Best of 2018
Il Museo Selvatico
Since launching in 2009, Oren Ambarchi’s
Black Truffle has been making quiet waves in the underground,
its growing catalog unfurling the unexpected aural connections
which only appear when a label is led by an artist’s ear and
heart. Initially orbiting around Ambarchi’s own output, and that
of the community which immediately surrounds him, the imprint
has increasingly endeavoured to establish cross-generational
links, issuing and reissuing stunnin…
Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan
Fantome Phonographique present a reissue of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan's self-titled release, originally released on Columbia in 1966. Even though the original recordings are crackly and in low fidelity (but also deeply charming) it seemed necessary to repress this record for its immense historiographic value. These recordings are made available here with new mastering, in as clear fidelity as possible. Fans of Indian classical music will no doubt know the name Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan. He founded the…
Music From The Soundtrack Respectable Families
Dark Tango, mysterious twist, and psychedelic cha-cha-cha! Nothing you
would expect from a '60s Egyptian soundtrack. Romanticist and artistic
all-rounder Abd Al-Rahman Al-Khamissi stands out with this absolute timeless musical production for his 1969 movie Respectable Families. Four abstract instrumental dances to express poetry through music.
Morning Flight
Recorded in 1973, “Morning Flight” by trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura is a stunning modal and spiritual jazz album! Genius work from Japanese trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura – working here at the helm of a twin-trombone group that also features the talents of Shigeharu Mukai – in a style that's filled with soul and free-thinking imagination! The two players work together beautifully here – avoiding any of the cliches of trombone-heavy groups from the past – and instead, using the open-ended Three Blind …
Revival II - The Electronic Tapes 1979-1982
Some artists like Cluster, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze have become quite popular and synonymous with the Kosmische Electronic music that rode the wave alongside the Krautrock explosion, but also nestled within the explosion of creative electronic music emerging from Germany in the early 70s, others have been left in the vaults of obscurity and discovered only by those jumping into their time capsules and searching high and low for some of the less heard acts. And obscure does not mean for …
Orphee Ballet
Scored for Maurice Béjart's choreography to the 'Orphée Ballet', based on the Greek god Orpheus, this is one of Pierre Henry's finest works of musique concrète, the genre in which Henry was an early innovator and to which he devoted his career. After years working for the French national radio (RTF) and honing his studio chops on radio spots and editing/composition, Henry formed his own studio in 1958 and began working on modern dance and ballet and soundtrack work. Incorporating percussion, ind…
Grundtone, opus 161 (A2 poster + download)
**Edition of 300** Henning Christiansen's handwritten score for 'Grundtone' [fundamental tone], opus 161 from 1984. Offset printed 1:1 reproduction in two colours. Format: A2 – 420 x 594 mm. Includes download code for Henning Christiansen's own recording of the piece. Released in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Henning Christiansen Archive.The piece 'Grundtone' [fundamental tone] (op. 161) is of central importance in the oeuvre of Henning Christiansen. It marks both his…
Le Saut De L'Ange/R.A.S
Never released before on LP, here are the complete original soundtracks of French cult film composer François de Roubaix for director Yves Boisset. Two movies that embody the two sides of Francois de Roubaix's approach to recording. For Le Saut De L'Ange (1971) the self-taught composer wrote an orchestration for some fifty musicians playing strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion with two distinct solo instruments alternating the main theme: Indian sitar on the one hand and accordion on the ot…
Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 5
Penultimate, 5th Stage of The Caretaker’s ‘Everywhere At The End of Time’ series charting severe levels of musical/mental deterioration and sensory detachment through four extended, smudged and hallucinatory side-long pieces. As we near the end, ‘Stage 5’ sees our protagonist enter a near-permanent state of confusion and horror. Mirroring the endemic deterioration of dementia’s latter phases, were pulled through the most extreme entanglements in the series so far; repetition and ruptures, barely…
The Faust Tapes
Faust stand among the most influential creative forces to have emerged from Germany in the late '60s and early '70s. Along with Can, Agitation Free, Neu! and others, they rejected the Anglo-American norms of rock 'n' roll to start a back-to-basics and uniquely Teutonic revolution in sound – later dubbed by the UK press with the semi-derogatory term "krautrock." They would reach near-mythical status through a series of classic albums recorded between 1970 and 1973 at their secluded Wümme studio.A…
Simple Affections
Simple Affections: "I corralled a dream LP that I would want to listen to. Too smelly, too sweet." Album features contributions from: Peter Friel, Jackson Graham, Mark Harwood, Graham Lambkin, Lia Mazzari, Sean McCann, Madalyn Merkey, Michael Pollard, Eric Schmid, Zach Schwartz, Tom James Scott, Patrick Shiroishi, Christina Stanley, Matthew Sullivan, Dennis Tyfus, and Will Gottsegen.
One time pressing. Includes six 5x7″ postcards in printed envelope,
program notes insert by Sean McCann, Scente…
Ttuunneesszz Duh Rruunneesszz (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still …
Interrvallissphereee (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still …
Polyphonies
Deluxe edition 12 x CD boxset with remastered audio and 112 page booklet. The CD wallets reproduce Pierre Henry’s “concrete paintings” and the booklet features repertoire notes, written mostly by the composer himself.The 12 CD boxset Polyphonies is a mind-blowing summation of more than 50 years work by restlessly pioneering composer, Pierre Henry (9th December 1927 - 5 July 2017) - the undisputed godfather of musique concrète, who laid the groundwork for much of electronic music as we now know i…
Radiance
**few copies back in stock, very last around** It hardly needs to be said that the context of experimental music is defined by incredibly ambitious efforts. But there’s ambitious, and then there’s ambitious. The German composer and musician, Stephan Mathieu, might have taken the cake. Back in 2016, he began issuing his sprawling Radiance project, the culmination of a decade of work, in the end amounting to twelve thematically linked album length pieces, built around the concepts of stasis, unfol…
Mills
**Edition of 300 copies, a masterwork made with solar oscillator (!) we are in awe** Boundless solar oscillations in exquisite cycle; this new record from Miki Yui is as playful as it is mesmerizing. Cuspeditions warmly welcomes Japanese artist Miki Yui to the label, with a work delicately crafted from field recordings, synthesizer, solar oscillator and sampler. Yui is known for the unique nature of her music (apparent also in past collaborations with Rolf Julius, Rie Nakajima and Klaus Dinger),…
A Sound Work To Accompany
Issued privately in 1972 by Toronto's Carmen Lamanna Gallery following an Autumn 1970 exhibition, this "Sound Work" by Sculptor Robin MacKenzie is a wonder of simplicity. Presenting a series of unadorned Sound Events - the approaches & recessions of single vehicles on what sounds like a lonely stretch of the 403 at 3am, then the Composer's footsteps similarly walking toward & away from the microphone's singular vantage point - in a manner befitting both the storied "Sounds of the Junkyard" Folk…
Kavafis Songs, Antiphonies
ncredible, unheralded set of music by Νικηφόρος Ρώτας (Nikiforos Rotas), incorporating Electronic & Experimental modes into mid-70s Éntekhno & Sound-Poetry forms.The first record, "Τραγούδια Καβάφη" (Kavafis Songs) sets works by early 20th Century Alexandrian poet Constantine P. Cavafy to music. Much in the vein of "Works of Electronic Music" contributor Thanos Mikroutsikos' experiments formulating a more Avant-Garde strain of Éntekhno from the mid-70s onwards, Rotas' use of non-musical sounds, …
Soliloque I, Soliloque IV, Match, Antifonia
Nicolae Brînduș was born in Bucharest in 1935 and swiftly
matriculated through his studies in Piano & Composition at
the National University of Music before embarking on the life-changing
seminars at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt
throughout the late 60s & early 70s; even working at Ircam for a
spell in the mid-1980s. How this formative music, composed & recorded largely during his
Darmstadt phase, has remained so relatively unknown is insane to me; it
has all of…
Stochastic Moods
Incredible new solo LP for the 'customized analog oscillator' virtuoso David Ross. Unpredictable micro-rhythms awkwardly roaming across an electronic wasteland. In ‘A Conceptual Framework for Consciousness’, Dr. Joachim Keppler elaborates on Quantum Stochastic Electrodynamic (SED) theoryto suggest that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe rather than a material creation of the human brain.Functioning as a resonant stochastic oscillator, the brain modulates with an all-pervasiv…