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Yellow Man With Heart With Wings
1990 CD issue of Robert Ashley's 1978 piece for voice and electronics. A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and ot…
Concrete
Concrete follows from Robert Ashley's preoccupation in two previous operas with the kind of speech that has not been explored in opera -- in Dust (LCD 1006CD), the speech of the homeless; in Celestial Excursions (LCD 1007CD), the speech of people living together in a home for old people. The three operas are not a "trilogy" in any sense, but they all come from this preoccupation with or fascination with special kinds of speech and special kinds of states of mind. "The characters I'm interested i…
Now Eleanor's Idea
2007 release. Now Eleanor's Idea was made possible by grants from The Rockefeller Foundation (1984 and 1993), the National Endowment for the Arts' Opera Musical Theater Program (1985) and InterArts Program (1992). Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), for an individual's self-realization within the co…
Celestial Excursions
2005 release. Following the ground-breaking work, Dust (LCD 1006CD), godfather of experimental opera Robert Ashley returns with Celestial Excursions. Ashley's endeavor explores remarkably uncharted territory -- the kind of language that is common among "old" people who talk all the time or not at all, to anyone passing by or to themselves. The opera premiered at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin, before coming to The Kitchen for its U.S. premiere in April 2003. Celestial Excursions delves into the wi…
An Avant Garde of Our Own: Disconnected Works 1980-2018 (8CDBox)
Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard, Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken…
Foreign Experiences
This new release from Lovely Music features Robert Ashley's famous ensemble, the "band" who interpreted his work for 20 years, from 1992 through 2012. They included Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Marghreta Cordero, Tom Hamilton, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara, and Amy X Neuburg. This recording was made at the Hebbel Theater, Berlin on May 12, 1995. The opera was also heard live at the Festival d'Avignon, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Musica Strasbourg, and Site Santa Fe. Foreign Experiences i…
The Sixth Decade - From Paris To Paris (Live At Sons D’Hiver)
The Art Ensemble Of Chicago, expanding to a chamber orchestra, marks its sixth decade as a vital force on the world music stage with an ear-opening live recording on two LPs. Recorded in France in 2020 at the Son D'Hiver Festival, this recording celebrates the legendary group's historic ties to Paris, where it was formed in 1968. When trumpet great Lester Bowie died in 1999, followers of the Art Ensemble of Chicago couldn't help but wonder whether the legendary quintet, which owed so much to his…
Ritual-All-7-70
Alan Sondheim was the young, exuberant leader of a pack of improvisers in their communal loft in Providence, Rhode Island. Undaunted by attempts to categorize electronic music as the province of academic tinkerers, a cold, unfriendly realm, with its own authorities, and audiences and mystique, they plunged fearlessly, joyously and unselfconsciously into the medium, discovering a new way to express their ideas. Their ESP CDs, ESP 1048, Ritual all 7-70 and ESP 1082, T'Other Little Tune, merge free…
Mandatory Reality
Mandatory Reality, the new album by Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society, is here. Setting aside (for the moment) the electric instrumentation of Simultonality (GB 048CD/MTE 068LP, 2017) and Magnetoception (MTE 063-64LP, 2015), Joshua Abrams conceived Mandatory Reality for an eight-piece acoustic manifestation of NIS, consisting of himself on guimbri, Lisa Alvarado on harmonium and gongs, Mikel Avery on tam-tam and gongs, Ben Boye on autoharp and piano, Hamid Drake on tabla and tar, Ben…
Naldjorlak
Saltern presents a thrilling new live recording of Naldjorlak for solo cello, composer Éliane Radigue’s first piece for an acoustic instrument, paired with a remastered version of the long out-of-print, original 2006 recording. Composed in 2005 in close collaboration with cellist Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak marked a striking shift in the music of Radigue, who has since composed exclusively for instrumentalists with her celebrated Occam series. This album brings together two complete performances …
This Embodiment
This Embodiment consists of work stemming from exhibitions and performances by Hanne Lippard over the past number of years. Including texts from her most recent exhibition entitled ‘Flesh’, at Berlin’s KW, that saw the artist use ‘her body and words to counterfeit perimeters given by established standards in art production and create a universe where the audience is physically as well as mentally brought outside of their confinements.’ The works collected display the various areas to which Lippa…
It’s All Breaking Apart
The six compositions on Soundwalk Collective’s new album, It’s All Breaking Apart, are based on field recordings from Berlin clubs, particularly Berghain, blended with additional sounds processed through modular synthesizers, ambient noise, fragments of conversations, and new vocal performances, both sung and spoken. The album features collaborations with Anika, Gudrun Gut, Elvin Brandhi, and Nina Kraviz. The opening track, The Crowd, is a collaboration between Soundwalk Collective and legendary…
Athos: Echos from the Holy Mountain
Huge Tip!!! Mount Athos, known as the «Holy Mountain,» is a monastic peninsula in northeastern Greece, central to Eastern Orthodox monasticism for over a millennium. Its twenty monasteries house around 2,000 monks dedicated to prayer and worship, which songs have echoed across the Aegean Sea for centuries, heard only by visiting pilgrims, isolated from conventional time and global events. After several years of research, and several visits to the retired community, we are happy to present our ne…
Music For Film
From small beginnings in 1974 as a local cinema and university event, Film Fest Gent has grown yearly in stature and is now recognised as one of the major destinations for the film industry. A vital component is the celebration of film music in the shape of the World Soundtrack Awards which honours the very best composers at work in the world of cinema. In 2016 the award goes to one of the most brilliant composers of his generation, Ryuichi Sakamoto. This is the first overview of his remarkable …
Expeditions
"Since 2014 I’ve had the luck, possibility (and guts?) to dedicate my life to exploring some parts of the world, driven both by curiosity and needs. The chosen way (the only one possible, for me) has been to undertake long tours. Jumping on this adventure, with no idea of what to expect, requires open brain, ears and good adaptability. What I have found since, is an endless count of good and bad experiences (which would not have probably happened as much, if I’d stayed at home). The people and t…
Banquet of consequences
Berlin-based Banquet of Consequences is the new sextet led by double bassist Antonio Borghini. In addition to the valuable lesson of Charles Mingus, clear references to Dutch, Italian and South African jazz traditions are mixed in the group. The group's eponymous debut album oscillates between completely improvised works - a series of numbered "Dialogues" - and compositions that swing wildly between chaos and tenderness.
Grammofon-Missionen - Swedish Jesus Music Aesthetics 1960 - 1990
With a preface by Johan Kugelberg and additional interviews by Emil Karlsson. This lavish coffee table book takes an in-depth visual look back at the amazing art and graphics of the so-called Swedish Gramophone Mission. The book presents the largest collection of Swedish Christian records from the 1960s -1980s ever amassed featuring 777 record covers, many of them extraordinary and surreal private/custom pressings.
Jam packed with lots of interviews, liner-notes and previously unpublished phot…
Ceremonial County Series Vol.VIII - Cambridgeshire / London
Volume VIII in the 24x volume set of ceremonial county cassettes.
Ceremonial County Series Vol.II - Suffolk | Dorset
Volume 2 in the 24x volume set of ceremonial county cassettes.
An Uncommon Music for the Common Man
* 2021 stock * Percussionist, Improviser and AMM founding member Eddie Prévost's fourth book presents a fascinating series of reflections and challenging insights on music in its various forms, and the development of improvised music at the intersection of contemporary compositional and conceptual forms; alongside a personal history of Prevost's life and his relationship with music.
"Part personal history, part provocation, here is a compelling book about musical improvisation. But it's also abo…