Reissues
Tape play
The Ten Tape Compositions: Fat Millie's Lament, The Wasting of Lucrecetzia, For Harry, Lemon Drops, Dante's Joynte, Rerun, Mouthpiece II, Hiss, Few (in collaboration with Henri Chopin), and Kyrie. "Over his career, Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) produced a lot of electronic music. However, works for tape alone are fairly rare in his output. Over about a thirty-year period, ten works for solo tape were produced. Of the ten tape pieces, five were created in the mid-1960s at the University of Illinois,…
Savage songs
Jorge Antunes (b. 1942, Rio de Janeiro) studied violin, composition and conducting at the University of Rio de Janeiro, as well as studying physics at the same institution. He further studied composition with Alberto Ginastera and Luis de Pablo. From 1970-71 he attended the University of Utrecht (Gotfried M. Koenig). From 1972-73 he worked with Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris. In 1962 he began his research in electronic music thus becoming a pioneer in the development of this field in Br…
Music for theatrical drama. Obscure Tape Music Of Japan – Vol.4
This is volume 4 of Omega Point's newly-reissued Obscure Tape Music of Japan series, featuring two early works of music concrète composed for theatrical drama by legendary Japanese composer Joji Yuasa. The sounds on this recording, especially of "Oen" is so experimental and strange, but this music was not for avant-garde theater. "Mittsu No Sekai" contains elements of a mechanical beat (suggestive of a machine civilization) that could be the precursor to industrial music. Composed for the …
Aoi no Ue. Obscure Tape Music of Japan vol. 1
Volume one of Omega Point's Obscure Tape Music of Japan series, featuring Joji Yuasa's "Aoi-no-Ue" (1961) and "My Blue Sky" (1975). Joji Yuasa (b. 1929) is one of most important composers in Japan after World War II. "Aoi-no-Ue" was composed for experimental theater at Sogetsu Art Center. The sound of this work is made from the chants of Japanese traditional "Noh" theater. "The text is recomposed by me keeping the original words. And it was sung in the style of Noh-chant by three brothers ... Th…
Sonatas and Interludes
This landmark recording of John Cage’s prepared piano works performed by Mario Bertoncini was recorded back in December 1991. The sonatas are divided into four groups, each divided by the less overtly structured, rhapsodic interlude pieces. Bertoncini sensitivity to the displaced sonic characteristics of the piano is remarkable and suggests a rigorous dedication to Cage’s work.
A tribute
From the liner notes of Eric Salzman: “John Cage wrote for keyboards throughout most of his life. Most famously, he invented the so-called "prepared piano" but he also wrote for unprepared piano in both traditional and untraditional ways. His later piano works employ an almost ferocious complication and virtuosity at the outer limits of performer possibility. Earlier he used electronic extensions, chance and performer collaboration in complex ways. His early keyboard music was written for himsel…
Jani Christou (Enantiodromie / Praxis / Epicycle / Anaparastasis)
An expanded version of the previous rz LP by Jani Christou. All works by Christou, the late, legendary "freely-atonal" Greek composer. Features: "Enantiodromia" (1965-68, for orchestra); "Praxis" (1966-69, for string orchestra and piano), "Epicycle" (1968, for instruments, actors and voices); "Anaparastasis III" (1968-69, for soloist, ensemble and continuum [tapes]); "Mysterion" (1965-66, for narrator, actors, 3 choirs, orchestra and tapes)"Jani Christou tried to use and incorporate philosophica…
A Catalogue of Sounds
Jakob Ullmann's music realizes an infinite variety of gradations in all areas of musical formation. That the music of the "catalogue" is nearly always played very softly leads to the ear noticing the smallest differentiations; the listener is put into a state of constant, acute attentiveness. The musical stream is constantly subjected to small irritations, sometimes its flow quickens, sometimes there are brief splashes like those caused by pebbles thrown into water. Performers: Ensemble Oriol Be…
Jesus Makes You High
A very strange 'paycheck' project for Conny Plank and Achim Reichel's Gorilla Musik production company. Wonderland-esque German rock with heavy Christian lyrics! A.R. is nowhere to be seen on the sleevenotes, but his fingerabdrücke are everywhere. You can make up your own punchline for the album title. First-ever reissue includes full lyrics and two bonus tracks from their only 7" release
Catalogue (LP)
2005 reissue. Released in 1979 in a limited edition on his own d'Avantage label, Catalogue, with its overt theatricality is every bit as wild as the previous Paralleles. Not really jazz, not rock, having nothing to do with contemporary music either, Catalogue is a kind of sonic postcard which features not the group of the same name but instead numerous Jacques Berrocal associates including Potage (co-founder of the d'Avantage label in 1976), Parle, Ferlet, Pauvros and recording engineer Daniel D…
Open secrets
"Aphoristic bursts of music separated by silences played with efficiency and fleeting beauty." - New York Times Open Secrets features Mac Low and Anne Tardos performing works for multi-track voices; and Robert Bethea, Andrew Bolotowsky, Daniel Goode, and Gabriela Klassen performing instrumental pieces. Winds/Instruments for flute, clarinet, trombone, violin, and narrator, could well become a classic of new music, not only being beautiful, but also displaying Mac Low's witty use and …
Iannis Xenakis
Trifold glossy slipcase includes two CDs, label catalogue and 16-page booklet of liner notes and images. For new initiates and avant-garde fiends alike, this Iannis Xenakis collection renders a breathtaking survey of works by the radical composer, theorist, architect and engineer, spanning the period 1956-1974 and featuring some of the greatest works of the 20th century, including the awe-inspiring sonic architecture of ‘Persepolis’.Inarguably one of the most important composers to blend electro…
Streichquartett N°4 Opus 33
String Quartet No 4, opus 33 (1976-87). Performed by the Arditti String Quartet. "infinite to be cannot be infinite, infinite anti-be could be infinite" (for nine string quartets or a string quartet surrounded by an imaginary 128 string-"viola da gamba"). "Among contemporary composers, Horatiu Radulescu is one who has something essential to express about the enigma of time: multi-layered lines of events, their structuring, perception and potential for poetic-religious message are -- together wit…
Clepsydra, Astray
**Restock of a rare, must-have record for contemporary music lovers. Comes with 4-page 12" booklet ** Great dense orchestral scraping and bowing from 1982 & 1983 by Romanian composer Horatiu Radulescu (1942-2008), among the great masters of Spectralism and subharmonics. This absorbing LP includes two groundbreaking works centered around the 'Sound Icons' - pianos standing on their sides, played with bows between the strings. On side A is the hypnotic, otherworldly Clepsydra for 16 Sound Icons (E…
Paysages Planétaires
In 2000, Henri Pousseur was asked by Philippe Samyn, a Brussels-based architect who liked to work in collaboration with other artforms, to lend his support to the plan for the construction of a business complex by one of the most important building enterprises in the country. There were four low buildings arranged like different parts of a medieval castle-village, grouped around a kind of large open central court. Leaning on the suggested image, Pousseur immediately suggested that the fir…
Enclosure 2
This massive 4CD set is the second "enclosure" in the series. It is sub-titled "Historic Speech-Music Recordings from the Harry Partch archives," and includes "archival recordings, including works from the 30s & 40s, a lecture on just intonation, excerpts from the 1935 hobo journal Bitter Music, and a sound documentary featuring Partch at the piano
One
Originally released in 1973 as a private press LP, 'One' is the first document of GAEB, a mysterious sextet of Californian improvisors. Formed in the late 60's by artist Richard Waters and jazz drummer Lee Charlton, the group made music using Waters's kinetic sculptures. His most important creation was the waterphone, a sort of acoustic synthesizer which used water in its resonators to produce warbling, tone bending vibrations similar to th edeep sea harmonies of humpback whales. Together with t…
Gottfried Michael Koenig
Restocked, reduced price: beautifully prepared overview of Gottfried Michael Koenig's work (including early 60s WDR electronic classics), produced in conjunction by the Instituut of Sonologie and NEAR/Donemus w/ Edition RZ. During the early '60s, Koenig began writing a program -- named simply 'Project 1,' or PR1 -- designed to compose and generate music via the computer; when in 1964 he accepted the position of creative director with the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht, Holland, he took the so…
Une Saison En Enfer
Composed in 1979 and realized at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique (Lyon, France) by Gilbert Amy with the assistance of Daniel Teruggi. Performed with Fusako Kondo (soprano), Edwige Parat (soloist of Maîtrise de Radio France), Jean-Pierre Drouet (percussions).
Giacinto Scelsi
**Comes in glossy gatefold sleeve with 20-page booklet ** Features 6 works by the influential Italian avant-gardist of the 20th century, dating from 1961-1990. Pranam I (for voice, 12 instruments and tape, 1972); Anagamin. Celui qui choisit de revenir ou pas (for 12 strings, 1965); Quattro pezzi su una nota sola (for chamber orchestra, 1959); Quartetto n. 4, (1964); Okanagon (Tam Tam and double bass, 1968); Quartetto n. 2 (1961). "For Giacinto Scelsi, music was above all a manifestation of the e…