New Arrivals
Awakening At The Inn Of The Birds
Continents of City and Love and Tidal, written 20 years apart, are both arch-form pieces scored for two pianos, synthesizer, string quartet, and double bass. They both feature expanding piano lines that intersect and compliment individually expanding textures provided by the strings and synthesizer. Continents cycles slowly through four harmonic areas via a sort of structural counterpoint, achieving a finely knit fabric of understated sensuality. Tidal combines strictly notated music with measur…
Adams / Cox / Fink / Fox
This album presents four noted West Coast composers—three from Southern California and one from Fairbanks, Alaska—writing haunting, generally quiet, sometimes lyric, occasionally pensive music for clarinet and bass clarinet accompanied by either string quartet or percussion and piano. All the pieces feature the playing of clarinetist/bass clarinetist Marty Walker.John Luther Adams’s Dark Wind was written for Marty Walker and this CD in 2001. Although it is a process-driven piece involving polyrh…
Aluminum Overcast
Chas Smith's six-movement set of variations that comprise Aluminum Overcast play with the listener’s sense of time—the perceived pace and the clock pace at which musical events take place—as they slowly progress, the spare advancing to the dense.The first five sections/variations are built from shared/recurrent phrases—melodic phrases (for bowed and struck metal), rhythmic phrases derived from geometric and Fibonacci structures, and phrases of “harmonic noise” that vary in density. The sixth mov…
Cold Blue
Back by popular demand (and available for the first time as a CD), this essential collection of West Coast new music—an anthology known simply as Cold Blue—is a classic. Originally issued on vinyl in 1984, shortly before the demise of the old Cold Blue label, the disc quickly became the company’s most popular release. When Cold Blue was started up again in 2000, the company received numerous letters encouraging it to re-release the anthology as a CD.Although bound together by a common concern wi…
Dancing On Water
All the music on this album, with the exception of Song(s) of the Sirens, was written specifically for remarkable clarinetist/bass clarinetist Marty Walker. As Is Thought/Aurora, a casually dramatic work for bass clarinet, harp, and vibraphone, is like a miniature concerto in its structure, contrasting solo bass clarinet phrases with tutti lines.Song(s) of the Sirens, a lush work for clarinet, piano, and woman’s voice, gradually and systematically builds in texture, harmonic richness, and melodi…
I Hear It In The Rain
Five Pieces for Piano (1997), Two Preludes for Piano (1996-97), and For Celesta (1985)—the latter for an instrument that is very seldom featured in a solo setting—display Michael Jon Fink’s command of crystalline forms that are Debussyian in beauty (and occasionally in gesture) yet hold a distinctly contemporary artistic distance from their musical materials. These fragile and primarily extremely quiet pieces are performed with great aplomb by Bryan Pezzone.Living to be Hunted by the Moon (1987)…
Nikkowolverine
Nikko Wolverine (1999) is a three-movement piece scored for various bowed and struck metal instruments in non-tempered tunings. These instruments, which were designed and built by the composer, emit tones that are rich in complex harmonics and often sound more electronic than acoustic. All three movements of this work share motivic materials, but each successive movement adds more harmonic complexity and textural density to the movement that preceded it.Tons Tons Macoutes (1999) is a texturally …
Last Things
Last Things, for bass clarinet, pedal steel guitar, piano, and electronic keyboards, was written for clarinetist Marty Walker in 1987, and has been subsequently performed (as a piece for bass clarinet and tape) by Walker at concerts across the U.S. Somewhat a rhapsodic call and response between bass clarinet and pedal steel guitar, it is constructed of seven connected sections (or songs) that over the length of the piece slowly build in intensity. As the piece progresses, each section expands in…
I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics. The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he …
In Another Lant Pt. 2
„The second part of the “In Another Land”-trilogy can be considered as the indispensable conceptual antipode to part I. It's everything that part I is not and vice versa. It's sculptural and it's not pursuing the idea of development, but it's neither static nor repetitive: The mostly short pieces, consisting of heavily treated snippets of recorded (electro-) acoustic instruments are circling around themselves, always aiming to show their core idea to the listener. The thing is the thing is the …
De Rerum Natura / Dance of the Elements
In his poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) the Roman
poet/philosopher Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 BCE) explores Epicurean
physics and philosophy through richly poetic language and metaphors, as
he presents an entire cosmology: based on the principles of atomism,
Lucretius tries to explain the nature of the mind and soul, and the
development of the world. While some of his ideas have been proven
scientifically wrong, some of his thoughts seem strikingly reasonable
even for the cont…
Arantzazu Close & Far
Nearly 15 years after the edition “Maison.House II-V” – in duet with his electroacoustic friend Eric La Casa – Vert Pituite La Belle is pleased to collaborate once again with Jean-Luc Guionnet, this time alone and at the organ.For Arantzazu Close & Far, the vinyl medium makes perfect sense: two sides, two versions of the same sound event, the recording of the same improvisation on the organ of the basilica of the monastery of Arantzazu in the Spanish Basque country, realized during a residency o…
Artists on Hanne Darboven
Artists on Hanne Darboven is the first installment in a series culled from Dia Art Foundation’s Artists on Artists lectures, focused on German conceptual artist Hanne Darboven. Established in 2001, the lecture series highlights the work of modern and contemporary artists from the perspective of their colleagues and peers. The inaugural Artists on Artists title is published in conjunction with the opening of Darboven’s 1980–83 installation Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (Cultural History 1880–1983, 1…
Nachtfalter
Günter Schickert's debut Samtvogel (1975) was one of the most significant guitar albums of the krautrock era. Points of comparison from today's perspective are Syd Barrett or Pink Floyd's more adventurous early recordings. Schickert's follow-up, Überfällig (1980) was released on the legendary Sky label. Once again a milestone recording, it showcased Schickert's hypnotic echo guitar which developed into one of the hallmarks of the krautrock sound. Schickert's new album Nachtfalter, translating as…
Black Trees
Recorded in Paris in 2014. Ame Son was a progressive rock band from France. They are notable for being featured on the Nurse With Wound list. Members of Ame Son also were in the band Red Noise and Komintern. Formed by Marc Blanc and Patrick Fontaine. Both were members of the first line-up of Banana Moon (the band that later would become Gong). Their debut album Catalyse was released by BYG in 1970. Ame Son is Marc Blanc, François Garrel, Romeo Blanc, and Bernard Lavialle. Edition of 500.
The Saga Of Padani
The Oakland Elementary School Arkestra presents the odyssey of 4th, 5th & 6th grade students from novice musicians into an avant garde ensemble. An ensemble that engenders an array of sonic textures which never remain static or stagnant, but flow in a way that it's always surprising, often startling and astonishing.These schoolkids have traveled the spaceways of Modernism, Minimalism, Impressionism, Exotica, film soundtracks and more. They have ingested the lessons of Iconic artists like Sun Ra …
Work n. 117
First released on cassette in 1995. Now available as a 7″ vinyl via VF and Martin Creed’s own label, Telephone Records. The single release coincides with the artist’s hugely popular show, TOAST, at Hauser & Wirth (London) which runs until 09/02/2019 and Artist Rooms at the Tate Britain until 10/03/2019“It’s got everything in it” – Martin CreedSide A All the sounds on a drum machine played one after the other, in their given order, at a speed which makes the piece last …
Carpet Proof Of Daily Reports
Hand-numbered edition of 300. It’s a Swedish house thing. Börft boss Jan Zwarre Svensson a.k.a Frak returns to his early project, Villa Åbo, for six deep and rude acid rub downs. Named after the former bank he grew up in and later founded Studio Styrka, site of early Frak and Alvars Orkester recordings, Villa Åbo is a funky study in teenaged fascinations and nostalgia for dance music’s golden era. Reprising the vibes of his 1997 releases, ’Ticketiketas’ and ‘Tagetes’, Villa Åbo pays tribute to c…
Bleaklow
New vinyl edition (300 copies) of this killer. Fully remastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy. One of the most destitute and absorbing albums in Leyland Kirby’s canon is finally given a much needed vinyl pressing, following on from its initial CD release 6 years ago. ‘Bleaklow’ is harrowing from the start, the opening "Something To Do With Death” reverberating dread via layers of unstable, radiant drones punctuated with pained, hi-pitched howls that cut through the mix with violent intent. ’Solemn D…
This Is Not A Lament
Return of Richard Youngs to Fourth Dimension, a label that has supported his work since the early 1990s via collaborations with Simon Wickham-Smith. The latter returns to this set, based around the notion of songs featuring special guests. Spread over the two discs, the eleven songs here assume all manner of sonic guises that are often difficult or sometimes blissed-out, but always rewarding. Most include guests, themselves from a wide variety of backgrounds (taking in all from groups such as Tr…