High Fidelity
Housed in a gatefold sleeve with a 36-page catalogue. The first LP is John Cage Speaks MUREAU by John Cage, its title assembled from the first syllable of the word "music" and the author's name "Thoreau." Malte Hubrig writes "The performance of Mureau -- its letters, syllables and words read by John Cage in a uniform intonation of the voice -- frees language of its meaning and opens it to sound." The second LP is Terry Fox's Culvert, a performance that took place at the University of Montana in …
broken music
When Broken Music was first released in 1979 on the microscopic label Multhipla, it went by largely unnoticed. This brand new CD reissue forced a reappraisal of Milan Knizak's pioneering work, especially in the wake of his followers Christian Marclay and Martin Tétreault. The five pieces presented here all consist of Knizak's modified LPs being played (on one or two turntables it seems). He cut them up and glued unrelated pieces together, pasted pieces of paper on them, scratched them, painted t…
The Complete Recordings
From the Joyce archives with the exclusive permission of the Joyce foundation, the only two recordings of the author, reading from "Ulysses" in Paris during the twenties and from "Finnegans Wake" in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Das 6-Tage-Spiel Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters
long out of print, this is the limited to 500 copies deluxe vinyl LP + CD rom documenting the 3rd day, 5th of August 1998 Aktion at Nitsch castle. Packaged in heavy laserdisc gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves, heavy vinyl release...At its most basic, the entire work is composed of a steady bed of shrieking wind instruments, on top of which various brass players intervene in short, often single-note bursts. The music is propelled by a drumming whose style is both drunken and militant.. t…
Das 6-Tage-Spiel Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters: 5-Tag
long deleted, last copy of this outstanding box: Hermann Nitsch is perhaps the best known of the notorious Vienna Actionists. His carefully choreographed performance art frequently involves cacophonous noise, buckets of blood and animal dismemberment, turning gory excess into ritualistic spectacle. Nitsch's undoubted Gesamtkunstwerk is his Des Orgien Mysterien Theaters, a six-day 'play' that was first performed in its entirety in 1998 at the artist's Prinzendorf Castle, in his native Austria.The…
Sound Characters 2 (Making Sonic Spaces)
One of contemporary music's greatest and most elusive mavericks returns to Tzadik with yet another CD of ear-bending electronic sounds. A student of Stockhausen and close collaborator of John Cage and David Behrman, Maryanne Amacher has been creating acoustic art, electronic soundscapes and site-specific installation work since 1967. A new CD of Amacher compositions is a true cause for celebration and Teo! is one of her greatest works. The winner of Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Musics cat…
KO/USK
84 page Hardcover book with embossed cloth cover & spine, also includes 12 page cd-booklet. Recorded & mixed between 1988 and 1995. Sound sources are stones collected all over the world. Beautiful artist book by Giancarlo Toniutti in collaboration with Siegmar Fricke, that comes with a nice CD (with an extra booklet) "speaking of "KO/USK," there has been a double trajectory in composing/recording it. On one side, following a decision implying the use of such sound sources (stones), a decision li…
Alla ricerca del silenzio perduto - Il treno di John Cage
Included in 160-page, hardcover book with bilingual (Italian/English) 'Any and all sounds are music : the sounds that surround us, whether we are in a concert hall or not...' 'We can begin from this quote by John Cage to unearth the traces of one of the most emblematic happenings of our time. In June 1978 Cage's Train marked a watershed in musical culture. It drew a line which parted those who think of music as an artistic expression based on a tonal system (or beyond that, on any system at all)…
Orchesterproben Ludwig Van Beethoven 6. Sinfonie
This is a blast! Another of Edition RZ’s great early issues comes up again, presenting pioneering early 20th century conductor and modernist champion Herman Scherchen leading rehearsals for performances of Beethoven’s 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th symphonies in Lugano, Switzerland, 1965.As fate would have it, these recordings of Scherchen sniping orders at the RTSI Orchestra (Radiotelevisione della Svizzera Italiana) during rehearsals were spontaneously recorded by sound engineer Dr. Ermanno B…
on and on
Despite his long career in sound art, the name John Hudak doesn't appear that often in Vital Weekly, perhaps mainly because releases these days are a bit sparse. Here on 'On And On' we hear him play guitar. Inspired by the black-capped chickadee, which is a bird in case you wonder, which sang four notes, A to G, G to F, and the next day it only sang A and G which inspired Hudak to strum his guitar for a long time and then transferring it to midi information, in which the computer simplified the …
Saskatchewan sound installations
Gordon Monahan conjures up the prairies of Saskatchewan with an impressive series of varied tracks utilising his fascinating installations. The piercing cry of the 'Theremin Pendulum' begins an auditory odyssey that takes us across a soundscape both harsh and delicate. A sense of openness infects these pieces, as Monahan shows us once again that he is a master of spacing and pacing. This cd includes a Quicktime video of Monahan's Aeolian String Installation at the Claybank Brick Factory, and a 1…
Off the wall
More Yoshi Wada from EM Records! The long-awaited reissue of Wada's 1985 LP Off The Wall, recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP-subsidiary SAJ label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ("massive," as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), Off The Wall features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri. The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by …
The night walker
A 7 inches album with the two songs that were composed in & for the video work The Night Walker (2008). Here the songs are recorded in studio after the video. 500 copies limited edition signed & numbered. Recorded and performed by Smoke Machine, London 2008THE NIGHT WALKER is a double channel video installation. The Night Walker (whose title is inspired by William Castle's horror film) takes its starting point with the story of a man terrified by everything, that as an anaesthetic for his suffer…
How to Make a Happening
Historic release. Originally released as an LP in 1966 by Mass Art, this is Allen Kaprow, father of The Happening explaining how to do it, and what is - and is not - a Happening.Simple in construction, yet profound in context, How to Make a Happening is Allan Kaprow delivering 11 rules on how, and how not, to make a Happening, an movement begun by Kaprow in the late fifties that is known for its unpredictability, open scores, and constantly-evolving form. On the first track, Kaprow speaks plainl…
Goodbye 20th Century
Goodbye 20th Century is a double album of covers of Avant-garde recordings by Sonic Youth and collaborators. SYR4 features works by avant-garde classical composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Christian Wolff played by Sonic Youth along with several collaborators from the modern avant-garde music scene, such as Christian Marclay, William Winant, Wharton Tiers, Takehisa Kosugi and others. The album received mixed reviews, but most critics praised the group's efforts at popularizi…
Air Pressure Fluctuations
Here is a CD containing a recording of air pressure fluctuations. When played on ordinary audio equipment, the recorded air pressure fluctuations (technically named infrasound) are reproduced at 360 times the original speed, and thus can be perceived by our ears as sounds.Here is a CD containing a recording of air pressure fluctuations. When played on ordinary audio equipment, the recorded air pressure fluctuations (technically named infrasound) are reproduced at 360 times the original speed, an…
Il Giardino Delle Delizie
an awesome 'object' and musically great artists record by Wolf Vostell who was, in the early 1960s, co-founder of the Fluxus movement and produced intermedia actions and installations, then films and extension of the Dé-collage actions into the electronic sphere. Since the early 1960s, Vostell uses a variety of media and materials in his happenings, actions, and installations without being a media artist in the strict sense. This double album comes with a cover made of a standard record mailer, …
Airwaves
An essential double LP anthology of artists' aural work & music in fold-out cover with extensive liner-notes. You can have a look at UBU for an estensive review with audio excerpt. Very rare, still sealed copy
10+2: 12 American Text Sound Pieces
AtRare original copy: a the time of its release in early 1975, unpitched speech was not taken for granted as musical material by composers, nor was there a widespread movement of sound poetry in the U.S. This now-legendary anthology, therefore, was a novelty and for some an inspiring revelation. Long prized by collectors (it has been out-of-print since 1984), this album of sound art made of spoken words inspired a burst of related activity during the decade of its circulation. A younger generat…
The Last LP
this is the rare original The Last LP album issued on Art Metropole, which purported to be a documentary disc of the dying gasps of ethnic musical cultures from around the globe including Tibet, Syria, India, China Brazil, Finland and elsewhere, with more thousands of words of pseudo-scholarly supplimentary notes, but was, in fact, a series of multi-tracked recordings of Snow himself, who gave the joke away only in a single column of text in the disc's gatefold jacket, printed backwards and read…