Sonoma
While Creel Pone has done a bang-up job at documenting non-Subotnick alternatives such as Michael Czajkowski's "People the Sky," Douglas Leedy's "Entropical Paradise", etc. there's, simply, not a lot of music out there made on the early Buchla systems; which makes this hiterhto undiscussed collection of pieces by the composer Carter Thomas, all recorded between 1971 & 1977, then issued in 1985, something of a unheralded gem.
Starting with "800th Lifetime" - an 11-minute suite for Buchla 100 & 20…
Electronic Music for Dance
Here’s a fine set of pieces, each showcasing the Buchla electric music box. Daria Semegen’s harmonic-series-rich “Arc” - composed at SUNY Stonybrook’s electronic music studio, established by mr. Arel in 1971 - at times recalls other era electronic “Spectralists” like Daniel Arfib, yet works across a more spare iterative space, often recycling short micro-melodies cut with the unmistakable thwack of the Buchla’s vactrol-based gates. It’s an incredible, patient piece of music that begs the questio…
Encore Electronic
After something of a break, Creel Pone returns, borne anew, with this reproduction of an obscure 1975 Standard Library offering (#ESL-133), dovetailing tracks by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop / White Noise member Brian Hodgson & previous Creel Pone "graduate" John Lewis (whose lengthy collaboration with composer John Keliehor, "Schizophrenia" closes out the otherwise all-Dubravko Detoni "Avantgarde" volume from Studio G, issued the previous year) - both founders of Electrophon studios & the lone …
Mental Sailing
After a short break - during which we all celebrated Creel Pone's 10th year of existence in style & the PTB worked quite hard at keeping the program's core largely available for a stretch - here's a reproduction of an unheard-of 1981 set of Electronic Music by the Chicagoland Composer Beverly De Fries D'Albert privately issued via the Columbus, OH pressing-plant / private imprint Coronet. Subtitled "Electronic Music Album Number 1," the album is split between three shorter pieces recorded at the…
Espaces Sonores Nº 1
Long one of my all-time Holy Grail cannot-find-a-copy titles is the LP in question here; the 1969 EMI-label Arlette Sibon-Simonovitch recital / vehicle “Espaces Sonores Nº 1”, offering a side of specially-commissioned pieces each by spanish composer Josep(h)-Maria Mestres-Quadreny & INA-GRM heavy Bernard Parmegiani.Just the idea that Parmegiani had composed a tape piece using only Sibon-Simonovitch’s virtuoso Ondes Martenot playing was enough to make me sweat; that it ended up being one of his f…
Artificial Horizons
Privately pressed on his Sandy Springs-based Horizons label in 1974, this is the sole release of Georgian home-studio Electronic Music maestro Tom Behrens. Hiding behind a glorious op-art sleeve, the music contained here is an inspired blend of noisy, free-synth filigree & the kind of anthemic, rising chord shapes more attuned to something like doom metal than the tried & true "Berlin School" methods which are often the launching-off point.
Aesthetically similar to Lorq Damon's "Journey to the …
Electro-Sonnances
Ever since the Creel-production of Douglas Leedy’s “Entropical Paradise,” I’ve been wondering about the existence of any other “Automatic Electronic Music” released during the “Classic Era.” Lo & behold, Mr. P.C. C.P. has unearthed this “Private-ly” released chestnut from 1980, covering four of obscure Belgian composer Arnold Aard’s experiments with self-generating electronic music systems. The results fall somewhere between Leedy’s elegant side-long tonality studies & the oddly miscreantic cree…
Sky-Sails+
While we're knocking off personal Holy Grail titles, here's an absolute corker; Ann Southam's 1973 Electronic Realization of the poet sean o huigin's "Sky-Sails." A continuous melding of o huigin's recitation against a coterie of keening, upper-register tweeter-zap electronics - theoretically largely c/o the Moog equipment installed in the University of Toronto's UTEMS - this floats on atonal clusters before erupting into "Persona" -esque thunderclaps of Ring-Modulated & Envelope-Followed voice …
Interpreta Obras • Musica Electroacústica
Issued in 1982 as a pair of separate lp’s by Hemis Ferio, this set covers the bulk of Spanish composer Andrés Lewin Richter’s Electro-Acoustic music (as opposed to his Library work - issued by Cam as a one-two-three punch of masterful mood-pieces under the “Space Electronics” moniker in 1977) segregated by his work with vocalist Anna Ricci (the first LP) and without (the second.)Incorporating a wide range of source materials (aside from Ricci’s operatic & at times psychedelic splendour, we’re tr…
18 Days
The Brussels-based Igloo label was one of the main hotbeds of Belgian Avant-Garde music in the late 70s & early 80s, issuing canonic work(s) by Godfried Willem Raes (& his Logos Duo w/ Moniek Darge), Jacques Bekaert, Henri Chopin, Léo Küpper, Artur Petronio, Henri Pousseur, and many others, including this slept-on set by electronic music composer Andre Stordeur (whose only other issued work prior to this were a pair of pieces used to score a 1973 documentary on the artist Gordon Matta-Clark) exe…
l'Envol / Ambitus
Perfectly timed replication of the other - ref: “Kosmos,” issued 30 or so ‘Pones back - great André Almuró LP, initially issued by the oft-cited Boîte a Musique - aka Disques Bam or just BAM - imprint at the tail-end of the 1960s.Almuró started out with Pierre Schaeffer, producing radio plays for the Club D’Essai in the late 40s before joining the GRM in 1958. He proceeded to produce dark, chilling Musique Concrète backings to recitations of work by authors such as Jean Genet & Antonin Artaud, b…
Kosmos : Musiques Expérimentales
Creel Pone here kicking off the 2007 season with a reproduction of this ludicrously hard-to-find 1969 LP on the Ades label containing four pieces composed at the tail-end of the Psychedelic era by Artaud / Breton / Genet collaborator and Pierre Schaeffer student André Almuró. This music has been whispered about in closed circles for close to 40 years yet seldom heard - it’s some of the finest Musique Concrète in the “Underwater Vibrations” category: tons of mutated / processed percussion-sound…
The Black Iron That Fell From The Sky, to Dwell Within...
The inception of an audio trilogy concerning the Darkness of Aegypt: the shadow stuff from whence dark dreams come. The Triad: dark, light and the animating serpent power are delineated by the Egyptian Gods Set, Horus and the Apep serpent. Volume one comprises of three received transmissions from the tunnels of Set via the physical envelopes of Matthew Bower and Samantha Davies operating as the occult cell known as Skullflower. The working, the concept and guiding hand comes from Nashazphone, pu…
Vs Abdel Baqy Byro in Cairo
Seemingly tossed-off spontaneity is the intoxicant with which Alvarius B vs Abdel Baqy Byro in Cairo is heavily laced. This 39- minute lenticular collage recalls Tangier-era William Burroughs in its concealment of structure behind a veneer of arbitrary free association, with Alvarius B. delivering his take on contemporary behavioral dementia in a style that veers from the nocturnal yammer of legendary somniloquist Dion McGregor to salty neo-Yossarian ravings to the casual vitriol of a misanthrop…
Wired Lab CV Session #1
Limited edition black chrome cassette + 16 page booklet, offset printed on Munken Lynx Rough, 100 gsm, black ink."Russell says that what he does isn't music and has nothing to do with music. Dave is of a similar mind in that he doesn't give a fuck. Maybe we could pike out like Eddie Varèse and call it 'organised sound'. But no. My first impression is that listening to these tracks entails undergoing some intense physical experience in real time. It's like being punctured with something, I suppos…
Chambre Sonore
Co-published by the prestigious Museum of Ethnography of Geneva and swiss renowned swiss Mental Groove Records, this second album entitled Chambre Sonore (Sonic Chamber) continues a new series of CDs devoted to contemporary compositions sourced from the monumental audio archives of the Museum (read below*). Julien Perez is a singer, songwriter and musician working at the edge of music industry and contemporary art. Since 2012 he records in french under the PEREZ moniker for Dirty (Pilooski, Dirt…
In den Garten Pharaos
CD version. In Den Gärten Pharaos" was originally issued in 1971, this time by Pilz, yet it wasn't precisely on the folk vein that Herr Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser was trying to keep the label into by those days. It's sound drinks directly from the same waters that brought Affenstunde, although there is a clear move towards some less dark passages, and the use of church organ as the main instrument, plus a first introduction into the ethnic music elements that Popol Vuh would soon mix into their cauldron…
Forever Alien
When Spacemen 3 -- the seminal, drone-indulgent English psych duo comprised of Peter Kember and Jason Pierce -- split in 1991, Pierce shuffled off to acclaim in Spiritualized. Meanwhile, Kember charted a less predictable course. As Sonic Boom, he released Spectrum in 1990, then, after taking a liking to that handle, released Soul Kill (Glide Divide) as Spectrum in 1992. Kemper alternated between those monikers and Experimental Audio Research (E.A.R.) throughout the 1990s, building a rich, …
Electronic Works 1958-1995
2016 repress. Triple yellow LP version. Pressed on audiophile grade heavy duty vinyl. Else Marie Pade, born in 1924 in Denmark, is a precious golden gem in the world of contemporary electro-acoustic music. She is a true pioneer of electronic music and musique concrète. Pade is Denmark's first lady of electronic music and her piece "Syv Cirkler (Seven Circles)" became the first electronic piece performed on Danish radio. Pade's fascination with sound began in early childhood. Isolated in her bed …
S U R V I V E
Back in stock, the 2012 debut full-length from Austin-based electronic quartet S U R V I V E is available once again with yellow and black alternate artwork. A fresh U.S. repress is in high demand for this modern classic, as the band enjoys a recent surge in notoriety on the heels of members Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s soundtrack work on the hit Netflix series Stranger Things. Recorded from 2010-2012 at the band’s own Omniverse Studios in Austin, this record chronicles the early days of the g…