★Recital
Saturday Night
**Edition of 225 copies, includes 20-page color photo of stills documenting the recording process booklet** Saturday Night is the debut LP by old friends and collaborators Alex Twomey, Matthew Sullivan, and Sean McCann. Recorded over numerous evenings at the artists' homes, and completed just before the birth of Matthew's daughter, Flora. The album became an excuse to spend time with one another as well as perform. As the trio ordered take-out, drank scotch, smoked on patios, laughing off the we…
Papers
Sean McCann, Recital label head, on Papers (April 2020): "In addition to the musical objects she creates, Sarah Davachi is also immersed in the theoretical issues that surround her practice. This twin engagement began in her youth in Canada, studying philosophy and music, and working at a specialized musical instrument museum. Her compositional ambitions led to the doorstep of Mills College, fertile with history. Accompanied by a thesis for pipe organ and electronics, she also wrote a tangential…
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…
Ionisation
**Edition of 250 copies, includes CD and 20-page color booklet** "Ionisation is the first LP by Italian poet Adriano Spatola. Born in Yugoslavia in 1941, by the age of 23 he became a major force in the Italian avant-garde. 'Towards Total Poetry,' Spatola's critical study on the state of modern poetry, spells out his position: 'to become a total medium, to escape all limitations to include theater, photography, music, painting, typography, cinematographic techniques, and every other aspect of cul…
Let Night Come On Bells End The Day
**Second Edition of 500 LPs Three art prints of photographs by the artist Digital download coupon, containing extended final track**Recital present the newest record by Canadian composer Sarah Davachi. Currently working on her PhD in Musicology at UCLA, her trajectory has been unorthodox. Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, which, if you've never been there, doesn't really scream "avant-garde" (Calgary is the rodeo capital of the world). It is important and interesting that she chose to study esoteri…
Puck
** Edition of 500, comes with 12-page “Puck” pamphlet + Two art cards with program notes** Sean McCann's Puck is here. Music for Public Ensemble, my previous album, was released three years ago. And three years before that was Private Ensemble. Puck is both public and private in nature. A smear of chamber works from Stockholm, Moscow, New York, and Kansas. Three aged personal recordings from 2008, 2009, and 2010 are also poured in the batter: a bedroom violin trio, ambient music, and a sad pl…
The Book of Numbers & Spells
Limited edition of 100; hand numbered in red ink. "The Book of Numbers and Spells is multi-hatted composer and inventor Charlie Morrow's first book. Number and letter games bejewel the pages of this anthology (pulling pieces and writings from 1974 to 2019). These works are largely text scores. It wasn't until I saw Charlie perform 'Ten the Long Way' with a room full of participants that the performative power became clear to me. Chanting numbers: the meditative, transparent, and unifying joy th…
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…
Stones : Dreams
**Art edition of 30 with signed/numbered 11” x 17” print by Malcolm Goldstein, housed in mylar sleeve** Recital label head Sean McCann on Stones : Dreams: "The first audio document ever published by Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks (1931-2018). There is a romanticism found in Geoffrey, that, in my mind, sets his work aside from his Fluxfriends. Known for his timeless sky paintings, applied to canvas, cars, clothes, and so on, the conceptual married the majestic. He was a master painter, whose wo…
Towards A Total Poetry
**Edition of 250 copies** Recital label head Sean McCann on Towards A Total Poetry: "Culled from live performances in Los Angeles in 1980, Towards A Total Poetry holds radioplays and sound poems by Julien Blaine, Adriano Spatola, F. Tiziano, and Paul Vangelisti. Two concerts were organized by poet and professor Vangelisti and broadcast on his KPFK radio show. A rare gathering of extreme French and Italian sound poets in California, flown out on with an arts funding grant (my, how things have cha…
Father Fugue
**Edition of250 copies** Recital label head Sean McCann on the record (June, 2019): "Father Fugue is Nour Mobarak's
first full-length album. The Los Angeles-based artist spent years
sculpting this LP, and the result is piercingly emotional. A foray into
her being; a sound artist, a songstress, a sculptor. Nour's creativity
orbits an ever-moving center. Thus, glimpses, reflections, and splinters
of her oeuvre embody Father Fugue. The side-long titular piece
on the LP is unlike anything I ha…
Gatherings
**200 copies** Anne Tardos is an American poet, visual and vocal artist. She has developed a unique performance style that allows her to move fluidly within, and between, media. This is evident in Gatherings, which was originally published on cassette by New Wilderness Audiographics, and holds recordings from 1974-1981. It stands as one of Tardos’s seminal audio documents. Two forms of sound are examined here: observational and static recordings of the artist’s loft: Percussive sounds from heat …
The Claviorganum and the Violin
**250 copies** This is the first published recording of Michel Samson since his unparalleled work with Albert Ayler’s quintet in the late 1960s. Samson’s violin playing is outstanding. His great exuberance and ecstasy, all sliding through an interlocking sadness. The collection on this LP holds numerous 17th-Century works of the Italian baroque, performed by Michel Samson and his wife, Rebecca. It showcases some of the earliest music composed for the violin as a featured soloist. Rebecca accompa…
The Entertainer
**250 copies** The Entertainer is Alex Twomey’s first album since 2012. Many have been waiting and, finally, here we are! During the silence, Twomey’s keyboard work has germinated into a more framed compositional structure, beaming with orchestral strings, woodwinds, and brass. Eleven cinematic settings and bouncing refrains mark this LP. Alex describes the album as, “vignettes alluding to a vague narrative regarding one’s idea as an artist.” A somber beauty is penned. Alex previously recorded a…
Dreams of India & China
**Edition of 500 copies, incl. 12 page booklet** Over the last few years, with its stream of stunning releases, delving into the outer reaches of sound art, poetry, and experimentalism, from seminal figures like Dick Higgins, Daniel Schmidt, Loren Connors, Sarah Davachi, Jackson Mac Low, Roger Eno, Annea Lockwood, François Dufrêne, and a great many more, the Los Angeles based imprint, Recital, has been hard to miss - a true force, shining light into the shadows of the past and present alike, sav…
Matthew
Edition of 250, includes signed insert by Sullivan. "Matthew Sullivan's Matthew is nailed together with driftwood from around the world. The waters of Italy, the pubs of London, birds of Japan, a phone call in Los Angeles. Sullivan moved from California to London in 2016. Living in London was a pivotal time for Matt, as I see it. This record digests that time. Each sound on Matthew means something specific to the artist. Locales and memories focus to mind as passages rise and sink. Us listeners…
Words And Music (Art Edition)
Deluxe-edition of 25 ( +10 AP) with new 7″ x 10″ print of Humument page done for this edition, signed and numbered by Tom Phillips. Words and Music is a rare and sought-after album by artist Tom Phillips (b. 1937). Fueled by painting, opera, and concrete poetry, this LP was originally published by the king, Hansjörg Mayer, in 1975 (this LP has never been repressed). Most are familiar with Tom Phillips’ “After Raphael” painting used on the cover of Brian Eno’s Another Green World LP, along with t…
Words And Music
Edition of 215 copies. Words and Music is a rare and sought-after album by artist Tom Phillips (b. 1937). Fueled by painting, opera, and concrete poetry, this LP was originally published by the king, Hansjörg Mayer, in 1975 (this LP has never been repressed). Most are familiar with Tom Phillips’ “After Raphael” painting used on the cover of Brian Eno’s Another Green World LP, along with the television series he made with director Peter Greenaway, A TV Dante (1990). However, Tom’s crowning achiev…
In My Arms, Many Flowers
Third CD pressing of the celebrated first album by Daniel Schmidt. No further vinyl editions will be made** Recital is proud to publish the first album of American Gamelan composer Daniel Schmidt (b. 1942). Schmidt, who emerged in the Bay Area music scene in the 1970s, wove the threads of traditional Eastern Gamelan music together with American Minimalism (repetitive music). Schmidt was (and is still) a prime figure in the development of American Gamelan music – studying and collaborating with …
Saccharine Scores
Saccharine Scores is an album/art book documenting Sean McCann's
recent chamber compositions. Ranging from the 10-person ensemble
performance of "Portraits of Friars" at Fylkingen, Stockholm in February
2018, to his first quartet piece "Victorian Wind", performed in Toronto
in 2014. McCann's scores leak pastoral and bizarre passages, dancing in
the banal beauty of sound poetry. The performances feature guest
musicians Sarah Davachi, Zachary Paul, Geneva Skeen, Celia Eydeland, Maxwell Augus…