New Arrivals
Four Meditations / Sound Geometrics
Pauline Oliveros surrounded by Belgian ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, performing two long pieces for orchestra. "Sound Geometries for Chamber Orchestra, Expanded Instrument System and 5.1 Surround Sound System" by Pauline Oliveros was premiered in Brussels. The 3 sections metaphors of the piece are intended to guide the players in their feelings and approaches to conducted, guided and improvisational music making to create differing atmospheres for each of the three sections. Players sounds…
Unworks & Rarities 2012-15
Limited gold vinyl version. This is the volume one of Unworks & Rarities, a new series compiling unreleased and miscellaneous pieces by Oiseaux-Tempête. Following their two acclaimed first albums on Sub Rosa (Ütopiya?, 2015 (SR 396CD, SR 396LP) & Oiseaux-Tempête, 2013 (SR 381CD, SR 381LP)), Unworks & Rarities is putting up more than a collection of outtakes. Since 2012, French "free-rockers" Oiseaux-Tempête have been making instrumental and experimental rock that's heavy, provocative, and in n…
Trembling Shade
Recorded live at Exploratorium, Berlin on 19 March 2015 by Johannes von Wrochem. Berlin is truly the spiritual home of The Sealed Knot - with the trio having played there numerous times since it's debut in the city at Ramschift Zitrone in 2002. In more recent times we've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to perform at regular yearly intervals, the most recent of which is the concert captured on this recording from Exploratorium in March 2015. Many thanks to Matthias Schwabe for the i…
Be Nothing
Awsome new CD by the legendary Sergio Merce, a work for microtonal saxophon and analog synth/ electronics. During the last three years, Sergio Merce transformed his alto saxophone in a tremendous and radical way. "I have been working on a "microtonal saxophone", which is an alto saxophone without the original mechanisms and keys that I replaced with water, gas and compressed air taps. I can move the tuning of any note, and play microtones, multiphonics. A sustain pedal allows me to maintain…
Tobel
Reinhold Friedl, inside piano. Franck Vigroux, electronics. 'An encounter between two worlds. Reinhold Friedl and Franck Vigroux are two musicians, both addicted to a real contemporary approach, getting to the core of sound but by very different means. Reinhold Friedl with his purely acoustic instrument and his highly developed and refined inside-piano techniques meets Franck Vigroux with his electronics including all kind of devices from tape recorders to analog synthesizers. Their sole …
Spuren
Christian Wolfarth's work clearly thrives on tactility and manipulation. In he also applied some techniques to concoct and subsequently remodel the acoustic substance on offer. On the one hand, his instrumental expertness is in evidence: one the other, processes of cut-and-paste and natural-sounding looping furnish several sections with potent connotations: relievingly hyptnotic a moment, almost suffocating the next. In fact, there are dynamic surpises waiting for the listener.
In the fi…
Sahib's Jazz Party
In a time before jazz music went free and ‘avant-garde’ there were a couple of inspired souls who put an emphasize on extended jams and improvised yet melodic parts based on a rather repetitive rhythm background. The result in turning away from the rather artistic and complicated bebop was the modal jazz that came up in the second half of the 1950s and lasted as the leading style until the mid to late 60s when bands either became free avant garde or discovered rock music to boost up their sound.…
Sonny's Time Now
LP version. In 1965 - only a few months after recording „Ghosts“ with Albert Ayler - Sonny Murray released his first album as a leader. „Sonny's time now“ is one of the holy grails for collectors and aficionados of free avant garde jazz music from the 1960s and while original vinyl copies fetch prices up to 270,00 US$ and more ,even the first Japanese reissue from 1986 on vinyl and CD is rare as stardust these days and goes up to 100,00 US$ for a mint CD copy. Well, we will take a closer look at…
Blind Tarots
Blind Tarots is a split tape featuring the contribution of My Dear Killer & Matteo Uggeri (Italy) and Modern Day Monks (Indiana, USA). The tape shows two different but somehow related attitudes to approach soft, minimalist, introspective folk. The A-side is played with acoustic guitars by My Dear Killer and processed by Matteo Uggeri, who also provided field recordings and broken rhythms. The side is called “L'albero della Morte”, and flows uninterrupted through five sections along the branches,…
The Decline of Western Civilization Collection
Penelope Spheeris' THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION was perceived as shocking and outrageous at the time of its original release in 1981 and its two follow-up films were no less extraordinary and revealing. Today, museums and educational institutions around the world present them as a historically significant works of art. Featuring some of the most influential and innovative musicians and groups of all time – Germs, Black Flag, X, Fear, Circle Jerks, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, these riv…
Goodbye Red Rose
Chefa Alonso performed with numerous musicians during her 2004-8 stay in London. Perhaps the most profound and rewarding musical relationship was the duo with Tony Marsh. This is at least the fifth soprano saxophone and percussion duo on Emanem. While perhaps influenced by the other duos, the strengths of the two participants mean that it is a unique addition to the instrumentation. Besides their contribution to the last night at the Red Rose, there are also appearances at another London venue, …
La Ragazzina
La Ragazzina is an Italian sex comedy film from 1974, and you know what they say about Italian sex comedies from the 70’s right? They always have cool kitschy soundtracks! La Ragazzina is no exception, with Nico Fidenco providing bright, loungey accompaniments to the on-screen sexy antics. This is arguably one of Fidenco’s finest works, and it's a pleasure to see this vinyl reissue with remastered audio on Contempo. "The soundtrack composed by Maestro Nico Fidenco for the 1974 movie directed …
Twilight
Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid 1970s. Following recent vinyl reissues of Marc Barreca's 1983 cassette Music Works for Industry via the RVNG spin-off Freedom To Spend, and a compilation of early cassette tracks on Vinyl On Demand's acclaimed American Cassette Culture, Palace of Lights has reissued the artist's first album for the label. 1980's Twilight was one of the earliest releases on Palace of Light, and is part of an ongoing program of documentin…
Fantastic Architecture
Primary Information is reprinting the seminal book, Fantastic Architecture, making the book widely available for the first time since it was originally published: first in 1969 by Droste Verlag in German (with the title Pop Architektur) and later in 1970 by Something Else Press as Fantastic Architecture. Edited by Dick Higgins and Wolf Vostell, this artist’s book/anthology explores the boundaries between pop art and architecture through writings and projects by key artists and thinkers of t…
The Dark Side of the Moog Vol. 1-4
Complex re-release of the most remarkable and worldwide sought after series The Dark Side Of The Moog by German electronic pioneers Klaus Schulze and Pete Namlook (aka Peter Kuhlmann) in three slip lid boxsets, each with 5 CDs, incl. bonus material and new linernotes. The first box contains Vol. 1 to Vol. 4 and the Best Of-Album The Evolution Of The Dark Side Of The Moog. Their relationship between Klaus and Pete and the exchange of ideas was unorthodox from the beginning of their co-operation, …
Closed System Potentials
Following the RVNG reissues of A Period Of Review(ranked the #7 reissue of 2014 by The Wire) and Artificial Dance (ranked the #2 reissue of 2015 by The Wire), Closed System Potentials, recorded in 1979 and originally released in 1980, finds its way back to vinyl in a completely remastered and expanded edition. The LP includes two previously unreleased tracks, and the download card includes an additional two unreleased tracks, all taken from the original Closed System Potentials sessions. In thei…
Room Tone
Published in November 2015. English edition, 16 x 21 cm (softcover), 112 pages (color ill.). Texts by Robin Wilson and Brandon LaBelle; interview with Brandon LaBelle by Elena Biserna. The publication documents a project developed by artist Brandon LaBelle which attempts to instigate conversations between sound and architecture through a set of audio recordings of the artist's apartment in Berlin.“Sound moves between inside and outside. It disturbs what may appear static while also providing mom…
4 contemporary sound poets
Pogus and the IMRC Center of the University of Maine at Orono are very proud to release this 5.1 surround sound disc 4 Contemporary Sound Poets. The technology embraced here is on two levels, the immersive technology of surroundsound, which now fifty years later is still struggling to move beyond its origins in cinema, and the powerful transformations availed by digital audio signal processing. These technologies combine to form a new frontier, a place to explore and expand the vocabulary of con…
Sable
Marta Sainz: voice, dan bau; If, Bwana (Al Margolis): amplified detritus box, recorder, clarinet.Marta Sainz and Al Margolis (If, Bwana) met and performed together in Madrid, Spain for the first time in October 2014. That initial performance - she on voice performance and he on laptop, was such a joy, that they both determined that they would work together again as soon as possible. That opportunity arose again in June 2015, when the duo did a brief tour in Spain, as well as going into the studi…
France Demo Tapes
Bamboo presents the first vinyl release of France Demo Tapes. "This just might be the single greatest side of OTT psych/noise guitar oblivion ever put to disc from the most legendary Japanese underground group of all time, Les Rallizes Denudes: the mysteriously-named France Demo Tapes have previously only circulated on wildly dubious CD-R burns, often with contradictory and conflicting track listings/material but the session (whether it was actually recorded in France or not) is consistently dat…