New Arrivals
Program
"A collaboration between Kouhei Matsunaga (who has worked with everyone from Sensational to Autechre and Asmus Tietchens) and the less prolific Toshio Munehiro, NHK’s ultra minimalist approach to techno may conjure memories of the late 90s/early 2000s glitch and microsound scenes, but their combination of erratic beats and digital expanses feels anything but dated, sounding entirely unique and fresh in 2015. I have always had a soft spot for that short lived era that was often full of derided la…
Sleepwalkers In A Cold Circus
On Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus Belgian sound artist Koenraad Ecker creates a biotope of musical characters that is sober, delicate, complex and vivid, with a restrained intensity, a “cold fire.” The characters discuss, hesitate, fight, pull closer, push back. Through the use of microtonality and recordings of acoustic instruments it is the elusive sound of a somnambulistic travelogue. “I’m searching for ways to create an intricate narrative, switching perspectives and voices within one form, t…
Beyond Repair
Beyond Repair is its latest solo cd. Eleven short tracks for modular synth, home made electronics and tape recorders. A true union between coarse substance of analogical devices and voltage of tense electronics. The core of Beyond Repair is the fusion of its contrasts. Permanent tension between chiselling and bare deconstruction, meditation and frontal sound, cold stasis and unstable dynamics. Eleven tracks that run without pause as a single composition that hits like a strong cut-up aggression…
Sounds Of Iceland
This recording takes you on a round trip of Iceland. The aural journey starts westward from the island’s south in the cold early spring. After a side trip into the West Fjords, our route traverses the north of the country at the height of summer, followed by an excursion into the interior highlands before a short stop in the East Fjords. As the sound trip nears its geographical starting point, autumn and winter make their appearance before the journey comes full circle.The recordings do not feat…
Double Automatism
New York City's experimental duo Talibam! team up with Fluxus artist and electronic avant-gardist Yasunao Tone and trombonist Sam Kulik for a confrontational sonic attack, fired by an array of analog synths and other electronic devices. David Novak, author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2013), on Double Automatism: "Bringing together the most calamitous materials from their home planets of noise, glitch, and free improvisation, Tone and Talibam! are at once the likeliest and …
Ebb & Flow
Formed in November 2006, Dream Weapon Ritual is the duo of Simon Balestrazzi and Monica Serra. They play free-form music that draws equally from droning electronica soundscapes and imaginary folk visions.Simon Balestrazzi is an electronic/electroacoustic composer and sound artist active since the 80's. He released many albums and performed live around Europe under various names. Monica Serra is a talented actress whose artistic research led to double as vocalist since 1999. Both are member…
Five Lines
The meeting of heavyweights of electroacoustic improvisation from Europe and the Pacific United States happened during MKM trio tour in Northern America. This recording, at CalArts in 2010, yielded interesting results: a nervous displacement of noises and rich sonorous timbres. Casey Anderson, from Los Angeles, works with sound in a number of media from composition and improvisation to installations. On Five Lines he played a combination of digital and analog instruments of his own design…
It's About Time
Pioneering synthesizer soundscapes originally issued in 1974, available again. The electronic duo of Robert Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil aka Tonto released their influential debut, Zero Time, in 1971, showcasing what they described as "the world's first and largest multi-timbral polyphonic analog synthesizer." Three years later, they released this classic follow-up, recorded in Malibu. Building on their earlier achievements, it incorporates guitar, bass and drums into the unique sound of Tonto: …
Five Fizzles For Samuel Beckett
"Is there a better all-around bassist with a bow than Barry Guy? That query may scream sycophantic hyperbole, but in taking stock of the British improviser's discography it's an interrogative that can't help but manifest repeatedly.
On Guy's end the distinction of best isn't even a peripheral consideration or goal. He's placed his instrument in near-countless contexts, bringing to it a perfect sense of pitch and dynamics. Five Fizzles for Samuel Beckett is right in line with that sterling…
Erfolg
"Erfolg" is the second solo album of the exceptional musician Hans Koch, released 25 years after his first solo work ("Uluru"). "Erfolg" documents Hans Koch's experimental examination of his three instruments bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophone. The pieces are state of the art instant composing and sound research. Besides numerous collaborations - in the trio Koch-Schütz-Studer, with musicians like Barry Guy, Cecil Taylor, Han Bennink, Fred Frith, Urs Leimgruber and many others - Ha…
Time Machine Volume IV
Fourth Volume of the series recorded directly from the Time Machine, a magic case containing an array of home-built oscillators activated by Renato Rinaldi to create pulsing rhythms and noise patterns using the mixer feedback. Edited and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
"The Time Machine project was conceived in order to find a simple and immediate way to work with rhythm. I built two cheap and imprecise, almost-square wave oscillators with a wide range of frequencies. These oscillators can …
Blood/Lines
Blood Lines is Emily Jane White's first album for Important since 2009's Dark Undercoat. Featuring vocal contributions from Marissa Nadler. This American version of the CD contains two bonus tracks not available elsewhere.
After releasing three albums in three years, Emily Jane White wrote over 100 sketches between January 2011 and October 2012. Her new album "Blood / Lines" is a selected compilation of these songs. Recorded in a secluded studio in Sonoma County, California, the quiet envi…
I Line My Days Along Your Weight
Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without a net. Mar…
Heat Source
Ashley Paul's Heat Source was recorded during a challenging year of transience between New York and London. During this year of impermanence Paul performed regularly and the effects of frequent performance and traveling can be heard in the intentionally pared back emptiness of Heat Source. making it an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience.Heat Source finds Ashley Paul working using her brilliant ears to find a zen like balance between her voice and a sp…
Surrealism Reviewed
Surrealism Reviewed is a collection of spoken word recordings by Surrealist artists, writers and poets. Made between 1929 and 1963, these historic audio recordings include poetry readings, interviews, lectures and manifestos. Most are in the English language, though some are in French (marked FR below). The remarkable contributions by Robert Desnos and Herbert Read were feared lost for several decades, unheard since they were cut onto acetate discs in the 1930s.
Running for 74 minutes, wit…
Futurpiano
Futurpiano showcases three influential avant-garde composers associated with the Futurist movement, by way of piano music composed between 1913 and 1933.
Arthur-Vincent Lourie was the first Russian Futurist musician, and a signatory of the original St Petersburg Manifesto in 1914. The five Syntheses written that same year offer a form of dodecaphony, while Formes en l'air from 1915 is a Cubo-Futurist conception using an innovative form of notation, dedicated to Pablo Picasso.
Born in the Ukraine…
Le Groupe des Six: Selected Works 1915-1945
This 160 minute anthology features selected piano and orchestral works by Les Six composed between 1915 and 1945, including collaborations with Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Marcelle Meyer and Denise Duval. Highlights include a digitally remastered cast recording of the Surrealistic opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias, co-created by Francis Poulenc and Apollinaire, and new recordings of Dada-related works performed by Peter Beijersbergen van Henegouwen.
All selections were re…
Par Hasard: Chance Composition 1913-1951
Par Hasard is a unique collection of avant-garde music by Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes and John Cage, all composed during the first half of the 20th century using chance techniques and operations.All selections are performed on piano. Iconic French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp conceived both of his Musical errata in 1913. One consists of notes drawn at random from a hat; for the second, balls are dropped through a funnel into wagons drawn by a toy train. "Exec…
Don't know, just walk
May 2014 release.“I used to think that music was my escape from reality, now I think it’s an escape into reality.” – Mike Weis, 2014. Mike Weis is probably best known for sitting behind a plethora of drums and gongs in long- running Chicago three-piece Zelienople, but his music is just as potent unaccompanied. Weis might be an obsessive collaborator (his work with Scott Tuma, Mind Over Mirrors and Kwaidan is also essential), but on his own, he is able to allow his unique percussive skills to bu…
Black meditations
The duo of Witchbeam & Mr. Matthews featuring Lala Ryan from Excepter, and Rachel & Grant Evans. New on Experimedia "Telecult Powers, the candle burning duo of Witchbeam & Mr. Matthews, known for their ritualistic live shows and previous releases on Baked Tapes, Draft, Pizza Night and more, bestow upon us their new album "Black Meditations", a six part sonic meditation on the connections between man, myth & magic. Black Meditations taps into the world of folk magic, reaching out to the spirit wo…