Reissues
BaraMon
The Tenjo Sajiki Company was an avant garde theater troupe formed by Terayama Shuji & was an audience participation street theatre designed to shock along the lines of the Living Theatre. Popular music was always incorporated in their projects, and so lots of rocker runaway teens were quickly attracted. By the early 70s, J.A. Ceazer and Kuni Kawauchi (of the GS group Happenings Four) had joined, and the music got really fucking weird along with the performances. Instead of just staging a version…
Saraba Hakobune
Another rarity is this original soundtrack album to Terayama Shuji's last movie with music by JA Seazer (Tenjo Sajiki, JA Caesar). Released in 1984, it was Terayama's last completed movie and Seazer's last contribution to his visionary and reactionary world. Saraba Habobune's soundtrack is just stunningly beautiful, far removed from Seazer's trademark bombastic scores. Instead it ventures into more pastoral and almost meditative psychedelic realms filled with traditional string plucking, eerie f…
Den'en Ni Shisu
Deluxe first reissue of this 1974 J.A. Ceasar-performed theatrical underground classic. A nice example of the recent flood of late 1960's-early 1970's psych reissues from Japan that are in the more fluxus/theatrical vein. The period saw political upheaval and protesting amidst much of the country's students and youth; and while the underground movements weren't as widespread as say those in the USA, the pockets of artistic institutions that responded to political causes (like the decimation of n…
Hatsukoi Jigoku Hen
Top notch and bang up identical reissue job; gatefold mini-LP style sleeve complete with inserts and obi. This was originally a private pressing on Terayama Shuji's own Tenjosajiki label. The disc is a soundtrack to his like-named movie, of which the title can be roughly translated as 'Volume of First Love Hell.' Psychedelic insanity, spoken word insertions and has included great vocal participations by sublime vocalist Carmen Maki of Blues Creation. Great disc that rarely surfaces with everythi…
Sho o Suteyo, Machi e Deyou
Reissued in 2003 by Show Boat/Sky Station - SWAX-62, the English title for this album is: Throw Away The Books, Let's Go Out on the Street and is subtitled: A High-Teen Symphony. There is a film soundtrack of the same title, but this recording contains entirely different material from the soundtrack. This album is based live recording of Tenjo Sajiki's 7th performance Sho o Suteyo ,Machi e Deyou at Asagaya Kokaido in October 1970. To add some studio workings, the performance was reconstructed an…
Canti Illuminati
long out of print, this is an overdue reissue of American composer Alvin Curran's third record. Following his involvement in the live electronics performance group Musica Elettronica Viva, Curran embarked on a more personal pursuit utilizing his own voice and a patchwork of minimal synthesizer and field recordings. The two parts of Canti Illuminati show clear affinities to the vocal style of Pandit Pran Nath and…
Red Buddah
Recorded in 1970 -- first issue 1971. First CD reissue of this incredible album of Stomu Yamash'ta. The 2 tracks performed by Yamash'ta are purely percussional. Yamash'ta is renowned worldwide for his work as an avant garde composer, and is deeply involved in the fields of 'musique contemporaine'. He also approached electronic music in the late 70s through a collaboration with Klaus Schulze." The 1st piece is composed for metal strings, tambury, cymbal, music saw, mandorin harp; the 2nd for stee…
Primitive Expression
First release of this archival material by this French rock band, best known for their classic Catalyse album (originally issued by BYG in 1970; CD is Spalax 14823). This posthumous archives release is comprising of Ame Son’s Catalyse period including when they called themselves Les Primitiv’s, some of their recording sessions from 71 and some post-second chapter mid-70’s recordings. Fairly aptly titled Primitive Expression, most of these tracks present on this album are not in their polished st…
Persian Surgery Dervishes
1993 CD reissue, original recordings from 1971/2. Terry Riley: electric organ + feed back. This is the reprint, in CD format (2 CD), of one of the masterpieces of American minimal music: Persian Surgery Dervishes by Terry Riley. Originally issued by Shandar in France as double LP album, the recording went out-of-stock in the early eighties and since then became a collector's item. Recorded in two different concerts in 1971 and 1972 in Los Angeles and Paris, Persian Surgery Dervishes presents two…
Long Night
Long Night, a 2 hour electronic drone work produced by Jim O'Rourke in 1990 around the time of his graduation from music school had been buried in the archives along with several other electronic music pieces Jim had created before he went about to explore other musical territories. Unearthed, remastered and now released for the first time, its ageless qualities shine as brightly as ever.
Rainbow Electronics 2
1996 release on Jim O'Rourke's old label, surprisingly repressed for 2008. First non-reissue on this label - an unreleased companion to the 1990 Alchemy label masterpiece. The designation 'Rainbow' contrasts with the odd colorlessness of the many noise records. Like Voice Crack, this is power electronics at its most detailed, most subtly varied, and most exhaustively kinetic. It doesn't stop. It's a thrill every two seconds, for seventy-five minutes... It splits into halves, quarters, and more u…
Amanita
Pratically impossible to make it brief here, HGeerken: author, composer, musician, film-maker, performer, actor, mycologist, archivist, stager of exhibitions, publisher of numerous authors from the circle of literary expressionism and dada, lumberjack, bumble-bee-keeper. during his six-year stay in Egypt in the 60's he is co-founder (together with Salah Ragab and Edu Vizvari) of the Cairo Jazz Band as well as founder and head of the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble. played in various music groups: Embry…
Noise As a Language
Abstemious Austrian composer who committed suicide in 2007. Two long pieces, one that builds up from violins all making a slightly different type of scratching. The second piece uses computer processing, and does a great job of establishing a droning floor and then dropping through to a lower frequency beneath, or suddenly revealing a pulse without simply fading things in & out. Comes with a book that contains an interview with Zibigiew Karkowski (Weirdo Records)“So the point is that so mu…
Saskatchewan sound installations
Gordon Monahan conjures up the prairies of Saskatchewan with an impressive series of varied tracks utilising his fascinating installations. The piercing cry of the 'Theremin Pendulum' begins an auditory odyssey that takes us across a soundscape both harsh and delicate. A sense of openness infects these pieces, as Monahan shows us once again that he is a master of spacing and pacing. This cd includes a Quicktime video of Monahan's Aeolian String Installation at the Claybank Brick Factory, and a 1…
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (1964-1967)
The accidental matriarch at the head of the recent folk revival, Vashti Bunyan had been championed by everyone from Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Adem as one of folk music's great lost voices. After the reissue of her 1970 LP Just Another Diamond Day, Vashti was coaxed out of retirement to record the Max Richter-produced Lookaftering, an album which featured guest appearances from many of the nu-folk crowd's movers and shakers and formally reintroduced her to the contemporary music scene. …
Just Another Diamond Day
Recently voted one of the Top 100 British Albums of all time by the OMM, this CD re-release of Vashti Bunyan's 'Just Another Diamond Day' features the likes of Robert Kirby (of Nick Drake fame), Robin Williamson (Incredible String Band) and the Fairport Convention's Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick, it is also regularly cited as inspiration by Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Scout Nibblet... Possibly sounding a bit naïve in retrospect, much of 'Just Another Diamond Day' seems to exist somewher…
Beautiful blood
One of the most exciting experimental music artists currently active in North America, he has earned a growing following around the world. This recording is what you might expect—insanely powerful drone based music composed of the richly layered sounds of different instruments & field recordings, allowing the listener to pick up on new sounds & subtleties with every listen. Incredibly unusual music that takes influence from both ambient & noise circles & blends them to fantastic results. A very …
Same Places (Slow Version)
Wafting, vaporously, from the suffocating heat of New Orleans, Belong shimmers like a mirage: vaguely discernable, yet always at the edge of an unobtainable horizon. Collaborators Mike Jones and Turk Dietrich employ a singular and remarkably inscrutable studio technique (Dietrich's remix skills extend to Nine Inch Nails' "The Frail") to wholly liquefy source material - here electric guitars - into wave upon breaking wave of sound. Comparisons are frequently made to William Basinski's notorious "…
Studies for Player Piano
The definitive recording of Conlon Nancarrow’s Studies for Player Piano, originally released on LP by 1750 Arch Records, newly remastered in spectacular sound, representing the most faithful reproduction of what Nancarrow heard in his own studio. This is the only available recording utilizing Nancarrow’s original instruments: two 1927 Ampico player pianos, one with metal-covered felt hammers and the other with leather strips on the hammers. The 4-CD set includes a 52-page booklet with the origin…
Mectpyo Bakterium
2014 repress, originally released in 1998. First issued by the Mnemonists' label (Dys in the U.S.) in 1982. M.B.: proto-electronics, compositions, arrangements. Mektpyo Bakterium is a work furnished of implacable plastic exasperation. The icy oppression, the hallucinative electronic wounds, are a precious and singular fact in a technological society brought to the limit. The emotion is pushed into dangerous zones, and unusual zones, and unusual tensions -- free biological groans of extreme e…