Reissues
Works for Instruments
Edition RZ presents John McGuire's Works For Instruments. Performers: Ensemble Modern -- Julia Rempe (soprano); Pellegrini-Quartett: Antonio Pellegrini, Thomas Hofer (violin); Fabio Marano (viola); Helmut Menzler (violoncello); musikFabrik: Hermann Kretzschmar, Paulo Alvarez, Irmela Roelcke, Eun-Ju Kim, Ulrich Löffler, Jürgen Kruse (piano), Christine Chapman, Jodie Lawson, Charles Putnam, Rohan Richards (horns), Dirk Rothbrust, Carlos Tarcha (percussion). Each of the compositions of post-minimal…
Scott 3
Scott 3, originally released in 1969, marked a big change in Walker's approach to albums as, for the first time, the record is dominated by his original compositions. In fact, the only other songwriter that makes it onto the album is Walker's idol, Belgium's legendary singer/songwriter Jacques Brel. Scott 3 again features string heavy production courtesy of Wally Scott, though it occasionally moves out of pop ballad territory into a more cinematic feel influenced by Ennio Morricone, among others…
Scott 2
Originally released in 1968, Scott 2 made it all the way to number one on the UK pop charts, perhaps the strangest number one hit in pop history. Continuing with his orchestral obsession, Scott 2 features over-the-top string and horn arrangements, occasionally veering into dangerously schmaltzy territory. This production style is in drastic contrast to the lyrical content, songs of despair, prostitution, homosexuality, and brutal honesty, indicting the same glamorous and glitzy lifestyle that hi…
Scott
One of the most enigmatic figures in pop music history Scott Walker (nee Scott Engel) first saw massive success in England with his band The Walker Brothers in 1965. Not really brothers, nor were they British, the trio left Hollywood seeking fame in England, and they found it there for a time with their particular brand of orchestrated pop. Following the group's demise in 1967, Walker set out to pursue solo stardom in perhaps the most peculiar way possible, with over-the-top baroque pop songs ow…
Concerto delle menti
Pholas Dactylus have left, with Concerto delle Menti, a unique example of avantgarde prog containing only spoken lyrics that can be appealing to the most adventurous listeners even because the musical background is intense and mesmerising; the album contains a long suite divided onto the two sides of the record with no breaks, and even a rare single was released from it. The first representation of Concerto delle Menti came in the winter of 1972, in Cornate d'Adda. The group had a very good live…
Corona - For Away - Piano Distance - Undisturbed Rest
Performed by Roger Woodward (piano). Recorded Decca Studio No.3, West Hampstead, London, 4 May 1973. This is the first International CD release featuring this recording. Was first released on Decca's HEAD label in 1974. For Takemitsu, sound can be beautiful without being significant, can signify beauty without making 'sense'. The quality of the music is thus elusive: it is not something one must necessarily 'understand', but perhaps rather absorb and accept. His works have, all the same, qualiti…
Complete Piano Works
Tōru Takemitsu was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Though largely self-taught, Takemitsu is recognised for his skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre, drawing from a wide range of influences, including jazz, popular music, avant-garde procedures and traditional Japanese music, in a harmonic idiom largely derived from the music of Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. In 1958, the international attention he drew with his Requiem for st…
Come un Vecchio Incensiere all'Alba di un Villaggio Deserto
Transcendent and phantasmagorical work from one of the premier visionaries of the Italian cosmic rock continuum that includes the likes of Franco Battiato, Pierrot Lunaire, Franco Leprino and Arturo Stalteri (to name check just a few), and his work here on "Comme Un Vecchio...", while absent some of the blasted rockist momentum of his debut LP "Aria" ripples and shudders across your consciousness with such palpable psychotropic force, a contact high is almost a forgone conclusion. The deeply fol…
in C
Features three Terry Riley pieces: "In C", "In DO(M)", "In Moscow". "In April 2000 the American composer and performer on the keyboard Terry Riley performed in Moscow: one evening at Moscow Conservatory's Rachmaninoff Hall, which was the closing evening of the SKIF #4 (the Sergey Kuryokhin International Festival), and in two days at a large-scale concert at the Cultural Center 'DOM', which was the opening concert of the 13th 'Alternativa' festival of contemporary music. At the opening concert of…
Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz / Sofferte Onde Serene / Contrappun
Luigi Nono began Como una ola de fuerza y luz (Like a wave of strength and light) as a piece for piano and orchestra in 1971, at the instigation of Maurizio Pollini. While the composition was in progress, Nono learned of the death of a young Chilean revolutionary and recast the work in his memory, with added parts for soprano soloist and tape. The resulting half hour work is clearly a lament, encompassing various expressions of grief, from stunned sorrow to anguish to the fiercest rage. As a kin…
Onze Danses Pour Combattre La Migraine
Onze Danses Pour Combattre la Migraine (French for "Eleven Dances for Fighting Migraine") is the debut album by Belgian avant-garde rock band Aksak Maboul. It was largely the work of one of the band's co-founders, Marc Hollander and was credited to Marc Hollander/Aksak Maboul. It was released on LP in 1977 on a Belgian independent record label, Kamikaze Records, and later re-released twice on Hollander's own Crammed Discs label: on LP in 1981, and on CD in 2003. Onze Danses Pour Combattre la Mig…
Clear or Cloudy
With the passing of Gyorgy Ligeti on 12 June, 2006 at the age of 83 in Vienna following a lengthy illness, the musical world has lost a true maverick. An independent thinker, Ligeti charted a singular route in his music with the evolution of a voice that is hard to ignore. In this respect one is tempted to put him alongside figures such as Boulez, Cage, Stockhausen and Xenakis when considering the major shapers of late 20th century composition.
Tre
Archimedes Badkar (Archimedes Bathtub) was a Swedish group formed by percussionist/pianist/composer Per Tjernberg that existed between 1972 -1980, recording four LPs (including a 2 LP set) that has since achieved cult status in several camps. World Music was not yet a household term, but for once that description seems perfect for what Archimedes Badkar must definitely be regarded as one of the pioneering bands. Several of the members had travelled and studied music in North and South India, Mor…
Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui
The sixth edition of the SYR series is a live recording of the April 12, 2003 benefit concert held at and for The Anthology Film Archives, the international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of avant-garde and independent cinema. In addition to screening films for the public, AFA houses a film museum, research library and art gallery.
The event, which raised money for the Archives and celebrated the life and work of avant-garde film maker Stan Brakhage, featured Sonic Youth prov…
Heaven's End
Remastered CD reissue + additional CD with bonus tracks and Peel Session. Had Loop been present at Woodstock, they probably would have hatched a plan to obtain all the brown acid that Wavy Gravy warned spectators not to take. After hearing his declaration that "The brown acid's a bummer, man!," Robert Hampson and his droogs would have likely gone incognito as security staff, offering to rid the concert goers of the bad trips waiting to be had. They would have procedeed to ingest what they could …
Fade Out
Remastered CD reissue + additional CD with bonus tracks, guitar loops and Peel Session. Distinguishing one Loop record from another is nearly as tricky as doing the same for the Ramones or AC/DC. Since Loop more or less stuck to one thing, remaining consistently great and gradually developing an experimentalist streak throughout their brief lifespan, the actual sound of each record is what separates one from the next. Aside from increasing control over their instruments, there isn't a great deal…
Rosea
The back cover of the album sums it up: "music is difficult to describe, but surely full of Elves and Gnomes!" And that it is... subterranean drippings, disembodied cackles and the slow dragging of concrete . Behind it all, a pensive score of shimmering and hesitating to reveal itself too much for fear of scaring its hosts. A low, sparse cacaphony of the Old Country, drawn from times long before it was paved over for easy transit. Ora albums are rather obscure, so best of fortune in your own sy…
Trax Reprint 2: Notterossa/Rednight
Much more than a simple record label, the TRAX experience coordinated from 1981 to 1987 by Vittore Baroni and Piermario Ciani represented a very original contribution to the "networking culture" that, making its first steps with Fluxus, Mail Art and other avantgarde circuits of the Sixties and Seventies, largely anticipated the advent of Internet and its interactive modalities. Twenty years after the end of a project that involved over 500 international artists and musicians in the creation of p…
Different Shades Of Blue
This release is the reissue of the original one, once released in different form, as a limited edition cd-r on Tom Greenwood's U-Sound Archive (Vol. 19). Improvisation recorded on February 12th, 2004 at MCIAA's Space Room, Torino, Italy (no overdubs/ no outtakes). This new vinyl edition is a different version, remastered and re-edited of "Different shades of Blue". Furthermore, this special edition will include also the un-edited artwork originally made by Roberto Opalio and completely inspired …
From The Earth To The Spheres Vol. 6
My Cat Is An Alien also share a split CD with Turntable-manipulator Christian Marclay and cellist Okkyung Lee, and it is their live collaboration “Rubbing” that opens the album. Full of disjointed sounds, scratches and stabs of cello, the piece is a rollercoaster of sonic experimentation, the two players complementing each other to create a wonderfully playful piece of music. After A tentative sounding opening “Beyond The Limit Of The Stars/Beyond The Limit Of The Grooves” Slowly begins to becom…