Music In Fifths / Two Pages
Cantaloupe continues its recording series of the masterworks of the music of our time with this brilliant disc of two early classics by composer Philip Glass, performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Glass is arguably minimalism's most well-known and influential composer. Before film soundtracks, operas, and universal acclaim, there were these intense, rugged, and demanding early works for keyboard. In Music in Fifths and Two Pages, Philip Glass's ideas are at their most basic, using only addit…
An Index Of Metals
hortly before his death (ten years ago), Fausto Romitelli together with his friend Paolo Pachini and the poetess Kenka Lèkovich, resurrected the dream of a total scenic art (a furnace of sensations, they called it, an_ initiation rite_) in the manner of the Futurists: rhythms and gleams of light striking metals (for the video part), poems in iron and chrome singing of fusion with matter (Kenka Lekovich), acoustic/electric music highly amplified, filtered, spatialised, in as artificial a manner a…
KlangWerk 11
Erhard Grosskopf (b. 1934) is a Berlin-based composer of contemporary music who has been active since 1963. His works include chamber and orchestral as well as electronic music, and have been performed in the West German pavilion at Expo '70, by various radio orchestras, renowned string quartets, and avant-garde groups such as Gentle Fire or Agitation Free.
A thread that runs through all of Grosskopf's works is the idea of composing not on a timescale but in a space. Grosskopf views himself as a…
Skullbase Fracture
Issued by Leo Fegin's visionary record label in 1993, this refreshed and revised reissue collection of Hungarian composer Tibor Szemző's chamber pieces with spoken text – composed at 1980s for the legendary GROUP 180 – is unlike anything else of its kind.
Fleeting Future
Tip! *300 copies limited edition. Much needed repress!* Akusmi is the new project moniker of French-born, London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Pascal Bideau, who signs to the new Tonal Union imprint for the release of his album ‘Fleeting Future.’ With its hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences, and in its quest for optimism in the face of unknown and limitless possibility. ‘Fleeting Future’ stands apart as an inventive and i…
Heide
Nanook of the North is back with their second album, following the enthusiastically received 2018 debut "Nanook of the North," (Denovali). The duo of a composer and violinist Stefan Wesołowski and electronic producer Piotr Kaliński were acclaimed by Boiler Room, The Wire or NPR. Bob Boilen of Tiny Desk Concerts called Nanook of the North's performance at the famous SXSW Festival in Austin, US "one of the wow moments of SXSW". Their new material is a raw and minimalist sonic landscape, practicall…
Supermarket Variations 1+2
Tip! *100 numbered copies* Two pieces generated from musical material found within a 14-minute recording of Sainsbury’s supermarket, Chingford, UK, recorded by Thomas Haines at 17:26 on October 16th, 2020. The source recording contains music-like material. The material, once isolated, cross-processed and rerecorded, reveals extended electroacoustic versions of itself. In the source recording (audible in Variation 1), checkout scanners produce clusters of short pitched tones as the cashiers proce…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. II
The second part in a collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces, cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965.
Solastalgia
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 400 copies.* We haven’t found them yet, the words to talk to each other about the worrying signs of climate change. Feeling worried when walking on autumn leaves in the beginning of August should be completely normal. But how do we communicate about it? We don’t want to be just the next hysterical doomer. With this music I try to focus on the climate pain itself, gently inviting the listener to investigate their latent feelings of unease and growing co…
Te Deum Per Un Amico
*Includes a 40-page booklet with full text of the work, introductory texts and photos.* Giovanna Marini is an almost unique figure in Italy: a classically trained musician (graduated from the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome, perfected as a guitarist with Maestro Andres Segovia, then a lutenist with Maestro Quaranta's "Concentus Antiqui" ensemble), from the early 1960s she began a work of studying and transcribing songs from the Italian folk oral tradition. Beginning with "Bella Ciao" in 19…
Hypothetical Moments
Other Minds is excited to present Hypothetical Moments, a DVD of the collaborative works of Carol Law and Charles Amirkhanian, available on video for the first time. Some of the work included within will be familiar to followers of Amirkhanian’s work (Dog of Stravinsky, Mahogany Ballpark), but the vast majority of Hypothetical Moments has been entirely unavailable until now. Both video and audio have been lovingly restored and remastered, opening up a new pathway into the densely layered and ref…
Apophany
If you were to connect seemingly unrelated things – Heavy Metal and the symphony orchestra, for example – you might be guilty of apophenia. That friction between opposites has never been a problem for Nick Vasallo, though – his music is equally at home in both worlds. Melding Xenakis, Varese, Extreme Metal, and Dark Ambient with gothic charm, Vasallo conjures up a muscular sonic battle that leads you on an inexorable musical journey to a conclusion where surrender is your best option. Catharsis …
Orchard
*2022 Stock.* “I was born and raised in Kentucky, and for many generations my direct ancestors and extended family have been farmers. So, creating music that is ‘about’ soil, plant life, and the natural world, is my way of honoring that legacy.” Composer Tyler Kline’s tools, though, are not the plow – and vegetables are not the crop – in this collection of brief piano pieces commissioned by and for over a dozen pianists. Instead, Orchard is a celebration of fruit. Each sketch draws on a specific…
Transmutation of Things
There is a venerable history of popular songs used as the starting point for elaborate classical compositions, but 500 years ago Josquin and Dufay never imagined using a gargantuan digital orchestra with up to 300 layered tracks pushing architectural proportion and human perception to the max. And yet, that is exactly what composer, MC Maguire, does in his Toronto studio. It’s daunting, it’s overwhelming, and it has to be heard (preferably loud) to be believed. Dubbed “the most irritating and sp…
Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin
Other Minds is excited and proud to bring you a near-unheard early composition by legendary American Maverick composer Lou Harrison, Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin (1936), performed by our friend Kate Stenberg. This short piece was written by the precocious composer when he was barely out of high school, still a teenager, but already a year deep into studies under Henry Cowell, studies that occurred during Cowell's stint in San Quentin State Prison.
The piece was entirely unheard from its comp…
Songs Of Synastry And Solitude
*2022 stock.* Brooklyn-based string instrumentalist/composer Jessica Pavone is known for her sparse, melodic music inspired by folk music, improvisation and minimalism. Modeled after the legendary Leonard Cohen album Songs of Love and Hate, these eleven marvelous and lyrical songs for string quartet use hauntingly simple beauty to evoke the ghosts of things lost. Performed by the brilliant young members of the Toomai String Quintet, this is lovely and expressive instrumental music from this eloq…
Back To Life
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Anyone who thinks of multifaceted composer/performer Fred Frith primarily as a guitar player with Henry Cow and for his 1974 album Guitar Solos is way out of touch with what he's been up to in, say, more than 30 years. The 2008 release of Back to Life on Tzadik represents a good opportunity to reconnect with Frith and summarize what he has been doing since the heady days of his scrambling, intense electric guitar improvisations like "Alienated Industrial Sea…
Ugnayan
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* An important discovery of the original 1974 recording of a Maceda masterpiece! Recorded as 20 channels broadcast simultaneously on all of Manila's radio stations to the population gathered in public spaces with hand-held transistor radios, Ugnayan was a massive production supported by the Marcos regime intended to meld values of indigenous Filipino culture with modernist aesthetics. Though politically problematic and largely misunderstood, the effort involvi…
Stay On It
In 1973, avant-garde ensemble Creative Associates goes on a tour of Europe with Eastman’s brand new piece in their repertoire, and in short: “Stay on It” turns the coordinates of avant-garde music on its head. It is minimal, but unashamedly groovy; it is open to improvisation, grants performers all the freedom they could need, but it isn’t jazz and never slips into the non-committal. It is open to theatrical and performative elements, but also to the poetic and lyrical. It is strict and demands …
Strangely Familiar
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Jazz legend Karl Berger is best known for his vibes and piano playing and for founding, with Ornette Coleman and Ingrid Sertso, the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, in 1972. He has also had a full career in the classical realm, earning a doctorate in musicology, serving as professor of composition at Frankfurt Hochschule, and as chair of the music department at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Strangely Familiar: 17 Miniatures for Piano Sol…