★Another Timbre
Choices
The first meeting on disc of two of the finest and most innovative electroacoustic instrumentalists in Germany, performing on reeds, trumpets, radio, speakers, and preparations. Three pieces from 2010, the first meeting on disc of two of thefinest and most innovative instrumentalists in Germany.
Horsky Park
Two instruments with totally different histories come together and look for a connection across two great sets from 2006 & 2010. "What counts is who you are performing with....in the end that is more important than the actual instrument"-Thomas Lehn
Dying sun
The third album by the established and highly respected Greek/Swedish/Norwegian trio Looper: Nikos Veliotis (cello), Martin Küchen (saxophone) and Ingar Zach (percussion). Recorded at GMEA auditorium in Albi, France, by Benjamin Maumus, January 2010. Music by Looper. Edited, mixed by Nikos Veliotis. Mastered by Coti K. Co-release Cathnor recordings.
Music For Shakuhachi
nprecedented music for Shakuhachi by Frank Denyer (releases on Tzadik, Mode) with Yoshikazu Iwamoto on shakuhachi and Paul Hiley joining Denyer on percussion.
Fields Have Ears
Fields have ears 1' (2008) - for piano & tape. 'Fade' - for piano (2000). 'Fields have ears 4' - realisation for 14 players (2009). Philip Thomas: piano + members of the edges ensemble. 3 varied works by the US-based composer Michael Pisaro. Fields Have Ears 1 interweaves a surprisingly lyrical piano part with layered field recordings and sine tones. Fade is a beautifully austere minimalist piece for solo piano, expertly played by Philip Thomas. Fields Have Ears 4 is a prose score, realis…
Wunderkammern
David Toop laptop, steel guitar, flutes, percussive devices. Rhodri Davies harp, ebows, electronics, preparations. Lee Patterson amplified devices, field recordings. Recorded by Dave Hunt at Dave Hunt Studio, London, 24 July 2006. Magnificent, tight studio recordings from 2006 by a trio of UK improvisers of different generations, coming together to create a rich and strange soundworld of whispered, scraped and quietly haunting reverberations.
Four4
Four4 for four percussionists (1991). By Simon Allen, Chris Burn, Lee Patterson, Mark Wastell. A unique realisation of one of Cage's late 'number pieces' by an ensemble of musicians better known for their work as improvisers. The 72-minute piece uses a system of flexible time brackets which were determined randomly according to a computer programme. Each musician chooses a number of sounds and assigns each of them them a number. Every time that number occurs above one of the time brackets, they …
Pie and Mash
Mathias Forge, trombone. Olivier Toulemonde, acoustic objects. 'Two more relative unknowns deserving of greater attention: Mathias Forge is a young but virtuosic French-based trombonist, and Olivier Toulemonde is a Brussels-based electroacoustic composer-turned improviser who has now developed an extraordinary instrumental set-up which has moved on from electronics altogether. Their duo - recorded with and without audience during a tour of the UK in early 2010 - immediately creates a uniqu…
Giles U.
The tuba's bass sounds are in complete contrast to the higher pitches of the spinet, bringing to mind cartoon images of an elephant and a mouse. But none of that concerned Hübsch and Schiller when they first played together in 2008-09; they felt a strong connection in their playing - it remains obvious here. Both have modified their instruments, in the process getting rid of the seeming disparity. Schiller's spinet has become a semi-percussive instrument, amply illustrated by this CD's opening s…
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Angharad Davies, violin. Axel Dörner, trumpet. 'Neither player should need much introduction, as both are widely acknowledged as leading improvisers on their respective instruments. These domestic recordings mark their first meeting as a duo, and - in the words of another early reviewer, David Grundy - create 'the atmosphere of surprise - of magic - that great improvisation is still so uniquely capable of providing'.'
Nella Basilica
Roberto Fabbriciani, bass flutes. Robin Hayward, microtonal tuba. 'This is the first CD of improvised music featuring Roberto Fabbriciani, one of the giants of contemporary music. Fabbriciani was the instrumentalist with whom Luigi Nono worked most closely in the last two decades of his life, playing in the premieres of virtually all of the composer's late works. On nella basilica Fabbriciani improvises with Robin Hayward, the phenomenal Berlin-based tuba player with whom he has worked on …
Crepuscular Rays
“The young Norwegian guitarist Håvard Volden uses the table-top approach, but his guitar is an acoustic 12-string that he rescued from a skip, so many of the sounds he works with have clear acoustic origins and contrast interestingly with the no-holds-barred electronics of Toshi Nakamura's famous no-input mixing board. The disc contains two powerful extended improvisations that were recorded at concerts in November 2008 during the duo's tour of Norway.” label info
Corgroc
'Ferran Fages: Acoustic guitar. Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga: zither. ap'strophe is the duo of Ferran Fages and Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga. They began working together in 2006, when Ferran Fages recorded 'Cançons per a un lent retard', where Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga collaborated in the track Paraula clau, which they composed and interpreted together. After recording the album they realized the impossibility of re-interpreting this piece, which is based on the detuning(s) of the guitar, but…
Lost Daylight
'The compositions on Lost Daylight' by John CAGE and the almost-forgotten American Fluxus composer Terry JENNINGS date from between 1958 and 1966. Yet in the hands of John Tilbury and Sebastian Lexer they sound astonishingly modern. JENNINGS' solo pieces couldn't be more conventional in using only pure keyboard notes, but they could hardly be more radical in the way in which the notes are reduced, isolated and surrounded with silences. As Michael Pisaro's sleevenotes say, 'It is music of simplic…
Turned Moment, Weighting
'Stephen CORNFORD is better known for his work in sound sculptures and installations than as an improvising musician. But on ÔTurned Moment, weighting' (at-b07) he uses the piano as a source for feedback patterns, which he blends with the gentle Feldmanesque playing of pianist Samuel RODGERS to produce three extended improvisations of astonishingly delicacy. Samuel RODGERS has said that 'though being aware of and struggling with the tradition and limitations of the instrument, I have found the…
The cat from Cat Hill
Loris is Patrick Farmer playing natural objects/E bow snare/tapes/wood, Sarah Hughes on chorded zither/piano/E bow and Daniel Jones supplying turntable/E bow/piezo discs and electronics. Their music is constructed of minimal gestures that seem at times borrowed directly from nature — witness the fuzzy crackling and odd insectile sounds at the start of the first track, "A Heron and a Terrapin", which has a very natural sounding sway, from quiet activity to near silence and back. The electric hums…
Midhopestones
Rhodri Davies (harps), Michel Doneda (soprano saxophone), Louisa Martin (laptop), Phil Minton (voice) & Lee Patterson (amplified objects & processes). Four extraordinary improvisations by musicians spanning three countries and three generations, performed in January 2009 in the freezing cold fourteenth century stone church in the small village of Midhopestones near Sheffield, England. A dark, brooding, swirling music from a quintet who gelled together into a remarkably tight and unified ensemble…
Decentred
Improvisations and realisations of indeterminate scores by John Cage and Michael Pisaro. Performed by Tom Chant (saxes & bass clarinet), Angharad Davies (violin), Benedict Drew (electronics) & John Edwards (bass). A quartet of leading improvisers play a combination of improvisations and indeterminate scores. The disc contains the first recorded performances of three of the American composer Michael Pisaro's ÔHarmony Series' pieces, a brilliant interpretation of John Cage's late work ÔFour 6', an…
Electricals
EKG : Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, english horn & analogue electronics) & Ernst Karel (trumpet & analogue electronics). Electricals' is the fourth duo release by Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn & analogue electronics) and Ernst Karel (trumpet & analogue electronics). As on previous discs, the music is carefully constructed and extended from extracts of duo improvisations recorded in the studio and at concerts.But as the title suggests, the disc has a more electronic feel than much of their previous …
Kravis Rhonn Project
“Very strong, extremely well integrated set, Krebs and Davies meshing perfectly....next to impossible to describe to any degree of satisfaction, but that's usually the case with something as beautifully positioned as this. Mandatory.” Brian Olewnick, Just OutsideAnnette Krebs (guitar, recordings, mixing board) and Rhodri Davies (electric harp & electronics) played together as a duo for the first time for a day at Annette’s flat when Rhodri was visiting Berlin in April 2008. Annette then spent a…