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Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
Hardly any other composer has ever been as far removed from conservatism as Helmut Lachenmann. In all his oeuvre his listeners are never permitted to lean back comfortably even for a moment in expectation of the well-known and familiar. Again and again Lachenmann succeeded, and still succeeds, in shaking the "aesthetic apparatus," the system of conventional formulas and phrases established throughout decades and centuries, to its very foundations. Intérieur I (1966), a piece for percussion solo,…
Trac(k)_t
his is the final work in the series of works-encompassing ataraxia, bradycard, trans~, and back_forward – using the cymbalon as source material. The process of working with this hammered stringed instrument for this series has been a “discussion” between the instrument and myself, an exploration of traditional playing, digital processing, and mixtures of both. I feel that trac[k]_t should convey the scope of using an instrument without losing both its intrinsic nature of engagement as …
Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
Dmitri Shostakovich was to encourage the young Gubaidulina, for instance when he told her in his official function as the chairman of a board of examiners: "Keep on composing on your errant ways." Her intuition was based on her profound religious faith as well as on literature and philosophy. In her String Trio of 1988 she accomplished a particularly impressive motif transfer in the finale. The motif, which has been powerfully completed before, sneaks in again through the first violin, endures, …
Chamber Works
One of the mysteries surrounding Jesús Rueda is the question how he was able to find a voice of his own, the various influences to which he was exposed during his development as a composer notwithstanding. He bid farewell to the constructivist rigor of Francisco Guerrero, and his pieces to do not immediately betray influences by Luis de Pablo, Giacomo Manzoni and Luigi Nono. Characteristic of his compositions are fast tempos, present in “slower” parts as brisk figurations, his sense of harmony a…
Une Soirée Vian
The Soirée Vian, a kind of meta-cabaret created in 1991 based on a commission by the WDR, develops along the narrative red thread of Boris Vian's novel The red grass and turns into a dizzying journey through the absurdly crazy worlds of Vian's universe. The fullness and polystylism of this venture undertaken by Denys Bouliane might indeed almost make the listener dizzy, not least due to the fantastic performance by the electro-acoustic ensemble "Série B." Their "musical roller coaster ride from …
Whitehouse
This project involves the unique German avant-garde orchestra performing a selection of tracks from the Whitehouse catalogue. The rehearsals and mixing were done in collaboration with William Bennett but he doesn't actually perform on the recordings. Anyone familiar with Zeitkreitzer's Rendition of Lou Reed classic Metal Machine Music will be fully aware that these guys can magnificently translate noise music and in this case electronic music through acoustic interments. Bennet's compositions h…
Neither
An opera? An anti-opera? A monodrama? Whatever it may be: Neither (1977) marks the meeting of the kindred artistic souls of Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman.
Yesterday night you were sleeping at my place
Flute, harp and percussion are the principal instruments on this recording, though you’d be hard pressed to identify them during the opening measures of “Hamida”, the longest track on the CD. But the buzzing, pulsing drone with which it begins gradually opens out into flute articulations that sound like jets of steam, a barrage of muffled percussion, and various harp-generated supplementary drones. The MUTA soundworld gets richer, louder and more pressurised as the track progresses, and…
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…
Mechanica
Shifts is Frans De Waard. Famous for his ground-breaking releases on his own Korm Plastics/Bake/Microwave labels (all available as CDRs) and his work for Staalplaat (which he didn't found, contrary to popular belief) and from a thousand other projects as Goem, Beequeen and Kapotte Muziek. Shifts produces another angle of De Waard's minimal music. The guitar is the source of Shifts. After a string of 7"s, 10"s and 2 CDs, we are proud to say that Mechanica is one of his best. The album is a contin…
Soundtracks To A Color: Gold & Black
Soundtracks To A Color: Gold & Black was an installation at LA Municipal Art Gallery as part of the COLA (City of Los Angeles) Fellowship exhibition from 2004. The installation consisted of 2000 posters: 1000 Gold and 1000 Black. Two separate rooms were covered with these posters that were covered solid in their color with the name of the color printed rather large in dead center. At the bottom of each poster was listed the instrumentation for each particular soundtrack to the color. The GO…
Sinfonía n° 1 \'Canarias\' / Tocata vieja en tono nuevo / Los e
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…
33 RPM: 10 Hours Of Sound From France
An exhibition companion compilation to SFMOMA's 2003 listening room program 33 RPM: 10 Hours of Sound From France, curated by Laurent Dailleau. 33 RPM's Compact Disc companion features compositions from Kasper Toeplitz, Kristoff K. Roll, Jean-Claude Risset, Lionel Marchetti, Christophe Havel, Laurent Dailleau, Mathieu Chamagne, pizMO, Jean-Philippe Gross, and Mimetic. Comes with a 24 page booklet and original program details.
Gran Torso / Salut für Caudwell
In 1988 the first issue of these recordings of Gran Torso and Salut für Caudwell was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics' Award); and neither compositions nor recordings have lost any of their value up to today. In Gran Torso, Lachenmann tried to explore the “mechanic and energetic conditions of sound production”. This resulted in singular, unusual sounds which simultaneously exploded the barriers of audibility, playing technique and sound as such. The guit…
From between
'It gives me great pleasure to announce the first release of the new label 'substance over surface editions' - SoSEDITIONS - an offering of recent live and studio recordings by the improvising trio of Michel Doneda, Jack Wright, and Tatsuya Nakatani. The recording is accompanied by a poem by renowned poet Jerome Rothenberg.
Night Studies
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…
Tempus Rei
The second part of Castle sonorisation serie by Alio Die, an epic and intense album with two long tracks, where the usual drones and loops, zither and field recorings go deep intoxicated into an old time surrealism. Limited 300 copies!
Journey Through A Body
Recorded in Roma in March 1981. It was recorded in five days, a day per body section. No tracks were re-recorded or added to after their day. Each was immediately after recording. No tracks were pre-planned, all tracks are invented directly onto the tape.