Antechamber
Michael McClure’s mysticism is vigorously scientific. Even the familiar patterned shapes of his poems remind us of the stars in the night sky and those we see when we shut our eyes. In the dancing lines of his newest work—the title poem “Antechamber” most especially—are the whirl of galaxies, the radiance of molecules, the energy lines of the double helix coiling around its core. — New Directions, 1978
Songs
Foamola is an underground musical group from New York City, consisting of Sparrow and his wife, who went by the cyber alias Violet Snow. Also in the group is artist Lawrence Fishberg and Sparrow's daughter, poet Sylvia Gorelick. Their music has been described as "folk-minimalist", and as "anti-Plutarch pop"
“Foamola is the only anti-rock band named after an herbal arthritis remedy. All our music is original, with tunes by Lawrence Fishberg (keyboard, vocals) and lyrics by Sparrow (ocarina, item…
Maggot Brain #6 (Sep/Oct/Nov 2021) (Magazine)
"On The Cover: Amazing unseen image of Bikini Kill live at CBGB in 1990, by Mike Galinsky, with accompanying lengthy photo essay exploring indie-rock in the early 1990s, including behind-the-scenes, unpublished black-and-white film images of Sonic Youth, Unwound, Mary Timony, Sleepyhead, Half Japanese, and more. Columns: Luc Sante's ridiculously good 'Pinakothek' column where he goes off on one image; John Colpits AKA Kid Millions on Miles Cooper Seaton (RIP); The forgotten brilliance of bluesy …
Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions
*2022 stock* "These two need no introduction, but "Cambridge 1969," which takes up all of side one, is a completely unheralded classic. For twenty minutes Yoko vibratoes her way around a single note while Lennon provides terrifying power-drone feedback accompaniment. This is the ultimate punk/metal take on La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela's Black Album (which, considering Ono & Young's history together, might be both figurative and literal). Towards the end John Stevens and John Tchichai chi…
NYC 11/20/02 (Tape)
** Limited edition of 60. It comes with a nice insert * A 90 minute very spirited and informal reading at the Tagine Restaurant, NYC by Ira with musical accompinament, sitars and the like. Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Ira Cohen was born to deaf parents and instead of just developing speech, began developing his vision early, learning to spell with his fingers. In 1961 he took a Yugoslavian freighter to Tangiers where h…
Teach Yourself Fucking (Tape)
* Edition of 60 * 95 minutes of songs, demos, rants and poetry. Recordings meant for his third album on Kramer's Shimmy Disc, it was never released. Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg (September 28, 1923 – July 12, 2010) was an American counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, pacifist anarchist, publisher, and co-founder of the band The Fugs.
Sound Commitments (Book)
Featuring new archival research and/or interviews with significant figures of the period in each chapter, Sound Commitments will appeal to researchers and advanced students in the fields of post-war music, cultures of the 1960s, and the avant-garde, as well as to an informed general readership.
Composing Dissent (Book)
The 1960s saw the emergence in the Netherlands of a generation of avant-garde musicians (including figures such as Louis Andriessen, Willem Breuker, Reinbert de Leeuw and Misha Mengelberg) who were to gain international standing and influence as composers, performers and teachers, and who had a defining impact upon Dutch musical life. Fundamental to their activities in the sixties was a pronounced commitment to social and political engagement. The lively culture of activism and dissent on the st…
Writings on Music (Book)
In the mid-1960s, Steve Reich radically renewed the musical landscape with a back-to-basics sound that came to be called Minimalism. These early works, characterized by a relentless pulse and static harmony, focused single-mindedly on the process of gradual rhythmic change. Throughout his career, Reich has continued to reinvigorate the music world, drawing from a wide array of classical, popular, sacred, and non-western idioms. His works reflect the steady evolution of an original musical mind.W…
This Life of Sounds (Book)
This Life of Sounds portrays an important and previously unexplored corner of the history of new music in America: the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts int eh State University of New York at Buffalo. Composers Lukas Foss (the Center's founder), Lejaren Hiller, and Morton Feldman were the music directors over the life of "the Buffalo group," during the years 1964-1980. Based on Foss's plan, the Rockefeller Foundation provided annual fellowships for young composers and virtuoso instrumen…
Tape Leaders: A Compendium of Early British Electronic Music Composers
Absolute tip! In the form of a richly illustrated compendium, Tape Leaders is an indispensable reference guide for anyone interested in electronic sound and its origins in Great Britain. For the first time a book sets out information on practically everyone active with experimental electronics and tape recording across the country, revealing the hidden history of early British electronic music. With an individual entry for each composer, starting with Daevid Allen and going through to Peter Zin…
Sikorsky
Sikorsky is an ambitious and highly original orchestral piece for 18 musicians — 8 clarinets, 4 drum kits, 4 double basses, trumpet and the alto sax of its composer and arranger, Danish, Copenhagen-based Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard. As on his previous release Vesper (2012), Løkkegaard is fascinated with the sound of clarinets and the sound of a closely-voiced clarinet ensemble plays a major role on his fifth release.The title of the 30-minute composition is associated with the sound of the Sikorsky h…
Luna Cinese
At long last, after decades out of print, the Milan based imprint, Dialogo, dives into the legendary catalog of Cramps, bringing forth the first ever vinyl reissue of Costin Miereanu's "Luna Cinese", part of an ongoing initiative dedicated to bring the imprint’s seminal output back into the light. Easily one of the most singular and important experimental albums of the 1970s that remains as engrossing, creatively riveting, and as ahead of its time today as it was in 1975, this is as exciting as …
Visual Scores
In the ensuing half century, Slovenian artist Milan Grygar, who trained as a painter, has dedicated himself to the relationship between sound and image. He has replaced paint wherever possible with sonic elements, interrogated the duration of a line, drawn with sticks, and integrated windup toys that leave noisy traces in his “mechanical drawings.” Grygar incorporates the acoustic frequencies that emerge during art making, but he also writes visual scores that musicians can interpret. His art is…
On Perpetual (Musical) Peace?
This LP features the results of "On Perpetual (Musical) Peace?" realized in Mexico City in 2019 with Liminar, a Mexican ensemble that works at the boundaries between composed and improvised music, performance and sound installation, and regularly performs in Mexico City's main chamber music halls as well as in museums, galleries and alternative venues. An extensive PMP concert took place at Bucareli 69, an art and concert space in a late-19th-century villa near the city's historical centre. The …
Music is not language. Neither is it painting. Just music.
A posthumous duo LP featuring text and music by Conrad Schnitzler, music by Wolfgang Seidel, and artwork by Matt Howarth! Conrad Schnitzler and Wolfgang Seidel have been musical collaborators since the early 1970s when Seidel performed in Schnitzler's free-form group Eruption that had been founded as a successor to Kluster and featured a revolving cast of members. In the 1980s, they produced the duo albums Consequenz, Consequenz II and Con 3 where Seidel performed under his alias Wolf Sequenza.
Tapuscrits – Poèmes-Partitions, Biopsies, Passe-Partout
* 2021 Stock. French edition * The collection of typescripts of the pioneer of sound poetry: a monument of some 1200 pages that offers an original approach to one of the most inventive, striking and influential poetic works of the second half of the 20th century, through 120 facsimile "scores", revealing for the first time the writing, in its visual and graphic dimension, which precedes and determines public reading. This publication brings together all the typescripts of the Poèmes-Partitions, …
Namely
If an artists’ work is a composite of influences from others, Beth Anderson’s Namely inverts that notion, creating a work from the names themselves of her influencers. The album consists of 65 short pieces, each using the name of one of Anderson’s varied influences as source material. Anderson applies a generative procedure to each name to create a text-sound poem that is performed as a vocal piece by the composer.
The collection of names reveals the intermedia nature of Anderson’s work — from t…
10 + 2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces
The best-selling recording in the history of American sound poetry, 10+2 was a novelty at the time of its release in 1975, when unpitched speech was rarely used outside of literary circles as performance material. Out of print for 20 years and available now for the first time on CD, this definitive anthology of speech music by composers, writers, and artists contains examples of the best work of Charles Amirkhanian, Beth Anderson, Robert Ashley, John Cage, Clark Coolidge, Charles Dodge, John Gio…
Matters of Listening
A sound composition based on a workshop focusing on questions of sound, listening, collaboration, and community. Matters of Listening took place as a workshop and public event held at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago de Chile, on June 30, 2019. Focusing on questions of sound, listening, collaboration, and community, the workshop developed as an explorative gathering for sharing, discussing, and making together: to pull from the closets and backrooms various materials and ob…