New Arrivals
Trio
The expansive length of Morton Feldman’s Trio (1 hr., 45 min., 22 sec.) requires a new approach to listening, which takes scale, the physical experience of sound, and novel uses of musical memory into consideration. With his delicate manipulation of musical materials, Feldman blurs the listener’s sense of time as their musical memory struggles to distinguish between past and present sounds - listeners are free to lose themselves in the beauty of each musical moment. Aki Takahashi and Rohan…
New World Pygmies vol.2
Eremite continues its documentation of this remarkable duo, who have played together since 1973, with a double c/d set (140+ minutes) featuring two concert recordings from a 2000 tour. on both versions of "new world pygmies," parker's recent interest in double-reed instruments & moondoc's introduction of a soprano saxophone move their music into realms of joyfully non-tempered playing recalling the Master Musicians of Jajouka. elsewhere the bass & alto join for ravishing performances of composit…
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…
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 …
Complete Piano Music Vol. 6 - Pieces 1960-1992)
Recording: February, 21-24, 2000, Fürstliche Reitbahn Bad Arolsen 28-page booklet includes text in English, French and German “The interpreter is a very important person indeed in Cage’s piano music, and a top international expert like Steffen Schleiermacher is a must for a complete recording such as this one: he knows the nuts and bolts and all the fine nuances.”
The Art of the Improviser
"The Art of the Improviser", a 2XCD, is Shipp's most audacious attempt yet to answer the enigmatic question of what it means to be a modern jazz musician. Already having explored the possibilities of electronically infused jazz on critically acclaimed projects with the likes of DJ Spooky, Scanner, and Anti-Pop Consortium, Shipp revisits an acoustic sound for this fearless voyage into the psyche of the improviser. Shipp's "idiosyncratic genius" shines through on this album, explaining once again …
Nova Psychedelia (1975-1985)
"Outside of his native Pennsylvania-West Virginia stomping grounds, Todd Tamanend Clark remains one of the least known North American underground artists in the lost music DIY field of his era, considering he has collaborated with and shared time with many of his peers over the years (Cheetah Chrome, Allen Ravenstine, Stiv Bators), as well as progenitors (Dorothy Moskowitz of United States of America, Robert Moog, William Burroughs), his significant body of recorded (and printed) work was always…
Songs About Nothing
Stunning double disc collection of mind-erasing loops, avant classical drone and minimal cold wave threat from Jason Lescallett, presented as a back-handed tribute to Big Black’s notorious 1992 album Songs About Fucking: Songs About Nothing is the sound of pure entropy, moving from ear-scalding feedback sculptures through nod-out minimal synth repetition through scrambled choral works and widescreen soundtrack drones. The first disc unfolds in a series of stately movements linked by a form of ob…
Les Espaces Acoustiques
Gérard Grisey’s Les espaces acoustiques is a groundbreaking work which defies assumptions about what music “ought” to be. Not for nothing did the composer describe it as “a great laboratory”, exploring the way we listen.The “Acoustic Spaces” cycle, begun in 1974 and completed in 1985, consists of six instrumental works that may be played consecutively, since each acoustic space extends the previous one. The unity of the whole is based on the formal similarity of the pieces and on the two acousti…
Hunted Gathering
"There's a savage battle raging in the hallowed streets of Los Angeles, being fought by prehistoric megaliths spewing lava from their mouths. These acid-tongued shamans are interested in one thing and one thing only, and that's to raze this city to the ground. Okay, perhaps it's not so apocalyptic, but hot off the heels of opening for Sonic Youth, dirt worshippers Robedoor and their native sisters Pocahaunted have unleashed an army for the ages with Hunted Gathering. Drones painted with black ho…
Complete Piano Music Vol. 4 - Pieces 1950-1960
“The interpreter is a very important person indeed in Cage’s piano music, and a top international expert like Steffen Schleiermacher is a must for a complete recording such as this one: he knows the nuts and bolts and all the fine nuances.”
Thousands Raised to the Sixth
The most recent solo incarnation of pioneer Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Black Boned Angel, et al.), this is the definitive OLWDTW release spanning two discs Crowning achievement in a prolific and highly collectable catalog. Solo project of Campbell Kneale, formerly Birchville Cat Motel, and one-half of Black Boned Angel. Packaged in an oversized 5.5" square folder with two art inserts and music spanning two discs, each in an envelope.
Ligeti Edition
Terrific nine-CD box (digipack CD sleeves!) at a fantastic price! The heart of Ligeti's output, and the basis for the consensus that places him among the 20th Century's most important composers, is the series of masterworks written during his middle period, which lasted from roughly 1957 (after his escape from Hungary) to 1977 (marked by the completion of his opera Le Grand Macabre). The "sound surface" compositions from the period, including Atmosphères, the Requiem, Lux Aeterna and much of the…
Psappha; Rebonds A & B; Okho pour trois djembés
This amazing CD contains some of the great works for solo percussion by the authorities in the field of contemporary music. The performances and recording quality are both superb! Clearly all care and effort went into the recording and text however, the dual layered dvd /cd is in PAL format, and will require said player or a media transfer to see the studio footage and interview with Xenikas. Considering we spend much time searching for the "right music" to add to our collection, this disc…
12 Madrigali
Salvatore Sciarrino, in league with the Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart, embarks on the investigation of a new ecology of sound, through a form of polyphony reduced to chamber-music scale. The lyrics selected by the Italian composer are based on six haikus by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashô (1644–1694). A comprehensive explanatory text on the production is contributed by Max Nyffeler. The world premiere of the work was recorded at the 2008 Salzburg Festival and is now made available on CD for the fi…
John Cage 100
This year, on 5 September, the music world is going to celebrate the 100th birthday of the American composer John Cage. WERGO very early turned to the oeuvre of the avant-garde musician and to the release of his most important works on LP or CD – including “Etudes Australes”, “Roaratorio” or “Sonatas and Interludes”, his “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” or his “Diary: How to improve the World (You will only make Matters worse)”. The label now presents outstanding productions of the compo…
Melodies & Harmonies
Cage is by no means a synonym for obligingness. All the more astonished we listen to the melodious and harmonious objects Annelie Gahl and Klaus Lang present on this album. Lang, the trained organist and internationally renowned composer, performs these pieces on a Fender Rhodes for the first time. Gahl, known as a versatile interpreter of both Old and New Music, plays the violin exactly as requested by Cage, without vibrato and with minimum weight on the bow. The musical material dates …
Triadic Memories
In the summer of 1990, i released on Sub Rosa a recording of Triadic Memories by Morton Feldman (1926-1987). It was one of the first recordings of this long work for solo piano completed on July 23, 1981.The score i used had been published by Universal edition as number UE17326 in 1987. Shortly after my CD came out, Universal published a new edition. At the bottom of page 2, under a dedication to Aki Takahashi and RogerWoodward is a small-print mention: 'corrected edition: 14.2.1991. I disr…
3 Nights In Oslo
Awesome 5 CD box set recorded over 3 nights in Oslo on February 19-21, 2009 at Victoria, Nasjonal Jazzscene. This time out the Tentet +1 includes Mats Gustaffson, Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Joe Mcphee, Johannes Bauer, Per Ake Holmlander, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang & Paul Nilssen-Love.
The Lie & The Orphanage
'It could be a walrus. Some very large, ungainly, semi-aquatic creature expelling air through a hole layered with tissue and fat and hairs. But then multiple apertures open at once and the creature just spouts information, chaotic from one angle, streamlined from another. Effluvia momentarily expelled, the beast lies down and breathes in short, percolating gasps, quiet but insistent. The pressure builds, however, surging in near-regular waves, causing the organ-walls to quiver, liquid to shudde…