A ghost surfaced in Italian record shop windows in 1978, bearing a single unexplained name and then dissolving back into the dark it had spent forty minutes describing. Midnight In Space is one of the great unsolved riddles of late-1970s Italian electronics. It arrived on PDU, the label founded by the pop singer Mina, an imprint better known to most for glossy chart records but cherished by collectors for two other reasons: its Italian pressings of the German Cosmic Courier clan, and a small run…
At some point all great explorers, from Amundsen to Kishan Singh Rawat, come to an opening up and cast their minds across a big space. A clearing, a promontory, a look out from a place no one's been before. Jakob Olausson ventured deep on Moonlight Farm, his debut for De Stijl in the winter of 2005. His singular expression returns on Morning and Sunrise, an explorer's codex, a gaze through to what's more important and less seen. The path yet traveled and the sun arcing over it. Morning and Sunri…
Exact reproduction LP of a Swedish release from 1970. A bit of confusion surrounds this release: The album has been credited to Träd, Gräs och Stenar, but they aren't featured on it. Bo Anders Persson did, in fact, in collaboration with Solvieg Bark, compile, edit and release this album. Bo Anders Persson, was a member of the legendary Swedish bands Harvester, International Harvester, Pärson Sound, and Träd, Gräs Och Stenar. Solveig Bark was one of a few young composers that, through the UNM (Yo…
Issued for an art event recently presented at the Galleria Milano in the first week of April 2012, the recordings on this LP edition represent a very specific and intimate moment in the creative sound production of Davide Mosconi with NADMA associates Inez Klok and Gustavo Bonora.For Davide Mosconi and for all the artists and musicians involved in the groups he founded (the legendary NADMA, Organic Archestra, Il Quartetto, Alea), improvising sessions were a daily practice that founded their very…
When psycho-spatial composer Nelson Gastaldi passed away in 2009 at the age of 77, he left behind a unique musical legacy that is only now beginning to be unveiled. A self-described “musical nihilist with noble and mystic origins” (as well as an accomplished visual artist), Gastaldi supported himself and his family with a job at an electric company in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while creating an astonishing body of work that went virtually unheard during his lifetime. Synthesizing his wide-ranging…
The voice as instrument, the temple bell as orchestra, the piano as detonator. Vol. 3 of Earle Brown's Contemporary Sound Series traces three radical propositions about sound and its sources - each originating from a different continent, each redefining what was possible within its medium.
The first disc belongs to Cathy Berberian. Originally issued on Time Records in 1962, it captures the American mezzo-soprano - then based in Milan and married to Luciano Berio - at the height of her extraordin…
"Wergo's reissues of the legendary Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series have been a big hit with fans of contemporary music around the world. Each set is a treasure-trove of works by a wide range of composers, performed by some of the finest musicians of the time. The three CDs of volume four feature string quartets by Boulez, Scelsi and Earle Brown, works for chamber orchestra by Xenakis, Aldo Clementi, Bo Nilsson, Wlodzimierz Kotonski and Yuji Takahashi and works by Milko Kelemen, Niccolo Cas…
A box collecting seven years of work, from 2000 to 2007: psychedelic drone, experimental electroacoustics, minimal music and deep listening. Monosov belongs to the Frogpeak collective and has worked with Charles Curtis and Duane Pitre.
“Sleeping City” is the highly anticipated and Anna’s second release in co-operation with the Mannequin label from Rome, Italy. Intelligence Dept. were Davide Carlotti (synthesisers, sax, backing vocals), Susanna Zaghi (vocals, lyrics), Stefano Panzera (bass) and Gian Paolo Di Federico (synthesisers, drum machine programming) from Ferrara, Italy. They only ever officially released three, yet totally amazing tracks on the “A White Chance” LP compilation in 1984 (White Studio Recording, WS 001; Wh…
Morton Subotnick's electronic works: the first CD and surround release of the quadrophonic tape piece Four Butterflies, and Until Spring: Revisited, a live recomposition of his 1975 Buchla work. The DVD adds A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur: Revisited.
A series of piano transcriptions of some solemn, now-dark, now-affirmative religious hymns by one G.I. Gurdjieff, with none of the usual flourishes and heady flights usually associated with Keith Jarrett's solo records. Jarrett assumes the proper devotional position, playing with a steady tread but always with attention to dynamic extremes, producing a gorgeously rich piano tone with plenty of bass.
This release documents the music Masselys made for the commisioned audio-visual piece, Jimmy Polaris, by visual artist Christopher Nielsen, animator Matt Willis-Jones and Masselys.Nielsen and Willis-Jones worked together on Norway’s most expensive animation film; Slipp Jimmy Fri from 2006. For Jimmy Polaris they used early raw animation snippets from the film’s preproduction phase. Nielsen and Willis-Jones then real-time manipulated these sketches into a psychedelic visual overload, which Massel…
Exacting reissue of the 1970 debut album by this trailblazing Swedish quartet, led by composer/pianist/organist/accordionist/vocalist Lasse "Lars" Hollmer, just prior to any knowledge of anything called "RIO" (Rock In Opposition). Formed in the late late '60s in Uppsala, SMM canvassed the festival circuit (appearing on the same bill that Träd Gräs och Stenar recorded their mammoth Live Gardet 1970 album) to popular and critical appeal. Later SMM would team up with groups like Henry Cow and …
Subtitled: Primordial Vibration / Sound ceremonial with a contemplative character. Composed in 1983-1986. Sound ceremonial with a contemplative character for two voices of Japanese Buddhist monks (traditional Shômyô techniques - traditional temple chanting - in a larger, modern and creative form), three Japanese Gagaku instrumentalists (traditional court music in a modern and creative form), one percussionist (with a percussion instrument orchestra) and electro-acoustic (fixed interactive sounds…
Black Phoenix Blues is the third Roaratorio collection of the best of Rodd Keith’s vast output. Dating from 1966 to 1974, the sixteen previously unreissued songs showcase the scope of his work: the should’ve-been-a-hit “You And I”; the elegant exotica of “I Love Lovely Chinese Gal”; the history lesson of “The Explosion Of Holden 22 Mine”; the harrowing psychokiller musings of the title track; “I’m Proud To Be A Hippie From Mississippi,” the stoner’s answer to Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Mu…
Recorded 29th May 1977 at A Day in Solidarity with Soweto: A Fund Raiser, Harlem Fight-Back, 1 East 125th St., New York Violinist Billy Bang made his recording debut as a leader with the Survival Ensemble, the first working band he ever led, on New York Collage in 1979. Bang, saxophonists Bilal Abdur Rahman and Henry Warner, bassist William Parker, and percussionists Rashid Bakr and Khuwana John Fuller played incendiary free jazz more clearly indebted to the New York avant-garde of the precedin…
A colossal encounter of drummer William Hooker and the late wind player Thomas Chapin performing at the 9th Street Gallery in NYC in 1992, 3 massive improvisations from the jazz underground. This is a monster duo! One of the greatest duo events of all time. There were a series of weekly duo encounters with William Hooker and different saxists at Jerome Cooper's loft during the summer in the early nineties. I caught two of these with Louie Belogenis and Thomas Chapin and both were incredible.I re…
The Guitar Solo album was produced by Takeshi Fujii, the producer of the legendary jazz label "Three Blind Myth", in June 1981. Takayanagi responded to the request with "Lonely Woman" recorded in August 1982. As stated in the liner notes of this work, Takayanagi said: "In my two years of fighting against illness, my thoughts have changed, and now I'm thinking rather than making a group album. The form of solo would be appropriate to put it together" and he worked on the guitar solo as the first…
Beautiful new album by Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luyk (with Daisuke Suzuki on percussions and Ian Middleton on "accidental sounds"). Andrew Chalk is one of the most appreciate musician in this category floating between drone and ambient music, and his meeting with Timo Van Luijk has created an amazing disc, able to emphasize the slow, limited gestures, movements elegiac elegance, but still so heavily controlled. Each faint seems to have a gesture meaning. Here you can hear a flute (connected to …
"Ton Vlasman recorded this amazing piece of acid Euro folk back in 1970, making it sound like an outer space freaked out Bob Dylan with the help of Frans Schoonen (organ, flute and harmonica) and Leo van Vugt (chincha tumba and tambourine). The seven original compositions are stunning, drug inspired psychedelic pieces of acid folk that mix acid folk with Indian ragas and even add some Pink Floyd overtones, yet from an acoustic rather than electric point of view. And the album contains als…
"Experienced jazz avant gardists Joachim and Rolf Kühn joined forces with Volker Kriegel, Gunter Lenz and Stu Martin to release this superb mixture of Krautrock, psych, funk and free jazz. With all kind of sound effects coming from distorted clarinets, Hammond organ, groovy bass/drums section, breaks and hot guitar licks The Mad Rockers paved the way for many Krautrockers to follow. Reissued in vinyl for the first time since its 1969 debut on the Metronome label, this is a basic record to…
A limited edition 10 CD boxed set of the remarkable radio documentary tracing the life and music of Douglas Lilburn. The set is made available through SOUNZ in collaboration with Radio NZ Concert and the producers Roger Smith and Gareth Watkins. Interviews with the composer, his family, friends, and colleagues both composers and performers make this a comprehensive and remarkable documentation of New Zealand’s most influential composer. The CDs are accompanied by a comprehensive booklet, which i…
10 years after the first Edition on CD the most horrifying piece of music available again on Vinyl. Featuring the infamous recording 'For Stringquintet and Asstrumpet' on one side, and a collage of studio-recordings and various live-actions in Rudolf Eb.er's unique style on side b. Mastered & cut by Lupo at D&M, Berlin.
Alga Marghen presents one of the treasures of the French avant scene of the 1970s, published now for the first time. An ideal parallel to Jac Berrocal cult LP “Paralleles”, the realization of these pieces recorded by Daniel Deshays and produced by d’Avantage in 1977 that also conceived a very elaborated sleeve design, was mysteriously discontinued making this record one of the lost jewels of the French underground.Together with Michel Potage (voice and various instruments) and Jac Berrocal (trum…
Axolotl Lullabies drifts through the uncanny: Felix Kubin braids nocturnal synth miniatures, tape apparitions, and lullaby forms that refuse to settle. Melodies flicker like phosphorescence, rhythms breathe and retract, and silence becomes a soft voltage. A cradle for insomniacs and dream mechanics alike, it hums at the border where comfort and curiosity blur.
2025 stock The story of Australian experimental music continues with Artefacts volume II documenting the explosion of Australian experimental music practice from the mid 1970s; from the use of synthesisers and computers, through to the radical fringes of post-punk, and to the beginnings of industrial and dark wave. The double CD set complete with 16 page booklet features one of Warren Burt’s first compositions completed in Australia, the Loop Orchestra’s first performance, South Australian indus…
Four works spanning two decades document an extraordinary musical collaboration between British composer Frank Denyer and shakuhachi master Yoshikazu Iwamoto. They met at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1974, where Denyer was a doctoral student in ethnomusicology and Iwamoto artist-in-residence in the World Music programme. What emerged is a folio of compositions that run like a vein through Denyer's output - a body of work unique in contemporary music.
Denyer was not interested in east-we…
** 2021 Stock ** 2001 CD reissue of this psychedelic underground masterpiece from 1970, with a 12-page booklet, including English liner notes and photos. Includes one bonus track not found on the original LP. Recorded 1968-69, digitally remastered in 2001. The lone album by this post-International Harvester group, originally issued in 1970, once again led by the academic tape-composer turned radical folkie psychedelicist Bo Anders Persson. Accompanied by an able body of co-conspirators including…
Published for the opening of Ben Patterson's first large retrospective exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, this double CD anthology includes both historical recordings taken from the Early Works, from 370 Flies CDs as well as the first digital version of the no longer available LP titled A Fluxus Elegy and a previously-unpublished track. The first CD starts with the first-ever recording of "Ants" (1960), one of Ben Patterson's first graphic scores, pre-dating the Fluxus group. …
This is the final chapter for this project run by Gianluca Becuzzi - well known for his old dark wave project Limvo but also for his solo works and collaborations with Fabio Orsi. Final Archives is a sort of collection of rare tracks recorded from 1999 to 2006 totally reworked and remastered in 2009. Absolute Grey is the title that Kinetix gave to his graphic artwork selection exhibited with an ambient score specifically composed for the exposition space. The exhibition is made up of ten grey sc…
A long overdue gathering. For more than half a century, Cyrille Verdeaux's Clearlight project has occupied one of the strangest and most overlooked positions in the landscape of 1970s European progressive music - a French ensemble whose foundational works were recorded in England, issued by Virgin, and shaped, in no small part, by the orbit of Gong. Now, for the first time, Esoteric collects the five essential Clearlight albums into a single remastered 5CD clamshell box, with a new booklet essay…
** Remastered, 180gr, their legendary debut LP from 1971** Jade Warrior's first album following Tony Duhig and Jon Field's emergence out of the psychedelic July captures them abandoning the best of that band's whimsical moodiness in favor of a symphonic spirituality epitomized from the outset by the soaring guitars that ecstatically slice through the opening "Traveller." Reminiscent, in places, of a less-precious successor to Quintessence and the Incredible String Band in that moods and esoteric…
A beautifully judged and played jazz-rock album, 'Elastic Rock' marked the beginning of a series of intricate and experimental fusion albums for the group's leader, trumpet-player Ian Carr. As did Soft Machine, Nucleus developed from a jazz-orientated outfit into a more progressive, fusion-based collective(in later years the group would come to be known as 'Ian Carr & Nucleus) with later albums, such as 1976's 'Alley Cat', adding electronics to the already eclectic brew. However, their deb…
Long overdue overview of composer David First's drone works. This special and specially priced set (3 CDs for the price of 2) is comprised of nine works composed between 1996 and 2009. Featuring Chris McIntyre and Peter Zummo, trombones; 'Blue' Gene Tyranny, keyboards; and The Black Jackets Ensemble. 'This was something unexpected and truly different: pulsing electronic textures that derived their rhythm from the beating patterns of closely-tune pitches -- as if Alvin Lucier and Philip Glass had…
(1969) from the home studio of future BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP composer PETER HOWELL & his musical partner JOHN FERDINANDO, makers of legendary albums under the names Alice Through the Looking Glass, Ithaca, Agincourt, & Friends. This private press album was recorded as the soundtrack for an underground film production by (later to be) renowned television director Ian Hamilton
2010 release. Three of the satellite songs from Robert Ashley's opera Atalanta (Acts of God) - each inspired or revolving around one of the main characters of the opera, Max, Willard and Bud. Atalanta (Acts of God) was written in the 1980s, begun while Ashley was still in production for the television opera, Perfect Lives.
The many hours of material were performed throughout the world in many
different configurations, but this is the first time these songs have
been available on CD. Personnel…
After releasing the first LPs ever published by Isidore Isou, Gil J Wolman, Hidlago & Marchetti’s ZAJ… here is another historical premiere, or the first LP ever issued by French pre-situationist Jean-Louis Brau.Jean-Louis Brau (1930-1985) at the age of 20 joined along with Gil J Wolman, Isidore Isou's Lettrist group, creating in this context (the same of Wolman's “mégapneums”, Dufrêne's “crirythmes”, Lemaître's “hyperphonies” and Isou's “poèmes ciselants”) what he called “instrumentations verba…
Originally released in 1981 as an untitled mini album on Zick Zack, "Dub & Die" completes our re-issue programme of the band's earliest works. Recorded at SADW's Cassettencombinat studio in Berlin, the original 8 tracks represent the first release by this German Avantgarde/Industrial group that was once a member of the "Geniale Dilettanten" movement. Again, comparison with early Einstürzende Neubauten is permitted, altho…
A milestone in Thorofon's back catalogue, 'Final Movement' was released on the band's own UMB label in 2002. A very limited version of the album had a 10" included which is also present on this CD re-issue. And in addition, we have thrown in a previously unreleased track so the playing time is extended to nearly 80 minutes. Thorofon are a German-based duo consisting of Genevieve Pasquier (who also records as a solo artist) and Anton Knilpert. Although their sound is very unique, their roots lie …