Jazz /
The First Two Gigs
An improvising quartet featuring four of the finest and most innovative musicians, who have extended the ranges of their respective instruments - piano, saxophones, harp and double bass - into new, uncharted territories. As well as having exceptional techniques, they are all virtuoso listeners, so that these first two performances as a quartet sound as if they have being working together for years. 68 minutes.
Solo in Japan
This is a document of one of the solo gigs by the modern sax legend and presumed bearer of the hallowed flame of Black American free jazz when he made his first trip to Japan.
50 ballets
Drums duo with Nicolas Field and Alexandre Babel. Nicolas Field, drummer. Performs music combining notation, improvisation and electronic processes. Studies in jazz, live electronics and composition in Geneva, den Haag and Amsterdam. Solo performances in den Haag, Amsterdam and Geneva. Alexandre Babel, born in Geneva. Studies drums in New York, classical percussion at the Geneva conservatorium and piano at home. Gets involved in different kinds of notated-unnotated contemporary music projects. H…
Blood lightning 2007
It has been purported that this release on the mighty No Fun imprint finds the estimable C. Spencer Yeh at the very summit of his powers, making his finest, most complete statement yet. As with the other Burning Star Core release from this week (Operator Dead... Post Abandoned on No Quarter) Yeh is joined by Robert Beatty, Gameboy records noisenik Mike Shiflet and Trevor Tremaine on drums. While Operator Dead is characterised by a near-ecstatic interpolation of krautrocking dynamics and wide ope…
Schnee live
ErstLive 003 is from the duo of Burkhard Stangl and Christof Kurzmann, titled 'schnee_live', the final show on the last night of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. Stangl and Kurzmann began working as a duo in late 1999, releasing Schnee in 2000, and playing numerous concerts over the past four years throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. schnee_live documents how much their duo has changed since the initial recording of Schnee, which was the first time they ever played together as a duo.
eh
One of the central aesthetics of the Erstwhile label is the counterpositioning of electronic and acoustic improvisers. Rarely has that been more starkly, and beautifully, achieved than on the opening and closing tracks of eh by guitarist Stangl and turntablist/electronicist Dieb13 (Dieter Kovacic). Stangl is one of a handful of contemporary free improv musicians who happily forays into tonal, even melodic spheres, conjuring up a reduced version of John Fahey, perhaps. On "eeeh", his delicate str…
Experience the magic
Blistering CD of live performances recorded at CBGB in New York in 1992.
Barbed wire maggots
Back in stock, CD reissue of what was the 4th Borbetomagus album, originally released on LP by Agaric way back in 1983. The trio of Jim Sauter (reeds), Don Dietrich (reeds) & Donald Miller (guitar). Recorded at In-Roads, NYC. May 7, 1982. "Barbed Wire Maggots is a motherfucker, even now, 23 years after it was recorded. Recorded at In-Roads on Mercer Street, BWM documents a gorgeous evening of extreme sonic dialogue. Sauter and Dietrich's reeds skinny-dip into virtual classicist free mode at time…
Sauter, Dietrich, Miller
CD re-issue of Borbetomagus' 3rd album originally released in 1982. This recording, compiled from concerts in 1981 and 1979, explores the range of sound that this trio could generate. It is best played at high volume, for this is the only way that the subtleties of the music can get through the sheer barrage of sound. This is music to scare your pets; at first listen this record may be mistaken for random noise. A closer listen will reveal that the sound is tightly controlled. The art happ…
Sauter, Dietrich, Miller, Doherty
Expanded reissue of the debut Borbetomagus album from 1980 with the trio of Sauter, Dietrich and Miller further bolstered by Brian Doherty on electronics. These early recordings have a beautifully corrosive classical avant garde/Industrial edge that is as bluntly beguiling as low-grade splatter. Also features a winning shot of Donald Miller's legendary mullet on the back as well as the previously unreleased "Last Concordat" - bonus! The trio of Jim Sauter (reeds), Don Dietrich (reeds) and Donald…
Love's dream
Reissue of this 1974 Emanem LP, with bonus tracks. Hard-swinging Free Jazz recorded in a club in Paris, featuring original tunes by the vastly under-rated Bradford (cornet) with Trevor Watts (alto sax), Kent Carter (bass) & John Stevens (drums). Reissue of Emanem 3302 with extra material. Recorded Nov. 1973.
Etwa
Early alto & soprano saxophone solo Recorded in 2004 inside two french chapels. "There are no tricks here, first and foremost ; Bertrand Gauguet has simply developed a weird array of techniques for his alto and soprano, which he exploits via close-miking. There are seven untitled tracks in 42-minutes, each one relentlessly exploring a different technical area : the restrained breath noises of the opening track, the superb low-end growl of the fourth, the chasm-like whooshing of the third, or the…
Short in the U.K.
Steve Beresford, keyboards, small trumpet; Dennis Palmer, synthesizers, voice; Bob Stagner, drums, percussion; Roger Turner, drums, percussion. The pencil - a history (09.04), Trees without dogs (00.33), Our world as we know it (05.24), Name without a street (00.13), Bulldog eating a wasp [Waspers] (14.42), Matzoh spectacles [thank you Lol Coxhill] (01.27), Earthling-a-ding (03.39), Faster than $ sound (11.23), Standing on a whale (05.53), Fearing puffins (05.03).Recorded at The Place, London in…
Shadow company
Anthony Braxton invited Milo Fine to travel half way across the USA so they could make some music together for the very first time. The result was the extended free improvisation (with gaps) which is heard complete on this CD. Braxton used four saxophones, and Fine two clarinets, piano and drums. Recorded 2/25/04.
Alphea
Alphea was formed in Hamburg 1991. The duo has performed in jazz clubs, art galleries and on jazz and contemporary music festivals, playing music structured exclusively by their own concepts.Hannes Wienert (alto and soprano saxophones, trumpet) studied visual arts. Peter Niklas Wilson (double bass) has performed and recorded with John Tchicai, Marion Brown, Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton.
Lidingö
Lidingö, a summit between innenklavier specialist Andrea Neumann and percussionist Burkhard Beins, is altogether knottier and gnarlier. Part of the important Berlin scene, the two play together in Phosphor as well as with Sven-Åke Johansson. Beins is a masterful player, often eschewing struck percussion in favor of rubbing, stroking, and scraping, only occasionally landing a gargantuan thudding bass drum for example. Neumann uses only the strings, resonating board, and metal frame of a piano - i…
The Inexhaustible Document
Recorded live in London's beautiful Union Chapel in 1987. The organic control of sound on this is spectacular - pretty much a must for serious listeners worldwide.. Free imrovisation in the hands of Amm valorises the unknown, combining unpredictabiity with contexual coherence and the implicit drama of emotion and meaning in play. By opening out the moment it reveals the inherent wilderness of living processes that we lose sight of in an environment of over-determination, where the planned and th…
AMMMusic
A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label's founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager, Peter Jenner (the title of Pink Floyd's 'Flaming' is a tribute to AMM's 'Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset'). Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British ja…
Aso
Ami Yoshida and Christof Kurzmann are both well-respected artists within the international community, each performing in a wide range of contexts from abstract to pure pop. Both are best known for their long-running duos, Yoshida for Cosmos (with Sachiko M) and Kurzmann for schnee (with Burkhard Stangl). This project finds them in far less comfortable territory, and a s o is the outcome of two years of hard work.Ami Yoshida strives to create a pure sound, abstracting her voice until it becomes a…
Spiritual voice
'Amazing improvisation joining jazz tones with electronic sounds, embellished with Tamaru's production'.