Reissues
Aniseikonia, Zeitsplitter, 4 Etüden
Warped, asynchronous, mid-80s FM Synthesis assemblages, captured at the absolute cusp of the Analogue-Digital transition, from Czech-Swiss Composer Jan Beran. Ages dormant on the Creel Pone shortlist, endlessly vetoed by yours truly for breaking the cardinal rules of comprising a total sum of post-1984 activity (pending a rewrite of the foil-stamp copy) and, specifically, explicitly incorporating the "Devil's Xylophone" amongst its tonal palette. But ah, the times, the times. After a few caref…
Novecento
With his score to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1976 historical epic Novecento, Ennio Morricone delivered one of the richest efforts of his legendary career. A sweeping and impressively variegated work, it manages to capture the period detail required to complement Bertoluccio's onscreen narrative, yet boasts a timelessness that's the hallmark of all the composer's masterpieces. Morricone's mastery of mood and texture reaches new zeniths here. Novecento communicates a vast emotional palette that extends…
La Terrificante Notte Del Demonio
**ltd 100 on Red vinyl** Demonic sounds, but surprisingly sweet as well – done with this easy-flowing style that's really wonderful – and much more similar to the seductive sound library work of Alessandro Alessandroni, than to some of the starker, darker horror of the time! There's definitely some spooky passages, but they're almost always warmed up in really nice ways – both with keyboards, and with these wordless vocals from the lovely Giulia De Mutiis, who drifts through the record like some…
Ecologia Del Delitto
**ltd 100 on Red vinyl** One of the coolest 70s soundtracks from the great Stelvio Cipriani – served up here with a huge amount of bonus tracks too! The music here was scored for a Mario Bava horror film, but it often has a quality that's more lean and lovely overall – that current of sex that we always love in Ciprani's best work, and which made him a key force for transforming the Italian bossa and jazz soundtrack style of the 60s into something completely new for the 70s! There's a lo…
Le paradis blanc
**193 unreleased before recordings** Le Paradis Blanc was recorded in 1983, it is also the music of the movie titled Le Paradis Blanc and directed by Etant Donnés the same year. The film and music were part of a three days installation and performance of Etant Donnés in the ELAC (Espace Lyonnais d’Art Contemporain) at the Fifth Symposium of Art Performance in Lyon in 1983 : one day for the construction of the installation, one day with a performance and one day for the destruction. The film…
Stitching in Process: Windmixed Data
**In process of restock** "Pentiments continues its collaboration with the legendarily enigmatic American sound art pioneer Leif Brush, this time with an extensive double LP release representing the most comprehensive collection of his recorded work to date. In plumbing the depths of his archives, weve unearthed and gathered a great breadth of his decades-long sonic research, spanning from his early work as a grad student to various lecture documents from his eventual tenure at UMD, with many cu…
The Lost Arkestra Series Vol 1 & 2
A double 10" set featuring Sun Ra recordings. Initially released on two separate 10"s back in 2010/13. Volume 1 features "Along Came Ra", a previously unissued live track recorded in Paris in 1983. The legendary Disco 3000 concert tapes are on the flip. Volume 2 lifts three fine selections from the Sub-Underground Saturn LPs. "Love Is For Always" and the driving, roots-y "The World Of Africa" come from 1974's Temple U; while the myth-science poetics of "Space Is The Place/We Roam The Cosmos" com…
Electronic Music in Canada, vol.1 & 2
Epic, double-disc edition covering three LPs of formative Electronic Music from Canada; both volumes of the Melbourne-label "Electronic Music By Canadian Composers" series - presenting both cover-variations of each in a metallized variant of the de facto Creel Pone "grid" - then the internal Radio Canada pressing of "Music Canada Vol XIII Electronic Music in Canada." Starting with an amazing, side-length piece by "Sky-Sails" co-author Ann Southam (more about her later in the series) & continuing…
Reidarin Sähköiset Kuvat, Ode To Marilyn
A pair of mid-70s Finnish Experimental Electro-Acoustic gems featuring "Suomalaista Elektroakustista Musiikkia" 's Antero Honkanen, masquerading as 1). a picturesque "Music To Accompany Paintings" affair and 2). a straight-ahead jazz-fusion session. The first disc here covers "Reidarin Sähköiset Kuvat," a wonderful set dovetailing pieces by Honaken & Åke Andersson, composed after paintings by Reidar Särestöniemi at the Experimental Studio of Yleisradio. With a production style owing to the forma…
Ramasses-Miettes, Nouveaux Modes Industriels
Long on the Creel Pone radar has been this pair of LPs by French bandleader Philippe Doray, recorded in conjunction with the aid of his five "Asociaux Associés" & issued in 1977 & 1980, respectively, via Jean-Marc Patrat & José Serré's Gratte-Ciel & Invisible, the house-label of the inimitable Jacques Pasquier's Société Coopérative d'Ouvriers-Producteurs Artistiques. Centered around Doray's Synthi VCS3 playing & sprech-stimme vocal stylings, the selections here run the gamut from puerile, absurd…
Anita
Originally available only in sex shops in the Netherlands, this is one of the rarest psychedelic LP’s ever to be recorded in Europe. Consisting of only two long tracks, one covering side A and one covering side B, this album is probably the most mind-bending stuff we’ve heard from around this time. Side A starts with fast-paced free-jazz-rock with intense drumming and Anita’s growing involvement (first giggling, then moaning and finally screaming in all sorts of terrifying ways) Most instrument…
Cosmographie
Once again, i’m reminded that one can twist & turn, uncovering rocks looking for stray Paleozoic lifeforms one’s whole life and still never find 0.01% of what’s out there. To my knowledge, the early 70s platter replicated here is the sole LP by one Bruno Menny; he’s mainly known for his endless CV of engineering, arrangement, and production credits for people like Mouloudji - yes, the voice on the Jean Genet / André Almuro "Un Condamne a Mort" LP - Michel Portal, Benoît Widemann, and a little-kn…
Flowers of Evil
Back again after last week’s mishap (don’t ask) with an absolute corker of a Creel Pone - the setting of a set of poems by Charles Baudelaire to electronic instrumentation & vocal treatments, as realized by Ms. Ruth White in mid-1969. A sampling of any of the included texts should tip you to just how creepy & dark the vibes emanating from within this record are exactly. Ms. White’s possessed monotone-through-echoplex-through-VCLFO’ed-gate throughout is just bone-chilling, her howling synth & noi…
Conrad & Sohn
Thus far the creel pones have all been academically-inclined in some way. by contrast, here’s a repro of a very bizarre one-off private-press lp “released” in 1981 by one-time tangerine dream / Kluster associate Conrad Schnitzler and given only to friends and family ...The b-side is pretty odd, even for schnitzler, with its pitched up vocals & arbitrary lo-fi synth drippings ; but the real prize is the a-side featuring his teenage son gregor on electric bass and completely fried vocals (in en…
Parmak Çocuk, Çizmeli Kedi
While there’s no explicit date listed anywhere within, I’m guessing the pair of 45rpm 7”s in question - released only in Turkey - date to the mid-60s, with each featuring Solmaz Sporel reading a different fairly tale over a completely amazing Musique Concrète tape-backing by Ilhan Mimaroglu, produced at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. Personally, these particular outings are some of the most gratifyingly zonked things I’ve ever heard, having much to do with the langua…
Le Crabe Qui Jouait Avec La Mer, Conte De Noël
"Le Crabe Qui Jouait Avec La Mer" is a beyoot of a radio-play, based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling, narrated by Jacques Gripel & featuring one of the only full-length bits of Musique Concrète by the ORTF / INA-GRM aligned composer Philippe Arthuys. While heavy french texts pervade the goings on throughout, with it’s all-ages appeal, it’s kind of the first Creel Pone that’s for everybody; "Crabe's" absolutely gorgeous cover - with it’s depiction of psychedelic crustaceans - only sweetens…
Roots Of Electronic Sound
Here’s possibly... ah hell it IS the best looking Creel Pone yet - thanks to an extended spec and much nicer print-stock - a reproduction of a 1979 Victor label reissue of a 1975 LP on the legendary Alm label featuring a series of short tape music experiments, recorded between 1963 and 1966 by Matsuo Ono, with assistance from none other than Takehisa Kosugi. The artwork and libretto on the lp are full of references to “Atom” - better known to westerners as “Astro Boy” - a mid-60s japanese car…
Independent Electronic Music Composer
Now that the Creel-Pone series has reached its teens, its time for an irreverent late-60s blast of heavy Synth-Freakout / Tape-Psych weirdness from this Cicero, Illinois based composer Edward M. Zajda, about whom i can’t find a single bit of information - other than that he has a piece included in a 1964 radio program called “Electronic Music in America” that’s archived in the Brandeis library. Originally issued in the late 60s on the regional Ars Nova / Ars Antiqua” label, “Independent” star…
Music From A Small Planet, Paths Of Motion
Two discs covering three self-issued LPs of 8-bit digital grind by Boston-area composer John Holland; as unheralded and unbeknownst as they come. Despite living in the hub for 24 years, and being a rabid fanatic of exactly this sort of thing, I had never seen nor heard head nor hide of either release, proving all too well that there are still gems out there waiting to be mined. On par with such proto-Digital-Synthesis masterworks as Daniel Arfib's "Musique Numerique", Pietro Grossi's "Compute…
Celebration
Even to a die-hard Early Electronic Music acolyte, Frank W. Becker's name isn't a readily familiar one, despite issuing a half-dozen LPs of vaguely Berlin-school music via Toshiba EMI while based in Japan in the mid-late 70s. "Celebration," a "Private" issue on his own Gorilla imprint, starts out sure enough with the titular, 1976 side-length bit of protracted sequencing and minimalism-inspired forms - all with a vague new-age lilt to it b/w of calming ocean noises & an almost Terry Riley-ish …