Sound Art / All styles

Extracts from the Farewell performance at Kings College, London 1978. Jgjgjgjg formed at the  London Sound Poetry Festival in June 1976. Reissue of tape on Balsam Flex. 200 copiesIn those days a number of British poets were producing works influenced by radical international currents in sound art, conceptual art, visual poetry and performance art. Bob Cobbing (1920-2002) was a central figure in this continuation of the ‘British Poetry Revival’, a rather loose poetry movement of the 1960s an…

Password is a short radio-play about the art world. Chamber Music is the trio performing Tibetan throat singing, inspired by a recent internet image: the hipster chart of esoteric music. Edition of 80  

A reissue of Antibarbarus, issued as a compact disc in 1998, was the first edition Walter Marchetti released on Alga Marghen. The Antibarbarus cycle of five pieces makes use of original tapes coming from the same recording sessions that originated some of Marchetti's major musical works realized in the '80s. This former series of works presented some homogeneous and untouched sound sources in the "concrete" status of their inner - and necessarily chaotic - level of entropy. Nevertheless this ope…

Original copies, very few available. José Luis Castillejo's The Book of J's was the first book issued by Alga Marghen. It was also the first art book produced by Castillejo in about 20 years; one line of 'J' letters in the center of the page, a continuous frieze running along 400 pages. No essays, no introduction, no two pages the same. A 400 pages hardbound top quality art book (cover cm.24x16) in an edition of 200 copies. Also included in the edition is a free LP, recorded by the author and co…

Art edition, LP edition limited to 80 copies in cardboard box with stamp, also including the original 400-page-creative-book with the same title. A killer reading of José Luis Castillejo's TLALAATALA book by Fernando Millan, recorded in Madrid in 2001. Modern or advanced writing is a direct and independent medium, i.e. it realizes and gives presence to a set of relationships without the need of further dependence (as it happened till now in literature) on other media. Words, syllables, stories, …

This record is a lie and a failure - a triumph and truth. Such is the condition that Henning Christiansen build across his entire career.  One the 20th Century’s most striking and visionary composers - perhaps the most notable of Fluxus’ Danish arm, Christiansen was a radical collectivist as much as an assertive individualist - contradictory and reactionary - possessed by a singular vision which drove him down uncharted paths. Christiansen’s life, with the sprawling body of work it left in its w…

Another crucial excavatio from the elusive The Balsam Flex legendary catalog is now available again thanks to Jan Van Toorn Slowscan imprint. Balsam Flex was a cassette label run by the artist Erik Vonna-Michell in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and evidence of a relatively overlooked moment when a number of London-based British poets were producing work that was influenced by performance art, conceptual art, sound art, text-sound composition, Fluxus, and situationism. Publisher and poet …

4GB Recycled Fiber Wood USB. 24 songs: MP3 (160kbps), WAV (88.2kHz/24bit). 2 hours, 2 minutes. PDF liner notes.Species pluralis: Multiple species appear indeterminate, indifferent, and unstable in-the-last-instance? If no more One than Multiple, then no more “Jarrod Fowler” or “Taku Unami” than et al.? Keywords: Alchemy, Biodynamic Agriculture, Hedgecraft, Human Subservience, Integrated Pest Management, [Species inquirenda: Doubtful identity requiring further investigation? If no more X than Y, …

** Edition of 100 copies** A seminal figure in the history of 20th century avant-garde, yet sinfully overlooked, Wolf Vostell unleashed ideas - those running wild through his debut LP Dé-coll/age Musik, which remain a slap to the face, more than half a century after they were set into play. A founding member of Fluxus, an early instigator of Happenings, an innovator of video art, Vostell was equally one of the most radical and irreverent practitioners in sound that the world has ever known. Firs…

Mid-eighties recordings by Dutch poet and writer Hans Plomp together with musicians and friends. Hans was involved in the Provo movement of the sixties and later on he squatted a village near Amsterdam with friends called Ruigoord, which still exists today. He is also an expert on psychedelics, hence his book 'Uit Je Bol' is a cult classic in The Netherlands. This tape features him reading his poems in English and Dutch. Also included is a recent scandalous interview. 100 copies.

Outstanding visionary stuff from Mexican artist Ariel Guzik – the kind of record that's a great introduction to his practice – and a sound relic from his mindbending Cordiox, a monumental stringed instrument animated by invisible magnetic forces. Cordiox is a four-meter acoustical tower, a hyper sophisticated musical instrument created by Ariel Guzik. In its depths resides a quartz cylinder, which constitutes its central acoustical axis and took up almost half of the budget of this work. Expl…

Solo Voice I – X is the first LP by C Spencer Yeh devoted entirely to the voice. Yeh’s practice has its most obvious precedents in the sound poetry scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s—recalling an outlier group like the Four Horsemen, at their most raw and a-verbal, as much as the circles and canons forged around post-Lettrist France—as well as in figures like Joan La Barbara. Over the past few years, he has moved from virtuosic, intensely physical performances to more focused studies whose specifi…

Restocked, reduced price Performing and visual artist Ben Patterson (born 1934) was a founding member of Fluxus' participatory, do-it-yourself, anticommercialist avant-garde network. While many Fluxus artists, influenced by John Cage's precedent, employed conceptual techniques borrowed from music (e.g., the event score), Patterson's fusion of art and music was informed by his background as a classically trained double-bassist. His "Variations for Double Bass" (1960), for example, was played with…

"The latest LP from veteran fluxus composer Philip Corner. OM Entering. and Once Enterd comprises four previously unreleased recordings with the Barton Workshop, taken from performances in the Netherlands, and South Korea, between 2000-2007. 'Om Entrance which one does....because the performance is a real "passage from the material to the spiritual" unless the "real" world is just as spiritual already which i like to think it is. As perhaps an everyday awareness is already to be entranced which …

200 musicians create over 77 thunderous minutes on 12 tracks of contemporary classical, orchestral, keyboard, noise & experimental music on this retrospective from Jasun Martz, the well known New York artist and composer who has recorded with Michael Jackson (Bad & Dangerous), toured with Frank Zappa and collaborated with art brut master artist Jean Dubuffet.   The essential experimental, keyboard, prog, soundscapes & contemporary classical/orchestral original music from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s.…

Some of you may have discovered Jean-Marie Massou in the film from Antoine Boutet, “Le Plein Pays”. We can see him gathering big stones, trying to clean the earth, and building an incredible cave. We also can see him working with different tape recorders. He likes recording his voice, some of his texts, mixing with some musics and local noises. Jean-Marie Massou shall soon be turning seventy. He can’t read or write and lives completely alone, secluded in the middle of the Bouriane forest in …

Philip Corner (b. 1933) is an American composer, musician and visual artist. A founder member of Fluxus, his teachers include Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen, and he has performed with George Maciunas, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. While on military duty in Korea in 1960-1961 he studied calligraphy with Ki-sung Kim and many of his works have calligraphic scores. His wide-ranging output includes works for gongs, bells, metal percussion and gamelan orchestra. Philip Corner writes, "Hiah Park - n…

Live from the Commodore Ballroom captures a legendary performance by UJ3RK5 in Vancouver in 1980. A strongly visual Canadian art-rock group, sharing an affinity with bands such as Devo and Talking Heads, UJ3RK5 emerged out of punk, new wave, and post-punk music, as well as the Vancouver School of photo conceptualism that some of the members were associated with. The band included artists Rodney Graham, Jeff Wall, and Ian Wallace among others, and while at the time the band eschewed the art…

**much needed reissue, soon ready to be sent** Recital is proud to publish the first album of American Gamelan composer Daniel Schmidt (b. 1942). Schmidt, who emerged in the Bay Area music scene in the 1970s, wove the threads of traditional Eastern Gamelan music together with American Minimalism (repetitive music). Schmidt was (and is still) a prime figure in the development of American Gamelan music –  studying and collaborating with Lou Harrison, Jody Diamond, and Paul Dresher. He curren…

Right here is a Creelproduction of Henri Chopin’s first - and, inarguably, best - album, initially readied by the UK-based Tangent imprint - alongside canonic sides by the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Ann(e)a Lockwood’s “The Glass World” - in 1971, issuing three pieces of his particular strain of throat-infected Sound-Poetry, mangled in-situ via tape machine in 1969.  No other recording captures Henri’s work at it’s most unfettered. The epic, side-length “Pluralité 1.1.1.1.” offers a determine…

Monster Holy-Grail Sound-Art / Sound-Sculpture / Live-Electronic / Drone Masterpiece by German Composer Hans Otte, one of two titles issued by the Kölnischer Kunstverein's in-house imprint - the other being the Nam June Paik / Takis "Duett Paik/Takis / Klangraum Takis" LP - featuring excerpts of a staging of the piece "On Earth" given there on June 13th, 1979. Bookended by a narrative / descriptive overlay spoken by Elisabeth Weber & Wilfried Grimpe, the piece quickly ascends into a whir of subt…

Restocked, reduced price. Song Cycle offers another remarkable addition to the canon of early sound art experimentalism, with this legendary collection of Fluxus audio works compiled by Italian conceptual artist and publisher Maurizio Nannucci. Founded in 1960 by the Lithuanian/American artist George Maciunas, Fluxus began as a small but international network of artists and composers who challenged accepted ideas about what art is. It characterised itself as a shared attitude rather than a movem…

Another legendary album which was issued on LP by Multhipla label, "The Entire Musical Work of " Marcel Duchamp realized by Petr Kotik and S.E.M Ensemble. Work planned and composed in 1913, based on chance operation. Recorded 7 May, 1976. B2 is a track for player piano, recorded in Buffalo, New York on a Steinway player piano. In the turbulent years from 1912 to 1915, Marcel Duchamp worked with musical ideas. He composed two works of music and a conceptual piece -- a note suggesting a musical ha…

Restocked, reduced price. Legendary debut from sound artists Christina Kubisch and Fabrizio Plessi mixing sound and visual elements, a seminal LP record originally published on the hugely influential Multhipla, run by Gianni Sassi (also founder of Cramps Records) in conjunction with Fluxus collector and editor Gino Di Maggio. Two And Two was a live performance for two performers (Kubisch and Plessi), two video cameramen, a wall of monitors and uncommon objects and instruments. Throughout the per…

14 pieces originally written for dance and other practical situations, here reassigned and reconstructed for choreographer Amanda Miller and the Nederland Dans Theater. These are loop-based, textural, mood pieces, and invocations of spaces and landscapes, with some fine steel guitar playing. Mostly this is Fred multi-instrumenting, with pianist Daan Vanderwalle, percussionist Willie Wynant, the Arte Sax quartet and Lotte Anker, the Arditti Quartet, Kiku Day, occasional shakuhachi, and vio…

CD version. After nearly 40 years of silence, Harry Bertoia's Sonambient label has been resurrected in order to release the best of Bertoia's unheard recordings from his recently preserved archive of 1/4" tapes. "Clear Sounds" b/w "Perfetta" was cut straight from the original reels and is a true analog pressing. These two pieces were selected for their minimal, meditative and lush harmonic qualities; lacking in the abundance of dynamics and contrasts found on the original Sonambient records, the…

Second issue of CRU Magazine, the annual magazine of the Berlin art space La Plaque Tournante ran by french composer Frédéric Acquaviva and english mezzo soprano Loré Lixenberg, which states what has happened or could have happened in the last year at La Plaque Tournante. This issue, printed at 500 copies, includes this time 3 catalogues under the form of affiche + postcard + list of material exhibited + poster of the 3 main exhibs of last year, on Broutin (lettrist since 1968), Gil J Wolman (wi…

A photographic essay depicting the everyday work of the members of the mythical workshop responsable for most of BBC´s sound effects between the 50s and 80s. All images are believed to be in the public domain and of BBC origin. Edited captions by Ray White. Zine A5 / Staple / ByW / 40 pp / 1st ed - 2014 / 50 copies . . .

S. Talks # is a series of uncut interviews with electronic contemporary musicians. Each interview is individually published in a zine and distributed for free. Originally from Houston, Texas,  James Daniel Emmanuel is a pioneer of electronic minimal music with a career that started in the late 70s and more than fifteen albums released... Zine 10 x 15 cm / Stapled / B-W / 6 pp / 1st ed - 2013 / 100 copies .

"I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution to a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm." About the author in Earle Brown words: "There could have not been a Ligeti, a Xenakis or a Penderecki without a Varèse." Zine A5 / Staple / ByW / 6 pp / 1st ed - 2014 / 50 copies .

Theremin´s virtuoso interviewed by synthesizser´s maverick Robert Moog in 1977. "I am a violinist and a musician. I wanted to see if it were possible to use the theremin to make real music. Bach couldn't write for the theremin when he was alive, but there is no reason why I can't play Bach on the theremin today. "Clara Rockmore Zine A5 / Staple / ByW / 8 pp / 1st ed - 2014 / 50 copies . .

 "Where does music fit into George Maciunas´s definition? Where does music fit into Fluxus praxis? Music fit where all the other individual arts fit into Fluxus - into a process of de-definition that robs music and the other arts of media that is itself not easily distinguished from the rest of life." Zine A5 / Staple / ByW / 6 pp / 1st ed - 2015 / 50 copies .

"Towards this condition of musical and societal "isolation," a variety of attitudes has been expressed, usually with the purpose of assigning blame, often to the music itself, occasionally to critics or performers, and very occasionally to the public. "

Minimalism´s father Steve Reich explains his composition method in this short essay which was first published in his book " Writings about music 1965-2002" ."I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." .

Luigi Russolo´s 1914 futurist manifesto on the inclusion of ambient sounds in music. “Let us invite young musicians go genius and audacity to listen attentively to all noises. Our increased perceptivity, which has already acquired futurist eye, will then have futurist ears. Thus the motors and machines of industrial cities someday be intelligently pitched, so as to make of every factory and intoxicating orchestra of noises.”

“I appeal to the young. Only they should listen, and only they can understand what I have to say. Some people are born old, slobbering spectres of the past, cryptograms swollen with poison. To them no words or ideas, but a single injunction: the end..”

After his stunning “The Shape of Failures Past” release (Granny records 2013), Yannis Kotsonis (Sister Overdrive, Acte Vide, Knot Gallery) returns with “Rotating Surfaces”. Kotsonis is now introducing us to a less known sonic side of him. He is leaving behind the electronic elements, to compose two untitled pieces with collected sounds of… rotating surfaces. Side A contains also processed samples from a duo improvisation with Andrew Raffo Dewar on saxophone, which took place at the Virgin Mary o…

Calls presents 11 improvised pieces recorded on a reel-to-reel machine throughout 2015 and 2016. Employing a mixed bag of source material and a half drafted vocal approach, these 11 tracks explore the notion of ‘contact calls’,which are irregular, non–specific sounds many social animals make to maintain contact within a group. The group in this instance includes more than just other members; an expanded cast of objects, figures, nature, and works of art act as the recipients of these calls. Ther…

This is a threat! A monumental 8CD box, supremely well-curated (and tirelessly hard-working) "Solo Exhibition" is the definitive solo career retrospective by seminal musician and visual artist Jasun Martz. Spanning the full range of his non-standard, truly unique music practice, always boldly innovative, esoteric and off-centre, it covers themes ranging from essential experimental, synth-oriented electronics thru to immersive, atmospheric epics soundscapes & contemporary classical/orchestral. 20…

Profoundly intimate yet immediately giving onto distant spaces, both an ‘organ of fear’ and an echo chamber of anticipated pleasures, an uncontrollable flow subject to unconscious selection and augmentation, the subtlety, complexity, and variety of modes of hearing has meant that sound has rarely received the same philosophical attention as the visual. In The Order of Sounds, François J. Bonnet makes a compelling case for the irreducible heterogeneity of ‘sound’, navigating between the physical …