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Works for Soprano
Kurtág's attachment to speech is also to be sensed in the works from this first period of maturity, something which emerged more concretely in this CD maily cenetered around the Russian language, which he learned especially in order to read Dostoevsky, and which is almost "sacred" for him, in the way that Latin was for Stravinsky. In his Russian works, opp 16 to 19, Kurtág's response to Russian prosody transforms his musical dialect with a poignant lyricism; this is to be heard both in the works…
Kraanerg
"I originated in 1954 a music constructed from the principle of indeterminism; two years later I named it "stochastic music." The laws of the calculus of probabilities entered composition through musical necessity… But other paths also let to the same stochastic crossroad -- first of all, natural events such as the collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen…
Pre-zoic cellways
Jaap Blonk: voice, powerbook, effects. Cor Fuhler: EMS synthi-AKS, turntable. Nice meeting in the electronic series of Kontrans.
Ray Night 1991-1992 Live
First ever CD by this legendary and ultra-obscure Japanese psychedelic rock group. Kousokuya are from Tokyo, have donated some spectacular tracks to the first two volumes of the Tokyo Flashback compilation series on the PSF label, and self-released an extremely ltd. LP in 1991. The band has been around for quite some time; I originally was under the impression they formed around 1984, but was recently informed that an edition featuring Nanjo and Narita from High Rise existed going back to the l…
(Old school) Karlheinz Stockhausen
This is the fourth release in the series [old school]. The first three CDs, dedicated to the music of John Cage [zkr0009], James Tenney [zkr0010] and Alvin Lucier [zkr0011] have been highly acclaimed. London's Wire Magazine wrote: 'The rigour and discipline they collectively bring to this compositions make both discs utterly enthralling, from start to finish.' The new release is dedicated to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.' 'I do not want a spiritualistic session. I want music.' Karlheinz St…
Three Voices
This piece is sung by the Swiss “deep voice”, Marianne Schuppe in trio with herself, a feat made possible by playing back recordings of her own voice. This is not minimal music; melodic lines arise, sensual, beautiful, and undoctored, swaying like a lullaby, yet boosting the overall rhythmic intensity. There cannot be many works which demand of the soloist such careful timing, intense concentration and voice control.
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…
Radio Java
Java is the center of Indonesian culture. Three out of every four Indonesians live on Java. It is the home of some of the most elegant musical styles to be found anywhere. To the veteran international sound collector, Javanese music is no secret. For the uninitiated, rather than going through an introductory outline of Javanese music history, I will wish you away to the internet, a library, or bookstore where you can find plenty of information on the subject. The selections on this CD are a comb…
Quilisma
The succinctness of his work will first become fully apparent when it becomes possible to view the second half of the twentieth century from something more like a bird’s-eye view.
Gran Torso / Salut für Caudwell
In 1988 the first issue of these recordings of Gran Torso and Salut für Caudwell was awarded the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics' Award); and neither compositions nor recordings have lost any of their value up to today. In Gran Torso, Lachenmann tried to explore the “mechanic and energetic conditions of sound production”. This resulted in singular, unusual sounds which simultaneously exploded the barriers of audibility, playing technique and sound as such. The guit…
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…
DW 17: Doubles / Schatten II
The unfolding of the differences is succeeded by ever new ramifications, versions, series. DW 17 Doubles/Schatten II as a new phase in the DW-Kosmos.
Variazioni canoniche sulla serie dell\' op. 41 di Arnold Schoenb
"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…
A Priori
“Once some music dropped through my letter-box; let’s summon their sounds into our world now, and deliver their names as Roses or Stations. The picture they imagined was both clear and cryptic: the certainties of the 17th century holding tight the ugly beauty that we now see scattered around us. I loved these CDs by Jozef van Wissem, A Rose by any other Name and Stations of the Cross. And then I received a new album, A Priori, and I immediately played it and heard its stark and repetitive intens…
Ribbons Of Dust
In La Monte Young's formulation, drone music is built on the idea of vertical composition, moving away from developmental form towards "Vertical Hearing". The danger, of course, is that layers will be substituted for composition, resulting in dissonant monolithic roars. These have their place, but tread an easy route to some ambiguous transcendence. On the four extended meditations for guitar and electronics here, Alex Cobb chooses no such route. Instead, patience and focus help him build up vas…
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.
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…
From between
'It gives me great pleasure to announce the first release of the new label 'substance over surface editions' - SoSEDITIONS - an offering of recent live and studio recordings by the improvising trio of Michel Doneda, Jack Wright, and Tatsuya Nakatani. The recording is accompanied by a poem by renowned poet Jerome Rothenberg.
New American Ethnic Music Volume 2 : Spindizzy
second release in this series documenting the archival recordings of this previously obscure, genius musician. Volume one received broad critical acclaim, including a top ten critics pick for 2001 in THE WIRE and numerous other reviews and articles. Volume 3 in the series, Hillbilly Tape Music, will follow shortly. Before the publication of his music, Flynt was most often known as an (often distorted) footnote in art history, as the man who invented Concept Art, Flynt's name in the early sixties…
s/t
Françoise Barrière was born on june 12th, 1944. classical training: piano at the conservatoire de versailles; harmony and counterpoint at the conservatoire national supérieur de musique, paris. less classical training: service de la recherche, ortf; ethnomusicology at the ecole pratique de hautes etudes. in 1970, she founded in collaboration with christian clozier, the groupe de musique expérimentale de bourges (now called the international institute of electroacoustic music of bourges) that the…