Independent Review/Description

ReR Label

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

	NECKS, THE: Chemist Code:ReRNECKS7 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
New studio work featuring three long pieces in classic Necks minimal/maximal style. Why waste words?
	NECKS, THE: Drive By Code:ReRNECKS3 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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. Listen to a sample of this release
	NECKS, THE: Hanging Gardens Code:ReRNecks1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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. Listen to a sample of this release
	NECKS, THE: Mosquito/See Through (dbl) Code:ReRNECKS5/6 Price: £20.00 Quantity in Basket: none
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.]
	NECKS, THE: Silverwater Code:ReRNECKS9 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Their first studio CD for three years - named for an industrial suburb in Sydney, famous for its correctional facility - Silverwater ranges further and wider than the Necks' earlier releases, exploring a more sectional structure that counterposes more extremes and contrasts, and has a greater sense of forward motion, than usual, though still retaining the long, hypnotic single-track iterative form for which the band has become famous. Layers and skeins of overdubs and textures give way in places to almost empty stretches, and there is much play with asynchronous time. Paradoxically, for a band famous for its slow, cycling, repetition, the Necks show again that they work hard not to repeat themselves
	NECKS, THE: The Boys Code:ReRNECKS4 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Sound-track to the prize-winning movie. The Necks break with convention here and put several shorter pieces on one CD. All gems and all pared back to the reiterative imperfection that is the Necks' unique and glorious signature. This a band that seems to be coming into its golden age. Prodigious music and highly recommended. Listen to a sample of this release
	NORMA with CHRIS CUTLER: The Harp and the Donkey Code:ReRNORMA1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
New work in 3 parts (1) Cinema - based on the Satie piece - a chameleon of a composition that changes every few seconds. A remarkable work remarkably recorded and mixed, (2) duo pieces for samplers, turntables and such by Massimo Simonini and Tiziano Popoli, universally great and imaginative, (3) NORMA live. Listen to a sample of this release
	OFFER: All three re-mastered Art Bears CDs Code:ARTBEARSx3 Price: £27.00 Quantity in Basket: none
	OSSATURA with TIM HODGKINSON: Dentro Code:ReRO1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Somewhere between Musique Concrete and a kind of abstract improvisational work, using extended techniques and electrification that disconnects sound from any recognisable source. A fascinating first record that sits between studio improvisation and extensive post production processing composition. Listen to a sample of this release
	OSSATURA: Verso Code:ReRO2 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
The second release from this abstract trio who mingle hard electronics with acoustic and processed percussion. A more focused, subtle aesthetic here, I think, than on their last also excellent - CD. These are finely tuned and seamlessly integrated sounds that have been crafted and, importantly, performed; this is essentially played music that had been painstakingly reworked, and bears still the deep qualities of interactivity and immediacy that created it. Listen to a sample of this release
	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.
	PELTONEN, AKI: Radio Banana Code:ReRAP1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable - in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes latin brass arrangements (sort of), great drumming, medium wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -and all without undue fuss but adding up to something exotic and new. Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. It doesn't play by genre rules, or fashion rules; it's just someone's idea of music - not sampled or assembled out of parts, just played, the old way, by human beings. The combination of elements may be inscrutable, but it was this combination, Aki says, that he wanted to hear. Me too. Nicely packaged.
	PERE UBU: London Texas Code:ReRPU01 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	PICCHIO DAL POZZO: Abbiamo tutti i suoi problemi Code:ReRPdP Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
One of the most original, impressive and highly respected of all the experimental groups to have come out of Italy in the 1970s, Picchio dal Pozzo were also one of the early invitees to the canonical 'Recommended Sampler', and would have been in RIO, had RIO lasted another year - and had the group not folded up and disappeared before anyone had realised it was there. In the last decade the record was reissued briefly in Japan, then It disappeared again. We have now re-mastered it and put it back into the public domain, where it belongs. Copying no one, though there is some Zappa influence - Picchio had a unique and highly developed style of composition that was not only out of step with it's own time but which sounds contemporary still. Highly composed and devoid of jazz phrasing and riffs with solos, this record achieves maximum musical effect with minimum instrumental means through close attention to timbre, dynamics and expressed tempi and a kind of deep complexity that sounds simple but changes with each listening. A lot of ideas subtly developed - rather than experimented with; a one-off classic.
	PICCHIO DAL POZZO: Abbiamo tutti i suoi problemi Code:ReRPdPJap Price: £18.00 Quantity in Basket: none
COLLECTORS. Japanese facsimile edition of PICCHIO DAL POZZO: Abbiamo tutti i suoi problemi
	QUARTERLY, ReR: Vol 4 No. 2 CD and Book Code:ReR0402SET Price: £20.00 Quantity in Basket: none
CD + Book. See UNFILED for contents.
	QUARTERLY, ReR: Vol 4 No. 2 CD Code:ReR0402 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	QUARTERLY, ReR: Volume 4 No 1 CD and Book Code:ReR0401SET Price: £20.00 Quantity in Basket: none
CD+Book, as intended. See UNFILED for contents.
	QUARTERLY, ReR: Selections Vol 1 Code:ReRQCD1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	QUARTERLY, ReR: Selections Vol.2 Code:ReRQCD2 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	QUARTERLY, ReR: Volume 4 No 1 CD Code:ReR0401 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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.
	QUATRE GUITARISTES: World Tour Code:ReRGQ1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Released on LP in 1987-8 these are composed rock/contemporary/experimental pieces for electric guitar quartet and drums. Complex and energetic. Both LP's are now on one CD, omitting the Fred Frith guitar quartet extracts, which have been released separately. Performed by: Andre Duchense, Rene Lussier, Jean-Pierre Bouchard, Roger Boudreault, Claude Fradette and guests Remi Leclerc and Ferdinand Richard. Listen to a sample of this release
	QUATRE GUITARISTES: Fin De Siecle (vinyl) Code:ReR42 Price: £13.80 Quantity in Basket: none
'Fin' finds Roger replaced by Claude Fradette and Ferdinand Richard and Remi Leclerk added. These are dense Rock/Contemporary Instrumental compositions operating at a lot of borders and not much like anything else. 'Fin' includes commissioned work from Fred Frith and Lars Hollmer - and Bartok string quartet transcriptions.THIS IS A VINYL RELEASE
	RAMPOLOKENG, LESEGO: Endbeginnings Code:ReRLRSCD1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Leading Black South African poet with the legendary surfers in a radical mix of rap/reggae and experimental pop. Echoes of Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Last Poets: strong reflections on the times. Clarity, engagement and art/pleasure/catharsis - rarity today. Listen to a sample of this release
	RATSIMANDRESY, NADIA and MATTEO RAMON AREVALOS: Messiaen et autour de Messiaen for ondes Martenot an Code:ReROM1 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
A signature collection of exquisite works for onde Martenot and piano by Olivier Messiaen, N'Guyen Thien Dao, Jacques Charpentier and Tristan Murail, exploring the many voices of this extraordinary instrument. The onde (or ondes musicales or le Martenot) was first demonstrated at the Paris Conservatoire in 1928 and immediately attracted the attention of Varese, Milhaud, Koechlin, Jolivet, Honegger and Messiaen, who all wrote for it - cumulatively ensuring its survival. Seven years younger than the theremin, the onde is a far more sophisticated, complex and versatile instrument, not least because of the combination it offers of pitched and glissando tones, and the wide range of filters and different resonating media through which it can sound: loudspeakers, gongs, sympathetic resonating strings and reverberant enclosures. The compositions here exploit every unearthly aspect of the instrument and are beautifully performed: a remarkable and exquisite collection.
	RIEMAN, DALABA, DEMPSTER: Lung Tree Code:ReRRDD Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
This is one of those recordings that arrived unannounced in the mail. I knew Lesli Dalaba, of course, but the others were new to me. The project is Eric Glick Rieman's and I found it immediately intriguing. There seemed to be something quite subtle going on; minimal, microtonal, economical and eccentric; it plays subtly with timbre, pitch and structure and never quite does what you expect. At first blush it seemed as it would be another interesting but conventional improvising trio, but after a few minutes the organising intelligence, and the clear compositional discipline became clear. And after this, throughout the CD, it sticks to the point. This is a deep investigation of a very few simple principles. Acoustic instruments rub ambiguously up against electrified objects and electronics, but these in the main provide atmosphere and harmonic complexity, never overpowering the mingling air-columns on which the wave of this CD floats. Attachments, modifiers, objects all make an appearance, but the topic is the small, the tenuous - and the tenacious - above all, breath.
	ROBERT, JOCELYN : Folie Culture Code:ReRJORCD Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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. Listen to a sample of this release
	ROSE, JON: Brainweather Code:ReRBJRCD2 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
'Brain' is a CD musi-drama (opera pervers) with El Maestro JR lui-meme, Shelley Hirsch, Phil Minton, a Nietschean dentist and thousands of Rosenbergs. Plus The Weatherman. Full texts and notes. Cover by Peter Blegvad. Listen to a sample of this release
	ROSE, JON: Perks Code:ReRJR3 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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
	ROSE, JON: Shopping Live@Victo Code:ReRJR4 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
Yes, we're still shopping - this is an unexpurgated copy of the Victoriaville concert (Radio recording) with group: Lauren Newton, Joelle Leandre, Otomo Yoshihide and Chris Cutler. In my opinion the wildest and most dizzying version on record. Unfolding chaos with luminous performances - viz, Lauren's hair-raising interpretations and vocal event, Joelle's oscar-winning bag lady performance, THE CAST for maintaining an atmosphere of knife-edge confusion. All human life and a whole lot of other stuff too. High quality radio recording with nothing cut or edited - nightmarish, and funny. Glad I was there. Listen to a sample of this release
	ROSE, JON: The Fence Code:ReRJR5 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
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. Listen to a sample of this release
	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
	ROSE, JON: Violin Music for Restaurants Code:ReRBJRCD Price: £11.50 Quantity in Basket: none
'Violin', a Radio work based on Jo 'Doc' Rosenberg's 'BOO' theory - songlines applied to restaurant tables. Includes theatre, noise, golden 4th dimension standards, vox humana and help from Derek Bailey, Eugene Chadbourne, Alvin Curran, Luc Houtkamp, Joelle Leandre, Misha Mengelberg, Barre Phillipsinter alia.
	ROSE, JON: The People's Music Code:ReRJR7 Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
With string orchestras, percussion, a motivating red guard and the severed embalmed arm of the great helmsman himself (maybe), Jon pits the ethos of Mao's China - and in particular the mass production of the violin and it's use in life against the 'reductive cultural practice of our globalised world'. Well, that's what it says here and by golly I agree. Apart from that, this a large scale work that features fine and extensive writing for string orchestras, juxtaposed with (more or less) controlled Rosean chaos, and harbours serious intentions toward the violin in all its lives and phases. Beautifully packaged in tasteful revolutionary kitsch.
	ReR Club - 1 Year Code:rerClub1Year Price: £5.00 Quantity in Basket: none
The ReR Record Club The idea is this: • You will be sent, automatically, every new ReR release and press releases and occasional extra items. You will automatically get the subscription editions. • very fourth CD will be free. • You sign up for one, two or three years; we will ask confirmation of renewal before this runs out. • You send us your Credit Card details and we will just deduct the appropriate amount whenever CDs are mailed. Otherwise with Cheque or Paypal pay £93.75 to cover 10 releases - because you pay upfront, there is no annual charge. To join with Credit Card payment costs £5 a year, £9 for two years or £12 for three years. We can also extend this offer to include any of the following labels: Ad Hoc, Angelica, EDMN,  Artyard, Fred Records. To join: Send your credit card details and membership period. Or cheque or paypal payment. When you get to the CHECKOUT please WRITE in the MESSAGE BOX the LABELS you want in ADDITION to ReR (Ad Hoc, Angelica, Fred Records, Artyard, EDMN) if any.
	ReR Club - 2 Years Code:rerClub2Year Price: £9.00 Quantity in Basket: none
The ReR Record Club The idea is this: • You will be sent, automatically, every new ReR release and press releases and occasional extra items. You will automatically get the subscription editions. • very fourth CD will be free. • You sign up for one, two or three years; we will ask confirmation of renewal before this runs out. • You send us your Credit Card details and we will just deduct the appropriate amount whenever CDs are mailed. Otherwise with Cheque or Paypal pay £93.75 to cover 10 releases - because you pay upfront, there is no annual charge. To join with Credit Card payment costs £5 a year, £9 for two years or £12 for three years. We can also extend this offer to include any of the following labels: Ad Hoc, Angelica, EDMN,  Artyard, Fred Records. To join: Send your credit card details and membership period. Or cheque or paypal payment. When you get to the CHECKOUT please WRITE in the MESSAGE BOX the LABELS you want in ADDITION to ReR (Ad Hoc, Angelica, Fred Records, Artyard, EDMN) if any.
	ReR Club - 3 Years Code:rerClub3Year Price: £12.00 Quantity in Basket: none
The ReR Record Club The idea is this: • You will be sent, automatically, every new ReR release and press releases and occasional extra items. You will automatically get the subscription editions. • very fourth CD will be free. • You sign up for one, two or three years; we will ask confirmation of renewal before this runs out. • You send us your Credit Card details and we will just deduct the appropriate amount whenever CDs are mailed. Otherwise with Cheque or Paypal pay £93.75 to cover 10 releases - because you pay upfront, there is no annual charge. To join with Credit Card payment costs £5 a year, £9 for two years or £12 for three years. We can also extend this offer to include any of the following labels: Ad Hoc, Angelica, EDMN,  Artyard, Fred Records. To join: Send your credit card details and membership period. Or cheque or paypal payment. When you get to the CHECKOUT please WRITE in the MESSAGE BOX the LABELS you want in ADDITION to ReR (Ad Hoc, Angelica, Fred Records, Artyard, EDMN) if any.
	SKELETON CREW: Country of Blinds. Learn to Talk (dbl CD) Code:ReR/FRO8/9 Price: £20.00 Quantity in Basket: none
With 10 extra tracks. A reissue of two timeless classics. On the first CD it's just Fred Frith and Tom Cora, the legendary two man crew who somehow - in real time, not with endless overdubs - managed to play all their own instruments (cello, bass, electric guitar, violin) and sing - as well as, between them, constructing the drum parts - dislocated into elements, with each of them having bits of the kit. This made for some fantastic, and normally unplayable, parts - most drummers having only one brain. No one sounded like Skeleton Crew, ever. Devious, complicated, brutally simple, always unexpected, turning on a dime, this was not just a pop band then, but a tocsin, a call to arms - and a catalogue of invention that is remains breathtaking today. On the second album, the inspired addition of Zeena Parkins (keyboards, accordion, more drums, more vocals) led to some of the best music of the decade. The recording was rawer, more urgent, the songs stand out in sharp relief; every part essential. And yet it's a puzzle almost impossible to unravel: how on earth did they ever evolve those dislocated parts and still make them fit so brilliantly together? Did I mention the texts? So to the point, so good. So where are the Skeleton Crews today when we really need them? Both CDs are here, in full, re-mastered by Fred and with 10 extra tracks - each as good as anything on the official albums. Just give in to the urge: if you have any pennies left, spend them on this.
	SLAPP HAPPY & HENRY COW: Desperate Straights Code:ReRHCSH Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
(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..
	SLAPP HAPPY: Acnalbasac Noom Code:ReRSH Price: £12.50 Quantity in Basket: none
The classic original, version recorded at the legendary Wümme studios using Faust as the house band, later, re-recorded with other musicians and different arrangements as 'Slaphappy or Slaphappy' for Virgin Records. Also includes the legendary 'Charlie and Charlie', not on the Virgin version and four extra tracks, including the single 'Everybody's Slimming' and unreleased pieces, one by Dagmar Krause.