Music from United States

This is a collection of previously-unreleased studio and live material. Originally released in 2002 and deleted for years -- this collection is now made available again in 2012 due to demand. The studio material is as beautiful and sad as "Dirty Old Town," made famous by The Pogues, which is released on CD for the first time here. The oldest song, "Willie Boy," was recorded during the 1991 session for Documentary but didn't make it onto the record. "German Mustard," "Where I Lead Me," "Heav…

Represencing is the 2nd installment of the Joshua Abrams sound world introduced on his 2010 Eremite album Natural Information. Recorded at home in Chicago summer of 2011, Abrams again organizes small group statements around the resonant grooves of the North African ceremonial instrument the guimbri with a unique and broadly assimilative compositional voice. Sources from traditional musics to minimalism, jazz to krautrock, animate Represencing but Abrams is always grounded in the solidity o…

EVPs from Case File PAW159. Part of an ongoing collection of essays and observations into the nature and experience of Electronic Voice Phenomena. The collective, entitled The Phantom Monographs, will have future releases which will be available over time and may be assembled in a final completed monograph.

Many years in the making, An Accident In Substance collects all of the 7-inch tracks and a huge number of compilation appearances of Key Ransone's legendary project Small Cruel Party. Like the pungent scent of a campfire or the complex flavor of a good, peaty single malt, Small Cruel Party's mix of environmental sounds, far-off voices, and Cartridge Music-like close manipulation of tiny sounds get into your sinuses, your hair, your jacket, melding into a location-specific surrealist vision …

More archival works from Jim O'Rourke see the light of day on Old News #8. Recorded in 1991-1992. Originally released as part of Disengage by Staalplaat. Special thanks to Geert-Jan Hobijn and Frans de Waard for their years of support. Jeff Cortazzo (trombone), Sue Wolf (cello), Michael Prime (shortwave), Geoff Fontaine (voice), Gretchen Wells, Matt Guerierri, Scott Shell. "Merely" recorded live at DePaul University, 1991 -- Carrie Biolo (percussion). Remastered in 2012, Steamroom Tokyo. This on…

Last copies, nice price....Debut CD from Brooklyn musician and film maker Sarah Lipstate. Red Rainbows is full of growing tonal drones that evoke visions of menacing multicoloRed skies alongside tracks full of beautiful minimalistic structures that shoot straight for the heart. Sarah uses double-neck guitar and various electronics to create breathtaking atmospheres with an intensity that works on both a cognitive and emotional level. These tracks are either really beautiful or really dirty when …

2009 LP release, few copies available...Mystery hides in the shadows, dreaming of colors that don't yet exist. Paint on the Shadows is her overdue debut LP full of beautiful floating guitar lines, breathtaking soundscapes and precise sculptures of spiraling sound created by Sarah using double-neck guitar, a tape player, and various electronic manipulations. Add this one to the list of new generation of sound masters No Fun Productions have been bringing you lately. Recorded in studio by Colin Ma…

Here’s a split LP from prolific dark electronic noise weirdo and NNCK founder Pat ‘Decimus’ Murano. Lovely screenprinted sleeve and has one track by the former and two by the latter. In an era where compositional abstract music has been co-opted by studious arrangers obsessed with process, where forbears have been kidnapped by pop stars, and where the noiseniks have all turned to techno beats, this split LP by Decimus (Pat Murano) and Hobo Sonn (Ian Murphy) presents a triumphant return to the fr…

Works for voices & electronics, performed by Lore Lixenberg, Gregory Rose, and Robert Worby. Recorded in 2012. "This year, 2012, the maverick American experimental composer John Cage would have been 100 years old. He defined experimental music in the 1930s and, since that time, his ideas, his music and his work have been copied by hundreds of other composers and musicians time and time and time again. Anybody who claims to make experimental music today has to acknowledge their debt to John …

Altitude is one of two live recordings to be released in July 2012 as part of the celebration of AUM Fidelity’s 15th anniversary. It documents the first-ever performance by esteemed veteran improvisers Joe Morris, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver as a trio during label founder Steven Joerg’s two-week run curating The Stone in New York during June 2011. Collectively, Morris, Parker and Cleaver have appeared on hundreds of recordings, including a variety of prominent releases on AUM Fidelity, but…

180-gram vinyl, Tip-on cover. Originally released on John Fahey's Takoma Records in 1965, The Seal Of The Blue Lotus is the debut album from American guitar soli legend Robbie Basho. In college Basho immersed himself in the study of Asian art and culture, even changing his last name to that of the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, and his music shows a much greater Eastern influence than contemporaries like John Fahey and Peter Lang. Basho was particularly entranced by the raga form which is apparent …

In September 2011, Erstwhile producer Jon Abbey was invited to curate two weeks of shows at John Zorn's legendary Manhattan venue The Stone, which he used as an opportunity to invite many of his favorite musicians from Japan, Europe and the US to perform. A second three night festival at Issue Project Room was later appended onto the end, making the AMPLIFY 2011: stones festival a 35 set, 17 night extravaganza in all. Four of those thirty-five sets will now be available in the ErstLive se…

Volume 2 in EM Records' John Cage Shock series lifts off with a fiery example of David Tudor's piano virtuosity, his mastery of dynamics well-evident in a performance of Klavierstücke X (1961) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The titular shock of this series is delivered even more forcefully with the next piece, John Cage's 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists and a String Player (1961), which was first performed the year before in Darmstadt by Tudor and Kenji Kobayashi, a combination of two of Cage's solo piece…

The final CD of the John Cage Shock series features John Cage's 0'00" (1962), also referred to as 4'33" No. 2, performed by the composer, with daily activities such as writing and drinking coffee amplified by contact microphones into sonic abstraction, following the score's directions: "with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action." Next is Composition II for 2 Pianos (1960/1961) by Michael von Biel, lovely and sparse, performed by David Tudor and Toshi Ichiyanagi. …

In October 1962, John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock," as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases -- three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordin…

Milestone! The music on these six discs comes from roughly the first decade of William Parker's career, one of the most intensely creative periods enjoyed by any musician of any era. William Parker's Centering (No Business CD 42-47), as the subtitle makes clear, is composed entirely of Unreleased Early Recordings 1976-1987. It's six CDs in all, with booklet and attractive slipcase.What makes all that important? It's William Parker the superb bassist, jazz composer and bandleader at his very bes…

of EM Records' John Cage Shock series, compiled from the three CD releases. Featured works: 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists and a String Player, Piano Music #7, 0'00", Variations II. Performers include: David Tudor, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Kenji Kobayashi, Yoko Ono and John Cage. Includes rare photos and liner notes in Japanese and English, plus commentary by Toshi Ichiyanagi. In October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposi…

Grapes and Snakes is the first collaborative work of two of the most respected American underground experimental/noise artists, Aaron Dilloway and Jason Lescalleet. Using purely analog synths and tape manipulation, they build a foggy psychoacoustic mass that lies between dynamic yet patiently treated tape-music and industrial howl. Aaron Dilloway has been releasing and recording music since the age of 16. He was a member of experimental bands Couch, Galen and Universal Indians. He is a form…

Restocked. In 2000, Eberhard Blum (flute, alto flute, bass flute), Nils Vigeland (glockenspiel, vibraphone) and Jan Williams (piano, celesta), American composer Morton Feldman's close friends and collaborators, came together once more as The Feldman Soloists to perform Crippled Symmetry, the trio Feldman composed for them, on the 25th anniversary celebration of June in Buffalo, the festival he founded. The recording of this concert is now finally available on CD, and is destined to become the…

Re-emerging from deep Fluxus celebrations in this 2012 summer, alga marghen realized that Philip Corner “Coldwater Basin” LP was instantly sold out. Could there be a better decision than issuing an alternative version of this masterpieces from the glorious 60s, by master of ecstatic music Philip Corner? If you fluctuated over sonic landscapes with the first version, then “Coldwater Basin No.2” will knock your socks off! More intense that Whitehouse, more liquid than your wildest dreams.  “Rememb…