Irrlicht
Vinyl version of Klaus Schulze's first solo album, from 1972. "After stints in the legendary bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Irrlicht was Klaus Schulze's first stab at a a solo project. He had radical ideas for the newly developed electronic music scene which are blatantly present here. Equipped with a small orchestra, 4-track, guitar, percussion, organ, and a little electronic gadgetry, he created a 'cosmic classic'. No synthesizers were used here, just a remarkable use of sampl…
The Lost Jockeys
The Lost Jockey was a large aggregate of British new music performers who came together on this LP to play compositions by three of its members: Andrew Poppy, John Barker and Orlando Gough. Poppy is the best known of the three-he worked with Psychic TV on their first two albums and made two rather dated EPs for ZTT in the mid-80s-and his pieces here are better than the later works but still forgettable. It’s Gough’s side-long “Hoovering the Beach I & II” that’s worth the price of admission-with …
Lessness
Following in the tradition of minimalist composers such as La Monte Young, Yoshi Wada, and Charlemagne Palestine, Sun Circle exemplifies a contemporary focus on long form drone music. Members Greg Davis and Zach Wallace have shown their interest in the field most recently with extended works on Kranky and Root Strata respectively; together on Lessness, they show a deep-rooted interest in the power of simple forms. Building upon themes from their recent solo work (Davis’ subtly shifting tonal w…
Zones Without People
'Zones Without People' was released in 2009 on a highly limited vinyl run for Arbor. All seven tracks featured in his Wire chart-topping 'Rifts' compilation, predating his mindblowing 'Returnal' album (surely one of the best of 2010) and displaying its prodigiously gifted creator amidst some of his most affective synthscapes. From the outset we could consider this to be classic material, as the miniature 'Computer Vision' - one of his very earliest creations circa 2004 - plugs into a spir…
Bright Failing Star
Bright Failing Star is probably one of the most straightforward albums I've made, and under some of the most trying circumstances I've encountered in recent years. The south London flat we were in at the time had suffered flood damage during the summer before we moved in, and our room had it's sodden carpet ripped out and the bare concrete floor exposed. This was never fixed in the duration we lived there so by December it was bloody freezing. To compound this we had no hot water for 5 months, c…
Selektiv hogst
Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar), Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board), Espen Reinertsen (saxophone & flute), Eivind L¿nning (trumpet), Martin Taxt (tuba). Selektiv hogst, meaning selection cutting, is a continuation of the music developed on the album Varianter av d¿de trær, released on SOFA in 2008. Since then, the quartet has performed numerous concerts in Japan and Europe, finding a particular way of making music together. 'Selektiv hogst' sees the former quartet of Tetuzi Akiyama, Marti…
Lisbon Concert
The highly influential composer and improviser recorded live in Lisbon at the Festival Dos Capuchos, 16th July 1995. "This gorgeous set of piano improvisations reflects minimalist composer Terry Riley's lifelong study of Indian music. It is an outstanding recording which captures Terry Riley at an inspired peak. Performances of such spontaneous and beautiful music are scarce and even less-frequently performed by the composer himself at such a late stage in an extraordinary career. To soun…
Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul / Concerto Des Ambiguites
Electronic / avant-garde music pioneer and founder of the French musique concrète movement, Pierre Schaeffer, a radio engineer, believed that any sound could be music, and was one of the first to experiment with tape looping, splicing and sampling. He was also one of the first to record music on magnetic tape. Drawing inspiration from the Italian Futurists, he emphasized the double meaning of the word "play", meaning to play an instrument, but also to have fun and enjoy oneself. Pierre Henry, a …
Le Microphone Bien Tempere'
Electronic music pioneer, Pierre Henry, was a classically trained French pianist and percussionist, but gained notoriety as one of the driving forces behind the French avante-garde movement "musique concrète", which attempted make music by using "real" sounds, like trains on tracks, dogs barking, footsteps, etc., in place of actual instruments and then electronically manipulate them in ways that had never been seen before, effectively redefining the very idea of music itself, and forcing …
Musique Sans Titre / Spatiodynamisme
Pierre Henry was a student and collaborator of Musique Concréte pioneer Pierre Schaeffer. The first side of the LP, composed in 1951 at the Studio d'Essai of the RTF, is notably one of his earliest attempts at the discipline. 'Spatiodynamisme' however, is based on 1954 recordings of a Nicolas Schöfer sculpture and was elaborated in his first private studio APSOM while he was still under the tutleage of Pierre Schaeffer's Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concréte. It was intended to as a sou…
Haut-Voltage / Coexistence
Accompanying the Doxy's coverage of early Henry recordings, 'Haut Voltage' is his 22 minute composition made in 1956, featuring his own vocals and designed to soundtrack a stage production by French choreographer Maurice Béjart. The second composition was written in 1959 after Henry had left Pierre Scaeffer's RTF and set to work in his own studio. During the period he realized that in order to evolve Musique Concréte it would have to begin to use electronics. 'Coexistence' is his first at…
Love Him v.2
In the wild sampling dark forest that daft giraffe commonly referred to as Okapi (www.okapi.it) struts about tuning a more than 100 hundred elements orchestra, all of which ruthlessly plundered, to celebrate the notorious Kyrgyz composer Aldo Kapi (1896-1952) of whom the early works (1914-1926) in between scratch music, electro-acustic extravaganza and slot-machine soundtracks are presented in this brilliant 12" volume 2.
Kevin Drumm
** 180 gram vinyl housed in a heavy textured glossy gatefold de-bossed and spot finished with 2 full page full color glossy inserts. Includes a sealed envelope containing a card with free download code ** The expanded and definitive double LP edition of Kevin Drumm's groundbreaking first album, originally released in 1997. Featuring some of the most fiercely abstract and organic guitar work ever heard, Drumm's debut is both jarring and completely alien. Dubbed by some as the greatest prepared gu…
Circunscrita
Maranha belongs to the same minimalist tradition as Paul Panhuysen and Arnold Dreyblatt. It is serious, deeply careful stuff (as anyone who has seen one of Maranha’s complex scores will attest), but informed throughout with a sense of practical experiment and discovery rather than the austere conceptualism or mathematical certainty that certain other minimalists adhere to. Like Panhuysen and Dreyblatt, Maranha pays a great deal of attention to instrumental timbre - he’s used the glass har…
Organ Eye
LP edition: born out of both creative empathy and chance, Organ Eye were formed in the wake of a live concert of David Maranha (Osso Exotico) and Minit (Jasmine Guffond & Torben Tilly), which took place at the ZDB Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal at the end of February 2005. With the addition of Patricia Machás (also a member of Osso Exotico), the quartet that now forms Organ Eye was completed and in March and December of 2006, they recorded their eponymous debut album.The two raga-like tracks that c…
Sablier
Oustanding new release!! Although with irregular appearances in recent years, Osso Exotico is by far one of the most consistent music projects in Portuguese experimental music. "Sablier" is their ninth album,, and the band includes André e David as well, Francisco Tropa, Patrícia Machás e Manuel Mota. Truly deluxe LP edition, gatefold cover, with and additional DVD
Church organ works
The three piece group from Portugal explore in ten tracks the possibilities of the church organ. The members play in various combinations on different organs. The outcome is very varied. The opening piece is barely audible, but the second piece is a loud, repitive, all register open one. Of course it's hard to see this music without any religious overtones, but Osso Exotico don't give a clue in that direction: all their pieces are untitled. Meditative pieces in most cases, but less minimal then …
Sorow
new work by David Jackman aka Organum after completing the recent "Holy" trilogy ('Sanctus', 'Amen' and 'Omega'). SOROW is not an album that expands the trilogy still farther, but opens a new chapter in Organum's career. On the basis of the European organ drones and the Indian Tanpura foundation, the gentle Japanese temple bell compliments the piece. ....
Energy Field
Armed with four 8011 DPA hydrophones, DPA 4060 omni mics, a Telinga parabolic reflector mic and and a Sound Devices 744T digital hard disk recorder, Jana Winderen studies and records wild places which have a particular importance in our understanding of the complexity and fragility of marine ecosystems. The recordings were made on field trips to the Barents Sea (north of Norway and Russia), Greenland and Norway, deep in crevasses of glaciers, in fjords and in the open ocean. These elements are t…
Fathom
Douglas Quin's Fathom brings together four extended underwater soundscapes-two each from the Arctic and Antarctic. The recordings have been gathered over a period of 15 years, capturing an extraordinary palette of sonic voices, events, spaces, and textures. To the human ear, these soundscapes are haunting and otherworldly; yet they are very much of this world-out of earreach. The tracks are minimally edited and are his first field recordings to be archived in vinyl. Included with the rele…