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Steve Reich: Tehillim The Desert Music
Two Reich masterpieces, definitively recorded, featuring a crystalline, high-energy Tehillim with the ONLY RECORDING of the newly revised version of The Desert Music. A must for Reich fans. For freshness and focus, the new recording of Tehillim surpasses the 1981 recording by Mr. Reich & his own ensemble.
Oboe Concertos
The oboe more than suited Maderna's partiality for clear structures and sensual-concrete sounds. It was not without good reason that at a time when the supply of music dedicated to the oboe was anything but plenty, Maderna wrote, not one, not two, but three concertos (besides several other works for oboe) for this "nasal" sounding member of the woodwind family. The first oboe concerto (1963) seems almost classical in its character, in the interplay of oboe and orchestra, or involving other instr…
Milano New Wave 1980-83
a representative and intense snapshot of the Milanese sinthy wave scene of the early eighties, 20 tracks that recount the salient steps of the brief but intense career of four Milanese bands — from the post-punk of Other Side, to the oblique funk of State Of Art, to the evident Kraftwerk infl uences of La Maison, to the electro of Jeunesse d’Ivoire — four bands that illustrate the mood of an underground scene tha…
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.
Musica Viva 06
"Musica Viva 06" is another excellent release from the German Col Legno label, which specializes in the avant-garde. This disc includes three live performances -- the original 1981 recording of "Ais," featuring the incredible baritone voice of Spyros Sakkas, a new recording of "Troorkh," a trombone concerto, from 2000, and (drumroll please...) the world premiere of "Anastenaria," also from 2000, with the inimitable Xenakis champion Charles Bornstein conducting. As it turns out, "Metastas…
The Wide Album
It took Tim Wijnant two years to complete the successor of his debut-album Gravity=Love. All this resulted in a stream of ideas, influences which were put into this new album. This is a mature CD ranging him amongst the likes of Pimmon/Fennesz/Markus Schmickler. The Wide Album is a progressing work. Started out by collecting 'sounds' from different sources. Manipulated, and processed into rough tracks and fitted alongside one another until a definite version was completed and fine-tuned as a who…
Piano and Orchestra, Palais de Mari, Piano
In the early 1970s, Feldman increasingly turned his attention to works for orchestra, in most cases combined with a solo instrument. The compositions dating from this period include, among many others, Cello and Orchestra (1972) or Oboe and Orchestra (1976). One aspect that was important to him in all of these works was a research into sound, an "unceasing effort to create, by way of exclusion and integration, by operating with colored projection surfaces and various spatial levels, a kind of se…
Music For Percussion Quartet
As early as in 1942, in Credo in Us, Cage employed not only a percussion ensemble but also sounds from the radio and records. Therefore, quite in accordance with what the composer would have wished, the materials used by the Percussion Ensemble Mainz in this recording range from Beethoven's fifth symphony (vinyl record, including the rustling) to ABBA, Tina Turner and advertising slogans. It goes without saying that rhythms play an important part in music for percussion. Cage, though, was also i…
Musica Viva 02
Musica Viva 02: Space and sound, modernism and pluralism, "perfect harmony" and, finally, the fascination of collectively organized fireflies.
Das atmende Klarsein
Researching into the fringe ranges of hearing, and actually going to the limits: electronics – live or prerecorded – was one of the tools employed by Luigi Nono in pursuance of this object. In his work Das atmende Klarsein he moreover endeavored to expand the ability of listening: "Waking up the ear, the eyes, human understanding, intelligence, is what is essential today," the composer, also a politically aware man, observed in the early 1980s. Das atmende Klarsein "is a key work of Nono's final…
Bryant park Moratorium Rally
An October afternoon in 1969. Midtown Manhattan. A rally in Bryant Park against the Vietnam War. Down 42nd Street towards Times Square, Tony Conrad is adjusting microphones in his 5th floor loft, one directed at the TV set -- where it will pick up live local news coverage -- the other pointing out the window, where the echo of speeches and crowd noise mingles with the oceanic rush of crosstown traffic. As the event is about to begin, he rolls tape. Thirty-four years later, we hear what he heard.…
Way Out
The Books have a terrific sense of humor-- and it makes The Way Out, an album built on eccentric vocal samples, a good-natured discovery instead of a cheap piece of mockery. Imagine if a blog had posted these clips of goofball hypnotherapist and meditation consultants, or found a tape of a boy and a girl swapping violent threats with each other: You'd chuckle and move on. But when the Books use these samples, they give them integrity. You find yourself engrossed with people …
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…
14 Récitations
A songbird that stops singing must die. Georges Aperghis demands a similar degree of self-sacrifice of the performer of his 14 Récitation.
Red Morocco
Someday someone will write a history of modern music that will free us of the false dichotomies such as high vs. low, improviser vs. composer, classical vs. everything else… …The written materials Joe passed out to the musicians for Red Morocco was minimal, sometimes more visual than musical, but always modest. Everyone was seated in the same room, in a circle. The music heard on this recording occurred late in the day, when Joe felt a certain clarity was occurring……The results are an elegant,…
Sooner or later
Long out of print, now reissued in limited edition metal boxes by Bob himself,Sooner or Later is a powerful piece (for sampler) derived from the sounds of a Salvadorian boy burying his father: a shovel striking rock, a voice, a buzzing fly. Some guitar sounds by Fred Frith are added in part two. This tells only of the sources; what Bob does with them is compelling and hypnotic.categories CC, SAPT, EL, C
s/t
Born in 1934. Boeswillwald took an eclectic engineer training (electronics, sound recording) of fine arts (decorative arts) and theatre, and at the Sorbonne antique theatre. In 1953, he discovered the Sorbonne maison des lettres studio founded by Roland Barthes and from that point commits himself into sound creation. He frequented regularly the radio Club d'essais where he met P. Schaeffer. 'Le piano joue, la caravane passe' (2000). 'Au fond, la mer est belle' (1999). 'Pathos ad Libitum' (…
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…
Our rainy season Nuilagi
“Kraig Grady: composer, metallophone. Jim Denley: bass flute, alto saxophone and wooden flute. Mike Majkowski: upright bass. Erin Barnes: metallophone. Jonathan Marmor: metallophone. 1. Our Rainy Season (49:12) 2. Nuilagi (25:54) The two pieces on this album reflect the sounds and the duality of the experiences of our rainy seasons. The first is an internal reflection sifted through memories. The second is a realization of the very music played by the people of Anaphoria to give thanks …
Opus 3.1
special price offer: Opus 3.1 consists of 20 tracks divided into five acts. Each cut--or scene--represents a different percussion instrument. Some are quiet, others cacophonous, but even the slow, stark resonance of a ringing gong maintains a sharp level of intensity. The sole drawback is inconsistency: After being soothed into a reflective trance state, the listener is occasionally jolted by the strident opening clang of the subsequent cut. Ghost Stories, a 1-track, 68-minute live recordi…