★Recital
Solo Voce
Edition of 200 copies, incl. 16-page booklet. Recital presents a collection of new sound poetry works from Vittoria de Franchis (b. 1993, Bruxelles), an independent curator, language researcher and writer operating between London, Berlin and Rome. Solo Voce, Vittoria’s first album, carries a certain arousal and intimate elation, a kind of sensual communiqué absent from much contemporary music. As Vittoria divulges:
The recordings were born out of fantasizing and desire. These bursts of fantasy …
Dafne Phono
** Edition of 200 copies, incl. 18” x 24” fold-out poster, insert, incl. download ** Nour Mobarak’s Dafne Phono is an adaptation of the first opera, Dafne, composed and written by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini in 1598. Drawing on the myth of Daphne and Apollo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses—a story of unrequited love, patriarchal possession, conquest, and transformation—Mobarak’s multimedia and multispecies reimagining splinters the opera’s Italian libretto. Alongside English and Greek versions, i…
Calendar
Edition of 200 copies, incl. 12-page booklet. Zachary Paul is a violinist and composer currently living in New York. Having played in orchestras for most of his life, his beautiful violin work has recently emerged in the new music scene on the East and West coasts. Recently collaborating with musicians like Simon Scott and Patrick Shiroishi, Zachary has long been a “session violinist” for many Recital releases (including Simple Affections and Autumn Fair). It’s with great pleasure to finally rel…
Tub Of Deep Green Ink
A limited CDr included with the A Castle Popping LP (R11, 2015). Tub of Deep Green Ink compliments the nature of the A Castle Popping, presenting ten tracks from 2011-2014. Ranging from layered string recordings, like the pastoral 2012 piece Inverness String Variations, to computerized-vocal experiments, as with ADR Aria & The Wind Sick (both from 2014). Human voice is dissected and stitched back together; examined under odd light. 2011’s Rooms of Night explores the interior of Sean’s old house …
Micromegas
Seeing Matthew Erickson perform live is an impressive experience. The sound he gets by blasting his saxophone through his Fender Twin literally shakes you to the core. Erickson has a great ear for experimental music; exercising tasteful timing and restraint, which I am finding to be more and more important. Whether performing in the sax-guitar duo Sudden Oak, or solo as Radiant Husk, his sonic presence has earned the respect of many.
"Collaborations" Readings
*300 copies limited edition* Recital is proud to present an artists’ record from the two giants Richard Hamilton and Dieter Roth. Hamilton (1922-2011) is revered as the father of British Pop Art as both theorist and practitioner, in addition to famously designing the artwork for The Beatles’ White Album. Dieter Roth (1930-1998) was a Swiss German artist who blithely ignored all artistic boundaries and aesthetic dictums. His oeuvre includes hundreds of artist books, almost half a thousand prints,…
Whiplash
*200 copies limited edition* Recital is thrilled to present the first full-length vinyl LP by sound artist Asha Sheshadri. Whiplash combines elements of sound poetry, diary-like narration, and delicate incidental music. Sheshadri has crafted a unique and marvelous album here:
"This record is an alternate approach to the autobiographical 'confessional' – I wanted to stitch together some pivotal sketches in self-understanding and forgiveness. While their designs may seem affectively disparate, the…
Homage to Annea Lockwood
*200 copies limited edition* Recital presents a book and CD homage to the New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood (b. 1939). The unique concept for this album was conceived by artists Noel Meek (New Zealand) and Mattin (Spain), who each share a deep admiration for Lockwood. A longform Skype conversation between the three artists was arranged at the end of 2020. They discussed politics, aesthetics, and Annea’s compositional practice, and as the conversation evolved, it was decided that …
Spontaneous Musical Invention
*350 copeis limited edition. Comes with 16-page booklet of program notes * In the 1960s, Robert Ashley pioneered the American avant garde with the ONCE Group and festivals, before irrefutably changing the face of American opera later in the 20th century. Buckner, in addition to running the fabulous 1750 Arch record label in the 1970s and 80s, is a noted baritone who has collaborated for decades with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and the late Noah Creshevsky, amongst countless ot…
Omaggio a Giuseppe Ungaretti
*Limited edition of 200 copies.* Omaggio a Giuseppe Ungaretti, the second Recital album of composer Loren Rush (b. 1935), contrasts the orchestral grandeur of last year’s LP Dans le Sable with plaintive just intonation piano improvisations. Loren Rush has been active in the Bay Area new music scene since the late 1950s alongside composers such as Terry Riley, Robert Erickson, and Pauline Oliveros, and also co-founded Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 19…
Chanter
To celebrate composer Charlie Morrow’s 80th birthday, Recital presents 80 minutes of voice-based recordings in his new album, Chanter. While Morrow’s previous two albums on Recital Toot! Too (2017) and America Lament (2020) focused on chamber and electronic compositions, Chanter covers over 60 years of vocal explorations. Spanning from Charlie’s first ever tape recording Ella (1960) to two intimate chanting improvisations made in 2021 for this CD.
Curated by Sean McCann, the dozen tracks which c…
Das Jahr 2020
* Edition of 200 copies, incl. 8 page booklet * Das Jahr 2020 is the first published recording of Molly McCann, my older sister of two-and-a-half years. After encouraging my sister to record her piano playing for years, she embarked on her first recording project with Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Das Jahr (“The Year”, 1841), a groundbreaking cycle of twelve thematically and harmonically interlocked character pieces depicting the twelve months of the year. Putting aside her usual toil for perfectio…
Sounds from the Book of Bean
** Ltd. to 300 copies, incl. printed inner sleeve + 20 page full-size booklet ** The first vinyl LP release from Fluxus pioneer Alison Knowles (b. 1933). Sounds from the Book of Bean is an assemblage of noises and texts related to The Book of Bean (1982), Knowles’ 8-foot tall walk-in book constructed at Franklin Furnace in New York. This recording, the sounds of making the big book, was continually played back inside of the installation. Echoes of Yoshi Wada hammering together the circular spine…
Dans le Sable
* Vinyl Edition of 500, 175 gram, ncludes 11″ x 11″ insert with program notes* Dans le Sable is the first new album in over 40 years by composer, pianist, and digital audio pioneer Loren Rush (b. 1935). Active in the Bay Area new music scene since the late 1950s alongside composers such as Robert Erickson and Pauline Oliveros, he also co-founded the Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in 1975. His music has been performed by the Boston Symphony, the New Yor…
St. Francis
**Edition of 200 - 180gram vinyl record - 18″ x 24″ folded color poster (blueprint).** The score by Schmid, reading by Landry, and edited/produced by McCann. Emily Martin and Derek Baron on St. Francis (Feb. 2021): What does it mean to pray? To address someone, to plead for something, to welcome humiliation and failure: Please, let me forget about the China Chalet parties, please let there be no countries and no war, please let me love you. Is prayer iteration, or just repetition: My god, my go…
Jubilee
**Limited edition of 100. Includes 20-page color booklet with photos. Numbered** Jubilee is an album of selections from the last five years of multifarious output by the art collective FPBJPC, including Jonathan Gean, Michael Pollard, Ben Schumacher, and Peter Friel. Including 8-hand piano arrangements of Schiller’s “An Die Freude,” helpful techno, free guitar quartets, music from their film The China Chalet Group, and more, Jubilee is an incomplete picture of FPBJPC’s life-long research into wa…
Electric Landlady
**Edition of 150 copies** Malcolm Green (b. 1952) is a British artist, dancer, and publisher. His eccentric, liquid ideas seem to come with a smile. Or is it a wry grin? His colorful paintings, usually adorned with phrases, are little riddled plaques. Luckily, Malcolm is of the ilk of visual artists who also records audio works (this multiplicity is always interesting). Green's own label Seedy CDs/Sieh Dies issued a number of CDrs between 2000 and 2005, including many of his own works, along tho…
The Crying Space
**Edition 0f 200** The Crying Space holds music and sounds to spawn tears. This double-CD is comprised of two sound pieces by the Fluxus artist Eric Andersen (b. Denmark, 1940). The first CD, Le Chemin Des Larmes, is a sound collage made for French radio broadcast in 1990. Fragile narrations in French and English by the artist and other voice actors, played over a streaming assemblage of tragic classical music. The sound crying, that of a professional Karelian mourner, is infused periodically. T…
As Stupid As A Fish
As Stupid As A Fish is an album/art book documenting Sean McCann's performance, recorded at the Berkeley Art Museum in the Spring of 2019. 166 color pages, 8.5″ x 10″ perfect bound, scented with “Stupid Fish” perfume. Comes with 30-minute cassette of music made for the book. Limited edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered. A monograph made in the Winter of 2018, with a microscopic camera, paints, pens, and ultra-marine powder. Texts are hung throughout the book; revering dreams of night, sea…
The Still Life
The Still Life is Karla Borecky's long-awaited second album following 2011's Still In Your Pocket. In between her work with Idea Fire Company,
Karla has been slowly building a new repertoire of solo pieces. She
threads together simple, whirling piano numbers. Lines of blue sadness,
red memories, and green dreams, stitched with charm and care, The Still Life is an approachable album in the best way possible. Whatever your hobby may be, The Still Life
will set the mood. This album also fea…