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There are no crows flying around the hancock building
In August 2003, Lampo invited Swedish artist CM von Hausswolff to do a project specific to Chicago. Intrepid traveler that he is, Hausswolff ascended to the top of the 100-story John Hancock Building and collected sounds from the open-air observation deck. While taking in the sights, he recorded building vibrations, passing breezes and overheard speech from tourists. Later, in his Stockholm studio, he added a series of feedback rotations to suggest crows (guardians or enemies?) encircling the co…
Ray Night 1991-1992 Live
First ever CD by this legendary and ultra-obscure Japanese psychedelic rock group. Kousokuya are from Tokyo, have donated some spectacular tracks to the first two volumes of the Tokyo Flashback compilation series on the PSF label, and self-released an extremely ltd. LP in 1991. The band has been around for quite some time; I originally was under the impression they formed around 1984, but was recently informed that an edition featuring Nanjo and Narita from High Rise existed going back to the l…
Shanked And Slithering
"Nearly 80 minutes of the most animalistic and violent industrial noise to ever crack the crust of the earth. Compiles and reworks early and unreleased out of print noise classics as well as brand new noise aberrations. For fans of early Controlled Bleeding ala Knees And Bones And Bladder Bags!" - Hospital Productions.
From The Kitchen Archives No.3: Amplified: New Music Meets Rock
From the Kitchen Archives Vol. 3. Amplified: New Music Meets Rock, 1981-1986 is the third release in a series of CDs compiled from The Kitchen's archive that documents historic concert recordings at The Kitchen from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. While the first two releases, New Music, New York 1979 and Steve Reich and Musicians, Live 1977 focused on major figures of new and experimental music from The Kitchen's first decade, Amplified moves into the early 1980s, representing a vocabulary th…
Käärmeenkääntöpiiri
Perhaps this collaboration was destined to happen, and we’re overjoyed that it is happening here! Tampere, Finland’s Uton (Jani Hirvonen) and Taranto, Italy’s Valerio Cosi (who is ½ of Pulga after all) are two of the most creative and most prolific musicians working in experimental music at the moment, and on Käärmeenkääntopiiri, Uton and Valerio have mastered a sound that combines elements of psychedelia, free jazz, krautrock, environmental sounds, drones and more for an ecstatic listening expe…
Discreet Music
Orignal master series reissue: a real masterpiece...after a car accident put Brian Eno in the hospital in 1975, he came out with the idea of creating Ambient music, or music that was essentially to be used as atmosphere. Discreet Music was the first of his ambient experiments and is therefore a landmark recording in addition to being a beautiful combination of tape-delay and composition.
Musica Viva 06
"Musica Viva 06" is another excellent release from the German Col Legno label, which specializes in the avant-garde. This disc includes three live performances -- the original 1981 recording of "Ais," featuring the incredible baritone voice of Spyros Sakkas, a new recording of "Troorkh," a trombone concerto, from 2000, and (drumroll please...) the world premiere of "Anastenaria," also from 2000, with the inimitable Xenakis champion Charles Bornstein conducting. As it turns out, "Metastas…
Complete Works For Clarinet
Giacinto Scelsi was both reclusive and inexact in the way that he dated and named his compositions. This rendition of Tre Pezzi (a broad title Scelsi used numerous times for different pieces) focuses on narrow ranges in the B-flat clarinet, demonstrating the thin margin of tonal range between the phrases that come sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Kho Lho, on the other hand, pairs a clarinet and flute duet so closely that the instruments' tones merge into a thick strand of sound. Maknongan is a r…
The butterfly and the bee
Following the success of their very first performance together at the 2004 FREEDOM OF THE CITY festival (heard on Emanem 4215), Roger Smith and Louis Moholo-Moholo went into the studio to record some more. Their second meeting went so well that they recorded enough duo improvisations for a complete CD. The resulting music is heard complete, with Smith on Spanish guitar and Moholo on augmented drum set.
Hearing Metal 1
Performer: Greg Stuart (tam-tam). 'The 60-inch (Mikrophonie) tam-tam is a large piece of metal, a proto-sculpture. Brancusi might have altered it: rounding and tapering the edges, making an oval instead of a circle, polishing the surface into smooth gold. The tam-tam is also a vast sound landscape-an instrument that makes noise at the slightest provocation. A resonance is created just in the act of walking past the instrument or breathing on it ... that is, if your ear (or a microphone) is close…
Chamber Music
It is with great shrewdness that Uroš Rojko has almost maxed out the unusual juxtapositions of an accordion with a viola and a piano, respectively. His fondness for the accordion may have its roots in his folk music past. On the present recording, however, these roots are not in evidence. Even the Tangos speak a language of their own, which Rojko creates by juggling characteristic fragments of tango, thereby reducing them to their essence. Even the first bars of his pieces exhibit the correspond…
Hotel paral.lel
"Re-mastered at Piethopraxis in Köln, July 2007. "Hotel Paral.lel", originally released in September 1997 by Mego, was Christian Fennesz's debut solo album. Following up from the EP "Instrument", it was an investigation into the sonic possibilties residing in guitar based digital music, recorded just before mobile computing devices became the norm. A far more darker and experimental work than what was to follow. Freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient textures create a time…
Las Orillas
“It seems most important to me not to stop being a connoisseur; I freely confess that I would rather be considered a hedonist than an analyst.” This statement by Luis de Pablo is reflected in his music; not in violent yet superficial currents of sound but in finely differentiated sound as de Pablo’s Las Orillas (1990) demonstrates: “The composition is very linear, particularly in the slower parts. The orchestration has therefore been planned especially thoroughly such that each voice has a meani…
Natura renovatur
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88) has featured prominently in my music writing life for a decade and a half, ever since I wrote Discovering Scelsi on my first computer for Piano Journal (Oct. 1986), one of the first UK articles about this fascinating and elusive composer.There are particular reasons why the Scelsi CD in the latest, indispensable batch from Kairos prompted a trawl of my files. Scelsi applauded my analysis of his piano music and we had a cordial correspondence, after which I met him tw…
The Highway\'s Jammed With Broken Heroes
Gas-station attendants around the world will rejoice at news of this final missive from Jason DiEmilio (aka Azusa Plane), a cleverly titled reminder of one of the Boss's most visionary & epic lines. Featuring two long tracks of cable glitch, amplifier hum and microphone bumping, this CD has such comedic aspirations that even Neil Hamburger will probably have to sit up and take notice. Thank you, New Jersey.
Happy days
Back in stock. Released: 1997.Jim O'Rourke is a rarity: a genuine bridge between the avant-garde and the underground. From his production work (Smog, Wilco, Faust) to his own freewheeling excursions as a solo performer and member of outfits like Gastr del Sol and Sonic Youth, his work continues to bring the out there in here. Happy Days pits a lone guitar against a phalanx of hurdy-gurdies, a decided shift away from the composer's electronic-based work. A roiling hornet's next of activity that F…
Airforms
Airforms was first presented at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [Scottsdale, Arizona] in April of 2004. The work was inspired by a group of experimental houses designed by Wallace Neff in the 1940s using a process he called airform construction. The houses were built by spraying concrete over an inflated balloon structure. Inspired by the nautilus sea shell, the houses were an investigation into the aesthetic possibilities of structures formed by air, and the psychological effects of l…
Action Music
Giacinto Scelsi’s relationship with the piano is interesting and contradictory. For no other instrument has the Italian composer and poet composed so many pieces; to no other instrument does he seem so closely attached, both personally and biographically; and no other instrument disappeared so abruptly and finally from his scores as the piano, the European showcase instrument. With the piano, we can follow the break lines and develop-ments in the musical thinking and works of Giacinto Scelsi, wh…
Symphony No. 3
Charles Ives (1874-1954) earned his living by selling insurance policies to his contemporaries. Besides, he took a great interest in literature, philosophy and, first and foremost, music. And what came of it? The most original modernist music one could imagine. Ives's Third Symphony was inspired by his memory of camp meetings, the Christian "evangelistic gatherings" common in his youth. However bizarre these meetings may appear to us, they were a familiar feature of rural America especially duri…