New Arrivals
Life Review (1993-2003)
The Shadow Ring formed in the seaside town of Folkestone, England in 1993. Over the course of a decade, and through eight LPs, Graham Lambkin, Darren Harris and later Tim Goss scraped out a unique musical pathway for themselves, armed with only the barest of tools. With each release the Shadow Ring presented themselves as a group in constant flux. Naive acoustic improvisations, dour bedroom sci-fi epics, cryptic D.I.Y. theatre and glacial electronic soundscapes all became fair game in the…
Our Bed Is Green
With ethics that even Igor Stravinsky would be proud of, 'Our Bed is Green' was originally released by the Charalambides on cassette way back yonder in 1992 before it made it onto CD then vinyl and now back onto double CD as part of Kranky's reissue series. Comprised of heavy-psych veteran Tom Carter and Christina Madonia, Charalambides are an aural vulture that picks through disperate genres and styles to find the sound that best matches that in their heads. Opening with the overt fragili…
Music for checking e-mails
Good news from your mailbox! Mitterer makes music on the subject of ambient in an electronic environment. Two amazing CDs with radical backgrounds.Mitterer’s CD in hand is about background music as a relative term, it’s about communicating via ›electronic post‹, it’s about the missing link between analog and digital ambient environments. Because Mitterer creates his instruments and then uses them in a unique way, electronic music for him has a unique vocabulary, one which in this day and age of …
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 …
Studio C
This 2CD pair features performances in Tokyo in 1996. Sod and Sodie Sock documents a performance at the P-House Gallery, where the three musicians performed together and separately. The action extended beyond the gallery, into the street in front, and down the block to a local hair salon. Recordings documenting the simultaneous activities of Kelley, McCarthy, and Violent Onsen Geisha have been combined to allow the listener to experience the entire group of, spatially separated, performances at …
Nature-Culture
A 2008 sequel to his highly-acclaimed first solo CD 'More is More' on psi 06.08. Peter Evans writes: Over the past couple of years one of my main creative outlets has been solo trumpet performance. These discs are meant to show various aspects of my music's development and were recorded in two different settings (studio and concert) and under two different circumstances. Jazz musicians have often referred to the playing of a solo as 'telling a story', which is essentially how I look at this musi…
Atrees / Nomos Alpha
The works on these two discs were all written in the 1950s & 60s, at a time when Xenakis was at his most productive. It has to be said that, to the casual listener, this is not easy listening. However, to the more adventurous collector and to those prepared to explore new musical avenues, this set of the music of Xenakis will prove a rare and valuable opportunity. Featured works: Atrées, Morsima-Amorsima, Nomos Alpha, ST/4, Akrata.
(1975-1991)
Just arrived! The research-performance group kiva was created in 1975 by the American trombonist John Silber and the French percussionist Jean-Charles François as part of a research project at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego. During the period of its existence (1975-91) various members (often graduate students from UCSD) joined the two permanent musicians, John Silber and Jean-Charles François, to contribute to the groups artistic production. Two persona…
Entraxes inégaux Craquer les liants
Reissue of two LPs from Bloc Thyristors label and two groups run by the drummer Jean-Noël Cognard. Empan with Judith Kan, voice, Jac Berrocal, trumpet, piano, Dan Warburton, violin, keyboards, Béatrice Godeau, cello. Tankj with Serge Adam on trumpet, Jérome Noetinger on electroacoustic devices and tape recorder, Titus Oppmann on doublebass. Recorded and mixed by Patrick Müller.
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…
New Sights, Old Sounds
A much-needed reissue of Derek Bailey's 1978 2-CD Japanese release on the Morgue label, the first disc a series of studio improvisations and the second presenting two live performances in Nagoya and Kalavinka.Recorded and originally issued in Japan in 1978, the contents of this two-disc set quickly became something of a collector's item as the album quickly went out of print. Happily, the master tapes were reacquired for release on Incus in 2002, providing further documentation of a rich portion…
Viva Negativa! A Tribute To The New Blockaders Vol IV
Outstanding double CD Featuring a mindblowing line-up of contributors, this double-disc release pays homage to noise music pioneers The New Blockaders, with tracks recorded by some of the avant-garde's leading lights, including Merzbow, Incapacitants, MSBR, Aube, K2, Violent Onsen Geisha, KK Null, Government Alpha, Astro, Cracksteel, Nobuo Yamada, Spiracle, Thirdorgan, Kazumoto Endo, Embudagonn 108, Guilty Connector, Defektro, Kouhei Matsunaga, Veltz, etc. 500 copies only!!!The New Blockade…
Mal des ardents / Pantonéon
eRikm, turntables, electronics, live sampling. Catherine Jauniaux, voice, bird call, cupule, cazoo. In the beginning, there are stories, sometimes dark, told by Catherine Jauniaux. With stunning ease, she invents imaginary conversations where several protagonists spring from deep in her throat, like rabbits out of a hat, like actors from Japanese Noh theatre. eRikm's electronic sounds fuse and infiltrate hers creating an unsettling environment Ð clearing the way or tangling it up in a so…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Trio With Interludes
Another fine disc from the Treader label, this time featuring the marvellous Evan Parker alongside John Coxon (Roland MKS 80, piano and harpsichord), Mark Sanders (Drums and percussion) and Ashley Wales (bass drum, riveted tambour and piano). As the title suggests this collection of improvisations is interspersed with brief interlude tracks, whereby Parker takes a backseat in order for his fellow musicians to plot out some experimental, palate cleansing sonics. During the main body of these piec…
Cry, Want
Very loosely related in selected affinity to the late Austrian saxophonist and artist Hans Koller, this younger version has played football with clubs such as TSV Oberlauringen and Dynamo Kebab, has studied ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and also jazz composition with Mike Gibbs and Bob Brookmeyer.Over the past decade Hans Koller has played and worked with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Phil Woods, Harry Becket, Kenny Wheeler, Bill Frisell, Steve Swallow, Jeff…