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The minor forms represented on the present recording range from the principles of the ars nova in the Sonata piccola to the weird waltzes in the Movimenti per chitarra. With the exception of the Préludes, the pieces are to be performed as cycles. The Sonata Piccola, composed in 1986 and revised in 1996, is really based on medieval compositional principles. The names of the movements of the Movimenti per chitarra and of the Partita then suggest Baroque forms of the suite. At the same time, a logi…
An attempt to convert Brussels' sonic reality into music. Mutated environmental sound materials gathered in Brussels, remixes of interviews with inhabitants and extracts of installations are flanked with atmospheric compositions made with sounds from other cities and countries.
Long deleted, few copies available: "Gestation Sonore" is the only album to be released by the French improvisational quartet "Horde Catalytique Pour La Fin"; which rightfully found its way onto the infamous Nurse With Wound list. The four piece line-up consisted of Richard Accart (Saxophone tenor, flutes), Francky Bourlier (Harpe de verrer, flute, vibraphone, percussions), Jacques Fassola (Contrebasse, guitar, banjo, Orgue a bouche) and Gil Sterg (Drums and percussion).Released in 1971 on the l…
Featured works: "Pléiades" and Psappha." Performed by Kroumata Percussion Ensemble; Gert Mortensen, percussion. "Xenakis has been very interested in percussion music -- ever since his orchestral piece 'Terretektorh (1966) in which the instrumental forces are spread throughout the hall, by way of 'Psappha' (1975) for a lone percussion virtuoso all the way to 'Pléiades' (1979) for six percussionists -- perhaps the largest composition in the entire percussion repertoire, and the most daring …
Reissue of this obscure Canadian album from 1975, originally issued on the A.R.C. Record label, with extended mixes and bonus material from the same period. Performed by David Rosenboom and J. B. Floyd (pianos, one in each channel) & Trichy Sankaran on South Indian percussion (mrdangam and kanjira). On April 19th, 1975, at Northern Illinois University, three musicians met in a milestone event from which emerged a unique, improvising trio with two pianos and South Indian percussion. Fortunately, …
Giacinto Scelsi was both reclusive and inexact in the way that he dated and named his compositions. This rendition of Tre Pezzi (a broad title Scelsi used numerous times for different pieces) focuses on narrow ranges in the B-flat clarinet, demonstrating the thin margin of tonal range between the phrases that come sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Kho Lho, on the other hand, pairs a clarinet and flute duet so closely that the instruments' tones merge into a thick strand of sound. Maknongan is a r…
The second release from this abstract trio who mingle hard electronics with acoustic and processed percussion. A more focused, subtle aesthetic here, I think, than on their last also excellent - CD. These are finely tuned and seamlessly integrated sounds that have been crafted and, importantly, performed; this is essentially played music that had been painstakingly reworked, and bears still the deep qualities of interactivity and immediacy that created it.
George Antheil was not only always ahead of his time; he was also an alert contemporary and ready to take in all artistic trends of the first half of the 20th century. There was hardly a kind of music he wasn't aware of, hardly a madness he didn't take part in, and hardly a scandal he missed, or missed to cause. All his personal entanglements are certainly reflected in his compositions – and we wouldn't expect any less from him; but his continuing reputation as a genuinely unique character is ne…
One of the mysteries surrounding Jesús Rueda is the question how he was able to find a voice of his own, the various influences to which he was exposed during his development as a composer notwithstanding. He bid farewell to the constructivist rigor of Francisco Guerrero, and his pieces to do not immediately betray influences by Luis de Pablo, Giacomo Manzoni and Luigi Nono. Characteristic of his compositions are fast tempos, present in “slower” parts as brisk figurations, his sense of harmony a…
Back in stock. Released: 1997.Jim O'Rourke is a rarity: a genuine bridge between the avant-garde and the underground. From his production work (Smog, Wilco, Faust) to his own freewheeling excursions as a solo performer and member of outfits like Gastr del Sol and Sonic Youth, his work continues to bring the out there in here. Happy Days pits a lone guitar against a phalanx of hurdy-gurdies, a decided shift away from the composer's electronic-based work. A roiling hornet's next of activity that F…
“Once you focus your will and mind on a particular thought or sentiment, and screen out the external world, you’re being transported into a state of contemplation, which fully takes effect in solitude: relaxation in a unity of subjective and objective experience which has come to rest.” (Robert M. Helmschrott) In the best case scenario, this basic, contemplative frame of mind helps sharpen consciousness, which, in turn, further deepens the understanding of music,” “reaching deep into the all-enc…
Summons of Shining Ruins is a project of Shinobu Nemoto, who works with electric guitar, tape delay, old rhythm machines, stompboxes and 4-track-recorders. No computer or software is used to record this work. And you can hear that in every tone.
1991 CD reissue of the 2nd TG album, originally issued in 1978; digitally remastered by Chris Carter. Adds 2 bonus tracks from the legendary Sordide Sentimental 7" ("We Hate You (Little Girls)" & "Five Knuckle Shuffle". Breaking from the live sound of the previous Second Annual Report, D.O.A. finds the group assembling collages of computer noise, cassette tapes on fast forward, looped feedback and tape hiss, surreptitiously recorded conversation, threatening phone calls, and much more, all to a …
Smalltown Supersound's "Superjazz" offshoot delivers this much-discussed darkcore jazz fusion album led by sometime sonic youth collaborator Mats Gustafsson, here rummaging through improvs and cover versions like a garage band picking up trumpets, double bass and drums for their heavily skewed but massively charming workouts. Sticking a hairy a tongue out at the polished slickness of the Bad Plus, The Thing offer up cover versions of tracks by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes and Peter Bro…
"All my works always start out from a human incentive: an event, an experience, a text in our lives leads to my instinct and my conscience and wants me to bear witness, as a musician and as a man." This is how Nono, in 1960, described his motivation as a composer, the incentive inducing him to speak up through his music. His opus 1, the Canonic variations on the series of op. 41 by Arnold Schönberg, is based on the twelve-tone series used in Schönberg's composition; it actually takes effect in t…
This release is the second (Volume 2) in the three-part Aerial series. Tod Dockstader is one of the all-time great figures in the world of musique concréte composition, with his "organized sound" works from the 1960s being amongst the most radical ever conceived -- in league with Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, and Varese. Aerial is a rare new work in the realm of shortwave radio, from one of America's most experimental composers. Volume 1 was released in March 2005 inside a slipcase. Volu…
Apart from a large orchestra, Kraanerg, composed in 1968/69, requires audio feeds of recorded parts played by the orchestra and of the results of the manipulation of electro-acoustical phenomena. “I do not work with basic building blocks. I start afresh every time,“ Xenakis once said. This statement may help explain the extremely independent sonic universe created afresh in his compositions again and again. In the same vein, he rejects any attempt to foist semantic patterns onto the music of Kra…
This CD collects the first Smegma long-player, Glamour Girl 1941, originally released on the LAFMS label in 1979, the Pigface Chant 7" released that same year and recorded five years earlier, and even adds in four bonus recordings from that same era. These early recordings of this long-running group of noise anarchists show an extremely primitive but non-conformist take on the musical world, even more so than, say, the Krautrock band Faust, as Smegma adds a messier element of chaos to its sound.…
An interesting development in recent times has been the transAtlantic and trans-generational connections being made in the improvisation community. The Emanem recording by Steve Beresford with Okkyung Lee and Peter Evans, and George Lewis' collaboration with GIO are just two recent examples that come to mind. At the forefront of this trend is the duo of Nate Wooley (trumpet & amplifier) and Paul Lytton (percussion & live electronics) bringing two of the most questioning minds in improvised music…
Titles often occur to Reinhard David Flender only after he has completed a composition. When listening to Aurora, for example, "a visual association is evoked. The piece starts with a long double bass tone. Then a high pitched tone played by oboe and harp comes in, briefly at first, repeated at intervals; as the piece proceeds it is joined by other tones, until a short melody emerges. Thus the title Aurora, the first rays of sun at the crack of dawn, which then give way to a shape: the dome of t…