New Arrivals
Works 1987-1993
Both of these projects hardly need an introduction. Merzbow is since the late '70s the project of Masami Akita working in the field of noise music, having released a few hundred CDs/LPs/cassettes by now. In 1987 Kapotte Muziek was then the solo project of Frans de Waard, after Christian Nijs left the group early '87. De Waard concentrated on working with other musicians, and started trading tapes with a few musicians he was already in contact with, and one of them was Merzbow. The first release …
What Space Is Made For
The monumental set 'What Space Is Made For' has been recorded in their secret base on the Western Alps, and unlike MCIAA's previous works, it's mostly made of short pieces and songs. In addition to their (un)usual instrumentation (electric and acoustic guitars, space toys, percussion), MCIAA have self-made, modified, and assembled / disassembled primitive electronic equipment. So the result may sound their most 'experimental' as well as their most 'accessible' work to date. An alternate edit of …
Ki
Luigi Turra is a musique concrete composer and graphic designer whose main interest is in the aural balance between silence and tactile perception of sound. A first version of Enso was originally released by Small Voices (Italy) in 2007, but the release suffered from peak-volume distortion due to being mastered too loud, plus the use of compression altered the sound of the work. Here, it is free from distortion and compression. Ancient Silence was originally self- released as a limited e…
Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series Vol. 2
3-CD Set. Recorded between 1960 and 1973, the original eighteen LPs that comprise Earle Brown's legendary Contemporary Sound Series have been highly sought after in the secondary market since 1978 when they were discontinued. These rare and historically important recordings of international avant-garde music have been carefully digitized and remastered by the Earle Brown Music Foundation. Volume two includes music by Nono (Polifonica-Monodia-Ritmica), Bruno Maderna (Serenata No. 2), Luciano Ber…
Ten horned moses descended the mountain
Terrific triple CD set...Formerly of 1990's dark ambient pioneers Endvra. Three previous full lengths on U.K. label Cold Spring. Over three hours of music focusing on subtle changes that command attention and focus; imagine if Philip Glass composed a three hour drone piece... Triple disc set, each disc with its own artwork, held together by a custom band with genuine letterpress printing. Original landscape photos reflecting the mood of each disc by Chris Walton himself, and packaging design by …
Echtzeitmusik Berlin
This compilation of Echtzeitmusik Berlin has been assembled and designed to become a companion to the book of the same title published in 2011 by Wolke Verlag, which reflects on a multilayered phenomenon within Berlin's musical culture, a phenomenon whose influence and meaning has effects that extend far beyond Berlin itself. Having emerged in the open spaces of the city's east side after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and rooted in a cultural coordinate system made up of squats and free im…
Sui poemi concentrici
Deluxe triple cd boxet "to write music for Dante’s entire Commedia... It was not without trepidation that I accepted the proposal for a television production. Especially to accompany a reading of the text, meaning to follow it step by step, but also to support it with solid architecture. It is the opposite of a background created fragmentarily with the situations to which it relates. [Rather] a complete structure that expresses itself within the poem, a unified plan. I thought of a single arch o…
Mort aux vaches
CD, 3-panel engraved sikscreened cover ltd. 500ex. Perhaps I told this before: one sunday afternoon two years I went out to see the farewell event of a band that I never heard of, Dagpauwoog, but I knew all of its members (including Rutger Zuydervelt) and was pleasantly surprised by at least two concerts: soccerCommitee use of voice and guitar blew me away (the female answer to Oren Ambarchi I thought) and Wouter van Veldhoven, who played some analogue synthesizer, a music box, an ancient tape d…
An Accident In Substance
Many years in the making, An Accident In Substance collects all of the 7-inch tracks and a huge number of compilation appearances of Key Ransone's legendary project Small Cruel Party. Like the pungent scent of a campfire or the complex flavor of a good, peaty single malt, Small Cruel Party's mix of environmental sounds, far-off voices, and Cartridge Music-like close manipulation of tiny sounds get into your sinuses, your hair, your jacket, melding into a location-specific surrealist vision …
For Christian Wolff
For Christian Wolff is one of Morton Feldman's final compositions, and stands alongside the four-hours-plus For Philip Guston, the 70-minute For John Cage, and the six-hour String Quartet II. Writing about hearing this work, Christian Wolff says that 'I found the experience of listening to it beautiful and interesting -- it moves away partly from our (Morty's, John Cage's and mine) original preoccupation with just sound and sonority into areas of self-awareness about listening, being a listener,…
Carved Into Roses / Infinityland / Singles
Deluxe triple-pack CD that restores two classic Skullflower albums to print, with a bonus disc of contemporaneous singles. Recorded together and originally conceived as a double CD back in the dark ages of 1995, "Carved Into Roses" and "Infinityland" find the band making a transition from the "heavy" riffs of their early days to a more free-form sound that continues to this day to drive leader Matthew Bower's many guises (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, Mirag, etc). Sporting a revamped …
Another Merzbow records
'We kick-off 2010 with possibly the most essential Merzbow release for many years. This 3CD set is culled from appearances on various compilations, ranging from the most obscure cassette releases, to long out of print gems on labels such as Blast First and Susan Lawly. This material spans an entire decade from 1991 to 2001 and as such, tells its own story of the development and sonic chicanery that is the Merzbow sound during this time. If you only own one Merzbow work, this is the one to…
The New Year Is Over
Nine long and extraordinary tracks collected in a 3 CD, among fluctuating ambient atmospheres, hypnotic rhythmic progressions, circular and motionless stasis, acid psychedelic escapes, evocative electronic reflections... Slow suites of "classic" ambient music suspended and dilated, soft and wrapping sonorities alternated with evocative and dramatic crescendos, through progressive sounds layerings, drones, pulses, distant echoes of human voices and subliminal perceptions of ethnical vibrations...…
Complete Piano Music Vol. 1 - The Prepared Piano 1940-1952
“The interpreter is a very important person indeed in Cage’s piano music, and a top international expert like Steffen Schleiermacher is a must for a complete recording such as this one: he knows the nuts and bolts and all the fine nuances.”
Blanc et Rouge
Awesome reissue: presenting yet another collection of 'absent' works is an evidence of their creators' critical approach and lack of consent to political pressure, under which they had to function. This album is only a selection of compositions belonging to this trend. Under the wing of the Warsaw Polish Radio Experimental Studio emerged dozens of hours of socially engaged music. These compositions to a various degree alluded to the current events but also pointed to the broader historical…
Complete Piano Music Vol. 9 - Etudes Australes Book I-IV
“The interpreter is a very important person indeed in Cage’s piano music, and a top international expert like Steffen Schleiermacher is a must for a complete recording such as this one: he knows the nuts and bolts and all the fine nuances.”
n. 04
Fourth issue of the contemporary art journal about sound: Mark Leckey, Ruth Ewan, Tom Marion and the sonic explorations in San Francisco Bay, notes on Robert Morris' 21.3, interview with Pierre Henry, the Louie Louie project, special interventions by Dora García and Hannah Rickards, etc. This fourth issue of Volume comes under the aegis of the double. Somewhere between duality and dialogue, the praxis of certain artists is illustrated as much by way of music as through the visual art…
Surface Tension Supplement No. 1
Edited by Ken Ehrlich and Brandon LaBelle. Essays by Jennifer Gabrys, Robin Wilson, Michael Rakowitz, Claudine Isé, Octavio Camargo, Kathy Battista, Brandon Lattu, Simparch, e-Xplo, James O'Leary, Kristin Kreider, et al. 'Following the success of Surface Tension: Problematics of Site, Surface Tension: Supplement No. 1 presents contemporary site-based practices in art, architecture and performance through writing, documentation and projects. It offers readers a string of moments when artist…
MSS Meesterd issue 8 (November 2012) zine
the 8th issue in a series of monthly magazines collecting activities and changes in general. while cleaning up my archive for the exhibtion "forward in time (15 jaar ultra eczema)" at lls 387 in antwerp, i found back a mountain of drawings my parents kept from when i was 9 years old.i completely forgot about these, obsessed by skateboarding i aparantly didn't draw anything else but skateboard gear, ramps, tricks and a lot of punk looking dudes..also the commercials of skateboard brands such as "…
Touch and Go: The Complete Hardcore Punk Zine \'79-\'83
Touch and Go fanzine was the brainchild of Tesco Vee and Dave Stimson and was launched in Lansing, Michigan, in 1979. Major fanatics of the new punk happenings in the late 70s, TV and DS set out to chronicle, lambaste, ridicule, and heap praise on all they arbitrarily loved or hated in the music communities in the US and abroad. In laughably minuscule press runs by today s standards, T & G was made by guys within the Midwest scene strictly for the edification of scenesters and pals in oth…