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Congotronics
This group was founded over 25 yrs ago by Mingiedi, a virtuoso of the likembé ('thumb piano'). The band's line-up includes 3 electric likembés, equipped w/ hand-made microphones built from magnets salvaged from old car parts, & plugged into amplifiers. There's also a rhythm section which uses traditional as well as makeshift percussion, 3 singers, 3 dancers & a peculiar sound system including megaphones dating from the colonial period. Their repertoire draws largely on Bazombo trance music, to w…
Allegro Sostenuto / Pression / Dal Niente / Intérieur I
Both Sostenuto and Dal niente were composed for the clarinetist Eduard Brunner. “As in the earlier Ausklang for piano and orchestra, the musical material is determined by the interplay of the experiences of resonance on the one hand and motion on the other. Both aspects of sound encounter one another in the conception of structure as a multiply ambivalent ‘arpeggio’, i.e. as a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction – experienced in temporal succession – which is conveyed both…
The Disintegration Loops IV
And then, the man remained alone with more doubts than ever before. Music had flown through the years, the tapes definitively gone. IV draws the final line in this groundbreaking 'disintegration' cycle and it does it with a high grade of acute intensity and a totally developed loop aesthetic...moreover, the final track is sort of a reprise of the first segment in I, like putting an end to a whole giant texture. Basinski's repetitions are truly addictive; I could listen for days, each repe…
There are no crows flying around the hancock building
In August 2003, Lampo invited Swedish artist CM von Hausswolff to do a project specific to Chicago. Intrepid traveler that he is, Hausswolff ascended to the top of the 100-story John Hancock Building and collected sounds from the open-air observation deck. While taking in the sights, he recorded building vibrations, passing breezes and overheard speech from tourists. Later, in his Stockholm studio, he added a series of feedback rotations to suggest crows (guardians or enemies?) encircling the co…
3 Liederzyklen
In the three song cycles of this recording, Wolfgang Rihm stays faithful to the text and its meaning while paying close attention to melodic line. In choosing to do so, Rihm has a deep lineage in the great tradition of Romantic art song that stretches back to the distinguished names of Schönberg, Berg, Brahms and Schumann. Approaching the text both from the perspective of the singer and from that of the accompanying pianist, Rihm is able to reach tremendous heights of expression. While the eleve…
Carliol
'John Butcher: tenor or soprano saxophones - plus feedback, motors, embedded harp speaker. Rhodri Davies: pedal harp, lever harp with embedded speaker and electric harp, aeolian electric harp. John Butcher is one of the leading sax players on the free improvisation scene. Rhodri Davies transcends conventional ideas about the harp--an instrument rarely associated with improvised music--in his wide-ranging projects. The two British musicians have worked together in a variety of contexts sin…
a portrait
Karl-Heinz Stockhausen is only one out of several composers with whom the conductor Fabián Panisello has worked. Panisello, among others, has conducted the premiere of Stockhausen’s Hoch-Zeiten. Having studied with composers as diverse as Elliot Carter, Brian Ferneyhough and Luis de Pablo, Panisello was able to draw inspiration from them for his own compositional work, while never allowing them to leave visible footprints. His style developed entirely independently. The present recording brings …
Tau
Main is back in grand form... After finalising his Firmanent CD's it's been a bit quiet around Robert Hampson. Although very busy with other projects as Comae (with Janek Schaefer), Chasm (Fatcat), his main output has been a bit low. Tau shows the first full album in years from a talent whom showed us the way to turn guitars into ambient. His unique way of concrete sounds and manipulating these into something of his own has always been his identity. Tau is no more or less a classic mover for qui…
Ktl
KTL is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.). This is a six-part collision amongst the increasingly fading presences between the light and the dark, with some pieces recorded in a resistance fortress in southern France during a thunderstorm -- while others were recorded in a winter garden drenched in sunlight. The collaboration came about as the two were working on a theatre production by Gisèle Vienne and Dennis Cooper, entitled Kinder…
Phoenix
Superb introduction to a largely unknown avant-garde composer/instrument builder; one of the most important ReR releases in a while. The music of little known East European composer Ernö Kiraly has finally been preserved -- a collection of original works that will impress and amaze all students of contemporary classical/electroacoustic composition, along with those who have only recently discovered the sound worlds of Pierre Henry and Harry Partch. Kiraly's experimental music stems from two sour…
Pre-zoic cellways
Jaap Blonk: voice, powerbook, effects. Cor Fuhler: EMS synthi-AKS, turntable. Nice meeting in the electronic series of Kontrans.
And: The feast is in full progress
The second cello concerto, entitled: Y: la fiesta está en pleno apogeo – And: The feast is in full progress (1993), is based on a poem by the Chuvash poet Gennadi Aigi. The vision of a raging mass of people awaiting the last Judgment is transformed into music by the composer with gripping, immediate, expressive force, free of graphic patterns. A moment of glory not for Gubaidulina only, but for David Geringas on cello, too. And as a bonus on this CD: Diez Preludios –Ten Preludes for Cello, in Vl…
Telescope Mind
Tussle's early output on Troubleman Unlimited proved to be quite a hit with tastemakers like John Peel and Trevor Jackson. Now, a few years down the line the group have lost one of their founding members (oddly, Vetiver's Andy Cabic used to play bass for the band) but have honed their modernised take on disco and rhythm music, with Telescope Mind achieving an immensely successful blend of experimental techniques and pop minimalism. After the brief, introductory piece, 'Lyre', 'Warning' comes acr…
s/t
Born in 1934. Boeswillwald took an eclectic engineer training (electronics, sound recording) of fine arts (decorative arts) and theatre, and at the Sorbonne antique theatre. In 1953, he discovered the Sorbonne maison des lettres studio founded by Roland Barthes and from that point commits himself into sound creation. He frequented regularly the radio Club d'essais where he met P. Schaeffer. 'Le piano joue, la caravane passe' (2000). 'Au fond, la mer est belle' (1999). 'Pathos ad Libitum' (…
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…
Gnomic Variations / Processional / Ancient Voices of Children
On reading the title Gnomic Variations, lovers of piano music might fancy themselves to be in a kind of "Grieg's World," but the truth is far from it: the title of the piano solo, completed in 1981, does not refer to any thieving Irish gnomes but solely to the conciseness of the structure of the work. "Gnomic" here means expressing an idea in brief words, or, simply, describing a maxim as accurately as possible. The Gnomic Variations consist of three parts, comprising a total of 18 variations. A…
Hearing Metal 1
Performer: Greg Stuart (tam-tam). 'The 60-inch (Mikrophonie) tam-tam is a large piece of metal, a proto-sculpture. Brancusi might have altered it: rounding and tapering the edges, making an oval instead of a circle, polishing the surface into smooth gold. The tam-tam is also a vast sound landscape-an instrument that makes noise at the slightest provocation. A resonance is created just in the act of walking past the instrument or breathing on it ... that is, if your ear (or a microphone) is close…
Jaal Ab Dullah
Muslimgauze are getting more bizarre with each release. This one is an intricately complicated ode to hip-hop music, but of course it's all done in that strange way that makes this band so unique. You can almost dance to this one
Chamber Music
It is with great shrewdness that Uroš Rojko has almost maxed out the unusual juxtapositions of an accordion with a viola and a piano, respectively. His fondness for the accordion may have its roots in his folk music past. On the present recording, however, these roots are not in evidence. Even the Tangos speak a language of their own, which Rojko creates by juggling characteristic fragments of tango, thereby reducing them to their essence. Even the first bars of his pieces exhibit the correspond…
Endokraniosis
This is probably one of the most clinical releases of Maurizio Bianchi's current discography. Together with Siegmar Fricke from Germany four very complex soundscapes have been produced that on the one hand show similarities and relations in sound to Maurizio’s early releases and on the other hand enter new territorities of clinical sound-excursions. The four long tracks contain metallurgic ambiences, painful postoperative distortions, quiet endoscopic sections and pulsating, radiant elect…