Reissues
Music for 88
Simplicity and clarity have always been among Tom Johnson's chief concerns as a composer. That concern led him to research number theory, particularly by Pascal, Fermat, and Euclid, and these sources suggested musical structures somewhat more complicated than those that he had used before. Music for 88 is the result of these researches. It contains nine sections (six of which are on this recording), each of which is a musical demonstration of a mathematical phenomenon.
Kientzy plays Johnson
In Kientzy Loops, the accompanying loop is a mix of six alto saxophones played in continuous blowing, while the principal lines are played on alto saxophone, except for the third section, played on baritone. The piece, premiered at the auditorium of the ADAC in Paris, was awarded a French national prize in the Victoires de la musique as the best piece of contemporary music for the year 2000. We are indebted to our friend Marc Chemillier for La Tortue de mer. As a mathematician Chemillier became …
An Hour For Piano
"First, the booklet notes. If you pine for Gertrude Stein speaking circles around herself, meaning what she doesn’t mean, and not meaning what she means, you’ll probably like Tom Johnson’s non-sort-of-explanation of his magnum keyboard opus, An Hour For Piano. The composer prefers that you don’t read his notes while listening to the music. In fact, don’t read them before you play the CD for the first time. Listen to the piece first. Then, if you’re feeling artsy, put on the CD again and read the…
Hourouurin
The Japanese underground band Johari was create in 1990 by the magic duo Asahito Nanjo (High Rise) and Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and will became later, in 1995, this shamanistic avant-garde formation Toho Sara. “Hourouurin” is their third opus, after two albums on PSF “Eastern most” (1995) and “Mei Jou Tan Sho” (1999) and some live performances in Europe during the years 1996 and 1997. “Hourouurin” is a weird unit who attempt to achieve a mystic fusion of ethnic music and rock, accor…
Pond
Life meets art. Born of a long written corresPondence and a mutual affection for frogs between David Myers (the artist formerly known as Arcane Device) and Tod Dockstader which eventually spawned this programme of electronic & concrete pieces derived almost entirely from field (and swamp) recordings of frogs - choral and solo processed, manipulated and organised in a million ways. This release also marks the welcome return of Tod Dockstader to the lists; it's his first large-scale new published …
Apocalypse
Tod Dockstader's musique concrete turns out to have a surprising relevance to music created decades later; he's been described as "one of the godfathers of Nurse With Wound, and a distant cousin of rap and techno" (Option). Craig Anderton writes that Dockstader was one of the few to master "the art of assembling tape-recorded sounds and painstakingly splicing, cutting, dubbing, manipulating and mixing to create final compositions," then adds: "If you think that sounds similar to the procedures u…
Quatermass
Seminal musique concrete recordings from the early 60s that were first issued on CD in '92/'93. This CDs offer all of Dockstader's principal solo works, including unreleased works and material that has been out of print on LP for over a decade (spread over 3 LPs on the Owl label). 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' …
Aerial
Tod Dockstader is one of the all-time great figures in the world of musique concréte composition, with his "organized sound" works from the 1960s being amongst the most radical ever conceived -- in league with Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, and Varese. Aerial is a rare new work in the realm of shortwave radio, from one of America's most experimental composers. This release is the first (Volume 1) in a three-part series. "I've written before of my interest in shortwave radio. When I was ve…
Eight electronic pieces
Reissue of a 1961 Folkways electronic music album. "Tod Dockstader assembled this terrifically unique and fresh collection of synthetic analog sound for release back in 1961. Dormant and nearly forgotten for some 40 years, Locust brings this gem back into print for another go around you won't want to miss out on. Dockstader has been characterized by many as a true antecedent to the techno and ambient electro scenes popularized by the likes of Aphex Twin, a visionary figure who the Washington Pos…
Boujeloud
The Master Musicians of Joujouka are often credited with being the first "world music" group. The Joujouka music for Boujeloud, or the Father of Skins, is frantic and has several movements which would equate to a symphony or the score of an opera if it were European classical music. The festival and ritual originate in the worship of the God Pan. In 1994, Frank Rynne began a two year long project recording the Master Musicians of Joujouka in their village. Sub Rosa released two CDs from these re…
Ignotium per ignotius
Originally released on CD by Touch and never re-issued. The seventh re-issue in the Hafler Trio re-issue series Seven Hours Sleep. Something approached, and it was embraced, thorns piercing the anonymous functions and the ways in which all the secrets had been help in high esteem. traces of the places yet to come, and those to be left far behind. the first outing in the digital domain, and all the difference the day made when it appeared, startling those in need of a jolly good lie down. and so …
Violin solo1980 nyc
A previously unreleased solo violin performance by the founder of the Taj Mahal Travellers and legendary Fluxus conceptualist. Active since the 1960s, Takeisha Kosugi has more recently served as the music director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe. He is currently involved with the composing and performance of impromptu music and electronic multimedia music. To be brief, Kosugi is one of the most important and influential Japanese experimental avant-gardists, alongside the likes of Yasunao T…
Violin Improvisations
Originally released in 1989 as Violin Solo. Sept. 3-4, '89. Takehisa Kosugi's improvisations, both with violin and miscellaneous sounding objects, have a sense of emerging from the bottom of a spiritual unconscious. From this place comes a music based more on the feeling of sounds than conscious arrangement. Memory, physical action, tactile perceptions, environmental conditions, and awareness of subconscious microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes inform his work as much as the intention to assembl…
Saxophone special +
Music for four saxophones (Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Steve Potts & Trevor Watts) with guitar (Derek Bailey) & synthesizer (Michel Waisvisz). Plus highlights from an earlier London concert by Lacy, Potts, Bailey, Kent Carter & John Stevens. Improvisations on original compositions. Reissue of Emanem 3310 (plus an extra piece from the same concert) and the better half of Emanem 304.
More Canned porridge
Sten Hanson has been working with experimental music, literature and art since the beginning of the 1960's, cultivating both instrumental, vocal and electro-acoustic music for performance on radio and television, on outdoor occasions or from the concert platform. From an early stage he was aware of the importance of tape-recording techniques in the renewal and development of poetry’s resources. Text-sound-visual image, often combined with intensely personal 'live" performances, are vital ingredi…
Canned porridge
The works here come from four decades, which in Swedish folklore is called an "adult man´s lifetime". Four decades is a long time, even if it may seem scarily short when you look back on it. Of course the artist is not the same person at 70 as at 30. Knowing that, I have made it a principle never to go back and reverse old works, even if I'm not too happy with them. Doing that you can be almost certain to make the works worse and not better, as one can learn from countless historical examples.In…
The Sonosopher Retrospective
Awesome anthology of Sten Hanson text-sound composition..."Fylkingen has, in the course of its many years of activity, become a familiar factor in Swedish, as well as international, musical life, a unique forum for the presentation of experimental art. Since very early it began to work in collaboration with an electronic music studio in Stockholm for the creation of technically satisfactory performance possibilities. The movement within Sweden in sound poetry/text-sound composition took hold in …
Text-sound gems & trinkets
England's Bob Cobbing and France's Henri Chopin. A sound poet -- or text-sound composer as the Swedish like to call this art form -- of exquisite talent, Hanson has scattered an impressive number of works on compilation albums and the odd solo LP or CD, most of which remain very hard to find. In 2002, Firework Edition Records released Text-Sound Gems & Trinkets, a solid collection of 25 of Hanson's recordings for a total duration of 73 minutes. Presented in chronological order, the short pieces …
Quintessence 2 (1973-4)
2nd volume. The unissued duo works by Stevens (cornet, voice, percussion) and Watts (ss) are way out and an invigorating reminder of the outlandish possibilities of free improvisation, especially "DAA-OOM" ("a loose composition inspired by the music of both the central African pygmies and Albert Ayler -- even 23 years later, the rawness of these pieces is somewhat startling." -- Martin Davidson).
A new distance
Two of the last performances by the SME which then comprised John Stevens (percussion & pocket trumpet), Roger Smith (guitar) and John Butcher (soprano & tenor saxophones). A new direction for the music that was sadly terminated later that year (1994) by Stevens' untimely death. Added to this reissue are two short pieces from the previous year, when Neil Metcalfe (flute) was also in the group, and some perceptive comments by Stevens. Reissue of Acta CD 8 with extra material. 63 minutes. Reissue …