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In Praise of Learning
A landmark in the history of European experimental rock, the third 'Cow' work, originally released on Virgin in 1975, represents the second act of joined forces between Henry Cow and Slapp Happy, and the first fully integrated appearance of Dagmar Krause. In Praise Of Learning is a unique piece of art, showing perfect unity of political content, with rock complexity, extended song form and free noise explorations. An impressive array of new compositions, including Tim Hodgkinson's masterwork 'Li…
Clic
There is no figure in Italian music, nor within the country’s shimmering, expansive avant-garde, who demands the respect and awe offered to Franco Battiato. He is the beginning and the end. An artist whose output, stretching across six decades, is so diverse and singular, that it defies any concrete definition - darting from psychedelic Prog, definitive gestures in the history of Minimalism, to the heights of explicit Pop. Like many of his contemporaries, Battiato’s journey toward avant-garde an…
First Rehearsal Tapes
*2021 repress* "On Suicide's First Rehearsal Tapes, recorded in 1975, Alan Vega and Martin Rev create minimalist aural structures, traces of which would surface on their eponymous debut album, released on the Red Star label in late 1977."These songs are not a sketchpad of semi-formed ideas. The First Rehearsal Tapes comprise an audio diary of two men out in the ether, measuring themselves as evolving individual artists and as a unit who would rely on inseparability to realize their unique and of…
Atlas (books, records, relics, prints, sounds)
This book looks at the work of Austrian avant-garde artist Hermann Nitsch, particularly his ritualistic and existential “public aktionen” under the Orgies Mysterien Theater. Presented through the documentation of these events as they were recorded (scored, directed, written down, photographed, published, and reported), this archiving method explores Nitsch’s performative practice, both in terms of how the performance is organised and by what means the organisation is effected by the original and…
Slates
* 2021 LP edition * compiles the six tracks from the original EP release, their March 1981 Peel session and an early '80s studio outtake. Liner notes by Brian Turner. If The Fall truly is a cult band, then Slates both benefits from and reinforces such shrouded obsessions. In presenting these six particular songs as a 10-inch EP, the inherent and attractive difficulty of The Fall's sound is made physical, framing the urgency of their singles from this period (notably How I Wrote 'Elastic Man' an…
La Jetee
"'This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood.' Thus begins, with deceptive simplicity, Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962). The film, by far Marker's bestknown work, synthesizes many of the elusive filmmaker's central preoccupations -- time and memory, power and resistance, the ephemerality and resilience of love -- yet it also undermines the very idea of film. Composed almost entirely of still photographs, La Jetée quite literally pieces together the tale of an unnamed, forsak…
Future Travel
Long out of print in its original, 1981 LP version from Street Records, Future Travel, has now been released again, remastered for digital media, by New World Records (80668-2). All the music composed and performed by David Rosenboom from this historic album is included, along with a new version of And Out Come the Night Ears, which was first introduced on an LP from 1750 Arch Records in 1978. One of the first albums composed almost entirely with a digital synthesizer, Future Travel, features th…
Five Works For Voices, Instruments, And Electronics
Kenneth Gaburo (1926–1993) composed works for instruments, voices, electronics, multi-media, theater, and a variety of other resources. Foremost among his many interests was a concern with the voice and with language—how we shape language and how we are shaped by it—and with making works that existed somewhere between the boundaries of music and language. Of the works on this CD, three are intensely concerned with what Gaburo termed “Compositional Linguistics” (Antiphony III, Antiphony IV, and M…
Lonesome Road (The Crawford Variations)
Larry Polansky, though known primarily for his work in the field of computer music, has produced a major addition to the keyboard literature, this massive theme-and-variations on Ruth Crawford Seeger’s arrangement of the folk song "Lonesome Road." Inspired by his deep engagement with her music, Lonesome Road (1988-89) is a prime example of Polansky’s penchant for building large architectonic structures through complex transformational processes. The work is in three sections of seventeen variati…
Terry Riley
Uncle Jard (1998) (saxophone quartet, piano, harpsichord, and voice) is a particularly compelling example of this. In this piece, Indian classical music and blues/jazz elements co-exist in a stylistically coherent whole: ragtime and raga have never been so closely intertwined. The piece is divided into three parts. While in the first and second parts the texture of the saxophone ensemble is enriched by the voice and keyboard, in the third part the voice is not featured. Assassin Reverie (2001), …
ShamanSong
Composer/performer Joan La Barbara (b 1947) has been an influential figure in experimental music since the early 1970s. She has devoted her career to the exploration of the human voice as a multi-faceted instrument. Going far beyond traditional boundaries, she has created works for multiple voices, chamber ensembles, music theater, orchestra and interactive technology. ShamanSong features three premieres of vintage La Barbara "sound paintings" of pensive beauty and spiritual resonance.
ShamanSo…
French Archives Vol. II 1974-1985
An absolutely astounding accomplishment, Black Sweat's second 4 LP Box set of previously unreleased material by Ariel Kalma - French Archives Vol. II - is a mind-melting immersion into the composer and saxophonist's radical experiments and stunning ambient harmonics made between 1974 and 1985. Venturing far beyond the territories for which he is most well-known, the collection takes great strides to accurately framing ambient and New Age musics as rightful extensions of the avant-garde, and is e…
Futuro Antico / Dai Primitivi all'Elettronica / Isole del Suono (3LP in bundle)
This bundle includes the complete available Futuro Antico discography, namely it includes the three following LPs:Futuro Antico (1980)Dai Primitivi all'Elettronica (1980)Isole del Suono (1980)Futuro Antico (1980)For the first time on vinyl this obscure gem of the italian project Futuro Antico, released just on tape in 1980, this record contains the hypnotic session of Walter Maioli (Aktuala) and Riccardo Sinigaglia. Analog and warm sounds, a perfect mix of drone synth and ancient flutes (found i…
Futuro Antico
2021 small repress. For the first time on vinyl this obscure gem of the italian project Futuro Antico, released just on tape in 1980, this record contains the hypnotic session of Walter Maioli (Aktuala) and Riccardo Sinigaglia. Analog and warm sounds, a perfect mix of drone synth and ancient flutes (found in oriental countries) gives you the idea to fly on a spaceship towards some exotic sites. This records terribly remember the astonishing live Köln jam of Terry Riley and Don Cherry, the compar…
Liverpool soundworks vol.1
2 limited edition CDs on Fluxus artist Ben Patterson's own label, distributed by Alga Marghen. "'The Liverpool Song Lines' (22'57"): for many year Ben Patterson has been fascinated by the so-called 'song lines' of the Australian Aborigine. Musically, these songs for solo voice, sometimes accompanied by 'beating-sticks,' are not especially stirring for Western ears. Rather, for the artist, it is the concept underlying the text which is remarkable. These songs describe flora, fauna and places whic…
Tazartes
Remastered CD edition of Tazartès, Ghédalia Tazartès' 1987 fourth LP. Now available as an expanded individual CD, this edition was previously only available as part of a CD containing both Tazartès and Diasporas, Tazartès' 1979 debut album, which is also now available in an expanded CD edition (TES 088CD). Immersive, transporting, and deeply arresting music from the revered autodidact and audio oddity. If you've never encountered Tazartès before, this is an excellent place to start, welco…
Les danseurs de la pluie
Either available separately as a 3" CD, or as a bonus disk within the new Tazartes boxset. "Les Danseurs de la Pluie", which gives title to the complete anthology, is a 12-minute mini-CD, presented on creative disc, including four previously unavailable tracks. Two 1977 killer recordings from the 'Eclipse Totale' sessions of a very wild and residential nature; and two colossal new pieces recorded in 2005.
Organic, Playco 1969
The stable Quartetto that pianist Davide Mosconi, saxophonist Enzo Gardenghi, percussionist Marco Cristofolini, and cellist and violinist Gustavo Bonora brought to life beginning in the late '60s constituted the core of what would, in the early years of the next decade, become the larger improvising ensemble NADMA. The group was also an elegant and accomplished expression of the musical objectives of its members. This music expresses the rich yields that Davide Mosconi cultivated from his explor…
Charlemagne at Sonnabend
First time available 2CD set art-edition of the Charlemagne Palestine performances at Sonnabend Gallery, New York City, 2001. Privately issued by the composer in collaboration with Sonnabend Gallery and issued in an edition of 300 signed copies in large silkscreened gatefold folio in 2002. This art edition was never officially distributed and after 10 years a limited amount of copies is now exclusively available for the first time from Alga Marghen. The first contact between Charlemagne Pa…
Paura
N.A.D.M.A. was officially born between August and the beginning of September 1972 during time spent in a little village in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. The identity and musical orientation of the collective centered on the convergence of heterogeneous interests and sensibilities coming from avant-garde jazz experiences liberated by post-free currents, from classical studies, or from musicians also active as visual artists who had cultivated an instrumental practice utilizing spontaneous …