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The Weather Pieces
The set of The Weather Pieces are reflections on the perception of meteorological phenomena. The listener is immersed in a hybrid sound world, as the line between the live performer and the computer generated propositions becomes blurred. The musician follows a score that leaves room for interaction with the computer’s ever-changing proposals. The works also use the performer’s voice, using spoken texts to convey inner thoughts and feelings. Les si doux redoux for basset horn grew out of an…
6 Pieces for Gamelan Slendro
For this recording project, the fearless French musical collective ensemble 0 (pronounced “zero”) began a new kind of collaboration with the Swiss percussion ensemble Eklekto and Gamelan Oksitan — this last the traditional Javanese ensemble of gongs and metallo- phones based in France. Their transcultural bridge has foundations that go back to Claude Debussy’s fascination with the radiant tones of gamelan music that he heard at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Yet neither Debussy nor many other sympat…
Stries
Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), the grand old man of French electroacoustic music, did not write much music for tape with live performers. Among them is “Stries” for the unusual combi- nation of three live synthesizer players and tape. Until recently, “Stries” had not been played live for some 30 years. This is the first complete recording, only part of it had been previously released on LP on the INA/GRM label. “Stries” was written for the three synthesizer players of the Paris- based electro…
Negoum
The music on this album was recorded in the studio the day after Frances-Marie Uitti and Ayman Fanous spent ten minutes improvising together in concert, in a first meeting. It represents bidirectional ideas in music often and erroneously thought to be opposites: western vs. eastern, improvised vs. through-composed. In this recording they are stood on their head, examined, dissected, tortured, and ultimately reconciled. Fanous says: “Musically, Frances and I came from two distinct sets of emphase…
Dispersion
"Working with forces unknown to me has always been an exciting challenge,” says Elliott Sharp, “especially when those forces are in the form of younger musicians, highly skilled and enthusiastic.” For his work with the musicians of the Veni Academy, he chose three previously composed works that would be easily adaptable to a large ensemble whose instrumentation was not the result of prior design plus one newly composed for the occasion. The chosen pieces were based on well-defined processes that…
Kurzwellen
"The performers in Kurzwellen react to the completely unforeseeable events which they receive on short-wave radios while performing on their instruments. But this is not improvisation. Stockhausen’s score instructs them how to transform what they hear: how they imitate and modulate it, make it longer or shorter, how to rhythmically articulate it, higher or lower, louder or softer, darker or more playful. Whether they should play and as solo, duo, trio or quartet, etc.Though not so familiar now, …
The Early Immersive Music of Joan La Barbara
**Milestone recordings. Joan La Barbara's controlled experiments into the limits of the human voice took her beyond music** Joan La Barbara is one of great figures in the history of the American musical avant-garde – holding equal standing as an innovator, composer, and performer. She has defined the field of extended vocal technique for the better part of half a century, pushing our understanding of the sonic possibility of the human voice – drawing on its primal root, and thrusting it into the…
Piano Sonatas & String Quartets 1
The first volume in a projected series combining Radulescu’s complete Piano Sonatas and String Quartets — there are six of each — on Mode performed by the superb JACK Quartet and Stephen Clarke (piano). In the 1970s, Horatiu Radulescu (1942 - 2008) began exploring and composing begun composing what he called “plasmatic music,” in which sound was conceived as an “endless ocean of vibrations,” as opposed to the traditional way in which music treats sound as a fabric of discrete scale steps. His mu…
The Marvelous Aphorisms of Gavin Bryars: The Eearly Years
Gavin Bryars' music, post 'The Sinking of the Titanic' and 'Jesus' Blood...', is well known and often performed today. Less known are the earlier works featured on this cd, created during the years 1969-71. At that time, Bryars became associated with Michael Nyman, John Tilbury and Brian Eno - marrying ideas from Cage, Fluxus, free improvisation and experimentalism. Some of the works recorded here appeared on Eno's avant-garde Obscure label in the mid-1970s. In 1, 2, 1-2-3-4, the musicians liste…
Makrokosmos
** 2022 remastered repress ** Pianist Margaret Leng-Tan - considered the leading exponent of “extended” piano techniques - is at her best with this music. George Crumb and Ms. Tan worked closely on the preparation of these works for the recording. Crumb’s Makrokosmos I & II were written to expand the world of color and sonic possibilities which a single piano and pianist could create. In addition to playing the keyboard, the pianist is required to strum and pluck the strings; apply glass tumbler…
Volume 1: Electronic Works
*2022 stock* Although this might be labelled 'Volume 1', this large collection of Morton Subotnick's work (featuring three of his pieces - 'Touch', 'A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur' and 'Gestures') actually showcases some of his most recent compositions. The pioneering electronic composer shot into the public eye with his very well known album 'Silver Apples of the Moon', but his work didn't end there and here we get 'Touch' which was composed just after 'The Wild Bull' in 1969 set next to 'A Sky of …
Electroacoustic Chamber Works
Composed between 1993-97, this second volume of works by Gerard Pape on Mode continues his richly darkly dramatic style with new compositional turns. Born in Brooklyn, now living in Paris, Pape is the director of the Atelier UPIC – an electronic music studio utilizing the unique UPIC computer developed by Iannis Xenakis – since 1991. While a resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan he ran Sinewave Studios, a state of the art New Music and Electronic Music studio and organized of the annual TWICE Festival…
Black Mantra
*200 copies limited edition* "Kali, "The Black-One", is the Hindu goddess of death, time, supreme power, destruction and change. She is dark and heartless, the anti-mother with a bloodied face. She is "The One Who Dances", leading the world towards dissolution, end and rebirth. The origins of the Thug clan, stranglers known for their ritual murders, are linked to this karmic cycle. Since the last century, her mysterious charm has inspired literature and cinema, making her a popular figure also i…
L'immagine di me, lontano
*200 copies limited release* Timeless sounds merge into a singular experience, giving birth to "L'Immagine di Me, Lontano," where timeless samples, devoid of memory, reimagined through the constant employment of granular synthesis, blend with echoes of distorted strings and distant pianos. Sounds excerpted from the sonic fabric of the world metamorphose into fragments of emotions, suspended between reality and imagination. The recordings, rich with unknown atmospheres, unveil their deepest essen…
L'impatience des invisibles
Quentin Rollet, alto saxophone, sopranino saxophone, synthesizer, electronics. Romain Perrot, keyboards, electronics, voice. Here we leave – just a little – the world of the voluntarily failed, the waste and the sound vomit, for something cosmic-ambient low-cost, combining electronics and saxophone with a strange look on the tradition that must be destroyed!
Black Bamboo II
*200 copies limited edition* A series of electroacoustic/acousmatic perfomances by TeZ (known for his collaboration with Clock DVA and the works on 13/Silentes with Fabio Orsi), based on live processing of acoustic sounds and field recordings. The improvisation with hybrid DIY and traditional folk/ethnic instruments, environmental recordings and archive audio clips is expanded through a series of generative filters, delays, pitch shifters and harmonisers, orchestrated in ever changing feedback l…
Poised at the Edge of Structure
Ana Fosca has emerged as presence to be reckoned with. Here stands a woman raging, wrestling, communing, and plainly preoccupied with the humanity's propensity for tragedy, violence, and blight. And it is with a particular strain of noise - one that is dour, miserable, frightening - through which she harnesses these conditions. While her catalogue of recordings is brief, Ana Fosca (born Linn Hvid) honed her craft by performing on a constant basis throughout Denmark, Sweden and Germany, especiall…
Wat Dong Moon Lek
Carl Stone continues his late career prolific renaissance with a new album of sculpted, tuneful MAX/MSP fantasias. Stone “plays” his source material the way Terry Riley’s In C “plays” an ensemble – with a loose, freewheeling charm connected to the ancient human impulse to make sound, melody, and rhythm from anything. Stone’s unique technique simultaneously focuses and sprays sound like a symphony of uncapped fire hydrants. Is this techno, avant-garde, sound art? It’s simply (or rather fantastica…
Mi specchio e rifletto
Tip - this is stunning! **CD version** Since their launch in mid-2000s, the New York based imprint, Unseen Worlds, has continued to set an incredibly high bar through the earth-shaking quality of their releases. As dedicated to historical artists and works as they are to those emerging in the present, they’ve always taken their time, slipping things into the world with remarkable care, that leave humble tectonic shifts in their wake. After an absolutely incredible couple of years with brilliant …
Pulse Music
*CD gatefold wallet with tip in booklet* Presented together for the first time, American composer John McGuire’s Pulse Music series (1975-1979) blurs the popular narrative that Minimalism was a reaction against Europe’s angular, intellectual, inscrutable high-modernism. McGuire, born in California, studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley before going to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. His compositions lock seria…