★EM Records
Vocal virtuoso: collection 1977-1997
Long deleted, this is the legendary spacey, funky, and wonderful album by Jana Koubkova! During the 60s and 70s, the Iron Curtain prevented most of us from hearing some of the fantastic sounds that were cooking in Eastern Europe -- where obscure jazz funk combos were grooving away in styles that were very different than those heard in the US and Western Europe. There's no easy way to describe the music, because it was so varied and inventive but this excellent set of 10 rare Czechoslovakian tra…
Otinku
The Modern Sound Quintet were formed in Stockholm by Trinidadian steel drum master Rudy Smith. On Otinku, Smith wails out on his set of 'pans' (as I believe the vernacular goes) in an improbably slick bebop mode, accompanied by a rhythm section capable of keeping it free and swinging one moment, and then within an instant locking down a groove. While pieces like the title track and 'Bye Bye Blackbird' flow effortlessly, 'Mercy, Mercy, Mercy' and 'Memphis Underground' lay down a solid bedrock of …
Reggae Is Here Once Again
Includes documentary DVD by Steve Shaw featuring perceptive commentary from Steel an'Skin's founder Peter Blackman, killer live and rehearsal footage of the band** A comprehensive reissue of Steel An' Skin's output from the late seventies and early eighties, combining the band's debut 12" release Reggae Is Here Once Again, a couple of tracks from their 1984 LP Acid Rain, and one previously unissued piece. Significantly, this edition come as a double disc release, including a DVD featuring Steve …
Virtuoso Saw
the pure union musician, was the sawtooth performer with the occupation musician who serves the oboe player of the los angeles symphony. it attends the musician of the band companion in the back, announcing the extremity of sawtooth performance with the transcendent tech which is lined to the beauty consciousness and professional ability of western classical music. the elegant solo album 1985 indicates one direction of sawtooth music. the japanese first appearance. the booklet attachment of valu…
Symphony Of The Birds
An early electronic manipulation/ musique concrete masterpiece, the reissue of an old 1960 Columbia album, Symphony of the Birds. Working with CBS radio technician Mortimer Goldberg, Fassett painstakingly pieced together fragments from recordings of bird calls originally made in the field by Jerry and Norma Stilwell. On this recording you will hear an orchestra of singing birds." That's how Jim Fassett introduces this extraordinary disc. The one-time musical director of CBS Radio composed his bi…
Chaos 1978-86
Unless Sun Ra's most out there moments, one of many behavioral components from Chaos 1978-86, were beamed alongside televised presidential messages for years, or the ravenous fire from Jimi Hendrix's burning guitar had a heated soundtrack of its own on the Billboard charts, it's hard to imagine anyone being ready for this crazy shit in the early 80s. The appropriately named Wicked Witch, a richly decadent and spooky avant-garde affair of off-kilter rhythm and blues-based x-spunk, was the masterm…
Evolution
Tamam Shud was one of the most original and innovative Australian groups of the late '60s and early '70s. They played a very important part as pioneers of acid-rock and progressive music. For many years after they split, they were something of a cult, and their original recordings were (and still are) very hard to obtain. The evolution of Shud was typical of many groups of the era, beginning as an instrumental band, through "beat" pop songs and psychedelia, to progressive rock. From the original…
Inter-Dimensional Music
CD reissue of the 1978 debut LP by the original new age music legend, Iasos. Fifteen tracks (including 3 bonus tracks) of original analog bliss. It is NOT the typical sounds of the average new age music found throughout the '80s, it is a trippy, exotic psych sound having roots in '60s West Coast experimental music. A cornerstone of new age music by real new agers. "l find lasos' inter-dimensional music needing new words to describe it. I feel as though I were entering a new world -- a new and ve…
Off the wall
More Yoshi Wada from EM Records! The long-awaited reissue of Wada's 1985 LP Off The Wall, recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP-subsidiary SAJ label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ("massive," as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), Off The Wall features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri. The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by …
The Appointed Cloud
This is the first-ever release of the extraordinary 1987 performance of Yoshi Wada's interactive sound installation The Appointed Cloud, recorded in the Great Hall of the New York Hall of Science. This majestic recording captures 60 minutes of sound produced by a self-made 80-pipe organ, a pipe gong, sirens and a massive suspended metal sheet, all triggered by a computer program designed by David Rayna. The CD also features Wada, Bob Drombowski and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, plus Michael Pugl…
Music By William Eaton
Mellow disc of tripped-out experimental acoustic-instrument pieces from composer/instrument designer William Eaton, reissuing a self-released 1978 lp of said. there’s more than a twinge of Fahey/takoma-lineage steel-string wrangling herein, albeit augmented with a certain Partch/Hans Reichel-ish sensibility and unusual recording techniques... but it stays pretty damn “easy on the ears” throughout.. "When I started building instruments, playing guitar took on a whole new dimension. The process of…
Lament For The Rise and Fall of the Elephantine Crocodile
2014 repress! Finally, a CD reissue of Yoshi Wada's most important and most rare LP, Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, originally released in 1982 on the India Navigation label. Yoshi Wada is a Japanese sound installation artist and musician -- he moved to New York in the late 1960s, and became well-known as a Fluxus artist with links to La Monte Young, and has been involved in many performances and sound installations. However, he has released only two recordings,…
Moooohieee!
A dead voice gathers on this Musical Saw and Hawaiian Guitar Soli Recorded in Early 1920s. Innovator of the octo-chorda (an open-alternate-tuned eight-string steel guitar), banjo, singing saw, inflated rubber balloon, and various other 'household instruments', Floridian samuel Pasco moore (1887-1959) was a darling both in NYC and on the vaudeville circuit during his 1920s heyday. While novelty acts suffered the pitfalls of most soft-soapers, moore's sound is of startling, heavenly haunted southe…
Music of Richard Lerman 1964 - 1987
RESTOCKED: As a sound artist, performer and composer, Richard Lerman traverses worlds of sound and music. For over forty years, he has been gathering, scanning, seeking sounds and creating works that weave through nature and draw upon living communities and memories in notable landscapes. (Some of his work references regrettable historical events such as the disappearance of Chilean citizens under General Pinochet' regime and the internment of Japanese-Americans during the World War II.) His rec…
The tape music of Noah Creshevsky 1971-1992
Reissue of 8 pieces from 1971 to 1992, mainly tape collage, using instrumental (including disco dance music or rock music), vocal, and concrete sounds. "In Other Words..." features the voice of John Cage. Noah Creshevsky is a Julliard-educated composer with a sense of humor and fine taste in vests. "Since studying with Boulanger in Paris and with Berio at Juilliard, New York avant-garde-ist Noah Creshevsky has been director of the Center for Computer Music, professor of music at Brooklyn Colle…
Brainwave music
CD reissue of biofeedback/brainwave music masterpieces from 1971 to 1974, using analog synthesizers, piano, and text. Includes a bonus track, a previously-unreleased 2001 piece featuring biofeedback-driven computer synthesis, violin and oboe. With original cover art. Listed in Alan Licht's "Minimalism Top 10 Pt. 3": "The sidelong 'Portable Gold and Philosopher's Stones (Music from Brains in Fours)' uses brain waves to trigger synths. A spiraling, oozing piece, it's the best analog synth mi…
Reelizations one & two the sound of Barton Smith
Double CD reissue of two albums, originally released on Folkways in 1980 and 1982, recorded in the early to late seventies. All pieces composed for various dance groups, using guitars, keyboards, self-made instuments, synthesizers, and tape manipulation.” CD 1 : “REELIZATIONS I” (1980). Akimbo. Scene four. TS Danza. Prelude in g # major. Roland No.119. Azirthmyth. Perihehlion. Biease. Feast. Pleasure guitar. The tube. CD 2 : “REELIZATIONS 2” (1982). Cit-calm. Gate of shariz. Magnus continuum. Th…
Electronic landscapes
Originally issued in 1979, first time on CD with bonus tracks. Although Barton and his wife Priscilla McLean have had a long and distinguished history of LP and compact disc albums throughout their professional composer/performer career, this album is unique in that it is the first one to present, on one CD, such a broad and comprehensive picture of their purely electronic music, spanning 1975 through 2001. Interestingly, although their materials and equipment have changed, their ideas of …
Early Works 1967-82
EM's original selection of Annea Lockwood's early works, which had once featured in Source: Music of the Avant Garde, a now-legendary magazine for new and experimental music from 1967-1973. This CD includes the album Glass World (originally issued on Tangent Records in England, 1970), and trippy, ritual shamanic tape piece "Tiger Balm" (1970). Also her most notable works, series performances "Piano Transplants (1967-1982)" is now re-realized in one single special booklet, containing "Piano Bu…