New Arrivals
No State No Sound
"Hold on gnaw...last but not least..... the NO STATE NO SOUND comp lp. Dont know what led up to it...think I vaguely remember getting "dared" by Nurse Khrust to put out a record of silence by the crew, not sure, but maybe told Haunted Square D about it....but anyhow.....flashblack to an average but killer brewsday in the late summer, got the crew shooting the gip, no biggy, and Square D rolls up with his "Body Morph" one minute silent track....takes a sec to remember but all right...lets do this…
WHITE NIGHT FESTIVAL TEL-AVIV 2006
The Annual 'White Night' Festival in Tel Aviv is Israel's only cultural event dedicated to Improvised Music and Free Jazz. It is a twelve-hour musical marathon promoting creative, improvised music and facilitating collaborations between Israeli Artists and artists from abroad. It also fosters the development of young musicians, exposing their work to the world. The 2006 event was the second year this beautiful event took place and hopefully the tradition will continue in the years to come. This …
Dordogne
Benjamin Bondonneau (clarinet) and Fabrice Charles (trombone). This double CD has been recorded in 2006 near the river called Dordogne. The two musicians are really integrated into the landscape, and they even manage to make it becoming the third musician. A great release limited to 1000 copies with a nice cover.
Einstein on the Beach
Widely credited as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, this rarely performed work launched its director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to international success when it was first produced in Avignon, France in 1976, with subsequent performances in Europe and in New York at the Metropolitan Opera. It is still recognized as one of their greatest masterpieces. Now, nearly four decades after it was first performed and twenty years since its last production, Einstei…
Psychic
Like Yeah Yeah Yeahs undergoing a psychotic episode, or Pocahaunted possessed by the spirit of James Brown, Vibes present four tracks of discombobulated funk and wild, outsider punk on this four song long single. The early, chaotic free-associations of Magik Markers would be a good point of reference too, but these guys place more emphasis on low-down bass grooves wah-wah pedal mutations. The cover shots suggest the band are a bit of a spectacle in a live setting, and the rough, brain-a…
Omicron, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, chi, psi, omega
A certified masterpiece! One monumental box set containing 10 (ten!) unreleased before LPs: an adventurous, spacious and varied oxet blossoming into the label you have known and loved ever since, always on the move; forward, sideways, upwards, backwards. Spread over the 10 LPs, you get the finest selection of rarities and previously-unreleased tracks. Not only that, the package itself is nothing short of excellent, with its newly-designed handmade box, and individual handmade cove…
Acoustic solo percussion-vol.3
Following his two previous 7“s with ‘acoustic solo percussion’ (see Vital Weekly 687 and 706), here is the third volume. Like before it’s hard to believe its percussion music. But this time we get a detailed notes on the proceedings: side E has ‘two cymbals bowed together with one cello bow’ and side F has ‘a snare drum rubbed with a ring of styropor and two cymbals bowed together with a cello bow’ (and made me wonder how many hands Wolfarth has?). Oh, did I mention ‘no overdubs, electronics and…
Kitty Hawk, le sable et le vent
A composition by Olivier CAPPAROS & Lionel MARCHETTI. For string quartet, two voices and three loudspeakers. An oratorio of musique concrète and instrumental music about “Kitty Hawk” the city where the Wright brothers did the first experiment with plane.
Dogs in English porcelain
Dogs in English Porcelain (Vanessa Rossetto's fourth solo album on the label) is a composition for electronics, field recordings, viola, violin, cello and acoustic turntable. It was created with many layers of very quiet elements that advance and recede, forming the episodic structure of the piece. The overlapping of electronic and environmental sounds with extended technique and traditional playing disturbs the boundaries separating the natural and artificial, the intentional and the incidental…
I'm So Awake / Sleepless I Feel
The Magic I.D. is a Berlin-based quartet exploring the juncture of song forms with abstract music. The band, consisting of Margareth Kammerer (vocals & guitars), Christof Kurzmann (vocals, g3 & lloopp), Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke (both clarinet), formed in summer 2005 after previously being connected via smaller groupings and projects. The musicians expand song forms through the prism of experimental sensibilities and mesh the two remarkably fluidly. 'I'm So Awake / Sleepless I F…
Reflex
Reflex is the fifth solo album by Switzerland's Reto Mder (Ural Umbo, Sum of R, Pendulum Nisum) as RM74. A creepy, paranoid record of sinister melody and complex structure. Electronics, organ, synthesizer, guitars and other instrumentation drifts in and out of bizarre atmospherics. The tracks gain emotional resonance as they move among vexing swells of dense, rotting psychedelia. Presented in a heavy matte sleeve printed with dark metallic ink. Includes fold out insert. Photograph by Phill…
Raw and the cooked
Collaborative compositions by Jean Claude Jones (electro acoustic bass and live electronics), Loic Kessous (computer and live electronics), Stephen Horenstein (baritone saxophone). Recorded and mixed at Kadima Studio, Jerusalem, May-June, 2006
The Atrocity Exhibition
Amazing experimental film with music by Jim Thirwell (Foetus). J.G. Ballard once said that the Atrocity Exhibition had been considered his only ‘unfilmable’ novel. Until Jonathan Weiss' feature adaptation of this infamous work of experimental fiction, a film which Ballard calls, ‘a poetic masterpiece’. Of all the films made of Ballard's fiction, only The Atrocity Exhibition contains a full length DVD commentary by the author himself. Less a commentary than a philosophical discourse on the nature…
24-24 Music
Though classically trained Arthur Russell's major contributions to the music world is in the dance genre. Despite the fact that his pioneering work in the late '70s and on through the '80s was only quietly acknowledged at the time, his long term impact is best described as formidable. Russell's innovative; left field dance records flew way ahead of what people were used to hearing at the time, due in part, to his involvement in New York's downtown avant-garde music scene. He scored severa…
Films
"Filmmakers often try to make a great film by making it feel heavier than film is by nature. Rudy Burckhardt seems happy if he can make his feel lighter. That does leave him unique, and he succeeds in it too. There is no distortion of image or sound. Its magic invention - including the later dream-weight - is new and inscrutable. It is a film that changes when you watch it again, it has many surprises I haven't mentioned. Take it as a wonderfully touching dream and as an amazing marvel of…
Miaux
"warm thick tears force their ways out of droopy eyes, children cover their ears and peppep is rubbing his underbelly with sandpaper.the general gloom MIAUX spreads on her sandwiches is darker than tatort and could easily replace any soundtrack of a fassbinder movie, the sad joy of a lady from sarajevo pushing her entire hands into a keyboard, don't ask her for a encore or you'll receive a grim reward!it seems that a new breath of electronic music is blowing over antwerp, all in a sort of kubin/…
Cartolina Postale, Composition No. 2
the recording features ilya working with a music box and toothpicks and civyiu kkliu with blank vinyl and a metal object. "regarding the specifics of the sound piece... ilya and i came up with the concept for this release and did a series of improvisations for it in California (2002)... we did this improvisatory work together (not by mail, etc)." civyiu kkliu picked up the project again in 2006 working on variations on the card design and layout. he continues that " the duration and nature of th…
Rule Of Inference
next to his prolific work as an electronic composer, improviser and producer, "rule of inference" once more features schmickler's as yet less known yet marvelous work as a composer and arranger for classical instrumental settings. similar to his widely regarded album "param" (2001), the album is a collection of various settings, all of them recorded over the course of the last years. "rule of inference" unveils a conception that marks various departures along the history of music: the alb…
Plastic Box
" Plastic Box is a a 'metal box' fascinating companion, plotting the evolution and subsequent degradation of the experimental impulse that saw its apex in 1979. Tracks like “Albatross” have always been passed off as autobiographical by Pistols-watchers who believed that Lydon could only ever refer to Lydon, but the power of Metal Box lies in Lydon’s ability to forget: himself, his past, and so to move around the landscape like a ghost, to be free of his own history in order to fully invest…
relax most of your muscles
a blurry midlife crisis for all children of the revolution! the A side of this psychedelic bumcrack is filled with 10 locked grooves, all vocal, some different panned brainbubbles, featuring one loop of Dennis Tyfus' personal alarm clock. All of these sounds played simultaneously at the 'Relax most of your muscles' Dennis Tyfus' solo exhibtion at Be Part in Waregem, Belgium, providing a non stop soundtrack that coincided with large paintings and around 20 film loops and drawings which cre…