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Congotronics
This group was founded over 25 yrs ago by Mingiedi, a virtuoso of the likembé ('thumb piano'). The band's line-up includes 3 electric likembés, equipped w/ hand-made microphones built from magnets salvaged from old car parts, & plugged into amplifiers. There's also a rhythm section which uses traditional as well as makeshift percussion, 3 singers, 3 dancers & a peculiar sound system including megaphones dating from the colonial period. Their repertoire draws largely on Bazombo trance music, to w…
Live At Blå
First live document and fourth album overall from a band that mixes free jazz ecstasy with garage rock intensity. Even with no electricity, they make a hell of a noise and the album is an explosion of energy. Recorded at the Bla in Oslo.
Hallway Of Mirrors
VHF is releasing a bunch of solo guitar dudes over the next few weeks. Here's one of 'em! It's an album from New York's Alexander Turnquist called Hallway of Mirrors. It says that above so it's kinda pointless me saying that. Having said that the New York thing was a new bit of info so it's not all filler! I've not heard this chap before but I was rather taken with him on first listen. It's not a million miles away from the likes of James Blackshaw.... ie extreme 12 string fingerpluckery which i…
String Quartets Vol. 3 (Nos. 7-9)
String Quartets Nos. 7, 8 and 9 suggest that Rihm has finally left behind the neo-romantic expressive pathos of earlier compositions: “Real or virtual allusions to the past are rarely to be found any more – and the same holds of the luscious and revelling strings. Remnants of tonal harmony are, with a few exceptions, almost completely obliterated. … Instead, new constellations come to the fore, emancipated from traditional conceptions of sound – heeding, in particular, the principle of polarity …
Getting a head
Second in the metal box limited edition re-releases, this one from1980 with Fred Frith (guitar) and Charles K. Noyes (percussion) and featuring unorthodox instruments built from tape recorders and helium balloons.
Hanging gardens
Completely unique, stunningly musical, technically impressive & breathtakingly simple. The Necks have defined an endlessly productive area of performance that is at once both minimal and gripping, obvious yet profoundly subtle. Easy to say, hard to achieve. It can take time for a group with a completely original idea to find its public & The Necks have been pursuing this one for over a decade in their native Australia - but it doesn't age, it just matures.
Sonatas & Inteludes
The sonata originated in the Baroque as a small, one-movement form, which nevertheless already contained the core of the sonata to be later developed and composed in elaborate detail by the Viennese Classics. In his Sonatas and Interludes John Cage stuck to the concise, one-movement form, thus establishing a link to Scarlatti and Bach's preludes as well as to Chopin's Préludes and Satie's piano pieces. Other than many of his later, freer works, these small but complex gems are fixed and noted do…
Basic
Carl Michael von Hausswolff's first major domestic release. As a composer he has been the main sound organizer in the duo Phauss; he has also worked with The Hafler Trio, and is currently performing live in the group Ocsid with Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome). As a visual artist, he is co-founder of the conceptual state of Elgaland-Bargaland, which hosts a worldwide array of embassies and consulates, and who physical territory is described as 'all borderlines between existing states and areas at sea.
Music for a Summer Evening / A Little Suite for Christmas / Five
Music for a Summer Evening (1974) is the third part of the "cosmic drama" Macrocosmos, which investigates the relations between the innermost human soul and the vastness of the cosmos; relations that also determine the temporal, dynamic and tonal dimensions of the composition. Its immense material extravagance is reflected by a range of some 70 percussion instruments; in addition, the two pianists are required to perform a variety of different techniques, such as pizzicatos, flageolets, etc. A s…
Works for Piano and Cembalo
The pieces for piano/cembalo on this CD include the first two Capriccios by the 24-year-old Ligeti, the Musica ricercata, and the first volume of the legendary Études, in brilliant interpretations by the German pianist Erika Haase. Ligeti was a master in how to make tricky compositional systems appear as more than just that by inspiring them with sensual substance: that's what distinguishes the artist from the artisan. Throughout his life Ligeti kept his ears pricked up and his senses sharpened …
Teenage hallucinations: 1992-1999
Teenage Hallucination is a compendium of Wiese's initial recordings as a teenager to his seminal early vinyl appearances. From pure analog bedroom havoc to intense cut-up harsh noise blasts, Wiese steadily developed his highly personal and specific style of extreme music while trying to survive the St. Louis experience. 52 tracks in nearly 80 minutes of the best material from his Catwoman 7", split LP with The Haters, split 5" with Panicsville, collaborative tracks with GX Jupitter-Larsen (T…
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 …
Titles Of The Greatness Of Been
Floating of directly direction improvisation this record have almost no overdubs. Coming close to the abortion of sounds genuinely overlooked by contemporary artist, they succeed to use 'noise' as a base to build quite direct tracks. At times very soft and gently showing of a romantic side of things, followed by a psychiatric attempt to slaughter all neighbours. The general feel after listening to the album is gasping for breath. It took them 4 years to do this album of top guitar improvisation …
Käärmeenkääntöpiiri
Perhaps this collaboration was destined to happen, and we’re overjoyed that it is happening here! Tampere, Finland’s Uton (Jani Hirvonen) and Taranto, Italy’s Valerio Cosi (who is ½ of Pulga after all) are two of the most creative and most prolific musicians working in experimental music at the moment, and on Käärmeenkääntopiiri, Uton and Valerio have mastered a sound that combines elements of psychedelia, free jazz, krautrock, environmental sounds, drones and more for an ecstatic listening expe…
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…
Girls Beware!
JanuarY 2004. Two years after the highly acclaimed album “Rose-garden", the portables come up with their second full length. “Girls Beware!" starts where their previous album ended. De Portables developed a cult reputation during the years, mainly because of their many intense and always different performances. Against all recent trends, standards and expectations they do their thing; they play because they like playing. The quartet twists themselves during 11 songs a way between pop, post-rock …
Landings
RESTOCKED, reduced price - Having recorded a significant body of work under various guises including A Broken Consort and Clouwbeck, Richard Skelton returns with a brand new and long anticipated album under his own name. Following on from 'Marking Time' (originally released via Preservation in 2008 only to be reissued on limited vinyl by Type over the summer), 'Landings' is an album steeped in the wild rural landscape of Skelton's surroundings. Over the span of just a few releases he's ma…
Calling Out Of Context
Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day, those comfortable with his modern classical accomplishments were baffled by his acetates of loopy leftfield disco. Likewise, lovers of these dance tracks were confounded by their beatless, beatific recasting on World of Echo. And then there were listeners astounded by the intimacy of his voice and cello work, stymied by both the pop songs and the classical works, all spinnin…
Music For Voice, Koto And Shamisen
As part of its Japan focus the 1999 Biennial Festival for New Music in Hannover also presented Toshio Hosokawa's exploration into the music of his "musical ancestors." This CD was recorded live during the performance and includes three works from the 17th and 19th centuries. Chidori no kyoku by Yoshizawa kengyô II (1808-1872) is based on the 31-syllable poems of the classical poetry anthology Kokin wakashû (10th century), so-called waka poems; chidori is the Japanese plover, whose calls have bee…