Maggot Brain #8 (Mar/Apr/May 2021) (Magazine)
The cover feature is an epic, really long timeline of images and interview with the modern king of arts portrait photography, Michael Lavine; Amazing archival images by Gail Butensky and reflections on Pavement + what we think is the band's first new interview in a decade in anticipation of their reunion shows and events later this year. Tom Scharpling talks about prog rock with Matt Berry; A lengthy interview with the SF-based dreamy pop band Cindy by editor Mike McGonigal; Reuben Radding's kil…
HAN BENnInK
This is a softcover, hand-bound 140-page art book showcasing Han Bennink's visual art, designed by Irma Boom. It features a retrospective in book form of Han's visual art through the years. The 8th of October 2017 marked the official release of the book and to celebrate this the Kranenburgh Museum in Bergen, NL opened a unique exhibition of Han's creative output, featuring a "total artwork"Ê that unites music, rhythm, organization and visual art. Drawings, photographs, assemblies, installations …
Overtone Singing: Physics and Metaphysics of Harmonics in East and West
In Overtone Singing, ethnomusicologist and singer Mark van Tongeren provides a fascinating insight into the timeless and universal aspects of sound and vibration. Grounded in a decade-long study of Asian music, he draws upon various fieldwork experiences, interviews with eastern and western musicians, in addition to the work of numerous scholars. He presents a multidisciplinary vision on sound that runs from World and contemporary music to the science of acoustics and perception, to music philos…
The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz (Book)
The Instant Composers Pool and Improvisation Beyond Jazz contributes to the expansion and diversification of our understanding of the jazz tradition by describing the history and practice of one of the most important non-American jazz groups: The Instant Composers Pool, founded in Amsterdam in 1967.
The Instant Composers Pool describes the meaning of "instant composition" from both a historical and ethnographic perspective. Historically, it details instant composition’s emergence from the encoun…
Mishakosmos: The Music of Misha Mengelberg (Book)
The first official book of Misha Mengelberg compositions, hardcover and professionally spiral-bound, 250 pages, featuring more than 75 pieces of Misha's music ready to play or otherwise engage with, designed for fans, teachers, students, and especially the performing musician. Curated and collated by Michael Moore, the list of tunes includes Blues After Piet, Peer's Counting Song, the Rollos, Gare Guillemins, Samba Zombie, Who's Bridge, and lots more, check the sidebar images for screenshots of …
Landscape and Voice
Black Truffle present Landscape and Voice, a radical new work (and rare vinyl release) from major Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda. Undoubtedly one of the most influential artists working with location recordings since the 1990s, Tsunoda's work possesses a rigorously searching quality that sets him apart from his contemporaries. Tsunoda is known to many listeners for the subtle atmospheric poetry of his early Extract from Field Recording Archive series, which focused on vibrations recorded …
VOCAL Adventures Free Improvisation in Sound, Space, Spirit and Song (Book)
“These Vocal Adventures chart a decades-long exploration of soundscapes – ones produced by the outside world but most prominently those created through free improvisation in music. The expedition into this realm of musical experience and expression has taken the author across oceans and continents, with diverse musical encounters providing invaluable sources of inspiration and a wealth of learning and teaching opportunities while enriching her own ideas and approaches along the way. This book as…
A Slightly Curving Place (Book)
Softcover, English, 180 pages, A Slightly Curving Place asks what it means to listen to the past and its absence which remains. It responds to the practice of acoustic archaeologist Umashankar Manthravadi, whose life and work are a history of sound and technology through the second half of the twentieth century. As a self-taught acoustic archaeologist, he has been building ambisonic microphones since the 1990s to measure the acoustic properties of premodern performance spaces. Comprising a range…
We Have Delivered Ourselves From the Tonal - Of, Towards, On, For Julius Eastman
2022 Repress * Softcover, English, 260 pages, B/W*An absolutely stunning achievement, “We Have Delivered Ourselves From the Tonal – Of, Towards, On, For Julius Eastman” - published by Archive Books and SAVVY Contemporary - gathers a collection of essays, librettos, lyrics, memories, photos, personal anecdotes by musicians, visual artists, researchers and archivers that pays homage to the work and life of African-American composer, musician, performer, activist Julius Eastman. Clocking in at 264 …
Entropies And Mimetic Patterns
**CD edition** Gustavo Costa is a musician and an artist with numerous talents guided by a constant exploration of the limits of listening. He is a drummer, an instrument maker, a creator of new sounds, a sound sculptor, a teacher, a programmer, and a generous booster of the contemporary music and sound art that is made in Portugal nowadays. After 30 years of an intense connection with the musical universe, Gustavo decided to present his first solo album with the instrument he plays since his ch…
Empty Words Part IV
* Rare original copies from the 80s* Comes in gatefold cover. A double LP set of John Cage performing his "Empty Words Part IV" at the Römerkeller, Cologne, on September 4, 1984. By this point in this piece, there are just collections of phonemes, no recognisable words. Truly extreme stuff.The cover is overall dominated by white, text in black, with a photography of John Cage on the back. Inside left there's an extract of the work. Inside right there's a photography of the first manuscript of Em…
Song for Any Voice(s) and Instrument(s) (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * This score by Dick Higgins consists of letters and arrows arrayed across one sheet of musical notation paper. A cover sheet provides the instructions for the four-minute, fifty-two second performance, stating that any number of people may interpret the score simultaneously if they do so independently of one another. Guidelines for interpretation are fairly specific, but the piece is different every time it is perform…
Piano Sonata #2 (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * After folding Something Else Press in 1974 due to financial difficulties, founder Dick Higgins would move on to other publishing projects for the remainder of his life and career, mostly under the imprint of Unpublished Editions and later Printed Editions. From 1980-1983, Higgins produced a remarkable series of publications using the format of common sheet music books. Within are experimental musical scores and instru…
Variations on a Natural Theme for Orchestra (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * Variations on a Natural Theme (1982), as in Dick Higgins words, is a large orchestral work, in some ways a companion to the Ten Ways, since this time it uses gamuts (in this case selected by the individual musicians) and photo derivations made from a female model; she was insistent that she not be recognizable, since she was a teacher and was afraid that it would be damaging to her professionally if it were known that…
Sonata for Prepared Piano (Book)
*Rare original arist' book - Music scores and instruction for performance* Sonata for Prepared Piano (1982) is a short work which, again, uses photoderivations as parts of the notation—this time nature with incomplete figure photographs, mostly obscured by the natural objects around them. (Dick Higgins, "The Strategy of Each of My Books" from Horizons, 1984)
"Four movements make up this thirteen minute work. Each uses a very different method of interpreting its materials, a set of four phot…
Twenty-Six Mountains for viewing the Sunset from (Book)
Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance ** Twenty-Six Mountains for Viewing the Sunset From (1981) is for a small ensemble, including three dancers. It is a different kind of notation, not using photographs but using an indication of what kinds of tex- tures and patterns are desired. The title comes from a trip I took late one night with a teenager from Vermont, who brought me to some of his favorite places to view the sunset from; it was magical evening…
Ten Ways of Looking at a Bird for Violin and Harpsichord (Book)
Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance Ten Ways of Looking at a Bird (1981)...is a playful variation on the name of a poem by Wallace Stevens whose work I have always admired, though, goodness knows, there is no modern poet more different from myself. This is a piece for violin and harpsichord; the harpsichord part is developed in “live time” (that is, during the performance) from what the violinist is doing, according to a set of rules. The violinist uses mu…
Piano Album. Short piano pieces (Book)
* Rare original artist' book - Music scores and instructions for performance * Although Dick Higgins is best known as a performance poet and artist, his creative life began with music, he studied with composers Henry Cowell and John Cage, and he has even made a phonograph record of compositions by himself and by Erik Satie. In fact, some of his Happenings and Fluxus works are essentially musical, such as the 1965 “Opera a Gogo” Hrusalk. For him music sometimes seems to be a matter of behavior ( …
Blue Iris, Black Rose by Burroughs and Ira expert Ian MacFadyen
Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Ira Cohen was born to deaf parents and instead of just developing speech, began developing his vision early, learning to spell with his fingers. In 1961 he took a Yugoslavian freighter to Tangiers where he lived for four years and published Gnaoua, a magazine devoted to exorcism, introducing the work of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs and other members of the Interzone mob.
In 1970 he wen…
Live New Departures 1960-1967 (Ephemera Map)
*A numbered edition of 26 copies* Live New Departures featured some of the UK’s finest modern jazz musicians together with poets Pete Brown (co-writer/Cream) and Michael Horovitz (Britain’s Beat Laureate). Live New Departures 1960-1967 ephemera map. An A 5 envelope filled with Live New Departures ephemera. Facsimile prints of programs, selections of letters, press sheets, flyers and much more.
Live New Departures was a series of poetry, folk and jazz happenings - where interaction between artis…