★Sub Rosa
Santur: Orient/Occident
This disc offers two approaches to an ancient instrument called the santur. The first, by the Iranian master musician Hossein Malek, consists of improvised pieces recorded by his friend Leo Kupper in the '80s, representing a unique and valuable archive. The second is Kupper's Western approach as a student of Malek, filtered through undetectable electronics. Includes 24-page booklet. "The santur is a stringed instrument in the same family as the Appalachian hammered dulcimer, the Chinese yangqin,…
as/if/when
Sub Rosa presents works by industrial music pioneer, Z'EV. The physical vibrations of the objects in his works with both text and sound has been influenced by the Middle Eastern mystical system best known as Kabbalah, as well as -- but not limited to -- African, Afro-Caribbean and Indonesian rhythms, musics and cultures. He has studied Ewe music, Balinese gamelan, and Indian tala. From 1959-1965 he studied drumming with Arnie Frank, then Chuck Flores and then Art Anton at Drum City in Van …
Gentle Electronics
In the pieces featured on this record, I have chosen simple electronic means - the kind that are commonplace, accessible, cheap, and easy to use - and I put them to work in a mostly-theatrical way: a situation of representation, one that is unique, new, and creative, where the focus lies in esthetics and poetics instead of in technological prowess. An imagination of otherness, where you don't know anymore whether the other is the soundworld produced out of time in the 'black box' of electronics …
Early Experimental Electronic Music 1954-61
Outstanding, unreleased before fundamental electronic In 1954, Henri Pousseur was twenty-five when he composed his first piece of electronic music in the studios of the Cologne radio, where Stockhausen (with whom he had a close relationship) had created most of his famous pieces. Released in our Early Electronic series This seventh and penultimate installment in the series Henri Pousseur had programmed around his experimental and electronic music features his earliest works -his first steps. Hen…
Musique Barbare
CD in six-panel digipak with 24-page booklet. First reissue of Karel Appel's masterpiece Musique Barbare. In 1963, Dutch abstract expressionist painter Karel Appel (1921-2006), who cofounded the avant-garde Cobra movement in 1948, booked time in the Instituut voor Sonologie in the Netherlands to compose music for a documentary that cinematographer Jan Vrijman was making on Appel's work. Musique Barbare was born. Originally released by Philips, this masterpiece of musique concrète is a real …
A Bird In The Hand Is Worth Two In The Bush
This record should be seen not so much as a tribute to Zbigniew Karkowski than as an ongoing concern to further his work and thinking as they were when he was alive, reacting, and questioning, uncompromisingly. Nevertheless, these are his final recordings, which he made- a homecoming of sorts - in Sweden, at EMS Studios in Stockholm, with his friends Jean-Louis Huhta and Lars Akerlund. Late november 2013. a reminiscence from the 1980s, the creation of the label Radium 226.05 by Carl Mich…
Break through in grey room
2016 repress; originally released in 2008. One of the most classic and in-demand titles in the Sub Rosa catalog -- mid-'60s cut-up tape machine recordings made by William S. Burroughs in hotels -- originally released on CD in 1987, reissued in 2001, released on vinyl in a gatefold sleeve. During the 1960s, Burroughs was in Europe and England. The Vietnam War, the cultural revolution, hippies and the acid gospel, the U.S. in tumult -- all these were dispatches to him. Living between Paris …
Univers Zero
Expanded reissue of the Univers Zero's 1977 debut album, reissued as a double LP with a bonus track "La Faulx" spread over sides C and D. Long-running Belgian chamber rockers and avant-garde pioneers led by drummer and composer Daniel Denis, Univers Zero formed in 1974 with co-composer and guitarist Roger Trigaux (who left the band in 1980). This is their first album, recorded between August 2 and 5, 1977. "The rhythmic energy and dissonant riffs, the distinctive sound of the bassoon and str…
Early Experimental Electronic Music 1954-72
Outstanding, unreleased before fundamental electronic In 1954, Henri Pousseur was twenty-five when he composed his first piece of electronic music in the studios of the Cologne radio, where Stockhausen (with whom he had a close relationship) had created most of his famous pieces. Released in our Early Electronic series This seventh and penultimate installment in the series Henri Pousseur had programmed around his experimental and electronic music features his earliest works -his first steps. Hen…
Life on the Inside
Limited edition of 300, already sold out at source. David Toop's environmental beauty Life on the Inside is the audio companion (created and recorded in 2015) to French sculptor Pierre Besson's 2014 exhibition D'objets noires et de Choses carrées (Black Objects and Square Things). This 34-minute ambient track was diffused inside of the sculpture and has never been published before. An excellent addition to the David Toop discography and a must for any wide-ranging ambient fan."Musician, write…
Another Evening at Logos 1974/79/81
Previously-unreleased recordings from live sessions at the Logos Foundation, Ghent, Belgium, recorded in 1974, 1979, and 1981. This double LP, the first release in a vinyl-only series, includes the following recordings: a 1979 performance by Max Eastley and Logos Ensemble (Max Eastley, Godfried-Willem Raes, Moniek Darge, and Rob Keymeulen playing xylophone bars, Aeolian flutes, springboard, sanzas); a 1974 performance by Feminist Improvising Group (Georgie Born: cello, bass guitar; Lindsay Coope…
Broken Re/Broken
Milan Knizak and Opening Performance Orchestra revisit Knizak's 1979 Broken Music (SR 400LP) in Berlin, 2014. "In 2008-9 we transferred the original recording from vinyl records into digital form. As we did so, we weren't interested in the precise, clean fidelity offered by the digital world, which fundamentally causes the fine structure of natural sound to be lost. Instead we were seeking the opposite: the world of errors and distortion, which remains hidden when digital audio is manipulated to…
What Lies in the Sea
What Lies in the Sea is the fruit of a ten-year collaboration between singer Lynn Cassiers and keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin, and is the first release for their duo Lilly Joel. Both musicians are free spirits and lauded innovators in their respective fields. File under: a mix between Obscure Records and the Birmingham sound. Belgian singer Lynn Cassiers is as much a sound-sculptor as a singer, using her voice, microphone, and electronics to create soundscapes. Belgian pianist Jozef Dumoulin redefin…
Moondog
French band Cabaret Contemporain pay tribute to the composer Moondog -- New York's Viking -- with singing by two Scandinavian sirens, Swedish singers Linda Oláh and Isabel Sörling. The seven musicians focus on Moondog in particular in an effort to offer the public a new way to appreciate this too little-known music. Cabaret Contemporain is a Paris-based quintet who play electro music with prepared acoustic instruments (piano, electric guitar, drums, two double bassses). T…
Fieldtone
The sounds found in nature can have a very slow groove. A groove embedded by silence, so slow it can almost only be felt while spending a few hours at sea, on a forest trip, in open fields... It is this groove and the "silence" of nature that inspired the Fieldtone compositions. The music is performed by an ensemble of string instruments (kanklės, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, double bass) supplemented with drums. Book of Air's series of bundled compositions exploring the parameters of sound…
La Selva
Finally available, in full-lenght original audio piece (71 minutes) on 24-bit / 48kHz digital USB flat memory-card with non-audio blank etched vinyl. Limited 500 pieces edition, numbered and signed by Francisco Lopez. La Selva' is an immersion into the sound environments of a tropical rain forest in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. An astonishing natural sonic web created by a multitude of sounds from rain, waterfalls, insects, frogs, birds, mammals and even plants, through a day cycle d…
Generation Sans Futur
Génération Sans Futur (Generation Without a Future), Art Zoyd's third LP originally released in 1980 through Atem Records, returns to the sound (and lineup, plus Daniel Denis (Univers Zero)) of the group's first album, Symphonie Pour le Jour où Brûleront les Cités (SR 330CD/LP). The 17-minute "La Ville" is a powerful epic, featuring Thierry Zaboïtzeff's prehistoric grunts, complex time shifts, and a tribal/ritualistic feel once again close to the spirit of Magma. But unlike "Musique pour l'Odys…
Utopiya?
Ütopiya? not only continues Oiseaux-Tempête's first album (SR 381CD/LP); it also extends it. The travels move this time to Istanbul and Sicily, providing the food for its urgent energy and indomitable drive. While the structures still hint at moments of post-rock, they go further now, almost into the area of free-jazz yet without losing a directness rooted in punk (highlighted perhaps by the presence of G.W. Sok from The Ex). In addition, the bass clarinet of Gareth Davis references both t…
Complete Analog and Digital Electronic Works 1978-2000
Released in 10-panel Digipak. Includes a booklet affixed to the sleeve. The Complete Analog and Digital Electronic Music 1978-2000 recorded between 1978 and 1980 by a key composer of Belgian electronic music André Stordeur. His musical career started in 1973 with a tape composition for the soundtrack to Gordon Matta-Clark's film Office Baroque. Later in the 1970s, he participated in avant-garde music ensemble Studio voor Experimentele Muziek, founded in Antwerp, Flanders, by Joris de Laet. Since…
Sounds from There
Swiss electro-acoustic artist Israel Quellet's fourth opus on Sub Rosa: a complex and mysterious work for symphonic bass drum, symphonic tympani, organ, Tibetan horn, homemade horn, triangle, tubular bells, shocks inside the church, anvil metal tank, and church bells. A challenging listen, but so rewarding.- "Music of expectation and experience, controlled recklessness. In his obsession with the possibilities of sound, Israel Quellet takes us to exciting places." --PopMatters - "Quellet's …