early music
“The room I entered was a dream of this room.” “It wasn't the hole in the landscape that gladdened us, it was the invitation to the weather to drop in anytime.” John Ashbery (both quotations from: Your Name Here 2000) “...all the hard dry studied Rules that ever was prescribed, will not enable any Person to form an Air any more than the bare Knowledge of the four and twenty Letters, and strict Grammatical Rules will qualify a Scholar for composing a Piece of Poetry, or properly adjust…
Empty Words
"Empty Words" begins by omitting sentences, has only phrases, words, syllables and letters. The second part omits the phrases, has only words, syllables and letters. The third part omits the words, has only syllables and letters. And the last part ... has nothing but letters and sounds. A mix of words, syllables, and letters obtained by subjecting the Journal of Henry David Thoreau to a series of I Ching chance operations. What was interesting to me was making English less understandab…
Transparent city (volumes 1 and 2)
Field recordings, electronic sound. Field recordings made in greater Los Angeles from December, 2004 to August, 2006. Each recording is an unedited ten-minute take from a single location. Sine tones and mixing completed in Michael Pisaro's home studio in Santa Clarita, California. Each ten-minute piece is followed by two minutes of silence. Recordings were mastered with home stereo playback in mind. In general, it is best to set the volume control on your system to a normal level (that is,…
Harmony Series 11-16
In the 'Harmony Series 11-16', very small events are happening in every nook and cranny of the music, and these subtle changes give magical effects to the music. This is in fact not magic at all - all the events are due to the theoretical structure of the music, but the way Pisaro incorporates them into his compositions is so subtle and natural, that the whole impression on his music becomes poetic. When I listen to each piece while carefully paying attention to the details, I feel that the nuan…
aus den fliegenden blttern eines fahrenden waldhornisten
'aus den fliegenden blttern eines fahrenden waldhornisten' (2013) ('from the flying leaves of a traveling horn player') for horn (F. Wilfried Krüger, horn).
EVA-MARIA HOUBEN (born 1955) studied Music Education at Folkwang-Musikhochschule Essen and the organ with Gisbert Schneider. Following her exams she taught both German and Music Education at Secondary School. She received her doctorate and postdoctoral lecturing qualification in musicology and was called for lectures at Gerhard-Mercator-Un…
Air - works for flutes and organ
'ein schlummer (a slumber)' (2013) for flute(s) and organ. 'aufhören (coming to an end)' (2013) for recorders: g-bass, c'-tenor, c-bass (1 performer). 'atmen V (breathing V)' (2014) for recorder(s) (1 performer) and organ. Ruth Walser, recorders. Barbara Müller-Hammerli, organ. Eva-Maria Houben, organ.
EVA-MARIA HOUBEN (born 1955) studied Music Education at Folkwang-Musikhochschule Essen and the organ with Gisbert Schneider. Following her exams she taught both German and Music Education at Se…
Orgelbuch
14 five-minute pieces from Eva-Maria Houben's 'Organ Book'. Eva-Maria Houben (organ).
Works for piano
Composer: Eva-Maria Houben. Performer: Eva-Maria Houben (piano). 'the sound of the piano decays. it cannot be sustained. I let it loose time and again. it appears by disappearing; starting to disappear just after the attack. in disappearing it begins to live, to change. the piano: an instrument, that allows me to hear how many ways sound can disappear. there seems to be no end to disappearance. I can hear, how listening becomes the awareness of fading sound.' 'Klavier' (2003). 'Drei chorle…
Era of Manifestations
People of the North may have begun life as a satellite of Brooklyn avant-everything institution Oneida, but it’s increasingly difficult to view the project as anything less than a primary concern. From the raw garage krautrock of 2010’s Deep Tissue to the snarled wavelength scrambling of 2013’s Sub Contra, People of the North is where organist Bobby Matador and drummer John Kid Millions—joined, frequently, by Oneida guitarist Shahin Motia—go to really let their hair down.
Sightings bassi…
Skull Sessions
Mazurek finds a challenge irresistible, and this is one of his most exciting projects" – The Wire
Skull Sessions combines two of Rob's groups: Sao Paulo Underground and Starlicker with additional personnel. The band is an international cast of masters, including drummer John Herndon (of Tortoise), vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz and flutist Nicole Mitchell, (both DownBeat poll winners on their respective instruments), Guilherme Granado on keyboards and electronics, Carlos Issa on guitar and …
Navigating by Starlight
"Navigating by Starlight is the elegantly distended fourth LP by a New York band known for its fine taste in bourbon as well as its ability to explore strangely forested nooks of space. Composed of two side-long excursions of heavily bearded improv, this is what Bruce Dern should have been listening to throughout Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running. The first side is called 'Lovejoy Vapor Trail,' after the recently discovered comet said to be releasing enough alcohol to fill 500 bottles of G…
Saturday Night Fever
"Saturday Night Fever takes the concept of the movie of the same name and stretches the night a bit later, the fever a bit higher to the point where the party ends up blending into something much more sinister and wild. What starts out as a disco drumbeat with funky guitar swagger and melodic horns may slowly deteriorate into some sort of corroded ambient loop that eventually morphs into melodic horn samples. Basically every track is subverting its own gestures, carving out a narrative of …
Live at Lons Le Saulnier, 1974
A band formed in France, 1973, by English vibraphonist, guitarist and singer Robert Wood, together with Olivier Didier (ex-Herbe Rouge) on drums and Simon Wheatley on electric bass. Patrick Fontaine (ex-Ame Son and ex-Bananamoon Band) replaced Simon Wheatley a few months later. In 1974 Robert Wood & Woodlands played more than forty concerts in France. The LP offers a selection of the recordings that were made at those shows. This is a limited and numbered edition of 1.000 copies, Including postc…
Movin Gelatine Plates
2015 release. This album contains previously unreleased versions recorded between 1970 and 1978 by the legendary (slightly experimental) psych/prog unit Moving Gelatine Plates. Edition of 1.000 copies on clear pink vinyl (gelatine colour) in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with flyer, family tree and postcard. This album includes a 7-inch record facsimile of the original acetate made in December 1970 (one copy) only with unreleased versions of 'X25' and 'London Cab'. These first recordings of the band …
Almasty
Solo bass played and composed by Kasper T. Toeplitz. Layers of noise full of details like the voice of dead machines !“A purely formal présentation of Almasty would point that it is a composition for solo bass – electric bass, which implies a few electric/electronic machines around the string instrument, which change or modifiy its resonances somehow, but nothing more that what is seen those days around any electric instrument. And Almasty is also a solo composition, as it is recorded and presen…
Grand Tour
Tilbury left communist Poland in 1964 and his visits grew rare. He got involved with Cornelius Cardew’s Scrath Orchestra and the AMM; later he went on to become known for his performances of Morton Feldman’s compositions. Meanwhile Zygmunt Krauze, aside from his work in the Musical Workshop, grew to be his generation’s leading conceptual composer, mainly thanks to his reception of Wladyslaw Strzeminnski’s unism. The worlds of Krauze and Tilbury were separate, but adjacent.
The Musical Worksh…
plays Parallel Winter
Voice, guitar and zither by Richard Youngs. Composed, recorded, mixed and mastered by Richard Youngs.Motto of Populista Winter Triangle came about on 13th of December, 2014. It was a cold and windy day, a classic of pre-winter Warsaw, cold, wet, transparent yet at the same time grey, or perhaps mostly grey. It was also a day of the first Warsaw show of Richard Youngs in Komuna// Warszawa. Not fully by accident, there was a piano in the room, which made Richard propose performing 'ParallelWinter'…
Silent Night at the Crooked Forest
Ole-Henrik Moe, viola. Kari Ronnekleiv, violin. Sheriffs of Nothingness is a stringduo consisting of two of Norway's most distinguished artists in contemporary music: Ronnekleiv as a performer and Moe mostly as a composer. Moe and Ronnekleiv won the Norwegian Grammy for best contemporary album in 2007, and in 2011 Moe was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Award.Sheriffs of Nothingness interplay is remarkable. They move inside their music like one organism with all kinds of materials and pas…
Playing with a Dead Person
When you contacted me about the duos, I thought there is nothing more original than playing with a dead person […] which is curious because Derek Bailey is very much alive, especially when we hear his voice and I feel he's sort of sitting here, in the studio, and he's waiting for me and I'm waiting for him and we're not quite sure what's gonna happen. „Derek and I always wanted to do a duo recording together and we never quite managed that. Within the later years that we were trying to set somet…
Pianophonie
'Forte e piano' is one of Serocki's lesser known and acclaimed works, while 'Pianophonie' is considered his greatest masterpiece. However, it's worth remembering that 'Forte a piano' and 'Pianophonie' are interrelated. It's difficult to imagine the latter without the former. Serocki was born in Torun. He studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano with Stanislaw Szpinalski at the State Higher School of Music in Lódz and graduated in 1946. He continued in Paris, studying composition w…