Back in stock
Sun Awakens
Ben Chasny has busied himself releasing a solid run of outsider folk records for some time now; ‘The Sun Awakens’ is his eighth full-length outing and thankfully it shows no signs of Chasny letting his quality control wane. As he explored on his last Drag City release ‘School of the Flower’, Chasny has again employed a handful of collaborators to fill-out his unique sound with percussion and odd instruments – yet this doesn’t distil the fact that the record is totally his own. "The Sun Awakens" …
Confusion / Gentleman
Collecting two of Fela Kuti's finest mid-1970s albums onto one disc, CONFUSION/GENTLEMAN presents the revered Nigerian Afro-pop renegade in the midst of an early career stride. Released in '73, GENTLEMAN consists of the latter three out of this set's four tracks, and is particularly notable since it marks the fiery performer's studio debut on the saxophone. Never one to shy away from challenges, Kuti offers up an impassioned sax solo at the beginning of the extended title song (even though he ha…
Kraanerg
"I originated in 1954 a music constructed from the principle of indeterminism; two years later I named it "stochastic music." The laws of the calculus of probabilities entered composition through musical necessity… But other paths also let to the same stochastic crossroad -- first of all, natural events such as the collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen…
Nachtgesänge / Konzert für Violoncello und Orchester / Intrada /
Young Müller (b. 1964, Switzerland) writes in a consistently romantic style — unexpected col legno fare! Perhaps Sterling should have released this. The warm Hesse settings, Nachtgesänge, could be mistaken for Szymanowski or Zemlinsky; indeed, Ernman sounds as though she’d be ideal in a Strauss opera. Darkly emotional, the single-movement cello concerto taps Shostakovich and Lutoslawski’s pathos; the idée fixe’s colorful unfolding reminds the listener of Dutilleux. Müller maintains his anachroni…
Sufiq
Those keeping a running count will know that Sufiq brings the Muslimgauze CD catalog into the triple digits. This mini-album is especially significant, as it extends the extraordinary productivity of Muslimgauze auteur Bryn Jones beyond his untimely passing. New Muslimgauze titles have emerged since, but each was scheduled prior to Jones’ death in January of 1999. Active to the end, Jones left behind a store of finished masters. Sufiq sees the first release of material from this impressiv…
Three Voices
This piece is sung by the Swiss “deep voice”, Marianne Schuppe in trio with herself, a feat made possible by playing back recordings of her own voice. This is not minimal music; melodic lines arise, sensual, beautiful, and undoctored, swaying like a lullaby, yet boosting the overall rhythmic intensity. There cannot be many works which demand of the soloist such careful timing, intense concentration and voice control.
Suitable For Framing
Reissue of this obscure Canadian album from 1975, originally issued on the A.R.C. Record label, with extended mixes and bonus material from the same period. Performed by David Rosenboom and J. B. Floyd (pianos, one in each channel) & Trichy Sankaran on South Indian percussion (mrdangam and kanjira). On April 19th, 1975, at Northern Illinois University, three musicians met in a milestone event from which emerged a unique, improvising trio with two pianos and South Indian percussion. Fortunately, …
Piano Music
Music as a message without words from far away – from our inner selves. Piano music as metaphor for the thrilling adventures of human existence.
Gnomic Variations / Processional / Ancient Voices of Children
On reading the title Gnomic Variations, lovers of piano music might fancy themselves to be in a kind of "Grieg's World," but the truth is far from it: the title of the piano solo, completed in 1981, does not refer to any thieving Irish gnomes but solely to the conciseness of the structure of the work. "Gnomic" here means expressing an idea in brief words, or, simply, describing a maxim as accurately as possible. The Gnomic Variations consist of three parts, comprising a total of 18 variations. A…
Happy days
Back in stock. Released: 1997.Jim O'Rourke is a rarity: a genuine bridge between the avant-garde and the underground. From his production work (Smog, Wilco, Faust) to his own freewheeling excursions as a solo performer and member of outfits like Gastr del Sol and Sonic Youth, his work continues to bring the out there in here. Happy Days pits a lone guitar against a phalanx of hurdy-gurdies, a decided shift away from the composer's electronic-based work. A roiling hornet's next of activity that F…
Olson III
A piece of unrelenting intensity, Olson III may be one of the most powerful compositions from minimalist composer Terry Riley. Based on the same phasing principals of In C, Olson III is filled with short motives that each ensemble member must play and repeat before moving onto the next. A chorus singing "To begin" joins into the droning fray of string instruments, sawing away à la In C. For 53 minutes here, Riley (on soprano saxophone) and a teenage student orchestra at the Nacka School of Music…
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…
Orchestral Works
The second CD of col legno's Wien Modern Edition is dedicated to Luciano Berio, who throughout his life kept on searching for new sounds, and new instrumental and orchestral organizing principles in his work. His Sequences for solo instruments are among the most important landmarks in recent music; later on, Berio decided to "comment" on some of these notoriously complex solo works from an orchestral perspective. Chemins and Chemins IIb are adaptations of the Sequences for harp and viola. "The b…
Orchestral Works
From this combination of ancient styles and arts of the past with contemporary music arises a series of particularly impressive works. In his Ausstrahlung, for instance, Maderna uses texts from an ancient Persian anthology and poems by various Persian authors in English, Italian, French and German translations, which are recited, sung and played from tape. Some ten years before, Maderna wrote the Konzert für Oboe und Kammerensemble out of fondness for the oboe. Another two concerts would follow …
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…
Milano New Wave 1980-83
a representative and intense snapshot of the Milanese sinthy wave scene of the early eighties, 20 tracks that recount the salient steps of the brief but intense career of four Milanese bands — from the post-punk of Other Side, to the oblique funk of State Of Art, to the evident Kraftwerk infl uences of La Maison, to the electro of Jeunesse d’Ivoire — four bands that illustrate the mood of an underground scene tha…
Vertical Time Study I / Sen V / In die Tiefe der Zeit / Melodia
In his series Vertical Time Study, Hosokawa seeks to „integrate Noh’s vertical structure of time into my own music. It is about how temporal elements, like wedges, disrupt the vertical, horizontal timeline at irregular intervals. These disruptions produce elements of tension … creating visible fissures in the structure of time and visible cracks in space. My aim is to examine the complexity and the depth of these sounds hidden in the moment.” In his piece Sen V, Hosokawa tries to combine the “ea…
Songbook
If you'd like to hear what might remain, and might survive, of the popular common musical property, these two works by the Salzburg composer Clemens Gadenstätter will give you some essential clues. "Akkor(d/t)anz" is based on the character of Romantic piano music manifested by monumental chords. The explosion of the chord is followed by pulsations derived from differentiated perceptions of its details. The "dance" of chords in accordance with new formations of the original chord demands an energ…
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.
The Rara Requiem
Added to these are bits and pieces of first names of real people and opera characters, and numerous quotes from older works by Sylvano Bussotti – who combines it all to a work that is also a grand opera: The Rara Requiem was written as the third part (acts 4 and 5) of Lorenzaccio (1968-72), the story of a renaissance man. A pandemonium of sounds, the subtotal of Bussotti's previous oeuvre – and the celebration of a proud renaissance man who confronts death with the courage of contempt. "The musi…