Reissues
Middle of the Moment
Continuing the definitive Fred Frith edition, this is the CD based on Fred’s music for the second film he made with Humbert and Penzel – following nomads – that features, along with Fred’s compositions and re-workings, a restless and gripping unfolding of atmospheric locations, tuareg and other musics, ethongraphic material and times captured. A collage or a soundwork rather than a straightforwardly musical composition, this is a serious and unfairly marginalised piece (because it falls between …
Trilogie de la mort
One of the landmarks of minimalism, Radigue's sonic investigation into life, death, and life elsewhere after death, considered to be Eliane Radigue's masterpiece. "Trilogie de la Mort is a work in three parts. The first, Kyema, was originally released by XI in 1992. The 2nd and 3rd parts, Kailasha and Koumé are being released for the first time and the trilogy now makes its debut as a whole [this 3CD set is being sold for the cost of 2 CDs to make up for the prior availability Kyema]. 'Kyema' is…
Jetsun Mila
Beautiful extended ambient work from Eliane Radigue, a composer known for her work with magnetic tape and Arp Synthesizer, and who studied under Pierre Schaeefer and Pierre Henry in the late 50's. Her compositions are often drone-like, impeccably crafted electronic sounds which seem to move in a continual flow around the listener. She has created many meditative works since the late 1970s, mostly based on Tibetan Buddhist subject matter.Jetsun Mila is inspired by the life of Milarepa, a great yo…
Songs of Milarepa
Originally released on Lovely Music in 1998. Double CD of all five of Elaine Radigue's songs in tribute to the Tibetan saint and poet from the 11th century. Two of the tracks dates from Radigue's first release in 1983, two are previously unreleased and the final 62-minute track was previously issued as a sole CD in 1987. The material is performed by Radigue (synthesizer and recording), Robert Ashley (English voice), and Lama Kunga Rinpoche (Tibetan voice). Radigue was born in France and has stud…
Dubravko Detoni With Acezantez
Croatian composer and pianist Dubravko Detoni is a name barely familiar to even the most hardened and fanatical followers of avant-garde composition. Although he has managed to consistently escape almost all forms of wider public recognition, Detoni has, since 1970 -- both in the solo context and with his Acezantez ensemble -- doggedly pursued a singular and unique musical path. Drawing on the conventions and traditions of modern composition, avant-garde electronics, musique concrète and group a…
Chrysalide
In Bocalises, Denis Dufour explored with virtuosity the sound possibilities of a sole sound source, glass jars broken, crushed and mixed to themselves to infinity. Fifteen years later, he takes up the material and, with digital tools, presents a retouched and recoloured version to give a new power and poetic richness to the initial energy.
Rainforest II / Mureau
This historic release of a simultaneous performance by David Tudor and John Cage of Rainforest II and Mureau, recorded live by Radio Bremen on May 5, 1972, preserves the only surviving performance of the second of Tudor’s "Rainforest" series. In addition, it documents one of the precious few recorded collaborations between these two visionaries. In 1970 Cage composed the piece called Mureau, in which phrases from Thoreau’s journals (in particular, passages which touch on the subject of music) ar…
Music for piano
Douvle CD set with recordings by the legendary 20th century avantgarde pianist performing compositions by (and with) John Cage, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff.
Neural synthesis n. 6-9
1995 release. Neural Synthesis Nos. 6-9 combines the art of music, the engineering of electronics, and the inspiration of biology. In it, David Tudor orchestrates electronic sound in ways analogous to our biological bodies' orchestration of consciousness. The performance originates from a neural-network synthesizer conceived and built especially for Tudor. He surrounds this synthesizer with his own unique collection of electronic devices, and in the recording on this CD made for headphone playba…
Invisible Gold
David Rosenboom (b. 1947) has been widely acclaimed as a pioneer in American experimental music since the 1960's. He is a composer, performer, conductor, interdisciplinary artist, author, and educator having explored ideas in his work about the spontaneous evolution of forms, languages for improvisation, new techniques for ensembles, cross-cultural collaborations, performance art, computer music systems, interactive multi-media, compositional algorithms, and the structure of the brain and nervou…
Autonomous and dynamical systems
A relentless explorer, composer, performer and theorist, David Dunn (b 1953) uses electro-acoustic resources, voice, non-human living systems, as well as traditional instruments. A creator of text-sound compositions, environmental installations, works for radio and video, he has also written and published extensively. Underlying all his work is a common regard for music as a communicative source with a living world. Growing up in San Diego in the sixties and seventies, he encountered people lik…
My Dear Siegfried
"David Behrman has been active as a composer and artist since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions. Sam Behrman and Siegfried Sassoon met in 1920, when Behrman, then a young writer working at The New York Times, was sent to interview Sassoon at the start of the English poet's postwar American lecture tour. In that tour Sassoon was billed as 'England's Soldier-Poet.' He had a reputation both as a war hero and …
Leapday Night
A series of three pieces/suites; 'Leapday Night', 'A Traveler's Dream Journal', and 'Interspecies Smalltalk' involving Rhys Chatham/Ben Neill (on trumpet/mutantrumpet), Fluxus mainstay Takehisa Kosugi (violin), and David Behrman himself on electronics. Behrman creates thickly layered liquid sounds utilizing this complex computer music system which absorbs, actually hears, the sounds of instrumentalists, then plays off their improvisations with its own synthesized reactions. The system consists o…
On the Other Ocean
On the Other Ocean is an improvisation by Maggi Payne and Arthur Stidfole centered around six pitches which, when they are played, activate electronic pitch-sensing circuits connected to the "interrupt" line and input ports of a microcomputer, Kim-1. The microcomputer can sense the order and timing in which the six pitches are played and can react by sending harmony-changing messages to two handmade music synthesizers. The relationship between the two musicians and the computer is an interactive…
Oramics
Comes with 16 page booklet. Daphne Oram is best-known for the design of her Oramics system, and also for co-founding the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1957, but until the release of this material, the only easily-available piece of music by her on CD was the 8-minute long "Four Aspects." There was also a 7" EP from 1962 on HMV, released as part of the Listen, Move and Dance series that was specifically designed to help children dance. Although the short pieces on this record are very basic, it cou…
Musica Mundana / L'Estran
'Musica Mundana': Mixed, fusion and root music, work on 'harmonisation' of various music and vocals. A genuine alchemy! 'L'Estran': What a beautiful metaphor is this piece of coastline. It conveys an impression of in-between, uncertainty, contraries. After studying music in the French National Music School, a decisive encounter with Ivo Malec, Guy Reibel, Jacques Lejeune and Jean Schwarz at the GRM will introduce him to electroacoustic music which he will afterwards focus on. He has composed aro…
Early Piano Music (1951-1961)
Early Christian Wolf piano music (written 1951-61), performed by: John Tilbury & Christian Wolff (pianos), Eddie Prevost (percussion). Studio recordings from 2001/2. "During the period when these works were composed (1951-61), Christian Wolff was closely associated with John Cage. Morton Feldmon, Earle Brown and David Tudor (they are sometimes referred to together as the New York School'). Feldman later remarked that he was profoundly indebted to Christian Wolff ('I think of him as my artistic c…
Solo
It took long enough. The electric kit finally gets a chance to speak for itself. I won't try to describe it, but it's been pretty much my main work of the last three years. I can't say it reminds me of anything else but, naturally, I suggest you buy it.
Hinterland
Carlos Roque Alsina is an Argentinean-born composer who tends to mix acoustic and taped sounds together in a manner that evokes natural sounds to some degree, something of a more programmatically inclined Iannis Xenakis. The title piece combines piano and percussion with taped sounds that often possess an organ-like quality. While the acoustic instruments dance around each other in intricate patterns, the tape heaves and respires ominously, depicting the sort of backcountry that's unsettling in …
Debon
Brast Burn was a legendarily obscure Japanese ensemble that existed in the first half (I presume) of the 1970s. For many years, they were known only as an entry in the notorious Nurse With Wound list, with no way for anyone to check them out. Thus this CD. First off, I'll say that it sounds really good. One would never guess that it was a transfer from vinyl. Brast Burn has been cited/promoted at various times as the "Japanese Faust". I feel that this is incorrect. A better analogy would be to …