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Gnomic Variations / Processional / Ancient Voices of Children
On reading the title Gnomic Variations, lovers of piano music might fancy themselves to be in a kind of "Grieg's World," but the truth is far from it: the title of the piano solo, completed in 1981, does not refer to any thieving Irish gnomes but solely to the conciseness of the structure of the work. "Gnomic" here means expressing an idea in brief words, or, simply, describing a maxim as accurately as possible. The Gnomic Variations consist of three parts, comprising a total of 18 variations. A…
Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
Dmitri Shostakovich was to encourage the young Gubaidulina, for instance when he told her in his official function as the chairman of a board of examiners: "Keep on composing on your errant ways." Her intuition was based on her profound religious faith as well as on literature and philosophy. In her String Trio of 1988 she accomplished a particularly impressive motif transfer in the finale. The motif, which has been powerfully completed before, sneaks in again through the first violin, endures, …
Urueña
'Sillón is proud to present what has to be Italy's best kept secret on the improvised music scene. Based in Madrid, Spain, Alessandra Rombolá works in the field of contemporary music and improvisation. Her stunning debut-cd, Urueña, shows her great musicality and sense of form. Her sound is so rich that it fills the whole space of the beautiful Church in the tiny village in central Spain, Urueña. The music is captured in detail by sound-wizard, Pierre-Olivier Boulant. A must for all fans of crea…
From The Kitchen Archives No.3: Amplified: New Music Meets Rock
From the Kitchen Archives Vol. 3. Amplified: New Music Meets Rock, 1981-1986 is the third release in a series of CDs compiled from The Kitchen's archive that documents historic concert recordings at The Kitchen from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. While the first two releases, New Music, New York 1979 and Steve Reich and Musicians, Live 1977 focused on major figures of new and experimental music from The Kitchen's first decade, Amplified moves into the early 1980s, representing a vocabulary th…
American Piano Concertos
The great creator of musical novelties hardly ever departed from the melodic harmonious basis, though: his major achievements included not least the development of new techniques for piano playing, which he also integrated in his book New Musical Resources. His Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1928) appears to put the spotlight on the technical and musical-historical findings, whereas in pieces such as Irish Jig and Four Irish Tales he openly and merrily inquires into his Irish background, with…
Proud Princess Of A Brand New City
After several hugely impressive concerts, where the visuals from Kurt D\\'Haeseleer are almost as important as the music, Guillaume Graux or Tuk comes up with a first cd. \\'Proud Princess of a Brand New City\\' contains mostly finished versions of the tracks he used the first three years at his live performances. The main sources on the cd are guitars, most of them so heavily treated that you barely hear it\\'s a guitar. Even if it\\'s only a beat, it might be guitar. You never know on this rec…
Gene packs
Hirotomo Hasegawa : ichiriki, voice, loops. Shizuo Uchida : bass, ichigen, loops. Debut album by a new improvisation group consisting of Hirotomo Hasegawa and Shizuo Uchida. Both have a leather-bound folder full of underground back-story. Hasegawa was the lead singer of seminal early eighties Japanese punk hardcore group Aburadako (Greasy Octopus), while Uchida was a long-term member of Haino's Nijiumu medieval dream-drone unit. The group's instrumentation is highly unorthodox, placing Uchida's …
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.
Darmstadt 2004
The "devil's organist" in action: if you really want to know what the "Queen of Instruments" is all about, make sure to experience Wolfang Mitterer play it live.Mitterer's organ event at Darmstadt in 2004 included not only works for organ solo but also synthetic sounds. In the piece mixture V (1995) he adheres to the principle indicated in the title, the mixture, in various respects – on the one hand in terms of organ technique and sound, on the other hand by his way of combining organ and elect…
Das tapfere Schneiderlein
Drop the usual children's opera platitudes, add a liberal measure of cheek – result: a smart musical comedy, young and saucy, just like the brave little people that go about their business here. Do the children today know at all what this fairytale is about? Well, if they don't, Wolfgang Mitterer will bring it home to them, with just a few characteristic instruments: double bass, samples, synthetic sounds. Elisabeth Rombach as the little tailor takes to the road boldly and merrily, parading the …
Trac(k)_t
his is the final work in the series of works-encompassing ataraxia, bradycard, trans~, and back_forward – using the cymbalon as source material. The process of working with this hammered stringed instrument for this series has been a “discussion” between the instrument and myself, an exploration of traditional playing, digital processing, and mixtures of both. I feel that trac[k]_t should convey the scope of using an instrument without losing both its intrinsic nature of engagement as …
Red Rainbows
Last copies, nice price....Debut CD from Brooklyn musician and film maker Sarah Lipstate. Red Rainbows is full of growing tonal drones that evoke visions of menacing multicoloRed skies alongside tracks full of beautiful minimalistic structures that shoot straight for the heart. Sarah uses double-neck guitar and various electronics to create breathtaking atmospheres with an intensity that works on both a cognitive and emotional level. These tracks are either really beautiful or really dirty when …
Nipples
Long awaited reissue of this historic pre-FMP album by Peter Brotzmann. Known to many for it's placement on "The List" (T. Moore's Top Ten list of free jazz artifacts as published in Grand Royal of course), this is one of the most desirable and completely unseen albums in the genre of modern improvisation. Recorded April 18/24, 1969 and released on the Calig-Verlag label. Simply put, Nipples is one of the rarest and most influential European energy jazz recordings of all time. The incendiary Sex…
Une Soirée Vian
The Soirée Vian, a kind of meta-cabaret created in 1991 based on a commission by the WDR, develops along the narrative red thread of Boris Vian's novel The red grass and turns into a dizzying journey through the absurdly crazy worlds of Vian's universe. The fullness and polystylism of this venture undertaken by Denys Bouliane might indeed almost make the listener dizzy, not least due to the fantastic performance by the electro-acoustic ensemble "Série B." Their "musical roller coaster ride from …
Punani Rubberist
First edition of 300 copies. 'Punani Rubberist is a new composition for computer, bass clarinet and gas horn. The CD includes remixes by Kazumoto Endo, eRikm, and Joe Gilmore, and an additional unreleased solo computer composition (Excelsior Punani) from 2003. He plucked a hair from his body, chewed it up, spat it out, made the magic with his fist, said the words of the spell, and shouted 'Change!'. It turned into hundreds and thousands of little monkeys, who rushed wildly about grabbing weapons…
Ktl
KTL is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.). This is a six-part collision amongst the increasingly fading presences between the light and the dark, with some pieces recorded in a resistance fortress in southern France during a thunderstorm -- while others were recorded in a winter garden drenched in sunlight. The collaboration came about as the two were working on a theatre production by Gisèle Vienne and Dennis Cooper, entitled Kinder…
Hotel paral.lel
"Re-mastered at Piethopraxis in Köln, July 2007. "Hotel Paral.lel", originally released in September 1997 by Mego, was Christian Fennesz's debut solo album. Following up from the EP "Instrument", it was an investigation into the sonic possibilties residing in guitar based digital music, recorded just before mobile computing devices became the norm. A far more darker and experimental work than what was to follow. Freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient textures create a time…
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…
I Love My Organ
The bulk of the material on Tom Recchion's second album for Birdman was recorded just after the completion of Chaotica in the mid-'80s, and sounds like a natural continuation of that record (despite the absence of any Esquivel). Recchion is assisted on some tracks by noted musician, composer, author, journalist for The Wire, and music curator David Toop (himself a collaborator with Eno, Jon Hassell, John Zorn, Talvin Singh, Adrian Sherwood, and Scanner). Recchion labored on I Love My Organ for y…
Les Maledictus Sound
(Originally released in 1968) this is one of the most bizarre records ever released and one of the most sought after titles on the collectors' market. The Maledictus Sound are to instrumental rock what Frankenstein was to science... a laboratory monster... a strange creature assembled from a mish-mash of diverse musical sounds. Psychedelic pop, romantic ballads, musical tongue-in-cheek, drugged out chipmunks, near-delirium sound effects, horror movie screamadelia and a mega-twisted '60s vibe. Ec…