★Important Records
Benzaiten
Another smoker from Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., in typically fine form. Benzaiten is an In C-style homage to the classic Osamu Kitajima record Benzaiten (1973). Acid Mothers Temple covers the title-track and reprise using Kitajima's original composition as a departure point to explore the outer realms of AMT territory. Further instrumental explorations reveal textures of the original composition while launching out further into the cosmic domain. Numerous Acid Mothers origi…
Mara
* Picture disc edition of 300 copies * Maja S. K. Ratkje is at the forefront of the musical avant-garde. Her music is bold, original and it is meant for sharing. At its heart lies Ratkje’s own voice, an open door to her individual musicianship and a constant tool for realigning her work with natural expressions and human truths.
On Mara, layers of vocals overlap and layer their way through the reverberant woodwork of an early baroque parish in Austria. At times slow and beautiful, other times fr…
The Consummation of Right and Wrong
David First likes to use the phrase "the virtuosity of slowness" to describe his musical philosophy. In The Consummation of Right and Wrong, he and his eight-piece ensemble, The Western Enisphere, practice this virtuosity to great effect in closely examining the universes that fall between the cracks of convention, reflecting a wide continuum of complex relationships, all the while creating music that is simply ravishing to listen to. This is "drone music" as dynamic organism, moving from compac…
Function
‘Function’ is an aesthetic exploration of digital audio at an elemental level: a sequence of quantized amplitude values. The entire sonic material in this series are generated through a custom-designed program that takes a mathematical function as input, and based on a set of pre-defined criteria, outputs the function as a digital waveform. Accordingly, each track in this series is named after one mathematical function, where the function itself is used as the only sound-generating engine. These…
Ex Patris
The title Ex Patris (from the fathers) plays on the idiomatic baroque lute compositions presented here which emulate the classical repertoire. It also refers to this almost forgotten instrument, which was passed on by the fathers. The Jozef Van Wissem's aim is to bring back and liberate the lute. The four compositions on Ex Patris form a circular narrative of interlocking repetitive melodic series. The follow up to Important release “ It is all that is made” kicks off with the pro apocalyptic tr…
Aerial 1
Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in an audiophile quality double LP edition of 500 copies. 15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.
Harmonic Twins
ELEH's Harmonic Twins is a slow moving monophony tuned to the overtone vocalizations generated by a particularly beautiful sound sculpture made by Harry Bertoia. These two pieces are inspired by early music, choral masses, motets, the cathedral reverberations of sacred geometry and deep bass. Harmonic Twins was originally debuted by ELEH at Unsound, Krakow in 2017.Harmonic Twins was pressed in an audiophile edition of 500 copies and is packaged in a heavy duty sleeve printed with metallic inks. …
'Split'
Split release between ELEH and NYZ (David Burraston). Released alongside a full-length from NYZ via Important Records (IMPREC 453LP).ELEH: This side is possibly the artist's most complicated electronic composition. It navigates myriad timbral, tuning, and temporal processes while winding itself to completion. It was composed / constructed over a period of months in early 2019. NYZ: Two crunchy microtonal drone meditations in mono, using techniques of digital FM and hybrid analog / digital modula…
Millz Medz
Lose yourself in the circuitry of the original 1965 Buchla 100 with NYZ (Dave Burraston) as he utilizes Barbara Hero's Lambdoma tuning theories to create two slow, deeply layered, subconscious, organic and meditative compositions. NYZ's split 12" with ELEH (IMPREC 477LP) will be released at the same time as Millz Medz. David Burraston is an award-winning artist / scientist working in the areas of technology and electronic music, operating Noyzelab as an independent art / science music studio sin…
Golden Tree
Duo collaboration between the Japanese female accordionist à qui avec Gabriel, who previously released a solo album on John Zorn's Tzadik label, and Acid Mothers Temple guitarist and guitar-drone soundscape artist Kawabata Makoto. Kawabata's guitar traces heretical designs through the stoically beautiful illuminated manuscripts of à qui avec Gabriel's accordion and voice. The combination is deeply phantasmal.
Shasta Cults
Shasta Cults is the musical project of Canadian electronics technician Richard Smith. For almost two decades, Smith was the official Buchla & Associates go-to repair person for studios, collectors, and musicians around the world, having worked with artists such as Aphex Twin, Suzanne Ciani, Mort Subotnick, and institutions such as The Library of Congress and Mills College, Smith has had the unique experience of restoring and interacting with nearly every model of Buchla instrument constructed ov…
Multivocal
Jessica Ekomane's debut LP, Multivocal, is brilliantly original, and will appeal to fans of Caterina Barbieri, Alessandro Cortini, Shasta Cults, ELEH, and the strand of minimal electronic music that runs through the Important catalog. Multivocal is a polyphonic maze that unfolds to both the body and the mind. A generative take on rhythm and spatial perception, it presents the same events in different configurations. The two pieces of the album, "Solid of Revolution" and "Never Odd or Even", mirr…
Configurations
Shasta Cults' Important Records debut is not to be missed. A self-titled Shasta Cults will be available later this year, also on Important Records. A ship sinks beneath the silver mirror of the sea-top, temple gongs ring through an empty valley, industrial machinery sputters, heaves, lurches forward, stops, falls apart... These sound events may be the most acute musical referents of Shasta Cults, the music project of Canadian synthesizer technician Richard Smith. Using obsolete electronics, Shas…
chry-ptus
Eliane Radigue's Chry-Ptus is her very first piece for the modular synthesizer. It was composed in 1971 using a Buchla 100 which had recently been installed at NYU by Morton Subotnick. 'Chry-Ptus' (1971). Originally two tapes which were to be played simultaneously, with or without synchronisation, which does not affect the structure of the work, but creates changes in the game of sub-harmonics and overtones. Three variations on this piece were performed at the New York Cultural Center in 1971, w…
Tara's Room + Sounding Way
It’s impossible to do the legacy of Pauline Oliveros justice. From her earliest tape works during the late 1950s and her emergence into the public eye as a founding member of The San Francisco Tape Music Center during the early 60s, until her passing in 2016, she was one of the great pioneering voices in among the American musical avant-garde, ultimately becoming its grande dame. There was, and will never be, anyone quite like her. Over the last decade, we’ve been fortunate to witness a growing …
Vibe
Important Records announces Vibe, the new LP from Extended Organ, the Los Angeles-based quintet associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Vibe, Extended Organ's first full-length studio LP since 2000's XOXO was recorded in April 2016 by members Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen, Paul McCarthy, Tom Recchion, and Alex Stevens. The album consists of two side-long tracks, Hate and Vibe, recorded live at LACM Studio in Pasadena, California by acclaimed engineer André Knecht. On Vibe, the gr…
Black Metal Square
**100 copies** The sound art of Jacob Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on immediate complex, unnoticed or unapproachable aspects of the human condition or civilisation. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in Palestine, and tones - otoacoustic emissions - generated from the actual human ear. Currently Kirkegaard works on two projects, one on the sound of global waste and waste management, and the other on sound…
Phonurgia Metallis
**300 copies** The sound art of Jacob Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on immediate complex, unnoticed or unapproachable aspects of the human condition or civilisation. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in Palestine, and tones - otoacoustic emissions - generated from the actual human ear. Currently Kirkegaard works on two projects, one on the sound of global waste and waste management, and the other on sound…
Orpheus Variations
Orpheus Variations is a new composition by Alvin Lucier for solo cello and seven wind instruments. It is based on a particular sonority from the first movement of Igor Stravinsky's ballet score, Orpheus; a sonority that has haunted Lucier for decades. Orpheus Variations is one of eight large-scale compositions made expressly for Charles Curtis by Alvin Lucier in the last 15 years. This performance was conducted by Petr Kotik, with Charles Curtis playing solo cello alongside members of the SEM En…
Chamber Music: Alvin Lucier & Morton Feldman
Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present a collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, "August Moon" and "Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba" are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier. A selection from Alvin Lucier's liner notes: "For Feldman, dynamics serve an acoustical function. When he mitigates a piano attack he reduces that spike of noise that's at the onset of every pi…