Rhys Chatham
Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain
Premiering to the world at large, Tony Conrad’s gobsmacking quintessential opus Ten Years Alive is now available to hear for the first time, featuring Laurie Spiegel and Rhys Chatham and arriving via Superior Viaduct just over a year since the death of the iconoclastic avant-garde violinist and composer in 2016
Rhys Chatham & Z'EV
*200 copies limited edition*
Rhys Chatham: trumpet in B flat, transverse flute in C, alto and bass flutes, electric guitarZ'EV: Yamaha DTXPRESS, 16-bit AWM2
Recorded at Studio Myrha, Paris 2014
Tomorrowstartstonight
The first duet album by Rhys Chatham and David Fenech, two well-known musicians of the experimental scene. It is a long piece of music in a minimalist spirit, where the two guitarists meet and merge with Rhys’ trumpets, flutes and vocals and David’s small percussion.This record has an organic feel and natural development that makes it unique. Tomorrow starts tonight !
Rhys Chatham is best known for his compositions for electric guitar orchestra… he began his musical career as a harpsichord tuner…
Two Men In A Boat (LP)
"The beauty of all this, as well as its sorrowful brutality, is even more powerful and stupefying since Ghédalia's sudden departure. Because retrospectively, not only is this recording the trace of a rare moment in a Parisian garden, it also summons a ghost, that of a loved one that is gone, and of his voice, which is fully alive here." Ghedalia Tazartes and Rhys Chatham had met once in 1977 at CBGC's and had not seen each other since then when they were asked by their mutual agent to play a pr…
Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995–2020
The collection of previously unpublished interviews and extended versions of Alan Licht's famous conversations with figures in the American art and music scene.
Cave Bacchus : Destroyer of Naivetés
Destroyer of Naivetés is a recording by Cave Bacchus (Joseph Nechvatal, Black Sifichi and Rhys Chatham) of Nechvatal’s sex farce poetry book Destroyer of Naivetés that was published in 2015 by Punctum Books (and is available here). Destroyer of Naivetés is an epic passion poem, power- fully read by Black Sifichi, that takes up a position of excess from within a society that believes that the less you conceal, the stranger you become. Destroyer of Naivetés owes much to the too-much artists who he…
What's Your Sign?
Four years after their inaugural union at Ecstatic Music Festival inside New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall produced a cosmic din for the ages, two genre-obliterating renegades who’ve made indelible marks in the experimental music pantheon—the NYC-bred, Paris-based avant-garde guitar legend and minimalist composer Rhys Chatham and long-running psychedelic free-rock juggernaut and Brooklyn institution Oneida—have joined forces on their first collaborative album proper titled What’s Your Sign?, d…
Pythagorean Dream
LP version. Includes printed inner sleeves and download code. Rhys Chatham returns with his first solo album since 2013, the enchantingPythagorean Dream. Having studied under Terry Riley and La Monte Young (with whom he later went on to work), Chatham fused the overtone-drenched minimalism of John Cale and Tony Conrad with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones. It was an inspired amalgamation -- the textural intricacies of the avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of electric gui…
Youuu + Mee = Weee
Sub Rosa presents Youuu + Mee = Weee (First), a vinyl edition of the first disc of the three CD set Youuu + Mee = Weee (SR 367CD, 2014). Youuu + Mee = Weee is the first recorded collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine and Rhys Chatham. And it's precious. Following the musical meetings with Z'ev (Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear, SR340CD/LP), and with Tony Conrad, these new Sub Rosa sessions create a sort of trilogy. Rhys Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-gar…
Youuu+Mee=Weeee
Youuu + Mee = Weee is the first recorded collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine and Rhys Chatham. And it's precious. Following the musical meetings with Z'ev (Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear, SR340CD/LP), and with Tony Conrad, these new Sub Rosa sessions create a sort of trilogy. Rhys Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-garde pioneer La Monte Young, also working as a harpsichord tuner for Gustav Leonhardt, Rosalyn Tureck, and Glenn Gould. He soon studied und…
Harmonie du Soir
Rhys Chatham's 'Harmonie Du Soir' presents three compositions. The title track is the first major piece written for the configuration of six electric guitars, electric bass and drums since Die Donnergtter (1986). The second is The Dream of Rhonabwy, a piece written for large brass ensemble and percussion, realized in 2012 by a 70-piece brass band called Harmonie de Pontarlier, lead by the French conductor Patrick Erard. The last track on the CD version and bonus download for the vinyl edition is…
Reve Parisien
An amazing limited LP that features four new Rhys Chatham compositions that were performed live at Kassay's exhibition at Art: Concept in Paris in 2010, and loosely functions as an audio catalogue to the exhibition. Reve Parisien contains compositions that were both performed live and used as a soundtrack through Kassay’s exhibition. These compositions mark a change in direction for Chatham, who has abandoned the trumpet style he developed in the nineties for a non-distorted, less effects-driven…
Outdoor Spell
Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…
The Bern project
The Bern Project presents six new compositions that Chatham recorded in Bern together with Swiss musicians Julian Sartorius (drums), Mago Flueck (electric bass) and Beat Unternhrer (trombone). The best parts of many hours of recordings were mixed, edited and complemented by Hinterzimmer's Reto Mder and became some kind of the first Rhys Chatham album with band since 1987s Die Donnergötter...
Sharing a Sonority
Alga Marghen proudly presents a new chapter in the documentation series of Charlemagne Palestine's historical works. This CD of previously-unavailable recordings not only presents you Charlemagne Palestine activities in 1974, collaborating with some of most important experimental artists and composers from either the New York loft scene and Cal Arts, but also features world premiere recordings of Terry Jennings and The Fundamental D Flat Group. "Short & Sweet" is the title of a breathtaking duo …
Two Gongs (1971)
The hour-long Two Gongs fills the entirety of [this] disc with its ethereal, droning psychedelia. While written in 1971, the '89 recording documented here features Chatham, along with fellow composer Yoshimase Wada coaxing heavy, overlapping tones out of a pair of Chinese gongs. The instruments buzz and hum, moving in waves from deafening rattles to soft, muted drones. The monstrous noise that Chatham concocts is far more akin to the seismic crashes of monstrously distorted guitar feedback than …
guitar trio is my life
Utilizing multiple electric guitars and a single chord, 1977's Guitar Trio is composer Rhys Chatham's signature work, and a euphoric, minimal-punk classic. Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Guitar Trio on an epic scale, Chatham musters an all-star guitar army for the 3CD set, Guitar Trio Is My Life! The sprawling collection features members of Sonic Youth, Swans, Tortoise, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Hüsker Dü, Modern Lovers, Silver Mt. Zion, Town and Country, Die Kreutzen, 90-Day Men, …
An angel moves too fast to see
By the late 1980s, Rhys Chatham was chafing against the logistical and financial constraints imposed upon him in the States; in his mind was a vast, unprecedented sound. Moving permanently from New York to Paris, Chatham began composing his masterpiece, a piece for one hundred electric guitars, electric bass and drums. The result, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, is one of the most extraordinary works in the minimalist canon, one that demonstrates the majesty inherent in Chatham's amplified imagi…
Die Donnergötter
Rhys Chatham altered the DNA of rock. The New York-born composer began as a classically-trained prodigy, but by 1975, Chatham was fusing the overtone-drenched minimalism of John Cale and Tony Conrad with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones. It was an inspired amalgamation -- the textural intricacies of the avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of electric guitar-slinging punk rock -- and with it Chatham created a new type of urban music. Raucous and ecstatic, this sound energiz…