Music from United States

Small repress available. "Regularly hailed as one the most important composers of the late 20th century, John Zorn is comfortable at the helm of an ensemble, as improviser on an array of instruments, and as a bold theorist of collaboration. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New York artist and operator of the esteemed Tzadik label became known for assembling hardcore-inflected jazz ensembles and for devising 'game systems,' or intricate musical conditions intended to force players into new ter…

Astro-Black mythology, astro-timeless immortality! Astro Black has long been known as a cornerstone of the Sun Ra catalog. It is well recorded, features a superb Arkestral lineup, and successfully combines several of the styles in which Sun Ra orbited, from Saturnic jazz to astro-funk. And now it’s finally back in the earthly bins! Pressed on colored vinyl, and packaged with new cover art, with liner notes by Robert Campbell (author of The Earthly Recordings of Sun Ra), and includes a poster ins…

The recently composed "Ricochet Lady" (2016) is the only work for solo acoustic glockenspiel by the American experimental composer Alvin Lucier. Following in the manner of his pieces "I Am Sitting In A Room" and "Vespers", "Ricochet Lady" embodies Lucier's approach toward sound's individual function and mobility within space. This CD defines this approach through four realizations recorded in four dissimilar spaces, ranging from the standard to extraordinary: a university rehearsal hall with wal…

Edition of 200 copies. Fractal, electro-acoustic improv from NYC’s Marina Rosenfeld and Ben Vida, conjuring a steeply layered investigation of proprioception and dreamtime psyches...  Marking Marina’s first appearance since the resoundingly unusual electro-dub of her ‘P.A. / Hard Love’ [Room 40, 2013] recordings with Warrior Queen, and also Ben Vida’s follow-up to ‘Damaged Particulates’ [Shelter Press, 2016], their probing collaboration is a wicked exercise in vivid, abstract terraforming.  As t…

Terry Riley's Descending Moonshine Dervishes is a long-form piece from a concert in Paris (on November 19) 10 days later the legendary performance held at the Metamusik Festival in Berlin. Essential for all fans of 20th Century Minimalism and electronics. Riley's Descending Moonshine Dervishes renders the West Coast minimalist deity in pursuit of a flighty solo spirit via modified Yamaha organ fitted with variable resistors to enable his favoured just intonation tuning - a method allowing him to…

Incredible lost recordings by Philip Glass from 1975, released at ORTF Sextet at La Maison de la Radio, Paris. The sextet is comprised of a stellar cast of musicians with Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Dickie Landry, Michael Riesman, Joan La Barbara and Richard Peck. Music in Twelve Parts is a set of twelve pieces written between 1971 and 1974. This performance in France includes part 1, 2, 3, 11 and 12 on a double LP.Also included a very rare Philip Glass interview from 1974 in his NYC loft during t…

Laurie Spiegel’s second full-length album, Unseen Worlds, arrived just over ten years after her debut album. Having realized the pieces found on The Expanding Universe (1980) on an instrument no longer available to her, the GROOVE System at Bell Laboratories, Spiegel moved on to composing and developing for the Alles Machine, alphaSyntauri, McLeyvier and various other instruments before creating an instrument entirely her own. Spiegel created “Music Mouse - An Intelligent Instrument” on a Macint…

Extremes are extreme, extremely. For Philip Corner, a lifelong commitment to extremes - extreme expression, extreme beauty, extreme noise, extreme silence - developed a mastery of expression, any one extreme may result in all of the others. In gripping new recordings by the duo of Silvia Tarozzi, violin, and Deborah Walker, cello - with assistance from Rhodri Davies, harp, and Philip Corner, piano - Corner's early ensemble works from 1958 are paired with newer, late works from 2015-2016. The wor…

Wendy Eisenberg is an extraordinary guitarist dedicated to the completely unconstrained exploration of music, language and time. Her work has taken her from conservatory to DIY space to concert hall, from performing improvised music and punk-metal to writing the quietest of songs. On Its Shape is Your Touch, Eisenberg turns her gaze to the guitar in its most absolute, essential form. Having traversed musical genres as she has, the intricate improvisations she weaves on this record have as…

Last copies, don't sleep. It's a new year. What better way to to kick it off than with some incredible sounds from a not too distant past, via Fern Recordings. Since launching during the middle 2000s, the Paris based imprint has shown an incredible dedication to under-celebrated efforts of underground sound, offering particular focus to works of field recording, experimentalism, and drone. Their latest release, a long overdue reissue of Small Cruel Party's legendary Resin, Parched, Chthonic, ori…

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Philip Corner. For more than half a century he has been a cornerstone of the American musical avant-garde. A once student of Otto Leuning, Henry Cowell, Olivier Messiaen, and Dorothy Taubman, who went on to inherit John Cage’s legendary Modern Music class at the New School for Social Research. A founding member of Fluxus, Corner made waves fast, creating a body of singular work, both on his own and within ensembles like Gamelan Son of Lion and Tone Roads,…

Doxy presents a reissue of the George Russell Septet's The Stratus Seekers, originally issued in 1962. Joe Goldberg, from the original liner notes: "'Color' is a word that crops up with great frequency whenever George Russell discusses music. 'Dixieland has a color,' he has said; 'bop is a definite color, and so is atonality.' Following that train of thought, one might extend Russell's thesis and refer to him as a kaleidoscopic musical figure: so many different 'colors,' to use his phrase, …

Endangered Species states, restates, correlates, instigates, inflates and deflates, elevates, formulates, disintegrates, interrogates, percolates, granulates, germinates, Kiss Me Kates, Tom Waits, Norman Bates and W.B. Yeats, horripilates, adumbrates, prestidigitates, sophisticates, enumerates, integrates and contraindicates songs from the standard repertoire, Standards they were called. Old French, Frankish, estendard "place of formation." If you asked a jazz musician what he played, he'd proba…

Though frequently overshadowed by his contemporary and Takoma Records labelmate John Fahey, the compositions and performances of Daniel R. Robinson Jr., best known by the stage name Robbie Basho, were integral in the development of the American primitive guitar style. Along with Fahey, and songwriter/composers such as Max Ochs, Leo Kottke, and others, Basho helped bring to the masses the distinct form of guitar finger-picking, which blended folk and country-blues with neo-classical composition t…

Dreamlike second collaboration between Félicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, a deeply affecting play of contrasting textures, densities and space that comes very highly recommended if you’re into Ryuichi Sakamoto’s collaborations with Alva Noto, La Monte Young, GRM’s 1970’s output, classic 4AD/Cocteau Twins, that incredible Autechre remix of Tortoise, or indeed Félicia Atkinson's scene stealing Hand In Hand album from last year...‘Limpid as the Solitudes’ is the steeply immersive second coll…

Hence is the third collaborative release from Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke, following on from Behold (EMEGO 176LP, 2015). Building on the refined combination of electronics and acoustic instrumentation found on their previous releases, Hence presents two side-long pieces combining synthesizers, heavily effected guitar tones, and tabla rhythms played by special guest Uzhaan. On the first side, an explosive opening chord sends out ripples of sparse, irregularly pulsing guitar and synthesizer…

So You ... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) is a major new work by legendary experimental composer Alvin Lucier. It is an hour-long epic that tracks the familiar Orpheus myth from a less familiar perspective: that of Eurydice as imagined by poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); a Eurydice who rails at Orpheus for his hubris in attempting to rescue her. So You ... (Hermes, Orpheus, Eurydice) was originally commissioned by Documenta 14 and first performed as part of Documenta in Athens in 2017. Two key, and for…

Nonesuch Records' 1989 recording of Steve Reich's Different Trains, the Grammy Award winner for Best Contemporary Composition that year, and Electric Counterpoint has returned on vinyl for the first time in more than twenty-five years. The album features the first recordings of the two pieces, performed by Kronos Quartet and Pat Metheny, respectively. The vinyl edition—mastered by Robert C. Ludwig at Gateway Mastering in Portland, Maine, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman, and pressed on 140-g…

** Edition of 300**A new chapter in a series of unreleased concerts from the 90s recorded in Japan by Chap-Chap Records, acquired by NoBusiness to bring them to light; this incredible live album, recorded at a concert in Yamaguchi, in March of 1994. Those in the know, free/jazz freaks worldwide, should know of drummer Sabu Toyozumi from his work with Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, Misha Mengelberg and Haino Keiji - here setting up a continuum made of reverberations from cymbals, hi hat and misce…

Completely wonderful album from pianist Dave Burrell and reedman genius Marion Brown on alto. Recorded at the Black Musicians’ Conference, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts, 10th April, 1981.