Tusk
Back in stock. 'Tusk wields its classic rock appellation like a talisman, but it still owes more to the lava-like flow of Repent, the trio's voice-free collection of in-concert jams recorded in 1996, than it does to any collection of rock songs that I've ever heard. They get some of the component pieces right; there's Robbie Yeats' inexorably driving drumming, Bruce Russell and Michael Morley's grinding rhythm guitar riffs, and Morley's vocal melodies that ooze out of the static-ridden ha…
Whitehouse
There's not much in the way of commentary or anything about that, though, so either call it a wry Kiwi joke at the Yanks' expense or just something that looked nice enough to use. Consisting of six tracks of unsurprisingly varying length - fairly short or totally long - in ways The White House is Dead C as per usual and in others a bit of a diversion from the usual form. Notably, there's evidence of relatively more production - while it's hardly hard-disk billion-track digital sound or the like,…
Vain, erudite and stupid
"Disliked in their native country of New Zealand, associated with drug-assisted hallucinations and blackouts, and evidently crazy enough to plan their own deaths, the trio of Michael Morely, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell also happen to be more brilliant than most bands they're compared to. This collection is superb: competent enough to entice new listeners and pull in folks that already love their music and want more.
The first disc covers everything from their first album up and until 1994. …
Text Of Light
All mixed 2003-04. All performances NYC venues 2001-02.
Metal box
Incredible 3 CD set spanning the years from Text of Light's first gig in 1999 through to 2005. This is the project of Lee Ranaldo, Alan Licht, William Hooker, Christian Marclay, Tim Barnes, Ulrich Kreiger and DJ Olive. They perform live to a backdrop of Stan Brakhage films, and no set is ever the same. The first 1000 copies of this lavish set will be issued in a special Metal Box with the 'ToL' logo embossed on the lid, as both a tribute to, and a pastiche of PiL. The first 1000 copies will also…
World as will II
Legendary composers Zbigniew Karkowski and Tetsuo Furudate complete their second installment of World As Will. This powerful collaboration results in a furiously intense music with Wagner-esque orchestrations and instrumentation with vigorous electronic manipulations, voice and mastery. A truly epic piece of work.
2006 duos
These five duos mark Terry Day's return to small group improvising after an over-long absence caused by ill health. He is mainly playing his homemade bamboo pipes, but also uses his voice (reciting two poems and otherwise) as well as an echo toy and a cold water bottle. His partners are Charlotte Hug (viola & voice), Rhodri Davies (harp), Phil Minton (voice), Hannah Marshall (cello) and John Russell (guitar). The duo with Hug comes from the 2006 Freedom Of The City festival.
Wind keeps even dust away
'Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) professes a romantic attachment to the notion that the world is falling apart, a terminal process only enhanced by the intrinsic obsolescence from the output of consumer culture. Yet, this Australian sound artist is not one to wallow in the nihilism of such poetics, rather he counterpoints these thoughts with the allegorical implications of his nom de plume. Tarab is an Arabic word that doesn't readily translate into English, but it might be best defined as the ecstatic …
s/t
First CD from the quartet featuring Tetuzi Akiyama, Yoshihide Otomo and Toshimaru Nakamura under the guidance of Taku Sugimoto. Two long and extremely minimal acoustic/electric guitar tracks.
Tengu et Kitsune
2006 release ** "Sparse mandolin music (very slow & deliberate plucking reminiscent of Derek Bailey), with a couple spurts of electronic noise throughout the duration."
Chamber music
Taku Sugimoto has been one of the most important musicians on the improv-front for some years now with releases on Erstwhile, Grob, A Bruit Secret, Improvised Music From Japan and many other labels. Redefining guitar music with his ultra minimal way of playing, the most extreme endpoint for this was the Taku Sugimoto Guitar Quartet album released earlier on Bottrop-Boy. On Chamber Music he puts the guitar aside and composes 3 pieces for violin, cello and piano. He recreates the same sustained so…
Violin solo1980 nyc
A previously unreleased solo violin performance by the founder of the Taj Mahal Travellers and legendary Fluxus conceptualist. Active since the 1960s, Takeisha Kosugi has more recently served as the music director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe. He is currently involved with the composing and performance of impromptu music and electronic multimedia music. To be brief, Kosugi is one of the most important and influential Japanese experimental avant-gardists, alongside the likes of Yasunao T…
Violin Improvisations
Originally released in 1989 as Violin Solo. Sept. 3-4, '89. Takehisa Kosugi's improvisations, both with violin and miscellaneous sounding objects, have a sense of emerging from the bottom of a spiritual unconscious. From this place comes a music based more on the feeling of sounds than conscious arrangement. Memory, physical action, tactile perceptions, environmental conditions, and awareness of subconscious microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes inform his work as much as the intention to assembl…
Invocation of the aural slave gods
Exciting new studio album featuring Annie Stubbs (LUSTMORD, SPK) on vocals + percussion and Swiss Aktionist Joke Lanz (SCHIMPFLUCH-GRUPPE) on noise toys, with conversions of Cabaret Voltaire's Nag Nag Nag and Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home A Heartache.
Broken. Distant. Fragrant.
A few years ago, Tu m' and Steve Roden began a correspondence. This led to the idea of a collaborative project. This led to bedroom audio experiments in American and Italy. This led to CDRs being sent through the mail to cross over the ocean. Tu m' used Steve Roden's audio as the working material for several works. Steve Roden used Tu m's audio as the working material for several works. This project contains a bit of both. Limited to 500 copies. Broken Distant Fragrant is a collaboration that wa…
3 pianos
Three grand pianists on three grand pianos. The presence of three good pianos at Gateway Studio allows one to hear three of the best improvising pianists working together. Most of the music is three-way improvisation, but there are also three short duos, and three pieces with restricting rules. 66 minutes.
The Suncrows Fall and Tree
Italian guitarist Stefano Pilia is best known as a member of concrete rock outfit 3/4HadBeenEliminated. He has also been releasing solo recordings over the past few years. 2005's Healing Memories and Other Scattering Times saw Pilia interrogating his basic musical language, framing various playerly tactics, shuttling between guitar drones, melancholy melodies and post-Durutti Column pointillism. For The Suncrows fall and tree, he shifts his focus to composition with two untitled tracks. Pilia re…
Synaesthetic videos from Austria
A DVD release celebrating the extraordinary young video and electronic music scene in Austria. These are radical avant-garde works that emerge logically from modern electronic music. The images sometimes tie in with the earliest pure abstract avant-garde films, but reveal themselves in everything to be exponents of contemporary digital technology.
33 1/3
2024 stock 33 1/3 is Smegma''s tribute to their 20th century avant-garde and out-jazz influences. The title is one part reference to the happy revival of passionate vinyl listening in the 21st century and one part celebration of their long hard slog of 33 1/3 years of being one of the most free thinking and original American underground groups. Their focus, ideas and determination has brought them through more than three decades and to this day they remain unparalleled, original and highly influ…