Noema
"Noema is a collection of 37 short pieces composed from source material I recorded in and around Kyoto during a three-month stay there with my family in 2012. The over-arching theme of the record is the idea of exploring social space through everyday sound and especially in the case of Kyoto, not just focusing on what we've come to know the city for (temples, shrines, etc. Ð though some of these are in there as well). The pieces also deal with the idea of memory, much as the famous episode…
Music from the Tudorfest: San Francisco Tape Music Center, 1964
In the spring of 1964 Pauline Oliveros organized a festival celebrating the work of pianist David Tudor, which featured compositions by Oliveros, George Brecht, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Alvin Lucier, and John Cage. The Tudorfest was a watershed event in the brief history of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which not only provided its members with an opportunity to collaborate with Tudor, but also to promote their own work. Co-sponsored by KPFA, the Tudorfest demonstrated the artistic diversi…
Art Is A Tear Of Noise And Infinite Silence
Clandestine auteurs the Opalio Brothers, Roberto and Maurizio Opalio (aka My Cat Is An Alien) have deftly sprinkled our solar system with their beautifully fragile, arcane soundscapes, as well as multimedia collaborations with vanguards such as Sonic Youth, Christian Marclay, Keiji Haino, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O\'Rourke, Mats Gustafsson and many more. They now present a new phase of their already-celebrated body of work by abandoning their signature guitars and \"space toys\" and swap…
Youuu+Mee=Weeee
Youuu + Mee = Weee is the first recorded collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine and Rhys Chatham. And it's precious. Following the musical meetings with Z'ev (Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear, SR340CD/LP), and with Tony Conrad, these new Sub Rosa sessions create a sort of trilogy. Rhys Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-garde pioneer La Monte Young, also working as a harpsichord tuner for Gustav Leonhardt, Rosalyn Tureck, and Glenn Gould. He soon studied und…
Hortexte Zwei
A precious double picture disc LP and booklet of radio plays (Horspiele) from sound artist and poet Ferdinand Kriwet, presenting 6 works including Hortext I, and Rotoradios I & II. Ferdinand Kriwet (b. 1942, Dusseldorf, Germany) is a German visual and audio artist who has produced films and sound works for radio and television, in particular throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a sound artist, Kriwet is more known for his Horspiele (radioplays) series named Hörtexte (Radiotexts) produced for G…
Through Two More-Than-Mysterious Barricades
“Les Barricades Mistérieuses,” the harpsichord gem by French Baroque composer François Couperin, has been a long-running source of exploration for Fluxus musician Philip Corner, who for years has used it as a jumping-off point for piano improvisations. Through Two More-Than-Mysterious Barricades comprises two very different takes on the same piece. The first dates from 1992, in collaboration with dancer Paulette Sears (who provides the ‘singings and screamings’ of the album’s subtitle); it moves…
Aurora Coelestis
Fourth solo album and debut on vinyl format by musician and visual artist Roberto Opalio of radical avant-garde duo My Cat Is An Alien. Aurora Coelestis presents two new instantaneous compositions for glockenspiel and voice, recorded in March 2014 at his Alien Studio for audiovisual arts, Torino, Italy. For the first time his musical work is mainly instrumental: Aurora Coelestis is Roberto Opalio’s homage to early minimalism. The work is intended to be listened to at soft volume level, quietly i…
Abstract Expressionism For The Ears
Debut release of the new collaborative project of outsider duo of musicians and visual artists MY CAT IS AN ALIEN and Belgian electronic composer CÉDRIC STEVENS. Over 2 hours of new music as human ears have never heard before and will never do if you miss this unique chance! In February 2014 brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio aka My Cat Is An Alien spent a residency in Brussels for a long studio session in trio with Cédric Stevens (aka Acid Kirk), who recently collaborated in Fennesz's new alb…
Ghostriders In The Sky
"In the recent past we have decently abused "songs" such as "La Bamba", "Popcorn" and "Fever" by inviting some of the most lawless folks on this planet to do whatever they want with "it", which resulted in nightmares all around, and maybe some of the worst records ever made!The idea of this lp is pretty much the same as the above mentioned results of faillure: in this case the 'orginally written by Stan Jones' cowboy knakker gets grilled, turned over, slapped around and puked on by Sjors Bral, B…
Inner Space Memorial in Wonderland
Dekorder presents two new vinyl editions composed and designed by UK sound artist Janek Schaefer, who is known around the world for his wide variety of engaging and unpredictable works for installation, concert and composition. Following his highly acclaimed ‘Lay-by Lullaby’ album on 12k [which Pitchfork listed in the ‘Top 10 under-the-radar releases for 2014’], Janek has created and collated a collection of tracks that showcase both his more ambient works [077], and his highly charged so…
Unfolding Luxury Beyond the City of Dreams
Dekorder presents two new vinyl editions composed and designed by UK sound artist Janek Schaefer, who is known around the world for his wide variety of engaging and unpredictable works for installation, concert and composition. Following his highly acclaimed ‘Lay-by Lullaby’ album on 12k [which Pitchfork listed in the ‘Top 10 under-the-radar releases for 2014’], Janek has created and collated a collection of tracks that showcase both his more ambient works [077], and his highly charged so…
Forms Of Forgetting
Forms of Forgetting is a studio construction investigating memory/forgetting and attention/inattention as catalysts for formal development in long-duration sound work. An extension of Seth Cluett’s gallery-based practice and created out of a sequence of materials developed for performance, the piece is the culmination of two years of in-situ live experimentation. Part site-specific performance, part modular, mobile form, this work employs techniques that aim to explore the fallibility of …
Duets
Tashi Wada's Duets LP is the first release from Saltern, his new imprint distributed through Important Records. Duets features a recording of Wada's series of string duos brilliantly realized by cellists Charles Curtis and Judith Hamann.
From Curtis' liner notes: "How far can we enter into a single moment, such that for that brief speck of time, for an instant, unison is registered? This would suggest a different sense of unison, as a state of complete integration hidden behind the dispari…
Chronological Compression II
Arranged sound for the purpose of preservation.The meticulous organization of memory and vibrations evoke the feelings of experience. All becomes one. Cassette is packaged in a handmade O-card with a 3 color screen print on both the inside and the outside of the heavy paper stock. An inner OBI card holds the cassette and is blind stamped on one side with a 6 color lino-cut on the other.
Primaire
Thomas Barriere's Primaire is nourished by various ethnical inspirations : Baluchistan, Mediterranean, Namibi bent into a contemporary shape of experimentation and progressive rock.For this project, Thomas uses a double-neck guitar (six and twelve strings) with two outputs independently connected to each an tube amp. Each channel has its own volume and distorsion and a switch on a guitar allows several combinations and musical effects; stereo, resonance, ping pong-effect.
Barriere uses several o…
Liebestod
Liebestod, by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski, consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings, and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. He shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nos…
Astrorgasm From The Inner Space
Double LP version. Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.'s new album Astrorgasm from the Inner Space features their original vocalist Cotton Casino. Available on CD and deluxe double LP. As usual, AMT delivers to Important their most scorching tracks. They've included, appropriately, since Important is set to issue Grayfolded on triple vinyl, a brand new re-recording of "Dark Star Blues" with Cotton Casino. On Astrorgasm from the Inner Space, Acid Mothers Temple look towards their sou…
Tryptichs: Variations On A Melody
Aidan Baker's (Nadja) Triptychs takes inspiration from Erik Satie's compositions Gymnopédies and his notion of "furniture music," which many consider a precursor to contemporary ambient music. Each "triptych" is based around a simple, slow-moving melodic line, which repeats three times with the addition of a harmonic line upon each repetition, culminating in a three part harmony. Various musicians from different ensembles and musical backgrounds -- Peter Broderick, Julia Kent, Leah Buckaref…
Heat Source
Ashley Paul's Heat Source was recorded during a challenging year of transience between New York and London. During this year of impermanence Paul performed regularly and the effects of frequent performance and traveling can be heard in the intentionally pared back emptiness of Heat Source. making it an emotionally challenging and fascinatingly personal listening experience.Heat Source finds Ashley Paul working using her brilliant ears to find a zen like balance between her voice and a sp…
Field Transfer
Recorded in the Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College in Oakland, California, with minimal edits and no overdubs.. Field Transfer projects the sounds from an analog circuit into juxtaposition with facets of raw digital audio. As a performer interacts with the circuit—which consists of two square-wave oscillators activated by pressure sensors and shorting disks—instances of pulsed and modulated sound are triggered in the laptop in a manner that couples the analog and digital sources together.…