Music from Canada

The Scholars did what they had to do. I knew too much, and it was too risky to keep me within the Walls. The Sacred Cycle cannot be touched, even by thought. But I had to know. I could not stop myself… They cast me out into the desert. After two days of walking, I found a small cave where I could rest for a while. I feel strange, as if my mind has been corrupted by the Sacred Cycle. The road through the desert seems to repeat itself in an endless loop. I was relieved to find this cave. Maybe it …

An eight-part cycle by Ana Dall’Ara-Majek built entirely from Buchla 200 improvisations recorded at EMS Stockholm in 2022, each piece giving a sound colour to one species of plankton, from radiolarian skeletons to diatom blooms seen from space. CD-R.

Christian Bouchard’s fourth album, five works from 2013 to 2022 that alternate abstract pieces with Montréal soundscapes: eight-track recordings from his car with police radio, a collective 15-minute recording, Canadian bird songs and a bank of oscillators.

Yves Daoust's documentary fictions from 1995 to 2021: Lily, built on a courtesan's confidences, in acousmatic and violin-accordion versions, a Chopin-based Impromptu 2, and Calme chaos, recorded at its 2012 premiere by the Nouvel ensemble moderne.

Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq live at Victoriaville in May 2010 with Jean Martin on drums and computer and Jesse Zubot on violin: throat singing, cries and breath stretched into an hour of raw, physical improvisation.

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.

Vancouver's Hard Rubber Orchestra led by trumpeter John Korsrud, with guests Lori Freedman, Marilyn Lerner and Brad Turner: new big band music by Korsrud, Turner, Jean Derome, René Lussier and Ron Samworth, recorded in 2000 and 2001.

CCMC in its trio line-up of Michael Snow, John Oswald and Paul Dutton: piano and synthesizer, alto saxophone and sound poetry, recorded live in Toronto, Jonquière and Victoriaville in 1996 and 1997.

André Duchesne's large ensemble live at the 1989 Victoriaville festival: three electric guitars, saxophones, cello, piano and drums, with Yannick Rieu and Claude Lamothe, in composed Montreal musique actuelle.

Jean Derome's written music for a Montreal ensemble of flutes, clarinets and saxophones with bass, drums and percussion, recorded at Studio Victor in 1988. Composed jazz with a nod, in the title, to Japanese court music.

Paul Bley and trumpeter Herbie Spanier played free duets in Los Angeles in 1958, around the time Ornette Coleman passed through Bley's band. That music was never documented. In Montreal in August 1993 they tried again, with Geordie McDonald's rack of gongs, shakers and temple blocks. Thirteen short improvisations.

Paul Bley was born in Montreal in 1932 and left for New York at the start of the 1950s. He had already taken over Oscar Peterson's chair at the Alberta Lounge as a teenager. In December 1987 he came home, sat down at Studio Tempo, and recorded ten improvisations for a local label that was then four years old. Solo was the first of the dozen or so records Bley made for Jim West's Justin Time over the next twenty years, a run that ended with About Time in 2008. It is also a digital recording from …

Studio Tempo, Montreal, 19 July 1996. Kenny Wheeler and Paul Bley, two Canadians who left for New York forty years earlier, in duo for the first time on record. Thirteen short pieces, seven by Wheeler and six by Bley, alternating; trumpet and flugelhorn against a piano that leaves most of the space empty.

*35 copies limited edition* On Fioritures, Lamasz offers his debut for Le Mont Analogue, transforming fragments of classical music into a quietly immersive work. Rooted in material drawn from thrifted cassettes, the six pieces unfold through looping motifs that drift and dissolve, gently enriched with drones, field recordings, and tape textures. The result is a cohesive, meditative reverie, where each moment slowly erodes into a suspended, near-weightless state.

*300 copies limited edition* For the past 30 years, Toronto's Picastro has been evolving an intense and idiosyncratic variant of indie rock songcraft, embracing unique instrumentation, unsettling dissonance, and an ultra-personal approach to form and dynamics. The vision of vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Liz Hysen has anchored the project's sound throughout these three decades, even amidst a diverse cast of collaborators that have come, gone, and sometimes returned. Among these co…

*300 copies limited edition* Kitsune No Yomeiri, which translates to the fox’s wedding, is an endearing expression used to describe sunshowers. Dawson returned home from a recent tour of Japan with a collection of field recordings documenting the spring rain he encountered throughout his travels. These curious sounds, stretching from peaceful shrines to clattering city streets, underpin the material. Dawson also credits the wonderful folks he met on that tour with profoundly shaping the directio…

*300 copies limited edition* Long Slow Distance is an album about finding peace, and making peace where it can’t be found. It’s inspired by change, grief, acceptance, forgiveness, love, and running. Dawson began running around the same time he started making records. At this point it’s unclear where one practice ends and the other begins. The album’s title has become the ethos he’s embraced for all things in life. Long Slow Dance unravels the woven collage of his previous work. Here each song co…

Rarest cover variation of the 2023 2LP set on We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records of the beautiful exotic electronic soundtrack to the TV series. With obi.

Original 1981 Canadian edition of the second volume of "acoustical environmental sound experiences without music or voice" recorded by film-maker Dan Gibson and released on his Dan Gibson Productions Ltd. label with sounds of the surf.

Original 1982 Canadian edition of the fourth volume of "acoustical environmental sound experiences without music or voice" recorded by film-maker Dan Gibson and released on his Dan Gibson Productions Ltd. label with recordings made at Niagara Falls.