New Arrivals
Sonic brotherhood - DTFP Israel 2009
Improvised music with exception of Irinia-Kalina' solo. Mark Dresser (bass), Irina-Kalina Goudeva (bass), JC Jones (bass), Barre Phillips (bass) and Bert Turetzky (bass). Recorded by Ori Winokur, edited, mixed and mastered by JC at the Kadima Studio, Jerusalem, October to December 2010.
New Music For Old Instruments
Curated by Jozef van Wissem the “New Music For Old Instruments” festival took place all over the world: in Brussels, New York, Paris, Utrecht, Antwerp and other cities. The idea was to rid traditional instruments of their clichés. When one thinks of a lute for example the Robin Hood image comes to mind of the player standing under a balcony serenading a lady and getting a flower pot thrown at him. In order to update the instrument, to make it mature and give it it’s recognition it deserves, one …
Bebe Godzilla
The first solo album of Patrick Gauthier (ex. Heldon, Magma, Weidorje) in 1981. Magma+Heldon sound! The original LP was released on CY Records in 1981. Featuring: Christian Vander, Bernard Paganotti, Richard Pinhas, Francois Auger, Didier Batard, David Rose etc. Reissue with elaborate miniature paper sleeve of the original LP. 2007 digital remaster version, limited 1,000 copies
The Shy Volcanic Society At The Bear And Bird Parade
A split album with Volcano the Bear and La STPO. VTB tracks 1-5 and STPO tracks 6-9. Bears and Birds, oh my! One side keeps the hot hot. And the other keeps the weird weird. VTB’s typically atypical entomological set scratches like a hive that has evolved just to the point of thumping out tribal fealties to its giant insect God-Thing. Environmentally ritualized sub-rhythms mix musique-concrete with actual concrete, forming freakishly minimal foundations for the hive of whatevers to swarm within.…
Wayfaring Strangers: Guitar Soli
another gem, a wonderful collection of obscure solo acoustic guitar tunes from the mid 60s up to the dawn of the 80s -- beautiful work from a slew of players we've never heard of -- but we'd put right up there with Fahey and Basho in the way they reach from the back porch to the cosmos with just their fingers and some strings! One thing we love about this set, and the Numero Group releases to date, is how deep they dig and what beauty they unearth, somehow with impeccable sound quality. S…
Ocean fire
Christopher Willits and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s new release, Ocean Fire, is a sublime soundtrack for the ocean. It is an intense and stirring wash of cascading tones and textured harmony. Willits + Sakamoto surprise with rare form in this collaboration, creating a sound world unlike anything they have produced previously. Each artist has gently pulled the other into new sonic territory. Sakamoto’s gorgeous processed piano sound reflects Willits’ beautiful shimmering clusters of notes, a new aspect of…
The Viola Works - volume 9
Volume 9 of Mode’s Scelsi Edition is devoted to the first complete recording of Giacinto Scelsi’s works for viola solo and duo. • Manto was a prophet in ancient Greece. Scelsi translated her oracle maxims into cryptic phonemes which the viola player has to sing simultaneously in the third movement. In Manto, the sound of the viola is expanded and explored via experimental playing techniques. This is the first recording of the third movement. • In Xnoybis, Scelsi’s exploration “into the insid…
13 Japanese birds Kujakubato Vol.7
Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds is a 13 month series of releases inspired by Olivier Messaien's Catalogue D'Oiseaux. Beginning in January 2009 one volume of 13 Japanese Birds will be released each month. The 13th and final volume will be released January 2010. Each volume will be a one time pressing of 1000 copies. Available from Important Records is a deluxe hand made numbered bamboo box to hold the 13 cd collection. Cover art by Jenny Akita. Author, activist, painter and sound artist Masami Akita …
Harmony Series 11-16
In the 'Harmony Series 11-16', very small events are happening in every nook and cranny of the music, and these subtle changes give magical effects to the music. This is in fact not magic at all - all the events are due to the theoretical structure of the music, but the way Pisaro incorporates them into his compositions is so subtle and natural, that the whole impression on his music becomes poetic. When I listen to each piece while carefully paying attention to the details, I feel that the nuan…
O'er A Shalabast'r Tyde Strolt Ay
Repress of the album packaged in a custom made gatefold case and fully remastered by Randall Frazier at Helmet Room studios. A shalabast'r tyde, like unto pantent leather shoes, really doth shyne up. Reflected in the waves are twinkling stars; a smirking harvest moon; herds of passing clouds & hazey pink dots, like legends burned against eyelids after a long stare into an errant brightness. Ka-Spel's penchant for musical procreation is further fathered via this, another outst&ing experimen…
Live at the Vortex
A 2006 concert recording at London's legendary Vortex by Evan Parker (tenor saxophone), Steve Beresford (piano), John Edwards (double bass) and Louis Moholo-Moholo (percussion) with special guest Kenny Wheeler (trumpet & flügelhorn) joining the band for the second set."-psi
Heaps of nothing
The second album from Australian band Naked On The Vague, who have doubled in size for this batch of new material. The tone is characterised by dark and fearsomely heavy garage-punk, with a wafer-thin coating of distortion lending a little extra bite to the band's already vicious dynamics. "Bleak, unrepentant, withering and droll, Heaps of Nothing is a 21st century codification of the gallows wit and mesmerizing otherworldliness of (Dub Housing-era) Pere Ubu, Primitive Calculators and L…
Live installation at Loop-Line recorded by Toshiya Tsunoda
USW56, USW57, USW59, USW61, USW113, these five hand-made electronics hanged from a ceiling have an ultrasonic wave transmitter, a reciever and an amplifier. Each frequency of the ultrasonic wave is about 40khz but slightly different. And when each instrument swings, each frequency changes a little caused by the Doppler effect. On thier instruments we can hear beat signals between transmitted and received ultrasonic waves changed in frequency. (Manabu Suzuki) Where does art work appear? How do pe…
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, …
Aíneen Musta Puhelin / Black Telephone Of Matter
Best known as one-half of acclaimed techno minimalists Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio also has an impressive résumé as a solo artist that stretches back to the early '90s and his association with influential Finnish imprint Sähkö. Recording primarily under the aliases Ø and Philus, and sometimes his birth name (depending on the project), Vainio's aesthetic mission has been consistently and rigorously defined by an investigation into the materiality of sound. Indeed, just about everything in his catalog …
Beyond The Purple Star Zone / Oblique Parallax
Two related classic Saturn LP reissues on a single CD, both recorded at the Detroit Jazz Centre - in 1980 and 1981 respectively. They share an excellent sound quality and great playing - there's a classic version of Rocket No.9 and plenty of otherworldly Moog and electronic keyboards - up there with Ra's best on record. Rocket excepted, all the pieces are original to these LPs and don't appear elsewhere (though the first track of Purple is heard again at the end, with another name (exactl…
Live at the Rothko Chapel
Mural's lush and inviting sound-world incorporates a wide range of percussive, harmonic, and timbral effects and suggests the vastness and mystery of time, as do Rothko's paintings. With Jim Denley on flute and saxophone, Kim Myhr on acoustic guitar, and Ingar Zach on percussion, the trio created a site-specific and improvisational work relating to, and inspired by, the Rothko murals in the Chapel. Recorded at the Rothko Chapel, March 4, 2010. (metamkine)
Drôles D'Oiseaux
Kiko C. Esseiva is a composer with Swiss and Spanish roots who lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. He creates electroacoustic sound pieces that are, not unlike those of the French master of the genre Luc Ferrari, warm, non-academic and colourful, spreading a humanity and richness that is far away from the sterility of a lot of today's electronic compositions. He creates very diversified atmospheres which combine acoustic instruments, noise, human voices, field recordings and static sheets of sound w…
Experimentum Mundi
CD reissue of the ultra rare Multhipla related (on its sublabel Fonia) LP from 1981 - the works of Giorgio Battistelli (b. 1953) are often linked to the theater, and even his instrumental works are highly dramatic, with various instruments and elements considered as 'characters' in a drama. For the past 20 years, 'Experimentum Mundi' has been one of the most-performed works of 'musique concrete,' i.e. music made with everyday objects instead of conventional instruments. In this work, 16 everyday…
Making The Walls Quake As If They Were Dilating
Recording of the sound sculpture in the Polish Pavilion at 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Sound sculpture by Katarzyna Krakowiak. Sound design by Ralf Meinz. Voices by Ulrike Helmholz and Sabina Meyer. Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by by Ralf Meinz. 32-page booklet. 'Architectural Biennale sound sculpture amplifying the entire building of the Polish Pavilion turned into a flat CD ? Will you say it completely misses the point? Brings the real space into a stereo syst…