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Psychoneurose
Italian Avant-Noise legend M.B. and Land Use collaborate on dramatic, subterranean wall-of-noise constructions and swirling textural storms, dense and complex arrangements, shifting and shimmering tones barely under control, streaming toward some distant and indefineable precipice. Not noisy, but way too tense and corrosive to be called ambient. These vibrant monoliths of sound shift the listeners pysche into a restless sort of zen, a blissful chaos - truly mind and mood-altering. Bianchi releas…
Seven Compositions (Trio) 1989
"The great avant-garde reed player Anthony Braxton (who on this set switches between alto, C-melody sax, clarinet, flute, soprano and sopranino), bassist Adelhard Roidinger and drummer Tony Oxley play five of Braxton's complex originals, Oxley's "The Angular Apron" and the standard "All the Things You Are." As usual Braxton's improvising is quite advanced and original but is colorful and fiery enough to always hold on to open-eared listener's attention. This is one of literally dozens of …
Neither
An opera? An anti-opera? A monodrama? Whatever it may be: Neither (1977) marks the meeting of the kindred artistic souls of Samuel Beckett and Morton Feldman.
Natura renovatur
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88) has featured prominently in my music writing life for a decade and a half, ever since I wrote Discovering Scelsi on my first computer for Piano Journal (Oct. 1986), one of the first UK articles about this fascinating and elusive composer.There are particular reasons why the Scelsi CD in the latest, indispensable batch from Kairos prompted a trawl of my files. Scelsi applauded my analysis of his piano music and we had a cordial correspondence, after which I met him tw…
Work 2006-2011
Wall and Rodgers have worked together informally and irregularly for the best part of two decades, but it has been since Wall took the leap into improvisation, roughly five years ago, that the potential for their collaborations to become something more solid has evolved. So the pair have worked together, either just informally in Wall's studio or out playing live gigs since 2006, and they have produced a body of material that Wall has then sculpted into the composition that appears on the CD. Th…
String Quartets Vol. 2 (Nos. 5 & 6)
That the two single-movement string quartets No. 5 (“Ohne Titel”) and No. 6 (“Blaubuch”), composed in 1981/83 and 1984, belong to the most passionate of Rihm’s quartets is due to their restless vigor. This impulsive approach is of course always present in his music. But even the tempo indications “fast, restless” and “fast und free” suggest a certain stringency - which is fully realized in the pieces. A sense of inner disquiet pulls the listener like a maelstrom into a sea of commotion, of stru…
Pre-zoic cellways
Jaap Blonk: voice, powerbook, effects. Cor Fuhler: EMS synthi-AKS, turntable. Nice meeting in the electronic series of Kontrans.
Fanfare For The Warriors
Fans of the A.E.C. and cutting-edge-music rejoice! Long unavailable in this country, the Art Ensemble of Chicago's landmark album recorded in 1974 for the Atlantic label is back in print. Though not "easy listening" to be sure, the A.E.C. present challenging music that's worth the effort. Witness the relentless, Louis Jordan/Louis Prima-rooted swing of "Barnyard Scuffel Shuffel" and the sublime African/Japanese/Javanese-influenced rhythmic soundscape of "What's To Say." The eerie, pensive, breat…
Autumn Testament
Comprised of Brad Rose (The North Sea) and Keith Wood (Hush Arbors), The Golden Oaks features road show magicians springing forth candles from wooded sanctuaries. Composed via the postal system, Autumn Testament is a hymn to the season of red, gold, and orange. A canopyn of leaves shelters the proceedings from the fog that threatens to obscure these sounds. This is a glorious combination of organic grace, blessed by the forests of past centuries and those still in their infant stages. The trees …
Guitar Album
This enterprising programme of 20th century music, recorded in England by the distinguished Japanese guitarist Azusa Shimizu, contains first recordings of pieces by Højsgaard and Mamiya, as well as offering a rare opportunity to hear the sonata by Antonio José, who was brutally murdered during the Spanish Civil War. An outstanding CD for all guitar music enthusiasts.
Telescope Mind
Tussle's early output on Troubleman Unlimited proved to be quite a hit with tastemakers like John Peel and Trevor Jackson. Now, a few years down the line the group have lost one of their founding members (oddly, Vetiver's Andy Cabic used to play bass for the band) but have honed their modernised take on disco and rhythm music, with Telescope Mind achieving an immensely successful blend of experimental techniques and pop minimalism. After the brief, introductory piece, 'Lyre', 'Warning' comes acr…
Early works vol. 1 (1979/82)
Very last copy. First release of the early sound installations from the German sound artist Rolf Julius, ranging from 1979 to 1982 : Music on Two High Poles (1979), Morning Song (Berlin Concert Series, 1981, in collaboration with Joan La Barbara), Music for the Earth (Berlin Concert Series, 1981), Music for the Eyes , (1981), Music for a Pane of Glass (1980), Music for a Yellow Room (Berlin Concert Series, 1982), Chamber Concert for Three Loudspeakers, (Berlin Concert Series, 1982), Concert for …
Airforms
Airforms was first presented at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [Scottsdale, Arizona] in April of 2004. The work was inspired by a group of experimental houses designed by Wallace Neff in the 1940s using a process he called airform construction. The houses were built by spraying concrete over an inflated balloon structure. Inspired by the nautilus sea shell, the houses were an investigation into the aesthetic possibilities of structures formed by air, and the psychological effects of l…
Elektronische musik
One of the biggest finds in total Kraut electronic underground in the recent years. Crack in the Cosmic Egg asks: Does this exist? Yes it does! A Student of Eimert, Reinhold Weber produced several records of his own, two between 1969 and 1971, both of which are total weird and wild electronic, handmade, pre-synthesizer. Topped with crazy German language monotone lyrics. For fans of Cluster, Eimert, Stockhausen and people generally interested in the weird side of music. The second LP of his will …
String Quartets Vol.1
This CD with … the first four string quartets reflects the interesting path of Rihm’s artistic development. The Minguet Quartet approaches the first two, shorter, works with audibly high concentration without relinquishing, in the frenzy of high-energy playing, their own cultivated sound born from quartet tradition. Here, Rihm’s third quartet, with its not unproblematic subtitle ‘Im Innersten’ (‘at the innermost core’), does not become self-indulgent navel-gazing, the display of sounding extremi…
Hommage à Paul Klee
With his Pedagogical Sketchbook often regarded as a virtual manual in composition, Paul Klee has exerted a far-reaching influence on modern music. Few composers were so profoundly affected as Sándor Veress, whose encounter with Klee's work after fleeing Hungary in 1949 gave rise to seven fantasies that range from the Bachian gravity of 'Old Sound' and the intensely elegiac 'Green in Green' to the rhythmic playfulness of 'Stone Collection'. Grau and Schumacher give a committed performance, differ…
American Landscapes 1
American Landscapes 1 and 2 are live dates from 2006. While there have been a few personnel changes since the original line-up—trombonist Hannes Bauer replacing Jeb Bishop and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love replacing Hamid Drake—the core Tentet has remained intact. Both discs are comprised of a single track, clocking in at respectively about 44 and 52 minutes. Both discs are difficult to digest as single entities: attacking them as longer composed/improvised pieces linked by changes allows you better…
Musica Viva 03
Musica Viva 03: Pleading for divine forgiveness, exploring the bounds of possibility of clarinets, and tricks of light.
Glissando n.1
Restocked “A trance-tape piece, constituting the entirety of the genre called Illuminatory Sound Environment, composed in the 70s in response to Catherine Christer Hennix’s “Electric Harpsichord. ” John Berdnt’s enthralling liner notes explain ISE as “an unfurling sound field of overwhelming but far from gratuitous sensuality, a highly “tuned” texture where all of the aspects are coordinated to make a deeply unusual “whole”, a new kind of perceptual gestalt... The piece has a disorienting flow t…
Chamber Music
Against spontaneity and con-sistency: Poppe manages the feat of being both a systematic and a revolutionary composer, one who plays by the rules and beats them at the same time.