New Arrivals
Archive #1
The IMO is a very large improvisors ensemble, founded in september 2010, that usually gather about 35 musicians per concert, from all switzerland and beyond. From the, expected, mess of the first concerts emerged a collective consciousness and involvement from the impressive number of musicians included in this ambitious projet. After a year - and 7 concerts - 40 of them met during 3 day during the 2011 summer, marking a sensitive step in the orchestra progression. Working deeply a certai…
Inanimate Nature
the first title in yasunori saito’s exhaustive survey of the music of masayuki takayanagi via his jinya disc imprint... the arrival of these discs in the mms catalogue has been a long time in the making; extremely glad to have these seminal documents of free-scrape/noise-guitar crossover in stock !!!this disc features takayanagi on solo “tabletop guitar” as recorded “aug 4, 1990 at ‘new direction for the arts, regular concert vol.69’ jean jean tokyo” - nothing at all like fred frith, keith rowe,…
Home
The Preservation label presents Home, the third album from Olan Mill from Hampshire in the United Kingdom. Olan Mill is the recording project of composer and producer Alex Smalley, who to-date has received rapturous acclaim for his work that holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience. On Home, Smalley has mined his most expansive territory yet to create a thrillingly evocative and deeply felt body of work. The tender clusters of sound that ha…
13 & 14 for Guitars
Composed by Taku Sugimoto. Tetuzi Akiyama: guitar. Recorded live at Loop-Line on October 23, 2009. Recorded by Taku Sugimoto. Mastered by Taku Unami. Drawing by Taku Sugimoto.
Ecotono
“The word Ecotono is built from two roots. Eco (oikos/casa) and tono (tonos/ tensión). An ecotono, or ecotone, is a habitat created by the juxtaposition of distinctly different habitats; an edge habitat; or an ecological zone or boundary where two or more ecosystems meet. It is a transition area between two distinct habitats, where the ranges of the organisms in each bordering habitat overlap, and where there are organisms unique to the transition area. An ecotone region provides conditions of b…
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…
Malaikat dan Singa
Arrington de Dionyso is a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, synths and bass clarinet, does Tuvan throat singing and generally sings with the intensity of a madman. And despite being an America, on Malaikat dan singa he sings in Indonesian, which, thanks to his idiosynchratic singing style, makes him sound particularly demented. As it happens, the lyrics are adapted and translated lines from poems by William Blake. Not that you would understand a single one of them unless you know Indonesia…
Orchestral Works
Beautiful boxet with 5 CDs "It would be an understatement to say that Iannis Xenakis, who passed away nearly ten years ago, marked the whole second half of the 20th century. Whether or not assisted by computer, he built vast musical architectures, which diverge resolutely from what was being done at the time and is still being done: another world of sounds, combined according to a different, but never gratuitous, approach resulting in something magical. The listener is surrounded by sound, immer…
Kippschwingungen
In 2007, Frank Bretschneider was invited to compose music for the Subharchord, a unique electronic instrument developed during the 1960’s at the RFZ, the technical center for radio and television of the East German postal service. Built in a limited edition of eight machines total, only three Subharcords (in Vienna, Trondheim and Berlin) are believed to survive to this day. The Subharchord is, broadly defined, a subharmonic sound generator, comparable soundwise to the Mixturtrautonium. It’s sugg…
Durée
Back in 1999, on the forefront of the Japanese electronic/acoustic microsound scene, was the then two-piece live improvisation band Minamo (two more members were added in 2001 to make the current four-piece lineup). Their live concerts helped pioneer this hybrid of delicate and natural instrumentation with microscopic electronics and subtle digital processing bringing an organic richness to a genre that threatened to remain coldly digital. Fans of Minamo not lucky enough to see them create their…
Kontinent Varèse
On"Kontinent Varèse" col legno has assembled seven major works of a pioneer of electronic music, performed e.g. by the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, the RSO Vienna and Martin Grubinger!Edgar Varèse is regarded as one of the pioneers of New Music, and with good reason. His piece “Ionisation” was the first-ever composition written exclusively for percussion ensemble to be performed in a traditional concert hall setting; and he explored and searched intensely for sonic experiences. Varèse integra…
Morning And Sunrise
At some point all great explorers, from Amundsen to Kishan Singh Rawat, come to an opening up and cast their minds across a big space. A clearing, a promontory, a look out from a place no one's been before. Jakob Olausson ventured deep on Moonlight Farm, his debut for De Stijl in the winter of 2005. His singular expression returns on Morning and Sunrise, an explorer's codex, a gaze through to what's more important and less seen. The path yet traveled and the sun arcing over it. Morning and Sunri…
Sonatas
Markus Hinterhäuser shows us a terrific interpretation of the piano sonatas from the russian composer. Massive music!They say that Galina Ustvolskaya led a very secluded life, that she was a loner. It is amazing, though, how distinct an image of her emerges from the almost meditative way in which she immersed herself in structures, dynamics and combinations of pitches. And not only that. You can hear the concentration on her work and the contrasts within the scope of an existence, some even say…
Forbidden Planets
With Electronic music’s current resurgence and interest in the form at an all time high, this superb 2 CD set, containing compositions and original recordings by the pioneers of this fascinating style of sound, compiled here for the first time, is certain to attract enormous excitement amongst fans of the genre. Featuring tracks recorded largely in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, from names as diverse as the ever popular John Cage, Edgar Varese, Daphne Oram, Henri Pousseur, Miklosz Rozsa, Pierre…
Michelangelo Antonioni
The third (and perhaps final) project in the film director series which began with Andrei Tarkovsky - Another Kind Of Language and Yasujiro Ozu - Hitokomakura. Michelangelo Antonioni - Trilogy And Epilogue focuses upon the Italian auteur's landmark 'tetralogy' of films L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962) and IlDeserto Rosso (1963). Antonioni was known for not being very keen to use music in his films, partially because he wanted the films to tell their stories free from 'add…
Tramp (Deluxe Edition)
2CD deluxe edition includes the album, demos for each album track, plus a bonus track demo. Repackaging includes a self-portrait & liner notes about each song taken from VAN ETTEN's journals. A startling collection, filled w/ as much defiant rock as pious, minimal beauty. There are declarative hymns, & remarkably sultry numbers. Guest appearances from Jenn Wasner (WYE OAK), JULIANNA BARWICK, Zach Condon (BEIRUT). NO CANADA/NO EXPORT(SAKI)
I Plan To Stay A Believer
The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield. "Bassist/composer William Parker is among the most active and highly regarded musicians performing today. The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield is the first project in his 35-year career devoted to the music of another composer; here Parker interpolates the mighty Mayfield songbook with an equally mighty 8-piece band. Curtis Mayfield was a prophet, a preacher, a revolutionary, a humanist, and a griot. Words that all apply to William Parker himself. I Plan To S…
Sudoku 82
Specially priced CD single stickered with glowing reviews from Howard Skempton, Kyle Gann, and The Wire. This spare, beautiful, spacious 20-minute piece for eight pianos was composed utilizing systems derived from sudoku puzzles and GarageBand software.
Four malleable
This is a limited edition of 300 copies. "Imaginative Elements" (2004), "From Modified Tapes" (2005), "Sceneries" (2006), and "Nocturne" (2009). "My work over the last several years has focused on the investigation of aural phenomena, environment, spatial listening, structure, natural and evolving processes, function, possibilities, and materiality. My interests have led me to explore acoustics, psychoacoustics, binaural beats, and diverse methods of recording sound, and the application of syste…
New Sights, Old Sounds
A much-needed reissue of Derek Bailey's 1978 2-CD Japanese release on the Morgue label, the first disc a series of studio improvisations and the second presenting two live performances in Nagoya and Kalavinka.Recorded and originally issued in Japan in 1978, the contents of this two-disc set quickly became something of a collector's item as the album quickly went out of print. Happily, the master tapes were reacquired for release on Incus in 2002, providing further documentation of a rich portion…