Will Make You Ill
Alga Marghen presents Modern Shit, a very singular chapter in the Amos/It's War Boys / Milk From Cheltenham / Homosexuals history. Directly taken from the original It's War Boys catalog, here is one of the most obscure sonic works of the early 1980s, Modern Shit! First "issued" on tape, this work circulated only privately among the close friends of the label and was never officially distributed. Actually, it represents one of the most intense and experimental outputs of this creative London…
The Viking of 6th Avenue - The Authorized Biography
Here is one of the most improbable lives of the 20th century: a blind and homeless man who became a famous eccentric in New York, and who rose to prominence as an internationally respected music presence. Born Louis Thomas Hardin in 1916, Moondog first made an impression in the late ’40s when his music was played by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. His unique, melodic compositions were released on the Prestige jazz label. In the late ’60s the Viking-garbed Moondog was a pop music sens…
Sickness Report
Atrax Morgue was the nom de plume of Italian noisy type Marco Corbelli. This album from '96 is a blood and thunder, bass heavy assault on the senses. Cold and surgical powerelectronics inspired by sickness, diseases and forensic pathology.
Necessary Discomforts
Premature Ejaculation is Williams' long-running collaboration with performance artist Chuck Collision. (The two worked as a street performance team called the Happiest Place on Earth). Necessary Discomforts, the duo's first widely available release, consists of six long, dreary, monotonous instrumentals: hell's version of Muzak? With typical calculated-to-offend taste, the cover photo shows an angel-faced young boy in a suggestive, full- frontal nude pose.
Advanced Alchemy of Music
Peter Frohmader released so many albums (some are only on cassette) during his long musical career that it's almost impossible to count them up accurately. The 75-minute "Advanced Alchemy of Music" is from 1994. It consists of six long tracks, and the CD booklet features an amazing surrealistic artwork done by Peter himself.
Stoneface
Nigel Ayers’ most accessible emission? The glut of his ‘band’s prolific history has generally been a full-scale assault upon the senses, via either dingy slabs of noise or near-pretty industrial musique concrete. Stoneface operates on many levels, a set of gruelling, scraping, yet strangely attractive organic sounds that reveal numerously coloured layers with successive listens. Recorded in 1988, these nineteen sonic morsels play with near-baroque tendencies, devolved factory rhythms, spiritual …
Zombie Bloodbath on the Isle of Dogs
The Recedents (Lol Coxhill, Roger Turner, Mike Cooper) demonstrate that you can be avant-garde and have fun at the same time. This is the soundtrack for a "yet-to-be-made" film about a conflict between zombies and a new housing tract. The plot is summarized in the liner notes. Each piece makes reference to this film in some way. The music ranges from the reggae-like title track, to avant rock, to rockabilly, to electrified free-form improvisations. Do not buy if you think humour doesn't belon…
Das Wunden
Not only a collaborator with various producers on a Wales/Bavaria/Catalonia axis, but also member of Hardcore band Mass, Robert Merdzo is also seem to be a bit of a musical magpie, dipping into various genres for source material, ideas and a few lifted manouvres.
Uno Es El Cubo
With this work Eduardo Polonio has shown us that the electroacoustic music proves to be an excellent base in an opera performance. And more than that: in this way, the possibilities which remain open are relevant.
Electric Chair And Table
mimeo: Keith Rowe, Phil Durrant, Kaffe Matthews, Jérôme Noetinger, Gert-Jan Prins, Cor Fuhler, Thomas Lehn, Marcus Schmickler, Markus Wettstein, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg and Rafael Toral. The Music In Movement Electronic Orchestra (mimeo) presents a double CD with recordings made at the Cologne "Jack Pohl presents..." festival in December 1998. Marcus Schmickler and Rafael Toral each edited one CD from the seven hours of live material. After the documentation CD queue (GROB 005, now avai…
Ring Ring 1997
A compilation of the best moments of the Ring Ring 1997 festival which took place in Belgrad in May 1997. Included is a previously unreleased track by Justine.
Lingua II: Maledetto / Antiphony VIII
The work and thought of the American composer Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993) exhibited many striking changes during his lifetime. In fact, while the world of commercial endeavor still insists that artists develop a recognizable personal "style," Gaburo's life-work can be seen as one of continual change and exploration, rather than one of codification and promotion. Some of these changes are beautifully illustrated by the two works on this CD, Maledetto, for seven speaking voices, from 1967-68, and A…
Texture Time
Texture Time” is the third album by Dense Band and quite possibly the best. It signals a further development of Moss' use of live sampling and electronics to magnify the impact of that already dramatic vocal delivery, showcasing Moss' astonishing leaps from register to register and his ability to shape time like an origami master folds paper. No other improvising vocalist that I know of has created such an intense, idiosyncratic vocabulary. Texture Time is indispensable.
World of Strings
Stephan Wittwer Intakt solo album, World of Strings has him all over the guitar. Live recordings.
Five Voices
International consortium of freaky vocal talent culled together here represent some of the finest exponents of extemporaneous jibber jabber extant. From the U.S., we have the zany N.Y. avant chanteuse Shelley Hirsch and her equally flipped out N.Y. compatriot in extended vocal technique David Moss as well as the L.A.-based Anna Homler, whose approach emerges from her personal zone of invented language generation as heard on her gorgeous Do Ya Sa Di Do CD, which I posted a while back. To that, ad…
Uluru
Solo work by one great saxophone player, founder of the Butch Morris' X-Communication and of the Cecil Taylor's European Big Band.
Azzazin
Shorter than many of Muslimgauze's 1990s albums - 13 untitled songs over 45 minutes - Azzazin, originally released as part of the limited-edition subscription series, feels more like a collection of random experiments than a cohesive piece of work per se. If not something that would intrigue the casual listener, the hard-core fan will likely find something of interest on the various tracks here. Starting with an extremely minimal opening number - it's no surprise Finnish experimental duo Pan Son…
Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy / Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorr
Much of what was unique about the original Pink Floyd's sound - the use of echo and piercing organ for musical effect - is present here, Floyd fans take note. Wonder if Syd Barrett had been exposed to Sun Ra's music. "Cosmic Tones" sounds like a 20th Century space-inflected chamber music quite unlike jazz, though it contains elements of it. The music attempts to paint pictures in an abstract fashion unencumbered by notions of traditional musical form. Instruments enter, contribute to the picture…
Hu-du-men: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack for a movie by Shu Kei. Chino Shuichi: piano, organ, synthesizer; Uchihashi Kazuhisa: guitar, bass, banjo; Matsumoto Osamu (5): trombone; Otsubo Hirohiko (2,10,16,17): contrabass; Nasuno Mitsuru (5): bass; Yoshigaki Yasuhiro: drums, latin percussions; Aya (2,16,17): vocal; Otomo Yoshihide (1): sampler.
Electro-Acoustic Solo Works 1984-95
Electro-Acoustic Solo Works (1984-95) collected assorted compositions of musique concrete and interactive computer music (Chatterlings of april 1995 for sampler and drums, and an excerpt from Aivilik Rays of may 1990, originally more than one hour long).