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Experimental /

Complete "La Grima"
"La Grima (Tears) was performed on August 14, 1971, at the Genyasai festival in Sanrizuka, Japan. The first six minutes or so of this performance can be heard on the omnibus LP Genya (released on CD in 2004). This CD presents the complete, unedited version of the performance.As if to slash through the audience's scornful, jeering reaction to Takayanagi's opening remarks, the group launched into a fiercely convulsive performance. Despite having a variety of objects thrown at them, Takayanagi and …
The seasons: Vermont
1998 release ** The Seasons: Vermont is a soundscape of Vermont as charted through the changes of its yearly soundings. It is a composition in four parts (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring) for magnetic tape collage with an unspecified live instrumental/vocal ensemble. Though the actual composing of the music was completed between 1980 and 1982, it is the realization of a ten-year composition project. Goldstein listened closely and became attuned to what was the particular sound quality of each sea…
No Strings Attached
Matchless Recordings presents the first solo recordings from Lou Gare, founding member of AMM, recorded at Firefly Studios, Thowleigh, Devon, England on 13th and 20th April 2005. The album includes four tracks performed by Lou Gare - tenor saxophone. "Toward the end of his fine short essay for Laminal, AMM's 30th Anniversary set, Jim O'Rourke asks in relation to the experience of simultaneously hearing the record and viewing the accompanying photograph of AMM's The Crypt, "where was the saxophon…
Dial: log-rhythm
Two concerts of experimental improvisation from Eddie Prevost and Christian Wolff, two giants of conceptual improvisation and composition, recorded at Ikletick in London in 2015 and at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2016; with superb pacing and brilliant execution, these dialogs between keyboard and percussive instruments explore unique sound worlds with depth, inquisitiveness, and a sense of wonder. "The set documents two concerts - 1, recorded at Iklectik in London in Septembe…
Live at the LU
Recorded in May of 2002, almost a year after Fennesz' surprisingly successful (commercially) release, Endless Summer, one might have expected that this pairing would produce an intriguing collision of opposing forces. On the one hand you have all the pop-influenced, steamily melodic and erotic explorations that Fennesz had developed in the prior years. Countering that, one could readily imagine Keith Rowe as saboteur, finding rifts in the smooth mass to deviously penetrate and deflate. This does…
Discrete Moments
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Eddie Prévost and John Tilbury recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames, England on the 6th of January, 2004. The album includes eight tracks performed by John Tilbury - piano, prepared piano and organ and Eddie Prévost - stringled barrel, tam-tam, percussion. "Some of their music is delicate and pointillistic with wide spaces between sounds, but there are also rich, thick webs and, as indicated, Cage/Kleeube Goldberg thunkity-thunk machin…
Two Chapters and an Epilogue
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Evan Parker and John Tilbury recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames, England on Monday 3rd August 1998. The album includes three tracks performed by Evan Parker - tenor & soprano saxophones and John Tilbury - piano. "These musicians have chosen to eschew the given media of jazz, from whence Evan Parker received much of his initial inspiration, and the classical world from which John Tilbury received his early and formative training, in o…
Hoib
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Hubbub recorded on September 2002 at Le Grand Mix by Jean-Pierre Bouquet. The album includes two tracks performed by Jean-Luc Guionnet - alto & soprano saxophones, Edward Perraud - drums, percussion, Jean-Sébastien Mariage - guitar, Frédéric Blondy - piano, Bertrand Denzler - tenor saxophone. Hubbub works on the sound matter and creates an expanded space inhabited by stripes, interlaced designs, resonances, tanglings, points and strokes, at the bor…
Hoop Whoop
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Hubbub recorded at Centre Culturel André Malraux, Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy, France on December 4th 2001. The album includes two tracks performed by Frédéric Blondy - piano, Edward Perraud -drums, Jean-Sébastien Mariage - guitar, Bertrand Denzler - saxophone, Jean-Luc Guionnet - saxophone.
Zahir
Hiss is an improvisational quartet made up of one Englishman and three Norwegians with an instrumental line-up that is unremarkable enough, but with a sound that is fairly unique. Keyboardist/electronicist Pat Thomas is a veteran of the British free improv scene while guitarist Ivar Grydeland, bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach -- though the latter three are younger -- are mainstays of the Norwegian free jazz and improv cultures. The reasoning behind the Arabic-sounding track tit…
Poire-Z
1999 release ** "Released in 1999 as a wave of electronic-based free improvisation was slowly overtaking the world of avant-garde music, Poire_Z appeared as the first such record by a supergroup of sorts. The duo Voice Crack (Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang), Günter Müller, and ErikM's proposition was of a highly introspective, slowly building shroud of electronically derived sounds: the popping of M's vinyls, the clicks and crackles of Voice Crack's electrical devices, Müller's cheap electronics,…
That House We Lived In
It was a long wait, but, 12 years after the fact, Fred Frith put together a live album of his group Keep the Dog, which had previously gone undocumented. Comprised of sax/flute player Jean Derome, guitarist René Lussier, keyboardist/harpist Zeena Parkins, sampling artist Bob Ostertag, and drummer Charles Hayward, Keep the Dog was formed by Frith in 1989 to perform a best-of repertoire of his career and remained his last rock group. By the time of this 1991 European tour, the unit had grown beyon…
Concert, V
Eddie Prévost & Veryan Weston. Recorded in England, 5/98, mixed by Evan Parker. "'Beauty as an Ear Thing' is a meticulous exploration of texture, full of soft explosions, the reverberant ring of spinning metals, and overtones that glow like embers, dying into silence; this music wouldn't be misplaced on an AMM disc. 'Clustered' rebuilds something out of the emptiness. The dislocated rhythmic feel is like an abstraction of something Monk and Max Roach might have played together. 'Fingers and drum…
Live improvisations
1994 release ** "All live improvisations should be this much fun! This live date between turntablist and electronic weirdmeister Christian Marclay and percussionist and electronics tinkerer Günter Müller is what the art of improvisation is supposed to be: fun, continually compelling textually, and inspired. While many intellectuals have made wild pronouncements about Marclay and his art -- and it is art, make no mistake -- writing all sorts of blather about how he strips the adult century bare b…
Percussionist songs
2004 release ** Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Christian Wolff and Robin Schulkowsky recorded at Poggiolo fram, Pozzuolo, Umbria, Italy on April 22-24 2003. The album includes fifteen tracks performed by Christian Wolff - composition, melodica, Robin Schulkowsky - percussion. "Rooms talk to me. I send out a sound, the space answers. The first message I picked up from the old barn in Umbria was 'yes'.Christian Wolff and I had been thinking, speaking about, even planning a CD with…
396
Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Yann Charaoui, John Lely and Seymour Wright recorded at Gateway Studios, Kingston-upon-Thames on 2nd August 2000. The album includes four tracks performed by Yann Charaoui - cymbals and table top samplers, John Lely - piano and prepared bal-bal tarang, Seymour Wright - alto saxophone. "The new austerity on the first CD from the young exponents of the growing art of improvisation...in the year 2000, this approach in which traditional musical instrum…