★ReR Megacorp
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, …
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…
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…
Explosion Of A Memory (A Literary Canvas For Orchestra)
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…
Gaps, Absences
A beautifully recorded and produced cycle of pieces that combine complexity and precision with rich and unfamiliar timbres. The ensemble pieces amplify and enrich a core piano with various combinations of harmonium, double bass, violin, percussion, Hungarian zither, citara bassa, bowed cymbals, alto clarinet, melodica, sampler and field recordings, all sparsely but powerfully deployed. This is a deep and powerful music with both crystalline clarity and cinematic low frequency power. And no fat o…
Cold Peace Counterpoints
A suite of fiendishly complex compositions for mixed real and virtual resources. Bob Drake, Djorge Delibasic, Pegja Milosavljevic and Chris Cutler make appearances - playing electric guitar, bass, drums and virtuoso violin between them, but mainly it is Stevan who plays all kinds of keyboards, strings, double bass, zither, samples and software. Three thoroughly through-composed and finely articulated pieces make up this very concentrated suite: Concerto Grosso (for keyboards, string instr…
Coal Tattoo
Contemporaries of Pere Ubu and best known for their work with the Numbers Band, Bob and Jack Kidney were also essential to David Thomas’ Mirror Man project. These are stripped down, guitar based songs/stories with deep roots - the deep, dark, bluesy kind of roots. Robert has a voice and a gravitas that commands immediate respect.
From Ritual Nova I & II
Boris produced these careful and extended works over 14 years. RN 1, was only released in Jugoslavia (as was) and has long been only a collectors item. RN II was released on our POINTS EAST label. Now 70 minutes from both LP's have been assembled and remastered on one CD. This is unique and wonderful music; timely when so much insanity and horror stains the lands of its origins.
Times of Day
What Boris does is without parallel or precedent, and he’s been doing it for over 40 years, perfecting a language that is uniquely his own: not chamber music, not world music, not jazz – but demanding performance skills vital to all three. What do you call a music that is fully scored, played only by acoustic instruments and demands not only extremely high technical standards from its performers but - if they are to imbue what is written with its proper ritual body - shared histories and …
Hello Debris
After a break of almost 15 years Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake have reconvened their classic partnership. In the meantime rock and post rock has mainly moved away from the song and its classic shapes, leaving commercial pop to straighten them out and endlessly repeat the same tropes and tricks. Hail is rare amongst bands in its adherence to the notion that what makes a song interesting is the application of imagination and skill to its arrangement, performance and recording. The plan is not…
Kirk
Second Hail CD, with guest appearances from Chris Cutler, David Kerman and Bill Gilonis.
Happiness Proof
Haco and many guests (including Otomo Yoshihide, Peter Hollinger, Uchihashi Kasuhisa, Pierre Bastien and Ichiraku Yoshimitsu with a new collection of songs, in inimitable Haco style. Nothing to explain.
Lost in Rooms
Although following The 5th Elephant in its musical organisation - around grids of pulses and highly crafted, rich sonorities - this work is more evolved, more focussed and more internally economic. Following a narrative thread this time, the whole is bound into a complex and ramifying exposition of repetition, transformation and evolution, where a return is no return and where perceiver and perceived are lost to time. Tightly bounded by speech-derived (but massively re-formed) sonic mate…
The 5th Elephant
Between electroacoustic procedural precision and more recent pulse driven electronica slips this placeless new work from composer Lutz Glandien, 2 years in the making, employing material collectively generated by Lutz himself, Chris Cutler and Tuba virtuoso Michael Vogt - heavily reorganised, processed, stretched and re-assembled to make extraordinary pieces that demand - and reward - concentrated listening.