★ReR Megacorp
The ReR Quarterly Volume 4 Number 2
CD contains commissioned works by Q.R. Ghazala: Sacrifice To Isis, , Mike Hovancsek/Paul Guerguerian:Three Cold Floors, Tom Dimuzio: Inception, Marie Goyette: Short-Cuts: Brahms, Ken Ando: Danseuse, Robert Iolini: Congo, Zimbabwe, Giovanni Venosta: Le Ombre Di Otello, Keith Rowe/A. De Fillips: Feu Brilliant, Brian Woodbury's Variety Orchestra:Shenandoah/Innsbruck, Richard Barrett: The Unthinkable, Stevan Tickmayer: Heterophony, Volapuk: Des objets de la plus grande importance, Boris Kovacs: Extr…
The ReR Quarterly Volume 4 Number 1
On the CD: John Oswald/John Zorn, Biota, Cornelius Cardew, ZGA, If Bwana, Kalahari Surfers + Lesogo Rampolokeng, Koongoortoog (Tuva),Blitziods, Al Margolis, Tom Nunn, Thinking Plague, Adenoid Quartet, N.O.R.M.A., Les Sales Combles, R.Deutsch, Martin Burlas, Peter Machajdik, David Myers, Chris Cutler/Fred Frith. New, found and commissioned work.
The ReR Quarterly - Selections From Vol. 2
Commissioned materials from Robert Wyatt, Iva Bittova / Pavel Fajt, LA 1919, Jocelyn Robert, James Grigsby, J. Lachan, Henry Kaiser, Increase The Angle, Bill Gilonis, David Thomas, Jospeh Racaille, John Oswald, Musci / Venosta, Luciano Margiorani, 5UU'S, When, Jean Derome. Taken from Volume 2 of the influential Quarterly, remastered, with an exquisite book by Dirk Vallons. L
ReR Quarterly Vol 1 - Selections
Selections from Volume 1 of the ReR Quarterly,including the legendary recording of the so-called 'supergroup' Duck And Cover (Tom Cora, Chris Cutler, Heiner Goebbels, Fred Frith, Alfred Harth, Dagmar Krause and George Lewis), Biota, Steve Moore, CASSIX, 5UU's, John Oswald. With generous book.
Getting A Head
Re-issue of Bob Ostertag's Getting A Head, and underground classic of tape manipulation from before the days of samplers. Best known for his work with computers, here a young Ostertag plays an instrument consisting of a highly unstable and peculiar recording system, which uses helium balloons to hold up tape loops between three tape recorders made to malfunction in a variety of ways. The record marks one of the first, and to this day one of the only, times that tape manipulation techniques devel…
When Better Isn't Quite Good Enough
The spirit of enquiry and experiment is still alive and kicking - in Portugal anyway. On this double CD, Vitor looks twice at the same material. On CD one we get his unique take on guitar improvisation, which is electric, songlike and mixes genres in an unusual way. Then he takes all the pieces on that CD and orchestrates them with drums, bass, piano, guitar, clarinet and trumpet, to make a duplicate CD on which the same pieces appear as quite different pieces. You can choose one or the other, o…
The Pharoah's Bee
Allen Ravenstine, erstwhile eminence grise of classic-era Pere Ubu, was one of the best-integrated and least predictable pioneers of analogue synthesis in rock until, in the late 1980’s, he quit both the public and the musical arena to pursue entirely different interests. But he never lost his interest in, or his feel for, analogue electronics. A few years ago, with Pere Ubu’s current synthesist, Robert Wheeler, he recorded ‘Farm Report and City Desk - in the context of a documentary about modul…
Radio Banana
Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable - in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes latin brass arrangements (sort of), great drumming, medium wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -and all without undue fuss but adding up to something exotic and new. Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. It doesn't play by genre rules, or fashion …
Phoenix: The Music Of Ernö Király
Kiraly's experimental music stems from two sources, the first of which is his country's traditional folk music, while the second is Edgard Varese, whose '+'"'+'Poeme Electronique'+'"'+' had an incredible impact on Kiraly when he first heard it. Thus the high pitched gypsy violin, the energetically strummed guitar and the eerie rumble of electronic music come together to create a marriage of sounds that are both ancient and modern. Kiraly (like Partch) is also an inventor of musical instruments, …
Variety Orchestra
Followers of our Quarterly will recall, about 6 years back, Woodbury's inspired arrangement of 'Shenandoah', which managed to embrace the whole of America history in under 10 minutes. Since then he has been working on completing this collection, his first full ensemble instrumental CD. The interest starts with the ensemble itself, half as expected for Latin, Jazz and Big band arrangements and half traditional American: pedal steel, banjo, accordion and fiddles. One thinks of Van Dyke Parks', and…
Tuba Intim
Contemporary music for tuba and a revelation of an under-utilised musical voice. For stretched and traditional techniques. Includes works by Lutz Glandien (Tuba and Tape), Morton Feldman, Igor Stravinsky and Michael himself. Excellent collection; and unusual.
World Tour 1998
Released on LP in 1987-8 these are composed rock/contemporary/experimental pieces for electric guitar quartet and drums, complex and enegetic. Both LP's are now on one CD, omitting the Fred Frith guitar quartet extracts, which have now been released separately.
...A Mere Coincidence..
A CD of songs following on from Art Bears, News From Babel and Domestic stories.This time the co-authors are Stevan Tickmayer and Chris Cutler, with Bob Drake, and guests Fred Frith, Amy Denio and Claudio Puntin. A dense, composed, gallon-in-a-pint kind of a record about the outer edges of hard science. Tightly composed, complex and layered.
Sérempie - Compositions For Ondes Martenot And Piano
This companion to our Messiaen et Autours de Messiaen collects together another classic group of works for Onde Martenot and piano, this time by Darius Milhaud, Andre Jolivet, Arvo Part, Kazuo Fukushima and Francisco Semprun, collected together here for the first time: an essential chapter in the history of a remarkable instrument. The performances are immaculate and the sound transparent. A pleasure from beginning to end. Historic.
The Wind Rises (Electropleinair Sound Diary)
First released in Hungary in 1987, this is an extraordinary work combining ensemble playing, documentary recording, studio manipulation, electronics and some stunning compositional conception. Featuring Marta Sebastjen, the Amaninda group, WYXOMPHONIC group, Mandel Quartet and a star gallery of other instrumentalists of all kinds. A unique work we worked years to acquire - a masterwork in every sense.
Barricade 3
The 1st by the duo of Hector Zazou & Joseph Racaille plus guests. Primitive electronics, reeds, electric & acoustic pianos, noise, songs, & the hovering spirit of Satie. Not as divine as Traite De Mechanique, but still an excellent and essential release. This disk features Hector Zazou playing predominantly electric piano and chromelodion (the tube-version precursor to the modern synthesizer), and partner Joseph Racaille on acoustic piano. Both share songwriting duties and vocals, the latter of …
Zgamoniums
File under early Russian industrial rock/art; Harry Partch, incorporating primitive analogue electronics. A legend in art and industrial music circles, ZGA was formed under the old regime in Riga, Lavia, in 1984, by Nick Sudnik and Valery Dudkhin. Unable to rehearse acoustically because of the neighbours, they invented their own instruments from scrap and springs and shaped metal fitted with contact microphones; these were not just noise instruments, but ways of accessing complex pitches, strang…
Argonautika
A sound drama for tuba and electronics that constructs its own rich, twilit, rather alien, world. Only the sound of the tuba (sometimes), a few waves and a little thunder sound familiar, everything else is a mysterious presence; the electronics are not at all conventional and though much of the sound is clearly derived somehow from the tuba, it offers no foothold in a familiar place. If landscape were ever an appropriate metaphor for the product of a congeries of sounds, it would be applicable h…
Black White And Grey
A complete new work plus 'Death In The Blue Lake'. Combines playing and through-composition with manipulated and environmental sound in dramatic, narrative, psychological constructions. Quite unique. 'Death' based on a novel; texts in new works by Chris Cutler.
Brain Weather (The Story Of The Rosenbergs)
Brain is a CD musi-drama (opera pervers) with El Maestro Jon Rose lui-meme, Shelley Hirsch, Phil Minton, a Nietschean dentist and thousands of Rosenbergs. Plus The Weatherman. Full texts and notes. Cover by Peter Blegvad