★ReR Megacorp

Steve MacLeans 5-piece ensemble perform complex, composed polyrhythmic pieces interspersed with atmospheric improvisations for guitar, bass, keyboard, percussion and various objects: a journey through complex, composed polyrhythmic pieces interspersed with careful, atmospheric improvisations for guitar, bass, keyboard, percussion and various objects. There is a quiet rigour, almost a formality, about this CD that is rather unusual for the new century - the compositions are not over-elaborated an…

2010 limited audiophile re-issue in an edition of 1000 copies on 180g virgin vinyl on ReR Megacorp of the landmark first album by the quintesential British art-rock/RIO band, originally eleased in 1973. NWW list.

2010 limited audiophile re-issue in an edition of 1000 copies on 180g virgin vinyl on ReR Megacorp of the second album by the quintesential British art-rock/RIO band, originally released in 1974. NWW list.

Restocked. Their first studio CD for three years - named after an industrial suburb in Sydney famous mainly for its correctional facility - Silverwater ranges further and wider than the Necks former releases, exploring a more sectional structure that counterposes extremes and contrasts, and possesses a greater sense of forward motion than we are accustomed to with this most economical of bands though it still retains the long, hypnotic single-track iterative form for which they have been praised…

** 2024 Repress. The complete official lifetime releases of This Heat: This Heat, Deceit, Health and Efficiency, Made Available and Repeat, re-mastered and re-packaged, with a substantial (48pp) book of interviews, recollections, information, documents and photographs in a sturdy box, PLUS a new CD of concert recordings **  This Heat were born in the years immediately preceding punk rock. Severe young men Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward were making things go pish-ding-whoosh on London’s free-…

The first time I heard R. Stevie Moore was when The Residents played me goodbye piano - which would have been sometime in early 1978. Soon after that, I got in touch with him to import some copies for Recommended - followed over the years by many of his other releases. Phonography was Stevie's first, and a masterpiece. Terminally idiosyncratic but with all the compositional qualities of great pop. R Stevie Moore is a gifted songwriter and marches to his own drum - as this strange and compelling …

An extended iterative, cycling, dissipating cloud of fragments, constantly shifting focus, which throws up detail, evolves, returns, settles and re-dissolves; it's a four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously alongside modern and (arguably) post-modern materials and techniques, all shaken loose out of the same experiential block, much as strata emerge as tectonic plates fold one time over another. Long, beautiful, to…

RESTOCKED! By 1982, recommended was in its fourth year. the catalog had expanded and the label was firmly established. a sampler seemed an obvious and necessary next step. we asked the most interesting groups in our catalog to record something new. the result was two hours of music released as a double lp in a hand silk-screened sleeve that was a time capsule - a tidy slice taken across a fascinating forking of musical paths that captured a moment of growth that foresaw a variety of possible fut…

Some years back, Bill Gilonis (The Work, The Lowest Notes, Hail, etc.) teamed up with B.O.A. administrator, Trixa Arnold, to write and record songs which would mostly praise the lords of Aqua-Vita (alcohol). Filling out their band of Smirnoff-swilling miscreants, was Ilya Komarov (bassist for the Estonian band, Ne Zhedali) and none other than armchair anarchist, crown prince of avant-garde pop, Rob Murphy, aka 'Bing Selfish.' While the group hoped that their songs would become instant 'hits' wit…

Michael, founder and brain behind the extraordinary Swedish post-Beefheartian group Kraljursastalten -- and world-class ice-hockey player -- here collects his extraordinary songbook including much of the two celebrated '70s releases by Kraljursastalten (the Reptile Institution: Michael plus the telepathic twins Stefan and Thomas Agaton), with later recordings from his solo record plus released and unreleased pieces with Henry Kaiser, John 'Drumbo' French, Sten Standell, Andy West and others. Wil…

Three old hands out of Soft Machine, Gong and Henry Cow stretch already elastic musical material into various shapes, tie it in knots and generally have a good time. These high quality recordings combined with seat-of-the-pants playing make for a lot of feature and color, underpinning a music that is constantly in shape-shifting motion. Compiled from recent concert recordings in Berlin, London and Tel Aviv, this clutch of extended songs should be to the taste of anyone familiar with the protagon…

Truly exxential! The ultimate collection from the legendary inventors of krautrock. This 5 CD set contains ALL Faust's early classic albums, a John Peel session, and unreleased early material. The 40 page booklet is stuffed with unpublished photos, stills from Super 8 footage from the famous studio at Wumme, and revealing interviews with many of the key players in the Faust story. CDs: Faust (the famous clear first album), So Far (the famous black second album), The Faust Tapes (for the first ti…

An incredible artefact from ReR, this double-disc release comes housed in a beautifully detailed book, all dedicated to the pioneers of the Russian avant-garde in the early twentieth century. The first disc captures a modern-day reconstruction of Arseni Avraamov's Symphony Of Sirens, a public sound event originally conceived in 1922, made up from factory sirens, military regiments, steam locomotives and choirs, all representing the lively sonic signature of the port city of Baku. In addition to …

A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label's founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager, Peter Jenner (the title of Pink Floyd's 'Flaming' is a tribute to AMM's 'Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset'). Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British ja…

Six years in the making, the visual/sonic art group Biota have finally completed their Sixth CD for ReR. Unique in their history and method, Biota painstakingly construct complex, organic structures that mix extensive studio processing and musique concréte techniques with a highly eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electronic resources – from kit drums, through mediaeval winds, strings and barrel organs to early experimental electronic instruments. Their works are always performance driven and i…

The Necks in quiet mood recorded at a concert recording in Townsville, Thuringowa, Northern Queensland. Though many Necks' pieces open with - or eventually arrive at - some discernable groove, Townsville just floats in a state of suspension from beginning to end. It's like watching the ocean as wave follows wave follows wave: each the same; each different; assymetric. Bassist Lloyd Swanton who, on this occasion, provides the motif that set Townsville running says he had had no idea where it woul…

Picchio dal Pozzo is regarded as one of the most original, impressive and highly respected of all the experimental groups to have come out of Italy in the 1970s. They share their original label with Henry Cow's Concerts, and were early invitees to the canonical Recommended Sampler. Aldo De Scalzi, Andrea Beccari, Giorgio Karaghiosoff and Paulo Griguolo all met at infant school and began playing Teleman, Corelli, Bach and Mozart together in their school orchestra. In 1969, Aldo's brother, one of …

FINALLY RESTOCKED! "New studio work featuring three long pieces in classic Necks minimal/maximal style. Why waste words?" (label info)"Chemist is the 13th release from Australian maverick trio The Necks, now approaching their 20th Anniversary, and still occupying a genre-group of one. Their slow, gripping, development of a single idea over the length of a whole CD, while somehow obvious, has proved un-copyable, mostly because it so much depends on the unique musical personalities and extreme vir…

A subtle, moody, rich and wide-ranging work, in which atmosphere, emotion and dramaturgy lead the ear far beyond music into a world of hints, evocations, anticipation and association and, in passing, reveal a complex metonymic language that, at a deep level, invokes that mostly unconscious lexicon of sound we have all absorbed collectively and subliminally in the course of a century of movie-going, television viewing, documentary recording and electroacoustic experimentation. Once sounds have be…

Acnalbasac Noom -- meant to be the German-English-American avant-pop group Slapp Happy's second album -- was originally recorded in 1973 but did not see release originally until 1980. Recorded with legendary German art-rock group Faust accompanying the Slapp Happy core of Anthony Moore on keyboards, Peter Blegvad on guitar, and Dagmar Krause on vocals, and with Faust's brilliant producer Uwe Nettelbeck at the helm, Acnalbasac Noom was initially rejected by the group's label Polydor as not being …

Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable - in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes latin brass arrangements (sort of), great drumming, medium wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -and all without undue fuss but adding up to something exotic and new. Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. It doesn't play by genre rules, or fashion …

A collection of 52 very short songs on uncanny themes, illustrated in the exquisite 24p full-colour booklet with a set of 20 commissioned paintings by Ray O'Bannon. Perhaps the scariest thing is that each of these miniatures is a fully formed, fully orchestrated and complete structure - no lazy snippets here - and Bob Drake plays all the parts with his famously Paganini-esque virtuosity in spooky variable tempo synchrony, packing more ideas and material into 50 seconds than many manage on an ent…

Life meets art. Born of a long written corresPondence and a mutual affection for frogs between David Myers (the artist formerly known as Arcane Device) and Tod Dockstader which eventually spawned this programme of electronic & concrete pieces derived almost entirely from field (and swamp) recordings of frogs - choral and solo processed, manipulated and organised in a million ways. This release also marks the welcome return of Tod Dockstader to the lists; it's his first large-scale new published …

Followers of our Quarterly will recall, about 6 years back, Woodbury's inspired arrangement of 'Shenandoah', which managed to embrace the whole of America history in under 10 minutes. Since then he has been working on completing this collection, his first full ensemble instrumental CD. The interest starts with the ensemble itself, half as expected for Latin, Jazz and Big band arrangements and half traditional American: pedal steel, banjo, accordion and fiddles. One thinks of Van Dyke Parks', and…

File under early Russian industrial rock/art; Harry Partch, incorporating primitive analogue electronics. A legend in art and industrial music circles, ZGA was formed under the old regime in Riga, Lavia, in 1984, by Nick Sudnik and Valery Dudkhin. Unable to rehearse acoustically because of the neighbours, they invented their own instruments from scrap and springs and shaped metal fitted with contact microphones; these were not just noise instruments, but ways of accessing complex pitches, strang…

A sound drama for tuba and electronics that constructs its own rich, twilit, rather alien, world. Only the sound of the tuba (sometimes), a few waves and a little thunder sound familiar, everything else is a mysterious presence; the electronics are not at all conventional and though much of the sound is clearly derived somehow from the tuba, it offers no foothold in a familiar place. If landscape were ever an appropriate metaphor for the product of a congeries of sounds, it would be applicable h…

This essential piece of history at last reissued, redesigned and repackaged. Keystone works from the various streams of musique concrete, electronic music, soundscape, electroacoustics and plunderphonics - including two masterworks from Eastern Europe, a territory traditionally overlooked in collections of this medium. It comprises: John Oswald's 'Parade', a complex work drawn and extended from Satie's celebrated ballet composition of 1917; Georg Katzer's monumental 'Aide Memoire' ('7 nig…

On the one hand, they seem to be releasing too many CDs - on the other, they are so different and so good you really need to have them. This time they offer two long pieces, both exquisite, of which Mosquito is, in my opinion, destined for greatness. Since the demo arrived in the office it's been on continuously. Minimal, with every sound perfectly imagined and perfectly placed, it achieves almost total timelessness. Essential. (label info)

Sound-track to the prize-winning movie. The Necks break with convention here and put several shorter pieces on one CD. All gems and all pared back to the reiterative imperfection that is the Necks' unique and glorious signature. This a band that seems to be coming into its golden age. Prodigious music and highly recommended.

Over the last thirty years Peter Cusack has built a reputation as an improvising musician, and is often to be found plucking an array of string instruments, including guitar and balalaika, while simultaneously triggering live electronics. Peter had known for some time about the extraordinary Lake Baikal, a 600 kilometre long lake in Siberia. It is thought to be the world's oldest and deepest lake and holds one fifth of the earth's fresh water. It was only recently, however, that he came across a…

Mnemonists eventually evolved into the incredible Biota band. Before they did they released a series of LPs, including the art work that surrounds and informs their approach to improvisation. As Mnemonists their work is darker and more ominous than that of Biota, but the process was still the same: post-processing live improvisation to construct larger works that stood on their own two feet as compositional pieces. Think AMM, Organum, Faust; Mnemonists embraced their strategies but created somet…

Continuing the definitive Fred Frith edition, this is the CD based on Fred’s music for the second film he made with Humbert and Penzel – following nomads – that features, along with Fred’s compositions and re-workings, a restless and gripping unfolding of atmospheric locations, tuareg and other musics, ethongraphic material and times captured. A collage or a soundwork rather than a straightforwardly musical composition, this is a serious and unfairly marginalised piece (because it falls between …

Some changes from Volume One. These are Instrumental pieces, and the band is now a quartet. Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer, Bob Drake and Chris Cutler are joined by guitarist Mike Johnson of Thinking Plague. The music remains somewhere between intense contemporary complexity and rock - passing most points between. Tickmayer's compositional language is....unique and complex and extremely broad - no influence is seemingly outlawed, and this makes for a genuinely unclassifiable form that resembles nothing…

The latest collection of twisting, turning instrumentals and songs, and another instant classic. If you didn't venture down this way yet, now is a good time to start. In a category of one, Bob Drake undermines musical, technical and production norms with a breathtaking amalgam of broken rules and unimaginable musical logic.

Based in Miami, this is a very interesting American band, ploughing its own furrow - whose accent is what they call 'prog' over there, but whose language is more complex by far. Pip Pyle adds a seasoned sophistication - in fact I think this is a great environment for him, he shines - but the whole ensemble is way past the foothills and keeping the oxygen packs handy. An excellent first CD, in a style that, features densely composed, layered, slightly post 5UU-school music - with some sung…

The Homosexuals appeared, stunned everyone who heard them and then disappeared. Between 1978 and 1982 they released 2 singles and a 12" EP. The three of them individually, under various names, also released a stack of other material, but as The Homosexuals they, curiously, left a whole archive of unreleased material lying around on tape with no idea of releasing it. When everyone had moved on, I was given all the masters and a invitation - if I was really still interested, to get on with it. For…

FINLLY RESTOCKED! For the last 40 years the Logos Foundation in Gent has featured, produced and supported a vast programme of experimental music. One of its most distinctive projects is the massive robot orchestra - a huge and growing array of invented instruments - all of them Goldbegeresque physical constructions that produce internally generated acoustic sound, programmed and played through computer driven mechanical processes... Here they have been programmed to play a broad concert o…

It was a long wait, but, 12 years after the fact, Fred Frith put together a live album of his group Keep the Dog, which had previously gone undocumented. Comprised of sax/flute player Jean Derome, guitarist René Lussier, keyboardist/harpist Zeena Parkins, sampling artist Bob Ostertag, and drummer Charles Hayward, Keep the Dog was formed by Frith in 1989 to perform a best-of repertoire of his career and remained his last rock group. By the time of this 1991 European tour, the unit had grown beyon…

In the early 1960's Tod Dockstader was a young maverick composer of electronic 'organised sound', and James Reichert a film composer and music supervisor. They met in New York in 1963, and launched one of the most extraordinary collaborations in modern music, a unique attempt to integrate electronic sounds and the classical orchestra. Unlike Varese's Deserts, and Stockhausen's Kontakte, it does not merely have the orchestra play along with a tape, or even process orchestral sounds live. What mak…

With string orchestras, percussion, a motivating red guard and the severed embalmed arm of the great helmsman himself (maybe), Jon Pits the ethos of Mao's China - and in particular the mass production of the violin and it's use in life against the 'reductive cultural practice of our globalised world'. Well, that's what it says here and by golly I agree. Apart from that, this a large scale work that features fine and extensive writing for string orchestras, juxtaposed with (more or less) controll…