Reissues

AKA Flightless Bird Needs Water Wings. The young person's guide to Les Rallizes Denudes! Now available everywhere in the free world!" Seemingly endless sonic flame-throwers of phased white noise streak across your inner landscape, as stupidly loud and overly-backlit lead guitar emissions perpetrated by a perpetually be-shaded longhair pummel the similarly be-shaded but barely adequate musical backing that sags and creaks under the wattage. Occasionally, lead vocals of a singular variety are prov…

This CD features two very special moments of the acoustic production of Charlemagne Palestine. A very peculiar strumming for 2 harpsichords and the first piano composition marking the passage from the electronic music period to strumming technique. Elisabeth Freeman and Charlemagne Palestine met in 1971 at Cal Arts near L.A. while she was a student of the international harpsichord virtuoso Fernando Valenti. The sound and clarity of the harpsichord perfectly fitted the sonic approach of Charlemag…

Originally released in 2000. The Golden Research is the name chosen for the complete documentation of previously unpublished works by Charlemagne Palestine starting from the early 1960s to the mid-late 1970s. Such a huge project will include seminal collage and electronic music, Bell Studies, New York and California drones, piano drones as well as more specific compositions. All the recordings will be exclusively available through Alga Marghen. Be ready to change your own opinion about minimalis…

Rare recordings of William Burroughs in conversation and readings from the 1970s - 80s. This is an essential insight into the mind and writings of arguably the most influential writer from the Beat generation. Through his mordant satire of cultural aspirations, homosexual eroticism and political power, Burroughs focuses our gaze into the abyss. His cold language creates beauty through a terror that we are just able to bear.

In 1966, 10 New York artists and 30 engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories collaborated on a series of innovative dance, music and theatre performances, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, held in October at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City. The artists were John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. Archival material has been assembled into 10 films, each of whic…

Nearly 40 years after her passing, Judee Sill remains one of the most important and singular talents of the Laurel Canyon scene. Her two releases for David Geffen's Asylum (1971's Judee Sill and 1973's Heart Food) are critically celebrated masterpieces of orchestral folk. Her songs have been covered by artists as diverse as The Turtles and Will Oldham, and her fans include Jim O'Rourke, Devendra Banhart, Graham Nash, Sleater Kinney and more. This amazing collection of previously unreleased live …

This is a reissue (in 1000 numbered copies only) of the second album Contact by '60s electronic legends Silver Apples, originally released by Kapp Records in 1969. This enigmatic duo, armed only with percussion, vocals and an early, specialized synthesizer, is often credited with giving the musical world its first electronic album, as well as having a significant influence on bands which followed in their wake; bands such as Ultravox and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. Silver Apples, named af…

Above all, COBRA is a musical experience. Words cannot convey. Listen, just listen, and you're liable to find yourself lost in the magic of the game, and the music. Cobra is an unpublished but recorded and frequently performed musical composition by John Zorn that was conceived as a loosely structured system, or game piece, for a group of musical improvisors and a prompter.Zorn completed Cobra on October 9, 1984. The composition consists of a set of cues notated on cards, and rules corresponding…

Created in 1973 by two former MAGMA musicians, Yochk'o SEFFER (Saxophone) and François "FATON" CAHEN (Keyboards), ZAO displays a music both intriguing and complex. The band offers an original mixture between Progressive rock, jazz, traditional Magyar influences and modern classical composers (BARTOK, STRAVINSKI...). Sophisticated meters are punctuated by wind instruments and piano, putting the stress on strange-sounding themes. "Live !" is a never-issued album, recorded at the famous French club…

Created in 1973 by two former MAGMA musicians, Yochk'o SEFFER (Saxophone) and François "FATON" CAHEN (Keyboards), ZAO displays a music both intriguing and complex. The band offers an original mixture between Progressive rock, jazz, traditional Magyar influences and modern classical composers (BARTOK, STRAVINSKI...). Sophisticated meters are punctuated by wind instruments and piano, putting the stress on strange-sounding themes. "Live !" is a never-issued album, recorded at the famous French club…

At this point Wyatt was in between work with the Soft Machine and Matching Mole and was aided by the likes of Elton Dean (alto saxello), David Sinclair (organ), Mark Charig (cornet), Neville Whitehead (bass), Mark Ellidge (piano) & Cyril Ayers (percussion). Wyatt himself on drums, mouth, piano, organ. The album opens & closes with a baffling space-jazz 'cover' of Gil Evans' 'Las Vegas Tango' that is quite deep, and proceeds through various settings of psychedelic jazz, Gong-like jamming and free…

The Soft Machine plunged deeper into jazz and contemporary electronic music on this pivotal release, which incited the Village Voice to call it a milestone achievement when it was released. It's a double album of stunning music, with each side devoted to one composition -- two by Mike Ratledge and one each by Hopper and Wyatt with substantial help from a number of backup musicians, including Canterbury mainstays Elton Dean and Jimmy Hastings The Ratledge songs come closest to fusion jazz althoug…

A beautiful boxed edition with an outstanding version of Satie's piano music performed by Ciccolini, who is totally inside this music and makes the most of its contrasts of mood and atmosphere. Ciccolini's playing is pliant and graceful, and under his fingers the music seems to breathe and come alive: in many ways this is the most distintive and 'definitive' Satie piano music

The People United Will Never Be Defeated! by the left-wing composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski is a landmark in American piano literature. The work comprises 36 variations on a protest song of the same name by the Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Almost every bar is laden with pianistic virtuosity, yet the listener is carried through some very complex music in a wholly natural way. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: from angry, highly-energiz…

The Desert Music is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by Steve Reich based on texts by William Carlos Williams. It consists of five movements, and in both its tempi and arrangement of thematic material, the piece is in a characteristic arch form (ABCBA). The piece is scored for a chorus of 27 voices: nine sopranos, and six each of altos, tenors and basses. It calls for a woodwind section comprising four flutes with three doubling on piccolo, four oboes with three doubling on cor …

Arvo Pärt: A Portrait. His Works, his Life. It contains 2 CDs with over 2½ hours of music, richly illustrated with rarely seen photographs, and a detailed essay by Nick Kimberley. The music of Arvo Pärt draws on traditions stretching back across the centuries, yet it could only have been written by someone who had lived through the complexities and contradictions of the last half-century. In his native Estonia, his early music incurred the wrath of the Soviet authorities; when he moved to the We…

Ballet Mécanique (1924) was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmaker/artist Fernand Léger. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history. In concert performance, the "ballet" is not a show of human dancers but of mecha…

In 1982 Philip Glass became the first composer since Aaron Copland to join the CBS Masterworks label. Glass had formed the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968, but it wasn't until his opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) that he achieved great critical and popular success. His first album for Masterworks, Glassworks, tripled all sales projections, pleasing audiences, critics and Glass himself: "I'm very pleased with it, the way it's received in performance. The pieces seem to have an emotional quality t…

Four works by James Tenney, each paired with music by an American composer to whom the Tenney composition is dedicated. The four 'Forms' compositions share with their senior partners -- Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Stefan Wolpe, and Morton Feldman -- a focus on sound and, in a more intuitive way, mood. Tenney's music draws upon an unorthodox and original approach to harmony. The compositions include James Tenney's 'Form 1' (1993) and Edgard Varese's 'Octandre' (1923), James Tenney's 'Form 2' (1993)…

Morton Feldman’s String Quartet (1979) follows over a decade of compositional activity where the composer was constantly occupied with a new piece for orchestra. In the eleven years before the Quartet he produced fifteen orchestral works, beginning with On Time and the Instrumental Factor (1969) up to Violin and Orchestra (1979). In the following eight years only three orchestral works were written, The Turfan Fragments (1980), Coptic Light (1986) and For Samuel Beckett (1987). With the String Q…

Performed by Daan Vandewalle (piano), 4 hours, 24 minutes worth. "Alvin Curran's music-making embraces all the contradictions (composed/improvises, tonal/atonal, maximal/minimal) in a serene dialectical encounter. His more than 100 works feature taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers, computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion and chorus. Whether in the intimate form of his well-known solo performances, or pure chamber music, experimental radio works or large-scale s…

Arthur Magazine proudly presents our newest release Paradise Now: The Living Theatre in Amerika DVD featuring rare, never-before-distributed films and a bacchanal of revolutionary multimedia documents from The Living Theatre's historic and influential '68-'69 American tour. A fulminating art-meets-life installation brought to you in collaboration with The Living Theatre, The Ira Cohen Akashic Project and Saturnalia Media Rites of the Dreamweapon. Transform your living, work or performance space.…

Though they only released two albums (1974's Musik Von Harmonia and 1975's Deluxe), in their brief existence Harmonia were considered one of the most important and influential bands of the German Krautrock/Kosmiche scene. Composed of Michael Rother from Neu! and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius from Cluster, this live recording captures Harmonia at their peak on March 23, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Previously unreleased and featuring 5 extended, never before heard songs…

Ruthann recorded a single early '70s Reprise album of superb loner folk psych with fragile singing and delicate acoustic guitar playing...stark and deep meditations on lost love, topsy-turvy moons, ringing bells... First time on CD. Detailed liner notes, rare photos. And oh yeah, she was the writer of the Association's hit 'Windy.

Released as a short-run private press LP in 1965, Fate Is Only Once has long been a coveted collectible among American Primitive guitar enthusiasts. The only other recorded work by Taussig surfaced on the out of-print Takoma LP Contemporary Guitar Spring '67alongside John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Max Ochs and Bukka White. 'Dorian Sonata' was recently featured on the acclaimed acoustic guitar compilation Imaginational Anthem Vol. 1, and now the album is here. remastered, with original liner notes and…

It is no exaggeration to say that Limpe Fuchs' musical creations really have a life of their own, whether the sounds are produced by conventional instruments, vocal chords, or even from objects she found or constructed specifically for that purpose. Her music is characterized, especially when she is playing the ballastring instruments, by the reverberating humming of the strings, rich in overtones, and by the mysterious echoes emanating from stones. For Limpe Fuchs, music means setting out on a …

Essential reissue of this LAFMS cassette-only release from 1977 -- the first in a series of archival LAFMS release from the label based in the store that was ground zero for the orginal movement to begin with -- Poo-Bah Records! Great booklet with new liner notes by Dennis, design by Tom Recchion. "Dennis Duck Goes Disco was originally released as a hand-made cassette in 1977. Only 20 were made, numbered and given to friends. The album was made entirely with a phonograph and records, utilizing s…

Kind of unbelievable that this has been reissued -- out of nowhere and a very pleasant surprise. Sondheim released 2 of the most-out ESP-Disks (Ritual All 7-70 & T'Other Little Tune and here is his prior Riverboat label album. First ever reissue of The Songs, the debut recording by Alan Sondheim & Ritual All 770, originally released on Riverboat Records (later recordings appeared on ESP Disk). Recorded in March 1967 and included on the legendary Nurse With Wound list of experimental recordings, …

This Brazilian classic finally gets a proper U.S. release -- one of the greatest psychedelic albums of the late '60s, and a key part of the Tropicalia movement as well! The record is easily the most tripped-out album ever from Gal Costa -- far more sinister than Gal's debut of a few months before. The session was still recorded with full arrangements by the legendary Rogerio Duprat (who'd worked previously with Costa, Os Mutantes, and others), but it also features a lot heavier guitar and a blaz…

Smegma were formed as a reaction to the band's perceptions of how horrible things were in the '70s. 'We moved up to Portland just as the Los Angeles Free Music Society came out of the closet. There was the whole punk scene and a rebirth of things, but when we left, it was the deadest, worst time to be there unless you were into glam.' This disgust is reflected in the tone of the early classics Pigface Chant, Flash Cards, Disco Diarrhea and Glamour Girl 1941. The crown jewel, perhaps, of the earl…

Group improvisations intended to accompany a film on the Viking space probe in 1975. Includes the original Doo-Dooettes lineup; Dennis Duck, Juan Gomez, Fredrik Nilsen, Tom Recchion, Harold Schroeder. The 7" includes a Doo-Dooette version of Faust's 'Picnic On A Frozen River' recorded in 1978. Packaged in 7" gatefold jacket. Limited edition. First time available. The release includes: The Doo-Dooettes performing Faust's 'Picnic On A Frozen River' 7", CD of Think Space. Hand numbered edition of 7…

This edit of Le-Forte Four is wedged between their former incarnation as The Patients and their debut LP that was put together in the electronic music studio at Cal Arts in 1974. Edited by Rick Potts in 1973. All the references made in their debut Bikini Tennis Shoes LP, from Speed Racer to Zappa to Looneytoons to the Moog, is very clearly foretold in the 'Boris The Spider/Priceless' edit. Includes Extended Grunge and Arguments From The Patients reworking of The Who's 'Boris The Spider' that was…

Kodachrome is a sparkling collection of Raymond Scott's idiosyncratic orchestral music, performed by the 60-piece Metropole Orchestra. All compositions make their CD debut here. With Kodachrome, the Raymond Scott legacy grows yet again. After Scott disbanded his legendary 'Quintet' in 1939, he formed the first of his many orchestras. Scott continued to compose, this time for a larger canvas, and some of his more historically fascinating work often went commercially unrecorded, performed only on …

The full title of this landmark collection, Otra Musica: Tape Music, Fluxus & Free Improvisation in Buenos Aires 1963-70, says a tremendous amount this overwhelming package in & of itself. Though he has only recently come to international attention through his recordings for Hatart as a leader and with Franz Koglmann, Argentinean clarinetist and alto saxophonist Guillermo Gregorio had a fascinating earlier artistic incarnation in Buenos Aires. Heretofore totally unknown, these recordings bring t…

Truly exxential! The ultimate collection from the legendary inventors of krautrock. This 5 CD set contains ALL Faust's early classic albums, a John Peel session, and unreleased early material. The 40 page booklet is stuffed with unpublished photos, stills from Super 8 footage from the famous studio at Wumme, and revealing interviews with many of the key players in the Faust story. CDs: Faust (the famous clear first album), So Far (the famous black second album), The Faust Tapes (for the first ti…

Minimal music and its strangely fascinating suspended sound animation has long held cult status in the musical world. On this CD Fabrizio Ottaviucci offers more new innovations with Terry Riley's 'Keyboard Studies #1' and '#2'. The keyboard studies are a few pages with short musical formulas and a long 'user's guide' requiring a lot of thought and organizational energy before things can be put into practice. The pianist soon recognized that one interpreter alone couldn't realize the tricky polyp…

Double CD set compiling the complete music for solo tape by Luigi Nono. CD2 also includes two italian radio broadcasts (tracks 2.2 and 2.3) meant to be spoken introductions to the broadcast of Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto In Auschwitz and Contrappunto Dialettico Alla Mente respectively. This two Disk set allows you here to survey Luigi Nono's contributions to this creative trajectory who also utilized live performers with electronics. Nono thought of the electronic genre as incredibly suitable to…

An amazing CD that compiles most of the Maderna electronic music production on magnetic tape from 1956 to 1962, all tapes created at the Studio di Fonologia Musicale della RAI Radio televisione Italiana in Milan. Bruno Maderna is yet regarded as one of the giants of post-war modernism, becoming one of the first Italians to produce electronic works. But it was not in technical progress that he saw music's future. Like his contemporaries, he also adopted 12-tone writing in the 1950s, yet Maderna r…

Founded in New York in 1971, The Kitchen is internationally known as a leading center for video, music, dance, performance, new media and literature. Orange Mountain Music has begun the restoration of audio reels from performances at The Kitchen with the goal of producing a series of CDs entitled From The Kitchen Archives. New Music, New York 1979, the debut release in this series, is a two-disc set offering re-mastered recordings from the landmark concerts of 'New Music, New York: A Festival of…

JAPROCKSAMPLER is an exploration of the clash between traditional, conservative Japanese values and the wild rock'n'roll renegades of the 1960s and '70s. It tells the tale of key artists in Japanese post-war culture, from itinerant art-house poets to violent refusenik rock groups with a penchant for plane hijacking, and rounds up the seminal japrock albums. UK-only publication, hardcover, 302 pages, with 16 page inset of color cover reproductions. Impressive work and a nice followup to Cope's de…