The first album under the Mnemonists name, released in 1980 in 500 copies on the Colorado collective's own Dys label: 22 'Fragments' of improvisation between modern classical, noise, industrial and free jazz, by the circle that became Biota. Reissued on CD by Klanggalerie.
Mnemonists, on the first album called Mnemonist Orchestra, is U.S collective of avant-garde musicians from Colorado, led by Mark Derbyshire and William Sharp. Their music is a mixture of modern classical, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avant-garde and free jazz. Their releases were published by their own self-produced label Dys between 1981 and 1986. By 1985 the group had split off into separate groups for visual and audio work. From that time, Mnemonists operated only as a visual arts …
Bourbonese Qualk were an experimental music group from England who where active from 1979 until 2003. The group were always obsessively and uncompromisingly focused on controlling their work – they ran their own record label, recording studio, tour organisation and music venue (the legendary ‘Ambulance Station’) – they refused to integrate into the commercial music racket turning down publishing deals from major labels – stubbornly opting for total independence.
Bourbonese Qualk were also know…
David Janssen is best know for his work as Ted The Loaf in Renaldo & The Loaf. When the band came to a halt in 2006, he concentrated on solo music. The Darkening Scale project was born. It is a purely digital affair created by David in his home studio. Klanggalerie have previously released 5 albums by this project: Sonic Archeology, Hydrogen Kaleidoscope, The Entomology Of Sound, Locum Windsock and the Darkening Scale re-working of Duck Stab by The Residents, Stuck Bad. After a pause of several …
James Jeffrey Plewman, better known by his stage name Nash the Slash, was a Canadian musician. A multi-instrumentalist, he was primarily playing the electric violin and mandolin, as well as the synthesizer, keyboards, glockenspiel, and other instruments. Nash worked as a solo artist beginning in 1975; founding the progressive rock band FM in 1976. Soon after releasing the band's first album, Black Noise, in 1977, he left the group; he resumed his solo career in 1978.
Nash's music covers an ecl…
The Silent Trumpets carries all the hallmarks for which Rapoon is revered: deep, immersive drones, gentle melodic movement, and an understated sense of ritual that slowly unfolds across the listening experience. From the opener “Real Life” to the luminous closer “Stars Over the Northern Skies,” the album moves through shadow and light, tension and release, crafting a world that feels both intimate and vast.
Pieces like the title track “The Silent Trumpets” and “I Love You” blend warmth with a ce…
Together, Samuel Kerridge and Maxim 'Panda' Barron conspire against the living with their electrifying new project, Death Disco. Drawing deeply from the rebellious roots of punk and the DIY ethos, the duo has crafted with their debut album ‘Death Notes’, a sense of urgency and authenticity. Samuel’s fierce vocal work and electronics gives the album an emotional depth that goes beyond its aggressive nature, while Maxim’s pulsating rhythms keeps cutting through the atmosphere with skin-stripping p…
Carl Ludwig Hübsch (voice, tuba) and Ignaz Schick (sampler, turntables) between abstracted song, sound poetry, noise improvisation and radio play, from sessions in Cologne and at Morphine Raum in Berlin.
Sorry For Laughing is a project by Gordon H. Whitlow who is also a member of legendary US avantgarde collective Biota, formerly Mnemonists or Mnemonist Orchestra. Their music is a mixture of modern classical, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avangarde, songwriting and free jazz. In 1986 Gordon H. Whitlow released a cassette under the name Sorry For Laughing: "The compositions stem from my beginning days with the avant-garde recording ensemble Biota, shortly after completion of the Bellowi…
Stephen Thrower is a British musician, composer and author. In 1984 he appeared as a guest on the first Coil album, Scatology, then joined the group until his departure in 1992, contributing to seven Coil albums in total. Between 1999 and 2015 he worked as Cyclobe, a duo formed with his partner Ossian Brown (also a former Coil member). Cyclobe released four albums – Luminous Darkness, The Visitors, Wounded Galaxies Tap At The Window and Sulphur-Tarot-Garden – on their own record label Phantomcod…
Hunting Lodge are an American industrial/experimental band formed by Lon C. Diehl, Richard Skott and Carla Nordstrom (then known as Karl Nordstrom) in Port Huron, Michigan in 1982. Their first live appearance took place in September 1982 at the Harrington Ballroom inside the Harrington Hotel. The event was recorded on a portable cassette player and would become their first release on their own S/M Operations label. Nomad Souls LP was released in the fall of 1984 on S/M Operations in the U.S., an…
Other:M:other is a trio from Austria, consisting of Judith Schwarz (extended drums), Jul Dillier (prepared piano) and Arthur Fussy (modular synthesizer). Judith is a drummer and composer and internationally well known with bands like Chuffdrone, Little Rosies Kindergarten or the duo Hofmaninger/Schwarz. Arthur is a sound designer, composer and engineer. He also works for theatre productions in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Jul describes himself as a sound poet. He works as a solo artist, per…
Severed Heads are an Australian electronic music group founded in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, who were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright had both left the band by mid-1981 with Ellard remaining the sole consistent member for the rest of the band's existence. In 1984 the band released Dead Eyes Opened as a single, which was remixed in 1994 and re-released, reaching No. 16 on the ARIA Singles Chart. Two of their s…
Geins't Naït was founded in Nancy, France, in 1986 by Thierry Merigout and Vincent Hachet, both students at the Architecture School of Nancy. A year later Laurent Petitgrand joined the band. Their sound is often described as an equivalent of bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Coil or Test Dept., but Geins't Naït is not pure classic Industrial. While Geins't Naït offers rough pieces of music as an extension of its punk attitude, Petitgand refines them to create some musicality within the post-ind…
Beyond the Beat is the debut album of Arthur Fussy/Modular Synthesizer and Judith Schwarz/Extended Drums. Both make up 2/3 of the group Other:M:Other whose debut album was released on Klanggalerie, and whose second album will follow here soon. Arthur also works a lot for the theatre, and Judith plays in many bands, amongst others Gina Schwarz's Pannonica, Mel*E, PRCDR with Manu Mayr (another Klanggalerie release), ChuffDrone (new album coming on Klang in autumn) and Little Rosies Kindergarten.
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After the success of Tutto Bene, enjoy Tutto Bene, Volume II! I've culled my favorite new accordion-driven hits into one fabulous sonic adventure to feed your hungry ears!
Some of the songs were produced solo, one is a live recording from my performance with the Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto at the Triple Door, others are from the sessions that Ama Trio (AD/Madeleine Sosin/Abel Rocha) recorded at Gravel Voice sessions with Scott Colburn, as well as a rich collaboration with fellow-Seattle Composer…
Since 1983 Dan Burke and his conspirators have dug through almost every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, each unique approach bending and reconstituting the expectations and possibilities of each realm.
Plowing through layered field recordings, deeply rumbling tones, and eerie electroacoustic sounds with seamless transitions between cut-and-paste collages and manufactured drones, it’…
Robert Revell is a musician from Sydney, Australia currently living in Los Angeles. When he found the SPK record “Information Overload Unit” at the age of 10 he instantly connected with it. For the first time in his short life he had found music that sounded like what was inside his mind. He asked his Father (Graeme Revell) about it and learned that it was his own record. Everything made sense.
Robert has played in bands over the years as a guitarist, vocalist, bassist and drummer in styles ra…
After playing complete improvised music with no constraints from 2016 on and releasing their first Album “Torbid Dayligtht” the quartet “Gratkowski / Zoubek / Landfermann / Mahnig” got renamed in 2023 to “In Cahoots” and now performs compositions by Frank Gratkowski, still with plenty of space for creative improvisation. In Cahoots also extends to a Quintet featuring Ingrid Laubrock on Tenor and Soprano Saxophones. The new Quintet version had its debut in Darmstadt 2023.
“Beneath the subatomic…
Blurt was founded in Stroud, UK, in 1979 as part of the post-punk movement by poet, saxophonist und puppeteer Ted Milton along with Milton's brother Jake, formerly of psychedelic group Quintessence, on drums and Peter Creese on guitar. After three albums Creese left the band to be replaced by Herman Martin on synthesizers who, after a year of constant touring left the band, and was replaced by Steve Eagles, former member of Satan's Rats, The Photos and Bang Bang Machine. Shortly thereafter Jake …
Fred Frith is one of the most important musicians of our time. He was born in Sussex, UK and now lives in California, USA. He first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. He was and is also a member of groups like Massacre, Art Bears, Skeleton Crew and Cosa Brava. Over the past 40 years Fred has collaborated with outstanding musicians like John Zorn, Tom Cora, Bill Laswell, Carla Kihlstedt, Henry Kaiser, Phil Minton, Brian Eno, The Residents, …
Non Toxique Lost are one of the most important and equally most underrated bands from Berlin's 1980s Industrlal scene. Sprung aus den Wolken, Einstürzende Neubauten, Die Tödliche Doris and also Non Toxique Lost were the core of the movement in the divided city. In the old days, most of their albums came out on cassette only, later they were collected onto vinyls and CDs. After the tragic loss of long-time member Steffen Schütze in 2017, NTL are continuing with their unique vision of music. This …
Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: "Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressin…
Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in Musique Concrete by listening to a German radio programme when he was 10 years old. In 1965, at the age of 18, Asmus started experimenting with tape loops and turned them into musical collages. Soon, the use of synthesizers was added. In 1980 his debut album Nachtstücke was released, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream. This was soon followed by a series of albums of electronic pop music for the S…
By inevitable coincidence, a street vendor in Buenos Aires became an instrument of providence, when he compelled attention of Christof Kurzmann, sitting outside a coffeehouse. His merchandise were small books of Hispanic writers, and the chosen one that ended up in the buyer’s pocket some eighteen years ago was a collection of poems by Argentinean poet Alejandra Pizarnik. Her works abound with music and sounds or absence of it, appreciating silence. For Kurzmann, this served as a sufficient reas…
This album was recorded in Brno, Czech Republic when these five masterful musicians were invited to perform together at a festival. Quentin Rollet started playing the alto saxophone at the age of 11 and the sopranino saxophone at 37. After a few years spent unlearning the teaching of the conservatory, he devoted himself to free improvisation. This led him to find himself on record or on stage with groups as varied as Nurse With Wound, Prohibition or The Red Krayola. Sylvia Bruckner is an interna…
Zahgurim formed in 1983 and were early contributors to the Industrial Music scene associating with the Temple Ov Psychick Youth. They were invited by Konnex Records Manfred Schiek to record an album for his Berlin Atonal label resulting in Moral Rearmament produced at Julian Gilbert and Simon Crabs studio at the Old Ambulance Station on Londons Old Kent Road. It became Berlin Atonal’s fifth release. Live performances at Dimitri Hegemanns pioneering Berlin Atonal festival with Psychic TV, Test De…
The Valentin Duit Quartett consists of Robert Unterköfler on saxophones, Tobias Meissl on vibraphone, Ivar Roban Križić on double bass and Valentin Duit on drums. The quartet interprets pieces by Valentin Duit which offer space for collective and solo improvisation in different ways. It emerged from the Tobias Meissl Trio in 2023 and has existed as a collective exploratory ensemble ever since.
Valentin Duit is a Vienna-based drummer who plays with various ensembles mainly in the fields of jazz a…
The Legendary Pink Dots are an Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band formed in London in August 1980. In 1984 the band moved to Amsterdam, playing with rotating musicians and having, as core members, singer/songwriter/keyboardist Edward Ka-Spel and keyboardist Phil Knight aka The Silverman. The band was originally called "One Day..." but subsequently changed the name to The Legendary Pink Dots, apparently inspired by pink dots on certain keys of the band's main recording studio piano. In the 1980s …
The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of over forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD ROM projects and more than ten DVDs. Charles Bock was a pseudonym that Hardy Fox, co-founder and primary composer for the group, used from 2012 to 2017. About a dozen albums were released using that name until Fox started using his real name for his solo recordings. "GOD O" was the openin…
A sensational quartet that was created by Free Music Forum in Austria. Joe McPhee is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, conceptualist and theoretician. He is currently the member of Trio X, Survival Unit III and has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Raymond Boni, The Thing, Trespass Trio, and Universal Indians among many others. With a career spanning nearly 50 years and over 100 recordings, he continues to tour internationally, forge new connections a…
JEM3 is an improvising trio that brings together the wide-ranging talents of three unique musicians: drummer JT Lewis, guitarist/reed player Elliott Sharp, and guitarist Marco Cappelli. The JEM3 found its genesis in an improvised set at the behest of Cappelli. The results felt great to all and so more shows followed. They decided to book a session at GSI Studios and this debut album Apices is the result. In addition to their mastery of their instruments and innovative approaches, JEM3 operates f…
Palo Alto is a French group formed in Paris, France in 1989 by Jacques Barbéri, Denis Frajerman, Philippe Masson and Philippe Perreaudin. In their early interviews the group insisted on their musical filiation with Tuxedomoon, and on drawing their inspiration from Made to Measure, a Crammed Discs label. They would later make explicit their interest in bands such as Art Zoyd, The Legendary Pink Dots, Coil, The Residents, Can or Cabaret Voltaire. Science fiction in all its forms is a leitmotiv in …
Sorry For Laughing is a project by Gordon H. Whitlow who is also a member of legendary US avantgarde collective Biota, formerly Mnemonists or Mnemonist Orchestra. Their music is a mixture of modern classical, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avangarde, songwriting and free jazz. In 1986 Gordon H. Whitlow released a cassette under the name Sorry For Laughing: "The compositions stem from my beginning days with the avant-garde recording ensemble Biota, shortly after completion of the Bellowi…
Denis Frajerman started as composer in the French experimental band Palo Alto. With a strong interest in literature and orality as a musician, he collaborates regularly with storytellers and writers for radio sessions, oratorios, or records. Strongly linked to the work of Antoine Volodine, his first solo album, Les Suites Volodine was directly influenced by his writings. They both share a taste for haunting atmospheres, black humor, witchcraft. Volodine and Frajerman also worked on creations, D…
After completing her master's degree at the Anton Bruckner Private University in 2018, Judith Schwarz has been working nationally and internationally as a drummer and composer in the field of jazz and improvised music. Judith is active as an instrumentalist, bandleader and composer in the following projects: Other:M:other, chuffDRONE, Beyond the Beat, Little Rosies Kindergarten, Schülande Engaling, Duo Hofmaninger/Schwarz, Mel*E. She has collaborated with Maria Portugal, Sylvie Courvoisier, Ange…
John Avery, a member of Sheffield electro-funk group Hula, is an English composer and sound designer for theatre. He has been a collaborator with the theatre group Forced Entertainment since a long time and many of his solo projects fed into music for their performances. John's work has been described as a juxtaposition of melody and noise and is characterised by a sense of narrative. Using dialogue, taped voiceover, soundtrack and choreographed action, Jessica in the Room of Lights explores a b…
Sutcliffe No More is the follow-up name for the band known as Sutcliffe Jugend. It was founded by Kevin Tomkins in 1982. It started as a Power Electronics act, quickly gaining a name for itself, before branching out stylistically, creating a distinctive style that drew influence from all manner of genres while keeping true to their roots as a noise act. In its original form Sutcliffe Jugend existed for less than a year before Tomkins stopped the project to join Whitehouse. He reformed the group …
With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano. Com…
Kevin Tomkins is best known for his work in Whitehouse and his own group Sutcliffe Jugend, now called Sutcliffe No More. He also worked with Bodychoke and Inertia. Most of his music has its background in the power electronics scene that evolved in Great Britain around the label Come Organisation and the group Whitehouse. Power electronics is a style of noise music that typically consists of static, screeching waves of feedback, analogue synthesizers making sub-bass pulses or high frequency squea…