Then & Now Now & Then / Celebrating 20 Years
First it was the name of an album that came out about 20 years ago and made new music history. Deep Listening. Then it became the name of the band that recorded that album. Then it became the name of a practice, an approach to art, improvisation, exploration and, well, living, that drove that band, a band of crazies led by Pauline Oliveros, to lower themselves into a hugeunderground concrete cistern in the state of Washington (David Felton, 2008). Here, 20 years later, Oliveros, Stuart Dempster …
Musique Directe
Entering their twentieth year of existence, the GOL orchestra, together with the label Planam, celebrates and starts a new program of collaborations: the Gollaboration series.Volume 1, hence the title "Musique Directe", shows the band facing the leaders of Roumenian spectralism Ana-Maria Avaram and Iancu Dumitrescu. Electric and intense spontaneous experiments, on the edge of electroacoustic music and primitive avant-garde. Live recordings in Marseille and Paris with the participation of Ansamb…
Dendoshi II
** 300 copies in gold cover ** Dendoshi is Keith Connolly (No Neck Blues Band), Raymond Dijkstra (Asra), Dave Nuss (No Neck Blues Band) and Timo Van Luyk (Af Ursin, In Camera). Dendoshi: "he who comes to propagate the ceremony" or "missionary" (japanese). There had actually been a previous incarnation of Dendoshi (hence Dendoshi 2), which was a large group performance in New York which concentrated on elucidating the memories of a dead tree which had been re-contextualized as a sculptural exhibi…
The Great Learning / Two Poems
Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning," is a great example of his struggles to reconcile his innate musical aesthetics and his intellectual belief that the "avant-garde" was inherently elitist. Written for a mix of musicians & non-musicians, it is a grand improvisatory work that nicely exploits the talents of whomever is performing it. Two of the seven "Paragraph's" are performed here by The Scratch Orchestra, who give the expected first rate performance. Bedford is known to many in the rock w…
Topography
Percussionist Jon Mueller continues his amazing run of releases (he appears on eight Table Of The Elements titles in the first half of 2008!) with Topography, a collaboration with Zürich-based sound and visual artist Jason Kahn. As a drummer, Mueller propels Collections of Colonies of Bees and the occasional guitar army of Rhys Chatham; he also finds time to collaborate with artists ranging from Wilco's Glenn Kotche to Swans' Jarboe. Kahn draws on electronic and acoustic sound sources to create …
Impala Eardrums: A Radium Sampler
Radium is regarded as Table Of The Elements' rock offshoot, although they do write that in inverted commas (that's 'rock', in case you were wondering what that would look like). The label is given a showcase by this eight-track LP, calling upon Jonathan Kane, Megafaun, Ateleia, Collections Of Colonies of Bees and Neptune among others. Rhys Chatham, that most iconic of Radium artists gets the album underway with an untitled piece from 1986, featuring an arsenal of four guitars, a bass and drums. …
I-IV-V-I
ONE-SIDED, ETCHED GREEN VINYL. Released as a part of Table Of The Elements' 15th anniversary celebrations, this LP is another installment in the label's Guitar Series, which features contributions from Fennesz, SunnO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Thurston Moore. By rights, David Daniell's name should be every bit as widely known as any of those other aforementioned superstars of the avant-garde. His album on TOTE sub-label Xeric (the magnificent Coastal) is an all too often overlooked masterpiece, and …
Telescope
ONE-SIDED, ETCHED MARBLE-EFFECT VINYL. This new Guitar Series installment is also the debut solo LP by David Daniell's bandmate in San Agustin, Andrew Burnes - though he may equally be known for his improv collaborations with the likes of Thurston Moore and Ken Vandermark, or as a co-conspirator in Loren Connors' Haunted House. Telescope takes the form of a single, lengthy drone piece, modulating and morphing across an expanse of handsome, marble-effect green vinyl. Burnes isn't shy of morphing …
June
12" one-sided clear vinyl with an etching by Savage Pencil. Table of the Elements continues to celebrate its 15th anniversary with the ninth installment in its Guitar Series Vols. 3 & 4. It’s a 12xLP romp of deviant fretnoise by some of experimental music’s most prominent players, including Christian. Simply put, Christian Fennesz is a pioneer. As much as any artist, he is responsible for establishing the laptop computer as both a compositional tool and concert instrument. Subsuming electro-acou…
The Moon Last Night
The Moon Last Night perfectly captures the complex and contemporary guitar style of Loren Connors - totally desolate yet wound in echoy, rich black clouds that weep of Mississippi ghost blues and chiming strings. This two part suite combines the artist's love of choral music, Giacinto Scelsi and the naked Venusian guitar style he evangelized across a string of private press LPs in the late 1980s. Conjured solely from a Fender six-string and reverb effects, solitary notes swirl and loft gently fr…
The Departing Of A Dream Vol. II
Avant guitar legend Loren Connors (aka Loren MazzaCane Connors) returns with the sequel to 2002's critically acclaimed The Departing of a Dream. The NYC blues guitarist, who has been recording and releasing albums since 1978, extends the theme (which was a loose tribute to Miles Davis' 'He Loved Him Madly') into a fragile and floating eight-part piece of acoustic/electric/ and bass guitar mixed with field recordings and the unsettling ménage of found sounds and ambient hiss. Whereas the first De…
TGV
THE VIDEO ARCHIVE OF THROBBING GRISTLE - Numbered Limited Edition of 2000. This Deluxe 7 disc DVD Collection showcases the phenomenon that was, and is now, Throbbing Gristle Live in Performance. Featuring 10 full shows, most never-before-seen, ranging from the fascinating beginnings in 1979, by way of the classic videos of Oundle and Heathen Earth, and including the notorious RE-TG "re-grouping" 23 years later at London's Astoria Theatre in Spring 2004, as well as three more recent remarkable co…
Multiples
Multiples was recorded at the Harvard University studios, where a stash of vintage synthesizers and electronics was made available to Keith Fullerton Whitman during his time as a lecturer there. The eight tracks on Multiples flow through hit hat shimmer to skull-scraping electronic tones to interlocking clusters of repetition. This is Whitman's most inclusive and developed album yet. The limited edition Antithesis and Schöner Flußengel LPs released in 2004 showed the range of Whitman's interests…
Koncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui
The sixth edition of the SYR series is a live recording of the April 12, 2003 benefit concert held at and for The Anthology Film Archives, the international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of avant-garde and independent cinema. In addition to screening films for the public, AFA houses a film museum, research library and art gallery.
The event, which raised money for the Archives and celebrated the life and work of avant-garde film maker Stan Brakhage, featured Sonic Youth prov…
The Versailles Sessions
Murcof, aka Barcelona-based Mexican composer Fernando Corona, is probably best known for his blending of classical and electronic music in multimedia pieces such as Oceano; but until that is reduced to CD size, this album of music commissioned to accompany a festival makes for a pleasing stopgap. As with much of Murcof's music, a rapprochement between past, present and future is obtained by the processing of acoustic source material, here including harpsichord and viola da gamba. "Welcome to Ver…
Heaven\'s End
Had Loop been present at Woodstock, they probably would have hatched a plan to obtain all the brown acid that Wavy Gravy warned spectators not to take. After hearing his declaration that "The brown acid's a bummer, man!," Robert Hampson and his droogs would have likely gone incognito as security staff, offering to rid the concert goers of the bad trips waiting to be had. They would have procedeed to ingest what they could and record something like Heaven's End, a filler-free release of warped se…
Event
How's this for a threesome; in the red corner we have Christian Marclay with a box of records and his trusty turntables, in the blue corner it's twinkle-toes Yasunao Tone and his prepared CD's and players, whilst in the, erm, green corner stands Christian Wolff and his one man band of bass, percussive stuff, radio-cassette recorder and melodica. FIGHT! Recorded live way-back-when in 1998 as improvised accompaniment to a Merce Cunningham Dance Company performance, 'Event' is a single 50 minute pi…
Fade Out
Distinguishing one Loop record from another is nearly as tricky as doing the same for the Ramones or AC/DC. Since Loop more or less stuck to one thing, remaining consistently great and gradually developing an experimentalist streak throughout their brief lifespan, the actual sound of each record is what separates one from the next. Aside from increasing control over their instruments, there isn't a great deal of actual progress made, but this is no fault. Wrecking ball riffs that remain firmly b…
Cosmospir
“Cosmospir” is a debut album from Polish singer/improviser and composer, India Czajkowska. Her music overturns categories through a fluid blend of classical instruments, experimental vocal technique and electronic spectrum arrangements. The dark alchemic laboratory in a deserted factory, the walls of which are breathing still with industrial noise. The space is sinking into strange sacral whispers and through the broken panes birds are flying in. The roar of the wind and the dripping of raindrop…
Raag drone theory
A new stage of the duo, after the successful Sunja - more expressively inspired by indian music: one long track completely acoustic displays a sound dialog between psaltery, zither and shruti box, brought into a contemplative space.