Reissues
Drip Music. Obscure Tape Music of Japan vol. 9
*2022 stock* This is volume 9 in Omega Point's Obscure Tape Music of Japan series. Yoji Kuri is one of the foremost and highly-regarded experimental animation artists in Japan, active since the early '60s. His name is well-known not only for his many works of "black humor" throughout the '60s and 70's, but also for the soundtracks to his materials, composed by avant-garde composers. Originally titled Synthesized Piano Space, it has been renamed Drip Music for this release. This new edition is co…
Live Document
The first release in Omega Point's series, Experimental Music of Japan. This is the live recording of the music performance held at the installation exhibition of Chiharu Shiota in the gallery of Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama, Japan in October 2007. The performance was defined as "art complex" by Toshi Ichiyanagi from a musical standpoint, and the content consists of live computer improvisation as well as some acoustic, programmed pieces performed on piano by Akiko Samukawa, Toshi Ichiy…
Beyond the Black Crack
Beyond the Black Crack was the concept of Reverend Dwight Frizzell, a musician, film maker, Doctor of Metaphysics and minister in the Universal Church of Life. It remains a little known classic, and one of the most unique listening experiences in modern experimental music. Recorded between 1974 and 1976 in locations as diverse as factories, the pyramid opposite Harry Truman's grave site as well as more 'conventional' concert settings. Beyond the Black Crack is a dark, dizzying and exhilarating j…
Trios 1971
is a trio of EMS synth plus turntables; full tracks on the Synthi blog courtesy the composer. Really brilliant sounds:Trios associates improvisation within a set of defined parameters. Its score includes a notebook with instructions for playing, 16 VCS3 patches, and two 33rpm records on which 2x16 sound events are recorded. The macrostructure is not determined, and both the duration and the temperament of the piece depend on the chances of the combinatorial principle. 16 sequences of VCS3 follow…
Love & Lamentation
It must have been quite some years since I last heard music by Simon Wickham-Smith, but there was a time when I played it a lot, especially the various albums he recorded with Richard Youngs. But I guess that's how things go. Interest shifts I assume. To be honest, again, I have no idea when I left off, or why. But its good, as well as strange perhaps to see him back on Pogus Productions. On the cover I read that 'not satisfied with making music, he has also been a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan t…
Cauldron
Cauldron was Fifty Foot Hose's first and most famous recorded work, released on Limelight Records in 1968. Founded by Cork Marcheschi, the band played continuously around the Bay area of northern California throughout the mid-'60s. Marcheschi, who had developed a taste for R&B and the avant-garde music of composers such as Edgard Varèse, started out as the band's bass player, but his interest in experimental music prompted him to develop his own musical instrument, similar in function to the hy…
The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977 to 1978
The complete recordings of Mars -- one of the lesser-known groups of the New York no wave scene, but a razor-sharp combo with some especially great guitars! The CD pulls together material from the group's first single, their following EP, and the famous No New York compilation -- all of it nicely tied up in a flurry of fast, edgey guitars -- as stark as they are dark -- propelled with fast, muddy rhythms that occasionally get a bit dubby -- and some vocals that are often at their most comfortabl…
Nord
Kaoru Abe's duo with legendary free bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa, nord, stands as a critical summit between two of the major forces in japanese jazz at the time. recorded in december 1975 and released in 1981 by Kojima, it reveals a different side to Abe.the two had apparently been playing together since the late '60s - Yoshizawa had, for various reasons, and it's probably due to yoshizawa's undeniable heavyweight status that this dialogue is conducted largely on his terms, with abe toning down hi…
Overhang Party
Stellar duo head on collision bet ween Kaoru Abe and free hitter/ skin mangler Toyozumi. The interaction between the t wo of them creates fire works of improvisational exquisiteness, free rambling seat sniffing combustion that on some occasions instigated Abe to divert his attention from his beloved sax to wards marimba and piano hammerings joined with harmonica blo w-outs. Ferocious, ghastly and kerosene charged head slamming action bet ween t wo of Japan's first wave free jazz terrorists.. Tak…
Mort a Credit
Mort à Credit shows Kaoru Abe in a fascinating period of transition, moving forth to something complexly and identifiably new, yet intransigently rooted in what had come before. It consists of two alto improvs from a show on October 18, 1975, and five more (three on alto, two on sopranino) from another performance a couple of days earlier. Released by Kojima on 2LP in 1976, it can be said to mark a significant change in Abe's style. Abe is here a little soften from his usual urgency - this can p…
Will Make You Ill
Alga Marghen presents Modern Shit, a very singular chapter in the Amos/It's War Boys / Milk From Cheltenham / Homosexuals history. Directly taken from the original It's War Boys catalog, here is one of the most obscure sonic works of the early 1980s, Modern Shit! First "issued" on tape, this work circulated only privately among the close friends of the label and was never officially distributed. Actually, it represents one of the most intense and experimental outputs of this creative London…
Snaketime Series
This really is a treat, a re-issue of the incredibly rare debut LP from legendary blind outsider Moondog. Originally released back in 1956 on the musician's own Moondog Recordings imprint, this incredible album showcases the man at his way-out best, blending Eastern instruments and ethnic music with American exotica to come up with a sound which is impossible to categorise. A mostly self-taught musician, Moondog (real name Louis Thomas Hardin) performed in the streets of New York City for most o…
Playing Moondog\'s Music
this rare 1955 set of recordings features the composer in collaboration with a brass section, although one of its defining aspects is the extensive influence of Native American musics on its rhythmic makeup. From the irrepressibly unconventional jibber-jabber of 'Rabbit Hop' to the tribal weirdness of 'Single Foot', this could only have come from the pen of Moondog. 'Dog Trot' is a more conventional swingtime piece, offering an oasis of accepted logic in an otherwise wildly outside-the-box set o…
The Viking Of Sixth Avenue
re-released on its original label, Honest Jon's, with new and improved gatefold card wallet sleeve packaging. Poet, composer, street musician and cosmologist Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin, 1916-1999) learned rhythm from American Indians and counterpoint from J.S. Bach. Many of his recordings feature instruments he built himself: trimba, yukh, tuji, oo. Sometimes you can hear in the background the streets of New York, where Moondog often slept. In addition, he was blind, due to an accident when he…
I Know A Chord Buried Into The Ground And A Tongue On A Cloud
Self-released Japan-only album from the higher-mind duo of Shizuo Uchida and Hirotomo Hasegawa aka Hasegawa-Shiuzo. Previous releases on PSF and Tiliqua have orbited the O-mind with alla the force of an octopus in zero gravity, with strings and ethnic drone instruments floating in waves of macro/micro bliss. This latest release ups the ante even more, with a more aggressively nuanced attack on post Taj Mahal Travellers group mind aesthetics and it makes for one of the best contemporary communal …
Trio In Concert
Amazing music by one of the French piano legend Georges Arvanitas, in the company of George's fantastic rhythm duo of Charles Saudrais on drums and Jacky Samson on bass
Metal Machine Music
25th Anniversary reissue in clear jewel-case with 12-page booklet. Few records have alienated audiences like Lou Reed’s 1975 double album Metal Machine Music. Each side bore a single track lasting exactly 16 minutes and one second. There were no drums, no singing, and no songs. Instead, waves of shrieking guitar feedback created a brutal sonic assault which, thanks to the locked groove at the end of side four, was literally never–ending. Deleted by RCA after two weeks on sale, the album attract…
Fragments
Recorded in Berlin, 11/14/74 as their "final reunion" a loose jamming session featuring various members of the groups' different periods: Christoph Franke, Michael Hoenig, Lutz Ulbrich, etc. Like many acts that suffer from sounding a bit stiff in the studio, the live experience is the way to hear `em let their hair down and show how rock music can be dangerous in a way that other musical genres are often not. Trad Gras Och Stenar are another example of a band far more visceral and exciting…
Keyboard Study 2 / Initiative (+Systèmes)
A split release between Terry Riley and French avant-garde composer Pierre Marietan that was recorded in Paris on September 30th and October 1st, 1969. Riley's piece is a 24-minute work for 2 pianos (Gérard Frémy and Martine Joste of the GERM ensemble - Groupe d'Etude et Réalisation Musicale). Marieten's piece is performed by the full GERM ensemble including Philippe Blachette (violin), Philippe Drogoz (double bass), Louis Roquin (trumpet), Chantal Lemaire (cello), Gérard Frémy (piano), Martine …
Catalyse
Reissue of the original 1970 album on the BYG label (one of the label's few entries in the rock field), and a classic period piece, like Gong at their heaviest. Ame Son is the pioneer group of French Underground born at the end of the 60s. The band is made up to two former members of Banana Moon, Daevid Allen's band on his arrival in France in 1967. Their music was harsh and scathing with vocals in both French & English, sometime with an outside layer of 'formal beauty', rapidly devastated by st…