New Arrivals
Four malleable
This is a limited edition of 300 copies. "Imaginative Elements" (2004), "From Modified Tapes" (2005), "Sceneries" (2006), and "Nocturne" (2009). "My work over the last several years has focused on the investigation of aural phenomena, environment, spatial listening, structure, natural and evolving processes, function, possibilities, and materiality. My interests have led me to explore acoustics, psychoacoustics, binaural beats, and diverse methods of recording sound, and the application of syste…
Nature-Culture
A 2008 sequel to his highly-acclaimed first solo CD 'More is More' on psi 06.08. Peter Evans writes: Over the past couple of years one of my main creative outlets has been solo trumpet performance. These discs are meant to show various aspects of my music's development and were recorded in two different settings (studio and concert) and under two different circumstances. Jazz musicians have often referred to the playing of a solo as 'telling a story', which is essentially how I look at this musi…
Forbidden Planets
With Electronic music’s current resurgence and interest in the form at an all time high, this superb 2 CD set, containing compositions and original recordings by the pioneers of this fascinating style of sound, compiled here for the first time, is certain to attract enormous excitement amongst fans of the genre. Featuring tracks recorded largely in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, from names as diverse as the ever popular John Cage, Edgar Varese, Daphne Oram, Henri Pousseur, Miklosz Rozsa, Pierre…
Suspensão
'Ernesto Rodrigues - viola, harp, metronomes, objects. Guilherme Rodrigues - cello. Gil Gonçalves - tuba. Nuno Torres - alto saxophone. Abdul Moimeme - prepared electric guitars. Armando Pereira - accordion, toy piano. Carlos Santos - electronics, piezo elements. José Oliveira - percussion.' (label info)
Open Strings: Early Virtuoso Recordings From The Middle East
'Superbly stylish in conception and packaging, it shows that small independent labels can still be an inspirational force' (Daily Telegraph); 'definitive and essential' (Brainwashed); 'stunning in its historical interest and musicianship' (Boston Phoenix); 'phenomenal and mesmerizing' (Dusted); 'one of the major phonographic salvage operations of our time' (The Wire). 'The archival finds are, without exception, phenomenal – and mesmerizing. The oud, the santour and spike fiddle dominate. There a…
I Plan To Stay A Believer
The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield. "Bassist/composer William Parker is among the most active and highly regarded musicians performing today. The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield is the first project in his 35-year career devoted to the music of another composer; here Parker interpolates the mighty Mayfield songbook with an equally mighty 8-piece band. Curtis Mayfield was a prophet, a preacher, a revolutionary, a humanist, and a griot. Words that all apply to William Parker himself. I Plan To S…
Studio C
This 2CD pair features performances in Tokyo in 1996. Sod and Sodie Sock documents a performance at the P-House Gallery, where the three musicians performed together and separately. The action extended beyond the gallery, into the street in front, and down the block to a local hair salon. Recordings documenting the simultaneous activities of Kelley, McCarthy, and Violent Onsen Geisha have been combined to allow the listener to experience the entire group of, spatially separated, performances at …
O kokos tis anixis (Grains of spring)
The ancient Greek philosophers thought that the world is constituted of a series of grains of space and time. When I walked around Miura Peninsula in the springtime, I felt the same way - the quality of the space and the time seemed to be formed by a series of grains of sounds. Each place has its own unique character. You could label it as a particular quality of the place. The quality of the sound.'-'This is one of my trials to present a 'subject' as a piece of work - which can be called…
(1975-1991)
Just arrived! The research-performance group kiva was created in 1975 by the American trombonist John Silber and the French percussionist Jean-Charles François as part of a research project at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego. During the period of its existence (1975-91) various members (often graduate students from UCSD) joined the two permanent musicians, John Silber and Jean-Charles François, to contribute to the groups artistic production. Two persona…
W2 (1998-2008)
"We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it's the journey that makes – and unmakes - us." (Nicolas Bouvier, "l'usage du monde"). When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.My relation to the sites wasn't based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps…
Hole in the heart
Here at last, is part of the "missing link" in the long and ever evolving history of ramleh. This material bridges the gap between the (for want of a better description) early "power electronics” material and the (for want of a better description) later "noise rock" . Neither of these terms do justice to this pioneering group led by Gary Mundy. Originally issued by Gary's own "Broken Flag” label in 1987 on cassette, "Hole in the Heart" is presented here, both expanded and remastered on a double …
Life Review (1993-2003)
The Shadow Ring formed in the seaside town of Folkestone, England in 1993. Over the course of a decade, and through eight LPs, Graham Lambkin, Darren Harris and later Tim Goss scraped out a unique musical pathway for themselves, armed with only the barest of tools. With each release the Shadow Ring presented themselves as a group in constant flux. Naive acoustic improvisations, dour bedroom sci-fi epics, cryptic D.I.Y. theatre and glacial electronic soundscapes all became fair game in the…
Nova Psychedelia (1975-1985)
"Outside of his native Pennsylvania-West Virginia stomping grounds, Todd Tamanend Clark remains one of the least known North American underground artists in the lost music DIY field of his era, considering he has collaborated with and shared time with many of his peers over the years (Cheetah Chrome, Allen Ravenstine, Stiv Bators), as well as progenitors (Dorothy Moskowitz of United States of America, Robert Moog, William Burroughs), his significant body of recorded (and printed) work was always…
Elegy for Native Tongues
Heavy, ominous psychedelic free-improv from Tokyo, Japan. Julian's Cope album of the month . Tetragrammaton is a trio featuring Nobunaga Ken on drums and percussion, Cal Lyall on electronics and guitar, and TOMO on hurdy-gurdy, saxophone and electronics, and have in the past collaborated with members of Zeni Geva, Acid Mothers Temple, Taj Mahal Travellers, and Damo Suzuki from Can. On Elegy For Native Tongues, however, it’s just the main trio at work, displaying a love for high-volume improvised…
Fukushima!
A double CD inspired by a lecture given by Otomo Yoshihide at Tokyo University of the Arts on April 28, 2011, 'The Role of Culture: After the Earthquake and Man-made Disasters in Fukushima'. With John Tilbury, Greg Kelley, Annette Krebs, Chris Abrahams, Burkhard Beins, Choi Joonyong / Jin Sangtae / Hong Chulki / Joe Foster, Mural, Magda Mayas, Mark Wastell & Jonathan McHugh, Michael Pisaro & Greg Stuart. All the money collected will go to a non-gouvernemental organisation - Japan Society …
Trio
The expansive length of Morton Feldman’s Trio (1 hr., 45 min., 22 sec.) requires a new approach to listening, which takes scale, the physical experience of sound, and novel uses of musical memory into consideration. With his delicate manipulation of musical materials, Feldman blurs the listener’s sense of time as their musical memory struggles to distinguish between past and present sounds - listeners are free to lose themselves in the beauty of each musical moment. Aki Takahashi and Rohan…
Creative Orchestra (Köln) 1978
"The Koeln concert shows us these positive vibrations marching through "the complete continuance of creative music," and on towards the next millennium. The "success of the future" is not a lost cause as long as there is music like this in the air."-Graham Lock"Although Anthony Braxton does not play on this double CD (whose contents were released for the first time in 1995), his presence is certainly felt. He conducts the band through a fairly free improvisation and five of his compositio…
Essence of Ellington/Live in Milano
Preeminent jazz composer/bassist William Parker has been working with large ensembles from the very beginning of presenting his own work as a leader in the mid-70s. His Essence of Ellington project is the very latest manifestation of his orchestral concepts, following in similar form on the extraordinary Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield project which was definitively presented on record by the acclaimed 2010 release, I Plan to Stay a Believer (AUM062/63). The Orchestra here interprets selections …
Viva Negativa! A Tribute To The New Blockaders Vol IV
Outstanding double CD Featuring a mindblowing line-up of contributors, this double-disc release pays homage to noise music pioneers The New Blockaders, with tracks recorded by some of the avant-garde's leading lights, including Merzbow, Incapacitants, MSBR, Aube, K2, Violent Onsen Geisha, KK Null, Government Alpha, Astro, Cracksteel, Nobuo Yamada, Spiracle, Thirdorgan, Kazumoto Endo, Embudagonn 108, Guilty Connector, Defektro, Kouhei Matsunaga, Veltz, etc. 500 copies only!!!The New Blockade…
ØØ Void
Lengths of stretched distortion rattle the grey matter, unnervingly slow and severe. With Sunn O)))’s second album, ØØ Void, the sonic misery nurtured to functionality by Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley stays simple and repetitive, a tabula rasa having yet to realize the full scope of its potential. With this album, Sunn O))) worked as a three-piece, collaborator Stuart Dalquist coming up with its opener, “Richard,” which is a solid fourteen and a half minutes of bending low end and v…