Reissues
L'oeuvre pour piano
A beautiful boxed edition with an outstanding version of Satie's piano music performed by Ciccolini, who is totally inside this music and makes the most of its contrasts of mood and atmosphere. Ciccolini's playing is pliant and graceful, and under his fingers the music seems to breathe and come alive: in many ways this is the most distintive and 'definitive' Satie piano music
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
The People United Will Never Be Defeated! by the left-wing composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski is a landmark in American piano literature. The work comprises 36 variations on a protest song of the same name by the Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Almost every bar is laden with pianistic virtuosity, yet the listener is carried through some very complex music in a wholly natural way. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: from angry, highly-energiz…
The Desert Music
The Desert Music is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by Steve Reich based on texts by William Carlos Williams. It consists of five movements, and in both its tempi and arrangement of thematic material, the piece is in a characteristic arch form (ABCBA). The piece is scored for a chorus of 27 voices: nine sopranos, and six each of altos, tenors and basses. It calls for a woodwind section comprising four flutes with three doubling on piccolo, four oboes with three doubling on cor …
A Portrait
Arvo Pärt: A Portrait. His Works, his Life. It contains 2 CDs with over 2½ hours of music, richly illustrated with rarely seen photographs, and a detailed essay by Nick Kimberley. The music of Arvo Pärt draws on traditions stretching back across the centuries, yet it could only have been written by someone who had lived through the complexities and contradictions of the last half-century. In his native Estonia, his early music incurred the wrath of the Soviet authorities; when he moved to the We…
Ballet mecanique
Ballet Mécanique (1924) was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmaker/artist Fernand Léger. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history. In concert performance, the "ballet" is not a show of human dancers but of mecha…
Glassworks
In 1982 Philip Glass became the first composer since Aaron Copland to join the CBS Masterworks label. Glass had formed the Philip Glass Ensemble in 1968, but it wasn't until his opera Einstein on the Beach (1976) that he achieved great critical and popular success. His first album for Masterworks, Glassworks, tripled all sales projections, pleasing audiences, critics and Glass himself: "I'm very pleased with it, the way it's received in performance. The pieces seem to have an emotional quality t…
Forms 1-4
Four works by James Tenney, each paired with music by an American composer to whom the Tenney composition is dedicated. The four 'Forms' compositions share with their senior partners -- Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Stefan Wolpe, and Morton Feldman -- a focus on sound and, in a more intuitive way, mood. Tenney's music draws upon an unorthodox and original approach to harmony. The compositions include James Tenney's 'Form 1' (1993) and Edgard Varese's 'Octandre' (1923), James Tenney's 'Form 2' (1993)…
String quartet (1979)
Morton Feldman’s String Quartet (1979) follows over a decade of compositional activity where the composer was constantly occupied with a new piece for orchestra. In the eleven years before the Quartet he produced fifteen orchestral works, beginning with On Time and the Instrumental Factor (1969) up to Violin and Orchestra (1979). In the following eight years only three orchestral works were written, The Turfan Fragments (1980), Coptic Light (1986) and For Samuel Beckett (1987). With the String Q…
Inner Cities
Performed by Daan Vandewalle (piano), 4 hours, 24 minutes worth. "Alvin Curran's music-making embraces all the contradictions (composed/improvises, tonal/atonal, maximal/minimal) in a serene dialectical encounter. His more than 100 works feature taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers, computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion and chorus. Whether in the intimate form of his well-known solo performances, or pure chamber music, experimental radio works or large-scale s…
Paradise Now: A Collective Creation of The Living Theatre
Arthur Magazine proudly presents our newest release Paradise Now: The Living Theatre in Amerika DVD featuring rare, never-before-distributed films and a bacchanal of revolutionary multimedia documents from The Living Theatre's historic and influential '68-'69 American tour. A fulminating art-meets-life installation brought to you in collaboration with The Living Theatre, The Ira Cohen Akashic Project and Saturnalia Media Rites of the Dreamweapon. Transform your living, work or performance space.…
Live 1974
Though they only released two albums (1974's Musik Von Harmonia and 1975's Deluxe), in their brief existence Harmonia were considered one of the most important and influential bands of the German Krautrock/Kosmiche scene. Composed of Michael Rother from Neu! and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius from Cluster, this live recording captures Harmonia at their peak on March 23, 1974 at Penny Station in Griessem, Germany. Previously unreleased and featuring 5 extended, never before heard songs…
Constant Companion
Ruthann recorded a single early '70s Reprise album of superb loner folk psych with fragile singing and delicate acoustic guitar playing...stark and deep meditations on lost love, topsy-turvy moons, ringing bells... First time on CD. Detailed liner notes, rare photos. And oh yeah, she was the writer of the Association's hit 'Windy.
Fate Is Only Once
Released as a short-run private press LP in 1965, Fate Is Only Once has long been a coveted collectible among American Primitive guitar enthusiasts. The only other recorded work by Taussig surfaced on the out of-print Takoma LP Contemporary Guitar Spring '67alongside John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Max Ochs and Bukka White. 'Dorian Sonata' was recently featured on the acclaimed acoustic guitar compilation Imaginational Anthem Vol. 1, and now the album is here. remastered, with original liner notes and…
Nur Mar Mus
It is no exaggeration to say that Limpe Fuchs' musical creations really have a life of their own, whether the sounds are produced by conventional instruments, vocal chords, or even from objects she found or constructed specifically for that purpose. Her music is characterized, especially when she is playing the ballastring instruments, by the reverberating humming of the strings, rich in overtones, and by the mysterious echoes emanating from stones. For Limpe Fuchs, music means setting out on a …
Dennis Suck Goes Disco
Essential reissue of this LAFMS cassette-only release from 1977 -- the first in a series of archival LAFMS release from the label based in the store that was ground zero for the orginal movement to begin with -- Poo-Bah Records! Great booklet with new liner notes by Dennis, design by Tom Recchion. "Dennis Duck Goes Disco was originally released as a hand-made cassette in 1977. Only 20 were made, numbered and given to friends. The album was made entirely with a phonograph and records, utilizing s…
The Songs
Kind of unbelievable that this has been reissued -- out of nowhere and a very pleasant surprise. Sondheim released 2 of the most-out ESP-Disks (Ritual All 7-70 & T'Other Little Tune and here is his prior Riverboat label album. First ever reissue of The Songs, the debut recording by Alan Sondheim & Ritual All 770, originally released on Riverboat Records (later recordings appeared on ESP Disk). Recorded in March 1967 and included on the legendary Nurse With Wound list of experimental recordings, …
Gal (1969)
This Brazilian classic finally gets a proper U.S. release -- one of the greatest psychedelic albums of the late '60s, and a key part of the Tropicalia movement as well! The record is easily the most tripped-out album ever from Gal Costa -- far more sinister than Gal's debut of a few months before. The session was still recorded with full arrangements by the legendary Rogerio Duprat (who'd worked previously with Costa, Os Mutantes, and others), but it also features a lot heavier guitar and a blaz…
Solo 78/79
Smegma were formed as a reaction to the band's perceptions of how horrible things were in the '70s. 'We moved up to Portland just as the Los Angeles Free Music Society came out of the closet. There was the whole punk scene and a rebirth of things, but when we left, it was the deadest, worst time to be there unless you were into glam.' This disgust is reflected in the tone of the early classics Pigface Chant, Flash Cards, Disco Diarrhea and Glamour Girl 1941. The crown jewel, perhaps, of the earl…
Think Space
Group improvisations intended to accompany a film on the Viking space probe in 1975. Includes the original Doo-Dooettes lineup; Dennis Duck, Juan Gomez, Fredrik Nilsen, Tom Recchion, Harold Schroeder. The 7" includes a Doo-Dooette version of Faust's 'Picnic On A Frozen River' recorded in 1978. Packaged in 7" gatefold jacket. Limited edition. First time available. The release includes: The Doo-Dooettes performing Faust's 'Picnic On A Frozen River' 7", CD of Think Space. Hand numbered edition of 7…
Boris The Spider/Priceless
This edit of Le-Forte Four is wedged between their former incarnation as The Patients and their debut LP that was put together in the electronic music studio at Cal Arts in 1974. Edited by Rick Potts in 1973. All the references made in their debut Bikini Tennis Shoes LP, from Speed Racer to Zappa to Looneytoons to the Moog, is very clearly foretold in the 'Boris The Spider/Priceless' edit. Includes Extended Grunge and Arguments From The Patients reworking of The Who's 'Boris The Spider' that was…