★Important Records
Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel
"This is where you have been forever and will always be forever." Stuart Dempster, speaking about what it feels like to be in a cistern where time seems to stop. Stuart Dempster created Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel in the same cistern where the legendary Deep Listening album was recorded. Reverberating with powerful, deep tones, this double LP is intended as a companion to the acclaimed Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis album Deep Listening. Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel…
Electronic Works 1958-1995
2023 Restock. Triple yellow LP version. Pressed on audiophile grade heavy duty vinyl. Else Marie Pade, born in 1924 in Denmark, is a precious golden gem in the world of contemporary electro-acoustic music. She is a true pioneer of electronic music and musique concrète. Pade is Denmark's first lady of electronic music and her piece "Syv Cirkler (Seven Circles)" became the first electronic piece performed on Danish radio. Pade's fascination with sound began in early childhood. Isolated in her bed …
Patterns of Consciousness
2023 repress, edition of 500 copies, gatefold sleeve. Essential re-press of Caterina Barbieri's debut double LP. Patterns Of Consciousness is the powerful second full-length from analog synth composer Caterina Barbieri. Gorgeous high resolution analog textures and algorithmic melodies unfold under Barbieri's careful control, exploring the basic nature of sound and consciousness. These pieces are minimal in arrangement but maximal in presence asserting Barbieri as a unique voice in contemporary e…
Born Again in the Voltage
*2023 repress* Born Again In The Voltage is an astonishing collection of electro-acoustic pieces for Buchla 200 system, cello, and voice composed and produced by Caterina Barbieri at Elektronmusikstudion (SE) between 2014 and 2015. Cello by Antonello Manzo. Images by Giovanni Brunetto; Photography by Angelo Jaroszuk Bogasz; Layout by Important Records. Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi. Edition of 500.
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"One of electronic music's most interesting new voices." FactMagazine
Forse 1
*2023 repress* Recent repress."Deluxe double LP. Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails/How To Destroy Angels) composed the Forse series using a Buchla Music Easel. Forse, meaning 'maybe' In Italian, is a series of three double LP releases Cortini recorded for Important to release in 2013. "All pieces were written and performed live on a Buchla Music Easel, in the span of one month. I found that the limited array of modules that the instrument offers sparked my creativity. Most pieces consist of a …
Veils Of Transformation 1972-1980
Veils Of Transformation 1972 - 1980 is a collection of the earliest works of Gregory Kramer, one of the 20th century masters of textural electronic music. This collection is available on CD and cassette with liner notes from Gregory Kramer and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, who first brought this fascinating work to the attention of Important Records. “Greg is one of the pioneers of electronic music and these pieces are unique opportunities to discover how intricate and dynamic early synthesizers are.” …
The Well And The Gentle
Tip! The Well & The Gentle, two of the major works of Pauline Oliveros, are presented here in a first time reissue on double vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes. If Oliveros had followed a more conventional path she may have, all social obstacles aside, been considered among the major composers of her time. However, Oliveros approached composition in a more egalitarian manner. She wrote music for musicians to interact with or, in the composers words, she wished to create "an in…
Postcards From Hereafter
Razen's Postcards From Hereafter was recorded using a 17th century organ tuned at 398 Hz (meantone) in a Belgian cathedral erected in 1305. The ensemble explored, with rich results, the organ's strict and limiting tuning with an arrangement that included hurdy gurdy, recorders, chalumeau, violone and nyckelharpa. The pieces on Postcards From Hereafter explore the crossover between this world and the next with improvised spiritual, religious music. Brussels-based ensemble Razen use the unique tim…
Snoweight
Recorded during two days of extreme weather, Eleh's Snoweight conveys the mesmerizing force of a winter storm with sonic realism and romanticism. These two new compositions evoke both warm security and wild, blanketing intensity in ways that are both emotionally arresting and time stopping.
Jo Ha Kyu
"Tradition belongs more to the present than the past. For three weeks Parisian cellist and composer Gaspar Claus met with traditional and modern Japanese musicians in a Tokyo studio to record Jo Ha Kyu. Performing with Claus on this piece are: Eiko Ishibashi (voice, piano, drums), Keiji Haino (voice), Kakushin Nishihara (voice, satsuma biwa), Ryuichi Sakamoto (piano), Hirochimi Sakamoto (electric cello), Sachiko M (sine wave), Otomo Yoshihide (turntable), Leonard Eto (wadaiko), Kazutoki Umezu (t…
All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea
After last year’s Black Clouds Above The Bows, Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle presents the second entry of their trilogy for Important Records, which is dedicated to telling the story of the climate crisis and its effects on coastal areas around the globe. For this album the artists incorporated the sound of a dying organ.
All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea consists of electro-acoustic threnodies for an environment at risk due to the effects caused by receding coastlines around the globe. …
11 Dec 80
11 Dec 1980 is a two CD set containing Eliane Radigue's live performance of Chry-Ptus (1971), her first work for modular synthesizer, and the world premier of parts one and three of Triptych (1978). Triptych part 2 is also performed. Upon hearing these performances for the first time in many years Radigue declared them to be the best versions she'd ever heard. Radigue's sublime renderings of these major pieces are full of illusory stasis, slow change and dense, slow motion drone that has charact…
Variolii Patterns
Duane Pitre's Varolii Patterns was made with an eight-voicesynthesizer, tuned in just intonation. These consonant pieces exploreshifting polyrhythms that slip in and out of rhythmic focus and "Common Rhythmic Pulses" that carry over as the pattern evolves withina piece.
Artist statement:"While experimenting with microtonal electronics for a piece I waswriting for Zinc & Copper, which would eventually be titled Pons, Icame across a process-based technique that I was quite keen on.Although I would…
Pitreleh
"With Eleh having cemented themself as perhaps the modern minimalist, their collaborations have become a fascinating journey into the genre old guard such as Pauline Oliveros and Ellen Fullman as well as platforms for newer artists like Sun Circle, and in this case, Duane Pitre. As usual, Eleh hardcore analogue drones are well matched by Pitre feather-light just intonation harmonics. Both sides reflect different aspects of minimalism past without being pale shadows of those earlier pioneers. In …
No Date Tapes 2
*100 copies limited edition* No Date Tapes 2 is the second official cassette release from Harry Bertoia's tape archive and, like the first cassette, these recordings were chosen from a small collection of tapes in Bertoia's archive missing recording dates. This cassette is packaged in a metallic shell and produced on super-ferro tape for incredible analog sound.
Hints of Things to Come
In 1970 Harry Bertoia had been developing his sonic sculptures for over ten years. He had only been composing/recording for two years and the four long pieces chosen for this CD find him starting to arrive at the sonic forms he had been searching for. Hints Of Things To Come is one of the most unique and melodic pieces discovered so far in the Bertoia tape archive. In this piece we hear him slowly create and articulate a musical riff. Bertoia builds this phrase patiently until the composition r…
Golden Leaf
*300 copies limited edition* Golden Leaf is the 19th album by the Italian experimental band Larsen here exploring free-form sounds and spatial dynamics by real-time composing and creating a sonic and social environment.
It also confirms the love and interest the band has for collaborations as ongoing dialogues and portals to new paths. This album documents a four-hour site-specific performance by Larsen and Alessandro Sciaraffa featuring interactive sound totems designed by Alessandro Sciaraffa…
Aerial #2
Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work.15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere. Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal clou…
Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970
11 CD set adapted from 12 CD edition. All tracks included. This dense 11-disc retrospective of Pauline Oliveros' early and unreleased electronic work includes her very first piece made for tape in 1961. Organized chronologically, this set not only documents Pauline's earliest electronic music but it also functions as an early history of electronic music itself. Follow as she participates in the establishment of the legendary San Francisco Tape Music Center and then moves to University Of Toronto…
Wizards
"Wizards was my first deep trance electronic music album. This album was inspired by Terry Riley, one of the earliest people ever to compose and perform long, extended, cyclic pieces in the electronic format. This music was composed and performed in '81 and '82. I consider this album my best work. The instrumentation is three Sequential Circuits PRO-1s, Crumar Traveler One, and a Yamaha SK-20, all real time recording to a Teac four-track reel-to-reel. I mixed the four tracks to a Teac A-7300 Mas…