New Arrivals
Tenor
Bertrand Denzler tenor saxophone. Recorded by Christophe Hauser on february 21st, 2010. 'As well as being part of such improvisation ensembles as Hubbub, Trio Sowari and Propagations Sax Quartet, Bertrand Denzler, who plays the tenor saxophone, also records solo music. Each of the three lengthy pieces on Tenor use a single note which are subsequently layered. Not by repeating them on the computer, like say Phill Niblock would do this, but by adding small variations in how he plays them. In Filte…
Split the Difference
"Splinters is remembered, indeed lionized by knowing UK jazz fans, as the monumental musical meeting of tenor giant Tubby Hayes, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, saxophonist Trevor Watts, pianist Stan Tracey, bassist Jeff Clyne, and legendary drummers John Stevens and Phil Seamen. Split The Difference is the rare recording Trevor Watts made of the group's first public appearance, at London's 100 Club on May 22nd, 1972. Two extended sets of continuous collective improvisation comprise this full-length CD…
Fancies, forbearance
Fancy: a 17th century term generally describing a composition in which form is of secondary importance. Fancies were usually contra-puntal and in several sections. (The Oxford Dictionary of Music)Fancies (2009) served to reconcile previously unsettled material, based upon a scheme that condones disparity between its constituent parts. In the period since its completion, and subsequent issue on cassette, Fancies has come to represent an antithesis to what I originally termed ‘a work in parenthesi…
47°13' N 7°E
Another uncommon sonic wringer from Portuguese label Creative Sources has been signed by a couple of Switzerland-based (as you could easily surmise from the geographical coordinate, which point to a place the district of Franches-Montagnes in the canton of Jura in Switzerland, they used to name this release) musicians, Lea Danzeisen and Christoph Schiller, who decided to squeeze the spinet, the little brother of harpsichord and piano, whose sound got totally transfigured by meticulous mod…
Surface of the Earth
Gunn Amps and Smashed Guitars. Surface of the Earth was recorded live to cassette, using two microphones in a wooden community hall in Wellington, New Zealand. The lp was gathered from two or three recording sessions in 1994/95. Back then we used to book out the hall for a couple of days, set up our gear and then record everything. It was a very atmospheric room for recording. Tony and Donald would put their guitars through their two old Gunn valve amplifiers and get to work. Tony often used thi…
Anro
A narrow path of safety extending through the gloom, its edges bleeding into the fearful zones of disorder and formlessness that enclose it. Paths create borders, they limn the known from the unknown, the clean from the unclean, the citizen from the exile, the present from the past. But while paths create boundaries, they themselves are ambivalent, neither here nor there, neither now nor then. The act of making a path where none existed always involves the subjugation of the unknown and f…
Thing
This powerful 1972 performance by Arni Cheatham's group provides a unique glimpse of the jazz scene in Boston. The group borrowed the most innovative characteristics of jazz and rock, but never sounded derivative. This is early seventies "jazz fusion" of the highest order, before the term evolved to mean a light, commercially acceptable genre. As with many innovative jazz forms, the recording was made at one of the many local universities, Harvard. The resulting album was pressed in scant…
Sepsis
Large ensemble Sissy Spacek recordings featuring the cream of LA. The line-up: John Wiese, Mitchell Brown, Joey Karam (The Locust), Peter Kolovos, Rick Potts (LAFMS), Damion Romero, Corydon Ronnau and Shannon Walter (16 Bitch Pile-Up). All the source recordings used for Sepsis were taken from a group improv session recorded for the Dublab radio in 2008. The recordings from each individual channel were later chopped and rearranged into audio collages byWiese without any regard to preserving group…
One Last Pose Before The Ruin
The ghosts of decades past are blocking the doors but you carry the future in the palm of your left hand. It promises a gentle landing, a transformation in soft colours. Hope. Eternity. Now, for the sake of posterity, one last pose before the ruin.....please. Limited edition of 500 copies.
The Fat Is Gone
Recorded live at Molde International Jazz Festival in 2006. The meeting between the godfather of free-jazz & the innovators of the modern free-jazz scene in Scandinavia, Mats Gustafsson & Paal Nilssen-Love, resulted in this mastodon of an album. This is the European free-jazz underground at its best. A devastating, blasting, raw, ferocious sonic assault on all senses. And beautiful, painfully beautiful.
Opus 2
Developing on the trance-induction and brainwave entrainment techniques explored on the first Ethernet album 144 Pulsations of Light, Opus 2 moves into deeper, more introspective and emotive territory. A stronger focus on melody and harmonic structure results in pieces that almost approach, but never quite arrive at, traditional song forms, while still leaving much to the imagination of the listener, evading mental categorization and revealing new sonic experiences with each listen. The bu…
Dispositions Furtives
Through the open sound portals created by his compatriot Castiglioni, the Italian pianist Alfonso Alberti first entered col legno's World of New Music; on his second album, he dedicates his sensitive and brilliant musicality to Gérard Pesson's fragile and puzzling fabrics of sound. A selection of piano pieces has been compiled in a joint effort by the pianist and the French composer; in his interpretations Alberti lets us catch glimpses of musical structures as though they were glittering just u…
My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky
After a fourteen year absence, Michael Gira resurrects his legendary apocalyptic no-wave band for a fabulous new album on his own Young God imprint. Assembling a cast of musicians that includes familiar Swans and Angels Of Light conspirators, Gira also welcomes a few new members to the fold with guest stars including Devendra Banhart, Mercury Rev's Grasshopper, Bill Rieflin (of Ministry, REM and Robyn Hitchcock's band), Shearwater multi-instrumentalist Thor Harris and even Gira's three-and-a-hal…
Field Recordings 1969/70
Field recordings made at Mariental-Dorf (Germany) 1970, Göteborg 1970 (Sweden), Wolfsburg 1969 (Germany) Sonnenberg, Harz 1970 (Germany) with a Uher mono recorder and a microphone Sennheiser MD 421 N
Watershed
If the three compositions proposed by Denis Fournier have already been recorded, they merit to be here as resurgences, like scenarios encouraging the freedom of transformation without which free interpretation is nothing. “I often say that I don’t make improvised music, but that I improvise music. In other words, I put together there and then elements of my life, of my history, of my culture…” In other words, no structure commands the action. Every structure opens to the action (to sharing) whic…
Regine Flory
Zak Boerger's combination of fuzz, acoustic guitar & extended downer ballads most immediately aligns him with the New Zealand scene centered around Peter Jefferies & Alastair Galbraith as well as associated international satellites like Flying Saucer Attack & the Twisted Village roster, but there's a lonesome edge to the music that would situate it ouside of any particular historical tradition & closer to the mystery school of regional private press obscurities. The acoustic tracks skirt the fri…
La journée de l\'existence
“Ivan Wyschnegradsky (1893-1979). "The Day of Existence". Confession of life before life. For orchestra and narrator. Text and music by Ivan Wyschnegradsky. With Mario Haniotis (speaker), Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France under the direction of Alexandre Myrat. "Ivan Wyschnegradsky had to wait sixty years to hear the first performance of his masterwork, La Journée de l'Existence, which he had conceived and composed beginning in 1916 in Saint Petersburg. And we have had to wait anot…
Status
12k presents Status, the result of two of the genre’s most talented, and diffferent, composers; Frank Bretschneider and Ralph Steinbrüchel, sharing their sounds and styles. Status began in the Spring of 2003 when they designed their own sound sequences and samples and sent the material to each other, waiting and hearing what the other will create out of it. They played this game for nearly 2 years, sending sequences and tracks back and forth until both of them were satisfied with the result.When…
Stridulum EP
Since her Sacred Bones debut last summer, ZOLA JESUS' profile has risen exponentially. Her next full length isn't due 'til 2011, but we feel pretty certain this will tide you over until then. Recording her vocals for the first time with professional instruments, Nika's voice is brought to the powerful forefront of the mix, unleashing emotions that previous work only hinted at. It's a siren song for the apocalypse! Industrial progress is a good analogy for the changes that occur through each cons…
Chantal
An inedite work by the great composer Luc Ferrari: 'chantal, ou le portrait d'une villageoise' 1977-1978. Stereo magnetic tape. Mastering: Jérôme Joy, Meriol Lehmann-Avatar.