Reissues
Sov Gott Rose-Marie
CD reissue of this all-time Swedish underground classic, originally issued on the Scandinavian Love label in 1968. International Harvester were the second incarnation of Bo Anders Persson's group, after Pärson Sound (whose early sound experimentation was finally documented in 2001 by Subliminal Sounds). Early in the 60's Bo Anders Persson had envisioned a new kind of communicative music -- would it be possible to create a more contemporary kind of rhythmic music that could play the same role as …
Träd, Gräs Och Stenar
Reissue of the first Träd Gräs och Stenar album, originally issued on the Decibel label in Sweden in 1970. Their name translates to "trees, grass & stones." A rock group led by Bo Anders Persson (after his works with Pärson Sound, Harvester, International Harvester), this was their first of three albums, a definitely more "rockist" continuation of the post-minimalist experiments of the earlier groups, but still with that undefinable Swedish underground feeling. Similar in vibe to the live docume…
Schwarzes Madrigal
In composing a piano trio, I fulfilled a long-fostered desire. This is a genre which, like the string quartet tradition, can slightly intimidate any composer. I too waited patiently but anxiously to make my own contribution. The pre-history of the piece is closely tied to my Music Epic about the devil, La Trahison orale (Oral Betrayal), which I wrote in 1981-83. When conceiving this work, I had already decided to compose character pieces, relatively short numbers with a particular mood, which co…
The Mauricio Kagel Edition
This limited edition set is a 75th birthday celebration of the work of Mauricio Kagel, an Argentinian composer who has been based in Germany for many years and whose work is playful and uses unusual instruments and sounds in his pieces. It features a DVD of 'Ludwig Van', Kagel's 1970 film in which a resurrected Beethoven wanders around Bonn looking at places associated with his life. It features the work of a number of artists including Joseph Beuys.There are also two CDs of music featuring Kage…
Playback Play
Famous for his examination of unusual and exotic instrumental sounds, here Mauricio Kagel focuses on the most mundane of sound materials. While attending a music trade show, Kagel was taken by the many levels and orbits of sound activity emanating from the various booths and stages. In 'Playback Play' (subtitled 'News from the Music Fair, A Radio Piece') he has arranged a spatially sensitive tableau of crowd noises, sales pitches and fragments of the sort one hears in music store show rooms, alo…
Persephassa
Persephassa is a piece for six percussionists composed by Iannis Xenakis in 1969. The piece was commissioned for the first-ever Shiraz Festival (organized by the Empress of Iran), held at the historic desert site of Persepolis. The title refers to the goddess Persephone, "the personification of telluric forces and of transmutations of life." Persephassa gains much of its effect from having the six percussionists distributed around the audience. The treatment of space as a musical parameter is on…
Galaxy my dear
1978 solo album by Biglietto per L'Inferno keyboards player "Baffo" Banfi. Electronic keyboards influenced by krautrock cosmic music, including one bonus track. Deluxe papersleeve CD edition, gatefold cardboard cover, detailed booklet with vintage photos and original LP labels.
Ipotesi
Another great italian avantgarde progressive rarity from 1972! Complex and excellent album, with classic moments, jazz-rock influences in the Canterbury vein, acoustic parts, sudden rhythm changes and complex arrangements, in a few words everything we love from vintage italian prog! The nine tracks of the CD are connected to form two long suites. Great and never seen on CD before!
Per una scultura di Ceschia
For the first time on CD one of the rarest records coming out of Italy!! Nascita della Sfera was a group of session musicians assembled by a composer to record a single LP, in this case composer and keyboardist Carlo Barbiera dedicated a full album to the life and works of sculptor Luciano Ceschia (1926-1991), both coming from near Udine, Friuli Venezia Giulia, in the north-east of Italy. The rare album is a rather original example of experimental electro-acoustic progressive style, mainly based…
Vietato ai minori di 18 anni
* Gatefold cardboard cover with 12-page booklet (photos, lyrics and liner notes in Italian and English) * One of the best italian progressive rock/experimental album released in Italy "Vietato ai minori di 18 anni?" is Jumbo's third album from 1973, is their most ambitious work, containing strong lyrics and fragments of avantgarde-inspired music, with the help of Franco Battiato's great VCS3 oscillators and Lino Capra Vaccina's (of Aktuala fame) bells and chimes' sinister tolling. Long spacey an…
Electronic Mind Waves
** mini-lp replica, housed in a gatefold cardboard sleeve with an OBI ** Out of the mysterious mind of Andrea Centazzo came Elektriktus. Originally released on the PDU label in 1976, the LP Electronic Mind Waves offers a collection of eight synth-fueled songs that sound very close to what kraut/cosmische heads were doing at the time, think of Conrad Schnitzler, Deuter or Cosmic Jokers, and also other European experimentalists like Richard Pinhas' Heldon, Spacecraft, Didier Bocquet, Seesselberg, …
Despair
after being hidden in time for about 25 years this industrial milestone of the infamous 1st generation got renovated extended and digitally overworked by CaTV. Cathy Vogan - Media Artist & Designer has been three times nominated for Video Art Award and received ZKM (Karlsuhe) Production Award for her work! Check it out here: http://vogania.com/VOGANIA.html . A true statement and monument for the outstanding band S.P.K. who gathered together under so many names like: SoliPsiK, Selektiv Pornograph…
Lohengrin
Lohengrin, Salvatore Sciarrino's "azione invisibile", is both a gloss on Wagner's opera and a sly debunking of it. It was conceived by its composer as an opera with action invisible, for one singer/actress who assumes all the charactersn Sciarrino's monodrama, based on one of Jules Laforgue's Moralités Légendaires, episodes from the story are viewed through the distinctly jaundiced eyes and ears of Elsa, the woman Lohengrin marries and then deserts. A single voice narrates and takes the roles of…
Vortex Temporum - Pèriodes
Gérard Grisey's cycle of compositions, Les Espaces Acoustiques, is considered one of his most significant works. Written between 1974 and 1985, it consists of six discrete pieces, for ensembles ranging in size from a solo viola with resonators to an orchestra of 84 players. In the cycle, the pieces progress from the smallest ensemble to the largest, and Périodes (1974), for seven players, is the second. The piece is a relatively early example of spectralism, a method of composition developed by …
Concrete
Concrete follows from Robert Ashley's preoccupation in two previous operas with the kind of speech that has not been explored in opera -- in Dust (LCD 1006CD), the speech of the homeless; in Celestial Excursions (LCD 1007CD), the speech of people living together in a home for old people. The three operas are not a "trilogy" in any sense, but they all come from this preoccupation with or fascination with special kinds of speech and special kinds of states of mind. "The characters I'm interested i…
perhaps I arrive - music for Atatürk Airport, Istanbul
This double disc set includes some of the most unusual sounds you will have heard from Carl Michael von Hausswolff. The story goes like this. Von Hausswolff was chosen by the 1997 Istanbul Biennal to create a sound installation for Atatürk Airport. His classic sound combining low frequency rumblings, very monotonous oscillations and hissy non-narrative sequences was deemed too confusing for the commutors. It was feared, von Hausswolff’s sound installation might be mistaken for an alarm and would…
Solo For Wounded
A founding member of the Fluxus Movement with Takehisa Kosugi, Yoko Ono and George Maciunas, Yasunao Tone has been doing experimental sound pieces since the early 1960s. For the past ten years much of his work has centered on extending the possibilities of CDs as a performance medium. With this new CD, Tone has created a new noise music for the 21st century: a symphony of digital errors that reaches a new extreme in intensity and musical energy
Noise media language
A pioneer since the early 60s in sound art and digital composition, yasunao Tone has composed for Merce Cunningham (alongside John Cage) and been a member of the groups Ongaku, Hi-Red Center, and Fluxus. He is unabashedly avant-garde and continues today to engage questions of noise, language, and systems of representation. This indispensable monograph catalogues the artist's career through documentation of seminal projects. Including a cd of works ranging from early performance experiments to cu…
Trio & Triangle
John Stevens (percussion, cornet, voice), Nigel Coombes (violin), Roger Smith (guitar). The 1981 London concert features two of John Stevens didactic pieces performed by nine or ten Musicians, plus a Trio improvisation. Another (previously unissued) Trio set can also be heard - the excitement of the music overcomes the imperfections of the recording on this half hour from 1978. Reissue of SFA LP 092 with extra Trio material.
"Sometime in 1976 the SME became a trio made up of John Stevens, Nigel …
Confusional Quartet
Futurism with its dynamic force, youthful spirit, attention to innovation and a bit of Italian histrionism; the sixties with their hopeful and playful atmosphere and their crisp and catchy music; Italy with its beautiful sun, beaches, Mediterranean brightness and laxity; minimalism with its focus on the deepness of details; all the things happening in Bologna in the late seventies, among some of the newest and most creative experiences in film, performance, fashion and music. With these elements…