★Folkways Records
New American Music, Vol. 4
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Noa Ain gives us a surreal portrait of violinist Yoko Matsua in “Used to Call Me Sadness,” Joel Chadabe encourages a solo percussionist to interact with an automated electronic system in “Echoes,” Ann McMillan manipulates animal sounds with recording techniques in “Whale I,” Gordon Mumma offers audience members “Do It Yourself” participation in “Cybersonic Cantilevers” and Vladimir Ussachevsky suggests a pre-biblical story of the creation of the world depicted by electro…
New American Music, Vol. 3
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Works by Talib Rasul Hakim, William Bolcom, Howard Swanson and Frederic Rzewski are presented here. Highlights include Bolcom’s "Whisper Moon" for chamber ensemble and three of Rzewski’s songs, whose lyrics are drawn from words by Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes and Guatemalan revolutionary Otto Rene Castille.
New American Music, Vol. 2
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Trumpets and trombones twist through dense pockets of sound in Lucia Dlugoszewski “Angels of the Inmost Heaven”; the voice of a lone guitarist punctures the silence in James Fulkerson’s “Patterns” II and VII; flute, bassoons, viola and vibraphone are intended to “turn some dancers on” in Carman Moore’s “Youth in a Merciful House”; and a guitarist laments to the hum of an Elizabethan-type string and woodwind consort in Stanley Silverman’s “Planh.” This is a thoughtfully b…
New American Music, Vol. 1
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* From Milford Graves’ guttural experiments with percussion and the body to Mary Lou Williams’ jazz combo interrupted by atonal “fungus,” this compilation of new (1970s) music makes for an eclectic mix of musical sounds. Star innovators Gil Evans, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray also contribute to this collection of jazz.
For Jon (Fragments Of A Time To Come) 1977
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation to enter in the 1977 Italia Prize Competition, Lars-Gunnar Bodin - For Jon (Fragments of a Time to Come) 1977 is structured as a “dramatic cantata…with vocal sections for both chorus and soloists alternating with recitatives and ‘instrumental’ interludes.” The texts are based on “’surrealistic science fiction’—testimony and reports about experience in other worlds, real or imaginary.” The liner notes provide an introdu…
At The Helm
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* East New York Ensemble de Music came out of the diverse community of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where African, West Indian & black American cultures converged. First and foremost a deep Spiritual Jazz record, At The Helm also incorporates elements of the West Indies, and both the Near and Far East. Originally issued in a very small pressing by Folkway Records in 1974, at a time when the label was doing some great underground recordings!
The sound is loose and free – spiritually…
Highlights of Vortex
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* The brainchild of visual artist Jordan Belson and electronics polymath Henry Jacobs, the Vortex Experiments ran from 1957 to 1960, first at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium and later at the SF Museum of Art. The very name of these events announced their aim: a swirling totality of sensory experience. Around Belson’s richly-colored visuals – making use of the planetarium’s entire dome and featuring luminous, sharply geometric imagery projected through an array of devi…
Music By Jean Eichelberger Ivey For Voices, Instruments, And Tape
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* This 1973 recording combines live performance and tape in order to “offer the best of both worlds, plus a dimension which neither live performer nor tape can reach alone.” There are four pieces on the album: “Terminus” and “Aldebaran” are each for a solo performer and tape, “Three Songs of Night” is for a large ensemble with intermittent tape, and “Cortege—for Charles Kent” is an entirely electronic piece. Liner notes contain a biography of composer Jean Eichelberger Ive…
The Griots: Ministers Of The Spoken Word
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* West African griots are gatekeepers of their culture, repositories of oral tradition. Hear centuries-old histories from Gambia and Mali, accompanied by stringed instruments and drums. This recording features a recitation describing the beginnings of the slave trade with the Portuguese and Dutch in the early 1600s.
Electronic Music From The Outside In
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Electronic Music from the Outside In presents the experimental musical sounds of Barton and Priscilla McLean (The McLean Mix), Reed Holmes, and Kevin Hanlon as they explain how they seek to explore the extremes of music and sound. Each track begins with a spoken introduction about the reasoning and process behind the music. Both of the McLeans have won numerous awards and grants for their work in promoting and creating experimental music.
Ionosphere
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Did you know that the ionosphere makes noise? Or that that noise is actually possible to record? This recording shows that the ionosphere, part of the upper atmosphere that is ionized by solar radiation, can indeed be recorded. Here you have the opportunity to listen to the electrical static in stereo synchronized from recordings made at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC and at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incidentally, this is a Cook classic…
Music Of A Timeless Earth
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* This 1980 album features compositions by Barton McLean, Charles Gruber, Gene Menger, and Catherine Schieve that present “several highly individualistic approaches to the combination of cultures in sound.” Influences from electronic music, from notation systems that can “translate” sounds and gestures from the human and natural worlds, and music based on non-Western oral and pre-literate tradition combine to inspire these works. Liner notes contain an introduction to the …
The Neptune Collection
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* An epigraph to the liner notes of The Neptune Collection, the second album by The Entourage Music and Theater Ensemble, reads, “We are a group flexible in size and temperament. Our purpose is to create original works in a collective manner. We utilize music, dance, poetry, and theatre skills.” Plainly stated, this dictum represents the core of the dynamic, multi-medium approach the group employed in the mid-70s when the album was recorded.The music on The Neptune Collect…
Waka and Other Compositions: Contemporary Music of Japan
2024 stock. This 1960 release is a selection of compositions by Japanese experimental composer Michiko Toyama. The 12 compositions are drawn from traditional Japanese musical forms with additional influence from many of the experimental composers in the West that were active during the twentieth century. Some pieces are sung with instrumental accompaniment; others are spoken poetry. The instrumentation consists of a mix of traditional Japanese and modern Western instruments, including electronic…
Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn's Experiments In Extension Of Human Vocal Range
Have you ever considered what the full range of tone and pitch the human voice is? Have you wondered if there was some latent singing ability that all people were capable of achieving?
Voicings For Tape / Soprano / Piano
2024 stock. Voicings for Tape/Soprano/Piano is a collection of performances by composer, educator, and pianist Sorrel Doris Hays that reflect her Southern roots and feminist themes. The first of four tracks, “Southern Voices for Tape” consists of random spoken conversations interwoven with music from a 1979 Sacred Heart concert. “Blues Fragments” is an excerpt from “Southern Voices for Orchestra” featuring soprano Daisy Newman. “Celebration of NO” is from a larger work titled “Beyond Violence” a…
Voices Of The Satellites
*2024 stock* On October 4, 1957, the space race was triggered by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I, the first human-made satellite to orbit the earth. This recording, produced and narrated by Professor T.A. Benham of Haverford College, chronicles the sounds of the first thirteen American and Soviet satellites launched during the ensuing year. One track features the audible heartbeat of Laika, the first dog in space.
Travelon Gamelon: Music For Bicycles
2024 stock. This early (1982) project from Arizona “Audio Artist” Richard Lerman presents musical composition performed with bicycles. Lerman explains: “A gamelan orchestra is a large group of percussive instruments, usually metallic, from SE Asia. In fact, the sound of such a group is not unlike the timbre of amplified bicycles.” With such an idea, he embarks on a project that captures the amplified sounds of moving bicycles in harmonious rhythms creating songs. Liner notes include detailed inf…
Tract: A Composition Of Agitprop Music For Electromagnetic Tape
*2024 stock* Created by Turkish musician and electronic music composer İlhan Mimaroğlu, Tract is dedicated to fellow countryman Nȃzim Hikmet, whom Mimaroğlu regarded “as the greatest poet of the revolutionary struggles.” Utilizing the voice of Turkish singer Tülay German (identified as Tuly Sand on this recording), Mimaroğlu creates an audio collage of political messages in the propaganda style (agitprop) of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Although his text is based on “direct and …
The Seasons: Vermont - for Magnetic Tape Collage & Instrumental Ensemble
*2024 stock* This 1983 recording is a four-part composition representing the four seasons in Vermont. Composed by Malcolm Goldstein, The Seasons features a collage of sounds of nature infused with live instrumental/vocal improvisation structures meant to “extend the sounds of the natural environment into the sound/space of human gesture.” Performers play instruments, their own bodies, and found objects such as stones, wood, and metal. Liner notes contain Goldstein’s detailed explanation of how a…