Back in stock
What Comes After
2024 stock. What Comes After introduced a new alliance with American bassist Barre Phillips whose freely creative arco playing is often the second lead voice (two of the compositions are also Barre’s). The unorthodox line-up includes contributions from powerhouse bass guitarist Sveinung Hovensjø, an important collaborator throughout the 70s (in the Odyssey band and other ensembles), and from classical oboist Erik Niord Larsen. Rypdal, Phillips and Christensen periodically played completely impro…
Zartir
*Deluxe packaging* The third album from Levon Eskenian’s remarkable ensemble is its most adventurous to date. As well as reclaiming the music of esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff for folk instrumentation, Zartir situates Gurdjieff in a tradition of Armenian bards and troubadours including Ashugh Jivani, Baghdasar Tbir and the legendary Sayat-Nova. In parallel, an emphasis on pieces for sacred dance reaches its apex in The Great Prayer, an entrancing collaboration between the Gurdjieff Ensemble an…
Music of Georges I. Gurdjieff
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* Fascinating and highly attractive project which returns the music of Gurdjieff (c. 1866 – 1949) to its ethnic inspirational sources. To date Gurdjieff’s compositions have largely been studied, in the West, via the piano transcriptions of Thomas de Hartmann. Armenian composer Levon Eskenian now goes beyond the printed notes to look at the musical traditions that Gurdjieff encountered during his travels, and rearranges the compositions from this perspective. Eskenian…
Violin & Orchestra
Carolin Widmann’s widely acclaimed ECM recordings have traversed a broad arc of music – from Schubert to Xenakis. Here she turns her attention to one of the pivotal compositions of Morton Feldman. Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1979, marked a new direction, with an almost painterly attention to detail in slowly unfolding music. It is not a concerto in the strict sense of the term, not soloist with orchestral support. The violinist must move inside the glowing colour-field of sound. In t…
Book Of Days
Meredith Monk is generally described as an avant-garde artist of many talents. Of her many talents there is no question, but what exactly makes her “avant-garde”? The Random House Dictionary defines the term as meaning “of or pertaining to the experimental treatment of artistic, musical, or literary material.” This raises another question: What does it mean to be experimental? The same dictionary gives us: “founded on…an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of tes…
Dolmen Music
Meredith Monk and her vocal troupe cut a line between experimental theatre and music, marking a passage through the Ancient Greek tragedy, the opera, world-music, the archaic ritual and the mystical chant. It started with "Gotham Lullaby", presenting a contralto over a desolate and stark piano sonata. Then "Travelling" set a feverish gypsy dance, a wild ritual stirring the primeval forces at play. The sonata returned in "The Tale", as the backbone to an offbeat pantomime/ theatrical performance.…
Nouvelle Vague
This is the complete soundtrack – music, dialogue, sounds – of Jean-Luc Godard’s Nouvelle Vague, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990. "In making this film," Godard said at a press conference later that year, "I heard a great deal of music; music produced by Manfred Eicher. I can well imagine how musicians are inspired and influenced by these sounds. And I too have immersed myself in this music, and I have felt,in my work, like a musician." Interviewed at the Toronto Film Festival of 19…
Tabula Rasa
The 1984 ECM album Tabula Rasa was the vehicle that introduced the revolutionary music of Arvo Pärt to audiences outside Eastern Europe and initiated what was to become one of the most extraordinary musical careers of the late 20th century. Like many of the first generation American minimalists, he limited himself to diatonic harmonies and generated pieces by setting processes in motion, but the radical simplicity he achieved was the result of religious contemplation that was at least as, if not…
Tractus
Tractus emphasizes Arvo Pärt compositions that blend the timbres of choir and string orchestra. New versions predominate, with focused performances from the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste’s direction that invite alert and concentrated listening. From the opening composition Littlemore Tractus, which takes as its starting point consoling reflections from a sermon by John Henry Newman, the idea of change, transfiguration and renewal resona…
Radiance
“Radiance” is the first album of solo piano improvisations from Keith Jarrett in a decade. The last such was “La Scala”, recorded 1995, released 1997. (In between, in 1999, Jarrett issued the home recording “The Melody At Night With You”, a solo album of standards and folk songs). Four years ago, Jarrett told interviewers it was unlikely he would return to solo piano performance. Having been sidelined for several seasons by illness, he had attempted two solo concerts in Japan in the autumn of 19…
Live In Munich
This concert recording from Munich’s Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. “To work with these colours is a great challenge and joy!” says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating from Jordina Millà’s freely associative piano. Like Guy, Millà is both a player of prodigious technical capacity and a fearless improvisational explorer, and her highly creative use of the piano interior opens up …
There’s nothing better than producing sounds
2011 release ** "This album is Gianluca Codeghini's return to his origins, and the 14 tracks were recorded after long improvisation sessions which inspired each musician with unpredictable scores, visual stimuli and stories. The starting point is "Coffee-table book" (2011), a collection of quatrains by Alessandro Broggi published by Transeuropa edizioni, and the poet actively collaborated in the composition of a few tracks and in the production phase. The sequence of the tracks lines up the rhyt…
Discordes
2017 release ** "This duo started in 2014 with the idea to transform the acoustic instrument into a real electroacoustic one. Transducers, springs and microphones are attached to the cello which is then processed through electronic and tape. This CD comes from several hours of improvisations recorded in studio and reorganised to build six pieces of abstract electroacoustic music. "
Unknown Music 1: Alien Letter
2005 release ** "Painter, guitarist, composer, and free author Steffen Basho-Junghans lives in Berlin and Thuringia, Germany. He has been highly influential on the eastern German guitar scene since the late '70s. Largely a self-taught artist and musician, his style is best categorized as eccentric and highly personal. Junghans uses steel-string acoustic guitars, combining archaic sounds with altered tunings and a plethora of divergent connections. Traditional European, American Indian, and Asian…
Harkening Critters
Forms Of Minutiae presents 'Harkening Critters', the label’s second non-profit compilation of field recordings and soundscape compositions highlighting, this time, the incredible variety of animal signals.
Ist Gefallen In Den Schnee
Magnus Granberg, piano. Angharad Davies, violin. Leo Svensson Sander, cello. Erik Carlsson, percussion. John Eriksson, vibraphone & crotales. Petter Wstberg, electronics. Henrik Olsson, bowls and glasses. Anna Lindal, violin. Toshimaru Nakamura, no input mixing board.
“Ist gefallen in den Schnee is a single, hour long composition scored by Magnus Granberg and performed by the group Skogen, which on this occasion consisted of nine musicians, seven of them Swedish and two of them (Toshi…
Caisson
Second outing for this powerful Anglo-Czech electronics-led trio (Jez Riley French, field recordings, zither, contact mics, electronics. Daniel Jones, turntable & electronics. Ivan Palack , amplified knitting machine). Recorded live in Hull, November 2010. 'With the Caisson CD, I think we all feel that this meeting between intuitive composition, sound & improvisation has a language of its own. The aspect of listening is constantly shifting in a forward motion. Moments are at the core of wh…
Spiral Inputs
Trio improvisations with Sophie Agnel - piano, Bertrand Gauguet - alto & soprano saxophones and Andrea Neumann - piano frame, electronic devices