Best of 2017
Through The Looking Glass
LP version. Comes in a Stoughton "Tip-On" jacket; Includes printed inner sleeves. Palto Flats & WRWTFWW Records are ecstatic to announce the highly-anticipated reissue of Japanese percussionist Midori Takada's sought after and timeless ambient / minimal album "Through The Looking Glass", originally released in 1983 by RCA Japan. Considered a Holy Grail of Japanese music by many, "Through The Looking Glass" is Midori Takada’s first solo endeavor, a captivating four-song suite capturing her deep q…
Pays Noir
Previously unreleased, the three tracks on Pays Noir come from recording sessions held at the same time as those for the cult album No Man's Land (FFL 026LP), produced by Jef Gilson in 1976, and published on vinyl by Souffle Continu Records in 2017. Singled out at the time of its release by Actuel, Rock & Folk, and Melody Maker, the tabula rasa of No Man's Land is the result of free-flowing experiments born of chance, if the two musicians are to be believed. Indeed, their approach to free im…
Music With Memory
** Small repress available. An essential entry, offering crucial insight into one of America’s most important composers. Beautiful, challenging, and visionary, this what music should always be - the heights of creativity bound to the specificity of time** Since they emerged just over twenty years ago, the Milan based imprint Alga Marghen has shown an unparalleled dedication to Post-War sonic avant-garde, assembling a catalog of reissues and archival releases which traverses a remarkable breath o…
Antibarbarus
A reissue of Antibarbarus, issued as a compact disc in 1998, was the first edition Walter Marchetti released on Alga Marghen. The Antibarbarus cycle of five pieces makes use of original tapes coming from the same recording sessions that originated some of Marchetti's major musical works realized in the '80s. This former series of works presented some homogeneous and untouched sound sources in the "concrete" status of their inner - and necessarily chaotic - level of entropy. Nevertheless this ope…
Music For Percussion
Ryoji Ikeda - Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and in…
Solo Guitar Volume 1
**small repress available**Honest Jon's Records present Solo Guitar Volume 1, a reissue of Derek Bailey's Solo Guitar release on Incus in 1971, with additional tracks included on previous reissues and a performance at York University in 1972. Kicking off a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: three double-LPs of the legendary free-improvising guitarist Derek Bailey, solo and in duos with Anthony Braxton (HJR 201LP) and Han Bennink (HJR 202LP), augmenting the original …
Un Giorno in una Piazza del Mediterraneo
In the late 70’s the Italian music scene recorded a renewed interest in a sound research involved to a stimulating fusion of popular elements, jazz improvisation and suggestions of the middle-oriental classical heritage. Starting from the experience of Aktuala the idea of a common "Mediterranean air", that could compare and harmonize rhythms and timbres of various regions, enlivened a large number of musicians.
In this context, it also placed the short history of Zeit and of his main mem…
Il Cerchio degli Antichi Colori
With their second album of 1981, the ensemble Zeit re-propose their own vision of a new cultural multi-geographical mosaic without boundaries. The sound confirms the inspired and eclectic vein of previous work suggesting even a greater conviction and maturity of intent. The arrangements tend to dilate in more alchemical and hypnotic sequences, while the range of inspirations (Balkan music, Greek, Turkish, Persian, African etc.) and the poly-instrumentalism are even more precious and varied. Dec…
Solo 1975-1980
Sidestepping all normal expectations on this album, Ju Suk Reet Meate (founding member of Smegma) directly goes about casting musical spells, utilizing primitive "inner mind" techniques on hammered dulcimer, tape loops, thrift store records, a homemade synthesizer, electric guitar, saxophone, mouth sounds, and manipulated christian radio broadcasts. Recorded in Portland, Oregon, these previously unreleased recordings reflect a similar "inner-mind over limited technique matter" aesthetic as the a…
Berlin Exercises
Christian Wolff on Berlin Exercises: "'Exercise' indicates relatively shorter pieces in which the process of work, of practicing and of trying things out within specified limits, in short a kind of discipline in process, are being attempted. I regard them as both exercises in composing and for performers, especially as the performers function as members of an ensemble." Your first encounter with the music of Christian Wolff leaves you with the impression you’ve just heard (or played, or re…
Revolutions Per Minute (The art Record)
Restocked, reduced price. Bubbling below the surface of the sonic avant-garde - spanning art and music, lays the rarely observed context of the Artist Record - a field of recorded sounds stemming from, or attached to, the environments of fine art. Though expansive, elastic, and at times difficult to define, the largest body of its artifacts have been made by artists who are known for their work in other media - painters, sculptors, etc. These thrilling experimental gestures, draw on ideas which …
Naši Hostia: Experimental Studio Bratislava Series, vol. 3
This Series of electro acoustic music and Musique Concrète has started in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Experimental Studio Bratislava, Exs. Series 1 introduced us to Ina Hudba/Other Music from the first generation of Slovak avant-garde composers recorded in the Exs, mostly with self-built electronic equipment behind the Iron Curtain. Series 2 provided a platform for Nova Generacia/New Generation of Slovak composers using Western equipment – now integrat…
358 Oblique
Baltimore’s PJ Dorsey has traversed a lifelong journey delving into psychoactive music which can alter one’s cognitive and conscious state. He harnesses his experiences to create music as Tarotplane. Using guitar, effects and processing he produces time suspending soundscapes - immersive music for merging the mind and body. 358 Oblique is the follow up to First which was released on Aguirre Records in 2015. Find yourself adrift in the lapping waters of a slow unraveling sea of sound, a sp…
Expansion Galactica
Mental Experience present the first ever collected works of Guatemalan electronic experimental musician Emilio Aparicio, collecting five 45s he released from 1969-1971. Aparicio was an, a pioneer in using the Moog synth in Latin America. He released a series of private 45s, recorded at his home studio in collaboration with his patron and producer, the painter Roberto Abularach. It is from 1969-1971, when the recordings included here, were registered. Most of the tracks were written at the countr…
Trip Flip Out Meditation
Zweistein's trippy Kraut psych experimental masterpiece from Philips Records 1970, arguably one of the most sought after Kraut titles, period! Remastered from the original tapes, absolutely essential! With roughly a half century between us, the revolutionary spirit of the 1960’s is easily lost - watered downed, its energy and truths rubbed clean by the ubiquity of the pop machine. Our contemporary vision of the past rarely resemblances the true zeitgeist of the day. The 1960’s was an era defined…
Gamelan Coming & Going
Recorded in 1985, this long piece, unpublished until now, belongs to the Gamelan series, which Philip Corner has worked for years and counting dozens of pieces. In the word of the author, the piece, for two pianists "...represents one of the most “curious” manifestation in the Gamelan series. The increment-link, high-to-low, is maintained on the chromatic scale of the piano keyboard, giving durations from 1 to 88. However they are realized in both directions at the same time. And counted out lou…
Sotto Il Segno Dello Scorpione
Quartet Records and Gruppo Sugar present the world-premiere release of Vittorio Gelmetti's experimental score for the cult movie Sotto il segno dello scorpione (also known as Under the Sign of Scorpio).
Directed by Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, the film takes place in a kind of fantastic prehistoric time when volcanos ravage and wipe entire civilizations off the face of the earth. When an island gets buried under lava and ash, a group of survivors manages to get away and reach a nearby islan…
13 Thirteen
Keith Rowe and Michael Pisaro: 13 Thirteen | On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself. On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and composers approach finely wrought detail and vast empty space in ways that can warp one’s perception of time itself."On this two-and-a-half hour, semi-improvised opus, the two guitarists and…
Time Out of Mind
“Time Out of Mind” represents a most important chapter in the recordings of Ora, during the years 1986-1994 and here almost all entirely unheard before. They represent unreleased studio pieces, field recordings and sketches, significantly made to portable recorder. This working method would become the basis of future and more elaborate studio pieces and in itself clarifies an important formative stage of the work of Ora, of often using outdoor performances and location sound in an entirely spont…
Israel Suite / Dominante En Bleu
Gatefold LP version. Includes download coupon. Sommor Records present a reissue of Rupture's Israel Suite / Dominante En Bleu, originally released in 1973. Rupture was born when famous French songwriter Boris Bergman (France Gall, Dalida, etc.) decided to record a conceptual album about the history of Israel. He approached ace drummer and singer Sylvain Krief (Airto Fogo, Michel Fugain, Aznavour, Clark Terry, Bud Powell, etc.) and soon, other musicians joined: Jean-François Jenny-Clark (Don Cher…