THE WIRE'S BEST OF 2016
Breadwoman & Other Tales
Sensational!!!! Breadwoman & Other Tales are the collected recordings of a language arising. It is the sound and document of Anna Homler divining speech, lyrical fragments, and melody for music composed, mixed, and engineered by Steve Moshier. It’s 1982 and Anna is driving an ocean blue classic Cadillac to meet renowned poet and playwright Deena Metzger in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles. Passing a non-descript desert patch where tall wheat and mustard flowers grow, Anna opens her mouth and sings in…
Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties
2019 Small Repress. This 3LP set contains a selection of seven early works by American composer Carl Stone, all previously unpublished except for “Shing Kee,” which appeared on the 1992 New Albion CD release, Mom’s. Notorious, formerly elusive recordings like "Sukothai," "Shibucho," and "Dong Il Jang" exemplify how Stone masterfully guided his art through the transition period when New Music exited the loft scene of the 1970s for a stab at commercial presence in the 1980s, satisfying both impul…
John Cage Meets Sun Ra: The Complete Concert
If you were going to envision the ultimate avant-garde meeting-of-the-minds jam session, who would you pick? Even the most hopeful fan of strange and innovative music couldn't have seen this one coming: on one afternoon in 1986, at Coney Island's dilapidated freak show, space-age avant-jazz genius Sun Ra met avant-garde "serious music" composer John Cage in an unforgettable performance. You couldn't imagine two figures more opposite. Cage was known for his unusual approach to composition, using …
Withdrawal (1966/67)
Featuring the earliest published recordings of Barry Guy & Evan Parker, percussionist John Steven's presents transitional sextet and septet performances of his groundbreaking free improv group from 1966 & '67 with Trevor Watts, Paul Rutherford, Kenny Wheeler, and Derek Bailey.
"Here is a missing link between the first two Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) recordings to be published. The music on CHALLENGE (recorded 1966 March and issued on a long vanished Eyemark LP) is mainly free jazz, w…
Curse go Back
Paradigm Discs presents Curse Go Back, tape experiments from William S. Burroughs. William Burroughs was in and out of London from the mid-50s to 1974 and for several years quite settled in a flat near Piccadilly. During this latter time he developed and refined the techniques he used for creating cut-ups on tape. Working closely with Ian Sommerville, who helped acquire, and no doubt maintain, the various tape recorders that Burroughs used and abused in these experimental works. The work here is…
I Do Play Rock And Roll
Jack Rose was a practitioner of his own unique brand of modern Appalachia, a master of the steel string, whether finger picking or playing with a slide, Rose can coax amazing sounds from a guitar, and all by his lonesome create lush steel string guitarscapes, that range from haunting and mysterious to folky and familiar.
This lp originally released in 2008 gathers up three long live tracks, all quite different. The first is a track from Kensington Blues, a big favorite around here, recorded…
Tumblers From The Vault (1970-1972)
Syrinx’s path veered from the dominant modes of ‘70s subculture, their version of chamber pop hybridized with wild, whimsical electronic experimentation charting new territory in the under and overground. Formed by composer John Mills-Cockell after the dissolution of Intersystems, Syrinx’s two adventurous albums, Syrinx (Self-Titled) and Long Lost Relatives, endorsed the poetic potential of the avant-garde, subverting a turn of the ‘60s trend toward technological pageantry. Tumblers From The …
Music of Morocco: Recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959
**in restock** Silkscreened cigar box with foil stamping details throughout, 120-page leatherette book, and four CDs containing 4 hours and 30 minutes of audio. Includes introduction by Lee Ranaldo, field notes by Paul Bowles, and annotations by Philip Schuyler. From July to December 1959, Paul Bowles crisscrossed Morocco making recordings of traditional music under the auspices of the Library of Congress. Although the trip occupied less than six months in a long and busy career, it was the culm…
Four Organs/Phase Patterns
Steve Reich remains one of the most important figures in 20th century music. Though he studied at the prestigious arts institutions Julliard and Mills College, by the mid- 1960s Reich set about dismantling the very orthodoxy that he had been trained in. Forming a new musical language based on repetitive processes, Reich became established as part of the so-called 'Big Four' of New York minimalists (along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass). Reich's influence can easily be seen tod…
Philosophy of the World
Limited repress; LP version. "In 1968, three sisters from Fremont, New Hampshire strapped on their instruments and declared themselves The Shaggs. At that moment begun a peculiar tale that would last far beyond the group's five-year run. Dot, Betty and Helen (and occasionally Rachel, the fourth sister) played in the group on the insistence of their father, Austin Wiggin Jr., who was convinced they were going to be big. Years earlier, Austin's mother gave him a palm reading, predicting that her s…
The Ghost Trade + The EP Collection
Camberwell, in South London, pops up infrequently in pop culture. Perhaps you know it from the Camberwell Carrot, the heroically sized joint smoked in cult movie Withnail & I, or perhaps – if you’re attuned to experimental music – you know of Camberwell Now. The group formed from the ashes of This Heat, the art-noise group whose catalog was reissued on Modern Classics Recordings in early 2016.
Not so much a supersession as a continuation of that group, Camberwell Now featured This Heat’s vocalis…
Circle Of Light - Original Electronic Soundtrack
Gold vinyl repress! Reduced price! Trunk Records present a highly important and unreleased soundtrack for Circle Of Life, created in 1972 by musician Delia Derbyshire and artist Elsa Stansfield. The soundtrack is a mix of concrete ideas, sound design, tape manipulation, natural environmental sounds and birdsong. The recording was originally commissioned by director, producer and art collector Anthony Roland for his 1972 film about the slides of radical stills photographer Pamela Bone. The fi…
Candida Cosmica
Candida Cosmica is a collection of recordings made between 1973–75 by electronic innovator Patrick Cowley and Candice Vadalla. Cowley met Vadalla, stage name Candida Royalie, in 1972 when he was living in Haight-Ashbury. A singer, actress and art student from Queens in New York, Vadalla took her new name when she began performing in porn films. She went on to work as a music producer, a sex educator, and directed feminist erotic films, before her death in September 2015.
Cowley arranged an…
Resolutionary (Songs 1979-1982)
There's a myth about music critics according to which they are frustrated wannabe performers. Evidence to the contrary: Vivien Goldman. The London-born, New York-based Goldman is one of the foremost chroniclers of the perfect storm of reggae, punk, hip hop, and Afrobeat, but between 1979 and 1982, she was also a working musician, creating songs that, years later, would be sampled by The Roots and Madlib. These rare girl grooves are now collected for the first time onResolutionary, covering Goldm…
Buchla Concerts 1975
The lost synth manifesto that could have changed the course of electronic music history by the first lady of modular synth history, Suzanne Ciani. Buchla Concerts 1975 is an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to such overused buzzwords as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking, and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we've come to understand it. To describe this record as a game-changer is…
This Heat
Repressed, second edition. A True Milestone, the near-mythical This Heat's debut album has been finally brought out of cold storage and made available again on deluxe remastered vinyl!!! "First official vinyl re-issue in collaboration with original band members Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward. 24 bit/96 kHz re-master from original analog tapes. 180 gram wax housed in an expanded gatefold tip-on jacket. Includes booklet with track notes and archival photos. Isn't it so often the case tha…
Deceit
Repressed, second edition. Another essential reissue, This Heat’s classic Deceit completes an official trilogy of vinyl reissues from their seminal and hugely influential run of late ‘70s/early ‘80s recordings which set the template for so, so much avant-rock, noise and experimental music ever since. With their debut album and follow-up maxi single Health and Efficiency, This Heat sowed the seeds of post-punk, avant rock, noise rock and post-rock, placing the trio -- Charles Bullen, Charles…
Cynosure
When 20-something saxophonist Trevor Watts was demobbed from the RAF in the early 60s, he moved to London and co-founded the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. Although clearly aware of Ornette Coleman’s new conception of Jazz in America, he soon developed his own, more fluently inclusive style, filtering and synthesising the history of jazz saxophony like few others—David Murray is one obvious counterpart in that respect—and giving it a personal twist. He also developed a unique conception of musical …
Hearing Music
Deeply enchanting, original new age flute and electronic compositions with an elegant, classical minimalism. A total must have for fans of Maggi Payne or Iasos. Flowering from studies with at the esteemed Mills College CCM and with Robert Ashley and Terry Riley in the ‘70s, the breathtaking and little-known recordings in Hearing Music are testament to the lush, earthly beauty of Joanna Brooks’ privately issued new age tapes made between 1981 and 1985 in The Bay Area, west coast USA.
Channelling…
We Be All Africans
Strut are proud to present the brand new studio album from West Coast jazz mavericks, The Pyramids, led by their inspirational bandleader, Idris Ackamoor. Alto saxophonist Ackamoor first met Margo Simmons (flute) and Kimathi Asante (electric bass) whilst students together at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio where one of their teachers was renowned pianist, Cecil Taylor. After founding the band in Paris in 1972, performing in Holland and embarking on a “cultural odyssey” across Afric…