Days Falling
** Edition of 100. Heavy weight 180 gram vinyl. Hand-painted covers on thick gray cardboard ** Editions presents Days Falling by Jason Kahn. Recorded April 9, 2020 in Zürich at Kunstraum Walcheturm. Recording, mixing, mastering, liner notes and LP artwork Jason Kahn. Many thanks to Patrick Huber for allowing me to record in Kunstraum Walcheturm. These pieces were recorded during one evening on April 9, 2020 in Zürich, my home for the last twenty-one years. I rode my bike through the rainy night …
Mara
* Picture disc edition of 300 copies * Maja S. K. Ratkje is at the forefront of the musical avant-garde. Her music is bold, original and it is meant for sharing. At its heart lies Ratkje’s own voice, an open door to her individual musicianship and a constant tool for realigning her work with natural expressions and human truths.
On Mara, layers of vocals overlap and layer their way through the reverberant woodwork of an early baroque parish in Austria. At times slow and beautiful, other times fr…
Songs 2002
Double A sided cassette reissue of a severely limited one-sided LP, and what might be C Spencer Yeh's most trying, challenging and rewarding foray into a world previously unknown to him, and us: his world of song. Songs 2002 contain what are perhaps subtle homages to early Eno and primo era Bowie vis a vis the studio treatments of the raw sounds with which we're more familiar in his previous work. Yeh's songs work within two generalized veins: ala Brian Eno's early attempts to communicate liquid…
Kiki's Island
UK-based Alasdair Willis, who makes music under the name The Vitamin B12. Active since the mid ’80s, Willis is primarily known for A legendary 4xLP box set that compiled selections from various free improvisational sessions from his Brighton loft in 1986. In the intervening years, The Vitamin B12 has proven to be an elusive figure in the European free improvisation scene, which also includes acts like Nurse With Wound and H.N.A.S.The Vitamin B12 was formed with the same ease as his childhood pro…
Sult
Based upon Maja Ratkje´s music created for the ballet ”Sult” (”Hunger") by profiled director Jo Strømgren for the Norwegian National Ballet, this is a departure from records and live settings normally associated with Maja S. K. Ratkje, as we find her placed behind a modified, wiggly and out of tune pump organ, singing songs and improvising. Metal tubes, PVC tubes and a wind machine were built into the organ; guitar strings, a bass string, a resin thread, metal and glass percussion and a bow are …
Top Ten: 2008-2018
Edition of 200. 550 pages, LP size. Top Ten: 2008-2018 is the second volume in James Hoff’s Top Ten series. In almost every issue since April 1998, Artforum has asked an individual from the art world to compile a top ten list of their favorite recent exhibitions (or concerts, television programs, books, events, etc.). In 2008, Hoff compiled the first ten years of this column into a new publication, with all of the articles’ accompanying images redacted, rendering the pictorial layout and design …
Top Ten: 1998-2008
Edition of 200. 440 pages, LP size. Top Ten: 1998–2008 is a new edition of the long-out-of-print publication by James Hoff. In almost every issue since April 1998, Artforum has asked an individual from the art world to compile a top ten list of their favorite recent exhibitions (or concerts, television programs, books, events, etc.). In this volume, Hoff compiles the first ten years of this column into a new publication, with all of the articles’ accompanying images redacted, rendering the picto…
Engines Of Desire
Since the early 80s, Blackhumour has been stubbornly dedicated to an
investigation of the cracks which exist in common speech practice and
the vacancy of the signifier. Vocal event is mined for stochastic
determinism and glottal smut. While affinities exist, it would be difficult to categorize this
material as sound poetry, despite a focus on voice, breath and the
subtle diversion of linguistic intent. What is it. Repetition and
magnification direct the incremental units of a sound which m…
The Early Immersive Music of Joan La Barbara
**Milestone recordings. Joan La Barbara's controlled experiments into the limits of the human voice took her beyond music** Joan La Barbara is one of great figures in the history of the American musical avant-garde – holding equal standing as an innovator, composer, and performer. She has defined the field of extended vocal technique for the better part of half a century, pushing our understanding of the sonic possibility of the human voice – drawing on its primal root, and thrusting it into the…
Rough Tongue
Beam Splitter (Audrey Chen and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø) is a duo for amplified voice and trombone. Beam Splitter‘s debut album Rough Tongue on Corvo Records is one part, a timbral collage of carefully extracted sound material and in another, a longer moment taken from an intimate room below the din. All tracks are taken from three live concerts in 2016. Utilizing the pure sounds of acoustic and closely amplified trombone and voice, the record exemplifies the joining together of these two i…
Schulevy Maker
Holotype Editions was founded as a means of bringing out music by some of the most unique and peculiar artists of the last decades. What could be more fitting for the imprint’s seventh release, than the duo of cult artist Ghédalia Tazartès and multi-instrumentalist, composer and singer Maya Dunietz. Recorded live at Cafe Oto, in December 2013, Schulevy Maker documents the duo’s first live appearance. An amalgam of bizarre samples, concrete sounds, live piano and bells, juxtaposed with the otherw…
Pop Art
Catherine Anahid Berberian (July 4, 1925 – March 6, 1983) was an American mezzo-soprano and composer based in Italy. She interpreted contemporary avant-garde music composed, among others, by Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Silvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky. She also interpreted works by Claudio Monteverdi, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Kurt Weill, Philipp Zu Eulenburg, arrangements of songs by The Beatles, and folk songs from several…
Live at White Cube
In collaboration between Christian Marclay and the London Sinfonietta, some of the world’s most renowned contemporary musicians have been invited to stage performances, including new compositions and live improvisation sessions inside the White Cube. Each performance over the course of the exhibition will be recorded, pressed and screen-printed live inside the gallery. This performance is from Okkyung Lee.A native of Korea, Okkyung Lee has been developing her own voice in contemporary cel…
Tapesongs
Tapesongs (1977) is the second of two crucial Joan La Barbara reissues on Arc Light Editions, following Voice Is The Original Instrument (1976) (ALE 005LP, 2016). Joan La Barbara is a composer, performer, sound artist and actor, renowned for her unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques, which have influenced generations of composers and singers. This reissue is presented in full collaboration with La Barbara. Tapesongs makes use of early electronics, and multi-tracked…
Extended Voices
Omega Point had obtained the original tape recording of "Extended Voices" composed by Toshi Ichiyanagi (first released by Odyssey/Columbia in 1967 on the compilation of the same name, alongside other pieces for voice & electronics by Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Robert Ashley and Alvin Lucier). The piece consists of electronic sounds and modulated voices which are included on this album in two new 2014 realizations, in collaboration with Takashi Matsudaira, a baritone singer…
Solo Concert 1980
This DVD presents a rare and powerful solo performance by one of the most important and original artists in the world. Recorded in 1980 at a studio on Long Island, Meredith is in full voice, relaxed and creatively inspired by a small audience of Monk cogniscenti. Recorded with a 3-camera shoot and then put on the shelf, Tzadik is proud to present the first release of this astonishing virtuoso solo performance.
Key
1995 release. Originally released in 1971. Key contains Meredith Monk's earliest compositions for voice. The songs that make up Key
were composed and performed in a three year period between 1967 and
1970, when Monk collected them into this 45-minute "invisible theater"
experience. Meredith Monk on the release: "In Key I wanted to
create a constantly shifting ambience. Each song dealt with a different
vocal character, landscape, technical concern or emotional quality. I
was trying for a vi…
Machine
Although Machine was completed in 1971 it was not released until 1973, shortly after the release of Journey Into Space. Machine is therefore the first major composition by Trevor Wishart. It was composed at York University and was originally issued on vinyl as 3 sides of a highly adventurous 3LP box set called Electronic Music From York, released by the University’s own record label. In common with Journey Into Space (also on Paradigm Discs), Machine makes use of a large number of volunteer cont…
Adventura Anatomica
** longtime sold out at source, few copies restocked ** A fairy tale world comes to life in sublime fashion on Maja Ratkje’s latest collaboration Adventura Anatomica, a musical work for theatre she created with choreographer/danser Odd Johan Fritzøe and stage designer in November 2005. This is a world of bittersweet fairytales, of wolves and innocent maidens losing their way in a dark wood, a world of fear and despair and joyful ecstasy. In any case, emotions such as these coexist closely in Rat…
Voice is the original instrument
Collection of Joan La Barbara early works and her first vocal compositions, originally released on LPs in the 1970s and early 1980s on her own Wizard Records. "One of my earliest pieces, "Hear What I Feel", was a self-exploratory, sensory-deprivation experimental work, designed to help me discover new sounds, delve into psychological aspects, as well as communicate with the audience on a pre-verbal level of awareness. After spending an hour in isolation with my eyes taped shut and not touching a…