The World's Worst - A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia
"Butchering the classics through avant-garde amateurism: the Portsmouth Sinfonia embodied the joyous collectivism of 1970s British counterculture. In 1970, galvanized in part by the musical experiments of avant-garde composers Gavin Bryars, John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, students at Portsmouth College of Art in England formed their own symphony orchestra. Christened the Portsmouth Sinfonia, its primary requirement for membership was that all players, regardless of skill, experience or musicians…
Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)
"Over 16 years, beginning in 1965, John Cage compiled anecdotes, observations and koanlike tales, originally typing everything on an IBM Selectric and using chance methods to determine the formatting of texts that twist down each page. The Siglio edition preserves the graphic effects, but, more important, it gives a sense of the company he kept during these years—Marcel Duchamp, R. Buckminster Fuller, D.T. Suzuki—and of his passionate feeling about a world locked in a state of perpetual warfare.…
Intermedia, Fluxus and the Something Else Press
"There are few art-world figures as influential—and as little known—as Dick Higgins (1938-1998), co-founder of Fluxus, “polyartist,” poet, scholar, theorist, composer, performer and, not least, the publisher of the Something Else Press. In 1965 he restored the term “intermedia” to the English language, giving it new dimension to recognize the dissolution of boundaries, the expansion of liminal spaces between traditional modes of art making, and the open field for new forms that cannot be compart…
Changes, Notes on Choreography
"On the occasion of the Merce Cunningham Centennial, we are pleased to offer this special, limited edition reprint of Cunningham’s own unique presentation of his choreographic ideas Changes: Notes on Choreography.Originally published in 1968 by Dick Higgins’ iconoclastic Something Else Press, the book can be viewed as a 170-page print version of an art performance piece. Just as Cunningham spent most of his career approaching choreography and movement in time and space from an original point of …
Fusées
“Fusées” isn’t the first collaboration between Thomas Bonvalet and Jean-Luc Guionnet, their first joint effort “Loges de Souffle” appearing on Be Coq last year. The same label also put out a vinyl edition of “Fusées”, but now Sarah Hennies’ label Weighter Recordings has thankfully stepped in with a CD and download release for the rest of us. Although the two artists are primarily known for their attachments to a particular instrument (guitar for Bonvalet, saxaphone for Guionnet), these instrume…
Field Recordings of Mythical Beasts
Big Tip! Exploring the intersection of sound libraries and ethnographc recordings, ‘Field Recordings of Mythical Beasts’ is a series of fake field recordings of mythical creatures. The recordings were created using traditional foley techniques originally developed for films. Field Recordings of Mythical Beasts represent explorations of a long forgotten expedition group on its journey to remote regions of the world. The Phoenix, Hydra, Griffin, and Holga have all been documented in their 'natural…
Drawing - Embergher mandolin mod. 5bis
Full size drawing of a mandolin made by Luigi Embergher - mod. 5bis - 1921 (2 sheets, 70x100 cm). It is a Drawing/Poster of a Luigi Embergher 5bis mandolin dated 1921. It's a very carefully made mapping with detailed informations on the instrument.Apart from the technical drawing giving all principal measurements, there are indications of thickness, sections of shell (for each centimeter), development of the end clasp, IR photo and digital elaboration of the images with enlargements of details, …
Cobbled
**Limited edition of 50 copies. Double cassette housed in a handmade silk-screened wooden box. Comes with a booklet with information and photographs, a bag with 4 small stones and a hand numbered print.** Jeph Jerman started recording and performing in 1986 under the moniker Hands To. Most of his early soundwork was sampler and tape loop based, though slowly evolved from electro-acoustic pieces to environmental recordings with very little to no manipulation or electronic processing using only na…
Stone Memorial
**Limited edition of 50 copies. Comes in a silkscreened box with a booklet and a plastic bag containing 3 pieces of broken glass, a piece of wire and a signed card.** Born in Montréal, Marie Goyette studied the piano in Montréal and London. After residing in Europe, she moved to Berlin in 1989. Inspired by the city's lively and unorthodox art scene, she started a second career and expanded her activities from traditional concerts to the fields of performance and radio art. In the early '90s Jan …
Solos
Deluxe boxed LP set of Graham Lambkin's first four solo records, including an expansive book featuring essays and unseen photos. LPs included are: "Poem (For Voice & Tape)", "Salmon Run", "Softly Softly Copy Copy" and "Amateur Doubles".
Vertice
Edition of 300 copies. Comes in a bespoke dye-cut sleeve, cover art by Monika Baer. The LP was mastered by Taylor Deupree and includes an essay by François J. Bonnet aka Kassel Jaeger, director of the GRM. New York’s Fridman gallery re-activates its record imprint with this absorbing collaboration between Ben Vida (fresh from his stunning 4 hour 'Reducing The Tempo To Zero’ opus for Shelter Press), and noted composer for dance, Marina Rosenfeld - whose collaborative album with Warrior Queen and …
Resonances / Volume 2
The second edition in Shelter Press and INA GRM’s series of annual publications, this time revolving around the idea of “resonances” and featuring The Caretaker - for the first time recalling selected memories that inspired and informed his now retired/expired protagonist, Tomoko Sauvage’s notes on her Hydrophonic practice, a previously unpublished text by Maryanne Amacher about Tones, David Toop on Resonant Frequencies, plus contributions and articles written by Chris Corsano, Ellen Fullman, C…
Thames
Thames presents diverse sound interactions along the River Thames that surprise with their musicality. As we travel from central London to the river’s furthest estuary, it feels like we’re travelling back in time. We hear the sounds of nature and industry in competition, from the pitched, quasi-musical sound of Tower Bridge lifting up, to the marsh frogs of Allhallows.
Desert Plants
**Essential reading!** Walter Zimmermann interviews Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jim Burton, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, Larry Austin, James Tenney, J. B. Floyd (about Conlon Nancarrow), La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, Charles Morrow, Garrett List, John Mc Guire and Ben Johnston (about Harry Partch).
Elemental Gestures
**Monograph about american Conceptual and Fluxus Artist Terry Fox (1943-2008) curated by Arnold Dreyblatt.** What is the common denominator between such different elements as the purring of cats, fishes, cigarette smoke, flour, water, yeast, and an artist’s own body? The answer is that they are all on Terry Fox’s “list of art ingredients” for his work. Elemental Gestures presents a comprehensive overview of this artist’s oeuvre and it offers fascinating and compelling insights into the multi-fac…
Visual Vinyl
**Hardcover edition. English edition, stunning one** Visual Vinyl Collects some of the most visually stunning and evocative album covers from the 20th Century Features homages to numerous important designers and artists, such as Damien Hirst, Yoko Ono and Raymond Pettibon. Up until the 1940s, records were sold in plain, uniform jackets. In the post-war years, musicians and record companies discovered that graphically designed record covers had the potential to boost sales. Significantly, in the …
Experimental music since 1970
What is experimental music today? This book offers an up to date survey of this field for anyone with an interest, from seasoned practitioners to curious readers. This book takes the stance that experimental music is not a limited historical event, but is a proliferation of approaches to sound that reveals much about present-day experience. An experimental work is not identifiable by its sound alone, but by the nature of the questions it poses and its openness to the sounding event.Experimentati…
Listening to the Wind: Encounters with 21st Century Independent Record Labels
If there’s a cultural artefact capable of withstanding the vagaries and fickleness of the digital age as well as the printed book, it’s the vinyl record... In Listening to the Wind, Ian Preece sets out on an international road trip to capture the essence of life for independent record labels operating in the twenty-first century. Despite it all – from algorithms and streaming to the death of the high street and the gutting of the music press – releasing a record to serve its ‘own beautiful purpo…
After Sound - Toward a Critical Music
After Sound considers contemporary art practices that reconceive music beyond the limitation of sound. This book is called After Sound because music and sound are, in Barrett's account, different entities. While musicology and sound art theory alike typically equate music with pure instrumental sound, or absolute music, Barrett posits music as an expanded field of artistic practice encompassing a range of different media and symbolic relationships. The works discussed in After Sound thus use per…
Sound Art Revisited
The first edition of Sound Art Revisited (published as Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories) served as a groundbreaking work toward defining this emerging field, and this fully updated volume significantly expands the story to include current research since the book's initial release. Viewed through a lens of music and art histories rather than philosophical theory, it covers dozens of artists and works not found in any other book on the subject.Locating sound art's roots across the centu…