Moments
**600 copies** In essence, the sound of the piano comes in two parts: its attack and its decay. The striking of a hammer is followed by the resonance of a string or strings. (Much the same might be said about the vibraphone, as it happens.) This dual quality of sound comes to mind when listening to Moments by New York-based composer Michael Vincent Waller. Performed by pianist R. Andrew Lee and vibraphonist William Winant, Moments − his third album, following Trajectories (Recital, 2017) and The…
Point/Wave
The first piece composer Catherine Lamb has written specifically for acoustic guitar was commissioned by Chilean guitarist Christián Alvear. Extending concepts from an installation piece titled Secondary Rainbow with Bryan Eubanks, Lamb employs electronics over an infinite cycle of four "environmental chords" which overlap and resonate with one another.
Shade / Gradient
**425 copies, 3-color letterpressed jacket with large 20-page booklet containing the full score and a lengthy interview with the composer** Catherine Lamb’s work is characterized by an insistence on what she calls the “interaction of tone”. Precisely tuned intervals, played slowly at subtle volumes, blend and generate a host of difference and combination tones, phasing, beating and aural illusions. Her ensemble and orchestral compositions have been performed in grand halls and d.i.y. spaces alik…
Music For Lock Grooves
**250 copies** SN Variations fifth release features two tracks in three parts each composed for lock grooves recorded onto acetate, percussion by Sam Wilson (Riot Ensemble / Actress) and violin performed by Aisha Orazbayeva. The tracks also feature the piano of Mark Knoop and the voice of Josephine Stephenson. A lock groove is one cycle of one groove on a record. This is 1.8 sec cut at 33rpm and 1.33 cut at 45rpm. Adrian Corker used the cutting lathe currently residing in the living room of The …
Two Orchestra Pieces
This recording is the first ever devoted to the orchestral music of Christian Wolff (b. 1934) and thus documents a little-known aspect of his wide-ranging work. John, David (1998) introduces in its second part a prominent role for solo percussionist, playing a wide range of pitched and non-pitched instruments, including marimba, glockenspiel, a variety of drums, wood and metal instruments and other sources, the exact choice left to the performer. Rhapsody (2009), in contrast, uses instruments of…
H1KhH2WM (Du Seuil), a Five-letter Sufi Word
The third chapter in the Sufi Word's series. Jean-Luc Fafchamps
on the release: "The Sufi Letters is a vast project of 28 compositions
(for the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet) undertaken in 2000 and still
ongoing. I am drawing inspiration from the symbolic charts found in
Sufi mysticism. Each Letter is a sonic meditation on the frontiers of
conscience and the paradoxes of time. Today's word, 'Du seuil' ('From
the threshold'), is the third word to be released by Sub Rosa. It is a
journe…
Propaganda
Written for theatre in 1987 using a host of avian and mammalian voices, snippets of unidentified musical material and electroacoustic noise- sculpting, as well as invented and real instruments played by Fred Frith. This was a hard time and the mood is intense, lean and not cheerful, though there are some gruesomely cheery inserts. There's no fat but a lot of meat here.
Two Circles
Alvin Lucier’s (b.1931) work has been more often described in terms of science than of art and his scores often contain experimental procedures. Lucier perfectly represents the fusion of a scientist with an artist. His pieces arise from an inspection of a pure physical phenomenon. The performers on Mode’s fourth disc of Lucier’s music are the Italian experimental music ensemble Alter Ego — two of the works were written for or dedicated to them — and Alvin Lucier himself. This new recordi…
Ordinary Objects and Other Distractions
In this episode, a number of short recordings of household objects and curious instruments become the core thematic material for a range of exquisitely conceived and realised pieces in which the recordings are shaped, stretched, tuned, combined and otherwise manipulated before being folded into a variety of musical structures with additional elements or parts added. Much use is made of rhythms derived from gravity – that is, dropping and bouncing - embedded into microtonal, poly-rhythmic and dee…
Assigned #15
The leading contemporary music ensemble Apartment House perform a new piece developing out of James Saunders's long-term modular project '#unassigned'. The new piece, 'assigned #15', was recorded in April this year and creates a mesmeric, dense, jungle-like soundworld across its 45 minutes. Beautifully realised by Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Bridget Carey (viola), Simon Limbrick (percussion), Nancy Ruffer (flutes), James Saunders (dictaphones & radio), Philip Thomas (piano) and Kerry Yong (chamb…
Szenen, standbilder. works 1991 – 2009
German composer Michael Reudenbach's works and studies from 1991-2009 are presented in a six-panel digipack with a 22-page booklet of notes, images and photos
Sirenes
Works from Volker Heyn, an outsider artist interested in acoustic process, tone gestures, friction, discontinuous movements
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 2
3-CD Set. Recorded between 1960 and 1973, the original eighteen LPs that comprise Earle Brown's legendary Contemporary Sound Series have been highly sought after in the secondary market since 1978 when they were discontinued. These rare and historically important recordings of international avant-garde music have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Volume two includes music by Nono (Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica), Bruno Maderna (Serenata No. 2), Luciano Ber…
Mondweiß
Recordings from the Elektronic Studio at the TU Berlin, the Studio of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, and at Patrick Kosk's own studio
The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 4
Meticulously remastered from the original mono master tapes! The Bewitched was Harry Partch’s first work solely intended for dance (and mime-dance at that; he was not overly enamored in his lifetime of so-called “modern dance”). Drawing heavily from his deep affection for the music-theatrical performance traditions of Greek theater, as well as those from Africa, Bali, and Chinese opera, Partch conceived of a contemporary American music ritual-theater where musicians not only play, but also funct…
The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 3
The four works on this newly remastered CD are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch’s aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for The Dreamer That Remains, for Rotate the Body in All Its Planes, for Windsong, and for Water! Water!, was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. In these works music joins with drama, with film, with dance, even with gymnastics, as integral parts of the composer’s vision..New World's The Harry Partch Collection, Vol. 3, as was the CRI …
Dust
Dust is an opera by Robert Ashley and Yukihiro Yoshihara (video direction) whose imaginary setting is a street corner anywhere in the world, where those who live on the fringes of society gather to talk, to each other and to themselves, about life-changing events, missed opportunities, memory, loss, and regret. Five "street people" recount the memories and experiences of one of their group, a man who has lost his legs in some unnamed war. As part of the experience of losing his legs, he began a …
Yellow Man With Heart With Wings
1990 CD issue of Robert Ashley's 1978 piece for voice and electronics. A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and ot…
Simoom
On Simoom we hear three of Lois V. Vierk's works for "big instruments," that is, multiples of the same instrument, treated more like single entities than like groups of voices: Go Guitars for five electric guitars tuned microtonally around "E," Cirrus for six trumpets, and Simoom for eight cellos. All three works employ what Vierk describes as "Exponential Structure," which utilizes exponential relationships to control time, pitch movement and rates of change. Within this system, Vierk creates v…
Trauermusiken
Two compositions by the young Austrian composer/organist Klaus Lang who currently lives in Berlin/Germany. Der Wind und das Meer for viola (Barbara Konrad, viola) The Sea of Despair for String Quartet (Amras Streichquartett)