★ReR Megacorp
Dentro
Somewhere between Musique Concrete and a kind of abstract improvisational work, using extended techniques and electrification that disconnects sound from any recognisable source. A fascinating first record that sits between studio improvisation and extensive post production processing composition.
Verso
The second release from this abstract trio who mingle hard electronics with acoustic and processed percussion. A more focused, subtle aesthetic here, I think, than on their last also excellent - CD. These are finely tuned and seamlessly integrated sounds that have been crafted and, importantly, performed; this is essentially played music that had been painstakingly reworked, and bears still the deep qualities of interactivity and immediacy that created it.
Gyromancy
Mnemonists eventually evolved into the incredible Biota band. Before they did they released a series of LPs, including the art work that surrounds and informs their approach to improvisation. As Mnemonists their work is darker and more ominous than that of Biota, but the process was still the same: post-processing live improvisation to construct larger works that stood on their own two feet as compositional pieces. Think AMM, Organum, Faust; Mnemonists embraced their strategies but created somet…
Horde
The 1981 electro-acoustic electronic classic by the group that morphed into Biota. Their 3rd album & their first true classic, which is a high-water mark of churning sonic storms. The first release by the Mnemonists to be reissued on CD & one of their finest works overall. Based in Fort Collins, CO, the Mnemonists gave modern American experimental music a good name in the early 80s as they dug themselves out of the trenches of post-industrial alignment. Ultra-detailed processing, beautiful graph…
Folie/Culture
This soundtrack contains many silences... Don't turn up the volume: it should be set so that the music and ambient sounds blend together. Better: open the windows and listen to it all. This is a four parts work, with an additional optional piece. To program this musical interlude in the listening sequence, call for the number 5. If your cd player doesn't allow sequence programming, just wait a few minutes after the fourth part: it is there somewhere.
That House We Lived In
It was a long wait, but, 12 years after the fact, Fred Frith put together a live album of his group Keep the Dog, which had previously gone undocumented. Comprised of sax/flute player Jean Derome, guitarist René Lussier, keyboardist/harpist Zeena Parkins, sampling artist Bob Ostertag, and drummer Charles Hayward, Keep the Dog was formed by Frith in 1989 to perform a best-of repertoire of his career and remained his last rock group. By the time of this 1991 European tour, the unit had grown beyon…
Speechless
This is one of the most important experimental guitar-based titles from avant guitarist and founding Henry Cow member Fred Frith. Frith's second solo album, Speechless, includes appearances by Etron Fou Leloublan, Massacre, and Bill Laswell.
This is a studio Frankenstein of live clips and found sounds. While Frith attests to the occurrence of many "happy accidents," the album comes across confidently and more often more coherent than merely challenging. This is often cited as Frith's best sol…
Middle of the Moment
Continuing the definitive Fred Frith edition, this is the CD based on Fred’s music for the second film he made with Humbert and Penzel – following nomads – that features, along with Fred’s compositions and re-workings, a restless and gripping unfolding of atmospheric locations, tuareg and other musics, ethongraphic material and times captured. A collage or a soundwork rather than a straightforwardly musical composition, this is a serious and unfairly marginalised piece (because it falls between …
Prints - Snapshots, Postcards, Messages And Miniatures 1987-2001
The short story: Prints is Fred Frith's first album of songs in 20 years. The long story: it is actually a collection of compilation tracks and unreleased studio sessions recorded between 1987 and 2001. No matter if you already own a few of these, a pop album by this man is a rarity -- and that is truly a shame. Of course, as a respected improviser, serious composer, and educator, anything lighter from this pillar of modern music will meet with severe criticism from people who take themse…
Accidental
Fred Frith has been heard in all possible contexts, from solo improviser to composer of orchestral music, but he remains at his best when trapped in a studio, alone or with a few musicians, building layered pieces. This process previously yielded stunning albums such as the delicate Middle of the Moment or the avant rocking Speechless. Accidental features Frith performing all instruments and voices, mostly guitars, violin, junk percussion, and random radio tuning. This music was commissioned by …
The Previous Evening
Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…
Phoenix
Superb introduction to a largely unknown avant-garde composer/instrument builder; one of the most important ReR releases in a while. The music of little known East European composer Ernö Kiraly has finally been preserved -- a collection of original works that will impress and amaze all students of contemporary classical/electroacoustic composition, along with those who have only recently discovered the sound worlds of Pierre Henry and Harry Partch. Kiraly's experimental music stems from two sour…
Musique-action
Compositions for the Hyperion ensemble by Dumitrescu, Avram, Hodgkinson and Cutler recorded at the Nancy-Vanoeuvre festival. Contents: New Meteors and Pulsars (Dumitrescu, 1982). For Tape and Percussion. Tape by Iancu Dumitrescu, Soloist, Chris Cutler. Nouvelle Axe (Avram, 1988) Hyperion Ensemble. Life On Earth (Cutler, 1998) Hyperion Ensemble with Ana Maria Avram, Prepared Piano and Tim Hodgkinson, Clarinet and Bass Clarinet. Black Death and Errors in Construction (Hodgkinson, 1988) Hyperion En…
More encores
Since 1979 Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records. His interest in records, both as objects and bearers of sound, is expressed through sculpture, performance, video and music. In performance, he mixes a wide variety of records on up to 8 turntables, fragmenting, repeating, altering speeds, playing the records backwards, etc. More Encores was originally released as a 10" vinyl record on No Man's Land (Germany) in 1988, composed entirely of recor…
p53
Commissioned project from Chris Cutler for the 25th Frankfurt Jazz Festival 1994, featuring Marie Goyette, Zygmunt Krauze, Otomo Yoshihide, Lutz Glandien and Chris Cutler (score contemporary composers: 2, Sound debris organisers: 2, virtuoso pianists: 2, Virtual instruments: 2, Rythmn, Melody, Chaos: 2,2,2, more of the same: nil). His first without sung text. Instruments: Two Grand Pianos, Turntables, Random-tuned Guitar, Drums/Electronics, Computer and real-time processing. A single, com…
Twice Around The Earth
An experiment in listening. These compositions are an offshoot of the daily soundscape programme I ran for Resonance FM radio between July 2001-2002, which consisted of commissioned real-time recordings made all around the world between 23.30 and midnight GMT (the time of the broadcast). This CD begins with material from these broadcasts confecting, as it were, two composites of the Earth and a few of its inhabitants, somewhat analogous to what an impossible satellite ear with pinpoint ac…
Solo
It took long enough. The electric kit finally gets a chance to speak for itself. I won't try to describe it, but it's been pretty much my main work of the last three years. I can't say it reminds me of anything else but, naturally, I suggest you buy it.