Calcutta Gas Chamber
John Watermann's Calcutta Gas Chamber has long been hailed as one of the minor masterpieces of post-industrial sound art, this is the very first edition on N D label. Back in 1990, this German born sound artist had traveled to Calcutta where he stumbled upon a gas chamber that had been closed down just a few years earlier. Watermann explains in the liner notes that the Indian government had numerous policies, both official and clandestine, aimed at population control; and the gas chamber was one…
Crop circles
a rare early work by Steve Roden, a visual and sound artist from Los Angeles, known for his musical work under the name 'In Be Tween Noise'. Steve felt that this particular work, music for an installation he has done, was far enough from the music of 'In Be Tween Noise' to ask us to release it under his own name. It is a quiet soundscape, produced by using only a microphone and a speaker to create the sound material, and designed to fill the room at a moderate loudness to let the listener take a…
untitled # 90
The sonic vibrancy of tropical rainforests is highlighted on the one long (45 minutes) track of Untitled #90. But, of course, in the hands of Francisco López, the kinetic sounds are manipulated and shaped in most imaginative ways. Opening with the buzzing hum of life (insects? birds? animals?), the ambience of life within the moist, humid rainforest, envelopes the listener. Not just simple field recordings, the sounds are looped, subtly stretched and tweaked, in such a way as to really bring the…
Before The Law
Raz Mesinai is one of the most respected young musicians in New York’s burgeoning underground electronica scene. His unique approach utilizes samples of acoustic instruments performing his original compositions, electronics of his own design, computers and occasionally his dynamic percussion work. His latest project is inspired by the hermetic Jewish writer Franz Kafka whose influential work views the Jewish experience through a mystical, almost Kabbalistic lens. A complex and multifaceted CD of…
Project
7' vinyl only. Limited edition. Artwork and photography by Jon Wozencroft. Cut by Jason at Transition. 'Project began as a film soundtrack for 'The Overcoming of Hazard' by Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, whose 3 monitor installation piece was presented in the crypt of St. Pancras church in London, August 07. It uses four atmosphere recordings, short wave radio and an organ stop - an attempt to confuse inside and out. Mixed with Mathias Gmachl at Loop.ph using Digital Performer, one side is designe…
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center
Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was an album of electronic music released in 1961. It was the recording of a concert performed at the McMillin Theatre (today called the Miller Theatre) at Columbia University on May 9 and 10, 1961. The Arel composition is completely electronic, with articulated signals over a continuous background texture. El-Dabh's composition, an "electronic drama," has a text drawn from the epic of Layla and Majnun, and consists primarily of tape manipulated instrum…
New Sounds in Electronic Music
One of the most beautifully pressed vinyls of electronic music with 3 important works: Steve Reich "Come Out" (see Reich's Early Works), Richard Maxfield "Night Music," and Pauline Oliveros "I of IV." Maxfield's "Night Music" is an exquisite pre-synthesizer electronic music made -- like his pieces "Sine Music" (1959) and "Trinity Piece" (1960) -- with only the supersonic bias signal of a tape recorder and a supersonic sawtooth waveform from an oscilloscope producing audio range difference tone "…
Happy Ending
Happy Ending contains the soundtrack to Joel Santoni's Les Yeux Fermes (1972), reissued together with Lifespan (1974) as Les Yeux Fermes & Lifespan (Elision Fields, 2007). The soundtrack itself consists of two lengthy pieces: the grave Journey From A Death of a Friend for organ and piano (the highlight of the album), and the lightweight Happy Endings for piano and saxophone (reminiscent of Poppy Nogood). Only copy available.
Clic
"Clic" is released in 1974 and it is truly of those art-popping creations Battiato ever managed to do - there are full analogies naming it a best ever album, there are voices that appreciate its corrosive attitude under quite exhaustive portraits, everything being or not of a heads-up, since "Clic" needs to affirm a great response from the person who listens to it. All the fractured comparisons can become unremarkable, even if most of the previous solid works has lead to this entire full interes…
luna park
Original, still shrink wrap copy of Organized Sound by Tod Dockstader Luna Park/Traveling Music/Apocalypse, 1966 Owl Records. This is one of the best and most creative records of electronic/concrete music ever! Dockstader made this music at night, staying at his day job’s studio (where he did the sound effects for Mister Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing), becoming expert at manipulating their tape recorders and rewiring oscillators to make powerful, pulsating electronic drones and effects. Absolut…
Musical Electro-Alchemy
Synthesist and electroacoustic composer born in 1933. Ivan Patachich was the musical director of Budapest film studios. He died in 1993. These recordings made in the Electronic Music Studio of the Hungarian Radio and in the Institute of Sonology, State University Utrecht. Very rare. Only one copy available.
Electronic Music V
Music from the Dartmouth International Electronic Music Competitions 1969 and 1970, by Peter Glushanok, Jose Vicente Asuar, Richard Allan Robinson, Jean-Claude Risset, Raymond Moore and Peter Klausmeyer. Only one copy available.
Electronic Music III
Third volume of the great contemporary electroacoustic compilations published by Turnabout: Electronic Music III. It contains electronic music by Berio/Druckman/Mimaroglu. Only one copy available.
Last Camel In Paris
Throughout the 1970s, legendary American composer Terry Riley toured regularly in Europe, performing solo organ concerts. In October 1978, Riley's personal technician Chester Wood built a stereo digital delay out of an ancient computer he had procured from Don Buchla, and the subsequent tour was the maiden voyage to try it out. Riley's specially modified two-manual Yamaha YC-45D portable combo organ had a Just Intonation setting and allowed him to feed stereo signals to the digital delay. The Ya…
Computer Music
Sonata for computer, Andromeda & L'aube des flammes composed 1984 and recorded at Electronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm, Sweden. Harmonics II composed 1983 ; Parta con moto composed 1984 recorded at Elektronisches Studio in der Technische Universität (Berlin, Germany). Only one copy available.
Tides
Long out of print, this CD is an awesome example of early 70's early 80's musique concrete - Pentes composed 1974 and realized at INA-GRM studios in Paris, France. Tides composed 1984 and Vortex composed 1982 realized at the electroacoustic studio in the University of East-Anglia, Norwich, England. The fairytale quality is bound to seep up like methane through the marshes, as so often in works by Jacques Lejeune or François Bayle – and the procedure functions in Smalley’s piece! Nature becomes …
Automne fold
ollowing his highly successful debut stabil (r-n073), Kangding Ray releases his second full length record on raster-noton, entitled Automne fold. With Automne fold, David Letellier has evolved from the quiet, pristine flow of his debut record to sounds that are raw, dark and organic on this second release. pulsating rhythms become lost in within walls of saturated strings, words are spoken over bowed acoustic guitars, and analog synths collide with urban field recordings. Vocals are a central th…
Deathofatypographer
Death of a typographer is meant to be a snap shot. The release was recorded in a winter week in Berlin. Only the pre-released single plastic star was created in sunny athens. The album contains the original session version of plastic star. The music of death of a typographer carries the special sound of raster-noton - but it is different: the tracks act as focal points, as elegy of an latently flowing stream, a stream that still moves on even when the music has long faded away. The tracks do not…
Unitxt
After finishing the transall cycle and introducing the series of xerrox, Alva Noto makes a move back to his more rhythmic approach in unitxt. It could be seen as a kind of continuation to the transspray ep from 2004. A preview of unitxt concept was already released as a remix track for the björk cd-s release innocence produced by Björk-Timbaland, from her latest album volta (2007). Unitxt was recorded during raster-noton japan tours 2006 and 2007. it was reviewed and edited in berlin early 2008.…
Everydays
Debut collaboration of New York artists and long-time duo partners Alan Licht and Aki Onda, whose combined history connects artists straddling the pop and experimental worlds, including Fennesz, Loren Connors, Takemura Nobukazu, Lee Ranaldo, and Toriko Nujiko. In the past decade their montage-inspired solo work - Licht's permutational guitar and tape pieces on Rabbi Sky and A New York Minute, Onda's field recording recontextualizations on Bon Voyage! and Ancient & Modern - has co-existed with th…