★Another Timbre
Vessels
An extraordinary 76-minute work for solo piano, played by Philip Thomas, and composed by Bryn Harrison, a Huddersfield-based composer who is quietly building something of a cult reputation for his distinctively minimal and repetition-based music. Vessels works with threads of tones which are repeated with subtle variation until they attain a mysterious, labyrinthine quality. 'I tried to get across this sense of the music being perpetually regenerative, of constantly opening up but then finding o…
Logical harmonies
Seven recent pieces by the UK-based composer Richard Glover, whose music is a process music based on the exposition of simple harmonic patterns. 'I enjoy the nuanced transformation attainable through dealing with harmony: alterations from within the sound which cannot be identified as emanating from one particular element, or line, but gradually alter the nature of the overall sonority each time. The focus upon the global, the whole, allows deeper inspection of everything else.' Performers inclu…
Radi d'or
A composed piece for small ensemble of instruments and live electronics. ÔRadi d'Or' uses shifting sinetones alongside sustained sounds from the acoustic instruments to create a shimmering music that unfolds slowly with gracefully. Composed in 2010, this recording is of the first public performance by the Ferran Fages Ensemble, which took place in Barcelona in February 2011: Olga Abalos (flute and alto saxophone), Lali Barrière (sinetones), Tom Chant (soprano and tenor saxophones), Ferran Fages …
Variable formations
Johnny Chang (viola), Angharad Davies (violin), Jamie Drouin (electronics), Phil Durrant (electronics), Lee Patterson (amplified objects), John Tilbury (piano).In February 2013 the Berlin-based musician Johnny Chang, who is a member of the Wandelweiser collective, visited London as part of a short tour along with his some-time playing partner Jamie Drouin, the Canadian musician and artist who had recently moved to Berlin. The duo constructed an installation at the Soundfjord gallery in Tottenham…
Rows
The return of the Swedish-based ensemble Skogen, after the success of their previous CD 'Ist gefallen in den Schnee'. This time the ensemble interpret a piece by Anders Dahl to produce what is, in the composer's words, 'the simplest twelve tone music possible'. With Magnus Granberg, Angharad Davies, Toshimaru Nakamura, Ko Ishikawa, Anna Lindal, Henrik Olsson, Petter wastberg and Erik Carlsson
Variations
First solo work from Christoph Schiller for spinet, amplified objects and piano. Christoph uses a simple but brilliant structure which combines improvised pieces in a unique chain-like pattern of repetition and development
Cantor Quartets
Antoine Beuger composed his ‘Cantor Quartets’ in 2003. There are 15 pages in the score, four of which are presented on this double CD. Each page contains four lines with seven notes each, all of which should be played gently and for a long or very long duration. Instrumentation is unspecified, and the notes can be played in any octave. Formally the piece is constructed a bit like a round such as ‘Row, row, row your boat’, in that Player A plays the first line as a solo, then when he/she moves o…
Wandelweiser und so weiter
Available again, Wandelweiser und so weiter' is a 6-CD box set with 8 hours of music by a wide range of composers in or around the Wandelweiser collective. The box brings together previously unissued works by the most well-known composers in the Wandelweiser collective (Michael Pisaro, Antoine Beuger, Radu Malfatti and Manfred Werder), pieces by other Wandelweiser composers (Johnny Chang, Sam Sfirri, Eva-Maria Houben, Stefan Thut, Taylan Susam), as well as music by other composers whose wo…
Cartridge Music
Cartridge Music was composed in 1960 and is one of Cage’s earliest attempts to produce live electronic music. Sounds are produced using cartridges from record players. Performers insert different objects into the opening of a cartridge, and manipulate them in a variety of ways (scraping, touching, striking etc) so that the sound of the object is picked up by the cartridge and then fed to an amplifier and speaker. The choice of objects and means of manipulation are left entir…
Inframince / Immensity
Michael Thieke (clarinet) and Olivier Toulemonde (acoustic objects) : 'Inframince'. Lucio Capece (bass clarinet & preparations) & Jamie Drouin (analogue synthesizer & radio) : 'Immensity'. The Inframince / Immensity split CD is the first in a series of discs exploring the work of musicians based in Berlin, a city which has been one of the most vibrant centres for improvised and contemporary music since the 1960's. The alternative music scene there is now huge, and musicians from all aroun…
Temperament as Waveform
Long-awaited duo, assembled over a period of two years as a result of file exchanges between Manchester UK and Austin Texas between 2010 an 2012. Four tracks of powerful electro-acoustic composition from two like-minded musicians who have never met in person. 'This fascinating album manifests both the frustration and invention that can emerge from inter-continental collaboration. It is an album of sacrifice one that subsumes existent tendencies into the creation of a whole beyond individual ide…
Oltreorme
Four beautiful pieces for acoustic objects, performed, recorded and assembled by an Italian composer whose reputation has soared in recent years after previous CD releases on Col Legno, Neos and Another Timbre . Oltreorme is Coluccion's second work for acoustic objects (no musical instruments, electronic devices or post-production treatments) and suggests a new direction in Coluccino's music, engaging with notions of silence more closely and explicitly than in his previous compositions. M…
Public private
Atolón : Ruth Barberán, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Ferran Fages. Chip shop music : Erik Carlsson, Martin Küchen, David Lacey, Paul Vogel. Recorded by Simon Reynell, February 2012. Mixed and mastered by Ferran Fages. A collaboration between two established and highly-regarded improvising ensembles, Atolon from Barcelona and the Irish-Swedish group Chip Shop Music. The disc consists of the whole of a wonderful concert performance from February 2012 in which the two groups attempted to play tog…
Kolk
Christoph Schiller (spinet & preparations), Birgit Ulher (trumpet, speaker, radio & objects). Five tight, close, and immaculate improvisations from the leading exponents - abusers of improvised trumpet and spinet. Recorded in Hamburg in October 2010, and sounding like nothing else.
Three Bodies (Moving)
Three bodies (moving)' by Catherine Lamb. A beautiful, hypnotic and flowing composition for violin, cello and bass clarinet by the young American composer, who was a pupil of both Michael Pisaro and James Tenney, but has already developed her own unique compositional voice. Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick, cello, Eric km Clark, violin, Phil O'Connor, bass clarinet.
Outwash
Angharad Davies (violin), Tisha Mukarji (inside piano) & Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (zither). Three great trio improvisations recorded in December 2011 at a church in the City of London. Beautiful, spacious, yet at times tense music.
Unbalanced In (Unbalanced Out)
Unbalanced Out (Unbalanced In)'. A powerful, challenging 50-minute collaborative piece constructed over a year through file-sharing by a sextet of leading musicians across the world, with Barry Chabala (USA, guitar), Bonnie Jones (USA/Korea, electronics), Louisa Martin (UK, laptop), Tisha Mukarji (Germany, piano), Toshi Nakamura (Japan, no-input mixing board) and Gabriel Paiuk (Argentina, piano)
Chantier 1
An extraordinary document of an experiment in which three improvisers - Pascal Battus (rotating surfaces and found objects), Bertrand Gauguet (saxophones) and Eric La Casa (microphones) - played at a working building site in Paris, adapting their playing to integrate the sounds and gestures of the workers at the site.
Ist Gefallen In Den Schnee
Magnus Granberg, piano. Angharad Davies, violin. Leo Svensson Sander, cello. Erik Carlsson, percussion. John Eriksson, vibraphone & crotales. Petter Wstberg, electronics. Henrik Olsson, bowls and glasses. Anna Lindal, violin. Toshimaru Nakamura, no input mixing board.
“Ist gefallen in den Schnee is a single, hour long composition scored by Magnus Granberg and performed by the group Skogen, which on this occasion consisted of nine musicians, seven of them Swedish and two of them (Toshi…
Thread
'We all met in Berlin at different times. Anthea and I had been playing as a duo since about 2006. Anthea also developed a performance/installation project with Annette I think around 2008. About a year later, I organised a house concert and we decided to play as a trio, which seemed very organic and easy immediately. We recorded parts of the album shortly after that. [] There was not much editing involved in either of the recordings, just minor changes. As for the general style - we act…