Main Catalog

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

	OSTERTAG, BOB: Verbatim Code:REDNOTE Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Third in Bob's great sampled-live-sampled project with Phil Minton and Mark Dresser. Nice packaging. See also special distribution
	OSTERTAG/FRITH/MINTON: Voice of America Code:RECDEC907 Price: £13.00 Quantity in Basket: none
Stands the test of time
	OSWALD, JOHN : 69 plunderphonics 96 (Dbl CD and book) Code:fony69/96 Price: £21.15 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	OSWALD, JOHN/GRATEFUL DEAD: Greyfolded (dbl) Code:SA1969 Price: £23.27 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	OSWALD, JOHN: Aparanthesi Code:IMED0368 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
- 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.
	OSWALD, JOHN: Plexure Code:AVAN016 Price: £18.21 Quantity in Basket: none
Only while limited numbers last, this is the scarce Japanese import of the 1993 plunderphonic classic in which John samples over a thousand top-hundred artists from the past 10 years. Starting with 'rapmillisylables', it then progresses through the material according to tempo. Hard to describe because the material moves so fast (there are thousands of fragments). It is jaw-droppingly complex, at the same time as being nothing but glossy hits exploding into a million shards (harmless when whole, exploded this stuff is lethal). This piece works on so many levels it's better to leave it to you the listener. EP length; indispensable
	OSWALD, JOHN: S/A 1969-1996 Code:Greyfolded Price: £14.10 Quantity in Basket: none
The ultimate Dark Star and other Grateful Dead plunderphones made at the request of the Dead who opened their massive live concert archive for John to work with.
	OTHER ROOMS OTHER VOICES: Audio Work by Artists Code:otherRoomVoices Price: £30.55 Quantity in Basket: none
173pp 21x28 cm hardback art book with CD. The artwork in the book and the sounds on the CD are are complementary. Arrtists are Lawrence weiner, Vittorio Santoro, Julian Opie, Iris Gallarotti, Jos Mapflin, Sylvie Defraoui, Shahryar Hashat, Dara Birnbaum, Ilona Ruegg, Robert Wilson. Louise Bourgeois, Marie Jose Burl, Sarah Sze, Mitja Tusek and Vito Acconci. This is only I think for those who know what to expect. POSTAGE. Because of weight please add: UK - £4.30, Europe - £5.86, ROW - £11.41
	OTOLITHEN: S.O.D Code:RUNE97 Price: £12.00 Quantity in Basket: none
	OTOMO YOSHIHIDE / VOICE CRACK: Bitsbotsandsigns Code:erstwhile011 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
5 pieces, mostly smaller, abstract sounds.
	OTOMO YOSHIHIDE, MARTIN TETREAULT: Studio Ð Analogique Ð Numerique Code:AM1113CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
(3x 3cm CD box) CD 1 is duo pieces, CD2 MartinÕs analogue mixes, CD3 OtomoÕs digital mixÉ.Click, scratch, glitch, minimal school mostly, though Otomo steps out a little. In a small box and nicely presented. ThatÕs important, the same data would fit on a normal CD, but it would mean something different. An art object maybe more than a musical object.
	OTOMO YOSHIHIDE: Vinyl Tranquilizer Code:NAIM01CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Otomo's MEMORY DISORDER, Solo works, Vol 2. Featuring 60 1 minute tracks each working on a single vinyl record..; a compendium of techniques and fun to 'spot the source'.
	OTOMO YOSIHIDE: Turntable Solo 8 cm ep Code:AlcoholOY1CD Price: £9.99 Quantity in Basket: none
Turntable without records - feedback. 22 minutes of mid frequency range roaring and squeals. Sustained assault music. Pretty definitive.
	OTOMO,YOSHIHIDE and MARTIN TETREAULT: 21 situations Code:AM069CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
As you would expect, radical scratchings, poppings and destroyed vinyl with extras, or - just a couple of guys and their turntables in 21 situations..
	OTOMO,YOSHIHIDE/SACHIKO MATSUBARA: Music for DanceArt , Hong Kong's Memory Disorder Code:NAIAM04CD Price: £15.28 Quantity in Basket: none
New style Otomo, with Sachiko M. Sine tones, almost inaudible frequencies, disturbance, controlled noise. Hard to find Chinese release. Artprint inside card folder. Very limited supply.
	OTOMO.ROWE. SUGIMOTO: Ajar Code:Alors1CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Minimal, quiet. There will be fans but though this can be gripping at a concert it doesn't seem to me to transfer to listening-object well at all. Unless as ambience
	P53: P53 Code:ReRP53 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	PAIK, NAM JUN: Works 1958-1979 Code:SR178 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Troublemaker, prankster, collaborator with Cage and Stockhausen, Fluxus alumnus Paik has here for the first time some of his recorded work released on a CD . Includes Hommage a John Cage (for tape and piano) and Study for piano and Simple (1958-60) both of which are in effect, classic early tape-works - incorporating plenty of stolen - sorry, referential - audio material. Plus Prepared Piano for Merce Cunningham (1977) a live performance by Paik for detuned piano and voice, and Duetti (as above but with Takis duetting on his metal sculptures). An historic release, very nicely presented.
	PALE NUDES, THE: Wise To The Heat Code:RECDEC71 Price: £15.28 Quantity in Basket: none
Amy Denio, Wadi Gysi, Mitch Gerber and Will Dowd in a post- (ec) Nudes. More 'acoustic' and much less experimental than the (ec) Nudes, but smoothly listenable. Well recorded and the addition of contrabasse is a plus. Usual good performance from Tone Dog Dowd.
	PALE ORCHESTRA, THE: Mirror Man Act 1 Code:CookCD175 Price: £15.57 Quantity in Basket: none
The Orchestra- Andy Diagram, Keith Moline, Peter Hammil, Chris Cutler, Jack Kidney, David Thomas. Singers and speakers- Robert Kidney, Linda Thompson, David Hild Jackie Leven, Jane Bom-bane, David Thomas. Commentary and voiceover- Bob Holman. In July 1998 David Thomas programmed three days of Disastodrome at London's Southbank. The centrepiece was David's epic journey into the heartland where it's all road and sky and one-horse towns on the outside and failure, deserts and tumbleweed on the inside. There are great stories and texts here, daring to be openly poetic. And songs winding in and out of them. On their way to somewhere and an unusual and courageous experiment with form. Bob's Kidney and Holman are a revelation and it is wonderful to hear Linda Thompson back on the boards. This is more than a record. Sorry about price – Cooking Vinyl!
	PALINCKX: Border, Live in Zurich Code:INTAKTCD043 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Contains some (different) live versions of 1. (fascinating comparisons/food for thought) and a great deal of other material. Great concert, well recorded. Get both CD's is my advice.
	PALINCKX: It's Frontal Dog Code:VICTO061 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	PALINCKX: Llllivvvvve!!!! Code:VONK4 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
P with friends, including Guus Janssen, Peter Van Bergen, DNA, The Mondrian Quartet and the ubiquitous LoL Coxhill (whose 'Murder in the Air extract' is truly magnificent). Organised and otherwise chaos with strong musical undertow.
	PALINCKX: Momentum & Wag Code:VONK8 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	PALINCKX: Tight Spots Code:VONK12 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
A new song CD from the indefinable Palinckx's, this one echoing maybe Beefheart and Ubu moments, nicely produced, with some good sounds and mixes. If you know Palinckx, you will be happy I think; full of pop references and fine playing, and some inevitable kitsch.
	PALO ALTO: Grands Succedanes (20 min) Code:OCD002 Price: £10.34 Quantity in Basket: none
	PALO ALTO: Trash et Arteres Code:FOS001 Price: £13.51 Quantity in Basket: none
Interesting and well recorded collection of varied pieces, rich, pure sound, of compositions and assemblages of played and manipulated instruments, tapework and surprises. No revolution but very good work. Nicely presented.
	PAMERUD, AKE: Jeu D'Ombres Code:IMED0367 Price: £15.28 Quantity in Basket: none
I shouldn't say it, but after hours of listening to laptop performances, this is a joy. Contemporary Electroacousticians work with subtlety, careful crafting, structure, conflict and balance, delicate dynamic detail and mixed materials. Track one here is for harp (an instrument I admit a fondness for anyway) and electronics, the second follows the form of a string quartet, the third includes renaissance instruments, the fourth is built around some Charlie Parker licks, the fifth deals with morphological transformation and the last works with the rejected material from another project for chamber orchestra and tape. These are fully formed paragraphs and narratives. Fine work.
	PANHUYSEN, PAUL: Le jeu & les règles Code:panhuysenRegles Price: £32.00 Quantity in Basket: none
The first monograph on this pioneering artist-curator who moved between sound, performance, installation and event art and ran the legendary Apollohuis throughout the 1980s and '90s, home to an amazing variety of sound art, experimental music and performances. Best known for his long-string instruments, Panhuysen, as this lavishly illustrated book shows, was busy with paintings and large-scale installations of some variety. 7 essay texts (by Panhuysen, Jaap Bremer, Yvan Etienne, Michel Giroud, Rahma Khazam, Paul Kuypers, Helga de la Motte-Haber, Rene van Peer, Rolf Sachsse & Louis Ucciani) cover the various aspects of his work, with copious photographs, illustrations and documents in colour. There is also a full chronology of exhibitions, installations, performances and concerts. Bilingual (English &French) this is a large soft-cover 320 page book (22,5 x 24,5 cm) which comes also with a CD 'Small Samples with Many Pieces' containing extracts from works composed, improvised, acoustic, amplified and electronic that employ and explore sounds made by musicians, animals and objects. Sorry we have to add Postage (heavy) £ 5.15 UK, £ 8.79 Europe, £ 17.26 Rest of the world.
	PANZERPAPPA: Koralrevens Klagesang Code:DHCCD501 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
A new CD from the timeless Norwegians, whose music is sometimes reminiscent - but not imitative - of National Health or Miriodor - and similar bands of that era: melodic, with a light but solid ensemble sound, rich, detailed, nuanced and with a style that is still their own. Mostly instrumental, though Richard Sinclair appears on track 7. They have come a long way since their last release. For everyone who likes that English type of 70's progressive rock and its more interesting extensions.
	PANZERPAPPA: Passer Gulfisk Code:PANZERPAPPA:PasserGulfisk Price: £11.16 Quantity in Basket: none
CD-R release by excellent Norwegian band in general style of good '70's progressive instrumental rock (additive rhythms, extended form, melody, harmony). Less jazzy than Hatfield, a touch of Etron Fou, a hint of Cow. Very nicely recorded - guitar, bass, drums, keyboards and sometimes sax, synth and tuned percussions. Nice work.
	PAPASOFF, CHARLES: International Baritone Conspiracy Code:VICTOCD038 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	PAPE, GERHARD: Chamber Works Code:MODE25 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	PARALLELAKTION: Endlos Code:FTF005 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
	PARKER, EVAN/SAINKHO NAMCHYLAK: Mars Song Code:VICTOCD042 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
	PARKINS, ZEENA/ELIOT SHARP: Blackburst Code:VICTOCD044 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Second CD from the roaring duo.
	PARKINS, ZEENA/SHARP, ELLIOT: Psycho- acoustic Code:VICTOCD026 Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
Duo recordings, cycles, noise
	PARKINS, ZEENA: $shot (LLPC) Code:parkins$Shot Price: £52.88 Quantity in Basket: none
Expensive because a limited edition art item - CD on an elaborate plastic inflatable cushion silk-screened with pictures from the performance event the sound on the CD was made for. The sound on the CD is processed from leather, latex, other plastics, twigs, metal, styrofoam, marbles, old gramophone records, radio, Moogs, ring modulators and tone generators and is substantial and constantly interesting.
	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
	PARKINS, ZEENA: No Way back Code:ALP64CD Price: £14.69 Quantity in Basket: none
1997 solo CD featuring the custom electric harp in its manifold identities (beyond but with occasional echoes of Hendrix, Frith, Alcorn and all the way to pure electronics) - it's a remarkable instrument, a remarkable performer - and this is the best solo document we have from both to date. Recommended. Engineered by Elliott Sharp