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Joan La Barbara begins Sound Paintings with a scream that pushes you into an unusual world of vocal sound. Her virtuoso singing style, developed over a 20-year period, can be heard on this disc, which combines some of her earlier works with more recent compositions. She takes her extended techniques, which include multiphonics, overtone singing, and glottal clicks, and orchestrates them in layered soundscape compositions using from 8 to 16 tracks of material.
Originally released on Lovely Music as Pulsers / Untitled in 1984. This re-release includes an additional piece from David Tudor, Phonemes. Pulsers explores the world of rhythms created electronically by analog, rather than digital, circuitry. With analog circuitry, the time-base common to the rhythms can be varied in many different ways by a performer, and can eventually become unstable. Untitled is a part of a series of works composed in the 1970s that were developed through experiments in gen…
2019 repress on CD; 1990 release. Commissioned by Mabou Mines, the experimental theater group from New York, for their interpretation of King Lear, Pauline Oliveros's Crone Music is a subtle and haunting electronic music endeavor. Interfacing an abundance of digital delay processors, reverb effects, and foot pedals to bend pitches from piercing to twisted, sonorous tones, with her one-of-a-kind expanded accordion, Oliveros produces rich, eerie textures. Personnel: Pauline Oliveros -solo accordio…
Maggi Payne's musical imagination is vivid: she is interested in the surreal, the inward, the micro, and the accumulation of physical and psychological tension. Periods of silence gently evolve into flowing drones of complex resonances. Oozing drones evolve into dense and powerful peaks of short duration. On one cut, multi-tracked voices shift in and out of phase, creating alternately shimmering and percussive patterns; on another, digital delay and 32 separate flute tracks create a rain forest …
"Don Cherry, more than any other artist in the jazz of his era, pioneered the music's internationalist nature that has now come to be commonly accepted as an integral part of its character. The individuality of Cherry's contribution to the history of jazz has often been unfairly obscured by his admittedly important association with the music ofOrnette Coleman. While the (pocket) trumpeter's position as Coleman's front line partner in the altoist's first revolutionary quartet was indeed a major o…
A legendary recording by tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler with his amazing working band, recorded in Holland for radio play, here digitally remastered with new artwork.
Personnel
Albert Ayler: tenor saxophoneDon Cherry: cornetGary Peacock: bassSunny Murray: drums
Joe Morris's recording career began in 1983 and has made him one of the most revered avant-garde jazz guitarists. Down Beat magazine dubbed him "the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation," while The Wire magazine called him "one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S." His revelatory 2012 book Perpetual Frontier/The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing) is a detailed and rewarding accounting of his approach to improvisation. He has been on the faculty in the Jazz an…
Subtitled: Belaluan, Pangkung, Busungbiu. World Arbiter presents historic gamelan recordings made in 1928 as part of a collection of the first and only commercially-released recordings of music made in Bali prior to World War II, the first ever to document pre-War genres. The compositions heard on volume 1 are untraditional, avant-garde experiments that later evolved into familiar forms, new music captured close to the time of its inception. After five years of research and field work, Ed…
** 2025 stock. ** Ancient Court Raga Traditions: The Pathak Gharana unveils the legacy of Ashok Pathak, torchbearer of a centuries-old musical lineage rooted in expressive sitar and surbahar artistry. The album channels the introspective eloquence and technical invention unique to Pathak Gharana, honoring classical forms while revealing a spirit of fresh musical interpretation through deep alap, intricate meend, and rare court compositions.
Vol. II in a five-disc series of 1928 Balinese recordings features Balinese vocal music, the first release of these recordings since they were first pressed to 78 rpm discs in 1929, the only commercially released recordings of music made in Bali before World War II. Originally recorded by a team from the German labels Odeon and Beka on a 1928-29 expedition to Bali and intended for a Balinese public that lacked any discs of its own music, many of these records have been reduced to single r…
Vol. III of the complete 1928 Balinese recordings, the first republication since 1928 of lost shellac recordings, opens with the only known recordings of a lost gamelan. Heard in three tracks, Gamelan Semar Pagulingan, an ensemble known as "Gamelan of Love in the Bedchamber," played instruments that no longer exist, originally performed just outside the private residence of a raja during meals, times of leisure, and when the raja was otherwise engaged in pleasure with one of his wives. The…
Vol. IV of the Bali 1928 recordings includes kebyar with sung poetry, gambuh dance-drama, ancient ritual angklung, and solo flute. All lyrics receive English translations in the liner notes, with an extensive text by Edward Herbst included as a PDF (accessed by computer) and hosted online by World Arbiter. Performances by Gamelan Gong Kebyar Belaluan, Denpasar; Gambuh of Sésétan, Denpasar; Gamelan Angklung Kléntangan of Sidan, Gianyar; Gamelan Angklung of Pemogan, Denpasar; Gamelan Angklung o…
Vol. V of the Bali 1928 recordings contains various emergent theatrical dance and dance-opera forms with translations of the dramas' texts. We hear the first recordings of women participating in dance dramas, making this disc a major cultural repatriation of primary Balinese art forms that had been lost for nearly a century. An extensive essay is included as a PDF (accessed by computer) with links to 1930s silent films and a photo library are hosted online by World Arbiter. Some of these …
A compilation from all five of World Arbiter's volumes of the complete Balinese recordings from 1928, newly remastered in 2015 and released for the first time since the days of 78-RPM shellac. Performances of gamelan gong kebyar, semar pagulingan, gender wayang, palégongan, gambangam pajogédan, gambuh, angklung, suling, tembang, kidung, kakawin, arja geguntangan, janger, cepung, unaccompanied vocals, and topeng. When composer Colin McPhee heard some 78s in New York, brought over by anthropologis…
Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined t…
In 1966 Bernard Stollman sent Sun Ra and his Arkestra, along with audio engineer David B. Jones on a tour of five New York Colleges. When they returned, just 39 minutes of music was chosen to be released as the original ESP 1045 "Nothing Is...". 44 years later, after extensive research, producer and Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson has pieced together the missing parts of the infamous New York College Tour. Recorded on May 18th 1966 at St. Lawrence University in Potsdam, NY, this illuminatin…
This track is the unreleased beginning portion of this 1973 Frank Lowe concert that was released as Black Beings. This incredible performance is filled with the fire and drive Frank Lowe was projecting on his tenor sax in 1973. This extended track titled "The Lowesky" is set in a five part suite form. Each performer is allowed ample time to express his individual contributions to this phenomenal group. The Band: Frank Lowe-tenor sax, Joseph Jarman-soprano, Raymond Lee Cheng (The Wizard)-violin, …
Originally released in 1965. The Byron Allen Trio was among the first batch of ESP-Disk' jazz LPs. Recorded on the afternoon of September 25, 1964, at Mirasound Studio in midtown Manhattan, it was Allen's debut. He had been recommended to ESP-Disk' by Ornette Coleman, and one of the tracks, "Decision for the Cole-Man," reflects this connection. Allen and his trio also play in a style somewhat similar to that of Coleman's trio of that era with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffett, th…
2025 stock When Albert Ayler's band went through Customs in July 1970 on their way to play at a festival in France, keyboardist Call Cobbs got held back and arrived a day late. Minus the keyboards, the band played anyway. The music-making of the resulting ensemble is freer and more adventurous than on the quintet's following Maeght Foundation concerts. This unique document, Ayler's penultimate recording, thus brings him back to something close to the trio setting in which he first found fame on …
This version of Black Beings contains of 15 minutes of additional material thought to have been lost. When he started out on ESP-Disk', Frank Lowe was one of those hard-blowing tenor saxophonists we think of when we heard the phrase "free jazz." Born in Memphis, he moved to San Francisco and, while visiting New York, began playing with Alice Coltrane (on whose album World Galaxy he made his recording debut in 1971), Sun Ra, Rashied Ali, and Noah Howard, and eventually moved to the Big Apple. On …