Best of 2019
Anthology of Contemporary Music from Africa Continent
**2020 small repress with slightly different artwork** A poetically plotted Anthology of Contemporary Music from Africa Continent, a lovely collection of electro-acoustic, computer music, field recordings and soundscapes variations from African artists such as Ahmed Saleh, Healer Oran, Mehdi Halib, Abdellah M. Hassak, In_o, Eryck Abecassis, Victor Gama, and more, meticulously curated by Raffaele Pezzella. Fantastically raw and visceral material, this compilation literally opens up an entirely ne…
The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen
In process of stocking. After two singles for Fast Product, Leeds art-punk collective The Mekons signed with Virgin Records in 1979. The band would have to borrow gear from their mates Gang Of Four to record their major label debut. In classic Mekons style, the album’s back cover featured a photo of Gang Of Four instead of themselves. As Simon Reynolds writes, “The Quality Of Mercy Is Not Strnen got a mixed reception at the time. Listening to it now, though, the first LP sounds more of a piece w…
Le Petit Duc
Le Petit Duc [The Little Scops Owl] is a sound work by Danish artist Knud Viktor, made between 1978 and 1983. Viktor was classically trained as a painter at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the 1950’s. Le Petit Duc is primarily composed of recordings Viktor made of an owls nest in the spring and summer of 1978. Narrated by Viktor himself and put together from recordings throughout a whole nesting season, Le Petit Duc tells the story of an owl family. The piece speaks to children and adul…
Prayer
I think it's important and proper to play Steve Lacy's music today and that we have to take the risk. Keeping his example alive means to me every time to question the results achieved. My relationship with his music is not occasional. Steve is present in three tracks of my first album "trochus". Later I played his music alone and in various groups. I would like to remember at least the Fish Horn Quartet, with Fabio Martini, Jean Jaques Avenel and John Betsch, the sextet 5or6 Bones with Sebi Tram…
Ending(s)
While certain recognizable fingerprints are found throughout the body of Daniel Lentz's (b. 1942) work, he has never been content to settle within one particular style or mode of music for long, moving ever forward in an evolutional continuum, an overriding arc that defines his growth as a composer -- beginning with traditional music, diverting into electronic music, moving into performance art pieces for his various touring groups, then sallying into minimalism, followed by work distinguished f…
Viola Torros
4 compositions from violist/composers Catherine Lamb & Johnny Chang, the 1st focusing on the mysterious compositions of Vedic-era composer Viola Torros, exploring monady, melody and harmony; the second, one composition each from Chang performed with the Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble, and from Lamb using the secondary rainbow synthesizer she developed with Bryan Eubanks..The summer I arrived in Berlin, I began meeting with Johnny around music-related things and he started mentioning a composer he w…
Femenine (Apartment House)
Apartment House give new life to Julius Eastman’s irrepressible ensemble piece from 1974. Unbounded energy and clarity of sound. Unmissable. Read the following interview with the Apartment House's director, cellist cellist Anton LukoszeviezeWhen did you first play Julius Eastman's music, and when had you become aware of it?I first performed Eastman's music in 2016, which was a revelation for me, as the extant scores are rather fragmentary and incomplete, some are even just transcriptions from ar…
Pieces From The Cloudland Ballroom
**500 copies** Pieces From the Cloudland Ballroom is the first solo LP by Anthony Moore, originally on Polydor. It was released in 1971 under the production of Uwe Nettlebeck and featured Anthony Moore on conduction, Ulf Kenklies, Glyn Davenport and Gieske Hof-Helmers on vocals, plus Werner 'Zappa' Diermeier on hi-hat. Moore is best known as a founder of the progressive rock band Slapp Happy but has also written lyrics for Pink Floyd (!)Pure minimalist experimentation with echoes of Richard Youn…
To The Land Of No Return
Edition of 500. Best known to funk / groove collectors for his 70's library efforts (Freezing Point, The Pop World Of Yann Tregger, Schifters, Catchy, Ducks & Drakes) on such cult labels as L'Illustration Musicale, MTS or Montparnasse 2000 or his late funky disco output via projects like Major Symphony or M.B.T. Soul; french trumpet player / composer /arranger Yann Tregger also devoted time and efforts to delve into electronic sound abstraction when needed. Based around the possibilities of the …
Territorial Landscape No. 1
Edition of 250 copies. Sculptor Relly Tarlo (° 1949) is mostly known for his large scale installations which he specifically designs for certain locations, i.e. an outside staircase, a park or the space under a bridge. His work is interdisciplinary: a mix of visual arts, architecture and resonance / noise & it explores the functional relationship between architecture, form and sound. Relly Tarlo has been active since the 1970s. The art-works always involve mechanically produced sound, that may o…
Nature Denatured and Found Again
5 CD Box. The five discs come in an oversized box with cover art by Marcus Kaiser and Yuko Zama. The box set also includes a 24-page full-color booklet containing additional photos by Joachim Eckl, Marcus Kaiser, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, and Michael Pisaro, and liner notes by Michael Pisaro and Joachim Eckl. This beguiling epic was born of composer Michael Pisaro’s desire to organize a series of sound walks along the Grosse Mühl River in Austria, a practice borrowed from the visual artist Joachim …
Pale Bloom
**Black Vinyl LP edition** Pale Bloom finds Sarah Davachi coming full circle. After abandoning the piano studies of her youth for a series of albums utilizing everything from pipe and reed organs to analog synthesizers, this prolific Los Angeles-based composer returns to her first instrument for a radiant work of quiet minimalism and poetic rumination.Recorded at Berkeley, California's famed Fantasy Studios, Pale Bloom is comprised of two delicately-arranged sides. The first – a three-part suite…
Het Jakoba Prieel
**Edition of 300** While the Sound Reporters imprint, which ran intermittently between the early 80s and 90s - specializing in the sounds of anthropology, ethnomusicology, religion, travel and history, hailed from Amsterdam, those aware of this obscure cassette label will probably only be the most developed fans of Italian avant-garde. It was Sound Reporters that issued the incredible collaboration between Pit Piccinelli, Fred Gales, and Walter Maioli, Amazonia 6891, reissued by Black Sweat in 2…
Kshatrya (The Eye of the Bird) LP
Small repress available. LP version. Transversales Disques presents Kshatrya (The Eye Of The Bird), a never released before recording by French avant-garde electronic composer Igor Wakhevitch. Wakhevitch composed a bunch of major experimental albums in the '70s, such as Logos (1970), Docteur Faust (1971), Hathor (1972), Les Fous D'or (1975), Nagual (1977), and Let's Start (1979). During this 10-year period, Wakhevitch was close to Jean-Michel Jarre, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and legendary choreo…
Linkage
First-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with booklet. Terry Fox was a first generation Bay Area conceptual artist. Beginning in the 1970s, he worked extensively with sound, especially the use of piano wires detached from their native instrument and anchored between opposing walls of the performance space. Linkage, Fox's first album, was originally released in 1982 to accompany an installation at Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland. The record would mark Fox's first attemp…
After Its Own Death / Walking in a Spiral
** Grouper’s Liz Harris quietly released this album of primordial soundscapes a few weeks ago under the new Nivhek alias, initially released in a private edition that vanished almost as quickly as it was announced, After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house is presented here in a beautiful second edition on Superior Viaduct's imprint W.25TH.** Opaque assemblages of Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes and broken FX pedals by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris, created dur…
Electronic Music
Bent Lorentzen is widely considered one of the key figures and pioneers of early Danish electronic music and he was one of a few classically trained composers seeking out the possibilities of the new technology in the 1960’s. Lorentzen composed a fairly large number of electronic works, – mainly in the 60's and 70'es. Furthermore, he developed a significant educational practice in and around electronic music, conducted workshops, taught at courses, and published articles in both national and int…
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…
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 …
Symphonic Songs
Double LP on black vinyl. Recorded between the release of Sand (1977) and Lost Secrets (1981), Symphonic Songs is a formerly unreleased work that chronicles the dynamic shift and development in experimental Swedish composer Ragnar Grippe’s canon. Following his seminal release Sand in 1977, Swedish experimental composer Ragnar Grippe worked on various art and performance commissions, often returning to Stockholm during the summer months to focus his efforts on his compositional practice. It was t…