Vapor Frames 86/91
Limited clear vinyl, edition of 100. The alchemist Bebo Baldan, accompanied by Steve James on violin and sarod (as well as on instruments of various geographical extractions) mixes, in a personal way, sounds from a bevy of different cultures – from Mediterranean and Indian, to South American – with synths, samples, and loops. The result is a boundless music that carries us, riding soft waves and bobbing between Balearic ambient, jazz and electronic, on islands that have been quietly, yet careful…
Svelto
In the past years we’ve seen many cool albums released as they were, just beautiful music artifacts with no particular purpose rather than pleasing the most trained ears in the underground scene of music listeners and cassette tapes aficionados. After a big research involving a copious amount of people including musicians, housewives and household management's scientists, Artetetra, in collaboration with the bolognese crew of Islandsexp, ended up with a catalogue of music that serves bo…
Um Argentino No Deserto
** Edition of 200** René Bertholo Alhandra (1935-2005) was mainly know as sculptor and visual artist, and his musical work, though including classical composition, largely focused on a digital modular sequencer/synthesizer of his own design. This story began when I had to learn something about electronics, in order to make objects with electric movement, which I call “small-scale models”, and which I was making between 1963 and 1973.In 1973, when tired of repairs I had decided to give up making …
Aeolyca
Standing beyond the realms of category and classification, Pier Luigi Andreoni and Francesco Paladino’s Aeolyca, initially released as a limited cassette in 1989, is an artifact which perfectly illustrates the openness and creative ambition displayed by Italy’s avant-garde music community during the 1980’s. While may of their cousins in other country’s flirted with institutional recognition and fame, Italian artists pushed toward the outer reaches, plumbing unknown depths, tragically remaining i…
Scorie
Soave present an official reissue of Scorie, Tiziano Popoli and Marco Dalpane's minimal wonder from 1985. Long coveted and hunted by collectors, Scorie falls among the strange and definition resistant artifacts of Italy's remarkable avant-garde music scene of the '70s and '80s. An emblem of sonic diversity rendered through electronic sound, distilling a daunting number of traditions and ideas, while sculpting its own world of creative singularity, standing apart from the rest. While a great many…
Meta
Fascinating collection of Minimal Sound-Art / Musique Concrète works by the obscure Belgian artist Paul A.R. Timmermans, privately issued in 1983 - with the aid & additional insight of his neighbor & friend Badouin Oosterlynck - in a perfectly minimal edition: a lead slug embedded with the artist's name is clamped onto the top left of an otherwise blank LP sleeve, with only a text-insert in four languages either affixed or inside. Containing four pieces composed between 1980 & 1982 of a very pec…
Omen
Ah, CP #200; never in 12 years did I think we'd make it this far. Those of you keeping count will realize that, despite the catalogue number this is actually the 181st title in the series; that said we're definitely winding down & what a great run it's been. This, in many ways, is the perfect title to ring in this momentous occasion; arguably the longest in the Creel Pone "Queue" (mainly as virtually the entire cabal, upon discovery, scratched their collective heads, rooted around for close to…
Built Through
The acoustic architecture of Robert Curgenven and Richard Chartier forms a delineation of space built through dismantling the constitution of internal and external. Beyond dividing space, creating a façade or habitable zone, the perceptibility of the surface is turned back in on itself and with it a shift in the ideological and social context of the space. A seamless integration of digital and analogue, a suffusion which creates a mutual modulation, transforming purpose chosen materials—dense, u…
Music To Wash Dishes By
Nice to see this 1982 “Private Press” LP by Chicagoland’s Tom Cameron in the program; I’ve long felt this was one of the better “One Man Against the World ... with Synthesizer” LPs self-financed during the late-70s / early-80s. Each side features an extended, gorgeous take on analogue “Automation” book-ended by two, shorter, more “Accessible” numbers. The A-side’s “Another Question” is an impeccably gaseous, floating void of minimal diminished-minor filigree that rates up there with thebest of…
Tropes on the Salve Regina
I've heard rumo(u)r of the Creel Pone "shortlist"; i.e. the member-curated selection of "candidates" for the Creel Pone treatment, each title nominated then judged according to strict set of attributes found running throughout the series (intangible qualities, mind you, such as "zonked" - "private-universe / bedroom" - "against-grain" - "aleatoric" - etc ...) Up high on said list all along has been this gem; Michael Sahl's first release, "Tropes on the Salve Regina." This one fits in so perfectl…
Elektronische Musik
Mr. P.C. C.P.’s handling of this 1981 “Private-Press” (c/o the Internationales Musikstudio - aka the Nürnberg vinyl pressing plant) abstract-synth stunner, comprised of three pieces composed during the mid 70s & early 80s by “Elektronische Musik im Unterricht” & “Musik aus Strom : Eine Einfuhrung in die Elektronische Musik” author & instrument designer (famously, he built the prototype of the “Synthi E” variant for EMS-Steinberg ... but a trail of custom-built analog designs like the “Doppelring…
Underwater Electronic Orchestra
One of the, in retrospect, better constructs of the Creel Pone cabal is that, despite many beliefs to the contrary, it is in fact a committee of semi-like-minded souls, all interested in portraying some aspect of the "Unheralded Electronic Music" canon. Case in point; while I personally wouldn't have included this particular collection of gossamer isolation-tank filigree & majority psychedelic-disco, it was strongly nominated by a number of the Cognoscenti along the way - partly due to its scarc…
Ritratto Di Giovane, Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul
One of the true Musique Concrète Holy Grails - alongside Jacques Lejeune's "Fantasmes Ou L'Histoire De Blanche-Neige" & the Jean Schwarz / Jacques Lejeune / Phillip Beetz "Des Musiques Des Sons" set - is this privately issued 3LP boxed set from the husband & wife team of Françoise Barrière & Christian Clozier, consisting of one extended piece by each; Barrière's "Ritratto di Giovane" & Clozier's "Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul." Barrière's six-part "Ritratto Di Giovane" - "Le Vieux Clown, "Et Le…
Uno Todo Tres
A beautiful drone like a line shaping in time, from silence to silence. Clara de Asís is an electroacoustic music composer and experimental guitarist, born in 1988 in Spain and based in France. Her musical practice is held away from any formal academicism, aiming to transcend conventional instrumental approaches. She works mainly on prepared electric guitar, focuses on exploring the specificities of her instrument, and develops them both in live situations and throughout electroacoustic composit…
Bikini Tennis Shoes
*totally sold-out at source, few copies back in stock* The origins of Le Forte Four are those of the Los Angeles Free Music Society itself. Chip Chapman joined forces with Rick Potts (and shortly thereafter Tom and Joe Potts), taking up the LAFMS name in 1974. Ultimately baptizing themselves Le Forte Four, they began threading imagined lines between John Cage and The Residents, Cecil Taylor and Henry Cow – generating sounds completely unlike any of these and anything since. The inaugural release…
Klangbilder
Whoah. Here’s one you’re not likely to have heard/seen evidence of; Mr. P.C. C.P.’s treatment of German Painter Günter Maas’ sole LP release, privately-pressed in 1969. “Klangbilder” contains four extended pieces, ranging from Oskar Sala-esque sheets of detuned electronic sound - composed on the then state-of-the-art Siemens synthesizer utilizing an experimental photo-electric coupler which converted his paintings into control-voltage !!! - to dark Musique Concréte pieces utilizing evil-sounding…
Who Says Birds Don't Do Things Just For Fun?
Wow, just wow. One of the dynamics at play in the C.P. program that has been all but absent in the recent catalogue is the "one man against the world" spec. These politically-charged times make me hesitant to use the catch-all "outsider", although, in the case of upstate-New York Composer Glenn Williams, it's clear that a palpable distance from the greater world was, indeed, in effect. Let's first focus on the music; the A-side's side-length title piece works a long-form take of the exact sort o…
BBC Radiophonic Workshop - 21
In 1958 the BBC Radiophonic Workshop opened with the aim to enhance the main drama output on the Third Programme (now Radio 3) following the development of new electronic music techniques emanating from Europe. Their work expanded across the BBC to take in TV drama (especially sci-fi), schools programmes and themes. The latter being their most celebrated and well known work: Delia Derbyshire’s treatment of Ron Grainer’s theme for Doctor Who.
This collection was originally released on vinyl …
Jukebox-Series 005
Trost continues its Trost Jukebox Series of 7"s. Chra - electronics; Pita - modular synthesizer, electronics. Mastered by Martin Siewert. Artwork by Lasse Marhaug.
Legacy Map
** Edition of 150 copies ** Sprung from the eclectic new wave of Italian noise and industrial music, Lettera 22 is a duo consisting of Matteo Castro and Riccardo Mazza, based in Vittorio Veneto. Their noise is dynamic and creative, balancing in the field between contemporary art music and harsh noise brutality: gritty, textured concrete sounds and field recordings are recorded and manipulated with analogue tape, drenched in tape hiss and finally crushed by a wall of distorted electronics and fe…