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The Echoing Green
** 2021 Stock ** Like Morton Feldman, whose music he acknowledges as an influence Walter Zimmermann (b.1949) is fascinated by the relationship between painting and music, and how material of an apparently simple nature played by apparently “normal” instruments is capable of almost infinite subtlety. Frankfurt’s HCD Ensemble are also members of Germany’s infamous Ensemble Modern. They are joined here by the superb violinist Peter Rundel and cellist Michael Bach. Wüstenwanderung [Wandering in the …
Shadow of an Idea
The influence of two American composers – John Cage and Morton Feldman – has been decisive on Walter Zimmermann. With Cage, it was his music from the late forties – works like the String Quartet, the Suite for Toy Piano and the Six Melodies – that caught his attention: works underpinned by precise numerical construction, yet with an engaging directness of expression. Feldman has been an inspiration to Zimmermann’s lyrical impetus, and Cage to his constructivist urges. Yet the two do not always …
A Natural Gesture: Thoughts on Musical Praxis and Conducting
Luigi Gaggero, a native of Genoa, has graced the stages of Europe’s most prestigious venues. He is currently Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra as well as musical director and co-founder of the Ukho Ensemble Kyiv, with which he has recorded acclaimed CDs of con- temporary music repertoire. Before launching his conducting career, Gaggero performed for 25 years as a cimbalom player and percussionist, collaborating with the finest European orchestras and ensembles …
Watching with My Ears: 20 Years Vision Festival New York
**English/German edition. Hardcover** With Watching with my Ears, the Wuppertal artist Jorgo Schäfer presents the works he has made over 20 years during the Vision Festival in New York. The Vision Festival is an annual world festival of free jazz (free improvised music, avant-garde jazz, etc.), where other arts such as dance, poetry, spoken word and visual arts also play an important role. „When the Wuppertal bassist Peter Kowald invited me to the Vision Festival in New York in the summer of 2…
KiSS Kinetics in Sound & Space (Book)
KiSS – Kinetics in Sound & Space: This acronym stands for the research project established in 2019 by the partner universities HfMT Hamburg and HAW Hamburg.
Exhibiting SoundArt (Book)
Museum directors, scholars, journalists and editors explore the variety of relations between sound as an object of investigation. Issues of sound as a medium of art and culture and possibilities and conditions of exhibiting sound art will be discussed. Sound art has become an integral part of art and music festivals for several decades, and is shown in museums, experimental venues and public spaces. Sound art requires a special approach in the way it is curated, conceived, produced and reenacted…
Sounding Fragilities An Anthology (Book)
Sounding Fragilities enacts a polyphony of writing on contemporary composition, music and performing arts in relation to music theatre. Co-edited by a theatre and performance scholar and by a composer and artistic researcher, this anthology considers its field of investigation through the lens of positionalities. Irene Lehmann and Pia Palme invite readers into intimate encounters with an artist’s practice, feminist and queer perspectives, and personal explorations into aspects of musicology, the…
Labyrinthus: hic habitat Musica (Book)
The phenomenon of “graphic” scores has been a subject of fascination, controversy, and a flourishing of artistic talent since its inception in the aftermath of the Second World War. The scores of that age, despite their compelling visual presence, nevertheless remain elusive: the means of performance are obscure, and they resist conventional analysis. This study reconsiders graphic scores from the perspective of Information Theory, derived from studies of “ergodic” texts: the ergodic score requi…
Imaginary Island Music Vol.1: Canary Islands
Introducing a new project by Discrepant label boss Gonccalo F. Cardoso (Gonzo, Visions Congo, Papillon) and Tenerife electronic stalwarts Tupperwear (Mladen Kurajica and Dani Tupper). Diving deep into various phantom island mythologies (the elusive St. Brendan's island being a recurring motif) Lagoss borrow from the exotica playbook of ideas and twist it inside out into a bubbling melting pot of sounds, shapes and patterns that eventually confuse, wonder and (occasionally) scare the inattentive …
Salar
Four years after their Discrepant debut - 'OOOO' -, Lisbon-based travellers Jibóia return to the fold with another offering of globetrotting psychedelia with 'Salar'. With the core trio of Óscar Silva, Ricardo Martins and Mestre André augmented by a stellar parade of collaborators on various roles, 'Salar' further expands on the transglobal visions by now pretty trademarked by the band. Intersped among shorter vignettes for drums, saxophone and bass, each of the more fully fleshed tracks casts a…
Versus
This album marks a new direction and development of Higgins' acclaimed work as a guitarist and composer, drawing on electronic music, free improvisation, and avant-garde modern composition, Versus is a highly emotional and expressive work that pushes Higgins' own instrumental virtuosity into new territories. He performs guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, drums and laptop programming across a 9-track record that traverses and transforms many aspects of Higgins' earlier work. The title track "Versus"…
Homage
Eleh's Homage series is remastered and on CD for the first time. Certain frequency combinations that were impossible to cut on LP are effectively presented in this digital edition. Packaged in a heavy duty 6 panel fold out jacket with inner printing and a matte finish. Eleh, an artist who flourishes in restraint, uses a reduced sonic vocabulary to highlight delicate intricacies in a logical path toward harmonious satisfaction. The organization of hypnotic square waves, rippling sine waves and tr…
Decibels of Gratitude
Decibels of Gratitude is the eighth full-length studio album by this long running Massachusetts ensemble. The roots of Major Stars go back to the 1979 formation of Crystalized Movements, through to their early 90s successor, Magic Hour. Upon that band's breakup, guitarists Wayne Rogers and Kate Village formed Major Stars, which kept Magic Hour's tendency toward songs spiked with lengthy instrumental excursions, but added a hard rock angle not usually present in the Hour's hazier sound. Major Sta…
Mirage
With Mirage on Important Records, Smegma again does the impossible. 38 years after reinventing the musical wheel, they have recorded a stunning masterpiece. With four of the original members working together again for the first time in many years, together with many new collaborators , they have kept alive their unique brand of old school primitive, Avant/Garage music. Running the gamut from the Musique Concrete inspired subtilely bombastic mood of the Title track to World of my Own's frenzied n…
Liebestod
Liebestod, by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski, consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings, and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. He shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nos…
Impedance
Alina Kalancea's Impedance is an entirely instrumental album spanning four sides, contains powerful rhythmic sequences, heart-beating frequencies and hypnotic loops that are paradoxically encapsulated in carefully crafted compositions which are full of secret passages and hidden doors. Kalancea's work creates ungraspable sonic experiences, which overtakes you, immersing its listeners in powerful and mind-altering soundscapes.
There's no quick payoff on Impedance. This is the sound of new, patien…
Zurich
Zurich began as a 1994 musical partnership between Neil Halstead then of Slowdive and Tony F Wilson. The two recorded a handful of tracks together at a time when Wilson was co-promoting and DJing at the club/live night Quirky in South London where he booked acts including Pan Sonic, Hafler Trio and Autechre. Halstead was shortly to begin work on Slowdive’s final and most experimental album Pygmalion. Recorded at a time when the popularity of ambient techno was at its peak, these recordings are r…
O True Believers
When UK-native James Blackshaw plays his 12-string, something spiritual takes place. This unassuming 23 year-old is transformed into a guitar god whose name belongs alongside the likes of Jack Rose, Steffen Basho-Junghans, and Glenn Jones. Making instrumental, solo, acoustic music that remains consistently interesting and moving is a difficult task. Yet, time after time, Blackshaw hits out of the park, constantly breaking boundaries in what could be conceived as a somewhat limited medium. O True…
Some Blood Will Stick
Hototogisu is Matthew Bower (Skullflower/Sunroof!) and Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards). They've been laying down billowing sheets of Teutonic guitar drone-noise since 2003 with the thickest possible helpings of vocals and electronics. Some Blood Will Stick is a collection of tracks from their ultra-limited self produced label Heavy Blossom. Songs were taken from Swoon Scream (2004) and Awful Symmetry (2005) with one additional track. What makes this disc more than a simple re-release is the ext…
The Echo From The Purple Dawn
The Echo From The Purple Dawn is a brand new full length from C.C.C.C. member Hiroshi Hasegawa's solo project, Astro. Using a battery of oscillators, ring modulators and field recordings, Hasegawa has created an engaging and versatile album that masterfully drifts between spaced-out analog dream drone and a more extreme form of harsher droning. As Astro, Hasegawa is able to combine some of the harsher influences of C.C.C.C. into the world of analog space music to create the signature sounds of A…