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Das tapfere Schneiderlein
Drop the usual children's opera platitudes, add a liberal measure of cheek – result: a smart musical comedy, young and saucy, just like the brave little people that go about their business here. Do the children today know at all what this fairytale is about? Well, if they don't, Wolfgang Mitterer will bring it home to them, with just a few characteristic instruments: double bass, samples, synthetic sounds. Elisabeth Rombach as the little tailor takes to the road boldly and merrily, parading the …
Nipples
Long awaited reissue of this historic pre-FMP album by Peter Brotzmann. Known to many for it's placement on "The List" (T. Moore's Top Ten list of free jazz artifacts as published in Grand Royal of course), this is one of the most desirable and completely unseen albums in the genre of modern improvisation. Recorded April 18/24, 1969 and released on the Calig-Verlag label. Simply put, Nipples is one of the rarest and most influential European energy jazz recordings of all time. The incendiary Sex…
Enviromental Meditations
The fact that Maurizio Bianchi is back is something that is known. I think the new age muzak he created right after his return should be seen as a false start, as since quite some time now, he returned to the world of noise and that is a territory that we can safely call his territory. Bianchi here teams up with one Maor Appelbaum, who is a member of various Israeli project such Poochlatz, Vultures, IWR and who has various solo projects Screening , Vectorscope and Plated Steel – not that I heard…
Concierto n° 1 para piano y orquesta \'Atlántico\' / La Luz del
Canary folklore: the Concierto Atlántico is based on two motifs that have been "united with the almost obsessive rhythm of the tango herréno, an essential element of the oldest folk music of the island." The piano piece Latir Isleño, on the other hand, is based on a well-known Canarian folksong, Arrorò. But traditional Canarian music is merely the starting point for these works, not their destination; their structure, like that of La Luz del Aire (The light of air), is determined by exact mathem…
Welcome Abroad
Vicki Bennett, under the People Like Us moniker, returns from several collaborations for her first solo album in several years. Stranded in the United States for an extended period after the Icelandic volcano eruption blocked her British homeland's airspace, Bennett derived thematic material of displacement, travel, and a longing forelsewhere, from the natural disaster that caused her own predicament. Volcanically marooned in Baltimore and NYC, Bennett utilized some of her "free" time to…
Chromatic mysteries: soundtracks 1963-2009
'Chromatic Mysteries: soundtracks 1963-2009 CD by Arthur Cantrill. Arthur and Corinne Cantrill have been making stunning, innovative films for fifty years. Yet little attention has been paid to their soundtracks. Many were realised by Arthur Cantrill using a range of ingenious methods on the cutting edge of electronic and environmental music development in Australia. Chromatic Mysteries documents a selection of Arthur's soundtracks from as early as 1963 through to his most recent work. These ele…
The ins and outs
This is a studio recording, and thus somewhat different in approach and tone to the group's continuous live sets; an example can be heard on a compilation from the 2003 Freedom of the City festival. Here the emphasis is more on developing specific ideas with a consistent logic than on modulating between passages of tension and climax. On the longest track, the 13-minute Absolute Xero, the logic is sure and compelling; Skzypce is more playful, with Wilkinson vocalising through his reed and Noble,…
Basic
Carl Michael von Hausswolff's first major domestic release. As a composer he has been the main sound organizer in the duo Phauss; he has also worked with The Hafler Trio, and is currently performing live in the group Ocsid with Graham Lewis (Wire, Dome). As a visual artist, he is co-founder of the conceptual state of Elgaland-Bargaland, which hosts a worldwide array of embassies and consulates, and who physical territory is described as 'all borderlines between existing states and areas at sea.
Qvaris
Their first label release in many years & represents their most polished work to date. One of the most enigmatic, mysterious, & defiantly anti-commercial groups to emerge from the NYC loft scene during the '90s. Incorporating elements of folk, drone, psychedelia, free jazz, noise, & just about everything else, NNCK has nevertheless carved out a distinctive sound despite the seemingly random component elements.
Visions de l\'Amen
Last things and Christian visions: György Kurtág's reflections on Heinrich Schütz, and Olivier Messiaen in search of the "Amen."
Music For Voice, Koto And Shamisen
As part of its Japan focus the 1999 Biennial Festival for New Music in Hannover also presented Toshio Hosokawa's exploration into the music of his "musical ancestors." This CD was recorded live during the performance and includes three works from the 17th and 19th centuries. Chidori no kyoku by Yoshizawa kengyô II (1808-1872) is based on the 31-syllable poems of the classical poetry anthology Kokin wakashû (10th century), so-called waka poems; chidori is the Japanese plover, whose calls have bee…
Kraanerg
Apart from a large orchestra, Kraanerg, composed in 1968/69, requires audio feeds of recorded parts played by the orchestra and of the results of the manipulation of electro-acoustical phenomena. “I do not work with basic building blocks. I start afresh every time,“ Xenakis once said. This statement may help explain the extremely independent sonic universe created afresh in his compositions again and again. In the same vein, he rejects any attempt to foist semantic patterns onto the music of Kra…
Guitar Album
This enterprising programme of 20th century music, recorded in England by the distinguished Japanese guitarist Azusa Shimizu, contains first recordings of pieces by Højsgaard and Mamiya, as well as offering a rare opportunity to hear the sonata by Antonio José, who was brutally murdered during the Spanish Civil War. An outstanding CD for all guitar music enthusiasts.
Olson III
A piece of unrelenting intensity, Olson III may be one of the most powerful compositions from minimalist composer Terry Riley. Based on the same phasing principals of In C, Olson III is filled with short motives that each ensemble member must play and repeat before moving onto the next. A chorus singing "To begin" joins into the droning fray of string instruments, sawing away à la In C. For 53 minutes here, Riley (on soprano saxophone) and a teenage student orchestra at the Nacka School of Music…
The Disintegration Loops IV
And then, the man remained alone with more doubts than ever before. Music had flown through the years, the tapes definitively gone. IV draws the final line in this groundbreaking 'disintegration' cycle and it does it with a high grade of acute intensity and a totally developed loop aesthetic...moreover, the final track is sort of a reprise of the first segment in I, like putting an end to a whole giant texture. Basinski's repetitions are truly addictive; I could listen for days, each repe…
String Quartets Vol. 3 (Nos. 7-9)
String Quartets Nos. 7, 8 and 9 suggest that Rihm has finally left behind the neo-romantic expressive pathos of earlier compositions: “Real or virtual allusions to the past are rarely to be found any more – and the same holds of the luscious and revelling strings. Remnants of tonal harmony are, with a few exceptions, almost completely obliterated. … Instead, new constellations come to the fore, emancipated from traditional conceptions of sound – heeding, in particular, the principle of polarity …
Orchestral Works
The second CD of col legno's Wien Modern Edition is dedicated to Luciano Berio, who throughout his life kept on searching for new sounds, and new instrumental and orchestral organizing principles in his work. His Sequences for solo instruments are among the most important landmarks in recent music; later on, Berio decided to "comment" on some of these notoriously complex solo works from an orchestral perspective. Chemins and Chemins IIb are adaptations of the Sequences for harp and viola. "The b…
Oboe Concertos
The oboe more than suited Maderna's partiality for clear structures and sensual-concrete sounds. It was not without good reason that at a time when the supply of music dedicated to the oboe was anything but plenty, Maderna wrote, not one, not two, but three concertos (besides several other works for oboe) for this "nasal" sounding member of the woodwind family. The first oboe concerto (1963) seems almost classical in its character, in the interplay of oboe and orchestra, or involving other instr…
Myrrh
this mindblowing album was originally released in 1972, when Robin Williamson was at the time still a member of the Incredible String Band, the ensemble he started with Mike Heron in 1966. These ten songs are all Williamson originals, with the exception of"Strings In The Earth And Air" by Ivan Pawle.Where his band's recordings were then getting increasingly electric, this is a return to a more acoustic bearing. This set includes some gorgeous, if overlooked, songs from the vast catalogue William…
Primordium
Primordial sounds created by Maurizio Bianchi/M. B. using a rudimental five strings guitar, afterwards polarized effects added by Siegmar Fricke utilizing a shapeless analogtronic apparatus. CD-R in half handmade 3 panels digipack