Back in stock
M’Uoaz
Michel Doneda, soprano and sopranino saxophones; Tetsu Saïtoh bass; Alain Joule, percussion; Antonella Talamonti, voice on track 2. Recorded 20-21 November 1995 at Talvera Studios, Cordes-sur-Ciel, France. Cover design painting (reproduced above) by Hyokichi Ohnari; graphics: Les Requins Marteaux.
Nachtgesänge / Konzert für Violoncello und Orchester / Intrada /
Young Müller (b. 1964, Switzerland) writes in a consistently romantic style — unexpected col legno fare! Perhaps Sterling should have released this. The warm Hesse settings, Nachtgesänge, could be mistaken for Szymanowski or Zemlinsky; indeed, Ernman sounds as though she’d be ideal in a Strauss opera. Darkly emotional, the single-movement cello concerto taps Shostakovich and Lutoslawski’s pathos; the idée fixe’s colorful unfolding reminds the listener of Dutilleux. Müller maintains his anachroni…
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…
Sufiq
Those keeping a running count will know that Sufiq brings the Muslimgauze CD catalog into the triple digits. This mini-album is especially significant, as it extends the extraordinary productivity of Muslimgauze auteur Bryn Jones beyond his untimely passing. New Muslimgauze titles have emerged since, but each was scheduled prior to Jones’ death in January of 1999. Active to the end, Jones left behind a store of finished masters. Sufiq sees the first release of material from this impressiv…
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 …
Bad Boy\'s Piano Music
George Antheil was not only always ahead of his time; he was also an alert contemporary and ready to take in all artistic trends of the first half of the 20th century. There was hardly a kind of music he wasn't aware of, hardly a madness he didn't take part in, and hardly a scandal he missed, or missed to cause. All his personal entanglements are certainly reflected in his compositions – and we wouldn't expect any less from him; but his continuing reputation as a genuinely unique character is ne…
Psychoneurose
Italian Avant-Noise legend M.B. and Land Use collaborate on dramatic, subterranean wall-of-noise constructions and swirling textural storms, dense and complex arrangements, shifting and shimmering tones barely under control, streaming toward some distant and indefineable precipice. Not noisy, but way too tense and corrosive to be called ambient. These vibrant monoliths of sound shift the listeners pysche into a restless sort of zen, a blissful chaos - truly mind and mood-altering. Bianchi releas…
American Landscapes 2
American Landscapes 2 ramps up the intensity slowly and with the clear objective to display power and a thorough sense of control. The first 13 minutes come at you sounding like a forest fire churning with stored energy. Underneath this unfurling force are composed parts that are revealed through close inspection. Once the energy breaks a trombone/saxophone duo stops the presses and summons a simple chamber horn interlude with other brass walking in. The piece wanders a bit into more open free p…
Étude sur les Mouvements rotatoires / 24 Préludes
The master of partial tones: Ivan Wyschnegradsky continued Scriabin's harmonic principles and (successfully) searched for new tone colors.
Lift
'It was on a night when sleep simply would not come, not matter how long I sprawled on the grass or how many pages of my book I leafed through. The black shaggy 'thing' expelled all the breath in its body. Phu phu phuu. And as it did so, something glowed softly at the crown of its head. Ahh, what a beautiful light! I should put a hat over it to stop it flying away. The black shaggy thing took his favourite hat, the one he had hung from a tree branch, and popped it onto his head. Perfect. Hirotom…
Action Music
Giacinto Scelsi’s relationship with the piano is interesting and contradictory. For no other instrument has the Italian composer and poet composed so many pieces; to no other instrument does he seem so closely attached, both personally and biographically; and no other instrument disappeared so abruptly and finally from his scores as the piano, the European showcase instrument. With the piano, we can follow the break lines and develop-ments in the musical thinking and works of Giacinto Scelsi, wh…
Congotronics
This group was founded over 25 yrs ago by Mingiedi, a virtuoso of the likembé ('thumb piano'). The band's line-up includes 3 electric likembés, equipped w/ hand-made microphones built from magnets salvaged from old car parts, & plugged into amplifiers. There's also a rhythm section which uses traditional as well as makeshift percussion, 3 singers, 3 dancers & a peculiar sound system including megaphones dating from the colonial period. Their repertoire draws largely on Bazombo trance music, to w…
FADENKREUZE
For Elmar Lampson, composition and the phenomenology of music overlap as disciplines, and attentive listening is as critical to his works' reception as is analysis of their carefully timed structures or pitch content. Lampson's String Quartet No. 2 (1992-1998) operates on several aural planes, some near and easy to distinguish, and others more remote and indistinct. The material shifts between active, atonal flurries and soft, almost lyrical passages of modal simplicity, and the extremely soft d…
Swimming In A Galaxy Of Goodwill And Sorrow
with Steve Swell: trombone Jemeel Moondoc: alto saxophoneWilliam Parker: double bass Hamid Drake: drum set - This is an album to be cherished, because it reaches back and incorporates styles from swing to post-modern free jazz; and because the playing of Steve Swell and the members of his quartet are as near-perfect as you are likely to find; and because the melodies capture the imagination with a complex beauty that hooks into the inner being of soulfulness. It encompasses a unity of elements…
Night Studies
Somewhere between Alex- ander Rodchenko, Jackson Pollock and Charles Ives: Marino Formenti's piano studies based on an instal- lation by Florian Pumhösl as a listening experience! The brilliant Italian pianist has placed compositions by Charles Ives (»Thoreau« from the Concord Sonata, the song »Tom Sails Away«, and »Study 11«) under his magnifying glass and studied them, has taken them apart, searched them for resonances, assonances and silences, and confronted the results with Ives’ own methods…
Turning Dreams & Shifting Harbours
The Kidnapping Europe project was initialized by the artists Christina Clar (Paris, France) and Peter Jap Lim (Berlin, Germany) in 2001. Based on the "Europa Myth" (Zeus kidnapped the phoenician princess Europa and brought her to a continent which now has her name), the project aims to approach the topic of migration and the dreams, hopes and visions of migrants, in particular, from a contemporary perspective. In addition to their own work, which resulted in an installation that made its debut a…
Sexual Infinity
'Marcia Bassett of Double Leopards, Hototogisu, GHQ, fame on her first proper solo full length has given us one of our favorites in the history of hospital productions. Sexual infinty stands refreshingly organized into six escalating pieces of her signature guitar, voice, and electronic moodscapes entrancing the listener with sinister seduction. Comparisons to early 80's power electronics and industrial acts as uncommunity, mauthausen orchestra and ramleh reside in the underbelly of Zaïmp…
Quilisma
The succinctness of his work will first become fully apparent when it becomes possible to view the second half of the twentieth century from something more like a bird’s-eye view.
Suitable For Framing
Reissue of this obscure Canadian album from 1975, originally issued on the A.R.C. Record label, with extended mixes and bonus material from the same period. Performed by David Rosenboom and J. B. Floyd (pianos, one in each channel) & Trichy Sankaran on South Indian percussion (mrdangam and kanjira). On April 19th, 1975, at Northern Illinois University, three musicians met in a milestone event from which emerged a unique, improvising trio with two pianos and South Indian percussion. Fortunately, …