"As a member of 70’s proggers Heldon, Georges Grünblatt made the unusual journey from psych rocker to full time psychiatrist. But not before his one and only 1980 album K-Priss bombed commercially. The solo offering was recorded in the autumn of 1977 for Polydor with his Heldon contemporaries; the influential guitarist Richard Pinhas, Francois Auger, Didier Batard and others, while Jean-Louis Rizet, one half of the one-off prog collaborative Besombes and Rizet who put out the spacey masterpiece …
Limited edition of 500 copies worldwide, each hand-signed and individually numbered by Michael Nyman. Cine Opera represents Michael Nyman at a creative peak, bringing together the old and the new, a powerful statement on the timeless nature of his work, his continuing relevance, and his enduring success in multiple artistic fields. La Traversée de Paris was first commissioned in 1989 to mark France’s bi-centennial celebrations. Nyman continued to use tracks from La Traversée de Paris in other pr…
First ever reissue of the sought after album Fourth Sensation, originally released in 1970. The band was formed by Ares Tavolazzi (I Giganti, Area) - who later was an active session musician as well as being a leading figure in the Italian jazz scene, accompanying Gil Evans, Steve Lacy, Max Roach, Lee Konitz, Phil Woods and many others - on guitar, Ellade Bandini on drums, keyboardist Vince Tempera - who, a few years later formed the progressive supergroup Il Volo with Mario Lavezzi and Al…
**ltd 100 on Red vinyl** One of the coolest 70s soundtracks from the great Stelvio Cipriani – served up here with a huge amount of bonus tracks too! The music here was scored for a Mario Bava horror film, but it often has a quality that's more lean and lovely overall – that current of sex that we always love in Ciprani's best work, and which made him a key force for transforming the Italian bossa and jazz soundtrack style of the 60s into something completely new for the 70s! There's a lo…
Killer 1988 “art-gallery” edition - each copy of the original LP was hand-painted by the composer in a loose, water-colour smear / drip style beautifully reproduced here, albeit utilizing the same image for each replica - covering a pair of beautiful, drifting piano pieces composed & executed by Giuseppe Morrocchi in 1980 & 1984.Seemingly influenced by Charlemagne Palestine’s “Strumming Music” approach - coupled perhaps with Lubomyr Melnyk’s “Continuous Mode” - the slow rise from decisive…
Creel Pone treatment of this majorly slept-on set of dark, minimal, surrealist electro-acoustic & Musique Concrète pieces from the Polish composer Joanna Bruzdowicz, a member of the GRM under Pierre Schaeffer’s tutelage between 1968 & 1970 & long-term collaborator of Agnes Varda’s, for whom she scored several films from the mid-80’s on, including “Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse.” The LP in question (the only one to feature her electronic work) consists of the three-part “Homo Faber” suite - compose…
When you think of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, we’d wager most of the time it’s in context of their seminal ‘60s and ’70-s output. However, The Soundhouse (1983) proves there was much to marvel at in their early ‘80s catalogue, too, summing up the great advances in technology between their Radiophonic Workshop - 21 collection and their acquisition of a Fairlight CMI - the first digital sampling synth - which is thoroughly, imaginatively demonstrated throughout. Horses for courses and all that b…
Hamburg’s Growing Bin go back to the roots of Trance, as in hypnotic electronic rhythms for dancing, with this Baldelli-favoured suite produced in Germany 1983-86. “If you’ve kept a keen ear to the underground, you may have noticed a trance revival creeping into the dance floors and darkrooms of late; a post ironic return to the 64 bar breakdowns and peak time key changes of your serotonin drenched youth. So what’s this then? Has Growing Bin gone from groundbreaker to copycat? Dig a little deepe…
Recorded in 1981 & issued “privately” in 1983 (on Jean Marc Foussat’s own Pyjama imprint) this is a screamer of a record, taking in a decidedly unique approach to minimal musique concrète assemblage (there’s an emphasis on presenting banal, interstitial in-situ sound-events [coughs, footsteps] that reminds of Luc Ferrari one minute ... before a sudden barrage of jackhammer-noise, plunderphonic mangling [is that ... Barbra Streisand !?!], and high-end oscillator scree takes over pushing this clos…
Reproduction of a rather odd, late 70s upstate New York “Electronic Music for Healing” lineage LP, credited only to the corporation "Pythagoron Inc. 1977;” about whom we know very little - and maybe it’s best it stays that way. Explaining the music enclosed - encased within, really, without resorting to euphemism is rather hard to do here; so I’ll just give you a rundown of what I hear:The A-side starts out with a surge of White Noise, then suddenly out of nowhere an out of time Echoplexed Dru…
Yet another follow-up; actually in this case a precursor to a prior Creel Pone, Ruth White’s “7 Trumps from the Tarot Cards • Pinions” (LS 86066) - originally released just eight notches before her “Flowers of Evil” (LS 86058) in the discography of the now-legendary Mercury Limelight series - in between, Pierre Henry’s “Mass for Today • The Green Queen” (LS 86065), the Percussion of Strasborg’s “Signals” (LS 86064) , Fifty Foot Hose’s “Cauldron” (LS 86062), “Response: Electronic Music from Norwa…
Once again, i’m reminded that one can twist & turn, uncovering rocks looking for stray Paleozoic lifeforms one’s whole life and still never find 0.01% of what’s out there. To my knowledge, the early 70s platter replicated here is the sole LP by one Bruno Menny; he’s mainly known for his endless CV of engineering, arrangement, and production credits for people like Mouloudji - yes, the voice on the Jean Genet / André Almuro "Un Condamne a Mort" LP - Michel Portal, Benoît Widemann, and a little-kn…
Two discs covering three self-issued LPs of 8-bit digital grind by Boston-area composer John Holland; as unheralded and unbeknownst as they come. Despite living in the hub for 24 years, and being a rabid fanatic of exactly this sort of thing, I had never seen nor heard head nor hide of either release, proving all too well that there are still gems out there waiting to be mined. On par with such proto-Digital-Synthesis masterworks as Daniel Arfib's "Musique Numerique", Pietro Grossi's "Compute…
Unearth is the first solo recording from Australian born, Berlin based composer and drummer Tony Buck in 15 years. Many would recognise Buck from his work with the iconic Australia avant trio The Necks. His history as a player however reaches much further than this engagement. Over the past few decades, Tony has cultivated a language that escapes easy categorisation. With Unearth he delivers his most accomplished solo composition. Built across several years, the record is the culmination of his …
**ltd 100 on Red vinyl** Demonic sounds, but surprisingly sweet as well – done with this easy-flowing style that's really wonderful – and much more similar to the seductive sound library work of Alessandro Alessandroni, than to some of the starker, darker horror of the time! There's definitely some spooky passages, but they're almost always warmed up in really nice ways – both with keyboards, and with these wordless vocals from the lovely Giulia De Mutiis, who drifts through the record like some…
**193 unreleased before recordings** Le Paradis Blanc was recorded in 1983, it is also the music of the movie titled Le Paradis Blanc and directed by Etant Donnés the same year. The film and music were part of a three days installation and performance of Etant Donnés in the ELAC (Espace Lyonnais d’Art Contemporain) at the Fifth Symposium of Art Performance in Lyon in 1983 : one day for the construction of the installation, one day with a performance and one day for the destruction. The film…
Yumiko Tanaka is a gidayu shamisen player active in the fields of contemporary classical and improvised music as well as traditional Japanese music. Tanaka performed as a musician and actress in Hashirigaki (premiered in 2000), a music theater production by German composer/director Heiner Goebbels; and created the music for and performed in Dogugaeshi (premiered in 2004), an object theater work by American puppeteer Basil Twist. Based on these experiences, in December 2010 she created, pr…
Since the 1980s, Pascale Criton has been exploring sound variability, microtunings, multisensory receptions and the spatialization of listening. Silvia Tarozzi, violin, and Deborah Walker, cello, are two adepts of contemporary and experimental music and free-improvisation. Together with Pascale Criton they have been exploring microtonal extended techniques and gestural processes on a violin and a cello tuned in 1/16 of a tone. The compositions that resulted from this process are conceived…
Typically enchanting electro-acoustic enigma from Philip Jeck, forming a richly abstract narrative from the reactive fizz and and timbral thizz of smeared shellac textures and their keening, dissonant harmonics Philip Jeck studied visual arts at Dartington College of Arts in the 1970's and has been creating sound with record-players since the early 80's. He has worked with many dance and theatre companies and played with muscians/composers such as Jah Wobble, Steve Lacy, Gavin Bryars, Jak…
Kurt Liedwart, a Moscow-based musician and curator of Mikroton Recordings, developed his own art and sound that cross genres, mixing music practices such as electroacoustic and improvised music, noise and glitch, and art movements such as Actionism and Fluxus. He plays a wide-ranging array of instruments such as analog synthesizers, electronics, light-controlled electronics, electromagnetic devices, laptop, sinewaves, field recordings, percussion processed electronically in real time.
"To…
Dammit, those Elks are exploiting their instruments for no good again. While Marta and Billy seem to have gotten it all wrong regarding their very strange collection of machinery, it's just a careless abuse how Liz and Kai handle their horns. Perhaps from the experimental music scenes of Berlin and Vienna one might expect a rather reduced and elegant sound world, but these Elks have some other ideas in store, and don’t mind to get their antlers a little dirty. There is no fear here of the…
Petr Vrba and Veronika Mayer use non-idiomatic improvisation to research the combination of textural materials, crossing them with vibrations of objects on the speakers, pure sound waves, feedbacks, tones coming from trumpet, accordion, electronics, and laptop, culminating in the creation of a muscular frenetic soup of tense energy fields.
Petr Vrba explores non-idiomatic improvisation using trumpets, clarinets, vibrating speakers and other electronics which made him one of the most activ…
Cilantro is the duo of multi-instrumentalists Angelica Castello on paetzold, ukulele, organ, tapes, & electronics, and Billy Roisz on electric bass, organ, tv, piezzo, computer & electronics, scrutinizing the activity in bordering areas between noise and silence, tenderness and rudeness, beat and drone, inner consciousness and outer awareness, control and freedom.
"Cilantro presents a world full of enigmas, labyrinths, sometimes abrasive, sometimes ecstatic, a complex and delicate subjec…
From the city that brought you LSD comes a new album by Marco Papiro, a Swiss-Italian musician and graphic designer who has gained some notoriety with his album covers for the likes of Panda Bear and Sun Araw. "Automare" is Papiro's seventh solo album, recorded on 4-track cassette, on hard-disk, in public and in private, entirely self-produced and now released on Nikolaienko's Muscut label. The five hauntingly evocative tracks offer a variety of atmospheres from surreal to arcane, from ce…
Derek Bailey plays electric guitar plus VCS3 synthesiser on Where is the police?; on Christiani Eddy he plays electric guitar unamplified and on The squirrel and the ricketty-racketty bridge he plays two acoustic guitars at the same time (not double-tracked). The improvisations are on electric guitar.' Recorded February 1971; equipment and recording Hugh Davies and Bob Woolford. Improvisations 4, 5, 6, and 7 and the three compositions were previously released on Incus LP 2 in 1971. In 1978 the r…
Body Consonance is the follow up to Precipice, Byron Westbrook’s critically acclaimed debut LP from 2015 (Root Strata).Taking a turn towards greater immediacy, this new album is far from “ambient” with ecstatic abstract rhythm as its anchor. An artist who also operates in visual contexts, Westbrook utilizes binaural qualities of the stereo listening format to sculpt three-dimensional sounds in perpetual motion, producing works that are both pointillistic and psychedelic. Body Consonance is …
Only a year after his debut solo album with Hands in the Dark, Brian Case is back this August with Spirit Design. The record consists of ten new experimental tracks of concrete dub and electronic wizardry. This sophomore solo record is drastically different from the Chicagoan’s first opus, Tense Nature. Case has added vocals and more beats to his compositions, putting together an album that promises and lends itself to a loud, moving live experience. Although in ways it is more experimenta…
2014 Release. * Limited edition of 100 copies worldwide. Hand signed and numbered by Marina Abramovic * 512 Hours is the first major performance by Marina Abramović since her monumental piece The Artist is Present, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2010, in which visitors were invited to sit in silence opposite the artist and gaze into her eyes for an unspecified amount of time. Abramović performed this work every day for three months. In a unique work created for the Serpentine, Abra…
On November 17th 1961, John Coltrane played at the Granada Theatre in Walthamstow. On November 23rd, 55 years later, free jazz legend Evan Parker made this six track recording in the same space with John Russell and John Edwards. This recording has personal resonances for Evan: he attended Coltrane's performance 55 years ago at the Granada. Evan Parker: "John Russell, John Edwards and I are going to record in that same cinema. It has had the usual chequered life of classic old cinemas of the…
Extended hypnotic explorations from Brooklyn’s experimentalist Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (Lichens, OM). Two long-side pieces of futuristic afro-dub, slowly evolving arrangements of voice and modular synthesizer soundscapes. Ethereal and melancholic on the first side with Magnamite, exhibiting 'the relationship of machine and human, showcasing the coupling of the two instruments'. Drifting and wildly pulsating on Heart of Sogguth that 'transforms this relationship into a unified human machin…
This is a selection of previously unreleased tracks created at home by Enrico Serotti (fmember of Confusional Quartet and Stupid Set), without any purpose other than the fun of playing with new musical devices. The tracks date from 1983 to 1999. A pretty long time span, coinciding with the transition from analog to digital technology. Cover Art by Alessandro Pessoli.
Drone Grand Maester Spencer Clark teams up with Finnish toy-wizard Jan Anderzen (Tomutonntuu / Kemialliset Ystavat) to create psychedelic magic. You just need the guy from The Skaters and one really out-there Finnish dude to make sure you get the best kind of weird there is. Animal calls pierce the layer hypnotic synths, drowned by tiny bells engorged by fuzzy delay and reverb pedals to evolve into alien laments from a different dimension. With its bubbling baselines, boiling percussion an…
Esoteric synths and classical harmonies from The Skaters mastermind. Pinheads in Fantasia is probably Spencer Clark's most out-there endeavor. At some point his records became more than just trippy music with crazy artwork and his use of symbols and poetry started to take a more central part in the releases. He even stopped calling them albums, preferring the term soundvisions instead. Fourth World Magazine Vol. II is the culmination of these tendencies, sounding like the creation myth for …
A two-CD live document of Jojo Hiroshige solo: two hours of his singular song-and-noise art, voice and roaring guitar fused into one body. The Hijokaidan founder using sound to reach what words cannot. On Alchemy, 2016.
It's finally here: a foundational album of electronic music which has not been available on vinyl since its original release almost 40 years ago. This newly remastered version is pressed up on heavyweight vinyl, made in an edition of 500 copies. Ahead of his time, armed with a VCS3, Synthesizer and guitars, Claudio Rocchi began treating all instruments with tape delays and echo effects, while absorbing the influence of the electronic music idioms of the time and exploring the potential of new te…
Doxy present a reissue of George Russell Sextet's Ezz-thetics, originally released in 1961. The sextet features George Russell, Dave Baker, Don Ellis, Eric Dolphy, Steve Swallow, and Joe Hunt. Includes bonus track. Edition of 300 (numbered). "With a group of musicians assembled for the occasion, pianist/composer/theorist George Russell goes into Riverside's studios in 1960 to record Ezz-thetics. Nowadays frequently found on 'greatest jazz albums' lists, this fantastic record is difficult to cat…
Mike Kitcher's Processed Snippets falls firmly into the category of new exotica, a music created from a very specific location that becomes placeless through abstraction. Kitcher reworks moments recorded from the SWP Records re-mastered release of Congo Traditional 1952 & 1957 (SWP 046LP, 2014), a collection of recordings by Hugh Tracey. Tracey, a pioneering documenter of traditional music across the continent of Africa was notable for the extent of his travels and the breadth of his work, as we…
2015 release. Along the arc of Lucrecia Dalt's music, beyond what steers her so allusively away from self-repetition, there is an undefinable forward inertia. What can explain, for instance, the near absence of her voice? Is it personal interest, renunciation, an embrace? Is she driven by a backdrop of conceptualism, or is this a lyrical wandering? What is known, for starters, is that she made Ou immersed in a cinema of her own, curatorial creation. Ou's filmic quality is a direct consequence of…