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Enviromental Meditations
The fact that Maurizio Bianchi is back is something that is known. I think the new age muzak he created right after his return should be seen as a false start, as since quite some time now, he returned to the world of noise and that is a territory that we can safely call his territory. Bianchi here teams up with one Maor Appelbaum, who is a member of various Israeli project such Poochlatz, Vultures, IWR and who has various solo projects Screening , Vectorscope and Plated Steel – not that I heard…
Sexual Infinity
'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…
Klaviermusik
The sovereign and immediate approach Lachenmann takes in his Fünf Variationen über ein Thema von F. Schubert (1956) lends Schubert's slight Deutsche Tanz D 643a special and almost heroic flavor. But only five years later, Lachenmann had already travelled a considerable distance since those days as his Echo Andante of 1961 shows. Like Wiegenmusik (1963), the piece has been shaped by Lachenmann's studies with Luigi Nono whose influence and inspiration are clearly audible. A perfect example of the …
Silmät Sulkaset
On the second full-length release by Kiila, the band gently conjures up mildly otherworldly tunes with a peaceful air and feathered eyes. What was once free-pop played by two is now free-folk played by seven. The language of the songs has reverted back to Finnish, and the human voices rest on a warm texture of sounds from an array of acoustic and electronic instruments. Carefully-arranged songs alternate with those improvised on the spot, all bearing the mark of a handcrafted article.
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
Complete Orchestral Works
Complicated, yet not complex: In order to create music as nature makes it, Guerrero employs fractal principles of composition.
How To Get Started
"John Cage conceived How To Get Started almost as an afterthought -- a performance substituting for another that was previously planned in 1989 for delivery at 'Sound Design: An Invitational Conference on the Uses of Sound for Radio Drama, Film, Video, Theater and Music' presented by Bay Area Radio Drama at Sprocket Systems, Skywalker Ranch, in Nicasio, California. In his introduction, Cage talks about the difficulty of initiating the creative process, while exploring the usefulness of im…
Kafka-Fragments
A wonderful CD, recorded under Kurtag's supervision: the hour-long Kafka Fragments, completed in 1986, is his biggest work to date: it's a characteristic cycle of 40 tiny movements, scored for soprano voice and violin, that adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts.The text is a mosaic of quotations from Kafka's writings, diaries and letters. The cycle is divided into four parts, articulated by the two longest movements; they draw a huge range of expression from soprano Juliane …
Arabbox
recorded in 1993 following the first Gulf War. 10 years later, following the second Gulf War, Soleilmoon is pleased to finally release this important Muslimgauze album. On April 15, 2003, we issued it in an expensive limited edition of 500 copies, packed in a hand-made metal box. This second edition, in an edition of 1000 copies, is released without the box but has a friendly price. It's commonly known that Bryn Jones, the late musician behind Muslimgauze, was driven by the passion of th…
Glissando n.1
Restocked “A trance-tape piece, constituting the entirety of the genre called Illuminatory Sound Environment, composed in the 70s in response to Catherine Christer Hennix’s “Electric Harpsichord. ” John Berdnt’s enthralling liner notes explain ISE as “an unfurling sound field of overwhelming but far from gratuitous sensuality, a highly “tuned” texture where all of the aspects are coordinated to make a deeply unusual “whole”, a new kind of perceptual gestalt... The piece has a disorienting flow t…
DW 17: Doubles / Schatten II
The unfolding of the differences is succeeded by ever new ramifications, versions, series. DW 17 Doubles/Schatten II as a new phase in the DW-Kosmos.
Das tapfere Schneiderlein
Drop the usual children's opera platitudes, add a liberal measure of cheek – result: a smart musical comedy, young and saucy, just like the brave little people that go about their business here. Do the children today know at all what this fairytale is about? Well, if they don't, Wolfgang Mitterer will bring it home to them, with just a few characteristic instruments: double bass, samples, synthetic sounds. Elisabeth Rombach as the little tailor takes to the road boldly and merrily, parading the …
ktl 2
This is the second full-length release by KTL, the formidable collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.). Devastatingly beautiful four-part follow up to the highly acclaimed debut CD, recorded in a former abattoir in Angers, as well as a 16th century manor in the extreme west of France. Taking the blueprint that was laid out on the first record even further, with the ecstatic build up of "Theme," the near-psychedelic "Abattoir," and closing wi…
New American Ethnic Music Volume 2 : Spindizzy
second release in this series documenting the archival recordings of this previously obscure, genius musician. Volume one received broad critical acclaim, including a top ten critics pick for 2001 in THE WIRE and numerous other reviews and articles. Volume 3 in the series, Hillbilly Tape Music, will follow shortly. Before the publication of his music, Flynt was most often known as an (often distorted) footnote in art history, as the man who invented Concept Art, Flynt's name in the early sixties…
Kraanerg
Apart from a large orchestra, Kraanerg, composed in 1968/69, requires audio feeds of recorded parts played by the orchestra and of the results of the manipulation of electro-acoustical phenomena. “I do not work with basic building blocks. I start afresh every time,“ Xenakis once said. This statement may help explain the extremely independent sonic universe created afresh in his compositions again and again. In the same vein, he rejects any attempt to foist semantic patterns onto the music of Kra…
Allegro Sostenuto / Pression / Dal Niente / Intérieur I
Both Sostenuto and Dal niente were composed for the clarinetist Eduard Brunner. “As in the earlier Ausklang for piano and orchestra, the musical material is determined by the interplay of the experiences of resonance on the one hand and motion on the other. Both aspects of sound encounter one another in the conception of structure as a multiply ambivalent ‘arpeggio’, i.e. as a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction – experienced in temporal succession – which is conveyed both…
Childhood, Christian Lies & Slaughter
"I find this disc to be consistently superb and often sublime.
Cian writes contemplative, melodic and somewhat bluesy songs that
always ring true. The one cover, Baka Dance, has more of an older,
folky theme, but all of the songs have an organic, human quality that
feels just right. If this was released in the mid-70's, it would fit
perfectly in the Takoma catalogue with John Fahey and Leo Kottke.
Pretty great company for a young whippersnapper like Cian Nugent." Downtown musi…
Ausklang / Tableau
The title Ausklang (Final Notes, or Fading Away) is intended to be understood literally. Lachenmann's Musik für Klavier und Or-chester is centrally concerned with final notes and sounds fading away. In particular, it is concerned with piano sounds created with certain techniques (playing silently at the keyboard, special ways of operating the piano pedals, etc.). It is also concerned with the fading away of sound as the sounds of the piano are being picked up by the orchestra just as they are ab…
Concierto n° 1 para piano y orquesta \'Atlántico\' / La Luz del
Canary folklore: the Concierto Atlántico is based on two motifs that have been "united with the almost obsessive rhythm of the tango herréno, an essential element of the oldest folk music of the island." The piano piece Latir Isleño, on the other hand, is based on a well-known Canarian folksong, Arrorò. But traditional Canarian music is merely the starting point for these works, not their destination; their structure, like that of La Luz del Aire (The light of air), is determined by exact mathem…
Cathédrale
Concert music for solo harp: The harp, whose ancestor belongs to the most ancient musical instruments, is usually associated with impressionistic sound. But Roman Haubenstock-Ramati - the most visionary inventor of sounds among contemporary composers, according to Wilhelm Sinkovicz – has never been satisfied with the status quo. So, while teaching composition and investigating new forms of musical notation, he succeeded in his endeavor to explore new possibilities of musical expression again and…