Diddy Wah Diddy / Who Do You Think You're Fooling / Moonchild /
In the high desert of California, they were referred to simply as “Beefheart.” Don Van Vliet acquired the habit of singing along to vintage blues records while hanging with high school chum Frank Zappa. Founder Alex Snouffer formed the Magic Band in late 1964. And, by early 1965, the powerful and charismatic local blues combo had made quite a name for itself locally as “the band” for local dances at the fairgrounds. By late ’65 the inclusion of master guitarist Rich Hepner explosively changed th…
Molecular Affinity
Thollem McDonas : “This is the third trio album Nels and I have made together, each time with a different 3rd partner. The previous two were The Gowanus Session with William Parker and Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly. Though each session has been unique in itself (different prescribed approaches, the environment and of course the uniqueness that each individual brings), there are definitely overarching themes pollinating each album. As the instigator of each of these sessions, I’ve always …
Mother Dearest / Très Chère Mère
Mother dearest is a story of childhood suffering which poses the questions: is the young narrator a girl or a boy? Is his brother human? Is his father a busy scientist or an idiot hermit? Is his mother a simple (and happy) narcissistic pervert? Très Chère Mère / Mother Dearest is illustrated throughout and the text is in both English and French. The book comes with a 13 minute CD also titled Mother Dearest.
"Guilliaume Belhomme, label boss at Lenka Lente in France, has been producing these quite…
Rise
"..to shape a new consciousness, one in which cooperation triumphs over domination, and humility before nature's complexity challenges technological hubris. to move on and leave the religious, materialist and supremacist phases behind us. most dimensions are yet to be explored. the real human potential has yet to be revealed. the process of liberation has only just begun. rise, rise, rise.." (final section of Dave Phillips' liner notes, spread across the four sides of the two inlays)
South Africa recordings
Raw field recordings. Immersion. Listening beyond sound. Nature speaks languages. we can “hear” them, but do we listen, do we try to understand? floods, tornados, land erosion, global warming, et cetera - these are but the most obvious examples of nature speaking. These discs contain nature’s sounds with this particular intention/communication in mind. The field recordist in the role of a mediator. Aesthetic choices are but departing points. The quality of attention defines the quality of experi…
selective memory / perception
An hour long piece consisting of classical instrumentation and orchestral arrangements using cello, violin and piano, plus recordings of wind, broken urban creatures, intimate situations, insect and amphibian sounds and mutations thereof, transmogrified balloons, unconscious voices and more. Selective perception is the tendency to not notice and more quickly forget stimuli that cause emotional discomfort and contradict our prior beliefs. Selective perception is the process by which individuals p…
Seek
Maurizio Grandinetti is tirelessly exploring the possibilities of the acoustic and semiacoustic guitar, and «will fearlessly employ any technique, any instrument, to manifest the necessary sounds», as Elliott Sharp describes Maurizio Grandinetti’s openness to a wide range of tonalities and techniques. His activities are not limited to one genre or formation, but range from solo recitals, chamber and contemporary music to improvisation. Electrically amplified, and accompanying himself on electron…
Est un chemin, loin en sombre
Joëlle V. aka Erle (voices) and Eric L. aka Fels (drums). Talweg is a duet that seeks to explore the darkest side of sound and music. Talweg tries to create links with the most creative aspects of our archaic past. The path to the deepest valley. Limited to 100 copies.
Community
Erstwhile is proud to announce the release of Community, the new solo release by Graham Lambkin, his fifth solo record, following 2011’s Amateur Doubles. “Community is a music steeped in sociological review. It sits as a keen barometer, taking the temperature of the world around it. Community is both willing servant and social mirror - it performs its basic civic duty without fuss, then shatters.” (José Perez)
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and designed by Lambkin, Community arrives in a delux…
The Earth and the Sky
Erstwhile is proud to announce the first release on the new ErstClass imprint, an epic collection of Michael Pisaro's work for piano from 1994-2016, 11 pieces totalling 223 minutes. The pieces are performed by the brilliant Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt (Current 93, Walter Marchetti, Robert Ashley, etc.) with close oversight by Pisaro as well as his own musical input at times. The gorgeous 8-panel digipak was designed by Yuko Zama (also the lead producer), and the 8 page booklet features liner…
Eternal beyond
My Cat Is An Alien (Roberto & Maurizio Opalio) together with Joëlle Vinciarelli (Talweg and La Morte Young)."All began in Spring 2015, when outsider instantaneous composers MCIAA traced a new magic triangle on a map between their hometown Torino, their current “Alien Zone” secret base in Western Alps, and the mysterious area over Nice’s hills known as Le Village Nègre. Not far from there, in the small and private recording studio of French underground queen Joëlle Vinciarelli, MCIAA recorded and…
Re-Up
Double LP version. Munster Records present a reissue of Étant Donnés's Re-Up, originally released in 1999. For Re-Up, France's Étant Donnés (Eric & Marc Hurtado) brought in Alan Vega, Lydia Lunch and Genesis P-Orridge to provide lyrics and vocals for specific contributions. Vega, featured on the first four tracks, juxtaposes his stream-of-conscious vocals with the phasing pulses and analog crackles and sighs on "Shadows Lights", responding to the rhythmic ticking and splintering synth on the …
Vibrant Stapler Obscures Characteristic Growth
**limited repress, gold vinyl edition** First reissue of Hastings Of Malawi's classic masterpiece Vibrant Stapler Obscures Characteristic Growth, originally released on the Papal Products label in 1981. Hastings Of Malawi were Heman Pathak, David Hodes and John Grieve. They recorded Vibrant Stapler Obscures Characteristic Growth in one night in 1981 with no plan and no idea of what they were doing. They played drums, clarinet, synthesizer and piano but also made use of things that they found l…
The Ghost Trade + The EP Collection
** Limited Edition Color Wax ** Camberwell, in South London, pops up infrequently in pop culture. Perhaps you know it from the Camberwell Carrot, the heroically sized joint smoked in cult movie Withnail & I, or perhaps – if you’re attuned to experimental music – you know of Camberwell Now. The group formed from the ashes of This Heat, the art-noise group whose catalog was reissued on Modern Classics Recordings in early 2016.
Not so much a supersession as a continuation of that group, Camb…
The Microcosm: Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970-1986
The follow up to Light In The Attic’s game-changing I Am The Center box set is finally here. The Microcosm: Visionary Music Of Continental Europe, 1970-1986 is the first major overview of key works from cosmically-taped in artists needing little introduction — Vangelis, Ash Ra Tempel, and Popol Vuh — and unknown masterpieces by criminally overlooked heroes like Bernard Xolotl, Robert Julian Horky and Enno Velthuys. Whereas I Am The Center called for a reconsideration of an entire maligned genre…
Live at Disjecta
Fourth in Open Mouths's Live At ... series. Greg Kelley on trumpet; Bill Nace on electric guitar. Recorded March 9, 2016 by Daniel Menche. Cover art by Bill Nace. Covers screened by Alan Sherry. Edition of 300.
Appalachian Anatolia (14th Century)
A 40-minute solo piece for ‘modified guitar’ written by the Swiss composer d’incise for the Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear.Perhaps more than a strict composition this piece is a conjunction of a technical frame and a conceptual input, and the own vision of the player. It works on tuning and de-tuning, a different set-up of the strings, on harmonics and pitch frictions and on the influences of music from very various origins and the transposition of gestures inside a reduced field of possibili…
Seaside
In late 2015 John Tilbury bought a clavichord, which is now in the conservatory of his house in the Kentish seaside town of Deal. This is the first CD on which John plays clavichord rather than piano. Fittingly for the hundredth Cd on Another Timbre, the disc combines compositions and improvisations.Christian Wolff and John Tilbury first met and worked together in the late 1960’s. At that time Christian composed a series of piano pieces for John with the general title ‘Tilbury’. For this disc Jo…
Burning Down the Palace
All of these work deal somewhat with a fake factor. Part Time Heroes handles the star concept, in a larger than life way; Running Sushi refers to comics and manga. Burning Palace, on the other hand, is based on The Art of Seduction. (...) For the human body to remain interesting, one must constantly put it in a different light or in another context. One has to look at the body sideways. With this, one achieves a large choreographic change in perspective, because everything is altered. In another…
Optical Vacuum
Nowhere else is talk of the »panoptic era« an eye that sees everything yet remains elusive clearer than in the medium that has taken omnipresence and fleetingness to a global scale: the Internet. On the Internet, the paradigm known thus far for our imaging apparatus has become invalid: there is no longer a single, central perspective, but instead, a myriad of viewing angles that broadcast over webcams, pumping incessant images into the digital data stream. The »vacuum« in the title of Dariusz…