Reissues
Atalanta (Acts of God)
Originally released on Lovely Music in 1985. Robert Ashley makes use of the story of Atalanta
- a royal princess, discarded by her family, who was raised by the
animals to become the fastest-running human, and who was later reclaimed
by her father to marry her off for dynastic purposes - to present the
character aspects of the "successful suitor". These three aspects of
character are presented in the opera as anecdotes about three
extraordinary men of our times: Max Ernst (surrealist paint…
Foreign Experiences
Foreign Experiences was commissioned by Performing Artservices,
Inc. (1993) with funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. The
opera was premiered by the Robert Ashley Ensemble at the Festival d'Avignon in 1994. This realization is a duet version by Sam Ashley and Jacqueline Humbert. The pre-recorded voices of the Ashley ensemble are the background chorus. Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea
is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of
events seen from four, diff…
Celestial Excursions
2005 release. Following the ground-breaking work, Dust (LCD 1006CD), godfather of experimental opera Robert Ashley returns with Celestial Excursions. Ashley's endeavor explores remarkably uncharted territory -- the kind of language that is common among "old" people who talk all the time or not at all, to anyone passing by or to themselves. The opera premiered at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin, before coming to The Kitchen for its U.S. premiere in April 2003. Celestial Excursions delves into the wi…
Dust
Dust is an opera by Robert Ashley and Yukihiro Yoshihara (video direction) whose imaginary setting is a street corner anywhere in the world, where those who live on the fringes of society gather to talk, to each other and to themselves, about life-changing events, missed opportunities, memory, loss, and regret. Five "street people" recount the memories and experiences of one of their group, a man who has lost his legs in some unnamed war. As part of the experience of losing his legs, he began a …
Your Money My Life Goodbye
An opera commissioned by Bayerisher Rundfunk Munich's Hörspiel und Medienkunst department about an internationally renowned swindler, who almost took down the European and American banking system. Featuring the voices of Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jackie Humbert, and Joan La Barbara. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hamilton. Robert Ashley on the piece: "Your Money My Life Goodbye is one of forty-nine vocal-ensemble pieces of various lengths (from ten minutes to ninety minutes or more) …
eL/Aficionado
1994 release. The fourth opera in Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy: Junior, Jr.'s story. A group of scenes from the life of an agent. The scenes are a kind of debriefing to a jury of interrogators, in which the Interrogators challenge the agent in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to American society's ongoing fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives. Featuring Thomas Buckner as the agent and Jacqueline H…
Yellow Man With Heart With Wings
1990 CD issue of Robert Ashley's 1978 piece for voice and electronics. A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and ot…
The Oak of the Golden Dreams
Important reissue of two historic minimalist albums, originally released on LP via the Advance label and out of print for decades now. Mastered from original tapes according to the composers original specifications. Packaged with informative liner notes by Kyle Gann, including an overview discography for seminal works within the field of minimalism. This timely CD reissue combines two LPs from the Advance label-Richard Maxfield’s Electronic Music and Harold Budd’s The Oak of the Golden Dreams-bo…
Music of Richard Lerman 1964 - 1987
RESTOCKED: As a sound artist, performer and composer, Richard Lerman traverses worlds of sound and music. For over forty years, he has been gathering, scanning, seeking sounds and creating works that weave through nature and draw upon living communities and memories in notable landscapes. (Some of his work references regrettable historical events such as the disappearance of Chilean citizens under General Pinochet' regime and the internment of Japanese-Americans during the World War II.) His rec…
Die Donnergötter
Rhys Chatham altered the DNA of rock. The New York-born composer began as a classically-trained prodigy, but by 1975, Chatham was fusing the overtone-drenched minimalism of John Cale and Tony Conrad with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones. It was an inspired amalgamation -- the textural intricacies of the avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of electric guitar-slinging punk rock -- and with it Chatham created a new type of urban music. Raucous and ecstatic, this sound energiz…
Natural Selection
Following the reissue of the Beyond the Black Crack LP, Paradigm delivers a second installment of outsider art from this American experimental showman. Collecting the offcuts of his numerous deranged sessions, this Kansas City tape collage artist turned electronic composer has an entirely unique vision, which is presented here as an overview of 25 years of work. A wide range of musical background informs the varied works on this collection, from Sun Ra-inspired space jazz to multi-channel electr…
Elektronische musik
One of the biggest finds in total Kraut electronic underground in the recent years. Crack in the Cosmic Egg asks: Does this exist? Yes it does! A Student of Eimert, Reinhold Weber produced several records of his own, two between 1969 and 1971, both of which are total weird and wild electronic, handmade, pre-synthesizer. Topped with crazy German language monotone lyrics. For fans of Cluster, Eimert, Stockhausen and people generally interested in the weird side of music. The second LP of his will …
Futaie / Tchernoziom
Régis Renouard Larivière was born on 3 December 1959 in Paris. He decided to devote himself to acousmatic composition following the Adac-GRM training course he attended at the end of 1984 with Jacques Lejeune and Philippe Mion. He has been teaching since 1990. He is currently professor of composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Mons (Arts2) in Belgium. He has written numerous articles on various electroacoustic composers (Parmegiani, Bayle, Schaeffer...), as well as on Schaefferian concepts. H…
Soothing Sounds for Baby Volume 3
Third of three mini-albums to soothe babies by, composed and performed by Raymond Scott on self-designed electronic instruments.
Soothing Sounds for Baby Volume 1
First of three mini-albums to soothe babies by, composed and performed by Raymond Scott on self-designed electronic instruments. To be enjoyed by infants of all ages. As ambient music, it predates Eno and Fripp. Reissue produced by Gert-Jan Blom, liner notes by Irwin Chusid.Included in Alan Licht's minimalist top ten! "I've paid zero attention to the Scott "revival," but these ultra-weird items are surely among the most startling rediscoveries of the digital age. Consisting of extremely repetit…
Desert ambulance
this is an album from none other than recently rediscovered early electronics guru Ramon Sender. After last year’s critically revered ‘Wormfood’ album also on Locust, this is yet another slice of otherworldly musical brain candy. Side A, entitled ‘Kore’ is an expertly made journey into tape music, reminiscent of Delia Derbyshire’s work for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (as heard in the recent Mute reissuses of the Doctor Who compilations) and also the work of Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros…
Worldfood
Worldfood is a wild, psychedelic warble & drone of looped, overlayed tape pieces produced by 'goosing' an ampex tape player with a computer calibration device. The resulting two pieces -- 'Worldfood vii (To See With my Eyes)' and 'WorldfoodXii' -- both part of a number of variations in a series -- make for gorgeous, careening sungazing music. Leave your glasses behind. Ramon Sender is a legendary figure in the Bay Area scene -- first paving the way for the San Francisco Tape Center with Morton S…
Wave Field
Reissue of the 2nd album by this Portuguese guitarist/composer Rafael Toral, originally issued by the small Moneyland label 1995, which was not widely distributed. This record is what every guitar/drone/crunch/snap,crack and pop afficionado has ever wanted. It's epic, it's intimate, it's a personally served 10 course meal at a table for two at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Dedicated to Alvin Lucier, with instructions to be played very soft or very loud, this features toral's trademark sound (lus…
Battimenti
Pietro Grossi was one of the pioneers of the experimental musical scene in Italy. This CD shows one of his visionary electronic works: "Battimenti", an electronic work composed and realized in 1965, made by the 94 combinations of near frequencies, organized in groups of 2, 3, 4 and 5 sine waves. This coupling originates the "harmonic beatings", overtones born out of the intersection of frequencies. Originally thought by Grossi has a "working material" for his famou…
Le solfège de l’objet sonore
This book, accompanied by 285 tracks on 3 CDs of examples is a unique and indispensable resource work for all those interested in electroacoustic music. Examples by Parmegiani, Henry, Bayle, Xenakis, Luc Ferrari etc. illustrate Pierre Schaeffer's text. This was originally designed to accompany Schaeffer's seminal work Traite des Objets Musicaux, but is a wonderful and enlightening tutorial in its own right.Le Solfège de l’Objet Sonore (Music Theory of the Sound Object.), a sound recording that a…