★Sub Rosa
Voxorgachitectronumputer
Charlemagne Palestine: (voice/organs), X Joachim Montessuis: (voice/computer). After two massive works, From Etudes To Cataclysms (SR 272CD) - for the Doppio Borgato and Strumming Music
(SR 297CD) for piano, harpsichord and strings ensemble, Charlemagne's
work is now rooted in Sub Rosa for good. But next to his solo records,
the label wants to continue to publish collaborative works: they started
with An Aural Symbiotic Mystery (SR 204CD) featuring Tony Conrad.
This time, Joachim Montessuis…
Feral
Daniel Menche has established himself as a musician with a sense of focus and determination uncharacteristic in a genre known for its randomness and chaotic structure.Rather than creating 'noise,' he strives for order and cohesiveness. His presentation of sonic structures is similar to the way a writer depicts a story, an allegory seems to arise, which uses confusion as a symbol for the imaginative process of total sound purity; aural intensity is not a representation of confusion or the chaotic…
Parabolique d'Enfer / Paraboles-Mix avec Leons d'Enfer
This recording will be Sub Rosa's first posthumous recording of Henri Pousseur. It is the sixth release (out of eight) in their catalog devoted to this composer's experimental and electronic works. It also marks the end of the trilogy of the Parabolic works (following the 1972 unreleased recordings and the 2001 collective performance). This time around, we have a piece built through another major Pousseur work: Leçon d'Enfer (composed in 1990-1991 around Arthur Rimbaud). This previously-unreleas…
El hombre que se sofoca
Israel Martinez (Guadalajara, Mexico 1979) scope of work goes from sound to multidisciplinary art, including experimental and non-academic electroacoustic music, actions, video, installation and site-specific projects, mainly focused on sound as source and theme. He got the Distinction Award at Prix Ars Electronica 2007 in the Digital Musics Category for his sound piece 'Mi Vida'. Since 2003 he has performed and exhibited in several countries throughout America and Europe. He's co-founder…
Tourbillon D'Obscurité
Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he'd rather be introduced as a "musical travel agent" than a composer. Petit uses a Cymbalum, an Electric Psalterion, computer and synths to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings.
To second the machines he likes to move various glasses,
or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds. A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical ac…
Fathom
Saxophonist and composer Ulrich Krieger is already widely respected for having been a part of the incredible Zeitkratzer and having collaborated with Merzbow. However this fifty-minute composition is possibly his most striking to date. A collaborative effort with Alan Licht, Tim Barnes and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, 'Fathom' is a deep, doomy exercise in patience and subtlety. With stark, minimal percussion and a bleak, haunted soundscape punctuated by Krieger's blackened woodwind tones th…
Inhumane Humans
Novi_sad is the guise for Thanasis Kaproulias (b. 1980) who holds a degree from the Economic University of Piraues. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. Influenced by the pioneers of audio assault, he began generating sounds in 2005. No studies, no academic education, no scholarships, just pure learning by doing. Amplified environmental recordings, drone manipulations, structured ambient soundscapes, microtones vs overtones, all come together in a hyper structure of iconoclastic form. Novi_s…
as/if/when
Sub Rosa presents works by industrial music pioneer, Z'EV. The physical vibrations of the objects in his works with both text and sound has been influenced by the Middle Eastern mystical system best known as Kabbalah, as well as -- but not limited to -- African, Afro-Caribbean and Indonesian rhythms, musics and cultures. He has studied Ewe music, Balinese gamelan, and Indian tala. From 1959-1965 he studied drumming with Arnie Frank, then Chuck Flores and then Art Anton at Drum City in Van …
Soni Sclavus
Electro-acoustic out-sound experimentician Israël Quellet was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1972, and this is his second release for the Sub Rosa label - the fifth volume in their Musics in the Margin series.
extended loudspeakers
Jerrycans connected by a network of steel wires, each wire length and can location is adapted to the space. A loudspeaker is slipped inside one of the cans; the sounds it broadcasts make the wires vibrate. When these sounds are modulated (pitch, timbre, volume, density), the cans produce various resonances, which can be injected back into the speaker (feedback). The cans are hanging, so that listeners can circulate and choose different listening perspectives.
Musics In The Margin Vol.4
Fourth opus of musical art brut, faithful to our precepts, we search out self-taught musicians. That means people who make contemporary music outside the customary production and distribution channels and with the determination and creative gifts that stem from unmistakable artistic talent. Some of these musicians operate in mental or social isolation and make their music in special workshops while others can be classified with the spiritualist or visionary artists. This particular relationship …
Hommage Au Sauvage - A Portrait
This portrait of renowned composer Henri Pousseur arrives just days after his death at the hands of bronchial pneumonia, aged 79. The documentary goes some way towards conveying Pousseur's warmth and openness as well as giving some impression of the breadth of his career and its accomplishments. The film documents Pousseur taking one last trip to Basel's Fondation Paul Sacher, to which he's donated his full archive of sound materials, research and memos. In addition to spending time during the j…
Oh, Run Into Me, But Don't Hurt Me! - Female Blues Singers (Rarities 1923 - 1930)
...Female Blues Singers - Rarities 1923-1930. The Sub Rosa label presents a collection of works from obscure and forgotten female blues singers, exploring the question: what can be said about a singer whose entire work fits on a single-sided 78rpm record? What circumstances led to this recording? Who decided to do it? For whom was it intended? Why wasn't it followed by more recordings? Hypotheses get lost in places and moments themselves forgotten. What remains are these miraculous voices that h…
Three Overpopulated Cities Built By Shortsighted Planners...
Minimalist sound artist CM Von Hausswolff gives his two cents on the state of overdevelopment in various urban environments the world over in this, his second disc for the Sub Rosa label. It's hard to say precisely how the music here relates to town planning: Von Hausswolff concentrates on conjuring the kind of stark, austere glitch-driven soundscapes found on his work for labels like Raster Noton, using what sounds to be entirely synthetic sources, so again, it's difficult to establish any conc…
From Etudes to Cataclysms - for the Doppio Borgato
After the epiphany of An Aural Symbiotic Mystery by Charlemagne Palestine and Tony Conrad (SR204) this is the first solo work by Charlemagne on Sub Rosa - the first but probably not the last - because we would like not only to release some new important material like this one - but re-release too a series of his classic works (most of them, unfortunately, are unavailable). From Etudes to a Cataclysms is one of the most important work 'till this day. An impressive composition of more than 140 min…
The mountain swallowing sadness
This is the first album from Wang Changcun, who is a member of the China Sound Unit, a group dedicated to investigating aural phenomena in various urban centers. Blurring the distinction between noise and the avant-garde, it also marks the first release of a Chinese composer by a Western label with international scope.
Of the two tracks on this disc, of more interest is the lengthy opener “Grand Hotel.” In this 40-minute composition, Changcun relies on expansive texture to create an ever-shiftin…
The creative act
deluxe digipack cd with booklet (english and french) : lecture in Houston, Texas - April 1957 some texts from à l'infinitif (1912-1920) ; lecture in New York, shortly before his death musical erratum (la mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même) ; long before John Cage, the first aleotory composition ; an interview by George Heard Hamilton recorded in New York (1959) ; an interview by Richard Hamilton recorded in London (1959) ; musical erratum (a score for 3 voices) only score written by du…