Viandra
Active in music for over 40 years, Lars Hollmer first got together with his friends to play music in late-'60s Sweden. This band eventually became the legendary 'Rock In Opposition' band, Samla Mammas Manna. Concurrently towards the end of Samla's original life-span (the band reformed in the '00s and is recording and playing shows again), Lars started a solo career, where he emphasized his very personal compositions and his accordion-playing, of which he is a master. Lars' solo albums have a gre…
Businesscide
Michael, founder and brain behind the extraordinary Swedish post-Beefheartian group Kraljursastalten -- and world-class ice-hockey player -- here collects his extraordinary songbook including much of the two celebrated '70s releases by Kraljursastalten (the Reptile Institution: Michael plus the telepathic twins Stefan and Thomas Agaton), with later recordings from his solo record plus released and unreleased pieces with Henry Kaiser, John 'Drumbo' French, Sten Standell, Andy West and others. Wil…
Trial By Headline
Three old hands out of Soft Machine, Gong and Henry Cow stretch already elastic musical material into various shapes, tie it in knots and generally have a good time. These high quality recordings combined with seat-of-the-pants playing make for a lot of feature and color, underpinning a music that is constantly in shape-shifting motion. Compiled from recent concert recordings in Berlin, London and Tel Aviv, this clutch of extended songs should be to the taste of anyone familiar with the protagon…
Key
1995 release. Originally released in 1971. Key contains Meredith Monk's earliest compositions for voice. The songs that make up Key
were composed and performed in a three year period between 1967 and
1970, when Monk collected them into this 45-minute "invisible theater"
experience. Meredith Monk on the release: "In Key I wanted to
create a constantly shifting ambience. Each song dealt with a different
vocal character, landscape, technical concern or emotional quality. I
was trying for a vi…
Real State
Recent CD of previously unreleased and pleasingly rough live recordings of Japan's Mirrors, from '78-'79. Historically they might be in the shadow of Friction, but Mirrors and the Gozira label which released their two singles are the real fathers of Japanese punk's first wave. Previous reissues of the Mirrors material have been few, limited and never really distributed outside Japan, so this disc is a much-welcomed release. These live recordings serve them well, as this is among the finest strip…
Prehistory
Some of you may remember Circle X's corrosive, caterwauling, and unutterably fabulous self-titled EP, which was originally released in 1979 and reissued a little over a decade ago by Jim O'Rourke's and David Grubbs' Dexter's Cigar label. Now the story picks up again with the long-overdue first CD release of Prehistory, Circle X's first full-length album. Prehistory was recorded in 1981 and released in 1983 by Index Records, making them, strangely enough, labelmates with Wall of Voodoo. Circle X …
Soirée Dansante
Performers for this incarnation of NMF - Adam Bohman (tracks: 2, 3) , Eric Faes , Geert Feytons , Greg Jacobs , Timo Van Luyk Soundtrack to a theatrical performance from mid 1990's.
Costa del Luna
Second album. Lunar psychedelic improvisations. Features Timo van Luijk (zither, flute, keys, tape) and Kirs Vanderstraeten (percussion). "Two more side long pieces from these two. The first side is a scuttling crab moving in and out of focus. It's great, but the second side is utterly fantastic. A lot of percussion and drones, as well as flute sounds, etc, with a touch of faux Orientalism. Enough that bits of the music could be seen as an alternative soundtrack to Apocalypse Now!. (And I mean t…
One
With a press release that simply declares this as "sinister psych, semi-acoustic noise" and a photograph on the back of the LP with the band posturing with instruments in a crumpled shack out in the forest, this record was pretty much made for Aquarius. Onde is a project that has come out of Noise Maker's Fifes, a theatrically Neo-Dada ensemble in the same orbit as Nurse With Wound and HNAS. The best known member of these groups is Timo Von Luijk, who had recorded briefly in Mirror with Andrew C…
Kuvaputki (Cathode Ray Tube)
Region 0 (free)/NTSC format DVD. The first ever Pansonic DVD release by Edward Quist, American digital visual artist. A live performance, close filmed. A redux digital film based around a Pansonic performance from their New York stop of their adventurous 1999 Round The World Tour. The film is a hyper-real abstract reflection of the duo, in the final year of the last century. While the documentary core remains, the footage is twisted and shaped by Quist into a new form in conjunction with Pansoni…
Kluster 1970-1971
Founded in 1969, German ambient space-rock pioneers Kluster were originally a trio featuring Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Dieter Moebius. During their brief lifespan (before Schnitzler left in 1971 and the duo renamed themselves Cluster) they recorded three LPs, all of which are available here. The first two records, Klopfzeichen and Zwei-Osterei, recorded in 1969 and 1970 respectively, were sponsored and released by a church-run record label (Schwann) and as a result of contra…
Organic, Playco 1969
The stable Quartetto that pianist Davide Mosconi, saxophonist Enzo Gardenghi, percussionist Marco Cristofolini, and cellist and violinist Gustavo Bonora brought to life beginning in the late '60s constituted the core of what would, in the early years of the next decade, become the larger improvising ensemble NADMA. The group was also an elegant and accomplished expression of the musical objectives of its members. This music expresses the rich yields that Davide Mosconi cultivated from his explor…
Spacecraft / Unified Patchwork Theory
Originally released in 2001. In the fall of 1966 a group of composers that included Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, Allen Bryant, Jon Phetteplace, Giuseppe Chiari and Richard Teitelbaum organized "Avanguardia Musicale I," a festival of several consecutive nights at the Accademia Filarmonica Romana. The program included tape music, Fluxus performance art pieces, and live electronic works. It was also the beginning of the group MEV.
One year later, the group was in Rome, Italy, but also involved i…
Quantum
First issue of this archival recording, originally recorded in 1973. "This is not a reissue. This is the first Basil Kirchin recording released for thirty years. Format: CD and very limited vinyl (500 numbered copies) release. Although there hasn't been a Basil Kirchin release for over 30 years, his reputation is still intact as being one of the most innovative and influential composers of the late 20th Century. This release is possibly his finest hour. It's certainly his weirdest. His last rele…
Friday
Brand new re-release of this MEV masterpiece. For the realization of "Friday", recorded in London in May 1969, MEV were Frederic Rzewski (piano, electronics, etc.), Alvin Curran (flugelhorn, etc.), Richard Teitelbaum (moog synthesizer), Franco Cataldi (trombone, etc.), Gunther Carius (saxophone, etc.). The main theme around this MEV piece is communication. Communication by means of music can be a very efficient means of reaching quick agreement among large numbers of people, because when you cal…
Morning of My Life
This is the third and final album in the A Taste of Ra trilogy. Nicolai Dunger, and the cloak of mystery behind the Taste of Ra project has captivated many with its various incarnations of free-folk meanderings, Tim Buckley jazz-howl and Swedish pastoral indie-hum. Dunger describes Morning of My Life as follows: "When we moved to the tent and the light was golden and we were young, and the magazine was all there was to bring, and you woke in the night when the birds were singing just for you and…
Naima
This is the third full-length release for Sweden's Hans Appelqvist, after two previous release on the Komplott label. Naima is an entity who in different ways is present to the persons on the album. Sometimes she interferes with their lives and speaks directly to them, sometimes her presence is only communicated through her musical theme, "Naimamelodin" (Naima's melody). Somewhat pretentiously expressed, the album is an answer to a longing for more fixed references. In 2004, Hans Appelqvist rele…
Throats
David Watson (bagpipe) w/ Shelley Hirsch (vocals), Makigami Koichi (vocals & jaw harp). "The writhing and resolving glissandos, so familiar to East Village ears by now, were still edgy enough to send a few Lincoln Center new-music wimps dashing for the exits. It's my feeling that the bagpipe is an inherently avant garde, push-the-envelope type of instrument anyway." --Kyle Gann; "From 1981-86, Watson was active in the New Zealand music and art scene, as a member of Primitive Arts Group, appearin…
Door Open at 8 A.M.
Introducing Masami Akita's homage to free-jazz. Door Open at 8am is one of the most adventurous outings made by Merzbow. Recorded during the same era as Aqua Necromancer, this new recording also incorporates the use of sampled sounds. However, this time Akita is paying homage to his love of free jazz, free-jazz drummers to be precise. It includes tracks such as Tony Williams 'Deathspace', 'Lyons Wake', 'Metro and Bus' and an unbelievable cover of John Coltrane's 'The Africa Brass Session, Vol 2'…