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** Silk-screen printed (blue color) recycled sleeve. 200 copies ** Much-needed repress of this spiritual flute jazz artifact by the mastermind Antti Vauhkonen. Originally released as a limited edition lathe-cut 10'' in a handful of copies. Cover art silkscreened on recycled cardboard-sleeves. Artwork by Arsi Keva. Mastered by Samuli Tanner. The first person to create something one may classify as instrumental music was probably alone. The mind tingles when imagining the prehistoric moment when, …

Eighth Tower Records unveils Nihil Impvlse’s The Great Filter, the third release by the industrial project on the label. A dark post-industrial exploration of humanity’s collision course with its own tools, the album reframes the titular cosmic theory as a metaphor for our self-engineered existential sieve where accelerationism’s fervent dogma and apocalyptic fatalism fuse into a nihilistic liturgy. Through seven corrosive movements, Nihil Impvlse conjures the dissonance of a species intoxicated…

Concrete follows from Robert Ashley's preoccupation in two previous operas with the kind of speech that has not been explored in opera -- in Dust (LCD 1006CD), the speech of the homeless; in Celestial Excursions (LCD 1007CD), the speech of people living together in a home for old people. The three operas are not a "trilogy" in any sense, but they all come from this preoccupation with or fascination with special kinds of speech and special kinds of states of mind. "The characters I'm interested i…

Robert Ashley's street-corner opera: five voices, Joan La Barbara, Thomas Buckner and Jacqueline Humbert among them, recall a man who lost his legs in a war and, when the morphine wore off, his conversation with God. "Blue" Gene Tyranny on synthesizer; 2CD with the 160-page libretto in a slipcase.

2005 release. Following the ground-breaking work, Dust (LCD 1006CD), godfather of experimental opera Robert Ashley returns with Celestial Excursions. Ashley's endeavor explores remarkably uncharted territory -- the kind of language that is common among "old" people who talk all the time or not at all, to anyone passing by or to themselves. The opera premiered at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin, before coming to The Kitchen for its U.S. premiere in April 2003. Celestial Excursions delves into the wi…

2007 release. Now Eleanor's Idea was made possible by grants from The Rockefeller Foundation (1984 and 1993), the National Endowment for the Arts' Opera Musical Theater Program (1985) and InterArts Program (1992). Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), for an individual's self-realization within the co…

2025 stock 1998 release. Inner Journey contains works by William Duckworth, Thomas Buckner, Jacques Bekaert, David Wessel, and Somei Satoh - united by their themes of the quest for self-knowledge. Composed of fragments from the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, and Thomas McGrath, William Duckworth's text reveals the multiple perspectives of an unknown couple whose post-modern love story emerges. Thomas Buckner's improvisation, "Inner Journey", is dedicated to the spiri…

1995 release. Two legendary composer/performers, David Rosenboom and Anthony Braxton, join forces on Two Lines to unite composition with improvisation, "new music" with "new jazz". Starting from David Rosenboom's notated score for Two Lines and his musical computer program, these musicians have achieved, to paraphrase Rosenboom, created a composition that is immediately heard. Duets with interactive HMSL software. Includes Rosenboom's Two Lines, plus compositions in collaboration with Braxton: L…

*2022 stock* "Any resemblance between these pointillistic chamber compositions and Schoenberg is purely coincidental. Delicate as to texture, curiously dispassionate as to mood, these mostly notated woodwind, string, and piano chamber works are motivically atonal, but tend to collapse into tonal cadences just to show you they know where they are. Like Ornette Coleman, Mitchell's playing with the tension between center and periphery, but in a milder, more abstract idiom and from the other directi…

** 2021 Stock ** Legendary avant-garde jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is best known for his role as a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This group is recognized for incorporating, and none-too-subtly ridiculing, the long-bearded tradition of Western art music. Mitchell, nonetheless, has something to say that is within the tradition himself, apart from, but related to his work in the field of jazz. Usually the sort of classical music piece produced by a "jazz cat" is formulated wi…

2003 release. A CD of works for solo piano from "Blue" Gene Tyranny. Thirty-five of the 36 songs in this "audio storyboard" are individually built around an atmospheric primary chord, counter-rhythms, and a body of notes which creates a potential melody that unfolds bit by bit. The Driver's Son is scored for a narrator, a chorus of five people creating fifteen voices, an electronically modified orchestra of folk and concert instruments and parts for a lighting designer and a live video ani…

1994 release. A realization of "Blue" Gene Tyranny's How to Discover Music In the Sounds of Your Daily Life, a procedural score for recording and composing with environmental sounds. Eclectic, flowing music alternately gesturing toward impressionism and minimalism. Personnel: "Blue" Gene Tyranny - acoustic and electronic keyboards, field and studio recording, electronic transforms; Timothy Buckley - accordion in "The CBCD Intro"; the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music, featuring Robert Hughes …

Crash was Robert Ashley's last opera. It premiered at the Whitney Biennial weeks after his death in 2014, and presented again in 2015 at Roulette, where this recording was made. Featuring the original cast: Gelsey Bell, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons. Music Director: Tom Hamilton. "What I have appreciated most about previous reconceptions of Ashley's operas was the extent to which newcomers found fresh possibilities. Already in Crash, broadened horizons…

An opera commissioned by Bayerisher Rundfunk Munich's Hörspiel und Medienkunst department about an internationally renowned swindler, who almost took down the European and American banking system. Featuring the voices of Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jackie Humbert, and Joan La Barbara. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hamilton. Robert Ashley on the piece: "Your Money My Life Goodbye is one of forty-nine vocal-ensemble pieces of various lengths (from ten minutes to ninety minutes or more) …

Originally released on Lovely Music in 1985. Robert Ashley makes use of the story of Atalanta - a royal princess, discarded by her family, who was raised by the animals to become the fastest-running human, and who was later reclaimed by her father to marry her off for dynastic purposes - to present the character aspects of the "successful suitor". These three aspects of character are presented in the opera as anecdotes about three extraordinary men of our times: Max Ernst (surrealist paint…

2010 release. Three of the satellite songs from Robert Ashley's opera Atalanta (Acts of God) - each inspired or revolving around one of the main characters of the opera, Max, Willard and Bud. Atalanta (Acts of God) was written in the 1980s, begun while Ashley was still in production for the television opera, Perfect Lives. The many hours of material were performed throughout the world in many different configurations, but this is the first time these songs have been available on CD. Personnel…

Robert Ashley's eL/Aficionado is a group of scenes from the life of an "agent". The scenes are a kind of "debriefing" to a jury of Interrogators, in which the Interrogators (chorus) challenge the Agent (soloist) in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to our fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives. The opera was performed many times between 1987 and 1993, and Lovely Music released a recording of the opera in 1994 (LCD …

1990 CD issue of Robert Ashley's 1978 piece for voice and electronics. A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and ot…

In 2012, the Wergo label celebrates its 50th anniversary. For half a century, Wergo has been synonymous with contemporary music. The label's catalog reads like a virtual who's-who of modern music, both in terms of composers and performers. From the beginning, the intent of founder Werner Goldschmidt (from whom the label derives its name) was to provide listeners with a snapshot of current musical activity and innovation. Goldschmidt's label and mission, now managed by the publisher Schott, is ma…

*2022 stock* This amazing double CD Box presents excerpts from previously unpublished concert and performance recordings of important artists who appeared during the lifespan of Het Apollohuis - between 1980 and 1997, artists presented a panoply of exhibitions, installations, performances, and concerts, and engaged in lively debate on art theory, at Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Under the direction of founders Paul and Hélène Panhuysen, the building became an important center for…

“It was only with Partch that a music began to take shape that could do equal justice to the physical desire for rhythmic pulse and a curiosity for new, unheard sounds; a music that enthralls us despite, or rather, precisely because of its unfamiliarity. A music for which we have no category, and which has no location, and yet in a strange way is grounded.” – Heiner Goebbels The American composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) is considered a pioneer of the Just Intonation movement and was far ahead o…

*300 copies limited edition* "Turner Williams Jr.'s music unfolds like a crossroads, where ancient and modern traditions intersect and attract each other. We hear American Primitive Guitar (Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Sandy Bull), the trance of Indian ragas, melancholy of Celtic ballads, the most experimental side of French folk revival (René Zosso, Rémy Couvez, Pierre-Jean Croset, Valentin Clastrier), while allowing the memory of even more ancient music to filter through (Marin Marais, François C…

Onilu is an all-percussionist trio utilizing the extensive family of drummed and tuned percussion instruments to deliver beautifully composed, arranged and executed small ensemble music. Nothing about this all-percussion band feels rarified, or missing anything musical. To the contrary, Onilu create a soundworld where nothing is missing, and everything is musical -- defying the stereotype of modern percussion ensembles as esoteric or academic pursuits, reaffirming the powerful social and sacred …

Nice to hear the first solo LP in a good while by this most excellent guitarist who also runs the superb Scissor Tail label. Dylan writes, 'I made the title track a couple years ago at the beginning of summer. I was thinking about how as you get older you have fewer new experiences. That feeling of excitement for summer fades, after it used to be such a big deal as a kid. Those experiences can only be new and vibrant once. The rest of your life can be spent in nostalgia for them. It's a sad thou…

2025 stock. Five graphic scores realised at the organ by Zsigmond Szathmáry, the Hungarian organist and composer, as improvisations: music that exists first as drawing and only becomes sound when a performer decides how to read it. The programme brings together Roman Haubenstock-Ramati's 'Ohne Titel', John Cage's Music for Carillon No. 5, Shin-ichi Matsushita's Konzentration, Michael Vetter's Der Kreis and Szathmáry's own Omaggio a György Ligeti, so that the organ moves from clusters and long he…

2025 stock WERGO's unique "studio reihe" series continues with a rather special CD release: The present recording of Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot lunaire" was the first long-playing record released by the newly founded label WERGO in 1962, which laid the foundation of the label's decades-long story of success. This important recording –with the soprano Helga Pilarczyk and under the direction of Pierre Boulez – has not been available on CD up to now. Now the label releases this highlight from its…

A long time in the making but good things always come to astral travelers as transatlantic soul mates Dead Sea Apes and The Band Whose Name Is A Symbol are joined together on black vinyl for the first time. Two artists that for over the last ten years (and longer) have spent their lives creating music that defies easy categorizations -- psych rock/kraut rock/minimal/maximal/avant/free are phrases that only give you fleeting glimpses of what each artist represents. What we do know is that via a s…

Pastoral moods, pastel modes, daydream verve, colors in complement, slightly dissonant, outdoor airs, shadow underleaf, gravity's touch, falling rain, solemn distances, memento mori, the wandering mind...Soft Focus is two volumes of a musical experiment that intended to go one way and went another. A project that sought song form became a process that discovered tonal movements through unexpected environments and atmospheres. I hope you enjoy! -Wednesday

2025 stock  The significance of the seven pieces brought together here is that they both generate a striking panorama of the intelligence of the material presented, over a period of four years, from 1939 to 1943, by the composer whom the critic Fred Goldbeck described as “the greatest Giraudouxian of our age”, and clarify in an extraordinarily oblique manner the prehistory of this “automation” of the creative act, towards which one can detect the perpetual temptation in the young Cage.

Path To The Gallows was recorded in Beeston, UK and Durban, South Africa straight to cassette and engineered by the wizard Rob V. It's Duncan's 9th "proper" album (but could also be his 12th or 6th depending how you count them).

Melle-Aan-Zee is the latest lo-fi recorded collection of improvised pieces by Ghent-based occasional psych folk, kraut infused jam collective De Regering Van Treffelijke Zaken, which seems to continue to give birth to compositions that defy convention and exceed expectations. Just as their sporadic meet-ups seemingly cannot be planned, their enigmatic worlds of sound unfold through pure improvisation, sense of experimentation, a confluence of coincidences and reasoned skits. There's a special ki…

2025 stock "Musica Ricercata" of 1951-53 is a collection of 11 piano pieces which even with their traditional character went beyond what was considered appropriate for performance in Hungary in the early 1950s. The tenth piece, e.g., was considered too "decadent" because of the abundance of minor seconds. The short "Capriccios" and "Invention", written in 1947-48, reveal convincingly the emergence of Ligeti's musical identity. "Monument · Selbstportrait · Bewegung" (three pieces for two pianos) …

*2022 stock* It's over 70 years since John Cage wrote his pivotal Music of Changes, and it's beginning to show its age. It feels very much of its time, with its uncompromising adherence to the 64 hexagrams of I-Ching, the Chinese book of changes, determining the direction of the piece and its use of sudden, percussive attacks on the strings or the body of the instrument. But for all that there is no denying the extreme stamina and concentration required of the performer, and here Herbert Henck e…

*2022 stock* This recording deals with works composed between 1944 and 1958, including several of Cage's lovely and masterful prepared piano pieces, which will come as a major surprise to those familiar only with his chance compositions. Joshua Pierce is the principal pianist (assisted by Dorothy Jonas on the Three Dances, written for two pianos) and attacks the pieces with a nice balance of delicacy and aggression, although compared to the earlier Angel recording of the abovementioned Three Dan…

John Cage's importance for a comprehensive aesthetic reorientation of New Music after the Second World War can hardly be overestimated. His self-discovery and compositional articulation took place particularly in the field of piano music: in the art-merging experimental laboratory of New York around the dancer Merce Cunningham, the painter Robert Rauschenberg and the congenial performer and pianist David Tudor. It is good fortune that Sabine Liebner, who has already released several internationa…

Over the course of five decades, the legendary Austrian free jazz collective Reform Art Unit (and their offshoot groups) have collaborated with countless musicians, including Don Cherry, Carla Bley, Evan Parker, and Jim Pepper. Documented collaborations with free jazz notables include Impressions (Kovarik's Musikothek, 1978) with Anthony Braxton and Clifford Thornton; Subway Performances (Granit, 1994) and Illumination (InRespect, 1995) with Sunny Murray; and With Milo Fine (Granit, 1999). Milo …

*2024 stock* Live recording of the piano recital for the eightieth birthday of composer Hans Otte that Philipp Vandré and Elmar Schrammel presented at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. A selection of John Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes" for prepared piano was interwoven with selections from Hans Otte's piano cycles "Das Buch der Klänge" (The book of sounds) and "Stundenbuch" (Book of hours). This concert experiment, conceived by Ingo Ahmels, paid quiet homage to the "beautiful piano so…

*2022 stock* Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, a cycle of 20 short pieces for prepared piano (a piano modified by inserting nuts and bolts and other objects between the piano strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effects) by American composer John Cage. Created in 1946–48 after the composer had been introduced to Indian visual and performing arts, the cycle was intended to represent the so-called permanent emotions—the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the comic,…

*2022 stock* Morton Subotnick achieved fame in the field of electronic music with Silver Apples of the Moon and The Wild Bull, his best-known tape works of the late 1960s. Since then, he has been active combining electronics with other media, notably employing gestural sketches on tape to alter sounds produced by voices and instrumentalists. The two works on this 2015 Wergo release are representative of Subotnick's methods, using a trumpet with a chamber ensemble in After the Butterfly, to reali…

Two Daughters marks a turning point. After several notable releases, Méryll has clearly taken a step forward with an album that finally captures the hypnotic madness of his live performances. His earth-shattering concerts, during which the artist physically engages with the sound material in an instinctive and radical way, finally have their counterpart in the artist's recording career.    Armed with a production that does justice to his fine and expert mastery of the Hertzian spectrum, this dou…