★Dark Companion
Syn•Thesis
*300 copies limited edition* Once again Lino surprises us. Always a poet of silences and strictly acoustic sounds, now he offers an album where synthetic sounds are the protagonists. On the other hand, since the time of the collaborations with Franco Battiato, the VCS3 has been in the poetics of Lino and Franco. Thus, as often happens, even the new and the old are in sympathetic symbiosis. And this album is the definitive proof of this. What makes it truly incredible is that it doesn't matter wh…
Mujician Solo IV (Live In Piacenza)
CD Edition. From its opening notes, it is apparent that Keith Tippett's first solo recording in fifteen years is something very special indeed. Tippett has always been a player with a talent for musical pyrotechnics, cascades of notes—triplets, trills, mordants and arpeggios-colliding with mighty tone clusters. But equally, he has also been an artist of great emotional subtlety and depth. Both these qualities are in evidence here. For much of the record, the sense is less that of Rachmaninov, mo…
A Music Cooperative In Isolation
*250 coipes limited edition. In process of stocking* 'In this trying time of Covid and the serious curtail of gigs and record production opportunities, I’m glad to be in contact with Dark Companion Records and Max Marchini. Max seems to be the rare guy who puts the quality of contemporary music he produces much more to the fore than the financial considerations.. the investment in which is always tricky, and can hardly ever promise much in financial return. On to the music herein: Just before th…
Free Spirits
'When I first had the chance to listen at Markus Stockhausen performing live at Conservatorio Nicolini in Piacenza, some years ago, I immediately had the intuition of this musical meeting. I was sure that the poetry of Lino Capra Vaccina will melt with Markus’ one in a completely intuitive, spontaneous way, creating something really unusual, really new. When, some months later, I had the chance to produce then meet the great Santoor player Alireza Mortazavi for the album Hamdelaneh (with Markus,…
Sincretico Modale
**LP version. Individually hand numbered strictly limited edition 300 copies in premium white audiophile virgin vinyl** "Exclusive sleeve notes by Paul Roland, John Greaves, Michael Tanner and Max Marchini. Produced by Max Marchini. A decisive step forward, a new milestone in the extraordinary discography of Lino Capra Vaccina. An album of iridescent introspectivity; a mandala of unheard sounds, a new way for contemporary minimalism. My collaboration with Lino has led me to discover recesses, re…
Sincretico Modale
**CD version. Individually hand numbered strictly limited edition 300 copies in golden audiophile cd** "Exclusive sleeve notes by Paul Roland, John Greaves, Michael Tanner and Max Marchini. Produced by Max Marchini. A decisive step forward, a new milestone in the extraordinary discography of Lino Capra Vaccina. An album of iridescent introspectivity; a mandala of unheard sounds, a new way for contemporary minimalism. My collaboration with Lino has led me to discover recesses, reflections and ref…
Piacenza
Recorded live at Conservatorio Nicolini, Piacenza, Italy, May 22. 2015 during "Musiche Nuove a Piacenza" Festival. Limited edition 980 handmade and individually hand numbered copy in papersleeve, with 21,50 x 21,50 miniposter © 2015
Hymns from the Harbour
**Edition of 118 numbered audiophile golden CD** Best known as producer and mainman behind Dark Companion Records and the reborn Manticore Records, Max Marchini gives birth to his first solo album where he plays all instruments except for two collaborations with avant-garde singer songwriter Paola Tagliaferro and the amazing pakhawaj indian drum playing of Akhilesh Gundecha. This album was intended as a present for his friends for Dark Companion’s 5th anniversary, but eventually label insisted t…
Vive
**CD version** "This is Annie Barbazza’s first solo album. She was a young drummer in love with progressive rock when Greg Lake discovered her talent as a singer and wanted her on stage with him for the concert which would later become the posthumous “Live in Piacenza”. Again Lake produced Moonchild, the duo with pianist Max Repetti for Manticore Records where she sang many songs formerly sang by Lake with ELP and King Crimson. If these were the beginnings of Annie’s career, now she is a rising …
PerpetuaI Possibility
Perpetual Possibility is an album that bears witness to the collaboration between Lino Capra Vaccina, living legend of Italian minimalism and the avant-noise duo Untitled Noise with an interesting album on the label Dark Companion. Perpetual Possibility is the faithful transcription of the concert held by the trio at the MA*GA Museum in Gallarate, Italy and is the first recorded live album by Lino Capra Vaccina. Untitled Noise weaves delicate electronic warps on which the gongs, vibraphone, pian…
ExpoZoom 1969
The history of music is never concrete. It’s forever changing and rewriting itself. The past becomes the present and the present reforms the past. What was lost is found, and what was known is lost. Our era, defined by the reissue and archival release, will likely be regarded as a definitive period of historical reparisal and reevaluation. Monumental figures have fallen. The obscure and unheralded have finally received their rightful due. Dark Companion’s latest LP - Ron Geesin’s ExpoZoom 1969, …
Folly Bololey (Songs From Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom)
**999 hand-numbered copies on golden CD** Critically acclaimed as one of the best records ever, 1974 Robert Wyatt’s masterpiece has been re-arranged by Craig Fortnam for his amazing North Sea Radio Orchestra. Featuring long time Wyatt’s collaborator and Henry Cow founder John Greaves on bass guitar and vocals, and the amazing vocalist Annie Barbazza as lead singer, this is an hearfelt, fantastic tribute to Robert Wyatt’s music. "This concert is a beautiful event, for me. These musicians seem to…
Hamdelaneh
CD edition. Another greeat release from Dark Companion Records. "Chance doesn’t exist. I met Markus Stockhausen after inviting him and his wife to “Musiche Nuove In Piacenza” festival in autumn 2018. Immediately I felt a strong empathy towards him. That doesn’t happen very often. I knew his work and had always admired it, especially the spontaneous compositions he performs and the way his unique talent blossoms in these situations.We talked at lunch and I dared propose to him to record an album …
A Mid Autumn Night’s Dream
CD Edition. A Mid Autumn Night’s Dream faithfully report a one shot concert that took place at Conservatorio Nicolini in Piacenza on October 1st, 2016. The four giants of new music never played together before. As the lights turned off something magic started. A spontaneous interplay, an amazingflowing of notes. The subject was the Night, its mystic flavours. Paolo Tofani, now a hindi monk, is a living legend in Italian avantgarde music having been the driving force of the band Area in the seven…
Ripe When Yields To Gentle Pressure
Dark Companion come up roses again with dazzling, never-before-heard haunting compositions and songs by Jeanette Sollén, compiled from her archive specifically for this album. 300 individually handnumbered transparent emerald green audiophile vinyl. "My first recordings were on an old tape recorder in my childhood bedroom. I spent a lot of time with that machine. Listening to the radio and pressing the green and red buttons when something I liked came on. And I seemed to have liked a lot. One ta…
Metafisiche del Suono
CD version. For fans of the Italian avant-garde, few names inspire the loyalty and devotion offered to the percussionist and composer Lino Capra Vaccina - a perfect emblem of the country’s extraordinary movement of musical Minimalism. He first gained note as a member of Aktuala, a project which laid the groundwork for a entire generation of practitioners following in their wake - creating a hybrid of rock, avant-garde, and ancient musics, while incorporating a diverse number of sonic traditions …
Arcaico Armonico
CD version. Like many of my generation, grew up in an age where the Internet did not exist and there were few sources of information, especially those inherent to the new music, I discovered Lino through his participation in one of the most daring musical pro- jects, the magnificents Aktuala, new band that released three great albums in the early ‘70s, full of innate grace, where Walter Maioli, Lino Vaccina and their cronies tended mystical and astral plots about warps of music and sounds extrac…