Blume returns to James Tenney's "Postal Pieces" with a second volume: three "Swell Pieces" and "Koan", written for Alison Knowles, Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young and Malcolm Goldstein, on vinyl for the first time from one of the key suites of 20th Century avant-garde music.
Julius Hemphill's 1972 debut, self-produced for his Mbari label and recorded in St. Louis with Baikida Carroll, Abdul Wadud and Phillip Wilson. The title track spends fourteen minutes on a funky 11/8 groove.
The problem with Harmonia is that words simply don't do the band justice. A super-group made up of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (of Cluster) and Michael Rother (of Neu!) they re-defined not only the Krautrock genre but also electronic music in general with a mere two full-length albums ('Musik von Harmonia' and 'Deluxe') so saying that they are an important act, especially on the pages of this particular website just doesn't do them justice. With a flawless blend of electronic and e…
*300 copies limited edition* For the Raven was due to be the next release after Ligeliahorn on the Nekrophile Rekords label. Sadly the project fell through and, even more sadly, it coincided with a number of the celebrants being rounded up to enjoy a short holiday at Her Majesty's Pleasure, expense and, indeed, insistence. By the time our intrepid Disciples Of Doom re emerged the momentum had been lost and For the Raven was consigned to the Metgumbnervaults to, until recently, only make an occas…
Giuni Russo's 1981 CGD album, produced with Franco Battiato and Alberto Radius and arranged by Battiato and Giusto Pio: electronics, experimental pop and avant-garde singing, remastered on 180g yellow vinyl.
A powerful "electric Miles" sounding band reinterprets a couple of classics - In A Silent Way and Freedom Jazz Dance - and adds some wholly contemporary improvisation to the mix."2026 Is Miles and Coltrane's Centenary year and if Jazz music needs any Gods then surely they fit the bill without question. When I heard In a Silent Way for the first time back in 1970 when I was 17 (incidentally that was the first year I heard Coltrane as well) it truly was music like nothing I had ever heard before.…
2026 stock Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water, the self-titled debut from the duo of trumpeter Will Evans and guitarist, synthesist, producer and multi-instrumentalist Theo Trump, arrives like a vault revelation. It feels like a decades-old yet newly unearthed masterwork of gorgeous ambient improvisation, the sort of thing scholars live to research and shepherd into deluxe reissue.
The patient, crystalline chords that swell and resonate like a series of confessions; the textured brass murmur…
Dramatic moments of enlightenment – when the mask is dropped and truth revealed – are found in tales from the Buddha and Euripides to Scooby Doo and Star Wars. And few artists have been as fascinated by niggling the clueless or deflating the stuck-up as Harry Partch (1901-1974). As a lifelong outsider, the conformist society he experienced and the narrow-minded attitudes (not to mention musical delusions) that permeated it, are themes to which he often returned. In the 1950s, seeing a world that…
"The shock and awe that Bitches Brew produced within and without the jazz world on its release in March 1970 was largely unexpected, the result of the music’s uncompromising power and what many felt to be its perplexing, eccentric sound and structure. In retrospect, we know how Miles’ unconventional studio methodology and Teo Macero’s subsequent compositional editing of the voluminous taped material innovated the remarkable finished product. But what has only marginally been discussed is the ext…
The 1972 official bootleg of the Islands line-up on tour in the USA, the last of the original King Crimson vinyl series, cut on 200g from masters approved by Robert Fripp.
Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, on May 19, 1957, Paul Chambers Quintet captures bassist Paul Chambers leading an exceptional ensemble at the height of the hard-bop era. Released by Blue Note in 1958, the album brings together trumpeter Donald Byrd, tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, pianist Tommy Flanagan, and drummer Elvin Jones.
Chambers is more than the foundation beneath the group: his resonant bass lines and confident solos give the session its unmistakable …
David Moss, John King and Otomo Yoshihide on the Victoriaville stage on 20 May 1994: voice, drums and electronics against electric guitars, turntables and sampler, in a fast, cut-up set between song fragments, noise and improvisation.
Emil Beaulieau, the persona of RRRecords founder Ron Lessard and America's Greatest Living Noise Artist, on a 7" lathe cut: two untitled sides of turntable abuse and recycled sound, thirty numbered copies on black, clear and white vinyl.
Tony Conrad alone with amplified violin and self-built Long String Instrument, playing behind a sheet inside the unfinished Mudam in Luxembourg, October 2002. Nearly an hour of unbroken drone, first published here with an extended interview by Philippe Franck. CD digipack, 8 page booklet.
Originally released in 2000, Iron grew out of Pavlov's teenage fascination with heavy metal and the underground record-exchanging community of the late Soviet era. At fourteen, inspired by Iron Maiden's “Running Free,” he picked up a six-string guitar brought to him by his grandmother and decided that he and his friends could also play that kind of music. Before long, they were rehearsing in a Soviet youth club with whatever equipment was available, looking for the sound they heard in early heav…
Hiroshi Yoshimura was commissioned in 1984 by Japanese multi-national personal care company Shiseido to create something that might be entirely out of his own wheelhouse: music that could complement a fragrance. Mixing bird song and sea sound with environmental field recordings, plus the usual electronics paraphernalia, he just released something truly inspiring. A record still ahead of its time !
David Grubbs' commissioned music for Josiah McElheny's singing paintings, wall works with hand-blown glass discs that resonate sound: one 30-minute piece for lap steel, electric guitar and Serge synthesizer, built on microtonal slide.
One of the most influential dub albums ever made. The remixing techniques used – radically new for 1973 – helped transform the role of the producer and the engineer to that of creative artists in their own right.
Cien Fuegos present a reissue of Schlippenbach Quartet's Three Nails Left, a classic mid-1970s originally released on FMP in 1975 and showing Schlippenbach is in sublime form. It features a stellar line-up, with Evan Parker - soprano and tenor saxophone; Peter Kowald - double bass and Paul Lovens - percussion. Side A was recorded live at 3rd Jazz Festival Moers June 2nd, 1974 by Michael Krause. Side B was recorded live at the Quartier Latin Berlin, February 2nd, 1975 by Jost Gebers with the FMP…
The 2018 debut by Chicago saxophonist Isaiah Collier with The Chosen Few, recorded when he was 20: 66 minutes of spiritual jazz after Coltrane, between gospel, free improvisation and heavy rhythm. First time on vinyl, limited first pressing.
Passiflora, the tenth edition of the Music To Watch Seeds Grow By series: KiF Productions follow the passion flower from seed to bloom and back to earth in nine collaged ambient pieces. Cassette.
For over 25 years, David Madson (aka Odd Nosdam) has been stationed away from the light of the mainstream, diligently working the nightshift. Every so often, we awake to find another of his bleary and beautiful missives slung into the waking world – albums whose assemblages of sampled grooves, atmospheres and voices are unified by a hallucinatory sense of melody, like disparate visions strung together through ribbons of sleep-talk. From his earliest days as a member of the seminal group cLOUDDEA…
Believe, four Australian improvisers, Peter Farrar, Novak Manojlovic, Clayton Thomas and Laurence Pike, who also produced: free jazz momentum and creative sound making recorded in Sydney in 2023.
String quartets by Kaija Saariaho (Nymphéa, with live electronics), John Cage and Bruno Maderna played by the Cikada String Quartet, recorded in August 2001 at Sofienberg Church, Oslo, and released by ECM New Series in 2005.
The new issue of Electronic Sound dives into the world of tape music – from Pierre Schaeffer and Delia Derbyshire to today's sharpest loopers – and comes bundled with an exclusive Steve Reich CD, Tape Pieces, pairing his mid-'60s phasing landmarks Come Out and It's Gonna Rain across some 30 minutes.
* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a four-page printed insert. The Contemporaray Jazz Quartet together with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray! This is THE sunken treasure. This is music I have only heard about. And yet, here it is. Unbelievable. Intact. Preserved. Beaming of energy and JOY! This is a sensational find. My favorite Danes exploding together with my favorite double bass player all time. Gary Peacock. The engine. The power engine. I …
Swiss saxophonist Gilles Torrent may have been initially smitten by the sounds of US jazz giants like Coltrane, Shepp and Sanders, but as he’s developed and matured he’s cast his creative net much wider. After teaching himself the sax at 21 he spent the next 11 years studying the concepts and innovations of Coltrane before moving on to take the next logical step - exploring and soaking up the many styles music from around the world, and incorporating them into his Coltranesque vision of jazz.
A…
Francis Dhomont’s 51-minute acousmatic descent into schizophrenia, built on the writings of RD Laing and on the single note B natural, winner at Bourges in 1981 and first issued by the Ina-GRM in 1982.
Inchiesta Sul Mondo is a double experimental concept album, mainly electronic, on topical problems of the period in which it was released, the middle 1970’s. The two records have two different arguments: Stati d'animo and Diagnosei Ecologica. Maestro Luciani is a well-known artist in the library music scene. His very personal style is the result of musical studies from childhood that allowed him to achieve a diploma in composition, choral music, choral conducting, and more. The avant-garde and c…
When you’re a three-piece, every move must mean. There’s no place to escape, and no one to hide behind. This might be why Unmarry Me’s slim body of recordings so far – one seven inch, one shared single with Lung Leg and Lora Logic, and now this, a five-track EP, Lions in Autumn – reads so clearly; there isn’t a step out of place. It’s a DIY effort, certainly, anti-rockist in intent, a home-made sound-system jerry-rigged into being by three uncontrollable spirits.
Unmarry Me is the unholy trinity…
First recordings of James Tenney's Poem, Monody, Seegersong #1 and #2 and the Ergodos series for computer music, with string, instrumental and percussion responses, played by the Barton Workshop and soloists.
On Today’s Special, Hanne Lippard and Renato Grieco turn speech into score and accompaniment into acoustic typography. Reduced, exacting compositions for voice, viola da gamba, piano and Wurlitzer shadow the rhythm and contour of language, transforming wordplay, online debris and intimate anecdotes into a dryly comic, strangely moving suite of musical rhetoric.
Two sunken treasures from the same Copenhagen underground, gathered here as a pair. On one LP, Predetermination: The Contemporary Jazz Quartet caught in 1964 alongside Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock - the rhythm section of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity - on music that stayed hidden for sixty years. Free jazz before the norm was set, exploding out of Denmark years ahead of the rest of Scandinavia.
On the other, Beautiful United Harmony Happening / The Education of an Amphibian: John Tchicai at hi…
Jean Derome and Louis Sclavis share a quartet with Bruno Chevillon on double bass and Pierre Tanguay on drums, live at Victoriaville on 19 May 2001: flutes, clarinets and saxophone on compositions by both leaders.
When describing the "Last Shot at Heaven" cover art on the Skullflower Bandcamp page, Matthew Bower highlights the ambiguity of the striking photograph of a civilian casualty during the Yugoslavian schism. "Is it ecstatic[?]" he asks of the woman's expression. This, too, is a question one could reasonably ask of any Skullflower album.
Bower and his many cohorts' body of work is full of lengthy compositions that evoke all manner of emotions. Statement records like "IIIrd Gatekeeper", released a y…
In Nov. 1987, a three-concert Ed Blackwell Festival was held in Atlanta. The festival served as a good excuse to reunite the members of Old And New Dreams (trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Blackwell), a quartet comprised of Ornette Coleman alumni. The unit interprets three rarely-performed Ornette Coleman compositions and a tune apiece by Blackwell and Redman. All of the musicians are in top form on this no-changes music, creating fresh and …
The long awaited reissue of this rare eastern and psychedelic jazz LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo, originally released in 1968. This extended edition comes with 2 bonus tracks: the radio versions of "Fire Dance" and "Ferris Wheel" released as 7" single in 1969. Comes with long, exclusively written liner notes by the famous researcher and biographer Douglas Payne. Remastered by Martin Bowes at Cage Studios (UK).
Miya Masaoka's orchestra, recorded live in San Francisco in 1995 and 1997 with George Lewis, Vijay Iyer, Trevor Dunn and others: strings, Asian winds, shamisen, electronics and turntables under her whole-body conduction.
Drawn from two September 1964 sessions at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio with producer Bob Thiele, The Voice That Is! features vocalist Johnny Hartman in his third and final album for Impulse! following a celebrated collaboration with John Coltrane. The album blends two sessions arranged by Bob Hammer: one pairing Hartman with pianist Hank Jones, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Osie Johnson, and another for octet, with English horn, flute, marimba and Latin percussion flourishes throughout. The rep…
A collective exploration of the murky area where practices from sound art, visual arts, performance, digital technologies, science, but also poetry and philosophy intersect in a constantly evolving digital environment, drawing on the cross-disciplinary dynamics and experiments initiated by the international festival ]interstice[ in Caen.
Since 2006, in the city of Caen in Normandy, the ]interstice[, rencontre des inclassables festival has explored a creative nexus of intersecting practices fro…