Reissues
Antibarbarus
A reissue of Antibarbarus, issued as a compact disc in 1998, was the first edition Walter Marchetti released on Alga Marghen. The Antibarbarus cycle of five pieces makes use of original tapes coming from the same recording sessions that originated some of Marchetti's major musical works realized in the '80s. This former series of works presented some homogeneous and untouched sound sources in the "concrete" status of their inner - and necessarily chaotic - level of entropy. Nevertheless this ope…
Il Cerchio degli Antichi Colori
With their second album of 1981, the ensemble Zeit re-propose their own vision of a new cultural multi-geographical mosaic without boundaries. The sound confirms the inspired and eclectic vein of previous work suggesting even a greater conviction and maturity of intent. The arrangements tend to dilate in more alchemical and hypnotic sequences, while the range of inspirations (Balkan music, Greek, Turkish, Persian, African etc.) and the poly-instrumentalism are even more precious and varied. Dec…
1972 Blues Jazz Session
Unreleased recordings of future members of Aktuala and I.P. Son Group! The history takes us back in the alternative Milan of the early 70’s, to the flavour of the first jam-blues of that era when musicians from different parts of the world (India, Africa or South-America), of disparate background and culture were used to gather to experiment just with an authentic sense of stay together. Here, the devotion to the blues roots remains strong but leaks in the compositions an aerial and wandering c…
Early Works 1969-70
Milestone! This LP of early compositions by Jacques Lejeune features three seminal works: D'une Multitude En Fête and Petite Suite, originally released on the Perspective Musicales series in 1970, and a previously unpublished composition, Géodes, from the same period. These three pieces (not included in the recent Parages and other electroacoustic works 3CD set) are some of Lejeune's earliest music for tape and may be considered a "prequel" to his later, more thematic works. Still, his concise m…
Funky Tramway
Take the Funky Tramway with Janko Nilovic and the Mad Unity Band! Here is another most wanted lbrary LP composed by iconic Janko Nilovic who recorded it with some of the finest musicians from Belgium under the Mad Unity group including Koen De Bruyne on Keys, Richard Rousselet & JP Onraedt from Placebo, Synthe wizard Dan Lacksman. No need to say more, you know this album is good from start to finish. "One of the coolest projects ever from funky sound library genius Janko Nilovic – and one of his…
Born in the state of FLUX/us
Restocked, reduced price Performing and visual artist Ben Patterson (born 1934) was a founding member of Fluxus' participatory, do-it-yourself, anticommercialist avant-garde network. While many Fluxus artists, influenced by John Cage's precedent, employed conceptual techniques borrowed from music (e.g., the event score), Patterson's fusion of art and music was informed by his background as a classically trained double-bassist. His "Variations for Double Bass" (1960), for example, was played with…
For A World After
LP version. Includes download code. Mental Experience present the first ever reissue of Requiem's For A World After, originally released in 1981. Dark, progressive, synth ambient meets Berlin-School sounds on this obscure kraut album, which "tells the story of a world annihilation through nuclear war." For A World After is full of delayed psychedelic electric guitar, effects, cold drum machines, waves of analog keyboards (Korg MS20, Casiotone 201, Crumar DS-2, Jupiter-4), and cosmic atmosphere…
Autoportrait
Reissue of a cassette released in 1991 by La Légende des voix. A sound self-portrait harsh and tortured also using some texts.Brume (Christian Renou) is a prolific French musique concrete composer/sound sculptor who has won himself a place of his own with his crossover between sound collages, electro-acoustics and noise. His compositions rely on dense, rapid-fire montage and wed cacophony and dynamics, emphasizing both the elements of discontinuity and continuity. Why the nickname « Brume »?: he…
A Trip Down The Sunset Strip
The Leathercoated Minds’ 1967 release A Trip Down the Sunset Strip is a one-of-a-kind artifact of the psychedelic era. Originally conceived as an Exploitation item, it nonetheless emerged as an enduring musical statement, thanks to the talents of those involved, particularly then-unknown Oklahoma-bred guitarist J.J. Cale. As its title suggests, A Trip Down the Sunset Strip was originally concocted by noted pop producer Snuff Garrett (known for his hitmaking ‘60s work with the likes of B…
Les Espaces Électroacoustiques
Milestones of electroacoustic music – from Edgar Varèse’s Poème électronique (1958) to Brian Ferneyhough’s Mnemosyne (1986) – are investigated from a music-historical perspective and presented in a contemporary 5.1 surround edition.The selection of works on this double CD mirrors the development of electroacoustic music over a period of 30 years, from the early analogue studios to the shift to digital technology in the 1980s. It includes electronic compositions and works for instruments and e…
Taste Me
“Taste me” is a 1981 obscure instrumental library music album and a weird example of Italo Funk Disco played by professional musicians (most of them under pseudonym) involved also in many different musical projects (from jazz, progressive rock and disco music). The LP includes the killer Disco Funk "Don’t Stop It”.Repressed in limited edition with original artwork for the first time since 1981. Don’t miss it.
Who Says Birds Don't Do Things Just For Fun?
Wow, just wow. One of the dynamics at play in the C.P. program that has been all but absent in the recent catalogue is the "one man against the world" spec. These politically-charged times make me hesitant to use the catch-all "outsider", although, in the case of upstate-New York Composer Glenn Williams, it's clear that a palpable distance from the greater world was, indeed, in effect. Let's first focus on the music; the A-side's side-length title piece works a long-form take of the exact sort o…
Skinny Woman
Cinedelic Records present the first-ever reissue of Ramasandiran Somusundaram's Skinny Woman, originally released in 1974. Skinny Woman is the only solo album by Indian percussionist Ramasandiran Somusundaram, a former member of Bambibanda E Melodie (post-Garybaldi band of Bambi Fossati), Maya, and New Trolls' Atomic System (1973). Produced and played along with a large portion of New Trolls - the De Scalzi brothers, Gianni Belleno, and Giorgio Usai - Skinny Woman is an absolute anomaly of an al…
Space Songs
The first ever vinyl reissue of an extraordinarily-unique space-age educational LP. Includes the oft-covered “A Shooting Star Is Not A Star” and “Why Does The Sun Shine?” Featuring Leo Leonni cover art and taken from the original atomic-era 1959 master tapes. Written by Hy Zaret and sung by Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans. Zaret (co-author of “Unchained Melody”) turned his attention to educational children’s music in the late 1950s, collaborating with Lou Singer on a six-album series called “Ballads f…
CMCD (Six Classic Concrete, Electroacoustic And Electronic Works 1970-1990)
This essential piece of history at last reissued, redesigned and repackaged. Keystone works from the various streams of musique concrete, electronic music, soundscape, electroacoustics and plunderphonics - including two masterworks from Eastern Europe, a territory traditionally overlooked in collections of this medium. It comprises: John Oswald's 'Parade', a complex work drawn and extended from Satie's celebrated ballet composition of 1917; Georg Katzer's monumental 'Aide Memoire' ('7 nig…
A Face We All Know
'A Face We All Know' breaks new ground altogether. This is a single work with texts by Chris Cutler, Rainald Geotz and Thomas Pynchon and documents the last days of a political nightmare. Start here with Cassiber.
Field Days (The Amanda Loops)
14 pieces originally written for dance and other practical situations, here reassigned and reconstructed for choreographer Amanda Miller and the Nederland Dans Theater. These are loop-based, textural, mood pieces, and invocations of spaces and landscapes, with some fine steel guitar playing. Mostly this is Fred multi-instrumenting, with pianist Daan Vanderwalle, percussionist Willie Wynant, the Arte Sax quartet and Lotte Anker, the Arditti Quartet, Kiku Day, occasional shakuhachi, and vio…
Propaganda
Written for theatre in 1987 using a host of avian and mammalian voices, snippets of unidentified musical material and electroacoustic noise- sculpting, as well as invented and real instruments played by Fred Frith. This was a hard time and the mood is intense, lean and not cheerful, though there are some gruesomely cheery inserts. There's no fat but a lot of meat here.
Impur
"In 1996, at the end of a two year residency, Fred organised an event at L'Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne in France. He roped in as many of the students as he could, grouped according to their departments (early music, rock, African drumming, classical &c), and set them up in all the rooms in the building. The public wandered around creating their own mix, or sat in the courtyard listening to the sound drifting out through the open windows.
For their part, each group of musici…
Nowhere Sideshow Thin Air
This is Frith's sixth CD of music for dance, featuring three commissions by three different choreographers each sharing, as Fred says ' a certain obsession with melodic deconstruction.' Two of them feature - and were especially written for - the remarkable violinist Carla Kihlstedt.
Fred and Carla perform one of them (Fred playing a huge array of instruments here as on all pieces), are joined by Fred Guiliano, (samples) and Gail Brand (trombone) on another, while the third features Fred, …