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"Noir" is the first studio album of the bleakly imaginative trio Marteau Rouge (French for "Red Hammer"), consisting of Makoto Sato on drums, Jean-Marc Foussat on VSC 11 and vocals and the talented guitar player Jean-Francois Pauvros (former collaborator of proper miliar stones of noise scene such as Sonic Youth and Keiji Haino), after their brilliant live recording with legendary free-improvisational saxophone player Evan Parker, whose absence on this record gives this amazing ensemble the poss…
*2022 stock* Kurt Schwitters’ “Sonate in Urlauten” [Sonata in Primal Sounds] is the prototypical work at the border between speech and music. The concise title of the work alone forges a suggestive link between language material and the musical form of the sonata; the "Ursonate" almost proverbially stands for sound poetry. For Schwitters, who was actively involved in promoting his sound-poetical opus magnum, even as his own interpreter, it was difficult to imagine that his work could survive wit…
*2022 stock* 'This collection of ensemble works, six altogether, ranges across the last two decades of Iannis Xenakis's life. It includes the last two pieces he composed, Zythos, for trombone and six marimbas, and O-Mega, for percussion and ensemble, both written in 1997, four years before his death. They are striking, small-scale examples of the bareness and drastic compression of his late style, but the finest music here is a bit earlier. In Échange, from 1989, a bass clarinet painstakingly un…
*2022 stock* It's over 70 years since John Cage wrote his pivotal Music of Changes, and it's beginning to show its age. It feels very much of its time, with its uncompromising adherence to the 64 hexagrams of I-Ching, the Chinese book of changes, determining the direction of the piece and its use of sudden, percussive attacks on the strings or the body of the instrument. But for all that there is no denying the extreme stamina and concentration required of the performer, and here Herbert Henck e…
Hidden but not forgotten, hinted at through piecemeal reference after the fact, the creative efforts of the members of this West-Coast-centric cadre of art mutants first took shape in the early 1980s in Chico, California, home to a state university infamous for its alcohol-embracing student body. Twenty-five years later, in 2009 to be exact, Induced Music Spasticity, the 4xLP boxest of unheard home-made four-track recordings of tape experiments, electronic improv, spoken word, live recordings, p…
Michael McClure’s mysticism is vigorously scientific. Even the familiar patterned shapes of his poems remind us of the stars in the night sky and those we see when we shut our eyes. In the dancing lines of his newest work—the title poem “Antechamber” most especially—are the whirl of galaxies, the radiance of molecules, the energy lines of the double helix coiling around its core. — New Directions, 1978
Foamola is an underground musical group from New York City, consisting of Sparrow and his wife, who went by the cyber alias Violet Snow. Also in the group is artist Lawrence Fishberg and Sparrow's daughter, poet Sylvia Gorelick. Their music has been described as "folk-minimalist", and as "anti-Plutarch pop"
“Foamola is the only anti-rock band named after an herbal arthritis remedy. All our music is original, with tunes by Lawrence Fishberg (keyboard, vocals) and lyrics by Sparrow (ocarina, item…
**Edition of 300 copies, numbered** Group Show is a project and installation that shows an extensive collection of ‘vernacular’ vinyl records with large groups of people on the cover. The awkward impossibility of photographing these choirs, regional ensembles and folklore bands and the typology of photographs that has comes out of it, is a longtime fascination for Erik Kessels. It even made him create a multi-media project out of this. The enormous volume and collection of records resulted in an…
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics. The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he …
*175 copies on Orange vinyl.* I've known Fabio Orsi for almost fifteen years now, artistically and humanly. Since the days of "Osci" his first album released by SmallVoices, my label at that time, up to some essential records published by A Silent Place, another label that I managed, in a period that seems almost unrepeatable. Each of his work, whether in music or photography, is always a certainty for me, but lately also a surprise; in fact Fabio Orsi has learned to surprise himself and surpris…
**Edition of 200 copies** Pentiments is honored to present the first vinyl-format offering of the work of long-time film, theater and sound art figure Arsenije Jovanović, born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1932, has been working in experimental media since the 1960s, beginning his career as a producer and director of theater and TV and eventually going on to produce several award-winning radio dramas in the 1970s whose approach to the use of sound as experiential narrative material has since become a …
Tip! As part of Ann Eysermans's For Trainspotters Only project, a vinyl record of the same name was produced on which various locomotives can be heard in different constellations.On the A-side are Prelude and Fugue for 4 diesel locomotives and harp. These compositions consist solely of locomotive and harp sounds. Both instruments were explored from top to bottom to extract their sonic qualities according to (often very strange) rules of counterpoint. Macro and micro sounds blend into melodies, h…
** 2021 Stock ** This is the first solo release by Swiss drummer Peter Conradin Zumthor. "Another good example of the consistently high-quality musical output and the vitality of the scene in the supposedly oldest city in Switzerland. On his solo debut, released on the label of the highly esteemed Swiss percussionist Christian Wolfarth, the self-taught drummer from Chur presents a refreshing musical potpourri of his sound repertoire, developed over the years, in the form of seven interwoven comp…
** 2021 Stock ** A typical modern drum set consists of a bass drum, a snare drum, hi-hats, a few toms, and a couple of cymbals. When played as a drum set, the characteristics of each sound combine to create what many people recognize as a single instrument. Yet each of the pieces within that instrument has particular qualities that are often different from each other, especially between drums and cymbals. From a player's standpoint, shifting focus from the sonic options available with a drum set…
Much of Frances White's music is inspired by her love of nature, and her electronic works frequently include natural sound recorded near her home in central New Jersey. This is the first complete disc of White's electroacoustic works, both with or without instruments. This disc is titled Centre Bridge because it has inspired two of the works contained on it. But beyond this, it is because the role that the bridge has played in White's work is so characteristic of her music. Her music is about li…
** 2021 Stock ** Like Morton Feldman, whose music he acknowledges as an influence Walter Zimmermann (b.1949) is fascinated by the relationship between painting and music, and how material of an apparently simple nature played by apparently “normal” instruments is capable of almost infinite subtlety. Frankfurt’s HCD Ensemble are also members of Germany’s infamous Ensemble Modern. They are joined here by the superb violinist Peter Rundel and cellist Michael Bach. Wüstenwanderung [Wandering in the …
Multi-channel electronic works in Surround Sound. Morton Subotnick was a phenomenon in the late '60s, the first composer to write substantial works for synthesizer that had a wide audience. He has been mentor to generations of composers, and his influence is so pervasive that it would be impossible to trace completely - the electronica movement, for one, reveres him. This release brings together two of his classic analog electronic works which were previously only available on LP.
** 2021 Stock ** “The double-bass – the paradox of its large size and basically quiet sound, and its low registral grounding – has long attracted me. I’ve also been fortunate in knowing outstanding double-bass players.” – Christian Wolff This disc collects all of Wolff’s large body of works for the bass, including a piece for solo electric bass guitar. Two of the works were written specifically for Robert Black, who prepared these pieces with Wolff. The composer attended all of the recordings se…
'Palimpsest' (1979) for piano & ensemble. Cory Smythe, piano. 'Echange' (1989) for bass-clarinet & ensemble. Joshua Rubin, bass-clarinet. 'Akanthos' (1977) for soprano & ensemble. Tony Arnold, soprano. 'Thalleïn' (1984) for 16 instruments. 'O-Mega' (1997) for percussion & ensemble. Steven Schick, percussion & conductor. Steven Schick, conductor. 'Zythos' (1996) for trombone & 6 marimbas. Benny Sluchin, trombone.
An exhilarating Xenakis progran, built around works for soloist and ensemble. Most…
2CD set. The dark, atmospheric and energetic mix of choirs, strings, various FX-sounds, heavy drums, and tribal sections makes this the seed for the raison d’etre sound trademark that began with the album 'Prospectus I' from 1993. Released in 1992 'Apres Nous Le Deluge' became the first official output from raison d'etre when it went available on the Cold Meat Industry subsidiary label Sound Source. There are three versions of 'Apres Nous Le Deluge' and now they have finally all been joined int…