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In late 2014, feeling stifled by the negativity of the Australian political discourse, the narcissistic excess of social media, and facing a long summer of migraine-inducing heat, I turned to the prepared piano as a refuge. I was coming out of an intense two-year period of composing for every conceivable instrumental combination, and not sure where to go next. I felt the need to get back to basics, and create something essential, elemental. These pieces are meditations, each with its own …
Michael Habermann made the first, and in many respects the best commercial recordings devoted to Kaikhosru Sorabji’s ridiculously difficult and overwrought piano works. As with Habermann’s previous three Sorabji discs, the present recital offers several sides of the composer: variation writer, miniaturist, paraphraser, and transcriber. Sorabji’s 1945 transcription of Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnol largely stays faithful to the original, save for decorative showers of bitonal arpeggios and runs that a…
Vol. V of the Bali 1928 recordings contains various emergent theatrical dance and dance-opera forms with translations of the dramas' texts. We hear the first recordings of women participating in dance dramas, making this disc a major cultural repatriation of primary Balinese art forms that had been lost for nearly a century. An extensive essay is included as a PDF (accessed by computer) with links to 1930s silent films and a photo library are hosted online by World Arbiter. Some of these …
Severed Heads are one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was…
In the late '70s, The Avengers established themselves as one of the US's preeminent punk bands. Fusing incisive guitar hooks, explosive rhythms and adolescent venom, the group forged some of the most in-your-face songs of the era. Their live shows were legendary, playing up and down the West Coast and even blowing Sex Pistols off the stage at the latter's final performance. As Byron Coley writes in the liner notes, 'Of the best bands of San Francisco's first wave in 1977, The Avengers were by fa…
First release in 1981. Another essential reissue documenting the history of experimental music in Peru. Omar Aramayo (Punol' s wind instruments), Manongo Mujica (percussion) and Arturo Ruiz del Pozo (keyboard), they shaped this magnificent album, where the early Andean music in Peru is assembled with the electronics, opening up to the pure sound experimentation. These composers explored serial, electronic, electroacoustic, and aleatoric music during a time of tension between politics and the ava…
** 2020 restock, nice price** Albert Ayler's trio with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray is best known for the July 10, 1964, recording of Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD), the album that made both Ayler and ESP-Disk' famous when it was released in 1965. A decade after that, in 1975, ESP-Disk' also released, as Prophecy(ESP-3030), the first documentation of the group, recorded a month before Spiritual Unity by Canadian poet Paul Haines at a concert at a 91st Street club. These Cellar Café recordings…
"The compilation that started the renaissance. In 2002 Audika Records entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with the estate of Arthur Russell to compile and issue previously unreleased and out of print material from Arthur's vast archive. This first album Calling Out of Context, features 12 previously unreleased tracks of Buddhist Bubblegum Alt Disco Pop recorded during Arthur's prime years 1985-90."
"Four years ago, Audika Records began releasing the exceptionally varied, long sought-af…
Unavailable since the film’s release in 1982, Susan Justin’s music for Forbidden World – produced by the legendary Roger Corman – mixes the electronic influences of the time with splashes of new wave, creating a score that fuses the eerie tonalities and avant-garde sensibility of Alien with the straight-up funk of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Birthed from this is a cult classic score that deserves to be held up alongside the works of Richard Band and Alan Howarth.
What immediately stands out from the…
The dreamer dreams again with her 4th album of otherworldly microcosms, 'Divers', recorded by Steve Albini and featuring contributions by Nico Muhly and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, arriving five years since her last opus for Drag City. Still possessed by a voice that teeters between sublime and ridiculous (I honestly laughed out loud at the first song), Joanna Newsom remains a precious spirit within the indie folk paradigm, blessed with an air of stately patience and poised, imma…
Dark Entries and Honey Soundsystem Records have teamed up again to release another volume of gay porn soundtracks by San Francisco-based musician and producer, Patrick Cowley. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary and influential people in the canon of disco music, Cowley created his own brand of Hi-NRG dance music, "The San Francisco Sound." Born in Buffalo, NY on October 19, 1950, Patrick moved to San Francisco at the age of 21. He studied at the City College of San Francisco where he founded …
Experimentation in early electronic music in the Sahara from the singular Mamman Sani. Dreamy organs and droning melodies reinterpret ancient folk tradition into sublime fantastical soundscape. Never before released recordings from the very beginning - unreleased tracks from his first album, recordings of a short lived trio, and a cover of an American folk ballad.
Mammane Sani Abdullaye is a legendary name in Niger's avant garde. A pioneer of early West African electronic music, for over 30 yea…
First historical edition! Limited to 500 copies. This three-disc box collects Number One Intersystems (1967), presenting the correct side sequence and (for the first time) the original tracks' sub-section divisions; Peachy (1967), with (for the first time) the correct track separations, timings, and titles; and Free Psychedelic Poster Inside (1968), with (for the first time) the original (double) track titles. All works remastered by Intersystems founding member John Mills-Cockell for this editi…
On the occasion of the 2015 exhibition Le Caselle di Anton Bruhin at the Istituto Svizzero di Roma in Milan, Alga Marghen presents the complete edition of Anton Bruhin's 1977 cycle Vogelsang/Vogelsong/Vogelsung/Vögelsäng. If the idea of recording birds came from Bruhin's friend, the Swiss painter Hans Krüsi (this was a common practice for the art brut master, who layered recordings of the many birds sharing his living space into primitive multi-track sonic sculptures), Bruhin is able to use th…
Pekka Airaksinen’s Love’N Addiction, composed in 1978 and released over a decade later under the alias McDullan, is a daring sonic exploration of sex and drugs-intentionally leaving out rock’n’roll, despite the title’s playful hint. The album’s soundscape is cold, mechanical, and at times abrasive, conjuring the sensation of two dinosaur computers conversing or Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley on a bad acid trip. Closely related to Airaksinen’s Vitamins in both era and approach, Love’N A…
Rvng present one of their most unique releases to date with a limited art zine and cassette that shines light on the work of psych musician Bobby Brown. Bobby Brown exists beyond being. Bobby’s documented music covers a dynamic emotional and spiritual terrain, his vocals, ever prominent, traverse six octaves of sound. Bobby’s understanding of — and unbending faith — in physics and technology manifest in unbelievable instrumental and intellectual innovations. Bobby’s dedication to the fundaments …
**CD version** If you are among those who own the two previous Braen's Machine LPs, Underground and Quarta pagina, you're probably already well aware of one of Italian library music best kept secrets, that is the real identities of those hiding behind the pseudonyms Braen and Gisteri. These were the monikers of Alessandro Alessandroni and Oronzo De Filippi, directed by Piero Umiliani and his record label Liuto. With Temi ritmici e dinamici (Rhythmic and dynamic themes) the plot thickens and give…
Limited edition of 500. Ken Moore (from Baltimore, Maryland) is one of the very early American DIY synthesists and multi-instrumental talents. Moore started to explore electronic music in the mid '70s while working in various (progressive) rock formations. In 1980 he established his own label, Anvil Creations, and in the following four years released approximately 20 tapes of solo and collaborative works he had recorded between 1973 and 1983. His solo work of that era bridges abstract electronic…
Palais des Bauzards pursued an industrial and electronic variant of the sound that swept into vogue during the first half of the '80s. This compilation digs into the original material provided by the band and offers an amazing selection from start to finish. The sometimes rudimentary though gripping tracks on the first side are emblematic of their early period; for example, "Money" is driven by a screeching rhythm box, distant guitar lines, and a nonchalant voice. Cabaret Voltaire comes to mind.…
"Birth Of A Being (Expanded) presents the essential first studio recordings by incomparable jazz saxophonist David S. Ware as a bandleader. Recorded in New York, April 1977, the first disc features material originally released on LP by the Swiss label, hat Hut Records -- out of print for over 30 years. The second disc features a full additional album of top-shelf material from those same sessions that have never been released in any form. This definitive edition was sourced from the original ana…