Best of 2014
From The Ming Oracle
Recording by Louise Landes Levi on traditional bowed harp or sarangi and Hilary Jeffery (who also plays with Catherine Christer Hennix) on trombone drone. Levi studied sarangi under the guidance of Annapurna Devi and Ali Akbar Khan. Levi & Jeffery interpret the perennial tradition of Indian raga - informed by the deep dream of the 20th century & the visionary ensembles of the mid century: The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company (Daniel Moore) & The Theatre of Eternal Music (La Monte Young &…
Popeth
Awesome LP from two masters of tectonic psycho-acoustics! "It is with great pride and pleasure that Glistening Examples announces the newest collaborative efforts of Aaron Dilloway and Jason Lescalleet. Recorded at Tarker Mills in February 2014 then mixed and mastered at Glistening Labs, this 38 minute LP was carved deeply into 150 grams of virgin vinyl via Direct Metal Mastering at GZ Media in the Czech Republic. These records are sheathed in deluxe poly-lined inner sleeves and presented in …
Musica su schemi
2015 repress. In the early 1960s, Franco Evangelisti assembled Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, a collective of Italian composers, aspiring to revolutionize composition through group improvisation and -like their peer, Karlheinz Stockhausen-musique concrète, aleatory (controlled chance) techniques and early electronic music. One significant influence in the studio was their use of chess to define key parameters of their music. Musica Su Schemi is unpredictable, fluid and always marked…
There
Engrossing debut album from Iranian sound artist, Pouya Ehsaei, sublimating samples of traditional Iranian music to "reveal the rage hidden beneath its melancholia." 'There' was produced in 2010, using fractured and brutally processed instrumentation indigenous to Iran to isolate a palpable feeling of tension articulated with a timbre unique to the artist's background. In the course of its six pieces we perceive a stark and grinding sadness from his aerated arrangements, gleaning elusive emotion…
The Hollow Organ
Luke Younger's Helm returns to PAN with four vital incursions marking his first new material since the sessions that birthed his acclaimed 'Impossible Symmetry' and 'Silencer' releases these last couple of years. Since those releases Younger has been hard at work building his Alter label into one of the most interesting imprints around whilst also honing a petrifying, improvised live set that's turned our bones to stone every time we've heard it. 'The Hollow Organ' delivers four tracks of…
Tutti i colori del buio
As part of a devoted series of releases focusing on Bruno Nicolai’s soundtrack music to the films of Edwige Fenech, Finders Keepers proudly unveil what is perhaps the crowning moment for both actress and composer with the film that inaugurated them (alongside director Sergio Martino) into the critical Giallo royal family in the early 1970s. Presented here with previously unpressed tracks as an alternative to the extremely rare 1973 Gemelli library edition, this Finders Keepers special release in…
Inverted Torch
Wisconsin's Jon Mueller and New Orleans' Duane Pitre are both towering figures in the world of avant-garde sound. Mueller has notched up an astounding amount of albums and collaborations in the past (including two on this very label) and while most of his time is spent eking out unusual textures from his plethora of percussive instruments, he can also be spotted moonlighting as the drummer for main-stage indie act Volcano Choir. Pitre, having retired as a professional skateboarder (serious…
New York Electronic, 1965
Sub Rosa presents another release as a part of their early electronic series. Drone-based experiments from Angus MacLise (notably with Tony Conrad extremely present on the album, and John Cale), and purely electronic compositions -- a path (almost) nobody knew MacLise had explored. Miraculously salvaged by Gerard Malanga, these archives provided a new perspective on the artist's whole body of work and considerably expanded his artistic palette. And so Sub Rosa is able to present a whole recor…
Dead unique
Blackest Ever Black presents to you Dead Unique, an album by Officer! recorded in 1995 but - outrageously, inexplicably - never before released into the public domain. This then is not a reissue or a revival; it’s a new record that just happens to have been maturing in the cask for, oh, a little shy of 20 years. It also happens to be a lost classic of English art-rock, and the crowning achievement in the career of its mercurial creator, Mick Hobbs. Londoner Hobbs’ roots are in the fecund RIO sce…
Organized sound Drone Two fragment From Apocalypse
Seminal musique concrete recordings from the early 60s, first time available on vinyl (original has been out of print on LP for over a decade, originally published on his private 'Owl' imprint). Dockstader deserves shelf space next to Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, Varése, etc. -- historically vital, minutely detailed experimental electronic music and tape composition. "My choice of the term 'Organized Sound' for my own work was, in part, a tribute to the 'Poéme' and to Varése. I…
Organized Sound: Luna Park Traveling Music Apocalypse
Another killer reissue on Doxy, equally desirable volume, which completes the documentation of Dockstader's organized sound works. "Traveling Music was originally composed as a monaural piece (Electronic Piece No. 8). It was, in effect, my Poeme Electronique, after Varese, and my first piece to be strictly organized with a few sound-materials (instead of throwing everything in and stirring briskly, as I'd done prior to this). When I got the use of a two-track…
L'Appel du Vide
Subterranean, nearly-inaudible restraint and a rushing, stuttering throb rule the night on this new record. Its electric moods are so resolutely alien they suggest worlds unknown rather than create them. Irregular heartbeat thumps are set against high end atmospheres explored in microscopic detail. Haunting overlays of tones fluctuate and tremble, and not one moment feels forced. The music is meticulously constructed and consistently surprising. The electronics spin away, shooting off int…
Lymph Est
Kye is proud to present 'Lymph Est', the brand new LP by Matt Krefting. Krefting's chronology is a deep-rooted and complex one, seeded in the foundation of the Apostasy imprint, and the animation of its numerous transitory groups, most notably Son of Earth, of which he played a crucial part. Concurrently, Krefting has won a reputation for his solo tape-based work, circulated primarily in secretive micro-editions, before eventually reaching a wider audience via last years critically acclai…
Whole Stories
Kye is proud to present 'Whole Stories', the brand new LP by Vanessa Rossetto, and her third for the label following 'Mineral Orange' (2010) and 'Exotic Exit' (2012). Like its predecessors 'Whole Stories' takes as its clay the sounds gathered from commonly found habitual environments, reshaping them into two extraordinary new long form compositions. 'This Is A Recorder' enumerates the colorful events of a drunken birthday weekend lost to Mardi Gras, New Orleans between Feb 8th-13th 2013. …
Keine oase in sicht
There is no oasis in sight. What to do? Walk on. Slowly, perhaps, but steadily. Unswervingly. Ten years after the invention of „New Weird America“ (D. Keenan) and the „return of the collective“ (D. Diedrichsen), Datashock, who are now in their eleventh year, are still exploring „the space of nomadic sounds“ and looking for old sources of fresh sounds, unfazed by contemporary musical mirages. The sun may still be burning down mercilessly in late capitalism, blinding our eyes and making our limbs …
Despairs had governed me too long
(Magnus Granberg, Angharad Davies, Toshi Nakamura, Henrik Olsson, Ko Ishikawa, Anna Lindal, John Eriksson, Erik Carlsson, Leo Svensson Sander and Petter Wstberg). Another beautiful extended composition by Magnus Granberg, exquisitely played by an ensemble of fine musicians whose last two discs on Another Timbre both featured in The Wire's best of year CD lists for 2012 and 2013 respectively. 'Despairs Had Governed Me Too Long' is the third disc on Another Timbre by the Swedish-based ensemble Sko…
Continuum Unbound
Michael Pisaro's Continuum Unbound is a three CD box set, featuring three individual as well as linked CD-length pieces, each 72 minutes long. 'Kingsnake Grey' is a field recording of sundown in the Congaree National Park in South Carolina. The beautiful and erratic sonic transformation that occurred over the 72 minutes was the model for the other two pieces.'Congaree Nomads' takes as its basis 24 three-minute recordings Greg Stuart and I made in the park, along Cedar Creek and the Kingsnake, th…
Hemispheres
Going back to his early musical inspirations in the early seventies, Werner Durand was fascinated with the multiple saxophone sounds coming from Terry Riley's Poppy Nogood and Happy Ending, Dickie Landry's Fifteen Saxophones and Ariel Kalma's Reternelle. His particpation in the Parisian saxophone ensemble Urban Sax in 1976/77 became a starting point for his own musical endeavours. The 2 saxophone pieces presented here were composed and recorded roughly 10 years apart and document his move from f…
Hidden Tapes
Hidden Tapes is composed from old cassette tapes, with addition of some other sources from movies soundtracks and classical or liturgical music extracts which were retrieved in closets. These sound documents were accelerated or slowed down, layered and transformed with analog devices. No digital effect, no plugin. Computer was only used for editing and mixing. Composed on 2013. About Marc Baron : Between 2000 and 2010, Marc Baron was an improviser on saxophone. He made concerts and performances …