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A truly stunning accomplishment on the part of Otoroku, "Collected Solos" is easily one of the most exciting reissues of the year. Gathering all four of Evan Parker’s seminal solo releases for Incus, plus a cassette featuring extra cuts from the sessions at FMP studios from the "Saxophone Solos" session, and an accompanying booklet written by the late writer, Paul Haines, issued in a deluxe, screen printed box, in an edition of 250 copies, it is a towering artifact of European free improvised mu…
**300 copies** Tongues Of Mount Meru is the duo of Jon Wesseltoft & Lasse Marhaug. Jon Wesseltoft is a versatile electronics composer and musician, having worked with noise, electro-acoustics, improvisation and experimental sound-work for over 20 years. Lasse Marhaug is an experimental musician, improviser and composer with a long history within noise, improvisational, and experimental music with numerous releases since the 1990’s. He is also a producer, graphic designer, label head and publishe…
*2022 stock* Pharoah Sanders’ Moon Child from 1990, which bookended a decade of musical soul searching for Sanders. The acclaimed free jazz player is known to have a raw and abrasive sound, but reinvented himself on this album as a more traditional improviser capable of thoughtful deliberations. Moon Child is a grand old time throughout, and Sanders has never been more eminently sing-along-able as he is on its title track.
The record was co-written with Horace Silver, George Gershwin and Abdulla…
Recorded in 1957 by Rudy Van Gelder and released in the same year on the New Jazz label, this was a major statement from Ray Draper, who besides working with the likes of Max Roach, Jackie Mclean and Donald Byrd, he has been one of the few tuba players who have made a name as band leader. In particular this quintet date was a courageous step with Draper sharing the frontline with John Coltrane. In fact the two gave voice to a very unusual combination of tuba and tenor sax. An unprecedented instr…
Ugo Busoni's “Valvole” is a classic example of the so-called library music records released in Italy (as in the rest of the world) in order to provide 'background music' to be used in the editing of news broadcasts, radio and newsreels. These were records made by highly experienced composers and musicians who, in a very short time and with limited or non-existent budgets, had to make music to be synchronized to images. For obvious reasons, they had to be tracks of short duration, characterized b…
If you could paint the world black, rediscover it with a flashlight illuminating every single detail and turn each finding into an obsession while gliding across the murk then you might stumble into Blak Saagan’s new magniloquent quest ‘Se Ci Fosse La Luce Sarebbe Bellissimo’ (If there were light it would be beautiful), a monstrous work of dedication and sound architecture that investigates and soundtracks one of the saddest and most obscure pages of Italian history: the 1978 kidnapping of forme…
Avant-garde jazz drummer Rashied Ali played with John Coltrane up until his death in 1967, appearing on final recordings like The Olatunji Concert and Interstellar Space. After Coltrane's death, Ali soon formed his own quartet, with Fred Simmons on piano, Stafford James on bass violin and Carlos Ward on alto sax and flute. The quartet's first release, New Directions In Modern Music, released on Ali's own Survival Records in 1973, exploded onto the free jazz scene, influencing the likes of Don Ch…
Music From the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Archives 1968-2011. This 2LP presents seminal works of music from the nearly 50-year history of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). When HOK founder Sonja Henie exclaimed that she wanted The Beatles to play at her art center, in essence she expressed its founding ambition to produce and stage a lively cross-artistic program that captured the contemporary spirit of the day in live form. This release is filled with previously-unreleased material recorded at H…
Koto virtuoso Michiyo Yagi joins the longstanding Norwegian duo of drummer Paal-Nilssen-Love and electronics wizard Lasse Marhaug for a session of extended improvisations. Galvanized by Nilssen-Love’s arsenal of sounds and textures, Yagi drives the most traditional of Japanese instruments to non-idiomatic and percussive extremes while Marhaug's abstractions reach heights of surprising lyricism. A veritable atlas of strange and wonderful sonic terrain, “Angular Mass” invites the listener to an un…
*2022 Stock.* Hymnen - Elektronische Musik Mit Orchester is the premier recording of a specially-adapted version of the 3rd Region of the massive electronic/tape work Hymnen. Commissioned for a 1971 concert with the New York Philharmonic, Stockhausen scored a new orchestral accompaniment to this particular quadrant (the other 3 Regions were accompanied in this concert by the electro-acoustic Stockhausen Group, employing intuitive strategies). This orchestra and tape version also includes a solo …
*2022 Stock.* 'The Stockhausen Edition no. 103 contains the first complete recording of Pole (Poles, 1969-70) for 2 soloists with shortwave radio (and small instruments). Vocalists Natascha Nikeprelevic and Michael Vetter are featured here. The score for Pole includes directions for spatial placement of sound sources, which were realized through panning and digital reverb. An earlier recording of this piece with Péter Eötvös & Harald Bojé can be found on The Stockhausen Edition no. 15.' - Stockh…
Packaged in a thick 2CD jewel case with 128-page booklet in English. Karlheinz Stockhausen –“Mikrophonie I” (1964) for tam-tam, 2 microphones, 2 filters with potentiometers (6 players) / “Mikrophonie II” (1965) for choir, Hammond organ, 4 ring modulators / “Telemusik” (1966) (electronic music). Together with Stockhausen's immediately preceding work Mixtur, for five orchestra groups, four sine-wave generators, four ring modulators, they form a tryptych of live-electronic works, where electronic …
*2022 Stock.* Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Synthi-Fou / Dienstags-Abschied ” "A double –CD like this one falls right into that crystal clarity, giving yet more insight into how his art is achieved, piece by piece, structurally – but as it is with human beings or a flower or an Earth sun rise, the result is much more and something else altogether than the sum of all the parts… and somewhere in that realm lies the real mystery; that elusive, vibrant core of beauty and truth which can’t be accounted fo…
Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Donnerstag aus Licht” (“Thursday from Light”); opera in three acts, a greeting and a farewell for 15 musical interpreters (4 solo voices, 8 instrumental soloists, 3 solo dancers), chorus, orchestra and magnetic tapes (1978 – 1980) " It arises in a silvery, calm motion of wind instruments – obviously preparing us for something of importance and vast durations. It is “Donnerstag-Gruss” (“Thursday Greeting”); the start of “Donnerstag aus Licht” (“Thursday from Light”); the …
Hania Rani announces ‘Music for Film and Theatre’ a personal selection of recent compositions for film, theatre and other projects. Writing music for film and theatre has always been a big part of Hania Rani’s musical world. It is also a part of the creative process that can be tantalisingly out of reach for listeners, either the project doesn’t come to fruition or the music simply isn’t available away from the film or play. From early collaborations with friends, to last year’s two scores for …
In Chinese mythology, Pan Gu is the primeval man, born of the cosmic egg. One day the egg split open. The top half became the sky and the bottom half the earth. Pan Gu, who emerged from the broken egg, grew ten feet taller every day, just as the sky became ten feet higher and the earth ten feet thicker. After 18,000 years Pan Gu died. Then, like the cosmic egg, he split into a number of parts. His head formed the sun and moon, his blood the rivers and seas, his hair the forests, his sweat the ra…
In Nov. 1987, a three-concert Ed Blackwell Festival was held in Atlanta. The festival served as a good excuse to reunite the members of Old And New Dreams (trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Blackwell), a quartet comprised of Ornette Coleman alumni. The unit interprets three rarely-performed Ornette Coleman compositions and a tune apiece by Blackwell and Redman. All of the musicians are in top form on this no-changes music, creating fresh and …
*The latest Wire Tapper CD, free to all readers with The Wire 465 November 2022 issue.* On the cover... Tyshawn Sorey: The genre straddling polymath unifies improvisation and composition into his own rigorous and powerful sense of expression. Plus: Black Composers: After a century of racist and Eurocentric marginalisation, the AACM and others forged new strategies for creative experimentation. Horse Lords: The Baltimore noise rock quartet gallop through a panoply of tunings and philosophical ide…
On the cover... Lucrecia Dalt: The Colombian experimental musician and now sought after soundtrack composer explores heritage and diaspora through rhythmic rearrangements of South American music on new album ¡Ay!; Inside the issue... Anthony Moore: The former Slapp Happy and Henry Cow player has forged a unique career taking in stadium rock, experimental film, modern composition and his own solo works; Carl Stone: The electronic music and sampling pioneer gets music history dancing to a new tune…