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The butterfly and the bee
Following the success of their very first performance together at the 2004 FREEDOM OF THE CITY festival (heard on Emanem 4215), Roger Smith and Louis Moholo-Moholo went into the studio to record some more. Their second meeting went so well that they recorded enough duo improvisations for a complete CD. The resulting music is heard complete, with Smith on Spanish guitar and Moholo on augmented drum set.
Emanations of a New World
Vivian Wang and Leslie Low, both of The Observatory, recount childhood memories of mythological fantasy theme park called Haw Par Villa. First called Tiger Balm Garden, the odd but colorful attraction contained a strange mix of characters and familiar tales from Chinese mythology and folklore, mixed in with earthy depictions of modern life and the Chinese concept of hell. The mutual love and dread of the park is told over eight recordings. Voice, guitar, percussion and other traditional i…
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…
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 …
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…
Speak no more about the leaves
This cd contains 3 pieces inspired by Arnold Schönberg's 'The Book of the Hanging Gardens' and in particular the poems by Stefan George that Schönberg used as lyrics. Track one uses Steve Roden's voice reading/singing part of the text as the only sound material. Track two uses the vowel structure from the text as a score for striking five tones on a small chime. Track three uses samples from the Schönberg work as well as Roden's voice singing the same text as track one.
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…
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…
Action Music
Giacinto Scelsi’s relationship with the piano is interesting and contradictory. For no other instrument has the Italian composer and poet composed so many pieces; to no other instrument does he seem so closely attached, both personally and biographically; and no other instrument disappeared so abruptly and finally from his scores as the piano, the European showcase instrument. With the piano, we can follow the break lines and develop-ments in the musical thinking and works of Giacinto Scelsi, wh…
Airforms
Airforms was first presented at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [Scottsdale, Arizona] in April of 2004. The work was inspired by a group of experimental houses designed by Wallace Neff in the 1940s using a process he called airform construction. The houses were built by spraying concrete over an inflated balloon structure. Inspired by the nautilus sea shell, the houses were an investigation into the aesthetic possibilities of structures formed by air, and the psychological effects of l…
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.
Étude sur les Mouvements rotatoires / 24 Préludes
The master of partial tones: Ivan Wyschnegradsky continued Scriabin's harmonic principles and (successfully) searched for new tone colors.
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…
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.
s/t
Dessus la mer composed 1995-1997. Equus - Carnet d'esquisses composed 1993, derived from a 4-seconds recording of the steps of a horse. Scènes des voyages d'Ulysse composed 1981, created as incidental music for a production of The Odyssey.
Complete Works For Clarinet
Giacinto Scelsi was both reclusive and inexact in the way that he dated and named his compositions. This rendition of Tre Pezzi (a broad title Scelsi used numerous times for different pieces) focuses on narrow ranges in the B-flat clarinet, demonstrating the thin margin of tonal range between the phrases that come sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Kho Lho, on the other hand, pairs a clarinet and flute duet so closely that the instruments' tones merge into a thick strand of sound. Maknongan is a r…
D.o.A. The Third And Final Report
1991 CD reissue of the 2nd TG album, originally issued in 1978; digitally remastered by Chris Carter. Adds 2 bonus tracks from the legendary Sordide Sentimental 7" ("We Hate You (Little Girls)" & "Five Knuckle Shuffle". Breaking from the live sound of the previous Second Annual Report, D.O.A. finds the group assembling collages of computer noise, cassette tapes on fast forward, looped feedback and tape hiss, surreptitiously recorded conversation, threatening phone calls, and much more, all to a …
Sorcery, Spells & Serpent Charms
After a break of over ten years, Sleepchamber (new spelling!) are back! We are proud to present you the comeback album of one of the most influential bands from the American Industrial scene. John Zewizz presents the new band line-up with a stunning collection of classic SC musick. The album belongs to the band's abstract dark ambient side but also has a few musical surprises. "Captured Spirits, spells, white horns and ha…
Musica Viva 03
Musica Viva 03: Pleading for divine forgiveness, exploring the bounds of possibility of clarinets, and tricks of light.
Z
“Z is about infinity and the double dimension we all live in yet don't fully understand. Z is the sound of that feeling you get when you think you're being watched or followed by the omnipotent one. Z is for believers and followers of the "Ecstatic Truth" that fuels this mysterious universe. Z has always existed and here is is as remembered and transfered solid by the people under the sun, the Sunburned..” – John Moloney, Sunburned