★Table of the Elements
Between The Whiles
One of the world's most creative harpists, Zeena Parkins has contributed her inimitable playing style to the work of artists like Bjork, John Zorn, Yoko Ono,Sonic Youth and Matmos, whilst also recording a number of wonderful solo albums (including the timeless Nightmare Alley) and a couple of Phantom Orchard collaborations with electronics guru Ikue Mori. What most immediately sets Parkins apart from her peers is a roving appetite to look beyond the ordinary constraints of her instrument. While …
The Pyre Of Angus Was In Kathmandu
a rare 7-inch single of studio outtakes by the violin-and-percussion drone masterpiece Outside the Dream Syndicate. Long out of print
Physical Changes
CD+DVD+LP. Mueller's mammoth new solo percussion work. If his previous solo effort "Metals" was about pummeling rhythms & frequencies, this drives the whole idea into oblivion, as the sounds here are something to be felt as much as heard.
Basic
Carl Michael von Hausswolff's first major domestic release. As a composer he has been the main sound organizer in the duo Phauss; he has also worked with The Hafler Trio, and is currently performing live in the group Ocsid with Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome). As a visual artist, he is co-founder of the conceptual state of Elgaland-Bargaland, which hosts a worldwide array of embassies and consulates, and who physical territory is described as 'all borderlines between existing states and areas at sea.
Jet Ear Party
Jet Ear Party, Jonathan Kane's second full-length release, is a masterpiece of raw, ass-thumping Americana that shakes the meat right off the bone. With guest appearances from members of his live band, February, Kane barrels into these eight tracks like a freight train. He lunges at breakneck boogies and tom-driven swamp stomps with equal abandon. In a radical departure, he tones down his mojo long enough to accommodate female vocals for a breathlessly sexy, overtone-drenched soul ballad. Kane e…
Keep An Eye Out
Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the tenth installment in its Guitar Series Vols. 3 & 4. It’s a 12xLP romp of deviant fretnoise by some of experimental music’s most prominent players, including Christian Fennesz, Thurston Moore, and Sunn O)))’s Stephen O’Malley. Sunn O))) founder Stephen O’Malley summons a mesmerizing drone, absorbing the listener into an aural tar pit of deep, inexorable oblivion. He wears a cloak of post-metal allegiances with behemoths li…
Un Peu De Neige Salie
Guenter's assiduous compositions favor extremely subtle variances in electro-acoustic crackle, subsonic rumble, and subliminal frequencies exploring the limits of the audible spectrum through invisible digital edits. The title of his landmark debut album, released in 1994 and reissued through Table of the Elements in 1996, translates as "a little dirty snow," an apt description for Guenter's naturally impressionistic minimalism. UN PEU DE NEIGE SALIE opens with "Untitled I/92," a degenerating ma…
Impala Eardrums: A Radium Sampler
Radium is regarded as Table Of The Elements' rock offshoot, although they do write that in inverted commas (that's 'rock', in case you were wondering what that would look like). The label is given a showcase by this eight-track LP, calling upon Jonathan Kane, Megafaun, Ateleia, Collections Of Colonies of Bees and Neptune among others. Rhys Chatham, that most iconic of Radium artists gets the album underway with an untitled piece from 1986, featuring an arsenal of four guitars, a bass and drums. …
I-IV-V-I
ONE-SIDED, ETCHED GREEN VINYL. Released as a part of Table Of The Elements' 15th anniversary celebrations, this LP is another installment in the label's Guitar Series, which features contributions from Fennesz, SunnO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Thurston Moore. By rights, David Daniell's name should be every bit as widely known as any of those other aforementioned superstars of the avant-garde. His album on TOTE sub-label Xeric (the magnificent Coastal) is an all too often overlooked masterpiece, and …
Telescope
ONE-SIDED, ETCHED MARBLE-EFFECT VINYL. This new Guitar Series installment is also the debut solo LP by David Daniell's bandmate in San Agustin, Andrew Burnes - though he may equally be known for his improv collaborations with the likes of Thurston Moore and Ken Vandermark, or as a co-conspirator in Loren Connors' Haunted House. Telescope takes the form of a single, lengthy drone piece, modulating and morphing across an expanse of handsome, marble-effect green vinyl. Burnes isn't shy of morphing …
June
12" one-sided clear vinyl with an etching by Savage Pencil. Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the ninth installment in its Guitar Series Vols. 3 & 4. It’s a 12xLP romp of deviant fretnoise by some of experimental music’s most prominent players, including Christian. Simply put, Christian Fennesz is a pioneer. As much as any artist, he is responsible for establishing the laptop computer as both a compositional tool and concert instrument. Subsuming electro-acou…
Primordial Lift
Primordial Lift was originally released in 2000 and is a recording of a performance Oliveros made with David Grubbs on Harmonium and Tony Conrad on electric violin among others. Of course, the result is transcendent and throws your mind across the room – thick waves of sound and dense drones surround you as you listen and the instruments become one wall of pulsating sound. Some of you might know Oliveros from her minimalist work with the Deep Listening Band, which she founded – this material how…
A Final Kiss On Poisoned Cheeks
Another ridiculously limited LPs from Table of the Elements celebrating not only their 15th anniversary but also the humble guitar itself. This time we have a one sided, etched blue slab of wax from the unshakable Oren Ambarchi, a man whose name has become synonymous with quality electronic production. In recent years he has been seen next to Stephen O'Malley and the Southern Lord lot, but here we find him back to doing what he does so well - a gorgeous long-form guitar drone piece taking in all…
Six Guitars
As with this week's excellent Ateleia & Benjamin Curtis LP, this beautiful Table Of The Elements LP comes on single-sided clear vinyl with a Savage Pencil etching on the flip. It's just as good as its counterpart too: as suggested by the title, the side-long piece piles on an armoury of guitars, accumulating a huge amount of sonic density, but never in an oppressive way. Instead the melding of electric and acoustic tones create a huge, warm network of sonorities, consolidating this band's positi…
Baghdad Batterie
Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the second installment in its Guitar Series. On 'Baghdad Batterie', Ateleia and Benjamin Curtis fuse splendidly, as perfectly synchronized audio alchemists, and when they dip their axes in a vat of liquid soundscaping, the transmutation is complete: thick, glistening beats throb and undulate, without a tell-tale twang in sight. Baghdad Batterie is a fabulous piece of laptop psychedelia, and certain to delight fans of Curtis a…
Same Places (Slow Version)
Wafting, vaporously, from the suffocating heat of New Orleans, Belong shimmers like a mirage: vaguely discernable, yet always at the edge of an unobtainable horizon. Collaborators Mike Jones and Turk Dietrich employ a singular and remarkably inscrutable studio technique (Dietrich's remix skills extend to Nine Inch Nails' "The Frail") to wholly liquefy source material - here electric guitars - into wave upon breaking wave of sound. Comparisons are frequently made to William Basinski's notorious "…
Strung
Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the third installment in its Guitar Series Vols. 3 & 4. Peripatetic composer, performer, improviser, and designer Jon Mueller is a busy guy, and both the rock and experimental music scenes are the richer for it. As a drummer he propels the ecstatic whorl of Collections of Colonies of Bees and the occasional guitar army of Rhys Chatham; alternately his solo project, Metals, is the most harrowingly intense percussive barrage yo…
Sea Changes & Coelacanths
Subtitled: A Young Person's Guide to John Fahey. This compiles Fahey's earlier releases for TOE: 1997's Womblife and the live followup Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts; plus the Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues 12" (all o/p as individual releases at this point). In the 43 years between his first recordings and his death in 2001, John Fahey stomped across the American soundscape, leaving behind footprints of influence so breathtakingly vast that entire genres now huddle within them. Fahey's mesmeric gu…
Live at Federal Hall National Memorial, 1981
Arnold Dreyblatt is one of the most engaging of the second generation of New York minimalists. During a three decade career he has developed a distinctive -- and delightfully accessible -- approach to composition and performance. Employing modified and invented instruments and a unique tuning system, his music is a vigorously rhythmic and richly textured romp through the natural overtone series. This live CD celebrates the 25th anniversary of Dreyblatt's historic concert at Federal Hall in New Y…
Specimens
Melissa St. Pierre tosses classicism and post-classicism overboard, utilizing the prepared piano -- John Cage's notorious instrument of choice -- and electronic enhancement to sail resolutely in the direction of rock & roll. Peppering the strings, hammers, and dampers with a variety of objects, she transforms the piano's typical timbre: sparkling gamelans chatter; harrowing voodoo drums call out in the night. Specimens, St. Pierre's debut, features production and performances by Collections of C…