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Pop Electronique
Remarkable record of 1960’s French electronic library music, of a somewhat experimental bent. Cecil Leuter (whose birth name, implausibly, is Roger Roger) was a busy, ‘proper’ bandleader at the time, but it turns out he had a real knack for crafting wildly unusual electronic miniatures. Pop Electronique is full of them! Reissued on Fifth Dimension. France seems to be the secret kingdom of electronic music, experimental music and movie soundtrack music also known as library music. Roger Roger…
Osorezan / Doh No Kembai
**restocked again, very last copies around** Their transcendental debut, from the lendary Geinoh Yamashirogumi, a music collective formed in Japan in 1974. Their approach psychedelic music with from a rather Krautish point of view and their first album from 1976 about which I write this review is rather a collage of strange noises, screams, a few rhythms patterns and wide open structures that seem to be borrowed from late 1960s psyched out free jazz. And you can bet, this is an ever flowing…
Metti Una Sera A Cena
Few copies coming from a dead stock. For a late-'60s Morricone soundtrack this is a little on the bland, easy listening side. But it's at the very least pleasant, and there are the occasional streaks of eccentricity to be heard here and there. The majority of the tracks are dainty and sunny, if lushly orchestrated, sometimes decorated with Edda Dell'Orso's female vocal scatting, as if to suggest the dawning of a new romance as the curtains are raised on a sparkling Mediterranean day. Some …
Giu' La Testa
Few copies available, coming from a dead stock. With classic films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West, Sergio Leone built his reputation as a master of the Western. A key part of these film's unique style was their soundtracks, all of which were crafted by Ennio Morricone: his singular mixture of avant-garde quirks, pop instrumentation, and traditional orchestral romanticism played a crucial role in helping Leone redefine what audiences expected from a Wes…
Alessandro Alessandroni
Multifaceted Maestro Alessandro Alessandroni: composer, conductor, and arranger. Among the various activities that he still performs to this day, he is also a mandolinist, guitarist, fisarmonicist, sitarist, whistler, and pianist. Most of all, he is a musician, highly renowned in international TV and cinema. The Maestro has composed and conducted over 50 film scores and documentaries, and has collaborated in the production of many songs, achieving great success. The activity of the M…
Alessandro Alessandroni (Butterfly 3, 1971-72)
Digisleeve CD. New, archival recordings by the legendary Alessandro Alessandroni's Farfalla #3, incredible and unbelievable unreleased outtakes recently pulled out from 1971-72. Breathtaking jams from the same recording session of the second legendary 'Farfalla' cuts, with driven beats, jazz-funk with usual vocals by the Cantori Moderni, lovely whistling easy listening and western melodies. It is an album that showcases all the qualities of Alessandroni composer and arranger : writing never b…
Pruitt Igoe
Enhanced and incredibly produced bass music from the Raster Noton camp courtesy of Kangding Ray, reinforced with stunning remixes from Alva Noto and Ben Frost. With 'Pruitt Igoe' Kangding Ray augments his sound to Raster's current avant-techno agenda, logging onto the 'floor with the burly swing of 'Rise' and 'Fall', both echoing Dubstep's move into slower tempos and elevated groove technology like some uncompromising Teutonic cousin to Pinch's 'Croydon House' sound or a steel-plated Shac…
In The Moment
One venue, 28 shows and 48 hours of live, improvised music. These are the ingredients for Chicago-based drummer Makaya McCraven's album In the Moment. However, McCraven, as the producer he also is, has not just thrown some random sounds together. Instead, he has carefully culled, cut and remixed the music into a coherent whole and 19 complex and catchy compositions emerge from his hands. The meeting between completely fresh improvisations from some of Chicago's finest musicians and the shrewd se…
Ewig gruen
Edition of 270 copies. Fullcolour cover and innersleeve by Dorothy Iannone. "When I was living in France in 1975, I made an audio cassette singing some lines from a famous German song: 'Wenn keiner treu Dir bliebe, ich bleib Dir ewig grün, Du meine alte Liebe, Berlin bleibt doch Berlin.' [When no one stays by you, I'll remain forever true, my old love, you, Berlin will always stay Berlin.]Maybe the song was on my mind because I had just received the news that I had been awarded a DAAD artist gra…
Aithein
**restocked** Oren Ambarchi, Stefano Pilia, and Massimo Pupillo (Zu) team up for an instrumental trip bridging post-rock, drone, and improvisation. Limited 180-gram LP in silk-screened sleeve with artwork by Sara D'Uva. Includes download code. Since the late '90s Oren Ambarchi has been exploring new ground as composer and multi-instrumentalist (mainly focusing on guitar), fusing a wide range of influences and inspiration from improvisation, contemporary music, modern electronics, and rock…
Pale Calling
**restocked** Pale Calling presents the fruits of the first collaboration between Oren Ambarchi, Kassel Jaeger and James Rushford, recorded at GRM studios, Paris in 2014. Although drawing on aspects of each member's solo works, the trio mark out their own unique territory, a mysterious space of slowly cycling electronics, distracted vocal mumbles and often unidentifiable field recordings. These two side-long pieces are composed of distinct layers that gently rise up and recede, obeying a dream-l…
Lawrence of Newark
2015 restock of this cosmic/spiritual jazz masterpiece. Grey area exact repro, originally released on Perception in 1973. A welcome reissue of this pure underground jazz classic from Newark, NJ's own Larry Young. He's in 'out' mode here, putting aside his more well-known styles (as heard on his classic Blue Note LP Unity) and laying down some Arkestra-style jamming alongside the shredding of James Blood Ulmer and some other underground cats. A killer melting of cosmic, Eastern, Afro and fr…
Emotional Planet
Chris Rose's Robust Worlds has impressed us since first glimpse. He was actually barefoot, if you can believe that, and his set had the feel of a way more lysergic Kevin Ayers. It was freezing fucking cold and I'm pretty sure he wore a Hawaiian shirt. His debut LP is called Emotional Planet, and it's deceptively simple. Voice, guitar, some noisy shit, whatever. His playing is sick: fluid, unforced, warm, soothed and soothing. It's a bath you don't want to exit. Seriously, if yr going to play gui…
'Split'
Sound sculptures and gongs by Harry Bertoia unite the sides of this split LP from Tara Jane O'Neil and Eleh. O'Neil's composition was commissioned by Venessa Renwick for her Medusa Smack video installation (originally screened in 2012 at the Oregon Biennial). The piece is partially created from sounds recorded by Bertoia on his own Sonambient sound sculptures, as well as O'Neil's recording of Athanasius Kircher's Bell Wheel at the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Eleh's side consists of 100 go…
Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments
CD version. Spectrum Spools presents the first reissue of American minimalist composer and electronic music pioneer David Borden's 1981 masterpiece, Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments, a work of the highest archival significance. A radiant achievement in sonic elegance, experimentation, and ambitious composition technique, Music for Amplified Keyboard Instruments contains four pieces, each utilizing three players and six keyboard instruments. - Borden was a central figure in the developmen…
Cold Waters
2012 release. Cold Waters is the result of a very short yet intense meeting between Jean-Herve Peron (Faust) and Amaury Cambuzat (Ulan Bator). The duo met in the French countryside -- two days, two mics, two friends, and a dog... from hilarious to heart-striking, these "Songs from the Mill" flowed through them. Cold Waters, far from being an anecdotal side-note to their ongoing collaborative efforts in the legendary "krautrock" band Faust, reaffirms the duo's successful explorations as leading f…
Archives sauvees des Eaux
2004 live recording of a 2000-2001 luc ferrari composition, performed by ferrari himself on cds and erikm on minidisc and kaoss pad. This was to be one of the final performances by mr. ferrari before he passed away in the fall of 2005.
Adrift
Three live performances of collaborative electroacoustic compositions from 2007-08, recorded in London, Brisbane and Antwerp, each exploring different points of contact between precomposed structures and spontaneous invention: a duo adrift (in memory of Paul Rutherford) with pianist Sarah Nicolls, a nonet codex IX (in memory of Mauricio Kagel) with the ELISION ensemble, and a 17-piece group with Ensemble Champ d'Action realising codex VII (to Vinko Globokar).
She Sleeps, She Sleeps
LP version that includes bonus CD, edition of 500. Fire! is a Swedish trio comprising Mats Gustafsson (The Thing), Johan Berthling (Tape), and Andreas Werliin (Wildbirds & Peacedrums), which came together with the idea of a fresh approach to improvised music drawing upon a number of influences from free jazz, psychedelic rock, and noise. Fire! is also these musicians' vehicle for rekindling their instrumental skills, playing outside their comfort zones, and collaborating with such prestigio…
social insects
Two new releases by Jonas Kocher’s Flexion label, and those releases can be had for the exchange of money, other CDs, books, bottle of wine, postcards etc. The first of these is not by Kocher himself but by two friends, the duo of one Hans Koch on bass clarinet and Gaudenz Badrutt on electronics – whatever that may consist of these days (laptop, stomp boxes, synths, electrical connections) cooking up some radical improvised music. Not radical in the sense of things being very loud or very soft, …