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Piano and Orchestra, Palais de Mari, Piano
In the early 1970s, Feldman increasingly turned his attention to works for orchestra, in most cases combined with a solo instrument. The compositions dating from this period include, among many others, Cello and Orchestra (1972) or Oboe and Orchestra (1976). One aspect that was important to him in all of these works was a research into sound, an "unceasing effort to create, by way of exclusion and integration, by operating with colored projection surfaces and various spatial levels, a kind of se…
Violence of discovery and calm of acceptance
This is his first album for touch. The highly evocative intricate and subtle guitar drones are captured in the beautiful photography of Heitor Alvelos, a Portuguese artist, and in the artwork of Jon Wozencroft. The background noise on track 10 is a recording of silence during a Space Shuttle mission real time webcast. All other sounds were released by electric guitars. The album was recorded between 1993 and 2000 and mastered at Noise Precision, Lisbon.
s/t
'Le Livre des Morts Ordinaires' (1987-90), 'Sur les chemins de Venise' (1983), 'Toccatanne N°3' (1975), 'Là où les roses sont froissées' (1971).
Fluxus
Collected here are three radioplays from three Fluxus affiliates, Philip Corner, Alison Knowles, and George Brecht. Each piece is built from a simple element and features a text recited by the author and sometimes others. Corner's piece is an homage to Erik Satie, built from a sparce two chord piano figure and a recitation that teeters along the stereo field. Knowles' piece, which she delivers along with Brecht, Hanna Higgins, and Jessica Higgins, is built from a long list of bean names on top o…
FADENKREUZE
For Elmar Lampson, composition and the phenomenology of music overlap as disciplines, and attentive listening is as critical to his works' reception as is analysis of their carefully timed structures or pitch content. Lampson's String Quartet No. 2 (1992-1998) operates on several aural planes, some near and easy to distinguish, and others more remote and indistinct. The material shifts between active, atonal flurries and soft, almost lyrical passages of modal simplicity, and the extremely soft d…
AURORA / THRENOS IV / PIRKEI TEHILLIM / MEMORARE
Titles often occur to Reinhard David Flender only after he has completed a composition. When listening to Aurora, for example, "a visual association is evoked. The piece starts with a long double bass tone. Then a high pitched tone played by oboe and harp comes in, briefly at first, repeated at intervals; as the piece proceeds it is joined by other tones, until a short melody emerges. Thus the title Aurora, the first rays of sun at the crack of dawn, which then give way to a shape: the dome of t…
Donaueschinger Musiktage 2004
Unusually, the 2004 annual COL LEGNO release from the Donaueschinger Musiktage is devoted to the work of one composer, Englishman Benedict Mason, and to just one extensive and curiously-titled work, commissioned in 2001 by the German Südwestrundfunk. Specially written for the hall in Donaueschingen where this live recording of the work’s first performance was made, Mason’s music explores space and acoustic, as well as the character of a variety of instruments, to fascinating effect.
Garage
Smalltown Supersound's "Superjazz" offshoot delivers this much-discussed darkcore jazz fusion album led by sometime sonic youth collaborator Mats Gustafsson, here rummaging through improvs and cover versions like a garage band picking up trumpets, double bass and drums for their heavily skewed but massively charming workouts. Sticking a hairy a tongue out at the polished slickness of the Bad Plus, The Thing offer up cover versions of tracks by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes and Peter Bro…
Casse-tete
Composed in 1979 and edited on LP in 1984 by Amaryllis. Reissue on cd by Oral, 2008. Contrary to an electronic music delighting itself in soaring above reality in self abstraction, the concrete music of Bernard Bonnier has a down on earth hearing, and a dancing too, altough now and then out of beat. Bernard Bonnier has defined chameleon-music as: '...a mime* trying to beat its parth through the puzzle (casse-tête: literally 'head-breaker') of soliciting madness, sundowns, violence, science, love…
New Music
Henry Cowell ha inventato e perfezionato la gran parte delle speciali tecniche per suonare il pianoforte utilizzate negli ultimi 70 anni; nel corso della sua vita (1897-1965) ha composto un impressionante numero di musiche sinfoniche, vocali e da camera ed ha pubblicato il pionieristico libro "New Music Resources". Il suo contributo che più ha influenzato la scena contemporanea è però la sua opera per pianoforte, considerata di fondamentale importanza per la musica del XX secolo. "New Music" pro…
Ode / Clarinet Quintet / Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra
Like Brahms in his later years, Edison Denisov, the European-oriented composer firmly rooted in Russian-Siberian soil, developed a certain partiality to the tonal qualities of the clarinet. Eduard Brunner, clarinet virtuoso and former soloist of the Symhonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, got acquainted with Denisov's music in the mid 1960s, and has been playing Denisov's works regularly ever since. Brunner's performance of the Ode, a composition revealing an original "Russian" element but …
Solar Flares Burn For You
Vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Robert Wyatt's career extends from the beginnings of the psychedelic era to the present day. This album started its life as simply a collection of the two BBC Top Gear sessions that Robert recorded in 1972 and 1974. But as we worked on it, Robert became more and more involved in it, until it ended up in its final form. In addition to the Top Gear recordings, there is a previously unheard and little known 1973 soundtrack for a short experimental film, …
Aerial # 2
This release is the second (Volume 2) in the three-part Aerial series. Tod Dockstader is one of the all-time great figures in the world of musique concréte composition, with his "organized sound" works from the 1960s being amongst the most radical ever conceived -- in league with Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, and Varese. Aerial is a rare new work in the realm of shortwave radio, from one of America's most experimental composers. Volume 1 was released in March 2005 inside a slipcase. Volu…
Bryant park Moratorium Rally
An October afternoon in 1969. Midtown Manhattan. A rally in Bryant Park against the Vietnam War. Down 42nd Street towards Times Square, Tony Conrad is adjusting microphones in his 5th floor loft, one directed at the TV set -- where it will pick up live local news coverage -- the other pointing out the window, where the echo of speeches and crowd noise mingles with the oceanic rush of crosstown traffic. As the event is about to begin, he rolls tape. Thirty-four years later, we hear what he heard.…
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…
Pencil Music
Originally released under the title "Bleistiftmusik" as a C30 cassette in a signed and numbered edition of 80 copies by Edition Hundertmark as 74. Karton. "I was surprised that it was possible to read the acoustic event from the object drawn, and some insecurity about the association of visual signs and sound phenomena (caused by the directional openness of the reading process) appears to increase even more the attraction of seeing them combined. The pencil-sound piece did not always remain th…
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…
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.
Magnog
Debut from a guitar/bass/drums/moog trio from Washington state. Not since the heyday of early Guru Guru and the original Ash Ra Tempel have we experienced such unrestrained, free playing taking place within the confines of a 'rock' band. More recent examples of this aesthetic might include the early recordings of Dif Juz on 4AD, Milwaukee's F/i, the recent collection of 4-track recordings from Cul de Sac or the homespun psych of Charalambides...
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…