Reissues
Mantra
'Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily on improvisation, that had come to dominate his output towards the end of the previous decade and a return to fully notated scores, but also introduced the idea of melodic formulae, the “mantra” of the title, which Stockhausen would eventually develop into the or…
Palimpsest | Épéi | Dikhthas | Akanthos
*2022 stock* 'This collection of ensemble works, six altogether, ranges across the last two decades of Iannis Xenakis's life. It includes the last two pieces he composed, Zythos, for trombone and six marimbas, and O-Mega, for percussion and ensemble, both written in 1997, four years before his death. They are striking, small-scale examples of the bareness and drastic compression of his late style, but the finest music here is a bit earlier. In Échange, from 1989, a bass clarinet painstakingly un…
For Franz Kline · For Frank O'Hara · De Kooning · Piano Piece To Philip Guston
*2022 stock* Wergo presents Moton Feldman's compositions For Franz Kline · For Frank O'Hara · De Kooning · Piano Piece To Philip Guston. Performed by Ensemble Avantgarde.
Le Grand Macabre
György Ligeti’s polymorphous music, a product of the 1960s, promises no familiar idiom even today. Ligeti himself described the bizarre and exaggerated music of Le Grand Macabre to be “far removed from the territory of Wagner, Strauss and Berg.”A sense of the absurd, the unpredictable, the totally irrational, not unlike the Dadaists who made their debut in Zurich back in 1916. Le Grand Macabre is often cited as a quintessential work of a Neo-Dada genre, one as bombastic as it is exuberant.
Sonata XIII / Music For Marcel Duchamp / Song Books I-II / Empty Words III
*2022 stock* The first works of Cage are experimental and related to the future. "The Future of Music" - a Credo" is the title of his first manifesto, and this future bears the name "all-sound music".
Works For Piano, Toy Piano & Prepared Piano · Vol. III
*2022 stock* It may come as a surprise but one of the leading creators of keyboard music in the twentieth century is a composer by the name of John Cage. Cage’s reputation is so deeply associated with the avantgarde, with chance music, graphic notation, performance art, technology and Zen Buddhism that is early, conventionally-notated music for percussion ensemble and keyboards is sometimes neglected. Or was until recently. In the last few years – with the advent of performances and recordings l…
Etudes Australes
*2022 stock* 'Etudes Australes was composed specifically for Grete Sultan, so this album is among the definitive recordings. As an indeterminate piece for solo piano (okay, well, a "duet for two hands"), this sounds very similar to Music of Changes, Winter Music, etc. Here, though, Cage generates indeterminacy by turning once again to using star charts as tools of composition, as he did previously in the wonderful Atlas Eclipticalis.
In a way, I find the piano to be more suited to star charts th…
Four Organs / Phase Patterns / Pendulum Music
Three early compositions (1968-1970) by Steve Reich, one of the most prolific exponents of minimal music, in stunning interpretations by the critically acclaimed Ensemble Avantgarde. Available on vinyl (180gr, gatefold sleeve incl. download code) for the first time ever!
Silver Apples of the Moon / The Wild Bull
Silver Apples of the Moon' is without a doubt the best known work from influential composer and electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick. It was originally commissioned by Nonesuch records back in 1967, when electronic music was more of a series of ideas than a recognised art form, and since then it has achieved well deserved classic status, influencing so much that would come after it is impossible to conceive. Subotnick's instrument of choice was the Buchla modular synthesizer, a gigantic pat…
Kontakte
Kontakte is a Stockhausen classic from 1959, for electronics, percussion and piano (played here by David Tudor). One of his "moment form" compositions, which "...lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are rather immediately intense and -- permanently present -- endeavor to maintain the level of continued 'peaks' up…
Don't Ask Me Why/Love Supreme
*Fully remastered and licensed* One of the most sought-after italo-disco release, the combined effort of Giovanotti Mondani Meccanici and Alexander Robotnick saw the light of the day in 1986 on Fuzz Dance, Materiali Sonori sub-label ran by the wizard Giampiero Bigazzi. Florence born producer and musician Maurizio Dami, created a mysterious character, a so-called "modular structure born out of a soviet calculator and promptly runaway". His classic "Problemes D'amour" was featured on the influent…
A Souvenir Of Camber Sands
Issued in a 6-panel Digisleeve with a sticker on the shrinkwrap Throbbing Gristle announce the next phase of their reissues series with the release of ‘Part Two: The Endless Not’ / ‘TG Now’ and ‘A Souvenir Of Camber Sands’. In 2004 Chris Carter, Peter Christopherson, Genesis P- Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti reformed - 23 years after their mission was originally terminated - and between 2004 and 2007 the band released 14 new studio tracks and a live album of their appearance at ATP’s Nightmare B…
Underground Altena
Alga Marghen returns with an absolute stunner, the LP “Underground Altena”, comprising a never before heard or released series of recordings capturing Anima - the duo of Limpe Fuchs and Paul Fuchs - in 1973. Largely rendered on a striking array of instruments, invented and played by the couple, its otherworldly, visionary sounds upend nearly every perception held about underground music transpiring in Germany during this period. Wild, wonderful, truly free, and inspiring as records come.
I Like To Think Of Harriet Tubman
*2022 stock* 'A true Leninist would argue that art in a smoothly running socialist state would become redundant and disappear, though while waiting for such a perfect society to come about, we have an idea of what socialist literature, painting, sculpture and cinema are like. But what does socialist music sound like? Luigi Nono? Eisler? Robert Wyatt? The Ex? Well, all four. and you may add Christian Wolff to the list. Like fellow experimental composers Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski, Wolf…
Preistoria
Big Tip! Originally released in 1968 as part of the "Serie Sonorizzazioni" series on Piero Umiliani's iconic Omicron label, "Preistoria" is the perfect example of a library music collection perfectly tailored to a theme. Through the use of orchestral accompaniment, jazzy arrangements, and tribal experimentation thrown in for good measure, the legendary Italian composer brings you back to the stone age, creating and ominous and primitive landscape, rich of caveman-style drums and deep bass lines.…
It's Up To You
** Limited to 300 double vinyl copies, two inlays with photos and liner notes. Originally released in 1974 on Preiser Records** »It’s Up to You« is a free sound art and performance project by sound artist and singer Limpe Fuchs, sculptor and sound artist Paul Fuchs, and pianist and recorder player Friedrich Gulda, who formed the trio Anima at the time of the recordings in 1974. As musical guests they were able to enlist the trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, the bassist Barre Phillips, the oud play…
Dramatic Tempi - Background Rhythms
Be With Records present a reissue of Dramatic Tempi / Larry Robbins Background Rhythms, originally released in 1975. Classic library breaks and beats set of heavy drums and louche funk. The first side, "Dramatic Tempi", is made up of four tracks each from Sammy Burdson and Klaus Weiss. Sammy Burdson was one of the many, many aliases of the mighty Austrian composer, arranger and conductor, Gerhard Narholz. Klaus Weiss produced essential records on German library labels Coloursound, Selected Sound…
Musiques Vertes
A document of pure sonic magic and stunningly organic creativity, Holidays Records drops the first ever vinyl reissue of Jean-Yves Bosseur's visionary 1982 LP “Musiques Vertes”, recorded by the legendary French ornithologist and wildlife field recordist Jean-Claude Roché. Utilizing handmade instruments constructed from plants and other natural materials, played by collective of children and untrained musicians, its radically experimental sounds build a revelatory bridge between the avant-garde a…
Zeit
Blue Translucent Vinyl Originally released in 1972, Zeit would be Tangerine Dream's third full length album, and the first to feature the main trio of Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann, and Chris Fanke. The German electronic group pioneered the entire dark ambient genre with this work, whose title translates to "time," and was based on the philosophy that "time was in fact motionless and only existed in our own minds." Also worth noting is that Popol Vuh's Florian Fricke plays Moog synthesizer on th…
Io e Caterina
1980, a crossroad full of living icons in a single movie interpreted and directed by Alberto Sordi, Io e Caterina. So, Alberto Sordi, Edwige Fenech, the year of release, 1980, what do we miss to get an absolute masterpiece? The soundtrack composer, Maestro Piero Piccioni. We can say it openly, one of its greatest score for cinema, intense, full of energy, orchestral, funky, melodic, touching, enthralling, passionate. An album that will be the score of your private summer, on your turn-table, in …