★Another Timbre
Pinna
Our first release 'The Organ of Corti' was a digital studio recording. We spent a few days at Kleylehof, Klaus's atelier - farmhouse on the border between Austria and Hungary, playing and recording every night. The sound is very clean, because everything is digitally generated and recorded. 'Pinna' was a recording of a concert that we played in a small church in Vienna. It is a microphone recording of a 'real' sonic space : we used 5 or 6 speakers distributed in the space, e.g. one speak…
Atto
Superb brand new release by Osvaldo Coluccino, enetirely focused on Acoustics objects. 'On a practical level : I struck or rubbed the objects, I breathed onto them etc. I never left them in peace in their (false) status of amorphous objects, or with their forced function, or with a univocal voice. I provoked them so that the 'new side', springs out from them and resounds. It doesn't matter what category of object it is; what matters is the aesthetic outcome of its 'singing'. Ethic-Aestheti…
Droplets
Dominic Lash, double bass. Patrick Farmer, percussion. Sarah Hughes, zither & piano. A 20-minute improvisation plus realisations of scores by the Wandelweiser composers Eva-Maria Houben & Taylan Susam, including an extraordinary outdoor performance of Houben's Nachtstück recorded in a wood in Derbyshire during a rainstorm. 'It's exciting to play Wandelweiser music because of its difference from improvisation, the satisfaction of being given specific tasks to carry out and attempting to do so to …
Caisson
Second outing for this powerful Anglo-Czech electronics-led trio (Jez Riley French, field recordings, zither, contact mics, electronics. Daniel Jones, turntable & electronics. Ivan Palack , amplified knitting machine). Recorded live in Hull, November 2010. 'With the Caisson CD, I think we all feel that this meeting between intuitive composition, sound & improvisation has a language of its own. The aspect of listening is constantly shifting in a forward motion. Moments are at the core of wh…
Grape Skin
The trio of Michel Doneda, Christoph Schiller and Jonas Kocher performing music of delicate tension and great assurance recorded in the spectacular church at Ligerz, Switzerland. "Music of delicate tension and great assurance, recorded in 2010 in the spectacular church at Ligerz, overlooking Lake Biel in Switzerland. "The generous acoustic of the church influenced our playing. We had to deal with space and silence....I think you can hear that in our music" Jonas Kocher
Choices
The first meeting on disc of two of the finest and most innovative electroacoustic instrumentalists in Germany, performing on reeds, trumpets, radio, speakers, and preparations. Three pieces from 2010, the first meeting on disc of two of thefinest and most innovative instrumentalists in Germany.
Horsky Park
Two instruments with totally different histories come together and look for a connection across two great sets from 2006 & 2010. "What counts is who you are performing with....in the end that is more important than the actual instrument"-Thomas Lehn
Dying sun
The third album by the established and highly respected Greek/Swedish/Norwegian trio Looper: Nikos Veliotis (cello), Martin Küchen (saxophone) and Ingar Zach (percussion). Recorded at GMEA auditorium in Albi, France, by Benjamin Maumus, January 2010. Music by Looper. Edited, mixed by Nikos Veliotis. Mastered by Coti K. Co-release Cathnor recordings.
Music For Shakuhachi
nprecedented music for Shakuhachi by Frank Denyer (releases on Tzadik, Mode) with Yoshikazu Iwamoto on shakuhachi and Paul Hiley joining Denyer on percussion.
Fields Have Ears
Fields have ears 1' (2008) - for piano & tape. 'Fade' - for piano (2000). 'Fields have ears 4' - realisation for 14 players (2009). Philip Thomas: piano + members of the edges ensemble. 3 varied works by the US-based composer Michael Pisaro. Fields Have Ears 1 interweaves a surprisingly lyrical piano part with layered field recordings and sine tones. Fade is a beautifully austere minimalist piece for solo piano, expertly played by Philip Thomas. Fields Have Ears 4 is a prose score, realis…
Wunderkammern
David Toop laptop, steel guitar, flutes, percussive devices. Rhodri Davies harp, ebows, electronics, preparations. Lee Patterson amplified devices, field recordings. Recorded by Dave Hunt at Dave Hunt Studio, London, 24 July 2006. Magnificent, tight studio recordings from 2006 by a trio of UK improvisers of different generations, coming together to create a rich and strange soundworld of whispered, scraped and quietly haunting reverberations.
Four4
Four4 for four percussionists (1991). By Simon Allen, Chris Burn, Lee Patterson, Mark Wastell. A unique realisation of one of Cage's late 'number pieces' by an ensemble of musicians better known for their work as improvisers. The 72-minute piece uses a system of flexible time brackets which were determined randomly according to a computer programme. Each musician chooses a number of sounds and assigns each of them them a number. Every time that number occurs above one of the time brackets, they …
Pie and Mash
Mathias Forge, trombone. Olivier Toulemonde, acoustic objects. 'Two more relative unknowns deserving of greater attention: Mathias Forge is a young but virtuosic French-based trombonist, and Olivier Toulemonde is a Brussels-based electroacoustic composer-turned improviser who has now developed an extraordinary instrumental set-up which has moved on from electronics altogether. Their duo - recorded with and without audience during a tour of the UK in early 2010 - immediately creates a uniqu…
Giles U.
The tuba's bass sounds are in complete contrast to the higher pitches of the spinet, bringing to mind cartoon images of an elephant and a mouse. But none of that concerned Hübsch and Schiller when they first played together in 2008-09; they felt a strong connection in their playing - it remains obvious here. Both have modified their instruments, in the process getting rid of the seeming disparity. Schiller's spinet has become a semi-percussive instrument, amply illustrated by this CD's opening s…
AD
Angharad Davies, violin. Axel Dörner, trumpet. 'Neither player should need much introduction, as both are widely acknowledged as leading improvisers on their respective instruments. These domestic recordings mark their first meeting as a duo, and - in the words of another early reviewer, David Grundy - create 'the atmosphere of surprise - of magic - that great improvisation is still so uniquely capable of providing'.'
Nella Basilica
Roberto Fabbriciani, bass flutes. Robin Hayward, microtonal tuba. 'This is the first CD of improvised music featuring Roberto Fabbriciani, one of the giants of contemporary music. Fabbriciani was the instrumentalist with whom Luigi Nono worked most closely in the last two decades of his life, playing in the premieres of virtually all of the composer's late works. On nella basilica Fabbriciani improvises with Robin Hayward, the phenomenal Berlin-based tuba player with whom he has worked on …
Crepuscular Rays
“The young Norwegian guitarist Håvard Volden uses the table-top approach, but his guitar is an acoustic 12-string that he rescued from a skip, so many of the sounds he works with have clear acoustic origins and contrast interestingly with the no-holds-barred electronics of Toshi Nakamura's famous no-input mixing board. The disc contains two powerful extended improvisations that were recorded at concerts in November 2008 during the duo's tour of Norway.” label info
Corgroc
'Ferran Fages: Acoustic guitar. Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga: zither. ap'strophe is the duo of Ferran Fages and Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga. They began working together in 2006, when Ferran Fages recorded 'Cançons per a un lent retard', where Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga collaborated in the track Paraula clau, which they composed and interpreted together. After recording the album they realized the impossibility of re-interpreting this piece, which is based on the detuning(s) of the guitar, but…
Lost Daylight
'The compositions on Lost Daylight' by John CAGE and the almost-forgotten American Fluxus composer Terry JENNINGS date from between 1958 and 1966. Yet in the hands of John Tilbury and Sebastian Lexer they sound astonishingly modern. JENNINGS' solo pieces couldn't be more conventional in using only pure keyboard notes, but they could hardly be more radical in the way in which the notes are reduced, isolated and surrounded with silences. As Michael Pisaro's sleevenotes say, 'It is music of simplic…
Turned Moment, Weighting
'Stephen CORNFORD is better known for his work in sound sculptures and installations than as an improvising musician. But on ÔTurned Moment, weighting' (at-b07) he uses the piano as a source for feedback patterns, which he blends with the gentle Feldmanesque playing of pianist Samuel RODGERS to produce three extended improvisations of astonishingly delicacy. Samuel RODGERS has said that 'though being aware of and struggling with the tradition and limitations of the instrument, I have found the…