Best of 2019
Trios
For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French …
Time
Multi-reedist Tony Coe was born in 1934, four years after guitarist Derek Bailey. He cut his teeth as a career jazzman with Humphrey Lyttleton, before an extended stint with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band. On this rare 1979 duo outing, he sticks to clarinet. And though that instrument has an illustrious jazz pedigree, Coe’s playing here is something else. It’s worth noting that the clarinettist has also played under the baton of arch-modernist Pierre Boulez, the kind of composer Derek B…
Homotopy To Marie
Double-CD version includes 30-page metallic hardcover book (15 x 20 x 2cm) containing color and black-and-white art by Babs Santini (Steven Stapleton). Rotorelief present a reissue of Homotopy To Marie. the fifth album by Nurse With Wound, originally released in 1982. Music and sleeve created by Steven Stapleton. The album is "a step on from the Dadaist rock of Merzbild Schwet, with much use of tape manipulation and classical avant-garde techniques". The album, which combines tape edits with res…
Mirror
Paradigm Discs present a reissue of Amnon Raviv's Mirror, originally released in Israel in 1983 and only available in a handmade edition of just 50 copies. As such, this edition is the first widely available issue of this LP, giving it a chance to reach an audience beyond the 50 hardened collectors who got to hear this strange experimental record back in the '80s. There's nothing else quite like it from that era, let alone from Israel, although it does have some parallels with earlier avant-gard…
To Magnetize Money and Catch a Roving Eye
**A 4+ hours labyrinthine work, previously unreleased** Jim O’Rourke is among the great voices of his generation - a true musical polymath, whose diverse efforts, since his emergence within the Chicago scene during the late 1980s, have continuously altered the creative landscape. Without him - from his relentless support of the careers of neglected artists, to contributions made within the vast and radical diversity of his output - now tracing across hundreds of releases - so much of what is, co…
Three Nails Left
Cien Fuegos present a reissue of Schlippenbach Quartet's Three Nails Left, a classic mid-1970s originally released on FMP in 1975 and showing Schlippenbach is in sublime form. It features a stellar line-up, with Evan Parker - soprano and tenor saxophone; Peter Kowald - double bass and Paul Lovens - percussion. Side A was recorded live at 3rd Jazz Festival Moers June 2nd, 1974 by Michael Krause. Side B was recorded live at the Quartier Latin Berlin, February 2nd, 1975 by Jost Gebers with the FMP…
Stones : Dreams
** Edition of 220 copies, it comes with a 16-page pamphlet ** Recital label head Sean McCann on Stones : Dreams: "The first audio document ever published by Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks (1931-2018). There is a romanticism found in Geoffrey, that, in my mind, sets his work aside from his Fluxfriends. Known for his timeless sky paintings, applied to canvas, cars, clothes, and so on, the conceptual married the majestic. He was a master painter, whose work could have filled cathedral ceilings. I…
Siberia / Sirens
** 2026 Stock. ** Siberia / Sirens presents two major sonic artworks in which Susanne Skog tests how far documentary sound can be bent before it becomes something closer to hallucination. Her practice is rooted in narrative forms - experimental radio, radio drama, documentary - but here the story is never handed over as plot; it emerges obliquely, through texture, pacing, and the slow recomposition of field recordings into abstracted, almost cinematic space. Drawing on her own recordings from ar…
ExpoZoom 1969
The history of music is never concrete. It’s forever changing and rewriting itself. The past becomes the present and the present reforms the past. What was lost is found, and what was known is lost. Our era, defined by the reissue and archival release, will likely be regarded as a definitive period of historical reparisal and reevaluation. Monumental figures have fallen. The obscure and unheralded have finally received their rightful due. Dark Companion’s latest LP - Ron Geesin’s ExpoZoom 1969, …
Hamdelaneh
CD edition. Another greeat release from Dark Companion Records. "Chance doesn’t exist. I met Markus Stockhausen after inviting him and his wife to “Musiche Nuove In Piacenza” festival in autumn 2018. Immediately I felt a strong empathy towards him. That doesn’t happen very often. I knew his work and had always admired it, especially the spontaneous compositions he performs and the way his unique talent blossoms in these situations.We talked at lunch and I dared propose to him to record an album …
Perpetual Possibility
Perpetual Possibility is an album that bears witness to the collaboration between Lino Capra Vaccina, living legend of Italian minimalism and the avant-noise duo Untitled Noise with an interesting album on the label Dark Companion. Perpetual Possibility is the faithful transcription of the concert held by the trio at the MA*GA Museum in Gallarate, Italy and is the first recorded live album by Lino Capra Vaccina. Untitled Noise weaves delicate electronic warps on which the gongs, vibraphone, pian…
Nuits Blanches au Studio 116
Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of « Nuits Blanches au Studio 116» unreleased rarities from Ariel Kalma’s personal archives recorded in the legendary GRM’s Studio 116 during the 70’s. Born and raised in Paris, Ariel Kalma started playing the recorder and saxophone as a youth. After successive studies of Computer Science, Music and Art in Paris he performed in various concerts from middle-age music to free jazz duo.
Ariel performed and recorded with several bands (J. Hi…
Fremde Zeit Addendum 5 · Solo V Für Klavier
Jakob Ullman's 5th solo work for piano is atypical for a piano performance, using electronic playback and requiring three assistants sustaining a soundscape to realize a concept of "gravity".
Femenine (Apartment House)
Femenine, composed by Julius Eastman in 1974, stands as a landmark for American experimentalism - bringing minimalist structure together with exuberant, open-form collaboration. In their intensely engaged rendering, Apartment House conjures music that listens as much as it declares. Simon Limbrick’s insistent vibraphone motif and a persistent field of sleigh bells anchor the performance, as piano, strings, winds, and keyboard join, layering intricate phrases, timbral color, and nuance. The music…
Mother Earth's Plantasia
**Mort Garson’s cult 1976 album Mother Earth’s Plantasia officially reissued for the first time by Sacred Bones. Comes with fully restored original booklet with new liner notes by Andy Beta (Pitchfork). All vinyl copies come with seed paper download card – plant it and watch it sprout!** Mort Garson is well known as one of the pioneers of electronic music in the late '60s; some may have heard of his contributions to quite a few pop hits back in the day, when he wrote and conducted orchestral arr…
Ethnoelectronics
**Edition of 300** Ethnoelectronics, issued on cassette by Sound Reporters in 1986, exists beyond the realm of easy definition. Very little information about the album exists, other than the fact that it involved the contributions of a remarkable group of sonic explorers - Walter Maioli, Nirodh Fortini, Fred Gales, Raffaele Serra, John Zandijk and the sculptor Edward Luyken, and was conceptualised as the soundtrack for an obscure science-fiction saga. Or was it?The title makes clear allusion to …
Crone music
2019 repress on CD; 1990 release. Commissioned by Mabou Mines, the experimental theater group from New York, for their interpretation of King Lear, Pauline Oliveros's Crone Music is a subtle and haunting electronic music endeavor. Interfacing an abundance of digital delay processors, reverb effects, and foot pedals to bend pitches from piercing to twisted, sonorous tones, with her one-of-a-kind expanded accordion, Oliveros produces rich, eerie textures. Personnel: Pauline Oliveros -solo accordio…
I Was Real
**Double-LP version presented in a heavy tip-on gatefold jacket with textured clothe wrap and matte foil stamping** 75 Dollar Bill is one of the essential groups at the heart of NYC's underground. Driven by the telepathic union of Che Chen's microtonal electric guitar and Rick Brown's odd metered percussion their long-form sound is unmistakable and compelling. On their third album, I Was Real, the group expands in bold new directions, embracing brilliant fuller orchestrations, joyous rockers and…
Black Case Volume I and II: Return From Exile
Last copies...Joseph Jarman (1937 - 2019) was a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist best known as a founding member of trailblazing avant-garde jazz group Art Ensemble of Chicago. Jarman was responsible for the Art Ensemble’s signature face paint and elaborate costumes as well as the pioneering theatrical and multimedia elements of their shamanistic performances, which could include dance, comedy, performance art, surreal pranks, and—notably—the recitation of Jarman’s poetry. In 1977, Art Ense…
Femina Ridens
** 2021 Repress ** If a jewel were to be chosen amongst the more than three hundred soundtracks that Maestro Stelvio Cipriani has composed during his long and prodigious career, that choice would probably not fall on the super classic and hyper known Anonimo Veneziano (the box-office and hit-parade champion who triggered the international fame of the Roman musician), but probably on his previous and less celebrated Femina Ridens – perhaps the most iconic of his soundtracks, along with Mark Il po…