★Tzadik
Life Field
David Rosenboom is a composer/performer of unprecedented range and experience. He performed at the Electric Circus in 1969, on the original recording of In C with Terry Riley, with La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music as well as with Anthony Braxton, Jim Tenney, Richard Teitelbaum and countless others. This exciting CD showcases four decades of compositional activity, embracing minimalism, electronics, indeterminacy, improvisation and more. Life Field is an essential document of one …
Anamorphosis
Romitelli was born in 1963 and died tragically in 2004 after a long illness. He studied in Italy with Donatoni, and later at IRCAM with the spectralists. His work blends the sonic experiments of spectralism with psychedelic rock in the kind of hybridization of art and popular music more common of the New York Downtown scene. His work is wild and exciting, and often combines acoustic and electric instruments with other bizarre sound sources creating a hallucinatory atmosphere. The Talea En…
Double Dupe Down
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Zeena Parkins is a keyboardist, harpist and composer who has worked closely with Fred Frith, Bjork, Ikue Mori and many others. Her brilliant work for dance has earned her three Bessie Awards, and her own bands have toured the world for over twenty years to great acclaim. This special compilation brings together her best compositions written for film and features some of the greatest musicians in the downtown scene. An endlessly creative collection of work by…
Heart Chamber Phantoms
The versatile composer/performer who has worked with Cibo Matto, Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon, Mike Watt and many others, creates a third CD for the Tzadik Oracles series highlighting her fascinating new instrumental approach. Mixing funky beats, hip samples and instruments both acoustic and electric, Yuka's dramatic sense of sound and color creates a hypnotic groove for young moderns. Endlessly listenable, her first CD in over five years is also her very best!
Aleph
*2022 stock.* In his liner notes to Aleph, Terry Riley explains that the work was created as "an improvised meditation on the various meanings of this supreme emanation from the Hebrew alphabet." It was made using a Korg Triton Studio 88 synth with his own sound design, and employing a just intonation scale used by Lou Harrison on his last work, "Nek Chand for Just Intonation National Steel Guitar," which was performed by Riley's son Gyan on the album Serenado. Riley has been using the scale for…
Who's Who In Central & East Europe 1933
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* This is the long awaited release of one of Dreyblatt’s most personal and major extended works. Created in 1991, it combined documentary photographs, films, texts and sound materials selected from archives and private collections with original music and was a landmark in multimedia opera production, touring a dozen cities and winning the Philip Morris Art Prize in 1992.Featuring Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings, three speakers and the charismatic voca…
Black Box: Torture Garden/Leng Tch\'e
"The controversial and influential Naked City Black Box couples two of Zorn's most extreme and violent creations. Torture Garden (1991) presents Naked City's intense and groundbreaking music combining free jazz, bebop, r&b, country, funk, rockabilly, surf, metal and grindcore—usually in the same song! The rare, seldom heard Leng Tch'e (1992), released only in Japan and long out-of-print features Naked City in an agonizingly slow, brutal 32-minute assault. This special 20th anniversary ed…
Autodreamographical
Despite being midway through his seventies, minimalist icon Terry Riley shows no signs of slowing down or satisfying his searching experimental appetite. On Autodreamographical Tales Riley embarks upon a musical dream diary, a project initiated in 1996. The resultant pieces play out chiefly as spoken-word passages given musical accompaniment, with Riley scoring his own strange REM meanderings via an array of MIDI instruments and piano pieces. At various points during the course of the album you …
Book Of Angels Volume 13
Four exotic and talented women doing the Book of Angels. A capella. “Mycale” is definitely not my favorite entry in the already 13 albums long series (even though I only have half of those yet), but it is an entirely new approach to the material and therefore about as fresh and original as I suspect it can get after versions over versions of these kind of compositions. But mainly it’s just a lot of fun.
Twilight Of The Gods
"Active in electronic composition since 1971, Creshevsky delights in presenting extreme and unpredictable juxtapositions in which the integration of electronic and acoustic sources and processes creates virtual "superperformers" by using the sounds of traditional instruments pushed past human capacities. Creshevsky uses the term Hyperrealism to describe his electroacoustic language constructed from found sounds, handled in ways that are exaggerated or intense. The second Tzadik CD by this modern…
The Sapphire Nature
"One of the world's premier noise percussionists and a learned scholar of Kabbalah, Torah and Talmud, Z'ev has been a vital force in the downtown scene since the late 1970s. In addition to his collaborations with Glenn Branca, Rudolph Grey and his fascinating solo work, Z'ev is also a prolific writer and musical thinker. He has written on subjects ranging from music composition, ritual performance and has also translated several esoteric Tibetan and Hebrew texts into English. His latest study is…
House Full Of Floors
Evan Parker is one of the world's greatest saxophone virtuosos, a revolutionary innovator who has almost single handedly changed the language of the instrument. House Full of Floors is the exciting follow up to his incredible studio composition Time Lapse, released to great acclaim on Tzadik in 2006. Working with three of London's most accomplished improvisers, Evan has fashioned a new world of sound in this exciting new recording. Radical soundscapes from one of the most important musical figu…
Beginnings
The pieces in Tzadik's collection of early works by Meredith Monk have either never been released before or are heard in performances released here for the first time. Since her 1981 album Dolmen Music, Monk has recorded for ECM, and these selections (including some live performances) all predate that release. The album begins with a disarmingly simple version of Greensleeves, made in 1966; it's intriguing to hear Monk's distinctive voice conventionally used in a folk song. Monk tends work in la…
Class Insecta
One of the pioneers of laptop electronics, Ikue Mori has been breaking new ground on the musical frontier for three decades. From her early days in the landmark no wave band DNA, to her years as a regular in the downtown improvisation community and more recently as one of the epicenters of the international laptop electronic scene, Ikue has become an underground hero -- yet her work is still sorely underappreciated. This newest solo CD features Ikue's idiosyncratic take on contemporary dance rhy…
Of The Body Prone
Mixing improvisation & tightly controlled jump cut compositional complexity, AHLEUCHATISTAS are one of a handful of rock groups that can give the Ruins, Meshuggah, & Naked City a run for their money. Fascinating & powerful, passionately performed & beautifully recorded, this is New Rock Complexity at its very best.
O\'o
The exotic follow up to "Dreamers." Featuring the same dynamic band of masters from Zorn's inner circle, this presents 12 more lyrical & adventurous instrumentals combining world music, surf, exotica, soundtracks, easy listening, minimalism & more into a fabulous & exciting new music.
Complete Studio Recordings
Naked City was: John Zorn, Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, Fred Frith, Joey Baron, Yamataka Eye & Bob Dorough. "Probably Zorn's most popular and most controversial musical project, the music of Naked City has been debated, analyzed, adored and reviled by fans, critics and academics alike, but nothing can replace the experience of hearing it in all its frightening glory. Most people know this music from the single domestic release on Nonesuch, but the major portion of their studio recordings were is…
Filmworks XXIII: El General
Eleven cues recorded for a striking documentary focusing on the life of controversial Mexican dictator Plutarco Elias Calles who was called everything from a nun-burner to the father of modern Mexico. Beautiful and dramatic, the music is scored for guitar, marimba, accordion/piano and bass and subtly draws upon Mexican, Spanish, minimalist and soundtrack traditions. Zorn's fifth film score in as many months is a pure delight. Moody and exotic music for a creative and revealing film dealing with …
Masada Anniversary Edition, Vol. 4: Masada Recital
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Masada 10th Anniversary Edition Vol. 4. Performed by: Mark Feldman (violin), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano). Virtuosic fireworks and heartfelt lyricism from two of the most amazing musicians in new music. Performing a dozen compositions from the vast Masada repertory, including the world premiere of a piece never before performed, Masada Recital is another new interpretation of the now classic book of compositions expanding on the Jewish tradition.
Patterns In A Chromatic Field
Performed by: Charles Curtis (cellos), Aleck Karis (piano); recorded 2003. The definitive recording of one of Morton Feldman's most important and challenging pieces, played at the composer's marked tempos, and taking all the notated repeats. Fitting neatly onto one CD, this is Feldman at his most extreme. A dramatic display of virtuosity performed with passion and precision by two of the leading exponents of new music in the world. Out of Feldman's enormous oeuvre, Patterns in a Chromatic Field …