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Violin and Orchestra / Coptic Light
Morton Feldman dedicated a whole series of compositions to the relationship between solo instruments and the orchestra: after Cello and Orchestra (1972), Piano and Orchestra (1975), Oboe and Orchestra (1976) and Flute and Orchestra (1977/78) his Violin and Orchestra (1979) marks the conclusion of these "relationship works." The variety of sound accumulated around the violin, or through the violin, in less than an hour's time ranges from delicate whispers to cantilenas in rich tones and sharp rep…
Solar Flares Burn For You
Vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Robert Wyatt's career extends from the beginnings of the psychedelic era to the present day. This album started its life as simply a collection of the two BBC Top Gear sessions that Robert recorded in 1972 and 1974. But as we worked on it, Robert became more and more involved in it, until it ended up in its final form. In addition to the Top Gear recordings, there is a previously unheard and little known 1973 soundtrack for a short experimental film, …
Mise en Scène
"I wrote Mise en Scène between July 1992 and May 1994. Apart from the four additional clarinets involved besides the soloist (two of them as 'doppelgangers' of the soloist) having to move around in the hall during the five movements of the composition, the choice of title is also justified by a number of scenographic instructions that constituted an, albeit vague, starting point for the whole composition." For his concerto José Ramón Encinar also falls back on his own compositions for clarinet, …
In Stereo
'Written and performed by Christian fennesz, Jim O'Rourke & Peter Rehberg. Recorded and mixed at Studio GOK Sound, Tokyo, October 2009. Mastered at Piethopraxis, Köln, December 2009. 'Thats right, they're back! After a hiatus of almost 9 years the legendary trio of Christian fennesz, Jim O'Rourke and Peter Rehberg have returned with a new studio album. Technically the first studio album as previous releases were edits of live performances. They spent a week in Studio GOK Sound, Tokyo to lay down…
Universe Symphony / Second Symphony
The most ambitious and grandest of his projects would of course never see completion. For over forty years, Ives continued to supplement the material for his Universe Symphony, adding both notes and details. At some point, the scenario he envisaged got somewhat out of hand, Henry Cowell reported. “Several orchestras and large parties of singers, male and female, were to be placed in valleys, on mountain slopes and on summits,” and “6 to 10 different orchestras on several mountain tops, each movi…
Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
Music and the freedom of art: Wolfgang Rihm's aim is not to produce empty sound structures but to hit the bull's eye with direct and unexpected force.
Untitled
A long awaited first release of David Borden's music, performed by his Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company in 1976-1977 is now available. Borden and his group used Moog synthesizer prototypes, becoming the first live Moog band ever, and utilizing the instruments to develop a style associated with Minimalism. These unique performances capture the rare analog synthesizer in newly created works. Borden contributed a lengthy text on the evolution of his style.
Seal Of The Blue Lotus
Seal of the Blue Lotus is the 1965 debut from the extraordinary folk guitarist Robbie Basho, who released numerous albums for John Fahey's Takoma label during the '60s. His mystical approach to six- and 12-string guitar improvisation shares many similarities to John Fahey in that Basho, too, was inspired by Eastern modalities -- his six-string melodies recalling the Indian ragas of Ravi Shankar's "Dhun in Musra Mund." "Mountain Man's Farewell" is an outstanding piece that displays the early seed…
Creak above 33
An interesting development in recent times has been the transAtlantic and trans-generational connections being made in the improvisation community. The Emanem recording by Steve Beresford with Okkyung Lee and Peter Evans, and George Lewis' collaboration with GIO are just two recent examples that come to mind. At the forefront of this trend is the duo of Nate Wooley (trumpet & amplifier) and Paul Lytton (percussion & live electronics) bringing two of the most questioning minds in improvised music…
Mechanica
Shifts is Frans De Waard. Famous for his ground-breaking releases on his own Korm Plastics/Bake/Microwave labels (all available as CDRs) and his work for Staalplaat (which he didn't found, contrary to popular belief) and from a thousand other projects as Goem, Beequeen and Kapotte Muziek. Shifts produces another angle of De Waard's minimal music. The guitar is the source of Shifts. After a string of 7"s, 10"s and 2 CDs, we are proud to say that Mechanica is one of his best. The album is a contin…
missa beati pauperes spiritu
In cooperation with IEM Graz and musikprotokoll 2005 (steirischer herbst, ORF). Excursion into the Middle Ages: Klaus Lang’s latest composition breathes new life into Gregorian chant more than a thousand years old. One hears the traditional sequence of the mass movements, but newly composed material gives it a new interpretation. Klaus Lang does not wish to evoke images in his listeners but rather empty and impoverish their minds.
The Hilversum Session
Originally recorded in 1964. Featured artists: Albert Ayler (tenor saxophone); Sunny Murray (percussion); Gary Peacock (bass); Don Cherry (cornet). The legendary recording, digitally remastered with new artwork, and liners by Russ Musto. Includes free 9.5 x 9.5 pullout poster!
Records (1981-89)
Records 1981-1989 is a fascinating collection of Marclay's work during the 1980s, the results of hours of home recordings -- using up to eight turntables and various other instruments of his own making -- plus many live performances (one track comes from a nationally televised appearance on the David Sanborn/Hal Willner program Night Music). Marclay did much more than just scratching and sampling for these tracks -- "One Thousand Cycles" uses an increasing variety of repeated samples and …
Chamber Music
Against spontaneity and con-sistency: Poppe manages the feat of being both a systematic and a revolutionary composer, one who plays by the rules and beats them at the same time.
s/t
Dessus la mer composed 1995-1997. Equus - Carnet d'esquisses composed 1993, derived from a 4-seconds recording of the steps of a horse. Scènes des voyages d'Ulysse composed 1981, created as incidental music for a production of The Odyssey.
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…
Resonant Spaces
****THE WIRE 2008 TOP 50 RECORDS OF THE YEAR WINNER****"A couple of years ago the promoters Arika invited John Butcher to tour a number of out-of-the-way spaces in Scotland. The venues, selected for their extreme acoustic properties, included a mausoleum, a wartime fuel-storage tank and a cave. This album grows out of Butcher’s evident interest in escaping the acoustic confines of conventional venues (work with resonant spaces is documented on the earlier Geometry of Sentiment and Cavern with Ni…
Whitehouse
There's not much in the way of commentary or anything about that, though, so either call it a wry Kiwi joke at the Yanks' expense or just something that looked nice enough to use. Consisting of six tracks of unsurprisingly varying length - fairly short or totally long - in ways The White House is Dead C as per usual and in others a bit of a diversion from the usual form. Notably, there's evidence of relatively more production - while it's hardly hard-disk billion-track digital sound or the like,…
L\'oiseau / L\'arbre / Le Béton
his first solo album, included in the NWW list. Influenced by musicians as diverse as Django Reinhardt and Cecil Taylor, French guitarist Raymond Boni has developed a unique and dazzling style derived from gypsy technique. After studying the piano and switching to the harmonica, Raymond Boni learned how to play the guitar with Gypsies living near his home. This empirical experience would leave a permanent imprint on Boni's approach to the instrument. In the early '60s, still a teenager, he decid…
The Sapphire Nature
"One of the world's premier noise percussionists and a learned scholar of Kabbalah, Torah and Talmud, Z'ev has been a vital force in the downtown scene since the late 1970s. In addition to his collaborations with Glenn Branca, Rudolph Grey and his fascinating solo work, Z'ev is also a prolific writer and musical thinker. He has written on subjects ranging from music composition, ritual performance and has also translated several esoteric Tibetan and Hebrew texts into English. His latest study is…