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Very last copy. First release of the early sound installations from the German sound artist Rolf Julius, ranging from 1979 to 1982 : Music on Two High Poles (1979), Morning Song (Berlin Concert Series, 1981, in collaboration with Joan La Barbara), Music for the Earth (Berlin Concert Series, 1981), Music for the Eyes , (1981), Music for a Pane of Glass (1980), Music for a Yellow Room (Berlin Concert Series, 1982), Chamber Concert for Three Loudspeakers, (Berlin Concert Series, 1982), Concert for …
And then, the man remained alone with more doubts than ever before. Music had flown through the years, the tapes definitively gone. IV draws the final line in this groundbreaking 'disintegration' cycle and it does it with a high grade of acute intensity and a totally developed loop aesthetic...moreover, the final track is sort of a reprise of the first segment in I, like putting an end to a whole giant texture. Basinski's repetitions are truly addictive; I could listen for days, each repe…
Somewhere between Alex- ander Rodchenko, Jackson Pollock and Charles Ives: Marino Formenti's piano studies based on an instal- lation by Florian Pumhösl as a listening experience! The brilliant Italian pianist has placed compositions by Charles Ives (»Thoreau« from the Concord Sonata, the song »Tom Sails Away«, and »Study 11«) under his magnifying glass and studied them, has taken them apart, searched them for resonances, assonances and silences, and confronted the results with Ives’ own methods…
Tussle's early output on Troubleman Unlimited proved to be quite a hit with tastemakers like John Peel and Trevor Jackson. Now, a few years down the line the group have lost one of their founding members (oddly, Vetiver's Andy Cabic used to play bass for the band) but have honed their modernised take on disco and rhythm music, with Telescope Mind achieving an immensely successful blend of experimental techniques and pop minimalism. After the brief, introductory piece, 'Lyre', 'Warning' comes acr…
KTL is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.). This is a six-part collision amongst the increasingly fading presences between the light and the dark, with some pieces recorded in a resistance fortress in southern France during a thunderstorm -- while others were recorded in a winter garden drenched in sunlight. The collaboration came about as the two were working on a theatre production by Gisèle Vienne and Dennis Cooper, entitled Kinder…
2002 release ** "One of the world's premier noise percussionists and a learned scholar of Kabbalah, Torah and Talmud, Z'ev has been a vital force in the downtown scene since the late 1970s. In addition to his collaborations with Glenn Branca, Rudolph Grey and his fascinating solo work, Z'ev is also a prolific writer and musical thinker. He has written on subjects ranging from music composition, ritual performance and has also translated several esoteric Tibetan and Hebrew texts into English. His…
This Romanian-born composer is noted for having developed the technique of 'spectral composition' during the 1960s. According to the man himself, this is defined as a "variable distribution of the spectral energy, synthesis of the global sound sources, micro- and macro-form as sound-process, four simultaneous layers of perception and of speed, and spectral scordaturae, i.e. rows of unequal intervals corresponding to harmonic scales." If you're any the wiser as to what he's on about do drop us a …
A conductor enjoys the privilege of being able to reconsider his attitude to musical works over and over again. The composer Boulez adheres to the same maxim: of his own compositions he regards only very few as being finished; most of them are, to him, "work in progress." The first two pieces on this collage CD were actually withdrawn by Boulez after their premiere as he wished to think them over again. Later on, Polyphonie X (1951) in view of its extremely strict serial procedure appeared to hi…
Kurtág's attachment to speech is also to be sensed in the works from this first period of maturity, something which emerged more concretely in this CD maily cenetered around the Russian language, which he learned especially in order to read Dostoevsky, and which is almost "sacred" for him, in the way that Latin was for Stravinsky. In his Russian works, opp 16 to 19, Kurtág's response to Russian prosody transforms his musical dialect with a poignant lyricism; this is to be heard both in the works…
The second CD of col legno's Wien Modern Edition is dedicated to Luciano Berio, who throughout his life kept on searching for new sounds, and new instrumental and orchestral organizing principles in his work. His Sequences for solo instruments are among the most important landmarks in recent music; later on, Berio decided to "comment" on some of these notoriously complex solo works from an orchestral perspective. Chemins and Chemins IIb are adaptations of the Sequences for harp and viola. "The b…
'Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards, Hototogisu, GHQ, fame on her first proper solo full length has given us one of our favorites in the history of hospital productions. Sexual infinty stands refreshingly organized into six escalating pieces of her signature guitar, voice, and electronic moodscapes entrancing the listener with sinister seduction. Comparisons to early 80's power electronics and industrial acts as uncommunity, mauthausen orchestra and ramleh reside in the underbelly of Zaïmp…
RESTOCKED, reduced price - Having recorded a significant body of work under various guises including A Broken Consort and Clouwbeck, Richard Skelton returns with a brand new and long anticipated album under his own name. Following on from 'Marking Time' (originally released via Preservation in 2008 only to be reissued on limited vinyl by Type over the summer), 'Landings' is an album steeped in the wild rural landscape of Skelton's surroundings. Over the span of just a few releases he's ma…
Enclosing the listener in sonic space: This is what Beat Furrer carried to extremes in his FAMA (col legno 20612), about 15 years after Rihm, by actually placing his audience in a “building of sound”. For Wolfgang Rihm, a sonic space was something less concrete and more indirect: “Organically sprawling strings of sound should be woven around the listener, circling her from different directions. In this way, the listener is not left to her own devices while opening up to it; the piece itself come…
'John Butcher: tenor or soprano saxophones - plus feedback, motors, embedded harp speaker. Rhodri Davies: pedal harp, lever harp with embedded speaker and electric harp, aeolian electric harp. John Butcher is one of the leading sax players on the free improvisation scene. Rhodri Davies transcends conventional ideas about the harp--an instrument rarely associated with improvised music--in his wide-ranging projects. The two British musicians have worked together in a variety of contexts sin…
CD album, high-end Super Jewel Box limited edition of 500 copies. “Réalités servomécaniques” is an improved version faithful to the original recordings with visuals specially reworked, answering to a categorical assertion, theoricaly and practicaly on Vivenza's bruitist point of view, who presents sounds, « noises », under their rawest and genuine aspect: sounds are machines / machines are sounds. Thus Vivenza captured the essence of factories with a strong sense of austerity, radicality, vertic…
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.
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…
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.
The Sinfonia n° 1 "Canarias" is dedicated to the composer's father, an old Canary Islander aged 94 at the time it was written. He was the reason why Cruz de Castro decided to focus the composition's middle movement wholly on the Canarian Folía. This special, important form of Canarian folk music appears both in its original form and in variations: "That's the way it should be: from the simple to the complex, from the melody line to the concentration: a harmonious whole." (Cruz de Castro) The Toc…