Reissues
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…
Winter Songs
A reissue of the brilliant second album by Art Bears, a band/project featuring Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause, formed in 1978 after disputes over the musical direction within Henry Cow. 'Winter Songs', originally released in 1979, placed Art Bears in the forefront of the Rock In Opposition Movement. Art Bears' intense and brutal avant-garde approach on the album comes across as primordial expression, which is nailed down by Krause's violently charismatic voice. As a piece of music re…
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, …
Clear Sounds/Perfetta
CD version. After nearly 40 years of silence, Harry Bertoia's Sonambient label has been resurrected in order to release the best of Bertoia's unheard recordings from his recently preserved archive of 1/4" tapes. "Clear Sounds" b/w "Perfetta" was cut straight from the original reels and is a true analog pressing. These two pieces were selected for their minimal, meditative and lush harmonic qualities; lacking in the abundance of dynamics and contrasts found on the original Sonambient records, the…
International Holy Hill Jazz Meeting 1969
CD version. BeJazz is happy to come up with a true “holy” modern/free jazz gems of the late 1960s. The original double LP was issued by Meno Liechtenstein’s CB Records – he was also the organizer of the “International Holy Hill Jazz Meeting” in Heidelberg/Germany. The sound quality on the original album was not really bad – but it certainly was not really good as well. We spent a lot of work on a proper restoration of the live tapes. The result is truly amazing – after almost 50 years we are now…
Same Animal, Different Cages Vol. 2: Solomonos for Analog Synthe
Yellow vinyl edition of 100 with download card. Fabrica Records announces the second volume in the Same Animal, Different Cages series by American composer and improviser David First. On this second installment in the Same Animal, Different Cages series of tonal investigations, David First dons his no-madder-than-you scientist's lab coat and proceeds to fire up and overheat his newest subject, a Korg MS-20. The resulting six tracks are characterized by rapid-fire analog oscillations, relentlessl…
JAZZ antibes 1963
CD digipack incl.12-page booklet. Unreleased live recordings from the 4th Antibes Jazz Festival. Since 1960 a jazz festival is held in Juan-Les-Pins at the Côte d'Azur, which is regarded as one of the best summer festivals worldwide. Apart from the big names - from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis or Keith Jarrett - it also featured legends such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. The 4th Festival in 1963 saw a meeting of representatives of traditional and mo…
Free At The German Jazz Festival 1966
Unreleased live recordings - featuring the pioneers from the Euro-pean New Jazz scene! This is the third in our series of exciting jazz albums with beautiful unreleased live recordings from the German Jazz Festival 1966! Please check the whos's who of the European jazz scene in the tracklisting.This 2-CD set comes in a SABA-style packaging.
We had the impression that those recordings could easily have been part of the SABA/MPS catalogue back in 1966 - that's why we decided to design the co…
Documents 1975
Grönland casually drop a rocket's worth of virgin krautrock fuel with the previously unreleased 'Documents 1975' tape capturing Moebius, Roedelius, Rother and Eno playing live between their idyllic Forst studio and venues in Hamburg. With likely reams of reels to pick from, they've carefully chosen to highlight four performances best showcasing the group's pioneering work from a variety of aspects. The two pieces recorded at Forst are little short of magick, capturing two sublime and uplifting f…
Das Tränenmeer
The actor and director Martin Engler has appeared on many stages in Germany and abroad, most recently in the Theater Basel. In addition to acting, he lectures at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch Berlin (The Ernst Busch Acting Academy) and narrates and directs radio plays in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. He has made a number of short and experimental films as well as working on freelance projects that straddle drama, art and science. He came across Dieter Roth’s texts in…
Classical Bhajans
The great singer/saint Swamy Haridhos and his followers in a long concert of religious singing from New Years Day 1968. Music and devotion in equal parts. The last tracks will be found on digital-only album CEX14. Not only was Swamy Haridhos an extremely charismatic leader, preacher and singer, head and shoulders taller than ordinary bhajan singers, but as such he attracted the participation of top notch accompanists.
In this recording from Gita Govinda Hall in Bombay you hear him with his…
B85 - Ballabili “Anni ’70” Pop Country
**CD version** Although library music has always had the purpose of accompanying TV and radio shows, documen- taries and TV news, it is difficult to track down most of these masterpieces composed by some of the greatest composers of those years. Anonymity is one of the distinctive traits of this music genre, being in most cases difficult, if not impossible, to find out where these tracks had been used. The liner notes of these works often spark the reader’s curiosity: the notes are in fact detai…
B82 Ballabili Anni 70 Underground
**CD version** Due to an overwhelming number of reissues and to the steady and meticulous work of collectors and passionate music lovers who have been spreading the word about it, the realm of Italian library music has moved from being some kind of hidden cult to becoming a well defined niche. Authors such as Alessandroni, Umiliani, Sciascia, Tommasi and Sorgini have become more accessible to the uninitiated, while prices of the original presses of their records keep surging.Among the multitude …
Carnet Turistico
From the legendary Deneb series, one of the grooviest Italian library ever. Amedeo Tommasi and Gerardo Iacoucci (alias H. Caiage) at their best. An explosion of heavy organ sounds, jazz & psych-beat, with killer drumming breaks and mellow tunes
Ak Musick
Mental Experience present first ever reissue of AK Musick, originally released in 1972. Radical, freaked-out sound with hints of free-jazz, improv and avant-garde, AK Musick was an improv collective assembled by clarinetist Hans Kumpf to "make music in a very democratic way". The five players had a classical education but they were also influenced by avant-garde composers like Helmut Lachenmann and Johannes Fritsch. Their only album, AK Musick, was recorded at the famous Bauer Studios in just …
Romance 76
From 1971 to 1977, Peter Baumann was a member of the legendary Berlin band Tangerine Dream. The group were pioneers of the so called Berliner Schule (Berlin School) which had such a profound impact on electronic music. He produced a number of momentous albums at his Paragon Studio (by the likes of Conrad Schnitzler, Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius) and also enjoyed success as a solo artist. His first two solo works are now being reissued with extensive liner notes and rare photographs. The influ…