★Sub Rosa
High Tide In The Lowlands
Born in 2012 when the three were living in the same apartment building in Cairo's Agouza district, the trio's instrumental improvisation-based explorations are propelled by Louca's North African percussion loops and shimmering keys, Shalabi's West African tinged free jazz guitar and grounded by Bishop's driving Krautrock-style acoustic bass.
High Tide in the Lowlands was recorded in Brussels at Les Ateliers Claus on September 5, 2017 and is quite an intense experience. Most performances and reco…
Stolen Symphony (Volume 1)
*Comes with a 72 page booklet including texts and pictures* All in all, there are more than 50 pieces, new and old, live and studio, finished pieces and scores to be performed, acoustic and classical, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive Fluxus archives and Edizioni Conz provided coproduction. Ursula and René Block made possible the realisation of John Cage's historical composition Rozart Mix from the E…
Brian Eno Performed by Dedalus Ensemble
With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978), and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, ambient music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what you expect from it. A mental base that takes you far away. One…
Epic Ellipses
Puce Moment is part of the French contemporary music scene. Their music is climatic, often inhabited by a strong emotional power. A procession of harmonic structures organized in a ritual way, sometimes close to trance. It can be written or improvised, vocal or instrumental. The electronic and electroacoustic arrangements summon new spaces and abstract landscapes, which can go from the purest sound to the most raw distortions. Vast, slower, deeper - distant echoes of half-faded things - and when…
Pas De Regrets
Laszlo Umbreit's album Pas de Regrets combines electronic sounds with recorded memories and various materials to create a unique listening experience. The album features complex soundscapes and techniques of layering and editing, drawing on Umbreit's experience as a sound designer for films. Pas de Regrets is an immersive and rich listening experience, with a narrative quality that places it between prospective electronics and experimental radio.
Laszlo Umbreit (°1986) is a Belgian sound designe…
Bear Traces: Nuggets From Bobs Barn. Second Paw
*2023 stock* Sub Rosa presents part two in a two-part vinyl version of the Bear Traces compilation culled from the legendary collection of Bob Hite, founding member and singer of Canned Heat. Compiled by DJ Dr. Boogie. "Although it stems from the same artistic process as Volume One in the Dr. Boogie Presents series, this is not Volume Two of a series devoted to Bob Hite. The process was different in that here I focused on much more obscure tracks taken from the very small portion of what remains…
Choreological Exchanges
British Dadaists Hastings of Malawi, with roots in the Nurse With Wound circle, continue their inquiry into communication itself. Recorded in the pandemic, side one is built from the sound of old mechanical telephone exchanges and their engineers' voices, a "dance within the wires"
Tarab
CD Digipack. In a handful of improvised albums circumnavigating the troubled waters of the contemporary Mediterranean -Greece, with the eponymous Oiseaux-Tempête (2013), Turkey and Sicily for Ütopiya? (2015), Lebanon with Al-'An! (2017) - the collective Oiseaux-Tempête has stretched its electric arc over musical genres and borders, imposing itself in a river of tours and releases like a wild UFO within the hexagonal indie scene. Navigating instinct, as attracted by disorder, the music of Oiseaux…
Two Extended Pieces for Four Pianos
Building on the back of their stunning release of Ensemble 0’s rendering of "Femenine" issued earlier this year, Sub Rosa returns with "Two Extended Pieces for Four Pianos", featuring brand new recording of two seminal works composed by Julius Eastman between 1970 and 1980 - "Evil N*gger" (1979) and "Crazy N*gger" (1980) - realised by Nicolas Horvath, Melaine Dalibert, Stephane Ginsburgh, and Wilhem Latchoumia.
Majestic Noise Made in Beautiful Rotten Iran
It's an all electronic affair, harmonically maximalist, predominantly symphonic synthetic, requiring active listening. Some pieces function as challengers of musical structural habits, provoking the short attention span culture, others present
a problem-solution scenario, collectively via
a neoteric noise aesthetic and detailed melodic weaving. Ultimately, the objective was to engineer an assortment of works full of sound, euphonic and vivid in nature.
Kajang
Four previously unreleased pieces (2015-2020) by Otto Sidharta, pioneer of Indonesian electronic music. Built from environmental sound and a deep love of sealed-off traditional musics, the album takes its name from a closed community in Sulawesi and works as a contemplation of the self, made "with no calculation". White vinyl.
Alterations
Never-before-released 1981 live recordings by Alterations, the great British free-improv quartet of David Toop, Peter Cusack, Steve Beresford and Terry Day. Hundreds of instruments cover the floor; the music reacts to room, noise and audience alike. Playful and rigorous at once. From Sub Rosa's SubLogos series. LP.
Sibyl Of The Rhine
*In process of stocking* Lynn Cassiers and Jozef Dumoulin have been making music together since over 20 years. But it's a vast and fascinating list of unrelated events that brought them to make this recording, featuring the music of 12th century sage and mystic Hildegard von Bingen in a setup of voice with electronics accompanied by pipe organ.
Yet it feels like an unexpected and vibrant evidence - coming home somewhere else. The music of Hildegard von Bingen is essentially monodic, made to be …
L'Effet Rebond (Version Iridium / Version Silicium)
*In process of stocking* 'L'effet rebond' is not one album but two. Two parallel albums sharing the same title. One by Pierre-Yves Macé, the other by Sylvain Chauveau - two friends and regular collaborators for nearly twenty years.
Both works come from the same original material:a few tracks of guitar, piano, harmonium and vocals, initially recorded by Chauveau. The lyrics (in French, English, Japanese) are very short poems by or quotations from e.e. cummings, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, Basho, …
Electronic Works & Voices 1977-87
Perfect follow-up to Sub Rosa's precedent double-LP Electronic Works & Voices 1961-1979, this release highlights Leo Kupper's earliest compositions with his GAME machine
Another State of Stagnation / Piano Pieces (1991-2021)
"My piano compositions are a mixture of musical reminiscences and a confession of my love for disharmonic chords on the one hand, and lascivious melodies on the other. As in the case of almost all my pieces, I wrote them 'dry', at a desk, without using any musical instruments. I only worked with memory and a little bit of imagination. The compositions often come across as randomly taken out of a pot, which contains a blend of fragments of works of a variety of periods, styles and creators." --Mi…
A New Score For Koyaanisqatsi
** White vinyl ** Dark-folk songwriter Chantal Acda and beyond drums-percussion musician extraordinaire Eric Thielemans propose a new score for Koyaanisqatsi, re-actualizing the incredibly beautiful, raw, rhythmic, and touching images of this '80s cinematographic masterpiece. Slow deep electric waves, lonely synths in sonic desert landscapes, rhythmic pulses, transporting drums and bells, and deeply longing sounds and voices make up the audible fundamentals of this imagined, neo shamanic, ritual…
The Encrimsoned
Milky white vinyl Sound architect and filmmaker from Liège, Belgium Phil Maggi is known as the lead singer of heavy-rock combo Ultraphallus. He has shared the bill with Jerusalem In My Heart, Keith Rowe, Phill Niblock, Tuxedomoon, Sote, Thisquietarmy, and many others. The Encrimsoned is the second part of his diptych inspired by Henry Corbin's writings, which started with his previous album Animalwrath (SR 453CD). The Encrimsoned is a four-track album, harboring a few musical friends and usual …
City of Light
*500 copies limited 'indian green' color vinyl* City of Light is the sixth solo album by American composer Bill Laswell, released on July 29, 1997. While it may appear an anachronism in his catalog, fans of Bill Laswell will find City of Light an extension of ideas he has explored throughout his career. His strong interest in Eastern music and religion resulted in this 1997 collaboration with Janet Rienstra. Part sacred, spoken word, part meditative soundscape, City of Light takes as its inspir…
Heresie
Tip! Sub Rosa present a reissue of Univers Zero's second album Heresie, originally released in 1979. A classic of chamber rock music, featuring heavy use of dissonance and dark, brooding, and extremely complex melodies. "This music on this LP might have little to do with rock, and might also be a massive downer, but the quality of the writing and playing is extremely high. Michel Berckmans' solo work on oboe and bassoon work is magnificent, and Patrick Hanappier's string playing (violin and viol…