New Arrivals
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 …
Crippled Symmetry
orton Feldman's music continues to exert its fascination on listeners and record companies alike. After releasing its highly successful recording of the more than three-hour-long For Philip Guston, Bridge once again returns to the California EAR Unit for Crippled Symmetry, at only 87 minutes a mere bagatelle in terms of Feldman's late output. Well, maybe not. Scored for flutes, mallet percussion, and piano/celeste, Crippled Symmetry does exactly what the title says: it toys with not quite exact …
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…
Spiral I & II, Pole, Wach, Japan, Zykus,
amazing (an cheap) double CD set featuring most of the Stockhausen "intuitive music" (ie quasi improvised). The first piece is Zyklus for solo percussion performed here by Tristan Fry in 1974. Zyklus was one of the first works with a graphic score allowing the performer some freedom to improvise. In the late 60s Stockhausen developed the idea of scores which determined a process rather than the exact content & his group toured the world playing this music. Several pieces are included her…
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…
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…
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 …
Rare Material
Totally essential two cd collection of some of the most elusive Moondog material of all . When the "Viking of Sixth Avenue" single volume compilation was reissued, we pleaded that here was truly a taste worth acquiring. Louis Hardin somehow managed to find the musical continuities between Bach, native american Sundances, be-bop, Stravinsky and yet still pursue his own musical paths and sound utterly unique. Strong claim, but the music truly bears it out. Drawing the entire disc one from the ultr…
Music for checking e-mails
Good news from your mailbox! Mitterer makes music on the subject of ambient in an electronic environment. Two amazing CDs with radical backgrounds.Mitterer’s CD in hand is about background music as a relative term, it’s about communicating via ›electronic post‹, it’s about the missing link between analog and digital ambient environments. Because Mitterer creates his instruments and then uses them in a unique way, electronic music for him has a unique vocabulary, one which in this day and age of …
Suara alam Indonesia
original field recordings made in Indonesia 2010; the Swiss radical performer presents again a completely different side of his work => environmental recordings of almost untouched nature & wildlife; lim. 200 in DVD box, comes with 5 colour photos
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…
Entraxes inégaux Craquer les liants
Reissue of two LPs from Bloc Thyristors label and two groups run by the drummer Jean-Noël Cognard. Empan with Judith Kan, voice, Jac Berrocal, trumpet, piano, Dan Warburton, violin, keyboards, Béatrice Godeau, cello. Tankj with Serge Adam on trumpet, Jérome Noetinger on electroacoustic devices and tape recorder, Titus Oppmann on doublebass. Recorded and mixed by Patrick Müller.
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…
Motion Sickness Of Time Travel
DOUBLE CD EDITION In 2010, Rachel Evans released Seeping Through The Veil Of The Unconscious, an expansive, magic trick of a cassette which captivated an unsuspecting American cassette underground and made dedicated fans instantly. Digitalis released fine editions of Seeping... as well as the acclaimed follow-up Luminaries And Synastries on LP which packed an equally potent punch and created much anticipation. Evans has since been hard at work on an expansive, definitive 2LP project, caref…
Technology 1 & 2
First issued as a very limited private tapes in 1981, now for the first time ever on CD for these early tapes by one of the most important figures in noise/electronic history, Maurizio Bianchi. These two discs were originally issued on tape in 1981 and have been bootlegged and cut into oblivion since then; this is the first time they've been made available digitally and fully uncut. Technology 1 has two long 25 min+ songs, both in a similar vein and showing MB taking a more subtle melodic approa…
Forbidden Planets, Volume 2
Subtitled: More Music From The Pioneers Of Electronic Sound. "Further to Chrome Dreams' enormously popular first Forbidden Planets CD comes this superb second volume of music from the pioneers of electronic sound. Compiled and annotated once more by music historian Alan Clayson, and featuring his extensive sleeve-notes, the two discs here, featuring 142 minutes of some of the strangest sounds ever recorded, will again delight fans of this most intriguing and previously un-compiled genre." …
Michelangelo Antonioni
The third (and perhaps final) project in the film director series which began with Andrei Tarkovsky - Another Kind Of Language and Yasujiro Ozu - Hitokomakura. Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue focuses upon the Italian auteur's landmark 'tetralogy' of films L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962) and IlDeserto Rosso (1963). Antonioni was known for not being very keen to use music in his films, partially because he wanted the films to tell their stories free from 'add…
(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…
Along the way
'From Chinese traditional music to avant-garde freestyle improvisation, this beautifully-packaged double-CD features the music created by the meeting of these two extraordinary artists of different cultures and even different generations - violinist Malcolm Goldstein (born 1936), one of the greatest maestros in the field of freestyle improvisation, and Chinese pipa virtuoso Liu Fang, young master on the traditional classical music of China.' label info