Vertical
Nikos veliotis and Anastasis Grivas have quite a long history of dealing with drones, improvisation, electroacoustic composition and experimental sounds. In this release, Ôvertical', veliotis' strings and Grivas' custom made guitars create a harmonically dense landscape that murmurs, howls, shrieks, sometimes even sings or just rests in silence. The key here is the experience of time, as the music brings a state of suspension and the frequency spectrum dissolves into a frozen uniform mass of pur…
Mexico Electroacustico 1960-2007
3 CDs and a booklet of 70 pages (English and Spanish) for an anthology of the Mexican Electroacoustic Music from 1960 to 2007 under the direction of Manuel Rocha Iturbide. Composers from the first generation: Carlos Jiménez Mabarak, Manuel Enríquez, Manuel de Elías, Mario Lavista, Julio Estrada, Francisco Núñez, Héctor Quintanar. Composers from the second generation: Javier Álvarez, Roberto Morales Manzanares, Vicente Rojo Cama, Antonio Russek, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Guillermo Galindo, Antonio F…
Dolphin Sonar
Author, activist, painter and sound artist Masami Akita had been at the foreground of experimental music for over 25 years. Inspired by psycedelic rock, free jazz, early electronic composition as well the physical arts, especial Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, Masami Akita has created a musical language all his own. Dolphin Sonar is Merzbow's full length protest album against the annual brutal slaughtering of some 2,500 dolphins in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture Japan. This is an angry album full of beats…
Charlotte Corday And The Lament Of Louis XVI / Passades
Featured pieces: "Charlotte Corday and the Lament of Louis XVI" (1989, for electronics, voices); "Passades -- Volume I" (2002/3, for electronis, transformed voices). Peformed by: Roger Doyle (electronics); Olwen Fouere, Paavo Evans-Doyle, Kathy Kennedy, Paul Dutton, Roger Doyle (voices). Produced and composed by Roger Doyle.
Konrad BoehmerPosition - Il Combattimento - Ouroboros
All compositions by Konrad Boehmer. "'Position' (1961-1962) for 4-track tape, voices and orchestra, (performed by Radio Symphony Orchestra of the WDR, Cologne, Bruno Maderna - conductor). The basic notation for 'Position' is one of 'open' form which does not consist of the exchangeability of its parts but in the idiomatic structure of the composition. 'Il Combattimento' (1989) for orchestra with solo violin and solo cello. "Il Combattimento' is a dramatic concert piece for orchestra that include…
Baby Grand
Roger Doyle (solo piano); Produced and composed by Roger Doyle. "Among my first piano compositions was Six Pieces for Pupils who Don't Like Exams. Baby Grand is the sixth of these and is composed for four hands (in this version I multitracked myself and used some double-speed recording techniques). ... Then in the 1980s I received two once-in-a-lifetime commissions ... The first was to compose music for a film by Irish film-maker Bob Quinn, called Budawanny. The music (which had to be piano musi…
Dmaathen - Eonta - Epei - Herma - Palimpsest - Evryali
A collection of early period works, recorded in the presence of the composer Iannis Xenakis; in Rotterdam, 1977 & Amsterdam 1986. Works featured are: DMAATHEN (1976, for oboe, percussion); EONTA (1963, for piano, trumpet, trombone, with Peter Eötvös, conductor); EPEÏ (1976, for oboe, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, double bass); HERMA (1960-61, for piano); PALIMPSEST (1979, for oboe, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, violoncello, double bass, piano, percussion, w/ Huub Kerstens - co…
The Early Years
This collection has been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding, by composer Roger Doyle and performer Olwen Fouere, of the music-theatre company Operating Theatre. Operating Theatre has been active in two phases: the first from 1981 to 1988, and the second from 1998 to the present. This double CD celebrates the first phase, during which the company operated as both a theatre company, integrating music as an equal partner in the theatrical environment, and as a band releasing…
Xenakis
Late 2007 / early 2008 release from bhvaast; a new recital disc from the xenakis ensemble, featuring elisabeth chojnacka (known for the “clavecin 2000” lp on the philips prospective 21e siècle series ... esp. her virtuosic performance of ligeti’s “continuum”), tsuji mifune, marco blaauw, and of course conductor diego masson. two xenakis pieces, one by willem breuker, and one by david del puerto ...
Two Bows
The sound of Frances-Marie Uitti’s cello resonates in the bloodstream. Griffiths, Welsh-born, a sometime music critic and the author of some excellent writing on new music, has a voice that sounds like Uitti’s cello... and he uses it the way she plays: intense, throbbing, now and then breaking off and darting in some unexpected direction. His poetry is darkly tinged with memory — “There it was, and it was, and it is gone.” Single words and phrases seem to dissolve into cello sound, and just as o…
Compositions for mechanical organ
Reedist Willem Breuker has a fascination with the mechanical organ, particularly instruments like the European street organ. The mechanical organ works like a player piano, and on these recordings is controlled by either Ben Uijtiens or Chris Weeda. His previous Bvhaast album, LUNCHCONCERT for three Amsterdam streetorgans recorded from 1967-1969 is an unusual album of organ work that takes the instrument is lesser known territories, and included a tribute piece to John Coltrane. The newly reissu…
Vito Acconci / New Humans / C. Spencer Yeh
Noise surrounds and permeates us, and no one is more responsible than the New Humans from that loudest and noisiest of metropolises: New York. From installation art to ear splitting live concerts, this infernal power trio lead by artist Mika Tajima eschews no collaboration, no matter how insane. Guitarist and artistic leader Tajimi is supported by electronics specialist and voice acrobat Howie Chen, drummer Eric Tsai, as well as a large number of guest musicians. The New Humans like nothing more…
A l’improviste
Two improvising string basses, masters Joelle Leandre and Barre Phillips in an aural experiment that is beyond our conventional definitions musical form and manner, an insighful conversationbetween two kindred souls and old friends who never documented their collaborations in a duet format.
Raymond & Marie
Mersault's album, Raymond and Marie, works by undermining expectations, shifting the foreground to the background and back again. A nominally placid passage contains a busy roughness that, without any overt moment of transition, characterizes the moment in question. Similarly, passages of resonant double bass emerge from rough, bracing chunks of sound, dropping after a while into parallel coexistence with electronic drone and muted percussion.
Withers In The Waking
This is the eighth release in the Touch Sevens 7" vinyl-only limited edition series. Both songs are the result of the WFMU podcast series "Codpaste," in which Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) & Ergo Phizmiz publicly composed a series of collage compositions and did a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay's ScreenPlay. This resulted in the online-only album Rhapsody In Glue, from which these two songs are alternative versions, with re-tooled guitars, and vocals added to a Prokofiev melody.
Pedal
Pedal is comprised of duo improvisations for two pianos by Australians Chris Abrahams (The Necks) and Simon James Phillips. While Abrahams is inspired by jazz, be-bop, hard-bop, free-jazz, rock 'n roll, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, improvisation, Terry Riley, and dare I say... Little Richard, Phillips feels much more at home with the concert hall, opera house, chamber works, Grieg, Janacek, Feldman, Ives, old-school, new-school, classically-trained pianist, conductor, pedagogue. The music: What …
Music For Solo Piano (1960-2001)
Performed by Daan Vandewalle, piano. "Gordon Mumma (b. 1935) is best known for his pioneering role in the development and evolution of electronic and live-electronic music. The piano has played a significant if underestimated role in his career. With a few notable exceptions, this collection by pianist Daan Vandewalle marks the first commercial recordings of Mumma's music for solo piano composed over more than forty years. It provides an important new perspective on his work as a composer. The s…
The Intermediary
Digital remaster of this Lovely Music LP release from 1982. The Intermediary gathers all of 'Blue's' musical impulses together in one, sweeping work for prose, improvisation, electronics, and piano. A program records, processes, and plays back the changed sounds so that 'Blue' Gene must act as an 'intermediary': both the sender and receiver of information.
Just For The Record
Digital remaster of this Lovely Music LP from 1979. Just For The Record is a musical snapshot of West Coast post-classical music via Mills College: multiple-keyboard works by Robert Ashley, Phil Harmonic, Paul DeMarinis and John Bischoff.
Star Jaws
Digitally remastered reissue of an old Lovely Music LP from 1978. Peter Gordon and 'Blue' Gene Tyranny are long-time Lovely Music stalwarts, having contributed their talents to many a LML release: Peter Gordon has acted as producer for a few early Robert Ashley recordings; 'Blue' Gene Tyranny is Robert Ashley's go-to pianist. Gordon and Tyranny have also collaborated in Gordon's Love of Life Orchestra (aka LOLO) and on Jill Kroesen's Stop Vicious Cycles. So, it's only fitting that when we dug in…