Zeena Parkins
Nightmare Alley
1993 release ** "The leading New York avant jazz harpist has appeared on hundreds of free improvisation recordings in collaboration with artists such as Fred Frith, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Lee Ranaldo, and Ikue Mori, among many others. During the '80s and '90s, she pioneered the electric harp of her own design, an instrument which thrives on the rich tonalities of the traditional harp matched with the flexibility of an electric guitar. The instrument was so unique that it shaped and influenced…
Scree
"We hear harp, electronics, piano, cello and percussion convene in clash and collusion, setting forth a dazzling array of sound and expression. Plains of disarticulation and misdirection are cut by moments of inextricable entanglement, where we hear discrete sounds fuse, instruments bleeding into one another, at times taking on the warp and weft of a companion. The recording is of an extraordinary performance of improvisational prowess by four musicians working at the very limits of their techni…
Dam Against The Spring Tide
Composer/Performer Zeena Parkins announces the release of two multi-part compositions, inspired by discoveries she made combing through the Walter Benjamin archives in Berlin. “Past Turned Space” features virtuoso players William Winant/percussion and Brett Carson/keyboards navigating a set of vignettes, flickering in response to Benjamin’s intimate descriptions of childhood memories. “Dam Against the Spring Tide” is graced with an all-star band of composer/performers, including: Zeena Parkins/a…
LACE
Tip! There’s music inside of lace stitching, and electro-acoustic composer, improviser, and harpist Zeena Parkins has spent years finding it. Her lace pieces use images of lace as musical scores for ensembles to play, building webs of sound that emerge from its contours. LACE is a boxset of artifacts including an LP of two of Parkins’ multi-movement works, “LACE I.” and “LACE II.,” presented for the first time on recording. The pieces were performed by percussionist William Winant, electronic mu…
To Dusk
Every day over the course of a year starting in June, 2020, in something she refers to as a "domestic ritual," Zeena Parkins recorded solo electric harp performances in her home studio. The brilliant improvisor and composer had, like most of her peers, been sidelined by the pandemic; unable to tour, she spent the end of each day at the harp, playing until sunlight waned, inventing and discovering new soundscapes, keeping her musical self together while the world seemed poised to crumble. Parkins…
Excavation
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 300 copies.* This release from Astral Editions, the rock offshoot of Astral Spirits, promises a lot of gems and this collaboration from Chris Cochrane (No Safety, Weird Little Boy) and John Thayer (Drunken Sufis, YAI) sits high atop the pile. Cochrane’s guitars crumple and crush, they squelch against Thayer’s rhythms with a gleeful sickness. “Zinc” chews through layers of tin and turbulence until Stan Zenkov’s sax enters the scene, throwing notes like …
Mouth=Maul=Betrayer
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Part of the Radical Jewish Culture series put out by John Zorn's Tzadik label, Zeena Parkins' Mouth=Maul=Betrayer perhaps more than any other album lives up to the name of the series. This work is aggressive, energetic, intellectually complex, challenging, and highly structured. At times it reads like the soundtrack to a classic gangster film of the '40s -- the music is often not a stylistic match for that time period, but the feeling of violence and darknes…
Scale
Scale, addresses issues of observation, embodied transferences, telepathy and duration employing swipes, knocks, resonators and hypnotic patternings on the acoustic harp with the less controllable sounds of radio waves, homemade synths and feedback. Inspired by the timings and sensations of natural phenomena including daylight’s slow emergence at dawn and the pulsing ambiance of ocean currents. Nature as both utopic and disruptive. Attention is situated in an often luscious, contemplative sonic …
Shark!
From the much lauded Queen Elizabeth Hall concert and club Link in Bologna, two very different knife-edge tours through sound and structure landscapes; from rollercoaster to glider. 'Indescribeable but wonderful. Quite superb. I would have been happy listening for ten times as long' Gibralter.
Land Escaping / Once
Few copies back in stock, long out of print - Archive release from avant-garde harpist / composer Zeena Parkins and legendary deep listener Pauline Oliveros. Presenca Series 001 is the result of the formerly-defunct Lucky Kitchen label delving into the vaults of the Serralves Foundation, digging up a side’s worth of sound art for each artist. On audiophile-grade vinyl. "Lucky Kitchen was a legendary experimental sound publisher beginning in New York in the 1990's, drawing to a close in Barcelon…
Works for String Quartet and Percussion
"The evolution of the string quartet repertory has accelerated during the last half of the twentieth-century and beyond as composers from both the mainstream and the avant-garde have mined its seemingly inexhaustible creative resources. This CD features the virtually unprecedented combination of string quartet and percussion. It contains three works by prominent American experimentalist composers from several generations exploring the ensemble's unique sonic resources in diverse stylistic settin…
Double Dupe Down
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Zeena Parkins is a keyboardist, harpist and composer who has worked closely with Fred Frith, Bjork, Ikue Mori and many others. Her brilliant work for dance has earned her three Bessie Awards, and her own bands have toured the world for over twenty years to great acclaim. This special compilation brings together her best compositions written for film and features some of the greatest musicians in the downtown scene. An endlessly creative collection of work by…
Between The Whiles
One of the world's most creative harpists, Zeena Parkins has contributed her inimitable playing style to the work of artists like Bjork, John Zorn, Yoko Ono,Sonic Youth and Matmos, whilst also recording a number of wonderful solo albums (including the timeless Nightmare Alley) and a couple of Phantom Orchard collaborations with electronics guru Ikue Mori. What most immediately sets Parkins apart from her peers is a roving appetite to look beyond the ordinary constraints of her instrument. While …