New Arrivals
4 American composers
Produced by Revel Guest. Directed by Peter Greenaway. New York, N.Y.: Mystic Fire Video, 1991. Originally produced by Transatlantic Films in 1985. Vol. 1: John Cage. Vol. 2: Philip Glass. Vol. 3: Meredith Monk. Vol. 4: Robert Ashley. 'Based on London performances under the aegis of the New York/Almeida Festival, this set of four one-hour documentaries, originally produced in 1983, introduced these avant-garde composers and their music to general audiences. Compared to Meredith Monk and Rob…
Fuck You: Fucking Noise in China Now
Fuck You: Fucking Noise In China Now is a film made by Dominique Lohlé and Guy-Marc Hinant from Sub Rosa -- 100 minutes of electronic noise music and harsh speeches -- a road movie between Beijing and Shanghai. Featuring artists Torturing Nurse, Wang Changcun, Wang Fan, Li Jian Hung/Dickson Dee, the poet Sun Meng Jin and Zbigniew Karkowski. 100 minutes. In English with French subtitles. Double-sided DVD in both NTSC & PAL formats, region free. "We went on a trip, with a vision that may …
Words Of Advice: William S. Burroughs On The Road
In 1983, the counter culture icon and author of the cult classic Naked Lunch (1959), William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), traveled throughout Scandinavia making a series of personal appearances. Twenty years later, filmmakers Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen found never-before-seen footage of his Copenhagen visit and set out on the road to record new material, telling the story of the acclaimed author's later work -- especially what is known as The Last Trilogy -- and his unique perform…
Kick that habit
Made in 1988/89 (16mm), a film around Voice Crack (Andy Guhl, Norbert Möslang + Knut Remond) in trheir daily work. A great film now on DVD!
Maurice Lemaitre
Maurice Lemaître is amongst one of the most important and creative artists of the second half of the 20th century. His cinematic work has led to a fundamental questioning of the relationship between film and spectator, image and sound, art and criticism, cinema and other types of images. His art is characterized by its inventiveness, it's joy of creating, and a radical and loud critique allowing for Lettrism to flourish as an avant-garde movement.OUR STARS A chronicle of the fantasies and dream …
Ström
Ström is a 45 minute piece for five loudspeakers, live-electronics and live-video, based on an openminded, artistic approach towards electricity. The piece is an attempt to transfer electric current via sound to the audience. The five speakers in the surround system struggle to take over the sonic stream like electro-magnets. Sine waves and noises rotate at breakneck speed around the listeners, try to charge them with static electricity, and, as an ultimate goal, even make them levitate. The vid…
FLicKeR
“Really, I think, behind everything, he was trying to teach people to see differently.” Genesis P-Orridge, on Brion Gysin...This award-winning documentary about poet, artist, calligrapher and mystic Brion Gysin, portrays the life and legacy of an artist who believed art could revolutionize human consciousness. FLicKeR chronicles Gison’s complex ideas, friendships and influence with some of the 20th century’s key counterculture figures, such as William Burroughs, Kurt Corbain and Marianne Faithfu…
From Straight To Bizarre
Subtitled: Zappa, Beefheart, Alice Cooper And LA's Lunatic Fringe. "Desperate to remove himself from his original deal with Verve Records, in 1968 Frank Zappa set up the Bizarre and Straight labels in league with manger Herb Cohen, and so began a string of releases which remain extraordinary in the extreme. This film revisits and reviews the astonishing music that came out on Bizarre and Straight, and reveals the background, operations and, crucially, the lives of the musicians, performer…
Sonic territories
'Sonic Territories is 12 works for 12 distinct acoustic spaces. Composer -performer Jonas Braasch utilizes soprano saxophone, field recordings, and electronic processing. Sonic Territories investigates the creative potential that various acoustic environments can unleash. Opposed to the current ideal of quiet recording studios that do not distract the performer from inner thoughts, I was looking for spaces that inspire and mess around with me, by influencing and guiding my performance. A n…
Interstices
Through these interstices, when conscience — this present to one’s self — falls asleep; through this tiny little interval between two instants, something arises, something you had never thought of; The erring ways of thought; through the cracks thus created, we lend our voice to the characters that rule over an unknown existence. These sounds are too rich of all their possible existence…
'Evelyn Glennie - Fred Frith. Touch the sound'
Subtitled A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer's exquisite Touch the Sound is nominally a portrait of the Scottish musician known as the first full-time solo percussionist. Glennie is certainly a fascinating subject. Profoundly deaf since childhood, she disdains the use of hearing aids and sign language, relying instead on lip reading and, more crucially, on the use of all of her senses, especially touch, to hear with her entire body. The film reveals …
This World Is Unreal Like A Snake In A Rope
A film by Robert Millis. Folk cinema from the eternal never-ending collage that is India. A journey through the ancient Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring Hindu trance ceremonies, street music, festivals, nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, ancient temples, processions, devotions, decay, fireworks, abstractions and more. India is impossible to know: it is impossibly old and impossibly new, impossibly rich and impossibly poor, quiet and chaotic. Offered here is on…
Max Ernst Hanging
"In this revealing documentary, patron, collector, and curator Dominique de Menil hangs the 1973 exhibition Inside the Sight, in conversation with Max Ernst, the 20th-century Surrealist artist. From installation to opening party, the events that transpire, as captured by filmmakers John and Francois de Menil, provide a rare and intimate glimpse into the process of making an exhibition."
An Evening Of Dance Constructions
In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. These radically new dances created circumstances for the performers' direct, non-stylistic actions. Each of the pieces was performed in a different place in the loft, with the audience moving from location to location to view them. Some of the pieces required elementary structure…
Divine Horsemen - The Living Gods of Haiti
Maya Deren takes us on a journey into the fascinating world of the Voudoun religion, whose devotees commune with the cosmic powers through invocation, offerings, song and dance. In 1947 filmmaker she received the first Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work in motion pictures based on a proposal for a film on Haitian dance. On trips to Haiti in 1947, 1949 and 1954, she shot several thousand feet of "Voudoun " rituals. The Voudoun pantheon of deities, or loa, is witnessed as being living…
135 Grand Street, New York, 1979
AMAZING!!! Dug out of storage after 30 years in a basement, Soul Jazz present '135 Grand Street New York 1979', Ericka Beckman's thrilling document of downtown New York during the infamous No Wave period of late 1970s. Over 60 minutes she features better known names like Rhys Chatham and the legendary Ut next to lesser known but no less intriguing acts like A Band, Chinese Puzzle and the brilliant Youth In Asia. On 8mm film she captures the raw energy of a scene in the ascendant, in flux b…
Soundtracks
Richmond-based artist and musician Stephen Vitiello transforms environments with the physicality of sound. His installations have been presented in New York's Whitney Museum, London's Museum 52, Paris' Cartier Foundation, and dozens of other sites around the globe. His music has been released by labels like 12k, New Albion, and Sub Rosa, and has included collaborations with Machinefabriek, Lawrence English, Pauline Oliveros, Scanner, and Anduin. This DVD, however, is his first commerciall…
Directions To See A Ghost
“The Black Angels bring the aura of mid-1966 the drilling guitars of early Velvet Underground shows, the raga inflections of late-show Fillmore jams, the acid-prayer stomp of Austin avatars the 13th Floor Elevators everywhere they go, including the levitations on their second album, _Directions to See a Ghost. Mid-Eighties echoes of Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain also roll through the scoured-guitar sustain and Alex Maas’ rocker-monk incantations. But he knows what time it is. ‘You say …
Detroit & Buffalo, USA
amazing 3xLP set: "Memorable and probably unrepeatable two qbico u-nites rec. in Detroit & Buffalo in 2006. worths mentioning: Perry Robinson jamming with Faruq Z. Bey and Northwoods Improvisors, Muruga Free Funk Band in full glory with the lovely Belita Woods and members of P-Funk, like Louie "Babblin" Kabbabie from Lebanon or Treylewd, Perry too (audience got carried away and i saw people dancing on top of other people shoulders ?!) ! Odu Afrobeat Orchestra led by Fela's alumni Adeboye Adegben…
Spiritual Jazz 4: Americans in Europe
Triple LP version. Housed in a deluxe triple gatefold sleeve with download card for the entire album. Jazzman Records presents the fourth volume in their Spiritual Jazz compilation series. It's well-known that throughout the 20th century, fed up with poor working conditions and racism in their home country, many American jazz musicians chose to leave the U.S. in order to live and work in Europe. What's less well-known is how their music developed and evolved during their time on the conti…