New Arrivals
The Solar-myth Approach (Vol 1)
** White Vinyl. Comes in a deluxe matte laminate gatefold sleeve. ** The first instalment of a landmark session by one of the most unique figures in black music is a shower of sounds that have come straight from another world. Occupying a unique place in the history of black music, Sun Ra took the big band aesthetic of his role model Duke Ellington into thrilling new territory. A pianist and keyboard player with an ear for uncommon timbres, a profound interest in a wide range of non-Western cul…
Trabant
Mega Tip! 300 copies. The cult bands' cult band: Trabant were formed in Hungary in 1980. The closest the group ever came to producing a record was in the form of a promotional 7” vinyl for a film in which the core members starred. At the centre of an anti-authoritarian—that is literally outlawed—underground music scene in Hungary, this film soundtrack represented an opportunity to distribute their music without acquiring the recording and distribution license demanded by the censorious Communist…
Prisoner of Love: The Dead Dance
* Numbered + handmade in an edition of 200 copies only; 180gr vinyl in custom-made outer (sealed), containing extensive booklet with images from performance + installation + newly commissioned essay by Akihito Yasumi (Japanese original + English translation); no digital * Takashi Inagaki’s original soundtrack score for filmmaker Takashi Ito’s Japanese-language stage adaptation of Jean Genet’s Prisoner of Love, and its parallel video installation, The Dead Dance. Genet’s final literary work recou…
New American Music, Vol. 4
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Noa Ain gives us a surreal portrait of violinist Yoko Matsua in “Used to Call Me Sadness,” Joel Chadabe encourages a solo percussionist to interact with an automated electronic system in “Echoes,” Ann McMillan manipulates animal sounds with recording techniques in “Whale I,” Gordon Mumma offers audience members “Do It Yourself” participation in “Cybersonic Cantilevers” and Vladimir Ussachevsky suggests a pre-biblical story of the creation of the world depicted by electro…
New American Music, Vol. 3
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Works by Talib Rasul Hakim, William Bolcom, Howard Swanson and Frederic Rzewski are presented here. Highlights include Bolcom’s "Whisper Moon" for chamber ensemble and three of Rzewski’s songs, whose lyrics are drawn from words by Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes and Guatemalan revolutionary Otto Rene Castille.
New American Music, Vol. 2
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Trumpets and trombones twist through dense pockets of sound in Lucia Dlugoszewski “Angels of the Inmost Heaven”; the voice of a lone guitarist punctures the silence in James Fulkerson’s “Patterns” II and VII; flute, bassoons, viola and vibraphone are intended to “turn some dancers on” in Carman Moore’s “Youth in a Merciful House”; and a guitarist laments to the hum of an Elizabethan-type string and woodwind consort in Stanley Silverman’s “Planh.” This is a thoughtfully b…
New American Music, Vol. 1
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* From Milford Graves’ guttural experiments with percussion and the body to Mary Lou Williams’ jazz combo interrupted by atonal “fungus,” this compilation of new (1970s) music makes for an eclectic mix of musical sounds. Star innovators Gil Evans, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray also contribute to this collection of jazz.
For Jon (Fragments Of A Time To Come) 1977
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation to enter in the 1977 Italia Prize Competition, Lars-Gunnar Bodin - For Jon (Fragments of a Time to Come) 1977 is structured as a “dramatic cantata…with vocal sections for both chorus and soloists alternating with recitatives and ‘instrumental’ interludes.” The texts are based on “’surrealistic science fiction’—testimony and reports about experience in other worlds, real or imaginary.” The liner notes provide an introdu…
At The Helm
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* East New York Ensemble de Music came out of the diverse community of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where African, West Indian & black American cultures converged. First and foremost a deep Spiritual Jazz record, At The Helm also incorporates elements of the West Indies, and both the Near and Far East. Originally issued in a very small pressing by Folkway Records in 1974, at a time when the label was doing some great underground recordings!
The sound is loose and free – spiritually…
Highlights of Vortex
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* The brainchild of visual artist Jordan Belson and electronics polymath Henry Jacobs, the Vortex Experiments ran from 1957 to 1960, first at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium and later at the SF Museum of Art. The very name of these events announced their aim: a swirling totality of sensory experience. Around Belson’s richly-colored visuals – making use of the planetarium’s entire dome and featuring luminous, sharply geometric imagery projected through an array of devi…
Bass Works: As I Venture Into
Zurich bass guitarist and composer Martina Berther is known for her delicious basslines in experimental rock outfits Ester Poly and AUL. On this solo debut, she conjures something utterly unique from her instrument. 'Bass Works' showcases Berther's talent and ingenuity across 12 startlingly varied one-take compositions. Taking root in improvisation, the collection unfolds like a playbook of strange and beautiful techniques. Voided melodies, harmonics and surfaces that prickle and collapse in sol…
Sti.ll
An elaborate, authoritative acoustic re-imagining of Deupree’s seminal electronic album Stil. (2002), Sti.ll is the result of a multi-year collaboration between Deupree and arranger/producer Joseph Branciforte to bring Deupree’s explorations of extreme repetition and stillness into the world of acoustic performance.
Three Cellos
The inaugural release in Greyfade’s innovative new FOLIO music release format, composer Kenneth Kirschner’s Three Cellos is the culmination of a five-year collaboration between Kirschner, arranger & producer Joseph Branciforte, and cellist Christopher Gross.
Music By Jean Eichelberger Ivey For Voices, Instruments, And Tape
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* This 1973 recording combines live performance and tape in order to “offer the best of both worlds, plus a dimension which neither live performer nor tape can reach alone.” There are four pieces on the album: “Terminus” and “Aldebaran” are each for a solo performer and tape, “Three Songs of Night” is for a large ensemble with intermittent tape, and “Cortege—for Charles Kent” is an entirely electronic piece. Liner notes contain a biography of composer Jean Eichelberger Ive…
The Griots: Ministers Of The Spoken Word
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* West African griots are gatekeepers of their culture, repositories of oral tradition. Hear centuries-old histories from Gambia and Mali, accompanied by stringed instruments and drums. This recording features a recitation describing the beginnings of the slave trade with the Portuguese and Dutch in the early 1600s.
Electronic Music From The Outside In
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Electronic Music from the Outside In presents the experimental musical sounds of Barton and Priscilla McLean (The McLean Mix), Reed Holmes, and Kevin Hanlon as they explain how they seek to explore the extremes of music and sound. Each track begins with a spoken introduction about the reasoning and process behind the music. Both of the McLeans have won numerous awards and grants for their work in promoting and creating experimental music.
Ionosphere
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Did you know that the ionosphere makes noise? Or that that noise is actually possible to record? This recording shows that the ionosphere, part of the upper atmosphere that is ionized by solar radiation, can indeed be recorded. Here you have the opportunity to listen to the electrical static in stereo synchronized from recordings made at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC and at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incidentally, this is a Cook classic…
Music Of A Timeless Earth
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* This 1980 album features compositions by Barton McLean, Charles Gruber, Gene Menger, and Catherine Schieve that present “several highly individualistic approaches to the combination of cultures in sound.” Influences from electronic music, from notation systems that can “translate” sounds and gestures from the human and natural worlds, and music based on non-Western oral and pre-literate tradition combine to inspire these works. Liner notes contain an introduction to the …
Invocations
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* How do people pray around the world? On this album, Richard Kostelanetz recorded ministers and religious leaders from diverse religious backgrounds to further explore “those qualities that make all prayers sound like prayers, regardless of differences in language.” The album contains prayers in German, French, Polish, and Persian, as well as Latin, English, Spanish, and Turkish. The recordings are layered, with prayers occurring in multiple languages at once. In this con…
The Neptune Collection
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* An epigraph to the liner notes of The Neptune Collection, the second album by The Entourage Music and Theater Ensemble, reads, “We are a group flexible in size and temperament. Our purpose is to create original works in a collective manner. We utilize music, dance, poetry, and theatre skills.” Plainly stated, this dictum represents the core of the dynamic, multi-medium approach the group employed in the mid-70s when the album was recorded.The music on The Neptune Collect…