★Folkways Records
Indeterminacy: New Aspect Of Form In Instrumental And Electronic
Perfect copy of Cage & Tudor's landmark album for Folkways from 1959 released as 2xLP box set with booklet.
Calypso Travels
New vinyl reissue remastered from the original 1960s master tapes, packaged in classic Folkways-style tip-on jackets with original liner notes. Lord Invader was one of the most iconic and well-regarded calypso musicians of the mid-20th century. Coming from humble beginnings in the musical hotbed of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, Invader gained notoriety for his unique voice and lyrical prowess. Calypso Travels, his final album released just before his death, was produced in New York in 1960 by Folkway…
Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar
Elizabeth Cotten's 1958 debut album Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar, (aka Freight Train and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes) is best known for containing the earliest recording of her classic "Freight Train." The breadth of her repertoire and her endearing style have captivated generations of guitarists and fans of traditional American music. Cotten's self-taught, upside-down, left-handed playing style on the guitar and banjo made her a true original. Many of her deeply persona…
Sounds of North American Frogs
Super tip! 2024 small repress available. It is probable that the first voice in existence was that of a frog," remarks renowned herpetologist Charles M. Bogert in the liner notes for Sounds of North American Frogs. These critters have been singing, croaking, barking, and chirping for millions of years, and Bogert captures 57 species in his 1958 compendium of frog calls. Sounds of North American Frogs has become one of the most coveted Folkways LPs, and we're proud to present a remastered version…
New American Music, Vol. 4
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Noa Ain gives us a surreal portrait of violinist Yoko Matsua in “Used to Call Me Sadness,” Joel Chadabe encourages a solo percussionist to interact with an automated electronic system in “Echoes,” Ann McMillan manipulates animal sounds with recording techniques in “Whale I,” Gordon Mumma offers audience members “Do It Yourself” participation in “Cybersonic Cantilevers” and Vladimir Ussachevsky suggests a pre-biblical story of the creation of the world depicted by electro…
New American Music, Vol. 3
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Works by Talib Rasul Hakim, William Bolcom, Howard Swanson and Frederic Rzewski are presented here. Highlights include Bolcom’s "Whisper Moon" for chamber ensemble and three of Rzewski’s songs, whose lyrics are drawn from words by Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes and Guatemalan revolutionary Otto Rene Castille.
New American Music, Vol. 2
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* Trumpets and trombones twist through dense pockets of sound in Lucia Dlugoszewski “Angels of the Inmost Heaven”; the voice of a lone guitarist punctures the silence in James Fulkerson’s “Patterns” II and VII; flute, bassoons, viola and vibraphone are intended to “turn some dancers on” in Carman Moore’s “Youth in a Merciful House”; and a guitarist laments to the hum of an Elizabethan-type string and woodwind consort in Stanley Silverman’s “Planh.” This is a thoughtfully b…
New American Music, Vol. 1
*2024 stock. Custon CDr* From Milford Graves’ guttural experiments with percussion and the body to Mary Lou Williams’ jazz combo interrupted by atonal “fungus,” this compilation of new (1970s) music makes for an eclectic mix of musical sounds. Star innovators Gil Evans, Sam Rivers, Sunny Murray also contribute to this collection of jazz.
For Jon (Fragments Of A Time To Come) 1977
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Commissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation to enter in the 1977 Italia Prize Competition, Lars-Gunnar Bodin - For Jon (Fragments of a Time to Come) 1977 is structured as a “dramatic cantata…with vocal sections for both chorus and soloists alternating with recitatives and ‘instrumental’ interludes.” The texts are based on “’surrealistic science fiction’—testimony and reports about experience in other worlds, real or imaginary.” The liner notes provide an introdu…
At The Helm
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* East New York Ensemble de Music came out of the diverse community of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, where African, West Indian & black American cultures converged. First and foremost a deep Spiritual Jazz record, At The Helm also incorporates elements of the West Indies, and both the Near and Far East. Originally issued in a very small pressing by Folkway Records in 1974, at a time when the label was doing some great underground recordings!
The sound is loose and free – spiritually…
Highlights of Vortex
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* The brainchild of visual artist Jordan Belson and electronics polymath Henry Jacobs, the Vortex Experiments ran from 1957 to 1960, first at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium and later at the SF Museum of Art. The very name of these events announced their aim: a swirling totality of sensory experience. Around Belson’s richly-colored visuals – making use of the planetarium’s entire dome and featuring luminous, sharply geometric imagery projected through an array of devi…
Music By Jean Eichelberger Ivey For Voices, Instruments, And Tape
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* This 1973 recording combines live performance and tape in order to “offer the best of both worlds, plus a dimension which neither live performer nor tape can reach alone.” There are four pieces on the album: “Terminus” and “Aldebaran” are each for a solo performer and tape, “Three Songs of Night” is for a large ensemble with intermittent tape, and “Cortege—for Charles Kent” is an entirely electronic piece. Liner notes contain a biography of composer Jean Eichelberger Ive…
The Griots: Ministers Of The Spoken Word
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* West African griots are gatekeepers of their culture, repositories of oral tradition. Hear centuries-old histories from Gambia and Mali, accompanied by stringed instruments and drums. This recording features a recitation describing the beginnings of the slave trade with the Portuguese and Dutch in the early 1600s.
Electronic Music From The Outside In
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Electronic Music from the Outside In presents the experimental musical sounds of Barton and Priscilla McLean (The McLean Mix), Reed Holmes, and Kevin Hanlon as they explain how they seek to explore the extremes of music and sound. Each track begins with a spoken introduction about the reasoning and process behind the music. Both of the McLeans have won numerous awards and grants for their work in promoting and creating experimental music.
Ionosphere
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* Did you know that the ionosphere makes noise? Or that that noise is actually possible to record? This recording shows that the ionosphere, part of the upper atmosphere that is ionized by solar radiation, can indeed be recorded. Here you have the opportunity to listen to the electrical static in stereo synchronized from recordings made at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC and at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Incidentally, this is a Cook classic…
Music Of A Timeless Earth
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* This 1980 album features compositions by Barton McLean, Charles Gruber, Gene Menger, and Catherine Schieve that present “several highly individualistic approaches to the combination of cultures in sound.” Influences from electronic music, from notation systems that can “translate” sounds and gestures from the human and natural worlds, and music based on non-Western oral and pre-literate tradition combine to inspire these works. Liner notes contain an introduction to the …
Invocations
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* How do people pray around the world? On this album, Richard Kostelanetz recorded ministers and religious leaders from diverse religious backgrounds to further explore “those qualities that make all prayers sound like prayers, regardless of differences in language.” The album contains prayers in German, French, Polish, and Persian, as well as Latin, English, Spanish, and Turkish. The recordings are layered, with prayers occurring in multiple languages at once. In this con…
The Neptune Collection
*2024 stock. Custom CDr* An epigraph to the liner notes of The Neptune Collection, the second album by The Entourage Music and Theater Ensemble, reads, “We are a group flexible in size and temperament. Our purpose is to create original works in a collective manner. We utilize music, dance, poetry, and theatre skills.” Plainly stated, this dictum represents the core of the dynamic, multi-medium approach the group employed in the mid-70s when the album was recorded.The music on The Neptune Collect…
Waka and Other Compositions: Contemporary Music of Japan
2024 stock. This 1960 release is a selection of compositions by Japanese experimental composer Michiko Toyama. The 12 compositions are drawn from traditional Japanese musical forms with additional influence from many of the experimental composers in the West that were active during the twentieth century. Some pieces are sung with instrumental accompaniment; others are spoken poetry. The instrumentation consists of a mix of traditional Japanese and modern Western instruments, including electronic…
Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn's Experiments In Extension Of Human Vocal Range
Have you ever considered what the full range of tone and pitch the human voice is? Have you wondered if there was some latent singing ability that all people were capable of achieving?