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** 2021 Stock ** Legendary avant-garde jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is best known for his role as a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This group is recognized for incorporating, and none-too-subtly ridiculing, the long-bearded tradition of Western art music. Mitchell, nonetheless, has something to say that is within the tradition himself, apart from, but related to his work in the field of jazz. Usually the sort of classical music piece produced by a "jazz cat" is formulated wi…
In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Alvin Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of 40 minutes and 32 repetitions of a simple paragraph of text.In I am sitting in a room, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforc…
Concrete follows from Robert Ashley's preoccupation in two previous operas with the kind of speech that has not been explored in opera -- in Dust (LCD 1006CD), the speech of the homeless; in Celestial Excursions (LCD 1007CD), the speech of people living together in a home for old people. The three operas are not a "trilogy" in any sense, but they all come from this preoccupation with or fascination with special kinds of speech and special kinds of states of mind. "The characters I'm interested i…
2007 release. Now Eleanor's Idea was made possible by grants from The Rockefeller Foundation (1984 and 1993), the National Endowment for the Arts' Opera Musical Theater Program (1985) and InterArts Program (1992). Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), for an individual's self-realization within the co…
1994 release. The fourth opera in Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy: Junior, Jr.'s story. A group of scenes from the life of an agent. The scenes are a kind of debriefing to a jury of interrogators, in which the Interrogators challenge the agent in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to American society's ongoing fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives. Featuring Thomas Buckner as the agent and Jacqueline H…
Cat's Squirrel is a live recording of Masami Akita & Oren Ambarchi's performance in Sydney, Australia in May 2012. Although Akita & Ambarchi have known one another since 1993 & performed together as part of larger ensembles, this was their first performance as a duo. Together they create a massive wall of sound that moves from the cavernous to the blisteringly psychedelic, laying down shifting low-end structures over which pointillist details ricochet across the stereo field. Akita & Ambarchi's …
"There is no argument; Merzbow stands as the most important artist in noise music. The moniker of Japanese artist Masami Akita has appeared on over four hundred albums since 1979. The name comes from German artist Kurt Schwitters' famous work Merzbau, in which he transformed the interior of his house with found objects. This is reflected in Akita's junk art / collage aesthetic. Other influences on the Merzbow philosophy range from ritualised eroticism (fetishism & bondage), surrealism to extreme…
Brian Thummler’s Ghost Birds combines piano improvisations and noise to create a uniquely compelling musical duality. These 7 pieces, selected by John Brien, are inspired by a lifetime of experience, art & poetry as well as Cage, Merzbow, Satie, Sun Ra......
Ghost Birds takes flight with experimental simplicity. The interaction of noise and piano, a synergy that also pushes and pulls, creates profound musical dimensions available to the attentive listener.Ghost Birds was recorded in a studio an…
From disenchanted Catholic schoolgirl and glam maniac to instigator on the 1980s hardcore punk scene, Nancy Barile discovered freedom at a time when punk music was new and dangerous. She made her place behind the boards and right in the front row as insurgents such as SSD, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys and Black Flag wrote new rules and made history. She survived punk riots and urban decay, ran the streets with outcasts, and ultimately found true love as she fought for fairness and fou…
A tight, atmospheric, and pretty damn funky soundtrack composed by the maestro Ennio Morricone for the 1970 crime-drama Città violenta(released in the USA as The Family in 1973), starring the mighty Charles Bronson and directed by Sergio Sollima. Another hard-hitting score by Morricone with quite a dark mood, flowing from the dramatic to psychedelic along with a touch of funkiness. The famous "Città violenta" track, the score's main theme, is celebrated as one of Morricone's most iconic themes. …
*300 copies limited edition* Monterrey, México, based psych/doom band Los Mundos is releasing its first ever “live” album, on bone white vinyl. The artwork comes in a dye cut cover with interchangeable covers and photos of the live session. Recorded in an abandon mine in Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, “En Vivo Desde El Centro de la Tierra” celebrates the band’s 12 year run as one of the most important and celebrated bands currently in Latin America. A powerful, raw, and intimate show, that plays with the …
The Ensemble Grizzana (Ryoko Akama, Mira Benjamin, Richard Craig, Emma Richards, Philip Thomas and Seth Woods) performs a series of delicate and beautiful chamber pieces by Swiss composer and clarinetist Jurg Frey, who also performs on clarinet.
Sabine Vogel 'luv', and Chris Abrahams + Sabine Vogel 'kopfüberwelle'. Another split disc, presenting two aspects of the music of Berlin-based flautist - composer - improviser Sabine Vogel. The first half of the disc contains a solo composition created from recordings made by Sabine with Landscape Quartet, a group committed to improvisation in and with natural environments. The second half of the disc features an extended improvised performance by Sabine on flutes in duo with The Necks' Chris Ab…
Four pieces from a residency in the Czech Republic by the trio of George Cremaschi (double bass and electronics), Irene Kepl (violin and electronics) and Petr Vrba (trumpet, clarinet and electronics). "We're concerned with using the acoustics of the resonant spaces we seek out as a sort of additional member of the group, composing with this interaction particularly in mind." Acoustic instruments and feedback devices combined in old stone spaces, such as the courtyard of a monastery, creating a r…
Performed by The Suidobashi Chamber Ensemble - a Tokyo-based group for new music with Wakana Ikeda, flute & harmonica, Yoko Ikeda, violin & viola, Masahiko Okura, clarinets, Taku Sugimoto, guitar & mandolin, Aya Naito, bassoon & voice, Hikaru Yamada, electronics - and by Taku Sugimoto (guitar)
The first in the Canadian Composers Series of CDs is a double album of chamber works by Linda Catlin Smith, who was born in New York, but studied in Canada and has lived in Toronto for over 25 years. The album ‘Drifter’ contains ten pieces dating from 1995 to 2015 played by Quatuor Bozzini and Apartment House. In his introductory essay to the booklet accompanying the Canadian Composers CDs, Nick Storring says that “One of the primary tensions in Linda Catlin Smith's music is between its equal a…
A double CD with five beautiful pieces that engage with the work of the extraordinary French-Swiss poet Gustave Roud. Performers include Dante Boon, Stefan Thut, Andrew McIntosh and Jürg Frey himself.
“I think my process of work is similar to Roud’s: roaming with my sketchbook, taking a movement here, adding some notes there, following an impression, writing a little melody or a rhythmic constellation, deepening a feeling, extending a pitch, waiting and letting it happen…”
Interview with …
Six pieces developed by Johnny and Keir from music by Hildegard van Bingen and Orlando de Lassus. Three violin duets, + three tracks for violins and the voice of Celeste Oram.
Sublime string quartets, piano works, and a short piece for electronics.
"The music of John Lely has run a continuous thread through the programmes of Apartment House for some 20 years. A subtle, yet sinuous presence, producing music that has a quiet yet significant sounding air about it. Lely’s titles of his works are ambiguous, yet point to hidden constructs and origins, Pale Signal, Meander Section or Karnaugh Quartets for example. Ambiguous perhaps, but revealing music of great clarity and a…
Lemegeton Party is the narcotic and occluded industrial-ambient debut for the Junkie Flamingos, a project conceived in 2017 by Luca Sigurtà, Alice Kundalini, and Daniele Delogu. Each of these musicians has their distinctive sounds: Sigurtà with his vertiginous electronica, Kundalini best known as the author behind the death industrial project She Spread Sorrow, and Delogu in the bombastic folk of the Barbarian Pipe Band. Their collective amalgamation shifts but does not denude each of these aest…