Mantra
'Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily on improvisat…
Palimpsest | Épéi | Dikhthas | Akanthos
*2022 stock* 'This collection of ensemble works, six altogether, ranges across the last two decades of Iannis Xenakis's life. It includes the last two pieces he composed, Zythos, for trombone and six marimbas, and O-Mega, for percussion and ensemble,…
Le Grand Macabre
György Ligeti’s polymorphous music, a product of the 1960s, promises no familiar idiom even today. Ligeti himself described the bizarre and exaggerated music of Le Grand Macabre to be “far removed from the territory of Wagner, Strauss and Berg.”A sen…
Sonata XIII / Music For Marcel Duchamp / Song Books I-II / Empty Words III
*2022 stock* The first works of Cage are experimental and related to the future. "The Future of Music" - a Credo" is the title of his first manifesto, and this future bears the name "all-sound music".
Works For Piano, Toy Piano & Prepared Piano · Vol. III
*2022 stock* It may come as a surprise but one of the leading creators of keyboard music in the twentieth century is a composer by the name of John Cage. Cage’s reputation is so deeply associated with the avantgarde, with chance music, graphic notati…
Etudes Australes
*2022 stock* 'Etudes Australes was composed specifically for Grete Sultan, so this album is among the definitive recordings. As an indeterminate piece for solo piano (okay, well, a "duet for two hands"), this sounds very similar to Music of Changes, …
Works For Piano & Prepared Piano · Vol. II (1944-1958)
*2022 stock* This recording deals with works composed between 1944 and 1958, including several of Cage's lovely and masterful prepared piano pieces, which will come as a major surprise to those familiar only with his chance compositions. Joshua Pierc…
Sonatas & Interludes For Prepared Piano
*2022 stock* Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, a cycle of 20 short pieces for prepared piano (a piano modified by inserting nuts and bolts and other objects between the piano strings in order to produce percussive and otherworldly sound effe…
Music Of Changes
*2022 stock* It's over 70 years since John Cage wrote his pivotal Music of Changes, and it's beginning to show its age. It feels very much of its time, with its uncompromising adherence to the 64 hexagrams of I-Ching, the Chinese book of changes, det…
Kontakte
Kontakte is a Stockhausen classic from 1959, for electronics, percussion and piano (played here by David Tudor). One of his "moment form" compositions, which "...lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the us…
Flicker Tone Pulse (Electronic Music 2001-2016)
A prolific composer, performer, and author, Curtis Roads says he “pursues research in the interdisciplinary territory spanning music and technology.” He was Editor and Associate Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 2000, co-f…
Requiem / Aventures / Nouvelles Aventures
György Ligeti's "Requiem" for soprano, mezzo-soprano, two mixed choirs and orchestra is one of his most impressive compositions - especially, when directed by Michael Gielen - and at the same time "the" requiem of the 20th century: Sound which is chr…
Touch • Jacob's Room
'I believe Jacob's Room is one of the most extraordinary examples of extended vocal techniques that I have ever heard. Touch is the child of the original Buchla electronic music triumvirate that included Silver Apples and Wild Bull. Its exploration o…
I Like To Think Of Harriet Tubman
*2022 stock* 'A true Leninist would argue that art in a smoothly running socialist state would become redundant and disappear, though while waiting for such a perfect society to come about, we have an idea of what socialist literature, painting, scul…
Tempi Agitati
On April 6, 1327, a 22-year-old Italian poet named Francesco Petrarca caught a glimpse of a young woman, Laura, in a church in Avignon. He later reported that “living sparks issued from two lovely eyes”. Those sparks enflamed Petrarch such that he sp…
Human Remains
*In process of stocking* Human Remains follows Creatures of the Deep and Black Sarabande as the final installment of a trilogy of piano based recordings by Robert Haigh for Unseen Worlds. The trilogy marks the end of the late era of solo albums by Ha…
Avalanche
*In process of stocking* In nineteen movements of varying lengths and moods, Denis Doufour’s monumental piano piece “Avalanche” invites us on a voyage across the infinite variation of the forms taken by snow, and the rich vocabulary established by the…
Let It Play (1979-1983 Selected Pieces)
*2022 stock.* This fine introduction to Hamel's varied style presents him in various moods from 1979 to 1983. Samples are taken from Transition, Colours of Time, Bardo, and a few previously unreleased selections.
Reflections
After a long break, we're happy to present another masterpiece in The Fact Of Being collection. A long-awaited reissue of the legendary ambient/new-age album "Reflections" by Laura Allan with Paul Horn. The album was recorded in 1980 and marked by th…
Deep Peace / New Atlantis
*2022 stock.* For the first time, Deep Peace and New Atlantis, two classics from Celestial Harmonies, are available on CD. Originally recorded in 1980 and 1983, these meditative masterpieces have long been recognized as remarkable and meaningful work…