New Arrivals
Turntable History: Spin Ensemble
Arnold Dreyblatt's Turntable History: Spin Ensemble was recorded March 12, 2011 by Ernst Karel at Boston's Goethe Institut. This performance version of the original piece (released on CD as IMPREC323) provides a different perspective on the original composition. From the original studio version of the piece: Arnold Dreyblatt (b.1953) is an American composer who has studied with La Monte Young, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Lucier. He is a member of the German Academy Of Art. He has released wo…
Stundenbuch/Book of Hours
Solo piano, performed by Roger Woodward. "It is fitting that Hans Otte's Stundenbuch/Book Of Hours, recorded by pianist Roger Woodward on a Bösendorfer at the Radio Bremen concert hall, is a co-production between Celestial Harmonies and Radio Bremen. The piece was commissioned by Radio Bremen for its Pro Musica Nova 1996, the highly-regarded biennial festival for contemporary music founded (in 1961) and directed (from 1962) by Hans Otte, during his tenure as Head of Music at Radio Bremen (1959 t…
Not a leaf remains as it was
In 1995 Steve Peters and Steve Roden toured as a trio with singer Anna Homler; sometimes they would vocalize behind her, and they liked the way their voices blended together. They then spent about 15 years saying that “someday” they should record a voice-based project together. Aside from the physical distance between them, the problem was always: What would we sing? Neither wanted to write or sing lyrics.Inspiration came in the form of a book of Japanese jisei – poems allegedly written by monks…
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…
13 miniatures for Albert Ayler
Would it be that when everything finishes that everything starts? Rather than a postlude or a coda, the five minutes a cappella by Joe McPhee on the tenor saxophone placed here in thirteenth position, sound like a song of love and hope coloured utopia which condenses the invisibility of lives which are here and then are no longer here.from the effervescence of an aviary where chirpings and warbling intersect (from Raphael Imbert, Urs Leimgruber, McPhee, Evan Parker and John Tchicai each sax seem…
Viva Negativa! - A Tribute To The New Blockaders Vol I
Volume I in a series of UK-European-US and Japanese artists' tributes to the pioneering UK Noise group The New Blockaders including exclusive tracks by: Nocturnal Emissions, Dieter Muh, Smell & Quim, Putrefier, srmeixner, Jazzfinger, Evil Moisture, Ashtray Navigations, Mutant Ape, Cheapmachines, Anomali, Halalchemists (incl. members of Skullflower, Culver and Snotnosed). Artwork by Richard Rupenus (TNB). The New Blockaders are a group who, more than any other, define the essence of true…
Drape
12k kicks off its 11th year with a new release that takes the label down new sonic pathways. Caught between the organic and electronic minimalism that 12k is known for and the unconventional Japanese pop musings and songwriting style of Happy, Moskitoo’s Drape is an infectously strange, bleepy, and dreamy debut release.Sanae Yamasaki (Moskitoo) hails from Sappporo, Japan in the country’s northern-most prefecture of Hokkaido. Perhaps a reaction to the cool climate of her home, her multi-instrumen…
Seven
Third album from Oslo's PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE & Chicago's KEN VANDERMARK who have previously worked together in SCHOOL DAYS & FME follows their 2 "Dual Pleasure" releases. While it seems barely possible, the duo have become even more groovy on this third album. Free Jazz w/roots in both the American & European traditions: warm, groovy, melodic & funky at the same time as it is raw, wild & energetic. The pure art of spontaneous music. Independent underground jazz at its very best & a free jazz master…
Ekhnatòn - Ricerca Italiana Semplice Numero Uno
This compilation, originally released in 1984 as a vinyl LP by Multiple Configuration in collaboration with the legendary ADN label, is finally available again in a completely remastered CD version. "Ekhnaton" collects tracks recorded by the most daring and remarkable bands that were active in the experimental Italian scene during those years. "Simple Italian Research Vol. 1" was (and still is) the subtitle of an album that includes two tracks from each of the following bands: Maze 1066, Tasaday…
Bridges intact
Dan Burke alone or with Thymme Jones and Ben Vida. All music completed during 2010 by Daniel Burke.
Celtichants
Lost and found all of a sudden, this album is the exploration made with the chanting voices of unknown nature. Choral fragments were decomposed and restructured, arranged with the effects and atmospheric shifts, creating the mysterious soundtrack to the otherworldly ceremony. These echoing voices are going directly from the lost memory or the daydreams, nobody can tell you where they are from, where they are calling you. Here are some words of the author, giving you just the hint but not t…
Concentration of the Stare
Spend any amount of time in the company of Keith Rowe and the names of certain painters will arise in conversation with some frequency. Caravaggio, Twombly and, among others, most definitely, Mark Rothko. Just as, long ago, he'd imagined what the guitars in Braque's cubist painting might actually sound like, so, I think, he did with Rothko, often referring to the way the "tinged" the space in which they were hung. For some time, in the early oughts, Rowe tried to place his music in a similar are…
Old and new acoustics
“All music by Sharif Sehnaoui – no cuts & no overdubbing. Recorded by Fadi Tabbal on the 9th of june 2009 at Bustros palace, Beirut. Mixed & mastered by Fadi Tabbal at Tunefork studios, Beirut. Artwork & design by Mazen Kerbaj. Produced in Lebanon by Al Maslakh.” label info
Noise Art
An album of unreleased music made by Jeff Keen, one of the UK's great avant garde artists. This is music found on cassettes in his studio after his death. It was made by Jeff (throughout the 1980s) using field recordings from his local amusement arcade: radio, TV, films, an Atari, a ZX Spectrum, a delay unit and a WASP synth. This is the first Jeff Keen album ever issued. Jeff Keen is one of the great undiscovered artists of our times. A missing link between the Dadaists, Cocteau, Warhol, …
Kappe
To paraphrase online reports: Svarte Greiner's Erik Skodvin comes riding from the dark, epic wastes of Scandinavialand, quaffing wyrmblood out of a hellmug and pronouncing mad soliloquies of doom. This kind of marketing creates strange dissonances with the music on Kappe. Sure, it's gloomy and foreboding. But it's also strident and glacially paced; it sounds more like a depressed La Monte Young than an heir of metal ancestry. At the same time, it strongly evokes the modulating bass o…
Massacre
In "massacre" Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. An opera for five singers, nine musical instruments and electronics.Based on Christopher Marlowe’s drama »The massacre at Paris«, Wolfgang Mitterer paints an acoustic picture of destruction, conspiracy and the thrill of power. His protagonists virtually rid themselves of their identities, turning into typological representations of different points of view. The concrete e…
You+Me+The Continuum
Primordial Undermind's second full-length blast of psychedelic freakout guitar bliss evolves the sonics found on their critically-acclaimed September Gurls debut into freer, more expansive territory, while retaining plenty of the finely-honed song craft familiar to those lucky enough to have grabbed any of their unfailingly excellent singles. Long modal excursions into the heart of free guitar darkness like "Device", "Turning of the Worm" and "Persistence of Trinity", are counterbalanced by defi…
Kataract
This album is a single forty-minute track exclusively made up from recordings of waterfalls within America's Pacific Northwest. The source material was cultivated and mixed over a two-year period and takes the form of a monstrously powerful, ferociously noisy concrète piece. Menche has always situated his work towards the extremes of electroacoustic music and Kataract is no exception, but for all the turbulence and extreme frequency manipulation here there's a level of detail on show th…
Somnambulance to Dream General
"Somnambulance" is a reworking of an album of odd and obscure tracks that was released in a microscopic edition on CD-R before. For this CD, Mr. Liles has provided his funniest and possibly most controversial artwork as of yet. You get an hour of music of many different styles: Andrew Liles' trademark of eerie and spooky sounds is there; also electronics and a whole range of instruments are placed in between sketches and longer tracks. And if all this weren't enough, you get three bonus tracks t…
I Wish I Didn't Dream
Wish I Didn’t Dream, the new album of duets by guitarist Loren Connors and vocalist Suzanne Langille, was cut in just a few hours of studio time. But the pieces started falling into place 15 years earlier on the 10th floor of a nondescript building in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. It was there, at the old location of the Brecht Forum, that Connors got to know writer and WFMU DJ Kurt Gottschalk, who was curating a concert series there. On occasion Tom Abbs (now President of Northern Sp…