★Sub Rosa
The Nethack Dictionary
In March 2005, drummer Teun Vergruggen (Jef Neve Trio, Flat Earth Society) invited the eccentric guitar player Mauro Pawlowski (dEUS, Somnambula) and Rhodes/piano wizard Jozef Dumoulin (Määk Spirit, Magic Malik, Octurn) to play a single session based on pure improvisation. The result left most people wondering how to categorize this music, and brought Othin Spake on the stage for many concerts. Six years later, the band has played in many jazz and alternative venues in Europe, released three …
Superdisque
Superdisque is the first album from the French trio formed by David Fenech (electric guitar) with Jac Berrocal (trumpet) and Ghédalia Tazartès (vocals). Somewhere beyond the borders of rock, jazz, punk and sound poetry -- the vocals seem to come from another planet, with lyrics in an improvised language. The winds are blown from Tibetan human bones and conch seashells. Guitars sound like rubber and steel. Expect the unexpected. Special guest Zap Pascal (accordion) appears on one track. Dav…
Installation for 300 Speakers, Pianola and Vacuum Cleaner
John Wynne's untitled installation for 300 speakers, pianola and vacuum cleaner is at once monumental, minimal and immersive. It uses sound and sculptural assemblage to explore and define architectural space and to investigate the borders between sound and music. There are three interwoven sonic elements: the ambient sound of the space in which it is installed, the notes played by the piano, and a computer-controlled soundtrack of synthetic sounds and gently manipulated notes from the piano itse…
Only
Pieces by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Hanns Eisler, Giacinto Scelsi, György Kurtag, Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur, Théodore Botrel, Rudolf Siecynski, and Sephardic songs. Performed/interpreted by vocalist Marianne Pousseur. "I like to listen to music in places that haven't been designed for it. I like when music mixes in with noise. Only came from a very personal desire to open the doors of my musical world to the concreteness of daily life, to tear down the fictional barriers between places a…
The Heavenly Ladder
Awesome hardcover book containing an in-depth analysis (plus an actual performance on the accompanying cd) of Adof Wölfli’s music by Baudouin de Jaer. Subtitled: Analysis Of The Musical Cryptograms. Belgian composer Baudouin de Jaer was completely moved by the artistic and human dimensions of the mystery surrounding the gigantic and universal body of work created by Adolf Wölfli within the Waldau hospital in the early 20th century. He managed what none other had accomplished before: to decode …
divide by zero
NEW SERIES FRAMEWORKAn extension of our CONCRETE ELECTRONICS NOISE,a brand new mix-up of unusual conceptions of sound material by young unknown composers, well known not-so-young composers and old but clever composers.Benjamin Thigpen, nomad, born in the United States, immigrated to Paris at the age of 31. He studied music, literature, philosophy and esthetics. He now composes in European studios such as GRM, EMS, Visby and STEIM, as well as in his bedroom and in the train. After six years as a …
Voxorgachitectronumputer
Charlemagne Palestine: (voice/organs), X Joachim Montessuis: (voice/computer). After two massive works, From Etudes To Cataclysms (SR 272CD) - for the Doppio Borgato and Strumming Music
(SR 297CD) for piano, harpsichord and strings ensemble, Charlemagne's
work is now rooted in Sub Rosa for good. But next to his solo records,
the label wants to continue to publish collaborative works: they started
with An Aural Symbiotic Mystery (SR 204CD) featuring Tony Conrad.
This time, Joachim Montessuis…
Feral
Daniel Menche has established himself as a musician with a sense of focus and determination uncharacteristic in a genre known for its randomness and chaotic structure.Rather than creating 'noise,' he strives for order and cohesiveness. His presentation of sonic structures is similar to the way a writer depicts a story, an allegory seems to arise, which uses confusion as a symbol for the imaginative process of total sound purity; aural intensity is not a representation of confusion or the chaotic…
Lumiere (For Synthesized and Concrete Sound)
This real masterpiece of Concrète and Synthesized music was no more available since its original manufacture in 1973. Dub Taylor is an US composer, producer, engineer and designer born June 22, 1948 in Burbank, California. He has many creative facets: recording and mastering engineer, record producer as well as composer, graphic designer and visual artist. He has studied with pianist Richard Bunger and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Not long after the release of Lumière, Taylor established Varg…
Parabolique d'Enfer / Paraboles-Mix avec Leons d'Enfer
This recording will be Sub Rosa's first posthumous recording of Henri Pousseur. It is the sixth release (out of eight) in their catalog devoted to this composer's experimental and electronic works. It also marks the end of the trilogy of the Parabolic works (following the 1972 unreleased recordings and the 2001 collective performance). This time around, we have a piece built through another major Pousseur work: Leçon d'Enfer (composed in 1990-1991 around Arthur Rimbaud). This previously-unreleas…
El hombre que se sofoca
Israel Martinez (Guadalajara, Mexico 1979) scope of work goes from sound to multidisciplinary art, including experimental and non-academic electroacoustic music, actions, video, installation and site-specific projects, mainly focused on sound as source and theme. He got the Distinction Award at Prix Ars Electronica 2007 in the Digital Musics Category for his sound piece 'Mi Vida'. Since 2003 he has performed and exhibited in several countries throughout America and Europe. He's co-founder…
Tourbillon D'Obscurité
Philippe Petit is interested in soundtracks; even if he creates original music he'd rather be introduced as a "musical travel agent" than a composer. Petit uses a Cymbalum, an Electric Psalterion, computer and synths to build up electronic layers, process acoustic and field recordings.
To second the machines he likes to move various glasses,
or percussive objects, and take advantage of vinyl material to fondle released sounds. A journalist for various magazines and radio as well as a musical ac…
And That
Sub Rosa presents an LP-only collaborative release between New York visual artist, photographer, and film artist Peter Downsbrough and Xavier Garcia-Bardon and Benjamin Franklin, two members of Buffle -- a Brussels-based improv collective. The work of visual artist, photographer and film artist Peter Downsbrough has had a major impact on the perception of art. In the early-'60s, Downsbrough interrupted his studies in architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Cooper Union in New York i…
Fathom
Saxophonist and composer Ulrich Krieger is already widely respected for having been a part of the incredible Zeitkratzer and having collaborated with Merzbow. However this fifty-minute composition is possibly his most striking to date. A collaborative effort with Alan Licht, Tim Barnes and Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, 'Fathom' is a deep, doomy exercise in patience and subtlety. With stark, minimal percussion and a bleak, haunted soundscape punctuated by Krieger's blackened woodwind tones th…
Triadic Memories
In the summer of 1990, i released on Sub Rosa a recording of Triadic Memories by Morton Feldman (1926-1987). It was one of the first recordings of this long work for solo piano completed on July 23, 1981.The score i used had been published by Universal edition as number UE17326 in 1987. Shortly after my CD came out, Universal published a new edition. At the bottom of page 2, under a dedication to Aki Takahashi and RogerWoodward is a small-print mention: 'corrected edition: 14.2.1991. I disr…
Inhumane Humans
Novi_sad is the guise for Thanasis Kaproulias (b. 1980) who holds a degree from the Economic University of Piraues. He lives and works in Athens, Greece. Influenced by the pioneers of audio assault, he began generating sounds in 2005. No studies, no academic education, no scholarships, just pure learning by doing. Amplified environmental recordings, drone manipulations, structured ambient soundscapes, microtones vs overtones, all come together in a hyper structure of iconoclastic form. Novi_s…
Untitled #244
Lovely field-recording album, created from evolution of original environmental recordings done at multiple underwater and abovewater locations in the Paraná and Paraguay rivers
An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music Vol 6
The sixth and penultimate edition in Sub Rosa's ongoing assembly of crucial noise and electronic music looks at the period 1957-2010. So far the series has been duly noted for its excavation and reappraisal of lesser known works by important artists and vol. 6 is no different, presenting 26 exclusive and original compositions including the work of Tzvi Avni, Joseph Nechvatal, and Kohei Gomi/Pain Jerk among better known titans of the avant garde such as Stephen O'Malley, Dick Raaymakers, J…
An Anthology Of Noise and Electronic Music: Volume 2
Finally available on vinyl for the very first time - featuring exclusive and never before available material from the likes of Autechre, Tod Dockstader, Luc Ferrari and so much more - in a super heavyweight and deluxe gatefold package* This second volume of this excellent compilation series from Sub Rosa features an exclusive/previously unreleased Autechre track 'Bronchus 1' from 1991 - an alternate version of the track on 'Incunabula'. A second chronology of pioneering sound artists cove…
Musik Oblik: Musics In The Margin 2
This is the second volume of the Musics in the Margin compilation series. Like volume 1 in 2006 (SR 254CD), this new production mixes visual arts with music, focusing on the affinities existing between three visual art fields considered on equal terms: modern art, contemporary art, and outsider art. Decompartmentalization is the key word, and this record offers unique approaches transcending the simple question of the insider/outsider classification. Based in Berlin, Klaus Beyer is mostly…