New Arrivals
Linkage
First-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with booklet. Terry Fox was a first generation Bay Area conceptual artist. Beginning in the 1970s, he worked extensively with sound, especially the use of piano wires detached from their native instrument and anchored between opposing walls of the performance space. Linkage, Fox's first album, was originally released in 1982 to accompany an installation at Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland. The record would mark Fox's first attemp…
Demon Box
*2023 stock* "The Trondheim band’s third release marked them as weirdos to watch in 1993. An ambitious, eclectic double album, it saw them transition from a run-of-the-mill grunge outfit into progressive magpies willing to throw everything into the pot. Demon Box remains a curious, conflicted and contradictory affair, lurching almost randomly from creepy folk to pounding metal to the left-field sonics of then-member Deathprod. To love it requires strenuous effort, and the splurge of uninspired m…
Pairs Of Three
Paal Nilssen-Love Circus emerged as a direct result of the travel restrictions caused by the corona pandemic. The Oslo World Music Festival asked Nilssen-Love to put together a new band of musicians based in Norway. He came up with players from different camps, experienced in various styles: ethnic, classical, contemporary, jazz, free jazz, noise, pop etc.
The seven unique voices were gathered around common musical ideas and ways of thinking and a shared understanding of musical freedom. Each mu…
New Map
New Map is based on open-form “cells” of concrete ideas, notes and directions that the musicians had to respond to. The 22-minute title piece swings - sometimes, literally - back and forth between subtle percussive games, mysterious and sensual orchestral-chamber dynamics, anchored by harpist Krüger, accordionist Kalle Moberg and trumpeter Köster, and raw, noisy and abstract improvisations led by sax players Lea, Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, Kristoffer Berre Alberts and Finnish electronics player Tomm…
Clusterfuck
On Clusterfuck, Nilssen-Love used graphic notations. The 24-minute title piece pushes the Large Unit to urgent and ecstatic blowouts but this powerful sonic adventure is often punctuated by playful, or subtle and reflexive, improvised solos. Eventually, the Large Unit exhausts its whole energy in the explosive coda before letting Moberg and Keränen end this piece. Nilsson-Love, second drummer Andreas Wildhagen and percussionist Celio de Carvalho navigate “Bubbles” to even more intense and energe…
Time Sound Shape
"At first glance this new CD on PNL looks like familiar territory - a trio recording with two known collaborators of Nilssen-Love: Accordionist Kalle Moberg have become a steady and important voice of the Large Unit sound over the last ten years, and Frode Gjerstad truly needs no introduction - him and Nilssen-Love have played together for 30+ years.
And while this trio is a new constellation, a combination that is good news in itself, "Time Sound Shape" offers another, bigger surprise: this is …
Free Jazz and Improvisation on Vinyl 1965-1985 (Book)
*2023 stock* Over the years the fantastic, genre-defying Norwegian label Rune Grammofon has published a few books mostly celebrating its own snazzy design aesthetic and rich history, but a gorgeous new volume by art historian Johannes Rød focuses more on the music and artifacts that have influenced label owner Rune Kristofferson, who penned one of the forwards for Free Jazz and Improvisation on Vinyl 1965-1985 (there’s a second one by notorious “discaholic” and reedist Mats Gustaffson). Rød deli…
Evil In Oslo
Evil in Oslo represents the Hedwig Mollestad Trio at a critical juncture in their musical development. It was released on the same day as their studio offering Black Stabat Mater. Though both are comprised of Mollestad compositions, they couldn't be more different. Black Stabat Mater is tighter, its musical terrain is more easily discerned as jazz-rock. Evil in Oslo is a different beast. Recorded in two clubs, its tracks feature jams from Mollestad's first three albums in four medleys. It's a si…
Maternity Beat
Rune Grammofon mainstay Hedvig Mollestad joins forces with legendary 12-piece Trondheim Jazz Orchestra on her latest prog-jazz-metal opus.
The Studio Intim Sessions, Vol.1
*2023 stock* Geir Sundstøl has made a name for himself as an innovative session musician on hundreds of Norwegian and international albums. 2015 saw the release of Furulund, the first self-composed long player from this Master of Strings. Langen Ro, Norwegian Grammy winner Brødløs and St.Hanshaugen Steel, followed soon after. Now, the stage is set for something quite different. The Studio Intim Sessions, Volume 1, Sundstøl's fifth solo album, has taken a trip on its own, away from the cinematic …
Fengselsfugl
*2023 stock* "Trond has been compared with guitar calibers such as Bill Frisell and Ry Cooder among a number of reviewers. "Bedehus & Hawaii" locates Trond Kallevåg at the right height on the heels of Ry Cooder and Bill Frisell. " - Jazzaroundmag.
On "Fengselsfugl" (prisonbird in english) Trond takes the listener into musical landscape inspired by his job as music teacher in Oslo Prison. Isolation, hope, darkness and the ballads inside the prisons in the 18th century are some key words that desc…
Velvet Serenade
On occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Staubgold label proudly presents Velvet Serenade. Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and French maverick Pascal Comelade relive The Velvet Underground - a non-nostalgic reinvention of a musical legacy that takes an influential past into the future.
The Guests Go in To Supper (Book)
Rare 1st edition from 1986. Nearly 400 pages, large size, paperbound, smythe-sewn. Texts, scores and ideas of 7 American composers using language in composition: John Cage (Mushrooms et Variationes), Robert Ashley (Improvement), Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Charles Amirkhanian, Michael Peppe, and Kenneth Atchley.
Published by Burning Books, 1986. Edited by Melody Sumner Carnahan, Kathleen Burch and Michael Sumner. Introductions by Charles Shere and Frances Butler.
Qicksand (Book)
Quicksand was written to be an opera libretto. But it was written in the form of a novel. . . . I am devoted to "mystery" stories. I read them one after another, mostly two or three times. Some of the best writers today are writing in this form. So, I thought that I would try to make an opera libretto from a mystery story, told verbatim. That is, the libretto and the novel would be the same: no scenes moved around or actions adapted to the proportions of a libretto, just tell the story the way i…
Breathe Into The Forest, Into The Bird, Into The Song
*Limited Edition Handmade CDR* "One day i invited my friends home to be the echo of a forest. We sat in a circle, we lighted on some candles and we listened to the wood of a shruti box. Through healing ourselves we healed the forest, the bird and the song. We breathed, pulsed & became. Sound." - Ángeles Rojas
Limited Edition CDR in Cardboard String Sleeve with Liner Notes and album art.
A Practice In Taking Up Space
*Limited Edition Handmade CDR* "All of the following are improvisations and workings-outs, captured at the time by whatever recording device I had at hand. I don’t know what they are: does the act of recording change the nature of a thing?" - Lottie Sadd
Limited Edition CDR in Cardboard String Sleeve with Liner Notes and album art.
Six Studies
*Limited Edition Handmade CDR* The pieces in this collection are studies, of a sort, and all written in 2021 or 2022. Along with most other things I’ve produced in thesame period, there’s an unintended, relentless sentimentality to them – inevitable, I suppose, if working with diatonic clusters.They’re all very simple, and, with the exception of Piano and Accompaniment, aren’t really “compositions” so much as demonstrations of what instruments are busy doing while we might be busy thinking about…
Spaces
*Limited Edition Handmade CDR* Spaces, for solo vibraphone, was composed in 2021 for percussionist Tony Oliver in celebration of more than thirty years of musical collaboration and friendship. The work is nearly 80 minutes in duration when performed in its entirety, but its eight 10-minute iterations (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b) may also be programmed individually or in suites. Each iteration labeled "a" begins with a group of three pitch-classes that gradually combine with a second trichord…
Vessels: Spellbook in the House of Hearts
Songs from Vessels: Spellbook in the House of Hearts is a collection of songs from my VR micro-opera cycle Vessels. Each song is a kind of evocative painting, intertwining technology with the sensual, the poetic, and the eerie. Spells 37 and 25, depict a gramophone with a spider at its base and a snake as the speaker.
Hide Behind The Silence EP 2
Vladislav Delay presents the second EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series with five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label Rajaton.Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it nev…