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Bali 1928, Vol. III: Lotring and the Sources of Gamelan Traditio
Vol. III of the complete 1928 Balinese recordings, the first republication since 1928 of lost shellac recordings, opens with the only known recordings of a lost gamelan. Heard in three tracks, Gamelan Semar Pagulingan, an ensemble known as "Gamelan of Love in the Bedchamber," played instruments that no longer exist, originally performed just outside the private residence of a raja during meals, times of leisure, and when the raja was otherwise engaged in pleasure with one of his wives. The…
Bali 1928, Vol. IV: Music for Temple Festivals and Death Rituals
Vol. IV of the Bali 1928 recordings includes kebyar with sung poetry, gambuh dance-drama, ancient ritual angklung, and solo flute. All lyrics receive English translations in the liner notes, with an extensive text by Edward Herbst included as a PDF (accessed by computer) and hosted online by World Arbiter. Performances by Gamelan Gong Kebyar Belaluan, Denpasar; Gambuh of Sésétan, Denpasar; Gamelan Angklung Kléntangan of Sidan, Gianyar; Gamelan Angklung of Pemogan, Denpasar; Gamelan Angklung o…
Bali 1928, Vol. V: Vocal Music In Dances Drama
Vol. V of the Bali 1928 recordings contains various emergent theatrical dance and dance-opera forms with translations of the dramas' texts. We hear the first recordings of women participating in dance dramas, making this disc a major cultural repatriation of primary Balinese art forms that had been lost for nearly a century. An extensive essay is included as a PDF (accessed by computer) with links to 1930s silent films and a photo library are hosted online by World Arbiter. Some of these …
Bali 1928 - Anthology: The First Recordings
A compilation from all five of World Arbiter's volumes of the complete Balinese recordings from 1928, newly remastered in 2015 and released for the first time since the days of 78-RPM shellac. Performances of gamelan gong kebyar, semar pagulingan, gender wayang, palégongan, gambangam pajogédan, gambuh, angklung, suling, tembang, kidung, kakawin, arja geguntangan, janger, cepung, unaccompanied vocals, and topeng. When composer Colin McPhee heard some 78s in New York, brought over by anthropologis…
Live at Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023
Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined t…
College Tour Vol.1: The Complete Nothing Is...
In 1966 Bernard Stollman sent Sun Ra and his Arkestra, along with audio engineer David B. Jones on a tour of five New York Colleges. When they returned, just 39 minutes of music was chosen to be released as the original ESP 1045 "Nothing Is...". 44 years later, after extensive research, producer and Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson has pieced together the missing parts of the infamous New York College Tour. Recorded on May 18th 1966 at St. Lawrence University in Potsdam, NY, this illuminatin…
The Loweski
This track is the unreleased beginning portion of this 1973 Frank Lowe concert that was released as Black Beings. This incredible performance is filled with the fire and drive Frank Lowe was projecting on his tenor sax in 1973. This extended track titled "The Lowesky" is set in a five part suite form. Each performer is allowed ample time to express his individual contributions to this phenomenal group. The Band: Frank Lowe-tenor sax, Joseph Jarman-soprano, Raymond Lee Cheng (The Wizard)-violin, …
The Byron Allen Trio
Originally released in 1965. The Byron Allen Trio was among the first batch of ESP-Disk' jazz LPs. Recorded on the afternoon of September 25, 1964, at Mirasound Studio in midtown Manhattan, it was Allen's debut. He had been recommended to ESP-Disk' by Ornette Coleman, and one of the tracks, "Decision for the Cole-Man," reflects this connection. Allen and his trio also play in a style somewhat similar to that of Coleman's trio of that era with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett, th…
Live On The Riviera
2025 stock When Albert Ayler's band went through Customs in July 1970 on their way to play at a festival in France, keyboardist Call Cobbs got held back and arrived a day late. Minus the keyboards, the band played anyway. The music-making of the resulting ensemble is freer and more adventurous than on the quintet's following Maeght Foundation concerts. This unique document, Ayler's penultimate recording, thus brings him back to something close to the trio setting in which he first found fame on …
Black Beings
This version of Black Beings contains of 15 minutes of additional material thought to have been lost. When he started out on ESP-Disk', Frank Lowe was one of those hard-blowing tenor saxophonists we think of when we heard the phrase "free jazz." Born in Memphis, he moved to San Francisco and, while visiting New York, began playing with Alice Coltrane (on whose album World Galaxy he made his recording debut in 1971), Sun Ra, Rashied Ali, and Noah Howard, and eventually moved to the Big Apple. On …
Turn On, Turn In, Drop Out
This CD release of Dr. Leary's Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out is the first ever reissue of the ESP-Disk' vinyl edition originally released in 1966. This unadorned spoken word recording of the '60s icon, Timothy Leary ("the most dangerous man alive"), was recorded at the famous Millbrook, New York estate just before his famous residency was ended by repeated raids and arrests by G. Gordon Liddy. Though the album title, Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out, became a clichéd rallying cry for a whole generation, …
The Call
It has occasionally been assumed that Henry Grimes got this recording date as a reward for his long service in the avant-garde of jazz. Having already honed his musical conception with a varied range of players, from Benny Goodman and Arnett Cobb to Lee Morgan, Gerry Mulligan, and Sonny Rollins to McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler(including ESP 1020, Spirits Rejoice), Don Cherry, and Cecil Taylor (to name just a few), the service was certainly there, but he got this gig fully on his merits. …
Explosions
Probably the first recording (1965!) of improvised jazz combined with electronic music, as well as playing inside the piano and other new music techniques. Bob James (piano); Barre Philips (bass); Robert Pozar (percussion). Also including Bob Ashley and Gordon Mumma (electronic tape collage). The recording is made of an assembly of estranging electronic sound effects, trite sports commentaries, and the music of a beautifully improvising jazz trio. Bob James has, through this convulsion of out-of…
Morning Meditation
Transcendental acoustic guitar mysticism from the VDSQ shaman of Western MA. Anthony Pasquarosa is an artist and musician whose need to create is like a never ending search. He shouts at the audience in HC/Punk bands, pays tribute to early eighties electro punk and late sixties psych, plays old time music and is an excellent player of all stringed instruments.
Ossification
2025 Stock. 180g vinyl with insert. Ossification is like an amazing party held at This Heat's Cold Storage studio, with friends like Felix Fiedorowicz, Tom Cora, Tim Hodgkinson, Bill Gilonis, Zeena Parkins, and Catherine Jauniaux creating one of the most unusual, pleasurable and character-filled "pop" records you'll ever hear. Recorded at Cold Storage in Brixton between 1983-84, this debut album from Mick Hobbs' project stands as a timeless anomaly: fourteen songs that contain the spirit of pop,…
Formally Haywire
*100 copies limited edition. Totally sold out at source. Housed in high quality card stock with art silk screened by Alan Sherry at SIWA Printing.* The latest mysterious musical missive from these soundohm faves, NYC's psychedelic improv free rock explorationists No Neck Blues Band, a reference whenever we need to describe some sort of tribal freeform psychedelia or jazzy abstract drift, or dirgey home-brewed free form minimalism, or pretty much any stop in between, these guys are the modern mas…
Exorcist II: The Heretic
2025 stock In one of his first forays into big budget Hollywood, Ennio Morricone handed in one of his weirdest, eeriest scores.
From the beautiful to the absolutely demented, while still playing in the same sandbox. Once you get to the deranged Satanic prog rock of “Magic And Ecstasy,” it hits you: this is the craziest we’ve ever heard Morricone. And it’s amazing.
“I like the first Exorcist, because of the Catholic guilt I have, and because it scared the hell out of me; but The Heretic surpasses…
Surface of the Earth
Since its release in 1996, Surface of the Earth's self-titled first album has gradually been recognized as an unlikely minimalist masterpiece and one of the key albums to emerge from New Zealand’s 1990’s Free Noise movement. Liberated from tonal and structural convention, yet also embracing elements of drone and ambient music, the Wellington trio created an album that defied easy categorization. It has been called "one of the most important albums to ever drag the subterranean vibe of unending d…
Sounds of North American Frogs
Super tip! 2024 small repress available. It is probable that the first voice in existence was that of a frog," remarks renowned herpetologist Charles M. Bogert in the liner notes for Sounds of North American Frogs. These critters have been singing, croaking, barking, and chirping for millions of years, and Bogert captures 57 species in his 1958 compendium of frog calls. Sounds of North American Frogs has become one of the most coveted Folkways LPs, and we're proud to present a remastered version…
Masque Femine
Masque Femine should be regarded as a total work - much like a film, a ballet, a building, or, an altarpiece - rather than as an album of individual songs. And, its fundamental subject should not be understood to be romantic love. Christina Carter was born in the bayou city of Houston, Texas in November of 1968, and co-founded the group Charalambides there in December of 1991. Ever since then, she has deeply mined her own vein of sound-as-music with voice, guitar (both electric and acousti…