Soliloque I, Soliloque IV, Match, Antifonia
Nicolae Brînduș was born in Bucharest in 1935 and swiftly
matriculated through his studies in Piano & Composition at
the National University of Music before embarking on the life-changing
seminars at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt
throughout the late 60s & early 70s; even working at Ircam for a
spell in the mid-1980s. How this formative music, composed & recorded largely during his
Darmstadt phase, has remained so relatively unknown is insane to me; it
has all of…
Ciclul „Cosmofonie”
The second title in Creel Pone's 23x survey of Romanian Early
Electronic Music, offering both pieces from the lone Electrecord LP by
Composer Dinu Petrescu, along with a composition from one of the many
Corul Madrigal offerings, here conducted by Marin Constantin. "Space Doina", or possibly "Doina Space (1978)", "music
for symphony orchestra, mixed choir, children's choir, synthesizer,
magnetic tape and electronic modulation" starts off with a gaseous drone
of distant reverberance, seguei…
Groupe De Recherches Musicales
This is the last of the 199.x titles, a great diversion
into those that were endlessly divisive amongst the C.P. cabal; so much
so that common ground had to be carved out & explored... I'd heard legend of this internal-issue-only "White Label" GRM
compilation, from trusted source "Ravi" Ben, of La Dame Blanche fame,
but had never heard nor seen a copy until one literally landed in my lap
at a soirée recently. Largely consisting of alternative & revised
versions of prime 1973-era GRM pieces…
Maté/Vallancien
One thing I've learned as I've grown and progressed
through music is that there is an incredible wealth of largely
unheralded & seldom-heard music buried deep in the expansive Saravah
catalogue, largely due to the street-level largesse of in-house
engineer Daniel Vallencien, who aside from engineering a large portion
of the canonic BYG catalogue - Don Cherry, Anthony Braxton, Musica
Elettronica Viva, Sonny Sharrock, Sunny Murray, etc. - was crucial in
the development of the label's sound …
Magnetic Fields
Reproduction of this obscure 1977 Private Press stunner
by Extradition, Company Caine, & Phyl Vinnecombe sideman & early
18th Century Quartet member Stephen Dunstan, a key part of Australia's
Electronic Music history alongside Val Stephen, Bruce Clarke, Keith
Humble, Felix Werder, & Ian Bonighton. Steve was a tragic figure; operating across multiple disciplines
before disappearing under suspicious circumstances in the mid-80s while
out retrieving a Moog Modular system, Dunstan was both a c…
Electronic Music
**Edition of 500 copies. No represses** An astounding, epic journey into the more obscure areas of early electronic music, Phillip Werren’s Electronic Music is a wellspring of contemporary composition across four LPs. Originally released in 1971 in an edition of 100 copies, this impossibly rare piece of early Canadian electronic music has finally been reissued on vinyl in an exact replica box with a silk-screened cover.Electronic Music was recorded at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), McGill …
Radiance
**few copies back in stock, very last around** It hardly needs to be said that the context of experimental music is defined by incredibly ambitious efforts. But there’s ambitious, and then there’s ambitious. The German composer and musician, Stephan Mathieu, might have taken the cake. Back in 2016, he began issuing his sprawling Radiance project, the culmination of a decade of work, in the end amounting to twelve thematically linked album length pieces, built around the concepts of stasis, unfol…
Ingaza
Staalplaat presents a double LP reissue of Muslimgauze's Ingaza, originally released in 1999 (the year of his death) as part of the Box Of Silk And Dogs set. Those not familiar with Bryn Jones's style will listen slack-jawed at the sheer anticipatory nature of his sound collages. He was a cult artist, politically motivated for the Arab-Palestinian cause and a seminal experimenter with ethnic samples' and minimal and electronic rhythms. The atmospheres retain their original charm, full and gloomy…
LP
Ren Schofield has returned with a new installment in his notorious LP series for Spectrum Spools. LP has all the earmarks of the classic Container sound with its uber-mangled, saturated tape garble and headlong tempo macabre. However, this new set of tracks feature an attention to composition unlike much of the Container you've previously heard. While the tracks unfurl across two sides of wax the contours and jagged edges of each sonic sculpture display a new refinement while maintaining the ful…
Early Electronic Works 1959-66
**Edition of 400 copies in silver vinyl, one-time pressing** Sub Rosa present a collection of Pauline Oliveros's early material, aptly titled Early Electronic Works 1959-66, released as a part of the label's Early Electronic series. Oliveros was an important American composer, born in Houston, Texas on May 30, 1932; the music she produced in the latter part of her life is akin to the breath of life, notably, through her pieces for accordion (particularly those which she herself performed). In ad…
After Vacation
Swans’ influential guitarist Norman Westberg returns with his most substantial album to date on the expansive, personal panoramas of After Vacation, a profoundly beautiful set of windswept soundscapes amplified by production from Lawrence English. For the last 6 years Westberg has rendered a one-take representation of his studio performances, effectively presenting a series of naked meditations on the electric guitar with little or no over-dubbing. Now, breaking with tradition following the end …
Monstrance
Monstrance documents Mika Vainio & Joachim Nordwall reshaping guitars, drums and incendiary electronics at Einstürzende Neubauten’s Berlin studio back in 2010. The results were originally issued by Touch in 2013, with this new 2LP edition now arriving on Nordwall’s iDEAL label five years later as a posthumous tribute and reminder of his erstwhile collaborator. In our opinion, it’s one of Vainio’s most crucial and absorbing collaborations; moving away from ice-cold electronic precision and into a…
Gallery Of Air
Self-taught composer Larry Chernicoff began writing music in the mid 1970's for a dance troupe in Woodstock New York, where he worked and taught at the legendary Creative Music Studio. On his 1983 debut album, Gallery of Air, he began blending improvisation with long-form compositions, minimalism, orchestral instruments, multi-layered counterpoint, the warm textures of synthesizers, and a diverse range of international sounds. Throughout Gallery of Air, his ensemble delivers both a high level of…
Sial
"Only two months have passed since the release of Matthias Urban‘s Passagen, but Sial is an entirely different creature. The earlier album investigated the oscillations of drum cymbals, while the new set is a soundscape of Icelandic ocean recordings. But wait, there’s more! In 2018 the artist also released The Galvanic Twitch, a work of musique concrète, and Grey Line I & II, field recordings captured in his native Austria at dawn and twilight. Credit Urban for his hard work and diversity!Like …
Habituated By Reason
Sebastiano Carghini is a musician whose research is mainly focused on the use of modular synth and the recording of physical objects. Habituated By Reason is a icro-acoustics tape loops. The solenoid motors are activated by LFO eurorack modules, a familiar yet formidable presence.
Before We Were Foam We Were Unbridled Waves
Erasure of the contradiction between real and imaginary. Temporal layers are juxtaposed with different speeds, creating polyphonies of sound spectrums. The time flux is not regular or linear, it's bent."The latest dispatch from Los Angeles experimental cassette imprint Dinzu Artefacts comes from the duo De Ponti / Moretti. Their tape, Before We Were Foam We Were Unbridled Waves, is out now on its own or as part of the label’s July Batch. The clip, a live studio excerpt, provides a glimpse of the…
Learn To Love Solitude
The Verge of Ruin is a research in sound and poetry that started in December 2015 by Stefano de Ponti and Shari DeLorian, in Milan. A view that lives in the present and at the same time is strongly connected with several guides and experiences out of the past. Constantly looking for new vanishing points and responding to creative impossibility which are caused by contemporary collapses of media. The framework referred to, is the one drawn by concrete music and acousmatic art of the XIX Century, …
Stochastic Moods
Incredible new solo LP for the 'customized analog oscillator' virtuoso David Ross. Unpredictable micro-rhythms awkwardly roaming across an electronic wasteland. In ‘A Conceptual Framework for Consciousness’, Dr. Joachim Keppler elaborates on Quantum Stochastic Electrodynamic (SED) theoryto suggest that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe rather than a material creation of the human brain.Functioning as a resonant stochastic oscillator, the brain modulates with an all-pervasiv…
When the Past Arrives
Emboldened by the success of the recent reissue of It's Cosy Inside, Mark and Clive had a listen to hundreds of previously unreleased tracks recorded in the 70s and 80s to assemble their first new record in two decades, When The Past Arrives, out in March from Drag City / Yoga Records. With comparisons to Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Animal Collective, Cluster, and Brian Eno, Woo's profile in the world of atemporal music has been growing for years. For the lucky few who know, like Fela, or Neu!, Woo …
Womb
After last year’s first record with Serenus Zeitblom Oktett, Berlin’s Hyperdelia comes back with a second release – a lucid underwater music composed and arranged by Swedish composer Kajsa Lindgren. Womb is a musical narration for abstracted ears and bodies – engulfing a listener simultaneously in subaquatic sonic environments, distant dreams, memories and voices from the unknown: where time and space fold into each other.The initial material of field-recordings, interviews and compositions has …