New Arrivals
An Evening Of Dance Constructions
In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. These radically new dances created circumstances for the performers' direct, non-stylistic actions. Each of the pieces was performed in a different place in the loft, with the audience moving from location to location to view them. Some of the pieces required elementary structure…
Divine Horsemen - The Living Gods of Haiti
Maya Deren takes us on a journey into the fascinating world of the Voudoun religion, whose devotees commune with the cosmic powers through invocation, offerings, song and dance. In 1947 filmmaker she received the first Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work in motion pictures based on a proposal for a film on Haitian dance. On trips to Haiti in 1947, 1949 and 1954, she shot several thousand feet of "Voudoun " rituals. The Voudoun pantheon of deities, or loa, is witnessed as being living…
Charisma X
A documentary film by Efi Xirou with composers George Apergis, François Bernard Mâche, Gerard Pape, Curtis Roads and featuring Françoise xenakis, Makis Solomos, Sharon Kanach, Mâkhi xenakis. Charisma X presents the visonary work and ideas of Greek composer and architect iannis xenakis structured around musical performances, interviews and testimonies from xenakis' collaborators and those with a deep understanding of his work. Musical performances and recollections are presented from percussionis…
FLicKeR
“Really, I think, behind everything, he was trying to teach people to see differently.” Genesis P-Orridge, on Brion Gysin...This award-winning documentary about poet, artist, calligrapher and mystic Brion Gysin, portrays the life and legacy of an artist who believed art could revolutionize human consciousness. FLicKeR chronicles Gison’s complex ideas, friendships and influence with some of the 20th century’s key counterculture figures, such as William Burroughs, Kurt Corbain and Marianne Faithfu…
Soundtracks
Richmond-based artist and musician Stephen Vitiello transforms environments with the physicality of sound. His installations have been presented in New York's Whitney Museum, London's Museum 52, Paris' Cartier Foundation, and dozens of other sites around the globe. His music has been released by labels like 12k, New Albion, and Sub Rosa, and has included collaborations with Machinefabriek, Lawrence English, Pauline Oliveros, Scanner, and Anduin. This DVD, however, is his first commerciall…
Live in Japan
"Live In Japan is the first official domestic live Boris DVD to be unleashed! The power, majesty and unique psychedelia that only Boris can deliver is perfectly captured in this stunning visual document. Professionally filmed on the last show of the their worldwide Smile tour 2008. Light dazzled eyes, cut off the view a lot of smoke, and making loud noise can destroy the delicate environment can monitor everything that is Boris.” (label)
Words Of Advice: William S. Burroughs On The Road
In 1983, the counter culture icon and author of the cult classic Naked Lunch (1959), William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), traveled throughout Scandinavia making a series of personal appearances. Twenty years later, filmmakers Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen found never-before-seen footage of his Copenhagen visit and set out on the road to record new material, telling the story of the acclaimed author's later work -- especially what is known as The Last Trilogy -- and his unique perform…
Narratives1: Dreams
"Narratives" is a series of "music text films" that centre on the experience of music mediated through animated text. Kyriakides has developed this form over the years, encompassing about 15 works ranging from orchestral, chamber, to electronic music. In the next year Unsounds will publish the whole collection in a series of DVDs. The first edition: "Dreams", collects the large scale ensemble works - "Dreams of the Blind", "The Arrest" and "Subliminal: The Lucretian Picnic" performed by E…
Max Ernst Hanging
"In this revealing documentary, patron, collector, and curator Dominique de Menil hangs the 1973 exhibition Inside the Sight, in conversation with Max Ernst, the 20th-century Surrealist artist. From installation to opening party, the events that transpire, as captured by filmmakers John and Francois de Menil, provide a rare and intimate glimpse into the process of making an exhibition."
This World Is Unreal Like A Snake In A Rope
A film by Robert Millis. Folk cinema from the eternal never-ending collage that is India. A journey through the ancient Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring Hindu trance ceremonies, street music, festivals, nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, ancient temples, processions, devotions, decay, fireworks, abstractions and more. India is impossible to know: it is impossibly old and impossibly new, impossibly rich and impossibly poor, quiet and chaotic. Offered here is on…
Rewriter
2009 release. Subtitled: Early (conceptual) photographs, (expanded) films, (body) videos and (contextual) works, 1964-1975. "This video archive with accompanying essays traces internationally-renowned media and conceptual artist Peter Weibel's artistic developments from his beginnings through 1979. Weibel started out in 1964 as a visual poet, and was soon transferring the structures of the visual culture from the page to the screen, while still retaining the model of language as one of perceptio…
Ström
Ström is a 45 minute piece for five loudspeakers, live-electronics and live-video, based on an openminded, artistic approach towards electricity. The piece is an attempt to transfer electric current via sound to the audience. The five speakers in the surround system struggle to take over the sonic stream like electro-magnets. Sine waves and noises rotate at breakneck speed around the listeners, try to charge them with static electricity, and, as an ultimate goal, even make them levitate. The vid…
A History Lesson Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984
Videographer Dave Travis grew up in Los Angeles where his dad worked as a cameraman for NBC and CBS news as well as TV shows such as “Chips” and “Fantasy Island.” When he was 15 his dad handed down to him an old video camera and he began shooting punk rock shows in Los Angeles. He eventually became a freelance video editor, working on projects such as Black Flag’s “Slip It In” video as director and editor, “1991 the Year Punk Broke” featuring Sonic Youth and Nirvana as editor, the Kurt C…
Seven Easy Pieces
Belgrade-born Marina Abramovic, the subject of a recent New Yorker profile, is the first performance artist to be honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. To coincide with "The Artist is Present," Microcinema has released Seven Easy Pieces, a document of Abramovic's week-long residence at the Guggenheim in 2005, in which the artist spent seven hours a day performing one of five landmark performance art pieces by other artists and two of her own.Performance art is by nature ephem…
Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention
Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is an amusing exploration of the sonic world of an eccentric creative genius. Artist/inventor/engineer/composer Trimpin shuns the hype and hyperbole of the commercial art world -- yet his freewheeling sculptures and outrageous musical experiments are cherished by museums all over the planet. Filmed over two years, this documentary feature follows the artist/inventor as he designs a 60-foot tower of more than 500 automatic electric guitars; builds an ensembl…
Spiritual Jazz 4: Americans in Europe
Triple LP version. Housed in a deluxe triple gatefold sleeve with download card for the entire album. Jazzman Records presents the fourth volume in their Spiritual Jazz compilation series. It's well-known that throughout the 20th century, fed up with poor working conditions and racism in their home country, many American jazz musicians chose to leave the U.S. in order to live and work in Europe. What's less well-known is how their music developed and evolved during their time on the conti…
Magical Nights
3LP version. Munster Records presents the most complete anthology of the legendary Czech band The Plastic People Of The Universe. PPUS was formed in autumn 1968 in Prague by teenagers and former school-mates bass guitarist Milan "Mejla" Hlavsa and guitarist Jirí "Premek" Stevich. They teamed up with vocalist and clarinetist Michal Jernek and drummer Pavel "Eman" Zeman. Their increasing popularity attracted attention from Ivan Martin Jirous, until then the artistic mastermind of the legendary Pri…
Detroit & Buffalo, USA
amazing 3xLP set: "Memorable and probably unrepeatable two qbico u-nites rec. in Detroit & Buffalo in 2006. worths mentioning: Perry Robinson jamming with Faruq Z. Bey and Northwoods Improvisors, Muruga Free Funk Band in full glory with the lovely Belita Woods and members of P-Funk, like Louie "Babblin" Kabbabie from Lebanon or Treylewd, Perry too (audience got carried away and i saw people dancing on top of other people shoulders ?!) ! Odu Afrobeat Orchestra led by Fela's alumni Adeboye Adegben…
Directions To See A Ghost
“The Black Angels bring the aura of mid-1966 the drilling guitars of early Velvet Underground shows, the raga inflections of late-show Fillmore jams, the acid-prayer stomp of Austin avatars the 13th Floor Elevators everywhere they go, including the levitations on their second album, _Directions to See a Ghost. Mid-Eighties echoes of Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain also roll through the scoured-guitar sustain and Alex Maas’ rocker-monk incantations. But he knows what time it is. ‘You say …
V
Finally the fifth KTL studio album is ready for release. Whereas their previous album IV (EMEGO 089CD) was recorded and made in a relatively short period in a more traditional rock environment, V turns full circle, takes its time and tackles the complex working processes of the European avant-garde. Rooting themselves in such legendary electronic music studios such as EMS in Stockholm and GRM in Paris, Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.) have delivered …