New Arrivals
Quintet
Things get dislocated, gather themselves, spread across areas of varying intensities. More intimate or more complex song. closer to the sacred, left untouched by mediation, even slightly incomprehensible, though mostlyambivalent and reality-piercing. At times, the music seems to lead us to a meaning that is deeper than the textual level. or is it the depth of another possible song? That's when the music takes us to areas that seem perpetually urging, more than their simple addition of voi…
Complete Works for Flûte and Clarinet
The Complete Works for Flute and Clarinet: In both original works and transcriptions, the Ebony Duo explores Scelsi’s use of special sound colors and his coloring of sound. Transcriptions especially prepared by the clarinetist (and pianist) Michael Raster provide the basis for some of the works on the present album. Yet Scelsi’s original intentions incurred no damage as a result of this recrafting. To the contrary! “The formidable technical demands that playing on two strings with in part opposi…
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…
Vital
In March 2006, Idea Fire Company made their first appearances in Europe. Core members Karla Borecky and Scott Foust linked up with Frans de Waard and hit selected hot spots in The Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. Adding de Waard (Beequeen, Shifts, Kapotte Muziek, Freiband, etc) was a brave gamble that paid off handsomely. Armed with only a tiny digital keyboard (Borecky), a radio/cassette boombox and small echo unit (Foust), and a sawed off MS 20 (de Waard), the trio captivated audiences large…
Ceremony
Phoenix Records reissues a digitally remastered edition of People's sole album, the legendary Ceremony -- Buddha Meet Rock, originally released in 1971 in Japan. Nobody's sure if the musicians on this recording ever performed as a group or whether Ceremony was simply a studio super-project. Certainly, guitarist Kimio Mizutani had already enjoyed a certain amount of critical exposure following stints with Love Live Life + One and Masahiko Satoh's Sound Brakers, and it is Satoh's jazzy fuzz guita…
Courant.Air
It is the continuation of a body of work intertwining instrumental and electronic music following the acclaimed 2004-2008 work les arbres (Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2009). The mixture this time is more edgy : a rich and complex electronic sound composition alongside the folk inspired guitar played by Simon Trottier (member of the extraordinary haunted blues band Timber Timbre). After 2 albums of improvised folktronica with Simon Trottier, Nicolas Bernier decided to explore that singu…
'Blow job
Blowjob’ is an album stripped of glamour, fancy artistry and advanced studio techniques. This is one man, one saxophone and the musical intentions of a modern musician. The second album in +3DBs series Music for ONE opens up a different view on improv than that of Michael Duch (Edges - +3DB009.) With Møster, an experimental attitude is mixed with an underlying sense for the history of jazz. This is not jazz anymore though, but a contemporary art form with a solid memory. Upholding a music…
Lithp
Improvised music group originating from Haifa, Israel. Ofer Bymel (drums), Adi Snir (soprano & tenor saxophone saxophone, clarinet), Michel Mayer (guitar), Ronni Benner (guitar). A clean, sophisticated minimalist style and a sound that fits snuggly into the soft abstract current European scene.
Only
Pieces by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Hanns Eisler, Giacinto Scelsi, György Kurtag, Frederic Rzewski, Henri Pousseur, Théodore Botrel, Rudolf Siecynski, and Sephardic songs. Performed/interpreted by vocalist Marianne Pousseur. "I like to listen to music in places that haven't been designed for it. I like when music mixes in with noise. Only came from a very personal desire to open the doors of my musical world to the concreteness of daily life, to tear down the fictional barriers between places a…
Otter Songs
Otter Songs is the culmination of the process that began in 2008 by Lingua Fungi and Alio Die. The idea for the collaboration was born from the initial recordings by Jaakko Padatsu utilizing diverse self made instruments and natural objects including driftwood, snail shells and otter skull ocarinas. The archaic and arctic drones were later complemented with subtle recordings by Stefano Musso with zither, sitar and other acoustic instruments. The collaboration was sealed with final recordings i…
Ural Umbo
Ural Umbo is Reto Mder (Sum of R, RM74) and Steven Hess (Fessenden, Haptic) electrifying internal music through a broad spectrum of instrumentation. Horns, piano, organ, harmonium, bass guitar, strings, electronics, drums and percussion guide the formation of black, subliminal melodies and slow feedback accompaniments. Each piece consumes the organic and dynamically balanced process that created it. With a nod to 1960s horror movie scoring Mder and Hess displace sound from the veil of the supern…
Daydreaming
Debut album by Seattle's Rafael Anton Irisarri, released in 2007 on Deaf Center's Miasmah label. A splendid but pitch black album based on long piano melodies, distant drones and even more distant glitches, "Daydreaming" is a particularely sad and introvert CD, which takes the most emotional and melancholic side of the other Miasmah releases, but expresses them in a very direct and stripped down way. Splendid.
Bloom
First in the 'Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent' series of three CD EPs by this new project founded by Irish singer Clodagh Simonds. Contributors incl. Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Laura Sheeran, Lydia Sasse, Cora Venus Lunny, Toby Arnott, Carter Burwell and Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio. The CD comes in a beautiful embossed cover in an edition of 2000 copies.
Selected passages / Set.grey
Selected passages : During the winter of 2008, I stayed on the campus of a small college in Vermont where I had previously recorded the material for a piece titled 'intervals'. When I first arrived I made recordings of a small radio which was in my room, I would listen to that radio throughout my stay and captured many different sounds from it. I also spent quite a bit of time both indoors and out recording the environments, and made recordings playing some of the pianos which are in vari…
Moss
Moss, is a live recording from a unique collaboration by sound artists/musicians Molly Berg, Olivia Block, Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello. This was a midnight concert at the beautiful Trinity Cathedral in San Jose, CA which was part of the 01SJ Biennial. Olivia and Steve had performed solo sets on the previous nights. The final night was meant to be a duo with Molly and Stephen but the opportunity to play with musicians/friends who we admire so much called out for an invitation to play …
Luminous Night
CD edition: Luminous Night is the first set of new Six Organs Of Admittance material to leap forth from Ben Chasnys' cerebral cortex in 18 months, and what a joy it is. With the release of odds-and-sods collection RTZ earlier in the year there to bridge the gap between 2007s Shelter From The Ash it doesn't seem like he's been away for long per se but for serious Chasny-heads a new album is something to get pretty excited about and with his other musical outlet Comets On Fire either on extended h…
The Temporal Wheel
For all intents and purposes, Grand Salvo is the work of singer-songwriter Paddy Mann. Grand Salvo’s debut album, 1642-1727, and its follow-up, River Road, earned him rave reviews and a solid following at home and beyond for his stark, sensitive and beautiful songs. After a spell living in Europe, Paddy returned to Australia and began work on another album he’d dreamt up while away, A set of songs that acts as a children’s storybook, the album became cursed with too many recording problems and P…
Capsizing moments
A veritable tour de force of 'inside' prepared piano playing - preppiano extensif. The whole of a solo set performed at Les Instants Chavirés near Paris. Sophie Agnel's preparations, neither static nor fixed, evolve during the course of her playing as she adds, moves or removes an object, or replaces one artefact with another. These preparations include disposable water cups, nylon fishing-line, bouncing balls, aluminium ashtrays, aluminium foil, industrial nylon, inner-tube rubber and polished …
SID Chip Sounds: The Music Of The Commodore 64
Compilation of music from classic Commodore 64 computer games. The 18 original pieces of music have been remastered for this release. When people talk about "Commodore 64 music," it's easy to forget they're not talking about a musical style: they're talking about a delivery mechanism. What that convenient phrase hides is the sheer amount of originality and creativity that went into creating the music for games on the Commodore 64. Included on this compilation is some of their most celebra…
Centralia
Mountains’ music is defined by slow builds, and subtle transformations, textures and melodic lines that evolve in a variety of ways to create grand soundscapes and acutely detailed compositions. For Centralia, the duo of Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg wrote and recorded in a way that mirrors the pace of their music. While the current trend in experimental music is towards hyper-prolificity, Mountains have taken their time on Centralia, resulting in an album that is as precise as it is boundl…