Reissues
Aleph
In his liner notes to Aleph, Terry Riley explains that the work was created as "an improvised meditation on the various meanings of this supreme emanation from the Hebrew alphabet." It was made using a Korg Triton Studio 88 synth with his own sound design, and employing a just intonation scale used by Lou Harrison on his last work, "Nek Chand for Just Intonation National Steel Guitar," which was performed by Riley's son Gyan on the album Serenado. Riley has been using the scale for some time. Th…
Electronic Noise Improvisation 1999
After spending the first half of the 1970s globetrotting with Asia's premiere avant-garde band--Takehisa Kosugi's Taj Mahal Travellers (where Seiji Nagai played trumpet and keyboards)--Nagai continued to study and play music, particularly Indian music (drones) and electronic/computer generated music. In 1999 he finally released Electronic Noise Improvisation, with the help of Koichi Watanabe, Koji Kawai and Minoru Yonemoto. Here, as in the days of TMT, Nagai concentrates on creating dense …
Dé-Coll/Age Musik
Awesome reissue of the vinyl-lp originally released 1983 by Multhipla (Cramps) and focused on his de-collage tecnique: much of Wolf Vostell's work deals with the idea of de-collage just as it sounds, rendering the whole into parts. He put this into practice with video and with sound, with his sound contributions being of interest here. Real-life events, dialogues, and existing recorded materials are spliced apart, ragged at the ends. From liner notes: "Some years ago I asked Giuseppe Chiari 'Wha…
Dolmen Music
Meredith Monk and her vocal troupe cut a line between experimental theatre and music, marking a passage through the Ancient Greek tragedy, the opera, world-music, the archaic ritual and the mystical chant. It started with "Gotham Lullaby", presenting a contralto over a desolate and stark piano sonata. Then "Travelling" set a feverish gypsy dance, a wild ritual stirring the primeval forces at play. The sonata returned in "The Tale", as the backbone to an offbeat pantomime/ theatrical performance.…
Das Buch Der Klänge
The Book of Sounds rediscovers the piano as an instrument of timbre and tuneful sound with all its possibilities of dynamics, color, and resonance. Consisting of twelve pieces composed in the minimalist style, the works are written in a simple consistent texture, without climax or development in the traditional sense. According to Mark Dickson of Sound Choice, "On this album, pianist/composer Hans Otte employs a somewhat serialist approach to explore the solo acoustic piano's range as a harmonic…
Sacred Hymns
A series of piano transcriptions of some solemn, now-dark, now-affirmative religious hymns by one G.I. Gurdjieff, with none of the usual flourishes and heady flights usually associated with Keith Jarrett's solo records. Jarrett assumes the proper devotional position, playing with a steady tread but always with attention to dynamic extremes, producing a gorgeously rich piano tone with plenty of bass.
Piano Piano
Bureau B reissues Piano Piano by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1991 on the Italian label Materiali Sonori. In classical music, "pp" (piano piano = pianissimo) is a dynamic indication of particularly soft music. And Piano Piano is a very soft, quiet album. Roedelius assumes the role of a fairytale character with his piano music, transported to a strange, fantastical landscape where, filled with awe and amazement, he tries to get his bearings. What he see…
Selbstportrait
LP version on 180 gram vinyl. This is the third solo album by German keyboardist Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released in 1979 on Sky Records. Alongside his ongoing work with Cluster and Harmonia, Roedelius amassed an almost incalculable number of musical notations during his time in the idyllic Weser Uplands. Fleeting sketches, spontaneous improvisations, implied miniatures, rough compositions -- Roedelius recorded virtually every idea he came up with outside the studio sessions on h…
Lustwandel
180 gram LP version. The third studio album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released by Sky Records in 1981, fulfilled a dream he had long cherished. A series of chamber music pieces, with grand piano solos taking center stage in some places, archaised percussion patterns in others. Lustwandel represents a logical progression, following on from Jardin Au Fou (re-released on Bureau B in 2009). Both albums were recorded at Paragon Studios in 1979 and produced by Peter Baumann (Tangerine Drea…
The Diary Of The Unforgotten (Selbstportrait VI)
LP version. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. The Diary Of The Unforgotten is a collection of recordings from the years 1972 to 1978 and was first released in 1990 (with different artwork). Between the years of 1972 and 1978, Hans-Joachium Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, later joined by Michael Rother, lived out on a country estate in the idyllic, diminutive settlement of Forst in the Weser Uplands. It was here that the Harmonia albums, legendary recordings with Brian Eno and various splendid Cluster …
Wenn Der Sujdwind Weht
Wenn Der Südwind Weht ("When The South Wind Is Blowing") is the seventh solo album by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, originally released on Sky Records in 1981 (also known under the title Selbstportrait IV). "Where on earth does Roedelius find such a beautiful array of notes?" wonders Asmus Tietchens in his sleeve notes for this reissue. Not an unreasonable question. Roedelius, a pioneer of ambient music, Krautrock and, arguably, synthesizer pop, member of such seminal bands as Cluster and Harmonia, …
Jardin Au Fou
LP version; includes all the original album tracks. Composer/poet Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Kluster, Cluster, Harmonia) is one of the most prolific musicians of the German avant-garde and a key figure in the birth of Krautrock, synthesizer pop and ambient music. Jardin Au Fou is his second solo album, originally issued in 1979 on France's Egg label, and produced by former Tangerine Dream member Peter Baumann. This record was all the more noteworthy as it bore no resemblance whatsoever to what…
Flammende Herzen
Michael Rother (half of the influential Krautrock group Neu! and a founding member of Kraftwerk and Harmonia) recorded this first solo album with producer Conny Plank in 1976. Rother's signature guitar sound, the mechanical percussion (Jaki Liebezeit of Can) and the simple yet outerworldly anthemic melodies make Flammende Herzen an outstanding and visionary record."Finally reissued on vinyl, this is the 1976 solo debut from from Neu!/Harmonia guitarist Michael Rother. This would be the fir…
Carved Into Roses / Infinityland / Singles
Deluxe triple-pack CD that restores two classic Skullflower albums to print, with a bonus disc of contemporaneous singles. Recorded together and originally conceived as a double CD back in the dark ages of 1995, "Carved Into Roses" and "Infinityland" find the band making a transition from the "heavy" riffs of their early days to a more free-form sound that continues to this day to drive leader Matthew Bower's many guises (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, Mirag, etc). Sporting a revamped …
Emtidi
First legit reissue of this debut album from 1970, predating their most commonly known Saat album from 1972. "Emtidi are best remembered nowadays for their classic album Saat, but prior to that release, the duo formed by Maik Hirschfeldt and Dolly Holmes had already released a marvelous LP. This superb debut album is filled with charming folk-oriented material. 6, 7 and 12 string acoustic guitars and beautiful flute arrangements surround the lovely female/male duet voices of Hirschfeldt and…
The Dossier Years
After leaving Subterranean Records, Z' ev moved on to the fabulous German label Dossier for his next two albums. "Schönste Muziek" and "Bust This!" were released in 1986/1988 and bring you the classical Z'ev percussion sound. Rarely has he been more innovative and more experimental in his work, a great variety of sounds is being created out of all kinds of percussion instruments. On this CD re-issue, both these albums have been carefully remastered. Possibly a perfect starting point if you want …
What Does The Brain Have To Do With It
Z'EV has been exploring and breaking ground in the audio and textual fields since the mid 1970s. Although best-known for his metal-based percussive performances, uns, his electronics and vocal-based whirlwind, was one of the most innovative (and individual) audio experiments of the early 1980s. uns's combination of sound poetics and voice treatments with dense sonic landscapes resulted in challenging, unique, and rewarding audio. A historical testament to the challenge uns presented appea…
La tentation de saint-Antoine
Another master piece from Michel Chion reissued by Nuun in this serie directed by Lionel Marchetti. 'Concrète series by Lionel Marchetti. A concrete melodrama consisting of a prologue and nine tableaux adapted from Flaubert. With Pierre Schaeffer (as St Anthony), Michèle Bokanowski (Ennoïa, the Narrator), Art Leroi-Bibbs (the Preacher), Korinna Rahls-Frisius (the Queen of Sheba), Michel Chion (the Announcer). Jointly commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the INA.GRM and radio Fra…
Jimmy Polaris – Live at Henie Onstad Art Centre
This release documents the music Masselys made for the commisioned audio-visual piece, Jimmy Polaris, by visual artist Christopher Nielsen, animator Matt Willis-Jones and Masselys.Nielsen and Willis-Jones worked together on Norway’s most expensive animation film; Slipp Jimmy Fri from 2006. For Jimmy Polaris they used early raw animation snippets from the film’s preproduction phase. Nielsen and Willis-Jones then real-time manipulated these sketches into a psychedelic visual overload, which Massel…
Tonal Image Films 1968-1991 CD
Rolf Aamot (b.1934) is a Norwegian electronic painter, graphic artist, film director and tonal image composer. Since the early 60s he has worked with the relationship between image and sound and he is regarded as one of the pioneers of audio-visual art in Scandinavia. Aamot has collaborated with artists and composers such as Bjørg Lødøen, Arne Nordheim and Bjørn Fongaard and his work Evolution, made together with Nordheim in 1966 was the the first time the television was used as a creative mediu…