★ReR Megacorp
Go Figure Traité De Mécanique Populaire (1978)
Comes in digipak with an 8-page booklet and a sheet announcing this CD as part of the ZNR box to be released in 2018. Originally released in 1978. "The second and last release by this most exquisite and eccentric of groups, who hardly touched the world of working bands, and whose existence was tenuous, flickering, mythological -- and yet who managed, to find its way to legendary status -- rather like Marcel Duchamp's fountain, by leaving an indelible trace in recorded form of their verifiab…
Go Figure
After 19 years, Go Figure marks the Peter Blegvad Trio's return to the studio, in supernal form and now a quintet with Karen Mantler and Bob Drake. Peter, John and Chris first met when Henry Cow was touring with Faust, in 1972. Peter was on secondment from his own group Slapp Happy, and in the following year Henry Cow and Slapp Happy merged, making two LPs before they separated again. When John Greaves left Henry Cow in 1976, he joined Peter in New York where they wrote and recorded Kew.Rh…
Water Messages On Desert Sand
The extraordinary 1987 debut album from the Italian legendary duo. Water Messages on Desert Sand was the very first sound creation from the Italian avantgarde duo of Roberto Musci and Giovanni Venosta. A classic work in the genre, released by Chris Cutler's Recommended Records in 1987. Back in the mid Eighties, Musci & Venosta, both on sampler, synthesizer, guitar, piano, effects and tapes were masters in overlaying and constructing rhythmic and harmonic pictures of transparent sound from electr…
Unrest
Dating from 1974, and following on from the re-release of Legend, this is the second in our series of vinyl reissues of the original Virgin albums. Geoff Leigh had left the group and Lindsay Cooper joined on bassoon, oboe, flute, soprano sax. The mix was more 'live' than Legend, with the drums much more up front. The first half is highly composed material, with some of the Henry Cow's best loved tunes, like 'Half Asleep Half Awake' and 'Bittern Storm Over Ulm'. For the second half the material w…
Desperate Straights
Desperate Straights was the first result of the historical meeting between Slapp Happy, the German/English Avant-Pop band and the apparently incompatible Henry Cow. Recorded at Virgin Record's Manor Studios in 1974 and properly re-mastered by Bob Drake, Desperate Straights stands as a real piece of Art from another time. A full set of great songs, including gems like "Bad Alchemy" and "Apes in Capes", arranged and performed by an amazing collective featuring Dagmar Krause's unique voice, Peter B…
Nuages de Magellan
Our third collection featuring the ondes Martenot and the most experimental, in part because the Spectralist composer Tristan Murail, to whom this CD is dedicated, was himself a student of - and performer on - the ondes and, in these pieces, he explores some of its less conventional byways. These works are united here for the first time, performed by a new generation of musicians more attuned to the raw, less academic approach to sound that Murail himself favoured. Works for solo Onde, tw…
Messages and Portraits
Classic work. Overlays and constructs rhythmic and harmonic vignettes of transparent sound (at once complex and simple) from electronic, acoustic and documentary sources, taking ethnic field recordings as it's thematic centre. In the realm of 'My life in the Bush of Ghosts' but far more accomplished and developed.
Phonography
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 …
Messiaen et autour de Messiaen for ondes Martenot and Piano
A signature collection of exquisite works for onde Martenot and piano by Olivier Messiaen, N'Guyen Thien Dao, Jacques Charpentier and Tristan Murail, exploring the many voices of this extraordinary instrument. The onde (or ondes musicales or le Martenot) was first demonstrated at the Paris Conservatoire in 1928 and immediately attracted the attention of Varese, Milhaud, Koechlin, Jolivet, Honegger and Messiaen, who all wrote for it - cumulatively ensuring its survival. Seven years younge…
MeRCy: Future(s)
This CD of songs, grittily arranged and produced is noticeably more straight-ahead than ReR’s usual releases though it sits comfortably within the broad range of Steve’s tirelessly experimental output. This is a project with a long history: Steve and his main collaborator Todd Dadaleares have been writing, recording and performing together for longer than MeRCy’s 20+ year existence and David Fields (drums) and Tim Inman (keyboards) are also long servers. New, for this phase of recordings …
Arcane Device - Engine of Myth
In 1988, I received a tape from David Myers consisting of music made purely from the internal conflicts of machines; sounds made from no sound - no input, only output emerging from the unstoppable flow of electrons within and across machines plugged into one another the 'wrong' way; these outputs then being controlled by David in real time using a mixing desk. The sounds were exquisite: ethereal, glassy, powerful, gritty, rich and strange by turns - and surprisingly varied. Clearly too, …
Killing Time
Another legendary release. Fred's first full-on group after Henry Cow - following soon after his move to America - was a power trio with Bill Laswell (bass) and Fred Maher (drums), both from Giorgio Gomelsky's house band Zu - later to become Material. Massacre was loud and their pieces tended to be short, make their point and end. They used the time-honoured structure of bebop: an intricate head followed by high energy explorations of rhythm and timbre (aka noise). But the authority of pla…
Expressions on Piano
Steve's fourth CD for us is a remarkable set of pieces for mediated acoustic piano that operates in the shadowy territory between what is playable and what is programmable; between narrative simplicity and performative complexity; between hopeful intentionality and flawless execution. Unusually, Steve has put our ear right inside the piano, sans artificial reverberations and blurring tools and, over the course of the CD, various musical dialects are explored and extended - from the plausi…
Bridges
These recordings collect together works spanning two decades of composition and experimentation that balance traditional musical resources (the band, compositional skills, instrumental techniques, acoustic and amplified instruments) and the new technologies (computers, software, processing). The first CD showcases polyrhythmic, careful compositions (like those on his last ReR CD, Opposite of War), which still no-one has tried to emulate. The second is more meditative, abstract and electro…
Frog Bug Guitar Computer
Steve is back with a truly original and unusual CD; very different from his other work - featuring, as the title proclaims, frogs and insects - recorded in the field - and guitar -, all subtly and intelligently processed (which is where the computer comes in); not to alter the sounds so much as to lock them together into complex rhythm and pitch relationships. The result sounds somehow 'natural' but yet spookily integrated. Then MacLean treats each track, or episode, differently, coming a…
Year of The Dragon
A collection of 5 songs and 4 instrumental pieces that explore equally - and simultaneously - spontaneous performance values, close compositional detail and extensive processing. Made out on the rocky coast of Maine with just a TV eye keeping tabs on a world skidding to hell in a handcart, all the basic work was done by MacLean and Cutler with Julie Thompson (voice) added later – alongside additional parts played by Frank Gross (bassoon), Michael Bierylo (laptop, samples, circuits) and Ti…
Lung Tree
This is one of those recordings that arrived unannounced in the mail. I knew Lesli Dalaba, of course, but the others were new to me. The project is Eric Glick Rieman's and I found it immediately intriguing. There seemed to be something quite subtle going on; minimal, microtonal, economical and eccentric; it plays subtly with timbre, pitch and structure and never quite does what you expect. At first blush it seemed as it would be another interesting but conventional improvising trio, but …
Metamorphoses (Electronic Adventures in Flamenco)
11 pieces beautifully played by flamenco guitarist Alfredo Lagos, and then put through an electro acoustic obstacle course by Venosta and Mariani. The raw guitar is reversed, inverted, cut up, re-played, propelled by processed handclaps and swathed in delayed vocals. The large-scale hypnotic structures contrast strangely with the pristine simplicity of the original guitar pieces, and the album works as a profound meditation on culture, technology, art and authorship. Unusual, genre-bendin…
The Most of Now
An exquisite and subtle new composition by Macedonian composer Nikola Kodjbashaia exquisitely realised by a broad and mixed ensemble of exemplary - and mostly Macedonian - instrumentalists: a suite of highly imaginative variations on a theme that meanders purposively through an unusual - I'd say unique - musical landscape in which reflections of everything from lounge music, Macedonian folk instrumentals, Byzantine church liturgy, contemporary orchestra composition and exotica rub should…