Music + one
Music + One, created in collaboration with myles boisen, is a collection of solo improvisations that is meant to be played along with by improvisers. The instructions given to the participants before recording were simple: improvise for 3 to 4 minutes, as if you were playing music with your shadow. This was to allow room for others to improvise with the recording. To test this, we invited the musicians to play along with one of the tracks at the 21Grand Performance Space & Art Gallery on Septemb…
Bringing up baby
rare UK album from 1981. Musique Concret were an obscur London duo composed by Jim Friedman & Michael Mullen with a short lived musical history : their sole album 'bringing up baby' was originally released on Steven Stapleton's label United Dairies and there is also one short track on compilation. This is a great experimental power electronics works with the use of many delay and echo, tape recorder manipulations, collages, rhythms box, noise, and others studio trickery, naturally close to Nurse…
Rome 1968
The original MEV (Allan Bryant, Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, Joh Phetteplace), recorded in the spring of 1968 in Rome. "Vault find recordings of a MEV concert from Spring of 1968, featuring the original lineup of Allan Bryant (synthesizers), Alvin Curran (percussion, trumpet), Frederic Rzewski (percussion), and Jon Phetteplace (cello, percussion). Booklet reprints prime Bryant rants on church/state separation ('TH' 10 GRAETST AMERICNZ WR AGENST ORGANYZD RLIJN (OR)'), questionable medical prac…
Silver Pyramid
Matchless Recordings presents an historic recording. Eddie Prévost's Silver Pyramid performed by Music Now Ensemble directed by Keith Rowe in London in 1969. Includes Cornelius Cardew, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe and others. The music is continuous. Time codes have been inserted at intervals to assist retrieval. Pre-Scratch Orchestra Ensemble formed by / for the occasion of the four day 'Music Now' event at the Roundhouse, 1969. The motley crew perform Eddie Prévost's 'composition' 'Silver Pyramid'. En…
Deep voices
Recorded live during the "Total Music Meeting '77", Berlin, Quartier Latin on November 2nd and 3rd by Bernhardt Arndt.
Charivari music
The second album by Morphogenesis finds the British improvising group continuing its exploration of unrecognizable sounds. Between the electronics that all group members play and the homemade instruments of Michael Prime (water machine and biofeedback) and Clive Graham (amplified springs), the listener is somewhat disoriented, adrift in a sound field of unknown origins. However, the music evolves in a very organic fashion, without the sudden harsh transitions that characterize some contemporary …
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…
Still Valley
Re-release of the LP version of "Still Valley", including one extra track. One of Mirror's finest works recorded by Andrew Chalk (Ora, Ferial Confine), Christoph Heemann (HNAS) and Jim O'Rourke (Sonic Youth, Gastr Del Sol, Illusion Of Safety) between May 2002 - January 2005. This album is a beautiful study of slowly changing drones, like a film shot in slow motion. One noticeable difference between this and other quiet Mirror affairs is the presence of oscillating pulses. These analog tones occa…
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 …
Metal Box
Mike Cooper: For the past 40 has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker…
Eclipses
Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone; Jean Pallandre, sound manipulation; Vladimire Skoda, Sculpture and drawings; The Tarn river, natural sounds. Recorded 1992 at the Moulins Albigeois, France, co-existent with an exhibition of metal sculptures by Vladimire Skoda and adjacent to the swollen River Tarn; recorded by Jean Pallandre and then re-mixed in the studio by Jean Pallandre and Michel Doneda to create 'an electroacoustic image of this moment'. 120 special editions of the compact disc were produ…
Les 120 jours
For Les 120 Jours, Michel Chion, Lionel Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger assembled a common bank of many original sounds which each of them had worked on, transformed and re-composed in his own style. This gives the listener the ability to hear a musical language in the form of collage-citations, which, for this occassion, they also named a 'concrete diversion'. Musique concrète composed in 1997/98 for the Festival Musique Action, 16 May 1998, at Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France.Limited edition of 100…
On n’arrête pas le regret
LAST COPIES, already out of print - Beatiful early compositions for the well known INA composer: 'Sambas pour un jour de pluie' (1985), 'La machine à passer le temps' (1972), 'On n'arrête pas le regret' (1975)
Preludes a la vie
LAST COPIES, already out of print: Préludes à la vie (Preludes to Life) combines pieces from 1972 to 1991 in two electronic operas. In Le prisonnier du son (The Prisoner of Sound) a single human voice tells the story of a lone character trapped in a world of manipulated sounds. The title piece is a series of technical exercises in the possibilities of musique concrète.
This second album on empreintes DIGITALes, as with the first one, consists of very different works which are quite separated in …
Cellomusiken 1970-71
'Deutsche Landschaften' (1970). 'Cellokonzert' (1971). Michael von Biel (violoncello).Booklet languages: English, German (16 pages in total with digipak).
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…
55 pas de la ligne au N°3
Long-time San Francisco based sound artist, internationally known from his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, releases his first full length solo work. 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 is a microscopic study of dense sonic landscapes buried within antiquated turntable motors. Gendreau, an acoustician by profession, utilizes high sensitivity accelerometers to map detailed frequencies from a variety of old turntable motors and mechanics. This is a rare exhibition of the creative potential wit…
Live in Geneva
As can be gleaned from the title, this is a recording of Merzbow live in Switzerland. Abrasive noise, big rhythms and (to be expected) and onslaught of noise. Recorded at Cave 12 on 10th March 2005, there is apparently no editing involved on this release.
Alexipharmaca
Alexipharmaca, Mem1’s second full-length album, is a collection of improvised works that capture the allure of the forbidden and dangerous, and the modern fascination with things ancient and shrouded in mystery. The album’s title is taken from a set of poems written by Nicander of Colophon, a Greek pharmacologist (fl. 197-130 B.C.E.), whose text deals with plant and animal poisons and their antidotes. Mem1’s music intoxicates with its rich textures and lavish soundscapes, but — like a beautifu…
Studio one
Michael Bullock (contrabass & feedback), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet) and Vic Rawlings (cello & surface electronics). "One strike isn't enough. This album struck me like a big wave, a wave that makes you lose your consciousness and equilibrium for several minutes, leaving you wondering what just happened to you during this elusive lapse of time. Probably this is exactly the purpose of this trio, where as their music draws rust from your very skin, suburban rust, from those big suburbs where the indivi…