Back in stock
Cave Rock
Already commercially successful as tune-smiths for teenyboppers,Austin Grasmere and Brian Elliot approached Bernard Stollmanlooking to focus their talents on something more original and unrestrained. Stollman asked, “What would be your theme?” and Elliot replied: “Everything is one.” Bernard said, “Go do it.” What followed was Cromagnon's (Grasmere, Elliot and the Connecticut Tribe) non-linear journey through the subconscious, weaving together bizarre instrumentation and meter with a psychotic b…
College Tour
2013 reissue, originally released in 1966. Patty Waters is internationally recognized as one of the first major avant-garde vocalists, cited as an influence by Yoko Ono, Diamanda Galás, and Patti Smith. Waters's first two LPs, both on ESP-Disk', had the most impact. In 1966, the year after her groundbreaking debut, Sings, appeared, the New York State Council on the Arts gave ESP-Disk' a grant to tour the five state colleges with music departments. Artists on this tour included the Sun Ra Arkestr…
Spiritual Unity
2014 expanded reissue. Mono. Spiritual Unity, recorded on July 10, 1964, is the album that made Albert Ayler and ESP-Disk' famous (or, in some people's eyes/ears, infamous). Mr. Ayler had already recorded in Europe and, in February '64, in New York, but this was the first album on which neither he nor his collaborators held back. It was also ESP's first jazz recording. Spiritual Unity presented a new improvisation paradigm: looser structure, less regard for standard pitch, and no obligation to p…
Look Up
2012 release. Born in Buffalo in 1939, Charles Gayle had hit New York City by the early '70s. He almost made his mark with an album on ESP-Disk' in 1974, but the label shut down before it came out. When he next recorded in 1988, he had been homeless for a while, sheltering in an empty Brooklyn storefront. The Knitting Factory gigs and concurrent CDs from Swedish imprint Silkheart, the Knit's own house label, the Italian label Black Saint, and a particularly well-received-in-Europe album on FMP, …
73 Poems
Joan La Barbara's composition, 73 Poems, was commissioned, produced and recorded by Permanent Press (Brooklyn, NY) to accompany the publication of Kenneth Goldsmith's 73 Poems as a book and as a suite of lithographs. La Barbara's works often involve multiple layers of her own voice, creating a kind of sonic canvas on which she throws splashes of vocal colors. On this CD, her potent combination of vocal and studio expertise makes it possible for her to represent in music some of the most distinct…
Gemini
**75 copies** Another entry in Polonius' Last Transmythological Acrobats Series by the mysterious aggregator Seif Gaber. Players on this release include: Ivan Beljin, Linsey Wellman, Seif Gaber, John Peippo, Damjan Markovic, Chris Love, Patrick Bonne. Recorded April and May 2019 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Aries
**75 copies** Another entry in Polonius' Last Transmythological Acrobats Series by the mysterious aggregator Seif Gaber. Players on this release include Matteo Pennesi, Luigi Monteanni, Seif Gaber, Lorenzo Rivosecchi, Giancarlo Brambilla. Recorded June 2019 at Standards, Milan, Italy.
Fire & Water
In 2012, Christian Marclay was invited to create an artwork for 'Mixed Bathing World', a contemporary art festival held in the town of Beppu, Japan, famous for its onsen (hot springs). It has eight major geothermal hot spots, sometimes referred to as the 'Eight Hells of Beppu'. On a jetty near the harbor Marclay installed a field of 100 flags banners, 50 represented water and 50 fire. At the bottom corner of each flag he attached a small bell. This ArtBook CD includes an innovative work made of …
Free Jazz Manifesto
** Texts in English and French ** 169 fundamental free jazzrecords recommended in 180 pages by Maurizio & Roberto Opalio (My Cat Is An Alien) and Philippe Robert, from must-have classics to indispensable curiosities. Free Jazz Manifesto is not simply a list of 169 recommended records, but a poetic vision, a parallel universe based on a personal aesthetics of perception and an in-nite love for the most creative, incendiary, spiritual music. If Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman or Anthony Braxton are well p…
Authentic Precolombian Music
* 2021 stock * Ethnic music of pre Columbian Mexico / Central America, as interpreted by Jorge Reyes. Prehispanic, Forgotten Spirits, Rituals are a set of "authentic pre-Columbian music" from Jorge Reyes. Reyes continues his homage to his native Mexican American roots and his Shamanic practices. The ritualistic music on these CDs is performed on acoustic ethnic instruments only. There are no electronic enhancements beyond amplification. This highly inspirational soundworld is steeped on the trad…
Extracts
"The first word that came to mind on playing Extracts was understatement, with an almost oriental minimalism and profundity on display. At times I was forced to check whether sounds were coming from the speakers or from outside. However, this is a far cry from the Radu Malfatti school of implied music since it is very much about close group interplay. Simon H. Fell's sonorous bass is of particular note, underpinning, colouring and giving the proceedings a kind of still, stately authority. Likewi…
Forlorn green
The press release is disingenuous in describing "Forlorn Green" as "lo-fi": even if Jason Lescalleet's work involves tapeloops using cheap recording gear and "trashed" speakers, his digital reworking and mastering is painstakingly perfectionist and perfect. Recorded in four different locations in the Boston area (a church, a gallery, an art school and the local Twisted Village record store) and crafted in Lescalleet's studio with what can only be described as loving care, the sonic alchemy of …
Aluminium
It's onward, ever onward for New Zealand's foremost guitar experimentalist, Dean Roberts. Before you know it, he'll be as ubiquitous as Thurston Moore, a New Music gadfly gatecrashing every weird feast going. The latest outpost in a transition from lo-fi humstrum to Destination Unknown sees Roberts shacked up with avant-Austrian Werner Dafeldecker bassist in Improv group Polwechsel.Expect: grinchy crackling, like the amplified sound of grit disintegrating. Imagine: bric-a-brac, debris, splinters…
What a wonderful world
Despite the title of the album and several of the selections, listeners who approach this disc expecting something in the vein of Louis Armstrong will likely be disappointed. Then again maybe not, if it's originality that's prized. Jérôme Noetinger and Erik M had, by the late '90s, established themselves as driving forces in contemporary electronic improvisation, performing and recording with virtually anyone of note in the field. For this album, they at least partially venture out into di…
Points and Slashes
Over the past decade, Swiss-based Günter Müller has collaborated with many of the most prominent Tokyo-based musicians, recording CDs with Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Masahiko Okura, and Toshimaru Nakamura. Points and Slashes is the latest of these, a duo collaboration with guitar wizard Tetuzi Akiyama.It's impossible to pin down Akiyama, a musician of diverse interests and activities, with a brief description. He has been playing electric guitar since he was 13, and formed his fi…
Bits, bots and signs
Ever since Otomo got into his minimal misuse of stereo equipment phase, a collaboration with Swiss toaster torturers Voice Crack was on the cards. Although Otomo's refraction of high end sinewaves around cranial interiors may not seem like an ideal partner for Norbert Mšslang and Andy Guhl's usual industrial clang, attempts have obviously been made to find a common ground. There's an intense focus upon the fine detail of the unfolding electronic fields, with the Swiss duo providing a constantly …
Lidingö
Lidingö, a summit between innenklavier specialist Andrea Neumann and percussionist Burkhard Beins, is altogether knottier and gnarlier. Part of the important Berlin scene, the two play together in Phosphor as well as with Sven-Åke Johansson. Beins is a masterful player, often eschewing struck percussion in favor of rubbing, stroking, and scraping, only occasionally landing a gargantuan thudding bass drum for example. Neumann uses only the strings, resonating board, and metal frame of a piano - i…
ErstLive 008
Keith Rowe's concluding set, with longtime partner Toshimaru Nakamura, at the AMPLIFY 2008: Light festival, recorded on September 21, 2008 by Taku Unami. AMPLIFY 2008: Light was an intense and deeply immersive experience for all who were lucky enough to be present, and quite a bit of that was attributable to Rowe's four sets, which are now available for all to hear.
Parazoan Mapping
With fifteen untitled vignettes and varying source material, Parazoan Mapping often feels like an aural scrapbook. And when looking through any scrapbook, the different photos and pieces of ephemera always point to something bigger: a sort of unraveling of the people contained within. The pictures of your family’s vacation from several years ago may not explicitly show it but you very well understand how then compares to now that feeling of joy when you conquered your first wave after hours…