String Quartet No. 4
Swiss composer Jürg Frey writes masterful soundscapes, calm and vast. With his sensitive ear for colour, sound and precision, he composes music of great serenity and lyricism; a poetic weightlessness in search of silence in sound. “My music is slow, sometimes static, often delicately shifting between standstill and movement. And yet, after more than an hour, this music has arrived at another place. Standstill, little happens, — it is this atmosphere from which my music emerges and to which it al…
Looking for Daniel
We commemorate the late Phill Niblock with this release made in close collaboration with the composer just before his passing in January 2024. His life and work have had a profound influence on many contemporary composers, performers and artists, so it is a great honour to be able to present here, together with Echonance Festival, recordings of some of his very last compositions. The two works on this album, “Biliana” (2023) and “Exploratory, Rhine Version, Looking for Daniel” (2019) represent t…
Artic_Akt
Absolutely brilliant debut by the young pianist Andrea Riccio. "Every record is a text and every text is fabric, and this is a fabric of precious threads. A pianism that has gold in its fingertips, from the timbral calligraphy of the pages of Annette Dieudonne, restored to the present, to the dark abysses of a Kreisleriana that reaches the uncanny through beauty, passing through the intimism of Brian Eno, between Brahmsian suggestions, minimal and echoes of Sehnsucht and Lied. Made unique by the…
Insula Dulcamara
Paul Klee’s Naturstudium (1923) recalibrated the dialogue between art-making and the natural world. By peering closely at nature, Klee’s project was one of a magical de-mystification, seemingly a contradiction in terms until you realize that by looking clearly and dispassionately (the studium part of Naturstudium), he brought us full circle to wonder and awe. Spanish percussionist Luis Tabuenca also peers inward at his world—here the universe of percussion sounds—inviting us to a microscopic lis…
Passage
Jason Eckardt’s composition Passage is a profound exploration of the unsettling history surrounding the CIA’s interest in sensory deprivation and its impact on human psychology. Divided into three movements – Subject, Ascension, and Testify – Eckardt delves into the dark legacy of interrogation techniques, shedding light on the use of sound and light as weapons in various global conflicts. In a separate work, pulse-echo, Eckardt transforms the piano into a resonant body, drawing inspiration from…
Boston Tenor Index
CD Edition. Alga Marghen returns with what might just be their most historically significant release to date, “Boston Tenor Index”, comprising three, never before released compositions - “Index”, from 1969; and “Tenor” and “Boston III”, both from 1972 - by Phill Niblock, that represent some the earliest works in his catalogue to have ever appeared. Truly stunning in audio terms, and an absolute revelation toward understanding how Niblock arrived where he did a few short years down the road, it’s…
The Possibility of A New Work for Electric Guitar
Other Minds is proud to present The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar, a new limited-edition 12” 45 RPM vinyl disc of music by Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff, performed by Wolff and Wendy Eisenberg. Side A features two performances of Morton Feldman’s The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Guitar, written for Wolff (who professes to be “not really a guitar player”) in 1966 as an experiment on the instrument. On his way to perform The Possibility of a New Work for Electric Gui…
Collected Works 2018-22
'Collected Works 2018-22' coalesces three deeply personal works that were created by Elms for three of the UK's most innovative ensembles and supporters of contemporary music. The three works explore misremembrance and the degradation of memory over time (Consolations in Travel), cyclical patterns of thought and resultant behaviour (The Age of Spiritual Machines), and the perception of reality orchestrated through expectation and misconstrued senses (100 Demons).
Colliding Bubbles
Colliding Bubbles (surface tension and release) is a composition for string quartet and harmonica quartet, meaning that Quatuor Bozzini is playing string instruments while playing harmonicas. "The title refers to different kinds of bubbly matter which are set to collide within the composition, leading to different ruptures and possible release of surface tension. The collision of bubbles unfolds partly in relation to sound, where small fluctuations appear in the encounters between harmonicas and…
Fame di Vento
Huge Tip! Fame di Vento is Manuel Zurria's latest work. A triple CD to evoke the many suggestions and projects that have taken place in recent years, full of collaborations, of the Sicilian flautist. Fame Di Vento is also an idealized homage to Alighiero Boetti, a nomad by culture and vocation. In his footsteps, Manuel draws on the most diverse cultures, from the Lithuanian mystics to India and Sicily, from just-intonation to European-style minimalism. As he has already done in the past, Zurria …
Satoko Inoue Presents Jo Kondo's New Works For Piano 2015-2020
Temporary Super Offer! "This CD, the third album of my piano works played by Satoko Inoue, presents all the pieces written for piano between 2015 and 2020, along with an introductory miniature piece." – Jo Kondo
7x7
Tricatel is proud to present, in a limited edition of 777 hand-numbered copies, the superb double vinyl/book dedicated to 7×7, inspired by Bertrand Burgalat.
Construire Sur Les Ruines D'un Passé Encore Fumant
Music performed and shaped collectively by Les Certitudes: Juliette Adam (clarinet), Félicie Bazelaire (cello) and Léo Dupleix (harpsichord). Score composed by Léo Dupleix. The ensemble Les Certitudes was created in 2021 as a means for developing acoustic music focusing on justly tuned tones and harmonies, taking as a starting point the physicality of the instruments –resonating wood and metal– in a long musical form.
Music For Labyrinths
*300 copies limited edition* "Keith was a dear friend firstly. He was a generous, wonderful person and, of couse, a genius, a true artist. We all owe so much to him for we started our label with his critically acclaimed piano solo “Mujician IV - Live in Piacenza”, way back in 2015. We welcome this album as a real blessing for the soul. So long dear Keith: your music shall live forever." - Max Marchini
Music for Labyrinths is an open live project for a soundtracks of labyrinths around the world a…
Screens
An extraordinary album of compositions by Frank Denyer, played by Octandre Ensemble. 'Screens' contains five pieces, whose dates of composition range from 1973 to 2021. Anyone listening blind would struggle to identify which were early pieces, and which were late; they all simply belong to and come out of Frank Denyer unique and idiosyncratic soundworld.
A list of the instrumentation for the first piece, 'Broken Music' from 1990, gives an indication of the peculiarity and eccentricity of the mus…
Flax
'Flax' is a 79-minute solo work for piano by the Canadian composer Martin Arnold. It was commissioned in 2020 by the pianist Philip Thomas, but sadly Philip became seriously unwell shortly afterwards. Martin Arnold completed the composition in 2021, and - as Philip was now unable to perform it - the project was taken on by Kerry Yong, with Philip's agreement and support. 'Flax' was premiered by Kerry Yong at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2023, when the CD recording was…
Hereafter
Sofa is proud to mark its 100th release with the stunningly beautiful double album Hereafter, a new major work from guitarist/composer Kim Myhr, written for the 15-piece Stavanger-based ensemble Kitchen Orchestra. “Hereafter can be seen as a meditation on mortality and transience”, Myhr explains. “It was written at a time where the prime minister of Norway told the country’s population that ‘you have to be prepared to lose someone dear to you’. It was like taken out of Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”. T…
Four Fantasies For Synclavier
*2024 stock* In this 1982 Folkways release, Jon Appleton plays four compositions written for the Synclavier, a digital synthesizer he helped to develop in the late 1970s. “The Sweet Dreams of Miss Pamela Beach” was recorded in a studio using a 24-track recorder to “layer” portions of the music. The remaining three pieces were performed live with “some small sections and accompaniments contained in the digital memory of the instrument at the time of performance.” Liner notes contain brief descrip…
Extended Piano
*2024 stock* Elliott Schwartz plays four of his compositions for solo piano and pre-recorded tape, a project that remains "a continuing attempt to enhance, expand, obscure, develop or otherwise modify the piano sonority and the act of piano performance, through electronics." In his improvisatory piece "Grand Concerto" he uses fragments from the Grieg, Tchaikovsky No. 1 and Liszt No. 1 piano concertos; it is as epic in scope as the classical favorites.
Computer Music From The Outside In
*2024 stock* A 1983 Folkways release, Computer Music from the Outside In showcases three composers narrating the ideas and processes behind their computer music compositions, as well as the compositions themselves. The first two pieces are by Barton McLean: “Etunytude” is an etude-like piece made of gradually changing harmonic sounds, and “The Last Ten Minutes” is meant to be an abstract representation of the devastation of “the last nuclear holocaust.” “The Whistling Wind,” by Karl Korte, is ba…