New Arrivals
Ceremony
Phoenix Records reissues a digitally remastered edition of People's sole album, the legendary Ceremony -- Buddha Meet Rock, originally released in 1971 in Japan. Nobody's sure if the musicians on this recording ever performed as a group or whether Ceremony was simply a studio super-project. Certainly, guitarist Kimio Mizutani had already enjoyed a certain amount of critical exposure following stints with Love Live Life + One and Masahiko Satoh's Sound Brakers, and it is Satoh's jazzy fuzz guita…
Orange
It has been quiet for Flim, also known as Enrico Wuttke, since his last release 'Pola Music' and 'Ohne Titel, 1916' (the latter being his second release on Plinkity Plonk). However he still works as a designer, and creates music for dance companies and short films, as well as enjoying family life. His new release is a 28 minute EP with four pieces he created for a dance piece 'Refugium', based on the novel 'The Wall' by Marlen Haushofer. Originally published in German in 1962 and touted more rec…
Middle Eastern Rock
An inspired fusion of Middle Eastern rhythms and psychedelia resulted in this the gorgeous album by accomplished oud player John Berberian and his troop of skilled musicians. First released on Verve/Forecast in 1969 this exotic album features music based on traditional themes from Turkey, Armenia, Greece, Arabia and North Africa blended with the terrific improvised energy of psychedelia. So what you end up with here is bustling bazaars and scorched sands passed through the prism of the lysergic …
Un Jour Comme Tant D'Autres
This is an unreleased album from 1975 of studio/live material! Dieu has smiled upon us, for a previously shelved early album (1975) by Ilitch finally has its jour in the soleil. Thierry Müller's strange musical arc is further enriched and confounded by this exploratory cosmic release. A brilliant mix of Krauty space groans and experimentalism (see also Conrad Schnitzler and Ash Ra Temple, etc) and the progressive electronics of Igor Wakhevitch. There is some psych in the folds, and the albu…
OTO NO HAJIMARI WO MOTOMETE
Brand new issue of archve series of NHK electronic music studio. Contents: Toshira Mayuzumi : 'Princess Hollyhock' (1957), Shinichi Matsushita : 'Le Cloitre NOir' for voice and electronic music (1959), Toshi Ichiyanagi : 'Parallel Music' (1962), Shiro Ima : 'Music for 12 players and Electronic sounds' (1965)'.
Perdition Hill Radio
2nd full-length from self-styled black ambient guitar overlord. Like Earth's seminal "Hex" before it, this invokes the ghosts of a lost America & drags the rotting carcass of country music through a swamp of noise & drone. The chugging, blown-out treble & isolated darkness of Xasthur is all present & correct, but there are also echoes of William Basinski & Deaf Center hidden amongst the clouds of radio static.
Unter den linden / Und transit
The 'Grundton' of this 30-minute composition is the recording of the concert given at SND Studios Sheffield (UK) in March 2009, entitled 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' by Mark Fell and powered with d&b speakers by Tony Myatt (MRC, University of York). The sounds of planes have been recorded in Mallorca (Spain) in 1987, and in Pilat (France) in 2009. This music comes after HCDC, composed in November 2008 after the death of Daniel Charles Ð his last days were darkened by brea…
Less Is More
The piano trio is probably one of the most common ensembles to be heard in jazz, and truth be told, I am a little weary of them, preferring the expressiveness of a horn section. Yet once in a while, a piano trio comes forward that has something new to tell. When I listened to WHO Trio's "The Current Underneath" (Leo Records) a couple of years ago, I was immediately enchanted by the sheer musicality of the project. This one, "Less Is More", is even better. The trio consists of Michel Wintsch on p…
E Pluribus Unum
a pure mantra: blending North African and Middle Eastern textures within a western context into our experience, regrettably the experience of a small few, but hopefully a wider community of listeners to come. Not only important historically, but musically: a wide range of music genres over the last couple of decades have worked with drone-note principles and it is an increasingly common device, but Sandy Bull was/is a superlative master of utilising the drone sounds;understated but effect…
Dispositions Furtives
Through the open sound portals created by his compatriot Castiglioni, the Italian pianist Alfonso Alberti first entered col legno's World of New Music; on his second album, he dedicates his sensitive and brilliant musicality to Gérard Pesson's fragile and puzzling fabrics of sound. A selection of piano pieces has been compiled in a joint effort by the pianist and the French composer; in his interpretations Alberti lets us catch glimpses of musical structures as though they were glittering just u…
Figures And Grounds
'My role in bringing together this group was to provide a new context for the diverse talents of these musicians. From the outset, the aim of the group was to explore the range of possibilities at the intersection of jazz and computer music.' Adam Linson. This is a terrific CD with this stellar line-up: Axel Dorner (trumpet, electronics), Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet), Adam Linson (double bass, electronics) and Paul Lytton (drums, percussion). Recorded on 14 January 2008 in AL's studio, Josetti Hö…
Harvey Milk
Following critical acclaim of Harvey Milk’s latest album Life… the Best Game in Town (2008), the band’s current home Hydra Head, has gone into the archives for this new/old album. Originally recorded in 1993 by one Bob Weston, these recordings never officially saw the long-playing light of day. Until now. The band is known for being somewhat curmudgeonly, and this proto-debut is fittingly nasty and strangely disconnected. Not for the ‘Milk the youthful exuberance of early spotty Metallica or gri…
C+-
The Phonos ek Mechanes trio was founded in 2007 by three composers and electro-acoustic performers from Wroc aw: Cezary Duchnowski, Pawe Hendrich and S awomir Kupczak. The name of the group comes from Greek and means 'the sound of the machine' which reflects specific methods of artistic creation applied by the three musicians. They play typical instruments such as the piano, electric guitar or electric violin, often prepared and tuned for microtonal music. Sounds that are created this way do not…
Login
When, years ago, I read Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" I was struck by a part of the novel... Harry Haller, the main character, is walking through a passage with endless doors. As he opens each door he is thrown into a new, unknown, mysterious dimension; a life between the real and the virtual world."Login" is an imaginary journey through the web, where one can explore new realities - or different views of well known stuff - on a thin line between truth and fiction.For this sound project I've used…
Sights
Back in stock. Take two collaborators, one a German sound artist noted for his painstaking micro-engineered computer compositions, the other a New Zealand noise terrorist with a reputation for making albums over his morning tea breaks. Put them in a basement studio in Karlsruhe for three days in February 2003, feed them on coffee and apple juice and let them out to walk in the woods once a day. What do you get? Sights, a dramatic collision of two very different but complementary approaches to th…
Hunting the Snake
2012 repress, originally issued pre-9/11. "Astounding 1975 Radio Bremen session from Germany -- never before released, by one of the greatest working bands in the history of European improvised music is offered for your consideration on Hunting The Snake. How can you lose? This all-star ensemble features Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano, Evan Parker on saxophones, Peter Kowald on bass, and Paul Lovens on drums and singing saw. A brilliant, previously unreleased 77 minute program fr…
Cellos
The association between Ulrich Mitzlaff and Miguel Mira promises an unforeseeable sound meeting. The specific, personal and different ways of their distinguished expression is the base for their very dynamic and interactive music. They create sounds where the improvisation moves with great fluency between the establishing of textures and abstract musical ideas and the switching in the musical discourse to singular, rhythmic and melodic affirmations. They construct the sonar explorations using th…
Vayu Rouah
Cosmic like Three Organic Experiences, esoteric like Password for Entheogenic Experience, Vayu Rouah perform a kind of synthesis of the researches by Alio Die and Aglaia. Vayu Rouah is the primordial wind that join cabala and sonorous alchemies, an inexorable flux with extended electro-acoustic solutions, by a wide range of frequencies. A very long and slow gestation of about eight years have absorbed different musical moods and have stratified itself throw the time.. sound after sound.. t…
Grandfather Harmonic
The Preservation label presents Grandfather Harmonic, the new full-length album from Sparkling Wide Pressure. The alter ego of Murfreesboro, Tennessee's Frank Baugh, Sparkling Wide Pressure has drawn from a seemingly infinite well of sonic inspiration to record at an incredible rate since 2008, having his work appear on labels such as Digitalis, Stunned, Housecraft and Students Of Decay. This transfixing entry into his weighty catalog pinpoints Baugh's increasing fascination with song-forms…
Jean-Claude Jones with Friends
2004. Jean Claude Jones (electro acoustic bass and live electronics) is a central figure on the Israeli jazz scene since many years and a pivotal member of the avantgarde - free jazz movement in Israel. Former member of the Kedma trio, he played with litarally everybody on the scene during the years. This is his debut album as a leader and he performs a series of duets with usual friends like Josef Sprinzak (voice), Harold Rubin (clarinet, text), Yuval Mesner (cello), Gan Lev (alto sax, baryton)…