Music from United States

Rinus van Alebeek and Michal Libera set out for a dozen of excursions into Calabrian towns armed with Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' as a guide book, to recite, talk, read, listen, drink coffee, perform, play, record, play back... or: blow, bow, rub, explode, scrape, walk, ignore, talk, screw, dance, whistle, which are all suggestions of Alvin Lucier to make large and small resonant environments sound. The material recorded during these attempts to make invisible cities of Calabria sound was…

Limited edition of 500. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Roach (born in 1955 in California) is a longstanding leader in contemporary electronic music, drawing on the beauty and power of the earth's landscapes to create lush, meditative soundscapes influential on the emergence of ambient and trance. At the age of 20, inspired by the music of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, and Vangelis, he taught himself to play synthesizer. After being a member of Doug Lynner's Moebius in the late '7…

In celebration of Record Store Day 2015, Strut and Art Yard join forces once more for the first release anywhere of a live Sun Ra performance from Amiens, France in 1973, Planets Of Life Or Death. Recorded direct from the soundboard and mastered from first generation reel to reel, the title is exclusively available for Record Store Day 2015.Sun Ra and his Arkestra had just completed a residency at the legendary Gibus in Paris in October before traveling to Amiens for a visceral Sunday afternoo…

Steve Lacy (soprano saxophone), Irene Aebi (voice), George Lewis (trombone), Jean-Jacques Avenel (double bass) and John Betsch (drums). After a long tour of North America, this quintet concluded by playing two concerts in Boston (March 2004) - most of the first one being included here. The material is five of the Beat poems featuring Irene Aebi, plus three instrumentals, including one (Baghdad) that has not been on record before as it had only just been written. After a lot of working together, …

An astonishing 3CD box set of new and previously unissued long-form works from world-renowned composer-bassist William Parker. This box set is comprised of four distinctly compelling long-form works -- Parker's first composition written for symphony orchestra performance; a commissioned piece for a standing new music ensemble; a 'chamber-jazz' song series for voice / soprano sax / piano / bass; a composition created specifically for a particularly diverse Parker assemblage in Universal To…

"Great Spirit again makes abundantly clear William Parker's multi-faceted talents as bassist, composer, poet, bandleader and =songwriter=. Raining On The Moon is the extraordinary group which seamlessly fuses all of these prodigious gifts: his long-standing Quartet with Hamid Drake, Rob Brown, Lewis Barnes is here exquisitely augmented by singer Leena Conquest breathing further compassion & dignity into William's lyrics, and pianist Eri Yamamoto for expert chordal support. Going back a few years…

2015 repress, originally reissued in 1992. Atavistic has quietly erected the near complete recorded works of Glenn Branca, whose vision of guitar-generated power-symphonic sound is, in simple terms, one of the most exhilarating and important musical gestures of the contemporary era. First issue of this '82 performance; 10 guitars (including Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo on special Branca-engineered "mallet guitars"), plus the massive force of Zev's bass drum & metal

The music of Christian Wolff has long occupied the fertile borderland between composition and improvisation, as both are usually understood. More a set of suggestions than a writ of prescriptions, his scores can take the form of graphic symbols floating freely against a white background—as in 1968’s Edges—or of pitches notated and other parameters left unspecified, as in the Exercises. He is on record as having said that a score is only a means to an end, the latter consisting of the performance…

"While Jackson C. Frank's eponymous 1965 album and other material has enjoyed numerous official and unofficial reissues, Jackson C Frank: The Complete Recordings is the first to compile his entire recording career. Released in conjunction with Jim Abbott's book,Jackson C. Frank: The Clear Hard Light of Genius, The Complete Recordings contains a total of 67 tracks, 24 of which have never appeared before. Every song has been mastered or remastered, a number of them straight from the original, brit…

"Amazing archival retrieval (with extra material on the download) of the first release by long-running human zoo known as Sunburned. Forged in the heat of Kristin Anderson's Charlestown loft, the group more or less descended straight from the corpse of Shit Spangled Banner, although they did not assume the band name until 1997 (two years after the first protean jams had started). The material on the album was recorded in 1997 & '98, often deep in the grip of acid flashes, and it really shows. Ov…

Their earliest meeting on record - the complete London (Wigmore Hall) concert (organised by Emanem), featuring them both at the top of their form. Highly acclaimed by both enthusiasts and critics. Reissue of 4006 which contained the concert section of Emanem 601. "These twelve duets between African-American avant-gardist Anthony Braxton and Brit Derek Bailey are remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which is that this is the first recording of these two seminal figures performing in t…

"Ambient Loop for Vancouver (2004) is a single, full length track (53'43"), with contributions from Alan Licht on guitar, Christian Marclay on turntables, and William Hooker on drums. It was originally assembled as the 'tape bed' for a performance in Vancouver, Canada of DRIFT, my collaborative film and music presentation with partner Leah Singer, in April 2004. This slowly changing, low volume ambience has since been used in various performance, reading and installation situations over the y…

Prefigured by the inclusion of a secret extra pocket in the original packaging of Far West (IMPREC 386CD/LP, 2013), this painstakingly crafted complimentary LP is intended for synced playback with that release. With two turntables or other playback devices, the listener can experience fully unique quad playback. Further West Quad Cult LP offers deeper journeys into the cave where the self dissolves. It also stands alone as an inverted Far West universe, and the listener is invited to enjoy it…

“Music For Private Ensemble” is Sean McCann’s first new solo album since 2011′s “The Capital”. Demonstrating a more serious study of orchestration and timbre than his previous work; it is a big step forward. The four arrangements presented here shy away from the use of synthesizers and effects processing – instead relying on voicing and movement to actuate the album’s sentiments. Inspired by the grandiosity of John Adams, the concerned somberness of Gavin Bryars, and the guttural tape work of Fl…

Flying Basket is a double album of avant jazz, discord and deconstructed rock by five master practitioners. It also marks the debut collaboration by a pair of Japan's legendary transgressors  -- saxophonist Akira Sakata and noise pioneer Masami Akita, aka Merzbow. For the past ten years Sakata has rededicated himself to fiery free jazz alongside guitarist Jim O’Rourke and the monstrous rhythm section that is Chikamorachi -- Chris Corsano (drums) and Darin Gray (double bass, percussion). Sakata's…

Nr. 3 from the most famous ambient series, now reissued. Laraaji’s glistening album “Ambient 3: Day of Radiance” has from the beginning been considered an outlier. Though widely celebrated at the time of its release in 1980 -- as the third installment of Brian Eno’s emerging ambient music series (Ambient 1-4) -- the album also brought with it an aura of mystification. Where did it fit in? An uncharted synthesis of resonating zither textures, interlocking, hammered rhythms and 3-D sound tre…

Composed 1976–8 and now studied by guitarists the world over, The Book of Heads is one of John Zorn’s most popular and oft-performed compositions. Utilizing an hermetic language of meticulously notated sounds inspired by contemporary classical extended techniques, the idiosyncratic guitar languages of free improvisation, cartoons, film noir, world music, philosophy and more, they receive a virtuosic reading by James Moore, founding member of the Dither guitar quartet. This special edition …

A minimalistic, tone-heavy and slower recording than much of their work, fired with deep electronic and horn-generated tones, stretched and layered over glitch-electronics, ultra-crude tape manipulation, and ear-piercing scraping glass. Nightmarish, painful, and stoned. Coming just months after Dread (Wolf Eyes' first LP as a trio), Slicer was released on cassette in an edition of 50 in 2001. From start to finish, it's a full-fledged sonic experience. Deep stuttering bass, high streams of electr…

Ulrich Krieger is a German-born saxophonist and composer notable for his involvement in the groups Text of Light and Metal Machine Trio. His work involves what he calls Ôacoustic electronics' or amplified acoustic instruments processed through effects and feedback loops. Cycles ranges from saxophone-controlled feedback walls of free-noise to the meditative sounds of sine waves.

"vibrant unissued live set which moves from free passages (side a) to more ethnic influences atmospheres (side b). my fav Kalaparusha (one of the real outsiders) album so far; those new live tracks sounds totally different from the the black saint studio album which was rec. only two days after ?!" punzmann Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, an outstanding saxophonist was a founding member of the AACM, Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a pioneering Chicago avant-garde coaliti…