Music from United States

Superior Viaduct's second Mingus reissue shows a more introspective side of the composer with Mingus Plays Piano. One of his most straightforwardly beautiful recordings, there is a meditative calm found in Mingus' piano work, touching on shades of Debussy, Satie, Bill Evans, and Duke Ellington. There's no showboating, and not an ounce of amateurism considering Mingus was primarily known as a bassist. Making its way through standards, original compositions, and the blues, Mingus Plays Piano is a …

2014 Release. This first ever LP issue includes the full history about Don Cherry and his legendary recordings from the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, January 16, 1977. The album Modern Art is basically something very unique, a kind of Hear And Now unplugged concert recorded at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. It is unclear if any other recordings from the Hear And Now era survived. If not, then this album is a once-in-the-life opportunity to experience. Everyone who has heard Modern Art…

Few copies back in stock, long out of print  - Archive release from avant-garde harpist / composer Zeena Parkins and legendary deep listener Pauline Oliveros. Presenca Series 001 is the result of the formerly-defunct Lucky Kitchen label delving into the vaults of the Serralves Foundation, digging up a side’s worth of sound art for each artist. On audiophile-grade vinyl. "Lucky Kitchen was a legendary experimental sound publisher beginning in New York in the 1990's, drawing to a close in Barcelon…

New York City's experimental duo Talibam! team up with Fluxus artist and electronic avant-gardist Yasunao Tone and trombonist Sam Kulik for a confrontational sonic attack, fired by an array of analog synths and other electronic devices. David Novak, author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation (2013), on Double Automatism: "Bringing together the most calamitous materials from their home planets of noise, glitch, and free improvisation, Tone and Talibam! are at once the likeliest and …

Z’ev and Simon Balestrazzi are two masters of the industrial and post-industrial sound.The first inventing his own world of self made metallic percussions, the second spreading the seeds of the industrial noise pollinated with electronica and future folk forms through his various outputs, T.A.C. (Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata), Dream Weapon Ritual and Candor Chasma.This record takes shape from several encounters between the two. A Z’ev live recording in Cagliari, Sardinia from 2007 is …

A pair of discrete releases, each documenting a separate set of a concert given by the trio, along with "Two City Blues 1", recorded on one intense night at Tokyo's Shinjuku Pit Inn. A trio of three towering figures, German free jazz legend Peter Brötzmann, Japanese avant-garde wizard Keiji Haino, and wildly versatile American composer and musician Jim O'Rourke, recorded by Yasuo Fujimura on November 23, 2010. Brötzmann: alto and tenor saxophones, tarogato, and clarinet; Haino: guitar, voice, sh…

Field recording artist Jeph Jerman and percussionist and sound designer Tim Barnes are finally out with this fantastic collaborative work - here’s a certain patience that’s required to fully engage with Matterings. It’s a good twenty minutes longer than the other recent Erstwhile releases but it goes beyond album length—when your source material is different aspects of nature, the process of recording, editing, and compiling tracks feels like excavation. It’s with these slowly unfolding tracks t…

"From the Host of Late-Comers represents the latest challenge manifested by Plastic Palace People, the duo of Jim O'Rourke and Christoph Heemann, who have been collaborating continuously (even though in a largely unnoticed fashion) since 1989. Previous Streamline releases from Mimir contain some of their earlier work; Plastic Palace People first saw release in 2011. After two releases in quick succession, it has been a long wait for more, and finally here is a recent piece of work from the…

A very special and unique performance of Terry Riley's iconic 1964 minimalist piece "In C", previously unreleased. Riley and the Roberto Cacciapaglia Ensemble together at the Aterforum festival in Ferrara, Italy, on July 9, 1988.

Alga Marghen presents a 2015 remastered CD edition of its 2003 CD The Wolfman, a collection of pieces that introduce the listener to the most extreme experimental side of American composer Robert Ashley. Presented in digipak with 12-page booklet including liner notes written by the composer and the complete score of "The Wolfman," first issued in Source magazine. The program starts with "The Fox" (1957), Ashley's first electronic work, which displays his nascent electronic music theater style. D…

Ben Vida is one of the most interesting experimental electronics musicians in New York right now. His work with sound is quite astonishing and idiosyncratic. Closer in purpose to sound art. His stock as a recording artist has risen over the last couple of years thanks to high-profile collaboration with Keith Fullerton Whitman and brilliant album "esstends-esstends-esstends" for PAN Records. "Monoblock..." is quite an advanced listening reminding of the work by likeminded musicians, such a…

The grande finale of 'Extreme Rituals - A Schimpfluch Carnival', performed and recorded live at Arnolfini, Bristol UK on December 2nd 2012. Four leading figures of the international Noise circus team up for a unique performance, solely based on their brainwave activity. Each performer is wearing a wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) headset. The EEG signals sent from the stage are received by soundengineers, transformed from data into sound and processed to emerge through eight speakers …

Behold is the second collaborative release from Oren Ambarchi and Jim O'Rourke following the 2011 LP Indeed. Ambarchi and O'Rourke seamlessly blend field recordings, electronics, guitar, drums, and other acoustic instruments into a subtle combination of krautrock, minimalism, and classic free flowing electronics. Side A takes the listener into the Fourth World adventures pioneered by Jon Hassell on Fourth World Music Vol. I: Possible Musics (GB 019CD/LP), while the flip seems like an unlikel…

Greetings, here we have Recital’s inaugural release, “Vanity Fair,” Sean McCann & Matthew Sullivan’s debut collaboration album.  A fitting introduction to the ethos of Recital; the desire to turn a new page, to more accurately project what is significant and engaging in contemporary music.Matt and I had often talked about collaborating, as our musical understandings and interests align. Both drawn to minimalism and graceful ambience, we would trade tidbits and slivers of ideas casually over coff…

“Music For Private Ensemble” is Sean McCann’s first new solo album since 2011′s “The Capital”. Demonstrating a more serious study of orchestration and timbre than his previous work; it is a big step forward. The four arrangements presented here shy away from the use of synthesizers and effects processing – instead relying on voicing and movement to actuate the album’s sentiments. Inspired by the grandiosity of John Adams, the concerned somberness of Gavin Bryars, and the guttural tape work of Fl…

Although I was not yet aware of the extent to which casinos tailor their environments for maximum comfort (and, correspondingly, profit), I did know as I crossed the threshold of my first casino floor earlier this year that it would not be my last visit. Hit by a cornucopia of slot machine tones, triggering aleatorically and coalescing into shimmering masses, I was struck by the need to return and record the sounds that so entranced me. It wouldn't prove to be easy--casino security is inte…

"Alternate version of very limited LP (250 copies) on Japanese label Rockatansky. About 50% of this is actually different & reworked material than what is on the Rockatansky LP. This edition is a one time pressing limited to 500 copies. Recorded 2008 / 2013. Mastered for vinyl by Jason Lescalleet." "...an amazing LP, with low-level battlefield tectonics and the sound of smeared and tortured magnetic tape coming over like a rusty, Industrial scale take on classic 20th century minimalism. Som…

"The enthusiasm of the Paris audience, the strong following the Aylershad in France does not come as a total surprise, For, as the musician and his brother explained in the Down Beat story: if you really understoodthe message of Sidney Bechet, you should have no difficulty to this newkind of free spiritual."-Peter Niklas Wilson "The two concerts presented on this disc represent two of the finest dates of Albert Ayler's European tour of 1966. The band -- with brother, Don, on trumpet, violinist M…

"Reissue as part of the 40th anniversary of Hat Hut Records. What we have here is a one-nighter by the Steve Lacy Quartet at Paris' Sunset Club...The four members of the quartet get a chance to stretch out and you can feel the club energy clearly in the recording - it's a good night at the Sunset...in this era of homogenization - of jazz players who are filled with technique but have gotten their sound from textbooks - there is not enough attention that can be focused on an uncompromising jazz i…

A master of romantic abstraction, Jefre Cantu–Ledesma is not new to the scene. In fact, he’s been releasing a steady stream of music for nearly twenty years. With the brilliant album A Year With 13 Moons, however, the ever–prolific Ledesma appears to be hitting a new high. Or low, depending on how you like to see things. More on that later. First, some background. Born & raised in Texas, Ledesma’s formative artistic years were spent studying painting & sculpture in San Francisco. He bega…