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Faust left Wümme's anarchic freedom for The Manor's professional constraints. Virgin wanted a hit. Faust IV was the answer: their most paradoxical album, accessible yet destabilizing, part studio work, part salvage. The sessions stretched, the budget vanished, the result endures—uneven, restless, compelling. Fifty years later: still mid-sentence, still profound, gloriously incomplete.

Marilyn Crispell alone at the piano, live at the Victoriaville festival on 2 October 1987: dense, Taylor-inspired clusters and open lyrical passages, with a Coltrane piece. The CD reissue of the 1988 LP adds Threads in the Ozone.

On the 30th anniversary of the Victo Festival Anthony Braxton took to the stage for a magnificent solo performance on the alto sax, performing 8 spontaneous compositions and an 8+ minute version of "Body and Soul", seamlessly crossing lyrical and complex approaches to the horn using his unique intervallic, trimbral and diagrammatic language, a stunning and embraceable accomplishment.

Miya Masaoka's orchestra, recorded live in San Francisco in 1995 and 1997 with George Lewis, Vijay Iyer, Trevor Dunn and others: strings, Asian winds, shamisen, electronics and turntables under her whole-body conduction.

Four double bassists, Barre Phillips, Joëlle Léandre, William Parker and Tetsu Saitoh, live at Victoriaville on 23 May 2003 in memory of Peter Kowald: bowed and plucked basses and voices in a shared farewell.

Jean Derome and Louis Sclavis share a quartet with Bruno Chevillon on double bass and Pierre Tanguay on drums, live at Victoriaville on 19 May 2001: flutes, clarinets and saxophone on compositions by both leaders.

Two masters who rarely play together--guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist Evan Parker--performing together as a duo at the 30th Musique Actuelle Festival in Victoriaville, Canada for an amazing exchange of ideas and intensely subtle dialog.

Urs Leimgruber, Jacques Demierre and Barre Phillips recorded at Radio DRS in Zurich in January 2001: saxophones, piano and double bass in quiet, closely controlled improvisations where dynamics become the material.

Boris Kovač and the Ritual Nova Ensemble from Novi Sad: saxophones, clarinets, violin, piano, bass and soprano voice in a chamber music that joins Pannonian folk memory, minimalist repetition and jazz.

Richard Pinhas, Merzbow and Wolf Eyes together at Victoriaville on 20 May 2011: guitars, electronics, tapes, saxophone and voice in a spontaneous five-way noise session.

Michel Doneda on soprano saxophone, eRikm on samplers and scratches, Jean-Marc Montera on guitar and electronics, recorded in Metz and Lons-le-Saunier in May 1999. Liner notes by Thurston Moore.

Zeena Parkins' 1992 album recorded in New York: electric harp, keyboards and tape with Ikue Mori on drums, Chris Cochrane on guitar, David Shea, and her sisters Margaret and Sara on cello, violin and voice.

Eugene Chadbourne and René Lussier, live in Paris and at Victoriaville in May 2002: acoustic and electric guitars, banjo and voice in a twisted hoedown of free improvisation, bluegrass and country blues.

Barre Phillips on double bass, Catherine Jauniaux on voice and Malcolm Goldstein on violin, live at Victoriaville on 22 May 2010: three veteran improvisers in a delicate, conversational trio.

Bill Dixon's last large ensemble concert, at Victoriaville on 22 May 2010, weeks before his death: trumpets and cornets with Taylor Ho Bynum, Rob Mazurek, Graham and Stephen Haynes, with Glynis Lomon, Michel Côté and Warren Smith.

Urs Leimgruber, Marilyn Crispell, Joëlle Léandre and Fritz Hauser in their first concert as a quartet, Victoriaville, 15 May 1998: eight improvisations growing from small details into heated four-way exchanges.

René Lussier and Martin Tétreault meet Otomo Yoshihide at Victoriaville on 19 May 2008: two electric guitars, three turntables and a spy microphone in the trio's first performance together.

François Houle, Kate Gentile and Alexander Hawkins live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2023: clarinets and electronics, drums and piano, in a set named after the medieval nonsense poem where sound leads meaning.

Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq live at Victoriaville in May 2010 with Jean Martin on drums and computer and Jesse Zubot on violin: throat singing, cries and breath stretched into an hour of raw, physical improvisation.

Carla Bley's ten-piece band live at NDR's Studio 10 in Hamburg on March 14, 1984, with Michael Mantler and Steve Swallow: a joyful, humorous concert rescued from the NDR archives. Double CD on Moosicus.

UK multi-reed master Evan Parker brings an all-star electroacoustic septet to the 2014 Victoriaville Festival for the massive and wonderfully detailed two part composition "Seven", performed with Peter Evans, Okkyung Lee, George Lewis, Ikue Mori, Sam Pluta, and Ned Rothenberg.

Vancouver's Hard Rubber Orchestra led by trumpeter John Korsrud, with guests Lori Freedman, Marilyn Lerner and Brad Turner: new big band music by Korsrud, Turner, Jean Derome, René Lussier and Ron Samworth, recorded in 2000 and 2001.

Iva Bittová, Gyan Riley and Evan Ziporyn as Eviyan, live at Victoriaville on 16 May 2013: violin, voice and kalimba, acoustic guitar and clarinets in songs between Moravian folk, minimalism and chamber music.

CCMC in its trio line-up of Michael Snow, John Oswald and Paul Dutton: piano and synthesizer, alto saxophone and sound poetry, recorded live in Toronto, Jonquière and Victoriaville in 1996 and 1997.

Fred Frith on guitar, Louis Sclavis on clarinets and soprano saxophone, Jean-Pierre Drouet on percussion and objects, live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2000: one extended improvisation from abstract textures to folk-like melody.

Elliott Sharp, Colin Stetson, Billy Martin and Payton MacDonald live at Victoriaville in May 2023: electric guitar and electronics, bass saxophone, drums and mallets in a heavy, groove-driven quartet.

Sophie Agnel on piano and John Butcher on saxophones, live at the 40th Victoriaville festival on 18 May 2024: spontaneous compositions of inside-piano sounds, extended techniques and quick, attentive interplay.

René Lussier, Érick d'Orion, Robbie Kuster and Martin Tétreault live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2021, for the label's 35th anniversary: guitar and daxophone, electronics, drums and turntables in one hour of collaged noise.

Pino Minafra's Sud Ensemble in the studio in Milan, January 1995: trumpet, didgeridoo and ocarina with Carlo Actis Dato, Lauro Rossi and Giorgio Occhipinti, mixing southern Italian band music, free jazz and theatre.

Anthony Braxton's septet live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2011, performing Echo Echo Mirror House music, where each musician plays an iPod loaded with Braxton's recorded history alongside their instrument.

Elliott Sharp writing for strings: Orchestra Carbon's violins, viola, cellos and double bass with electronic percussion, recorded in New York in 1992. Dense, restless pieces between contemporary chamber music and noise.

Anthony Braxton's 12+1tet live at Victoriaville on 20 May 2007: Composition No. 361, seventy minutes of layered Ghost Trance writing with Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson, Steve Lehman, Nicole Mitchell and others.

Evan Parker's ElectroAcoustic Ensemble with Sainkho Namtchylak, recorded at Victoriaville on 19 May 1996 and released in 2021: saxophones, bass, violin and percussion processed live by Walter Prati and Marco Vecchi.

Fred Frith and René Lussier's duo, recorded at the 1986 Victoriaville festival and finished at Studio Victor: guitars, bass, violin, voices and tape in short, playful pieces. The CD adds four tracks recorded in New York in 1992.

Evan Parker's soprano and tenor saxophones with the voice of Sainkho Namtchylak, live at the Music Gallery in Toronto on 15 May 1996. Circular-breathed lines against throat singing, overtones and wordless cries.

Eugene Chadbourne and Paul Lovens on tour in May 1996, recorded in New York, in Michigan and in an Italian restaurant in Traverse City: guitar and banjo against drums, cymbals and saw, a suite for the waiters of the world.

Lindsay Cooper's song cycle on texts by Sally Potter, about the divided Europe of the Cold War, live at Victoriaville in October 1989 with Phil Minton, Hugh Hopper, Marilyn Mazur, Alfred Harth and Elvira Plenar.

André Duchesne's large ensemble live at the 1989 Victoriaville festival: three electric guitars, saxophones, cello, piano and drums, with Yannick Rieu and Claude Lamothe, in composed Montreal musique actuelle.

Pierre-Luc Senécal's Growlers Choir, fourteen metal vocalists, live at FIMAV in May 2021 with poet Fortner Anderson: growls and throat-singing-like improvisation over electric guitar tapes, between metal, noise and drone.

Keiji Haino and Masami Akita as Kikuri, live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2007: guitar, voice, strings and drums against electronics and computer, in their first concert together outside Japan.