Pure Gaze
“Block is an electro-acoustic and modern instrumental composer whose recorded compositions combine layered, processed wind and string instruments with processed sounds from sections of field recordings she has collected from various natural landscapes. Her performances include minimalistic scored musical sections played live by a quintet accompanied by taped material , often sounds of field recordings, or the same quintet previously recorded and electronically manipulated. block herself “…
More Gloom - More Light
2003 ** "This collaboration hardly needs explanation - Mueller's gorgeous, eerie sound fields are a perfect playground for nmperign's irreverent cooperation. Two extended trio tracks creep between beauty and menace and lend evidence to the rumor that nmperign can be real bullies. Mueller accepts this behavior with aplomb and puts forth a solo track that is as eyebrow-raising as it is understated. nmperign, refusing to be upstaged, finishes the CD with an ante-upping duo track."
City Open To The Nomad
Negative Entropy is a new collaboration between two well established sound artists Michael Prime & Geert Feytons. Michael Prime has a well established solo recording career with many solo releases, but has also worked with Organum, Jim O'Rourke & Morphogenesis. Geert Feytons has been involved with his own project Noise-maker's Fifes for about 15 years now with many releases to credit including sound works for theatrical & ballet pieces in Belgium, France & Italy. 'City Open to the Nomad' present…
Paura
N.A.D.M.A. was officially born between August and the beginning of September 1972 during time spent in a little village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. The identity and musical orientation of the collective centered on the convergence of heterogeneous interests and sensibilities coming from avant-garde jazz experiences liberated by post-free currents, from classical studies, or from musicians also active as visual artists who had cultivated an instrumental practice utilizing spontaneous …
Gyromancy
Mnemonists eventually evolved into the incredible Biota band. Before they did they released a series of LPs, including the art work that surrounds and informs their approach to improvisation. As Mnemonists their work is darker and more ominous than that of Biota, but the process was still the same: post-processing live improvisation to construct larger works that stood on their own two feet as compositional pieces. Think AMM, Organum, Faust; Mnemonists embraced their strategies but created somet…
Triptych of poisoners
2005 release. Milk From Cheltenham is the first in a series of Alga Marghen editions documenting the activities of the It's War Boys underground label, founded by Amos (of The Homosexuals fame) in the late 1970s. The original LP was issued in an edition limited to 300 copies. The material was recorded from 1979 to 1981 but wasn't released until 1983 due to problems with the silkscreened sleeve. The band only put out this record, a real hidden gem. Lepke said that he wanted it to sound like …
M’Uoaz
1997 release ** "Japanese bassist Tetsu Saitoh stands out as a new hope from across the ocean. He's the new ray in the sea of bodies that play the same standard fare. These two recordings, released on his own Scissors label, outline the here and now in his present body of work. On "M'uoaz", Tetsu is surrounded by an all-star cast, which includes saxophonist Michel Doneda and percussionist Alain Joule. [Vocalist Antonella Talamonti joins the trio on one track.] The music is rather sparse. Joule i…
Requiem
A new album by Michael Prime who is another prolific sound composer for many years. Being an active member of Morphogenesis he also collaborated with among others: David Jackman/Organum, Jim O'Rourke, Eddie Prevost, David Toop, Adam Bohman. He's also one half of Negative Entropy a collaborational project with G. Feyton (Noise Makers Five). Recorded between December 1998 and December 2000 Requiem is one of his most intense works so far and quite different from his more inviromental studies. Dedic…
Facts for Fiction / Parco delle Rimembranze
Whether he is working in the so-called documentary or so-called fictional mode, with 16mm, 35mm or high-8-video: for Pilz the central issue is our perception and the film or video is a disposition, a condition for the temporal and spatial organization of a reflection. This refers in the first instance to the mere listening and observing, but also to an intuitive sense for encounters with people, for their ways of dealing with the space within which they move and the things that surround them. Th…
Eleven Live Collaborations
Live collaboration between Japanoise legend Merzbow and german artist Achim Wollscheid. Recorded at Spiral Hall, Tokyo.
Merzbear
Author, activist, painter, and sound artist Masami Akita has been at the foreground of experimental music for over twenty-five years. Inspired by psychedelic rock, free jazz, and early electronic composition as well the physical arts (especially Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau), Masami Akita has created a musical language all his own. Merzbear, the sixth Merzbow release in his utterly essential Merz series for Important Records, pulses and pounds with distorted droning guitar feedback, pulsing noise b…
Kilter
"Kilter is significant as a title because it displays Mary Ellen's habit of insisting we remember what, if left to ourselves, we'd be quite happy to forget. She's moved on, compelled like the rest of us to negotiate a strange, often lovely land, in an oddly menacing time. What she writes are signposts in that land, or lanterns which led the way home one night." - Bill Morelock, NPR
"In Parterre transformation works as an almost psychedelic fantasy. Childs juggles a kaleidoscopic assortment of …
The seasons: Vermont
1998 release ** The Seasons: Vermont is a soundscape of Vermont as charted through the changes of its yearly soundings. It is a composition in four parts (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring) for magnetic tape collage with an unspecified live instrumental/vocal ensemble. Though the actual composing of the music was completed between 1980 and 1982, it is the realization of a ten-year composition project. Goldstein listened closely and became attuned to what was the particular sound quality of each sea…
The Sleeping Moustache
This curious quintet makes sounds that recall the glory days of Nurse With Wound: long, shapeshifting collages of psychedelic murk interrupted by random outbursts of industrial clatter, nightmarish drones, deeply bizarre audio mutations and tangible masses of sticky audio goop of impossibly vague origin. The Sleeping Moustache consists of five ten-minute tracks interspersed with five brief interstitial tracks. Everything blends together well because nothing blends together well; forced juxtaposi…
Travelling Light
Lisl Ponger's photographic and cinematic work investigates the circumstances of places and their territorial occupation by the camera, the acquisation of images, the function of photographic and cinematic representation, and the presentation of cultural values. Her works are characterized by that which is no longer present, which refers to that which is already absent. This is a latent component of each of her images and at the same time the particular political stance of her works.
Farrago
The subversive, ironic analysis of systems of social control; pseudo-scientific technical experiments, for example with objects of daily use; and the “manipulation” of our visual habits with the help of technical apparatus – these are central aspects of artistic work of Leo Schatzl.
Rabbit Run
Keith Rowe: tabletop guitar, electronics Thomas Lehn: analogue synthesizer Marcus Schmickler: digital synthesizer, computer
Dial: log-rhythm
Two concerts of experimental improvisation from Eddie Prevost and Christian Wolff, two giants of conceptual improvisation and composition, recorded at Ikletick in London in 2015 and at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2016; with superb pacing and brilliant execution, these dialogs between keyboard and percussive instruments explore unique sound worlds with depth, inquisitiveness, and a sense of wonder.
"The set documents two concerts - 1, recorded at Iklectik in London in Septembe…
Live at the LU
Recorded in May of 2002, almost a year after Fennesz' surprisingly successful (commercially) release, Endless Summer, one might have expected that this pairing would produce an intriguing collision of opposing forces. On the one hand you have all the pop-influenced, steamily melodic and erotic explorations that Fennesz had developed in the prior years. Countering that, one could readily imagine Keith Rowe as saboteur, finding rifts in the smooth mass to deviously penetrate and deflate. This does…
s/t
ErstLive is a new series of releases from Erstwhile Records, documenting notable live sets associated with the label. The discs are designed to simulate a concert experience, each in the same template design using two colors chosen by the musicians involved, with a photo of the concert on the back cover. Each will be in an edition of 800 CDs and not reprinted. The initial releases will be chosen from the AMPLIFY 2004 festival which took place in Cologne and Berlin in May 2004. ErstLive …