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…
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…
W2 (1998-2008)
"We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it's the journey that makes – and unmakes - us." (Nicolas Bouvier, "l'usage du monde"). When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.My relation to the sites wasn't based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps…
Excision
Essential collection of previously vinyl only Nadja tracks which work brilliantly as a 2CD album. All of these tracks originally appeared on limited vinyl or cd releases between 2007 and 2009 and are now out of print. 'Jornada del Muerto' originally appeared on the Trinity CD (Die Stadt Musik) and 'Perichoresis' on the Trinitarian LP (Important Records), both of which releases featured solo tracks by Aidan and Leah and one Nadja track. 'Spahn' appeared on Tumpisa (Accident Prone Records), a …
The Temple Recording
I am currently making recordings like this: I go to a certain place and choose an object Ð mainly it is a landscape, which is interesting to me. I fix a stethoscope with a small built-in air mike onto my temples. The position of the air microphone can be set anywhere near the ears, but I feel that our temples are the best and only place for that. The stethoscope captures vibrations of my muscles and blood flows. Because of the nature of the air microphone, environmental noises are recorded, t…
Creative Orchestra (Köln) 1978
"The Koeln concert shows us these positive vibrations marching through "the complete continuance of creative music," and on towards the next millennium. The "success of the future" is not a lost cause as long as there is music like this in the air."-Graham Lock"Although Anthony Braxton does not play on this double CD (whose contents were released for the first time in 1995), his presence is certainly felt. He conducts the band through a fairly free improvisation and five of his compositio…
O kokos tis anixis (Grains of spring)
The ancient Greek philosophers thought that the world is constituted of a series of grains of space and time. When I walked around Miura Peninsula in the springtime, I felt the same way - the quality of the space and the time seemed to be formed by a series of grains of sounds. Each place has its own unique character. You could label it as a particular quality of the place. The quality of the sound.'-'This is one of my trials to present a 'subject' as a piece of work - which can be called…
The French Collection
To be issued mid Oct. 2010 as a double CD set housed in a custom made gatefold case with artwork by Jesse Peper. It started with a dusty box of DAT tapes. Perhaps it was years since anyone had listened to them despite the tantalising labels,"Paris #1", "Paris #2","Paris #3”... Indeed it was Paris where the Dots played their first residency in 1992. However , these tapes were a document of the Dots' one and only 3-nighter from the 10th to the 12th of March 1994 at the delightful Theatre Passage d…
Exp
Raster Noton's rhythmic auteur, Frank Bretschneider, presents his first album in three years, a "music-visual project based on the idea that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music". 'EXP' is an attempt to assimilate the qualities of music, namely rhythm, movement, tempo, mood, intensity and compositional structure within the visual aspect. The music for the project is arranged from an array of generated and selected waveforms sourced from pure electricity, magnetism, light an…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Spontaneous Suite For Two Pianos
A 4-CD box set of 9 "Spontaneous Sweets", elaborate, magnificent and melodic piano improvisations, recorded by Connie Crothers & David Arner performing in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, NY. "It was magical from the beginning. The music seemed to create itself" "We trusted our spontaneity, our intuitive logic, our sense of form." "We had no set tempos, no preconception about soloing or accompanying." "We had no set themes or referents. What we did have was complete trust, i…
The complete short stories 1998-2010
Howard Riley : piano. CD 1 was recorded on 23rd July 1998. CD 2 was recorded on 11th April, 1999. CD 3 was recorded on 29th June 2004. CD 4 was recorded on 2nd August 2006. CD 5 was recorded on 27th June 2008. CD 6 was recorded on 22nd April 2010. All compositions by Howard Riley (PRS MCPS). Mastered by Ar nas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. Producer Ð Danas Mikailionis. Co-producer : Valerij Anosov.' label info. 'The beauty of a short story, of course, is that it can be taken …
The Naked Truth
LP version with bonus 7". Every once in a while, a record presents itself so defiant in its refusal of categorization that it becomes the bane of those poor vinyl archaeologists whose business it is to file and classify. The aptly-named The Naked Truth (1975) is one such artifact; a wayfaring stray of an album that weaves its insouciant magic through the edgelands of sound. The musical provenance is palpable -- an electric blend of spiritual jazz, rhythmic black psychedelia and far-out ex…