Triptych of poisoners
2005 release. Milk From Cheltenham is the first in a series of Alga Marghen editions documenting the activities of the It's War Boys underground label, founded by Amos (of The Homosexuals fame) in the late 1970s. The original LP was issued in an edition limited to 300 copies. The material was recorded from 1979 to 1981 but wasn't released until 1983 due to problems with the silkscreened sleeve. The band only put out this record, a real hidden gem. Lepke said that he wanted it to sound like …
Metal Box
Mike Cooper: For the past 40 has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker…
Eclipses
Michel Doneda, soprano saxophone; Jean Pallandre, sound manipulation; Vladimire Skoda, Sculpture and drawings; The Tarn river, natural sounds. Recorded 1992 at the Moulins Albigeois, France, co-existent with an exhibition of metal sculptures by Vladimire Skoda and adjacent to the swollen River Tarn; recorded by Jean Pallandre and then re-mixed in the studio by Jean Pallandre and Michel Doneda to create 'an electroacoustic image of this moment'. 120 special editions of the compact disc were produ…
Les 120 jours
For Les 120 Jours, Michel Chion, Lionel Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger assembled a common bank of many original sounds which each of them had worked on, transformed and re-composed in his own style. This gives the listener the ability to hear a musical language in the form of collage-citations, which, for this occassion, they also named a 'concrete diversion'. Musique concrète composed in 1997/98 for the Festival Musique Action, 16 May 1998, at Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France.Limited edition of 100…
On n’arrête pas le regret
LAST COPIES, already out of print - Beatiful early compositions for the well known INA composer: 'Sambas pour un jour de pluie' (1985), 'La machine à passer le temps' (1972), 'On n'arrête pas le regret' (1975)
Preludes a la vie
LAST COPIES, already out of print: Préludes à la vie (Preludes to Life) combines pieces from 1972 to 1991 in two electronic operas. In Le prisonnier du son (The Prisoner of Sound) a single human voice tells the story of a lone character trapped in a world of manipulated sounds. The title piece is a series of technical exercises in the possibilities of musique concrète.
This second album on empreintes DIGITALes, as with the first one, consists of very different works which are quite separated in …
Cellomusiken 1970-71
'Deutsche Landschaften' (1970). 'Cellokonzert' (1971). Michael von Biel (violoncello).Booklet languages: English, German (16 pages in total with digipak).
Requiem
A new album by Michael Prime who is another prolific sound composer for many years. Being an active member of Morphogenesis he also collaborated with among others: David Jackman/Organum, Jim O'Rourke, Eddie Prevost, David Toop, Adam Bohman. He's also one half of Negative Entropy a collaborational project with G. Feyton (Noise Makers Five). Recorded between December 1998 and December 2000 Requiem is one of his most intense works so far and quite different from his more inviromental studies. Dedic…
55 pas de la ligne au N°3
Long-time San Francisco based sound artist, internationally known from his extensive discography as Crawling With Tarts, releases his first full length solo work. 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 is a microscopic study of dense sonic landscapes buried within antiquated turntable motors. Gendreau, an acoustician by profession, utilizes high sensitivity accelerometers to map detailed frequencies from a variety of old turntable motors and mechanics. This is a rare exhibition of the creative potential wit…
Eleven Live Collaborations
Live collaboration between Japanoise legend Merzbow and german artist Achim Wollscheid. Recorded at Spiral Hall, Tokyo.
Live in Geneva
As can be gleaned from the title, this is a recording of Merzbow live in Switzerland. Abrasive noise, big rhythms and (to be expected) and onslaught of noise. Recorded at Cave 12 on 10th March 2005, there is apparently no editing involved on this release.
Merzbear
Author, activist, painter, and sound artist Masami Akita has been at the foreground of experimental music for over twenty-five years. Inspired by psychedelic rock, free jazz, and early electronic composition as well the physical arts (especially Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau), Masami Akita has created a musical language all his own. Merzbear, the sixth Merzbow release in his utterly essential Merz series for Important Records, pulses and pounds with distorted droning guitar feedback, pulsing noise b…
Alexipharmaca
Alexipharmaca, Mem1’s second full-length album, is a collection of improvised works that capture the allure of the forbidden and dangerous, and the modern fascination with things ancient and shrouded in mystery. The album’s title is taken from a set of poems written by Nicander of Colophon, a Greek pharmacologist (fl. 197-130 B.C.E.), whose text deals with plant and animal poisons and their antidotes. Mem1’s music intoxicates with its rich textures and lavish soundscapes, but — like a beautifu…
Studio one
Michael Bullock (contrabass & feedback), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet) and Vic Rawlings (cello & surface electronics). "One strike isn't enough. This album struck me like a big wave, a wave that makes you lose your consciousness and equilibrium for several minutes, leaving you wondering what just happened to you during this elusive lapse of time. Probably this is exactly the purpose of this trio, where as their music draws rust from your very skin, suburban rust, from those big suburbs where the indivi…
Fever
Each composition of this CD is dedicated to a person, or to the work of a person: Malcolm Goldstein, Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elvis Presley and Yoko Tawada. Throughout these five sound portraits, Kaul displays a fertile imagination and a penchant für exotic instrumentation, which includes a hurdy-gurdy, Korean gongs Japanese and Tibetan temple bells, kalimba, Tanzanian lute, bowed gopichand from India, glass harp, kanjira, tabla and frame drum, and Western percussion instruments.…
Open
Mark Wastell and Matt Davis met and first played together in a workshop led by Eddie Prévost in London during the spring of 1996. Soon after, Wastell was invited to join Chris Burn's Ensemble, in which he played with Phil Durrant for the first time. Subsequently, Phil and Mark worked together in the quartets Assumed Possibilities and Quatuor Accorde, documented on Rossbin and Emanem CDs, respectively.
The debut trio concert by Davis/Durrant/Wastell took longer to organise than any of the partici…
Catapult
Gustafsson, for all his brash screeching, is a particularly accomplished player with an amazing ability to create snaps, crackles and pops on his baritone. He has lung power to spare but also can tone down the wildness and use understatement to great effect. On Catapult, Gustafsson confounds those listeners who know him as this generation’s Brötzmann. His solo playing (this may be one of only two solo baritone records ever recorded?) is actually gentle and intellectual. Nine themes make up the r…
Mondes inconnus
Mapping (1995-97). Aerial (2002). Deepfield (2000). Still Time (2001) for flûte and electronics. Melt (1994). Symbiont (2002). Silk to Steel (2005). Cortex (2004-05). DVD-Audio with several versions: Surround 5.1, Stéréo and Stéréo (Dolby Digital). 'Composition is, for me, like a giant puzzle in which the overall shape is fixed but the pieces and the picture itself change and undergo subtle transformations as one is constructing it. The computer tools that I use, enable me to fix the edges - the…
Complete "La Grima"
"La Grima (Tears) was performed on August 14, 1971, at the Genyasai festival in Sanrizuka, Japan. The first six minutes or so of this performance can be heard on the omnibus LP Genya (released on CD in 2004). This CD presents the complete, unedited version of the performance.As if to slash through the audience's scornful, jeering reaction to Takayanagi's opening remarks, the group launched into a fiercely convulsive performance. Despite having a variety of objects thrown at them, Takayanagi and …
The dark spot
Kosokuya are one of Japan's more mysterious psychedelic inner-space rock groups with an obscure history dating back to the late seventies. Great sensitive + heavy playing, lovely vocal action from Kaneko, and Urabe's unique atmospherics.