Weisse Messe
Touting the slogan 'Organic free metal from Malaysia' I have to say I was intrigued even before I popped this record on the deck - I mean how can you possibly dislike a record if it lives up to that slogan, and I'm happy to say that it really, truly does. While being more 'free' than 'metal', this Malaysian improvisational five-piece make quite a racket and armed with two saxophones, bass, guitar and drums they're not your traditional rock band. In fact the band have more in common with Kraut ro…
Paul Flaherty / Thurston Moore / Bill Nace
Paul Flaherty has been a direct lifeline to the radical free-reed lineage of Albert Ayler, John Gilmore, Peter Brotzmann and Arthur Doyle since first coming into our vision sometime in the '80s. In the '90s he began woodshedding hard with Northampton, Massachusetts resident spirit-drummer Chris Corsano. As the contemporary free-noise-space-weird underground gathered around, minds were liberated to godhead heights. Also in the '90s a young and beautiful boy-man named Bill Nace was drawn to the re…
Hoffman Estates
A large ensemble improv album, featuring Ken Vandermark, Rob Mazurek, Kevin Drumm, Rick Rizzo, Darin Gray, etc. O'Rourke decided to pair up Loren with Alan Licht. A full day of improvising was recorded, selected, and then arrangements were later added by O'Rourke in a sort of Gil Evans/Miles Davis move, or more appropriately Teo Maceo meets Mazza-Licht. Organized like a continuum of music that brings new meaning to 'suite' (or at the very least, a flexible new spelling), the record is at once a …
1987-1989
In 1987, Loren Mazzacane Connors first played with his future wife, Suzzane Langille. Together they performed Langille-adapted traditional and gospel standards, slowing them 'down to a crawl'. Two albums were released on his own St. Joan label under the moniker Guitar Roberts with Suzanne Langille, entitled Bluesmaster 1 and Bluesmaster 2. This album represents the best of their material as a duo from those two records, plus the one song they performed as a duo from Loren's 1989 In Pittsburgh fu…
Thirty Minute Raven
An uninterupted half hour of statement, restatement, and versioning of this track from A Spectrum Between that takes as its point of departure a thumping instrumental with the dream group of David Grubbs, Noël Akchotè, John McEntire, Quentin Rollet, & Charlie O.
The Thicket
David Grubbs' first pop proper solo LP. There's a proud equilibrium to The Thicket. The arrangements are consistent (and consistently colorful) throughout the record. When you first hear a banjo or a trumpet or a Tony Conrad, you can bet your bottom dollar that you'll hear it again. Thus, the record is purged of exoticisms. The Thicket is many things, and elusive is not among them. It's a straight-40-to-the-head album of pop sonic lucidity.
Forgiveness & Exile
Forgiveness and Exile is Chris Connelly's ninth solo work, the follow-up to 2007's critically acclaimed The Episodes. The album is again produced by Tim Kinsella (Cap'n Jazz, Joan of Arc), Ben Vida (Town and Country, Terminal 4, Bird Show), and Connelly himself, and the musicians comprise the same jazz and improvisational band that played on The Episodes. This time, however, Connelly's group is augmented by the addition of four of his oldest friends: David Miller (Fini Tribe), Shirley Manson (Ga…
The Brain Of The Dog In Section
Peaked-out duo recordings from one of the founders of the form and his ever adventurous, cello-torque-ing protégé. Recorded live in November 2007 at Chicago's famed Hideout destination, Brö and brother FLH combine for the first time ever in this penultimately intimate configuration. Although 'Braindog' (as we affectionately refer to these hypnotic tones around here) was recorded in an ultra-industrial urban warehouse district, the resulting music is über-organic, almost onomotopaeic at points. C…
Songs \'77-\'79
Documents the early recordings of Glenn Branca within the realm of his legendary no-wave ensembles The Static & Theoretical Girls. Contains all the recordings from both singles by these groups, plus "outrageous and inspired home cassette recordings from the time." Crucial no-wave-into-the-eighties reference point, and some extremely influential music.
Unununium
unununium (r-n 111) is the first release of the new raster-noton unun series. The name of the series derives from the greek atomic numbers of the chemical elements 111 119 in the periodic table. NHK is a collaboration of Kouhei Matsunaga and Toshio Munehiro who have been working together since 2006 when they both lived in Osaka. Kouhei started making music back in 1992 focusing on rather experimental compositions. He has been working with various artists such as Merzbow, Asmus Tietchens, Sean Bo…
Insen Live
In 2005 and 2006 three major tours of insen led the artists alva noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto around the world. Raster-noton is pleased to present insen live dvd as a document of this project. Recordings took place at Casa da música, Porto, Portugal, on june 11th 2006 and at Sonar festival 2006, Barcelona, Spain, on june 15th 2006. Besides material from 2005 insen album the dvd contains previously unreleased tracks such as xerox and barco. The dvd in dolby 5.1 surround sound comes in a cardboard cove…
Generazioni del cielo
Generazioni del Cielo is a contemporary musical work in the form of oratory; it is born from a development of matured musical language across polyvalent experiences, that range from classical composition to the production of music widely listened to. The subject originates from the will to tell a story that is not usual, a story without real events but with real and felt emotions, drawing from contemporary literature and also taking cues from sacred texts. In the production, the music, which is…
Despite the water supply
Over the last 20 years, besides his own music, Jim O'Rourke has worked with the Merce Cunningham Dance company, Takehisa Kosugi, Derek Bailey, and Tony Conrad amongst many others. He has produced albums for Beth Orton, Stereolab, John Fahey, Brigitte Fontaine, Faust, and Wilco and more. Between 1999 and 2005 he was a member of Sonic Youth. He has also scored films for directors Werner Herzog, Olivier Assayas, Shinji Aoyama, and Koji Wakamatsu and more. O'Rourke's own films were part of the 2004 …
Matrix
This is Ryoji Ikeda's fifth solo CD and his third for Touch, following the highly acclaimed +/- [1996] and 0*C [1998]. He previously released 1000 Fragments on his own cci recordings, and Time and Space, a double 3” CD, for Staalplaat. Ryoji is constantly touring as part of the Japanese performance group Dumb Type, who are shortly to undertake a tour of Japan, and also as a solo artist.
In The Pendulum's Embrace
Oren Ambarchi continues his otherworldly investigations with 'In The Pendulum's Embrace', a dark twin to his landmark 2004 album 'Grapes From The Estate' [Touch # TO:61]. Returning again to the hallowed halls of BJB Studios in Sydney, Ambarchi expands the scope and range of his unique musical language, incorporating an even broader pallette of instrumentsand sensibilities. Despite the use of glass harmonica, strings, bells, piano, percussion and guitars, it's startling that the world created is …
Fluxus & Happening Friends
Fluxus & Happening Friends was presented at L'Autre Caserne on the evening of October 21st 1998 in Limoilou, Quebec. The selection of artists and the choice of fluxus scores had been entrusted to Larry Miller, who also served as Master of Ceremony on that occasion. The actual documentation is an historic testimony of the Action Art as conceived and performed by fluxus. Alos, Dick Higgins made his last public appearence that night since he died shortly after. Scores by: Ay-O, Georges brecht, Al H…
Midnight Crossroads Tape Recorder Blues
Bruce Russell : acoustic guitar, vocal, analogue Tape treatments, mixing and composition. Ralf Wehowsky : sitar, digital sound processing. Recorded 2003-05, Lyttelton, New Zealand and Eggenstein, Germany. Digital mastering at the Temple of Music. “It is Midnight during the summer of 1951, the scene is a rural Crossroads somewhere outside Paris. A man called Pierre Schaeffer is sitting in the grass by the side of the road. As the village clock strikes the hour he invokes Eleggua, the Yoruba god o…
That Mysterious Forest Below London Bridge
1. Chant-Lambert-Lexer-Milton (Tom Chant (soprano and tenor saxophones), Ross Lambert (guitar), Sebastian Lexer (piano and laptop), Matt Milton (violin). 2. Coleman-Wastell-Wright (Jamie Coleman (trumpet), Mark Wastell (harmonium), Seymour Wright (alto saxophone). 3. AMM (Eddie Prévost (percussion), John Tilbury (piano). Recorded by Rick Campion, edited and mastered by Sebastian Lexer.
Marie-Antoinette is not dead
Crystal transparent 7' vinyl encrusted with white sprayings, numbered and stamped edition limited to 470 copies. Stunning collaboration between four entities who all left an indelible track in various spheres and in different eras, such as Jac berrocal, a mythical figure, improvisator in his music and his encounters, a visionary poet and avant garde trumpeter who went against the grain in jazz and punk, amongst others, and his associate Jack Belsen, a virtuoso with the machines, guitarist and in…
Koitsukara usetaitameno hakarigoto
New solo hurdy-gurdy disk - the first solo Haino release in over two years. Third album of devastating solo electric hurdy-gurdy for Haino, following on from The 21st Century Hard-Y-Guide-Y Man (1996) on PSF, and Even Now, Still I Think (1998). The hand-cranked medieval instrument provides the perfect tool for Haino to display his genre-collapsing originality, allowing multiple dimensions of rhythm, noise, drone, harmony and melody to co-exist, majicked from the invisible interstices of the anci…