New Titles
BING SELFISH & THE WINDSORS: Selfish Sentiments
Amazingly, he’s still at large. And this may be Bing’s most massive yet. A dozen great songs, including the rational derangement of all the senses, financial advisor, world without government and never alone with a drone all dressed in nicely judged headlong arr... more »
DUCHAMP, RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, PICABIA, CAGE: Par Hasard: chance composition 1913-1951
A useful collection of historical chance music, featuring Duchamp's Musical Erratum performed with electric motors and prepared piano – as well as a later instantiation for piano; two fascinating pieces by George Ribemont-Dessaignes, which are very convincing and ha... more »
ANTHEIL, ORNSTEIN, LOURIE: Futurpiano
Highlighting three giants of early C20 Futurist Music: two Russians - Arthur Lourie, who evolved new notations and explored a radical mixture of atonality, impressionism and proto-serialism, and Leo Ornstein, whose family emigrated to America when he was 14 - a prod... more »
Milhaud, Poulenc & LE GROUPE DES SIX (Auric, Durey, Honegger, Tailleferre) (dbl CD)
The name has stuck. Six young French composers who came together under the gentle pressure of Cocteau (and to a degree Satie) and – rather like the New Wave after Punk - broke with past orthodoxies though not in very uniform ways; in fact it was hardly a movement at... more »
DEBUSSY, SATIE, APOLLINAIRE, DUCHAMP, RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, ARP, PICABIA, HONNEGER, DESNOS, LES SIX,
A useful collection. The recordings of Apollinare (1913), Arp (1961), Cocteau (1929) and Desnos (1938) are all of short contemporary recordings of the artists reciting their own verse – Cocteau accompanied by the Dan Parrish Jazz Orchestra and Desnos as part of a ... more »
IVES, ORNSTEIN, COWELL, ANTHEIL, RUGGLES, RUDHYAR, VARESE, SESSIONS, FELDMAN, CAGE, PARTCH, GYSIN. T
An interesting addition to the series. Disc one features Ives’ prescient and (very) quietly iconoclastic Central Park in the Dark (1906), Leo Ornstein’s explosive Suicide in an Airplane (1913), Henry Cowell’s Dynamic Motion (1916) performed by the composer, Ge... more »
VITOR RUA & the Metaphysical Angels Do Androids Dream of Electric Guitars? (dbl CD)
A genuinely original guitarist and composer, Vitor is still curiously little celebrated outside his native Portugal. Hopefully this record will change that. It’s a remarkable release for a number of reasons – firstly, CD1, really does have something new to say about... more »
BLEGVAD, PETER: Go Figure
After 19 years, the return of the Peter Blegvad Trio, in supernal form and now a quintet with Karen Mantler and Bob Drake. Recorded over 10 days at studio Midi-Pyrenees the old way: sitting in a room, working on arrangements, rehearsing a bit and then quickly r... more »
CAGE, JOHN: Klang der Wandlungen (3 CD Box)
These 3 CD contain 6 long works recorded by various German radio stations between 1985 and 2011. There are two orchestra pieces- seventy-four and 103, both late works – which dispense with conductors, leaving the coordination to the performers. The results are very ... more »
SCHAEFFER, BOGUSLAW: Travel Notes
Five electronic pieces by the Polish composer Boguslaw Schaeffer made in Warsaw, Belgrade, Stockholm, Cracow and Berlin - part of what was then the East bloc circuit - between 1973 and 1979. Of importance mainly, I would say, to scholars and specialists - not least ... more »
THE REMOTE VIEWERS: Last Man in Europe
"The peculiar brainchild of tenor saxophonist David Petts, The Remote Viewers have sometimes included six or seven members ata time. Reduced to the key trio of Petts, Adrian Northover on soprano sax and bassist John Edwards, the project sheds the clumsy Harry Part... more »
CAGE,JOHN/TUDOR, DAVID/ MUMMA, GORDON/ PAIK NAM JUN/ VANDERBEEK STAN/ CUNNINGHAM, MERCE: Variations
A 1966 German Television recording of Variations V, written for Merce Cunningham’s Dance Company in 1965 with a score that consists of 37 enigmatic statements or instructions. The music is performed here - with a lot of electronic clutter, including radios and a lot... more »
JUMP FOR JOY!: Keeping Score
Limited Edition. Released by the band (Jean-Herve Peron, Zappi Diermier Geraldine Swayne [all from Faust], Geoff Leigh, Yumi Hara and Chris Cutler) – a good quality recording of a concert (edited) from the 2016 RIO Festival in Carmaux. Neither flesh nor fish nor g... more »
AAAAAAAAXB(Aaaaaaaaxb): The best of ...
[also, clearly nothing to do with ALAN JENKINS]<p> [All these bands are real. Probably. Alan isn’t just making them up. Probably. Maybe. Not.]<p> This invaluable collection brings us further news from the suspiciously overlooked constituency of the Inter... more »
SCOTT, RAYMOND/The Secret Seven: The Unexpected
Originally released in 1960, with seven (in fact eight) – musicians Scott thought would be immediately recognisable (hence the Secret Seven, because none are named on the LP; you can try to guess) - who cover piano, vibraphone, harmonica, trumpet, guitar, tenor sax... more »
SCOTT, RAYMOND and his Orchestra: This Time with Strings
A reissue of the 1956 release, with cheesy cover and original sleeve-notes, nicely re-mastered, featuring a selection of tunes wandering from cartoon music through light popular to quasi-exotica - the straighter side of the master. Charming, but again for fans and s... more »
SCOTT, RAYMOND: Kodachrome – Compositions for Orchestra
A selection of Scott’s compositions played by the Dutch Metropole Orchestra (half a classical orchestra and half a big-band jazz ensemble, some 50 strong - you’ll remember their perfect renditions of Juan Esquivel‘s work a couple of years back at this same address).... more »
SCOTT, RAYMOND: Suite for Violin and Piano
A curiosity and an important piece of research, this carefully crafted CD features two versions – the original and then a contemporary rendition of an unpublished and entirely untypical work by Scott, specifically written for Arnold Eidus - first violinist in Scott’... more »
VAROUTAS, GIORGOS: Chronostasis
Standing Time. From Athens, a somewhat unusual release for us: an intriguing collection of 10 very measured and nuanced drone-based pieces - for extended guitar, some percussion and, unusually, Iranian ney, Chinese sho (played by Ko Ishikawa, one of the leading pla... more »
SLAPPHAPPY/HENRY COW: Desperate Straights (Vinyl)
New vinyl release.<p> 180g vinyl. ... more »
MUSCI, ROBERTO/VENOSTA, GIOVANNI: Urban and Tribal Portraits (vinyl)
No expense spared productions from Souave, in Italy. But unhappily – as with all vinyl, ridiculously expensive to ship. Please add for postage: £3 UK £6 Europe £7.50 World ... more »
WESTON, VARYAN: The Make Project
A gem; beautifully written, full of ideas and changes, this is a work for piano, bass, drums and a modest but perfectly attuned modern choir.<p> The 52 two aphoristic texts are all taken from female authors and all include the work ‘make’, which, whe... more »
CHADIMA, M. & The Ex Extempore Members: The City/Velkomesto
Of all the bands and musicians to emerge in Czechoslovakia back in the ‘70s Mikolas was one of the most radical and has certainly been the most productive, still releasing one fine album after another. This has a special resonance for me because, back in the ear... more »
VITOR RUA & THE METAPHYSICAL ANGELS: When Better isn’t Quite Good Enough (dbl CD)
The spirit of enquiry and experiment is still alive and kicking - in Portugal anyway. On t his double CD, Vitor looks twice at the same material. On CD one we get his unique take on guitar improvisation, which is electric, songlike and mixes genres in an unu... more »
CUTLER, CHRIS: MIssing Chapters Vol. 2
Made in a small number for a project in Japan. This is the second CDR documenting a few things I like from my recent undocumented archive (in this case my first solo gig with the electrified kit in Japan (1998), music for Josef Nadj’s Ballet L’Anatomie d’un Fauve wi... more »
CUTLER, CHRIS: Missing Chapters Vol 3
Next in the Japan private release series, with more unreleased archive recordings (this time a duo concert with Fred Frith in Tel Aviv, a trio concert with Jean-Marc Montera and Jean-Francois Pauvros, some debris from EWA7, Nimmersatt (with John Greaves, Daan Vandew... more »
THE WORK: COMPILATION (VINYL)
Heavy vinyl, classy gatefold, tactile print; contains the selected (by the band) and re-mastered hits: Fingers and Toes, I Hate America, Brickyard, State Room, Do It, Hell, Abdomen, Dangerfish, Eat, Read to Me and Stone. In a numbered, limited edition of 400 copies.... more »
EVIL DICK: Earthly Delights
Another rare bird: a contemporary band, strong on improvisation as well as structure that lives on its playing and thinking skills; Zappa-tinged with a good balance between energy and abstraction, it’s very well recorded and persuasively played with some added use o... more »
CURRAN, ALVIN: Endangered Species (Dbl CD)
Put on your shelf next to Derek Bailey’s Ballads and Ground Zero plays Standards ; Alvin takes the golden songbook on a tour through the badlands [a type of dry terrain characterized by ‘steep slopes, minimal vegetation, lack of a substantial regolith... more »
RADULESCU, HORATIU: Works for Organ and Cello
One of the unsung geniuses of the C20, the Romanian/French spectralist Horatiu Radelescu used unconventional resources, extended techniques and microtonal shifts to work in a medium of texture and flux. The five pieces here are (variously) for organ; cello and t... more »
