★Sub Rosa
Walls of sound II
'Music in Fifths' (1969) from Phillip Glass. 'Pendulum Music'(1968) from Steve Reich. 'Dorian Reeds' (1964) from Terry Riley. '1 + 1' (1968) from Phillip Glass. 'Reed Phase' (1967) from Steve Reich. 'Walls of Sound' is about what I call: 'static music' - music that isn't semantic, gestured, or narrative, that doesn't move or change atmospherically, and isn't dramatic or has a development in the traditional European sense. If it changes it does it very slowly. The emphasis lies on the 'aural scul…
Aerial # 2
This release is the second (Volume 2) in the three-part Aerial series. Tod Dockstader is one of the all-time great figures in the world of musique concréte composition, with his "organized sound" works from the 1960s being amongst the most radical ever conceived -- in league with Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, and Varese. Aerial is a rare new work in the realm of shortwave radio, from one of America's most experimental composers. Volume 1 was released in March 2005 inside a slipcase. Volu…
Aerial
Tod Dockstader is one of the all-time great figures in the world of musique concréte composition, with his "organized sound" works from the 1960s being amongst the most radical ever conceived -- in league with Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, and Varese. Aerial is a rare new work in the realm of shortwave radio, from one of America's most experimental composers. This release is the first (Volume 1) in a three-part series. "I've written before of my interest in shortwave radio. When I was ve…
Pièces electroniques : scies, bonds, empreintes…
Thierry De Mey is a composer and filmmaker. Much of his musical output is written for dance and film. For choreographers, he works as a composer and also a collaborator in the conception of "formal strategies." His main productions and works are Rosas danst Rosas (choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker); What the body does not remember and Les Porteuses de mauvaises nouvelles (choreographies by Wim Vandekeybus), Musique de table, Poses, Frisking pour percussions, and several ensemble pieces …
Boujeloud
The Master Musicians of Joujouka are often credited with being the first "world music" group. The Joujouka music for Boujeloud, or the Father of Skins, is frantic and has several movements which would equate to a symphony or the score of an opera if it were European classical music. The festival and ritual originate in the worship of the God Pan. In 1994, Frank Rynne began a two year long project recording the Master Musicians of Joujouka in their village. Sub Rosa released two CDs from these re…
s/t
At the very beginning of Survival Research Laboratories in 1978, the group's founder Mark Pauline predicted that people would eventually start building their own technology in order to seize control of the very violence that characterizes the age we live in. Survival Research Laboratories was conceived and founded by Mark Pauline in November 1978. Since its inception, SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of…
Circulations
Circulations is an impressive hourlong electro-acoustic work by composer Pierre-Yves Macé and his second album (after a lukewarm debut released on Tzadik). Making the best of a residency at Euphonia (Marseille), he first wrote four solo pieces for percussion, electric guitar, harp, and clarinet. At Euphonia, he rehearsed these solos with musicians Frédéric Doumas, Rémy Décrouy, Rafaëlle Rinaudo, and Agathe Fourneau (respectively) and recorded them. Then, Macé composed a tape part for each solo, …
For Bunita Marcus
Morton Feldman (1926-1987) remains a legendary and key figure in modern American composition. A pioneer of aleatoric and indeterminate music, he was a master of minimal improvisation. Despite many thematic fluctuations in Feldman's compositional style throughout his career, a significant turning point took place in 1949, when he met John Cage, commencing an artistic association of crucial importance to music in America in the 1950s. Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence…
The creative act
deluxe digipack cd with booklet (english and french) : lecture in Houston, Texas - April 1957 some texts from à l'infinitif (1912-1920) ; lecture in New York, shortly before his death musical erratum (la mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même) ; long before John Cage, the first aleotory composition ; an interview by George Heard Hamilton recorded in New York (1959) ; an interview by Richard Hamilton recorded in London (1959) ; musical erratum (a score for 3 voices) only score written by du…
Erratum musical
the principle of musical erratum is simple: you choose a keyboard - any keyboard - you draw each note at random - no note can be struck twice, but all are struck - the resulting whole is played without any particular modulation, "a uniformity de rhythm, anaccentuation" says Duchamp.tThe premises of minimal and aleatory art are thus expressed in "the green box", published in 1934 (although the writings date back to 1912-15). to do this, we chose to use a piano (a bösendorfer)7 VARIATIONS ON A DRA…
Didascalies
The idea of bringing together Rencontres fortuites, Didascalies and Tautologos III - two recent works for piano, viola and electronics, and one open-ended work - imposed itself at a concert at the Boendael Chapel in Brussels, where Collard-Neven and Royer performed Didascalies, with Ferrari attending. A few months later, we found ourselves in the legendary Brème studios, having to deal with the waiting, the Tonmeister's mood swings, and Luc, sick, having a hard time with long commutes and schedu…
Les anecdotiques
Luc Ferrari's diverse work and aesthetics continue to have a singular impact on the young generations of electronic musicians and artists. The corpus of his work is immense and includes hundreds of compositions of all kinds. Les Anecdotiques - his last composition - is a vast sound-film of more than an hour who explores in 15 steps the intensity of re-composed sounds from his continual travel around the world - with electronic additional structures. 'I have made works that more or less depart fr…
I could never make that music again
I Could Never Make That Music Again is a choral album, a sound collage crafted out of interviews, where artists, musicians, DJs and sound makers talk openly about their work, their visions, their hopes, their moments of doubts and their regrets in a loosely constructed narrative. Most of the people interviewed have all participated in the making of the history of electronic music; from the early tape experiments in the 1950s to the latest trends in techno. Derrick May and Stacey Pullen, the pion…
The voices of the dead
Sub Rosa presents a CD which contains fragments and reworkings of the legendary Raudive tapes. Who was Doctor Konstantin Raudive? Dr. Raudive, a student of Carl Jung, was a Latvian psychologist who taught at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, before devoting the last ten years of his life to electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). He published in his book Breakthrough in 1971. His early collaborator F.Jurgenson, whom he met by the very beginning of 1965, awakened Dr. K. Raudive's interest in EVP rese…
Intimate rituals
This Romanian-born composer is noted for having developed the technique of 'spectral composition' during the 1960s. According to the man himself, this is defined as a "variable distribution of the spectral energy, synthesis of the global sound sources, micro- and macro-form as sound-process, four simultaneous layers of perception and of speed, and spectral scordaturae, i.e. rows of unequal intervals corresponding to harmonic scales." If you're any the wiser as to what he's on about do drop us a …
Musique mixte 1966-1970
This is the fourth Henri Pousseur CD in Sub Rosa's Early Electronics series, exploring the work of this Belgian theoretician and experimental/avant garde composer. Along with previous releases in this series, Musique Mixte will cover all his electronic music and his most radical works between 1953 and 1988 -- 35 years of research and experiments. These recordings are a continuation of Sub Rosa's earlier releases, namely: Liège à Paris (a piece composed thanks to Luciano Berio and premiered at th…
Up from the archives
New York pop-art archival cd document from the 60's to the 90's featuring Andy Warhol, WS Burroughs, Iggy Pop, Thurston Moore [Sonic Youth], Jack Kerouac, dj Olive, Allen Ginsberg, Angus maclise. Gerard Malanga [the bronx, 1943- .... ] writer, filmmaker, performer [with The Velvet Underground] and Andy Warhol's main assistant, superstar & and closest friend at the Factory from 1963 to 1970. also know as a seminal photo archivist of the pop culture, Gerard Malanga edited for Sub Rosa a selection …
An aural symbiotic mystery
More that 30 years had passed since our last experimental duet. Tony arrived and decided he could stay for several days in Brussels and we casually started to play together one afternoon Aude, my wife, remarks about that special moment that in 5 minutes if not less she heard a natural musical chemistry of beauty and power that greatly impressed her yet. Tony and i hadn't played discussed or conversed about sound or anything in over 30 years None the less the result were totally surprising dazzli…
Live in London 1982
'Autumn 1982, Brixton, London, Brion gysin, the eternal accomplice of William Burroughs, renews the methods of performance by reciting texts, hastily brought together: Tessa, a member of Slits, Steve, of Rip, rig and panic, Jail, of Penguin café orchestra and Ramuntcho Matta on guitar. Ramuntcho, in the style of Brion, called this session 'white funk'. Most of the texts were written upon meeting Burroughs, at the time of the invention of the cut-up. The influence that Brion gysin has had on cont…
One night @ 1001
As the inventor of the Dreamachine ("the first objects made to be viewed with closed eyes"), a prolific writer, painter and calligrapher, Brion Gysin also found time amongst his cramped schedule to set up a restaurant (The Thousand and One Nights) in Tangier, where he proceeded to provide a stage for the best in Moroccan groups specialising in exorcism or trance (particularly the Master Musicians of Joujouka who enjoyed an extended residency). An archive album comprised of these recordings, the …