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(Old school) Karlheinz Stockhausen
This is the fourth release in the series [old school]. The first three CDs, dedicated to the music of John Cage [zkr0009], James Tenney [zkr0010] and Alvin Lucier [zkr0011] have been highly acclaimed. London's Wire Magazine wrote: 'The rigour and discipline they collectively bring to this compositions make both discs utterly enthralling, from start to finish.' The new release is dedicated to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen.' 'I do not want a spiritualistic session. I want music.' Karlheinz St…
Happy days
Back in stock. Released: 1997.Jim O'Rourke is a rarity: a genuine bridge between the avant-garde and the underground. From his production work (Smog, Wilco, Faust) to his own freewheeling excursions as a solo performer and member of outfits like Gastr del Sol and Sonic Youth, his work continues to bring the out there in here. Happy Days pits a lone guitar against a phalanx of hurdy-gurdies, a decided shift away from the composer's electronic-based work. A roiling hornet's next of activity that F…
Calling Out Of Context
Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day, those comfortable with his modern classical accomplishments were baffled by his acetates of loopy leftfield disco. Likewise, lovers of these dance tracks were confounded by their beatless, beatific recasting on World of Echo. And then there were listeners astounded by the intimacy of his voice and cello work, stymied by both the pop songs and the classical works, all spinnin…
Girls Beware!
JanuarY 2004. Two years after the highly acclaimed album “Rose-garden", the portables come up with their second full length. “Girls Beware!" starts where their previous album ended. De Portables developed a cult reputation during the years, mainly because of their many intense and always different performances. Against all recent trends, standards and expectations they do their thing; they play because they like playing. The quartet twists themselves during 11 songs a way between pop, post-rock …
Une Soirée Vian
The Soirée Vian, a kind of meta-cabaret created in 1991 based on a commission by the WDR, develops along the narrative red thread of Boris Vian's novel The red grass and turns into a dizzying journey through the absurdly crazy worlds of Vian's universe. The fullness and polystylism of this venture undertaken by Denys Bouliane might indeed almost make the listener dizzy, not least due to the fantastic performance by the electro-acoustic ensemble "Série B." Their "musical roller coaster ride from …
Dawn
It was recorded at the legendary Total Music Meeting of Free Music Production in November 2000. Dawn is a composition played off the cuff of nearly 42 minutes. All the highs and lows of a longer composition are on this recording: searching and finding, restrained groping and violent erupting.... The decisive factor, however, is that this music is played by people who have nothing or very little to do with this attitude, by Gert-Jan Prins (see his solo record Prins Live, GROB210), by the saxophon…
Ktl
KTL is a collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita, etc.). This is a six-part collision amongst the increasingly fading presences between the light and the dark, with some pieces recorded in a resistance fortress in southern France during a thunderstorm -- while others were recorded in a winter garden drenched in sunlight. The collaboration came about as the two were working on a theatre production by Gisèle Vienne and Dennis Cooper, entitled Kinder…
Klaviermusik
The sovereign and immediate approach Lachenmann takes in his Fünf Variationen über ein Thema von F. Schubert (1956) lends Schubert's slight Deutsche Tanz D 643a special and almost heroic flavor. But only five years later, Lachenmann had already travelled a considerable distance since those days as his Echo Andante of 1961 shows. Like Wiegenmusik (1963), the piece has been shaped by Lachenmann's studies with Luigi Nono whose influence and inspiration are clearly audible. A perfect example of the …
Live!
It's hard to go wrong with Fela Kuti's work from the 1970s, and LIVE!, which features the Afrobeat innovator backed by his powerhouse band Africa '70 and ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker, is no exception. Like all of Fela's recordings from the era, LIVE! consists of just a few tracks, each of which approximates or exceeds the ten minute mark. Yet the arrangements are so dynamic on these tracks, the criss-crossing polyrhythms so absorbing, and Fela's incantatory vocals so entrancing that the long ru…
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…
Aerial # 3
This release is the third and last in the three-part Aerial series. Tod Dockstader is one of the all-time great figures in the world of musique concréte composition, with his "organized sound" works from the 1960s being amongst the most radical ever conceived -- in league with Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, and Varese. Aerial is a rare new work in the realm of shortwave radio, from one of America's most experimental composers. Volume 1 was released in March 2005 inside a slipcase. Volume …
Orchestral Works & Chamber Music
Hardly any other composer has ever been as far removed from conservatism as Helmut Lachenmann. In all his oeuvre his listeners are never permitted to lean back comfortably even for a moment in expectation of the well-known and familiar. Again and again Lachenmann succeeded, and still succeeds, in shaking the "aesthetic apparatus," the system of conventional formulas and phrases established throughout decades and centuries, to its very foundations. Intérieur I (1966), a piece for percussion solo,…
Les Maledictus Sound
(Originally released in 1968) this is one of the most bizarre records ever released and one of the most sought after titles on the collectors' market. The Maledictus Sound are to instrumental rock what Frankenstein was to science... a laboratory monster... a strange creature assembled from a mish-mash of diverse musical sounds. Psychedelic pop, romantic ballads, musical tongue-in-cheek, drugged out chipmunks, near-delirium sound effects, horror movie screamadelia and a mega-twisted '60s vibe. Ec…
Whitehouse
This project involves the unique German avant-garde orchestra performing a selection of tracks from the Whitehouse catalogue. The rehearsals and mixing were done in collaboration with William Bennett but he doesn't actually perform on the recordings. Anyone familiar with Zeitkreitzer's Rendition of Lou Reed classic Metal Machine Music will be fully aware that these guys can magnificently translate noise music and in this case electronic music through acoustic interments. Bennet's compositions h…
Santi
In Śānti, Jan Beran unites meditative-expressive means of articulation with avant-garde techniques, and Western attitudes with those of the Far East. This multicultural approach is founded not least on Beran's extraordinary personal and musical background and development, which took the mathematician and composer from his native town Prague to Switzerland, the USA, and as far as India. This explains, among other things, his efforts to reconcile the time patterns of Indian music with Western seri…
Speak no more about the leaves
This cd contains 3 pieces inspired by Arnold Schönberg's 'The Book of the Hanging Gardens' and in particular the poems by Stefan George that Schönberg used as lyrics. Track one uses Steve Roden's voice reading/singing part of the text as the only sound material. Track two uses the vowel structure from the text as a score for striking five tones on a small chime. Track three uses samples from the Schönberg work as well as Roden's voice singing the same text as track one.
Discreet Music
Orignal master series reissue: a real masterpiece...after a car accident put Brian Eno in the hospital in 1975, he came out with the idea of creating Ambient music, or music that was essentially to be used as atmosphere. Discreet Music was the first of his ambient experiments and is therefore a landmark recording in addition to being a beautiful combination of tape-delay and composition.
Hotel paral.lel
"Re-mastered at Piethopraxis in Köln, July 2007. "Hotel Paral.lel", originally released in September 1997 by Mego, was Christian Fennesz's debut solo album. Following up from the EP "Instrument", it was an investigation into the sonic possibilties residing in guitar based digital music, recorded just before mobile computing devices became the norm. A far more darker and experimental work than what was to follow. Freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient textures create a time…
I Love My Organ
The bulk of the material on Tom Recchion's second album for Birdman was recorded just after the completion of Chaotica in the mid-'80s, and sounds like a natural continuation of that record (despite the absence of any Esquivel). Recchion is assisted on some tracks by noted musician, composer, author, journalist for The Wire, and music curator David Toop (himself a collaborator with Eno, Jon Hassell, John Zorn, Talvin Singh, Adrian Sherwood, and Scanner). Recchion labored on I Love My Organ for y…
Flick
Second one in the guitarimproseries (first one was Shifts). This Finish guy is pretty young but has a distinctive feel towards his guitarplay. Excerpts from his talents could be found on the Killa 7\\"s but here he is operating alone on his selfbuild guitar and other \\"soundlabs\\". It\\'s dark and quiet with lots of floating, hissing and inspired contructions. Every now and then a melody pops up which brings together the harmony between impro and a \\"listenable\\" experience. As for guitarpla…