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3R4
In 1980, after three relentlessly creative albums, the members of Wire were at an impasse, unsure of how to push themselves any further as a four-piece rock band. While frontman Colin Newman spent the band's hiatus mining Wire’s knack for intelligent and contorted pop songs, guitarist Bruce Gilbert and bassist/vocalist Graham Lewis joined forces for a series of experimental projects (Dome, Cupol, etc.) where the primary motivating concept was "studio as instrument."3R4, the duo's only LP under t…
Visitations
MASTERPIECE!!!"Since the mid-1960s, Jon Gibson has played a key role in the development of American avant-garde music. No other artist has performed in the world premieres of Terry Riley's 'In C,' Steve Reich's 'Drumming,' and Philip Glass's 'Einstein on the Beach,' three major works that changed the course of musical history. While his expertise on woodwind instruments made Gibson a go-to collaborator in Reich's, Glass's, and La Monte Young's ensembles, less known are his remarkable contributio…
Propellers In Love
Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…
History Is What's Happening
Emerging out of Amsterdam's vibrant squat scene in 1979, The Ex -- a name chosen for the ease and speed with which it could be spray-painted onto a wall -- have for four decades been an entirely self-sustaining musical entity, charting a course through the global underground with a spirit of freedom and radical exploration. Originally released in 1982, History Is What's Happening features one of the most harrowing title/cover art combinations in recent memory. What at first glance looks like a f…
Successive Reflexes
Liquid Liquid emerged from New York City's vibrant Downtown scene in 1981. Formed by drummer Scott Hartley, bassist Richard McGuire, vocalist Sal Principato and marimba player Dennis Young, the group cut their teeth in underground clubs and street art circles before solidifying their trailblazing style—a fusion of irresistible basslines, junkyard percussion and urgent, free-flowing lyrics. Their three EPs, all originally released on legendary 99 Records, would heavily influence dance-orie…
J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz from Japan 1969-1984
In the years following World War Two, Japan developed one of the most insatiable, dynamic and diverse markets for jazz. For a crucial period of little over a decade – from the late 1960s to the early 1980s – Japanese jazz culture progressed at an astonishing rate, producing an extraordinary array of artists, recordings and record labels that created some of the most forward thinking and impressive jazz to be committed to tape. This amazing journey is explored on J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz from Jap…
Room for the Moon
Kate NV is the project of Russia-born recording artist, songwriter, and producer Kate Shilonosova. Best known in her hometown of Moscow as the lead singer and founder of the post-punk garage band Glintshake, Kate NV is also a performer in the experimental Moscow Scratch Orchestra and releases music under an alternate alias, NV. "Room for the Moon" is Kate NV's third album and second for RVNG Intl. "Room for the Moon" was inspired by memories of 70s/80s Russian and Japanese pop music and movies.
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Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2: The Canon
Craig Leon revisits the extraterrestrial origins of civilization in Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music Vol. 2: The Canon, a continuing chronicle of his early 80s albums Nommos and Visiting. Exploring the cosmic lore of Leon’s earlier work, The Canon expands upon the conceptual cycle based on the alien and mathematical relationships that backbone the creation of art, architecture, science, and music. In 1981, producer and composer Craig Leon, known in the downtown New York zeitgeist for his p…
Skins n Slime
Oliver Coates’ skins n slime is a caliginous anatomy concealed by a drone-metal membrane, feeding upon mechanized strand distortions and thriving amidst its harmonic waste.
In his follow-up album to 2018’s Shelley’s on Zenn-La, the British cellist and producer leads an impassioned performance of string through viscous, synthetic modulation, triggering a darker side of his compositional sensibilities. Shelley’s experimental dance hybrids are substituted here for scorching color palettes and bruta…
We Are Not The First
For those who maintain the more mutable dance music is, the deeper its impact on human evolution, RVNG Intl. presents We Are Not The First, an Epic conducted and deconstructed by Chicago artist Hieroglyphic Being and the J.I.T.U. Ahn-Sahm-Bul. We Are Not The First combines the musical forces of Marshall Allen, Daniel Carter, Greg Fox, Shelley Hirsch, Shahzad Ismaily, Elliott Levin, Jamal Moss, Rafael Sanchez, and Ben Vida in deep dialogue with each other and humans’ hidden sonic history. Tracked…
FRKWYS Vol. 11: Cantos De Lisboa
Sharing their vision over lengthy living room guitar sessions and evenings of cold wine in Fado taverns, Gunn and Mike Cooper created Cantos de Lisboa, an album with variable vernacular shades and musical forms from Portugal’s antiquity. Cantos means “corner” in Portuguese, as well as “chant” or “song” (this latter meaning evolved from the Latin antecedent referring to stanzas of verse in poetry). For two artists whose roots lie in the country blues and its subverted offshoots, the proverbial “c…
Blau
P version on 180 gram vinyl. On the Red Album Rot, Conrad Schnitzler laid down the direction his musical artistry would take. His second solo , The Blue Album Blau, originally released in 1974, offered confirmation of his intent. Maybe the "Red" and "Blue" tracks were recorded in the same session. The structure, sound and timbre of both LPs are so similar as to suggest that this was the case (an unverified assumption nevertheless!). Far more important than this historical pedantry is the fa…
Kangaroo Kitchen
n 2018 Mikroton Mikroten Festival offered a special occasion to record five important musicians from the Swiss experimental music scene.
Joke Lanz was born in Basel in 1965 and now lives in Berlin. He is a pioneer of the electronic independent scene and a crossover artist whose work spans improvised and experimental music, noise and turntablism, performance art and musique concrète. In addition to theatre and film music, radio works, installations and objects, there are two constants in his work…
Sink
It took 15 years since its foundation to release their first album. Sink was formed in Berlin in 2004. Though their music is improvised, Sink play, perform, sound and feel as a band with a distinct band sound. Their sound ranges from typically Berlin Echtzeitmusik related mixed electroacoustic and acoustic soundscapes which can, but need not, result in a minimalistic groove. Sink already appeared on “Echtzeitmusik Berlin” compilation we produced in 2012.
Andrea Ermke is a sound artist from the s…
Wabi Experience
The story of the making of the album was complicated, almost mythological. Instead of retelling the original story we give a word to Federsel, the initiator of the project:
It all began in 2002, or it might have been also in 2001, I don’t remember anymore. For whatever reason, I had an idea to remix songs of Czech country hero Wabi Daněk, who’s music I remembered from my childhood, from singing around the fireplace. I thought this will be some sort of funny game for me, with which I will spend f…
Something Wrong There
The science fiction yearning for utopia sometimes falls into dystopian space. Kurt Liedwart with Ken Ganfield and Petr Vrba tried to follow the impulse of getting to the ideal world but their most powerful and fearful predictions and prophesies came to the fore and “Something Wrong There” happened all the time. Liedwart recently became dissatisfied with the improvisation’s disability to create sonically fresh sound worlds and completely remixed the studio recordings. Did it prevent him from maki…
Punkt
Petr Vrba explores non-idiomatic improvisation using trumpets, clarinets, vibrating speakers and other electronics which made him one of the most active experimental musicians in Prague. He works with a lot of projects like Prague Improvisation Orchestra, Poisonous Frequencies, NOIZ, Doppeltrio, Rouilleux and Junk & The Beast. “Punkt” is his second release on Mikroton following “Trailer” with Veronika Mayer released in 2017.
Kurt Liedwart, a Moscow-based musician and curator of Mikroton Recordin…
Third Issue
On their new album Third Issue Trio Sowari continues its musical investigation of asymmetric structures and multilayered ambiguities. Gravitation, Suspension, Exploration and finally Levitation, the four tracks on this CD present different fields of interactive possibilities. No signs of dystopianism or retrotopianism here, but undaunted and spirited ways of facing a complex and bewildering present. Bertrand Denzler on tenor saxophone, Burkhard Beins on percussion with Phil Durrant now also invo…
Neue Bilder
Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler have been known for building their sonic worlds for 17 years since their first album Bart. After 6 years of studio silence, here comes Neue Bilder. Their 5th allbum is a constant flux of musical juxtapositions, collisions and balance of their tour de force with analogue synth and computer. The album features two tracks created from two concentrated performances in Münster and Wels, both being magnificently reworked stereo versions of their quadrophonic live conc…
Aq'Ab'Al
The second appearance of Alfredo Costa Monteiro after critically acclaimed Contour with Keith Rowe, Kurt Liedwart and Ilia Belorukov, and the first physical release of Miguel A. Garcia after Uropygi with Kurt Liedwart, Ilia Belorukov and Dmitry Krotevich on Mikroton Digital.
The album is titled after “Aq’ab’al”, the Mayan Astrology Sign about polar opposites — dawn and dusk, hot and cold, black and white which represents renewal, change, the end of boredom or new beginnings. The album takes off …