Charlemagne Palestine
Charlemagne Palestine is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist. A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Steve Reich, Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is perhaps best known for his intensely performed piano works. He also performs as a vocalist.
Charlemagne Palestine is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist. A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Steve Reich, Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is perhaps best known for his intensely performed piano works. He also performs as a vocalist.
Battling the Invisible
Edition of 300. Comes with a 8-page booklet. In 1969, while American minimalism was consolidating into its most recognizable forms, Charlemagne Palestine was conducting solitary experiments with oscillators and sine waves that only now reveal their visionary scope. This was the New York of lofts and abandoned industrial spaces, of artists pushing sound toward its physical limits - a city where the boundaries between music, performance art, and bodily endurance were dissolving. Battling the Invis…
The Organ is the worlds Greatest Syntesizer
**Limited edition of 222 copies, black vinyl two color screenprinted cover** At eight o'clock on a March morning in 2024, as Amsterdam awakened around it, Charlemagne Palestine took his place at the console of the Vater-Müller organ in the Oude Kerk—the city's oldest building, a Gothic monument dating to 1306—and opened a portal. What emerged over the following forty-plus minutes, now captured on this limited edition LP, stands as one of the most concentrated distillations of Palestine's six-dec…
415 Steppsss to DingggDonggg Paradise
Huuuuge Tip! CD Edition. Where the bells begin, everything else follows. Long before Charlemagne Palestine discovered the thick molasses sonority of the Bösendorfer piano, before the strumming technique that would define his maximalist-minimalist vision, there were bells. Colossal carillon bells in the tower of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York, where a teenage Palestine hammered hymns into the Manhattan sky before spending hours lost in spectral improvisations that drew Moondog, Ton…
Ouvres Sonores
Alga Marghen is proud to present one of the year's most extraordinary and limited releases: the "Oeuvres sonores" box set, a numbered edition of only 29 copies documenting a series of historic events held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This monumental collection of 7 LPs gathers some of the most significant works of international sound avant-garde, originally presented during the Oeuvres sonores presentations at Centre Pompidou. The box includes works by Charlemagne Palestine, Luc Ferrari, Bru…
Arpeggiated Bösendorfer + Falsetto Voice
* Lucky Find. This special edition of just 80 copies, with different back cover, was created specifically to coincide with Palestine's major exhibition Bear Mitzvah in Meshugahland at The Jewish Museum in New York in 2017 * Charlemagne Palestine stands as one of the towering figures in the history of musical Minimalism - a composer whose voice commands unparalleled respect and adoration within the avant-garde community. “Arpeggiated Bösendorfer + Falsetto Voice”, one of Alga Marghen's most remar…
Beyondddddd The Notessssss
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* In the depths of Geneva’s Fonderie Kugler red-lit-boudoir, stand four grand pianos surrounded by divinities. The two elder Erard brothers are tuned down a quarter tone lower than their neighbours, a twin pair of gleaming and valiant Yamaha’s. Charlemagne and Seppe both sit facing each other, managing the 428Hz tuning from the tip of their left hand, while the right hand controls the conventional 440Hz machine. This four-piano fantasy was born a few years ago, w…
4 Pianoforti
Great catalogue of this 1999 event of legendary minimal piano performances in Rome.
Strumming Music
Flawless original copy of on Shandar of Charlemagne Palestine's beautiful album of strummin music from 1974. One of the milestones of American minimalism.
Four Manifestations On Six Elements (Golden 5)
Outstanding copy in mint condition of the crucial first double 1974 LP by Charlemagne Palestine released as a numbered and signed art edition by Sonnabed Gallery.
The God Bear Archives II
*90 copies limited edition* The legendary Charlemagne Palestine returns with the second volume of his monumental God Bear Archives series, and what a treasure trove this is. For those who have followed Palestine's singular journey through the outer reaches of sound - from his early days as a carillonneur at St. Thomas Church in New York to his groundbreaking work with sustained piano tones and electronic drones - this collection offers a deep dive into the vaults of one of contemporary music's t…
CHARRRLLEEMMMA GGGNEELANDDDDDS SS”””””” CCCRREATTO RRSSSSSCCCARILLON NNN”””””””” DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr SSSOFTTT DIVINI TIESSSSS!!!!!!!!! with STTT THOMASSS ‘’’’”‘”DINGG GDONGGGDINGGGzzz zzzz ferrrr TONYYY’’’’’’’’
DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! In the newest record by the iconoclastic Brooklyn-born composer Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947), find two mesmerizing works for carillon, the keyboard-controlled bell tower derived in the 16th century. On side A, a new piece recorded at the artist’s studio in Belgium—a high-ceiling, stuffed-animal-packed paradise he calls Charleworld—among friends and “divinities,” his name for the thousands of plush toys he’s amassed since the ’60s. On the flip side, Blank Forms…
The God Bear Archives I
*300 copies limited edition* Before there was a second volume, there was this - the first installment of Charlemagne Palestine's archival excavation, and what a revelation it remains. Palestine has always been a prolific artist, his output spanning live performances, studio recordings, installations, and collaborations that stretch back to the late 1960s, yet much of this work has remained hidden in personal archives, heard only by those fortunate enough to be present at the original events. The…
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*2023 stock* Charlemagne Palestine's performance on the organ of the Friedenskirche, Eupen for the reihe-M showcase at the Meakusma Festival 2019 was one of the many highlights of that year's festival edition. This record features the full live performance as Palestine conjures up his dense definition of maximized minimalism, introducing the performance with a minimalist drone and himself singing on top. His voice touches upon melancholy and the absurd and gives the piece context and direction. …
ਚੈਨਲKAANALचैनलRÁÐעָרוּץ
**Blue vinyl Limited Edition to 300 numbered copies ** The title alone - rendered in Punjabi, Dutch, Hindi, Icelandic, and Hebrew scripts, all spelling out variations of the word "channel" - signals that we are entering territory where conventional categories dissolve. This extraordinary summit meeting brings together three of the most distinctive voices in contemporary experimental music: Charlemagne Palestine, the grand patriarch of drone and sustained tone; Oren Ambarchi, whose guitar work ha…
Illuminations / Meditative Sound Environments (2 LP in bundle)
** 365 copies ** This bundle includes the two LPs Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti released by Alga Marghen: "Illuminations" and "Meditative Sound Environments".Awesome Alga Marghen re-release presenting "Illuminatios", or Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti duo interactions, illuminated with dim red lights.
In early 1970 Morton Subotnick asked Charlemagne Palestine to join his soon to be created Media Department at the new “Dream School of the Future” endowed by the Disneys to be calle…
Illuminations
** 365 copies, remastered edition ** Awesome Alga Marghen re-release presenting "Illuminations", or Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti duo interactions, illuminated with dim red lights.
In early 1970 Morton Subotnick asked Charlemagne Palestine to join his soon to be created Media Department at the new “Dream School of the Future” endowed by the Disneys to be called the California Institute of the Arts. Charlemagne and Simone Forti met there in 1970, when La Monte Young asked them to arrange…
Meditative Sound Environments
** 365 copies ** «I met Simone through Dr. Richard Alpert, a professor at Columbia University who went to India to study with a Hindu guru and he himself became a guru afterwards called Baba Ram Dass. Coming back to US he brought Pandit Pran Nath with him. It was a time when everybody was experimenting. All came with a lot of orientalism because people were into timelessness, meditation and being stoned. It was in that atmosphere that I met Simone because she also knew Pran Nath. Around that tim…
October 24, 1975
**Tape Limited Edition to 100 numbered copies ** A few months after the release of the legendary Strumming in 1974, Charlemagne Palestine gave a masterful and powerful 56 minutes performance in Antwerp in an exciting concert series. With the work and the precious help of M KHA and Lotte Beckwé, we were able to find this recording. We are pleased to offer you this unreleased performance on cassette and CD
MMXX-06
An incantation rendered typographically - announces that we are in the presence of Charlemagne Palestine at his most uninhibited and ecstatic. Throughout his long career, Palestine has never been an artist to do things by halves; his performances are legendary for their intensity and duration, his persona inseparable from the stuffed animals and cognac that accompany him, his approach to sound rooted in a conviction that music can and should transport both performer and listener to altered state…
Sssseegmmeentss Frrooom Baaari
Stochastic music for percussion and synthesizers from New York avant conceptualist and keyboardist Charlemagne Palestine, here on voice, piano & electronics, with the Italian duo Trrmà a multifaceted project formed by Giovanni Todisco (percussion) and Giuseppe Candiano (synthetizers) in two side-long works of irregular rhythm, complexity and dissonance that build and recede in a suspenseful journey. Recorded in 2018.