★Important Records
Wizards
This CD reissue of JD Emmanuel's Wizards contains two tracks excluded from the original 1982 LP due to master tape problems. "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…
Homage
Eleh's Homage series is remastered and on CD for the first time. Certain frequency combinations that were impossible to cut on LP are effectively presented in this digital edition. Packaged in a heavy duty 6 panel fold out jacket with inner printing and a matte finish. Eleh, an artist who flourishes in restraint, uses a reduced sonic vocabulary to highlight delicate intricacies in a logical path toward harmonious satisfaction. The organization of hypnotic square waves, rippling sine waves and tr…
Untitled #274
Untitled #274 was composed by Francisco López and performed by Kasper T. Toeplitz at GRM Studios in Paris, France. Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of sound art and experimental music. For more than thirty years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from th…
I Line My Days Along Your Weight
LP edition. Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without…
Feel Free: Live At Cafe Oto
Beautiful ensemble performance of Duane Pitre's Feel Free including James Blackshaw on hammered dulcimer. LP pressed in an audiophile grade edition of 1000 copies.
Shortly after the release of Pitre's Feel Free, the composer set out for a 2012 solo tour in select European cities. To start off this tour he staged an ensemble performance of Feel Free, at London's renowned Cafe OTO. For his ensemble, Pitre chose to utilize only one veteran of a Feel Free performance (Jesse Sparhawk) and for th…
Melodies For A Savage Fix
Steve Gunn and Mike Gangloff (Pelt) combine six-and 12-string guitars with gongs, tanpura, singing bowls, shruti box, and banjo fora gorgeous collection of improvised compositions. The two artists took it pretty far off the beaten path for Melodies for a Savage Fix, sequestering themselves for an overnight session in the remote farmhouse/recording studio of noted roots-music engineer Joseph Dejarnette (Carolina Chocolate Drops, Bruce Greene, Curtis Eller) in the countryside of Floyd County, Virg…
The Golden Hour
Portland guitar wizard Marisa Anderson's long-awaited solo guitar record. Marisa has been a fixture on many a music scene for years and years, playing with everyone from the Evolutionary Jass Band to Tara Jane O'Neil to The Dolly Ranchers. In any context, she can't escape her rag/blues/folk roots, no matter how hard she tries. On this LP featuring only guitar, no vocals, no overdubs, we are treated to a very intimate-sounding home recording filled with delicate grace. Comparisons to John F…
Mercury
CD version of the 2009 Mississippi Records release. Highly recommended to followers of the Blackshaw/Wissem line of acoustic instrumental composition that runs through the Imprec catalog. From the original notes: "Portland guitar virtuoso Marisa Anderson is back with a new set of home-recorded instrumentals. This time around we find Marisa exploring structures more based on the Appalachian folk tradition. The bluesy cadences of Marisa's other previous release -- Golden Hour -- are still the…
Blood/Lines
Blood Lines is Emily Jane White's first album for Important since 2009's Dark Undercoat. Featuring vocal contributions from Marissa Nadler. This American version of the CD contains two bonus tracks not available elsewhere.
After releasing three albums in three years, Emily Jane White wrote over 100 sketches between January 2011 and October 2012. Her new album "Blood / Lines" is a selected compilation of these songs. Recorded in a secluded studio in Sonoma County, California, the quiet envi…
Liebestod
Liebestod, by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski, consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings, and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. He shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nos…
Jeff Burch
Jeff Burch's first solo full-length album is comprised of two expansive instrumental compositions anchored by beautiful old acoustic guitars and a modular synthesizer. He hoists his sounds up through the remnants of the 60's downtown drone spirit, through the fetid fruits of post-war central Europe and the scattered output of present-day suburban outsiders. The arrangements shift gracefully from floods of lush string texture to driving guitar and drum motif, from ebbs of brass and deep electric …
Tryptichs: Variations On A Melody
Aidan Baker's (Nadja) Triptychs takes inspiration from Erik Satie's compositions Gymnopédies and his notion of "furniture music," which many consider a precursor to contemporary ambient music. Each "triptych" is based around a simple, slow-moving melodic line, which repeats three times with the addition of a harmonic line upon each repetition, culminating in a three part harmony. Various musicians from different ensembles and musical backgrounds -- Peter Broderick, Julia Kent, Leah Buckaref…
Heat Source
Ashley Paul's Heat Source was recorded during a challenging year of transience between New York and London. During this year of impermanence Paul performed regularly and the effects of frequent performance and traveling can be heard in the intentionally pared back emptiness of Heat Source. making it an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience.Heat Source finds Ashley Paul working using her brilliant ears to find a zen like balance between her voice and a sp…
For Moussavi Atrium
For Moussavi Atrium is a brand new 38 minute piece from Eleh written for performance at the Cleveland Museum Of Contemporary Art (Cleveland MOCA) on September 28, 2013. " walks into a bar and asks for a pint of beer, the barman scowls at him and refuses. When pressed as to why, he says "I don't like your tone." Meanwhile a drunk in the corner tries to start a chant of "Eleh, give us a wave"...probably a sine it's time to leave.Yup, here's another tonal meditation from extreme minimal chappie…
Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death
Important is proud to welcome back James Blackshaw for his first full length on Important since his breakthrough album O True Believers was released in 2006. James has since forged a remarkable career achieving critical praise for his dexterity, his deep, connected songwriting and his beautiful arrangement.
Written at a time of great emotional disquiet, the hauntingly beautiful and bittersweet ninth full-length studio album, Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, from British guitarist-composer Ja…
Radiator
Beautiful new work from Kevin Doria (Growing). If Eliane Radigue and Kevin Drumm made a record together it might sound something like Total Life. Kevin Doria creates a sound world with deep inner dynamics shrouded by distortion. Whether you stay on the surface or listen deeply, the energy in this work is vivid. Recorded and mixed at home in the winter of 2012, RADIATOR represents the first proper full length release by Total Life for Important Records. RADIATOR is inspired by standing on the ga…
Nihil Obstat
Gorgeous new full length from Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem. Wissem's long form, graceful melodic lute layers, preceded by suspenseful deep bass movements, create a transcendental and pastoral. Wissem's is a world where hypnotic minimalist figures are repeated to slow the act of listening. Nihil Obstat (Nothing Hinders) is performed on Wissem's custom black lute built by Michael Schreiner. LP pressed in an edition of 800.
"New classical lute music that sound as if it always existed, as if it h…
Pitreleh
Full length collaboration from Duane Pitre & ELEH. Pitreleh use high resolution analog and digital tools to create music utilizing natural vibrations and harmonics as rhythm and melody. Inspiration is drawn directly from vibrational waves (sound, gravity, water). The electronics, of which both pieces are constructed, are tuned using Pure Intonation which utilizes the prime numbers: 1-3-5-7.
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…
Bridges
"Duane Pitre's Bridges, features two pieces taken from a suite of analogous compositions by the same name, and was composed by Pitre in 2012. The two pieces that comprise the album are meant to work together in sequence as a composite work; or they can be isolated and listened to on their own. The title derives its name from the original concept for this work, which was to bring together aspects of traditional Eastern music (such as compositional form and tuning) with Western musical trad…