★ReR Megacorp
Sift
"Blast's second release on the Recommended label after a long wait from this unique ensemble. Equally at home with the discipline of composition and the tightrope of improvisation Blast have evolved a fluid, pointillistic, unfathomable but transpa…
Funnel to a Thread
Since the late 1970s Biota has ploughed its own furrow, producing a body of work that resembles nothing anyone else has done or is yet doing. Their compositions evolve in long, constantly shifting timbral blocks filled with fragments and echoes of qu…
Cape Flyaway
After 5 years of extensive and careful work, the new and much anticipated CD by this extraordinary collective, who have no parallels, no rivals and no peers, is at last complete. It’s a dense and indescribable orchestration of electric and acousti…
Object Holder
Stunning work that breaks new ground; an extraordinary achievement that was 3 years in the making and rewrote lot of rules in passing. With texts and singing by the inimitable Susanne Lewis, the CD also features contributions from Charles Vrtacek …
Invisible Map
A long time coming, but as always, well worth the wait. Technically, this is the usual uncategorise-able mixture of primitive electronic, ethnic antique and conventional instruments, multilayered processing and meticulous construction. Aurally, va…
Ash in the Rainbow
Out of print immediately after release, now re-issued. A test-bed of experimental arrangement and production ideas set in the context of songs that only just hold together - exquisitely realised. Extraordinary sounds, treatments and arrangements -…
Hopes And Fears
The first Art Bears LP, mostly made by the band formerly known as Henry Cow and completed by Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause who went on, as '[Art Bears', to investigate this short song format further over the next two years, once Henry…
Winter Songs
A reissue of the brilliant second album by Art Bears, a band/project featuring Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause, formed in 1978 after disputes over the musical direction within Henry Cow. 'Winter Songs', originally released in 1979, placed …
The World As It Is Today
The third classic Art Bears record, and the most austere. Remastered and repackaged.
If you thought Henry Cow was a pretty political band to start with, you may be even more taken aback by the Art Bears, which was put together following Henry Cow's d…
Tessuti
The latest from Paulo on which he plays compositions by Fred Frith and Bjork - solo (though when you hear it, you definitely won't believe it) on his highly customised and extended, electrified, giant Sardinian guitar. A tour de force of technique…
Itsunomanika
Paolo Angeli and ex-After Dinner/Volapuk violinist/singer Takumi Fukushima present an integrated, complex and largely composed programme of deft, focused pieces that make the most of their not inconsiderable individual talents and instruments; mostly…
Sale Quanto Basta
Paolo Angeli’s latest is an extraordinary collection of pieces that explore the full range of his highly modified, extended and prepared Sardinian guitar; and although it’s just him and electricity, it seldom sounds like fewer than 3 people. Great co…
Bucato
Extraordinary player - extraordinary instrument. Paulo plays a highly modified and treated Sardinian Guitar - in many styles, some of them apparently impossible. Innovative techniques, a deeply musical sensibility and a rich, occasionally baffling…
NITA. L'Angelo sul Trapezio
This could hardly be more different from his first ReR CD- the extraordinary collection of solo prepared Sardinian Guitar pieces. Here, with a small orchestra of musicians (30 of Bologna's finest), is a programme of highly evolved, through compos…
Tibi
This disc will play in stereo on a CD player and with film and 5.1 surround sound (or stereo) on a DVD player or computer. The music, as always, is prodigious, sounding like a small band, but played by one person in real time (as the film attests)…
S'Û
An amazing record. It’s beautifully recorded and almost impossible to believe that such a layered and polyphonic music, with chords, percussion, lead lines, bass lines, harmonies, string sections and sometimes voice could all be produced by one perso…
Crashing Icons
Based in Miami, this is a very interesting American band, ploughing its own furrow - whose accent is what they call 'prog' over there, but whose language is more complex by far. Pip Pyle adds a seasoned sophistication - in fact I think this is a g…
Crisis In Clay
Second Installment from monster band 5UU's, featuring rock complexity, extraordinary production (by bassist and singer Bob Drake) and high energy precision mixed with eccentric song-writing. People that work this hard are becoming an endangered sp…
Vertigo
The Necks 18th album Vertigo is an eventful, kaleidoscopic tone poem set against a darkly shimmering background. Slowly but inexorably moving forward, it crosses many frontiers yet remains true to the mission and mood established in the opening st…
Concerts
Originally released in 1976, this collection offers a snapshot of Henry Cow as audiences would have heard it in the year before. In the chronology, Concerts came between In Praise of Learning and Western Culture - that is, after Virgin had lost in…