Buffalo Pearl
John Butcher (tenor & soprano saxophones) with Gerry Hemingway (drums, percussion, voice, sampler). 'Buffalo Pearl is culled from a performance in April 2005 with myself and John Butcher and marks the 7th release on my own Auricle Record label (aur-7) which this year celebrates its 30th anniversary. John and I worked collaboratively on the multi-tracked mixing and editing to put this together and simultaneously we have organized a second recording taken from two nights earliar at Roulette in NYC…
Naldjorlak
Created in close collaboration with Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak is the first entirely acoustic composition by a composer who has pioneered pure electronic sound for over thirty years. Delicate in its dynamic range, the work explores highly diffuse bowed textures that defy perceptual focus; the hidden, untamed ur-sonority of the cello is revealed as a deeply unstable and complex source. The Tibetan title refers to the motion of all life toward unity; in a seamlessly interwoven three-part structure…
Friulian sketches
Alexander Von Schlippenbach (piano), Daniel D'Agaro (clarinet), Tristan Honsinger (cello). This spontaneous chamber music establishes further advances in the development of improvisation as compositional process. Recorded in the prestigious Arte Suono Studios, Udine in 2008. As you taste this dish, you'll be perhaps so engaged to query about the ingredients. At any given time you could lay this musical output equally at the feet of Jazz, Classical, or 20th Century composed music. But the ingredi…
Future Artists
LP X 2. In their first new album since 2003's The Damned and last year's two-cd greatest hits behemoth, 'Vain, Erudite & Stupid', New Zealand's The Dead C return with another uncompromising realisation of the finest rock improvisation you'll ever hear. It's been twenty years, and The Dead C show no sign of losing their ability to express the surreal and undefined. Long may they prosper.
Secred Earth
Lp version. The elegance of howling guitar noise was fully realized when The Dead C appeared. For over twenty years now, the trio has continually redefined what rock music is and can sound like, and have inspired Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Wolf Eyes, and Comets On Fire, not to mention the current fertile underground noise scene. The Dead C is the ultimate blues band. But rather than departing from the heartfelt singing of the African-American South, they express the tenets of alienation in societ…
Eusa kills - Helen said this
The second in a series of Dead C reissue collaborations between Jagjaguwar and Ba Da Bing, Eusa Kills has been pressed on vinyl for the first time in years, along with the Helen Said This 12-inch as a bonus record. Eusa Kills is The Dead C's second album from 1989, released by Flying Nun, the arbiter of the time for all that mattered in New Zealand rock. Considered by many to be their songs record, Eusa Kills adds ominous aggression to the abstract sounds of their time-- those being created by s…
DR503 / The Sun Stabbed EP
The first in a series of Dead C reissue collaborations between Jagjaguwar and Ba Da Bing, DR503 has been pressed on vinyl for the first time in years, along with the Sun Stabbed EP as a bonus record. Originally released in 1987 (and not to be confused with the releases DR503b or DR503c, which are completely different recordings), DR503 sounded like nothing that came before - a furious pastiche of unrelenting drones, noise and menace. It didn't fit in with the other bands New Zealand's venerable …
Rue Victor Massé
Ray Warleigh (alto saxophone & flute) with Tony Marsh (percussion). 'What I play is absolutely unpremeditated. There are no soundscapes or pictures in my head. But I like melody very much, and I've thought about it a lot. After several attempts to make relatively lavish studio productions we agreed that the music here had the spirit that Ray wanted regardless, or perhaps because, of the absolutely basic way in which it was recorded in 2004. Unbelievably, this is only the second album made under …
Life in the greenhouse
Dan Warburton: violin. Recorded on March 3rd, 2007 by Christophe Le Dantec at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 'Music for Plants' was an installation by Berkeley-born artist Peter Coffin which formed part of an exhibition curated by Anthony Huberman at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in February and March 2007. 'Several musicians, including Noël Akchoté, Hervé Boghossian, Pierre-Yves Macé, Jean-François Pauvros and myself, were invited to play a solo set in Coffin's greenhouse, to entertain visitors to t…
Keith Rowe - Taku Unami
ErstLive 006 is from the duo of Keith Rowe and Taku Unami, and took place on the first night of the Amplify 2008: light festival in Tokyo in September 2008. This was the first set they'd ever played together. Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics. Taku Unami: computer with objects, contraguitar, mandolin.
Keith Rowe
ErstLive 007 is a solo set from Keith Rowe, and took place on the second night of the Amplify 2008: light festival in Tokyo in September 2008. This was Rowe's first ever solo set in Tokyo in his 40+ year career. Keith Rowe: guitar, electronics.
Volume
The first solo cd by John Edwards, increasingly recognised as one of the most significant players of his generation. Recorded in splendid detail by John Wall in 2008, these nine tracks are a very fresh take on the possibilities of unamplified double bass playing, making it a major entry in the solo bass literature. This solo recording is an unusual and rare offering that comes from a musician who performs every day, every week, and appears on over 100 records. It's a selection of sounds, melodie…
Then & Now Now & Then / Celebrating 20 Years
First it was the name of an album that came out about 20 years ago and made new music history. Deep Listening. Then it became the name of the band that recorded that album. Then it became the name of a practice, an approach to art, improvisation, exploration and, well, living, that drove that band, a band of crazies led by Pauline Oliveros, to lower themselves into a hugeunderground concrete cistern in the state of Washington (David Felton, 2008). Here, 20 years later, Oliveros, Stuart Dempster …
Musique Directe
Entering their twentieth year of existence, the GOL orchestra, together with the label Planam, celebrates and starts a new program of collaborations: the Gollaboration series.Volume 1, hence the title "Musique Directe", shows the band facing the leaders of Roumenian spectralism Ana-Maria Avaram and Iancu Dumitrescu. Electric and intense spontaneous experiments, on the edge of electroacoustic music and primitive avant-garde. Live recordings in Marseille and Paris with the participation of Ansamb…
Dendoshi II
** 300 copies in gold cover ** Dendoshi is Keith Connolly (No Neck Blues Band), Raymond Dijkstra (Asra), Dave Nuss (No Neck Blues Band) and Timo Van Luyk (Af Ursin, In Camera). Dendoshi: "he who comes to propagate the ceremony" or "missionary" (japanese). There had actually been a previous incarnation of Dendoshi (hence Dendoshi 2), which was a large group performance in New York which concentrated on elucidating the memories of a dead tree which had been re-contextualized as a sculptural exhibi…
The Great Learning / Two Poems
Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning," is a great example of his struggles to reconcile his innate musical aesthetics and his intellectual belief that the "avant-garde" was inherently elitist. Written for a mix of musicians & non-musicians, it is a grand improvisatory work that nicely exploits the talents of whomever is performing it. Two of the seven "Paragraph's" are performed here by The Scratch Orchestra, who give the expected first rate performance. Bedford is known to many in the rock w…
Topography
Percussionist Jon Mueller continues his amazing run of releases (he appears on eight Table Of The Elements titles in the first half of 2008!) with Topography, a collaboration with Zürich-based sound and visual artist Jason Kahn. As a drummer, Mueller propels Collections of Colonies of Bees and the occasional guitar army of Rhys Chatham; he also finds time to collaborate with artists ranging from Wilco's Glenn Kotche to Swans' Jarboe. Kahn draws on electronic and acoustic sound sources to create …
Impala Eardrums: A Radium Sampler
Radium is regarded as Table Of The Elements' rock offshoot, although they do write that in inverted commas (that's 'rock', in case you were wondering what that would look like). The label is given a showcase by this eight-track LP, calling upon Jonathan Kane, Megafaun, Ateleia, Collections Of Colonies of Bees and Neptune among others. Rhys Chatham, that most iconic of Radium artists gets the album underway with an untitled piece from 1986, featuring an arsenal of four guitars, a bass and drums. …
I-IV-V-I
ONE-SIDED, ETCHED GREEN VINYL. Released as a part of Table Of The Elements' 15th anniversary celebrations, this LP is another installment in the label's Guitar Series, which features contributions from Fennesz, SunnO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Thurston Moore. By rights, David Daniell's name should be every bit as widely known as any of those other aforementioned superstars of the avant-garde. His album on TOTE sub-label Xeric (the magnificent Coastal) is an all too often overlooked masterpiece, and …
Telescope
ONE-SIDED, ETCHED MARBLE-EFFECT VINYL. This new Guitar Series installment is also the debut solo LP by David Daniell's bandmate in San Agustin, Andrew Burnes - though he may equally be known for his improv collaborations with the likes of Thurston Moore and Ken Vandermark, or as a co-conspirator in Loren Connors' Haunted House. Telescope takes the form of a single, lengthy drone piece, modulating and morphing across an expanse of handsome, marble-effect green vinyl. Burnes isn't shy of morphing …