Trois Songes
Three 5.1-channel works Gilles Gobeil composed at the ZKM in Karlsruhe between 2005 and 2007, each on a literary argument: the Desert Fathers, Dante's Paradise and an unshot Tarkovsky script on E T A Hoffmann, with René Lussier's daxophone throughout. DVD-Audio.
Les Ponts de l’Espace
Six works by Laurie Radford from 2001 to 2006, reworked for 5.1 surround: wintry street recordings set against an invented wall instrument, Slovenian bells and trumpet, and his own instrumental music melted down like wax in a bronze casting. DVD-Audio.
Exils
Six works by Annette Vande Gorne from 1983 to 2006 on six kinds of exile, from a Debussy threnody and the vocal suite Vox Alia to texts by Kamal Ben Hameda and Saint-John Perse and music for a play on Van Gogh. DVD-Audio.
Miroirs Obscurs
Andrew Lewis’s four sound portraits of the coast of Anglesey, from the lighthouse bell and plainchant of Penmon Point to the jets over Llanddwyn, plus Danses acousmatiques, a nine-movement suite on space and movement made in 2007. DVD-Audio.
Environs
Jonty Harrison’s eight-channel works from 1999 to 2007, centred on ReCycle, his four-part cycle on the classical elements built from a garden roller, car engines fitted with accelerometers, a parachute fall and running water. DVD-Audio.
Lieu-Temps
Two 5.1 works by John Young from 2005 about his parents meeting in wartime Forlì: the Bourges-winning Ricordiamo Forlì, built from war correspondence archives and his father’s memories, and Arrivederci for the ensemble Stroma and the Duomo bells. DVD-Audio.
Horizons du Silence
Québec composer Martin Leclerc’s Horizons du Silence: six works from 2000 to 2005, every one a Hugh Le Caine Award winner, drawing on Enki Bilal, Thoreau and Neruda, with a piece for amplified trumpet played by Pascal Leprohon. DVD-Audio.
Mâts
Eight works from 1996 to 2004 by the Argentine composer Elsa Justel, made in Paris, Bourges, Barcelona, Berlin and Nevers, from an Andean bull’s-horn trumpet in Mâts to a homage built on Pierre Schaeffer’s voice and a piano invaded by a cat goddess.
… et Autres Utopies
Five acousmatic “fantasies” by Francis Dhomont from 1989 to 2005, among them a Lautréamont ocean reworked for Bourges, the three-part Chroniques de la lumière and Voyage-miroir, a reversed and shrunken replica of … mourir un peu.
Forêt Profonde
Francis Dhomont’s acousmatic melodrama Forêt profonde (1994-96), a 58-minute reading of fairy tales after Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, in thirteen sections that each borrow a colour from Schumann’s Kinderszenen.
Électro Clips
Twenty-five electroacoustic miniatures of three minutes each, commissioned in 1990 for the Montréal musiques actuelles/New Music America festival from composers in Québec, Canada, the USA and Mexico, among them Dhomont, Westerkamp, Oswald, Gobeil and Álvarez. 1996 reissue.
Les Méandres du Rêve
Serge Arcuri’s dream cycle in seven pieces from 1982 to 1992, tape works and mixed works for oboe, harp, horn and percussion, played by Lawrence Cherney, Erica Goodman, Francis Ouellet and Trevor Tureski and recorded in Toronto in 1992.
the Religious Experience
VERY LAST COPIES AROUND Stasis and stability are nowhere to be found here. Instead, an ever-changing dialogue between structure and chaos shifts from one performer to the next, never resting long before launching again into shuddering flight. Accoustic instruments and vocals form a familiar reference point, but studio treatments take the music into psychedelic and cinematic realms. In their words, “Improvisation is a way to experiment without thinking. When our improvisations ‘work’, the music j…
Theology
"The CD "Theology" contains the source recordings used for the LP "The Religious Experience", and is limited to 450 copies. The two albums and their music should be considered as mirror opposites. Where theology is a completely artificial system of belief, a religious experience is the immediate experience of the thing itself. Likewise, the music on "Theology" is complex and elaborate, while "The Religious Experience" is much simpler, going directly to the heart of the material compri…
Hotel paral.lel
"Re-mastered at Piethopraxis in Köln, July 2007. "Hotel Paral.lel", originally released in September 1997 by Mego, was Christian Fennesz's debut solo album. Following up from the EP "Instrument", it was an investigation into the sonic possibilties residing in guitar based digital music, recorded just before mobile computing devices became the norm. A far more darker and experimental work than what was to follow. Freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient textures create a time…
Il Fiore Della Bocca
Produced in 2003 for the sound art department of a german radio station, "Il Fiore della Bocca" is one of the most controversial text sound compositions by Alessandro Bosetti. Composed exclusively with the voices of physically and mentally handicapped people, the piece displays an impressive richness, depth and variety of sound, covering the full range of musical possibilities of the spoken voice; from heavily processed to completely unprocessed, naked and direct. The piece has an ambiguous natu…
Parr(A)cousmatique
Guitarist Arturo Parra’s project of mixed music: Francis Dhomont, Gilles Gobeil, Robert Normandeau, Stéphane Roy and Mauricio Bejarano each wrote an acousmatic piece, and Parra composed a guitar part over it, played on an unprepared guitar.
The Tail of the Tiger
** VERY LAST COPIES** As is the case with La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music, David Hyke's Harmonic Choir and Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Band, Roberto Laneri has had a life long penchant for the droning mysteriosa of the Sound Current and with the Prima Materia ensemble he has expressed it in a disciplined, expansive and singular way (Terry Riley). In 1977 an obscure Italian private label issued a record that sounded like it came from outer space. A long and dense trance-inducing d…
Sintesi da un diario
Angelo Petronella is an avowed devotee of acousmatics, a musique concrete practice that encourages as much disassociation as possible between the sound on record and the source it was taken from. And though many of Sintesi da un diario's sounds are culled from such well-worn locales as children's playgrounds, country landscapes, and factory floors, repeated exposure reveals a composer intent on draining any familiarity in the pursuit of a total removal of all convention. Birdsong is pulled taut,…
Automatic Writing
A 1996 CD compiling three early Ashley works from the years 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental and out-there works. A classic electronic music collection and an ideal intro into the somewhat foreboding oeuvre of Robert Ashley's recorded works. The title piece is a 46-minute classic from 1979, which rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense. Steven Stapleton's commentary upon this summarizes the intense vibe of this recording: "A Missing Sense was originally co…