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An elegant decay amassed from the sounds of detritus. That may be an apt introduction to the work of Jo Montgomerie. Of course, The Helen Scarsdale Agency has a long standing infatuation with disintegrated sound in various forms. So, it makes perfect sense we should publish her work! That said, Montgomerie has a fascinating strategy to her long-form smears of blackened mascara ambient and smoldered noise. As a teenager she was a classically trained musician with an eye towards a career as a conc…
Italian sound artist Giulio Aldinucci returns with his 4th album on Karl: "Real" is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed "Borders And Ruins" (2017), "Disappearing In A Mirror" (2018) and "Shards Of Distant Times" which all made it onto several year's best lists.
With now his 4thalbum for Karl, the sound artist from Siena has proved a steady and prolific artist on the label roster. And each time, Giu…
**500 copies** This album contains six pieces written by French composer / artist Bruno Duplant, all composed and realized by Dutch pianist / composer Reinier van Houdt. Duplant's scores Lettres (pour Reinier van Houdt) (2017) are three letter-form scores personally addressed to van Houdt containing letter sequences distributed across the page. Trois replis d'incertitude (2018) are also three letter-form scores but with the notion of 'repli' (meaning 'fold' in a Deleuzian postmodern baroque sens…
Swiss composer and cellist Stefan Thut composed ‘about’ in 2017 for the sextet of Ryoko Akama (electronics), Stephen Chase (guitar), Eleanor Cully (piano), Patrick Farmer (metal percussion), lo wie (tingsha), and Thut (cello). The six musicians have diverse backgrounds in music, poetry, and literature, as well as comprising a multilingual group. Thut integrated both musical elements and non-musical elements in his piece. His score instructs three performers to make percussive, ringing, and elect…
'Night Blossoms' is French composer/pianist Melaine Dalibert’s sixth solo album, consisting of new compositions from 2019-2021. Of the six pieces on this album, 'A Rebours', 'Windmill', 'Eolian Scape', and 'Sisters' were written around the same time as most of the pieces for his 2020 album 'Infinite Ascent'. While 'Infinite Ascent' featured his intuitive compositions in a pop style, 'Night Blossoms' features works further developed with his algorithmic approach, which has been his long-term purs…
The five tracks on neuschnee form an ambitious meta-song suite, with the various lyrics and musical styles combining to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The design is again from Berlin designer Marion Gerth, previously responsible for The Magic ID-till my breath gives out on ErstPop. The front cover juxtaposes a satellite picture of snow with the Mao Zedong poem 'Snow', which the musicians discovered in a book bought while on tour in Beijing. "After a long phase of experimental…
ErstLive 003 is from the duo of Burkhard Stangl and Christof Kurzmann, titled 'schnee_live', the final show on the last night of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. Stangl and Kurzmann began working as a duo in late 1999, releasing Schnee in 2000, and playing numerous concerts over the past four years throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. schnee_live documents how much their duo has changed since the initial recording of Schnee, which was the first time they ever played together as a duo.
"Band Of Cloud’s David Owen has previous. Hailing from Leeds, he knocked about with Soft Cell early doors, hoovered up 80s synthpop, got distracted by The Sisters Of Mercy, formed The Hollow Men, dropped out for a couple of decades and popped back up in 2011 with the utterly brilliant ‘We Know Where The Time Goes’ by The FLK – a folk version of The KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. Yes, it’s as great as that sounds. Judging by all that, ‘This Is Tomorrow’ should be good. David reveals that the first album he b…
In recent years, the Turkish drone-pop composer Ekin Fil (born Ekin Üzeltüzenci) has been refining her talents in the realm of the film score. Since her first recordings that were published by Root Strata and Students of Decay, she has always exhibited a preternatural ability to express the saddest of emotions through sound. Once channeled through the lens of a gauzy shoegazing smear of guitars and voice, she has peeling away layers of her ephemeral songs to reveal their emotional core. That com…
Recorded after performances at New York's prestigious 92nd Street Y in 1996 with the participation of the composer, Ensemble Music 2 is the follow up to the initial, critically acclaimed and best selling volume of Iannis Xenakis' Ensemble Works on Mode. This disc contains the first recording of Xenakis' memorial work A la Mémoire de Witold Lutoslawski, to the great Polish composer. A literal monument in sound, comprised of massive blocks of brass arranged as a dirge-like fanfare. Composed in 199…
This disc contains the first complete recordings of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass. Volume 7 in Mode's acclaimed Scelsi Edition. Scelsi's infamous 'KO-THA I, II, Ill' -- for string instrument played lying on its back in a percussive manner -- is presented for the first time in an adaptation from the original for guitar by legendary bassist Fernando Grillo. Robert Black, internationally known as one of the leading bassists of our time, has also collaborated or performed with a diverse nu…
'More Energy Fields, Current' is a definitive new peak in the recorded continuum of prolific producer/percussionist Carlos Niño. Featuring heavy contributions from many of the most exciting instrumentalists in the creative music constellation of Los Angeles (of which Niño’s has been a central force for over 2 decades), the album collects 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Co…
Corbett Vs. Dempsey present a reissue of Sun Ra Discipline 27-II, originally released on El Saturn Records in 1973. Arguably the last great original-era Saturn LP to be reissued on CD, Discipline 27-II has long deserved to be more familiar to Sun Ra fans and layfolk alike. Recorded during the same sessions in 1972 at Chicago's Streeterville Studios that produced Ra's most popular and best-known record, Space Is The Place (1973), it's got much the same vibe, from the 24-minute four-part suite of …
*In process of stocking. This second-hand record is available through our collaboration with Parisian shop Dizonord, all items are in NM condition.* It was already a reference among the diggers’ community, and one day, our friend from Chouf made us listen to the record before Dizonord. We found Uli, one of the musicians, who still had a fair number of copies of this 1990 LP, a tricky year for vinyl. This record is a mix between jazz, funk and ambient but with a very special pop touch to it.
*In process of stocking. This second-hand record is available through our collaboration with Parisian shop Dizonord, all items are in NM condition.* À Travail Égal Salaire Égal was Un Drame Musical Instantane's third album, originally released in 1982 on the group's own GRRR label. Since its creation in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé, the group has decided to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in them…
*In process of stocking. This second-hand record is available through our collaboration with Parisian shop Dizonord, all items are in NM condition.* Rideau! was Un Drame Musical Instantane's second album, originally released in 1980 on the group's own GRRR label. Since its creation in 1976, featuring Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet and Francis Gorgé, the group has decided to promote collective musical creation, co-signing their albums, which they consider as artworks in themselves, or their li…
The first Wandering The Sound album in 2018 was the trio of Argentinian reedist Guillermo Gregorio, Spanish drummer Ramón López and Polish bassist Rafał Mazur, here extended to a quintet with pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura for a 2019 concert at Alchemia in Poland, a masterful example of free improv based on a poem by Ikkyu Sojun, a Zen master from the 15th century.
Taking its album title and the titles for three compositions from poems by Laura Winter, the German jazz quartet led by clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann with Christopher Dell on vibes, Christian Ramond on double bass and Klaus Kugel on drums present an advanced example of modern creative, chamber-oriented collective free jazz with a stunning level of communication.
** 2021 Stock ** Tenor sax savant Ivo Perelman has made an endless number of recordings just on the idea of instantaneously creating music with only one to three partners. It’s an idea he could probably mine forever because of his inspired choice for partners and the equally inspired tactic of making no type of instrument off limits to spar with his sax. Perelman’s ability to adjust to any situation and still be very much himself is unsurpassed. The Purity of Desire inserts Perelman into a decid…