Home Handover
In 2010, Jean-Luc Guionnet and Éric La Casa were invited by Arika to the Uninstal festival in Glasgow (Scotland) to carry out a series of recordings with some inhabitants of this city, in their home spaces. Based on predefined rules, including the single-sequence shot as a recording method, these people became the actors in a story about their everyday life. Guionnet and La Casa considered this work as a composition under the form of a score with four phases.
1st phase: APARTMENT Recording…
In Dialogue With Eugeniusz Rudnik
"Making music is to be in constant dialogue with your own aesthetics and preferences. In inspired moments, you can get surprised by where the process leads you. And in welcoming circumstances, there are no limits or sneaking doubts that disallow you to try out any possibility. The electronic music made by Eugeniusz Rudnik unquestionably encourages such a position. Working with his music has been greatly inspiring, and the nature of his music feels strangely fitting to my own approach to e…
One Hour As A Plant
All of the sounds used in this composition were produced by recording the bioelectrical field of a specimen of the Peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii). A fascinating work that takes the listener into normally unheard realms. One Hour As A Plant was composed in 2003 for Ben Green's Resonance FM program called "One Hour As...". In 2005, Michael released a slightly shorter version (57:57 versus 61:02) himself on CDR under the title "One Hour As Peyote". After closely listening to both "OHAPlant"…
A Secret Place
The Tobacconists are Scott Foust (Idea Fire Company/Swill Radio) and Frans de Waard (Kapotte Muziek/Korm Plastics). In 2005, Frans joined Idea Fire Company on their European tour (as documented on the "Vital - Live In Europe" CD). Four years later, Scott F. returned to Europe to screen his feature film "Here's To Love" and reconnected with Frans to form The Tobacconists. An intensive week of rehearsals yielded six new pieces of music, followed by a European tour and a proper studio recording. Th…
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…
The Golden Hour
Portland guitar wizard Marisa Anderson's long-awaited solo guitar record. Marisa has been a fixture on many a music scene for years and years, playing with everyone from the Evolutionary Jass Band to Tara Jane O'Neil to The Dolly Ranchers. In any context, she can't escape her rag/blues/folk roots, no matter how hard she tries. On this LP featuring only guitar, no vocals, no overdubs, we are treated to a very intimate-sounding home recording filled with delicate grace. Comparisons to John F…