Music from United States

For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that…

the new album by the über-prolific and often esoteric Z'ev sees this musician leaves the drums aside and focus on long, slightly noisy and constantly rumbling low-frequency drones. Dark and brooding, but clearly grittier and dirtier as, let's say, Lu…

This is an original copy of "Bust This", by far one of the best Z'ev albums,chosen in 1988 by The Wire as one of the greatest 50 percussion albums of all time. His brand of scrap-metal/found object percussion originates in intense musical training an…

One of the earlier Z'ev recodings, under his real name (Stefan Weisser) this amazing artist records develops a personality all it's own, a wonderfully crafted noise product to be played at any speed, depending on the mood, drugs, or time at hand. Pio…

Already out of print, Eleh resurfaces from the depths with a new full-length release on TAIGA records. Homage to the Sine Wave is the second release in the sound wave series following 2008's sold-out LP, Homage to the Square Wave. In a fashion simila…

As sold on recent tour - Limited to 500 copies on clear green vinyl with all handpainted covers. This record features 5 instrumental mixes of songs from the latest kranky lp (songs for the broken hearted). These mixes are completely different & in so…

The mid-'60s formation of Chicago's musician collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), proved a watershed event for jazz, providing a springboard for some of the next few decades' most influential performers, inclu…

Fat Possum's reissue of Townes Van Zandt's first four albums, along with 1978's Flyin' Shoes, squanders the opportunity to re-envision and expand an understanding of the songwriter in simply replicating the originals. Neither new liner notes nor bonu…

Finally, we have managed to track down copies of one of the most revered Sunburned Hand of the Man records in existence. Originally pressed up by the prestigious Arthur magazine's own imprint, this handmade reissue (straight from the Sunburned Men th…

A piece of unrelenting intensity, Olson III may be one of the most powerful compositions from minimalist composer Terry Riley. Based on the same phasing principals of In C, Olson III is filled with short motives that each ensemble member must play an…

Massive and essential! This box set gives the listener all of Reich's major works. I can't even attempt to describe them individually, but every one of these 10 CDs is compelling. For the totally uninitiated, take out "Music for 18 Musicians" (presen…

Early archival recordings: brand new release of never-before-heard material from the heyday of Ya Ho Wha 13, featuring the legendary Father Yod and his sons playing improvisational, psychedelic spirit music recorded in the wee hours of morning medita…

Already out of print, this is the first-ever collaboration between these two legends, Wolf Eyes and Sickness. This is not haphazard but a symbiotic collaboration bridging distant roads. This full length LP is a dark casket of scorched earth sounds, t…

Charles Ives (1874-1954) earned his living by selling insurance policies to his contemporaries. Besides, he took a great interest in literature, philosophy and, first and foremost, music. And what came of it? The most original modernist music one cou…

The most ambitious and grandest of his projects would of course never see completion. For over forty years, Ives continued to supplement the material for his Universe Symphony, adding both notes and details. At some point, the scenario he envisaged g…

Music for a Summer Evening (1974) is the third part of the "cosmic drama" Macrocosmos, which investigates the relations between the innermost human soul and the vastness of the cosmos; relations that also determine the temporal, dynamic and tonal dim…

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 sol…

For each of his compositions for prepared piano Cage created a specific piano preparation chart, setting out in meticulous detail the strings to be prepared, and the materials and manipulations to be used for preparing them. For the Concerto for Prep…

John Cage was a student of Henry Cowell and Arnold Schönberg and made use of innovations of both of his teachers, promptly integrating them into his own creativity – and turning them into something completely different. He adopted Henry Cowell's idea…

As early as in 1942, in Credo in Us, Cage employed not only a percussion ensemble but also sounds from the radio and records. Therefore, quite in accordance with what the composer would have wished, the materials used by the Percussion Ensemble Mainz…