★Dark Companion
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…
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…