A Musical Dictionary Of 80 People Around Fluxus
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Fluxus, I composed eighty short musical pieces for eighty Fluxus people... For each person, I used only the pitches available from the letters spelling his/her name. A different timbre was applied to each person... The artists whose names are musically described are: Dietrich Albrecht, Eric Andersen, Ay-O, Michael Berger, Joseph Beuys, René Block, Luigi Bonotto, George Brecht, Stanley Brouwn, Jean Brown, John Cage, Giuseppe Chiari, Henri Chopin, Henning Chris…
Andy Warhol Attentat Sound
A collage consisting of sounds recorded between 7PM October 11th and November 12th, 1986 in New York City by the 'New York City Audio/Visual Group' led by Al Hansen. Features Al, Lisa Cieslik, Georg (ist Warhol!), Suzanne Zierold, Dieter Hebben, Peter Kleinertz, Hanjo S., Nicole Hundertmark, and others. Figures like Gerard Malanga, Angus MacLise, Valerie Solanas, Warhol, and others are roasted/honored (the tone is always a little hard to suss) in the form of chants like 'Long Live Andy Panda', e…
Northwest Passage: The Birth of Portland\'s D.I.Y. Culture
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Pacific Northwest witnessed a surge of idiosyncratic creativity that, for a time, banished the slack-jawed banality of mainstream music and art to the shabby bargain basement of the cultural wasteland. Countless young men and women turned their backs on the hollow blather generated in corporate boardrooms, producing their own music and art with a rebellious, energetic glee. Northwest Passage: The Birth of Portland's D.I.Y. Culture is an independent film…
Volksmusik
The Zeitkratzer international soloists ensemble does their own take on Volksmusik: literally, the "people's music" of the Alpine regions of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc. However, Zeitkratzer comes up with their own sound, and their own interpretation, immersing themselves into folk music as still existing today, not some leftover phantom of older days and older traditions. To prepare for this material, they focused their research on the music of the Danube abutters and used every kind of f…
Schonberg Pierrot Lunaire -- Cheap Imitation
Berlin's Reinhold Friedl is a practitioner of the inside-piano technique and founder and director of the Zeitkratzer and Piano-Inside-Out ensembles. His piece, Schönberg Pierrot Lunaire -- Cheap Imitation is exactly what the title says: an endless funny parody of Schönberg's Pierrot Lunaire, a composition often taken far too seriously. At the same time, it is a compositional condensation of Schönberg's techniques, conducted in a genius way by trumpet player Franz Hautzinger from Vienna, a longti…
8
Helge Sten, Ståle Storløkken, Arve Henriksen and Jarle Vespestad celebrate 10 years as Supersilent, the groundbreaking quartet with their first studio album in almost 5 years. Their music lives in a no-man's-land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. Yes, we say composition because when listening it´s not far fetched to think it could have been, although everything here is improvised, as it has always been with Supersilent. With ”8” they have yet a…
Dodeka
It is with great joy and honour that we are able to celebrate our 30th release with a new album by one of the most distinguished personalities in Norwegian music. Not only that, Dodeka, meaning twelve in Greek, is a small sensation in that the twelve pieces presented here have never been available on record before. These compositions are made from the building blocks and basic elements from Nordheim´s work in Warszaw between 1967 and 1972. Considering the primitive working methods and the equipm…
Electric
Beautifully presented reissue of classic archival electroacoustic works, first released on now very obscure vinyl in 1974. Bright orange fold-out digipak, extensive booklet of notes package some of the most exciting, shimmering and crystalline electronic sounds to be unearthed in quite a while. Important and essential. Born in 1931 and highly active, Arne Nordheim is considered by most as the greatest living Norwegian composer, his chamber music, orchestral and various other work spanning a 40 y…
Photography Meets Music
Video version of the Yuji Itsumi book. Itsumi Yuji (photography); Ohkuchi Junichiro (piano); Imai Kazou (Live electroacoustic); Urabe Masayoshi (alto sax). Color; 80 minutes.
Beyond The Boundary Of Time
Beyond the Boundary of Time documents the last live performance of the legendary Revolutionary Ensemble before Leroy Jenkins's death in 2007. This recording was made of a performance on May 25, 2005 in Warsaw, Poland. In the 1970s, the Revolutionary Ensemble introduced New York to decided musical advances, many pioneered by Chicago's A.A.C.M. musicians. Ex-Chicagoan Leroy Jenkins, who played violin, of all unheard-of modern jazz instruments, had formed his concept from classical, swing, blues, a…
Point Conception
Point Conception is Daniel Lentz’s wild nine-piano tribute to the octave. It amasses and bubbles over with incessant streams of octaves (harmonic and melodic) that run the length of the keyboard. Through a “cascading echo system,” long-time Lentz Ensemble pianist Arlene Dunlap performs all of its parts.Presented with Point Conception (which was originally issued as a Cold Blue LP in the mid-80s) is Lentz’s previously unrecorded NightBreaker, a kaleidoscopic and explosive tour de force for four p…
Rocks Will Open
Loren Chasse is responsible for a whole host of vital albums. He was a founding member of the Jewelled Antler label and has sparked so many great moments from the likes of Thuja, The Blithe Sons, Softwar, and of course his main solo guise, Of. For years, this project has evolved into something of absolute magical grandeur. Rocks Will Open is the latest opus in Chasse's catalog. The music on this album is as organic as it gets. Each tone, each sound feels like it has been culled directly from the…
Low Cloud Means Death
For years, I've counted Tetuzi Akiyama as one of my absolute favorite guitarists. He's been cranking out great records for ages, honing his style and skill in every possible way. Add in Christian Kiefer, who has also put out a string of magnificent releases, and a talented drummer/percussionist in Kevin Corcoran (who has appeared on releases on Weird Forest and played in Antennas Erupt!) and you've got a recipe for something magical. Low Cloud Means Death is a series of sea-inspired improvisatio…
Aix
Aix is the latest work from Italian artist Giuseppe Ielasi and the follow-up to 2007's August (12K 1044). With Aix we see Ielasi building his layered, atmospheric music around rhythmic grids. Most of the time these are quite irregular and the pulses are not necessarily stable or clear. Where his previous work approached sound in a linear fashion Aix imposes a strong vertical development with the aforementioned grid and a production consisting of ons and offs, employing as much improvisation as I…
More Arctic Hysteria / Son of Arctic Hysteria
...The later years of early Finnish avant-garde. Another incredible volume, following the inspiration and eye-opening 2001 CD Arktinen hysteria -- Suomi-avantgarden Wsipuutarhureita. Perfectly packaged document of more utterly obscure electronic mayhem and theatrical intoxication, presented as near-high-art. Now covered are the 1970s and 1980s. 34 artists. Featuring a lavishly illustrated leaflet of 20 pages. Compiled by Jukka Lindfors. Featuring Jimi Tenor, Läjä Äijälä and early Mika Vainio (Pa…
Mexico
Along with the two records by Nurse With Wound favorites Moving Gelatine Plates, Ergo Sum's weird and wonderful album Mexico is an unusual portal into the intense creativity of early 1970s French music. True, the bands are not musically similar; yet these three albums are distinguished not only by their instrumental richness, but by their unceasing sense of adventure. We'd go so far to say that Ergo Sum presents one of the most distinctive experiences in a rock idiom (apart from Zeuhl music jugg…
Canaries on the Pole #2
Jacques Foschia (eb & bass clarinet), Christoph IRMER (violin), Georg Wissel (prepared alto & tenor saxophones, objects) and Mike Goyvaerts (percussion, objects, toys). Recorded in 2008.
Ordinary music vol.3
#1 for string trio & double bass. Nikolaus Gerszewski (violin, composer), Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Guilherme Rodrigues (cello) and Hernâni Faustino (double bass). Recorded in 2008 at Goethe Institut, Lissabon.
Blinzeln
Birgit ULHER, trumpet. Heiner METZGER, sound table. Recorded 2007 in Hamburg. Born 1961 in Nuremberg, she studied the visual arts, which still have an important influence on her music. Since moving to Hamburg in 1982 she has been involved in free improvisation and experimental music. Since then she has “established a distinguished grammar of sounds beyond the open trumpet” (jazzdimensions.de). She performs solo, with dancers, working ensembles, and one-time collaborations with musicians from aro…
Till My Breath Gives Out
The magic i.d. is a berlin-based quartet exploring the juncture of song forms with abstract music. The band, consisting of margareth kammerer, christof kurzmann, kai fagaschinski and michael thieke, formed in summer 2005 after previously being connected via smaller groupings and projects. till my breath gives out is their debut release, and consists of six intricately constructed gems, each with its own individual shape, painstakingly sequenced to form a record that becomes more than the sum of …