Back in stock
A mist is a collection of points
Michael Pisaro (b. 1961) is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, an international organization of musicians which he has defined as 'a particular group of people who have been committed, over the long term, to sharing their work and working together.' Its members have shared an interest in John Cage and experimental music, and extended durations, indeterminacy, and silence have featured in many works they have made; but Michael Pisaro is quick to point out that the members of the colle…
Solo Works : The '70s
This historic collection gathers together the four seminal solo albums recorded by Alvin Curran (b. 1938) in the 1970s. Two, Fiori Chiari Fiori Oscuri and The Works, are making their first appearance on CD. Author-critic Tim Page, an early advocate of these works, writes, 'Curran weaves electronic technology, an occasional acoustic instrument, voices and musique concrète ('found' music) into a multi-hued tapestry of sound. He holds these dissimilar elements together with a compelling subliminal …
The Complexity Of Distance
At the onset, we hear a single, heavily distorted power chord. The chord fades, and then we hear three more iterations of the chord in regular, pulsed attacks. To some, especially fans of metal and its many subgenres, this sound is welcoming and familiar. To others, this sound is surprising, perhaps arresting—an unexpected opening from a composer known for music of quiet, prolonged stillness. This chord and its four attacks signal the opening of The Complexity of Distance, a 58-minute collabora…
Wind Shadows
The music on these CDs takes us into a new realm of music making, one that Alvin Lucier has defined for us and one that demands that we start to listen anew. His work has been more often described in terms of science than of art as if it were a series of quasi-scientific experiments, but to put the emphasis here is to miss the point, for its purpose is never “explanatory” (the goal of science) but, like all art, “revelatory.” This is not to suggest that the composer has some spiritual agenda in …
In Our Name
Pioneering American electronic music composer Annea Lockwood presents "In Our Name", based upon two of the many poems written in Guantánamo by detainees, with no expectation that they could ever be heard "outside the wire". Many poems were confiscated by the Pentagon before the writers' lawyers could read them and remain locked away, the Pentagon "arguing that poetry 'presents a special risk' to national security because of its 'content and format.'" Marc Falkoff writes, in his introduction to t…
Brian Baumbusch: Chemistry for Gamelan and String Quartet
Chemistry for Gamelan and String Quartet is the culmination of a long-term collaboration between the JACK Quartet and composer and instrument builder Brian Baumbusch (b. 1987). Over the past ten years, Baumbusch has designed and built two separate sets of “American gamelan” instruments. Based on various instruments from the Balinese gamelan tradition, these instruments depart in innovative ways from Indonesian traditions based on their unique tuning, inspired in part by the tuning theories publi…
The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 1
This newly remastered reissue marks a welcome return to the catalog of the first volume of the classic 4-CD collection that was formerly available on the CRI label. The works recorded on this disc span the first six years of what Harry Partch (1901–1974), slightly tongue-in-cheek, called the “third period” of his creative life. They show him moving away from the obsession with “the intrinsic music of spoken words” that had characterized his earlier output (the vocal works of 1930–33 and 1941–45)…
The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 3
The four works on this newly remastered CD are eloquent testimony to Harry Partch’s aesthetic of corporeality. The music he composed for The Dreamer That Remains, for Rotate the Body in All Its Planes, for Windsong, and for Water! Water!, was intended as only one component in the total artistic experience. In these works music joins with drama, with film, with dance, even with gymnastics, as integral parts of the composer’s vision..New World's The Harry Partch Collection, Vol. 3, as was the CRI …
The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 2
Harry Partch’s compositions of the 1940s have remained until recently an unwritten chapter in the history of American music. And yet it was these very pieces—the collection of four works he would later collectively entitle The Wayward—that brought him to the attention of the New York musical world. His concert of these pieces for the League of Composers established for him a small but permanent reputation as a musical maverick who had wandered off well-worn tracks and had developed a sort of lat…
The Zürich Concert
Just when you think you are grasping the breadth and quality of the music of Julius Eastman (1940 - 1990), a recording such as Julius Eastman: The Zürich Concert shows up, and you have to go back and reassess his work and wonder what will show up next. This recording is from a 1980 solo seventy-minute improvisatory concert in Zürich, a cherished cassette made by a friend of Eastman's, who recently realized its uniqueness and decided that he should share it.The Zürich Concert was performed on Oct…
3 String Quartets
Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers— timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials—were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musici…
Dialogues and Shadows
Among its many qualities, music relies on a special force: transcendence. When we listen, we are placed in a different reality, where sound is a vehicle for a much higher meaning. Naturally, not all music is capable of such a thing. But a few musicians clearly stand above as special – as soon as we hear them, we know that their music flows, floats and transcends. Dialogues and Shadows, the second recording by the duo of Gonçalo Almeida and Pierre Bastien emanates a distinct and intriguing sound …
Hybrid Musics
Larry Austin (1930–2018), thirteen years Hunt’s senior, was a key interlocutor for the composer. The two met during Austin’s term as editorial director of the magazine Source: Music of the Avant Garde and both had studied music at the University of North Texas. Following stints at the University of California, Davis, and the University of South Florida, Austin returned to UNT as professor in 1976 and took over its electronic music studio, the Center for Electronic Music and Intermedia. When Hunt…
Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind (Singles And Demos 1964 To 1967)
*2023 stock* "Vashti Bunyan will always be most known for her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, a big cult favorite among some folk-rock fans, and her 2005 comeback Lookaftering. She did, however, release a couple obscure singles in the mid-'60s, as well as doing quite a few unreleased studio and demo recordings around the same time. This 25-track collection couldn't be bettered as a thorough sweep of her material from this era, including both sides of her two mid-'60s 45s; three tracks from …
L'ultimo Uomo di Sara (Sarah's Last Man)
Quartet Records presents a remastered LP reissue of Ennio Morricone's bizarre giallo score for the 1974 thriller L'ultimo Uomo di Sara (Sarah's Last Man). Directed by actress Maria Virginia Onorato (in her only foray into feature film directing), the movie stars Oddo Bracci as Paolo Castellano, an artist who wants to investigate the death of his ex-wife Sara long after the police declare the case closed. Aided by Sara’s friend Anna (played by Rosemary Dexter), Paolo goes through the hours of foo…
In The Kingdom of Dub
Hopeton Brown, better known as Scientist, has been a pioneering figure in the world of dub for 40 years. His early love of electronics proved fruitful when (still a teenager) he was hired at King Tubby's studio in Kingston. Brown quickly ascended the ranks and became heir to Tubby's throne, producing imaginative and technically impressive mixes that solidified his forward-looking nickname. Originally released in 1981, In The Kingdom Of Dub remains one of the best early LPs in Scientist's long ca…
The Symmetry of Telemetry
*200 copies limited release* Elevator Bath and Sedimental are honored to co-release the newest work from legendary Texas-based electronic musician Rick Reed, arguably the linchpin of Austin's experimental scene for the past few decades. Reed's distinguished reputation has been justifiably lauded and this new collection of works is thus cause for celebration. The Symmetry of Telemetry, Reed's first new release since 2018, was recorded at his home studio during 2020 and 2021. Reed employs Buchla a…
Yuen Shan
CD edition. Mindblowing!!! A gorgeously dreamlike album, suspended in a timeless, spiritually resonant space ... Yuen Shan (Round Mountain in Chinese) was conceived in 1972 and finalized in 2014. It’s a musical cosmogony in four cycles based on different levels of ancient Asian spiritual principles and mechanisms. A major work in Ranta's oeuvre (his first solo release in almost 25 years), highly personal and spiritual. 16 track composition for pre-recorded sounds and live percussion perform…
Taiwan Years
A stunning journey into the archives of one of the most fascinating composers / percussionists working today, Michael Ranta’s Taiwan Years, issued by Metaphon, is nothing short of a revelation, seamlessly binding acoustic interventions with a subtle pallet of electronic and electroacoustic ambiance in a landscape threaded by East-Asian esotericism, psychedelia, minimalism, and outright experimental avant-gardism.
Chewing Hides the Sound
Double CD, expanded edition. Snakefinger surely needs not much of an introduction. Born Philip Charles Lithman in London, he moved to San Francisco in 1971. His roots lie in the British blues scene, but he soon became friends with The Residents who also gave him the name Snakefinger based on a photograph of Lithman performing, in which his finger looks like a snake about to attack his violin. In 1972 Lithman returned to England and formed the pub rock band Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers. A…