New Arrivals
Ballads of the Research Department
The Boats are a duo consisting of Craig Tattersall (ex-Hood, The Remote Viewer, and owner of the Cotton Goods label) and Andrew Hargreaves (Tape Loop Orchestra) as well a rotating roster of guest musicians and vocalists. While Ballads of the Research Department is their 12k debut, it follows up a string of critically acclaimed and genre favorites such as Sleepy Insect Music (Flau/Home Normal, 2010), Words Are Something (Home Normal, 2009), and limited editions released on their own Our Small Ide…
Schindler house
This cd documents a series of 3 sound installations originally presented at the Schindler house / MAK center for art and architecture Los Angeles in 2001. Garden was placed near the back of the lot facing the house in a bamboo grove via 8 small speakers. A quiet flexible background for a harmonious life was placed in a small hallway of the house on headphones. Pathway was placed along the front path to the house on 4 larger speakers. The outdoor works were set to relatively low volume lev…
Fancies, forbearance
Fancy: a 17th century term generally describing a composition in which form is of secondary importance. Fancies were usually contra-puntal and in several sections. (The Oxford Dictionary of Music)Fancies (2009) served to reconcile previously unsettled material, based upon a scheme that condones disparity between its constituent parts. In the period since its completion, and subsequent issue on cassette, Fancies has come to represent an antithesis to what I originally termed ‘a work in parenthesi…
Superficial Music
Re-release with bonus tracks recorded in 1982. On 1981's Superficial Music masterpiece, French electronic composer Bernard Szajner presents selections from his previous "Visions of Dune" sessions played backwards and at half speed, enhanced through the use of digital and analog devices, as well as "Oswicim," a three-part reflection on the Holocaust that draws on his own family's experience. Szajner's touch is delicate and evocative, making for a powerful, if understated, listening experie…
How Day Earnt Its Night
"Ben Reynolds is an English solo steel string guitarist and songwriter. In his solo instrumental works he draws upon the vast well of musical inspiration native to the British Isles as well as that found across the Atlantic and beyond. Ben's 2008 recording Two Wings was released on Portland, Oregon label Strange Attractors Audio House and focuses upon sprawling, meditative improvisations and concludes with the track 'Here Toucheth Blues' which appeared on Tompkins Square's Imaginational An…
The orchestral works 1
'Hymnos' (1963) for organ & 2 orchestras. 'Hurqualia' (1960) for large orchestra. 'Konx-Om-Pax' (1968) for large orchestra & chorus. The Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic & Concert Choir. Juan Pablo Izquierdo, conductor. 'Canti del Capricorno' for voices & instruments. Pauline Vaillancourt, soprano. Douglas Ahlstedt, tenor. Volume 2 in Mode's scelsi Edition presents three of his rarely heard and recorded orchestral works, vividly captured in outstanding sound. Hymnos' large orchestra is divided antip…
Pluie Fine
Angharad Davies (violin) and duo Cremaster consisting of Alfredo Costa Monteiro (electro-acoustic devices, speakers, electric guitar) and Ferran Fages (feedback mixing board, electro-acoustic devices). Composed, recorded and assembled between september 2010 and july 2012 in Barcelona. Violin parts recorded by Kostis Kilymis on march 2012 in Oxford. Pluie fine is the result of several exchanges of recorded material shared between Cremaster and Angharad Davies, from 2010 to 2012. Each piec…
Bones
After playing bass with Rodan, pioneers of post-rock and post-hardcore, the long-respected and much-lauded Tara Jane ONeil has formed bands like The Sonora Pine and Retsin and has collaborated with Sebadoh, Papa M, Come, Low and Ida. Her first two solo albums for the Quarterstick label (Calexico, Rachels, June of ‘44), Peregrine and In The Sun Lines drew great acclaim for a rich musical tapestry The Wire has called “evocative dream music”. Consistently on the move, ONeil records all over the US,…
Music for a distance
Music for a Distance is the second release in the small music series. The title of the work in relation to the cover images (abstract photographs of Julius’ wife resembling landscapes merging into a distant horizon) suggests a work of uncommon poetic perception and inspiration. With the opening track "Music for a Distance," Julius achieves a sensitive balance of unpredictability and deliberate design, at times resembling a symphony of insects, complete with crickets and cicadas and rustling leav…
Guts
Deluxe 2LP version. More voraciously bestial soundwork coming from Daniel Menche -- this time, his chosen theme is the piano, in which he attacks, investigates and dissects with the precision of an autopsy surgeon, adding a whole new meaning to the concept of prepared piano, or should we say, unprepared piano, for an all-out assault. Guts lays out quite possibly some of the finest slabs of Menchian sonic mayhem to date. Slightly different track sequence over CD and vinyl formats due to ti…
Stop Playing
Wolfgang Mitterer is playing the organ and leaves no tone unturned. The composer beams the traditional instrument straight into the 21st century – feel free to follow suit!The organ is a machine, and Wolfgang Mitterer certainly knows how to operate machines. Quite early on his passion for this complex instrument got hooked up to the manifold possibilities available in a digital studio setting; so, meanwhile the Austrian composer has become both: a much admired contemporary organist with a pencha…
Reception
The Sons of God: 32 amplified iron plates. Mats Gustafsson: live electronics. Recorded by Olof Madsen on the 5th of March 2006 at Frgfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden. Reception was a sound installation at Frgfabriken (February 18 - March 5, 2006). by the Sons of God and Emanuel Swedenborg and a part of the festival Place and Space, Stockholm New Music. The festival was curated by Magnus Haglund and Magnus Andersson. During the installation period, the following guest-artists were invited for performa…
Five American Portraits
“Ridges and creases / high on the middle forehead / The right temple near the eyebrow / A small ridge under the right eye / The right side of the tip of the nose / The opening of the right nostril / The middle lower lip / The inner ear of the right ear.” Can you tell who it is yet? It’s George W. Bush, of course, or at least part of his head, as seen (or rather heard) in the second of five “American portraits” in words and music by legendary experimental rock outfit the Red Krayola, in collabora…
I Know When it's Time To Get The Fuck Away
From the initial sonic assault of “Apocryphal” to the final “Wrong Affection”, the five tracks guide the listener through shades of early nineties electric blues (think Palace, Songs:Ohia and fellows), sixties psichedelia flavoured from the spirit of Skip Spence. Rella's singing is rich, intense and perfumed, sometimes plunged into deep trance, like in “Are You Expired?” or “Wrong Affection” where instruments and voice rise together in a psichedelic unison building from a country-like ope…
Becalmed
Becalmed is the debut album from Sydney pianist Sophie Hutchings, recorded between two different settings: one with engineer Tim Whitten, best known for his work with The Necks, and one with Tony Dupe, who records on the preservation label as Saddleback. Becalmed isn't an entirely solo affair, and you'll hear Hutchings' family and friends helping her out with violin, cello and percussion - all elements that greatly help bring these recordings to life. Beautifully recorded, elegiac and romantic c…
3 : 1
The cracked, pinched, squeaked, and scraped sounds of the twin trumpets of Mazen Kerbaj and Birgit Ulher and the damped, scrubbed, and rasping sounds of Sharif Sehnaoui seem surprisingly familiar these days. Now that so many players have incorporated these techniques into their vocabularies, it allows one to focus on how they‘re used interactively rather than simply as sounds in and of themselves. Kerbaj and Sehnaoui have gained some visibility as core members of a group of free improvisers base…
SFU 40: Celebrating Electroacoustic Music 1965-2005
Amazing anthology focused on The Electronic Music Studio at Simon Fraser University (SFU) was founded by R Murray Schafer when the university opened in 1965, the third such studio in Canada, after the University of Toronto and McGill University (Montréal). It was located in the basement of the SFU Theatre as part of the Centre for Communication and the Arts. Composers such as Schafer, Anthony Gnazzo, Peter Huse, …
Huge
Following the critical acclaim which has greeted EP 1 Bloom, Die Stadt and Janet Records are proud to announce that Huge EP 2 in the 'Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent' limited edition series by Fovea Hex is out. Fovea Hex continues to shape-shift and to evade & confound those who bray 'what exactly IS it?,' and 'where does it BELONG exactly?,' and 'who exactly belongs to IT?'. If you must bang on the table like that, you won't hear a thing. If this music can be described as 'up-to-the-momen…
Tidings / Amesthyst Waves
Trying to put the last 15 years of music into context, you’d be hard pressed to get anyone to agree on a single thing. If anything, this period has been a collective convergence of all things cool-sounding: naïve experimentalism, academic composition, art-rock synthesis, electronic nihilism/flagellation, and, well, everything else. Mark McGuire could muddy anyones interpretation of the contemporary canon with his buddies in the triadic mega-unit, Emeralds, his collaborative outings in Sun Wa…
Organ
This is Jun Konagaya (a.k.a. GRIM )s first solo album. GRIM released collection of complete sound sources from hanng niap records in 2009. and insanity live performance was resumed after it. And having been released this time is not GRIM but a solo Jun konagaya name. Atrocious feedback/roaring cannot be heard there. "Organ" The malformed story about floating folk song of malformation, such as "Message" of GRIM. Inner surface of the universe is filled with deep sorrow of Jun konagaya, has been ex…