'm afraid. Very limited supply.
	BAILEY, DEREK: Ballads Code:TZ7607 Price: £15.57 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	BAILEY, DEREK: Improvisation (book) Code:BAILEY,DEREKImprovisation Price: £18.21 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	BAILEY, DEREK: To Play Code:ss008 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
His last studio recording; produced by David Sylvian.
	BAILEY, Denio & Palmer: The Gospel Record Code:SRRCD004 Price: £12.93 Quantity in Basket: none
Amy and sometimes Dennis sing Gospel songs. Derek plays the guitar, Dennis Synthesiser and Samples. This is not improvised music, as known, it is rather stretched arrangements of Gospel music. It's great to hear Derek in this context - as with the great ‘Ballads', it's a rare occasion on which he leavens the abstractly free with the generic, melodic and harmonic and it suits him. More of this. Palmer orchestrates with taste and imagination. Amy does some daring and some risky things and holds everything together. Altogether a fine release. Short. 7 songs. But who need quantity when there's quality to be had.
	BAKER, LAURIE SCOTT & ROBERT EVANS: Liquid metal Dreaming Code:MNCD010 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
An interesting set of pieces for combinations of basses, metal percussion, crwth (a 6 string lyre tuned to Pythagorean proportion 12:9:8:6, often bowed), tambura, lyre and fiddle - any two at a time. Airy, light, delicate and resonant sounds of great richness, floating for the most part in their own sonority, not too structured, not going anywhere in a hurry, but also not drones and not boring. Laurie you may know from the Scratch Orchestra, Robert is a celebrity in the tiny community of very early Welsh string music. This is a music easy to approximate in a lacklustre way and very hard, as here, to make luminous. Eccentric sleeve-notes but a fine recording. For immersive listening.
	BAKER, LAURIE SCOTT: Gracility (dbl CD) Code:MNCD012 Price: £19.50 Quantity in Basket: none
In the mid to late sixties Baker was much involved with Cardew, AMM, Tudor, the London Improvisers and then the Scratch Orchestra, as well as jobbing in Hair and with Manfred Mann and Alex Harvey, soon falling into the ambit of the so-called Canterbury scene. Moving about then. These are original documentary recordings of 4 performances of Baker's pieces, made between 1969 and 1975 that feature Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe (their only recording together), Gavin Bryars, Evan Parker, Jamie Muir, John Tilbury and the Scratch Orchestra. Whatever else, that makes these important historical documents. The title piece (Baker, Bailey, Briars and Rowe, with their amplifiers turned all the way up and them trying to play quite softly) is 71 minutes long and gives a good flavour of the period, Pibroch, with Evan, is a snippet at 5.57 but very lyrical and exquisite (and not at all like the Evan we know today), Bass, Chants and Cues features a trio of John Tilbury (Lowry organ), Laurie Baker (fretless bass, VCS3 and pedals) and Jaime Muir (Drums) which starts a bit like Terry Riley and ends a lot like Faust - and finally Circle Piece is a rare, good quality, recording of the Scratch Orchestra. The sleeve notes are also interesting since they show the many interconnections that existed at the time between contemporary art music, the free improvisers and fringe rock and pop. It was a moment that didn't last. In its way a gem.
	BAKSHI, ALEXANDER: Hamlet is Dying Code:CDLA00028 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Three works for performance (music-theatre).The first, Hamlet is Dying, for 2 violins, three string ensembles, Double Bass funeral train and Bass drum brought to my mind an echo of Broch's 'Death of Virgil' as Hamlet's life swirls around him and some external sounds penetrate following his fatal poisoning. Part music, more dramaturgy, a convincing and concentrated work.The second piece, Sidur Mystery, for Soprano and percussion ensemble seems less concentrated, certainly on the record, without the seeing and the being there. You can compensate a bit by turning the Volume up and the light down, but this is still more of a document than a listening piece. It's interesting but not gripping.The third, Shostakovich Concerto, for Violin and Strings (a piece about, not by Shostakovich) . Gideon Kremer is the main violinist on the first and third pieces. The sleeve notes are almost worth the price of the CD, Bakshi writes about his idea of theatre-music, about the unique and critical quality of individual performance and about the deep relation of sound, space and presence in performance that is centred on dramaturgy and not dependent on words or any separable element. And there's the rub, on the CD, of course, only the sound remains. Nevertheless, there is an intelligence at work here that even information of is worth the having. Russian release. Limited supply.
	BAKU: SYMPHONY OF SIRENS - SOUND EXPERIMENTS IN THE SOVIET AVANT GARDE. ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS AND RECON Code:ReRRAG12 Price: £27.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	BALAYANA, JOSEPH MARIA: Ultramarinos 451 Code:NCM5 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
A live recording of a concert at the Miro Foundation, Barcelona, for piano, prepared piano, public and a lot of plastic tubing. There are always more things to do with a piano - and here are a few of them.
	BALDAH, BEBO: Soniaskiri Code:SUBCD0025-47 Price: £15.33 Quantity in Basket: none
	BALESTRACCI, FRANCK : Existences Invisibles CDR Code:FRANCKBALESTRACCI:ExistencesInvisiblesCDR Price: £12.93 Quantity in Basket: none
An interesting CDR release of fairly involved pieces that would fit at the non pompous fringe of what has come to be known a Îprogâ, but with hints of Magma, film music, a little Jazzrock where all instruments (means drums and all manner of keyboards a lot of synth -are played by Frank.
	BALESTRACCI, FRANCK: Modified Reality Code:Carbon7 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
This is in all respects a large record, full of ideas, clean sounds and layered atmosphere. Most of it is played by keyboardist and drummer Balestracci, with many electronic aids and much overdubbing, though Guitarist Reginald Trigaux and Bassist Guy Segers both appear. Epic pieces, fully evolved and arranged, with more than a little of the Magma/Univers Zero/Present about them, though written on a much broader canvas. Instrumentally it's impressive; also in its focus and tension. Nicely recorded: transparent, but powerful when it needs to be.
	BANCQUART, ALAIN: Livre du Labyrinth (dbl CD) Code:Mode120-121 Price: £22.03 Quantity in Basket: none
6 pieces exploring microtanailty, shifting textures and time, some with very interesting instrumentation (piano in sixteenth tones, two in quarter tones and 2 violas d'amore; electric guitar, flute, harp, cello, clarinet, cymbalum, percussion and quartertone piano; four singers and tape; bass voice and 5 cellos. But much is slow and demands a performance context or visual accompaniment, I think, except for a few pieces. On the other hand the densely microtonal pieces are extremely interesting and unusual. A CD you might not want always to listen to all of but with some tracks that are passing strange.
	BANDA ELASTICA: Cataloga de Tiraderos Code:CDLN04 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	BARRET, NATASHA: Isostasie Code:IMED0262 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Installation pieces mostly, well crafted.
	BARRETO, JORGE LIMA, VITOR RUA: Telectu Solos - Dbl CD Code:BA00201 Price: £18.21 Quantity in Basket: none
Prepared Piano. Customised Midified Guitar.
	BARRETT, NATASHA: Trade Winds Code:ACD5056 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
A sustained and impressive electroacoustic/ documentary composition built around sounds recorded from old ocean-going wooden ships (the sea, the creaking rigging, occasional voices) as well as appropriately related sources, that blends the weight of the world's oceans, the hyper-reality of film soundtrack, the conventions of science fiction, total sensory immersion and an imaginative suggestion of narrative. So: unclassifiable. A one-off. And great. Composed as a 16-channel installation it comes here on an SACD hybrid disc - so it will play on any CD player, but if you have SACD hardware, you will get the extra quality.
	BARRETT, RICHARD: Vanity Code:NMCD041S Price: £8.23 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	BARROSO, SERGIO: Delirantes Code:IMED9628/29 Price: £15.28 Quantity in Basket: none
Good collection from Cuban composer of pieces for solo instruments and tape.
	BARTLEY, WENDE: Claire-voie Code:IMED9414CD Price: £9.09 Quantity in Basket: none
	BARTSCHI: Klang Klavier Code:RECDEC4 Price: £13.00 Quantity in Basket: none
	BASCHET, BERNARAD AND FRANCOIS : Les Structures Sonores Code:FMRCD63-0599 Price: £13.51 Quantity in Basket: none
Collated from many sources, including long deleted records (remember the Bam label?), this gives some idea of the extraordinary scope of the Baschet brothersÕ instruments. In a long career, starting in 1954, they produced families of beautiful, exotic, futuristic sculptures made from metal, sheet aluminium, glass, wire and plastic - in all sizes, some small, some over 20 feet high Ð all designed to be played: stroked, beaten, bowed, blown (even worn) and composed for. Here are compositions from various hands that exlore the amazing array of sonorities these objects can produce Some unfortunate vocalising now and then does not really detract. This is history. I recommended that you get this CD free with the Book Ð see the book section for details.
	BASCHET, FRANCOIS: Les Structures Sonores. With Free CD Code:FRANCOISBASCHETLesStructuresSonores Price: £18.80 Quantity in Basket: none
The Baschet brothers produced families of exquisite sculptures, starting in 1954, which were designed to be played as instruments - exquisite and exotic instruments whose sounds recall Partch, Analogue synthesisers, the Ondes Martinot, Fred Frith and otherworldly atmospheres impossible to produce except through this specific acoustic concatenation of materials and shapes. In this book their history, the principles of their design, the theory of sound that informed them and a fascinating anecdotal history of their careers and the careers of their designers in many countries and in collaboration with Cocteau, Varese, Schaeffer, Shankar, Cage, Tudor, Menuhin and Takemitusu (who has a piece for the instruments on the CD) are covered, along with 100Õs of photographs and design drawings and a clear meditation on acoustic principles and sonic theory. Another indispensable addition to every library. And not even expensive. Weight means we have to add postage to this - sorry £3.00 UK, £4.00 Europe, £6.00 World.
	BASSOONIST: Reinhard, Vieru, Scelsi, Pehrson, Babin. Played by Jonny Reinhard Code:p-200214 Price: £14.50 Quantity in Basket: none
A very small, essentially handmade, edition of 300 copies of pieces researched and performed for the microtonal society at various venues in New York This is a collection of mostly microtonal compositions exploring extended bassoon techniques, the solo works often on the same turf as free improvisation, though not always. Louis Babin's Mellow Tones for Johnny - for small ensemble - stands out, as does Talibanned Buddhas, for contrabassoon, cello gong, bowls and bells. A valuable window on a world seldom encountered.
	BAUER, KONRAD.: Toronto Tone Code:VICTOCD017 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	BAUER, KONRAD: 3 Wheels in 4 Directions Code:VICTOCD023 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
	BAYLE, FRANCIS: La Main Vide Code:MUSIDISC245542 Price: £18.80 Quantity in Basket: none
Vol 8 in the works.
	BAYLE, FRANCOIS : Jeita Code:MD248122 Price: £14.98 Quantity in Basket: none
Pieces spanning 1970-1999, derived from recordings made in a vast natural space - the grotto at Jeita - of an ensemble composition by Bayle - and of the environ. Some recognisable sounds, but very spacious and highly processed. Fine work. Then, some 30 years later a revisitation of the materials. Interesting. With some impressive picture documentation.
	BAYLE, FRANCOIS: Camera Oscura. Espaces Inhabitables Code:MD275112 Price: £14.98 Quantity in Basket: none
Pieces from 1967 and 1976.'Spaces' is an early work, remixed here, but from the original; Camera is a recent revision of an early piece. Both use mainly concrete, manipulated materials and both have the early clarity and excitement of much of the pioneer work, making the most of every sound and of its spatial placement. These are classic works.
	BAYLE, FRANCOIS: Fabulae Code:MUSIDISC244732 Price: £18.80 Quantity in Basket: none