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 Pierce is the principal pianist (assisted by Dorothy Jonas on the Three Dances, written for two pianos) and attacks the pieces with a nice balance of delicacy and aggression, although compared to the earlier Angel recording of the abovementioned Three Dan…
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 effects) by American composer John Cage. Created in 1946–48 after the composer had been introduced to Indian visual and performing arts, the cycle was intended to represent the so-called permanent emotions—the heroic, the erotic, the wondrous, the comic,…
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, determining the direction of the piece and its use of sudden, percussive attacks on the strings or the body of the instrument. But for all that there is no denying the extreme stamina and concentration required of the performer, and here Herbert Henck e…
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 usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and -- permanently present -- endeavor to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up…
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-founded the International Computer Music Association in 1979, and was a pioneer in the development of granular synthesis. Roads developed the Creatophone, a system for spatial projection of sound in concert, as well as the Creatovox, an expressive new…
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, sculpture and cinema are like. But what does socialist music sound like? Luigi Nono? Eisler? Robert Wyatt? The Ex? Well, all four. and you may add Christian Wolff to the list. Like fellow experimental composers Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, Wolf…
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 spent the rest of his illustrious career coming to terms with them. Madrigals were developed in the 16th century by Adrian Willaert and Cipriano de Rore, which took Petrarch’s agonized images as justification for violating the rules that had guided mus…
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 Haigh before he steps away from music production. The title, Human Remains, was initially based on a painting of the same name by Haigh that is suggestive of an ancient structure resolute in the wake of overwhelming forces. As a metaphor for our curren…
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 Innuits for it since their arrival on Greenland, the continent of ice. At work in this piece is a transposition, inspired by morphologies, of a certain kind of energy onto the relationships between the physical and musical realms. Thanks to his prac…
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 the participation of twice Grammy Awarded jazz legend flutist Paul Horn. The meeting of Laura and Paul was a true miracle that brought amazing fruit. Since 80th "Reflections" captivate the minds of spiritual ambient music fans all over the world. Magic…
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 works.
Frank Perry employs a fascinating array of acoustic instruments, including 400 year old Zen Buddhist Densho bells and a Ming Dynasty Chinese temple bell. He adds various kyeezees (Burmese meditation gongs), Burmese chime bowls, other glass bowls, …
Kristine Scholz Plays Otte And Cage
*In process of stocking* Featuring the Sweden-based pianist, new music pioneer, and former Merce Cunningham-collaborator Kristine Scholz, the album "Scholz plays Otte and Cage" is focusing the music of two composers who over time came to mean a great deal to one another: Hans Otte (1926-2007) and John Cage (1912-1992). On the album, four movements from Otte's seminal work "Das Buch der Klänge" (1979-82) is combined with a stunning interpretation of Cage's "Music for Piano 4-19" (1953). As the ex…
Landmarks
Landmarks offers an immersive, contemplative collaboration between Katelyn Clark and Isaiah Ceccarelli, presenting a suite of works that draw from both ancient and contemporary sound worlds. The duo’s backgrounds in historical keyboard and percussion performance anchor the album, but the project transcends specific genres or traditions. Instead, it crafts a patient, ambient landscape shaped by resonance, modest gesture, and a shared reverence for the act of attentive listening. Throughout the al…
Tehran Dust
Tehran Dust reveals Klaus Lang at his most understated and evocative, presenting a pair of pieces that meditate on the porous boundaries between sound, space, and memory. Eschewing overt drama or visual spectacle, the album envelops the listener in a slow-form exploration of timbre and atmosphere, shaped by microtonal harmony and subtle shifts in instrumental color. What emerges is not simply a display of compositional technique, but an invitation to enter a suspended sonic landscape where each …
The Pankow-Park Sessions
The Pankow-Park Sessions Vol.1 is a striking documentation of collaboration between Ernstalbrecht Stiebler and Tilman Kanitz, offering a series of works that blur distinctions between composition and improvisation in an acoustic setting. These recorded sessions capture the artists’ shared sensitivity to resonance, duration, and the momentary emergence of musical events. Rather than foregrounding virtuosic display or dense structuring, the album cultivates a sense of spaciousness where tones, sil…
Gold
* Digipack CD* The lightning rod for Alabaster DePlume’s luminous follow up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 was personal. “Someone was going through a thing,” says the Mancunian poet-performer. “I said, ‘go forward in the courage of your love’. And then I thought 'yeah, that's what I need to hear as well’.” Gold is a sonorous double album that celebrates the communal act of making music and the relationships that can be explored when you purposefully avoid …
Michael Pisaro-Liu: Radiolarians
Radiolorians (2018) finds Pisaro-Liu drawing inspiration from another gifted observer of this world-in-variation, the German zoologist, naturalist, and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), who promoted and popularized evolutionary thought via extensive monographs and artful renderings of insects, animals, sea creatures, and embryos. For Radiolarians, Pisaro-Liu creates what he terms “transcriptions” of individual radiolaria species depicted in Haeckel’s drawings. Radiolarians comprises fourtee…
World in World
Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their a…
Caspar
This habit some experimental musicians have of applying forced context or stories to what is essentially pure improvised music does sometimes perplex me. Here Janek references Kaspar Hauser with the title and in the sleeve notes. He also states the intention “…to de- and reformulate the idea of beauty”. When referencing the case of Kaspar Hauser, I assume Janek sees himself as “…set free…” from traditional technique, and aims, on this disc at least, to “…redefine by discover[y] and recover the p…