★Metaphon
Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982
Launching the brand-new imprint Auryfa, produced in collaboration with the always amazing Metaphon, comes “Poly-Art Recordings 1976-1982”, a lavish 6CD box set collecting the Romanian / French composer Costin Miereanu’s legendary series of self-published cassettes and LPs, originally issued between 1982 and 1984. This first-ever reissue in any format of an astounding and singular body of work—skirting the borders of ambient music and minimalism while incorporating visionary approaches to electro…
Passages... À Travers Le Temps
Octavian Nemescu's music doesn't perform - it initiates. This Metaphon collection reveals Romania's spectral mystic at his most profoundly timeless, where bees' wings and synthesizer drones become pathways to the inaudible."
Ziua Fără Sfârșit
Before spectral music had a name, Romanian polymath Corneliu Cezar was crafting electro-acoustic revelations. Ziua fără sfârșit collects his 1967-75 recordings - radical explorations of natural resonance that predate Western spectralism by a decade.
μP RPF78
Big tip! *2025 repress. 250 copies limited edition* An anthology of the intensely arresting work of Robert Fesler (1936-2023), revealing many of his compositions (1975 -1987) created with his self-built synthesizers, with as pinnacle the μP RPF78. All music composed and recorded by Robert Fesler at his home on rue Cour Boisacq in Bierges, Belgium.With profound simplicity and devotion, Fesler paints a hermetic inner world with strong emotions of confronting solitude, sensual alienation and trauma…
Les Années 1967-1984
Big tip! *2025 repress. 250 copies limited edition* Metaphon is thrilled to present this collection of 14 phenomenal electronic and electro-acoustic works by French composer Fernand Vandenbogaerde, realized between 1967 and 1984. After his science studies Fernand Vandenbogaerde (1946) studied at the Conservatoire de Roubaix and did various classes and courses with a.o. Jean-Etienne Marie, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bruno Maderna. He wrote analyti…
Raoul De Smet
Big tip! *300 copies limited edition* First LP in the ‘Signature Series’, a small new series in the Metaphon catalog, documenting previously unreleased archive works of less known composers. Metaphon presents their ‘signature’ in the most personal and elementary way.
Raoul De Smet (1936), mainly known for his numerous instrumental and chamber music works, started composing in the early 1960’s. Between 1974 and 1989 he also recorded several electro-acoustic compositions at the IPEM in Ghent, one …
Multiple Musics
**500 copies** Previously unreleased live recording from the Ranta archives. The creative duo of Michael Ranta and Takehisa Kosugi performed many times in the 1970’s and 1980’s. On this outstanding performance, recorded at the Japanese Culture Institute in Cologne in 1987, the application of an advanced multi delay system, independently utilized by both players, plays a central role. The smartly treated cyclic tapestry of the delay system (modulated, transformed, harmonized) injects additional d…
Wege / Way
Bomb! Edition of 500 copies, with fold-out insert. Rolf Gehlhaar (1943-2019) was an instrumental and electronic music composer, and a pioneer in computer controlled interactive music. He grew up in the US where he studied philosophy and composition at Yale University. In 1967 he moved back to Germany to become Karlheinz Stockhausen’s personal assistant and member of his performing ensemble. In 1969 Gehlhaar co-founded, along with Johannes Fritsch (Metaphon 012) and David Johnson, the Feedback St…
Mundus
Biggest Tip! ** Second edition of 300 copies. 3LP set in 7,5mm sealed slipcase sleeve + 12 page booklet with text and track info by Vincent De Roguin and Mark Harwood, archive notes by Lachartre and a rare portrait from 1969 ** First ever release of female French composer, musicologist and writer Nicole Lachartre (1934-1991). This 3LP set comprises most of her electronic and concrete music compositions recorded in the 60’s and 70’s, all previously unreleased. Lachartre had a classical formation…
Arthur Pétronio
Edition of 500. With fold-out poster and original sleeve design by Alain Geronnez. Arthur Petronio (1897-1983) was a French-Italian musician, poet and painter. Lived in Belgium and The Netherlands between 1910 and 1924 and since then in France. Young violin virtuoso studying with Belgian master violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Played solo violin for Belgian King Leopold II, at the age of 9. Attracted to the avant-garde and visionary ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk. Develops and presents his “Verbophonie” in 191…
Jacques Bekaert (LP)
Edition of 500. ‘A Late Lunch’ is the soundtrack to Akiko Iimura’s eponymous movie realized in 1978. It is based on acoustic instruments and field recordings, brilliantly reconfigured and mixed by Jaques Bekaert to create a surreal, immersive soundscape. The technique used includes superposition and speed change of recordings, radical sound effects and juxtaposition of sounds. The players were prominent musicians of the 1970’s, including Maggi Payne, George Lewis, David Rosenboom and Blue Gene T…
Azabu
Edition of 500. CD and 8 page booklet in gatefold cardboard sleeve * Even though only being fully terminated 50 years after its conception, 'Azabu' can be regarded as the starting point of Michael Ranta’s creative self-discovery. The recordings that form the base of 'Azabu' were mostly made in the Tokyo district with the same name (Azabu-Juban). Next to abstracted field recordings 'Azabu' is also pervaded by a rich variety of percussion, string and wind instruments, all played by Ranta himself.
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Improvisation Sep. 1975
** Limited edition of 125 copies with mounted text on front and back (as the original 1975 LP), silkscreened by Alan Sherry. This edition includes two inserts, a Japanese text sheet and the English text, translated by Alan Cummings ** Toshi Ichiyanagi, Michael Ranta and Takehisa Kosugi originally got together in the summer of 1975 for an open-air concert in Sapporo. The concert felt like a great success but was unfortunately not recorded. As the desire arose to record together, they managed to a…
Kyo Mu / Hochtöner
Tip! ‘Kyo Mu’ and ‘Hochtöner’ both reveal a mesmerizing symbiosis of innovative sound exploration and visionary interior music, a sublime compound of fine-drawn intricate arrangements skillfully projected in space and time, or perhaps beyond space and time. Johannes Fritsch (1941–2010) was an award-winning composer, musician, publisher, studio owner, author and music teacher. He studied viola and composition with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and was member of the Stockhausen Ensemble from 1964 to 1970…
Rails and Other Tracks
Tip! *300 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* First ever release of concrete and electronic collage works by Belgian underground sound explorer Jan Bruyndonckx. This album contains autonomous compositions, music for film and documentary; all independently recorded in his private studio between 1958 and 1965. A small collection of adventurous and mysterious sound evocations with text/poetry recited by Julien Schoenaerts.
Taiwan Years
A stunning journey into the archives of one of the most fascinating composers / percussionists working today, Michael Ranta’s Taiwan Years, issued by Metaphon, is nothing short of a revelation, seamlessly binding acoustic interventions with a subtle pallet of electronic and electroacoustic ambiance in a landscape threaded by East-Asian esotericism, psychedelia, minimalism, and outright experimental avant-gardism.
Die Mauer
**500 copies** Die Mauer is a collection of previously unreleased music composed, performed and recorded by Michael Ranta in 1988/1989 for a ballet choreographed by Philippe Talard. CD is housed in a 6-panel fold out sleeve.
Mu
** Last copies... ** Previously unreleased studio material from 1970 recorded a few months after the legendary Wired session. Hardboard linen CD box contains 2 CDs and a 28 page booklet with biography, text and notes (in Dutch, German and English) from Michael Ranta.The only time this ensemble got together before was for the singular and legendary Wired session recorded in 1970 and published on the Deutsche Grammophon box set Free Improvisation in 1974. The Wired session also included Karl-Heinz…
Brussel Live
Highlights of their first 2 concerts in about 20 years, live in Brussels (2007-2008), shows the trio of Gilbert Artman, Jac Berrocal and Jean-Francois Pauvros anarchistic, powerful and controversial as ever. Uncertain rockers, exacerbated freejazzmen, pranksters, Jean-Francois Pauvros: guitarist, Jac Berrocal: trumpeter and vocalist, Gilbert Artman: drummer and pianist are a bit of everything, rock stomping, boring the avant garde, enraging the virtuosity. Trespassing the unbreakable with the su…
‘Mars II’ Music for Automated Piano, Pianist and Ash
Incredible edition consisting of 2LP set in hardboard gatefold with black linen and embossed print, with large format booklet with extensive notes (in English), scores, illustrations and graphics, in a edition of 300 copies.‘MARS II, the vinyl’ contains the music composed for MARS II, the performance. In MARS II Karl Van Welden explores the impact of volcanic ash on the performance of pianist Frederik Croene and the sound he produces, playing on an automated piano. MARS II examines a momen…