New Arrivals
The Resurrection And Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock
Michael Chapman, one of the finest acoustic guitar innovators borne of the late '70s UK folk scene, was in Philadelphia early 2010, paying tribute to his good friend, the late Jack Rose, a mighty six-string alchemist in his own right, and a youngster wholly inspired by Chapman's critical recordings. While sharing in the good light of friendship backstage, we asked Michael if he'd ever recorded an LP of purely improvised guitar music. It seemed feasible, as the current state of acou…
Durée
Back in 1999, on the forefront of the Japanese electronic/acoustic microsound scene, was the then two-piece live improvisation band Minamo (two more members were added in 2001 to make the current four-piece lineup). Their live concerts helped pioneer this hybrid of delicate and natural instrumentation with microscopic electronics and subtle digital processing bringing an organic richness to a genre that threatened to remain coldly digital. Fans of Minamo not lucky enough to see them create their…
Große Gartenbauausstellung
Sven-Ake Johansson, Andrea Neumann and Axel Dörner formed the trio Barcelona Series in the end of the 90's. Their music was utterly important for the development of the new improscene, the new ways of improvising by using your instruments more as acoustic bodies than traditional instruments. Johansson had since the 70's been experimenting with a music with less gestures but anyhow keeping the emotional pressure. Both Dörner and Neumann were pioneers in their ways of playing their instrume…
Songs Of Flowers & Skin
Doomgaze. Is that a thing? In ancient times "Songs Of Flowers & Skin" might have done time on 4AD, Creation, or even Sarah. Except of course, for the slender demonic tail woven into the melodies, which would have left a smoldering pile of pointy shoes in its wake. Though the tracks here are not metal, there is no lacking of heavy. The songs (yes, songs) simmer to a point just below explosion. Aidan chooses to excavate with atmosphere in lieu of caterwauling electricity, filling the spaces…
Lassie House / Jumble Massive
This CD compiles two long out of print, obscure vinyls by People Like Us. Almost all (maybe all) were recorded as commisions for Dutch radio. People Like Us plunders her way through the wastelands of vinyl nobody buys, collages them into mostly strange, and at times funny pieces of music. Unlike other plunderphonics, People Like Us keep the voice/spoken word segments to a minimum, which I most hearthly welcome. Extensive spoken words are usually hilarious, but after repeated listening don't hold…
From The Ground
The Preservation label presents From The Ground, the debut album from Portland, Oregon’s Heather Woods Broderick. Growing up in the relative quiet of the Maine countryside while learning a range of instruments and being sung to sleep by her parents playing folk songs, natural and rural sounds became central to Heather’s sense of song, falling into a deeply personal realm.
The subtlety and nuance in Heather’s music also comes from her inclination towards ambient and experimental sounds, con…
Birdtalking
'When dealing with female interpreters of the art of advanced vocalism, four personal favourites come to mind : Diamanda Galàs, Meredith Monk, Shelley Hirsch and - more recently - Non Credo's Kira Vollman. I'm afraid that I'll have to add a fifth chair at the table. I had already met Ute Wassermann in a great CD on Creative Sources, Kunststoff, a duo with trumpet player Birgit Ulher; yet, Birdtalking is one of those records that immediately raise all aerials, a top-rank effort in which a single …
Serpentement
The very old catfish, covered in moss, that live in the depths of the lake, never go up towards daylight and disdain any bait that nature offers them.They are only attracted by the oddest shapes that fishermen can invent, shiny and silvery blades in the shape of a human hand that, attached to their line, dance a jig; or also a bat made of red glass with hooks treacherously sewn inside their wings'. G.Meyrink. Instruments: mechanical metronome with bell, harmonica reeds, six string banjo, amps, m…
Recyclopaedia Britannica (Selected Works 1992-2002)
“The work of People Like Us rests gingerly between two dangerous positions: on the one hand, the risk of fashioning merely stylish pastiche out of borrowed finery for the sake of self-conscious kitschiness; on the other hand, the risk of making simplistic, heavy handedly "topical" audio-jokes at the expense of one's raw material to a smug effect. If the lounge creeps uncritically snack on their sonic ingredients and coast on being "groovy", the cads of pseudo-critique take cheap shots at straw m…
Sonic brotherhood - DTFP Israel 2009
Improvised music with exception of Irinia-Kalina' solo. Mark Dresser (bass), Irina-Kalina Goudeva (bass), JC Jones (bass), Barre Phillips (bass) and Bert Turetzky (bass). Recorded by Ori Winokur, edited, mixed and mastered by JC at the Kadima Studio, Jerusalem, October to December 2010.
Scope
The disc is a recent release on the Monotype label by a group named LHZ+H, who are the semi regular trio of Thomas Lehn, (analogue synth) Carl Ludwig Hübsch (tuba) and Philip Zoubek (piano) augmented on this 2008 occasion by the trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, who on this occasion added a delay pedal to his instrument. The release contains four improvised tracks, and is named Scope. Now, I have been known to describe some improvised music as brooding a good few times before, perhaps trying to …
Saturnian (Solo Saxophones, Volume 1)
Recorded live in concert at the Abrons Arts Center, NYC on October 15, 2009, Saturnian documents master saxophonist David S. Ware's triumphant return to performance following his kidney transplant in May 2009. This performance prompted features in The New York Times and on NBC Nightly News.Ware, in full peak of form, performed three extended pieces, each one on a different horn. "Methone" is on the saxello and "Pallene" features the stritch. David has played these lesser-known members of the sa…
Cracked Refraction
Cracked Refraction ties its complex knots with infectious vigor and a predilection for playfulness. Wrack’s melodies are slithering and serpentine, and the music is built of smaller segments assembled in what can seem a slapdash manner, with all sorts of jutting ends and unexpected collisions. What Bruckmann’s done, though, is intentional, placing his players on different planes, with straight lines failing to meet, runs of notes ricocheting at impossible angles, and expected avenues folding in …
Endless Falls
Endless Falls is the fifth full length release by Scott Morgan under the loscil moniker. The album begins and ends with the sound of rain recorded by Scott in his back yard, precipitation being a constant presence in his home city of Vancouver. Many of the other sounds on the album are derived from these same recordings, processed and combined with other harmonic sounds to create the textures and drones. Something completely new to this release would be vocals, of a sort, a first for any loscil …
Transient Places
Music in the here and now. An event in an everyday situation. A connecting link between actual occurrences and the deepest depths of one's inner world. A balancing act between total control and the inexplicable. An acoustic journey through the present. It is with his ears that Luigi Archetti journeys into the guitar's pick-up, to the limits of the audible. He hears, listens and gathers until he has a whole depot of sounds at his disposal, which he then processes by structured planning or b…
Objects Sense Objectes
Ap'strophe is the duo of Ferran Fages (acoustic guitar) and Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga (zither). Recorded by Christian Pallejà at Maik Maier studios in Barcelona, december 2008. Mixed and mastered by Ferran Conangla. With their music they investigate the perception of the distinctive timbre of the guitar and the zither alongside the differences and similarities of their string instruments.
The finishing line (Film music volume 2)
Second full-lenght album from rashomon (aka Guapo founding member Matt Thompson). Inspired by public information broadcast The Finishing Line (1977), the record is a sonic re-imagining of the film as haunted meditation on the power of memory, drawing the listener into a claustrophobic sense of unease and mounting horror. An amalgam of library music, 1970s prog soundtrack, musique concrète and spectral jazz
13 13
'First reedition. Recorded in 1981. Originally released in 1982. Lydia Lunch: vocals, piano. Dix Denney: guitar. Greg Williams: bass. Cliff Martinez: drums, percussion. Digipack.'
Music For The Ears
Western Vinyl is proud to release “Music for the Ears” the first in a series of Small Music releases by Rolf Julius. With a goal of creating solitary sound environments, the Small Music series will culminate into a boxed edition of seminal works by this master sound artist. “Music for the Ears” is comprised of two long tracks of gently weaving tones exploring the possibilities of spatial experience. The cover image depicts Julius’ sound installation in a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan where his m…
The beauty is the thing
The trio of pianist Aki Takase, guitarist/daxophonist Kazuhisa Uchihashi, and trumpeter Axel Dorner in an exploration of informed and exquisite dialog in acoustic and electric improvisation. This trio's musical inspirations give birth to an amazing, extraordinary, mind-boggling mandala of sound. It's an extreme sound that could only be achieved by people engaged in the ultimate sonic and musical explorations. Surrender yourself to the joyful sounds coming out of the left and right speaker…