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Spectrum Pieces
James Tenney (1934-2006) was one of the most versatile figures in contemporary American music. Apart from creating a large, wide-ranging, and fascinating body of compositions, more than a hundred of them, he was one of the key music theorists of the late twentieth century. This CD set offers complete recordings of one of the most important of Tenney's later sets of pieces-Spectrum Pieces 1-8, the first five of which were written in Toronto in 1995 and the last three in 2001, after he moved to Va…
Unusual Perversions
Unusual Perversions was the first "official" production of Pacific 231, originally released in 1984. Previously,Psychic Euthanasia was a limited edition, self-produced tape, and one of the first DIY experiments from 1981-83. After the short lived Berlinerluft, an outfit that included Axel Kyrou (from Vox Populi!) andBertrand Wolf, Pacific 231 swiftly moved away from the new wave genre toward a raw industrial sound with power electronics tonalities in-line with his influences, going from writers …
City of vorticity
Track 1: City of Vorticity (with soloists): Al Margolis, violin; Alan Zimmerman, percussion, prepared hammer dulcimer; Peter Zummo, trombone, didgeridoo; Tom Hamilton, electronic sound environment.Track 2: City of Vorticity (electronic sound environment): for listening alone or as an accompaniment.The Wire has described Hamilton’s music as “colourful and seductive,” and Gramophone has noted that “the results bubble with energy, a veritable counterpoint of indeterminacy.” These brief descriptions…
A 1000 Keys
CD version. "How many can get a personal sound out of a fucking piano?!" - Lee Konitz. Thomas Brinkmann takes his seductive reductionism to the next level with A 1000 Keys, a harsh meditation on the expressive qualities of digital sound production. In translating the timbre of a grand piano into binary codes, thus rebuilding its corpus with "0 and 1s", Brinkmann subverts the sensual qualities of this proto-romantic instrument in a sardonic way. Replacing the musician with a mathematically p…
In defense of the machine
This new cd by Brazilian composer Jorge Antunes, one of the pioneers of electronic music in South America consists of 7 works for instruments and tape, composed between 1965 and 2003. Canção da Paz was composed in 1965, and is one of the first pieces in Brazilian music history to use a traditional instrument accompanied by pre-recorded electronic sounds. Insubstituível 2ª was written for the cellist Iberê Gomes Grosso (1905-1983). Antunes was an early pioneer in electronic music. The piece, alm…
71 Minutes
Compiled from "lost" and unreleased material released to us on the 10th Anniversary of their disbandment (inc.prophetic pre-dub mixing) as well as most of the unreleased "FAUST PARTY 3" LP.
The Happy End Problem (Music for Dance Volume 5)
Frith's Music for Dance Volume 5 - two works for small ensembles, which were performed for each of Amanda Miller's dances created for The Pretty Ugly Dance Company. The first is based on Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, and the other a deliberately Western look at Japanes culture.
According to Chris Cutler:
'Happy End' presents two, related, small-ensemble works for 6 and 7 musicians respectively - mostly strings of one sort or another, with percussion, flute, clarinet and electronics. Fred, v…
Impur
"In 1996, at the end of a two year residency, Fred organised an event at L'Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne in France. He roped in as many of the students as he could, grouped according to their departments (early music, rock, African drumming, classical &c), and set them up in all the rooms in the building. The public wandered around creating their own mix, or sat in the courtyard listening to the sound drifting out through the open windows.
For their part, each group of musici…
Impur II
Essentially a pretty great concert by a large 19 strong ensemble with Fred conducting as well as playing. Lots of rhythm, harmony, rock noise, exotic instrumentation, power, complexity and melodic writing, with stretches of chaos, eccentricity and theatre. Totally different, then, from Impur Part I which was a deconstructed, spatialised simultaneity of musical events heard through open windows or by wandering through rooms; Impur Part II was an unannounced performance upon which audience …
Nowhere Sideshow Thin Air
This is Frith's sixth CD of music for dance, featuring three commissions by three different choreographers each sharing, as Fred says ' a certain obsession with melodic deconstruction.' Two of them feature - and were especially written for - the remarkable violinist Carla Kihlstedt.
Fred and Carla perform one of them (Fred playing a huge array of instruments here as on all pieces), are joined by Fred Guiliano, (samples) and Gail Brand (trombone) on another, while the third features Fred, …
Technology of Tears (And Other Music for Dance)
"Sadness, Its Bleached Bones Behind Us," and "You Are What You Eat" are unrelenting slices of hard-edged sounds over a pulse. "The Palace of Laughter, The Technology of Tears" is an imaginative, intense, varied suite comparing music which represents the past "frozen tears" of sadness -- displayed as images before us by the media, etc. -- with the "hot tears" of the moment that cannot be absorbed by technology. "Jigsaw" and "Jigsaw Coda" (1986) creates patterns with constantly shifting acc…
Prints - Snapshots, Postcards, Messages And Miniatures 1987-2001
The short story: Prints is Fred Frith's first album of songs in 20 years. The long story: it is actually a collection of compilation tracks and unreleased studio sessions recorded between 1987 and 2001. No matter if you already own a few of these, a pop album by this man is a rarity -- and that is truly a shame. Of course, as a respected improviser, serious composer, and educator, anything lighter from this pillar of modern music will meet with severe criticism from people who take themse…
Gravity
Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…
Love Is A Drag - For Adult Listeners Only
CD version. A once shocking 1962 record of love songs… by men, for men. A long lost treasure featuring the cool & sophisticated vocals of Gene Howard and a cast of prime studio jazz musicians, performing a set of standards sung to a male suitor. Ahead of its time in every way. A fantastic, once-shocking album finally sees reissue - and brings with it the answer to a half-century mystery! Case file: A big band vocalist, a Hollywood photographer, and an LGBT music and history archivist - they are…
Fly To Brazil
Strerath is a pianist of European calibre and he has won numerous prizes since 1967. The Walter Strerath Trio played at many Jazz Festivals in Europe and they were invited to play at Newport in the early 1970s. On this 1975 session they explore the music of Brazil. The Bossa Nova is sort of a feed-back of North-American jazz with its drive, blues and beat compared to Brazilian samba with its “joie de vivre” and optimism. The Walter Strerath Trio commands this synthesis between North and So…
Metti Una Sera A Cena
Quite possibly the greatest Morricone score ever – and one whose dreamy bossa-inflected title theme has been covered a number of times over the years (most recently by the group Balanco!) From the first minutes of the album, you'll instantly recognize the main theme – as it's swells of voices and lilting keyboards are among one of Morricone's best signatures from the time. Don't worry about getting bored because you may already know it, though – as the album has loads of other beautiful …
Yellow Dust
Bruce Ditmas is a unique, heavy musician from one of those special tightknit communities that tried (and almost succeeded) to change the face of progressive pop music and jazz via musical technology. Raised in Miami (an unknown incubator for future synthesists), Ditmas carved the image of a teen prodigy playing jazz drums at the most exclusive Miami Beach hotels. After being whisked off to New York by none other than July Garland he became immersed in free music, recording compositions by …
Collected Works Of
BOX edition: Psychedelic drone sounds, experimental electro-acoustics, minimal music and deep listening from the years 2000 - 2007 by Ilya Monosov, who is a member of the Frogpeak artist collective and one-half of the psychedelic noise group The Shining Path and the improv duo Monosov/Swirnoff. Ilya Monosov has collaborated with Bob Cobbing, Charles Curtis, Duane Pitre, Marc Schulz (in Ben Patterson's installation at the 40th Anniversary of Fluxus), Larry Polansky, Andrew Deutsch (with Pau…
Film Scores
Classically trained and rigorously de-trained, possessor of a restless, semi-feral spirit, Lori Goldston is a cellist, composer, improvisor, producer, writer and teacher based in Seattle. Her voice as a cellist, amplified or acoustic is full, textured, committed and original. A perpetual inquirer, she wanders recklessly across borders that separate genre, discipline, time and geography, performing in clubs, cafes, galleries, arenas, concert halls, sheds, ceremonies, barbecues, and sanctuaries.
Sonic Drawings
We perceive many things with our eyes. Many visual impressions are engraved in our memories. But, all the things that are going on around us, can also be detected by the ear; can be listened to with various feelings. What effects do silence and noise have? The sonic drawings unfold themselves, build up with memories of future and past, which lead us back to the sound of the moment. It is enriching to discover the musicality of a moment and to find oneself listening to that music. The release „So…