New Arrivals
Transparent Waves
*2022 stock.* When does our experience of sound become "music"? In the tradition of John Cage and Morton Feldman, in which sounds – and silences – can just be themselves, Thomas DeLio plays with the spaces between your ears as much as the sounds he puts there. In short, be advised this album is replete with clicks, silences, and brief sound events. Stripped bare, it plays with time and space and the minimum conditions for music. It gives the term ‘experimental music’ meaning. DeLio’s approach to…
Apophany
If you were to connect seemingly unrelated things – Heavy Metal and the symphony orchestra, for example – you might be guilty of apophenia. That friction between opposites has never been a problem for Nick Vasallo, though – his music is equally at home in both worlds. Melding Xenakis, Varese, Extreme Metal, and Dark Ambient with gothic charm, Vasallo conjures up a muscular sonic battle that leads you on an inexorable musical journey to a conclusion where surrender is your best option. Catharsis …
Orchard
*2022 Stock.* “I was born and raised in Kentucky, and for many generations my direct ancestors and extended family have been farmers. So, creating music that is ‘about’ soil, plant life, and the natural world, is my way of honoring that legacy.” Composer Tyler Kline’s tools, though, are not the plow – and vegetables are not the crop – in this collection of brief piano pieces commissioned by and for over a dozen pianists. Instead, Orchard is a celebration of fruit. Each sketch draws on a specific…
Transmutation of Things
There is a venerable history of popular songs used as the starting point for elaborate classical compositions, but 500 years ago Josquin and Dufay never imagined using a gargantuan digital orchestra with up to 300 layered tracks pushing architectural proportion and human perception to the max. And yet, that is exactly what composer, MC Maguire, does in his Toronto studio. It’s daunting, it’s overwhelming, and it has to be heard (preferably loud) to be believed. Dubbed “the most irritating and sp…
Signals
Lawson & Merrill are not financial advisors. But if electroacoustic bliss is what you seek, you would do well to make an appointment with them. They – David Margolin Lawson and David Merrill – met a number of years ago while engineering sessions at the revered CityVox Studios in New York City. They discovered they both had a love for “mid century” electronic music and composers like Morton Subotnick, Eliane Radigue, Edgard Varèse, Ilhan Mimaroğlu, and Steve Reich. It wasn’t until recently, thoug…
Galaxy Heart
Galaxy Heart is the companion album to Phosphenes (Nov 2021) and completes an intensive body of work that Montréal composer-violinist Jessica Moss wrote, performed and self-produced in deep isolation throughout 2020. As A Closer Listen wrote in its Top Ten Modern Composition list for 2021, "few musical voices represent so well the estrangement and intensity of our times; Moss is among the best of them." Galaxy Heart consolidates this assessment, revealing the more exploratory and extemporaneous …
Fleeting Adventure
Andrew Tuttle's Fleeting Adventure is a musical adventure through a reimagined journey from the Australian ambient producer and banjo player. A crew of fellow travellers - including Steve Gunn, Chuck Johnson, Luke Schneider and Balmorhea - help navigate a cosmic trip into subtropical landscapes. Golden plucks of banjo, gauzy electronics and cosmic guitar shimmer into gloriously expansive melodies that conjure peace and space, comfort and wonder.
A deepening sense of life, love, health, loss, and…
III
"Texture. A nice word, wouldn’t you say, settling into the audible dis-course with whiffs of sophistication, complexity, depth. The Oxford English Dictionary gives us "the constitution, structure, or substance of anything with regard to its constituents or formative elements". Merriam-Webster offers "the disposition or manner of union of the particles of a body or substance". And here, courtesy Barstool Mountain, III, a deep-dive into fractured reservoirs of textural dis-course, whiffs of smudge…
Speaksome
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* For as long as I can remember, Christian Wallumrød's piano touch has done something to me. We met early. The peculiar and surprising, but still somewhat self-evident, melodic twists. Not to mention the far above average well-weighted ornaments. He manages to create completely unique universes, either with his own ensemble or alone. In recent years, he has also returned to electronics and he treats them with a gentle rawness. There has always been something h…
Linde
*In process of stocking.* The trio Slagr releases their sixth album “Linde”, made up of music created in a time of new beginnings. The music on the album is written by Katrine Schiøtt in the middle of maternity leave, giving a new touch to the trios distinctive sound. Postpartum - lack of sleep, emotional vulnerability, an extreme focus on something outside oneself; providing nourishment and love to the newborn. A minor state of emergency where small moments can inspire to musical fragments and …
Krympende Klode
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Krympende klode is a new collaboration between two internationally recognised musicians from Bergen, Norway: music producer Jørgen Træen, who has worked with talents such as Susanne Sundfør, Thea Hjelmeland and Jazkamer, and the unique and eternally inventive guitarist Stein Urheim, whose releases include 6 albums on the Hubro label. On this album they present their personal collections of synthesisers and string instruments from all over the world, and let …
Avant Folk
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock. Limited edition of 500 copies.* The opening track of ‘Avant Folk’ is like a dream of what contemporary experimental folk-meets-jazz-meets-chamber-music might be. Composed by Frode Haltli, ‘Hug’ begins with a galumphing off-centre rhythm that could be an accompaniment to elephants waltzing before the wheezing bellows-breath of Haltli’s accordion creates delightfully airy whispers of noise that drift across the other instruments like wisps of cloud across the s…
Sound Scapes - Denmark's Intuitive Music Conference 2001
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* "...the music you can listen here on this CD is result of collaboration of musicians from five countries gathered for participating in DIMC held in Rudme in summer 2001. Some compositions are examples of collective improvisation notated graphically, by different ways. Thus, graphical score can look like a sort of "verbal instruction" for performers, with a prescription how selected musical models interact. It is this way by which pieces by Henrik Rasmussen an…
Improvised Varieties
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* "This CD features music from concerts with Intuitive Music Group (founded 1990) and from some of its members' touring activities in Poland and Russia. It centers around composer and pianist Henrik Ehland Rasmussen. There are three long solo pieces, including one based on a formula given by his countryman Niels Viggo Bentzon, in which countless varied statings of the formula produces an astounding number of ever-developing pianistic phenomena. The other pieces…
Danish Intuitive Music
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* "The Group for Intuitive Music originated in 1974 around the Copenhagen University Institute of Music with Jørgen Lekfeldt and his piano teacher, Elisabeth Klein, as the founder members. Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Anders Keiding and Niels Rosing-Schow, also students at the same place, joined the group. Pieces from Stockhausen's verbally notated collections From the Seven Days and For Times to Come constituted the group's first repertoire. Soon, however, it devel…
ADHD
*2022 stock. Limited edition of 500 copies.* Fusing spacious electronic minimalism, shimmering guitars, and the empyrean voice of Misty Mary, Portland’s WL (pronounced ‘well’) arrive at the end of 2020 with an album of lustrous, crystalline Left Coast pop that is destined to be a trusted companion during the long nights ahead. ADHD is a defining statement of purpose for the group, made during a time of personal upheaval and featuring an evocative song cycle that begs to be listened to on repeat.…
Penguin Bids
*2022 stock.* Hot, hot and even hotter! Thrilling big-band recordings from the 1960s, made with the Polish Radio Dance Orchestra… The music is full of energy and swing, and is an evidence of Jerzy Milian’s artistry as an arranger, and above all, as a great vibraphone player.
After Edward Czerny took over the leadership of the Polish Radio Dance Orchestra in 1959, he took it to a level unattainable to his predecessors. Until 1974 he regularly performed with the Orchestra in Poland and in other Ea…
Živí Se Diví: Live In Bratislava 1975
What is the most successful marriage of Fender and Moog in the history of music? "Živí se Diví. Live in Bratislava 1975” is a unique live album from Jazz Q, the legends of Czechoslovakian jazz-rock. The material presents a group in one of its best incarnations, from time of cult compilation "Jazzrocková Dílna” (1975). This dynamic material in excellent radio quality comes from the private archives of Martin Kratochvíl, who entrusted GAD Records with the rights to his music legacy. First released…
Zimna Kąpiel
The history of music largely consists of the word "if." For if Boguslaw "Dizzy" Rudzinski had not emigrated to Sweden in the mid-1960s, the history of Polish jazz might have looked very different. And the songs that appear on the album "Cold Bath" more than half a century after recording - could successfully fill one of the volumes of the "Polish Jazz" series.
Boguslaw Rudzinski, despite his great activity on the music scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s, quickly fell into oblivion after emi…
Optima Fide (1968-70 • More Belgian Scores - Third Stream Tales)
The Belgian jazz orchestra run by BRT radio was one of Europe's most interesting workshops, allowing composers to experiment at will with the sound or structure of works. Jerzy Milian exploited the possibilities of this composition to its absolute limits, and "Optima Fide," the eleventh installment in the "Jerzy Milian Tapes" series, chronicles this turbulent period in his career. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Milian regularly wrote large forms bordering on jazz and avant-garde for Belgian radio. …